Richard Sharpe

Richard Sharpe is the titular hero of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series and its subsequent television adaptation. He is a British Army soldier who becomes commissioned as an officer under Lord Wellington, a rare occurence in those days, and serves as a great asset to the British Army, fighting against Napoleon.

In the TV series, he was played by Sean Bean.

Early life
Richard Sharpe was born in London on June 26th, 1777, to an unnamed French smuggler father and a prostitute mother living on Cat Lane. Of his birth mother, he can only remember dark hair and a voice in the darkness. The young Sharpe was orphaned at the age of three, when his mother was killed in the Gordon Riots of 1780.

Sharpe was then sent to a foundling home in Wapping, and sent to work picking oakum off of ropes. He was regularly bullied and starved, and was left small for his age. At the age of nine, he was sold to a chimney sweep and nearly forced into a short life of chimney cleaning. He ran away, and lived in the Rookery of St Giles, living with prostitute Margaret Joyce, who became a surrogate mother figure to him, teaching him thieving and house-breaking. He eventually lost his virginity to Joyce, and killed a gang leader who abused her when he was fifteen. This resulted in him having to leave London for Yorkshire.

In Yorkshire, Sharpe found himself a job working in a bar, dealing in stolen luggage. After six months, he killed the bar owner, a "right bastard" in Sharpe's words, after they both fell for the same girl. To avoid arrest, he enlisted in the 33rd Regiment of Foot of the British Army, recruited by his future sworn nemesis, Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill.

Sharpe's Tiger
In the 33rd, Sharpe's first deployment was to India, still under the abusive Hakeswill.