The War of Wars (75 page)

To his great relief he learnt that the Tsar was not prepared to fight on. Alexander had decided that the Prussian cause was lost, and preferred to make peace with Napoleon with his armies more or less intact, diverting his designs southwards again. The two most aggressive and expansionist powers in Europe had fought each other to a bloody standstill.

On 18 June Napoleon marched forward to the village of Tilsit to engage the enemy, should they have the impudence to stand their ground. But the following day he wrote: ‘A curious incident which made the soldiers laugh, occurred for the first time near Tilsit; we met a horde of Kalmucks, who fought with bows and arrows. I control the Niemen. I shall probably conclude an armistice this evening.’

The ensuing ‘summit’ – a meeting between two unbalanced and aggressive autocrats – was staged amidst incredible theatre. Alexander would not recognize that he had been defeated, quite justifiably, as his six-month-old duel had ended with honours about even, and refused
to come to French-held territory. Napoleon refused to cross over into Russia. So they met on a huge raft in the middle of the river Niemen near Tilsit. The raft consisted of a sophisticated tent which contained a large and comfortable room and two waiting-rooms, one for each potentate, which opened into it. At midday on 25 June two boats set off from opposite banks, Napoleon with his childish vanity insisting that his oarsmen get there first, which they did, permitting him to stride through the raft to the door where the Tsar was expected and greet him patronizingly.

The Tsar met him with the remark, ‘Sire, I hate the English as much as you do.’ There was, in fact, some justice in this observation: for months, as Napoleon re-equipped his defeated army after Eylau, the Tsar had begged the British to open a second front against the French by sending an expeditionary force into the Baltic. This Grenville, desperate for peace and seeking to disengage Britain from the continent, had refused to do. Now the Tsar was deeply disillusioned with his old ally.

Instead, he sought to divide up Europe with the other continental predator. There was no reason why this should not work: Napoleon had no territorial designs on Russia: in Poland, the German states and Austria he had a buffer against possible Russian expansionism. An arrangement with Russia would allow him to dismember the already cowed Prussia, and would enable him to dispense with any threat from Austria, which was already beaten and would be deprived of the two allies which could make her dangerous – Russia and Prussia.

A favourable agreement with Russia would, in short, secure the eastern boundaries of Europe for a dominant French empire. Once it was concluded, France would be free to do anything she chose, expand in the Middle East or, as Napoleon had told Talleyrand, invade Spain, and strangle economically his most hated enemy, enfeebled Britain. He regarded Portugal and Sweden, Britain’s two remaining allies, as ineffectual.

Napoleon’s reply to Alexander’s opening sally was ‘in that case, peace is established’. The two men eyed each other in the comfort of the barge’s well appointed central room. Small and now growing tubby, Napoleon was much less prepossessing than the lean, and
bright-eyed young man he had been during his twenties and early thirties. Yet he combined extraordinary mental and physical energy with a delight in the pleasures of life. By contrast the manic-depressive young Tsar had an inscrutable human dimension which the Frenchman could not fathom. He described him initially as ‘handsome and excellent’, with ‘more intelligence than is generally supposed’. It has often been said that the sexually ambivalent Napoleon was physically attracted to the handsome young Tsar: ‘Were Alexander a woman, I think I should fall passionately in love with him,’ Napoleon said. But he would hardly have meant that remark to be interpreted literally: it reflected their common interests at that stage. There were compelling political reasons for their closeness.

Altogether they spent twenty days in each other’s company, exchanging reviews, dinners and presents on the raft and on their respective opposite banks, while the real business was conducted by their underlings on shore. The feeble King of Prussia watched as his country was gobbled up. The only figure to emerge with credit was his tough-minded, beautiful young wife, to whom Napoleon took a shine even while refusing her entreaties. (According to a respected British envoy in Germany, Henry Williams Wynn, she had already had an affair with the Tsar). He wrote later:

The Queen of Prussia had decided ability, a good education and fine manners; it was she, really, who had reigned for more than fifteen years; and, in spite of all my efforts and skill, she retained command of our conversation, and always got back to her subject, perhaps even too much so, and yet with perfect propriety and in a manner that aroused no antagonism. In truth, the matter was an important one for her, and time was short and precious . . .

She was tormenting me for Magdeburg; she wanted to obtain a promise from me. I kept refusing politely. There was a rose on the chimney; I took it, and offered it to her. She drew her hand back, saying: If it is with Magdeburg! – I answered at once: – But Madam, it is I who am offering the rose! – After this conversation I conducted her to her carriage; she asked for Duroc [Napoleon’s closest friend], whom she liked, and began to cry, saying: – I have been deceived!

She found an unlikely ally in Talleyrand who wrote:

I was indignant at all that I saw and heard, but I was obliged to hide my indignation. Therefore I shall all my life be grateful to the Queen of Prussia – a Queen of another age – for having appreciated it. If when I look back upon my life much that I find there is necessarily painful, I can at least remember as a great consolation what she was then good enough to say and almost to confide to me. ‘Monsieur the Prince of Benevento,’ she said, the last time that I had the honour to conduct her to her carriage, ‘there are only two people here who are sorry that I came – you and I. You are not angry, are you, that I should go away with this belief?’ The tears of emotion and pride that came into my eyes were my answer.

The resulting treaty, signed on 7 July, was one of the most cynical in history. Prussia was reduced to its 1772 frontier and in spite of the Queen’s entreaties the province of Magdeburg, seat of Prussian power, was to remain in French hands. All of western Prussia as well as much of Hanover was incorporated into the new kingdom of Westphalia, to be ruled by Jerome Bonaparte, and would be part of the French puppet Confederation of the Rhine. Danzig was also to remain under French occupation. The Prussian army was to be reduced to 42,000 men. French troops would remain until Prussia paid colossal reparations, and the latter would also have to embrace the Continental System.

Russia also agreed to abandon its old ally Britain and join the Continental System. Napoleon and Alexander agreed to partition Poland: part of the territory was given to Russia, while the rest was to become the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which would be ruled by the French puppet King of Saxony, and would form part of the Confederation of the Rhine. In a secret protocol Russia agreed to help France capture Gibraltar from Britain and not to oppose French ambitions in Spain and Portugal.

In exchange for these concessions, Alexander was offered his share of the spoils. As well as the slice of Poland and suppression of the independence movement there, he was given a free hand to take
over Finland. Finally, Napoleon abandoned his recently acquired Turkish ally and gave Alexander a free hand to attack Turkey’s provinces in the Balkans. In addition Napoleon abandoned another ally, Persia, to which he had promised Russian-occupied Georgia; instead he proposed a 50,000-strong joint Franco-Russian expeditionary force to conquer Persia and British India. Finally, Napoleon sought the hand of Alexander’s sister Catherine in a dynastic marriage that would symbolize the carve-up of a continent between its two most aggressive powers, although he reckoned without the snobbery of the Romanovs and the hatred of the Tsar’s mother.

The Prussians were not the only ones to feel resentment after Tilsit. In Austria there was revulsion at the treaty. Philippe Stadion, the new Austrian foreign minister, suspected that Napoleon was planning to install the Archduke Frederick, Francis’s younger brother, as Emperor. Prince Clement von Metternich, who had been appointed Austrian ambassador in Paris, was a little more optimistic, believing the alliance would not last long.

Napoleon returned in triumph from Tilsit to Paris on 27 July to celebrate his birthday the following month amid scenes of extraordinary splendour. He had to reassert his authority in the capital, which had been seething with resentment against both its economic difficulties and his long absences. The chief intriguer was the duplicitous chief of police, Fouché, who was both a rival and an ally to Talleyrand, with whom he corresponded. The latter was by now thinking of overthrowing Napoleon: on his return to Paris he was ‘promoted’ to the meaningless post of vice-grand elector, losing his job as foreign minister, and joining the equally powerless former Second and Third Consuls who held the posts of Arch Chancellor and Arch Treasurer respectively. The new foreign minister, Champagny, was merely a tool of Napoleon.

The Emperor himself was not content with having secured his empire’s eastern boundaries and with ruling over a population of 70 million people, unparalleled in Europe since the reigns of Charlemagne or Augustus Caesar. His country was crying out for effective administration. But to settle down to an era of peace was entirely foreign to his nature. He was a general, not a man of peace. Besides, he still was
opposed by a yet unvanquished enemy. So it was to Britain that he now turned.

Britain by the middle of 1807 appeared hardly to present much of a challenge. Pitt and Nelson were gone. Politically, the country was in a shambles: the collapse of the Grenville government had left the undistinguished Duke of Portland in power precariously with only the young bloods, George Canning at the foreign office and Lord Castlereagh at the war office, lending it a guiding hand. Even as they took power, the half-hearted nature of British resistance to Napoleon was apparent in a series of extraordinary and mostly failed minor military expeditions.

Only the first proved at all successful: this had been designed by Grenville. In 1806 the commander of British forces in Sicily, Sir John Stuart, set off with 8,000 of the 12,000 garrison for the Italian mainland, reaching the Bay of Santa Euphamia, some fifty miles north of Messina on 1 July. A French force under General Reynier attacked across the Lamato river on 4 July. The British doggedly stood their ground, then volleyed repeatedly and charged with their bayonets, entirely routing the French. Soon the remaining 40,000 or so French were moving to attack them and Stuart and his naval commander Sir Sidney Smith decided hastily to re-embark.

Two more peculiar episodes were to follow. The first was launched in February 1807, when it seemed that Turkey had decided to ally itself to France. Sir John Duckworth, a somewhat unimaginative admiral in charge of eight ships of the line and three frigates, was ordered to go to the Dardanelles and seize the Turkish fleet – twelve warships and nine frigates – to prevent this falling into Napoleon’s hands.

On 19 February Duckworth sailed into the narrow Channel of the Dardanelles – twelve miles long and two miles wide in places – under intense fire from the Turkish forts on either side. Sir Sidney Smith, heading the squadron, destroyed eight frigates and some lesser ships in a vigorous exchange of fire before the little fleet proceeded to Constantinople. Duckworth ignored his orders to attack and negotiated with the Turks for ten days before getting nowhere, and deciding to withdraw.

By that time the Turks had reinforced their forts along the Dardanelles bringing ‘stone-shot’ guns to bear capable of firing giant pieces of granite some 800 pounds in weight. These inflicted massive damage on the retreating warships, nearly sinking five ships and killing 167 men. The expedition had been costly and entirely pointless.

It was followed up by another under Major-General Fraser from Messina to Egypt, with the aim of expelling the Turks from that country. At first Fraser’s 5,000 landed safely on 21 March and took the fort of Alexandria, losing just seventeen men and taking two Turkish frigates. The hapless Duckworth now also arrived and decided to seize the port of Rosetta. He landed two regiments which marched into the town with its narrow streets and were ambushed from the surrounding buildings with the loss of a staggering 400 men, many of whose heads were chopped off and put on pikes. The remainder struggled back to Alexandria.

Another, larger, expedition was organized, but by that time the Turks had rushed up reinforcements from Cairo. For some reason, the British decided not to use artillery, and their 2,500 men were again ambushed in the narrow streets and repulsed after appallingly bloody fighting, leaving an even worse tally of 1,000 dead. Fraser withdrew from Alexandria in September having accomplished nothing.

These desultory and largely disastrous expeditions were the sole significant British operations against Napoleonic France in Europe in some twenty months after the victory at Trafalgar. They reflected the Grenville government’s desire for peace on the continent and its intention to concentrate on the further-flung British colonies. It was in fact ridiculous for Napoleon to assert that at this time the British posed a real threat to peace or even a challenge to him. But the Emperor, having vanquished continental Europe, still needed an enemy: and it was his attempt to enforce the Continental System – the blockade of Britain – that finally once again galvanized Albion into action.

Canning and Castlereagh, of a more warlike disposition, both learnt of Napoleon’s intention to issue an ultimatum to the Danes to join an alliance with France and hand over the fleet at Copenhagen through an extraordinary British intelligence coup at Tilsit.

A great spy of that period was the shadowy A. Mackenzie: nothing is known of his origins or identity. This extraordinary man had wormed his way into the confidence of the Russian commander-in-chief, General Bennigsen, before the historic encounter between Napoleon and the Tsar on the raft at Tilsit. Bennigsen at the time was furious with the way the Tsar had blamed him for the previous debacle at the Battle of Friedland. It has been suggested that Mackenzie actually managed to get aboard the raft, but it seems extraordinarily unlikely that a British agent could have smuggled himself aboard without being detected. He probably instead received his intelligence at second-hand from Bennigsen, who was aboard.