The Russian Campaign: The Beginning of the End of Napoleon’s Power

Thomas Hackworth
HIS3930: Junior Seminar
April 15, 2020
 Napoleon believed that his government in France was legitimized through his victories in

war and his defeat in Russia in 1812 was a severe blow to him. When Napoleon and the Grand

Army crossed the Neman River at Kovno on June 24, 1812, it is estimated that there were over

500,000 soldiers in its ranks.1 When the Grand Army escaped Russia by crossing into Prussia on

December 14, 1812, an estimated 21,000 soldiers crossed of the Neman River.2 While the

Russian army retreated and ultimately surrendered Moscow, when Napoleon decided to leave

Moscow and Russia and return to France, the Russian army constantly harassed the retreating

French. The French were in such disarray that when the general population began to harass the

French that on December 3, "three Russian peasants threw the whole transport section into a

panic."3 The defeat of Napoleon during his Russian campaign in 1812 was not only a military

victory for the Russian Army but a national victory for the Russian people. His defeat also

signaled the beginning of the end for Napoleon’s plans of a Europe controlled by France and the

ultimate defeat of England.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born August 15, 1769, on the French island of Corsica. His

parents were minor Italian nobility of Tuscan origin4 and Napoleon boasted that “I am of the race

that founds empires.”5 This belief in his heritage spurred him on, encouraging him to take

advantage of opportunities when they arose. Napoleon entered military school in 1779 at the age

1
M. de Fezensac, The Russian Campaign: 1812, trans. Lee B Kennett (Athens GA: University of Georgia
Press, 1970), 128.

2
Count Philippe Paul de Ségur, Napoleon's Russian campaign, trans. J. David Townsend (Cambridge MA:
Riverside Press, 1958), 291.

3
Marquis de Caulaincourt, With Napoleon in Russia; the memoirs of General de Caulaincourt, Duke of
Vicenza, ed. Jean Hanoteau (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1935), 260.
4
M. Fauvelet de Biurrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, vol. 1, trans. John S. Memes (Edinburgh,
Scotland: Constable & Company, 1830), 34.

1
of 9 years old and he graduated in September 1785, as a second lieutenant assigned to a regiment

of artillery.6 His knowledge of math suited his new assignment since an artillery position

required more technical skills than other army positions. Napoleon continued to excel, and made

a name for himself as an army officer who could complete any task assigned to him. On the

evening of December 16, 1793, Napoleon was part of a raid against the British at Toulon, on the

French Mediterranean coast. General Jean-Pierre du Teil, Napoleon’s commanding officer,

commented later that “I have not words in which to describe the merit of Bonaparte: much

science, as much intelligence and too much bravery.”7 Napoleon served in the French Army

during the French Revolution and quickly rose through the ranks to become a general at the age

of 24 in 1794.8 Early in his military career he showed his belief in the nobility and honor of war.

In 1796, during the Italian campaign, he wrote the leader of the Austrian army requesting, not

demanding, a peaceful surrender, “It is, I believe, in the spirit of war and the interest of both

armies to come to an arrangement.”9 By 1806, however, he modified his stance, and decided that

sometimes honor in war could be ignored, that “we have been forced for the good of our peoples

and our allies to employ the same weapons against the common enemy as he employed against

us.”10 Napoleon learned and changed his tactics as needed, usually to his advantage.

5
Patrice Gueniffey, Bonaparte, trans. Steven Rendall (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2015),
22.
6
M. Fauvelet de Biurrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, vol. 1, 47.
7
Paul Johnson, Napoleon (New York: Penguin, 2002), 20.

8
R.S. Alexander, Napoleon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 15.

9
Napoleon, Napoleon on War, ed. Bruno Colson, trans. Gregory Elliot (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2015), 18.
10
Napoleon, Napoleon on War, 19.

2
 Napoleon always looked at the big picture and took advantage of what he observed. In

1797, as Napoleon rose through the ranks of the French Army, he commented that "I see only

one thing, namely the enemy's main body. I try to crush it, confident that secondary matters will

then settle themselves."11 As early as August 1797, Napoleon realized that the struggle for

government control between the supporters for a new monarchy and the supporters of the French

Republic was about to erupt. The royalists wanted him arrested and he disliked the Directory,

but he was willing to use the republicans if it was to his benefit.12 When the Council of Ancients

approached Napoleon in November 1799, they hoped that he become the leader of the military,

as they attempted to form a new republic. Napoleon stalled them but when he finally agreed they

were surprised that he also had ideas concerning the rest of the government. Abbe Sieyes,

discussing the options available to the Council, told several of the members that “Gentlemen,

you have a master, Napoleon will do all, and can do all. In our deplorable situation, it is better to

submit, than to excite dissensions which would draw down certain ruin.”13

Napoleon was unhappy that the English had not complied with the Peace of Amiens,

signed March 27, 1802, by not giving up Malta, Egypt, or the Cape of Good Hope.14 He

attempted to pick a fight with England and George III responded that England was ready for war.

On March 13, 1803, while at a reception with the ambassadors of Russia and Spain, Napoleon

exclaimed “England wants war, but if they’re the first to draw the sword, I’ll be the last to

11
Jonathon Riley, "How Good Was Napoleon?" History Today 57, no. 11 (July 2007): 37.
12
M. Fauvelet de Biurrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, vol. 1, 66-68.
13
Napoleon, Memoirs, ed. Somerset De Chair (London: Soho Book Company, 1986), 382.
14
M. Fauvelet de Biurrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, vol. 2, trans. John S. Memes (Edinburgh,
Scotland: Constable & Company, 1831), 271-272.

3
sheathe it. They don’t respect treaties.”15 After being crowned Emperor on May 18, 1804, he

began his conquest of Europe, with the aim of destroying England. Napoleon believed that he

simply continued an ongoing war with England since England had not fully complied with

previous treaties. The English navy controlled the seas and Napoleon, referring to England’s

policy of capturing ships at sea, that, England “without danger, proclaim her subjugation of the

seas…That the flag does not cover the merchandize…a neutral ship has no right to carry on

trade.”16 In response to the British blockade of French ports in May 1806, Napoleon created the

Continental System on November 21 of that year with the Berlin Decree. The Decree declared

"all commerce and correspondence with the British islands are prohibited" and noted that France

and her allies were "the victims of the injustice and the barbarism of the English maritime

laws."17 The Berlin Decree placed a blockade on trade between the English and the European

Continent, in an attempt to weaken England.

Napoleon saw a unified Europe as a means to defeat England. A unified Europe, under

control of France, would eventually weaken England enough that Napoleon could conquer it.

After the defeat of Prussia and Russia in 1807, Emperor Alexander I told Napoleon during the

signing of the Treaty of Tilsit on July 7, 1807, "I hate the English no less than you do" to which

Napoleon replied "In that case everything can be speedily settled between us and peace is

made."18 As part of the treaty, Russia was to impose a trade embargo against British trade as

15
Frank McLynn, Napoleon: A Biography (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2002), 266.
16
Napoleon, Memoirs, 408.
17
2009. "Berlin decree." Berlin Decree 1. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November
11, 2013).
18
Richard Cavendish, "The Treaty of Tilsit." History Today 57, no. 7 (July 2007): 63.

4
part of Napoleon's plan to destroy the British economy. By 1810, however, Russia had ignored

this portion of the treaty and allowed English ships into her ports.

On June 5, 1811, Napoleon remarked that "I have no intention of going into Russia."19

Yet, in November 1811 he contradicted himself when he remarked to Dominique Dufour de

Pradt, the French ambassador in Warsaw, that "in five years, I shall be master of the world: there

only remains Russia, but I will crush her."20 Napoleon invaded Russia just over six months later,

with the thought that he could force Alexander to comply with the provisions of the 1807 treaty.

As early as March 1810, the Russian Minister of War, Barclay de Tolly, discussed with

Alexander the defenses of Russia's western borders in preparation for an invasion by Napoleon

and the French Grand Army. Barclay fortified the northwestern route, toward St. Petersburg,

about 440 miles, and the southwestern route to Kiev, about 540 miles, because he thought that

"one cannot expect that the enemy would dare to advance in the centre" towards Moscow.21

Napoleon however chose the center route.

Alexander told the French Ambassador in early 1811, that if the French attacked Russia

that "it is possible, even probable, that we shall be defeated, assuming that we fight...We shall

take no risks. We have plenty of room."22 While the Russian army made plans for a possible

invasion by Napoleon, Alexander still hoped to avoid war. Alexander began to feel pressure

from Napoleon and notified the Austrian minister in August 1811, that there would be no

Russian support to defend Vienna against an attack by Napoleon. The Russian strategy, if

19
Marquis de Caulaincourt, 4.
20
Jonathon Riley, 37.
21
Dominic Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace (New
York: Viking, 2009), 125.

22
Marquis de Caulaincourt, 5.

5
Napoleon chose to attack Russia, would be to draw Napoleon in, exhaust his army, and wait for

Napoleon to make a major military mistake.23 Even though Emperor Alexander knew that a

direct battle favored Napoleon, he still encouraged the Russian military to "defend your Faith,

your Country, and your Liberty"24 as part of his Imperial Order on June 25, 1812. Alexander’s

ultimate plan for defending Russia evolved into a scorched earth retreat, which left no supplies

available for the French to use. In early 1812, the Russian Army was outnumbered over two to

one, since Alexander had slightly over 240,000 soldiers available to confront the 500,000 of

Napoleon's Grand Army.25 When Napoleon crossed the Neman River, Alexander selected

Barclay to lead the Russian First Army through a "fighting withdrawal," a series of staged and

coordinated retreats designed to draw Napoleon and the Grand Army deeper into Russian

territory in order to weaken them.26 On July 12th, four weeks after crossing into Russia,

Quartermaster-General Count Philippe-Paul de Segur recorded that during a council of war

Napoleon remarked "How far must we pursue these Russians before they decide to give

battle?"27 Napoleon, "believing that each day would see the enemy turn and offer battle was thus

drawn down the road to Moscow, disregarding the fatigue of his troops."28 In early July there

was hope in Moscow that the British would come to the aid of Russia, as recorded by General

23
Dominic Lieven, "Russia and the Defeat of Napoleon (1812-14)," Kritika: Explorations In Russian And
Eurasian History 7, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 302-303.

24
Alexander Mikaberidze, "1812 First Person," Russian Life 55, no. 5 (September 2012): 29.
25
Dominic Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon 138.

26
Dominic Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon 152.

27
Count Philippe Paul de Ségur, Napoleon's Russian campaign, 17.
28
M. de Fezensac, 28.

6
Volkonskiy, "The British with their navy and the Swedish armies...are already in the Baltic."29

While there was hope in Moscow that the French would be stopped before reaching the city, help

from the British was nothing more than a rumor. While there were British ships in the Baltic

Sea, they were not there to support Russia but were in fact enforcing a blockade of Russian ports.

England was still technically at war with Russia and a peace treaty was not signed until late July

between Russia and England.30

By August 1st, five weeks into the campaign, the Grand Army was near Vitebsk and had

traveled a little over half of the distance to Moscow. Alexander felt that he needed to unify the

Russian population against Napoleon in order for the Russian army to ultimately succeed, and in

a proclamation he stated that "there must be a general uprising against this universal tyrant."31

The people of Russia responded, as noted in an account by Fyodor Glinka on the fall of

Smolensk on August 8th, "These scoundrels prevail only because of their great numbers. Arm all

and everyone...At last - the people's war is at hand."32 Napoleon, frustrated by the lack of

military battles and the recent proclamation, marched onward to Moscow. He remarked at

Vitebsk on August 13th about the Russian retreat, “No, they are not retreating deliberately. If

they have left Lilnius, it is because they could no longer rally there…it is in order to make a link-

up that has been deferred so many times. The moment of battles is approaching.”33 Napoleon,

the noble and honorable warrior, could not reconcile the fact that the Russians were intentionally

29
Alexander Orlov, "Britons in Moscow in 1812," History Today 53, no. 7 (July 2003): 18.
30
Edward Foord, Napoleon’s Russian Campaign of 1812 (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1914), 12.
31
Count Philippe Paul de Ségur, Napoleon's Russian campaign, 25.
32
Alexander Mikaberidze, 30.
33
Napoleon, Napoleon on War, 372.

7
stringing out his army, even though Alexander had said several times in 1811 that the Russians

would not engage in a full battle when they could retreat instead.

Napoleon finally got his battle with the Russian Army on September 7th, at the Battle of

Borodino. As noted by Johan Reinhold von Dreyling, an aide to General Kutuzov, the

Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army, "Our losses were horrendous and several generals and

some twenty-five thousand soldiers, including ten thousand who were killed, honored their duty

to their Fatherland."34 The French losses were even greater, "forty-three generals had been killed

or wounded."35 One estimate of the wounded or killed in this one-day battle was over 28,000

French and 50,000 Russian soldiers.36 Napoleon, however, failed to press his advantage and to

use his army to its fullest extent to capture or crush the Russians, as was his leadership style, and

instead allowed the Russian army to escape and retreat toward Moscow. General de Ségur noted

that Napoleon was ill and fatigued, after not sleeping well the night before and was not engaged

in overlooking the battlefield as he was prone to do, “the action of his genius was in a manner

chained down by his body”.37 The French had broken through the Russian lines and Napoleon’s

generals pushed him to engage part of his elite unit, the Imperial Guard, to bolster the rest of the

army and continue to engage the Russians. Napoleon replied that he would not send more troops

into battle, because “if there should be another battle to-morrow, where is my army?”38

Borodino was less than 80 miles from Moscow and with the Russian retreat from the battlefield

34
Alexander Mikaberidze, 30.
35
Count Philippe Paul de Ségur, Napoleon's Russian campaign, 81.
36
M. de Fezensac, 32.
37
Count Philippe Paul de Ségur, History of the Expedition to Russia (London: Treuttel and Wurtz, 1825),
347.
38
Count Philippe Paul de Ségur, History of the Expedition to Russia, 347.

8
the road to Moscow was now open for Napoleon. After reviewing the battlefield on September

8th, Napoleon remarked that "Peace lies in Moscow."39

Napoleon and the French Grand Army marched into Moscow on the afternoon of

September 14th as the Russian Army retreated further east, just hours before them. Nikolai

Muravyev wrote that the Governor of Moscow had ordered the fire engines removed from the

city and fires lit to destroy stocks of food to prevent them from falling into French hands.40

Russian actress Madam Louse Fusil recorded in her journal that the French soldiers attempted to

fight the fires and helped the people rescue belongings from buildings that were in danger of

burning. Madam Louse Fusil also noted that the sections of the city that did not burn were used

to house the French army. An unnamed German resident of Moscow and fellow Moscow

resident Russian, Andrei Alekseyev, wrote in their journals that the true French soldiers were

courteous and kind to the local people, taking only what they needed in the way of food and

clothing but that the non-French soldiers in the Grand Army left nothing behind, even going so

far as to take the cloth from billiard tables.41 The local population of Moscow did at times fight

against the invaders, dumping the bodies where they would not be found. Moscow resident,

Anna Grigorievna, noted that a local man inquired to another about fishing in his pond in order

to sell the fish to the French soldiers, the response; "No need to ask permission. But the question

is what are you going to catch in your net, Gregor Nikitich? A carp - or a trooper?"42

Napoleon waited over five weeks for Alexander to request peace, but with no response,

Napoleon decided on October 19th that it was time to leave Russia and return to France. As the

39
Marquis de Caulaincourta, 105.
40
Alexander Mikaberidze, 32.
41
Alexander Mikaberidze, 33-35.
42
Alexander Mikaberidze, 35.

9
general population organized itself into partisan groups to attack the weakened Grand Army

during its retreat, the attacks became more numerous and increasingly deadly. Montesquiou de

Fezensac, the commander of the Third Corps of the Grand Army, noted in his personal journal

that "the partisans around Moscow became more audacious. The town of Vereya was surprised

and the garrison massacred.43 One account noted that the women of Russia were involved as

well; a Russian girl was reported to have killed two drunken French soldiers and taken their

weapons to the local partisan group. Another account tells of an elderly woman who invited

French soldiers into her home to drink only to bar the door from the outside and set the house on

fire with the soldiers inside.44 An unnamed Russian soldier noted in his diary that during the

French retreat that the Russian forces "constantly harass the enemy, targeting all roads

connecting Moscow to the provinces...If one counts the losses inflicted by our detachments and

peasants, the enemy daily casualties can be estimated at more than five hundred men per day."45

The soldier added that the French fear the peasants more than the Russian Army because the

peasants have less mercy and that the French only forage for supplies in large groups in order to

combat the peasant attacks. Fezensac commented about the constant attacks by the Russian

army, noting how "the main Russian army was constantly maneuvering on our flanks,

intercepting communications, overwhelming detached bodies of troops, and preventing us from

leaving the road."46 Russian General Konovnitsyn wrote to his wife on November 9th that the

Cossacks almost captured Napoleon and that he still hoped that Napoleon might be captured.47

43
M. de Fezensac, 45.
44
Janet Hartley, "Napoleon in Russia: Saviour or Anti-Christ?" History Today 41, (January 1991): 32.
45
Alexander Mikaberidze, 36.
46
M. de Fezensac, 67.
47
Alexander Mikaberidze, 37.

10
That event may have appeared in French General de Caulaincourt memoirs when he noted that

Napoleon was almost captured on the morning of October 25th as he made rounds of his camp

before dawn, when he surprised a detachment of Cossacks inside the French lines.48

The weather played a major role in the difficulties encountered by the French during their

retreat out of Russia. Charles Minard, a French civil engineer, created a graphic chart in 1869,

which depicted Napoleon's campaign in 1812. He noted that the temperature in Moscow when

the French began their retreat was near thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit and fell slowly but

remained fairly constant until the third week of November; when it rose from near minus fifteen

degrees Fahrenheit and spiked near seven degrees Fahrenheit, and then fell quickly until it hit

minus thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit the first week of December.49 Caulaincourt related that

after being in Moscow for over three weeks that the weather was unusually mild for the first

week of October and that Napoleon often remarked "So this is the terrible Russian winter"50 but

that by early December the temperature "had gone to twenty below" and that the breath "froze on

the lips, and formed small icicles under the nose, on the eyebrows, and round the eyelids."51

Seventeen year old Rafail Zotov of the St. Petersburg militia, attached to the northern Russian

army under control of General Wittgenstein, stated that the weather was severe even by Russian

standards and that the French suffered greatly as the temperature dropped to approximately

minus twenty-two Fahrenheit and the "roads were littered with their corpses."52 Artillery officer

48
Marquis de Caulaincourt, 172-174.
49
Tracey Carr, "Inspired by Statistics?" Teaching Statistics 30, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 41.
50
Marquis de Caulaincourt, 140.
51
Marquis de Caulaincourt, 274.
52
Alexander Mikaberidze, 38.

11
Ilya Radozhitsky added that a cannon wheel became stuck in the snow- covered bones of a

frozen corpse as the Russians chased the French toward Kovno and the Neman River.53

Napoleon travelled with his army and planned on going to Warsaw once he left Russian

territory. However, when he learned of a failed government takeover by Governor Claude

Mallet, General Maximillian Guidal, and General Victor Lahorie, he left his army behind and

travelled directly to Paris. General Rapp was with Napoleon when he received the dispatch

about the failed attempt and he wrote that Napoleon said “Is, then, my power so insecure that it

may be put in peril by a single individual...I must go back to Paris; my presence there is

indispensable to reanimate public opinion.”54 Leaving the army in the hands of his generals,

Napoleon quickly made his way back to Paris to try to salvage his hold on power. The defeat in

Russia however began a series of defections as first Prussia, then Pope Pius VII, and then Austria

left the confederation that Napoleon had put together. Napoleon could see that he would soon be

facing a united Europe, allied against him.

The defeat of Napoleon and the Grand Army in Russia during the campaign of 1812 was

a national victory for the Russian people and the end of Napoleon’s power for a variety of

reasons. The Russian Army relied on a policy of a scorched earth retreat, fighting minor

skirmishes that delayed the French advance and left no supplies for the French to use, and forced

the French to rely more and more on their extending supply lines. The forced marches by the

French, as they tried to catch up to the main Russian Army to allow Napoleon his decisive

military battle, only caused fatigue among the French soldiers and quickly reduced the size of the

53
Alexander Mikaberidze, 39.
54
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, ed. R. W. Phipps, vol. 3 (New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891; Project Gutenberg, 2019), Chapter XXVII,
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3567/3567-h/3567-h.htm#linklink2HCH0095 (accessed April 13, 2020).

12
Grand Army. The Battle of Borodino where Napoleon finally faced the Russian Army reduced

his army by a third, but Napoleon was unwilling to push his advantage in manpower to crush the

enemy. Reflecting on his invasion of Russia, Napoleon told his English captors in 1817 that “I

was wrong in staying at the Kremlin for thirty-five days, I should have stayed for two weeks

only. As soon as I entered Moscow I ought to have annihilated the remnants of Kutuzov’s

forces…I ought to have proposed to the Russians that I should withdraw without destroying

anything.”55 The mild fall weather and the refusal of Alexander to discuss peace confused

Napoleon so he delayed leaving Moscow until the middle of October, and it was early December

before he and his army crossed the Prussian border and finally escaped the Russian army. The

combination of the Russian Army hounding the Grand Army on its retreat, the violent peasant

uprising against the French as they passed through the countryside, and a late but harsh Russian

winter all contributed to the destruction of the French Grand Army and Napoleon's dream of a

united Europe against England.

55
Napoleon, The Mind of Napoleon, ed. and trans. J. Christopher Herold (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1955), 278.

13
 Bibliography

Alexander, R.S. Napoleon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

"Berlin decree." Berlin Decree (January 21, 2009): 1. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost
(accessed November 11, 2013).

Biurrienne, M. Fauvelet de. Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Vol. 1. Translated by John S.

Memes. Edinburgh, Scotland: Constable & Company, 1830.

Biurrienne, M. Fauvelet de. Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Vol. 2. Translated by John S.

Memes. Edinburgh, Scotland: Constable & Company, 1831.

Bourrienne, Louis Antoine Fauvelet de. Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 3. Edited by R.
W. Phipps. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891; Project Gutenberg, 2019.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3567/3567-h/3567-h.htm#linklink2HCH0095 (accessed
April 13, 2020).

Carr, Tracey. "Inspired by Statistics?" Teaching Statistics 30, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 39-43.

Caulaincourt, Armand Augustin Louis, marquis de, duc de Vincence, et al. With Napoleon in
Russia; the memoirs of General de Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza. Edited by Jean
Hanoteau. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1935.

Cavendish, Richard. "The Treaty of Tilsit." History Today 57, no. 7 (July 2007): 62-63.

Fezensac, Raimond-Aymery-Philippe-Josephe de Montesquiou, duc de. The Russian campaign,

1812. Translated by Lee Kennett. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1970.

Foord, Edward. Napoleon’s Russian Campaign of 1812. London: Hutchinson and Company,
1914.

Gueniffey, Patrice. Bonaparte. Translated by Steven Rendall. Cambridge MA: Harvard

University Press, 2015.

Hartley, Janet. "Napoleon in Russia: Saviour or Anti-Christ?" History Today 41, (January 1991):
28-34.

Johnson, Paul. Napoleon. New York: Penguin, 2002.

Lieven, Dominic. Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace.
New York: Viking, 2009.

14
Lieven, Dominic. "Russia and the Defeat of Napoleon (1812-14)." Kritika: Explorations In
Russian And Eurasian History 7, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 283-308.

McLynn, Frank. Napoleon: A Biography. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2002.

Mikaberidze, Alexander. "1812: First Person." Russian Life 55, no. 5 (September 2012): 28-39.

Napoleon. Memoirs. Edit by Somerset De Chair. London: Soho Book Company, 1986.

Napoleon. Napoleon on War. Edited by Bruno Colson. Translated by Gregory Elliot. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2015.

Napoleon. The Mind of Napoleon. Edited and translated by J. Christopher Herold. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1955.

Orlov, Alexander. "Britons in Moscow in 1812." History Today 53, no. 7 (July 2003): 17-23.

Riley, Jonathon. "How Good Was Napoleon?" History Today 57, no. 11 (July 2007): 37-39.

Ségur, Philippe Paul, Comte de. History of the expedition to Russia: undertaken by the Emperor
Napoleon, in the year 1812. London: Treuttel and Wurtz, 1825.

Ségur, Philippe Paul, Comte de. Napoleon's Russian campaign. Translated by J. David
Townsend. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1958.

15