Impact of Political and Industrial Revolutions 201more densely populated parts of western Europe where it was difficult
to meet the problem by simply extending tillage to new ground.
Within the Austrian and Russian borders, the Hapsburg and Romanov
regimes also built up the size of their armies and replaced losses by
heavy drafts upon the peasantry. Their situation differed inasmuch as
nothing prevented economically useful engagement of the growing
work force in agriculture, whereas in more densely populated parts of
western Europe this was difficult or impossible. In other words,
political-diplomatic and military factors accounted for the growth of
east European armies; no internal social dynamic pushed in that direc
tion, although the growth of population made it relatively easy for the
recruiters to fill their quotas from the villages.
Prussia constituted something of an exception, for after 1808 the
terms of the treaty Napoleon imposed on Frederick William III limited
the size of the Prussian army to 42,000 men. But this compulsory
demobilization, and the economic distresses arising from years of
French occupation and requisitioning, provided a store of men and
emotion for the Befreiungskrieg of 1813, when Prussian manpower,
summoned to the colors en masse, responded willingly.
Within the bounds of continental Europe, therefore, the revolu
tionary response to the demographic crisis of the Old Regime proved
generally effective, at least until 1810. Napoleon’s repeated victories
over Austria (1797, 1800, 1805, 1809) and the crushing blow he gave
to Prussian power in 1806 dismayed and discredited the Old Regime
everywhere except in Great Britain. There popular feeling tended
instead to harden against the French and rally behind the aristocratic-
oligarchic leadership which managed the British economy and polity
throughout the war with considerable success, as we shall soon see.
Russian elites were ambivalent, both admiring and fearing the revolu
tionary upheaval. Given such hesitancy, nearly everyone was content
to take his cue from the quirks of the reigning autocrat, first the angry
eccentric Paul I (1795–1801) and then the guilt-ridden ideologue,
Alexander I (1801–25).^35
Neither a British-directed commercial integration of all Europe nor
a French-dominated military consolidation of western Europe was
truly compatible with Russian Orthodox feeling nor in accord with
- Alexander was implicated in the murder of his father, Paul; and soon after his
accession to the throne enthusiasm for enlightened French ideas competed in his mind
with mystical pursuit of communion with God. His flip-flops from a French to a British
alliance and back again were often associated with shifts in his intellectual posture,
before as well as after his well-known conversion by Mme. de Krüdener to Christian
ideals in 1815. Cf. Alan Palmer, Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace (New York, 1974).