(some words from ourselves)
The Russian campaign of Napoleon was finished! What did it bring to Russia, France and Europe? For whom was it a victory and for whom - a defeat ?
There are many questions about this and many more very different answers and opinions. Here we are giving our own view. Readers may or may not agree with us.
Napoleon and Alexander. The two most dramatic personages of this war and in the history of the beginning of the 19th century.
Napoleon - he always could think and make non-typical decisions and put them into non-typical practice. He was a great General who hated war all his life, but by it he tried to unite Europe, to give The Human And Citizen Rights Code to all its countries and to turn its history in the right direction. By the way, nowadays, about 200 years after Napoleon, the wisest and most sagacious modern statesmen are trying to do the same, realizing clearly that it is the best way to put an end to all discords and causes for future conflicts between countries.
Alexander - a clever and intellectual man, a talented politician; he could radically change all Russia development, and he really tried to do this at the beginning of his reign. But all his life, that foul March night in 1801 was before his eyes, when his father, Emperor Pavel, was killed by the group of conspirators from the nobility. That night when Alexander was sitting in his room and Count Palen came to him and said : "Don't be childish! Stop crying and go reign!"
Alexander knew if his actions displeased the nobles too much, the same would happen to him too. As a constant reminder of this, he was always surrounded by the very people who taken part in the murder of his father, such as General Bennigsen, General Uvarov and others.
Once Caulaincourt, who was the French ambassador to Russia said that Russia was "a small talk monarchy", and he was right. The main decisions in Russia were not made in Alexander's study, but in the saloons of the nobles in St.Petersburg and Moscow. Perhaps this was the cause of such inconsequent and treacherous policies of Alexander, and the constant violation of the Tilzit treaty terms that was one of the main reasons for the war of 1812.
Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly. The two principle Generals of the Russian army.
The first, an excellent tactician. In his youth he could make courageous and unusual decisions and was never afraid to take responsibility for them. He was one of the best disciples of Generalissimo Suvorov. But when he was a young officer in the army of Rumiantsev, he was given a strong dose of human meanness and since became reserved, distrustful and buttoned up for the rest of his career.
In the end he came to fear responsibility and always tried to shift off all decisions on somebody else. He became an excellent retinue member who always came out unscathed.
The second, Barclay de Tolly, was always promoted slowly because he often came out openly against his command if he saw that senseless human sacrifices would be made to please the Tsar or to gain an unimportant victory. He was always able to defend and prove his point of view. He was very popular and respected by his officers and men because he saw them as people, not just soulless figures in military reports.
But at court and among the highest general officers he was always a stranger. He could not be proud of his long and rich genealogy as Kutuzov, or as a descendant of tsars as was Bagration. Nor did he own huge estates and luxurious palaces in both capitals as did many others.
Often he was blamed because his last name sounded very unusual to the Russian ear, although many Germans held different high posts, and such names were not uncommon at all, By the way, he was not German. His ancestors came from Scotland. He carried on his broad shoulders the hardest part of the campaign of 1812. It was he who found the only tactics by which Russia could win this war without huge, senseless losses. Yet he was removed from the post of War Minister and the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army by Alexander's order.
It should be said in all fairness that this order was the last thing Alexander wanted to sign. He thought highly of Barcaly as a highly skilled general, a wise strategist and a very clever diplomat, but he was forced to do so by pressure of the nobility leaders who feared Napoleon - Not his army, losses and terrible destruction accompanying every war. They were not so afraid of the iron regiments of the Great Army as of the pen of Napoleon, by that he could any time sign an edict to abolish serfdom in the occupied Russian territories. To declare freedom for serfs as he did in other countries of Europe, would be the end of their world. They would prefer any other conqueror, even Attila or Chinhiz-Khan. In their world Napoleon was a stranger forever, as was Alexander, surrounded by his father's murderers and Barclay, surrounded by high-born dignitaries that hated him.
Kutuzov was appointed Commander-in-Chief only days before the Borodino battle. What new did he introduce in the Russian army strategy?
Really nothing. He merely continued and completed the plans of Barclay de Tolly with the only difference that Barclay would never agree to the battle at Borodino that killed so many, as Kutuzov did under pressure of the nobles. That terrible, bloody massacre had almost no results.
Borodino cannot be called a victory of the Russian army, though many of Russian sources try to prove the impossible. And Kutuzov himself tried to make many people believe it was a victory, but of course, such Russian generals as Ermolov, Osterman-Tolstoy and many others knew better.
Kutuzov and Barclay had finally broken off their relationship in the village of Phili just after the War Council where the decision to leave Moscow was made. Kutuzov asked Barclay the same sacramental question: "Have we won at Borodino or not?" And Barclay with his usual straightforwardness replied: "A battle after which an army leaves the field of battle and gives its capital to the enemy cannot be called a victory". After this confrontation, Barclay was forced to leave the army, but soon, after insistent requests of Alexander, he returned to again take command of the army in 1813, and to enter Paris in 1814 at the head of it.
Russia and Europe. The campaign of the Russian army of 1813 - 1814 in Europe. Many Russian sources called it "The liberating march of the Russian army". But what could the Russian army bring on its bayonets to the "liberated" countries? Old, decrepit monarchs that had successfully held on to their thrones from the 15th and 17th centuries, landlords (serf-owners), accustomed to buying and selling their serfs as live-stock. European people had suffered from before the first lights of freedom broke through the dark clouds of the Middle Ages from Paris. And in Russia, officers' fists and sticks, lashes and endless serfdom awaited the returning heroes.
Many books have been written about the war of 1812, and perhaps the most well-known all over the world is "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy. Perhaps this book, as nothing else, has made a big contribution to creating the myth about this war and its consequences for Russia and all Europe. But this book is only the opinion of a single man - Count Lev Nickovaevich Tolstoy, who, for all his life, had been looking for his own truth, but never found it. He met his death on the way to the Church that he did not recognize all his life.
Maybe, if in June of 1812, had only some diplomats such as Talleyrand and Caulaincourt, instead of the Great Army, crossed the Niemen. Perhaps they would have been able to solve all the problems with Alexander and Barclay in a quite different way!
Who knows? Perhaps the future fates of Russia and all of Europe would have been very different. Maybe Europe would not have been thrown back in its development for some dozens of years, and Russia might not have stayed at its medieval level.
Perhaps even there would not have been the First and the Second World Wars with millions of victims, and the numerous modern conflicts that constantly break out in different countries of Europe.
We would like to finish our book with the words :
"God save the world from Russia, and Russia from itself!"
