Russia Against Napoleon

47 I. G. Fabritsius, Glavnoe inzhenernoe upravlenie, SVM, 7, SPB, 1902, pp. 733–58. There is a new and interesting book on Ottoman warfare by Virginia Aksan: Ottoman Wars 1700–1870: An Empire Besieged, London, 2007. If it has a weakness it is that it says too little about actual battle and tactics.

48 SIRIO, 121, 1906, no. 13, Chernyshev to Rumiantsev, 13/25 July 1810, and no. 15, 5/17 Sept. 1810, pp. 75–80 and 88–95. For his account of his mission to Sweden, see SIRIO, 121, pp. 22–48.

49 The quote is from a letter from Bernadotte to Count Löwenhielm, the special Swedish emissary to Alexander, dated 7/19 March 1812 and published in La Suède et la Russie: Documents et matériaux 1809–1818, Uppsala, 1985, pp. 96–8. The text of the Russo-Swedish treaty of alliance is no. 66, pp. 105–11.

50 The phrase ‘blundered towards empire’ was suggested by Owen Connelly to describe Napoleon’s campaigns: Blundering to Glory: Napoleon’s Military Campaigns, Wilmington, Del., 1987.

51 The literature on Napoleon’s empire is so immense that any attempt at a bibliography is impossible here. The best up-to-date general history in my opinion is Thierry Lentz, Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire, 3 vols., Paris, 2004–7. In English, the best recent works include P. Dwyer (ed.), Napoleon and Europe, Harlow, 2001; M. Broers, Europe under Napoleon, London, 1996; S. Wolff, Napoleon’s Integration of Europe, London, 1991.

52 See above all Christopher Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, Cambridge, 1988, ch. 3, and the chapters by Michael Duffy, Patrick O’Brien and Rajat Kanta Ray in P. J. Marshall (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 1998.

53 Rajat Kanta Ray, ‘Indian Society and the Establishment of British Supremacy, 1765–1818’, in Marshall (ed.), British Empire, pp. 509–29, at p. 525. On changing European views on overseas empire, see especially Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France, Princeton, 2005. On French (and other) views of eastern Europe, see Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford, Calif., 1994.

54 This is to risk embroiling myself in a vast literature on the origins of nations: see e.g. A. D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, London, 1986. The Napoleonic era provides fine opportunities to test national identities’ strength and constituent elements, not just in Europe but in comparative terms across the globe: R. G. S. Cooper, The Anglo-Maratha Campaign and the Contest for India, Cambridge, 2003, illustrates the internal weaknesses of a polity which was Britain’s toughest enemy in India. Compare this with e.g. M. Rowe (ed.), Collaboration and Resistance in Napoleonic Europe, Basingstoke, 2003.

55 The perfect model of an imperial conqueror is the Chinese Emperor Ch’in Shih-Huang, whom Sam Finer calls the ruler who left the biggest and most lasting mark on government. Measured against him, Napoleon’s ambitions and impact appear puny: S. Finer, The History of Government, 3 vols., Oxford, 1997, vol. 1, pp. 472–3. For a fuller study of the First Emperor, see D. Bodde, ‘The State and Empire of Ch’in’, in D. Twitchett and M. Loewe (eds.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1: The Ch’in and Han Empires 221 BC–AD 220, Cambridge, 1986, ch. 1. Michael Doyle, Empires, Ithaca, NY, 1986, is perceptive as regards institutionalization.

56 On this and many other points discussed in this section, see the excellent Lentz, Nouvelle histoire, vol. 3: La France et l’Europe de Napoléon 1804–1814, Paris, 2007. As will be evident from the above, I agree with Professor Lentz on the question of ideology: see pp. 671–5 of his book.

57 VPR, 5, no. 142, Memorandum of F. P. Pahlen, not later than 14/26 Nov. 1809, pp. 294–5.

58 On Napoleon’s ‘Indian projects’ and Russian fears that they would be forced to serve them, see V. Bezotosnyi, ‘Indiiskie proekty Napoleona i Rossiia v 1812 g.’, in Epokha 1812 goda: Issledovaniia, istochniki, istoriografiia, 161, TGIM, Moscow, 2006, vol. 5, pp. 7–22.