D’Aupias, A Historic, Andecdotal, and Military Memoir of the French Campaign of 1812 in Poland and Russia
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This text presented here is an account of the campaign of 1812 written by a certain D’Aupias, chief of staff of the 3rd Cuirassier Division of Oudinot’s 2nd Corps, when he was held as a prisoner of war in Russia in 1813. The original manuscript is held in the Russian State Military Historical Archive (RGVIA) and apart from a few sentences quoted by Eugene Tarle in 1941, this is its first publication. As a staff officer D’Aupias had access to the inner workings of Oudinot’s headquarters, and he provides an interesting assessment of the war. Indeed, his account of events on the northern front, where Oudinot and St. Cyr spent months pinning down Wittgenstein’s forces, is especially important given that the large majority of the 1812 memoirs were written by participants serving in the central group led by Napoleon himself. D’Aupias’ sixty-eight-page account of the campaign up to his capture on 29 November, after the Grande Armée’s crossing of the Berezina, was finished by late January 1813. It is of particular interest for its “matter-of-fact ” style and because it was written in the immediate aftermath of the campaign.
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