Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [314]
At the same time, to reiterate a point made in passing above, Metternich was genuinely anxious not to overthrow Napoleon. What he wanted was not just a peace based on a territorial settlement that would keep France in check, but rather an end to all war in Europe. This, he believed, required an arrangement in which the two central facts of European diplomatic life - a powerful France and a powerful Russia - were kept physically apart by a neutral bloc capable of staving off the threats of East and West alike. But if France and Russia were to be kept apart, they also had to be strong, for, if one or the other was ever allowed to think that her alter ego could not keep her in check, then she might well launch such a push for hegemony that nothing could stop it. In the aftermath of 1812, Russian power was clearly enormous, and this therefore required France to be an impressive force as well, and, by extension, one ruled by Napoleon.
Even now, Austria was no enemy, and there is no doubt that, given some constructive diplomacy, Napoleon could still have rescued a great deal from the Russian disaster. And at all events he would have been wise to have striven to keep relations with Vienna on a friendly basis, for within weeks of his forces crossing the frontier Alexander had been joined by Frederick William of Prussia. The Prussian monarch had been placed in an impossible situation. Napoleon’s defeat in Russia notwithstanding, his first instinct had been to remain loyal to the alliance of 1812, and he had therefore ordered Yorck’s arrest and court martial. Yet Prussia’s easternmost territories were now in a state of revolt. Following Tauroggen, Yorck had declared his forces neutral and in effect set up a liberated area around Königsberg. Here, meanwhile, he was joined by Stein, who had been appointed by Alexander I as his commissioner in occupied Prussia, the latter immediately persuading the local estates to decree the formation of a popular militia or Landwehr. Terrified of Napoleon, suspicious of Russia, and deeply hostile to the radical military reform now underway in East Prussia, even Frederick William sought to remain on good terms with the French while yet decreeing general mobilization and accepting such measures as the formation of volunteer units from amongst the well-to-do and the abolition of all exemptions from conscription. However, Napoleon’s defeat having caused great excitement among the educated classes, the reformers were able to deluge the king with warnings of imminent revolution, while it was also clear that failure to break with France might well be punished by the Russians. Assailed on all sides, and with many of his doubts assuaged by a Russian guarantee that Prussia would be restored to a size equivalent to that of 1806, Frederick William therefore finally agreed to an alliance.
With the French forces, other than a few garrisons, now out of the way across the Elbe, on 16 March 1813 Prussia declared war. With his forces consisting of a mere 65,000 men - the war with Russia had persuaded Napoleon to allow him to recruit 20,000 extra troops - Frederick William now had no option but to adopt the full programme of the reformers. To the accompaniment of a grandiloquent call to arms, on 18 March it was decreed that a Landwehr should be formed from all those men aged between seventeen and forty who were not required by the army, and on 21 April that the remainder of Prussia’s manpower should serve in the Landsturm, an emergency homeguard charged with guerrilla resistance in territories occupied by the French. To say that all this has given rise to a great deal of nonsense in the historiography of the Napoleonic Wars is an understatement. Within three months, the number of Prussians under arms had risen to some