To Moscow with Bony
For Sergeant Henry Turner of the Forth Battalion¸ the Forty Seventh Regiment of Foot¸ 1815 should have seen an end to his war. Napoleon had been exiled to Elba¸ and many of the Allied soldiers had been safely returned to their home countries. As the British Treasury sought to save money¸ by quickly reducing the size of the army¸ all Henry had to look forward to¸ was being cast upon the streets of his native Liverpool¸ or if he was lucky¸ sent off to some far flung outpost of the ever growing British Empire. Neither was going to happen. In Vienna¸ the great powers had gathered to divide up Europe. As they did¸ Napoleon Bonaparte sat on Elba like a spider in his web¸ feeding off the breeze of discontent and greed¸ channeled by spies. Russia wanted all of Poland. Prussia¸ allied with the Russian Czar¸ was willing to give up its share of Poland to get all of Saxony. Austria feared domination by a Russo-Prussian block. England had not fought for a generation to replace a French hegemony in Europe with a Russian one. In the squabbles what should have been a peace conference to end two decades of war with France became a shouting match between two power blocks with Austria-England-France as the other side. With the war clouds once again threatening the fragile peace¸ Bonaparte seized his chance and dispatched a letter to King George of England¸ offering his services as General Bonaparte¸ soldier of fortune. He offered to raise a force to serve under Wellington¸ if perchance¸ England was to go to war with either Prussia or Russia. Soon Henry would find himself fighting along side former enemies against former friends¸ and once more Napoleon would be marching towards Moscow. Only this time¸ Henry and the British army would be marching with him