V.

Blockade, Entanglement, and Defeat, 1807-1812

As a result of Tilsit, if one disregards a weak and isolated Sweden that was soon to be broken by Russian invasion, Napoleon had once again secured a general peace on the Continent. The emperor, however, proved incapable of turning this situation to account. Rather than simply waiting for the Continental Blockade to crush Britain (and there is considerable evidence that, but for subsequent events, it would have done so, the period 1807 to 1808 being a time of great hardship), in the autumn of 1807 a variety of factors impelled him to intervene in Portugal and Spain, the second of these states eventually being given his brother, Joseph, to be its new king. This, however, was a disaster, for both countries. They became the scene of major revolts that proved impossible to suppress, the Iberian insurgents receiving the support of larger and larger numbers of British troops in a conflict that became known as the Peninsular War. In the end Napoleon might still have triumphed even in the Peninsula, while an attempt on the part of Austria to reverse the defeat of 1805 was smashed at Wagram in July 1809, but the effect of his adoption of the Continental Blockade was to force him to annexe more and more territory in Germany and Italy, this being the only means by which the policy could be made effective. The result of this being to alienate Alexander I, Napoleon resolved on the invasion of Russia. The effect of this move, which was initiated in June 1812, was completely to destabilize the French position in Spain, but, had victory been obtained in Russia this need not have mattered, for it is clear that the emperor could then have swept back across the Pyrenees and forced the Allies to retreat.

Victory, however, was not obtained in Russia. On paper the chances of success seemed very high when war broke out on June 24. In all, Napoleon had some 600,000 men, against whom the Russians could initially field only 175,000, while even these troops were in a very difficult situation. Yet, hampered by poor roads, inadequate reconnaissance, commanders who were out of their depth, and its sheer size, the grande armée moved with none of its customary celerity. Meanwhile, increasingly corpulent and rather unwell, Napoleon himself was no longer the dynamic leader of earlier years. In consequence, the Russians succeeded in falling back on Moscow, leaving the grande armée to lumber slowly along in their wake. Meanwhile, so many men died of exhaustion or disease or had to be dropped off to protect the road to the frontier, that when the Russians finally gave battle at Borodino some 70 miles west of Moscow on September 5, the emperor was left with too few men to obtain a decisive victory. After a terrible struggle that was very badly handled by Napoleon, Moscow was eventually occupied, but, secure in the knowledge that his army was still in one piece, Alexander refused to negotiate, the emperor eventually being left with no option but to retreat. Leaving Moscow on November 19, the grande armée soon found itself plunged into the horrors of the Russian winter. Thousands of men died of cold or starvation, while still others were picked off by Cossack raids or killed fighting off the new armies that the Russians had sent to cut their line of retreat. In all, some 120,000 of the 140,000 troops involved perished in the disaster.