"It was ten days short of Candlemas, 1814, and an Atlantic wind carried shivers of cold rain that slapped on narrow cobbled alleys, spilt from the broken gutters of tangled roofs, and pitted the water of St Jean de Luz's inner harbor. It was a winter wind, cruel as a bared sabre, that whirled chimney smoke into the low January clouds shrouding the corner of south-western France where the British Army had its small lodgement." (p. 9)

"Elphinstone had been piqued by Bampfylde's discourteous treatment and thus chose to use the technical language of his trade, doubtless hoping thereby to annoy the bumptious naval captain. 'It's an old fortification, Sharpe, a square-treace. You'll face a glacis rising tot en feet, with an eight counterscarp into the outer ditch. A width of twenty and a scarp of ten. That's revetted with granite, by the way, like the rest of the damned...