ARMS AND THE WOMAN - The Diaries of Baron Boris Uxkull 1812-1819 by Uxkull, Baron Boris

New York, Macmillan 1966. first US edition, hard bound in dust jacket, 6 x 9, VG/VG- ( dj light edge wear and price clipped ), 319 pages, several illus, index............................................ Never before published, this is an account, by someone who was actually present, of Napoleon's fateful Russian campaign. The young Boris von Uxkull was an Estonian nobleman attached to the Russian headquarters staff. He was a valiant soldier and a patriot, but he had an independent mind, and he was able to perceive the darker sides and the paradoxes of war.Altogether, he took part in seventeen battles, first with the rank of Cornet, and later rising to Lieutenant. He was a member of the Allied Armies that entered Paris in 1814, and he took a full part in the life of gallantry that succeeded the harder life of a wartime officer. But Uxkull had never been obsessed by his military duties to the exclusion of all else, even during the hardest campaigns, and some of his amorous adventures en route bring Casanova to mind.The second part of these diaries, covering the years 1818 to 1819, describes one of the greatest amorous adventures in Uxkull's life, which began when he was studying philosophy in Heidelberg after his release from the Army.