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The man entrusted with the difficult Balkan mission was General of Infantry Prince M. I. Kutuzov, a wise, hard-headed veteran of Turkish wars, remarkable for his acute strategic judgement and strong sense of timing. Knowing that his army was likely to be recalled at any moment, in 1811 Kutuzov managed to make enough ground militarily to force the Turks to the peace table. Kutuzov himself led the Russian side in the negotiations; the outcome was the annexation of Bessarabia. This might seem but a modest triumph judged against the scale of Russia’s earlier gains in the two great Turkish wars of the later eighteenth century, and given that the Romanian elite of Moldavia and Wallachia would at that time gladly have accepted Russian rule. In the fraught context, however, it was a signal success. The fact that the Ottoman negotiators were subsequently executed confirms this view.

Since the new territories were seriously underpopulated, the mandarins in St Peterburg immediately extended the Empire’s enlightened settlement policies, previously applied in New Russia, to Bessarabia. ⁶ But Napoleon was already leading his great army eastward across the Russian frontier. At the end of May 1812 Kutuzov and his troops were ordered home at once to help meet the threat.

Napoleon’s invading Grand Armée was massive by the standards of the age — more than 350,000 men. It was also international, including Spaniards, Dutch, Swiss and citizens from many states in Germany and Italy, in addition to Frenchmen. The Russians could muster barely half that number to confront them. ⁷ Moreover, Napoleon was at the height of his powers and supported by a formidable array of talented, battle-hardened generals who knew his mind — Davoust, Ney, Saint-Cyr, Murat and Mortier among them. They marched directly into the Empire’s heartland. Towards the end of August the ageing, portly Kutuzov was given command of the Russian forces on the western front, and early in September he tried to do what was expected of him: stop the invaders before they reached Moscow. The ensuing battle of Borodino was fiercely fought but indecisive. Kutuzov’s next actions confounded amateur strategists: he gave orders to withdraw, and continued to fall back beyond Moscow, abandoning the ancient capital to the invader.

Kutuzov’s reasoning was sound, however. Napoleon had sent out columns to threaten his lines of communication, and the move had to be countered. The abandonment of Moscow, for all its religious and symbolic importance, mattered less than the desperate need to frustrate the enemy. As Kutuzov explained in a letter to Tsar Alexander, ‘So long as Your Imperial Majesty’s army is intact … the loss of Moscow is not the loss of our fatherland.’ He had had no hesitation in choosing to preserve the army rather than risk it in the defence of Moscow. But, as he hastened to assure his commander-in-chief, his strategy was by no means passive. Indeed, he was already launching an operation of which he had high hopes. He had ordered a new order of battle, ‘with all our forces in a line extending from the Tula and Kaluga roads. From these positions units will be able to break into the enemy’s line of communications which stretch from Smolensk to Moscow. This would stop all support the enemy army might receive from its rear, and at the same time draw its attention. By these means I hope to compel him to leave Moscow.’ ⁸

The effect on morale might have been expected to be catastrophic, however, and much of Russia’s elite was indeed terrified - not only of the invaders, but also that their peasant serfs might seize the opportunity to rise against them. Yet the morale of the Russian troops held up rather better than that of the French and their allies, and it soon transpired that the peasantry hated the invaders more than their own masters. By the time Napoleon had been in Moscow a week or two he must have suspected that he was lost. He had confidently expected emissaries to arrive from Alexander, begging for peace and the return of the city. Yet no one came. Alexander had set his face against any dealings with the upstart intruder. As day after day passed without word from St Petersburg, Napoleon’s suspicion hardened into the sombre realization that he was doomed.