Re: French Military Victories

"Raktizer Omheit" <cequka@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:437550d6$1_1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "Jim Voege" <jfvoegeNO@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:XSAcf.14568$EK.346691@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> <am05@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:1131544753.263330.97790@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>
>>> Raktizer Omheit wrote:
>>> \> >
>>>> am05, it has so far been genuinely interesting debating with you, but
>>>> after
>>>> your last round of rebuttals, I see that you are personally determined
>>>> to go
>>>> against what most historians have said on the subject concerning
>>>> Napoleon's
>>>> disastrous Russian invasion of 1812.
>>>
>>>
>>> 'Most' of the modern historians are saying what I'm trying to tell you.
>>> I don't know
>>> what you had been using as the sources but what you are saying is in a
>>> direct
>>> contradiction with what was written by Caulaincourt, Clausewitz,
>>> Chandler and
>>> quite a few others. So far, you failed to bring a single name.
>>>
>>> So far you failed to come with a single name or a single reference and
>>> your
>>> 'general considerations' regarding Russian climate and geography are
>>> often
>>> in a direct contradiction with a reality.
>>>
>>>>Remember that by 1812 the art of
>>>> printing was already very old,
>>>
>>> Yes, and how this is related to your claims that the French soldiers
>>> had been
>>> freezing to death in mid-October?
>>>
>>>> and most people in Western Europe by that
>>>> stage had a greater level of primary education than that available to
>>>> the
>>>> average person in the worlds of pagan Greece and pagan Rome,
>>>
>>> Yes, and what does it have to do with your claim that the Russian and
>>> French
>>> troops had been fighting on the outskirts of Moscow?
>>
>> To my mind the climatic battle of the retreat was that fought at the
>> Berezina. It was fought because the French had to stop to build a bridge
>> from scratch. They had to do that because the river was not frozen. It
>> wasn't frozen because there had been insufficient sustained temperatures
>> below freezing. To me that indicates that Russia during the retreat
>> wasn't the frozen wasteland that it is often depicted as being. For that
>> kind of thing Eylau would be a better example.
>>
>>
> Jim, the Berzina river was frozen, but the ice was not thick enough to
> hold the weight of men, horses, and wagons.

Not according to Chandler who writes that a recent thaw had caused the river
to burst its banks. In any event whether there was no ice or very thin ice
seems like a distinction without a difference to the point in issue.

Jim


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