Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 97 - French Invasion of Russia Part 3: The Not So Grand Army

Episode Date: March 23, 2020

Napoleon's famed Grande Armee finally begins its march towards war. Almost immediately his soldiers begin starving to death and shooting themselves before they even make it to Russia. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys check out our new merch: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store Follow us on twitter: @lions_by Join the subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LionsLedByDonkeys/

Hello and welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I almost forgot the name of our own podcast. Podcast. I almost forgot the name of our own podcast. I'm Joe and with me today, as per always, from an undisclosed location. Yeah, the Jesse Ventura location. That's right. Now, this is the first time we've been doing the show for almost two years. We have almost 100 episodes under our belt. This is the first time that we have ever recorded remotely because you are forcefullyfully quarantined yeah it's awesome i love it uh it sounds like fucking hell on earth i don't mean to laugh like no it's honestly a funny situation and i were the i would not be laughing if you didn't call me yesterday when we were getting ready to actually record this which had to be postponed obviously uh and

you were like giggling to yourself and like i understand that like literally tens of thousands of people around the globe are suffering a horrible pandemic and people have died yes we know uh that shit sucks it's horrible i wish governments could get off their ass and provide the health care to people that they need it but the show uh one of the things we do is we talk about serious things we try to bring levity to them and that thank you nick yeah and that's what we're gonna do well we're gonna do a bonus episode where we talk about you in quarantine how that whole thing happened uh but you know if we make any jokes about being locked in a small room for 14 days just know we're trying to make light of an incredibly dark situation right um which is i

mean we're about to talk about like thousands of people dying like if anybody's upset about this like we're you must be fucking new here but you shouldn't be new here because this is uh the french invasion of russia part three yeah it's episode three yeah so why are you on episode go back listen to episode one and two donate to the patreon and then you can be upset about us making fun of pandemics um that's that's what we call gatekeeping money talks yeah uh but also does not listen uh true now when when we left you last week uh we were talking about how napoleon had committed to war against Russia for reasons that really don't make a whole lot of sense

to anybody whose brain isn't like I don't know diseased by 1800s syphilis and so deluded they made themselves an emperor doesn't make a lot of sense it's just mainlining it right up his fucking veins I don't think Napoleon had

syphilis that is uh that is that is a bit uh i are you slandering napoleon i kind of wished it said like nick is locked in an undisclosed location i wish that was a bit it's not but syphilis syphilis is a bit uh so the last episode we we really just focused on the outlines of the armies that would be fighting each other so we wouldn't have to do it later this one we're going to talk about how the war kind of unfolded is this a tobacco free zone can I dip? the podcast? or your fucking jail cell

well my jail cell is my jail cell you always dipped in the podcast in the recording studio Or your fucking jail cell. Well, my jail cell is my jail cell. I'll talk about the podcast in general. You always dipped in the podcast in the recording studio. All right, just making sure. Nothing's changed. And like every soldier I ever knew who dipped would leave their dip bottles behind. I would actually clean mine up.

I would take it with me. I mean, it's fine because they would intermingle with the like dozens of empty beer cans that we have on the desk at any given time oh yeah let's blend together um now this episode we're going to talk about napoleon's grand army's march into russia but first they had to kind of like form itself together i know even waiting for this for weeks uh they kind of like form itself together from all the various client states and france and all that as they march through germany and poland

they had a tendency to kind of create uh like an international traffic jam like the roads that they have in these places obviously are not interstates they're probably awful it's like a single dirt track that's kind of flat that you drive a fucking wagon down i mean cobblestone roads are a thing um stuff like that but like they are absolutely not built to handle tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of people all at once so all of this would um slow everything down and the speed as we talked about before and la mara and all that other shit speed is of the essence here now what is it

if now if you you are a sergeant in the army before you say march from one point to another there's something that's pretty important right like what are you doing where am I going yeah like where what's my destination what if I that what if I told

you that no almost nobody in the french army knew what they were doing they didn't even know where they were going go that way yeah uh turn east now obviously like napoleon and his marshals knew that they were marching off to invade russia but like even people that like at the height of like general did not know that they were invading Russia. So people that should know. Yeah. And soldiers definitely had no idea. Now remember that Napoleon is fighting a war in Spain at the time.

And a lot of people thought they were marching in that direction to get to a Baltic port where they would be loaded upon ships and then transported to Spain. Well, have you ever closed your eyes while in a car and you could tell where they would be loaded upon ships and then transported to Spain. Well, have you ever closed your eyes while in a car and you could tell where they're going? Kind of, yeah. Yeah, I think that's what they're feeling right now. I think this is more like, have you ever been really tired and you fall asleep for just a millisecond and you're not really sure how you got to where you ended up?

I think it's more like that. Every day. Yeah, sure. Not anymore every day. Well, yeah, sure. Uh, not anymore every day. Yeah, we, uh,

we, we do not condone safe driving on this podcast. We actually, uh, hope everybody gets really, really tired behind the wheel and becomes a danger to everybody around them. Uh, other people thought that like,

remember how we talked about how, um, Napoleon kind of lied to alex and said hey we're going to join forces and we're going to invade india and stick it to the brits well some people thought that they were actually doing that rather than like russia is our enemy now uh there was a very very small amount of people that knew that they were invading russia really so i would hope generals would know. You would think that,

but a lot of people were left out of the loop to include generals. Because remember, this is like, this whole army is dependent on Napoleon, right? Right. He doesn't really think that they need to know certain things because in reality, they didn't. They kind of sucked at their job.

And I mean, this isn't like an operational security thing like opsec isn't generally a thing uh other than like marching routes and stuff like that like the general idea of we're being invaded is not a secret everybody knew at this point um they weren't sneaking up on anybody with a half a million people no that's it sounds incredibly hard yeah it sounds like something that would be impossible to do in 2020. I have a hard time sneaking up on people. I have big feet. Yeah, this is just a whole army of stomping ass feet, Nix.

Now, if all this wasn't bad enough, and it was pretty bad, Napoleon went on to make it worse. There's a few beginner's steps that you need to take in order to plan a war like you need to shore up your allies you need to make sure that people aren't going to jump into the war on russia to start a war for dummies kind of book guide you know if there was one you feel like it'd be written by napole he was starting a lot of them. More like defense. Yeah, it's kinetic defensive wars. There's certain things you want to do.

You want to talk to maybe Sweden. You want to talk to Austria. You want to talk to all these powers like, hey, you're joining the shit on my side. Napoleon did not do any of that. In fact, he did the opposite. my side napoleon did not do any of that in fact he did the opposite uh first uh under the pretext that they were not enforcing the continental system he simply invaded a portion of sweden now uh if you hit that's why that's it uh now if you remember sweden was a longtime french ally that napoleon had purposely made sure that uh b Bernadotte would be on the goddamn throne as crown prince. So

they'd kind of be like grafted to him as an ally because a Frenchman's on the throne. He invaded them. I would do the same. And then Sweden, to the surprise of I'm assuming only Napoleon, went and signed a peace treaty with Russia rather than saying, like, yep, we got your

back, like, fuck this, we're with Russia. It kind like saying that like yep we got your back like fuck this we're with Russia it kind of sucks god I mean how bad do you have to suck for a Frenchman who I mean granted I I know Bernadotte and Napoleon really didn't like each other but he was still at that level because of his uh his his acquaintanceship with like Napoleon but like this isn't like biting the hand that feeds you he turned around and cut it off with a fucking broadsword right which I mean I don't blame Bernadotte for doing that at all I mean there's a

reason why the house of Bernadotte is still the royal house of Sweden he was smarter than fucking Napoleon I mean he's still around he's doing something right yeah I'm assuming it's actually still him like the god emperor from Warhammer 40 K. He is just like his throne is a life support system. Um,

now there's another thing. Uh, we, we talked about Prussia, uh, briefly, but it's important to remember kind of dumb, uh,

for dumb reasons that, uh, pride and honor is super important to especially a martial nation like Prussia. Like the, the, the, the Prussian tradition of warfare and their hardcore militarist society is kind of what led to world war one and the unification,

the unification of Germany and then world war one. But it was also a thing in 1812 and Prussia had been subjugated by Napoleon and ever since then they've kind of felt like they've been besmirched. And one of the things they need to do to earn that honor back was go to war, even if it was on the side of Napoleon, and fight with him. So the Prussians came to him and said, look, we understand what's happening. We would like to contribute a large amount of troops. Hey, we're really into war. Yeah. I mean, it's Prussia. It's what's happening. We would like to contribute a large amount of troops. Hey, we're really into war.

Yeah, I mean, it's Prussia. It's what they do. I mean, name one other thing that they're good for. I mean, exactly. Hold on. Give me a second. A lot can be said for Prussian society in that, I mean, unifying Germany

is largely a good thing, I guess, I suppose, in a geopolitical sense but like they're kind of bastards as well but you know they wanted to gain their honor back like you know let us put like as many soldiers as we can in the grand army to do that um napoleon actually refused he only allowed them to take a tiny contingent of people uh yeah which is weird because like in like two weeks he's like i really wish i had those 50 000 prussians um i don't need them now this is considered a pretty big fucking insult um so it actually caused an upswell of anti-french attitude uh in prussia as well as prussian nationalism like we need to be as strong as we can fuck the french we need to kick him out

which actually forced the plane to divert forces away to quell this stuff so he actively kicked himself in the balls because he didn't want more soldiers and like historically prussian soldiers are some of the best in in europe yeah he's like nope don't want an awesome yeah um and then another thing we've talked about poland almost constantly uh in the series and we can continue doing that um now one of the main arguments that uh france and russia had was poland status uh and are they single are they taken is it complicated swing do they go both ways i mean they go they definitely go between germany and russia oof uh but yeah a genocide joke i guess uh our bad um but you know he didn't say you know what my goal

is to restore the kingdom of poland or my goal is to make the grand Duchy of Warsaw as strong as possible. He just didn't do shit. Don't need to. Which actually caused the Polish national, not necessarily national smooth, but national feeling to gravitate more towards Russia. Because they're like, well, shit, at least we know we're just Russian with them. That's true. And rightfully, they thought Napoleon was now untrustworthy. They they're like the dude well he's not shitting or getting off the pot he's just kind of like not doing anything and honestly he just doesn't seem like a trustworthy

guy yeah i mean he's not absolutely no never trust napoleon not even if you're one of his soldiers because they'll be like you know what i love you guys i'll do everything i can to care for you oh by the way march into that cannon you fucking idiot he would be the guy if you're split screening halo he would look at your screen yeah and then you're like bro you're screen peeing like no i'm not i just had an itch yeah what a dick yeah fuck that guy he if you're playing basketball but in all honesty i would too i would definitely screen like i always screen peaked um if you're playing a pickup game of basketball with Napoleon, he's an elbow.

You hold his hands up like no foul, no foul. He's a fucking asshole. I also may have done that, but you know, it's important because, you know, I've,

we've pointed out a few times that one of the points of the war was not to destroy Russia. It was to smack him around and get him in line. So he thought the restoration of Poland would gravely destabilize Russia. So he didn't want to do Russia. It was to smack him around and get him in line. So he thought the restoration of Poland would gravely destabilize Russia. So he didn't want to do that. Um, but he, at the same time,

he didn't want to give up the grand Dutchie. It means meanwhile, like the polls are in the middle of all of us are like, well, somebody please just give us food. Uh, yeah, it's really dumb.

Uh, I really agree. I can't go into that anymore without, uh, by, and then make it not sound dumber because it's really dumb uh i really agree i i can't go into that anymore without by and then make it not sound dumber because it's it's very very stupid uh another thing is that russia and you know the the imperial russia fought almost like an endless string of wars against the turks in the ottoman empire they were in the middle of one right now. And Napoleon thought that was cool and all. He's like, oh, cool.

They're fighting Turkey. That's good. And he just assumed they would keep fighting rather than like go to the Ottoman Sultan and be like, hey, look, just keep Russia engaged in a war and we'll pay you or something like just like keep them distracted. Do something. Have like a little like tap dancing show in front of Russia? Yeah, because if he went to Turkey and asked them for a favor, he would have to do something he sucks at, which is treat them as an ally,

treat them as an equal. He wasn't going to do that. So he's like, well, I'll just ignore them, and I'm sure they'll just keep fighting. The problem was Turkey was losing that war, because remember theians had pushed them back and then retreated because they couldn't afford an occupation got no money yeah so like the czar knew that war with france was coming so like he quickly went to the ottomans like yo let's let's pause on this shit and then ottomans like yeah, cool. We're losing. Let's stop fighting. And so the fuck, they ended the war.

Nice. Which allowed him to focus everything on the coming French invasion. Now, there's more to it than like Napoleon just being an idiot. Napoleon and the Ottomans were not friends. The French and the Turks were not friends. They had no history of friendship. But like that whole saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend fucking exists for a reason and has for quite some time. Unless, of course, you are Napoleon, which in which case the enemy of my enemy is that guy.

I don't talk to my enemy. Also, I also must invade them now. Now, as we said in the last episode, Napoleon kind of crossed the Rubicon, so to speak, meaning war was certain. Now, war requires concrete plans. That is, unless you are two people, the United States of America or the French Empire.

Napoleon knew he wanted to put Alex in his place, in Russia, in a place of subjugation, but he wasn't really sure how to do it. So his plans just kind of changed every day, all while people were literally already marching to war.

Plans changing every day back then would suck. Yeah, so absolutely nobody knew where they were going, what they were doing what their goals were it was just napoleon just spitballing stuff uh but like yeah people like half a million people thereabouts are already marching towards war from the the sea no the west uh i want chicken alfredo quick invade england sir we are in poland uh invade spain i see now remember at one point he he wasn't this wasn't going to be a long war it was you know go in win a battle bike see look

yeah it'd be home by christmas you know can we be usual yeah yeah that that saying was definitely worded which means they're doomed um at one point he said his army would only go as far as minsk uh sapping the russian strength by having his army live in Russia. I mean, having 100,000 or so people living in your backyard is kind of a drain on your resources. And living off the land in Russia would suck as well. Yeah, I hope you can digest dirt and sadness, which, spoiler alert, they could not. which, spoiler alert, they could not. And then one day at like 3 a.m., pretty much everybody was asleep

except Napoleon and a couple of his aides that he made stay up with him. And he called everybody in for a meeting randomly and decided that, you know what? We might just have to invade Moscow. Though he wasn't so sure. Like, it was just a suggestion. He was like, he wasn't like,

all right, guys, we're going to have to go as far as Moscow. He called a meeting to say, we might have to go as far as Moscow. And then like, you know, somebody's like, which one is it? This guy's doing the lines of Coke and everybody's just like,

this guy's unstable. I mean, like between Minsk and Moscow is a fucking massive, massive gap of, of, of area. Like you can't just like yeah we'll just go that way it's like hundreds and

hundreds of kilometers and like or thousands they're like they don't have the supplies they don't have the logistics for that like you said three weeks and we're going to Minsk but didn't matter we're doing that now he said what he said well I said we're going to Moscow can't go back now

and then he started fucking with the poles again now he thought a polish nationalist movement as in like a unified effort to restore the kingdom of poland not the grand duchy bullshit um front uh that would like he would stoke the fires of that movement but he wouldn't lead it himself like it wouldn't have explicit napoleonic backing he was trying to do a proxy war. And he was trying to weaken Russia by doing that. So he stuck his brother Jerome at the head of an army

and sent him to Warsaw to do just that. To be like, alright guys, we're all for Poland now and for some... Jerome was supposed to be the king. Even though he was not Polish, did not speak Polish, nothing. Don't need to. No, you really, really don't.

It turns out Jerome was a bit of a fucking idiot. Now, almost immediately the people of Warsaw began to really fucking hate Jerome and the soldiers he brought with him. His troops were German, not Polish. And I think everybody listening to this show knows what Germans do when they're in Poland. And that is steal, rape, and pillage, and murder, wherever they went. Yeah, and the commander of these guys, remember, is meant to be the king.

So, like, whoops. So whose interest is he? Is he supposed to have the soldiers interest the polish interest i don't know no nobody knows that's like the thing is like well these german soldiers are under french command so we'll give them to napoleon's brother that napoleon's brother is supposed to have you know loyalty to france because you know he's napoleon's brother he's the emperor's brother uh and they're going to go and tell the poles hey i'm your king but also we should probably ignore all the rape uh that my soldiers are doing right now because they're not polish because

enough of you didn't actually support me to do this yeah see so it's okay you know yeah yeah um now if all that wasn't bad enough and it's pretty bad Napoleon arrived in the city of Poznan to inspect the stores it was a supply depot where soldiers were met to take supplies on the march remember how important it was that his army could supply everything that

the army would need while in Russia because Russia could not well it turns out this fine tunedtuned supply machine completely and totally went to shit. It had not even materialized. It had somehow... He had all this shit on paper.

He had all these people in charge. He wrote all of it. He commanded all of it. But it never actually materialized. It never showed up. The wagons weren't there. The supplies weren't there. Nothing was there. It seems like everybody. The wagons weren't there. The supplies weren't there. Nothing was there.

It seems like everybody we cover, their supply is ass. Yeah. Definitely in the past more so than the present. At least an invading force now would be like, we had all these supplies in place, and it just turns out the enemy bombed them or something. These just didn't show up. The Grand Commissariat that he put together

had really only been an invention on paper. It's like that episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns is drawing the Spruce Goose and Smithers is like, yes, it's a very nice plane, sir. And then Mr. Burns tells him to get in and it's a toy plane. He's like, excuse me, sir?

And he pulls a gun on him. He's like, get in. Except it's Napoleon like, please have a loaf of bread. And he's like excuse me sir and he pulled he pulls a gun out on him he's like get in except it's napoleon like please have a loaf of bread and he's just sitting in an empty room like on a stool and like sir there are there is no bread he's like eat the walls i said bread yeah thank you for the bread sir it's delicious i guess we're on a diet i'm so cold oh napoleon's that guy had a sleepover like he goes to bed doesn't give his buddies a blanket or anything and then in the morning he's like well they're in the closet i'm not gonna go through your closet exactly uh not like every single there wasn't like one thing

that failed it wasn't like oh the flower supply spoiled or something like every single aspect of the supply train had failed. There wasn't enough water, there wasn't enough food, there wasn't enough equipment. And then, remember, they're not in Russia yet. Oh, so it's starting off bad. Yeah. So the French army, without its imaginary supply

train, returned to foraging. Which, in this situation, I mean, horrible, horrible looting. They went back to La Mara. They're not doing the Napoleon system where they give people money. They're just like, horrible, horrible looting. They went back to La Mara. They like, they're not doing the Napoleon system where they give people money. There's like, Nope,

it's mine. Now you see our supplies are bad. Here's an IOU. Uh, can I please have your farm animals? Oh, well, we don't have any farm animals.

Children are also fine. Okay. Children will work just as good. Please let me eat your shirt um now remember how i said that even though this rampant looting was largely normal in war back then because armies moved pretty fast they marched through they took what they needed and they left they didn't stay there they didn't stay there and like pillage and loot for months and months at a time they were in and out uh then that's fine i used to loot barracks rooms

back in our old unit whenever i knew somebody was uh leaving and they left i'd go in their room well they'd always leave stuff behind yeah and like now imagine that except you stayed there for like a month and ate the drywall and now remember like that so let's say the the lead regiment goes into some polish village it's like i'll take the wheat i'm gonna take the corn take your goat whatever i'm gonna leave that's normally it but there isn't just one regiment there's hundreds of thousands of people so many goat would not do like the system that they had in place that they relied on for so long which is already horribly exploitive would just turn into like a complete absolute clusterfuck and also remember the traffic jam they're not moving fast so the lead elements of the french army would move through an area they'd eat whatever

they want which in poland amounted to almost nothing because poland was pretty hard off as it was um it was like at the time it wasn't uncommon for Polish peasants to be so desperately poor and hungry. They literally ate their own thatch roofs. So adding 100,000 people to that situation does not make it better. Did you guys try the roofs yet? Fuck, they already ate the walls too.

It's just a guy named peter sitting on a cement slab eat the cement uh and like also poland had one of the worst harvests in decades so like there's even less than normal to eat um so the lead elements would eat their weight or whatever they could get and then lead nothing behind so like more elements of the army would come through and there'd be nothing for them or you know by the by the second wave of soldiers they would get kind of desperate because they're hungry so they're eating they're eating the things that already kind of aren't food like you know shoes and roofs

the first soldiers leave behind a go fuck yourself they put up a whole bunch of corpses on the road that says get fucked god damn it like the end like so the second wave would come through they're already eating the things that you probably shouldn't. And then by the third wave comes through, there's nothing.

And then the fourth wave comes through. There's even less than nothing. By the fifth wave comes through. The fourth wave comes through. Hey, guys, this dirt tastes way better than the last place. Yeah, I mean, pretty much. Because they've gone through like six villages doing this. So the guys in the back haven't eaten in fucking weeks. So mad if I was in the fourth wave. Yeah, I mean, pretty much because they've gone through like six villages doing this.

So the guys in the back haven't eaten in fucking weeks. So mad if I was in the fourth way. Yeah, it's like, oh, I hope Pierre drops out so I can eat his fucking face. So less and less like so. All right. They, in essence, had a trickle down economic system, but for food and it didn't work. So less and less food trickled down and so by the time within the matter of weeks the french army is starving to death before it even gets to russia god and then they began to kind of accidentally and purpose poison their horses

hat what so i'm not a horse guy. I'm not an equestrian. So I had to look this up. They normally eat, you know, grass, hay, whatever. It's too easy, right? They kind of feed themselves. You just kind of put them out in the field and they'll eat. Oh, that's easy. Like it grows out of the ground. This all seems very, very simple to me.

Yeah, we should get a horse. Yeah. A lion's horse. New Patreon goal. We're going to start a one-man cavalry regiment. You know how terrible that horse would be to keep inside the recording studio? It would be like the fucking Borat where there's just a half of a door and the horse is sticking through. So this would be how it normally is.

The French cavalry soldiers would just throw their people out in the field. The horses would feed themselves. But the year had had a cold start, which meant the plants that were supposed to be growing, which would later be consumed by horses, were slow to grow. By the time they arrived,

the only thing that the horses had to eat was sprouted, unripe oats and barley. Now, this had a two-fold effect, both of them bad. One, having horses eat the sprouted oats it destroyed a future harvest so it pretty much doomed all the peasants to starve to death uh but also unripe barley and oats were poisonous to horror to horses there's they they can't yeah they like poison their stomachs cause them to blow up with colic like it cause it causes their stomachs to like

rupture and explode uh so they did so like okay the men are starving man this couldn't get any worse so the horses just start dropping left and right and they're and everyone's like oh god damn it but on the bright side you can now eat the horses right so that's good half our problems are solved for the day can i eat the saddle there's a whole horse there son can i like the saddle can i eat the cavalry trooper he doesn't have a horse anymore please sir i have a family basically you don't can i eat them as well yeah can i eat your family now uh one of the things many of napoleon's commanders were worried about was also the amount of young

recruits because remember they like I said before they're scraping the mob in the barrel that were brought into the army younger men are and which actually is kind of accurate to this day are much more likely to die of disease or the hard life of a soldier oh okay

it's not like I'm stuck in a room yeah I'm sure you'll be fine. Can I have your Xbox when you die? I just need you to clear my browser history if I die. New Patreon goal. You give me $10, you get an ex-browser history. Now, they wanted veterans. So they wanted people who were a little bit older. They weren't 16, 17 years old.

That was a little bit more hardened to the horrible life that a soldier in the 1800s would have to live. But that meant that these young soldiers were dying in droves almost immediately. They died much quicker from starvation. They died much quicker from disease. Also, they began to desert because they're like, wow, being in the army fucking blows. And then the ones that couldn't desert just shot themselves. Where did they desert to while they were there? I don't.

They just ran off into the field somewhere. Free range of French soldiers. I'm a traveler on the land. I don't even need it. Like, it was so common at night to hear just single gunshots from soldiers killing themselves in the middle of the camp i mean and it should be noted that the french army were had had not resorted to cannibalism so that's like god damn fuck you go through his pockets via some bread um like it was pretty common for a line regiment to lose a full fifth of their manpower

by the time they got to the russian border oh god uh if that wasn't depressing enough one soldier wrote quote i look forward to getting killed because i'm dying as i march like they had gone full-on doomer like zoomer status in the 1812s like fuck it i don't even care just kill me bro that's like my birthday when it comes up when i'm like 80 years old my family's singing to me and i just tell them i just hope i don't have another one i don't want to make 81 like that's that's the most soldier thing on earth i look forward to getting killed because I'm dying as I walk like

that is so grim that even like an emo song like that's a bit much isn't it yeah so this constant bleed of forces applied just a simple operation see like people didn't have to die or get grievously wounded or shoot themselves for this impact army numbers uh as an army advances it has to secure certain roads uh depots um you know stores to store things at areas to facilitate movement every unit in the entire army was doing this as they went so that means that as an army advances it by definition only gets smaller and never gets larger but this

is the 1800s organization and movement is far from coordinated like map reading still kind of in its early stages there's no navigation um if it's cloudy, oh fuck. I guess I really don't know where I'm going. It's kind of like when you try to run in a battalion formation, regiment formation or something, and one unit up front is slowing down, speeding up, and it causes that ripple effect all the way down. Yeah, the accordion

effect. Yeah, it's a half million man. Then the unit in front eats everything, so the unit behind can't eat anything. Yeah, I hate those runs. We've been running for months. Now, I use that movement analogy because that's kind of what they were doing

as they advanced into Russia. And it got people really confused. And like one person would, like the gaps would get larger eventually. Like one unit would be able to march way faster than the other one. Uh, maybe they'd get a little bit too far away for one unit to see the other one anymore.

And that's when like some people would just get lost and wander off in a different direction. Other people like now seems like a really good chance to run away from the army and they would run off too. So every single day, weird shit like this is happening that caused the grand army to get, now seems like a really good chance to run away from the army and they would run off too so every single day weird shit like this is happening that caused the grand army to get to not be so grand to be la petite army uh napoleon was largely unaware of all of this which i imagine they're lying to him on the numbers uh You nailed it perfectly, actually.

Now, he was, as we pointed out in the last episode, incredibly micro... He's a micromanaging dickhead. He's like the worst manager on Earth. Oh, man. He called the formations and counted on his own. He probably did. And that's why he could only be a

micromanager based on the information being given to him by his subordinates. And that's one of the things was, is he was pretty well known for exploding on people when they told him things that he didn't like to hear. Like from Big Trouble Little China? I haven't seen that movie. Really? Yeah. Well, one of the villains blows up.

So. Yeah, Napoleon literally blew up and that's the end of the series uh he was uh a voltorb from pokemon and after you attack him a couple times he self-destructs uh but like so he would be uh like beside himself with anger if you gave him a bad idea if you were stupid but also if you told him something that he just didn't want to hear like hey like 10,000 of our soldiers are starving to death like he didn't want to hear that so he would explode

on you he would demote people on the spot he would ruin your career ruin your life so like people would just stop telling him stuff so I hear two of your regiments vanished last night nope they're still there they're totally good nothing bad happened we call them our ghost regiment

they're so good so even when the emperor demanded accurate numbers like I need a company by company I need to count every single man in this army he just wouldn't get them he was surrounded by sycophants who would just tell them yep our regiments are totally fine they didn't start a death or dessert where's the other marshal uh he

didn't shoot himself last night he's resting uh you know like and then and the numbers that napoleon were getting that was getting was not just like a little inflated they were like inflate up to 50 percent uh on paper for instance the imperial guard which is like the premier regiment that he loved uh was supposed to be 50 000 people but they never numbered more than 25 000 the germans sent almost 50 000 less men than they said they would and nobody had any idea i mean it's kind of hard to see when they're all grouped up but But imagine, he's like, I need accurate numbers. And then the German general's like, yeah, we totally brought those 150,000 people

we talked about. Not really, though, sucker. He would just come... He would just keep changing the subject. Yeah, it's kind of hot out today and Frederick, what about those numbers? Yeah, my wife really did leave me. It's real sad. Yeah, and it's actually pretty cold out. You know, uh, uh, Mitt Frederick, what about those numbers? Oh yeah. My wife really did leave me.

It's real sad. Yeah. And it's actually pretty cold out. You know, like, and I understand that even in a modern army, uh, if your subordinates aren't giving you good information, you have literally no idea what's going on. Uh, but you know, one of the main reasons they did that for Napoleon is because they were literally afraid of his outbursts of anger. So, for instance, all this was happening.

And sometimes, like I said, they didn't even have to get lost. They just never showed up in the first place. Napoleon had no idea the size of his own army. He thought he was invading Russia with north of half a million men. But he was actually around about 235,000 with another 50,000 civilians in tow. So he wasn't even close to the numbers he thought he had, but you know what? You know who was kind of close to the numbers? The Russians. So these are all relatively new discoveries in the field of history. At the time, people laughed at the

backwards-ass dumb Russian army whose intelligence thought that the French only had around 250,000 men in the field. Knowing what we know now, that means the Russians actually had more accurate understanding of Napoleon's army than Napoleon did. Wow. And we know this because the officers who are passing bad

numbers kept accurate real numbers for themselves. they just never told Napoleon they must been sweating bullets yeah oh man I hope he doesn't find my diary bro I hope I sent out the right one

no Napoleon had no idea his army was literally marching to death but he did know he had a supply problem which he decided right then he's like, Hmm, this can't continue. The war can only go on for three weeks.

Uh, that was once they crossed the Niman river into Russia. Um, and then, so from this point forward, we can only go three weeks. That quickly goes out the window pretty goddamn fast. So they're not in Russia yet.

No, they're just crossing the Niman river. So they're, holy shit. And at this point, tens of thousands of people are Russia yet. No, they're just crossing the Niman River. Holy shit. And at this point, tens of thousands of people are dead already. As for the Russians. You know what?

It's not going to end well, and it will get much, much worse. Let's just say they find a bad way to fill the hole in their diet. Everybody knows I'm talking cannibalism! But we're not there yet. As for the Russians, as the French crossed the river into the Empire, they had literally no plans. So, a lot of people frame this war as, ah, the Russians were

genius. They retreated exactly like they were supposed to, and went on a score-short plan exactly like they were supposed to. None of that was short planning exactly like i was supposed to none of that was planned absolutely fucking none of it what was planned if you remember was the russians were going to invade the duchy of warsaw so all of their supply depots all their forward position they were all meant for an offensive nobody had any defensive plans none nothing had been prepared not even a command structure or overall strategy. Like, it wasn't like, okay, this is central command.

It was, okay, he's a noble, he's a noble. He's kind of the commander put in place by the Tsar. They're all in charge. They'll figure it out. There was no central commander quite yet. Oh, okay. The Tsar had no idea what to do. The Russian forces were scattered

and organized defense would be hard, if not impossible, to plan. So the Tsar was in a town called Vilna, which was pretty close to the border. So when he saw French troops on the horizon, he just jumped on a horse and ran. Oh, he saw that? Yeah. Which everybody, now remember the Tsar is hypothetically the commander-in-chief kind of like the president right uh so everybody's like oh fuck the czar is running that means we have to run too so that caused like a panic um unorganized flood of staff officers to run as

fast as they could to keep up with him he just yelled scatter yeah and. And that is when the scorched earth tactics kind of came into play. I doubt it came into play. I bet you somebody knocked over a lantern. They're like, oh, fuck. So it was not a Russian plan. It was technically a German plan. It was the Russian General Barclay Detali, who was a German man in the Russian army. Detali, who was a German man in the Russian army. It was his

idea and his idea alone that when he finally organized his soldiers together in Vilna, we should burn it down. He accidentally knocked over the lantern, but made it his fucking decision like, oh, I did that on purpose. Nailed it. He was taking a dump and accidentally kicked over a lantern. He was like, oh, fuck!

Fuck! Shit! In the Port of John. The Tsar's gonna be so mad at me! But yeah, on his way out he's like we should make sure they have nothing and they set the they set the city on fire um so they burned vilna to the ground mostly totally like there's some buildings still standing but like for as fast as they acted it was it'd be the most useless building to in Barclay so Barclay Detali is kind of a not a great historical

figure especially in Russian history and we'll talk about that a little bit but the entire keep withdrawing keep withdrawing keep withdrawing plan that was his and his alone he did not want to engage with the French army because he knew he would lose now He did not want to engage with the French army because he knew he would lose.

Now, this made Napoleon kind of mad, as you would imagine. The Russians had not engaged him, which is what he wanted. His entire point was to make the Russian army stand and fight him, beat them, and then be like, okay, time for peace. But he couldn't lock them into battle. Barclay had them pulled back. Instead, he found himself literally in the middle of a burning city with no food. That fucking blows. The Russian

tactics confused him. Like, this didn't make a whole lot of sense to Napoleon. Why would someone flee from battle and scorch all their own supplies? He assumed instead of a giant, fuck you, which it was, it was a trap that,

uh, like this was a screening effort to distract them. Insert Admiral Akbar. Yeah. So like he thought that the Russians were waiting an ambush for him on the outskirts of Vilna for him to advance right into you, which they absolutely were not. Uh,

so, and instead of pushing this. And there's a good chance. If he would have just advanced right past the city. He would have caught Barclay. But instead he's like. This must be a trap. So he ordered his generals to advance with caution.

Now if you remember. A slow cautious advance. Was absolutely something that the French. Did not have time for. Whoops. So like Barclay's last desperate attempt to salvage the battle kind of ended up winning in two different ways. Now, this actually had a weird positive downside.

This finally allowed the French army to rest. They had been marching without any real rest for weeks. The soldiers bedded down wherever they could. A lot of them just put their muskets down and laid down in the dirt without setting up a tent without doing anything. They didn't have any food to cook so that problem solved for them.

Sweet. That's just extra steps you don't need. And that is when a biblical storm appeared out of nowhere biblical storm yeah it was like the storm of the century did they fucking build an arc so it was a torrent of freezing rain and lightning oh god which is weird because they just been in the middle of a crazy heat wave so this meant soldiers had like stripped to like try to cool down uh now cut had now found themselves in like frozen puddles of water and the russian roads which were already

pretty perilous like just dissolved into muddy morasses of bullshit they couldn't use and also people were getting struck by lightning i could eat the lightning please take me thor just fucking smite me i'm sick of this shit uh so thousands of men and horses died uh mostly artillery units also funny thing that probably might happen here in a bit my dinner's on the way so you might hear a giant bangs on the door it's good it It's fine. We're not running. It's all good. It buffs out.

So these artillery units, which suffered the worst, lost up to 25% of their horses in only a few hours. And the cavalry suffered pretty bad as well. Now, accounts of men who survived this weird storm from hell. I think they just stuck their sabers in the air and said, smite me. That was my time to shine! Now, the men who walked away from this tell of a strange psychological trauma that inflicted a lot of them because they were forced to march through

a completely muddy, destroyed landscape covered with tens of thousands of dead and dying horses. That sucks. I wonder what it would smell like. Not good. In Russia, that already smells bad, I assume. Russia in 1812 was probably not a picnic. Now it's just full of dead horses and French people.

I'm starting to think Napoleon personally affronted God in some way. Oh, no. That should be a movie. Napoleon versus God. He already fought dinosaurs once. Oh, yeah, he did. Napoleon versus the Titans.

Now, Napoleon took this moment to try to rein his troops in who were desperately looting everything they came across in the search for food. Now, he did this the only way Napoleon knew how. And that was sending out the MPs to shoot everybody they caught looting. Now, hilariously, this did nothing to stem the looting as people went to the firing squad laughing and joking because they're just happy to finally get over with

that they were going to die. It's a win-win. People were laughing. It's like, oh, I guess I'll die now rather than later. Who fucking cares? What's the difference of a day? What a bunch of soldiers. And then another 50,000 soldiers

just abandoned the army and turned into a roving gang of bandits. What? That's awesome. If you're thinking that, Joe, you've already talked about this. Yes, I did. This just happened that often. It happened all the time. That's's awesome what would your game be what would their name be uh thundercats already taken uh pit vipers i feel like i could be a greaser with that one

that's a good name it's not a bad name um now if you're thinking like wow 50 000 people just suddenly turning into like gang doing some hood rat shit like me probably makes like all this area that they're conquering pretty awful and you'd be right wherever napoleon's army went they turned the entire area into a lawless dystopia full of napoleon's own like men looting and killing napoleon's own men because there wasn't really much else left like you know i told you and killing napoleon's own men because there wasn't really much else left like you know i told you before that napoleon is pretty much running the entire country via mail that he brought with him like through a mail like a secure mail system that also got robbed the the mail was full of like his official imperial orders how to run france and like

some dude named jeff is like fuck this isn't beef jerky and just thrown in the ditch oh we got fire uh and like also like his officials like his own officers and even like members of the imperial elite were getting robbed at gunpoint by their by their own men which honestly i support i wish more soldiers would rob their officers at good point i imagine these soldiers automatically had slick back hair real greaser style they have a pack of cigarettes under their sleeve yeah they look great and they're not just weird rockabilly dudes yeah uh so in another case of bumble fuckery, Napoleon launched a plan to trap some Russian units and force them into fight.

But his brother Jerome, who had a chief of staff put in place of the army by Napoleon to run it for him. Cause he realized his brother was kind of a fucking idiot. Refused to follow the orders of the chief of staff. So, so like the chief of staff would be like, Prince Jerome,

the emperor wants us to do this i'm gonna pass it was like no we go nowhere uh so he totally ruined the plan like the napoleon is like ah they'll be at this point at this time but the army hadn't fucking moved and so while jerome is throwing a shitty fit he said well if i can't command my army i'm going home so he took his royal guard and just went back to France without telling anybody. Oh, that's fucking awesome. Which honestly,

probably better. Meanwhile, the Russians had their own plans afoot. The czar finally made Barclay the official commander of the army. Now this is a title that was supposed to be important, but was largely ignored because Barclay was attempting to organize everything but without like really the official capacity to

do so but now the Tsar is like you're officially the commander so he tried to do it anyway he's like all right well fuck it the Tsar said I'm a command now so you all have to listen to me now this is considered a pretty big personal insult to a lot of Russian nobles who are also commanders because he remember he's not Russian but also he's not a noble he's a pretty big personal insult to a lot of Russian nobles who were also commanders because

remember, he's not Russian, but also he's not a noble. He's just a German general who they kind of bought. So Barclay's having problems telling all these nobles, like, no, no, no, I'm in charge. I have to be in charge. Now, Barclay would eventually become a noble,

but he wasn't at the time. But he's telling all these nobles, like, hey, the Tsar made me in charge. You have to listen to me. But the nobles are like, no, fuck you. You're not even Russian. I'm not listening to you. It's like when my older brother tried to be in charge of us

whenever he was babysitting us. It's like when a specialist promotable is like, I'm in charge of all the other specialists and all the other specialists are like, go fuck yourself. Yeah. Like, so Barclays finally went to the czar and was like do these

guys aren't listening to me can you just order them to listen to me and he wouldn't I don't know I like the drama so this effectively created two completely parallel command structures within the Russian army you had Barclay and his field army and a couple nobles that listened to him within the Russian army. You had Barclay and his field army and the couple of nobles that listened to him and the second army under Peter Bigration,

who was a Russian prince. And he commanded a lot of respect, mostly because of that fact, not because of his qualities as a commander. Now, soon the fact that remember how we talked about many Russian officers to include their commander were German or French or gave orders in german or french this would become a problem uh famed military strategist klausowitz was actually um arrested for being a spy because he carried orders

in french and spoke no russian uh so when people when uh russian commoners stopped him he couldn't speak russian and they didn't speak french so he just got arrested and then cossacks uh who were kind of hard to explain let's call them russian cavalry uh were attacked and killed their own officers in the heat of a skirmish because they heard them shout orders in french what like oh god he's wearing a russian uniform but he's french they're behind us yeah Yeah. They're everywhere. Now, the main problem facing Alex was, well, him. It was Alex. Alex was the problem.

He had been with the army when it retreated without a fight from the third largest city in the entire empire, and gave up an incredibly large track of land to the enemy without much of a fight. As long as he's with the army, any failings of the army would look like the direct failings of a fight. As long as he's with the army, any failings of the army would look like the direct failings

of the Tsar himself. Even if he wasn't actually in charge of them. It quickly became apparent that he needed to get the fuck away from the army. And the Russian generals were kind of glad to see the Tsar finally leave because when he was around, the generals had a hard time doing their jobs.

While he was never really in charge, the generals would back the ideas of the Tsar, even if they were really bad, just to protect themselves or maybe heighten their status, leading to pretty dumb outcomes like the retreat. With him gone, they could actually try to function about as well as the Russian army would function through the war, which wasn't great. It was the opposite for the French. Napoleon got bogged down in fucking statecraft for two goddamn weeks in Vilna. Now remember,

the whole war was only supposed to go three. He got bogged down in Vilna, passing orders back to France, trying to do state-related stuff for the Grand Duchy. It's all dumb. He shouldn't have been doing it. Instead, I mean, he did do something that I assume an emperor would do,

which is delegate authority to his marshals to run the war, which immediately led to Begration's army escaping and start marching to rejoin with Barclays, the exact thing Napoleon did not want to happen.

So, yep, whoops. Napoleon can't delegate authority because they won't work. This guy's making stellar decisions. So when Marshal Joaquin Murad and his famed cavalry gave chase, Murad, unfortunately, was kind of insane. So Murad's one of my favorite characters

in all of Napoleonic Marshals, simply because the dude had no business being in charge of anything. He was insane. He's kind of nuts. I mean, he's, he was, and this is the way that the book Moscow 1812, but it quote the master of the suicidal cavalry charge.

He was pretty much only promoted because he was brave. He, the only military tactic he knew was a frontal assault on horseback. Oh, he also dressed kind of, uh, bizarrely, like overdressed, and brought dozens of changes of clothes with him

wherever he went and would change whenever he got bored. He would also wear multiple different fur jackets and scarves, diamonds and pearls. Oh, this guy had swag. And he also brought a fuckload of cologne with him. That's fucking awesome. So he also brought a fuckload of cologne with him that's fucking awesome so he probably looked

a whole lot like uh a mall kiosk guy and smelled like one too uh like he was just bling the fuck out wearing furs getting his suicidal charge on but looking good doing it definitely my favorite marshal but probably shouldn't

have been a mars Marshall he was and like the book notes that people commented that like he was kind of mentally unwell so follow my dragon what like he was promoted because he was kind of dumb like he would routine it like he never stopped

charging when he was ordered to and it wasn't for his tactical brilliance on as a cavalry leader that he was promoted to be the wasn't for his tactical brilliance on as a cavalry leader that he was promoted to be the leader of the cavalry which will become a problem because during the chase to prevent those two armies from waking up his army rode so hard and so fast on horseback that they rode their horses to death which was something that was super common for him to do like he routinely rode horses to death. It wasn't even a thing for him.

Wow. The sixth one this week. Yeah. And like, remember the horses are already weak and kind of poisoned. So like they, when the chase was over, they were so tired and weak that they kind of,

the, the cavalry guys had to walk the horses back to the line because they couldn't carry them anymore. Jesus. Now, Murat finally got to the Russians and forced them to engage him outside the town of Astrono. Now, the French beat the Russians back, only to discover that the town had been burnt to the ground with nothing left inside.

This was not the battle the French were looking for. It was small and mostly pointless but that would soon change napoleon had had finally cornered barclay's army a full 80 000 men and quickly maneuvered his men into place to attack this is it this is the day everybody was waiting for this is barclay versus napoleon fucking heavyweight title on the line pay-per-view 80,000 men squaring up so they dress to the fucking tens man they got everybody put their dress

uniform on because like they treat it like a holiday like they're going on parade everybody got ready to go because the French Empire is the only society more mentally broken than our own like combat was considered a glorious occasion we need to dress up.

They polished their brass, they put on their fancy hats, and marched into battle the next morning. And when Napoleon woke up to command this battle in person, he found Barclay's entire army had fucking vanished. What? They had retreated in the middle of the night

because they didn't want to fight him oh he must have been pissed everybody was furious uh barclay actually did something kind of ingenious even the soldiers i just want to die please somebody shoot me uh now like barclay did something kind of ingenious which was leave a small group of men behind to keep stoking campfires through the night to make it look like 80,000 men were still camped out, which is a lot of fucking fires, man. Yeah, I'd be pissed. Just put extra duty on it. So the Polian's army, defeated by pretty much their own, I don't know, their own moral, their own morale and hats, I guess, marched on. own moral their own morale and hats i guess marched on the few roads that they found uh were quickly turned into nothing but single track lanes and polish bogs and marches you know we'd be on

that detail every time yes uh you two are fires go light the fires god damn it so the at this point the the napoleonic armies were largely marching um on what you consider a normal road for the time. It's not great, but it's a road. And that's when the army found its way into bogs and marshes, swamps. And they were introduced to a new level of hell for the men. Swarms of mosquitoes, horseflies, and wasps. Are they wearing Russian uniforms? They are not

that'd be awesome if they were the horseflies definitely said something anti-French though at this point Napoleon definitely pissed off God like you already got the torrents of water you got lightning you got fields of dead horses now you have

like a pestilence being brought to you did I mention the heatwave yet because there's a horrible horrible heatwave fields of dead horses. Now you have a pestilence being brought to you. Did I mention the heat wave yet? Because there's a horrible horrible heat wave. It was so hot that many of Napoleon's men who had fought with him in Egypt said this is the hottest they've ever been on the march.

Jeez. Can't catch break. It was July and it was hot as hell. These soldiers were weighed down by layers of wool, breastpl breast plates and whatever else uh now one thing i guess one thing they weren't weighed down with was supplies so they have that going with for him so you were lighter now one thing they didn't have to worry about was those uncomfortable square-toed shoes i talked to you about yeah because they had disintegrated right off their feet from marching so like because of marching or bad quality

both I'm assuming okay they were marching up to 30 kilometers a day or 18 miles in freedom units fuck most of the time the men set up camp and fell asleep without eating dinner every day more soldiers just did not wake up or get up from camp because they died from hunger or exhaustion in the middle of the night.

The ones who didn't began to die of thirst, and some of them drank water from the swamps, which also killed them. This is like when you play Oregon Trail. Yeah. This is Oregon Trail, but you have to control 200,000 people all at once.

Contaminated water would be something of a hallmark for this army it caused dysentery to sweep through the ranks and start killing entire companies of men all at once now people who are not familiar with dysentery it dehydrates you further by making you vomit and shit yourself so many men were dying they would drop dead where they were marching which would in this case normally make them tumble off the road and fall into a local body of water, containing that one too. The ones that... Flavor water. Which men would then attempt to drink that

water, because it's the only water available, causing them to get sick, die, and contaminate the next portion of water they'd come across. The ones that didn't die would deal with the horrible bouts of diarrhea that would spread disease and contaminate even more water supplies. The road soon became littered

with the bodies of the dead and dying, and I'm assuming soiled pants. I'm assuming shit roads. Shit road? We've had a corpse road in this podcast. We've had a horse road in the beginning of this

series, and now we have shit road not roadhouse definitely that's a very depressing roadhouse yeah so as for napoleon he knew all of this was happening because at this point it'd be pretty hard for him to hide all the corpses from him uh but he had no idea what to do about it they're're just doing weekend at Bernie's with all the corpses. The men had created an impossible situation and made tens of thousands of men walk and shit themselves to death. At a loss of what to do, he publicly

chewed the ass of the head of the medical corps and the commissariat loud enough so his troops could hear it, tricking them to thinking that literally anyone other than Napoleon was at fault for what was happening to them. Do you think he put a mirror up and also yelled at himself in front of everybody? Oh no, Napoleon's never at fault for

Napoleon. It's everybody else's fault. But Napoleon would be yelling at that guy in the mirror because Napoleon wouldn't even know. He's bizarro Napoleon. He has a mustache. Meanwhile, the Russian army pulled all the way back to the city of Smolensk, where the 1st and 2nd armies joined up and Big Gratian finally allowed the guy who was supposed city of Smolensk, where the first and second armies joined up and migration finally led the guy

who was supposed to be in charge of him, Barclay to take command of the entire Russian army, at least for now together, they plan to make a heroic last stand in the city of Smolensk. While some generals wanted to go on the attack, Klaus Witz, who is now unarrested because everybody realized he worked for Russia, rightfully pointed out that the French army would probably still win a pitched battle and they shouldn't do it.

But they were weakening by the day. And if they were going to fight in the city, they should force the French to besiege it and prolong their stay in the city. Wow. It would have been an even better idea to pack up and leave the city continuing the retreat which is exactly what barclay wanted to do but he was getting screamed at by literally everybody above him and below him to stop retreating and put up a fight so on august 7th he gave the people what they wanted and ordered an attack on marshall nays force near rudinia as they did so barclay got some bad intel that the French had actually occupied

the area to the north of his area of attack. So he said, oh fuck, and immediately ordered his army to wheel around and march in that direction to meet them. The problem was there were no French soldiers to the north. And he quickly learned that, so he ordered his army to wheel around again and attack Rudinia per the original plan. As you can imagine, this caused everybody in the Russian army to become deeply confused as to what the fuck was going on. But Gratian, who was in command of his army, helping Barclay on the attack, said

fuck it and just marched his city marched his army back to the city of Smolensk in a blatant act of insubordination. And Barclay's like Peter, where are you going? Fuck you, I'm going home this shit sucks and he just went back to the city Napoleon's

now there's actually a fun bit of trivia that will come from this but Napoleon seeing the Russians out of the city and on the move or in his forces to move in and encircle the city as he thought it would be empty and then he could just kind of walk in he actually would have been to just Napoleonoleon yeah uh he actually would have been completely right if migration hadn't

taken his ball and gone home the city would have been left completely undefended and be able to walk right into without a fight so uh yep way to not listen to your commander guy you did a really good job so as the french marched they ran smack dab into the confused russians who are marching in so many different directions they got lost uh leading to many different confused and unorganized skirmishes and russian soldiers shooting at one another what whoops the old razzle dazzle spirit, but with an entire army group. Meanwhile, a cavalry force led by who else but Murat, that was supposed to race around and finish the encirclement,

ran into Begration's troops who had gone home. He ran into elements of Begration's army that had retreated without orders, which was the 27th Division. Now, the 27th Division was made up of raw recruits who had pretty much never even had training. So, like, they're naked? They're wearing probably, like, some fucking homespun rugs on their backs. They're peasants with virtually no training. They faced down 30 different cavalry charges by Murat's men while slowly withdrawing,

buying time for Barclay's men who had become lost to pull back towards the city and meet up with Begration. But this one division held up a French marshal who was supposed to be the cavalry guy, all without training and without really any leadership because their officer had already went back to the city itself. Y'all got this, right? I'll see you in the city. Bye. I'm kind of tired. right i'll see you in the city bye i'm kind of tired uh and then when murat finally did force them back to the city they ran into uh begrations men who had been held up in the suburbs outside of it so yeah he him telling barclay to go fuck himself really did save the city there and i mean in in reality it probably also saved barclay's army as well because if they had taken the city Barclay's army had nowhere to go.

Whoops. So Smolensk was a city of no tactical importance whatsoever. Napoleon had no real reason to want to besiege it or capture it other than he wanted to crush the army that was within it. He also believed that the Russians would be forced to come out and defend

their city like in the field rather than like force them into a siege under the really dumb belief that Smolensk was holy to them as it housed a renowned miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary. Now the Russians thought of the same thing that I thought of when I read this which is

why don't they just take it out and move it? Which is the first thing they did. They just moved it out of the city. So this ended up being completely wrong um because remember barclay's plan was to abandon the city so he's like well we're gonna take the virgin mary icon with us uh yep checkmate napoleon now that's awesome almost as almost immediately napoleon discovered that nope the russians were just fine holding strong behind the walls of the city. And that began the Battle of Smolensk and where we will pick up next week. Nice.

I'll still be here. Hey, on the bright side, you're not dead. True. You got that going for you, which, I mean, some people don't have. I'm not a good optimist. At least you're not in the True. You got that going for you, which I mean, some people don't have. I'm not a good optimist. At least you're not in the French army right now. Very true. So that is the French invasion of Russia.

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I'm not allowed in that room. I'm drinking Jameson out of the bottle right now. I mean, that should probably kill the coronavirus. My commander got it for me, so that's pretty cool. So thank you, everybody, for tuning in to part three. Thank you, Nick, for joining me from your undisclosed location. Yep, Jesse Ventura's here. And until next time uh don't

drink corpse water don't don't that i mean if we're gonna teach you anything don't drink corpse water kids and we'll see you next week later