In 1806 an enthusiastic young Frenchman Maurice de Tascher embarked on a career as a soldier in Napoleon's Grand Arm . 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.

In the summer of 1812 Napoleon gathered his fearsome Grande Armée, more than half a million strong, on the banks of the Niemen River. He was about to undertake the most daring of all his many campaigns: the invasion of Russia. Meeting only sporadic opposition and defeating it easily along the way, the huge army moved forward, advancing ineluctably on Moscow through the long hot days of summer. On September 14, Napoleon entered the Russian capital, fully anticipating the Czar’s surrender. Instead he encountered an eerily deserted city—and silence. The French army sacked the city, and by October, with Moscow in ruins and his supply lines overextended, and with the Russian winter upon him, Napoleon had no choice but to turn back. One of the greatest military debacles of all time had only just begun. In this famous memoir, Philippe-Paul de Ségur, a young aide-de-camp to Napoleon, tells the story of the unfolding disaster with the keen eye of a crack reporter and an astute grasp of human character. His book, a fundamental inspiration for Tolstoy’s War and Peace, is a masterpiece of military history that teaches an all-too-timely lesson about imperial hubris and its risks.

The only known memoir of the Napoleonic Wars written by a common foot soldier relates the hardships of campaigns against Prussia and Poland and the disaster of the Russian campaign of 1812

A distinguished historian describes how the Enlightenment and the French Revolution led to the first total war in history during the age of Napoleon, when such embodiments of modern-day warfare--conscription, guerrilla warfare, unconditional surrender, disregard for the rules of combat, civilian mobilization, and more--made their first appearance. Reprint.

“Gripping . . . a compelling story of personal hubris and humbling defeat.” —Jack Weatherford,author of the New York Times bestseller Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World In a masterful dual narrative that pits the heights of human ambition and achievement against the supremacy of nature, New York Times bestselling author Stephan Talty tells the story of a mighty ruler and a tiny microbe, antagonists whose struggle would shape the modern world. In the spring of 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte was at the height of his powers. Forty-five million called him emperor, and he commanded a nation that was the richest, most cultured, and advanced on earth. No army could stand against his impeccably trained, brilliantly led forces, and his continued sweep across Europe seemed inevitable. Early that year, bolstered by his successes, Napoleon turned his attentions toward Moscow, helming the largest invasion in human history. Surely, Tsar Alexander’s outnumbered troops would crumble against this mighty force. But another powerful and ancient enemy awaited Napoleon’s men in the Russian steppes. Virulent and swift, this microscopic foe would bring the emperor to his knees. Even as the Russians retreated before him in disarray, Napoleon found his army disappearing, his frantic doctors powerless to explain what had struck down a hundred thousand soldiers. The emperor’s vaunted military brilliance suddenly seemed useless, and when the Russians put their own occupied capital to the torch, the campaign became a desperate race through the frozen landscape as troops continued to die by the thousands. Through it all, with tragic heroism, Napoleon’s disease-ravaged, freezing, starving men somehow rallied, again and again, to cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” Yet Talty’s sweeping tale takes us far beyond the doomed heroics and bloody clashes of the battlefield. The Illustrious Dead delves deep into the origins of the pathogen that finally ended the mighty emperor’s dreams of world conquest and exposes this “war plague’s” hidden role throughout history. A tale of two unstoppable forces meeting on the road to Moscow in an epic clash of killer microbe and peerless army, The Illustrious Dead is a historical whodunit in which a million lives hang in the balance. From the Hardcover edition.

The true story of George Scovell follows the engraver's apprentice who possessed extraordinary linguisitic genius as he is assigned to Wellington's headquarters, where he easily cracked codes used in French dispatches, but when the enemy changed their tactics from simple ciphers to almost unbreakable encoded messages, he was forced to race against time to save the British army from Napeoleon's deadly machinations.

A history of Napoleon's invasion of Russia describes his prior domination of Europe and the events that prompted the invasion, recounting how such factors as the harsh climate and Russian patriotism eventually turned the tide against Napoleon and set the stage for his downfall. Reprint.