Instead of following "Madame Therese" with stories celebrating the
victories of Napoleon and thus appealing to their compatriots' love of
glory and military illusions, MM. Erckmann-Chatrian take up next the
tragic and far more significant story of 1812-13. With "The Conscript"
begins their long, sustained, and eloquent sermon against war and
war-wagers--the exordium, so to say, of their arraignment of Napoleon
for wanton and insatiate love of conquest. "The Conscript" is
certainly one of the most impressive statements of the darker side of
the national pursuit of military glory that have ever been made. The
first part of the book is taken up with a vivid and pathetic account of
the passage of the _grande armee_ through Alsace on its way to Moscow
and the Beresina, of the anxious waiting for news of the battles that
succeeded, of the first suspicions of disaster and their overwhelming
confirmation, of the final rout and awful straggling retreat and return
of the great expedition, and its demoralized and harassed entry within
the national frontiers once more. The second and major portion
narrates the rude surprise of the continuation of warfare and the still
more fatal campaign which opened so dubiously with Lutzen and Bautzen,
and culminated so disastrously in Leipsic and the capitulation of
Paris. Poor Joseph Bertha, who tells the affecting and exciting story,
is snatched away from his betrothed and his peaceful trade by the
conscription, and his individual experiences in the campaign are as
interesting, from the point of view of romance, as their representative
nature and his shrewd and simple reflections upon them are historically
and philanthropically suggestive. Certainly, war, in the minutiae of
its reality, has never been more graphically painted than in "The
Conscript of 1813."