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Kriegsgeschichte

Napoleon in Russia

According to Nigel Nicolson (Napoleon in Russia, Cologne 1987), the 1812 campaign against Russia was avoidable, i.e., it was willed by Napoleon from the outset. Napoleon did not accept the warning remarks of his confidant Armand Augustin Louis (5th Marquis de) Caulaincourt (09.12.1773 in Caulaincourt in the département Aisne, † 19.02.1827 in Paris), nor did he accept the peace assurances of the Russian Tsar Alexander I (1777–1825). This confrontation was ultimately a consequence of the Emperor’s prior conquests, in particular the “duel between France and England” (Dmitri Merezhkovsky, Napoleon. His Life. Napoleon as a Man, Berlin 1928, p. 185).