Before you is a unique book: a true history of the war of 1812! The largest Russian expert on the Napoleonic era, a well-known historian, Yevgeny Ponasenkov, studied tens of thousands of documents stored in the archives of Russia and Europe, as well as diaries and memoirs of participants in the events - and managed to create a fundamentally new description of that grandiose campaign. The impeccable accuracy of the scientific presentation is combined with a bright and elegant manner of presentation of the material. For the first time, a detailed description of the life of all layers of Russian society was given, the economic, diplomatic and cultural aspects of what happened were investigated. You will learn about the true plans and actions of Napoleon and Alexander I, about what happened in parallel with the invasion of the civil war in Russia, about the behind-the-scenes "battles" and intrigues of the world of professional scientists and state propaganda.