The book contains memories of participants in the Patriotic War of 1812 and the foreign campaign of the Russian army, which ended with the ceremonial entry into Paris in 1814. These testimonies, belonging to a variety of people - officers and soldiers, clergy and nobles, merchants and city dwellers, foreigners in the Russian service, servants and serfs - have either never been published before, or, published in periodicals, were beyond the sight of historians . Only now, two hundred years after the Patriotic War of 1812, do they take their place in the history of the victory of the Russian people over the Napoleonic invasion.