Memoirs of a Cavalier
By the author or Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe's Memoirs of a Cavalier is the story of an English gentleman during one of the most unstable and fascinating periods of English and European history. The Cavalier, thought to be 'no less a figure than one of King William's secretaries of state', tells of his adventures during the Thirty Years War as a soldier fighting in the army of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus in support of the German Protestants. The death of Gustavus Adolphus eventually draws the Cavalier back to his native land, and when England descends into civil war, he goes into battle again, this time for King Charles I against his own parliament. Memoirs of a Cavalier, one of the earliest examples of the English novel, is above all else a gripping adventure story set on the battlefields of Germany and England.