Of Russian Steppes and Sacrifice...
I'm currently reading Adam Zamoyski's brilliant new history of Napoleon's campaign in Russia in 1812 called, unsurprisingly "Moscow 1812". Apart from the inevitable performance of Tschaikowsky's absolutely magnificent "1812 Overture", with its commemoration of victory, I think people generally know very little of the campaign.
Zamoyski paints an horrific picture of life on campaign, primarily for Napoleon's Grande Armee (which was not exclusively French but French, Polish, German, Portuguese, Piedmontese and everything else but the kitchen sink). Tales abound of privation and hardship - soldiers sleeping for weeks in the open air (when normally accustomed to being billeted in houses), a complete absence of food and water (with many resorting to drinking horse urine lying in pools in the roads to satiate them in the searing heat) and descriptions of every other sort of suffering you can imagine (including soldiers having to manually "deconstipate" their horses which had become bloated from eating unripened oats and barley).
If we have heard anything before, we have heard about Napoleon's retreat, not his advance which was equally fraught with disaster. Contrast this to the German advance into the Russian steppes in 1941 - rapid and buoyed by a tremendous sense of victory among the advancing armies. It was only when the Russian winter stepped in that the Eastern Front became the morass it was. Yet, if we are to think of war in Russia, we only think of that which occurred in the Second World War. Reading Zamoyski's book has got me to thinking whether Hitler's repeat of Napoleon's debacle merely eclipsed events of 140 years previously or whether history will, always with time, spread sand over events of the past and obscure them from scrutiny. Does this mean that 40 or 50 years from now, the supreme sacrifices and horrors of the First and Second World Wars will be ancient history known only to those who make a positive effort to learn about them or will the values for which we fought and the evils which we defeated always trump the onward advance of history? It's an interesting question and which which only time can answer.
In the meantime, the Zamoyski book is well worth the read.
Zamoyski paints an horrific picture of life on campaign, primarily for Napoleon's Grande Armee (which was not exclusively French but French, Polish, German, Portuguese, Piedmontese and everything else but the kitchen sink). Tales abound of privation and hardship - soldiers sleeping for weeks in the open air (when normally accustomed to being billeted in houses), a complete absence of food and water (with many resorting to drinking horse urine lying in pools in the roads to satiate them in the searing heat) and descriptions of every other sort of suffering you can imagine (including soldiers having to manually "deconstipate" their horses which had become bloated from eating unripened oats and barley).
If we have heard anything before, we have heard about Napoleon's retreat, not his advance which was equally fraught with disaster. Contrast this to the German advance into the Russian steppes in 1941 - rapid and buoyed by a tremendous sense of victory among the advancing armies. It was only when the Russian winter stepped in that the Eastern Front became the morass it was. Yet, if we are to think of war in Russia, we only think of that which occurred in the Second World War. Reading Zamoyski's book has got me to thinking whether Hitler's repeat of Napoleon's debacle merely eclipsed events of 140 years previously or whether history will, always with time, spread sand over events of the past and obscure them from scrutiny. Does this mean that 40 or 50 years from now, the supreme sacrifices and horrors of the First and Second World Wars will be ancient history known only to those who make a positive effort to learn about them or will the values for which we fought and the evils which we defeated always trump the onward advance of history? It's an interesting question and which which only time can answer.
In the meantime, the Zamoyski book is well worth the read.