Sergeant Bourgogne - with Napoleon's Imperial Guard in the Russian campaign and on the retreat from Moscow - 1812-13 Adrien Bourgogne was a seasoned veteran before the campaign of 1812, but nothing in his experience prepared him for the horrors of the infamous retreat from Moscow. Believing he was settling into comfortable winter quarters, Bourgogne found himself together with his comrades of the Vélite Fusilier - Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard - on the road to the west. Bourgogne's account of the agonies of the Russian Winter exacerbated by hunger, brigands and the Russian enemy is graphic and without parallel. This is a story far beyond the common military memoir. It is almost surreal in its portrayal of the nightmarish scenes of the straggling column and the hellish infernos of burning towns. A memoir of war in the raw and an utterly unforgettable classic Napoleonic experience of conflict.