As regards the emperor’s Russian subjects, much the most important ‘constituency’ was the army itself. For any army, maintaining discipline and morale during a long retreat is extremely difficult. The Prussian army disintegrated after Jena-Auerstadt and the French were little better during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 and from Leipzig in the autumn of 1813. British discipline collapsed during Sir John Moore’s retreat to Corunna in 1808 and again during the retreat from Burgos back into Portugal in 1812. As one historian of the Peninsular War comments, ‘retreats were not the British army’s forte’. Though the Russian army was famous for its discipline, a retreat not just across the whole of Belorussia and Lithuania but also deep into Russia itself was bound to test morale and order within the regiments to the limit. In stressing the impact of retreat on his troops’ morale just before the war Prince Bagration had his own axe to grind because the very idea of retreating in the face of an enemy was anathema to him. Nevertheless, his fears were by no means groundless.57
It is a truism among military historians that armies can only fight wars in line with their ‘military doctrine’, which is elaborated in the pre-war years. In the early nineteenth century formalized military doctrine in the modern sense existed nowhere. This would have to wait for staff colleges and the whole paraphernalia of modern military education and training. In an informal sense, however, the Russian army did have a ‘doctrine’ in 1812 and it was wholly committed to offensive strategy and tactics. From his first moments in his regiment the young officer was encouraged to be daring, fearless, confident and aggressive. Every lieutenant was expected to believe that one Russian was worth five Frenchmen. Male pride was at stake in the ‘game’ to capture trophies such as flags and drive the enemy off the battlefield. Many Russian generals in 1812 had this mentality too. To retreat before the enemy was almost as shocking as failing to defend one’s honour in a duel when challenged. In addition, in the previous century the army had experienced only victory. Its great triumphs over Frederick II and the Ottomans had been won on the offensive and on enemy soil. The greatest eighteenth-century Russian generals, Aleksandr Suvorov and Petr Rumiantsev, stressed speed, aggression, surprise and shock. An army bred on such ideas and traditions was bound to mutter if forced to retreat hundreds of kilometres deep into Russian territory on the basis of calculations about logistics and numbers made by ‘German’ staff officers.58
It was also hard to predict how the Russian civilian population would respond if Napoleon entered the Great Russian provinces. After all, the army of a great power was supposed to protect the property of its compatriots, not retreat for hundreds of kilometres without a battle and open the country’s core to devastation. Above all, the elites had to worry about how their serfs would react to Napoleon, particularly if he issued promises of emancipation. In pre-war military documents there is very little on this subject. One interesting (though unique) war ministry document did raise the spectre of Russian peasant disturbances, arguing that the experience of the Pugachev rebellion showed that house serfs and peasants working in factories were the least reliable elements.59
Inevitably such fears grew as Napoleon approached the Russian borders in July 1812. The private secretary to Alexander’s wife Empress Elizabeth, Nikolai Longinov, wrote in July that ‘although I am convinced that our people would not accept the gift of freedom from such a monster, it is impossible not to worry’. In December 1812, with the danger passed, John Quincy Adams wrote that among the Petersburg elite there was great relief that ‘the peasants had not shown the least disposition to avail themselves of the occasion to obtain their freedom…. I see this is what most touches the feelings of all the Russians with whom I have conversed on the subject. This was the point on which their fears were the greatest, and upon which they are most delighted to see the danger past.’ The influence of such fears on pre-war planning or wartime operations must not be exaggerated, however. Petersburg’s salons might shiver at the word ‘Pugachev’ but fears of peasant insurrection barely figure in the correspondence of Alexander, Barclay or Kutuzov.60
