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4.0 

Bonaparte's Sons

By Richard Howard
Bonaparte's Sons by Richard Howard digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

 

In this sweeping historical series debut, a fallen French aristocrat must prove himself in the furnace of Napoleon’s army.

France, 1795: Confusion and fear reign in the Republic. With her troops facing starvation and annihilation on three fronts, France is killing her patriots. Alain Lausard, an aristocrat whose family were massacred in The Terror, now rots in prison. His one chance at freedom is to serve in the faltering Italian campaign, now commanded by a young Napoleon Bonaparte.

Trained as a soldier, Lausard commands respect for turning his ragged miscreants into ruthless cavalry. Yet tensions remain. As the unit falls under the command of the despotic Cezar, a hazardous mission behind enemy lines threatens everything . . .

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1 Review

4.0
“France trembles on the edge of an abyss. Her society has been thrown into complete disarray by the mass violence of the revolution; a new cabal of rulers has merely replaced the Bourbons, both in power and in the contempt the public holds for them; and her armies are ever-smaller, penniless, and starving. Even the dregs of the prisons are being scraped up and put into service for the defense of the nation. But from Corsica comes a shot in the arm – a man who knows how to lead, and better still – how to win. With Bonaparte at the helm, and rapists and thieves in the ranks, the French army sets out to deliver a blow against the Hapsburgs in Italy. One man in Napoleon’s army, Alain Lausard, has lost everything to the ‘republic’ — and yet still he fights, and will make his mark. Having greedily devoured so many tales of Horatio Hornblower and Richard Sharpe, I was excited to learn of another series of Napoleonic fiction. This one has the added interest of telling the stories of the French cavalry, and author Richard Howard sweetens the pot by making his main characters a controversial bunch. They’re all prisoners; Lausard is merely a political captive, the last survivor of an aristocratic family butchered by the revolution – but among his new brothers in arms he can count criminals of far worse repute, and their infighting is constant. Howard takes us through their training before skirmishes with the Austrians erupt, and from there we hear rumors of a gold-laden baggage train that will keep Lausard and his men on the run even after they rout the Austrian army. It wasn’t until the ending, however – where one despicable act of treachery is gloriously turned against its Judas – that I really warmed to Lausard, whose personality is overwhelmed by his need to hide his aristocratic past from the rest of his troop. Lausard especially shines when his commanding officer is injured after one skirmish and replaced by a man so odious his name might as well be Frag-Me-Now. Rather than risk a court-martial by directly opposing him, Lausaurd broadcasts his contempt with veiled put-downs. Imagine an officer worse than Sir Henry Simmerson from the Sharpe movies.”

About Richard Howard

Richard Howard is the pseudonym of a bestselling British author who usually works in another genre. However, his love of the Napoleonic Wars, his life long interest in military history and particularly, the material offered by the campaigns of Napoleon drove him to write the series of novels featuring Alain Lausard and the men who fight alongside him.

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