The battle weakened both sides, but the Russians had more territory even than the Americans into which to retreat, abandoning Moscow as they did so. The French, far from home, advanced farther when Napoleon couldn’t resist taking the city, hoping to shock Tsar Alexander I into making peace. When that didn’t happen, the greatest military genius since Julius Caesar assumed the attributes of a dog who’d chased a car and caught it: what do you do next? Meanwhile, as his humblest private could have reminded him, winter was coming on.
