MILITARY LIFE UNDER NAPOLEON: The Memoirs of Captain Elze'ar Blaze

This is also the most complete translation of Blaze's book and it offers an insider's view of the Grande Armee, how it fought, how it lived, and the colorful people who made it up, marshals and generals, colonels and junior officers, and the mass of soldiers who did the marching, killing, and dying for their Emperor.

Blaze was a careful observer, and he had to ability to sum up in a few pithy phrases the general outlook of soldiers and veterans of one of the greatest armies that has marched through history, and the Grande Armee marched the length and breadth of Europe, and stabled its horses in every capital of continental Europe. His comment, 'The Grande Armee fought hard, seldom cheered, and always bitched' sums up the attitude of all who humped a pack across Europe from campaign to campaign, 'swift-marching, furious in the attack, grimly enduring, high-hearted, stubborn in disaster.' blaze also sums up the veterans viewpoint, especially after the fall of Napoleon and the return of the hated Bourbons:

'In the career of glory one gains many things; the gout and medals, a pension and rheumatism...And also frozen feet, an arm or leg the less, a bullet lodged between two bones which the surgeon cannot extract...All of those bivouacs in the rain and snow, all the privations, all those fatigues experienced in your youth, you pay for when you grow old. Because one has suffered in years gone by, it is necessary to suffer more, which does not seem exactly fair.'

This memoir is a must for every student of the period. It is a view of the daily life of a soldier in the Grande Armee, and that story is told with wit, verve, and an unerring eye for detail and descriptions of what went on from a soldier who usually did his duty.


Boring trivia   October 14, 2000
 3 out of 18 found this review helpful

I am a collector of memoirs of the French Revolution and 1st Empire and hope to use them to rewrite and complement the regimental histories that already exist. Unfortunately, many of these memoirs are vague and picturesque, but none of them are as rambling, disjointed and peppered with idiotic and inconsequential dialogues as this one. Blaze's banter and anecdotes often refer to periods prior to 1789. In all of Blaze's book there is only one interesting uniform detail: Captains and higher grades of the Young Guard flanker regiments wore their former blue Old Guard uniforms while the lower grades wore green.