NAPOLEON’S INVASION OF RUSSIA IN 1812 – PART FOUR The second Polish war, as Napoleon named it, started late when the Grande Armée crossed the River Niemen on 24 June 1812. Lateness, thought Napoleon, would not matter, as he expected to win the war in three weeks by a series of lightning thrusts to envelop and destroy the Russian army. The Russian policy, however, was to delay and Barclay de Tolly instituted a scorched earth policy whereby any crops that could not be harvested and removed were burned, wells poisoned and animals driven away or butchered. This policy was increasingly unpopular with the landowners and the peasants who farmed the land, but it placed ever more of a burden on the French logistics machinery, which soon began to creak. The heat and dust of the Russian summer began to take its toll with men suffering with heat stroke exacerbated by the failure of the suppliers to get sufficient water forward to the infantry columns. Horses too were affected, particularly in areas where the grass had been burnt off and stocks of hay destroyed or removed.
NAPOLEON'S INVASION OF RUSSIA IN 1812 - PART FOUR
NAPOLEON'S INVASION OF RUSSIA IN 1812 - PART…
NAPOLEON'S INVASION OF RUSSIA IN 1812 - PART FOUR
NAPOLEON’S INVASION OF RUSSIA IN 1812 – PART FOUR The second Polish war, as Napoleon named it, started late when the Grande Armée crossed the River Niemen on 24 June 1812. Lateness, thought Napoleon, would not matter, as he expected to win the war in three weeks by a series of lightning thrusts to envelop and destroy the Russian army. The Russian policy, however, was to delay and Barclay de Tolly instituted a scorched earth policy whereby any crops that could not be harvested and removed were burned, wells poisoned and animals driven away or butchered. This policy was increasingly unpopular with the landowners and the peasants who farmed the land, but it placed ever more of a burden on the French logistics machinery, which soon began to creak. The heat and dust of the Russian summer began to take its toll with men suffering with heat stroke exacerbated by the failure of the suppliers to get sufficient water forward to the infantry columns. Horses too were affected, particularly in areas where the grass had been burnt off and stocks of hay destroyed or removed.