In his annual report in November, Secretary Gallatin announced that an additional $20 million was needed to fund the war. Republicans in Congress again refused to raise internal taxes, afraid the country would not support them, which it probably would not have. They remembered that when John Adams raised taxes to pay for the Quasi-War with France, he was defeated for a second term. On the other hand, when Jefferson did away with internal taxes, he was reelected overwhelmingly. That was not the only reason for his popularity, of course, but it certainly contributed to it.
Instead of internal taxes, Republican War Hawks like Calhoun, Lowndes, and Cheves proposed in December 1812 to renew trade with Britain. They claimed this would produce the desired revenue from customs duties. By some magic, taxes on imports were considered external, even though they led to higher prices internally. When Cheves and Lowndes introduced a bill to in effect allow free trade, they were voted down. Ironically, New England Federalists, who in other respects were strong advocates of rapprochement with Britain, did not support the legislation because their fledgling manufacturing plants were prospering under wartime restrictions against British imports.
Republicans preferred to borrow rather than tax, ignoring the fact that in doing so they were placing in the hands of the war’s opponents—Federalist bankers in Boston and Philadelphia—the power to deny Madison the money he needed to carry on the war. Through privateering, smuggling, manufacturing, shipping, and banking, an inordinate amount of the country’s specie was flowing into the coffers of Federalist banks in New England and Philadelphia, producing great wealth for those who opposed the war.
In February 1813, Gallatin told the House Ways and Means Committee that the Non-Importation Act would have to be modified and internal taxation increased to finance the war, particularly the expansion of the army and navy, which had just been voted on. As expected, the House of Representatives—firmly in control of the Republicans—resolutely refused to raise internal taxes or adjust the Non-Importation Act. Instead, it passed legislation authorizing Madison to borrow $16 million on the best terms he could obtain, as well as another bill, authorizing the president to issue five million one-year Treasury notes bearing 5.4 percent interest. These notes were only one step removed from bills printed by the Continental Congress during the Revolution.
Authorizing a loan and obtaining it were two very different things, as Gallatin could attest to. He was expected to find this massive amount for a government that had no national bank, and thus no national circulating medium, and that refused to raise taxes in one of the more prosperous countries in the world. The Congress adjourned on March 4, and by then the government was nearly out of cash. Federalist bankers in Boston and Philadelphia showed no interest in loaning the nearly bankrupt government any money. In fact, they hoped the administration would go broke. Gallatin narrowly averted catastrophe through the good offices of John Jacob Astor, who with Philadelphia bankers David Parish and Stephen Gerard loaned the government nearly $8.5 million at a whopping 7.5 percent.
The unwillingness of American politicians who had voted for the war to adequately fund it was noticed in London and substantially weakened the chances that President Madison could negotiate a satisfactory peace.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Napoleon and Alexander
DURING THE SECOND week of November 1812, while Madison had been trying to stir a reluctant country to renew the war effort, incredible reports began circulating in London that Napoleon was suffering a catastrophic reversal in Russia. The British could scarcely believe the good news. Back on July 18, immediately after Napoleon’s invasion, Liverpool had signed a treaty of peace and amity with Czar Alexander, and he had given him as much support as he could, shipping him, for instance, 100,000 muskets. The alliance had one object—destroying Bonaparte—but at the time few people in London believed the czar could. During the summer, the British watched with bated breath as the Grand Army drove into Russia against weak resistance. It looked as if the czar would soon be at the negotiating table—on his knees.
Napoleon knew the Russian climate necessitated that he not remain long. His army was forced to live off the countryside; it could not be supplied from France or its satellites. At all costs, he had to avoid being sucked into the Russian vastness during the brutally hot summer. He strove for an early climactic battle that would destroy the Russian army in a single engagement. Alexander’s strategy was to deny him that opportunity. Once Napoleon crossed the Niemen River (the border between Poland and Russia) and marched into the Russian heartland, the die was cast; he had to defeat the czar or lose his aura of invincibility.
As the summer wore on, the British watched nervously as the czar’s armies stayed just beyond Napoleon’s grasp, luring him deeper into the country. Bonaparte pushed on, racing for Smolensk, where he hoped to induce his great battle, but again the czar’s armies, although fighting briefly, escaped during the night of August 18–19 deeper into Russia, along the road to Moscow.
Napoleon might have stopped at Smolensk in August, consolidated his gains, and resumed the battle in the spring, but he never seriously considered that option. Instead, he marched on toward Moscow, something he knew was dangerous and had hoped to avoid. The heat was now unbearable and sustenance from the countryside nonexistent. As the Russian armies retreated, they carried out the czar’s scorched-earth policy, burning village after village and field after field before the French reached them. The heat, impossible logistics, and scorched earth ate away huge chunks of the Grand Army. Men dropped by the thousands from lack of water and food, and so did Napoleon’s irreplaceable horses. Nonetheless, he kept moving closer to Moscow, believing the Russians would not let their sacred city fall without a climactic fight. The alternative was to admit failure and retreat, and if he did that, he could no longer pretend to be master of Europe. Retreat meant the end of his regime, and perhaps his life. And so, the prisoner of his image, he pressed forward, marching on through Russia’s poisonous countryside.
National honor finally forced the czar to fight the battle Napoleon craved. On August 29 Alexander gave overall command of his armies to sixty-five-year-old Mikhail Kutuzov, an immensely popular general with the troops, who were demoralized by the constant retreating and the destruction they were forced to inflict on their own people. They wanted to fight the French, and under Kutuzov they believed they had a chance to win. Influential members of the czar’s court were also urging him to fight. They, too, were angry at what the French were doing to their country; they thought honor demanded that Russia defend herself. The czar finally agreed, but only after his scorched-earth policy had seriously weakened the Grand Army.
Kutuzov made his stand on September 7 at Borodino, seventy miles southwest of Moscow. The Russians arrived on the battlefield first, and they were prepared for the French when they attacked. A horrendous bloodbath followed. Perhaps 80,000 died—45,000 Russians and 35,000 of the Grand Army. At the end of the day, Napoleon controlled the battlefield, but his army was badly beaten up. More importantly, he failed to destroy the Russian army, and in that sense Borodino was anything but the decisive victory he needed.
Kutuzov, although staggered, was able to withdraw to Moscow. He thought about defending the city but then decided to evacuate. With much of the civilian population trailing behind, he marched out of the city and established himself southeast of Moscow, where he could rest and reconstitute his army.
On September 15 Napoleon entered Moscow and established himself in the Kremlin. The next day the city erupted in flames that destroyed three-quarters of the buildings, making life for the French army even more difficult than it already was. It became clearer by the hour that, even though Bonaparte was in Moscow, he had not captured Russia—Russia had captured him. Nonetheless, he continued acting as if he were a victor and demanded the czar’s capitulation. Napoleon sent messages to St. Petersburg, urging Alexander to submit, but the czar refused. On the day the Grand Army crossed the Niemen, Alexander had pledged, “I will n
ot sheathe my sword so long as there is an enemy within my imperial borders.” He meant to keep that promise.
Convinced Alexander would soon relent, Napoleon wasted precious days waiting. And while he did, Kutuzov’s army grew in numbers and strength, especially with the addition of thousands of Cossacks. All the while, French foraging parties, desperately seeking food, were meeting armed peasants willing to die in defense of their turf.
With his supplies running out, and the czar giving no indication he would surrender, Napoleon finally understood that he had to evacuate Moscow. He did not begin his retreat until October 19, however. By then, the start of the deadly Russian winter was only days away. His troubles were compounded by wasting nine more days fighting and maneuvering against Kutuzov south of Moscow before deciding that he had to retreat down the main road to Smolensk. Kutuzov forced him to travel along the same scorched earth he had come on.
As Napoleon sped toward Smolensk, Kutuzov harassed him constantly, but avoided a major battle. Cossack cavalry disrupted the frenzied attempts of the French to obtain food. With every mile, the Grand Army shrank. During the first week of November, heavy snow began falling. Instead of dying from heat, the French were succumbing to the cold. Bodies began appearing everywhere, thousands of them, partially covered with snow, looking like sheep huddled down in the middle of white fields. Horses in similar numbers were collapsing.
Napoleon took no notice of the sickening white lumps in the fields. He had only one thing on his mind—getting back to Paris fast. He reached Smolensk on November 9. Its supplies of food were quickly devoured. He left on the twelfth, heading for Krasnoye and then Orsha, where he crossed the Dnieper and continued west toward the river Berezina, a tributary of the Dnieper.
The czar hoped to cut Napoleon off and capture him at Borisov on the Berezina. Admiral Pavel Chichagov with 32,000 men, and a similar number under General Peter Wittgenstein, converged on Borisov. On November 26–29 the remnants of the French army—now amounting to perhaps 30,000 to 40,000—fought the Russians and suffered devastating losses but escaped destruction, crossed the river, and continued moving west. Napoleon himself crossed the Berezina at Studenkia, just north of Borisov, and avoided capture. He continued west to Smorgoni, midway between the Berezina and the Niemen. The Grand Army continued to dwindle.
On December 5, from Smorgoni, Bonaparte issued his famous Bulletin 29, admitting to the French people that there had been a dreadful calamity in Russia. At the same time he began calling up 300,000 men for a new army. He then completed conferences with his remaining generals and left secretly in the middle of the night, abandoning what was left of his army. He raced west to Vilna and then to Kovno, where he crossed the Niemen into Poland. From there he traveled by sleigh to Warsaw and then to Dresden, reaching it on December 13, accompanied only by his closest aide, Caulaincourt, Duc de Vicence.
Not wasting any time, Napoleon sped on to Paris, entering it the night of December 18, apprehensive about what awaited him. But Caulaincourt reported that “from the very first the complexion of Paris . . . looked cheering to him. His return had produced a tremendous effect.... and after the second day he felt reassured . . . ‘The terrible bulletin [29] has had its effect,’ he said to me, ‘but I see that my presence is giving even more pleasure than our disasters give pain. There is more affliction than discouragement. This state of mind will communicate itself to Vienna; and all will be retrieved within three months.’”
Napoleon’s luck was indeed holding out. He had arrived back in the nick of time; Paris had just found out about his disaster—too soon for a real opposition to form. Although he had issued Bulletin 29 on December 5, the news did not reach the capital until the day before his return. Ignoring his horrific Russian debacle as if it had never happened—claiming the weather caused it—he brazenly went to work raising another huge army, dreaming of being as powerful as ever.
The unreality of Napoleon’s world and the pretense that his reign would continue as before could be seen in an announcement printed in the Gazette de France on December 7, when the emperor’s Russian disaster was widely suspected. “We today celebrate that day which opens the 9th year of Napoleon’s reign; a reign preceded by 8 years of immortal glory,—brilliant to himself by the most memorable exploits, and by the most elevated acts of policy and legislation,—a reign, the fruitful activity of which, insures to our country ages of grandeur, repose, and prosperity.” The emperor’s propaganda could not wipe away his appalling reversal in Russia, however. The world knew about it, and so did the French people, who had to send more of their sons to be sacrificed to his ambition.
DURING THE SECOND week of December in London, the earlier rumors of Napoleon’s catastrophe were confirmed, and the British were exuberant. On December 11 the Times wrote, “Every day brings some fresh confirmation of the distress of the French armies, and some new instance of the disasters and defeats with which they are closing a campaign opened with so much ostentation and apparent success.”
A week later, on December 17, the Times announced, “Bonaparte is wholly defeated in Russia: he is conquered, and a fugitive. And what can we say more?” The British prayed the Russians would capture him, but on Christmas Eve the Times had to concede that, “the wretched vagabond has returned home.” The hope of ending the war with a new regime in Paris suddenly vanished. “We have scotched the snake, not killed it,” the Times lamented.
Nevertheless, Napoleon’s defeat was immensely satisfying to the British, and as his fortunes declined, their confidence grew. The distasteful necessity of making peace with America disappeared, replaced by a commitment to make her pay a steep price for her de facto alliance with Napoleon. With Bonaparte back in power in Paris, however, the Liverpool ministry would have to deal with him first before it settled scores with the United States. Although a hugely popular idea, humbling America would have to wait.
WHEN THE RUMORS of Napoleon’s debacle were confirmed in Washington in January 1813, Madison was shocked, but he did not despair. Defeat in Russia did not mean the end of the Napoleonic regime in Europe. The dictator’s fate depended on whether he reached Paris safely and could reestablish his authority, and on whether the great powers, Russia, Britain, Prussia, and Austria, allied with smaller states like Sweden and the German principalities, could form an effective alliance against him. Madison considered this unlikely. He thought chances were better that Napoleon would survive and regain his power. If that were the case, the foundation of the president’s grand strategy would remain intact. He found himself hoping the dictator held on to power.
A titanic struggle over the fate of Europe was now in the offing. The British were focused on only one objective—annihilating Bonaparte. The czar was equally adamant. The invasion and the destruction of Moscow had outraged him, and he wanted revenge. On December 12 he proclaimed, “The arm of the giant is broken, but his destructive strength must be prevented from reviving; and his power over the nations, who served him out of terror, must be taken away.”
Napoleon was rearming rapidly, however, and he still looked formidable. His enemies had a myriad of difficulties to surmount before they could hope to crush him. It was uncertain, for instance, what role Czar Alexander would play in Europe. Kutuzov, reflecting the views of many in the army, did not want to march beyond Russia’s borders, at least not until the army had a chance to recover from what had been nearly as brutal a war for them as it had been for the French. Furthermore, Britain’s small army, although doing well under Wellington, was totally occupied in Spain. And Austria was nominally a French ally and could not be counted on to join an alliance against him. Maria Teresa, the emperor’s daughter, was married to Napoleon, and the powerful Austrian foreign minister Prince Metternich had no desire to have French power in Europe replaced by Russian, nor did he have any love for England. And he was leery of a resurgent Prussia. He expected Napoleon to remain on the French throne, less powerful but still potent.
Prussia, which Napoleon had reduced to a weak
state of vassalage after Tilsit in 1807, was still nominally a French ally, although King Frederick William, who hated Napoleon, dearly wanted to change sides, as did a growing number of German patriots. Already, on December 20 the Prussian general von Yorck had deserted Napoleon and declared his Prussian Corps neutral. The czar had known for a long time of Frederick William’s yearning to change sides, but the Prussian king could not make a move until Alexander decided to push beyond Russia’s western border into Europe. The Prussians did not have to wait long. The Russian army crossed the Niemen on January 12 and marched into Prussia and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Frederick William felt liberated; he could now join Alexander. Still, Prussia at the moment was a small country. The king could produce only a limited number of soldiers.
In the midst of these epic events, Czar Alexander offered to mediate between the United States and his new ally, Britain. He had received news of the American declaration of war back in August 1812. Not wanting London’s energies diverted by war with the United States, he proposed Russian mediation. And beyond the present conflict, the czar hoped to promote America as a counterweight to British sea power. He thought a check on Britain’s uncontrolled dominance of the oceans was necessary.
The American ambassador in St. Petersburg, John Quincy Adams, reported the czar’s offer in dispatches dated September 30 and October 17, 1812. John Levett Harris, nephew of the American consul general in St. Petersburg, brought them to Washington, arriving on February 24, 1813. The following day, the Russian chargé d’affaires, Andre Daschkoff, told Secretary Monroe that the czar was indeed anxious to act as a mediator.
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