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Napoleon never intended to invade as far as Moscow. It was just supposed to be the 2nd Polish campaign. But Napoleon's hammer blows kept missing.
Napoleon's blend of insightful planning and terrible planning for the invasion led to the temptation to do what the Empereur knew was wrong. Just go a little deeper.
There were at least 3 inflection points that historians point to that could have led to more success and a very different world for us. These include the movement east from Smolensk, the long stay in Moscow, and finally the December 5 decision to leave Murat in command of the French army at Vilnius.
And from the view of Russian decision making we have the quite severe limits on Alexander's freedom to make the kind of decisions Napoleon needed him to make. And also there were the arguments made by Kutuzov, among others that Russia should not push into Germany.
There will be another episode on the topic the following week.
By Harald Hansen5
1313 ratings
You can send a text, include contact info to get a response.
Napoleon never intended to invade as far as Moscow. It was just supposed to be the 2nd Polish campaign. But Napoleon's hammer blows kept missing.
Napoleon's blend of insightful planning and terrible planning for the invasion led to the temptation to do what the Empereur knew was wrong. Just go a little deeper.
There were at least 3 inflection points that historians point to that could have led to more success and a very different world for us. These include the movement east from Smolensk, the long stay in Moscow, and finally the December 5 decision to leave Murat in command of the French army at Vilnius.
And from the view of Russian decision making we have the quite severe limits on Alexander's freedom to make the kind of decisions Napoleon needed him to make. And also there were the arguments made by Kutuzov, among others that Russia should not push into Germany.
There will be another episode on the topic the following week.

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