Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [277]
Implicit in the idea of a Russian Poland was, of course, a war against Napoleon. Nor was this surprising. As challenge succeeded challenge, and slight succeeded slight, so Alexander became increasingly certain that the emperor was planning an attack upon him. ‘Napoleon will never turn fool,’ he told Czartoryski. ‘It is something which is inconceivable, and those who believe it do not know him at all. He is someone who in the midst of the greatest turmoil always has a cool head. All his outbursts of anger are but put on for those around him . . . He does nothing without having first thought everything through and worked everything out. The most violent and audacious of his actions are coldly calculated.’43 And if Napoleon was bent on war, the only thing to do was to choose the moment at which Russia should fight and to do so in the best conditions possible. So far as Alexander was concerned, moreover, the moment for action had come. Napoleon was still deeply embroiled in the Peninsula, but such were the successes being won by his armies that this distraction could not be guaranteed to last for very much longer. The Poles, in fact, were not only being offered their historic kingdom, but also being summoned to rise in revolt. Nor were they to be Alexander’s only allies. On 13 February 1811 Alexander wrote to Francis I asking for Austrian support and promising Moldavia and Wallachia if he would in turn cede Galicia to a restored Kingdom of Poland, while the idea of a war was also floated with Prussia and Sweden. All this was backed up by Russian troop movements and other preparations for war: the production of arms was stepped up, and a force of 200,000 men, including, significantly, five divisions taken from the Balkan front, was built up in White Russia, along with a network of magazines and entrenched camps.
Yet within a matter of weeks the whole enterprise had collapsed, not the least of Alexander’s problems being that the Poles would not cooperate. In the first place war was likely to bring total devastation as the main fighting could not but take place on Polish soil. And, in the second, if there were some nobles who feared the social reforms initiated by the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, there were plenty of others who were prepared to set such fears aside, and simply saw Napoleon as a better bet. To quote Oginski:
Almost everything that happened at that time encouraged our hopes. Napoleon freely acknowledged the valour of the Poles, and seemed to take pleasure in securing their allegiance. He had increased the strength of the old [Polish] legions, as well as forming others that had distinguished themselves in the campaign of 1809. He had organized a unit of Polish lancers for which he evinced particular affection, and made it a part of his guard. And, if he had only given the title of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw to that part of Poland which he had seized from the King of Prussia, the new state had an army . . . a fiscal system, a senate, ministries for every branch of the administration and a legislature that resembled that of the old kingdom. As all this was on a scale that far outstripped the limits of its population and borders, one was led to suppose that the emperor . . . was hiding in his bosom projects that were still vaster and even more advantageous to the interests of the Poles.44
Czartoryski, then, was not only unable to deliver the support for which Alexander hoped but turned his back on the idea of war altogether, calling instead for the tsar to settle both the issue of Poland and his quarrels with Napoleon by negotiation.
While very useful, Polish support was not the most essential factor in the situation, however: with Austria, Prussia and Sweden on his side, Alexander might well have gone to war anyway. Yet there was no hope to be had here either. In Austria the Russian attempt to secure a rapprochement, let alone a military alliance, was shattered by