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Author: Jakob Walter Publisher: Doubleday ISBN: 0307817563 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 195
Book Description
A grunt’s-eye report from the battlefield in the spirit of The Red Badge of Courage and All Quiet on the Western Front—the only known account by a common soldier of the campaigns of Napoleon’s Grand Army between 1806 and 1813. When eighteen-year-old German stonemason Jakob Walter was conscripted into the Grand Army of Napoleon, he had no idea of the trials that lay ahead. The long, grueling marches in Prussia and Poland sacrificed countless men to Bonaparte’s grand designs. And the disastrous Russian campaign tested human endurance on an epic scale. Demoralized by defeat in a war few supported or understood, deprived of ammunition and leadership, driven past reason by starvation and bitter cold, men often turned on one another, killing fellow soldiers for bread or an able horse. Though there are numerous surviving accounts of the Napoleonic Wars written by officers, Walter’s is the only known memoir by a draftee, and as such is a unique and fascinating document—a compelling chronicle of a young soldier’s loss of innocence as well as an eloquent and moving portrait of the profound effects of war on the men who fight it. Professor Marc Raeff has added an Introduction to the memoirs as well as six letters home from the Russian front, previously unpublished in English, from German conscripts who served concurrently with Walter. The volume is illustrated with engravings and maps, contemporary with the manuscript, from the Russian/Soviet and East European collections of the New York Public Library. Honest, heartfelt, deeply personal yet objective, The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier is more than an informative and absorbing historical document—it is a timeless and unforgettable account of the horrors of war.
Author: Jakob Walter Publisher: Doubleday ISBN: 0307817563 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 195
Book Description
A grunt’s-eye report from the battlefield in the spirit of The Red Badge of Courage and All Quiet on the Western Front—the only known account by a common soldier of the campaigns of Napoleon’s Grand Army between 1806 and 1813. When eighteen-year-old German stonemason Jakob Walter was conscripted into the Grand Army of Napoleon, he had no idea of the trials that lay ahead. The long, grueling marches in Prussia and Poland sacrificed countless men to Bonaparte’s grand designs. And the disastrous Russian campaign tested human endurance on an epic scale. Demoralized by defeat in a war few supported or understood, deprived of ammunition and leadership, driven past reason by starvation and bitter cold, men often turned on one another, killing fellow soldiers for bread or an able horse. Though there are numerous surviving accounts of the Napoleonic Wars written by officers, Walter’s is the only known memoir by a draftee, and as such is a unique and fascinating document—a compelling chronicle of a young soldier’s loss of innocence as well as an eloquent and moving portrait of the profound effects of war on the men who fight it. Professor Marc Raeff has added an Introduction to the memoirs as well as six letters home from the Russian front, previously unpublished in English, from German conscripts who served concurrently with Walter. The volume is illustrated with engravings and maps, contemporary with the manuscript, from the Russian/Soviet and East European collections of the New York Public Library. Honest, heartfelt, deeply personal yet objective, The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier is more than an informative and absorbing historical document—it is a timeless and unforgettable account of the horrors of war.
Author: R.M. Johnston Publisher: Casemate Publishers ISBN: 1473882796 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 573
Book Description
A powerful portrait of a complex individual. It uses Napoleons own words to show his genius, arrogance, insecurities, and frustrations. The reader will be amazed by Napoleons attention to detail, from those of pressing national interests to the mundane (such as the problem of heartbroken soldiers in his guard.) . . . This makes it an invaluable reference book that should be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the period. Rob Burnham, Editor, Napoleon SeriesIn the words of Napoleon is a startling insight into the life and deeds of Napoleon I. Derived from Napoleons extensive correspondence and his other writings and recorded speech, this valuable compilation acts as a diary or journal, encompassing the whole of the emperors life. Napoleons words as recorded on a particular day are set down as entries, and these offer a unique glimpse into the major events of the Napoleonic period.The diary reveals Napoleons thoughts and actions as his great life unfolded and throws light on his attitudes to war, politics and the many varied personalities who surrounded or opposed him. As entries appear on an almost daily basis, the reader has the opportunity to trace the surging course of events as they happened, and to witness the emperors response to the rise and fall of his fortunes.Philip Haythornthwaite provides a fascinating introduction which analyses Napoleons words, and includes biographical sketches of the key personalities of the era.
Author: General Michel Franceschi Publisher: Savas Beatie ISBN: 1611210291 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
Popular and scholarly history presents a one-dimensional image of Napoleon as an inveterate instigator of war who repeatedly sought large-scale military conquests. General Franceschi and Ben Weider dismantle this false conclusion in The Wars Against Napoleon, a brilliantly written and researched study that turns our understanding of the French emperor on its head. Avoiding the simplistic clichés and rudimentary caricatures many historians use when discussing Napoleon, Franceschi and Weider argue persuasively that the caricature of the megalomaniac conqueror who bled Europe white to satisfy his delirious ambitions and insatiable love for war is groundless. By carefully scrutinizing the facts of the period and scrupulously avoiding the sometimes confusing cause and effect of major historical events, they paint a compelling portrait of a fundamentally pacifist Napoleon, one completely at odds with modern scholarly thought. This rigorous intellectual presentation is based upon three principal themes. The first explains how an unavoidable belligerent situation existed after the French Revolution of 1789. The new France inherited by Napoleon was faced with the implacable hatred of reactionary European monarchies determined to restore the ancient regime. All-out war was therefore inevitable unless France renounced the modern world to which it had just painfully given birth. The second theme emphasizes Napoleon’s determined efforts (“bordering on an obsession,” argue the authors) to avoid this inevitable conflict. The political strategy of the Consulate and the Empire was based on the intangible principle of preventing or avoiding these wars, not on conquering territory. Finally, the authors examine, conflict by conflict, the evidence that Napoleon never declared war. As he later explained at Saint Helena, it was he who was always attacked—not the other way around. His adversaries pressured and even forced the Emperor to employ his unequalled military genius. After each of his memorable victories Napoleon offered concessions, often extravagant ones, to the defeated enemy for the sole purpose of avoiding another war. Lavishly illustrated, persuasively argued, and carefully illustrated with original maps and battle diagrams, The Wars Against Napoleon presents a courageous and uniquely accurate historical idea that will surely arouse vigorous debate within the international historical community.
Author: Janet Elizabeth Croon Publisher: Casemate Publishers ISBN: 1611213894 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 489
Book Description
A remarkable account of the collapse of the Old South and the final years of a young boy’s privileged but afflicted life. LeRoy Wiley Gresham was born in 1847 to an affluent slave-holding family in Macon, Georgia. After a horrific leg injury left him an invalid, the educated, inquisitive, perceptive, and exceptionally witty twelve-year-old began keeping a diary in 1860—just as secession and the Civil War began tearing the country and his world apart. He continued to write even as his health deteriorated until both the war and his life ended in 1865. His unique manuscript of the demise of the Old South is published here for the first time in The War Outside My Window. LeRoy read books, devoured newspapers and magazines, listened to gossip, and discussed and debated important social and military issues with his parents and others. He wrote daily for five years, putting pen to paper with a vim and tongue-in-cheek vigor that impresses even now, more than 150 years later. His practical, philosophical, and occasionally Twain-like hilarious observations cover politics and the secession movement, the long and increasingly destructive Civil War, family pets, a wide variety of hobbies and interests, and what life was like at the center of a socially prominent wealthy family in the important Confederate manufacturing center of Macon. The young scribe often voiced concern about the family’s pair of plantations outside town, and recorded his interactions and relationships with servants as he pondered the fate of human bondage and his family’s declining fortunes. Unbeknownst to LeRoy, he was chronicling his own slow and painful descent toward death in tandem with the demise of the Southern Confederacy. He recorded—often in horrific detail—an increasingly painful and debilitating disease that robbed him of his childhood. The teenager’s declining health is a consistent thread coursing through his fascinating journals. “I feel more discouraged [and] less hopeful about getting well than I ever did before,” he wrote on March 17, 1863. “I am weaker and more helpless than I ever was.” Morphine and a score of other “remedies” did little to ease his suffering. Abscesses developed; nagging coughs and pain consumed him. Alternating between bouts of euphoria and despondency, he often wrote, “Saw off my leg.” The War Outside My Window, edited and annotated by Janet Croon with helpful footnotes and a detailed family biographical chart, captures the spirit and the character of a young privileged white teenager witnessing the demise of his world even as his own body slowly failed him. Just as Anne Frank has come down to us as the adolescent voice of World War II, LeRoy Gresham will now be remembered as the young voice of the Civil War South. Winner, 2018, The Douglas Southall Freeman Award
Author: Maurice de Tascher Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 1844154572 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 223
Book Description
In 1806 an enthusiastic young Frenchman Maurice de Tascher embarked on a career as a soldier in Napoleon's Grand Armée. He was inspired by the emperor's triumphs and determined to win glory and serve his country. In 1813, disillusioned by war and doubtful about the honor of the French cause, de Tascher died in Berlin, a victim of Napoleon's disastrous war against Russia. This is his story.
Author: Jenny Uglow Publisher: Macmillan + ORM ISBN: 1466828226 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 524
Book Description
A beautifully observed history of the British home front during the Napoleonic Wars by a celebrated historian We know the thrilling, terrible stories of the battles of the Napoleonic Wars—but what of those left behind? The people on a Norfolk farm, in a Yorkshire mill, a Welsh iron foundry, an Irish village, a London bank, a Scottish mountain? The aristocrats and paupers, old and young, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers—how did the war touch their lives? Jenny Uglow, the prizewinning author of The Lunar Men and Nature's Engraver, follows the gripping back-and-forth of the first global war but turns the news upside down, seeing how it reached the people. Illustrated by the satires of Gillray and Rowlandson and the paintings of Turner and Constable, and combining the familiar voices of Austen, Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron with others lost in the crowd, In These Times delves into the archives to tell the moving story of how people lived and loved and sang and wrote, struggling through hard times and opening new horizons that would change their country for a century.
Author: Neil Campbell Publisher: Ravenhall Books ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
In April 1814 Napoleon Bonaparte, onetime emperor of France and master of Europe, was exiled to the island of Elba. Colonel Neil Campbell was instructed to accompany the fallen monarch. Part guardian, part spy, Campbell monitored Napoleon and kept an observant watch on the comings and goings of his confidents and much reduced household staff. He eavesdropped on the island's gossip, conversed almost daily with Napoleon, attempted to gain his trust and sought to gauge his intentions. For a year, Campbell kept an intimate diary of events on the tiny island. It paints character studies of all the key personalities and wades into island gossip with relish. It records events as Napoleon builds an empire in miniature on Elba and it keeps an eye on the coming and going of agents and would-be assassins. Frank and enlightening it also reveals much about the personality of Napoleon and of the tensions and subterfuge within the exiled community as Napoleon devises and implements his plans for an escape. The vivid diary is now published in a new accessible edition and it is essential reading for anyone with an interest in this era when the fate of empires hung in the balance.
Author: Jakob Walter
Author: Jakob Walter
Author: R.M. Johnston
Author: Napoleon I (Emperor of the French)
Author: Jakob Walter
Author: General Michel Franceschi
Author: Janet Elizabeth Croon
Author: Maurice de Tascher
Author: Jenny Uglow
Author: Neil Campbell
Author: Alethea Hayter