Authors: Adam Zamoyski
He was determined to control the mood of the people through propaganda and news-management. He composed proclamations, full of demagogic patriotism and braggadocio, which were posted at street corners for all to read. They painted Napoleon and the French in the blackest of colours, and plucked every xenophobic chord in order to forestall any French appeal to the lower orders; at the same time they gave those lower orders an object of hatred that would distract them from any hostile feelings they might have entertained towards the nobility. Rostopchin also enjoyed sowing shameless lies. ‘I gave instructions that a rumour should be spread to the effect that the Turks are now going to be supporting us, and this morning I received reports that the peasants are saying: “The Turks have submitted and have promised our Tsar to pay him a tribute of 20,000 Frenchmen’s heads a year,”’ he wrote to Alexander with satisfaction on 23 July.
33
Rostopchin inflated every skirmish into a victory, and organised grandiose religious thanksgiving services. On 17 August everyone in Moscow was rejoicing in rumours of a victory over the French at Smolensk. General Tuchkov had apparently beaten Napoleon, and it was said that he had killed 17,000 Frenchmen and taken 13,000 prisoners. Two days later, Rostopchin was reporting to Balashov that the city was calm; sixty people swore to having seen a vision of God blessing Moscow appear over the Danilovsky monastery; a French resident who had been extolling the wonders of French liberty was flogged and sent into exile; in Bogorodsk, a Russian worker who had been saying that Napoleon would bring freedom to Russia, causing the whole of his factory to down tools, was flogged and imprisoned, while his comrades were driven back to work.
34
The shock produced by the truth about Smolensk, when it finally reached Moscow, was predictable. ‘Moscow was shaken with horror;
all thoughts turned to flight and to either removing or burying valuables, or walling them up,’ remembered a young noblewoman. ‘Houses were cluttered with trunks, streets filled up with wagons, heavy carriages and light breaks crammed with whole families and their entire wealth.’ Churches remained open night and day, crowded with praying multitudes. Most of the nobles in Moscow had estates, on which they would normally spend the summer, and many of those who had stayed behind in town or come up for Alexander’s visit now made for the country. ‘Every day one could see hundreds of carriages driving across the city, mostly occupied by women and children,’ recalled Rostopchin’s daughter. Men of military age who were spotted leaving were jeered and sometimes even threatened by the rabble. ‘In order to avoid the taunts and the insults of the populace, men of all ages adopted the costumes of their wives and mothers, hoping to save themselves from any disagreeable comments with the aid of this disguise.’
35
They were being replaced now by refugees from Smolensk, who told tales of horror, and wounded officers evacuated from the front, whose complaints about Barclay and the German ‘traitors’ began to circulate in the city. Soon even Moscow’s coachmen were cursing Barclay for a German traitor.
36
Rostopchin himself began evacuating the treasuries of churches, libraries and the Kremlin. But he continued to pen his proclamations, which grew increasingly warlike, and walked the city streets accosting people and telling them that they need not fear, that the French would soon be beaten, and that he would burn the city sooner than let them into it. ‘The people here, who are faithfully devoted to their sovereign and filled with love for their country, are resolved to die under the walls of Moscow and, if God refuses us His succour in our noble enterprise, then, in accordance with the old Russian saying “You will not fall into the hands of the wicked”, the city will be reduced to ash, and instead of a rich prize, Napoleon will find only a heap of dust where the ancient capital of Russia stood,’ he wrote to Bagration on 25 May.
37
On Rostopchin’s orders, ‘spies’ and ‘agitators’ were being arrested every day. They were flogged and either incarcerated or, if they were foreign, sent to some far-off town under surveillance. French inhabitants of the city who appeared to be too pleased at Napoleon’s successes were exiled to Nizhni Novgorod. Rostopchin proudly reported to Bagration on 24 August that he had the situation under control, that they had nothing to fear from the lower orders as the only people who had been heard extolling Napoleon and French liberty were a few drunks. ‘The mood of the people is such that every day I find myself shedding tears of joy,’ he wrote to Balashov.
38
On 18 August hundreds of peasant draftees were brought into the city, accompanied by keening wives, mothers and children who had come to see them off. They were the first batch of the 24,835 men raised in the province to date. They were given their militia uniforms – grey knee-length peasant kaftans and baggy pants tucked into Russian boots, cloth forage caps with earflaps that could be tied under the chin, adorned with a brass cross and the motto: ‘For Faith and Tsar’. They were then paraded before the military governor, exhorted by the historian Nikolai Karamzin and blessed by the metropolitan Bishop of Moscow, who sprinkled them with holy water and gave them sacred banners to carry into battle, before being marched out to the front.
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Rostopchin was nothing if not conscientious, and he was prepared to consider almost anything that might contribute to the destruction of the French. He was taken in by a German charlatan by the name of Leppich, who claimed that he could build a huge aerostat which would sail over the French army and destroy it at a stroke by pouring fire down on it. Having relieved the city treasury of a great deal of money, Leppich set to work, in secret.
But Rostopchin’s activities were sewing confusion and generating an increasingly febrile atmosphere. People who used any language other than Russian in the street were set upon by angry mobs. The proclamation issued by Rostopchin on 30 August, which announced that he would lead the people of the city out to face the enemy, armed
with hatchets and pitchforks if necessary, actually caused rioting, with shops being broken into and innocent citizens being roughed up on the streets on suspicion of being French spies.
40
All this boded ill for the ancient capital of the tsars.
A
fter what he had experienced in Moscow, Alexander found the mood of St Petersburg depressingly defeatist when he returned there at the beginning of August. There were some at court who were calling for peace, and even those who were against treating with Napoleon showed little of the exalted courage of the Muscovites. Many, including Alexander’s mother the Dowager Empress, had been packing up and sending away valuables, others had theirs crated up in readiness for a quick evacuation, and most people had horses and carriages waiting. They were all living, as one wit put it, on axle grease.
The only manifestations of patriotism were the beards and Russian clothes sported by some nationalists, and the public’s boycott of the French theatre, where the celebrated Mademoiselle Georges played to empty houses. Performances of
Dmitry Donskoi
, by contrast, were packed out, but according to one witness took place in an atmosphere more redolent of a church than a theatre, with half of the audience in tears.
1
Alexander had retired to his summer residence on Kamenny Island and buried himself in work. He saw less of his mistress and more of the Tsarina, and did not show himself much in public. But he could not ignore the stream of letters from his brother Constantine telling him Barclay was an incompetent coward and a traitor, those from Bagration to Arakcheev, which he saw, saying much the same thing,
and the gossip at court – everyone was getting letters from someone in the army, all of them complaining and accusing. There was, in the words of the American ambassador John Quincy Adams, ‘an extraordinary clamour’ against Barclay.
2
Alexander stood by his commander as long as he could. He was desperately hoping for some good news, and after hearing that Barclay had abandoned Vitebsk he hoped he would make a stand before Smolensk, and would later express his profound disappointment that he did not. ‘The ardour of the soldiers would have been extreme, for it would have been the entry into the first really Russian city that they would have been defending,’ he wrote to him.
3
With the fall of Smolensk, he could no longer go on supporting the despised general without exposing himself to similar feelings. Particularly as public opinion had already selected Barclay’s successor – Kutuzov.
‘Everyone is of the same mind; everyone says the same thing; indignant women, old men, children, in a word all conditions and all ages see in him the saviour of the fatherland,’ wrote Varvara Ivanovna Bakunina to a friend.
4
Alexander hated Kutuzov for his immorality, his slovenly manner and his attitude, as well as for the memories of Austerlitz and his father’s murder. He also had a low opinion of his competence. He had rewarded him for making a rapid peace with Turkey by making him a prince, but had then given him an insignificant post. A delegation of St Petersburg nobles came to Kutuzov begging him to accept command of the militia the city was raising, which he did, having obtained Alexander’s approval. This brought him to the capital and back into the limelight.
On the evening of 17 August, just as the battle for Smolensk was beginning, Alexander convened a meeting of senior generals, presided over by Arakcheev, to advise him on the choice of a successor to Barclay. After three and a half hours’ deliberation, they settled on Kutuzov. But Alexander did not act on their advice, prevaricating for a full three days, during which he considered nominating Bennigsen, and even of inviting Bernadotte over from Sweden. His sister urged him to bow to the inevitable. ‘If things go on like this, the
enemy will be in Moscow in ten days’ time,’ she wrote, adding that he must under no circumstances even think of assuming command himself. Rostopchin wrote declaring that Moscow was clamouring for Kutuzov. There was nothing for it but to go along with the general mood. ‘In bowing to their opinion, I had to impose silence on my feelings,’ Alexander later wrote to Barclay. ‘The public wanted him, so I appointed him, but as far as I am concerned, I wash my hands of it,’ he said to one of his aides-de-camp.
5
Immediately after nominating Kutuzov, Alexander set off for Finland, where he had arranged to meet Bernadotte. According to the agreement their foreign ministers had negotiated in April, Russia was to indemnify Sweden for the loss of Finland (seized by Russia) by permitting her to conquer Norway from Denmark and annex that. Russia was also to support a Swedish invasion of Pomerania to reclaim it from the French. But with Napoleon now advancing into the heart of Russia, there was a distinct possibility that Sweden might seize the opportunity of taking back Finland.
Bernadotte and Alexander met on the island of Åbo, and took an immediate liking to each other. Alexander was relieved to discover that Bernadotte hated Napoleon as much as he did. Bernadotte, it appeared, was taking a longer view, and for good measure Alexander encouraged him in this and at the same time wove him into his own plans for the future by suggesting that when Napoleon was finally defeated and the French throne became vacant, the Crown Prince of Sweden might become the King of France. They parted as friends, and Alexander could safely withdraw the three divisions protecting Finland and redeploy them against Napoleon.
6
On his return to St Petersburg, Alexander found that even more people and valuables had left, and those who remained were in despondent mood. They had received news of the fall of Smolensk a few days before, and this confirmed many in the conviction that it was time to open negotiations with Napoleon. Grand Duke Constantine, sent away from headquarters by Barclay after Smolensk, was persuading people that the situation was hopeless. Another who had arrived
from Smolensk was the British ‘commissioner’ General Robert Wilson. He brought news of dissension and strife at headquarters which confirmed that Alexander had been right to replace Barclay. He had also appointed himself spokesman for an indeterminate group of patriotic senior officers who, according to him, demanded that the Tsar sack his Foreign Minister Rumiantsev and others tainted with sympathy for France. In the politest terms, Alexander brushed off this preposterous meddling.
7
When Kutuzov had walked out of Alexander’s palace on Kamenny Island on the evening of 20 August after receiving his nomination, he had himself driven straight to the cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan. There, taking off his uniform coat and all his decorations, he lowered his great bulk to his knees and began to pray, with tears pouring down his face. On the next day he went, this time accompanied by his wife, to pray in the church of St Vladimir. Two days later, on 23 August, he set off for the front. His carriage could hardly move, such was the throng of people cheering and wishing him well. He stopped at the cathedral once again, to attend a religious service, and knelt throughout. Afterwards, he was presented with a small medallion of Our Lady of Kazan, which was blessed with holy water. ‘Pray for me, as I am being sent forth to achieve great things,’ he is alleged to have said as he left the church.
At a posting station along the way, he encountered Bennigsen travelling in the opposite direction. Alexander had insisted that Kutuzov appoint Bennigsen as his chief of staff, as a safety measure against the new commander-in-chief’s possible treachery as well as his imputed incompetence. Bennigsen was far from pleased when he heard of this, as he had been on his way to St Petersburg hoping to prevail upon Alexander to give him overall command. ‘It was not pleasant for me to serve under another general, after I had commanded armies against Napoleon and the very best of his marshals,’ he later wrote. But when Kutuzov handed him Alexander’s letter begging him to accept, he could not do otherwise.