Books about Napoleonic era (and Polish history) - 3
Good day, dear all, and let me share with you some books I've read recently.
And because today is the birthday of Tadeusz Kościuszko I'll start with a biography of him The Peasant Prince, by the American historian Alex Storozynski:
2. One more position about the Polish history, in English, I'd like to recommend you is Richard Butterwick's The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1733–1795: Light and Flame, dedicated to the reigns of Polish-Lithuanian two last kings, Augustus III Wettin and Stanisław August Poniatowski:
From the topic of Polish history let's switch to the French one.
3. One more addition to my collection of Talleyrand's biographies was this one, written by Robin Harris:
4-5. Then, there were two books about Napoleon's private life, by Octave Aubry and Sigrid-Maria Größing:
6-7. A study on the topic of French revolutionary and imperial generals, by Georges Six, and George Nafziger's Imperial Bayonets. (These were books with lots of military details, so I can't say I've enjoyed them thoroughly, rather not belonging to their target audience))
8. And this is a book I really liked, The anatomy of Glory by Henry Lachouque! And though its subtitle (Napoleon and his Guards) kinda states the book will be focused on the Imperial Guards, in fact its topics turned out much more wider, including information on Napoleon himself, France and even some details of the usual life of that times:
9. The book majority of you have already read, The Iron Marshal, a biography of Louis Nicolas Davout by John Gallaher:
10-11. And the last but not the least - two books on Murat. The first is a book by the French historian Jean Tulard and the second is an impressive work of Sarah Hammel @joachimnapoleon.
Thanks a lot, Sarah, for letting as see Joachim Murat through his letters, from his own point of view!
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Lend a Hand
(Maria Hawke/Fenris | 965 Words | no warnings)
They’d been wandering through Sundermount for what felt like hours before Fenris noticed the change in Hawke’s spellcasting.
He didn’t want to notice. For his own reasons, Fenris tried not to watch Hawke too closely, even if his efforts were usually in vain. In the end, he couldn’t help noticing the change; during their fight against a particularly tenacious group of spiders, one of them carved a line across his chest and Fenris called out for help. Usually, this would be the point at which Hawke turned and threw fire at whatever he was fighting. Instead, she just hissed and hit it with a lackluster burst of sparks.
Fenris cast a disgruntled look over his shoulder, but had little time to object to her lack of assistance. Three crossbow bolts thudded into the spider, felling it at last, and he paused to down a health potion before turning to the next.
Several minutes later, when they were the only ones left alive, the others set about searching the cavern and Hawke went back to the stairs, frowning down at her hand. She set her staff aside with little care, and it hit several steps before rolling to the floor with a dull thud.
Odd, that. Much as Fenris tried not to watch her, he knew that she was meticulously careful with her staff. He paused, crouched over a dead explorer, and watched her warily.
Hawke sat stiffly on a splintering step and bent over her hand. A lock of curly black hair drifted back over her face and she blew it out of the way, annoyed.
That—that was precisely why he kept his eyes to himself.
Despite her occasional hints, Fenris had been careful to hedge his bets. She was, above and beyond anything else she did, still a mage. Not to be trusted; he’d had a lifetime to learn that, even if he didn’t remember much of it. So—he hadn’t responded to her attempts at flirting, but he hadn’t turned her down outright, either.
He could not explain to himself why he was crossing the cavern to her now, when it would be so much smarter to stay where he was.
“What is it?” he asked when he got close, “A wound?”
Hawke grimaced, then looked up at him.
“Hand cramp,” she said, “Foolish. I should have done something when it started hurting hours ago, but here we are. I’m sorry about earlier, by the way—dropped the damned thing and had to improvise without the staff. Nothing ever works right without the staff.”
She mumbled this last sentence, and glared down at the staff in question. It went on lying on the cavern floor, faintly muddy now, and Fenris peered down at it.
This was a bad idea.
It was a very bad idea.
“Let me see,” he said, carefully holding out one hand.
Hawke’s eyebrows shot up, but she offered her hand after a moment. Her fingers were curled in, the thumb extended past what must be comfortable, and there were red marks on her palm from where she’d been rubbing it.
Don’t do it, he told himself firmly, she can manage it for herself. She’s a healer; let her heal it herself.
Fenris crouched before her and took her hand in his, running a thumb over the swell of her palm. There was a knot in the muscle there; he could feel it even without pressing hard, and the hiss between her teeth confirmed it for what it was.
“Stretch more often,” he told her stiffly, and ran both thumbs down either side of the cramped muscle.
“Are you a healer now?” she asked, and he wasn’t looking at her (he wasn’t!), but he could see the quirk in her full lips when she said it, as if she was laughing at her own joke.
“No,” Fenris said stiffly, but went on after a moment, “There was a woman—an old slave—who did this for the swordsmen when I lived in Danarius’s household. It helped with the pain.”
“Oh!” Hawke said, and hissed between her teeth when he hit a particularly bad spot. Fenris ignored this and moved on to the skin beneath her knuckles.
Her hands were callused here, which made sense. His hands were callused in the same places, for a staff and a greatsword were gripped in a similar enough manner. He’d not accounted for the warmth of her, though, nor the way her breath stirred his hair when she craned her neck to see what he was doing.
Fenris had known this was a bad idea, but here he was nonetheless. Getting closer to her could only end badly for both of them. And yet…
“You should be more careful,” he told her sternly, to banish the odd fluttering in his chest. It had begun when he’d watched her blow her hair out of her face. Ignoring it had not yet forced the sensation to dissipate.
Good enough; he ought to let go and move away quickly, before anything else—
Her fingers clung to his when he drew away—not very much, only for a breath or two longer than he’d held onto her, but it was enough.
Enough—ha! Too much by far.
Fenris stood quickly, sidestepping her fallen staff without needing to look for it.
“Thank you,” Hawke told him, flexing and curling her fingers before bending to reach for her staff.
Fenris turned away, willing the heat and tingling to vanish from his ears. At his side, his hands flexed, as if by doing so he could shake off the feeling of her skin against his.
It was...the first time they'd touched each other that didn't involve healing.
“It was nothing.”
He wondered if Hawke could hear the lie in his voice as plainly as he did.
(At @jtownnn's request for the prompt "6. Massage, either full-body or partial (hand, shoulder, etc.)" from this list. This was fun! I don't think I've written them this early in the game yet c:)
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