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Napoleonic Mills House

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Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Napoleonic Mills House
Phone:
+39 0565 915846

Hours:
Sunday8:30am - 7pm
Monday8:30am - 7pm
Tuesday8:30am - 7pm
Wednesday8:30am - 7pm
Thursday8:30am - 7pm
Friday8:30am - 7pm
Saturday8:30am - 7pm


The French invasion of Russia, known in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812 and in France as the Russian Campaign , began on 24 June 1812 when Napoleon's Grande Armée crossed the Neman River in an attempt to engage and defeat the Russian army. Napoleon hoped to compel Tsar Alexander I of Russia to cease trading with British merchants through proxies in an effort to pressure the United Kingdom to sue for peace. The official political aim of the campaign was to liberate Poland from the threat of Russia. Napoleon named the campaign the Second Polish War to gain favor with the Poles and provide a political pretext for his actions.At the start of the invasion, the Grande Armée numbered 680,000 soldiers . It was the largest army ever known to have been assembled in the history of warfare up to that point. Through a series of long marches Napoleon pushed the army rapidly through Western Russia in an attempt to engage and destroy the Russian army, winning a number of minor engagements and a major battle at Smolensk in August. Napoleon hoped the battle would win the war for him, but the Russian army slipped away and continued the retreat, leaving Smolensk to burn. As the Russian army fell back, scorched-earth tactics were employed, resulting in villages, towns and crops being destroyed and forcing the French to rely on a supply system that was incapable of feeding their large army in the field. On 7 September, the French caught up with the Russian army which had dug itself in on hillsides before a small town called Borodino, seventy miles west of Moscow. The battle that followed was the bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars, with 72,000 casualties, and a narrow French victory. The Russian army withdrew the following day, leaving the French again without the decisive victory Napoleon sought. A week later, Napoleon entered Moscow, which the Russians had abandoned and burned.The loss of Moscow did not compel Alexander I to enter into negotiations, and Napoleon stayed on in Moscow for a month, waiting for a peace offer that never came. On 19 October, Napoleon and his army left Moscow and marched southwest toward Kaluga, where Field Marshall Mikhail Kutuzov was encamped with the Russian army. After an inconclusive battle at Maloyaroslavets, Napoleon began to retreat back to the Polish border. In the following weeks, the Grande Armée suffered from the onset of the Russian Winter. Lack of food and fodder for the horses, hypothermia from the bitter cold and persistent attacks upon isolated troops from Russian peasants and Cossacks led to great losses in men, and a breakdown of discipline and cohesion in the army. More fighting at Vyazma and Krasnoi resulted in further losses for the French. When the remnants of Napoleon's main army crossed the Berezina River in late November, only 27,000 soldiers remained; the Grande Armée had lost some 380,000 men dead and 100,000 captured during the campaign. Following the crossing of the Berezina, Napoleon left the army after much urging from his advisors and with the unanimous approval of his Marshals. He returned to Paris to protect his position as Emperor and to raise more forces to resist the advancing Russians. The campaign effectively ended after nearly six months on 14 December 1812, with the last French troops leaving Russian soil. The campaign was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars. It was the greatest and bloodiest of the Napoleonic campaigns, involving more than 1.5 million soldiers, with over 500,000 French and 400,000 Russian casualties. The reputation of Napoleon was severely shaken, and French hegemony in Europe was dramatically weakened. The Grande Armée, made up of French and allied invasion forces, was reduced to a fraction of its initial strength. These events triggered a major shift in European politics. France's ally Prussia, soon followed by Austria, broke their imposed alliance with France and switched sides. This triggered the War of the Sixth Coalition.
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