December promised not France’s natural frontiers but ‘an extent of territory greater than France had ever known under its kings, because a courageous nation is not demoted in status simply because it has suffered defeats in a stubborn and bloody war, in which it has fought with its customary boldness’. In part this shift reflected London’s horror at what Aberdeen had agreed. In addition, however, Alexander’s basic belief that military and political events on the ground would determine the peace terms was proving true.23
As the allied armies approached the Dutch border, revolt broke out in the Netherlands. Events followed a pattern very similar to the insurrection in Hamburg and northern Germany in the spring of 1813. Like the citizens of Hamburg, the Dutch had been ruined by Napoleon’s economic policies and longed for liberation. The advance guard of Winzengerode’s Army Corps under Alexander Benckendorff raced across the Netherlands to support the revolt and secure Amsterdam. His infantry – the 2nd Jaegers and the Tula Regiment – covered 60 kilometres in less than thirty-six hours. Benckendorff’s detachment also included a regiment of Bashkirs, exotic and improbable liberators of bourgeois Holland. Benckendorff’s tiny force of fewer than 2,000 men then led the defence of Breda against a French counter-offensive. The earliest French history of the campaign paid tribute to Alexander Benckendorff, saying that he showed courage and initiative even in attempting the defence, let alone in pulling it off.24
Unlike in the previous year at Hamburg, the allies now had large masses of regular troops with which to back up their Cossacks and sustain the revolt. Bulow’s Prussian corps moved into the Netherlands and within weeks had cleared most of the Low Countries. Quite apart from its political impact, the conquest of the Low Countries had important military consequences for the invasion of France. It opened up a possible supply line through rich and untouched country to the coast which allied armies operating in the Paris region could use. It also convinced Napoleon that the allied offensive in the winter of 1813–14 would come in the Low Countries. As a result he moved the best of his meagre reserves northwards.25
Meanwhile the allied leaders were planning an invasion over the Rhine but well to the south. Blucher and Gneisenau argued for an immediate attack while Napoleon’s army was still small and disorganized. Prussian historians subsequently supported this strategy. But the allied armies were also exhausted, hungry and diminished by the autumn campaign. They too needed time to rest and reorganize themselves, and to establish military roads, magazines and hospitals in their rear. During the seven weeks they rested on the Rhine, the allies in fact drew in more and better reinforcements than Napoleon. When they moved forward at the end of the year, eastern France fell to them easily and they still far outnumbered Napoleon’s forces. If the campaign later became more difficult, that had little to do with numbers: it was due to poor leadership and to the way in which political considerations were allowed to sabotage military operations.26
On 9 November Barclay de Tolly submitted his report to the emperor on the state of the Russian army at the close of the autumn campaign. He reckoned that ‘for all our great victories, the present campaign has cost us…half our army’. In some units a much higher proportion of men were no longer in the ranks. ‘Count Wittgenstein’s cavalry does not have even one-quarter of the strength with which it left Silesia’ in late August. Of the five front-line Army Corps only two were still fully viable and ‘look like regular soldiers’. These two were the Grand Duke Constantine’s Guards and Grenadiers of the Reserve Army Corps and Winzengerode’s Army Corps in the Army of the North, ‘which have seen less combat and have suffered less than the others’. In many units of the other three Army Corps (Wittgenstein, Langeron and Sacken) ‘total disorganization’ threatened unless action was taken quickly. ‘The soldiers are suffering from a great shortage of ammunition, and an even greater lack of boots, shirts and tunics.’ In some regiments not more than one hundred men were still in the ranks. Casualties among officers in the autumn campaign had been high and ‘the shortage of officers is the reason why even these small remnants cannot be restored to proper order’. Many other sources, including regimental accounts and Blucher’s reports to Alexander, confirm the picture drawn by Barclay and stress the army’s urgent need for a pause to fill up its ranks, rest its troops, and restock with ammunition, food and equipment.27
During the seven weeks that the Russian army remained on the Rhine the situation was transformed. Stragglers and men from hospital rejoined their regiments. Units detached in the rear during the autumn campaign were brought forward. Prince Aleksei Shcherbatov’s corps, for example, arrived from Berlin to reinforce Sacken. Above all, however, a further wave of reinforcements arrived from Lobanov-Rostovsky’s Reserve Army. As a result, as had happened during the summer truce in 1813, the Russian army entered the 1814 campaign refreshed and at full strength. During the seven weeks on the Rhine 25,000 reinforcements arrived for Langeron and Sacken, and 19,000 for Wittgenstein and the Grand Duke Constantine from Lobanov. In all, 63 reserve squadrons reinforced the army’s regular cavalry regiments, in other words more than 12,000 men, and there were more on their way. Langeron and Sacken had arrived on the Rhine with fewer than 30,000 men. By the beginning of the 1814 campaign they had 60,000.28
The reinforcements were generally in good order and of high quality. As usual, the cavalry were best. General Nikolai Preradovich inspected the reserve squadron which arrived to reinforce the Chevaliers Gardes on 18 November and reported that ‘I found it to be in perfect order: the men are well turned out and the horses in good form’. Peter Wittgenstein also reported that the reserve units reaching his Army Corps were in excellent condition. Completely unlike the situation with Lobanov’s first wave of reinforcements in the spring of 1813, on this occasion the units arrived at full strength, having shed very few sick or stragglers. Of course, there was a big difference between marching through a German autumn and a Belorussian winter, but the contrast also reflected the fact that Kankrin’s management of the military roads, hospitals and magazines in the army’s rear was working well.29
In one sense the movement of reinforcements had been almost too successful. The reserve companies had marched with only three-quarters of the men supplied with muskets, as in the spring. Since very few men dropped out, some soldiers in Sacken’s Army Corps actually only received their muskets when large supplies were captured from the French in early January 1814. Equipment was also a problem. Alexander became almost hysterical when his beloved Guardsmen turned up with jaeger regiments’ cross-belts and pouches. Everyone denounced the wretched state of the recruits’ uniforms, which by now were often in tatters. In 1814 many line regiments presented a strange appearance, in some cases being dressed in captured French clothing. Sometimes new uniforms had actually been ordered for them in Germany, Poland and Bohemia but the speed of the army’s advance meant that these were trailing along well in the rear. The plan had been that the officers who had led Lobanov’s units to the Field Army should return to Poland to continue the training of new recruits. In fact, however, the line units were now so short of officers that some of Lobanov’s cadre had to stay behind on the Rhine and join the 1814 campaign.30
Meanwhile the Prussians and Austrians were also resting and reinforcing their troops. Almost as important, the allies were mobilizing the resources of conquered Germany to sustain their new campaign against Napoleon. Responsibility for this was given to the so-called Central Administration, headed by Baron vom Stein and established right back in March 1813 to run territories conquered by the allies. Stein initially saw the Central Administration as a means not just of mobilizing German resources for the allied cause but also of laying the foundations for a post-war united German polity, in which the sovereignty of the ruling princes would be circumscribed by federal institutions and by elected assemblies. This plan was unacceptable both to Metternich and to the monarchs of the former Confederation of the Rhine, who united to undermine it. Historians have concentrated on this battle over politics, in which Alexander made no attempt to challenge Metternich.
The price paid by the princes to preserve their sovereignty was generous support for the allied war effort. On this point Metternich was just as firm as Stein. In their treaties with the allies, the princes pledged themselves to provide as many troops of the line as they had to Napoleon and then an equal number of Landwehr. They also contributed one year’s gross state revenue, though not of course all at once and in cash. In the end the Bavarian and Wurttemberg corps fought in Schwarzenberg’s army and five other German corps were also created. Some of these corps took over the task of blockading French fortresses and guarding allied bases and lines of communication. This freed large numbers of front-line Russian and Prussian troops to march into the Paris region and join the fight against Napoleon in February and March 1814. Without these reinforcements, the allied campaign would almost certainly have failed.31
For many of the allied leaders and generals the idea of marching on Paris and overthrowing Napoleon seemed very risky. For many centuries France had been Europe’s most powerful country. No foreign army had taken Paris since 1415. As Kutuzov recalled in November 1812, a century before at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession France had faced most of Europe, whose armies had been led by two of the greatest generals in history, Prince Eugene of Savoy and the Duke of Marlborough. After six years of lost battles total defeat loomed, yet still the
