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.
[Illustration: Battle of Heilsberg.]
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.
[Illustration: Battle of Friedland.]
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.