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Catastrophe: History’s Most Disastrous Defeats

Khalid Elhassan January 15, 2025 17 min

Catastrophe - Napoleon retreats from Moscow — Napoleon retreats from Moscow. ABC

15. Waiting Too Long for Negotiations

Napoleon in Burning Moscow, by Albrecht Adam, 1841. Wikimedia

Near Moscow, the Russians finally offered battle at Borodino, where Napoleon won a hard fought engagement. However, at the decisive moment, he wavered and held off from his usual tactic of sending in the elite Imperial Guard, kept in reserve, to finish off the reeling enemy. That prevented the victory from becoming decisive, and allowed the battered Russians to live to fight another day. When he reached Moscow, Napoleon assumed that the Russians would sue for peace. So he waited for their peace feelers, even as winter drew near. The Russians strung him along, but no more than he strung himself along with wishful thinking of peace negotiations long after it became obvious that the Russians were not interested. By the time he gave up and marched back to Smolensk, it was too late.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.