The Coup That Nearly Toppled Napoleon

Napoleon’s ill-fated Russian campaign could have been far worse

Napoleon watches Moscow burn during his campaign in 1812. (Public domain)

In the summer of 1812, Napoleon launched his famous invasion of Russia. Despite trepidation on the part of his generals and staff about pushing into Russia so close to the cold weather months, he proceeded anyway and was met with initial success. His confidence had been boosted by a string of past military successes and he felt that his Grande Armée was capable of quickly subduing the ill-organized Russians.

The campaign would end up ultimately being a failure, partly due to the unforgiving Russian winter and largely due to a little known coup that was unfolding back west, in Paris.

Napoleon’s disastrous march through the snow which led to the collapse of his famous Grande Armée was driven by the terror that all of his hard-earned military and political gains would be undone by a coup back home. This fear drove him to march his army west, when he had the Russians on the ropes, in order to retake control of the capital from upstarts and dissidents.

Napoleon’s failures in Russia are widely studied and well known but the key driver to his fleeing the field in the winter of 1812 is less well known. It all started with a man by the name of Claude François de Malet.