The 34 days Napoleon spent in Moscow in the fall of 1812 predetermined the fate of the Great Army, and then the entire Napoleonic Empire. Pictures of the sad retreat of French troops in the harsh Russian winter became a vivid episode in the historical memory of the French for many generations. The former President of France, a member of the French Academy, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing tried to imagine how events would have unfolded if Napoleon had decided to retreat from Moscow a month earlier. After all, real history was separated from imaginary history, and defeat from victory was separated, according to the author, by only “a few tens of minutes of reflection of a brilliant mind.” Taking “War and Peace” as an artistic example, and as a historical source the memoirs of Adjutant Marshal Davout and the Imperial Almanac for 1812 year, Giscard d'Estaing presents a large-scale canvas of events, well known to the Russian reader, from an unusual angle.