Major-General Aleksei Ermolov. Now the right men were in their correct posts. Both Toll and Ermolov were formidable soldiers who would play crucial roles in the campaigns of 1812–14.3
Though Karl von Toll’s family was ultimately of Dutch origin, it had long since settled in Estland and become part of the Baltic German minor gentry. Both Toll’s parents were Germans, and he himself remained a Lutheran all his life. In 1814 he married a Baltic German noblewoman. Although this appears to make him a thoroughgoing Balt, in reality matters were more complicated. For many years of his adolescence he attended a cadet corps in St Petersburg. The school’s director at that time was the later Field-Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, who always regarded Toll not just as a brilliant officer but also almost as an adopted son. On leaving the cadet corps Toll served all his career in the quartermaster-general’s section of the emperor’s suite, in other words the general staff. Here his great patron came to be Prince Petr Mikhailovich Volkonsky. An officer whose two key patrons were leading members of the Russian aristocracy was by definition likely to be seen as an honorary Russian. According to one contemporary, Toll was very careful to portray himself in these terms, always speaking Russian whenever possible, though this did not stop him using his position to find jobs for his German relatives. In doing this he followed the universal custom of the time, which saw such behaviour not as nepotism but as praiseworthy loyalty to family and friends – unless of course the patron happened to be a German and the job was one on which one had set one’s own hopes.
A cynic might remark that with patrons as powerful as Kutuzov and Volkonsky Karl von Toll could hardly fail, but this would be unfair. He earned their patronage by his intelligence, efficiency and hard work, as well as by his loyalty. His main problem was his proud, impatient and passionate temperament. His temper was notorious and he found it very difficult to tolerate opposition or criticism, including from superior officers. On a number of occasions in 1812 this almost ruined his career. After a ferocious argument in August with the equally explosive Bagration, Toll was demoted, only to be rescued by the arrival of his old patron Kutuzov as commander-in-chief. Although Toll could be an infuriating colleague, let alone subordinate, he was neither petty nor vindictive. He was deeply committed to the army and to Russia’s victory over Napoleon. His outbursts of fury and impatience were usually directed not by personal ambitions and slights but against anything which he saw as impeding the efficient prosecution of the war.4
As quartermaster-general of First Army Toll’s immediate boss was Aleksei Ermolov. An extremely courageous and inspiring front-line commander, Ermolov did not have the trained staff officer’s meticulous attention to detail and careful recording of all orders on paper. At times in 1812 this caused problems. Trained as an artillery officer, Ermolov had done brilliantly in the East Prussian campaign of 1807. Together with a number of other young artillerists – of whom Count Aleksandr Kutaisov, Prince Lev Iashvili and Ivan Sukhozhanet were the most famous – he had done much to restore the reputation of the Russian artillery after the humiliation it had suffered at Austerlitz. Subsequently, however, Ermolov contributed to deepening the factional cleavages in the artillery’s officer corps. According to his great admirer and former aide-de-camp, Paul Grabbe, Ermolov not only loathed Arakcheev and Lev Iashvili with particular virulence, but also infected everyone around him with equally black-and-white feelings, which did not benefit either the artillery’s efficient management or the careers of Ermolov’s own clients.5
Aleksei Ermolov was not just a thoroughly skilful and professional artillerist but also an exceptionally intelligent and resolute commander. Above all, he had great charisma. His appearance helped. A big man with a huge head, wide shoulders and a mane of hair, he struck one young officer on first acquaintance as a ‘true Hercules’. First impressions were reinforced by the friendly and informal way he treated his subordinates. Ermolov was a master of the memorable phrase or action. When his mare foaled on the eve of the 1812 campaign he had the newborn animal cooked and fed to his young officers, as a warning of what they would have to put up with during the forthcoming campaign. With the possible exception of Kutuzov, no other Russian senior general so caught the imagination of younger officers at the time or of subsequent nationalist legend.6
Ermolov owed his appeal not just to his charisma but also to his opinions. Coming from a well-off family of the provincial gentry and well educated in Moscow, he was never closely associated with Petersburg or the imperial court. He shared the conviction of most of his class that Russian soldiers were best commanded by gentlemen and that promotion from the ranks was at best an undesirable wartime necessity. In Ermolov’s day, however, Germans were far more serious rivals to Russian nobles than commoners promoted from the ranks, and Ermolov was famous and popular for his witticisms at their expense. This made him an uncomfortable bedfellow for Barclay de Tolly and a ferocious enemy of Barclay’s German aides. Two of the latter, Ludwig von Wolzogen and Vladimir von Lowenstern, wrote memoirs in which they chronicled Ermolov’s ruthless intrigues against them.7
More importantly, Ermolov was at the heart of the opposition to Barclay’s strategy in July and August 1812. Alexander had invited the chiefs of staff of both Bagration and Barclay to write to him directly. Though initially Bagration was very suspicious of his chief of staff as a result, in fact Emmanuel de Saint-Priest’s letters to the emperor strongly supported his commander. Ermolov on the contrary used his direct line to Alexander to undermine Barclay. To do him justice, he acted in this way out of a genuine – albeit misguided – conviction, shared by almost all the senior generals, that Barclay’s strategy was endangering the army and the state.8
Though in the short run Alexander used Ermolov and valued his military skill, it is very unlikely that he ever trusted him. On one occasion he called him ‘black as the devil but armed with as many skills’. With his charisma, his Russian patriotic credentials and his many admirers in the officer corps Ermolov was the perfect focus for gentry feeling against the court. On 30 July 1812, as indignation against Barclay reached its height, Ermolov wrote to Bagration that the army commanders would need to account for their actions not just to the emperor but also to the Russian fatherland. To a Romanov autocrat this was very dangerous language. Not coincidentally, when young Russian officers attempted to overthrow the absolute monarchy in December 1825 it was widely believed that Aleksei Ermolov was a source of inspiration and even possible future leadership.9
A quieter presence at headquarters but also a formidable one was the First Army’s intendant-general, Georg Kankrin. Aged 38 when the war began, Kankrin was a native of the small town of Hanau in Hesse. His father had been lured to Russia, partly by the high salary offered for his skills as an expert in technology and mining, and partly because his sharp tongue had ruined his prospects in Germany. After a German youth which included first-rate university studies and writing a romantic novel, young Georg Kankrin found it very difficult to adapt to life in Russia. He hibernated for a number of years, too poor to buy tobacco and forced to mend his own boots in order to save money. Eventually, his writings on military administration brought him to the attention of Barclay de Tolly and won him a key position in the war ministry’s victualling department, where he proved a great success. As a result, Barclay brought Kankrin with him when appointed to command First Army. During the next two years Kankrin overcame the immense challenge of feeding and equipping Russia’s armies as they marched first across the empire and then through Germany and France. He proved extremely efficient and hard-working, as well as honest and intelligent. On the strength of his achievement in 1812–14 he subsequently served for twenty-one years as minister of finance.10
Between 26 April when he arrived in Vilna and 19 July when he departed for Moscow Alexander lived alongside Barclay de Tolly near First Army headquarters. A curious duumvirate ran Russian strategy and even to some extent tactics. In some ways Barclay benefited from this. He and the emperor shared the view that strategic withdrawal was essential but could not be too openly advocated for fear of undermining morale and alienating public opinion. They believed that Russians, both inside and outside the army, had become inured to easy victories over inferior opponents and were unrealistic about what it meant to face Napoleon’s immense power. Through Alexander, Barclay could exercise a degree of control over Tormasov and Bagration. Since he was positioned with First Army the emperor naturally tended to view operations from its perspective. In addition, though Alexander had no great opinion of any of his leading generals, he trusted Barclay’s strategic insight and military skill much more than he did Tormasov, let alone Bagration. Almost certainly Bagration had been the lover of Alexander’s sister, the Grand Duchess Catherine. To her the emperor wrote in 1812 that Bagration had always totally lacked any skill or indeed conception when it came to strategy.11
If Alexander’s presence allowed Barclay some influence over Second and Third armies, the price he paid was the emperor’s interference in the affairs of his own First Army. First Army’s corps commanders sent reports in duplicate to Alexander and Barclay. At the beginning of the campaign they sometimes received orders from both men, too. Eight days after the war began Lieutenant-General Karl Baggohufvudt, the huge and jovial commander of Second Corps, wrote to Barclay that ‘I just received your orders of June 18th: since they are in contradiction with His Majesty’s orders what are we to do?’ On 30 June Barclay wrote to the emperor that he was unable to give instructions to Count Peter Wittgenstein, who commanded First Corps on the army’s vulnerable right flank, ‘because
