Literature / The Starbuck Chronicles

The Starbuck Chronicles is a four-book historical fiction series by Bernard Cornwell, author of the Richard Sharpe books and The Saxon Stories. The series details the adventures of Nathaniel "Nate" Starbuck, a clean-cut theology student from Boston who finds himself in Richmond, Virginia, upon the outbreak of the American Civil War. After Washington Faulconer, father of Starbuck's best friend Adam, saves him from being lynched by a mob of angry Southerners, Starbuck joins the Faulconer Legion, the regiment that Washington is raising for the Confederate Army. The series follows Starbuck and the Legion from the First Battle of Bull Run/Manassas to the Battle of Antietam.

The books are:

• Rebel^note Bull Run, 1861 (published 1993)
• Copperhead^note Ball's Bluff, 1862 (published 1994)
• Battle Flag^note Second Manassas, 1862 (published 1995)
• The Bloody Ground^note The Battle of Antietam, 1862 (published 1996)

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The series provides examples of:

• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • Stonewall Jackson “laughs” in his own unique way when Starbuck explains his method for preventing stragglers in his unit: he tells them they’re free to go, but can’t take any government property with them, so he strips them naked and boots them out.
  • In The Bloody Ground, Lucifer and Potter steal some saws from a nearby Georgia unit so that the Yellowlegs can cut down some inconvenient shrubs, whereupon the aggrieved Georgian captain comes over to retrieve them. Once the Yellowlegs have accomplished their task, Starbuck returns the saws with thanks for being “allowed” to borrow them. The Georgia captain laughs and leaves without further incident.
  • At one point, Belvedere Delaney makes a crack about Episcopalians not counting as real Christians in front of Robert E. Lee, himself an Episcopalian. Lee just chuckles.
• Afraid of Blood: Colonel Maitland, Starbuck's replacement as commander of the Legion in The Bloody Ground, admits to Starbuck that he can't stand the sight of blood and proves it by throwing up on himself. Swynyard seizes the opportunity to get rid of him by quietly suggesting that he'd be better off going back to Richmond.
• Age-Gap Romance: Patrick Lassan, who is in his late forties, takes up with Sally Truslow, who is in her late teens.
• The Alcoholic: Griffin Swynyard can barely function without booze, at least until he has a near-death experience and gives up drinking altogether. Matthew Potter of the Yellowlegs is also a drunkard.
• Ancestral Weapon: Washington Faulconer owns a saber that was given to his grandfather by the Marquis de Lafayette during the Revolution. Adam steals it in Battle Flag and carries it until he’s killed in The Bloody Ground. Patrick Lassan, meanwhile, wields his father’s Pattern 1796 heavy cavalry sword.
• Anti-Hero: Starbuck. He’s generally a decent person, but he chooses to fight for the Confederacy, actively pursues married women, and isn’t above murdering people who cross him.
• Armchair Military: The Union generals, including Pope, Banks, and McClellan, are frequently portrayed as lounging in comfort far away from the battlefield while their men are being savaged by the Confederates. Truth in Television applies, especially in McClellan's case; he really did spend Antietam sitting comfortably in the parlor of a farmhouse well behind the front lines while his army was slowly chewed to pieces by Lee's.
• Asshole Victim: Pretty much anyone Starbuck decides to kill, including Ethan Ridley, Captain Dennison, and Sergeant Case.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Nate joins the Confederate army because Washington Faulconer saved him from a lynch mob in the streets of Richmond.
• Been There, Shaped History: Belvedere Delaney steals a copy of Lee’s Special Order 191 and passes it to Adam Faulconer, who is shot and killed en route to deliver it to the Union army. He manages to toss the order into a field, where it's found by three Union soldiers on the hunt for firewood, leading directly to the Battle of Antietam and the single bloodiest day in American history.
• Betty and Veronica: Played with. Starbuck is more than a little in love with Sally Truslow (the provocative and stunningly beautiful Veronica) and Julia Gordon (the sensible, reserved Betty), but Sally turns down his proposal and he can’t find the nerve to tell Julia how he feels.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Washington Faulconer initially seems to be a kind and wise mentor to Starbuck, but quickly turns on him.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Washington Faulconer's custom-made ivory-handled Adams revolver and his sword, a finely engraved ivory-hilted weapon that was presented to his grandfather by the Marquis de Lafayette.
• Bling of War: Many of the high-ranking officers on both sides go to battle wearing perfectly creased uniforms covered in elaborate braid and gleaming gold buttons. They're usually portrayed in a negative light compared to muddy-boots officers like Starbuck, Truslow, and Stonewall Jackson.
• Blood Knight: Matthew Potter admits that he enjoys battle for its own sake, though he’s less bloodthirsty than the usual examples of the trope. Stonewall Jackson also seems enthralled by war.
• Brick Joke: Early on in Battle Flag, Starbuck meets a Union officer named Dick Levergood under flag of truce. Levergood notes that the Legion's recently captured supply wagon was built by his family's carriage company. Later on in the novel, the Confederates capture yet another store of Union supplies, including two more Levergood wagons.
• Bullying a Dragon: While Nate is masquerading as Lieutenant Potter to investigate the Yellowlegs, Captain Dennison and Sergeant Case frequently bully and demean him. Dennison almost wets himself when he finds out that he's actually been mocking his new CO the entire time.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Stonewall Jackson. He’s an eccentric zealot who amuses and confounds the people around him with his unusual habits and stern, deeply religious personality, but he’s also an aggressive and savvy general who frequently bails Lee out of tight spots.
• Call-Back: A few to the Sharpe series. Sharpe’s son Patrick Lassan appears as a grown man and a veteran soldier, still carrying his father’s old sword. One character lightly says “over the hills and far away” at one point, echoing the traditional song that served as the theme for the television adaptation. In The Bloody Ground, Colonel Maitland suggests garrisoning a farm in front of the Legion’s position at Sharpsburg, calling it their Hougoumont, after the farm that the British seized and held at Waterloo. Swynyard counters the suggestion by pointing out that the British also garrisoned the farm of Mont St. Jean and lost it to the French when the soldiers inside ran out of ammunition and were surrounded. Both actions were depicted in Sharpe’s Waterloo.
• Category Traitor: Starbuck’s father, a fervent abolitionist, is outraged by his son’s decision to fight for the slaveholding Confederacy and immediately deems him a traitor to the Union and to his family. Adam Faulconer is also treated like a traitor to his home state after defecting to the Union.
• Cassandra Truth: Faulconer tries to tell everyone that Starbuck murdered his aide-de-camp Ethan Ridley, which Starbuck did, but everyone thinks he’s delirious from the battle. Adam argues with McClellan’s staff about the size of the rebel army, knowing from personal experience that they can’t muster the kind of numbers that Union spymaster Allen Pinkerton is claiming, but he’s ignored.
• The Cavalry: A.P. Hill’s Light Division comes thundering in to bolster Lee’s army at a critical point during the Battle of Antietam, allowing them to blunt the Union advance.
• Character Catchphrase: A captured Northern civilian, upon getting his first look at the unkempt and badly dressed Stonewall Jackson, mournfully exclaims “Oh, my God, just lay me down.” It quickly spreads through Jackson’s entire corps.
• The Charmer: Billy Blythe frequently employs his good ol’ boy Southern charm to win people over. It works on almost everyone except Adam Faulconer, who sees right through him from the start.
• Chick Magnet: Starbuck, in true Cornwell-protagonist tradition, is irresistible to women, especially married women. It annoys Truslow and almost gets him on Stonewall Jackson’s bad side.
• Cliffhanger: The series has been left hanging after the Battle of Antietam for 28 years and counting, with many plot threads still unresolved.
• Conflicting Loyalty: As is only natural in a civil war. Starbuck is frequently riddled with guilt for abandoning his family and country to join the Confederacy, while Adam feels the same way after defecting to the Union. Belvedere Delaney is quite fond of his many friends and acquaintances in the South and is genuinely saddened by the idea that he might have to sell them out to the Union to get ahead, not that it’ll stop him doing it. Galloway’s Horse is a cavalry regiment made up of Southern-born men who chose to fight for the Union.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Thaddeus “Pecker” Bird is an eccentric schoolmaster who was only given a commission in the Legion because he’s Washington Faulconer’s brother-in-law. Despite this, he proves to be an excellent soldier who quickly earns the respect of the men under his command.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: As is to be expected of a series set during the American Civil War and told from the Confederate viewpoint. Many of the Southern characters are openly, casually, and virulently racist towards Blacks, while Elial Starbuck preaches the since-discredited pseudoscience of physiognomy and Lieutenant Coffman asserts that the Yankees have spoiled their bloodlines with race-mixing.
• Dirty Coward: Ethan Ridley, Billy Blythe, Dan Medlicott, Captain Moxey, Captain Dennison...
• Dramatic Irony: At one point, Billy Blythe, under the assumed name of Billy Tumlin, is sitting in a tent with Starbuck and Caton Rothwell, whose farm Blythe looted and burned and whose wife he raped. Rothwell tells Starbuck the story and shows him the paper that Blythe signed promising recompense for the farm, and Starbuck in turns tells Rothwell about Blythe’s killing Legion officers and burning down a tavern with women in it. Neither man knows, of course, that the perpetrator is sitting in the tent with them.
• Dude Magnet: Sally Truslow. Starbuck proposes to her, she becomes one of the most popular prostitutes in Richmond, and Patrick Lassan takes up with her after she becomes a medium.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Washington Faulconer gets increasingly fed up with the lack of recognition he gets for having supplied an entire regiment to the Confederacy out of his own pocket. Likewise, Nate’s not happy about having to continually prove himself to Southerners who doubt his allegiance.
• Dwindling Party: The Faulconer Legion is slowly whittled down over the course of the series, with many of its prominent characters either killed or wounded seriously enough to be removed from action.
• Embarrassing Nickname: The 66th Virginia, after folding like wet cardboard in its first battle, has been sarcastically renamed the Yellowlegs.
• Expy: Starbuck and Truslow are this series’ version of Sharpe and Harper. Billy Blythe is its version of Obadiah Hakeswill.
• Face–Heel Turn: Starbuck joining the Confederate Army is treated as such by every Northern character who knows him. Likewise, when Adam Faulconer defects to the Union, it’s seen as a grievous betrayal of his home state and family name.
• Facial Horror: Starbuck gets shot in the face in The Bloody Ground, blowing a hole in one of his cheeks and destroying several of his teeth. Truslow happily states that the resulting scar will “take the gloss off his good looks”, though Matthew Potter points out that women like scars.
• Faith–Heel Turn: Starbuck plows happily into a sinner's lifestyle after joining the Confederacy, though he frequently feels guilt over abandoning God.
• Farmer's Daughter: Sally Truslow, who is breathtakingly beautiful despite her hardscrabble background. Starbuck is smitten by her almost immediately and even proposes, though she turns him down. She eventually winds up joining a brothel in Richmond after her father departs the farm to go to war, then becomes a medium under the name of Madame Royall.
• Fat Bastard: Billy Blythe. It nearly gets him busted when he claims to have been in a Union POW camp, only for several characters to note that he’s far too hefty for a man who'd supposedly been living on prison rations for several months and walked from Massachusetts to Virginia.
• Fictional Counterpart: The Faulconer Legion is quite similar to Hampton's Legion, a combined-arms regiment that was raised and partially financed by Wade Hampton III, served under Stonewall Jackson's command for the early part of the war, and fought in almost every major battle of the Eastern Theater.
• Fictional Province: Faulconer County, Virginia. Most of the county is owned by its namesake family, and the county seat is Faulconer Court House.
• Fingore: Swynyard is missing three fingers, which he claims were severed by a saber cut in the Mexican-American War. He actually got them blown off by a crazed German miner during his gold mining days in California.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Starbuck and Truslow, and eventually Starbuck and Swynyard.
• Foregone Conclusion: American readers and history buffs will already know how the Civil War ends.
• Friendly Enemy: Starbuck converses quite cordially with a Union officer when the two sides meet under a flag of truce.
• Frontline General: Most of the Confederate generals who appear in the series are frontline commanders, in contrast with their Union counterparts. This is Truth in Television; senior Confederate officers tended to get stuck in alongside their men and frequently paid the price for it.
• General Failure: Every Union general who appears in the series, which is Truth in Television for the early part of the Civil War in the East. George McClellan squanders a perfect chance to crush the Army of Northern Virginia thanks to his indecision and hesitancy at Antietam. Washington Faulconer also is revealed to be much less competent than he thinks; it ultimately gets him relieved of command.
• Glory Hound: Many men on both sides. General Nathaniel Banks fantasizes about winning the war singlehandedly and becoming the next President. Washington Faulconer wants to carve his name into history alongside his grandfather, who served in the Revolution.
• Gratuitous French: Nate uses some random French phrases to bluff Captain Dennison into assuming that he knows more about fighting with swords than he really does.
  Nate: Derobement of the prise de fer. Bind from quarte to seconde.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: The series tries for this. Many of the characters fighting for the Confederacy are decent and honorable men, and the Union is shown to be overrun with venal schemers, political hacks, and outright bastards like Billy Blythe. At the end of the day, though, it can’t be glossed over that, no matter how decent and honorable they are, the Confederate characters are fighting for a separatist state founded on racist and white supremacist ideals. This is supposedly part of the reason why Cornwell has yet to return to the series as of 2024.
• Hate Sink:
  • Billy Blythe. He’s a rapist, a thief, a pathological liar, and a scheming opportunist who will smile to your face while getting ready to stick a knife in your back.
  • Griffin Swynyard is a thuggish, conniving, black-hearted drunk who savagely beats his slaves and treats the men of the Legion little better. His religious conversion in Battle Flag goes a long way toward changing this.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: Swynyard starts taking more trouble with his appearance after getting saved and giving up liquor and manages to look much more presentable, though there's not much he can do about his scars and missing fingers and teeth.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Adam manages to successfully hide his stolen copy of Special Order 191 before he’s caught and killed by a group of bushwhackers. The order is recovered by Union soldiers and brought to General McClellan, who seizes the opportunity it offers him, bringing about the Battle of Antietam.
• Historical Domain Character: As is the norm for Bernard Cornwell’s historical series. Some of the more notable appearances include Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, George McClellan, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
• Heel–Face Turn: There are several throughout the series.
  • Adam Faulconer defects to the Union in Copperhead.
  • Griffin Swynyard is knocked out by a near-miss from a cannonball in Battle Flag. When he regains consciousness, he’s had a religious epiphany and becomes a completely different man.
  • Starbuck almost goes back to the Union in Battle Flag thanks to a persuasive speech from his father.
• I Have No Son!: Elial Starbuck furiously disowns Nate when he joins the Confederate army. When they’re briefly reunited in Battle Flag, though, Elial tries to convince his son to come home with him.
• Insistent Terminology: Lucifer’s Colt revolver is not a gun, it is a cooking utensil.
• Karma Houdini: As of the fourth and thus far last book in the series, Billy Blythe has yet to get his comeuppance.
• Kicked Upstairs: Faulconer manages to get himself promoted to a cushy job in the Confederate War Department after he’s relieved of command by Stonewall Jackson.
• Ladykiller in Love: Starbuck becomes nervous and tongue-tied around Sally Truslow and Julia Gordon in spite of his newfound success with women. He even proposes to Sally, though she turns him down.
• Loophole Abuse: Since it’s illegal for a Black man to carry a gun, Starbuck’s servant Lucifer insists that his revolver is a cooking utensil.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Anyone who gets hit by canister shot is ripped to bits. In The Bloody Ground, Nate fires a gun loaded with canister shot at Captain Dennison and Sergeant Case from only fifty yards away, almost vaporizing them.
• Manipulative Bastard: Billy Blythe will lie to anyone about anything if it suits his purposes to do so.
• Miles Gloriosus: Many characters talk a big game about the glories of war and combat, but have little to back it up, including Washington Faulconer, Nathaniel Banks, George McClellan, and Ned Maitland.
• Mission from God: Elial Starbuck believes he has been anointed by God to preach the abolitionist cause. On the flip side, Stonewall Jackson seems to believe he’s on a divine crusade against the Union. Swynyard believes that God has tasked him with converting Starbuck back to Christianity after getting saved himself.
• The Mole: Belvedere Delaney is a Union spy who is convinced that the Confederacy will ultimately lose and is trying to set himself up for a comfortable life after the war by sending intelligence to the North.
• The Neidermeyer: Sergeant Case frequently bullies and abuses the soldiers serving under him, inflicting extreme physical punishment at the slightest provocation and bawling them out for not being as efficient or disciplined as the British soldiers with whom he used to serve.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Swynyard thanks Starbuck for stopping another officer from slipping a bottle of whiskey into his tent in an effort to win the regimental pool on when he’d break his sobriety. Starbuck, who’d been planning to plant the bottle himself the next night, immediately feels terrible.
• Odd Friendship: Nate Starbuck, a Yale-educated Bostonian turned Confederate officer, and Thomas Truslow, a hardscrabble Virginian farmer/ex-soldier who hates Yankees.
• Old Soldier: Truslow is a veteran of the Mexican-American War and probably one of the most competent fighters in the Legion. Griffin Swynyard is also a Mexico veteran, though at first he’s not up to much.
• Orphaned Series: The fourth and last book in the series, The Bloody Ground, was published in 1996. Cornwell then put the Chronicles on hiatus after deciding to write more Sharpe novels, stating that the series were so similar that he didn’t feel like writing two such books a year. He's expressed a desire to return to Starbuck despite his many other projects, but apparently has found it increasingly difficult to write a sympathetic story from the Confederate viewpoint. As of 2024, 28 years later, there’s no hint of a new Starbuck book on the horizon, and the most recent Q&As on his website indicate that it's unlikely to happen.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • The men of the Legion are stunned when Swynyard politely asks to join their prayer meeting and apologizes to everyone for his atrocious behavior. They’re even more astonished when he swears off liquor and frees his slaves.
  • George McClellan, when handed a copy of Special Order 191, realizes that he has an opportunity to smash the Army of Northern Virginia once and for all and gets his troops moving with a level of energy and resolve that he’s never shown before. It doesn’t last long, though, and he fritters the opportunity away.
• Phony Psychic: Sally Truslow sets herself up as a medium after getting tired of working in a Richmond brothel.
• Pocket Protector: Starbuck’s canteen bounces a rifle bullet in Battle Flag. Matthew Potter gets shot In the Back by Captain Dennison in The Bloody Ground. The bullet only shatters his stone jug of whiskey, which was itself wrapped in two spare shirts, some canvas, and an unbound copy of Macaulay's Essays that he found in a privy.
• Preacher's Kid: Starbuck, whose father is a famed minister and abolitionist in Boston. After joining the Confederate army, he quickly takes to swearing, drinking, smoking, whoring, and other such habits. Matthew Potter of the Yellowlegs is also a preacher's son, though in his case he's just a drunk.
• Rank Up: Nate is promoted from second lieutenant to major over the course of the series; in turn he promotes Truslow from sergeant to captain. Swynyard is promoted to brigadier general after Antietam.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: In The Bloody Ground, Nate gets reassigned to a punishment battalion called the Yellowlegs as part of Faulconer’s ongoing scheme to discredit him. Being the protagonist of a Bernard Cornwell series, he’s quickly able to turn the battalion around and make them into a creditable fighting force, though not without making some more enemies in the process.
• Red Baron: Stonewall Jackson, named for his defiant stand at the First Battle of Bull Run. He also acquires the admiring nickname of Old Mad Jack from his men. Meanwhile, George McClellan becomes known as the Young Napoleon, though he does nothing to earn the title.
• Religious Bruiser: Many men on both sides of the war, as was the case in reality. Stonewall Jackson is probably the best example, but men like Peter Waggoner and Griffin Swynyard almost match his fervent devotion to God and ferocity in battle. At one point, Matthew Potter jokingly comments that Jesus must be quite confused by having both sides singing hymns to him and praying for victory.
• Riches to Rags: Swynyard reveals to Nate that he struck it rich in the California gold rush, only to drink, gamble, and whore all the money away.
• Servile Snarker: Lucifer, the young Black boy who becomes Nate’s servant in Battle Flag. He never misses a chance to lip off to Nate, who finds it endearing. The Southerners around him, by contrast, are shocked by Lucifer's attitude and tell Nate to beat it out of him.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Matthew Potter does not deign to trivialize his speech with monosyllabic verbiage.
• Shown Their Work: As is usual for Bernard Cornwell. In this case specifically, he describes the Faulconer Legion as a combined-arms regiment of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, which was unusual for the time. Several such units were raised for the Confederacy; they really were called legions, and they were named after the men who organized and commanded them.
• Sigil Spam: Washington Faulconer puts his family's crest on the Legion's custom made battle flag and orders expensive patches bearing the crest for them to wear on their uniforms. The patches soon become a mark of loyalty in the regiment; those who wear them are Faulconer men, while those who don't are aligned with officers like Starbuck and Pecker Bird.
• Spiritual Successor: This series is very much in the vein of Cornwell’s Sharpe books.
• Spotting the Thread: Starbuck first realizes that Billy Tumlin (who is really Billy Blythe) isn't to be trusted when he witnesses him casually lying to Stonewall Jackson about being a born-again Christian. His servant Lucifer confirms it after overhearing Blythe claiming to have seen John Brown hanged in Harper's Ferry; he tells Starbuck that Brown was actually executed in Charlestown, Virginia.
• The Starscream: Captain Dennison and Sergeant Case. Case encourages Dennison to kill Starbuck and take command of the Yellowlegs, and in turn plans to get rid of Dennison at the first opportune moment so he can have the battalion for himself.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Swynyard becomes a much better man after he’s knocked out by a near-miss cannon shot. He becomes a born-again Christian, gives up booze, frees his slaves, and makes amends with the Legion and Starbuck.
• That's an Order!: In Battle Flag, Starbuck orders the recalcitrant Major Medlicott to take his men to another regiment’s assistance, making it clear that it is an order. When Medlicott refuses to obey, Starbuck shoots him on the spot.
• Unusual Euphemism: Truslow refers to Nate's newfound habit of chasing women, especially married women, as "caterwauling".
• Uriah Gambit: Faulconer orders Swynyard to send Starbuck’s company out ahead of the Legion without support so that they’ll be cut off and destroyed, ridding him of Starbuck once and for all. Truslow remarks on it, and Starbuck, being a minister's son and former theology student, quickly draws the parallel for himself, referencing Uriah by name when Swynyard comes to apologize for what he did.
• The 'Verse: The Starbuck Chronicles are revealed to share continuity with the Sharpe series thanks to the appearance of Colonel Patrick Lassan, Sharpe’s son with Lucille Castineau. He is now a veteran cavalryman in the French army who has acquired an impressive collection of facial scars to match his father’s and wields Sharpe’s old sword. He tells Starbuck that his father is dead, his sister Dominique is Countess of Benfleet, and his mother is still alive, though quite lonely.
• Worthy Opponent: Colonel Holborrow in The Bloody Ground seems impressed by Starbuck’s talent for deceit.