Download Napoleon's Invasion of Russia: The History and Legacy of the French Emperor's Greatest Military Blunder AudioBook Free

"The thunderstorms of the 24th converted into other downpours, turning the monitors - some diarists promise there were no highways in Lithuania - into bottomless mires. Wagons sank up to their hubs; horses decreased from exhaustion; men lost their boots. Stalled wagons became hurdles that forced men around them and ended source wagons and artillery columns. Then arrived sunlight, which would cook the profound ruts into canyons of concrete, where horses would break their legs and wagons their rims." (Richard K. Riehn) French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had not been a man designed for peacetime. By 1812 he previously been successful in subduing most of his opponents - though in Spain the Uk continued to be a perpetual thorn in his flank that drained the empire of money and troops - but his romance with Russia, never several of common suspicion at best, possessed now grown downright hostile. At the heart of it, apart from the obvious mistrust that two huge superpowers purpose on dividing up European countries felt for one another, was Napoleon's Continental blockade. Russia possessed initially decided to uphold the blockade in the Treaty of Tilsit, nonetheless they had since taken up to ignoring it altogether. Napoleon wanted a justification to instruct Russia a lesson, and in early 1812 his spies gave him just that: an initial arrange for the invasion and annexation of Poland, then under French control. Napoleon wasted no time attempting to defuse the situation. He increased his Grande Armee to 450,000 fighting men and ready it for invasion. On July 23, 1812, he launched his army across the boundary despite the protestations of several of his marshals. The Russian Campaign had started, and it could turn out to be Napoleon's biggest blunder.

Category: France