Napoleon: A Biography

furious and told his aides: 'Junot has let them escape. He is losing the campaign for me.' Junot never recovered from the disgra ...

turned out to be much stronger than expected during the battle of 16--17th, the failure to cut the Moscow road initially and the ...

Their arguments were various: the Grand Army was now reduced to r6o,ooo effectives, many demoralized and exhausted, and would di ...

monastery was available when night fell. He worked all day long, even when in motion, since the carriage was fitted with a desk ...

Kutusov's clever dispositions, but astonished his marshals by opting for a direct frontal assault on the Russian right and centr ...

a general... then he should go back to the Tuileries and let us be generals for him.' The first breakthrough for the French came ...

plausible. Even if we take the lowest possible figure, a modern observer has commented that this is the equivalent of a fully lo ...

between his Cossacks and the French cavalry, insinuating the idea that peace was just around the corner. Meanwhile he steadily a ...

follows: 'It is difficult to control a people who for three hundred years have never known war within their frontiers, who are r ...

remain in Moscow for six months; seek a second battle with Kutusov and then continue south to the pleasanter weather and richer ...

lowering his guard, Napoleon was none the less badly shaken and there was an air of panic about the announcement that the depart ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Napoleon left Moscow with the aim of rejoining the 37,000 men of IX Corps at Smolensk, using the supplies a ...

to divert from the south-westerly route meant that the destruction of the French army became inevitable. So what led Napoleon to ...

him, why had not similar considerations ruled out the march on Moscow after Borodino? As it was, the battle of Maloyaroslavets f ...

was the possibility that Napoleon might free the serfs, as they themselves urged him to. So fe arful was the Russian elite of th ...

nails hammered into the body, legs and arms cut off to leave a bleeding torso, stakes driven down the throat. One of two particu ...

such a scene as probably was never witnessed in the history of the world. Wilson makes the important point that, even without th ...

stocks of food were not at the expected high levels, since Victor's and Oudinot's corps had taken most of it when they headed no ...

not form a compact fo rce but were still strung out: it was not until the 17th that Ney and the rearguard got clear of Smolensk. ...

routed the Russians in short order. The Russian Colonel Davidov reported that the Guard scythed through the Cossacks 'like a hun ...