The Invasion of Russia

JUN 24 1812 · 12:00

Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow. Adolph Northen, oil on canvas, second half of the 19th century. Of the 600,000 who marched east, fewer than 100,000 returned. Place: the crossing of the Niemen at Kaunas Figures: Napoleon, commanding the largest field army Europe has yet assembled · Mikhail Kutuzov, Russian commander at Borodino · Tsar Alexander I, refusing to negotiate · the Grande Armée, 685,000 men, perhaps 100,000 returning The Niemen, Borodino, Moscow Burning Napoleon crosses the Niemen on 24 June 1812 with the largest army Europe has assembled to date: 685,000 men of twenty nationalities, half of them French. The pretext is Russian noncompliance with the Continental System (see [[continental-system-1806]]). The real objective is to force Alexander into a binding peace that secures Napoleonic Europe. The Russian armies retreat eastward, refusing the decisive battle Napoleon needs, burning supplies as they withdraw. At Borodino on 7 September, Kutuzov finally stands. The battle lasts a single day and produces roughly 70,000 casualties on the two sides combined, the bloodiest single day of the entire Napoleonic Wars. Both armies claim victory; Napoleon holds the field; Kutuzov withdraws in order. A week later the French enter Moscow. The city is empty; the governor Rostopchin has ordered it set ablaze. The fires burn for four days. Napoleon waits five weeks in the half-ruined Kremlin for a peace offer that does not come. The Retreat On 19 October the Grande Armée begins to withdraw westward. Snow falls in early November; the temperature drops below minus 30 Celsius in late November. Cossack raids harass the column at every river crossing. At the Berezina (26 to 29 November) perhaps half the surviving force is lost in the crossing. Of the 685,000 who crossed the Niemen in June, perhaps 100,000 recross it in December as a functioning force; many more straggle home individually or die over the winter. Napoleonic Europe is finished. Prussia switches sides in February 1813; Austria in August. Within sixteen months the allies are at the gates of Paris. The Russian campaign demonstrates the upper bound of what conscript mass armies (see [[levee-en-masse-1793]]) and Napoleonic logistics can do. Beyond that bound, even genius cannot project sovereignty. The lesson will be re-learned by every continental power that tries to invade Russia for the next century and a half. Video: Epic History's Russia campaign episode, from the Niemen crossing to Borodino, Moscow, and the snow.