Ferragus (real name Luis Ferreira) is the main antagonist of the Bernard Cornwell novel Sharpe's Escape. He is a Portuguese businessman seeking to take advantage of the Napoleonic Wars.
Biography[]
Luis Ferreira was born into a respectable middle-class family but had a brutish nature that unnerved his parents. He ran away from home and ended up being pressganged into the British Navy. There, he learned the act of bare-knuckling fighting, becoming a large and powerful man. He eventually deserted and served on a slave ship, becoming rich from the slave trade. He became rich and powerful, owning every brothel in Coimbra as well as numerous other houses and businesses that earned him rent, but always desired more money. He adopted the name Ferragus after a legendary giant whose skin could not be pierced.
Despite being rejected by his parents, he remained close to his brother Pedro Ferreira, a Portuguese intelligence officer who had a wife and children in Coimbra. In early 1810, with the French invading again, Ferragus and Ferreira believed that the British would ultimately abandon Portugal and they should prepare for a French victory. Their first move was to attempt to sell flour to the French but their stockpile was discovered by Captain Richard Sharpe and his men. Ferragus tried to bribe Sharpe but Sharpe incapacitated him with blows to the groin and throat, then destroyed the flour.
Ferragus sought revenge and attacked Sharpe at Bussaco, giving him a beating but being disturbed by British soldiers before he could kill him. He returned to Coimbra, having agreed to protect his brother's house, and had his wife and household sent to Lisbon. He had been stockpiling supplies in his warehouses ready to sell to the French. The city's head storekeeper, Rafael Pires, had been ordered to find and destroy the supplies. He approached Ferragus and tried to convince him he had no choice but Ferragus beat him to death.
Ferragus developed an obsession with Sarah Fry, an English governess employed by his brother who was one of the few people not to fear him. Keeping her at the house, he forced her to strip naked and prepared to rape her, but was interrupted by Ferreira's return so kept her locked in her room. In the brothers' absence, Sharpe commandeered the house for his battalion and freed Sarah. On learning of his presence, Ferragus sent a message about his supplies and lured Sharpe and Sarah, together with Sharpe's friends Patrick Harper and Jorge Vicente, to the warehouse to ambush them. Sharpe managed to badly wound two of his men and take refuge in the cellar. Ferragus sealed them in there, intending to kill them later: He had become so obsessed with Sharpe that he chose to stay behind to finish him rather than meet the French. However, the group escaped into the sewer.
Ferragus and Ferreira sold their goods to the French when they took the city, who in return protected their house from looting. However, Sharpe then burnt down the warehouse and Ferragus and Ferreira realised the French would believe they had cheated them. They fled the city with their men, aiming to rejoin the Portuguese and claim they had tricked the French. Their only problem was Sharpe knowing the truth, so they paid partisans to ambush his party, claiming they were traitors.
The group reached the Lines of Torres Vedras just as the French prepared to attack it and ended up taking refuge in a farm with Sharpe’s company, effectively now led by Lieutenant Bullan. Ferreira tried to get the British to surrender in return for his group being allowed to return to allied lines but then Sharpe arrived and took charge. He aimed to take the men back to the lines as prisoners but Ferragus broke free and attacked Sharpe. After a vicious fist fight between the two men, Sharpe managed to back Ferragus against a window where he was shot dead by French snipers.
