The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon

XC - The Port of Cadiz

XCI - The Little Bird

XCII - Trafalgar

XCIII - Disaster

XCIV - The Storm

XCV - Escape

XCVI - At Sea

XCVII - Monsieur Fouché’s Advice

XCVIII - A Relay Station in Rome

XCIX - The Appian Way

C - What Was Happening on the Appian Way Fifty Years before Christ

CI - An Archeological Conversation between a Navy Lieutenant and a Captain of Hussars

CII - In Which the Reader Will Guess the Name of One of the Two Travelers and Learn the Name of the Other

CIII - The Pontine Marshes

CIV - Fra Diavolo

CV - Pursuit

CVI - Major Hugo

CVII - At Bay

CVIII - The Gallows

CIX - Christophe Saliceti, Minister of Police and Minister of War

CX - King Joseph

CXI - Il Bizzarro

CXII - In Which the Two Young Men Part Ways, One to Return to Service under Murat, and the Other to Request Service under Reynier

CXIII - General Reynier

CXIV - In Which René Sees that Saliceti Was Not Mistaken

CXV - The Village of Parenti

CXVI - The Iron Cage

CXVII - In Which René Comes Upon Il Bizzarro’s Trail When He Least Expects It

CXVIII - In Pursuit of Bandits

CXIX - The Duchess’s Hand

APPENDIX

I His Imperial Highness, Viceroy Eugene-Napoleon (#litres_trial_promo)

II At Lunch (#litres_trial_promo)

III Preparations (#litres_trial_promo)

A NOTE TO THE READER

A NOTE ABOUT PREPARING THE TEXT

About the Author

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PART I BONAPARTE (#u3e8154c2-e160-5506-b2f3-078402a93490)

I Josephine’s Debts (#u3e8154c2-e160-5506-b2f3-078402a93490)

“NOW THAT WE ARE in the Tuileries,” Bonaparte, the First Consul, said to Bourrienne, his secretary, as they entered the palace where Louis XVI had made his next-to-last stop between Versailles and the scaffold, “we must try to stay.”

Those fateful words were spoken at about four in the afternoon on the 30th Pluviose in the Revolutionary year VIII (February 19, 1800).

This narration begins exactly one year to the day after the First Consul’s installation. It follows our book The Whites and the Blues, which ended, as we recall, with Pichegru fleeing from Sinnamary, and our novel The Companions of Jehu, which ended with the execution of Ribier, Jahiat, Valensolles, and Sainte-Hermine.

As for General Bonaparte, who was not yet general at that time, we left him just after he had returned from Egypt and landed back on French soil. Since the 24th Vendémiaire in the year VII he had accomplished a great deal.

First of all, he had managed and won the 18th Brumaire, though the case is still being appealed before posterity.

Then, like Hannibal and Charlemagne, he crossed the Alps.

Later, with the help of Desaix and Kellermann, he won the battle of Marengo, after first losing it.

Then, in Lunéville, he arranged peace.