In the years 1792-1815, the modern concept of “total war” came into being, ushered in by Enlightenment ideas about the perfectibility of society and the political upheavals that followed the French Revolution.

From The Illustrious Dead by Stephan Talty. Page 33. 

The historian David Bell has argued persuasively that in the years 1792-1815, the modern concept of “total war” came into being, ushered in by Enlightenment ideas about the perfectibility of society and the political upheavals that followed the French Revolution. The “culture of war” was transformed so that the struggle between France and the successive coalitions against it became, in the words of one French supporter, “a war to the death, which we will fight so as to destroy and annihilate all who attack us, or be destroyed ourselves.”

The description fits Alexander’s view of the coming battle. The transformation of national conflicts into all-out, apocalyptic duels, a notion that has come cleanly down to us as a clash of civilizations in which one side must win or die, would be realized on the road to Moscow. And there, as in the modern version, faith would play a huge role.

Certainly Napoleon endorsed such an all-encompassing view of war, especially early in his career. Still, he genuinely imagined the coming invasion would have certain limitations, especially in the endgame. He believed Alexander was a nobleman who would fight, be measured on the battlefield, and then settle according to the results of arms, as had Francis I and Charles of Spain. The emperor had badly misjudged the situation in Russia.

But his war machine made the error seem irrelevant. If ever there had been an armed force built for total, annihilating war, it was the Grande Armée. No divisions on earth, arrayed against it in a straight-ahead confrontation, had a remote chance of winning.

Except if they had a hidden, undetectable ally in the fever that had burned at Naples.