Napoleon

by Adam Zamoyski

  Alexander wanted Napoleon to sign a convention pledging not to allow the restoration of Poland, and to take up arms against the Poles should they attempt it. Napoleon replied that while he could declare his opposition to such a revival, he would and could not undertake to hinder it. To sign the text suggested by Russia would ‘compromise the honour and dignity of France’, as he put it to his foreign minister Champagny; tens of thousands of Poles had fought alongside the French for over a decade, inspired by hopes of a free motherland and convinced of France’s sympathy for their cause.19

  On 30 June 1810, when he received a communication from St Petersburg with a list of complaints and a renewed demand that he sign the convention on Poland, and hinting that Russia might not be able to keep up the blockade against Britain without it, Napoleon lost his temper. He summoned the new Russian ambassador, Prince Kurakin, a ridiculous and ineffectual man known in Paris as ‘le prince diamant’, since he never appeared otherwise than covered in decorations and jewellery, who was eloquent testimony to how little Alexander valued developing good relations with France. ‘What does Russia mean by such language?’ Napoleon demanded. ‘Does she want war? Why these continual complaints? Why these insulting suspicions? If I had wished to restore Poland, I would have said so and would not have withdrawn my troops from Germany. Is Russia trying to prepare me for her defection? I will be at war with her the day she makes peace with England.’ He then dictated a letter to Caulaincourt in St Petersburg telling him that if Russia was going to blackmail him and use the Polish question as an excuse to seek a rapprochement with Britain, there would be war. It was an idle threat, as war with Russia was the last thing he wanted.20

  Alexander, on the other hand, was coming to see war as inevitable. Russian society resented the alliance with Napoleon as it associated him with the Revolution and godlessness, as well as fearing that he intended to restore Poland. Orthodox Russian traditionalists regarded the Catholic Poles as the rotten apples in the Slav basket, and the Polish inhabitants of what were now the empire’s western provinces as a fifth column of western corruption within it. Such feelings turned to paranoia when, in the summer of 1810, the Swedish people elected a Frenchman as their crown prince and de facto ruler.

  The Swedish king, Charles XIII, was senile and childless, and in their search for a successor, the Swedes looked for a distinguished French soldier who might help them recover Finland, lost to Russia in 1809. They turned to Napoleon, who suggested Eugène. He declined, not wishing to abandon his Catholic faith, so, encouraged by Champagny, they suggested Bernadotte. Napoleon was not best pleased, realising that he might prove less than cooperative, but assumed that he would behave as a Swedish patriot if not a Frenchman – Sweden’s natural enemies were Russia and Prussia, and France her traditional ally. The Swedes’ friendly feelings towards France were strained by the Continental System, but their long coastline and their Pomeranian colony on the northern coast of Germany permitted them to breach it. It would also have been a relief to Napoleon to have Bernadotte out of the way.

  In Russia, Bernadotte’s election was greeted with uproar. ‘The defeat of Austerlitz, the defeat of Friedland, the Tilsit peace, the arrogance of the French ambassadors in Petersburg, the passive behaviour of the Emperor Alexander I with regard to Napoleon’s policies – these were deep wounds in the heart of every Russian,’ recalled Prince Sergei Volkonsky. ‘Revenge and revenge were the only feelings burning inside each and every one.’21

  Such feelings were reinforced by the economic hardships caused by the Continental System. Russia had little industry, and was dependent on imports for a variety of everyday items. These now had to be smuggled in via Sweden or through smaller ports on Russia’s Baltic coastline. Her exports – timber, grain, hemp and so on – were bulky and difficult to smuggle. The Russian ruble fell in value against most European currencies by as much as 25 per cent, which made the cost of foreign goods exorbitant. Between 1807 and 1811 the price of coffee more than doubled, sugar became more than three times as expensive, and a bottle of champagne went from 3.75 to 12 rubles. This cocktail of wounded pride and financial hardship produced ever more violent criticism of Alexander’s policy, and the only way he could deflect it was to break free of Napoleon. He had been building up and modernising his army since Tilsit, and back in December 1809, while still pretending to favour Napoleon’s marriage to his sister, he began trying to subvert the Poles with promises of autonomy under Russian aegis.22

  The summer of 1810 yielded a poor harvest in England, which coincided with a dramatic fall in the value of sterling. Napoleon tightened the economic screw by raising tariffs further on licensed imports. Britain was struggling economically, and he was convinced he could bring her to the negotiating table (on his terms). He therefore, in October 1810, instructed Caulaincourt to order Russia to raise tariffs too. This left Alexander with little option but to defy the system openly. On 31 December he opened Russian ports to American ships, and imposed tariffs on French manufactured goods imported overland into Russia. British goods were soon pouring into Germany from Russia; the Continental System was in tatters.

  Napoleon could not accept it. ‘The Continental System is uppermost in his mind, he is more taken up with it than ever,’ noted his secretary Fain. In his determination to control all points of import, Napoleon annexed the Hanseatic ports. In January 1811 he did the same with the duchy of Oldenburg, whose ruler was the father of Alexander’s brother-in-law. He did offer him another German province as compensation, but this was refused. Alexander was outraged, and felt personally insulted – his supposed ally was now despoiling members of his family. He had to act, if only to save face. ‘Blood must flow again,’ he told his sister Catherine.23

  At the beginning of January 1811 he renewed attempts to win over the Poles, or at least ensure their neutrality, while his minister of war General Barclay de Tolly drew up plans for a strike into the Grand Duchy followed by an advance into Prussia. Alexander had 280,000 men ready, and calculated that if the Poles and the Prussians were to join him, he could be on the Oder with a force of 380,000 before Napoleon could react. Napoleon was well informed, and took the threat seriously. He ordered Davout, in command of the French forces in northern Germany, to prepare for war, and ordered the Poles in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw to mobilise. ‘I considered that war had been declared,’ he later affirmed. In a report to Francis on 17 January 1811, Metternich stated his opinion that war between France and Russia was inevitable.24

  In the same report, he argued that the restoration of Poland would be desirable if, in return for giving up the rest of Galicia, Austria were to recover the Tyrol, part of Venetia and Illyria. That would strengthen her position in the Balkans, improve her defences in the south and give her Trieste and access to the sea, while a restored Poland would act as a buffer against Russian aggression. Austria rejected Russian diplomatic overtures aimed at securing support against France, fearing Russian expansion in the Balkans and increased influence in Central Europe; a strategic alliance between Austria and France was on the cards. The treaty Austria would sign with France on 14 March 1812 had as its aim the return of the Danubian Principalities to the Porte, and left open the possibility of recreating a kingdom of Poland. In Paris, gossip had it that Murat would be made King of Poland.25

  ‘I have no wish to make war on Russia,’ Napoleon declared to the Russian Count Shuvalov during an interview at Saint-Cloud in May 1811. ‘It would be a crime on my part, for I would be making war without a purpose, and I have not yet, thanks to God, lost my head, I am not mad.’ To Colonel Chernyshev, whom the tsar had sent to Paris with letters for Napoleon, he repeatedly stated that he had no intention of fatiguing himself or his soldiers on behalf of Poland, and ‘he formally declared and swore by everything he held holiest in the world that the re-establishment of that kingdom was the very least of his concerns’. But such professions of goodwill would not suffice.26

  When Caulaincourt returned to Paris from St Petersburg on the morning of
5 June 1811, he drove straight to Saint-Cloud, and within minutes of arriving was ushered into Napoleon’s presence – in which he spent the next seven hours in a discussion whose course he noted down that evening. He explained Alexander’s position, and warned that the tsar would fight to the end rather than submit to Napoleon’s demands. Napoleon dismissed this as bravado, asserting that Alexander was ‘false and weak’. He could not believe Russian society would accept the implied sacrifices – the nobles would not want to see their lands ravaged for the sake of Alexander’s honour, while the serfs would as likely revolt against them as fight for a system of slavery.

  He viewed the Russian abandonment of the Continental System as a betrayal, and her troop build-up as a threat to his influence in Central Europe. He had convinced himself that Alexander was using the Polish question and the subject of trade as excuses to break out of the alliance and draw closer to Britain, and that he would invade the Grand Duchy of Warsaw the moment an opportunity presented itself.

  Caulaincourt pointed out that Napoleon had only two options: he must either give a significant part, if not the whole, of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw to Alexander, or go to war with the aim of restoring the kingdom of Poland. He advised him to take the first course, which in his opinion would guarantee a stable peace. Napoleon declared that such a betrayal of the Poles would dishonour him and lead to further Russian expansion into the heart of Europe.27

  He wanted to maintain his alliance with Alexander, yet would not pay the necessary price, and wanted to keep the Polish question open without committing to it. But this was no longer possible. By making his alliance with her the linchpin of his plan to defeat Britain, Napoleon had inflated Russia’s significance, and his continued attempts to make Alexander do his bidding had spurred the tsar to assume an even greater role in European affairs.

  Napoleon’s exasperation erupted on 15 August 1811, his forty-second birthday. At midday he strutted into the throne room at the Tuileries, filled with court officials and diplomats perspiring in their uniforms and ceremonial dress on what was a particularly hot day. After receiving their good wishes, Napoleon stepped down from the throne and walked among the guests. When he reached the Russian ambassador, he accused Russia of massing troops with the intention of invading the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, describing it as an open act of hostility. The unfortunate Kurakin kept opening his mouth to reply, but could not get a word in edgeways, while sweat poured down his face. After bullying him for a while, Napoleon walked away, leaving him in a state of shock.28

  The following morning, after a conference with Maret, who had succeeded Champagny as foreign minister, in the course of which they reviewed every document concerning Russia since Tilsit, Napoleon concluded that France wanted Russia as an ally against Britain and had no wish to fight her, since there was nothing she wanted from her, but that she could not buy Russia’s friendship by betraying the Poles. France must therefore prepare for war in order to prevent Russia from going to war. Caulaincourt’s successor in St Petersburg, General Lauriston, was instructed to explain this.29

  Napoleon could not see that he had put Alexander in an impossible situation, and he would not believe what he did not wish to see – that unless he stepped back, war was inevitable. Nor did he wish to face the fact that Russia was strategically invulnerable, as it was too vast to overrun and subdue. France on the other hand was highly vulnerable, since it was already engaged in a war in the Iberian Peninsula and was open to attack from Britain along its entire coastline. French possessions in Germany and Italy were unstable, as Napoleon kept moving boundaries and rearranging their administration, and satellites such as Naples were not dependable. Nor were his allies in the Confederation of the Rhine loyal other than by necessity. The whole Napoleonic system was a work in progress, whose final arrangement was contingent on an outcome with Britain, which now depended on solutions in both Spain and Russia. Acting tactically, without an overall strategy, Napoleon had got himself into an impasse from which the only way out was back – not a step he was used to contemplating.

  ‘It would have been difficult to imagine any new obstacle to the Emperor’s prosperity, and, whatever he undertook, people expected of the magician what no man would have undertaken,’ wrote Victorine de Chastenay. Surrounded by his maison, which had grown to include 3,384 people, he was cut off from the real world. Beugnot, who had returned to Paris after an absence of three years, was struck by the luxury of the court, but noted that at Napoleon’s table and those of his ministers, which were ‘sumptuously served and attended by valets shimmering with gold’, boredom reigned, as nobody discussed matters of state as they had in the past. Although there were few guards in evidence at the Tuileries, and security surrounding the emperor was light, fear and self-censorship proclaimed despotism; people whispered or kept silent, and Napoleon could ignore unpleasant truths. He must have read, as he always did, the police report from Lille relating to 2 December 1811, the anniversary of Austerlitz and his coronation, one of the major national feast days of the Napoleonic calendar, which found that ‘the inhabitants appeared not to know for what reason’ the city was illuminated and festivities were taking place. But it clearly made no impression deep enough to make him reflect. From where he sat, his power seemed limitless. On 3 November 1811, the fourteen-year-old Heinrich Heine watched him ride into Düsseldorf. He thought ‘his features were noble and dignified, like those of ancient sculptures, and on his face were written the words: “Thou shalt have no other gods beside me.”’30

  He was defying God himself; when, back in June, the Council of French bishops, headed by Fesch, had sworn allegiance to the Pope, Napoleon had closed it down and imprisoned a number of its members in the fortress of Vincennes. On 3 December he issued another ultimatum demanding the acquiescence of the Pope, whose behaviour had ‘wounded’ his imperial authority, and imprisoned or exiled more clerics. The Pope himself would soon be dragged off in a closed carriage, travelling by night to house arrest at Fontainebleau, and even Fesch would be exiled.

  By that time, troops were on the move all over Europe, recruits were being drilled, arms, uniforms and supplies of every kind stockpiled. Yet Napoleon still denied he intended to make war. To Metternich and many others it now seemed inevitable, and the only question was what the outcome would mean for Europe. ‘Whether he triumphs or succumbs, Europe will never be the same again,’ Metternich wrote to Francis. ‘This terrible moment has unfortunately been brought on us by the unpardonable conduct of the Russians.’31

  36

  Blinding Power

  Napoleon still had no fixed policy at the beginning of 1812. ‘I am far from having lost hope of a peaceful settlement,’ he wrote to Jérôme on 27 January. ‘But as they have adopted towards me the unfortunate procedure of negotiating at the head of a strong and numerous army, my honour demands that I too negotiate at the head of a strong and numerous army. I do not wish to open the hostilities, but I wish to put myself in a position to repulse them.’1

  Yet to one of his aides he explained that he was ‘propelled into this hazardous war by political reality’, as the fertile and civilised south of Europe would always be threatened by uncivilised ravenous hordes from the north, and ‘the only answer is to throw them back beyond Moscow; and when will Europe be in a position to do this, if not now, and by me?’ According to some in his entourage, he feared that his military talents and powers of endurance were in decline, and felt he must deal with Russia while he still had the energy. ‘One way or another, I want to finish the thing,’ he said to General Vandamme, ‘as we are both getting old, my dear Vandamme, and I don’t want to find myself in old age in a position in which people can kick me in the backside, so I am determined to bring things to a conclusion one way or the other.’ As he began regrouping his forces and preparing for war, the soldier seems to have awoken in Napoleon. And according to Mollien, he even thought that, as in the past, a war might refill his coffers. In effect, he did not really know what to do. ‘I feel myself propelled
towards some unknown goal,’ he admitted to his aide Philippe de Ségur, adding that his fate was ‘written’.2

  He had assembled the largest army the world had ever seen. The Frenchmen in its ranks were outnumbered by Poles, Germans, Austrians, Belgians, Dutchmen, Swiss, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese and Croats, all of whom had differing interests and loyalties. Yet military instinct and the spirit of emulation bound them together. French rabbis exhorted young Jews: ‘You will fight and vanquish under the command of the God of armies. Go, and return covered in laurels which will attest to your valour.’ Valour, as tested in battle, was considered the prime virtue at the time, and young men felt a strong urge to prove their worth. ‘Whatever their personal feelings towards the emperor may have been, there was nobody who did not see in him the greatest and most able of all generals, and who did not experience a feeling of confidence in his talents and the value of his judgement,’ in the words of one aristocratic German officer. ‘The aura of his greatness subjected me as well, and, giving way to enthusiasm and admiration, I, like the others, shouted “Vive l’Empereur!”’ A Piedmontese cavalry lieutenant to whom Napoleon had addressed a few words during a parade felt the same. ‘Before that, I admired Napoleon as the whole army admired him,’ he wrote. ‘From that day on, I devoted my life to him with a fanaticism which time has not weakened. I had one regret, which was that I had only one life to place at his service.’3

  The size of the army obscured its quality. In March 1812 an inspection of the cavalry revealed that a third of the horses were too weak to carry a man. Only about the same proportion of the men were fit for action in most of the contingents. Napoleon made light of this. ‘When I put 40,000 men on horseback I know very well that I cannot hope for that number of good horsemen, but I am playing on the morale of the enemy, who learns through his spies, by rumour or through the newspapers that I have 40,000 cavalry,’ he argued. ‘Passing from mouth to mouth, this number and the supposed quality of my regiments, whose reputation is well known, are both rather exaggerated than diminished; and the day I launch my campaign I am preceded by a psychological force which supplements the actual force that I have been able to furnish for myself.’4