of the most significant fighting occurred in the Western hemisphere and in Asia. In reality, however, the Napoleonic Wars were largely confined to Europe because the British were getting closer to winning their hundred-years-war with France for global supremacy. The most basic fact about the Napoleonic Wars was that British seapower locked French imperialism into Europe. For many reasons it was far harder to create any species of empire in Europe than overseas. As a number of Russian observers understood, it was in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras that Britain consolidated its hugely powerful global empire, both territorial and commercial. Looked at from one angle, Napoleon’s attempt to create a European empire was simply a last, heroic effort to balance British imperialism and avoid defeat in France’s century-long conflict with Britain. The odds were very much against Napoleon, though by 1812 he had come seemingly very close to success.
It is in fact possible to study the Napoleonic Wars on many different levels. At one extreme one has the God’s-eye view. This looks at events in the round and in the long term. It is interested in the impact of geopolitics, at shifts in European ideology and cultural values after 1789, and at global patterns of trade and finance. At the other extreme one has what might be described as the view of the worm. This includes the day-to-day perceptions of ordinary people in this era. It includes, too, important details such as the firing locks and cartridge paper which contributed to the unreliability of Russian musketry. Here, too, for example, one finds discussion of the events of the afternoon of 21 May 1813, when Marshal Michel Ney’s mistakes robbed Napoleon of decisive victory in the battle of Bautzen and probably thereby denied him the chance to decide the 1813 campaign and keep Austria out of the war. Between the levels of God and the worm one finds the other matters commonly discussed by historians. As regards this book, for example, they include Russian infantry tactics, the Russian armaments industry, or Russian perceptions of Austria and the Balkans. In the present book all these levels are covered, since all of them are relevant to understanding how and why Russia defeated Napoleon.
The basic approach of the book is chronological. I begin with the negotiations at Tilsit in 1807 and end with the Russian army’s entry into Paris in 1814. One reason for doing this is that any other approach would ruin the story. Not even a professor has the right to do this to one of the best stories in European history. But another reason for using narrative and chronology is that this is usually much the most truthful way to explain what happened in these years. On the battlefield an opportunity for victory that existed at two o’clock in the afternoon had often gone by four. Chance, misperception and confusion accounted for much of what happened. Decisions had consequences which rippled through the following days and weeks. At a number of points in the book I pause from the narrative to explain the background, however. In Chapter 7, for example, I turn aside from the narrative of the 1812 campaign to explain what was happening on the crucial Russian home front.
The book progresses as follows. Chapter 2 introduces the reader to two of the book’s ‘heroes’, namely the imperial army and Emperor Alexander I. It provides essential information on the Russian political system, the sinews of Russian power, and the nature of international relations in the Napoleonic era. It concludes with the negotiations at Tilsit in 1807 and seeks to explain Russian thinking at the conference and the bases of the Franco- Russian ‘deal’ to run Europe and put their relations on a long-term peaceful footing. Chapter 3 is a narrative of Franco-Russian relations from Tilsit until Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in June 1812. It is mostly but by no means exclusively about diplomacy. A crucial element of this chapter is a discussion of Russian intelligence operations, above all in Paris, and of their impact. The chapter ends with an attempt to put Franco-Russian relations into the broader global context. It is this chapter which most obviously combines all levels of explanation, from God to the worm. Chapter 4 looks at how the Russian army prepared and planned for war between 1807 and 1812.
There follow four chapters on 1812 and four on 1813. Six of these eight chapters are essentially narratives of the campaigns. In all six chapters, however, I devote much attention to how the armies were fed and supplied. This is always important. At some points in 1812 and 1813 it was decisive. The chapters on 1812 and autumn 1813 are largely military in content. Once these campaigns had begun, diplomacy took a back seat. On the contrary, in the first eight months of 1813 Russian strategy was largely determined by the need to bring Prussia and Austria into the war if Alexander’s goals were to be achieved. Diplomacy therefore plays a big role in Chapter 9 on the campaign of spring 1813. Two of these eight chapters are devoted to the Russian home front and to how Russian resources were mobilized in 1812 and 1813. It is impossible to understand the war effort or Russian victory without them. Chapters 13 and 14 cover the 1814 campaign. They too are a narrative, though a complicated one because of the need to weave together military operations, diplomacy, logistics and even French domestic politics, since all four elements were closely intertwined and essential to understanding Russian policy and the eventual allied victory.
Russia as a Great Power
For the Russian state the eighteenth century had been an era of victories. Before the reign of Peter the Great (1689–1725) European elites had seen the Russians as barbarous, alien and unimportant. Like the Ottomans, they were regarded as outsiders to Europe: unlike them, they did not earn even the grudging respect born of fear. By the time of Peter’s death, however, attitudes had begun to change. Russia had smashed Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700–21) and had replaced it as the most powerful state in north-eastern Europe. In the Seven Years War (1756–63) Russia made an even bigger impact on European minds. Her armies occupied East Prussia, defeated Frederick II’s forces on many occasions, and even briefly captured Berlin. Only the death of the Empress Elizabeth in 1762 and the dramatic reversal of Russian policy by her successor, Peter III, saved Prussia from destruction.1
There followed the reign of Catherine II (1762–96) during which Russia’s territory, power and international status grew enormously. Most of the Polish commonwealth as well as huge territories in what we now call southern and eastern Ukraine but which was then known as ‘New Russia’ were annexed. Having become the leading Baltic power under Peter, Russia now came to dominate the Black Sea as well and to send her fleets into the Mediterranean. The fertile Ukrainian grasslands conquered by Catherine began to fill up with colonists. As the economy of New Russia boomed, there seemed almost no limits to possible future Russian power. Catherine and her most famous lover, Grigorii Potemkin, contemplated restoring the Byzantine Empire and putting her grandson, the Grand Duke Constantine, on its throne. The scheme was ambitious and fantastic but so too was not just Catherine’s own life but also Russia’s dramatic rise in the eighteenth century.2
One effect of these triumphs was to accustom Russian elites to victory and to feed their pride, confidence and arrogance. For better and worse, this had an impact on how Russia fought in 1812–14. Inevitably too, victory increased the legitimacy of the Romanov dynasty and of the autocratic system of government. Russia was a strong supporter of constitutional principles in Sweden and Poland because it knew that the weakness of the Swedish and Polish monarchies undermined these neighbours and rivals. Russia’s spectacular victories over the Ottomans between 1768 and 1792 also owed much to the inability of weak sultans to control court factions and provincial satraps. Both the Russian tsars and the Ottoman sultans faced the challenge of out-of-date military forces which blocked the creation of a modern, European-style army. These regiments – the
The foundations of this power were the political alliance between the Romanov monarchy and the landowning aristocracy and gentry. In this respect Russia was similar to the other four European great powers (Britain, France, Austria and Prussia), all of which rested on a similar alliance between the crown and the landowning elites. In each case this alliance had its specific traits. In Britain, for instance, monarchical power was not absolute and the aristocracy was the senior partner in a coalition which included financial and commercial elites.4
Though all four continental great powers were in theory absolute monarchies, no one doubted that the power of the Russian emperor was more complete than that of his French, Austrian or even Prussian peers. He could make laws and tax his peoples without their consent, and no laws protected even his most aristocratic subjects against his arbitrary whims. By contrast, especially in France and Austria, aristocratic assemblies and judicial institutions inherited from medieval feudalism inhibited a monarch’s power, as indeed did the ethos of the social elites, including sometimes of the monarchs themselves and their relatives. Other factors also enhanced the power of the Russian autocrat. For example, in Protestant Europe the previously enormous landholdings of the Catholic Church
