The Count of Chanteleine: A New Translation (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798305642810)

Brittany, 1793. The Revolution has come to destroy everything the Count holds sacred.

The Reign of Terror sweeps across France, and in Brittany, the Revolutionary government demands total submission: churches closed, priests hunted, the king executed, traditional loyalties extinguished. But the Count of Chanteleine will not bow. A nobleman who has lived in peace with his people, he now becomes a leader of resistance-organizing guerrilla fighters in the forests and moors, protecting priests who celebrate Mass in secret, defending communities against revolutionary brutality.

The conflict is savage and without mercy. Republican forces burn villages and execute rebels. The royalist Chouans-named for the owl-hoot signals they use to communicate-fight from hiding, appearing suddenly to strike at revolutionary columns before vanishing into the countryside. The Count must protect his family, maintain the loyalty of wavering followers, and navigate a world where yesterday's neighbor may be tomorrow's executioner.

As the Terror intensifies and the Republic's armies close in, the Count faces impossible choices: between survival and honor, between protecting his family and defending his faith, between pragmatic compromise and unyielding principle. In a time when neutrality is impossible and every decision carries fatal consequences, he must determine what matters most-and what he is willing to die for.

Jules Verne's early historical novel, written before his science fiction masterpieces, explores courage and conviction in revolutionary France's darkest chapter. Set in the Breton landscape he knew intimately, the work demonstrates his gift for vivid settings and suspenseful plotting while revealing the conservative sympathies that would persist throughout his career.

From the author of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea-a tale of faith, honor, and resistance when civilization tears itself apart.