underestimates the Russian achievement. The most basic reason for this is that the Russia which defeated Napoleon was an aristocratic, dynastic and multi-ethnic empire. Mining the events of the Napoleonic era just for Russian ethno-national myths and doing so in naive fashion inevitably leaves out much about the war effort.
At one level it is absurd to call Leo Tolstoy the main villain in this misunderstanding. A novelist is not a historian. Tolstoy writes about individuals’ mentalities, values and experiences during and before 1812. But
One key reason why Russia defeated Napoleon was that its leaders out-thought him. In 1812 Napoleon failed to understand Russian society and politics, or to exploit Russia’s internal weaknesses. In the end he ruined his cause by delaying in Moscow in the naive hope that salvation would come from Alexander, the Russian elites or even a Cossack revolt. By contrast, Alexander well understood the strengths and weaknesses of his enemy and used this insight to full effect. Before the invasion he realized exactly what kind of war Napoleon wanted and needed. The Russians planned and executed the opposite kind of war – a drawn-out defensive campaign and a ‘people’s war’ which would play to their strengths and Napoleon’s weaknesses. In the first year of the war Russian strategy succeeded beyond their expectations. Napoleon’s entire army was virtually destroyed. This owed much to luck and to Napoleon’s mistakes. Events certainly did not precisely follow Alexander’s plans. Had they done so, Napoleon would have been stopped and worn down on the river Dvina. But in war events very seldom do go precisely according to plan, particularly in a defensive campaign which necessarily surrenders the initiative to the enemy. Nevertheless the basic Russian concept of ‘deep retreat’ was sound and worked. It would not have done so without luck and enemy mistakes, but the resolution and moral courage of Mikhail Barclay de Tolly was also crucial, as above all were the fortitude, discipline and skill of the Russian rearguards and their commanders.
It should be no surprise to anyone that the Russian army fought with more skill in 1813–14 than in 1812. Even more than in most activities there is a vast difference between training for war and its reality. Experience is a crucial teacher. Whether one looks at low-level tactics – such as the use of jaegers – or at the competence of staffs, there is no doubt that the army of March 1814 was much more formidable than had been the case two years before. In comparison to the disaster of 1806–7 when Bennigsen’s army starved in East Prussia, the performance of Georg Kankrin in feeding and supplying the Russian troops as they crossed almost the whole of Europe was also outstanding. No one who has read accounts of how the army fought at Kulm, Leipzig or Craonne – to take but three examples – could subscribe to old myths about how the soldiers lacked the patriotic motivation they had felt in 1812. This is not to deny that officers and men may have fought with special desperation at Borodino after weeks of retreat and in the Russian heartland. As in most armies, however, the key to performance on the battlefield was usually loyalty to comrades and to one’s unit. In the Russian case this included messmates in the artel but also the regiment, which for so many of these soldiers was their lifetime home.
The Russian regiment was very much part of an Old Regime rather than a modern, national army. This merely underlines the fact that it was the European Old Regime which defeated Napoleon. It had absorbed some aspects of modernity such as the Prussian Landwehr and it had allied itself to British economic power, which was much more truly modern than was Napoleon’s absolutist empire. Nevertheless the main cause of Napoleon’s defeat was that the three great dynasties fought side by side for the first time since 1792 and that the Russian army was on the scene from the start, rather than having to pick up the pieces after Napoleon had defeated the Austrians or Prussians. It did help enormously that Napoleon’s army had been destroyed in 1812 and that he fought in 1813 with younger and less skilled troops. But during the spring 1813 campaign the Russian army too was still hugely weakened by its efforts in the previous year and the Prussian army was mostly raw and struggling to train, arm and equip itself. The same was true of both the Prussians and the Austrians at the start of the autumn 1813 campaign. In fact, right down to the battle of Leipzig, the 1813 campaign was a very close-run business and could easily have gone in Napoleon’s favour. This contributes to the story’s drama.
Of course it is not surprising that Russians find it easier to identify with the battle of Borodino, fought under Kutuzov outside Moscow, than with the battle of Leipzig, fought in Germany under Barclay de Tolly and Schwarzenberg in defence of a concept of Russian security rooted in the European balance of power. As with the British and 1940, standing alone, united and undaunted is the finest of all wartime memories. But even from the narrowest and most selfish conception of Russian or British interests 1940 and 1812 were not enough. To remove the enemy threat meant taking the war beyond the country’s borders, and it required allies. In 1941 Hitler and Tojo kindly provided the British with these allies. In 1813 Alexander had to take the great risk of invading central Europe with his exhausted and weakened army to mobilize his potential allies, at times almost needing to grab them by the scruff of the neck in order to get them to serve their own and Europe’s interests. The courage, skill and intelligence he showed in first creating the allied coalition and then leading it to Paris was remarkable.
Alexander acted in this way first and foremost because of a correct view that this is what the interests of Russia – empire, state and people – demanded. This is not to deny that Nikolai Rumiantsev was also partly correct in seeing growing British economic hegemony across the globe as the most important underlying reality of the age. This certainly helps one to put the Napoleonic Wars into global perspective and to understand their logic. But for Russia in 1812–13 the overriding priority had to be the ending of Napoleonic control of Germany. So long as Napoleon held Germany he would be much more powerful than Alexander. The financial costs of sustaining Russian security against the threat he represented would soon become intolerable. Vital Russian security and economic interests could therefore not be protected. In the winter of 1813–14, with Germany liberated, the arguments for and against invading France and seeking to topple Napoleon were more evenly balanced. Perhaps Alexander believed that by so doing it would be easier to satisfy his ambitions in Poland, but the Russian documents show clearly that this was not his main motivation. On the contrary, the emperor believed that so long as Napoleon ruled neither the German settlement nor European peace would be secure.
The basic point was that Alexander was convinced that Russian and European security depended on each other. That is still true today. But perhaps there is some inspiration to be drawn from a story in which the Russian army advancing across Europe in 1813–14 was in most places seen as an army of liberation, whose victories meant escape from Napoleon’s exactions, an end to an era of constant war, and the restoration of European trade and prosperity.
Alexander I
The Commanders
Mikhail Barclay de Tolly
