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World history
Course: World history > Unit 5
Lesson 3: Napoleon Bonaparte- Napoleon and the Wars of the First and Second Coalitions
- Napoleon and the War of the Third Coalition
- Napoleon and the War of the Fourth Coalition
- Napoleon's Peninsular Campaigns
- French invasion of Russia
- Napoleon forced to abdicate
- Hundred days and Waterloo
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French invasion of Russia
Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia. Created by Sal Khan.
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- On the chart when it shows Napoleon's retreat, there is a line that joins it coming down from the north, what is that?(42 votes)
- You know how on the way to Moscow he needed to leave behind men to gaurd the supply route. My guess is that the line from the north is men from the supply route returning to the main army.(32 votes)
- Curious how Napoleon made such a huge mistake to wait in Moscow for so long that it cost him huge casulties and lesssupporters yet in WWII Hitler ignored this error and even though his generals protested he made them invade Russia during the winter time. My guess is that both of the leaders were too focused on gaining power than bothering to think about the fact that, it gets pretty cold up north. Has anyone else made any other mistakes like these in history?(25 votes)
- Napoleon decided it was imperitive to punish the Russions for breaking the trade restrictions imposed by the Continental System (blockade of Britain by all member states in Napoleonic Empire). Hitler simply recognized his war was a timetabled war, meaning he had to achieve his objectives quickly; so when Hermen Goering aasured him that the Battle of Britain was nearly won, Hitler turned to Russia instead of making sure Britain was defeated. Goering also assured Hitler the Luftwafta could also supply the German army as it marched against Russia. The rest is history.(26 votes)
- At: what happened at the Berezina River that made Napoleon lose so many men? Was it just that they had trouble crossing it or was there some sort of skirmish with the Russians? Thanks!:-) 14:15(16 votes)
- It was that they had trouble crossing because it was waayy below freezing. Water and coldness does not go together. Plus they were very weak from having very little food, and other necessary supplies to survive.(16 votes)
- Why did Russia break the treaty with Napoleon and start trading with Britian?(7 votes)
- As a purely agricultural country, Russia flirted with an economic crisis when it could no longer, because of the Continental System, exchange its excess of production by England manufactured goods. The result was that the Tsar Alexander I Pavlovich started to trade with England again, ignoring Napoleon's protests or answering evasively.(10 votes)
- Why did France and Great Britain hate each other so much?(4 votes)
- In 1066 the duke of Normandy who was a subject of the French king, conquered England (he was called William the conqueror for this reason). He was married to the daughter of the French king. And so his children were the children of the English king and grandchildren of the French king, plus they held the duchy of Normandy as well, this gave them a good claim on the French crown, and the English and the french fought for many years over these claims ( you can look op the hundred years war to read about the conflict). and this was what started the rivalry between England and France, later the English king Henry the eight split from the catholic church and formed the church of England which was unpopular with the rest of the catholic nations, including France.(14 votes)
- why did napoleons invasion fail(4 votes)
- Napoleon Bonaparte sent more than 70,000 soldiers to invade Russia. At first, the Russians retreat. The France' goal is to capture Moscow and other Russian cities. But the Russian cold defeated many soldiers and the Russians take care of rest of the soldiers.(3 votes)
- Did Hitler know what happened to Napoleon when he attacked Russia?(2 votes)
- Yes, he knew. He failed to learn from history and earned his doom when history did repeat itself.(5 votes)
- Why is it a bad idea to invade Russia in winter ?(3 votes)
- The weather in Russia during the winter is awful, the ground covered in feet of snow. Its under -100F.(3 votes)
- What is the technical difference between a "skirmish" and a "battle"?(2 votes)
- Skirmish is just brief and minor exchange of fire between opposing military forces. On the other hand, battle is a full-scale confrontation between two or more armies.(5 votes)
- At, the coldest temperature is given as '-37 degrees'. Is this in Fahrenheit or Centigrade? Although, I suppose at that temperature, the difference between the scales is rather small - after all, -40*F = -40*C. 13:44(3 votes)
Video transcript
In the last video, I talked
about the two campaigns that eventually lead to Napoleon's
downfall. One of those was the Peninsular
Campaign. Where Napoleon and the French
Empire had to waste a significant amount of resources
fighting and trying to hold Spain. And the other, almost more
direct catalyst for the fall of Napoleon, was his
invasion of Russia. We're going to see in this is
video why it was so disastrous for Napoleon. This is easily one of the top
five, I would say, famous military campaigns in
all of history. So let's remind ourselves the
relationship between Napoleon, or between the French
Empire and Russia. After the Fourth Coalition, you
might remember the Treaty of Tilsit, they're friends. Russia was part of the
Continental System, which means that they would boycott
or that they would not trade with Britain. Or allow Britain to use
any of Russia's ports. And Russia was allowed to do
anything that they want with the Ottoman Empire. So everything was good. But then we move forward
to 1811. We're in 1811 and Russia
starts relaxing the Continental System. Essentially meaning that they
started to trade a little bit with Britain. So this all of a sudden begins
to annoy, it angers Napoleon. In order for an embargo to
work, in order for the Continental System to work,
everyone on the continent has to not trade with Britain. Because if someone trades with
Britain, Britain could just trade with them and then that
trade could circulate through the rest of Europe. So in order for this to work,
it has to be total. So this already annoys
Napoleon. Especially because he defeated
the Russians in the Fourth Coalition. In the Treaty of Tilsit
he thought he was being nice to them. Just don't do any trade with
Great Britain, we're going to be good buddies. But then what really got
Napoleon is in 1812, he hears that Russia is thinking about
taking the French Empire's part of Poland, or the
Duchy of Warsaw. So Russia thinking about
taking Poland. So Napoleon figures, gee, we're
no longer friends, I better attack them
preemptively. So against the advice of a lot
of people about actually invading Russia, Napoleon
decides to invade. So this directly leads
to Napoleon invading. And his other option, obviously,
would have been just to defend Poland
from Russia. But Napoleon, he just says no,
look if they're going to double cross me like that, I'm
just going to go full tilt and show them who's boss. So he decides to invade
in April of 1812. And Napoleon is no dummy. He realizes that the Russian
winter is really vicious. So he says, if I start in the
late spring like this and I engage the Russians and I
decisively defeat them, everything will be
said and done. And I'll be Emperor of
Russia, as well. Before Russia even begins
to get cold. So what I'm going to do here,
to just understand how devastating this campaign ends
up being to Napoleon, I'm going to use one of the
most famous charts in the history of charts. Some people consider this
to be the best, most well-designed chart ever. And this was created
by Charles-- let me use another color. I keep using this. This was created by Charles
Joseph Minard. You can actually get a bigger
version of this on Wikipedia. But that was too big
for my screen. So this is a smaller version. But it's a fascinating chart. So what it shows is the size
of Napoleon's army as it invades Russia. And the size of the army is
shown by the width of this brown line right here. So when he starts invading
Russia, he has 450,000 men. If you could read this number,
that's what it says. And you can find zoomed
versions on the web. If you just do a search on this
and on the invasion of Russia, you'll find
this chart. It's very, very famous. More than even teaching you the
history, this is also just a neat chart to look at. And it's something that
you should be exposed to at some point. But as you can see, and just
so you have some scope of what's going on, not only does
it show you the size of his forces, it shows the path
that it travels. And you can already see that as
the forces are travelling, the number of the soldiers in
the force is getting smaller and smaller. And he keeps updating
the numbers. So obviously that width is
smaller than that width, by it looks like it's less than half
the forces at this point than at this point. And just to understand where
this is going on, here is a map of Eastern Europe. And Charles Joseph Minard's map
starts right around here in Lithuania. So this is where the Napoleon
forces were strongest, where he had 450,000. And it kind of goes like this. This is Moscow right here. So this is kind of
the endpoint. And if I were to trace this
shape onto here, it would look something like this. I'm just trying to
show the path. Roughly like this. And then you get to Moscow. So that line is the same
thing as that line. Just so you have some context
within the broader geography of Europe. So it's starting off, in what's
almost exactly the northeastern border of
present-day Poland, or you could say the southwestern
border of what's now Lithuania. Crosses through what
is now Belarus. And then goes on into Russia. Now, as you can see here, I
already pointed out, that as he's traveling, as the forces
are travelling, these 450,000 men, horses, and armaments, and
cannons, and everything else is getting thinner
and thinner. And one is, it's just basic
military logistics. You have to keep your
supply routes open. You have to keep leaving men
behind to essentially guard the supply routes. So just as the longer your
campaign, and the further into enemy territory you have, you
have to keep leaving men behind to guard it. And this whole time, Napoleon
kept wanting to engage with the Russians. The whole time that he was
travelling, he kept expecting to engage the Russians. But just as he was about to
engage the Russians, the Russians would back
up a little bit. And this kept happening. They're were small skirmishes,
so obviously he lost some troops here or there. But most of this was just to
maintain the supply line. Eventually, he is able to have,
I guess we could say, a skirmish, I don't want to say
a skirmish, it was actually maybe a brief battle
with the Russians in August in Smolensk. And that is, let me make sure
I get it right on the map, right there. But once again, Napoleon
was victorious. But the Russians retreated, it
wasn't a decisive victory over the Russian army. Eventually, he just keeps
chasing them, keeps chasing them, until we get to
September 7, 1812. And now you could imagine that
we're kind of in the fall now. And it gets cold quickly
out here in Russia. So already, it's getting to be a
kind of precarious position. But Napoleon is confident. He's like, you know what? If I can decisively defeat the
Russians, I can take Moscow. Moscow will have food it in. And all will be said and done. And that's actually brings
up another point. You might remember when I talked
about the War of the Third Coalition, that Napoleon,
and in general good military tactics to invade
during the fall. Because of fall is the
harvest season. That way you don't have to
have as many supplies carried with you. You don't have to guard the
supply routes as carefully. Because you can just go and take
all of the farmer's crops to feed your troops. But what the Russians did is
what they call scorched earth tactics, which essentially
means exactly what it sounds like. As the Russians kept retreating
back, they burned everything that could be of
benefit to Napoleon's troops. So they burned all the fields
as they retreated, so that Napoleon's troops couldn't
access the local resources. So they had to keep having a
very-- I guess you could say-- costly supply chain from where
they started, as opposed to just feeding off of the land. And the Russians just
continued to do this on and on and on. All the way to Moscow. All the way to September 1812,
where we have the Battle of Borodino, if I'm saying
it correctly. And at this point, Napoleon
only had a 135,000 of his original 450,000 men. The rest had to be left behind
to guard the supply route. Or they deserted because they
were starting to get hungry. Or they were lost just with
minor skirmishes that happened along the entire way. And at the Battle of Borodino,
after a long, protracted, super bloody battle, in which--
let me write these numbers down-- 44-- and these
are all estimates-- 44,000 Russian casualties. Mostly death, but also
wounded or captured. And 35,000 French. Many historians think this is
the most of bloody day of battle up to this
day in history. The French are victorious. So we have a French
victory here. So Napoleon is feeling
good about himself. Borodino is right outside
of Moscow. He's like, you know what? I'm just going to walk
into Moscow. They're going to hand the keys
of the city over to me. And then my troops are going to
have a good time in Moscow being able to eat all the
food that must be there. And I will now be Emperor
of Russia, as well. So about a week later, he walks
into Moscow and it's completely deserted. All of the inhabitants have left
and they've taken all the food with them. And then on top of that,
Moscow starts burning. And there's some debate as
to why Moscow burned. Some historians believe it
is because the Russians deliberately set fire
to the city. Some believe that it was just
a tinder box waiting to burn and Napoleon's troops were just
a little irresponsible with where they built fires. It's not clear. But needless to say, it made
Moscow useless to Napoleon. And this is kind of
a major change. Napoleon just expected look,
if I beat your army decisively, like I did it
at Borodino, I won. I take the city. Now, you should give me
food and shelter. And I'm your new Emperor. But the Russians had something
different in mind. They said, no you will
never take Russia. You can have Moscow. You can have a burned Moscow. There's nothing in it. And we'll just like to see you
retreat in the Moscow winter. And by Napoleon's own accounts,
this is a quote that he gave. The most terrible of
all my battles was the one before Moscow. The French showed themselves
to be worthy of victory. This is at Borodino. But the Russians show themselves
worthy of being invincible. So with no one to recognize
Napoleon or to help him out or to feed his troops, he's kind
of in a worthless Moscow. He decides to just turn around,
especially because the Russian winter is approaching. So on this chart you can see
they went all the way to Moscow, they had
135,000 troops. They lose 35,000 of them. So you have 100,000 troops
coming back. This black line, right here,
this represents the retreat. And then things start
getting cold. So it's really interesting
about this chart that Minard made. It has a couple things. You see the route that
Napoleon's army took as it went into Russia. Then in black, this
is its retreat. It gets thinner and thinner
and thinner. And you see where they went. And on top of that,
he shows the temperature as they retreated. And this is on something called
a Reaumur scale, but you can just multiply these
numbers, if you can see them, by 1.25. So you can see that it was
already, it was not that bad. But over here, we're already
below freezing. We're well below freezing
over here. At the coldest point, if
Minard's numbers are right, and I've seen some historians
contest the numbers, but it was cold nonetheless. It's negative 37 degrees as
we start approaching into November and December. So Napoleon's forces, as before,
they had this whole supply chain. They had scorched earth. So there's nothing to eat. They still had nothing to eat. Then it started getting cold. And while it was cold and they
were retreating, some of the troops would desert. They would be attacked
by peasants. Just little bit by little bit
they'd be attacked by various Russian forces. And then kind of the final blow
was when they were trying to cross the Berezina River. So this right here is
the Berezina River. And you can even see from
Minard's chart that the width was respectable. But then after trying
to cross that river, it just got decimated. Almost half of the soldiers
died or disappeared. And these are depictions, these
are paintings, of the retreat of Napoleon's forces
in the winter. This is actually a painting of
the crossing of Berezina. And by the time that the forces
got back at the end of 1812-- all the way over here,
by Minard's map-- you only have 10,000 troops of the
original 450,000. So only 1 in 45 returned. The other were either captured, deserted, or just died. So when this happened, you could
imagine, not only did Napoleon lose so many soldiers,
also lost on the order of 200,000 horses. Actually, total casualties for
this one campaign, the estimates are about 300,000
French troops. The estimates I saw had about
200,000 Russian troops. And just to be clear, a big
portion of the French troops died as they tried to retreat. And then there was a huge amount
of Russian civilian casualties. And there were also soldiers
from other countries participating, especially
on the French side. When all is said and done,
estimates are over 1 million dead from the French invasion. But beyond even just the human
casualties, Napoleon lost on the order of 200,000 horses. I forgot the exact number,
but thousands of canons. So you could imagine, that it
was just this huge, huge loss to the French military. So by the time this was done,
the rest of the powers of Europe could kind of finally see
Napoleon being weakened. He was already bogged down
in the peninsula. He had this huge defeat as he
tried to invade Russia. They finally realized that now
is the time that they can form maybe a Sixth Coalition and
really take Napoleon out.