Sharpe's Battle is the twelfth historical novel in the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell, first published in 1995. The story is set during the Peninsular War in Spain in 1811. Plot summary While lost near the Spanish-Portuguese border, Sharpe and his company surprise a group of French soldiers in unusual grey uniforms, caught in the act of raping a teenage Spanish villager. They kill some Frenchmen and take two prisoner. During a parlay, their leader, Brigadier-General Guy Loup, offers to give Sharpe safe passage in exchange for the men, but Sharpe, appalled by the rape and massacre of the other villagers, including children, orders the prisoners shot. (Loup reveals that he counters the atrocities committed by Spanish guerrillas by having his men commit more heinous ones.) Loup swears to avenge them. Back at headquarters, Sharpe is informed by Major Michael Hogan that the Real Compania Irlandesa, the royal bodyguard of the captive King of Spain, have been sent to join Wellesley's forces. As the British wish for Wellesley to be appointed Generalissimo of the Spanish Armies, it is imperative that the unwanted soldiers be treated with honour, though they are composed of Irish exiles and their descendants (who have no love for the British due to their occupation of Ireland) and have no combat experience. Wellesley assigns Sharpe to encourage them to desert by taking them to a fort close to the French and drilling them mercilessly. There Sharpe also has to deal with former Wagon Master-General Colonel Claude Runciman, a grossly fat and indolent man. Pierre Ducos, a French intelligence officer answering to Napoleon himself, has planted an agent within the Compania Irlandesa, Dona Juanita de Elia, a Spanish noblewoman, the mistress both of the unit's commander, Lord Kiely, and of Loup. False rumours of British atrocities in Ireland, backed up by forged American newspapers, target not only the Compania, but also the many Irishmen in the British army. Despite knowing Wellesley's intentions, Sharpe decides to turn the demoralised exiles into real soldiers. He persuades Runciman to divert arms and ammunition to the Compania, and conspires with a local partisan, El Castrador, to kill and mutilate some deserters, making it look like the French are responsible, to deter further desertions. The Compania are joined at the fort by a Portuguese infantry battalion. Sharpe, concerned by the threat posed by Loup's personal vendetta against him, acknowledges his illegal execution