In Our Time - Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow

Episode Date: September 19, 2019

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, in September 1812, Napoleon captured Moscow and waited a month for the Russians to meet him, to surrender and why, to his dismay, no-one came. Soon his triumph was revealed as a great defeat; winter was coming, supplies were low; he ordered his Grande Armée of six hundred thousand to retreat and, by the time he crossed back over the border, desertion, disease, capture, Cossacks and cold had reduced that to twenty thousand. Napoleon had shown his weakness; his Prussian allies changed sides and, within eighteen months they, the Russians and Austrians had captured Paris and the Emperor was exiled to Elba.WithJanet Hartley Professor Emeritus of International History, LSEMichael Rowe Reader in European History, King’s College LondonAndMichael Rapport Reader in Modern European History, University of GlasgowProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programs. Hello, in September 1812, Napoleon captured Moscow and waited a month for the Russians to meet him, to surrender. Yet to his dismay, no one came.

Soon his triumph was revealed as a great defeat. Winter was coming, supplies were low, he ordered his Grand Army of 600,000 to retreat, and by the time he crossed the border, desertion, disease, capture, Cossacks and the cold had reduced that to 20,000. Napoleon had shown his weakness. His Prussian allies changed sides,

and within 18 months a day, the Russians and the Austrians had captured Paris and the emperor was exiled to Elba. With me to discuss Napoleon's retreat from Moscow are Michael Rowe, reader in European history at King's College London, Michael Report, reader in modern European history at the University of Glasgow

and Janet Hartley, Professor Emeritus of International History at the LSE. Janet Hartley, why had Napoleon invaded Russia? He invaded Russia with this enormous army for very limited aims. He wanted Alexander I, Tsar of Russia, to commit himself to agree to adhere to the Treaty of Tilset, which had been signed between France and Russia in 18. and in particular he wanted Russia to commit itself to the economic blockade, the so-called continental system, which would blockade Britain and which Napoleon thought was the only way to defeat Britain. That in itself sounds almost reasonable and not too much for Alexander to stomach, except for two factors. Firstly, it required the Russian army to be completely defeated and unable to mount any sort of counter-attack.

and secondly, it relied on Alexander the first coming to terms, and we know neither of those things happened in 1812. The unusual thing about Alexander not agreeing to come to terms was that it was unusual and that he wouldn't come to the table. Why was that? It was unusual. It was the norm that if you lost a battle or a couple of battles, you would come to terms,

although many of the treaties that Napoleon signed with other countries were broken in time. It wasn't unusual for that to happen. and Alexander himself had come to terms in 1807 and made an agreement which he later broke. But I think that Napoleon completely misunderstood Alexander's position, both his strengths and his weakness. His weakness was that sardom is often characterized by the phrase

autocracy tempered by assassination. And Alexander, in fact, had come to the throne in 1801 when his father had been assassinated because he defended the elites in Russia by what had seemed like capricious policy. And Alexander couldn't afford to offend the elite in the Guards Regiment who were very patriotic and would not have tolerated coming to terms with Napoleon. I think Napoleon couldn't appreciate that.

And secondly, underestimated Alexander's strength, which was that in the course of 1812, particularly over the summer, Alexander had a, what you might call a religious experience and came to see himself as commanded by God, to not only defeat Napoleon, but to save the whole of Europe from Napoleon. So in the final resort, it was Alexander's determination not to come to terms, which was vital. But in fact, there are also practical reasons. Once Napoleon had penetrated into the heart of Russia, he was always going to lose a vast number of men in the retreat.

So I think the Russians realised the longer they delayed, the stronger they would be. As I understand it, Napoleon was heavily advised not to go into Russia at all. It was sensible advice. I don't know what he would have done, though, because the Russians had not adhered to the treaty. So the only alternative to military action would have been to accept that and waited perhaps for Russia to have fought in Europe and then been far away from home.

Where he made the mistake, I think, I mean, it was a very well-supplied army, 50 days of supplies, and everything seemed to work well at first. He got as far as Smoliansk, he beat the Russians, in battle. They retreated. He had enough supplies to get back from Smolienz, but the Russians retreated in good order. I think he underestimated the capacity of the Russian army to do that. The mistake was probably going to Moscow, but even that could have been successful if they'd engaged rapidly and if he'd left Moscow quickly. It was staying in Moscow for over a month

that was the disaster and then having to face the exceptionally cold Russian winter, on the way out. We'll be coming back to that. Thank you very much, Michael. What was the size of army? It's been mentioned. Can you be more specific about it? What were the size of Napoleon's army?

And how was it made up? It was big. It was unprecedented for the period. Now, there's several numbers we need to sort of bear in mind here. So the actual force that Napoleon leads into Russia in June 1812 is about 450,000 troops. Now, they are followed by additional troops. over the following weeks and months. So that then gets you up to over a half a million, 550,000 or so.

And then you sometimes see in the literature reference to 600,000 plus 650,000. Those are staying behind in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, Poland, East Prussia, as part of a kind of like a base camp. So this is an unprecedented force. You don't see anything like this again until the 20th century. And how is it made up? Well, you have a mixture of nationalities. one might think it's a French army.

It isn't 40% of it's French. The next largest national contingent would be various German contingents from the smaller German states and from Austria and from Prussia, which have been compelled to send units in. So the German speakers would be roughly about a quarter, 20%. So that's still 100,000 plus would be Polish speakers. And then you'd have other nationalities too, Italians, Spanish speakers, even a minority of Portuguese, people from the Balkans.

It is a European army. That must have been extraordinary, difficult to control. It is, and that becomes apparent, really, during the retreat. But even during the advance, it's an army of such a size that a single person sitting on a white horse hasn't got any oversight. And yet the kind of structures you get later on in the 19th century, a sort of general staff, what modern armies have, that doesn't exist in this period.

So that's a real weakness, the command and control. control, rather the lack of it. And what about the Russian army? The Russian army is smaller. At least that bit of a Russian army which confronts Napoleon, which is there on the border, is more like 200,000. So we're talking about a two to one advantage for the French side. But there are the bits of the Russian army elsewhere. People forget that the Russians are actually fighting a war until very recently against the Ottoman Empire. So you've got a substantial Russian army in the Balkans. You've got an even smaller Russian army

facing the Persian Empire. They're having another war against the Persians. And their troops scattered around various garrisons. There have to be troops in the north in case the Swedes might join in. So it's a vast territory, Russia. But you have about 250,000.

But they're cohesive, aren't they? Or other, you tell me. They are cohesive. They're divided into field armies. The problem is they don't exactly know where Napoleon's going to go. It's not obvious that he'll head for Moscow. He might go for St. Petersburg. He might take a more southerly route. So you have to sort of spread yourself out a bit and cover various eventualities. But could these be called hardened conscripts? A lot of them are hardened troops. The Russian army is a long service army. You get conscripted in it. You serve

25 years. I think probably the really good troops are actually on the southern front, you know, fighting the Ottomans. They've had years of experience. may come into play later on, once for French, are actually retreating from Moscow. Thank you. Mike, report, there's the Battle of Borodino, the big battle, sometimes claimed as the Battle of Moscow. It's about 70 kilometres from Moscow, as I understand it.

It was on a scale of great bloodiness. People mentioned the Somme in comparison with it, don't they? Absolutely. I mean, the term Charmelhaus is a bit of a cliche, but it really is appropriate here. One of the reasons it was so bloody was because the Russian army, the bulk of the Russian army,

was squashed into a salient, defensive position, about a mile and a half, actually less, about a kilometer, 1.7 kilometers wide. And they're sitting ducks for French artillery. To a point that at one stage where you get French cavalry charges, the Russian soldiers saw that as a relief because it was a break from relentless bombardment. There was also bitter hand-to-hand fighting at certain points of the line, most famous at the Ryovsky-Roddow in the middle, which is at the tip of the salient. And so it really is the Russians actually create a focal point, but it's partly determined by the terrain,

and they take the best defensive position they could, and they're mulled. Can you give us some idea of numbers? Involves of the slaughtered? Yes. The Russians, there are few estimates, but the Russians seem to have lost about 50,000 dead and wounded. The French,

or the Grande Armée, this cosmopolitan Grande Armée, loses about 35,000. casualties, dead and wounded. The profits of 100,000. Yes, I mean, it's reaching in that direction. Truly, truly a horrific battle. One of the most concentrated battles of the Napoleonic War is possibly apart from Waterloo.

Just that kind of humanity crammed into a tight space. Who claims victory? The French do. The Russians withdraw, but it's in good order. So when the Russians pull back, Kutuzov pulls back his troops, and the retreat goes fairly well. and the French are in control. The field, the French keep marching.

So in that sense, it's a victory, but it's not decisive. It wasn't decisive. So the Russians are still intact. They're still able to fight. And so Napoleon really cannot claim the decisive victory that he's so desperately craved. So he marches on Moscow, about 70 kilometers down the road. And what does he find when he gets to Moscow? A city which has been deserted.

The Russian army marched right through it. On the way back, they decided to abandon Moscow. And what they found was a city which had suffered an exodus. A lot of civilians fled the city. Also, on the day Napoleon arrived, which is in mid-September, the 15th of September, some Cossack set light to a district, part of the scorched turf policy, but that's not what caused the fire. On the day Napoleon arrived, the fires broke out in the city,

and it's still a mystery as to how and why that happened. Who do you think did it? I actually rather like Leo Tolstoy's explanation, which is that you have lots of soldiers in a city built with wooden buildings. Accidents are going to happen. One of the other explanations is the governor, Rostokin, sets light to it out of in a fit of patriotism, so that the capital seat of old Muscovy of ancient Russia doesn't fall to the French or to Napoleon. Does the fact that they consider Napoleon to be the Antichrist play in this at all? With the burning of Moscow, it did because it was a sort of sacrifice of Russian patriotism to the wider cause, yes.

I think Napoleon as the Antichrist is a key feature of 1812. It does appear in Tolstoy's war and peace because Pierre, by a convoluted way of spelling his name and Napoleon's name, comes out with a number 666, a sign of the beast. And that then determines that he is the one to assassinate Napoleon. he's always playing a trick. He's mocking the fact that Russians find Antichrist everywhere by making this so convoluted. But this is the way that he's depicted. The Orthodox Church excommunicated Napoleon in 1806. There are plenty of poems, including soldiers ditties, which are sung, which depict Napoleon as the Antichrist. Peasants are whipped up into a sense of hatred by their local priests by telling them that Napoleon is the Antichrist. And in fact, French memoirists, those who are

who survived that terrible retreat, talk about the peasants viewing them as a legion of devils ruled by the Antichrist. So we have Napoleon in Moscow. It's been deserted, as we've been told. It's been set on fire. We don't quite know by whom and why, but a lot of it's been burnt down.

Was it a fit place to billet troops of this number? It's not entirely unreasonable. There were a lot of stone buildings in Moscow as well as wooden buildings. so you could have lodged troops there. He did lodge troops there. There had been this complete exodus of the population, but there hadn't been a complete exodus of all the possessions and goods in Moscow.

So quite a lot of shops still had cloth and objects and leather that could be used. There wasn't much food in Moscow, which was the thing that Napoleon really needed, or fodder for the horses, which in some way he needed more than food for men. But he wasn't totally unreasonable to think that, say, for a week, a two week, It would allow some of the wounded to be treated, some recovery, but it wasn't what Napoleon expected. And he is sending messages, I presume, to Tara Azanda, who either ignores them or simply says no.

Exactly, yes. What does he do? He know the more say no. At first he didn't know what to do, because rumours reached him from all sorts of quarters about what had happened at Borodino, and the first rumour that he got was that the Russians had won. So there's a moment of hesitation, I think, which turned out to be a very good thing,

because the longer the Russians waited, the worse it got for Napoleon. And then he finds out from his generals and from Kutuzov in particular that the Russian army isn't destroyed. It's badly wounded by Borodino. It couldn't mount another immediate attack, but it had got the capacity to regroup itself. And so that helps a determination, plus this feeling that he is the man of destiny

and he must save Europe. So the longer he waits, the better it is. Roe, when did strike Napoleon that there would be no answer, and how debilitating was that weight? Well, as Mike says, he occupies Moscow mid-September, and it's really about the third, fourth of October, but he decides that he has to leave. Three weeks on.

So it's about three weeks on. He only actually leaves then a week after that. So he sort of hesitates before. He always hopes for a response. It never comes. can't believe that Alexander's going to allow this to happen. So Napoleon when he's in exile much later on St. Helena, he admits, you know, this was a mistake invading Russia. His second mistake was not to get out of Moscow sooner.

Perhaps had Moscow been burnt down completely, and again, this is a myth, as Janet mentioned, it's not completely obliterated by arsonists, but had it been burnt out completely, that might have actually saved Napoleon and that he would have retreated much sooner. Has what you said told us all we need to know about this hesitation or what are there other factors at play? He is worried about what's going on at home in Paris. This is not a secure regime. It's not a legitimate monarchy like you get in Austria,

or in Prussia, or indeed in Russia. And people are plotting against him. And indeed, in early November you have an attempted coup, which is led by a former French general, somebody called Malé, who's got Republican sympathies, which seems momentarily that it might succeed. So Napoleon realizes that being away from Paris is dangerous. People are going to be plotting against him.

The regime might collapse. But the interesting thing is that a man who'd been in his youth so flexible with his tactic and so on was stunned that Alexander Zana could not obey the official rules of war. It is uncharacteristic. It is un-Napologian. Just as his advances, you know, he thinks one more attempt to, advance, I'll be able to surround the Russian army. And that's his real target.

He goes for Moscow because he believes that the Russians are going to have to defend it. They try and defend it. Borodino, they withdraw in good order. He's then stuck in Moscow. I think whatever decision he makes at that point, it's going to be a defeat. If he retreats, he's going to lose face throughout Europe. And, of course, it's not only a French audience he's worrying about, or indeed a Russian audience. He's worried about the Austrians and a Prussians.

And if he loses that aura of invincibility, he's in big trouble. But let's now turn to the retreat. He decided to retreat, and quite soon after he took his troops out of Moscow, there was a battle on the 24th of October, which shifted Napoleon's route home. Let's turn to you, Mike, for that. What was significant about that? Well, Napoleon wanted to take a more southerly route

in order to march along roads, which hadn't been, through countryside, hadn't been denuded of fodder for horses, of food supplies. I mean, things were pretty sparse anyway because of the scorched earth policy and the Russian retreat. But this was one chance of actually getting out, of going some of the way out through countryside, which actually had materials that the French soldiers could use, food especially, and fodder for the horses, grass for the horses, for example, before the winter really came in. And the significance of Malayaro Slavets, the engagement or the big battle, actually, south of Moscow,

is that it deflects Napoleon. He actually makes the decision to go back to the Smolensk Road. I'm intrigued by why it deflects him. How big an army did the Russians send in? Well, the Russians are in camp at a place called Tarotino. And so they're in a strong position. The main reason, I think, is that time is against Napoleon. He knew that the winter was coming in.

He knew that he was going to run out of food. And also, of course, by stopping him, the Russians are stopping him from kind of advancing any further southwards or southwestwards, which is where he wanted to go. There's some theory, some argument that he maybe was after the armaments factory at Tula, which might have not Russia's defensive capacities quite badly if he'd taken the small arms manufacturers at Tula, then that might have severely compromised Russia's capacity to keep fighting.

But it seems to be, I think, that he wanted to find a route out where there were good supplies or better supplies. But this wasn't a battle on the scale of Borodino. No. So what was it a battle on the scale of? It was... Why did he lose? It was house-to-house fighting, really nasty house-to-house fighting.

And it was a bitter battle. The other thing is Napoleon couldn't be terribly sure how strong the Russian army was in front of him. Can I turn to you again, Janet? So he's on the move, he's been deflected. He's going back on land, he's already trodden over and therefore stripped one way and another. He's got to go back perhaps through or bypass Borodino.

It is back across the battlefield. I can't imagine how horrendous that must have been. The troops with corpses and carcasses of horses just on the ground, untouched. So it's on this great retreat, which has been made so much of, and quite understandably. What are the Russians doing to Napoleon's retreating army? Several actions. There's what I would cause harassing the troops from the regular and irregular forces,

Cossacks in particular and partisan groups. Can we talk about the Cossacks in particular for a moment? Well, the Cossacks are the cavalry, and very good at reconnaissance, which Napoleon army wasn't so good at. The cavalry, I think, in Russia was always stronger than the Napoleonic cavalry, but they're very good at small groups conscripting peasants to their cause, attacking stragglers in the rear. And it was destructive in terms of losing men and losing equipment,

but it was also something that was fairly devastating for morale. So that's irregular activity by the Russian army. The Russian army wasn't really strong enough to have another pitched battle against Napoleon. But it was certainly strong enough to push them all the time and to catch them at various points and to have what you might call skirmishes rather than major battles. So there was the action of the regular army, but there was also the action of peasants, something which...

Was that spontaneous or was it being organised? Both. It was organised in terms of small partisan groups, but there was spontaneous action by peasants. Later on, this becomes part of the myth of 1812. The People's War is. the way it's termed in Russian. And as I said earlier, peasants were whipped up by priests

to attack, to see the French troops as godless. They saw them as French troops. If they were Polish troops, they were even more antagonistic towards them, but they didn't normally make distinctions between nationalities. And that was something that French memoirs comment on and say was very savage, was a pitiless war. The motivation, well, I think some of it was, in a crude sense, a sense of Russian nationalism, sheer hatred for the foreigner who'd invaded

their land. Some of it was also very pragmatic. Napoleon's troops were pretty well supplied when they entered Russia, but of course in the retreat, the supplies went down and down, and that's not only foodstuffs, but also fodder for the horses, the weather got colder and men were weakened by the weather, by disease, and they had to live off the land, which meant they had to steal food and fodder from peasants. And there's a lot of the same. And there's a natural instinctive reaction against that. So it's pragmatic as well as, which you might call nationalistic, patriotic.

It certainly harassed the French troops as they retreated. It didn't actually defeat Napoleon, though, I would say. What defeated Napoleon was essentially the Russian army. And Napoleon's stubbornness in persisting to go to Moscow and then staying there too long. But it certainly had an impact on making the very, very difficult retreat where Napoleon knew he would lose a lot of men, they made it worse. Michael Rowe, what was the human cost of this retreat?

And when did the winter, the snow, the frost start to play a part? Because that's certainly part of the myth. Yes, again, it becomes a bit complicated. How do you define survivors? Now, one figure you come across is 30,000 make it out of Russia. Now, those 30,000 are in fairly coherent units. They can still function as soldiers, they can still fight. then you have a slightly larger number in addition to that,

maybe another 40,000 who are stragglers, who are people who just can't function militarily. So it's a small minority who actually escape. When does a weather play a part? Well, I think this can be overdone a bit. I mean, the first, you know, serious bad weather, snow, that occurs in early November. But Napoleon's army is basically finished and defeated by then.

You know, two thirds of the casualties are before he evacuates Moscow. one has to understand geography and weather and crops to understand the polionic warfare. You can only really operate in Russia from June to November. So he's operating under a timetable. Napoleon subsequently blames the snow and the awful cold. But he's going to lose vast numbers of soldiers even before the first snow has fallen. We have to mention, I indeed emphasised, diseases and desertion and malnutrition. Yes.

And we have actually some archaeological evidence of this. You know, mass graves from this period have been found in what is today Vilnius, then Vilna, in what is today Lithuania. And the soldiers, men, most of them, are a few female skeletons, overwhelmingly men, early 20s, a few teenagers, a few older. They're not in good shape. They've got injuries to their feet. They've got fractures.

About a third of them have been suffering, it seems, from typhus. you know, this is a disease-ridden force, which then gets partly frozen to death. You just add on the weather that actually at first it was too hot rather than too cold, and I think that lulled Napoleon into a false sense of security in Moscow, because it was very hot and seasonably warm when he left Moscow in October, and then one would expect it to drop below freezing in November, but the French forces, Napoleonic forces, weren't really equipped for that.

they were particularly not equipped with horseshoes for the horses. So pulling the carts, pulling the equipment, pulling the food stuff became more and more difficult for them. But it was exceptionally cold in December, even by Russian standards. It was below minus 30, which is pretty rare in Russia, particularly in that part of Western Russia. And by that stage, as Michael said, you had troops who were already weakened by poor diet, by disease.

Moral was low. And under those circumstances, the weather, then did play a crucial part, particularly with the stragglers. Mike Rapport, why did they pursue Napoleon beyond their boundaries? Several reasons. First of all, Zal-Axana would first seize himself as the Liberator of Europe. So ideologically has almost this mystical devotion to this goal. But there is a debate within the Russian government and the high command. Kutuzov wanted to stop.

The enemy are out of Russia. That's it. Job done. The Tsar, however, and some of his other advisors believed, actually we continue because Russian strategic security would not be guaranteed for as long as Napoleon is in eastern and central Europe, in a strong position. He also is worried about Poland. One of the dangers for Russian strategic security on the western frontiers is that Napoleon might somehow reconstitute Poland. There's a particular animus towards Poland, isn't it? Yes, absolutely. When they're caught, they get treated worse than anyone else. That's the anecdotal evidence, certainly.

I think partly because they're not treated as enemy soldiers, they're treated as rebels. So at the end of the Napoleonic War, that campaign, other members of the Napoleonic Army are released to prisoners of war and allowed to go home. But many of the Poles who were captured are conscripted into a Russian army. But they're still, they decide to plow on. Yes, that's right. And they do so also because Napoleon was in. a weak position. His army was shattered. So push on. It seemed to be, make some kind of strategic sense.

Also, there was a chance and quite a large chance that Europe was on the brink of rebellion against French domination. And the British and the Spanish and the Portuguese are already fighting the French pretty successfully in Spain. And there's a possibility that the Austrians might change sides, join the Allies, and then Prussia itself. When did Prussia change sides? Is it during the retreat? In spring of 1813, although I happen to be corrected on that. It's quite early. I think it might be as early as January 1813. The Prussians have been forced by treaty to supply an auxiliary corps.

A small Prussian unit, well, not that small. Tens of thousands of troops as part of the invasion force, as part of the Napoleonic invasion force into Russia. And they switch sides when it becomes clear that they've only ever been there on sufferance anyway. And once it becomes clear that Napoleon has lost, they signed a convention. Their commander does, somebody called York von Wartnstein, signs a convention of Torogun. So the Prussians switch sides, they're now in the Russian camp. And that's a big problem for Napoleon.

Yes. When does he feel these powers lining up against him and around him? Well, it gets worse over the year. So the Austrians who field a huge army later on in Napoleonic Wars, they decide, they again have sent in an auxiliary corps on the French Napoleonic side, and they managed to extricate it. I think the Russians probably realise that they're not really our enemies, so they sort of avoid each other, the Austrians pull out, and then they set themselves up as mediators.

They say, let's have peace, we're going to mediate between Zara Alexander and Napoleon, which is a great position for Austria to be, and it holds the balance of power. Napoleon refuses to do the kind of deal, which would have been acceptable, and so the Austrians, over the summer of 1813, they join this burgeoning coalition of Prussia, Russia, and of course Britain coming up through spade. So Napoleon is now heavily outnumbered by the summer of 1813. How did, now, we have the saga element,

almost mythics, any of a saga of them going through the snow, trying to get back, numbers reduced again and again, the Cossacks tearing in and tearing out, and the thing builds up to Tolstoy, Djokovsky, and the myth of the peasants and so on. But just at this moment, they got out, He's got back. How did he present himself to the French people, Napoleon?

Well, first of all, he left his army early. I mean, he, about a week or two before the army recrosses into the Duchy of Warsaw or Poland, makes it back to Paris and starts actually raise a new army in order to face out. Was there a sense of blame around the place? I mean, Napoleon does present it as a kind of non-event. I mean, Napoleon is four. on this. He'd already abandoned a French army once before in Egypt. He'd run away in 1799, and it sort of presented it through fake news. It spun it as a great kind of like triumph.

Now, what he essentially does... Why does he spin this as a crime? What he does is he issues these bulletins, and the infamous one, if you like, is the 29th bulletin of the Grande, which is a kind of propaganda sheet, comes out in early December. And he essentially says everything's going fine until the weather. turns nasty in early November. And it's not really the Russians that defeated us. It's the weather.

Bad weather. Bad luck. And it ends that bulletin with the sort of the line that the health of his majesty, I, Napoleon's never been better. So it's not too bad. The emperor still lives. He has to say that because of this earlier coup I mentioned, which had been predicated on the idea that Napoleon has died in Russia.

So let's have a regime change in Paris. And this health wasn't good at the time. His health is not good. He's obviously depressed. He's annoyed at what's going on in Paris. But he immediately, you know, after a few days, he's back in Paris. He attends the Paris Salon, you know, the kind of art collection, and he does all his kind of public events and things. So he bounces back, and as Mike mentioned, he starts raising new armets. And he feels a very large army back in Central Europe in 1813. It does seem what he can have lost so many people, especially young men,

18s and their 20s, and then cheerfully, not cheerfully, let's stop that, and then go back and start raiding another army. Well, the French had a system of conscription dating back to 1798 called the Gilles-Den-Law on conscription, which divided the male population into classes. So every year, when that class came of age in their mid-20s, they were liable to conscription. So each year, and sometimes he called in classes early

before these men came of age, so he could really draw on a lot of manpower very, very quickly if he so chose. Were there any insurrections across France saying we've seen what's happened to our sons, cousins and all the husbands and so on? Not quite yet. There were later on, especially when Wellington crossed the Pyrenees in 1814. And then there's a lot of restiveness as the European allies converge on France's frontiers in 1814. But it's interesting that you do get a lot of domestic opposition beginning to stir.

after the defeat in Russia in 1812. Up to that point, really from about 1804 to 1812, there hadn't been that much domestic opposition, or at least overt domestic opposition to Bonaparte, apart from the coup de Tatea and so on, or attempted coup. But it's after 1812. As the Napoleonic Empire in 1813 and 1814 began to unravel across Europe, the French were less able to rely on the manpower,

the finances, the material provided by French-dominated Europe, because that unraveled. So increasingly the French were more dependent on French resources, which stirred opposition. Janet Hartley, how are the Russians affected by this? And by what turned out it would be their great victory? Well, I'd like to say that although the French suffered terribly in the retreat, the Russians suffered as well, of course. No one knows, again, quite how many Russians died,

but probably 200, 300,000 Russians. They were better equipped for the winter. It was easier to operate on their own territory. They had quite good grain stores, and it was easier for them to conscript men rapidly. In the whole Napoleonic period, they conscripted over 1.5 million men, and it was easier for them as well to get horses. But they did suffer in the retreat, which is one of the reasons why the Russian army couldn't finish Napoleon off in 1812.

How it's presented in Russia is very interesting, because in many ways it's an odd presentation. There was no heroic battle that the Russians won, and most countries like to celebrate a battle, but there wasn't a heroic battle in 1812. The Russian troops performed extremely well in Europe in 1813 and 1814, but that isn't part of the myth. The myth is 1812, the people's war, the rise of the people,

the rise of Russian nationalism, despite the fact that Russia is a multi-ethnic and a multi-confessional empire, and Muslim Bashkirs and Tartas fought alongside Orthodox Russian soldiers. That myth-making starts almost straight away. It starts in 1812 when local newspapers in Russia report heroic actions of peasants rising against French soldiers. And it continues over the next two centuries, but it's changed and warped by developments within Russia. So the initial presentation is of heroic outpouring of all the people collectively, irrespective of class,

nationality, whether they're a serf or whether they're a nobleman. That starts to shift by the late 19th century and Tolstoy's war and peace is part of that where the ordinary people are given much more support and praise for their performance in 1812 than the Russian officer corps. It changes again in the early 20th century in the centenary in 1912 when the Russian Tsar is very very weak on the throne having lost a war against Japan and uses the opportunity to reassert the great patriotic outpouring of all the people collectively for the Tsar and orthodoxy. And then it changes again in the Soviet period, partly because of class interpretations of history so that the people again come to the fore, the nobility and the clergy hardly get a look in and it's linked with

attacks on feudalism. And partly because, of course, the Soviet Union retreats in front of Nazi Germany in much the same way that Kutuzov were treated in front of Napoleon's forces, so it's then presented as a superb action by a general drawing the enemy in rather than a necessity because the Russian forces weren't strong enough. 2012, the celebrations were immense in Russia, which contrasted with the celebrations of the revolution, which were very ambivalent in Russia in 2017. And Putin stated that it was the patriotism of the Russian people, which made Russia powerful in which defeated Napoleon.

How far do you go along with this, Michael, and how far is it propaganda? Well, I mean, 1812 is the Russian moment of this period. Of course, it's overtaken in by the great patriotic war of the 20th century. Other countries have their moments in this period. In Britain, it would be Trafalgar, 1805, the death of Nelson, possibly Waterloo as well, 1815.

For the Spanish, it's the great uprising against Napoleon in 1808, the 2nd of May, the Dostomaios, there's not a single town or city in Spain, which hasn't got a square named after that event. For the Germans, especially for the Prussians, the North Germans, maybe at a stretch the Austrians as well. It's the Battle of the Nations. It's 1813 is the great anniversary, which they celebrate, for example, in 1913, just on the eve of the... So everyone in the sense is engaged in myth-making and of picking that moment, if you like, of Napoleonic wars where they come out best.

Now for France, of course, it's complicated. There's really nothing you can say positive about 1812. I suppose their big event is ultimately 1789, is the revolution, the Bastille. That's what subsequent regime, certainly when you get republican forms of government in France after 1871, that's what they dwell on. And Napoleon is really something you try and forget a little bit.

And is this typified by the fact that two of Russian's greatest artist, Chakowski and Le Tolstom. 2012. I'm sure it almost certainly is. I mean, Tolstoy, the great novel, War and Peace. He actually did his research. He used some of the leading sources of the day. I'll defer to Jan on the pronunciation, Mikhailovsky, Danilevsky or something like that. He used his book, his seminal book, written in 1830s on the 1812 campaign. So he did his research, but he was fictionalized. and of course it creates this wonderful story of love and war and then of course you have the music

and Chikovsky's the overture of 1812 which is incredibly heroic and I think it's very heroic but of course it wasn't written in 1812 to say it the obvious it was produced in 1882 to commemorate the opening of the cathedral the thing is that 70 years later he's still celebrating 1812 Yes but he's celebrating something very specific which is the opening of the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer,

which in itself recognised the contribution made by soldiers who died in the 1812 campaign. So it all comes together. And that church is then blown up by the Bolsheviks in the early 20th century and has now been recreated with the names of all the officers who died in the Napoleonic Wars inscribed on the walls. And I love the fact with 1812 that the French are represented by the Marseillaise, which of course would have been wrong. in 1812 because Napoleon banned it, the Marseillaise.

How did it change the balance of power finally? Well, it's a huge loss in manpower. And Napoleon, yes, he gets armies back, but these are young conscripts. As Mike was saying, they fall back on earlier years. They call up classes prematurely. So these are sort of people in their late teens. Also, something which is very serious,

we haven't really mentioned horses, you know, the equine loss. the fact that the loss of horses, probably 200,000 on the Napoleonic side, French horses, well, French, German on the Napoleonic horses, if you like. And of course, horses, cavalry are your reconnaissance, they're your communications, they are shot troops in battles. They make battles decisive, you can follow them up. So Napoleon, although he gets fairly large armies back into Central Europe in 1813, they can't really inflict knockout victories against their Austrian.

in Prussian and Russian opponents. And it's partly this deficiency in horsepower, in cavalry. So we're left with something in 1812 that is still powering away in Russia today. I think so, yes. I think the memorials that took place in 2012 to 1812 were easy for the Russians to do. It was something that was easy to celebrate and brought people together. And that's as relevant today as it was at the time. How far do you think that it was the people, it was the people's war and the people threw them out of Russia

and it was the people who challenged Napoleon as he tried to get back to revenge. They were the principally responsible. Tolstoy listed towards that. How do you stand there? I'm afraid I think the Napoleon was defeated partly by his own attitude and then by the Russian army and the discipline of the Russian army and its ability to retreat in good order. But I don't want to. to dismiss the significance of the hitting morale in the retreat

by the actions of peasants who killed, murdered, stragglers in the French army. Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Janet Hartley, Michael Rowe and Mike Report. Next week is The Rapture. The idea that true Christians will be snatched safely to heaven before the end of the world, popularised in the 19th century in Britain and Ireland before taking hold in America. Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now, a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.

I think perhaps I would have liked to have added a few words more on Poland, on the impact of the 1812 invasion on Poland. I think the Poles who entered Russia, possibly over 90,000 of them, knew what they were fighting for, possibly quite more than the Italians or maybe from the Italian peninsula or from the German states. They wanted a resurrection of their country. They'd got it to some extent under Napoleon who'd created a Dutchian. of Warsaw. They knew what they were fighting for and they lost. So when the Russians moved through Europe

in 1813, they were conquerors in Poland, they were an occupation in Poland. They weren't greeted as liberators as they were in Prussia. And the upshot for Poland was a slightly ambivalent one. One might have expected their aspirations to be completely crushed. In fact, superficially, they got more out of it than the Russians did because they got a reconstituted state, rather a small one, but a reconstituted state, Congress kingdom of Poland, and they got a constitution. a modern-style constitution and various liberties. But they were completely tied to the Russian state. And later revolts meant that Poland became fully incorporated into the Russian state.

I would like to add actually almost following on from Janet's point is what happens in Russia afterwards is, I mean, a lot of the, I think there's some debate about this, but a lot of the army officers, Russian army officers who march across Europe or ride their way across Europe, meeting Prussian officials, meeting even enlightened Napoleonic French, ex-Napologian French officials, when the Russians occupy France in 1814, bring back a lot of the ideas that why can't we have these kinds of bureaucratic reforms, constitutions, and ultimately, just 10 years after the end of Napoleonic wars, you get the first Russian Revolution, and that's the Decemberst uprising of 1825,

which is partly inspired by the experience of the patriotic war of 1812 and the subsequent years in the Napoleonic conflict. That's true. There's very much a feeling that they saved Europe. they shed their blood for Europe and they got nothing and even the perfidious polls got a constitution the French got a constitution but not the Russians

I mean this is Russia's moment 1814 15 I think Stalin when he's met by Americans whatever in Potsdam and they sort of say you know is it wonderful the Russia's got this far in the middle of Germany Stalin's sort of reply as well

Alexander got to Paris they never get as far west as that and so the Russians can present themselves quite plausibly as saviors of European civilisation. And, you know, you were mentioning about the influence of France on Russian political thought of enlightened French sort of thinking. But Russians also leave their mark on Parisian fashion.

You get these kind of Cossack motifs, which women, you know, elegant Parisian women start to where I think even the roller coaster, the Russians sort of introduced these kind of like, you know, things that we have in fairgrounds, it's all primitive versions of those. And there are these kind of interesting cultural transfers from Russia to the West, which you hadn't had before, and it's not to that extent. And also apparently the term bistro. That's right.

Beestra. Bistra, Bistra. Serve me quickly. Bistra. I'd like to have heard more about the Cossacks. I mean, I think one of those greatest novels is the Cossacks. But that apart, what the Cossacks did and what they were, does anybody want to talk a bit more about them?

I get a sense as a historian of Germany. that they sometimes exaggerate the number of Cossacks. They seem to be popping up everywhere in 1813 and 14, and they almost become kind of shorthand for the Russian army. And you add up the number of references to them, and they couldn't have been that many. I mean, we're probably talking 20, 30,000 Cossack troops out of an army of about half a million the Russians get together.

They make a huge impression. Yeah, they wage guerrilla warfare almost under their own. But not only that. I mean, you know, by the time of the Napoleonic wars, they'd more or less become incorporated into the Russian army formally. It was the 18th century where they were really almost like under control, out of control, and became rebels. They were incorporated.

They were used as cavalry forces and irregular forces. And I think they were very, very good at that. They're very, very well-trained horsemen. They also freed the regular army from duties like guarding prisoners of war, reconnaissance, as Janet said. guarding important strategic points like crossroads and all that. And also there is a Cossack strike arm, which actually intervened at Borodino, went around behind the French, and a guy called Platov.

And it turned out to be a bit of a distraction, but just enough to delay a French attack on the Ryovsky Redoubt at the height of the battle, which maybe contributed to allowing the Russians eventually to extricate themselves from Borodino with their army. Well, I wasn't going to say intact, but perhaps less badly more than it might other whites have been. Why do you think they became so romanticised? What's your word for it? It's a mixture of terror and

a sort of romanticisation. I mean, their flamboyate, well, the terror is that they have a reputation for great cruelty, for inflicting sort of physical harm on civilians and on prisoners and on enemy combatants alike. What is bad as the Bashir? I'm actually

quarter of Cossack heritage, a terror of Cossack. So I'm not trying to remove myself from this. This is a sensitive point. I'm going to have a reputation for drinking, you know, smashing wine cellars and sort of emptying out with contents of all the bottles they sort of come across. I mean, this fear is actually quite effective in 1813, 14, because bits of the Napoleonic administration in the outer sort of satellite states and the outer empire, they start to sort of prematurely evacuate their administration, partly through fear, you know, Cossacks have been spotted nearby. We better sort of pull back. So it's a very effective tool on the Russian side.

And its contemporary relevance as well, as Ukraine in particular, is rediscovering a Cossack heritage, with a lot of horsemanship and a lot of rather unpleasant nationalistic views. The strange thing about the Cossacks is how they go from being rebels to be in the absent stalwarts of the Ancian regime

in very right wing, and that happens between the late 18th century and the early 19th century when the last great Cossack rebellion is crushed. And then they become sort of bastions of conservatism. What is this relationship between Prussia and Russia? Well, there is this sort of Prussian lobby in Russia. One of the earlier questions you're asking was, you know,

why does Alexander continue his march westward, despite advice from people like Kutuzov that says, you know, the British are going to gain from this, and we don't like the British. And there is this sort of Prussian lobby. Somebody who's very important as an opponent, somebody called Baron von Stein, who's a great Prussian reformer changes, you know,

way Prussia is governed in this period. And there are others around him. Klausovitz, he enters, he's a Prussian who enters Russian service. They hate Napoleon. They hate Napoleon. They hate what he's done to Prussia in 1806, the occupation, and the French occupation of Prussia is awful. And Russia is a kind of saviour. Well, it's repressive, they shoot people, they requisition, so you're near famine conditions, people starve, the infant mortality rates. This is documented. They go up. So the Prussians are treated very harshly by Napoleon after 1806

So this leads to partly to an upsurge of German nationalism But the Russians save Prussia They really do And so for most of the 19th century For most of the period Really all the way up until about the 1890s That relationship between Prussia Which becomes of course Germany after unification 187071

That relationship between Prussia stroke Germany And Russia is quite a close one They tend to be allies rather than enemies the 19th century. Why did Napoleon's reputation continue to dazzle when he was such, well, I won't find words on this programme to describe what I think of him, but he just sails in and sacrifices hundreds of thousands of people. Why does people come out at the other end still and say, oh, Napoleon there was a man? I don't know, is the heroism, I suppose, are almost a romantic. Was he a particularly hero? Well, I don't, I can't see it myself,

I have to say, that I know when I went to the Battle of Waterloo gift shop, I was a bit disgusted to find that 95% of the goods on sale to do with the podium that's very little to do with the British or with Wellington. There was a fascination with him in Russia as well, which I think diminished after 1812, but there was a sense

of this great figure. He was also, sorry Michael, he was also very good at creating his own myth. He dictated his memoirs when he was in Exxon, Santalina, the memoir de Saint-Elein, and he talks about, you know, I want to be the liberator.

at some point says I wanted to, after invading Egypt, I wanted to ride into India on the back of an elephant. He's creating his own myth. And the memorial was a bestseller in Europe after he died. So he created his own image quite well. But it was mixed, actually. I think a lot of Europeans were, at the end of 1815, were really relieved to see him go,

including a lot of French people, wanted peace. They were not just war weary. They were terrified of war. They'd suffered a military occupation, just as the rest of Europe did in 1814, not as rapacious, but they did. And so they wanted an end to the war as well. I mean, that's short term, I think. People are, you know, they're fed up with war.

They've had a generation of it in 1815. But then very quickly, I think this pro-Napoleon sets in, and it's partly because he has his memoirs written in St. Helena, and they put the best possible gloss on him and say he's a liberator. But then these regimes which you get in, including in Britain, they're pretty awful after 1815. They're sort of reactionary. They're oppressive, of course, in Britain, you have a Peterloo massacre.

You have Metternish with his censorship machine in Austria. And they're rather boring as well. You know, they don't do very much those regimes. They're not heroic, and they're oppressive. And I think people then start to sort of see Napoleon through rose-tinted glasses, and they say, weren't things better then? At least we had some kind of heroic leader. You know, more for them, I would agree.

It was awful in the route. One era where he does actually make quite a constructive contribution to Europe is where he introduces things like the Concordao, which introduces religious toleration to religious minorities, and religious freedom, actually, religious minorities, and also the Napoleonic Code, which is a fairly straightforward system of law, civil law, which is very popular in some parts of Europe

where it was allowed to take root. When he's on Centalino, Napoleon almost expressed his regret that he didn't try and incite serfs in Russia against their noble owners and create a sort of social war, I think that's simply after the event. He was a military man who had fairly limited military aims, but there certainly is no evidence of that in 1812.

I think you're about to be interrupted by the producer. Would you like tea or coffee? Coffee would be coffee. A tea would be very nice. Coffee would be lovely. I love a tea, please. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. Your Dead to Me is a new history podcast for people who just don't like history,

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