The Grand Strategy of the Russian Empire, 1650-1831

TO the east of Paris on 7 September 1815 (the third anniversary of the Battle of Borodino), Alexander I, Francis I of Austria, Frederick William III of Prussia and the Duke of Wellington reviewed a huge parade of the 150,000-strong Russian army which had just played a major role in the defeat of Napoleon. All three monarchs were dressed, highly symbolically, in Russian uniforms, and nobody was slow to recognise the significance of the occasion: Wellington was observed to be ‘pensive’. It was not the last time a Russian ruler underlined the centrality of Russia's contribution to the defeat of an enemy who had subjugated much of Europe, but even Stalin only managed to reach Berlin; under Alexander, a Russian army entered Paris (2,970 kilometres from Moscow) while Russian armies in the early nineteenth century penetrated nearly to Constantinople (2,660 kilometres from Moscow) and Teheran (240 kilometres distant, and 4,000 from the capital, St Petersburg)

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