The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army [Kindle Edition]
Author: Stephan Talty | Language: English | ISBN: B002AWX6IY | Format: PDF, EPUB
The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army
Download for free books The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link “Gripping . . . a compelling story of personal hubris and humbling defeat.”
—Jack Weatherford,author of the New York Times bestseller Genghis Khan and the Making of the
Modern World
In a masterful dual narrative that pits the heights of human ambition and achievement against the supremacy of nature, New York Times bestselling author Stephan Talty tells the story of a mighty ruler and a tiny microbe, antagonists whose struggle would shape the modern world.
In the spring of 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte was at the height of his powers. Forty-five million called him emperor, and he commanded a nation that was the richest, most cultured, and advanced on earth. No army could stand against his impeccably trained, brilliantly led forces, and his continued sweep across Europe seemed inevitable.
Early that year, bolstered by his successes, Napoleon turned his attentions toward Moscow, helming the largest invasion in human history. Surely, Tsar Alexander’s outnumbered troops would crumble against this mighty force.
But another powerful and ancient enemy awaited Napoleon’s men in the Russian steppes. Virulent and swift, this microscopic foe would bring the emperor to his knees.
Even as the Russians retreated before him in disarray, Napoleon found his army disappearing, his frantic doctors powerless to explain what had struck down a hundred thousand soldiers. The emperor’s vaunted military brilliance suddenly seemed useless, and when the Russians put their own occupied capital to the torch, the campaign became a desperate race through the frozen landscape as troops continued to die by the thousands. Through it all, with tragic heroism, Napoleon’s disease-ravaged, freezing, starving men somehow rallied, again and again, to cries of “Vive l’Empereur!”
Yet Talty’s sweeping tale takes us far beyond the doomed heroics and bloody clashes of the battlefield. The Illustrious Dead delves deep into the origins of the pathogen that finally ended the mighty emperor’s dreams of world conquest and exposes this “war plague’s” hidden role throughout history. A tale of two unstoppable forces meeting on the road to Moscow in an epic clash of killer microbe and peerless army, The Illustrious Dead is a historical whodunit in which a million lives hang in the balance.
From the Hardcover edition. Books with free ebook downloads available The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army [Kindle Edition]
Download for free books The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link “Gripping . . . a compelling story of personal hubris and humbling defeat.”
—Jack Weatherford,author of the New York Times bestseller Genghis Khan and the Making of the
Modern World
In a masterful dual narrative that pits the heights of human ambition and achievement against the supremacy of nature, New York Times bestselling author Stephan Talty tells the story of a mighty ruler and a tiny microbe, antagonists whose struggle would shape the modern world.
In the spring of 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte was at the height of his powers. Forty-five million called him emperor, and he commanded a nation that was the richest, most cultured, and advanced on earth. No army could stand against his impeccably trained, brilliantly led forces, and his continued sweep across Europe seemed inevitable.
Early that year, bolstered by his successes, Napoleon turned his attentions toward Moscow, helming the largest invasion in human history. Surely, Tsar Alexander’s outnumbered troops would crumble against this mighty force.
But another powerful and ancient enemy awaited Napoleon’s men in the Russian steppes. Virulent and swift, this microscopic foe would bring the emperor to his knees.
Even as the Russians retreated before him in disarray, Napoleon found his army disappearing, his frantic doctors powerless to explain what had struck down a hundred thousand soldiers. The emperor’s vaunted military brilliance suddenly seemed useless, and when the Russians put their own occupied capital to the torch, the campaign became a desperate race through the frozen landscape as troops continued to die by the thousands. Through it all, with tragic heroism, Napoleon’s disease-ravaged, freezing, starving men somehow rallied, again and again, to cries of “Vive l’Empereur!”
Yet Talty’s sweeping tale takes us far beyond the doomed heroics and bloody clashes of the battlefield. The Illustrious Dead delves deep into the origins of the pathogen that finally ended the mighty emperor’s dreams of world conquest and exposes this “war plague’s” hidden role throughout history. A tale of two unstoppable forces meeting on the road to Moscow in an epic clash of killer microbe and peerless army, The Illustrious Dead is a historical whodunit in which a million lives hang in the balance.
From the Hardcover edition. Books with free ebook downloads available The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army [Kindle Edition]
- File Size: 1013 KB
- Print Length: 338 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0307394042
- Publisher: Broadway Books (June 2, 2009)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B002AWX6IY
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #426,725 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #8 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Military > Napoleonic Wars
- #93 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Internal Medicine > Infectious Disease > Communicable Diseases
As other reviewers have pointed out, "The Illustrious Dead" is hard to put down. At one level, the book tells the military history of Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of Russia in 1812, from the June day when the Grand Armee crossed the Nieman River into Russia until the end of its catastrophic retreat from Moscow in December of the same year.
But Talty's book also tells the history of a disease that has been plaguing soldiers and civilians for thousands of years. Napoleon's deadliest enemy. Talty claims, was not "General Winter," or Tsar Alexander, or the Cossacks--it was the microbe Rickettsia prowazekii, which causes typhus, aided by the body louse. In Talty's version of events, Rickettsia began to kill before the Grand Armee even crossed the border, passing with body lice among the densely packed, unwashed body of men. By the time Napoleon began to engage Russian forces in earnest, his army was so depleted by the disease that he was no longer able to make the decisive maneuvers that might have forced the Russians to sue for peace. As it was, the Russians held on, suffering huge casulaties but denying Napoleon the knock out blow that might have changed history, ultimately forcing Napoleon to retreat. After Napoleon returned to Paris, it was only a matter of time before his enemies took advantage of the fact that typhus had deprived France of its most experienced and effective soldiers.
"The Illustrious Dead" is a gripping mix of narrative military history, science and detective story. Talty does an excellent job of weaving the broad story of the campaign with the words of the men who fought the battles and endured the hardships.
This is the story of an army and a microbe. The microbe wins.
That's a bit of an understatement, like saying that Napoleon was somewhat short, or that Moscow gets a bit cold in the winter, or that book reviewers tend to be too fond of lame similes. The microbe went up against Napoleon's Grand Army --- the greatest assemblage of military might since antiquity --- and beat the living whey out of it, all the way to Moscow and all the way back.
On the surface, it looks like such a mismatch. Napoleon had put together nearly half a million front-line troopers, many of them hard-bitten veterans of his victorious Italian and Austrian campaigns, and had significant cavalry and artillery to boot. They had the best training of their times, and some of the best generalship, and were impressively well-organized for the pre-microchip era. And yet, the army, as grand as it was, was beaten overwhelmingly, thoroughly and comprehensively by something it couldn't even see, something without a brain, nothing more than a collection of a few strands of DNA, designed to do little more than survive --- and kill.
To be sure, the microbe had powerful allies in its campaign to stop the French in their drive into Russia, such as the Russian army (or at least the rank and file of that army, considering its poor leadership). Then there was the scorched-earth tactics that denied provender to Napoleon's polyglot army. There was Napoleon's own imperial hubris in starting the conflict in the first place, and his failure to plan for the Russian winter or the possibility of infectious disease. There were even other microbes in the mix --- dysentery and the like.
All of these factors combined to bog down Napoleon's advance to Moscow and complicate his retreat.
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