The Battle of Two Empires

Oleg Valeryevich Sokolov - one of the leading experts in the world on the history of the Napoleonic era, a knight of the Order of the Legion of Honor, the highest award of the French Republic - reveals the mystery... of Napoleon's fateful decision to start the war with Russia in 1812 on the pages of this book.
What is the true reason for the armed confrontation between Russia and France? What led to the failure of the attempts at the Franco-Russian alliance? Were Napoleon's wars against Russia his true goal and desire? How was the "Polish question" resolved by the parties to the conflict and what was its role in the confrontation between the great powers? Were Alexander I and his empire victims of Napoleon's aggressive plans? Did the Russian emperor have plans for a preventive war against the Europe controlled by Bonaparte? Whose intelligence proved to be stronger and more sophisticated in gathering information about the opponent? What is the role of Great Britain and the Franco-British conflict in the fate of relations between Russia and France? How did the continental blockade actually affect the economy of the Russian Empire? Was there an opportunity for Alexander I, in the spirit and letter of the Tilsit and Erfurt agreements, to expand the boundaries of Russian influence to the axis of Stockholm-Constantinople-Bosporus-Balkans?
In this already legendary book by a leading historian of the Napoleonic wars, clear answers are given to all these and many other complex questions of the diplomatic competition between the two great powers, based on a broad source base of both Russian and French documents, many of which are being published for the first time from the silence of archival storage, accessible to the general reader.