Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  Almost immediately, in the first days and weeks of 1813, anti-Napoleonic pamphlets, newspaper articles and caricatures began to appear, galvanizing public opinion against Napoleon.127 The Russians had been at work on this for some time already, printing their own bulletins that were distributed to the army and, more importantly, printing calls to revolt in the main languages of the Grande Armée, aimed at both troops and officers.128 Napoleon was personally held responsible for the suffering that had befallen Europe. Poems published as pamphlets informed people about the French disasters, and explained that Moscow had burnt.129 Moreover, proclamations issued by both Alexander and Kutuzov – Kutuzov issued a proclamation in January 1813 to his ‘children’: ‘We will make Europe exclaim with astonishment. The Russian army is invincible’130 – did the rounds of just about every inn in Europe.131

  It is obvious that people reacted differently to the news in different parts of Europe but what seems clear is that Napoleon’s setback helped fuel the hatred of those suffering under French occupation. The conclusion people drew from all this was that, if there were ever to be peace on the Continent, Napoleon would first have to go. In the north of Germany, in the Hanseatic ports where the Continental Blockade had done so much to ruin their commercial life, Napoleon and the French were particularly hated. News of the defeat in Russia, which had occurred so suddenly and so unpredictably, seemed like a miracle to those who opposed the French. Rumour exaggerated, if that were possible, the extent of the defeat and filled the opponents of the Empire with hope: the army had been completely destroyed (more or less true); Napoleon had fled by himself or disguised as a peasant; Prussia and Austria had joined forces with Russia (not yet true); the whole of Germany had risen in revolt (some regions would eventually do so, but not all). The rumours, no matter how absurd, were enough to cause a ‘general ferment’.

  None of this, however, prepared the people of Prussia for the sight that greeted them as the remnants of the Grande Armée marched back through their territory – the pestilential stench, the rotting flesh in the rotting uniforms. ‘Their clothing consisted of rags, straw mats, old women’s clothing, sheepskins, or whatever else they could lay their hands on. None had the proper headgear; instead they bound their heads with old cloths or pieces of shirt; instead of shoes and leggings, their feet were wrapped with straw, fur or rags.’132 The French subsequently felt the full hatred of the Prussian people who no longer bothered to hide their contempt. ‘The ass’s kick’, as one soldier put it.133 Rumours of the difficulties the French army had been facing had been filtering back to Prussia since October. When, on 12 November, there were newspaper reports that Napoleon had retreated from Moscow people assumed he had been defeated and openly vented their rage in street riots.134 The Westphalian legation secretary in Berlin wrote that never had he seen ‘such intense hatred’.135 When the 29th Bulletin was published in Berlin on 14 December, there could no longer be any doubt – Napoleon was defeated. The remnants of the army were greeted with insulting songs,136 and, much worse than this, armed groups of peasants began attacking stragglers.137

  As with the figures surrounding the number of men who entered Russia, the figures for those who survived are just as varied. It is thought that about 75,000 troops crossed the Niemen in late 1812, half of whom were Austrian or Prussian and would therefore never fight for Napoleon again, while most of the rest were in so pitiful a state they could not fight, at least not in the immediate future.138 When one takes into account the Russian military losses – according to one estimate, as many as 300,000 dead139 – one can reasonably assert that up to one million people died between the end of June 1812, when the expedition into Russia was launched, and February 1813, with the remnants of the army continuing to die from wounds, disease, malnutrition and exhaustion. Of the 27,000 Italian troops only 1,000 made it back.140 Of the 25,500 Saxon soldiers that went into Russia, 6,000 came back alive.141 Looking at figures for individual regiments sometimes tells an even bleaker story. Raymond de Montesquiou-Fezensac had 3,000 men under his command. Of those 200 came back with him and another 100 were eventually returned from prison – that is, nine-tenths of his effectives were dead or missing.142 Similarly, a Sergeant François, writing from Magdeburg on 1 March 1813, described how he had lived off horsemeat for the last six weeks and that only twenty-six men from his battalion of 1,000 men had survived.143 Of the 28,000 Westphalian troops, those abandoned by Jérôme early in the campaign, about 250 made it back alive. Some 1,700 soldiers left Mecklenburg-Schwerin; only 118 survived the ordeal.144 For Württemberg, only 500 men of the 15,800 initial contingent returned home.145 The Poles did not fare any better. Of the 118,000 men who began the campaign, about 90,000 were killed, wounded, made prisoner or went missing.146

  There was the problem of dealing with the thousands of cadavers, both men and horses, left behind. Somewhere between 160,000 and 200,000 horses were lost during the campaign.147 The carnage in Moscow was such that reportedly it could be smelt for miles around.148 The Russians were obliged to organize special teams to follow in the wake of Napoleon in order to bury the dead. We know from a report of a spy working for Louis Le Lorgne d’Ideville, who served Napoleon as a secretary-interpreter, that the Russians burnt 253,000 bodies in the districts of Moscow, Vitebsk and Mogilev, most belonging to the Grande Armée, and another 53,000 in the region of Vilnius.149 A report from the Russian ministry of police calculated that 430,707 men had been buried in this way. Naturally, many others would have been buried by their own men, while the special teams may have mistaken Napoleon’s troops for their own on occasion, but it gives an idea of the size of the loss and devastation.150 Around 12,000 bodies, many of which may have been those of wounded Russian soldiers too sick to move during the evacuation and caught up in the flames at the beginning of the occupation, were discovered in Moscow when the Russian army recaptured the city in October 1812.151 A third of the Russian soldiers ordered to remove the rotting bodies fell ill themselves. It is not unreasonable to assume then that Napoleon’s army incurred a loss of around 85 per cent in dead, wounded, deserters and prisoners.152 Figures cited do not always take account of the numbers who deserted in the early weeks of the war and who may have made it out of Russia, possibly as many as 50,000.153 Nor do they take into account the number of men who settled in the western provinces of Russia in the closing stages of the campaign. We know that prisoners were sometimes given to local landowners as cheap labour and never returned home, and that others agreed to take service in the Tsar’s army, swearing an oath of loyalty and settling into a new life. Admittedly, this did not happen all that often. There were nevertheless over 9,000 men in a Russian German Legion formed out of German prisoners. Most German prisoners, however, remained loyal to Napoleon, and refused to fight for the Tsar.154 We know too that a Russian census carried out in 1837 noted 3,299 Frenchmen, former prisoners, who had stayed on in the region of Moscow.155 In what is now Lithuania we know that a number of men remained there and assimilated with the local population.156 During an archaeological dig in 2001 in which 3,269 skeletons (fifteen female) were uncovered in the centre of the town of Vilnius, and which turned out to be a mass grave of soldiers from the Grande Armée, a number of people approached the French cultural centre in town to say that the family had always said that they were descended from a soldier in Napoleon’s army.157

  When the Russians reached the Niemen in the wake of the remnants of the Grande Armée, they had to decide whether to pursue Napoleon or leave him be. They had, after all, achieved their objective by defeating their enemy and ejecting him from their country. In doing so, their army was exhausted and many officers had little in mind but rest. It was a crucial decision, one on which, in some respects, the fate of Napoleon and Europe hinged.158 If Alexander had decided not to pursue Napoleon, any number of alternative paths might have opened, but one thing is certain: it would have left Napoleon in control of central Europe and therefore with his Empire intact. It is not that Alexander or Russia alone were respo
nsible for ‘liberating’ Europe, but that without Russia’s involvement Napoleon would not have been overthrown.

  There were conflicting views among the Russians not only on the nature of the war – that is, about whether a war that had been in defence of the fatherland should be transformed into a campaign to destroy Napoleon – but also on whether Russia should pursue the French into central Europe.159 A number of people in Alexander’s entourage, probably the majority – they might be called the isolationists and included Kutuzov, the minister of war, General Count Aleksei Arakcheev, the foreign minister Rumiantsev and the minister of the interior, Admiral Aleksandr Shishkov – did not want to carry the war into Europe and would have been satisfied with taking a few territorial possessions in the west, or with extending Russia’s western boundary to the Vistula.160 Not only was the Russian army in poor shape – at this stage only about 100,000 troops were in any condition to advance beyond Russia – but generals like Kutuzov, hardly a match for Napoleon in open battle, were extremely wary of having to face him on the German plains, and (as we have seen) were worried that his destruction would benefit only Britain.161 Shishkov was of the same opinion. He would have preferred to see Russia send an auxiliary corps to help Austria, and believed that the bulk of the Russian army should stay behind.162

  Alexander and a number of younger men in his entourage, among them Karl von Nesselrode, his chief diplomatic adviser who would virtually take over from the foreign minister, and some young officers who would later be drawn to the Decembrist movement – a secret society that led an unsuccessful revolt in St Petersburg in December 1825 – were keen to push on and eventually overthrow Napoleon. Indeed, Alexander had long made up his mind, writing to London in 1812 that he planned on ‘liberating Europe from the French yoke’.163 There is every indication that he had prepared himself for the ‘ultimate conflict’ with France ever since Erfurt (perhaps earlier),164 and that he was keen to carry the war into Germany, if not for territorial gains then at least in the role of ‘Saviour’ or ‘Liberator of Europe’.165 It is said that, in the second half of 1812, Alexander had undergone a sort of religious conversion, so that he believed himself to be God’s Chosen One, called upon to bring Christian enlightenment to the world.166 The fire of Moscow supposedly ‘lit up’ his soul and filled his heart with a ‘warmth and faith’ that he had never felt before.167 He had always had religious convictions, but with the French invasion he increasingly turned to the Bible for inspiration, and especially to the eleventh chapter of the Book of Daniel, in which the King of the North (read Alexander) defeats the King of the South (read Napoleon).168 Napoleon’s defeat became, in his mind, synonymous with God’s will, and hence Alexander became His instrument. The Tsar got his way. The Russian army was ordered to pursue the French into Germany.

  THE ADVENTURER, 1813–1814

  21

  ‘The Enemy of the Human Race’

  The Limits of Attachment

  Napoleon arrived in Paris on 18 December 1812 at the Tuileries Palace just as the clock struck fifteen minutes to midnight.1 Marie-Louise was genuinely pleased to see her husband and they warmly embraced one another. We have no idea, however, what happened next between them, how much, if at all, Napoleon opened up to her, and what was said after seven months of absence. Regardless of what happened in Russia, the court had a life of its own, so the lever took place as usual the next morning at around eleven o’clock. There too Napoleon said nothing about Russia or his predicament, as though it were just another day at the palace. There are, however, conflicting reports about how he behaved during this period. According to Caulaincourt, there was ‘no look of the defeated man about him’; he worked all that first day until one in the morning, issuing orders to all and sundry.2 According to others, he was never the same after his return from Russia; he had neither the ideas nor the force of character to carry them through, nor the same aptitude for work.3 He also appears to have been in poor health, suffering from a chronic dermatitis that made him scratch to the point of bleeding, and from violent stomach pains. If Paris consoled him – he was back in familiar surroundings, and he immediately fell into his old work habits – inwardly the extent of the defeat must have had an impact on his psyche.

  Outwardly, however, Napoleon’s confidence does not seem to have been terribly damaged by his setback in Russia. When the Senate and the Council of State paid him a visit the next day, 20 December, he bluntly reminded them that they had not followed protocol in proclaiming his son emperor on hearing of his alleged death. If structurally his regime was relatively secure, its survival beyond Napoleon himself does not appear to have entered into the political elite’s consciousness. This is not entirely surprising. Napoleon may have resolved most of the domestic difficulties threatening political stability, unlike the Directory and other earlier revolutionary regimes, but he had largely negated those gains through constant warring. There seems little doubt that the French political elite had grown tired of him, something exacerbated by two developments: the economic crisis of 1810–12 as a result of which the French suffered terribly from crop failures and rising prices;4 and the introduction of the Guard of Honour (Gardes d’honneur), a scheme designed to ‘rally’ throughout the Empire (including Italy, Belgium and Holland) the bourgeoisie, who had until then largely managed to avoid conscription by buying replacements – that is, paying people to take their place, although admittedly the number of replacements was always only some 4 per cent.5 The scheme obliged the sons of the well off to furnish their own horses and equipment,6 a desperate attempt to make up for the loss of cavalry, and to rally the elite to his regime. The one damaged Napoleon’s economic credibility – the economic crisis played a crucial role in undermining support for the regime – while the other hit home where it hurt the elite the most, within their families, and alienated many bourgeois from the regime.

  As long as Napoleon had been able to convey an image of himself as the saviour, as an instrument of the public good, he had been assured of power. The political elite ostensibly still submitted to him. When he opened the Legislative Corps on 14 February 1813, he explained the defeat in Russia as a consequence of the weather, and the vast majority of deputies accepted a war budget for the coming year of more than one trillion francs.7 In the face of military defeat, however, the elites were beginning to lose faith. It is the fate of a charismatic ruler: since everything revolved around his person, Napoleon became responsible for everything, good and bad. Now everybody blamed him, criticized him, denounced him.8 He was no doubt aware of these sentiments, and believed that the only way of redressing the situation, of bolstering faltering morale, was to launch another campaign and pull off another series of victories through which he might possibly obtain peace.

  He wanted to take the offensive in the coming spring, convincing himself that he had learnt the lessons of the Russian fiasco. Letter after letter went out organizing the army for what he knew would end in a campaign in Germany the following year.9 He wrote to Francis I, explaining the military situation, and asking for another 30,000 men.10 There was some justification for Napoleon’s optimism, even after what had happened in Russia and even after the allies had advanced deep into Germany by the beginning of 1813. At the end of 1812, he was still in a powerful position; he still controlled all of western Europe up to the Oder. Tens of thousands of troops called up as early as September 1812 to replace the losses in Russia were marching to the front by the beginning of 1813.11 By March 1813, Eugène in Berlin was in command of over 110,000 men and 185 guns. Another 140,000 men with 320 guns were gathering between the Rhine and the Elbe.12 In all, more than one million men were called up; the class of 1813 but also the classes between 1809 and 1812 were recalled to arms, obliging notables who had managed to keep their sons out of the army by buying replacements to do so again.

  Napoleon was not about to take the decision to go to war again alone. A Council meeting was held at the beginning of January 1813, at which people expressed their views. Talleyrand, Cau
laincourt, Cambacérès and Decrès all advised peace, moderation and the mediation of Austria.13 In fact, this type of council was for show. Napoleon had no intention of negotiating peace terms, for to him it would be seen as an avowal of weakness that would make Russia and Austria more demanding. Besides, he had already decided to continue the war. Any hope or expectation by some of his generals that the retreat would prove a useful lesson and cool his warlike ardour was misplaced.14 He was arming for peace, he told the Austrian ambassador to Paris, Prince Schwarzenberg, and he expected Austria to raise some 200,000 men to threaten the Russians.15

  The winter of 1812–13 thus passed with Napoleon in Paris trying to reorganize his Empire. There was, to quote Caulaincourt, ‘mourning in every family but hope in every heart’.16 The war with Russia had generally been regarded as unnecessary, and the war in Spain had created a good deal of discontent.17 At the beginning of the Empire there had been an ideological consensus in favour of conquest and expansion – France was, after all, extending an ‘empire of liberty’ throughout Europe – when military victory was considered to be the necessary prerequisite for peace. Now, this was no longer accepted. Political consensus, built upon quite fragile foundations, began to waver with the First Polish War, and certainly with the invasion of Spain. It became definitely hostile over Russia. The image of Napoleon and the regime had been indelibly tarnished by the continuing wars.