Sure, let's take a look. Tolstoy wasn’t the general, but he was a keen observer of how the Russians and French moved their troops, how supplies were stretched, and how morale shifted. In *War and Peace* he lays out the logistical juggling act – the timing of reinforcements, the scarcity of ammunition, the impact of the weather – in a way that’s almost a textbook for modern planners. If we pull out the key moments, like the dawn attack on the second line and the artillery barrage that followed, we can see the parallels to a boardroom sprint: coordination, resource allocation, risk assessment. Want to start with the opening moves?

The Russians were the ones who built their lines with a clear sense of purpose. They knew where the roads, the railways, and the rivers ran and placed their troops accordingly, like a manager who’s mapped out each department’s responsibilities. The French, on the other hand, launched a rapid thrust that looked good on paper but had no backup; it was like a boardroom exec who pushes a bold proposal without a contingency plan. The initial deployment set the tone: the Russians had a stable logistics backbone, the French were chasing momentum at the cost of coordination. It’s the difference between a well‑planned project and a wild sprint.

Let’s look at the hour when the French first broke through the Second Battle Line. By then the Russians had already moved their reserve divisions to the right flank and had a chain of supply posts along the highway. The French, eager to keep the tempo, pushed a brigade forward with almost no artillery support and without a clear line of retreat. It’s a classic case of speed over structure – the French got a momentary advantage, but the Russians were ready to pull the plug on that flank because they had a spare supply cache. If you calculate the movement rates, the Russians moved about 12 miles per day to cover that gap, while the French could only cover 6 miles with the same effort. That half‑speed advantage, over a few hours, turned the tide.