The Battle

The Battle is the book Balzac always wanted to write and, beginning his story with Balzac’s own words (‘On Tuesday 16th May 1809...’), Rambaud has finally achieved his predecessor’s dream.

The eponymous battle – now commonly described as Napoleon’s first major defeat on land in Europe – took place at Essling, near Vienna; forty thousand men died in forty-eight hours. With vivid detail and meticulous accuracy, Rambaud paints a frighteningly convincing picture of the scene, imbuing the reader with a sense of the full horror and fascination of combat. With a cast enlivened by real people – Marshals Berthier, Lanne and Masséna, the writer Stendhal, the painter Lejeune and, of course, the Emperor himself, The Battle is at once an incredible and epic book, a captivating literary recreation and a spellbinding portrait of one of history’s most enigmatic characters.