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In history, or in the history of France, there is hardly a commander who has the record of Napoleon. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

It can be said that Napoleon is a well-deserved French first military strategist.

Napoleon, in terms of his place of origin, was indeed French. This is inevitably related to the fact that the actual control of Corsica, where Napoleon was born, was France.

A rebellion against the ****** in 1729 followed by a period of unrest on the island, culminating in 1755 with the establishment of the Corsican Republic by the nationalist leader Pauli. At this time, ****** controlled only a few towns along the coast, and Pauli organized the rest of Corsica into an independent democracy with a fairly liberal constitution.

Napoleon was born on August 15, 1769 in Ajaccio, Corsica. In the same year, Corsica was incorporated into France as a department. Since then, the island has been a French province, with the exception of a brief period of British occupation and a brief period of German and Italian occupation.

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Napoleon's victory or defeat in the war, especially after his accession to the throne as the First Emperor of France, and the change in his logistical way of thinking did guide France's successive victories in foreign wars.

However, I am afraid that Napoleon himself did not expect that his epoch-making system of logistics and tactics would suffer the worst defeat in his military career under the strong walls and clear tactics of the Russians.

And this fiasco of the war is known in history as the Russo-French War of 1812.

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Under the pretext that Tsar Alexander I had broken the Peace of Tilsit, Napoleon I led an army of 600,000 to cross the Neman River in two ways to invade the Russian border, trying to annihilate more than 200,000 Russian troops in front of him, and the victory was decided in a battle.

The Russian army under the command of Barclay carried out the policy of retreating and decisive battle, but it caused strong dissatisfaction, and on August 20, Kutuzov was replaced as the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, and in less than a week there was a bloody battle with the French army in Borodino, with heavy casualties on both sides. After that, the Russian army took the initiative to withdraw from Moscow, maneuvered to Kaluga, threatened the French army's communication line, and organized the military and civilians to "clear the wilderness" and attack the French army.

The French army was hungry and cold, so they had to withdraw from Moscow and withdraw along the south. The Russian army switched to a counteroffensive and pursued and annihilated a large number of French troops. The French lost all their cavalry and almost all their artillery, and only 30,000 men were left to retreat from the border.

Napoleon had been contemplating an invasion of Russia for months, and the French army had established nine military stations west of the Russian border, each with enough food and grass to consume the French army for many days. The grain and forage were transported to the front by a baggage team of 5,424 wagons and 2,400 ox carts (divided into 26 convoys). The transport required 200,000 harnesses (in addition to 110,000 horses), each consuming nearly 20 pounds of feed per day. According to calculations, nearly one-third of the army's food and grass were consumed by the animals, which obviously made it difficult to maintain a forward force far from the military station or supply ground for a long time.

After entering Russia, it became very difficult to transport these limited grain and grass. Although it was summer, the vast majority of convoys, with the exception of a few light convoys, were barely accessible on major roads and in the countryside (mainly due to muddy roads), and there were no pastures suitable for grazing.

As a result, the French army had to discard and consume large quantities of grain and grass on the spot. By the time they reached Vilna, the French had lost 20,000 horses, but they could not be replenished quickly. In the past, after a victory in a battle, the French army was often replenished with food and grass on the spot. But in 1812 it was different. Kutuzov adopted a strategy of retreat, set fires along the way, and implemented a scorched earth policy, burning the French army everywhere it passed, disrupting Napoleon's original plan for a quick victory, and also ruining Napoleon's original plan to grab supplies while fighting.

Moreover, after the French army entered the Russian hinterland, it encountered effective resistance from the Russian army and people, especially soon after the start of the war, the weather in Russia soon entered the autumn and winter weather, and the cold Russian wilderness made the French soldiers from afar unaccustomed, and the Russian army retreated with strong walls, and the morale of the French army began to waver.

Napoleon did not declare war on Russia in order to ensure the strategic initiative. A day and night later, Alexander I received news of the French invasion and tried to mediate the conflict peacefully, and on 26 June sent the Inspector General of Police, General Barasov, to bring a personal letter to Napoleon. However, Napoleon rejected the proposal for peace talks. Under the pressure of the enemy's superior forces, the 1st and 2nd armies of the Russian Western Front were forced to retreat step by step into the hinterland of the country.

The 1st Army of the Western Front abandoned Vilna and withdrew to the Drissa Barracks, thus increasing the distance between it and the 2nd Army of the Western Front to 200 km. The main force of the French army took advantage of the situation and occupied Minsk on July 8, forming a trend of annihilation of the Russian army. At the beginning of the war, Napoleon did not achieve the desired results, and the French army suffered 150,000 casualties and desertions, and many horses died. The combat effectiveness of the French soldiers declined, discipline was lax, looting was rife, and the pace of the offensive began to be slow, so Napoleon had to order the troops to stop advancing on July 29 and rest for 7~8 days in the area from Veli to Mogilev.

On 7 August, the 1st and 2nd armies of the Russian Western Front began an offensive, but the offensive was inconclusive due to hasty preparations, indecisive actions, and differences of opinion between Bagration and Barclay-de-Tolly. At this time, Napoleon suddenly moved his troops to the left bank of the Dnieper, and there was a danger of occupying Smolensk and cutting off the Russian army from Moscow. The Russian army began to retreat in a hurry. On Sunday, the Russian-French army conducted the Battle of Smolensk. The Russian army could not resist the French attack, abandoned Smolensk and retreated to Moscow. The Russians continued to retreat, causing the Tsar to remove Count Barclay de Tolly. On August 20, 1812, Kutuzov was appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian army.

On August 29, Kutuzov arrived at the inauguration of the unit and established a defensive position about 125 kilometers from Moscow. He chose a plot of land next to the village of Borodino that was very suitable for defense, and from September 3 he strengthened the fortifications. On 7 September, the Russians retreated to the outskirts of Moscow and fought a decisive battle with the army of Napoleon I near the village of Borodino. The central French army, led by Napoleon himself, crossed the Neman River with close men, but at the beginning of the campaign only men remained, and most of the soldiers died of starvation and disease. In the Battle of Borodino, both sides suffered heavy casualties (35,000 French troops and 38,500 Russian troops), and the Russian side suffered particularly heavy losses, even the commander of the Second Army, Bagration, the general of the main battle faction, was killed in battle, and had to withdraw from the battlefield at night. On September 13, Kutuzov convened a military meeting in the village of Fili. Ten generals were present, and six were in favor of retreating. Kutuzov ordered Moscow to be abandoned on September 14, leaving Colonel-General Miroladovich to lead the rearguard troops.

Admiral Miroladovich sent a letter to Marshal Murat, who did not attack Moscow. In this way, the Russian army retreated without a fight. Most of the inhabitants also withdrew with the army. On the first day of the French invasion of Moscow, the city was in flames, and Napoleon urgently appointed Marshal Mortier as the governor of Moscow, and asked him to lead his army to extinguish the fire. The fire burned until September 18, and the entire city was reduced to rubble. Napoleon's army looted and did evil everywhere.

Murat did not take advantage of the victory to pursue the Russians, and it is likely that around the time of the Battle of Borodino, the French had to abandon their offensive plans due to battle losses and some more disastrous attrition.

According to some corresponding deductions in later generations, if the French army under Murat, which had not recovered or even recuperated, continued to forcibly attack Moscow, it was very likely that it would end up in total annihilation.

Because when Kutuzov was withdrawn from Borodino, Napoleon did not pursue him. On 13 September, Kutuzov redeployed his troops on the outskirts of Moscow with the intention of fighting the French, but was persuaded to abandon the plan. So he led the Russian army through the city of Moscow and continued to retreat.

On the afternoon of September 14, the first French army led by Murat entered the city of Moscow, which soon became a sea of flames.

After the capture of Moscow by the French, Napoleon, knowing that the situation was unfavorable, proposed an armistice to Russia, but received no reply. By this time, the cold winter had arrived, the front line was snowing, the French army was too deep, and the supply lines were too long. Napoleon finally ordered a retreat on 19 October, and in search of food and shelter for the south, he retreated west from the south. After the French began to retreat, the main forces of the Russian army were ready to move, closely following the rear of the French army. However, they did not send the main force to engage the French army, and only used Cossack cavalry and partisans to ambush and harass the French army.

On the way to retreat, the French army encountered the Russian army at Yaroslavitz, a battle caused by 1,000 Russian troops and 600 French troops, but in the end the French and Russian troops were concentrated, and Napoleon was almost captured. At the end of the battle, the French completely occupied Lesser Yaroslavitz, but the Russians formed an encirclement outside the city, so the French retreated along the Staraya-Smolensk Boulevard. The Russian army and the partisans took advantage of the victory in pursuit.

The battle of Tarutino (which took place on the banks of the Chernishnya River) and the Battle of Lesser Yaroslavets were the beginning of the counteroffensive of the main Russian forces. Since then, the combat operations of the troops and partisans have been particularly active, which have included such effective methods of warfare as parallel pursuit and encirclement of enemy troops. The French army suffered 6,000 casualties and 26,000 prisoners in the three-day battle on November 16~18, and almost lost all artillery.

The scattered remnants of the French army, including those that confronted the Genstein Corps, retreated along the Borisov Highway in the direction of the Bezina River, and the units of the Russian 3rd Army on the Western Front and the Wittgenstein Corps formed a "pocket" in the Borisov area on the way to Berezina, so that the French army, which had been forced to retreat from the east by the main Russian forces and was surrounded on all sides, was pocketed. However, due to the hesitation of Pyotr Christianovich Wittgenstein and the fact that Tsichagov was bewitched by the enemy's feints and disobeyed Kutuzov's orders, he made a mistake by transferring the main forces of his headquarters from Borisov to Zaboshevich to the south, which enabled Napoleon to prepare for the crossing of the Berezina River at Stuttyuenka.

At the end of November, when the French army crossed the Berezina River, it was shelled by the Russian army, suffering heavy casualties. On the morning of November 29, after Viktor's rearguard crossed the bridge, he immediately burned the bridge and fled from the pursuit of the Russian army. The French troops besieged on the banks of the Berezina River were not completely wiped out, but suffered heavy casualties while crossing the river. Napoleon was forced to flee Russia with the remnants (0.9~10,000 men who survived the disastrous defeat at the Battle of the Berezina). He managed to reach Smolgaon and returned to Paris on 6 December, where the remnants of the French army were almost completely wiped out as the Russians continued to fight. Napoleon lost more than 50,000 men in Russia, losing all his cavalry and almost all of his artillery. Only the MacDonald and Schwarzenberg 2 Corps on the flanks survived.

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During the Russo-French War, Napoleon still believed that the decisive battle was the main mode of operation to achieve victory in the war, and his logistical combat method also revolved around the policy of the decisive battle.

However, when the Russian army took the initiative to abandon Moscow, and even when the French army attacked western Russia before, even if the logistics of the French army had been prepared accordingly, it was a pity that because the French army had too many troops, with the national strength of France at that time, in the absence of more adequate preparations, the logistics system of the French army at that time had been prepared accordingly according to Napoleon's requirements, but in the end it could not meet the corresponding needs of the French army, which became an important factor leading to the defeat of the war.

However, the Russian high command creatively adopted a variety of different combat methods and methods: retreating and active guerrilla warfare, maneuvering and parallel pursuit of the flanking enemy, maneuvering to encircle the retreating enemy, being good at combining offensive and defensive in engagements, and using artillery and cavalry on the battlefield extensively. In addition, the purposeful training and use of various reserves is also one of the characteristics of the military scholarship of the Russian army.

In the case of fighting on home, the Russian army has relatively less logistical pressure than the French army, which is also one of the important factors in their victory over Napoleon's army.

It can be said that in a certain sense, the looting behavior of the French army after entering Russia was precisely driven by Napoleon's views on logistics, and even an indicator that could be said to encourage French officers and soldiers to do so.

If Napoleon had been able to control this aspect better, then perhaps Napoleon would have been able to win over some of the popular hearts and minds that might have been won over, thereby alleviating some of the logistical pressure.

And the most critical point is that Napoleon in the Russo-French War, not only got a fiasco for him as a lifetime, but also because of Napoleon's defeat in the war, and the war attrition that could not be replenished, which eventually led to the First French Empire in the Battle of Waterloo, suffered another defeat and withdrew from the stage of history. (To be continued.) )

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