Alexander sat back and laughed. 'Mr. Brook, you are fallen completely into our little trap. You could not more clearly have declared yourself to be a man of honour. Of course, we have no means of compelling you to it, but we are convinced that you will now honour your given word. Nay more. I pray you, in the interests of your own country, which are now identical with ours, to rejoin Napoleon and transmit to us such knowledge of his plans as you are able.'
Seeing no alternative, Roger endeavoured to resign himself to this commitment with as good a grace as possible. Giving a wry smile, he said, 'So be it, Sire. When do you wish me to set out?'
'Tomorrow we leave St. Petersburg ourselves, and we desire you to accompany us.'
That quashed a niggling question that had entered Roger's mind. A man of honour he might be, in that he did not cheat at cards or seek to trick anyone other than his country's enemies, but simply because the Czar had had him, when a prisoner of war, exchanged for a Russian officer, was he really bound again to risk his life for an indefinite period; or should he slip away across the Baltic? It was now clear that he was not to be given the option. Alexander evidently did not trust him enough, but meant to take him to the front and push him over it.
Next day the great cavalcade of coaches, escorted by the Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard, set out. Now that spring had come, only remnants of the snow, where it had formed big drifts, remained. The flat country was a greenish brown, the roads rivers of mud, and every rivulet now swollen to a river in spate. But there were constant relays of good horses and the Imperial party reached Vilna, the capital of the province of Lithuania, and the last city on the Russian side of the Polish frontier, on April 26th.
During the weeks that followed, had Roger been acting as a secret agent for Napoleon, he could not have been better placed, as everyone at Alexander's headquarters talked freely in his presence of their hopes and fears, and of the preparations going forward to resist invasion.
The Count de Narbonne had been sent by Napoleon to Alexander with lying messages of continued goodwill; but obviously he was to find out all he could of the Russian dispositions. Tactfully, but firmly, the Czar sent the Count back with a message to the effect that he was anxious to avoid war, so had no intention of sending his troops across the Polish frontier, and he had so far not entered into an alliance with England; but would do so once the first shot was fired. Both sides now knew that war was inevitable, but were maneuvering to gain time.
Napoleon had arrived in Dresden and was holding Court there. Never before had there been such an assembly of Royalties and Great Captains: his father-in-law the Emperor of Austria, his two reliable allies the Kings of Saxony and Bavaria, the brow-beaten King of Prussia, Murat, King of Naples, Prince Poniatowski, the leader of the Poles, a score of Princes, Grand Dukes, Margraves and Landgraves, a dozen of the most famous Marshals, sullen but obedient Generals commanding troops from Denmark, Switzerland, Holland and even Spain.
Surrounded by this brilliant throng of fawning sycophants, the majority of whom wished him dead but dared not refuse his demands that they should raise ever more troops from the conquered territories, the Master of Europe built up the most mighty army that had ever existed, while Berthier worked night and day, despatching division after division, until six hundred and fifty thousand troops were concentrated in east Prussia and Poland.
Meanwhile the Russians were making their dispositions with the far smaller forces at their disposal. Before leaving St. Petersburg, the Czar had dismissed his pacific minded Minister, Speranskii, and his War Minister, Arakeheyev, had become his principal adviser. But this brutal sadist, who delighted to have soldiers knouted to death before him for quite trivial offences, although a bulwark of the throne, was no strategist; so Alexander placed himself in the hands of a German General named von Phull.
This man had gained for himself a reputation as a master of the art of war. He was a marvellous theoretician and had made the plan by which Prussia was to overwhelm Napoleon in 1806. The result had been catastrophic for the Prussians. Nevertheless, he had, immediately afterwards, been received at St. Petersburg as an infallible pundit, and was listened to there with awe, in spite of the fact that he was irritable, stubborn, openly regarded the Russian Generals with contempt and, in six years at the Czar's Court, had not bothered to learn a word of Russian.
The plan he produced was that the main Russian army should be divided into two unequal halves, with a considerable gap between them. The larger, under Barclay de Tolly, a Lithuanian of Scottish ancestry, and a cautious man, on the left front with one hundred and eighteen thousand troops; the smaller, under Prince Bagration one of Russia's best generals, who believed in attacking the enemy at every opportunity, on the right front with thirty-five thousand.
There were, in addition, two smaller armies: that of General Wittgenstein, consisting of twenty-five thousand men, which was to be stationed further in the rear, guarding the road to St. Petersburg, and another under Admiral Tormasov, which also lay far to the rear, in the east.
However, von Phull's great inspiration was to turn the little town of Drissa, on the Dvina, some two hundred miles behind the frontier, into a huge, fortified area where, if forced back, both armies could make a stand and equally well bar the road either to St. Petersburg or Moscow.
Early in June news reached the Czar that greatly cheered him. For six years past he had been at war with Turkey. On May 22nd, by a clever piece of trickery, the veteran General Kutuzov had induced the Turks to sign a peace treaty. This meant that Russia was now safe from attack on both her flanks, and could bring her army from the Danube to assist in repelling the French.
On the night of June 24th a ball was given for the Czar in Vilna. While he was at it, news was brought to him that Napoleon's army had begun to cross the Niemen by the bridge at Kovno and three others not far from it, built by his sappers. Next day Alexander sent for Balashov, his Minister of Police, and said to him:
'The mission on which we are about to send you will not stop the war; but we wish to prove to the world that we did not start it.' He then handed Balashov a letter for Napoleon, which said in effect that if the Emperor was willing to enter on negotiations, they could begin at once. But only on condition that his troops retired beyond the frontier, otherwise the Czar gave his word of honour that, as long as a single armed French soldier remained on Russian soil, he would neither utter nor listen to a single word about peace.
Owing to obstruction by, first Murat, then Davoust and several subordinate officers, it was not until the 29th that Balashov was interviewed by Napoleon, and then it was in the same room in Vilna in which he had received his instructions; for Alexander had withdrawn and the Emperor occupied the city on the previous day.
Napoleon read the Minister of Police a long lecture about the shortcomings of his master, and even insulted him; but Balashov cleverly got his own back. When the Emperor remarked that the Russians were barbarians and irreligious, he replied, 'The piety of nations varies; but in Russia, as in Spain, the masses are fanatically religious.' The Emperor then facetiously asked him the way to Moscow, to which he promptly answered, 'There are several. Charles XII took that via Polotsk.' A neat crack, for the Swedish King's army had been thoroughly routed and he had narrowly escaped with his life. Balashov had then tried to persuade Napoleon that he was making a terrible mistake by invading Russia, because the Russians would never surrender, but fight on to the last man.