author
Jacques Fricasse
b. 1773
A French soldier-memoirist remembered for a vivid firsthand account of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, he writes with the directness of someone who lived the chaos he describes.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Best known as the author of Journal de marche du sergent Fricasse de la 127e demi-brigade, 1792-1802, he is identified in library and catalog records as Jacques Fricasse, born in 1773. The work is presented as the memoir or campaign journal of a sergeant in the French army during the years of the Revolution and the wars that followed.
The opening of the text, as reproduced by later editions and library listings, places his birth on February 13, 1773, in Autreville in Haute-Marne, France. Readers come to him less as a polished literary stylist than as a witness: the appeal of his book is its ground-level view of marching, fighting, and everyday military life.
Some catalog records differ on his death year, and the surviving biographical details appear limited, so it is safest to focus on the work itself. What remains clear is that Fricasse is associated with one of those rare soldier narratives that bring a turbulent period of French history down to a human scale.