Books: Aide’s Napoleon

WITH NAPOLEON IN RUSSIA—General de Caulaincourt—Morrow ($3.75).

General Armand de Caulaincourt, first Duke of Vicenza, was born in Picardy in 1773, became a soldier at the age of 14, a brevetted second lieutenant at 15, a member of the National Guard during the French Revolution, was jailed as an aristocrat at 19. In the turbulent years that followed, when military careers fell to young men. he became Napoleon’s aide-de-camp, was twice wounded, had seen 15 years of service at the age of 29. Two scandals darkened his life. He was unjustly suspected of responsibility for the murder of the Duke of Enghien, “one of the few instances of individual terrorism that Napoleon appears to have allowed himself.” In this killing Napoleon behaved like a modern gangster taking a rival for a ride; arranged the affair so that responsibility fell on the aristocratic Caulaincourt, who was at tlk, point of taking his life when he heard of Enghien s murder. Second blow came when Caulain-court fell in love with a married woman whose husband had left her, wanted her to get a divorce so he could marry her himself. Afraid of the scandal of his own divorce, Napoleon would not permit another in his court. Thus Caulaincourt, although he never betrayed the Emperor, distrusted him, always observed skeptically the genius who blinded and infatuated most of the soldiers with whom he was in contact.

Last week the Book-of-the-Month Club offered Caulaincourt’s recently discovered memoirs as its choice for December. Readers found it an extraordinary portrait of a despot at the moment of his greatest eminence and the beginning of his fall, might question its authenticity only because the story of its discovery seemed too pat to be believed. After Napoleon’s fall Caulaincourt lived in retirement, was stung to reply when rivals published memoirs that discredited him. His family withheld his exposures, fearing libel, until 1914. During the German invasion the manuscript was walled up in the Caulaincourt Chateau, lost when the chateau was blown up, found in 1933 when a garbled copy of the original was already going to press. Readers whose suspicions are awakened by such remarkable coincidences may be made more doubtful by the narrative speed and fluency of the memoirs, the dialogs which read like passages from a good novel, the portrait of Napoleon, which agrees so exactly with that of modern research. But they will be unable to discover contradictions or vagueness in the work itself, are likely to be convinced that it is “the most impressive close-up of Napoleon that we possess” and one of the major autobiographical discoveries of modern times.

With Napoleon in Russia begins in 1811, when Napoleon, confiding in no one, had already decided to go to war with Tsar Alexander. When Caulaincourt, who had been Russian Ambassador, warned him against the war, assured him that Alexander wanted peace, Napoleon said, “You speak like a Russian.” Napoleon insisted with mixed irritation and playfulness that Caulaincourt had become Alexander’s man. Forthright, convinced that the plan was suicide, Caulaincourt persisted even after he had been publicly humiliated by Napoleon, snubbed at receptions, rebuffed in his plans for marriage.

Unlike most accounts of the Russian campaign. Napoleon’s victories seem, in Caulaincourt’s account, almost more ‘terrible than the famed retreat from Moscow. Day after day Napoleon’s army raced after the fleeing Russians, whose complete disappearance seemed more mysterious and frightening as the troops became exhausted. None of Napoleon’s spies returned. Counting on peasants to supply information and food, he found the country deserted. Believing that a battle would lead Alexander to sue for peace, he feverishly pursued an army that spread so widely he could scarcely determine the direction of its flight. “I beat the Russians every time,” he exclaimed, “but that doesn’t get me anywhere.”

High point of With Napoleon in Russia is the description of Napoleon’s taking of Moscow, a triumph literally turned to ashes. Before the retreat, as the advance guard pushed on, Napoleon and most of his staff were nearly captured when the army and wandering Cossacks unexpectedly collided. During the retreat, Caul-aincourt saw refugees who were clinging to wagons fall off, be crushed beneath the wheels, while stupefied drivers were heartened at the lightening of their loads. He saw horses that fell, torn apart for food before they were killed. Pursuer and pursued mixed in a vast mass of suffering humanity, with isolated groups of French deep in Russian lines, crazed Cossacks lost among French refugees. Weary of slaughtering, Cossacks stole clothing, then gave their victims clothing they had stolen from others. Frightened at reports of an “idiotic” coup in Paris, alarmed at the lack of news, Napoleon fled with Caulaincourt across Poland and Germany to reach France ahead of news of the catastrophe. For 14 days they traveled, while Napoleon poured out his theories of monarchy, his opinions on his family and mistresses, discussed England, the future of the U. S.. the characters of his subordinates, to his embittered aide. He expressed no grief for his lost armies, displayed a gruesome cheerfulness as he neared Paris and decided that the surprise of his return would counteract the shock of defeat. Of the 600,000 soldiers who marched into Russia, only 1,000 of the Old Guard returned to Paris in order.