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When Napoleon's forces took Moscow, and after most of it had burned, they committed that classic fatal mistake of entering the besieged city's remains and then staying still way too long, rather than realizing that the Russians were still out there in force and would cause havoc for them on the way back, the same type of mistake the Germans made at Stalingrad... The works of Sun Tzu were never read much in them days...!!
Russia's vast territory has been used by the Russians to their advantage for many centuries, during battles with the Poles, Swedes, Turks, Tarters, and all the rest. Hitler and Napoleon both had limits as to how far they could practically invade, due to many factors, they just didn't know it!
The cold winters just helped along the process of defeat.....
When Napoleon's forces took Moscow, and after most of it had burned, they committed that classic fatal mistake of entering the besieged city's remains and then staying still way too long, rather than realizing that the Russians were still out there in force and would cause havoc for them on the way back, the same type of mistake the Germans made at Stalingrad... The works of Sun Tzu were never read much in them days...!!
Russia's vast territory has been used by the Russians to their advantage for many centuries, during battles with the Poles, Swedes, Turks, Tarters, and all the rest. Hitler and Napoleon both had limits as to how far they could practically invade, due to many factors, they just didn't know it!
The cold winters just helped along the process of defeat.....
Ah there are never enough Napolean topic's in this forum.
There is a debate on if Russia purposely traded space as a strategy or if it was out of neccessity. They held river crossings, were outflanked or defeated and forced to fall back. Then there was Borodino, which if anything proves that Russia gave everything they had to protect Moscow. But, they were able to refill their ranks, Napolean was not.
Other reasons for Napolean's defeat, besides the obvious ones you listed and the ones I listed (shock #1 for Napolean - Alexander would not sign terms after Moscow fell), where that Napolean's hands-on command style that worked so well in the past did not work over such a vast territory. His Marshalls were, for the most part, not innovators. Left alone in north or south Russia, they were not that resourcesful. Also, simply enough, Napolean was losing his mojo, he was getting older, losing energy, health issues, he was no longer on top of his game.
I hear on the Weather subforum, that Russia is not that cold. If this is true, then what beat Hitler and Napoleon? In history class, they tell you it is the cold weather that beat them.
I think your teacher gave you a simplified version of history. It is twice the distance from Berlin to Moscow as it is from Berlin to Paris. In addition, half the distance from Berlin to Paris is through home territory.
Supply lines are surely more significant than cold weather.
Ah there are never enough Napolean topic's in this forum.
There is a debate on if Russia purposely traded space as a strategy or if it was out of neccessity. They held river crossings, were outflanked or defeated and forced to fall back. Then there was Borodino, which if anything proves that Russia gave everything they had to protect Moscow. But, they were able to refill their ranks, Napolean was not.
Other reasons for Napolean's defeat, besides the obvious ones you listed and the ones I listed (shock #1 for Napolean - Alexander would not sign terms after Moscow fell), where that Napolean's hands-on command style that worked so well in the past did not work over such a vast territory. His Marshalls were, for the most part, not innovators. Left alone in north or south Russia, they were not that resourcesful. Also, simply enough, Napolean was losing his mojo, he was getting older, losing energy, health issues, he was no longer on top of his game.
This is one part that people often overlook about Napoleon's invasion. Napoleon had absolutely no intentions of conquering or occupying Russia. Napoleons reason for invasion was to force the Russians to remain in the Continental System and prevent Russia from launching an invasion of Poland whose reconstituted existence the Russians saw as a threat. What Napoleon expected would happen is that he would cross the border, the Russians would move to engage him, he would defeat them in a major battle and then Alexander would sign a treaty recognizing Poland and agreeing to remain in the Continental System.
To that end Napoleon actually made extensive logistics preparations. He stocked forward areas, assembled one of the largest baggage trains ever to that point and made extensive plans for how he was going to supply his army. Napoleons original target was Vilnius in Lithuania which served as the command post for the Russian army. When that failed to bring about a major battle or surrender, he went after Smolensk. When that failed to bring about a decisive battle or surrender he set out for Moscow. Moscow brought him Borodino which was a costly victory and then he entered Moscow. Still, no surrender despite Napoleons best attempts to secure one.
The real story isn't Napoleons retreat, it's what happened along the way from the river Niemen to Moscow. To say that Russia had a road network would be a gross overstatment. For the most part the Grande Armee was marching on dirt trails through forests. The trails were heavily rutted and prone to turning into mud rivers during rain storms. Napoleons armies had long mastered the idea of the rapid march and foraging off the land. This was great, except that didn't really work in Russia. The vanguard of the army was moving fast to try and bring about a battle, but their rapid movements easily outpaced the ability of the baggage trains to keep up. As the army marched it foraged for supplies in the sparsely populated and agriculturally poor areas. What ended up happening was that the vanguard sucked up all of the supplies, leaving the follow-on support units near starving with the baggage trains mired in mud and days behind. The Russians engaged in scortched Earth tactics, but this was really not as effective as people think. The Grande Armee itself was simply too large to even be remotely sustained off of the land they were passing through. It was written by a French general that the Armee itself was like a plague of locusts and as they moved through, not a morsel of food or living soul was left in their wake.
The heat was blistering that summer and the army weathered many severe thunderstorms which turned the trails to mud. Disease ravaged through Napoleons camps and thousands upon thousands of horses died in the early days of the campaign. Several large groups of soldiers, mainly Spanish and Portugese conscripts simply deserted the army and went to loot the countryside. Of the estimated 422,000 men of the Grande Armee that crossed the River Niemen, only 100,000 made it to Moscow and 22,000 were sent on a feint towards St. Petersburg. Remember, Napoleon took Moscow in September, long before the Russian winter set in. So, by September, the Grande Armee had lost 300,000 men or 71% of its strength...before a single snowflake fell.
When Napoleon was approaching Moscow he expected the normal greeting of the civic leaders to present him with the keys to the city. In return for sparing the city and keeping order among his troops, the civic leaders would arrange billets and food for the troops. No one came to meet Napoleon. The city had been largely abandoned and the food stores removed. The only people who remained were mainly foreign nationals or "colonists" that had nowhere else to go and criminals whom the Russians conveniently let out of the jails to run amock. So, Napoleons army was left to secure its own billets and food supplies. The fires in Moscow broke out AFTER the army occupied the city. While some have written it was Russian sabotage others argue it was simply accidental from the looting the army was carrying out in the city. As a large majority of buildings in Moscow were made of wood, 2/3rds of the city burned before the fire was contained.
Napoleon remained in Moscow attempting to negotiate a peace, but his overtures were rejected as the Russians continued to gather strength. Napoleon was faced with staying in burned out Moscow with no food for the winter and his supply lines under threat by the Russian army or marching back to his supply bases in Poland. Napoleon knew his army was done if they stayed as they would have a hard time surviving the winter, so they set out. Napoleon attempted to retreat along a different road out of Moscow, but the Russians brilliantly blocked him from the north and south and forced him to go back along the Smolensk road still devastated from the advance. What was left of the Grande Armee evaporated on this retreat, however, it still had very little to do with winter.
The Russian cavalry harassed the army along the retreat path and forced them to live solely on what they could forage. The land they were moving through was absolutely devastated and the army simply couldn't be sustained. The horses died first and that resulted in the cavalry ceasing to exist and abandonment of the artillery and military wagons. Then the troops began to starve and they started surrendering or dropping dead from hunger. Most of the losses during the retreat were from starving groups of soldiers simply breaking off from the main body and then surrendering to the Russians. Cannibalism broke out among the troops and bad went to worse to hell on Earth for the army. Throughout the temperatures actually remained rather stable and averaged around 50 degrees during most of November. In December the temperatures started to drop and were quite brutal, but the army had already been reduced to around 25,000 total troops before the harshness of winter set in. After they were joined by the remnants of the northern feint, most of the losses were from the battles against the Russians who were trying to cut them off, not from the cold.
So, overall it is actually a myth that Napoleon's loss in Russia had anything to do with the cold weather.
I think your teacher gave you a simplified version of history. It is twice the distance from Berlin to Moscow as it is from Berlin to Paris. In addition, half the distance from Berlin to Paris is through home territory.
Supply lines are surely more significant than cold weather.
Definitely. The cold weather actually helped to IMPROVE the German supply situation as it meant the mud that had been bogging them down for so long froze over. While the Germans certainly suffered in the cold and were not prepared for a winter campaign in 1941 into early 1942, the cold was not the reason they failed to take Moscow or achieve their objectives. The German logisitcs and reserves were simply stretched to the breaking point and the Russians were determined to stay in the fight.
General Winter may be fierce, but he has rarely been decisive.
This is one part that people often overlook about Napoleon's invasion. Napoleon had absolutely no intentions of conquering or occupying Russia. ...
You really left nothing out, except that Napolean planned for just about everything except cold weather gear - simply because he didn't expect the campaign to go on through winter. Both you and I mentioned, not the cold, but the heat and rain. So really it's not the Russian Winter, but the Russian temperature extremes. The horses in particular suffered, and the loss of horses was attrocious. No horses, no supply wagons.
Besides that (again just expanding on your thread), people should understand that The Napoleanic War was not a constant war for 20 years. But a series of campaigns of maneover and skirmishing that would end in one decisive bloody battle, and usually that would be it for the year, one side would capitulate, ask for peace, and loose some territory and pay reparations, and build up for a few years to the next campagn (the Peninsula being an exception perhaps). Poor Austria-Hungary I think lost 3 "wars" alone during this time frame, suing for peace each time and then entering again with the next european coalition against France and losing again. Prussia as well. But this was new to Napolean, meeting an enemy that would not surrendor. Napolean just could not pin down the Russian forces through all that territory to get that One Decisive Battle, and even Borodino was not decisive enough.
This is one part that people often overlook about Napoleon's invasion. Napoleon had absolutely no intentions of conquering or occupying Russia. Napoleons reason for invasion was to force the Russians to remain in the Continental System and prevent Russia from launching an invasion of Poland whose reconstituted existence the Russians saw as a threat. What Napoleon expected would happen is that he would cross the border, the Russians would move to engage him, he would defeat them in a major battle and then Alexander would sign a treaty recognizing Poland and agreeing to remain in the Continental System.
To that end Napoleon actually made extensive logistics preparations. He stocked forward areas, assembled one of the largest baggage trains ever to that point and made extensive plans for how he was going to supply his army. Napoleons original target was Vilnius in Lithuania which served as the command post for the Russian army. When that failed to bring about a major battle or surrender, he went after Smolensk. When that failed to bring about a decisive battle or surrender he set out for Moscow. Moscow brought him Borodino which was a costly victory and then he entered Moscow. Still, no surrender despite Napoleons best attempts to secure one.
The real story isn't Napoleons retreat, it's what happened along the way from the river Niemen to Moscow. To say that Russia had a road network would be a gross overstatment. For the most part the Grande Armee was marching on dirt trails through forests. The trails were heavily rutted and prone to turning into mud rivers during rain storms. Napoleons armies had long mastered the idea of the rapid march and foraging off the land. This was great, except that didn't really work in Russia. The vanguard of the army was moving fast to try and bring about a battle, but their rapid movements easily outpaced the ability of the baggage trains to keep up. As the army marched it foraged for supplies in the sparsely populated and agriculturally poor areas. What ended up happening was that the vanguard sucked up all of the supplies, leaving the follow-on support units near starving with the baggage trains mired in mud and days behind. The Russians engaged in scortched Earth tactics, but this was really not as effective as people think. The Grande Armee itself was simply too large to even be remotely sustained off of the land they were passing through. It was written by a French general that the Armee itself was like a plague of locusts and as they moved through, not a morsel of food or living soul was left in their wake.
The heat was blistering that summer and the army weathered many severe thunderstorms which turned the trails to mud. Disease ravaged through Napoleons camps and thousands upon thousands of horses died in the early days of the campaign. Several large groups of soldiers, mainly Spanish and Portugese conscripts simply deserted the army and went to loot the countryside. Of the estimated 422,000 men of the Grande Armee that crossed the River Niemen, only 100,000 made it to Moscow and 22,000 were sent on a feint towards St. Petersburg. Remember, Napoleon took Moscow in September, long before the Russian winter set in. So, by September, the Grande Armee had lost 300,000 men or 71% of its strength...before a single snowflake fell.
When Napoleon was approaching Moscow he expected the normal greeting of the civic leaders to present him with the keys to the city. In return for sparing the city and keeping order among his troops, the civic leaders would arrange billets and food for the troops. No one came to meet Napoleon. The city had been largely abandoned and the food stores removed. The only people who remained were mainly foreign nationals or "colonists" that had nowhere else to go and criminals whom the Russians conveniently let out of the jails to run amock. So, Napoleons army was left to secure its own billets and food supplies. The fires in Moscow broke out AFTER the army occupied the city. While some have written it was Russian sabotage others argue it was simply accidental from the looting the army was carrying out in the city. As a large majority of buildings in Moscow were made of wood, 2/3rds of the city burned before the fire was contained.
Napoleon remained in Moscow attempting to negotiate a peace, but his overtures were rejected as the Russians continued to gather strength. Napoleon was faced with staying in burned out Moscow with no food for the winter and his supply lines under threat by the Russian army or marching back to his supply bases in Poland. Napoleon knew his army was done if they stayed as they would have a hard time surviving the winter, so they set out. Napoleon attempted to retreat along a different road out of Moscow, but the Russians brilliantly blocked him from the north and south and forced him to go back along the Smolensk road still devastated from the advance. What was left of the Grande Armee evaporated on this retreat, however, it still had very little to do with winter.
The Russian cavalry harassed the army along the retreat path and forced them to live solely on what they could forage. The land they were moving through was absolutely devastated and the army simply couldn't be sustained. The horses died first and that resulted in the cavalry ceasing to exist and abandonment of the artillery and military wagons. Then the troops began to starve and they started surrendering or dropping dead from hunger. Most of the losses during the retreat were from starving groups of soldiers simply breaking off from the main body and then surrendering to the Russians. Cannibalism broke out among the troops and bad went to worse to hell on Earth for the army. Throughout the temperatures actually remained rather stable and averaged around 50 degrees during most of November. In December the temperatures started to drop and were quite brutal, but the army had already been reduced to around 25,000 total troops before the harshness of winter set in. After they were joined by the remnants of the northern feint, most of the losses were from the battles against the Russians who were trying to cut them off, not from the cold.
So, overall it is actually a myth that Napoleon's loss in Russia had anything to do with the cold weather.
Thanks NJ, your knowledge on these subjects is as impressive as ever. A lot of Americans would love to believe that it was just the "Russian winter" and problems with "supply lines" that finished off both German and French Armies, but as you've proven many times it's not quite so; the weather was just one of the factors, but not the decisive one.
The truth is, Russia represents a tricky combination of "the wild west" and European train of thinking.
So while the French were dealing with Russian upper class, they've most likely pictured Russians as not too different from any other Europeans, and that what most likely was putting them automatically into the thinking mode of the "rapid march" - after all Europeans should have good roads, right?
However in Russia, once you get out of Moscow or St. Petersburg, you are not in "Europe" any more - you are in the land of the "indigenous population," that regards any foreigner with suspicion. Basically you shouldn't think in terms of Europeans any longer, ( at least not modern Europeans,) but people who can leave their huts and move into the forest, and they'd be using that forest ( and Russia IS the country of huge forests) as mountainous people use mountains for their advantage when they deal with invaders.
They will be attacking enemy out of nowhere , unexpectedly, because they are the ones who know all the hideaway places and they are the ones who can watch the enemy while being unnoticed. After all the guerrilla war was extensive during Napoleonic War as it was during the WWII.
On another hand, I've underlined your other sentence about the brilliant planning of Russian generals, who by no means were part of "indigenous population" or some kind of chieftains. There you jump right back to European academic studies, military schools, European train of thought, European philosophy and the rest. After all the teacher of Field Master Kutuzov, who was credited for the victory over Napoleon, was none other but Alexander Suvorov, whose
" full name and titles (according to Russian pronunciation), ranks and awards are the following: Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Suvorov, Prince of Italy, Count of Rymnik, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, Prince of Sardinia, Generalissimo of Russia's Ground and Naval forces, Field Marshal of the Austrian and Sardinian armies" - one of few generals in history who never lost a battle. Alexander Suvorov - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As I've already mentioned before, Russia is an illegitimate child of Europe, where America is her legitimate daughter.
When Hitler considered Russians to be a combination of Aryans with "undesirable people," he was basically right. He thought, however, that "Aryans" ( or Germanic people) were only part of the upper class that was destroyed after the Communist revolution. That's where he was dead wrong; the mixture was much more thorough on every level of the society, that's why even after the destruction of the old upper class, Russians were still bringing forth mathematicians, scientists and engineers, and people of the lower ranks were often as inventive and resourceful during the WWII as well. So talking only about "General Winter," while forgetting T-34, Kalashnikovs, Shturmoviks and Katushas is again - a big mistake.
You really left nothing out, except that Napolean planned for just about everything except cold weather gear - simply because he didn't expect the campaign to go on through winter. Both you and I mentioned, not the cold, but the heat and rain. So really it's not the Russian Winter, but the Russian temperature extremes. The horses in particular suffered, and the loss of horses was attrocious. No horses, no supply wagons.
I don't even know if I would go so far as to say it is the extremes of the weather as much as it is simply the terrain itself and the general lack of development. Several of Napoleons marshals later wrote that they had seen hotter, wetter, colder, etc. conditions on previous campaigns and that the weather had little impact on the army then. I think in the case of Russia it's the weather on top of crossing difficult terrain that leaves armies (of that time) woefully undersupplied.
The vast forests that Napoleon was crossing were barely adequate to support the few local people who lived there and some small cities of well under 15,000 residents. There was little in the way of accessible fresh water and even less in terms of easily foraged food for an army on a rapid march. Disease spread so fast among Napoleons troops as they were basically reduced to drinking water out of mud holes that they found. Barely a month into the campaign, dysentery was tearing through the army.
Temperature extremes are bearable if you are well supplied, they become disastorous when you aren't. The Grande Armee under the same conditions in say Germany, probably would have been fine. Indeed, Napoleons later campaigns against the Sixth Coalition saw him commanding an army even larger than the Grande Armee with none of the same issues throughout all kinds of weather...but in western/central Europe. Ultimately, IMO, it is the lack of development of the area he was operating in that did more damage than anything else.
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Besides that (again just expanding on your thread), people should understand that The Napoleanic War was not a constant war for 20 years. But a series of campaigns of maneover and skirmishing that would end in one decisive bloody battle, and usually that would be it for the year, one side would capitulate, ask for peace, and loose some territory and pay reparations, and build up for a few years to the next campagn (the Peninsula being an exception perhaps). Poor Austria-Hungary I think lost 3 "wars" alone during this time frame, suing for peace each time and then entering again with the next european coalition against France and losing again. Prussia as well. But this was new to Napolean, meeting an enemy that would not surrendor. Napolean just could not pin down the Russian forces through all that territory to get that One Decisive Battle, and even Borodino was not decisive enough.
Excellent points. Napoleon was quite flustered having won Borodino, sitting in the Kremlin and still no serious talk of peace. Usually the peace envoys were sent as soon as the road to the capital lay open for the invader. There is a famous painting "Peace at all Costs" showing Napoleon in Moscow giving his orders to the delegation he was sending to Alexander...
You really left nothing out, except that Napolean planned for just about everything except cold weather gear - simply because he didn't expect the campaign to go on through winter. Both you and I mentioned, not the cold, but the heat and rain. So really it's not the Russian Winter, but the Russian temperature extremes.
Russian temperatures have "extremes" once in a while; usually the temps are pretty steady and summers are not all that hot. ( Definitely not as hot as in the US Northern states.)
However it looks like during foreign invasions those temps have tendency to go to extremes...
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