1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow

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Caesar

As the first cannon shot thundered out from the guns drawn up before the Invalides on the morning of 20 March 1811, an extraordinary silence fell over Paris. Wagons and carriages came to a standstill, pedestrians halted, people appeared at their windows, schoolboys looked up from their books. Everyone began to count as the discharges succeeded each other at a measured pace. In the stables of the École Militaire, the cavalry of the Guard were grooming their horses. ‘Suddenly, the sound of a gun from the Invalides stopped every arm, suspended every movement; brushes and curry-combs hung in the air,’ according to one young Chasseur. ‘In the midst of this multitude of men and horses, you could have heard a mouse stir.’1

As news had spread on the previous evening that the Empress had gone into labour, many patrons had given their workmen the next day off, and these swarmed expectantly in the streets around the Tuileries palace. The Paris Bourse had ceased dealing that morning, and the only financial transactions taking place were bets on the sex of the child. But the excitement was just as great among those who had nothing riding on it.

‘It would be difficult to imagine with what anxiety the first cannon shots were counted,’ recalled one witness: everyone knew that twenty-one would announce the birth of a girl, and one hundred that of a boy. ‘A profound silence reigned until the twenty-first, but when the twenty-second roared forth, there was an explosion of congratulation and cheering which rang out simultaneously in every part of Paris.’2 People went wild, embracing total strangers and shouting ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ Others danced in the streets as the remaining seventy-eight shots thundered out in a rolling barrage.

‘Paris had never, even on the greatest holidays, offered a picture of more general joyfulness,’ noted another witness; ‘there was celebration everywhere.’3 A balloon went up, bearing into the sky the celebrated aeronaut Madame Blanchard with thousands of printed notices of the happy tidings, which she scattered across the countryside. Messengers galloped off in all directions with the news. That evening there were fireworks and the capital was illuminated, with candles in the windows of even humble mansard rooms. Theatres staged special performances, printmakers began churning out soppy images of the imperial infant borne on celestial clouds with crowns and laurels hovering over him, and poets set to work on commemorative odes. ‘But what one will never be able to convey adequately,’ wrote the young Comte de Ségur, ‘is the wild intoxication of that surge of public rejoicing as the twenty-second cannon shot announced to France that there had been born a direct heir to Napoleon and to the Empire!’4

The twenty-year-old Empress Marie-Louise had felt the first pains at around seven o’clock on the previous evening. Dr Antoine Dubois, Premier Accoucheur of the Empire, was on hand. He was soon joined by Dr Corvisart, the First Physician, Dr Bourdier, the Physician-in-Ordinary to the Empress, and Napoleon’s surgeon Dr Yvan. The Emperor, his mother and sisters, and the various ladies of the Empress’s household brought to twenty-two the number of those attending her, either in her bedroom or in the next chamber.

Beyond that, the salons of the Tuileries were filled with some two hundred officials and dignitaries, who had been summoned at the first signs of the Empress going into labour and stood about awkwardly in full court dress. Every now and then, one of the ladies-in-waiting on duty would come out and give them a progress report. As the evening wore on, small tables were brought in and they were served a light supper of chicken with rice washed down with Chambertin. But the banter was subdued: things were clearly not proceeding smoothly in the Empress’s bedroom. At about five in the morning the Grand Marshal of the Empire came out and informed them that the pains had ceased and the Empress had fallen asleep. He told them they could go home, but must remain on call. Some went, but many of the exhausted courtiers stretched out on benches or rolled up carpets into makeshift mattresses and lay down on them in all their finery to snatch some sleep.

Napoleon had been with Marie-Louise throughout, talking to her and comforting her with all the solicitude of a nervous father-to-be. When she fell asleep Dubois told him he could go and take some rest. Napoleon could do without sleep. His preferred means of relaxation was to lie in a very hot bath, which he believed in as a cure for most of his ailments, be it a cold or constipation, from which he suffered regularly. And that is what he did now.

He had not been luxuriating in the hot water for long when Dubois came running up the concealed stairs that led from his apartment to the Empress’s bedroom. The labour pains had started again, and the doctor was anxious, as the baby was presenting itself awkwardly. Napoleon asked him if there was any danger. Dubois nodded, expressing dismay that such a complication had occurred with the Empress. ‘Forget that she is Empress, and treat her as you would the wife of any shopkeeper in the rue Saint Denis,’ Napoleon interrupted him, adding: ‘And whatever happens, save the mother!’ He got out of his bath, dressed hastily and went down to join the doctors at his wife’s bedside.

The Empress screamed when she saw Dubois take out his forceps, but Napoleon calmed her, holding her hand and stroking her while the Comtesse de Montesquiou and Dr Corvisart held her still. The baby emerged feet first, and Dubois had a job getting the head clear. After much pulling and easing, at around six in the morning he delivered it. The baby appeared lifeless, and Dubois laid it aside as he and the others attended to the mother, who seemed to be in danger. But Corvisart picked up the child and began to rub him briskly. After about seven minutes of this he came to life, and the doctor handed him to the Comtesse de Montesquiou, with the comment that it was a boy. Napoleon, who could see that Marie-Louise was by now out of danger, took the baby in his arms and, bursting into the adjoining room where all the senior officers of the Empire were gathered, expecting the worst, exclaimed: ‘Behold the King of Rome! Two hundred cannon shots!’

But when his sister-in-law, Queen Hortense, came up to congratulate him a moment later, he replied: ‘I cannot feel the happiness – the poor woman has suffered so much!’5 He meant it. They had been married for just one year, and the arranged match had quickly turned into an almost cloyingly loving relationship. One of thirteen children of the Austrian Emperor Francis II, Marie-Louise had been her father’s favourite, his ‘adorable poupée’. She had been brought up to hate Napoleon and to refer to him as ‘the Corsican’, ‘the usurper’, ‘Attila’ or ‘the Antichrist’. But, when diplomacy demanded it, she bowed to her father’s will. And once she had tasted the pleasures of the marital bed there was no restraining her enthusiasm for the Emperor. Napoleon, who had been thrilled at the idea of having in his bed ‘a daughter of the Caesars’, as he referred to her – and one half his age – quickly became moonstruck, and their marriage turned into a middle-class idyll.

That evening, as the capital celebrated, the child was baptised according to the age-old rites of the French royal family. The next day Napoleon held a grand audience, seated on the imperial throne, to receive formal congratulations. The entire court then accompanied him to see the infant, who lay in a superb silver-gilt cradle presented by the city of Paris. It had been designed by the artist Pierre Prudhon and represented a figure of Glory holding a triumphal crown and a young eagle ascending towards the bright star which symbolised Napoleon. The chancellors of the Légion d’Honneur and of the Iron Cross laid the insignia of both orders on cushions beside the sleeping child. The painter François Gérard set to work on a portrait.

Over the next days homage of every kind poured in, and cities throughout the country joined Paris in celebrating as the news reached them, each in turn sending a delegation to deliver its congratulations. The same process was repeated as the news rippled out to the more far-flung parts of the Empire and to other countries. Such expressions were to be expected in the circumstances. But there was a great deal more to the celebrations and congratulations than just loyal humbug – to most Frenchmen the birth of a boy heralded a period of peace and stability, and much more besides.

France had been at war virtually without interruption for nineteen years. She had been attacked, in 1792, by a coalition of Prussia and Austria. Over the next years these were joined by Britain, Spain, Russia and other lesser powers, all of them bent on defeating revolutionary France and restoring the Bourbon dynasty. It was not a fight over territory. It was an ideological struggle over the future order of Europe. Atrocities aside, revolutionary France had brought into public life all the ideals of the Enlightenment, and her very existence was seen by the monarchical powers as a threat to theirs. She had made ample use of this weapon in order to defend herself, by exporting revolution and subverting provinces belonging to her enemies. She had gradually turned from victim to aggressor, but she was nevertheless fighting for survival. Revolutionary France could not secure a lasting peace, as virtually every other power in Europe would not reconcile itself to the survival of the republican regime, and felt a necessity to destroy it.

General Napoleon Bonaparte’s seizure of power in Paris in November 1799 should have broken this vicious circle of fear and aggression. He reined in the demagogues, closed the Pandora’s box opened by the revolution and tidied up the mess. Being a child of the Enlightenment as well as a despot, he mobilised the energies of France and harnessed them to the task of building a well-ordered, prosperous and powerful state, the ‘état policé’ of which the philosophes of the Enlightenment had dreamed. He was following in the footsteps of rulers such as Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine the Great of Russia and Joseph II of Austria, who had introduced social and economic reforms while strengthening the framework of the state, and who were universally admired for this. But to their successors, Bonaparte was but a grotesque upstart, a malignant outgrowth of the evil revolution.

By 1801, following a series of resounding victories, Bonaparte was able to force peace on all the powers of the European continent. France’s security was guaranteed by expanded frontiers and the creation of a series of theoretically autonomous republics in northern Italy, Switzerland and Holland which were in fact French provinces. In March 1802 Bonaparte even concluded the Peace of Amiens with Britain. But this was not likely to last.

To Britain, France’s hegemony in Europe was intolerable. To France, Britain’s superiority at sea was a constant threat. French designs on Malta, Egypt and India were a hazy but nevertheless haunting nightmare to Britain, while Britain’s ability to use allies on the European mainland to make war by proxy was a source of continuing anxiety to France. Hostilities between the two resumed in May 1803.

During the following year Bonaparte himself revived opposition to his rule throughout Europe. In March 1804 he ordered the young Bourbon Duc d’Enghien to be seized at Ettenheim in the state of Baden just outside the borders of France and brought to Paris. He was convinced that the Duke was involved in a conspiracy to overthrow him and restore the monarchy, and had him executed after a summary judgement. This violation of every accepted law and principle horrified Europe. It confirmed the opinion of those who saw Bonaparte as the devil incarnate, and reinforced the notion of a fight to the death between the sanctified order as embodied in the ancien régime and the forces of evil in the form of revolutionary France.

France was in fact no longer exporting revolution. She had become little more than a vehicle for the ambitions of Bonaparte, who a couple of months later proclaimed himself Emperor of the French under the name of Napoleon I. What exactly these ambitions consisted of has perplexed and divided historians over two centuries, for Napoleon was never consistent in anything. His utterances can at best be taken to illustrate some of his thoughts and feelings, while his actions were often erratic and contradictory. He was intelligent and pragmatic, yet he allowed himself to indulge the most far-fetched fantasies; he was the ultimate opportunist, yet he could get caught up in his own dogma; he was a great cynic, yet he pursued romantic dreams. There was no grand idea or master project.

Napoleon was in large measure driven by nothing more complicated than the lust for power and domination over others. Attendant on this was an often childish set of reactions at being thwarted in any way. Having no sense of justice and no respect for the wishes of others, he took any objection to his actions as gratuitous rebellion, and responded with disproportionate vehemence. Instead of ignoring a minor setback or turning an obstacle, he would unleash bluster and force, which often involved him in unnecessarily costly head-on collisions.

He was also driven by a curious sense of destiny, a self-invented notion of a kind often affected by young men brought up on Romantic literature (his favourite reading had been the poems of Ossian and The Sorrows of Young Werther), which he came to believe in himself. ‘Is there a man blind enough not to see,’ he had declared during his Egyptian campaign in 1798, ‘that destiny directs all my operations?’6 Napoleon was also a great admirer of the plays of Corneille, and there is reason to believe he saw himself as acting out some great tragedy in their mould.

This sense of living out a destiny was to lead him repeatedly into acting against his better judgement in pursuit of nebulous dreams. His triumphs in Italy, followed by his spectacular victories at Austerlitz and Jena, only confirmed him in this fantasy, which communicated itself to his troops. ‘The intoxication of our joyful and proud exaltation was at its height,’ wrote one young officer after Napoleon’s triumph over Prussia. ‘One of our army corps proclaimed itself "the Tenth Legion of the New Caesar"!, another demanded that Napoleon should henceforth be known as "The Emperor of the West!"’7

But Napoleon was also the ruler of France. As such, he was inevitably driven by the same political, cultural and psychological motors which had dictated the policies of French rulers of the past such as François I and Louis XIV, who had striven for French hegemony over Europe in order to achieve lasting security.

France had always sought to impose a balance in central Europe that would prevent a major mobilisation of German forces against her, and she had achieved this by the Treaty of Westphalia back in 1648, in which she and Austria, jointly with a number of other powers, had put in place a whole series of checks and balances. This system had been undone in the second half of the eighteenth century by the rise of Prussian power and the emergence of Russia as a player in European affairs, manifested most critically in huge shifts of power in Germany, the partition and disappearance of Poland, and the race for control of the Balkans. In view of this, it was quite natural that Napoleon should seek to reassert French interests, and in doing so he was pursuing a traditional vision of a ‘French’ Europe as much as his own personal ambition. It was a vision that appeared to have history on its side.

In the eighteenth century France had become the cynosure of Europe in terms of culture and political thought. Her paramountcy in these spheres was consolidated by the revolution, whose fundamental message and ideas were admired and accepted by élites all over the Continent. The French political and military classes saw themselves as ‘la Grande Nation’, the first nation in Europe to have emancipated itself, and considered themselves to be armed with a mission to carry the benefits of what they had achieved to other peoples. This was the age of neo-Classicism, and they began to see France as the next Rome, the fount from which this new ideological civilisation radiated, the capital of the modern world.

Napoleon was not immune to the enthusiasms of his age. As befitted the most powerful individual since the days of the Caesars, he issued decrees ordering the cleaning of the Tiber and the Forum Romanum, and the preservation of its monuments. Shortly after the birth of the King of Rome, he set in motion plans for an imperial palace on the Capitol. But he also intended to build one for the Pope in Paris, arguing that this was where he should move, just as St Peter had moved to Rome from the Holy Land.8

As early as the mid-1790s, the French revolutionary armies began to bring home to Paris not only valuables and works of art, but also libraries, scientific instruments and entire archives. This epic bout of looting was not the product of mere greed. The idea was that everything most useful to the development of civilisation should be concentrated at the heart of the Empire, and not allowed to benefit only a few in outlying provinces. ‘The French Empire shall become the metropolis of all other sovereignties,’ Napoleon once said to a friend. ‘I want to force every king in Europe to build a large palace for his use in Paris. When an Emperor of the French is crowned, these kings shall come to Paris, and they shall adorn that imposing ceremony with their presence and salute it with their homage.’ It was not so much a question of France ‘über alles’. ‘European society needs a regeneration,’ Napoleon asserted in conversation in 1805. ‘There must be a superior power which dominates all the other powers, with enough authority to force them to live in harmony with one another – and France is the best placed for that purpose.’ He was, like many a tyrant, utopian in his ambitions. ‘We must have a European legal system, a European appeal court, a common currency, the same weights and measures, the same laws,’ Napoleon once said to Joseph Fouché. ‘I must make of all the peoples of Europe one people, and of Paris the capital of the world.’9

France’s claim to the mantle of Imperial Rome seemed to gain validation when, in 1810, Napoleon married Marie-Louise, daughter of the last Holy Roman Emperor Francis II. His father-in-law, now Emperor of Austria under the name of Francis I, appeared to acquiesce in this transference of power. When Napoleon produced an heir, Francis ceded to the child the title of King of Rome, which had traditionally been that of the son of the Holy Roman Emperor.

France’s position on the Continent was by then one of unprecedented power; her political culture and the new system were imposed over vast areas of Europe. But to the average Frenchman this was of less interest than the benefits the past decade had brought him at home. All the most positive gains of the revolution had been salvaged, but order, prosperity and stability had been guaranteed, and a general amnesia if not amnesty had allowed those divided by the struggles of the revolution to put the more unpleasant aspects of the past behind them. Whether this new order would survive depended not only on Napoleon’s ability to defend it, but on his ability to guarantee its continuance by cancelling out the possibility of a Bourbon restoration. A return of the Bourbons would mean not only a return to the ancien régime; it would also raise the prospect of much score-settling.

In this respect, the birth of the King of Rome was crucial. Most of Napoleon’s subjects believed that their ruler, who had recently turned forty, would henceforth be inclined to spend more time with his family than with his armies, that Napoleon the Great would in time be succeeded by Napoleon II, and that the rest of Europe would accept that the Bourbons had been consigned to history. That was why they rejoiced. ‘People sincerely anticipated a period of profound peace; the idea of war and occupations of that sort were no longer entertained as being realistic,’ wrote Napoleon’s chief of police, General Savary, adding that the child appeared to all as the guarantor of political stability.10