And the The Welcome to Russian History Retold, episode 133, Russian Generals of the Napoleonic era, part one.

Last time, we reviewed the life and murder of Grigori Rasputin,

and today we start a new series on Russian and Soviet generals

throughout history.

This series will likely not be continuous,

but will appear here and there as I see fit.

So we're going to cover some generals,

then go on to a different topic, come back to them again.

So it's going to be kind of a hit or miss type of series and I hope you enjoy it.

Today we're going to cover the lives of three men of six who were the leaders of the Russian army during the time of

the 1812 invasion of Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte.

The men are Pavil Chichikov, Peter Wittgenstein, and Alexander Tormassov.

Next time we're going to be covering Peter Bograchon, Michael Andreas Barckley-Dutoli,oli and finally the headman Mikhail Kutuzov.

Now in this episode and the shorter of the two we're going to discuss the careers of the first three men and the next week we're going to cover the last three.

First, let's start with a bit of background on what was going on when these men served their country and repulsing the French.

The Tsar at the time, of course, was Alexander the first, the son of the hugely unpopular

Paul.

Napoleon was marching through Europe and had his eyes on Russia.

Now, the official reason Napoleon used to invade

was to liberate Poland.

But the real reason was his goal of stopping Russian trade with England.

He believed that if he reached Moscow, Alexander would sue for peace,

...