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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who is Prince William of Orange?

2. How many more rivers does Napoleon have to cross before reaching Brussels?

3. What has Wellington promised Blucher?

4. What persists towards the East from where Sharpe and Harper are?

5. Why is the Duchess apprehensive of Rossendale being at her home?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who is Sharpe's mother and in what wars has he fought? To whom is he attached now?

2. To whom does Sharpe send a note when he encounters men from the German Legion and what is the response? Why does he respond that way?

3. Why is the Duke of Wellington worried about his troops and what kinds of troops does he have?

4. How does Sharpe mitigate a complete disaster with the battalions under French cavalry attack?

5. Why are the Dutch-Belgium troops unable to fight well?

6. What type of technical details are seen in Chapter 8?

7. What becomes a major source of friction between the Prince of Orange and Sharpe? Why is Sharpe with the Prince?

8. Who does Sharpe encounter while escaping the crossroad area and what happens?

9. What did the actions in Chapter 7 show about the Prince of Orange and some of the other British officers?

10. Who does Sharpe see as he leaves Wellington to return to the crossroads? What does he do?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Most protagonists are a mixture of admirable traits and character flaws, and Richard Sharpe is no exception. Sharpe's legendary powers of military strategy are juxtaposed with his reputation as a womanizer and his hatred for his wife. Discuss the following:

1. Trace and analyze situations when Sharpe demonstrates his prodigious powers of military strategy. Give specific examples to illustrate your analysis.

2. Trace and analyze Sharpe's character flaws offering specific examples of these flaws in your discussion.

3. Discuss how you think Sharpe's admirable traits helped him obtain a high rank in the military despite his background as a child. Have his flaws impacted his career at all? Do any of those under his command seem to notice these flaws? Who? How does the reader know this?

Essay Topic 2

D'Alembord's premonition that he will be killed and his developing fear of tomorrow's events exemplifies the true nature of courage, which includes coming to terms with fear and overcoming it.

1. Discuss in detail whether courage is the absence of fear or doing a task in spite of it. Use examples to support your answer.

2. If a person runs from a battle due to fear, do you think that means he will always run from a battle? Why or why not? Use examples to support your answer.

3. If a person goes into combat with no fear and kills a significant number of the enemy and perhaps rescues other soldiers, is that person courageous? In other words, if a person acts like a hero/ine, yet truly has no fear, does that person still qualify as having courage? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 3

Cornwell has tried as much as possible to use historical events and facts around which to weave his work of fiction. Discuss the following:

1. Do you think this book qualifies as an historical fiction? Why or why not?

2. If many of the events in the book are historical, what surprises you about the way the events play out?

3. Do you think the culture of that era is more or less advanced than you imagined? Explain.

(see the answer keys)

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