avert ruin from the trade and finance of Russia; and this he refused to do.
The campaign of 1812 may, therefore, be considered as resulting, firstly, from the complex and cramping effects of the Continental System on a northern land which could not deprive itself of colonial goods; secondly, from Napoleon’s refusal to mitigate the anxiety of Alexander on the Polish question; and thirdly, from the annoyance felt by the tsar at the family matters noticed above. Napoleon undoubtedly entered on the struggle with reluctance. He spoke about it as one that lay in the course of destiny. In one sense he was right. If the Continental System was inevitable the war with Russia was inevitable. But that struggle may more reasonably be ascribed to the rigidity with which he carried out his commercial decrees and his diplomacy. He often prided himself on his absolute consistency, and we have Chaptal’s warrant for the statement that, after the time of the Consulate, his habit of following his own opinions and rejecting all advice, even when he had asked for it, became more and more pronounced. It was so now. He took no heed of the warnings uttered by those sage counsellors, Cambacérès and Talleyrand, against an invasion of Russia, while “the Spanish ulcer” was sapping the strength of the empire at the other extremity. He encased himself in fatalism, with the result that in two years the mightiest empire reared by man broke under the twofold strain. His diplomacy before the war of 1812 was less successful than that of Alexander, who skilfully ended his quarrel with Turkey and gained over to his side Sweden. That state, where Bernadotte had latterly been chosen as crown prince, decided to throw off the yoke of the Continental System and join England and Russia, gaining from the latter power the promise of Norway at the expense of Denmark.
Napoleon on his side coerced Prussia into an offensive alliance and had the support of Austria and the states of the Rhenish Confederation. At Dresden he held court for a few days in May 1812 with Marie Louise: the emperor Francis, the king of Prussia and a host of lesser dignitaries were present—a sign of the power of the modern Charlemagne. It was the last time that he figured as master of the continent.
The military events of the years 1812–1814 are described under Napoleonic Campaigns; and we need therefore note here only a few details personal to Napoleon or some considerations which influenced his policy. Firstly we may remark that the Austrian alliance furnished one of the motives which led him to refrain during the campaign of 1812 from reconstituting the Polish realm in its ancient extent. To have done so would have been a mortal affront to his ally, Austria. Certainly he needed her support during that campaign; but many good judges have inclined to the belief that the whole-hearted support of Poles and Lithuanians would have been of still greater value, and that the organization of their resources might well have occupied him during the winter of 1812–1813, and would have furnished him with a new and advanced base from which to strike at the heart of Russia in the early summer of 1813. If the Austrian alliance was chiefly responsible for his rejection of that statesmanlike plan, which he had before him at Smolensk, it certainly deserves all the hard things said of it by the champions of Josephine.
Another consideration which largely conduced to the disasters of the retreat was Napoleon’s postponement of any movement back from Moscow to the date of October 19th, and this is known to have resulted from his conviction that the tsar would give way as he had done at Tilsit. Napoleon’s habit of clinging to his own preconceptions never received so strange and disastrous an illustration as it did during the month spent at Moscow. On the other hand, his desertion of the army on the 5th of December, not long after the crossing of the river Beresina, is a thoroughly defensible act. He had recently heard of the attempt of a French republican general, Malet, to seize the public offices at Paris, a quixotic adventure which had come surprisingly near to success owing to the assurance with which that officer proclaimed the news of the emperor’s death in Russia. In such a case, the best retort was to return in all haste in order to put more energy into the huge centralized organism which the emperor alone could work. His rapid return from Spain early in 1809, and now again from Lithuania at the close of 1812, gives an instructive glimpse into the anxiety which haunted the mind of the autocrat. He believed that, imposing as his position was, it rested on the prestige won by matchless triumphs. Witness his illuminating statement to Volney during the Consulate: “Why should France fear my ambition? I am but the magistrate of the republic. I merely act upon the imagination of the nation. When that fails me I shall be nothing, and another will succeed me.”
To this cause we may ascribe his constant efforts to dazzle France by grandiose adventures and by swift, unexpected movements. But she had now come profoundly to distrust him. Her thirst for glory had long since been slaked, and she longed for peaceful enjoyment of the civic boons which he had conferred upon her in that greatest period of his life, the Consulate. That the Russian campaign of 1812 was the last device for assuring the success of the Continental System and the ruin of England was nothing to the great mass of Frenchmen. They were weary of a means of pacification which produced endless wars abroad and misery at home. True, England had suffered, but she was mistress of the seas and had won a score of new colonies. France had subjected half the continent; but her hold on Spain was weakened by Wellington’s blow at Salamanca; and now Frenchmen heard that their army in Russia was “dead.” At home many industries were suffering from the lack of tropical and colonial produce: cane sugar sold at five, and coffee at seven, shillings the pound. The constant use of chicory for coffee, and of woad for indigo, was apt to produce a reaction in favour of a humdrum peaceful policy; and yet, by a recent imperial decree, Frenchmen had the prospect of seeing the use of the new and imperfectly made beet sugar enforced from the 1st of January 1813, after which date all cane sugar was excluded as being of British origin. Shortly before starting for the Russian expedition Napoleon vainly tried to reassure the merchants and financiers of France then face to face with a sharp financial crisis. Now at the close of 1812 matters were worse, and Napoleon, on reaching Paris, found the nation preoccupied with the task of finding out how many Frenchmen had survived the Russian campaign.
Yet, despite the discontent seething in many quarters, France responded to his appeal for troops; but she did so mechanically and without hope. Early in January 1813 the senate promised that 350,000 conscripts should be enrolled; but 150,000 of them were under twenty years of age, and mobile columns had to be used to sweep in the recruits, especially in Brittany, the Netherlands and the newly annexed lands of North Germany.
In the old provinces of France Napoleon’s indomitable will overcame all difficulties of a material kind. Forces, inexperienced but devoted, were soon on foot; and he informed his German allies that he would allow the Russians to advance into Central Germany so as to ensure their destruction. As for the “treason” of General York, who had come to terms with the Russians, it moved him merely to scorn and contempt. He altogether underrated the importance of the national movement in Prussia. If Prussian towns “behaved badly” (he wrote on the 4th of March), they were to be burnt; Eugène was not to spare even Berlin. Prussia (he wrote on the 14th of March) was a weak country. She could not put more than 40,000 men in the field (the number to which he had limited her in September 1808). He therefore heard without dismay at the end of March that Prussia had joined Russia in a league in which Sweden was now an active participant.
It was clear that the spiritual forces of the time were also slipping out of his grasp. Early in January he sought to come to terms with the pope (then virtually a captive at Fontainebleau) respecting various questions then in debate concerning the Concordat. At first the emperor succeeded in persuading the aged pontiff to sign the preliminaries of an agreement, known as the “Fontainebleau Concordat” (25th of January 1813); but, on its insidious character becoming apparent, Pius VII. revoked his consent, as having been given under constraint. Nevertheless Napoleon ordered the preliminary agreement to be
