Napoleon

Jacques-Louis David painted Napoleon in his study at the Tuileries in 1812, the year the Grande Armée crossed into Russia. Hand in waistcoat, a desk, a clock: this is power as furniture, not a raft on the Niemen and not a fire in Moscow. Do not ask the canvas to do Borodino. The last article closed on Alexander’s committee and Speransky’s carriage. This page is the European war that pulled that committee off the desk: coalitions, Austerlitz, Friedland, Tilsit, a Polish duchy on Russia’s border, and a Continental System that hurt Russian trade until the tsar opened his ports. The invasion of 1812 has the next article. Keep this one as the bargain that made the invasion thinkable.

When Alexander came to the throne in March 1801, Russia was hostile to most of Europe; he quickly made peace with France and Britain and restored relations with Austria. The hope of concentrating on internal reform was frustrated by the reopening of war with Napoleon in 1805. Defeated at Austerlitz in December 1805, Russian armies fought in Poland in 1806 and 1807, with Prussia as an ineffective ally. In 1806 Napoleon defeated Prussia at Jena and Auerstädt. Despite the warnings of his mother and his advisers, the tsar rushed to the aid of his friend. After a partial success at Eylau, the Russian army under General Bennigsen was decimated at Friedland on 14 June 1807. Then came the meeting, on 25 June, of the two emperors on a raft in the middle of the Niemen off Tilsit, now Sovetsk.

Britannica’s Alexander life says the sequel demonstrates that, in the course of the Tilsit interview, it was the tsar of Russia who deceived the emperor of the French. Seeking to gain time he used his charm to play the admiring friend. He accepted all the victor’s conditions, promising to break with England, to adhere to the Continental System set up by Napoleon to isolate and weaken Great Britain, and to recognise the creation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, formed from the part of Poland given to Prussia during the Partition of 1795. The previous chapter left Napoleon’s Duchy of Warsaw for this page. Here it is: not a restored Commonwealth, not the 1791 constitution, a client duchy under the king of Saxony, recognised at Tilsit, sitting on the border of an empire that had helped erase Poland only twelve years earlier.

Charles Williams etched The Imperial Embrace on the Raft in July 1807 for a London publisher. Napoleon squeezes Alexander until a crown slips; Frederick William flounders in the river. Use it as British satire of the meetings, then put it aside. A caricature is not the treaty text.

The Treaties of Tilsit, 7 July and 9 July 1807 — 25 and 27 June Old Style — were the agreements France signed with Russia and with Prussia after those victories. Under the terms, France and Russia became allies and divided Europe between them, reducing Austria and Prussia to helplessness. Alexander accepted the reduction of Prussia from 89,120 to 46,032 square miles, the creation from Polish provinces detached from Prussia of a new Grand Duchy of Warsaw for Napoleon’s ally the king of Saxony, and the establishment of the Kingdom of Westphalia in northern Germany. Napoleon’s hegemony in western and central Europe was thus established. Prussia was to be occupied by French troops until a war indemnity, fixed at 120 million francs, had been paid. Alexander promised to join the Continental System against British trade if Britain rejected Russian mediation. Russia was given a free hand to conquer Finland from Sweden.

Because the treaties came so close to creating a continental blockade that excluded British trade, Napoleon sought in the next few years to enlarge and enforce the blockade. This led to the collapse of the peace on the continent. The period of Franco-Russian collaboration lasted until 31 December 1810, when the tsar, finding that the alliance to the Continental System seriously hurt Russian trade, opened Russian ports to neutral ships. The threat to Russia from Napoleon’s satellite, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, on Russia’s border, also contributed to the eventual failure of the Franco-Russian alliance. Those two facts — ports reopened, a Polish client on the frontier — are the break as Britannica states it. They are not yet Borodino. They are why a study in the Tuileries in 1812 is a man preparing a war, not a man still sharing Europe with a friend.

Speransky had accompanied Alexander to the 1808 meeting with Napoleon and had been called the only clear head in Russia. His pro-French leanings, in the years of the Continental System, added to the hostility of nobles whose finances suffered. That belongs to the previous article as the secretary’s downfall. It belongs here as a reminder that Tilsit was not only a raft. It was a trade policy that reached into Russian pockets, a Polish duchy that reached into Russian memory of the partitions, and a diplomatic language of brotherhood that a London caricaturist could already see as a squeeze. David’s 1812 study does not show a map of Warsaw. The next picture can.

The Duchy of Warsaw was formed from lands Prussia had taken in the later partitions, with the king of Saxony as duke. It was a military base and a barrier as much as a state. For Poles it was not 1772 undone; it was a name on a French leash. For St Petersburg it was the return of a Polish question that Catherine, Frederick and Maria Theresa had thought closed in 1795. Alexander had recognised it at Tilsit as the price of time. Time ran out when the Continental System hurt more than the alliance helped, and when the duchy remained. Napoleon invaded Russia in June 1812. The next article is that invasion. This one should not steal Smolensk, the fire, or the Berezina. It should leave the reader on the wrong side of a bargain, with a desk in the Tuileries and a map of a duchy that had not existed in 1796.

They embraced on a raft and divided Europe. Five years later the ports were open, the duchy was still there, and the desk in the Tuileries was a war office.

Paul had lurched from a coalition against Napoleon to an anti-British line and a dream of India. Alexander made peace in 1801, fought in 1805, lost at Austerlitz, lost at Friedland, and then smiled on a raft. The smile, if Britannica is right, was time bought with recognition of a Polish duchy and a promise to starve British trade. The previous era’s partitions are the ground under that duchy. This chapter’s 1812 is what happened when the smile ended. Keep the two from collapsing into one paragraph. Tilsit is a treaty year. 1812 is a campaign year. Paris is a year of occupation and congress. Napoleon on this page is the man who made Russia an ally against Britain and then an enemy again, without yet marching on Moscow in these sentences.

Austerlitz in December 1805 is the first great defeat of the reign. Friedland on 14 June 1807 is the defeat that produced the raft. The treaties of 7 and 9 July are the paperwork. The Continental System is the economic war. The Duchy of Warsaw is the Polish ghost. The opening of ports on 31 December 1810 is the break. June 1812 is the next title. That sequence is enough. Do not add invented conversations on the raft. Do not add a casualty figure for Friedland that Britannica’s pages used here do not give. The caricature already says what London thought of the embrace. David’s study already says what power looked like in the year the embrace ended.

Keep Kutuzov out of this page. Keep Rostopchin out of it. Keep the Congress of Vienna out of it. Napoleon here is coalitions, two lost battles, a raft, two treaties, a blockade, a duchy, and a break. Readers who want the retreat through snow will find it next. Readers who want Alexander in Paris will find him two articles later. This article’s inventory should stay on the European side of the Niemen. A study, a satire, and a map are the three images. None of them is Moscow burning. That is the point of the cut.

Mathiasrex’s 2009 map colours the Duchy of Warsaw between 1807 and 1809. A later schematic, not a treaty leaf. Use it for the client state on the border, then put it aside. A coloured patch is not 1812.

Stop this page before the Grande Armée crosses. The next title is a year. This title is a man and a bargain. David painted the man at a desk in the year of the crossing. Williams etched the bargain as a squeeze in the year of the raft. The map is what Russia had recognised and come to fear. Austerlitz, Friedland, Tilsit, the Continental System, the duchy, the open ports: that is the list. It is also why the next article can begin with an invasion without having to explain, all over again, why two emperors who had embraced were no longer friends.

Catherine’s partitions had erased a Commonwealth. Napoleon’s duchy wrote a Polish name back onto the map without restoring the old republic. Alexander accepted that name in 1807 to buy time and to look like a brother. He opened the ports in 1810 when the blockade cost more than brotherhood. Napoleon treated the opening, and the duchy’s menace, as reasons for war. The large Russia of the nineteenth century meets Europe here, on a raft and on a desk, before it meets Europe in a burning city. The next page is the city. This one should remain the bargain that failed.