Russia Against Napoleon

Russo-Prussian alliance against Napoleon, thereby achieving Nesselrode and Alexander’s first great diplomatic triumph in 1813.

Lieutenant-General Hans David von Yorck, the commander of the Prussian corps on the left flank of Napoleon’s forces, was a very difficult man even by comparison with senior Russian generals of the era. Arrogant, prickly and hypercritical, he was a nightmare as a subordinate. The other Prussian corps commander in the east, Lieutenant-General Friedrich Wilhelm von Bulow, in fact told the Russians that Yorck’s actions sprang less from patriotism than from personal enmity towards his French commander, Marshal MacDonald.⁹

This was unfair because there was no reason to doubt Yorck’s commitment to restoring Prussian independence, pride and status. In November and December 1812 the governor-general of Riga, Marquis Philippe Paulucci, attempted to win over Yorck to the Russian side by playing on these themes. The fact that Yorck responded to his letters raised Paulucci’s hopes. Initially he ascribed the Prussian general’s caution to Yorck’s need to seek guidance from his king. By late December, however, Paulucci was beginning to fear that Yorck was just playing for time. The collapse of the Grande Armee had left Napoleon’s forces in southern Latvia isolated. Orders for their retreat came very late. Paulucci began to fear that Yorck was merely hoodwinking the Russians in order to get his corps back to Prussia in one piece. A threatening note had entered Paulucci’s communications to Yorck by 22 December.¹⁰

Russian threats only became meaningful, however, when Wittgenstein’s advance guard under Major-General Johann von Diebitsch cut across Yorck’s line of retreat near Kotliniani. Even then Yorck could have fought his way through Diebitsch’s weak force had he so wished. The thought of shedding Prussian and Russian blood on behalf of Napoleon’s fading cause must have been a deterrent to Yorck. More importantly, Diebitsch’s presence gave Yorck the excuse he needed to pretend that his hand had been forced. He sat down to discuss terms with Diebitsch, using as a basis the offer made by Paulucci for the neutralization of the Prussian corps. No doubt it helped negotiations that Diebitsch himself was a German and the son of a former Prussian officer.

On 30 December 1812 Yorck and Diebitsch signed the so-called convention of Tauroggen. The Prussian corps was declared neutral and deployed out of the way of Russian operations. If the King of Prussia denounced the agreement, the Prussian troops could retire behind the French lines but could not take up arms against Russia again for two months.¹¹ In military terms the convention resulted in East Prussia and all the other Prussian territory east of the Vistula falling immediately to the Russians. The number of soldiers actually present in Yorck’s corps by December 1812 was barely 20,000, but the enormous losses sustained by the main French and Russian forces meant that this number of combat-ready troops could make a substantial difference in the winter of 1812–13. If Yorck’s corps had remained with MacDonald and resisted the Russian advance it would have been difficult for Wittgenstein’s exhausted and overstretched corps to force its way past them into East Prussia. Once Murat heard of Yorck’s defection, however, he quickly retired behind the Vistula, leaving the well-garrisoned fortress-port of Danzig as France’s only remaining outpost in Prussia’s eastern lands.¹²

The business of mobilizing all East Prussia’s resources for war got under way immediately. A Russian governor-general would have trodden on many toes, as Paulucci did to a truly crass degree in Russian-occupied Memel, by absolving local officials of their oath to the king and talking about possible Russian annexation.¹³ Alexander therefore appointed Baron vom Stein, who had been his chief adviser on German affairs since June 1812. The Russians needed to mobilize East Prussia’s resources immediately but they also had to avoid alienating the Prussians by disorderly requisitioning or by seeming to covet Prussian territory. As Russian forces began to cross the Prussian border, Kutuzov issued a proclamation declaring that Alexander’s only aim in advancing across the Russian frontier was ‘peace and independence’ for all the European nations, which he invited to join him in the task of liberation. He added: ‘This invitation is directed firstly and above all to Prussia. The emperor intends to end the misfortunes which shackle her, to bear witness to the friendship which he still preserves for the king, and to restore to the monarchy of Frederick its territory and prestige.’¹⁴

Feeding the advancing Russians was not too great a problem because their numbers were not huge, they did not need to concentrate for battle, and the local population and officials in East Prussia loathed the French even more than was the case elsewhere in Prussia and greeted the Russian forces as an army of liberation.¹⁵ Kutuzov demanded excellent behaviour from his troops towards the civilian population and, despite their exhaustion, the Russian soldiers responded well and retained their discipline.¹⁶

Politically much more delicate was the decision to summon the provincial estates without the king’s consent, and to call up 33,000 men for the army and militia. Fortunately, while this was in train Stein received a coded message from the Prussian chancellor, Prince Karl August von Hardenberg which had been slipped through the French lines. This conveyed Frederick William’s support and announced that a treaty of alliance with Russia would soon be signed. This was the crucial breakthrough. For all the enthusiasm of the East Prussian estates, the province had less than a million inhabitants. To have any chance of defeating Napoleon the resources of the whole kingdom needed to be mobilized. Only Frederick William could do this.¹⁷

The king received the news of the convention of Tauroggen on 2 January 1813 while taking his afternoon walk in his garden in Potsdam. Frederick William detested Napoleon and feared that the French emperor intended to carve up Prussia. He liked and admired Alexander, and he distrusted Russian ambitions much less than those of Napoleon. On the other hand Frederick William was a great pessimist: as Stein put it, ‘he lacks confidence both in himself and in his people. He believes that Russia will draw him into the abyss.’ The king also quite simply hated having to make decisions. His natural inclination was to ask for advice and to vacillate. In particular, he thoroughly disliked the idea of further wars. This was partly out of honourable concern for his people’s welfare, but it also reflected his own entirely disastrous experience of defeat and frustration in 1792–4 and 1806– 7.¹⁸

To do the king justice, he had good reason for nervousness and equivocation in January 1813. When he heard the news of Tauroggen the Russian armies were still hundreds of kilometres away in Poland and Lithuania. French garrisons on the contrary were scattered across Prussia, including a large one in Berlin. This dictated that Frederick William’s first public reaction must be to denounce the convention and to send messages to Napoleon pledging his continued loyalty. The king took advantage of Napoleon’s request to contribute more troops to the Grande Armee by levying extra recruits and expanding his army. On 22 January he himself, his family and the Guards regiments decamped from Potsdam and Berlin to the Silesian capital, Breslau. By so doing he achieved independence from the French and secured himself against kidnap. Since Breslau was right in the path of Russian armies advancing through Poland the king could put forward the half-plausible excuse that he was preparing Silesia’s defence.

Ideally Frederick William would have preferred an alliance with Austria to secure Germany as a neutral zone and stop the French and Russians fighting on his territory. A Prusso-Austrian alliance could also attempt to mediate a continental peace settlement which would restore to Vienna and Berlin much of the territory they had lost in 1805–9. With this goal in mind, the king’s trusted military adviser, Colonel Karl von dem Knesebeck, was sent to Vienna. He arrived on 12 January and stayed for no less than eighteen days.

At one level Knesebeck’s mission was a failure. The Austrians made it clear that they could not abandon the French alliance overnight and attempt immediately to impose mediation on the warring sides. The emperor’s honour and the completely unready state of their armies dictated a longer period of disengagement from the alliance with Paris. The basic point was that the Austrians had much more time for manoeuvre than the Prussians: Russian troops were not crossing the Austrian border, nor were Austrian generals threatening disobedience unless their sovereign changed his foreign policy.

On another level, however, Knesebeck’s mission was of great service. Both Metternich and Francis II promised categorically that they would reject Napoleon’s efforts to buy Austrian support against Prussia by offering her Silesia. They stressed that the two Germanic great powers must on the contrary both be restored to their pre- 1805 dimensions in order to hold their own against France and Russia, thereby securing the independence of central Europe and the overall European balance of power. Far from opposing the Russo-Prussian alliance, the Austrians hinted that it seemed Prussia’s best option in the circumstances. Meanwhile, once ready, Vienna would put forward its own ideas for peace. Knesebeck concluded optimistically, and in a sense that went to the core of Russo-Prussian strategy in the spring and summer of 1813, ‘sooner or later Austria will go to war with France because the peace terms which she wants to achieve by mediation are unobtainable without war’.¹⁹

After reporting to Frederick William at Breslau, Knesebeck was sent on to Alexander’s headquarters. Before he would commit himself to Russia, the king needed reassurance on a number of points. Most basically, the