What if Napoleon Won the Battle of Waterloo - an Editorial Review of "The Debt of Free Men"
Book Blurb:
What if…Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo? Jean-Pierre Bengoa, a fusilier in the French army, will not only witness Napoleon’s legendary 1814 and 1815 campaigns, but his actions will have unknown consequences that will echo through time.
But first he must take the leap from boy to man as he seeks adventure and glory. He must risk his father’s wrath as his desires lead him away from the seminary where he has spent the past two years.
He may soon come to regret what he has wished for. A soldier’s life is not what he imagined, but now he is caught in the current of history, and he has no choice but to be swept along. Little does he, or anyone else, know how his actions will be the stone that ever so slightly changes the world and the course of history.
Book Buy Link: https://geni.us/Z5ytO
Author Bio:
It was after six years in the US Marine Corps Reserve and 14 years working as an engineer that Domingo Leonis returned to his first intellectual enthusiasm: history. This was originally kindled at the age of 12 when he encountered a documentary on the Battle of Thermopylae, and it became a full-fledged pursuit after he read Andrew Roberts’ landmark book Napoleon: A Life while deployed overseas with the Marine Corps.
He subsequently devoted himself to a study of the Napoleonic era, focusing especially on firsthand memoirs such as, “The Memoirs of Sergeant Bourgogne” and essentially any work from the brilliant Jonas De Neef. His research was influenced by his connection with the Basque country of southwest Europe, which, as a first-generation Basque American, he has visited often and where much of his family still lives. With the encouragement of his wife, and drawing on his own experience as an infantryman, Domingo transformed his fascination with details of the past into a work of history, as accurate and true to life as possible. However, as the ending of this book demonstrates, he has also wished the reader to gain an appreciation for just how fragile history can be, and how individual actions, ever so slight, can alter its course.
Following the publication of The Debt of Free Men, his first book, Domingo Leonis is working on a second volume describing the drama and intimacies of Napoleonic warfare. He currently lives in Billings, Montana, USA with his wife and kids.
Editorial Review:
Title: The Debt of Free Men
Author: Domingo Leonis
Rating: 4.0
“What if…. Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo?”
The answer is affirmative in Domingo Leonis’s “The Debt of Free Men,” an alternate-history novel that rests on one of the strongest divergences for a Waterloo What If. This, unlike many alternate-history novels before it, is not a dry military exercise, but a brutal and intimate story, told through the eyes of Jean-Pierre Bengoa, a fusilier in the French army. He witnesses “the impossible” without knowing it. We know Waterloo went differently. He doesn’t. His is an original account of the campaign.
“My body was moving without thought. As we dropped our kits in our tents, the others cleaned and oiled their muskets. I did as they did. Unable to think, my hands worked unconsciously of their own accord. I began to tremble once again. Some of the veterans laughed and called me un frileux [one who shivers from the cold]. I felt ashamed but could not control my body.”
This is a significant passage that reveals how the war left a mark on the mind, as surely as it did to the body. By grounding the moment in Jean-Pierre’s hands, the novel establishes that Napoleon’s army was made of ordinary men who feared and trembled easily. If this was the raw material of the French army, then the reader genuinely doesn’t know how victory is supposed to come. This moment feels deliberate, and it offers a question the reader won’t stop carrying, even as they remember the shaking hands, and what those hands later do at Ligny and at Mont-Saint-Jean.
“Do not be so certain… There are many things that cannot be seen, and many endings that are yet unknown. Do not doubt your choices, as I do believe God has guided you on this path. You were meant to take this path, you were meant to be a soldier, and what shall come from this only God can see and time will tell…”
These words by Father Louis tell of a “larger design” whose ending was not visible to Jean-Pierre. The reader knew about it right from the first page, and it’s this knowing that makes them a helpless witness, yet a privileged one.
Most alternative-histories leave the reader satisfied, through an answered what if, and a thrilling answer. In, “The Debt of Free Men,” just as the name suggests, the novel refuses the victory to be ending. The complication is the novel’s backbone. The answer is given and then the cost is presented. The reader is forced to hold both. This one goes beyond into territory the genre doesn’t usually claim, and into the question of what a life is worth when it’s spent on something the spender never sees.
Lovers of historical fiction will appreciate the deep research, as well as the author’s afterword showing where history bent and why. Fans of regional history especially will appreciate that the novel is rooted in a place where most war fictions often ignore- the Basque country.
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