It is also interesting that Russian army officers could talk to French without a translator, because Napoleon invasion happened in the period of "westernization", started by Peter the Great. The buildings were built in a Western style, calendar was changed to European, government, army and fleet were reformed, noblemen were required to shave their traditional beards, wear western-style clothes, used French language, and danced to classical Western music in events like balls and fought duels.
This is a major through-line in War and Peace. Native Russian characters write to each other in (untranslated-in-the-original! Hope your translation comes with footnotes!) French, and a significant chunk of the dialogue is in French as well.
It's a lot less interesting once you look trough the names of senior Russian officers - de Tolly, Bagration, von Benningsen, Wittgenstein, Osterman-Tolstoy.
One begins to suspect that the reason Kutuzov replaced Barkley was for a sort of reverse-DEI reasons.
I remember reading one of Peter the Great's orders regarding creating 10 new units in the army. Out of names of the commanders only 3-4 were Russian. So hiring foreign talent was also part of westernization.
