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1812: The Great RetreatBy Paul Britten Austin
CONTENT: 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 out 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 Mardi on Moscow and 1812: Napoleon in Moscow - brought the Grand Army to the head-on battle at Malo-Jaroslavetz after withdrawing sixty miles from the burnt down capital, and for the first time in his meteoric career Napoleon had to order a retreat. 1812: The Great Retreat follows the army's withdrawal through 800 miles of devastated countryside, crossing the horrific relics of the Borodino battlefield, fighting its way through the Russian General Kutusov's 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 recross the Niemen into Poland. Using the words of 160 of the participants themselves, Paul Britten Austin brings unparalleled authenticity and immediacy to his unique account of the end of Napoleon's dramatic and tragic 1812 campaign. KEY POINTS:
REVIEWS: "...Already heralded as a classic... The text is enriched with first-hand accounts which bring the whole narrative to life with an air of stark realism... Britten Austin's account of the army's withdrawal from Moscow is compelling. It is alive with detail and colour that tells of the disorganised exodus in which food and provisions were abandoned in preference to plunder ... The author spares us none of the horror. Some first-hand accounts are gruesome in the extreme, vividly telling of this ill-fated army in full retreat... Britten Austin's trilogy truly ranks as a masterpiece, representing all that is to be admired in a research based work. Thoroughly readable, the lively text fully conveys the magnitude and drama of the events of 1812." - John S. White, Waterloo Journal "...Napoleon's 1812 campaign in Russia, the turning point of the Napoleonic Wars, has finally found its best chronicler...Austin shoots his entire tale almost entirely in the literary equivalent of maximum close-up, using numerous, lengthy narratives...For Napoleonic history in general and the 1812 campaign in particular, this is as good as it gets." - Ian Thompson's Military Bookshelf, Daily Republic "...Vivid and compelling...The most detailed account of the disaster yet to become available in English." - Dr Charles Esdaile, University of Liverpool, R.U.S.I. Journal "...A splendid close to a splendid trilogy." - Military Modelling AUTHOR NOTES: Paul Britten Austin has written many books on a variety of subjects, both in English and in Swedish. He holds an honorary D.Litt and a Swedish knighthood of the Order of the North Star. His three books on the 1812 campaign arc the result of twenty-five years of research, and together constitute his magnum opus. October 1996 | ISBN 1-85367-246-7 | Price: £;30.00/$50.00 Format: 240 x 159mm | Pages: Approx 488 Features: 16 pages of illustrations. 4 maps
Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal Limited Park House Stackpole Books 5067 Ritter Road
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