Sign in with Facebook
Eurydicegirlgmail.Com
“The Russian regiment was very much part of an Old Regime rather than a modern, national army. This merely underlines the fact that it was the European Old Regime which defeated Napoleon. It had absorbed some aspects of modernity such as the Prussian Landwehr and it had allied itself to British economic power, which was much more truly modern than was Napoleon’s absolutist empire. Nevertheless the main cause of Napoleon’s defeat was that the three great dynasties fought side by side for the first time since 1792 and that the Russian army was on the scene from the start,”
― Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814
― Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814
“Meanwhile the revolt of Russian officers in the so-called Decembrist movement of 1825 owed much to injured Russian national pride at the Poles being given freedoms denied to the Russian elites. In the century which followed 1815 the Poles contributed much to the Russian Empire’s economy. In political terms, however, both the Polish and Jewish populations of the former Duchy of Warsaw caused the Russian government many problems. Nor was it even clear that the annexation of the Duchy had strengthened Russia’s strategic position. On the contrary, by 1900 it could be seen as a potential trap for the Russian army. By then the German settlement of 1815 also looked a mistake from the perspective of Russian interests. A France bordering on the Rhine would have eased many Russian concerns about the challenge of Germany’s growing power.”
― Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814
― Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814
“For a significant section of the ruling elite the Napoleonic Wars were in one sense a distraction and a sideshow. They saw Russia’s main interests as lying in expansion southwards against the Ottomans and Persians. These men seldom saw France itself as Russia’s main or inevitable enemy. Most of them believed that the Napoleonic empire was”
― Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814
― Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814
“Of course, it is unfair to judge the efforts of statesmen using retrospective knowledge. Some of the difficulties caused by annexing the Duchy of Warsaw could have been –and indeed were –anticipated. But from the Russian perspective there were actually no easy answers to the Polish problem, to an even greater extent than was true of the British in Ireland. Nor could anyone predict that the weak Prussia of 1814 would be transformed by the Industrial Revolution and German unification into a menace to itself and Europe. Nevertheless a knowledge of subsequent European history does give emphasis to the question of whether the enormous sacrifices of the Russian people in 1812–14 had been worthwhile.”
― Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814
― Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814
Eurydicegirlgmail.Com’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Eurydicegirlgmail.Com’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Eurydicegirlgmail.Com
Lists liked by Eurydicegirlgmail.Com
