As soon as Napoleon and his Grand Army entered Moscow, on 14 September 1812, the capital erupted in flames that eventually engulfed and destroyed two thirds of the city. The fiery devastation had a profound effect on the Grand Army, but for thirty-five days Napoleon stayed, making increasingly desperate efforts to achieve peace with Russia. Then, in October, almost surrounded by the Russians and with winter fast approaching, he abandoned the capital and embarked on the long, bitter retreat that destroyed his army. The month-long stay in Moscow was a pivotal moment in the war of 1812 the moment when the initiative swung towards the Tsar's armies and spelled doom for the invading Grand Army yet it has rarely been studied in the same depth as the other key events of the campaign.Alexander Mikaberidze, in this third volume of his in-depth reassessment of the war between the French and Russian empires, emphasizes the importance of the Moscow fire and shows how Russian intransigence sealed the fate of the French army. He uses a vast array of French, German, Polish and Russian memoirs, letters and diaries as well as archival material in order to tell the dramatic story of the Moscow fire. Not only does he provide a comprehensive account of events, looking at them from both the French and Russian points of view, but he explores the Russians' motives for leaving, then burning their capital. Using extensive eyewitness accounts, he paints a vivid picture of the harsh reality of life in the remains of the occupied city and describes military operations around Moscow at this turning point in the campaign.

This account of Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia, in the words of those who experienced it, offers “a brilliant insight into men at war” (David G. Chandler, author of The Campaigns of Napoleon). Hundreds of thousands of men set out on that midsummer day of 1812. None could have imagined the terrors and hardships to come. They’d been lured all the way to Moscow without having achieved the decisive battle Napoleon sought—and by the time they reached the city, their numbers had already dwindled by more than a third. One of the greatest disasters in military history was in the making. The fruit of more than twenty years of research, this superbly crafted work skillfully blends the memoirs and diaries of more than a hundred eyewitnesses, all of whom took part in the Grand Army’s doomed march on Moscow, to reveal the inside story of this landmark military campaign. The result is a uniquely authentic account in which the reader sees and experiences the campaign through the eyes of participants in enthralling day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour detail.

More than a third of a million men set out on that midsummer day of 1812: none can have imagined the terrors and hardships to come. They would be lured all the way to Moscow without having achieved the decisive battle Napoleon sought; and by the time they reached the city their numbers would already have dwindled by more than a third. One of the greatest disasters in military history was in the making. The fruit of more than twenty years of research, this superbly crafted work skilfully blends the memoirs and diaries of more than a hundred eyewitnesses, all of whom took part in the Grand Army’s doomed march to Moscow, to reveal the inside story of this landmark military campaign. The result is a uniquely authentic account in which the reader sees and experiences the campaign through the eyes of participants at each stage of the advance in enthralling day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour detail.

Alexander I was a ruler with high aspirations for the people of Russia. Cosseted as a young grand duke by Catherine the Great, he ascended to the throne in 1801 after the brutal assassination of his father. In this magisterial biography, Marie-Pierre Rey illuminates the complex forces that shaped Alexander's tumultuous reign and sheds brilliant new light on the handsome ruler known to his people as "the Sphinx." Despite an early and ambitious commitment to sweeping political reforms, Alexander saw his liberal aspirations overwhelmed by civil unrest in his own country and by costly confrontations with Napoleon, which culminated in the French invasion of Russia and the burning of Moscow in 1812. Eventually, Alexander turned back Napoleon's forces and entered Paris a victor two years later, but by then he had already grown weary of military glory. As the years passed, the tsar who defeated Napoleon would become increasingly preoccupied with his own spiritual salvation, an obsession that led him to pursue a rapprochement between the Orthodox and Roman churches. When in exile, Napoleon once remarked of his Russian rival: "He could go far. If I die here, he will be my true heir in Europe." It was not to be. Napoleon died on Saint Helena and Alexander succumbed to typhus four years later at the age of forty-eight. But in this richly nuanced portrait, Rey breathes new life into the tsar who stood at the center of the political chessboard of early nineteenth-century Europe, a key figure at the heart of diplomacy, war, and international intrigue during that region's most tumultuous years.