Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 99.5 - French Invasion of Russia Part 6: March or Die

Episode Date: April 13, 2020

Napoleon begins his retreat from Moscow, the Grand Army dies a slow death, and the Cossacks get blinged out as hell. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Follow us on twitter @lions_by Join the reddit community: https://www.reddit.com/r/LionsLedByDonkeys/

Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me, per always, these days, is Nick. Assuming you're not locked into an office somewhere. No, just here. And we are on part six, the conclusion of our epic French invasion of Russia series. Part seven's here. No, but I may have...

Sometimes I give the illusion that I'm good at planning. I know you know that I'm not. You've known me for years. But our listeners probably think I'm good at it since I research and I write all these scripts. I am not. Many adventures we've been on have definitely been awful plans. Yeah.

The way I run this podcast fits snugly into our podcast topics because I just start researching things. I never really map out how long they're going to be until I start writing. It just turns out the average is between six and seven episodes. I had no idea how long this was going to be.

I just knew I wanted to fit it in before episode 100, and I failed. This is episode 99.5, which I said the last episode I would not do. You did. You said that was for a bunch of square bitches yeah and i am a square ass bitch uh someone's gonna isolate that audio and just play it and repeat for intro now that'd be fucking awesome soundboard yeah oh god i'm you know i'm endlessly happy that i have managed to not create a soundboard uh through nearly 100 episodes now, 99.5 episodes. That'd be awesome. Because I would- We're a shitty radio station. I would use it so much, Nate would quit.

He's like, not doing it. I'm fucking out. How about we give you a raise? So, you know, I guess like a soundboard for our series would just be like a series of gunshots and explosions. Fart noises? like a series of gunshots and explosions. Fart noises? It's like the Family Guy episode where they had a baby and the dog or whatever.

It was baby and the dog. It was baby and the dog. Baby and the dog. Just making fart noises for hours at a time. So when we left you last week, Napoleon and a shambling corpse of an army began to withdraw towards the Polish border for winter quarters. Now, there is a small side story that developed in the city of Moscow itself as the French left.

They could only take so many wounded people with them, forcing them to leave many behind. Yeah, they had to take all the goods. They did load up their wagons with more loot than wounded people. Hold on, they're still wounded, but there with more loot than really hold on they're still wounded but there's way more space for goods we're good uh but we should point out that uh some of this was because customs of the time were well they have to be treated fairly uh by the enemy when they uh come back in like the russians have to take care of them now like even in world war two people still did that right like uh which is incredibly dumb uh because that goes sideways uh almost immediately

uh but the problem was that the people of moscow were uh in something of a mood uh you see now they were seeing their chance to strike back at the french and if you've listened to our several other episodes you'll know that the french had treated the people of moscow like shit very uh so they set upon any french person left behind slaughtering them in the streets quick that one doesn't have legs he can't even crawl away and you know at this point i'm sure most of french would have like finally please yeah thank god leave him alive kill me no and then they uh this uh rampaging mob came to the foundling hospital uh it was a joint hospital that treated both the french and the russian wounded from borodino um and the the mob was stopped see captain thomas abri of the french cavalry joined forces with three wounded russian generals to organize a defense.

And they stood, wounded as shit, ordering soldiers to fire from both sides onto the civilians to keep them at bay. Holy shit, what? Tag team, back again! Shit. Like I said, it's the generally unified theory of fuck those guys. Like, look, we slaughtered each other at Borodino, but fuck those guys like look we slaughtered each other borodino but fuck those guys yeah because like the russians were probably also going to get murdered for sure this had a lot to do with general anger at military in general because like remember uh the people of

moscow had been abandoned by the russian military as well they weren't they weren't defended out at all so there's a good chance the russians were going to get bludgeoned and looted as well. But, you know, that's like, it's kind of fun. They held out in the hospital until Russian regulars showed back up in the city and retook it. And they're like, what in the fuck is going on? They just rolled in like, what? Whatever. We're back, y'all.

So Napoleon's plan. Which one of you guys has goods i can take now let's get let's start the looting with you fuck uh now uh napoleon's original plan was to make something of a fighting withdrawal and also had something to do with like he wanted to exact vengeance like he didn't think he was defeated that's pretty important to point out napoleon did not think of himself as defeated nor did he ever uh he thought that he was simply making a tactical withdrawal so like he thought it would be a good idea to march his army directly at katuzov's camp at tartina which is nearby and it actually would have been a kind of a good idea we're not going to go into it very deeply

since the vast majority of the popular narrative of this entire series is on the misery of the french army but the russian army was not much better off really um i mean because you know fighting in winter sucks uh they're they're chasing the french they've been burning everything down they really don't have a ton of food either most of these guys are largely untrained peasants so like they're not exactly in fighting shape uh not to mention um at this point uh the the rapid advance of the grand army killed off mostly new recruits so like the last people left assuming they had not been killed at borodino were veterans oh wow so like while the the grand army had certainly been leaned out they are actually more efficient now oh wow that will rapidly change and this is the last time napoleon could have seized that opportunity

but he randomly changed his mind and did not do that just off a whim yeah uh like even most of his officers were like yeah we should probably attack katuzov because he's just gonna attack us when we try to retreat oh Well, sorry, withdrawal. It's not a route quite yet, but they're like, we should probably hit him again. And Napoleon's like, never mind, we're going to go to the west. We're just going to move around him. His brain was doing gymnastics again. Kind of.

He sort of moved towards the town of Kaluga, virtually for no reason. Now, when Kutuzov heard of the French withdrawal, he as always was pretty slow to act. But he eventually ordered his army to give chase in the normal Kutuzov fashion. Spattered orders to random people, making his army pretty much move randomly, bits and pieces at a time. That way.

Yeah. Now, Russian and French units raided one another until the French occupied the town of Mario Savlitz. Around 25,000 soldiers, mostly Italians, came under the command of Napoleon's stepson, Prince Eugene, and he defended the area. Now, I know we have a lot of good time here shitting on Italians. Not going to do that. Not this time. Not this time.

The Italians, probably the best soldiers in the French army. Really? Yeah, maybe other than the Swiss and the Dutch, which we'll talk about later on. The French weren't bad either, but I mean, technically, Prince Eugene

was not Italian, but he had a lot of loyalty from the Italian troops, mostly for the fact that the Bonaparte family was kind of legendary in their Italian campaigns. Oh, I thought it was just because best marinara sauce. His breadsticks were fucking bomb. After this, we're going to go get some broads and then a lot of gnocchi.

Yeah. All right, so we already broke our promise. We're fucked with italians again we just can't make promises here the only good racism is italian racism it's okay we can make fun of white people always i encourage other people to do it anyway uh if you remember uh general russian general doctor uh from smolensk forever ago smolensk forever ago. Smolensk. Still. Still sounds like smells. It's full of corpses now. Controlled by the dog legion. Rotten salami and ball sweat.

Dr. Ruff launched the offensive against Eugene's forces in the town. And I have to say that the name Eugene, not cool compared to a guy named Dr. Ruff, right? No. Dr. Ruff sounds like he fights Spider-Man. Yeah. Eugene sounds like he does long division. Like he does accounting for Spider-Man. There's a lot of nervous glasses

pushing up. Now the town changed hands multiple times during the fighting and then the town caught on fire because that's what towns do in Russia during this time period. And times during the fighting. And then the town caught on fire because that's what towns do in Russia during this time period. And most of the fighting was hand to hand, street to street affairs.

Because the smoke was so thick that nobody could see each other or maneuver on another. So like soldiers would hunker down in buildings and be firing on people. Then quickly realize like, Oh, that's us. I hope they speak my language. They probably also didn't

because a lot of the officers were French, did not speak Italian. Many of the Italian foot soldiers did not speak French. And nobody can hear too because they're all firing next to each other's ears. Right. Because they're always in lines. Also, they can't see because they're blended by smoke.

And then the burning houses collapsed down under the defenders and the attackers simultaneously. It was not good. It's all bad. Nobody had fun. Now, Dr.

Off himself had to admit that the Italians quote fought like lions and not fought like Giovanni down 32nd street. I'm not going to stop. I'm never promising again. They're all from New York. I don't know. I do not know to stop. I'm never promising again. They're all from New York. I don't know. I do not know why. It has to. And Napoleon called his Italians, quote, the bravest troops in Europe.

The most tanned out, gym out, fuck it. They had the tallest hair and the deepest of olive skin. Now, after a long night of fighting, the Russians were forced to withdraw, leaving behind around 5,000 dead. It's food. Ay! Score! Yeah, you know, the main reason they fought hand-to-hand,

it's really hard to get the entire Italian hand meme into the trigger well of a musket. Very true. So they just have to frantically stab at them with their fingertips. Oh, that would suck too. Just taking claws to the fucking eye. Just snatching out eyes.

Yeah. Not to take away from the glorious stand of Prince Eugene's Italians, because it was impressive, but his success probably had a lot to do with the fact that the Russian troops that Doktorov had sent into battle were largely untrained, and some of them did not have muskets. That's a trend. It's just like they had farm tools and stuff like that.

They were militiamen. Scythes and shit. Yeah. Hammers. They were the levied militia that a lot of people maimed themselves at getting out of. But you throw enough militiamen at a problem, you either solve the problem,

or you have less militiamen, which is a solution into itself. What farm tool is that? It's a cedar. Can I get something cooler? That can probably kill. I brought the combine! In the land of 1812,

the man with the combine has a gundam. Now, the man with the combine has a Gundam. Now, the problem was is that the French lost another 4,000 men holding that town, and it was tactically pointless. So I guess I do have to take away a little bit from Eugene's victories. And there will be a string here where Eugene continuously wins, like, glorious victories that are pointless. He liked what was going on in the town. He was really good. Best gelato in this town. We're going to defend it. Smells like

smoked meats. Everybody's yelling at each other out of windows. Town's on fire. Gelato's fucked. God damn it. It needs to be cold. Now, this wasn't really a defeat for the Russians either. It was, I guess, a furore victory for the French. But they just withdrew and joined the rest of Cthulhu's army that was now camped right outside and now numbered them by tens of thousands.

So now the plan of moving towards Kaluga was fucked. And unless he could fight, win, and break through the entire Russian army that was now standing in front of him, he had to think of something else. Now, his aides came up with a plan that he should probably retreat towards Smolensk instead, but Napoleon wouldn't really commit to the choice. Smells there. Don't want to go. I heard the dog is running the place.

Instead, he decided to ride out and see just how bad the situation was because i guess having several marshals and all of your scouts going shit's fucked he's like nah i'm gonna have to go check this out yeah so he jumped on his horse and rode out to the front and was immediately attacked by a group of cossacks what yeah he almost fucking died uh his aides managed to fight them off but it was a really close call and it was something that terrified napoleon for the rest of his time on the on the retreat holy shit he wasn't gonna go out scouting anymore which is a problem because he didn't trust anybody else to do it napoleon was still pretty undecided as to what to do despite the fact he was just attacked by

cossacks where he thought he was safe and he he began thinking fighting Kutuzov would be a good idea. Now, I said before that fighting at Tortino probably would have been a good idea, but probably not anymore. He would be fighting Kutuzov on the defense like he had done at Borodino. And just like he had done at Borodino, Kutuzov began to dig in,

thinking Napoleon was going to attack him again, remembering that, now, Borodino is a tactical loss for the Russians, hypothetically. They left the battlefield, is how you can judge these things in the 1800s. But it was an overall strategic success because they had mauled the French army. So Kutuzov wanted to do it again, thinking that he could finally crush the great army, and he probably would have been right. But finally, Napoleon's like,

hmm, guess we can't attack him now. He knew he couldn't have another Borodino either. Fuck no. It was probably good for the Russians that they had dug it, because it was something of a bluff. Kutuzov himself thought that the untrained groups of conscripts and militiamen that made up his army would probably immediately break an open battle, regardless if they out been reinforced with a whole bunch of recruits that had no idea what they were doing.

So it would have, at the same time, I don't see this as like a strategic victory for Napoleon either, because if he would have smashed Catoos off again and really did chase him off, he could have slaughtered all of Kutuzov's army and it wouldn't have really mattered. Remember, the French are still starving. They hardly have boots on their feet anymore. And they're still hundreds of miles away from home, which is the only secure place in the entire continent of Europe at this point. So they would have accomplished nothing.

I guess if they would have defeated them, the Miroslavets, and then marched on Moscow again, I don't know. Like, what would that have achieved? They would not have had the manpower after that battle to march on St. Petersburg, where the Tsar was. So, congratulations. You're right back where you were. Nowhere. You're fucked.

Like, hmm, I have once again defeated myself. But nobody can defeat me but me. Again, Marshallj collin congratulations you've played yourself uh instead of committing another bordinio napoleon officially ordered a retreat towards smolensk which is important to point out remember he was supposed to be withdrawing he wasn't retreating yet it's semantics but it means something nobody like even in the ranks even though they knew the reality of situation which napoleon was kind of separate from at this point the men kind of knew that they were in a bad spot but they didn't think they were treating they didn't think they'd lost now they're like oh fuck we lost so morale kind of took a nose dive um but it wasn't like

fuck this i'm throwing my weapon down and i'm running it was like suddenly their god emperor that could do no wrong that they all openly said they would serve until the death like huh i guess he can fuck up too which is kind of big for them oh yeah actually yeah it's it's kind of earth shattering to a lot of people especially i mean this army still has veterans uh in it that had fought with Napoleon in Egypt before he ever attempted to seize political power. So like seeing, following that arc all the way through,

he's like, oh man, we must be fucked if Napoleon was wrong. So to make things worth the retreat brought with them, brought them back to the battlefield of Borodino. Not great for morale either. The dead had been left out in the open to rot and had been eaten by wild animals.

Oh, God. Again. Many soldiers remarked that cold had preserved the dead enough so their dead eyes were still intact and staring at them as they walked by. Yikes. You got any food? You're still alive.

Please, just end it. All the other dead bodies are keeping me warm but this actually forced more people to believe in napoleon's greatness because if anybody could find a way out of this shit it must be napoleon like it drove people like that whole saying like um adversity brings you closer it was it was kind of that thing there was like well he may have fucked up but if there's one person that can get us out of the life, it's Napoleon. So while their morale to fight may have lowered, their devotion to Napoleon grew only stronger. Nice.

I mean, it's like, surely he'll save us. He's not going to just lead us all to die, right? Right? Right? Oh, everybody's dead. Oh, I am the last guy in france fuck uh several officers who hated him before that said they saw him warming his hands next to a fire with a group of regular soldiers and swore right then and there they would serve him until they died but the fire is too hot

for his hands but he won't retreat he's like oh good thankfully for a lot of those officers that death would come rather rapidly uh for like tens of thousands of people thank god so they wouldn't have to wait too long yeah i mean it really seems like at this point napoleon created a more effective death cult than an army oh dude which i guess is weird flex but cool he did something yeah then one like Then one final fuck you to Russia Napoleon on his retreat ordered every village that they passed to be burned to the ground. A trend. See how you like it

assholes! When they made it to the town of Kolitskoy a town that had been turned into a transit point for the Napoleonic wounded like they were slowly being evacuated back. It had kind of gotten jammed up. It was still full of wounded,

and had not been moved further to the rear for care. They were largely untreated and starved, and Napoleon decided they should be taken with him. When were you wounded? Literally the first day. I'm still here. I broke my foot in Poland! It was one of those things that,

okay, hypothetically, the wounded train will eventually get you back to France, but the roads are cut off because Cossacks are everywhere. Nobody left any troops back here to fucking guard anything. It's like, well, we're here. It's one of these weird things. Napoleon does something that I think makes him a good person, but also kind of a dumb military leader.

You don't want to be in between on any of this situation. Either alive or dead, wounded sucks. Wounded is pretty much a death sentence. It's just a really slow one. Exactly. Now, most of the doctors told Napoleon that they understood why he wanted to bring the wounded with him back to France,

but it was a really fucking bad idea because everybody that was there was going to die anyway, regardless of what they did. Um, and, and to make things worse, all these wounded will just slow you down.

And that's not really an option that we have right now. Uh, also there'll be a huge drain on what little resources that we have, because now we have to give them water and food, which again, we do not have. Uh, so,

uh, Napoleon just going to shrug likeug like yep put them on the wagons go ahead boys god damn it horses are pissed off damn it the horse is like this could not get any worse more people fuck i thought we got rid of all of you uh most of them died within a day or two on the march and to make things worse sometimes wagon drivers saw the strain that they were putting, the added weight was putting on their horses, which were, remember, mostly starved to death and sick themselves. So they kicked them off the wagons, left them to die on the side of the road. Can you imagine just being that cargo? Just, all right.

Hey, well, he's not moving. Time to kick him off. He's like, I'm alive. Yeah, you won't be for long. Tuck and roll, buddy. He's like, kick him off the side. Oh, rigor mortis has set in on off. He's like, I'm alive. Yeah, you owe me for long. Talk and roll, buddy. He's like, kick him off the side. Oh, rigor mortis has set in on you. He's talking.

I'm just cold. Yeah, and they just buried them in the snow that hopefully nobody would notice. Don't worry, this will insulate you. The next day, Napoleon pulled his aide in for a meeting, Calancor, the guy who I have come to convince is a much better emperor than Emperor Napoleon through the course of the series.

Now, Kalenkor is pretty open to the fact that we're never going to make it to Smolensk. We're fucked. We're not going to make it. We can smell it, but we won't make it. The dogs will keep us at bay. Napoleon flowed the idea

that he might need to retreat on his own back to paris leaving the army calen core said that'd probably be a pretty good idea just by himself uh the army had been out of moscow for about 10 days but had gotten virtually nowhere all those goods they took and what that was part of it uh the reason for their slow march was a literal lack of horsepower almost almost everyone outside a few elites and a couple wagons was marching on foot their wagons being drugged by men on foot they just have a bunch of us yeah uh also for some reason the french still had with them about 3 000 russian prisoners of war slowing them down even more just let him go yeah what the fuck smolensk was still 10 days

away at best and they had no supplies cavalry or any idea what the russians were doing because if people were unaware you generally use cavalry on the march as a screening force and to keep an eye out for like anybody trying to flank you attack you from the rear whatever encircle you didn't have that anymore so there's like where's the russians somewhere from the rear, whatever. Encircle you. They didn't have that anymore. So there's like, where's the Russians? Somewhere from the east to the west, probably to the south. They're just everywhere. It turns out the Russian army,

the Russian army itself was not something they really had to worry about. It was the Cossacks. They waited at the edge of the French army, occasionally raiding in or ambushing foraging parties. The French were shocked that a lot of these guys were firing arrows at them. What the fuck? Because they were something of like remote tribes and stuff like that at the steps.

But they were stalking them like vultures and flying around a dead animal. Like the French were twin peaksing fucking Colleen. Now, the important part is like like, this wasn't new. The Cossacks were doing much of the same thing during the advance, but the French ignored them because they had the cavalry to keep them far enough away from the main body that they really only were able to pick off a couple foragers that wandered a bit too far.

The French also thought they were cowards for refusing to engage them in open battle. But now that the French had no cavalry to guard their flanks to chase the Cossacks off, things kind of changed. The Cossacks became a huge psychological weapon and demoralized even the most veteran French units. And the Cossacks really didn't care about war. They cared about looting. The retreating army was huge in spoils now,

as they had literally looted their way retreating army was huge in spoils now as they literally looted their way across the russian countryside and into moscow uh and the cossacks were having a great time picking it apart and stealing that along with tons of french stuff the cossacks were now wearing multiple colorful french uniforms wearing watches around their necks jewelries and furs and in one case they had raided Marshal Ney's dress uniform and French soldiers were confused as it seemed like a Marshal of France was shooting and laughing at them

at the edges of their column. He's moved on to better things. Man, that guy's smart. You guys are going to play Cossack too? This is where quite possibly my favorite quote of the entire war comes from. A Marshal screamed at units of the Old Guard, quote of the entire war comes from. A marshal screamed at units of the old guard,

one of the best units left in the army, for flinching at the sight of Cossacks, saying, quote, the Cossacks are there, there, and there, pointing in every which direction. If you do not follow me, you're fucked. I say to you again, if you don't stay with me, you're fucked. In any way, I don't give a fuck. You can all go fuck yourself.

Really? What? That's a real quote? Yeah yeah that's not me making that up that's a marshal of france yelling at soldiers that's awesome it is amazing imagine a general talking this is higher than imagine if we had a five-star general that talked to people that when i hear a fucking major start cussing i'm like this guy's fucking cool if you all don't follow me go fuck yourself like all right soon uh they were just a mere mention of cossacks would send soldiers running for cover and dropping their weapons in fear some commanders wanted to abandon their cannons which were taking up the few remaining horses

this would allow them to use its horses to remount some cavalry and use as a defense against the raiders. But Napoleon refused, despite the fact he had been attacked by Cossacks because there was no cavalry protecting him. The French army was retreating in echelons, with one group following another. And when I say echelon, consider it like a large group of men at a time, kind of moving in the conga line of misery and depression.

Napoleon was in the lead and Marshal de Vau was in the rear. This led to an unseen problem, even though they should have seen it because they ran into the same problem during the advance. Each group moved through and more people would fall out. More people, more wagons, more horses. People would slow down or they would just drop dead. Wagons would break down and would slow down. Or they would just drop dead. Wagons would break down and be abandoned.

Horses would finally drop dead. So the further back you happen to be in the echelon, the more shit was in the way and clogging the road, kind of creating a traffic jam. So the people in the rear, again, are fucked. Getting fucked. So again, it turns into a giant accordion. When Cossack attacks came, and they often did,

the massive moving people would panic and rush away from them. People would slip on the ice, and they'd be trampled to death. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Much like on their way to Moscow during the retreat, resources were wiped out by the first group, leaving nothing for the people in the back. It's just because it worked so well the first time.

Play the same song. It's the Tatooine bar, but a retreat. See, I'm sprinkling in Star Wars, so you respect me more. This is great. Much respect. And this is when the first accounts of cannibalism come. But not from the French. It was actually the russian prisoners began

eating one another yep and the russians uh the french at the time like barbarians ho ho ho their time is coming yes that guy still has a fucking arm he's saving uh the russians launched an ambush on deval's column surrounding his 14 000000 exhausted men with around 25,000. They almost certainly would have been destroyed if it wasn't for Eugene and Ney turning around and breaking through the Russians, opening a route of retreat, which Davao immediately took. Kutuzov and his entire army,

uh, were in place to attack Ney from behind, but instead just sat there and did nothing because Kutuzov kind of sucks at his job. He was napping. Another Russian officer sent so many messages to Kutuzov kind of sucks at his job he was napping another russian officer sent so many messages to katuzov begging him to attack nay katuzov threatened to hang the next messenger that showed up at his tent i can't read i'm trying to sleep the french had lost

another 6 000 men but were still some of devou's men who were seasoned veterans had thrown down their weapons and ran something Something that was like, this does not bode well. The constant battles, raids, and marching eventually stretched the retreating column to such a length of distance that different parts of it would experience different weather than other parts of it.

Oh, that blows. Eventually, the distance between the head and the tail of the echelon would be more than 62 miles try passing a message 62 miles i'm like hey we're under attack meanwhile in the very very back someone's like man i'm fucking cold i just get hit in the chest like cannonball or something snow began to come down in piles according to some as much as two feet per day horses froze to death even uh when the men who could make campfires

they would not be warm enough. When commanders went to muster their men for march they found entire groups of men frozen to death still standing still around a campfire. People wrapped themselves

in whatever they could find but it was rarely enough. Everything had iced over so thickly that when soldiers came to a hill they had to sit down and just kind of slide down it. Whee!

That's pretty... This is the highlight of my day. to a hill, they had to sit down and just kind of slide down it. Whee! This is the highlight of my day. Look, I may have had to eat my friend's face the other day, but this is kind of fun, right, Pierre? Please kill me. Whee! Did you get to the bottom? Okay, I'm ready to die again. Yeah, they get to the top, they're like, they go down, happy.

They get to the bottom. What isn't fun was being so cold that the skin of your hands stuck to the musket and everything else that was metal, forcing people to rip their hand away to free themselves. Like a Christmas story. Yeah, except with a whole lot more big gloving. Are you familiar with the concept of big gloving? When, like, the skin of your finger pulls off and just stays the shape yeah yeah that happened that's cold yeah i see what you did there yeah soldiers

had to sleep in the open with no cover of any kind when they came across the village it had probably been previously torched leaving a little shelter men would fight each other to the death over the best ruins the camp in most of the rations they brought with them from Moscow were now gone. Forging parties were now impossible because they'd just get killed by Cossacks. Some units took care of each other. This is actually something that became pretty important. The survival rate of the Grand Army

pretty much depended on if your units stayed together. It had nothing to do with individual people, which is interesting. The more organized a unit was and stayed together under the command of their NCOs and commanders, keeping men in line and staying to the colors, the better chance of survival you had. Oh, really?

If your unit fell apart and disintegrated, you were fucked. The reason why is these units took care of each other. They shared food, the little food they had. They shared warmth, and they stayed organized. Other units cut deals with russian villagers to leave them alone in exchange for food like hey man we won't burn your fucking

shit down if you give us some you know let's eat your roof or something i don't know but those were the exception most would not be so well taken care of some soldiers had stolen a bunch of tea in moscow and ended up surviving by eating raw tea leaves for weeks. Other men survived on bouillon cubes that his wife had mailed him before everything had gone south. Simmons hunted cats or ate dead horses. Other men mixed axle grease together with snow and gunpowder, and it was dubbed Spartan Gruel, and they ate that. Yeah.

None of that is edible. No, I'm pretty sure those people died. Yeah. You can't eat axle grease. Though it's probably mostly like beef tallow or something. So it's probably just fatty grossness. But it's not like petroleum jelly like we think of, I would imagine. That's what I'm thinking of.

Yeah, because they're not using petroleum. Because they have cars. Yeah, yeah. That's the main reason why Napoleon's March to Moscow fails. He used lifted trucks. They had really bad miles per gallon. Yeah, and he didn't turn them on. He just kept them in neutral.

And they were really loud. Now, if Napoleon invaded Priuses, everyone would see them coming. Oh, yeah, you're a little beast. That's right. Can we put... Sidebar. You know Texas Longhorns?

Yeah. Like Boss Hogg from Duke's Passage? Do you want me to put that on the front of my Prius? Do you want me to put fucking horns on the front of your Prius? As long as I can put the minigun from the second Red Dawn on the back of it. Yes. Yeah, so that's one food that we will not be trying on this show is the Spartan Gruel. I don't want to die.

God, no. I also do not plan to eat any cats. Soldiers deserted, surrendering to the Russians in the middle of the night by the thousands. Many of these men were pretty much killed outright, despite the Tsar's order

demanding his soldiers treat prisoners humanely. It hardly ever happened. This included the Tsar's own brother, Duke Constantine, who seemed to enjoy killing prisoners personally rather than giving orders to do so.

I liked Constantine. It's a fucking psychopath. It's a good movie. Yeah, it's Keanu Reeves just slaughtering Frenchmen. The Cossacks would turn their prisoners over to the local populace

who killed any Frenchmen who fell into their hands in such a varying degree of ways it almost seemed like kind of a competition. From burying them alive to burning them, they would also slowly

cut them apart piece by piece, keeping them alive as long as possible just so they'd really know how much they hated them. It's almost like they didn't like French people after they invaded and stole everything from their houses.

Weird how that works. But while things were bad for the French soldiers, they were also personally getting bad for Napoleon. When he reached a small town, he found a group of French officers waiting for him. They informed that someone had attempted a coup back in Paris and attempted to depose him. The plan had failed, but the idea that his rule was somehow in doubt and could be questioned shook him pretty badly.

Because, like, that wasn't something he ever had to be worried about before. Right. Furthermore, a stockpile of supplies that he had ordered to be maintained in the city by his army had been burned when the Russian army stormed it and took it over. So another empty city full of nothing. And that's when Napoleon finally made it to Smolensk, which I'm assuming means he made a formal peace treaty between the French and the roving hordes of stray dogs that had eaten all the dead bodies.

Even though Napoleon had ordered Smolensk to be reinforced and supplied with food, it hadn't happened. His plans of keeping the army there for the winter would be impossible, and they would just starve to death in a different location. The army was in such a disarray that huge parts of the camp followers were just deserted soldiers throwing away their weapons. So soldiers had to man the gates of Smolensk only allowing formations of soldiers under arms and wearing colors to enter the city as they considered the camp followers to be not part of the army anymore.

This kind of doomed the deserters to starve to death out in the cold because while there wasn't a lot of food in the city, there was at least shelter, which they didn't have out there. Right. So that led to the deserters attempting to storm the city, which led the soldiers who had not desertered to fight the soldiers over food that neither one of them was going to get. Oh.

Yeah. Why are we shooting them? I don't know. This is also Napoleon's fault. As he was worried about telling people about his army's setbacks in Moscow, he had not told authorities in Smolensk he was heading in that direction. If he had the soldiers in the city already and warned them ahead of time, he could have had them to start baking bread and dividing it into rations, which was desperately needed. Some kind of organization to make sure the army didn't literally rip itself apart. As they had no idea, they had to just come to the conclusion that well we'll just have to hand you

sacks of flour and you'll have to make your own bread or do whatever the problem was these soldiers hadn't anything to eat in days and they had no ability to cook anything anymore all of their cooking supplies or pots their pans whatever had all been lost in the retreat and the wagons left in moscow whatever they know what had no way to cook the flour. So they just ate raw flour while others attempted to mix it into melted snow to make a gruel. I don't think eating raw flour is toxic, but I do not think it's good for you. I've done the raw protein powder, and that's awful. Yeah, it's like the fucking cracker challenge.

Yeah, so I can't imagine raw flour. But now imagine doing that with all of the gusto of a man who hasn't eaten in a week. Of an axle grease and gunpowder. Remember the guy with... My friend's looking real good. Man, that motherfucker looks thick. That's the time where someone's like,

man, you're looking dummy thick. You start fearing for your life. Cut some bacon off my back. Soldiers accused the Imperial Guard of taking the best food and more rations than they were allowed, which, to be fair, they probably did because they were Napoleon's favorites

and largely allowed to get away with whatever they wanted. For sure. This led to soldiers in various units attempting to kill one another over a sack of flour that, again, they could not make anything out of. I want the white fat powder. Now, Napoleon, for his first time, also saw that his army, for all intents and purposes, was done. I assume watching people knife fight to death over sacks of flour really burned that into his brain.

It got old. There's only around 40,000 men left. Out of? 400,000. Oh. Over 60,000 had died in the three-week march from Moscow. That's not good odds. Yeah.

Which is why, like I said in the beginning in Moscow, it would have worked if he would have attacked the Tartino because he still had around 120,000 men. Not anymore. No. Elsewhere, his stepson, because he still had around 120,000 men. Not anymore. No. Elsewhere, his stepson, Prince Eugene, had attempted to cross a river, but the bridge had collapsed.

While all this is happening, his forces attacked by Cossacks, forcing Eugene to leave behind his wagon train so his army can move fast enough to escape. As the men attempted to save their looted belongings, they'd brought with them all the way back from Moscow. They were cut down by Cossacks who then captured everything.

This is awful. Eugene lost 2,000 men, all of his ammunition and rations. Oh, fuck. When Napoleon heard this, he finally snapped. He began screaming at everybody and throwing things across the room. He physically assaulted several marshals and blamed them for everything to include

even the invasion itself. What? Yeah. Yeah. This guy. He was only in Smolensk for a few days and had to set back out. His column's march was badly slowed down by deep snow that made going slow and mostly impossible as soldiers attempted to dig their way through it. Also, remember the

echelons the first group would struggle through it which would lead them packing down the snow which to me sounds like a good thing because i didn't grow up in russian snow i grew up in michigan snow and when you like were three people back in the snowboard line going up the hill it was pretty great because they had to tamp down everything and make like foot grooves and you climb up after them well they would pack it all down so deep because it's tens of thousands of men that by the time the last column went through, it was virtually a sheet of ice. And they would just slip and fall and die.

Just from falling. Well, I mean, they were so weak at this point. It's like a 90-year-old person taking a fall. They're going to break something. Fucking rupture a goddamn organ or whatever. But yeah, they were attempting to break trail effectively. All while they were still being harassed by Cossacks. But now the Russian soldiers had also showed up.

They had mounted artillery and skis and were towing it around, literally running in circles around the French, shelling them with little fear of return fire. Oh, fuck. Prince Eugene, the guy who seemed to have the worst luck of anybody, marched his unit of barely 4,000 Italians directly into a Russian roadblock

outside of the town of Krasny. In front of him was 20,000 men and Kutuzov with the rest of the Russian army only a short ways away. The Russians sent an officer under a white flag to ask for surrender, which I'm assuming the argument was, come on.

Look at you. Look at you. Look at you. It's like that scene from Band of Brothers. You have horses. What are you doing? What are we doing here? You have 4,000 men. What are we doing here?

Eugene buttoned up his jacket and said, I'm a prince of the French Empire. Prince, do not surrender. And ordered his soldiers to attack. Four choices. Well, that's the thing. At first, the Russians didn't shoot. Not really sure. Are they serious?

Are they really doing this? This is happening? Instead, they yelled out again for the Italians to surrender. The Italians answered back with gunfire. Just a bunch of dry pasta. Their marinara points are low! They fought until nightfall, but did not budge an inch, despite being outnumbered.

Again, 20,000 to 4,000. Italians are fucking hard-headed. Yeah, which is interesting. I'm assuming that the Italian army actually burned up all of their fight in the Napoleonic Wars. Because when World War I and World War II rolled around, yikes, man. They got nothing left. Had to. We're fucking tapped out here, dude.

Like, they're just psychically exhausted somehow from what their grandpa did 100 years before. Like, oh, God, I just can't do this anymore. just psychically exhausted somehow from what their grandpa did 100 years before like oh god i just can't do this anymore uh yeah but eugene knew the next day like okay obviously we lucked out we didn't break uh but the next day we're like we're fucked we can't do this again that was until a polish colonel in his army came forward with an idea. And it was an idea that was so stupid that it only works in a cartoon, but also history. We'll dig under them. History, it's almost

that dumb. Almost. They would abandon everything that they didn't need, fall into a single-file line, and then just walk around the Russian army. It's that simple. Guys, I got an idea. Hear me out. Does this sound crazy we go around them i know right fucking nuts we just walk around 20 000 goddamn russians uh and you know

what to his credit prince eugene's like fuck it fine whatever it's not any it's not any dumber this is you gonna do yeah it's not any dumber than sitting here exchanging volleys with 20 000 soldiers i'm telling you what else was on on the board was they go under them through the snow. That's pretty much it, yeah. Or attempt to construct a biplane. Summon Exodia, the Forbidden One. I don't fucking know.

They began this plan. They made it a certain distance and they were stopped by Russian sentries. At which point, the colonel, who spoke fluent Russian, simply told them they're on a secret mission from Kutuzov, and we're allowed to walk right on by. What? It's cool.

We understand we're coming from the direction of the guys you were fighting yesterday, but Kutuzov said we're cool. I imagine those people are like, aren't you the Italians that are supposed to be over there? No. No. You awfully look like Italian. I don't like spaghetti.

He's hiding his hands. It's like challenge and password. Spaghetti sucks. What did that motherfucker say? The one Polish girl's like, shut the fuck up. Be cool. Hey, hey, gabagool, gabagool. 4,000 people arguing over fucking pasta.

But they managed to keep their shit together and just walked right on by. These guys smell awfully a lot like marinara sauce. I am going to assume the sentry was immediately executed. I had to admit. Dude, that's fucking awesome. How bad are you at your job right now? You have one fucking job. He was that guy where he was like, fuck, he's bothering me?

All right, yeah yeah you're on a special mission do this oh yeah it's it's like that one guy who's it was supposed to be relieved 45 minutes ago and a group of people are very obviously italian and led by what is definitely the prince of fucking italy walks up just like, fine, whatever, my relief will be here any minute, I don't care. I sort of go back to bed. Even though Eugene and Napoleon met up and moved out from Krasny, they found the hills... Can you imagine the story? He just told Napoleon

bro, there I was, no shit, hear me out. They found the hills and the roads lined with Russian cannons who constantly fired down on them. Now, the Russians stayed out of musket range, so infantry was dispatched to attack uphill through waist-high snow. It went about as well as you can imagine. They were massacred pretty much immediately.

Even at this stage, members of the guard began to break down. When a member of the guard said he just could not go on fighting anymore when a general ordered him to advance, the general simply walked over and shot him in the face in front of everybody the rest of the guard that immediately began frantically cheering napoleon's name and joy assuming so they probably wouldn't be next like napoleon made it to the next town and began to get worried because he had not seen marshal nays since they had left smolensk. Like, hey, anybody see that whole Marshall that we should be worried about? Like, yeah, wow, it's weird

that you spaced on that, sir. Nays' column had been the last to leave the city and had been cut off by the exact same roadblock that Eugene had snuck around, leaving him to fend for himself. Nay was furious, saying of Napoleon, quote,

that bitch has abandoned us. He sacrificed us in order to save himself. What the fuck am I supposed to do? What will become of us? Everything is fucked. I love Marshall Ney so much. That's awesome. That bitch left us.

I promise I'm not adding swear words to any of this. When the Russians once again demand the surrender of Ney. We lost a bunch of Italians here. Don't know how. Those goddamn greasy Italians. But you're here. Oh, look, another one. After several failed breakout attempts, Ney answered that he wished he could surrender,

but a marshal of France has never surrendered, nor will they ever. What an idiot. He just didn't walk around him? Ney's column managed to escape in the middle of the night through the woods because the Russians really fucking suck at this. What the fuck? That one guy is like, I have 20,000. How the fuck?

Yeah, it's the same sentry like, look, man, I'm going to give you one more chance. It definitely is. I'm going to post you to this. Nobody ever goes that way just don't fall asleep you'll make e4 on time he just fucking passes out nay and ten thousand frenchmen walk by loud as shit too yeah because they're crunching through the snow blind with like horses and shit uh but as they were crossing a frozen river it broke through uh this force

half of his force to force his unit to be split in half. One half pretty much being abandoned to the Russians, and Ney being on the other half. Well, I'm on the good half. And also, there is a huge number that fell into the icy river and died, because it's winter in Russia, and they fell in water. Though Ney and what remained of his force finally found Napoleon in the city of Orsha. Now, their greatest enemy wasn't the Russians.

It was now the cold. It froze their already limited water supply, meaning that soldiers had to make fire in order to be able to have water. They only could make fire

when they were stopped. Problem. It froze their boots solid, causing them to snap when they walked. Men got frostbite that rapidly turned to gangrene and killed them. There's some hands and fingers frozen solid and broken off.

That's not a cold I would hate to experience, that type of cold. When the few living horses that were left dropped dead, and people before that was like, oh fuck yeah, we could have horse speed, they froze solid within minutes. Oh fuck. They couldn't even eat them. This led desperate groups of men

to sneak up on officers on horseback and cut slices of horse meat from still living horses because it was so cold that the horse hardly felt it. Let me just get a little slice of that ass. Slice. Hey, could you fucking not?

I'm trying to horse. I'm fucking horsing me. The officer's like, hmm you fucking not? I'm trying to horse. I'm fucking horse-ing me. The officer's like, hmm, I don't remember being covered in blood. Yeah. It was so cold that the blood would freeze, effectively forming a scab, and the horse would mysteriously drop dead from an infection a couple days later. I wonder if they ever fell asleep, stopped maid camp. The horse is just chilling, and the officer comes back the next morning,

and it's half a horse, and he still tries to get on it like onward Skittles. Onward. It's just the horse's ass. I don't know about that but there was a couple occasions where someone was like walking their horse through camp by the reins and then like the reins went slack and then soldiers

were like pushing their horse off into a tent to eat it. They literally zerg rushed fucking officers horses and shit uh but one that uh that they did not do is eat uh the regimental mascots which are normally dogs uh they like kept those with them the whole time you can't eat that and what was weird was the regimental mascot had handlers and those almost had a 100% survival rate. Oh, dude. You got to. Because the theory is they gave him something to

work towards and rally around. No matter what, they didn't focus on how awful everything was. Like, I just gotta take care of this dog. Yeah, weird story, but yeah. That's an awesome one. Yeah. It's like the one I would love to be the handler. Yeah. Well, all this is going on. The Russian forces were continually moving in to finally trap the French army for good.

So Napoleon planned an escape across the Brezhne River and make his way into Poland. Now this is something of a small problem. Napoleon had kind of assumed that the river would be frozen, but it wasn't, making his plan both dumb and impossible. This plan quickly changed to moving downriver to a more suitable place to build a pontoon bridge. But Napoleon had previously ordered all those supplies to be torched to make marching easier. Because it's winter, why the fuck do we need to build a bridge? Thankfully for Napoleon, one of his generals from Holland

simply disobeyed that order. So he still had shit to build a bridge. He didn't have shit to build two bridges. But he still got pissed at him for not listening to that order. How dare you not listen to my order? I was like, Oh God, shut the fuck up.

Now, uh, there was a diversionary move. So they were being chased by the Russians. Everybody knew it. So the, so Napoleon fainted to the South. He juked him.

Yeah. He stutter stepped the Russian army and, uh, uh, to draw them South to give them enough time to build this bridge, uh, bridges. There's two of them.

So a group of Dutch engineers worked their asses off to construct these bridges, which required them to climb into the icy river to build braces for it. While they were doing this, the Russians began to attack them from behind. And also the river joined in on the fight as huge blocks of ice carried by current slammed into them, carrying them downriver and killing them.

Oh, fuck. Yeah. It's like a Mario level. It is. Yeah. Frogger, too. Cross the river. Most of the engineers died in the construction of the bridge within 30 minutes because of its fucking goddamn winter and you're in the water.

Yeah. Though they'd almost immediately be replaced by other volunteers who immediately jumped in after them to continue their work. Are we sure they're volunteers? Oh the water. Yeah. Though they'd almost immediately be replaced by other volunteers who immediately jumped in after them to continue their work. Are we sure they're volunteers? Oh, yeah. Yeah. They only took volunteers for this mission. I want to die.

You're next. Not all of them died. Just the vast majority. And then because that wasn't enough, they built a second bridge, which went as well as the first. Now, as the French began to cross these bridges, they came under attack from the other side as well, as the

Russians on that side realized that they had been juked out. The hardest fighting happened in the rear guard, as a few Swiss regiments held back two Russian armies, chasing them back with seven different bayonet charges, as they ran out of ammunition and their barrels were followed and froze solid.

Whoops. It turns out, and this is the main reason, like we talked about before, we kind of made fun of them, how, wow, nobody made any plans for winter clothing for the military. It's because militaries didn't operate in the winter most of the time. It was not campaigning season. So most of their weapons didn't work great in the winter either. Some of them didn't work at all.

So that's why a lot of this turns into a whole lot of stabbing and beating people to death. So instead of breaking or surrendering against these odds, the Swiss instead sing patriotic songs while they stab thousands of Russian soldiers to death. All jolly dude just going to work. Going to go back to the corpse fields, bring a harvest in. At the end of the fighting the swiss are pretty badly beaten uh they lost over a thousand men but they did not break the rear guard held and pretty much saved the entire french military now on the other side of the bank the fighting was just as bad a collection of different german regiments held the bridgehead against constant russian attacks while the two sides were fighting the russ Russians pumped unending

shell fire into the mass of camp followers who were also attempting to cross the bridge, killing literally tens of thousands of them. Cossacks raided camp followers, slaughtering men, women, and children. The traffic across the bridge just turned into a human crush as people attempted to escape all of this.

People were literally compressed against each other so hard they suffocated to death while standing up. And then the shells would hit the bridge and explode it, sending them all into the river to die, meaning the Dutch had to go back to work repairing it. That happened multiple times. And so many people were killed

attempting to cross the bridges that a detail had to be assigned to run across the bridge and kick all the corpses out of the way so the wagons could keep moving. All of this sucks for the French. It's all bad. Every single thing.

I don't know how true this is, but the book notes that, um, for a long time, average regime, no, was kind of considered like, uh,

uh, cinnamon for disaster in French. So like, whoops, nice, but it worked. Uh, it went on for four days and the French finally fought their way across the river and French. So like, whoops. Nice. But it worked. It went on for four days and the French finally fought their way across the river and escaped.

So they, I mean, of course they burned the bridges behind them because that's what you do. And the French lost around 25,000 people in total, mostly camp followers. The camp followers got fucking mauled, but soldiers as well. It was pretty terrible.

But they did escape. Yay. Yeah. I mean, it's like, kind of like Borodino. You met the army in the open finally and you drove them

from the field, but like, now look at us. It's like, we escaped all six of us or whatever. Yeah, their numbers

aren't looking too good. They're not good. But escape did not mean anything good was going to happen to these men. The temperature continued to drop to 20 below and all the rations were gone.

Oh, fuck. The army pretty much ceased to be as men dropped dead from cold starvation or finally succumbed from wounds they had received. I hate when it hits 30. Yeah, it's going to get colder.

20 below is what? I think the coldest i've ever been in was five or ten below and it hurt to be outside and this is like in michigan in like the early 2000s and it was with wind chills so like it probably wasn't that cold it's only cold if you're outside and it's dumb enough to be standing in the wind, but the wind hurt. And that was with like modern winter clothing, not like covered in fucking hay and newspaper scraps and shit. Now, people, like I said, begin to lay down and simply accept their fate that they were going to die. One of those was a general. One last sleep.

People were just like, I cannot do this anymore. I'm fucked this. I'm laying down to die. Like people literally made a decision to sit down and just let themselves die um one man witnessed a soldier pulling the boots off of a general who collapsed by the side of the road the general who was still alive said quote just let me die in peace to which the soldier responded my general i'd be happy to but another will take your boots and prefer it to be me run your shit motherfucker gerald's just touche go ahead and like another time somebody like came across the wagon where

there's like a general who or a colonel or something that's wounded on it and uh the guy was uh like it's like hey just could you could you end it? I don't want to go through this. Could you just shoot me? And a soldier thought about it for a second, but remembered that to fire his weapon, he'd have to take the gloves off of his hand, and he didn't want to do that. So he just walked away.

I didn't hear that. Good luck, bitch. Soldiers from the same unit killed each other over coats boots and food an officer noted that quote they were knife fighting over the tiniest scraps of food with men screaming at each other with all the languages of europe just in a circle with like the fucking cable guy music playing and like and these are this is all of the grand army's been whittled down to a really small group so there's a good chance that none of these fucking guys can even talk to one another. No, dude.

And this is when the cannibalism started. Yeah. Now, before it was rare and happened in isolated cases, mostly with the Russian prisoners. Now it was widespread. Someone said that it was pretty rare to see a dead body without strips of flesh, flesh missing off of its thighs or buttocks or to hear advice on what part to take. Let me eat that ass. Now, the crazed men began to lose their shit and eat themselves. Oh, yeah.

Which I'm assuming was just a bad idea. Other people like now it's noted that none of the first-hand accounts from survivors are like yeah i ate some people like nobody fucking talks about it was like no that was sergeant fucking williams didn't make it that's a shame you are sergeant williams fuck damn it uh yeah but like a lot of people ate some people uh napoleon decided that his army would have to make its way to Vilna, which, if you remember, was the first city they took. Now, even though he thought that his army could not make another stand,

calling them an undisciplined mob and worried about how much damage it would cause the city if it had got there and they'd just eat everything. Like, he warned the commissariat in charge of Vilna, like, if you don't have 100,000 bread rations ready, I pity that city. Oh, fuck. Yeah.

Things had also began to get worse for Napoleon. He was no longer getting mail and was largely unable to keep ruling as he had been. If you remember, it was the secure mailing system which he was running the entire French Empire through. Rumors were floating around Europe about his defeat as the Tsar in St. Petersburg made sure to announce that Napoleon had been defeated.

And he's like, look at all these dead bodies. He finally decided he had no choice but to rush back to Paris. But he also had no idea who to leave in charge of the last 10,000 men of the Grand Army. grand army 10,000 that's it oh god he wanted to promote eugene as he had probably done the best so far but he thought if he did miral would pretty much mutiny 100 like uh like there's no way that miral would allow his stepson to be put in charge of him so he had no choice but to give the command of the army to Murat,

which ended up being a fucking terrible idea. If you remember, we've talked about Murat so far. He was not promoted for his brains or his organizational skills. It was only for his willingness to charge suicidally on horseback. Now, Eugene was pretty upset about this, pointing out everything that I did. But he eventually said, fuck it, fine, whatever. And at that point, Napoleon jumped in his carriage and set off. And he picked a good time to do it.

By December 6th, the temperature dropped to 35 below zero. Min reported seeing ice floating in the air as it was blown by the wind so hard it cut their exposed faces. What the fuck? Min went blind from the white of the snow and their eyes froze shut. Have you heard of snow blindness? Yes, I have. Yeah, yeah.

They got that real bad. A sergeant reported showing up to watch duty to find the guy that he was relieving frozen to death but propped up by his musket. At least I got company. Shoves him over. Yeah. Groups of soldiers broke off, got lost, and were drunk with hypothermia. shoves him over. Groups of soldiers broke off, got lost,

and were drunk with hypothermia. When the Russian army found them, they simply left them alone, allowed them to march around in circles until they eventually died. The Russians did note that when they found people eating other people, they did shoot them. Like, oh, gotta put that one down. He's feral.

He's got a taste for human blood. Yeah, yeah. The army made their way towards Vilna, which was planned to be their bastion it turns out that unlike the last several cities vilna really could support them enough rations for a hundred thousand men had been stockpiled as well as tens of thousands of reinforcements the problem was those reinforcements were mostly all fresh recruits uh levied on uh napoleon's orders or forward. As we talked about raw troops before,

this isn't going to go well. Now, this was just on the march there, which was hot, they were short of supplies. They're now marching into 35 below weather without winter clothing. These raw troops were from Western Europe and marched out to meet the Grand Army and immediately began freezing to death.

In one case, the division was reduced from 10,000 to 2,000 in a single night. What? So imagine the confusion of the Grand Army as they marched towards Vilna and the road in front of them was covered with thousands of men

in brand new uniforms, frozen upright in ranks or leaning against cannons. That's awful. That is a fucking horror film. Like, oh, I think I see a division in front of... Oh, God.

Oh, no. Like, one of them noted that like uh the italians knew that one of their unit one of those units is from italy because they're wearing like the certain bright uniform but they were all frozen to death sitting around a campfire campfire still going the campfire is also frozen it's just fire inside. By December 7th, parts of the army finally arrived in the city. The first unburnt, unlooted city they had seen in six months. Huh. So this is what buildings look like. The civilians of Vilna were fucking horrified by what they saw.

Streaming into the city was what looked like an army of zombies shuffling through the streets. Now think, they're wearing scraps of cloth for uniforms they're frostbitten down to their bones they're all diseased and shitting on themselves their teeth are falling out they quite literally looked like something out of a george romero film yeah just like into the city so people were scared and began to close up shops and ends barred their doors and windows and waited for the parade of horrors to leave well they could have fought them off easily just push them over i'll probably die thank you please just end it hit me with that stick though the governor of the city had set up barracks in a nearby monastery that did save

the city from like an orgy of violence like that of Moscow and Murat ran into orders that had been waiting for him to hold the city he was supposed to defend Vilna from the Russians at which point he responded no I refuse to be taken prisoner

in this piss pot of a place. And he did not tell the army about his orders to defend the city. He crippled them up and threw them away. Didn't see them. La la la, not listening. Have you ever just plugged your ears? I'm not listening to your emperor. He tries to start a fire and as the fire gets lit,

he tries to throw the letter and the fire just goes down. Fuck! But it didn't really matter. The army just didn't care anymore. With Napoleon gone, many officers no longer felt the, like, honor bound to remain there and just went home, abandoning their units. Now, these were mostly the foreign officers, like the not French officers. I'm closer.

Yeah, fuck you. I'm going to Prussia, bitch. Soldiers disregarded orders because fuck it, why not? And Murat made little effort to try to reorganize or discipline the army. Oh, no, don't. All right, tried. By December 9th, the rest of the army, the vast majority of it, made it into the city. And thousands of people attempted to pass through the gates of the city at a single time.

This again caused a human traffic jam, causing people to be trampled and suffocated at the city gates. We're supposed to be safe here. After pushing through that and murder stomping their buddies, they descended upon the city. Unlike the first wave, these guys didn't have great manners. They broke into home stores and shops, and the people of Vilna tried their best to just get out of the way.

The last thing any of them wanted to do was soldier. A roll call was called the next morning which nobody showed up to. Just imagine being the officer that called it.

Mirai attempted to call a meeting with his generals and they didn't show up. So I guess I'll just go fuck myself, huh? When the Cossacks raided the outskirts of the town's defenses, a call to arms was issued

and only 500 men showed up. Everybody else was like, yeah, I don't care. It was clear to Murat that he would not be able to hold the city or even command the army for that matter. So he just ordered a retreat in a blanket statement

rather than passing down orders. This had a bit of a problem. Most men did not listen, while others didn't and couldn't. Others never got any orders at all. When Murat came across a group of German reinforcements heading towards Vilna, having no idea that he had ordered the

retreat, they were shocked to find the head of the marshal and asked him for orders. Murat had to quote major we're fucked get on your horse and run alright cool as Miras and the last few organized units with commanders in place exited the city

the Cossacks swarmed in the civilians of Vilna worried that they might be judged to be French collaborators by letting the people take their food and stuff. Join the Cossacks in murdering the French and stayed behind. Jesus Christ.

Most of the units had escaped under colors and in organized structure were no larger than about 50 people apiece. That blows. So slightly larger than a modern day platoon. Yeah. As the Cossacks advanced towards them out of vilna murat realized he'd have to put up a fight marshal laferve cried out scared that uh after all

this he would never see home again to which a sergeant turned to him and said shut the fuck up you old fool if we die we die most units could hardly follow orders, but Marshal Ney almost single-handedly rallied the rearguard and saved what remained of the army. During this last stage of the retreat, soldierly behavior and solidarity began to return to the survivors. Despite

stealing, murdering, and leaving each other to die for the last few months, now that they saw that safety was kind of sort of within grasp, people began to act like it again. They began to like, oh yeah, we're totally friends now. Their true colors got shown

when they were all struggling. When men fell down, their help to their feet. People began to share food and water if they had it. Though not always. A general and his aide came across two young Dutch conscripts

running a fire in a hut in the middle of the night. They beat them senseless and tossed them out. The general heard them crying on the outside of the hut throughout the night and found them frozen to death in the morning. Oh, fuck. Fuck that guy. Muran, the lead of the army, made his way to Kovno, but they had no intention of staying there either, knowing that the Russians were at their heels

and fighting at this stage would be fucking suicide. The organized soldiers quickly exited the city, while the stragglers, who had managed to survive the Cossack raids, poured into the city and looted everything they could, because they're still giant pieces of shit. They found huge stockpiles of booze and got hammered,

leading to rolling fistfights between French and German units. Nice. The problem was, after all the stress and not eating and being horrible shambling bags of disease, getting blitz was a really bad idea and killed a lot of them outright. Everything is killing everything. Yeah. While Murat immediately left the city, Ney stayed behind to keep the road open so as many

stragglers as possibly could could make their way into the city and into safety. But this had the downside of him eventually finding himself being surrounded by Cossacks. He tried to hold off as long as he could, but found his soldiers who had been with him through so much had finally broken, slowly melting away into the retreat rather than staying and fight with him anymore.

But that didn't stop Ney. Ney, with only a few dozen French infantry, set off on a fighting withdrawal. Rather than commanding from a high horse and yelling at his men to keep up the fighting, he took up a musket, stood in ranks with them, and fired shoulder to shoulder with the few men

that he had left keeping the Cossacks at bay. By the time Ney had escaped, he was virtually all that was left of the entire Grand Army's rear guard. About 40 dudes. God. Yep. Back with Napoleon, he had made his long way back to Poland,

and he was cheerfully telling Kalenkor that he had no doubt that Murat was holding Vilna. It's going great. Everything's fine. This is fine. Something his marshal hadn't even attempted to do. Once there, he continued to blame everybody for his problems, including the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, saying that he had not seen a single Polish soldier during the entire campaign.

Now, this is ridiculous for a lot of reasons, mostly because the Poles had been some of his best soldiers, and while he escaped, he exchanged his traditional bicorn hat for the hat of a polish lancer because it's furry and covered his ears nice yeah he's a piece of shit uh polish ministers showed up for a meeting and and napoleon demanded they raise more men uh and said they had 120 000 men in vilna despite the fact that the vaunted grand army was probably closer like 5 000 mostly starved frost bitten dudes and not in Vilna at all.

He also kind of admitted that he lost, claiming that he beat the Russians every time. In another six months, he'd be on the march again, saying, quote, he who hazards nothing, gains nothing. Uh, yep. He still didn't see this as a defeat.

It was a setback. And he was also doing his best. A whole army setback. More than one army. A whole international clusterfuck. He was so bad at being an international military leader during an invasion that ISAF is jealous. And he knew that he had seriously fucked up. And he knew the true cost.

He knew that there wasn't that many people left. But he did not want everybody else knowing that. He then drank some wine and decided to go over to his side piece's house, which was nearby. Swear to God. He's just like, time to go. It's pussy. The dude had not even bathed yet. He's like, time to go get laid.

I don't smell myself. He had to be talked out of by Kalancor at the last second because look at everything that's happening right now. It is important to point out that Napoleon and pretty much all of his marshals and generals did not think they were defeated by the Russians. Kind of like what Napoleon said. It was like, I defeated the Russians in every battle we had had which is true they never like retreated they won everything um

but they lost look at them like there's war is i mean i hate to talk like i'm pointing at a fucking powerpoint show right now and you're at a meeting that you don't want to be in but war is like a 360 degree thing there's more to it it than winning a battle. And Napoleon should know that because he was fighting in the 1800s where disease and supply killed more people than fighting did, which it did here too. But him arguing like,

well, I beat the Russians is exactly like every idiot ass American who claims that America didn't lose the Vietnam War. Yeah. Like, we didn't lose, we left. Okay, please point to Saigon on the map. We didn't lose Moscow. Okay, we didn't lose, we left. Okay, please point to Saigon on the map. We didn't lose Moscow? Okay, then please point

to me, Napoleon's 50-year reign as emperor. Doesn't exist. I mean, the French blamed everything on the retreat on everything but the

Russians. Which, I mean, if it wasn't for the Cossacks and the Russians harrying them on the way back, the retreat would have been much better.

But, like, they would have been fucked either way. As such, Napoleon doesn't think what happened in Russia was anything other than a minor setback. Just to show how totally detached from reality he was by this point, he held great importance to the fact that the United States of America was now fighting the British in the War of 1812. Now, we did cover this before. I won't go into it too far. But it, again, has to do with the continental system,

but he not only thought that America would win, but that they would then join him in his international war against the British. Oh boy. Could not like, that is somehow the dumbest thing he fought. That a whole bunch of militiamen like, yeah,

let's invade Spain. Like a bunch of drunk guys. When he finally reached his palace in France in the Tuileries, the guards had hardly recognized him and had to be talking to the fact that, yes, this is in fact the emperor because he was so unrecognizable

from losing so much weight. Once there, he wrote a letter to Myra addressed in Vilna, a city that was so securely in Russian hands that Kutuzov was holding parades in the middle of the town and the Tsar was there. Holy shit. How's the defense going? Marshal Kutuzov, we have a letter for you from Napoleon. What?

Instead of being in Vilna, Mirah had set up camp in Konigsberg in Prussia, which everybody thought would be pretty safe. But instead of being safe, an epidemic of typhus swept through the ranks because his army was literally fucking cursed by God at this point. There's also another bit of a problem. Instead of reorganizing the army, which Murat was probably never really going to be able to do, he ran smack dab into popular resentment. See, the Prussians kind of knew that things were going south because

look at these guys. Exactly. And they knew it was now their time to rise up against the French. Wow. Prussians began hurling rocks and singing patriotic songs at French troops. People refused to sell them food or board them. If you fell out or found alone,

you'd be jumped and probably beaten to death in the streets, which at this point was probably pretty easy. Oh, for sure. Like a punch. A couple of eight-year-olds just mob a guy.

Yeah. Prussian soldiers under their French flag defected to Russia where they're allowed free movement. Other Prussian units refused to move

and marched away from Murad to support him. Murad was once again forced to retreat. Again! It's just snowballing. All of this is terrible. He's like at this point, can someone just fucking shoot me? By the time the survivors of the Grand Army finally

made it to their assembly points where this whole thing had begun, months before, around 400,000 men of the army had died. Less than a quarter of which fell in battle, mostly at Borodino. This is felt by some units much harder than others. For instance, you know those engineers that built the bridges that saved

everything? Six of them returned to Holland alive. Oh, shit. Tens of thousands never returned because the Cossacks sold them into slavery, while others still stayed behind to set up new lives for themselves. Many stayed after 1814 because they refused to return to a France not ruled by Napoleon.

As for Napoleon, the invasion of Russia had doomed his empire. The Polish War, as they called it, would end and the War of the Sixth Coalition would begin in March of 1813. As his former allies of Austria, Prussia, and Sweden, yes, Sweden, ruled by his old buddy, joined with Russia and the UK to finally kick the emperor while he was down.

He was finally decisively defeated at the Battle of the Nations, also known as the Battle of Leipzig, the largest battle Europe would see until World War I. Eventually, Tsar Alexander would lead the Allied armies into Paris itself. Napoleon, though, refused to quit, demanding that they launch an offensive to retake his capital

until he was confronted by marshal nay who refused oh nay's back napoleon said the army would listen listen to the emperor and nay said the army would listen to its marshals and they was correct so napoleon advocated his imperial and royal majesty, Napoleon I, by the grace of God and the constitutions of the empire, emperor of the French, king of Italy, mediator of the Swiss Confederation and protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, and co-prince of Andorra, abdicated the throne on April 11, 1814. Napoleon was exiled to the small island of Elba, and the Bourbon monarchy of Louis XVIII returned to the throne, ending the French Empire, at least

for now. And that is our conclusion. This whole episode, the best part was Eugene. Eugene and his Italians? Yeah. Best part. Everything else? Horrifying. Yeah, there's

not a lot of optimism in the French version of the Donner Party. So, thank you everybody for tuning in to this wonderful six-part series. Nick, thank you for joining me, both in person and in quarantine. Yes. And before we go, and as

this is the end of a series, you know what time it is questions from the legion now uh if you would like to ask a question of the legion you can donate at least a dollar on our patreon and get on the discord which is generally where we do this stuff now i have um a pretty interesting question what do you think is the major failings of history as a discipline and how would you go about fixing them um well i majored in history and i can tell you that i think one of the major failings of history is pretty obvious and that is like victors write history and for sure and those victors get their version of history put in textbooks have you seen seen my textbooks? You should see some of Texas's textbooks.

Which actually most people, because of the way the textbook system works, get Texas's textbooks. Which is bad. Because they one time called slaves migrant workers. That is true. But I think a lot of that nationalistic tendency to politicize history i mean history is political war is political that's why um our series end up going so long and talking about all the backgrounds of the shit because it's important but like trying to point out that say that the civil war is about slavery immediately starts some fires oh for sure um trying to point

trying to talk about the realities of world war ii and like the the the reality behind um nazi politics people get really pissy when you try to tell them that they weren't socialists or communists um america's early history is incredibly dark people really don't like talking about that when you use the genocide word on our treatment of native americans um stuff like that i think a lot of that is based in nationalism. It's the same reason why in Japan they don't teach about comfort women or the rape of Nanking. In America, it's as guilty as anybody else. Honestly, I think the most, I don't know, from what I understand, I could be wrong.

If there's any Germans listening, you can please tell me. The nation that's done its best to confront its national ghosts is Germany because they have to learn about the Holocaust. They have to learn about the Third Reich and everything that they did. I think if America had some kind of reckoning like that, which, of course, Germany has to do that because they fucking lost. But if America had some reckoning like that, where we had to learn about the true causes and the true costs and a whole bunch of other stuff

of the dark periods of our history, I think the discipline of history in itself would have a lot more well-rounded people. You go into a history classroom and you read a textbook. Even college textbooks are pretty bad, unless you have a good professor, which can be

rare from my experience like my professors ran the gamut from like a nationalist uh to like straight up marxist um and there's like almost no one really yeah it's almost no one between especially in like european history is like you end up someone who's like a straight up mostly leftist or definitely anti-imperialist or someone who's like well the british empire did spread technology everywhere so that's good right like there's there's no in between it's really wild and i think a lot of that is because people just can't process things without that political nationalistic lens which is why like our show gets a lot of hate mail because we talk about things that people don't want to talk about. Like for me,

I'm, I'm a Napoleon guy. I fucking love Napoleon. It's the main reason why I went into European history. He's a fucking idiot. Like you can love a point in history. I didn't realize that. Like I have, I have no like fucking misnomers about him.

I know he was a goddamn idiot. He was a fucking God. Yeah. He could do no wrong. It's all Zara, Zara examiner's fault. But yeah, I think that,

and the way to fix that is, I don't know, other than like blow everything up and start over. There's no way to fix this. Like imagine, I grew up in Michigan. We have a super, super long native history in Michigan.

Like a lot of uprisings happened there that we covered. I never learned about any of that fucking shit in school because they didn't want to talk about it because it just pretty much ends with white people

slaughtering people in their beds you know like nobody wants nobody can learn about that I don't know you'd have to start

all over again so I mean of course they say blow it up figuratively yeah please don't cancel

this Patreon but uh speaking of patreon we have patreon if you like our show like to support our like to support our show uh you can donate to us on patreon the link will be in the show notes uh you can get bonus episodes stickers books a whole bunch of other stuff access to the discord where you can ask us questions in the legion uh and uh maybe maybe also some Spartan gruel made out of gunpowder and axle grease mailed to you in a sock. I feel like that's the correct transportation method.

Yeah, packaged in a sock. A sweaty sock. A crusty sock. Big toe hole in it. Yeah. But that is the French invasion of Russia. Nick, again, thank you for joining me both in person and in undisclosed location.

This was awful. This is terrible. I can say I don't know where this series is going to fall on a hierarchy of fan favorites, but I do know this. More people froze to death in this series than any other one. For sure. And it's going to be hard to fucking top it. So until next time, everybody, keep keep warm don't eat axle grease yes and

we'll see you next time yes later