Guy De Tournet, Child of Revolution, Son of France

Book excerpt: Russia.with its wild untamed lands of vast open Steppes, of marshlands, of rivers, of unfathomable people, some as wild as their country, yet with a culture of religion, of art, of buildings of great beauty. Into this forbidding landscape came the French with all their arrogant innocence, proclaiming a victory they had yet to win. Amongst them Guy De Tournet, Captain of cavalry, who kept silent vigil over his own thoughts. It would take more than defiant words to win this war. It would take men, blood and guts. His and that of other valiant Frenchmen; the cannon fodder. The year was 1812, the antagonists Bonaparte, who fashioned himself like a Roman Emperor, and Alexander I , the suspicious autocratic Tsar of all Russia.