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History’s Most Catastrophic Man-made Errors

Khalid Elhassan December 9, 2020 34 min

Wanggongchang Explosion - Beijing — The Wanggongchang Explosion devastated Beijing. Pintrest

4. “From the Sublime to the Ridiculous Is Only One Step“

Napoleon and the remnants of his army during the retreat from Moscow. Total War Center

Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow during winter was made worse by his final bad decision, this one in his choice of route. L’Empereur had the choice of two routes, and ended up taking the one that was struck by severe winter storms. The route he did not take saw little snow that year. Most of Napoleon’s army starved or froze to death during the retreat, or were killed by Cossacks who harried the rear and flanks of the retreating columns.

Napoleon had marched into Russia with a Grande Armee numbering 685,000 soldiers. He came out with only 35,000 Frenchmen still under his command, with the remainder either dead (over 400,000), deserting, or switching sides. Reflecting upon the disaster, Napoleon commented: “From the sublime to the ridiculous, is only one step“.

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.