WI: Napoleon Proclaims Abolition of Serfdom in Russia.

Loghain

Banned
So lets say Napoleon Invades Russia as OTL because of its Breaking the Continental Blockade but this time Proclaims abolition of serfdom in Russia. What happens next ?
 
So lets say Napoleon Invades Russia as OTL because of its Breaking the Continental Blockade but this time Proclaims abolition of serfdom in Russia. What happens next ?


Nothing much. Russian serfs don't know French and very few in the Grand Armee know any Russian. About the only people who could translate would be Polish landowners with French sympathies, but they wouldn't want their own peasants getting any ideas, so would probably soon discover that they were loyal to the Tsar after all.
 
It's quite unlikely for Napoleon to do so : his strategical goal was less to punish Russia, than to force it to join back the continental system. Proclaiming the abolition of serfdom would only, even if it would have worked out somehow, greatly destabilize western Russia without any evidence that Russian peasants would be less hostile to Napoleonic army. If something Nappie didn't need then, it was a second Spain.
 
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