Seventeen‑year‑old Louis Durand is a quiet lycée student from Lyon whose only passions are antique firearms and deep‑dive documentaries about European military history. When a runaway delivery truck sends him to an early grave, he awakens in a candle‑lit Paris bedroom—inside the body of a recently deceased provincial clerk—on 10 November 1799, the morning after Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup d’État of 18 Brumaire.

Gifted with perfect recall of two centuries of technological progress and burdened by the knowledge of France’s eventual defeat in the Wars of Coalition, Louis vows to tip the scales. From rifled muskets and percussion caps to steam‑powered logistics and optical telegraphs, he will drip‑feed “future” inventions to the budding Consulate—while evading inquisitive statesmen, ruthless spies, and the paradoxes of tampering with history itself.

Yet the battlefield is not his only front. Entrusted as an aide to Napoleon’s formidable but kind‑hearted stepdaughter—Hortense de Beauharnais—Louis must navigate salons, intrigues, and a blossoming romance that could change both their destinies. Every innovation he shares may win a battle—but at the cost of accelerating the mechanization of war and darkening the age he longs to protect.

hortense mcduck

I’ll Rewrite the Napoleonic Wars with Ideas from the Industrial Age