Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / The Romanovs' War with Napoleon: 1812 and the Burning of Moscow
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked a lot about the Romanovs' internal struggles — the secret police, the reforms, the revolutions. But one of the biggest tests the dynasty ever faced came from outside Russia. Napoleon Bonaparte invaded in 1812 with the largest army Europe had ever seen. Luna: That's the campaign that ended with the burning of Moscow, right? I always picture the snow and the retreat. Lucas: Exactly. But the snow came later. When Napoleon crossed the Niemen River into Russia on June 24, 1812, it was summer. His Grande Armée numbered over 600,000 men — French, but also Poles, Germans, Italians, Dutch. It was a genuinely multinational force. And Tsar Alexander I was determined not to negotiate. Luna: He'd been allied with Napoleon before, hadn't he? Lucas: Yes, at Tilsit in 1807. But by 1812, that alliance had collapsed. Alexander had withdrawn from the Continental System — Napoleon's blockade of Britain — and Napoleon decided to force him back in line. What Napoleon didn't count on was the Russian strategy: retreat and scorched earth. The Russian army under General Barclay de Tolly kept pulling back, burning crops and supplies as they went. No decisive battle, no surrender. Napoleon pushed deeper and deeper into empty territory. Luna: That must have been maddening for him. He wanted a quick fight. Lucas: It was. Napoleon's whole style was to force a decisive battle and crush the enemy army. But the Russians refused to play along. They retreated all the way to Moscow, and the pressure on Alexander to stand and fight became enormous. So in late August, he replaced Barclay de Tolly with the old, battle-hardened General Mikhail Kutuzov. Kutuzov was a student of Suvorov, cautious but stubborn. He decided to make a stand at Borodino, about 110 kilometers west of Moscow. Luna: Borodino. I've heard it called the bloodiest day of the Napoleonic Wars. Lucas: It absolutely was. On September 7, 1812, around 250,000 men faced off. The fighting was concentrated around three key points: the Bagration flèches — earthworks named after General Pyotr Bagration — the Raevsky Redoubt, and the village of Borodino itself. The Russians had built field fortifications and fought with desperate tenacity. Bagration was mortally wounded leading a counterattack. By nightfall, the French had taken most of the positions, but at a staggering cost: roughly 30,000 French casualties, and maybe 40,000 Russian. Kutuzov's army was battered but not destroyed. Luna: So Napoleon won the battle, but he didn't win the war. Lucas: Exactly. He had a pyrrhic victory. The Russians withdrew in good order, and Napoleon marched on to Moscow, expecting the city to surrender. But Moscow was largely abandoned. The governor, Count Rostopchin, had evacuated most of the population and removed firefighting equipment. On the night of September 14, fires broke out. Within days, three-quarters of Moscow burned to the ground. The cause is still debated — deliberate scorched earth by the Russians, or accidental fires in the chaos. Either way, Napoleon's army found no food, no shelter, and no one to negotiate with. Luna: He must have realized then that he was in trouble. Lucas: He waited in Moscow for a month, expecting Alexander to sue for peace. But Alexander refused to respond. Finally, on October 19, Napoleon ordered the retreat. That's when the disaster really unfolded. The army marched back along the same Smolensk road they had devastated on the way in. Supplies were gone. Winter set in early and brutally. Cossack raiders under Matvei Platov harassed the flanks. The Grande Armée disintegrated. At the Berezina River in late November, a desperate crossing cost thousands more. By the time Napoleon abandoned the army and fled to Paris in December, maybe 100,000 of the original 600,000 had survived. Luna: And this is where we should mention — we don't run ads on these episodes. If you want to support the show staying ad-free, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It helps us keep doing deep dives like this. Lucas: Absolutely. We keep the show independent because of listeners like you. So back to 1812 — the victory transformed Russia's place in Europe. Alexander I became the 'Savior of Europe' and led the coalition that finally defeated Napoleon in 1814. The Romanov dynasty's prestige soared. But it also planted seeds of later unrest: Russian officers who saw Western Europe during the occupation came home with ideas about reform, and that led directly to the Decembrist revolt of 1825. Luna: So the war that saved the dynasty also sowed the seeds of its later challenges? Lucas: Exactly. The Patriotic War of 1812 — as Russians call it — became a founding myth. It's in Tolstoy's War and Peace, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, and countless monuments. The Borodino battlefield even became a site of pilgrimage. For the Romanovs, it was their finest hour, but it also exposed the gap between the autocracy and a society that had sacrificed so much. The war — and the memory of it — haunted Russia right up to 1917. Luna: I never realized how directly it connected to the later revolutions. Lucas: It's a thread that runs through the whole century. The officers who fought at Borodino were the fathers and grandfathers of the revolutionaries. And Nicholas II, at his coronation in 1896, was still invoking the spirit of 1812. But by then, the dynasty had lost the ability to channel that patriotism into real reform. So the war with Napoleon is both a high point and a warning.