Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

The Franco-Russian Alliance, concluded so hastily and unexpectedly at Tilsit in 1807, lasted nominally nearly five years. It was however unpopular from the beginning with certain influential classes in Russia and its inconveniences became increasingly apparent. The aristocracy of Russia, a powerful body, hated this alliance with a country which had abolished its own nobility, leaving its members impoverished by the loss of their lands and privileges. There could be no sympathy between the Russian nobility, based upon the grinding serfdom of the masses, and the country which had swept all traces of feudalism aside and proclaimed the equality of men. Moreover, the Russian nobility hated the Continental System, as it nearly destroyed the commerce with England in wheat, flax, and timber, which was the chief source of their wealth. Furthermore, the Czar Alexander I, having obtained some of the advantages he had expected from his alliance, was irritated, now that he did not obtain others for which he had hoped. He had gained Finland from Sweden and the Danubian Principalities from Turkey, but the vague though alluring prospect of a division of the Turkish Empire still remained unfulfilled and was, indeed, receding into the limbo of the unlikely. He wanted Constantinople, and Napoleon made it clear he could never have it. Moreover Alexander was alarmed by Napoleon's schemes with the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, a state made out of the Polish provinces which had been acquired by Prussia and Austria. Alexander had no objection to Prussia and Austria losing their Polish provinces, but he himself had Polish provinces and he dreaded anything that looked like a resurrection of the former Kingdom of Poland, any appeal to the Polish national feeling.

But the main cause of Alexander's gradual alienation from his ally was the Continental Blockade. This was working great financial loss to Russia. Moreover its inconveniences undermined him in other ways. To enforce the system more completely in Germany Napoleon seized in 1811 the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, which belonged to Alexander's brother-in-law.

Thus the alliance was being subjected to a strain it could not stand. In 1812 it snapped, and loud was the report. Napoleon would not allow any breach of the Continental Blockade if he could prevent it. He resolved to force Russia, as he had forced the rest of the continent, to do his bidding. He demanded that she in 1812 live up to her promises and exclude British commerce.

The answers were evasive, unsatisfactory, and in June, 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen with the largest army he ever commanded, over half a million men, the 'army of twenty nations,' as the Russians called it. About one-half were French. The rest were a motley host of Italians, Danes, Croatians, Dalmatians, Poles, Dutchmen, Westphalians, Saxons, Bavarians, Wurtembergers, and still others. For the first time in his military career Napoleon commanded the cooperation of Austria and Prussia, both of which were compelled to send contingents. There were 100,000 cavalry and a numerous and powerful artillery. He had around him a brilliant staff of officers, Murat, Ney, Eugene Beauharnais and others. It seemed as if no power on earth could resist such an engine of destruction. Napoleon himself spoke of the expedition as the 'last act' of the play. It was not quite that, but it was a supremely important act, one full of surprises. From the very start it was seen that in numbers there is sometimes weakness, not strength. This vast machine speedily commenced to give way beneath its own weight. The army had not advanced five days before the commissary department began to break down and bread was lacking. Horses, improperly nourished, died by the thousands, thus further demoralizing the commissariat and imperiling the artillery.

The Russians adopted the policy of not fighting but constantly retreating, luring the enemy farther and farther into a country which they took the pains to devastate as they retired, leaving no provisions or supplies for the invaders, no stations for the incapacitated, as they burned their villages on leaving them. Napoleon, seeking above everything a battle, in which he hoped to crush the enemy, was denied the opportunity. The Russians had studied the Duke of Wellington's methods in Portugal and profited by their study. It was 700 miles from the Niemen to Moscow. Napoleon had had no intention of going so far, but the tactics of his enemy forced him steadily to proceed. The Czar had announced that he would retire into Asia if necessary, rather than sign a peace with his enemy on the sacred soil of Russia. Napoleon hoped for a battle at Smolensk but only succeeded in getting a rear-guard action and a city in flames.

This policy of continual retreat, so irritating to the French Emperor, was equally irritating to the Russian people, who did not understand the reason and who clamored for a change. The Russians therefore took up a strong position at Borodino on the route to Moscow. There a battle occurred on September 7, 1812, between the French army of 125,000 men and the Russian of 100,000. The battle was one of the bloodiest of the whole epoch. The French lost 30,000, the Russians 40,000 men. Napoleon's victory was not overwhelming, probably because he could not bring himself to throw in the Old Guard. The Russians retreated in good order, leaving the road open to Moscow, which city Napoleon entered September 14. The army had experienced terrible hardships all the way, first over roads soaked by constant rains, then later over roads intensely heated by July suns and giving forth suffocating clouds of dust. Terrible losses, thousands a day, had characterized the march of seven hundred miles from the Niemen to Moscow.

Napoleon had resolved on the march to Moscow expecting that the Russians would consent to peace, once the ancient capital was in danger. But no one appeared for that purpose. He found Moscow practically deserted, only 15,000 there, out of a population of 250,000. Moreover the day after his entry fires broke out in various parts of the city, probably set by Russians. For four days the fearful conflagration raged, consuming a large part of the city. Still Napoleon stayed on, week after week, fearing the effect that the news of a retreat might produce, and hoping, against hope, that the Czar would sue for peace. Finally there was nothing to do, after wasting a month of precious time, but to order the retreat. This was a long-drawn-out agony, during which an army of 100,000 men was reduced to a few paltry thousands, fretted all along the route by which they had come by Russian armies and by Cossack guerilla bands, horrified by the sight of thousands of their comrades still unburied on the battlefield of Borodino, suffering indescribable hardships of hunger and exhaustion and finally caught in all the horrors of a fierce Russian winter, clad, as I many of them were, lightly for a summer campaign. The scenes that accompanied this flight and rout were of unutterable woe, culminating in the hideous tragedy of the crossing of the Beresina, the of the bridge breaking down under the wild confusion of men fighting to get across, horses frightened, the way blocked by carts and wagons, the bridges raked by the fire of the Russian artillery. Thousands were left behind, many fell or threw themselves into the icy river and were frozen to death. In the river, says one writer, when the Russians came up later they saw "awful heaps of drowned soldiers, women, and children, emerging above the surface of the waters, and here and there rigid in death like statues on their ice-bound horses." A few thousand out of all the army finally got out of Russia and across the Niemen. Many could only crawl to the hospitals asking for "the rooms where people die." History has few ghastlier pages in all its annals.

Napoleon himself left the army in December, and traveled rapidly incognito to Paris, which he reached on the 18th. "I shall be back on the Niemen in the spring," was the statement with which he tried to make men think that the lost position would be soon recovered.