When Napoleon's Grande Armee crossed the Nemen river into the Russian Empire in 1812, the die had been cast.
The French invasion of Russia, also known as the Russian campaign, the Second Polish War, the Army of Twenty nations, and the Patriotic War of 1812 was launched by Napoleon to force the Russian Empire back into the continental blockade of the United Kingdom.
Napoleon's invasion of Russia is one of the best studied military campaigns in history and is listed among the most lethal military operations in world history.
It is characterized by the massive toll on human life: in less than six months nearly a million soldiers and civilians died.
In the years between the peace of Tilsit and the war against Russia, Tsar Alexander I and Emperor Napoleon had praised each other and Russia had even joined the continental blockade of Napoleon's arch enemy Great Britain.
Still, in 1811 both sides saw war as inevitable.