Napoleon the Great

by Andrew Roberts

  Such a victory ought to be all the easier because, as he told Joseph of his new subjects, ‘The Spanish people are despicable and cowardly, and remind me of Arabs I have known.’105

  Napoleon had used his time in Paris productively, ensuring that the legislature passed a measure calling up 160,000 recruits from the classes of 1806 to 1809. He visited a panorama depicting Tilsit in the Boulevard des Capucines on the 21st, and the next day left for Erfurt, 400 miles away, a distance he covered in five days.

  The conference at Erfurt took place against a background of noticeably cooler Franco-Russian relations. It was, as he put it to Savary, ‘the moment to judge the solidity of my work at Tilsit’.106 Napoleon had been writing warm letters to Alexander throughout the year – ‘In these few lines I’ve expressed my entire soul to your Majesty … our work at Tilsit will determine the destiny of the world’ – but with the crisis of the Friedland defeat abated and Finland ingested into his Empire, Alexander was growing lukewarm about an alliance that was costing him a good deal domestically because of the deeply unpopular Continental System.107 Earlier that month he had written to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, saying ‘Our interest obliged me’ to conclude an alliance with Napoleon, but ‘We will see his fall with calmness, if such is the will of God … the wisest policy is to await the right moment to take measures.’108 Going to Erfurt was necessary, he told her, because ‘it would save Austria and conserve its strength for the true moment when it can be used for the general good. This moment may be near, but it has not sounded; to accelerate it would be to ruin everything, to lose everything.’ Meanwhile, Russia ‘must be able to breathe freely for a while and, during this precious time, augment our means and our forces … It is only in the most profound silence that we must work, and not in publicizing our armaments and our preparations, nor in declaring loudly against the one whom we are defying.’109 In these private letters Alexander still called him ‘Bonaparte’ or sometimes ‘the Corsican’.110 While ordering his foreign minister, Count Nikolai Rumiantsev, to stay close to France, Alexander was preparing, diplomatically and militarily, for ‘the right moment to take measures’.

  The pretty Thuringian town of Erfurt was chosen for the conference because it was a French enclave in the middle of the Confederation of the Rhine, a principality that had been a personal fiefdom of Napoleon’s since Tilsit. Napoleon met Alexander on the road 5 miles outside the town on Wednesday, September 28; they descended from their carriages and ‘cordially embraced’.111 Alexander wore the grand cross of the Légion d’Honneur, Napoleon the Russian order of St Andrew. At Tilsit Alexander had given Napoleon the malachite furniture now in the Emperor’s Salon at the Grand Trianon at Versailles, so at Erfurt Napoleon gave Alexander one of only two sets of the Sèvres porcelain Egyptian service which featured scenes from Denon’s Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte. It has rightly been described as one of the most lavish gifts ever given by one sovereign to another.112* Napoleon placed Alexander at his right hand at meals, they visited each other’s apartments, led each other down to the entrance halls on receiving and saying farewell each time, and dined together almost every day. They even took it in turns to give the grand marshal the night-watch passwords every evening.

  One can still see where the Tsar lodged in the Angerplatz, and where Napoleon stayed in what is now the state chancellery, as well as where they met in the classically baroque 1715 Kaisersaal. Napoleon took a large entourage, including Berthier, Duroc, Maret, Champagny (the foreign minister), Rémusat, Savary, Caulaincourt, Daru, Lauriston, Méneval, Fain, his doctor Yvan, four equerries and eight pages.113 He had dismissed Talleyrand as foreign minister in August 1807 because the kings of Bavaria and Württemberg had complained about how much he was demanding in bribes.114 He nevertheless retained him as Vice-Grand Elector, with access to the palaces and his person. Napoleon enjoyed Talleyrand’s company – ‘You are aware of the esteem and attachment I entertain for that minister,’ he told Rapp – so he was therefore prepared to overlook, and perhaps did not fully realize, that this access allowed Talleyrand to sell secrets whenever he chose. He took him to Erfurt for his experience and advice. Since Talleyrand had encouraged Napoleon to execute the Duc d’Enghien, drew up the Berlin Decrees instituting the Continental System and supported the invasion of Spain, it is a wonder that he still took his advice, but he did. It was a serious error to bring him now, because Talleyrand hadn’t forgiven Napoleon for his dismissal, and (in return for cash) he leaked French plans to both the Russians and the Austrians, while advising Napoleon to withdraw from Germany.115 ‘Sire,’ Talleyrand said to Alexander at the first of several secret meetings at Erfurt, ‘what have you come to do here? It is for you to save Europe, and the only way of doing this will be for you to resist Napoleon. The French are a civilised people; their sovereign is not.’116

  Alexander brought twenty-six senior officials in his entourage. There were also four kings present – those of Bavaria, Saxony, Westphalia and Württemberg – as well as the Prince Primate of the Confederation, Karl Dalberg, two grand dukes and twenty other princes, whose order of precedence was established by the date that they acceded to the Rhine Confederation. (Bausset rightly identified this as a clever move by Napoleon to give the Confederation more prestige.117) The overt friendliness – and the balls, concerts, reviews, receptions, banquets, plays, hunting trips and fireworks – did not mean that the negotiations were easy. Most of the important discussions were conducted tête-à-tête between the two emperors. ‘Your Emperor Alexander is as stubborn as a mule,’ Napoleon told Caulaincourt. ‘He plays deaf when things are said that he is reluctant to hear.’118 Napoleon teased Caulaincourt about being pro-Russian (hence the ‘your’) but it was true that the Tsar didn’t want to listen to Napoleon’s evidence of Russian customs inspectors surreptitiously allowing British produce into St Petersburg and elsewhere. At one point during the negotiations, Napoleon threw his hat on the ground and started kicking it. ‘You’re hot-tempered while I’m stubborn,’ said an unruffled Alexander. ‘But by anger no one can get anywhere with me. Let’s talk, discuss things, otherwise I will leave.’119

  Russia’s adherence to the Continental System had damaged her economy, preventing her from selling wheat, timber, tallow and hemp to Britain. The mere existence of the Duchy of Warsaw left her concerned about the re-emergence of a kingdom of Poland. For his part, Napoleon looked unfavourably on Russian schemes against Turkey, not wanting a Russian warm-water fleet in the Mediterranean. Much of the talk at Erfurt was speculative. Napoleon approved in theory of Alexander’s desire for territorial gain against Turkey in Moldovia and Wallachia – for which France would be compensated – while Alexander in theory promised to ‘make common cause’ with Napoleon in the event of a French war against Austria, even though another Austrian defeat would tilt the European balance of power yet further towards France.

  It seems that one matter Napoleon might have discussed was the possibility of divorcing Josephine, because only eight days after Alexander returned to St Petersburg the Dowager Empress announced the marriage of her daughter, Alexander’s sister the Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna, to Prince George of Holstein-Oldenburg, the younger brother of the heir to the Duchy of Oldenburg, a Baltic coastal duchy not part of the Rhine Confederation. By a special ukaz (decree) of Tsar Paul I, Alexander’s sisters could marry only with the permission of their mother, so Alexander could genuinely claim that he did not have the final say despite being ‘the Autocrat of All the Russias’. With Alexander’s other unmarried sister Anna only thirteen, both Romanov girls seemed to have been saved from what Maria Feodorovna may have seen as the threatened ravages of the Corsican minotaur.

  Napoleon took advantage of being in Erfurt to meet his greatest living literary hero, who lived only 15 miles away in Weimar. On October 2, 1808, Goethe lunched with Napoleon at Erfurt, with Talleyrand, Daru, Savary and Berthier in attendance. As he entered the room, the Emperor exclaimed, ‘Voilà un homme!’ (Here’s a
man!), or possibly ‘Vous êtes un homme!’ (You’re a man!).120 The two men discussed Werther, Voltaire’s play Mahomet, which Goethe had translated, and drama in general.* Napoleon complained that Voltaire should not have ‘made such an unfavourable portrait of the world-conqueror’ Julius Caesar in his play La Mort de César.121 Goethe later reported that Napoleon ‘made observations at a high intellectual level, as a man who has studied the tragical scene with the attention of a criminal judge’. Napoleon told him he felt that French theatre had strayed too far from nature and truth. ‘What have we now to do with Fate?’ he asked, referring to plays in which prearranged destiny formed the determining agency. ‘Politics is fate.’122 When Soult arrived, Napoleon spent a few moments addressing Polish affairs, allowing Goethe to look at tapestries and portraits, before returning to discussing Goethe’s personal life and family – ‘Gleich gegen Gleich’ (on equal terms), as Goethe later put it.

  They met again at a ball in Weimar four days later, where the Emperor told the author that tragedy ‘should be the training ground of kings and peoples, and is the highest achievement of the poet’.123 (He wrote to Josephine that Alexander ‘danced a lot, but not me: forty years are forty years’.124) Napoleon suggested that Goethe write another play on Caesar’s assassination, portraying it as a blunder. He went on to denounce Tacitus’ prejudices, obscurantism and ‘detestable style’, and also the way that Shakespeare mixed comedy with tragedy, ‘the terrible with the burlesque’, and expressed his surprise that such a ‘great spirit’ as Goethe could admire such undefined genres.125 Napoleon did not give his opinions didactically, but regularly ended by asking, ‘What do you think, Herr Goethe?’126 He unsuccessfully pressed Goethe to move to Paris, where he said he would find a broader view of the world and an abundance of material for poetic treatment, and he conferred the Légion d’Honneur on him before they parted. Goethe was to describe his time discussing literature and poetry with Napoleon as one of the most gratifying experiences of his life.127

  The Emperor and Tsar spent eighteen days in each other’s company at Erfurt. They watched plays almost every night, sitting together on thrones set apart from the rest of the audience; reviewed each other’s regiments (Napoleon was keen that Alexander see as much of the Grande Armée going through its manoeuvres as possible); spoke long into the night; shared the same carriages on visits; shot stag and roebuck together (killing fifty-seven) and toured the battlefield of Jena, lunching where Napoleon had bivouacked the night before the battle. When Alexander noticed that he had left his sword at his palace, Napoleon took off his own and presented it to him ‘with all possible grace’, and the Tsar said, ‘I accept it as a mark of your friendship: Your Majesty is well assured that I shall never draw it against you!’128 Watching the first scene of Oedipus on October 3, when the actor playing Philoctetes said to the hero’s friend and confidant Dimas, ‘A great man’s friendship is a gift of the gods!’, Alexander turned to Napoleon ‘and presented to him his hand, with all the grace possible’. The wildly applauding audience saw Napoleon bow in reply, ‘with an air of refusing to take to himself so embarrassing a compliment’.129 A few nights later they spoke for three hours alone together after dinner. ‘I’m happy with Alexander; I think he is with me,’ Napoleon told Josephine on October 11. ‘Were he a woman, I think I’d take him as my lover [amoureuse]. I’ll be with you shortly; stay well, and may I find you plump and fresh [grasse et fraîche].’130

  The Erfurt talks reinforced the agreement reached at Tilsit to divide Europe between France and Russia, but despite the many hours of intimate discussions Napoleon and Alexander came to few concrete arrangements. Although they couldn’t agree on dismembering Turkey, by a secret article of the Erfurt Convention signed on October 12 Napoleon recognized Finland, Moldavia and Wallachia as part of the Russian Empire and agreed that France would join Russia if Austria opposed these arrangements by force. Alexander agreed to recognize Joseph as king of Spain, and promised to come to Napoleon’s aid should Austria attack France, although crucially the precise extent of any help wasn’t discussed in detail. That day, Napoleon wrote to George III to offer Britain peace once more in familiar terms – ‘We are gathered here to beg your Majesty to listen to the voice of humanity’ – a plea that was again ignored by the British government.131 The two emperors embraced and took their leave on October 14, near the spot on the Erfurt–Weimar road where they had met. They were never to see each other again.

  Napoleon’s writ now ran from the Channel ports to the Elbe, in central Germany up to the Oder–Neisse line, in southern Germany to the River Inn and beyond. In Italy he controlled everywhere but the Papal States and Calabria. Denmark was his ally, Holland was ruled by his brother. The glaring exception to his control of western Europe was Spain, where no fewer than half a million of his troops were to serve over the next six years, including significant numbers of Dutch, Germans, Italians and Poles. ‘This war could be over in one fell swoop with a clever manoeuvre,’ Napoleon told Joseph on October 13 of the fighting in Spain, ‘but I must be there for that.’132 By November 5 he was at the Basque city of Vitoria in northern Spain, indignant as ever with the war commissariat, sending a series of letters to General Dejean, the war administration minister, complaining, ‘Your reports to me are nothing but paper … Yet again, my army is naked as it’s about to start campaigning … It’s like throwing money into the water’, and ‘I’m being told fairy tales … Those at the head of your department are stupid or thieves. Never has one been so badly served and betrayed’, and so on.133 He absolutely refused to pay local contractors for sixty-eight mules that had been supplied to the artillery, because they were three and four years old and ‘I gave the order only to buy mules that are five years old.’134

  It is estimated that there were only 35,000–50,000 guerrillas operating in Spain. Even in regions they controlled completely there was not much co-operation between bands; when the French had been forced out of an area, many of the guerrilla fighters simply returned to their villages.135 But even once Napoleon had recaptured Madrid at the end of the year and attempted to establish control from the centre outwards, the large distances and poor roads made it hard for the French to impose their will.136

  Lines of communication were constantly harried by the guerrillas in a countryside that was perfect for ambushes, until it got to the point where it took two hundred men to escort a single despatch. In 1811 Masséna would need 70,000 men merely to maintain safe communications between Madrid and France.137 All told, the Spanish and Portuguese guerrillas killed more Frenchmen than the British, Portuguese and Spanish regular armies combined, and also ensured that josefino civilians caught collaborating with the French, supplying them with information or food, faced summary execution.138 (As before, Britain stepped in quickly to help finance the opposition to Napoleon, giving various local juntas in Spain and Portugal an average of £2.65 million each year between 1808 and 1814.139) Once the French started responding to guerrilla terror tactics – which included mutilation (especially of the genitals), blinding, castration, crucifixions, nailing to doors, sawing in half, decapitation, burying alive, skinning alive, and so on – with almost equally vicious measures, the fighting in Spain swiftly took on a character that was a far cry from the warfare of élan, esprit de corps and gorgeous uniforms that had characterized Napoleon’s earlier campaigns, which for all their carnage had been generally free of deliberate torture and sadism.140 When Spanish banditti – men not in regular army uniform – were captured, they were hanged. There was no logic to killing a uniformed regular soldier in battle and not hanging a bandit when captured.

  ‘I’m pretty well,’ Napoleon reported to Josephine on November 5 as he assumed command of the army on the Ebro, resolving to march on Madrid, ‘and I hope that all this will soon be ended.’141 If the war in Spain could have been won in the manner of his earlier campaigns, by defeating the enemy’s regular army and occupying his capital, it is safe to assume that Napoleon would have soon been victorious. H
e quickly appreciated that this was not going to happen, telling General Dumas, who had complained about being left in the rear of Soult’s army at Burgos, ‘General, in such a theatre of war there is no rear nor van … you will have employment enough here.’142

  At 3 a.m. on November 30, Napoleon was 5 miles from the pass at Somosierra, which protected the route to Madrid. Clad in a ‘superb fur’ given to him by Tsar Alexander, he was warming himself by a campfire and, ‘seeing himself on the point of engaging in an important affair, was unable to sleep’. At the battle later that day, his 11,000 men ground down and pushed back the smaller Spanish regular forces of 7,800 before Napoleon unleashed two charges of Polish lancers and one of the Guard chasseurs, which took the pass and sixteen guns. After the battle, Napoleon ordered the whole Imperial Guard to present arms to the much reduced Polish squadron as it rode past.143

  Reaching Madrid on December 2, Napoleon recognized that the best-defended place there was the Retiro Palace, which Murat had fortified. Some shells were exchanged, and on the morning of the 3rd Bausset, who spoke Spanish and thus translated for the Emperor, recorded that Napoleon walked outside the walls ‘without taking much notice of the projectiles which were discharged from the highest points of Madrid’.144 The city capitulated at 6 a.m. on the 4th but Napoleon stayed at Chamartin, his headquarters in a small country house just outside Madrid, going into the capital only once, incognito, to inspect Joseph’s Royal Palace, which he was astonished to see the Spanish had respected, including David’s portrait of him crossing the Alps and the ‘precious wines’ in the royal cellar. He pardoned the Marquis de Saint-Simon, a French émigré who had been captured while firing on French troops from Madrid’s Fuencarral gate, after his daughter pleaded for his life.145