May 6, 2026 • 34 mins
Napoleon’s march into Russia. Too far for resupply. Fires across Moscow.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is a Jesse Kelly Show. Is the Jesse Kelly
Show on a fantastic Wednesday, I'll hump day. So this
hour you already know what's coming. I've already told you.
It is part three of the little history series I'm
doing on the Napoleon invasion slash retreat from Russia in
(00:33):
eighteen twelve. I promise I am going to get back
to politics next hour, where we'll touch on things like
fraud and oil and being forcing somebody to eat gushers
andansagram and all kinds of other things still to come
in the final hour of the show, but we're not
doing any more of that right now because it's time
(00:54):
for Part three. And a reminder to you if you
missed part one in part two, surprise surprise, it's available
one podcast form. The second hour of Monday's show and
the second hour of Tuesday's show is where you will
find parts one and two of this ugly little saga.
iHeart Spotify iTunes. It's all free. No, there's no charge
(01:17):
for any of this stuff. Go downloaded, enjoy it. Now
let's go to part three. So we finished off last night.
Napoleon had lost half of his horses. He just couldn't
pin the Russians down up to this point in a
big battle anywhere. He was pushing east. His armies were
pushing east into the Russians, and there's a skirmish here
(01:40):
and a skirmish there, and they'd clash for a little
bit and then take off, and he couldn't get what
he wanted. And what he wanted was to fight a
large Russian force so he could annihilate it. He just
wanted to get his hands on them. He had this
huge army, this very capable army, and he couldn't get
(02:01):
his hands on them, and he was very, very frustrated.
He has worked his way into Russia. I already mentioned
about the horses. The men are hungry, that they're lacking
certain things. But Napoleon has to make a decision. Does
he keep pushing them, does he keep going push harder,
(02:24):
try to grab that Russian army so you can destroy
it or call it quits for a year. You don't
have to abandon the whole thing. Let's rest refit. Get
some coats up here, relaxed for a while. Napoleon, as
he almost always did, decided to slam on the gas pedal.
He decided on speed. And I want to remind you
(02:47):
this something we've talked about before many times. The great
generals of all time. If you're a history nerd like
I am, you can pick your general Genghis, Julius, Caesar,
Alexander the Great, Hannibal. Go down the list of all
the great generals. I don't know that I can think
(03:10):
of a single one that didn't believe in speed. I
know there are the slower, more methodical generals that are
thought of as being wonderful. I get that, but when
you look at the pantheon of the greats, they all
believed he Look, if the men are tired, we'll get
through it. Things are breaking down, too bad, so sad,
(03:33):
because the most important thing is getting to the enemy,
getting to the place you want before he does. You move,
you get somewhere where he's not expecting, You catch him
off balance, and you land the knockout blow. Think of
it similar to a boxer who's completely out of stamina.
(03:55):
He's at of gas, he can hardly lift his arms,
and he really shouldn't throw, oh a huge haymaker right now.
But the opponent is a little off balance, and it
might be worth it to take that swing, because if
you land it, fight over great generals think like that
(04:16):
more often than not. Napoleon hammers on the gas pedal,
and he has a destination in mind place you maybe
you've heard of before, Smolensk. Maybe you haven't. If you haven't,
don't worry about it again. You can go look up
the Battle of Smolensk. It's no big deal. It's a
city in Russia. Okay, but you know what a city
(04:37):
can't do. A city can't turn and run. And by
this point Alexander has gotten so much pressure from his generals.
Alexander feels like, hey, we got to stand and fight
here at Spolensk. I can't. I might get a revolt
(04:58):
from the people themsel els. If I just hand over
a major city like Smolensk without any kind of a fight.
I can't probably politically survive something like that. I've got
to do something, So it's fight time. Smolensk has walls.
(05:20):
This is one of those things it seems like as
you read about it that the battle really could have
gone either way, and it's exactly what you think it is.
It is a fortified Russian city, Russian troops inside of
the city. Yes, there's a Russian army also outside of
the city. We'll go and call it on the other side,
(05:41):
on the opposite side of Napoleon's Napoleon he presses because
he believes there is a large, large Russian force in
there and this is his opportunity to destroy them. This battle,
it was fought with swords, and it was French troops
(06:02):
climbing walls, stabbing guys. There are stories I read about
how they would get to the wall and that they
didn't have a ladder or something to climb on, and
men would be climbing on top of each other's shoulders,
trying to get over the wall with a sword or
a spear in hand to spear the Russian on the
(06:23):
other side. It looks, it reads like complete and utter carnage.
At the Battle of Smolensk, it seems close, but the
Russians lose, lose. I heard I read one guy who
said they didn't lose, and here was his thinking. Here
(06:45):
here's what actually happened. The Russians were giving as good
as they were getting, and either you can say they
lost their nerve or they just decided that's enough for today.
One point, the Russian said, you know what, let them
have it. Let's go. Let's not lose everybody in our
(07:08):
force here. Pack it up and leave. They pack it
up and leave. All right, Well, now we have another problem.
You see. Keep this in mind as we go throughout
this because this is going to be the same It's
going to be the same story for the rest of
the time. As Napoleon moves east into Russia. As he
(07:30):
pushes east into Russia, there are different things that are happening,
and they're all bad for Napoleon. The first thing that's
bad for Napoleon as he moves into Russia is his
supply train, his logistics. He's getting further and further and
further and further away from where he can get supplies
(07:50):
as he moves east. The food's back there, right, Okay,
already that's bad. Another thing that's bad towards Europe in
Russia towards Europe. The western part of Russia, by Europe,
is really the most fertile part of Russia. Russia is
(08:11):
a huge place, that's true, but Russia so much of
it it's kind of I don't know if I should
call it uninhabitable because there are people who live there,
but they have winter coats. There's not a lot of stuff.
As you get further east into Russia, there's less and
less stuff for you. That's also a problem. As you
(08:35):
move east the land is poor. That it's bad. Now
Napoleon has taken this city of Smolensk. Great news, right,
you won the battle. The Russians abandon it. Here's the
bad news. Remember I told you it was a tough fight. Yeah,
the city's friggin ruined. So if you're Napoleon now you're
(08:58):
looking at this city that could potentially have provided much
needed shelter, a place for your men to maybe rest
something like that. It's not as nice of a place
to rest. Now. You might not even get the cover
you want because you had direct the freaking place with
cannon balls before you were able to take it. So
(09:20):
the place that maybe you could have put down some roots,
you kind of had to ruin it in order to
take the thing. Napoleon has to decide do I hold
here or do I try for one more city? And
(09:41):
that one more city is the one you've probably saw coming. Certainly,
if you're familiar familiar with this story, you've seen it coming.
But that city is Moscow. Napoleon thinks there's not a
snowball's chance in Hades. The Russians are just going to
walk out of mind. They can't do that. You can't
(10:03):
just leave Moscow. That's not something humanly possible. If I
press on past Smolensk. If I do this, I will
get my decisive battle in Moscow. I will win, Alexander
will sue for peace, and I can go home to
my bed and my wife. We will continue in a moment.
(10:26):
We'll be back truth attitude. Jesse Kelly, it is the
Jesse Kelly Show on a Fantastic Wednesday. You can email
us Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com your love, your hate,
your death threats. As we continue on with Napoleon's invasion
(10:47):
of Russia, we just had the Battle of Smolensk. The
Grand Army is successful, but the Russians are not annihilated
because they decide to pull out. They bail. And now
Napoleon's sitting in a city that he just had to ruin,
and he asked it aside, and he makes the decision
He's going to push on to Moscow. It's time. Now
(11:08):
he starts pushing his men and pushing his men. And
I already mentioned that as you continue to push east,
that the weather is starting to turn and the land
itself is getting more and more barren. How bad? How
bad of a way are Napoleon's troops in right now?
(11:28):
Supply wise, I'm about to say something, and you're going
to be grossed out, and it's not my intention, but
I might as well lay it out there. Men are
seen drinking horse pea. They don't have water, they don't
have food. They're dying of thirst, dying of hunger. And
(11:51):
remember yesterday when I brought up the Cossacks, this kind
of Polish Russian horseback studs, horseback warriors, Cossacks, the Cossacks,
as the As the Grand Army is starving more and
more and in more and more of a bad way,
the Grand Army is having to stretch itself out further
(12:13):
and further and further away to try to get food,
to try to get water, to try to get supplies.
Think of it. It's more complicated than this, because it's
a big army. But think of it as you have
a camp, right, you have a camp, and this is
where the army is. The Army's in the camp. This
is where we're all sleeping and we got guards set up.
Everyone's in the camp. But we got to eat and
(12:34):
we gotta have water. So hey, why don't you go
a couple miles that way? See what you can find.
Oh there's nothing, Ah, well, keep going. How about five miles?
How about ten miles? Soon you and your unit pick
a number. Maybe there's ten of you, maybe there's twenty
(12:56):
of you. You are really far away from from help
and the Cossacks. This, these horseback guerrilla warlords for the
freaking Russians are pillaging, pillaging the guys who are going
out foraging and looking for food. It is a desperate
(13:17):
situation and made more so by this. There is an
ominous thing happening, and again, hindsight we could see what
was happening and why. The Russians are starting to burn
everything as they leave, as they retreat, they're lighting it
(13:38):
on fire. There are multiple stories of French troops coming
into let's call it a wheat field and desperately trying
to put out the fire before all the food is
burned up. The Russians are putting to the torch all
the food, and they're poisoning the wells. They're poisoning water supplies.
(13:58):
The Russians know exist exactly what kind of battle they're fighting,
and they know exactly what kind of shape Napoleon's army
is in, and they're making everything worse as things go
on and things go on. But the Russians do decide, hey,
we can't allow Napoleon to just walk into Moscow. That
(14:20):
can't be a thing I mentioned earlier, mentioned many times before.
There is a political and a military aspect to every
war that's ever been fought. Czar Alexander politically, even though
he's just all powerful Zar, you can't hand over Moscow
to Napoleon and survive. You just get you can't. He'd
(14:40):
be assassinated, there'd be a revolution. You better make him
earn it a little bit. The Russian force that had
bailed decides to dig in and have a big slugfest
with Napoleon before he gets to Moscow. If you're interested
in this battle again, I'll give you the name of
it so you can look up. I'm not going to
(15:01):
go into all the details of us. I don't do that,
but it's called the Battle of Borodino. The Battle of
Borodino is what it is. It is a Titanic Battle,
Russians slamming into the French, French slamming into the Russians. Surprise, surprise, Napoleon.
Because he's Napoleon, he wins. He's too Smart's too good, strategy,
(15:26):
too good honestly, even in their bad state. His troops
are just better and yes, good point Chris, and he
has more of them. Napoleon's too good and the Russians lose,
but once again the Russians pull out before they are
(15:47):
surrounded and annihilated. Napoleon doesn't just need to win these fights.
Napoleon needs to find a way to get behind the Russians,
get to the east of them, so we can surround
them and kill them all or take them all prisoner.
I don't want to act like it's the most blood
thirsty thing in the world, although it's very blood thirsty.
(16:07):
He doesn't want to have He doesn't want to face
off against an army of fifty thousand and only kill
ten thousand of them, because then he has forty thousand
he has to deal with again. He needs all fifty
thousand removed from the chess board, if you will. The
Russians are aware of this, and again battle a Bordino.
Russians take it on the chin, although they get they're
(16:30):
giving back, don't get me wrong, and they pull out
in time so they are not surrounded and annihilated. The
Russians they're not far away. Now's one of these times
when Napoleon makes a decision that historians judge him for.
It's nighttime. Napoleon's troops are gased that they're out of gas.
(16:52):
The Russians are not far they just pulled out. Napoleon
decides that night, Hey, let's rest for tonight. We can
hardly keep our eyes open. We'll go finish them off tomorrow.
The Russians slip out during the night and head back
towards Moscow. We'll continue in them up. This is the
(17:15):
Jesse Kelly Show. It is the Jesse Kelly Show on
a wonderful, wonderful Wednesday. If you miss any part of
the show, you can download at iHeart Spotify iTunes. Back
to our little tail, Napoleon beats that Russian army. Now
(17:38):
that Russian army is retreating towards Moscow, they're wounded. I
keep bringing up the condition of the Grand Army, the
French Army, even though it's a lot more than just French.
I keep bringing up their condition. But look, these Russian
guys are flesh and blood too, and they've now had
(17:58):
a couple big old bats with Napoleon. You've got wounded people,
they're stragglers, and they're starting to straggle on into Moscow. Okay, well,
what do you do if you're Alexander? What do you do?
You just lost again. You tried to square off with
Napoleon again, you got your teeth bloodied again, you had
(18:23):
to pull back. You managed to save your army from annihilation.
Now your army's straggling into Moscow. What do you do?
Do you man the walls, fight to the last man.
What do you do? And this is again hotly debated
(18:43):
inside Russian leadership at the time. There are many soldiers, officers,
they're tired of this running. They're tired of that. They
are disheartened. They don't want to run. They want to
stand and fight for their country and everything else. There's
another thing that I need to bring up that Napoleon's
army is running into and it's kind of sparking even
(19:06):
more concern. I mentioned as you get east, further east
into Russian it's poorer and doesn't have as much supplies
and things like that. I got all that, there's something else.
It's more patriotic. There was something Look, Europe has been
fought over and divided up eighteen million times. It'll take
it would take twenty hours to go over the history
(19:27):
of all this, but I'll make it very very simple.
As you move further east into Russia, you are running
into more and more very patriotic Russians who do not
appreciate your presence there. If some people before were kind
of accommodating to you, that's going away. Well back to
(19:47):
this Russian army in Moscow. They know this too when
they're looking around, saying, wait a minute, are we we
can't leave. Our people are banking on us. We have
to fight for Russia. All right. Now, let's go to
the Napoleon side. What do they see think about how
(20:09):
long and brutal and taxing this entire military campaign has
been covered at all the starvation and everything else. Now
it's New York City in front of you. It's not
quite that, but you understand what I mean. What does
Moscow look like to Napoleon's army, It looks like a
(20:32):
freaking oasis in the desert. It looks like every oh
my gosh, civilization, a warm bed, facilities. Let's get in
there and take it. So the Russians they don't just leave.
(20:54):
The army does decide. Alexander decides they're gonna pull out.
They're gonna leave. The Russians are also stalling Napoleon a
little bit. While they do this. They send out people
to meet him outside of the city, kind of like
a little treaty meeting. Hey, maybe we can work something out.
(21:15):
They're not gonna work anything out, that's not the intention.
They buy themselves enough time to pull the Russian army
and the citizens of Moscow out. So Napoleon moves in.
He moves in. As I mentioned, you can imagine the
(21:37):
relief of his men. There are facilities, there are buildings.
Things are okay now, no matter what, even if we
can't get a hold of the Russians just yet, we've
were set up shopping Moscow. Life is good. And then
it's like a scene out of a movie. A fire
starts one night. In case you're wondering numbers, I'm not
(22:00):
numbers person, but Moscow had previously had two hundred and
fifty thousand people, only about ten thousand left back to
the fire. A fire breaks out one night. It's weird
at first, Napoleon doesn't really think much of it. Fires
keep starting and starting and starting all over Moscow. You see,
(22:27):
the Russians have done something so savagely brilliant. Remember how
many times we've had the talk that, you know, evil people,
communists and other people like that, how useful criminals can
be to an evil person. They just are when you
have some I don't want you to be a criminal,
by the way, but when you have somebody who's unencumbered
(22:50):
by morality or worried about following the rules, that somebody
can be tremendously useful to you in certain situations. Guess
what Russians have bad people too, Murderers, thieves, arsonists. The Russians,
as they were pulling out of town, let them out
(23:11):
of jail and gave them a job. Hey, guys, light
the city on fire after we're gone. Russian arsonists are
putting Moscow to the torch while Napoleon is trying to
set up shop in Moscow. And when I say putting
it to the torch, I don't mean a couple buildings.
(23:34):
The situation turns desperate. Almost immediately, Napoleon has his army
scrambling all around the city trying to put these fires
out before all their shelter disappears once again. The wells
have been poisoned, they don't have the fresh water. Napoleon
has to try to crack down. He's rounding up as
(23:57):
many of these arsonists and criminals as he can, and
they're just shooting them right there on the spot, trying
to kill all these guys before they can burn the
freaking city down. It's it's a terrible, terrible scene. I
should also mention this because there's more than one account
of it. There were women amongst the ten thousand who
(24:22):
were left inside the city. There are all kinds of
different troops from all kinds of different places who've had
a very long, very brutal march, fought a very long war,
all kinds of accounts of the women in the city
being pillaged by the Grand Army while it was there.
On top of the women getting assaulted in all the
(24:44):
ways you can possibly imagine that the troops are simply
taking everything, pillaging everything. It's a scene of unimaginable horror.
The city's burning down. There's rape there's murder, there's extra
judicial killings. It is at a ze. Now disaster maybe
(25:05):
a strong way to put it in Napoleon's mind at
this point in time. And here's why. Napoleon. Yes, the
city's burning, Yes, he's having to kill arsonists, Yes he
did that. There's problems, there's certainly plenty of problems. But
he does have Moscow. He is sitting here and Alexander's
Moscow with his army, and Alexander is not here. It's
(25:31):
getting cold, but again, not the end of the world,
because you won, right, you're sitting in Moscow. It's over surely.
Alexander is working up a peace treaty, getting ready to surrender,
(25:53):
and he's gonna ask for terms. And Napoleon, because he's Napoleon,
he did this a lot. He's not going to destroy
him for who'll agree to a lot of Alexander's terms.
Is Alexander's gonna sue for peace and Napoleon's gonna bring
him back into the fold. And everything's fine. And Napoleon
starts sending them as series out to Alexander, Hey go
(26:13):
find out. Is he putting on the finishing touches on
the peace treaty? No word at all. Nothing. We'll continue
in a moment. Jesse Kelly returns next. It is the
Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful, wonderful Wednesday. Memory. You
(26:36):
can email your love, your hate, your death threats Jesse
at Jesse kellyshow dot com. I'm going to get to
some of those next hour. I'm gonna touch on some
fraud things. Wonderful fraud thing, I mean, terrible fraud things,
but what we're doing, things about the fraud whatever. You have,
all kinds of stuff coming next hour on the Jesse
Kelly Show. Now, let's do one more little segment on
(26:58):
Napoleon's invasion of Russia and disastrous retreat, which is about
to begin. I mentioned Napoleon has occupied Moscow. Moscow is
being that on fire by Russian arsonists. Napoleon's killing them
as fast as he can. But again, none of these
things are the end of the world, because Napoleon won, Right.
(27:20):
Napoleon is sending emissaries to Alexander, He's getting no word back,
and it's getting colder and colder and colder. Well, what
do you do now His army is not in a
(27:40):
state where he can continue pushing. They just can't. You
can't push any further than this. So what do you
do if Alexander just never says anything to you. You
don't have the supplies. They don't even have the winter coats.
There are some, there's some winter gear coming in. Not
very much at all, though, when do you say, I
(28:01):
have to leave? Napoleon agonizes about this. Napoleon agonizes about
this for a month. Again. I've said it over and
over again. It applies so much to so many things
in history, but certainly to this tale. Hindsight, being twenty twenty,
(28:24):
you can look at that month and say Napoleon doomed
tens of thousands of men to death by that month,
the decision to wait for a peace treaty did it
did in the end doom thousands and thousands of men
to death. But if we have to pause and defend
(28:45):
Napoleon for a moment, what if what if he only
waited five days and then looks around at his men
and says, all right, they're tired, they're hungry, it's getting cold. Hey, guys,
pack up the army and let's leave. Well, what if
Alexander was on his way?
Speaker 2 (29:03):
What if he was on horseback as we speak with
a peace treaty in hand, and then he gets there
and he sees your armies pulling out and you're retreating.
The peace treaty gets lit on fire, and Alexander says
he won.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
A month is a long time to wait. Obviously a
suicidally bad decision at the time, but you can see
from Napoleon's perspective why he did it. But he did
do it. He waited a month. Now now is where
the problems. The problems, they don't start getting worse, they
(29:42):
start compounding on each other. First the state of the
French forces. How much have they been reduced. I'll give
you one example of one unit. But this, I want
this to really drive home this fact. You're not dealing
with six hundred thousand men of the Grand Army by
this time, after this much distance, this much desert, desertion, battles, starvation,
(30:09):
You're dealing with a shell of the army. You crossed
the border with one unit. Cavalry unit had nine thousand
men in their horses. What was it at now seven
hundred seven hundred, again a shell of what it used
to be. And to make matters worse on the Russian side,
(30:34):
not only was Alexander and the Russians. Not only were
they not sitting around the table trying to cross the
t's and dot the eyes on a peace treaty, they
were building up their forces for a winter counter attack.
Russian winter is not pleasant for anybody, we're all human beings.
(30:55):
But obviously, because it's their homeland, Russians are well acquainted
with it and well equipped for it in ways the
French were not. The Russians knew it was getting cold.
They knew for a fact the French were in a terrible,
terrible state. They were outside of Moscow, getting freaking ready.
(31:17):
Napoleon takes off. Then it's just so the bad luck.
When I was reading about this. Every time I read
about it, and I watched a couple documentaries on it,
I actually found myself wincing. All right, now you've got
to leave, Okay, you want to go west, all right,
we got that. Trying to get back to France. What
(31:40):
route should you take? Well, the way you came in.
Pause for a second, Let's think about this logistically. What
has your army been doing to the entire route you
just came in on the whole way in? What has
your army been doing pillaging it for everything, absolutely everything.
Anything that wasn't burned, anything that wasn't nailed down, had
(32:02):
been used and eaten. And the relatively barren countryside you
just came through, it's ten times as barren now as
it was when you came through it. And the weather's freezing,
and your men are broken down. You can't take the
same route back home. You have to find a new one.
(32:25):
Napoleon decides to try and find a new one. The Russians,
they again, they really understand the situation they're in. They
move their troops into Napoleon's way, and they now are
the aggressors. They deny him an alternate route. The alternate
(32:49):
route Napoleon was going to take home. He gets cut
off from it and it's no longer an option. That
means that entire he just marched through as the weather
is frigid, We're talking twenty below zero, the snow is
starting to fall, the food has run out. He now
(33:13):
has to march through the barren lands he already pillaged.
Oh and by the way, those Cossacks, I mean the
Russians in general, but those Cossacks, they have their winter
coats snugly on themselves. What do you think a absolutely
sweet army of horseback warriors who know how to handle
(33:37):
the snow, what do you think they're going to do
to a strung out, starving, tired French army that's freezing
to death on the way out. Yeah, we'll wrap this
up tomorrow. I don't think it'll take me very much longer,
but we'll wrap this whole little tail up tomorrow. For now,
let's get back to some politics and talk about some
(33:57):
fraud matters. We'll do some emails, will make fun of
Katie Porker. We'll be back
This is a Jesse Kelly Show. Is the Jesse Kelly
Show on a fantastic Wednesday, I'll hump day. So this
hour you already know what's coming. I've already told you.
It is part three of the little history series I'm
doing on the Napoleon invasion slash retreat from Russia in
(00:33):
eighteen twelve. I promise I am going to get back
to politics next hour, where we'll touch on things like
fraud and oil and being forcing somebody to eat gushers
andansagram and all kinds of other things still to come
in the final hour of the show, but we're not
doing any more of that right now because it's time
(00:54):
for Part three. And a reminder to you if you
missed part one in part two, surprise surprise, it's available
one podcast form. The second hour of Monday's show and
the second hour of Tuesday's show is where you will
find parts one and two of this ugly little saga.
iHeart Spotify iTunes. It's all free. No, there's no charge
(01:17):
for any of this stuff. Go downloaded, enjoy it. Now
let's go to part three. So we finished off last night.
Napoleon had lost half of his horses. He just couldn't
pin the Russians down up to this point in a
big battle anywhere. He was pushing east. His armies were
pushing east into the Russians, and there's a skirmish here
(01:40):
and a skirmish there, and they'd clash for a little
bit and then take off, and he couldn't get what
he wanted. And what he wanted was to fight a
large Russian force so he could annihilate it. He just
wanted to get his hands on them. He had this
huge army, this very capable army, and he couldn't get
(02:01):
his hands on them, and he was very, very frustrated.
He has worked his way into Russia. I already mentioned
about the horses. The men are hungry, that they're lacking
certain things. But Napoleon has to make a decision. Does
he keep pushing them, does he keep going push harder,
(02:24):
try to grab that Russian army so you can destroy
it or call it quits for a year. You don't
have to abandon the whole thing. Let's rest refit. Get
some coats up here, relaxed for a while. Napoleon, as
he almost always did, decided to slam on the gas pedal.
He decided on speed. And I want to remind you
(02:47):
this something we've talked about before many times. The great
generals of all time. If you're a history nerd like
I am, you can pick your general Genghis, Julius, Caesar,
Alexander the Great, Hannibal. Go down the list of all
the great generals. I don't know that I can think
(03:10):
of a single one that didn't believe in speed. I
know there are the slower, more methodical generals that are
thought of as being wonderful. I get that, but when
you look at the pantheon of the greats, they all
believed he Look, if the men are tired, we'll get
through it. Things are breaking down, too bad, so sad,
(03:33):
because the most important thing is getting to the enemy,
getting to the place you want before he does. You move,
you get somewhere where he's not expecting, You catch him
off balance, and you land the knockout blow. Think of
it similar to a boxer who's completely out of stamina.
(03:55):
He's at of gas, he can hardly lift his arms,
and he really shouldn't throw, oh a huge haymaker right now.
But the opponent is a little off balance, and it
might be worth it to take that swing, because if
you land it, fight over great generals think like that
(04:16):
more often than not. Napoleon hammers on the gas pedal,
and he has a destination in mind place you maybe
you've heard of before, Smolensk. Maybe you haven't. If you haven't,
don't worry about it again. You can go look up
the Battle of Smolensk. It's no big deal. It's a
city in Russia. Okay, but you know what a city
(04:37):
can't do. A city can't turn and run. And by
this point Alexander has gotten so much pressure from his generals.
Alexander feels like, hey, we got to stand and fight
here at Spolensk. I can't. I might get a revolt
(04:58):
from the people themsel els. If I just hand over
a major city like Smolensk without any kind of a fight.
I can't probably politically survive something like that. I've got
to do something, So it's fight time. Smolensk has walls.
(05:20):
This is one of those things it seems like as
you read about it that the battle really could have
gone either way, and it's exactly what you think it is.
It is a fortified Russian city, Russian troops inside of
the city. Yes, there's a Russian army also outside of
the city. We'll go and call it on the other side,
(05:41):
on the opposite side of Napoleon's Napoleon he presses because
he believes there is a large, large Russian force in
there and this is his opportunity to destroy them. This battle,
it was fought with swords, and it was French troops
(06:02):
climbing walls, stabbing guys. There are stories I read about
how they would get to the wall and that they
didn't have a ladder or something to climb on, and
men would be climbing on top of each other's shoulders,
trying to get over the wall with a sword or
a spear in hand to spear the Russian on the
(06:23):
other side. It looks, it reads like complete and utter carnage.
At the Battle of Smolensk, it seems close, but the
Russians lose, lose. I heard I read one guy who
said they didn't lose, and here was his thinking. Here
(06:45):
here's what actually happened. The Russians were giving as good
as they were getting, and either you can say they
lost their nerve or they just decided that's enough for today.
One point, the Russian said, you know what, let them
have it. Let's go. Let's not lose everybody in our
(07:08):
force here. Pack it up and leave. They pack it
up and leave. All right, Well, now we have another problem.
You see. Keep this in mind as we go throughout
this because this is going to be the same It's
going to be the same story for the rest of
the time. As Napoleon moves east into Russia. As he
(07:30):
pushes east into Russia, there are different things that are happening,
and they're all bad for Napoleon. The first thing that's
bad for Napoleon as he moves into Russia is his
supply train, his logistics. He's getting further and further and
further and further away from where he can get supplies
(07:50):
as he moves east. The food's back there, right, Okay,
already that's bad. Another thing that's bad towards Europe in
Russia towards Europe. The western part of Russia, by Europe,
is really the most fertile part of Russia. Russia is
(08:11):
a huge place, that's true, but Russia so much of
it it's kind of I don't know if I should
call it uninhabitable because there are people who live there,
but they have winter coats. There's not a lot of stuff.
As you get further east into Russia, there's less and
less stuff for you. That's also a problem. As you
(08:35):
move east the land is poor. That it's bad. Now
Napoleon has taken this city of Smolensk. Great news, right,
you won the battle. The Russians abandon it. Here's the
bad news. Remember I told you it was a tough fight. Yeah,
the city's friggin ruined. So if you're Napoleon now you're
(08:58):
looking at this city that could potentially have provided much
needed shelter, a place for your men to maybe rest
something like that. It's not as nice of a place
to rest. Now. You might not even get the cover
you want because you had direct the freaking place with
cannon balls before you were able to take it. So
(09:20):
the place that maybe you could have put down some roots,
you kind of had to ruin it in order to
take the thing. Napoleon has to decide do I hold
here or do I try for one more city? And
(09:41):
that one more city is the one you've probably saw coming. Certainly,
if you're familiar familiar with this story, you've seen it coming.
But that city is Moscow. Napoleon thinks there's not a
snowball's chance in Hades. The Russians are just going to
walk out of mind. They can't do that. You can't
(10:03):
just leave Moscow. That's not something humanly possible. If I
press on past Smolensk. If I do this, I will
get my decisive battle in Moscow. I will win, Alexander
will sue for peace, and I can go home to
my bed and my wife. We will continue in a moment.
(10:26):
We'll be back truth attitude. Jesse Kelly, it is the
Jesse Kelly Show on a Fantastic Wednesday. You can email
us Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com your love, your hate,
your death threats. As we continue on with Napoleon's invasion
(10:47):
of Russia, we just had the Battle of Smolensk. The
Grand Army is successful, but the Russians are not annihilated
because they decide to pull out. They bail. And now
Napoleon's sitting in a city that he just had to ruin,
and he asked it aside, and he makes the decision
He's going to push on to Moscow. It's time. Now
(11:08):
he starts pushing his men and pushing his men. And
I already mentioned that as you continue to push east,
that the weather is starting to turn and the land
itself is getting more and more barren. How bad? How
bad of a way are Napoleon's troops in right now?
(11:28):
Supply wise, I'm about to say something, and you're going
to be grossed out, and it's not my intention, but
I might as well lay it out there. Men are
seen drinking horse pea. They don't have water, they don't
have food. They're dying of thirst, dying of hunger. And
(11:51):
remember yesterday when I brought up the Cossacks, this kind
of Polish Russian horseback studs, horseback warriors, Cossacks, the Cossacks,
as the As the Grand Army is starving more and
more and in more and more of a bad way,
the Grand Army is having to stretch itself out further
(12:13):
and further and further away to try to get food,
to try to get water, to try to get supplies.
Think of it. It's more complicated than this, because it's
a big army. But think of it as you have
a camp, right, you have a camp, and this is
where the army is. The Army's in the camp. This
is where we're all sleeping and we got guards set up.
Everyone's in the camp. But we got to eat and
(12:34):
we gotta have water. So hey, why don't you go
a couple miles that way? See what you can find.
Oh there's nothing, Ah, well, keep going. How about five miles?
How about ten miles? Soon you and your unit pick
a number. Maybe there's ten of you, maybe there's twenty
(12:56):
of you. You are really far away from from help
and the Cossacks. This, these horseback guerrilla warlords for the
freaking Russians are pillaging, pillaging the guys who are going
out foraging and looking for food. It is a desperate
(13:17):
situation and made more so by this. There is an
ominous thing happening, and again, hindsight we could see what
was happening and why. The Russians are starting to burn
everything as they leave, as they retreat, they're lighting it
(13:38):
on fire. There are multiple stories of French troops coming
into let's call it a wheat field and desperately trying
to put out the fire before all the food is
burned up. The Russians are putting to the torch all
the food, and they're poisoning the wells. They're poisoning water supplies.
(13:58):
The Russians know exist exactly what kind of battle they're fighting,
and they know exactly what kind of shape Napoleon's army
is in, and they're making everything worse as things go
on and things go on. But the Russians do decide, hey,
we can't allow Napoleon to just walk into Moscow. That
(14:20):
can't be a thing I mentioned earlier, mentioned many times before.
There is a political and a military aspect to every
war that's ever been fought. Czar Alexander politically, even though
he's just all powerful Zar, you can't hand over Moscow
to Napoleon and survive. You just get you can't. He'd
(14:40):
be assassinated, there'd be a revolution. You better make him
earn it a little bit. The Russian force that had
bailed decides to dig in and have a big slugfest
with Napoleon before he gets to Moscow. If you're interested
in this battle again, I'll give you the name of
it so you can look up. I'm not going to
(15:01):
go into all the details of us. I don't do that,
but it's called the Battle of Borodino. The Battle of
Borodino is what it is. It is a Titanic Battle,
Russians slamming into the French, French slamming into the Russians. Surprise, surprise, Napoleon.
Because he's Napoleon, he wins. He's too Smart's too good, strategy,
(15:26):
too good honestly, even in their bad state. His troops
are just better and yes, good point Chris, and he
has more of them. Napoleon's too good and the Russians lose,
but once again the Russians pull out before they are
(15:47):
surrounded and annihilated. Napoleon doesn't just need to win these fights.
Napoleon needs to find a way to get behind the Russians,
get to the east of them, so we can surround
them and kill them all or take them all prisoner.
I don't want to act like it's the most blood
thirsty thing in the world, although it's very blood thirsty.
(16:07):
He doesn't want to have He doesn't want to face
off against an army of fifty thousand and only kill
ten thousand of them, because then he has forty thousand
he has to deal with again. He needs all fifty
thousand removed from the chess board, if you will. The
Russians are aware of this, and again battle a Bordino.
Russians take it on the chin, although they get they're
(16:30):
giving back, don't get me wrong, and they pull out
in time so they are not surrounded and annihilated. The
Russians they're not far away. Now's one of these times
when Napoleon makes a decision that historians judge him for.
It's nighttime. Napoleon's troops are gased that they're out of gas.
(16:52):
The Russians are not far they just pulled out. Napoleon
decides that night, Hey, let's rest for tonight. We can
hardly keep our eyes open. We'll go finish them off tomorrow.
The Russians slip out during the night and head back
towards Moscow. We'll continue in them up. This is the
(17:15):
Jesse Kelly Show. It is the Jesse Kelly Show on
a wonderful, wonderful Wednesday. If you miss any part of
the show, you can download at iHeart Spotify iTunes. Back
to our little tail, Napoleon beats that Russian army. Now
(17:38):
that Russian army is retreating towards Moscow, they're wounded. I
keep bringing up the condition of the Grand Army, the
French Army, even though it's a lot more than just French.
I keep bringing up their condition. But look, these Russian
guys are flesh and blood too, and they've now had
(17:58):
a couple big old bats with Napoleon. You've got wounded people,
they're stragglers, and they're starting to straggle on into Moscow. Okay, well,
what do you do if you're Alexander? What do you do?
You just lost again. You tried to square off with
Napoleon again, you got your teeth bloodied again, you had
(18:23):
to pull back. You managed to save your army from annihilation.
Now your army's straggling into Moscow. What do you do?
Do you man the walls, fight to the last man.
What do you do? And this is again hotly debated
(18:43):
inside Russian leadership at the time. There are many soldiers, officers,
they're tired of this running. They're tired of that. They
are disheartened. They don't want to run. They want to
stand and fight for their country and everything else. There's
another thing that I need to bring up that Napoleon's
army is running into and it's kind of sparking even
(19:06):
more concern. I mentioned as you get east, further east
into Russian it's poorer and doesn't have as much supplies
and things like that. I got all that, there's something else.
It's more patriotic. There was something Look, Europe has been
fought over and divided up eighteen million times. It'll take
it would take twenty hours to go over the history
(19:27):
of all this, but I'll make it very very simple.
As you move further east into Russia, you are running
into more and more very patriotic Russians who do not
appreciate your presence there. If some people before were kind
of accommodating to you, that's going away. Well back to
(19:47):
this Russian army in Moscow. They know this too when
they're looking around, saying, wait a minute, are we we
can't leave. Our people are banking on us. We have
to fight for Russia. All right. Now, let's go to
the Napoleon side. What do they see think about how
(20:09):
long and brutal and taxing this entire military campaign has
been covered at all the starvation and everything else. Now
it's New York City in front of you. It's not
quite that, but you understand what I mean. What does
Moscow look like to Napoleon's army, It looks like a
(20:32):
freaking oasis in the desert. It looks like every oh
my gosh, civilization, a warm bed, facilities. Let's get in
there and take it. So the Russians they don't just leave.
(20:54):
The army does decide. Alexander decides they're gonna pull out.
They're gonna leave. The Russians are also stalling Napoleon a
little bit. While they do this. They send out people
to meet him outside of the city, kind of like
a little treaty meeting. Hey, maybe we can work something out.
(21:15):
They're not gonna work anything out, that's not the intention.
They buy themselves enough time to pull the Russian army
and the citizens of Moscow out. So Napoleon moves in.
He moves in. As I mentioned, you can imagine the
(21:37):
relief of his men. There are facilities, there are buildings.
Things are okay now, no matter what, even if we
can't get a hold of the Russians just yet, we've
were set up shopping Moscow. Life is good. And then
it's like a scene out of a movie. A fire
starts one night. In case you're wondering numbers, I'm not
(22:00):
numbers person, but Moscow had previously had two hundred and
fifty thousand people, only about ten thousand left back to
the fire. A fire breaks out one night. It's weird
at first, Napoleon doesn't really think much of it. Fires
keep starting and starting and starting all over Moscow. You see,
(22:27):
the Russians have done something so savagely brilliant. Remember how
many times we've had the talk that, you know, evil people,
communists and other people like that, how useful criminals can
be to an evil person. They just are when you
have some I don't want you to be a criminal,
by the way, but when you have somebody who's unencumbered
(22:50):
by morality or worried about following the rules, that somebody
can be tremendously useful to you in certain situations. Guess
what Russians have bad people too, Murderers, thieves, arsonists. The Russians,
as they were pulling out of town, let them out
(23:11):
of jail and gave them a job. Hey, guys, light
the city on fire after we're gone. Russian arsonists are
putting Moscow to the torch while Napoleon is trying to
set up shop in Moscow. And when I say putting
it to the torch, I don't mean a couple buildings.
(23:34):
The situation turns desperate. Almost immediately, Napoleon has his army
scrambling all around the city trying to put these fires
out before all their shelter disappears once again. The wells
have been poisoned, they don't have the fresh water. Napoleon
has to try to crack down. He's rounding up as
(23:57):
many of these arsonists and criminals as he can, and
they're just shooting them right there on the spot, trying
to kill all these guys before they can burn the
freaking city down. It's it's a terrible, terrible scene. I
should also mention this because there's more than one account
of it. There were women amongst the ten thousand who
(24:22):
were left inside the city. There are all kinds of
different troops from all kinds of different places who've had
a very long, very brutal march, fought a very long war,
all kinds of accounts of the women in the city
being pillaged by the Grand Army while it was there.
On top of the women getting assaulted in all the
(24:44):
ways you can possibly imagine that the troops are simply
taking everything, pillaging everything. It's a scene of unimaginable horror.
The city's burning down. There's rape there's murder, there's extra
judicial killings. It is at a ze. Now disaster maybe
(25:05):
a strong way to put it in Napoleon's mind at
this point in time. And here's why. Napoleon. Yes, the
city's burning, Yes, he's having to kill arsonists, Yes he
did that. There's problems, there's certainly plenty of problems. But
he does have Moscow. He is sitting here and Alexander's
Moscow with his army, and Alexander is not here. It's
(25:31):
getting cold, but again, not the end of the world,
because you won, right, you're sitting in Moscow. It's over surely.
Alexander is working up a peace treaty, getting ready to surrender,
(25:53):
and he's gonna ask for terms. And Napoleon, because he's Napoleon,
he did this a lot. He's not going to destroy
him for who'll agree to a lot of Alexander's terms.
Is Alexander's gonna sue for peace and Napoleon's gonna bring
him back into the fold. And everything's fine. And Napoleon
starts sending them as series out to Alexander, Hey go
(26:13):
find out. Is he putting on the finishing touches on
the peace treaty? No word at all. Nothing. We'll continue
in a moment. Jesse Kelly returns next. It is the
Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful, wonderful Wednesday. Memory. You
(26:36):
can email your love, your hate, your death threats Jesse
at Jesse kellyshow dot com. I'm going to get to
some of those next hour. I'm gonna touch on some
fraud things. Wonderful fraud thing, I mean, terrible fraud things,
but what we're doing, things about the fraud whatever. You have,
all kinds of stuff coming next hour on the Jesse
Kelly Show. Now, let's do one more little segment on
(26:58):
Napoleon's invasion of Russia and disastrous retreat, which is about
to begin. I mentioned Napoleon has occupied Moscow. Moscow is
being that on fire by Russian arsonists. Napoleon's killing them
as fast as he can. But again, none of these
things are the end of the world, because Napoleon won, Right.
(27:20):
Napoleon is sending emissaries to Alexander, He's getting no word back,
and it's getting colder and colder and colder. Well, what
do you do now His army is not in a
(27:40):
state where he can continue pushing. They just can't. You
can't push any further than this. So what do you
do if Alexander just never says anything to you. You
don't have the supplies. They don't even have the winter coats.
There are some, there's some winter gear coming in. Not
very much at all, though, when do you say, I
(28:01):
have to leave? Napoleon agonizes about this. Napoleon agonizes about
this for a month. Again. I've said it over and
over again. It applies so much to so many things
in history, but certainly to this tale. Hindsight, being twenty twenty,
(28:24):
you can look at that month and say Napoleon doomed
tens of thousands of men to death by that month,
the decision to wait for a peace treaty did it
did in the end doom thousands and thousands of men
to death. But if we have to pause and defend
(28:45):
Napoleon for a moment, what if what if he only
waited five days and then looks around at his men
and says, all right, they're tired, they're hungry, it's getting cold. Hey, guys,
pack up the army and let's leave. Well, what if
Alexander was on his way?
Speaker 2 (29:03):
What if he was on horseback as we speak with
a peace treaty in hand, and then he gets there
and he sees your armies pulling out and you're retreating.
The peace treaty gets lit on fire, and Alexander says
he won.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
A month is a long time to wait. Obviously a
suicidally bad decision at the time, but you can see
from Napoleon's perspective why he did it. But he did
do it. He waited a month. Now now is where
the problems. The problems, they don't start getting worse, they
(29:42):
start compounding on each other. First the state of the
French forces. How much have they been reduced. I'll give
you one example of one unit. But this, I want
this to really drive home this fact. You're not dealing
with six hundred thousand men of the Grand Army by
this time, after this much distance, this much desert, desertion, battles, starvation,
(30:09):
You're dealing with a shell of the army. You crossed
the border with one unit. Cavalry unit had nine thousand
men in their horses. What was it at now seven
hundred seven hundred, again a shell of what it used
to be. And to make matters worse on the Russian side,
(30:34):
not only was Alexander and the Russians. Not only were
they not sitting around the table trying to cross the
t's and dot the eyes on a peace treaty, they
were building up their forces for a winter counter attack.
Russian winter is not pleasant for anybody, we're all human beings.
(30:55):
But obviously, because it's their homeland, Russians are well acquainted
with it and well equipped for it in ways the
French were not. The Russians knew it was getting cold.
They knew for a fact the French were in a terrible,
terrible state. They were outside of Moscow, getting freaking ready.
(31:17):
Napoleon takes off. Then it's just so the bad luck.
When I was reading about this. Every time I read
about it, and I watched a couple documentaries on it,
I actually found myself wincing. All right, now you've got
to leave, Okay, you want to go west, all right,
we got that. Trying to get back to France. What
(31:40):
route should you take? Well, the way you came in.
Pause for a second, Let's think about this logistically. What
has your army been doing to the entire route you
just came in on the whole way in? What has
your army been doing pillaging it for everything, absolutely everything.
Anything that wasn't burned, anything that wasn't nailed down, had
(32:02):
been used and eaten. And the relatively barren countryside you
just came through, it's ten times as barren now as
it was when you came through it. And the weather's freezing,
and your men are broken down. You can't take the
same route back home. You have to find a new one.
(32:25):
Napoleon decides to try and find a new one. The Russians,
they again, they really understand the situation they're in. They
move their troops into Napoleon's way, and they now are
the aggressors. They deny him an alternate route. The alternate
(32:49):
route Napoleon was going to take home. He gets cut
off from it and it's no longer an option. That
means that entire he just marched through as the weather
is frigid, We're talking twenty below zero, the snow is
starting to fall, the food has run out. He now
(33:13):
has to march through the barren lands he already pillaged.
Oh and by the way, those Cossacks, I mean the
Russians in general, but those Cossacks, they have their winter
coats snugly on themselves. What do you think a absolutely
sweet army of horseback warriors who know how to handle
(33:37):
the snow, what do you think they're going to do
to a strung out, starving, tired French army that's freezing
to death on the way out. Yeah, we'll wrap this
up tomorrow. I don't think it'll take me very much longer,
but we'll wrap this whole little tail up tomorrow. For now,
let's get back to some politics and talk about some
(33:57):
fraud matters. We'll do some emails, will make fun of
Katie Porker. We'll be back
Host
Jesse Kelly
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