JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (1749-1832) was a German poet, writer, scientist, statesman, and one of the greatest German literary figures. Goethe, the eldest of seven children born in a wealthy Frankfurt family, studied law at the universities of Leipzig and Strasbourg. He wrote novels and poetry, dramas, treatises on botany and literary criticism, among which his successful novels The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795). Early in his life, Goethe was a member of the Sturm und Drang literary movement, emphasizing free expression of emotions over the restraints of rationalism. Later, Goethe, together with Friedrich Schiller, initiated the Weimar Classicism, a cultural movement based on a synthesis of Romanticism, Classicism and the Enlightenment.

FROM MY LIFE: POETRY AND TRUTH, PART FOUR 519
Book Sixteen 522
Book Seventeen 535
Book Eighteen 555
Book Nineteen 576
Book Twenty 594
CAMPAIGN IN FRANCE 1792. SIEGE OF MAINZ 607
Introduction 609
Campaign in France 1792 618
Siege of Mainz 749
NOTES 777
From My Life: Poetry and Truth 779
Part Four 779
Campaign in France 1792 784
Siege of Mainz 798

An authoritative English translation of Goethe's classic autobiographical account of war and conquest in the age of revolution
In August 1792, Goethe accompanied Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, during the Prusso-Austrian invasion of revolutionary France to restore Louis XVI as king. After the Cannonade of Valmy that September, the German armies were forced to retreat, never again to threaten the heart of France until the end of the Napoleonic era. The French subsequently invaded the Rhineland and captured the city of Mainz, claiming it for the French Republic. When German armies besieged Mainz, Goethe witnessed the capture of the city at the close of 1793.
Goethe's narrative of these events has become a classic text for the history of Franco-German relations during the revolutionary period. A product of recollection, historical hindsight, and considerable study of other published sources, it is a fascinating document of the military catastrophe exposing the decline of Prussian power since the death of Frederick II, which eventually culminated in Napoleon's devastating 1806 victory at Jena and Auerstedt.