History is written by the victors, says a saying.
It therefore leaves little room for the
"last square",
these diehards who, in defiance of everything, have led the fight to the end, in vain.
A battalion was therefore needed - the word quarteron would be too restrictive to describe the twenty-five historians and journalists of talent chosen - to illustrate pages of history, known or not, often tragic, never mediocre.
Our national memory associates the "fine gesture" with the Chouans, the cadets of Saumur, the soldiers of Diên Biên Phu, as if it were the prerogative of the French, Cyrano's brothers in arms.
Yet it is one of the merits of this rich and fascinating book to draw a world history of heroism.
Soldiers of Masada and Thermopylae, Indians of the King of France abandoned by the Treaty of Paris, Spanish Republicans fighting Franco until the 1950s: these are the brave!
And what about the brave YPG (Kurdish soldiers) of the dramatic siege of
Kobane
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