Ten Thousand Banners

About the Book

FALLING IN LOVE WITH NAPOLEON In 1800 teen aged girls didn’t moon over rock stars and movie idols or sexy presidents. If they were inclined to hero worship, they chose a real, honest to goodness specimen like Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France and conqueror of most of Europe. When Napoleon came marching through Warsaw in the winter of 1806 he spotted a beautiful eighteen year old blonde named Marie Walewska who had been waiting for hours in the cold to hand him a bouquet. His reaction was immediate. "I saw no one but you, I admired only you, I desire only you." Who wouldn’t be thrilled to receive a letter like that? Swept off her feet, Marie was only too happy to leave her 72 year old husband and follow Napoleon all over Europe. When Marie became pregnant with the son he had always wanted, Napoleon divorced his wife, the Empress Josephine. But he didn’t marry Marie, who was only a Polish Countess. He married an Archduchess, the daughter of the Austrian emperor and had a son with her who became his heir. Marie, he sent back to her husband. That was when Marie grew up. Meanwhile, the soldiers of Europe were fighting and dying. One of them was a Polish Count Andre, beloved of another teenager, Bluma, a Polish Jewess. Torn between her passion for Count Andre and traditional religious mores, Bluma can only worship him from afar. When he returns severely wounded after the French retreat from Moscow, they share a doomed love. Biography and fiction blend as youth and innocence are caught up in the storm and grandeur of the age of Napoleon.

About the Author

I’m a former history and political science instructor and the author of several novels and a number of non-fiction articles which have appeared in regional publications. I’ve extensively researched Ten Thousand Banners both in university libraries and through travel in France and Eastern Europe.