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Article: The war of the two emperors: the duel between Napoleon and Alexander: Russia, 1812.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- December 19, 1986
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1986 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Napoleon 1812, by Nigel Nicolson (Harper & Row, 192 pp., $16.95) The War of the Two Emperors: The Duel between Napoleon and Alexander: Russia, 1812, by Curtis Cate (Random House, 488 pp., $24.95)
NAPOLEON'S disastrous invasion of Russia is a vertiginously exciting, depressing, and unsettling subject; and for a host of confused and confusing reasons. One such reason is the six-month-long invasion itself--an exotic, titanic, tragic spectacle. But even here there is the question of point of view. Tolstoi's War and Peace must make us "Russian' in some way, indelibly. Yet Tolstoi's fictional dismemberment of Napoleon is itself a tribute to the force of what is ...