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By Root 2719 0

alliance with Turkey, the French ambassador, Latour-Maubourg, was full of cheap promises of the restoration of the Black Sea coast and the Crimea. In this instance, however, Napoleon paid the price for earlier faithlessness. In 1807 the Turks had been betrayed by Napoleon at Tilsit, and they now decided to settle with the Russians while they had the chance. On 28 May 1812 peace was finally signed, leaving an astonished Napoleon completely outflanked. As for the 50,000 Russians still on the Danube, now commanded by Admiral Chichagov, they were soon marching with all speed for White Russia. Indeed, had things gone as Chichagov planned, Russia would have gained still more from the situation. Why not, he argued, get the Turks to ally themselves with Russia and invade the Illyrian provinces while at the same time attacking the Austrians in the rear? Or, alternatively, in the absence of Turkish agreement to this plan, why not send Russian troops into Bosnia so as to whip up a great national insurrection amongst the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes of the Austrian empire and the Illyrian provinces? Though both schemes were very attractive to Alexander, nothing came of any of this: the Turks were not interested in fighting an offensive war, while the South Slav war of liberation was abandoned after a worried Metternich in effect promised to keep Austrian participation in the campaign to a minimum. There was, then, to be no Balkan front in the coming war, but even so the end of Russia’s Turkish imbroglio was a major blow to Napoleon, as witness the fury with which he reacted to the news of peace.

In the Baltic, Napoleon also met with disappointment. As far as Sweden was concerned, he seems simply to have assumed that Berna dotte would join forces with him. Yet why he should have done so is unclear. The Continental Blockade had wrought much the same havoc in Sweden as it had done in Russia, and, like Alexander, Bernadotte knew that there were forces in the court and army that might very easily have him deposed or even murdered should he not satisfy their wishes. Meanwhile, the new crown prince still hated Napoleon, and had been much irritated by the fact that a scornful emperor showed no interest in giving Sweden Norway and had made it quite clear that if she wanted territorial gains she would have to fight for them in Finland, a region that Bernadotte was convinced had become untenable. Britain, by contrast, had proven much more proactive: in October 1811 the former British ambassador had paid a secret visit to Stockholm and promised Bernadotte he would be well rewarded should he ever go to war with Napoleon. Sweden was thus very much in the balance when the emperor committed an act of amazing folly. Moved by the purely military consideration that Swedish Pomerania might be the scene of a British amphibious landing, he ordered its occupation by French troops. The risk was in itself real enough, but since 1799 Britain’s record in such operations had been mixed, and it is hard to see why the capture of Stralsund should have cost Napoleon much concern. However, in January 1812 French troops entered the Swedish enclave. There was no resistance, but Bernadotte was furious and immediately approached both London and St Petersburg in search of assistance. From the former came offers of arms, supplies (though not yet money) and an island in the West Indies, while from the latter came the promise of military and diplomatic support over the annexation of Norway. At the last moment Napoleon realized his error and hastily proffered Bernadotte some bribes of his own, but it was too late: on 5 April 1812 the Swedish government signed a treaty of alliance with Russia. About the only consolation was that Sweden’s agreement with Russia was not much of a threat: desperate to win over Bernadotte, an increasingly worried Alexander accepted that no Swedish troops need land in Germany until Norway had been occupied, and even promised Bernadotte the help of 15,000 troops to secure this objective.

As both sides scrambled for allies and sought to free themselves