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Alexander and his advisers well understood Napoleon’s aims and tactics. In this as in every other way, they sought to impose on him the kind of war he least wanted to fight. In political terms this meant a Spanish-style national war to the death, in which the emperor would refuse all negotiations and would seek to mobilize Russian society behind the war effort by appeals to patriotic, religious and xenophobic sentiment. In his memorandum of April 1812 Petr Chuikevich stressed that Russia’s key strengths must include ‘the resoluteness of its monarch and the loyalty to him of his people, who must be armed and inspired, as in Spain, with the help of the clergy’. In addition, in a national war fought on the nation’s soil Russian society would willingly provide the resources and make the sacrifices which victory over Napoleon’s immense empire would require.1

The best source on Alexander’s own views about the war’s domestic political context is the record of a long conversation he had in Helsingfors (Helsinki) in August 1812 while on the way to his meeting with Bernadotte. The emperor noted that for the past century all Russia’s wars had been fought abroad and had seemed to most Russians to be far removed from their own immediate interests and concerns. The landowners had resented the conscription of their peasants and all setbacks resulted in relentless criticism of the government and its military commanders.

In present circumstances it was necessary to persuade the people that the government did not seek war and that it was arming only in order to defend the state. It was vital strongly to interest the people in the war, by waging it for the first time in over a hundred years on the territory of their motherland (rodina). This was the only way to make this a truly people’s war and to unite society around the government, of its own freewill and conviction, and in the cause of its own defence.

Alexander added that the united resolution shown by Russian society since Napoleon’s invasion showed that his calculation had proved correct. He added that, as for himself, he would never make peace so long as a single enemy soldier remained on Russian soil, even if that meant standing firm on the line of the river Volga after being defeated in battle and losing Petersburg and Moscow. The Finnish official to whom Alexander was speaking recorded in his memoirs that the intelligence, clarity and resolution with which the emperor spoke was impressive and inspiring.2

From the moment Napoleon crossed the frontier Alexander proclaimed the national character of the war. After the line of defence on the river Dvina was breached and the French approached Smolensk and the borders of Great Russia, this call was redoubled. In early August Barclay de Tolly wrote to the governor of Smolensk, Baron Casimir von Asch, that he knew that the loyal population of the province would rise up to defend ‘the Holy Faith and the frontiers of the Fatherland’, and that in the end Russia would triumph over the ‘perfidious’ French as it had in the past over the Tatars.

In the name of the Fatherland call upon the population of all areas close to the enemy to take up arms and attack isolated enemy units, wherever they are seen. In addition I have myself issued a special appeal to all Russians in areas occupied by the French to make sure that not a single enemy soldier can hide himself from our vengeance for the insults committed against our religion and our Fatherland, and when their army has been defeated by our troops then the fleeing enemy must everywhere meet ruin and death at the hands of the population.3

When Alexander left the army on 19 July and set off to Moscow to mobilize the home front for war, his immediate priority was to create a militia as a second line of defence against the invaders. Aleksandr Shishkov drafted the imperial manifesto appealing for the support of all estates of the realm for the new militia. The manifesto harked back to the so-called Time of Troubles exactly two hundred years before, when