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Over 90 per cent of this consisted of serfs, about half of them owned by the nobility, the rest by the Church or the state. Serfs were chattels. They could be bought and sold, included in a gambling debt, marriage contract or loan. They could be flogged by their masters, and killed in the process. There was no identifiable revolutionary urge among the serfs, mainly because they had no leaders, but there was always the potential for bloody mutiny, and there had been a terrible one, led by Pugachov, in living memory.

The intrusion of the French army could not fail to affect the
peasants’ attitude towards their rulers, or at least bring to the surface latent grievances. The authorities had anticipated this, and the police intensified their snooping in taverns and alehouses all over the country. There were confused reports of agitators travelling around the countryside encouraging serfs to rise, and rumours circulated among peasants and house serfs to the effect that Napoleon had told Alexander to emancipate them, otherwise he would. Alexander had stationed half-battalions of three hundred men in every province as a precaution, which was not misplaced. There would be sixty-seven minor peasant revolts in thirty-two different provinces in the course of 1812, more than twice the annual average.
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The serfs were nevertheless Russians, deeply attached to their land and their faith, and it was hoped that they would rally to the defence of these. But first signs were not promising. D.I. Sverbeev, the nineteen-year-old son of a landowner to the south of Moscow, recalled how, on hearing news of the invasion, his father called his serfs together after church on Sunday. The seventy-two-year-old master announced that he and his son were going to go to Moscow to enlist, and called on his serfs to volunteer. There was much shuffling of feet, and finally one old peasant volunteered, while some of the others offered a few pennies. Other squires fared even less well. There were instances of rebellion and sacking of manors as the French armies drew near.
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It was up to Alexander to ensure that patriotic feeling, or rather the determination to stand by the whole political, social, religious and cultural edifice which he embodied, spread through every class of the nation. A huge propaganda exercise was required, and in this Shishkov was to be invaluable. Alexander would hand him a draft proclamation, written in French, and Shishkov would turn it into stirring Russian. The manifesto issued in Polotsk on 6 July announced that Napoleon had come to destroy their ‘great nation’. ‘With guile in his heart and flattery on his lips he is bringing for it eternal flails and shackles,’ it warned. Alexander would chase Napoleon from the land, but as Napoleon disposed of enormous strength, the Tsar would
need to gather new forces. The manifesto represented the whole nation as being engaged in a life and death struggle in defence of their wives, children and homes, and called on nobles, clergy and peasants to emulate heroes of the past. Shishkov knew how to combine love of family and home with love of fatherland and Tsar. His proclamations were couched in biblical vein, equating Russia with the chosen people which must one day tower above others, and brimmed with pious confidence in divine providence.
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Alexander also brought the propaganda machine of the Orthodox Church into play. He wrote to bishops urging them to mobilise their clergy into action against the common threat of the alien and godless ‘army of twenty tongues’, as the multinational Grande Armée was sometimes referred to. The Synod issued its own proclamation, calling on everyone to take up arms in defence of faith and fatherland against the godless intruders who had offended the Almighty by overthrowing the throne and the altar in France. It called on priests up and down the country to arm simple souls with the correct sentiments. At Alexander’s request, Augustine, Vicar of Moscow, wrote a special prayer in which the faithful could beg God to defend Russia, inspire devotion to the Tsar and imbue him with all the wisdom and courage required to give him victory, quoting the examples of Moses and Gideon, David and Goliath.
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Issuing ringing manifestos was one thing. Keeping people calm was another. The febrile mood of St Petersburg veered from absurd optimism to darkest despair with astonishing ease. ‘Everyone is expecting a courier to appear at any moment with news of a victory, rumours of which are circulating in the city,’ wrote an inhabitant of the capital to a friend in the county on 21 July. ‘They say that Bagration has beaten the King of Westphalia. They give the number of prisoners taken as 15,000.’ There was talk of resounding victories: Wittgenstein had thrashed Oudinot and Macdonald, Ney and Murat had been beaten outside Vitebsk, and so on.
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But there was also much anger at the retreats, and at the optimistic bulletins being issued by the authorities. ‘In these they write about
our successes, about the slow pace of Napoleon’s advance, about his lack of confidence in his forces, but the facts themselves show us something quite different; we have been successful only in retreating, and while the enemy has not conquered, he has simply helped himself to entire provinces,’ complained Varvara Ivanovna Bakunina in a letter to a friend, adding that ‘despair and fear grow by the hour, while they try to deceive us, assuring us … that all this is happening according to some very clever plan’. Hundreds of refugees from Riga had turned up in St Petersburg, sowing panic. ‘Grief, fear and despair has taken hold of everyone,’ she reported on 6 July.

The ratification of peace with Turkey, announced a week later, steadied nerves. But fast on this came news that Alexander had abandoned Drissa, which threw St Petersburg into a panic. Tidings of Wittgenstein’s stand at Yakubovo restored a semblance of calm. On 25 July there was a service of thanksgiving for this in the Tauride Palace, followed three days later by one for Tormasov’s success at Kobryn. But when they heard that Napoleon was in Vitebsk, many people began to pack their bags and some actually left St Petersburg, expecting it to be the next goal of his advance.
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The mood was only a little steadier in Moscow. On 27 June, three days after Napoleon crossed the Niemen but before she had heard of it, Maria Apolonovna Volkova wrote to her friend Varvara Ivanovna Lanskaia that she ‘had always been of the opinion that one should not concern oneself too much with the future’. But her philosophy did not stand up to the test when the fatal news broke. ‘Peace has abandoned our lovely city,’ she wrote on 3 July. A couple of days earlier, a German inhabitant of Moscow was nearly stoned to death by the mob, who thought he was French. A week later, Maria Apolonovna took up the pen once more. ‘Five days ago they were saying that Ostermann had won a great victory. This turned out to be a fabrication,’ she wrote. ‘This morning news reached us of a brilliant victory won by Wittgenstein. This news comes from a reliable source, and Count Rostopchin is confirming it, but nobody dares believe it.’
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What Alexander had to do was to convert these fears and this anger
into action. In the first place, he needed more men – and these belonged, physically, to the landed nobility. There had already been much grumbling in March when he had squeezed another extra draft out of them, and he would need all their good will to get them to give him more now. He also needed large quantities of cash, and he must therefore appeal for donations, over and above taxation, which had itself been increased dramatically in the run-up to war. It would be the greatest test his legendary charm was ever put to.

In Smolensk, where he went first, many nobles came and offered themselves and their wealth to the cause. Typical of them was Nikolai Mikhailovich Kaliachitsky, who offered his three sons for ‘either a determined defence or a glorious death’, as well as wagonloads of supplies for the army, which virtually spelt ruin for his small estate.
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Emboldened by the effusion of patriotism and devotion to his person he had witnessed here, Alexander set off for one of the most important meetings of his life – that with the inhabitants of Moscow.

He did not want to make a triumphal entry into the city, as he was not at all sure of the reception he would get in this stronghold of the ‘
starodumy
’, the defenders of tradition whom he had done his utmost to placate by ditching Speransky and appointing Rostopchin. He asked the Governor to drive out and meet him at the last posting station before Moscow on the afternoon of 23 July. They had a long talk, during which Rostopchin reassured him that he had the city under control and that Alexander had nothing to fear. The Tsar nevertheless resolved to drive into Moscow at midnight, hoping that by then everyone would be in bed. But he was to be disappointed.

The nobility had gathered to meet him in the Kremlin. The great rooms were filled with aristocrats and high officials, while the open spaces inside the precincts were crowded with the populace. Suddenly a rumour spread through the throng that Orsha had fallen to the French, and the people surged around the Kremlin howling about treason. Then someone suggested that the Tsar had not shown up yet because he was dead. ‘A tremor ran through the crowd,’ recalled one
of the young noblewomen in the upstairs rooms. ‘They were ready to believe anything and to fear everything.’ Someone standing next to her, hearing the roar of the populace outside, whispered ‘Rebellion!’ The word flew through the room, and bedecked aristocrats began to panic. Happily for all concerned, a courier then appeared announcing the Tsar’s imminent arrival.
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Crowds had also gathered on the Poklonnaia, the hill of Salutation, to greet him, but instead of waiting, they moved further and further out along the road. It was a warm, starry night, and when his carriage was still fifteen versts from the city, Alexander found the road lined with peasants clutching candles and priests holding aloft icons and blessing him. When he reached the city, the crowd unharnessed his horses and hauled his carriage through the streets, with people kneeling as he passed.

The next morning he attended a solemn service in the Kremlin’s Uspensky cathedral to celebrate the ratification of the peace with Turkey. Afterwards Metropolitan Platon blessed him with an icon of St Sergei which had accompanied Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in his wars against the Poles and Peter the Great against the Swedes. ‘Lead us where you will, lead us, father, we will die or conquer!’ people shouted all around him. But he was nevertheless nervous when, on the following day, he set off to the Sloboda Palace, where the nobility and the merchants had gathered to meet him. Alexander looked ‘pale and thoughtful’, and unlike himself without his usual warm smile. In order to reassure him, Rostopchin had parked a row of police
kibitkas
outside the palace, and was prepared to bundle any troublemakers into them and send them off to Kazan. But they would not be needed. Alexander harangued the nobles and the merchants about the need to make sacrifices in order to defend the fatherland, and then left them to debate, separately, on the matter.
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The nobles began to discuss the viability of raising one man in twenty-five, when someone suggested one in ten. It later transpired that the proposal had been put forward by a man who owned no land in the province and only wanted to gain influence at court. His
suggestion hit the mood and was endorsed in a rush of enthusiasm. The merchants’ meeting was held in a no less exalted atmosphere. ‘They struck themselves on the head, they tore out their hair, they raised their hands to heaven; tears of fury flowed down their faces, which resembled those of ancient heroes. I saw one man grinding his teeth,’ recorded a witness. ‘It was impossible to discern exact words in the general uproar; all one could hear were wails and shouts of indignation. It was a spectacle quite unique.’ The provost of the merchants gave a huge sum, saying: ‘
Je tiens ma fortune de Dieu, je la donne à ma patrie.
’ As well as offering to give one man in ten to the militia, the nobility came up with a pledge of three million roubles, and the merchants contributed eight million.
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Alexander had achieved something far greater than merely obtaining the men and the cash he needed. According to Prince Piotr Andreievich Viazemsky, who was living in Moscow at the time, the war had been regularly discussed in the English Club and in drawing rooms, but the tone of the discussions had always been a touch academic, as though it did not really concern those present. But everything changed with Alexander’s arrival on the scene. ‘All vacillation, all perplexity vanished; everything seemed to harden, to become tempered and came together in one conviction, in one holy feeling that it was necessary to defend Russia and save her from the invading enemy.’
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His visit to Moscow had a profound effect on Alexander himself, and he left the old capital on the night of 30 July a stronger man. He was filled with a new determination and strength by the effusion of devotion to his person. ‘I have only one regret, and that is not to be able to respond in the way I should wish to the love of this admirable nation,’ he said to one of the Tsarina’s ladies-in-waiting, Countess Edling. ‘How so, Sire? I do not understand.’ she replied. ‘Yes, it needs a leader capable of leading it to victory, and unfortunately I have neither the experience nor the talents required at such a moment.’ Despite himself, he began to think once more of assuming command of the army. But a timely letter from his sister Catherine,
which pointed out that he had let down Barclay by his indecision, virtually ordered him not even to think of it.
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The Russian army was no happier than the French at its failure to stand and fight at Vitebsk, and the troops were in a state of dejection as they trudged back towards Smolensk. They reached the city on 1 August and made camp on the north bank of the Dnieper. Barclay issued a proclamation to the effect that they were about to be joined by Bagration’s Second Army, and would then be ready to take on the French, which lifted spirits.