War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [809]
6. honors in Dresden: Napoleon spent the month of May 1812 in Dresden in the company of his new allies the emperor of Austria, the king of Prussia, the king of Saxony, and the sixteen German princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, which was put together by Napoleon following his victory at Austerlitz, and which lasted from 1806 to 1813.
7. another wife had been left in Paris: See note 2 to Volume II, Part Five.
8. Légion d’honneur: On founding the order of the Legion of Honor, Napoleon made himself its first grand chancellor (see note 26 to Volume II, Part Two).
9. Quos vult perdere—dementat: An abbreviated form of the saying Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat (“Those whom God wants to destroy, he first drives mad”).
10. a separate commander in chief: Barclay de Tolly was commander in chief of the first army in the west (later replaced by Kutuzov); Bagration of the second, further to the south; and Tormasov of the third, a reserve force being drawn up near the Austrian border.
11. Kourakine…passeports: On 25 April 1812, the Russian ambassador in Paris, Prince A. B. Kurakin, conveyed to Napoleon the request of Alexander I that he withdraw his troops from Prussia. The request was denied, and Kurakin then asked for papers allowing him to leave France.
12. Mameluke Rustan: The Mamelukes were a military force, originally formed of Circassian slaves, who seized control of Egypt in 1254 and remained a power until 1811, when they were crushed by the Egyptian viceroy Mohammed Ali (1769–1849). Napoleon had defeated them at the battle of the Pyramids on 21 July 1798, and had brought one of the prisoners, Rustan, back to France as a bodyguard.
13. peace with the Turks…Moldavia and Wallachia…Finland: Following a series of victories and diplomatic efforts, Kutuzov signed a peace treaty with the Turks in Bucharest on 16 May 1812, to the great annoyance of Napoleon, who was hoping to make use of the Turkish army in his war on Russia. In the treaty, part of Moldavia (Bessarabia) went to the Russians, but the rest of Moldavia and Wallachia remained under Turkish rule. For Finland, see note 14 to Volume II, Part Three.
14. the Steins, the Armfelts, the Wintzingerodes, the Bennigsens…Alexander: The Prussian minister Baron von Stein, banished by Napoleon for sympathizing with Spain and seeking to free Prussia from French occupation, was living in Russia in 1812. The Swedish general and statesman G. M. Armfelt, who had been in the service of Russia since 1811 as president of the committee for Finnish affairs and was a member of the State Council, intrigued against Speransky and played a part in his exile. He accompanied Alexander I during the 1812 campaign. General Wintzingerode could be called a “French subject” only because Napoleon had included his native Hesse in the Confederation of the Rhine; he had been in service to Russia since 1797. General Bennigsen had been defeated by Napoleon at the battle of Friedland in 1807, but “terrible memories” is a reference to his participation in the plot to assassinate Alexander’s father, the emperor Paul I.
15. Bernadotte…Russia: In 1810 the French marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was adopted as his heir by King Charles XIII of Sweden, who hoped to use French influence to get Finland back, but in 1812 Bernadotte went over to the anti-French alliance.
16. that barrier…destroyed: Napoleon is referring to the Polish territories bordering Russia, which Russia had acquired as a result of the partitioning of Poland in 1793.
17. defeat of the French in Spain: Under Wellington’s command, the allied English, Spanish, and Portuguese forces won a series of victories over the French in 1812, culminating in the battle of Salamanca on 22 July. By August they were in Madrid.
18. Poltawa…happy response: King Charles XII of Sweden (1682–1718), up to then considered invincible, tried to get to Moscow through the Ukraine, but was crushed by Peter the Great at the battle of Poltava in 1709. Tolstoy deliberately