Portugal, 1810: Wellington's lines at Torres Vedras, an Irish officer accused of an outrage against a Portuguese convent, a court martial, and a political trap set for him by men on his own side. Sabatini spoke five languages and chose English because, he said, all the best stories are told in it; the Peninsular detail is exact, and the villain is the diplomacy, not the French. Sixty plates of Goya, Gillray and their contemporaries track the Peninsular War and its aftermath from 1781 to 1904, the same years of intrigue and siege that Sabatini turns on his characters.
