About the book: year / For him it was someone else’s war. But no one asked him if he wanted to fight. The war had to be fought on foreign territory with little bloodshed. But it unexpectedly turned into a series of defeats in border battles. Retreating regiments, abandoned carts, warehouses captured by the enemy. Brave but inexperienced recruits who received rifles without ammunition and without training were thrown into the meat grinder of battles. Generals accustomed to fighting with dashing cavalry attacks. Manstein's flanking movements and the heroic defense of Moscow. This is not 41 years old. This is 70 years earlier. This is the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, which caught our compatriot, born many decades later and remembering little about that forgotten war. Save France? Emperor? Take the story in a different direction? First you have to survive the brutal battles of the first war of the industrial era..