Russian Campaign Books

“A volume...whose tremendous importance is due to its complete artlessness and candor....When General de Caulaincourt laid down his pen he had completed, whether he knew it or not, a masterpiece.”–New York Times

GMM - I am lucky to have the original printing from 1935 in my collection.

Adam Zamoyski’s account of the 1812 campaign is so brilliant that it is impossible to put the book aside. This is not simply because the story is so dramatic. Zamoyski is such an economical and elegant writer that one could overlook the amount of difficult original material he has read in so many languages. His grasp of both the big picture and of the significant detail reveals a master craftsman at work. His prose matches the extraordinary illustrations of military existence by such contemporary war artists as Albrecht Adam.

A sensation when it was first published in 1821 under the title History of the Expedition to Russia, Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812, this chronicle offers an at once heroic and tragic first-hand narrative of the campaign that in a space of six months claimed 1,000,000 lives and set in motion the chain of events that culminated in the fall of France's First Empire." "In the almost two centuries since French General Philippe de Segur's account appeared in Paris, it has provided historians of the Napoleonic era with an unparalleled eyewitness source for graphically detailed and dramatically related material, as it contains some of the most striking and poignant descriptions of war ever written.

Lieven tells it with all the verve of the enthusiast and the erudition of the fine scholar he is ... The result is a balanced, informed and entirely convincing explanation of how Russia was able to defeat the Napoleonic empire. It is also a perfect marriage of scholarship and engaging narrative that fills a yawning gap in the historiography of the period, while entertaining the reader (Adam Zamoyski, Standpoint )

In the winter of 1812, Napoleon's army retreated from Moscow under appalling conditions, hunted by three separate Russian armies, its chances of survival apparently nil. By late November Napoleon had reached the banks of the River Berezina - the last natural obstacle between his army and the safety of the Polish frontier. But instead of finding the river frozen solid enough to march his men across, an unseasonable thaw had turned the Berezina into an icy torrent. Having already ordered the burning of his bridging equipment, Napoleon's predicament was serious enough: but with the army of Admiral Chichagov holding the opposite bank, and those of Kutusov and Wittgenstein closing fast, it was critical. Only a miracle could save him ...

In a gripping narrative Alexander Mikaberidze describes how Napoleon rose from the pit of despair to the peak of his powers in order to achieve that miracle. Drawing on contemporary sources - letters, diaries, memoirs - he recreates one of the greatest escapes in military history - a story often half-told in general histories of the Russian campaign but never before fully explored