The Memoirs of Count Grammont — Complete

Written in the dying years of Louis XIV's reign, this mischievous memoir resurrects the wild life of the Chevalier de Grammont, a soldier, gamester, and notorious lover who schemed his way through the most glittering courts in Europe. Hamilton opens his account at the siege of Trino in 1658, where Grammont arrives fresh from a hundred scrapes and immediately makes himself the most entertaining man in the camp, outdrinking the officers and outwitting them at cards while bullets fly. From the muddy trenches of Italian campaigns to the scented salons of Versailles and the libertine court of Charles II in England, Grammont pursues women, accumulates ruinous debts, and escapes consequences through sheer nerve. This is memoir as gossip column, a secret history of the grand monde told with a novelist's eye for the absurd. Hamilton layers anecdote upon anecdote, duels fought over nothing, affairs discovered in closets, fortunes lost on the turn of a card, creating a portrait of an era when survival at court required more cunning than courage. The wit remains razor-sharp three centuries later, and the scandal never ages.