Napoleon s bold but ultimate disastrous invasion of Russia--a failed attack that resulted in nearly half a million casualties--is chronicled in vivid, gory, distressing detail in a new edition of the 1824 classic history.

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Summerville, an English bookseller and Napoleon buff, has donea thoroughly fine job of editing one of the classic Napoleonic memoirsinto a volume accessible to modern English-speaking readers. De Segur,a general in Napoleon's army, was an expressive eyewitness to thepartial triumphs and total tragedies. Many of these events are wellknown, so Summerville condenses the political and diplomaticbackground, as well as many of the battle reports, with editorialskill. He demonstrates, too, descriptive (sometimes irreverent) flair:Napoleon in 1812 was like "some ageing rock star embarking on afarewell tour"; General Mikhail Kutusov was "an overweight bon viveur;a one-eyed womanizer." Summerville also offers a chronology, aglossary and extensive annotation. Even the accounts of the highpoints give us new dimensions to a story often rather brusquelysummarized in general histories. We see Napoleon's belief in his"star," and his position in the eyes of his men weakening as hisphysical and mental health decline. We learn that Smolensk had stoutmedieval walls, that the Emperor narrowly escaped being blown up bystored gunpowder in the Kremlin during the burning of Moscow, and thatstarving soldiers sliced flesh out of living horses, who wereapparently too numb with cold to notice, on the last stage of theretreat. And the crossing of the Berezina-on improvised bridges withdiscipline breaking down and the Cossacks hovering around-is somethingno horror novelist would have dared to invent.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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