Review (PDF) 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March On Moscow
Adam Zamoyski’s bestselling account of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and his catastrophic retreat from Moscow, events that had a profound effect on European history.In 1812 the most powerful man in the world assembled the largest army in history and marched on Moscow with the intention of consolidating his dominion. But within months, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia – history’s first example of total war – had turned into an epic military disaster. Over 400,000 French and Allied troops perished and Napoleon was forced to retreat.Adam Zamoyski’s masterful work draws on the harrowing first-hand accounts of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict. The result takes the reader beyond the invasion of Russia to present both a poignant tale of the individual foot soldier and a sweeping history of a turbulent time.
File Size: 10183 KB
Print Length: 672 pages
Publisher: HarperPress (November 29, 2012)
Publication Date: November 29, 2012
Sold by: Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B009YBU18W
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray: Not Enabled
Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Best Sellers Rank: #362,117 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #67 in Books > History > Military > War of 1812 #109 in Books > History > Military > Napoleonic Wars #2773 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Europe
The first half of Zamoyski's book is truly top-quality narrative history, it is written lucidly, and it is packed with interesting facts and observations. A coherent picture emerges of all the many forces at work in that vast and terrible enterprise, the invasion of Russia.Zamoyski does an especially good job of explaining Napoleon's reasons for invading Russia, and I think adds new clarity to them. The author also has wonderful passages in which we see Napoleon's view and considerations at certain points and then those of various Russian commanders facing him. He does something similar with Tsar Alexander, an intelligent and ambitious man, but not a leader to assume command in battle. He does a deft job at giving the reader some appreciation of the massive, complex preparations necessary for the campaign, almost exhausting a reader's imagination of how one man could put all of it into motion. His other great strength is the description of the battles for Smolensk and Borodino: these are remarkable passages.The second half of the book declines from that high level, in my view, not in the quality of the writing but in the subject matter. There is an awful lot of graphic detail of individual deaths and perils on the ghastly march out of Russia. Some of this is of course necessary to give readers a full appreciation of a situation where climate and the weather played greater roles in Napoleon's defeat than the Tsar's armies, but I think there is too much, becoming effectively padding.The trouble with those kinds of anecdotes is that they cloud the true sense of what is happening.
1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow Moscow 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March 1812 : Napoleon in Moscow Illustrated Battles of the Napoleonic Age-Volume 3: Badajoz, Canadians in the War of 1812, Ciudad Rodrigo, Retreat from Moscow, Queenston Heights, ... Shannon, Chrystler's Farm, Dresden and Lutzen THE SLEEPLESS STARS: the Fatal Insomnia Finale (Fatal Insomnia Medical Thrillers Book 3) A RAGING DAWN: A Novel of Fatal Insomnia (Fatal Insomnia Medical Thrillers Book 2) FAREWELL TO DREAMS: A Novel of Fatal Insomnia (Fatal Insomnia Medical Thrillers Book 1) Napoleon Hill's Greatest Speeches: An Official Publication of The Napoleon Hill Foundation ELGAR IMPERIAL MARCH TRIUMPHAL MARCH ORGAN Staff Ride Handbook for the Niagara Campaigns, 1812-1814 - War of 1812 - New York and Canada Settlements, Queenston Heights, Stoney Creek, Chippawa, Lundy's Lane, Fort Erie, President Madison I Am Canada: A Call to Battle: The War of 1812, Alexander MacKay, Upper Canada, 1812 The Call to Arms: The 1812 Invasions of Upper Canada (Upper Canada Preserved _ War of 1812) 1812: The War of 1812 Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War The Moscow Puzzles: 359 Mathematical Recreations (Dover Recreational Math) Moscow Stations Moscow Rules (Gabriel Allon Series Book 8) Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet Fatal Words: Communication Clashes and Aircraft Crashes Fatal Descent: Andreas Lubitz and the Crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 (Kindle Single)
