"Sharpe's Tiger" by Bernard Cornwell

Above: "Sharpe's Tiger" - Bernard Cornwell - 384 Pages.

He's one of those guys you want to be near when the proverbial mud hits the fan.

I completed reading this book today.

"Sharpe's Tiger" is the first (chronologically, not in sequence published.... kind of like the Star Wars series) in a series of twenty one novels about an enlisted soldier in, first, the army of the British East India Company (EIC), and later, in the British Army under the command of The Duke of Wellington (Arthur Wellesly). The series ends with "Sharpe's Devil" chronicling Sharpe's roll with the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo in 1821.

In Tiger, Sharpe is a recently enlisted private in the 33rd Regiment of Foot, serving in southern India during the Siege of Seringapatnam in 1799. It is also the first of a trilogy of novels (followed by Sharpe's Triumph and Sharpe's Fortress) chronicling Sharpe's army service in India, and of a quintet of novels (including Sharpe's Trafalgar and Sharpe's Prey) taking place before the Peninsular War.

Sharpe comes from the British lower classes. He is somewhat of a rogue. The British East India Company army in southern India offered him an out from perennial troubles he had with the law in England.
Notwithstanding Sharpe's provenance, however, he is intelligent, canny, resourceful and reliable. He's one of those guys you want to be near when the proverbial mud hits the fan.

In Tiger, Sharpe's canniness is resented by his Sargent, Obediah Hakeswill. Hakeswill can't very well tolerate smart people in his unit so he tries to take Sharpe out. Sharpe is set up by Hakeswill to have Sharpe strike an officer in front of witnesses. He, by army law, is sentenced to two thousand (!) lashes, which of course, is essentially a death sentence.

Early in his lashing punishment Sharpe is redeemed by a friendly young officer, Lt. Lawford, who is required by General Harris and Col. Wellesly (ultimately the Duke of Wellington) to go on a secret mission to Seringapatnam, capital of the Kingdom of Mysore, overseen by the Persian tyrant, Tipoo Sultan. It seems that Lawford's uncle, the Scot, Colonel McCandless, has been captured by the Tipoo. McCandless in in possession of key information that will enable EIC troops to easily assault Seringapatnam and bring down the Tipoo, Napoleon's buddy. Lawford says he won't go on the dangerous mission unless he can select an enlisted man to accompany him. His wish granted, Lawford selects Sharpe. Sharpe's punishment is interrupted by Wellesly after two hundred lashes, his wounds salved, and off he and Lawford go to be "deserters," turn-coats, to join Tipoo's army.

And so begins an adventure where Lawford and Sharpe are captured and certified as deserters. As proof of his new loyalty to the Tipoo, Sharpe is asked to shoot Colonel McCandless with one of the Tipoo's diamond encrusted flintlocks. Sharpe undertakes the task with aplomb but the gun misfires. The Tipoo laughs, and convinced of Sharpe's loyalty, chooses not to follow through with McCandless's death sentence. Lawford is aghast. "You were OK with killing my uncle," he cries! "Nope," says Sharpe, "I could see that the powder load they gave me was not real gun powder." And so we see one of many examples in the book of the lower class, uneducated, can't read, soldier's canniness.

The book proceeds with, more or less, historical accuracy (except for the fictional Sharpe role).

Seringapatnam is besieged by EIC troops and the city eventually falls. The Tipoo is killed. Sharpe, of course, working from the inside, is key to turning the tide of the battle to the EIC. He has one or two more encounters with Hakeswill, who again deceitfully tries to trip him up. Sharpe even goes into combat with one of the Tipoo's tigers, left to guard the cells of him, McCandless and Lawford while the Tipoo and his men are engaging EIC troops.

Wellesly promised Sharpe a Sargent-ship should he succeed in his Seringapatnam mission and so begins the rise of the guy from the other side of the tracks into the officer ranks of pukka British military. Hakeswill is "executed" by one of the Tipoo's tigers, the whole affair being engineered by Sharpe during the fog of war.

I enjoyed the book. I was thinking, as I was reading it, "hey, I'm reading a great adventure story, learning about character development, history, India, and the career of rising star Arthur Wellsely! What am I wasting my time on all those Jack Reacher books for?

Reading the book, I was glad to have a lot of historical holes filed. TIMDT and Mwah (sic) visited Tipoo Sultan's summer palace in Bangalore in February 2015. Tipoo Sultan, then, was a mystery to us. After reading this book, he is a mystery no longer. The novel provides a ton of information as to who this sometimes enlightened, sometimes tyrannical, leader was. The Tipoo and Napoleon were regular correspondents. The Tipoo had a senior French officer, Colonel Gudin (a sympathetic character in the book, by the way) and a battalion of French troops assisting him at Seringapatnam when his fort fell.
I think I'm going to continue to follow the Sharpe series. In October of last year (2019), I read "Wellington - The Iron Duke" by Richard Holmes, my first real study of Britain's most important soldier. The chain of Cornwell's Sharpe novels, chronicling the next 20 years from Seringapatnam on should provide augmented background to my understanding of both Napoleon and Wellington, with a fair degree of historical accuracy as seen from the eyes of a superstar soldier, Sharpe, rising quickly through the ranks.