‘I love you, Anna Petrovna,’ he said abruptly, and she looked at him for a moment doubtfully, quizzically. And then she laughed: not because it was funny, but simply because she felt good. He put his arms round her and pulled her roughly against him, and she tilted her head up, looking up at him and laughing; and against his belly, through the muffling layers of his clothing and hers, he felt the child within her kick him lustily.
EPILOGUE
Nobody knows exactly how many men crossed the River Nieman into Russia in June 1812; probably the total of the Allied French forces taking part in the campaign was between five and six hundred thousand. Those who straggled back over the frozen river in December numbered between thirty and forty thousand.
In the six months in between, half a million men had been lost: some in battle, killed or taken prisoner; others from starvation, exhaustion, typhus, pneumonia, dysentery, gangrene; and on the long march back from Moscow, others still perished from the effects of the pitiless Russian winter. Unprepared for the terrifying cold, without food, fuel or adequate clothing, they died by the thousand. Frozen to death, they fell like winter sparrows, unheeded beside the road, and no one ever recorded their names.
The name of Napoleon Bonaparte is known throughout the world as the greatest soldier who ever lived, and the man who, more than any other, shaped modern Europe.
Other books by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles include
The Colonel’s Daughter
Harte’s Desire
The Horsemasters
Julia
The Longest Dance
The Orange Tree Plot
The Bill Slider Mysteries
The Morland Dynasty Series
The War At Home Series
The Kirov Saga- Books 2 & Three
Copyright
Published by Northwood Publishing
Copyright © 1990, 2019 Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
All rights reserved
Author’s website
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
ISBN 978-1-84396-573-2
Also available in paperback
ISBN 978-1-84396-574-9
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual living persons is purely coincidental.
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