Arms and the Woman - The Diaries of Baron Boris Uxkull 1812-1819

The intimate journal of an amorous Baltic nobleman in the Napoleonic Wars. Boris Uxkull was an Estonian Russian officer in Napoleon's Russian campaign. He was present during Napoleon's fateful Russian campaign, attached to the Russian HQ staff. He was a valiant soldier and a patriot, but he had an independent mind, and he was able to perceive the darker sides and the paradoxes of war. Altogether he took part in seventeen battles, first with the rank of Cornet, and later rising to Lieutenant. He was a member of the Allied Armies that entered Paris in 1814, and he took a full part in the life of gallantry that succeeded the harder life of a wartime officer. But Uxkull had never been obsessed by his military duties to the exclusion of all else, even during the hardest campaigns, and some of his amorous adventures en route bring Casanova to mind. The latter part of his diaires cover his philosophy studies in Heidelberg, a trip down the Danube with Helene, and the management of his estates in Estonia...