64 On frustration in the ranks, see Sabaneev’s letter to P. M. Volkonsky of 20 Feb. (OS): RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 4166, fo. 65i, and on orders to Oertel and the Evdokimov case his letters of 28 Jan. (OS) to Major-General Oldekop (fo. 40i) and to the Grand Duke Constantine of 24 Jan. (fo. 42i).
65 The voluminous correspondence above all between Barclay and Kankrin in RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 18, Delo 17, gives a detailed sense of the army’s efforts to feed itself and the problems they encountered: see in particular fos. 128i–ii, Barclay to Kankrin, 29 Jan. 1814 (OS); fos. 153i–ii, Barclay to Kankrin, 9 Feb. 1814 (OS); fos. 160i–ii, Kankrin to Barclay, 14 Feb. 1814 (OS). M. Dandevil’, Stoletie 5-go dragunskago Kurliandskago Imperatora Aleksandra III-go polka, SPB, 1903, p. 105.
66 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/120, Sv. 18, Delo 17, fos. 109–10, Kankrin to Barclay, 17 Jan. 1814 (OS); fos. 172–5, Kankrin to Barclay, 20 Feb. 1814 (OS); fo. 218, Barclay to Oertel, 7 March 1814 (OS). V. von Löwenstern, Mémoires du Général-Major Russe Baron de Löwenstern, 2 vols., Paris, 1903, vol. 2, pp. 315–20.
Chapter 14: The Fall of Napoleon
1 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/120, Sv. 18, Delo 17, fos. 68–70, Kankrin to Barclay (enclosing Lisanevich’s own report: fos. 70–71), 14 Jan. 1814 (OS); fos. 73–5, Barclay to Kankrin, 15 Jan. 1814 (OS) (on how the mobile magazine should be used); fo. 127, Kankrin to Barclay, 27 Jan. 1814 (OS) (on the magazines’ survival almost intact); fo. 160, Kankrin to Barclay, 15 Feb. 1814 (OS) (on how the mobile magazines had already supplied biscuit rations for one month); fo. 204, Kankrin to Barclay, 27 Feb. 1814 (OS) (on the dispatch of Kondratev’s magazine to Joinville).
2 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 18, Delo 17, fos. 50–52: Stein’s letter to Barclay explaining the arrangements to administer occupied territory and defining the districts, dated 25 Jan. (NS) 1814. For Alopaeus’s initial responses see: fos. 188–9, Kankrin to Barclay, 22 Feb. 1814 (OS), and fos. 201–3, Alopaeus to Barclay, 23 Feb. 1814 (OS). See also Peter Graf von Kielmansegg, Stein und die Zentralverwaltung 1813/14, Stuttgart, 1964, part 4, pp. 98 ff.
3 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 12, Delo 126, fos. 52–3, Kankrin to Barclay, 22 Jan. 1814 (OS).
4 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 18, Delo 17, fo. 204, Kankrin to Barclay, 27 Feb. 1814 (OS); fos. 205–7, Alopaeus to Kankrin, 25 Feb. (OS).
5 A. Fournier, Der Congress von Chatillon: Die Politik im Kriege von 1814, Vienna, 1900, no. 27, Metternich to Stadion, 9 March 1814, pp. 334–5. Lord Burghersh, The Operations of the Allied Armies in 1813 and 1814, London, 1822, pp. 177–85, for a retrospective, ‘sanitized’ view.
6 Dispatch from Lieven to Nesselrode, 26 Jan. 1814, enclosed in a letter from Castlereagh to Liverpool, 18 Feb. 1814: Marquess of Londonderry (ed.), Correspondence, Despatches, and Other Papers of Viscount Castlereagh, 12 vols., vol. 9, London, 1853, pp. 266–73.
7 F. Martens (ed.), Sobranie traktatov i konventsii, zakliuchennykh Rossiei s inostrannymi derzhavami, vol. 3: Traktaty s Avstrieiu, SPB, 1876, no. 73, pp. 148–65.
8 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3399, fos. 131ii–132i. SIRIO, 31, 1881, pp. 364–5, has the protocol of the meeting of 25 February. M. Bogdanovich, Istoriia voiny 1814 goda vo Frantsii, 2 vols., SPB, 1865, vol. 1, pp. 268–70.
9 K. von Clausewitz, Der Feldzug von 1812 in Russland, der Feldzug von 1813 bis zum Waffenstillstand und der Feldzug von 1814 in Frankreich, Berlin, 1862, pp. 375–7; Baron Karl von Müffling, The Memoirs of Baron von Müffling: A Prussian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars, ed. P. Hofschroer, London, 1997, pp. 146–71; V. von Löwenstern, Mémoires du Général-Major Russe Baron de Löwenstern, 2 vols., Paris, 1903, vol. 2, pp. 325–34. Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, 32 vols., Paris, 1858–70, vol. 27, no. 21439, Napoleon to Joseph, 5 March 1814, pp. 288–9. Henri Houssaye, Napoleon and the Campaign of 1814: France, Uckfield, 2004, pp. 116–41, tends to be an uncritical apologist for the Bonapartist line. Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814, vol. 1, pp. 299–307.
10 For the basic narrative from rival sides, see Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814, vol. 1, pp. 309–29; Houssaye, Napoleon, pp. 142–59. R. von Friederich, Die Befreiungskriege 1813–1815, vol. 3: Der Feldzug 1814, Berlin, 1913, pp. 214–22, is semi-neutral and accurate. On Heurtebise, and the battle of the Russian jaegers, see S. I. Maevskii, ‘Moi vek, ili istoriia generala Maevskogo, 1779–1848’, RS, 8, 1873, pp. 268–73. He commanded the 13th Jaeger Regiment during the battle.
11 Apart from the works cited in the previous note, see specifically on the Russian retreat, Ivan Ortenberg, ‘Voennyia vospominaniia starykh vremen’, Biblioteka dlia chteniia, 24/6, 1857, pp. 18–33, at pp. 18–19.
12 Burghersh, Operations, p. 196. Clausewitz, Feldzug, 1862, p. 379.
13 Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814, vol. 1, pp. 324–5; Captain Koch, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la campagne de 1814, 3 vols., Paris, 1819, vol. 1, pp. 399–400. Houssaye, Napoleon, p. 157. Alain Pigeard, Dictionnaire de la Grande Armée, Paris, 2002, pp. 648–9. Friederich, Feldzug, writes that 15,000 Russians actually fought 21,000 French soldiers on the battlefield of Craonne.
14 There is a good description of meeting Blücher at this time in F. von Schubert, Unter dem Doppeladler, Stuttgart, 1962, pp. 345–6.
15 Friederich, Feldzug, pp. 243–8; Müffling, Memoirs, pp. 167–76.
16 I. I. Shelengovskii, Istoriia 69-go Riazanskago polka, 3 vols., Lublin, 1911, vol. 2, pp. 251–75. Skobelev was actually an odnodvorets, in other words the descendant of free peasant colonists who had manned the southern frontier regions of Muscovy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By Alexander’s reign the burdens and constraints on odnodvortsy were roughly the same as those of the state peasantry.
17 Alexander’s correspondence in RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3399, contains a mass of letters expressing these worries: see e.g. fos. 147ii and 151i for letters of 28 Feb. (OS) to Schwarzenberg urging him to press forward more quickly, and of 5 March (OS) to Nikolai Raevsky, who had replaced Wittgenstein, warning him not to become isolated and to expect an attack by Napoleon at any moment. For the scenes at GHQ, see Karl Fürst Schwarzenberg, Feldmarschall Fürst Schwarzenberg: Der Sieger von Leipzig, Vienna, 1964, pp. 306–8, 483–4. Mémoires de Langeron, Général d’Infanterie dans l’Armée Russe: Campagnes de 1812, 1813, 1814, Paris, 1902, p. 423.
18 Langeron, Mémoires, pp. 434–7, has a good discussion of these two options.
19 T. von Bernhardi, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben des kaiserlichen russischen Generals der Infanterie Carl Friedrich Grafen von Toll, 5 vols., Leipzig, 1858, vol. 4ii, pp. 292–4, cites Napoleon’s own subsequent conversations on this point.
20 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3399, fo. 154ii, Volkonsky to Gneisenau, 10 March 1814 (OS). The basic narrative of events is the same in Friederich, Feldzug, and in Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814.
21 Friederich, Feldzug, pp. 281–2. On previous criticism of Oertel, see RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/120, Sv. 12, Delo 126, fo. 71: Barclay to Oertel, 16 Feb. 1814 (OS). A. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Opisanie pokhoda vo Frantsii v 1814 godu, SPB, repr. 1841, pp. 284–5.
22 The only witness of this discussion to leave a detailed account is Toll: see Bernhardi, Denkwürdigkeiten, vol. 4ii, pp. 310–14. Bernhardi is right to dismiss Austrian claims to authorship of the plan, for which there is no evidence and which make a nonsense of Schwarzenberg’s actions. One cannot rule out Volkonsky’s role so easily, however. According to Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, Alexander himself told him of Volkonsky’s advice. If Mikhailovsky had merely recorded Volkonsky’s role in his published history one could easily dismiss it as one of his many efforts to please still-living grandees of Nicholas’s reign by praising their role in the war. But he says the same in a manuscript not intended for publication in which in general he is critical of his former boss: Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Memuary 1814–1815, SPB, 2001, pp. 33–5. See also, however, Diebitsch’s brief account in a letter to Jomini of 9 May 1817, published in Langeron, Mémoires, pp. 491–3.
23 Schwarzenberg, Schwarzenberg, p. 323.
24 Ibid., pp. 308–9. RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 18, Delo 17, fos. 227–8, 235, 238–9, Kankrin to Barclay: 12, 13, 17 March 1814 (OS).
25 An interesting letter of 17 March from Count Latour to Radetsky states that the Austrian army had lost prestige because it was generally blamed for twice doing nothing and leaving the Army of Silesia to its fate: Fournier, Congress, no. 17, pp. 281–2. For Barclay’s compliment to Kankrin, see his letter of 10 March 1814 (OS), in RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 210/4, Sv. 17, Delo 17.
26 For the Russian angle, see the excellent and detailed account by Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814, vol. 1, pp. 456 ff. For the French view – on this occasion not too dissimilar – see Houssaye, Napoleon, pp. 296–311. Friederich, Feldzug, pp. 287–90, is fair and intelligent as always. There is a recent account in English by Digby Smith, Charge: Great Cavalry Charges of the Napoleonic Wars, London, 2003, pp. 207 ff., but as with most of the English-language literature on 1813–14 it very much underestimates the Russian impact, in this respect following its German-language sources. This chapter, for example, gives the impression that Württemberg’s cavalry played the leading role at Fére-Champenoise, which is far from true.
27 Langeron, Mémoires, pp. 446–8.
28 See n. 26 above for the main sources. See Ch. 5, pp. 162–4, for the battle of Krasnyi. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky was present at Fére-Champenoise and gives a good description of the final stages of the battle: Opisanie 1814, pp. 294–313. P. Pototskii, Istoriia gvardeiskoi artillerii, SPB, 1896, pp. 300–310, has interesting details on the role of the Guards horse artillery.
29 For an excellent and succinct interpretation of Talleyrand’s views and role in 1814, see Philip Dwyer, Talleyrand, Harlow, 2002, pp. 124–40. For Napoleon’s movements and the Council of Regency, Houssaye, Napoleon, pp. 317–70.
30 Count A. de Nesselrode (ed.), Lettres et papiers du Chancelier Comte du Nesselrode 1760–1850, Paris, n.d., vol. 5, pp. 183–4, 28 March 1814.
31 Löwenstern, Mémoires, vol. 2, p. 376. I. Burskii, Istoriia 8-go gusarskago Lubenskago polka, Odessa, 1913, pp. 115–17. I. Radozhitskii, Pokhodnyia zapiski artillerista s 1812 po 1816 god, 3 vols., Moscow, 1835, vol. 3, pp. 109–10.
32 Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Opisanie 1814, p. 327.
33 There is a detailed narrative of the battle in Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814, vol. 1, pp. 506–60, and Friederich, Feldzug, pp. 301–10.
34 Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814, vol. 1, pp. 534–7. Eugen, Memoiren, vol. 3, pp. 278–90.
35 Langeron, Mémoires, pp. 465–73.
36 See e.g. his orders to Langeron: RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3399, fo. 160ii, 16 March 1814 (OS), and his plea to Wrede, in Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Opisanie 1814, p. 324. M. F. Orlov, ‘Kapitulatsiia Parizha 1814 g.’, VS, 37/6, 1864, pp. 287–309.
37 See e.g. Castlereagh’s comment to the Prince Regent that the Russian Guards were ‘the most splendid that can be imagined’: Castlereagh, vol. 9, 30 Jan. 1814, pp. 210–12.
38 Burghersh, Operations, pp. 250–52. Baron de Vitrolles, Mémoires et relations politiques, 3 vols., Paris, 1884, vol. 1, p. 316.
39 Orlov, ‘Kapitulatsiia’, p. 300. Vitrolles, Mémoires, vol. 1, pp. 311–12.
40 On Talleyrand, see n. 29 above. J. Hanoteau (ed.), Mémoires du Général de Caulaincourt, Duc de Vicenze, 3 vols., Paris, 1933, vol. 3, pp. 207–30. Houssaye, Napoleon, pp. 470–99. For Talleyrand’s own account of these days, see Mémoires du Prince de Talleyrand, Paris, 1891, pp. 156–67.
41 All the key documents of these days are reproduced between pp. 403 and 416 of SIRIO, 31, 1881: these include the various allied declarations, senatorial resolutions, Marmont’s statements and a short commentary by Nesselrode.
42 For Alexander’s letter to Louis XVIII of 17 April, see SIRIO, 31, 1881, pp. 411–12. Castlereagh, vol. 9, pp. 450–51, reproduces Charles Stewart’s letter to Bathurst of 7 April denouncing the offer of Elba but there is no mention of his brother’s letter to Bathurst of 13 April: this is published as no. 4, pp. 420–3, in Baron Fain, Manuscrit de Mil Huit Cent Quatorze, Paris, 1825. Since there is nothing that is implausible in the content of the letter and no reason to think that Fain invented it, the likeliest interpretation is that it was not included in the collection by Lord Londonderry because he did not think it reflected well on his brother. He does include many other letters to Bathurst. In Castlereagh’s defence, he was seeking to sustain a fait accompli created by others.
43 Schwarzenberg, Schwarzenberg, p. 337.
44 Löwenstern, Mémoires, vol. 2, pp. 342, 419–23. A. Zaitsev, Vospominaniia o pokhodakh 1812 goda, Moscow, 1853, pp. 29–34. P. Nazarov, ‘Zapiski soldata Pamfila Nazarova’, RS, 9/8, 1878, pp. 539–40. RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3399, fo. 172ii, Volkonsky to Barclay, 2 April 1814 (OS), on the immediate departure of the irregular cavalry. Radozhitskii, Pokhodnyia zapiski, vol. 3, pp. 236–7, on the tremendous reception given to the returning Russian troops in Silesia, thanks partly to the king, who had given 3 million talers for parties and meals in their honour. Dnevnik Pavla Pushchina, Leningrad, 1987, pp. 166–73, on the Guards’ journey home.
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Archives
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Fond 46: A. S. Kologrivov
Fond 103: M. B. Barclay de Tolly
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Fond 140: M. G. Titov
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Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace Page 82
