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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 ...
Napoleon with the French Grande Armée began his invasion of Russia on 24 June 1812 by crossing the Niemen. [17] As his Russian army was outnumbered by far, Mikhail Bogdanovich Barclay de Tolly successfully used a "delaying operation", defined as an operation in which a force under pressure trades space for time by slowing down the enemy's momentum and inflicting maximum damage on the enemy ...
The second strategy used by Napoleon when confronted with two or more enemy armies was the use of the central position. This allowed Napoleon to drive a wedge to separate the enemy armies. He would then use part of his force to mask one army while the larger portion overwhelmed and defeated the second army quickly.
Napoleon came up with what became known as the Smolensk maneuver, a masterful operation designed to outflank Barclay from the south, cut off the Russians from Moscow and destroy the isolated Russian army, thus bringing the war to an end. [10] [12] The action at Inkovo on 7 August was seen by Napoleon as heralding an immediate Russian attack.
The forces immediately facing Napoleon consisted of three armies, [43] operating around the Western Dvina, the Dnieper and the Bug (river), comprising 175–250,000 Russians and 15,000 Cossacks, with 938 guns as follows: Minister of War Mikhail Barclay de Tolly served as the Commander in Chief of the Russian
Attrition warfare against Napoleon; Lists of battles of the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars; List of battles of the War of the First Coalition; List of battles of the War of the Second Coalition; List of battles of the War of the Third Coalition; List of battles of the War of the Fourth Coalition; List of battles of the War of the ...
The Battle of Leipzig, [e] also known as the Battle of the Nations, [f] was fought from 16 to 19 October 1813 at Leipzig, Saxony.The Coalition armies of Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Russia, led by Tsar Alexander I and Karl von Schwarzenberg, decisively defeated the Grande Armée of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon in Russia: A Concise History of 1812, Digby Smith, Pen & Sword Military, ISBN 1-84415-089-5 The War of the Two Emperors , Curtis Cate, Random House, New York, ISBN 0-394-53670-3 Narrative of Events during the Invasion of Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Retreat of the French Army, 1812 , Sir Robert Wilson , Elibron Classics, ISBN ...