Florence Delaunay is the secondary antagonist of the Bernard Cornwell novel Sharpe's Assassin. She is the English widow of a French general.
Biography[]
Florence was the daughter of Sir Philip Latimer, a Royal Navy admiral. Her family had been snubbed at court. Her father captured a French troop ship during the American Revolution and brought his captives home. Florence fell in love with one of the French officers, Lieutenant Delaunay, marrying him and accompanying him home. After living with him in France for the next forty years, she no longer considered herself English but French and was a firm supporter of the Bonaparte regime.
In 1815, Florence received word that her husband, now a general, had been killed at Waterloo. She was aware that he was a member of La Fraternitie, a group pledged to avenge Napoleon if he was defeated. She gave shelter at her home in Paris to Colonel Lanier, the senior member of the fraternity left alive, and he and his men took up residence in the family vineyard. When Alan Fox, a British diplomat and spy, came looking for her husband, she had him imprisoned, with him and the house guarded by Lanier's men.
Florence encountered Colonel Richard Sharpe when he broke into the house looking for Fox, holding him at pistol point. She expressed her disgust at the plans to restore King Louis to the throne and also at the allies' intention to recover the art treasures looted by Napoleon's armies and return them to their previous owners, declaring that Paris was the height of culture and those they had been taken from were lesser races. Out of curiosity, she fired Sharpe's rifle into the air, but not only managed to break her collarbone with the recoil but also signalled Sharpe's friend Patrick Harper and the rest of his men to attack and subdue Lanier's men. Florence let Sharpe take Fox with little protest. She was acquainted with Sharpe's partner Lucille Lassan and disapproved of her choice of Sharpe. She also enquired about the return of her husband's body. Sharpe told her he had been buried with his men, keeping quiet about the fact the body had likely been burned.
Florence attended a dinner the Duke of Wellington was putting on and was received civilly despite making her disdain for the event clear. She arranged for Lanier to deliver a number of barrels to the house, supposedly a gift of wine from her but really containing gunpowder, intending for them to be set off later. She had hoped King Louis would be attending the event and be killed. Sharpe saw through the deception and had the barrels dumped in a fountain. Florence ranted about a world that let her husband die and the king live. Sharpe retorted that Lucille, who had been at the dinner, was alive as well. Florence conceded she would have regretted her death and told Sharpe to look after her.
Sharpe led his men in an assault on the vineyard, during which Florence's house was burned to the ground. Florence witnessed Sharpe defeating Lanier in a brutal fight and forcing him to agree to withdraw, after which Sharpe apologised to her. Florence called him a barbarian and Sharpe, echoing a comment of Lanier's, replied that he as a "soldat" (soldier).
