Word: gur
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NAPOLEON'S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN (306 pp.)-Philippe-Paul de Ségur-Hough-ion Mifflin...
Count de Ségur's famed diary of Napoleon's Russian campaign is not just another book about Bonaparte; it is the main source of a thousand schoolbooks, cartoons, legends, sermons and second thoughts for would-be conquerors. Nor is it simply a great and exciting war story. To Ségur, as it did to most who survived it, the retreat from Moscow had a deeper personal and political meaning. As a ruined aristocrat who embraced the French Revolution and became aide-decamp to the Emperor, Ségur took the long, cold view...
Copy for Tolstoy. Ségur was seldom far from the Emperor's side during the five fearful months that it took to unravel Napoleon's grand design. He was close enough to hear Napoleon exclaim as he came within sight of the Muscovite capital of logs and gilded domes: "So here at last is that famous city! It was high time!" The remark was used by Tolstoy in War and Peace; probably one of the original French editions of Ségur's journal (first in 1824) was before Tolstoy as he wrote his masterpiece...
Always Ségur keeps before his eye the vision of the Grande Armée as a sort of international brigade marching to liberate (among others) the Poles from an Asiatic despotism. It was indeed not a French national force but a great group of armies-half a million men from 17 nations...
...gur wonderfully evokes the opening scenes of the disastrous war, with the Emperor surrounded by men whom he had named princes and dukes titled for victories in a dozen countries. The great host glittered with invincibility, and the men were still heady with the idea that they represented liberty under arms. They had only to cross the Niemen into Russian territory, and "love and gratitude" would welcome them...