Getting the priests on his side was a canny piece of diplomacy by Rezanov. In Russia Peter the Great had effectively made the Church a branch of the state bureaucracy, but in New Spain the roles were reversed: it was the Church that was the real power in the land. Indeed as Rezanov discovered from his long conversations with Father Uria, the founding ideology of the colony was a purely religious one, to evangelize the natives. The missions were California – the presidios, with their garrisons and governors, were there only to provide security and civil administration for the missions. Despite the agricultural plenty of the land, Madrid’s insistence on a ban on trade of any sort made the colony an expensive undertaking. Half a million piastres a year were spent by the Spanish Crown to maintain the nineteen missions in the four presidial districts of California. In return, His Most Catholic Majesty expected no reward other than a heavenly one.
This high principle had been funded for two centuries by the gold and silver of the New World, but by the turn of the nineteenth century even the Spanish state was starting to realize that it must engage with the grubby world of commerce or face bankruptcy. In the 1780s King Charles III of Spain had taken shares in the merchant-adventuring Caracas Company, just as Alexander I would later buy into the Russian American Company.
What Rezanov was proposing – to open New Spain to trade – was nothing less than an invitation to join the modern world. ‘The proximity of our settlements in the New World, the great mutual advantages which may result from trade have compelled me to come to New California,’ Rezanov wrote to Don José Iturrigaria, viceroy of New Spain in Mexico City. Continuing his pose as the Tsar’s appointed chief of Russian America, Rezanov stressed how essential trade is ‘for regions located at a vast distance from their Mother countries’.10 To Arguello and Arrillaga, during their frequent dinners and nightly informal dances at the presidio, Rezanov proposed a credit arrangement to disguise the fact that trading had taken place. It was a fairly feeble fudge: Rezanov would buy the missions’ grain with a letter of credit, and the missions buy the Juno’s cargo, also on credit, with no money changing hands. Arrillaga was unimpressed. ‘“No, no,” said he, “that is equivalent to trading. After living sixty years without reproach I cannot take that upon my conscience.”’
Rezanov, a master of the straight face from his years at court, protested that ‘it was not love of gain but merely a desire to benefit your countrymen that would urge you to infringe slightly in your regulations’. Arrillaga, not Madrid, was in a position to help the people in his charge, and in addition, Rezanov added, ‘the Holy Padres will bend their knee in prayers for you.’ But the old governor was no fool. ‘Oh, I see clearly that the Holy Padres have already bent the knee for you,’ he answered wryly.11
A deadlock then. How was a gambling man like Rezanov to break it but by raising the stakes, quickly and dramatically? Arrillaga had already warned him that he ‘hourly expected a report of a total breach of concord between our governments’ in the form of news from Europe of a new twist in the wars. The Bourbon King Charles IV of Spain had gone to war against revolutionary France in 1793 after the execution of his kinsman Louis XVI. He had lost badly, and as a result Spain had been in a forced alliance with France since 1796. Great Britain, France’s perennial enemy, had led two coalitions against France between 1792 and 1801, both involving Russia. Neither had been successful. But as Arrillaga had rightly suspected, by April 1805 indefatigable British Prime Minister William Pitt had signed Russia up for the Third Coalition, along with Austria, Prussia and Portugal. In other words, by the time Rezanov landed in California, Russia had been at war with Spain’s ally France for a year. Fortunately for Rezanov, relations between Madrid and Paris were strained – hence the warm welcome the Spanish authorities had ordered extended to the Russian circumnavigators. Nonetheless, it was only a kind of diplomatic suspension of disbelief that kept Spain and Russia – whose allies were each other’s enemies – from being at war directly with each other.
This was the narrow diplomatic corridor that Rezanov had to navigate. Clearly, any twist in the volatile situation in Europe could have an immediate and disastrous effect on his mission. Unbeknown to Rezanov, the British had crushed a Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar the previous October, seizing or destroying twenty-two ships of the line and losing none of their own. In retaliation Napoleon had defeated the Russian, Prussian and Austrian armies at Austerlitz in December 1805 – and with them had destroyed the Third Coalition. Exactly what this see-saw of defeat and victory meant for relations between Spain and Russia was by no means clear, certainly not in California – though it was obvious that the destruction of her fleet at Trafalgar further undermined Spain’s ability to protect its sea lines of communication with her colonies. In any case, as Arrillaga told Rezanov, they were five and a half months behind the news.12
The last news the governor had heard was that Prussia had entered the Third Coalition the previous autumn, inevitably heralding another round of European war. So both the Spanish and Russians daily expected a dust cloud on the Monterrey road signalling the arrival of a courier with news of a breach between Russia and Spain. As a gesture of his bona fides, Rezanov ordered all the powder unloaded from the Juno and stored at the fort. The presidio’s long heavy guns may have been antiques, but they were still deadly and there would be no escape from them if the Spanish were ordered to seize his ship. A ‘friend’ of Rezanov’s in the presidio – presumably Conchita herself – had told him that a company of soldiers had secretly been ordered up from Monterrey to the Mission Santa Clara de Asis, a day’s march away, in readiness for exactly such an eventuality.
Even after three years at sea and in the wilds of the Pacific Rim Rezanov had lost none of his talent for showmanship or his appetite for risk-taking. Two weeks after his arrival in San Francisco Rezanov proposed marriage to Conchita Arguello.
‘Seeing that our situation was not getting better, expecting every day that some serious unpleasantness would arise and having but little confidence in my men, I decided that I should assume a serious bearing where I had before been but formally polite and gracious,’ was how he reported his démarche to Rumiantsev. ‘I described Russia to her as a colder country, but still abounding in everything, and she was willing to live there, and at length I imperceptibly created in her an impatient desire to hear something more explicit from me. When I proffered my hand she accepted.’13 The news came as a bombshell to Don José Dario and Dona María Ignacia. ‘My proposal was a shock to her parents, whose religious upbringing was fanatical. The difference in religion, besides the prospective separation from their daughter, was, in contemplation, a dreadful blow to them,’ wrote Rezanov.
Conchita was promptly bundled off to the mission to be confessed. But she refused to yield to her parents’ or the priests’ arguments against the match – ‘her brave front finally quieted them all’. The practicalities, however, were less easily resolved. Rezanov refused out of hand to convert to Catholicism – though of course Paul I had mooted a union of the Russian and Roman Churches. His reasons were social and political rather than religious: converting to the Spaniards’ religion would be seen as tantamount to going over to their side. And this was the difficulty that the fathers and Arguello family latched on to. The final decision on such a controversial mixed marriage would have to be left to the Pope. One imagines the regretful spread-handed gesture with which news of this obstacle was conveyed to Rezanov.
If the priests’ intention was to stop the marriage plans in their tracks, it failed. To ‘a philosophic head like the Chamberlain’s,’14 Langsdorff noted sarcastically, difference in religion was by no means an insurmountable problem. Rezanov immediately assured his future parents-in-law that as soon as he returned to St Petersburg he would ask his friend the Tsar to appoint him ambassador to Spain. There he would ‘obviate every kind of misunderstanding between the two powers’ and return to California via Mexico to claim his bride. Langsdorff clearly believed that his chief was bamboozling the pr
ovincial Arguellos. ‘It will be seen from this detail that the chamberlain was no less spirited in forming his projects for the accomplishment of his wishes than ardent and active in carrying them into execution.’ The doctor called the marriage negotiations a ‘trade’ whose object ‘was the insuring a regular supply of corn and flour from New California’.15
But if it was a trade, Conchita was a willing participant. The manoeuvre also worked. ‘Being not able to bring about the marriage, I had a written conditional agreement made and forced a betrothal,’ reported Rezanov. The arrangement was to be kept secret – but of course in practice wasn’t – until the Pope’s final decision. Rezanov even presented the setback as an important and unique opportunity to get in some spying on his return trip to marry Conchita, which he seemed sincerely intent on doing. ‘I shall be in a position to serve my country once again by a personal examination of the harbour of Vera Cruz, Mexico, and by a trip through the interior parts of America,’ he told Rumiantsev. ‘This could not be accomplished by, nor would permission be granted to, anyone else, the suspicious Spanish temperament forbidding such investigations.’16 Moreover, such a progress from Madrid to New Mexico would give Rezanov a fresh diplomatic role to further the Tsar’s interests by ‘securing an entrance for Russian vessels to the Eastern ports (of the Pacific)’.17 Thus would the embarrassment of Japan be eclipsed by a new and important phase of his career: bringing together the two great old monarchies on the edges of Europe in a community of interest at the extremities of their empires.
Probably slightly dazed and certainly confused by Rezanov’s world-historical strategies involving their teenage daughter, the Arguellos invited Rezanov to live at the presidio. ‘Thereafter my deportment in the house of Comandante Arguello was that of a near-relative, and I managed this Puerto of his Catholic Majesty as my interests called for,’ boasted Rezanov, at his least likeable when bragging of his own success. ‘The Gobernador was now very much perplexed . . . as he now found himself to be in fact my guest.’ Rezanov lost no time in investigating the colony’s secret business. ‘Every official document received by Gobernador Arrillaga passed through the hands of Comandante Arguello and consequently through mine . . . his subordinate officers, seeing as I had become almost Hispaniolized, vied with each other to be apprised of any new occurrence, so that the information of the possible arrival of any courier was not dreaded.’18
It was an impressive coup of diplomacy – or espionage. In just over a fortnight Rezanov had gone from being an overdressed stranger with bad breath to a member of the colony’s ruling family, privy to state secrets. And not before time. Tidings of both the Spanish defeat at Trafalgar and the French victory at Austerlitz and subsequent occupation of Vienna in November arrived by the same post shortly after Rezanov moved into the presidio. News of the inevitable collapse of the Third Coalition was clearly imminent, with its consequent reshuffling of Europe’s alliances. But thanks to his betrothal to Conchita, Rezanov felt at least partially insured against such reversals of fortune.
Conchita, for her part, hoped and believed that her engagement was the beginning of a new life. In old age she told Sister Vincentia how ‘Nikolai Rezanov came bounding into her life. How she loved him and how they planned for a life of love and happiness in far-off Russia.’ The couple went walking on the beach and arranged ‘a tryst’ at the spring of San Polin, just below the presidio – though Rezanov himself makes no mention of this and it is difficult to imagine that such a meeting would have happened without a chaperone present. They took a trip to the island of ‘La Bellisima’, now known as Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, and there Conchita said she gave Rezanov a locket.
‘Concha detailed how she cut strands of hair from Nicolai’s head and wove them with strands of her own,’ recalled Sister Vincentia. ‘This accomplished, both of them placed their plaited hair in the little gold and enamel locket with a cross set with pearls on its front. Having placed the locket around his neck with a golden chain, he in turn gave her a cross of gold encrusted with diamonds and sapphires and, last but not least, he gave her a picture of himself as a remembrance. Concha spoke softly as she recalled the vows of lasting devotion and fidelity to each other.’19
How much of this is true and how much the romantic imagination of a woman dwelling for half a century on the only few weeks of romance that fate had allotted her? Conchita’s account, as recalled by Vincentia, contains much that is improbable. She claims for instance that a Russian visitor came to the presidio years later and returned the locket she had given Rezanov. She might have meant Otto Kotzebue in 1816, but he would surely have recorded such a symbolically important and logistically complex feat as carrying Rezanov’s locket around the world. But what does ring true is that Conchita sincerely felt that those ‘six weeks of her life made her a woman and gave her the strength, the power and the endurance to live out the many years of loneliness that followed’.20
To Rezanov, his immediate problems appeared solved. Arrillaga allowed himself to be talked into a scheme whereby the Juno’s commissary signed for the purchase of grain, while the missions filed formal petitions asking for permission to sell grain to (rather than trade with) the visiting Russians. The sale of the Juno’s cargo in the other direction would be off the books. Arguello confided to Rezanov that the padres had been holding back from delivering grain not just because of legal scruples but because of rumours that the Juno might soon be confiscated.
Rezanov suggested that if the Monterrey garrison could be recalled from Santa Clara, such rumours would subside. ‘The Gobernador was surprised to learn that his secret orders were known to me, and, turning it off as a joke, sent orders at once for the troops to return,’21 reported Rezanov, apparently unconcerned that his only possible source in the presidio – Conchita – might get into trouble with her father for leaking such information. Within days such a quantity of grain began to arrive that the Juno’s crew could not load it fast enough.
Festivities were arranged. A bear was caught in the nearby hills and dragged on an ox skin down to the presidio. To Langsdorff’s disappointment, the animal died before he could properly inspect it. To make up for this – and apparently misunderstanding the doctor’s interest in natural history – Arguello ordered wild bulls caught instead and baited by dogs for the amusement of the local population. Langsdorff was surprised that the holy fathers ‘never oppose these national amusements though they are cruel and barbarous. Perhaps they are no more affected by seeing the useless slaughter of animals than the Nukakhivans are by the eating of human flesh.’22
The Indians of San José dance for Langsdorff.
Langsdorff, with the help of the padres, set off with Davydov on an expedition to the Misión de San José, sixteen leagues down the coast. The original plan had been to take the Juno’s three longboats and pick up more grain, but the winds being contrary, the party set off in Aleut baidarkas into the open Pacific instead. The journey took two days. The fathers of San José welcomed the Russians warmly; even in this tiny mission founded only two years before they had 200 measures of surplus wheat stored in their barns.
‘In a land with such a plenty of wood and water and excellent harbours persons of enterprising spirit could in a few years establish a flourishing colony,’ Langsdorff wrote; in time the RAC should ‘plant a colony of Russia’s own’. His hosts, unaware that their guest was eyeing their mission with the greedy eye of empire, arranged for the natives to dance for them with ‘dreadful gestures and contortions’. Langsdorff’s pen-and-ink portraits of these Indians, now in the University library of Göttingen, are remarkably accomplished. The natives’ party trick was to swallow hot coals plucked from the fire. ‘This was no deception; I observed them very closely and it is utterly incomprehensible to me how they do it,’ wrote the baffled Langsdorff.23
The presidio of San Jose.
The doctor was in for a rude shock when he returned to the Juno, which was being loaded with her new cargo. He found his painstakingly-prepared scientifi
c specimens casually discarded. ‘Skins of sea dogs and birds laid on deck to dry were I know not by what means thrown overboard,’ complained Langsdorff. The blotting paper he needed for drying plants was packed deep in the hold and a collection of live birds he had bought had been released. He was told – presumably by Rezanov – ‘that they had more important business to attend to and that our expedition was not undertaken for the promotion of natural history’. Langsdorff professed himself ‘so entirely discouraged’ by this philistinism that he ‘relinquished the idea of further labours and surrendered myself to the wishes of Chamberlain von Rezanov as interpreter to the misiones’.
Rezanov was obsessively single-minded. Nothing, not Langsdorff’s natural history, not the emotions of a young girl nor the scruples of religion, was going to get in the way of his dream. Russian America would be made prosperous and viable, and in time Russia would conquer the presidio of San Francisco just as Rezanov had conquered its fairest daughter.
Footnotes
* In 1814, after the death of Don José Arrillaga, Arguello became governor of Alta California – as did his son, Don Luis, after him.
19
I will never see you – I will never forget you
Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America Page 31
