Why did Napoleon attack Moscow?

[Easterling]

Moscow mattered to Napoleon because it was Russia's old capital and he felt capturing it would achieve his war aims of enabling Alexander to remove his "bad advisers" and seek peace.

But wasn't Sankt Petersburg the true capital? I suppose Napoleon would have greater changes to capture courtiers if he went there.

Well, if you hadn't been all TL;DR, then you would know that I said it would be much, much worse. Napoleon would be exposed to British bombardment and his supply lines would be right across very uncomfortable territory. Furthermore, he'd be vulnerable to encirclement.

-what is TLDR?
- naval bombardment? even if the British do indeed break into the Baltic, we are talking about 18th century ships of the Line, not the Yamato! The only way they can inconvenience Napoleon's Army is if he insists on sticking to the beach all the way to Sankt Petersburg
-as for the "unconfortable terittory": why would it be any more unconfortable then central Russia? at least he would be marching through lands that have only been taken by Russia relatively recently, so theey might be slightly more "civilized"

 

[Snake Featherston]

But wasn't Sankt Petersburg the true capital? I suppose Napoleon would have greater changes to capture courtiers if he went there.

Yes, but Napoleon didn't want to capture Alexander I.

 

[TheLordProtector]

-what is TLDR?
- naval bombardment? even if the British do indeed break into the Baltic, we are talking about 18th century ships of the Line, not the Yamato! The only way they can inconvenience Napoleon's Army is if he insists on sticking to the beach all the way to Sankt Petersburg
-as for the "unconfortable terittory": why would it be any more unconfortable then central Russia? at least he would be marching through lands that have only been taken by Russia relatively recently, so theey might be slightly more "civilized"

-"Too long; didn't read".
-Yes, I know, thanks. However, that doesn't preclude the fact that the British could, at any time, land a force in his rear and proceed to kill his supply lines, and the fact that naval bombardment is still a threat. Any cities he takes on the coast will be easily retaken with the help of the Royal Navy. You get me?
-I don't mean the Russian coast, I mean the Kingdom of Prussia. Napoleon had only just pacified them, and they were still quite ready to go back on whatever treaty was signed (I forget) and attack him, as the War of the Sixth Coalition shows. Running his supply lines through Prussia is both the only option in such a scenario and a very, very bad one. They could, at any time, renege on their agreement and cut off his supply, which would leave him without any possibility of reinforcement thousands of miles from Paris with very few supplies. In a word, fucked.

 

[CandyDragon]

You may remember we lost that war.

That's an overstatement, I'd say.

 

[Enigmajones]

We won the part of it that mattered to us - turning back your invasion of Canada. You were able to fight us to a standstill once the fighting had moved back onto your side of the border.

We could have carried on longer had we seen any point in it, but we didn't. The British Empire already had more virgin forest than it knew what to do with, and didn't need to try and conquer more.

If the British thought they had an outside chance of retaking what had been their most profitable colony, they would have. They were smart enough to realize that the cat had been let out of the bag in 1776 and they didn't want to have to occupy a restless territory. Now as to Canada, we did a fair bit of damage in that front, still a stupid idea, and it served its purpose, distracting the British from pouring all their aid to the Indians we were desperately trying to quash. The United States won the part that mattered to us, and the British won the part that mattered to them. Aka, a draw.

 

[CandyDragon]

If the British thought they had an outside chance of retaking what had been their most profitable colony, they would have. They were smart enough to realize that the cat had been let out of the bag in 1776 and they didn't want to have to occupy a restless territory. Now as to Canada, we did a fair bit of damage in that front, still a stupid idea, and it served its purpose, distracting the British from pouring all their aid to the Indians we were desperately trying to quash. The United States won the part that mattered to us, and the British won the part that mattered to them. Aka, a draw.

That seems to be a good summary of it.

 

[Simreeve]

If the British thought they had an outside chance of retaking what had been their most profitable colony,

Jamaica? We still held that anyway...

 

[Mikestone8]

Now as to Canada, we did a fair bit of damage in that front, still a stupid idea, and it served its purpose, distracting the British from pouring all their aid to the Indians we were desperately trying to quash. The United States won the part that mattered to us, and the British won the part that mattered to them. Aka, a draw.

Fair enough.

 

[Easterling]

-"Too long; didn't read".

I take offense to this! I always read the posts I'm responding to!

I don't mean the Russian coast, I mean the Kingdom of Prussia. Napoleon had only just pacified them, and they were still quite ready to go back on whatever treaty was signed (I forget) and attack him, as the War of the Sixth Coalition shows. Running his supply lines through Prussia is both the only option in such a scenario and a very, very bad one. They could, at any time, renege on their agreement and cut off his supply, which would leave him without any possibility of reinforcement thousands of miles from Paris with very few supplies. In a word, fucked.

The risk of prussia cutting the supply lines will exist in any case of a French invasion of Russia, due to the simple fact that Prussia sits between France and Russia.The only solution is to stockpile supplies in the Duchy of Warsaw (thisi is what I think the French did historically) in which case if you look at a map you can see it is possible to go from there to Sankt Petersburg and bypass East Prussia without making a big detour, plus the route would stay far enough from the coast to minimize the risk of British attacks.

 

[Colonel Troutstrangler]

Prussians cutting supply lines???

Frederick William III did not have the guts to back his own soldiers when they declared against Napoleon - he would certainly not have cut supply lines whilst Prussia was occupied. As his wife siad of him "he is a timid liddle schit, unt I can whoop his arse unt my ownen, just vait unt see if i dont!!!"

 

[RPW@Cy]

Look, I want to know just one thing: would it be worse then going after Moskow?
I suppose, at least, that the infrastructure in the Baltics would be slightly better then in central Russia.

Personal anecdote - I once attempted to write an AH based on precisely this premise and ran it past a Finnish friend of mine (who was a student at the time and is now a professional military historian, so knew his stuff) for plausibility. He very, very strongly recommended I drop the idea (I did), for a variety of reasons, but largely because of the geography of the area - the Baltic coastal region at the time consisted largely of marshes where they don't consist of impenetrable forest and the few roads in the region at that period ran in the wrong direction, i.e. north-south. East-west traffic was handled by coastal shipping, which was right out as mentioned because the French had nothing in the Baltic to protect it. Oh and it doesn't need the RN to be present, the Russian Navy in the Baltic was perfectly capable of denying the sea to the French. To march on St Petersburg the French would have had to build their own road as they went, which was a suboptimal idea to put it mildly.

Napoleon marched on Moscow because he had to - the only east-west roads that stood a chance of supporting his army ran that way, and if he wanted to go to St Petersburg it was actually easier to go to Moscow first then strike north from there anyway. If he'd have tried to go along the coast he wouldn't have got half way before his army died on him.

One final thought to the people derailing the thread - to everyone outside North America - even the British - "War of 1812" means Napoleon, Moscow and Tchaikovsky, not Andy Jackson and the USS Constitution. That's what this thread is about, there are plenty of others on your War of 1812.

 

[Colonel Troutstrangler]

RPW - I could not agree more with all the sentiments in your post. The only way Prussia was able to beat the invading Green Meanies in my own time line (The Only Man In Prussia) was precisely because the Russian Lines of Communication were through the Massurian Lakes Plateu - lots of lakes and forrests and bugger all else! The Prussians were able keep the disparate elements of the Russian hoards "blind" and defeat them in detail. Remember that "anything" north and east of Warsaw is bog or dense woods. Boney wasn't stupid and chose the only real route available to move vast numbers of men and materiel.

 

[Enigmajones]

Jamaica? We still held that anyway...

Jamaica, while profitable has nothing on the profitability of New England, the Mid Atlantic and Southern colonies.

 

[Nugax]

Jamaica, while profitable has nothing on the profitability of New England, the Mid Atlantic and Southern colonies.

And you don't understand the meaning of 'profitable' - in terms of revenue rendered to the metropol, Jamaica was far more important. The Eastern Seaboard had greater gross product, but the difficult of rendering that dispersed wealth to taxation and commercial interests was what the american revolution was about .

 

[PoeFacedKilla]

Anglo-Spanish War:
The Spanish beat the Royal Navy in 1585, twice in 1591, 1593, 1594, and 1596.

First Anglo-Dutch War:
The Dutch beat the Royal Navy in 1652 twice and 1653 and managed a draw in 1652.

Second Anglo-Dutch War:
The Dutch beat the Royal Navy in 1665, 1666, and 1667

Third Anglo-Dutch War:
The Dutch beat the Royal Navy in several times in 1673 and managed a draw in 1672.

War of Spanish Succession:
The French beat the Royal Navy in 1703, at the Lizard in 1707, at Beachy Head in 1707, won again in 1710 and managed draws in 1702 and 1704.

War of Austrian Succession:
The French beat the Royal Navy in 1744.
The Spanish managed a draw against the Royal Navy in 1744.

Seven Years War:
The French managed a draw against the British in 1757, and several times in 1758.

American Revolution:
The Dutch managed draw against the Royal Navy at Dogger Bank in 1781 and in the West Indies.
The French beat the Royal Navy in 1778, 1779, twice in 1781, and 1782 and managed draws in 1778, 1780, 1781, again in 1781, and twice in 1782.
The Spanish beat the Royal Navy in 1780.
The United States beat the Royal Navy in 1775, 1778, again in 1778, 1779, 1781, and 1782, managed a draws in 1776 and 1779.

War of 1812:
The United States beat the Royal Navy in several small engagements in 1812, several small engagements in 1813, as well as a larger battle, several small engagements in 1814, as well as a larger battle, and more small engagements in 1815.

I just have to say this;
the royal navy has been beaten in battles in the short term many times;
but they won pretty much every way you've just mentioned almost entirely because of their naval supremacy.

Look, nobody wins every battle but its who wins the war that counts;
and the British just didn't give up post-1600

(tho the dutch did beat them a few times and i'll give you that)

 

[Mikestone8]

I just have to say this;
the royal navy has been beaten in battles in the short term many times;
but they won pretty much every way you've just mentioned almost entirely because of their naval supremacy.

Look, nobody wins every battle but its who wins the war that counts;
and the British just didn't give up post-1600

(tho the dutch did beat them a few times and i'll give you that)

Make that Post-1688 (it had also been true in the 1650s) and I'd agree. Under the Stuarts we tended to perform below par.

It was even more the case post-1694, when the Bank of England was founded. Navies were very expensive items, and the BoE more than anything gave us the financial means to maintain ours. In the 18C, the RN was the biggest purchaser of food, wood, rope and sundry other commodities in Britain, and its personnel outnumbered the population of any town outside London.

This was Nappy's fundamental problem vis a vis Britain - as it had been the French kings' problem before him. He already had to bear the cost of being the biggest military power in Europe, and even with the plunder of a continent to draw on, simultaneously challenging GB's position as the biggest naval power was just impossibly expensive.

 

[RGB]

The Grand Armee could not be supplied by sea, as the RN (in the person of Admiral Saumarez) controlled the Baltic.

The fundamental problem everyone seems to be blitherly ignoring isn't the British navy being kept out of the Baltic, but the French one forcing their way in.

In 1812 it was in no condition to seriously challenge the Russian Baltic navy even if the Russians didn't have allies. So that settles the sea supply question very elegantly.

 

[Ivir Baggins]

Is there any realistic possibility of Boney invading the Ukraine?

 

[Easterling]

Is there any realistic possibility of Boney invading the Ukraine?

I see two variants:

- alliance with the Ottomans, in which case the Ukraine would be an obvious theater for joint operations (but the Ottomans didn't quite like him and went out of their way to avoid an alliance)

- Napoleon, instead of trying to come to an agreement in Russia, decides instead to rely on the Poles instead, and create a greater Poland as his proxy in Eastern Europe, in which case seizing Belarus and the Ukraine would be primary objectives, while pushing further into Russia wouldn't be. (but Napoleon doesn't seem to have taken the Poles seriously, even if he promised such things)

 

[TheLordProtector]

I see two variants:

- alliance with the Ottomans, in which case the Ukraine would be an obvious theater for joint operations (but the Ottomans didn't quite like him and went out of their way to avoid an alliance)

- Napoleon, instead of trying to come to an agreement in Russia, decides instead to rely on the Poles instead, and create a greater Poland as his proxy in Eastern Europe, in which case seizing Belarus and the Ukraine would be primary objectives, while pushing further into Russia wouldn't be. (but Napoleon doesn't seem to have taken the Poles seriously, even if he promised such things)

I could see the second one happening. The Poles were some of Napoleon's best soldiers, and could probably have carved out an empire for themselves with the help of the Grand Armee. If he just conquered Belarus and western Ukraine without proceeding any further, I could definitely see a French victory on the horizon.