Defeat: Napoleon's Russian Campaign (New York Review Books Classics) - Tapa blanda

"This is War and Peace without the peace and the love interest, and therefore a fraction of the length. But it was Tolstoy's major source: the History of Napoleon and the Grande Armée in 1812, the diaries of Bonaparte's aide de camp, Philippe-Paul, Comte de Ségur, was first published in 1824. Defeat is a reissue of the 1958 translation by the late David Townsend, with an introduction by the journalist and historian Mark Danner...His account of the march on Moscow is a work of reflection and justification as well as narrative, but it still conveys the horror." --London Times

"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...Ségur wonderfully evokes the opening scenes of the disastrous war...[he] was a war chronicler ranking with Herodotus and Bernal Díaz." -Time magazine

"The influence of the work now made available in a new translation, was felt for many years. The giants of literature used it as a source book and as an inspiration...It is still the most vivid account of that apocalyptic disaster...it's appeal is eternal." -The New York Times (June 22, 1958)

"The book is valuable...a most entertaining and interesting work." -The New York Times (June 5th, 1895)

"Ségur served throughout the Napoleonic era as an aide-de-camp to the Emperor, becoming a brigadier on the eve of the Russian campaign. His memoirs remain the classic account of the destruction of the Grand Army." -Parameters, The US Army War College Quarterly

Military History Appeal: "One of the most celebrated debacles in all military history, it is the subject of a brilliant eye-witness account...extremely well written...Filled with exact observation and filled also with the grief and horror Ségur had personally experienced, it is one of the enduring classics of war memoirs. Its narrative of battles and routs, starvation and panic, is outstanding. It's close-up view of Napoleon vacillating and apprehensive, blundering into defeat, is fascinating." -The New York Times (July 25, 1958)

Philippe-Paul de Ségur was an aide-de-camp to Napoleon, privy to the councils of the emperor's inner circle. There he witnessed the debates surrounding the decision to invade Russia in the summer of 1812. The emperor's generals opposed the venture, and even Napoleon entered on it against his better judgment. Nonetheless, Napoleon found the undertaking too tempting to resist. Ségur describes the subsequent campaign with a reporter's eye both for the big story and for the telling detail: we witness the march through the long hot days of the summer; the supply lines growing more stretched with every effortless victory; the Grande Armée suffering unanticipated losses; the taking and sacking of Moscow, and its abandonment; the disastrous winter retreat that destroyed Napoleon's army and insured his downfall.
Ségur's account is to this day one of the greatest military disasters of all time and a masterpiece of military history, providing a vivid and unmistakable lesson about imperial hubris and its risks.