When Napoleon met Alexander I's envoy General Alexsandr Balashev in 1 July in Vilnius, Napoleon fumed at the fact that he had occupied a whole province of Russia without a major battle. "I'm already in Vilnius and I still don't know what we are fighting for," the Emperor is alleged to have said. Later in the interview, Napoleon ripped a window from its hinges and threw it into the courtyard below.

This particular anecdote is rather telling about Napoleon's endgame in Russia. Aside from the objective of bringing Russia to heel and back into the Continental System, there really was not much of a coherent strategy behind Napoleon's actions. He had hoped to destroy the Russian armies at the Polish frontier, but the Russian forces evaded the Grande Armee. Thus Napoleon was at a loss in this campaign and often let events play out as he became preoccupied with destroying the Russian army.

It is plausible that Napoleon intended to resurrect the kingdom of Poland if his invasion succeeded. His memoirs on St. Helena indicated that Napoleon would have put Józef Poniatowski on the throne, but this assertion should be taken with a grain of salt. The French 1812 treaties with both Prussia and Austria treated the Polish issue very gingerly and there is evidence that Napoleon's ardor for an independent Polish state had cooled somewhat by 1812. Napoleon only made very small steps to resurrect the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth or grant Lithuania autonomy from the Russian empire. He did set up a provisional Lithuanian government and raised several Lithuanian military units. These efforts are counter-balanced by the presence of French military governors and the refusal of the French to announce an abolition of serfdom, which would have been a sign of a more permanent French reform of Lithuania. Military expediency underlay much of Napoleon's actions in Lithuania as the provisional government and the Lithuanian elite provided the French armies supplies and other forms of tribute.

Napoleon's treatment of Austria after 1809 does give something approaching a precedent as to how Napoleon would have treated a defeated great power. He browbeat the Austrians into surrendering slices of territory and paying a sizable indemnity, the Austrians were allowed to remain a power so long as it was allied to French interests. The existence of both the Duchy of Warsaw and the slightly enlarged Rheinbund states were to act as a check on Austria, but both these imperial entities were subordinated to French interests. In Napoleon's logic, these flanking satellite states would give Francis I no option but to hew to French leadership. The marriage to Marie-Louise was the carrot in this geostrategic partnership as it provided a personal connection between the Hapsburg and Bonapartist dynasties. Napoleon had a similiar attitude towards Alexander I, claiming that he had a personal connection with the tsar that was spoiled by Russia's corrupt ministers. His letters to the tsar, delivered by Balashev, emphasized that the two monarchs could still form a personal partnership. Napoleon flew into a rage when these entreaties were met with silence and at times threatened to raise a new Polish state and eliminate Russian power. While these tantrums do not speak well of Napoleon's character, an alternative explanation to them is that they were an exercise in brinksmanship as they would allegedly cow Alexander I into obedience. However, these threats were relatively empty. Any expansion of Poland would have increased tensions with the newly-formed Austrian alliance and many of Napoleon's diplomats warned him of this.

There are also reports that Cossacks captured dress imperial regalia during the retreat from Moscow. Again, it is unknown whether Napoleon wanted to symbolically refound his empire as a pan-European system after defeating Russia, but there were preparations for a set of new coronations in Rome for 1813. Given the recent annexations of Holland and Catalonia, the idea that Napoleon would have used a Russian triumph as a pretext to declare a rearrangement European political order is not outside the realm of possibility. But again, the lack of any clear indications on Napoleon's part makes this idle speculation.

In the end, Napoleon really did not have a very pragmatic or coherent grand strategy in 1812. Success against the Russians would have alienated his Austrian "ally" and provided a pretext for his Prussian "satellite" states, especially since the best check against Russian revanchism, a strong and independent Polish kingdom, would have eroded these shaky alliances. Russia itself was simply too big for Napoleon to partition or occupy for an extended period, as with Spain (and that itself went very poorly for the French). Napoleon had hoped the occupation of Moscow after the French victory at Borodino would somehow bring Alexander I to his senses and a negotiated end to the war, but this proved illusory. One of his few consistent ideas Napoleon entertained in 1812 was that French military power could compel Alexander I to see reason and accept a peace favorable to Napoleon's empire. The longer Napoleon waited for Alexander I to act bring an end to the war, the options Napoleon had to end the campaign narrowed and he found he no longer possessed whatever initiative he possessed when he crossed the Niemen.

Sources

Dwyer, Philip. Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power. Yale University Press, 2013.

Elena, I. Fedosova. "Polish Projects of Napoleon Bonaparte." The Journal of the International Napoleonic Society 1, no. 2: 98.

Gaidis, Henry. "Napoleon's Lithuanian Forces." Lituanus: Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences 30, no. 1 http://www.lituanus.org/1984_1/84_1_01.htm

Nester, William. "Why Did Napoleon Do It? Hubris, Security Dilemmas, Brinksmanship, and the 1812 Russian Campaign." Diplomacy & Statecraft 24, no. 3 (2013): 353-364.

Schneid, Frederick C. "Kings, clients and satellites in the Napoleonic imperium." The Journal of Strategic Studies 31, no. 4 (2008): 571-604.

Zawadzki, Hubert. "Between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander: The Polish Question at Tilsit, 1807." Central Europe 7, no. 2 (2009): 110-124.