"General Klugen’s memoirs: the storming of Praga in 1794." Topic

"…My general, Ivan Ivanovich von Klugen, never received a basic school education, and so in accordance with the practice of the time he entered military service at a very young age. Still, by nature he was gifted with sound judgment, the kind that cannot be acquired in any school, and being assigned to several headquarters staffs during his service, he was rubbing shoulders—as they say—with people of higher education. He was even in correspondence with the noted German writer and uniquely practical philosopher Zeime. At that time I knew nothing of that writer and listened coolly to the general's stories about this extraordinary person who was first the teacher of General Graf Igelström's children and then acted as his secretary in the rank of sublieutenant in the Russian service. The general told me things about the great Suvorov that I never found in any book, and most probably the following judgment on Suvorov was expressed to I.I. von Klugen by the renowned Zeime.

"It is yet too soon to judge Suvorov," said the general to me one day. (This was said only nine years after the hero's death on 12 May 1800.) "Everyone ranks Napoleon higher than Suvorov, and not only a great many foreigners, but even some of our own countrymen, fail to see in Suvorov the high qualities of a military commander, calling him a brave grenadier who conquered by means of sudden assault and determination, without regard for the lives of his brave soldiers.

They say that from all his campaigns Suvorov never deduced a single tactical or strategic rule, and that all his expertise was limited to "Hurrah, forward, at the bayonet!" There may be some truth in the accusations, but the accusers have not investigated the circumstances that forced Suvorov to act this way and not otherwise. Suvorov rated only Kutuzov (Mikhail Illarionovich, later field marshal and prince) as a general capable of deep strategic concepts. All other generals—he did not trust. Suvorov had his favorites, Prince Bagration and General Miloradovich, who were young, brave, and fiery warriors, and he called them his eagles and bayonet generals, but he dared not let his success depend on their judgment. He respected Generals Derfelden, Buxhoeveden, and some others, but he had full faith only in Russian courage and that was his method of victory, so that he was able to create in his soldiers unbounded trust in himself. "God is our general!" Suvorov often repeated. But those who knew Suvorov well and with whom he spoke seriously (of which there were very few) maintain that Suvorov was second to none as a military commander with the exception that he did not like dividing his forces into separate bodies but rather maneuvered with a concentrated force. Although the defeat at Zurich was not Rimskii-Korsakov's fault, since he had been abandoned by the Austrians, Suvorov nevertheless used even this to confirm his distrust of a separated corps. "Herman could eat up in Holland, but Korsakov was starved in Switzerland," Suvorov once remarked to General Derfelden, from which I draw the meaning: if he had been with me with his corps, in four months we would have sung God's praises together in Paris! Suvorov was a great man in the full sense of the word, but always liked to operate everywhere alone, with his soldiers, and credited all his victories to God and the tropos…"
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Amicalement
Armand

This memoire, seems to be a sadly overlooked source of interest- both here and in general.
Do we know if a full translation, ie. book in English, ever came of it?

Interesting stuff. Thanks Tango.

John