The One Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis

The One Hundred Thousand Children of Saint Louis is the sixth novel in the second series of the National Episodes by Benito Pérez Galdós.
In the previous novel July 7 we had seen how Salvador Monsalud, one of the protagonists of this second series of the National Episodes, left home, after endless doubts, with an unknown woman, who we assumed was the wife of a Marquis and his former lover. Well, in The Hundred Thousand Children of San Luis, we learn that the woman with whom he had finally fled was Genara de Barahona, his former girlfriend, married to the guerrilla Don Carlos, and later separated. It will be precisely this Genara who undertakes the narrative that, in this novel, takes the form of memoirs. Romantic heroine, of extreme passions that constantly oscillate between love and hate. The year is 1823. Genara will accompany the French troops called “the hundred thousand sons of Saint Louis”, from Paris to Cádiz, always in search of her lover. But fate is very cruel and, for one reason or another, all the planned appointments and encounters will fail. Meanwhile, the last liberal stronghold, Cádiz, ends up falling into the hands of the French army and the absolutist forces of Fernando VII. It is the end of the Liberal Triennium.

Reference edition: Madrid, Imprenta de José María Pérez, 1877.