“Are you trying to stall?” Tom asked. “Tell me the Stan Higgins secret to victory.”
“I don’t know about a secret,” Stan said, “but in 1812 Napoleon gathered the largest force in history up to that time: the Grand Army. It numbered well over six hundred thousand soldiers. His biggest previous army had been around two hundred thousand. I’m sure you know the story. Napoleon marched on Russia, wanting to make the Tsar, the Russian ruler, obey his Continental System.”
McGraw stared at him with big, whiskey-wet eyes. It didn’t look as if the general knew anything.
“At the time of the 1812 invasion, Napoleon was waging economic warfare against the British,” Stan said. “Napoleon said no one could buy British goods. He planned to beggar the British and bring them to their knees economically, since he couldn’t get to them militarily. The naval battle of Trafalgar had seen to that. But the economic war didn’t work out the way it was supposed to for the man from Corsica. The worst offenders for breaking the rules of the Continental System were the Russians. They bought British goods and—”
“What about the war of 1812?” Tom said impatiently. “I don’t care about the economics of the thing. Get to the fighting.”
Stan nodded. “Napoleon crossed the Niemen river with his Grand Army, looking to smash the puny Russian forces. Some of the Russian generals wanted to trade space for time. They would keep their army intact, fighting along the way, but always backing up into the deep spaces of their gigantic country. Napoleon tried to catch the main Russian armies and annihilate them fast. They always managed to slip away from his traps.
“Finally, after months of hard maneuvering, the Russians dug in and built log redoubts on the road to Moscow, setting up for a grim fight. Napoleon beat them at the Battle Borodino, although the French Grand Army took bitter losses doing it. Napoleon might have crushed the Russians at the end of the battle, but he feared to send in his Old Guards, his last un-bloodied formation, his final reserve. What if his last stable troops were ground down to a nub in the battle? Napoleon said something like the victory would have been too costly for him. Instead of crushing the beaten Russians, he let them march away.
“In the end, a battlefield-victorious Napoleon reached Moscow. Russian terrorists burned the city to the ground, leaving the French a smoldering ruin. After many weeks of negotiating, Napoleon finally realized the Tsar wasn’t going to make peace with him but was playing for time, for winter to arrive and do its freezing work. Napoleon started marching for home, but he took the wrong route back, retracing the same way he’d come. That meant his soldiers had already plucked the countryside bare of supplies. Most of the straw-roofed homes were smoldering ruins this time, their grim trademark.
“Disease began to do its work, while angry Russian peasants bushwhacked French stragglers. Swift-riding Cossacks harried the French flanks. Soon the harsh winter weather arrived. Sickness, hunger, the punishing cold and battle losses eventually destroyed the Grand Army. Napoleon barely escaped with his life, and his legend of invincibility had been shattered. The Russian plan had worked due to luck and persistence.”
Tom pursed his lips. “Are you saying we should pull back deeper into the northern prairies?”
Stan tapped the map in the e-reader. “I’m saying we should be cagier in our approach. Look, we’ve fought the summer and autumn battles. We took grim losses, but the main U.S. Army still exists. We’ve already traded space for time and now winter approaches.”
“The Chinese will just keep on marching deeper into the Great Plains,” McGraw said, “cutting our nation in half. The Chinese are better supplied than Napoleon ever was.”
“Look at the map,” Stan said. “Do you see all the space they control? I’ve read reports and I know Americans are turning into partisans. They’re becoming like the Russian peasants, cutting off enemy stragglers and blowing up supplies. That costs China soldiers, weakening their overall Army as they put guards everywhere. Look at the length of the Mississippi River. The Chinese are using troops to guard it, too. That pulls out yet more soldiers from their advancing fronts.”
“They still have far more soldiers than we do,” McGraw said.
“It’s the Battle of Borodino time,” Stan said with drunken certainty. “But with a German World War II twist.”
“Meaning what?” McGraw asked.
“In 1812, the Russians strengthened their army at Borodino by building redoubts: log barricades.