Les Campagne
de Russie 1812

Book Review

Reviewed by Yves Martin

La Campagne de Russie (1812): vue par Albrecht Adam et Christian Wilhelm von Faber du Faur

(The 1812 Russian campaign as seen by Albrecht Adam and Christian Wilhelm von Faber du Faur)

Author: Alain Pigeard
Pages: 82 pages
Illustrations: 150+, many in color.
Maps: One, with text outlining the day-by-day progress of the 4th Corps
Footnotes: None
Appendices: None, but there are 16-1/2 pages of very detailed orders of battle for the Grande Armée at the start of the 1812 campaign (down to the number of men in each regiment and the name of the commander of each battalion and squadron!). By comparison, the Russian Army is summarized in a half page.
Bibliography: Numerous manuscripts in the French National Archives, Napoleon's correspondence (32 volumes), and 61 memoirs and other books (in French) are cited.
Index: None
Publisher: This is special issue #3 of Tradition Magazine, published by L.C.V. Services, 25 rue Bargue, 75015 Paris, phone: 33 1 40 61 97 67, fax: 33 1 40 61 96 33
Publication Date: 1998
Binding: Paper (softcover, intended for newsstands)
ISBN: None
Price: 99 FF ($15)
Summary: This is an inexpensive but attractive compendium of Adam's and Faber du Faur's artwork related to the 1812 campaign. There is much material published here for the first time. All the text is in French, but the eyewitness illustrations and detailed charts can be appreciated in any language.

Albrecht Adam was an artist who followed the Grande Armée during the 1809 campaign against Austria, and, more importantly, throughout the 1812 campaign in Russia attached to Prince Eugène's staff as an official artist. [Eugène was Napoleon's stepson and commander of the French 4th Corps.]

Faber du Faur was an artillery officer from Würtemberg with a gift for drawing. Both survived the famous retreat and returned with an extensive series of drawings which they subsequently published. Alain Pigeard is a regular contributor to the French Tradition Magazine (not to be confused with the older British magazine of the same title), and is the author of several scholarly works on Napoleonic military matters. His massive volume on the French Napoleonic Army, L'armée Napoléonienne, stands unchallenged in size and scope.

Alain Pigeard obtained the drawings by Adam and du Faur, as well as some color copies previously unpublished, in German libraries which hold the original drawings. These illustrations truly represent the core value of the book. Pigeard has written a concise description of the campaign (with a strong pro- French flavor!) and also provided an exhaustive order of battle for the Grande Armée as of June 1812.

The quality of the reproductions is excellent for a book of this price. Each page has two or three reproductions. The only criticism is that they are unfortunately quite small in some cases, so some detail is lost. This is the closest you can come to photo-journalism in the Age of Napoleon!

Pigeard also includes some of Adam's work from the 1809 period. His captions (in French) are quite insightful and may be of more interest than his description of the 1812 campaign [for more comprehensive narratives of the Russian campaign, refer to George F. Nafziger's classic, Napoleon's Invasion of Russia, recently republished in paperback by Presidio Press, or Paul Britten Austin's 3-volume epic by Greenhill].

Everything considered, this small publication is highly recommended. Readers may be interested to know that L.C.V. Services, publisher of Tradition Magazine, is also a book mail-order firm and they offer some extremely attractive uniform plates (Benigni and Rousselot) published by the organization "Le Bivouac" in association with the famous Musée de l'Empérie.

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