Napoleon Bonaparte

by Alan Schom

  By June 13 Napoleon was back at Eylau instructing his commanders on the tactics required of them as they closed in — he hoped for the final time — on the slippery Bennigsen. Lannes was dispatched to the Domnau area, where Napoleon thought the big battle would take place. His orders were to catch up with and hold Bennigsen there until he could arrive with Mortier’s, Victor’s, and Ney’s corps, as well as Bessières’s Imperial Guard.

  Bennigsen with 60,000 or so troops was determined to cut off and annihilate Lannes’s force of 26,000. But in fact Lannes’s three infantry divisions with an attached division and Grouchy’s two cavalry divisions instead closed in on Bennigsen’s two corps at the small town of Friedland on the serpentine Alle River, well to the east of the main road to Königsberg, which lay some thirty miles to the northwest.

  At eight o’clock on the morning of June 14 the situation hardly looked encouraging for the vastly outnumbered Lannes. Tough and reliable even in the most difficult of situations, he was a commander Napoleon could always count on. Napoleon for his part was en route for the day of reckoning that had been evading him for more than six months now. With his arrival the French force now totaled 80,000 men, as opposed to Bennigsen’s 60,000. If the Russians did not escape yet again, Bonaparte felt confident that he finally had them.

  The fighting had begun at 3:00 A.M. The soldiers were beyond exhaustion when, thirteen hours later, at 4:00 P.M. Napoleon launched his offensive, with Mortier on the French left flank, Lannes still in the center but buttressed by Victor, and Ney on the extreme right flank. Facing them were Gorchakov’s corps covering the Russian right to the center, divided by the swift-flowing Mühlen River, and Bagration’s force covering the left-center all the way to the extreme left Russian flank extending to the Alle, where, on the opposite shore, the Cossack cavalry was moving forward.

  Napoleon’s aim was to strike hard at Bagration’s overextended left flank with Ney’s fresh corps, then bring up Victor’s reserve corps from behind Lannes’s extreme right. It all went just as planned, and so quickly did the Russian line crumble and fall back that French artillerymen literally had to push their guns forward by hand, until within point-blank range of the Russian infantry, which French gunners then ruthlessly destroyed with case shot. Although Gorchakov’s infantry along with Uvarov’s cavalry attacked the French left in force, Mortier and Grouchy held their own. Bagration then tried to halt Ney’s onslaught with a bayonet attack, but that too failed, as Dupont’s division continued forward, their own lethal bayonets serving them only too well.

  A desperate Bennigsen now unleashed the Russian Imperial Guard, Alexander’s much vaunted elite, only to see even them trodden under by the advancing French. By 8:30 that evening Ney’s corps had secured Friedland proper, although it was put to the torch by the fleeing Russians. And then, offering the coup de grâce, Napoleon ordered forty squadrons of Grouchy’s cavalry forward, only to see them halted momentarily by Uvarov’s enterprising but smaller force of twenty-five squadrons. Grouchy was no Murat, and this was one battle that absent cavalryman would have loved.

  Nevertheless the Battle of Friedland was clearly a French victory, as all Russian forces retreated under a hail of fire, the French continuing their pursuit until 11:00 P.M. For once French losses were relatively small — 8,000 men, as opposed to nearly 20,000 Russian casualties. There were few Russian prisoners, however, with eighty guns taken, but Bennigsen had finally been decisively defeated. Four days later Czar Alexander reluctantly sued for peace, an armistice going into effect on June 23, 1807. For the first time since leaving Warsaw, Napoleon could smile, having achieved his objective of crushing the czar’s forces. “My children have celebrated the anniversary of Marengo in a worthy manner,” he wrote Josephine the day after the battle, as Soult took Königsberg and Bennigsen fled up the Baltic coast to a position on the other side of the Niemen (Neman) near a small place called Tilsit.[715]

  As the last of the sulfuric smoke lifted over the battlefield of Friedland on June 14, Napoleon successfully brought to a close the long, bloody, destructive, and totally unnecessary military rampage that he had unleashed in the autumn of 1805, which had soon included the major battles of Ulm and Austerlitz, Jena and Auerstädt, Eylau, and now finally Friedland. Some 150,000 men had been killed, wounded, or maimed for life. Following the Battle of Eylau even the patriotic French troops no longer called out the now-obligatory “Vive l’Empereur!” but instead pleaded for “bread and peace!” The same sentiment was echoed in the streets of Paris. Archbishop de Belloy ordered yet another Te Deum in Nôtre-Dame Cathedral — as he had done after each of the previous victories — but the ancient cathedral bells tolled, not chimed, and mothers and fathers prayed that still another 80,000 French young men would be spared conscription next year. Enough was enough. “This is no longer warfare,” an exhausted Bennigsen lamented to Archduke Constantine, “it is a veritable bloodbath.” There must be peace at last.[716]

  Following an interview with the defeated ruler on June 17, Ambassador Lord Gower reported Czar Alexander I as saying that he “would never stoop to [negotiate with] Bonaparte, he would rather retire to Kazan or even to Tobolsk.” But the czar’s generals, and Bennigsen in particular, protested the folly of continuing this “bloodbath.” Talleyrand, who learned of Napoleon’s latest battle on June 18, while still at Danzig, echoed the Russian general’s sentiments:

  Sire, I have finally heard some details about the battle of Friedland...But it is not merely because of the glory of the moment that I now rejoice. Rather, I like to think of it as a precursor, or guarantor of peace to come, that will ensure the repose Your Majesty and your people so richly deserve, after so much toil, hardship, and danger...[717]

  Meanwhile Napoleon’s agents intimated to the czar that Russia would be permitted to extend its frontiers westward one hundred miles to the Vistula if peace were now signed. The czar finally relented, signing an armistice with France on June 22. Negotiations could begin.[718] “The alliance of France and Russia has always been the object of my desires,” a contented Napoleon wrote the Russian ruler two days later.

  Thus it was that Czar Alexander’s carriage and strong cavalry escort arrived at the muddy banks of the Niemen at 11 o’clock on the morning of June 25, where he was kept waiting half an hour before Napoleon rode up on the opposite shore. Both men and their staffs boarded large boats that were rowed out to a raft bearing two tents, anchored at the midway point of the river. Arriving first, Napoleon in his famous green guard’s uniform and wearing only one decoration — the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honor — heartily embraced the amazed Russian leader as he stepped aboard the platform. There he stood in his dark blue uniform with enormous gold epaulettes, he so fair and blond, his hair already thinning, towering a full head above the almost dwarflike Corsican, whose lack of height was minimized only slightly by his beaver hat and high black boots.

  They quickly walked over to one of the tents and sat alone for fifty minutes of initial talks. Afterward, smiling, they introduced their respective staffs, and Alexander helped Napoleon into his boat. At the czar’s request, Napoleon had also agreed to an armistice with shattered Prussia, and that was signed that same afternoon by Marshal Berthier and General Kalkreuth for Friedrich Wilhelm III, who had been excluded from this meeting by Napoleon. Indeed, the Prussian leader, humiliated and fuming, had passed the entire time on his horse on the right bank of the Niemen, awaiting the czar’s return. As for the thirty-two-year-old czar, who had come to Tilsit with a deep loathing for the French leader, he came away from this meeting as if hypnotized, admiring him, almost fawning over him, to the utter astonishment of his aides and staff. “Everyone has loved, and hated me,” Napoleon once commented. “Everyone has taken me up, dropped me, and then taken me up again,” as Alexander now proved.[719]

  At the second meeting on the raft the following day, the Prussian king accompanied Alexander, Napoleon remaining stiff and arrogant. Rather stilted talks resumed among the three men; Napoleon closed t
he meeting by turning his back on Friedrich Wilhelm and inviting Alexander alone to dinner that night at his headquarters in Tilsit. The Prussian was affronted, as Napoleon had intended.

  Thereafter until the conclusion of the negotiations at Tilsit, the enraptured czar dined with Napoleon every afternoon, and every evening Napoleon took tea, Russian-style, with Alexander, whose headquarters had now been moved across the Niemen to Tilsit. The two emperors met daily for several hours in Bonaparte’s small village house, usually alone. Indeed, when Foreign Minister Talleyrand arrived on June 29, he was invited neither to participate directly nor even to share Napoleon’s confidence until most of the major decisions had already been taken. “If peace is not concluded in a fortnight’s time,” Savary informed Talleyrand on his arrival, “Napoleon will cross the Niemen.” Looking at him in his famous expressionless manner, the foreign minister coolly replied, “And what, pray tell, might he be doing on the other side of the Niemen?”

  As Talleyrand no longer had Napoleon’s ear — which greatly embarrassed him before the Prussian monarch and the czar, with whom he had hitherto had close relations — he gave advice to General Savary to pass on to his master, especially regarding the role of France in central and eastern Europe:

  You must make him abandon this insane idea of occupying Poland. Nothing can be achieved with these people. The only thing they do is organize disorder. Now is the ideal time to end this and pull out with honor...If he does not do this...he will only be brought back here with greater problems later, all of which can be avoided if he stops his plans [for occupation] today.[720]

  Napoleon, however, who was infallible in all matters from drama critique to finance to foreign affairs, had other views on this subject. Indeed, he found Talleyrand’s “moderation” rather tedious.

  The arrival of the Prussian queen, Louise, on July 6 certainly added a little grace and cheer to these otherwise masculine negotiations dominated by dour Corsican brusqueness. When she attempted to discuss peace terms, however, Napoleon merely smiled condescendingly and complimented her on her dress. “Shall we talk only of chiffons at such a solemn moment as this?” she replied in surprise. Napoleon, who had never permitted Josephine or any other woman to discuss politics with him, had no intention of beginning now. “The Queen of Prussia dined with me yesterday,” Napoleon informed his wife the next day. “I had to check myself from not giving in to her and making even more concessions to her husband. But I was most gallant, while holding to my political intentions.” Nevertheless, he teased, he did in fact find her “fort aimable,” closing, “when you read this letter, peace with Prussia and Russia will have been concluded.”[721]

  Following mutual troop inspections by both the czar and Napoleon, the two emperors often went out on long rides together and discussed a great variety of subjects beyond the prying eyes and ears of their advisers. Negotiations were finally closed as the two men prepared to break camp following the signing of the draft treaties on July 7, by Foreign Minister Talleyrand and Prince Kurakin. A final treaty was signed with Prussia two days later. Within the space of those couple of weeks together Napoleon had won over the formerly hostile but highly impressionable and mercurial Alexander I — indeed, to an almost embarrassing degree.[722]

  The terms of the treaties with Russia and Prussia were not as generous as Alexander had originally been led to believe by Napoleon. They did, however, redesign the map of Europe, leaving France and Russia the undisputed arbiters of the entire continent. The text of the Treaty of Tilsit was in fact made up of three treaties, the “Patent Treaty,” the “Separate and Secret Articles,” and the “Treaty of Alliance,” most of this kept secret and published for the first time only in 1891. “Out of regard for the emperor of all the Russias,” Napoleon agreed to restore some of the Prussian territories east of the Elbe, although not including the enclave of Cottbus (which went to Saxony) and the newly created Duchy of Warsaw, which France controlled directly. The Duke of Warsaw was to be Napoleon’s straw man, namely the elector — soon to be raised to king — of Saxony. Danzig was to be restored as an independent city. Russia got the Polish district of Bialystok (but not all the land earlier promised by Napoleon). French garrisons were to occupy the Duchies of Saxe-Coburg, Oldenburg, and Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The czar agreed to attempt to mediate a peace treaty between England and France, while Napoleon would do the same for Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Russia lost land, however, including the Turkish provinces of Moldavia and Walachia. The czar also recognized three new Bonaparte kingdoms, Louis’s in Holland, Joseph’s in Naples, and Jérôme’s in the newly-created state of Westphalia. In addition Alexander recognized the Confederation of the Rhine. Napoleon and Alexander guaranteed each other’s new territories. The Secret Articles also required Russia to hand over to France the Adriatic seaport of Cattaro (now Kotor) and the Ionian Islands. In exchange for giving Hannover to Westphalia, Prussia was to receive an equivalent property on the left bank of the Elbe. The Treaty of Military Alliance required France and Russia to support each other “in every war...against any European Power.” In the event England refused to make peace with France, Russia could then make “common cause with France.” Russia would close its ports to England and would then demand that Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Lisbon do likewise “and to declare war upon England...If Sweden declines to do so, Denmark shall be constrained to declare war upon her in turn.” Finally, if the Sublime Porte declined to accept French mediation between the Ottoman Empire and Russia, France agreed to take Russia’s side in their quarrel and seize “all the provinces of the Ottoman Empire in Europe, except Constantinople and Rumelia” — in other words, the whole of modern Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece.

  The Treaty of Tilsit was followed two days later, on July 9, by one between France and Prussia, thereby concluding the series of battles following Austerlitz. This ill-advised convention helped further upset the whole political balance of Europe, which had so worried Talleyrand since Pressburg. In fact Prussia lost one-third of her entire territory and nearly one half of her population — 4.5 of 10 million — to France and the Confederation of the Rhine. Naturally Prussia would be forbidden to have any further commercial or maritime contact with its former British ally. France agreed to remove all troops of occupation from Prussia within two and a half months, after war “contributions” imposed on the country had been paid. But as that was impossible after having lost nearly half its taxpayers, in reality Prussia would remain an occupied French satellite.

  The treaties signed at Tilsit literally turned Europe topsy-turvy. The whole of western Europe was either occupied or controlled by French armies under the orders of one man, Napoleon Bonaparte. The Poles, who had seen their country earlier partitioned and denied independence by Austria, Russia, and Prussia, now came largely under the French yoke for their fourth partitioning. By humiliating and emasculating Prussia, now a nominal French ally, Bonaparte had in reality created a resentful, stubborn, bitter, and ultimately powerful foe set on his destruction. England, which in the summer of 1806 had offered France a most generous peace settlement, was now instead to have the last of its European ports and markets (not to mention the allies of its coalition) cut off, and would be fighting for its very life, because Napoleon alone demanded it. All these events had occurred because of his refusal to withdraw troops from occupied lands in the summer of 1805, when he still had the opportunity to do so. That in turn had led to Austerlitz, when French armies were then unleashed throughout the German states, Prussia, and Poland, terminating on a raft in the Niemen. The result: the undying hatred of the whole of Europe for Napoleon and France. Nor can one forget Talleyrand’s wise advice to him back at Tilsit, that the consequences of not withdrawing from eastern Europe and making a moderate peace would inevitably require his return there to cope “with greater problems later.”

  The extraordinary terms dictated to Russia and Prussia at Tilsit over everyone’s objections proved to be the point of no return in Napoleon’s career, the final moment ir
retrievably lost, for which the whole of Europe would now pay the full price over the next seven years. Bonaparte, who had needed a temporary army of 200,000 men to launch this war, would thereafter require a permanent one of 600,000 men to maintain “the peace” in French-occupied Europe.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – Iberia

  ‘To choose the right moment in which to act is the great art of men. What one can do easily in 1807 perhaps cannot be done under any circumstances in 1810.’

  “What do you think of all these victories, this armistice, this new peace treaty?” a delighted Regnault de Saint-Angély exclaimed to another Bonapartist officer, General Thibaudeau, on Napoleon’s return to Paris on July 27, 1807, after a ten-month absence.[723] “Napoleon is beyond the ken of normal human history,” an equally delighted Comte Seguier echoed. “He belongs to the heroic times of yesteryear.”[724] The French stock exchange rose dramatically, and Paris rejoiced with genuine enthusiasm, as the first of the victorious French legions marched through the streets of the capital. A grateful nation, which had seen several hundred thousand French boys march off to war, rejoiced as they never had, not even after Austerlitz. But if, following the signing of the Treaty of Pressburg, Bonaparte had returned to face a menacing financial disaster, now he confronted a ministerial crisis of almost equal proportions, requiring his immediate intervention. “I have done enough soldiering. I must now play the prime minister for a bit,” he explained as he convened an urgent cabinet meeting at St.-Cloud.