by Philip Dwyer
101. Derrécagaix, Le maréchal Berthier, ii. pp. 458–60; Jean Thiry, La campagne de Russie (Paris, 1969), p. 330.
102. Macdonald, Souvenirs, pp. 193–4.
103. See Schneid, ‘The Dynamics of Defeat’, 18.
104. Jean Lucas-Dubreton, Murat (Paris, 1944), pp. 207–8.
105. Beauharnais, Mémoires et correspondance politique, viii. pp. 133–4 (17 January 1813).
106. Published later in the Moniteur universel, 14 May 1815, in order to embarrass Murat. In that same issue, a letter from Napoleon to Caroline was published in which he stated, ‘Your husband is very brave on the battlefield, but he is weaker than a woman or a monk when he does not see the enemy. He has no moral courage.’
107. Corr. xxiv. n. 19474 (22 January 1813).
108. Macdonald, Souvenirs, p. 193.
109. Beauharnais, Mémoires et correspondance politique, viii. pp. 134–6 (17 January 1813).
110. On Vilnius, Griois, Mémoires, ii. pp. 181–7.
111. Labaume, Relation circonstanciée, pp. 413–15; Bourgogne, Mémoires, p. 229.
112. Vionnet de Maringoné, Souvenirs, pp. 80–1.
113. Lignières, Souvenirs de la Grande Armée, p. 129; Puybusque, Lettres sur la guerre de Russie, p. 121 (15 November 1812).
114. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, ii. p. 139.
115. Roustam Raza, Souvenirs de Roustam, mamelouck de Napoléon Ier (Paris, 1911), p. 220.
116. In France in 1789, the average distance between postal stations, where one could change horses for example, was between 7 and 10.5 kilometres. One could expect to cover about 90 kilometres a day. In 1812 it took around eighteen days for a post-chaise to travel from Paris to Warsaw, and thirty-one days from Paris to Petersburg, assuming of course that the weather permitted. On this see Stuart Woolf, ‘The Construction of a European World-View in the Revolutionary-Napoleonic Years’, Past & Present, 137 (1992), 76 n. 11.
117. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, ii. p. 162.
118. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, ii. pp. 166, 168.
119. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, p. 443. Andrew Roberts, Napoleon and Wellington: The Battle of Waterloo and the Great Commanders who Fought It (New York, 2001), p. 96.
120. Fantin des Odoards, Journal, p. 354.
121. Friedrich Adami, Schicksalswende: Preußen 1812/13: nach Aufzeichnungen von Augenzeugen (Berlin, 1924), pp. 185–7.
122. Jackson, The Bath Archives, i. pp. 445–6 (19 December 1812).
123. Eduard Wertheimer, ‘Wien und das Kriegsjahr 1813’, Archiv fur österreichische Geschichte, 79 (1893), 360–1.
124. Lavalette, Mémoires, pp. 282–4; Pion des Loches, Mes campagnes, p. 357; Petiteau, ‘Lecture socio-politique de l’empire’, 199–200; Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, pp. 213–15; Olcina, L’opinion publique en Belgique, pp. 50–3.
125. Delécluze, Louis David, p. 340.
126. See Gotteri (ed.), La police secrète, vi. pp. 12, 15, 47, 59, 92 (1–2, 3–4, 14, 18 and 28 January 1813). For the degradation in public opinion for the period 1813–14 see Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, pp. 212–21; Olcina, L’opinion publique en Belgique, p. 55.
127. It has been estimated, for example, that between 1813 and 1815 more than 1,800 anti-Napoleonic caricatures were printed (Hans Peter Mathis, Napoleon I im Spiegel der Karikatur (Zurich, 1998), pp. 38–9).
128. Scharf, ‘Einführung’, pp. 19–20, who notes that the manner in which the catastrophe was communicated and received throughout Europe has yet to be explored in any great detail.
129. See, for example, Jean-Baptiste-Benoît Barjaud, La conquête de Moscou (Paris, 1812); H. Dassier, Les ruines de Moscou (Paris, 1812); Auguste Moufle (François-Toussaint-Auguste), Ode sur l’embrasement de Moscou (Paris, 1812); and Quaynat, Ode à Sa Majesté l’Empereur et Roi sur la prise de Moscou (Paris, 1812).
130. Parkinson, The Fox of the North, p. 229.
131. Ute Planert, ‘Conscription, Economic Exploitation and Religion in Napoleonic Germany’, in Dwyer and Forrest (eds), Napoleon and his Empire, p. 141.
132. Clark, Iron Kingdom, p. 357; Münchow-Pohl, Zwischen Reform and Krieg, p. 377.
133. Fantin des Odoards, Journal, p. 349.
134. Girod de l’Ain, Dix ans de souvenirs militaires, pp. 288–93.
135. Münchow-Pohl, Zwischen Reform and Krieg, pp. 373–4.
136. Jean-Nicolas-Auguste Noël, With Napoleon’s Guns: The Military Memoirs of an Officer of the First Empire, trans. Rosemary Brindle (London, 2005), pp. 150, 151, 154.
137. Münchow-Pohl, Zwischen Reform and Krieg, p. 378.
138. Adams, Napoleon and Russia, p. 417; Leggiere, The Fall of Napoleon, p. 7, gives a total of 93,000 men and 250 cannon, without citing his source.
139. Sokolov, ‘La campagne de Russie’, 42–51.
140. Franco Della Peruta, ‘War and Society in Napoleonic Italy: The Armies of the Kingdom of Italy at Home and Abroad’, in John Davis and Paul Ginsborg (eds), Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento: Essays in Honour of Denis Mack Smith (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 26–48, here p. 48.
141. Martin, ‘The Russian Empire and the Napoleonic Wars’, p. 260.
142. Montesquiou-Fezensac, Souvenirs militaires, p. 383.
143. L. Bailly-Maitre, ‘La retraite de Russie vue par un artilleur lorrain’, Revue des études napoléoniennes, 41 (1935), 28–9.
144. Roger Dufraisse, ‘L’écroulement de la domination française en Allemagne (1813)’, in Jean Tulard (ed.), L’Europe au temps de Napoléon (Paris, 1989), p. 477.
145. Ute Planert, Der Mythos vom Befreiungskrieg: Frankreichs Kriege und der deutsche Süden: Alltag, Wahrnehmung, Deutung 1792–1841 (Paderborn, 2007), pp. 414–15.
146. Robert Bielecki, ‘L’effort militaire polonais (1806–1815)’, Revue de l’Institut Napoléon, 132 (1976), 160.
147. According to Lieven, Russia against Napoleon, p. 306, the figure was 175,000. The loss was seriously to hamper Napoleon’s ability to defend his Empire in the coming months. Horses were naturally lost as a result of the weather, but one has to say that the enormous losses were also in part due to lack of planning, lack of supplies and negligence. To give but one example, Caulaincourt (Memoirs, i. p. 336), in charge of Napoleon’s horse, lost only eighty horses out of the 715 belonging to the Imperial Household with which he began the campaign. He showed what could be done with a great deal of care and some foresight.
148. Martin, ‘Russia and the Legacy of 1812’, ii. pp. 147–8.
149. Gotteri, Napoléon, p. 154. On the rebuilding of Moscow see Miliza Korshunova, ‘William Hastie in Russia’, Architectural History, 17 (1974), 14–21, 53–6; Albert J. Schmidt, ‘William Hastie, Scottish Planner of Russian Cities’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 114:3 (1970), 226–4; Albert J. Schmidt, ‘The Restoration of Moscow after 1812’, Slavic Review, 40:1 (1981), 37–48; Tatiana Ruchinskaya, ‘The Scottish Architectural Traditions in the Plan for the Reconstruction of Moscow after the Fire of 1812: A Rare Account of the Influence of Scottish Architect William Hastie on Town Planning in Moscow’, Building Research & Information, 22:4 (1994), 228–33.
150. Monika Senkowska-Gluck, ‘La campagne de 1812’, in Tulard (ed.), L’Europe au temps de Napoléon, pp. 469–70.
151. Grunwald, Société et civilisation russes, p. 44; Lieven, Russia against Napoleon, p. 212.
152. Tulard gives the figure of 380,000. Russian losses were not quite as high. Anywhere between 250,000 and 300,000 men were killed or wounded, or deserted, not counting the numbers of Russian civilians, whose numbers we simply do not know. Kutuzov lost around 50,000 men in casualties in the final weeks of the campaign.
153. Here too figures for the number of prisoners taken by the Russians vary but are as high as 150,000 to 190,000, all nationalities confounded. There are numerous accounts of life in Russia as a prisoner of war. See, for example, Vieillot, Souvenirs; Everts, ‘Campagne et captivité de Russie’, pp. 153–72; Jacques Garnier, ‘Récits du lieutenant Bressolles sur la campagne de 1813�
��, Revue de l’Institut Napoléon, 135 (1979), 57–65; Ducor, Aventures d’un marin de la Garde impériale; Vaucorbeil, ‘Mémoires inédits’, 43–57.
154. Adams, Napoleon and Russia, p. 414.
155. Vladilen Sirotkine, ‘La campagne de Russie’, Revue de l’Institut Napoléon, 156 (1991), 64.
156. Bellot de Kergorre, Journal, p. 85.
157. Libération, 11 December 2002, pp. 34–5; Romain Pigeaud, ‘Le charnier des grognards’, Archeologia, 401 (June 2003), 41–7. Atolija Krulis is one such descendant. His grandmother was a de Courtenay, daughter of Jacques, himself son of Jean-François, a soldier in Napoleon’s army, probably an officer. Forty kilometres from Vilnius in the village of Tabariskes, Bogdan Komoliubio, a teacher and peasant, is also convinced that his great-great-grandfather was a soldier in Napoleon’s army, although he had an Italian-sounding name, and was from the region of Lyons. In fact, the villagers believe that three men found refuge in the village, completely exhausted, and that, once recuperated, these French-Italians went back home only to return years later with French wives. There is a wood a few kilometres outside the village called ‘French forest’ in which soldiers of the Grande Armée are said to be buried.
158. Esdaile, Napoleon’s Wars, p. 487, has called it ‘one of the key moments in the international history of the Napoleonic Wars’.
159. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, p. 124; Volker Sellin, Die geraubte Revolution: der Sturz Napoleons und die Restauration in Europa (Göttingen, 2001), pp. 42–51.
160. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, pp. 139–40.
161. Rothenberg, The Art of Warfare, p. 204. See Kutuzov’s remarks to the British liaison officer General Wilson in Wilson, Narrative of Events, p. 234.
162. Lieven, Russia against Napoleon, pp. 288–9. The idea received support from both Kutuzov and Karl von Toll. Toll submitted a memorandum to Kutuzov espousing this view: Bernhardi, Denkwürdigkeiten, iii. pp. 469–70.
163. Cited in Adams, Napoleon and Russia, p. 415.
164. See Raeff, Michael Speransky, p. 188.
165. There were any number of influential men and women in the Tsar’s entourage who saw this as an opportunity to expand Russia’s borders to the Vistula and who no doubt brought some influence to bear. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, pp. 141–2. Kraehe, Metternich’s German Policy, i. p. 149, argues that Alexander’s ‘political preparations from the very outset had anticipated a campaign beyond the Russian frontier’. Lieven, Russia against Napoleon, p. 287.
166. Andrei Zorin, ‘“Star of the East”: The Holy Alliance and European Mysticism’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 4 (2003), 331.
167. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, pp. 144–5; Rey, Alexandre Ier, pp. 328–30.
168. Cited in Adams, Napoleon and Russia, p. 415.
THE ADVENTURER, 1813–1814
21: ‘The Enemy of the Human Race’
1. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, ii. pp. 292–3; Bourgoing, Souvenirs, pp. 213–14.
2. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, ii. p. 318.
3. Chaptal, Mes souvenirs, pp. 331–2.
4. Fernand L’Huillier, ‘Une crise des subsistances dans le Bas-Rhin (1810–1812), Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 14 (1937), 518–36; Pierre Léon, ‘La crise des subsistances de 1810–1812 dans le départmente de l’Isère’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 24 (1952), 289–310; Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, pp. 206–12; Pascal Chambon, La Loire et l’aigle: les Foréziens face à l’Etat napoléonien (Saint-Etienne, 2005), pp. 345–6.
5. Lignereux, L’Empire des Français, p. 227.
6. See Eugène Lomier, Histoire des regiments des Gardes d’Honneur, 1813–1814 (Paris, 1924); Léon Deries, La conscription des riches: les Gardes d’honneur de Maine-et-Loire de l’année 1813 (Angers, 1929); Chambon, La Loire et l’aigle, pp. 361–78; Georges Housset, La Garde d’honneur de 1813–1814: histoire du corps et de ses soldats (Paris, 2009), pp. 27–8, 33–41, 141–58. It is true that a little over one-quarter of the overall effectives (around 2,500 out of 9,500 men) would volunteer for these positions, but the majority were there against their better judgement. At the beginning of 1813, letters were addressed to Napoleon by individuals and authorities expressing a desire to form a ‘departmental guard’ that looks like the precursor to the Guard of Honour (AN AFIV 1453).
7. Lignereux, L’Empire des Français, p. 295.
8. Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution française, viii. p. 39.
9. Corr. xxiv and xxv. Dozens of letters were sent to the minister of war, General Clarke, and to Berthier as major general of the Grande Armée, at the end of December 1812 and during the months of January, February and March 1813.
10. Léonce de Brotonne (ed.), Lettres inédites de Napoléon Ier (Paris, 1898), n. 1026 (7 January 1813).
11. Corr. xxiv. n. 19218 (23 September 1812).
12. Leggiere, ‘From Berlin to Leipzig’, 49.
13. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, ii. pp. 346–9; Agathon-Jean-François Fain, Manuscrit de mil huit cent treize, contenant le précis des événemens de cette année, pour servir à l’histoire de l’empereur Napoléon, 2 vols (Paris, 1824), i. p. 131.
14. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, ii. pp. 61–2.
15. Dard, Napoléon et Talleyrand, pp. 301–2.
16. Caulaincourt, Memoirs, ii. p. 349.
17. According to Hortense, Mémoires, ii. p. 147.
18. Gotteri (ed.), La police secrète, vii. p. 384 (13 November 1813).
19. Fouché, Mémoires, ii. p. 131.
20. AN F1C I 12, Comptes-résumés des bruits (December 1812–June 1813); Woloch, The New Regime, pp. 418–21.
21. See for example the public votes of support by the municipal councils of Paris, Nanterre, Beauvais, Versailles, Dreux, Châteaudun and Seine-Inférieure, January 1813. Note that they are all from the Paris region.
22. See Fontaine, Journal, i. p. 382.
23. Hauterive, La police secrète du premier Empire, iii. pp. 156, 266, 279, 283, 298, 300, 314 (14 February, 5, 17, 20 June, 7, 8, 25 July 1807).
24. See, for example, Gotteri (ed.), La police secrète, vii. p. 385 (13 November 1813), which states that most of those called up in Tuscany had deserted. Other figures can be found in Roger Dufraisse and Michel Kerautret, La France napoléonienne: aspects extérieurs, 1799–1815 (Paris, 1999), p. 195; Jean Tulard, La vie quotidienne des Français sous Napoléon (Paris, 1978), pp. 151–3; Petiteau, Les Français et l’Empire, pp. 212–21.
25. Annie Crépin, La conscription en débats ou le triple apprentissage de la Nation, de la citoyenneté, de la République (1798–1889) (Artois, 1998), p. 32.
26. Annie Crépin, Défendre la France: les Français, la guerre et le service militaire, de la guerre de Sept Ans à Verdun (Rennes, 2005), p. 149.
27. Rowe, ‘France, Prussia, or Germany?’, 623.
28. Alan Forrest, Conscripts and Deserters: The Army and French Society during the Revolution and Empire (Oxford, 1989), p. 41.
29. AN F7 6349, Hambourg. Rapports du directeur général de la police (21, 28 and 31 January 1813); Dufraisse, ‘L’écroulement de la domination française en Allemagne’, pp. 477, 484–5; Aaslestad, Place and Politics, p. 265.
30. AN F7 6349 (13 and 22 January 1813).
31. AN F7 6349 (15 January 1813).
32. Aaslestad, Place and Politics, p. 266.
33. Aaslestad, Place and Politics, pp. 266–7, and n. 96 for other sources.
34. AN F7 6349 (28 January 1813).
35. Schama, Patriots and Liberators, pp. 628–30.
36. Broers, Napoleon’s Other War, p. 101.
37. Aaslestad, Place and Politics, pp. 266–7.
38. Roger Dufraisse, ‘A propos des guerres de délivrance allemandes de 1813’, Revue de l’Institut Napoléon, 148 (1987), 14.
39. Figures cited in Werner K. Blessing, ‘Umbruchkrise und “Verstörung”: die “Napoleonische” Erschütterung und ihre sozialpsychologische Bedeutung
(Bayern als Beispiel)’, Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte, 42 (1979), 78–9 n. 13.
40. Aaslestad, Place and Politics, p. 268.
41. Rey, Alexandre Ier, pp. 332–4.
42. Lettres personnelles des souverains à l’empereur Napoléon Ier (Paris, 1939), p. 387.
43. Fain, Manuscrit de mil huit cent treize, i. p. 296.
44. Corr. xxv. n. 19664 (5 March 1813).
45. Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, pp. 466–7.
46. Kraehe, Metternich’s German Policy, i. pp. 154–6; Stamm-Kuhlmann, König in Preußens großer Zeit, pp. 362–4.
47. Stamm-Kuhlmann, König in Preußens großer Zeit, pp. 370–3; Hagemann, ‘Mannlicher Muth’, pp. 406–15; Peter Brandt, ‘Einstellungen, Motive und Ziele von Kriegsfreiwilligen 1813/14: das Freikorps Lützow’, in Jost Dülffer (ed.), Kriegsbereitschaft und Friedensordnung in Deutschland 1800–1814 (Münster and Hamburg, 1994), pp. 211–14.
48. See Ernst Friedrich Christian Müsebeck, Freiwillige Gaben und Opfer des preussischen Volkes in den Jahren 1813–1815 (Leipzig, 1913), p. 132. The Treaty of Kalisch with Russia (28 February) was followed by a formal declaration of war (17 March 1813).
49. Indeed, orders were issued for Yorck’s arrest and court martial, although this did not prevent him from inciting garrisons in East Prussia to revolt, arguing that he was acting with the king’s secret approval (Peter Paret, Yorck and the Era of the Prussian Reform, 1807–1815 (Princeton, 1966), pp. 191–6). In fact, it appears that, once again, the Prussian political elite were saying one thing to the French and doing something entirely different behind their backs (Paul R. Sweet, Wilhelm von Humboldt: A Biography, 2 vols (Columbus, Ohio, 1978–80), ii. p. 120). The Austrian commander, Schwarzenberg, similarly signed a secret convention with the Russians at Zeycs at the end of January 1813.
50. Stamm-Kuhlmann, König in Preußens großer Zeit, pp. 365–9, 370–4; Scott, Birth of a Great Power System, p. 350; Clark, Iron Kingdom, pp. 362–3.