The Gun
1933
First Published
3.81
Average Rating
186
Number of Pages
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...
Avg Rating
3.81
Number of Ratings
744
5 STARS
26%
4 STARS
38%
3 STARS
27%
2 STARS
7%
1 STARS
2%
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Author
C.S. Forester
Author · 46 books
Cecil Scott Forester was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith, an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of adventure and military crusades. His most notable works were the 11-book Horatio Hornblower series, about naval warfare during the Napoleonic era, and The African Queen (1935; filmed in 1951 by John Huston). His novels A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours were jointly awarded the 1938 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
