An account of my life, Aart Kool, 1787-1862

"In 1812 Aart Kool was a young Dutch engineering officer in Napoleon’s army on the march to Moscow. Of the 600,000 troops in that infamous campaign, only 15,000 made it home. Aart was one. Twenty-five years later he wrote a vivid and engrossing account of his involvement in this setback for the French empire. A century later, on the anniversary of Napoleon’s defeat, his story was published in a Rotterdam newspaper. Now, two hundred years after 1812, it has been translated into English and is published here for the first time." --Publisher description.