AT NAPOLEON'S SIDE IN RUSSIA

The Classic Eyewitness Account

by Armand de Caulaincourt

ISBN#978-1-929631-47-6 • Paperback 2009

$ 18.00

“I beat the Russians every time,” said the Emperor, “but that doesn’t get me anywhere.”

Armand de Caulaincourt was one of the highest officials in the French Empire, riding constantly at Napoleon’s side. His memoirs have been hailed by historians as the most accurate and best written eyewitness account of Napoleon’s disastrous attempt to conquer Russia.

The campaign that began in June 1812 brought about the crisis of the Napoleonic tragedy, which met its end in Russia’s winter of ice and snow. Nowhere is that awful event described as clearly as in the memoirs of Armand de Caulaincourt. An aristocrat of the Old Régime who had accepted the French Revolution and was ready to serve the new Emperor, Caulaincourt was made Duke of Vicenza, Master of Horse, he would be twice Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Ambassador to Russia as well as a close political advisor to Napoleon. Caulaincourt was also a trained soldier who had been in battle and readily understood the magnitude of France’s commitment to the Russian campaign. As he rode with Napoleon day after day, Caulaincourt could see the dimensions and the growing horror of defeat and disaster culminating in the rout of the Grand Army’s retreat from the vast expanses of Russia after its triumphant march to a burning and empty Moscow.

“My notes were made everywhere, at my desk and in camp, every day and at all times of day…More than once it occurred to me that this journal, written under the very eyes of the Emperor, might fall into his hands; but that reflection did not check my pen.”
—Caulaincourt

Recent findings in Vilnius, Lithuania, have confirmed the scale of the ruin of the French army in 1812. The tragedy was again in the news as recently as 2002. The New York Times reported on September 14, 2002 on the discovery of mass graves of what had been the Grand Army at a construction site in Vilnius. “When Napoleon gave up his siege of Moscow in October 1812, the army retreated through territory laid waste to deny them sustenance. Napoleon himself left the army on the evening of December 5, leaving instructions to reorganize in Vilnius…. the true number of soldiers buried there may approach 80,000.”

Napoleon’s Grand Army had entered Russia triumphantly on June 18, 1812 with as many as 600,000 men while the remnants that staggered out were merely a few thousand. It was the greatest military disaster in history.

These memoirs are considered the most truthful and significant of the entire Napoleonic period offering a close and accurate portrait of the Emperor. Their literary value has led to comparisons with Tolstoy’s War and Peace and they are the closest insight available into Napoleon as the winds of fortune began turning against his great adventure. The manuscript first discovered in the second half of the nineteenth century, was hidden in the castle of Caulaincourt that burned during the First World War. The iron box that contained the handwritten text, though spotted by water, had miraculously survived the fire and was found several years later in the rubble. The manuscript was published in French in 1933 and translated into English in 1935. It has been out of print in English until this new Enigma edition.

 

Still available in HARDCOVER!!!