Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [280]
But too much should not be made of these claims. The idea of a crusade in favour of Western civilization had hitherto been notably absent from Napoleon’s discourse, while Poland’s real place in his thoughts is suggested by a conversation recorded by Oginski, who was told by the Grand Master of the Palace, General Duroc - always a close confidant of the emperor - that ‘the re-establishment of an independent Poland could not be regarded as anything other than a chimerical project and was a dream that would never come true; that Poland had never truly been independent in any case; that she had existed in a state of anarchy for many years; that the freedom of which so much was made consisted of no more than the vehement speeches that the nobles had the right to pronounce in the meetings of the diet; that the servitude of the peasants had always been an obstacle to the establishment of good government; and, finally, that the Poles were too disunited in their opinions, and the nobility too jealous of its rights, for Poland ever to rejoin the ranks of the powers of Europe.’53 Inside the regime, then, there were few illusions. ‘The idea has been lodged in his head for more than a year,’ one member of the council of state told an old friend who had come to Paris on official business in the autumn of 1811. ‘The affairs of the Peninsula torment him from morning till night: the conflict is like a maggot gnawing away at him. He wants to deliver a great blow that will put the North [i.e. Russia] on its knees, and has persuaded himself that this will by extension settle the fate of Britain, and allow him to finish not only with her, but also with Spain and Portugal. Such at least I have gleaned . . . from the measures that he has one after another implemented . . . On top of this I will tell you what my reason alone has suggested to me. I could be mistaken, but is it not the case that we are again seeing the mania of heaping conquest upon conquest, and as much in times of peace as times of war? Is it not the case that, even though she now stretches all the way from Rome to Hamburg, France still seems too small to him?’54
If this was the opinion of men who were still loyal to Napoleon, it was pointless to look for anything better from those who had come to oppose him. One such was the former Minister of Police, Joseph Fouché, who blamed everything on ‘the extravagant ambition of the chief of state’. Anxious to press the case for peace, Fouché waited on the emperor armed with a long report in which he warned of the dangers of war, only to come up against the same sort of stonewalling encountered by Caulaincourt:
There is no crisis: the present is a war purely political. You cannot judge of my position, nor of the general aspect of Europe. Since my marriage the lion has been thought to sleep: we shall see whether he does or not. Spain will fall as soon as I have annihilated the English influence at St Petersburg. I wanted 800,000 men and I have them. All Europe follows in my train, and Europe is a rotten old whore with whom I may do as I please . . . Did you not formerly tell me that you thought genius consisted in finding nothing impossible? Well, in six or eight months you shall see what things upon a vast scale can effect when united to a power that can execute them. I am guided by the opinion of the army and the people, rather than by yours, gentlemen who are too rich and who only tremble for me because you apprehend a fall. Make yourselves easy: regard the Russian war as dictated by good sense, and by a just view of the interests, the repose and the tranquillity of all. Besides, how can I help it