The Retreat. Questo articolo non è disponibile.The Retreat

The sequel to The Battle, winner of the Priz Goncourt, continues the story of the Napoleonic Wars with the demoralized, exhausted, and much diminished French army in September 1812 at the gates of Moscow as Napoleon and his forces confront their most brutal challenge amid the cold and starvation of the Russian winter. Reprint.

The spectacular sequel to The Battle, winner of the Prix Goncourt and the Grand Prix Roman de l'Acadé mie Franç aise, this stunning second volume of Patrick Rambaud's Napoleonic trilogy opens in September 1812 with the French army at the gates of Moscow. Exhausted and demoralized, they are only a quarter of the 400,000-strong force that crossed the river Niemen three months before. But the sight of this famous city feels like a triumph and a chance, at last, to enjoy a conqueror's spoils. Napoleon rides to the Dorogomiló v Gate expecting to be met by city elders bearing tokens of surrender, but no one appears; Moscow has been evacuated. Oblivious to their predicament, Napoleon sends to Paris for comic novels and imagines that it is only a matter of time before Tsar Alexander sues for peace. Finally, a month later, Napoleon gives up and the Grand Armé e begins its tragic retreat. The French will endure their most brutal test as they lose over twenty thousand men due to fighting, the cold, and starvation. With the same pulse-quickening dramatic power he showed in The Battle, Rambaud brings this disastrous campaign to brilliant, near-hallucinatory life.