THE DIARY OF A
NAPOLEONIC FOOT SOLDIER
http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/Amazon/Diary_of_a_Nap_Foot_Soldier.htmWhen eighteen-year-old German stonemason
Jacob Walter was conscripted into the Grand Army of Napoleon, he had no idea of
the trials that lay ahead. The long, gruelling marches in
Though there are numerous surviving
accounts of the Napoleonic Wars written by officers, Walter's is the only known
memoir by a draftee, and as such is a unique and fascinating document -- a
compelling chronicle of a young soldier's loss of innocence as well as an
eloquent and moving portrait of the profound effects of war on the men who
fight it.
Honest, heartfelt, deeply personal yet
objective, The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier is more than an
informative and absorbing historical document -- it is a timeless and
unforgettable account of the horrors of war.
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Eighteen-year-old German stonemason Jakob Walter served in
the Grand Army of Napoleon between 1806 and 1813. His diary intimately records
his trials: the long, grueling marches in
As a common soldier, Walter had a limited view of the scope of the
campaigns he was involved in. By far the greater part of his time was spent on
the march, and most of his memoir concerns foraging; he
speaks of the difficulty of forcing peasants to show where their food was
hidden. He describes the extremes of heat and cold (made worse because he
abandoned his extra clothing in the hot weather, and then suffered in the cold)
and notes that more soldiers died from thirst than anything else, because there
was very little good water on the route. At times he survived on dough balls
made from looted flour mixed with muddy water and roasted in a fire; for almost
a week he lived on a jar of honey he dug up from where a peasant had hidden it.
As both a German and a conscript, Walter had no particular loyalty to Napoleon. He
rarely mentions him, and when he does he generally refers to him simply as
"Bonaparte." He had no knowledge of the larger strategy of the
campaign; his descriptions of combat are chaotic, as in his description of the
assault on the city of Smolensk on August 17, 1812:
So, as soon as day broke —we marched against the city. The river was
crossed below the city. The suburbs on the northern side were stormed, set on
fire, and burned up. My company's doctor, named Staüble, had his arm shot away
in crossing the stream, and he died afterward. No longer could I pay any
attention to my comrades and, therefore, knew not in what way they perished or
were lost. Everyone fired and struck at the enemy in wild madness, and no one
could tell whether he was in front, in the middle, or behind the center of the
army.
Walter records that after the fall of Moscow and the subsequent
retreat, the French commanders became more brutal to the men; he says that even
in retreat the commanders would inspect the men's weapons, and men who had rust
on their weapons were beaten with clubs "until they were near desperation."
Also, food became even harder to find, and several times he had to fight French
and German soldiers over scavenged wheat. In the bivouac at