66 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/120, Sv. 18, Delo 17, fos. 109–10, Kankrin to Barclay, 17 Jan. 1814 (OS); fos. 172–5, Kankrin to Barclay, 20 Feb. 1814 (OS); fo. 218, Barclay to Oertel, 7 March 1814 (OS). V. von Löwenstern, Mémoires du Général-Major Russe Baron de Löwenstern, 2 vols., Paris, 1903, vol. 2, pp. 315–20.
Chapter 14: The Fall of Napoleon
1 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/120, Sv. 18, Delo 17, fos. 68–70, Kankrin to Barclay (enclosing Lisanevich’s own report: fos. 70–71), 14 Jan. 1814 (OS); fos. 73–5, Barclay to Kankrin, 15 Jan. 1814 (OS) (on how the mobile magazine should be used); fo. 127, Kankrin to Barclay, 27 Jan. 1814 (OS) (on the magazines’ survival almost intact); fo. 160, Kankrin to Barclay, 15 Feb. 1814 (OS) (on how the mobile magazines had already supplied biscuit rations for one month); fo. 204, Kankrin to Barclay, 27 Feb. 1814 (OS) (on the dispatch of Kondratev’s magazine to Joinville).
2 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 18, Delo 17, fos. 50–52: Stein’s letter to Barclay explaining the arrangements to administer occupied territory and defining the districts, dated 25 Jan. (NS) 1814. For Alopaeus’s initial responses see: fos. 188–9, Kankrin to Barclay, 22 Feb. 1814 (OS), and fos. 201–3, Alopaeus to Barclay, 23 Feb. 1814 (OS). See also Peter Graf von Kielmansegg, Stein und die Zentralverwaltung 1813/14, Stuttgart, 1964, part 4, pp. 98 ff.
3 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 12, Delo 126, fos. 52–3, Kankrin to Barclay, 22 Jan. 1814 (OS).
4 RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/210, Sv. 18, Delo 17, fo. 204, Kankrin to Barclay, 27 Feb. 1814 (OS); fos. 205–7, Alopaeus to Kankrin, 25 Feb. (OS).
5 A. Fournier, Der Congress von Chatillon: Die Politik im Kriege von 1814, Vienna, 1900, no. 27, Metternich to Stadion, 9 March 1814, pp. 334–5. Lord Burghersh, The Operations of the Allied Armies in 1813 and 1814, London, 1822, pp. 177–85, for a retrospective, ‘sanitized’ view.
6 Dispatch from Lieven to Nesselrode, 26 Jan. 1814, enclosed in a letter from Castlereagh to Liverpool, 18 Feb. 1814: Marquess of Londonderry (ed.), Correspondence, Despatches, and Other Papers of Viscount Castlereagh, 12 vols., vol. 9, London, 1853, pp. 266–73.
7 F. Martens (ed.), Sobranie traktatov i konventsii, zakliuchennykh Rossiei s inostrannymi derzhavami, vol. 3: Traktaty s Avstrieiu, SPB, 1876, no. 73, pp. 148–65.
8 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3399, fos. 131ii–132i. SIRIO, 31, 1881, pp. 364–5, has the protocol of the meeting of 25 February. M. Bogdanovich, Istoriia voiny 1814 goda vo Frantsii, 2 vols., SPB, 1865, vol. 1, pp. 268–70.
9 K. von Clausewitz, Der Feldzug von 1812 in Russland, der Feldzug von 1813 bis zum Waffenstillstand und der Feldzug von 1814 in Frankreich, Berlin, 1862, pp. 375–7; Baron Karl von Müffling, The Memoirs of Baron von Müffling: A Prussian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars, ed. P. Hofschroer, London, 1997, pp. 146–71; V. von Löwenstern, Mémoires du Général-Major Russe Baron de Löwenstern, 2 vols., Paris, 1903, vol. 2, pp. 325–34. Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, 32 vols., Paris, 1858–70, vol. 27, no. 21439, Napoleon to Joseph, 5 March 1814, pp. 288–9. Henri Houssaye, Napoleon and the Campaign of 1814: France, Uckfield, 2004, pp. 116–41, tends to be an uncritical apologist for the Bonapartist line. Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814, vol. 1, pp. 299–307.
10 For the basic narrative from rival sides, see Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814, vol. 1, pp. 309–29; Houssaye, Napoleon, pp. 142–59. R. von Friederich, Die Befreiungskriege 1813–1815, vol. 3: Der Feldzug 1814, Berlin, 1913, pp. 214–22, is semi-neutral and accurate. On Heurtebise, and the battle of the Russian jaegers, see S. I. Maevskii, ‘Moi vek, ili istoriia generala Maevskogo, 1779–1848’, RS, 8, 1873, pp. 268–73. He commanded the 13th Jaeger Regiment during the battle.
11 Apart from the works cited in the previous note, see specifically on the Russian retreat, Ivan Ortenberg, ‘Voennyia vospominaniia starykh vremen’, Biblioteka dlia chteniia, 24/6, 1857, pp. 18–33, at pp. 18–19.
12 Burghersh, Operations, p. 196. Clausewitz, Feldzug, 1862, p. 379.
13 Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814, vol. 1, pp. 324–5; Captain Koch, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la campagne de 1814, 3 vols., Paris, 1819, vol. 1, pp. 399–400. Houssaye, Napoleon, p. 157. Alain Pigeard, Dictionnaire de la Grande Armée, Paris, 2002, pp. 648–9. Friederich, Feldzug, writes that 15,000 Russians actually fought 21,000 French soldiers on the battlefield of Craonne.
14 There is a good description of meeting Blücher at this time in F. von Schubert, Unter dem Doppeladler, Stuttgart, 1962, pp. 345–6.
15 Friederich, Feldzug, pp. 243–8; Müffling, Memoirs, pp. 167–76.
16 I. I. Shelengovskii, Istoriia 69-go Riazanskago polka, 3 vols., Lublin, 1911, vol. 2, pp. 251–75. Skobelev was actually an odnodvorets, in other words the descendant of free peasant colonists who had manned the southern frontier regions of Muscovy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By Alexander’s reign the burdens and constraints on odnodvortsy were roughly the same as those of the state peasantry.
17 Alexander’s correspondence in RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3399, contains a mass of letters expressing these worries: see e.g. fos. 147ii and 151i for letters of 28 Feb. (OS) to Schwarzenberg urging him to press forward more quickly, and of 5 March (OS) to Nikolai Raevsky, who had replaced Wittgenstein, warning him not to become isolated and to expect an attack by Napoleon at any moment. For the scenes at GHQ, see Karl Fürst Schwarzenberg, Feldmarschall Fürst Schwarzenberg: Der Sieger von Leipzig, Vienna, 1964, pp. 306–8, 483–4. Mémoires de Langeron, Général d’Infanterie dans l’Armée Russe: Campagnes de 1812, 1813, 1814, Paris, 1902, p. 423.
18 Langeron, Mémoires, pp. 434–7, has a good discussion of these two options.
19 T. von Bernhardi, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben des kaiserlichen russischen Generals der Infanterie Carl Friedrich Grafen von Toll, 5 vols., Leipzig, 1858, vol. 4ii, pp. 292–4, cites Napoleon’s own subsequent conversations on this point.
20 RGVIA, Fond 846, Opis 16, Delo 3399, fo. 154ii, Volkonsky to Gneisenau, 10 March 1814 (OS). The basic narrative of events is the same in Friederich, Feldzug, and in Bogdanovich, Istoriia…1814.
21 Friederich, Feldzug, pp. 281–2. On previous criticism of Oertel, see RGVIA, Fond 103, Opis 4/120, Sv. 12, Delo 126, fo. 71: Barclay to Oertel, 16 Feb. 1814 (OS). A. Mikhailovskii-Danilevskii, Opisanie pokhoda vo Frantsii v 1814 godu, SPB, repr. 1841, pp. 284–5.