plans. With typical modesty, Chernyshev concluded that the commander of a ‘flying detachment’ needed great energy, presence of mind, prudence and ability to grasp situations quickly. Chernyshev had a penchant for self- advertisement and self-promotion worthy of Nelson. To do him justice, he also had Nelson’s boldness, tactical skill, strategic insight and capacity for leadership.26
Just five days before the fall of Berlin Frederick William finally buried his doubts and consented to the treaty of alliance with Russia. An officer on Kutuzov’s staff wrote that ‘in our negotiations with them [i.e. the Prussians] the news we often received about the successes of our advance guards which were already approaching the Elbe gave us great weight’. Nevertheless, negotiations were difficult almost to the end. The main reason for this was disagreement on the fate of Poland. Prussia had been a key beneficiary of the Polish partitions. It wanted back the Polish lands which Napoleon had forced it to concede at Tilsit, and argued that without this territory Prussia could not possess the strength or security essential for a great power. On the other hand, the events of 1812 had further confirmed Alexander in his belief that the only way to square the demands of Polish nationhood and Russian security was to unite as many Poles as possible in an autonomous kingdom whose ruler would also be the Russian monarch. At a time when Russia was expending huge amounts of blood and money to restore large territories to Austria and Prussia, and when Britain had made a clean sweep of the French and Dutch colonial empires, the emperor no doubt also felt that his empire should have some reward for his efforts.27
Baron vom Stein helped to smooth over the difficulties by travelling to Breslau to win over Frederick William. Stein himself disliked Alexander’s plans for Poland, which he thought were dangerous for Russian internal stability and a threat to Austrian and Prussian security. He also wondered whether the Poles, ‘with their serfs and their Jews’, were capable of self-government. But Stein knew that on this issue Alexander was adamant and he helped to broker a Russo-Prussian compromise.
Russia would guarantee all existing Prussian possessions and it would ensure that East Prussia and Silesia were linked by a substantial and strategically defensible band of territory taken from the Duchy of Warsaw. The Russians also promised that they would commit all their strength to the war in Germany and would not make peace until Prussia was restored to the same level of power, territory and population as it had possessed before 1806. Article I of the Treaty of Kalicz’s secret clauses promised that Prussia would be fully compensated in northern Germany for any Polish territory it lost to Russia in the east. Unlike Napoleon, the Russians could not bribe the Prussians with Hanoverian territory, since this belonged to their ally, the British king. The only likely source of compensation was therefore Saxony, whose weakening or dismemberment would go down badly in Vienna. The Treaty of Kalicz therefore in part remained strictly secret and was storing up problems for the future.
For the moment, however, it was a satisfactory basis for Russo-Prussian cooperation. The main thrust of the treaty was its commitment to restoring Prussia as a great power, above all so it could check France but also perhaps in order to balance Austrian power in Germany. On this all-important issue the Russians were just as committed as the Prussians. In addition, although the preamble to the treaty contained its share of sanctimonious hypocrisy, its call for ‘the repose and well-being of peoples exhausted by so many disturbances and so many sacrifices’ was genuine and heartfelt. Add this to the friendship which existed between Alexander and Frederick William and there are the ingredients of a strong and lasting bond between the two states. Indeed in one form or another the Russo-Prussian alliance of February 1813 was to survive until the 1890s, forming one of the most stable and enduring elements in European diplomacy.28
Article VII of the treaty bound both Prussia and Russia to give top priority to bringing Austria into their alliance. This priority was to dominate not just allied diplomacy but even to some extent military strategy in the next three months. Austria, however, was intent on playing hard to get, and with good reason. The Austrians believed that they had borne the biggest share of fighting the French since 1793 and that they had been let down by the Prussians and Russians on a number of occasions and taken for granted by the British. This time they would exploit all the potential leverage of their position and not be rushed into anything.
Numerous defeats bred pessimism and aversion to risk among some Austrians, above all in Francis II, on whom in the last resort all decisions on war and peace depended. Suspicion of Russia ran deep, with traditional fears of Russian power and unpredictability exacerbated by the fact that the Austrians had intercepted part of Alexander’s correspondence with Prince Adam Czartoryski, his chief confidant on Polish affairs, and were aware of the gist of his plans for Poland. Russian and Prussian appeals to German nationalism, on occasion calling for the overthrow of princes who supported Napoleon, infuriated the Austrians, partly for fear of chaos and partly because they alienated the Confederation of the Rhine monarchs whom Vienna was trying to woo. Baron vom Stein, Alexander’s chief adviser on German affairs, was a particular Austrian bugbear.
From March 1813, however, Alexander increasingly bowed to Austrian wishes in this matter, stopping inflammatory proclamations by his generals and conceding to Austria the lead in all matters to do with Bavaria, Wurttemberg and southern Germany. Most importantly, the great majority of the Austrian political and military elite deeply resented the manner in which Napoleon had reduced Austria to the status of a second-rate power, annexing her territory and removing her influence from Germany and Italy. Given a good opportunity to reverse this process and restore a genuine European balance of power, most members of the Austrian elite would take it, by peaceful means if possible but running the risks inherent in war if necessary. The Austrian foreign minister, Count Clemens von Metternich, shared this mainstream viewpoint.29
In January 1813 Metternich’s immediate priority was to free Austria from the French alliance and take up the role of neutral mediator without provoking Napoleon more than necessary in doing so. One aspect of this policy was to remove Schwarzenberg’s corps from the
Amidst all the tensions and uncertainties of Russo-Austrian relations in the spring and summer of 1813 it helped enormously that Nesselrode was in frequent and secret correspondence with Friedrich von Gentz, one of the leading intellectuals of the counter-revolution in Vienna and Metternich’s closest confidant. Gentz was exceptionally well informed about Metternich’s own thinking and about the opinions and conflicts within Austrian ruling circles. Nesselrode had known Gentz for years and rightly trusted his deep commitment to the allied cause. Gentz could put in a good word for the allies in Metternich’s ear. More importantly, he could explain to Nesselrode the severe constraints within which the foreign minister was operating, shackled as he was not just by the caution of Francis II and some of his advisers, but also by the deep and genuine difficulties facing Austrian rearmament.32
In comparison to the tortuous diplomacy conducted by Metternich in the first half of 1813, the movements of Schwarzenberg’s observation corps are relatively easy to follow. In January 1813 Schwarzenberg’s men stood directly in the path of a Russian advance through Warsaw and central Poland. As was the case with Yorck’s corps at the other end of Napoleon’s line, the 25,000 relatively fresh Austrian troops would have been a major obstacle to Kutuzov’s overstretched army had it chosen to bar his way. But the Austrians had no interest in defending the Duchy of Warsaw and actually welcomed the Russian advance towards central Europe as a means of weakening and balancing Napoleon’s power. They also had no wish to see their best troops sacrificed in battles with the Russian forces.
Ignoring French orders to cover Warsaw and retreat westwards, Schwarzenberg, on his government’s