El Héroe (real name Colonel Gonzales and also nicknamed El Cobarde) is the main antagonist of the Bernard Cornwell novel Sharpe's Command. He is a rogue Spanish partisan in 1812.
Biography[]
El Héroe had been colonel of de la Reina Dragoons in the Spanish army prior to the French occupation of Spain. He left his regiment to become a guerilla leader, taking the title of general and giving himself the name "El Héroe", telling tales of his supposed daring exploits against the French. In fact, he was in the pay of the French garrison at Miravete castle, who knew it was worth their while to buy supplies and information from them, and let everyone believe that El Héroe was running guerilla operations in the area when in fact he let their patrols move around unmolested. He also sold the French the girls of his village as sex slaves, encouraging them to keep the girls naked to stop them running away.
When the British under General Hill went to El Héroe for information regarding an operation around Miravete, he requested a thousand guineas and rifles as payment. Instead, they sent Captain Richard Sharpe and his detachment of riflemen with a hundred guineas, of which Sharpe let El Héroe keep one as an advanced payment. El Héroe lied about the French strength, claiming the garrison was smaller than it was and not telling anyone about an encampment trying to repair an old bridge. He tried to dissuade Sharpe from taking a scouting party to spy on the French positions and warned the French they were coming. He then confiscated the rifles from Sharpe's men, providing them with muskets instead.
Sharpe returned having fought off the French and, while retrieving the rifles from the church, killed a group of French soldiers looking for El Héroe. El Héroe claimed they were informants and that the French would now attack the village. He took his men away, leaving Sharpe's party and the villagers to their fate, and hid in the caves of San Miguel. When he encounter fellow partisan Teresa Moreno, he tried to get her to stay with him but she insisted on going to help Sharpe.
El Héroe went to the British camp in Truxilo and told Hill that Sharpe was dead, trying to feed him false information. When Sharpe and Teresa arrived, he panicked and went back to the village, where Sergeant Patrick Harper and the rest of Sharpe's men had taken the gold he had received from the French and holed up in the church. Unaware that Sharpe and Teresa had returned, El Héroe tried to negotiate with Harper, claiming that Sharpe had been disciplined by Hill for disobeying orders and the British attack had been called off, and demanding the return of the gold, which he tried to say was the village poor box. When he declared he would hand Teresa over to his men if she returned, it prompted her to fire at him. He joined the French in attacking the riflemen and partisans, but the attack was defeated by the arrival of another loyal partisan, El Sacerdote.
El Héroe fled to the French garrison at Fort Napoleon, only to end up being trapped inside when the British, aided by partisans, captured it during the Battle of Almaraz. He was confronted by Teresa, who challenged him to a fight and revealed she was Sharpe's wife. He matched his sword with her knife, which she threw at him and then retrieved a pike, repeatedly cutting him with it. El Héroe managed to disarm her but, as he went to strike the killing blow, she retrieved a concealed second knife and stabbed him in the groin, leaving him to bleed to death.
