In the Grip of the Bear

I suppose most people’s understanding of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 has been shaped by a reading of Tolstoy’s War and Peace; I know that mine has. It’s one of the great epics of national consciousness, a true patriotic hymn.

But it only tells a partial story because Tolstoy had little interest in what happened after what was left of the Grande Armée was chased across the Neman in December of that remarkable year. It’s thanks to Russia, thanks to Tsar Alexander, that Europe was liberated from the hands of Napoleon, from the rapacious imperialism of a man who must count as the modern world’s first dictator, the first Little Corporal.

The full story of the War of 1812 to 1814, the story of Russia’s part in this struggle, is ably told in Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace by Dominic Lieven, a wide-ranging, deeply researched and wonderfully written history. This is a book that gives the lie to some of the old myths, notably the French contention that Russia owed her victory not to its national spirit, its determination to resist a foreign invader with all of the means at its disposal, but to the severity of its weather. No, the Russians were superior to the French in so many ways, in the quality of their armed forces, particularly the cavalry. Mention should also be made of the excellence of the intelligence service as well as the skilful way in which the game of international diplomacy was played.

The reason that Napoleon failed so spectacularly during the invasion of 1812 itself is really quite simple: with his usual arrogance and conceit he thought he was the hunter when in reality he was the hunted. He was looking for a quick victory, after which Alexander would be obliged to make peace. But Alexander, under the guidance of Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, his war minister, aimed at destroying Napoleon by drawing him ever deeper into Russia, extending ever further his lines of communication, while harassing his army by defensive bites followed by all-out attack.

It’s all here, all the great battles, not just the Borodino of War and Peace, but those of the two year campaign that came after, climaxing in Leipzig, the Battle of the Nations, followed by the advance on Paris itself. Alexander himself, that complex and contradictory man, is depicted in a far more nuanced way as a skilful strategist and diplomat, one who managed to rally Prussia and Austria as the Russian army moved westwards, careful to show that this was an act of liberation, careful to keep his armies under strict control, retaining discipline to the end.

We in the west owe so much to Great Russia. It’s a pity there was not a better understanding of that simple truth.

Bashing Boney

What was the most important factor in the downfall of Napoleon? Why, an impossible obsession. After the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, realising that he would never be able to defeat England by a war at sea, he decided that he would have to resort to a new kind of war on land; an economic war.

By the Continental System he hoped to destroy British trade and manufacturing. But the Continental System was hopelessly ambitious. It required control, and absolute control, of the whole of Europe, from Lisbon to Moscow. It required all powers, all territories, all dependencies, all allies, no matter how reluctant, to fall in behind what was effectively a French economic dictatorship. Bit by bit the whole impossible project came apart. Portugal was the first to break rank, beginning the French tyrant's ruinous involvement in the Peninsula. Next to go was Russia, the ally of occasion.

To bring Tsar Alexander I back into line Napoleon broke the first rule of warfare-never march on Moscow. Russia's success in defeating French aggression also freed Austria and Prussia from the grip of the Continental System, enabling them all to join together in the War of the Sixth Coalition. Abandoned on almost all sides, Napoleon was overwhelmed at the Battle of the Nations.

How did his economic blockade affect the British? Hardly at all; for new markets were found in the Americas. Besides, smuggling into Europe was highly effective. More than that, Napoleon was forced to grant exceptions to his Berlin and Milan decrees, for the simple reason that he depended on British manufacturers for the supply of his army's boots! Contrary to Napoleon's intentions, moreover, such economic hardship as there was came in his own country, with food shortages, loss of business and high prices adding to his growing unpopularity. And that is how the mighty are fallen!

The Frog and the Bear

Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 had one small but significant effect: it ended a long-standing ban of political caricature in the country. There followed a remarkable and inventive flourishing all directed against the imperious little Frenchman, prints which a direct influence on the better known work of George Cruickshank and Thomas Rowlandson. The artist who had the greatest impact was Ivan Ivanovich Terebenev, whose work in this area I’m only now becoming aware of thanks to Mark Bryant, author of The Napoleonic Wars in Cartoons.

Traditional cartoon images in Russia came in the form of brightly coloured woodcuts known as lubok, featuring animals and mythological themes to pass comment on human activities. In 1720 they were effectively banned by new censorship codes preventing the publication of lubiki which were considered to be an attack on the Orthodox Church, the imperial government or the personal honour of an individual. The ban was lifted after Napoleon’s invasion, when traditional techniques came back into fashion, given a new edge by the influence of western drawing.

Terebenev was among the most creative of the new school, drawing almost fifty satirical prints lampooning the French in the years leading up to his early death in 1815. Carried across the country by printsellers, his work also appeared in journals, in book form and even on fine china. His best known work is Azbuka 1812 goda-A Gift to Children Commemorating the Year 1812-also known as Terebenev’s ABCs, an anthology of anti-Napoleon cartoons.

Such was his influence that his work was redrawn for the British market by Cruikshank, who produced several adaptations of the Russian originals. Trebenev’s 1814 Shepherd and Wolf, which depicts Alexander I as a shepherd holding Napoleon in the shape of a wolf by the nape of the neck while French generals run away was reproduced in England by Rowlandson, who substituted the Prussian general Blücher for the Tsar.

Terebenev had a long afterlife. After the German invasion of Russia in 1941 many of his anti-Napoleon cartoons were republished alongside cartoons mocking Hitler in a collection entitled Russia: Britain’s Ally, 1812-1942. In Russia itself the satirical magazine Krokodil might be said to have continued the lubok tradition reworked by Terebenev, producing parodies of Hitler and the Nazis far more savagely biting than anything ever drawn in the west.

Napoleon on St Helena

Ah, Napoleon on St. Helena, most definitely an island too far! When he was told by his British captors that was where he was bound he said "Go to St. Helena-no!-no! I prefer death" But to St. Helena he went. Lord Liverpool, the British Prime Minister of the day, explained the reasons for sending the troublesome Emperor so far from Europe-"There is only one place in the circuit of the island where ships can anchor...At such a distance, and in such a place, all intrigue would be impossible; and, being withdrawn so far from the European world, he would very soon be forgotten." But he was not forgotten, by the British least of all.

In exile, Napoleon set himself two tasks: to persuade his former enemies to grant his release, and to create an image of himself for future generations of Frenchmen, an image based on Christian concepts of martyrdom. He failed in the first but suceeded in the second, creating a myth that was to become the basis for the Second Empire. His memoirs were, in fact, a quite cynical exercise in political manipulation, and he went so far as to tell an aide "If Jesus Christ had not died on the cross, He would never have been worshipped as a God." He concluded his account of his career with an accusation and a plea "I am dying prematurely murdered by the English oligarchy and its hired assassins...I wish my ashes to rest near the banks of the Seine in the midst of the French people I have so dearly loved."

In a sense the creation of the 'Napoleon myth' was the Emperor's last great victory. Even the themes he anticipated were later taken up by his countrymen in a romantic vision that overlooked the tyranny and militarism of the First Empire. By 1840 he was being compared to Prometheus, chained to a rock (St. Helena), where his blood was drunk by the vulture of Albion;

Jesus by his strength
Saved the pagan, lost in sin.
Napoleon saved France;
Like Jesus he was sold
After odious sufferings,
Jesus died on the cross;
Napoleon at St. Helena,
Has suffered like Jesus.

In 1840 the singularly unheroic Louis Phillipe arranged for Napoleon's remains to be returned to France, to be re-interred at Les Invalides. Some 600,000 people watched the procession through Paris, with cries of Vive l'Empereur! and A bas les Anglais! While he was still alive, though, the chief preoccupation of the government of Louis XVIII was to ensure that he remained in the south Atlantic, and that there would be no repetition of the Hundred Days. The Duc de Richelieu, Louis' chief minister, even went so far as to ask his agent on St. Helena if the barrels leaving Napoleon's house at Longwood, were being checked! Some of the fear was justified, because there were indeed genuine plots to rescue Napoleon, including one from Brazil and another from Texas, where some four hundred exiled soldiers from the Grand Army dreamed of a resurrection of the Napoleonic Empire in America. Believe it or not, there was also a plan to rescue him using a submarine!

Despite his complaints and his petulance, Napoleon was not too badly treated by the British, and was more or less free to live his life in the manner of in English country gentleman in quite comfortable surroundings. When he was a boy, William Makepeace Thackery, the writer, stopped at St. Helena on a voyage from India. His servant took him to Longwood "We saw a man walking...'That is he', said the black servant, 'That is Bonaparte, he eats three sheep every day, and all the children he can lay his hands on.' " Napoleon received many visitors, to the anger and consternation of Richelieu "This devil of a man exercises an astonishing seduction on all those who approach him."

In a uniquely British way, Napoleon was transformed in the public mind from a monster to a hero, no doubt a direct expression of discontent at the reactionary post-war government of Lord Liverpool. In 1818 The Times, which Napoleon received in exile, in reporting a false rumour of his escape, said that this had been greeted by spontaneous illuminations in London. There was some sympathy for him also in the political opposition in Parliament. Lord Holland, the nephew of Charles James Fox, the former Whig leader, sent over 1000 books and pamphlets to Longwood, as well as jam and other comforts. Holland also accused the government of attempting to kill the Emperor by a proceess of slow assassination. Napoleon knew of this, and based his hopes for release on the possibility of Holland becoming Prime Minister, Richelieu's greatest fear.

Napoleon also enjoyed the support of Admiral Lord Cochrane, one of the greatest sailors of the age, closely involved in Chile and Brazil's struggle for independence. It was his expressed aim to make him Emperor of a unified South American state, a scheme that was frustrated by Napoleon's death in 1821. For Lord Byron, amongst others, Napoleon was the very epitome of the Romantic hero, the persecuted, lonely and flawed genius. At quite the other extreme, the news that Napoleon had taken up gardening at Longwood appealed to more domestic British sensibilities, which had the effect of humanising him still further. When news of his death reached Europe in early July 1821 the French Foreign Minister noted that this caused a far greater sensation in London than in Paris. Ironically, it was the British who were the first to adopt a myth, later exported to France, where tragedy was destined to be refashioned in the shape of farce.