Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [322]
Why, then, did the war continue? The answer is devastatingly simple. Rather than accept a compromise peace, Napoleon had elected to gamble on military victory. However, before we look at the campaigns that followed, we must first consider some loose ends elsewhere. At the very time that the guns had fallen silent in Silesia, matters had come to a head in two other theatres of war, namely the Balkans and the Trans-Caucasus. In the Balkans, Russia’s disengagement from her war with Turkey had left the Serbs hopelessly vulnerable to an Ottoman counter-attack, while Karadjordje’s attempt to set up a centralized state had alienated many key Serbian chieftains. Still worse, the populace were desperately war-weary. In the treaty of Bucharest the Ottomans had been forced to concede both a general amnesty and a guarantee of autonomy if the Serbs would in turn make peace and recognize the suzerainty of Constantinople. But the details of what was meant by autonomy had been left very vague and the Serbs had in effect been left to secure such terms as they could get. These, needless to say, proved to be most unfavourable. Fearing the worst, Karadjordje sought desperately to buy time while secretly appealing to Russia for help. This aid was not forthcoming and Constantinople became more and more impatient. After all, if the matter was still unresolved when the Russians concluded peace with Napoleon, there was an obvious danger of a fresh Russian attack. In late July, then, three Ottoman armies poured into Serbia. Only in a few places was there much resistance, and by early October it was all over, the only bright spot amid the scenes of carnage that followed being that Karadjordje himself managed to reach safety in Hungary.
In the Trans-Caucasus, meanwhile, though fighting had ceased between the Russians and the Ottomans, leaving the former in control of a small amount of additional territory, there was still conflict with the Persians. As will be remembered, Russia had been engaged in a spasmodic war with Persia over the suzerainty of Georgia ever since 1804. A combination of distance and terrain enabled the outmatched Persians to keep up the fight for a considerable time, but in October 1812 they were decisively defeated at Aslanduz on the Araks river, while a second defeat at Lenkoran two months later persuaded them to sue for peace. The result was the treaty of Golestan. Signed on 12 October 1813, this not only confirmed Russian ownership of Georgia, but also handed her what is today Azerbaijan, as well as exclusive rights to navigation on the Caspian Sea.
In terms of Russian expansion in central Asia, the treaty of Golestan was of immense importance, opening the way as it did to the independent khanates of present-day Kazakhstan. In some ways, then, it may be said to have had greater long-term geopolitical effects than anything that happened in Western Europe. In 1813, however, it appeared a sideshow. To return to Napoleon - confronted by the odds that he now faced, even the emperor would have been hard put to survive. Counting the troops of his remaining allies, he could only muster some 335,000 men, despite the fact that the King of Saxony had returned to the fold and mobilized his army. Facing him were a minimum of 515,000 allied troops. Predictably enough, Alexander and Frederick William had derived greater benefit from the truce than Napoleon in terms of getting reinforcements from their home bases, while there