another book from the Wilkin, or rather a trilogy about the 1500 letters from Napoleonic soldiers kept in the Archives of Liège and reproduced in 3 volumes (in french)
With the trilogy 'Lettres de Soldats au service de la France', produced with his father René Wilkin, Bernard Wilkin, archivist at the State Archives in Liège, gives a voice to the more than 25,000 people of Liège who enlisted in the armies of the French Republic and Empire between 1795 and 1815. A unique, human and moving testimony.
For 20 years, the current province of Liège was a department of the French Republic and then of the French Empire. More than 25,000 of its sons participated in the wars of this era. They wrote to their families to recount their training, their suffering, their hopes, their loves, and their vision of the countries they crossed.
The State Archives in Liège have preserved 1,500 of these letters. For the first time, they are published in their entirety, in an edition whose text has been translated into a language understandable to our contemporaries, while respecting as closely as possible the expression of our ancestors.
Full version with commentary. Volume I: 1795-1809 & Volume II: 1810-1812 (2 volumes, the 3rd will follow soon), General Archives of the Kingdom, Brussels, 2025, 487 p. and 601 p., €60 (€30 per volume).
Several letters preserved in the State Archives in Liège have been published. Some 150 letters written between 1800 and 1814 by conscripts in the Napoleonic army were published in early 2019 by Bernard and René Wilkin in the book 'Lettres de grognards / la Grande Armée en campagne'. In 2015, the same authors translated several letters from Napoleonic soldiers from the Ourthe department into english in the book 'Fighting for Napoleon: French Soldier’s Letters 1799-1815'. Published in January 2018, their book 'Fighting the British: French Eyewitness Accounts from the Napoleonic Wars' examines the Napoleonic campaigns that pitted the French against the British from a French perspective. It once again features letters from Napoleon’s soldiers from Liège.
