1812: Napoleon in Moscow

by Paul Britten Austin

At the gates of Moscow, Napoleon's Grand Army prepares to enter in triumphal procession. But what it finds is a city abandoned by its inhabitants – save only the men who emerge to fan the flames as incendiary fuses hidden throughout the empty buildings of Moscow set the city alight. For three days Moscow burned, while looters dodged the fires to plunder and pillage. And so begins 1812: Napoleon in Moscow, Paul Britten Austin's atmospheric second volume in his acclaimed trilogy on Napoleon’s catastrophic invasion of Russia.

After the fires died down the army settled in the ruins of Moscow; for five weeks Napoleon waited at the Kremlin, expecting his 'brother the Tsar' in St Petersburg to capitulate and make peace, while in fact the Russian Army was gathering its strength. At the same time Murat's cavalry, the advance guard, was encamped in dreadful conditions three days' march away at Winkowo, where it was being starved to death. When Napoleon eventually realized the futility of his plans and prepared to leave Moscow, his advance guard was surprised by a Russian attack. The most astounding exodus in modern times ensued.

1812: Napoleon in Moscow follows on from the brilliant 1812: The March on Moscow, which took Napoleon's army across Europe to the great city. Paul Britten Austin brings this next phase of the epic campaign to life with characteristic verve. Drawing on hundreds of eyewitness accounts by French and allied soldiers of Napoleon's army, this brilliant study recreates this disastrous military campaign in all its death and glory.

376 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 3, 2012

About the author

Paul Britten Austin was an English author, translator, broadcaster, administrator, and scholar of Swedish literature. He is known for his translations of and books on the Swedish musician, singer and poet Carl Michael Bellman.

Britten Austin was born in Dawlish, South Devon, England. His parents were the writers Frederick B.A. King and Mildred King. He was educated at Winchester College. In 1951, he married novelist Margareta Bergman, sister of film director Ingmar Bergman; they lived in Stockholm, where he worked for Radio Sweden as head of English-language broadcasting. He directed the Swedish Tourist Office in London between 1957 and 1968, at the same time working on his book on Carl Michael Bellman.

Britten Austin was employed by Swedish Radio's international investment program from 1948 to 1957 and at the Swedish Tourist Association's office in London from 1957 to 1968.

Alongside his career and his other writings, Britten Austin spent 25 years working on his detailed three-volume eyewitness-only account of Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. He explains he is "profoundly skeptical of historians." He felt "the more readable they are, the less historically reliable", so instead he chose "to invent nothing, hardly even a phrase" but instead to "resurrect them - in their own words". Britten Austin takes "160 people of the many thousands who made up the Grande Armée". "I thought, and without any impertinent comments of my own (after all I wasn't there), I might be able to reconstitute, as authentically as ever can be done, six months of vanished time." To achieve this "Naturally I have had to take my thousands of vivid fragments, longer or shorter, snip them and put them together in what I came to think of as a 'marching order', and generally help the reader not to go astray." The result is a uniquely detailed report from the front.