“He had trampled through Italy winning victory after victory, he had smashed the Russians on the border of Switzerland and rammed bloody defeat down Austrian throats before Marengo. Marshall André Masséna, Duke of Rivoli and Prince of Essling, was not a pretty soldier, but by God, he knew how to fight, which was why, at fifty-two years old, he had been sent to retrieve the disasters besetting the emporer's armies in Spain and Portugal.”

— Bernard Cornwell

Narrator, describing Marshal André Masséna, p. 265
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Battle (1995)

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British writer 1944

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