The French Government has thought proper again to give to
the world through the columns of the Paris Constitutionnel another
intimation respecting the manner in which the war is to be carried
on for the next couple of months.* These exposés are now
becoming not only fashionable but periodical, and although they
are apt to be inconsistent with each other, they afford for the time
a pretty good idea of what favorable chances are open to the
French Government. Take them all in all, they form a collection of all Louis Bonaparte’s possible plans of campaign against
Russia. As such they deserve some attention, for they involve
the destiny of the second Empire and the possibility of French
national resurrection.

It seems then that there is to be no “grande guerre” with 500,000
Austrians and 100,000 French on the Vistula and Dnieper. Nor is
there to be a general rising of those “oppressed nationalities”
which are constantly looking toward the West. No Hungarian,
Italian, Polish armies are to appear at the magic call of the man
who put down the Roman Republic." All that belongs to the past.
Austria has done her duty to the West. So has Prussia. So has all
the world. Everybody is satisfied with everybody. This war is no
grand war at all. It is not destined to renew the glory of the old
struggles of the French with the Russians, though Pélissier
accidentally says as much in one of his dispatches. The French
troops are not sent to the Crimea to reap a harvest of glory; they
are simply there to do police duty. The question pending is a

* This refers to A. de Cesena’s article on the aims and prospects of the Crimean
war published in the semi-official Constitutionnel, No. 169, June 18, 1855.— Ed.

mere local one: the supremacy of the Black Sea—and it will be
settled on the very locality concerned. To give the war any larger
dimensions would be folly. “Respectfully but firmly” will the Alhes
knock down every attempt at resistance by the Russians in the
Black Sea and on its coasts; and when they have done that— why
then of course they or Russia, or both of them will make peace.

Thus another of the Bonapartist self-delusions has been put
aside. The dreams of the Rhine as the boundary of France, of the
acquisition of Belgium and Savoy, have vanished, and a sober
modesty of no common degree has taken their place. We are not
fighting to restore France to the position which is due to her in
Europe. Far from it. Not even are we fighting for civilization, as
we used to say a short time ago. We are too modest to pretend to
anything of such magnitude. What we are fighting for is—why,
nothing more than the interpretation of the Third Point' of the
Vienna protocol! Such is the language now held by his Imperial
Majesty Napoleon III, by the grace of the army and the toleration
of Europe, Emperor of the French.

And what does this all amount to? We are told the war is being
carried on for a purely local object, and can be brought to a
successful termination by purely local means. Take the actual
supremacy of the Black Sea out of the hands of Russia, and the
end will be accomplished. Once masters of the Black Sea and its
shores, hold what you have got, and Russia will very soon give in.
Such is the most recent of all the many plans 6f campaign issued
from headquarters at Paris. We proceed to look at it a little more
closely.

We will take matters as they stand at present. From Constantinople to the Danube on the one side, and round by the
Circassian coast, Anapa, Kertch, Balaklava, to Eupatoria, the whole
coast 1s taken out of the hands of the Russians. Kaffa and
Sevastopol are the only points that hold out, the one hard pressed,
the other so situated that it must be abandoned as soon as it is
seriously menaced. More than that, the allied fleets sweep the
inland sea of Azoff; their light vessels have been up as far as
Taganrog, and every place of importance has been assailed by
them. No portion of the coast can be said to remain in the hands
of the Russians, except the tract from Perekop to the Danube, or
about one-fifteenth part of their possessions on that coast. Now we
will even suppose that Kaffa and Sevastopol have fallen, and that
the Crimea is in the hands of the Allies. What then? That Russia
will not make peace in that situation, she has already loudly
proclaimed. She would be mad if she did. It would be giving up

Napoleon’s War Plans 269

the battle after your advanced guard has been thrown back, at the
very moment your main body is coming up. What then can the
Allies do, after having secured these advantages at an immense
cost?

They can, we are told, destroy Odessa, Cherson, Nikolaieff; they
can even land a strong army at Odessa, fortify themselves there so
as to hold out against any number of Russians, and then act
according to circumstances. They can, besides, detach troops to
the Caucasus and all but destroy the Russian army which, under
General Muravieff, now holds Georgia and the other transCaucasian countries. But suppose all these things to be accomplished: and again we ask, what then, if Russia, as she certainly
will do, refuse to make peace under these circumstances? Let it
not be forgotten that Russia is not placed in the same position as
France or England. England can afford to conclude a shabby
peace. In fact, as soon as John Bull has had enough of excitement
and war-taxes, he will be but too eager to creep out of the mess
and leave his dear allies to shift for themselves. England’s real
power and source of strength do not exactly lie in that direction.
Louis Bonaparte may, too, find himself placed in a position where
an unseemly peace will be preferable, for him, to a war to the
knife; for it must not be forgotten that with such an adventurer,
in a desperate case, the chance of prolonging his dominion for
another six months outweighs every other consideration. Turkey
and Sardinia are sure to be left to their own puny resources in the
decisive moment. So much, at least, is certain. But Russia cannot
make peace, any more than ancient Rome could, while the enemy
is on her territory. Russia, for a hundred and fifty years past, has
never made a peace by which she lost ground. Even Tilsit' gave
her an increase of territory, and Tilsit was concluded before a
single Frenchman had put his foot on Russian soil. To make peace
while a large and advancing army is on Russian soil, a peace
involving a sacrifice of territory, or at least a restriction of the
Czar’s sovereignty in his own dominions, would be to break at
once with the traditions of a century and a half. Such a step could
not be thought of by a Czar new to the throne,* new to the people,
and anxiously watched by a powerful national party. Such a peace
could not be concluded until all the resources offensive and (above
all) defensive of Russia had been brought into play and found
wanting. That day will doubtless come, and the necessity of
minding her own business will be imposed upon Russia, but by

* Alexander II.— Ed.

other enemies than Louis Bonaparte and Palmerston, and after
struggles far more decisive than the “local” execution put in force
on her Black Sea dominions. But let us suppose the Crimea
conquered and garrisoned by 50,000 Allies—the Caucasus and
everything to the South of it cleared of Russian troops, and an
allied army checking the Russians on the Kuban and Terek—
Odessa taken, and converted into an intrenched camp, holding say
100,000 Anglo-French troops; Nikolaieff, Cherson, Ismail, destroyed or occupied by the Allies. We will even suppose that beside
these “local” exploits, something of some importance may have
been accomplished in the Baltic, although with the information at
our command it is hard to say what that may be. What then?

Will the Allies confine themselves to holding their positions and
tiring out the Russians? Their men in the Crimea and the
Caucasus will vanish faster under the effects of disease than they
can be replaced. Their main army, say at Odessa, will have to be
fed by the fleets, for the country for hundreds of miles around
Odessa produces nothing. The Russian army, surrounded by
Cossack scouts—nowhere more useful than in these steppes— will
harass them whenever they show themselves out of their
intrenchments, if it cannot take up a permanent position
somewhere in the neighborhood of the town. It is impossible
under such circumstances to force the Russians to give battle; their
great advantage will always be to draw the Allies into the interior
of the country. To every advance of the Allies, they will respond
by a slow retreat. Yet a large army cannot be confined for any
length of time in an intrenched camp without giving it something
to do. The gradual progress of disorder and demoralization would
force the Allies to some decided movement. Sickness, too, would
make the place too hot for them. In a word, to occupy the
principal points on the coast and there to await the moment when
Russia finds it necessary to give in is a game that will never do at
all. There are three chances to one that the Allies would be tired
of it first, and that the graves of their soldiers on the shores of the
Black Sea would soon be counted by hundreds of thousands.

It would be a military blunder, too. To command a coast, it is
not sufficient to possess its principal points. It is the possession of
the inner country which alone gives the possession of the coast. As
we have seen, the very circumstances arising from an establishment on the coast of South Russia would all but force the Allies to
march into the interior. And here it is that the difficulties begin.
Up to the frontiers of the Governments of Podolia, Kieff, Poltava,
Charkoff, the country is an almost uncultivated plain, very scantily

Napoleon’s War Plans 271

watered, furnishing nothing but grass, and not even that after the
heats of Summer. Supposing Odessa, Nikolaieff, Cherson to be
taken for a base of operations, where would be the object against
which the Allies could direct their efforts? The towns are few and
far between, and there are none of sufficient importance to give,
if occupied, a decisive character to the operation. There is no
decisive point nearer than Moscow, and that is 700 miles off! Five
hundred thousand men would be required for a march on
Moscow, and where are they to come from? Surely, the case is
such that in this way the “local” war can never lead to any decisive
result; and we defy Louis Bonaparte with all his exuberance of
strategic imagination to find another.

_ All this, however, presupposes not only the strict neutrality but
even the moral support of Austria. And where is that power at the
present moment? Austria and Prussia have declared they would
consider an advance of the Russian army towards the Balkan, in
1854, as a casus belli against Russia.’*’ Where is the guarantee that
in 1856 they will not consider a French advance on Moscow or
even Charkoff as a cause of war against the Western Powers? We
need not forget that every army advancing from the Black Sea
toward the interior of Russia as much offers its flank to Austria as
a Russian army advancing into Turkey from the Danube; and at a
given distance, therefore, its communication with its base of
operations, that is to say its very existence, is at the mercy of
Austria. To keep Austria quiet, even for a time, she will have to be
bought off by the surrender of Bessarabia to her troops. Once on
the Dniester, her army commands Odessa as completely as if that
town were garrisoned by Austrians. And under such circumstances
could an allied army venture on a wild-goose chase after the
Russians into the interior of the country? Nonsense! But this
nonsense, let us remember, is the logical consequence of Louis
Bonaparte’s latest plan of “local warfare.”

The first plan for the campaign was the “grande guerre,” by
means of the Austrian alliance. It would have placed the French
army in the same numerical inferiority and virtual dependence
with respect to the Austrian army as the English army is now with
regard to the French. It would have given the revolutionary
initiative to Russia. Louis Bonaparte could do neither. Austria
refused to act; the subject dropped. The second was the “war of
nationalities.” This would have roused a storm between the
Germans, Italians, Hungarians on one hand, and the Slavonian
insurrection on the other, which must have reacted upon France
at once and overturned Louis Bonaparte’s Lower Empire '* in less

time than it took to set it up. The counterfeit “iron man,” passing
himself off as a Napoleon, shrunk back. The third and most
modest of all is the “local war for local objects.” It reduces itself at
once to an absurdity. We are again obliged to ask: What next?
After all, it is far easier to be made Emperor of the French, with
every circumstance to favor the design, than to act as such, even
when long study before the looking-glass has made his Majesty
perfectly familiar with all the theatrical portion of the business.

Written about June 15, 1855

abridged and altered German version was
in the Neue Oder-Zeitung, Nos. 279 and
287, June 19 and 23, 1855, marked with
the sign xX

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