1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow. Adam Zamoyski
so in practice. The membership never exceeded a few hundred, and all they did was sit around talking of insurrection, guerrilla war and revenge. But it is in the very nature of secret societies to appear more powerful and threatening than they actually are, and the Tugendbund had profound symbolic significance.
It also acted as an inspiration and a focus to disaffected elements in other parts of Germany. The German nation’s impotence in the face of the arrogance of the French was underlined as the cost of the Continental System made itself felt. Wounded pride turned into grim determination in the minds of many German patriots, and it received its first encouragement with the news of Bailén in the summer of 1808. ‘The events in Spain have had a great effect and show what can be done by a nation which has force and courage,’ Stein wrote to a friend.7
Napoleon was well aware of the new spirit at work in Germany. He was not particularly concerned by it, but he did, during his stay in Erfürt and Weimar at the time of the meeting with Alexander in 1808, make a desultory effort to garner some popularity, inviting professors from the university of Jena to lunch with him. He decorated Goethe with the Légion d’Honneur. He had the poet Christoph Martin Wieland brought to Weimar, and spent upwards of two hours discussing German literature with him during a ball, while a circle of astonished guests looked on. He then walked over to Goethe and engaged him in conversation. The event was commented on in the court bulletin, which explained that ‘the hero of the age thereby gave proof of his attachment to the nation of which he is the protector, and that he esteems its language and literature, which are its national binding force’. But the next day he visited the battlefield of Jena, on which he had made the Germans build a small temple to commemorate his triumph over them.8
In 1802, the German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel had gone to Paris with the intention of founding an international institute of learning in this new Rome. Now he was looking more to Germany. Goethe, who wore his Légion d’Honneur with pride and used to refer to Napoleon as ‘my Emperor’, was also beginning to complain of the shameful state of submission into which Germany had been forced. The philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the writer Ernst Moritz Arndt and the theologian Friedrich Daniel Schleiermacher were among those who called for a national German revival and a rejection of the French hegemony. Many of those who had seen Napoleon as a liberator now saw in him nothing but an oppressor.
There had been a predictable surge of national feeling in Austria following her defeat by Napoleon in 1806, with papers and pamphlets calling for a united German front against the French. Austria’s natural desire to avenge the humiliating defeat and regain some of her losses had been powerfully reinforced by the many disgruntled mediatised counts and knights, the deposed north Italian and particularly Piedmontese nobles and the many German patriots from the Confederation of the Rhine who had taken refuge and in many cases service there. In January 1808 the Emperor Francis married for a third time. His bride, Maria Ludovica of Habsburg, was the daughter of the Captain-General of Lombardy, who had been thrown out by Napoleon, and this was not the least of her reasons for loathing the French.
The new government under Count Philip Stadion appointed by Francis in 1808 began preparing for a confrontation with France, instituting, amongst other things, a national militia, the Landwehr. This war of revenge, Stadion made clear, was to be a national, German one, aimed at expelling France and her influence from central Europe altogether. While Maria Ludovica and a poet and fitness enthusiast called Caroline Pichler reinvented a supposedly traditional German form of dress, the Tracht, the historian Johannes von Müller, the publicist Friedrich von Gentz and others underpinned the anti-French arguments with facts. They made much of what they saw as the struggle of the Spanish people against foreign domination, holding it up as an example for the Germans to follow. Authors of every kind were invited to police headquarters, where they would be asked to use their pens in the national cause, and publishers of periodicals were instructed to print patriotic poems and articles, on pain of having their publications closed down. Unbidden, the poet and dramatist Heinrich von Kleist published ‘Die Hermannschlacht’, a poetic appeal to Germans and Austrians alike to rise up against the French and to punish all pro-Napoleonic ‘traitors’.9
In April 1809, judging Napoleon to be bogged down in Spain, Austria invaded Bavaria and launched a war for the ‘liberation’ of Germany. ‘We fight to assert the independence of the Austrian monarchy, to restore to Germany the independence and national honour that belong to her,’ declared Stadion in his manifesto. The commander-in-chief Archduke Charles issued a proclamation penned by Friedrich Schlegel which dwelt on the pan-German character of the war, representing it as an opportunity for the redemption and regeneration of the nation.10
Their call did not go unanswered. A Prussian officer, Frederick Charles de Katt, attempted to seize Magdeburg with a gang of partisans, but failed and was forced to take refuge in Austrian Bohemia. Colonel Dornberg, a Hessian serving in King Jérôme’s royal guard who had been plotting with Stein, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, intended to seize Jérôme and call the population to arms. In the event, he only managed to raise six to eight hundred men and was easily defeated. This was bad news for Major Schill, a Prussian officer who had distinguished himself in 1806–1807 by his determined defence of Kolberg. On 28 April 1809 he marched out of Berlin with his regiment, telling his men that he was going to invade Westphalia and evict the French from Germany. He was expecting to link up with Dornberg, who should by then have seized Jérôme, but he soon found himself facing superior forces and was obliged to retreat to the Baltic coast, where he hung on, vainly hoping for British seaborne support, until he was killed in a skirmish on 31 May.
An altogether more serious response came in the Tyrol, where resentment of the French ran much deeper. The area had traditionally been governed by the Habsburgs with much respect for local tradition and idiosyncrasies, but Bavaria, to which it was transferred by Napoleon in 1806, operated a more centralised administration. The locals were offended by higher rates of taxation and by enforced conscription. The parish clergy did not approve of the secularisation taking place in Bavaria, adding to the discontent. In January 1809 Andreas Hofer and a handful of other Tyrolese went to Vienna to prepare an insurrection to coincide with Austria’s invasion of Bavaria. On 9 April beacons were duly lit and the Tyrol rebelled. A Bavarian corps of two thousand men was forced to capitulate, and Austrian forces occupied Innsbrück. But they were soon ejected from it by the French under Marshal Lefèbvre.
On 21–22 May Napoleon fought the twin battles of Aspern-Essling against the Austrians under Archduke Charles. Although technically a French victory, they reverberated through Europe as a defeat. Napoleon suffered a personal loss in the death of Marshal Lannes, and had to bring Lefèbvre back to join the main army. This allowed the revolt in the Tyrol to erupt with renewed vigour, under the slogan ‘God and the Emperor’, which had enemies of Napoleon all over Europe rubbing their hands at what they thought was a new Spain.
At this point, the Duke of Brunswick-Oels appeared on the scene. His father had been ignominiously defeated at Auerstädt in 1806, and he had vowed eternal hatred to the French. He had gone to Vienna, where he obtained a subsidy in order to raise a 20,000-strong ‘Legion of Vengeance’ with which he intended to liberate northern Germany. He now sallied forth, defeated the Saxons at Zittau, seized Dresden on 11 June and Leipzig ten days after that. On 21 July he marched on, through Brunswick and Hanover, but he met with little enthusiasm, and was eventually forced to take refuge on a British man-of-war in the Baltic.
In the meantime, Napoleon had won the conclusive battle of Wagram, and Austria was forced to sign the Treaty of Vienna, which reduced it to a state of powerlessness. Her image as a potential liberator of Germany was shattered, and she settled down meekly within the Napoleonic system. Francis was only too happy to pay tribute by giving his favourite daughter to the Corsican ogre, and the marriage was hailed as a happy event by his people.
Austria’s failure stemmed in large measure from her inability to engage the support of Russia, and above all to draw Prussia into the war against the French. The pan-German plotters had been active in