comte de Philippe-Paul Ségur

Born in Paris in 1780, Philippe-Paul, comte de Ségur was the son of Louis Philippe, comte de Ségur. He entered the cavalry in 1800, served in the Grisons campaign under General Macdonald, and soon joined Napoleon’s circle through the emperor’s staff.

Ségur combined military service with diplomacy, taking part in major events of the Napoleonic period and later turning those experiences into books. He became especially known for his account of Napoleon’s 1812 Russian campaign, a work valued for its immediacy because it came from someone who had been there.

After the empire, he built a second life as a man of letters and historian. He lived a long life, dying in Paris in 1873, and remains one of the most widely read memoirists of the Napoleonic era.