Chapter Fourteen
At 7 p.m., Fuse and I were in the day room, where I read to him from my history notes.
He wrote in his tablet as I talked.
“How many soldiers left France with Napoleon on his invasion of Russia?” he asked.
“Almost six hundred thousand.” I heard chair legs scraping on the floor and looked up to see Andrew Hobbs pulling his chair closer.
“And only twenty-two thousand returned to France?” Fuse asked.
I looked back at my shorthand notes. “Yes. Many died from the cold and starvation.”
Cadet Fairchild moved his chair over beside Hobbs and opened his tablet.
“The main reason for Napoleon’s defeat in Russia,” I read, “was the bitter winter weather.”
“Was that the end of Napoleon?” Fairchild asked.
“No.” I flipped through my notes. “The battle of Waterloo, in Belgium, is
