Russia Against Napoleon

by Lieven, Dominic

  Kankrin wrote that his officials,

  themselves barely alive, were forced almost every other day to establish hospitals in ruined areas, in the midst of extreme cold and deprived of almost any help. There was a complete shortage of experienced officials. We took anyone who fell into our hands, grateful for being able to find any officials for this job. The man chosen was given the regulations, some money, open orders to the local administration requiring them to assist him, and a small staff. This was all the help one got in setting up a hospital, together whenever possible with some biscuit and groats, a few beef-cattle and some spirits.

  Nevertheless, wrote Kankrin, the majority of the men in hospital did recover and rejoin the army, ‘which on the one hand shows the toughness of Russian soldiers but also shows that they were given some care’.80

  On 13 December Kutuzov reported to Alexander that unless his army got a rest it might disappear entirely and have to be rebuilt from scratch. Any commander would dread such a possibility, but a Russian general had more reason than most to protect the professional and veteran cadre around which the army was built. Men with the education and willingness to serve as officers were not that plentiful. Highly skilled cadres who could serve in the engineers, artillery or staffs were much rarer still. Above all, the emperor’s army was not the nation in arms. Its strength lay in the great loyalty of its veterans to their comrades and regiments. Destroy these men and these loyalties, and the army would become worse than a mere militia. The inner force which made this army so formidable and resilient would be undermined. In the winter of 1812 this came too close to happening for Kutuzov’s comfort. In fact the army’s core survived, large numbers of veterans subsequently returned from hospital, and around this cadre a fine new army was rebuilt in 1813. But it was not really until the summer of 1813 that it recovered from the awful strains of the 1812 campaign and regained its full potential.81

  1813: The Spring Campaign

  Alexander I arrived in Vilna on 22 December 1812. This time he brought with him a smaller entourage than the gaggle of bored and squabbling courtiers who had been such a nuisance in the first weeks of the 1812 campaign. Three men whom he summoned to Vilna were to be his closest assistants for the rest of the war. Prince Petr Mikhailovich Volkonsky became Alexander’s right-hand man as regards military operations; Aleksei Arakcheev remained in charge of all matters concerning the mobilization of the home front, the militia and the provision of reinforcements to the field army. Karl Nesselrode became Alexander’s chief diplomatic adviser. In fact if not in name Nesselrode acted as deputy minister of foreign affairs. The true foreign minister was Alexander himself. The emperor intervened frequently in military matters but he lacked the confidence to take over command or play the leading role in military operations himself. Where diplomacy was concerned, however, Alexander was unequivocally in charge and in 1813 on the whole remarkably skilful and effective.

  Though Nikolai Rumiantsev remained foreign minister in name, he was completely excluded from the making of foreign policy. Alexander claimed to have left him behind in Petersburg to preserve his health. It was indeed true that Rumiantsev had suffered a minor stroke while on campaign with Alexander in 1812. For the emperor this was just a good excuse to escape from his foreign minister in 1813. The last thing Alexander wanted was an ‘Old Russian’ foreign minister, distrusted by all Russia’s current allies and critical of the emperor’s policy, looking over his shoulder. In Rumiantsev’s opinion Alexander’s crusade against Napoleon was wrong-headed. As he said to John Quincy Adams, Napoleon was by no means the only issue in Russian foreign relations. By concentrating so exclusively on Napoleon’s defeat, Alexander was downgrading Russian policy towards the Ottoman Empire and Persia, and even allowing historical Russian interests to be sacrificed to a desire to placate the Austrians and the British. Rumiantsev on occasion even upbraided Alexander in thinly camouflaged terms for forgetting his ancestors’ proud legacy.

  The foreign minister also feared anarchy as a result of the efforts being made to incite mass risings against Napoleon, especially in Germany. In Rumiantsev’s words, this was ‘in essence a return of Jacobinism. Napoleon might be considered the Don Quixote of monarchy. He had, to be sure, overthrown many monarchs, but he had nothing against monarchy. By affecting to make his person the only object of hostility, and by setting the populace to work to run him down, there would be a foundation laid for many future and formidable disorders.’ Alexander could afford to ignore Rumiantsev, both far away and sidelined, though when Metternich made precisely the same points two months later he was forced to pay far more attention.1

  Decorations and fireworks greeted Alexander’s arrival in Vilna. The day after his arrival was his birthday and Kutuzov hosted a great ball in his honour. Captured French standards were thrown down at Alexander’s feet in the ballroom. Further celebrations and parades followed. The price of luxuries in Vilna became exorbitant. Even Lieutenant Chicherin, an aristocratic Guards officer, could not afford to have a new uniform tailored with the appropriate gold braid. The glitter and congratulations could not conceal even from the emperor the terrible suffering in Vilna at that time. Forty thousand frozen corpses lay in the city and its suburbs awaiting the spring thaw when they could be burned or buried. Starving and typhus-ridden scarecrows roamed the streets, collapsing and dying across the doorways of Vilna’s citizens. The Guards artillery was used to transport the corpses to the frozen walls and hillocks of bodies awaiting disposal outside the town. A third of the soldiers involved fell ill with typhus themselves. Worst of all were the scenes in the hospitals. To his credit, Alexander visited the French hospitals, but there was not much the overstretched Russian medical services could do to help. The emperor recalled a visit ‘in the evening. One single lamp lighted the high vaulted room, in which they had heaped up the piles of corpses as high as the walls. I cannot express the horror I felt, when in the midst of these inanimate bodies, I suddenly saw living beings.’2

  On the surface all was harmony between a grateful emperor and his devoted commander-in-chief. Alexander awarded Kutuzov the Grand Cross of the Order of St George, the rarest and most prized of honours any Russian monarch could bestow. In reality, however, the emperor was dissatisfied with Kutuzov’s pursuit of Napoleon and determined to assert control over military operations. Petr Konovnitsyn, the army’s chief of staff, went on extended sick leave. In his place Alexander appointed Petr Volkonsky. Kutuzov would continue to command and to play the leading role in strategic planning but he would do so under the close eye of the emperor and his most trusted lieutenant. In terms of administrative efficiency Volkonsky’s arrival was of great benefit. Both Kutuzov and Konovnitsyn were lazy and inefficient administrators. Key documents went unsigned and unattended for days. Serge Maevsky, a staff officer in Kutuzov’s headquarters, commented that

  it seemed to me that the field-marshal was extremely unhappy about this appointment because now the tsar’s witness could pass on a true picture of the field-marshal. In addition he worked with us when he felt like it but he was forced to work with Volkonsky even when he didn’t want to. Volkonsky was very hard-working and exhausted the old man by numerous discussions of problems. It is true that our business flew along. That isn’t to be wondered at: in one day Volkonsky would decide matters that before him had piled up for months.3

  Kutuzov was determined that his exhausted troops should have some rest before embarking on a new campaign across Russia’s borders. The emperor was very unwilling to heed such advice. In his view, not a moment was to be lost at this crucial time while Napoleon was at his weakest, revolt against his empire was bubbling in Europe, and Russian prestige was sky-high. The army must press forward into Germany in order to control as much territory as possible and encourage Prussia and Austria to join the Russian cause. Just before leaving Petersburg Alexander had told one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting that the only true and lasting peace would be one signed in Paris. On arriving in Vilna he told his assembled gener
als that their victories would liberate not just Russia but Europe.4

  Kutuzov had no enthusiasm for this vision. The tired old commander felt that he had done his duty in liberating Russia. Liberating Europe was not Russia’s concern. Kutuzov was not alone in believing this. How many officers shared his view no one can say: the army did not conduct polls and, on the surface at least, the emperor’s word was law. But particularly towards the end of the spring campaign, as exhaustion grew and fortune turned against the allies, foreign observers commented on the lack of enthusiasm for the war at headquarters and among many of the Russian generals. This was less evident at regimental level, where officers and men were bound up in a culture of discipline, courage and mutual loyalty. Once the summer armistice allowed the army to rest and fortune turned the allies’ way again in the autumn, much less was heard of defeatism and exhaustion among the generals. But the spirit of the 1813 campaign for the Russian officers was always rather different to the defence of their homeland in 1812.5

  To an extent, this was now a campaign like so many in the past for personal glory, honour and promotion. The presence of the emperor with the army meant that rewards showered down on officers who distinguished themselves, a big incentive in a society where rank, medals and imperial benevolence counted for so much. In the officers’ memoirs about 1813 and 1814 one sometimes gets the sense too that they were ‘military tourists’ as they passed through one exotic foreign territory after another, accumulating adventures and impressions as they went. Seducing first Polish, then German and finally French women was a joyful element in this tourism for some of the officers, particularly the aristocratic young Guardsmen. In a way it seemed as much an affirmation of the officers’ manhood, tactical skill and all-conquering spirit as defeating Napoleon on the battlefield.6

  Admiral Shishkov was too old and too virtuous for such adventures. He was also a dyed-in-the-wool isolationist. Shortly after returning to Vilna with Alexander, he questioned Kutuzov as to why Russia was advancing into Europe. Both men agreed that after the devastation he had suffered in 1812 Napoleon was unlikely to attack Russia again and, ‘sitting in his Paris what harm can he do us?’ When asked by Shishkov why he had not used all his present prestige to press this view on Alexander, Kutuzov answered that he had done so but ‘in the first place he looks on things from a different perspective whose validity I cannot altogether reject, and in the second place, I tell you frankly and honestly, when he cannot deny my arguments then he embraces and kisses me. At that point I begin to cry and agree with him.’ Shishkov himself suggested that at the most Russia should act as Paul I had done in 1798–9, sending an auxiliary corps to help the Austrians but leaving the main efforts for Europe’s liberation to the Germans themselves, supported by British paymasters. Subsequently Kutuzov was to take up this idea, encouraging Karl von Toll to present a plan in late January 1813 whereby the main burden of the war could be passed on to the Austrians, British and Prussians while Russia, ‘because its home provinces are so very distant, will cease to play the leading military role in this war and will become the auxiliary of a Europe mobilized in its entirety against French tyranny’.7

  Alexander rejected Shishkov’s and Toll’s arguments for a limited Russian commitment, and was right to do so: in spring 1813 only full-scale Russian participation in the war in Germany could inspire Prussia and Austria to join in, or provide any realistic hope of victory even should they do so. The emperor was also right to doubt Shishkov’s and Kutuzov’s view that Napoleon was no longer a serious threat to Russian security. Given Napoleon’s personality and his record, it was optimistic to imagine that he would simply accept a devastating defeat at Russian hands and seek no revenge. Even leaving personal considerations aside, Napoleon believed that the legitimacy of his new dynasty required military victory and glory. In addition, since France’s war with Britain was continuing, so too was the geopolitical logic that had driven Napoleon to confront Russia in 1812. Getting rid of the last independent continental great power and consolidating French dominion in Europe while Napoleon himself was still an active and inspirational leader remained a credible strategy. Just conceivably, his experience in 1812 might persuade Napoleon to leave Russia in peace. More probably it might teach him to attack it in more intelligent fashion, making full use of the Polish factor and of Russia’s political and financial weaknesses. Of course all predictions about what Napoleon might do in the future were uncertain. What was beyond question was that his empire was much stronger than Russia. In peacetime it would not be possible to sustain for long the level of military expenditure which security against Napoleon would require. For that reason too it made good sense to try to end the Napoleonic threat now, while he was weakened, while Russia’s resources were mobilized, and while there was a strong chance of drawing Austria and Prussia into the struggle.

  The best source on Alexander’s policy at this time is provided by a memorandum submitted to him by Karl Nesselrode, his chief diplomatic adviser, early in February 1813. Tactfully, the memorandum started by repeating the emperor’s own words to its author. Alexander had stated that his overriding aim was to create a lasting peace in Europe, and one which would be proof against Napoleon’s power and ambition.

  The most complete way in which this goal could be achieved would undoubtedly be for France to be pushed back within its natural borders; that all the territories not situated between the Rhine, the Scheldt, the Pyrenees and the Alps would cease to be either integral parts of the French Empire or its dependants. This is of course the maximum we could want but it could not be achieved without the cooperation of Austria and Prussia.

  Nesselrode acknowledged that not even Prussian participation in the war was yet certain and that Austria might possibly remain Napoleon’s ally. If Prussia joined Russia but Austria was hostile, the most the allies could achieve would be to hold the line of the Elbe and make it Prussia’s permanent frontier. Nesselrode was confident that Prussia would ally itself to Russia soon but even if it did not there was every reason for Russia to push on now and occupy the Duchy of Warsaw, which was both vital for its security and no doubt a pawn in any future peace negotiations.8

  Nesselrode’s memorandum illustrated how very much the nature of Russia’s war had changed. Once the 1812 campaign had begun diplomacy was of secondary importance during the rest of that year. In the spring 1813 campaign, by contrast, Russia’s objectives could not be achieved by military means alone. Success required bringing in Austria and Prussia, and this in turn could only be achieved by a combination of diplomatic and military policies. As was typical of Nesselrode, the tone of his memorandum was coolly realistic. There was, for instance, no mention of pursuing Napoleon to Paris or overthrowing his regime. Such goals would have seemed wholly unrealizable in February 1813 and would have alienated even the Prussians, let alone the Austrians.

  Also realistic was Nesselrode’s understanding of power. Some of Alexander’s advisers dreamed of instigating a European – and in particular German – revolt against Napoleonic tyranny. The leader of this group was Baron Heinrich vom Stein, the former Prussian chief minister who had joined Alexander’s entourage in 1812. On the contrary, Nesselrode’s memorandum said nothing about popular revolts or public opinion. For him, it was states and governments which counted. On the whole the events of 1813–14 bore him out. However much public opinion in the Confederation of the Rhine had turned against Napoleon, the princes stuck by him and the great majority of their soldiers fought loyally on his behalf until very near the end. In 1813 Napoleon was defeated, not by rebellions or nationalist movements, but because for the first time Russia, Prussia and Austria fought together and because, unlike in 1805 and 1806, Russian armies were already in central Europe when the campaign began.

  But Nesselrode argued that only states and governments really mattered in international relations, partly because he strongly believed that this ought to be the case. Like Metternich, whom he admired, Nesselrode longed for stability and order amidst the nev
er-ending turbulence of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. Both men feared that any form of autonomous politics ‘from below’ – whether led by Jacobin demagogues or by patriotic Prussian generals – would throw Europe into further chaos. Ironically, however, in the winter of 1812–13 it was to be a Prussian general acting without his king’s sanction who was to begin the process which culminated in the Russo-Prussian alliance against Napoleon, thereby achieving Nesselrode and Alexander’s first great diplomatic triumph in 1813.

  Lieutenant-General Hans David von Yorck, the commander of the Prussian corps on the left flank of Napoleon’s forces, was a very difficult man even by comparison with senior Russian generals of the era. Arrogant, prickly and hypercritical, he was a nightmare as a subordinate. The other Prussian corps commander in the east, Lieutenant-General Friedrich Wilhelm von Bülow, in fact told the Russians that Yorck’s actions sprang less from patriotism than from personal enmity towards his French commander, Marshal MacDonald.9

  This was unfair because there was no reason to doubt Yorck’s commitment to restoring Prussian independence, pride and status. In November and December 1812 the governor-general of Riga, Marquis Philippe Paulucci, attempted to win over Yorck to the Russian side by playing on these themes. The fact that Yorck responded to his letters raised Paulucci’s hopes. Initially he ascribed the Prussian general’s caution to Yorck’s need to seek guidance from his king. By late December, however, Paulucci was beginning to fear that Yorck was just playing for time. The collapse of the Grande Armée had left Napoleon’s forces in southern Latvia isolated. Orders for their retreat came very late. Paulucci began to fear that Yorck was merely hoodwinking the Russians in order to get his corps back to Prussia in one piece. A threatening note had entered Paulucci’s communications to Yorck by 22 December.10