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igenlodeI discovered the existence of this title while researching the activities of Hyde de Neuville after wondering what might have become of a version of the Comte de Brencourt who stayed behind in Paris, and looked for it on Project Gutenberg because Georges Cadoudal, who appears at the start of "The Yellow Poppy", was mentioned as featuring as a character in it (which he does), and because I was intrigued by the existence of a Rafael Sabatini novel of which I'd never heard. To my pleasant surprise, I enjoyed it more than I was expecting. The final twist satisfactorily explains away elements that had been unexplained since the start of the novel and carries emotional weight, while managing to provide some depth to its villains, and for once the book avoids Sabatini's besetting trope of the despicable weak intellectual betraying and then being defeated by the designated Manly Man.
The protagonist, Quentin de Morlaix, is an eighteenth-century professional fencing-master, which provides a credible rationale for why he is consistently able to defeat talented amateurs of the sword but also means that it is not considered honourable for him to accept a challenge to a duel (nonetheless he fights a few over the course of the book). He becomes mixed up in the Royalist resistance to the French Republican regime in the aftermath of the fall of Robespierre, not from political conviction, since he is not himself an exiled aristocrat but has been brought up to earn his own living in England since he was a small child, but because he discovers that he has improbably inherited property in France, which comes along with a set of resentful Royalist cousins whom he strongly suspects of wanting to see him dead. If anything it is the Royalists who pose the most danger to him in the course of the book, when he is simply attempting to gain possession of his property under the tolerance of the Republican authorities; nonetheless he ends up fighting with Cadoudal and his Chouans against the 'Blues', more for reasons of personal allegiance than any burning desire to restore the emigré nobility, many of whom he despises, to their former position.
Quentin becomes a dedicated adherent of the Comte de Puisaye, a flamboyant and questionably trustworthy figure whose insistence on helping him he at first finds suspicious, like the too-eager suggestions of his Morlaix de Chesnières cousins, and later repays with a dogged loyalty despite Puisaye's unpopularity among his fellow exiles. Puisaye is cited as the successor to La Rouërie, who inspires the (fictional) Gilbert with his guerilla organisation in D.K. Broster's "Chantemerle", and it is to the advantage of the book that I am not familiar enough with this period of the fighting to be certain which of the characters is real (and thus has a predetermined fate) and which is not. It turns out that Puisaye was, in fact, a real person, as was the Chevalier de Tinténiac (and the house of Coëtlogon where Quentin tries to obtain money), but not being aware of this I had no idea what to expect, or of who would survive and who was to be trusted! The outcome of Quiberon is all too well known; whether Quentin's relief column of Chouans had any real-life existence I did not know, but against all history I found myself hoping desperately that despite all the internal dissent they would somehow make it through...
Quentin's other personal attachment is to his cousin Germaine, to whom he is attracted despite his feud with the rest of her family, but she is an ardent Royalist who finds his amicable relationship with the Blues highly suspicious and persists in denying that his cousins can actually be out to kill him - quite apart from the fact that she cannot marry him in any case until she reaches her majority! So despite their mutual attraction neither of them is entirely sure of the other's allegiances; again, Germaine's attitude is finally explained by the revelation at the end.
I'm not sure this is all that *good* a Sabatini novel (it's a bit episodic, as Quentin has to conveniently turn up in all the relevant bits of history that the author wants to cover), but it managed both not to be annoying and to make me care about the fate of the characters, with a couple of uncomfortable revelations rather than a straightforward story of Good and Evil.
The protagonist, Quentin de Morlaix, is an eighteenth-century professional fencing-master, which provides a credible rationale for why he is consistently able to defeat talented amateurs of the sword but also means that it is not considered honourable for him to accept a challenge to a duel (nonetheless he fights a few over the course of the book). He becomes mixed up in the Royalist resistance to the French Republican regime in the aftermath of the fall of Robespierre, not from political conviction, since he is not himself an exiled aristocrat but has been brought up to earn his own living in England since he was a small child, but because he discovers that he has improbably inherited property in France, which comes along with a set of resentful Royalist cousins whom he strongly suspects of wanting to see him dead. If anything it is the Royalists who pose the most danger to him in the course of the book, when he is simply attempting to gain possession of his property under the tolerance of the Republican authorities; nonetheless he ends up fighting with Cadoudal and his Chouans against the 'Blues', more for reasons of personal allegiance than any burning desire to restore the emigré nobility, many of whom he despises, to their former position.
Quentin becomes a dedicated adherent of the Comte de Puisaye, a flamboyant and questionably trustworthy figure whose insistence on helping him he at first finds suspicious, like the too-eager suggestions of his Morlaix de Chesnières cousins, and later repays with a dogged loyalty despite Puisaye's unpopularity among his fellow exiles. Puisaye is cited as the successor to La Rouërie, who inspires the (fictional) Gilbert with his guerilla organisation in D.K. Broster's "Chantemerle", and it is to the advantage of the book that I am not familiar enough with this period of the fighting to be certain which of the characters is real (and thus has a predetermined fate) and which is not. It turns out that Puisaye was, in fact, a real person, as was the Chevalier de Tinténiac (and the house of Coëtlogon where Quentin tries to obtain money), but not being aware of this I had no idea what to expect, or of who would survive and who was to be trusted! The outcome of Quiberon is all too well known; whether Quentin's relief column of Chouans had any real-life existence I did not know, but against all history I found myself hoping desperately that despite all the internal dissent they would somehow make it through...
Quentin's other personal attachment is to his cousin Germaine, to whom he is attracted despite his feud with the rest of her family, but she is an ardent Royalist who finds his amicable relationship with the Blues highly suspicious and persists in denying that his cousins can actually be out to kill him - quite apart from the fact that she cannot marry him in any case until she reaches her majority! So despite their mutual attraction neither of them is entirely sure of the other's allegiances; again, Germaine's attitude is finally explained by the revelation at the end.
I'm not sure this is all that *good* a Sabatini novel (it's a bit episodic, as Quentin has to conveniently turn up in all the relevant bits of history that the author wants to cover), but it managed both not to be annoying and to make me care about the fate of the characters, with a couple of uncomfortable revelations rather than a straightforward story of Good and Evil.