A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 20

[The French advance from Smolensko.]

When Kutusoff reached the camp, the prolonged miseries of the French advance had already reduced the invaders to the number of the army opposed to them. As far as Smolensko the French had at least not suffered from the hostility of the population, who were Poles, not Russians; but on reaching Smolensko they entered a country where every peasant was a fanatical enemy.

The villages were burnt down by their inhabitants, the corn destroyed, and the cattle driven into the woods. Every day's march onward from Smolensko cost the French three thousand men. On reaching the river Moskwa in the first week of September, a hundred and seventy-five thousand out of Napoleon's three hundred and eighty thousand soldiers were in the hospitals, or missing, or dead. About sixty thousand guarded the line of march. The Russians, on the other hand, had received reinforcements which covered their losses at Smolensko; and although detachments had been sent to support the army of Riga, Kutusoff was still able to place over one hundred thousand men in the field.

[Battle of Borodino, Sept. 7.]

[Evacuation of Moscow. French enter Moscow, Sept. 14.]

On the 5th of September the Russian army drew up for battle at Borodino, on the Moskwa, seventy miles west of the capital. At early morning on the 7th the French advanced to the attack. The battle was, in proportion to its numbers, the most sanguinary of modern times. Forty thousand French, thirty thousand Russians were struck down. At the close of the day the French were in possession of the enemy's ground, but the Russians, unbroken in their order, had only retreated to a second line of defence. Both sides claimed the victory; neither had won it. It was no catastrophe such as Napoleon required for the decision of the war, it was no triumph sufficient to save Russia from the necessity of abandoning its capital. Kutusoff had sustained too heavy a loss to face the French beneath the walls of Moscow. Peace was no nearer for the 70,000 men who had been killed or wounded in the fight.

The French steadily advanced; the Russians retreated to Moscow, and evacuated the capital when their generals decided that they could not encounter the French a.s.sault. The Holy City was left undefended before the invader. But the departure of the army was the smallest part of the evacuation. The inhabitants, partly of their own free will, partly under the compulsion of the Governor, abandoned the city in a ma.s.s. No gloomy or excited crowd, as at Vienna and Berlin, thronged the streets to witness the entrance of the great conqueror, when on the 14th of September Napoleon took possession of Moscow. His troops marched through silent and deserted streets. In the solitude of the Kremlin Napoleon received the homage of a few foreigners, who alone could be collected by his servants to tender to him the submission of the city.

[Moscow fired.]

But the worst was yet to come. On the night after Napoleon's entry, fires broke out in different parts of Moscow. They were ascribed at first to accident; but when on the next day the French saw the flames gaining ground in every direction, and found that all the means for extinguis.h.i.+ng fire had been removed from the city, they understood the doom to which Moscow had been devoted by its own defenders. Count Rostopchin, the governor, had determined on the destruction of Moscow without the knowledge of the Czar.

The doors of the prisons were thrown open. Rostopchin gave the signal by setting fire to his own palace, and let loose his bands of incendiaries over the city. For five days the flames rose and fell; and when, on the evening of the 20th, the last fires ceased, three-fourths of Moscow lay in ruins.

[Napoleon at Moscow, Sept. 14-Oct. 19.]

Such was the prize for which Napoleon had sacrificed 200,000 men, and engulfed the weak remnant of his army six hundred miles deep in an enemy's country. Throughout all the terrors of the advance Napoleon had held fast to the belief that Alexander's resistance would end with the fall of his capital. The events that accompanied the entry of the French into Moscow shook his confidence; yet even now Napoleon could not believe that the Czar remained firm against all thoughts of peace. His experience in all earlier wars had given him confidence in the power of one conspicuous disaster to unhinge the resolution of kings. His trust in the deepening impression made by the fall of Moscow was fostered by negotiations begun by Kutusoff for the very purpose of delaying the French retreat. For five weeks Napoleon remained at Moscow as if spell-bound, unable to convince himself of his powerlessness to break Alexander's determination, unable to face a retreat which would display to all Europe the failure of his arms and the termination of his career of victory. At length the approach of winter forced him to action. It was impossible to provision the army at Moscow during the winter months, even if there had been nothing to fear from the enemy. Even the mocking overtures of Kutusoff had ceased. The frightful reality could no longer be concealed. On the 19th of October the order for retreat was given. It was not the destruction of Moscow, but the departure of its inhabitants, that had brought the conqueror to ruin. Above two thousand houses were still standing; but whether the buildings remained or perished made little difference; the whole value of the capital to Napoleon was lost when the inhabitants, whom he could have forced to procure supplies for his army, disappeared. Vienna and Berlin had been of such incalculable service to Napoleon because the whole native administration placed itself under his orders, and every rich and important citizen became a hostage for the activity of the rest. When the French gained Moscow, they gained nothing beyond the supplies which were at that moment in the city.

All was lost to Napoleon when the cla.s.s who in other capitals had been his instruments fled at his approach. The conflagration of Moscow acted upon all Europe as a signal of inextinguishable national hatred; as a military operation, it neither accelerated the retreat of Napoleon nor added to the miseries which his army had to undergo.

[Napoleon leaves Moscow, Oct. 19.]

[Forced to retreat by the same road.]

The French forces which quitted Moscow in October numbered about 100,000 men. Reinforcements had come in during the occupation of the city, and the health of the soldiers had been in some degree restored by a month's rest.

Everything now depended upon gaining a line of retreat where food could be found. Though but a fourth part of the army which entered Russia in the summer, the army which left Moscow was still large enough to protect itself against the enemy, if allowed to retreat through a fresh country; if forced back upon the devastated line of its advance it was impossible for it to escape destruction. Napoleon therefore determined to make for Kaluga, on the south of Moscow, and to endeavour to gain a road to Smolensko far distant from that by which he had come. The army moved from Moscow in a southern direction. But its route had been foreseen by Kutusoff. At the end of four days' march it was met by a Russian corps at Jaroslavitz. A b.l.o.o.d.y struggle left the French in possession of the road: they continued their advance; but it was only to find that Kutusoff, with his full strength, had occupied a line of heights farther south, and barred the way to Kaluga. The effort of an a.s.sault was beyond the powers of the French. Napoleon surveyed the enemy's position, and recognised the fatal necessity of abandoning the march southwards and returning to the wasted road by which he had advanced.

The meaning of the backward movement was quickly understood by the army.

From the moment of quitting Jaroslavitz, disorder and despair increased with every march. Thirty thousand men were lost upon the road before a pursuer appeared in sight. When, on the 2nd of November, the army reached Wiazma, it numbered no more than 65,000 men.

[Kutusoff follows by parallel road.]

Kutusoff was unadventurous in pursuit. The necessity of moving his army along a parallel road south of the French, in order to avoid starvation, diminished the opportunities for attack; but the general himself disliked risking his forces, and preferred to see the enemy's destruction effected by the elements. At Wiazma, where, on the 3rd of November, the French were for the first time attacked in force, Kutusoff's own delay alone saved them from total ruin. In spite of heavy loss the French kept possession of the road, and secured their retreat to Smolensko, where stores of food had been acc.u.mulated, and where other and less exhausted French troops were at hand.

[Frost, Nov. 6.]

[French reach Smolensko, Nov. 9.]

Up to the 6th of November the weather had been sunny and dry. On the 6th the long-delayed terrors of Russian winter broke upon the pursuers and the pursued. Snow darkened the air and hid the last traces of vegetation from the starving cavalry trains. The temperature sank at times to forty degrees of frost. Death came, sometimes in the unfelt release from misery, sometimes in horrible forms of mutilation and disease. Both armies were exposed to the same sufferings; but the Russians had at least such succour as their countrymen could give; where the French sank, they died. The order of war disappeared under conditions which made life itself the accident of a meal or of a place by the camp-fire. Though most of the French soldiery continued to carry their arms, the Guard alone kept its separate formation; the other regiments marched in confused ma.s.ses. From the 9th to the 13th of November these starving bands arrived one after another at Smolensko, expecting that here their sufferings would end. But the organisation for distributing the stores acc.u.mulated in Smolensko no longer existed. The peris.h.i.+ng crowds were left to find shelter where they could; sacks of corn were thrown to them for food.

[Russian armies from north and south attempt to cut off French retreat.]

[Krasnoi, Nov. 17.]

It was impossible for Napoleon to give his wearied soldiers rest, for new Russian armies were advancing from the north and the south to cut off their retreat. From the Danube and from the Baltic Sea troops were pressing forward to their meeting-point upon the rear of the invader. Witgenstein, moving southwards at the head of the army of the Dwina, had overpowered the French corps stationed upon that river, and made himself master of Witepsk.

The army of Bucharest, which had been toiling northwards ever since the beginning of August, had advanced to within a few days' march of its meeting-point with the army of the Dwina upon the line of Napoleon's communications. Before Napoleon reached Smolensko he sent orders to Victor, who was at Smolensko with some reserves, to march against Witgenstein and drive him back upon the Dwina. Victor set out on his mission. During the short halt of Napoleon in Smolensko, Kutusoff pushed forward to the west of the French, and took post at Krasnoi, thirty miles farther along the road by which Napoleon had to pa.s.s. The retreat of the French seemed to be actually cut off. Had the Russian general dared to face Napoleon and his Guards, he might have held the French in check until the arrival of the two auxiliary armies from the north and south enabled him to capture Napoleon and his entire force. Kutusoff, however, preferred a partial and certain victory to a struggle with Napoleon for life or death. He permitted Napoleon and the Guard to pa.s.s by unattacked, and then fell upon the hinder divisions of the French army. (Nov. 17.) These unfortunate troops were successively cut to pieces. Twenty-six thousand were made prisoners. Ney, with a part of the rear-guard, only escaped by crossing the Dnieper on the ice. Of the army that had quitted Moscow there now remained but 10,000 combatants and 20,000 followers. Kutusoff himself was brought to such a state of exhaustion that he could carry the pursuit no further, and entered into quarters upon the Dnieper.

[Victor joins Napoleon.]

[Pa.s.sage of the Beresina, Nov. 28th.]

It was a few days after the battle at Krasnoi that the divisions of Victor, coming from the direction of the Dwina, suddenly encountered the remnant of Napoleon's army. Though aware that Napoleon was in retreat, they knew nothing of the calamities that had befallen him, and were struck with amazement when, in the middle of a forest, they met with what seemed more like a miserable troop of captives than an army upon the march. Victor's soldiers of a mere auxiliary corps found themselves more than double the effective strength of the whole army of Moscow. Their arrival again placed Napoleon at the head of 30,000 disciplined troops, and gave the French a gleam of victory in the last and seemingly most hopeless struggle in the campaign. Admiral Tchitchagoff, in command of the army marching from the Danube, had at length reached the line of Napoleon's retreat, and established himself at Borisov, where the road through Poland crosses the river Beresina. The bridge was destroyed by the Russians, and Tchitchagoff opened communication with Witgenstein's army, which lay only a few miles to the north. It appeared as if the retreat of the French was now finally intercepted, and the surrender of Napoleon inevitable. Yet even in this hopeless situation the military skill and daring of the French worked with something of its ancient power. The army reached the Beresina; Napoleon succeeded in withdrawing the enemy from the real point of pa.s.sage; bridges were thrown across the river, and after desperate fighting a great part of the army made good its footing upon the western bank (Nov. 28). But the losses even among the effective troops were enormous. The fate of the miserable crowd that followed them, torn by the cannon-fire of the Russians, and precipitated into the river by the breaking of one of the bridges, has made the pa.s.sage of the Beresina a synonym for the utmost degree of human woe.

[French reach the Niemen, Dec. 13.]

This was the last engagement fought by the army. The Guards still preserved their order: Marshal Ney still found soldiers capable of turning upon the pursuer with his own steady and unflagging courage; but the bulk of the army struggled forward in confused crowds, hara.s.sed by the Cossacks, and laying down their arms by thousands before the enemy. The frost, which had broken up on the 19th, returned on the 30th of November with even greater severity. Twenty thousand fresh troops which joined the army between the Beresina and Wilna scarcely arrested the process of dissolution. On the 3rd of December Napoleon quitted the army. Wilna itself was abandoned with all its stores; and when at length the fugitives reached the Niemen, they numbered little more than twenty thousand. Here, six months earlier, three hundred and eighty thousand men had crossed with Napoleon. A hundred thousand more had joined the army in the course of its retreat. Of all this host, not the twentieth part reached the Prussian frontier. A hundred and seventy thousand remained prisoners in the hands of the Russians; a greater number had perished. Of the twenty thousand men who now beheld the Niemen, probably not seven thousand had crossed with Napoleon. In the presence of a catastrophe so overwhelming and so unparalleled the Russian generals might well be content with their own share in the work of destruction. Yet the event proved that Kutusoff had done ill in sparing the extremest effort to capture or annihilate his foe. Not only was Napoleon's own escape the pledge of continued war, but the remnant that escaped with him possessed a military value out of all proportion to its insignificant numbers. The best of the army were the last to succ.u.mb. Out of those few thousands who endured to the end, a very large proportion were veteran officers, who immediately took their place at the head of Napoleon's newly-raised armies, and gave to them a military efficiency soon to be bitterly proved by Europe on many a German battle-field.

[York's convention with the Russians, Dec. 30.]

[York and the Prussian contingent at Riga.]

Four hundred thousand men were lost to a conqueror who could still stake the lives of half a million more. The material power of Napoleon, though largely, was not fatally diminished by the Russian campaign; it was through its moral effect, first proved in the action of Prussia, that the retreat from Moscow created a new order of things in Europe. The Prussian contingent, commanded by General von York, lay in front of Riga, where it formed part of the French subsidiary army-corps led by Marshal Macdonald.

Early in November the Russian governor of Riga addressed himself to York, a.s.suring him that Napoleon was ruined, and soliciting York himself to take up arms against Macdonald. [174] York had no evidence, beyond the word of the Russian commander, of the extent of Napoleon's losses; and even if the facts were as stated, it was by no means clear that the Czar might not be inclined to take vengeance on Prussia on account of its alliance with Napoleon. York returned a guarded answer to the Russian, and sent an officer to Wilna to ascertain the real state of the French army. On the 8th of December the officer returned, and described what he had himself seen.

Soon afterwards the Russian commandant produced a letter from the Czar, declaring his intention to deal with Prussia as a friend, not as an enemy.

On these points all doubt was removed; York's decision was thrown upon himself. York was a rigid soldier of the old Prussian type, dominated by the idea of military duty. The act to which the Russian commander invited him, and which the younger officers were ready to hail as the liberation of Prussia, might be branded by his sovereign as desertion and treason.

Whatever scruples and perplexity might be felt in such a situation by a loyal and obedient soldier were felt by York. He nevertheless chose the course which seemed to be for his country's good; and having chosen it, he accepted all the consequences which it involved. On the 30th of December a convention was signed at Tauroggen, which, under the guise of a truce, practically withdrew the Prussian army from Napoleon, and gave the Russians possession of Konigsberg. The momentous character of the act was recognised by Napoleon as soon as the news reached Paris. York's force was the strongest military body upon the Russian frontier; united with Macdonald, it would have forced the Russian pursuit to stop at the Niemen; abandoning Napoleon, it brought his enemies on to the Vistula, and threatened incalculable danger by its example to all the rest of Germany. For the moment, however, Napoleon could count upon the spiritless obedience of King Frederick William. In the midst of the French regiments that garrisoned Berlin, the King wrote orders p.r.o.nouncing York's convention null and void, and ordering York himself to be tried by court-martial. The news reached the loyal soldier: he received it with grief, but maintained his resolution to act for his country's good. "With bleeding heart," he wrote, "I burst the bond of obedience, and carry on the war upon my own responsibility. The army desires war with France; the nation desires it; the King himself desires it, but his will is not free. The army must make his will free."

[The Czar and Stein.]

[Alexander enters Prussia, Jan., 1813.]

York's act was nothing less than the turning-point in Prussian history.

Another Prussian, at this great crisis of Europe, played as great, though not so conspicuous, a part. Before the outbreak of the Russian war, the Czar had requested the exile Stein to come to St. Petersburg to aid him with his counsels during the struggle with Napoleon. Stein gladly accepted the call; and throughout the campaign he encouraged the Czar in the resolute resistance which the Russian nation itself required of its Government. So long as French soldiers remained on Russian soil, there was indeed little need for a foreigner to stimulate the Czar's energies; but when the pursuit had gloriously ended on the Niemen, the case became very different. Kutusoff and the generals were disinclined to carry the war into Germany. The Russian army had itself lost three-fourths of its numbers; Russian honour was satisfied; the liberation of Western Europe might be left to Western Europe itself. Among the politicians who surrounded Alexander, there were a considerable number, including the first minister Romanzoff, who still believed in the good policy of a French alliance.

These were the influences with which Stein had to contend, when the question arose whether Russia should rest satisfied with its own victories, or summon all Europe to unite in overthrowing Napoleon's tyranny. No record remains of the stages by which Alexander's mind rose to the clear and firm conception of a single European interest against Napoleon; indications exist that it was Stein's personal influence which most largely affected his decision. Even in the darkest moments of the war, when the forces of Russia seemed wholly incapable of checking Napoleon's advance, Stein had never abandoned his scheme for raising the German nation against Napoleon.

The confidence with which he had a.s.sured Alexander of ultimate victory over the invader had been thoroughly justified; the triumph which he had predicted had come with a rapidity and completeness even surpa.s.sing his hopes. For a moment Alexander identified himself with the statesman who, in the midst of Germany's humiliation, had been so resolute, so far-sighted, so aspiring. [175] The minister of the peace-party was dismissed: Alexander ordered his troops to advance into Prussia, and charged Stein himself to a.s.sume the government of the Prussian districts occupied by Russian armies.

Stein's mission was to arm the Landwehr, and to gather all the resources of the country for war against France; his powers were to continue until some definite arrangement should be made between the King of Prussia and the Czar.

[Stein's commission from Alexander.]

[Province of East Prussia arms, Jan., 1813.]

Armed with this commission from a foreign sovereign, Stein appeared at Konigsberg on the 22nd of January, 1813, and published an order requiring the governor of the province of East Prussia to convoke an a.s.sembly for the purpose of arming the people. Stein would have desired York to appear as President of the a.s.sembly; but York, like most of the Prussian officials, was alarmed and indignant at Stein's a.s.sumption of power in Prussia as the representative of the Russian Czar, and hesitated to connect himself with so revolutionary a measure as the arming of the people. It was only upon condition that Stein himself should not appear in the a.s.sembly that York consented to recognise its powers. The a.s.sembly met. York entered the house, and spoke a few soul-stirring words. His undisguised declaration of war with France was received with enthusiastic cheers. A plan for the formation of a Landwehr, based on Scharnhorst's plans of 1808, was laid before the a.s.sembly, and accepted. Forty thousand men were called to arms in a province which included nothing west of the Vistula. The nation itself had begun the war, and left its Government no choice but to follow. Stein's task was fulfilled; and he retired to the quarters of Alexander, unwilling to mar by the appearance of foreign intervention the work to which the Prussian nation had now committed itself beyond power of recall. It was the fortune of the Prussian State, while its King dissembled before the French in Berlin, to possess a soldier brave enough to emanc.i.p.ate its army, and a citizen bold enough to usurp the government of its provinces. Frederick William forgave York his intrepidity; Stein's action was never forgiven by the timid and jealous sovereign whose subjects he had summoned to arm themselves for their country's deliverance.

[Policy of Hardenberg.]

[Treaty of Kalisch, Feb. 27.]

The Government of Berlin, which since the beginning of the Revolutionary War had neither been able to fight, nor to deceive, nor to be honest, was at length forced by circ.u.mstances into a certain effectiveness in all three forms of action. In the interval between the first tidings of Napoleon's disasters and the announcement of York's convention with the Russians, Hardenberg had been a.s.suring Napoleon of his devotion, and collecting troops which he carefully prevented from joining him. [176] The desire of the King was to gain concessions without taking part in the war either against Napoleon or on his side. When, however, the balance turned more decidedly against Napoleon, he grew bolder; and the news of York's defection, though it seriously embarra.s.sed the Cabinet for the moment, practically decided it in favour of war with France. The messenger who was sent to remove York from his command received private instructions to fall into the hands of the Russians, and to inform the Czar that, if his troops advanced as far as the Oder, King Frederick William would be ready to conclude an alliance. Every post that arrived from East Prussia strengthened the warlike resolutions of the Government. At length the King ventured on the decisive step of quitting Berlin and placing himself at Breslau (Jan. 25). At Berlin he was in the power of the French; at Breslau he was within easy reach of Alexander. The significance of the journey could not be mistaken: it was immediately followed by open preparation for war with France. On February 3rd there appeared an edict inviting volunteers to enrol themselves: a week later all exemptions from military service were abolished, and the entire male population of Prussia between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four was declared liable to serve. General Knesebeck was sent to the headquarters of the Czar, which were now between Warsaw and Kalisch, to conclude a treaty of alliance. Knesebeck demanded securities for the restoration to Prussia of all the Polish territory which it had possessed before 1806; the Czar, unwilling either to grant this condition or to lose the Prussian alliance, kept Knesebeck at his quarters, and sent Stein with a Russian plenipotentiary to Breslau to conclude the treaty with Hardenberg himself. Stein and Hardenberg met at Breslau on the 26th of February. Hardenberg accepted the Czar's terms, and the treaty, known as the Treaty of Kalisch, [177] was signed on the following day. By this treaty, without guaranteeing the restoration of Prussian Poland, Russia undertook not to lay down its arms until the Prussian State as a whole was restored to the area and strength which it had possessed before 1806. For this purpose annexations were promised in Northern Germany. With regard to Poland, Russia promised no more than to permit Prussia to retain what it had received in 1772, together with a strip of territory to connect this district with Silesia. The meaning of the agreement was that Prussia should abandon to Russia the greater part of its late Polish provinces, and receive an equivalent German territory in its stead. The Treaty of Kalisch virtually surrendered to the Czar all that Prussia had gained in the part.i.tions of Poland made in 1793 and in 1795. The sacrifice was deemed a most severe one by every Prussian politician, and was accepted only as a less evil than the loss of Russia's friends.h.i.+p, and a renewed submission to Napoleon. No single statesman, not even Stein himself, appears to have understood that in exchanging its Polish conquests for German annexations, in turning to the German west instead of to the alien Slavonic east, Prussia was in fact taking the very step which made it the possible head of a future united Germany.

[French retreat to the Elbe.]

War was still undeclared upon Napoleon by King Frederick William, but throughout the month of February the light cavalry of the Russians pushed forward unhindered through Prussian territory towards the Oder, and crowds of volunteers, marching through Berlin on their way to the camps in Silesia, gave the French clear signs of the storm that was about to burst upon them. [178] The remnant of Napoleon's army, now commanded by Eugene Beauharnais, had fallen back step by step to the Oder. Here, resting on the fortresses, it might probably have checked the Russian advance; but the heart of Eugene failed; the line of the Oder was abandoned, and the retreat continued to Berlin and the Elbe. The Cossacks followed. On the 20th of February they actually entered Berlin and fought with the French in the streets. The French garrison was far superior in force; but the appearance of the Cossacks caused such a ferment that, although the alliance between France and Prussia was still in nominal existence, the French troops expected to be cut to pieces by the people. For some days they continued to bivouac in the streets, and as soon as it became known that a regular Russian force had reached the Oder, Eugene determined to evacuate Berlin.

On the 4th of March the last French soldier quitted the Prussian capital.

The Cossacks rode through the town as the French left it, and fought with their rear-guard. Some days later Witgenstein appeared with Russian infantry. On March 17th York made his triumphal entry at the head of his corps, himself cold and rigid in the midst of tumultuous outbursts of patriotic joy.

[King of Prussia declares war March 17.]

It was on this same day that King Frederick William issued his proclamation to the Prussian people, declaring that war had begun with France, and summoning the nation to enter upon the struggle as one that must end either in victory or in total destruction. The proclamation was such as became a monarch conscious that his own faint-heartedness had been the princ.i.p.al cause of Prussia's humiliation. It was simple and unboastful, admitting that the King had made every effort to preserve the French alliance, and ascribing the necessity for war to the intolerable wrongs inflicted by Napoleon in spite of Prussia's fulfilment of its treaty-obligations. The appeal to the great memories of Prussia's earlier sovereigns, and to the example of Russia, Spain, and all countries which in present or in earlier times had fought for their independence against a stronger foe, was worthy of the truthful and modest tone in which the King spoke of the misfortunes of Prussia under his own rule.