Sample Solution

“good battles.” Consequently Napoleon had not prepared to play cat and mouse with the Cossack and Le Grande Armée was decimated by starvation and the early winter. The Emperor may not have been able to see the early winter coming however, it was this “unbounded pride” that Petre refers to that prevented Napoleon from withdrawing from Moscow earlier. Napoleon had failed to grasp that “The tsar knew well that he would be deposed and assassinated if he tried to do so[negociate].”(Clausewitz) There is much validity to this argument as we know that Napoleon remained in Moscow for a period of eight weeks as he waited for a Russian emissary to arrive and discuss peace terms, this failure to recognise the need to leave cost the once ruthlessly pragmatic Napoleon his army. The Tsar later remarked from St.Petersberg “My campaign led by General winter, is just beginning.” Subsequently Napoleon’s underestimation of Russia’s resistance would result in the loss of an estimated half a million men and a thousand cannons, a disaster from which he would never regain his greatness. Francois Dumocreau, a Belgian soldier recalls leading his horse over “a veritable mountain , more than two metres deep, of dead and dying…” According to Britten-Austin “The biggest, most spectacular army Europe had ever raised” was decimated in a matter of months through an unwillingness to abandon all Napoleon had conquered in Russia without concessions from the Tsar. Although Napoleon was defeated for good at Waterloo in 1815, “He and his supporters do not want to admit that huge mistakes, sheer recklessness, and, above all, overreaching ambition that exceeded all realistic possibilities, were the true causes” of his downfall. This helps to identify Napoleon’s arrogance, underestimation of opposition and unyielding ambition as three key causes in his downfall, it highlights that Napoleon’s downfall was in fact his own fault as by wanting to extend his empire into eastern Europe and Russia his fall was made inevitable.

Socio-Economic

On the other hand, the socio-economic consequences of Napoleon’s rash decision making would become