The Conscript and Waterloo

The Conscript and Waterloo forms a powerful diptych of Napoleonic-era historical fiction, following the reluctant soldier Joseph Bertha from enforced service in 1813 to the catastrophe of Waterloo. Written in a lucid, popular-realist style, it transforms grand military history into the intimate record of ordinary lives disrupted by imperial ambition. Its domestic detail, plainspoken narration, and humane irony place it within the nineteenth-century historical novel while resisting heroic mythmaking. Erckmann-Chatrian was the joint literary signature of Émile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian, writers from the Franco-German borderlands of Lorraine, a region acutely sensitive to war, occupation, and shifting national identity. Their republican sympathies and distrust of militarism shaped their fiction, which often gives moral authority to peasants, artisans, and provincial families rather than generals or emperors. This background helps explain the book's sympathy for conscripts and civilians. This volume is recommended to readers interested in Napoleon's legacy as experienced from below, and to those who value historical fiction with ethical seriousness. It offers battle, memory, and political judgment without bombast, making it both accessible and intellectually rewarding.

Maße: 1.2 x15.2 x22.9 cm