1812 [Hardcover]

Adam Zamoyski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 5, 2004

This is the story of how the most powerful man on earth met his doom, and how the greatest fighting force ever assembled was wiped out.; By 1810 Napoleon was master of Europe, defied only by Britain, which he could not defeat because he had no navy. His intention was to destroy Britain through a total blockade, the Continental System. But Tsar Alexander of Russia now refused to apply the blockade, and Napoleon decided to bring him to heel.; Napoleon quickly realised that nemesis awaited him, and the events of 1812 had a colossal impact on the fate of Europe: a great patriotic surge helped turn the Russians into a nation (hence Tchaikovsky's '1812' overture) and led them to reject Western values; the Germans began their fateful 'Prussification'; the French lost their cultural dominance.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Zamoyski's book is a brilliant piece of narrative history, full of sparkling set-pieces, a wholly fascinating account of what must be reckoned one of the greatest military disasters of all time.' Sunday Telegraph 'No review can do justice to the scholarly integrity and human sensitivity of this book, or to the horror is describes ! 1812 is one of the greatest stories ever told.' Christopher Woodward, Spectator 'Adam Zamoyski's account of the 1812 campaign is so brilliant that it is impossible to put the book aside ! A master craftsman at work.' Sunday Times 'An utterly admirable book. It combines clarity of thought and prose with a strong narrative drive.' Daily Telegraph --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Adam Zamoyski was born in New York, was educated at Oxford, and lives in London. A full-time writer, he has written biographies of Chopin (Collins 1979), Paderewski, and The Last King of Poland, as well as a history of Poland and HOLY MADNESS: ROMANTICS, PATRIOTS AND REVOLUTIONARIES 1776--1871.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Harper Collins; illustrated edition edition (April 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007123752
• ISBN-13: 978-0007123759
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,227,366 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Cold War Legacy, April 12, 2010

By 

A. Tartyshev (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 1812 (Paperback)

I was surprised that even generation after the end of Cold War books like this one are still published and claim a shelf space in history section - I felt it rather belongs to Black PR section, which nowadays is a politically correct term for propaganda. In my opinion the purpose of the book is NOT to describe and analyse the historical events objectively but to communicate a very specific picture to people with low-to-none reading background on Napoleonic wars.

Zamoysky consistently highlights the suffering of Grande armee soldiers which is described in a novel like approach, telling the story from one side, naturally making the reader to be sympathetic to Grande armee soldiers and very unsympathetic to ruthless Russians and "barbaric" Cossacks.

He dwells into the details of the suffering - highlighting the horrors of wars in a very selective approach - that is devoting numerous paragraphs to war crimes conducted by Russian partisans / peasants / Cossacks using words like "sadistic", "horrific", "barbaric" "uncivilized" while being very brief (usually one sentence) and dry when talking about the same conduct by the French.

Somehow Zamoysky "forgets" to dwell into the details of war crimes conducted by Grande armee soldiers. Zamoysky does not mention that whenever an invading army faces civil opposition - it creates a vicious cycle of violence from both sides, which is true for any nation, any army, any war, any time.

However, when the invading army does not terrorize local population usually there is no civil resistance. When Allied armies invaded France in 1814, apart from isolated cases, there was no raping, murdering and torturing of French population by Russian, German, Swedish and Austrian troops. Neither there was a material French civil resistance against the allies.

Zamoysky mentions numerous times how Russian authorities failed to care for the captured French devoting numerous paragraphs to this. For some reason he does not mention the tremendous logistical challenges faced by Russian home front and Russian army which:
- struggled badly under the economic burden of the biggest war in history
- struggled to get enough supplies for their own soldiers and sick.
- operated in twice devastated (by the invasion and the retreat) desert like area
- operated in the extreme weather conditions which was very untypical for Napoleonic wars operations as forage could not be harvested off the land and technology of that time did not allow to transport enough forage in carts. That is by the time forage is delivered the horse of the supply column would eat their own cargo.

The combined effect of the above factors diminished the Russian army from ~95,000 at Maolyaroslavetz to ~27,500 by the end of 1812 Campaign. Surprisingly, Zamoysky decided not to tie these facts together when spending a great deal of detail about the fate of the French POW. Also Zamoysky decided to ignore the fact that once escorted outside the devastated combat zone, French POW were lived reasonably well there. Certainly better than in British captivity at Lisbon and Chatham where majority of French POW died in intolerable conditions (Rothernberg).

Zamoysky bias is probably is most obvious when it comes to facts. He is very willing to takes the highest possible estimates of casually figures for Russians and always the lowest possible estimates for the French combat losses and of course the highest for non-combat losses creating an atmosphere that Russian army had nothing to do with Napoleon's defeat.
Zamoysky juggles some historical facts to make a specific impression - like he suggests that "most likely" that Russian army at Borodino was 156,000 opposed by only 120,000 which also could be "slightly exaggerated"(!) creating a sensational impression of "French were outnumbered".

Somehow the author decided not to dwell into further discussion that there is a common agreement amongst historians that Russian regular army was OUTNUMBERED by the French. The controversy is only in Russian militia units whose administration as opposed to regular army, was largely sporadic and unreliable. Either way this troops were completely useless in filed battle and no wonder Kutuzov did not used them. The performed non-combat duties only (guarding a train and carrying for wounded).

Only 80% of them were not even armed with firearms, hardly had ANY military concept of formation, lacked cohesion and it would be a pointless suicide to throw them against Europe's best army and no wonder Kutuzov did not even use them. For that reason they were not regarded as a real combat force and even those militia included in official Russian army roster was a mere trick with numbers.
Finally, if Zamosky feels that these poor fellows are comparable to French Old Guard for the purpose of numbers juggling, then he should consider thousands of French non-combatants present at Borodino who performed exactly the same duties as Russian militia and consisted of: soldiers guarding army and imperial trains, train drivers, artillery train , ammunition train, medical units, a usual big gang of adventure seekers always surrounding cantinieres and Grande armee, zgandarms (not Guard), numerous servants of officers / generals, various army / imperial commissariats with their own armed guards and officers.

These men were NOT part of the line units rosters and were never mentioned by Zamosky. On the other hand he is more than happy to include Russian militia whose big part WAS included in Russian army roster despite having not much military value and with another big part precisely unknown to this day really existed only on paper as they were spread through all rear units and duties. But Zamosky somehow decided to skip this information, which would give a completely opposite impression on his "156,000 Russians hopelessly outnumbering the French". Furthermore French none-combatants in fact unlike Russian militia WERE mostly armed with firearms.

It is interesting to see how Zamoysky deals with Borodino casualties. He states that Kutuzov "could only muster only 45,000 after the battle" - leaving the creating an impression that Russian losses were above 100,000 (156,000-45,000). He "forgets" that, apart from causalities there are other factors that affect army combat readiness to a far greater extent. The most common ones are combat chain failure and short-term combat fatigue. But yet Zamosky "forgets" to mention these factors and forgets to apply the same logic of "could muster" factor to the French army. Zamosky simply doesn't get into in-depth analysis whenever the analysis does not support his picture of "defeated Russian army".

Cavalry engagement of Mir brilliantly executed by Platov resulting in the annihilation of two Polish cavalry regiments and one day delay of three Grande Arme coprs which gave Bagration time to avoid encirclement and destruction is described by Zamoysky in a few words: "did make contact at Mir, they were given drubbing by Platov's Cossacks."
Then he goes blaming Jerome and Napoleon but "forgetting" to say a word about Bagration whose retreat was a role model. Although a few pages back Zamosky empathized the strategic goal of Grande Armee:
Page 158. ...catching Bagration became a priority".
Page 166 ....he [Bagration] was in a trap, with Jerome's three army Coprs behind him and Davout in front" Bagration's brilliant performance does not deserve even one sentence.

Battle of Ostrovno example (page 177-178): [17,000 Russians vs 26,000 French] - Zamosky starts with "12,000 Russians were left to delay the French advance". The battle is descried on about one page with comments like: "French executed a brilliant charge" "captured Russian battery" "Russians were pushed back once more" "spectacular charge led by Murat" "the Russians were defeated" - French tactical achievements are all over the page with a few mentions of Russians performance "mounted a counterattack sowing confusion in the French ranks" "determined resistance". He concluded by "Russians retreated in a good order" but forgot to mention that French in fact failed to achieve their goal of routing outnumbered 2 to 3 Russian corps and winning time to cut of Russian army and in fact Russian corps did achieve its goal and retreated in a good order while suffering the same losses.

Battle of Ostrovno is not a problem for Zamosky to refer to Battle of Saltanokvka as "Davout... although greatly outnumbered, had beaten Russians back..." [p 180]. Davout had about 14,000 troops while Bagration had about 15,000. 14 vs 15 - this is what the author calls "greatly outnumbered".

Interesting to see how Zamosky mentioned the Battle of Klyastitsy [p194] using two words: "inconclusive engagement". This "Inconclusive engagement" which effectively stopped French advance on the Russian capital and as per Zamosky himself on the same page "forced Oudinot to fall back too cover Polotzk". Also he "forgets" to mentions this time again that Russians were "greatly outnumbered" 20K vs 26K and in fact suffered 2,500 less losses while destroying 25% of the French forces. Truly "inconclusive engagement".
Sometimes Zamoyky's bias gets really ironical and absurd - for example when describing the clash of Borisov Zamoysky mentioned that "fleeing Russians left behind up to 9,000 dead, wounded and POWs" (page 459) - this claim is ignoring both common sense and uncontroversial fact that the whole Russian detachment at Borisov (advance guard) numbered only around 5,000-6,000 men even ignoring previous day losses and non-combat losses.

French achievements consistently highlighted using very fancy words ["gallant performance"] while Russian military successes are either... Read more ›

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly disgusting, January 11, 2009

By 

Arjan Van Woensel - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 1812 (Paperback)

It is a Sunday Times bestseller, so I guess you don't really need this review to be persuaded to read the book. But if you'd like to know from me, I thought it was brilliant. It's as detailed as any serious historical work should be, but written in a thriller-like quality.
And what a thrill it is. I almost wanted to just stop reading because of the horrible events described in the book. So much unimaginable hardship, so much chances of a totally different outcome, so much stupid mistakes... and so much to learn from this hefty tome.
For instance: I always learnt at school that the Russians pulled back because they thought it a very cunning plan. As a matter of fact, they just retreated because they couldn't come up with a decent strategy and were quite afraid of the invincibility of Napoleans army.
The book is very rich in detail, but also paints a much larger picture. You can already feel the resentment growing that would ultimately lead to the Russian revolution, WW1, and consequently WW2.
All in all a hell of a historical roller-coaster ride.