SO BRIEF A SPRING

by Claude Manceron ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 24, 1957

...was the ""100 days"" of Napoleon's return from Elba. Bonaparte was the hope of the '93 revolutionaries who had seen their dreams of a new France dashed with the restoration of the Bourbon-Louis XVIII. This historical romance tells of the plots, counterplots, stratagems, bold adventures and wretched miseries undertaken by a small radical group, which although not entirely happy with the ""Little Corporal"", knew he was the only alternative to the hated Royalist rule. Jacques d'Avremont, who would have been a radical anywhere, Rouselle, the wily cripple, Pierre Toussaint, the embittered revolutionist, and his son Paul, who at 18, had no trade, no diploma, no religion and knew only the cause of the revolution, disrupted the clumsy Royalist counterattack in the provinces through sabotage and subterfuge in the hope of presenting an appearance of a France united under Bonaparte. Against this sweeping background of political intrigue is recorded, in the form of Paul's personal journal, the love affair between Marjolaine, daugher of the aristocracy, and Paul, who would have fled from causes but was trapped by events and who was, at the end of spring, 1815, among Napoleon's ill-fated troops at Waterloo. This massive story is admirable in its ambition, capturing in its vividness of scene, unconvincing in its machination.

Pub Date: Feb. 24, 1957

ISBN: 0548440050

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1957

Categories: FICTION