Hacker News Reader

Comment by codedokode | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting that although Napoleon captured Moscow, the capital at that time was in Saint-Petersburg. Why didn't he go to the capital? This painting depicts Napoleon hopelessly waiting for a delegation from Russian Emperor with burning city in the background [1].

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Napoleon_in_burning_...

View on HN

The capital was better fortified and the French wanted food and loot. So softer target sounds nice, especially if you think this crushes morale immediately and don't believe the opposition will go scorched earth (but they did).

> If I would take S.P., I would hold Russia by the head. If I take Kiev, I will hold Russia by legs. If I take Moscow, I will reach right into its heart!"

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/27588/why-did-na...

Your comment has me remember a great graph of his army disintegrating. It’s such a good visualisation.

https://brilliantmaps.com/napoleons-invasion-infograhic/

His goal was the Russian army, they retreated towards Moscow and he pursued.

Because Napoleon didn't want to depose the Tsar, much less to conquer Russia, he just wanted to impose his (Napoleon's) will on the Tsar and on Russia as a whole when it came to strictly imposing the Continental Blockade against the British. A heavily defeated Russia wouldn't have helped him into achieving that.

> Because Napoleon didn't want to depose the Tsar, much less to conquer Russia... A heavily defeated Russia wouldn't have helped him into achieving [the blockade of Britain].

You think a heavily defeated Napoleon would help him a lot in that matter? Realistically, there was no third option, going in guaranteed than one of them would be heavily defeated.

At that point in time, Napoleon was in command of the largest and most heavily armed military force in history. And he assembled it to go beg the Tsar to blockade a third country? It doesn't make any sense.

That’s what he had done to the Prussians and Austrians, yes.

A bunch of reasons.

1. Napoleon's goal was to pursue and defeat the Russian army in the field, not necessarily capture cities. Going north would have meant releasing the pressure on the main russian field armies and let them engage his main force at their discretion while exposing his flank.

2. St. Petersburg remained the political and economic capital of Russia; St. Petersburg never displaced Moscow in real world importance.

3. St. Petersburg was shielded from land and sea with prepared fortifications on both and Napoleon lacked a fleet to effectively blockade it.

4. Its in the middle of a very dense forest and swamp, not the the best logistics and ability to maintain a siege.

The Nazis made the same choice in WWII and even though they were able to control the Baltics and had Finland as an ally never seriously threatened to take the city.

> The Nazis made the same choice in WWII and even though they were able to control the Baltics and had Finland as an ally never seriously threatened to take the city.

There was an 18 month siege of SP during WWII. SP starved and people there resorted to cannibalism to survive. I don't remember if it was ever taken but the Germans definitely tried to. And the situation there was ghoulish, so even if they didn't, they almost did.

SP was never taken by the axis.

Never taken, but it was a city in the Axis alliance while Russian and Germany carved up Poland.

I know no one who considers the USSR to have been an Axis power between the start of the war and Operation Barbarossa.

You're correct and I'm wrong. Germany started negotiating Russia joining but this seems to have been disingenuous from Germany and part of the lead in to the attack on Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German–Soviet_Axis_talks

It's more complicated than that. Go have a listen of the Mannerheim tape with Hitler. Hitler basically confesses to Mannerheim that Stalin was blackmailing Hitler with oil and that this was the casus belli for Hitler, but then Hitler had no idea of Stalin's tank manufacturing prowess and he says that if he had known he wouldn't have invaded Russia. Super interesting. You get the impression that though Hitler hated Russia and Russians, it was events that led to Barbarossa rather than Hitler's long-term plan -- things got away from his control real quick.

On the other hand, read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Axis_tal... I wonder just how explicit Stalin's oil blackmail was.

Wasn't Moscow the capital of Russia during WW II?

Yes. It became capital again in 1918 (Saint Petersburg had become capital in 1712).

One theory I've heard for this, and sorry I don't remember the source, is that Napoleon suspected if he truly did take down the Russian royalty then he expected the rest of European royalty to unite and attack attack him.

As I remember, after French revolution, there were coalitions of foreign monarchies with the goal of punishing France [1].

Also what surprises me, after years of several revolutions and chaos in France, how could Napoleon gather such a large army.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_First_Coalition

he essentially invented the modern concept of conscription. there were press gangs and conscription-like things all through history but for the most part soldiers were professionals

He didn't invent it, the revolutionary government did and Bonaparte then inherited a massive experimented army after the French Republic having been at war for a decade when he took power.

> Also what surprises me, after years of several revolutions and chaos in France, how could Napoleon gather such a large army.

Conscription + France was basically the China of Europe at that point: it was almost as populated as the rest of Europe combined.

France then had a very, very, early demographic transition which dramatically limited its population. Had France followed the demographic path of England or Germany, France would have around 250M inhabitants today.

> France was basically the China of Europe at that point: it was almost as populated as the rest of Europe combined.

That doesn't seem to be correct. From Wikipedia: "During the Middle Ages, more than one-quarter of Europe's total population was French;[8] by the seventeenth century, this had decreased slightly to one-fifth. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, other European countries, such as Germany and Russia, had caught up with France and overtaken it in number of people." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France

Reply on news.ycombinator.com