seems to have occurred to him that a sixfold increase in numbers would
augment the problems of command and coordination exponentially. This
applied particularly to logistics. In a nutshell, the Grande Armee was too
big for the resources of Russia and its infrastructure. The problems of
roads and food supply were so great that the most sober analysts have
concluded that Napoleon's 1812 adventure was doomed from the start; it
was an impossible dream, something impracticable before the advent of
railways and the telegraph.
Since the problem of time was pressing, Napoleon should have crossed
the Niemen in May. His failure to do so caused him problems which he,
typically, attributed simply to bad luck. As the summer heats began,
disease struck at the Army: 6o,ooo died from dysentery, diphtheria and
typhus before ever a Russian was sighted or a shot fired. A believer in
omens, Napoleon should have heeded the portents. But the superstitious
Corsican did not even heed the 'warning' when he was thrown from his
horse in the late afternoon of 23 June - a hare ran between the hooves of
his steed - though privately he brooded on the conspiracy against him by
paranormal forces. Yet there was still time to change strategy and save
face. One possibility was to cross the Niemen for a massive raid in force
and then return to the frontier for the winter: the Czar would then be
informed that the same thing would happen every year until he came to
heel.
It is impossible to avoid the comparison between the crossing of the
Niemen by the Grande Armee on 23 June and the invasion of Russia by
Hitler's Wehrmacht just one day earlier 129 years later. In both cases
dictators had underestimated the enemy, failed to think their strategy
through and started the campaign too late. But there the comparisons
end, for the Germans in 1941 achieved striking early success with their
blitzkrieg, while the Grand Army trekked for over a month before coming
to grips with the enemy. And the five-day march to Vilna would have
alerted a more circumspect commander of the possibility of ultimate
disaster, for the warning signs were all there.
On the first day of the campaign 130,0 00 infantry and cavalry crossed
the Niemen on three pontoon bridges; Napoleon himself crossed on the
24th and made his headquarters at Kovno, ready for the advance on
Vilna. But on the march itself the poor organization of the Army was
already apparent: the troops were indisciplined and consumed all four
days' rations on the first day, so that long before they got to Vilna they
were collapsing with hunger and exhaustion. Plodding along muddy
tracks, past polluted wells, over collapsing bridges, maddened by lack of
marcin
(Marcin)
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