It Could Have Been Worse

Welcome to Friday with Chairman Joe.

  In France, if you call something a Berezina, you're saying it's a disaster. It's like saying someone has met his Waterloo. Which is funny, because both sayings relate to Napoleonic bad days. It was on this day in 1812 that Napoleon's army crossed the Berezina River in present day Belarus during its ignominious retreat from Moscow.
  Crossing the river was the final stage of a three day battle. The battle was actually a draw. The Russians had hoped to annihilate the French Army on the banks of the river, but Napoleon managed to get away with most of his army of 40,000 men. However, considering Napoleon had invaded Russia the previous June with an army of 685,000 the word Berezina could stand for the full catastrophe.
   What was Napoleon doing in Russia anyway? He had defeated Russia back in 1807. The Tsar had given up Poland and agreed not to trade with Britain. Napoleon's ultimate goal was to conquer Britain which was always meddling in his plans to dominate the world. But over the years the Tsar continued to supply Britain with goods. Also, Russia appeared to be getting ready to invade Poland. Everyone told Napoleon, "Do not invade Russia." He wouldn't listen.
  At first the French did well. They won several battles, but the Russian army kept retreating to the east. As Napoleon approached Moscow, the Russians burned the city and retreated again. Napoleon hung around Moscow for a month waiting for the Tsar to surrender, but the Tsar never did. This was a month Napoleon should have been heading for home. Winter came early that year. Soldiers froze in their summer uniforms. Cossacks swept in to harass the lines.
   Napoleon planned to march the remnant of his army across the frozen Berezina River. But in one of those "What else could go wrong!" moments, the temperature rose and the river ice thawed. Napoleon had previously ordered that all his bridge making equipment be destroyed to prevent it from falling into Russian hands. Fortunately for him, one of his commanders had disobeyed that order. A battalion of Dutch engineers, working in freezing waters, got going on a 330 foot bridge.
   French troops held off the approaching Russians for two days while the bridge was completed. The Swiss Guard at the bridgehead suffered the greatest casualties. Napoleon recruited men from all the countries he had conquered in the previous ten years, thus the Swiss and the Dutch.
  Napoleon got back to France and raised a new army, but he had lost his reputation for invulnerability back in Russia. His Prussian and Austrian allies switched sides and joined Britain and Russia against him. He fought on for three more years, but his glory days were over. He himself never gave up, but in the end his generals refused to lead the army into battle and that was that.
  In 1815 he was exiled to the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, one of the most remote islands in the world. He died there of stomach cancer after a stay of six years. He was 51. There are rumors that the British slowly poisoned him with arsenic, but that would not have been necessary. There are no bridges off of Saint Helena Island.

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