#aka when Napoleon did take Moscow

[lightdancer1]

One of Russian history's standard ironies is that otherwise brilliant figures lose wars to Russians and are more renowned for defeat than the Russians for victory.

The Bonapartist invasion of Russia is the classic example of this phenomenon. By every logical standard Napoleon waged a war with an army so vast the logistical strain of supporting it killed more of it than the Russian summer (also very fatal to parts of it) and the Russian winter both did. He waged that war without bothering to realize the kind of war his enemies were actually waging. His battles were among his most poorly fought performances with Smolensk, Borodino, and Malyaroslavets masterpieces of his failures at multiple levels.

He goes in with anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 troops (that the margin is that vast in differences should speak for itself about how much historical facts can and do change with how one does historical statistics). Whichever number one goes with, the higher or the lower, he walked out on his own and 30,000 more than half frozen shellshocked survivors were all that emerged from the invasion of Russia, which culminated two years later in "Tsar Alexander got to Paris."

To sugarcoat a catastrophe of this magnitude to favor the idiot who lost it should, in theory, be impossible. In reality, of course, this is exactly what Napoleon did in his bitter and whiny exile after his failure.

In reality, Barclay de Tolly and Kutuzov did outgeneral Napoleon and played to his weaknesses and maximized their strengths. The narratives of how and why they did it and how Russia overcame its own weaknesses to prevail is the one that should be told. And yet it almost never is, especially in English.