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'What do you think?' 'Sir?' 'Frightening? Did you ever learn mathematics?' 'Yes, sir.' 'So add up how many Frenchmen can actually use their muskets.'
Bernard Cornwell -
Here, in this filthy stench of powder smoke, he felt at home. Other men learned how to plough fields or to shape wood, but Sharpe had learned how to use a musket or rifle, sword or bayonet, and how to turn an enemy's flank or assault a fortress.
Bernard Cornwell
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If you capture a ship, Sharpe, you keep the old name unless it's really obnoxious. Nelson took the Franklin at the Nile, an eighty gun thing of great beauty, but the navy will be damned if it has a ship named after a traitorous bloody Yankee so we call her the Canopus now.
Bernard Cornwell -
And the good news is that you've got a brain. You do! Honest! I saw it with my own eyes, thus disproving the navy's stubborn contention that soldiers have nothing whatsoever inside their skulls. I shall write a paper for the Review. I'll be famous! Brain discovered in a soldier.
Bernard Cornwell -
Agents will read unpublished work because they might make money, and that's their job. It isn't mine.
Bernard Cornwell -
The Forlorn Hope was for the brave. It may have been a courage born of desperation, or foolhardiness, but it was courage just the same.
Bernard Cornwell -
A Marshal of France is a fine fellow, second only to the Emperor, and he wore a dark blue uniform edged with golden leaves, and his collar and shoulders were heavy with gilt decorations. A Marshal of France was given privileges, riches, and honour, but they had to be earned by answering the difficult questions.
Bernard Cornwell -
He wondered again, for the hundredth hundredth time, why these men, reckoned by their country to be the dregs of society, fought so well, so willingly, so bravely.
Bernard Cornwell
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'Sensible thing to do, is for us to bugger off out of here and got to bed.' 'Sensible thing to do, is get out the bloody army and die in bed.' 'But that's not why we joined, is it?' 'Speak for yourself, sir. I just joined to get a square meal. Getting killed wasn't really part of the idea at all.'
Bernard Cornwell -
I know nothing about producing TV drama and any involvement on my part is liable to prove an obstacle to the producers, so I prefer to be a cheerleader and let them get on with it.
Bernard Cornwell -
'The Major's a grand big fellow, so he is.' 'So what are we? The damned?' 'We're that, sure enough, but we're also Riflemen, sir. You and me, we're the best God-damned Soldiers in the world.'
Bernard Cornwell -
They haven't made an armor strong enought to resist an English arrow.
Bernard Cornwell -
'The Irish are very largely Romish, Sharpe. Papists! We shall have to watch our theological discourse if we're not to unsettle their tempers! You and I might know that the pope is the reincarnation of the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, but it won't help our cause if we say it out loud. Know what I mean?'
Bernard Cornwell -
I'll happily mentor anyone who wants mentoring, and most of that goes on by internet rather than face to face.
Bernard Cornwell
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This was the might of France, the pride of France, the tactic of the world's first conscript army, and this column, Clausel's counter-attack, ignored cold mathematical logic. It was not defeated by the line.
Bernard Cornwell -
The Light Company were not worried by the French. If Richard Sharpe wanted to lead them to Paris they would go, blindly confident that he would see them through
Bernard Cornwell -
My God, I will not abide plundering, especially by officers. How can you expect obedience from the men when officers are corrupt?
Bernard Cornwell -
'You want a blessing, my son? Then God give strength to your bow and add bite to your arrows! May your arm never tire and your eye never dim. God and the saints bless you while you kill!'
Bernard Cornwell -
Your friend Will is a good man, too,but I fear he's no longer an archer.' 'It would have been better, I sometimes think-' 'If he had died? Wish death on no man, Thomas, it comes soon enough without a wish.'
Bernard Cornwell -
To say anything was useless, to say nothing was cowardly. 'I think it a bad idea, Sir.'
Bernard Cornwell
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For five thousand infantry would now cross the Kaitna at a place where men said the river was uncrossable, then fight an enemy horde at least ten times their number. ... The enemy had stolen a march, the redcoats had journeyed all night and were bone tired, but Wellesley would have his battle.
Bernard Cornwell -
'It ain't justice, Richard, but politics, and like all politics it ain't pretty, but well done it can work wonders.'
Bernard Cornwell -
I remember one other battle, gentlemen, which almost matched our recent victory in carnage. After Assaye I had to thank a young Sergeant; today we salute the same man, a Captain. Gentlemen, I give you Sharpe's Eagle.
Bernard Cornwell -
He's actually a rather good ruler. Better, I suspect, than most of our Christian monarchs. He's certainly been good for Mysore. He's fetched it a deal of wealth, given it more justice than most countries enjoy in India and he's been tolerant to most religions, though I fear he did persecute some unfortunate Christians.
Bernard Cornwell