Sharpe's Sword is a 1995 British television drama, the eighth of a series screened on the ITV network that follows the career of Richard Sharpe, a fictional British soldier during the Napoleonic Wars. It is based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Bernard Cornwell, though it is set a year later (1813) than the book. Plot On the French-Spanish frontier, a French patrol led by a colonel of Napoleon's Imperial Guard overtakes a carriage containing a priest and three nuns. The priest is the confessor of El Mirador, Wellington's best secret agent; he is tortured into revealing the spy's identity. Then, he and two of the nuns are killed, but the youngest (Emily Mortimer), a novice, gets away. Major Sharpe (Sean Bean) and his riflemen show up and rout the French, taking a captain captive, while the colonel is killed. Sharpe finds a piece of paper on the prisoner filled with cryptic numbers and suspects that his captive is actually the colonel in disguise. However, he is unable to convince his superior, nor his fellow officer, Captain Jack Spears (James Purefoy); the Frenchman is allowed to give his parole and is not imprisoned. The young woman (referred to simply as "the Lass"), having lost her faith and being rendered mute by the horror she has witnessed, attaches herself to Sharpe. Back at camp, Wellington's spymaster, Major Mungo Munro (Hugh Ross), has received word that Napoleon himself has sent Colonel Leroux (Patrick Fierry) of the elite Imperial Guard to capture El Mirador. Munro assigns Sharpe the task of killing the colonel, but refuses to divulge the spy's identity. He sends Sharpe and the South Essex Regiment to the town where El Mirador is based. The British already control the place, but there is a French-held fort close by. When the men near the town, a surprise artillery barrage (rendered extra-surprising by the use of exploding roundshot) from the fort causes enough confusion to allow the prisoner, who is in fact Leroux, to break his parole and escape to its safety. Sharpe meets two people, his old enemy Sir Henry Simmerson (Michael Cochrane), now the British representative to the town, and Father Curtis, an Irish priest (John Kavanagh), who runs the hospital. The regiment attacks that night, but the French have been forewarned and the assault is bloodily repulsed. Berkeley is killed at the outbreak of the battle, leaving