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“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,”
― Dominic Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814

“Both generally and in the Russian case it seems to me a mistake to see everything in the imperial tradition as harmful and the nation as the inevitable embodiment of virtue. This is in no sense a justification for neo-empire in today’s world. But empire in its day – unlike very many nations – was often relatively tolerant, pluralist and even occasionally benevolent”
― Dominic Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814

“for self-destruction was always part of Alexander’s calculation. Russian policy in these years was intelligently conceived and was executed with consistent purpose. It was very far removed indeed from Tolstoyan mythology.”
― Dominic Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814

“ever”
― Jeffrey Cox, Morning Star, Midnight Sun: The Early Guadalcanal-Solomons Campaign of World War II August–October 1942