LIVING WITH THE GRANDE ARMÉE - Being a Soldier in the Age of Napoleon

In fifteen years, the Napoleonic Grande Armée, an unmatched war machine, won more victories than any other army before or after it... Austerlitz, Jena, the Moskova, Leipzig and Waterloo have already generated much ink, but these battles are often analysed from the standpoint of strategy and tactics.

Yet the Napoleonic Wars were above all a human story. For France alone, nearly 2,300,000 men experienced the anguish of waiting and departure, the crossing of an entire continent, the hardships of life on campaign and the chaos of battle. Enthusiastic or resigned, deserter or hero, each man responded according to his personal history. For 15 years, these soldiers were the central yet anonymous actors in a great human lottery from which many never returned. They often kept notebooks in which they recorded daily the details of the extraordinary events they lived through, and as soon as the imperial epic was over, many were quick to recount their military adventures. The sources are therefore abundant, and stand in contrast to the silence of earlier periods in which soldiers' voices are so rare.

A ground-level history, from recruitment and the parting from family to the difficult return to civilian life, taking in instruction and training, brotherhood and solidarity, the importance of correspondence and maintained ties, the central role of love, wounds and trauma.