Buoyed by the enthusiasm of the younger men, he chose to ignore the state of mind of many of those with greater experience. Much of the revolutionary ardour that had fired the French armies of the 1790s and early 1800s had been quenched by 1812. ‘From the moment Napoleon came to power, military mores changed rapidly, the union of hearts disappeared along with poverty and the taste for material well-being and the comforts of life crept into our camps, which filled up with unnecessary mouths and numerous carriages,’ in the words of General Berthezène. ‘Forgetting the fortunate experiences of his immortal campaigns in Italy, of the immense superiority gained by habituation to privation and contempt for superfluity, the Emperor believed it to be to his advantage to encourage this corruption.’ He had given his marshals and generals titles, lands and pensions; they became less willing to forsake their warm beds and palaces, their wives and families for the rigours of the bivouac and the uncertainties of war. Many were entering middle age; they could hardly expect to win greater glory, but could lose everything they had and leave their families destitute.5
Napoleon’s marshals, senior generals and entourage were mostly opposed to the war for specific reasons: the distances involved, the terrain, the nature of the enemy, the pointlessness, the lack of any advantage to be gained from it, and the possible consequences on the political situation back in France. Even the commander of the Polish contingent, Poniatowski, warned him against invading Russia. Yet such was Napoleon’s extraordinary aura that even the most sceptical submitted to the spell and believed in his ‘star’. ‘It was so sweet to abandon oneself to that star!’ reminisced Ségur. ‘It blinded us, it shone so high, so brilliant, it had worked such miracles!’6
While Napoleon was involving half the states of Europe in the forthcoming war, he was determined not to enlist them as real allies, because he meant to keep his options open. Nor did he bother to prepare the ground at the diplomatic level – quite the contrary. On 27 January 1812, under the pretext that the Continental System was not being enforced rigorously there, he sent his armies into Swedish Pomerania and took possession. He followed this up with a demand to Sweden for an alliance against Russia and a contingent of troops. When this was rejected, he 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 envoy was in St Petersburg asking for a treaty with Russia, which was duly signed on 5 April.
Napoleon failed to encourage the Turks to carry on fighting the Russians in the Balkans, with the result that they would soon make peace, allowing Russia to transfer troops from there to face him. His treatment of Austria and Prussia meant he had two disgruntled allies at his back only waiting for a chance to abandon or even turn against him. This was careless in view of the rising tide of anti-French feeling in Germany. Throughout 1811 reports from French commanders and diplomatic agents there alerted him to the growing danger. In Prussia, the king was barely able to contain the national feeling, particularly strong in the army. ‘The ferment has reached the highest degree, and the wildest hopes are being fostered and cherished with enthusiasm,’ reported a nervous Jérôme from neighbouring Westphalia in December. ‘People are quoting the example of Spain, and if it comes to war, all the lands lying between the Rhine and the Oder will be embraced by a vast and active insurrection.’7
Napoleon’s lack of contingency planning accords with other evidence that he was confident war could be avoided, and that the military build-up was aimed principally to cow Alexander into submission. In this he misjudged the situation catastrophically; he knew Alexander was weak and stubborn, and with his wide experience of men he should have known that stubborn men, however weak, grow more stubborn when pushed. Alexander could not step back from the brink without discrediting himself forever in the eyes of his subjects, thereby exposing himself to a fate like his father’s. By now, even a face-saver over Poland would not have sufficed, as the tsar had rallied to his side an impressive array of Napoleon’s enemies, representing a spectrum of causes. They included Germaine de Staël, who lent him the intellectual credibility of supporting liberalism, the fiercely anti-French German nationalist Baron Karl vom Stein, who hoped to bring about the regeneration and unification of Germany, and Napoleon’s old enemy Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo, pursuing his vendetta. Alexander also dreamed of playing a grand part on the world stage, and was beginning to see his duel with Napoleon as not just a challenge, but an opportunity.
If it did come to war, Napoleon needed to inflict such a shattering blow that the Russian army would lose all ability and will to resist, as the Prussian had following Jena. But his campaign of 1807 had shown that speed was not achievable in this part of the world, and that of 1809 had revealed that his enemies had got wise to his tactics and become deft at slipping out of the traps he set for them. In a sparsely populated area where he had no spies, he would be operating in the dark. And by concentrating such a huge force he cancelled out any possibility of swift manoeuvring.
The enterprise presented a logistical nightmare. Napoleon had read every book he could lay his hands on regarding the topography, climate and characteristics of the theatre of operations. He had pored over maps, calculating distances and imagining the conditions in which he would have to operate. The starting point, the Russian frontier on the Niemen, was some 1,500 kilometres from Paris, and the two principal Russian cities, St Petersburg and Moscow, were respectively 650 and 950 kilometres beyond that. The stretch of 300 kilometres on the western side of the border and 500 beyond it was very poor, sparsely populated country with rudimentary roads and bridges, few towns, numerous rivers, bogs and forests to get lost in, and scant resources. The Grande Armée would have to take with it everything it needed.
Perhaps more important than any of these considerations was that a change had taken place in the nature of war, and the kind of brilliant victories he had achieved in the past would no longer yield the same results; the verdict of the battlefield had ceased to be decisive. Napoleon still believed that if an enemy’s army was defeated and its capital occupied, it would be forced to sue for peace and then to abide by its terms, however onerous, even though Spain had revealed this not to be so. And although he had seen the Russian soldiers let themselves be hacked to pieces at Eylau and Friedland rather than surrender, he had not drawn the conclusion that, given the size of the country, there would always be more to take their place, and he was therefore bound to lose a war of attrition.
There were only two areas in which the Russian state was vulnerable. Having recently conquered a huge amount of territory and not had time to absorb or fully pacify its indigenous populations, it could be challenged by multiple national insurrections. And, based as it was on serfdom, it could be destabilised by revolution. Yet these were two options that Napoleon did not wish to use, since they would undermine his preferred outcome – a renewal of his alliance with Alexander.
On 24 April Kurakin delivered a letter from Alexander in which the tsar declared that no more talks could take place unless Napoleon withdrew all his troops west of the Rhine, which was tantamount to a declaration of war. In his reply, delivered three days later, Napoleon expressed regret that the tsar should be ordering him 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.8
He could delay no 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 bilateral withdrawal of French and British troops from the Iberian Peninsula, with Joseph remaining King of Spain and its former rulers being allow
ed back into Portugal, he expected nothing to come of it. He therefore strengthened France’s coastal defences and organised a national guard of 100,000 men who could be called out in an emergency. To remind people of their duty, he had the man who had capitulated at Bailén, General Dupont, retried and given a stiffer sentence. He also put in hand public works projects including five abattoirs, two aqueducts, three fountains, a canal, eleven markets, three bridges, a granary, a university, an observatory, a college of art, and refurbishments to or further work on an opera, a conservatoire, the national archives, a ministry, several palaces, a temple, a church, cemeteries, embankments and streets.9
At their last meeting, on the eve of Napoleon’s departure, the prefect of police Étienne Pasquier voiced fears about the possibility of an attempt by his enemies to seize power while he was so far away. ‘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, enterprise I have ever undertaken; but one must accomplish what has been undertaken. Goodbye Monsieur le Préfet.”’10
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 Fain as the emperor left Saint-Cloud on Saturday, 9 May with Marie-Louise. At Mainz he reviewed troops and received the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt 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 faithful vassals.11
On 16 May he was met by the king and queen of Saxony, who had driven out to greet him, and together they made their entry into Dresden by torchlight as the cannon thundered salutes and the church bells pealed. His lever the next morning was graced by several ruling princes. The queen of Westphalia and the Grand Duke of Würzburg arrived later that day, and the emperor and empress of Austria the next. They were joined a couple of days later by Frederick William of Prussia and his son the crown prince.
Napoleon had taken over the royal palace, obligingly vacated by the king, in which he held court attended by all the crowned heads present, ‘whose deference to Napoleon went far beyond anything one could imagine’, in the words of his aide Boniface de Castellane. After they had cringed at his lever every morning, they followed him to attend the toilette of Marie-Louise. They watched her pick her way through an astonishing quantity of jewellery, trying on and discarding one piece after another, 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 some years earlier.12
In the evenings they dined off the silver-gilt dinner service Marie-Louise had been given as a wedding present by the city of Paris, which she had thoughtfully brought along. The company assembled and entered 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: ‘L’Empereur!’ He was also the only one present who kept his hat on. ‘Napoleon was indeed God at Dresden, the king amongst kings: it was on him that all eyes were turned; it was to him and around him that all the august people brought together in the King of Saxony’s palace gathered,’ in the words of one observer.13
There were balls, banquets, theatrical performances and hunting parties, all focused on Napoleon in a choreographed display of power intended to remind his allies of their subjection to him. He was still hoping that when he saw himself isolated and faced with such an array of power Alexander might agree to negotiate. He still felt what Méneval described as ‘an extreme repugnance’ for going to war, and clung to the delusion that the tsar’s resolve would crumble. ‘Never have the reason and judgement of a man been more deceived, more led astray, more dominated by his imagination and his passions than those of the Emperor in some matters,’ noted Caulaincourt after one of their meetings.14
Napoleon had convinced himself that Alexander was being manipulated by his entourage, and believing that if only he could talk to him directly or through some trusted third party they would reach an understanding, he despatched his aide Louis de Narbonne to the tsar’s headquarters at Vilna (Vilnius). Alexander received him coolly, and sent him back to Dresden. Napoleon then sent a courier to Lauriston in St Petersburg, instructing him to go to Alexander at Vilna and talk sense into him, but he was denied permission and told to leave Russia.
Napoleon had left himself with no option other than to fight, and he put on a brave face. ‘Never has an expedition against them been more certain of success,’ he said to Fain, pointing out that all his former enemies were now allies. ‘Never again will such a favourable concourse of circumstances present itself; I feel it drawing me in, and if the Emperor Alexander persists in refusing my proposals, I shall cross the Niemen!’ Yet he had no fixed idea as to what he would do after that.15
‘My enterprise is one of those to which patience is the key,’ he explained to Metternich. ‘The more patient will triumph. I will open the campaign by crossing the Niemen, and it will end at Smolensk and Minsk. That is where I shall stop. I will fortify those two points, and at Vilna, where I shall make my headquarters during the coming winter, I shall apply myself to the organisation of Lithuania, which is burning to be delivered from the Russian yoke. I shall wait, and we shall see which of us will grow tired first – I of making my army live at the expense of Russia, or Alexander of nourishing my army at the expense of his country. I may well myself go and spend the harshest months of the winter in Paris.’ And if Alexander did not sue for peace that year, Napoleon would mount another campaign in 1813, into the heart of Russia. ‘It is, as I have already told you, only a question of time,’ he assured Metternich. He said much the same to Cambacérès, whom he assured that he would restore Poland up to the river Dnieper, and would go no further.16
He was nevertheless open to every possibility. ‘If I invade Russia, I will perhaps go as far as Moscow,’ he wrote in his instructions to one of his diplomats. ‘One or two battles will open the road for me. Moscow is the real capital of the empire. Having seized that, I will find peace there.’ He added that if the war were to drag on, he would leave the job to the Poles, reinforced by 50,000 French.17
He still refused to see Alexander as an enemy to be defeated, thinking of him as an ally to be brought back to heel, which he wished to do with as little unpleasantness as possible and a minimum of damage. ‘I will make war on Alexander in all courtesy, with 2,000 guns and 500,000 soldiers, without starting an insurrection,’ he explained. But he still clung to the hope that he would not have to do even that. ‘I may even not cross the Niemen,’ he wrote to Cambacérès; his aide Dezydery Chłapowski was convinced that he was only bluffing, and had no intention of invading Russia at all.18
Talleyrand, Narbonne and Maret were among those who advocated creating a Polish state as a bulwark against Russian expansion, and Napoleon did not rule this out. He did have to keep the Poles on his side, and he needed to prime, even if he did not come to fire it, the weapon of Polish national insurrection in Russia’s western provinces. In order to do this, he must send a clever man to Warsaw as an unofficial personal ambassador. He had originally selected Talleyrand for this purpose, but his choice now fell on the Abbé de Pradt, Archbishop of Malines. He was to encourage the Poles to proclaim the resurrection of the Polish state, without committing himself or his imperial master to backing it.19
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Napoleon gave some thought to the question of whom to put on the Polish throne if he did decide to restore the kingdom. It would be too important a place for Murat or Eugène, both of whom believed themselves to be in line for the job. He did consider Davout, a good soldier and administrator popular with the Poles, but the example of Bernadotte raised questions as to future loyalty – and Napoleon never entirely got over his jealousy at having been outshone by Davout’s feat at Auerstadt. ‘I’ll put Jérôme on it, I’ll create a fine kingdom for him,’ he told Caulaincourt. ‘But he must achieve something, for the Poles like glory.’ He duly put Jérôme in command of an army corps and directed him to Warsaw, where he was supposed to win the love of the Poles.
Thrilled at being given a command, Jérôme kitted himself out with helmet and breastplate emblazoned with the insignia of his Order of Union, with its eagles, lions and serpents. He made a regal entry into the Polish capital and announced that he had come to spill his blood for the Polish cause. He sent back the mistress he had brought from Kassel and took a Polish one. The Poles found him overbearing and ridiculous, and were put off by the behaviour of his troops. More important, most reasoning Poles sensed the lack of commitment, and indeed of purpose, in Napoleon’s policy. He had assembled the greatest army the world had ever seen, with no specific goal; by definition, aimless wars cannot be won.20
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