The Tsar's Doctor (8 page)
Authors: Mary McGrigor
Alexander returned to St Petersburg to a rapturous reception from his people. Their little father was back and with the defeat of Austerlitz still unknown to most of them, he was still their hero.
Only his wife, Elizabeth, his doctor and, to some extent his mother, Maria Feodorovna, knew of his mental agony as the images of those dreadful scenes of battle, and of what he now felt to be his own inadequacy as a commander, tortured his sensitive mind. Wylie, for his part, cursed his own failure to relieve the misery he found himself forced to witness. Medicine, even if forced on Alexander, would be useless and other remedies there were none. Sympathy and exhortation to try to put his troubles from his mind produced only outbursts of fury for which he invariably apologized with all of his endearing charm. Eventually, and as his doctor now knew inevitably, Alexander found some comfort in the arms of his Polish mistress, the vibrant, dark-haired Maria Naryshkina.
Elizabeth, now largely estranged from Alexander, chose to ignore the reincarnation of this love affair, which she was powerless to prevent. Perhaps, like Wylie, she was grateful for anything that would lift him from the black cloud of misery which appeared to monopolize his mind. Resigned by now to his unfaithfulness, she had long become accustomed to his insatiable roving eye. Handsome and enormously attractive himself, he loved both the admiration and the company of pretty women. Foremost among them was the acknowledged beauty the Prussian Queen Louise, whose image in flickering candlelight lingered obsessively in his memory.
It was on his return to Russia that the Emperor Alexander, the welfare of his soldiers lying heavily on his mind, ordered Wylie ‘to make out preventative and curative instructions for the Russian troops in Corfu and the other Greek islands threatened from their ‘‘situation’’ with yellow fever or the new American plague.’
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The result was Wylie’s book,
On the Yellow American Fever
. Dedicated to Alexander and printed in Russian, by the Medical Press at St Petersburg in 1805, it provides a short historical account, followed by a comprehensive discussion on the disease, with clear recommendations for its prevention and treatment.
By then he must have already been working on his famous handbook on surgical operations, again written in Russian and the first to be printed in that language, which was published in 1806.
James Wylie was also appointed Inspector-General of the Russian army board of health in 1806, a post he was to hold for nearly fifty years until 1854. In that same year, as the Fourth Coalition between Prussia, Russia, Saxony, Sweden and Britain was formed, at the request of King Frederick William, he was seconded as adviser to the Prussian medical staff.
The commander-in-chief of the Prussian army was the Duke of Brunswick, Prince Friedrich Ludwig of Hohenlohe commanding the left wing. However, with little communication between the military leaders, the two parts of the Prussian army failed to co-operate successfully in a co-ordinated campaign.
The town of Jena lies on the plateau west of the River Saale in today’s eastern Germany. It was here, on the evening of 14 October 1806, that Hohenlohe’s force of 38,000 – mostly newly conscripted men – was confronted by part of the French army under the command of Marshal Lannes.
Jean Lannes, a strikingly handsome man, born the son of a blacksmith, had risen high in Napoleon’s estimation during previous campaigns. Realizing he was outnumbered, he immediately sent urgent requests for reinforcements. During the night new units joined him until, by the morning, he had approximately 50,000 men with the assurance that more were approaching.
Knowing that he had the advantage of numbers, Lannes forced the Prussians onto open ground, where the cavalry could be most effectively employed. Hohenlohe, seeing his men mown down as Marshal Ney launched an attack, also desperately appealed for reinforcements. At one o’clock Napoleon ordered a general advance, and after two hours of deadly struggle, the Prussians were over-powered. Many were cut down by the sabres of the French cavalry as they tried to flee. While the French lost only 5,000 of their seasoned troops, an estimated 25,000 of the young, untried Prussian soldiers are said to have been killed.
Further north at Auerstadt, both Marshal Davout and the Swedish Marshal Bernadotte, were ordered to reinforce Napoleon’s army. Davout, Napoleon’s youngest marshal, marched south from Eckartsberg, where he had just fought a battle with the Prussians in which Prince Henry of Prussia had been wounded. The Prussians failed to block his advance through the Kösen Pass and Davout ordered Major General Gudin to attack the village of Hassenhausen.
Gudin met fierce resistance and shortly before ten o’clock the Duke of Brunswick ordered a full assault on Hassenhausen. Within minutes the Prussian Commander-in-Chief was carried mortally wounded from the field. The Prussian command was in confusion and Davout, seeing what was happening, ordered a counter-attack. Within an hour the battle was over and King Frederick William, defeated, ordered his troops to withdraw.
From Wittenburg, on 20 October, Davout wrote to the Prince of Neufchatel, Major General of the Grand Army, to tell him that the advance guard of the Third Corps had crossed the Elbe and entered Wittenburg. The Prussians had tried, but failed, to set fire to the bridge as they retreated.
Wylie, as a regimental surgeon both during and after the battle, must have worked ceaselessly, carrying out operations – largely amputations – and dressing wounds. Again, as at Austerlitz, he was to witness the frightful suffering of the wounded Prussian soldiers, to whom, except for the officers, no medical attention was given. Left to lie in the blood-soaked, churned-up mud of the field in which they had fought, there was little or no hope for any of them to survive. It was truly claimed that a cannon ball was the soldier’s greatest friend. Killed instantly, he would be spared a night of torture before the inevitable end.
The French, on the other hand, had ambulances, which carried men to the dressing stations adjacent to the battlefield itself. Wylie, horrified by what he knew to be an unnecessary loss of life, was already laying plans for similar arrangements which he knew could save many wounded men.
Aware as he was that Alexander’s despondency after Austerlitz had been largely induced by the awful sights of the battlefield, Wylie now felt confident that the moment had come to put forward his case for adopting modern methods of improving the medical services of the Russian army. Subsequently, on returning to St Petersburg, Alexander, as Wylie had anticipated, gave his full attention to his plans. There was, as he rightly insisted, no time for delay. Renewal of the war with Napoleon now seemed inevitable and Alexander, again as Wylie had rightly guessed, seized enthusiastically on his suggestions of erecting field hospitals, at which not only officers, but men of all ranks could be attended to. Unaware of – or perhaps oblivious to – the fact that the friend and physician whose attempts at calming his recent despair had been so brusquely refused was now twisting his arm, he set his seal on what was asked for with all the enthusiasm which Wylie, only so recently, had believed he might never see again.
Speed was indeed essential, for even as Wylie gave orders for the field hospitals to be assembled, news came from Prussia that, with their army virtually obliterated, King Frederick William and Queen Louise had fled to Königsberg in the extreme north-east of their kingdom. Behind them they left their capital to be occupied by the now apparently invincible Emperor of the French.
On 25 October the French army entered Berlin. On reaching the city, Napoleon immediately gave orders for the Charlottenburg Palace to be searched from the attics to the vaults. The discovery of letters from Alexander proved that he had been urging Frederick William to continue his war against Napoleon even as the peace treaty between them was in the process of being arranged. Napoleon, furiously angry, was then handed a portrait of Alexander, found in the queen’s bedroom, together with letters from him to her, written in undeniably affectionate terms. Spitefully he broadcast the correspondence, inserting innuendos in official bulletins, to the detriment of Louise’s reputation and to the ridicule of the tsar.
In November 1806, as churches throughout Russia denounced the French emperor as the Antichrist, the enemy of mankind, Napoleon entered Warsaw and annexed the part of Poland held by Austria.
Subsequently General Bennigsen, in command of the Russian army, halted the apparently invincible French advance in the inconclusive battle near the Prussian town of Eylau on 7 February the following year.
Again, as at Austerlitz, there was appalling loss of life. Heavy snow had fallen, and men died of hypothermia as much as from the murder of the guns. The first field hospitals, although primitive in their inception, were soon to be introduced.
In March Alexander, with Wylie as usual in attendance, drove at his accustomed speed to Memel where, once again, he met Frederick William and Louise. This time, however, there were no balls and banquets. Frederick William was sunk in depression and Louise’s lovely face was drawn and lined with the sorrow and anxiety they had both endured. Leaving Memel the two monarchs travelled to the battle zone where, at Bartenstein, Alexander assured Frederick that he would uphold his claim to former frontiers in any dealings with the French.
It was, as Alexander knew, an empty promise. The French now held all of Prussia except Königsburg and still their conquering army advanced. Tension increased in St Petersburg as the threat of invasion to Russia itself became acute. On 14 June the tsar’s army of 61,000 men, commanded by General Bennigsen, confronted what he at first believed to be a small force near the town of Friedland on the River Alle. The Russian army, divided by the swift-flowing stream, was overcome by a French force, 80,000 strong, which, under Napoleon’s own command, completely defeated the Russians within a space of three hours.
Again the casualties were heavy: 12,000 on the French side, 20,000 on the Russian. The French had already established field hospitals. Baron Larrey, Napoleon’s Surgeon-General, was the inventor of the light, two-wheeled ambulances, the
ambulances volantes
, which bore wounded men swiftly to the surgeon’s tents. And now, for the first time, thanks to the Scottish surgeon Wylie’s sway over their tsar, the wounded Russian soldiers were also carried to emergency medical stations near the battlefield for treatment, where previously they would have been left to die.
Was Wylie himself there to witness the triumph of his persistence?
The question at once springs to mind. But unfortunately, as with so much else about him, this is something we shall never know. Records do not mention his presence on the battlefield and it seems more likely that he was with Alexander at Tilsit on the Niemen, some seventy miles from Friedland, where it is known that news first reached him of his army’s devastating defeat.
Despairing, the tsar then realized the futility of continuing a war that was proving so utterly ruinous in terms of both money and lives.
On the morning of 25 June 1807, at eleven o’clock, the Emperor Alexander reached the east bank of the River Niemen, which at that point was as wide as the Seine. With him were his brother, the snub-nosed Constantine, and the morose King Frederick William of Prussia, on whose land they actually stood. Both banks of the river were lined with spectators, who gazed in fascination at the large raft, towed out earlier into mid-stream, shining resplendent in the sun. On board was a pavilion with monograms of the letter A facing the right bank and N the left.
For two hours Alexander waited in a village inn. Wylie, in attendance, noticed his agitation, the restless movements, the heightened colour of his face, the snapping of his fingers in frustration at the waste of time. Noon passed and he was all but screaming with impatience when, at about one o’clock, his ADC Count Paul Lieven heard cheering from the far side of the river and at last the squat, blue-coated figure of Napoleon, astride his beautiful Arab stallion Marengo, was seen riding down to the west bank where a boat lay waiting to carry him out to the raft.
Alexander and his retinue at once boarded the ferry, which took them out to the raft where Napoleon was now aboard. As the two emperors shook hands, onlookers saw how Alexander towered above Napoleon, making him seem even more diminutive. Did they, one wonders, also notice the tall dark Scotsman, standing as usual to one side? If within earshot, he can hardly have relished the opening exchange of words.
‘Sire, I hate the English no less than you do and I am ready to assist you in any enterprise against them,’ was Alexander’s greeting, to which Napoleon quickly replied, ‘In that case everything can be speedily settled between us and peace is made.’
The two men emerged smiling after talking for nearly two hours.
The next day they met again on the raft and for a week thereafter they wined and dined with each other and rode throughout the surrounding country. Sometimes Frederick William accompanied them but Napoleon had little respect for him, calling him ‘a nasty king’
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and Queen Louise, who arrived at Tilsit on 6 July, accused Alexander of deceiving her and betraying her country to Bonaparte. Later, however, on the next day, when the formal treaty was signed, it was found that two thirds of her husband’s territory was to be restored to him at the special request of the tsar.
Alexander having acquiesced to Napoleon’s request that he should pressurize Denmark and Sweden to join Napoleon’s economic system, if necessary by force of arms, then in open aggression, agreed to cancel all trade with Britain and to order her government to surrender her colonies under a threat of war.
He had turned his doctor into an enemy! Wylie, like the many other Scots and English in Russia, was a native of the country with which it was now at war. Doubtless he himself considered his new status to be nothing more than a technicality, as, it would appear, did Alexander. Nonetheless, it gave impetus to his Russian confederates to cast yet further aspersions on the man whose success and influence is known to have caused jealousy throughout his career.
