War & Military Books

OFF TO WAR The time was late in the autumn of the second year of the war; the place, the garden of a war hospital in a small Austrian town, which lay at the base of wooded hills, sequestered as behind a Spanish wall, and still preserving its sleepy contented outlook upon existence. Day and night the locomotives whistled by. Some of them hauled to the front trains of soldiers singing and hallooing,... more...

CHAPTER I. "Does it never rain here?" asked the Latest Arrival, with sudden shift of the matter under discussion. "How is that, Bentley?" said the officer addressed to the senior present, the surgeon. "You've been here longest." "Don't know, I'm sure," was the languid answer. "I've only been here three years. Try 'Tonio there. He was born... more...

Preface. As many boys into whose hands the present volume may fall will not have read my last year's book, With Moore in Corunna, of which this is a continuation, it is necessary that a few words should be said, to enable them to take up the thread of the story. It was impossible, in the limits of one book, to give even an outline of the story of the Peninsular War, without devoting the whole... more...

CHAPTER I THE POITEVINS The history of France in 1792 has been too fully written, and too generally read to leave the novelist any excuse for describing the state of Paris at the close of the summer of that year. It is known to every one that the palace of Louis XVI was sacked on the 10th of August. That he himself with his family took refuge in the National Assembly, and that he was taken thence to... more...

THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. This story was written in the summer of 1863, as a contribution, however humble, towards the formation of a just and true national sentiment, or sentiment of love to the nation. It was at the time when Mr. Vallandigham had been sent across the border. It was my wish, indeed, that the story might be printed before the autumn elections of that year,—as my "testimony"... more...

CHAPTER I A great multitude of people filled the church, crowded together in the old black pews, standing closely thronged in the nave and aisles, pressing shoulder to shoulder even in the two chapels on the right and left of the apse, a vast gathering of pale men and women whose eyes were sad and in whose faces was written the history of their nation. The mighty shafts and pilasters of the Gothic... more...

IN THE DEPTHS OF OLD FRANCE "Drink, Monsieur Angelot," said the farmer. His wife had brought a bottle of the sparkling white wine of the country, and two tall old treasures of cut glass. The wine slipped out in a merry foam. Angelot lifted his glass with a smile and bow to the mistress. "The best wine in the country," he said as he set it down. The hard lines of her face, so dark, so... more...

CHAPTER I "Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call... more...

CHAPTER I Let a man, an arrow, and an answer each go straight. Each is his own witness. God is judge.—EASTERN PROVERB. A Sikh who must have stood about six feet without his turban—and only imagination knows how stately he was with it—loomed out of the violet mist of an Indian morning and scrutinized me with calm brown eyes. His khaki uniform, like two of the medal ribbons on his breast, was new,... more...

CHAPTER I. IN THE AIR. "And how do you feel now, Mr. Stubbs?" Hal Paine took his eyes from the distance ahead long enough to gaze toward that part of the military aeroplane in which three other figures were seated. It might rather be said, however, that two of the others were seated, for the third figure was huddled up in a little ball, now and then emitting feeble sounds. In response to... more...