Chapter 223 - 223: The Hunters of the Interior

When open battle failed, the Russians fell back on an older habit.

It was not a new idea, nor one born only of this war. Since the days of the old tsars, Russian commanders had used Cossacks and other light cavalry in the same rough frontier way: if you could not break the enemy army in open battle, then bleed the enemy land instead. Send horsemen where whole regiments could not go. Raid roads. Burn storehouses. Strike couriers, supply trains, and isolated villages. Force the stronger enemy to turn his head, divide his strength, and fear the country behind his own front.

Peter the Great had used Cossacks in precisely those traditional roles of raiding, harassment, scouting, and rear-area pressure, and Russia would return to the same answer again and again. In 1812, when Napoleon drove deep into Russia, commanders sent out small Cossack detachments to strike the invader's flanks, middle, and rear, harassing supply columns and spreading fear far out of proportion to their numbers.

...