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It was not the intervention of the Russian winter that had decided the matter, however. As a contemporary pointed out, ‘People still talk of “General Frost”, forgetting that the autumn of that year was warmer than in France … [and that as early as October] entire brigades and divisions had already begun to disappear from the enemy army.’ ⁹ Confirmation comes from the great military theorist Clausewitz, who was serving with the Russian staff. The French army, he wrote in an assessment of the campaign, had lost no less than a third of its strength even before it reached Smolensk, and another third before it got to Moscow, chiefly through desertions. By that time it was ‘already too much weakened for the attainment of the end of its enterprise.’ ¹⁰ Kutuzov also knew this, and that, by cleverly withdrawing to the south-west in order to keep his own lines of supply open while threatening to intercept the enemy’s, he had placed Napoleon in an untenable position. At last, on 19 October, five weeks after he had arrived in Moscow, Napoleon decided to abandon the city. By then, however, it was too late to save what was left of his Grande Armée.

What, then, had eroded the invader’s strength? In part it was the time-honoured Russian strategy of denying the enemy food and provender and stretching his lines of communication; in part the Russian army’s reluctance after Borodino to offer battle, its sharp surprise attacks, its blocking movements and harrying tactics. These methods combined to wear the invaders down, though what broke Napoleon’s own morale was Alexander’s unexpected and adamant refusal to come to terms after the occupation of Moscow. Kutuzov’s contribution was significant too - his brilliant manoeuvring, his strategy of pursuit without engaging in set-piece battles, his patience. And the enterprise was also aided by a surge of patriotism which embraced the peasant serfs, who might well have rebelled had Napoleon proclaimed their emancipation. As it was, when groups of the enemy seemed vulnerable, peasants often proceeded to slaughter them. Some 40,000 Poles, including emigres from the 1790s, had joined Napoleon, but for the most part the subject peoples had remained loyal to Russia or inert.

Yet, when all these factors have been taken into account, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Napoleon himself was primarily responsible for the disaster. His preparations for the invasion had been inadequate. His maps were inferior, his logistical support poor, his intelligence inferior, his horses inappropriately shod, his assumptions about Russia’s resilience and the Tsar’s firmness of purpose mistaken. In brief, his hubris doomed him.

The cost of victory was heavy enough. Kutuzov’s army, 120,000 strong when it began the pursuit, had shrunk to a mere 35,000 by the time it crossed into the Duchy of Poland, ¹¹ and the campaign as a whole had cost Russia 250,000 men. Yet in long-term perspective the loss seems small. Russia’s population was soon to recover; the demographic cost to France was more serious. The Russian campaign heralded the decline of France as a great power, while Russia now became the strongest power in continental Europe. Wellington and Blücher won what the former called the ‘close-run thing’ against France at Waterloo in 1815, but, with a powerful Russian army marching towards him, Napoleon was doomed even had he won at Waterloo.

While Europe’s statesmen gathered in Paris and then Vienna to redraw the political map, Russian soldiers bivouacked in the Champs-Elysées and gave a Russian word, bistro, to French dictionaries to denote fast food service. Since both Castlereagh, who represented Britain, and Metternich for Austria feared Russia’s power in Europe, they tried to limit it by co-opting France into the ranks of respectability in order to provide a counterweight. Although Russia did not gain all it had hoped for in the peace settlement, it nevertheless got most of it - the lion’s share of Poland as well as Bessarabia and Finland.

Russia’s rule over Poland could hardly be characterized as oppressive. Tsar Alexander and his brother Constantine, whom he appointed his viceroy in Warsaw, were children of the Enlightenment and had both been reared on advanced ideas. ¹² Some of these were reflected in Russia’s new regime for Poland. The constitution, largely the work of the Polish magnate Adam Czartoryski, provided for a parliament that included elected representatives of the respectable classes of both countryside and town. Poland was to have its own army of 35,000 men, and would be united with Russia only through the person of the Tsar in his capacity as hereditary king of Poland. The Catholic religion was guaranteed, and Polish was established as the official language of government, the courts and education. Furthermore the viceroy, Grand Duke Constantine, was liberal by disposition and married to a Polish lady.