ON 24 June 1812, against the warnings of his closest advisors, invaded Russia with a huge army of almost 600,000 soldiers and 50,000 horses. Napoleon had boasted he would defeat Russia in 20 days. Yet he failed miserably. The Russians retreated, following a scorched-earth policy, burning the countryside along the way. Napoleon’s soldiers found it harder and harder to forage for food, and they started to die from hunger, exhaustion and sickness: more than 5000 died each day. Within a few weeks, before any major battle, Napoleon had lost 100,000 men. What went wrong?
Napoleon’s disastrous…
