Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 96 - French Invasion of Russia Part 2: Worst Enlistment Ever

Episode Date: March 16, 2020

On part 2 we talk about the terrible life and times of a soldier in the 1800s. 25 year conscription, disease, banditry, and good old government ran child abduction. Now shut up and die for your Emperor. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys buy some merch: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store follow us on Twitter @lions_by Join the subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LionsLedByDonkeys/

and welcome to another episode of the lions led by donkeys podcast i'm joe and with me today nick is rich nick no it's nick her her voice is a little bit a little bit deeper than usual I'm Joe and with me today is Rich. Her voice is a little bit deeper than usual. I don't think I can get that low or that high. I definitely can't have a high-pitched voice. I can try and I just sound like a dumber version of me. But yeah, I'm here with Rich today. I got Nick and the podcast dog in the room today. Also wearing my like a T-shirt that I got.

That is a Soviet propaganda poster. Solid T-shirt. You know, it's funny. Rich and I went to a Bernie Sanders rally in Tacoma a couple weeks ago. And it was the same day these shirts came in. I'm like, fuck yeah. I cannot wait to wear this shirt. And then I realized, like, I probably should not wear a Soviet Union propaganda poster to a political rally.

This will probably not go over great. They might even turn me away at the door. So I did not. But last week, how did you feel about part one of Napoleon's invasion of Russia? We get to the war. Now we do kind of fuck. So you remember, um,

way back, uh, during the Soviet Afghan war series, how I made an entire episode based on the life and time of the soldiers fighting in the war. Great episode. This is this episode. Um, now I,

we have a Soviet soldier way, way back uh well we do talk about the imperial russian army which i will leave it up to you if their existence is worse than the red army uh we'll we'll compare and contrast there let's do it um but when we left you on the last and actually before we go into that i thought it was important to do this i learned from the structure of the soviet afghan series and it kind of didn't make a lot of sense to make that part seven because like i'm telling this seven hour long 10 hour long story however long was i don't remember um and there's no like you know he's really like in the the boots of the dudes who are drinking boot polish or whatever like you didn't learn that till afterwards

right and a lot of the dumb shit they did or were made to do or ended up doing ended up making a lot more sense. The problem was that was six hours later. So I figured I'd front loan at this time. It's also pretty important to the story because most people think of

the Grand Army as a French army. Absolutely was not. Most people think of the Russian Imperial Army as a French army. Absolutely was not. Most people think of the Russian Imperial Army as a Russian army, when it absolutely was not. I don't think I've actually seen a more multicultural group of idiots thrown at each other than this war yet in this show.

And it's probably not what people are thinking. But we also get to talk about how we got to that point. And that's what this episode is as well. All right. What are they drinking? They would hope for water, which we will talk about. But they also did not have that. Probably wine, fortified wine diluted down because it's potable.

Right. Water purification really did not exist. Or they could be drinking what we're drinking right now, which is Michelob Ultra. Yeah, they could. Which is just water with extra steps. Do not judge us. I felt like I had to bring that up because when we're not drinking Old Crow,

I feel like we're doing our audience a disservice. Our last episode, we were drinking wine. This episode, we're drinking yeast water. It will not happen again. No, and 2.6 carbs, though. We're officially at the age where we judge what we drink by what their carb content is. It's not bad. It's called getting old.

Now, when we left you last week the bros of empire but hurt yeah you broke your ass snowboarding yeah should point that out phrasing are we not doing phrasing on this podcast anymore never uh what happens in the studio stays in the studio it is not soundproof that is completely no it's not true found that out so we have a bathroom that's attached to our studio uh and he was in it and he was like he said something and i was like what okay he's like wait can you hear me i think it's not even an entire piece of drywall that separates the two it's probably just a plank of wood maybe it's a plank wouldn't at least two pieces of drywall yeah i don't know what's in between those two pieces of drywall. Maybe newspaper.

Like one of those memes with the fucking gray guy who's like construction. Yes. So, yeah, when we left you last week, Nick was suffering butt pain. And also the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and the Russian Tsar Alexander were their bromance has fallen apart their bromance had fallen on rough times bring those back to yeah I mean they probably turn in their friendship bracelets

they get different workout partners some serious shit actually I can't even make that joke and deployed fetish shit now he's not working out it's actually noted in the book multiple times that he had gained weight like i wonder if it's like everybody noticed like like i don't know if it's okay to fat shame

napoleon but we should probably fat shape i'm imagining just a whole page has nothing to do with napoleon but they throw it in there like napoleon at this time fat as shit still yeah a soldier says he rode by, damn, he looks like a bag of nickels. Yeah. Napoleon is girthy. Who is that soldier? I want his rank.

I want his name. Now, the importance of his girth will become important. Because as you know, I wonder if his horse was noticing if he was getting fat. His horse fucking noticed.

Whoa, Napoleon, you're gaining a few. At first, it was kind of like a joke. As everybody knows, the width is more important than his height. But because he's going to be surrounded by literally tens of thousands of people starving to death, Napoleon never lost a fucking pound. Don't need to.

Important to point out. Now, when we're talking about the beginning of this war, it's important to point out, and I think most people will be shocked to learn, that Napoleon was not the first person to plan for this war, or even plan a war. That was actually the Tsar of Russia, Alex. After one too many slights,

the Tsar ordered his minister of war, which, remember, is a position that he had just created and nobody had any idea how to run, uh, to start drawing up invasion plans. Uh, his plan was to what else, uh, strike directly into the grand Duchy of Warsaw,

which was, I'm assuming something that haunted his nightmares every single day by existing. Wait a minute. Polish people. No, thank you. Uh,

because if there's one constant in russian history it's getting drunk on boot polish and fucking poland over mercilessly uh constantly it just it's without end um there wasn't that long ago that like their entire government died in a plane crash and uh when they're it was weird they're all traveling on the same plane, but they're also going to a memorial of a massacre of Polish military officers and telegyser from during World War II. Yeah. And everybody's going to be like, Russia fucking did it. I'm not really one for conspiracy theories. I was like, yeah, probably.

It sounds valid. Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. Especially because it's a pretty big point of contention that like Russia never apologized for that massacre. So like, Oh,

that happened. Yeah. They, it's like the, it's a, their version of the Armenian genocide to the Turks. They're like, nah,

never. People died. Sure. But it wasn't that bad. Yeah. Yeah. Was it that many though? It was like tens of thousands of people that they executed in a ditch.

I think it's called the Khitan Massacre. I'm pretty sure they're still looking at it like, but was it that many? I mean, in the grand scheme of things in Soviet history, what is 10 or 15,000 dead? But like, yeah. Now, his plan was, after crushing the duchy, which was pretty much not really an existent country which we'll talk about in a little bit um his armies were gonna link up with prussia which was supposed to be his new bro i used to use prussia all the time uh and like empire total war yeah solid choice i always did they had long range rifles and they they start off like they're back against the sea and the ai

was always too stupid for a seaborne invasion so you're solid yeah uh and and if you start off as poland lithuania on the other hand russia would invade you immediately you just you start the campaign and you're defeated yeah huh you've you've chosen poorly uh so and then after linking up with prussia they were just going to kind of just tour around the French Empire, stomping on Napoleon's shit until he lost. Touring. Yeah. Soon, the Russian war machine, what existed at the time, and by war machine, I mean it was like two serfs with a horse, was in full effect. And the troops were being called up because they had like a huge standing army, but also they had to call up a ton of reserves or what passed for reserves at

the time. What was that? People who were kind of, we'll talk a little bit more about the Russian system in a second, but it was generally people who had already finished their military service or people who were up for military service, but had just like not shown up, which was really easy in the 1800s.

They actually would make an attempt to bring you back into the army. Oh, you have two legs. I see you have all your fingers. I see you're chewing one off. You're still good in our book. The problem was you can't like move around tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people.

Now, really, without people noticing, but definitely not back then because like word travels fast um and there's spies everywhere uh and as soon it was like the talk of the town in russia like yeah we're gonna invade france we're gonna invade france so like before long napoleon immediately knew what they were doing. Though almost all of his advisors thought it was a bluff. Napoleon's advisors, that being, they did not think that Alex had the balls to actually invade them. Oh.

But Napoleon thought it was as good as a formal declaration of war and began to put his entire empire on full alert through this invasion route that he thought he thought he was going to come through uh he also tried to stop the war before it started uh through diplomatic means uh napoleon may have been up his own ass most of the time but he didn't want to fight the british and the spanish at the same time as he fought russia because it was really because this guerrilla war which is where the term comes from uh it was a real big thorn in his side and he thought that it was going to be really easy to crush and he just kept sending other people to command it rather than himself which as we will

find out is never a good thing for napoleon to do and he just kept losing so he didn't want a war with russia even though it really seemed like he did. But the problem was his only diplomacy was pretty much, you're going to give me this. His diplomacy was a mugging, if you know what I mean. Like, give me your wallet. No. Okay, I'm going to assault you and then I'm going to take your wallet. Okay, here's my wallet. Oh, so it worked.

I mean, he did take over most of Europe. Took all their wallets. He was going to make people give him what he wanted or fight you and then take what he wanted. It's pretty much his entire diplomacy, which is why him and Russia always had problems. He sent numerous negotiators to try to talk Russia down. And so Russia had their specific terms in place that they wanted Poland to be Russian and they wanted out of the continental system, which we talked about before. Because it sucked. I mean, it wasn't really hurting the normal Russian people.

It was hurting the nobility. Normal Russian peasants were serfs. They were effectively slaves and subsistence farmers. They didn't give a shit about a continental system. But the English were normally just importing luxury goods which were impacting the nobility

because then they couldn't get them anymore. And yeah, the normal serf would not have noticed the fucking difference. Like, I don't know, I ate my fucking foot yesterday. I'm hungry. Yeah. Could I please have freedom? Or maybe just one fucking, one more grain of rice today, please.

Hey, good joke. Yeah. Hey, go hit the fields there, sweetheart. Yeah. So it was hurting, like I said before, it's bizarro world sanctions in the modern day sense

where sanctions now only hurt regular people, not the elite. This continental system was only hurting the elite of people. It was supposed to be working like it wasn't hurting England at all. Their exports actually increased. So like the point, it's the DJ Khaled move, like congratulations, you played yourself. But they wanted out of it. They also let it be known if, like, congratulations, you played yourself. But they wanted out of it. They also let it be known if war was to come, they would not surrender, and they would fight through the depths of Russia all the way to the capital if they need to. And they would not dictate any kind of peace terms as long as French soldiers run Russian territory.

Now, if you are familiar with this chapter of history you will know that's exactly what fucking happened uh and this is what is known as foreshadowing uh i'm not familiar with this chapter now but i like it uh napoleon dismissed this as uh as bullshit and uh his warning of we'll never surrender we'll fight all the way to moscow is weak and false not a smart man uh it is pretty clear to me now that the czar learned everything that the emperor had taught him at tilsit and their parties afterwards and is now much better at this game than napoleon is but napoleon never thinks that he's not the best at anything he's ever done so he doesn't notice he still thinks that while alex has matured he's still my play thing i can work around this it's all he thought it was all the nobles around him causing him to be this boisterous yes like alex isn't the

problem it's all those fucking nobles which kind of sort of true, but not really, because it was fear of his own nobility and losing the respect that kind of made Alex not able to govern Russia. So Napoleon is, I would say, 30% right, which is failing if you were keeping track at home. Now, the Tsar told the French negotiator this. Quote, The Frenchman, he means Napoleon, is brave, but long privations and bad climate

tire and discourage him. Our climate, our weather, will fight for us. Protegious victories are only achieved where the emperor is, and he cannot be everywhere or stay away from Paris for years.

Ooh, the Soviet winter. This means that the czar literally knew how this war was going to play out before it started which is fucking astounding um i mean that's exactly what happens to at uh and if you are keeping track so far you'll know that napoleon laughed at this it never happened never happened weather doesn't exist like the the czar of russia is warning him like dude you're going to fucking lose if you come into russia we're just gonna go back into russia and fuck your shit up later um now for the negotiator named kalancourt um he knew that the czar was not bluffing. He's like, no, he seemed really serious to me.

He told the emperor that he should simply give up the Duchy of Warsaw. Like, just give it to fucking Russia. Who cares? Yeah, why does he want it? A prestige thing. It's also important to point out that the Duchy, other than like diplomatically speaking, materially is not worth shit. Poland is incredibly poor, and the duchy is being propped up by French money and structure.

Even though it's not officially part of France, it's a puppet, he's propping up to exist. There's no infrastructure there. It's not giving anything to the empire other than just being a buffer zone between them and Russia. But it's a buffer zone that would not be needed if he gave it to Russia, because then they'd be cool. I mean, the whole Kalancor is like, if you just gave it

to him, this alliance would be fine, and you guys would be cool again. Right. You guys go back to writing letters. Yeah, like trying to get each other to come to parties and fuck weird. Blow each other? I don't know. That's how you actually seal an alliance in France. Oh, then blowing each other. You have to cross d That's how you actually seal an alliance in France.

Oh, then blowing each other. You have to cross dicks over the paper. Nice. Now, that's why de Gaulle and Hitler hate each other so much. They just weren't a big fan of one another. Now, there's a pretty good chance that this would have worked, but sovereigns being sovereigns,

there's a good chance they'd eventually end up fighting a war anyway, just because they both wanted to expand and now they were neighbors. But this would have at least postponed the war. Unfortunately, nobles are really dumb. I could go into like the, I don't want to get into the weeds too much

in the concept of honor and the 1800s and warfare and imperialism and all that. But Napoleon said he could not have peace without honor and giving Warsaw away would be a dishonor to him, and it would be too big of a shame for him to bear. Would it, though? No.

Now, going back to the last episode where he said that giving it up would hurt him personally because a whole bunch of Polish people had fought for him, but I don't think they would have cared. Because remember, he did not reinstall the kingdom of poland like poland is not like the polish people understand their lot in life right now like we're not really independent napoleon controls everything like they're not under any kind of like misconceptions that they just fought for freedom and won it they're not stupid but he thinks that it's about you know image right um as dumb as it sounds this whole thing did work in slowing down

the war not because napoleon had successfully worked some diplomatic magic but because alex was seeing as like uh the window was getting further and further away and this might not be a great idea uh because he was really really pissed off and then he emotionally began began all of this and he's like hmm now that i'm sitting down looking at this this seems like it might be bad i mean his policies were failing at home uh like i told you that nobility really didn't like him and if you have an entire court of people that don't like you your your government isn't going to work that great. This guy's reacting emotionally. They both say.

You'll find out that they both really do that, and Alex is just in a better place to do it, because he's the one being invaded. But also, too, if his children had died, kind of threatening his grasp on power. Now, if someone wanted to kill him, it would be a little bit easier to just assert a new dynasty.

Right. It's legitimate. It's kind of like why Napoleon was so excited about having a kid, except the opposite, because now they're dead. And everybody hated him. So there's like a good bet like,

hmm, my legitimacy is kind of fucked and everybody wants to kill me. Not good. Never good. There's also an important fact that he did not want to be seen as an aggressor, which is kind of weird, but he was worried about how he'd look on the international stage, which Napoleon already invaded most people anyway. Right.

So they probably wouldn't have cared. Oh, Napoleon's doing Napoleon things. Okay. Yeah. Also, people already kind of knew he had a hand in killing his own father so there's he probably already looked like as big of an asshole as he's gonna look uh but now is napoleon's turn to plan for this war because remember he sees the mobilization as sign is like war's on gotta start i mean it's kind of like world war one

once the mobilizations all started nobody really knew how to stop them cool let's go they just ended up in war yeah uh also a whole bunch of inbred idiots were involved then too uh he saw the russian abandonment of the continental system as a betrayal and combine that with the troop build-up that we talked about he thought he had no choice but to act remember napoleon always saw his wars as defensive because he's dumb but uh also because he's an emperor and the you know always saw his wars as defensive because he's dumb but uh also because he's an emperor and the you know the head of a giant fucking empire he's gonna do giant fucking empire stuff yeah um and napoleon was starting to kind of lose his shit on the issue to the point that he was not for a man who talked about honor a lot like he did he was not exactly

acting in a way that was honorable in the sense that you would expect an emperor to act that way for instance yeah it turns out that a lot of governing and diplomacy back then it was pretty much just tons of palace parties and he was having one of those uh i want a palace party first need a palace he used to get drunk in a trailer i've done that before that's kind of like a palace. I mean, your own palace. Yeah. I mean, if you declare it one, why not? I mean, he declared himself emperor.

If my body's a temple. Yeah, then this beer is a sacrament. Nice. So at these palace parties, there would be ambassadors from everywhere, from all over Europe. There would be diplomat shit like that. Blow. Definitely tons of booze. I don't think they're doing drugs yet. I'd like to think that

all of these would be much better if they all just had brains full of acid. I thought Napoleon was trying to have stripper and blow parties all the time. He probably would if he thought he could get away with it. But he decided, I don't think he was drunk but he's really really mad

um and he kind of summoned the ambassador to russia over um and he had learned that the russians had just defeated the turks uh in a battle uh but instead of taking over the area that they they won control of they withdrew rather than like conquering like hey this is russia now fuck off didn't do that they withdrew now the ambassador said well we just don't have the money to station all the fucking troops out there we're kind of poor right uh we're a nation that is mostly populated by slaves so you know it's a problem now napoleon did not believe him whatsoever um and he just kind of launched into a screaming match, a one-sided screaming match, out of nowhere

and said that they'd actually withdrawn because the Tsar was planning to invade Warsaw and fuck you, what the fuck. And remember, this is in the middle of a goddamn dinner party where everybody's probably... That's awkward. It's like farting in the middle of a library except you just shit yourself. But instead of shitting on yourself, you shit

on the Russian guy next to you. in the library in the library because everybody's quiet and it's gonna be really loud and disruptive and everybody's definitely stopping what they're doing someone's monocle is gonna fall out i do that for funsies but like a fake fart just to see just to gauge the room though just to see where everybody's sense of humor is at so somebody in the back room's like hey you know where to sit yeah exactly i just kind of go in there now the the ambassador was pretty surprised by just getting screamed at by the french emperor out of nowhere as you would imagine and he couldn't really get a word in edgewise as he was just getting fucking chewed out out of nowhere uh and like the book makes sound like it was a spectacle everybody stopped they're doing napoleon's like faces beat fucking red uh and just scream almost incomprehensibly mad to the point that

he like at this point if if you got in a bar fight this guy would start crying and he'd swear it was just from the adrenaline like he just cannot control himself um it's almost like going to your friend's house and then his parents start yelling at him. And then you're just sitting there like, oh, yeah, it's actually a pretty good metaphor there. And then finally, at the end of his ass chewing, Napoleon is like, you know what? Fuck this. We'll negotiate a new treaty right now. You and me.

Let's do this. Let's sit down. And before dinner was over, we're going to figure this out. And then somebody's over here like, I got the wrong dinner. When do I point this out? I ordered the turkey medallions. Now, there's a problem is obviously the ambassador did not have the authority to do that right then and there. That's not how fucking diplomacy works.

And you'd expect the French emperor to know that. I honestly hope he sat there and was like, deal, let's do it. Just so he can get out of the situation. It's like, hey, man, I have this really good idea, and you're just at a party drunk, and somebody's hammered, and he totally thinks he can write a video game or a screenplay or whatever. Kind of like how we made the podcast? Yep.

Okay, cool. This has happened to me a lot, especially the, especially like when I, the once every three years, when I go like to Michigan, um, I'll run into someone that I haven't talked to in years. I'm like, Hey, I heard you wrote a book. I have an idea for a book. And then you're kind of have to listen to the idea cause you're trapped. Uh, the best way to get around that is by saying yourself knows you get business cards

to have your email, like, yo, send it to me. And then you can just get the fuck out. You have business cards. I did. Yeah. Yeah. I ran out of them because nobody wanted them and i just threw them away they turned out to be you have my business card yeah it's supporting this table it's not all wobbly anymore uh it was a really it's a really good like ninja smoke bomb like yeah i'm really interested you should email me and in reality it was like i only knew him because he was my weed guy when i was 15 and then like he ended up becoming friends with my brother and then at that point it's way

too awkward to cut off that that linkage there it's a secondhand friend that's what i'm saying your brother also yes uh now obviously like i said the ambassador could not be like yeah let's wrap up this giant fucking treaty uh because you know he's not the czar uh and the emperor should have known that this led to uh napoleon leaving the party throwing his hat at him because that's just what he always did he probably went through a lot of hats i feel like he did uh and knocked over some stuff on his way out and he went back to his office where he came to the conclusion that if he wanted peace with russia he would they would have to give up warsaw france that means but he couldn't do that because dumb honor imperial reasons uh so he only knew one other way to find peace and that was the only way napoleon ever found

peace with anybody yeah it's you know it's like universal basic income both hand jobs nice uh but he he knew the only way he'd get peace if he could dictate it or as he put it quote my honor demands i negotiate at the head of a strong and numerous army which really just sounds like war with extra steps it's a lot of extra words there yeah uh it's it's rather than like it's a nice way that that he obviously someone is writing this down so he he wanted a way to be like, fucking hate that guy. I'm going to go shoot him. But like,

you can't say that because you're the emperor. He's like, hmm, I can negotiate the head of a large and numerous army. I imagine he did say that, but then the dude who's actually writing now is like, hmm. I speak for the emperor.

Yeah. And you know, someone else like, sir, you want to revise that a bit? That just sounds like war. Hmm. No.

And that's when Napoleon finally committed to war with russia no he was not going to invade russia to conquer the territory he wasn't trying to topple the czar his plan was to smack them around a bit so he could dominate them and force them back onto team napoleon that sounds really stupid right yeah it's because it is uh now this brings us to one of the things that many people know about this future disaster already. That is Napoleon's Grand Army. One of the largest ever assembled up to that point in history. But remember, this is the 1800s.

They're not jumping on trains and going over the Eastern Front. They're not going to be transported there in an airplane. They're not going to get mustered by any technological sense. It's literally just footwork. Oh, sounds like that's walking. Yep. Pulling together hundreds of thousands of men in the support system to deploy them would take some time and effort. In Napoleon's world, that pretty much meant telling all of his family members that he had installed on the various thrones of Europe to start mustering their armies.

This included his stepson, who is the Prince of Italy now, and his brother Jerome, who kind of bounced around in different imperial titles because he's kind of a fucking dumbass. And various other minor German states. All fell under the French imperial thumb. Napoleon's goal was to gather half a million men, which was

going to be pretty fucking hard. That's big. That is hard to do now. Life in the French military at the time was as bad as pretty much every other army and when i say french i mean the imperial french army there's variations of this depending on the variant client states but this is largely the existence of a soldier in western europe European military at the time. So, I mean, life was pretty bad. So there's a chance that a lot of people would desert.

They had special formations set up on the march. Like cavalry would march on a screen to make sure they could catch people as they ran away. Really? Like they literally dedicated people. I think it was the King of Prussia that started that. Yeah. Which is why the Prussian military has always thought it was being like the most brutal

because it was harder to get away from. Jeez. of Prussia that started that. Which is why the Prussian military has always started being the most brutal. Because it was harder to get away from. But in peacetime, nobody really gave a shit. Now there was obviously that war going on in the West with Spain and England. But there was a vast amount of soldiers just sitting around. And people were just like, well, I guess I'm just

going to go home. And nobody really cared. Just looked around. I'm done yeah like if you're a night guard and i'm just gonna walk away it's really fucking easy um i mean the army had more important things to worry about at the time but now that the emperor is trying to find every abled bodied man he could find um with or without training preferably with training it'd save him some time and money. So he, that would, people would start caring about the vast amount of deserters. Like,

it was pretty easy to desert, but it was pretty hard to stay deserted. So most people would leave Paris and one of the outlying villages. So they would just send the gendarmes, which is pretty much the MPs, out into the countryside to root out all these groups. And they tend to congregate in groups too. Because, you know, they'd run out to these villages, not have any connections or family these groups. And they tend to congregate in groups too, because they'd run out to these villages,

not have any connections or family. Right. And they just end up living around one another. Smart. Yeah. So they would go out and find them and bring them all back. But this is also matched by a huge call it for new recruits. The idea was to spread as many as they could amongst other units. So like not have huge clumps of them,

but they got so many new recruits. as many as they could amongst other units, so not have huge clumps of them. But they got so many new recruits that soon there's an entire battalion made up of new people. Willing recruits? Well, it's a conscription. It was a lot of people volunteered for the military in France at the time. I cannot stress enough

how much of a magnanimous personality Napoleon was to a normal Frenchman, or especially to a soldier. Virtually worshipped the man. So, and not to mention, the French Revolution knocked away all those old walls about peasants becoming officers, becoming even nobility. Because, like, one ofon's favorite generals start off as a sergeant um so like if you went out and earned glory on the field of battle for napoleon he would reward you like his marshals became nobility because of napoleon oh like he's like you know through his peerage so like obviously it's a massive army so you it's

like winning the lottery but the there was a very it's almost like today like there's a very real possibility that if i join them if i'm broke and i don't have any other career aspects out there i could join the military and i could climb up to you know lower middle class which is fucking mind-blowing, right? Same thing. Oh, sweet deal. But there was conscription, where they would drag you kicking and screaming into the ranks at times like this.

And you would serve until the end of the campaign. So it was like, from now until, whoo, that's awful. Yeah, it gets worse. Now, if you're thinking all this, and the quality of those people varied widely because recruiters got paid for the people that they brought in.

Like, well, sir, I'm missing an arm. Welcome aboard! Yeah. Don't worry, a rifle is an extension of that arm. Yeah. If you're thinking that this huge influx of new people, arms, and supplies that those new people would need and everything else to put together an invasion force

would require a large staff of well-trained officers to manage and, you know, whatever. You'd be right. You'd also not be Napoleon. Oh. Napoleon, among other things, was one of the most annoying micromanagers quite possibly in all of military history.

Now remember, this man is not a general anymore. He's not a marshal. He's the fucking emperor. He has run the entire government. It's an absolute monarchy. This is the things that he was worried. Right.

He demanded every detail from every unit from all over the French Empire down to the lowest battalion to be directed directly by him. Wow. He would pass paper orders for tens of thousands of people. Now, remember, he has generals and marshals and colonels. And just like everything else, they are not allowed to make any fucking decisions. They're just bodies. Pretty much. Gotcha.

The officers in the French military, with the exception of directly on the battlefield at the time of when things would happen, are pretty much only there to pass on orders from the emperor. That's their job. Yep. Nice. Now, this includes things like the exact amount of supplies they should have on them at any given day, down to the individual soldier. Down to the noodle.

And what buttons they had on their uniform. Wow. He demanded to be in control of absolutely everything. A company would not march without imperial approval. I have not seen anything like this. That's insane. Ever. Speaking of those uniforms, let's talk about those.

Nick, you're a bit of a uniform guy. Former. So I'm going to explain these uniforms to you. The uniform the French soldiers would march their way to war in was absolutely not something you should be marching into war in. They were several layers of wool to include trousers that tied in such a way that it made bending your knees difficult. They had knee wraps on.

Pretty much. No squat session. It was like three pairs of pants. Solid. And like jackets and everything else and these are dress uniforms which they would go into battle in

there wasn't there wasn't like a ceremonial uniform they put on their like when they marched they would dress down and carefully

pack away their dress uniform for days of war like they would get dressed up like they're going out you would be getting into your Class A's or whatever.

Well, you've seen... To go on patrol. The uniforms they wore in World War I? Yeah. Dressed uniform. Right. Also a battle uniform. And this would include

giant fucking headwear, like the... Everybody knows, like the Shaco's and the giant bearskin hats and shit. All that. That was specifically for battle. But their battle uniform was so constricting

that a French officer called it, quote, a conspiracy by three thicknesses of cloth. Nice. All this is paired with a pair of square-toed shoes, which are notoriously uncomfortable. Now, they were square- square toed specifically so they could not be sold on the black market because only military boots could have square toes really it was so common for soldiers to sell their shit for money right that's awesome yeah so annoying

micromanager aside you would think that this intense maybe kind of insane attention to detail would lead the premier like would lead this emperor to create the premier fighting force in all of the entire world. Like he's paying attention to everything. How could anything slip by him? Well, you'd be wrong in a way that underlines that Napoleon may have been kind of a dumbass. While he was worried about his uniform buttons and shoes, he had totally ignored the actual tools for war that his soldiers would use. Don't need it.

So I'm not going to get into the weeds on French artillery here, but I will describe it very, very short in a very, very short way. There's a revolutionary Grisbevall gun system that came up about 50 years before. It pretty much meant that due to supply problems in the french military that they would use a uniform size gun um that meant you know replaceable parts easier to supply things like that it was considered crazy at the time sounds good um the problem was is those same guns were in use 50 years later the whole world had passed them by and it's impressive to point this out because napoleon was a fucking artillery officer and he's like yep still good no changes uh which means that the emperor the artillery officer turned emperor would eventually be outgunned by artillery on the

battlefield against russia not a good look no it's not furthermore they're muskets uh now they were about 100 years old. Same design. And now that is pretty common for musketry. I mean, we're not at rifles yet or anything. And muskets always kind of sucked. I mean, even like the best musket fucking blew. But the French ones were kind of worse than normal.

And everybody knew it. They had a really bad tendency to explode in their soldiers' faces after a couple shots and blind them or kill them. Which, again, that happened with other muskets too, but the French ones were pretty bad. The best explanation I could find was they kind of used shitty gunpowder and weak barrels. That makes sense. But remember, this has been going on 100 years. Nobody fixed it.

Don't need it. And Napoleon is a soldier's emperor, soldier's general. Everybody loves him. He's supposed to be in tune with the soldier. Never gave a shit about this. Now, one of the reasons this is never fixed, besides the fact that gun science is still like 100 years old for the most part. There's no revolutionary designs of muskets in 1812.

It was the fact that just overall, nobody really cared about foot soldiers. It didn't take long to train, about a week. They were plentiful and easily replaced. So if Frank got his fucking face blown off by a shitty musket, nobody really cared. There were six other Franks to take his place. If Napoleon ever did a tour of the soldiers, what can I do for y'all? No, he did all the time. We're going to talk about that.

New rifles. Can we maybe get one that doesn't blow my hands off? I only have so many left. So another problem that nobody really seemed to care about was where soldiers came from and where their formations fell into place. Now, like I said, this is a huge multicultural

army slapping together. But language barriers. So it was huge. The French Empire... Didn't French suck? It was accented. It didn't suck. He could... It's not like people did not understand

his French. But the problem was his soldiers may have been French, but his empire is huge and covers a dozen different states with a dozen different languages. And most foot soldiers, remember, are peasants. It's not like the Russian nobility that speaks German, Russian, and French. And French burn the French empire.

These are people from everywhere. Like Italians, Swiss, Poles, Germans, Dutch, and a few other ones. Fucking Russians were fighting Russia. So, like, there's a whole bunch of different languages that play here. But nobody really thought about that when they're putting people places. So there's a good chance that my regiment is here

or my demi-brigade is here because the French military is a little bit weird or my division's here. I need to support this division to my right. I can't fucking speak to them because they're German or they're Swiss or whatever. And I only speak French. Like the largest non-French contingent of troops were Polish.

We already kind of established that. But like from the Grand Duchy of Poland, or Warsaw rather, there was a problem though. They pumped out close to 100,000 soldiers for the army. But Napoleon still wanted more. That was something the small impoverished state just couldn't do. Like, we don't have anybody left. They sent men who were unfit, already injured, too young or too old. 100,000 is a lot.

It's a huge, I mean, remember, this isn't all of Poland. It's not even half of Poland. So, like, it's a small population base of working-age males that need to be working in the fields so we don't fucking starve to death right um so we're still as remember that's the grand duchy that's not france they have their own uniforms you need to supply those they couldn't fucking do that either uh so whoops now they ended up having to plug that gap with french funds and stuff like I've talked about. But remember, the largest contingent of people other than French are Poles who do not speak French. And the average Frenchman does not speak Polish or Russian.

So there's going to be a problem. These soldiers would show up in street clothes or without shoes. If they were lucky, they got a badly made uniform from the Granduchy that just kind of fell off their backs and most of the men they mustered for military service had no training whatsoever and they didn't train them before they sent them out some of them did get training i think the number i saw was less than half and because of infrastructure problems and governmental problems in the grand duchy as soon as they deploy them, they just stop paying them. What? Yeah, so it would lead to huge amounts of desertion.

But the funny part was you could desert within the Grand Army into another country's army and just enlist. Super fucking common. So like Poles would be like, I'm going to go join the French Army. People are like, yeah, whatever, come on in. Nobody really gave a shit. Though the Poles could be considered something of a success story compared to the Neapolitan contingent of the Italian army. Ice cream.

If only it was as good as the ice cream. The entire force is made up of different gangs and secret societies. That's awesome. Yeah, like a real-life West Side story because everybody's bayonetting one another. And once they were all grouped into regiments, they just started fighting one another. That's even better.

And then they were a contingent of the overall Italian army. And when the overall Italian army moved out, as soon as the Neapolitan contingent marched, they immediately deserted and began robbing people in the countryside. What? I imagine people in the countryside. What? I've seen them on the battlefield. The enemy's just like, they're fighting each other. No, no, no. They didn't even make it out of

Italy. They thought they were fighting each other so much. Everything I'm saying right now, army has not invaded Russia yet. That part's going to be important. So many of the units mustered, like the Germans, Prussians, and Swiss, actually hated the idea of fighting for France. And,

and a lot of them in their diaries hope that the Russians would win. Nice. What they did not hate was Napoleon. Like I talked about before, it cannot be understated how much people love Napoleon. But even people who fucking hated him thought he was some kind of superhero on the battlefield. Like, just by being around you, we will fight better, which means I'll be able to get more honor and dignity and loot and riches and shit

and titles and maybe peerage just by being around you, even though I fucking hate your guts. It's a really weird dynamic. Okay. guts it's a really weird dynamic okay but like they hated the whole idea but just the concept of being around napoleon is enough for them um but he did his best to earn the personal loyalty of his men like we actually started talking about a little bit ago uh he knew everything about every unit he visited uh like if had been campaigning with him for years, like his famed Italian campaign, those soldiers are still around,

or in Egypt, he fucking remembered them. Really? Yeah, he knew individual soldiers, he knew where they fought, and he would just kind of hang out, despite the fact he was the fucking emperor of France. That's kind of cool. Imagine if, it's hard to have an everyday comparison,

but if someone that you fought with forever ago ended up becoming we don't have an emperor but became president uh and then visited the base that you were at fucking remembered you that'd be kind of cool it's it inspires loyalty but like even more so it's even more faceless back then because technology doesn't exist things like that these people haven't talked in 20 years uh but he's like hey i remember fighting egypt with you what's up and he remember fucking all of them i mean there's a good chance that he was just faking it but like soldiers were absolutely it was like the second coming of christ i'm sure they wouldn't even care if he was faking it no he, he probably wasn't. It was enough that he acknowledged their existence. Yeah. Because

it can't be understated how little officers and nobility think of peasants and soldiers back then. Like, just the cruelty visited upon them by their own officers. That really does not happen in the French military because Napoleon ended it. And a lot of that has to do with, like,

the Leveille and Moss during the Revolution, and now it's, like, an army of equals for the most part. Like it changed the whole dynamics changed, but these people were alive before this was a thing too. Okay. So like, this is the man that changed it all. He changed it for us.

Um, it's hard in like, I know I'm a Napoleon fan boy, so this all may come out biased, but these are all firsthand soldiers accounts of how much they worship this man. They talk more about Napoleon. They talk about religion and they're all deeply fucking religious. Right.

But yeah, they write more about Napoleon. They do Jesus or the Catholic Church. Wow. And while he went, he while he visited the camps that the soldiers were sleeping at, he would sit down, eat with them. He'd eat their food, which remember, he's the fucking emperor of France, and he's sitting down eating some shit at a campfire with some soldiers. It was to show them he cared

about the quality of their food. And he would routinely, if he didn't think the food was good coming out of the kitchen, he would stomp over there and chew the ass of the cooks and their officers and stuff, like, where the fuck are the supplies?

Why does the food taste like shit? And he'd do that in front of other soldiers so they would see it and see that he cares right um like in one case there's a uh a guy from piedmont which is part of italy uh who did not like napoleon until one day he uh napoleon came up and sat down ate bread with him it's like spread shit went over fixed it uh and came back with new bread served it himself and he said quote from that day on i devoted my life to that man so like the simple things matter yeah meanwhile it's like it does a lot i mean especially like bread especially uh where it like literally meant life and meanwhile like i know a friend of mine was in the navy and he said there's like in the ships there's a completely different stairwell for the officers to take

than men so like the juxtaposition is stark um so by assembling so many soldiers in one army that meant it was inevitably going to start scraping the bottom of the barrel like you can't just like i need a half a million military age fighting men we're in good shape and like they appear like there's gonna be problems perfect and soon it was becoming such a glaring problem that the officers in the army were complaining that half them and they were getting were completely fucking useless and that

was not just limited to the men the army would also need tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of horses because remember the main mode transportation right buying so many so quickly that it actually created a horse shortage in the empire. Really? Yeah.

You don't hear that often. No, you do not. You can imagine how badly this impacted people who were not in the army. Like, how am I going to get my goods to market? And shit like that. They had so many horses and they got so many in. Because they're not like, I need 10,000 horses. Like, I'll get you 10,000 horses.

You didn't say anything about the quality. I'll get you 10,000 horses. Many of them were too small or too weak to even carry the burden of a normal cavalry soldier at the time, which, I mean, admittedly, was a lot. But these horses weren't good for anything. But they also had to train the ones that were decent into war horses because a lot of these guys just came off stables, which normally takes

a fair amount of time and hard work. They didn't really have any of those things. So, they just kind of settled to forcing the horses to run towards a group of men

who were screaming at them and banging pots and pans to simulate gunfire. I feel like those guys got fucked up. Well, they did it over and over and over again until the horse just didn't react to it anymore, at which point it was awarded a carrot.

Oh, yeah. I imagine at first the guys are all bandit, like they're all fucked up, and then at the end they're like, oh, God, please, don't care. We can't get ran over too many more times. Now, if it sounds like they cut some corners on their horse training, they did. Something you really couldn't is like cavalry training.

They teach men how to ride horses, use horses, care for horses. Because one of the most important things that a cavalry soldier can do on their march is take care of their mount. Right. They're kind of veterinarians at the same time. Most of the new cavalry soldiers that the army received were too small to wield a sword. And they had no idea how to ride or take care of horses over long distance. So that's going to be a problem.

Like after one March to Berlin, the majority of the horses that were ridden were already lame or infected with saddle sores because their rider had no idea how to take care for them on the March. Like, or infected with saddle sores because their rider had no idea how to take care of them on the march. I think something to compare that to is how little an average U.S. Army soldier knows how to do actual maintenance on a vehicle. Most none at all.

Yeah, so it's like, oh, broke down, must be a piece of shit. Pretty much. Did you change the oil? The what? Like, you just plug them in and they'll work itself out. This thing has liquid in it? Now, if you're thinking that a guy who didn't pay obsessively close attention to details of his army did not know he was filling his ranks with a bunch of largely useless people,

you'd be wrong. Napoleon knew fully well what he was doing. He knew as well as you or I, that you cannot rapidly recruit 40,000 cavalry men and not, you know, show up with some duds. Uh, but his goal was intimidation.

Remember he was going to storm into Russia, like look at my fucking army. Listen to me. He didn't actually think he was going to use them. Should've got a green screen. Yeah. Just, just copy and paste one horse over and over and over and over again uh he knew that the czar would hear it like napoleon has 40 000 cavalry coming and like be intimidated by it he didn't like he wanted the just the idea of fighting him to be a bad idea he wanted his force to strike fear into

the heart of enemies but one of napoleon officer one of one of Napoleon's officers had a very good point where he's like, okay, but what if we actually have to fight them? Like, these guys suck. Wait a second. Let's think about this. Sir, that's only half of a plan. Now we're going to move on from the army.

We're going to talk about his logistics system. Now, hold on. I know everybody listening. I just, I just heard, I don't know, 4,000 audible groans through my headphones. Like,

Oh God, we're going to talk about logistics. Now bear with me. This is why I wrote my cap capstone project. Logistics. The logistics of the invasion of Russia. Yeah. Is it good?

It's I'll keep you at the edge of your fucking seat. I can't sit at the edge of my seat. Uh, it's cause you'd be at the edge of your fucking seat. I can't sit at the edge of my seat. You'd be at the edge of your seat mostly because everybody is dysentery. But I will make this as plain and as entertaining as I can because that's kind of what we do here, I guess. Now, it sounds like it might be the most boring thing I've ever talked about in the show. But that is actually not true. And I am also convincing myself of that. So by necessity, the French Revolutionary Armies always traveled light. They had no rations to speak of.

There wasn't really a logistic system that gave them food. They would live by looting whatever area they happened to be marching through. It was a system called la marade. It just means marauding. Looting. Stealing, you know, whatever. Napoleon really hated this, because remember, he's an honor guy. Right.

He's an honor boy. He disliked looting, because they thought it made him look bad, which it did. So he developed his own system in place, where you could still live off the land, but the army had a system in place where, okay, my soldiers came through and took three of your cows. Here's a whole bunch of money, which I mean, the idea was the army was moving so fast because the revolutionary armies did move very,

very fast. Um, they were renowned for that, but they would move so quickly through an area that we're only going to take a certain amount. You're going to get money. Uh, and you know,

there's, there's going to be plenty left and you'll get paid. Everybody wins. Um, it, it there's going to be plenty left, and you'll get paid. Everybody wins. In a perfect world, everybody wins. You get encumbered with a whole bunch of hungry assholes for a couple days, but we're going to be gone really, really fast. But Napoleon knew this would not work in Russia. The La Marade wouldn't work. His system wouldn't work.

Unlike the rest of Europe, where there was frequent towns in close proximity to make this system work with various resources to pick from, like, oh, this town is a farm. This town has fields. We can live off this shit. Russia didn't have that. They didn't have a suitable road system. Its towns were very, very few and far between, even more so than they were in World War II, which ended up fucking the Germans as well. And the countryside was pretty much a wasteland. There wasn't like vast fields of corn or anything. That's depressing.

It was virtually, I mean, it's Russia. Yeah, exactly. He said, quote, one can expect nothing of the country. We'll have to carry everything with us. And he was right. There wasn't going to be anything for him. So he founded the commissariat or something resembling what on paper

looks like a modern supply system that would stockpile everything his army would need in giant stockpiles. And then it would be distributed as necessary throughout the huge army as they went. I just thought that meant he was going to start shooting people. Have a bunch of shopettes on the way.

That's where the word comes from. Everybody, get your tornadoes. Everybody line up and get your French toast tornadoes. So he would need an effective transport system for this to work. Since he was transporting a large amount of supplies, he needed large heavy wagons

that would require quality roads. Are you getting the hint that this probably isn't going to work? He, he did a U S army, which was, he built a modern supply system that would work on a war that you would draw on a map. And then he invaded the place where it absolutely would not work.

Uh, but I mean, if he was writing this down for like a war college paper, it'd be revolutionary. Um, now the, the wagon train for supplies is 10,000 wagons. Now that is actually kind of ingenious is playing on paper because like he knew that like when the wagons get to point B, they're going to be pretty fucking haggard. So I'm probably not going to get them back. So part of my supply system, I'm going to have draft oxen carry them.

And when they get there, the soldiers will eat the oxen and the stuff that's in the wagon. Like it's perpetuating. Cool. Cause you know that they're not, we're not, the wagons are gonna be all torn up. We're not gonna get them back.

So just eat the fucking oxen, ditch the wagons, eat the wagons, eat the wagons. Yeah. Build fucking a shack out of them, whatever. Now these 10,000 wagons were in a wagon train that was already

so large it was absurd. Now, the Revolutionary Army got a reputation for traveling light, like I said, because they didn't have anything. They rarely had uniforms. They definitely didn't have a 100,000 man wagon train. But ever since

the French Empire became a thing, that had changed rapidly as people became becoming nobility again but granting importance and with importance becomes self-importance and that you just end up becoming a gluttonous asshole so every officer had at least one carriage uh that would attended by at least one servant. Ooh. Now imagine how many officers are in an army of a half a million people. 24. That's like, so that's just regular officers. It's already a half million wagons.

Hmm. Generals would bring four times that. Now if that sounds bad, let's talk about Napoleon himself. Ooh. Remember how- Palace on wagon. One of them, yeah. Now, if you remember, I said that he is an absolute monarch,

and that is true. There was trappings of another government system. That was largely just his plaything. But he would have to run the country on a campaign, which he had been doing, but from a much bigger fucking distance now. So on top of the normal general type stuff that he brought, like wagons and,

like he brought palaces, he brought libraries, he brought an office. All these are different wagons. He brought, you know, I don't know, a hundred different changes of clothes and everything else. He brought servants

and each one of those servants would also have a wagon because they had a very specific job. He also brought with him what amounted to be the entire French government. This included courts and an entire mail system and everything else you need to run the entire country by wagon train i want to go into one of those wagons and it just be like it's just huge from the inside then you go back out and just looks like a regular

wagon let's cast a spell on it or something yeah and. And he was going to run his entire country by secured lockbox of mail the whole way. So he kind of created a pony express along the way too, further creating a giant clusterfuck of logistics. So now that we have a decent outline of the French military, let's talk about the Russian military, because it could not have been more different, at least as far as the common soldier was concerned.

Awful. I assume. So the standard Russian conscript, which the entire army is based in conscription would serve for a period of 25 years. What? This was in effect, a life sentence.

Now soldiering back in the 1800s is pretty goddamn brutal. As we've talked up quite a lot, even back then, physical abuse and hazing was common in almost every army, but the Russian army was considered the worst of the worst. Russian soldiers were treated with disgust and contempt by their officers, who were all nobles, who would use other enlisted soldiers, normally NCOs, to beat the others on command if they displeased them or even looked at them wrong. There was no military justice system.

They were effectively serfs in uniform. Wow. And this being the 1800s, disease was incredibly common and very often fatal. Vaccines simply did not exist. Hygiene did not exist. They did not understand things like bacteria. So you can imagine how this spreads. not understand things like bacteria so you can imagine how this spreads all this added up to uh being only around 10 of all conscripts surviving their time in the russian army

in peacetime it's not what this is before this is before we introduce a war uh so i want you to have a better understanding of what these numbers mean so So I did some math, so bear with me. You're not even good at math. I am not. Then 2018, the United States Army had around 471,990 soldiers in it, active duty. Using the same numbers of the Imperial Russian Army, less than 50,000 would survive. I don't like my odds. That would make peacetime the most violent time to be in the United States Army in its

history. If that sounds really, really grim, it's supposed to get worse. So when people would be officially drafted into the army, they'd get a letter. At that point, their family would throw a funeral for them that they would be invited to attend along with all their neighbors. Congrats! Now the family would then ritualistically excise them from their lives. Part of that funeral would be

piling up all the stuff that reminded them of them and setting it on fire because they knew they were never going to see you again. That sucks. That's like the most uniquely Russian thing I've ever fucking heard. I feel like that's what happened with you yeah it is uh imagine like you went home like mom dad i enlist like okay we'll invite all the neighbors over and like it's just like an empty casket with like your old jerk socks in it or something

and like a picture of you all of your old like childhood uh pictures that your mom ever took they put them in a garbage can light them on fire in front of you like yeah i'll go ahead and move your bed out or turn it into a gym and you know air airbnb that shit well i'm not leaving for four months uh whatever get your shit out here now if you're a father and you were conscripted which happened a lot um you would also have to take your child. This is because the Russians believed that a single working mother could not be a mother. They could not

care for a child. Clearly. The males were put into military orphanages. They would be raised from whatever age they ended up in there to become NCOs in the Russian army. The women would be put in regular orphanages, which were pretty bad too but the

conditions in these schools were so bad that most of them died only about two-thirds survived till adults yeah only two-thirds of children survived to actually make it into the russian army as an nco wow it also should be pointed out this is the only way you would ever make an nco oh so within that so the ncos are already pissed yeah they already they grew up in death camps yeah they grew up in cholera infected death camps abandoned by their parents um like imagine you're serving 25 years right and you show up at a new duty station river and your fucking son's in charge of you. And then you don't get retirement.

No, your retirement's that they expect you to die in 12. Yeah. So it's, it's, there is accounts of regular conscripts becoming NCS, but they're super fucking rare. And also the only way to be an officer is a noble. So you're never going to make like a lieutenant or whatever. Yeah. So you were almost certainly to be outranked by your son if they managed to survive which they don't have much of a ladder they got like mathematically the good news was you were both going to die at least there's a guarantee like you know what's going to happen now if you're thinking like all right i have 25 years in service and russia really isn't at war that often back then what the fuck am i gonna do

with all this time right like we even think that 25 whole years yeah like we even think that now during a regular army contract where like you have time off like what am i gonna do at work tomorrow there's nothing to fucking do think slavery entire units would be rented out by the aristocracy to be used for labor uh and those payments would go to their officers makes sense uh this is hardly surprising as even the officers who remember were all nobles were paid absolute dog shit this is actually the lowest paid military to include their officers in the entirety of europe like and and remember as the promotion is nobility-based. So if you were a super minor noble,

you're never getting promoted. Your family doesn't fucking matter. So you were effectively doomed to a life of dogshit poverty alongside your own soldiers if you happen to be some shitty Viscount from Assen to Siberia or whatever.

So like, yeah, they sold their army sucks this army sucks and like and every day you go back all the other officers fucking hate you because you're a minor noble but your soldiers hate you too because you sold them into slavery so it's like fuck man now you would think this would make desertion super common and you would be wrong this is mostly because russian reasons ah their morale was high well russia is vast and miserable uh and because of the surf system at the time if you were to run off at some random village everybody would know you're not from there so like they would probably either a turn you in which is almost always a death sentence um or you would just not be able

to live because you're unattached peasant you have no money, or you would just not be able to live because you're an unattached peasant. You have no money. You have no land. You have no way to live. But whenever units were stationed close to a border, the units would just disappear overnight. Like whole fucking battalions?

Yeah. They would just rush over the border, and they would either just become fugitives or join the other army. Solid. Because they would actually just become fugitives or join the other army. Solid. Because they would actually get paid and food and stuff. Oh, you guys actually eat? Yeah. What'd you have for dinner? Sleep. I think

you have to build a roof tomorrow. Sleep? They let you sleep? All of this, so the entire Russian military is based on deprivation and brutal, horrible discipline. The rest of the

European armies are known for that. I mean, you're standing alone and getting shot at. Most people are pretty well disciplined. But I guess an unpopular statement would be the Russian imperial military is by far the most disciplined in all of Europe because they had nothing else

like their life was the military so other people could retreat or surrender or whatever what would the russian do i my whole life is in this military i can't do that so they would stay in line fuck that sucks yeah they were they were notorious for uh like that most soldiers only retreat on command because the the penalties of doing otherwise is pretty pretty steep die but the but the russians uh like if their officer was killed and nobody had the ability to pass on orders to retreat they don't always fight to the death either way way, you're just dying. Yeah, yeah. This will become important much, much later on in the series. Now, ever since Alexander had been brosed in Napoleon,

he had been tempted to rapidly modernize the Russian military. This meant nothing for regular Russian line soldiers because their life was bleak and miserable. What it did mean is by the time of the war, the Russian artillery, like I said, was actually better than the French. Also, their uniforms were much better. did mean is by the time of the war, the Russian artillery, like I said, was actually better than the French. Uh, also their uniforms are much better.

Uh, like they just wore a simple green uniform. Um, some special units like cavalry and stuff had some flares attached to it, but it was like actual livable clothing. Nice. Um, you gotta look good.

Yeah. Uh, I mean, they, they were comfortable much, but much more so than their French counterparts. Russia also had enough strength. Another old standby.

Their main strength of all time was just numbers, a large pool of manpower. Fear of the coming war meant Alex had an emergency draft, which managed to dig up one million soldiers nearly overnight. Yep. Now, they didn't really have a very uh in-depth census at the time it was like their conscription like one and 30 men conscripted one and 25 men conscripted there was like one in 15 one in 10 like and they're just like they're like okay he's missing feet, but okay.

That recruiting post met their quota. Now, the worst part was a lot of these men had already finished their 25 years of service. Fuck, that sucks. Congrats, you got extended. So, you know how the only 10% of you made it the first time? You want to roll those dice? How about 1%? I can't imagine that one guy's like, thank God, I missed the army. Yeah, I didn't have anybody to call me like, thank God, I missed the army.

Yeah. I didn't have anybody to call me a fucker and hit me with a stick in years. But it also meant they were all really fucking old. Yeah. I mean, for 1800s peasantry in Russia, this guy would have already been in his mid to late 30s and already lived a fucking hard as shit life. So he only has a couple of years left.

Oh, God. Yeah. That has to he only has a couple of years left. Oh God. Yeah. That has to be the worst stop loss of all time. Now they also brought in French and Prussian officers who had fled from the revolution and Napoleon's advance. Remember a lot of people hated Napoleon, but also a lot of them didn't have this, that, you know, magnetic attraction to them that some people did. So like, they're like, fuck Napoleon.

I'm going to go fight him. Also, Russia was paying them a lot to do that some people did. They're like, fuck Napoleon, I'm going to go fight him. Also, Russia was paying them a lot to do that. Many of them filled the Russian military in order to pass orders from an officer, like a general officer, down to enlisted men. They'd have to cross three different languages. There's also the small fact that the

Frenchmen, the French had so penetrated the Russian military that a Frenchman was the admiral of the entire Russian fleet. Really? Yeah. Also, their main commander of the war was German. Russians themselves had actually very little command and control

over the Russian military as a whole. I mean, obviously, they had the Tsar and the various nobles who were generals, but Barclay de Talley, who is the main commander of the war for the for a large chunk of the war for russia is german uh and it pretty much is a circle of germans that control it through everything we talked about those so far throughout all of this the two sides were still trying to talk to one another because the only person that really seemed to want war was napoleon everybody else was like

yeah sure we'll do war but also like i'm okay with not doing war as well about this yeah so napoleon sent one last emissary to the czar looking for peace and by peace i mean napoleonic peace the czar refused to enter formal peace talks until Napoleon pulled all of his troops from Warsaw, which Napoleon could not do because then that made him look like he abandoned Warsaw, which then he thought the Tsar would then invade Warsaw. Some of that's probably true. Not exactly sure. Either way.

I do not think a Russian invasion was realistic. They just didn't have, at the time, they just didn't have venom. Now, obviously Napoleon wasn't going to do any of that. He really didn't have, he didn't get a half million people all together just for no reason. To not go to war.

You can't get all dressed up to not go out into the town. He thought Alex's dismissal, like, I'm not even going to talk to you until you leave Warsaw was a challenge. Which is kind of how we saw everything if you're not picking up on that. And it was a challenge. You're not going to eat all your food, Napoleon? Is that a challenge?

War! Hey Napoleon, how's it going? Yeah, like you shake his hand you high five him rather than shake his hand. So it's war. Or you like shake his hand a little bit too hard. Yeah. Oh,

so that's how you want it. And unfortunately for pretty much everybody involved, it was a challenge that Napoleon was more than happy to buy into. Now, Napoleon was starting to smell his own farts. He was buying it. He was, he was digging into his own supply.

He was so dismissive of the Russians. Like the, he said, quote, never has an expedition against them been more certain of success. And he started talking about how the Russians were savages and barbarians and how an army of savages such as the Russians can never stand against us,

which, I mean, part of that could be he's trying to convince himself. I don't know. But with that, Napoleon finally crossed the Rubicon into irreversibly fucking himself and began the war that would destroy the first French empire and eventually lead to his death. We,

and that is where we will pick up next week. Better. Nice. And I promise next week, the war actually starts. Finally. Do you feel better now, Nick?

I do. I just killed people for you. 12 is coming. it is already 1812 yeah yeah so that is napoleon's invasion of russia part b nice i see what you did yeah uh so do that in russian i will not uh i don't i think i know like four whole words of russian what's that uh i i think they're mostly swear words i can't remember them all uh but i know how to squat i'd speak fluent uh uh gopnik nice now that is part two um thank you for listening if you if you like what we do like share and subscribe um and if you really like what

we do and like to support us financially you can do so through Patreon. If you give to us through Patreon, you get access to our communal Discord with the boys over at The Hell of a Way to Die. You get episodes early. You get bonus episodes. You get books. You get stickers. You get Nick for a weekend. I'm fun. He's alright. So, again,

Nick, thank you for suffering through two whole episodes. Is that a war? Right now the lights are off, so support us. We did not turn the lights in the studio on before we started recording. We are not good at that. We've been doing this for almost two years. With the lights on.

And we have not remembered how to turn the lights on. So until next week, everybody, I don't know how to close this one out. Uh, don't join the Russian army. I don't later.