Lefebvre Georges. Napoleon

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often not possible: Wellington could not be satisﬁ ed, for instance, by paper

credits drawn on Germany. Advances and the transfer of precious metals

were therefore unavoidable. It was not only the exchange rate that suffered,

for it was not possible to ensure that these transfers were scrupulously

carried out. At the end of April 1812 Wellington found that he was short of

ﬁ ve million piastres. By striking at exports from England, Napoleon was thus

also able to make things difﬁ cult for him in the military sphere.

If Ricardo’s view had won the day, the emperor’s success would have been

greater, for his solution was to go back to the gold standard. If this had

happened, the Bank of England would not have been able to advance cash any

longer, and it would have been difﬁ cult to maintain Wellington in the Spanish

Peninsula. Moreover, there would have been a deﬂ ationary crisis which

would have restricted productivity and restricted the market for capital. It

would then have become difﬁ cult for the treasury to obtain funds, and so to

ﬁ nance the war. It is strange that the Bank’s opponents did not envisage any

of these consequences. No doubt there were private interests lurking behind

the theoretical arguments, for the re-establishment of the gold standard

would have prevented the Bank from supporting consols, in which case the

bears would have triumphed. It is probable, too, that Ricardo’s supporters

had a shrewd insight into the situation, and realised that his scheme would

be bound to force the country to make peace. The government denounced

this dangerous course. ‘I am bound to regard the proposed measure’, wrote

Perceval, ‘as a declaration by Parliament that we must submit to no matter

what conditions of peace rather than continue the war.’ And so a return to the

gold standard was rejected on 10 May 1811, and depreciation continued. In

1811 the cash reserves fell to three million, and the gold premium was only

a quarter. The French franc was at thirty-nine per cent and the Hamburg shil-

ling forty-four per cent. Inside the country those living on investments began

at last to protest, and Lord King claimed from his tenants a bonus equal to the

loss in the value of the banknotes. As a result, Parliament had to decide to

make the note legal tender at its nominal value, and England found herself

ﬁ rmly saddled with an artiﬁ cial exchange rate, which meant – as it always

does – considerable hardship for those on ﬁ xed incomes.

But neither the monetary crisis nor the blockade seriously worried the

industrialists and merchants during the ﬁ rst six months of 1810. It was

rather the reverse, for the fall in the pound was an advantage for exports. But

when they had exhausted their credit or completely immobilised their liquid

pounds, the shortage of money coming in from abroad ﬁ nally brought them

hard up against reality. Latin America was generally held to be the villain of

the piece. At the beginning of August 1810 ﬁ ve Manchester ﬁ rms went bank-

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rupt, with liabilities amounting to £2 million, and a veritable cyclone was

unleashed. The banks, hit by bankruptcies, restricted credit and by so doing

brought about further bankruptcies, or forced manufacturers to slow down

production and ﬁ nally come to a halt. There was a landslide in prices: the

1811 index ﬁ gure was 158 instead of the 176 of 1810. Colonial goods fell

in value by ﬁ fty per cent, and coffee by nearly two-thirds. Napoleon could

not have chosen a better moment for tightening up the blockade. His draco-

nian measures, the Baltic seizures, the staggering fall in British exports which

resulted – all these aggravated the crisis and made it last longer. The year

1811 was marked by a profound stagnation in the business world, accompa-

nied by a fall in prices in manufactured articles, a slowing down of produc-

tion and widespread unemployment. The index ﬁ gure for business activity

as a whole in Great Britain was sixty-four, as compared with 74.8 in 1810.

In the big exporting industries, the slowing down was no doubt even more

marked, and seems to have been to something like only twenty-ﬁ ve per cent

of the 1809–10 level. Production would have fallen off still further and

brought even severer unemployment if the ﬁ rms working for the American

market had not continued to produce, gambling on a rapid repeal of the

Orders in Council, and the reopening of the United States market. The

depression went on into 1812, up to 23 June, when the Orders in Council

were repealed. This step enabled the exporting industries to clear their stocks,

which were despatched with all speed to the United States. There was an

undoubted recovery, but it was short-lived. At the news that America had

declared war stagnation once again descended upon industry, and lasted till

the news of the Russian disaster. For the year as a whole, the index ﬁ gure of

general business activity was scarcely higher than for 1811 – 65.3 as against

sixty-four. It would no doubt be an exaggeration to say that British industry

was paralysed by the blockade and Madison’s policy combined; but it is

quite clear that the effects were most serious.

There were violent social repercussions. In May 1811 the cotton mills

were only working three days a week, and at Bolton the weekly wage was

down to ﬁ ve shillings. Two-thirds of the looms were out of action. As

the workers had long considered their wretched condition to be due to the

introduction of machinery, it was the machines that they attacked. The

trouble started in March in the Nottingham district, and had become

extremely serious by November; by 1812 it had spread to Yorkshire,

Derbyshire and Leicestershire. Lancashire and Cheshire also rose in revolt,

and in these parts there were not only attacks on machinery but also market

riots, for bread was still dear. These 1812 disturbances were the longest,

most widespread and most serious that had taken place in England since the

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356

seventeenth century. For several weeks certain districts were practically in

the hands of the rebels, and twelve thousand regular troops were needed to

put down the disturbances. This outbreak showed up in glaring fashion the

faults, not to say vices, of the social and economic system in Great Britain,

and the inadequacy of its antiquated system of local government.

Clearly, this was where Napoleon made his mistake in delivering corn to

England. No one can say what the turn of events might have been if famine

had come in to make the crisis still worse. Grave though the crisis was, it did

not produce panic. In spite of their misgivings, neither the aristocracy nor

the middle classes lost their heads. The ﬁ nances, too, stood up to the squall,

in spite of the rise in the country’s expenditure from £128 million in 1810

to 147 million in 1812, and a slight fall in revenue, where there was a two-

million drop in 1811 and 1812 from a falling off in customs. The govern-

ment had borrowed £22½ million in 1809; in 1810 it had to be content

with a million less, but managed to collect £23½ million in 1811, and in

1812 nearly thirty-ﬁ ve million. But as that was not enough, the government

also borrowed an additional thirty-seven million on short term in 1810,

forty-one million in 1811 and forty-ﬁ ve million in 1812. A longer ordeal

would have been needed to exhaust Great Britain’s reserves.

Although the emperor’s conﬁ dence was increased by these difﬁ culties in

England, he did not escape the counter-effects of the measures he had

adopted in 1810. In March of that year, some misgivings had been produced

in Paris by the bankruptcies in Brittany; but it was deﬁ nitely the Trianon

decree that let loose the continental crisis. It began in the Hanseatic cities

and in Holland, where speculation in colonial goods had been rasher than

elsewhere, so that the effects of the decree were more damaging. In

September the House of Rodda of Lübeck went bankrupt to the extent of

2½ million marks; and a little later on, the Desmedt Bank at Amsterdam

stopped all payments. Since the Paris banks were closely linked to both of

them, businessmen expressed their fears in no uncertain terms in November

at a Trade Council meeting; and the following month the Fould Bank

collapsed, as well as the Simons, whose chief was the husband of

Mademoiselle Lange [the actress], and thirty-seven other ﬁ rms. This was the

signal for the spread of panic, and Talleyrand even went so far as to recom-

mend a moratorium. In January 1811 Bidermann, who had been a constant

speculator ever since the end of the ancien régime , went bankrupt along with

sixty others. Little by little all districts were affected, and manufacturers

were hard hit, with consequent severe unemployment. Since Napoleon had

cleared out all stocks of corn, the average price of corn again rose above

twenty francs in 1810, and a poorish harvest added to the rise, which

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continued in the following year. There were not any disturbances like the

English ones; but it is well known how nervous Napoleon was of such

outbreaks in similar circumstances.

Neither in London nor in Paris was there any liking for government inter-

ference. The British cabinet and Parliament showed a growing inclination to

adopt a laissez-faire policy. Though Napoleon was inclined to pursue an

opposite course, he had no tender feelings towards industrialists, and

towards bankers and merchants more particularly, but rather reproached

them bitterly for having run into these troubles through their own wild

speculations. But both countries were forced to seek a remedy for the

un employment. Parliament provided a credit of two million for loans on the

security of goods, as in 1793. In France, the emperor at ﬁ rst tried to get

more commercial discount by buying up a certain number of shares from

the Bank of France, and by compelling it to open branches in the provinces.

He also considered forming a loan fund on the security of goods; but in the

end he did not do more than give local or individual help, as in 1807. The

Amiens Chamber of Commerce obtained an advance for setting up an emer-

gency loan fund, and others were granted to large banks like Tourton-Ravel

or the House of Doyen in Rouen, as well as to important manufacturers like

Richard-Lenoir in Paris and Gros-Davillier in Alsace. Mollien estimated these

at a total of twelve or thirteen million. Besides this help, the state greatly

increased its purchases. Napoleon bought two millions’ worth of silks and

six of other goods, which he put in the hands of the exporters in return for

the necessary licences. Without advertising his own hand in the affair, he

arranged a two-million credit with the Hottinger Bank in various places,

especially at Rouen, for the ﬁ nancing of orders.

The crisis was a severe test of both the belligerents, and its most curious

result was to make them more accommodating to one another, and to lead

them to harmonise their respective licensing system so as to make exchanges

easier. In England, business people could make their voices heard, and put

vigorous pressure on the Board of Trade. But it would appear that they

received offers or encouragement from the Continent – probably from

Holland – in the course of negotiations with Fouché, Ouvrard and

Labouchère, and also from Belgium, for van Acken, a merchant and adviser

to the préfecture at Ghent, passed on to Montalivet letters that had been sent to

him from England relating to these efforts. In 1810 the Board of Trade

showed a readiness to accept goods that Napoleon had agreed to export

under licence, on condition that he would take British products and colonial

goods in exchange; but in November he went back on his promise. As the

crisis was growing worse, the merchants returned to the attack. For example,

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on 14 April 1811 the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce demanded that there

should be an agreement with the enemy. On 15 November the English

newspapers announced that trade with France would once more be allowed

on a reciprocal basis; and a circular of 14 April had in fact admitted

wines to England. In February 1812 Mollien announced that England was

going to allow them warehouse facilities: ‘Such an event seemed a miracle

at the time.’

The Board of Trade did not go as far as that; but it granted facilities to

French ships, lifted the embargo on cinchona and baled cotton, allowed

enemy subjects to take up quarters in England to organise trading under

licence and expressed its view that insurers could safely quote on cargoes

intended for France. Napoleon seems to have been surprised, but Montalivet

kept things moving by advising on 25 November that the licences should be

adapted to comply with the English conditions. The proposed exchange was

between wine and silks on the one side and sugar on the other. Montalivet

would appear to have won the day, for in December numerous licences were

issued to this effect. On the thirty-ﬁ rst it was decided also to accept coffee,

dyestuffs, skins and medicaments; and on 13 January 1812 Napoleon spoke

in council of importing 450,000 quintals of sugar. Up till February he was

still signing licences; from March to July these became few and far between;

but as Mollien’s records were lost in the retreat from Russia, it is difﬁ cult to

know exactly what happened. In any case, from July to October 299 licences

were issued, more particularly for bringing cotton to Rouen. Napoleon is

thought to have signed in all 799 in the course of 1812. The English were

more and more conciliatory, and as from 25 March 1812 they issued licences

along the same lines as the French.

This unspoken agreement was a great help to international ﬁ nance, which

alone was in a position to make adjustments between the two regimes. It

was in this context that the Rothschilds took up their abode in Paris and

succeeded in rendering the services to the British treasury which have been

referred to above. According to a report by Montalivet on 6 January 1813,

the Empire exported ﬁ fty-eight millions’ worth and imported to the value

of twenty-two million. It was recognised in England that the balance was in

favour of France; but the vital task was to sell at all costs. There is no need,

moreover, to exaggerate the importance of this deal. If English exports rose

in 1812, this was more particularly due to the reopening of the Russian and

Swedish markets, and to the resumption of contraband trafﬁ c after the

Grande Armée had cleared out of Germany. The Empire, which had been

much less badly affected, seems to have recovered fairly quickly. At Ghent

during the last three months of 1812, there were about as many spindles

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and rather more looms in action than in 1810; and in the kingdom of Italy,

the export of silk and silk-stuffs was greater than in 1809, and the total trade

almost equal to that of 1810. Production also started up again in Lyon and

Rouen. During the winter a pronounced shortage made itself felt, but

Napoleon looked upon this as merely a passing trouble. Come what might,

he was conﬁ dent that the continental economy would stand up to the

inevitable inconveniences produced by the blockade. He was less than ever

inclined to give it up: the licences issued in 1812 were of the same kind as

before, and were viewed by him as a temporary expedient which harmed

the English rather than France, since the balance of trade was unfavourable

to them. Because he had given way in the matter of corn exports, he had not

made all the capital he could have out of the crisis; but if he had come back

victorious from Russia he would surely have applied his decrees with new

vigour and new effectiveness, seeing that his dominion would have been

even more far-reaching than before.

But for the French economy, circumstances would not have been so

favourable. Since the crisis had produced a healthier market and kept down

prices, business was beginning to revive. The number of bankruptcies was

diminishing, though the ﬁ gures were still as high as for 1810; and exports

to Britain rose to ﬁ fty million, an increase of twenty-eight per cent over the

1811 value, though seventeen per cent below the ﬁ gure for 1810. Although

imports generally were recovering, coffee and sugar had dropped again,

showing that the market for colonial goods was still suffering from the glut.

In the same way baled cotton sank to sixty-three thousand pounds against

ninety-one thousand in 1811 and 132,000 in 1810 – a sign of weakness,

suggesting that exports were drawing more particularly on liquidated stocks

at rock-bottom prices. The Bank’s gold continued to drain away, and there

was no signiﬁ cant improvement in the exchange rate. Corn kept going up

in price, reaching 154 shillings in 1812. Disturbances among the working

classes broke out more violently than ever. On the other hand if the emperor

had been victorious, he would no doubt have closed the Levant to English

trade; and the American market was already lost. On 2 February 1811

Madison, relying on Napoleon’s promises, had called on England to repeal

the Orders in Council. Under the pressure of public opinion the Cabinet in

London agreed to do so on 21 April 1812, provided it could be shown that

the emperor had repealed his decrees. Maret then took a decision in line

with this policy, antedating it for 28 April 1811, and the English – quite

taken aback – complied on 23 June. But it was too late: on 19 June Madison,

maintaining that the question of the press gangs had still not been settled,

decided to declare war.

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A blockade can always be used for several purposes. In the eighteenth

century, the English had used it more particularly as a source of enrichment;

but nowadays its main aim is to destroy the military power of the enemy.

The Napoleonic blockade was a kind of half-way stage. It was forward-

looking, in the sense that it sought to break down England’s resistance. But

it was also tied to the past, in that it aimed at reaching its goal by a round-

about and thoroughly mercantilist route designed to rob the enemy of his

gold, but not to starve him out. In this watered-down form, its effects could

not be rapid; moreover, the British ﬂ eet had command of the seas, and the

blockade, to be successful, needed the help of circumstances more or less

outside Napoleon’s control. Nevertheless, the experiment had been worth-

while, though in the ultimate analysis its success depended on the Grande

Armée, whose ruin in so short a space of time no one could have prophe-

sied. It was not the natural laws of a liberal economy, but the Russian winter,

that saved England.

THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE RUSSIAN

CAMPAIGN (1811–1812)

Alexander had been well aware that his attitude since Tilsit, and especially

since the 1809 campaign, was bound sooner or later to provoke a conﬂ ict

with Napoleon. He was itching to cross swords with his rival, to determine

which of them should be master of the Continent, or at any rate of the East.

It took some time for the emperor to become convinced that anyone was

actually bold enough to defy him; but after the ukase of 31 December 1810

he decided to make an end of this presumption. The tsar should be reduced

to the rank of vassal; and if he resisted, he should be hurled back into Asia,

and the fairest of his European provinces incorporated in the Grand Empire.

Napoleon has been blamed for having compromised the real national

interests of France by indulging in such an adventure; but since 1803 at

least, these interests had ceased to count: the only thing that mattered to

him was to rule the Continent and the world. The Continental System could

contain allies, but without allowing them real independence or tolerating

any rebellions. Once Rome had been conquered, the emperor’s dreams

turned inevitably to Constantinople; and to take possession of this, the

power of the tsar must ﬁ rst be broken. The blockade provided a concrete

justiﬁ cation for the new undertaking; and Alexander’s infringement of it

made this fresh enterprise seem absolutely necessary, for his defeat would

then enable Napoleon to recapture the Levant market from England.

Napoleon did not in any way conceal from himself the fact that this was the

most dangerous campaign he had ever conceived. He could hardly fail to

remember that Charles XII had taken this risk and that it had been his

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undoing. It is said that he spent three sleepless months before ﬁ nally making

up his mind. Yet as there was no other court of appeal but his own will, he

could hardly draw back. He expressed the matter very simply when he left

Paris, saying that he owed it to himself to ‘ﬁ nish what he had begun’.

THE SCARE OF 1811

For several months Napoleon’s attention was absorbed by the difﬁ culties

involved in transferring half a million men to the Russian frontier, a task

which involved immense transport facilities, huge supplies and proportion-

ately vast expense. The 1811 class had been called up and was already in the

depots, and from the end of January he began to reinforce the troops in

Germany, doubling the units one by one, forming new corps, bringing up

arms and munitions and laying down supplies and depots. But in spite of

the precautions he took, these measures did not escape the notice of

Chernyshev and Nesselrode through their espionage service. By getting in

the ﬁ rst blow, Alexander might surprise the emperor in the midst of his

preparations and by carrying the war into Germany give Russia a protective

cover. But would he dare to do so?

At the beginning of 1811 this was what he intended to do. But his ﬁ nances

were in a pitiful state, with a deﬁ cit running up to one hundred million

roubles and paper money losing up to ﬁ ve-sixths of its value. Russia under

the tsars, however, had never been deterred by difﬁ culties of this kind. There

were 240,000 Russians grouped in two armies, who confronted on the

other side of the border ﬁ fty-six thousand men from Warsaw and forty-six

thousand Frenchmen, though the latter were at some distance, and widely

scattered. In March ﬁ ve divisions out of nine were recalled from the army on

the Danube, and everywhere the troops went steadily marching on day by

day towards the grand duchy frontier. Yet although Poniatowski was giving

Napoleon time to move his forces forward, Alexander did not feel sure of his

ground. Accordingly, on 8 January, he returned to the charge with Czartoryski,

the need for money ﬁ nally brought home to him, cap in hand, proposing

that he should win over the support of Poland, so that her army, by moving

in as far as the Oder without striking a blow, would induce the Prussians to

enter the lists. Once again the prince observed that in order to gain his coun-

try’s support it would at least be necessary for the tsar to enter into a formal

engagement to reconstitute the kingdom of Poland, ﬁ x its boundaries and

accept the constitution of 1791. Alexander promised to hand over his Polish

provinces, and Galicia if possible; as to internal government, he conceded

that there should be autonomy, but said nothing about a constitution.

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Meanwhile, he did not inform Rumiantsev of his plans, for he was always

against war and disposed to come to terms with Napoleon; but he put out

secret diplomatic feelers in the direction of Sweden, Prussia and more

particularly Austria, and on 13 February Metternich was offered the

Danubian principalities. But these tentative approaches met with no success.

Czartoryski had to admit that the Poles were not willing to betray the

emperor, and Metternich refused to accept the proffered gift. Frederick

William, who had bought a faked memorandum from Champagny,

composed by Esménard, which announced the intention to eliminate

Prussia, became so worked up that in May Hardenberg proposed an alliance

with France. Bernadotte, who had become regent and was looking out for

subsidies, hoped to get some from his motherland. He offered Alquier, the

new French ambassador, a contingent of ﬁ fty thousand men against Russia,

provided he was allowed to take over Norway. The offensive policy continued

to have its partisans, notably Armfelt; yet among the tsar’s cosmopolitan

entourage, where there were beginning to be many enemies of the emperor,

it also had its opponents. A Prussian named Phüll proposed that they

entrench between the Dvina and the Dnieper in order to make a ﬂ ank attack

on the Grande Armée as it marched on Moscow. Alexander was not yet

resigned to a policy of methodical retreat; but an offensive policy was

deﬁ nitely rejected, and the troops were brought to a halt.

Caulaincourt remained quite unaware of what was happening. The Poles,

on the other hand, became alarmed. Poniatowski sent an aide-de-camp to

Napoleon; and then, on his way to be present at the baptism of the king of

Rome, he put the government at Dresden on the alert. Davout, who was at

ﬁ rst incredulous, became convinced by the evidence. During the month of

April the emperor remained constantly on the alert, and from the ﬁ fteenth

to the seventeenth, in the midst of the festivities following the birth of the

king of Rome, he redoubled his military preparations. The Poles, when

mobilised, were to evacuate the duchy at the ﬁ rst signal and move to join up

with Davout and the Saxon contingent on the Oder. Champagny, who was

probably blamed for not having been aware of what was afoot, was replaced

by Maret, and Napoleon gave orders for negotiations with Prussia, Sweden

and Turkey, while he himself spoke to Schwarzenberg of a possible alliance.

In May there was more reassuring news. Rumiantsev had in fact managed

to arrange for negotiations to be opened for compensating the duke of

Oldenburg, hoping that part of the duchy of Warsaw could be made over to

him. Neither he nor his master said so in explicit terms; but the emperor

understood, and refused point blank. The discussions went on, however, the

duke receiving another offer of Erfurt, and Russia an offer of the treaty