The Great White Army

Downloads: Under 100
Pages: 163

Read online EPUB Download Save

About this book

Surgeon-Major Janil de Constant first sees Moscow as a promised reward for Napoleon's soldiers. Once Constant enters the city, a stranger draws him into a grand house, where a young French artist lies dead and voices sound along a silent corridor. Max Pemberton builds his historical novel around Constant's account of the Russian campaign of 1812, with the surgeon's nephew, Captain Léon de Courcelles, often at the centre of its adventures.

The splendour of the arrival gives way to hunger, snow and danger during the retreat. In one episode, Constant and Léon watch mounted troops race past the hut where wolves have trapped them. The narrator's concern for his nephew brings a personal scale to the military disaster. Readers interested in Napoleonic fiction will find a soldier's conversational recollections, sudden reversals and close attention to the effort of staying alive.

About the author

Max Pemberton

Sir Max Pemberton (1863-1950) was an English novelist and journalist who became one of the most widely read popular authors of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. He edited Cassell's Magazine and the boys' paper Chums, and produced dozens of adventure and mystery novels, among them The Iron Pirate and Kronstadt.