Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "Elon Musket" channel.

@mikhailmakarov9627 "Kutuzov's goal was to cause maximum damage to Grand Armee that Napoleon would not be able to compensate. And Kutuzov achieved it." Even if Napoléon had somehow magically suffered no casualties at Borodino I don't think still had a chance to win the war (as long as the Russians wouldn't get so demoralized as to surrender). His supply situation was too dire and lower or no casualties would have only meant even more mouths to feed which he couldn't do. I have not tried to verify this but the description that I've usually seen is that Kutuzov (as well as Barclay) favored attritional strategy against Napoléon instead of direct confrontation and that he only gave battle at Borodino due to political pressure to do so (and that this had also been the reason why Barclay had given battle earlier at Smolensk).
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Napoléon also destroyed his own army in Russia by marching.
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@diephoainambui9682 The Russians didn't quite choose to run away. The tried to stop Napoléon at Borodino but failed (but capturing Moscow wasn't enough to bring victory to Napoléon). It's not clear to mean that they were much less "arrogant" than other Europeans.
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@diephoainambui9682 They used retreating a lot but Barclay did try to first stop them at Smolensk (and was replaced by Kutuzov due to failing) and later Kutuzov tried to stop them at Borodino. Also, the retreating strategy is more viable for Russia due to the larger amount of land and longer distances. It's not clear to me that the other Europeans were that much more "arrogant" than the Russians.
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Austria is always doing badly in wars.
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@TheAustrianAnimations87 EmperorTigerstar did a tally on Austrian performance in his video on the French military performance. The result was that Austria had a 50%/50% win/loss rate. He counted Austria when it was ruled by Habsburgs including Austria-Hungary and also the modern Austria after that. This isn't the worst performance but it's worse than e.g. France, Italy, and Spain.
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That US anthem sounded a bit fast. I had to check that I wasn't playing this at 1.25 speed.
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@andrewshaw1571 "you dont retreat that far without a serious fight and allow the enemy to burn down one of your holiest cities and threaten THE holiest city without a fight" I agree that it's understandable that they tried to save Moscow. It might have been a reasonable attempt ex ante. It's only with the benefit of hindsight that we know that Moscow still wasn't saved. "on the command of a jumped up German" Wasn't Kutuzov in charge at that point? I'm not able estimate what the effect on morale would have been but at least in purely material terms it would seem that knowing how Borodino went in real history not trying to fight there would leave the Russian army in a better shape but leave Napoléon with significant supply difficulties. I'm not saying morale doesn't matter, however.
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