The Battle - Hardcover

Rambaud, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802116620 ISBN 13: 9780802116628

Publisher: Grove Pr, 2000

Synopsis

A dramatic fictional recreation of the 1809 battle of Essling captures the events of the conflict, NapolTon's first major defeat, through the experiences of reallife people of the time, including the wrtier Stendhal, the painter Lejeune, and NapolTon himself. Winner of the Prix Goncourt & Grand Prix du Roman de l'AcadTie Frantaise. 40,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Rambaud was a founder of Actuel in 1970.

Reviews

Among Honor? de Balzac's papers were notes for a projected novel about the battle of Essling, one of Napoleon's first major defeats. Rambaud, picking up on Balzac's ideas and suggestions, and having conducted further research on his own, has written a novel about that conflict. Balzac's plan was to deliver the battle raw, minimizing Napoleon's direct role, but Rambaud shows quite a bit of the Corsican, as well as of his marshals Lannes and Massena. A subplot features Henri Beyle, better known as Stendhal, waiting in Vienna for news of the battle and fantasizing about Anna Krauss, a delectable blonde Austrian. Rambaud follows a select group of soldiers, from Private Paradis, who just wants to get back to his father's farm, to the emperor, during two days of intense fighting that ultimately left 40,000 dead on the field. The author excels in creating scenes that rip the heroic mask off the atrocities of war: a seasoned French infantryman raping a dead Austrian girl; a doctor marking chalk crosses on the foreheads of wounded men he considers to be unsavable; the Austrians setting alight a huge mill wheel covered with pitch and sending it down the Danube River to break up the French pontoon bridge. This last tactic denies the French reinforcements and practically decides the battle. Rambaud is less able to avoid historical novel cliches: his Vienna seems plucked from an operetta, while his Napoleon is not fully drawn but characterized mainly by his tics, a lapse at odds with the colorful, ambitious scenes of combat. (May) FYI: Battle has won the Prix Goncourt and the Prix de l'Academie Fran?aise.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In 1831, French novelist Balzac began taking notes for a novel of the Battle of Essling (1809), Napoleon's first defeat on the Continent. The narrative would include "not a single woman: only cannon, horses, two armies, uniforms," with Napoleon appearing at a distance, crossing the Danube at the end of the day. Balzac never finished the book, but Rambaud has amply realized his ambition in The Battle, which won the Prix Goncourt and the Grand Prix Roman de l'Acad?mie Fran?aise. Napoleon dominates Rambaud's account: "he detested familiarity and advice: all he desired of his officers, like his courtesans, was mute obedience." Wherever the emperor goes, his household goods go, too: a mountain of linens, china and food, his iron bedstead, carpet, chandeliers, and a round of parmesan cheese to sprinkle on his soup. Future novelist Stendhal is also present as witness to the devastation of this "battle without a victor." Rambaud balances horrific battle set pieces and subtle characterizations to produce what will be a classic. Enthusiastically recommended.
-David Keymer, California State Univ., Stanislaus
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Although Napoleon suffered his first major defeat at the Battle of Essling, this pivotal campaign has been largely overlooked in the annals of military history. Fascinated by Honorede Balzac's aborted attempt to novelize this conflict, Rambaud offers his own fictionalized version of the horrific events that occurred on an Austrian plain outside of Vienna on May 16 and 17, 1809. Populating this gripping narrative with all the major players who participated in the planning and the execution of the virtual bloodbath that claimed more than 40,000 lives in less than two full days, Rambaud also includes a number of unforgettably poignant portraits of common soldiers inexorably caught up in the madness and the mayhem of the battlefield. An unflinching account of a historically and militarily significant battle that introduced the modern concept of wholesale carnage into the combat arena. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Pr
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802116620
• ISBN 13: 9780802116628
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 313