French invasion of Russia in the context of Extreme weather

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a global series of conflicts fought by a fluctuating array of European coalitions against the French First Republic (1803–1804) under the First Consul followed by the First French Empire (1804–1815) under the Emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and from the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and produced a period of French domination over Continental Europe. The wars are categorised as seven conflicts, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres: the War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia.

The first stage of the war broke out when Britain declared war on France on 18 May 1803. After some minor campaigns, Britain allied with Austria, Russia, and several minor powers to form the Third Coalition in April 1805. Napoleon defeated the allied Russo-Austrian armies in the subsequent war which climaxed in French victories at Ulm and at Austerlitz, leading to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and Austria being forced to make peace by the end of the year. Britain and Russia remained at war with France. Concerned about increasing French power, Prussia joined Britain and Russia in the Fourth Coalition, which resumed war in October 1806. Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena-Auerstedt and the Russians at Friedland, bringing an uneasy peace to the continent by July 1807, and again leaving Britain as France's sole major enemy. Britain was unable to dispute French dominance on the continent but obtained hegemony over the seas after a string of victories including Trafalgar. Russia used the interim peace to resolve wars with the Ottomans, Swedes, and Iranians.

The Austrian Empire, officially known as the Empire of Austria, was a multinational European great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence, it was the third most populous nation in Europe after the Russian Empire and the United Kingdom, while geographically, it was the third-largest empire in Europe after the Russian Empire and the First French Empire.

The empire was proclaimed by Francis II in 1804 in response to Napoleon's declaration of the First French Empire, unifying all Habsburg possessions under one central government. It remained part of the Holy Roman Empire until the latter's dissolution in 1806. It continued fighting against Napoleon throughout the Napoleonic Wars, except for a period between 1809 and 1813, when Austria was first allied with Napoleon during the invasion of Russia and later neutral during the first few weeks of the Sixth Coalition War. Austria and its allies emerged victorious in the war, leading to the Congress of Vienna, which reaffirmed the empire as one of the great powers of the 19th century.

Smolensk is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, 360 kilometers (220 mi) west-southwest of Moscow. It has a population of 316,570 (2021 census).

First mentioned in 863, it is one of the oldest cities in Russia. It has been a regional capital for most of the past millennium, beginning as the capital of the Principality of Smolensk in the 11th-15th centuries, then the Smolensk Voivodeship of Lithuania and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Smolensk Governorate and Oblast within Russia. It was the main stronghold of the Smolensk Gate, a geostrategically significant pass between the Daugava and Dnieper rivers, and as such was an important point of contention in the struggle for dominance in Eastern Europe, passing at various times between Lithuania, Poland and Russia. In more recent history, it was the site of two battles in 1812 and 1941 during the French invasion of Russia and Operation Barbarossa respectively on their paths towards Moscow. It was the place of the Smolensk air disaster of 2010.

War and Peace (Russian: Война и мир, romanized: Voyna i mir; pre-reform Russian: Война и миръ; IPA: [vɐjˈna i ˈmʲir]) is a literary work by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, the work comprises both a fictional narrative and chapters in which Tolstoy discusses history and philosophy. An early version was published serially beginning in 1865, after which the entire book was rewritten and published in 1869. It is regarded, with Anna Karenina, as Tolstoy's finest literary achievement, and it remains an internationally praised classic of world literature.

The book chronicles the French invasion of Russia and its aftermath during the Napoleonic era. It uses five interlocking narratives following different Russian aristocratic families to illustrate Napoleon's impact on Tsarist society. Portions of an earlier version, titled The Year 1805, were serialized in The Russian Messenger from 1865 to 1867 before the novel was published in its entirety in 1869.

The history of Russia begins with the histories of the East Slavs. The traditional start date of specifically Russian history is the establishment of the Rus' state in the north in the year 862, ruled by Varangians. In 882, Prince Oleg of Novgorod seized Kiev, uniting the northern and southern lands of the Eastern Slavs under one authority, moving the governance center to Kiev by the end of the 10th century, and maintaining northern and southern parts with significant autonomy from each other. The state adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine, Slavic and Scandinavian cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated as a state due to the Mongol invasions in 1237–1240. After the 13th century, Moscow emerged as a significant political and cultural force, driving the unification of Russian territories. By the end of the 15th century, many of the petty principalities around Moscow had been united with the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which took full control of its own sovereignty under Ivan the Great.

Ivan the Terrible transformed the Grand Duchy into the Tsardom of Russia in 1547. However, the death of Ivan's son Feodor I without issue in 1598 created a succession crisis and led Russia into a period of chaos and civil war known as the Time of Troubles, ending with the coronation of Michael Romanov as the first Tsar of the Romanov dynasty in 1613. During the rest of the seventeenth century, Russia completed the exploration and conquest of Siberia, claiming lands as far as the Pacific Ocean by the end of the century. Domestically, Russia faced numerous uprisings of the various ethnic groups under their control, as exemplified by the Cossack leader Stenka Razin, who led a revolt in 1670–1671. In 1721, in the wake of the Great Northern War, Tsar Peter the Great renamed the state as the Russian Empire; he is also noted for establishing St. Petersburg as the new capital of his Empire, and for his introducing Western European culture to Russia. In 1762, Russia came under the control of Catherine the Great, who continued the westernizing policies of Peter the Great, and ushered in the era of the Russian Enlightenment. Catherine's grandson, Alexander I, repulsed an invasion by the French Emperor Napoleon, leading Russia into the status of one of the great powers.

In the War of the Sixth Coalition (French: Guerre de la Sixième Coalition; December 1812 – May 1814), sometimes known in Germany as the Wars of Liberation (German: Befreiungskriege), a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Sardinia, and a number of German States defeated France and drove Napoleon into exile on Elba. After the disastrous French invasion of Russia of 1812 in which they had been forced to support France, Prussia and Austria joined Russia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Portugal, and the rebels in Spain who were already at war with France. The invasion of Russia cost the French many seasoned soldiers, so Napoleon took action to engage "Marie-Louises", young conscripts who were barely familiar with military affairs; they were called up from October 1813 to 1815. However, the constant warfare weakened the Coalition nations as well. The Russian military was particularly depleted after 1812, and Prussia also suffered a significant downgrade as a result of its losses in 1806–1807; nevertheless, it carried out large-scale reforms to improve the situation in the Prussian Army. Later, having encountered the Prussians in the Battle of Lützen, Napoleon would say: "These animals have learned something."

The War of the Sixth Coalition saw battles at Lützen, Bautzen, and Dresden. The even larger Battle of Leipzig (also known as the Battle of Nations) was the largest battle in European history before World War I. Ultimately, Napoleon's earlier setbacks in Spain, Portugal and Russia proved to be the seeds of his undoing. With their armies reorganized, the allies drove Napoleon out of Germany in 1813 and invaded France in 1814. The Allies defeated the remaining French armies, occupied Paris, and forced Napoleon to abdicate and go into exile. The French monarchy was revived by the allies, who handed rule to the heir of the House of Bourbon in the Bourbon Restoration.

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (sometimes called the Great French War or the Wars of the Revolution and the Empire) were a series of conflicts between the French and several European monarchies between 1792 and 1815. They encompass first the French Revolutionary Wars against the newly declared French Republic and from 1803 onwards, the Napoleonic Wars against First Consul and later Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. They include the Coalition Wars as a subset: seven wars waged by various military alliances of great European powers, known as Coalitions, against Revolutionary France – later the First French Empire – and its allies between 1792 and 1815:

• War of the First Coalition (April 1792 – October 1797)
• War of the Second Coalition (November 1798 – March 1802)
• War of the Third Coalition (April 1805 – July 1806)
• War of the Fourth Coalition (October 1806 – July 1807)
• War of the Fifth Coalition (April – October 1809)
• War of the Sixth Coalition (March 1813 – May 1814)
• War of the Seventh Coalition, also known as the Hundred Days (March – July 1815)

Although the Coalition Wars are the most prominent subset of conflicts of this era, some French Revolutionary Wars such as the French invasion of Switzerland, and some Napoleonic Wars such as the French invasion of Russia and the Peninsular War, are not counted amongst the "Coalition Wars" proper.

A thematic map is a type of map that portrays the geographic pattern of a particular subject matter (theme) in a geographic area. This usually involves the use of map symbols to visualize selected properties of geographic features that are not naturally visible, such as temperature, language, or population. In this, they contrast with general reference maps, which focus on the location (more than the properties) of a diverse set of physical features, such as rivers, roads, and buildings. Alternative names have been suggested for this class, such as special-subject or special-purpose maps, statistical maps, or distribution maps, but these have generally fallen out of common usage. Thematic mapping is closely allied with the field of Geovisualization.

Several types of thematic maps have been invented, starting in the 18th and 19th centuries, as large amounts of statistical data began to be collected and published, such as national censuses. These types, such as choropleth maps, isarithmic maps, and chorochromatic maps, use very different strategies for representing the location and attributes of geographic phenomena, such that each is preferable for different forms of phenomena and different forms of available data. A wide variety of phenomena and data can thus be visualized using thematic maps, including those from the natural world (e.g., climate, soils) and the human world (e.g., demographics, public health)

Data and information visualization (data viz/vis or info viz/vis) is the practice of designing and creating graphic or visual representations of quantitative and qualitative data and information with the help of static, dynamic or interactive visual items. These visualizations are intended to help a target audience visually explore and discover, quickly understand, interpret and gain important insights into otherwise difficult-to-identify structures, relationships, correlations, local and global patterns, trends, variations, constancy, clusters, outliers and unusual groupings within data. When intended for the public to convey a concise version of information in an engaging manner, it is typically called infographics.

Data visualization is concerned with presenting sets of primarily quantitative raw data in a schematic form, using imagery. The visual formats used in data visualization include charts and graphs, geospatial maps, figures, correlation matrices, percentage gauges, etc..

The Russo-Turkish War (1806–1812) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire as one of 12 Russo-Turkish wars. In 1812, both sides favored peace just as Napoleon's invasion of Russia was about to commence.

The military career of Napoleon spanned over 20 years. He led French armies in the French Revolutionary Wars and later, as emperor, in the Napoleonic Wars. Despite his comprehensive battle-winning record, Napoleon ended his career in defeat. Nevertheless, European history has since regarded Napoleon as a military genius and one of the finest commanders in history. His battles, campaigns and wars have been studied at military schools worldwide. Such campaigns as the Italian campaign of 1796–1797, the Ulm campaign and the Six Days' Campaign demonstrated his strategic and tactical genius. He fought more than 80 battles, losing only ten, mostly towards the end when the French army was not as dominant. As historian Alexander Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky observed, Napoleon was a "despotic sovereign of the battlefield, in whose presence but few generals ventured to maneuver, striving only to ward off his blows." Napoleon never sought refuge behind ridges, redoubts, etc.; he was a proponent of the offensive principle.

The French dominion collapsed rapidly after the invasion of Russia in 1812. Napoleon was defeated in 1814 and exiled to the island of Elba, before returning to France. He was finally defeated in 1815 at Waterloo. He spent his remaining days in British custody on the remote volcanic tropical island of Saint Helena. In his long military career, Bonaparte celebrated 64 victories and suffered 10 defeats; 6 battles ended with an uncertain outcome.

The Grande Armée (pronounced [ɡʁɑ̃d aʁme]; French for 'Grand Army') was the primary field army of the French Imperial Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Commanded by Napoleon, from 1804 to 1808 it won a series of military victories that allowed the First French Empire to exercise unprecedented control over most of Europe. Widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest fighting forces ever assembled, it suffered catastrophic losses during the disastrous French invasion of Russia, after which it never recovered its strategic superiority and ended its military career with a total defeat during the Hundred Days in 1815.

The Grande Armée was formed in 1804 from the Armée des côtes de l'Océan (Army of the Ocean Coasts) more commonly referred to as the Armée d'Angleterre (Army of England), a field army of over 100,000 men assembled for Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom. He subsequently led the field army to Central Europe and defeated Austrian and Russian forces as part of the War of the Third Coalition. Thereafter, the Grande Armée was the principal field army deployed in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Peninsular War and War of the Fifth Coalition, where the French army slowly lost a large portion of its veteran soldiers, strength and prestige, and in the invasion of Russia, War of the Sixth Coalition and Hundred Days. The term Grande Armée is often used to refer to multinational armies led by Napoleon in his campaigns; however, during the War of the Fifth Coalition and the Waterloo campaign (part of the Hundred Days), other formations were led by him de facto, namely the Army of Germany and the Army of the North, respectively.

Michel Ney, 1st Prince de la Moskowa, 1st Duke of Elchingen (pronounced [miʃɛl nɛ]; 10 January 1769 – 7 December 1815), was a French military commander and Marshal of the Empire who fought in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.

The son of a cooper from Saarlouis, Ney worked as a civil servant until 1787 when he enlisted in a cavalry regiment, right before the outbreak of French Revolution. Distinguishing himself as a cavalry officer in the War of the First Coalition, he quickly rose through the ranks and, by the Battle of Hohenlinden (1800), he had been promoted to divisional general. On Napoleon's proclamation of the French Empire, Ney was named one of the original 18 Marshals of the Empire. He played an instrumental role during Napoleon's subsequent campaigns, seeing action at Elchingen (1805), Jena (1806) and Eylau (1807). Ney commanded the French rearguard during the disastrous invasion of Russia, for which he was lauded as "the bravest of the brave" by the emperor.

The Battle of Smolensk was the first major battle of the French invasion of Russia. It took place on 16–18 August 1812 and involved about 45,000 men of the Grande Armée under Emperor Napoleon I against about 30,000 Russian troops under General Barclay de Tolly. Napoleon occupied Smolensk by driving out Prince Pyotr Bagration's Second Army. The French artillery bombardment burned the city to the ground. Of 2,250 buildings, 84% were destroyed with only 350 surviving intact. Of the city's 15,000 inhabitants, about 1,000 were left at the end of the battle inside the smoking ruins. With over 15,000 casualties, it was one of the bloodiest battles of the invasion.

The Year 1812, Solemn Overture, Op. 49, popularly known as the 1812 Overture, is a concert overture in E♭ major written in 1880 by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The piece commemorates Russia's successful defence against the French invasion of the nation in 1812.

The overture's first public performance, conducted by Ippolit Al'tani, took place in Moscow on 20 August [O.S. 8 August] 1882, under a tent, near the still unfinished Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which also memorialised the 1812 defence of Russia.

The 1810s (pronounced "eighteen-tens") was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1810, and ended on December 31, 1819.

The decade was opened with a very hostile political climate around the world. Napoleon was invading France's neighbours in efforts to build a French Empire, causing a chain of global-scaled conflicts known as the Napoleonic Wars. Here, France's Napoleonic empire saw its rise and fall through events such as Napoleon's attempts to conquer Russia, the War of 1812 (spillover to America), and the Battle of Waterloo (Napoleon's ultimate defeat). Imperialism began to encroach towards African and Asian territories through trade, as the United States saw mass-scaled migration that headed westward towards the American frontier (mostly through the opening of the Oregon Trail.)