History Of Napoleon’s Expedition To Russia 1825. This first edition two-volume set is titled “History Of The Expedition To Russia, Undertaken By The Emperor Napoleon, In The Year 1812.” and it was written by General, Count Philip De Segur, with a map and five engravings, and published in London by Treuttel and Wurtz, Treuttel, Jun. and Richter, 30 Soho-Square in 1825. It was published by Treuttel and has the map and the five engravings, as called for, which make it a first edition. Comte Philip de Segur (also Philippe-Paul, Count de Segur, 1780- 1873) was a French general and historian. He enlisted in the cavalry in 1800 and served under General Macdonald, a Marshal of the Empire and military leader during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. De Segur fought in Switzerland in 1801 and published an account of the campaign in 1802, and through connections to another French general, De Segur was attached to the personal staff of Napoleon. He served through most of the important campaigns of the empire and was frequently employed on diplomatic missions. During the campaign in Poland in 1807, he was taken prisoner by the Russians, but was exchanged at the Peace of Tilsit. For his diplomatic duties, he was promoted to colonel, but was wounded in Spain and compelled to return to France. As general of a brigade, he took part in the Russian campaign of 1812 and produced these books in 1825. They chronicle the invasion of Russia by the French Grande Armee in 1812. The battle lasted from October to December of that year, and the French army was forced to retreat after the Russian forces refused to engage with them, which resulted in the deaths of more than 400,000 French soldiers, the vast majority of them from cold and starvation, and the two books portray the catastrophic disaster suffered by the French. Both volumes have paper labels on brown spines, blue cloth covers, blank endpapers inscribed “William Jones, Cyfarthfa, November 18th 1839” on the front paste-downs (Cyfarthfa is in Wales), then the half-titles and a frontis portrait in each volume. Volume I has a frontis portrait of Napoleon, followed by a three-page Address to the Veterans of the Grand Army, a fold-out map of the Countries between Paris & Moscow “Shewing the Route of the French Army in their Disastrous Campaign 1812”, then 368 pages of text and the engravings opposite pages 125 and 309. Volume II has a frontis portrait of Alexander, the king of Russia from 1801 until his death in 1825. (Alexander ruled Russia during the Napoleonic Wars and suffered defeats as well as victories; his greatest triumph came in 1812 when Napoleon's invasion of Russia proved to be a disaster for the French.) After the title page, there are 406 pages of text, and this includes another engraving opposite page 265, so the map and all the engravings are present. The books are 8vo. and measure 9 1/4 x 6 in. wide, the bindings are tight, the pages and text are pretty clean, with light offset once in a while, light browning in the margins and browning on the edges of the pages, a few small corner creases and a few chips on the edges, small blue marks on the bottom of the last page of the first volume, and an important first-edition set of books that gives you a “you are there view” of the invasion of Russia from an insider’s perspective. #174 #1556