Pushkin's story Snowstorm opens at the end of 1811, six months before Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Tsar Alexander I (1801-1825) had joined together with Austria to fight Napoleon in 1805, but had been defeated at the battle of Austerlitz. The peace of Tilsit was signed in 1807, but by 1811 this was breaking down and war with France was expected. The Russian nobility was deeply influenced by French culture and the ideas of the French Enlightenment, spoke French and, like Marya in the story, read French novels. Many, like Pierre in Tolstoy's War and Peace, rather admired Napoleon. Nevertheless when the French invaded in June 1812 a wave of patriotism swept the country, large sums of money were donated by the population to help the war effort. Alexander I was seen as personifying Russia, and he appealed to the population to support God and the fatherland. He had been very popular at the beginning of his reign, when there were promises of reform and even a constitution. Although little was achieved as the result of the these early hopes, in 1809 Speransky, the Tsar's chief minister, drew up an ambitious scheme of reform which would have included a separation of powers between the executive (a cabinet or state council headed by the tsar), a reformed judiciary, and a new legislative assembly (elected on a very narrow franchise). This scheme was a casualty of the threat from Napoleon, and Speransky was exiled to Siberia just before the French invasion.
Napoleon's army of nearly half a million men crossed into Russia on 23 June 1812. The Russians had no real strategy to attack the French and Barclay de Tolly, the Commander in Chief, withdrew into the interior. Alexander, who did not take command of the army himself, sanctioned this policy, but it was not popular with many of the nobility. Napoleon had hoped for a quick and decisive victory over the Russians and was disappointed when no battle took place. The Russians, to his surprise, did not defend Smolensk in August, and Napoleon found himself being drawn further and further into the Russian interior, which had not been his intention. After Smolensk, Barclay de Tolly was replaced by General Kutuzov, but he merely continued the policy of retreat. Finally Kutuzov made a stand at Borodino early in September, 70 miles west of Moscow. The battle, during which both Vladimir in Pushkin's story and Prince Andrei in Tolstoy's, were fatally wounded, was a success for the French, in that Kutuzov withdrew from the field, but neither side won. The French lost 40,000 men, the Russians 50,000. Kutuzov withdrew in good order towards the south, leaving the road to Moscow open. Napoleon entered the city on 14 September. We are told that Vladimir had died there just before then. Prince Andrei, in War and Peace, was also taken there with the wounded, evacuated by the Rostov family, but died later.
The city the French entered was almost deserted and fires were burning everywhere. Napoleon waited for Alexander, who was in St Petersburg, to approach him and surrender. Alexander's popularity, so strong at the beginning of the war, had declined sharply with the loss of Moscow, but he refused to negotiate, threatening to withdraw to Kazan if necessary. On 19 October Napoleon, aware that he could not supply his army over the winter, withdrew. He attempted to go south, but Kutuzov forced him back onto the devastated route the French army had taken into Russia. The Orthodox church had declared Napoleon antiChrist and priests encouraged Russian peasants to organise partisans groups to attack the French. The Russian army harrassed them back to the border. By now winter had set in, the towns the French army retreated through had been destroyed and food was unobtainable. Napoleon himself abandonned the army and returned ahead of it to France. Of more than 400,000 men who invaded Russia under 40,000 returned. Kutuzov saw his task as complete once the French had left Russian soil, but Alexander, who now took over control of the army, believed it was his mission to liberate Europe. At the head of his troops he pursued Napoleon into Europe and, together with his European allies, defeated him.
Alexander rode into Paris on 14 March 1814. Feted across Europe, Alexander was seen, and certainly saw himself, as its saviour. He was in London when Napoleon returned briefly in 1815, and the Russians played no part in the battle of Waterloo. Nevertheless Alexander was important in the Congress of Vienna (1815), which finally ended the Napoleonic Wars and Russia emerged as a major power in the new Quadruple Alliance with Prussia, Austria and Great Britain. As Pushkin says 'the war ended gloriouly' and the Russian army officers who returned in 1815 had gained much from their European experiences. Some, like Burmin, had matured from their wild youth, others demanded reform in line with the Western countries they had experienced. Many of these were to become involved in the Decembrist movement in the early 1820s. Alexander however had undergone a religious conversion during the war and his success seemed to underline the rightness of the Russian system. His Holy Alliance, which most European powers saw as 'mysticism and nonsense', emphasised conservatism and rule by the will of God. Now deeply influenced by pietism and mysticism (in England he attended a Quaker meeting), although he talked about new reform schemes until 1820, nothing materialised, and the Decembrists were to stage a doomed uprising on his death in 1825. Pushkin was not involved in the Decembrist movement, although many of his friends were, but he certainly believed in a constitutional monarchy, a legal system and civil rights, and emancipation of the serfs, which most of the Decembrists were calling for. A Westerner, Pushkin was also deeply patriotic, and shared the popular feeling he described of 'national pride with love of the Tsar'.