LINKS: A map showing the main lines of advance into Russia
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/riley/787/Napoleon/1812/Prior.html

The best description of Russian Operations in 1812 in any medium:
http://russian-prussian.napoleonicwars.com/Russian_Leaders/Peter_Bagration__The_Best_Geor/Chapter_6/chapter_6.shtml

If you are interested in the 1812 campaign you cannot miss this book. (Don't forget to add 12 days to the dates mentioned in the text!)

From: "Sakari Lindhén"

I was getting worried about my copy of Highway to the Kremlin, but it finally arrived today - I had to ransom it from the nasty custom officials....

Let me say that of the 200+ games in my collection, dating way back to SPI (Wolfpack was my first subscription game), this is definitely one of the top 3 in terms of sheer gorgeousness, and no, I cant name the other two off hand...What a map! Superb. Box is very stylish and the counters are great, though we are a bit spoiled counterwise in Napoleanic era games, but the maps! Brilliant!

Just now I am writing a review for Paper Wars on Avalanche's Finnish front games, and they are everything a map should not be, whereas your maps demand that I sling the cat (singluar, her sister died over the summer, sniff) out onto the balcony in order to start playing - and though I have only had time to read the opening paragraph of the rules (because I wanted to tell you how absolutely gorgeous the maps are), I am intrigued by the "learning system" you have provided. More feedback on that later.

From: Robert Lindsay

In the HttK Game last saturday, it fell apart on turn 2. There was a battle at Grodno(?) when the Russians couldn't force march away.

The Russians lost 2 SP, Nappy none. (The French got around the problem of attrition moving Nappy big force by making 3 seperate forces out of it for movement, the reuniting for battle. Is this Legal?

The problem on turn 2 came when I planned to retreat further. My supply source (which was also functioning as Center of Ops, since we were playing with scenario rules instead of Campaign rules) would need to be moved. But moving a supply source (per the rules) keeps you from issuing movement commands, AND you roll on the NO LOC column if you get initiative. On the other hand, if I just left the supply source there, and the french captured it, I'd get it back in the next Admin phase, be able to use movement commands on my march phase, (with my accumulated AP level), and only be on the NO LOC table for my forced march phase. I think this is a bug in the system. I also wanted to use the rules for moveing the Center of Ops to move my supply source, but the french disagreed. Nonetheless it was interesting to set the game up, and examine the system more closely.

P.S. I finally found a decent Global Warming link: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/g00-008_earth.html

from: Joaquín Mejía

I have had the time to read through your HTK commentaries-analysis: it´s chilling! How could Napoleon be so blind to the Army's destruction as it advanced more and more into Russia? The Retreat losses can be understood after all, but what keeps shocking me is how the army was decimated in the advance.

[Editor sez] That is exactly my feeling. By this time it seems the Emperor had become detached from such details, as though he was already seeing himself as a demi-god, and beyond such issues as concern for the lives of mere mortals. Anyone who looks at the initial set-up and then glances at the Attrition Table can see that the central army group crossing the Niemen is too large.

It comes back to the whole point of the campaign: the question is, why did Napoleon pursue this campaign against the advice of almost all his marshals? I believe it was purely a war for the Emperor's personal prestige. To assemble a force the size of which had never been known in anybody's lifetime, of men from all over Europe, would so overawe the Russians that they would collapse at the sight of the juggernaut.

Anyway that is the best of my understanding at this point. It is certainly a mystery, and fascinating. The mystery that is explored in 'Highway to the Kremlin.'

These are the deeper issues of battle that are addressed in Highway to the Kremlin. We are delving into Napoleon's self-aggrandisement. The assembly of forces on the Niemen was arranged as a display of Imperial prestige and in no way functional. Napoleon is no longer thinking in this campaign as a general, but as Imperator.

From: John Millen

First there are the realities of war: Romance but also grinding ever present death. The mere thought of war by the Emperor starts the death making machine - from the allocation of resources to mobilization to troop movement, relentless tearing of the essential fabric of community: The lives of men and women and families that must live without their labor and their support. Towns cities, whole regions and countries set aside essential projects as their will is bent to the imperatives of war. The cry of the child goes unheard as the army and the country becomes increasingly isolated within the archetype of war. Pulled in by the need for intense experience in combat and the flow of blood, they are seduced away from all that makes their life meaningful until there is only the pull toward death. In the end, the genius in Napoleon for war had within it the seed of its own destruction - the single-minded dedication to the mythology of war. The irrational death march to the Kremlin took root in the heady elixir of his earlier brilliant victories, in his "Habit of Victory".