Unheroic account …

… At Waterloo, Seeking Glory at the Margins - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Inspired less by the Napoleonic Idea than by the emperor himself, Fabrizio escapes his staid, repressive household on Like Como to fight alongside the French in the Hundred Days campaign—Napoleon’s last, launched shortly after his escape from Elba and culminating in his defeat at Waterloo. Impulsive and unschooled in the arts of war, Fabrizio makes a terrible soldier. First taken for a spy by the French and imprisoned, he eventually makes his way to the front, where instead of finding heroism he ends up drunkenly sleeping through much of Waterloo.