History of the Expedition to Russia. comte de Philippe-Paul Ségur

took up arms, because circumstances imperiously called upon him to do so, deeming it far preferable to die sword in hand than to fall with disgrace."

      It was said at the same time, that Frederick secretly offered to Alexander to give him possession of Graudentz, and his magazines, and to put himself at the head of his insurgent subjects, if the Russian army should advance into Silesia. If the same authorities are to be believed, Alexander received this proposition, very favourably. He immediately sent to Bagration and Wittgenstein sealed marching orders. They were instructed not to open them until they received another letter from their sovereign, which he never wrote, having changed his resolution. A variety of causes might have dictated that change; 1st, a wish not to be the first to commence so great a war, and his anxiety to have divine justice and the opinion of mankind on his side, by not appearing the aggressor; 2d, that Frederick, becoming less uneasy as to the plans of Napoleon, had resolved to follow his fortunes. It is probable, after all, that the noble sentiments which Alexander expressed in his reply to the king were his only motives: we are assured that he wrote to him, "That in a war which might begin by reverses, and in which perseverance was required, he only felt courageous for himself, and that the misfortunes of an ally might shake his resolution; that it would grieve him to chain Prussia to his fortune if it was bad; that if it was good he should always be ready to share it with her, whatever line of conduct necessity might oblige her to pursue."

      These details have been certified to us by a witness, although an inferior one. However, whether this counsel proceeded from the generosity or the policy of Alexander, or Frederick was determined solely by the necessity of the case, it is certain that it was high time for him to come to a decision; for in February, 1812, these communications with Alexander, if there were such, or the hope of obtaining better terms from France having made him hesitate in replying to the definitive propositions of Napoleon, the latter, becoming impatient, sent additional forces to Dantzic, and made Davoust enter Pomerania. His orders for this invasion of a Swedish province were repeated and pressing; they were grounded on the illicit commerce carried on by the Pomeranians with the English, and subsequently on the necessity of compelling Prussia to accede to his terms. The Prince of Eckmühl even received orders to hold himself in readiness to take immediate possession of that kingdom, and to seize the person of her sovereign, if within eight days from the date of these orders the latter had not concluded the offensive alliance dictated to him by France; but while the marshal was tracing the few marches necessary for this operation, he received intelligence that the treaty of the 21st of February, 1812, had been ratified.

      This submission did not altogether satisfy Napoleon. To his strength he added artifice; his suspicions still led him to covet the occupation of the fortresses, which he was ashamed not to leave in Frederick's hands; he required the king to keep only 50 or 80 invalids in some, and desired that some French officers should be admitted into others; all of whom were to send their reports to him, and to follow his orders. His solicitude extended to every thing. "Spandau," said he, in his letters to Davoust, "is the citadel of Berlin, as Pillau is that of Königsberg;" and French troops had orders to be ready to introduce themselves at the first signal: the manner he himself pointed out. At Potsdam, which the king had reserved for himself, and which our troops were interdicted from entering, his orders were, that the French officers should frequently show themselves, in order to observe, and to accustom the people to the sight of them. He recommended every degree of respect to be shown, both to the king and his subjects; but at the same time he required that every sort of arms should be taken from the latter, which might be of use to them in an insurrection; and he pointed out every thing of the kind, even to the smallest weapon. Anticipating the possibility of the loss of a battle, and the chances of Prussian vespers, he ordered that his troops should be either put into barracks or encampments, with a thousand other precautions of the minutest description. As a final security, in case of the English making a descent between the Elbe and the Vistula, although Victor, and subsequently Augereau, were to occupy Prussia with 50,000 men, he engaged by treaty the assistance of 10,000 Danes.

All these precautions were still insufficient to remove his distrust; when the Prince of Hatzfeld came to require of him a subsidy of 25 millions of francs to meet the expenses of the war which was preparing, his reply to Daru was, "that he would take especial care not to furnish an enemy with arms against himself." In this manner did Frederick, entangled as it were in a net of iron, which surrounded and held him tight in every part, put between 20 and 30,000 of his troops, and his principal fortresses and magazines, at the disposal of Napoleon[2].

[2] By this treaty, Prussia agreed to furnish two hundred thousand quintals of rye, twenty-four thousand of rice, two million bottles of beer, four hundred thousand quintals of wheat, six hundred and fifty thousand of straw, three hundred and fifty thousand of hay, six million bushels of oats, forty-four thousand oxen, fifteen thousand horses, three thousand six hundred waggons, with harness and drivers, each carrying a load of fifteen hundred weight; and finally, hospitals provided with every thing necessary for twenty thousand sick. It is true, that all these supplies were to be allowed in deduction of the remainder of the taxes imposed by the conquest.

CHAP. III.

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      These two treaties opened the road to Russia to Napoleon; but in order to penetrate into the interior of that empire, it was necessary to make sure of Sweden and Turkey.

      Military combinations were then so much aggrandized, that in order to sketch a plan of warfare, it was no longer necessary to study the configuration of a province, or of a chain of mountains, or the course of a river. When monarchs, such as Alexander and Napoleon, were contending for the dominion of Europe, it was necessary to regard the general and relative position of every state with a universal coup d'œil; it was no longer on single maps, but on that of the whole globe, that their policy had to trace its plans of hostility.

      Russia is mistress of the heights of Europe; her flanks are supported by the seas of the north and south. Her government can only with great difficulty be driven into a straight, and forced to submit, in a space almost beyond the imagination to conceive: the conquest of which would require long campaigns, to which her climate is completely opposed. From this, it follows, that without the concurrence of Turkey and Sweden, Russia is less vulnerable. The assistance of these two powers was therefore requisite in order to surprise her, to strike her to the heart in her modern capital, and to turn at a distance, in the rear of its left, her grand army of the Niemen—and not merely to precipitate attacks on a part of her front, in plains where the extent of space prevented confusion, and left a thousand roads open to the retreat of that army.

      The meanest soldier in our ranks, therefore, expected to hear of the combined march of the Grand Vizir towards Kief, and of Bernadotte against Finland. Eight sovereigns were already enlisted under the banners of Napoleon; but the two who had the greatest interest in the quarrel were still deaf to his call. It was an idea worthy of the great emperor to put all the governments and all the religions of Europe in motion for the accomplishment of his great designs: their triumph would have been then secured; and if the voice of another Homer had been wanting to this king of so many kings, the voice of the nineteenth century, the great century, would have supplied it; and the cry of astonishment of a whole age, penetrating and piercing through futurity, would have echoed from generation to generation, to the latest posterity!

      So much glory was not in reserve for us.

      Which of us, in the French army, can ever forget his astonishment, in the midst of the Russian plains, on hearing the news of the fatal treaties of the Turks and Swedes with Alexander; and how anxiously our looks were turned towards our right uncovered, towards our left enfeebled, and upon our retreat menaced? Then we only looked at the fatal effects of the peace between our allies and our enemy; now we feel desirous of knowing the causes of it.

      The treaties concluded about the end of the last century, had subjected the weak sultan of the Turks to Russia; the Egyptian expedition had armed