1812: The Great Retreat

1812: The Great Retreat tells the story of the end of the most famously disastrous campaign in history, using the words of the survivors to describe their desperate withdrawal from Russia. Napoleon's campaign had begun with more than a third of a million men setting out on what was to be a long and terrible march to the glittering city of Moscow. Only 100,000 were to reach it. Forced to turn back in the face of winter's onset, almost nothing of the drastically reduced army lived to recross the Niemen River. Using the words of 160 of the participants, Paul Britten Austin brings unparalleled authenticity and immediacy to his unique account of the end of Napoleon's dramatic and tragic 1812 campaign.