POLITICAL SITUATION OF FRANCE.
1812. The unmatched power of Napoleon’s genius was now being displayed in a wonderful manner. His interest, his inclination, and his expectation were alike opposed to a war with Russia, but Alexander and himself, each hoping that a menacing display of strength would reduce the other to negotiation, advanced, step by step, until blows could no longer be avoided. Napoleon, a man capable of sincere friendship, had relied too much and too long on the existence of a like feeling in the Russian emperor; and misled, perhaps, by the sentiment of his own energy, did not sufficiently allow for the daring intrigues of a court, where secret combinations of the nobles formed the real governing power.
That the cabinet of Petersburgh should be, more than ordinarily subject to such combinations at this period, was the necessary consequence of the greatness of the interests involved in the treaties of Tilsit and Erfurth; the continental system had so deeply injured the fortunes of the Russian noblemen, that their sovereign’s authority in support of it was as nothing. During the Austrian war of 1809, when Alexander was yet warm from Napoleon’s society at Erfurth, the aid given to France was a mockery, and a desire to join a northern confederation against Napoleon was even then scarcely concealed at St. Petersburgh, where the French ambassador was coldly treated. The royal family of Prussia were, it is true, at the same time, mortified by a reception which inclined them to side with France, against the wishes of their people and their ministers, but in Russia, Romanzow alone was averse to choose that moment to declare against Napoleon. And this was so certain that Austria, anticipating the explosion, was only undecided whether the king of Prussia should be punished or the people rewarded, whether she herself should befriend or plunder the Prussian monarchy.
At that time also, the Russian naval commander, in the Adriatic, being ordered to sail to Ancona for the purpose of convoying Marmont’s troops from Dalmatia to Italy, refused, on the plea that his ships were not sea-worthy; yet secretly he informed the governor of Trieste that they would be in excellent order to assist an Austrian corps against the French! Admiral Tchtchagoff’s strange project of marching upon Italy from Bucharest has been already noticed, and it is remarkable that this expedition was to be conducted upon popular principles, the interests of the Sicilian court being to be made subservient to the wishes of the people. At a later period, in 1812, admiral Grieg proposed to place an auxiliary Russian army under either Wellington or lord William Bentinck, and it was accepted; but when the Russian ambassador in London was applied to upon the subject, he unequivocally declared that the emperor knew nothing of the matter!
With a court so situated, angry negotiations once commenced rendered war inevitable, and the more especially that the Russian cabinet, which had long determined on hostilities though undecided as to the time of drawing the sword, was well aware of the secret designs and proceedings of Austria in Italy, and of Murat’s discontent. The Hollanders were known to desire independence, and the deep hatred which the people of Prussia bore to the French was a matter of notoriety. Bernadotte, who very early had resolved to cast down the ladder by which he rose, was the secret adviser of these practices against Napoleon’s power in Italy, and he was also in communication with the Spaniards. Thus Napoleon, having a war in Spain which required three hundred thousand men to keep in a balanced state, was forced, by resistless circumstances, into another and more formidable contest in the distant north, when the whole of Europe was prepared to rise upon his lines of communication, and when his extensive sea-frontier was exposed to the all-powerful navy of Great Britain.
A conqueror’s march to Moscow, amidst such dangers, was a design more vast, more hardy, more astounding than ever before entered the imagination of man; yet it was achieved, and solely by the force of his genius. For having organised two hundred thousand French soldiers, as a pretorian guard, he stepped resolutely into the heart of Germany, and monarchs and nations bent submissively before him; secret hostility ceased, and, with the exception of Bernadotte, the crowned and anointed plotters quitted their work to follow his chariot-wheels. Dresden saw the ancient story of the King of Kings renewed in his person; and the two hundred thousand French soldiers arrived on the Niemen in company with two hundred thousand allies. On that river four hundred thousand troops, I have seen the imperial returns, were assembled by this wonderful man, all disciplined warriors, and, notwithstanding their different, national feelings, all proud of the unmatched genius of their leader. Yet, even in that hour of dizzy elevation, Napoleon, deeply sensible of the inherent weakness of a throne unhallowed by time, described by one emphatic phrase the delicacy of his political situation. During the passage of the Niemen, twelve thousand cuirassiers, whose burnished armour flashed in the sun while their cries of salutation pealed in unison with the thunder of the horses’ feet, were passing like a foaming torrent towards the river, when Napoleon turned and thus addressed Gouvion St. Cyr, whose republican principles were well known,
“No monarch ever had such an army?”
“No, sire.”
“The French are a fine people; they deserve more liberty, and they shall have it, but, St. Cyr, no liberty of the press! That army, mighty as it is, could not resist the songs of Paris!”
Such, then, was the nature of Napoleon’s power that success alone could sustain it; success which depended as much upon others’ exertions as upon his own stupendous genius, for Russia was far distant from Spain. It is said, I know not upon what authority, that he at one moment, had resolved to concentrate all the French troops in the Peninsula behind the Ebro during this expedition to Russia, but the capture of Blake’s force at Valencia changed his views. Of this design there are no traces in the movements of his armies, nor in the captured papers of the king, and there are some indications of a contrary design; for at that period several foreign agents were detected examining the lines of Torres Vedras, and on a Frenchman, who killed himself when arrested in the Brazils, were found papers proving a mission for the same object. Neither is it easy to discern the advantage of thus crowding three hundred thousand men on a narrow slip of ground, where they must have been fed from France, already overburthened with the expenses of the Russian war; and this when they were numerous enough, if rightly handled, to have maintained themselves on the resources of Spain, and near the Portuguese frontier for a year at least.