There follow four chapters on 1812 and four on 1813. Six of these eight chapters are essentially narratives of the campaigns. In all six chapters, however, I devote much attention to how the armies were fed and supplied. This is always important. At some points in 1812 and 1813 it was decisive. The chapters on 1812 and autumn 1813 are largely military in content. Once these campaigns had begun, diplomacy took a back seat. On the contrary, in the first eight months of 1813 Russian strategy was largely determined by the need to bring Prussia and Austria into the war if Alexander’s goals were to be achieved. Diplomacy therefore plays a big role in Chapter 9 on the campaign of spring 1813. Two of these eight chapters are devoted to the Russian home front and to how Russian resources were mobilized in 1812 and 1813. It is impossible to understand the war effort or Russian victory without them. Chapters 13 and 14 cover the 1814 campaign. They too are a narrative, though a complicated one because of the need to weave together military operations, diplomacy, logistics and even French domestic politics, since all four elements were closely intertwined and essential to understanding Russian policy and the eventual allied victory.
Russia as a Great Power
For the Russian state the eighteenth century had been an era of victories. Before the reign of Peter the Great (1689–1725) European elites had seen the Russians as barbarous, alien and unimportant. Like the Ottomans, they were regarded as outsiders to Europe: unlike them, they did not earn even the grudging respect born of fear. By the time of Peter’s death, however, attitudes had begun to change. Russia had smashed Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700–21) and had replaced it as the most powerful state in north-eastern Europe. In the Seven Years War (1756–63) Russia made an even bigger impact on European minds. Her armies occupied East Prussia, defeated Frederick II’s forces on many occasions, and even briefly captured Berlin. Only the death of the Empress Elizabeth in 1762 and the dramatic reversal of Russian policy by her successor, Peter III, saved Prussia from destruction.1
There followed the reign of Catherine II (1762–96) during which Russia’s territory, power and international status grew enormously. Most of the Polish commonwealth as well as huge territories in what we now call southern and eastern Ukraine but which was then known as ‘New Russia’ were annexed. Having become the leading Baltic power under Peter, Russia now came to dominate the Black Sea as well and to send her fleets into the Mediterranean. The fertile Ukrainian grasslands conquered by Catherine began to fill up with colonists. As the economy of New Russia boomed, there seemed almost no limits to possible future Russian power. Catherine and her most famous lover, Grigorii Potemkin, contemplated restoring the Byzantine Empire and putting her grandson, the Grand Duke Constantine, on its throne. The scheme was ambitious and fantastic but so too was not just Catherine’s own life but also Russia’s dramatic rise in the eighteenth century.2
One effect of these triumphs was to accustom Russian elites to victory and to feed their pride, confidence and arrogance. For better and worse, this had an impact on how Russia fought in 1812–14. Inevitably too, victory increased the legitimacy of the Romanov dynasty and of the autocratic system of government. Russia was a strong supporter of constitutional principles in Sweden and Poland because it knew that the weakness of the Swedish and Polish monarchies undermined these neighbours and rivals. Russia’s spectacular victories over the Ottomans between 1768 and 1792 also owed much to the inability of weak sultans to control court factions and provincial satraps. Both the Russian tsars and the Ottoman sultans faced the challenge of out-of-date military forces which blocked the creation of a modern, European-style army. These regiments – the
