The Note-Books of Captain Coignet

Captain Jean-Roch Coignet was born a month after the American Declaration of Independence, and lived through three French Revolutions, two Republics, one Empire, and four Kingships. He writes truthfully of himself and his times in these fascinating memoirs.

In the pages of his note-book, Coignet relates the ordinary soldier’s views of the great campaigns and battles – Montebello and Marengo in 1800; the campaigns of Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau and Friedland in 1805-7; a brief dash into Spain in 1808, where he helped to pursue Sir John Moore, the campaign of Aspern and Wagram in 1809, the Russian invasion of 1812, with its sequels in Germany and France, and finally the dramatic conclusion at Waterloo.

‘The Note-Books of Captain Coignet stand alone among French military memoirs,’ wrote Sir John Fortescue. ‘His record of service is remarkable, embracing as it does every campaign of Napoleon as First Consul and Emperor … In no other memoirs, perhaps, can be studied so closely the inner life of the Army which for so long was the terror of Europe.’

Jean-Roch Coignet was born on 16 August 1776 at Druyes-les-Belles-Fontaines. He participated in sixteen campaigns and forty-eight battles, but was never wounded. An illiterate peasant, he was selected for the Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, rising to the rank of captain. He began to write his memories after the death of his wife in August 1848. These were initially published in Auxerre between 1851 and 1853 under the title Aux vieux de la vieille. He died on 10 December 1865.