Napoleon's Russian Campaign

by Philippe-Paul de Ségur

Book by Count Phillipe-Paul de Segur

Genres: History, Nonfiction, France, War, Russia, Memoir, 19th Century

306 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1824

About the author

French general and historian Philippe-Paul, comte de Ségur, was the son of Louis Philippe de Ségur.

Reviews

[Eric Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must for disaster junkies, fans of slow breakdown and group degeneration—anyone who can’t get enough of that horrible sorting which leaves some of the shipwrecked with their wits and capacity for teamwork, others with nothing but predacious urges and a callous despair. Also a plum if you like Romanticism. Once the retreat from Moscow begins, every page is a canvas of Delacroix or Géricault: pathetic calamities under exotic skies, in turbulent colors.* (Negligible cannibalism, which is a surprise, but there are cities in flames, emptied jails, starving plundering mobs; and Ségur does infant-clutching dashes across ice floes in the pitch dark better than Mrs. Stowe.) And “Bonaparte”—the British favored his surname, that of a swarthy stage villain if you imagine the Duke of Wellington’s pronunciation—is fascinating, better than all his Byronic copies and duplicates; grandiose in optimism and in fatalism, in paralysis and in combat; here an emperor sighing and sluggish amid his entourage, distracting himself with long dinners and pompous reviews in the courts of the Kremlin—as the first flakes fall—there a reinvigorated chieftain waving his sword and marching in the snow, rallying the Old Guard to fight a way through the blizzard and the Cossacks (though Ney is the hero, the conspicuous individual of the retreat).


Defeat is the graspable handle NYRB Classics has given this abridgement of General Philippe-Paul de Ségur’s Histoire de Napoléon et de la Grande-Armée pendant l’année 1812, published in 1824. In his original two volumes, Ségur interleaved tedious statistics and technical disquisitions in archaic military French with a vivid memoir of Napoleon and the Russian campaign that incensed hardcore Bonapartists. A few years after publication, Ségur fought and was wounded in a duel with another of the emperor’s former aides. I had to work to imagine this book as a scandalous takedown or tell-all. While Ségur did not think Napoleon a faultless demigod, he did see him among the Great Men, with exceptional (if fallible) powers of concentration and self-mastery, a majestic (though volatile) pride, and (usually) decisive timing; the hubristic human genius, in short; the hero fated to fall. And Ségur’s view of the Russian campaign as a clash of higher and lower civilizations is no less mythic, and really quite chauvinist. Russia was still the barbarous domain of superstition and slavery, whatever Napoleon’s political overreach and blunders in the field. Its greedy lords scorched the earth to keep Enlightenment from the priest-ridden, icon-bludgeoned serfs, and its generals resorted to guerilla tactics because cowed by the puissance of the Grande Armée. Ségur even calls the Russians the spectators, not the authors, of the army’s woe.


Ségur’s history/memoir was a major source of War and Peace (and of more obscure works by Chateaubriand and Hugo). It is a salute to Ségur’s dramatic craftsmanship that Tolstoy lifted whole scenes from the Histoire, even as he sought to correct the book’s Great Man bias and disdainful picture of the Russian people at war. It is a ridiculously entertaining narrative. I love that the action is a welter of insane shit, yet the style remains terse, sententious, and the figures classically posed—just the style you'd expect from a remnant of the old military nobility (as Louis XVI's Minister of War Ségur’s grandfather appointed a fifteen-year-old Napoleon to the École Militaire) and a writer whom Baudelaire, after visits among the grayhead Academicians, called a Romantic Tacitus, Xenophon with a glaze of le pathétique. I’m also grateful to Ségur for interesting me in War and Peace. That novel has never been high on my list of Tolstoy priorities, certainly far below Hadji Murad, The Death of Ivan Ilych, and a badly needed return to Anna Karenina; but now in bookstores I heft copies and sample translations, while wishing I had nothing to do but read.


----------
*To choose from literally hundreds of examples…Marshal Ney’s rearguard of the retreat, like the army as a whole, was a core of still-disciplined units marching in formation amidst a desperate horde of unarmed, leaderless stragglers scrambling about in unrecognizable tatters of uniforms. This is what happened when Ney was cut off and attacked:

Our unarmed stragglers, still numbering about three thousand, were terrified by the noise. This herd of men surged madly back and forth and rushed into the ranks of the soldiers, who beat them off. Ney succeeded in keeping them between himself and the enemy, whose fire the useless mass absorbed. Thus the timid served as a protection for the brave. Making a rampart of those poor wretches for his right flank, the marshal moved backward toward the Dnieper, which became a cover for his left.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so engrossing it was hard to put down, and so horrific it was hard to keep reading. Written by one of Napoleon’s generals who participated in the bitter campaign, it describes the horrors of the retreat in a visceral way that no later historian, trying to be impartial and inclusive, could ever do. The fighting to get to Moscow was brutal and bloody, but the retreat was an epic of arctic cold, hunger, misery beyond words, and death at every step. The dissolution of the Grande Armée, the finest fighting force since the Roman legions, is almost beyond belief, and even the author find that words fail to convey the full extent of the disaster.

Entering Russia with 140,000 soldiers and twice that many support personnel, the numbers rapidly declined from battle, and then collapsed during the frozen retreat. The description of the debacle crossing the Berezina River is one of the most ghastly things I have ever read. By the time the pitiful remnant stumbled out of Russia it was no longer an army, and barely even qualified as a mob, just mass of sick, exhausted, defeated men.

De Ségur is a great admirer of Napoleon, but also a coolly dispassionate observer, and clearly saw the flaws of ego and ambition that finally brought disaster upon the conqueror of Europe. Where Napoleon was once noted for his energy and daring, in Russia he was tired and sick, and allowed events to unfold around him rather than taking charge of the action. His generals were often brilliant but failed to coordinate well, leading to unnecessary losses. Only Marshal Ney comes across as unfailingly capable, and his leadership in bringing out the surrounded rear guard at Smolensk is one of the great acts of generalship of the age.

There are plenty of modern books on the Russian campain, benefiting from additional sources and scholarship, but this book is the place to start for an understanding of the people, the fighting, and the suffering. It is a book you will never forget.

[Jeff Clay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This relatively thin (just shy of 300 pages) account of Napoleon's disastrous Russian Campaign is not a grand study of the operational, tactical, and strategic shortcomings that led to the decimation of the Grande Armée. For that there are many other books from von Clauswitz's Russian Campaign of 1812 (he fought in the service of Russians) to a plethora of more modern analyses. Instead, this is a memoir written from the perspective of Napoleon's aide-de-camp. Count Philippe-Paul de Ségur published his account entitled Histoire de Napoléon et de la grande armée pendant l'année 1812 nine years after Napoleon met his Waterloo. Republished a number of times, the definitive English language version was masterfully translated by J. David Townsend in 1958. (I note that the excellent publishers New York Review of Books released an edition some 10 years ago, though my copy is the sturdy, stiff-paper cover Time-Life Books edition of 1965.)

As a regular occupant of Napoleon’s tent and staff meetings, de Ségur was in a unique position to comment on the Emperor’s disposition as the campaign worsened. The picture painted is not always flattering. Here we see Napoleon indecisive, pensive, pacing, brooding, doubting, worried, depressed and in pain. (He had a number of moderately debilitating physical ailments in Russia from nagging colds, urinary tract problems, and insomnia, though de Ségur doesn’t go into much detail about these.) The decisive, bold master commander of Austerlitz is but a shadow of before. This is revealed as much in the battles themselves as it is in de Ségur’s trenchant observations before – or after – the battles. Napoleon is driven by the internal demons of pride and hubris, “Like all men who have been fortunate for a very long time, he expected what he desired.”

Continually outmaneuvered by the elusive Russians (debate ‘rages’ still after some 200 years as to whether there was ever a grand “Scythian Plan” deployed or whether Russian operational prudence in response to Gallic obtuseness was merely at play), Napoleon chases the specter of success from battle to battle: “retreat was of little importance to Napoleon who thought only of victory.” With the Russians exiting Smolensk, Napoleon ignores his generals and plans for the grand battle that doesn’t happen, because he “believed what he most desired.” After Smolensk burns and the Russians have again vanished, de Ségur gives us a despondent Napoleon who chased “the mirage of victory, which lured him on, which he seemed so often on the point of grasping, [yet] had once more eluded him.”

Next up Borodino but before the grand and bloody battle, the weather too turns against the Emperor: “...a fine cold rain began to fall, and a high wind heralded the coming of autumn. This was one more enemy to be reckoned with.” Borodino, Napoleon felt, was finally THE ONE BIG BATTLE that was needed to break the Russians. The French had been chasing and fighting since June 24th. Depending upon the source between 450,000 and 600,000 men had begun the march into Russia. At Borodino Napoleon had no more than 190,000 tired, hungry and now shivering cold men left: “He [Napoleon] felt that the army needed a rest…and there was no rest in store for his troops save in death or victory.” De Ségur finds the Emperor “with his head in hands reflecting on the vanity of glory.” This is not the young Napoleon of old and to some historians his hesitancy and perseveration, though gaining him a tactical victory, cost him the strategic edge, never to be regained.

On to Moscow only to be frustrated there by a first vacant, then torched city, Napoleon exhibits bi-polar behavior with deep depression and wild manic schemes to march on St. Petersburg. His generals are appalled at the latter suggestion, though this no wonder given that they have a “sovereign whose genius outdistanced their imaginations.” The Emperor clearly realizes that his position is becoming untenable, even indefensible, but retreat cannot be an option: ”When one makes a mistake one must stick to it -- that makes it right!” And so, writes de Ségur, “Stubbornness his finest quality elsewhere, becomes his worst defect here.” He stays too long in the ruins of the great city, waiting for peace offerings from the Russian emperor, Alexander I, that never come, “alternately urged forward and held back, he remained with the ashes of his conquest, with little to hope for, yet still wishing.“

The retreat, when it comes, is one long prolonged death agony. De Ségur spares little horrific detail as appalling conditions and marauding, elusive Cossacks wreak havoc on the starving and freezing men of the once Grand Army. The last large battle, of the Berezina River, is described in lurid, livid terms and lives on in modern France as the term "Bérézina" has become synonymous for “disaster.”

Whilst the portrait that de Ségur paints of Napoleon is critical it is ultimately both believable and all-too-human. The former so much the so because of the latter. Some have been critical of this version of Napoleon – de Ségur was challenged to a duel and was wounded by another former soldier of the campaign – but I find it not dissimilar from other accounts I have read of the Emperor post-Wagram.

Napoleon made it further than either Charles XII of Sweden (Battle of Poltava, 1709) or Hitler in ’41-’42, but as it was for those two empires (the Kingdom of Sweden and the German Reich), so it was for the French: the invasion of Russia was the beginning of the end. De Ségur says it best on the last page: “I have erected a melancholy beacon with a lurid beam; and if my weak hand has not been equal to the painful task, I have at least attempted to give this warning, that those who came after us may see the peril and avoid it.” Unfortunately, pride and hubris still ride before circumspection and humility.

[Nick Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best war memoir I've read save those of William Sherman (which ought be required reading for every American male). Perfection.
---
I was given this book by a goodreader last year, and finally got around to it. Thanks so much, Jen!
---
as i get older, i find myself wanting to read books about war pretty much all the time. so it goes! yet another weighty historical tome I've been shamed into reading by mighty eric, who one must assume is hung like reggie freakin' nelson.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting insight into Napoleon's character and decision making process. There were far too many descriptions of detailed military maneuvers however, and the writing in these moments was devoid of energy (the extensive use of exclamation points didn't cover this fact up).

I found myself frustrated with de Segur's obvious restraint regarding the portrait he creates of his hero Napoleon. It is clear that he wishes to excuse Napoleon's dangerous ego and inability to grasp the obvious. Due to the incredible scope of this fiasco of an invasion, de Segur has to provide some explanation, and it is telling as to Napoleon's total lack of humanity that we see even a glimpse of his true nature through one of his great apologists.

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philippe-Paul de Ségur served as Napoleon’s aide-de-camp during the infamous and fantastically disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia by the enterprising Emperor and his Grande Armée, consisting as that behemoth was at outset of more than half a million men. Ségur would publish his firsthand account of the debacle in 1824, over a decade after the events themselves transpired, the Emperor having subsequently endured an unprecedented fall from grace, having in fact been dead for about three years. The original printings of Ségur’s account would rapidly sell out and the book would quickly be translated in to all the languages operative in Europe. Many took exception to some of the facts, deeming certain elements exaggerated. Ségur would even fight (and win) a duel over the veracity of his testimonial. His grandson would introduce an abridged version of the text in the late 19th century, excising some of the drier considerations of transport logistics et cetera, and in 1958 the minister and missionary J. David Townsend would produce an English translation of this shorter version of the text, this translation contained in the New York Review Books edition currently under consideration. Philippe Paul de Ségur came from a wealthy and connected French family left impoverished in the wake of the French Revolution (his father having narrowly avoided arrest), and as a young man he had fledgling literary aspirations on which at first he failed to make good. Finding himself temperamentally disposed to a military career, he quickly rose up the ranks in Napoleon’s forces, finding himself a trusted intimate of the great leader. Ségur was present as Napoleon remade Europe, triumphing in one brazen military campaign after another, seizing territory and placing functionaries in important leadership roles hither and yon. Russia would be the first time the Emperor disastrously overextended himself and would mark the beginning of his legendary downfall. Ségur’s account of this epic folly is written with considerable literary verve, setting out to both make and unmake myth, and the author himself serves as detached commentator, entirely removed from the events as an active agent. This is a chronicle in which the chronicler all but disappears. The reader cannot help but be aware that this bit of history has been shaped and cultivated to serve specific ends. Indeed, those who seek to position the historical narrative often as not have a stake in the matter. While none of the major players are absolved, Ségur strives to capture horrific calamity and make it intelligible. At the end of the book he explicitly states that his reason for doing this is to articulate a lesson for future despotic aspirants. In his introduction to the New York Review Books edition, Mark Danner states the following: “If the narrative skeleton of Ségur’s work is fashioned from facts—of deeds witnessed and words spoken—the flesh of its prose springs from a mixture of facts and greater truths, and some of those latter flowered only with the passage of time.” If Ségur reflects upon the lesson of the Swedish king Charles XII’s perilous foray into Russia, a lesson from which Napoleon failed to himself learn, DEFEAT also looks forward to Hitler’s analogous calamity. Like Napoleon, Hitler would himself conquer much of Europe, finding himself opposed to both England and Russia, and would see Russia as the latest of a series of strategic dominoes, a prelude to direct confrontation with Great Britain. Also like Napoleon, whose disaster he knew all too well but nonetheless failed to avoid repeating, Hitler would face a Russian strategy of strategic retreat and scorched earth. Military leaders have continued to fail to heed the warning, especially when they overvalue the efficacy of shock and awe within the context of asymmetrical warfare (see America’s grievous strategic myopia in Vietnam and the Middle East). Napoleon lost Russia without once suffering a decisive loss on the battlefield. Not only did he lose Russia, he lost the near entirety of his overwhelmingly massive army, an army that could not have helped but win the kind of confrontation to which it had become accustomed. This is of course a story in large part about hubris. Both Napoleon and Hitler failed to heed the warnings of advisors of sound sense because their previous impossible triumphs had conditioned them to believe themselves infallible. They refused to consider defeat an option even as it seemed to indicate its inevitability. This overconfidence presents itself on a number of levels, Ségur for example seeing it at play in the Emperor’s conception of his adversaries, and the fact that “either through vanity or experience, he was not accustomed to imputing to his enemies the cleverness he would have shown in their place.” The Napoleon we are presented with in DEFEAT should have done a number of things differently. He did not adequately appreciate the strategic cunning of his foe, he did not adequately consider the logistics, and he began to vacillate during periods when commitment to a decisive course of action was vital. Napoleon’s problem was not that he was addicted to victory so much as that a steady accretion of victories was a political necessity. “What a frightful succession of perilous conflicts will begin with my first backward step!” There can be no denying that these nervous words from the Emperor would prove prophetic, nor that they express a bottom line that would leave hundreds of thousands of dead strewn upon foreign soil. Napoleon knows the political consequences that will befall him if he is “to retreat before the eyes of Europe,” but in consequently forestalling retreat he only manages to ensure that the disaster will be total. It is common to ascribe to the winter and its weather the key role in the destruction of the Grande Armée. This is only part of the story. The Russians knew that if they were to bide their time they would have the seasons on their side. The combination of strategic retreat and scorched earth meant that the Russians kept the French marching further and further from home (and support) whilst preventing them access to shelter, supplies, or nourishment. The winter facilitated this war of attrition, and when the French finally did begin to retreat they were so exhausted, sick, and demoralized that they were easy prey. The sacrifice of Moscow becomes emblematic. Napoleon becomes obsessed with saving face by taking control of Russia’s famous capital city. The Russians abandon Moscow and burn most of it to the ground. “The grave suspicion took possession of all our minds: had the Muscovites, aware of our carelessness and negligence, conceived the plan of burning with Moscow our soldiers, besotted with wine, fatigue, and sleep? Or, rather, had they dared to believe that they would entangle Napoleon in the catastrophe, that the loss of the man was well worth the loss of their capital? Did they think the result was of sufficient importance to justify the sacrifice of all Moscow; that heaven, perhaps, in exchange for so great a victory, required so great a holocaust; that this colossus deserved an equally giant funeral pyre?” Ségur’s treatment of the bold and dazzling conflagration in the preceding quotation speaks to his literary gifts and the quality of malignant portent inherent in his account. Each devastating blow to the French becomes both a manifestation of fate and a diabolic harbinger. The Russians are in fact practicing a kind of military jujitsu, using the enemy’s strength and girth against him. “So great expeditions are crushed by their own weight. Human limits had been exceeded. Napoleon’s genius, seeking to transcend time, climate, and distance, had as it were got lost in space. Great as his capacities were, he had gone beyond them.” Ségur excels at capturing the horrors of what he witnessed. To whatever extent he may have exaggerated certain events for the purposes of his grim portraiture, there can be no denying that he would have seen an impossible-to-fathom number of dead along with the reversion of much of the army to a condition of desperate savagery (some men resorting to cannibalism, as he dispassionately concedes). He writes of the brutal battle at Borodino, and, perhaps even more disturbingly, of returning to the battlefield and surrounding areas after the retreat from Moscow. Harrowing stuff, written with a methodical and chilly élan. There are tableau in DEFEAT straight out of Dante or Bosch. Some of the worst tragedies are brought about by a general panic and disorder. According to Ségur, the Russian generals Kutuzov, Wittgenstein, and Tchitchakov themselves made mistakes resulting in the situation for the French being less completely disastrous at times than it might otherwise have been, and he attributes this to a timidity instilled in them by the firece legacy and reputation of the great Napoleon. Even many the French soldiers, as death takes them one by one and their condition deteriorates into a reality of the most extreme abjection, continue to revere their leader and very seldom complain. “He still lived in the midst of his army, like hope in the human breast.” This is a disturbing testimony to the cult of personality. Perhaps many men refuse to accept that all is lost until Napoleon finally abandons them for Paris, leaving his decimated forces to the leadership of Murat and Berthier. Napoleon takes their illusions with him. “We drifted along in this empire of death like accursed phantoms.”

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philippe-Paul de Ségur puts humanity back into an event where we get distracted by the sheer number of the dead. I've read histories now where historians estimate the size of The Grande Armée to have been anywhere from 300,000 and 600,000 men on the way to Moscow; survivors of the campaign are estimated between 30,000 to 50,000. That's a lot of zeroes, and a lot of rounding, and a lot of missing stories of human happenings.

Maybe the best possible representation of the quantitative loss was conceived by Charles Joseph Minard in his famous graphic, here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mi...

Ségur, though, made me understand what it was like to be there:

“The road was constantly running through swampy hollows. The wagons would slide down their ice-covered slopes and stick in the deep mud at the bottom. To get out they had to climb the opposite incline, thickly coated with ice on which the horses’ hoofs, with their smooth, worn-out shoes, could find no hold. One after another they slipped back exhausted — horse and drivers on top of each other. Then the famished soldiers fell upon the fallen horses, killed them and cut them in pieces. They roasted the meat over fires made from the wrecked wagons, and devoured it half cooked and bloody.”

An amazing book.

[Don Heiman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a classic. Count de Segur served Emperor Napoleon for 15 years as an aide-de-camp and later he served Napoleon as his quarter master general during the Russian Invasion of 1812. The abridged de Segur memoir was written by his son and became a standard reference on the tragedy of invasion and the burning of Moscow resulting from the Russian strategy for defeating Napoleon's army. I found the writing exceptional and I now better understand the reasons for why Russian General Kutulov's strategy of retreat led to Napoleon's self defeat and ultimate demise. Tolstoy used extensively de Sequr's memoirs when he wrote War and Peace.

[Eric Pecile · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting that this is one of the more complete histories of the Moscow campaign and properly ascribes the defeat to the weather and the burning of Moscow rather than to some sort of French failure as any British based history would allow. Correctly highlights the fact that Napoleon was one of the few if not the only general in history to take Moscow by military arms successfully. Any 19th century aficionado has to read this fantastic primary account.

[Padraic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating insider account of the entire disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. Surprisingly contemporary translation limps at spots, but de Segur comes across as a real person rather than an icy narrator. Most satisfying moment - watching the Little Corporal ride painfully across the Russian steppes with a severe urinary tract infection...

[Ben]

Very good. The Grand Army just entered Moscow...

[Sebastian Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lean and engaging.

Segur's account of Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812 is brisk, colourful and very engaging. I've read numerous books about this fascinating episode in history, and this is amongst the easiest, quickest, and most fun to read.

Apparently Segur's veracity was called into question, and even after Napoleon's downfall his negative portrayal of Bonaparte had serious consequences, leading the author to fight a duel in defence of his honour. Although wounded Segur survived the encounter, as did his adversary, General Gorgaud.

Despite this, because of his gifts for well wrought and colourful anecdotes, Segur is amongst the primary sources most quoted in other works, albeit frequently attended by provisos explaining that he was known to perhaps add a little colour. Whatever the truth of these allegations, I personally found his book amongst the most enjoyable I've read on the 1812 campaign.

One of the many colourful anecdotes that litter this slim volume, and this one not amongst those I'd heard quoted in other works, concerned a Russo-German plan to use a hot air balloon, 'under the direction of a German pyrotechnician' 'to fly over the French army, single out it's leader, and crush him with a rain of fire and steel!' Segur alleges that Rostopchin (governor of Moscow) used this as a cover for producing the incendiary materials intended for 'Moscow herself ... the great infernal machine whose sudden explosion by night would destroy the emperor and his army.'

I believe I've read elsewhere that not all readers are enamoured of Townsend's translation. Thus far it's the only version of Segur I've read, so I can't compare it with any others, but, as memoirs of the campaign go, I personally think it's been very well rendered, in a highly readable contemporary English. Whilst a lot of authors of the Napoleonic era write in a stodgily verbose grandiloquent manner, Townsend's rendering of Segur is lean and engaging.

All in all, this is what some might call a 'galloping good read', and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

[Callsign222 · Rating 5 out of 5]

A real gripfest page-turner with the usual cast of well dressed French officers off to exotic Moscow for glory and honor and then slowly crushed under the unstoppable train wreck that follows. Fascinating, well paced, great imagery... very readable and accessible. Before you read take some time to look at the uniforms of La Grande Armée if not familiar. There are some haunting lines of the folly of long distance imperialism in foreign lands that are as true today as then. Highly recommended war memoir.

[John Teske · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting, and not my cup of tea.

Interesting to note that this novel is found, in bits and pieces, in War and Peace.

And this is a fascinating section of history, that I knew existed, but, reviewing notes available on the internet, I was unaware of the devastating effect it had on the military strength of so much of Europe and Russia.

Overall, in reading the sections introducing the novel, reading the first 50 pages, and looking up relevant history on the internet, I learned a great deal, and for that I gave it two stars.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty solid insider history of Napoleon's Russia campaign (the one that led to both War and Peace and perhaps the most famous early infographic). Hubris and disaster abound.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

My brother Rick gave me this book as a 2023 Christmas present. I just got around to reading it. This was a fascinating account of the 1812 Russian campaign from one of Napoleon's junior aides. I knew a little about this campaign over the years but never knew the extent until I read this book. It helps to know something about the Napoleonic Wars to better appreciate this story. However, it's a good account of the campaign and worth reading for military history enthusiasts.

[Steven Severance · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very mixed book.
Much of it is confusing and repetitive but then sprinkled throughout are clear moving sentences. These in toomake the book worth reading.

Tolstoy used this memoir when he wrote war and peace . It is easier to follw the French invation, battes and defeat through his eyes.

[Rob Markley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting reflection of Napoleon's Russian disaster from a high up official. Some good assessment but light on the essential anecdotal material that would have added interest.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is so brutal. What were they all thinking?! The descriptions are really fantastic though.

[Ken Wahe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author was there...good portraits of murata and ney,halography of napolean but author was at his side throughout...very readable ...Tolstoy had book at his side as he wrote war and peace

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read because the author was a contemporary of the events.

[Ricky Carrigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable and compelling account of Napoleon’s disastrous campaign into Russia.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this as a follow up companion piece to War & Peace. Simple summary : War is Hell. This book doesn't disprove this. And invading Russia is always a bad idea.

[Davy Bennett]

War and Peace will have to do. Donating.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Andrew Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent writing and while de Segur would be naturally defensive of Napoleon, he plainly points to him as where the problems occur.

[Aepe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horrific read

[Augustus Gump · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unexpectedly moving piece of history. As Napoleon's aide-de-camp during the Russian campaign, Segur was present during the battles and the disastrous retreat, as well as the discussions and decision-making that brought on the destruction of the Grande Armee without ever losing a battle to the Russians. We feel Napoleon's uncertainty about whether to advance on Moscow and his consternation at the ruthless and to him (and me) barbarous lengths to which the Russian elite were prepared to go to avoid defeat, sacrificing large sections of their own population and setting fire to their capital, all the while blaming the French and inspiring fear and hatred in their subjects. This misrepresentation of his character and intentions seemed particularly to get under Napoleon's skin. The relative chivalry of the French stands in stark contrast, and one cannot help but admire the skill and daring of their generals in the face of such appalling and constantly worsening odds.
Segur is frequently generous with his praise of the Russians, especially Barclay, for sticking to his tactics. However, it is the heroism of so many of the doomed French which sticks in the mind, as well as the humanity of Napoleon, whom we are accustomed to regard more as an icon of good or evil. He was a much greater, and in many ways better, man than his eventual conquerors.
An interesting side note. The number of Scots involved is surprising. - Barclay was the overall Russian commander, until removed due to xenophobic back biting. It was only after the war that it was recognized that he had in fact saved Russia. On the French side, we find Lauriston and MacDonald. We Scots get everywhere!

[Michael Messinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully told, haunting, and poignant.

An example of the narrative, thoughtful and at times poetic style:

From the Napoleon's Russian Campaign chapter after much horror and suffering:

“Fortunately there were those among us who stood firm against heaven and earth, and continued to protect and comfort the weak
but such were very rare.

On the sixth of December, the day following the departure of the Emperor, the sky became still more terrible. The air was filled with infinitesimal ice crystals; birds fell to the earth frozen stiff. The
atmosphere was absolutely still. It seemed as if everything in nature having movement or life, down to the very wind, had been bound and congealed in a universal death. Now not a word, not a murmur
broke the dismal silence, silence of despair and unshed tears.

We drifted along in this empire of death like accursed phantoms. Only the monotonous beat of our steps, the crunch of the snow, and the feeble groans of the dying broke the vast mournful stillness. Among us was heard neither raging nor cursing, nothing
that would imply a trace of warmth: we had hardly enough strength left to pray. Most of the men fell without a word of complaint, silent either from weakness or resignation; or perhaps because men only complain when they have hopes of moving someone to pity.”

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

A suspenseful retelling of the beginning of the fall of Napoleon. de Segur has a key eye for detail and sets a standard for reportage and subtle forshadowing for which both journalists and screenwritings ought to aspire.

In a mere 289 pages he recounts Napoleon's Russian campaign - its empty victories leading to the destruction of an abandoned Moscow, and the brutal and complete destruction of his army that follows. With spare writing he paints a vivid picture of a man of greatness found suddenly out of his depth - dithering and entirely lacking in the decisiveness upon which which, presumably, he made his military and political fortune. Highly enjoyable reading, even for someone with a mere lay person's knowlege of the Russian campaign, such as myself.

While this is a slim book, it can be a burden to complete, because as the body count of the Grande Armee piles up (and it does indeed pile up), the vivid yet dispassionate description thereof simply weighs you down - one can only take so many thousands of bodies freezing to death in the Russian countryside in one sitting.

de Segur's account finally wraps up with a plea for caution and reflection in the face of history. As we all know, said plea has gone unheeded.