Sharpe's Regiment

Sharpe's Regiment is the seventeenth historical novel in the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell, first published in 1986. The story is set in England as Sharpe looks for the missing Second Battalion of the South Essex Regiment needed in Spain to fight in the Napoleonic Wars. Plot summary The 1st Battalion, South Essex Regiment, is desperately short of men. The 2nd Battalion, stationed back in England, is supposed to train and send recruits, but Lord Simon Fenner, the secretary of state for war, informs Major General Nairn that no reinforcements will be sent and recommends the unit be broken up. While there is a lull in the campaign as Wellington prepares to invade France, Nairn sends Sharpe back to England to investigate. Sharpe goes to the 2nd Battalion's headquarters with Regimental Sergeant Harper, Captain d'Alembord and Lieutenant Price and finds only a skeleton staff. However, an old comrade-in-arms stationed there tells him that he saw a South Essex recruiting party with new enlistees in tow, though none of them have arrived for training. Sharpe is then summoned by the Prince Regent, where he meets Lord Fenner. Fenner has his mistress, Dowager Countess Lady Anne Comoynes, meet Sharpe to find out what he knows. She seduces Sharpe for her own purposes and warns him against asking questions. Two men are sent to assassinate Sharpe, but Sharpe kills them after visiting an old friend, Maggie Joyce. One of the dead men is wearing the (concealed) uniform of a sergeant of the South Essex. Sharpe and Harper then enlist in the South Essex Regiment under assumed names. They are taken to a secret and brutal training camp in Foulness Island, run by the 2nd Battalion's commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Bartholomew Girdwood. Sharpe learns that Fenner, Sir Henry Simmerson (the regiment's disgraced founder and Sharpe's old enemy from Sharpe's Eagle) and Girdwood are secretly selling trained recruits to other regiments and profiting enormously.