French Invasion of Russia
Napoleon crossed the Niemen in June 1812 with the largest army Europe had assembled and brought a fraction of it home. The cause was the Continental System. Russia had joined it at Tilsit in 1807, found that closing its ports to British trade destroyed the market for its timber, grain and hemp and the incomes of its nobility, and began licensing neutral shipping in 1810. Napoleon's answer was to compel compliance by force, and the force he assembled was some 600,000 men from every state in his empire and alliance, of whom fewer than half were French. The plan required a decisive battle near the frontier within weeks. The Russians would not give one. They withdrew for two months, avoided encirclement, and destroyed what they left behind, and the Grande Armée lost tens of thousands to heat, typhus, dysentery and desertion before a shot was fired in a general action. Borodino in September cost 70,000 casualties and decided nothing. Moscow was occupied and burned, and no peace offer was answered. The retreat began on 19 October, in the middle of a period of unusually fine weather that turned in November. The crossing of the Berezina in late November got the fighting units out and destroyed the stragglers. Around 100,000 men recrossed the Niemen in December. Prussia changed sides within weeks and the empire was finished within eighteen months. The campaign also produced two of the century's works of art. Tolstoy wrote War and Peace about it half a century later, and Tchaikovsky's overture was commissioned for the consecration of a cathedral built in Moscow to commemorate it.
- Year: 1812 CE
- Category: Military
