Napoleon needed a quick victory. He marched north to confront the Austro-Russian concentration at Olmütz, reaching Brünn (Brno) on 20 November. He rode out with his staff and spent a long time surveying the vicinity, noting various features of the terrain. ‘Gentlemen, look carefully at this ground!’ he said to his entourage. ‘It will be a field of battle! You will all have a part to play on it!’21
He was eager to bring on events, fearing the entry of Prussia into the war. Having ridden out and scouted the ground again, he began acting as though he wished to avoid an engagement. He withdrew units which had approached the enemy positions and instructed others to retreat if attacked, gradually drawing the enemy onto his chosen ground. On 26 November he sent a letter to the tsar through General Savary. Savary was snubbed at Russian headquarters by sneering aristocratic young aides, and although the tsar was more polite, his reply was addressed to ‘the head of the French government’. Napoleon sent Savary back with a request for a meeting, to which Alexander responded by sending one of his aides, Prince Dolgoruky. Along with others in the tsar’s entourage, the young man took these overtures as a sign of weakness, and when they met, out in the open, he looked down on Napoleon, whom he thought small and dirty, and declared that he must evacuate the whole of Italy and all Habsburg dominions, including Belgium, before any talks could take place. A livid Napoleon told him to leave. The exchange confirmed that Russian headquarters was dominated by inexperienced hotheads eager to prove themselves in battle, like the tsar himself, who would prevail over wiser counsels.22
Two Austrian delegates arrived at Napoleon’s headquarters requesting an armistice, and two days later, on 27 November, the Prussian foreign minister Count Christian von Haugwitz also turned up. Napoleon recognised these moves for the delaying tactics they were, and rudely sent them off to Vienna to confer with Talleyrand, to whom he wrote on 30 November saying he would be prepared to make far-reaching concessions to make peace with Austria. But he spent that day preparing for battle.23
Impervious to the alternating rain and hail, he again carefully surveyed the terrain and observed the Austro-Russian army’s movements. He seemed preoccupied, but rubbed his hands together with satisfaction. That night he slept in his carriage. After a final reconnaissance on 1 December, he settled into a small round hut which his grenadiers had built for him near a cottage in which his staff put up. He was joined by Junot, who had travelled from his embassy in Portugal to be at Napoleon’s side and was overjoyed to have arrived in time for the battle. That night, after lecturing his staff over dinner on the subject of the deficiencies of modern drama when compared with the works of Corneille, Napoleon rode out for a last look at the enemy positions. He then walked among the campfires around which the troops huddled against the bitter cold. The supply train had, as usual, failed to keep up with the army, and they had little food. They had been read a proclamation in which he assured them that he would be directing the battle throughout, and would, if needed, be among them to face the danger. Victory on the morrow would mean a speedy return home and a peace worthy of them and him. As he walked through the bivouac, some soldiers lit his way with torches, and were soon joined by others with twists of straw or flaming branches, so that soon a torchlight procession snaked through the camp, to shouts of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ ‘It was magnificent, magical,’ recalled one chasseur of what was now the Imperial Guard. The following morning seemed no less so.24
It happened to be the anniversary of Napoleon’s coronation. The troops were roused long before daybreak, and formed up in the thick mist of a wintry morning which muffled all sound. They stood to for some time in eerie silence. The sun rose, burning off the mist and temporarily blinding them before its rays glinted on the rows of bayonets and lance-tips facing them, giving the signal for the artillery to open up. The ‘soleil d’Austerlitz’ would go down in legend.25
Napoleon’s 73,000 men were outnumbered by the combined Russian and Austrian force of 86,000 facing them, and seriously outgunned with 139 pieces of artillery to their opponents’ 270. But having surveyed the ground and taken up what appeared to be defensive positions, he had anticipated the direction in which they would be tempted to attack, and laid his plans accordingly. He instructed Davout on his right wing to fall back when the Russian left challenged him and to draw them on, off the high ground, in order to make their eventual retreat more difficult. The Russians responded as expected, and when they had overextended themselves, Napoleon launched a vigorous attack on the now exposed enemy’s centre, while his left wing outflanked their right and forced it back, widening the gap at the centre. The manoeuvre worked as he had intended, and the enemy were thrown into confusion, with some units having to face about and others to fall back into the path of their advancing colleagues. But the Russians in particular fought doggedly, and there was a moment when a counter-attack by the Russian Guard threatened the outcome. It was countered by a vigorous cavalry charge led by Bessières and Rapp. The allied army crumpled, and while individual units stood their ground the majority took flight, with a humiliated Alexander galloping away from the field of battle.26
‘The battle of Austerlitz is the finest of all those I have fought,’ Napoleon wrote to Josephine on 5 December; ‘more than twenty thousand dead, a horrible sight!’ As usual, he exaggerated the enemy losses and diminished his own, but it had been a triumph. The French army had taken forty-five enemy standards, 186 guns and 19,600 prisoners, and although the number of dead was considerably smaller than 20,000, the allied army had been diminished by at least one-third and its morale shattered. ‘I had already seen some battles lost,’ wrote the French émigré Louis Langeron, a general in Russian service, ‘but I could never have imagined a defeat on this scale.’27
The victorious troops lay down and slept around miserable smoking fires among the dead and dying, with nothing to eat except the odd crust they carried with them. Flurries of snow had made everything damp, and in the evening it began to rain. It was not until the following night that Napoleon himself slept in a bed for the first time in over a week, in a country house in the nearby village of Austerlitz, after which he named the victory. In his address to the troops he stressed that it had been entirely their work, and announced that he would adopt the children of all the French dead.28
He only slept for a couple of hours. The Austrians had requested a ceasefire, and the following day he met the emperor, in the open at a prearranged place. Francis drove up in a carriage, from which Napoleon handed him down, and they spoke for over an hour as their aides watched. Francis conceded that the British were merchants in human flesh, and abandoned the coalition. Napoleon agreed to an armistice, on condition he expelled the Russians from his dominions. It was signed on 6 December.29
Napoleon admitted to his secretary Méneval that he had made a mistake in agreeing to the meeting with Francis. ‘It is not in the aftermath of a battle that one should have a conference,’ he said. ‘Today I should only be a soldier, and as such I should pursue victory, not listen to words of peace.’ He was right. Davout, who had been in pursuit of the retreating Russians, had cornered them and was on the point of taking Alexander himself prisoner when he was informed by a note from the tsar that an armistice had been signed which included the Russians – which it did not. Davout retired and let them pass. On 5 December Napoleon had written to the elector of Württemberg, who was Alexander’s brother-in-law, to use his good offices to persuade the tsar to lay down his arms and negotiate. But Alexander felt, according to one contemporary, ‘even more thoroughly defeated than his army’, and longed only for a chance to redeem his honour; he would fight on.30
On 12 December Napoleon was back at Schönbrunn. Three days later, on the very day by which it was supposed to have joined the anti-French coalition, he signed a treaty of alliance with Prussia, sanctioning its annexation of the British king’s fief of Hanover and thereby stealing one of Britain’s potential allies on the Continent.
Talleyrand had been trying to persuade
Napoleon to be generous to Austria and turn her into his principal European ally, which would give France tranquillity in Italy and the Mediterranean, a bulwark against Russia as well as a counterbalance to Prussian influence in Germany. But while Napoleon agreed with him that the only alternative, an alliance with Russia, was a poor prospect, qualifying the Russians as ‘Asiatics’, he had lost respect for Austria. He took no precautions as he moved about Vienna and its environs, and his soldiers noted that while the population was reserved, they treated them as tourists rather than enemies. On 17 December Napoleon had treated an assembly of Austrian generals and representatives of the estates to a two-hour admonition containing, according to the prince de Ligne, ‘a little greatness, a little nobility, a little sublimity, a little mediocrity, a little triviality, a little Charlemagne, a little Mahomet and a little Cagliostro …’ Napoleon did not consider them worthy allies.31
True to his threat, he spent Christmas in Vienna. By the Treaty of Pressburg, dated 27 December, Austria ceded the Tyrol and Vorarlberg to Bavaria, other territories in Germany to Napoleon’s allies Württemberg and Baden, and Venetia, Dalmatia, Friuli and Istria, gained by the Treaty of Campo Formio, to France. As well as losing Francis a sixth of his twenty-four million subjects, it destroyed what was left of the Holy Roman Empire. By the same treaty, Francis recognised Napoleon as King of Italy, the rulers of Bavaria and Württemberg were elevated to royal status, while that of Baden became a grand duke. Finally, Austria had to pay a huge indemnity to France to cover the cost of the campaign.
Napoleon could not afford to waste time in Vienna, as he had a country to rule, and he left the next day. On 31 December he was in Munich, where on 6 January he enjoyed a performance of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito with the newly-minted King of Bavaria, who was only too happy to give away his daughter Augusta in marriage to Eugène a week later. Josephine, who had come from Paris for the occasion, was ‘at the height of happiness’ according to Caulaincourt. The next stop was Stuttgart, where the new King of Württemberg, a man of legendary girth, laid on entertainments which included operas and a hunt. Wherever he went in southern Germany Napoleon was greeted with genuine enthusiasm. But he could not linger.32
From the frantic letters of Joseph and Cambacérès it was clear that the French financial crisis had not subsided. News of Austerlitz eased the tension, but Cambacérès urged Napoleon to return as soon as possible, as there was ‘a torrent of bankruptcies’ undermining confidence in the government. People had come to identify stability and order so much with the person of Napoleon that his absence was in itself cause for anxiety. He was back at the Tuileries at ten o’clock on the evening of 26 January. Before retiring for the night he summoned the Council of State and a number of ministers to meet in the morning.33
29
The Emperor of the West
If the people of Paris were relieved to hear that their master was back, the same could not be said of those summoned to appear at the Tuileries on the morning following his return. They were going to have some explaining to do, and it was with a sense of foreboding that they gathered at the palace.
Faced with the necessity of going to war with Austria in the summer of 1805, Napoleon had instructed his treasury minister François Barbé-Marbois to raise money. This could only be achieved by unorthodox means which involved a group of Paris finance houses and merchants along with one of the principal military and civil victuallers, Joseph Vanlerberghe. It did not take long for them to become insolvent, and in the case of Vanlerberghe bankrupt, but they were kept afloat by the financier and speculator Gabriel Ouvrard. He had lent money to the Spanish government, in return for the contract to bring gold and silver coinage and bullion from Mexico and other American colonies to Europe. Since the Royal Navy had captured the Spanish treasure fleet in October 1804 and another treasure ship in July 1805, Ouvrard devised an ingenious scheme involving North American and Dutch partners, but this unravelled. In order to avoid the domino collapse of all the finance houses in Paris, Barbé-Marbois had extended credit to Vanlerberghe and his associates through the Bank of France, which precipitated a run on the bank.1
Despite his distaste for ‘men of business’ and their ways, Napoleon had given his sanction to the operation before leaving to join the army. He now grilled his councillors and ministers in a session lasting a full nine hours, at the end of which he sacked Barbé-Marbois. ‘I hope that Your Majesty does not accuse me of being a thief?’ the minister asked, only to receive the reply, ‘I would prefer it a hundred times if you were, for dishonesty has limits, stupidity has none.’2
The man Napoleon appointed to take over at the treasury, Nicolas Mollien, was a brilliant administrator who shared his distaste for financial wizardry while understanding the need for subterfuge. He would rebuild the finances of the French state, at the same time allowing his master to pillage them secretly and manage his own parallel finances. The first step was to alter the statutes of the Bank of France, in order to bring it under closer government control; the second to salvage whatever could be from the Ouvrard operation. Vanlerberghe, Ouvrard and others were summoned and told they had to repay 87 million francs, but while some were forced to pay up, Ouvrard had enough connections among Napoleon’s family and entourage to negotiate his way out. Mollien contrived to involve the London banking house of Hope, based in Amsterdam, and over a period of time most of the Spanish bullion would be brought to France – some of it in British ships.3
Napoleon created a separate military treasury, under Pierre Daru, into which all the proceeds of war would be paid, beginning with the indemnity due from Austria under the Treaty of Pressburg. This provided him with a ready war chest of his own. In order to preserve it, he kept part of his army cantoned in Germany, at the expense of the local authorities, and he warned that he would still raise taxes in time of war. He also began building up a ‘Domaine extraordinaire’, a private treasury from which he could dispense pensions, grants and gifts. The cash was kept in a vault at the Tuileries and its contents closely monitored by means of two registers, one listing every source of income and its yield, the other every payment. Wherever Napoleon went, a ‘cassette’ went with him, full of rolls of gold coins, to be distributed at will.4
When he returned from his first Italian campaign at the end of 1797 and discovered how much money Josephine had spent, Napoleon began investigating where it had all gone, and her continuing profligacy developed in him a reflex for checking bills and accounts. He would find out independently the cost of fabrics and ribbons in order to query the prices charged by her dressmakers and milliners. When he moved into the Tuileries, he began checking the numbers and cost of candles, firewood and food. He enquired how many of his household took sugar, how often, and then calculated how many kilograms that added up to, researched the price per kilo and finally checked the amount spent over the past month. In order to cut down on expenses he introduced vouchers, bons de repas, with which members of the court were issued. The scheme was only abandoned after Hortense arrived for dinner and, as her ladies had forgotten to bring the appropriate vouchers, was denied coffee. He also issued regulations regarding candle-ends – if there were more than eight inches left, they were to be reused in the corridors, if between six and eight, they were to be sent to the private quarters of members of the court, and so on. He developed a quasi obsession when it came to linen, ordering Daru to make an inventory of the 12,671 pairs of bedsheets, 2,032 napkins, 500 ‘rags’ and the other items. The cost of laundry did not escape his scrutiny either – not surprisingly, since he kept changing clothes himself: in the space of one month he sent thirty-six shirts, fourteen waistcoats, 137 kerchiefs and nine dressing gowns to be washed.5
He began keeping notebooks in which he wrote down payments and expenditure in a given area, as well as decisions taken and observations on their execution. This helped him spot anomalies and fraud when checking accounts, and to catch out ministers, functionaries and officers. As he always wanted quick and precise answers t
o his questions they would sometimes invent facts or figures, but he would challenge them, often knowing more about their ministry or regiment than they did. Mollien noted that no amount of detail could overwhelm him, that he was always looking out for problems to solve, and that ‘he was not content to reign or govern, he had to manage, and not as a prime minister, but more directly as any minister’.6
The unsatisfactory conduct of affairs by those to whom he had delegated during his absence suggested the need to be better informed and have greater control of what was going on in Paris when he was away. He therefore set up a new system of communication, ‘estafettes’, whereby despatches contained in a briefcase to which only he and the director of posts, Lavalette, had a key were carried by postilions from one posting station to the next. They knew where they were going, they had fresh horses at their disposal, and they would write down the time of arrival and departure in a notebook that accompanied each briefcase. As there were sanctions for any delay, they acquitted themselves with diligence. This would permit him to control the administration in Paris more closely and to delegate less.
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