How does the petty vindictiveness and arrogance of the victors arouse in the vanquished a longing for a return to the old conditions? Why did many French people see Napoleon in 1815 not as a usurper or a monster, but as the bearer of old and new hopes? Why did they again follow his call to the flags and once more endure all the agonies and horrors of the battles, the terrible downside of glory? How did they experience the crushing defeat at Waterloo? Accounts by survivors of Napoleon's wars provided the French writers Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian with the material for their historical novels. Even today, their authenticity makes them among the best ever written about the time and its battles. The hero of the book is the conscript Josef Bertha from Pfalzburg in Lorraine, whom we already met in the novel about the year 1813 at Großgörschen and Leipzig. We learn of his longing for peace, his despair at having to go to war again, and meet him at Ligny and finally on the battlefield of Waterloo as one of the Emperor's many nameless soldiers, ready to die for him. The novel captivates with its knowledgeable and detailed account of the battles, but arguably even more so with its haunting answer to the question: "How could it have come to this?". 248 pages with numerous illustrations.
