An Infamous Army, first published in 1937, concerns the 100 Days from Napoleon’s escape from Elba to the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815.

Our hero, Colonel Charles Audley, is one of Wellington’s ADCs, which gives us an in to the Great Man and his plans, both on and off the battle-field; our heroine, flighty widow Lady Barbara Childe. The action, naturally, occurs in and around Brussels, with a good chunk of the second half of the book devoted to the battle itself.

Of course, since most people associate Heyer with her Regency romances, the focus is more likely to be on Col. Audley and Lady Barbara, who meet in Brussels during the heady days of getting as much fun in as possible before the Monster might reconquer France, from picnics to military reviews to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. After all, with Wellington in charge, who need fear Napoleon? Wellington has never lost a battle, you know.

I think it extremely unfair to toss this book under the Regency Romance tag of so many of her books. Yes, it takes place during the Regency (1811-1820), and yes, it hangs upon the basic boy-meets-girl plot, but I would say it’s more military than romantic. The love-affair, for me, tends to take a bit of a back seat to all the war-preparations, and then the actual fighting and dealing with the wounded. That, I think, is the real story. Audley and Barbara are just window-dressing. Or, rather, the basic framework on which is hung the story of the Hundred Days. That, really, is the story that Heyer was writing, having read pretty much everything then written or published on Waterloo, from memoirs of soldiers and visitors to Brussels to Wellington’s Despatches to more recently published histories. But her readers expected romance, so they got Audley and Barbara, with complications provided by Belgian soldier Comte de Lavisse.

Those few chapters on the battle led to it being required reading at Sandhurst Military Academy; most of the words spoken by the Duke of Wellington in the novel were culled from his letters or despatches. In her research for An Infamous Army, Heyer developed an abiding love for the Duke, even going so far as to purchase a letter of his for her research library, and found she couldn’t improve on his own words (although not always chronologically accurate). According to her biographers, she began her research prepared to curse the Duke, but came eventually to greatly admire him.

An early novel of the Regency (this was her second; most were published after World War Two), this is somewhat less light-hearted than the rest, due in no small part to the battle and bloodshed and the very detailed description of said battle.

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