LITMIR.BIZ

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dismayed at the mediocrity of the monarch he was serving. He strongly disapproved of Frederick William’s alignment with France in 1805 and his consequent seizure of Hanover. Along with others, he persuaded the reluctant Frederick William to switch to the side of the coalition against Napoleon, and when this led to the disasters of Jena and Auerstadt he was dismissed in January 1807, with a string of imprecations from the King.

      It was all the more galling for the unfortunate King that a few months later Napoleon, who had reduced Prussia to an entirely subservient condition, having heard that Stein was a good administrator but not that he was a German patriot, instructed Frederick William to nominate him as his principal minister. Stein took the opportunity provided by his new position to introduce an edict of emancipation which transformed Prussia from a feudal monarchy into a modern state, and followed this up with administrative, municipal and military reforms. Barely more than a year later an intercepted letter revealed to the French police the extent of Stein’s hatred of the French, and in consequence Napoleon had him dismissed and declared an outlaw. Rendered penniless at a stroke, Stein took refuge in Austrianruled Prague.

      In 1812 Stein was summoned to Russia by Tsar Alexander. The two had met in Berlin in 1805 and been drawn to each other by the high-minded ideals – and, no doubt, by the priggishness – they shared. As the Grande Armée advanced into Russia, raising doubts as to the competence of Alexander and his generals, the Tsar suffered moments of self-doubt and emotional stress. In these circumstances Stein’s unshakeable belief in him as the champion of the universal anti-French cause proved invaluable as both solace and support. His influence over the Tsar grew in proportion.

      He took over the direction of a German Committee set up by Alexander to coordinate pro-Russian sentiment throughout German lands, and turned it into an instrument for his own ends. On 18 September 1812, a couple of days after Napoleon had crushed the Russians’ last stand at Borodino outside Moscow, Stein produced a memorandum which sketched out his plan to create a unified German state. He was convinced that Russia would prevail in the end, and argued that having defeated the French she must carry the war into Germany and liberate Europe from their yoke.

      When, three months later, the remnants of the Grande Armée straggled back across the frontier, the Russian commander Field Marshal Kutuzov and most of his senior officers argued against pursuing them further. Kutuzov would continue to beg Alexander to make peace and go home, and to advise against crossing the Elbe, until his very death, on 28 April 1813 at Bünzlau (Bolesławiec). Even the most ardent Russian patriots, such as his Minister of the Interior Admiral Shishkov and the Archimandrite Filaret, were against Alexander’s proposed liberation of Europe. The consensus was that Russia should help herself to East Prussia and much of Poland, providing herself with some territorial gain and a defensible western border, and leave it at that. But Alexander ignored them.⁸

      When the Russian armies did advance, Alexander put Stein in charge of administering German territory in their rear, and he went to work setting up not only organs of local administration, but representative bodies as well. He recruited volunteers, called up reservists, formed a new militia, the Landwehr, to be supported by a home defence force, the Landsturm, all in the name of the King of Prussia but without his knowledge, let alone his authority.

      Although Alexander’s behaviour encouraged Stein in the belief that he was going to be able to put into effect his dream of a united Germany, the Tsar stopped short of endorsing it. He wished to be the healer of past ills and the bringer of happiness to the Germans as well as the Poles, and indeed to all the inhabitants of the Continent. But while he enjoyed being the anticipated saviour, he had no fixed programme. He also needed to keep his options open. Nevertheless, the expectations he aroused introduced unaccountable new elements into what was already a volatile situation.

      The first obliged to confront these was King Frederick William of Prussia, and he was a worried man in those early months of 1813. ‘Make use of the authority granted you by God to break the chains of your people!’ Stein exhorted him from St Petersburg at the end of December 1812. ‘May its blood no longer be spilt on behalf of the enemy of humanity.’ But the Prussian King was not a born hero.⁹

      His innate weakness undermined the advantages of a kindly and God-fearing nature, and made him suspicious as he clung to power, while his sense of failure nourished a false pride and a mean streak. He had been forced to give up half of his kingdom only ten years after acceding to it, and had been gratuitously humiliated by Napoleon. The knowledge that everyone compared him with his famous predecessor and great-uncle Frederick the Great only compounded this sense of failure. The one light in his life had been his Queen, the beautiful and universally admired Louise, to whom he had been attached by a true and mutual love. But she had died in 1810. He hung on to the remains of his realm, seeing in a close association with Napoleon the only means of survival.

      General Yorck’s defection from the French ranks raised the terrifying possibility of French retaliation. Frederick William therefore loudly denounced it as an act of mutiny and made great show of standing by his alliance with Napoleon. But his ally was far away in Paris mustering a new army, the Russians were flooding into his kingdom from the east, and public opinion was against him.

      Frederick William should have had every reason to welcome the approach of the Russians. Back in 1805 when they had met for the first time in Berlin, he and Alexander had sworn eternal friendship at midnight over the tomb of Frederick the Great. That friendship had been only slightly marred by Frederick William’s forced contribution of troops to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and the Prussian King knew that he had the sympathy of Alexander. Yet he viewed the approach of the Russian armies with misgivings and even fear.

      Alexander’s appointment of Stein was, considering their past relationship, almost an insult. Stein’s disregard for Frederick William’s authority as he set about administering East Prussia was an open affront. It might signify that Alexander was preparing to detach that province from the Prussian kingdom. Stein’s calls for a pan-German war of national liberation were even more alarming. He made no secret of his views that all German rulers who had allied with Napoleon were ‘cowards who sold the blood of their people in order to prolong their miserable existence’. The prospect of his being let loose on Germany aroused legitimate fears of social upheaval and even revolution, which Frederick William would be in no position to oppose.¹⁰

      He was in an unenviable position. The strong French garrison ensconced in the fortress of Spandau paraded through Berlin daily, reminding him that there were more French than Prussian troops in the country. The probability was that Napoleon would be back in the spring with a fresh army, with which he would crush the Russians. Even if he did not hope for a Russian defeat, Frederick William ardently desired the stability which only such a return could guarantee. What he dreaded above all was the possibility that Alexander and Napoleon might yet reach an accommodation, the principal victim of which would almost certainly be Prussia: an obvious solution would have been for Russia to take East Prussia and all Polish lands up to the Vistula as the price for continued French control of Germany.

      Frederick William calculated that if he could negotiate better terms with Napoleon, he would be in a position to reassert his authority, control the hotheads in his dominions and face Russia on more level terms. It was, of necessity, the lesser of two evils. ‘By allying with France, the least that could be expected was a further degree of ruin for the kingdom, which would inevitably become the theatre of the war,’ wrote the Prussian chancellor, Baron August von Hardenberg, ‘but if one were to enter into alliance with Russia, how could one dare to confront once again the implacable vengeance of Napoleon?’¹¹

      Frederick William therefore sent Prince Hatzfeldt to Paris with the proposal of an active alliance against Russia, on condition that France paid the ninety million francs she owed Prussia and agreed to the restitution of some of her former territory in Poland. The alliance was to be sealed by the marriage of the Prussian Crown Prince to a princess of the house of Bonaparte. Failing to get a response, in February 1813 he made two further such proposals to Napoleon. Скачать книгу