You may be interested in what I've previously written about the Russian campaign. Briefly, Napoleon did not aim for either city; his goal was the destruction of the Russian field army, which happened to retreat towards Moscow. His art of war eschewed geographical and positional strategy. It didn't matter whether he possessed one city or the next or wide swaths of territory; once the enemy army was destroyed, the rest would take care of itself. Lieutenant Colonel Peter Chuikovich in the Russian War Ministry recognized this when he penned his memo to general Barclay advocating a Fabian strategy against the French invasion.

The loss of several provinces should not frighten us, since the integrity of the Empire resides with the integrity of the Army.