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“These Memoirs are the findings of a professional soldier, sitting in judgment upon the foremost soldier of fortune the world has known. But they are something more than that. They are the observations of a man of the Old Régime, whose lot had been cast in with the new Empire. The soldier who wrote them was a statesman as well—a diplomatist of the school of Talleyrand, but without any of that strange creature’s womanish ways. He was also—and one often feels the lack of this quality in memorialists who were near Napoleon—an administrator of sufficient skill to comprehend the Emperor’s plans, and to do justice to the recording of them. And finally, he was a man with physical energy enough to match, and on occasion to outdo, the Emperor’s own.”
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Marquis de Caulaincourt (9 December 1773 - 19 February 1827) in his own right, Duke of Vicenza by creation of Napoleon, the author was born to the profession of arms. He came of an ancient feudal family, with a strong military tradition. In contrast to many of Napoleon’s followers, he was not a mere soldier of fortune. As Napoleon’s Master of Horse, his Ambassador to Russia, and twice his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Caulaincourt was over a long period also Napoleon’s political adviser. His memoirs are a comprehensive picture of the Russian campaign—that supreme crisis of Napoleon’s career—by a soldier who was a skilful enough statesman to understand the Emperor’s plans and to do justice to the recording of them. Caulaincourt, who was four years younger than Napoleon, died in 1827 at the age of 54.
