Sharpe's gold

Bernard Cornwell published Sharpe's Gold in 1981, the second of the Sharpe novels to appear. It is set in August 1810, during the Peninsular War.

Wellington gives Sharpe a secret mission that matters more than it looks: he needs a hoard of Spanish gold to keep his army in the field, and the gold is in the keeping of Spanish guerrillas behind the French lines. Their leader is a man known as El Catolico, who takes pleasure in torturing French prisoners to death, and the British have already lost one attempt to bring the money out.

One of Major Michael Hogan's exploring officers, Claud Hardy, had been left watching the guerrillas and the gold. Hardy is a wealthy man, and the lover of Josefina La Costa, who was Sharpe's own interest in the previous book, which gives the mission a personal edge alongside the military one. The work takes Sharpe into the hills behind the French lines, among allies whose motives are never simple, and the destruction of the fortress at Almeida that closes the novel is one of the set pieces of the series.