Читать книгу 1812 - Adam Zamoyski - Страница 13

As hundreds of thousands of men drawn from every corner of Europe tramped across Germany ready to fight and die for him, dreaming of an epic march to India or just of getting back home as quickly as possible, the Emperor of the French was setting the scene for the catastrophe that would engulf all but a handful of them.

Napoleon was about to pit himself against a huge empire while still engaged in a wasting war in Spain, with Germany in a state of ferment and Britain hovering on the sidelines ready to take advantage of any opportunity that might arise. It is customary before going to war to firm up as many allies as possible, and for one such as this it was an absolute necessity. As luck would have it, he had a number of them lining up to support him. Sweden was a natural ally, with a long history of francophilia and an interest in recovering Finland and her enclaves on the Baltic from Russia; Turkey, another traditional ally of France, was actually engaged in a bloody war with Russia; Austria, whose emperor was Napoleon’s father-in-law, had many interests in common with the French; Prussia was begging to be allowed into an alliance with France; and the Poles were only waiting to be given the signal to rise up all over western Russia.

In the circumstances, Napoleon’s behaviour is astonishing. On 27 January 1812, under the pretext that the Continental System was not being enforced rigorously enough there, he sent his armies into Swedish Pomerania and took possession of it. He followed this up with a demand to Sweden for an alliance against Russia and a contingent of troops. When this was rejected by Bernadotte, he said he would allow the Swedes to recapture Finland, and offered some trading concessions. When this too was rejected, Napoleon offered to return Pomerania and threw in Mecklemburg as well as a large subsidy. But it was too late. His high-handed seizure of Pomerania had been taken as an insult in Sweden, and within two weeks of the news reaching Stockholm, Bernadotte’s special envoy was in St Petersburg asking for a treaty with Russia, which was duly signed on 5 April.

As for France’s other traditional ally, Turkey, Napoleon did nothing, assuming that she would go on fighting Russia unbidden. It is true that relations between France and Turkey had been strained by the treaty of Tilsit, which appeared to ally France with Turkey’s enemy. It is also true that Napoleon had a low opinion of the three sultans who had followed each other in rapid and bloody succession. But at this stage any gesture of support for Turkey would have yielded real advantages: Alexander had just instructed his commander on the Turkish front, General Kutuzov, to start talks and make peace at almost any cost, as he needed all his troops to face the French.

Napoleon’s treatment of Austria was hardly less offhand. The treaty he signed with her on 14 March stipulated that following a French victory Moldavia and Wallachia would be returned to Turkey, and that if Poland were to be restored, Austria could keep Galicia, or, if she preferred, receive compensation in Illyria. While the treaty suggested a common policy in central Europe and the Balkans, it kept everything vague, as Napoleon did not wish to tie his hands. For the same reason, he only asked for a small Austrian auxiliary force under Prince Schwarzenberg, which was to cover his right flank.

Frederick William of Prussia had begged Napoleon for an alliance which would restore some dignity to his country’s enforced subjection to France. But Napoleon responded with a treaty, signed on 4 March, by which he graciously allowed Prussia to supply a small contingent of troops for the forthcoming campaign, on the most abject terms. This not only incensed the Prussian nationalists further, it also undermined the pro-French party in Berlin, paving the way for an explosion of anti-French feeling. It also meant that French troops had to be diverted to keeping an eye on the country, as Napoleon insisted that they march through Berlin every day and maintain strong garrisons in fortresses such as Spandau and Danzig.¹

Finally, he refused to give the Poles an unequivocal signal, thereby strengthening the party in that country which mistrusted his intentions and believed that their best chance of survival lay with Alexander. The fact that Napoleon did not see fit to give such a signal speaks volumes both about his self-confidence and his unwillingness to damage Russia any more than was necessary. He wanted to frighten her, but he did not want to destroy her as a power. He wanted to co-opt her as an ally against Britain. There was no other reason for France to go to war with Russia: there was nothing Russia had that France could possibly have wanted. The only other conceivable motive for confronting Russia was to force her out of her newly dominant position in European affairs and neutralise her ability to threaten France.

In the first days of March, in a long conversation with one of his aides, Napoleon announced that he was determined to ‘throw back for two hundred years that inexorable threat of invasion from the north’. He expounded a historical vision according to which the fertile and civilised south of Europe would always be threatened by uncivilised ravenous hordes from the north. ‘I am therefore propelled into this hazardous war by political reality,’ he affirmed. ‘Only the affability of Alexander, the admiration he professed for me, which I believe was real, and his eagerness to embrace all my schemes, were able to make me disregard for a while this unalterable fact … Remember Suvorov and his Tartars in Italy: 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?’²

He did not believe any of it. He had already shown that he was even prepared to add to Russia’s power if that meant she would help him vanquish Britain. And, as ever when he thought of Russia and Britain, Napoleon’s mind filled with a notion that lived uneasily beside the vision of himself as a latter-day Roman emperor throwing back the barbarian hordes, namely the Alexandrine dream of a joint march to India.³

To General Vandamme he gave a more perfunctory reason for going to war. ‘One way or another, I want to finish the thing,’ he said, ‘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 finish one way or the other.’⁴ In effect, he had assembled the greatest army the world had ever seen, with no defined purpose. And, by definition, aimless wars cannot be won.

One cannot help wondering whether Napoleon did not realise this. In the weeks before setting off, he made more than his usual share of cryptically fatalistic comments. ‘And anyway, how can I help it if a surfeit of power draws me towards dictatorship of the world?’ he said to one of his ministers who urged him to draw back from the war. ‘I feel myself propelled towards some unknown goal,’ he told another.⁵ This fatalism would also explain the absence of the speed and determination which were his usual hallmarks. While the vast military machine was taking shape in northern and eastern Germany in March, the diplomatic niceties continued.

For all the talk of barbarian hordes being thrown out of Europe, the unfortunate Russian ambassador in Paris, Prince Kurakin, was finding it difficult to get away. He had never enjoyed his job, and had found it increasingly difficult to carry it out as tension mounted between Napoleon and Alexander. Things had not been made any easier when, in February, a spying scandal had broken over Paris involving Alexander’s special envoy Colonel Chernyshev. He had for some time been paying a clerk at the French War Ministry to supply him with information on troop numbers and movements. The French police had got wind of this and informed Napoleon. On 25 February, just as Chernyshev was about to set off for St Petersburg with a personal letter from him to Alexander, the Emperor accorded him a long interview, in which he treated him with cordiality and respect. The following day the police broke into the apartments the departed Chernyshev had just vacated and brought the whole matter into the open.

Kurakin had to listen to torrents of outraged self-righteousness on the subject. As he watched troops leaving Paris bound for Germany, he found himself in a ridiculous position. He felt he should ask for his passports and leave, but every time he mentioned this to Maret or to Napoleon they evinced shocked surprise, affirming that there was no reason at all for him to go, and intimating that his departure would be interpreted as a declaration of war.⁶

On 24 April Kurakin called on Maret with a letter from Alexander stating that Russia would not negotiate until France withdrew all her troops behind the Rhine. This was rich, considering that only two weeks earlier Alexander himself had set off to join his armies on the frontier of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. On 27 April Kurakin had an audience with Napoleon at the Tuileries to discuss this. The interview was not as stormy as might have been expected, and Napoleon handed him a letter for Alexander. It expressed regret that the Tsar should be ordering Napoleon where to station his troops while he himself stood at the head of an army on the frontiers of the Grand Duchy. ‘Your Majesty will however allow me to assure him that, were fate to conspire to make war between us inevitable, this would in no way alter the sentiments which Your Majesty has inspired in me, and which are beyond any vicissitude or possibility of change,’ he ended.⁷

But he could not delay any longer. He had to go and take command of his armies. Before doing so, he made arrangements for the defence and the administration of France. Although he had, as a long shot, made a peace offer to Britain, suggesting a withdrawal of all French and British troops from the Iberian peninsula, with Joseph remaining King of Spain and the Braganzas being allowed back into Portugal, he expected nothing to come of it. He therefore strengthened the coastal defences in order to discourage any British attempt at invasion, and organised a national guard of 100,000 men who could be called out to deal with any emergency.

He had considered leaving Prince Eugéne in Paris as regent, but decided against it. In the event he left the Arch-Chancellor of the Empire Jean-Jacques Cambacérès in charge. The Arch-Chancellor would preside over the Council of State, which was a non-political executive composed of efficient and loyal experts.

At their last interview, on the eve of Napoleon’s departure, Étienne Pasquier, Prefect of Police, voiced his fears that if the forces of opposition building up in various quarters were to try to seize power with the Emperor so far from Paris, there would be nobody on the spot with enough authority to put down the insurrection. ‘Napoleon seemed to be struck by these brief reflections,’ recalled the Prefect. ‘When I had finished, he remained silent, walking to and fro between the window and the fireplace, his arms crossed behind his back, like a man deep in thought. I was walking behind him, when, turning brusquely towards me, he uttered the following words: “Yes, there is certainly some truth in what you say; this is but one more problem to be added to all those that I must confront in this, the greatest, the most difficult, that I have ever undertaken; but one must accomplish what has been undertaken. Goodbye, Monsieur le Préfet.”’⁸

Napoleon knew how to hide any anxiety he may have felt. ‘Never has a departure for the army looked more like a pleasure trip,’ noted Baron Fain as the Emperor left Saint Cloud on Saturday, 9 May with Marie-Louise and a sizeable proportion of his court.⁹ It soon turned into more of an imperial progress.

At Mainz, Napoleon reviewed some troops and received the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstädt and the Prince of Anhalt Coethen, who had come to pay their respects. At Würzburg, where he stopped on the night of 13–14 May, he found the King of Württemberg and the Grand Duke of Baden waiting for him like two faithful vassals.

On 16 May he was met by the King and Queen of Saxony, who had driven out to meet him, and together they made a triumphal entry into Dresden that evening by torchlight as the cannon thundered salutes and the church bells pealed. His lever the next morning was graced by the ruling princes of Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Coburg and Dessau. This was followed by a solemn Mass (it was Sunday), attended by the entire court and diplomatic corps. Napoleon went out of his way to greet the representative of Russia. The Queen of Westphalia and the Grand Duke of Würzburg arrived in Dresden later that day, and the Emperor Francis of Austria and his Empress the following day. A couple of days later Frederick William arrived in Dresden accompanied by his son the Crown Prince.

Napoleon had taken up residence in the royal palace, which Frederick Augustus had obligingly vacated, guarded by Saxon rather than French sentries. It was he who was the host, and he dictated etiquette, treating both the King of Saxony and the Emperor of Austria as his guests. At nine every morning he would hold his lever, which was the greatest display of power Europe had seen for centuries. It was attended by the Austrian Emperor and all the German kings and princes, ‘whose deference for Napoleon went far beyond anything one could imagine’, in the words of Boniface de Castellane, a twenty-four-year-old aide-de-camp.¹⁰ He would then lead them in to assist at the toilette of Marie-Louise. They would watch her pick her way through an astonishing assemblage of jewels and parures, trying on and discarding one after the other, and occasionally offering one to her barely older stepmother the Empress Maria Ludovica, who simmered with shame and fury. She loathed Napoleon for the upstart he was – and for having thrown her father off his throne of Modena many years before. Her distaste was magnified by the embarrassment and resentment she felt in the midst of this splendour, as the poor condition of the Austrian finances allowed her only a few jewels, which looked paltry next to those of Marie-Louise.

In the evening they would dine at Napoleon’s table, off the silver-gilt dinner service Marie-Louise had been given as a wedding present by the city of Paris, and which she had thoughtfully brought along. The company would assemble and enter the drawing room in reverse order of seniority, each announced by a crier, beginning with mere excellencies, going on to the various ducal and royal highnesses, and culminating with their imperial highnesses the Emperor and Empress of Austria. A while later, the doors would swing open and Napoleon would stride in, with just one word of announcement: ‘The Emperor!’ He was also the only one present who kept his hat on.

To some of the older people present, and particularly to the Emperor Francis, there must have been an element of the surreal about the proceedings. It was less than twenty years since his sister Marie-Antoinette had been shamefully dragged to the scaffold and guillotined to please the Parisian mob, yet here was this product of the French Revolution not only ordering them all about, but insinuating himself into the family, becoming his own son-in-law. At dinner one evening, the conversation having touched on the tragic fate of Louis XVI, Napoleon expressed sympathy, but also blamed his ‘poor uncle’ for not having shown more firmness.¹¹

His stay in Dresden was enlivened with balls, banquets, theatre performances and hunting parties. They were by no means just gratuitous show, but part of a carefully choreographed display of power. ‘Napoleon was indeed God at Dresden, the king amongst kings,’ was how one observer saw the proceedings. ‘It was, in all probability, the highest point of his glory: he could have held on to it, but to surpass it seemed impossible.’ Napoleon was flexing his muscles before the whole world, and he meant everyone to sit up and take note. On the one hand he wanted to remind all his German and Austrian allies of their subjection to him. More importantly, he was still hoping that Alexander’s nerve would break; that when he saw himself isolated and faced with such an array of power he might agree to negotiate.

To many, this still seemed the most likely outcome. ‘Do you know that many people still do not believe there will be war?’ Prince Eugène wrote to his pregnant wife from Plock on the Vistula on 18 May. ‘They say it won’t take place, as there is nothing to be gained from it by either party, and that it will all end in talk.’ Napoleon’s secretary Claude-François Meneval noted ‘an extreme repugnance’ to war on his master’s part.¹²

Napoleon had convinced himself that Alexander was being manipulated by his entourage, and that if only he could talk to him directly or through some trusted third party, he would manage to strike a deal. He therefore sent a special envoy to the Tsar. For this delicate and, as he thought, crucial mission, he chose one of his aides-de-camp, the Comte Louis de Narbonne.

Narbonne was a fifty-seven-year-old general, who had, in turn, been Minister of War in the early stages of the revolution, an émigré and Napoleon’s ambassador in Vienna. He was a man of vast education, with literary tastes and a special interest in the diplomacy of the Renaissance, on which he was something of an expert. He was generally believed to be the natural son of Louis XV, and exuded all the elegance and grace associated with the ancien régime. If anyone could inspire trust in Alexander, it must surely be him.

But Napoleon was deluding himself. Even had he wished to, Alexander could not afford to negotiate with him. ‘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.’ He may have exaggerated the strength and the universality of these feelings, but they were gaining ground, encouraged by popular literature, which scoured Russia’s past for patriot heroes. ‘The upsurge of national spirit manifested itself in word and deed at every opportunity,’ wrote Volkonsky. ‘At every level of society there was only one topic of conversation, in the gilded drawing rooms of the higher circles, in the contrasting simplicity of barracks, in quiet conversations between friends, at festive dinners and evenings – one, and only one thing was expressed: the desire for war, the hope for victory, for the recovery of the nation’s dignity and the renown of Russia’s name.’¹³

Reading the letters and memoirs of Russian nobles of the time, one is struck by the fact that nobody seems to have a good word to say of anyone in positions of authority, be it in the civil administration or the army. They reverberate with invective against ‘foreigners’ running the country, and laments over ‘corruption’, Freemasonry, ‘Jacobins’, and any other bogey that came to mind. Much of this discontent settled on the figure of Speransky, who was heartily detested by Grand Duchess Catherine and her court, and by most of the nobility, who hated him for blocking their careers by introducing qualifying exams for senior posts in the civil service and who feared his alleged intention of emancipating the serfs. ‘Standing beside him I always felt I could smell the sulphurous breath and in his eyes the glimpse the bluish flames of the underworld,’ noted one contemporary.¹⁴

In February 1812 an intrigue was spun by Gustav Mauritz Armfeld, a Swede who was one of Alexander’s military advisers, with the participation of the Minister of Police Aleksandr Dmitrievich Balashov, to show up Speransky as being in secret contact with the French (which indeed he was, with Talleyrand, on Alexander’s orders). At the same time a rumour was spread to the effect that the police had uncovered a plot by Speransky to arm the peasants and call them out against their masters.

Alexander had Speransky put under surveillance by the police, but also had his Minister of Police followed and watched – this kind of paranoia was not a Soviet innovation. It is impossible to tell whether Alexander believed that Speransky had betrayed him or not, but it was certainly clear even to him that his State Secretary’s unpopularity was not only tainting him, but even exposing him to danger.

On the evening of 29 March 1812 Speransky was summoned to an audience with the Tsar in the Winter Palace. There were no witnesses to the two-hour interview, but those waiting in the antechamber could see that something was wrong when the Minister emerged from the Tsar’s study. Moments later the door opened again and Alexander himself appeared, with tears pouring down his cheeks, and embraced Speransky, bidding him a theatrical farewell. Speransky drove home, where he found Balashov waiting for him. He was bundled into a police kibitka and driven off through the night to exile in Nizhni Novgorod.¹⁵

His post as State Secretary was given to Aleksandr Semionovich Shishkov, a retired admiral and a particular hater of everything pertaining to France and her culture. He had denounced the Tilsit treaty and made frequent attacks on Speransky, and had of late achieved a certain notoriety through his Dissertations on the Love of One’s Fatherland. He was astonished, and somewhat overwhelmed, to be hauled out of obscurity. But nobles up and down the empire rejoiced.

The fall of the hated Minister was an unequivocal signal to them that Alexander had understood he needed them during the uncertain times ahead. He was acutely aware that an invasion of Russia might well trigger a new Time of Troubles similar to that two hundred years before. It was probably for this reason that he agreed to give the post of Governor General of Moscow, which had fallen vacant in March, to his sister Catherine’s protégé Count Fyodor Rostopchin. This erstwhile Foreign Minister to Tsar Paul was a lively, clever man, forthright in his opinions, but he was also something of a fantasist, and possibly mentally unbalanced. Alexander did not consider him up to the job, and had tried to resist his sister’s request. ‘He’s no soldier, and the Governor of Moscow must bear epaulettes on his shoulders,’ he argued. ‘That is a matter for his tailor,’ she riposted. Alexander gave way. It was, after all, a largely honorary post.¹⁶

He had removed the most obvious points of friction between himself and his people, and pacified the most vociferous centres of opposition. Now it was up to God. At 2 p.m. on 9 April, after attending a solemn service in the monumental new cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, Alexander left St Petersburg for the army, accompanied part of the way by a crowd of wellwishers who ran alongside his carriage cheering and weeping. He had decided that his place was with his troops.

The Russian army was unlike any other in Europe, and could not have been more different from the French, particularly where the common soldier was concerned. He was drafted for a period of twenty-five years, which effectively meant for life. He was unlikely to serve that term, as no more than 10 per cent survived the dreadful conditions and the frequent beatings – including the practice of making them run the gauntlet of two rows of their comrades beating them as they went – let alone disease or death in battle.

When he was drafted, his family and often the entire village would turn out to see him off, treating the event as a funeral. His family and friends excised him from their lives, never expecting to see him again. As the children of men drafted into the army could not be looked after by working single mothers, they were sent to military orphanages to be brought up and trained to become non-commissioned officers when they grew up. But conditions in these institutions were so poor that only about two-thirds of them survived into adulthood.¹⁷ If the conscript were to return after a quarter of a century (with no leave and no letters) he would be a stranger. And he would no longer be a serf, so there was no place for him in the rural economy any more. Those who did last out the twenty-five years would therefore either try to go on serving, or go off to towns looking for work.

When they entered their regiments the conscripts effectively joined a brotherhood, removed from the normal stream of Russian life and bound together by misery. Virtually the only respect in which they had an advantage over their French counterparts was that their uniforms, predominantly green in colour, were more practical and less constricting, as well as better made. In peacetime, their platoon functioned as a trading corporation, an artel, leasing their labour to local civilians, with the profits theoretically being shared out between them, though more often going into the pockets of their officers.

Desertion was difficult within the boundaries of the Russian empire, as an unattached peasant would stick out wherever he went. But when Russian armies were stationed along the western border it became frequent, and many would cross it and take service in the Polish or other forces. When they operated abroad, particularly when they were about to return home, desertion became common, and its scale testified to the misery of military life. In 1807, as they began their march back into Russia after Tilsit, Prince Sergei Volkonsky noted that his regiment, the élite Chevaliergardes, lost about a hundred men in four days, despite doubled sentries posted all around the camp perimeter.¹⁸ The men nevertheless behaved with the greatest patriotism and loyalty in the face of the enemy.

Much of the training in the Russian army was directed at good performance on the parade ground rather than on the battlefield. The men were drilled mercilessly and marched about in formation until they learnt to operate as a mass, and taught to rely on the bayonet rather than musketry. In battle, obedience was considered to be a key factor. A special instruction addressed to infantry officers stipulated that on the eve of an engagement they must give their men a talk, reminding them of their duty and that they would be severely punished for any signs of cowardice. Even trying to dodge a cannonball while the unit was standing to was to be punished by caning. If a soldier or non-commissioned officer showed cowardice in the field, he should be executed on the spot. The same went for one who created confusion, by, for instance, shouting ‘We’re cut off!’, as he was to be considered a traitor.¹⁹ All these factors conspired to generate solidarity, resilience and the ability to put up with almost any conditions. But they did not breed intelligence or initiative.

The chasm dividing officers from the other ranks was unbridgeable, and there was no possibility of promotion. The officers were drawn exclusively from the nobility. They were supposed to serve their apprenticeship in the ranks, but usually did this in cadet formations or officer schools, and kept contact with their troops down to a minimum. This was not a problem, since many could not sustain a conversation in Russian. But they did personally cane them for minor faults.

The pay of junior officers in the Russian army was lower than anywhere else in Europe. And as promotion to senior ranks was almost entirely dependent on influence at court, junior officers from the minor nobility were sentenced to a life of poverty and obscurity. As a result, such a career only attracted those of meagre talents. The operations of 1805–1807 had shown up grave faults in the command structure of the Russian army, lack of cooperation between units and arms, and other weaknesses, mainly to do with the low calibre and poor training of the officers. But all attempts at addressing these problems were vitiated by the rapid expansion of the armed forces over the next few years, which created a shortage of officers, with the result that in 1808 the length of training was actually cut.

Alexander did everything he could to prepare the army for its next showdown with Napoleon. He created a Ministry of the Armed Forces with the aim of making the army more effective, and lavished money on it. Military spending rose from twenty-six million roubles out of a total budget of eighty-two million at Alexander’s accession to seventy million out of a budget of 114 million by 1814. He raised the draft, which took four men out of five hundred souls in 1805, to five out of five hundred, yielding 100 to 120,000 men each year, which meant that he conscripted more than 500,000 men between 1806 and 1811. In the course of that year 60,000 retired but capable soldiers were brought back into service. The total number under arms in Russia’s land forces increased from 487,000 in 1807 to 590,000 in 1812, and in March of that year an extra draft of two men per five hundred souls yielded another 65 to 70,000 men. By September 1812 the total number of men under arms in the land forces would reach 904,000.²⁰

In 1803 Alexander had charged General Arakcheev with modernising the artillery. His reforms did not yield fruit in time for the war of 1805, but by the end of the decade it was probably the most professional in Europe. Arakcheev got rid of small-calibre guns, and equipped it with six- and twelve-pounder field guns, and ten- and twenty-pounder ‘licornes’, a kind of howitzer. He fitted these guns with the most sophisticated and accurate sights, and made sure that the gunners knew how to use them to best advantage.

The latest reform to see the light of day, in January 1812, was an ordinance for the command of large armies in the field. This laid out clearly who was responsible at every level of command, and gave the commander-in-chief almost unlimited powers in time of war. It also prescribed the channels through which all information should flow up from the furthest outpost to the commander-in-chief and how orders should be transmitted down from him to the company commander. Unfortunately, it was to be almost universally disregarded in the forthcoming campaign, with lamentable results.

The Russian forces in Lithuania were divided into two armies. The First, the stronger of the two, under General Barclay de Tolly, was deployed along the river Niemen in a slight arc almost a hundred kilometres long in advance of Vilna, a position from which it could either move out to attack or mount a defence. The Second Army, under General Bagration, was concentrated like a strike force, ready either to support the advance of the First Army by outflanking any enemy defence, or to ram the exposed flank of any force that attacked the First Army before Vilna. A Third Army, under General Tormasov, guarded the frontier to the south of the Pripet marshes. Exact figures for the strength of these forces are impossible to establish: the conflicting calculations of Russian historians put the total land forces as low as 356,000 and as high as 716,000, with as few as 180,000 and as many as 251,000 effectives in the front line. Most recent studies have been more consistent, but there is some confusion as a result of Russian historians’ habit of breaking down effectives into ‘front-line’ figures and totals, which include all the support services. The myth of the Russians being vastly outnumbered during this campaign has stemmed from the juxtaposition of Russian ‘front-line’ figures with French totals. The strength of the First Army was 127,800 frontline and 159,800 in total, that of the Second 52,000 and 62,000 respectively, and of the Third 45,800 and 58,200, making up a force of 225,000 front-line and 280,000 in total positioned along the frontier, supported by just over nine hundred guns.

This force was backed up by two reserve corps, Ertel’s of 55,000/ 65,000, and Meller Zakomelsky’s of 31,000/47,000, bringing the total of the Russian forces facing Napoleon to 392,000. Behind them a second wave of units was being formed. As soon as Alexander’s diplomatic demarches had secured peace with Sweden and Turkey, another 28,500/37,200 troops from Finland and 54,500/70,000 from Moldavia would be brought into play. The armies at the front were well supplied and supported for an offensive by a series of magazines at Vilna, Shvienchiany, Grodno and elsewhere, and a second line stretching behind that from Riga in the north to Kaluga in the south.²¹

It is difficult to gauge what Alexander intended by coming to Vilna, as he gave no indication that he meant to take command. His armies had been massing in the region for the past eighteen months, and were poised along the frontier in readiness to attack. The Tsar’s arrival at advance headquarters would, in the circumstances, suggest that the decision had been taken to launch the attack, since there could be no conceivable point in His Imperial Majesty coming all that way just to review them. In the event, Alexander’s presence helped to confuse what was already a highly confused situation.

The man ostensibly in command was the fifty-one-year-old Minister of War, General Mikhail Barclay de Tolly. He was an intelligent, sensible and competent man of strong character and independent judgement, who had shown his mettle in the field against Swedes, Poles, Turks and Frenchmen, being seriously wounded at Eylau. He was undoubtedly very brave and steady under fire. Alexander liked him and had promoted him over the heads of others, arousing their jealousy. He was reserved and stoical rather than affable, which did nothing to increase his popularity among his peers. As he could not count on their cordial cooperation, he was wont to look to everything himself. And although he had done more than any other to ease the lot of the common soldier, he was not the kind of commander who inspires devotion in the rank and file.²²

While Barclay had been appointed commander of the First Army, he had not been nominated commander-in-chief. This may have been because Alexander felt this to be unnecessary since he was also Minister of War, or it may have been because he intended to command himself, or did not want to offend others vying for the post.

Ostensibly, Alexander took no part in military affairs beyond inspecting fortifications and attending parades. But he did interfere in day-to-day business. And his presence at headquarters ineluctably diminished Barclay’s already fragile authority, as it gave huge scope for insubordination – and there was no lack of those who hated Barclay and resented the idea of serving under him.

Foremost amongst these was General Prince Piotr Ivanovich Bagration, commanding the Second Army. Bagration was a dashing battlefield general, recklessly brave, with a volcanic temper, a warm heart, and all the fiery bravado necessary to make him worshipped by his officers and men. Although younger than Barclay, he had been a general for longer and therefore felt he had a right to overall command. In the absence of any document stipulating that he must take his orders from Barclay, Bagration took the view that his command was an independent one. Alexander’s arrival at headquarters provided him with an excuse to send all his reports to the Tsar, as supreme commander, bypassing Barclay entirely.

Bagration’s position was a strong one. He was extremely popular with his fellow generals and had a great following at court. And, having been for a time Grand Duchess Catherine’s lover, he also had a slight ascendancy over Alexander, who did not like him but could not be seen to put him down.

Matters were made no easier by the Tsar’s younger brother Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, who commanded the Imperial Guard, an unbalanced blusterer whose only real pleasure in life derived from making troops parade before him. For him, the parade was a kind of ballet – perfect precision in the choreography and meticulous attention to dress were assured by the generous distribution of savage punishments for being a few inches out of line or missing a button. Between parades, Constantine could be counted on to support anyone who criticised Barclay or failed to carry out one of his orders.

This state of affairs opened the door for a comeback by General Levin Bennigsen. A Hanoverian by birth, this old professional soldier had taken service in Russia more than fifty years before. A competent commander, if a little fussy and ponderous, he had risen slowly but surely, and assured his survival in Alexander’s good graces by being one of those who had murdered his father. He had ended his military career on a less than satisfactory note, leading the Russian army to defeat at Friedland. He was now sixty-seven years old. He had retired, and was living on his estate of Zakrent, which happened to be a few kilometres outside Vilna. Ever since Friedland he had longed for a chance to redeem his reputation, and felt it was he, not Barclay, who should be given overall command. Upon his arrival in Vilna, Alexander summoned Bennigsen and asked him to return to service in an unspecified capacity in his personal entourage.

This was already alarmingly large. Alexander was surrounded by a swarm of unofficial advisers, including his brother-in-law Prince George of Oldenburg, his uncle Prince Alexander of Württemberg, the Swedish adventurer Gustav Mauritz Armfeld, the French émigré Jean Protais Anstett, and a host of others. This was partly the result of Alexander’s longer-term views and ambitions. ‘Napoleon means to complete the enslavement of Europe, and to do so he has to strike Russia down,’ he wrote to Baron vom Stein, inviting him to come and help plan the crusade for its liberation. ‘Every friend of virtue, every human being who is animated by the sentiment of independence and love of humanity is interested in the success of this struggle.’²³

Since Alexander also needed to carry on exercising political power, he had instructed his most important ministers to follow him to headquarters. He was soon joined in Vilna by Admiral Shishkov, who was slightly baffled to find himself, the effective Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, stuck out at military headquarters. General Arakcheev, head of the Council of State’s Military Committee and Secretary to the Emperor for Military Affairs, was also in attendance. Chancellor Rumiantsev suffered a mild stroke on his way to Vilna, but this did not stop him joining the Tsar, though Alexander henceforth conducted his diplomatic business through his Secretary for Foreign Affairs Karl von Nesselrode.

The presence of so many different hierarchies of power had undesirable repercussions in the army at every level, and exacerbated a problem, created by the dearth of native officer material, which was to bring forth torrents of bad blood and bedevil the conduct of the campaign: the presence of large numbers of foreigners.

There were literally hundreds of French officers serving in the Russian army, most of them émigré aristocrats who had fled the revolution. They occupied a variety of posts, including some of the highest, with the Marquis de Traversay Admiral-in-Chief of the Russian Fleet, the Comte de Langeron and the Marquis Charles Lambert in command of army corps and General de Saint-Priest as chief of staff to the Second Army. There were also Italians, Swiss, Swedes, Poles and others: Barclay came of a family of Baltic barons who traced their ancestry to the Barclays of Towie in Scotland; Bagration’s origins were Georgian. But those who caused the greatest problem were the Germans, and particularly the Prussians.

Hundreds of officers who had been cashiered as a result of the reduction of the Prussian army after Jena had taken service in Russia. More joined them over the next years, with a second great wave after Napoleon’s defeat of Austria in 1809. And a final batch had just arrived, disgusted by the servile alliance Prussia had signed with France in February. Among these officers were the Prussian military reformers Major von Boyen and Colonel von Gneisenau, the future military theorist Major von Clausewitz, the staff officer Colonel Karl von Toll, and Baron Ludwig von Wolzogen, a native of Saxe-Meiningen and former aide-de-camp to the King of Württemberg.

All the Russian officers spoke French amongst themselves, and that was the language in which orders were normally given, but many of the Prussians lapsed into German when communicating with each other. As Barclay also spoke good German, they would address him in that language, creating an impression of a foreign club within the army, particularly at headquarters, since most of the Germans were employed as staff officers.

Alexander’s presence in Vilna had a paralysing effect on the vital question of Russia’s overall strategy. While he refrained from favouring any particular option, he lent a willing ear to anyone who expressed a view, and then asked others what they thought of it, thus seemingly opening to discussion something that should have been decided in small committee at the outset. There were a number of options to be considered.

There was the old plan, formulated by Barclay, Bennigsen, Bagration and others in the previous year, of a strike into Poland followed by an advance into Prussia to liberate it from French domination. Bagration repeatedly begged Alexander to implement this plan even at this late stage. ‘What have we to fear?’ he wrote to his sovereign on 20 June. ‘You are with us, and Russia is behind us!’²⁴ According to some sources, Barclay still favoured this plan, although he was less sanguine about the chances of success than some of his colleagues. He was presumably also aware of his master’s reluctance to be seen as the aggressor, and therefore prepared a second plan, of defending the frontier along the river Niemen. He stretched his forces along the frontier, ostensibly so they could contain and beat back any French attempt at crossing the river.²⁵

Barclay had come up with another plan back in 1807, when he was lying in hospital recovering from a wound received at Eylau. The Russians had just been defeated by the French at Friedland, and he saw their only hope of avoiding total annihilation in a retreat deep into Russia. If the French were to follow them, they should avoid giving battle, but concentrate on consolidating their forces by marching back towards their bases. The further the French came after them, the more men they would have to leave behind, and the longer their lines of communication and supply would grow. In the end, the Russians would find themselves superior in numbers and resources and would be able to defeat the French.²⁶

It was not a particularly original idea: the strategic asset provided by the vast country was something of a cliché, and Russian officers often brandished it as a threat in conversations with foreigners – Alexander himself had done so.²⁷ But Barclay had only considered it in 1807 as a last resort, a counsel of despair, at a moment when Russia did not really have an army left. Napoleon’s willingness to treat with Alexander at Tilsit had saved the day, and no more was said of the plan.

While there was much interest in Russian and Prussian military circles in the concept of a long-drawn-out defensive war, inspired partly by Wellington’s tactics in Spain, it was not one based on retreat. In a long memorandum written for Alexander at the end of July 1811, Barclay suggested moving out to attack the French, but not in a conventional battle – he advised loose manoeuvring by large numbers of light troops, which could harry and demoralise, dragging out the campaign and avoiding decisive engagements. This was to be carried out on enemy territory. Withdrawal into Russia was not something that could be seriously considered when there was a numerous and well-equipped army standing in defence of her borders, and neither Barclay nor Alexander, nor any of the Russian generals for a moment contemplated such a strategy.²⁸ It would have been politically inadmissible and militarily absurd. The troops were positioned for attack, not for retreat. Their stores and depots were as close behind them as they could be so that they could support an attack, and would be condemned to destruction or capture by the French if a retreat were ordered. And drawing an enemy into Russia raised all manner of terrifying possibilities, including peasant revolt – it was only four decades since a rebellion by the peasant leader Emelian Pugachov had brought the empire to the brink of collapse. The memory was fresh in people’s minds, kept so by regular minor eruptions of discontent.

There was only one man at Russian headquarters who entertained a plan based on retreat, and it was nothing like the poetic vision of drawing the enemy in to be devoured by the expanses and forces of Russia. He was Karl Ludwig von Phüll. He had left the Prussian service after Auerstädt and joined the Russian army, in which he had been given the rank of Lieutenant General.

Phüll’s plan was based on a tactic adopted by his hero Frederick the Great in 1761 when confronted by overwhelming forces. Frederick had fallen back into an entrenched camp and worn down the two enemy armies which besieged him there. Phüll suggested that in the event of a French invasion, the Russian First Army should fall back to a previously prepared position, drawing the French in behind them. The Second Army could then come up in the rear of the French and inflict great damage on them. For this purpose he, or rather his protégé Wolzogen, selected a site at Drissa, covering both the Moscow and the St Petersburg roads. Work had started in the last months of 1811 on the construction of massive earthworks that were to make the position impregnable.

The Drissa idea appealed to Alexander because it reminded him of Wellington’s fallback to the lines of Torres Vedras in 1811. But he did not come down firmly in favour of this or any other plan, and he simultaneously entertained various other options. One was to launch a rising in the Balkans and Hungary in order to cause a diversion. The idea was the brainchild of Admiral Pavel Vasilievich Chichagov, an eccentric but competent sailor and erstwhile admirer of Napoleon, currently serving under Kutuzov on the Turkish front. He suggested that having made peace with Turkey, Russia should use her army on that front to invade Bulgaria, whose population was Orthodox and therefore russophile, from there launch an attack on Napoleon’s provinces along the Dalmatian coast, and thence into the heart of Napoleonic Europe via Italy and Switzerland. Alexander was entranced by the sheer scale of the scheme, and toyed with it for some time before Rumiantsev pointed out that it was unrealistic and diplomatically counter-productive, as it would rouse both Turkey and Austria against Russia and force them into Napoleon’s camp.

Then there was the Polish card, which Alexander was still trying to find ways of playing. While in Vilna he devoted much effort to seducing the local Polish aristocracy, bestowing orders and honorific titles and making the odd allusion to the possibility of restoring Poland. He had a couple of trusted agents sounding out opinion, and wrote to Czartoryski asking whether now would not be a propitious moment to declare his intention of doing so. He was encouraged in this by Bernadotte, who wrote urging him to strike into Poland and to offer its crown to Poniatowski. Alexander sent Colonel Toll on a secret mission to Poniatowski to offer him high office (possibly even the crown) in a future Kingdom of Poland if he agreed to detach his corps from the French army and take it over to the Russian side. Poniatowski was astonished at this request, which would have been impossible to carry out, even had he wished to.

In his quest for ways of subverting the Poles, Alexander also instructed the notorious Catholic pugilist and Sardinian ambassador in St Petersburg, Joseph de Maistre, to employ the Jesuits (who had been disbanded by the Pope but had perversely been kept alive in Russia) to subvert Poland, using the argument that Alexander was the defender of the Papacy, while Napoleon was its enemy.²⁹

Alexander’s sister Catherine was urging him to leave the army. ‘If one of [the generals] commits a fault, he will be blamed and punished; if you make a mistake, everything falls on your shoulders, and the destruction of confidence in him on whom everything depends and who, being the only arbiter of the destiny of the Empire, must be the support to which everything bends, is a greater evil than the loss of a few provinces,’ she wrote.³⁰

What she did not point out was that he had already done a great deal of damage by going to Vilna, and was compounding it by his irresolute behaviour. His refusal to commit himself to any of the options laid before him or to openly place his confidence in any one of his generals meant that nobody knew what to prepare for. His brother Grand Duke Constantine drilled his soldiers mercilessly, but nobody was preparing to meet the approaching Grande Armée. No serious attempts were being made to plot the enemy’s movements, and the units had not even been issued with adequate maps of the areas they were to operate in.³¹

‘In the meantime we held balls and parties, and our prolonged sojourn in Vilna resembled a pleasure trip rather than preparations for war,’ in the words of Colonel Benckendorff. Shishkov was astonished by the carefree atmosphere and the lack of any sense of imminent menace he found on his arrival in Vilna. ‘Our everyday life was so carefree that there was not even any news about the enemy, as though they had been several thousands of versts^* away,’ he wrote. The troops had settled into their billets and savoured whatever pleasures the country life of Lithuania could provide. ‘The senior officers feared Napoleon, seeing him as a fearful conqueror, a new Attila,’ wrote Lieutenant Radozhitsky of the light artillery, ‘but we younger ones romped with the god of love, sighing and moaning from his wounds.’³²

People far away from the front could not understand why the Russian army, whose officers wrote home letters full of bravado, did not attack and drive the French out of Prussia and Poland. There was grumbling about the lack of action, reinforced by widespread fear of a French advance into Russia, not least because it might provoke social unrest.

In May the erroneous news reached St Petersburg that Badajoz and Madrid had fallen to the British and that a Spanish army had crossed the Pyrenees into southern France. Why, people asked themselves up and down the country, was Alexander not marching out to deal the final blow against Napoleon? He and his entourage appeared to be whiling away the time at balls and parties, and it was reported in the capital that the officers were indulging in ‘orgies’.³³

Russian estimates of the size of the Grande Armée were very low. Barclay and Phüll put the strength of the French forces at 200–250,000; Bagration at 200,000; Toll at 225,000; Bennigsen at 169,000; and Bernadotte at 150,000. The highest estimate drawn up by anyone on the Russian side was 350,000, and that included all reserves and rear formations.³⁴ This meant that an attack on it would have been seen as perfectly feasible, and Alexander undoubtedly longed to launch one. His excitement about the Chichagov plan and his attempt to bribe Poniatowski can only be viewed in the context of an offensive. And there are other indications that he wanted to take command of it.³⁵

But he was heavily influenced by Phüll’s views, and Phüll was against any attack, believing as he did that the Russian army was not up to it.³⁶ Above all, Alexander wanted to be seen as the innocent victim rather than the aggressor, and his religious instincts told him to play the part of passive tool of the divine will.

In recent years he had made more and more references to the will of God in his letters and utterances, and he had been increasingly guided by the wish to make himself a worthy and righteous instrument of that will. ‘I have at least the consolation of having done everything that is compatible with honour to avoid this struggle,’ he had written to Catherine in February. ‘Now it is only a question of preparing for it with courage and faith in God; this faith is stronger than ever in me, and I submit with resignation to His will.’³⁷

Nesselrode was still advising Alexander to negotiate rather than provoke a war, but Alexander seems to have ruled out negotiations entirely as an option, and he was in no mood to talk when Narbonne arrived in Vilna on 18 May.³⁸ He received him and read the letter he had brought, but told him that as Napoleon had ranged the whole of Europe against Russia it was evident his intentions were hostile, and that there was therefore no point in negotiating. He reiterated that he would only consider doing so if Napoleon withdrew his troops beyond the Rhine.

‘What does the Emperor want?’ he asked Narbonne rhetorically. ‘To subject me to his interests, to force me to measures which ruin my people, and, because I refuse, he intends to make war on me, in the belief that after two or three battles and the occupation of a few provinces, perhaps even a capital, I will be obliged to ask for a peace whose conditions he will dictate. He is deluding himself!’ Then, taking a large map of his dominions, he spread it on the table and continued: ‘My dear Count, I am convinced that Napoleon is the greatest general in Europe, that his armies are the most battle-hardened, his lieutenants the bravest and the most experienced; but space is a barrier. If, after a few defeats, I retreat, sweeping along the population, if I leave it to time, to the wilderness, to the climate to defend me, I may yet have the last word over the most formidable army of modern times.’³⁹

Although most people at Russian headquarters assumed that the only purpose of Narbonne’s mission was to spy out their dispositions and rouse local patriots to stage an uprising, Alexander invited him to attend a parade on the following day, and to dine with him afterwards. But the next day Narbonne was informed by one of Alexander’s aides-de-camp that a carriage generously provisioned for the journey back to Dresden would be waiting at his door that evening.⁴⁰

* One verst = 1060 metres, approximately five-eighths of a mile.