Russia Against Napoleon

Against Knesebeck stood Blücher, Gneisenau and the Army of Silesia.

Their views are sometimes belittled as stemming from nothing but desire for revenge and military glory. This is unfair. The Army of Silesia’s quartermaster-general, Baron Müffling, was a cool-headed staff officer, personally much closer to Knesebeck than to Gneisenau or Blücher. But he shared their view that lasting peace required Napoleon’s removal. He believed that if the emperor remained in power, after a short respite to rest and regroup his resources he was certain to try to overturn any peace settlement. All his veterans currently in allied captivity or in hospitals would stand ready to support him. Meanwhile, Müffling added, as Napoleon advanced over the Rhine, the Russian army would be 1,000 kilometres away and unable to come to Prussia’s assistance.⁵

In the end, Prussian policy depended on Frederick William III. The king shared Müffling’s views and was satisfied with the deal struck at Kalicz. Once Frederick William had gone through the agony of making the great decision to back Russia in February 1813 he was temperamentally very disinclined to review it. In any case he trusted and admired Alexander. The king was also grateful for the fact that the tsar had refused to abandon Prussia at Tilsit and had rescued his kingdom from Napoleon in 1813. Very soon the Russo-Prussian alliance was to be drawn even closer by the marriage of the king’s eldest daughter to Alexander’s younger brother and eventual heir, the Grand Duke Nicholas.⁶

Amidst the rivalries of the continental allies, Britain stood somewhat apart. Her role in the alliance which liberated Germany in 1813 was mostly limited to subsidizing her allies’ armies. By the winter of 1813–14, however, matters had changed. With Germany free and a final peace in the offing, Britain moved to the centre of the picture. The continental allies knew by bitter experience that if Britain and France remained at war they would end by being dragged in. Demobilizing their armies, restoring their finances and rebuilding international trade would be difficult. Britain therefore had to be brought into the peace settlement and her continental allies hoped that she would help to reconcile the French to peace by restoring many of the overseas colonies conquered between 1793 and 1814.

In 1813 Britain’s diplomatic representatives at the three allied courts had not been impressive. Lord Cathcart and Sir Charles Stewart were generals, more anxious to join in the campaign than to conduct negotiations. Meanwhile Lord Aberdeen, the 28-year-old envoy to Austria, could not even speak decent French and inevitably was eaten by Metternich. One Austrian source commented that ‘of the three only Aberdeen had any aptitude for diplomacy though he had no experience. The other two lacked either aptitude or experience.’ The allies appealed to London to send a political heavyweight who could conduct peace negotiations. In response there arrived at allied headquarters in January 1814 Viscount Castlereagh, one of the ablest foreign secretaries Britain has ever possessed.⁷

The basic point, however, was that Britain was by some margin the most powerful of the four allies. After its defeat in the American War of Independence, the United Kingdom had faced the combined challenge of the French, Spanish and Dutch fleets. Now in 1814 these fleets had largely been destroyed and the Royal Navy dominated the seas. Behind it stood by far the strongest merchant marine and shipbuilding industry in the world. Beyond those stood Britain’s immense financial and commercial resources. Scotland and Ireland, the historical back-doors into England, were now firmly under London’s control. To these fundamental elements in British power were added Wellington and his soldiers, the best army and the best general fielded by Britain in the last two centuries. In 1814 the allied monarchs knew that Wellington’s advance deep into southern France was keeping Marshal Soult and more than 40,000 troops tied down, far from the key theatre of operations in the north. Even more important, the logic of international relations in Europe worked in Britain’s favour. The continental allies might often resent Britain’s wealth and security, but their key interests were always more at risk from their land neighbours. They shared Britain’s commitment to a balance of power on the continent for reasons of their own security. But a continental balance of power meant that British maritime and colonial dominance could not be seriously challenged.⁸