MY FAVOURITE BOOKS ABOUT NAPOLEON'S 1812 CAMPAIGN

1812 the year of fire and ice

I have built up my Napoleonic library over many years. Most of the books I bought here in England were highly critical of Napoleon and everything he stood for - no surprises there then. It was only as I read books by American authors in particular that I realized that the same historical events were open to more than one interpretation. Then, as I read and discovered more myself, I saw that Napoleon had been rated one of the greatest geniuses of all time by no less a person than Goethe, who met the French Emperor and received the Legion of Honour from him in person. Heine and Nietszche were other admirers of Napoleon. More recently, a wide perusal of the Net has revealed nuggets of pure joy for the Napoleonic researcher. Abbott's writings were completely new to me when I came across them last year as was the excellent commentaries by Walter Runciman, especially his 1919 volume Drake, Nelson and Napoleon. Runciman who lived from 1847-1937 was likewise brought up to believe in the myth of the Corsican Ogre and yet he came to a completely different assessment of Napoleon after extensive reading in the British archives.

One of the best books about Napoleon and his Grand Army is by John Elting. Swords around a Throne is full of great anecdotes and those little human touches that reveal Napoleon the man. The scholarship of the sadly deceased Elting is superb and there are chapters about every branch of the French Army including information about cantinieres and other vital elements of the non-military participants in glorious pages of history. No fact is too arcane but that Elting has a comment to make about it. There are many references to 1812 scattered throughout the volume and they are all well worth reading.

For the political element of the Franco-Russian struggle and particularly the personal relationship between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander, Curtis Cate's book The War of the Two Emperors is invaluable. Alan Palmer's Russia in War and Peace  is also useful and had excellent illustrations particularly contemporary Russian ones.

My favourite writing of all however, are eye-witness accounts of the horrors of this Russian epic. I have already mentioned the memoirs of Bourgogne and Coignet. One superb trilogy that utilizes  scores of such first-hand witnesses is that by Paul Britten Austin.  Although Austin is no real fan of Napoleon, the sheer effort of putting dozens of different perspectives into one continuous narrative is extremely impressive and I enjoyed reading his volumes considerably.

What first got me interested in the Russian campaign was  reading Anthony Brett-James' 1812 eyewitness accounts (1966). Sadly, this seems to be out of print now but if you can find a second-hand copy it will be well worth the trouble. Similarly, Boris Uxkull's Arms and the Woman gives an excellent Russian view on this campaign. I found my copy by accident in a second-hand book store in Doncaster, England- I had never heard of it before. I enjoyed reading it back in 1987 and more recently in 2005. Amazingly, Amazon have a dozen versions of this volume, one for as little as two dollars.

I cannot finish without mentioning the very recent work of my friend, that excellent French historian Jean-Claude Damamme whose Les Aigles en Hiver (The Eagles in Winter) came out last year, published by Plon. As yet, it is unavailable in English. How I regret that my French is so poor!  Other excellent books by Monsieur Damamme are available. If you want an account of Waterloo that has regard to history and not propaganda - do take a look.

C. John Tarttelin M.A. History

Author of The Real Napoleon - The Untold Story

A Souladream Production

AT THE BEREZINA RIVER - RUSSIA 1812

BATTLE OF BEREZINA by Peter von Hess (1792-1871) Wikipedia

This is the best picture I have come across that shows the chaos at the fateful crossing of the River Berezina during Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. The irony here was that the water should have been frozen solid, particularly as 1812-1813 was the coldest Russian winter in a hundred years, but slightly milder weather had  led to a thaw and the Grand Army was faced instead by a turbulent mass of ice filled water.

Already, the Russians were on the other side and two more Russian armies were closing in from behind. The situation for the French was dire in the extreme. Two-thirds of the army had succumbed to starvation and the cold and the coup de grace from Kutozov's men seemed imminent. As always during moments of extreme pressure and seemingly unassailable odds, Napoleon's intellect shone as sharply as the sparkling snow all around him. In a fantastic ruse he lured the Russians on the far bank south away from the intended crossing point where two bridges were thrown across the river by General Eble and his heroic men. In ice cold water they worked tirelessly, handed drinks by Napoleon himself. As they succumbed to the cold they floated away downstream and others took their place. What bravery, what self-sacrifice!

While Victor's gallant troops fended off the Russian pincer movement to the rear, the remnants of the Guard and the other corps filed silently across the river. Over 10,000 stragglers, not wanting to leave their firesides, were captured by the enemy. During a lull in the fighting, one bitter night, Sergeant Bourgogne, sick and weary, crossed one of the bridges with difficulty. As he wrote in his memoir of these events, he could nor understand why the stragglers did not heed his example - thousands could have saved themselves with one last desperate effort.

At another time, Jean-Roch Coignet found himself at one end of a bridge shepherding people across the river. A few yards away, opposite him at the same end, Davout the Iron Marshall was doing the same thing. Some years before, the Marshal had been instrumental in getting Coignet into Napoleon's elite Guard. Coignet was a titch, 'petiot' or 'a little un' as it is in French. Davout suggested he put two packs of playing cards in his shoes to beat the measure! Coignet did so and became the smallest ever member of the Guard. His bedmate back in France had nicknamed him his dwarf and Coignet, whose pal was the tallest man in the Regiment, could walk beneath  his friend's outstretched arm!

This same man was later discovered by Napoleon himself on guard outside his bedchamber. The Emperor was gobsmacked (I don't know the French equivalent for that). The man was over six feet four with an eighteen inch bearskin on his head and a plume over a foot long stuck on the side of that. He was a veritable giant - well over eight feet tall in his full uniform. One important point here - the French foot was 3/4s of an inch longer than the English one. Hence Napoleon's height of 5'2" French equates to approx. 5 feet 6 inches. Napoleon was not small - he was the average height for his day. Indeed, when he stepped on board the Bellerophon in 1815 Captain Maitland stated he was about 5' 6" English in height.

So impressed was Napoleon with the man's height that he immediately sent him to his superior officer in order to turn him into a drum major so he could strut his stuff in front of a splendid military band. The man was fazed by the Emperor speaking to him in person and in his confusion he left his musket on the floor! When he came back for it, flushed with embarrassment Napoleon told him to leave it and that he would stand guard in his place.

So it was that le Petite Caporal or Le Tondu as the men in the Guard called him ( the 'shorn one' because he always had his hair cut short - his elite Guard had ponytails), stood guard for himself. Many apochryphal stories were told by the men of their Emperor standing guard for a weary soldier fallen asleep at his post - on this occasion he did stand guard for one of them. Just imagine what this did for the morale of the common French soldier. Napoleon was not just their hero - he was one of them.

C. John Tarttelin M.A. History

Author of  The Real Napoleon - the Untold Story

A Souladream Production

THE END OF AN ERA- WATERLOO SUNSET

The Battle of Waterloo began late on the morning of June 18th 1815. The ground had been saturated by torrential rains that followed the eruption of the volcano Tambora in April of that year. The decade 1810-1820 was the coldest of the C19th due to an unprecedented amount of volcanic eruptions in quick succession and there was probably a lot of residual dust in the atmosphere even before Tambora exploded with far greater force than the Krakatoan eruption of 1883.

The Prussian Army was seen to the east in the early afternoon and Napoleon had to send all his reserves to fend them off while he tackled Wellington to his front. The Young Guard enacted prodigies of valour at Placenoit and 7,000 Prussians became casualties before overwhelming their French counterparts. Meanwhile Grouchy, far away with 33,000 vital supporting troops did not heed advice and march to the sound of the guns - an old military maxim. Napoleon had failed to warn him in time. At the Battle of Ligny on the 16th, Napoleon's last victory,  the Prussians had retreated in disorder but they were not routed. The expected help on their right from Wellington had not materialized and Gneisenau was all for heading off back to Prussia tout de suite. There was no sign of Blucher who had been ridden down by French cavalry and was lain trapped beneath his horse. Had the French soldiers captured or killed Blucher there would have been no Waterloo as Wellington would never had stood without the promised aid of a Prussian corps.

Although the remnants of the Young Guard were still fighting at Placenoit late in the evening of the 18th, it was all over in the centre around 8pm after a second Prussian corps had arrived and when elements of the 'Middle' regiments of the  French Imperial Guard were repulsed by the British soldiers who had been given time to regroup by the arrival of their allies. There was no massacre of the Old Guard - the two elite regiments of chasseurs and fusiliers escaped in good order as David Chandler makes clear in his impressive account of Napoleon's campaigns.

In the painting above we see Napoleon at the climactic moment of the battle when he realizes that all is lost. Such was the panic amongst the retreating French soldiers that the Emperor had to abandon his coach - it was captured by the Prussian cavalry who set off in pursuit. The stolid British troops were too exhausted to pursue and most of their cavalry had been destroyed earlier in the battle in repulsing the initial attack of d'Erlon's corps. Too excited to reign in their mounts they plunged headlong into the French lines and many were caught by Pire's lancers who had been observing the approaching Prussians.

C.  John Tarttelin M.A. History 

Author of The Real Napoleon - The Untold Story

A Souladream Production

BUST OF NAPOLEON BY HOUDON

This is one of my favourite images of Napoleon. Here is a man who is a thinker and a sage, as far from the stereotypical image of the mindless conqueror as one can get. Napoleon had a passion for intellectual inquiry that overrode military necessities. On the eve of the Battle of Austerlitz  in December 1805 he discussed literature with his officers. After invading Russia and capturing Lithuania without a shot he asked to see the astronomer Sniadecki - there had been a famous comet in the skies above Europe in 1812. While on board ship on the voyage to Egypt in 1798 he had discussed God and religion with his companions. Such was the mind that fascinated Goethe and almost everyone who ever met Napoleon. Even his enemies were affected by his charm and easy conversation. He treated people the same way whether they were kings or peasants - he was approachable to all as Bourgogne and Coignet repeatedly attest. When British sailors took him to England and later to Saint Helena they were as fascinated by him as anyone. Frederick Maitland's account of his time on the Billy Ruffian or Bellerophon make this abundantly clear. The English Tars loved it when they put a play on for Napoleon and the one-time ruler of most of Europe deigned to listen and watch them for  twenty minutes - repeatedly laughing at their antics, especially the men who were dressed as women. In 1920 H.G. Wells had written that Napoleon was a tyrant who never laughed. But then Wells as a great story-teller - he was certainly no historian. 

BEST BOOKS ABOUT NAPOLEON

 

The Evening of Waterloo by Earnest Croft (1879)

I would start with one of the best memoirs I have ever read - Sergeant Bourgogne's account of the great retreat from Moscow in 1812. Bourgogne's experiences are so tellingly written that you can almost feel the snow between your fingers and the icy wind blasting the back of your neck.

Bourgogne was in the Imperial Guard and along with his best friend Picart, he faced one nightmare after another on the infamous retreat and saw everything from frozen corpses to evidence of cannibalism. But despite everything, his faith in his Emperor never wavered and his own personal bravery was beyond question. If you only ever read one account of the 1812 campaign - make it this one.

Bourgogne's experiences show that the human spirit can surmount every obstacle and even in the depths of despair - lost in the frozen wastes of Russia - he kept faith with himself - and survived.

Borodino 1812 by Peter vonHess (1843)

Another soldier is also worthy of mention. Jean-Roch Coignet was born a peasant and did not even learn to read and write until he was well into his Thirties. He was taught by members of his own regiment. His incredible adventures as a boy almost defy comprehension. As a small child he had a tug of war with a large wolf - a prize sheep being the trophy being torn between them. He was abandoned by a cruel stepmother straight out of Disney central casting and ignored by his wastrel father who sired innumerable bastards in the locality.

Coignet was rescued by a kind horse trader and helped his protector supply the French Army with remounts. Eventually his love of adventure got the better of him and he joined up himself. The rest as they say - is history, written by Coignet himself. He served in Poland in 1807, Austria in 1809, Russia in 1812 and at Waterloo in 1815. This smallest member of Napoleon's Imperial Guard played a big part in many battles and was on very friendly terms with the Emperor himself. He noticed Napoleon as he took great care of the wounded - of all sides. He knew the real Napoleon.

Of particular fascination is Coignet's account of the aftermath of Waterloo. He took part in the rout but discovered that once back in Paris a whole new French Army was regrouping south of the Loire. Marshal Davout refused Napoleon the 117,000 men in reserve as well as the services of new recruits. The French had more men than the victorious but separated and isolated troops under Wellington and Blucher. The Prussian cavalry was actually repulsed before Paris but then traitors like Fouche took charge and denied Napoleon political support. As the former Emperor headed for the coast and a hoped-for exile in America, Coignet and thousands of other French soldiers eager for revenge were held back by Marshal Davout - formerly Napoleon's most loyal subordinate. Waterloo was far from being the sole cause of Napoleon's downfall.

THE WARS AGAINST NAPOLEON - BOOK REVIEW

The Wars Against Napoleon: Debunking the Myth of the Napoleonic Wars
 by Ben Weider and General Michel Franceschi (2008) AMAZON

Napoleonas First Consul by Gros

The greatest threat to peace in Europe in the early nineteenth century was the British Cabinet. With its millions in subsidies it fought a mainly proxy war against France before Napoleon, and France under Napoleon. It was other countries that basically did the dying for British ends. England had been fighting France for decades and, still smarting under the loss of the American colonies, who won their freedom with crucial French backing, the last thing it wanted was for ideas of freedom and equality to spread amongst its own down-trodden people.

The  British population was held in contempt by its autocratic, aristocratic, oligarchic masters. The French Revolution was a match hovering over the keg of liberty and the British Cabinet was determined to put it out.

Napoleon solidified the gains of the Revolution. He was the only one strong enough and pragmatic enough to heal the wounds of French society and under him France became a serious player in the field of international relations once again. The ancient monarchies were terrified that under his leadership, the liberalisation fostered by revolutionary ideas would spread to their own realms. Hence they pocketed the English bribes and fostered a series of coalitions that were to expunge the French leader and all he stood for from the map of Europe.

In their excellent book, Michel Franceschi and Ben Weider raise dozens of points, particularly in regard to the diplomacy of the time, that will be a real eye-opener to British readers. Especially telling are the references to the British press and Opposition in 1815 who said that the war of that year against Napoleon was totally unjustified. And Marie-Louise's letter to her father, expressing her anguish that he could be contemplating war against his own son-in-law is very revealing - especially as she says the English were probably behind it.

One reviewer has stated sneeringly that the authors blame the loss at Waterloo on a bad thunderstorm. They do not say that: they rightly comment that the French were outnumbered. In fact, although Wellington hung on grimly, it was the arrival of 45,000 Prussians, 7,000 of whom died at the hands of the Young Guard at Placenoit, that sealed the Emperor's fate. Not many of those Prussians went to Eton by the way.

As a reader of dozens of books on this period, I can honestly say that this is the first one that I have come across that looks at things from Napoleon's perspective. Far from being called The Napoleonic Wars, the period 1799-1815 would be better dubbed The English Mercenary Wars. Five stars!

NAPOLEON - 200 YEARS ON

It will soon be 200 years since Napoleon's infamous retreat from Moscow in the exceptionally cold winter of 1812-1813. It is also nearly 200 years since the Battle of Waterloo. Both of these events are part of our collective European memory, the one being seen as a human disaster and the other a 'triumph' of the Allies against a tyrant otherwise known as the Corsican Ogre.

Let us take a look at these events in the round and not just through the splenetic eyes of the English Establishment and their sirens such as Sir Walter Scott who have created two centuries of fishy tales about the man who set the alarm bells ringing for those devotees of Privilege.

In 1819, when Napoleon was languishing on the rock of Saint Helena with only two more years to live, mounted English militia charged into a peaceful crowd at Saint Peter's Field in Manchester and killed at least eleven English subjects in cold blood and wounded dozens more. This was obviously nothing to do with 'Boney' and everything to do with the rich elite stopping at nothing to maintain their brutal grip on power. No longer could the fallen Emperor be used as an excuse to shed blood or as a 'reason' to foment European mayhem with lavish bribes from the Bank of England - as in 1805 when British gold forced Napoleon into conflict with Austria and Russia.

Mounted militia charged their disenfranchised fellow citizens with relish as was often the case in a Britain that was ruled by a privileged elite with only 2% of the population having any sort of vote. Castlereagh said in Parliament that the action had been necessary to prevent 'revolution'. Anybody who wasn't rich and privileged was, by definition, a revolutionary. It was the same in Scotland where only 4,000 people could vote out of a population of 2,000,000. Was this the 'justice' that the Jack Tars fought for at Trafalgar and the footsloggers at Waterloo?

When Castlereagh died the English crowd cheered at his funeral - not because he was popular but because most people hated his guts. He slit his own throat but many would have cheerfully done it for him - especially Canning with whom he had fought a duel. Canning was the upright English gent who sent the British fleet to bombard Copenhagen in 1807 on the mere suspicion that the Danish monarch (who actually hated Napoleon like all 'divine right' Kings), was thinking of giving his fleet to the French. In an early display of 'Shock and Awe' the fleet- sans Nelson who had died two years earlier at Trafalgar - set the Danish capital on fire and killed scores of Danes whose only crime was to be neutral in the European war paid for by the City of London. The British then took the whole Danish fleet as prizes as if the vessels were like foxes taken during the day's hunt. It was looked upon as sport. Wellington, then still a virtual unknown, had a great victory over the clog-wearing Danish militia. It was a disgraceful flouting of international law and an act of piracy that should haunt the consciences of our nation. But how many British people even know about this shameful episode?

The coldest decade in the Nineteenth Century occurred between the years 1810 t0 1820. Numerous volcanic eruptions seeded the atmosphere with particulates and sulphur dioxide lowering the temperature on a global scale. As a result the poor and unemployed suffered even more than usual. No wonder there was unrest, for famine followed in the wake of these natural disasters.

The Tambora eruption of April 1815 not only led to the monsoon-like rains that delayed the Battle of Waterloo until 11-30am on the morning of June 18th and, as a consequence, gave the Prussians under Blucher time to arrive on Napoleon's right wing when most of his forces were already engaged with Wellington on Mont Saint-Jean, but Tambora also led to the 'year without a summer'. The year 1816 was also known as 'eighteen hundred and froze to death'. In New England on the Eastern seaboard of America there were frosts during the height of 'summer' and the cold, damp, drear, dreck, dismal conditions were inspiration for Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein.

But the most monstrous lie of the time is the oft-quoted saw that Napoleon caused all the wars of the period. They were, it is said, all the result of his ambition, and the desire for war he somehow imbibed at his mother's breast. Yet, in early 1793, before Napoleon had even been heard of (his part in kicking the British fleet out of Toulon came later that year), William Pitt the Younger declared that Britain was in a war of annihilation with France. Of course, this had nothing to do with British ambition or British predilection for war - Britain was naturally in the right simply by being 'British'.

And what was the British navy doing in French waters anyway? The French people had executed their King and wanted something else in his place. They got the Terror, the Brunswick Manifesto - they got anarchy - and finally, they got Napoleon who did his best to stop Frenchmen killing each other. Napoleon even made peace with those gentle Establishment lambs from across the Channel - until Whitehall renewed war after the Peace of Amiens by impounding all the French vessels currently in British ports and only then 'declaring war' against Napoleon. This is otherwise known as British fair play.

Napoleon's adversaries at Waterloo were Wellington with an Army in which 60% of his soldiers spoke German as their mother tongue - there were less than 24,000 English troops; and the Prussians who also spoke German and who lost 7,000 soldiers to the British 8,000. It was a joint effort against the French Emperor by two leaders who only had French as a common language themselves! In the end Napoleon was defeated by sheer weight of numbers. He mistakenly allowed Ney to do most of the fighting at Waterloo despite his poor showing at Quatre Bras, and was far from top form himself. But he did not suffer from piles as Bernard Cornwell has written. That is yet another pathetic attempt to ridicule Napoleon by writers who write piles of tosh themselves. Sharpe is a good yarn but it is not the stuff from which the tapestry of history should be written.

Jean-Roch Coignet was by Napoleon's side during those eventful days. Anyone who really wants to know what happened to the French just before and during the Battle of Waterloo ought to read his memoirs. When the victorious British soldiers went home they swelled the ranks of the unemployed for the last thing the Establishment wanted was a standing Army that might be used against them. Many of the heroes who withstood the magnificent but futile French cavalry charges on June 18th, languished in poverty. Furthermore, no English officer was allowed to progress beyond the rank of major if he was a Roman Catholic. At least in Napoleon's Army a man was allowed to rise to the limits of his own innate talent and ability. In England, ability amongst the poor and working classes was feared by the elite, not utilized.

In a few weeks it will be 2010 - two hundred years since Napoleon was at the apogee of his power and influence. In 1811 Tsar Alexander of Russia prepared for war against France only to find that the usual culprits (Austria and Prussia) were in no fit state to renew hostilities. In 1812, in a real error of judgment, Napoleon decided to take Alexander on. He hoped for a quick campaign, a one-off battle that would bring Alexander back into the alliance he had had with Napoleon since Tilsit in 1807. Napoleon had no intention of 'occupying' Russia.

The skies above the Europe of 1812 were full of sulphur dioxide. Constable and Turner were painting livid rich works, enthralled by Nature's majesty evidenced with every dawn and sunset - red skies, ever redder. Volcanoes in the Azores and elsewhere, were filling the atmosphere with dust. It was also a time of low sunspot activity which meant even colder weather. And if that wasn't enough, it was the time of a quick El Nino-La Nina turnover which always unsettles the climate. Volcanic activity, the cooler sun, and the turbulent oceans were producing a concaternation of events of almost unprecedented rarity - all of which pointed to an extremely cold winter. As the Grand Army crossed the River Niemen into Russia on June 24th 1812 it was already doomed.

NOTE

For more of my articles about Napoleon please see the INS website at napoleonicsociety.com or go to Scribd.com and look under SOULADREAM.