1812: The Great Retreat: The Great Retreat Told by the Survivors

by Paul Britten Austin

1812: The Great Retreat the third and final volume in Austins magisterial trilogy concludes the story of one of history's most disastrous campaigns. The author's previous books brought the Grand Army to the head-on battle at Malo-Jaroslavetz after withdrawing sixty miles from the burnt down capital, and for the first time in his meteoric career Napoleon had to order a retreat. This volume follows the army's withdrawal through 800 miles of devastated countryside, crossing the horrific relics of the Borodino battlefield, fighting its way through the Russian General Kutusov's successive attempts to cut it off, and winning, against overwhelming odds, the three-day battle of the Berezina crossing. First-hand narratives, many published in English for the first time, describe Marshal Ney's astounding achievement in holding together the rear-guard until he himself, musket in hand, was the last man to re-cross the Niemen into Poland.Using the words of the participants themselves, Paul Britten Austin brings unparalleled authenticity and immediacy to his unique account of the closing stages of Napoleon's dramatic and tragic 1812 campaign.

789 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 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.