[4] His father served in the French Army through the ancien régime and into the Republic, being made Count of the Empire by Napoleon shortly before his death in 1808.

[4] At the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792 Caulaincourt had been promoted to captain and was serving as an adjutant on the staff of his uncle, Louis-Auguste Juvénal des Ursins d'Harville.

His lineage as a noble made him suspect by the revolutionaries, causing Caulaincourt to volunteer to serve in the Paris National Guard as a common soldier.

He was used to pass on orders calling for the seizure and transport to Paris of Louis Antoine de Bourbon, the Duke of Enghien.

He was incensed that he had been used in this way, and the event forever gave supporters of the Bourbon monarchy a means by which to impugn Caulaincourt's integrity and honor.

During the subsequent French retreat from Moscow, Caulaincourt noted the disintegration of the army, and implored Napoleon to return directly to France to stabilize the political situation in Europe.

Caulaincourt signed the armistice of Pleswitz, June 1813, which suspended hostilities between France and Prussia and Russia for seven weeks.

The provision for Napoleon on the island of Elba after his abdication is credited to Caulaincourt, who reportedly was able to influence the Tsar Alexander I for this disposition.

Caulaincourt tried to persuade Europe of the emperor's peaceful intentions during the Hundred Days, but he was unsuccessful in this, culminating in the War of the Seventh Coalition.

Following Napoleon's second fall from power Caulaincourt's name was on the list of those proscribed for arrest and execution in what came to be known as the Second White Terror during the Second Restoration of the Bourbons.

His name was removed from the list by the personal intervention of the Tsar Alexander I. Caulaincourt lived in retirement in Paris.

Following the initial astonishing success of the German invasion of Russia in June 1941, military historian and theorist B. H. Liddell Hart coolly appraised the difficulties awaiting the Wehrmacht, citing Caulaincourt's work extensively in an article he published in the British magazine The Strand in October 1941.

[11] Friedrich von Mellenthin made reference to it in his memoir while describing the character of the Russian soldier, his stubbornness in defense, and his capacity to endure bombardments.

"[10] Besides Liddell Hart, William Shirer, the author of the famous book, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", also pointed briefly the impact of Caulaincourt's memoirs in the chapter, "A Turn of the Tide", when depicting the Battle of Moscow---

Now, Blumentritt remembered, the ghosts of the Grand Army, which had taken this same road to Moscow, and the memory of Napoleon’s fate began to haunt the dreams of the Nazi conquerors.

The German generals began to read, or reread, Caulaincourt’s grim account of the French conqueror’s disastrous winter in Russia in 1812.