With Napoleon's Guns

The Military Memoirs of an Officer of the First Empire

In 1795 – the year Napoleon Bonaparte was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the French army in Italy – the seventeen-year-old Jean-Nicolas-Auguste Noel entered the Artillery School at Chalons. A year later, with Napoleon proclaiming himself the liberator of Italy, Noel was appointed second lieutenant in the 8th Regiment of Horse Artillery. Written in 1850, With Napoleon's Guns is his remarkable memoir of two decades in the Emperor's service. A trained artilleryman himself, Napoleon dramatically transformed the role of artillery from a cumbersome and tactically limited force into a fluid, independent and highly mobile trans d'artillerie. This new organisation required fresh, new officers who could act on their own initiative – officers such as Noel.

From the optimism of the early years in Italy , through the privations of the retreat from Moscow and the horrors of the Battle of Leipzig to the disillusionment of the Emperor's defeat at Waterloo, Noel charts both his personal career and, at close hand, the rise and fall of the First Empire with frankness and percipience. Based on his journal he kept from his cadetship at Chalons, With Napoleon's Guns is a revealing account of an officer at the heart of Napoleon's army.

SELLING POINTS:

• A detailed personal commentary from one of Napoleon's senior artillery officers.
• The author was a participant in operations in Spain, the invasion of Russia, and the Battle of Waterloo
• Contains rare eye-witness accounts from the Revolutionary Wars under Napoleon.

Illustrated with a central plate section. It was during the invasion of Russia in 1812 that Jean-Nicolas-Auguste Noel was appointed to the command of an artillery train squadron. He was involved in the Battle of Leipzig and the defence of Paris in 1814. He rallied to Napoleon upon the latter's return from Elba to fight in the Waterloo campaign. After Waterloo he was Director of Artillery in Bayonne.