Napoleon’s retreat from Russia appears not as a self-explanatory historical memory but as the past a retired soldier makes his own through present choices. By continuing to hope for the Emperor’s return under the Restoration, the old soldier chooses to be a hero of the retreat; he then lives out that identity so uncompromisingly that the past he has claimed helps perpetuate his poverty and failure.

The Past Chosen from the Future

Sartre presents the soldier’s past as bound to a future-directed project rather than as a force that determines him from behind. The old soldier chooses not to join the government of Louis XVIII or adopt its new customs. He continues to hope for the Emperor’s triumphant return, conspires to hasten it, and prefers life as a retired soldier to service as an active one. Through these choices, he takes the retreat from Russia as his own heroic past.

The contrast with another possible life makes the point explicit: a soldier who had formed the project of joining the new government would not have chosen the same past. The retreat remains the same historical reference, but its meaning in an individual life depends on the end toward which that person acts. The past is not first an independent cause that dictates a present; it becomes this soldier’s past through the future he chooses.

Conduct and the Burden of a Chosen Identity

The soldier’s commitment is visible in his circumstances and behavior. He lives in almost indecent poverty, is embittered, and longs for the Emperor’s return. Sartre reverses the apparent causal order: the soldier is not simply driven by an already settled heroic past. Rather, his continued longing and refusal to accommodate the Restoration express the past he has chosen to be.

Once claimed, however, that past is not merely an idea he can set aside. His conduct realizes it, and there is no separation between choosing the identity and acting it out. He seeks to make his past glory an intersubjective reality, so that it can exist as an objectivity for others as well as for himself. Officials, for example, react to the danger represented by old soldiers. Their treatment of him places his chosen identity within a public world of judgment and consequence.

Social Judgment and Consequence

Being treated by others as a representative of the old imperial cause helps shape what the soldier does next. He acts in a way he takes to be worthy of the past he has claimed, becoming intransigent and losing every chance of a pension. His poverty is thus linked not only to his political situation but also to his effort to remain faithful to a self-defined heroic history. He cannot accept conduct that would make him, in his own terms, unworthy of that past.

The example therefore holds freedom and constraint together. The past does not exist as an independent power that mechanically governs the present; yet once the soldier has chosen it, it becomes an integral condition of his project and presses upon his subsequent conduct. The identity is freely assumed, but its public realization and the soldier’s fidelity to it make it increasingly demanding.

Meaning in the World

Sartre’s example gives historical memory a social as well as personal dimension. A freely chosen past appears in the world, enters relations with other people, and becomes available for their evaluation. The soldier’s heroic self-understanding cannot remain private: his behavior, the officials’ reactions, and his lost pension all give it consequences beyond his own intention.

The retreat from Russia thus illustrates a central tension in Sartre’s account of the past: people choose its meaning in light of what they are trying to become, then encounter that meaning as a concrete obligation embedded in their actions and relations. The soldier chooses the hero of Beresina as his past; in trying to live up to that choice, he is also devoured by it.