In 1800 Napoleon Bonaparte's grip on the reins of power in Revolutionary France is far from secure. And the French Army stands on the brink of another defeat with thousands of men besieged in the city of Genoa. He needs a great victory to secure his position and he is looking to northern Italy for it. Like Hannibal two thousand years earlier he will cross the Alps with an army to fall upon his enemy. Caught up in this plan is a young cavalry officer, Antoine Chauvelle, returning to his regiment from leave as they march to war. From the struggle across the mountains to the desperate fight for survival in a besieged and pestilential city, events sweep Chauvelle into a plot that could undermine all Bonaparte's grand strategy and will culminate on the bloody battlefield of Marengo.