Winter of the Eagle by KM Campbell (ebook)

Winter of the Eagle follows a company of an infantry battalion during the terrible retreat from Moscow in 1812. It brings to life the constant battles of the retreat and the conditions surrounding it - the weather, the ground, the landscape, not to mention the hunger, pain and fear - as well as memorable episodes like the tumult in the market in Smolensk, a wild chase in a troika, and the perilous crossing of the Dnieper river as the ice begins to crack.

The story of Winter of the Eagle is the story of men caught up in the retreat: Sergeant Bernoit, small of stature but massive in authority, veteran of Valmy, Austerlitz and Spain; the officer Larguien whom Bernoit initially distrusts because of his youth and aristocratic mien; the cheerful, wily Corporal Necker; the dour 'Black Giant' MacDonald, the best shot in the regiment and feared by all; and finally Marshal Ney himself, a veritable hero to his soldiers, who commands one rearguard after another until he is literally the last man over the river Niemen and out of Russia.

First published in 1980, and released as an ebook in 2013, Winter of the Eagle is a fine adventure story, compulsively readable, and an impressive historical novel with a real and vigorous sense of period and of war.