NAPOLEON IN RUSSIA - The 1812 Campaign by Palmer, Alan

New York 1967, Simon & Schuster, US first edition, hard bound in dust jacket, , Fine/Fine condition , 6 1/2 x 9 1/2, 318 pages, illus, maps, notes, bibliog., index. ------------------------------------------------------------------- FOR NAPOLEON 1812 was the beginning of the end. The invasion of Russia, the stroke that was to be the crowning glory of his Empire, ended in disaster, defeat and humiliation. Tsar Alexander I, who only six months before had been an undisciplined ally, became the saviour of Europe, the vanquisher of the French. Later historians have judged the Russian expedition to be a monumental folly, doomed from its inception. It is Alan Palmer's thesis that Napoleon's defeat owed less to the commonly accepted factors — the vastness of the Tsar's Empire, the rigours of the Russian winter — than to the personalities involved. Napoleon was defeated because of the gulf between his conception of a quick war, decisively won, and the reality created by an enemy whose leadership vacillated and avoided action.---------------------------------------------------------------- With a brilliant use of sources (often hitherto neglected) and a gripping narrative power, this book follows, day by day, not only the development of the campaign, but also the Emperor's state of mind, his bad health and indecision, the quarrels of his marshals, the anxieties of his staff.Simultaneously the author traces the course of the retreating Russian armies and the bitter disputes between its commanders. As the story moves towards its climax among the flames of Moscow it is made abundantly clear that the great disaster was in fact the product of innumerable mistakes and omissions — Napoleon lost his army not by folly but by default, the Russians saved their country more by accident than by strategy.