Christmas 1826 finds Major Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons alone and isolated. A prisoner of the Spanish, he is locked up in the notorious fortress of Badajoz, with little means of outside communication. He must escape; but as he lays his plans, his thoughts return to 1812, when he was a young cornet with Wellington's Peninsular army.

Badajoz was then of huge strategic importance, and French resistance at its bloodiest. Twice the Duke laid siege to the fortress and twice he failed. At the third attempt Cornet Matthew Hervey sees scenes that will stay with him forever. What Hervey does not know, as he paces his prison cell 14 years later, is that in Lisbon, his close friends, including the beautiful Isabella Delgado, are rushing to his aid.