Liveblogging Napoleon's Russian Invasion: The Emperor Loses His Touch

Retreating, evading battle, and burning their own resources, the Russians have confronted Napoleon with a style of warfare he cannot comprehend and with which he does not know how to deal. His companions may or may not have understood, but a generation later, the greatest Russian novelist understood:

Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa; there can be no doubt of the victory, since the battlefield remains with the French. the Russians retreat and surrender the capital. Moscow, filled with provisions, arms, ammunition, and incalculable riches, is in the hands of Napoleon. The Russian army, twice weaker than the French, does not make a single attempt to attack in the course of a month. Napoleon's position is most brilliant. To fall upon the remainder of the Russian army with double its forces and exterminate it, to negotiate an advantageous peace or, in case of refusal, to make a threatening move on Petersburg, even to return to Smolensk or Vilno in case of failure, or to remain in Mosocow--in other words, to hold on to the brilliant position the French army was in at the time, would seem to require no special genius. For that one needed to do the simplest and easiest thing: to keep the army from looting, to provide a supply of winter clothing, of which there would be enough in Moscow for the whole army, of which (on the evidence of French historians) there were enough to Moscow for more than six months. Napoleon, that genius of geniuses and having the power of control over the army, as the historians affirm, did none of that.

--Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace Volume IV, Part Two, VIII 1001
(R. Pevear and L. Volokhonsky trans. 2007)