The Battle of the Berezina
The Battle of the Berezina

Author: Alexander Mikaberidze

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2010-08-19

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1848849443

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The full story of Napoleon’s legendary escape from Russia under seemingly impossible odds is recounted in this thrillingly vivid military history. In the winter of 1812, Napoleon's army retreated from Moscow under appalling conditions, hunted by three separate Russian armies. 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. In a gripping narrative that draws on contemporary sources—including letters, diaries and memoirs—Alexander Mikaberidze describes how Napoleon rose from the pit of despair to execute one of the greatest escapes in military history.

Crossing the Berezina
Crossing the Berezina

Author: François-Guy Hourtoulle

Publisher: Histoire & Collections

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9782352500445

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Napoleon had failed to tame the Russian Bear and winter made that dream impossible. The Grande Armee was retreating under constant attack from the Cossacks. The Berezina was the last obstacle that had to be crossed. Discover how this terrible episode was a true victory for French military genius.

Berezina
Berezina

Author: Sylvain Tesson

Publisher: Europa Editions UK

Published: 2019-11-07

Total Pages: 135

ISBN-13: 1787701999

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October 1812, Napoleon enters Moscow. The Russians have set fire to the city, soon it will be reduced to a pile of ash. The Emperor equivocates, decides to turn back. This is the beginning of the retreat from Russia, a page of history that has become legendary for its degree of suffering and horror, but also for the heroic acts that took place. Two hundred years later, Sylvain Tesson, accompanied by four friends (two Russians and two French), decides to follow the route of the retreat. Perched on two Soviet Ural sidecar motorcycles, they will rejoin Paris from Moscow, guided only by the spectres of the two hundred thousand soldiers who died through cold, starvation, and in battle. Twenty five hundred miles travelled in a wild escapade to salute the ghosts of history, across the white plains of Russia.

1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow
1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow

Author: Adam Zamoyski

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Published: 2012-11-29

Total Pages: 677

ISBN-13: 0007381069

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Adam Zamoyski’s bestselling account of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and his catastrophic retreat from Moscow, events that had a profound effect on European history.

Borodino 1812
Borodino 1812

Author: Philip Haythornthwaite

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2012-09-20

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1780968817

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A highly illustrated account of the battle of Borodino, the most crucial action in Napoleon's 1812 campaign in Russia. The battle of Borodino was one of the greatest encounters in European history, and one of the largest and most sanguinary in the Napoleonic Wars. Following the breakdown of relations between Russia and France, Napoleon assembled a vast Grande Armée drawn from the many states within the French sphere of influence. They crossed the river Neimen and entered Russian territory in June 1812 with the aim of inflicting a sharp defeat on the Tsar's forces and bringing the Russians back into line. In a bloody battle of head-on attacks and desperate counter-attacks in the village of Borodino on 7 September 1812, both sides lost about a third of their men, with the Russians forced to withdraw and abandon Moscow to the French. However, the Grande Armée was harassed by Russian troops all the way back and was destroyed by the retreat. The greatest army Napoleon had ever commanded was reduced to a shadow of frozen, starving fugitives. This title covers the events of Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign of 1812 in its entirety, with the set-piece battle of Borodino proving the focal point of the book.

Russian Eyewitness Accounts of the Campaign of 1814
Russian Eyewitness Accounts of the Campaign of 1814

Author: Alexander Mikaberidze

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2013-07-10

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1473828627

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Russia played a decisive role in the Napoleonic wars and the success in the struggle against France allowed Russian leaders to profoundly influence the course of European history. Over the last 200 years, the Napoleonic era has been discussed and analysed in numerous studies, but many fail to fully portray the Russian side of events due to the relative scarcity of Russian sources in English. Only a handful of Russian memoirs have been translated, while dozens remain unknown outside Russia. This book seeks to fill this gap by providing, in English, previously unavailable memoirs of Russian participants. Defeat at Leipzig in 1813 had driven Napoleon back across the borders of France, and in January 1814 the Russians, Austrians, Prussians and their other German allies stood poised to cross the Rhine. But the French Emperor was far from beaten, and the ensuing campaign saw desperate fighting, with the outcome very much in the balance. This book is the first to bring together dozens of letter, diaries and memoirs of Russian participants of the 1814 Campaign. Reading these documents we see both what Russian officers and soldiers experienced during the final months of the three-year-long campaign as well as their joy at defeating Russia’s most dangerous enemy. We follow them not only through the heat of battle but also on delightful tours of Paris which they describe as the pleasure and entertainment capital of the world.

DIARY OF A NAPOLEONIC FOOT SOLDIER
DIARY OF A NAPOLEONIC FOOT SOLDIER

Author: Jakob Walter

Publisher: Doubleday

Published: 2012-05-09

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0307817563

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A grunt’s-eye report from the battlefield in the spirit of The Red Badge of Courage and All Quiet on the Western Front—the only known account by a common soldier of the campaigns of Napoleon’s Grand Army between 1806 and 1813. When eighteen-year-old German stonemason Jakob Walter was conscripted into the Grand Army of Napoleon, he had no idea of the trials that lay ahead. The long, grueling marches in Prussia and Poland sacrificed countless men to Bonaparte’s grand designs. And the disastrous Russian campaign tested human endurance on an epic scale. Demoralized by defeat in a war few supported or understood, deprived of ammunition and leadership, driven past reason by starvation and bitter cold, men often turned on one another, killing fellow soldiers for bread or an able horse. Though there are numerous surviving accounts of the Napoleonic Wars written by officers, Walter’s is the only known memoir by a draftee, and as such is a unique and fascinating document—a compelling chronicle of a young soldier’s loss of innocence as well as an eloquent and moving portrait of the profound effects of war on the men who fight it. Professor Marc Raeff has added an Introduction to the memoirs as well as six letters home from the Russian front, previously unpublished in English, from German conscripts who served concurrently with Walter. The volume is illustrated with engravings and maps, contemporary with the manuscript, from the Russian/Soviet and East European collections of the New York Public Library. Honest, heartfelt, deeply personal yet objective, The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier is more than an informative and absorbing historical document—it is a timeless and unforgettable account of the horrors of war.

Napoleon in Russia
Napoleon in Russia

Author: Alan Warwick Palmer

Publisher: Running PressBook Pub

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 9780786712632

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"Napoleon is a torrent which as yet we are unable to stem,” said Field-Marshal Prince Mikhail Kutuzov in September 1812, and then he predicted, “Moscow will be the sponge that will suck him dry.” Three months earlier, on June 24, 1812, Napoleon had made his fateful crossing of the Niemen River into Lithuania with an army of 500,000 men, which by December would be depleted by war, the weather, starvation, and disease to a mere 10,000. Sucked dry, indeed. The final six months of 1812 made of Napoleon’s boldest imperial dream his most disastrous military campaign, which historian and biographer Alan Palmer recounts here with narrative immediacy, colorful detail, analytic skill, and striking insight. He follows the French forces in their long, dusty haul from Vilna to Vitebsk to Viasma; from the frightful slaughter at Borodino to Moscow’s deserted, burning streets—and then the horrors of the grueling winter retreat. But Palmer also looks beyond the savagery of blizzards and battles to bring to his vast canvas an overall picture of a campaign that tragically cost Napoleon nearly half a million men and shaped the greatest catastrophe of his career. Illustrations and maps are included.

Vilnius 1812
Vilnius 1812

Author: Paul Richardson

Publisher: Trotman, Limited

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13:

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The first published account & groundbreaking record of the extraordinary discovery of a Napoleonic mass grave in Lithuania in 2002, the victims being soldiers from the 1812 campaign. Author Paul Richardson was given full access & information by the authorities, allowing him to document, with original photographs this time capsule of remains & artifacts of the Grande Armee.It begins with a necessary but concise history of the 1812 Campaignand its aftermath and how the many bodies came to be buried in mass graves in and around Vilnius (there is ample evidence that there are more mass graves that are unlikely to be found as they are now probably under new buildings in the city. This is followed by an in-depth explanation of the archaeological excavation of the gravesite, the cataloguing of the bones and number of people buried (and their gender as there were not only males ), artefacts, including buttons and pieces of uniforms and equipment from many of Napoleons regiments, but no side arms as these would not have been thrown into the grave, and the history of the ongoing restoration of these artefacts.