Russia Against Napoleon_ The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace - Dominic Lieven [53]
Aleksandr Chernyshev also had a number of permanent, paid agents. One of them worked in the council of state near the heart of Napoleon’s government, another was in military administration, and a third served in a key bureau of the war ministry. There may well have been more, at least on an occasional basis. The published documents provide rather more details about the content of their reports than is the case with most of the memoranda purchased by Nesselrode. We have everything from general memoranda on the domestic political situation and the position in Spain to detailed information about the redeployment of artillery to infantry battalions, the organization of transport and rear services for future campaigns, and reports on new arms and equipment.
Some of these documents bore explicitly on the coming war with Russia. Chernyshev reported that Napoleon was rapidly increasing his cavalry arm, his measures proving ‘how much he fears the superiority of our cavalry’. Special wagons – larger and stronger than the previous models – were being built to survive Russian conditions. Chernyshev disguised himself to get into one of the workshops where they were being constructed and drew sketches. He reported that one of his sources stated that Napoleon intended to deliver the decisive blow by his central column, which would advance on Vilna under the emperor’s own command. He expected to be able to recruit large numbers of Polish soldiers in Russia’s western borderlands. Probably Chernyshev’s most valuable agent was the officer in the heart of the war ministry who had worked previously for the Russians but whom Chernyshev now exploited to maximum effect. Every month the ministry printed a secret book listing the numbers, movements and deployment of every regiment in the army. On each occasion a copy was delivered to Chernyshev, which he re-copied overnight. The Russians could follow the redeployment of Napoleon’s army eastwards in precise detail. Given the sheer scale and cost of this redeployment one could hardly imagine that it would end without a war, as Chernyshev himself remarked.35
Both Chernyshev and Nesselrode were far more than mere purchasers of secret memoranda. They moved in Paris society, gleaning an immense amount of information along the way. Some but by no means all of this information was provided by Frenchmen who disliked Napoleon’s regime. Chernyshev in particular was accepted into the heart of Napoleon’s own family and intimate circle. King Frederick William wrote to Alexander that Prussian diplomats reported that Chernyshev’s ‘relations with many individuals provide him with means and opportunities that no one else possesses’. Because of their intelligence and political sophistication Nesselrode and Chernyshev could evaluate the huge amounts of information they received and encapsulate it in the very shrewd appreciations they sent to Petersburg. Both men, for instance, were at pains to disabuse Alexander of any illusions that Napoleon would not or could not attack Russia so long as the war in Spain continued. They stressed the enormous resources he controlled but also the implications of his domestic problems for his campaign in Russia. Both men reported that the longer the war dragged on and the further Napoleon was pulled into the Russian interior the more desperate his situation