H-France Review Vol. 13 (November 2013), No. 183 Marie-Pierre Rey, L’effroyable tragédie: Une nouvelle histoire de la campagne de Russie. Paris: Flammarion, 2012. 390 pp. 24€ (pb). ISBN-10: 2081228327.
Review by David A. Bell, Princeton University.
"Marie-Pierre Rey has now added to this expanding bookshelf with a long-needed, concise, up-to-date and readable summary of the Russian campaign as a whole.... L’effroyable tragédie can now take its place as the standard short history of France’s greatest military disaster....more than Lieven, Rey highlights Alexander’s many moments of uncertainty and despair as the long retreat threatened to become a disastrous rout, as the “holy city” of Moscow fell, and as Russian forces bereft of options then burned much of their once and future capital to the ground (just 122 of the city’s 329 churches survived the conflagration [p. 184])....Some of Rey’s claims about the campaign are quite traditional. She treats the Russian campaign as the great fatal blow to Napoleon’s empire, whereas some historians have recently highlighted the emperor’s ability to replenish the ranks of his armies afterwards, and pointed to moments at which he came close to eking out victories during the campaigns of 1813 and 1814.[7] Here, I think, Rey has it right. While Napoleon could replace men, he could not so easily replace either materiel or military experience, and with Prussia and Austria turning against him after the Russian catastrophe, ultimately a few additional favorable rolls of the dice would not have staved off final defeat....Given the length of Napoleon Bonaparte’s extraordinary career, it would be understandable if, by now, the bicentennial observances had induced a degree of scholarly fatigue. By the time the hardy battalion of Napoleon historians meets its Waterloo in two years time, it would be forgivable for its members collectively to want to banish all Napoleoniana off to Saint Helena along with the man himself. Yet the Russian campaign remains one of the most extraordinary examples of human folly and horror in all of history, and Rey’s able, excellent history should rightfully attract many readers."