12 failures of Napoleon Bonaparte. The famous Pushkin's "bald dandy" is nothing more than a verdict to the vanity of Alexander Pavlovich. Yes, at the beginning of 1813 he was already trying on the role of a sort of Agamemnon, “the king of kings,” the leader of the anti-Napoleonic coalition. But the Russian emperor is not leading the Russian regiments to Europe out of vanity. For a start, Alexander is simply not satisfied with the idea of Europe en francais, and it would be necessary to build the "old woman" in a completely different way.
How? Yes, in Catherine's way, so that the Bourbons, or whoever will be in power in Paris, send their ambassadors to Petersburg with the sole purpose of asking: what and how? And it is no longer so important that Alexander took over much more of his personal qualities from his half-crazy father than from his great grandmother. The trend is important. And if the Napoleonic invasion Alexander could hardly have prevented, then no one forced him to invade Europe.
But he, it seems, even before Austerlitz, longed for the same glory and the same brilliance to which the Corsican upstart Napoleone Buonaparte taught Europe. He did not forgive the fact that this newly-minted emperor dared to remind him, Romanov, of the murder of his father, and all his dislike for Napoleon resulted in fierce rivalry.
The Russian emperor never really concealed his desire to get rid of Bonaparte, and on the day of his entry into Paris, when, it seemed, he finally surpassed him even with glory, he turned to Ermolov: “Well, Alexey Petrovich, will they say now in Petersburg? After all, really, there was a time when we, magnifying Napoleon, I was considered a simpleton."
Shortly before his death, Kutuzov reminded Alexander of his oath: not to lay down arms until at least one enemy soldier remains on his territory. “Your vow has been fulfilled, not a single armed enemy remained on Russian soil; now it remains to fulfill the second half of the vow - to lay down the weapon."
Alexander didn't put it down. According to the official Krupennikov, who at the time of their last conversation was in the room of the dying field marshal, in Bunzlau, it is known that Alexander Pavlovich told Kutuzov:
- Forgive me, Mikhail Illarionovich!
- I forgive, sir, but Russia will never forgive you for this.
Russia not only forgave, the Russians gained glory no less than the same French, and Alexander himself was called the Blessed. The emperor slightly flirtatiously did not accept such a title officially, but it took root almost immediately. And no one has ever challenged him.
However, we must not forget that Alexander Pavlovich Romanov was not without reason compared to the great Talma, and for him Europe is, first of all, a big stage. In any performance on this stage, the main role should belong to Russia, and there is no need to explain who has the main role in Russia. Well, the audience (it does not matter if it is a people or a notorious society, which does not like the idea of going to Europe at all) is always a fool for a cool actor. It can be put before a fact.
Prolonged finale
The finale of the big European performance, however, dragged on and began in such a way that it was just right to say that it would not take place at all. The first blow for Alexander was the death of the commander-in-chief M. I. Kutuzov in Bunzlau. No matter how the Emperor Alexander treated the grumpy old man, he had no better military leader to lead the Russians to Paris.
And then there were two brutal defeats from the French army revived by Napoleon - at Bautzen and Lutzen. However, Alexander succeeds in the almost impossible - he not only achieves an armistice with Napoleon, but still pulls Prussia to his side, and then Austria. And for the sake of the latter, he even goes to the fact that he appoints the commander-in-chief of Prince K. Schwarzenberg.
But this happens only because Emperor Franz does not consent to the fact that the allied forces be commanded by his brother Karl, who excellently carried out reforms in the Austrian army and had already defeated Napoleon at Aspern. In all three armies, into which the allied forces are divided, the majority are Russian regiments. Schwarzenberg actually leads only the largest of them - Bohemian, and the general leadership remains with the three emperors, that is, in fact, with Alexander.
It took the Russian emperor three months to persuade the Prussian king to raise the people and the country to fight for freedom, and this despite the fact that back in 1812, the Prussian corps of General York von Wartburg went over to the side of the Russians. The tsar persuaded the Austrians for more than six months, Europe, it seems, did not really crave freedom at all, and even England advocated peace with Napoleon. But the tsar, having driven the enemy out of Russian borders, literally pulled the allies with him to Paris.
Alexander Pavlovich Romanov, the only one of the august trinity, was capable of something real. He not only called on everyone to march on Paris, in the summer of 1813 he also summoned the French general Zh-V from America. Moreau to lead the allied forces. After the revolution, Moreau was considered the main rival of Bonaparte, already under the empire he was suspected of participating in a royalist conspiracy and was expelled from France. The only one who managed to defeat Moreau was the great Suvorov. Shortly before the battle of Dresden, General Moreau was offered to begin with becoming an adviser to the headquarters.
However, the French nucleus, which, according to legend, was released by almost Napoleon himself, seriously wounded the general, who soon died. This was another blow of fate. In addition, for the first time, death on the battlefield really threatened Emperor Alexander himself, who stood on horseback next to Moreau on top of a hill occupied by Austrian batteries.
Allied forces remained under the command of Schwarzenberg. This lazy aristocrat, gourmet and glutton, who had grown so fat that none of the battle painters tried to hide it, as a commander was known exclusively for his defeats. But he was obedient and punctual enough, which actually quite suited Alexander.
Near Dresden, after the injury of Moreau, he issued so many conflicting orders that he only confused the advancing troops. In the end, the whole thing almost ended in defeat. The Bohemian army began a slow retreat into Austrian Bohemia, as Bohemia was then called. Inspired by his success, Napoleon tried to encircle the allied forces by sending a detour column of Vandam, but the outflanking one, as you know, can always be bypassed himself.
The magnificent victory at Kulm, after which General Vandam himself was taken prisoner, became a turning point in the company of 1813. After it, the Northern army of the Swedish prince Bernadotte really entered into action, and Blucher's Silesian army inflicted a whole series of defeats on individual French corps.
Napoleon, pulling his main forces to Leipzig, tried to beat the allied armies in parts, but those, on the direct orders of Alexander I, began to act more and more in concert, practically not breaking away from each other. The colossal superiority of the Russians, Austrians and Prussians in forces over the French, who, moreover, one by one the former German allies began to leave, began to show itself. The Saxons were the first to break away, followed by the Bavarians, and other members of the Rhine Confederation also cheated.
In the final battle of the company in 1813, rightly called the "Battle of the Nations", armies of unprecedented strength clashed near Leipzig - more than 300 thousand people with 1300 guns from the allies against 220 thousand and 700 guns from Napoleon. The battle dragged on for four October days - from the 16th to the 19th, during which the forces of the allies only grew, and Napoleon's strength was exhausted, but on the second day he was literally one step away from victory.
A powerful blow to the center of the positions of the Bohemian army at the Wachau, which began with the concripts of Napoleon - the young recruits of the conscription of the future 1814, and completed the cavalry of the King of Naples Murat, led to the breakthrough of the allied lines. Death under the blows of French sabers really threatened Alexander, as well as two other monarchs - Austrian Franz and Prussian Friedrich Wilhelm. Several French light squadrons broke through to the hill to which they drove together with Schwarzenberg, but they were stopped by a timely dashing counterattack of the Life Guards Cossacks of Colonel Efremov.
Premature apotheosis
Having lost the decisive battle at Leipzig, Napoleon retreated beyond the Rhine, breaking along the way the resistance of the Bavarians of Field Marshal Wrede, who tried to block his path at Hanau. The allied forces, like the Russians after the 1812 campaign, might well have avoided pursuing the French. Napoleon would hardly have shied away from peace negotiations at that time. However, Alexander was already unstoppable.
The campaign of 1814 turned out to be not the longest, but very glorious, and not only for the allied, but especially the Russian troops. It was also glorious for Napoleon, who more than once crushed the Silesian army of Blucher and the Bohemian army of Schwarzenberg. It turned out to be the most glorious company for Alexander - after all, he managed to complete it in Paris.
Prior to that, the Russian emperor managed to take part in a real battle for the first time in his life. At Feuer-Champenoise on March 25, 1814, the emperor, as a simple cavalryman, together with members of his retinue rushed into a saber attack on the French square. But that was not the end of it either. When the guardsmen, enraged by the fierce resistance of the French infantry, almost hacked it to pieces, only the Russian emperor personally could stop the bloodshed.
Then there was a bold raid to Paris, to which Napoleon did not have time to react, Russian cannons were stationed in Montmartre, and the capital was surrendered after the very dubious betrayal of Marshal Marmont. Finally, on March 31, 1814, the Russian emperor Alexander I, accompanied by the king of Prussia and the Austrian general Schwarzenberg, entered Paris at the head of the guards and the allied forces.
It was the apotheosis that Europe had not seen. The Parisians almost without exception poured into the streets of the city, the windows and roofs of houses were full of people, and from the balconies they waved handkerchiefs to the Russian tsar. Subsequently, Alexander did not hide his delight in a conversation with Prince A. N. Golitsyn: “Everything was in a hurry to hug my knees, everything was trying to touch me; people rushed to kiss my hands, feet, even grabbed the stirrups, filled the air with joyful shouts and congratulations."
The Russian tsar played a European, in passing offending his own soldiers and generals. The former were mostly kept in barracks, although pictures on the theme of "Russians in Paris" were circulated throughout Russia. “The victors were starved to death and kept under arrest, as it were, in the barracks,” wrote NN Muravyov, a campaign participant. "The sovereign was partial to the French and to such an extent that he ordered the Parisian National Guard to take our soldiers under arrest when they were met on the street, which led to many fights."
The officers also suffered a lot of insults. They, among other things, were regularly hit for the improper appearance of the units and units entrusted to them. Trying to gain the favor of the French, Alexander, according to the testimony of Muravyov, "aroused the murmur of his victorious army."It even got to the point of sending two colonels under arrest, and in vain Yermolov pleaded better to send them to Siberia, which Alexander's father Pavel Petrovich had done very willingly before, than to subject the Russian army to such humiliation. But the happy emperor remained adamant.
A contemporary wrote:
“Two months of Alexander's stay in the French capital was a continuous bathing in the rays of glory and honor. He shone in Madame de Stael's salon, danced in Malmaison with the Empress Josephine, visited Queen Hortense, talked with scientists, amazing everyone with his exemplary French. He went out and left without security, willingly entered into conversations with the people on the street, and he was always accompanied by an enthusiastic crowd."
Surprisingly, the Parisian apotheosis seemed a little to Alexander, and he arranged a couple more. To begin with, just two weeks after the capture of Paris, the Russian tsar made the French royalists happy with a solemn prayer service on the Place de la Concorde, which bore the name of Louis XV before the revolution, where the next Louis, the "meek and kind" Sixteenth, was executed.
Finally, no longer for the Parisians, but, it seems, for the whole of Europe, by order of Alexander, the Russian army held its famous review in Vertu.
This is how the famous but forgotten review was described by the author of the beloved Ice House, Ivan Lazhechnikov, in his Traveling Notes of a Russian Officer:
“Champania has never imagined the spectacle she is witnessing today. On the 24th of this month, 165 thousand Russian soldiers set up their camp there. On a field-level space of several versts, their tents in several rows whiten, weapons shine and countless fires are smoking …
Vertu's fields seem to have been deliberately formed by nature to watch a large army. Spreading on one side for several miles in a smooth plain, on which not a single bush, not a single modest stream flickers, they represent on the other side a peaked hill, from which the gaze can survey their entire vast expanse in an instant.
On the 29th the very review took place. The first monarchs of the world, the first generals of our century, arrived in the Champagne fields…. They saw in this day, to what extent mighty Russia should become between states, what they can fear from her strength and hope from her certain righteousness and peacefulness; they saw that neither the long-term wars, nor the extraordinary means used by Russia to crush the colossus, which had risen on the power of several powers, could exhaust her strength; they saw these now in a new splendor and greatness - and brought her on the scales of politics a tribute of amazement and respect.
At 6 o'clock in the morning, 163 thousand Russian troops arrived on the Vertu plains and stood in several lines in battle formation. The monarchs and the generals of various powers accompanying them arrived soon on Mount Mont-Aimé. Everything in the ranks was hearing, silence and stillness; everything was one body, one soul! It seemed at this moment that the troops were rallied into motionless walls. The commander and the private were expecting the blow of the messenger's cannon.
The hill was smoking; perun burst out - and everything began to move. Music, drums and trumpets thundered in all lines, fluttering banners bowed down, and thousands of hands saluted the sovereigns with one wave. Soon the whole army was transformed again into silence and stillness. But the messenger perun rang out again - and everything was shaken. The lines began to divide; their fragments flowed in different directions; the infantry and its heavy guns were walking at a brisk pace; cavalry and flying artillery rushed, it seemed, on the wings of the wind.
In a few minutes, from different points in a space of several miles, the troops all arrived together at their destination and suddenly formed an immobile spacious square, of which the front, right and left sides were all the infantry, and the rear - all the cavalry (somewhat separate from the infantry). At this time, the sovereigns moved down from the mountain and with a loud "Hurray!" drove around the whole square.
The troops, lining up in dense columns, making up these of two battalions side by side, having their own artillery behind each brigade - their own infantry before, and then all the cavalry - went in this way past the sovereigns. The order and brilliance of the procession of this large army amazed the foreigners all the more since the guard was not among them, this is the best, most brilliant part of the Russian army.
The show ended with a quick fire from 160 thousand rifles and 600 guns. One can imagine the terrible thunder they produced …"
The famous British commander Wellington said, "he never thought that the army could be brought to such great perfection."
But after Paris and Vertu, Alexander, it seems, no longer knew what to do next. And this is at some 39 years old. Of course, it would be possible to seriously engage in peasant reform, but the risk is already very great. And after all, this is not a war with France, you can not expect receipts from the English box office. It's good that soon the first graduation of lyceum students is expected.
So which is more important: Paris or Lyceum?
Few, before Alexander Arkhangelsky, tried to seriously analyze the reasons why Pushkin so boldly put Paris and the Lyceum in one line. But even this author of the last major monograph on the Blessed Emperor turned out to be quite expected. Because, from his point of view, these were indeed events of the same order. And there is no desire to argue with this.
Summing up our drawn-out narration, we repeat once again, it was Emperor Alexander who became the main winner of Napoleon. And perhaps it was this success that became one of the reasons that Alexander became so vain in his mature years. His self-admiration at some stage simply went off scale, although at the parade, in fact, anyone is supposed to represent himself in his best form.
And Alexander I earned his right to the parade by the fact that in the end he took Paris. And if he only gave one parade. But there was also a solemn prayer service, and a grandiose review in Vertu. Of course, nothing of the kind was organized in relation to the lyceum. Neither Alexander nor his entourage could even think of such a thing. Triumph and apotheosis can turn the head of graduates forever, and then few of them will be of any use.
In time, of course, there is a lyceum. And the later capture of Paris, of course, in no case can be counted as a certain first result of the chosen line, or, as it is fashionable to say now, a trend. But as a moral, ideological continuation of the message made back in 1811, it can still be considered.
A message of this kind was made by the younger Alexander to his older opponent, who immediately impudently took a patronizing, paternal tone in his attitude. With an age difference of only seven years. At the moment when a turning point in his relations with Napoleon was clearly outlined, when the coming clash no longer seemed, but became inevitable, the Russian emperor created his own lyceum.
The lyceum was a priori called upon to regularly feed the country's ideological, political, powerful, but above all capable elite. A country that openly claims to be the leader in Europe, at least in continental Europe.
There is too little historical information about how Napoleon perceived the creation of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Perhaps he simply did not notice this, although this is clearly not in the spirit of Napoleon. But he, as the main strategic opponent, could thus well have made it clear that Russia's long-term plans do not at all include hanging on the sidelines. But it seems that it was precisely such a prospect that Napoleon was preparing for the great northern power.
The constituent link of the Continental system is, of course, an exaggerated forecast for the future role of Russia in Napoleonic Europe. However, Napoleon, as you know, was cynical to the limit, and sometimes even without limit, especially in relation to the countries with which he fought and which he won for a long time. This trait of his character would be quite enough for the implementation of just such a forecast. It was precisely the Russia of Emperor Alexander I the Blessed that did not allow it to come true in those glorious years.
