Chapter 4

AN INDECISIVE VICTORY: FRIEDLAND[4]

[Footnote 4: References as before.]

The State of France -- Remedies Proposed by the Emperor -- Napoleon's Self-Indulgence -- Perplexities of both Combatants in Poland -- Opening of the Campaign -- Heilsberg -- Friedland -- The Result Indecisive -- The Strategic Problem -- The Statesman's Point of View -- The Armistice -- Napoleon's Resolution -- The Czar's Obligations to Prussia -- His Attitude toward Napoleon.

The situation in Paris was even less satisfactory to Napoleon than that in the rest of Europe. Then, as now, France was too much like one of those interesting creatures called by the pleasant scientific name of cephalopod--all head except a few tentacles; so we say Paris, and not France. Imperial interests rested on two supports, Paris and the rest of the world. When Napoleon withdrew behind the Passarge, not all the fictions which his fertile brain could devise and his busy agents spread were sufficient to deceive the astute operators of the Paris exchange. Accordingly, the price of French government bonds went down with a serious drop; England having announced soon afterward that she meant to land a great army on the shores of the Baltic, public confidence was further shaken. A year before, the French nation had been startled by the premature demand for more French youth; the new call to anticipate the conscription filled them with consternation. These were grave matters, and the roads from Paris to Osterode and Finkenstein continually resounded under the hoofs of horses and the roll of wheels as messengers sped back and forth with questions and replies. The nature of this correspondence shows how perfectly the government of France was centralized in Napoleon's person, even in his absence at such a distance: the whole gamut of administration was run, from state questions of the gravest importance down to the disposition of trivial affairs connected with the opera and its coryphees. As to reviving the finances, the Emperor was at his wit's end, and in a sort of blind helplessness he ordered the state to lend five hundred thousand francs per month to such manufacturers as would keep at work and deposit their wares in a government storehouse as collateral; nor did he disdain such measures as the founding of one or two factories of military supplies, or even the refurnishing of the Tuileries, in which he requested the women of his family to spend their money freely.

Of course he was absurdly unsuccessful; scarcely less so than he was in his attempts to restore general confidence by the publication of inspired articles in the newspapers. The censorship was more rigid than ever, and Fouche was instructed to stop indiscreet private letters from the army. Nevertheless, with no great difficulty the senate was bullied into approving the new conscription, and the volatile people soon listened without alarm to the siren voice of their Emperor, which said these boys would be only a national guard, children obeying the law of nature, the objects of his own paternal care. Louis, who was governing Holland with reference to its own best interests, and ordering the affairs of his family rigidly but admirably, received a severe and passionate reprimand from the Emperor for his economy. What was wanted was pay for the troops, plenty of conscripts, encouragement for the Dutch Catholics, and a giddy court where men would forget more serious things, and where the gay young Queen Hortense could make a display. "Let your wife dance as much as she wants to; it is proper for her age. I have a wife forty years old, and from the field of battle I recommend her to go to balls; while you want one of twenty to live in a cloister, or like a wet-nurse, always bathing her child." In the absence of her bogy, Mme. de Stael, who said she loved the gutters of Paris better than the mountain streams of Switzerland, reappeared in the suburbs of that city. When Napoleon heard of it he grew furious, and gave orders to seize her as an intriguer, and to send her back to Geneva, by force if necessary. It was done, but an awful presentiment took possession of the Emperor that she had appeared like a crow foreboding a coming tempest. As if to compensate France for the loss of the exile's literary powers and those of her friends, many means were devised and tried for the encouragement of an imperial literature. In his assumed and noisy contempt for ideals, Napoleon displayed his fear of them: the Academy was ordered to occupy itself with literary criticism; when in public assemblies mention was made of Mirabeau or other Revolutionary heroes, the speaker was to be admonished that he should confine himself to their style and leave their politics alone; the schools were ordered to train the children in geography and in history, but the instruction must be confined to facts, and not be philosophical or religious.

Napoleon's worst qualities and his growing weaknesses were made manifest this winter in two exhibitions of self-indulgence most far-reaching in their results. The first bad symptom was his notorious license, which brought from the Empress expressions of the bitterest reproach. Growing old at forty-three, not forty, as Napoleon gallantly but untruthfully wrote to Louis, the aging Creole dismissed from memory the sins of her own youth and middle age, while in jealous fury she charged her husband not only with his adulteries, but with crimes the mere name of which sullies the ordinary records of human wickedness and folly. She would have followed the Emperor to Poland, but his repeated dissuasions, although honeyed, were virtual prohibitions, and she dared not. His unfriendly annalist, Mme. de Remusat, says he retorted to all Josephine's charges that he needed but one reply, the persistent I: "I am different from every one else, and accept the limitations of no other." Her continuous weeping, he wrote to his consort, showed neither character nor courage. "I don't like cowards; an empress should have pluck." The second sign of weakness was the growing neglect of detail in his work. Life has always been too short for a despot both to gratify his passions and at the same time to be a beneficent ruler, even under the simplest conditions. On the recovery of Maret, the Emperor relaxed very much in his personal attention to detail, while his secretary sought to drown a domestic sorrow and scandal in a feverish activity still greater than that which he had always displayed. This conjunction gave the secretary an eminence he had not hitherto reached, and made him thereafter a power behind the throne whose influence was dangerous to the Empire, to France, and to the peace of Europe.

In spite of the enemy's numerical inferiority, Napoleon had been thwarted at Eylau by the weather, by the unsurpassed bravery of the Russian soldiers, and by the able tactics of Bennigsen. The latter had not been worsted in the arbitrament of arms, yet the Emperor's character for resolution and energy had virtually defeated the Russians, and had given him not only a technical but a real victory. Although he fell back and assumed the defensive, feeling that without enormous reinforcements and the capture of Dantzic he could not resume the offensive, yet nevertheless he had remained for four months unmolested by his foe. Bennigsen's perplexities were great. The Russian court was rent by dissensions, affairs at Constantinople were occupying much of the Czar's attention, and the force available for fighting in the North seemed too small for a decisive victory: he remained virtually inert. There was an effort late in February to drive the French left wing across the Vistula, but it failed. A few days later Napoleon in person made a reconnaissance on his right, and this show of activity reduced the opposing ranks to inactivity. He had proposed to resume hostilities on June tenth, and had by that time increased his strength on the front to one hundred and sixty thousand men, all well equipped and fairly well fed. The reserve army in central Europe was much larger; there were about four hundred thousand men, all told, in the field.

Meanwhile, however, the pleasant season had mended the roads and dried the swamps. The Russians were refreshed by their long rest, and, children of nature as they were, felt the summer's warmth as a spur to activity. Bennigsen had by that time about ninety thousand men, excluding the Prussians, who now numbered eighteen thousand. By his delay he had lost the services of his best ally, the inclement weather; but he had at least come to a decision, and forestalling Napoleon's scheme, advanced on June sixth to the Passarge, against Ney's corps, which was the French advance-guard. Ney retreated, and the seventh was spent in manoeuvers which resulted in uniting his corps with the main army. Bennigsen, having hoped to cut off and destroy his division before attacking in force, felt compelled, in consequence of failure, to retreat in turn, and this movement left Lestocq at a dangerous distance to the right. At this juncture Napoleon determined to assume the offensive himself. On the eighth he began to concentrate his troops, and took measures to find the enemy in order to force a battle. Bennigsen had withdrawn beyond the river Alle; Soult and Lannes, with Murat in advance, were sent up its left bank to Heilsberg; Davout and Mortier were to pass farther on, as part of a general movement to surround; Ney and the guard were held in reserve, while Victor was despatched to block Lestocq.

The first shock occurred on the morning of the tenth, in the neighborhood of Heilsberg; for Bennigsen had sent a considerable number of his troops back over the river to feel the enemy. The Russians were slowly driven across the plain, fighting fiercely as they went, until by six in the evening they reached the heights near the town, which had been intrenched. Here they turned, and for five hours hurled back one advancing French column after another until eleven o'clock at night, when, fortunately for the attacking troops,--so at least thought Savary, who was with them,--it grew too dark, even near the summer solstice and in those high latitudes, to fight longer. Next morning Napoleon woke after his bivouac and looked to see his enemy gone, as at Pultusk and Eylau. But this time a repetition of that pleasant experience was denied him. His losses had been so serious the day before that he spent the eleventh in manoeuvers, further concentrating his army before Heilsberg, and despatching Davout to throw himself between Lestocq and Bennigsen, thus turning the latter's right and checking the former, if all went well. This movement determined the character of the whole campaign. It had the desired effect, and on the morning of the twelfth the trenches in front of him were empty. The Russians had stolen away, and for two days they steadily retreated down the Alle in the general direction of Koenigsberg, until on the evening of the thirteenth they reached Friedland.

Bennigsen had expected to retreat still farther, hoping to reach Wehlau, and cross to the right bank of the Pregel for a strong defensive position before Koenigsberg. Lestocq with the Prussians was well forward on the extreme right toward that place. But at three in the morning of June fourteenth the head of Lannes's column appeared before Friedland, and the Russian commander, supposing he had to do with a single division, turned, and crossing to the left bank of the Alle, passed through Friedland in order to meet his enemy in the open. His evident intention was to follow the Napoleonic plan of overwhelming the attacking divisions one by one as they arrived. His right wing was stationed in the rear of the hamlet of Heinrichsdorf, his left rested on a forest known as the Sortlack. When his arrangements were completed it was nine o'clock in the morning. What information he had is unknown, but what he did remains inexplicable. Starting to seize Heinrichsdorf, he was, after a short conflict, repulsed; for Lannes had stretched his line far to the left for the same purpose, and had been reinforced by Mortier's vanguard. Bennigsen withdrew about noon to his first position, and stood there in idleness for three long hours, exchanging useless volleys with his foe. Having his entire force already on the field, he remained absolutely inactive while the enemy formed their line. In respect to his having massed his forces before the French could form, his position was exactly parallel to that which the latter had occupied at Jena with regard to the Prussians, and which was used by Napoleon with such vigor for a flank attack. But Bennigsen lacked the promptness and insight necessary to use his advantage, and the long delay was decisive. In the interval, Ney, Victor's artillery, and the guard arrived; at three the Emperor issued his orders for forming the line; and two hours later he gave the signal for Ney to attack on the right. The Russians had but shortly before learned that the main French army was in front of them, and were beginning their retreat with the intention of recrossing the Alle, many having entered Friedland, which lies on the left bank of the stream. In the first rush toward the town, Ney was repulsed with dreadful loss; but as Ney's corps rolled back to right and left, Dupont appeared with Victor's first division in the very middle of the breaking lines, and at the same moment Senarmont pressed forward close to the Russian ranks with all Victor's artillery,--thirty-six pieces,--and began to pour in a deadly fire. This routed the enemy, who fled through the town and over the stream; but their right wing, being thus turned into the rear-guard, was caught by Lannes before it reached the crossing, and checked. The wooden bridge was set in flames, and before nightfall that portion of the Russian army which had not yet crossed was virtually annihilated.

About eighty thousand French and about fifty-five thousand Russians took part in this battle; the former lost seven thousand men, the latter sixteen thousand, with eighty field-pieces. It was the only one of Napoleon's great engagements in which he admitted his numerical superiority to his enemy. The same day Soult and Davout, with Murat's cavalry, drove Lestocq into Koenigsberg, and prepared to invest the town. But Lestocq's troops, with the garrison and the court, escaped, flying for refuge toward the Russian frontier. Bennigsen collected at Allenburg the troops he had saved, and, retreating in good order, crossed the Niemen at Tilsit four days later. He then had the option of awaiting Napoleon, who was close behind, or of making peace, or of withdrawing into the interior beyond the enemy's reach, as Alexander had done after Austerlitz. As a matter of fact, he confessed utter defeat. "This is no longer a fight, it is butchery," he wrote to the Czar's brother, the Grand Duke Constantine. "Tell the Emperor what you will," he said again, "if only I can stop the carnage."[5]

[Footnote 5: Oudinot: Memoires, Ch. II.]

The campaign of Friedland shows either less genius or more than any other of Napoleon's victories, according to the standpoint from which it is judged. If he is to be regarded throughout its duration merely as a general, then his conduct shows comparatively little ability. He came on his enemy where he did not expect a battle. Although he had ample time to evolve and execute an admirable plan, and while his loss was trifling compared with that of his opponents, yet, nevertheless, Friedland was a commonplace, incomplete affair. It compelled the foe to abandon Heilsberg, but it did not annihilate him or necessarily end the war. Bennigsen found all Russia behind him after his defeat: twenty-five thousand men came in from Koenigsberg, Prince Labanoff brought up the Russian reserves, and thus was formed a substantial army. A retreat with this force into the vast interior would have left Napoleon as a general just where he was before. This ineffectual result was entirely due to a single deliberate move which terminated his scheme of surrounding and annihilating the foe--the detachment of Davout against Lestocq on the enemy's extreme right.

But when viewed from the statesman's point of view, Friedland appears in a very different light.[6] It is a strange coincidence that in the month previous a rebellion of the janizaries had deprived Selim III of his throne, and that, Sebastiani's influence being thus ended, France's position in the Oriental question was utterly changed. The formal despatches announcing this fact did not reach Tilsit until June twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, but there is a strong probability that it was known to Napoleon before the battle of Friedland. Is it possible that the Emperor intended Friedland to do no more than satisfy his army's eagerness for glory, and yet leave Alexander in a humor to unite with him for the gratification of those well-known Oriental ambitions of his which he had so recently seen jeopardized by the Franco-Turkish alliance and the consequent ascendancy of French influence at Constantinople? Such a hypothesis is by no means wild; nevertheless, a careful study of the campaign seems to prove that Napoleon, in suddenly changing from the defensive to the offensive, and so finding himself at Heilsberg face to face with defeat, took the quickest and easiest means to relieve a critical situation. It would have appeared something very much like bravado had Davout's corps penetrated between Lestocq's division and the Russian army, and thus have exposed itself to a rear attack. If the easy self-reliance Napoleon felt after a winter of robust health had been somewhat less, and if his intellectual acumen had been somewhat greater, the whole situation might have been foreseen and provided for. As neither was the case, he did as a general the best thing that was possible at the moment. Admitting this, we shall find the statesman making the most of the general's poor situation; for the treaty which followed Friedland is unique in the history of diplomacy.

[Footnote 6: Yorck von Wartenburg: Napoleon als Feldherr, I, XIII.]

There were forcible reasons on both sides for arriving at an understanding. It has been remarked that Napoleon never discharged the stings and darts of personal abuse at Alexander I as he did at the persons of other enemies. In what was almost a personal correspondence at an earlier time the Czar had exhibited his noblest qualities and an enlightened liberalism. To be sure, every humiliation had been heaped on Russia in spurning the Oubril treaty of the previous year and by the light disdain of peace obligations solemnly taken. Yet Napoleon was alive to the present and imperative need of a strong ally if his mercantile attack on England were to have even a chance of success. With Austria he had employed all the diplomatic arts of Talleyrand and Andreossy to no avail: the Polish campaign had made Francis alert, that of Russia was reviving the bellicose spirit of the Austrian army. Negotiation with Frederick William had failed because based on the concept of a new Prussia eastward of the Elbe, a menace alike to Russia and Austria, and a confession of defeat by the King, who preferred to place his trust in Alexander. Francis was equally adverse to Talleyrand's elaborate scheme of a realm eastern in fact as in name, stretching away down the Danube valley to the Euxine, a buffer against Russian aggression, a menace or a support to Turkey as occasion required. It was therefore a categorical imperative which determined the Emperor of the French to woo the Emperor of all the Russias at this juncture. When a proposition for an armistice was made by Bennigsen on June twenty-first, it was not only courteously but impressively accepted, and within a very short time things were moving as if the two emperors were no longer enemies, but rather as if they were already intimate friends, anxious to embrace. At least, even before their meeting, such was the attitude they assumed in their communications with each other and ostentatiously displayed to those about them. Some things are perfectly patent in the Czar's desire for peace. Russian autocracy as a system was still unshakable, but the authority of his house was not: in sixty years there had been no fewer than four revolutionary upheavals, either by the soldiery or by a palace cabal. The instability of the throne had sadly diminished the prestige of the country, and after Austerlitz the nation had been treated with contempt in the person of the Czar, both in his political and his military character, the rest of Europe being profoundly indifferent to Russian chagrin. His situation was not improved by Pultusk, Eylau, or Friedland. Dissensions in the field were not concealed by the hallelujahs and hosannas of the populace in the cities; victory bore no fruits; without Austria the next step could not be taken, and hesitancy still marked that uneasy monarchy as its own. Prussia, although the principal in the fight, was but a feeble power. England, though reaping the harvest of Russia's commerce, had become niggardly in regard to subsidies, and had delayed the long-promised, much-vaunted Baltic expedition until it was useless. The King of Sweden was so hated by his own subjects that his efforts as an ally had been rendered almost futile. In Russia itself there was a strong party, led by the Grand Duke Constantine, which steadily denounced the war as one in the interest of strangers, and in it were included most, if not all, the Russian officers. It was evident that Alexander as an auxiliary would lose no prestige at home in withdrawing from a quarrel which was not Russia's, and in which he had more than paid any debt he owed to Prussia by the sacrifice in her behalf of his guards and of the flower of his army. Moreover, misery abounded among the survivors, and Russian finances were not exactly in a flourishing condition. Such was the general discontent with the war that men of importance--at least so it was said at the time--ventured to remind Alexander of his father's violent death.

On the other side the urgency was becoming acute. As the strategists say, Napoleon had won a battle, but not a victory, at Friedland. The situation in Paris continued highly unsatisfactory. The threatened English expedition to the Baltic might arrive at any time. Contemptible as was Gustavus of Sweden, he was in Pomerania with an Anglo-Hanoverian army of ten thousand men. Most disquieting of all, there were movements both of intellectual agitation and of active partizan warfare in Prussia that presaged a speedy convalescence on her part. It is evident that an alliance with Russia was better for France than one with Prussia as regards both the Oriental and European plans of Napoleon. He therefore determined to suggest the most glittering prospects to Alexander's messenger--nothing less than the partition of Turkey, and the Vistula as the Russian frontier on the Baltic.

But all these reasons on both sides seem inadequate to explain the extraordinary character of the events preliminary to the meeting of the two emperors at Tilsit, of what occurred at that meeting, and of the treaty there negotiated. When Bennigsen first proposed an armistice, Napoleon demanded as a guarantee the three fortresses of Pillau, Kolberg, and Graudenz. His messenger returned with the reply that they were not Russia's to give. Soon Duroc was despatched to the hostile camp. Would the Czar make a separate peace? To do so would be to betray Prussia by expressly violating the Bartenstein treaty. Technically the document was invalid, for Austria had never signed it, although she would gladly have done so when brought to face a Franco-Russian alliance. Morally it would be base for Alexander to negotiate separately, for Frederick William had refused a similar offer.[7] The young Czar, however, cared nothing for the royal Europe of former days, and but little for the theory of a Western empire under Napoleon. What he did care for was Russian influence in geographical Europe under whatever name, for the dismemberment of Turkey, and for the extension of his empire toward the west by the acquisition of Finland from Sweden. Having failed to realize his purpose by a coalition of so-called legitimate sovereigns, and having heard the almost incredible suggestions which Napoleon had made to Prince Labanoff, his messenger, he was overpowered by the temptation thus held out, and, deserting Prussia, answered, "Yes." On the twenty-first an armistice without serious guarantees was concluded between France and Russia; but none was made with Prussia, for the terms offered to her were so severe that, desperate as was her King, he could not endure the thought of accepting them. She was no longer an equal with either France or Russia, but a dependent on either and on both; her nomad court was reduced to Frederick William, his minister Hardenberg, and a few followers who were here to-day and there to-morrow, wherever they felt most was to be gained from the self-interest of either their former ally or their conqueror. The Queen and royal family were at Memel, the farthest outpost of Prussia's shattered domain.

[Footnote 7: On the character of Alexander, see Vandal: Napoleon et Alexandre, Vol. I, Ch. I.]

The attitude of the Czar toward Napoleon was markedly different from that of his predecessors in defeat. Frederick William's ancestor had only a century before bought his title by supplying Prussian troops to the German-Roman emperor, and, like Napoleon, had set the crown on his own head. Francis I of Austria was the grandson of Maria Theresa, a powerful and masterful woman, who held her throne in direct contravention of legitimist theories, because she had conquered it. Both were nevertheless overpowered by the sense of their legitimacy and sacred aloofness. When Francis humiliated himself before his conqueror after Austerlitz, his mien was distant and his salute haughty; the miserable King of Prussia was, like him, dignified and severe even in his beggary. The Czar was too close to the crime which had set him on his throne to assume any airs of superiority with the French Caesar. Having taken the first step, he began to show a childish eagerness for a personal meeting with Napoleon. The Emperor was far from averse, and made a formal proposal to that effect, which was promptly accepted; the intercourse between French and Russian officers grew warmer and closer every day, and the arrangements for an interview between the would-be Eastern and Western emperors were soon completed.