Lefebvre Georges. Napoleon

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the world in 1812

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which are a hindrance to the exploitation of natural wealth and prevent a

rational division of labour among the different regions of the earth; and in

this sense, a universal empire might have been favourable to it. But capi-

talism was only just beginning, and its champions, who were thoroughly

imbued with the Mercantile doctrine, simply viewed their own country as a

preserve to be guarded at all costs. Moreover, in their human capacity as

patriots, they were devoted to its independence; and the favours Napoleon

reserved for France would sooner or later have turned them into partisans

of nationality in opposition to the Empire, until such time as national feel-

ings set them at odds with one another. Nevertheless, this was not the worst

aspect of things for Napoleon. More serious for him was the fact that

England was the country where industrial capitalism had originated, and

where it had acquired the greatest resources and power. It alone enabled

England to ﬁ nance the war: in this sense, Great Britain’s victory over the

emperor was a victory for capitalism.

III

The Fall of Napoleon

(1812–1815)

THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE

CONTINENTAL SYSTEM (1812–1814)

The Continental System had been created and upheld by the victories of the

Grande Armée. But each new war made its continuance more and more

doubtful. The Russian campaign was intended to put the ﬁ nishing touches

to it; instead, its outcome was disaster. After the disintegration of the Grande

Armée, all the emperor’s efforts were set upon rebuilding it; and although,

with the amalgame , it had lost the chief secret of its strength, he would again

have been victorious if he had only had to ﬁ ght against one or two of the

continental powers, as in the previous struggles.

But on this occasion, remembering the lessons of the last twenty years,

the powers united to fall upon him. The Continental System disintegrated,

Napoleon vanished from the scene and France was left to pay for his failures.

THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN

To bring against Russia, Napoleon had over seven hundred thousand men,

more than 611,000 of whom successively crossed the frontier in the course

of the campaign. These forces followed the pattern of the Grand Empire.

There were three hundred thousand French, including those from the

annexed territories; 180,000 Germans, including thirty thousand Austrians

from Schwarzenberg and Yorck’s twenty thousand Prussians; nine thousand

Swiss; ninety thousand Poles and Lithuanians; thirty-two thousand Italians,

Illyrians, Spaniards and Portuguese. These contingents proved to be of very

variable loyalty. Never had the Grande Armée been so large, and never of

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such motley composition and with so little cohesion; Frenchmen of France

proper constituted hardly a third of the total.

The shock troops, who had taken up positions beyond the Vistula,

consisting of 450,000 men and 1,146 guns, were divided into nine corps,

plus the Guards, four cavalry corps and the allies. With this customary divi-

sion of forces, the army seemed unwieldy enough because of its very size,

the length of the front and the difﬁ culties of liaison. Napoleon did in fact

group these corps into armies. He was on the Niemen with 227,000 men.

Eugène was a little to the rear with eighty thousand. Jérôme was in command

of the right wing, with seventy-six thousand; beyond him were

Schwarzenberg, and, on the extreme left, Macdonald and Yorck. But really

good army commanders were needed, and Jérôme could hardly be reck-

oned as such. In choosing him, Napoleon had been swayed by dynastic

reasons. Never again was there to be the same precision of manoeuvre.

As usual, Napoleon intended this to be a short war. Up to 20 June he

hoped that it would be fought in Poland. While he was making for Kovno

with the bulk of his forces, he refused to give battle with his right wing

towards Warsaw, where Jérôme’s mediocre generalship was a positive snare.

If the enemy made a massed attack on the grand duchy, he would fall back

on his right ﬂ ank and disperse them, and there would be a quick peace. But

the Russians made no move, and it was therefore necessary to attack them

on their own ground. His soldiers took a four-day bread ration, and the

convoys followed them with a ﬂ our supply for three weeks. By the end of

this period, a decisive blow would have brought Alexander to his knees.

It is certain that there was no lack of voices advising Alexander to take a

conciliatory line, men like Grand Duke Constantine and Rumiantsev. On 28

June Balashov was despatched to Napoleon to offer negotiations if he would

evacuate Russian territory. The enemies of France, such as Armfelt and Stein,

never ceased to fear that the tsar might give in, and perhaps they had good

grounds for their anxiety. At all events, pride won the day. Nevertheless, the

Russian army’s inferiority seemed quite irremediable. Behind the Niemen,

Barclay de Tolly had 120,000 men at his disposal, while, on the Bug,

Bagration had less than forty thousand. Further south, Tormasov could bring

up rather more; and in the second line of defence, Wittgenstein was

advancing to protect the Dvina and Riga. In the interior, there remained

three to four hundred thousand recruits, Cossacks and militiamen, and

Chichagov was getting under way with the Danube army, but still

needed time. Time could be gained by concealment, and those who – like

Rostopchin – considered the distances and the winter to be their best allies,

saw nothing but advantage in this delay. The majority, however, could not

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stomach the idea of invasion, or were afraid that it would break their master’s

resolve. In the end, the plan adopted was that of Phull, a German émigré,

according to which either Barclay or Bagration – whichever of them was

attacked by Napoleon – would resist, while the other would fall upon the

assailants’ ﬂ ank. Alexander had no thought of the war being carried to the

heart of the country. But that could scarcely fail to happen, because his

generals knew they were weaker than their enemies, and were very much

afraid of them. They were given a good deal of latitude as to their

movements, fell back in order to avoid disaster, and thus condemned their

opponents to wear themselves out in pursuit.

Napoleon’s army crossed the Niemen on 24 and 25 June 1812, and on

the twenty-sixth reached Vilna by a forced march of forty kilometres, with

the intention of crushing Barclay. But it struck thin air, for Barclay had

retreated towards the entrenched camp at Drissa, behind the Dvina. So

Bagration remained to be dealt with. Davout set out from Vilna towards

Minsk, in order to cut off his retreat, while Jérôme went in pursuit. But

Jérôme had a long way to go, and did not hurry. Bagration, seeing that he

was not directly pressed, slipped out of Davout’s way by turning south,

crossed the Dnieper, and then went on upstream. Jerome, deprived of his

objective, turned back towards Westphalia. Davout defeated Bagration at

Mogilev, but was unable to stop him. The Vilna manoeuvre had failed.

On 3 July Napoleon set out again for Vitebsk, in order to come between

the two Russian armies, but when he arrived on the twenty-fourth it was

too late. Barclay had evacuated Drissa and then Vitebsk, and was withdrawing

towards Smolensk, where he managed to join forces with Bagration.

The two Russian armies being thus united, Barclay agreed to take the

offensive towards Vitebsk. Napoleon immediately put a third plan into

action. He slipped away southwards, crossed the Dnieper, and appeared

before Smolensk on 16 August. But his attack failed, and Barclay, who had

been forewarned and had begun to withdraw on the twelfth, arrived in time

to defend the town. On the seventeenth, as the result of a bloody battle, the

French only managed to capture the suburbs. Again the Russian army retired,

and on the nineteenth its rearguard covered the retreat at Valutina. Would the

French follow it to Moscow?

From the start, it was clear that this was to be a new kind of war. Napoleon’s

strategy had proved faulty: the enemy were shamelessly withdrawing, and

there were no natural obstacles to bring them to bay, nor was it possible to

catch them by surprise, because in these deserted plains the cavalry wore

itself out without collecting any information, and because the sheer distances

deprived the French rapid marches of their usual effectiveness. And the

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marches had been more than usually exhausting. As early as 26 June there

had been many stragglers and deserters in the advance on Vilna, and these

had assumed alarming proportions. The convoys were unable to keep pace,

and almost from the start the army had to live on the country – and the

country produced absolutely nothing. Deprived of their fodder, the horses

died by the thousand. Then the weather took a hand in the game, with

storms, rain and cold nights at the end of June, followed by sweltering heat.

At Smolensk, the available troops were reduced to 160,000 men. How many

of these would be left by the time Moscow was reached? The foreign troops

in particular were visibly melting away. The Württemberg division, sixteen

thousand strong, had only 1,456 men left by 4 September. On the ﬂ anks and

in the rear, the situation was far from promising. Macdonald had failed to

take Riga, and Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, who had been victorious at Polotsk, saw

Wittgenstein’s army visibly increasing in size to bar his path. Reynier and

Schwarzenberg were making Tormasov move cautiously; but Chichagov was

moving towards them. Napoleon had counted on the Poles to rise as one

man and invade the Ukraine. But on 28 June the Diet gave way to a confed-

eration presided over by Czartoryski’s father, which immediately re-

established the kingdom of Poland. The emperor gave a cold reception to this

news and remained silent, realising that it was not wise to irritate Prussia

and Austria, nor to drive Alexander to despair before having beaten him. He

did not even join Lithuania on to the duchy, but handed it over, like Courland,

to French ofﬁ cials. The Poles were in a state of disappointment and unrest.

Moreover, they were exhausted, and Napoleon’s ambassador, de Pradt, arch-

bishop of Malines, did not arouse much enthusiasm. They were waiting to

show their hand until victory was well on the way. In these circumstances,

would it not be wiser to stop and organise the country so far conquered, and

arrange to provision the army while it went into winter quarters on the

spot? Napoleon had already asked himself this question at Vitebsk. There was

one way of making a radical change in the whole complexion of the war,

and in the chances of success, and that was to promise the peasants the aboli-

tion of serfdom. The emperor was well aware of this; but the revolutionary

tradition was now too much against the grain with him for this expedient to

seem anything but hateful. From this time onwards, he decided that the

efforts demanded from the Empire could not continue without damage to

his own prestige. In Germany more particularly, the consequences might

well be incalculable. Moreover, he was convinced that the fall of Moscow

would bring Alexander to his knees, and he decided to go forward.

On 5 September he suddenly came up against the Russian army on the

outskirts of the River Moskva. Kutuzov had replaced Barclay, and did not

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intend to give up Moscow without a struggle. His right ﬂ ank was covered

by the river, and was therefore protected: his left, resting on a forest, was

only turned at a later stage. Napoleon attacked in the centre on 7 September,

and carried the redoubts after a long and bloody battle. The French lost

thirty thousand men and the Russians ﬁ fty thousand. At the critical moment,

Napoleon had refused to throw the Guards into the battle, and Kutuzov was

able to withdraw without a breach in his line behind the Nara, south of

Moscow, while Napoleon entered the capital on 14 September. From the

ﬁ fteenth to the eighteenth it was devastated by ﬁ res, kindled at least in part

on the orders of Rostopchin.

Alexander meanwhile had come back from Drissa to St Petersburg. He

made peace with England and handed over his ﬂ eet. At the end of August,

his alliance with Bernadotte was conﬁ rmed in an interview at Abo. But

although Bernadotte had now obtained a subsidy from Great Britain, he was

in no mind to risk anything in Germany without ﬁ rst conquering Norway,

and then only so long as Napoleon remained victorious. It was clear that the

tsar must rely simply upon his own efforts. His sister Catherine, and the

émigrés, joined by Arndt, d’lvernois and Madame de Staël, insisted on

ﬁ ghting to the bitter end. If Alexander had capitulated, he would no doubt

have been in great danger from the nobility, who were beside themselves

with anxiety and rage. But it would appear that what ﬁ nally prevailed with

him was the attraction of striking a heroic attitude. The international circle

surrounding him saw in him their last hope and greeted him as the liberator

of Europe; and he was secretly sure that victory would make him its master.

He had always dreamed of playing this part, which suited his vanity, his lip-

service to liberty and his deep-down instinct for domination. With his

increasing tendency to mysticism, he was easily persuaded that he was God’s

chosen vessel in the ﬁ ght against Antichrist. Having thus put himself at the

head of this crusade which Burke had formerly preached, he remained deaf

to all Napoleon’s suggestions.

Napoleon did not possess the means to go any further into Russia. In

Moscow, the army was in no immediate danger: nevertheless, it only held

the ground it occupied, and its lines of communication were far from

secure. Ofﬁ cial tradition has no doubt exaggerated the national character of

this war; but the serfs, like everyone else, could only ﬂ ee before a starving

foe, and, reduced to despair, they could only reply by guerrilla warfare. The

Cossacks, with their usual elusiveness, kept a close watch on all the French

detachments. If Napoleon allowed winter to hem him in, he might lose

Europe and even France in the general uncertainty about his fate. Up to the

middle of October he continued hopeful. Kutuzov was keeping Murat

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happily occupied by negotiating for an armistice; but he suddenly took his

enemy by surprise at Vinkovo. The next day Napoleon, thoroughly disillu-

sioned, gave the order to retreat.

Kutuzov could reckon on several days’ start from Tarutino to Smolensk. In

order to intimidate him, Napoleon advanced southwards and defeated him

on the twenty-fourth at Maloyaroslavets, after which he slipped away and

continued to make for Smolensk, while Davout – not without some

difﬁ culty – covered him against Miloradovich. When he set out, it was still

ﬁ ne weather; but quite abruptly snow began to fall. The countryside had

been devastated on the forward march, and now offered no shelter and

nothing in the way of resources. The horses fell by the wayside, vehicles and

guns were abandoned, the trail of stragglers grew constantly longer under

the daily scourge of the frost and the Cossacks. From 9 to 13 November the

army entered Smolensk, and from the fourteenth to the eighteenth they left

it in successive stages. The Russians went ahead and cut the road to Krasnoi.

On the ﬁ fteenth Napoleon got by without much resistance; but on the

sixteenth Eugène, and on the seventeenth Davout, had to give battle. On the

eighteenth, Ney was stopped, and only managed to escape by miraculously

crossing the frozen Dnieper. The army regrouped, and reached the Beresina,

though now reduced to about thirty thousand men. At this point, a serious

danger confronted it. Chichagov, having rejoined Tormasov, had moved

northwards, and without being pursued by Schwarzenberg had taken

Minsk, and then Borisov. Wittgenstein, for his part, had crossed the Dvina

and was driving back Oudinot and Victor. Oudinot hastened back to recap-

ture Borisov, but found the bridge had been destroyed. In the night of the

twenty-ﬁ fth to twenty-sixth, Eblé’s sappers built two new bridges. Napoleon

crossed on the twenty-seventh, and the next day there was a furious battle

on both sides of the river. On the right, Chichagov was held; but Kutuzov’s

weakness allowed Victor to escape, though he had to sacriﬁ ce his stragglers.

At this point the cold, which had up till then been relatively moderate, since

the Beresina was not frozen over, grew desperately severe, and ﬁ nished off

what was left of the Grande Armée. Some twelve thousand men reached

Vilna on 9 December and retreated by way of Kovno to Königsberg, to be

gradually joined by forty thousand stragglers who had been cut off.

Macdonald, falling back towards Tilsit, and Reynier and Schwarzenberg

towards the Bug, had between them no more than ﬁ fty-ﬁ ve thousand men.

Napoleon had lost four hundred thousand, plus one hundred thousand

prisoners.

The Grande Armée, the shield of Europe, no longer existed, and would

take a long time to rebuild. There was no longer any possibility of the

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binding force that had held the French armies together since 1793, nor

could new cavalry be improvised. Nevertheless, Napoleon was not alto-

gether shattered by this catastrophe, and was already giving his whole mind

to the problem of rebuilding an army. On 5 December, before Vilna,

Napoleon had received the news of General Malet’s attempt to seize the

government in Paris on 23 October, which all but succeeded; but he and his

accomplices had been shot on the twenty-ninth. Yet Napoleon realised it

was high time to go and take over the reins again before the terrible news

from Russia became generally known. He handed over command to Murat

and hastened back to France by sledge, accompanied by Caulaincourt. He

was full of illusions, demanding new contingents from Prussia and Austria,

and counting on Murat to hold the Russians at a safe distance on the Vistula,

while he himself would reappear there in the spring with new legions.

THE DEFECTION OF PRUSSIA AND THE FIRST

CAMPAIGN OF 1813

If the Prussians and Austrians had remained faithful, Murat might perhaps

have been able to hold on. Kutuzov was exhausted and did not venture

across the frontier, thinking that his country had no interest in prolonging

the war, an opinion shared by many of his countrymen. It was Alexander

who decided to resume the offensive. Dismissing Rumiantsev in disgrace,

he appeared at Vilna with Nesselrode on 23 December. He was spurred on

by Stein, who had been imploring him since 17 November to set Germany

free. The people would be called upon to rise, and the princes would be

urged to join the right side on pain of losing their thrones. Overtures had

already been made to Yorck by the Italian Paulucci and the German émigrés.

Yorck asked for instructions, and it is possible that none reached him. But,

separated as he was from Macdonald by the Russians, he made no attempt

to force his way through – which he could easily have done – but signed a

convention of neutrality at Tauroggen on 30 December. The Russians invaded

Prussia, and with Bülow refusing to work with Murat, Macdonald had some

difﬁ culty in regaining the Vistula. Frederick William dismissed Yorck; but

Yorck pretended to be unaware of the fact and followed the Russians, who

had good reason to count upon the Polish aristocracy. In December

Czartoryski had asked the tsar to re-establish Poland under the sceptre of

one of his sons. Several members of the Warsaw government offered the

grand duchy to Russia, asking for reunion with Lithuania and the granting

of a constitution. Nesselrode and Stein opposed this plan, the former in his

country’s interest, the latter on the plea that the coalition would then become