We have just finished our French Revolution topic in class, and (once again) were asked to come up with a question to research the topic deeper than we had in class.
Anatolia, Marley, and I were having a water fight on Saturday afternoon, and we suddenly came up with an idea that we could turn our fight into one of, the French Emperor, Napoleon’s battles or invasions. We came up with a main question: “Why and how did Napoleon’s invasion of Russia end badly for France?” So then we turned on the camera, put on some French and Russian accents, and reenacted “Napoleon Bonaparte’s attempted invasion of Russia.”
So after watching our short movie, you are probably thinking “well that’s not really what happened” or “those aren’t the same facts that I’ve read in a much more informative primary source”. After watching our video, Anatolia and I were thinking the same things. We made the mistake of not doing a thorough researching job before we started filming, and then after we filmed we found some information about the invasion and realized we got a few of the facts quite wrong.
So the main reason Napoleon wanted to invade Russia is because he had almost all of Europe under his control and wanted to make Alexander I hand over Russia into his open arms. We kind of messed up on our dates and the period of which Napoleon was attempting to invade. We said that it took a couple of weeks, but the whole expedition actually lasted about 5 months, 2 weeks, and 6 days. Russia realised that France had a very strong army, and they could only hope to defeat them, so they decided to, pretty much, go into defensive mode and retreat each time France would try to strike. Every time Napoleon would advance towards them, Russia would retreat, but leave little traps and “surprises” to slow the French.
As time went on, and France still had had no direct combat with Russia, they began to disintegrate due to extreme fatigue, hunger, and small attacks made by the Russians. Finally, the Russians realized that if they didn’t stay and fight with the French, then the whole of Russia could potentially fall into their opponent’s arms. So they battled in Moscow, on September 7, then found that it was useless because no side had really “won”. Russia abandoned Moscow days later, leaving the French with hardly any resources.
At last, the realization sunk in that Russia wasn’t about to offer to negotiate any deals, and the Franch began the journey home, but were caught in the midst of the cruel Russian winter. Food was basically non-existent, cossacks were attacking the stragglers, and in the end, 10,000 men survived out of the 600,000 men to start.
And that pretty much sums up Napoleon’s invasion and how things went downhill!
French Invade Russia Information
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