‘The future was vague, and its fortunes very distant; there was no inkling, nothing to exercise the imagination, nothing to awaken the enthusiasm,’ wrote Colonel Boulart of the artillery of the Guard. This did not stop them from speculating wildly. Jakob Walter of Stuttgart thought they were being marched up to some Baltic port, from which they would be shipped to Spain. But most looked eastwards. ‘We thought that, together with the Russians, we would cross the deserts of that great empire in order to go and attack England in her possessions in India,’ wrote General Pouget. One soldier wrote home saying they were marching to England, overland through Russia.45
‘Some said that Napoleon had made a secret alliance with Alexander, and that a combined Franco-Russian army was going to march against Turkey and take hold of its possessions in Europe and Asia; others said that the war would take us to the Great Indies, to chase out the English,’ remembered one volunteer.* ‘All of this concerned me very little: whether we were going to go to the right, to the left or straight ahead was a matter of indifference to me, as long as I could enter into the real world,’ wrote another. ‘My friends, my childhood companions were almost all in the army; they were already storing up glory. Was I, useless burden on this earth, to remain with my hands crossed to shamefully await their return? I was eighteen years old.’ Another, a fusilier in the 6th Regiment of the Guard, wrote to his parents telling them he was off to the ‘the Great Indies’ or possibly ‘Egippe’. ‘As for me, I don’t care either way; I would like us to go the ends of the earth.’ He spoke for many.46
* The term ‘grande armée’ in French military parlance designated the main operational force in any given campaign, but in the popular imagination the two words are above all associated with the great force that marched on Moscow.
* Curiously enough, Alexander’s secret information services had also reported to him that Napoleon’s plan was to knock out Russia with a quick blow, force peace on her and then, using 100,000 Russian auxiliaries, march on Constantinople, thence to Egypt, and then to Bengal.47
As hundreds of thousands of men drawn from every corner of Europe tramped across Germany ready to fight and die for him, dreaming of an epic march to India or just of getting back home as quickly as possible, the Emperor of the French was setting the scene for the catastrophe that would engulf all but a handful of them.
Napoleon was about to pit himself against a huge empire while still engaged in a wasting war in Spain, with Germany in a state of ferment and Britain hovering on the sidelines ready to take advantage of any opportunity that might arise. It is customary before going to war to firm up as many allies as possible, and for one such as this it was an absolute necessity. As luck would have it, he had a number of them lining up to support him. Sweden was a natural ally, with a long history of francophilia and an interest in recovering Finland and her enclaves on the Baltic from Russia; Turkey, another traditional ally of France, was actually engaged in a bloody war with Russia; Austria, whose emperor was Napoleon’s father-in-law, had many interests in common with the French; Prussia was begging to be allowed into an alliance with France; and the Poles were only waiting to be given the signal to rise up all over western Russia.
In the circumstances, Napoleon’s behaviour is astonishing. On 27 January 1812, under the pretext that the Continental System was not being enforced rigorously enough there, he sent his armies into Swedish Pomerania and took possession of it. He followed this up with a demand to Sweden for an alliance against Russia and a contingent of troops. When this was rejected by Bernadotte, he said he would allow the Swedes to recapture Finland, and offered some trading concessions. When this too was rejected, Napoleon offered to return Pomerania and threw in Mecklemburg as well as a large subsidy. But it was too late. His high-handed seizure of Pomerania had been taken as an insult in Sweden, and within two weeks of the news reaching Stockholm, Bernadotte’s special envoy was in St Petersburg asking for a treaty with Russia, which was duly signed on 5 April.
As for France’s other traditional ally, Turkey, Napoleon did nothing, assuming that she would go on fighting Russia unbidden. It is true that relations between France and Turkey had been strained by the treaty of Tilsit, which appeared to ally France with Turkey’s enemy. It is also true that Napoleon had a low opinion of the three sultans who had followed each other in rapid and bloody succession. But at this stage any gesture of support for Turkey would have yielded real advantages: Alexander had just instructed his commander on the Turkish front, General Kutuzov, to start talks and make peace at almost any cost, as he needed all his troops to face the French.
Napoleon’s treatment of Austria was hardly less offhand. The treaty he signed with her on 14 March stipulated that following a French victory Moldavia and Wallachia would be returned to Turkey, and that if Poland were to be restored, Austria could keep Galicia, or, if she preferred, receive compensation in Illyria. While the treaty suggested a common policy in central Europe and the Balkans, it kept everything vague, as Napoleon did not wish to tie his hands. For the same reason, he only asked for a small Austrian auxiliary force under Prince Schwarzenberg, which was to cover his right flank.
Frederick William of Prussia had begged Napoleon for an alliance which would restore some dignity to his country’s enforced subjection to France. But Napoleon responded with a treaty, signed on 4 March, by which he graciously allowed Prussia to supply a small contingent of troops for the forthcoming campaign, on the most abject terms. This not only incensed the Prussian nationalists further, it also undermined the pro-French party in Berlin, paving the way for an explosion of anti-French feeling. It also meant that French troops had to be diverted to keeping an eye on the country, as Napoleon insisted that they march through Berlin every day and maintain strong garrisons in fortresses such as Spandau and Danzig.1
Finally, he refused to give the Poles an unequivocal signal, thereby strengthening the party in that country which mistrusted his intentions and believed that their best chance of survival lay with Alexander. The fact that Napoleon did not see fit to give such a signal speaks volumes both about his self-confidence and his unwillingness to damage Russia any more than was necessary. He wanted to frighten her, but he did not want to destroy her as a power. He wanted to co-opt her as an ally against Britain. There was no other reason for France to go to war with Russia: there was nothing Russia had that France could possibly have wanted. The only other conceivable motive for confronting Russia was to force her out of her newly dominant position in European affairs and neutralise her ability to threaten France.
In the first days of March, in a long conversation with one of his aides, Napoleon announced that he was determined to ‘throw back for two hundred years that inexorable threat of invasion from the north’. He expounded a historical vision according to which the fertile and civilised south of Europe would always be threatened by uncivilised ravenous hordes from the north. ‘I am therefore propelled into this hazardous war by political reality,’ he affirmed. ‘Only the affability of Alexander, the admiration he professed for me, which I believe was real, and his eagerness to embrace all my schemes, were able to make me disregard for a while this unalterable fact … Remember Suvorov and his Tartars in Italy: the only answer is to throw them back beyond Moscow; and when will Europe be in a position to do this, if not now, and by me?’2
He did not believe any of it. He had already shown that he was even prepared to add to Russia’s power if that meant she would help him vanquish Britain. And, as ever when he thought of Russia and Britain, Napoleon’s mind filled