The Memoirs of General Baron De Marbot

Here is a man who rode beside the men who made history, and he wrote it down. General Baron de Marbot served as aide de camp to Napoleon's Marshals and went on missions for the Emperor himself. He was present at Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau, Wagram, and Waterloo, usually in positions where he could see exactly how decisions were made at the highest levels. This is not the sanitized memoir of a general writing about his own glory. This is a witness, writing from inside the room where the orders went out. Born into the French nobility in 1782, Marbot came of age as his world burned. The Revolution swept away his family's privilege; the Empire gave him a chance to remake himself. He took it. What emerges from these pages is a man who loved the excitement of battle, respected the genius of Napoleon, and retained enough honesty to show the chaos and cruelty that purely military accounts usually erase. He is funny, vain, observant, and vivid. Two centuries later, you are still reading the closest thing to hearing someone who was actually there.