Saturday 21 September 2019

Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow ….. In Our Time ….. One to listen to

“Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, in September 1812, Napoleon captured Moscow and waited a month for the Russians to meet him, to surrender and why, to his dismay, no-one came. 

"Peace at all costs"
Soon his triumph was revealed as a great defeat; winter was coming, supplies were low; he ordered his Grande Armée of six hundred thousand to retreat and, by the time he crossed back over the border, desertion, disease, capture, Cossacks and cold had reduced that to twenty thousand. 

Napoleon had shown his weakness; his Prussian allies changed sides and, within eighteen months they, the Russians and Austrians had captured Paris and the Emperor was exiled to Elba.

With

Janet Hartley
Professor Emeritus of International History, LSE

Michael Rowe
Reader in European History, King’s College London

And

Michael Rapport
Reader in Modern European History, University of Glasgow

Producer: Simon Tillotson”*

Painting; Napoleon and general Lauriston ("Peace at all costs!"), Vasily Vereshchagin, 1899-1900

* Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow, In Our Time, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008jd2

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