WWTBAM Bored

To continue the Dictator threads.

I am reading a book on Napoleon's disastrous campaign in Russia in 1812.

I know very little about Napoleon in general-but I knew he made it to Moscow and then made a disastrous retreat and very few of his men made it out of Russia alive.

I really should read more about Napoleon's campaigns.

After reading the first part of the book-I am about halfway to Moscow-I don't get how the French even made it to Moscow.

The supply situation even for the early part of the campaign was horrendous so the troops had to pillage in very hard country- with the added complexity that on a completely arbitrary basis some French troops were shot for pillaging.

Thousands of horses died in the first days of the campaign and the suicides among French troops also started very early.

If I didn't know the outcome-I would assume that they didn't make it to Moscow and were forced to retreat much earlier.

It is an absolute disaster from Day 1.

I was in Corsica last month, where I learned a bit about an earlier period in Napoleon's life. The pro-French loyalists including the Bonapartes battled the pro-independence faction led by Pasquale Paoli. Paoli was a hero to the American Sons of Liberty, and Paoli, Pa., on the Main Line not far from where I live, is named after him.

Ironically, Paoli's biggest international ally was King George III. Sounds like a case of "the enemy of my enemy ..."

Did you hear what happened to Napoleon when he fell off his horse?

Spoiler

He broke his bone apart