Russia Against Napoleon (47 page)

On 22 January 1813 Aleksandr Chernyshev wrote to Kutuzov suggesting the formation of three ‘flying detachments’ which would raid deep into the French rear up to and beyond the river Oder. These raiding parties ‘will both have an impact on the indecisive Berlin cabinet and cover the main army in its quarters, since the latter after its glorious but difficult campaign absolutely must get some rest having reached the Vistula’. Chernyshev told Kutuzov that reconnaissance showed that many routes to the Oder and Berlin were open. The French losses, especially of cavalry, had been huge and the garrisons in their rear were too small and too immobile to cope with Russian raiders. He added that ‘all the information I have received’ argued that only when Russian troops reached the Oder ‘will this force Prussia to declare itself decisively in our favour’. There was not a moment to be lost: the French must be harried while they were still shaken and bewildered; they must not be given the opportunity to regain their senses, reinforce or reorganize themselves.
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Kutuzov and Wittgenstein took up Chernyshev’s suggestion and three flying columns were dispatched. The most northerly column was commanded by Colonel Friedrich von Tettenborn, a former Austrian officer and a German patriot who dreamed of raising the population of northwest Germany against Napoleon. Shortly after Tettenborn had crossed the Oder north of Kustrin, a second raiding party under Alexander Benckendorff got across south of that town. Both then carried out a number of attacks on French units and supplies in the Berlin region. Meanwhile Chernyshev himself began his operations further to the east, in the rear of Eugène’s headquarters in Posen, in the hope of causing such chaos that the viceroy would abandon this key position and fall back on the Oder. Together the three raiding parties numbered fewer than 6,000 men. Most were Cossacks but they included some squadrons of regular cavalry since, in Chernyshev’s opinion, ‘however good Cossack units are, they act with much more confidence if they see regular cavalry in support behind them’. None of the three parties contained infantry and only Chernyshev had horse artillery, though even in his case this only amounted to two guns.
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The Russians were greatly helped by the small numbers, low quality and poor morale of the enemy cavalry. Whatever enemy horsemen they encountered they destroyed. Chernyshev annihilated 2,000 Lithuanian lancers near Zirche on the river Warthe behind Posen, whom he bamboozled and attacked simultaneously from front and rear. A few days later Wittgenstein reported to Kutuzov that Benckendorff, operating along the road from Frankfurt on the Oder to Berlin, had ambushed and ‘destroyed almost the last unit of enemy cavalry, which even without this was very weak’. The Russian cavalry caused confusion along the French lines of communication, attacking infantry and recruit parties, destroying supplies, and intercepting correspondence. Inevitably this increased the already existing fear and confusion among French commanders. The extraordinary mobility of the Russian horsemen meant that their numbers were greatly exaggerated. Because they captured so many French couriers, the Russians on the other hand were very well informed about French deployments, numbers, morale and plans.
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Eugène decided to pull back and defend the line of the river Oder, a decision for which he was castigated by Napoleon at the time and by a number of subsequent historians.
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They were correct to suggest that it made no sense to string troops along the line of the Oder, especially at a time when vastly superior Russian cavalry could so effectively impede communication and cooperation between them. Eugène believed that the ice on the rivers was now melting, which would make the Oder defensible. In fact, however, even Chernyshev, well informed about where the ice remained strongest, just succeeded in getting across the Oder in time. He commented that the ice was very thin and the operation extremely risky but his troops’ morale by this time was so high that they were convinced that they could achieve wonders.
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Once all three raiding parties were across the river they harassed Marshal Pierre Augereau’s garrison in Berlin ceaselessly, at one point actually breaking right into the city centre. By now the Russians had captured so many French couriers that the enemy’s intentions were an open book to them. Wittgenstein was told that the French would abandon Berlin and retire behind the Elbe the moment any body of Russian infantry approached. Armed with this information, Wittgenstein hurried forward his corps’s advance guard – only 5,000 strong – under Prince Repnin-Volkonsky. Benckendorff rebuilt a bridge over the Oder for Repnin’s men and the Russian forces entered Berlin on 4 March to a tremendous reception. Wittgenstein reported to Kutuzov in triumphant mood that very day: ‘The victorious standards of His Imperial Majesty are flying over Berlin.’
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The liberation of Berlin and the retreat of the French behind the Elbe were very important. The capital’s recapture raised morale and the resources of all of Prussia could now be mobilized for the allied cause. Large French forces were being gathered by Napoleon and had Eugène been able to hang on for just a few more weeks the 1813 campaign would have started on the Oder, within range of rebellious Poland and Napoleon’s fortresses on the Vistula. That in itself would have reduced the chances of Austrian intervention. Instead the campaign began well to the west of the Elbe, gaining for the allies a number of precious weeks in which Russian reinforcements could approach and Austria could gird itself for battle.

A number of factors explain the French retreat. Among them should not be forgotten the outstanding performance of the Russian light cavalry and Cossacks. In his journal Chernyshev commented that in previous wars ‘partisan’ units had raided behind enemy lines to capture supply trains and take prisoners in order to gather intelligence. They had also attacked small enemy units. He added that in the 1813 campaign his own partisans did much more than this. For considerable periods they had cut enemy operational lines and stopped all movement and communication. Operating sometimes hundreds of kilometres ahead of the main Russian forces, they had created a complete fog around enemy commanders and in some cases had actually forced fundamental changes in enemy plans. With typical modesty, Chernyshev concluded that the commander of a ‘flying detachment’ needed great energy, presence of mind, prudence and ability to grasp situations quickly. Chernyshev had a penchant for self-advertisement and self-promotion worthy of Nelson. To do him justice, he also had Nelson’s boldness, tactical skill, strategic insight and capacity for leadership.
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Just five days before the fall of Berlin Frederick William finally buried his doubts and consented to the treaty of alliance with Russia. An officer on Kutuzov’s staff wrote that ‘in our negotiations with them [i.e. the Prussians] the news we often received about the successes of our advance guards which were already approaching the Elbe gave us great weight’. Nevertheless, negotiations were difficult almost to the end. The main reason for this was disagreement on the fate of Poland. Prussia had been a key beneficiary of the Polish partitions. It wanted back the Polish lands which Napoleon had forced it to concede at Tilsit, and argued that without this territory Prussia could not possess the strength or security essential for a great power. On the other hand, the events of 1812 had further confirmed Alexander in his belief that the only way to square the demands of Polish nationhood and Russian security was to unite as many Poles as possible in an autonomous kingdom whose ruler would also be the Russian monarch. At a time when Russia was expending huge amounts of blood and money to restore large territories to Austria and Prussia, and when Britain had made a clean sweep of the French and Dutch colonial empires, the emperor no doubt also felt that his empire should have some reward for his efforts.
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Baron vom Stein helped to smooth over the difficulties by travelling to Breslau to win over Frederick William. Stein himself disliked Alexander’s plans for Poland, which he thought were dangerous for Russian internal stability and a threat to Austrian and Prussian security. He also wondered whether the Poles, ‘with their serfs and their Jews’, were capable of self-government. But Stein knew that on this issue Alexander was adamant and he helped to broker a Russo-Prussian compromise.

Russia would guarantee all existing Prussian possessions and it would ensure that East Prussia and Silesia were linked by a substantial and strategically defensible band of territory taken from the Duchy of Warsaw. The Russians also promised that they would commit all their strength to the war in Germany and would not make peace until Prussia was restored to the same level of power, territory and population as it had possessed before 1806. Article I of the Treaty of Kalicz’s secret clauses promised that Prussia would be fully compensated in northern Germany for any Polish territory it lost to Russia in the east. Unlike Napoleon, the Russians could not bribe the Prussians with Hanoverian territory, since this belonged to their ally, the British king. The only likely source of compensation was therefore Saxony, whose weakening or dismemberment would go down badly in Vienna. The Treaty of Kalicz therefore in part remained strictly secret and was storing up problems for the future.

For the moment, however, it was a satisfactory basis for Russo-Prussian cooperation. The main thrust of the treaty was its commitment to restoring Prussia as a great power, above all so it could check France but also perhaps in order to balance Austrian power in Germany. On this all-important issue the Russians were just as committed as the Prussians. In addition, although the preamble to the treaty contained its share of sanctimonious hypocrisy, its call for ‘the repose and well-being of peoples exhausted by so many disturbances and so many sacrifices’ was genuine and heartfelt. Add this to the friendship which existed between Alexander and Frederick William and there are the ingredients of a strong and lasting bond between the two states. Indeed in one form or another the Russo-Prussian alliance of February 1813 was to survive until the 1890s, forming one of the most stable and enduring elements in European diplomacy.
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Article VII of the treaty bound both Prussia and Russia to give top priority to bringing Austria into their alliance. This priority was to dominate not just allied diplomacy but even to some extent military strategy in the next three months. Austria, however, was intent on playing hard to get, and with good reason. The Austrians believed that they had borne the biggest share of fighting the French since 1793 and that they had been let down by the Prussians and Russians on a number of occasions and taken for granted by the British. This time they would exploit all the potential leverage of their position and not be rushed into anything.

Numerous defeats bred pessimism and aversion to risk among some Austrians, above all in Francis II, on whom in the last resort all decisions on war and peace depended. Suspicion of Russia ran deep, with traditional fears of Russian power and unpredictability exacerbated by the fact that the Austrians had intercepted part of Alexander’s correspondence with Prince Adam Czartoryski, his chief confidant on Polish affairs, and were aware of the gist of his plans for Poland. Russian and Prussian appeals to German nationalism, on occasion calling for the overthrow of princes who supported Napoleon, infuriated the Austrians, partly for fear of chaos and partly because they alienated the Confederation of the Rhine monarchs whom Vienna was trying to woo. Baron vom Stein, Alexander’s chief adviser on German affairs, was a particular Austrian bugbear.

From March 1813, however, Alexander increasingly bowed to Austrian wishes in this matter, stopping inflammatory proclamations by his generals and conceding to Austria the lead in all matters to do with Bavaria, Württemberg and southern Germany. Most importantly, the great majority of the Austrian political and military elite deeply resented the manner in which Napoleon had reduced Austria to the status of a second-rate power, annexing her territory and removing her influence from Germany and Italy. Given a good opportunity to reverse this process and restore a genuine European balance of power, most members of the Austrian elite would take it, by peaceful means if possible but running the risks inherent in war if necessary. The Austrian foreign minister, Count Clemens von Metternich, shared this mainstream viewpoint.
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In January 1813 Metternich’s immediate priority was to free Austria from the French alliance and take up the role of neutral mediator without provoking Napoleon more than necessary in doing so. One aspect of this policy was to remove Schwarzenberg’s corps from the
Grande Armée
and get it back safely over the Austrian border. Another was to work out peace terms on the basis of which Austria could mediate. Austria’s goal was a European system in which Russia and France balanced each other, with Austria and Prussia restored to their previous strength and able to guarantee the independence of Germany. The Austrians also deeply wanted and needed a long and stable peace.
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To have any chance of success in its mediation, Metternich realized that Austria would need to rebuild its army so that it could threaten decisive intervention in the war. The problem here was that military expenditure had been cut savagely after the defeat of 1809 and the state bankruptcy of 1811. Many infantry battalions were mere skeletons; horses and equipment were in very short supply; most of the arms works had been closed. The finance ministry conducted a stubborn rearguard action on military expenditure in 1813, with money being disbursed very slowly even after budgets had been agreed. In addition, arms and uniforms workshops could not be re-created overnight and no sane manufacturer would give the Austrian government credit. Metternich also miscalculated how much time he had at his disposal. In early February he was convinced that Napoleon could not possibly have a large army in the field before the end of June. On 30 May he confessed his astonishment at ‘the incredible speed with which Napoleon had re-created an army’. For all his great diplomatic skill, the speed and violence of Napoleonic warfare was alien to Metternich and could easily upset all his calculations. As with Prussia in 1805, Austria in 1813 dragged out negotiations with both warring camps before finally committing itself to the allies. Prussian policy had then been totally confounded by the disaster at Austerlitz. The same came near to happening to the Austrians in May 1813.
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