The History of Russia Podcast

Today’s episode will feature two main events - a long, muddled chase. Barclay De Tolly pulling back, Bagration trying to catch up with him, neither of them quite knowing where each other was and Napoleon's marshals trying to make sure that the two Russian armies never quite managed to meet up and combine forcesAnd in August, almost 2 months after the invasion had started, we will have our first battle - well sort of.We also have a couple of other sideshows to keep an eye on, neither of which were at the forefront of either Napoleon’s or Alexander’s minds - the Iberian campaign and the continuing rumbling in the Caucasus.By the way if there is a medical term for the fear of saying the place-name' Smolensk", I've got it.If you want to get in touch it's -nordicworld@outlook.com

This time around, we’ll be covering just the two things, the somewhat inevitable fall of Speransky and the events that would lead up to and include Napoleon’s full scale invasion of Russia in June 1812.

In Today's episode we'll be visiting a number of different locations.First, Iberia — because Napoleon's other war, the one being fought in Spain and Portugal, was quietly draining exactly the men, materiel and focus that would be ideally required in the east. Then we’ll head east ourselves, to the Ottoman front and take a short detour into the Caucasus. Next it’s back to St Petersburg, to watch Speransky's reform programme start to come apart at the seams. And then finally, the main event — the actual mechanics of how France and Russia went from suspicious allies to open enemies over the course of 1811, and what both sides were doing about it.

Napoleon continued to sweep all before him - on land. But at sea, it was a different story.Prussia decided to join the allied coalition, and imediately regreted it. Which meant that Alexander had no other choice but go to war with the French.But that would all, literrally end in tears and Napoleon and Alexander agreed to a treaty - which on paper looked advantageous to both but in hindsight, just papered over the cracks.

It's 1804 and a new coalition was being formed (the 3rd) to try to and defeat Napoleon and the French.However, in the following year the French emperor would again show just why he was one of the greatest military figures of all time,

Paul is dead, Alexander is the new Tsar and so today we're going to cover the first two to three years of his reign — roughly 1801 to 1803, where surely, things in Russia could only get better...

Today we are doing something slightly different. We are stepping off of the chronological conveyor belt — which has been moving at quite a clip lately — and we are going to take a breather and look at something I have perhaps neglected (well there is no 'perhaps' about it - I have). So for the next 35 or so minutes come with me on a journey through 18th Century Russian culture. The art, the architecture. the literature, the music - and let's see if we can work out whether any of it was actualy Russian.

It's the 23rd of March 1801 and in the Mikhailovsky Castle, just outside St Petersburg, something terrible is about to happen...