Three classic Richard Sharpe adventures Richard Sharpe and the campaign in northern Portugal, spring 1809 A small British army is stranded when the French invade northern Portugal. Sharpe is cut off and his attempts to fight his way back to the British lines fail until he is joined by the future Duke of Wellington. Richard Sharpe and the Talavera Campaign, July 1809 In Portugal, Richard Sharpe is ordered to accompany a newly arrived, inexperienced regiment. But Sharpe, a veteran, quickly clashes with the incompetent colonel after they start to lose men. Richard Sharpe and the Destruction of Almeida, August 1810 Sharpe is delighted when, after long months of patrolling duties, he and his regiment are summoned north by Wellington. But his new mission is desperate and dangerous: to go behind enemy lines to recover the gold, vital to the success of the war.

After the cowardly incompetence of two officers besmirches their name, Captain Richard Sharpe must redeem the regiment by capturing the most valued prize in the French Army—a golden Imperial Eagle, the standard touched by the hand of Napoleon himself.

This is Bernard Cornwell's first novel, written as a means of providing him with an income while living with his American fiancée in her home country where he could not get a work visa. Cornwell’s plan "to write a series of tales about the adventures of a British rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars" and he had wanted to start with the Siege of Badajoz but on reflection, he felt that this was too ambitious for his first novel and so decided to start with a couple of easier books as a warm-up. Cornwell also wanted to find a task just as impossible as the taking of Badajoz for his first adventure, and so the capture of a Regimental Eagle from a French Regiment provided the challenge the author felt necessary to establish the reputation of both Sharpe and his close friend, Sergeant Patrick Harper.