Napoleonic blunder by protesters

What is going to happen next?

The anti-government protesters could be making the same mistake as Napoleon, who decided to invade Russia and suffered a devastating defeat. Napoleon's armies could seize the territories, but they could not occupy them for long.

If the situation continues, the protesters could run out of steam.

Let's take a look at Napoleon's disastrous attempt to attack Russia. This is from geographia.com

In June 1812, Napoleon began his Russian campaign, a landmark in history of the destructive potential of warfare. Virtually all of continental Europe was under his control, and the invasion of Russia was an attempt to force Tsar Alexander I to submit once again to the terms of a treaty that Napoleon had imposed upon him four years earlier. Having gathered nearly half a million soldiers, from France as well as all of the vassal states of Europe, Napoleon entered Russia at the head of the largest army ever seen.

The Russians, under Marshal Kutuzov, could not realistically hope to defeat him in a direct confrontation. Instead, they began a defensive campaign of strategic retreat, devastating the land as they fell back and harassing the flanks of the French. As the summer wore on, Napoleon's massive supply lines were stretched ever thinner, and his force began to decline. By September, without having engaged in a single pitched battle, the French Army had been reduced by more than two-thirds from fatigue, hunger, desertion, and raids by Russian forces.

Nonetheless, it was clear that unless the Russians engaged the French Army in a major battle, Moscow would be Napoleon's in a matter of weeks. The Tsar insisted upon an engagement, and on September 7, with winter closing in and the French army only 110 km from the city, the two armies met at Borodino Field. By the end of the day, 108,000 men had died, but neither side had gained a decisive victory. Kutuzov realised that any further defence of the city would be senseless, and he withdrew his forces, prompting the citizens of Moscow to begin a massive and panicked exodus.

When Napoleon's army arrived on September 14, they found a city deserted and bereft of supplies, a meagre comfort in the face of the oncoming winter. To make matters much worse, fires broke out in the city that night, and by the next day the French were lacking shelter as well.

After waiting in vain for Alexander to offer to negotiate, Napoleon ordered his troops to begin the march home. Because the route to the south was blocked by Kutuzov's forces (and the French were in no shape for a battle) the retreat retraced the long, devastated route of the invasion. Having waited until mid-October to depart, the exhausted French army soon found itself in the midst of winter - in fact, in the midst of an unusually early and especially cold winter.

Temperatures soon dropped well below freezing, cossacks attacked stragglers and isolated units, food was almost non-existent, and the march was 800 km. Ten thousand men survived. The campaign brought about Napoleon's downfall and Russia's status as a leading power in post-Napoleonic Europe. Yet even as Russia emerged more powerful than ever from the Napoleonic era, its internal tensions began to increase.