Describe Napoleons Russian campaign
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At the start of the invasion, the Grande Armée numbered around 685,000 soldiers (including 400,000 soldiers from France). It was the largest army ever known to have been assembled in the history of warfare up to that point.[17] Through a series of long marches Napoleon pushed his army rapidly through Western Russia in an attempt to destroy the Russian army, winning a number of minor engagements and a major battle at Smolensk in August. Napoleon hoped this battle would win the war for him, but the Russian army slipped away and continued to retreat, leaving Smolensk to burn.[18] As their army fell back, the Russians employed scorched-earth tactics, destroying villages, towns and crops and forcing the invaders to rely on a supply system that was incapable of feeding their large army in the field.[15][19] On 7 September the French caught up with the Russian army, which had dug itself in on hillsides before the small town of Borodino, seventy miles west of Moscow. The battle that followed, the bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars, with 72,000 casualties, resulted in a narrow French victory. The Russian army withdrew the following day, leaving the French again without the decisive victory Napoleon sought.[20] A week later, Napoleon entered Moscow, only to find it abandoned and burned by the Russians.[21]
The capture of Moscow did not compel Alexander I to sue for peace, and Napoleon stayed in Moscow for a month, waiting for a peace offer that never came. On 19 October 1812 Napoleon and his army left Moscow and marched southwest toward Kaluga, where Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov was encamped with the Russian army. After an inconclusive battle at Maloyaroslavets, Napoleon began to retreat back to the Polish border. In the following weeks, the Grande Armée suffered from the onset of the Russian Winter. Lack of food and fodder for the horses, hypothermia from the bitter cold and persistent attacks upon isolated troops from Russian peasants and Cossacks led to great losses in men, and a breakdown of discipline and cohesion in the Grande Armée. More fighting at Vyazma and Krasnoi resulted in further losses for the French. When the remnants of Napoleon's main army crossed the Berezina River in late November, only 27,000 soldiers remained; the Grande Armée had lost some 380,000 men dead and 100,000 captured during the campaign.[22] Following the crossing of the Berezina, Napoleon left the army after much urging from his advisors and with the unanimous approval of his Marshals.[23] He returned to Paris to protect his position as Emperor and to raise more forces to resist the advancing Russians. The campaign ended after nearly six months on 14 December 1812, with the last French troops leaving Russian soil.