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By Root 2703 0

he preferred the present as the more certain and subject to his will. In a word, he thought less of leaving . . . a dynasty behind him than a name which should have no rival and a glory which could never be excelled. Even more extravagant than fantastic in his ideas, his treatment of Spain and the head of the Catholic world had shown that unmoral action or abuse of power was nothing to him so long as he attained his object. But more than all it was his expedition to Russia and scheme for a continental blockade which made it plain to everyone . . . that death alone could set a limit to his plans and put a curb on his ambition.59

What makes the ‘glory’ thesis still more credible is that at this very time there resurfaced the so-called ‘oriental mirage’, the idea that Napoleon could establish an eastern empire on the lines of that of Alexander the Great while at the same time dealing the British a smashing blow by expelling them from India. This project was such a subject of palace gossip that it was soon being assumed it lay at the heart of the coming war. As one general asked Anna Potocka, a Polish noblewoman who had travelled to Paris in the suite of Marie-Louise, ‘What do you want me to bring you back from India?’60 Setting aside such exchanges, another factor that we must consider here is the place of Persia in the emperor’s plans. The collapse of the Gardanne mission had not quite seen an end to Napoleon’s ambitions in respect of that state, repeated attempts having been made to restore a French presence in Tehran. Are we, then, to take the remarks that Napoleon is supposed to have made to his aide-de-camp, Narbonne, at face value?

This long road is the road to India. Alexander left from as far away as Moscow to reach the Ganges. But for the English pirate and the French emigré who together directed the fire of the Turks, and, together with the plague, forced me to abandon the siege, after St Jean d’Acre I would have conquered half Asia and taken Europe in the rear in my bid to secure the thrones of France and Italy. Well, today I shall be marching from the extremities of Europe to take Asia in the rear so as to attack Britain. You know about . . . the missions of Gardanne and Jaubert to Persia. Nothing much has come of them, but I know enough of the geography and the condition of the population to get to . . . India by way of Erivan and Tiflis . . . Imagine Moscow taken, Russia overthrown, [and] the tsar reconciled or murdered by a palace plot . . . and tell me that it is impossible for a large army of Frenchmen and auxiliaries starting from Tiflis to reach the Ganges, where the mere touch of a French sword would be sufficient to bring down the framework of [Britain’s] mercantile grandeur throughout India.61

Here one returns to the idea of the Russian war as a necessary step in the war with England, but to use this idea to justify Napoleon’s actions at this point seems counter-productive. Given that the breach Russia represented in the Continental Blockade was insignificant, would closing it achieve the ends that were supposed? Was a march on India, even with the cooperation of the Russians, ever really a practical possibility? And would even conquering India be sufficient to knock Britain out of the war? As Narbonne said afterwards, ‘What a man! What ideas! What dreams! Where is the keeper of this genius? It is hardly credible. One doesn’t know whether one is in Bedlam or the Pantheon.’62

Whatever the reasons for Napoleon’s actions, Europe was plunged into frenzied diplomatic activity. Realizing the convention Scharnhorst had signed with Russia offered little hope - rather than the Russians sending troops into Prussia, the Prussians were expected to abandon their homeland and march to join the Russians in Poland - in November Frederick William III buckled to French pressure and agreed to an alliance. Signed the following February, the resultant treaty not only provided Napoleon with an auxiliary force of 20,000 men, but also guaranteed the grande armée all the food it required. In Vienna the following