Gradual disagreement between Alexander and Napoleon.
The causes of the disagreement between Napoleon and the Emperor Alexander dated back to the Treaty of Tilsit. At that time, though personally full of enthusiasm for the French conqueror, Alexander looked with suspicion on the formation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw as a possible first step towards the restoration of Poland. Napoleon pointed out to him that he could obtain compensation in the direction of Sweden and of Turkey—a suggestion which led to the conquest of Finland and eventually of Bessarabia. Though Alexander carried out the projects proposed to him, he continued to resent the creation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and still more the maintenance of French troops in that quarter. At the Congress of Erfurt Napoleon to some degree allayed the suspicions of his ally, but on his return to Russia there can be no doubt that Alexander looked upon himself as duped and badly treated. The war of 1809 widened the breach. Napoleon complained that the Russian troops promised for his assistance had not acted with vigour, and Alexander regarded with open discontent the cession of part of Austrian Galicia to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. The dethronement of the Duke of Oldenburg, who had married Alexander’s favourite sister, the Grand Duchess Catherine, and the absorption of his Duchy into the French Empire, in 1810, was another and more personal cause of disagreement. The delay in granting a Russian grand duchess to him in marriage was looked on by Napoleon as a personal slight, and his interference in Spain appeared to the Russian Emperor a sign that Napoleon could maltreat even his most faithful ally. The carrying out of the Continental Blockade embittered the situation. Napoleon complained that the Russians did not adhere loyally to the arrangement for the exclusion of English commerce. Alexander on his side complained that his country was being ruined by the blockade, while the French Emperor granted many licences to Frenchmen to trade with England.
To these political reasons must be added the personal characters of the two emperors. Napoleon, though he had spoken at Tilsit of dividing Europe between France and Russia, began, as his power increased, to devise schemes for securing the Empire of Europe for himself and the exclusion of Russia from any share. Instead of restoring the Empires of the East and West, Napoleon arrogated to himself the position of ruler of Europe, and spoke of thrusting Russia back into Asia. In these views he was encouraged by many of those surrounding him. His marshals, finding no profits to be got from Spain, looked forward to enriching themselves in Russia. His statesmen, either from motives of their own or to please his personal wishes, declared that France could not be safe until Russia was crushed. Alexander on his side was surrounded by bitter enemies of Napoleon. His ministers never wearied of emphasizing the ruin caused to Russia by the Continental Blockade. The King of Prussia, whom he had made his personal friend, pleaded for the complete restoration of his dominions. His family, and especially his mother, regarded Napoleon as the enemy of the human race; English agents were perpetually inciting the Russians to declare for commercial freedom; and three of the most accomplished and most able statesmen in Europe constantly urged him to war with France, namely, Stein, whom Napoleon had ordered the King of Prussia to dismiss; Pozzo di Borgo, a Corsican, who had known Napoleon in his youth, and who hated him as a personal enemy; and Nesselrode, a skilled diplomatist and an intimate friend of Metternich.
Policy of Castlereagh.
These various causes, both political and personal, might not then have led to war had it not been for the direct intervention of the English by means of the new Prince Royal of Sweden, Bernadotte. Lord Castlereagh, in January 1812, returned to office. He advocated the carrying on of the war against Napoleon, not only by reinforcing Wellington in the Peninsula, but by subsidizing the monarchs of the Continent. He therefore despatched three diplomatists to the three chief courts of the Continent, to endeavour to form a fresh coalition against Napoleon. These were his brother, Sir Charles Stewart, ambassador to Berlin, Lord Aberdeen to Vienna, and Lord Cathcart to St. Petersburg. Lord Cathcart was a distinguished military officer, and strenuously urged Alexander to declare war, and he brought with him several English officers to assist in reorganizing the Russian army, of whom the best known is Sir Robert Wilson. But it was rather through Sweden than directly that Castlereagh influenced the Emperor Alexander. Bernadotte, on being elected Prince Royal, had applied to Sweden the Continental Blockade against England, but he soon perceived how ruinous that policy was to his new country, and inclined to make some arrangement with England. Being unable to break with Napoleon by himself, Bernadotte acted as the intermediary between England and Russia, and in April 1812 signed a secret treaty with Alexander at Abo, by which Sweden renounced all claims on Finland on condition that Russia should promise Norway in its stead. Both England and Russia approved of this scheme. Frederick VI. of Denmark, who had succeeded his father, Christian VII., in 1808, had, after the capture of the Danish fleet in 1807, formed a most intimate alliance with Napoleon, and Alexander at Abo held out to Bernadotte, not only a hope that he might have the whole of Denmark as a result of successful war against the French, but even an expectation that he might eventually receive the throne of France as a reward for his services. Not less important than the English intervention in Sweden was the effect of English influence in Turkey; for it was through English mediation that the Treaty of Bucharest was signed in May 1812, which allowed the Emperor of Russia to concentrate all his military power against Napoleon.
Prussia. The Ministry of Hardenberg.
Between France and Russia there remained, however, Austria, Poland, and Prussia. Though Napoleon’s direct domain extended to Lübeck along the coast, he had not ventured to annex Germany proper, which lies between the Elbe and the Rhine, or to accept the title of German Emperor, in addition to that of the Emperor of the French and King of Italy, as had been suggested by the Prince Primate, Dalberg. Yet Germany proper, owing to his creation of the Confederation of the Rhine and the Kingdom of Westphalia, was so thoroughly under his influence that, from a military point of view, it might be regarded as part of his Empire. Austria, Poland, and Prussia were, however, more independent, and his first effort, when he decided to attack Russia, was to secure their active co-operation. The Emperor Francis, since the campaign of Wagram, had abandoned the idea of resistance. He feared and disliked the Russians; Napoleon was his son-in-law, and he did not intend to oppose his wishes. He therefore promised willingly enough that an Austrian army should invade Russia to the south of the direct French invasion. In the Grand Duchy of Warsaw the Poles cared little for their Grand Duke, the King of Saxony; they looked to Napoleon for the restoration of their complete independence, and delighted in the thought of striking a blow at their old foes, the Russians. In Prussia the position was more complicated. Reduced as the kingdom was, the reforms of Stein and Scharnhorst had created a national feeling, which could not as yet be utilised in attacks on the French soldiers who occupied the Prussian fortresses. Stein himself had been driven from Prussia by Napoleon’s orders, but a successor, Hardenberg, completed his work. It is significant that when Hardenberg was reappointed State Chancellor in 1810, he did not undertake the Foreign Office, as he had done in 1806, but the ministries of the Finance and the Interior. It was Hardenberg who in 1810 made the nobles subject to taxation, and brought Stein’s promised Representative Assemblies into partial use; who, on 23rd January 1811, suppressed the Teutonic Order, and made its possessions part of the national domain; and who, on 11th September 1811, achieved the logical result of Stein’s edict abolishing serfdom by granting the peasants power to become absolute proprietors of two-thirds of their holdings on surrendering the other third to the lords in full recognition of all feudal dues and servitudes.
Hardenberg’s most ardent coadjutor was William von Humboldt. As Stein and Hardenberg had done the work of the French Revolution in Prussia by abolishing feudalism and securing equality before the law, so William von Humboldt established a national system of education in many respects similar to Napoleon’s creation in France, and reformed the whole department of public instruction. At the head of the system was founded the University of Berlin. Prussia had deeply felt the loss of the University of Halle when that city was separated from Prussia by the Treaty of Tilsit. Königsberg, though made famous by Kant, was too distant from the centre of the reduced kingdom to fill its place, and the new national spirit was concentrated in the new University of Berlin. Learned men came from all parts of Germany. Savigny, Fichte, Wolf, Buttmann, Boeckh, Schleiermacher, and Niebuhr all enrolled themselves as professors; and Germany, not merely Prussia, found a worthy representative in the world of thought.
In the resurrection of Prussia King Frederick William III. merely acquiesced in the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg. But his former leaning to neutrality had given place to a desire for revenge on the French. In July 1810 he lost his patriotic wife, Queen Louise, and her death only exasperated his feelings. Nevertheless, he refused to declare himself on the side of Russia in 1812. The Emperor Alexander announced his policy of allowing the French to invade, and his intention of thus drawing Napoleon far from his base, and Frederick William felt that he was not strong enough to openly oppose the French Emperor. He was even constrained by the occupation of his fortresses to go further, and, on 24th February 1812, he signed an offensive and defensive alliance with Napoleon. By this treaty Prussia was not only to feed the French armies passing through her dominions to invade Russia, but to send an army of 30,000 men to act with them. Alexander was not displeased by this behaviour. He knew that Prussia could not help itself; he felt a sincere friendship for the hapless king; he understood that beneath the surface, not only Prussia, but all Germany was boiling with indignation against the French; and in 1812, when war was at hand, he summoned the inspirer of German national feeling, the great Prussian minister, Stein, from his exile in Austria to become his adviser and coadjutor in his German policy.
The Invasion of Russia. May 1812.