The Tsar Liberates Europe? Russia against Napoleon, 1807-1814

good evening everyone my name is on West odd I'm one of the two directors of LSE ideas the overseas news center for international affairs diplomacy and strategy together with Professor Michael Cox and it's a great pleasure and a great honor for me today to introduce a new senior fellow in ideas professor Dominic Livan the two occasions really for us meeting up here tonight the first one by far of course the most important one is the launch of Professor Levin's book Russia against Napoleon but they also would like to underline his affiliation with ideas it is wonderful to have him on board there it strengthens the Russia side of what we do tremendously and it will be a very strong very exciting program on over time for us xi is of course one of our seas leading international historians his teaching is renowned his range of knowledge on Russian international history spanning several centuries is is deeply impressive he's also a very brave man not only has he named his dog after Minister of War de tolly but he wasn't even that it's not the dog has just taken over as head of llc's international history department and that a great deal of courage indeed I I know the book that we will be discussing today builds on the earlier work has done on Russian and international history the span of this if you really want to get into the range of the issues that it searches upon I think turning to the volume of the Cambridge history of Russia which he edited volumes to on Imperial Russia came out three years ago now 2006 is a very good starting point you also get a sense of the span of his interest in a comparative sense by looking at his book from 2000 Empire the Russian Empire and its rivals which tries to take Slocum the whole development span of the Russian Empire what it aimed to do what its razón d'etre was and compare that with its rivals in a European Imperial context it's a great book it strongly recommended he also has a number of other earlier books from his first book in 1983 on Russia and origins of the first world war is written on on Nicholas the second he's written on aristocracy in Europe during the 19th century and he's written I I guess we could call it the topography of Russia's rulers under the old regime a kind of collective biography of people who came to Provence during the during the 19th century especially but the book that we're celebrating the launch of today I think will remain as one of his one of his he works Russia against Napoleon and it's a book that's entitled in its English version Russia against the podium the battle for Europe 1807 to 1914 its American version our us discovered its entitled Russia against Napoleon the true story of the campaigns of war and peace and of course the Americans have to you know there has to be a little bit more excitement Tolstoy and excitement I guess we're drawing people into this on the on the American side so those who read Tolstoy already or pretend to have read war and peace they will then turn to professor Levin's book to get the real story what it's what it's really what it's really about this is great narrative history but very significant if the positive advances built into it exactly the kind of international history that I like and I'd like just before handing over to professor Levin used to read you deep conclusion to the book the very last part of the book in terms of getting a sense of divider implications of this top we're professor level roids the basic point presumably the basic point about the book was that Alexander was convinced that Russian and European security depended on each other that is still true today but perhaps there is some inspiration to be drawn from a story in which the Russian army advancing across Europe in 1813 14 was in most places seen as an army of liberation whose victories meant escaped from Napoleon's exactions an end to an era of constant war and the restoration of European trade and prosperity and looking at Russian Foreign Relations in the big historical sweep in that perspective is something I think that all of us can benefit from it's a great pleasure to introduce you here today so looking forward to your exit thank you very much [Applause] well thank you all for coming I hope you'll forgive me for sitting down there's always a risk if I stand up that my DPA problem will kick in and I'll fall on my nose which would be a very sad end to the lecture all right I have very many thank yous to say this evening but I will say them later to my editor Simon to my agent and Natasha to many many people perhaps the only person I might mention right now is my wife it is loyalty beyond the cause of call of duty that brings someone back all the way from Tokyo for a lecture and that really is quite some effort and I'm very grateful the other people who I definitely must mention though of course our ideas to which as Anna said I have just become affiliated indeed incorporated you could say I do actually think that ideas is one of the most exciting developments in the school in the last few years and I'm enormous ly happy to be part of it and I'm very grateful to them for putting on this lecture so my thanks at honor here and to MIT Cox to Sveta to Amelia and to where some to all the other saints of ideas we might forgotten thank you all right this book this lecture is really about the most traditional type of history in many ways it is about at its core grand strategy diplomacy military operations the sinews of state power beyond that it is about these very traditional elements of the historians art high politics in the old term under a European old regime and if there is a single individual who is a hero of the book it is the Emperor Alexander the first so this is quite literally a story of kings and battles at one level as one terribly well-meaning American put it 1812 and all that with the obvious connotations of 1066 it is of course also precisely 8012 one of the most famous and often told stories in European history so you might ask what is their new to say about this most traditional area of the historians art in one of the most told stories of European history and I think the answer and the rather surprising answer is that there is a vast amount to say because most of what is understood both in Russia and in the West is almost a caricature of what happened and it is very interesting to ask why that should be the case there are many reasons but I think the most basic is the domination of the historiography of this era by various nationalist historical traditions it is in other words nationalist mythology which has distorted many of the realities of what went on and has very much conditioned the way that we understand the events which I covered now that in itself is not particularly strange war is always has always been the most fertile source of nationalist mythology the war hero is the absolute center of most tales which nations tell themselves about their glory and of course the Napoleonic Wars occurred just as modern European nationalism and the ideas it embodied came over the horizon and the Napoleonic Wars happened just before the great socio-cultural changes in Europe which created if you like the the environment in which modern European nationalism could most easily take me to in other words an increasingly urban and literate society increasingly as you might say open to myths about the nation so it's not particularly surprising that if you read Western historians about Russia you should fart or about the you know these years of Russia's part and that wholly on ik wars you should find the story very considerably distorted by British French German nationalist perspectives and it's not of course just the Russians who suffer in this way Waterloo is absolutely part of British patriotic mythology I was completely like most boys of my era brought up on the belief that the British had won the Battle of Waterloo virtually unaided and it was a sort of shock to me at about the age of 15 to discover that a quarter of the troops on the Allied side at Waterloo were British the other three-quarters being Germans of one description or another the British stole Waterloo the Prussians stole 1813 for their pro so Germany is mythology etcetra etcetra etcetra and it's not particularly surprising therefore that since there has never been a book on the russian war effort written by a historian of russia on the basis of the russian sources published in a western language it is not at all surprising that the Western audience has absorbed various elements of German or French perception of what went on what is rather more interesting and rather more surprising is that though of course the Russians mined this era industriously for nationalist myths in just the same way that the French the Germans the British and the Spanish did the mad reality of things is that Russian national myths about this era grossly underestimate their own achievement which is not to put things that it's Politis what happens when you read the French or the Germans or the British or the Spanish so that is a puzzle there's no question who in a way the main villain is it's Leo Tolstoy if you read Tolstoy his novel in the first place of course it is part of his philosophy of history that no one ever controls anything at least of all governments so you know you wouldn't expect him to say that the government really what was going on at the time we'll contributed greatly to Russia's victory second point is that for Tolstoy military professionalism as a form of German disease as becomes very clear in his novel you know which takes on an extremely sharp tone every time any staff officer comes over the horizon and that staff officer is always speaking in a German accent which is actually fair enough in a way since more than half the staff officers in the Russian army in 1812 were not even Slavs and of course the great majority of that 57% were German in origin anyway from my perspective I suppose the most obvious distortion of Tolstoy though is that his novel ends in December 1812 with the Russian army and vildan the Russian army actually got to Paris it is rather a long way from Vilna to Paris particularly when you have to walk the whole way it seems even longer when you have someone called Napoleon with half a million French and a light ruse in the way so in a way by ending in December 1812 Tolstoy doesn't just finish with the story half told but actually the greatest challenges and the greatest achievements was still to come and when you say the greatest achievements you can summon up some of them up in a wave quite pithily half a million Russian troops were deployed beyond the borders of the Russian Empire in 1813 40 that is of course including the reserve army in the duchy of warsaw and this in a europe in which there are only two cities of over half a million people how do you actually feed supply quit move half a million russian troops in the europe of that day without half of them dropping down dead of starvation there is another point which is the the traditional Russian obsession in their historiography with military operations only in 1812 does no favours to the Russian army whatsoever since in professional military terms the army certainly fought much more professionally successfully efficiently in 1813 14 which is after all roughly what you would expect armies learn from war however good peacetime training it can never replicate the realities of war the army in 1813 has learned from what it did and did not achieve in 1812 it is a far more formidable instrument whether you're talking for instance about the the activities of the Russian staffs the coordination of the various branches of the service on the battlefield low-level tactics in terms of the use of light infantry and artillery whole range of ways in which beyond any question the army in professional terms is much more successful which makes it even more bizarre that a Russian patriotic tradition which glories in the army closes its eyes to that Army's greatest achievement before 1945 which is its performance in 1813 14 that is a very strange nationalist tradition as I say it is in part told stories in inverted commas fault of course it is not the business of a novelist to express historical truth in this way I told stories interested in other things but it nevertheless is an interesting puzzle both why he wrote that way and why the message which he got across is overwhelmingly the dominant one in rational Russian professional historiography and in the consciousness of the Russian people the last attempt for instance to write a serious book on the whole period 1812 to 14 spends 450 pages on 1812 and 50 on 1813 214 though 1813 214 is a longer and more complicated set of military operations I think it's probably fair to say that for every thousand books on 1812 or articles written in Russian there is one on 1813 14 a fabric assay is a puzzle there are a number of reasons which go some way to explaining this puzzle but I think the most fundamental is relatively simple in the Russian perception as in Tolstoy's perception 1812 is a national war 1813 14 is the victory of the dynasty and of the empire now there are problems about this many problems some of which I will not be able to come across today one of tho is extremely simple you can't understand how Russia fought the 1812 campaign without understanding 18 1314 because the Russian government from the very beginning planned for at least a - and probably longer war which would begin on Russian soil but would conclude with the Russian army pursuing Napoleon westwards and raising a European insurrection against it all the Russian planning whether you're talking about the mobilisation of reserves war industry everything is based on this premise so if you leave out everything that came after December 1812 in a sense you get an entirely distorted idea of what the government was doing and you also by definition don't pay attention to the whole front or the mobilisation of the home front because that really only matters in a long and for the campaigns of 1813 the russian reserves inevitably don't come into action until 1813 the other obvious point i suppose is that the Tolstoy an interpretation which became the dominant Russian conception of course fitted marvelously into Western interpretations of events Napoleon was deeply grateful to be told that no one had controlled events and that everything was down to the weather and snow and fate that did rather absolve him from a number of Rome spectacular miscalculations German nationalist historiography was very happy to discover that the Russians have played only a small role in 1813 to interesting that Charles Stewart the Russian Millen and the British minister to the Prussian court at this time said that the Prussian relationship to Russia was like the Portuguese relationship to Britain that was an exaggeration but there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever in 1813 14 that the Russians were by far the senior partner in that alliance in terms of both the numbers and quality of truths put in the field the Prussian artillery largely operated with Russian guns apart from anything else so you know it's a rather strange setup in which Russian nationalist historiography feeds directly into an interpretation of events which is glorified by French and German interpretations because it feeds into their myths very interesting of course the main goal of my book was not to look at myths it was not to look at the historiography but unless you do understand those myths and you do understand the roots of historiographical misconception you find it very difficult indeed to get back to some idea of what was actually happening all right that is the first and smaller section of this talk the longer section is to try to provide some sense of what actually was the true story as is often the case of history you can explain what happened on a number of very different levels but one level the highest level what I call God's eye you stand way above events and you look at the big long term structural factors underlying what happened you put the struggle in the context of global ideological economic and commercial trends you look at the geopolitics of Europe if you do look at the geopolitics of Europe then the story is in some ways a familiar one fundamentally in the early 19th century as in the first half of the twentieth it was difficult but possible to conquer what you might describe as the Carolingian core of Europe France Germany the Low Countries northern Italy the basic problem when you had done that was that you then faced two extremely powerful peripheral centres Britain across the channel of Russia beyond the Polish and Belarusian swamp it was extremely difficult to mobilize power sufficient to defeat both those enemies simultaneously and you would undoubtedly have to do so since they would certainly gang up against anybody who did control the Carolingian pool and threatened to be the universal monarch of Europe things were not made easier that you needed to mobilize simultaneously two rather different forms of power a maritime power to get you across the channel against the Royal Navy and the military logistical power to establish yourself and keep yourself in the heartlands of Russian power south and east of Moscow one interesting point about Russia is to think of it as a peripheral power and to think of it in comparison to Britain Europe's other great peripheral power there are actually a lot of parallels between Russian and British grand strategy and between the ways in which British and Russian elites thought about grand strategy there is a familiar story from 18th century England about national versus dynastic grand strategy court versus country court being at least so it is said Britain's Hanoverian dynasty and its obsession with Europe the continent the European balance of power which in the eyes of its enemies the country faction of the national faction is betraying truly national British interests to alien dynastic concern for the electorate of Hannover the Kings own patrimony and indeed for what a scene to be arcane and unnecessary interventions in European affairs the truly national strategy being the commercial maritime strategy building up colonies dominating the oceans contributing to British wealth through increasingly hegemonic control of international trade the Russian version of this is that the national strategy is expansion southwards across the steppe against the Ottomans bringing huge and potentially very rich grasslands into the Russian Empire a lying yourselves with what a seem to be Russia's ethnic allies or maybe religious allies the Orthodox and Slavs of the Balkans and that is contrasted to the policy of the dynasty with its obsession with Germanic Affairs the European balance of power and again you have to remember that after the male line of the Romanovs dies out in 1730 the crown passes through the female line to the house of culture titled war there is a lovely moment in 1809 when the commander of the Russian army of the Danube field marshal Prince resolved ski rights to the commander of the Russian army of Galicia general Prince galaxy' both of them from ancient Russia Russian princely family this is at a time when Russia is seen by them to be cowering to Napoleon and to be in general messing up its foreign policy and preserve ski rights to girl it's in My dear Prince if policy continues to go on in its present way the pros are off skis and the gullets ins will no doubt preserve our estates but the house of Holt's line Oldenburg will cease to reign in Russia you know what you could say in a polite letter in Russia you could shout from the rooftops in Britain but it is the same basic theme dynastic called European great power obsessions versus national strategy and in the Russian case this is strengthened by the fact that the national strategy the expansion southwards against the Ottomans had proved dramatically successful in Catherine's era and it had proved dramatically successful under Russian generals Alexander Suvorov Peter rumancek Grigory Potemkin whereas if you look at the people who commanded the Russian armies in the European theater they are for the most part barclay de tolly Bennigsen Vincent Goro the Vic and Stein a whole succession of Baltic Germans and other strange foreigners the most important and interesting embodiment of the national tradition the national grand strategy in the era 18/7 to 1812 is the foreign minister Nicolae ROM eunsuh for a remarkable character Nikolai Ruby on serve apart from anything else is the man who collected made most of the great early Slavic and Russian literary icons you know all the great collections of many of them which are now the absolute center of the greatest libraries in Russia he was a great he was a highly intelligent man passionate patriot immensely rich he was for a foreign minister and a diplomat a man with a rather extraordinary background quite apart from being from the heart of the aristocracy which of course was not yet he was also Minister of Trade and therefore had a very clear conception of what was going on in terms of global commercial and financial developments which persuaded him that the British were taking over the world he had also for time being in charge of the water communications of the Empire canal technology he was extremely ofay with technological developments in Western Europe and above all in Britain which again persuaded him but the deep underlying reality of this era is not Napoleon who he sees as a flash in the pan not the French Empire which he sees as a purely temporary phenomena but on the contrary the increasing domination of the United Kingdom of the world's trade and commerce and potentially industrial production his great ally one of his boat allies at the time is John Quincy Adams the American minister of Petersburg the pause for an answer the great point about the United States is that it can be built was a rival to British commercial and even in the long run financial and industrial hegemony and Quincy Adams John Quincy Adams his diaries are actually a very fascinating source on this period now you could say that why bother with romances because in the end his policy of support for Napoleon as a means of under my undermining potential British global advantage M&E failed it is for start over ruled by Alexander who puts Europe first and comes to see Napoleon as the great challenge to Russian security above all it is overruled by the podium himself who after all invades Russia and even before Napoleon invades Russia remote Civ has come to the reluctant conclusion that although the real long-term threat is Britain Russia first has to defeat France but this France is so powerful in Europe that it represents a threat to the empire security which cannot be ignored above all to the Empire's possession of Poland to which romances Russian Patriot as years is totally committed nevertheless it is still very much worthwhile taking onboard romances point of view partly because it does help to explain the underlying realities of this era at least from the Russian perspective but above all because it has an impact and military operations themselves in a way which may seem surprising to you the basic point is that Mikhail Kutuzov the commander in chief in 1812 fundamentally shares the romances point of view as he says to the British military representative who berate sit for not doing all he can to bag the Napoleon why should I bother says the Pope it says Kutuzov I am not at all convinced that the complete defeat of France is in the interests of Russia France after all is the traditional enemy of Britain lot of Russia as quitters of tells the British envoi the complete defeat of France will not read and to the advantage of any continental power it will merely complete hegemony of the United Kingdom in the overseas world as regards commerce as regards finance etc etc and will create a world which will not at all be to Russia's interests there for the survival of Napoleon and a French power I'll be it diluted and diminished is a Russian interest okay so I spoke them too long but it gives you some sense of this Banzai view right at the other end of the scale is what I told all the worms eye view you know and the worms eye view has all sorts of elements to it it has to do for instance with the thickness of Russian paper which makes it very difficult to have tightly engineered muskets which helps to explain why Russian musketry is probably the most inaccurate in Europe but it has to do perhaps above all with that most unfashionable of all academic subjects or norm academic subjects nowadays military operations you know if you want to make yourself I'm appointed in any British German let alone American University just tell people that you want to study kings and battles with particular stress on military operations you know and I wouldn't bother to stay for the interview but military operations are crucial you can study structures and ideology and god only knows what till you're blue in the face but it can all be blown away in the course of an afternoon and that is the nature of blitzkrieg it's the nature of you know Napoleon's way of fighting war it's the way of its most skillful it's Klaus if you like I can't obviously give you a running description of the military operations in this entire period though part of the book is very much to do with that but I just give you one little example which is what happened on the 21st of May 1813 at a place called banks on the second day at the battle between Napoleon and the the Allies meeting the Russians and the Prussians do not for one minute think Napoleon was a dead duck in December 1812 he put four hundred and fifty thousand troops in the field again within four to five months the French Empire in the areas it's controlled had a population of 68 million people as a gains perhaps 40 million Russians and five million Prussians and of course found it far easier to get his reserves onto the battlefields in German central Germany than was the case with the Russians the Russian main area for training reserves is east of Moscow 1,800 kilometers from the Russert Polish border even when they got to the Russian Polish border they were still of course forced to cover across Poland and part of Germany actually half of all the Russian reserves which departed from Russia in the winter of 1812 213 died or fell out before they reached Germany you know that's what happens if you're trying to get conscripts to move over 3,000 sometimes kilometers in a Russian winter through areas devastated by typhus so Napoleon was bound to win the battle to get his reserves on the battlefield first in 1813 the big question was what use he could make of that advantage at the Battle of bouts and he outnumbered the Allies roughly two to one really and it was within his power to end the 1813 campaign that day and in fact his plan used that advantage and victory decisive victory which would have pushed the Prussians and Russians back over the Austrian border and probably ended the campaign within a day out it was a very sensible and successful one now I'm terribly proud of myself but there's you know I'm not a military historian but I've learnt all this really complicated sort of verbiage he probably won't understand a word I get a say in it and good academic fashion I mean the basic points damn simple the man who commanded Napoleon's troops marching into the Rosso Prussian rear was Michel ney as attended to happen in moments of excitement in the middle of a battle they turned right not left and that ditch Napoleon's plan I mean one thing get complicated but this is really the essence of it afternoon very much the fate of Europe hung in the balance so you cannot ignore you know that most unfashionable of all subjects military operations between the levels have gotten the worm there are really in this book even what might seem to you very obscure subjects actually have a considerable salience you can run some way even with gender studies which is not what you would expect I mean if you're looking at the values which keep officers on the battlefield and if you're looking at the mentalities which carry the Russian officer corps across Europe in eighteen thirteen fourteen when the straight patriotic motivation is not they're looking at the uniforms of reading some of their letters about seducing women across the whole of Europe and gambling does tell you something about her attitude to risk armor jewelry all sorts of things and this is actually directly important in operational terms the basic point in 1812 is a very simple one in every way Russian military doctrine stresses the offensive because of these fundamental male noble values but also because of the experience of the Russian army in the 18th century which is an experience of advancing than anyone else in the neighborhood abroad trying to persuade this army that the key to victory is to retreat a thousand kilometers into the Russian heartland opening up the Russian heartland to devastation by the enemy it's just extremely difficult it runs against every element of Russian if you want to call it that instinct and doctrine and the great hero there in many ways this week how about you de Tolly after whom as Anna quite rightly said the dog is named it was his moral courage and resolution more than anything else which kept the army together and imposed on deeply unwilling senior Russian generals that strategy as I say I could their never ending numbers of things I could talk about in this context of between God and the world obviously part of this revolves around the army itself its command structure its training its tactics its weaponry etcetera etcetera etcetera perhaps though you know the most interesting even the most puzzling element is a question of motivation and morale of the ordinary soldiers here you have a problem roughly one-and-a-half million Russians served in the Army and militia as ordinary soldiers two of them wrote memoirs well as you might imagine that is not a very good sample the best memoirs are written by a soldier ordinary peasant to begin taught himself to read and write when he was in the army and ended his career after 25 years service as a monk went into a monastery not the typical feint of her private soldier of the Imperial Army inevitably the Russian historiography stresses patriotism and that is not entirely wrong it is important that the overwhelming majority of these soldiers were Orthodox East Slavic and within the context of their value system orthodoxy mattered far more than any modern conception of nationality and the mama as the the protector of the Orthodox community is undoubtedly a very powerful force for loyalty within the ranks of the army but above all what matters as most military historians stress in all cases is small unit loyalty which is possibly stronger in the Russian army than almost any other one could imagine you have to remember who these men were they were in the overwhelming majority of cases peasants conscripted for 25 years into the ranks of the Imperial Army the great majority of them would die in the ranks of the army 25 years was a long term even in peacetime these soldiers are with few exceptions illiterate they cannot write home they never see their families again even the overwhelming majority of literate noncommissioned officers never go home on leave very large numbers of peasants die through sheer shock being ripped out of their villages and dumped in this pretty ferocious brutal environment but when they do get to their regiments if they survive the regiment becomes the whole the family and the fatherland the regiment is what you die for the regiment and the regimental mess if a soldier dies in the army his possessions are shared with his messmate any earnings he made and they may have read many earnings on the side though mostly to the regimental mass these little groups of men you know if you do as I have done and read through the very lovingly preserved personnel records of the army what you get is a picture of Russian regiments dominated by men who have served in them for 10 15 20 sometimes 25 years as in any army it is the NCOs and the senior rancors who really matter you know regiment after regiment you will get men who have been in the Army and in most cases in that regiment in virtually all cases in that company in that mess you know after 20 years it creates an enormous sense of solidarity and of commitment and it goes a long way towards explaining well you know that old proverb you didn't just have to kill Russian soldiers you have to knock him over to they had a staying power and a discipline which was beyond that of any other army in Europe I don't think any other European army could have retreated from the border to Moscow without disintegrating the British disintegrate twice at the peninsula the French disintegrates both after Moscow in 1812 and after Leipzig the Prussian army disintegrates in 18:6 the Russian army does not despite having been put under the kind of pressures which have an enormous impact on morale and discipline so I think that is an interesting quote what you have to remember to put it in a nutshell is that the army of the Emperor is not the Russian nation and ours it is an army built around regimental pride and a veteran Carter that is both its strength and its fragility Napoleon is quite right to believe that if he destroys that Carter he's won the war you'll never be able to resurrect it in wartime the truth earth is deeply scared by November 1812 but the losses are reaching such a level that the Corps NCO and veteran Carter the regimental Carter is being destroyed and will have to be reconstituted from scratch at which point the Russian army will be worse than a militia because it doesn't have a kind of citizenry a concept of citizenry to sustain it all right in terms of you know all those other factors between God and the worm I should just talk briefly about - one of which is the horse and the other of which is espionage you have to remember that in this era the force is the equivalent of the modern tank aeroplane lorry armoured personnel carrier mobile artillery the lot it is in other words the weapon of reconnaissance shock exploitation transport you name it you name it it isn't the man he loses in Russia in 1812 which do from Napoleon it's the horses he can replace the men and does so he can't replace the horses partly because France in January 1813 is reckoned to have less than 30,000 horses of any description which you could use for cavalry service partly because it takes at least three or four times as long to train a cavalry unit as it does an infantry one you've got to train the man you've got to train the whole secret to train the man and the horse not easy the russians defeat Napoleon probably more than for any other reason through horsepower Russia of course has Europe's richest treasure trove of horses what they do in 1812 13 is sometimes substitute horses for men in the conscription system two Russian provinces alone out of 50 produced 10,000 horses in December in 1812 January 18 3rd 13th for the Army in all something like eighteen ninety thousand horses are mobilized in 1812 and 1830 just for the cavalry that doesn't include of course the huge mobilisation of resources for the artillery and the supply trains one of the unsung heroes of this whole war effort is a man called Andre color Griffith general of the cavalry he is the man who organizes and trains the cavalry reserves and it's not just a question of getting all these horses it's also a question of creating the depots where you train cavalry man it's a question of creating the hospital's the various little little big workshops for homes furnishings etc etc etc etc watching the way in which Russia mobilizes its power turns horse power into effective cavalry uses its existing cavalry Claddagh intelligently to Train cavalry reserves is actually extremely fascinated in one sense the equivalent of the Second World War at looking at the Soviet tank formations how they were trained how the tanks were made except it is the absolute core of power at that time become a group of just in 1813 since 200 supporters of reserve cavalry 45,000 men to the front and by universal consent these are the best reserve cavalry in Europe you know it isn't a coincidence that after all the war ends in 1814 when the Russian cavalry intercepts Napoleon's respondents with his wife telling the Allies that he is not going to defend Paris he's going to raid their rear in the hope of drawing them away the Russian cavalry presents that to their high command the high command moves on Paris because it knows exactly what Napoleon's after and this isn't a sense of fitting culmination of after two years of war in which the Russian light cavalry in particular is superior to the French from the start and is totally dominant after the retreat from Moscow so the horse is crucial it is of course not much heralded in the history books because nationalist history is interested in human heroes not horses the second point is espionage that interesting area intelligence to put it politely between the fields of foreign policy and military history what is very seldom understood is that the Russian espionage system and intelligence systems ripped apart the Napoleonic both civil and military structures of power they totally penetrated right into Napoleon's own family right into the Ministry of War right into the Foreign Ministry there was simply no secret in France which was not on Alexander's desk within a month or so of being on the polios that is perhaps a slight exaggeration but not very the two heroes of Russian espionage are an exam to tarnish off of the military side and Karl Nesselrode are on the diplomatic side both men in their 20s they head the Russian military opera espionage operation in Paris in the five years before 1812 and it is actually a mark they are an example of one reason why the Russians do to feed Napoleon they promote a number of extremely able men when they are still very young to top positions on the strength of their success in 18 7 to 14 Nesselrode er is foreign minister for four decades and cherish off war Minister for - I can't begin to give you a sense of the range of what they did I suppose there I mean tarnish off had a you know row of spies it is probably most effective one was inspired the war ministry every month the French war ministry produced a large book essentially of course for internal circulation five copies detailing the the numbers deployment leads movements every single unit in the French army down to regimental size every month the poppy was delivered to the Russian military attache in Paris Jena Schaaf to be poppy to return Friday evening to be copied and returned to the Ministry on Sunday evening the Russians could trace absolutely the movement of every French unit in Europe of course they didn't believe a word of what Napoleon said they knew very well but no one is going to move half a million troops across Europe and not start a war it's rather expensive apart from anything else Nestle Rada among other things buys up the French intelligence operation in Russia one reason it seems why Napoleon partly ruins his army racing for Vilna convinced that Alexander will defend it is that the Russians have turned the 1st that the main chief the chief French agent in Lithuania and a fed misinformation back to the podium but they will fight for build up so Napoleon presses ahead ruin half his forces in the process that's what the Russians say I mean you know we wait for corroboration probably the single most spectacular document that Nesselrode our lives is a secret report by the French Foreign Minister to Napoleon at Napoleon's request in march 1810 which is the key moment when the Rousseau French Alliance is collapsing in which the French Foreign Minister says basically we have two alternatives one is dispatch the Russians destroy Prussia and restore a small Poland and the other is to completely smash the Russians restore a big poll of would push Russia back to where it was before Peter the Great you know this is total dynamite of course it arrives on Alexander's desk four weeks after it arrives on the poem bought for four thousand french francs the point about nests or order and cherish off our is that they don't just buy documents these are exceptionally intelligent men who move in the highest circles and fraud tarnish off was accepted right rumored he was the lovely Polian sister I think it's not true but he knew literally everything in terms of having access and there were also of course within the French elite very many senior people who loathe Napoleon and provided a great deal of advice and information to the Russians for free this advice and information go straight via Nestle Rhoda avoiding ramyeon surf to alexander it is best summed up in the memorandum of the head of russian military intelligence twig average in april 1812 which essentially sums up what nestled rather and a general have been saying and what Shrieker says is well not just Napoleon's military system but his entire political system rests on the logic of rapid victory blitzkrieg to put it in modern terms those are the kinds of wars he has to win and wants to win because those are the kind of wars that his army is here to win under this political system of sustain so what we must do is facing with the opposite kind of war a long drawn-out war a People's War a national mobilizing the religious fanaticism as 3-carat puts the books of the Russian people the idea that the Russian government is unaware of what is going on or that what happens in 1812 230 is some kind of tossed iron movement of you know impersonal forces is totally contrary to the evidence as portrayed in the archive the most basic reason why Russia defeated Napoleon was on the Russian government and thought him you know when the Polian gets to Moscow in 1812 he fafsa round for six weeks expecting Alexander to make peace the Russian elites to revolt against him even the Cossack revolt in other words basically he hasn't got a clue despite the fact that actually he had being given very intelligent political analysis by his former ambassador in in Petersburg Karl encore when the Russian army the Allied armies get to Paris in March 1814 the same could have happened Paris was not a military objective it was a political agenda the Allies capture of Paris was only meaningful if they could exploit it for political reasons within a week of the Allied armies reaching Paris not just Napoleon but that Bonaparte his dynasty had been overthrown essentially by a coup from within the French and eat that coup headed by Talha who after all had been he was probably the person who was shipping these most secret diplomatic documents out and it certainly times been in the pay of the Russians I thought of how the paws you know I belong to ideas I thought of living on his interest how to put all this in some kind of Cold War perspective and I suppose the closest equivalent would be if from Harry Truman President Truman had been overthrown and the Cold War brought to a spectacular end in about 1946 by a cadet our led by Dwight Eisenhower subsequently discovered to a clean in Soviet pay for the last ten years and that tells you something of what is going on but I think he's probably beyond the imagination of even Joe McCarthy which point I'll stop [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you very much - that's wonderful wonderful presentation it might not be more on peace but there are some elements in this that does remind me a little bit of those of the stories in the way towards they are telling them although with a very different perspective I'm probably with very different conclusions as well I'm sure they said a lot story or two in there if you explore the footnotes I think I discovered a couple of those so that maybe they may be more to it than just the historical interpretation I would restore doubt to the question that really goes back to what you said initially about the multinational aspects of these efforts really struck me when I was reading the end of the book covering the 1812 1814 period the discussions that you described going on among the top leaders on the right side about you know moving into Europe but what them to do with Europe I mean what are their plans where are they going to end up after Napoleon has been defeated or at least defeated only on the battlefield as it were and I want that in connection with that what an impact on those discussions you think it had that the leadership not only of the Russian army but of the Russian state was such a multinational crew I mean not just Germans from the Baltic States of which your own ancestors of course were a very significant and influential family but also people from all over I mean in terms of trans history in terms of who they communicated with who they had grown up with before the war started how about you an impact do you think that had on those discussions I mean what was Russia after what did Russia see for itself at the end of this cataclysmic set of that well in one sense of course if you're talking about top level decisions Russia is Alexander it is the Emperor who decides he may listen to he may listen to why but he decided and this is not a theory Alexander is in every sense Russia's leader as essentially you know as much as Stalin laws not by the same methods of Terror but unequivocally the man who makes the final decisions in terms of grand strategy diplomacy and to some extent even military operations alexander chooses to listen to a group of advisers very many of whom are not even he subjects actually the majority of whom are not ethnic Russians and that has got to do with personally his own personality he tends to trust foreigners more than certainly military terms Russian generals but it is also to do with his fundamental commitment to Europe and his conviction that Russian security is indissolubly linked to European security I mean if it had been in terms of contingency Alexander prance around on the battlefield and on one or two occasions was very nearly killed had he been the Russian our book had he been killed in 1812 that was not like had he been the Russian army would probably have not pursued Napoleon overall than you know had he been killed in 1813 as he very nearly was there is no question of the Russian army going across into France wouldn't have done a large section of the Russian leadership Kutuzov of course being the most obvious having got Napoleon out of Russia basically said enough Salah fits now for the Europeans to rescue themselves Alexander decided otherwise and I think he was right I mean the basic that the basic thinking is that so long as the French controlled Germany Russian security is deeply at risk and indeed is indefensible not least because the French will control such resources that Russia will not be able to sustain the kind of military buildup to hold the bay you know again you have to remember Russian revenues reporter of Britain's revenues in 18 for Russian real revenue declines by 25 percent between 84 and 1810 it is one of the big issue I said a lot of time on the syllable looking at how it is that at this supreme moment of crisis the Russian state manages an effective war effort at a time of such deep fiscal and financial crisis well Alexandre is well aware of the fact that if he makes peace with Napoleon while the French still dominate Germany in the medium to longer run he simply can't sustain the financial burden involved so it makes sense to take the Russian army across into Germany make in a sense the jurors pacing at war but also mobilize the Prussians and Austrians while the polio is still weak it's a very close run thing it took guts that he did it his basic perception is as I say that you've got to get the French back over the ride once you've got them over the ride he goes on all the way to Paris and they sometimes accused of having done so further petty reasons I think again though he was right his basic conception was that the nature of Napoleon and of the Bonaparte East regime was that he were never gonna have peace and stability in Europe so long as he sat on the throne and I think Napoleon the third proved that I think it was just in the nature of moment autism I mean might you know I had this Alzheimer's here but I my publisher but this I said to him my basic idea for the cover you see it's deeply our prejudice this was at a time when our house was invaded by rats and I wanted me and my dog on the cover dressed as Russian generals both standing US students with pitchforks with a lot of French soldiers dressed as rats there we know it reflects rats dressed as French soldiers with a very stout Napoleon rat at their head but this is roughly my conception and I think although it says you might say a touch crude and an academic I mean it does have a basic sensitively until you put the whole thing in the global context and then you realize that in some sense what's Napoleon to do British sea power locks French and key realism into Europe unless the French create an empire in Europe they've lost their hundred year war with Britain the whole point in it I've always suspected partly that the British respect from new rules is that as long as you play by the rules the British always win I mean that was certainly the situation in the early 19th century as long as you locked French passes you know as long as British sea power locks French imperialism into automatically mobilizes the European balance of power on Britain's side the Russians the Russians and the Austrians resent the fact but you know their countries get fought over and the British seem to get richer and richer but if they've got to choose they'd rather have the British dominating India and Napoleon dominating Germany it's as simple as that so it's a complicated one and I've been looking at things from the Russian perspective and a curious account of why I think just give you a more sympathetic view of Napoleon no it was very striking it's very useful to think about these things reporter perspective particularly if you want to take this up to the notes and since you don't mention into this one tip which we won't do here tonight of course we will we will indeed stay with the story the great story of Russia against the podium questions from the audience please up there you can stop thank you Bob let's see what the high avoid all better yes couldn't see you though I I really do think you have to be congratulated for putting geopolitics at the center of an act what's usually taken to be a national story and I think I think that there are far too many great episodes of modern Russian history where geopolitics tend to be forgotten that the Russian Revolution itself being a case in point really really does want a book writing with geopolitics being at the heart things I I have a question though which is to do with the importance of the Battle of bouncing that you mentioned could have gone the other way and that then Russian and Russian power would have been destroyed how does that gel with your your your broader point which seemed to imply sympathy with Kutuzov ultimately the big the big enemy was Britain and that the French hegemony over Europe it depends upon that your time scale of it depends on your time scale I mean if Napoleon had won at bouncing he could have imposed a piece on the Prussians and Russians which would have restored his domination of Germany and probably retained an independent Duchy of water under his you know indirect rule that would have meant that French hegemony in Europe lasts for another well question we don't know we don't know I mean when you're trying to build empires really it comes in three stages the first is military victory geopolitics defeating enemies the second is creating the institutions which will outlast the initial creator of empire and the third is creating loyalty towards the empire at least in the various Elie's if not lower if he'd won at bouts of Napoleon would I think for a generation of succeeded as regards phase one whether he would ever have got far we wouldn't have got too far on phase three phase two is more indeterminate but on the other hand of course whatever had happened whether the French Empire would have survived his demise or not a Europe which emerged let us say in the 1840s and 50s ant of a collapsing French Empire would have been a very different Europe - the one which emerged after 1850 all sorts of imponderables come up and it was not just true of bouncing I mean not again things were very Nippon Tarkin in September even at Leipzig it could have gone the other way so I mean it's adds to the fascination of the drama of the story and I think that's roughly how each other now what are questions I mark sloboda masters LSE you if I could draw you into an LLC ideas question related to the book you've described to us brilliantly in the book how in the last 200 years Russia has twice liberated Europe from a would-be continental dictator for their own pursuits of a balance of power and of belief that Russia and Europe's security is intertwined could you talk about how that relates to a modern context where Europe is united not by a dictator but by consensus and just recently President Medvedev in the last year has proposed a Russian and new European new security charter you're taking me a long way look as always there are some continuities other things are rather different Ukraine that always is the big issue it's been the case really from about 1870 to 1945 that the only two countries which really mattered in Europe were the Germans of the Russians only they potentially had the power to dominate the whole continent and the two world wars in one sense were wars above all between Germany and Russia in Europe as to who was to dominate Central Europe and thereby dominate all Europe unless you bring the American tea in many ways you know the closest you've got to European hegemony was not even Napoleon or Hitler it was 1917 brest-litovsk means German domination of Europe the great irony of the First World War is that the Germans bringing the Americans literally almost within days of the Russian Revolution beginning the disintegration of Russian power and opening the way to German domination of Europe without the Americans coming and there's no way that the British and French would have been able to roll back the settlement in Central and Eastern Europe and as long as the Germans had the wit to run Europe in Eastern Europe in an intelligently imperialist way that's of course a big question they'd won and that actually brings you back to my period it's very difficult to defeat Russia in a blitzkrieg distance and resources make that you know quite a challenge the way to defeat Russia is to combine military with political strategies because the enormous pressures of the population sort of material and other and the nature of the regimes required to impose that pressure in order to sustain Empire in order to sustain Russia's position as a top-ranked European power create all sorts of domestic political problems look you know Russia has been defeated in these great confrontations in the First World War in the Cold War but it was defeated by combinations military we'll crush a lot by all-out blitz cream and with the biggest failing of Napoleon is really a political failing in 1812 it was not going to be easy to defeat Russia by a combined political and military strategy but it was possible and the pony knew the opportunities to do it so that's how I would most easily fit this into a much bigger context yes placing the blue I get us awesome Dominic what was the what was the catalyst for you even to start this book that's the best question to be asked off you feel if Dubois I think look Robert at one level you know my ancestors were Russian generals and this dad war so of course there I was prancing around at the age of four convinced I was defeating the pony I mean I must say God bless the British it is a very very rare fellowship like the leader you which allows us to the potty middle-aged professor in his mid-50s to blunder around on full salary full research grant full everything for three years fulfilling his childhood fantasy image is a story which I am absolutely convinced has be told completely untruthful but year after and I just got fed up I suppose that's another you know basic answer so you've got you know - [Music] you know it says I haven't been able to bring this out but this is a story of how Russia was mobilized against Napoleon it tells you an enormous law amount I think about the nature of Russian society and state at that time you know this is not some kind of totalitarian dictatorship you have to remember that state authority virtually ceases below the provincial capital in Russia at that time mobilizing the war effort the Russian domestic front against Napoleon is above all the state collaborating with the land owning nobility without that it's helpless and in fact in 1980 12 to 14 the state is able to coercively mobilize the masses into the army that's more or less it's raised all dead a much bigger problem is getting enough officers for all sorts of reasons and if you look into that and if you look into the whole way in which Russian strategy is debated before 1812 the way in which Alexander interacts with the Russian elites the way he manages the administrative system the governmental system but also the elites you learn a tremendous amount just as you also learn an awful lot about the the basic value system of the Russian elites through looking at how they respond to this challenge it is as I tried to say a much bigger puzzle to work out you know the poor souls who have mobilized in the ranks but the closest Chipman the closest you can come to that I think is the mentality of the regimental loyalty and I think that does rather under under underline that you know what defeats Napoleon is marked what nationalism it's the Russian old regime which is much more formidable in its way faced with that kind of challenge because in a sense as with Stalin you know of course Hitler was a disaster for the Russian people it was in some ways exactly the kind of challenge that you know the Soviet system was best designed to meet not least of course because everything that Soviet propaganda had said about the word lunatic and the propaganda exaggeration you name it read into that all-out to drink the people's blood well if anything had underestimated what Hitler tried to do and in that sense played straight into the hands of the Soviet pretty over that deep at the end you have to forgive me if I don't recognize people I know but it's impossible to see anything from down here except hands waving in the air please could you could you explain the defect the war and the whole campaign had on the subsequent 50 years Russian his history and could could that explain why Russian history stop at 1812 rather than 14 I mean given I mean I only watched a few episodes of BBC Two's war and peace but Pierre a section of the Russian intelligentsia really regarded the French as as the way some people regarded Tony Blair look I mean the most basic point is that any regime which wins on the scale that the Russian regime one in 1812 to 14 fuels and indeed is legitimized and the Russian regime of that era is a regime of autocracy and served a victory in the Second World War legitimizes the British set up victory always legitimizes the existing order and I think you know it is the sense of victory in a sense that Russian security is certain that helps to explain why Russian regimes particularly under all right under Nicolas the first 18 25 to 55 pursues a relatively conservative policy at the same time you've got to be careful because of course in a Russian history is deeply politicized and an awful lot of it which is tends to be faithfully echoed in the way is written from an auntie regime liberal or radical standpoint it tends to see Russian backwardness in the 19th century a bubble through a political lens it's naive to believe that the Russian regime under Alexander of Nicolas has anything like the power no there's no political strategy of any sort is going to change the most fundamental fact which is that the Industrial Revolution begins in Western Europe and spreads eastwards you know and if you look at why it doesn't start in Russia it's blindingly obvious you know you have to look at levels of education population you have to look at the fact that the Industrial Revolution is bringing over coal together are the only way you can do that in Russia is through the railways so I would be reticent to attach overwhelming to what happens in the it was very interesting France found itself in a minority in supporting Muhammad Ali and is a he's attempted car about a little bit of the Ottoman Empire himself Austria Britain Prussia were all against that Russia with somewhere in the middle but how would you characterize that you know and France was in a minority of one a fraud was in a minority one basically in the eighteen twenties and thirties because kiss me impact the revolution in the poll at 22 years of war devastates Europe you know the levels of casualties are enormous Lehigh in terms of the populations at that time we're interesting where the Russian army gets to France in 1814 you read the officers letters they say how poor Frances you know they don't say that about Silesia or Saxony no no they love saxon entirely the great nice paaji german buxom women you know even nicer farms you know animals even Podger than the women great place get to this yeah this place is part this place is really poor it's fascinating and so France Universal threat in the 1820s and 30s the French to get gallivanting around again and you know blow me down the second they get a bogan are back after 1848 they're up to the road tricks again but this time even stupider than ever the sense that you know he undermines the European system to Frances even more direct disadvantage than example let me congratulate you again on a book that I think all of us will enjoy reading I certainly enjoyed it tremendously as I enjoyed your presentation here today I particularly enjoyed having you on board as a senior fellow in ideas it's something that is not just going to produce a lot of good research from Russia as you could hear from tonight it's also going to be great for me and thanks to thanks to everyone for coming to our books for sale outside could I please ask you to let the speaker leave first because he has some things that he needs to look after like writing in the code outside such as working in the books thanks to everyone for coming do check the LSE events list and the LSE ideas website for upcoming events we have a couple of great events on already next weeks that you might be interested but first of all most again our tank [Applause]

Channel: LSE

Views: 32,647

Keywords: LSE, London School of Economics, Public, Lecture, Event, Seminar, Professor, Dominic Lieven

Id: UzElqomAATI

Length: 76min 58sec (4618 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2010