Having completed these arrangements Austria and Prussia promptly communicated them to Russia! Despite the grim seriousness of the situation, and the terrible drama which was soon to be acted, it is difficult not to see that Napoleon’s position was a somewhat ludicrous one. Austria gave Alexander full assurances that no attack should be made upon Russia by any but the auxiliary corps, and communicated to him the secret orders given to the troops in Galicia and Transylvania!
Poland—or the fraction of it represented by the Grand Duchy of Warsaw—was, naturally and necessarily, heart and soul with Napoleon. France had always been the model to which the Poles looked up; and since the Partition they regarded France as their natural helper. They had fought in the French ranks in large numbers during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, and there was undoubtedly much sympathy of a kind felt for them in France. Farther than this feeling did not go. The chivalry with which the French national character is credited by its admirers certainly does not appear in history. French diplomatic annals are to the full as soiled as those of other countries, and French soldiers have usually been ruthless interpreters or breakers of the rules of war. And most certainly the natural instincts of the French people are essentially material. In so far as Poland was useful to France, France was very ready to sympathise with her. Otherwise the general opinion of the Poles, later expressed by the poet Gaszinski, is that they have obtained from France only tears!
Napoleon was, of course, fully alive to the advantages to be reaped from Polish enthusiasm and aspirations. Besides the army of Warsaw he brought up to the front all his own Polish regiments so as to give his operations as far as possible the appearance of a war for the restoration of Polish independence. Eventually in 1812 he sent De Pradt to Warsaw to organise the movement against Russia. He gave him detailed instructions as to how he was to carry out his orders, and it is hardly possible to read them without feelings of indignation against the man who ruthlessly traded upon the aspirations of a brave and patriotic people, and of pity for the people themselves. The ambassador himself was very conscious of the ignominious part which he was called upon to play. To all appearance he did his work well; certainly the poverty-stricken and requisition-wasted Grand Duchy raised a very large force for the campaign. Napoleon, however, chose later to be dissatisfied; and at St. Helena violently attacked De Pradt, as a chief cause of his defeat—a statement which may fairly be included in the mass of falsehoods which Napoleon emitted during his captivity.
On January 27th, 1812, Napoleon issued to his German vassals a declaration of his complaints against Russia, and required them to have their contingents ready by the 15th of February. The Army of Italy was ordered to march into Germany, and the King of Bavaria to clear the roads of snow and to supply it during its march through his territory. The troops were to live at free quarters; if they were not supplied with all that they required they were to take it! Anyone insulting a French soldier was to be court-martialled, and the sentences of prejudiced and often brutalised judges may be imagined. It is, of course, needless to add that both these orders were suppressed by the editors of Napoleon’s correspondence. In order to extract additional supplies the Army of Italy was stated at 80,000 strong, its actual numbers being about 45,000. When Napoleon’s allies were thus oppressed, one may imagine the misery in Prussia, which was treated as a conquered country.
All this time Napoleon and Alexander were negotiating, though with small chance of a peaceful result. Alexander desired peace, but would not surrender his independence: Napoleon required complete submission. Alexander sent his aide-de-camp, Colonel Chernishev, on a special mission to Paris, while at St. Petersburg the French Ambassador, Caulaincourt, was replaced by General Lauriston. Early in 1812 Napoleon induced the King of Prussia to send a special envoy to St. Petersburg, with the suggestion that Alexander might make fresh proposals. Alexander made a dignified reply: he had, he said, shown his strong desire for peace by keeping silent upon the subject of Napoleon’s annexations: at the same time he was willing to hear what explanations France might have to offer. None were made, and French troops continued to flood across Germany. Napoleon believed that the Russian preparations were more advanced than they actually were—this is fairly apparent from his military correspondence—and was anxious to gain time. In April Alexander sent to Prince Kurakin, his ambassador at Paris, final instructions. He was to propose that Prussia be fully evacuated by the French, thus leaving a neutral space between the contending powers. Russia would then be ready to satisfy France—or Napoleon—on commercial questions. It can hardly be doubted that, come what might, Alexander did not intend entirely to return to the Continental system, and so far Napoleon was probably right in deeming the proposal a diplomatic move to gain time. He made no reply, but despatched Count Narbonne on a shadowy mission to Alexander at Vilna, and kept Kurakin, with studied insolence, waiting. The ambassador pressed repeatedly for a reply, but received none until nearly three weeks later. Then he was merely asked if he had full powers to treat! He rightly regarded such treatment as a gratuitous insult, and demanded his passports. Narbonne’s mission naturally led to nothing, except that he obtained a better idea than Napoleon of the stern determination of the erstwhile soft and yielding Tzar.
Alexander, on his side, was endeavouring to free his hands for the approaching struggle. The result of the Treaty of Tilsit had been the long and harassing war with Turkey; and Russia paid dearly for the blunder into which Napoleon’s blandishments had led her. Negotiations for peace were very slow, and steadily opposed and hampered by the French ambassador at Constantinople. Peace was not signed at Bukharest until May, 1812, and even then French influence was still so powerful that there was fear that it would be broken by Turkey. It was not until August that the bulk of the Army of the Danube at last started from Bukharest under Admiral Chichagov, and by that time Napoleon was already on the line of the Düna and the Dnieper. As it happened the delay was fortunate for Russia, but it might easily have been fatal.
Yet more important to Russia than peace with the Osmanli Empire was peace with Great Britain, but in order to keep the gate of conciliation open for Napoleon until the last moment formal negotiations were not commenced until April, 1812. In point of fact, though the two powers were nominally at war, and the British fleet was blockading the Russian ports, there was a very good feeling between them. Through the Spanish envoy Zea Bermudez, Lord Wellesley had in 1811 assured Alexander that Britain was not really hostile, and Alexander in turn had promised Bermudez that he would keep his troops on the Polish frontier, so as to ensure that the suspicious French Emperor would not move more troops from Germany into Spain. Admiral de Saumarez, the fine seaman and excellent diplomatist who commanded the British Baltic fleet, handled the situation with unerring tact and skill, and effectively ensured the doing of nothing which might destroy the comparatively friendly relations which subsisted between the two nominally hostile states. All this is doubly interesting, as proving the hopelessly fragile basis upon which Napoleon’s European domination rested.
Russia’s first overtures were somewhat clumsy and exorbitant in their demands. They suggested that since Russia was obviously about to render vital services to the common cause Britain should take over a loan of nearly £4,000,000 just raised by her. The refusal of the British Government to accede to this demand, in itself not inexcusable, but failing to recognise Britain’s own difficulties and the services which she was rendering, rather dashed the Russian Government, and the formal alliance was not concluded until July.
Finally, it may be noted that Napoleon, before entering upon hostilities, went through the time-honoured farce of making overtures of peace to Britain. It was purely a diplomatic move, and certainly not seriously intended, nor did the British Government regard it as being so. Britain was more confident than she had been for a long time. The French offensive in the Peninsula had very definitely reached its limit, and Wellington, by his capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, had taken the first steps in the great counter-attack which was eventually to roll the French back over the Pyrenees. Calm observers like Foy saw that the turn of the tide had come. It may be regarded as certain that terms of peace less unfavourable than those which Napoleon offered would hardly have been accepted.
Sweden, under the direction of Napoleon’s old enemy and restive servant, Bernadotte, also allied herself with Russia in April—an act immediately brought about by Napoleon’s arrogant seizure of Swedish Pomerania, but perhaps in the end inevitable. Sweden, however, partly owing to poverty, partly because of Britain’s unwillingness to abet Bernadotte’s designs on Norway, took no active share in the Continental war until 1813; but Russia was enabled to withdraw most of her troops from Finland for service against Napoleon.