Napoleon invades Russia

On June 24, 1812, Napoleon's Grande Armee began crossing the Niemen river into Russian Poland. It was the largest army Europe had yet seen, with 600,000 men or more drawn from France and from allied and conquered states, including Poland, Germany and Italy. Napoleon wanted to force Tsar Alexander I back into the Continental System, the embargo against British trade that Russia had been breaking since 1810, and to win a decisive battle that would end the resistance.¹

After the French defeated Austria and Prussia and made peace with Alexander at Tilsit in 1807, Napoleon controlled most of Europe but could not defeat Britain, so he fought it with trade restrictions. Russia suffered from them, and when it reopened trade, Napoleon prepared to invade. The Russians, under Barclay de Tolly and later Kutuzov, retreated rather than fight, burning supplies as they went. French armies lost men to disease, hunger and desertion, and the supply wagons could not keep up on the huge distances.

Napoleon forced a battle at Borodino on September 7, a bloody day with tens of thousands of casualties on each side, and the Russians withdrew. He entered Moscow on September 14, and fires burned much of the city. Alexander would not negotiate. On October 19 Napoleon began the retreat along the same ravaged road, and the Russian winter, hunger, disease and attacks by Cossacks destroyed the army, which suffered a final disaster at the Berezina river in late November. Only a fraction of the men who had crossed into Russia came back. The disaster encouraged Prussia and Austria to rejoin the war against France in 1813.¹²