Russia

Napoleon perfected the art of feeding armies off conquered territory—until he met a land too vast, a climate too harsh, and an enemy willing to burn everything. The 1812 catastrophe reveals the fatal limits of logistics without depots.

Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia is remembered as a tale of hubris and winter. But the real killer wasn't the cold—it was a catastrophic failure of logistics that doomed 600,000 men before they ever reached Moscow.