 Her memoir, "The Cavalry Maiden", is a significant document of its era because few junior officers of the Napoleonic wars published their experiences, and because it is one of the earliest autobiographies in the Russian language.Nadezhda Durova was born in an army camp at Kiev, the daughter of a Russian major.Her father placed her in the care of his soldiers after an incident that nearly killed her in infancy when her abusive mother threw her out the window of a moving carriage.