An honored veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Sharpe has become a peaceful farmer following Waterloo. But he comes out of retirement to undertake a perilous mission to find his old friend Don Blas Vivar, Captain-General of the Spanish colony of Chile, who vanished without a trace half a world away.

With intrepid Irishman Patrick Harper at his side, Sharpe journeys to Chile, a land seething with corruption and revolt. But when fortune delivers him into the hands of Lord Cochrane, the legendary rebel genius, the real battle erupts. On land and at sea, Sharpe faces impossible odds in a time when tyranny rules, injustice abounds, and Napoleon lurks on the horizon, itching to rekindle the world in a blaze of war.