Only a year after its stunning victory at Talavera in July of 1809, Wellington's Peninsular Army, vastly outnumbered and its coffers empty, was on the brink of collapse. The Spanish government had fallen, the last Spanish armies had been crushed by the French, and all that was left were the peassants fighting the guerrilla, the "little war." But Wellington had one hope left. He knew that in the dangerous Portuguese hills lay a fortune in gold, enough gold perhaps to turn the Peninsular War around. And he knew of one fighting man capable of stealing it: Captain Richard Sharpe of the South Essex regiment. In this novel, the third in a series that will take the magnetic Sharpe all the way from Talavera (Sharpe's Rifles) to the glory of Waterloo, Bernard Cornwell tells the gripping story of Sharpe's secret mission, an adventure unlike an form of warfare Sharpe has known in his long and embattled career as a soldier fighting his way up through the ranks.