Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Bad Idea

Général de division Alexis Joseph Delzons at the Battle of Maloyaroslavets
24 October 1812

(Source)
Two-hundred and five years ago this month, La Grande Armée of the French Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte was busily trying to extricate itself from the depths of Russia. In the category of "Bad Ideas," invading Russia ranks near the top of the list.
  • Charles XII of Sweden tried in 1707. Peter the Great and the Russian army kicked his ass.
  • Napoléon I of France tried in 1812. The Russian army and the Russian weather kicked his ass.
  • Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany tried in 1941. The Russian army and the Russian weather kicked his ass.
It seems that no matter how often it is attempted from the West, it doesn't work. It seems that Europeans can't quite grasp just how big Russia is. Or how primitive it can be in spots. And how terrible the weather can get in those vast forests in the North and those sprawling steppes in the South.

No one has ever successfully invaded Russia coming in through the front door. However, the Mongols did it twice, via the back door, in 1223 and again in 1236, Of course it wasn't really Russia in those days. More of a group of principalities, not always working in harmony with one another. (Which would lead me to surmise that in order to resist a foreign invasion, working together is a pretty damned good idea. Memo to Europe, your conquerors are already in place. You effed up. Big time. Read this.)

So rather than rant and rave about our current society, and the evils therein, I'm going to be getting all historical this week. It calms my soul and it's one of the few things I'm actually good at, though you readers are the true judges of that. So, off we go, into the Wayback Machine for, "The Invasion of Russia, Part Deux." (Not counting the Mongols mind you.)


La Grande Armée crossed the Nieman River on the 24th of June 1812. They were over 600,000 strong, only half of which (if that many) were soldiers from within the borders of France (to include areas which had been annexed to France, like Belgium and Holland). The others were a mixture of Poles, Italians, Westphalians, Saxons, Badeners, Bavarians, Bergers, Swiss, Austrians, Prussians, Danes, and Spaniards. (From what I recall there was even a Portuguese outfit present.) It was truly a European army.

The preparations had been extensive, the Emperor had ordered that 30 days worth of rations be carried along in the trains. In reality only one corps, that of Marshal Davout, came anywhere close to obeying the Emperor's orders to the letter. The remainder assumed they could "live off the land" the same way they had done in western Europe.

The weather started out hot, within the first few weeks the army had lost 10,ooo horses, a lot of it through the boneheadedness of Marshal Murat. A brilliant leader of cavalry on the battlefield, not the brightest bulb on the tree when it came to strategy and any tactic other than the headlong charge. Sort of a hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle kind of guy.

All the while the Russian generals fell back, not through any grand scheme but because the Russians had multiple armies facing Napoléon and in all honesty, the generals in command didn't like or trust each other very much. Also, they couldn't agree on a place to try and stop Napoléon. So they fell back.


So why did Napoléon invade Russia in the first place? Economics old boy (or girl), that and the fact that the French Navy sucked and couldn't defeat the British Royal Navy. Trafalgar was the last time the French (with their, at the time, Spanish allies) attempted to break the English blockade of the Continent. So Napoléon couldn't get at the English directly, so he decided to close the Continent to English trade.

One of the reasons for the invasion of Spain in 1808 was to get at Portugal, who were merrily trading away with their old English allies and giving the French the Portuguese version of the finger. No, the Emperor didn't like that. Nor did the Spanish when the French decided to throw their weight around and tell the Spaniards how to run their country.

While all that was going on, the Russians decided that they too would go ahead and trade with England. After all, Moscow and St. Petersburg are a long way from Paris, even further away than Lisbon. So the Czar and his advisers figured that Napoléon would be far too busy trying to subdue the Portuguese and the Spanish to bother with the Russians.

Well, the Emperor was a bit of a megalomaniac, the old saying that power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely is true. And Napoléon was the undisputed ruler of France, his power was more extensive than many, if no most, of his Bourbon predecessors.

So into Russia he plunged.


The French managed to catch a Russian army at Smolensk. Which was a French tactical victory (at the cost of 10,000 men) and the Russians had to retreat. Which they probably would have done anyway without a battle.

Deeper into Russia went La Grande Armée, bleeding men and horses along the way. Detachments to guard supply depots and the like were necessary as the French had discovered that there was no "living off the land" in Russia. The serfs barely managed to support themselves, let alone multiple large armies running about the landscape.

On the banks of the Moscow River, at the little village of Borodino, some 80 miles from Moscow, the Russians finally stopped retreating. Here was the big battle that the Emperor preferred. Destroy the Russian army and the rest would fall into his hands like an overripe plum. After all, it had been that way in Austria (twice) and in Prussia. Here was the chance to impose his economic policies on these untrustworthy Muscovites.

The battle was massive, 250,000 men engaged, 70,000 casualties inflicted. What's more, the Russians really outfought the French, held their line and damaged the Emperor's army grievously. Of course, the Russians had also been badly hurt. So the night after the struggle, the Russians slipped away into the night.

The Emperor declared victory and captured Moscow. Expecting the Czar to surrender, he was prepared to camp out in the Russian capital until the Czar came to his senses.

Well, in those days Russia had two capitals. Moscow and St. Petersburg. While the seizure of Moscow didn't really help the Russians, it didn't really harm them either. Russia is not like Western Europe. Seizing the capital, or even both capitals, wasn't enough to get the Russians to throw in the towel. After all, it was October. One of Mother Russia's most fearsome allies was about to make an appearance.

Winter.

While the Emperor knew that, he was a bit nonplussed as to his next move. Things were particularly bad as fires had broken out in multiple districts in the city, destroying many supplies. (Russian histories claim that it was deliberate, which may not have been the case. Then, as now, the Russians will take credit for events fortuitous to them whether they were coincidental or not. No big deal, the end result was the same.)


On the 19th of October, Napoléon got the heck out of Dodge, er, Moscow. Rather than retreat back the way they had come (which had been stripped of all forage and supplies), the French went further south. Where they ran into a Russian army at Maloyaroslavets.

That chap in the opening painting commanded a division of Italian troops in the corps commanded by Napoléon's step-son, Eugene de Beauharnais (son of Josephine, yes, that Josephine). He fought like a tiger at that battle as did his Italians. They covered themselves in glory. Their general fell to a Russian musket, as did his brother, a major in the same unit, who rushed forward to drag his brother to safety. He too was shot down.

While the French were initially checked, the Russians had already decided to retreat if the French pushed forward again, the Emperor lost his nerve. He commanded the army to fall back to the north and retrace their steps over the way they entered Moscow. Over the battlefield of Borodino, where to the horror of the French and their allies they discovered a charnel house of unburied bodies, human and horse, and where one regiment actually recovered their lost eagle. (Each regiment had an eagle, much like in Roman times, to lose one was a disgrace.) Seems that the standard bearer, while dying, had shoved the flag up the anus of a dead horse rather than let the Russians capture it.

The eagle was still intact, in the skeleton of the horse.

Horror upon horror followed as the Emperor's army fell back, harassed by the Russians and the weather the entire way. First it froze and snowed, then there was a thaw, reducing the primitive roads to a sea of mud. Most of the cannon were abandoned. Then it got cold. Really cold, the kind of cold that even Russians barely tolerate.Then it began to snow.

Napoléon ordered the bridge train destroyed to enable the army to move faster. Of course, the head engineer managed to "forget" to destroy everything, he kep a few wagon loads of tools. (You can build a bridge out of any available wood, can't cut it or pound nails with your bare hands though. And you can read more about that here.)

When the army finally left Russian territory in December, only 120,000 were left of the original 600,000. Of the main army under Napoléon at the Berezina, scarcely 30,000 remained.

Some have called the invasion of Russia the death knell of the Napoleonic Empire, and it was in one sense, Napoléon never again was able to put together such a large army of veterans. His armies, until Waterloo, were mostly young conscripts and some of the battered and weary survivors from the Russia campaign. So yes, Russia crippled the French.

But they were already being bled white in Spain. With the help of a small British army under Wellington. Napoléon never understood the English, and only defeated then once, at Corunna. But that, mes enfants, is a story for another time.

Night Bivouac of La Grande Armée - Vasily Vereshchagin
(Source)
Yeah, invading Russia. Bad idea. (Damn but that looks cold!)



44 comments:

  1. A number of Americans who think the USA is a large country don't know that Russia is almost twice( 1.74 I think) the size. That's a loooong way to walk as both Napoleon and Hitler found out. You write well Sarge.

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    1. Thanks.

      The continental USA has four time zones (six if you include Alaska and Hawaii), Russia has 11. There are only 24 time zones total, just think, Russia covers nearly half of them. Yes, Russia is the largest country in terms of area, Canada is 2nd, China 3rd, and the USA 4th. Russia is nearly twice the size of each one of those (1.7x Canada, 1.79x USA).

      Yup, awfully big. And the weather sucks in most of it for most of the year.

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    2. So... if you can't be better, be bigger, right?

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    3. I remember that the Soviet military operated on Moscow Time which made it interesting when flying off Vladivostok or Kamchatka and having to convert their activity to our Zulu Time. Turns out that rail schedules throughout Russia operate on Moscow Time, which is what is displayed on station clocks.

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    4. I seem to recall reading that somewhere.

      Interesting.

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    5. @Rivetjoint, There are some advantages to doing that. Unit logs from the Battle of Midway (fought over the Dateline) have such idiocies as a scout plane taking off on June 4, spotting Japanese ships on June 6, then recovering on June 5. From a military point of view, Zulu time (or SOME frickin' standard) is the only way to go.

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    6. The International Date Line always makes for odd stories. I seem to recall flying from Tokyo to San Francisco and getting there before I left. Or something...

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  2. Yep, invading Russia and sticking around into the winter is one of the classic blunders. It's right up there with "Never get involved in a land war in Asia" and "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line", as things not to do.

    Nice recounting of the disaster of the Grand Armee in Russia.

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    1. Thanks Aaron.

      (Never mess with a Sicilian, ever.)

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    2. The only safe way to do that is very discreetly so that no one, and I mean NO ONE, ever knows. Requiring such dimplomatic skills that it's 1) never suspected, and 2) such stealth that it can't be tied to you except by the most paranoid. In which case, you're probably screwed since no one more paranoid than a Sicilian.
      (except maybe a Russian?)

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    3. Dimplomatic? F***, this isn't the Gerber baby cutesy skills we're talking about here.

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    4. Concur on the relative paranoia levels of Sicilians and Russians.

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    5. Larry - nice recovery on the typo. Made me laugh it did.

      ;)

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  3. If you've never seen the Minard poster that graphs Napoleon's Russia invasion, go here and embiggen it so you can see some of the detail. Methinks you might gift it to yourself at Christmas? For to frame & hang for contemplation from time to time?

    https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters

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    1. I have seen that before (it's part of the Wikipedia article on the French invasion of Russia). What I didn't know is that there was a poster, available for purchase of same.

      Nice idea!

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    2. And... cheap at $14!

      PS: my all-time favorite post of Sultan Knish (Daniel Greenfield) is this one:

      http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-minority-victim-value-index.html

      Although since it was written before all the liberal "new" social upheavals of multiple gender pronouns and transmutation of one sex into another, perhaps he really should update it?

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    3. Cheap indeed!

      Love the Victim Value Index. Sultan Knish has long been a favorite.

      (He does need to revisit that post. All the new gender jargon boggles the mind!)

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    4. I was going to mention the Minard poster.

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    5. It's a fascinating graphical representation of the death of an army.

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  4. Do love your history lessons. I've been reading a Nazi history lately, so this *somewhat* ties in. Thanks!

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  5. Thank you for a most excellent post. As my knowledge of the Napoleonic wars is scant, I enjoy the history lessons.

    Paul L. Quandt

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  6. Never invade Russia is sound advice, on the other hand...
    On of few occassions Russians suffered sound trouncings were when they invaded neighbours who just happened to be tough enbough to bring patriotic ferocity and measure of skill against lumbering masses of Russian soldiers.
    1920 Poland
    1940 Finland
    1980s Afghanistan.
    On first 2 occasions, despite relative lack of support from the West.
    Probably one of reasons Putin has not decided to march on Kiev. Frozen borderlands conflict is cheap way to keep aptriotic fervor, while mass invasion would be costly, and quite risky, it took Stalin well into 1950s to subdue Ukrainian nationalistic guerillas, and nowadays warfare favors guerillas much more...

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    1. The Poles won their war against the invading Bolshevik hoards in 1920. Though the Finns put up stout resistance, the Soviets eventually ground them down, though at a heavy cost.

      Soviet heavy-handedness didn't play well with the Afghans, who only stop fighting between themselves when invaded by outsiders.

      Interesting thought on guerrilla warfare being favored by these modern times. I need to look into that, might make an interesting post.

      Good stuff Paweł, as always.

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    2. Light infantry with better knowledge of terrain,abundance of urban areas, access to man-portable anittank and antiair missiles, coupled with horrible costs of modern heavy military machinery, has given the advantage to guerilla side. Look at how Hezbollach has managed to defy Israel, the local superpower. Soon add to this swarms of drones, and ability to make own weaponry covertly by 3d printing.
      Give me a 3d printer and some ball bearings and ill make you enough claymores to mine my entire city.
      Poland is investing right now heavily into territorial defence forces, as a failsafe should regular forces be pushed back or destroyed.

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    3. @Pavel, Only so long as those anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles can be brought in from outside. Even drones require some industrial base, though getting lower every year with ever-cheaper systems-on-a-chip and GPS + advanced antennas and radios (still the most expensive part if you need anything not trivially jammed). Don't need 3D printers to make claymores or any other mine, that's something that can be done with molds and/or carpentry (exploders and the HE is harder, but the Viet Cong got some of theirs from US dud bombs). So long as there's a (relatively) untouchable base area, the sky's the limit. That was the US's chief failing in Vietnam -- not physically cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail in '65-'66 across the line of the DMZ (and extending into Thailand with Thai troops supported by US if necessary), and forcing the NVA into frontal battles to break the blockade. They could break the naval blockade, so that would be their only choice. Of course, a bombing campaign that didn't start at the bottom of the priority list and gradually work its way up (with pauses to make sure the North could rebuild and re-arm) would've made a lot of sense, too. Naturally, we did neither of those things.

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    4. Dammit, my fingers are betraying me tonight. That and not proof-reading. :( The North COULDN'T break the naval blockade (even if some blockade runners got through), so trying to break a land barrier would be their only option. With US airpower, that would've been a forlorn hope.

      However, without forcing some form of land reform upon S. Vietnam, I think it would've been a war that would've heated up every our attention wavered.

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    5. I've been doing some research for a potential future post on guerrilla warfare. It seems that outside help is a necessary precursor for the guerrilla. But not always, there are a few cases where that doesn't seem to apply. More to come, maybe.

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    6. And yes, reform in the South would have been necessary in the long run. If the GD Congress had honored our commitment to the South in 1975, history might well be different. Our airpower would have ground the NVA to red ruin once they were out in the open, which they were in '75.

      (And Larry, don't beat yourself up over the typos, you put out a LOT of comments in one night! All good ones I might add.)

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  7. Russia has lots and lots of space to trade for time. A few decades ago I read, Lord knows were or by whom, that standard Russian doctrine is give ground slowly, bleed the enemy while doing so, and pray for a hard winter.

    After WWII, or towards the end, anyway, when the Western Allies were negotiating with the Russians...um...Soviets....about how to divvy up Western Europe the West's lack of understanding of the Russian culture bit us time and again. Our diplomats would make a proposal, expecting a Russian...um...Soviet...proposal and statement of what they would do. Their diplomats would stand up, say "Thank you" and sit down. Not making any offers or proposals themselves.

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    1. We still don't understand the Russians. The problem with our diplomats is that they can't grasp that our opponents didn't go to an Ivy League school, therefore react differently than the "experts" at Foggy Bottom expect.

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    2. That applies to EVERYONE who wasn't educated in an "elite" western institution. They sure as hell never understood Uncle Ho and his Merry Minh.

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    3. No, they didn't. Even when we had OSS guys who worked with Ho against the Japanese trying to tell the Foggy Bottom types about him. There are none so blind as those who will not see!

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  8. The French were notoriously bad at abusing horses and not caring for them properly, even in WWI. For Murat to beat that standard was ... exceptional. The French paid for their neglect in 1812 and every single year afterwards. Napoleon's lack of cavalry turned several victories from great victories into hollow shells worth nothing in the end. From what I've read, they carry that attitude forward still in their treatment of (especially) the Foreign Legion, but also their own enlisted. Though it's certainly gotten better over the (many) decades.

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    1. Colonel Elting mentioned that in Swords Around a Throne, he reports that it was said that you could smell a French cavalry outfit before seeing them because of their neglected horses' saddle sores. A lack of cavalry was the reason why Napoleon couldn't tire the Allies enough to quit in both 1813 and the final campaign in 1814. The enemy could pull back and regroup and hit again, no cavalry to prevent that.

      About the attitude of French officers, to many think they're part of the nobility, either the one from the Ancient Regime of the Bourbons or the newly minted ones of the First Empire. The fathers won laurels and titles, their progeny, for the most part, were unworthy of those titles. A good argument against hereditary titles!

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  9. Oh, boy!!! This is going to be fun--brings back memories of a paper I wrote in grad school about Borodino. Later I ended up writing my master's thesis about Operation Barbarossa. Good times....

    Some odd notes here:

    Economics did play a part in Napoleon's decision to invade Russia insofar as the Peace of Tilsit required Russia to join Napoleon's Continental System. One of Russia's biggest foreign trade items was furs, and their biggest trade partner for them was Great Britain. Personal note here--I went to grad school with a descendant of John Horsey, England's fur trader to the court of Ivan Grozhniy (Ivan the Terrible). What really pissed Aleksandr I off, however, was Napoleon's resurrection of Poland as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Poles and Russians have always been a bad mix....

    The Russian forces in 1812 were badly deployed. There was a major gap between their two main forces that practically dared Napoleon to try to drive a wedge between them. It's worth noting that in 1941 the Russians were also badly deployed, that time too far forward in a salient that invited encirclement. In both cases they had no real choice other than to retreat.

    Smolensk and Borodino were battles of necessity for the Russians, politically more than militarily. There was no way Aleksandr was going to surrender to Napoleon; he vowed to retreat to Kamchatka if necessary and any sign of surrender would probably have caused his own court to dispose of him--fatally. Marshal Kutuzov is given credit for Borodino by Russian historians, but it was Barclay de Tolly who fought that battle for them. The Russians gag on that a bit as he was a Baltic German and not an Orthodox Russian.

    Kutuzov was responsible for the Russian strategy that forced Napoleon's army out of Russia and nearly destroyed it--he called it the "Golden Bridge". When the French tried to retreat over ground they had not previously plundered and stripped bare the Russians hit them--Maloyaroslavets being the key example. Napoleon was forced to retreat over frozen earth previously scorched by his men and the Russians, which made the retreat that much more miserable.

    Interesting note: When the Germans crossed the Berezina River in 1941 they built pontoon bridges next to charred wooden stumps sticking out of the water. Those were the last physical remains of the bridges the French retreated across in 1813....

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    1. A fellow historian! Great story about the Germans crossing the Beresina.

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  10. I recall reading about a conversation between a Russian officer and his French counterpart prior to the invasion in which the Frenchman asked about roads leading to Moscow. Perhaps as a veiled warning the Russian told him that there were two roads to Moscow; one went through Smolensk and the other went through Poltava. Napoleon stayed in the Kremlin during the brief French occupation of Moscow; I read that while he waited for Aleksandr to offer terms he occupied himself reading a biography of Sweden's Charles XII. I love history's little ironies....

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  11. Just a trivia point--Poltava was also a landing field for US bombers during the WWII "shuttle-bombing" campaign....

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