The Conscript - A Story of the French War of 1813

284 Pages. Copyright 1868 by Charles Scribner & Co. and by Charles Scribner's Sons 1869 and 1898. Blue cloth with very tight binding and tight, white pages. Previous owner's ex-libris pasted on front endpaper. The appearance of a book read once and stored away properly. In this historical fiction the authors take up the tragic story of Joseph Bertha, who tells the affecting and exciting story, is snatched away from his betrothed and his peaceful trade by the conscription, and his individual experiences in the campaign are interesting, from the point of view of romance. The authors begin their long, sustained, and eloquent sermon against war and war-wagers of their arraignment of Napoleon for wanton and insatiate love of conquest. The Conscript is certainly one of the most impressive statements of the darker side of the national pursuit of military glory that have ever been made. The first part of the book is taken up with a vivid and pathetic account of the passage of the grande armee through Alsace on its way to Moscow and the Beresina, of the anxious waiting for news of the battles that succeeded, of the first suspicions of disaster and their overwhelming confirmation, of the final rout and awful straggling retreat and return of the great expedition, and its demoralized and harassed entry within the national frontiers once more. The second and major portion narrates the rude surprise of the continuation of warfare and the still more fatal campaign which opened so dubiously with Lutzen and Bautzen, and culminated so disastrously in Leipsic and the capitulation of Paris. This is a story of romance in the background of war. Certainly, war, in the minutia, of its reality, has never been more graphically painted than in The Conscript of 1813. List of Illustrations: War and Glory Frontispiece covered with onion skin, Monsieur Goulden, The Dragoon Fell Heavily, Come My Children to Table, Who Goes There, They Related with Majestic Air Their Battles Their Marches and Their Duels, Look Yonder, Close Up The Ranks, Everything Gave Way Before Him, We Saw Him Standing On a Table, In the River the Dead were Floating by in Files, and Halt Stop.…