This weekend, I completed reading Tarlé's history of the 1812 campaign that was recommended in the "Stalwart Russians" thread a while ago. I was a little disappointed. The military operations are merely touched on. With this book alone, getting any reasonable idea of the campaign itself would be nearly impossible.
Ample space is given, on the other hand, to three main themes---
1. the Russian peasant, whether as regular soldier or as partisan, was incomparably brave and saved the country single-handedly although everyone else failed him;
2. the Russian elite, political or military, with the single exception of Kutusow, was weak, ignorant and corrupt, and spoke French better than Russian; especially the Tsar was a weakling who possessed the folly and impudence to care about Europe as a whole instead of only for Russia;
3. Kutusow's failure to stop the Grande Armée at the Berezina (or anywhere, for that matter) was not failure at all, but rather the deliberate master stroke of a genius: naturally, three more years of war for Europe and hundreds of thousands more casualties were to be preferred over sacrificing some thousand Russian soldiers in order to end the business there and then. (That tens of thousands of those precious soldiers died during the half-hearted pursuit to the Nyemen, more than any battle against a Grande Armée pinned against or trapped astride the Berezina could positively have cost, seems to have escaped the author.)
These three main themes are repeated over and over, but conclusive proof at least to me seemed to be wanting. In fact, I found the whole approach and style partisan and polemical rather than educating or academic. On the other hand, at least the heavily ideological stuff was confined to the first and last chapter.
In short, I would recommend the book only in order to understand better where some of the recurrent statements about 1812 seem to have originated at least partly. As a history of the campaign, I find it hard to take it seriously.
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D.S. "Green Horse" Walter, Maréchal d'Empire
Duc des Pyramides, Comte de Normandie
Commandant la [url="http://home.arcor.de/dierk_Walter/NWC/3_VI_AdR_Home.htm"]3e Division Bavaroise[/url], L'Armée du Rhin
Commandant [url="http://home.arcor.de/dierk_Walter/NWC/EdM_start.htm"]L'Ecole de Mars[/url], L'Armée du Rhin
Commandant la Brigade de Grenadiers de la Moyenne Garde
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