1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow. Adam Zamoyski

his back. There was no trace of the previous day’s preoccupation, and he seemed happy, occasionally humming military marches to himself as he looked down on what one witness termed ‘the most extraordinary, the most grandiose, the most imposing spectacle one could imagine, a sight capable of intoxicating a conqueror’.³⁷

      ‘The army was in full dress, and from the top of the hill on which the Emperor stood, one could see it file across the three bridges on the Niemen in perfect order,’ recalled Nicolas Louis Planat de la Faye, an aide-de-camp standing close by. The units marched up, one after the other, converging from different directions, on the heights that dominated the left bank of the Niemen. They then descended to cross one of the three bridges over the river, and deployed on the flat right bank. ‘Each regiment marched behind its band, which played fanfares that mingled with cries of “Vive l’Empereur.