[52] Ibid., x., 519 (July 9, 1813).
CHAPTER VI.
THE DOWNFALL OF NAPOLEON.
The war between France and Russia, publicly threatened in August, 1811,[53] was long deferred. On Russia's part the adherence to a defensive policy delayed action until France was ready. But there was another reason why the preparations for war were only slowly pushed forward. Even at the court of St. Petersburg there was a French party which retarded such preparations as committing Russia too definitely to an open rupture. On the part of France, also, delay was necessary. Though deliberately provoked by himself, the war was not altogether welcome to Napoleon. It suited him best to have a strong but friendly neighbour in Russia, and victory promised him but the half-hearted friendship of a power to which he could no longer dare to leave much strength. Besides it was necessary to make far more extensive preparations than had been required for any of his previous campaigns. Russia was too poor and too thinly peopled for it to be possible for war to support itself, and immense supplies with correspondingly large transport arrangements were needed for a large army which would have to fight at so vast a distance from its base. It would have been impossible to be ready in time for a summer campaign in 1811; the country was not favourable to transport on a large scale during winter, and the war was therefore postponed till the summer of 1812. The end of May or beginning of June was the date originally selected for the beginning of operations, as it was expected that the difficulty of providing fodder would be greatly reduced when the grass had grown. But the preparations were not sufficiently advanced by that date, and hostilities were only opened on June 24.
The interval was spent by both powers in securing allies and pacifying enemies. Early in the year 1812 Prussia had made a last attempt to avert a French alliance by inviting Russia to join in a peaceful compromise. After the failure of this negotiation her position was helpless, and resembled that of Poland before its national extinction. Russia could not become her active ally without exposing her own army to destruction at a second Friedland, and Prussia could not fight France alone. Frederick William, therefore, accepted the terms dictated by Napoleon. By a treaty concluded on February 24 he agreed to supply the emperor with 20,000 men to serve as a part of the French army, and was to raise no levies and give no orders without his consent. The king was also to afford a free passage and provide food and forage for the French troops, payment for which was to be arranged afterwards. In return for this a reduction was made in the war indemnity due to France. This was probably as much as Napoleon could have obtained without authorising a dangerous increase in the Prussian army.
RUSSIAN ALLIANCES.
Austria was more fortunate, because an Austrian war would have been a serious diversion, not a step towards the invasion of Russia. She was in consequence able to impose her own terms on France. These terms, so far as the nature and extent of the Austrian assistance to France were concerned, had been sketched by Metternich to the British agent, Nugent, as far back as November, 1811, and they were accepted by France in a treaty of March 16, 1812.[54] Austria was to provide an army of 30,000 men to guard Napoleon's flank in Volhynia. In return France guaranteed the integrity of Turkey, and secretly promised a restoration of the Illyrian provinces to Austria in exchange for Galicia, which was to form a part of a reconstituted Poland. Elsewhere Napoleon's negotiations were unsuccessful. In January he fulfilled his threat of occupying Swedish Pomerania, but it had no effect on Swedish policy, and when in March he offered Finland and a part of Norway as the price of an alliance, his terms were rejected and Sweden allied herself with Russia. On April 17 Napoleon made overtures for peace with Great Britain, offering to evacuate Spain and to recognise the house of Braganza in Portugal and the Bourbons in Sicily, if the British would recognise the "actual dynasty" in Spain and Murat in Naples. The offer was certainly illusory. "Actual dynasty" was an ambiguous phrase, but would naturally mean the Bonapartes. Castlereagh declined to recognise Joseph, but declared his readiness to discuss the proposed basis if "actual dynasty" meant a recognition of Ferdinand VII. in Spain. Napoleon was enabled to say that his offers of peace had been rejected, and made no answer to Castlereagh.
Russia in her turn had to conciliate the Porte, Sweden, Persia, and Great Britain. The Turkish negotiations were prolonged, and it was only in May that the treaty of Bucharest was signed, by which Russia gave up all her conquests except Bessarabia. Sweden had offered Russia her alliance in February. She was prepared to surrender Finland to Russia on condition that Russia should assist her in the conquest of Norway. A joint army was to effect this conquest and then make a descent on North Germany, threatening the rear of the French army of invasion. The adhesion of Great Britain was to be invited. On April 5 an alliance between Russia and Sweden was signed on the terms suggested. This was followed on August 28 by the treaty of Åbo, which was signed in the presence of the British representative, Lord Cathcart. By this treaty Russia was to assist Sweden with 30,000 men and a loan, Sweden undertook to support Russia's claim, when it should be made, for an extension of her frontier to the Vistula. Shortly afterwards it was agreed to postpone the attack on Norway till the following year, and thus at length the Russian army in Finland was set free. The treaties with the Porte and Sweden were too late to liberate troops to oppose Napoleon's advance, but the troops thus liberated greatly endangered his retreat. With Persia no peace could be made. Great Britain was still nominally at war both with Russia and with Sweden. Negotiations with Russia in April came to nothing because the British government refused to take over a loan of £4,000,000, but on July 18 a treaty of alliance between the three powers was signed, in which Great Britain promised pecuniary aid to Russia. A further sign of friendship was given when the tsar handed over the Cronstadt fleet for safekeeping to the British. The formal treaty was, however, only the public recognition of a friendship and mutual confidence which had begun with the breach between Russia and France. This good understanding was shared by the nominal allies of France, Prussia and Austria. Russia was fully informed of the military and political plans of Austria, and knew that her forces would not fight except under compulsion.
At last, on June 24, Napoleon's grand army began the passage of the Niemen, which formed the boundary between the duchy of Warsaw and the Russian empire. The main body, at least 300,000 strong, was commanded by Napoleon himself. A northern division, including the Prussian contingent, was commanded by Macdonald, and, after advancing to Riga, which it pretended to besiege, remained idle throughout the campaign. The Austrians, under Schwarzenberg, formed a southern division, but they merely manœuvred, and made no serious attempts to impede the movements of the southern Russian army on its return journey from the war on the Danube. Napoleon himself drove the main Russian armies before him in the direction of Moscow. At last Kutuzov, who had taken over the command of the Russians in the course of the retreat, made a stand at Borodino, where on September 7 one of the bloodiest battles on record was fought. The figures are variously given, but the French army probably lost over 30,000 in killed and wounded out of a force of 125,000; and the Russians lost not less than 40,000 out of an army of slightly smaller dimensions. This awful carnage ended, after all, in little more than a trial of strength. The French gained the ground, but the Russians made good their retreat, and six days later Kutuzov retired through the streets of Moscow, taking the better part of the population and all the military stores with him. The French vanguard entered on the 14th, and Napoleon himself next day. A fire, kindled either by accident or by Russian incendiaries, raged from the 14th to the 20th and destroyed three-fourths of the city.
NAPOLEON'S RETREAT FROM MOSCOW.