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The Beginning
of the Counter-Revolution in France

p The overthrow of the revolutionary government on 9 Thermidor 1794 marked the beginning of the bourgeois counter-revolution. Although in the first few days after Robespierre’s execution the deputies at the Convention continued to profess their allegiance to the revolutionary cause, this mask was soon abandoned and the victors showed themselves in their true colours.

p The streets were now controlled by roaming bands of "Jeunesse Doree" (Golden Youth). In the Convention and the government organs it was the so-called "Right Thermidorians" who held sway —representatives of a new section of the bourgeoisie which had grown up during the revolution, flourishing on speculation. At their insistence fixed prices were abandoned and complete freedom was restored to the sphere of commerce. All food prices immediately soared and speculation reached unprecedented proportions. The town poor went hungry while the traders and speculators made tremendous profits.

p In November 1794 the Golden Youth destroyed the Jacobin Club and this outrage marked the beginning of a wave of counterrevolutionary terror, as Girondins and Feuillants and other counter-revolutionary groups settled their accounts with the Jacobins.

The major social and democratic achievements of the Jacobin dictatorship were done away with. In 1795 a new constitution was drafted which abolished universal suffrage and restored electoral qualifications based on property.

The Directory

p At the end of 1795 in accordance with the new constitution power was transferred to the Directory (an executive of five “directors”) and two legislative chambers—the Council of the 373 Ancients and the Council of the Five Hundred. Both in the Directory and the two chambers it was the new rapacious, speculative bourgeoisie that held sway. This ruling group was full of contempt for the urban poor, which it feared greatly, and it was this fear that lay at the root of the anti-popular reactionary policy it pursued. However, this new bourgeoisie which had seized the riches of the former landowning nobles could not permit the restoration of the old regime. It was an anti-monarchist government and it ruthlessly crushed all attempts on the part of the royalists to recapture power. This meant that the Directory lacked any semblance of a co-ordinated policy, since it was continually trying to strike a compromise between the two extremes of left and right. This vacillating “policy” became known as the political see-saw (bascule).

p In 1796 the Directory brought to light a carefully planned conspiracy, known as the "conspiracy of equals" led by Gracchus Babeuf (1760-1797). Babeuf was the first communist revolutionary, who hoped to do away with private property by means of a dictatorship of the minority. But the communism he propagated was of a primitive egalitarian variety and Babeuf failed to appreciate the historic role of the proletariat. Babeuf was executed and the conspiracy fizzled out.

After crushing this conspiracy the Directory soon found itself threatened from the right. In 1797 there was a threat of a monarchist coup and once more the Directory had to resort to force to defend itself. After these constant swings of the political see-saw to right and left, the Directory soon lost most of its former authority and the people’s confidence and was hard put to it to cling to the last vestiges of its power.

The 18th Brumaire Coup d’État

p On the morning of 18 Brumaire m the year VIII (November 9, 1799) on the pretext that there existed a threat of a new Jacobin conspiracy, the Council of the Ancients appointed Napoleon commander of the armed forces. In a voice throbbing with emotion Napoleon made a vow that in this situation, when great danger threatened the Republic and a terrible conspiracy had been brought to light, he, Bonaparte, would defend "the Republic founded on liberty, equality and the sacred principles of popular representation”. Such was the opening of a carefully premeditated and prepared political coup. By the evening of the next day the coup had been completed. In a highly “legal” fashion the Directory and all its organs had been swept away and a new order, that of the Consulate, had been established.

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However, although in his short and somewhat incoherent speeches throughout Brumaire (November) General Bonaparte assured everyone that he was resolved to defend the "sacred principles of popular representation”, the real motive behind the latest coup was to do away with these sacred principles and set up his own unlimited dictatorship.

The Consulate

p On the surface little had changed since the time of the Diiectory. Bonaparte instructed his counsellors to write "in brief obscure terms”. The new constitution adopted after the coup d’etat of Brumaire, known as the constitution of the year VIII, was drawn up according to Napoleon’s instructions. It was brief in the extreme and worded in very obscure terms. France was to remain a republic as before. The revolutionary calendar which had been introduced by the Convention was retained, as were the revolutionary slogan "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, and the symbolic figures of Liberty and the Republic. Executive power, however, passed from the Directory to three consuls, and the two legislative chambers were replaced by four organs—the Senate, the State Council, the Tribunate and the Legislative Body. Deputies to each of these legislative organs were not elected but appointed by the government from among proposed candidates. These four institutions achieved very little since their spheres of action overlapped considerably and their power was more apparent than real.

p Real power in the republic was now in the hands of a single man —the First Consul General Bonaparte (1769-1821). When he carried out his coup d’etat in 1799 his reputation was not yet established and he had no grounds for aspiring to leadership in the country. He was of course known to be one of the finest generals, but at that period there were a number of fine generals, such as Moreau, Jourdan and Massena and rumours also circulated to the effect that Bonaparte had abandoned the Egyptian army in a quite hopeless situation without any official authorisation.

Bonaparte was well aware of all this and accordingly tended at first to give prominence in his speeches to the republic and the "sacred principles" of the revolution, keeping his own role in the background. Meanwhile he was going out of his way quietly and inconspicuously to do away with the republic and those very principles of which he spoke so much. He abolished the parliamentary system and local self-government the revolution had brought and set up in their place a strong centralised administration embracing the whole country. The Ministry of the Interior 375 and the all-powerful police which insinuated its way into all spheres of the nation’s life—political, spiritual and private—were to become the most important state organs under the Consulate. The police network was placed in the hands of Joseph Fouche who had been a priest before the revolution, an extremist in the Jacobin Convention, and a Thermidorian under the Directory—cunning, mendacious and treacherous, and a master of intrigue. Fouche was quick to show his new master what he was capable of. The attentats organised against Napoleon Bonapaite by the monarchists in 1800 Fouche—with the direct encouragement of the first consul—declared to be the work of the Jacobins. This provided him with the desired pretext for reprisals against the Jacobins and the Royalists, in short with all those still behaving too independently: the excuse had been found and 376 the scheme was carried through to its logical conclusion. Freedom of the press was abolished and a few dozen newspapers were closed down. The thirteen newspapers which continued to appear were all turned into government organs.

The Campaign of 1800 and the End
of the Second Coalition

p Police measures, however, were not enough to consolidate the first consul’s power. Bonaparte was aware of this and realised that he needed military triumph and a reputation that spread beyond the confines of his own country. So he proceeded to lead the French army into Northern Italy where the main Austrian forces were deployed. The French army chose the most difficult and unexpected route—across the Alps by way of the high Grand St. Bernard pass. At the beginning of June the army appeared in the enemy’s rear. On June 14 after a fierce battle at Marengo the outcome of which was long in the balance, Napoleon succeeded in routing the Austrian army, forcing the survivors to flee in panic.

The outcome of the Austrian campaign was already decided. Another victory at Hohenlinden secured by General Moreau made the Austrians more anxious than ever to sue for peace. By the Treaty of Luneville signed on February 9, 1801, the terms of which were dictated by the victor, France annexed Belgium and all German territory on the left bank of the Rhine, and Austria agreed to recognise all the so-called "daughter republics”, Helvetian (Switzerland), Batavian (Holland), Ligurian (Genoa area) and Cisalpine (Lombardia), which in practice were totally dependent on France, Piedmont being subjected to French occupation.

England from the French Revolution
to the Treaty of Amiens

p The Treaty of Luneville made France the leading power in Western Europe. Yet there was still England to be reckoned with, France’s traditional enemy, who had long been contending French supremacy in Europe and the colonial world. England had beenat war with France for the best part of a decade. During this period her industry, spurred on by the introduction of the latest mechanical innovations, had been making great strides, her fleet had grown considerably and the big bourgeoisie had been making considerable profits from the wars. Taken all in all however, enormous military expenditure had been to the detriment of the country’s economy; prices, and in particular the price of bread 377 had risen steeply. With every passing year the living conditions of the masses were becoming more intolerable. In 1795 riots over food prices broke out in various English towns. Slogans such as "Bread and Peace for the People or Off with the King’s Head" were to be found on the walls of the poor districts. In 1797 sailors manning English warships in the English Channel and the North Sea mutinied. In some cases nooses were attached to the masts as a warning to captains and officers. In 1798 a rebellion broke out in Ireland.

The English government was headed at the time by William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806) who, by means of concessions or, more frequently, repression, succeeded in putting down these outbreaks. He pressed for victory over France. However, when Suvorov’s outstanding victories in Italy on the Adda and in the battle of Trebbia (1799) were followed by a reconciliation between Russia and France, a tremendous setback for England, and when finally Austria also retired from the war, he realised there was no longer any hope of victory over France. The people demanded peace and Pitt resigned. In March 1802 a peace treaty based on mutual concessions was signed between England and France at Amiens. For the first time after ten long years of costly wars resulting in tremendous loss of life France was finally at peace. Some of her enemies she had defeated while the remainder she had obliged to conclude an honourable peace with her. France was now universally recognised as Europe’s strongest military power.

Napoleon Becomes Emperor

On the strength of her victories France had gained unprecedented prestige and was now very nearly at the apogee of her glory as Power No. 1 in Europe. Since all her successes were linked with the illustrious name of country’s First Consul, Bonaparte decided that the time was ripe for him to realise his true ambitions. He no longer felt obliged to continue his former role of soldier devoted to the Republican cause. In 1802 Bonaparte was made Consul for life and in 1804 he was hailed "Emperor of the French”. Napoleon desired to be crowned by the Pope just as Charlemagne had been a thousand years before. The difference in the proceedings lay in the fact that whereas Charlemagne had travelled to the Pope, Napoleon obliged the "holy father" to come to Paris and during the coronation ceremony tore the imperial crown out of the Pope’s hands and set it on his head himself.

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The Bourgeois Empire

p The Republic was gone to be replaced by the Empire. The Tuileries was to become the court of the new Emperor and Napoleon was determined that the splendour and magnificence of his palace should outshine all the other courts of Europe. A new imperial nobility came into being, when former clerks, stable boys and petty traders, devoted heart and soul to Bonaparte, were made dukes, princes and earls overnight. Golden bees on black velvet were to be the emblem of the new empire. Soon a new monarchy had come into being, a powerful monarchy rich and lavish in its outward brilliance, not a feudal monarchy but a bourgeois empire under the one-man dictatorship of Napoleon I.

Bonaparte made short work of the democratic gains of the Revolution. The passing of the Republic was followed by the abolition of many of the recently gained democratic freedoms, and democrats were subjected to ruthless persecution. However, Napoleon’s policies were based on clear-cut principles and determined by definite objectives. Bonaparte not only retained the redistribution of property in the interests of the bourgeoisie the Revolution had brought, but went out of his way to consolidate and protect the bourgeois gains. All his policies, all his social and civil legislation promoted the interests of the bourgeoisie and landowning peasants. The interests of dynastic succession obliged the Emperor to make plans for new military successes. The throne of the empire was to be enhanced by a halo of glory. This was called for by the interests of the French bourgeoisie in its aspirations for domination of Western Europe. Meanwhile however, neither England, acknowledged as the leading economic and industrial power in Europe and aspiring to domination of the Western World, nor the old feudal monarchies of Europe were ready to reconcile themselves to the ascendancy of this new, bourgeois Empire. The peace treaties of 1801 and 1802 were regarded as breathing spaces rather than long-standing armistices. In the meantime both sides were busily preparing for war.

The Third Coalition

p By the autumn of 1805 Europe was once more embroiled in a large-scale war. On the initiative of English diplomats a powerful new anti-French coalition was set up. It was joined by England, Russia and Austria, and Prussia was ready to attack France too. Events moved rapidly: on October 20th Napoleon forced the Austrian army to capitulate at Ulm and on November 13th French troops marched triumphantly into Vienna. However, shortly before these victories, on October 21st the English navy under 379 Admiral Nelson practically annihilated the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar. Napoleon was forced to abandon his plans for invading Britain. Trafalgar made up for Ulm and served to restore the balance of power.

p On December 2, 1805, the main forces of both sides met in a battle which was to settle the outcome of the war. At the battle of Austerlitz, which came to be known as the "battle of the three Emperors" the Austrian and Russian armies were routed by Napoleon. Tsar Alexander and Emperor Francis of Austria fled from the field in the midst of desperate chaos.

A few days later Austria capitulated. On December 26 she accepted the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Pressburg. As a result the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist, and Austria was to lose a considerable part of her territory to the expanding French Empire, which thereby gained immeasurable political prestige.

The Fourth Coalition

p Bonaparte still had Russia and England to reckon with. In 1806 they were joined by Prussia, Saxony and Sweden in the Fourth Coalition against France.

p The presumptuous, self-assured Prussian military, which held this German state, like the army, in the grip of iron discipline and regimentation, carried away by memories of the age of Frederick the Great boastfully promised a lightning victory over the "revolutionary anti-Christ”. But no sooner were hostilities under way than events took a very different course.

p On October 8, 1806, the French army led by Napoleon set out •on a new expedition. Within the space of six days the main body of the Prussian army had been routed in two almost simultaneous battles at Jena and Auerstadt. The Prussians then retreated in panic, abandoning town after town as they went. The last of the Prussian fortresses equipped with massive artillery and a 22,000-strong garrison—Magdeburg—surrendered without resistance to Marshal Ney in command of the French advance forces almost before he had had time to fire a few light mortars, the only heavy weapons he possessed. Within a month of the commencement of the war Prussia was no longer. As the great German poet Heine remarked, "Napoleon only needed to give a whistle and Prussia ceased to exist.”

Russia meanwhile continued the struggle. On February 7 thSth, 1807, at Preussisch-Eylau a fierce battle was fought between the French and the Russians. Despite tremendous losses, the outcome of the battle was indecisive. However in the next major battle on June 14th at Friedland Napoleon gained yet another major victory.

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The Treaty of Tilsit

p Both sides were now eager for a cessation of hostilities. Napoleon and Alexander met at Tilsit and on July 7th, 1807, signed a peace treaty concluding a Franco-Russian alliance. Russia recognised all the conquests and reforms that Napoleon had introduced in Western Europe, while Napoleon for his part promised to give Russian claims in the Middle East his firm support. Russia thus became France’s ally against England and joined the Continental System, which amounted to a blockade of the British Isles pressed for by Napoleon in 1806-1807. Napoleon’s idea was to force England to her knees by facing her with the alternative of starvation or capitulation. As it turned out, however, these hopes were ill-founded.

In 1809, Napoleon’s Empire was to wage war with the Fifth Coalition, again mustered by England. France’s main enemy on the continent was still Austria, but within two or three months her armies had been annihilated and in October 1809 in Vienna occupied by the French the Austrian government was obliged to accept an onerous and humiliating peace.

Reasons for the Napoleonic Victories

p The year 1809 saw France at the apogee of her glory and power. The French Empire now included Belgium, Holland, northern and central Italy, Illyria and Dalmatia. In northern and central Italy Napoleon set up an Italian kingdom, where his stepson Eugene de Beauharnais ruled as regent for him. The remainder of Western and Central Europe consisted of French vassal states. Napoleon’s brother Joseph was installed on the Spanish throne, while his brother-in-law Marshal Murat became King of Naples. Napoleon himself headed the Rheinbund or Confederation of the Rhine which embraced the bulk of the western German states. The Kingdom of Westphalia, comprising various parts of former Prussian territory, was handed to Napoleon’s younger brother Jerome. Austria, Prussia and Saxony which had all been defeated by Napoleon now all became his allies. Russia remained on friendly terms with Napoleon, who by 1809 had for all practical purposes achieved complete hegemony over Europe.

p What lay at the root of this amazing success and the dazzling victories of the French army and its rapid ascendancy? A great deal is usually made of Napoleon’s genius and he is often portrayed as little short of a “Superman”. Indeed Bonaparte was a commander and statesman of rare talent, although there was naturally nothing superhuman about him. A young bourgeoisie at the 381 dawn of its power could always be counted on to produce remarkable champions of its interests. Napoleon not only had a rare capacity for work but he was bold and decisive and possessed an iron will. This short, slight figure of a man, prone to fainting fits in his youth, had a rare gift for asserting his authority over others. When at the age of 27 he was put in command of the Italian campaign and Augereau whom he had outstripped began to object, Bonaparte remarked coldly: "General, you may well be a whole head taller than I, but if you continue to object to my appointment I shall make a point of doing away with that difference.” After he became dictator Napoleon’s ruthlessness, disdain for those around him and unbridled ambition came clearly to the fore. But being an extremely talented leader of men, Napoleon made a point of surrounding himself with able, gifted helpers. Davout, Ney, Murat, Massena, Berthier, Lannes and his other marshals were all first-class commanders. If there had been no Napoleon, any one of them might have become the outstanding general of his age. Napoleon also had a number of extremely able supporters working in the civil services.

p However it is necessary to probe a lot further than Napoleon’s personal qualities and those of his immediate entourage to explain the unprecedented wave of victories that France secured over her enemies. The reason why France won such remarkable triumphs when taking on five enormous European coalitions more or less single-handed in a short space of time and defeating them all can be explained by the fact that bourgeois France represented a more advanced society than the feudal orders of absolutist Europe.

Despite the annexationist, plunderous aims pursued by Napoleon, the wars which he waged against the feudal absolutist states of Europe, for a time at least, represented a distinctly progressive phenomenon. Wherever the French troops went they did away with old feudal practices, replacing them with more progressive bourgeois social patterns. Thus, when Napoleon brought about the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire and wiped off the map of Europe dozens or rather hundreds of tiny, petty German states—the heritage of feudal particularism and disunity—he was making -a significant contribution to the advance of the German people.

Deepening Contradictions Within
the Napoleonic Empire

p The more far-reaching and ambitious Napoleon’s plans of conquest grew and the further the borders of the French Empire were extended, the heavier grew the yoke of French rule in the 382 Empire’s satellites and the less progressive elements there were to be observed in Napoleon’s policy. Indeed his policy was to change almost beyond recognition as the reactionary annexationist element which had always been present in his plans was now to become the dominant one and before very long the be all and end all of his policy.

France’s military, political, commercial and industrial prominence in Europe had laid the foundation for the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon plundered and stripped bare the lands he conquered, enslaving them and bleeding them dry of industrial raw materials, money and other wealth. Napoleon’s dominion soon came to constitute a threat to the national integrity of many peoples of Europe. National liberation movements in the subject territories gradually began to grow up, at first weak and clandestine but later of a far bolder nature, and these were to play an important part in bringing about the final downfall of the Empire.

Popular Resistance in Spain

p In the course of 1807-1808 French troops occupied Spain and Napoleon’s brother Joseph was installed on the Spanish throne. The Spanish people however was in no way prepared to reconcile itself to this state of affairs and rose up against the foreign conquerors. The French put down an uprising in Madrid but were unable to crush the guerilla activities. In July 1808 a 20,000-strong French army under General Dupont was forced to surrender to the guerilla forces at Baylen. On hearing of this disaster Napoleon in a fit of wild anger ordered that Dupont be handed over to a court martial; meanwhile this capitulation was to make a tremendous impact throughout Spain. Napoleon decided to send large forces to Spain. The siege and storming of Saragossa, where the Spaniards defended every street and house to the last man and where 50,000 dead bodies filled the streets after the battle, served to reveal the determination of the Spanish people to perish rather than submit to their would-be conquerors.

The defeat at Saragossa by no means marked the end of the resistance in Spain. The valiant struggle of the Spanish patriots set an inspiring example to other peoples of Europe. In Italy a secret society known as the Carbonari was set up to organise a liberation struggle against the French conquerors. In Prussia, now a humiliated vassal territory of Napoleon, the emergent nationalpatriotic movement was to take various forms. The well-known German philosopher, Fichte, in his famous "Addresses to the German Nation" incited the people to take up the struggle to liberate their country. In Konigsberg officers and students set up a secret 383 patriotic society known as the Tugendbund or "Union of Virtue”. In the Austrian Tyrol the peasants started up a guerilla resistance movement, which the French conquerors were hard put to it to suppress.

1812

Intoxicated by his victories and tremendous power, which meanwhile was becoming more and more illusory, Napoleon chose to disregard these ill omens. By now he was a despotic monarch used to giving orders and no longer capable of appreciating, let alone giving a correct assessment of the national liberation movements against his rule which were developing among the Empire’s subject peoples. Such was the situation confronting the Emperor when he embarked on the unnecessary and reckless war against Russia.

Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia.
The Popular Character of the Resistance Movement

p On the night of June 24, 1812, Napoleon’s troops treacherously crossed the Niemen, without a declaration of war on Russia.

p At the outset of the war France’s Grande Armee was numerically superior to the Russian forces and Napoleon advanced rapidly capturing one town after another. Near Smolensk the Russian First Army under Barclay de Tolly and the Second Army under Bagration confronted the invaders together. Napoleon hoped that this battle would be the decisive one of the campaign and that he would succeed in routing his opponent’s main force. His plan, however, was thwarted, for the Russian army was not routed: it succeeded in keeping its main strength intact as it retreated from the burning city. Napoleon followed in hot pursuit eager to fight out the decisive battle, destroy the Russian army and bring the war to a swift conclusion.

p Russian resistance was to assume an increasingly popular character. This made itself felt above all in the morale of the Russian soldiers, who came to regard the task of driving the foreign conquerors from their lands as their own sacred cause, to which they must devote all their energies. The peoples of the Russian Empire—Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Bashkirs and many others—fought side by side with the Russians in this heroic struggle. The people afforded the army active assistance. The peasants in the occupied territories refused to trade with the enemy and to provide them with vital food supplies. They also handed spies and agents over for trial and abandoned their villages as the enemy approached, burning their huts before taking refuge in the woods and leading away their livestock with them. The peasants also 384 formed numerous partisan detachments, among the most famous being that led by the peasant Gerasim Kurin near Moscow, which numbered five thousand men, and the one led by Vasilisa Kozhina near Smolensk.

p After the Russian armies had joined forces near Smolensk, Alexander I appointed Mikhail Kutuzov, a famous general and pupil of Suvorov’s, to the post of commander-in-chief of all the armed forces. The Tsar himself had no great liking for Kutuzov but the nation as a whole favoured his appointment and at this critical hour the Tsar was prepared to pay heed to the voice of the nation. The people greeted the news of Kutuzov’s appointment with jubilation and it did a great deal to improve the soldiers’ morale.

p Napoleon advanced rapidly towards Moscow. Kutuzov prepared to give battle near the village of Borodino, not far from Mozhaisk. The right flank of the Russian army under Barclay de Tolly took up its position on the high hill overlooking the river Kolocha and the left flank under Bagration was deployed in a more exposed position on the open plain near the village of Semyonovskaya, where it proceeded to set up its artillery emplacements.

p The battle began at dawn on September 7, 1812 (August 26 according to the pre-revolutionary Calendar). A French army of 130,000 faced a Russian army of 120,000. At first Napoleon sent his men to attack the Russian left flank, noting correctly that this was the weak point of the Russian position. The French seized the artillery positions after fierce fighting in the course of which Bagration was fatally wounded. However, the Russian troops stood firm. Napoleon then struck out at the centre of the Russian line and with considerable difficulty eventually succeeded in capturing the mound held by Raevsky’s battery. However, the Russian line held firm and there was no break-through. The battle drew to a close as evening fell, by which time the French had lost 58,000 men and 47 of their finest generals.

p At first Kutuzov was inclined to renew the attack the next day but since his army had little ammunition left he gave orders for a retreat. He realised that if he kept the army intact the country could fight on, whereas if a continuation of the battle ended in disaster for the Russians the next day, the war was lost. After the military council met in the village of Fili it was decided to surrender Moscow to the enemy without a battle. Later Napoleon was to write of the battle of Borodino: "Of all my battles the most terrible was the one before Moscow. The French showed themselves capable of winning the day, but the Russians commandeered the right to be invincible.”

p At sunrise on September 14th, the first Russian detachments left Moscow. The news that the troops were leaving spread like 385 386 wild-fire through the city, and events then took an unexpected turn. The whole of the city’s population as a man, without receiving any orders to that effect, decided to leave the city rather than remain there under enemy occupation.

Soon after the enemy marched into Moscow fires broke out in various parts of the vast city. The fires spread and the French army was thus deprived of a large part of its vital food supplies and accommodation.

The Russian Counter-Offensive

p It was a bitter blow for Kutuzov as for all other Russians to have to abandon Moscow to the enemy. But the prospect of losing the army was still more terrible, since that would have meant losing the war to Napoleon. The army needed to gather its strength after battles which had cost many lives and take on new reinforcements, train them, and work out a new plan of action for driving the enemy out of the country. Under Kutuzov’s leadership the Russian army was soon to prove itself quite adequate to this task.

p Kutuzov was very astute when it came to foreseeing Napoleon’s subsequent plans of action. To outwit him, he took an unexpected route and thus kept his army intact. Napoleon even lost track of the Russian army and for some time did not know where it was.

p Following Kutuzov’s instructions, partisans helped the army by making surprise sorties against the French, taking prisoners and recapturing much of what had been looted. The battle of Tarutino in October 1812 ended in a Russian victory. Later the battle at Maloyaroslavets was to convince Napoleon of the extent to which the Russian troops had been reinforced.

p In the middle of November the Grande Armee by this time exhausted by its many battles and enormous losses approached the river Berezina. In the course of the fierce fighting that went on during the crossing the French lost many more thousands of soldiers.

p At the beginning of December, Napoleon secretly abandoned his army to their fate and fled to safety. In a simple carriage, hiding his face behind a thick fur collar to avoid being recognised, he hastened to Paris to start mustering a new army. Such was the inglorious end of his Russian campaign, and his dreams of world domination.

The Patriotic War of 1812 was a just people’s war which saved Russia from the treacherous invasion of a foreign conqueror and shattered his ambition to enslave the Russian people.

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The Fall of the Napoleonic Empire

p Napoleon’s defeat in the war of 1812 against Russia marked the beginning of the fall of his Empire. On his return to France, Napoleon mobilised all those capable of bearing arms and set out with a new army to meet the Russian troops which by this time had made their way to Germany. This time Napoleon was confronted not merely by the Russians but by the whole of Europe. Oppressed by French rule, the peoples of Europe rose up to give battle as soon as they heard the news of the rout of the Grande Armee in Russia. France’s allies of yesterday—Prussia, Austria, Saxony and others, now joined the new anti-French coalition. The mighty allied armies marched westwards, and at the battle of Leipzig which lasted three days (October 16-19, 1813) and which went down in history as the "Battle of the Nations”, the allies crushed Napoleon and obliged him to retreat. Napoleon’s Empire by this time was in ruins and by 1814 the theatre of war had been transferred to French soil. Napoleon displayed amazing energy and bold leadership during the campaign of 1814, but while he gained several minor victories it was no longer in his power to reverse the overall course of the war.

p On March 31, 1814, the allied forces led by Alexander of Russia on a white steed marched triumphantly into Paris where they were met by a chastened and shattered people. Napoleon, acknowledging at last that his marshals no longer believed victory was within reach, signed an act of abdication at Fontainebleau, and was exiled to Elba, which was ceded to him for life.

The allied monarchs decided that the French throne should be restored to the Bourbons. The brother of Louis XVI, Count of Provence, who had been living in exile for 25 years, was brought to Paris with an escort of allied troops and proclaimed King Louis XVIII of France.