"Using Berezina Battle for political purposes." Topic

Old… but still interesting….

"It was supposed to be an easy, three week campaign: in June 1812 Napoleon led his Grande Armée of over a half a million men into Russia, but at the end of the year less than five per cent of that enormous force straggled back across the border.

Of the 9,000 or so Swiss who took part in the campaign – enrolled under Switzerland's treaty obligations with France – about 400 returned to tell the tale.

It was a campaign with few pitched battles; many of those who died perished from cold, hunger and disease and in Russian guerrilla attacks.

But the three-day battle at Berezina, in modern Belarus, in which 1,300 Swiss troops helped to hold off the Russians until the retreating French army had crossed the river, is seared into Swiss consciousness. Only 300 survived…"
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Amicalement
Armand

It was supposed to be an easy, three week campaign

In somebody's dreams, maybe. Just marching from the Vistula to Moscow in three weeks means covering more than 30 miles a day, with no days off, over wretched roads. That's fancy marching for a non-mechanized army. Doing it in the face of heavy resistance borders on the impossible.

You are right my friend….

Amicalement
Armand