Sharpe's Waterloo

Bernard Cornwell published Sharpe's Waterloo in 1990, under the shorter title Waterloo, and it was the eleventh of his novels about Richard Sharpe. Cornwell has said that he meant to end the series with it, before changing his mind later.

Napoleon has escaped from Elba, and Sharpe leaves the farm in Normandy where he has been living to rejoin the British Army, travelling with Lucille, the woman he loves. The Prince of Orange takes him onto his staff and gives him the rank of lieutenant colonel, which places him at the centre of an army being assembled by people who have never seen the French fight.

Patrick Harper, Sharpe's friend from the peninsula, is nominally a civilian who has come to Belgium to trade in horses, but he takes up his old position beside Sharpe. The novel follows the days before the battle, as patrols and reports piece together what Napoleon intends, and it is as interested in the politics and confusion of the allied camp as in the fighting itself.