Snow would complicate things
Why would the Ottomans be invading in winter? Doesn't sound like a very good idea to me.
Snow would complicate things
It wasn't winter when Napoleon and Hitler invaded. Russia is big and takes time to invade. You can't conquer it in one campaign season.Why would the Ottomans be invading in winter? Doesn't sound like a very good idea to me.![]()
Why would the Ottomans be invading in winter? Doesn't sound like a very good idea to me.![]()
Somehow, I believe that the Mongols were far better prepared for winter than any coalition that the Ottomans would put together. As well as something else that was touched on earlier, mobility. It plays out a lot better for the steppe ponies than it does for the infantryman and artillery train.
That's still a 200,000 man army of high quality, i.e. more than enough to assure the security of the empire against any offensive aspirations of his Continental enemies. If he'd had that when Prussia rose against him, it'd be more than enough to wipe them from the map and discourage Austria from joining the war. The wars of liberation were only conceivable because of how total the destruction in Russia was. If the Russians had been utterly shattered at Borodino, Napoleon would have been able to go into winter quarters and preserve the strength of his army; if the retreat had been better managed, even with 100,000 men returning to Germany, this would suffice to not just defeat but destroy the Spring coalition when joined by new drafts. With regard to an Ottoman march on Moscow, if they were to set out with 100,000 men from Kiev and arrive with only half, that's still a very substantial army; under a great general, that could be enough to win a battle of annihilation over the Russians. From there, they could go into winter quarters and avoid the catastrophe that befell Napoleon.
Losing half a million men is enough to qualify as "running into trouble" in my book, even if it wouldn't be enough trouble to unseat Napoleon. (Though I do suspect you're being too sanguine here about his ability to bounce back from such losses.) And whilst it's theoretically possible for an Ottoman force to capture Moscow, it would require so many things to go right (getting there in the first place, in spite of supply difficulties; winning a battle of annihilation against the Russians, as opposed to just a regular victory; keeping their army sufficiently intact to take Moscow itself; the Russians not being able to mobilise any new forces to cut the Ottomans off from their home base; etc.) that a successful outcome would be highly unlikely.