The Bloody Ground

Name: The Bloody Ground
Rating: 4.5 (2477 reviews)

by Bernard Cornwell Book 4 in the Starbuck Chronicles series.

First published 1996

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4.5(2,477)

Late summer, 1862. As Robert E. Lee carries the war north into Maryland, Nathaniel Starbuck is placed in command of a punishment battalion made up of men regarded as shirkers, criminals and cowards. The appointment is intended to ruin him, but Starbuck must turn the despised unit into soldiers while surviving enemies within his own army.

The campaign moves through the capture of Harpers Ferry and culminates at Antietam, where Confederate and Union forces fight through fields, woods, a sunken road and the crossings over Antietam Creek. Starbuck’s command is tested amid intelligence failures, personal betrayal and mass casualties. The fourth novel ends the published sequence at the point when the war has become longer, more destructive and morally inescapable.