caption

How did Napoleon’s Strategy fail in Russia? ⚔️ Part 1: To the Dvina river, 1812 ⚔️ DOCUMENTARY

On June 24th, 1812, the French Emperor 
Napoleon led 450 thousand men across the   Niemen River into Russia, beginning one of the 
most notorious military disasters in history.   Throughout this 6-month campaign, 
both French and Russian commanders   would struggle with forces far greater than any army:
politics, logistics and  of course, Nature. Strategic Overview In 1805 and 1806, Napoleon crushed 
the armies of Austria and Prussia,   extending the French Empire over much of Western 
Europe. Part of his success came because the   Russian army started far from the theater of war, 
and could not reinforce the Germans in time.
  When Napoleon finally faced the Russians in 
1807, the results were much less one-sided:   Eylau was a draw fought in atrocious winter 
conditions, while at Friedland the Russians,   while badly defeated, successfully withdrew back 
to the border.

Nevertheless, the battles convinced   the Russian Tsar Alexander to ask for peace.
The resulting Treaties of Tilsit carved up   Continental Europe between Napoleon and Alexander: 
France would dominate Central and Western Europe;   Russia would have a free hand in the East. Both 
pledged to defend the new order against the   overseas enemy, Great Britain, and accordingly 
Russia joined France’s ‘Continental System’,   under which it would stop all trade with 
Britain as a form of economic warfare.
  Despite this, neither side really accepted 
the other’s hegemony. Alexander still expected   Napoleon’s Empire to eventually collapse, and 
had no interest in helping him solidify it:   when Austria fought France again in 1809, the 
Tsar would only give token support. In turn,   neither was Napoleon ready to grant Russian 
desires in either Poland or the Balkans.
  But the chief irritant in the relationship would 
be Alexander’s increasing reluctance to abide by   the ‘Continental System’. As Britain was Russia’s 
chief export market, the Tsar’s embargo had done   considerable damage to his own economy, which only 
added to the anti-Napoleonic sentiment amongst   the Russian aristocracy.

In late 1810, Alexander 
finally gave in, and resumed trade with Britain   under quote-unquote ‘neutral shipping’.
Napoleon’s response was to begin preparing   for war, and when this failed to deter 
Alexander, finally committing to it in   mid-1811. The stage was set for the 
Emperor’s greatest challenge yet.
  French Strategy
  Napoleon’s goals were deceptively limited: on 
the surface, he simply wanted Russia to re-join   his ‘Continental System’. But that meant forcing 
the Tsar to accept a deeply unpopular policy – so   Napoleon planned for a decisive campaign that 
would end Alexander’s ability to resist him.
  Achieving such an outcome in the vast 
expanse of Russia would be a formidable task.   Seeking inspiration from history, Napoleon studied 
the records of the last great invasion of Russia,   led by Sweden’s Charles the 
12th from 1707 to 1709.
  Charles initially invaded Poland with 44 thousand 
battle-hardened Swedes, hoping to destroy Russia’s   main army there. At the time, Sweden was known 
for mounting rapid, long-distance strikes,   that were sustained by its army living off the 
land as it went.

In this way, Charles hoped to   outmaneuver, trap and destroy the Russians.
Instead, the Russians repeatedly withdrew ahead   of Swedish maneuvers, scorching the earth 
in their wake to deny forage to the Swedes.   After months of this, the Swedes 
were lured deep into modern Belarus,   their numbers halved by starvation, disease, 
and the need to garrison captured territory.
  Charles had hoped to aim for Russia’s capital 
Moscow, where Russia’s army would surely have   had to confront him. But now he was forced to 
abandon the chase, call in reinforcements and   focus on finding supplies – and that was when 
the Russians struck. They scattered Charles’   reinforcements, harassed his army, and lured 
the Swedes even further into modern Ukraine.   At Poltava, Charles’s force was finally 
confronted by a Russian force twice its size,   and the result was Swedish annihilation.
Charles’ misadventure taught Napoleon several   things. First, Napoleon largely followed 
the Swedish invasion route through Belarus,   which isn’t surprising considering 
the sparse infrastructure there.   And although Moscow was no longer Russia’s 
capital by 1812, it was still of immense   spiritual importance, and its central 
position would allow for additional   options towards Russia’s actual capital of St 
Petersburg or its breadbasket of Ukraine.

  Second, Napoleon agreed with Charles that the 
Russian army was key to the Tsar’s resistance,   and its destruction would win the war.

But as 
shown, the Russians were unlikely to fall for   Napoleon’s preferred tactics of outmaneuver and 
entrapment, which would give the French an easy   win on the cheap. Brute frontal assaults might 
well be needed to get the Russians to fight.
  Third, given the high possibility that the 
Russians would lure him deep into their territory,   Napoleon needed an army that would absorb the 
inevitable attrition, provide detachments to   hold the flanks, and still be large enough 
to fight a battle under reasonable odds.
  Accordingly, the Emperor increased the draft, 
diluted the officer ranks, and called on his   German, Italian and Polish allies to provide 
troops.

The result was a 600-thousand-strong   Grande Armee – the largest Napoleon had ever led 
– even if its quality left much to be desired,   especially in the infantry arm.
And finally: fourth, a supply system was   needed to invade Russia, especially for an army 
of this size. But by 1812, the French had long   since ditched the pre-Revolution supply system, 
replacing it with extensive foraging as the   army went. Like Sweden a century before, forage 
gave French armies extensive reach and speed,   demonstrated in 1809 when tens of thousands 
smoothly redeployed from Spain to Austria.
  But Russia was far less densely-populated than 
Western Europe. In particular, the expected   theater of war – modern Lithuania and Belarus 
– only had about a million people in an area   slightly smaller than modern France. Even without 
the inevitable Russian scorched-earth tactics,   the local region clearly couldn’t sustain 
an army numbering half its population.
  Napoleon therefore returned to the pre-Revolution 
supply system. He assembled thousands of wagons,   barges and animals, grouped into 26 transport 
battalions. Some would establish depots in   the army’s rear; others would travel from 
these depots to troops on the front line.   In this way, Napoleon hoped to maintain a 
reasonable supply level as he advanced.
  In hindsight, some of these preparations were 
insufficient: the wagons were not designed for   Russia’s often-muddy roads, and only the worst 
soldiers were assigned to this low-prestige   work.

But more importantly, Napoleon failed 
to adjust his operational method to the new   logistics reality. Pre-Revolution generals 
limited themselves to slow, methodical,   limited campaigns because they knew how unreliable 
their supply systems could be. By contrast,   Napoleon still hoped to conduct post-Revolution 
aggressive, long-distance maneuvers.
  For all his preparations for an 
extensive invasion of Russia,   Napoleon’s ideal campaign remained one 
where the enemy fully cooperated with him:   either by attacking Poland, or staying near the 
border. Either would allow the French to trap and   annihilate them in a month, and that outcome wasn’t
entirely unlikely, given what he knew  of Russian strategy. Russian Strategy Napoleon had advertised his war preparation 
in the hope of scaring Tsar Alexander,   so the Russians had ample time to design their 
response.

Since late 1810, the Russians were   already disengaging from border wars, re-aligning 
with Britain and subverting French hegemony in   Germany. These initiatives bore fruit just before 
the invasion, as Russia made peace with Turkey,   allied with Sweden and Britain, and got Austria 
to limit its contribution to the upcoming war.
  Reforms since 1805 had increased the 
effectiveness of Russian artillery and infantry,   while its light and irregular Cossack 
cavalry were already the best in Europe.   Mobilization efforts by 1812 yielded a 
600-thousand-man army including reserves,   backed up by 1 million militia of varying 
quality. But the Russians lacked trained   engineers to support a defense, and were further 
hampered by an inefficient command system,   ridden by mutual suspicion not just between the 
generals, but also between them and the Tsar.
  There were also broader constraints on Russian 
strategy. Russia’s economy was in terrible shape,   which the Continental System only exacerbated: 
it could only get by through printing money,   which caused its currency to depreciate 
by half over a decade.

Even accounting   for British subsidies and the low cost 
of Russian soldiers, the country couldn’t   maintain extensive mobilization for long.
Added to this was the weak political position   of Tsar Alexander. His father had been overthrown 
in a coup in 1801, and the British believed that   they could do the same to him by destroying the 
Russian fleet. Napoleon certainly believed that   capturing Moscow would force his surrender, and 
even Russian generals during the invasion felt   entitled to demand the Tsar change ministers.
As a result, the traditional Russian strategy   was long-ranging offensive campaigns, which would 
both allow the Russian army to live off the enemy,   and fit with the ‘cult of the offensive’ that 
characterized Russian military honor at the time.   By contrast, letting the enemy spoil Russian 
lands was seen as an absolute humiliation.
  Up until 1812, Russia thought of 
striking the French in Poland first,   with the help of a defecting Prussia. But 
as the true scale of Napoleon’s army became   known – though as a state secret, it was 
known only to the Tsar, his War Minister   de Tolly and their staff – it became clear 
that such an attack would play into Napoleon’s   hands.

Leave a Reply