Napoleon: A Biography

with the U.S.A., leading to war in r8rz, was distracting the attention of the political elite The growing volume of peace petiti ...

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO From the beginning of r811 it was clear to the shrewdest observers that France and Russia were on a collision ...

unable to stand up to the Dowager Empress and feared that the fate he had meted out to his father would be visited on him, the C ...

sometimes been said that Alexander's duplicity, intrigues and expansion­ ism forced conflict on an unwilling French Emperor but, ...

Napoleon swept aside all these objections and continued to prepare for war. But there was a significant lacuna in Napoleon's pre ...

again engaged in 'double or quits'. On this view, his power base in France was becoming precarious, he was at loggerheads with t ...

downfall; consciously the divorce of Josephine signified to the supersti­ tious Emperor the loss of his luck, and unconsciously ...

seems almost to have believed that the resources could be conjured out of thin air. Meanwhile the flower of the Grande Armee was ...

the two power blocs. Napoleon regarded the answer as more of an insult than serious diplomacy. Some historians have claimed that ...

itinerant court. Travelling via Chalons and Metz he was at Mainz on 12 May, then proceeded to Dresden by way of Wi.irzburg, Bayr ...

the French soldiers there were 40,000 Italians, JO,ooo Portuguese and Spanish, Swiss, Dutch, Illyrians, Croats, Lithuanians and, ...

calculated that he could achieve this end by crossing the river Niemen on a narrow front, with flanks protected by MacDonald's c ...

committed terrible atrocttles against their former masters, the only consequence of the Emperor's scruples in this regard was th ...

seems to have occurred to him that a sixfold increase in numbers would augment the problems of command and coordination exponent ...

fresh meat and weakened by diarrhoea, the ravenous soldiers began to drop in their tracks; desertion and even suicide were commo ...

Dvinsk Oz.. J'�q Orissa MACDONALD (20,000 Prussians) , 1: " eElbing I I Mariembourg lll NAPOLEON (300,000 men) Thor 1 I ���� I E ...

likiluwi Roslav To ula Briansk Russian Campaign June-December 1812 0 100 200 km • • • • Grande Annee advance --• Grande Armee ...

meanwhile a further 8,ooo horses had died between Vilna and Vitebsk and Ioo,ooo troops were absent from their units through illn ...

advance to the Orsha gap. Barclay did neither, mainly because he feared Bagration was intriguing against him and would use any m ...

and even while it shrank in size daily, the French army was dangerously strung out; what with Oudinot, who had defeated Wittgens ...