Part 39

Napoleon thoroughly appreciated the dangers of his position, as his correspondence with his agent at the Russian court shows. He was most urgent in inviting Alexander to play the part of an effective ally by sending troops to Hungary and Galicia, a movement which would have taken Austria between two fires. There were no longer vague promises of reward held out, but specific engagements were offered as an inducement for the Czar to act. “The three crowns of Austria could be separated. When these last-mentioned states have been thus divided, we can diminish the number of our troops, substitute for these general enlistments of troops, which are tending to call even the women under arms, a small number of regular troops and so change to the system of small armies, as introduced by the late King of Prussia (Frederick II). Our barracks can become poor-houses and the conscripts can stick to their tillage. Even if it is wished after the conquest to guarantee the integrity of the monarchy, I will agree to it provided there is a complete disarmament.”

Alexander showed a lack of interest in these proposals; on the other hand, he let the Austrian government know that he hoped they would be successful, promising at the same time that his alliance with the French would be interpreted so formally, that the Austrians would have nothing to fear from Russian armies. Yet in spite of these diplomatic discouragements Napoleon lost none of his technical skill in the campaign that followed. In five days (April 19-23, 1809) with an army of 120,000 men, though the main Austrian army consisted of 175,000, he took 40,000 prisoners and 100 pieces of artillery. He divided the enemy’s forces into separate divisions, both of which were defeated, and so he opened up the road to Vienna. But the close of the campaign was obstinately contested by the Austrian commander, the Archduke Charles. In the neighborhood of the Austrian capital there were desperate engagements at Aspern and Essling (May 21-22). For a time Napoleon’s lieutenants, Masséna and Lannes, were hard pressed near the island of Lobau in the Danube. The French advance was checked thirteen times; Essling was taken and retaken, and, according to general opinion, the primary result of this serious contest was only a repetition of Eylau.

Reinforcements were summoned from all sides; Lobau was transformed into a strong citadel with impregnable redoubts to insure the passage of the river. In July, Napoleon had under him 150,000 men and 450 cannon. On the 5th and 6th of the month a decisive battle was fought at Wagram, according to a carefully planned program. The Austrians were first of all outnumbered; the whole French army was so dispersed and concentrated over a distance of not more than four miles that it could be directly under the Emperor’s eyes. On the other hand, the Austrians were scattered, had no reserves at hand, and orders had to be given in writing. Successful as was Napoleon’s strategy, which contained his favorite expedient of breaking the enemy’s center by an overwhelmingly strong concentrated attack on the weakest point, it was plain to him that there was no longer in his army the cohesive action that had made the earlier victories so complete. The battle cost from 20,000 to 25,000 men on each side. “These are no longer the soldiers of Austerlitz,” he explained; and he showed his lack of confidence by giving up bayonet charges and trusting to artillery fire to break up his opponents’ lines.

The Austrian archduke withdrew from the field in good order, but Napoleon had no desire to pursue and force another engagement in the interior of the country. He trusted to the general influence abroad of the success at Wagram, and was glad to sign a treaty of peace at Vienna on the 14th of October, 1809, by which Austria was denuded of large sections of territory, that were taken to reward the fidelity of the Bavarians and Poles to their French allies. Under this reorganization Austria occupied a territory smaller than that of pre-revolutionary France. She was required to reduce her army to 150,000 men and to pay an indemnity of $17,000,000. Russia’s share of the spoil was measured by her apathetic position as an ally. There was an addition of territory containing a population of 400,000, but this was a small gain that by no means outweighed the favor shown to the Poles by the annexation of western Galicia to the grand duchy of Warsaw. Annexed to the French Empire were Fiume, Trieste, Croatia, Carniola, and a part of Carinthia, so that Napoleon’s eastern dominions extended practically without a break in their eastern border from the mouth of the Cattaro to Dantzic. Austria seemed to have become as much a satellite of Napoleon’s empire as Holland or Italy.

VII THE BEGINNING OF THE END

During the course of the contest with Austria, the war in the Iberian peninsula went on in a prolonged series of obstinate campaigns between Napoleon’s marshals and an allied force composed of English, Portuguese, and Spanish contingents. Even after the victory of Wagram the Spaniards held on in the face of several disasters; and helped by the English fleet they managed to retain a foothold in Cadiz. The temper of the population was judged to be so hostile that the French army of occupation was raised to the enormous number of 270,000 and the whole country was placed under martial law. The King, Napoleon’s brother Joseph, was only the nominal executive; he aptly called himself the porter of the Madrid hospitals. As the country was harassed with guerrilla warfare, and as the Cortes refused to recognize Joseph as their sovereign, Napoleon threatened to annex the whole kingdom to France.

In Portugal, a French army under Masséna failed to win a decisive victory. It was met by an Anglo-Portuguese force under Wellington, who so strongly intrenched himself at Torres Vedras that Masséna finally withdrew, followed by the English. In his retreat the French general was unable to change his fortune, and the effort to occupy Portugal failed. Masséna was then superseded in his command. Later on the French cause was much injured by the mutual jealousies of the commanders of the various army corps, who, if they had zealously coöperated, might, with the superior forces at their command, have driven Wellington back to the sea coast. By the year 1812, the French armies were stale, and although there were 230,000 French soldiers in the peninsula, Wellington was allowed to invade Spain with an army of only 60,000 men.

Napoleon was indignant at the mismanagement of his subordinates, and sent Jourdon to take charge of the military operations. The new commander not only found the various generals under him unwilling to act together, but also had to deal with a situation in which the troops were demoralized by habits of pillage. Their pay was in arrears, field artillery was scarce, the large siege guns had fallen into the hands of the English, there were no wagon trains and no supply service. Napoleon himself could not from a distance undertake any intelligent supervision of the Spanish situation, since he was obliged to depend on indirect information, and when he interfered his commands were rarely carried out with common sense or good will. His own hands were not free when the Spanish affairs became most critical, for the alliance with Russia, on which so much hope was placed, proved only temporary. On both sides there were grievances; Napoleon was indignant at the apathetic attitude of his ally during the Wagram campaign, and he felt irritated also at the hesitation and delay of the Czar in arranging a marriage for him with a Russian archduchess, after the divorce from Josephine. A distinct Austrian trend was given to French policy when Napoleon found the Austrian Emperor willing to sacrifice his daughter, for the purpose of perpetuating the Napoleonic dynasty. Intimation was given in plain terms that in the questions relating to the Balkan peninsula, Russia’s scheme of aggression would be no more encouraged nor supported.

In Alexander’s domains the continental blockade against England was unpopular and disastrous. With English vessels barred from Russian ports there was no more an outlet for the raw materials of the country. Many of the landlords were in a bankrupt condition; reprisals were made by increasing the tariff on French goods. In a military sense the only benefit accruing to Russia from the French alliance was the conquest of Finland. No good came from French help either in the war with Persia or in that with Turkey. On the other side, the constant extension of French territory and influence placed a sinister but natural interpretation on Napoleon’s promises to share with the Russians the dominion of all European and Asiatic lands as far East as India.

The last step in annexation illustrated the character of Napoleon’s present temper. Hamburg and Lübeck were incorporated with the French Empire and along with them the duchy of Oldenburg, whose duke was closely allied to the Russian royal house. The Czar protested formally, but without moving the Emperor of the French either to recede or to give adequate compensation for annexing these German territories.

But the severest blow to Russia came from the favors shown the Poles, to reward their valorous coöperation in the Wagram campaign. The Czar, who feared the restoration of the kingdom of Poland, attempted to secure from Napoleon the promise that that kingdom should never be reëstablished. Napoleon’s reply was that he would only pledge himself not to give any assistance to any revolt tending to restore the kingdom of Poland. The Czar’s anxiety was misplaced, for the provinces of his empire that he feared might be taken, were in no sense Polish socially, though they had formed a part of the ancient kingdom of Poland. There was no likelihood of a popular movement in favor of the Poles, nor would the population have endured a pro-Polish rearrangement of their territory against the Russians, with whom they, as members of the Orthodox Church, were closely in sympathy. There was also a pro-Russian party among the Poles which Alexander encouraged, by proposing a scheme to establish an enlarged autonomous Poland with a constitution under Russian protection. In 1811, Russian troops were massed together, to invade the grand duchy of Warsaw, and so to encourage the Russian partisans to carry through Alexander’s scheme.

In the spring of 1811, Napoleon, who had at first made light of the intimations of the hostile purposes of the Czar, that kept coming to him from Polish sources, realized that there was a substance behind these reports and began to collect forces from all parts of his empire to protect the grand duchy. Napoleon told the Russian representatives of his gigantic preparations, and at the same time declared that he wished for peace; he asked also whether Alexander thought he was ready to sacrifice 200,000 Frenchmen to re-establish Poland.

But the final rupture arose over Napoleon’s economic policy. Alexander refused to give up the right of trading with neutrals. “I am ready,” he said, “to withdraw to Siberia rather than accept for Russia the situation now occupied by Austria and Prussia.” When the Russian ultimatum was handed in, its conditions were the settlement of Alexander’s grievances with Sweden, the evacuation of Prussia, and the right of commerce with neutrals as preliminary to the question of tariffs and indemnity for the seizure of Oldenburg. Napoleon’s unwilling allies, Prussia and Austria, smarting as they were from past defeats at his hands, were not to be depended upon. On the other hand, Russia’s hands were made free by subsidies from England, by a treaty of peace with Turkey, and by the valuable aid of Sweden, whose crown prince was now Bernadotte, a kinsman of Napoleon and one of his ablest marshals.

In May, 1812, the French Emperor appeared in Dresden, ready to undertake the invasion of Russia; he was the personal ruler of 130 French departments, and under him, in the relation of vassals, were seven kingdoms and thirty princes. In Poland, he was greeted with great enthusiasm, but the actual contingents supplied to his army from Polish sources did not amount to more than 70,000 men. Much of the Grand Army with which Russia was now invaded, 678,000 in all (among the items being 480,000 foot, 100,000 horse, and 80,000 artillerymen), were composed, to the proportion of nearly half, of foreign contingents. Besides the force taken with him to Russia, he had at his command, under arms, 150,000 soldiers in France, 50,000 in Italy, 300,000 in Spain. The plan of campaign was to penetrate into the interior of the Russian Empire, leaving ample forces to guard communications and protect the flanks, as the French advanced. On the Russian side the forces were much less numerous, and there actually faced the 400,000 French who crossed the Niemen the last of June, only 147,000 Russians.

Napoleon’s plan depended for success on quick action. He hoped to attack and overcome the two chief Russian armies, before they had effected a junction. But the country was not like the plains of central Europe; it was marshy and broken by forests. His commanders, especially his brother Jerome, whose position at the head of an army corps was an absurd concession to the clan spirit of the Bonaparte family, showed dilatoriness in executing important strategical movements. The troops also suffered in their discipline from the constant marauding expeditions. Desertions were numerous, many lagged behind, and there were epidemics in the invading army owing to the extreme heat. From these various causes the divisions lost a large percentage of their effective strength, so that by the middle of July the invaders were faced by a reduction in the original number of their army of 150,000 men. Napoleon won no decisive victory, for after every engagement the enemy contrived to get away, drawing the invading forces farther into the interior of the country.

At Smolensk and Borodino there were battles that recalled the Eylau campaign, the losses were heavy on both sides without producing any change in the position of the opposing armies. On September 7, a murderous battle took place at Borodino near Moscow; the victory for the French might have been complete, if Napoleon had not at a critical time refused to let his guard charge, saying that he did not want to destroy it, 800 leagues away from France. The loss on both sides was frightful; of the French 30,000 were “hors de combat,” while the Russians counted their losses at 60,000. Among the killed on the French side were three generals of division, nine brigadier generals, and ten colonels. The Russians lost their heroic commander Bagration.

The road was now opened to Moscow, but there was no rejoicing among the victors, for on the field of battle lay 30,000 dead and 60,000 wounded. On the 14th, Napoleon entered the city, the ancient capital of Russia. Most of the inhabitants had fled, leaving only the lower classes and the occupants of the prisons, whom the governor of the city had released, when he heard of the victory of the French. While the army was halted in expectation that Alexander would sue for peace, a fire, started by Russian incendiaries, soon consumed most of the city, the houses of which were constructed entirely of wood. Fifteen thousand of the Russian wounded, who had been brought on in ambulances, were burnt to death. After the fire had spent its course Napoleon took up his abode in the Kremlin, which was only saved by the efforts of the Imperial Guard. He still hoped that terms of peace might be arranged, but Alexander continued inflexible.

Napoleon for a time contemplated spending the winter in Russia, since he recognized the practical difficulties of the retreat and the loss of prestige due to his withdrawal. Finally he decided to return by the southern provinces. The start west began on the 19th of November, 1812, with a force of 100,000 men; the way south was made impracticable by the obstinate resistance of the Russian general Kutusoff, with his army of only 50,000 men. Therefore the route over which they had come had to be taken for the return. The rearguard was constantly harassed by the enemy, and early in November there was a battle at Viazma, in which the French lost from 15,000 to 18,000 men. Snow began to fall, food was scarce, the troops were badly prepared to endure the wintry weather; out of 100,000 men there were soon only 40,000 left able to bear arms, and at Smolensk on the 12th of November only 34,000 were left.

No French army corps actually surrendered, but they suffered terrible losses, some of them losing half their effective strength. The Russians who followed the retreat were also reduced from 60,000 to 30,000. At the Berezina, where three Russian armies were joined to dispute the passage, the French with unheard-of bravery rescued themselves from capture by forces three times as numerous, and inflicted on the Russians a loss of 14,000 men. When the remnants of the army reached Lithuania, Napoleon left them there in order to make a rapid return to Paris and to counteract by his presence in his capital the bad effect of the news of the defeat in Russia. New armies had to be raised, for it was practically certain that a large part of Germany would soon be in revolt. Though temporarily strengthened by the various contingents left to protect the communications eastward, the final stage of the retreat from Russia, which was conducted by Murat, bore witness to the frightful straits and demoralization of the French. The sick and wounded were abandoned; there were no provisions for carrying the artillery or the pontoons; even the army treasure and the secret archives had to be left behind. Before the end of the journey west Ney, who commanded the rearguard, had with him no more than 500 or 600 men, and when the Old Guard entered Königsberg, it was reduced to 1500 men, of whom only 500 were fit to bear arms.

The extent of the Russian disaster may be measured by a few statistics; 533,000 soldiers crossed the actual frontier into Russia in the summer of 1812; 18,000 of the main army returned in the December following; about 130,000 men had been made prisoners in Russia, 55,000 had deserted at the opening of the campaign, and there were 55,000 survivors of the various corps that had been stationed as reserves along the line outside of the Russian territory. Altogether 250,000 must be reckoned as having perished during the course of the march to Moscow and the retreat from that city. The disaster meant that Napoleon’s schemes of European domination were checked and his military resources much diminished. It was no longer a question of new conquests, but of turning to face the nations who had suffered so long from French despotic rule.

VIII DEFEAT AND EXILE

From every quarter came the word that, with the Grand Army destroyed, the French Cæsar must now yield; his system, it was said, had expired on the plains of Russia. The hostile spirit of a subject population was seen as the straggling French passed through Prussia; soldiers who dropped out of the ranks were disarmed by the peasants, insulted and badly handled. The Prussians and Austrians made separate arrangements with the Russians, by which hostilities, so far as each were concerned, were to be suspended. Most of Prussia was abandoned; there were only 40,000 French left to oppose a revolted Germany. Even Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, abandoned the failing cause and retired suddenly to Naples, to make from there arrangements on his own account with the Austrian Prime Minister Metternich.

The activity of Napoleon in such a desperate situation was marvelous. As to money, he collected nearly $100,000,000 by using his own private treasury and selling large amounts of communal estates. Every available man was placed under arms, including the National Guard and even by anticipation the conscripts of 1814--there were already 140,000 of the conscripts of 1813 under training--the sailors in the seaports were enrolled as soldiers; and many regiments were taken from Spain. Altogether there was collected and sent in detachments to Germany an army of 500,000 men, mostly made up of youths less than twenty years of age. In order to give them discipline and stability, veterans were incorporated in the new regiments.

Napoleon was not so alert as he had been; he was suffering from an internal disease, and sometimes for weeks he was incapable of effort. There were frequent attacks also of drowsiness, all indicative of exhaustion of his powers. He was more intolerant than ever of criticism, refused to take advice, was suspicious of his counselors, and contemptuous of the ability of his commanders, an attitude somewhat justified by the fact that many of his best marshals were now replaced by men of second-rate ability, while others, who were fitted to command, were unwilling from jealousy to work together. Marbot declared that, “if the Emperor had wished to punish all those who were lacking in zeal, he would have been obliged to dispense with the services of nearly all his marshals.”

The service of supplies for the army was most defective. In the beginning of the year 1813, by the carelessness of the administrative work in this department, the Prussians got possession of over $6,000,000 worth of supplies, intended for the French armies. The consequence was that the soldiers depended on pillage; even the officers lived on what they could get from the country. Worse than all was the inability of the Emperor himself to gauge the changed conditions produced by his defeat. He still behaved as if he were invincible, and refused to make terms with Prussia or to conciliate Austria by well-timed territorial concessions. To the end he would not believe that his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, would take up arms against him. If, at this time, he had accepted a smaller, compact France, confined to its natural limits, he might have avoided the disasters of 1813 and 1814, and yet ruled over a territory larger than that ever held by Louis XIV.

In the new coalition Prussia was most anxious to restore her prestige; the uprising against the French was a national movement common to all classes of the population. Finally, even the timorous King was induced to side with the Russians and to issue an appeal to his people. There were 150,000 Prussians under arms, and in order to receive the help of other German states, proclamations were issued under Russian auspices, making generous promises of national independence and personal liberty. So were transplanted to German soil the watchwords of the French Revolution. Austria made many open professions of fidelity to the alliance with France, but Metternich was actively intriguing with the smaller German courts. He even tried to detach Jerome of Westphalia and Murat of Naples from the French, and he did all in his power to urge Frederick William, the Prussian king, to take up arms in behalf of the independence of Europe.