Borodino and the War of 1812

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Cassell
Published: 09 Dec 1999
ISBN 10: 0304352780
ISBN 13: 9780304352784
Book Overview: In the summer of 1812, having defeated almost every army in Europe, Napoleon finally began his attack on the Russian empire. For ten terrible weeks the 'Grande Armee' swept all before them, and by September they had reached Borodino on the western approaches to Moscow. It was here that the full force of the French and Russian armies finally clashed. What ensued was a battle the Russian commander Kutuzov called 'the most bloody battle of modern times'. In this powerful account, Christopher Duffy explains how Napoleon's eventual victory at Borodino was to prove the final undoing of the French. He explains the background to the conflict, the tactics and manoeuvres which left the field strewn with more corpses than the regimental clerks could accurately count. And he goes on to describe the consequences for Napoleon's troops in the tragic campaign which followed: over the next two months Napoleon's army was totally destroyed, and of the half a million men who set out from the edges of the French empire in the summer, only a few thousand ever returned.