War approaching between France and Russia--Policy of Prussia--Hardenberg's
Ministry--Prussia forced into Alliance with Napoleon--Austrian Alliance--
Napoleon's Preparations--He enters Russia--Alexander and Bernadotte--Plan
of the Russians to fight a Battle at Drissa frustrated--They retreat on
Witepsk--Sufferings of the French--French enter Smolensko--Battle of
Borodino--Evacuation of Moscow--Moscow fired--The Retreat from Moscow--The
French at Smolensko--Advance of Russian Armies from North and South--
Battle of Krasnoi--Passage of the Beresina--The French reach the Niemen--
York's Convention with the Russians--The Czar and Stein--Russian Army
enters Prussia--Stein raises East Prussia--Treaty of Kalisch--Prussia
declares War--Enthusiasm of the Nation--Idea of German Unity--The Landwehr.
[Austria and Prussia in 1811.]
[Hardenberg's Ministry.]
War between France and Russia was known to be imminent as early as the
spring of 1811. The approach of the conflict was watched with the deepest
anxiety by the two States of central Europe which still retained some
degree of independence. The Governments of Berlin and Vienna had been drawn
together by misfortune. The same ultimate deliverance formed the secret
hope of both; but their danger was too great to permit them to combine in
open resistance to Napoleon's will. In spite of a tacit understanding
between the two powers, each was compelled for the present to accept the
conditions necessary to secure its own existence. The situation of Prussia
in especial was one of the utmost danger. Its territory lay directly
between the French Empire and Russia; its fortresses were in the hands of
Napoleon, its resources were certain to be seized by one or other of the
hostile armies. Neutrality was impossible, however much desired by Prussia
itself; and the only question to be decided by the Government was whether
Prussia should enter the war as the ally of France or of Russia. Had the
party of Stein been in power, Prussia would have taken arms against
Napoleon at every risk. Stein, however, was in exile his friends, though
strong in the army, were not masters of the Government; the foreign policy
of the country was directed by a statesman who trusted more to time and
prudent management than to desperate resolves. Hardenberg had been recalled
to office in 1810, and permitted to resume the great measures of civil
reform which had been broken off two years before. The machinery of
Government was reconstructed upon principles that had been laid down by
Stein; agrarian reform was carried still farther by the abolition of
peasant's service, and the partition of peasant's land between the occupant
and his lord; an experiment, though a very ill-managed one, was made in the
forms of constitutional Government by the convocation of three successive
assemblies of the Notables. On the part of the privileged orders Hardenberg
encountered the most bitter opposition; his own love of absolute power
prevented him from winning popular confidence by any real approach towards
a Representative System. Nor was the foreign policy of the Minister of a
character to excite enthusiasm. A true patriot at heart, he seemed at times
to be destitute of patriotism, when he was in fact only destitute of the
power to reveal his real motives.
[Hardenberg's foreign policy, 1811.]
Convinced that Prussia could not remain neutral in the coming war, and
believing some relief from its present burdens to be absolutely necessary,
Hardenberg determined in the first instance to offer Prussia's support to
Napoleon, demanding in return for it a reduction of the payments still due
to France, and the removal of the limits imposed upon the Prussian army.
[169] The offer of the Prussian alliance reached Napoleon in the spring of
1811: he maintained an obstinate silence. While the Prussian envoy at Paris
vainly waited for an audience, masses of troops advanced from the Rhine
towards the Prussian frontier, and the French garrisons on the Oder were
raised far beyond their stipulated strength. In July the envoy returned
from Paris, announcing that Napoleon declined even to enter upon a
discussion of the terms proposed by Hardenberg. King Frederick William
now wrote to the Czar, proposing an alliance between Prussia and Russia.
It was not long before the report of Hardenberg's military preparations
reached Paris. Napoleon announced that if they were not immediately
suspended he should order Davoust to march on Berlin; and he presented a
counter-proposition for a Prussian alliance, which was in fact one of
unqualified submission. The Government had to decide between accepting a
treaty which placed Prussia among Napoleon's vassals, or certain war.
Hardenberg, expecting favourable news from St. Petersburg, pronounced in
favour of war; but the Czar, though anxious for the support of Prussia,
had determined on a defensive plan of operations, and declared that he
could send no troops beyond the Russian frontier.
[Prussia accepts alliance with Napoleon Feb, 1812.]
Prussia was thus left to face Napoleon alone. Hardenberg shrank from the
responsibility of proclaiming a war for life or death, and a treaty was
signed which added the people of Frederick the Great to that inglorious
crowd which fought at Napoleon's orders against whatever remained of
independence and nationality in Europe. [170] (Feb. 24th, 1812.) Prussia
undertook to supply Napoleon with 20,000 men for the impending campaign,
and to raise no levies and to give no orders to its troops without
Napoleon's consent. Such was the bitter termination of all those patriotic
hopes and efforts which had carried Prussia through its darkest days.
Hardenberg himself might make a merit of bending before the storm, and of
preserving for Prussia the means of striking when the time should come; but
the simpler instincts of the patriotic party felt his submission to be the
very surrender of national existence. Stein in his exile denounced the
Minister with unsparing bitterness. Scharnhorst resigned his post; many of
the best officers in the Prussian army quitted the service of King
Frederick William in order to join the Russians in the last struggle for
European liberty.
[Alliance of Austria with Napoleon.]
The alliance which Napoleon pressed upon Austria was not of the same
humiliating character as that which Prussia was forced to accept. Both
Metternich and the Emperor Francis would have preferred to remain neutral,
for the country was suffering from a fearful State-bankruptcy, and the
Government had been compelled to reduce its paper money, in which all debts
and salaries were payable, to a fifth of its nominal value. Napoleon,
however, insisted on Austria's co-operation. The family-relations of the
two Emperors pointed to a close alliance, and the reward which Napoleon
held out to Austria, the restoration of the Illyrian provinces, was one of
the utmost value. Nor was the Austrian contingent to be treated, like the
Prussian, as a mere French army-corps. Its operations were to be separate
from those of the French, and its command was to be held by an Austrian
general, subordinate only to Napoleon himself. On these terms Metternich
was not unwilling to enter the campaign. He satisfied his scruples by
inventing a strange diplomatic form in which Austria was still described as
a neutral, although she took part in the war, [171] and felt as little
compunction in uniting with France as in explaining to the Courts of St.
Petersburg and Berlin that the union was a hypocritical one. The Sovereign
who was about to be attacked by Napoleon, and the Sovereigns who sent their
troops to Napoleon's support, perfectly well understood one another's
position. The Prussian corps, watched and outnumbered by the French, might
have to fight the Russians because they could not help it; the Austrians,
directed by their own commander, would do no serious harm to the Russians
so long as the Russians did no harm to them. Should the Czar succeed in
giving a good account of his adversary, he would have no difficulty in
coming to a settlement with his adversary's forced allies.
[Preparations of Napoleon for invasion of Russia.]
The Treaties which gave to Napoleon the hollow support of Austria and
Prussia were signed early in the year 1812. During the next three months
all Northern Germany was covered with enormous masses of troops and
waggon-trains, on their way from the Rhine to the Vistula. No expedition
had ever been organised on anything approaching to the scale of the
invasion of Russia. In all the wars of the French since 1793 the enemy's
country had furnished their armies with supplies, and the generals had
trusted to their own exertions for everything but guns and ammunition. Such
a method could not, however, be followed in an invasion of Russia. The
country beyond the Niemen was no well-stocked garden, like Lombardy or
Bavaria. Provisions for a mass of 450,000 men, with all the means of
transport for carrying them far into Russia, had to be collected at Dantzig
and the fortresses of the Vistula. No mercy was shown to the unfortunate
countries whose position now made them Napoleon's harvest-field and
storehouse. Prussia was forced to supplement its military assistance with
colossal grants of supplies. The whole of Napoleon's troops upon the march
through Germany lived at the expense of the towns and villages through
which they passed; in Westphalia such was the ruin caused by military
requisitions that King Jerome wrote to Napoleon, warning him to fear the
despair of men who had nothing more to lose. [172]
[Napoleon crosses Russian frontier, June, 1812.]
[Alexander and Bernadotte.]
At length the vast stores were collected, and the invading army reached the
Vistula. Napoleon himself quitted Paris on the 9th of May, and received the
homage of the Austrian and Prussian Sovereigns at Dresden. The eastward
movement of the army continued. The Polish and East Prussian districts
which had been the scene of the combats of 1807 were again traversed by
French columns. On the 23rd of June the order was given to cross the Niemen
and enter Russian territory. Out of 600,000 troops whom Napoleon had
organised for this campaign, 450,000 were actually upon the frontier. Of
these, 380,000 formed the central army, under Napoleon's own command, at
Kowno, on the Niemen; to the north, at Tilsit, there was formed a corps of
32,000, which included the contingent furnished by Prussia; the Austrians,
under Schwarzenburg, with a small French division, lay to the south, on the
borders of Galicia. Against the main army of Napoleon, the real invading
force, the Russians could only bring up 150,000 men. These were formed into
the First and Second Armies of the West. The First, or Northern Army, with
which the Czar himself was present, numbered about 100,000, under the
command of Barclay de Tolly; the Second Army, half that strength, was led
by Prince Bagration. In Southern Poland and on the Lower Niemen the French
auxiliary corps were faced by weak divisions. In all, the Russians had only
220,000 men to oppose to more than double that number of the enemy. The
principal reinforcements which they had to expect were from the armies
hitherto engaged with the Turks upon the Danube. Alexander found it
necessary to make peace with the Porte at the cost of a part of the spoils
of Tilsit. The Danubian provinces, with the exception of Bessarabia, were
restored to the Sultan, in order that Russia might withdraw its forces from
the south. Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, who was threatened with the
loss of his own dominions in the event of Napoleon's victory, concluded an
alliance with the Czar. In return for the co-operation of a Swedish army,
Alexander undertook, with an indifference to national right worthy of
Napoleon himself, to wrest Norway from Denmark, and to annex it to the
Swedish crown.
[Russians intend to fight at Drissa.]
[Russian armies severed, and retreat on Witepsk.]
The head-quarters of the Russian army were at Wilna when Napoleon crossed
the Niemen. It was unknown whether the French intended to advance upon
Moscow or upon St. Petersburg; nor had any systematic plan of the campaign
been adopted by the Czar. The idea of falling back before the enemy was
indeed familiar in Russia since the war between Peter the Great and Charles
XII. of Sweden, and there was no want of good counsel in favour of a
defensive warfare; [173] but neither the Czar nor any one of his generals
understood the simple theory of a retreat in which no battles at all should
be fought. The most that was understood by a defensive system was the
occupation of an entrenched position for battle, and a retreat to a second
line of entrenchments before the engagement was repeated. The actual course
of the campaign was no result of a profound design; it resulted from the
disagreements of the general's plans, and the frustration of them all. It
was intended in the first instance to fight a battle at Drissa, on the
river Dwina. In this position, which was supposed to cover the roads both
to Moscow and St. Petersburg, a great entrenched camp had been formed, and
here the Russian army was to make its first stand against Napoleon.
Accordingly, as soon as the French crossed the Niemen, both Barclay and
Bagration were ordered by the Czar to fall back upon Drissa. But the
movements of the French army were too rapid for the Russian commanders to
effect their junction. Bagration, who lay at some distance to the south,
was cut off from his colleague, and forced to retreat along the eastern
road towards Witepsk. Barclay reached Drissa in safety, but he knew himself
to be unable to hold it alone against 300,000 men. He evacuated the lines
without waiting for the approach of the French, and fell back in the
direction taken by the second army. The first movement of defence had thus
failed, and the Czar now quitted the camp, leaving to Barclay the command
of the whole Russian forces.
[Collapse of the French transport.]
[Barclay and Bagration unite at Smolensko, Aug. 3.]
Napoleon entered Wilna, the capital of Russian Poland, on the 28th of June.
The last Russian detachments had only left it a few hours before; but the
French were in no condition for immediate pursuit. Before the army reached
the Niemen the unparalleled difficulties of the campaign had become only
too clear. The vast waggon-trains broke down on the highways. The stores
were abundant, but the animals which had to transport them died of
exhaustion. No human genius, no perfection of foresight and care, could
have achieved the enormous task which Napoleon had undertaken. In spite of
a year's preparations the French suffered from hunger and thirst from the
moment that they set foot on Russian soil. Thirty thousand stragglers had
left the army before it reached Wilna; twenty-five thousand sick were in
the hospitals; the transports were at an unknown distance in the rear. At
the end of six days' march from the Niemen, Napoleon found himself
compelled to halt for nearly three weeks. The army did not leave Wilna till
the 16th of July, when Barclay had already evacuated the camp at Drissa.
When at length a march became possible, Napoleon moved upon the Upper
Dwina, hoping to intercept Barclay upon the road to Witepsk; but
difficulties of transport again brought him to a halt, and the Russian
commander reached Witepsk before his adversary. Here Barclay drew up for
battle, supposing Bagration's army to be but a short distance to the south.
In the course of the night intelligence arrived that Bagration's army was
nowhere near the rallying-point, but had been driven back towards
Smolensko. Barclay immediately gave up the thought of fighting a battle,
and took the road to Smolensko himself, leaving his watch-fires burning.
His movement was unperceived by the French; the retreat was made in good
order; and the two severed Russian armies at length effected their junction
at a point three hundred miles distant from the frontier.
[The French waste away.]
[French enter Smolensko, Aug. 18.]
[Barclay superseded by Kutusoff.]
Napoleon, disappointed of battle, entered Witepsk on the evening after the
Russians had abandoned it (July 28). Barclay's escape was, for the French,
a disaster of the first magnitude, since it extinguished all hope of
crushing the larger of the two Russian armies by overwhelming numbers in
one great and decisive engagement. The march of the French during the last
twelve days showed at what cost every further step must be made. Since
quitting Wilna the 50,000 sick and stragglers had risen to 100,000. Fever
and disease struck down whole regiments. The provisioning of the army was
beyond all human power. Of the 200,000 men who still remained, it might
almost be calculated in how many weeks the last would perish. So fearful
was the prospect that Napoleon himself thought of abandoning any further
advance until the next year, and of permitting the army to enter into
winter-quarters upon the Dwina. But the conviction that all Russian
resistance would end with the capture of Moscow hurried him on. The army
left Witepsk on the 13th of August, and followed the Russians to Smolensko.
Here the entire Russian army clamoured for battle. Barclay stood alone in
perceiving the necessity for retreat. The generals caballed against him;
the soldiers were on the point of mutiny; the Czar himself wrote to express
his impatience for an attack upon the French. Barclay nevertheless
persisted in his resolution to abandon Smolensko. He so far yielded to the
army as to permit the rearguard to engage in a bloody struggle with the
French when they assaulted the town; but the evacuation was completed under
cover of night; and when the French made their entrance into Smolensko on
the next morning they found it deserted and in rums. The surrender of
Smolensko was the last sacrifice that Barclay could extort from Russian
pride. He no longer opposed the universal cry for battle, and the retreat
was continued only with the intention of halting at the first strong
position. Barclay himself was surveying a battleground when he heard that
the command had been taken out of his hands. The Czar had been forced by
national indignation at the loss of Smolensko to remove this able soldier,
who was a Livonian by birth, and to transfer the command to Kutusoff, a
thorough Russian, whom a life-time spent in victories over the Turk had
made, in spite of his defeat at Austerlitz, the idol of the nation.
[The French advance from Smolensko.]
When Kutusoff reached the camp, the prolonged miseries of the French
advance had already reduced the invaders to the number of the army opposed
to them. As far as Smolensko the French had at least not suffered from the
hostility of the population, who were Poles, not Russians; but on reaching
Smolensko they entered a country where every peasant was a fanatical enemy.
The villages were burnt down by their inhabitants, the corn destroyed, and
the cattle driven into the woods. Every day's march onward from Smolensko
cost the French three thousand men. On reaching the river Moskwa in the
first week of September, a hundred and seventy-five thousand out of
Napoleon's three hundred and eighty thousand soldiers were in the
hospitals, or missing, or dead. About sixty thousand guarded the line of
march. The Russians, on the other hand, had received reinforcements which
covered their losses at Smolensko; and although detachments had been sent
to support the army of Riga, Kutusoff was still able to place over one
hundred thousand men in the field.
[Battle of Borodino, Sept. 7.]
[Evacuation of Moscow. French enter Moscow, Sept. 14.]
On the 5th of September the Russian army drew up for battle at Borodino, on
the Moskwa, seventy miles west of the capital. At early morning on the 7th
the French advanced to the attack. The battle was, in proportion to its
numbers, the most sanguinary of modern times. Forty thousand French, thirty
thousand Russians were struck down. At the close of the day the French were
in possession of the enemy's ground, but the Russians, unbroken in their
order, had only retreated to a second line of defence. Both sides claimed
the victory; neither had won it. It was no catastrophe such as Napoleon
required for the decision of the war, it was no triumph sufficient to save
Russia from the necessity of abandoning its capital. Kutusoff had sustained
too heavy a loss to face the French beneath the walls of Moscow. Peace was
no nearer for the 70,000 men who had been killed or wounded in the fight.
The French steadily advanced; the Russians retreated to Moscow, and
evacuated the capital when their generals decided that they could not
encounter the French assault. The Holy City was left undefended before the
invader. But the departure of the army was the smallest part of the
evacuation. The inhabitants, partly of their own free will, partly under
the compulsion of the Governor, abandoned the city in a mass. No gloomy or
excited crowd, as at Vienna and Berlin, thronged the streets to witness the
entrance of the great conqueror, when on the 14th of September Napoleon
took possession of Moscow. His troops marched through silent and deserted
streets. In the solitude of the Kremlin Napoleon received the homage of a
few foreigners, who alone could be collected by his servants to tender to
him the submission of the city.
[Moscow fired.]
But the worst was yet to come. On the night after Napoleon's entry, fires
broke out in different parts of Moscow. They were ascribed at first to
accident; but when on the next day the French saw the flames gaining ground
in every direction, and found that all the means for extinguishing fire had
been removed from the city, they understood the doom to which Moscow had
been devoted by its own defenders. Count Rostopchin, the governor, had
determined on the destruction of Moscow without the knowledge of the Czar.
The doors of the prisons were thrown open. Rostopchin gave the signal by
setting fire to his own palace, and let loose his bands of incendiaries
over the city. For five days the flames rose and fell; and when, on the
evening of the 20th, the last fires ceased, three-fourths of Moscow lay in
ruins.
[Napoleon at Moscow, Sept. 14-Oct. 19.]
Such was the prize for which Napoleon had sacrificed 200,000 men, and
engulfed the weak remnant of his army six hundred miles deep in an enemy's
country. Throughout all the terrors of the advance Napoleon had held fast
to the belief that Alexander's resistance would end with the fall of his
capital. The events that accompanied the entry of the French into Moscow
shook his confidence; yet even now Napoleon could not believe that the Czar
remained firm against all thoughts of peace. His experience in all earlier
wars had given him confidence in the power of one conspicuous disaster to
unhinge the resolution of kings. His trust in the deepening impression made
by the fall of Moscow was fostered by negotiations begun by Kutusoff for
the very purpose of delaying the French retreat. For five weeks Napoleon
remained at Moscow as if spell-bound, unable to convince himself of his
powerlessness to break Alexander's determination, unable to face a retreat
which would display to all Europe the failure of his arms and the
termination of his career of victory. At length the approach of winter
forced him to action. It was impossible to provision the army at Moscow
during the winter months, even if there had been nothing to fear from the
enemy. Even the mocking overtures of Kutusoff had ceased. The frightful
reality could no longer be concealed. On the 19th of October the order for
retreat was given. It was not the destruction of Moscow, but the departure
of its inhabitants, that had brought the conqueror to ruin. Above two
thousand houses were still standing; but whether the buildings remained or
perished made little difference; the whole value of the capital to Napoleon
was lost when the inhabitants, whom he could have forced to procure
supplies for his army, disappeared. Vienna and Berlin had been of such
incalculable service to Napoleon because the whole native administration
placed itself under his orders, and every rich and important citizen became
a hostage for the activity of the rest. When the French gained Moscow, they
gained nothing beyond the supplies which were at that moment in the city.
All was lost to Napoleon when the class who in other capitals had been his
instruments fled at his approach. The conflagration of Moscow acted upon
all Europe as a signal of inextinguishable national hatred; as a military
operation, it neither accelerated the retreat of Napoleon nor added to the
miseries which his army had to undergo.
[Napoleon leaves Moscow, Oct. 19.]
[Forced to retreat by the same road.]
The French forces which quitted Moscow in October numbered about 100,000
men. Reinforcements had come in during the occupation of the city, and the
health of the soldiers had been in some degree restored by a month's rest.
Everything now depended upon gaining a line of retreat where food could be
found. Though but a fourth part of the army which entered Russia in the
summer, the army which left Moscow was still large enough to protect itself
against the enemy, if allowed to retreat through a fresh country; if forced
back upon the devastated line of its advance it was impossible for it to
escape destruction. Napoleon therefore determined to make for Kaluga, on
the south of Moscow, and to endeavour to gain a road to Smolensko far
distant from that by which he had come. The army moved from Moscow in a
southern direction. But its route had been foreseen by Kutusoff. At the end
of four days' march it was met by a Russian corps at Jaroslavitz. A bloody
struggle left the French in possession of the road: they continued their
advance; but it was only to find that Kutusoff, with his full strength, had
occupied a line of heights farther south, and barred the way to Kaluga. The
effort of an assault was beyond the powers of the French. Napoleon surveyed
the enemy's position, and recognised the fatal necessity of abandoning the
march southwards and returning to the wasted road by which he had advanced.
The meaning of the backward movement was quickly understood by the army.
From the moment of quitting Jaroslavitz, disorder and despair increased
with every march. Thirty thousand men were lost upon the road before a
pursuer appeared in sight. When, on the 2nd of November, the army reached
Wiazma, it numbered no more than 65,000 men.
[Kutusoff follows by parallel road.]
Kutusoff was unadventurous in pursuit. The necessity of moving his army
along a parallel road south of the French, in order to avoid starvation,
diminished the opportunities for attack; but the general himself disliked
risking his forces, and preferred to see the enemy's destruction effected
by the elements. At Wiazma, where, on the 3rd of November, the French were
for the first time attacked in force, Kutusoff's own delay alone saved them
from total ruin. In spite of heavy loss the French kept possession of the
road, and secured their retreat to Smolensko, where stores of food had been
accumulated, and where other and less exhausted French troops were at hand.
[Frost, Nov. 6.]
[French reach Smolensko, Nov. 9.]
Up to the 6th of November the weather had been sunny and dry. On the 6th
the long-delayed terrors of Russian winter broke upon the pursuers and the
pursued. Snow darkened the air and hid the last traces of vegetation from
the starving cavalry trains. The temperature sank at times to forty degrees
of frost. Death came, sometimes in the unfelt release from misery,
sometimes in horrible forms of mutilation and disease. Both armies were
exposed to the same sufferings; but the Russians had at least such succour
as their countrymen could give; where the French sank, they died. The order
of war disappeared under conditions which made life itself the accident of
a meal or of a place by the camp-fire. Though most of the French soldiery
continued to carry their arms, the Guard alone kept its separate formation;
the other regiments marched in confused masses. From the 9th to the 13th of
November these starving bands arrived one after another at Smolensko,
expecting that here their sufferings would end. But the organisation for
distributing the stores accumulated in Smolensko no longer existed. The
perishing crowds were left to find shelter where they could; sacks of corn
were thrown to them for food.
[Russian armies from north and south attempt to cut off French retreat.]
[Krasnoi, Nov. 17.]
It was impossible for Napoleon to give his wearied soldiers rest, for new
Russian armies were advancing from the north and the south to cut off their
retreat. From the Danube and from the Baltic Sea troops were pressing
forward to their meeting-point upon the rear of the invader. Witgenstein,
moving southwards at the head of the army of the Dwina, had overpowered the
French corps stationed upon that river, and made himself master of Witepsk.
The army of Bucharest, which had been toiling northwards ever since the
beginning of August, had advanced to within a few days' march of its
meeting-point with the army of the Dwina upon the line of Napoleon's
communications. Before Napoleon reached Smolensko he sent orders to Victor,
who was at Smolensko with some reserves, to march against Witgenstein and
drive him back upon the Dwina. Victor set out on his mission. During the
short halt of Napoleon in Smolensko, Kutusoff pushed forward to the west of
the French, and took post at Krasnoi, thirty miles farther along the road
by which Napoleon had to pass. The retreat of the French seemed to be
actually cut off. Had the Russian general dared to face Napoleon and his
Guards, he might have held the French in check until the arrival of the two
auxiliary armies from the north and south enabled him to capture Napoleon
and his entire force. Kutusoff, however, preferred a partial and certain
victory to a struggle with Napoleon for life or death. He permitted
Napoleon and the Guard to pass by unattacked, and then fell upon the hinder
divisions of the French army. (Nov. 17.) These unfortunate troops were
successively cut to pieces. Twenty-six thousand were made prisoners. Ney,
with a part of the rear-guard, only escaped by crossing the Dnieper on the
ice. Of the army that had quitted Moscow there now remained but 10,000
combatants and 20,000 followers. Kutusoff himself was brought to such a
state of exhaustion that he could carry the pursuit no further, and entered
into quarters upon the Dnieper.
[Victor joins Napoleon.]
[Passage of the Beresina, Nov. 28th.]
It was a few days after the battle at Krasnoi that the divisions of Victor,
coming from the direction of the Dwina, suddenly encountered the remnant
of Napoleon's army. Though aware that Napoleon was in retreat, they knew
nothing of the calamities that had befallen him, and were struck with
amazement when, in the middle of a forest, they met with what seemed more
like a miserable troop of captives than an army upon the march. Victor's
soldiers of a mere auxiliary corps found themselves more than double the
effective strength of the whole army of Moscow. Their arrival again placed
Napoleon at the head of 30,000 disciplined troops, and gave the French a
gleam of victory in the last and seemingly most hopeless struggle in the
campaign. Admiral Tchitchagoff, in command of the army marching from the
Danube, had at length reached the line of Napoleon's retreat, and
established himself at Borisov, where the road through Poland crosses the
river Beresina. The bridge was destroyed by the Russians, and Tchitchagoff
opened communication with Witgenstein's army, which lay only a few miles to
the north. It appeared as if the retreat of the French was now finally
intercepted, and the surrender of Napoleon inevitable. Yet even in this
hopeless situation the military skill and daring of the French worked with
something of its ancient power. The army reached the Beresina; Napoleon
succeeded in withdrawing the enemy from the real point of passage; bridges
were thrown across the river, and after desperate fighting a great part of
the army made good its footing upon the western bank (Nov. 28). But the
losses even among the effective troops were enormous. The fate of the
miserable crowd that followed them, torn by the cannon-fire of the
Russians, and precipitated into the river by the breaking of one of the
bridges, has made the passage of the Beresina a synonym for the utmost
degree of human woe.
[French reach the Niemen, Dec. 13.]
This was the last engagement fought by the army. The Guards still preserved
their order: Marshal Ney still found soldiers capable of turning upon the
pursuer with his own steady and unflagging courage; but the bulk of the
army struggled forward in confused crowds, harassed by the Cossacks, and
laying down their arms by thousands before the enemy. The frost, which had
broken up on the 19th, returned on the 30th of November with even greater
severity. Twenty thousand fresh troops which joined the army between the
Beresina and Wilna scarcely arrested the process of dissolution. On the 3rd
of December Napoleon quitted the army. Wilna itself was abandoned with all
its stores; and when at length the fugitives reached the Niemen, they
numbered little more than twenty thousand. Here, six months earlier, three
hundred and eighty thousand men had crossed with Napoleon. A hundred
thousand more had joined the army in the course of its retreat. Of all this
host, not the twentieth part reached the Prussian frontier. A hundred and
seventy thousand remained prisoners in the hands of the Russians; a greater
number had perished. Of the twenty thousand men who now beheld the Niemen,
probably not seven thousand had crossed with Napoleon. In the presence of a
catastrophe so overwhelming and so unparalleled the Russian generals might
well be content with their own share in the work of destruction. Yet the
event proved that Kutusoff had done ill in sparing the extremest effort to
capture or annihilate his foe. Not only was Napoleon's own escape the
pledge of continued war, but the remnant that escaped with him possessed a
military value out of all proportion to its insignificant numbers. The best
of the army were the last to succumb. Out of those few thousands who
endured to the end, a very large proportion were veteran officers, who
immediately took their place at the head of Napoleon's newly-raised armies,
and gave to them a military efficiency soon to be bitterly proved by Europe
on many a German battle-field.
[York's convention with the Russians, Dec. 30.]
[York and the Prussian contingent at Riga.]
Four hundred thousand men were lost to a conqueror who could still stake
the lives of half a million more. The material power of Napoleon, though
largely, was not fatally diminished by the Russian campaign; it was through
its moral effect, first proved in the action of Prussia, that the retreat
from Moscow created a new order of things in Europe. The Prussian
contingent, commanded by General von York, lay in front of Riga, where it
formed part of the French subsidiary army-corps led by Marshal Macdonald.
Early in November the Russian governor of Riga addressed himself to York,
assuring him that Napoleon was ruined, and soliciting York himself to take
up arms against Macdonald. [174] York had no evidence, beyond the word of
the Russian commander, of the extent of Napoleon's losses; and even if the
facts were as stated, it was by no means clear that the Czar might not be
inclined to take vengeance on Prussia on account of its alliance with
Napoleon. York returned a guarded answer to the Russian, and sent an
officer to Wilna to ascertain the real state of the French army. On the 8th
of December the officer returned, and described what he had himself seen.
Soon afterwards the Russian commandant produced a letter from the Czar,
declaring his intention to deal with Prussia as a friend, not as an enemy.
On these points all doubt was removed; York's decision was thrown upon
himself. York was a rigid soldier of the old Prussian type, dominated by
the idea of military duty. The act to which the Russian commander invited
him, and which the younger officers were ready to hail as the liberation of
Prussia, might be branded by his sovereign as desertion and treason.
Whatever scruples and perplexity might be felt in such a situation by a
loyal and obedient soldier were felt by York. He nevertheless chose the
course which seemed to be for his country's good; and having chosen it, he
accepted all the consequences which it involved. On the 30th of December a
convention was signed at Tauroggen, which, under the guise of a truce,
practically withdrew the Prussian army from Napoleon, and gave the Russians
possession of Königsberg. The momentous character of the act was recognised
by Napoleon as soon as the news reached Paris. York's force was the
strongest military body upon the Russian frontier; united with Macdonald,
it would have forced the Russian pursuit to stop at the Niemen; abandoning
Napoleon, it brought his enemies on to the Vistula, and threatened
incalculable danger by its example to all the rest of Germany. For the
moment, however, Napoleon could count upon the spiritless obedience of King
Frederick William. In the midst of the French regiments that garrisoned
Berlin, the King wrote orders pronouncing York's convention null and void,
and ordering York himself to be tried by court-martial. The news reached
the loyal soldier: he received it with grief, but maintained his resolution
to act for his country's good. "With bleeding heart," he wrote, "I burst
the bond of obedience, and carry on the war upon my own responsibility. The
army desires war with France; the nation desires it; the King himself
desires it, but his will is not free. The army must make his will free."
[The Czar and Stein.]
[Alexander enters Prussia, Jan., 1813.]
York's act was nothing less than the turning-point in Prussian history.
Another Prussian, at this great crisis of Europe, played as great, though
not so conspicuous, a part. Before the outbreak of the Russian war, the
Czar had requested the exile Stein to come to St. Petersburg to aid him
with his counsels during the struggle with Napoleon. Stein gladly accepted
the call; and throughout the campaign he encouraged the Czar in the
resolute resistance which the Russian nation itself required of its
Government. So long as French soldiers remained on Russian soil, there was
indeed little need for a foreigner to stimulate the Czar's energies; but
when the pursuit had gloriously ended on the Niemen, the case became very
different. Kutusoff and the generals were disinclined to carry the war into
Germany. The Russian army had itself lost three-fourths of its numbers;
Russian honour was satisfied; the liberation of Western Europe might be
left to Western Europe itself. Among the politicians who surrounded
Alexander, there were a considerable number, including the first minister
Romanzoff, who still believed in the good policy of a French alliance.
These were the influences with which Stein had to contend, when the
question arose whether Russia should rest satisfied with its own victories,
or summon all Europe to unite in overthrowing Napoleon's tyranny. No record
remains of the stages by which Alexander's mind rose to the clear and firm
conception of a single European interest against Napoleon; indications
exist that it was Stein's personal influence which most largely affected
his decision. Even in the darkest moments of the war, when the forces of
Russia seemed wholly incapable of checking Napoleon's advance, Stein had
never abandoned his scheme for raising the German nation against Napoleon.
The confidence with which he had assured Alexander of ultimate victory over
the invader had been thoroughly justified; the triumph which he had
predicted had come with a rapidity and completeness even surpassing his
hopes. For a moment Alexander identified himself with the statesman who, in
the midst of Germany's humiliation, had been so resolute, so far-sighted,
so aspiring. [175] The minister of the peace-party was dismissed: Alexander
ordered his troops to advance into Prussia, and charged Stein himself to
assume the government of the Prussian districts occupied by Russian armies.
Stein's mission was to arm the Landwehr, and to gather all the resources of
the country for war against France; his powers were to continue until some
definite arrangement should be made between the King of Prussia and the
Czar.
[Stein's commission from Alexander.]
[Province of East Prussia arms, Jan., 1813.]
Armed with this commission from a foreign sovereign, Stein appeared at
Königsberg on the 22nd of January, 1813, and published an order requiring
the governor of the province of East Prussia to convoke an assembly for the
purpose of arming the people. Stein would have desired York to appear as
President of the Assembly; but York, like most of the Prussian officials,
was alarmed and indignant at Stein's assumption of power in Prussia as the
representative of the Russian Czar, and hesitated to connect himself with
so revolutionary a measure as the arming of the people. It was only upon
condition that Stein himself should not appear in the Assembly that York
consented to recognise its powers. The Assembly met. York entered the
house, and spoke a few soul-stirring words. His undisguised declaration of
war with France was received with enthusiastic cheers. A plan for the
formation of a Landwehr, based on Scharnhorst's plans of 1808, was laid
before the Assembly, and accepted. Forty thousand men were called to arms
in a province which included nothing west of the Vistula. The nation itself
had begun the war, and left its Government no choice but to follow. Stein's
task was fulfilled; and he retired to the quarters of Alexander, unwilling
to mar by the appearance of foreign intervention the work to which the
Prussian nation had now committed itself beyond power of recall. It was the
fortune of the Prussian State, while its King dissembled before the French
in Berlin, to possess a soldier brave enough to emancipate its army, and a
citizen bold enough to usurp the government of its provinces. Frederick
William forgave York his intrepidity; Stein's action was never forgiven by
the timid and jealous sovereign whose subjects he had summoned to arm
themselves for their country's deliverance.
[Policy of Hardenberg.]
[Treaty of Kalisch, Feb. 27.]
The Government of Berlin, which since the beginning of the Revolutionary
War had neither been able to fight, nor to deceive, nor to be honest, was
at length forced by circumstances into a certain effectiveness in all three
forms of action. In the interval between the first tidings of Napoleon's
disasters and the announcement of York's convention with the Russians,
Hardenberg had been assuring Napoleon of his devotion, and collecting
troops which he carefully prevented from joining him. [176] The desire of
the King was to gain concessions without taking part in the war either
against Napoleon or on his side. When, however, the balance turned more
decidedly against Napoleon, he grew bolder; and the news of York's
defection, though it seriously embarrassed the Cabinet for the moment,
practically decided it in favour of war with France. The messenger who was
sent to remove York from his command received private instructions to fall
into the hands of the Russians, and to inform the Czar that, if his troops
advanced as far as the Oder, King Frederick William would be ready to
conclude an alliance. Every post that arrived from East Prussia
strengthened the warlike resolutions of the Government. At length the King
ventured on the decisive step of quitting Berlin and placing himself at
Breslau (Jan. 25). At Berlin he was in the power of the French; at Breslau
he was within easy reach of Alexander. The significance of the journey
could not be mistaken: it was immediately followed by open preparation for
war with France. On February 3rd there appeared an edict inviting
volunteers to enrol themselves: a week later all exemptions from military
service were abolished, and the entire male population of Prussia between
the ages of seventeen and twenty-four was declared liable to serve. General
Knesebeck was sent to the headquarters of the Czar, which were now between
Warsaw and Kalisch, to conclude a treaty of alliance. Knesebeck demanded
securities for the restoration to Prussia of all the Polish territory which
it had possessed before 1806; the Czar, unwilling either to grant this
condition or to lose the Prussian alliance, kept Knesebeck at his quarters,
and sent Stein with a Russian plenipotentiary to Breslau to conclude the
treaty with Hardenberg himself. Stein and Hardenberg met at Breslau on the
26th of February. Hardenberg accepted the Czar's terms, and the treaty,
known as the Treaty of Kalisch, [177] was signed on the following day. By
this treaty, without guaranteeing the restoration of Prussian Poland,
Russia undertook not to lay down its arms until the Prussian State as a
whole was restored to the area and strength which it had possessed before
1806. For this purpose annexations were promised in Northern Germany. With
regard to Poland, Russia promised no more than to permit Prussia to retain
what it had received in 1772, together with a strip of territory to connect
this district with Silesia. The meaning of the agreement was that Prussia
should abandon to Russia the greater part of its late Polish provinces, and
receive an equivalent German territory in its stead. The Treaty of Kalisch
virtually surrendered to the Czar all that Prussia had gained in the
partitions of Poland made in 1793 and in 1795. The sacrifice was deemed a
most severe one by every Prussian politician, and was accepted only as a
less evil than the loss of Russia's friendship, and a renewed submission to
Napoleon. No single statesman, not even Stein himself, appears to have
understood that in exchanging its Polish conquests for German annexations,
in turning to the German west instead of to the alien Slavonic east,
Prussia was in fact taking the very step which made it the possible head of
a future united Germany.
[French retreat to the Elbe.]
War was still undeclared upon Napoleon by King Frederick William, but
throughout the month of February the light cavalry of the Russians pushed
forward unhindered through Prussian territory towards the Oder, and crowds
of volunteers, marching through Berlin on their way to the camps in
Silesia, gave the French clear signs of the storm that was about to burst
upon them. [178] The remnant of Napoleon's army, now commanded by Eugene
Beauharnais, had fallen back step by step to the Oder. Here, resting on the
fortresses, it might probably have checked the Russian advance; but the
heart of Eugene failed; the line of the Oder was abandoned, and the retreat
continued to Berlin and the Elbe. The Cossacks followed. On the 20th of
February they actually entered Berlin and fought with the French in the
streets. The French garrison was far superior in force; but the appearance
of the Cossacks caused such a ferment that, although the alliance between
France and Prussia was still in nominal existence, the French troops
expected to be cut to pieces by the people. For some days they continued to
bivouac in the streets, and as soon as it became known that a regular
Russian force had reached the Oder, Eugene determined to evacuate Berlin.
On the 4th of March the last French soldier quitted the Prussian capital.
The Cossacks rode through the town as the French left it, and fought with
their rear-guard. Some days later Witgenstein appeared with Russian
infantry. On March 17th York made his triumphal entry at the head of his
corps, himself cold and rigid in the midst of tumultuous outbursts of
patriotic joy.
[King of Prussia declares war March 17.]
It was on this same day that King Frederick William issued his proclamation
to the Prussian people, declaring that war had begun with France, and
summoning the nation to enter upon the struggle as one that must end either
in victory or in total destruction. The proclamation was such as became a
monarch conscious that his own faint-heartedness had been the principal
cause of Prussia's humiliation. It was simple and unboastful, admitting
that the King had made every effort to preserve the French alliance, and
ascribing the necessity for war to the intolerable wrongs inflicted by
Napoleon in spite of Prussia's fulfilment of its treaty-obligations. The
appeal to the great memories of Prussia's earlier sovereigns, and to the
example of Russia, Spain, and all countries which in present or in earlier
times had fought for their independence against a stronger foe, was worthy
of the truthful and modest tone in which the King spoke of the misfortunes
of Prussia under his own rule.
[Spirit of the Prussian nation.]
[Idea of Germany unity.]
But no exhortations were necessary to fire the spirit of the Prussian
people. Seven years of suffering and humiliation had done their work. The
old apathy of all classes had vanished under the pressure of a bitter sense
of wrong. If among the Court party of Berlin and the Conservative
landowners there existed a secret dread of the awakening of popular forces,
the suspicion could not be now avowed. A movement as penetrating and as
universal as that which France had experienced in 1792 swept through the
Prussian State. It had required the experience of years of wretchedness,
the intrusion of the French soldier upon the peace of the family, the sight
of the homestead swept bare of its stock to supply the invaders of Russia,
the memory of Schill's companions shot in cold blood for the cause of the
Fatherland, before the Prussian nation caught that flame which had
spontaneously burst out in France, in Spain, and in Russia at the first
shock of foreign aggression. But the passion of the Prussian people, if it
had taken long to kindle, was deep, steadfast, and rational. It was
undisgraced by the frenzies of 1792, or by the religious fanaticism of the
Spanish war of liberation; where religion entered into the struggle, it
heightened the spirit of self-sacrifice rather than that of hatred to the
enemy. Nor was it a thing of small moment to the future of Europe that in
every leading mind the cause of Prussia was identified with the cause of
the whole German race. The actual condition of Germany warranted no such
conclusion, for Saxony, Bavaria, and the whole of the Rhenish Federation
still followed Napoleon: but the spirit and the ideas which became a living
force when at length the contest with Napoleon broke out were those of men
like Stein, who in the depths of Germany's humiliation had created the
bright and noble image of a common Fatherland. It was no more given to
Stein to see his hopes fulfilled than it was given to Mirabeau to establish
constitutional liberty in France, or to the Italian patriots of 1797 to
create a united Italy. A group of States where kings like Frederick William
and Francis, ministers like Hardenberg and Metternich, governed millions of
people totally destitute of political instincts and training, was not to be
suddenly transformed into a free nation by the genius of an individual or
the patriotism of a single epoch. But if the work of German union was one
which, even in the barren form of military empire, required the efforts of
two more generations, the ideals of 1813 were no transient and ineffective
fancy. Time was on the side of those who called the Prussian monarchy the
true centre round which Germany could gather. If in the sequel Prussia was
slow to recognise its own opportunities, the fault was less with patriots
who hoped too much than with kings and ministers who dared too little.
[Formation of the Landwehr.]
For the moment, the measures of the Prussian Government were worthy of the
spirit shown by the nation. Scharnhorst's military system had given Prussia
100,000 trained soldiers ready to join the existing army of 45,000. The
scheme for the formation of a Landwehr, though not yet carried into effect,
needed only to receive the sanction of the King. On the same day that
Frederick William issued his proclamation to the people, he decreed the
formation of the Landwehr and the Landsturm. The latter force, which was
intended in case of necessity to imitate the peasant warfare of Spain and
La Vendée, had no occasion to act: the Landwehr, though its arming was
delayed by the poverty and exhaustion of the country, gradually became a
most formidable reserve, and sent its battalions to fight by the side of
the regulars in some of the greatest engagements in the war. It was the
want of arms and money, not of willing soldiers, that prevented Prussia
from instantly attacking Napoleon with 200,000 men. The conscription was
scarcely needed from the immense number of volunteers who joined the ranks.
Though the completion of the Prussian armaments required some months more,
Prussia did not need to stand upon the defensive. An army of 50,000 men was
ready to cross the Elbe immediately on the arrival of the Russians, and to
open the next campaign in the territory of Napoleon's allies of the Rhenish
Federation.