Napoleon's Lost Army: The Soldiers Who Fell

Page 6 of 8

• 1. The discovery of a grave
• 2. Napoleon's strategy
• 3. Russian withdrawal
• 4. Disaster
• 5. Harrowing defeat
• 6. Aftermath
• 7. Tales from the grave
• 8. Find out more
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Aftermath

The stunned, frozen and starving spectres who had managed to stagger to Vilnius, many of them to end their days there, had come from all over French-occupied Europe. Eventually, at most some 20,000 soldiers - of the 400,000 who'd marched into Russia at midsummer - finally recrossed the Niemen into Poland. They were meant to rejoin Napoleon, but he'd already gone ahead to Paris to give the news of the catastrophe, and to raise new armies. Men could easily be replaced, but not horses. Tens of thousands of soldiers had died in Russia, but it was because of his lack of cavalry that Napoleon was eventually defeated by Austria, Prussia, Sweden and Russia, in 1813.

'The discovery of the mass grave has made Lithuanians aware of what happened.'

Successive occupiers - Russians, Prussians, Poles, Nazis, Soviets - have tried to stamp out Lithuanians' memories of their national history. And indeed many of today's Lithuanians, newly coopted into the EU, in fact know absolutely nothing about the horrific events at Vilnius in December 1812. The discovery of the mass grave has made Lithuanians aware of what happened, and hopefully this knowledge will help ensure that such things never occur again.

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