Hard to wrap my head around this one. Like and subscribe if you enjoyed this video 👍🏻 Follow me on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/sogal.yt/ Twitter: twitter.com/SoGal_YT Facebook Page: facebook.com/SoGal-104043461744742 Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/238616921241608
Its actually several artists, i know the painting about the Spanish war are mainly done by Francisco Goya ('Disasters of War' series) but the other its best to ask Epic History TV themselves on twitter. They'll answer you 👍
@@NewHeathen I was thinking they might have been light cavalry Skirmirshers maybe to raise up dust(create a cover for the main cavalry force) and draw out an enemy - make them break tight formation to try and get rid of the pesky skirmishers. While in the meantime in the background a charge could be brewing or not. ... Just my thoughts looking at the picture. If have any opinion on that. But I have a feeling what I just wrote is a part of what you actually described lol.
I really enjoyed your video featuring the Vulcan (in fact, I've really enjoyed all your videos!) an aeroplane that holds a special place in my heart along with another, the English Electric Lightning. There's a video about the Lightning intercepting a super-high altitude USAF U-2, a plane the Americans thought was immune to interception. th-cam.com/video/8DdUwIhI-ZA/w-d-xo.html If you waned to check it out! Though I'm positive you must have an enormous backlog of videos to watch by this point. If not that, how 'bout a Star Trek video? 😊
6:29 Ignaz Sebastian Klauber "the crossing of the French army across the Niemen on June 12, 1812", 6:35 Victor Vikentievich Mazurovsky "The case of the Cossack Platov near Mir on July 9, 1812", 6:42 V.V. Vereshchagin "Napoleon at the Borodino Heights", 6:59 Without author (in the place I found it author was not mentioned) "Marshal Ney's French soldiers are driven into the forest in the battle of Krasny.", 7:55 Alexander Yurievich Averyanov "Defense of Smolensk 5 (17) August 1812", 13:51 E. Zaitsev - "Prayer before the battle.", 17:52 A. Averyanov "The feat of the artillerymen", 18:44 A. Averyanov "Fight for Bagration flushes", 19:21 A. Averyanov "Prince P. Bagration in the Battle of Borodino. The last counterattack", 20:09 Without author "retreading Horseguad in the Battle of Borodino", 24:08 V. Vereshchagin "The End of the Battle of Borodino"
To grasp the scale of death at Borodino, one commentator put it as follows: "Imagine a Jumbo-Jet full of people crashing in these fields EVERY THREE MINUTES from breakfast till sundown." That would be a 747 type of Jet, which would hold over 400 people. And the battlefield is about 11 square miles.
The battle of the Somme, with modern artillery, tanks, automatic and semi automatic weapons (as opposed to muskets) and tanks saw 60.000 dead on the first day The battle of Borodino with none of these killed 10.000 more. That should give you an idea. Plus the population of countries back the was a lot smaller so the impact of such a war was more widely felt
@@roboguard96 Casualties include the wounded, missing, and captured. Not every casualty is a death. Thus, the plane crashing analogy is more apt than a comparison with the first day of the Somme.
@@roboguard96 Not dead, total British casualties which included 20,000(!) KIA, greatest mortality of any single day in their military history. To be fair Haig didn't want to attack but the French were practically begging for an allied offensive to keep Germany from reinforcing their own offensive around Verdun. Without that France would almost certainly have lost Verdun and quite possibly the war.
@@primevaltimes "Not every casualty is a death" reminds me of that Star Wars fanfilm where a stormtrooper is only wounded and his comrades are so confused that he's alive that they end up shooting him to solve the confusion.
The soldiers were so exalted with the idea of a battle taking place, who when the Russians began firing back all the French army cheered because it was clear who they didn't retreat again
@@zetos4440 modern perception of the war in the west worldview kicked in only after two world wars in the early XX century. Before it war was much more mundane event with a tint of glorification.
@@090giver090 Thats not completely true. The perceptions of war and death are not constant in history, but rather vary greatly between different time periods, locations and cultures. S A society or nations could become warlike if given the right economic, political situations that make its leaders and people open to the idea of war, especially if no large war had been fought prior. We seen this after 9/11 when most Americans support the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The anti war sentiment only came after the war, not before it. That’s why mankind will always making the same mistake again, because we are monkeys with the memory spans of a few generations at most.
@@090giver090 That's kind of a broad stroke too. Wars always happen because people always find something to fight for, justifiably or not. That does not infer anything about the society's mentality or the mentality of it's soldiers. In this instance, there was a glory to war very much like today. The notion of service, patriotism, protection of your fellow citizens etc etc. That hasn't changed. The soldiers cheered at the start of Borodino because they just walked thousands of kilometers with no clear action, just aimlessly wandering in horrid conditions. They didn't want the death of battle, rather it's meaning in what comes next. Battle meant action, decisiveness. They either win , or they go home. Sort of like ripping off a bandaid. People have always been sensitive to the horrors of war. They were more equipped, and used, to the chance of it happening in the past. Doesn't mean they were happy about it. The Italians showed as much when they were conquered by Napoleon during the First Coalition War under the Directoire. The french showed as much during the campaign of 1814 (and after losing 90k men in a single month on the opening moves of wwII, with the looming specter of millions dead in wwI). There is a famous story of a peasant woman spitting at the feet of a couple french officers asking for supplies in Northern France shortly before Waterloo, screaming about how her two youngest sons were taken by "the Ogre"'s (L'Ogre, a nickname for Napoleon) wars, and how she didn't have anything left to give, much like the country. Little did she know that among the officers was Napoleon, who didn't react and let her be, to the surprise of his staff who spoke about it afterwards. War involves group thinking. Group thinking is the result of a balance between propaganda, education, and added experience. That experience is more accessible now, and propaganda is harder to accomplish. People can turn on a tv or computer and see the effects of war rather than the "adventurous lives of the bois" from newspapers of the time. They move in cycles in a single war, not across history. Every war left a bitter taste among people after or during the fact. It didn't just change all of a sudden with the WWs. Altho those certainly helped for the modern stance of most western countries. But still today, there's a "glory and adventure with the bros" side pushed by recruiters, even in the west. From time to time a "come and become an anime/videogame badass" take on it. Just look at ads (our most modern and commercial form of propaganda) made by militaries today. You don't even need to understand the language to understand the message. CCP: th-cam.com/video/JOWRembdPS8/w-d-xo.html Russia: th-cam.com/video/aqek78JXckw/w-d-xo.html USA: th-cam.com/video/rSilTq4shzA/w-d-xo.html France: th-cam.com/video/A8NhabFRXZQ/w-d-xo.html Heavy handed side-dish of self righteousness and patriotism. You have the formula.
The loose formation used by the cavalry was often used to avoid cannon fire on approaching the enemy army then they closed in to charge as soon as they are near enemy formations. Redoubts are temporary earthworks and fortifications used during Napoleonic wars to mount cannons onto a fixed position(some kind of mini fort) like the ones that were used by both sides in the siege of Toulon.
To add onto the cavalry comment; Cavalry doctrine of the time required in combat formation, to have one horse width apart between each rider. This gives some room for mobility for the horse, dodging rocks, hedges, etc, and for the rider to swing their sword. Additionally, each rank was at LEAST 2 horse lengths away from each other, but possibly more. This gave an opportunity for the rider to react to what the person in front is doing, and avoided one felled horse to take out a chunk of a squadron. This resulted in cavalry engagements occurring in waves. The first wave hits, they swipe at each other, then crash into the second wave, on and on until they break free, and maneuver in for it again, or they run out of space and are forced to fight. Also, contrary to popular belief, cavalry normally would not clash at full tilt, they would slow down before actually making contact, in favour of maneuverability and so as to not destroy the bones in your arms hitting another sword or armour.
(Edited for your question) A Redoubt is a earth work that covers the side and front of a unit of guns, it sometimes has a trench in the front as well. One thing that wasn't mentioned in the video was that a redoubt is meant to be open at the back so the gunners for the cannons can pull the guns out quickly, but the commander of the Grand Redout ordered a wall be made at the back as he was determaned that him and his men would die by their guns some what following a line by Sun Tzu "Throw your men into posistions from which their is no escape and they will prefer death to flight"
I am a history teacher. Don't apologize for either not knowing something or comparing things to what you know: that is how you learn. Historians are yeah nuts. Whatever you say they will always say, "Yeah, but..." and tell you a differs nuance. Hitler and Napoleon are perfectly natural and good comparisons, as long as you remember that all comparisons break down at some point. I love your channel because it helps me see things through a fresh perspective, and it gets me to watch things that are interesting but I wouldn't watch on my own because I would be saying, "yeah, but..." in stead of appreciating what's good.
I think the comparison between the Napoleonic war and the 2nd World War is justified in many ways Like Both Napoleon and Hitler fighting on more then on front 2 the British fighting the long way of attrition 3 the War of economy 4 they both World wars 5 muilty nation coalition
@@daniellastuart3145 I guess when it comes to the invasion of Russia the key difference; Hitler utilizes an element of surprise to try and invade Russia. Suprise them, catch them on the backfoot and encircle destroy their armies. Eliminate the Soviet government before they can successfully fully mobilize. On the other hand. Napoleon tried to use size to win a key battle. Preferably that key battle being not too far into Russia so that his army's position stays still a threat to St. Petersburg and well-supplied thru Poland.
As a russian I can say that in our historiography the war of 1812 year and ww2 connected, because only this two wars have adjective 'patriotic' war, it shows that not only army fought against invaders but also ordinary people united in partisan squads to resist invaders.
@@StephenButlerOne Different but. The Russian back then fought for religion and honor. Soviet Russians fought for their revolution. Hitler thought Russia would buckle again as it did during WW1. Pre-Revolution Russia. As flawed as Communism is, the thing is that was a major revolution in Russia. The veterans and founding fathers of that revolution were old men/women but many were still around. The sons and daughters of those veterans and patriots were starting to take over whatever their parents created (something to fight for). Basically what I am trying to say invading Russia during WW2, is equivalent to Britain attempting a full invasion of the USA in 1812. In 1812 the founding fathers of the United States are still alive and their sons and daughters are beginning to inherit running the show (something to fight for). Britain would have run into a lot of resistance. The USA didn't have their civil war until all the founding fathers were gone, and a 3 or 4th generation was in power.
In fact, the First World War in Russia was called the Great Patriotic War. But the communists deleted this story and then used Russian nationalism against the Nazis.
@@radziwill7193 Never heard about wwI called patriotic. Check again your info. What russian nationalism, did russians live in Germany in that time? And we wanted to unite the nation? What are you talking about?
Borodino is an interesting battle in that tactically it was basically a slugging match between two armies. And overall the French were handled much better tactically. This resulted in significantly greater casualties for the Russians despite them being on the defensive. (I note here that, like many battles of the Napoleonic era casualties are disputed. The figures given c. 30,000 for the French and C. 44,000 for the Russian are likely right for the Russians but the 30,000 figure for the French is probably too low and relies on figures from the Napoleonic Fan club that exists among Historians etc., a little too much. The actual figure is probably 34,000 - 36,000). Regarding the battle itself. It is noteworthy that Napoleon's handling , or should I say non-handling, of the battle is notorious. Basically Napoleon did very little and left it too his Marshals and Generals, with one important exception. Bizarrely this was duplicated among the Russians. Kutuzov did even less than Napoleon during the battle. Leaving his generals to pick up the slack. Fortunately for the Russians Bagration and especially Barclay performed magnificently that day. No thanks to Kutuzov. And on the French side so did the Marshals and Generals. Notably Ney, Davout and Murat. One of the more remarkable features of the battle was the poor handling of the Russian artillery. Due to a series of circumstances and sheer idiocy about 40% never came into action. The result was French artillery superiority during the battle and this likely caused the Russians to lose. Napoleon's one important intervention in the battle was his decision not to send in the Guard. Debate has been endless about this. My own opinion is that in retrospect it was a mistake but at the time it was a perfectly reasonable decision to make. After all Napoleon could not predict the future and with the knowledge he had at the time this was probably the best decision he could have made. It turned out to be wrong because the Russians responded in ways he did not expect, or for that matter anyone at the time would think was likely. Also it must be made clear that even if Napoleon had crushed / destroyed the Russian army at Borodino Alexander may not have made peace but continued the war. Conquering Russia even with the horde Napoleon brought was an absurd idea at the time. Even with no large formal Russian army Napoleon's army would have been swallowed up in a super Spain. In a horrific massive guerilla war in territory much larger, geographically much worst and significantly less productive than Spain. If Spain was a serious drain on French resources a Russian guerilla war would have been many times worst. Napoleon's hope was that destroying / crushing the main Russian army would so shock Alexander and his supporters that they would make peace on terms Napoleon wanted. There was no certainty that this would have happened if Napoleon had won a crushing victory at Borodino. But still Napoleon would have had a better chance of a favorable peace if he had won a crushing victory at Borodino.
I would also agree that not sending the guard, which would probably cause alot of damage to the Russian army, because they were buckling under the pressure, and perhaps make the retreat easier (thou there are easier ways to improve that outcome...). But I also think that it is an excusable mistake. Napoleon didn't have our knowledge on how many and where the enemy troops where and maybe there was still another Cossack cavalry detachment out there just waiting for him committing the guard. And even with hindsight, the desire to have an intact reserve left is not irrational. Especially with the problems of logistics.
Traditionally (especially in the military theory of the late 18th - early 19th centuries) it was believed that the battle was won by the one for whom the battlefield remained. Obviously, the field remained with Napoleon, after which he occupied Moscow without any problems. But on the other hand, it is just as obvious that, having won the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon lost the campaign: by December 1812, not a single uncaptured French soldier remained on the territory of the Russian Empire, and in December the Russian army's overseas campaign had actually begun and the war was fought on territory of Europe. Thus, the strategic battle of Borodino was won by Emperor Alexander and Field Marshal Kutuzov. They saved the army and proved the correctness of this decision. Very little time will pass after September 8 and at Maloyaroslavets Napoleon will be stopped, he will be forced to retreat along the old Smolensk road. So it turns out that Borodino was won by Napoleon purely formally, but in fact - by Kutuzov. And in the Russian tradition it has always been considered so. Although the French considered and continue to consider the battle "at the walls of Moscow" a victory for Napoleon. So it depends on which bell to watch. You have a very strange assessment of Kutuzov. Napoleon could have achieved victory if his opponent had not been Kutuzov, but a more traditionally thinking general who would have continued the battle until the very end. But Kutuzov withdrew the army, keeping it. Otherwise, nothing would have remained of the Russian army in this battle. Napoleon would also have suffered heavy losses, but he would have won the battle anyway, and after that he would have taken Russia practically with his bare hands. This, in fact, is the ingenious merit of Kutuzov, that he abandoned the template of a general battle and battle to the last drop of blood and saved the army. But Kutuzov could not win Borodino, since there was an inequality of forces and capabilities of the strategic potential.
The spread-out cavalry is skirmishing. Screening the approach of the main army, harrassing enemy light troops and messengers, scouting, forcing the enemy into cover or at least a more cautious approach. That was the job of light cavalry on the battlefield, beyond their tasks of reconnaissance, guarding and harrassment outside of the major battles. Heavy cavalry on the charge used a denser formation, much more dense, with the riders almost leg to leg. The main impact of a cavalry charge was in... the impact, and the more mass you could bring into a small space, the better.
Well said. There's an interesting 20-year-old Napoleonic tactical real-time game system which reflects this and other neat details: Breakaway Games' Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Battle and Austerlitz: Napoleon's Greatest Victory. May have trouble running them on Windows 10; installing last patches (1.002 and 2.01 respectively) can help. We had to burn discs for both as well.
There is a simple and at the same time very wise expression:"Save the people by losing the land - the land can still be returned. Save the land by losing people - you will remain without people and without land".
A redoubt is an improvised fortress, get the top of a hill or a village, get some gabbions, whicker baskets filled with rock or soil, the pre-20th century version of sandbags and dig in some cannons or infantry.
The movie 'Waterloo' was made in the seventies and was classified as suitable for general audiences. (just as an FYI, the battle scenes were filmed using whole regiments of Red Army soldiers who rehearsed and learned Napoleonic battle formations to make the film as authentic as possible.) Similarly, the TV series 'Sharpe' was made for prime-time TV and traces Sargent Sharpe's rise from the ranks to become a Major in the 95th Rifles attached to a regiment of infantry called the 'South Essex' regiment. Inspiration for the author came from many places, including a book called 'The Recollections of Rifleman Harris' made from the diary kept by Harris during the war in Spain. Harris is portrayed in the TV show as one of Sharpe's men.
Rob Steiger is for me the best Napoleon, i saw some films about napoleon and not even French actors (most famous were pierre mondy and Christian clavier) are better than Steiger.
Rod Stiger and Christian Claver are my two go-to onscreen depictions of our Lord and Master Emperor Napoleon I. Rod Stiger for the more volatile side of Napoleon (such as he could go from calm to raging back to calm with the drop of a hat) and Claver for the civil and military mastermind of Napoleon.
11:15 redoute is a defensive position made of wood and sand or even if it's enough time bricks etc. Sometimes very complex. Redoutes made of bricks by Vauban in times of Louis XIV were very strong in France
Kutuzov was kind of the Russian version of Nelson as he was seen as an Icon and was constantly getting wounded even getting shot in the head and surviving.
No, this is myph, Kutuzov was used as a propaganda symbol - he was high officer under command of Alexander Suvorov - greatest Russian general. And this fact increased morale of Russian army. But factually, Barclay, Wintegstein, Bagration and Bennigsen were higher in command than Kutuzov, they were marshals, while Kutuzov was general. How can general command marshals?
@@arty5876 I think your misunderstanding what i was saying, i was trying to say he was an icon. Nelson himself wasn't the head of the Royal Navy, he commanded the white division their was another Division above and that Admiral held seniority over Nelson.
@@radziwill7193 why you said "it" ? You hate Tatars? All Easten slavs have Tatar roots - East slavic nations were formed in ~7th century from hybrid of Central slavs, Scandinavians and Scyphs (de facto Tatars). Tatars also Europeoid race, they have white skin. This is not Asian nomads, how many people think.
@@arty5876 TH-cam deletes my messages, I can not accurately express my thoughts. Genetics and stories about abortions raped by the Tatars show the hatred of the Slavs towards the Tatars.
-When they say how many casualties there were it's not all dead people, it includes wounded, captured and missing (and anything else that takes a soldier out of service). Still Borodino is the bloodiest single day of the napoleonic wars. -As for what they did with all those corpses, as far as I'm aware they just left them for the crows. -You will see why Moscow is burning in the next video so I won't spoil it
74,000 casualties in a single day is a terrifyingly high number for any era of warfare. I think something a lot of people don't understand is that these older battles would often take place on a single battlefield over the course of one day, two or three days at the most and sometimes in the space of just a few hours. When you look at those massive WW2 battles like Stalingrad, Moscow and Normandy and you see the casualty numbers in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, you have to remember that these "battles" were more like campaigns, with many smaller battles taking place over a very large area with millions of troops involved that would last sometimes for months. For example at the Battle of Stalingrad the Soviets experienced 1.2 million casualties (between dead, wounded, sick, captured and missing) but that was a 166 day long battle. If you do the math that's an average of about 6,900 casualties per day. If daily Russian casualty numbers were as high at Stalingrad as they were at Borodino (44,000), the Soviets would have suffered over 7 million casualties instead of 1.2 million. Just a different way of looking at it.
Moscow still was the biggest city during that period. Trade and business center. St. Petersburg was more like an administrative center with the Emperor's residence and ministries. Washington DC and NY can be rough analogy.
you shouldnt apologize for bringing up WW2 eastern front with Napoleon because the comparison is a fair and relevant one. The German soldiers invading Russia were very well aware of it as well and some of the officers had with them Caulincort's 1st hand accounts detailing Napoleons campaign in Russia. The vastness and environment of Russia mattered just as much to the Germans as it did to Napoleons army.
If you live in a village and hear rumors of armies approaching nearby, you run like hell! Simple as that. What happened to the dead? Well, that depended on where you were, if the army stayed, if civilians could take over the task and more factors. I think I read somewhere that in Borodino little to no cleanup efforts were taken. Napoleon was eager to advance, the russion army was retreating and the area was lightly populated (compared to central europe). Meaning the corpses were mostly rotting on the fields for weeks at least.
One guy survived by eating (and sleeping in [?!]) dead horses. The French discovered him when they passed the battlefield during their retreat. Grotesque, no?
Wellesley/Wellington famously rejected being identified as Irish despite being born in Ireland, saying "Just because a man is born in a stable does not make him a horse." However, as the other commenters said, a third of his army in the Peninsula was Irish, and this probably played a part in how he delivered Catholic Emancipation when he became Prime Minister despite being incredibly anti-reform on everything else.
13:59 a french ally, but the man was German, Westphalia is the western part of Germany (Somewhat famous for the "Westphalia peace" that ended the 30 year war)
A piece of trivia: in french, there is some expression wich refers to Napoleon's defeat. "Un coup de Trafalgar" (a Trafalgar coup, meaning a situation/event with serious consequences) "C'est la Bérézina" (it's the Berezina, meaning something is a disaster)
I'm French and i've never heard of the Trafalgar expression... I don't even know it. I've never heard about the Berezina expression either, but I know this one.
One common critique of Napoleon is that he became more conservative with his military strategy as his rule went on relying more on overwhelming force than clever or bold maneuvers. You kind of see that in this episode
But he was kind of proven right in both decisions. Sending imperial guard makes sense assuming Russia surrenders after Moscow falls which doesn't happen and the flanking manouver probably wouldn't work because, as it is later said. that land was a thick forest so army would be very slow and it would be hardly possible for them to keep their organization at acceptable level.
@@draganmarkovic491 Kinda. Sending the guard in would properly lead to a far worse state of the Russian army (including when Napoleon has to retreat), which would probably not lead to Russia given up, but to an easier retreat (mind you that there are other mistakes more pressing in that regard). Thou it was by no means an "obvious error" even with hindsight. As for the flanking: the problem with fictional flanking maneuvers is that people more or less always assume that the enemy does nothing to intervene. That is hardly the case thou.
@@Nonsense010688 Yeah after reading your comment I do agree. ... here is thing south-east of Moscow where Kutuzov took his army to recover that is the military-industrial complex area. Meaning at that spot, Kutuzov could recruit, and equip and regroup the army. If Napoleon had outright demolished the Russian army, odds are that he wouldn't have been forced to sit in Moscow. He could have actually possibly pushed south-east of Moscow and captured that area. My guess is Alexander would have talked peace rather than possibly see that area destroyed. Destroying Moscow, the residential housing area that can be rebuilt. But destroying the area that was industrious and a driver of innovation and armament, food supply, the gathering spot for the Siberian fur trade/textile industry, etc.. of the country is a completely different thing. To rebuild not just the army but also Moscow quickly you need that industrial area to stay intact. That is why Kutuzov is guarding it.
It’s pretty morbid, but battlefields of the era were pretty nightmarish after the battle was fought. It was pretty commonplace to simply leave the bodies out there, and then the looters would systematically strip the bodies of any and all valuables. Accounts describe field covered by naked bloody bodies rotting in the sun and being eaten at by birds. Also accounts of bodies piling up in massive mounds. Certainly a horrific scene
Waterloo and War and Peace are not to graphic. They worked with real actors and without cgi you couldnt show very graphic wounds. There is not even a lot of blood in waterloo. But the battle in War and Peace has a very depressing athmosphere. The scale of both movies is gigantic and will propably never be recreated in human history. The Soviet army lend its army to the creators. There are 17.000 real humans in this movies, that where trained in the tactics of the day. If you watch War and Peace, watch the soviet version of it. This is the version with the huge amount of extras and the very spectacular battle of borodino.
well... Most of the French were devoted, and knew their best chances was of getting a quick battle in which their leaders were master at..... Desertion meant having to cross the ENTIRE continent, crossing 15 regions where people neither talked your language nor were very found of your country....
i worked on a pipeline in russia with a Uk company here, in England, we found many many french napoleonic medals, and buttons and badges for hats, all in bad shape, but i still have 12, French medals and 8 shako badges, many buttons and lots of personal items .Message me if you would like pics of them, they are a lovely bit of history my favorite is a horse bone made into a flute.
Years ago there was a miniseries about war. One of the things the host covered was Borodino. He described the losses in terms to which modern people can relate. He said basically - picture a 747 full of people crashing into the ground, and then another, and another...and this goes on with a 747 crashing every X minutes for Y hours and then it happens again the next day. If I could remember the name of the series, I'd recommend it to you. It wasn't about any particular war, but about the evolution of it and the psychology. Another thing that series covered was that once a war starts, everyone involved at every level is trapped in it. The combat troops are fighting for their lives, their buddies lives, and because they don't want to fail their buddies. Officers above direct contact have their orders. The leaders can't stop without admitting that all of the losses had been in vain. It is like one of those finger traps. Burning bodies doesn't work as well as most people think. Crematoriums work at a different level than open burning. You reminded me of the end of "War Games" where the computer concludes "Strange game...the only winning move is not to play." What it doesn't say is that to not play, you have to convince everyone that they don't want to mess with you. You should read "The Defense of Duffer's Drift" It is used for training officers on field tactics, but it reads like a novel. The protagonist experiences a series of dreams, each one correcting the errors he made in the previous dream. It isn't a long book. It is set in the Boer War, but I think there was a rewrite to the Afghanistan.
If you google Pavel Yakovlevich Tolstoguzov, there is a photo of a Russian who fought at the battle of Borodino (he was 14 years old), he lived till he was 114 years old. There are also photos of both Napoleon and Wellington war veterans; even a photo of wellington in his old age.
To put thing into perspective: The US lost 58.000 men in the whole of the Vietnam war (close to 20 years of fighting) while over 70.000 men died in a single day battle at Borodino.
To put Borodino in a general military context, the British supreme example of military disaster is the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, but more men died at Borodino than on 1st July 1916, and along a front of 4-5 miles, rather than the 20 mile front on the Somme. It is no exaggeration to say that the French were climbing over mountains of their dead by the time they finally captured the Fleches. One of the finest descriptions of Borodino, appears in Tolstoy's War and Peace, where the battle is largely experienced through the eyes of one of the main characters in the novel, Count Pierre Bezhukov, who rides out of Moscow to "see what a battle looks like" and eventually finds himself in the midst of the fighting. The 1967-8 Russian Film of War and Peace, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk (who went on to direct Waterloo) has a truly epic Borodino sequence, for which he was given 6 divisions of the Russian Army as extras. Here is a compilation from the Borodino scene: th-cam.com/video/4SVC_9V8K5Y/w-d-xo.html
Hey there Southern Girl! I just wanna give some input. Per your statement at 14:02, there is a difference between things that inspire the Russian on those two wars. The first one is a religious valor and while the second one is their very existence. At 1812 the Russian thought that Napoleon would come to extinguish their Orthodox faith, reminiscence of previous Templar and Polish invasion centuries ago. The reality is Napoleon doesn't think of doing such things, but the Russian keep that narrative on because religious valour is such a noble and estemeed ideas at that time. While in WW2, their fear is justified because Hitler publicly and loudly admit his idea of basically extinguishing Slavic people from Eastern Europe. Ordinary Soviet soldiers doesn't care about communism that much especially when the other side swore to annihilate them. Btw some short clips you might find interesting (taken from War and Peace 1966 movie) -Veneration of the Icon before Borodino th-cam.com/video/vLTQIh3CB2c/w-d-xo.html (720p) th-cam.com/video/shOtt7zcD9Q/w-d-xo.html (with subtitles) - Battle of Borodino th-cam.com/video/k97nvOSBDnk/w-d-xo.html Hope you see this and find it entertaining/useful :) I really like the fact that you give feedbacks, engaging with us and putting your effort to really follow the topic in hand. This is my first time seeing such format on a reaction channel and it's refreshing to see. My big props to you! 👏
So to answer a few of your questions and help expand your knowledge: 1. The cavalry at the start were in a loose skirmish order. This was primarily used for scouting and protection vs cavalry and artillery. - it helped with scouting as they covered a larger area as such could see a lot more area/ground or similar ground to other but at different angles - while one person may see what looks like a steep bank, another could potentially see that it was two inclines with a break/dip between them that isn’t exposed from a front angle. - the protection from cavalry came that if engaged, the others could quickly flee/retreat to safety or could build up speed to preform a counter attack. Against artillery, it was done so that if a shell detonated amongst the horses or cannon ball struck the unit, it would only wound/kill a bare few men and horse, while if packed together it would cause considerably more casualties. 2. Napoleons speech was quite well received. At that time many of his soldiers were deeply loyal to him and his marshal and believed him when he said they’d see victory for they usually did and with not that many casualties - of course when we see them they are massive, however to your average solider they barely knew the true scale only the deaths and wounded that came from their company/battalion. - referring to the “face to the enemy, let’s go and get killed” line later spoke by a French Colonel, it may have been partial inspiration (soldiers take very different to dark humour and such things as such statements like that are saw as jovial) but it very likely could have been a colonel dreading his duty to advance and that statement being his callous way of showing his dread to the idea, but preforming to his duty. - as for desertion, you’d be surprised but many chose to stay over desert especially with the news of the Russian Cossacks. Also, desertion would actually make you a casualty of war too - casualty referring to any injury that takes a solider out of combat (death, large wounds, small wounds, feeling a bit dizzy/ill, major exhaustion and many other things). Interestingly, if your ever near a hospital or watch a hospital show, you’ll probably commonly hear your every day patient referred to as a casualty too. 3. A readout is a fortification that is made from a massive mound of earth piled together and shaped into a defensive angle. These could also have open ports for artillery to shoot from (think like how castles have gaps between the upper wall areas for people to shoot from), have small to large trench lines for infantry to form at their front and flanks, and could also have some wooden palisades and defences for ward off frontal cavalry or flanking cavalry charges, tho every redoubt is different) 4. To us it may seem weird that the Russian artillery general was only 27, however you must remember that during this age many young men of prominent aristocratic/rich/military families would begin training for these types of positions from a very young age - between 10-15 when many start. You’d also find that those who have came up from the ranks may have even started their careers when they were still only 15 or close to. During the 17th and 18th century, going off to war was sometimes saw as the better option that doing whatever task your family brought you up to do. 5. Oh you’ll see next episode why the fires began
You mentioned the calvary spacing. Very good observation and a good question. The cavalry like all other forms of military units conduct their drill in different formations or orders of march. Formations being like wedge, line of battle, coloum etc. What u noticed is order of March. They would have tight dense formations only for the pitched battle as it allows the unit to give greater impact and had a devastating psychological force. On the march though the cavalry would operate in a dispersed order of march, to limit the effect of skirmish fire, maximize the ground being reconoidered, and provide ease of movement as a denser formation needs longer to turn and can not react the same as an open order of march
It's odd that Tchaikovsky's triumphant 1812 Overture was commissioned to commemorate what was later seen as a "successful" defence of Borodino. Sure, the Russians succeeded in keeping Napoleon at bay, but they sustained a higher number of casualties and ulitmately retreated, allowing the Grande Armée to advance on Moscow. Posterity might look on Borodino as a pivotal moment in the ultimate defeat of Bonaparte's Russian campaign, but the battle itself took a heavy toll on both sides.
Never forget that we are watching history with a 21st centuries mindset this is for me the most important part of history not just the facts - they always got along with a society at that times this is the one and only reason why i would love to have a time machine
For the 100th anniversary of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, a panoramic painting of the Battle of Borodino was created in Moscow by F. Rubaut, which made it possible to better immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the battle. The idea of such paintings was quite popular, around the same time a panorama of the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium appeared, before that the Battle of Gettysburg in the USA, etc.
Cavalry charged togheter but they normally are dispersed while marching or not engaging, to have more freedom of manouver and to avoid the potential of a cannonball smashing deep into the ranks. As the horses are easier targets
There was so much carnage that you wouldn’t be walking on ground but on dead bodies sometimes piled as high as 8 bodies on top of each other, filling up the moats of the redoubts and even getting all the way to the top of the walls.
Attempting to answer your outro questions: 1. Casulty numbers: The term "casulty" just means a soldier that was taken out of combat. Not all of them were killed... though often a lot of the wounded died in the aftermath due to lacking or bad medical treatment. For example, of the about 30,000 French casulties, about 7 to 8000 were killed, the rest wounded or missing. It still was a slaughter on a massive scale. 2. You can watch both "Sharpe" as well as the classic "Waterloo" movies without fear. "Sharpe" was made for TV, and is more focused on the heoric individuals than huge battles and slaughter. "Waterloo" is a major battle, and features thousands of actives (fun fact: Soviet Red Army soldiers), but it's from a time when gratuitous bloody violence wasn't that dominant on the silver screen. 3. Napoleonic wargames differ a lot in style and scope. The "Total War: Napoleon", of which there's often footage used, plays both on the strategic side - raising and moving armies through countries - as well as the tactial battles... but because the player controls the strategy, there won't be replays of the "famous" battles... or even wars. If your Napoleon doesn't want to invade Russia, well, no one is forcing you. Other games set different foci. Some will be purely strategic, and even major battles are just a few symbols on the map moving. Others focus on individual campagins or battles... and there you can indeed change the outcome. 4. Moscow burning. The Russian's didn't fight for Moscow, even though some people wanted to, and the "offical" line had been given out that Borodino had been a glorious Russian victory. Retreating Russian troops had already started some fires, in the "scorched earth" tradition. French soldiers might have started others, and then there was the general danger of fires from open lightsources and a paniced population. Whoever was _mainly_ responsible, the result was that most of Moscow - still mainly build from wood - burned to the ground, and didn't offer much shelter for Napoleon's army.
@@omarbradley6807 Waterloo was one, I remember that. But I also remember that the battle Artificial Intelligence in the Total War games was... not that intelligent. Which makes recapturing the spirit of a Napoleonic battle a bit difficult.
Florence Nightingale invented the pie chart to show generals how clean hospitals saved soldier lives and Mary Seacole was also somebody who transformed army hospitals, both in the Crimean War.
We actually learn about her in school over here, and in fact, I didn't realize she was English - that's just me not remembering things correctly from school :) But I'd like to do a video on her.
Fun Fact : many *big* momentx in history are related with critical geological and climatic perturbation. Napoléon went to Russia in 1812, and between 1815-1820 was actually the end coldest spike of what we call "the little ice age" or Maunder Minimum/ I.E Napoléon *exactly* choosed the worse years of the millenia to attempt a nice winter Russia Tour
Made me think about this. Mongol invasion of Russian Principalities happened in the 1200s. Little Ice age begins. Russia grows stronger! Removes the Mongol Yoke with the beginning of the little ice age. Creates the Russian Empire. End of little ice age.. Google has it at 1860. You could argue the troubles for the Russian imperial family (other royal families all across the globe as well..). By 1918 they are removed. ....... A thing I read before on the mini-ice age was the height of people. I guess the average skeleton height 1500 or before is equal to that of a 20th-century person. In between the 1500 and into the 20th-century people are shorter. Altho I believe Noble families probably kept their height, it was the peasants that brought down the average. Part of the reason nobles started to believe they were a completely separate race of humans from the peasants.
30:13 Napoleon Total War can be purchased on Steam, a common gaming library tool. I would highly recommend the game due to its graphics, historical units, strategies, and navy battles. A great Real Time Strategy game. The game has several modes to choose from: a campaign (control French troops, Calvary, and cannon regiments using a mouse/keyboard; any battle has this incorporated into the game), multiplayer (fight other player teams with your own team in pre-chosen maps by the host), coalition mode (pick a side of the coalition against France and work your way towards conquering France/Europe region by region), and free for all mode (fight other computer players while choosing army units per each side and the battlefield to fight on). The war games allow the player to command each regiment by weapon class (e.g. bayonet, musket, rifle, bombs, cannon shot, grape shot, shells, swords, etc.), positioning (e.g. form square, column, spread out formation, retreat, etc.), speed, and when to engage the enemy. Once choosing your tactics, it may be difficult to control your regiment once engaged in the fight as the troops take fire (i.e. the units are delayed to new orders when in a bayonet engagement with the enemy). If you get your opponent's army to in full retreat from the battlefield or kill every last enemy solider, you win! The score will state how well each side did. Avoid Pyrrhic Victories, achieve Decisive Victories! Here's a Napoleon Total War 3 vs 3 I was apart of for reference: th-cam.com/video/gK7fLtZF91I/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=ProfessorStroeve
The Russian comander Kutuzov, wanted to anhilate Napoleon, with a simple hammer and anvil manouver. He expected Napoleon to focus on his right under Barcally, and then the troops of Bagration massed behind the fleches, will come out and sourround the Frenchs, but Napoleon attacked Bagration, and Kutuzov freezed, the huge carnage on the Russian ranks during the french assaults was not as bad as it was during the opening barrage of artillery.
That napoleon documentary is very good it had several different titles originally broadcast on the BBC but it covers the events at toulon captain to major napoleon and his rise to fame also the madness of the revolutionary government at the time , the horses in pictures may have been the officer's or reconnaissance units , but you will see a major cavalry battle before the series ends
Regarding cleaning up, most armies prior to about 1850 just didn't do it. Soldiers stayed where they fell unless they were rich enough or famous enough to have somebody come look for them and cart them off. Peasants stripped them of anything valuable including clothing. If anybody wanted to farm that land some day in the future, they had to clean it up first. By that time, scavenging animals and vermin had done a lot of the work, and mostly what they had to bury was bones, which they did with varying levels of ceremony and thoroughness
At that times the casualty rate was almost always under 10%, but there are examples, especially with Napoleonic battles where a side take that 10% of casualties but inflict even a total destruction upon the enemy. Thus winning the war and making everything worth of it but here it was both sides with around 30% casualties without one side being anhilated, thus it was not worth of it, in this case
3:14 Bill's 1 war out. In WW1, you're looking at around a 6 or 7 to 1 ratio of deaths in action or from wounds against death by communicable disease. If we take the giant step of assuming that those who died of wounds all died from wound infection (which would be bollocks), you're still looking at around 3:1 killed in action:died of disease. And the change has bugger all to do with active medical intervention; lessons learned the hard way in the Crimea and South Africa had spread, and the provision of clean drinking water did more to reduce deaths from disease than any other factor.
How cavalry were deployed varied, as it did with infantry. Just as infantry could do things like form storming columns or squares (to hold off cavalry) so could the horsemen. It depended on battlefield terrain (travel is different over open roads than over mountain trails) and what the strategy being employed was. Calvary could be more 'spread out' than infantry, because of the speed of the horses.
It would be called a `Pyrrhic` victory for Napoleon. A news report a couple of months back, stated that French Soldier remains from this era had been unearthed in Russia. Did you hear of this Sogal? . On the first day of the `Battle of the Somme` 1, July 1916, there was a similar `body count` amongst the protagonists-and it stands as the most troops that Britain ever lost on a single day.
@@SoGal_YT there are loads of stories and videos of people finding old guns and equipment in rivers and fields where they've been lost in long dense frontlines and preserved. Unfortunately it's dangerous to go looking for stuff too, as you still hear stories of unexploded bombs and uncleared minefields. In France, Belgium, and Germany there are a handful of deaths every year from unfortunate people who accidentally trod too close to a hidden hundred year old bomb. The old wars still claim lives
Sharpe is not gory. Apart from some very few instances, there's very little blood or nasty wounds shown. It gives a good idea of what things were like in Wellington's army. I also recommend watching the Hornblower TV series. Hornblower is similar to Sharpe but regards the fictional Horatio Hornblower serving in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.
If Sharpe is less gory, I think it reflects the sensitivities of television production companies and audiences of the time. Even today, something truly gory would be shown, not just after the 9.00 pm watershed (after children are assumed to have gone to bed) but after 10.00 pm.
The cavalry that is spread out on the field in the painting is called Dragoons, they are not used to charge in to enemy but rather they are carrying muskets and are a skirmishing force. The more tightly packed ones are usually sword wilding or lancer cavalry.
Not exactly. Almost whole cavalry, except heavy reserve cav. maybe, could be used in skirmisher line, flanquer as it was called back than. Preferably it would be light cavalry, like mounted chasseurs, hussars or lancers. Dragoons, unlike in XVII, in XVIII and first half XIX, at least in Europe, became "line" cavalry or even "heavy" cavalry, but with option to fight on foot. So in most of cases, You would still not use them in skirmish line, but keep them in reserve for decisive charge, especially if dedicated heavy cavalry was not present. Only towards end of XIX century and decline of horseback fighting in face of growing firepower, virtually all cavalry came back to role of dragoons with only exceptional episodes of actual full-on charge with swords drawn.
An excerpt from Lermontovs poem "Borodino" [...] No sooner did the heavens brighten Than everyone began to rise, and The soldiers moved in rows. Our colonel was so bold, determined: The soldiers’ sire, the Tsar’s true servant! We all shed tears when we interred him; In peace he’s resting now. He said to us, his eyes like candles, “Men! Isn’t Moscow there behind us? Let's die for Moscow now, Just as our brothers died before us!” We gave our oath in one great chorus And then we did just as we promised Throughout Borodino. [...] You'll never see such ruthless battles! The banners floated by like shadows And flames glared through the smog; The sabers rang and buckshot howled as The fighters wore their strong arms out, and The slain were stacked up in a mountain So wide it stopped the cannon balls. The Frenchmen learned a fair amount that They didn’t know of Russian combat, For we fought tooth and nail! The earth, just like our chests, was quaking; The horses howled, their manes were shaking; A thousand shouts and shots were making One neverending wail … [...] Yes, there were folks in that brave era Who had the hearts and souls of heroes: Real men, unlike you lads! They battled, but their luck turned ill, and So many brave young men were killed then. But Moscow, if God had not willed it, Would never have changed hands!
To answer your question about cavalry tactics, generally they would charge in relatively packed formations, but if an enemy unit broke they would spread out and kill the retreating enemy or in the case of combat with infantry, they may also rely on the momentum of the charge to break the unit, depending on the type of cavalry.
To get some perspective, I would use the American Revolution. The New York campaign of 1776 - 1777 for example involved more than 50,000 men and there was combined casualties of about 10,000 men. These losses were inflicted over the course of a year with roughly the same weaponry. Most European battles at the time were likewise no bigger and deadlier than this either. However, the Napoleonic Era had revolutionized war with new tactics ,command, supply and conscription. This resulted in the great powers fielding much larger armies compared to 35 years before and therefore the potential for massive losses in life became immensely higher in a much shorter space of time.
One good thing with this epic history,besides all the other nice and professional things with it is that they always bring quotes...that gives extra flavour to the storytelling,in this case pertaining Napoleon,to read quotes from him during these battles...
cavalry kept at least a horses length from one another when still to reduce the impact of artillery, at a gallop they kept greater distance between eachother depending on speed so that they could slow, stop or maneuvre without hitting one another, and then right if as they charged an enemy they might go back into close order almost stirrup to stirrup. Cavalry actually charging infantry in close order was quite rare, they usually stayed somewhat distant and broke apart so that they could each maneuvre freely and avoid being trapped by their own fellows and brought to a standstill. Basically free movement was more important for the cavalry then keeping close order like infantry, since they weren't a defensive force and weren't offered protection by other cavalrymen.
Napoleon recognized the value of art as propaganda to popularize his regime. He had an annual budget of 60,000 francs to encourage painting but often overspent it. Some notable examples include Jacques-Louis David (whose paintings are some of the most famous, like Napoleon's coronation portrait or Napoleon crossing the Alps), Francois Gerard, Theodore Gericault, Anne-Louis Girodet, Antoine-Jean Gros, Jean Urbain Guerin, Jean-Auguste Ingres, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Carle Vernet and his son Horace, and Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun. In Spain even Goya worked in the court of King Joseph for a while.
2:16 Think of it this way: Empire->Kingdom->Duchy->Country->Barony (all of these are areas of land ruled by the equivalent title, so Emperor, Duke, Count and Baron). Then you get knights below that. And non-nobles like sergant at arms etc. A Baron would be a castle and some surrounding areas.
Normally the soldiers across time were hired for a set period of time and a big battle normally meant that their service was nearly over and they would return home soon if they survived.
Cavalry at the time did not bunch up as much to avoid the consequences of Volley Fire from Muzzle Loaders and other Firearms. In earlier periods where more primitive firearms were involved, a decently armored Cavalry Unit can expect to deflect most shots. This continued until about the early - mid 1600s when larger bullets and powder charges meant that armor was very likely to be penetrated. From that point forward, armored units became less common, any Cavalry usually ended up holding a Sword, a Pistol / Carbine (Carbine is a shortened rifle, originally intended for cavalry). So, all of this to say, well, that's why they're so spread out, its so they don't all get mowed down at once by gun fire. There was also rather devastating cannons that were also employed, which further discouraged bunched up soldiers of any kind, really. At the time, commanders would typically vary between tight formations and more spread out formations depending on immediate needs.
ART : The Napoleonnic period (and Napoléon himself) is maybe the most *PROLIFIC and INSPIRING period/character* for painting, music, and litterture *(there are more books written about Napoléon, than days which separates us from his death... that's wild)* Lots of artist were paid, a lot of this were commanded (portait, battle depictions) he has Jacques Louis Davic as his personnal artsit., but most of them were also produced in the mid-late 1800"s. there was a huge *(romantism)* wave of fascination and almost nostalgia of the Revolutionnay and Napoleonnic period all accross Europe. But we have sculptor and other artist still painting etc about this period, battles, etc, to this day. Hard to pic a name
And of course, they were two sides... Romantism/interest for Napoléon >< Nationalists waves and anti-French/pro British/europe artists Such that the more books and painting were done about the Glory of La Grande Armée, the more books and painting were done in response to promote the National Bravor of those who fought him. Each of the sides feeding the others and generating this HUGE amount of art and litterature about this period which launched an unprecedent wave of change accross Europe and the colonized World; contributing to the "legend"
Intersting to note that the combined French / Russian casualties at the end of the first day, are almost exactly that of the first day of the battle of the Somme in WWI. But bear in mind the WWI casualties were from automatic weapons and artillary that killed at relativly long distances - at Borodino most casualties were from fighting that was almost hand to hand! No wonder both armies were utterly shattered at the end of the first day. On a different note - modern armies still have priests or ministers - reasonably close to the front line.In th eBritish Army, the chaplains etc are all officers, whereas in the Royal Navy the chaplain automatically has the same rank as the person they are talking to, regardless if it is an admiral or a deckhand! (a piece of genius I think). I don't think things have changed much for the soldier on the ground since these times - they head towards a battle in the knowledge that they may well not return. Certainly in the British Army, troops have to write a 'in case of my death' letter, that will be delivered to there family if they should die.
The biggest difference between Napolean and WWII is Hitler could send supplies (food,clothes asnd ammunition) most of the way by rail while Napolean had to send supplies from France by wagon.
Hitler didn't have it easy either. Soviet Union had a different rail width, which meant that they had to change trains and carts after Poland, or build entirely new railroads. This slowed down the initial invasion considerably.
Actually, Hitler had exactly the same problems regarding supplies as Napoleon did. Russia used (and still today uses) a different railway gauge size than Europe. Consequently, Germany could not use their locomotives and wagons on Russia's rails. Further, as part of scorched earth, Russia destroyed most of its locomotives and wagons prior to each retreat. Thus Germany wasn't able to move supplies within Russia by rail. Germany had to move supplies using roads by trucks and horse-pulled carts. However, just like in 1812. Russia's roads were of very poor condition and again turned to rivers of mud from rain, which Germany's supplies, just like Napoleon's got stuck in.
@@andywilliams7323 They could send supplies by rail. They had extra stations to change the cargo of the trains to trains with fitting gauge. This however was extremly inefficient.
@@Hunter27771 It was extremely inefficant but it did not need to be fed though admitidly the German fuel supply made it almost as bad and the rolling stock lost priority to sending Jews to the camps.
For context of the number of casualties, those figures are telling you the total of those Killed, Wounded and Missing in Action. For example, the proportion of those killed in combat would be something like a third of those casualty numbers, while the rest would be the amount of wounded. The missing in action proportion are the men who they can't identity or find their body to confirm if they have died (either their wound is so bad to make identification impossible, or they got blown to bits by a cannon round, or perhaps they've deserted during the battle). Unfortunately, the death toll would only increase in the days after the battle as the majority of the wounded men would die of their wounds due to infections.
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Cavalry tactics can vary. And not all cavalry were melee cavalry. Dragoons would often fight using carbines (short muskets). So it makes sense for them to spread out and disperse. A dense block of cavalry is an perfect target for canons. A redoubt is a form of earth fortification.
The casualty numbers are one thing, but the percentage of population is another. One battle in the UK War of the Roses (Towton) killed an estimated 3% of the men in England in a single day...
Great channel, fascinating subjects! I must mention director Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace. The full film is a 6 hour epic of epicness. About one of those hours is dedicated to the Battle of Borodino. Literally a cast of thousands. As there was no CGI in 1960s Russia the sheer scale of this film is truly impressive. Bondarchuk a few years later directed Waterloo with Rod Steiger and Christopher Plummer. Almost equally epic in scope but flawed somehow, still worth the watch. Unfortunately the released version was cut by an hour or two from the original.
Borodino was the greatest battle before WWI (to put it in perspective, the losses are roughly the size of one of the starting armies at Waterloo). The ground was covered in grapeshot and cannon balls to the extent it looked like a metal hailstorm had taken place. The casualty estimates were Napoleons, but it would seem more Russian casualties is correct. The French were fought to a standstill, it was certainly not a victory for them. The battle pretty much ended with the Raevsky Redoubt (the Great Redoubt) being captured. From that point both armies consolidated where they stood and the battle was just a huge artillery dual from that point on.
What happened to the dead after these battles is an interesting question. First the bodies were looted by the soldiers of the winning army some before they were actually dead , there are reports of wounded soldiers regaining consciousness and finding themselves naked, Having being stripped by looters . Then the camp followers would probably look for anything of value missed by soldiers, The locals would next pick through for anything of value. Bodies were then sometimes burned sometimes buried .There are reports after Boridino of bodies lain strewn on the battlefield still some two months after the battle. Looters would also sometime go armed with pliers to take teeth from the bodies which were used to make dentures . There are also reports of ships loaded with bones from the dead on the battlefields , arriving in England after Waterloo and being used as fertiliser on English gardens.
200 years ago people thought differently , mentality was different , ideas etc. especially for the soldiers fighting . honour and glory was super important. The mere sight of the Emperor was enough to bolster platoons or regiments of people to fight harder and/or until death. to give you an example , while crossing Niemen Napoloen wanted to see where the best crossing was , so he jokingly stated he should send some men into the river . this was picked up by some of the low level officers and they threw themselves in the water just to be recognized by the onlooking Emperor. they did find the ford, but only after 3-4 men drowned, along with their horses.
Regarding the age one joined the military, they were indeed very young. Some services took them younger than others. It was common to see a midshipman in the Royal Navy join his first ship somewhere between his 10th and 12th birthday. Others still were younger. Namely, powder monkeys. The army took them a little older, 15 or 16 for Ensigns. Nelson commanded his first ship before his 21st birthday, Wellington his regiment before his 25th.
Marshal Davout fell so hard from his horse that his second-in-command, Gen. Sorbier, rode back to Napoleon thinking Davout was dead. General Rapp, taking command of Davout's forces, was shocked to find the supposedly dead Davout leading his men on foot *with a limp.* Also, the effect General Kutaisov's (the 27-year--old Russian Artillery General) death had on the battle cannot be understated. When he was killed, no one was appointed to replace him. The Tsarist Russian Army was famous for punishing initiative among its rank and file, and because no one was appointed to command them forwards to defend the redoubts, most of the 637 Russian artillery and their crews sat useless at the Russian rear and were never ordered into battle. So effectively the Russians had only half the artillery EHTV's video says they had.
Hard to wrap my head around this one. Like and subscribe if you enjoyed this video 👍🏻 Follow me on social media:
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Its actually several artists, i know the painting about the Spanish war are mainly done by Francisco Goya ('Disasters of War' series) but the other its best to ask Epic History TV themselves on twitter. They'll answer you 👍
Guillotine is no a Weapon.
War are sin
@@NewHeathen I was thinking they might have been light cavalry Skirmirshers maybe to raise up dust(create a cover for the main cavalry force) and draw out an enemy - make them break tight formation to try and get rid of the pesky skirmishers. While in the meantime in the background a charge could be brewing or not. ... Just my thoughts looking at the picture. If have any opinion on that. But I have a feeling what I just wrote is a part of what you actually described lol.
I really enjoyed your video featuring the Vulcan (in fact, I've really enjoyed all your videos!) an aeroplane that holds a special place in my heart along with another, the English Electric Lightning.
There's a video about the Lightning intercepting a super-high altitude USAF U-2, a plane the Americans thought was immune to interception.
th-cam.com/video/8DdUwIhI-ZA/w-d-xo.html
If you waned to check it out! Though I'm positive you must have an enormous backlog of videos to watch by this point.
If not that, how 'bout a Star Trek video? 😊
Borodino drinking game: Take a shot of vodka every time the narrator says "with heavy losses", take 2 every time its "Heavy losses on both sides"
I like my liver better than that.
6:29 Ignaz Sebastian Klauber "the crossing of the French army across the Niemen on June 12, 1812",
6:35 Victor Vikentievich Mazurovsky "The case of the Cossack Platov near Mir on July 9, 1812",
6:42 V.V. Vereshchagin "Napoleon at the Borodino Heights",
6:59 Without author (in the place I found it author was not mentioned) "Marshal Ney's French soldiers are driven into the forest in the battle of Krasny.",
7:55 Alexander Yurievich Averyanov "Defense of Smolensk 5 (17) August 1812",
13:51 E. Zaitsev - "Prayer before the battle.",
17:52 A. Averyanov "The feat of the artillerymen",
18:44 A. Averyanov "Fight for Bagration flushes",
19:21 A. Averyanov "Prince P. Bagration in the Battle of Borodino. The last counterattack",
20:09 Without author "retreading Horseguad in the Battle of Borodino",
24:08 V. Vereshchagin "The End of the Battle of Borodino"
To grasp the scale of death at Borodino, one commentator put it as follows: "Imagine a Jumbo-Jet full of people crashing in these fields EVERY THREE MINUTES from breakfast till sundown." That would be a 747 type of Jet, which would hold over 400 people. And the battlefield is about 11 square miles.
The NRG Stadium in Huston, TX has a capacity of 72,220 people. That's about 1,500 people less than the total casualties at Borodino.
The battle of the Somme, with modern artillery, tanks, automatic and semi automatic weapons (as opposed to muskets) and tanks saw 60.000 dead on the first day
The battle of Borodino with none of these killed 10.000 more. That should give you an idea. Plus the population of countries back the was a lot smaller so the impact of such a war was more widely felt
@@roboguard96 Casualties include the wounded, missing, and captured. Not every casualty is a death. Thus, the plane crashing analogy is more apt than a comparison with the first day of the Somme.
@@roboguard96 Not dead, total British casualties which included 20,000(!) KIA, greatest mortality of any single day in their military history. To be fair Haig didn't want to attack but the French were practically begging for an allied offensive to keep Germany from reinforcing their own offensive around Verdun. Without that France would almost certainly have lost Verdun and quite possibly the war.
@@primevaltimes "Not every casualty is a death" reminds me of that Star Wars fanfilm where a stormtrooper is only wounded and his comrades are so confused that he's alive that they end up shooting him to solve the confusion.
The soldiers were so exalted with the idea of a battle taking place, who when the Russians began firing back all the French army cheered because it was clear who they didn't retreat again
I always wondered did they look at war in the cruel way we in the modern day think about or did they really just welcome it as a soldier
@@zetos4440 modern perception of the war in the west worldview kicked in only after two world wars in the early XX century. Before it war was much more mundane event with a tint of glorification.
@@090giver090 Thats not completely true. The perceptions of war and death are not constant in history, but rather vary greatly between different time periods, locations and cultures. S
A society or nations could become warlike if given the right economic, political situations that make its leaders and people open to the idea of war, especially if no large war had been fought prior. We seen this after 9/11 when most Americans support the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The anti war sentiment only came after the war, not before it. That’s why mankind will always making the same mistake again, because we are monkeys with the memory spans of a few generations at most.
@@090giver090 That's kind of a broad stroke too. Wars always happen because people always find something to fight for, justifiably or not. That does not infer anything about the society's mentality or the mentality of it's soldiers. In this instance, there was a glory to war very much like today. The notion of service, patriotism, protection of your fellow citizens etc etc. That hasn't changed. The soldiers cheered at the start of Borodino because they just walked thousands of kilometers with no clear action, just aimlessly wandering in horrid conditions. They didn't want the death of battle, rather it's meaning in what comes next. Battle meant action, decisiveness. They either win , or they go home. Sort of like ripping off a bandaid.
People have always been sensitive to the horrors of war. They were more equipped, and used, to the chance of it happening in the past. Doesn't mean they were happy about it. The Italians showed as much when they were conquered by Napoleon during the First Coalition War under the Directoire. The french showed as much during the campaign of 1814 (and after losing 90k men in a single month on the opening moves of wwII, with the looming specter of millions dead in wwI). There is a famous story of a peasant woman spitting at the feet of a couple french officers asking for supplies in Northern France shortly before Waterloo, screaming about how her two youngest sons were taken by "the Ogre"'s (L'Ogre, a nickname for Napoleon) wars, and how she didn't have anything left to give, much like the country. Little did she know that among the officers was Napoleon, who didn't react and let her be, to the surprise of his staff who spoke about it afterwards.
War involves group thinking. Group thinking is the result of a balance between propaganda, education, and added experience. That experience is more accessible now, and propaganda is harder to accomplish. People can turn on a tv or computer and see the effects of war rather than the "adventurous lives of the bois" from newspapers of the time. They move in cycles in a single war, not across history. Every war left a bitter taste among people after or during the fact. It didn't just change all of a sudden with the WWs. Altho those certainly helped for the modern stance of most western countries. But still today, there's a "glory and adventure with the bros" side pushed by recruiters, even in the west. From time to time a "come and become an anime/videogame badass" take on it. Just look at ads (our most modern and commercial form of propaganda) made by militaries today. You don't even need to understand the language to understand the message.
CCP: th-cam.com/video/JOWRembdPS8/w-d-xo.html
Russia: th-cam.com/video/aqek78JXckw/w-d-xo.html
USA: th-cam.com/video/rSilTq4shzA/w-d-xo.html
France: th-cam.com/video/A8NhabFRXZQ/w-d-xo.html
Heavy handed side-dish of self righteousness and patriotism. You have the formula.
The loose formation used by the cavalry was often used to avoid cannon fire on approaching the enemy army then they closed in to charge as soon as they are near enemy formations. Redoubts are temporary earthworks and fortifications used during Napoleonic wars to mount cannons onto a fixed position(some kind of mini fort) like the ones that were used by both sides in the siege of Toulon.
To add onto the cavalry comment;
Cavalry doctrine of the time required in combat formation, to have one horse width apart between each rider. This gives some room for mobility for the horse, dodging rocks, hedges, etc, and for the rider to swing their sword. Additionally, each rank was at LEAST 2 horse lengths away from each other, but possibly more. This gave an opportunity for the rider to react to what the person in front is doing, and avoided one felled horse to take out a chunk of a squadron.
This resulted in cavalry engagements occurring in waves. The first wave hits, they swipe at each other, then crash into the second wave, on and on until they break free, and maneuver in for it again, or they run out of space and are forced to fight.
Also, contrary to popular belief, cavalry normally would not clash at full tilt, they would slow down before actually making contact, in favour of maneuverability and so as to not destroy the bones in your arms hitting another sword or armour.
Spreading out the cavalry also allowed individual horsemen to turn their horses around if needed, rather than circling as a formation.
(Edited for your question) A Redoubt is a earth work that covers the side and front of a unit of guns, it sometimes has a trench in the front as well. One thing that wasn't mentioned in the video was that a redoubt is meant to be open at the back so the gunners for the cannons can pull the guns out quickly, but the commander of the Grand Redout ordered a wall be made at the back as he was determaned that him and his men would die by their guns some what following a line by Sun Tzu "Throw your men into posistions from which their is no escape and they will prefer death to flight"
He broke their pans and pots.
I am a history teacher. Don't apologize for either not knowing something or comparing things to what you know: that is how you learn. Historians are yeah nuts. Whatever you say they will always say, "Yeah, but..." and tell you a differs nuance. Hitler and Napoleon are perfectly natural and good comparisons, as long as you remember that all comparisons break down at some point.
I love your channel because it helps me see things through a fresh perspective, and it gets me to watch things that are interesting but I wouldn't watch on my own because I would be saying, "yeah, but..." in stead of appreciating what's good.
It was supposed to say yeah but without a space, not yeah nuts! Autocorrect...
As a fellow history teacher, I would almost concur to everything you said here... yeah, but... ;)
I think the comparison between the Napoleonic war and the 2nd World War is justified in many ways
Like
Both Napoleon and Hitler fighting on more then on front
2 the British fighting the long way of attrition
3 the War of economy
4 they both World wars
5 muilty nation coalition
@@daniellastuart3145 I guess when it comes to the invasion of Russia the key difference; Hitler utilizes an element of surprise to try and invade Russia. Suprise them, catch them on the backfoot and encircle destroy their armies. Eliminate the Soviet government before they can successfully fully mobilize. On the other hand. Napoleon tried to use size to win a key battle. Preferably that key battle being not too far into Russia so that his army's position stays still a threat to St. Petersburg and well-supplied thru Poland.
I appreciate the encouragement!
As a russian I can say that in our historiography the war of 1812 year and ww2 connected, because only this two wars have adjective 'patriotic' war, it shows that not only army fought against invaders but also ordinary people united in partisan squads to resist invaders.
Quite a different nations, the kingdom Russia of 1812 and Soviet Russia of the 1930/40s.
@@StephenButlerOne Different but. The Russian back then fought for religion and honor. Soviet Russians fought for their revolution. Hitler thought Russia would buckle again as it did during WW1. Pre-Revolution Russia. As flawed as Communism is, the thing is that was a major revolution in Russia. The veterans and founding fathers of that revolution were old men/women but many were still around. The sons and daughters of those veterans and patriots were starting to take over whatever their parents created (something to fight for). Basically what I am trying to say invading Russia during WW2, is equivalent to Britain attempting a full invasion of the USA in 1812. In 1812 the founding fathers of the United States are still alive and their sons and daughters are beginning to inherit running the show (something to fight for). Britain would have run into a lot of resistance. The USA didn't have their civil war until all the founding fathers were gone, and a 3 or 4th generation was in power.
In fact, the First World War in Russia was called the Great Patriotic War. But the communists deleted this story and then used Russian nationalism against the Nazis.
@@radziwill7193 Never heard about wwI called patriotic. Check again your info. What russian nationalism, did russians live in Germany in that time? And we wanted to unite the nation? What are you talking about?
@@radziwill7193 it's still called the great patriotic war in Russia isn't it? I've never come across the other term
Borodino is an interesting battle in that tactically it was basically a slugging match between two armies. And overall the French were handled much better tactically. This resulted in significantly greater casualties for the Russians despite them being on the defensive. (I note here that, like many battles of the Napoleonic era casualties are disputed. The figures given c. 30,000 for the French and C. 44,000 for the Russian are likely right for the Russians but the 30,000 figure for the French is probably too low and relies on figures from the Napoleonic Fan club that exists among Historians etc., a little too much. The actual figure is probably 34,000 - 36,000).
Regarding the battle itself. It is noteworthy that Napoleon's handling , or should I say non-handling, of the battle is notorious. Basically Napoleon did very little and left it too his Marshals and Generals, with one important exception. Bizarrely this was duplicated among the Russians. Kutuzov did even less than Napoleon during the battle. Leaving his generals to pick up the slack. Fortunately for the Russians Bagration and especially Barclay performed magnificently that day. No thanks to Kutuzov. And on the French side so did the Marshals and Generals. Notably Ney, Davout and Murat.
One of the more remarkable features of the battle was the poor handling of the Russian artillery. Due to a series of circumstances and sheer idiocy about 40% never came into action. The result was French artillery superiority during the battle and this likely caused the Russians to lose.
Napoleon's one important intervention in the battle was his decision not to send in the Guard. Debate has been endless about this. My own opinion is that in retrospect it was a mistake but at the time it was a perfectly reasonable decision to make. After all Napoleon could not predict the future and with the knowledge he had at the time this was probably the best decision he could have made. It turned out to be wrong because the Russians responded in ways he did not expect, or for that matter anyone at the time would think was likely.
Also it must be made clear that even if Napoleon had crushed / destroyed the Russian army at Borodino Alexander may not have made peace but continued the war. Conquering Russia even with the horde Napoleon brought was an absurd idea at the time. Even with no large formal Russian army Napoleon's army would have been swallowed up in a super Spain. In a horrific massive guerilla war in territory much larger, geographically much worst and significantly less productive than Spain. If Spain was a serious drain on French resources a Russian guerilla war would have been many times worst. Napoleon's hope was that destroying / crushing the main Russian army would so shock Alexander and his supporters that they would make peace on terms Napoleon wanted. There was no certainty that this would have happened if Napoleon had won a crushing victory at Borodino. But still Napoleon would have had a better chance of a favorable peace if he had won a crushing victory at Borodino.
I would also agree that not sending the guard, which would probably cause alot of damage to the Russian army, because they were buckling under the pressure, and perhaps make the retreat easier (thou there are easier ways to improve that outcome...).
But I also think that it is an excusable mistake. Napoleon didn't have our knowledge on how many and where the enemy troops where and maybe there was still another Cossack cavalry detachment out there just waiting for him committing the guard.
And even with hindsight, the desire to have an intact reserve left is not irrational. Especially with the problems of logistics.
Traditionally (especially in the military theory of the late 18th - early 19th centuries) it was believed that the battle was won by the one for whom the battlefield remained. Obviously, the field remained with Napoleon, after which he occupied Moscow without any problems. But on the other hand, it is just as obvious that, having won the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon lost the campaign: by December 1812, not a single uncaptured French soldier remained on the territory of the Russian Empire, and in December the Russian army's overseas campaign had actually begun and the war was fought on territory of Europe. Thus, the strategic battle of Borodino was won by Emperor Alexander and Field Marshal Kutuzov. They saved the army and proved the correctness of this decision. Very little time will pass after September 8 and at Maloyaroslavets Napoleon will be stopped, he will be forced to retreat along the old Smolensk road. So it turns out that Borodino was won by Napoleon purely formally, but in fact - by Kutuzov. And in the Russian tradition it has always been considered so. Although the French considered and continue to consider the battle "at the walls of Moscow" a victory for Napoleon.
So it depends on which bell to watch.
You have a very strange assessment of Kutuzov. Napoleon could have achieved victory if his opponent had not been Kutuzov, but a more traditionally thinking general who would have continued the battle until the very end. But Kutuzov withdrew the army, keeping it. Otherwise, nothing would have remained of the Russian army in this battle. Napoleon would also have suffered heavy losses, but he would have won the battle anyway, and after that he would have taken Russia practically with his bare hands. This, in fact, is the ingenious merit of Kutuzov, that he abandoned the template of a general battle and battle to the last drop of blood and saved the army. But Kutuzov could not win Borodino, since there was an inequality of forces and capabilities of the strategic potential.
The spread-out cavalry is skirmishing. Screening the approach of the main army, harrassing enemy light troops and messengers, scouting, forcing the enemy into cover or at least a more cautious approach.
That was the job of light cavalry on the battlefield, beyond their tasks of reconnaissance, guarding and harrassment outside of the major battles.
Heavy cavalry on the charge used a denser formation, much more dense, with the riders almost leg to leg. The main impact of a cavalry charge was in... the impact, and the more mass you could bring into a small space, the better.
Well said. There's an interesting 20-year-old Napoleonic tactical real-time game system which reflects this and other neat details: Breakaway Games' Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Battle and Austerlitz: Napoleon's Greatest Victory. May have trouble running them on Windows 10; installing last patches (1.002 and 2.01 respectively) can help. We had to burn discs for both as well.
There is a simple and at the same time very wise expression:"Save the people by losing the land - the land can still be returned. Save the land by losing people - you will remain without people and without land".
A redoubt is an improvised fortress, get the top of a hill or a village, get some gabbions, whicker baskets filled with rock or soil, the pre-20th century version of sandbags and dig in some cannons or infantry.
The movie 'Waterloo' was made in the seventies and was classified as suitable for general audiences. (just as an FYI, the battle scenes were filmed using whole regiments of Red Army soldiers who rehearsed and learned Napoleonic battle formations to make the film as authentic as possible.) Similarly, the TV series 'Sharpe' was made for prime-time TV and traces Sargent Sharpe's rise from the ranks to become a Major in the 95th Rifles attached to a regiment of infantry called the 'South Essex' regiment. Inspiration for the author came from many places, including a book called 'The Recollections of Rifleman Harris' made from the diary kept by Harris during the war in Spain. Harris is portrayed in the TV show as one of Sharpe's men.
Yeah, “Waterloo” movie is maybe the best war movie ever (in my opinion)
Rob Steiger is for me the best Napoleon, i saw some films about napoleon and not even French actors (most famous were pierre mondy and Christian clavier) are better than Steiger.
@@progylkinpresents4565 you can check the channel history buffs 😉.
btw the 1970 Waterloo film because there's been other series/films also named napoleon
Rod Stiger and Christian Claver are my two go-to onscreen depictions of our Lord and Master Emperor Napoleon I. Rod Stiger for the more volatile side of Napoleon (such as he could go from calm to raging back to calm with the drop of a hat) and Claver for the civil and military mastermind of Napoleon.
Many, many artists made these painting, not just french guys ;)
@ExLegionary no they were not many of these were russian
@Aniruddh I have no idea what point you're trying to make here... you're saying only the French made the paintings yet many of them were Russian 🤔
11:15 redoute is a defensive position made of wood and sand or even if it's enough time bricks etc. Sometimes very complex. Redoutes made of bricks by Vauban in times of Louis XIV were very strong in France
just a temporary field fortress
“ solider, face to the enemy let’s go and get killed “
- French officer to his soldiers at the battle of borodino
The “Come on you apes you wanna live forever”?, of the XIX century.
Those who died in battle ironically were the lucky ones.
The old joke is "Soldier did you come here to die?" "No sir I came here Yesterdye"
Was that soldier an Aussie, by any chance?
Kutuzov was kind of the Russian version of Nelson as he was seen as an Icon and was constantly getting wounded even getting shot in the head and surviving.
No, this is myph, Kutuzov was used as a propaganda symbol - he was high officer under command of Alexander Suvorov - greatest Russian general. And this fact increased morale of Russian army. But factually, Barclay, Wintegstein, Bagration and Bennigsen were higher in command than Kutuzov, they were marshals, while Kutuzov was general. How can general command marshals?
@@arty5876 I think your misunderstanding what i was saying, i was trying to say he was an icon.
Nelson himself wasn't the head of the Royal Navy, he commanded the white division their was another Division above and that Admiral held seniority over Nelson.
He was a symbol among Russian soldiers only because he had a Slavic surname. But in reality it was a baptized Tatar.
@@radziwill7193 why you said "it" ? You hate Tatars? All Easten slavs have Tatar roots - East slavic nations were formed in ~7th century from hybrid of Central slavs, Scandinavians and Scyphs (de facto Tatars). Tatars also Europeoid race, they have white skin. This is not Asian nomads, how many people think.
@@arty5876 TH-cam deletes my messages, I can not accurately express my thoughts. Genetics and stories about abortions raped by the Tatars show the hatred of the Slavs towards the Tatars.
-When they say how many casualties there were it's not all dead people, it includes wounded, captured and missing (and anything else that takes a soldier out of service). Still Borodino is the bloodiest single day of the napoleonic wars.
-As for what they did with all those corpses, as far as I'm aware they just left them for the crows.
-You will see why Moscow is burning in the next video so I won't spoil it
74,000 casualties in a single day is a terrifyingly high number for any era of warfare. I think something a lot of people don't understand is that these older battles would often take place on a single battlefield over the course of one day, two or three days at the most and sometimes in the space of just a few hours. When you look at those massive WW2 battles like Stalingrad, Moscow and Normandy and you see the casualty numbers in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, you have to remember that these "battles" were more like campaigns, with many smaller battles taking place over a very large area with millions of troops involved that would last sometimes for months. For example at the Battle of Stalingrad the Soviets experienced 1.2 million casualties (between dead, wounded, sick, captured and missing) but that was a 166 day long battle. If you do the math that's an average of about 6,900 casualties per day. If daily Russian casualty numbers were as high at Stalingrad as they were at Borodino (44,000), the Soviets would have suffered over 7 million casualties instead of 1.2 million. Just a different way of looking at it.
The fire in moscow will be explained next video. The choice of phrase is because the event is rather famous.
@ErikBloodaxe A former capital but still a very important city, the capital during that time was St. Petersburg
Moscow still was the biggest city during that period. Trade and business center. St. Petersburg was more like an administrative center with the Emperor's residence and ministries. Washington DC and NY can be rough analogy.
You are "GORGEOUS!" Take care matey. Love listening to you. Take care. John.x
you shouldnt apologize for bringing up WW2 eastern front with Napoleon because the comparison is a fair and relevant one. The German soldiers invading Russia were very well aware of it as well and some of the officers had with them Caulincort's 1st hand accounts detailing Napoleons campaign in Russia. The vastness and environment of Russia mattered just as much to the Germans as it did to Napoleons army.
If you live in a village and hear rumors of armies approaching nearby, you run like hell! Simple as that.
What happened to the dead?
Well, that depended on where you were, if the army stayed, if civilians could take over the task and more factors. I think I read somewhere that in Borodino little to no cleanup efforts were taken. Napoleon was eager to advance, the russion army was retreating and the area was lightly populated (compared to central europe). Meaning the corpses were mostly rotting on the fields for weeks at least.
One guy survived by eating (and sleeping in [?!]) dead horses. The French discovered him when they passed the battlefield during their retreat. Grotesque, no?
@@jonshive5482 the story of sleeping in dead horses is real. They used the heat of the rotting carcass to not freeze to death at night
Wellesley/Wellington famously rejected being identified as Irish despite being born in Ireland, saying "Just because a man is born in a stable does not make him a horse." However, as the other commenters said, a third of his army in the Peninsula was Irish, and this probably played a part in how he delivered Catholic Emancipation when he became Prime Minister despite being incredibly anti-reform on everything else.
13:59 a french ally, but the man was German, Westphalia is the western part of Germany (Somewhat famous for the "Westphalia peace" that ended the 30 year war)
The casualties for Borodino would be my entire hometown being wiped off the map :(
First day at Verdun would depopulate my home island at the height of turist season.
A piece of trivia: in french, there is some expression wich refers to Napoleon's defeat.
"Un coup de Trafalgar" (a Trafalgar coup, meaning a situation/event with serious consequences)
"C'est la Bérézina" (it's the Berezina, meaning something is a disaster)
I'm French and i've never heard of the Trafalgar expression... I don't even know it.
I've never heard about the Berezina expression either, but I know this one.
@@irov5884
One common critique of Napoleon is that he became more conservative with his military strategy as his rule went on relying more on overwhelming force than clever or bold maneuvers. You kind of see that in this episode
But he was kind of proven right in both decisions. Sending imperial guard makes sense assuming Russia surrenders after Moscow falls which doesn't happen and the flanking manouver probably wouldn't work because, as it is later said. that land was a thick forest so army would be very slow and it would be hardly possible for them to keep their organization at acceptable level.
@@draganmarkovic491 Kinda.
Sending the guard in would properly lead to a far worse state of the Russian army (including when Napoleon has to retreat), which would probably not lead to Russia given up, but to an easier retreat (mind you that there are other mistakes more pressing in that regard).
Thou it was by no means an "obvious error" even with hindsight.
As for the flanking: the problem with fictional flanking maneuvers is that people more or less always assume that the enemy does nothing to intervene. That is hardly the case thou.
@@Nonsense010688 Yeah after reading your comment I do agree. ... here is thing south-east of Moscow where Kutuzov took his army to recover that is the military-industrial complex area. Meaning at that spot, Kutuzov could recruit, and equip and regroup the army. If Napoleon had outright demolished the Russian army, odds are that he wouldn't have been forced to sit in Moscow. He could have actually possibly pushed south-east of Moscow and captured that area. My guess is Alexander would have talked peace rather than possibly see that area destroyed. Destroying Moscow, the residential housing area that can be rebuilt. But destroying the area that was industrious and a driver of innovation and armament, food supply, the gathering spot for the Siberian fur trade/textile industry, etc.. of the country is a completely different thing. To rebuild not just the army but also Moscow quickly you need that industrial area to stay intact. That is why Kutuzov is guarding it.
It’s pretty morbid, but battlefields of the era were pretty nightmarish after the battle was fought. It was pretty commonplace to simply leave the bodies out there, and then the looters would systematically strip the bodies of any and all valuables. Accounts describe field covered by naked bloody bodies rotting in the sun and being eaten at by birds. Also accounts of bodies piling up in massive mounds. Certainly a horrific scene
You should read if you can (in French) : “Le Dormeur du Val”, a powerful little sonnet written by Rimbaud (genius poet)
Waterloo and War and Peace are not to graphic. They worked with real actors and without cgi you couldnt show very graphic wounds. There is not even a lot of blood in waterloo. But the battle in War and Peace has a very depressing athmosphere. The scale of both movies is gigantic and will propably never be recreated in human history. The Soviet army lend its army to the creators. There are 17.000 real humans in this movies, that where trained in the tactics of the day. If you watch War and Peace, watch the soviet version of it. This is the version with the huge amount of extras and the very spectacular battle of borodino.
well... Most of the French were devoted, and knew their best chances was of getting a quick battle in which their leaders were master at..... Desertion meant having to cross the ENTIRE continent, crossing 15 regions where people neither talked your language nor were very found of your country....
i worked on a pipeline in russia with a Uk company here, in England, we found many many french napoleonic medals, and buttons and badges for hats, all in bad shape, but i still have 12, French medals and 8 shako badges, many buttons and lots of personal items .Message me if you would like pics of them, they are a lovely bit of history my favorite is a horse bone made into a flute.
Years ago there was a miniseries about war. One of the things the host covered was Borodino. He described the losses in terms to which modern people can relate. He said basically - picture a 747 full of people crashing into the ground, and then another, and another...and this goes on with a 747 crashing every X minutes for Y hours and then it happens again the next day. If I could remember the name of the series, I'd recommend it to you. It wasn't about any particular war, but about the evolution of it and the psychology.
Another thing that series covered was that once a war starts, everyone involved at every level is trapped in it. The combat troops are fighting for their lives, their buddies lives, and because they don't want to fail their buddies. Officers above direct contact have their orders. The leaders can't stop without admitting that all of the losses had been in vain. It is like one of those finger traps.
Burning bodies doesn't work as well as most people think. Crematoriums work at a different level than open burning.
You reminded me of the end of "War Games" where the computer concludes "Strange game...the only winning move is not to play." What it doesn't say is that to not play, you have to convince everyone that they don't want to mess with you.
You should read "The Defense of Duffer's Drift" It is used for training officers on field tactics, but it reads like a novel. The protagonist experiences a series of dreams, each one correcting the errors he made in the previous dream. It isn't a long book. It is set in the Boer War, but I think there was a rewrite to the Afghanistan.
Thanks been looking forward to this one , hey roger
If you google Pavel Yakovlevich Tolstoguzov, there is a photo of a Russian who fought at the battle of Borodino (he was 14 years old), he lived till he was 114 years old. There are also photos of both Napoleon and Wellington war veterans; even a photo of wellington in his old age.
Grim. The futility of war for all to see. I enjoy watching your history series, thank you for sharing the learning experience.
To put thing into perspective: The US lost 58.000 men in the whole of the Vietnam war (close to 20 years of fighting) while over 70.000 men died in a single day battle at Borodino.
To put Borodino in a general military context, the British supreme example of military disaster is the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, but more men died at Borodino than on 1st July 1916, and along a front of 4-5 miles, rather than the 20 mile front on the Somme. It is no exaggeration to say that the French were climbing over mountains of their dead by the time they finally captured the Fleches. One of the finest descriptions of Borodino, appears in Tolstoy's War and Peace, where the battle is largely experienced through the eyes of one of the main characters in the novel, Count Pierre Bezhukov, who rides out of Moscow to "see what a battle looks like" and eventually finds himself in the midst of the fighting. The 1967-8 Russian Film of War and Peace, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk (who went on to direct Waterloo) has a truly epic Borodino sequence, for which he was given 6 divisions of the Russian Army as extras. Here is a compilation from the Borodino scene: th-cam.com/video/4SVC_9V8K5Y/w-d-xo.html
I love your channel keep up the great stuff!!!!!
If this was too bloody for you, you haven't seen the other chapters yet 😂
Hey there Southern Girl! I just wanna give some input.
Per your statement at 14:02, there is a difference between things that inspire the Russian on those two wars. The first one is a religious valor and while the second one is their very existence. At 1812 the Russian thought that Napoleon would come to extinguish their Orthodox faith, reminiscence of previous Templar and Polish invasion centuries ago. The reality is Napoleon doesn't think of doing such things, but the Russian keep that narrative on because religious valour is such a noble and estemeed ideas at that time. While in WW2, their fear is justified because Hitler publicly and loudly admit his idea of basically extinguishing Slavic people from Eastern Europe. Ordinary Soviet soldiers doesn't care about communism that much especially when the other side swore to annihilate them.
Btw some short clips you might find interesting (taken from War and Peace 1966 movie)
-Veneration of the Icon before Borodino
th-cam.com/video/vLTQIh3CB2c/w-d-xo.html (720p)
th-cam.com/video/shOtt7zcD9Q/w-d-xo.html (with subtitles)
- Battle of Borodino
th-cam.com/video/k97nvOSBDnk/w-d-xo.html
Hope you see this and find it entertaining/useful :)
I really like the fact that you give feedbacks, engaging with us and putting your effort to really follow the topic in hand. This is my first time seeing such format on a reaction channel and it's refreshing to see. My big props to you! 👏
Thanks, Garry!
Русские в обеих войнах просто защищали свою землю. Всё. Не надо придумывать ничего лишнего.
So to answer a few of your questions and help expand your knowledge:
1. The cavalry at the start were in a loose skirmish order. This was primarily used for scouting and protection vs cavalry and artillery.
- it helped with scouting as they covered a larger area as such could see a lot more area/ground or similar ground to other but at different angles - while one person may see what looks like a steep bank, another could potentially see that it was two inclines with a break/dip between them that isn’t exposed from a front angle.
- the protection from cavalry came that if engaged, the others could quickly flee/retreat to safety or could build up speed to preform a counter attack. Against artillery, it was done so that if a shell detonated amongst the horses or cannon ball struck the unit, it would only wound/kill a bare few men and horse, while if packed together it would cause considerably more casualties.
2. Napoleons speech was quite well received. At that time many of his soldiers were deeply loyal to him and his marshal and believed him when he said they’d see victory for they usually did and with not that many casualties - of course when we see them they are massive, however to your average solider they barely knew the true scale only the deaths and wounded that came from their company/battalion.
- referring to the “face to the enemy, let’s go and get killed” line later spoke by a French Colonel, it may have been partial inspiration (soldiers take very different to dark humour and such things as such statements like that are saw as jovial) but it very likely could have been a colonel dreading his duty to advance and that statement being his callous way of showing his dread to the idea, but preforming to his duty.
- as for desertion, you’d be surprised but many chose to stay over desert especially with the news of the Russian Cossacks. Also, desertion would actually make you a casualty of war too - casualty referring to any injury that takes a solider out of combat (death, large wounds, small wounds, feeling a bit dizzy/ill, major exhaustion and many other things). Interestingly, if your ever near a hospital or watch a hospital show, you’ll probably commonly hear your every day patient referred to as a casualty too.
3. A readout is a fortification that is made from a massive mound of earth piled together and shaped into a defensive angle. These could also have open ports for artillery to shoot from (think like how castles have gaps between the upper wall areas for people to shoot from), have small to large trench lines for infantry to form at their front and flanks, and could also have some wooden palisades and defences for ward off frontal cavalry or flanking cavalry charges, tho every redoubt is different)
4. To us it may seem weird that the Russian artillery general was only 27, however you must remember that during this age many young men of prominent aristocratic/rich/military families would begin training for these types of positions from a very young age - between 10-15 when many start. You’d also find that those who have came up from the ranks may have even started their careers when they were still only 15 or close to. During the 17th and 18th century, going off to war was sometimes saw as the better option that doing whatever task your family brought you up to do.
5. Oh you’ll see next episode why the fires began
was waiting for this...
You mentioned the calvary spacing. Very good observation and a good question. The cavalry like all other forms of military units conduct their drill in different formations or orders of march. Formations being like wedge, line of battle, coloum etc. What u noticed is order of March. They would have tight dense formations only for the pitched battle as it allows the unit to give greater impact and had a devastating psychological force. On the march though the cavalry would operate in a dispersed order of march, to limit the effect of skirmish fire, maximize the ground being reconoidered, and provide ease of movement as a denser formation needs longer to turn and can not react the same as an open order of march
28:10 - War is always war and the soldiers are commiting to the same risks no matter the age or the weapons.
It's odd that Tchaikovsky's triumphant 1812 Overture was commissioned to commemorate what was later seen as a "successful" defence of Borodino. Sure, the Russians succeeded in keeping Napoleon at bay, but they sustained a higher number of casualties and ulitmately retreated, allowing the Grande Armée to advance on Moscow. Posterity might look on Borodino as a pivotal moment in the ultimate defeat of Bonaparte's Russian campaign, but the battle itself took a heavy toll on both sides.
It was commissioned to commemorate the victory in the war of 1812, not only the battle of Borodino
@@princejulius7704 I'd always been taught that it referred to Borodino itself, but thanks for the correction.
Never forget that we are watching history with a 21st centuries mindset
this is for me the most important part of history
not just the facts - they always got along with a society at that times
this is the one and only reason why i would love to have a time machine
For the 100th anniversary of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, a panoramic painting of the Battle of Borodino was created in Moscow by F. Rubaut, which made it possible to better immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the battle. The idea of such paintings was quite popular, around the same time a panorama of the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium appeared, before that the Battle of Gettysburg in the USA, etc.
Cavalry charged togheter but they normally are dispersed while marching or not engaging, to have more freedom of manouver and to avoid the potential of a cannonball smashing deep into the ranks. As the horses are easier targets
Peter Bagrationi was from the line of Georgian kings, and Napoleon also said that the Russians would never have such a strong general as a Caucasian.
There was so much carnage that you wouldn’t be walking on ground but on dead bodies sometimes piled as high as 8 bodies on top of each other, filling up the moats of the redoubts and even getting all the way to the top of the walls.
Anyone else got the 1812 Overture on second screen while watching this?
Redoubts were a type of earthwork that was really simple. It was just a trench in front and then a defensive mound with embrasures for the cannon.
Attempting to answer your outro questions:
1. Casulty numbers: The term "casulty" just means a soldier that was taken out of combat. Not all of them were killed... though often a lot of the wounded died in the aftermath due to lacking or bad medical treatment.
For example, of the about 30,000 French casulties, about 7 to 8000 were killed, the rest wounded or missing.
It still was a slaughter on a massive scale.
2. You can watch both "Sharpe" as well as the classic "Waterloo" movies without fear. "Sharpe" was made for TV, and is more focused on the heoric individuals than huge battles and slaughter. "Waterloo" is a major battle, and features thousands of actives (fun fact: Soviet Red Army soldiers), but it's from a time when gratuitous bloody violence wasn't that dominant on the silver screen.
3. Napoleonic wargames differ a lot in style and scope. The "Total War: Napoleon", of which there's often footage used, plays both on the strategic side - raising and moving armies through countries - as well as the tactial battles... but because the player controls the strategy, there won't be replays of the "famous" battles... or even wars. If your Napoleon doesn't want to invade Russia, well, no one is forcing you.
Other games set different foci. Some will be purely strategic, and even major battles are just a few symbols on the map moving. Others focus on individual campagins or battles... and there you can indeed change the outcome.
4. Moscow burning. The Russian's didn't fight for Moscow, even though some people wanted to, and the "offical" line had been given out that Borodino had been a glorious Russian victory. Retreating Russian troops had already started some fires, in the "scorched earth" tradition. French soldiers might have started others, and then there was the general danger of fires from open lightsources and a paniced population. Whoever was _mainly_ responsible, the result was that most of Moscow - still mainly build from wood - burned to the ground, and didn't offer much shelter for Napoleon's army.
Well if i am not wrong the Napoleon total war had some historical battles...
@@omarbradley6807 Waterloo was one, I remember that. But I also remember that the battle Artificial Intelligence in the Total War games was... not that intelligent. Which makes recapturing the spirit of a Napoleonic battle a bit difficult.
Florence Nightingale invented the pie chart to show generals how clean hospitals saved soldier lives and Mary Seacole was also somebody who transformed army hospitals, both in the Crimean War.
She developed nursery especially for the British in Crimea, but Napoleon had Dominique Larrey, a pioneer in medicine
We actually learn about her in school over here, and in fact, I didn't realize she was English - that's just me not remembering things correctly from school :) But I'd like to do a video on her.
Fun Fact : many *big* momentx in history are related with critical geological and climatic perturbation.
Napoléon went to Russia in 1812, and between 1815-1820 was actually the end coldest spike of what we call "the little ice age" or Maunder Minimum/
I.E Napoléon *exactly* choosed the worse years of the millenia to attempt a nice winter Russia Tour
Made me think about this. Mongol invasion of Russian Principalities happened in the 1200s. Little Ice age begins. Russia grows stronger! Removes the Mongol Yoke with the beginning of the little ice age. Creates the Russian Empire. End of little ice age.. Google has it at 1860. You could argue the troubles for the Russian imperial family (other royal families all across the globe as well..). By 1918 they are removed. ....... A thing I read before on the mini-ice age was the height of people. I guess the average skeleton height 1500 or before is equal to that of a 20th-century person. In between the 1500 and into the 20th-century people are shorter. Altho I believe Noble families probably kept their height, it was the peasants that brought down the average. Part of the reason nobles started to believe they were a completely separate race of humans from the peasants.
30:13 Napoleon Total War can be purchased on Steam, a common gaming library tool. I would highly recommend the game due to its graphics, historical units, strategies, and navy battles. A great Real Time Strategy game.
The game has several modes to choose from: a campaign (control French troops, Calvary, and cannon regiments using a mouse/keyboard; any battle has this incorporated into the game), multiplayer (fight other player teams with your own team in pre-chosen maps by the host), coalition mode (pick a side of the coalition against France and work your way towards conquering France/Europe region by region), and free for all mode (fight other computer players while choosing army units per each side and the battlefield to fight on).
The war games allow the player to command each regiment by weapon class (e.g. bayonet, musket, rifle, bombs, cannon shot, grape shot, shells, swords, etc.), positioning (e.g. form square, column, spread out formation, retreat, etc.), speed, and when to engage the enemy. Once choosing your tactics, it may be difficult to control your regiment once engaged in the fight as the troops take fire (i.e. the units are delayed to new orders when in a bayonet engagement with the enemy).
If you get your opponent's army to in full retreat from the battlefield or kill every last enemy solider, you win! The score will state how well each side did. Avoid Pyrrhic Victories, achieve Decisive Victories! Here's a Napoleon Total War 3 vs 3 I was apart of for reference: th-cam.com/video/gK7fLtZF91I/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=ProfessorStroeve
The Russian comander Kutuzov, wanted to anhilate Napoleon, with a simple hammer and anvil manouver. He expected Napoleon to focus on his right under Barcally, and then the troops of Bagration massed behind the fleches, will come out and sourround the Frenchs, but Napoleon attacked Bagration, and Kutuzov freezed, the huge carnage on the Russian ranks during the french assaults was not as bad as it was during the opening barrage of artillery.
That napoleon documentary is very good it had several different titles originally broadcast on the BBC but it covers the events at toulon captain to major napoleon and his rise to fame also the madness of the revolutionary government at the time , the horses in pictures may have been the officer's or reconnaissance units , but you will see a major cavalry battle before the series ends
Regarding cleaning up, most armies prior to about 1850 just didn't do it. Soldiers stayed where they fell unless they were rich enough or famous enough to have somebody come look for them and cart them off. Peasants stripped them of anything valuable including clothing. If anybody wanted to farm that land some day in the future, they had to clean it up first. By that time, scavenging animals and vermin had done a lot of the work, and mostly what they had to bury was bones, which they did with varying levels of ceremony and thoroughness
At that times the casualty rate was almost always under 10%, but there are examples, especially with Napoleonic battles where a side take that 10% of casualties but inflict even a total destruction upon the enemy. Thus winning the war and making everything worth of it but here it was both sides with around 30% casualties without one side being anhilated, thus it was not worth of it, in this case
Please react to “Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow”
She will, don't worry.
I'm doing the whole series, and I think that one's next.
3:14 Bill's 1 war out. In WW1, you're looking at around a 6 or 7 to 1 ratio of deaths in action or from wounds against death by communicable disease. If we take the giant step of assuming that those who died of wounds all died from wound infection (which would be bollocks), you're still looking at around 3:1 killed in action:died of disease.
And the change has bugger all to do with active medical intervention; lessons learned the hard way in the Crimea and South Africa had spread, and the provision of clean drinking water did more to reduce deaths from disease than any other factor.
How cavalry were deployed varied, as it did with infantry. Just as infantry could do things like form storming columns or squares (to hold off cavalry) so could the horsemen. It depended on battlefield terrain (travel is different over open roads than over mountain trails) and what the strategy being employed was. Calvary could be more 'spread out' than infantry, because of the speed of the horses.
It would be called a `Pyrrhic` victory for Napoleon. A news report a couple of months back, stated that French Soldier remains from this era had been unearthed in Russia. Did you hear of this Sogal? . On the first day of the `Battle of the Somme` 1, July 1916, there was a similar `body count` amongst the protagonists-and it stands as the most troops that Britain ever lost on a single day.
Hadn't heard about that, but I can imagine there's all kinds of things over in Europe to unearth like that.
@@SoGal_YT there are loads of stories and videos of people finding old guns and equipment in rivers and fields where they've been lost in long dense frontlines and preserved. Unfortunately it's dangerous to go looking for stuff too, as you still hear stories of unexploded bombs and uncleared minefields. In France, Belgium, and Germany there are a handful of deaths every year from unfortunate people who accidentally trod too close to a hidden hundred year old bomb. The old wars still claim lives
@@SoGal_YT They were discovered Two years ago and numbered 120. Now given Christian burial along with remains of Three Woman and Three Teenage boys.
Sharpe is not gory. Apart from some very few instances, there's very little blood or nasty wounds shown. It gives a good idea of what things were like in Wellington's army. I also recommend watching the Hornblower TV series. Hornblower is similar to Sharpe but regards the fictional Horatio Hornblower serving in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.
Hornblower was based on Thomas Cochrane, plus others.
If Sharpe is less gory, I think it reflects the sensitivities of television production companies and audiences of the time. Even today, something truly gory would be shown, not just after the 9.00 pm watershed (after children are assumed to have gone to bed) but after 10.00 pm.
redout is a defensive hill construction form dirt, made around cannons
The cavalry that is spread out on the field in the painting is called Dragoons, they are not used to charge in to enemy but rather they are carrying muskets and are a skirmishing force. The more tightly packed ones are usually sword wilding or lancer cavalry.
Not exactly. Almost whole cavalry, except heavy reserve cav. maybe, could be used in skirmisher line, flanquer as it was called back than.
Preferably it would be light cavalry, like mounted chasseurs, hussars or lancers.
Dragoons, unlike in XVII, in XVIII and first half XIX, at least in Europe, became "line" cavalry or even "heavy" cavalry, but with option to fight on foot. So in most of cases, You would still not use them in skirmish line, but keep them in reserve for decisive charge, especially if dedicated heavy cavalry was not present.
Only towards end of XIX century and decline of horseback fighting in face of growing firepower, virtually all cavalry came back to role of dragoons with only exceptional episodes of actual full-on charge with swords drawn.
An excerpt from Lermontovs poem "Borodino"
[...]
No sooner did the heavens brighten
Than everyone began to rise, and
The soldiers moved in rows.
Our colonel was so bold, determined:
The soldiers’ sire, the Tsar’s true servant!
We all shed tears when we interred him;
In peace he’s resting now.
He said to us, his eyes like candles,
“Men! Isn’t Moscow there behind us?
Let's die for Moscow now,
Just as our brothers died before us!”
We gave our oath in one great chorus
And then we did just as we promised
Throughout Borodino.
[...]
You'll never see such ruthless battles!
The banners floated by like shadows
And flames glared through the smog;
The sabers rang and buckshot howled as
The fighters wore their strong arms out, and
The slain were stacked up in a mountain
So wide it stopped the cannon balls.
The Frenchmen learned a fair amount that
They didn’t know of Russian combat,
For we fought tooth and nail!
The earth, just like our chests, was quaking;
The horses howled, their manes were shaking;
A thousand shouts and shots were making
One neverending wail …
[...]
Yes, there were folks in that brave era
Who had the hearts and souls of heroes:
Real men, unlike you lads!
They battled, but their luck turned ill, and
So many brave young men were killed then.
But Moscow, if God had not willed it,
Would never have changed hands!
To answer your question about cavalry tactics, generally they would charge in relatively packed formations, but if an enemy unit broke they would spread out and kill the retreating enemy or in the case of combat with infantry, they may also rely on the momentum of the charge to break the unit, depending on the type of cavalry.
I think that picture shows light cav which are scouting in loose formation
To get some perspective, I would use the American Revolution. The New York campaign of 1776 - 1777 for example involved more than 50,000 men and there was combined casualties of about 10,000 men. These losses were inflicted over the course of a year with roughly the same weaponry. Most European battles at the time were likewise no bigger and deadlier than this either. However, the Napoleonic Era had revolutionized war with new tactics ,command, supply and conscription. This resulted in the great powers fielding much larger armies compared to 35 years before and therefore the potential for massive losses in life became immensely higher in a much shorter space of time.
a Re-doubt: a temporary or supplementary fortification, typically square or polygonal and without flanking defenses.
One good thing with this epic history,besides all the other nice and professional things with it is that they always bring quotes...that gives extra flavour to the storytelling,in this case pertaining Napoleon,to read quotes from him during these battles...
cavalry kept at least a horses length from one another when still to reduce the impact of artillery, at a gallop they kept greater distance between eachother depending on speed so that they could slow, stop or maneuvre without hitting one another, and then right if as they charged an enemy they might go back into close order almost stirrup to stirrup. Cavalry actually charging infantry in close order was quite rare, they usually stayed somewhat distant and broke apart so that they could each maneuvre freely and avoid being trapped by their own fellows and brought to a standstill. Basically free movement was more important for the cavalry then keeping close order like infantry, since they weren't a defensive force and weren't offered protection by other cavalrymen.
Richard canton woodville jr was a good painter of military conflicts of them times
Napoleon recognized the value of art as propaganda to popularize his regime. He had an annual budget of 60,000 francs to encourage painting but often overspent it. Some notable examples include Jacques-Louis David (whose paintings are some of the most famous, like Napoleon's coronation portrait or Napoleon crossing the Alps), Francois Gerard, Theodore Gericault, Anne-Louis Girodet, Antoine-Jean Gros, Jean Urbain Guerin, Jean-Auguste Ingres, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Carle Vernet and his son Horace, and Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun. In Spain even Goya worked in the court of King Joseph for a while.
The Epic History TV videos on Napoleons Marshals are great too. Some of them are way more interesting than the battles.
Those could be cavalry skirmishers. They do charge boot to boot.
Editing is top notch from you! 👌👌
Absolutely agree! Sogal’s filming and editing are wonderful, her questions are thoughtful and she attracts excellent commentators.👍
Thanks!
2:16
Think of it this way:
Empire->Kingdom->Duchy->Country->Barony (all of these are areas of land ruled by the equivalent title, so Emperor, Duke, Count and Baron).
Then you get knights below that.
And non-nobles like sergant at arms etc.
A Baron would be a castle and some surrounding areas.
Normally the soldiers across time were hired for a set period of time and a big battle normally meant that their service was nearly over and they would return home soon if they survived.
Cavalry at the time did not bunch up as much to avoid the consequences of Volley Fire from Muzzle Loaders and other Firearms. In earlier periods where more primitive firearms were involved, a decently armored Cavalry Unit can expect to deflect most shots. This continued until about the early - mid 1600s when larger bullets and powder charges meant that armor was very likely to be penetrated. From that point forward, armored units became less common, any Cavalry usually ended up holding a Sword, a Pistol / Carbine (Carbine is a shortened rifle, originally intended for cavalry).
So, all of this to say, well, that's why they're so spread out, its so they don't all get mowed down at once by gun fire. There was also rather devastating cannons that were also employed, which further discouraged bunched up soldiers of any kind, really. At the time, commanders would typically vary between tight formations and more spread out formations depending on immediate needs.
ART : The Napoleonnic period (and Napoléon himself) is maybe the most *PROLIFIC and INSPIRING period/character* for painting, music, and litterture
*(there are more books written about Napoléon, than days which separates us from his death... that's wild)*
Lots of artist were paid, a lot of this were commanded (portait, battle depictions) he has Jacques Louis Davic as his personnal artsit., but most of them were also produced in the mid-late 1800"s. there was a huge *(romantism)* wave of fascination and almost nostalgia of the Revolutionnay and Napoleonnic period all accross Europe.
But we have sculptor and other artist still painting etc about this period, battles, etc, to this day.
Hard to pic a name
And of course, they were two sides... Romantism/interest for Napoléon >< Nationalists waves and anti-French/pro British/europe artists
Such that the more books and painting were done about the Glory of La Grande Armée, the more books and painting were done in response to promote the National Bravor of those who fought him.
Each of the sides feeding the others and generating this HUGE amount of art and litterature about this period which launched an unprecedent wave of change accross Europe and the colonized World; contributing to the "legend"
Intersting to note that the combined French / Russian casualties at the end of the first day, are almost exactly that of the first day of the battle of the Somme in WWI. But bear in mind the WWI casualties were from automatic weapons and artillary that killed at relativly long distances - at Borodino most casualties were from fighting that was almost hand to hand! No wonder both armies were utterly shattered at the end of the first day.
On a different note - modern armies still have priests or ministers - reasonably close to the front line.In th eBritish Army, the chaplains etc are all officers, whereas in the Royal Navy the chaplain automatically has the same rank as the person they are talking to, regardless if it is an admiral or a deckhand! (a piece of genius I think). I don't think things have changed much for the soldier on the ground since these times - they head towards a battle in the knowledge that they may well not return. Certainly in the British Army, troops have to write a 'in case of my death' letter, that will be delivered to there family if they should die.
War is hell especially on the Eastern Front during World War II that was brutal
The biggest difference between Napolean and WWII is Hitler could send supplies (food,clothes asnd ammunition) most of the way by rail while Napolean had to send supplies from France by wagon.
Hitler didn't have it easy either. Soviet Union had a different rail width, which meant that they had to change trains and carts after Poland, or build entirely new railroads.
This slowed down the initial invasion considerably.
Actually, Hitler had exactly the same problems regarding supplies as Napoleon did. Russia used (and still today uses) a different railway gauge size than Europe. Consequently, Germany could not use their locomotives and wagons on Russia's rails. Further, as part of scorched earth, Russia destroyed most of its locomotives and wagons prior to each retreat. Thus Germany wasn't able to move supplies within Russia by rail.
Germany had to move supplies using roads by trucks and horse-pulled carts. However, just like in 1812. Russia's roads were of very poor condition and again turned to rivers of mud from rain, which Germany's supplies, just like Napoleon's got stuck in.
@@andywilliams7323 They could send supplies by rail. They had extra stations to change the cargo of the trains to trains with fitting gauge. This however was extremly inefficient.
@@Hunter27771 It was extremely inefficant but it did not need to be fed though admitidly the German fuel supply made it almost as bad and the rolling stock lost priority to sending Jews to the camps.
For context of the number of casualties, those figures are telling you the total of those Killed, Wounded and Missing in Action.
For example, the proportion of those killed in combat would be something like a third of those casualty numbers, while the rest would be the amount of wounded. The missing in action proportion are the men who they can't identity or find their body to confirm if they have died (either their wound is so bad to make identification impossible, or they got blown to bits by a cannon round, or perhaps they've deserted during the battle).
Unfortunately, the death toll would only increase in the days after the battle as the majority of the wounded men would die of their wounds due to infections.
Cavalry tactics can vary. And not all cavalry were melee cavalry. Dragoons would often fight using carbines (short muskets). So it makes sense for them to spread out and disperse. A dense block of cavalry is an perfect target for canons. A redoubt is a form of earth fortification.
The casualty numbers are one thing, but the percentage of population is another. One battle in the UK War of the Roses (Towton) killed an estimated 3% of the men in England in a single day...
Great channel, fascinating subjects! I must mention director Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace. The full film is a 6 hour epic of epicness. About one of those hours is dedicated to the Battle of Borodino. Literally a cast of thousands. As there was no CGI in 1960s Russia the sheer scale of this film is truly impressive. Bondarchuk a few years later directed Waterloo with Rod Steiger and Christopher Plummer. Almost equally epic in scope but flawed somehow, still worth the watch. Unfortunately the released version was cut by an hour or two from the original.
Borodino was the greatest battle before WWI (to put it in perspective, the losses are roughly the size of one of the starting armies at Waterloo). The ground was covered in grapeshot and cannon balls to the extent it looked like a metal hailstorm had taken place. The casualty estimates were Napoleons, but it would seem more Russian casualties is correct. The French were fought to a standstill, it was certainly not a victory for them. The battle pretty much ended with the Raevsky Redoubt (the Great Redoubt) being captured. From that point both armies consolidated where they stood and the battle was just a huge artillery dual from that point on.
What happened to the dead after these battles is an interesting question. First the bodies were looted by the soldiers of the winning army some before they were actually dead , there are reports of wounded soldiers regaining consciousness and finding themselves naked, Having being stripped by looters . Then the camp followers would probably look for anything of value missed by soldiers, The locals would next pick through for anything of value. Bodies were then sometimes burned sometimes buried .There are reports after Boridino of bodies lain strewn on the battlefield still some two months after the battle. Looters would also sometime go armed with pliers to take teeth from the bodies which were used to make dentures . There are also reports of ships loaded with bones from the dead on the battlefields , arriving in England after Waterloo and being used as fertiliser on English gardens.
Btw the reason why the cavalry is so spaced out is so they won't get wiped out in one artillery shell because growing horses takes for forever to do
A redoubt is a raised round earthwork with embrasures (gaps for the guns to fire through). A fleche is a smaller, arrowhead-shaped version.
200 years ago people thought differently , mentality was different , ideas etc. especially for the soldiers fighting . honour and glory was super important. The mere sight of the Emperor was enough to bolster platoons or regiments of people to fight harder and/or until death. to give you an example , while crossing Niemen Napoloen wanted to see where the best crossing was , so he jokingly stated he should send some men into the river . this was picked up by some of the low level officers and they threw themselves in the water just to be recognized by the onlooking Emperor. they did find the ford, but only after 3-4 men drowned, along with their horses.
Regarding the age one joined the military, they were indeed very young. Some services took them younger than others.
It was common to see a midshipman in the Royal Navy join his first ship somewhere between his 10th and 12th birthday.
Others still were younger. Namely, powder monkeys.
The army took them a little older, 15 or 16 for Ensigns.
Nelson commanded his first ship before his 21st birthday, Wellington his regiment before his 25th.
Marshal Davout fell so hard from his horse that his second-in-command, Gen. Sorbier, rode back to Napoleon thinking Davout was dead. General Rapp, taking command of Davout's forces, was shocked to find the supposedly dead Davout leading his men on foot *with a limp.*
Also, the effect General Kutaisov's (the 27-year--old Russian Artillery General) death had on the battle cannot be understated. When he was killed, no one was appointed to replace him. The Tsarist Russian Army was famous for punishing initiative among its rank and file, and because no one was appointed to command them forwards to defend the redoubts, most of the 637 Russian artillery and their crews sat useless at the Russian rear and were never ordered into battle. So effectively the Russians had only half the artillery EHTV's video says they had.