The traditional Western account of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia suggests that the French were able to advance deep into Russia in 1812 because they used superior tactics and were faced with Russian forces that were disunited and poorly led. After the inconclusive battle of Borodino, Napoleon’s army entered Moscow, but began to retreat as the weather worsened. It was ‘General Winter’ that was responsible for destroying the French army and sending the remnants of Napoleon’s bedraggled Grande Armée back to France with their tails between their legs. For the Russians, 1812 has been portrayed as a great national victory, and Tolstoy’s depiction of the events of the year in War and Peace has become the standard narrative in Russia itself. For Tolstoy, it was the strength and resilience of the ordinary Russian soldier that defeated the French and he portrayed theRussian commander-in-chief, Kutuzov, as epitomizing the virtues of the common man, very different from the aristocratic generals who had allowed Napoleon to penetrate so deeply into Russia. The Romanovs used the experience of 1812 to promote their vision of a Russian nation united with its rulers, and the centenary of Napoleon’s defeat in 1912 was marked as an important part of the attempts by Nicholas II to promote national unity.

Dominic Lieven’s outstanding book gives a very different view of the conflict between Russia and Napoleon. He provides a straightforward chronological account of the diplomatic and military engagements between Russia and France, tracing the relationship between the two states from the meeting between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I at Tilsit in 1807, where the two rulers signed an alliance, to the Russian invasion of France in 1814 and the end of Napoleon’s reign. But the emphasis of Lieven’s narrative is distinct from both Western and Russian interpretations in two ways. First, he places the war between Russia and France firmly in its wider European context. As Lieven makes plain, this was a European struggle that encompassed the entire northern half of the continent and involved not just France and Russia but also Prussia, Austria, and Britain. Russian forces played the decisive role in defeating Napoleon, but it was only as part of a European coalition that Russia was able to drive Napoleon towards final defeat. The campaign of 1812 was only one element – albeit the most dramatic – of this continent-wide effort to reverse French imperial growth. Lieven also extends the chronology of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia to include the way in which the tables were turned on the French, as Russian armies pursued Napoleon across the Russian frontier, dealing a decisive blow to the French at the battle of Leipzig in October 1813. By March 1814, Russian troops were at the gates of Paris and, in a remarkable reversal of Napoleon’s entry into Moscow in September 1812, Tsar Alexander I led his troops down the Champs-Élysées.

The second area in which Lieven offers an original interpretation of the war against Napoleon is in his assessment of the quality of the commanders of the Russian forces and the strategy that they pursued. He provides perceptive and illuminating portraits of some of the officers who led the Russian troops: Aleksei Ermolov, for example, was a man of great charisma, chief of staff to Barclay de Tolly in the summer of 1812, and not afraid to stand up to his commander and argue for a very different strategy against the French, while the two-metre-tall Dmitrii Neverovsky showed immense bravery andconsiderable care for the soldiers under his command, inspiring great loyalty from his men. The quality of Russian military leadership was high, Lieven suggests, and he argues that Russian strategy was carefully thought out and far from being just the haphazard and stumbling response to French activity that is often suggested. In particular, Lieven highlights the way in which the Russians mounted a determined counter-offensive against theFrench as Napoleon began to retreat from Moscow. The ‘Russian advance’, as he describes it, was carefully planned, and Alexander I himself was enthusiastic to drive the French out of Russia. Rather than Napoleon’s army struggling back westwards, harried by Russian partisans, Lieven demonstrates how the Russian armies deliberately drove the French out of Russian territory. This was a difficult and complex military operation, and the book also emphasizes the strength of the logistical support that the Russian troops enjoyed as they attacked the French. The Russian army was reliant on a continuous supply of high-quality horses, both as cavalry mounts and as draught animals, and it was able to acquire horses from provinces deep in European Russia, while the army made sure that ill or wounded horses were sent back to the countryside for rest and rehabilitation. Lieven is careful, however, not to overestimate the extent of Russian power, especially in his discussion of the financial resources that Russia could mobilize to support its military operations. While the Romanov empire was able to sustain the costs of a difficult war, it did place huge strains on the imperial treasury. Russia’s victory over Napoleon was earned at great cost: the country’s finances were placed under immense strain and the outcome of the war hung in the balance during 1812 itself, with Russia eventually able to triumph only as part of a wider European alliance against the French.

Lieven’s book is an exceptional piece of historical writing. He demonstrates a close and comprehensive knowledge of the Russian military, grounded in its political and social setting, and utilizes this to provide an original and convincing account of the struggle between Russia and Napoleonic France. This will become the definitive account of the war of 1812.