Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [279]
As yet no rupture came: Kurakin remained in Paris, and he was even joined by two special envoys, Chernichev and the future Foreign Minister, Karl von Nesselrode. Equally, Napoleon neither issued an ultimatum to Alexander nor announced the object of the great mobilization that began to grip the empire. But the emperor was bent on breaking Russia once and for all. At all events every attempt to avert Napoleon’s anger was rebuffed. The Dutch general, Dedem de Gelder, for example, was taken aside by Nesselrode, and told that Alexander genuinely wanted to live in peace with Napoleon, and that his only quarrel was with the Continental System. ‘Neither we nor you need a new war,’ said Nesselrode. ‘If you have your cancer in Spain, we have ours in Turkey: the war that we are waging there is just as impolitic and disastrous as the one that you are waging in the Peninsula.’48 This conversation Dedem felt duty bound to report to Maret, but the latter’s response was crushing: ‘Russia has but one choice: she must follow our system in its entirety, and for us to make certain, allow us to place French customs officials even in Reval and Kronstädt.’49
Among soldiers, statesmen and civilians alike, there was now but one assumption: war with Russia was coming. The prospect, however, was not popular: ‘Napoleon’s popularity now began to wane,’ wrote one medical student. ‘Troops were being raised without interruption for the Russian campaign although already every family was mourning a husband or son; further bloodshed was dreaded by all. The emperor superintended every detail of the preparations in person. Most of the regiments which were to take part were concentrated in Paris and reviewed minutely by him. The troops were full of eagerness. The very sight of Napoleon electrified them. But, alas, smooth chins were more numerous among them than beards. The war in Spain . . . had robbed us of the majority of our seasoned soldiers . . . The pressing need for men had lowered the standard age from twenty to nineteen and again to eighteen. They were mere children, and many of them were totally incapable of bearing up under the hardships of a campaign.’50 To all this, however, Napoleon had but one answer. In the words of Hortense de Beauharnais, ‘Unable to understand why it was necessary, the whole of France complained of a war that it did not want. The emperor persisted in regarding it as the last effort that would put an end to her labours. He believed that anything was possible to French valour, and would let nothing stop him.’51
To establish the facts is one thing, but to establish a motive for Napoleon’s actions is quite another. In the face of every argument to the contrary - and to the bitter end Caulaincourt sought desperately to persuade him that Alexander still wanted peace, and that war with Russia would lead to disaster - he insisted that he himself wanted only peace, that Alexander was bent on war and that he was therefore conducting a defensive campaign. Mixed in with this was the claim that he was fighting a war for the liberation of Poland, and even that his aim was the defence of Western civilization from the menace of the east. As he told Caulaincourt (who was forced to accompany the emperor’s headquarters as a most unwilling diplomatic adviser) when the grande armée reached Vilna:
I have come to finish off, once and for all, the colossus of the barbarians of the north. The sword is drawn. They must be thrust back into their snow and ice so that for a quarter of a century at least they will not be able to interfere with civilized Europe. Even in the days of Catherine the Russians counted for little or nothing in the politics of Europe. It was the partition of Poland