Napoleon swept aside all these objections and continued to prepare for
war.
But there was a significant lacuna in Napoleon's preparations from the
end of August until mid-November I8I I while he mulled over all the
implications of the proposed war. First he travelled to Compiegne for a
three-week stay. Then on I8 September he followed a now familiar
itinerary, through Wimereux, Ambleteuse, Calais, Dunkirk, Ostend,
Flushing, Anvers and Gorkhum to Utrecht and Amsterdam. Anxious to
see for himself this land from which he had expelled Louis he remained
in Amsterdam for two weeks before setting out on 24 October for the
completion of the journey. After visits to the Hague, Rotterdam, the
chateau of Loo, Nijmegen and Arnhem, he crossed into Germany for
stopovers at Dusseldorf, Bonn, Liege and Mezieres before returning to St
Cloud on I I November. His mind was now made up. The Continental
System had to continue, and war with Russia was its logical expression.
Why did Napoleon embark on a course of action so fraught with
danger and ultimately so fatal to his prospects? Not even Hitler made the
mistake of fighting an active war on two fronts, since there was no war in
western Europe when he invaded Russia in I94I. Yet Napoleon launched
into the vast open spaces of the Russian interior at a time when he was
already losing a major war in Spain. There was a rational element in his
decision, but it seems to have been overwhelmed by multifarious slivers
of wishful thinking, fantasy and self-destructive impulses. In his rational
moments, Napoleon argued that a Russian campaign was necessary to
maintain credibility and to extinguish British hopes. In the first place, if
Russia was allowed to flout the Continental System, others would soon
follow her example and the entire strategy for defeating England would
be subverted. Secondly, England still sustained herself with the hope of
another Continental coalition; with Prussia and Austria cowed, her only
plausible potential partner was Russia. It followed that a military defeat of
Russia would finally convince the British that Bonaparte was invincible
and force them to sue for peace. Thirdly, Poland needed to be converted
into a strong state, with a weak Russia on her borders, so that the French
Empire could not be threatened from the east after Napoleon's death.
Many observers are convinced that even beneath this seeming
rationality there lurked a second-order irrationality. Was it not almost
suicidal to double the stakes just when the game seemed to be going
against him? The Continental Blockade had not worked, and seemed
unlikely to work. The attempt to close one door on England had led to
the unforeseen debacle in Spain. What might not invasion of Russia
bring? This has led some historians to argue that Napoleon was once
marcin
(Marcin)
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