Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [307]
into East Prussia, they were therefore confronted by general antagonism. ‘The attitude of the inhabitants left me in no doubt as to their hostility to us,’ wrote Lieutenant Colonel Noël of the artillery. ‘I was certain we should have been attacked if they had known that we were not being followed by more troops. On our arrival in a village where we were to shelter, I sent for the burgomaster and told him that . . . at the slightest threat . . . the village would be burned down . . . To defy us, the inhabitants sang rude songs about us. The refrain of one of them was explained to us, “Five French to pay for one Prussian: it’s not too much.” ’45 None of this was enough to trigger a popular insurrection in the winter of 1812-13 . But, particularly in the army, many officers remained genuinely concerned at the extent to which Prussia had been humiliated, and a number had resigned their commands, defected to the Russians and tried to organize a ‘Russo-German legion’ from German deserters and prisoners of war. In the wake of the French retreat this feeling boiled over. Frederick William had no intention of reneging on his alliance with Napoleon, but on 30 December 1812 General Yorck von Wartenburg, the commander of the Prussian forces sent into Russia, signed a separate convention with the Russians at Tauroggen and led his troops back into East Prussia. What would have happened next had the Russians remained on the frontier is unclear, but in the event they kept coming and the remnants of the grande armée were left with no option but to flee for the safety of first the Vistula and then the Oder (garrisons, however, were left in Danzig and a number of other places). There were plenty of fresh troops and ample magazines in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and East Prussia, but the titular commander of the French forces, Marshal Murat, was exhausted and demoralized and he knew his forces were not to be relied on. ‘The Cossack hurrah,’ he later said, ‘was ringing in every ear, and . . . half would have deserted the first night at the thought of bivouacs where no fires could be lighted from fear of their serving as conductors to that horrid screech.’46
The Russian decision to advance was beyond doubt one of the key moments in the international history of the Napoleonic Wars, and yet in many respects it was a very surprising development. The invasion of Russia had not expunged years of Russian anti-British sentiment. Peace had been signed with Britain in July but it was not until September that the prohibition on trade between the two states was lifted, and even then British imports continued to have to pay heavy tariffs. Nor was any formal treaty of alliance signed between the two powers. Many Russians, including Alexander, Rumiantsev and Kutuzov, remained suspicious of the British and there was a strong feeling among the ‘easterners’ that Russia had no need to involve herself in the travails of central and Western Europe, but should concentrate on her traditional foreign policy objectives. Russia could, for example, take a further piece of Poland as the price of peace - the Vistula was mentioned as a possible new frontier - but her troops should march no further. In taking such a line, the ‘easterners’ were reinforced by a variety of practical considerations: the very heavy levies occasioned by the war had imposed great strain in the countryside and in some places had given rise to worrying disturbances, Russia was in serious financial difficulties; and in the summer of 1812 the Ukraine had been struck by a severe outbreak of plague, this ‘not only ruining the commerce of [Odessa], but reducing all the members of its numerous labouring and manufacturing population to a state of despair’.47 Himself an easterner, Kutuzov was also able to put forward cogent military arguments. The army under his command had suffered very badly in the course of its pursuit of the French. Some 110,000 strong when it left its camp at Tarutino in October, it was now down to less than 28,000 men, and caution alone dictated that it should be given a little time