How Did Napoleon Invade Russia

In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with about six-hundred-thousand men and over fifty-thousand horses. His plan was to end the war by fighting a final hard battle. Just in case his plans didn't succeed, he supplied 30 days of food. He soon discovered that he should have brought more. Due to his unexpected finding that Russia had a very poor road network, he was forced to travel in a narrow line. Even though he sent out a larger food supply than usual, food was mostly to be acquired by whatever the soldiers could find along the way. But all did not go to plan. The life was very poor and could not support the thousands of soldiers that would be living off the land. Since these men were basically using the same roads, the first troops got the most, best food that could easily be foraged. The second few troops got less, etc. If you were at the back, you wouldn't get much, or anything good. The Russians made the problem worse by destroying everything possible as they retreated before the French. As time went by, soldiers began to trail, due to having to search further away from the roads to get food, and weakness from the lack of it.

Grazing on road and such places was not healthy for them. Their food had to be straw. The further the army ventured into Russia, the less such food was available. Even the grass began to become scarcer, for, like the soldiers food, the horses bringing up the rear had the worst grazing due to the front eating as much as they were. By the end of the first month of traveling, over ten-thousand horses had