WITH and AGAINST NAPOLEON - Benedict Peter

With and against Napoleon

War memoirs 1806-1818

Oberwachtmeister Benedikt Peter (1785-1863) is one of those participants in the Napoleonic Wars about whom we have only very incomplete information and are largely dependent on what he wrote about himself. The story of Superintendent Benedict Peter is a very personal one, not at all whimsical and rarely pursuing grand contexts, yet it is profoundly true to the point of feeling like a confession. In the summer of 1809, as a twenty-four-year-old mounted hunter, Peter went off to his first war, in which he experienced the battles of Abensberg and Eggmühl in Bavaria and Linz in Austria. Three years later he was drawn to Russia, where the slaughter of the Battle of Borodino awaited him, followed by a retreat through the Russian winter with the infamous Battle of the Berezina River. In 1813, on the second day of the Battle of Leipzig, the Württemberg cavalrymen switched to the side of the anti-Apoleonic coalition, and Peter and his comrades would have three more years to fight against the Emperor of the French. The memoir is a marvelous, life-written story that astonishes with a style, composition, and grip that no one would expect from a man who taught himself to read and write as a self-taught man after his first promotion. Peter's narrative flows like water, and there are so many strong points that it is at times breathtaking. Peter's story is certainly one of the best that has been produced in the wide range of memoirs and reminiscences of the Napoleonic Wars. In addition, it is one of the few German-language sources available in English translation. The translation is accompanied by extensive notes by historian Jiří Kovařík.

• Elka Press, Prague 2023
• Jiří Ohlídal
• 224 pages
• Format :148 x 210 mm
• Black and white photographs
• ISBN 978-80-87057-49-0

This book is in Czech language only!