Berezina: From Moscow to Paris Following Napoleon's Epic Fail

To my late mother, Marie-Claude Tesson-Millet

“Nevertheless, anything that breathed set forth.”

—SERGEANT BOURGOGNE, Memoirs

“Extreme abulia! In order to escape from it, I sometimes read the odd book about Napoleon. Sometimes, other people’s courage acts like a tonic.”

—CIORAN, Cahiers, January 17, 1958

“I’m reading the recollections of Captain Coignet, in which four Frenchmen often triumph over ten thousand Cossacks. Times have changed.”

—PAUL MORAND, Journal inutile, Volume II

BEREZINA: River in Belarus, a tributary of the Dnieper River, 349 miles long. It was the scene of one of Napoleon’s battles against the Tsar’s troops in 1812, during the famous French Retreat from Moscow.

In colloquial French, a bérézina refers to a disastrous situation.