History of the Expedition to Russia

History of the Expedition to
Russia, by

Count Philip de Segur This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at
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Title: History of the Expedition to Russia Undertaken by the Emperor
Napoleon in the Year 1812
Author: Count Philip de Segur
Release Date: April 3, 2006 [EBook #18113]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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HISTORY
OF THE

EXPEDITION TO RUSSIA,
UNDERTAKEN BY THE
EMPEROR NAPOLEON,
IN THE YEAR 1812.

BY GENERAL, COUNT PHILIP DE SEGUR.

Quamquam animus meminisse horret, luctuque refugit, Incipiam--.
VIRGIL.
SECOND EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED AND CORRECTED.
IN TWO VOLUMES,
WITH A MAP AND SEVEN ENGRAVINGS.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
TREUTTEL AND WURTZ, TREUTTEL, JUN. AND RICHTER, 30,
SOHO-SQUARE.
1825.
[Illustration: Portrait of Napoleon]

TO THE
VETERANS OF THE GRAND ARMY.

COMRADES,
I have undertaken the task of tracing the History of the Grand Army
and its Leader during the year 1812. I address it to such of you as the
ices of the North have disarmed, and who can no longer serve their
country, but by the recollections of their misfortunes and their glory.
Stopped short in your noble career, your existence is much more in the
past than in the present; but when the recollections are so great, it is
allowable to live solely on them. I am not afraid, therefore, of troubling
that repose which you have so dearly purchased, by placing before you
the most fatal of your deeds of arms. Who is there of us but knows, that
from the depth of his obscurity the looks of the fallen man are
involuntarily directed towards the splendor of his past existence--even
when its light illuminates the shoal on which the bark of his fortune
struck, and when it displays the fragments of the greatest of
shipwrecks?
* * * * *
For myself, I will own, that an irresistible feeling carries me back
incessantly to that disastrous epoch of our public and private calamities.
My memory feels a sort of melancholy pleasure in contemplating and
renewing the painful traces which so many horrors have left in it. Is the
soul, also, proud of her deep and numerous wounds? Does she delight
in displaying them? Are they a property of which she has reason to be
proud? Is it rather, that after the desire of knowing them, her first wish
is to impart her sensations? To feel, and to excite feeling, are not these
the most powerful springs of our soul?
* * * * *
But in short, whatever may be the cause of the sentiment which
actuates me, I have yielded to the desire of retracing the various
sensations which I experienced during that fatal war. I have employed
my leisure hours in separating, arranging, and combining with method
my scattered and confused recollections. Comrades! I also invoke yours!
Suffer not such great remembrances, which have been so dearly
purchased, to be lost; for us they are the only property which the past

leaves to the future. Single, against so many enemies, ye fell with
greater glory than they rose. Learn, then, that there was no shame in
being vanquished! Raise once more those noble fronts, which have
been furrowed with all the thunders of Europe! Cast not down those
eyes, which have seen so many subject capitals, so many vanquished
kings! Fortune, doubtless, owed you a more glorious repose; but, such
as it is, it depends on yourselves to make a noble use of it. Let history
inscribe your recollections. The solitude and silence of misfortune are
propitious to her labours; and let truth, which is always present in the
long nights of adversity, at last enlighten labours that may not prove
unproductive.
As for me, I will avail myself of the privilege, sometimes painful,
sometimes glorious, of telling what I have seen, and of retracing,
perhaps with too scrupulous attention, its most minute details; feeling
that nothing was too minute in that prodigious Genius and those
gigantic feats, without which we should never have known the extent to
which human strength, glory, and misfortune, may be carried.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.
VOLUME FIRST.
BOOK I.
CHAP. I.--Political relations of France and Russia since 1807 1
II.--Prussia.--Frederick William 6
III.--Turkey.--Sultans Selim--Mustapha--Mahmoud 18
IV.--Sweden.--Bernadotte 32
BOOK II.
CHAP. I.--Feelings of Napoleon's grandees at the approaching
contest--their objections, with Napoleon's replies--real motives which

urged him to the struggle 49
II.--Arguments against the war by the Dukes of Frioul and Vicenza and