What Might Have Been

By John C. Kerr

What Might Have Been carefully examines nine of the most fateful decisions made in the 19th and 20th centuries, considers alternatives that were not chosen, and asks the provocative question of how the course of history might have been fundamentally altered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jul 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886935141

John C. Kerr

John Kerr is the author of six published novels and two published works of history. He is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Texas Law School and resides in San Antonio, Texas with his wife, Susan.

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About the Author

John Kerr is the author of six published novels and two published works of history. He is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Texas Law School and resides in San Antonio, Texas with his wife, Susan.

Dedication

For Brewster, Caldwell, Jeff and Millie

Copyright Information ©

John C. Kerr 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

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Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Kerr, John C.

What Might Have Been

ISBN 9798886935127 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798886935134 (Hardback)

ISBN 9798886935141 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023909484

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

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Acknowledgment

Special thanks to my wife, Susan, who as with all my books, read every chapter as I was writing, and to Cynthia Vann, my long-time and very gifted editor.

Introduction

Historians, as a general rule, confine their studies to the actual events of the past, their causes and consequences, and usually avoid conjecture about how things might have turned out differently. And yet some of the most momentous events in history have resulted from a fundamental action or decision, for good or ill, of an individual or group of individuals. I would argue that an exploration of how history might have taken a different course deepens our understanding and appreciation for actual historical events and the people who influenced them. This is a particularly fascinating exercise when examining critical decisions that occurred on the precipice of starting, or avoiding, a major war, and how history would have been altered had they been made differently. By confining their inquiry to the historical record, historians can give the impression that the leading actors had few if any choices in these circumstances or that their decisions were somehow foreordained or otherwise unavoidable. The great British historian A.J.P. Taylor, for example, argued that Adolf Hitler had no grand design to plunge Europe into another world war but rather that in each of his bold decisions that led to the war, he was improvising, like a man walking in his sleep.

In this book, therefore, the actual course of events, the paths chosen (or not chosen) will first be examined before turning attention to ‘the road not taken’ and how history might have been profoundly altered.

Chapter One

Napoleon Crosses the Niemen

Early on the morning of June 24, 1812, Napoleon’s Grand Armée, a multinational force of approximately 615,000 men (larger than the entire population of Paris at the time), began crossing the Niemen River, on the border of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw with the Empire of Russia, to join battle with the forces of Tsar Alexander. In 1812, Napoleon was at the pinnacle of his extraordinary rise to power, the undisputed master of Europe. After leading a French army to victories in Egypt and the Middle East, he returned in 1799 to a hero’s welcome in Paris. Within less than a month, at age 30, he seized power in the bloodless Brumaire Coup. By Christmas Day 1799, a new constitution had been adopted and Napoleon named First Consul. In May of 1800, he marched his army across the snow-covered Alps, the first army to do so since Hannibal, and decisively defeated the Austrians in the Battle of Marengo in Northern Italy. In 1804, he installed himself on the throne of France as Emperor, and over the next five years he commanded his Grand Armée in a series of brilliant triumphs, defeating the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz in 1805, defeating the Prussians at Jena in 1806, defeating the Prussians and Russians again at Friedland in 1807, and decisively defeating the Austrians at Wagram in 1809.

Napoleon followed his victories with a series of advantageous alliances and shrewd diplomacy. In 1805, he was crowned King of Italy, and the following year installed his brother Joseph on the throne of Naples. Following his great victory at Austerlitz, Napoleon entered into an alliance with the Confederation of the Rhine, a collection of German states that reached from the Tyrol and Bavaria in the south along the Rhine to Hesse, Westphalia, and Saxony in the north. In 1806, he also named his brother Louis King of Holland. After the victory of his armies at Friedland, Napoleon negotiated the Treaties of Tilsit, first with Tsar Alexander of Russia and then with the Prussians. Lastly, after defeating the Austrian army at Wagram, he concluded the Treaty of Schönbrunn. To further ensure peace with Austria, with which France had been at war, off and on, since 1800, he divorced the Empress Josephine in 1810 and married the 18-year-old Austrian Archduchess Marie Louise (Napoleon was 40), who would shortly bear him a son and heir to his throne. As a result of these military triumphs, treaties, and accessions to monarchies, Napoleon’s mastery of Europe by 1812 was almost complete, consisting of the Empire of France (which incorporated Tuscany, Belgium, and Holland) and control of Spain, the Confederation of the Rhine, all of Italy save Sicily, Switzerland, and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (which encompassed most of Poland). He also had concluded military alliances with the Austrian Empire, Prussia, Denmark, and Norway. Only Great Britain, France’s implacable foe, the Russian Empire, and Portugal lay beyond the ambit of Napoleon’s mastery. No European head of state, other than Adolf Hitler in 1942, has matched Napoleon’s extraordinary achievement.

Napoleon’s great accomplishments were not limited to those gained on the battlefield. He restored relations with the Catholic Church, which had been severed during the Revolution, signing the Concordat with the Vatican in 1802. Two years later he oversaw the comprehensive revision and modernization of the civil and criminal laws, resulting in the Napoleonic Code. This ‘consisted of a reasoned and harmonious body of laws that were to be the same across all territories administered by France codified in 2,281 articles in prose so clear that Stendhal said he made it his daily reading… It guaranteed the equality of all Frenchmen in the eyes of the law, freedom from arbitrary arrest, the sanctity of legal contracts and allowed no recognition of privileges of birth. It established total religious toleration separating Church and state’.¹ An authentic intellectual, Napoleon’s interests ranged from literature (he became a confidant of Goethe), to classical music, the arts, science, and technology, and he was elected to membership in the Institut de France, whose distinctive blue uniform he often wore. He was also responsible for adding greatly to the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale, the world’s greatest library, often sending to Paris invaluable volumes he plundered in his far-flung conquests. While certainly a despot, he was an enlightened despot, a true product of the 18th century Enlightenment.

Why, then, in 1812 did Napoleon decide to invade the Russian Empire? As a result of the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, Europe was effectively divided into two sectors: France and the states controlled by or allied with France, and the Russian Empire. In the former group, there was general satisfaction with Napoleon’s rule and imposition of the Continental System. In the words of English historian Andrew Roberts, By 1810 he was moving toward a progressive unitary Europe with uniform laws based on the Napoleonic Code, enlightened secularism and religious toleration, equality before the law, and uniform weights, measures, and currency.² Yet the enmity between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander, notwithstanding their outward display of mutual affection at Tilsit, was unmistakable. It was also clear that Russia was rearming, strengthening its army in an expected bid to challenge France’s alliances with Poland and Prussia. By early 1812, both Napoleon and Tsar Alexander had concluded that war was inevitable. For Napoleon’s part, this was largely due to his obsession with forcing Britain, France’s last remaining major enemy, to come to terms by strict enforcement of the Continental System adopted in 1806. The intention and effect of this system was to cut off Continental markets to British exports. Napoleon explained his strategy to his brother Louis as follows: I will conquer the sea through the power of the land. It’s the only means of striking a blow to England and obliging her to make peace.³ Although the Treaty of Tilsit forbade Russia from trading with Great Britain, by 1811 Russia was flagrantly violating its terms. To enforce the Continental System, Napoleon annexed the Hanseatic ports of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck in December of 1810. But in a clear violation of the Treaty of Tilsit, he also annexed the Duchy of Oldenburg, which was ruled by Duke Peter, the father-in-law of the Russian Grand Duchess Pavlovna, the sister of Tsar Alexander. The Tsar promptly retaliated with the issuance of a ukaz, or decree, banning the import of many goods manufactured in France and imposing heavy duties on others. In the words of Napoleon biographer Andrew Roberts, "The ukaz directly contravened the Tilsit and Erfurt agreements and was a clear cassus belli, threatening Napoleon’s imperial system at a time when he was capable of raising an army of over 600,000 men."⁴

While it was true that Napoleon could muster an army of over 600,000, he could only do so by the requisition of large numbers of troops from Austria, Prussia, and above all, Poland. This was primarily because in 1811–12 France was mired in a war with the British on the Iberian Peninsula, where Napoleon had committed almost 300,000 French troops. Even worse, the war in Spain and Portugal was not going well for the French, who had lost the Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro in Portugal to the British army commanded by the Duke of Wellington. When by 1811, it was apparent to Napoleon’s senior generals and advisors that he intended to go to war with Russia, virtually all of them, including Jean-Antoine Cambacérès, Indendant-General Daru, Grand Marshal Duroc, and Generals Lacuée and Lauriston, opposed it. Most telling of Napoleon’s supreme self-confidence, Lauriston, after months in Russia as France’s ambassador, spent five hours in a tête-à-tête with the Emperor in a futile attempt to persuade him that war with Russia would be a grave error. Napoleon was undeterred, having twice defeated the Russian army commanded by the same generals, Bagration and Barclay de Tolly, he would face in the Russian campaign. Nor did he intend to fight a protracted war deep into the interior of Russia but rather overwhelm the inferior Russian forces in a set-piece battle in Lithuania, adjacent to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, in a campaign of no more than 50 days.

The Grand Armée began assembling in Poland from France and other Continental nations in April of 1812. It consisted of 450,000 men in the first line and 165,000 in the second, The largest invasion force in the history of mankind to that time.⁵ Slightly less than half of the infantry were Frenchmen, a higher proportion of the cavalry. The remainder were Poles, Austrians, Prussians, Bavarians, Saxons, Hessians, Westphalians, Dutch, Neapolitans, Florentines, Spanish, Portuguese, and Croatians, with Polish troops forming the largest contingent. The army had sufficient provisions for a month-long campaign and was accompanied by some 250,000 horses, supporting the cavalry, artillery, and supply wagons. So vast was his army, when Napoleon issued the order to cross the Niemen on June 24, it took five days to accomplish. Facing Napoleon, Tsar Alexander’s forces number approximately 250,000 men, divided into the First Army of the West, commanded by Barclay⁶, the Second Army of the West, commanded by Bagration, and the Third Army of the West, commanded by Tormasov. Rather than rush to the frontiers to face the invader, the Russians maintained a safe distance from the Grand Armée and were dispersed rather than concentrated. By June 28, Napoleon reached Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, which became his principal supply depot. He hoped to win over the Lithuanian people, who were largely ethnic Poles, offering them protection from the Russians. After a brief respite, Napoleon sent two of his corps in a pincer movement to attempt to encircle Bagration’s Second Army, which the Russians avoided by continuing to march to the east. As they retreated, they destroyed everything that could possibly be used to provision or otherwise support Napoleon’s men and horses. The midsummer weather alternated between violent thunderstorms and punishing heat. By the end of the first week of July, having had virtually no contact with the enemy, the Grand Armée was suffering heavy losses of horses, with a thousand animals on average dying each day, due, in the words of Napoleon’s master of horse, to the forced marches, the dearth of provisions, [and] the want of care…⁷ By July 16, Davout, commanding the French first corps, captured Minsk, but again Bagration’s army managed to avoid contact and continue the retreat to the east, deeper into the seemingly limitless Russian interior. Before leaving Vilnius, when one of his generals asked Napoleon if he intended to march on to Moscow, Napoleon answered:

I much prefer to get there in two years’ time. If M. Barclay thinks that I want to run after him all the way to the Volga, he is very much mistaken. We shall follow him as far as Smolensk, where a good battle will allow us to get into cantonments. I shall return here, to Vilnius, with my headquarters to spend the winter Then next May we shall finish the job, if we do not make peace during the winter.⁸

The Grand Armée continued its eastward march through what today is Belarus. By mid-July, its food supplies were running perilously low, and the countryside, due to widespread poverty and the scorched-earth tactics of the retreating Russian army, offered few opportunities for foraging. But a far more dangerous threat than lack of food was imperiling Napoleon’s troops: typhus. The deadly infection (not to be confused with typhoid fever) was later discovered to be spread by lice, which widely infested the soldiers of Napoleon’s army (as it did those of the American Civil War and of World War I). Napoleon’s troops marched and slept in extremely close quarters, seldom changed their uniforms, and lacked the water and fuel to launder them. Typhus spread rapidly among them, inducing high fever and often death with a week of infection. By mid-July, Napoleon’s men were dying from typhus in large numbers. Others died from dysentery and other diseases. It is estimated that as many as 140,000 men in the Grand Armée died of disease in 1812, the majority from typhus.⁹ Many others deserted; some committed suicide. As Napoleon’s men marched farther and farther east, its ranks were being decimated, almost none due to battle losses. His supply lines lengthened while the