Russia and the Napoleonic Wars

Janet M. Hartley, Paul Keenan, Dominic Lieven, Janet M. Hartley, Paul Keenan, Dominic Lieven

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137528001
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Russische Geschichte

Russia played a fundamental role in the outcome of Napoleonic Wars; the wars also had an impact on almost every area of Russian life. Russia and the Napoleonic Wars brings together significant and new research from Russian and non-Russian historians and their work demonstrates the importance of this period both for Russia and for all of Europe.

1

International Relations in the Napoleonic Era: The Long View

Dominic Lieven

This chapter will look at international relations in the Napoleonic era from a perspective which is both long in time and global in breadth. It will also interpret the words ‘international relations’ rather freely, investigating not just diplomacy and inter-state relations but also warfare and the sources of power in this era. Such broad perspectives have clear advantages. Comparative approaches can open up new issues and interpretations. They can also challenge the assumptions and enrich the debates among specialists in any historical field. Since most history-writing – and the history of war in particular – is still national and sometimes even nationalist, global perspectives and international comparisons are doubly useful. Attempting to determine what were the key issues and fundamental trends within a mass of detail is essential to the telling and understanding of history. Like all approaches, however, the broad sweep has its problems. Even the best comparisons can never replace detailed local knowledge based on mastery of the sources. Global perspectives can be little more than vapid bows to contemporary fashion. They can also feed into an inevitable danger when writing history in the longue durée, which is to read the present back into the past and to impose master narratives which legitimize contemporary assumptions and ideologies. The great point, in my opinion, is for the historian to be aware and explicit about these dangers.

The Napoleonic Wars occurred in the middle of what historians often call the Era of Revolutions.¹ Though precise boundaries differ, this era is generally taken to include the French and (usually) American Revolutions on the one hand, and the ‘First’ Industrial Revolution on the other. Together these revolutions are seen to have created the foundations of modernity: in other words liberal capitalism, liberal-democratic ideology and the literate, urbanized, wealthy mass societies which are taken to be its most favourable setting. To put things crudely, the Era of Revolutions has generally been seen as the dividing-line between the early modern and modern ages. The question therefore more or less asks itself whether the spectacular turn taken by international relations – and in particular by warfare – in the age of Napoleon represents itself a decisive shift towards modernity and break with the past. A basic argument in this chapter is that while major changes did occur in international relations and especially in warfare, on the whole the elements of continuity were greater than those of change. A further conclusion of this chapter is that although in the long term the forces unleashed by the French and Industrial Revolutions were of immense power and destroyed Europe’s old regime, one should nevertheless not underestimate either the strength or sometimes the intelligence with which the old regime confronted these forces in the Napoleonic era.²

The lack of fundamental change is most obvious when one addresses the impact of economic change – in other words the Industrial Revolution – on war and international relations in this era. It is by now a long time since any serious historian has interpreted the French Revolution as the political counterpart of the triumph of the capitalist bourgeoisie in the economic sphere. Economic historians are in any case often now inclined to play down the word ‘revolution’ as regards turn-of-the-century Britain’s economy. They emphasize instead the longer-term development of British trade and consumption, and stress that the really revolutionary shifts in power-generation, communications and industry came in the first half of the nineteenth century.³ Clearly this was true as regards those sectors of industry most closely related to warfare. The basic point about war in the Napoleonic era was that it was pre-industrial and in that sense pre-modern. The Industrial Revolution’s impact on weapons, communications and logistics lay just over the horizon. The horse was still the key to reconnaissance and transport during military campaigns, to moving the guns on the battlefield, and to the cavalry’s pursuit and destruction of a defeated foe.⁴ Weapons and equipment had not changed fundamentally in the century before the battle of Waterloo. This ensured that close-order infantry and cavalry formations remained the key to delivering the shock and the firepower which alone could win battles. Light infantry were growing in importance but the emphasis put on them by some historians can itself reflect ideological assumptions. Far too often the light infantryman is assumed to be the citizen-in-arms. His politically-inspired initiative and individualism is juxtaposed to the dumb servility which supposedly kept unwilling conscripts or mercenaries in the closely packed ranks of monarchy’s armies. This is a very dubious description of the hard-bitten light infantry veterans who were the pick of Wellington’s army, let alone of their Russian jaeger equivalents, whose best regiments had honed their skills as light infantrymen during years of campaigning against those masters of the raid and the ambush, the Ottomans.⁵

The debate over the citizen-jaeger belongs to the wider question of the French Revolution’s impact on international relations in the period 1792–1815. Clearly, in the early years of the Revolutionary Wars ideology mattered on both sides. Support for the French counter-revolution was, for example, an important element in British strategy. But geopolitics and state interest always took precedence. Britain went to war to keep the French out of the Low Countries, not to destroy the Revolution. Catherine II proclaimed her adherence to the counter-revolutionary cause but defined Russia’s role in this crusade as the extinction of Polish nationhood. Prussia made peace with the French republic to secure its share of Poland. Napoleon’s murder of the Duc d’Enghien in 1804 caused outrage in many European courts but hard-headed raison d’état won out on this occasion too. The rulers of Europe’s great powers could not afford to be sentimentalists, at least as regards politics. Even in 1814 none of the continental powers were enthusiastic about restoring the Bourbons. If Alexander I in his heart was committed to toppling Napoleon, this had nothing to do with legitimist sympathies. The tsar simply believed that Napoleon would never for long accept a settlement which would secure allied interests and Europe’s peace. Of all the allied leaders, however, Alexander was least enthusiastic about restoring Louis XVIII, above all because he did not believe that the Bourbons would be sufficiently flexible and liberal to survive in power. His preferred option would have been the Duc d’Orléans or Jean Bernadotte as king, or even a conservative republic.⁶

As regards the nature of the war that began in 1792 and lasted with only brief intermissions until 1815, it was to some extent influenced by revolutionary ideology, especially in 1792–1794. The thousands of French volunteers who flocked to the colours in the war’s early months were unlike the soldiers of any other European army. This was true in both positive and negative terms: on the one hand enthusiastic commitment to a cause, on the other a lack of basic military skills. By the Napoleonic era, however, the French army in most respects resembled its opponents. Its officers’ code of honour and behaviour, not to mention their professional training and ‘doctrine’, on the whole followed common European norms. Its men were mostly veterans or recruits drawn from the lower orders in a conscription system that generally allowed the well-to-do to avoid service and buy substitutes. Their primary loyalty was to their units and monarch, not to any political cause. Many of them were not ethnic Frenchmen. It is true that discipline in the French army was more relaxed, egalitarian and humane than in the armies which they fought. It is a liberal illusion, however, to imagine that this necessarily made the French army more effective in war. The fierce discipline of the Russian army sustained it under the enormous pressures of the long retreat from the border to Moscow, despite the huge losses suffered at the battle of Borodino. On the contrary, the lack of discipline and the marauding tradition inherited from the French Revolutionary army contributed mightily to the disintegration of Napoleon’s forces on the retreat from Moscow.⁷

Of the four main allied armies which finally defeated Napoleon, it was the Prussian which was most radically reformed and furthest from the old regime model by 1815. Military historians have concentrated their attention on the reformed Prussian army because it is rightly seen as the most modern of the allied forces. In particular, the introduction of universal military service and the creation of a remarkable general staff system and cadre are seen as staking out a path which all European armies were subsequently to follow. The Prussian military effort in 1813–1815 was indeed impressive, as was the thorough-going mobilization of Prussia’s meagre resources which sustained it and which allowed a relatively small state to regain its place among the great powers. One needs to remember, however, that in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) the Prussian war effort and the mobilization of resources had also been remarkable. A country of five million people had put 5 per cent of its population in arms, had suffered over 160,000 losses, and by stupendous efforts had survived the attack of the three other continental powers, each of which far outmatched Prussia in population, wealth and resources. The contrast is sometimes made between ‘total’ Napoleonic War and the indecisive and limited nature of eighteenth-century campaigning. In fact there was nothing indecisive or cautious in Frederick II’s way of war. Nor was its result of limited significance. Prussia’s emergence, and survival, as a great power between 1740 and 1763 was miraculous and of immense long-term significance. The sense of Prussian identity and pride which sustained the country’s resurgence between 1807 and 1815 was partly rooted in memory of the earlier struggle.⁸

Despite its impressive efforts between 1813 and 1815, however, Prussia remained the junior and least powerful member of the allied quartet. On land, the main key to victory was the Russian army, which at all times much outnumbered the Prussian forces and was indeed largely responsible for Prussia’s liberation from French occupation. The Russian army had undergone significant professional and technical reforms between 1807 and 1812 which often derived from French models and made it more effective. But the main elements of the army, let alone of Russia’s state and society, remained unchanged. William Fuller was the first Western historian to note not merely that the Russian army was still unequivocally ‘old regime’ but that this was one of its great strengths.⁹ The resilience, high morale and extraordinary powers of resistance of this army owed much to the fact that it was made up of lifelong veteran soldiers who displayed immense loyalty to their regimental home, which itself was a microcosm of the Orthodox fatherland. Given the size of Russia’s population a long-service professional army could nevertheless be of sufficient size to make a big impact on the Napoleonic battlefield. Faced with dire emergency in 1812–1813 the Russian old regime was also sufficiently legitimate and effective to mobilize the Empire’s resources for war on an unprecedented scale. Russian grand strategy was intelligently conceived and pursued, with Alexander I exercising effective personal leadership.

It was no coincidence that the most impressive and influential military thinker of the Napoleonic era came from the ranks of the Prussian general staff. Nor is it surprising that a Prussian officer was inclined to see the transformation of war in his era in more radical terms than was the case with his Russian or Austrian counterparts. Part of Clausewitz’s attraction for students of war is precisely the timelessness of his insights. He rose well beyond the confines of his own era, showing great insight into the enormous future potential of the forces unleashed by the Revolution and harnessed by Napoleon. To an extent, Clausewitz spotted the chicken in the egg. In some respects that makes his more conceptual passages better as prophecy than as a comment on the actual campaigns of his day. For those seeking to understand the everyday realities of Napoleonic-era warfare, Antoine de Jomini can sometimes be a better guide. This is not to deny the near-cataclysmic level of the violence which submerged Europe between 1792 and 1815, and which so impressed Clausewitz. Between 1763 and 1792 there had been no significant warfare in the European heartland. For the next 23 years fighting barely ceased, moreover in terms of raw numbers warfare had moved to a new scale. The French mass mobilization of 1792–1794 began this trend and the Loi Jourdan of 1798 confirmed it. France’s enemies were forced to mobilize their manpower to match French numbers. Vast armies made huge casualties from battle, sickness and desertion both inevitable and more tolerable for generals than in the eighteenth century. This had an impact on the tempo with which warfare was conducted. Huge numbers also made inevitable the reorganization of armies into semi-autonomous all-arms corps and divisions. Without this the tactical co-ordination, movement and strategic direction of the era’s huge military machines would have been impossible.¹⁰

Nevertheless, it is to the point that Napoleon was ultimately defeated by what one might describe as the European old regime. There were of course many reasons for his downfall. His style of warfare was best suited to the rich, densely populated lands of western and central Europe where his troops could feed off the land and find many roads down which to march. Napoleon was also more likely to find supporters for the ‘enlightened’ and ‘rational’ principles which his Empire claimed to embody in Europe’s heartland. In both military and political terms he had much greater difficulty in applying his principles of war and governance in Europe’s more backward periphery.¹¹ The enmity of Britain, perched beyond his reach across the Channel and able to use its financial power to subsidize France’s continental enemies was another major impediment to Napoleon’s ambitions.

The key, however, to Napoleon’s destruction in 1813–1814 was different and simple. For the first time in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars the Romanovs, Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns united against him. As important, the Russian army was already deployed in the theatre of operations when the key campaign of autumn 1813 began. The contrast between 1805 and 1806 when its allies’ main armies had already been wholly or partly destroyed before Russia’s forces arrived in the field was very important. If at any time between 1792 and 1809 the three eastern great powers had made a similar united effort, it is likely that the Napoleonic adventure would have been ended years earlier than was actually the case. Above all, they failed to do because of mutual suspicions. These suspicions had far from disappeared in 1813 but the three dynasties had by then learned the lesson that Napoleon’s France was a deadly threat to their status as independent great powers, and perhaps to their survival.

Even so, it took the destruction of Napoleon’s army in Russia to provide a breathing space during which Russian armies could advance into central Europe before the beginning of the decisive campaigns which would decide Europe’s fate. Without this it would have been impossible to create an effective coalition of the eastern powers, given the extent to which Prussia and Austria had been weakened by 1813....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• General Maps
• Introduction
• 1 International Relations in the Napoleonic Era: The Long View
• 2 Cicero and Aristotle: Cultural Imperialism and the Napoleonic Geography of Empire
• 3 Napoleon’s Vision of Empire and the Decision to Invade Russia
• 4 Russian Perspectives on European Order: ‘Review of the Year 1819’
• 5 Alexander I, Talleyrand and France’s Future in 1814
• 6 Russia and Britain in International Relations in the Period 1807–1812
• 7 Russia, Napoleon and the Threat to British India
• 8 Factions and In-fighting among Russian Generals in the 1812 Era
• 9 The ‘Maid of Orleans’ of the Russian Army: Prince Eugen of Württemberg in the Napoleonic Wars
• 10 The Finances of the Russian Empire in the Period of the Patriotic War of 1812 and of the Foreign Campaigns of the Russian Army
• 11 Patriotism in the Provinces in 1812: Volunteers and Donations
• 12 The Russian Imperial Court and Victory Celebrations during the Early Napoleonic Wars
• 13 Orthodox Russia against ‘Godless’ France: The Russian Church and the ‘Holy War’ of 1812
• 14 The Enemy behind Our Backs? The Occupation of the Duchy of Warsaw 1813–1814
• 15 Heroes of the Napoleonic Wars in the Ruling Elite of the Russian Empire
• 16 The 1812 War and the Civilizing Process in Russia
• 17 The Patriotic War of 1812 in the Commemorative Practices and Historical Memory of Russian Society from the Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Centuries
• Index