Emperor Alexander I and His Entourage. Memoirs of a Lady-in-Waiting of Two Russian Empresses about the High Nobility during the Patriotic War of 1812

A representative of Polish-Lithuanian aristocracy, Countess Sophia de Choiseul-Gouffier was awarded the court title of lady-in-waiting in the retinue of the Russian Empresses Elizaveta Alexeevna (wife of Alexander I) and Maria Feodorovna (mother of Alexander I). In 1812, she met Russian Emperor Alexander I, with whom she developed a friendship that lasted until the end of the emperor's life. During the Patriotic War of 1812, she experienced the French occupation in Vilno, where she met Napoleon Bonaparte, demonstratively supporting the Russian emperor and his politics.

The present memoirs are not only personal memories of meetings with Emperors Alexander I and Napoleon, and Field Marshal M. I. Kutuzov, with whom she was also acquainted, but also a narrative about the reign of Alexander I, the Russo-French war, and the fate of Vilno during the occupation and liberation by the Russian army.

Published in full for the first time in Russian.