The Last Valley (novel)
.jpg)
Cover of first American edition (hardcover)
|
|
| Author | John Barclay Pick |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Edith Allard |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical fiction |
| Publisher | Little, Brown and Company |
|
Publication date
|
1959 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 176 |
The Last Valley (1959), by J. B. Pick, is an historical novel about the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). The story occurs from September 1637 to March 1638, and centers on two men — a mercenary soldier and an intellectual — who are fleeing the destruction and starvation wrought by religious war. In southern Germany, each man stumbles upon a fertile valley untouched by the war. Soldier and intellectual, man of arms and man of mind, must collaborate to preserve the peace and plenty of the last valley from the stress and strain of the religious bigotry that caused thirty years of war in Europe.
In Britain, the novel originally was published as The Fat Valley.James Clavell adapted and directed the novel as The Last Valley (1970), with Michael Caine and Omar Sharif, respectively the mercenary captain and the philosopher.
The story opens with a man named Vogel, starving and exhausted, running from a burnt-out, plague-ridden village. After several days, he stumbles into the Valley. At its center, Vogel discovers a well-maintained, obviously inhabited village but with no people or domesticated animals. He falls asleep in an abandoned home but is awakened by the sound of horses and instinctively flies out of the home, only to be quickly tackled by two soldiers. The two prove to be of a company of mercenaries that arrived in The Valley while Vogel slept. Vogel is dragged to the leader of the group, a man identified as the Captain.
It is the Captain's intention to pillage the Valley, burn the village to the ground, and return the plunder to the Protestant army of Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar for whom they are working. Vogel intuitively senses that the Captain is battle fatigued and hastily thinks-out a plan to save the Valley. Accompanied by a man named Korski, his main rival within the group, the Captain draws Vogel aside from the other mercenaries who have begun to break into the buildings. Vogel convinces the Captain to spare the Valley and guard its existence from other soldiers in order to survive the coming winter. "Live well," he tells him, "while other villages are trampled flat." The Captain quickly surmises the rationality of Vogel's suggestion and, with equal quickness, kills the unsuspecting Korski. He then proceeds to inform the company of the change in plans and arranges the elimination of several other troopers who might object (allies of Korski and those with women back at the army's encampment). Vogel insures his own survival in this arrangement by offering to be a type of buffer between the peasants and the soldiers as he is a member of neither group.
...
Wikipedia