La sombra del águila (The Eagle's Shadow)

During the Russian campaign of 1812, a battalion of former Spanish prisoners recruited to fight for Napoleon’s army defects to side with the Russians. The Emperor believes the battalion’s actions to be heroic and dispatches a cavalry unit to assist them. Using this historical event as the premise for this story, Arturo Pérez-Reverte reveals a caustic and brutal vision of war, patriotism and anonymous acts of heroism —in short, an entertainingly tragic outlook of the human condition.