Napoleon: a life

35 Apogee

NAPOLEON WOULD LATER blame his marriage to an Austrian archduchess for his downfall, referring to her as ‘that bank of roses obscuring the abyss’. There was something in that, as its joys did distract him and its fruits deceived him, with fatal consequences. He was besotted with his new bride and seemed to revel in the possession of this fresh, young, submissive yet lusty girl with her imperial blood.^[1]

In a report to his emperor, Metternich had characterised Napoleon as a ‘good family man, with those accents which one finds most often in middle-class Italian families’, but the Latin paternalism had given way to deference and become tinged with Austrian Gemütlichkeit. He ordered paintings of battles fought against the Austrians to be removed from the imperial palaces and commissioned views of Schönbrunn and Laxenburg, where Marie-Louise had grown up. Where he had chided Josephine for being late, he waited obsequiously for his new bride. He who had never spent more than twenty minutes at table now sat patiently as she munched her way through seven courses. She was bored by the tragedies of Corneille and Racine that he loved, so he sat through comedies that he despised. He was so deferential that she confessed to Metternich that she thought he was a little in awe of her.^[2]

He went hunting more often than before, mainly to get some exercise and exhaust himself; he dashed about on his horse wherever his fancy took him, to the exasperation of Berthier, who as grand huntsman planned the hunt with his usual thoroughness. It did not prevent him putting on weight, and those around him felt he had slowed down and declined physically. He was not eating more than usual, so there must have been another cause to his slide into obesity. It has been convincingly argued that it was probably the failure of his pituitary gland, which can affect men around the age of forty, leading to weight gain and genital shrinkage, from which he also suffered according to post-mortem examinations.^[3]

His workload remained impressive, but less strenuous. In the past he had been continually on the road, obsessed as he was with taking matters in hand and judging on the spot before making decisions. He was now travelling less; he had never before spent such a long time in Paris and its environs. Many saw in this an encouraging development. At the marriage banquet in April 1810, Metternich had proposed a toast ‘To the King of Rome!’—the title traditionally borne by the heir to the Holy Roman Empire. The Austrian chancellor’s toast suggested that the Habsburg monarchy had ceded its rights to the new emperor of the West, and the age-old struggle between the House of Austria and France was at an end. It implied that the birth of a King of Rome would seal a lasting peace, and as soon as it was confirmed that the empress was pregnant people began to pray for it.^[4]

As she went into labour on the evening of 19 March 1811, the court gathered at the Tuileries, while doctors Corvisart and Dubois took charge, attended by two surgeons. Expectation gripped the city. The stock exchange closed, and many employers gave their workers the day off. The birth would be announced, as were victories and major events, by the firing of cannon: twenty-one shots for a girl and one hundred for a boy. On the esplanade in front of the Invalides, the gunners of the Imperial Guard primed their pieces and waited for the order to fire.

They had to wait all night, as the birth proved a difficult one. Napoleon remained at his wife’s bedside from the moment the labour started at about seven in the evening, showing signs of distress at her pain. This subsided at around five o’clock in the morning and she fell asleep, so he went to have a bath. It was not long before a nervous Dr Dubois came hurriedly up the hidden staircase to tell him that there were complications, as the baby was presenting itself badly. Napoleon asked whether there was any danger, and the doctor replied that the empress’s life was threatened. ‘Forget she is the empress and treat her as you would a shopkeeper’s wife from the rue Saint-Denis,’ Napoleon interrupted him, adding, ‘And whatever happens, save the mother!’ He dressed and joined the doctors at her bedside, calming her as Dr Dubois took out his forceps. The baby came out feet first, and it took some time to get the head clear, during which Marie-Louise screamed so much Napoleon was in tears. At around eight in the morning the child was born. Having satisfied himself that the mother was out of danger, Napoleon took the child in his arms and stepped into the adjoining salon where the dignitaries of the empire were waiting, bleary-eyed after their long vigil. ‘Behold the King of Rome!’ he declared. An aide ran through the rooms and out to his waiting horse to give the gunners their orders.^[5]

At the first shot, the city came to a standstill. People opened their windows and came out of shops, carriages and wagons pulled up, pedestrians stopped. The first twenty-one were fired at intervals of several seconds so everyone could count them. When the twenty-second was heard, ‘there rang out across the town a long shout of joy which ran through it like an electric current’, in the words of one lady. It was accompanied by the remaining seventy-eight shots delivered in quick succession, and the pealing of bells from every church in Paris. A police report noted that two porters at Les Halles who were on the point of coming to blows paused at the first shot and embraced at the twenty-second. Even opponents of the regime and enemies of Napoleon felt joy. To many it seemed as though the future was secure, and a pax gallica would descend on Europe. In a poem dedicated to Marie-Louise, Goethe represented her union with Napoleon in cosmic terms, referring to her as ‘the beautiful bride of peace’.^[6]

That evening, while the people of Paris celebrated, the child was baptised according to the rites of the French royal family — he had already been assigned as governess the same comtesse de Montesquiou who had brought up the children of Louis XVI. The next morning, seated on his throne, Napoleon received the congratulations of the Senate, the Legislative and other bodies of the government and administration, the diplomatic corps, and the municipal authorities, after which they accompanied him to view the infant as he lay in a cradle donated by the city of Paris, featuring a figure of Glory holding a crown, with an eagle ascending toward a star representing Napoleon. Over the next days congratulations poured in from every corner of the empire, and from every foreign court except that of St James’s.

Aside from the satisfaction he felt at the birth of an heir, Napoleon was as moved as any man by the experience of fatherhood; he immediately sent a page to inform Josephine of the birth. He may even have taken the child later to Malmaison for her to see. He still felt deep affection for her, and every year after the divorce he would send her a million francs in addition to her settlement. When Mollien informed him that she wanted three more officers to attend her, Napoleon told him ‘not to make her cry’ and let her have them. He had hoped that Marie-Louise would come to accept her as a friend, and that he would be able to accommodate them both in his life, and was, according to Hortense, put out by the younger woman’s jealousy.^[7]

The notion that the blessings of peace were about to descend on France was enhanced by numerous depictions of Napoleon as a father figure of the nation and a pacific family man. An engraving published in Vienna showed a nativity scene, with Marie-Louise as the Virgin, Napoleon’s son as the infant Christ, the kings of Saxony, Bavaria, and Württemberg as the three wise men, and the other rulers of the Confederation of the Rhine as the shepherds, and, hovering on a cloud, Napoleon himself as God the Father declaring, ‘This is My Son, in whom I am well pleased.’^[8]

On 9 June 1811 Napoleon and Marie-Louise drove in the coronation coach to Notre Dame for the ceremonial christening of their son. The two-month-old baby was baptised by Cardinal Fesch in a church packed with marshals, members of the court, the public bodies, representatives of all the cities of the empire, foreign princes, and the diplomatic corps. This was followed by a banquet at the Hôtel de Ville at which Napoleon, his consort, and the royals present sat at table wearing their crowns. There followed a court ball and, in the Champs-Élysées, fireworks and free food, wine, and dancing for the people of Paris.

‘Now begins the finest epoch of my reign,’ Napoleon declared shortly after the birth of his son, and appearances seemed to bear this out. Miot de Melito, who came to Paris for the baptism after an absence of five years, was astonished at the change the city had undergone. Everywhere he saw new buildings, bridges, and monuments, he drove down elegant quais and across open spaces, visited the Louvre and other museums, and was overwhelmed by the city’s magnificence.^[9]

Paris, with its wide streets, grand buildings, fountains, and gardens was only the centre, from which fourteen grand imperial roads and as many improved lesser ones, supported by 202 subsidiary ones, radiated to the furthest points of the empire. Travel time was cut by at least half in the course of Napoleon’s rule, and with a network of 1,400 posting stages and 16,000 horses, the Messageries impériales could carry people and post at unprecedented speed. The telegraph had been extended to Amsterdam, Mainz, and Venice. There was a plan to link the river Seine to the Baltic with a new canal. Decrees had been issued for the cleaning of the Roman Forum and the dredging and banking of the Tiber and, after the birth of the King of Rome, for a new imperial quarter on the Capitol. Antwerp, Milan, and other cities throughout the empire were improved or, as in the case of La Roche-sur-Yon, built from scratch in deprived areas. Paris boasted the greatest library on earth, but dozens of public libraries had sprung up in medium-sized towns, each the seat of a literary and/or scientific learned society. The empire and its allied states had seen spectacular industrial growth, encouraged by the blockade which excluded outside competition, with the development of metallurgical industries in northeastern France, Belgium, and Saxony, of textile industries in France and northern Italy, and of the sugar-beet industry across northern Europe.

The French empire, with its 130 departments stretching from Amsterdam to Rome and its population of 40 million out of a European total of 170, was the greatest power on the Continent, and to the outside observer looked set to remain so. But in effect, it was a deeply flawed structure with profound problems.

While it had continued to grow on the Continent, it had been shrinking overseas, losing its last colonies to the British: La Petite Terre in 1808; La Désirade, Marie-Galante, Guyana, Saint Louis, Santo Domingo, Saint Lucia, Tobago, Martinique, and the Danish Antilles in 1809; Réunion (renamed Bonaparte in 1806), Guadeloupe, and Île de France in 1810; and Mauritius, Tamatave, and the Seychelles in 1811. Napoleon planned to build up to a hundred ships of the line, but in the hurry to achieve this poor timber was used, while the cannon were of such poor quality, and so prone to explode, that the British did not use captured guns. French privateers did prey on British shipping, taking 519 prizes in 1806, and 619 in 1810, but that was only a pinprick to the British sailing stock, and with the introduction of convoys even that was reduced.^[10]

The real problems were economic: Napoleon’s grand projects and imperial splendour required money, and his need kept growing. His budget went up from 859 million francs in 1810 to 1,103 million the following year. The cost of the land army rose from 377 to 500 million. His court was taking a greater share of government income than that of Louis XVI before the Revolution. He raised taxes and imposed customs duties and other means of indirect taxation (these had more than doubled in the past five years), while looking for economies by eliminating imagined waste. He spent hours inspecting accounts, adding up figures, and delighting in discovering a discrepancy of a few francs; he discussed the necessity of every expense and quibbled with architects, engineers, and builders, accusing them of trying to cheat and insisting that any, even the smallest, extra-budgetary expense be authorised by himself, even in dependent territories such as the grand duchy of Berg. He went through the court accounts looking for waste and haggled with suppliers. He kept lists in his notebooks of everything he had authorised and referred to them to check that nothing had been slipped in without authorisation. At the same time, the published budgets and accounts were as fictitious as his bulletins.^[11]

His military expenditure was enormous. In the past, war had paid for it, and the treaty signed after Wagram had yielded a huge sum in indemnities. Part of the reason for the harshness of its terms was that the campaign had been more costly than previous ones on account of the size of the armies and the quantity of ordnance involved. It had also been more costly in terms of casualties. The war in the Iberian Peninsula was proving equally costly and brought in nothing. Napoleon had raised a loan on the income of the grand duchy of Warsaw to finance his foray into Spain in 1808 (‘Bayonne-like sums’ is still a proverb in Poland today to denote untold riches), looted whatever he could, and sold off as much Church property as he could lay his hands on. He sent as many non-French units as possible to fight there in order to reduce the expense — Westphalian, Dutch, Polish, and Italian troops were equipped and paid by their respective governments, and their casualties did not have an impact on public opinion in France. But the war dragged on, and the cost to his treasury was growing.^[12]

He had meant to return to Spain in the autumn of 1809 to take charge, drive out the British, and impose order. But his divorce and remarriage had distracted him, and when in the spring of 1810 he discovered the joys of life with his new bride, he put off going. There seemed to be no urgency, as the military situation did not look bad: Joseph and Soult had occupied Andalucia and Seville, where they recovered all the standards lost at Bailén, Suchet had taken control of Aragon, and Masséna had pushed Wellesley, now Lord Wellington, back into Portugal. But Napoleon’s policy of sending German, Dutch, and Italian troops to serve in Spain had a deleterious effect, as many of them took the first opportunity to desert, creating a climate which communicated itself to their French comrades who also went over to the enemy.^[13]

Joseph had no control over the French troops supposed to support his rule. Berthier was nominally in command of the Army of Spain but remained in Paris. In February 1810 Napoleon divided Spain into military provinces whose commanders had extraordinary powers, which, since there was nobody in overall command, only dispersed the military effort further. The administration put in place by Joseph was undermined, taxes collected by his officials were seized, and his attempts to impose his authority were ineffectual. By the middle of 1810 he was in conflict with every one of the commanders operating in Spain, and Napoleon ignored him, not bothering to reply to his letters.

Joseph was so exasperated that one day in August he emptied a pair of pistols at a portrait of Napoleon. He wrote to his wife, Julie, saying he had decided to leave Spain, sell Mortefontaine, and find a place far from Paris to retire to. He begged Napoleon to allow him to abdicate, arguing that his health could no longer stand the strain. He came to Paris unbidden for the christening of the King of Rome to plead his case, only to be told to go back to Madrid and wait for Napoleon to come and take things in hand.^[14]

But the possibility of his doing so was receding, as other, financial and political problems loomed. One was a severe economic crisis at the beginning of 1811 which caused a recession across northern Europe and hit France badly, with multiple bankruptcies, a rise in unemployment and strikes, along with riots against conscription and anti-war slogans daubed on walls. Napoleon took measures to provide emergency food for the poor, but he had to look further for additional sources of income, which aggravated an already difficult international situation.

The economic war with Britain was damaging both sides while failing to deliver a result. Just as Britain began to suffer, the French intervention in Spain provided her with a lifeline; the Spanish colonies in Central and South America took advantage of the change of dynasty in Madrid to declare independence and open their ports to British shipping, creating a market for British manufactured goods. And if Britain was economically damaged by the Continental blockade, the effect on France was hardly better: maritime trade had withered, French ships rotted in port, and the treasury was starved of customs revenue. Under pressure to find new sources of income, in 1809 Napoleon allowed merchants to purchase licences to trade with Britain, and not long afterward the British government did the same with regard to France, as the country was running short of grain. Thus, by the end of the year France was exporting brandy, fruit, vegetables, salt, and corn to England and importing timber, hemp, iron, quinine, and cloth. This made a mockery of the Continental System and had profound political consequences, as it was an insult to France’s principal ally, Russia.^[15]

As soon as his marriage to Marie-Louise had been agreed, Napoleon had written to Alexander tactfully announcing his intention. His letter crossed one from Alexander informing him that while he still hoped their two houses would one day be united, the dowager empress had ruled out his marrying the Grand Duchess Anna for another two years on the grounds of her age. It was a polite refusal, and it should have been Napoleon who felt affronted. Yet it was Alexander who was made to look foolish; he had championed the entente with France in the face of hostile public opinion at home, and it now looked as though his ally had snubbed him. The announcement of the Austrian marriage also suggested that Napoleon had been conducting parallel negotiations with Austria, which raised the question of what else might have been agreed. ‘Russia acts only out of fear,’ Metternich had said to Napoleon during his visit to Paris for the wedding in March 1810. ‘She fears France, she fears our relations with her, and, with fear generating more fear, she will act.’ He judged correctly.^[16]

At Tilsit, Napoleon had declared to Alexander that there were no points of friction between the interests of France and those of Russia and that he had no wish to extend French influence beyond the Elbe, adding that the area between that and the Niemen should remain a neutral buffer zone. Yet he had established a French satellite there, and a provocative one at that; the creation of the grand duchy of Warsaw in 1807 was seen in Russia as the first step in a restoration of the kingdom of Poland, which raised the possibility of Russia’s having to give up some if not all of the 463,000 square kilometres, with a population of some seven million, acquired when Poland was liquidated. Many Poles, whether they were citizens of the grand duchy or not, did see it as the nucleus of a restored Poland. When Austria went to war with France in 1809 and the Polish army of the grand duchy invaded Galicia, the part of Poland ruled by Austria, local patriots rose in support. In the peace settlement, Napoleon allowed only a small part of the liberated territory to be added to the grand duchy and awarded the greater part to Russia. It was a typically Napoleonic compromise: it disappointed the Poles without pacifying Russian public opinion, which saw it as a second step in the restoration of Poland.^[17]

Napoleon never intended to restore Poland. All his statements to the contrary date from later, when he was trying to keep the Poles on his side or salvage his reputation. At the time he dismissed the idea firmly and frequently; he regarded Poland as ‘a dead body’ and did not think the Poles capable of reviving it as a viable state. But he could not deny himself a vast pool of soldiers (most of them to fight in Spain), so he encouraged the Poles in thinking he favoured their cause.^[18]

Alexander wanted Napoleon to sign a convention pledging not to allow the restoration of Poland and to take up arms against the Poles should they attempt it. Napoleon replied that while he could declare his opposition to such a revival, he would not and could not undertake to hinder it. To sign the text suggested by Russia would ‘compromise the honour and dignity of France’, as he put it to his foreign minister Champagny; tens of thousands of Poles had fought alongside the French for over a decade, inspired by hopes of a free motherland and convinced of France’s sympathy for their cause.^[19]

On 30 June 1810, when he received a communication from St Petersburg with a list of complaints and a renewed demand that he sign the convention on Poland, and hinting that Russia might not be able to keep up the blockade against Britain without it, Napoleon lost his temper. He summoned the new Russian ambassador, Prince Kurakin, a ridiculous and ineffectual man known in Paris as ‘le prince diamant’, since he never appeared otherwise than covered in decorations and jewellery, who was eloquent testimony to how little Alexander valued developing good relations with France. ‘What does Russia mean by such language?’ Napoleon demanded. ‘Does she want war? Why these continual complaints? Why these insulting suspicions? If I had wished to restore Poland, I would have said so and would not have withdrawn my troops from Germany. Is Russia trying to prepare me for her defection? I will be at war with her the day she makes peace with England.’ He then dictated a letter to Caulaincourt in St Petersburg telling him that if Russia was going to blackmail him and use the Polish question as an excuse to seek a rapprochement with Britain, there would be war. It was an idle threat, as war with Russia was the last thing he wanted.^[20]

Alexander, conversely, was coming to see war as inevitable. Russian society resented the alliance with Napoleon as it associated him with the Revolution and godlessness, as well as fearing that he intended to restore Poland. Orthodox Russian traditionalists regarded the Catholic Poles as the rotten apples in the Slav basket, and the Polish inhabitants of what were now the empire’s western provinces as a fifth column of western corruption within it. Such feelings turned to paranoia when, in the summer of 1810, the Swedish people elected a Frenchman as their crown prince and de facto ruler.

The Swedish king, Charles XIII, was senile and childless, and in their search for a successor, the Swedes looked for a distinguished French soldier who might help them recover Finland, lost to Russia in 1809. They turned to Napoleon, who suggested Eugène. He declined, not wishing to abandon his Catholic faith, so, encouraged by Champagny, they suggested Bernadotte. Napoleon was not best pleased, realising that he might prove less than cooperative, but assumed that he would behave as a Swedish patriot if not a Frenchman — Sweden’s natural enemies were Russia and Prussia and France her traditional ally. The Swedes’ friendly feelings toward France were strained by the Continental System, but their long coastline and their Pomeranian colony on the northern coast of Germany permitted them to breach it. It would also have been a relief to Napoleon to have Bernadotte out of the way.

In Russia, Bernadotte’s election was greeted with uproar. ‘The defeat of Austerlitz, the defeat of Friedland, the Tilsit peace, the arrogance of the French ambassadors in Petersburg, the passive behaviour of the Emperor Alexander I with regard to Napoleon’s policies — these were deep wounds in the heart of every Russian,’ recalled Prince Sergei Volkonsky. ‘Revenge and revenge were the only feelings burning inside each and every one.’^[21]

Such feelings were reinforced by the economic hardships caused by the Continental System. Russia had little industry and was dependent on imports for a variety of everyday items. These now had to be smuggled in via Sweden or through smaller ports on Russia’s Baltic coastline. Her exports — timber, grain, hemp, and so on — were bulky and difficult to smuggle. The Russian ruble fell in value against most European currencies by as much as 25 percent, which made the cost of foreign goods exorbitant. Between 1807 and 1811 the price of coffee more than doubled, sugar became more than three times as expensive, and a bottle of champagne went from 3.75 to 12 rubles. This cocktail of wounded pride and financial hardship produced ever more violent criticism of Alexander’s policy, and the only way he could deflect it was to break free of Napoleon. He had been building up and modernising his army since Tilsit, and back in December 1809, while still pretending to favour Napoleon’s marriage to his sister, he began trying to subvert the Poles with promises of autonomy under Russian aegis.^[22]

The summer of 1810 yielded a poor harvest in England, which coincided with a dramatic fall in the value of sterling. Napoleon tightened the economic screw by raising tariffs further on licensed imports. Britain was struggling economically, and he was convinced he could bring her to the negotiating table (on his terms). He therefore, in October 1810, instructed Caulaincourt to order Russia to raise tariffs too. This left Alexander with little option but to defy the system openly. On 31 December he opened Russian ports to American ships, and imposed tariffs on French manufactured goods imported overland into Russia. British goods were soon pouring into Germany from Russia; the Continental System was in tatters.

Napoleon could not accept it. ‘The Continental System is uppermost in his mind, he is more taken up with it than ever,’ noted his secretary Fain. In his determination to control all points of import, Napoleon annexed the Hanseatic ports. In January 1811 he did the same with the duchy of Oldenburg, whose ruler was the father of Alexander’s brother-in-law. He did offer him another German province as compensation, but this was refused. Alexander was outraged and felt personally insulted — his supposed ally was now despoiling members of his family. He had to act, if only to save face. ‘Blood must flow again,’ he told his sister Catherine.^[23]

At the beginning of January 1811 he renewed attempts to win over the Poles, or at least ensure their neutrality, while his minister of war, General Barclay de Tolly, drew up plans for a strike into the grand duchy followed by an advance into Prussia. Alexander had 280,000 men ready and calculated that if the Poles and the Prussians were to join him, he could be on the Oder with a force of 380,000 before Napoleon could react. Napoleon was well informed and took the threat seriously. He ordered Davout, in command of the French forces in northern Germany, to prepare for war and ordered the Poles in the grand duchy of Warsaw to mobilise. ‘I considered that war had been declared,’ he later affirmed. In a report to Francis on 17 January 1811, Metternich stated his opinion that war between France and Russia was inevitable.^[24]

In the same report, he argued that the restoration of Poland would be desirable if, in return for giving up the rest of Galicia, Austria were to recover the Tyrol, part of Venetia and Illyria. That would strengthen her position in the Balkans, improve her defences in the south, and give her Trieste and access to the sea, while a restored Poland would act as a buffer against Russian aggression. Austria rejected Russian diplomatic overtures aimed at securing support against France, fearing Russian expansion in the Balkans and increased influence in Central Europe; a strategic alliance between Austria and France was in the cards. The treaty Austria would sign with France on 14 March 1812 had as its aim the return of the Danubian Principalities to the Porte and left open the possibility of re-creating a kingdom of Poland. In Paris, gossip had it that Murat would be made King of Poland.^[25]

‘I have no wish to make war on Russia,’ Napoleon declared to the Russian count Shuvalov during an interview at Saint-Cloud in May 1811. ‘It would be a crime on my part, for I would be making war without a purpose, and I have not yet, thanks to God, lost my head, I am not mad.’ To Colonel Chernyshev, whom the tsar had sent to Paris with letters for Napoleon, he repeatedly stated that he had no intention of fatiguing himself or his soldiers on behalf of Poland, and ‘he formally declared and swore by everything he held holiest in the world that the re-establishment of that kingdom was the very least of his concerns’. But such professions of goodwill would not suffice.^[26]

When Caulaincourt returned to Paris from St Petersburg on the morning of 5 June 1811, he drove straight to Saint-Cloud and within minutes of arriving was ushered into Napoleon’s presence — in which he spent the next seven hours in a discussion whose course he noted down that evening. He explained Alexander’s position and warned that the tsar would fight to the end rather than submit to Napoleon’s demands. Napoleon dismissed this as bravado, asserting that Alexander was ‘false and weak’. He could not believe Russian society would accept the implied sacrifices — the nobles would not want to see their lands ravaged for the sake of Alexander’s honour, while the serfs would as likely revolt against them as fight for a system of slavery.

He viewed the Russian abandonment of the Continental System as a betrayal and her troop build-up as a threat to his influence in Central Europe. He had convinced himself that Alexander was using the Polish question and the subject of trade as excuses to break out of the alliance and draw closer to Britain and that he would invade the grand duchy of Warsaw the moment an opportunity presented itself.

Caulaincourt pointed out that Napoleon had only two options: he must either give a significant part, if not the whole, of the grand duchy of Warsaw to Alexander, or go to war with the aim of restoring the kingdom of Poland. He advised him to take the first course, which in his opinion would guarantee a stable peace. Napoleon declared that such a betrayal of the Poles would dishonour him and lead to further Russian expansion into the heart of Europe.^[27]

He wanted to maintain his alliance with Alexander, yet would not pay the necessary price, and wanted to keep the Polish question open without committing to it. But this was no longer possible. By making his alliance with her the linchpin of his plan to defeat Britain, Napoleon had inflated Russia’s significance, and his continued attempts to make Alexander do his bidding had spurred the tsar to assume an even greater role in European affairs.

Napoleon’s exasperation erupted on 15 August 1811, his forty-second birthday. At midday he strutted into the throne room at the Tuileries, filled with court officials and diplomats perspiring in their uniforms and ceremonial dress on what was a particularly hot day. After receiving their good wishes, Napoleon stepped down from the throne and walked among the guests. When he reached the Russian ambassador, he accused Russia of massing troops with the intention of invading the grand duchy of Warsaw, describing it as an open act of hostility. The unfortunate Kurakin kept opening his mouth to reply but could not get a word in edgeways, while sweat poured down his face. After bullying him for a while, Napoleon walked away, leaving him in a state of shock.^[28]

The following morning, after a conference with Maret, who had succeeded Champagny as foreign minister, in the course of which they reviewed every document concerning Russia since Tilsit, Napoleon concluded that France wanted Russia as an ally against Britain and had no wish to fight her, since there was nothing she wanted from her, but that she could not buy Russia’s friendship by betraying the Poles. France must therefore prepare for war in order to prevent Russia from going to war. Caulaincourt’s successor in St Petersburg, General Lauriston, was instructed to explain this.^[29]

Napoleon could not see that he had put Alexander in an impossible situation, and he would not believe what he did not wish to see — that unless he stepped back, war was inevitable. Nor did he wish to face the fact that Russia was strategically invulnerable, as it was too vast to overrun and subdue. France, conversely, was highly vulnerable, since it was already engaged in a war in the Iberian Peninsula and was open to attack from Britain along its entire coastline. French possessions in Germany and Italy were unstable, as Napoleon kept moving boundaries and rearranging their administration, and satellites such as Naples were not dependable. Nor were his allies in the Confederation of the Rhine loyal other than by necessity. The whole Napoleonic system was a work in progress, whose final arrangement was contingent on an outcome with Britain, which now depended on solutions in both Spain and Russia. Acting tactically, without an overall strategy, Napoleon had got himself into an impasse from which the only way out was back — not a step he was used to contemplating.

‘It would have been difficult to imagine any new obstacle to the Emperor’s prosperity, and, whatever he undertook, people expected of the magician what no man would have undertaken,’ wrote Victorine de Chastenay. Surrounded by his maison, which had grown to include 3,384 people, he was cut off from the real world. Beugnot, who had returned to Paris after an absence of three years, was struck by the luxury of the court, but noted that at Napoleon’s table and those of his ministers, which were ‘sumptuously served and attended by valets shimmering with gold’, boredom reigned, as nobody discussed matters of state as they had in the past. Although there were few guards in evidence at the Tuileries, and security surrounding the emperor was light, fear and self-censorship proclaimed despotism; people whispered or kept silent, and Napoleon could ignore unpleasant truths. He must have read, as he always did, the police report from Lille relating to 2 December 1811, the anniversary of Austerlitz and his coronation, one of the major national feast days of the Napoleonic calendar, which found that ‘the inhabitants appeared not to know for what reason’ the city was illuminated and festivities were taking place. But it clearly made no impression deep enough to make him reflect. From where he sat, his power seemed limitless. On 3 November 1811, the fourteen-year-old Heinrich Heine watched him ride into Düsseldorf. He thought ‘his features were noble and dignified, like those of ancient sculptures, and on his face were written the words: “Thou shalt have no other gods beside me.”’^[30]

He was defying God himself; when, back in June, the Council of French bishops, headed by Fesch, had sworn allegiance to the Pope, Napoleon had closed it down and imprisoned a number of its members in the fortress of Vincennes. On 3 December he issued another ultimatum demanding the acquiescence of the Pope, whose behaviour had ‘wounded’ his imperial authority, and imprisoned or exiled more clerics. The Pope himself would soon be dragged off in a closed carriage, travelling by night to house arrest at Fontainebleau, and even Fesch would be exiled.

By that time, troops were on the move all over Europe, recruits were being drilled, and arms, uniforms, and supplies of every kind stockpiled. Yet Napoleon still denied he intended to make war. To Metternich and many others it now seemed inevitable, and the only question was what the outcome would mean for Europe. ‘Whether he triumphs or succumbs, Europe will never be the same again,’ Metternich wrote to Francis. ‘This terrible moment has unfortunately been brought on us by the unpardonable conduct of the Russians.’^[31]