Louise Reviews The Last Campaign of Marianne Tambour: A Novel of Waterloo

Please not that the author is gifting a signed paperback and an ebook for two lucky winners.

See below for details.
The winners will be drawn on Thursday the 5th November

From David Ebsworth's amazon page

On the bloody fields of Waterloo, a battle-weary canteen mistress of Bonaparte's Imperial Guard battalions must fight to free her daughter from all the perils that war will hurl against them - before this last campaign can kill them both.

This book, an immense story of war, and the lives of those who live through it, deserves an accolade for astounding depth of detail, not only in the descriptions of the characters, but also in their actions. A cinematic, full colour, masterpiece. A powerfully packed novel of the history of one of the most iconic battles, that of Waterloo, told from the female perspective. Ebsworth has characters driven by their personalities, and their battle for survival. The personalities, and their struggles are such, that the characters become three dimensional, and the struggles becoming personal to the reader. We have Marianne Tambour, who is a cantiniere; Liberté Dumont, who is a female Dragoon, and informer to the police minister, Joseph Fouché.

I first have to mention the book cover for Marianne Tambour. The detail, the story beckoning, the tale of a well-known war, with the unknown personal lives that lived within that war. This is, indeed, a cover of some note.

I have read that we view a cover in a clockwise fashion. This being the case, then, I shall start with the image of the woman, top right. Is this Marianne Tambour? Then there is the title of the book, slashing the cover in half, written in blue and red, resembling a signature, perhaps; confirming the protagonist, in colours imitating the tricolour above. Below this we have three soldiers, one of whom is most definitely Napoleon. The horses look worn down, mirroring the men mounted upon them, demonstrating the bone-weariness of war. The bodies beneath the horses' hooves, strewn like discarded chaff. Then there is the author's name, supporting the entire scene, in a capitalised font; bold, underlining the image above. We then swing our vision around and back to the top of the cover, and there is the tricolour. Is it being held by Marianne Tambour? Or is it the arm of a soldier? Only reading the story within will inform.

David Ebsworth's story of intrigue within the well-known story subject of the battle of Waterloo, is inspired. It is written as a journal, of sorts, each chapter being pinned to a day, a date, and a time. A countdown, if you will.

Chapter One 

Wednesday 14th June 1815, 2.00pm 

The boning knife flashed from the left, flensed the lower buttons from Marianne's coat in the instant she jumped back, a reflex from the strange gift of premonition - or perhaps it was a curse - that she possessed.

These opening lines, of what is Marianne Tambour's last campaign, are so powerful as to warn the reader of what is to come. Mayhem, death, and a struggle for survival.

When I first started to read Ebsworth's novel, I was hooked immediately by those first opening lines. First of all, they intrigued me. A boning knife, a knife that has a particular function; that of taking flesh from bone. The image is harrowing in its starkness. Its blade is narrow, with a long point, perfect for the task. The knife, 'flensed the lower buttons from Marianne's coat', flense, an interesting verb to use, as this is the particular action of stripping blubber or skin from whales, another very particular function. For me, that would imply the stripping of Marianne's flesh from her bones in a most brutal fashion. Imagine how close that knife came as it took the lower buttons from Marianne's coat. A hair's breadth closer, and Marianne's story would be over. It is detailed description like this; that encompasses the reader, the narrative being absorbed by osmosis, tantalising, and beckoning the reader.

Whether you are on the French side, or the English side, it matters not. Ebsworth's narrative is being told not only from the female perspective, which in itself, is refreshing, but it is also being told from the French point of view. Very often, when reading about Waterloo, we are treated to the English view of the event. For me, it was like snooping behind enemy lines, if you will, overhearing, and being alarmed at the terrible events.

Marianne has a tenacity which helps her to stay alive after her husband's death. She not only has herself to look after, but also her child, Poppy. Here Ebsworth impacts the feeling of survival, a child, after all, is a precious thing, the future of a population. War is a destructor of populations, and so we are ensconced in two battles, the one of Waterloo, and the survival of Marianne, and her child.

There is much brutality in this story of war, if you could, you would look away, but the draw is to watch, to flinch, to be torqued into a curl of anxiety, followed by relief. We are manipulated by Ebsworth's text, he leads, and we follow.

This is from Chapter Eighteen: 

'Fouché tells me you're something of a sword-sharpe,' he said. More lather, she thought. That's good. She slipped her fingers inside the knuckle guard, wrapped them around the wired leather in a tug-of-war over some disputed garment. The Lieutenant's eye was drawn inevitably to them and it was the only chance that Liberté needed. 

This is a most compelling fight scene, told entirely from the female perspective. The sword-fight between Lieutenant Henry and Liberté, is written in such a way that the draught from the swords is palpable, as they sweep past. They were fighting with sabres,

These were hardly duelling blades, after all. There was no subtle slash and parry for a Dragoon, the heavy sabre either wielded straight as a lance, or hacking like a bludgeon. A butcher's clever, she always thought, this backsword, as opposed to the light cavalry sabre's flensing knife.

The sword fight is described cinematically. Detail after detail laid before the reader, jamming the brain with the same rush of adrenaline as the characters must be experiencing. I was left breathless after reading the sabre duel. I know nothing of fencing, per se, other than it is an art. So the description, so rich in its detail, left me in no doubt as to the stamina and the art, needed by the combatants.

If you like to read books about the battle of Waterloo, and you are au fait with the history, then this book is one for you. If you have no notion of the battle, then this book is also one for you. Ebsworth's fine art of creating a world, one which is both believable, and all encompassing, is a unique talent. His use of prose is superlative. Marianne Tambour, is a tour de force.

To win a copy please leave a comment below or on our Facebook page

From David Ebsworth's amazon author page:

David Ebsworth - aka - Dave McCall

David Ebsworth is the pen name of writer, Dave McCall, a former negotiator for Britain's Transport & General Workers' Unioin. Dave was born in Liverpool (UK) but has lived for the past thirty years in Wrexham, North Wales, with his wife, Ann. Since their retirement in 2008, the couple have spent about six months of each year in southern Spain. Dave began to write seriously in the following year, 2009. He has recently published his fourth work of historical fiction. The Last Campaign of Marianne Tamboiur: A Novel of Waterloo. His previous books have been about: the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745; the Spanish Civil War in 1938; and the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. Dave's main passions are his family, history, travel, Spanish food, swimming and sailing. He is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Alliance of Independent Authors.

David Ebsworth is author of many books, which can be found on amazon

You can also find him on Facebook

And on his website

Louise Rule is author of Future Confronted, a biographical account of her family's struggle to come to terms with a much loved son's terminal diagnosis and is currently writing her first historical novel, The Touching of Stones set to the background of the Scottish Wars of Independence. 

PAULA'S PEOPLE: DAVID EBSWORTH TALKS ABOUT HIS LATEST NOVEL SET DURING THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO

Welcome again for another round with Dave McCall, who writes as David Ebsworth. Here, David, our Book of the Month winner, would like to talk to you about the background of his latest novel, The Last Campaign of Marianne Tambour.


The Battle of Waterloo, its 200th Anniversary, and a new angle on the story--

The British Cavalry at Waterloo

They say that on the day after the battle, you couldn’t find a pair of pliers for love nor money. Not for fifty miles around.

The new fashion - in London, Paris, Berlin and St. Petersburg – was for dentures fitted with real teeth. And there, on those few square miles of Belgian soil, lay no less than 50,000 potential donors, most of them dead, the rest so close to it that it didn’t much matter.

Carved ivory base with human teeth, 

And it wasn’t just the nature of dentistry that changed in June 1815.

The battles fought in Belgium over those few brief days brought an end to 22 years of almost continuous fighting between the European powers in what had been, effectively, the first “world war” – and historians estimate that as many as 7,000,000 military and civilian casualties occurred between 1804 and 1815 alone. Until 1917, this was known as “The Great War.”

Those battles also brought an end to that military rivalry between Britain and France which had flared so violently and plagued each of the six centuries since the Anglo-French War of 1202-14.

From now on, France would be our ally in all subsequent conflicts – the beginning of a new and more modern Europe in which Germany and Italy would be born, and the seeds of social democratic government would slowly begin to replace the despotism of the old royal houses. It’s a process that’s still evolving, of course.

But many other things remained entirely unchanged. International banking continues to fund all sides in current conflict, exactly as they did in 1815. The arms industry is still the main beneficiary of warfare, exactly as it was in 1815. And regardless of the original spark, which may ignite the bonfires of war, it has generally been international banking and the arms industry that have fanned the flames and kept the bonfires burning.

So, with this in mind, and the bicentenary of Waterloo coming up, I began to think how I might tell the story from a slightly different perspective.

As usual, I began by looking at the controversies. Was victory at Waterloo (a) won by the brilliance of Wellington and the resolute steadiness of his British infantry; (b) truly threatened by the alleged cowardice of his Dutch and Belgian contingent;  (c) snatched from the jaws of an ignominious British defeat by the timely arrival of Wellington’s dogged Prussian allies; or (d) simply thrown away, against all the odds, by the French. You’ll find whole battalions of eminent historians this year fighting their own battles, for and against each of these viewpoints.

And then there were the legends – none striking me so hard as the tale of Charles Napier (95th Rifles) and the broken body of a beautiful female French cavalry trooper he discovered among the thickest of Bonaparte’s dead. It was this tale that set me on the path of researching the many feisty women who fought in their own right, in their own way, in the French front lines.

By the time I’d finished that research, I knew what I didn’t want to write. Not yet another “boy’s own adventure” story of Waterloo. Not another one-sided account that failed to recognize the battlefield fever and frenzy, the heroism that gripped British, Dutch-Belgian, Prussian and French alike – nor to at least acknowledge that all the protagonists genuinely believed they were “on the right side.” Hindsight, and the pen of the victors, might have shaped the way we’ve been taught about Waterloo over the past 200 years but on the day among the French ranks, it all looked very different indeed!

So I became a bit fixated on some little-known and often forgotten issues.

First, Napoleon faced two very powerful armies, not one – and each of those armies was numerically as strong as his own.

Napoleon Bonaparte

By the time of Waterloo itself, over the previous three days, the French had already fought two major battles and several smaller ones.  The French army and its commanders had slept little over those few days. By the end of the battle, many French divisions, almost a third of Bonaparte’s total force, had still not fired a shot nor been engaged.

For at least half the battle a relatively small number of French soldiers held off wave after wave of Prussians trying to come to Wellington’s rescue – in some of the bloodiest fighting which those taking part had ever seen. And for most of the battle Bonaparte – either by choice or through illness – was not even present on the field.

The Prussians arrive!

The result of all this has been The Last Campaign of Marianne Tambour – a tale of Waterloo told from the viewpoint of two French women participants. But is this Napoleonic chicklit? Definitely not. This is a very traditional action story, and will hopefully appeal to all readers of historical fiction. Somebody said that the novel is perhaps akin to Thomas Keneally’s The Daughters of Mars and if so, that’s a great compliment.

But I’ll leave readers to make up their own minds!

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David Ebsworth has published three previous novels: The Jacobites’ Apprentice, finalist in the Historical Novel Society’s 2014 Indie Award; The Assassin’s Mark, set during the Spanish Civil War; and The Kraals of Ulundi: A Novel of the Zulu War. Each of these books has been the recipient of the coveted B.R.A.G. Medallion for independent authors.

More details of David’s work are available on his website: davidebsworth.com.

The Last Campaign of Marianne Tambour was published on 1st January and is available through all normal outlets.

PAULA'S PEOPLE: INTERVIEW WITH DAVE McCALL WHO WRITES AS DAVID EBSWORTH

Welcome all to Paula's People, my very own spot on The Review Blog where I get to talk to some of the most interesting people. Today I would like to introduce you to the winner of our Book of the Month Award, Dave McCall who writes as David Ebsworth. This month it was my turn to choose the first winner, The Jacobites' Apprentice, and it means that this book has been chosen to win for its high standards of excellence. 

Hello, Dave, I am so thrilled to announce you as my Book of the Month for The Review. When I thought about this award and chose the first slot, I did not even have to think twice about which book I was going to choose. The Jacobites’ Apprentice just popped into my head straight away and I was like YES! That’s the one! So I’m glad to be in this position now to present your book to our readers and to present you as a shining example of why being an indie author works.

Thanks, Paula, and it’s a great privilege to be first up for Book of the Month – and among so many old friends, of course! So thanks for thinking so highly of Jacobites' and also for giving me this chance to talk about it.

The Jacobites’ Apprentice is your first novel and is such a roller coaster ride of an epic tome. How long did it take to research and write?

In truth, I wrote it twice. I spent two years researching and writing the first version, but that was while I was still working full-time – as a union negotiator, you may remember.  I had no real intention of publishing anything then. It was just a hobby, really. Then I retired, but still wanted a new challenge, something that would feel like a work routine. So I went back to the manuscript of Jacobites', realised that the background story was OK, but the writing and plot detail was abysmal. So it went in the bin. Every page. And I started again. It was easier this time, of course, because the basic research was mostly complete. It still took me more than a year to finish the first draft of version two, though. It’s a big book – over 300,000 words. And then there was all the editing and polishing. Another six months. So I suppose I spent two years on the version of Jacobites' that was eventually published early in 2012.

What inspired you to choose this subject and how did your characters develop?

I was working in Salford at the time, and doing lots of meetings in Manchester. I’m from Liverpool really, so it felt a bit like foreign territory. But as I was going from place to place, I started noticing the various blue plaques that linked the city to events in 1745 and the Bonnie Prince Charlie rebellion. It was one of the periods of history that’s always fascinated me, though I think I had a fairly romantic view of the story. It intrigued me, I suppose - that little-known fact that Charles Edward Stuart only enjoyed minority support from Scotland in his bid to reclaim the throne for his exiled family, and was tempted to march south on the promise that England was full of sympathisers who would flock to his banner if given half a chance.

He should have known better! In practice, only Manchester provided any substantial numbers of additional troops – three hundred, in total. Well, I thought, I’d like to read a novel about that. But there wasn’t one. I searched for ages. So there was really only one solution. And the characters simply walked out of the walls wherever I found those blue plaques. Manchester in 1745 was a town divided. Right down the middle. Not by football but by its politics. Those Manchester merchants, clergymen and citizens loyal to the ruling Hanoverian George II – the Whigs, and their mainly Catholic opposite numbers who felt marginalised by the Hanoverians and wanted a return of the exiled Stuarts – the Tories. So I needed three or four fictional characters from each faction who would stand for the real-life personalities of the time.

My favourite characters are definitely Maria-Louise and Titus Redmond. As a couple they work tremendously well together despite their dysfunction. Maria-Louise, for example, is painted by you so vividly, that I could hear her, see her and almost feel her jumping out of the pages. Titus I just adored, and even though he is flawed and not a saintly man, I couldn’t help but have a soft spot in my heart for him. Did you base these characters on anyone in particular or did they develop naturally – or did they turn out a lot different to what you’d had in mind when you started?

Titus was easy. It had occurred to me that, although the main supporters of each side were middle-class merchants, they were up to their necks in intrigue and also some illicit operations – tea smuggling was rife at the time, for example, as a supplement to more honest trading. So they must have been ‘rough diamonds’ for the most part. And I wanted to portray them accordingly. I cheated a bit, however, since I’d recently seen the series Deadwood and knew instantly that I wanted Titus to be a Manchester equivalent of that great Ian McShane character, Al Swearengen. Maria-Louise, on the other hand, wasn’t based on anybody specific. I wrote up a character sheet for her and then just let her loose on the story. That was exciting because, until almost the final chapter, I didn’t know how her story would end.

What are your writing methods? Did you plan the book from start to finish? Or did you have a starting plan which you developed as you went along?

I have to admit that I didn’t do much planning for Jacobites'. As a result (though I suppose I shouldn’t admit this!) the story rambles a bit. But actually I quite liked that. I’m not a great fan of today’s trend that requires all books to be trimmed to their absolute minimum. On that basis, I doubt whether Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy or Victor Hugo would ever have been published. I enjoy putting a bit of effort into my reading. Most of the time, anyway. So I suppose that’s also reflected in the way I write. And then there’s the fact that I like writing historical fiction. That helps because the history must be as accurate as possible. The history therefore sets its own framework through which my invented characters must travel. If their characters are sufficiently developed, they should be able to react to the historical events or background in a way which, basically, writes its own plot.

One of the things you state about yourself is that you write the books that no one else has thought of. Looking at the novels that you have written, I would say that was true. Is this a conscious thing? Can you explain more about this? How do you look for extraordinary subjects and is it a challenge?

In truth, I think I’ve said that I write the books which I wish somebody else had written for me to read, but which don’t yet exist. With Jacobites', it was really just accidental. I’ve already explained how the story came about. But once I had this concept in my head, I found it hard to escape. I normally have an idea of the period I want to work on next – and I enjoy having to research different historical eras for each book. Once I know the period, I start looking for the 'untold tales' that surround it. I normally begin with any local links to the story. Almost always, that triggers some unusual aspect or viewpoint. And, if I search beyond that again, there’s normally a pearl waiting for me.

What other books have you written? Please tell us what they are and a little about them and why you wrote them?

So, for the second book I wanted to write about the Spanish Civil War, partly because of my politics and partly because of those friends, both in Spain and in Britain, who had fought in that awful conflict, the prologue to the Second World War. I wanted to tell the story from a whole new angle and eventually came across the extraordinary story of the battlefield tourism that took place in northern Spain while the war was still raging. So The Assassin’s Mark was born – a Christie-esque political thriller set towards the end of 1938.

For the third, I was drawn by the Zulu War – but thought that it had been done too many times already. And then I realised that every single novel on the subject only dealt with the first few weeks of the war – the territory most famously covered by the two films Zulu Dawn and Zulu. Yet the war lasted for another six months and some of the most intriguing stories simply hadn’t been told in fiction. Ever! Like the strange death of the French Prince Imperial, Louis Napoleon, which now lies at the heart of The Kraals of Ulundi.

My recently published fourth book is The Last Campaign of Marianne Tambour – a novel about the Battle of Waterloo told mostly through the eyes of two incredibly feisty French women whose exploits are based on those of real-life characters who served in the front lines of Bonaparte’s battalions.

Indie publishers work very hard to publicise their books and I know that you for one have been very successful in your endeavours. Do you have any tips for us other authors who are trying to make their way in the world of publishing?

The first big thing, I reckon, is to take almost pedantic care of the editing processes. Several re-writes and plenty of polishing, then work by a good professional editor. Traditionally-published authors seem to get away with any number of typo errors. But for indies, the slightest mistake is picked up as a sign that we’re not really professional. And if we haven’t got that credibility, we’ll never succeed with the publicity and marketing. But once the editing’s sorted, the book is published, and you’ve got a decent author website, all the hard work begins.

At last year’s London Book Fair, some of the world’s best-selling indie authors talked about the key things that had made them successful. Interestingly, they all said more or less the same things. First, that they concentrated on ebook sales more than the frustrating process of trying to get on bookstore shelves; second, that they had only begun to earn real income with their fourth or fifth books; third, that while it was important to have a working knowledge of all the social media formats (Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Goodreads, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc., etc.) it was crucial to concentrate on no more than two of them. So, for me, I like to focus on just Goodreads and Twitter – otherwise, I’d never have enough time to reach books numbers five, six and seven.

In addition, it’s taken as read (isn’t it?) that you’ve got the right cover for your book – since (fairly obviously) an ebook requires a very different cover image than one destined for bookshelves.

Do you think that if a big publishing house offered to take you on that you would ever accept it, or are you happy being independently published?

Oh, heavens, I think that’s really difficult. I am happy being independently published but that’s because I’m resigned to finding most of my new readers online, regardless of whether they’re buying paperbacks or ebooks. But part of me would like to make it onto mainstream bookstore shelves at some point – and I think that’s really difficult without a big publishing house behind you. But that’s just a vanity thing.

What next is for David Ebsworth?

Book number five is set in 6th century Britain. Its working title is The Song-Sayer’s Lament and I’ve dubbed it 'the antidote to King Arthur stories.' It should be published early in 2016.

At the same time, I’m working on a sci-fi novella that’s been floating around in my head for far too long. That too should appear early next year under the title Kunlun: Post-March Millennium and, as the title suggests, it’s set in the year 2936. I’ll be writing that one under a different pen name, however – as Robert M. David.

But that, as they say, is another story.

Thank you, David, for being such a fabulous guest and bringing all those brilliant answers with you!

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Readers: Just so you know, there is still time to get your name in the hat for the giveaway draw of The Jacobites' Apprentice. Just check this link for details.

David's website is davidebsworth.com.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's guest post when David talks about his new novel The Last Campaign of Marrianne Tambour.