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Title: St. Bartholomews Eve

Subtitle: A Tale of the Huguenot Wars

Author: George Alfred Henty

Narrator: Jim Hodges

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-11-17

Publisher: Jim Hodges Productions

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

Bring history back to life through Jim Hodges' historically accurate, exciting, and edifying audio recordings.

On August 24, 1572, more than 2,000 French Huguenots - men, women, and children - were massacred for their faith. In St. Bartholomew's Eve, Henty vividly depicts Admiral Coligny's unflinching bravery, Queen Elizabeth's vacillating foreign policy, Catherine de Medici's vindictive scheming, and the queen of Navarre's inner strength as he recounts the adventures of Phillip Fletcher, son of an Englishman and a Frenchwoman, who journeys to France to take part in the Huguenots' struggle for freedom. He and his band of soldiers see much combat, and Phillip's skill as a swordsman and marksman is required innumerable times before he returns as a hero to England.

The Henty Historical Novel Collection, written by George Henty in the 1800s, covers many time periods in history throughout the world. In this collection you will learn history, geography, and vocabulary while also discovering hero characters for your children to emulate.

Members Reviews:

Good historical background

Having read several books on the history of the Huguenots in France from the time of the Reformation until the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and afterwards, I can vouch for the accuracy of the historical narrative found in this book. It does a good job of giving an overview of the events that led to the St. Bartholemew's Day massacre, including the treachery of Catherine de Medici and her ability to control the rather simpleminded and perhaps mentally unbalanced King Charles of France.

G.A. Henty does a pretty good job of weaving the history in with the story of Philip Fletcher, the son of an English father and a French mother, who leaves his native England as a teen to fight with the Huguenots against the French Catholics, and in particular those of the House of Guise. Although accurate in its depiction of the events that happened during this time, as a story of young Philip and his compatriots, it is less compelling. In particular, the characters tend to be unidimensional. (Philip, for example, seemingly can do no wrong and consistently has wisdom far beyond his years when it comes to making decisions that somehow always turn out right.) Moreover, the dialogue, which I suspect is typical of late Victorian novels, is stilted. The characters not only consistently speak in complete sentences but often in rather long discourses. I found this to be somewhat off-putting and created scenarios that were less than fully realistic. Moreover, it is rather slow moving at the start, although the action does pick up about halfway through the book.

Excellent!

Nineteenth century English author George Alfred Henty has taken an extremely complex subject (the French Wars of Religion of the sixteenth century) and has presented it in a clear, entertaining, and historically-accurate manner.

As with all of Henty's works, the author's detailed research and perceptive analysis is evident. Although the story itself is fiction, one will not be misled regarding historical facts (as chronically happens in movies and regularly happens in many works of historical fiction).