Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  Admittedly, the occupation of Moscow by the enemy is frightful, yet if it is possible to set aside the sad spectacle of our ancient prostituted capital being despoiled by the monster that occupies it, and to consider this calamity from the abstract military point of view, one could draw consoling conclusions. I believe that this success, far from being favorable to him, has put him in difficulties of which he was previously unaware. This is worth expanding, and this is how I explain it: this man believed firmly and persuaded his whole army, thanks to this illusion, that all the fatigues that he had showered on them until that day were going to end, that Moscow was the final goal, that it was in Moscow they would find peace and abundance, that from Moscow he would leave, strengthened to subjugate that part of Europe that still resisted him. He managed to arrive in Moscow, but there he only found heaps of ash, fire, and debris—the whole lit by our own hands. Nobody spoke to him of peace; like a father who would rather kill his daughter than see her dishonored, we annihilated Moscow at the moment when we could no longer defend it. He was scarcely used to such receptions in the other capitals of Europe—even Spain was more amiable—and here he is terribly disappointed.39

  In fact, the Grande Armée was in a state of exhaustion: the deficient chain of supply no long allowed the soldiers to be fed properly, and they were weakened by interminable marches and felt discouraged at “taking” deserted towns where they could not find food. There were early signs of indiscipline: a burned Moscow was quickly prey to pillagers and marauders. The general mood was for giving up. This degradation in his army pushed Napoleon to solicit peace. In vain: Alexander refused any kind of talk. On the night of October 18, sowing panic among sleeping soldiers, Cossack troops went onto the offensive against 25,000 of Murat’s men who were bivouacking near the village of Vinkovo, and the losses were heavy on the French side. The next morning Napoleon still planned to restart the offensive by leaving Moscow, heading south and taking the warehouses of Kaluga. But five days later the hard battle of Maloyaroslavetz—the little town changed hands eight times, with a loss of 6,000 killed and wounded on the French side and 7,000 on the Russian—would, in fact, decide the fate of the war. The Grande Armée, with 130,000 soldiers, was only a shadow of itself, while the imperial army, perked up thanks to the arrival in Volhynia of the Danube army led by Chichagov and the Finnish corps led by Wittgenstein, had a total of 144,000 combatants, who managed to block Napoleon’s progress to the south. Napoleon was forced to sound the retreat and take the route back to Smolensk, “an itinerary in which requisitions and pillaging had emptied the reserves and whetted the local population’s desire for revenge.”40

  After the end of October, due to snowfalls that became heavier, and still more after mid-November,41 due to the extreme cold that set in, the forced march retreat of the Grande Armée was made an ordeal. On top of this, on its way back, the Grande Armée suffered from the incessant harassment by regiments of the regular army (regular means all the army except for the cossaks) and Cossack detachments, as well as from attacks by armed peasants trying to chase the impious invader out as fast as possible. During this retreat, the passage of Berezina—a small river situated along the town of Borissov, 45 miles northeast of Minsk—lasting from November 26 to 29, was an episode both heroic and painful. The Russian armies had burned the only bridge over the river, which was full of blocks of ice but was not deeply frozen and could not be crossed. And so, for long hours the 400 bridge builders of General Eblé, most of whom would die of cold and exhaustion in the course of this trial, worked in icy water to construct two temporary bridges. When they were finished on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth, the crossing for the next two and a half days allowed 60,000 combatants to escape; but despite its heroic nature, the episode left a bitter taste. On November 29, having given the order to burn the new bridges to avoid the Russians’ pursuing the Grande Armée, Eblé had to leave behind him almost 20,000 more soldiers and civilians, who, too exhausted to walk and cross the bridges in time, were abandoned to the Russians. Those who escaped with the Grande Armée recrossed the Niemen on December 13, which marked the end of the Russian campaign. For the Russians and their emperor this was the date of liberation.

  But the toll of this war was frightfully high. On top of the material destruction of cities, towns, and villages that had been entirely burned or ravaged, there were colossal human casualties. Of the 600,000 Grande Armée combatants (the 448,000 men who crossed the Niemen in June 1812 had been joined in the course of the campaign by almost 150,000 more), barely more than 10 percent came back to France. Soldiers had been exposed to terrible suffering. In a letter to his brother Joseph, dated December 21 and written from Vilnius, Xavier de Maistre recounted with horror the scenes he had witnessed:

  I cannot give you an idea of the route I have taken. The cadavers of French obstructed the road that from Moscow to the borders (about 800 verstes) appears to be a continuous battlefield. When we approached villages, most of them burned, the spectacle became even more awful. The bodies were in heaps, and in several places where the unfortunate soldiers had gathered in houses, they were burned inside them without having the strength to come out. I saw houses where more than fifty bodies lay together, and among them, three or four men were still living, stripped to their shirts, in minus 15 C degrees42 of cold. One of them said to me: “Monsieur, get me out of here or kill me, my name is Normand de Flageac, I am an officer like you.” It was not in my power to help him. We gave him clothes, but there was no means of saving him and we had to leave him in that horrible place. […] From all sides and on all roads we met miserable men who were wandering around, dying of hunger and cold; their large number meant that one could not always gather them in time, and they mostly died on the way to the depots. I saw none without thinking of that infernal man who led them to this excess of misfortune.43

  And in his correspondence to his king, Joseph de Maistre (the former’s brother) wrote in turn:

  The state of the French cannot be expressed; it is said about them things that resemble the siege of Jerusalem. They are said to have eaten human flesh. Someone asserted that he saw a man being roasted; all the stories, both written and oral, agree that Frenchmen were seen lying on the carcass of a horse to devour it with their teeth. Here is another sure thing: someone took as prisoner a veteran soldier wearing broken chevrons on his sleeve, the mark of long and distinguished service, and who had done all Bonaparte’s campaigns, including in Egypt. For several days he had lived on a little dead flesh, and for two or three days since then, he had eaten nothing at all.44

  As regards the Russian army as a whole, it suffered heavy losses, around 400,000 men: this was the scope of a cataclysm that aroused in Alexander a moral and spiritual crisis of great intensity, followed by a “rebirth.”

  Alexander during the Patriotic War

  The idea of the coming war had not ceased to haunt the tsar since 1809–1810, and he was well aware of his adversary’s advantages. Since 1802–1803, he had been no longer “seduced” by the First Consul, and we remember the acerbic statement he made about Napoleon on the eve of Tilsit. “Napoleon takes me for a fool, but he who laughs last laughs best.” But at the same time Alexander recognized the exceptional charisma of his enemy, his magnetism and intelligence, which soon led him to reflect on the unparalleled courage and tenacity that he would have to show to triumph over this extraordinary adversary. And naturally it was into this relentless combat that he launched himself in June 1812.

  From the first hours of the invasion, while he was still in Vilnius, he adopted a ukase countersigned by Barclay de Tolly that reaffirmed his faith and trust in God. Meanwhile he decided very pragmatically to increase the strength of the regular army by resorting to using the forestry guards of the western provinces.45 A few days later, on July 18, when accompanying the troops of the first army, he found himself in the fortified camp of Drissa and issued a manifesto. Mixing religious inspiration with patriotic sentiments, the text referred to mythic and historical
references:

  The enemy has penetrated our territory and continues to bear arms inside Russia, hoping by force and temptations to overthrow the tranquility of our Great State. He has in mind the bad intention of destroying our glory and prosperity. With a heart full of malice and a mouth full of flattery, he is bringing chains and eternal fetters for Russia. We have asked God to help us to oppose him with our troops, but we cannot and should not hide from our subjects that the forces of the enemy are numerous and that we have to gather other troops to form a second front that will defend the homes, women, and children of each and all of us. We have already called on Moscow, our first capital, but today we are calling on all our faithful subjects, on all orders and estates both religious and civil, inviting them, by their unanimous and general uprising, to cooperate against the designs and expectations of the enemy. May he find at every step the faithful sons of Russia who will strike him by all their means and with all their strength, without listening to any of his malice, any of his lies. May he encounter in each noble a Pozharsky,46 in each cleric a Palitsyn,47 in each bourgeois a Minine.48 Nobility, in all times you have been the savior of the country. Holy Synod and Clergy! By your ardent prayers you have always summoned Grace down upon the head of Russia. Russian people! Brave descendants of the brave Slavs! You have more than once broken the teeth of lions and tigers that were attacking you. Unite! With the cross in your hearts and weapons in your hands, no human force will be able to vanquish you.49

  He also called for the constitution of popular militias designed to assist the regular army. The energy he deployed so prodigiously was accompanied by a sort of existential anguish, due to his extreme lucidity about the responsibilities incumbent on him. In 1814 he confirmed to the Countess of Choiseul-Gouffier: “One has to be in my place to have any idea of the responsibility of a sovereign and of what I am feeling, thinking that one day I must account to God for the life of each of my soldiers.”50 We saw that in July 1812, yielding to the injunctions of those close to him and his military advisors, Alexander resolved to leave the front, but it was to go to Moscow in order to galvanize the population and to work to cement the people around their tsar, their faith, and their endangered country. Alexander feared that Napoleon, as the spiritual son of the French Revolution, would bring (as he already had to Prussia and Warsaw) his share of “temptations”—he used exactly this word in his manifesto of July 18—and might even destabilize the empire by promising the peasants that he would abolish serfdom. And, in fact, Napoleonic proclamations spread in the provinces of Vitebsk and Smolensk did arouse violent disturbances, although it is not easy for the historian to grasp what was due to French influence and what arose from a tradition of jacquerie51 that was anchored in Russia itself. Consequently, to stop the process, Alexander had to resist the invader with words as well as actions, skillfully combining religious and nationalist themes to convince the population that the Napoleonic invasion was not the consequence of errors committed by the tsar but rather the fruit of the insatiable lust for power of a tyrant who had nothing to do with the good of the people. On the road to Moscow, Alexander halted at Smolensk, where the town’s nobility had raised and equipped 20,000 militiamen in his honor. In this small provincial village Alexander was overcome with dizziness for the first time. He now incarnated the national spirit; nascent public opinion, which on many occasions had murmured if not complained about him and had rarely understood him, had finally lined up behind “its” tsar.

  He arrived in Moscow on July 23 in the evening and soon ignited an intense patriotic fervor. On July 24 in the morning, the tsar attended a blessing in the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Kremlin. Three days later, he met the deputies of the nobility and merchants of Moscow who displayed their patriotism and offered him respectively 3 and 10 million rubles, which validated his faith in the people and its determination to fight.

  Returning to St. Petersburg after a week’s stay in Moscow, he continued his intense propaganda activity, trying constantly to convince people and to justify his stance. On August 4 an imperial ukase raised new troops, and on August 13 a new manifesto forcefully asserted:

  French troops have broken through the frontiers of our empire. The most perfidious aggression has been my punishment for my strict observance of the alliance. To keep the peace, I exhausted all means that conformed to the dignity of my throne and were useful for my people—but I obtained no result. Emperor Napoleon had firmly in mind a plan to destroy Russia. The most moderate proposals remained unanswered. The unexpected invasion has clearly revealed the falseness of the kindly affirmations and promises professed even a short while ago. This is why nothing remains but to brandish weapons and put myself in the hands of Providence to find the means to fight force with force. My hope lies in the zeal of my people and the bravery of my troops. Threatened within their own homes, they will defend them with firmness and valor. Providence will bless our just action. The defense of the homeland, the maintenance of our independence, and the honor of our people have obliged us to go to war. I will not lay down arms as long as a single soldier in arms is still present in my empire.52

  Disseminated by newspapers and pamphlets, these various imperial edicts were backed up by tracts from Count Rostopchin. Written in a more brutal (and even offensive) style and posted in the streets of Moscow, they aimed to solder the people behind the tsar by sharpening hatred of the invader. All this patriotic propaganda was echoed in the press: the journal The Son of the Fatherland played a major role among elites throughout the conflict, as did the visual arts—pictures by Kiprensky dramatized heroic fighters like the young Peter Olenin—which also participated in the patriotic effort.

  Equally concerned to counter the French propaganda spread by the bulletins of the Grande Armée and posters addressed to the inhabitants of occupied towns, Alexander set up a mobile printing press in the theater of operations, charged with diffusing among the non-French soldiers of the Grande Armée proclamations inciting them to abandon the fight.

  However, despite the fears expressed by Alexander and despite Napoleon’s first actions during his entry into Vitebsk, then Smolensk, the latter gave up pushing peasants to revolt; in the territories occupied by the Grande Armée, serfdom was not in fact abolished.53 This reluctance aroused, and still arouses, many questions among historians. Is it explained by Napoleon’s desire to spare his enemy and not destabilize his empire in order to continue to negotiate with him? Or out of a concern not to destabilize his own supply lines? Or does it express, as the Russian historian Vladlen Sirotkin asserts, a contempt tinged with fear of the Russian peasants, the muzhiki, who were perceived as unpredictable and dangerous barbarians? The answer is not clear. Whatever the case, reassured in the loyalty of the peasantry, Alexander consented to the creation of peasant militias, who during the Grande Armée’s retreat played a key role in continually harassing the routed troops.

  In parallel to his engagement on the domestic front, the emperor also conducted intense diplomatic activity. He reestablished peace with England in August and confirmed that henceforth no restriction would affect the circulation of ships and commercial exchanges. In mid-August he met Bernadotte in Turku and obtained from Sweden the promise to guarantee the inviolability of Finland; this was a major advance: Alexander was now free to bring the Finnish corps to the western front.

  •••

  Alexander’s commitment was total and merciless, but he was not isolated: the whole imperial family was mobilized in the war effort. Grand Duke Constantine, very active in the general staff, took part in all military decisions. Elizabeth had proclaimed from the start of the conflict a determination and patriotism that ceded nothing to Alexander’s. In a letter written on the same day the Borodino battle was taking place, August 26 (O.S.), 1812, she wrote to her mother with an honorable clairvoyance:

  I am sure that you are badly informed in Germany about what is happening here. Perhaps they have tried to make you believe we have fled to Siberia, whereas we have not left P
etersburg. We are prepared for everything, in truth, apart from negotiations. The more Napoleon advances, the less he must believe in a possible peace. This is the unanimous feeling of the emperor and the whole nation in all classes, and thank heaven, there exists the most perfect harmony in that respect. This is what Napoleon did not expect: he got that wrong, like many other things. Each step he takes in this immense Russia makes him approach the abyss. We will see how he bears the winter!54

  Two days later, in a new letter to the margrave of Baden, the empress saluted the patriotic spirit that had overwhelmed the country, turning into derision the supposed French “civilization” faced with Russian “barbarity,” and she reaffirmed that Alexander would not make a pact with the enemy:

  Daily you must see and hear (as we do) enough proofs of patriotism and devotion and the heroic bravery in all military and civil ranks so as not to think them exaggerated. Ah! This brave nation shows what it is, and what those who understand it have known for a long time, despite stubbornly treating it as barbarian. However, the barbarians of the north and the bigots of the south of Europe are those who now resist the supposedly civilized nation the most,55 and they are far from being reduced to nothing.

  From the moment Napoleon crossed our borders, it was as if an electric spark extended over all Russia, and if the immensity of its extent had allowed everyone at the same moment to be informed in all corners of the Empire, it would have raised a cry of indignation so terrible that it would have been heard at the end of the universe. As Napoleon advanced, this feeling increased. Old men who had lost almost everything said: “We will find the means to live! Anything is preferable to a shameful peace.” Women who had all their kin in the army still regarded the dangers they were running as secondary and they feared only peace. A peace that would be the death knell of Russia cannot be made, fortunately: the emperor cannot conceive of the idea, and even if he wanted to, he could not. This is the fine heroism of our position!56