The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier: A Unique Eyewitness Account of the Face of Battle from Inside the Ranks of Bonaparte's Grand Army

by Jakob Walter, Marc Raeff (Introduction)

Overview

Eighteen-year-old German stonemason Jakob Walter served in the Grand Army of Napoleon between 1806 and 1813. His diary intimately records his trials: the long, grueling marches in Prussia and Poland, the disastrous Russian campaign, and the demoralizing defeat in a war few supported or understood. It is at once a compelling chronicle of a young soldier's loss of innocence and an eloquent and moving portrait of the profound effects of all wars on the men who fight them.

Also included are letters home from the Russian front, previously unpublished in English, as well as period engravings and maps from the Russian/Soviet and East European collections of the New York Public Library.

"Vivid and gruesome … but also a story of human fortitude. … It reminds us that the troops Napoleon drove so mercilessly were actually more victims than victors—a side of Napoleon that should not be forgotten."
—Chicago Tribune

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140165593
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/01/1993
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.11(w) x 7.71(h) x 0.55(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mark Raeff, the Boris Bakhmeteff Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies at Columbia University, is a scholar of pre-revolutionary Russia. His books include Understanding Imperial Russia, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia, The Well-Ordered Police State, and Russian Abroad.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier:
Campaign of 1806 and 1807
Campaign of 1809
Campaign of 1812 and 1813

Historical Appraisal of Walter's Chronicle by Frank E. Melvin

Notes to the Diary

Writing Home: Six Letters

Notes to the Letters

About the Illustrations

Chronology

Place Names

Reading Suggestions

Editorial Reviews

01/01/2016
Few armies were dragged on as long or as grueling marches as Napoleon's Grand Army. Written with surprising skill, this memoir is as much a testament to human endurance as to the interminable, driving will of Bonaparte.

Library Journal

Of the half - million men who invaded Russia in Napoleon's army in June 1812, barely 25,000 survived. One who did was the author of this diary, Jakob Walter (1788-1864), a German private soldier from Westphalia. First conscripted in 1806, he was recalled to duty in 1809 and again in 1812. Walter's writing is unemotional and non-interpretive; he describes straightforwardly what he experienced. The account of the 1812 campaign--Napoleon's march on Moscow and inglorious retreat--takes up three-quarters of this short volume and constitutes its most interesting portion. In a chronicle of progressive demoralization, Walter observes how the instinct for self-preservation, under the pressure of Cossack attacks and treachery by erstwhile allies, leads to savagery among Napoleon's troops. The common-soldier perspective is rare among the mass of material left by veterans of the 1812 campaign and the book will be of interest to the general reader as well as the scholar. This edition includes six short letters home by other German soldiers in the Grand Army, all less interesting than Walter's diary. Raeff is professor of Russian studies at Columbia University. Illustrated. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly