Memoirs of Sergeant Bourgogne: (1812-1813)

This classic memoir is a rare and revealing soldier's view of one of history's most famous campaigns, and the only surviving eyewitness account of Napoleon's capture of, and disastrous retreat from, Moscow during the freezing winter of 1812. Separated from his regiment by the fire which ravaged the city, Bourgogne spent three months fighting his way back to Prussia, rejoining the straggling column in retreat. His impressions of that dramatic time, recorded when imprisoned during the Battle of Dessau, served later as the foundation of this remarkable chronicle.
But there is more to Bourgogne than a simple recorder of facts, for his diary is also the hair-raising story of a very French military hero, more engaging than any fictional rogue. An ex-grenadier in the elite Imperial Guard, who survived where over 600,000 perished; a much-decorated officer, who served his country with valour and distinction; he was above all an irrepressibly exuberant personality whose descriptive powers owe as much to Flashman as to the staid annals of French military history.
Published here in full for the first time this century, Memoirs of Sergeant Bourgogne is one of the earliest examples of the military memoirs of the ordinary man and a priceless fragment of the army under the First Empire.