Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture deserves some attention. I referenced it in my last posting, but I'd like to discuss it further. I'm going to discuss the history behind the music today, and the music itself tomorrow. That way, if you hate the story behind the music, you can just read about the music itself without wading through one giant:

HISTORY LESSON!!!

First of all, the 1812 Overture is built around the events surrounding the French invasion of Russia (part of the entire conquer-absolutely-everything campaign known more appropriately as The Napoleonic Wars) in 1812, and the epic fight that followed. No, this isn't the same War of 1812 that the U.S.A. had with Great Britain since I'm sure you were asking. Anyway, Napoleon's self-styled Grand Army of nearly 700,000 soldiers drawn from the Empire of France - an absolutely massive army now 196 years later and a jaw-droppingly colossal, biggest-army-ever then - marched into Russia with all the reputation for invincibility that it had cultivated under the brilliant hand of the peerless Napoleon (Wellington is a different story, since I'm sure you were asking).

This kind of thing is rarely convenient, but it happened at a terrible time for Russia. The military was being run by incompetent nobles who had their leadership positions solely by virtue of being born into rather nice estates and castles and so forth. Ability didn't matter nearly as much as social standing in any aspect of Tsarist Russia, and the military was no different. Facing the initial invasion of Napoleon's 700,000 well-trained, cutting-edge, veteran force was less than 200,000 comparably backward Russian soldiers and calvary.

Russia knew it didn't have a snowball's chance in a face-to-face fight with Napoleon. They had inferior equipment, training, leadership, morale and numbers. What Russia DID have was land. Lots and lots of it. So, they retreated and adopted the Scorched Earth policy (made famous during a similar attack by Hitler in 1942), which meant they pulled everyone back and burned everything behind them. Now, if you're marching - walking - across RUSSIA of all places, it's going to take a while and you're going to want to eat, right? Well, it's hard to keep food and horses (and food for the horses) and bullets and blankets and tents and everything else an army runs on following you all the way from France all the way through the hugest country on the entire planet. These supply lines are to an army what arteries and veins are to your brain; stretch them too much or cut them and you're dead.

So Russia retreated, and retreated, and retreated, and the Grand Army took over a lot of land, but taking over scorched fields and burnt villages doesn't really count as PROGRESS. After Napoleon's army was depleted by hunger, desertion and constant raids by the Russians, there was finally the first head-to-head fight in the Battle of Borodino in September of 1812. Around 70,000 - 100,000 casualties were suffered, but that shattered the remaining strength of the Grand Army even if the battle itself wasn't a glorious Russian victory. The Russians retreated again, and even burned Moscow to the ground in the face of a crippled but advancing French force. Napoleon had been counting on Moscow to serve as his army's quarters in the impending and legendary Russian winter. Whoops. Now he had to retreat back to France with what was left, suffering disease, starvation, a devastating winter and constant attacks by Russian raiders. Napoleon abandoned his army to flee ahead, and the once grand Grand Army crawled back to France with less than a tenth of its initial strength.

This epic conflict was incredibly important for everyone in Europe and Russia; it signaled the end Napoleonic tyranny, drew Europe together in the face of a now-vulnerable threat, and was nothing short of Divine Deliverance to the Russian people. Hell, it became the precedent by which the Soviet Army would halt Hitler's Nazi German invasion in its tracks and truly turn the tide of a little scuffle called the Second World War.

So if you were going to make a song about THAT, what would it sound like? Details tomorrow.