The battle
by Patrick Rambaud. Grove Press, 2000.
In recent years there have been some thrilling additions to the list of great novels about warfare, in particular Tim Willocks’ The Religion, about the Siege of Malta, and Stephen Pressfield’s Gates of Fire, about the Spartans at Thermopylae. Of comparable stature is Patrick Rambaud’s The Battle, originally published in French, which won several major literary prizes including the Prix Goncourt. It tells the story of the Battle of Aspern-Essling, in May 1809. Napoleon’s army takes on the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire near Vienna, at the villages of Aspern and Essling. With their backs to the swollen River Danube, the French troops find themselves overwhelmed by the Austrians’ sheer manpower. Over the course of the two days of the battle, over 40,000 men died in the fierce hand-to-hand combat. Rambaud excels at depicting the battle scenes in all their brutality and randomness. He is less interesting in scenes which feature the young Henri Beyle, who later was to find fame as the novelist Stendhal, but he paints a convincing picture of Napoleon, over-confident and on the verge of his first major reversal.
For those of us whose grasp of Napoleonic warfare only consists of the Retreat from Moscow and Waterloo, this gripping novel adds considerably to our knowledge.
- John.
In recent years there have been some thrilling additions to the list of great novels about warfare, in particular Tim Willocks’ The Religion, about the Siege of Malta, and Stephen Pressfield’s Gates of Fire, about the Spartans at Thermopylae. Of comparable stature is Patrick Rambaud’s The Battle, originally published in French, which won several major literary prizes including the Prix Goncourt. It tells the story of the Battle of Aspern-Essling, in May 1809. Napoleon’s army takes on the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire near Vienna, at the villages of Aspern and Essling. With their backs to the swollen River Danube, the French troops find themselves overwhelmed by the Austrians’ sheer manpower. Over the course of the two days of the battle, over 40,000 men died in the fierce hand-to-hand combat. Rambaud excels at depicting the battle scenes in all their brutality and randomness. He is less interesting in scenes which feature the young Henri Beyle, who later was to find fame as the novelist Stendhal, but he paints a convincing picture of Napoleon, over-confident and on the verge of his first major reversal.
For those of us whose grasp of Napoleonic warfare only consists of the Retreat from Moscow and Waterloo, this gripping novel adds considerably to our knowledge.
- John.
Labels: war
posted by Manly Library at 9:23 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home