French invasion of Russia subject of much discussion among historians. The campaign's sustained role in Russian culture may be seen in Tolstoy's "War and Peace", Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture", and the identification of it with the German invasion of 1941–45, which became known as the "Great Patriotic War" in the Soviet Union. French invasion of Russia The French invasion of Russia, known in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812 () and in France as the Russian Campaign (), began on 24 June 1812 when Napoleon's crossed the Neman River in an attempt to engage and defeat the Russian army. Napoleon hoped to compel Tsar
French invasion of Russia Europe as a whole than about Russia. Alexander's conception of a war to free Europe from Napoleon lacked appeal to many nationalist-minded Russian historians, who preferred to focus on a campaign in defense of the homeland rather than what Lieven called Alexander's rather "murky" mystical ideas about European brotherhood and security. Lieven observed that for every book written in Russia on the campaigns of 1813–1814, there are a hundred books on the campaign of 1812, and that the most recent Russian grand history of the war of 1812–1814 gave 490 pages to the campaign of 1812 and 50 pages to