[Footnote 15: Wimpfen, History of Schleswig.]
CCLIX. The Russian Campaign
An enormous comet that, during the whole of the hot summer of 1811, hung threatening in the heavens, appeared as the harbinger of great and important vicissitudes to the enslaved inhabitants of the earth, and it was in truth by an act of Divine providence that a dispute arose between the two giant powers intent upon the partition of Europe.
Napoleon was over-reached by Russia, whose avarice, far from being glutted by the possession of Finland, great part of Prussian and Austrian Poland, Moldavia, and Wallachia, still craved for more, and who built her hopes of Napoleon's compliance with her demands on his value for her friendship. Belgrade was seized, Servia demanded, and the whole of Turkey in Europe openly grasped at. Napoleon was, however, little inclined to cede the Mediterranean to his Russian ally, to whose empire he gave the Danube as a boundary. Russia next demanded possession of the duchy of Warsaw, which was refused by Napoleon. The Austrian marriage was meanwhile concluded. Napoleon, prior to his demand for the hand of the archduchess Maria Louisa, had sued for that of the grandduchess Anna, sister to the emperor Alexander, who was then in her sixteenth year, but, being refused by her mother, the empress Maria, a princess of Wurtemberg, and Alexander delaying a decisive answer, he formed an alliance with the Habsburg. This event naturally led Russia to conclude that she would no longer be permitted to aggrandize herself at the expense of Austria, and Alexander consequently assumed a threatening posture and condescended to listen to the complaints, hitherto condemned to silence, of the agricultural and mercantile classes. No Russian vessel durst venture out to sea, and a Russian fleet had been seized by the British in the harbors of Lisbon. At Riga lay immense stores of grain in want of a foreign market. On the 31st of December, 1810, Alexander published a fresh tariff permitting the importation of colonial products under a neutral flag (several hundred English ships arrived under the American flag), and prohibiting the importation of French manufactured goods. Not many weeks previously, on the 13th of December, Napoleon had annexed Oldenburg to France. The duke, Peter, was nearly related to the emperor of Russia, and Napoleon, notwithstanding his declared readiness to grant a compensation, refused to allow it to consist of the grandduchy of Warsaw, and proposed a duchy of Erfurt, as yet uncreated, which Russia scornfully rejected.
The alliance between Russia, Sweden, and England was now speedily concluded. Sweden, who had vainly demanded from Napoleon the possession of Norway and a large supply of money, assumed a tone of indignation, threw open her harbors to the British merchantmen, and so openly carried on a contraband trade in Pomerania that Napoleon, in order to maintain the continental system, was constrained to garrison Swedish-Pomerania and Rugen, and to disarm the Swedish inhabitants. Bernadotte, upon this, ranged himself entirely on the side of his opponents, without, however, coming to an open rupture, for which he awaited a declaration on the part of Russia. The expressions made use of by Napoleon on the birth of the king of Rome at length filled up the measure of provocation. Intoxicated with success, he boasted, in an address to the mercantile classes, that he would in despite of Russia maintain the continental system, for he was lord over the whole of continental Europe; that if Alexander had not concluded a treaty with him at Tilsit he would have compelled him to do so at Petersburg.—The pride of the haughty Russian was deeply wounded, and a rupture was nigh at hand.
Two secret systems were at this period undermining each other in Prussia, that of the Tugendbund founded by Stein and Scharnhorst, whose object being the liberation of Germany at all hazards from the yoke of Napoleon, consequently, favored Russia, and that of Hardenberg, which aimed at a close union with France. Hardenberg, whose position as chancellor of state gave him the upper hand, had compromised Prussia by the servility with which he sued for an alliance long scornfully refused and at length conceded on the most humiliating terms by Napoleon.[1]
Russia had, meanwhile, made preparations for a war unanticipated by Napoleon. As early as 1811, a great Russian army stood ready for the invasion of Poland, and might, as there were at that time but few French troops in Germany, easily have advanced as far as the Elbe. It remained, nevertheless, in a state of inactivity.[2] Napoleon instantly prepared for war and fortified Dantzig. His continual proposals of peace, ever unsatisfactory to the ambition of the czar, remaining at length unanswered, he declared war. The Rhenish confederation followed as usual in his train, and Austria, from an interested motive, the hope of regaining in the East by Napoleon's assistance all she had lost by opposing him in the West, or that of regaining her station as the third European power when the resources of the two ruling powers, whose coalition had threatened her existence, had been exhausted by war. Prussia also followed the eagles of Napoleon: the Hardenberg party, with a view of conciliating him, and, like the Rhenish confederation, from motives of gain: the Tugendbund, which predominated in the army, with silent but implacable hate.
In the spring of 1812, Napoleon, after leaving a sufficient force to prosecute the war with activity in Spain and to guard France, Italy, and Germany,[3] led half a million men to the Russian frontiers. Before taking the field, he convoked all the princes of Germany to Dresden, where he treated them with such extreme insolence as even to revolt his most favored and warmest partisans. Tears were seen to start in ladies' eyes, while men bit their lips with rage at the petty humiliations and affronts heaped on them by their powerful but momentary lord. The empress of Austria[4] and the king of Prussia[5] appear, on this occasion, to have felt this most acutely.
For the first time—an event unknown in the history of the world—the whole of Germany was reduced to submission. Napoleon, greater than conquering Attila, who took the field at the head of one-half of Germany against the other, dragged the whole of Germany in his train. The army led by him to the steppes of Russia was principally composed of German troops, who were so skilfully mixed up with the French as not to be themselves aware of their numerical superiority. The right wing, composed of thirty thousand Austrians under Schwarzenberg, was destined for the invasion of Volhynia; while the left wing, consisting of twenty thousand Prussians under York and several thousand French, under the command of Marshal Macdonald, was ordered to advance upon the coasts of the Baltic and without loss of time to besiege Riga. The centre or main body consisted of the troops of the Rhenish confederation, more or less mixed up with French; of thirty-eight thousand Bavarians under Wrede and commanded by St. Cyr; of sixteen thousand Wurtembergers under Scheeler, over whom Marshal Ney was allotted the chief command; single regiments, principally cavalry, were drawn off in order more thoroughly to intermix the Germans with the French; of seventeen thousand Saxons under Reynier; of eighteen thousand Westphalians under Vandamme; also of Hessians, Badeners, Frankforters, Wurzburgers, Nassauers, in short, of contingents furnished by each of the confederated states. The Swiss were mostly concentrated under Oudinot. The Dutch, Hanseatic, Flemish, in fine, all the Germans on the left bank of the Rhine, were at that time crammed among the French troops. Upward of two hundred thousand Germans, at the lowest computation, marched against Russia, a number far superior to that of the French in the army, the remainder of which was made up by several thousand Italians, Portuguese, and Spaniards, who had been pressed into the service.[6]
The Prussians found themselves in the most degraded position. Their army, weak as it was in numbers, was placed under the command of a French general. The Prussian fortresses, with the exception of Colberg, Graudenz, Schweidnitz, Neisse, and Glatz, were already garrisoned with French troops, or, like Pillau near Koenigsberg, newly occupied by them. In Berlin, the French had unlimited sway. Marshal Augereau was stationed with sixty thousand men in Northern Germany for the purpose of keeping that part of the country, and more particularly Prussia, in check to Napoleon's rear; the Danish forces also stood in readiness to support him in case of necessity. Napoleon's entire army moreover marched through Prussia and completely drained that country of its last resources. Napoleon deemed it unnecessary to take measures equal in severity toward Austria, where the favor of the court seemed to be secured by his marriage, and the allegiance of the army by the presence of Schwarzenberg, who neither rejected nor returned his confidence. A rich compensation was, by a secret compact, secured to Austria in case the cession of Galicia should be necessitated by the expected restoration of the kingdom of Poland, with which Napoleon had long flattered the Poles, who, misled by his promises, served him with the greatest enthusiasm. But, notwithstanding the removal of the only obstacle, the jealousy of Austria in regard to Galicia, by this secret compact, his promises remained unfulfilled, and he took possession of the whole of Poland without restoring her ancient independence. The petitions addressed to him on this subject by the Poles received dubious replies, and he pursued toward his unfortunate dupes his ancient system of dismembering and intermingling nations, of tolerating no national unity. Napoleon's principal motive, however, was his expectation of compelling the emperor by a well-aimed blow to conclude peace, and of forming with him an alliance upon still more favorable terms against the rest of the European powers. The friendship of Russia was of far more import to him than all the enthusiasm of the Poles.