Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  It is with some justification that historians have seen in this nothing more than a cynical exercise in damage control, an attempt by Napoleon to displace concern over the French dead and wounded on to the enemy dead and wounded.32 Before making a judgement, it is worth recalling that Napoleon was probably shocked by this loss of life, as was every other witness who wrote about it, either shortly afterwards or indeed many years later. In his memoirs, François-Frédéric Billon, assistant to the surgeon-in-chief Dominique Jean Larrey, left us with an account of Napoleon’s visit to the battlefield: ‘I was standing on a stone bench against the wall when he passed near me. The emperor was doing his best to prevent his horse trampling on so many human remains; unable to do so, he gave up the reins, and that is when I saw him cry.’33

  Billon wrote up the account decades later. Did he really see Napoleon crying or was he simply reporting what he had read about this episode, thus playing into the hands of the propagandist? This gruesome description of the trampling of Napoleon’s horse over body parts is meant to elicit a feeling of pathos for the Emperor, one aspect of how carnage can be used to counter the negative fallout from a battle, but there is nevertheless no denying that Napoleon was affected – up to a point. The day after the battle, he wrote to Maria Walewska asking whether she suffered as much as he from the separation.34 His letter to Josephine about a week later was of a somewhat different tenor. ‘The countryside is covered with the dead and dying,’ he wrote. ‘It is not the the [sic] best part of war. One suffers and the soul is oppressed to see so many victims. Nevertheless, I am doing very well.’35 It is the written stammer that makes one think that, yes, the aftermath may have disturbed Napoleon, despite what might appear to the modern reader as the thoughtlessness of ‘I am doing very well.’ That, however, falls within the logic of a regime that was built around the person of one man. If the Emperor was well, the state was well. His concern, in other words, did not run particularly deep and certainly not deeply enough for him actually to do anything for the wounded. While the French wounded were treated relatively well, most of the Russian wounded died in appalling conditions.36 Helping them may never have crossed his mind. The Russian wounded were left on the battlefield, and more often than not froze to death. Those Russian troops capable of reaching their own hospital at Grodno were more than likely to starve to death.37 According to one account of his visit, Napoleon got off his horse and started to walk across the battlefield; then, after prodding one of the corpses with his foot, he turned to his generals and declared: ‘This is so much small change.’38

  And yet, despite the mauling, the Russians still refused to give up. One French officer, Fantin des Odoards, considered the Russians’ reluctance to surrender the result of their ‘semi-civilized’ state, incapable of accepting the generosity of the victors.39 Napoleon, on the other hand, was desperate for peace, for in an unprecedented move, six days after Eylau, he wrote to Frederick William offering to restore all his former lands in return for a renewal of the Franco-Prussian alliance.40 Frederick William replied on 21 April, suggesting a general peace congress that would be held in then neutral Copenhagen. Napoleon urged Prussia not to wait. He was, in other words, recommending Prussia to enter into a separate arrangement with France, leaving Russia in the lurch. Nothing came of this.

  ‘One More Victory’

  Napoleon spent the months of March and April 1807 considerably reinforcing the army, possibly realizing that if the Russians had beaten him at Eylau, he would have had few reserves and would therefore have had difficulty fending off attacks in Germany.41 A new army of 100,000 men was raised. It marks a turning point in the composition of the Grande Armée. Increasingly, from this time, more and more foreign contingents would make up the numbers. In the new corps commanded by Marshal Lefebvre, for example, only 10,000 out of the 30,000 men were French. The rest were Poles, Italians and Germans.

  Napoleon took to the field with this new Grande Armée. The Russians under Bennigsen attacked first. On 5 June they moved through the town of Heilsberg (present-day Lidzbark Warmin´ ski). Napoleon marched north to try and counter them. A battle of sorts took place on 10 June during which the French lost over 10,000 men for little or no gain (the Russians lost around 8,000). Once again, the Russians held their ground. It looked as though the fighting was going to continue the next day – the Russians began with a heavy bombardment in the morning – but threatened by a flanking movement they decided to retreat during the night of 11–12 June, abandoning their supplies and wounded.

  The pursuit continued. Napoleon surmised that Bennigsen would attempt to cross the River Alle – in order to get to Königsberg – at the town of Friedland (today Pravdinsk in Russia) on the left bank about forty-eight kilometres south-west of Königsberg. Napoleon made the error of splitting his force in two, sending 60,000 men under Murat, Soult and Davout to try and capture Königsberg, while he sent Lannes with around 10,000 men to try and take the bridgeheads at Friedland. Lannes and Bennigsen reached Friedland at around the same time during the night of 13–14 June, from opposite banks of the river.42 The next morning, the French found themselves facing 45,000 Russians. Bennigsen saw a chance and crossed the river in the belief that he would easily be able to defeat the advance guard, then make off before Napoleon and the bulk of the French army arrived. He was mistaken; more and more Russian troops got caught up trying to defeat the French so that by mid-morning the whole Russian army had crossed the river. By then, they had lost the advantage of numerical superiority; by late morning the two sides were more or less equal. Bennigsen had let slip an opportunity to destroy Lannes completely. Not only that, but he was no longer able to use the river as a defensive barrier; he now had it, and the town of Friedland with its narrow streets, at his back (and he was in no position to retreat; it had taken him five hours to get his army across the river over a few bridges and pontoons).

  Napoleon arrived a little after midday and took over command of the fighting, but he did not launch a full-scale attack until 5.30 that evening, by which time the French had almost 80,000 men available. Napoleon, ‘radiating joy’, convinced he was about to destroy the Russian force, galloped past his troops reminding them that it was the anniversary of Marengo. Attack and counter-attack followed, but each time the Russian assaults were successfully stymied so that they were pushed back into an ever-diminishing area within the town where they fought until the streets were heaped with dead and wounded.43 The Russians were slaughtered where they stood.44 At one point, General Victor brought up thirty guns to fire into the Russian infantry, gradually reduced their range from about 1.4 kilometres to within sixty paces and poured case shot into their ranks, inflicting devastating casualties. The French should have annihilated the Russians, but for some inexplicable reason Napoleon held back troops that had not engaged till then. Things were bad enough as they were: the Russians suffered anywhere between 18,000 and 20,000 casualties – about 30 per cent of the army – for 8,000 French. Bennigsen was able to extricate the remaining troops, but the Russian army was no longer in any position to fight. ‘My dear,’ Napoleon wrote to Josephine the next day, ‘I write you only a line for I am very tired.’45 There was not much humanity shown for the dead and the dying. The battle finished around eleven in the evening, just as light was fading. Fantin des Odoards was obliged to spend the night where he found himself, trying to get some sleep on a blood-soaked field, with a dead horse for a pillow.

  I was overwhelmed with sleep and fatigue, but I could not sleep . . . I waited for dawn, going over the events in my head, and thinking of the friends which they had deprived me of. Only a deaf person or someone deprived of all sensitivity would have been able to sleep amid the deplorable noise made around us by the unfortunate wounded whose moaning was carried afar by the wind in the silence of the night.46

  In the heat of the moment, wrote Fantin des Odoards, the individual was capable of being transformed into a brutal killer, but in the cold light of day, when one could see the consequences of the ki
lling on the field of battle, ‘he cursed the war and its authors and, without daring to admit it, felt remorse at being among the passive instruments of such horrors’.47

  This second major defeat in two years was as traumatic for Alexander as the battle of Austerlitz.48 Bennigsen wrote a letter to the Tsar (15 June) asking him to put an end to the fighting. Most of the Russian generals in Alexander’s entourage agreed that there was little point in continuing the war: the army was so depleted and Prussia so crushed that the path to Russia lay completely open. There were others though, such as his new foreign minister, Count Andrei Budberg, ‘wound up to a pitch of fury against Bonaparte’,49 who still insisted on Russia’s potential to win a war of attrition.50 Napoleon was in no better shape; the burden of the war in terms of casualties was beginning to take its toll.51 He too had been thinking of putting an end to the conflict, and of offering Alexander an alliance.52 It is what a number of politicians in France were also hoping for. On 18 June, shortly after the battle of Friedland, Talleyrand sent off a missive to Napoleon stating that he hoped it was the last victory he would be obliged to win because, ‘wonderful though it is, I have to admit that it would lose in my eyes more than I can say if Your Majesty were to march to new battles and expose himself to new dangers . . . because I know how much Your Majesty despises them’.53 In ‘court speak’, Talleyrand was suggesting that he believed Napoleon was driven by some vague and indiscriminate desire to dominate, invade and conquer, and that it was time to stop. A similar sentiment was expressed by the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Jean-Siffrein Maury; when writing to Napoleon to congratulate him on his victory he insinuated that enough was enough. ‘The war is hence exhausted through its own exploits. Enough victories, enough triumphs, enough wonders.’54 It was the first time the elite had expressed reservations about where Napoleon was leading them, but he did not, probably could not, heed the warning.

  As a result of Napoleon’s outstretched hand, Alexander’s mood was transformed overnight from despondency to excitement. He had lost tremendous personal and political prestige through two major defeats in as many years, so Napoleon was offering him in some respects a way out. He could save face by concluding a treaty which not only was profitable to Russia but would be the harbinger of international peace.

  The Partition of the World

  Tilsit (today Sovetsk) was then a small town on the left bank of the River Niemen that marked the boundary between Prussia and Russia. The river was also the official demarcation line between the opposing forces; troops were lined up on either side of the river facing each other, so Napoleon came up with the idea of building a raft and meeting in the middle. If it had taken place elsewhere, rather than on a raft, the meeting would quickly have raised concerns about etiquette, prestige and status.55 On this elaborate raft, about four by six metres, stood a small central salon with two antechambers on either side; the salon was made of wood and painted white to resemble a tent. On one side was painted an ‘N’ and on the other an ‘A’. Everything was ready by about 12.30 in the afternoon on 25 June 1807, and timed so that the two emperors, each accompanied by a small entourage, would leave their respective shores simultaneously and arrive at the raft at the same time, the first meeting of two European monarchs since 1532.56 It must have been a strange sight. Alexander, tall, Napoleon shortish; Alexander speaking fluent French, Napoleon speaking it with a heavy accent.57 If Napoleon was driven, Alexander was vain, full of esprit, the expression of the day and, according to one close observer, not quite all there.58 But neither was showing his true colours. The meeting, which took place in the salon that was constructed on the raft, lasted two hours, unburdened in some respects by court etiquette and the eyes of courtiers – there are no contemporary accounts. Once the initial encounter was over, and for the next two weeks, they spent a good deal of time together reviewing troops, exchanging presents and decorations, attending the theatre, dinners, parades and balls together. The Imperial Guard, on Napoleon’s orders, held a banquet for their Russian counterparts.59 The festivities were designed not only to flatter Alexander, but also to portray an idealized relationship between the two rulers. The last evening they spent talking at great length, although we know nothing of what was said between the two men.60

  This was staged diplomacy at its best. Napoleon and Alexander were playing conciliatory roles, both expressing ideas that they thought the other wanted to hear, and both came away seemingly infatuated with the other. But one has to wonder to what extent those sentiments were sincere. Alexander is supposed to have said something like, ‘If only I had seen him [Napoleon] sooner! The veil is torn asunder and the time of error is passed.’61 For his part, Napoleon wrote to Josephine to say that Alexander was a ‘very handsome and good but young emperor’.62 We know, however, that in private Alexander considered Napoleon a parvenu. Behind the scenes he was assuring those in his entourage that ‘We shall see his fall with calmness’, or he made references to the ‘true moment’ when they would strike against Napoleon.63 One should consequently treat with some scepticism the assertion that Alexander was charmed by Napoleon (and vice versa). The problem with Napoleon is that, more so than Alexander, he took the diplomatic discourse at face value. In the grander scheme of things, he was disadvantaged. Alexander was surrounded by advisers, not to mention the aristocracy and the diplomatic corps, who hated Napoleon and the French.

  The whole spectacle at Tilsit was meant to place Napoleon and Alexander on the same level; they were now portrayed as royal allies, as equal brothers. In his correspondence, Napoleon addressed Alexander (as he did other sovereigns of Europe) as ‘my cousin’, as though they were members of the same family. (After his marriage to the Austrian princess Marie-Louise, Napoleon would refer to Louis XVI as his ‘poor uncle’.)64 Even the act of embracing, which Napoleon did to Francis after Austerlitz and to Alexander at Tilsit, was meant to put him on an equal footing. Tilsit was, therefore, quite a diplomatic coup for Napoleon. Until then, Alexander had refused to recognize his status as emperor, but now not only was he obliged to do so in a public manner, he had to agree to treat Napoleon as an equal in the treaty stipulations that followed.

  Tilsit was in effect made up of three treaties, two agreed by France with Russia and one with Prussia. The Russian alliance was, in some respects, breaking with recent tradition; France had played the Austrian card to the exclusion of the Russians for decades. There were people in Napoleon’s entourage who still thought that this was the best option for France. Armand de Caulaincourt, sent to Petersburg as ambassador after Tilsit, warned Napoleon that French behaviour was having an adverse impact on European public opinion.65 Russia had not been crushed, as had Austria and Prussia, and so did not have to come to the negotiating table, except that it was tired of the war. It meant that Russia came away with more territory than before it entered the war – a sizeable chunk of Prussia and the annexation of Finland (which had belonged to Sweden, at war with France), in return for a promise to close Russian ports to English goods. There was talk of an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire, but as we shall see this was an ever-moving feast with Napoleon, who could agree to it one day and change his mind the next, and the issue was probably raised at the conference table as a sort of lure to get Alexander more interested in an alliance. Napoleon also gained from the alliance, although only in terms of prestige. His title and his Empire were now recognized by Russia. Tilsit was, on the surface, a partition of the Continent between the two emperors, France dominating western and central Europe, while Russia dominated the east. This was not a particularly new idea and recognized what already existed. As early as 1801, political commentators had remarked that mainland Europe was divided between the two powers, so that the idea of a bi-hegemony had become quite current.66

  Adolphe Roehn, Entrevue de Napoléon Ier et du tsar Alexandre Ier de Russie sur le Niémen le 25 juin 1807 (Meeting of Napoleon I and Tsar Alexander of Russia on the Niemen, 25 June 1807), 1807. The raft was decorated with garlands and wreaths, th
e letters ‘A’ and ‘N’, and French and Russian flags. There was no sign of the Prussian flag, despite being on Prussian territory. The threatening clouds unwittingly evoke troubles that lay ahead. The Niemen symbolized for the next five years the demarcation point between East and West. Interestingly, in this painting, and unlike the highly choreographed meeting that saw the two emperors approach and board the raft simultaneously, Napoleon is depicted waiting for Alexander’s arrival, placing him in a position of ascendancy.

  With Russia on his side, Napoleon was hoping for a free hand in central Europe. It was not that he did not already have one, but Prussia and Austria were less likely to cause problems knowing that Russia was not going to ally with them. More than that, though, Napoleon was hoping that Russia would make Britain think twice about continuing the war against France.67 The former stratagem was unnecessary and the latter proved unfruitful.68 Alexander, on the other hand, was obliged finally to recognize both the French annexations and Napoleon’s imperial title, as well as the royal titles of his three brothers. But he also believed that peace would now reign over Europe,69 that the treaty would benefit his people by allowing him to continue to reform Russian society, and that he would be given free rein to expand eastwards towards Constantinople.70