George Grote

George Grote (1794-1871) was an English historian, banker, and political reformer, remembered above all for his twelve-volume History of Greece, which shaped how Victorian readers understood the ancient world. A founder of University College London and a Member of Parliament for the City of London, he wrote from a rationalist and democratic point of view. The companion narrative here comes from Philippe-Paul, comte de Ségur (1780-1873), a French general and aide to Napoleon whose eyewitness history of the 1812 Russian campaign became a classic of military memoir.