Captain Richard

Two brothers, identical in every outward feature. One a man of unbending loyalty; the other governed by passions he cannot always master. In the high-stakes world of Napoleonic espionage, that difference will cost them everything.

When Louis and Paul Richard are sent to infiltrate a German nationalist network operating against the French empire, Paul's recklessness sets in motion a chain of consequences neither brother can foresee. Among those caught in the wreckage is a young German idealist named Frédéric Staps - a real figure from history, who once stood before Napoleon himself and refused to explain or apologize for what he had tried to do. In Dumas' telling, his story is bound to the Richards' in ways that wind through the years and survive even the catastrophe of the Russian campaign.

Captain Richard is Alexandre Dumas working at close range - a taut, morally serious novel of loyalty, guilt, and the debts that follow a man across a war. From secret gatherings in ruined castles to the long retreat from Moscow, it moves with the pace and discipline of his finest work, toward a reckoning that neither brother has earned the right to escape.

One of Dumas' most overlooked works, restored here to English readers for the first time.