Fourriers, Grognards, and Dolmans -- Alors!

My current novel-in-progress begins in 1799 and follows Napoleon's Grande Armeé from Egypt to Austria, Russia and beyond. I've put together a plot and characters, that was the easy part. So was writing the first thirty thousand words or so. Now I'm catching up on my period research, especially making sure I have military formations, uniforms, and tactics correct for the battle scenes that come later.

What did I get myself into?

 Fig. 1: Yes, he fought in that getup.

It's bewildering. First off there's the ranks. In the French army a brigadier did not command a brigade--he was a corporal in a cavalry troop. Similarly one must not confuse a maréchal des logis -- supply sergeant -- with a Marshal of the Empire.

And speaking of marshals, mon général Grouchy would appreciate it if everyone would pronounce his name correctly and stop intimating that he wears green fur and lives in a garbage can.

But I wouldn't doubt that somewhere, somewhen, there was a regiment of hussars, or chasseurs-à-pied, or mameluke lancers clad in green fur of exactly Oscar's hue. 

These guys wore anything -- especially the cavalry. No two hussar regiments had the same uniform. And the hats!  You've got shakos, busbies, cocked hats, square-topped Polish headgear I can't remember the name of right now... Napoleon's big bicorne seems rather staid when you line him up against a regiment of grenadiers with two foot of bearskin bonnet per man.

How did they fight in all that kit? I've been reading personal accounts of Napoleon's soldiers and not one has mentioned a man being killed because of the ridiculous outfit he had to fight in. But there are several accounts of men being shot through the hat and being unharmed. One tells of a man who lost his hat in a cavalry action but was able to get it back from the enemy for a small 'ransom' the next day.

An excellent and comprehensive reference is Swords Around a Throne by American officer John R. Elting. He provides uniform guides and in-depth looks at each branch of service. I'm also reading diaries of a couple of Imperial Guard infantrymen and a cavalryman named Marbot who rose from the ranks to command a regiment of chasseurs at Waterloo.

My biggest surprise so far? The number of horses involved. The poor animals are much less durable than men, and it was easy to wear them out. Officers had several and used them in rotation... or ride each into the ground in turn. Many regiments had no idea how to care for their horses, and got them killed by letting them graze too freely (or not enough). Some soldiers knew what they were doing, but not the French... a Polish lancer regiment came back from Russia with two hundred horses out of a thousand while many French cavalry managed only to save a few mounts for their officers.

Next up, I need to get a better idea about contemporary life in civilian France at that time. Unfortunately the bulk of novels in English from that time are set in, well, England. And I will do a lot of things for my craft but I'm not reading a raft of crappy Regency romances. So next on my plate is to learn enough French to read Balzac (although his novels are set after the wars), Paul Adam and Emile Zola... I've already been plowing through the daily Paris newspapers of the period, helpfully scanned and available online at gallica.fr.

Next, I think I'll write something set in the modern era. In Schenectady. It worked for Vonnegut!

Research Readings for July 2010

It's raining today (finally) and so the perfect day to stay in and do a little research on my latest novel project: a bit of horreur that begins, but does not end, in Egypt during the French occupation.

Nina Burleigh's excellent book Mirage--Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt is more or less indefinitely checked out to me thanks to my good sense at having married the librarian. Mirage follows the French occupation from the point of view of the cent-cinquante savants General Bonaparte brought with him on his attempt to wrest the East and India from England. It's a fascinating window into Napoleon's character: at 28 years of age, he was already padding his C.V. as a new-model emperor of the Enlightenment.

These French scientists made the first comprehensive descriptions of Egypt for European audiences, and touched off a fascination for all thing Phaoronic that continues to this day. (shout-out to fellow-blogger Libbie Hawker, who specializes in the 18th dynasty)

Next in the stack, arriving this week from Amazon (see, even the librarian's husband must often buy a book) is a translation of a 19th century Arab's chronicle of the invasion. The translation is by Shmuel Moreh, a noted scholar whose work I've used before in research for Saint Mark's Body. I haven't gotten very far in this, but my favorite bit so far is when Al-Jabarti dissects bad Arabic grammar in one of Napoleon's proclamations:

"His [Bonaparte's] statement bta al-Mamalik (belonging to the Mamluks) is despicable and a banal and trite word. The word mutma'in should be mutma'inan because it is hal (circumstantial expression) and converting it to the nominative (raf) incorrectly is an indication of their state, and their significance. May God hurry misfortune and punishment upon them, may He strike their tongues with dumbness, may He scatter their hosts, and disperse them, confound their intelligence, and cause their breath to cease."

Apparently, according to Al-Jabarti, Allah should not be so merciful or compassionate when it comes to the declension of nouns. It seems quite just to me for a speaker of perfect French (which I am not, as any Francophone will instantly tell you) to be taken to task like this.

And of course there is the Historical Novel Review, my first issue since joining HNS. I didn't know quite what to expect from this mag: I joined up simply because I knew so many good authors who are members, like C.W. Gortner and Susan Higginbotham. I can certainly say I'm not disappointed; Historical Novel Review gives me a much bettery understanding of the breadth of the historical novels market. It's vital intelligence for anyone looking to break in.

Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist, 2010

On this day in 68 AD, Mark the Evangelist met his martyrdom on a street in Alexandria
(pictured at right by Fra Angelico).

I first became interested in Mark because of the story of how his body left Alexandria 760 years later and ended up in Venice. The more I learned about the living Saint Mark, the more I liked him.

Mark is unique among the Gospel writers in several ways. First off, it's entirely possible that he was actually there. Tradition puts him at the Last Supper, as a server. (Hey, boy, can you get us a new salt shaker? And wrap the rest of this bread up to go-- might be important later. Thanks.) He may also appear in a cameo in his own Gospel, as the young man in Gethsemane who the Romans try to arrest but manages to get away by ditching his clothes. Mark's mother was one of the early Christians who sheltered the Apostles in the days after the Crucifixion, and so Mark became an early disciple of Peter. In fact, Mark's gospel might really be Saint Peter's lecture notes.

What I love about Mark's Gospel is its immediacy and its directness. Mark doesn't tell a nativity story. Mark doesn't bring in a lot of imagery and symbolism. The message is strong enough that Mark feels he can tell it without first establishing his main character's divine credentials. So, one can approach Mark's Gospel as a philosopher. And why not? Whether or not it gets anyone to Heaven, a philosophy of putting love of others first, if universally adopted, would make Earth a pretty nice place to live.

Besides the mystery of what happened to Saint Mark's body in 827-828 and what that meant for Venice, the other thing that intrigues me about him is the fact that a good portion of his orginal Gospel draft is not known to us.

Say what?

Well, Mark writes his "just the facts" story and at a pretty good clip takes us straight to the moment where the women go into the tomb and find Jesus's body missing. Mark 16:8 has the frightened women running out of the tomb... and then, in the earliest known manuscripts, it just ends. The rest of the traditional text, Mark 16:9-20, wraps the story up with news of a Resurrection, but it reads like another author's work. Maybe Mark's agent or editor added the extra verses to make his Gospel more saleable... (A cliffhanger? No, seriously, Mark baby, that ain't gonna work for your debut. We're already taking a chance on you printing on papyrus and not going straight to trade paperback.) but slightly more likely is the possibility that part of a codex got lost along the way and a helpful scribe added a religiously appropriate ending.

And so today we celebrate the author on whose text Matthew's and Luke's gospels were based: an eyewitness to the last days of Christ and the first days of the Apostles: the man who founded the Coptic Church, the first community of Christians outside Israel: and the man who, if the legends are to be believed, continued to affect history and politics for more than a thousand years hence.

I was talking to the rector of St. George's in Schenectady on Friday (George's feast day, as it turns out) and he asked me where Mark's body is now. Well, he's in at least three places! Most of him is still believed to be in Venice, although in recent years the Venetians have not really let anyone look at him. The head might still be in Alexandria, though it has not been seen since the early 19th century and Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. And certain relics were returned to the Coptic Church (some or possibly all of the Venetian treasure) in 1968.