1812 (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | Paul Britten Austen | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

1812: The Great Retreat tells the story of the end of the most famously disastrous campaign in history, using the words of the survivors to describe their desperate withdrawal from Russia. Napoleon's campaign had begun with more than a third of a million men setting our on what was to be a long and terrible march to the glittering city of Moscow. Only 100,000 were to reach it. Forced to turn back in the face of winter's onset, almost nothing of the drastically reduced army lived to recross the Niemen River.

The author's previous books on the campaign - 1812: The March on Moscow and 1812: Napoleon in Moscow - brought the to the head-on battle at Malo-Jaroslavetz after removing sixty miles from the capital, and for the first time in his meteoric career Napoleon had to order a retreat. In this final volume the army withdraws through 800 miles of devastated countryside, crossing the horrific relics of the Borodino battlefield, fighting its way though the Russians' successive attempts to cut it off, and winning, against overwhelming odds, the three-day battle of the Berezina crossing. First-hand narratives, many published in English for the first time, describe Marshal Ney's astounding achievement in holding together the rearguard until he himself, musket in hand, was the last man to cross the Niemen into Poland.

Using the words of 160 of the participants, Paul Britten Austin brings unparalleled authenticity and immediacy to his unique account of the end of Napoleon's dramatic and tragic 1812 campaign.