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The military machine Napoleon the artilleryman had created was perfectly suited to fight short, violent campaigns, but whenever a long-term sustained effort was in the offing, it tended to expose feet of clay. [...] In the end, the logistics of the French military machine proved wholly inadequate. The experiences of short campaigns had left the French supply services completed unprepared for ...
[125] Schroeder says Poland was "the root cause" of Napoleon's war with Russia, but Russia's refusal to support the Continental System was also a factor. [126] In 1812, at the height of his power, Napoleon invaded Russia with a pan-European Grande Armée, consisting of 450,000 men (200,000 Frenchmen, and many soldiers of allies or subject areas).
A week of close escapes on the part of the Russian army followed. Napoleon and Kutuzov even slept on the same bed in the manor of Bolshiye Vyazyomy just one night apart, as the French chased the Russians down. Napoleon and his army entered Moscow on 14 September. To Napoleon's surprise, Kutuzov had abandoned the city, and it fell without a fight.
Napoleon was stretched very thin; he had committed 40,000 troops to Mexico, 20,000 to Rome to guard the Pope against the Italians, and another 80,000 in restive French Algeria. Furthermore, Prussia, having just defeated Austria, was an imminent threat. Napoleon realized his predicament and withdrew all his forces from Mexico in 1866.
Russia also chafed under the embargo, and in 1810 reopened trade with Britain. Russia's withdrawal from the system was a motivating factor behind Napoleon's decision to invade Russia in 1812, which proved the turning point of the war and his regime. [citation needed]
Napoleon's Wars: An International History 1803–1815 (2008), 621pp; Gates, David. The Napoleonic Wars 1803–1815 (NY: Random House, 2011) Hazen, Charles Downer. The French Revolution and Napoleon (1917) online free; Nafziger, George F. The End of Empire: Napoleon's 1814 Campaign (2014) Parker, Harold T. "Why Did Napoleon Invade Russia?
The battle of Vitebsk, sometimes spelled Witepsk, was a military engagement that took place on 26 and 27 July 1812 during the French invasion of Russia.The battle put a French force, under the command of Emperor Napoleon I, in combat with Russian rearguard forces under General Petr Konovnitsyn (on 26 July) and Peter von der Pahlen (on 27 July) and ended with the Russian forces making a ...
With Austria and Russia out of the war, Britain found itself increasingly isolated and agreed to the Treaty of Amiens with Napoleon's government in 1802, concluding the Revolutionary Wars. However, the lingering tensions proved too difficult to contain, and the Napoleonic Wars began over a year later with the formation of the Third Coalition ...