Gun, The

Resumen del libro

Abandoned by the retreating Spanish Army during the Peninsular war, the gun was an eighteen pounder bronze cannon, thirteen feet long, a foot in diameter at the muzzle, and weighing three tons. When a group of Spanish partisans come across it two years later they see in it a chance for victory against the French. But first they must take it a hundred miles across the mountains, with nothing but a handful of donkeys and half-starved oxen to haul it.

First they must gather forces...On its epic journey over the mountains, the ornamented bronze cannon begins to gain almost mystical significance for the ever-swelling force that surrounds it. With the gun going on before them they are no longer a mere band of Spanish irregulars, they are an army. With the might of the gun on their side they can take on the cream of Napoleon's troops, they can march openly across the plains, they can batter great fortresses into subjection...

Biografía del autor

Cecil Louis Troughton Smith (27 August 1899 2 April 1966), known by his pen name Cecil Scott "C. S." Forester, was an English novelist known for writing tales of naval warfare, such as the 10-book Horatio Hornblower series depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic wars. The Hornblower novels A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours were jointly awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1938. His other works include The African Queen (1935; turned into a 1951 film by John Huston) and The Good Shepherd (1955; turned into a 2020 film, Greyhound, adapted by and starring Tom Hanks).