1640, and the pall of war hangs over France . . .

The young Chevalier de Roland has scarcely set foot in the city before he crosses swords with a cruel nobleman to defend a young woman's honour. Too late he learns he has stumbled on a conspiracy within the King's own household to seize power by secret alliance with Spain. Accused of treason and forced to flee into hiding, André must fight on alone, staking both his life and his honour in the battle to save France.

Blood and Steel is an epic swashbuckling pageturner that sweeps from the political intrigues of Cardinal Richelieu to the great battlefields of the Thirty Years War.

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Jacques Gilbert
From his interviews with the Abbé Fleuriot, 1669

I know what you’re thinking. Sometimes I wake up sweaty from
nightmares I can’t remember and think the same thing.
But it’s bollocks really, and I know that now. There’s nothing I
could have done to stop it happening, not the boy the way he was.
For André to be safe it was the whole world needed changing, but
you’d have had to be God to do that, and I don’t think even God
could have done much with France just then, back in the summer of
1640 and the middle of a war.
You can’t blame us for not seeing it. We’d left Dax that morning
with the crowds cheering because the Saillie was liberated and we
were finally out of danger. André and I were travelling in triumph to
his grandmother in Paris, with nothing to do when we got there but
be looked after and made to feel important. The sun was shining,
we were free and riding through Picardie with harvest starting all
round us, fields of hops and golden barley and women with their
skirts tucked up singing bawdy songs as they slashed. André was
singing too, that slushy ‘Enfin la Beauté’ de Chouy used to like, and
I knew he was thinking about Anne. Everything felt exciting and
full of hope, and it wasn’t till we got clear of Lucheux I realized
anything was wrong at all.
The landmarks were gone. I nearly missed the turning by Luchuel
because the windmill had disappeared, and couldn’t keep straight for
Milly because I was looking for a spire that wasn’t there. Then we
came to the hamlet of Petit-Grouche, and I understood. I remembered
it as a cluster of farm buildings, a wooden church, and a yard
with a water trough and stone well where children used to play. Now
the trough was dry and clogged with leaves, the well’s rusty chain
hung without a bucket, and the smell that drifted up was brackish
and sour. There was nothing else but a circle of burnt stones where
the church ought to have been and a field of sunken oblong patches
with wooden crosses. The Spaniards had been through.
The war seemed to be everywhere after that. We kept passing
soldiers on the roads, grim marching ranks stamping through lines
of tall poplars, all heading for the border and the siege of Arras.
When we reached Amiens there was a whole army camping in the
fields and we couldn’t even get in the gate. The guards said the King
was there and half the court with him, they were mustering a force
to break the blockade round our starving troops. ‘Not a bed to be
had anywhere,’ they said. ‘Everything’s for Arras.’
I thought that was a bit much actually. I mean André was the Chevalier
de Roland, the man who’d held the Dax Gate and opened the
way to Spanish Flanders, they ought to have been chucking flowers
and stuff, not leaving him to kip in the fields. I started to argue, but
the boy touched my arm, said ‘Stefan’s at Arras,’ and turned away.
I didn’t give a stuff about Stefan, the one good thing I could see
about Arras was him being stuck in it, but I sort of understood all
the same. That night I looked at the campfires and listened to the
men playing ‘En passant par la Lorraine’ on little tin pipes and got my
first glimmering of the truth. We were using what felt like every
man in France to take a single town in Artois, but there were Spanish
and Imperial armies all over Europe, and us like a little tiny island
in the middle. It was only a matter of time before they came again.
We’d fight them. We’d always said we would, and André was old
enough now, just weeks off seventeen. The firelight was catching
the side of his face as he sat watching the soldiers, and I remember
noticing the little dark shadow that meant he needed a shave. He
was ready.
We’d got a little respite while the Comtesse saw to his education
and chose a regiment, but André obviously wanted it right now.
We were getting breakfast next morning when trumpets started
blaring and people came pouring out of the gates to line the road,
so he just grabbed the bag of andouillettes and rushed to join in.
Drums were rumbling in the distance, and beneath them the clatter
of hundreds of hooves.