What If Napoleon Had Listened to His Generals?

#history #napoleon #animatedhistory Napoleon Took 600,000 Men Into Russia. Why Did So Few Come Back? June 1812. On the bank of the river Neman, the largest army Europe has ever seen crosses into Russia: around six hundred thousand men. Six months later, a few thousand ghosts stumble back across the ice. Everyone blames the Russian winter. But the army was dying long before the first snow. One man warned Napoleon first: General Armand de Caulaincourt, his former ambassador to Saint Petersburg. The Russians will not make peace, he said. They will retreat to the end of their empire and let the land do the fighting. Napoleon laughed and pinched his ear. In this animated documentary we follow the Grande Armée through eight forks, eight decisions on the road to Moscow and back, and watch the counter fall at each one: the battle he expected, the heat and the typhus of the summer, Smolensk, the Guard he never sent in at Borodino, thirty-five days in a burning Moscow, the wrong road home, the bridges at the Berezina and the sleigh that carried the Emperor away from his army. Then we answer the question: did the winter destroy the army? And we meet the men who read Caulaincourt's memoirs in 1941, and walked right into the same trap. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 June 1812 1:19 The Warning 2:56 The Heat 5:14 The Burning City 6:17 The Guard 7:31 Thirty-Five Days 9:34 The Wrong Road 10:50 The Bridge 12:31 The Sleigh 13:49 The Line on the Map Which fork doomed the Grande Armée, 1 to 8? Tell us in the comments. Watch next: What If Hitler Had Listened to His Generals?    • What If Hitler Had Listened to His Generals?   Subscribe for more of history's wrong turns. Sources include Armand de Caulaincourt (With Napoleon in Russia), Adam Zamoyski (1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow), Dominic Lieven (Russia Against Napoleon), Philippe-Paul de Ségur's memoirs, David Chandler (The Campaigns of Napoleon) and Charles Joseph Minard's 1869 chart. Army sizes and losses are historians' estimates and differ between sources; the counter follows the main army under Napoleon's direct command. Character lines are taken from memoirs and letters; some are paraphrased or dramatized. This video is a historical analysis and does not glorify any war or ruler. #history #napoleon #animatedhistory