French Invasion Of Russia: Napoleon Falling Short

After many years of constant battling, trying to conquer and grow, Napoleon could not seem to find a victorious ending. Napoleon experienced many defeats. One of the most notorious losses was when he tried to invade Russia in June of 1812. I feel like we lost that war because we were not prepared for the harsh weather, and were forced to fight on empty stomachs. As we started to invade Russia we started getting resistance from the Russian forces. We would overpower them and feel like we winning, but they would retreat and burn all of the grain and slaughter animals so we had nothing to eat. A lot of the soldiers who weren’t French wandered off looking for food, so our numbers have dropped quite a bit.

One of the reasons why we lost this war was that the weather was so cold. As we continued to work hard to conquer Russia, Napoleon believed that he was doing all of the work. He even told us this quote, “In war men are nothing, one man is everything. ” As we arrived in Moscow, Russia we noticed that the entire city was on fire. The Czar of Russia had burned down the city as they withdrew. We thought that we had won, and waited in Moscow for five weeks for the Czar to admit defeat; but he never did. Finally, it was October and winter was coming. We were not in a good place because winter was upon us.

Napoleon finally let us leave to go home. We were cold, hungry, and tired. As the snow fell upon us in November, the Russians attacked our army and left very few survivors. The people that did survive were in very bad shape. One French sergeant mentioned soldiers whose feet were so frozen that they sounded like wooden shoes. After this attack, our army was down to only 10, 000 soldiers.

To add insult to injury, our enemies took full advantage of our weakness when we were returning home. Britain joined with Russia, Prussia and Sweden to defeat us. Austria eventually joins and suddenly all of the main European powers are against us. At the end Napoleon himself tried to commit suicide by drinking poison. Unfortunately, because he had carried that poison in a tiny vile with poison in it but throughout time the poison slowly became less potent so he was not successful with his own death.

Napoleon eventually ended up on St. Helena, a tiny island in the South Atlantic; where he spent six years in exile before his death.