You are petty-fogging over little details, like reading the text.

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OK - why is there no witch-hunt going on against the Russian armies of the era, but instead only the French ?

As far as I can tell, in this era, if you :
- operated formations of corps size, and
- operated in non-friendly territory, and
- operated for more than about 2 weeks, and
- sought to move your forces at an average rate above about 10 km/day,
then the logistic technologies of the era were insufficient to allow you to supply your forces. If an army had the occasion to attempt operations meeting the listed criteria, they made a big mess of the local territory. If the operations of the army did not meet the listed criteria, then the army fought without trashing the locals.

I think my "algorithm of atrocity" correlates pretty well with the historical examples, and does not require deciding which states were morally "good" and which were morally "bad", unless we wish to assign governments to the "war criminal" trials merely for failing to curtail thier operations to within the listed criteria.

1814, on the Allied side, provides an interesting example. The Austrians wanted to stay within the limits of the "algorithm of atrocity", and the Russians just wanted to get to Paris, no matter who got foraged in the process. The fear was that they might actually be able to do it, and so curtail to some extent Austria's position in post-conflict negotiations.

Moore is perhaps another example. When the speed of movement went up and the population thinned and became less actively friendly, he found himself outside the limits of the "algorithm of atrocity". One supposes he could have just surrendered to avoid harming the locals. Is he thus a "war criminal'?

Yuck - I hate moralizing. Especially ex-post-facto moralizing using ex-post-facto laws and customs to define "good" and "bad". I hate this almost as much as using bias and (national/cultural) prejudice to define "good" and "bad".

Yours in firm research,