Book Review: With Napoleon in Russia, 1812, Lt. Vossler

I bought this book at Partizan, on Sunday, and began reading it the very next day. It's Wednesday lunchtime, and I've just finished it. Hopefully that conveys how much I've enjoyed it? Whilst it's not quite as exciting or colourful as the very best Napoleonic/1812 memoirs, it is nevertheless a solidly readable account.

Vossler was an officer in the Duke Louis Chasseurs, a Würtemberg cavalry unit. Separated from his compatriots, under the command of Montbrun he served alongside French and other 'allied' troops. Although he got as far as Borodino, taking part in the southern portion of the battle, he didn't get to Moscow itself.

I believe this image depicts Vossler's regt.

His account is very down to earth, and mixes observations of the lands he moved through, their towns and peoples, with his own wartime experiences, a great deal of which are concerned with movement and billeting. Wounded at Borodino, his part in the retreat cannot have been much fun, as he also had typhus/dysentery and the accompanying diarrhoea, conditions which would contribute directly to the deaths of many on the advance as well as the retreat.

I like this memoir because it doesn't end once he gets home, one of the few lucky survivors of the Russia 1812 debacle, but continues as he returns to service in the 1813 campaign. However, not yet fully recovered, he's captured when a reconnaissance mission goes wrong, and spends the rest of the hostilities being shepherded around Poland and Russia along with other prisoners of war.

This isn't amazing if you want great detail on any of the battles, even those he took part in. He was at Smolensk, for example, as well as a Borodino. But he doesn't even attempt the grand overview - and I'm thankful, frankly, as plenty of others do (and not always very well) - instead sticking to the localised stuff he was involved in. But it's great for conveying day to day life as a Napoleonic soldier.

Of the officer class, he seems as concerned with food and lodgings, and the usually deploarable state (or indeed absence) of both, as he is with war and soldiering. I love these sorts of books, as they really bring the era and the conflicts to life very vividly. His writing style has been very well rendered in Walter Wallich's translation, avoiding the stodgy style that mires some similar accounts of the same vintage.

Book Review: Imperial Sunset - R. F. Delderfield

Novelist and Napoleonic history buff turns in a wonderfully readable account of the decline of Napoleon and his Empire.

Playwright turned author and amateur historian R. F. Delderfield was very clearly something of a latter-day Bonapartist. So far I've read three of his non-fiction books [1] on the Napoleonic era: this one, Napoleon in Love (subject = obvious!), and The March of the Twenty Six (subject = the Napoleonic Marshalate). They are all very, very good indeed. What is best about them, undoubtedly, is how readable and exciting they are. 

Delderfield's skills as a writer of fiction and drama are very evident throughout. His skills and credentials as a historian might perhaps be open to debate, and I have seen reviews criticising his favouring of excitement and atmosphere over scholarly exactitude. I must say, this doesn't bother me too much. There's plenty of other literature out there on Napoleonic subjects; one can do as Delderfield did, and read as much of it as possible and then make one's own mind up as to the 'facts'.

Looking suitably serious, this shot is used (facing left) on the rear of the dust jacket of my edition. [2]

Of the three Delderfield Napoleonic history books that I have read so far, this is probably the best. The story starts with the aftermath of the retreat from Russia in 1812. Delderfield's skills as a novelist enable him to set up a series of very vivid opening tableux, of Cossacks on the Elbe, in 1813, and garrison towns throughout the empire with wavering and divided loyalties. He skilfully describes the Coalition powers moving westwards as the French retreat, their crumbling alliances and stranded fortress outposts draining Napoleon's resources, such that though he fights with great skill and verve, there's a kind of inevitability to his gradual downfall. 

Delderfield draws on many contemporary accounts, making particular use of those by Marbot and Barrès. And he clearly admires Eugene, MacDonald and Caulaincourt, for their honesty and loyalty at a time when many, including such stalwarts as Ney and Murat were to eventually abandon the man who had helped raise them and so many others like them so high. The central story retains a resolutely central and western European theme, although Delderfield does continually refer to important developments in other theatres, such as Italy and Spain.

The author caught in more approachably avuncular mood.

One of the reasons I like this more than the other two Delderfield Napoleonic books I've thus far read - and I love them all - is that both of the other two above-mentioned works are kinds of 'group portraits', describing numerous individuals and their relations with Napoleon in his varied conquests. This one has a more satisfyingly focussed central narrative thread, telling as it does a very interesting and exciting story. 

It's intriguing that Delderfield, clearly a fan of Napoleon (but not an uncritical one), in covering the campaigns of this 'Great Captain' chose to write - at least in terms of his published historical works (and this observation is somewhat mitigated by the more extended coverage of his group portrait works) - only about the Russian campaign and its aftermath (he has a book about the the Russian campaign which I intrnd to read), rather than the glory days of his first 15 or so triumphant years. 

Consequently, and given his obviously pro-Napoleonic stance, there's something elegiac in the tone of this work, a mood he brilliantly captures in much of his Napoleonic writing, but especially poignantly at the close of this particular book, when he describes the ageing veterans of the Grande Armée growing old under other more peaceful but less 'glorious' French regimes.

Pictured above: Napoleon looking suitably glum, as he contemplates the sun setting on his 'glory'. This classic image of Napoleon was painted by Paul Delaroche, and depicts Napoleon at Fontainebleu, in 1814, capturing the both the period and the mood, as well as the siutter admirably.

Thomas Hardy was another writer of fiction obsessed with Napoleonic history, and this book exemplifies what he was getting at when he said 'My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading. So I back Bonaparte for the reason that he will give pleasure to posterity.' This book was difficult to put down, and was certainly a great pleasure to read.

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NOTES:

[1] He also wrote some Napoleonic fiction. I read Seven Men of Gascony in my mid-teens, and, whilst it is admittedly not 'Great Literature', like say for example Tolstoy's War And Peace, it certainly helped cement my love for the era. And it certainly qualifies under Hardy's definition, as a 'rattling good' read, and part of Napoleon's legacy of 'pleasure to posterity'.

[2] My copy was brought at a wargames from show, from (I think?) Paul Meekins, and is a Chilton Press 1968 1st edition. Vintage booksniffers... this was a good year: what a bouquet this old tome has!