by Alan Palmer
The truth was that Alexander had become ensnared by his preoccupation with Prussia. At the beginning of September he sent a letter to Frederick William repeating his request for free passage for his troops and urging the King to come and meet him so that they might discuss their problems together. But it was not until Alexander reached Brest on 27 September that he received an answer: Frederick William, though pathetically willing for the Tsar to visit him, obstinately clung to a rigid interpretation of his pledges of neutrality.39 But Alexander was not entirely discouraged: he sent Dolgoruky to Berlin to see if a personal emissary could overcome the King’s reluctance; and, to the delight of the Poles in his entourage, he decided to await further reports from Berlin at Pulawy, the Czartoryski family estate, only seventy miles from the ‘Southern Prussian’ capital of Warsaw.40 He did not inform Czartoryski of Dolgoruky’s mission.
Alexander arrived at Pulawy at dead of night on 3 October. His carriage had snapped a shaft and he finished the journey on foot, following a local peasant with a lantern along forest paths. He was so exhausted when he reached the house that he refused to allow the porter to awaken his hosts and was content to throw himself fully dressed on to a bed, where he slept until seven in the morning.41 Despite this unorthodox beginning to his period of residence at Pulawy, the Czartoryski estate soon assumed the dignity of an improvised Court. The Tsar was attended by many of his ministers and generals and by some of the diplomatic corps and for a fortnight this remote château in a Polish forest was the effective capital of the Russian Empire.
For most of his sojourn at Pulawy Alexander was in buoyant spirits. He approved, and immediately cancelled, orders for an advance on Warsaw; he explained by letter to the Austrian Emperor how much he was hoping for an understanding with the Prussians while assuring the head of the Austrian military mission, by word of mouth, how determined he was ‘to make the Poles rise against Prussia’; he let his hosts think that the proclamation of a new Polish Kingdom was imminent and proceeded to examine maps so as to see whether, after all, it was essential to move across Prussian territory.42 His inconsistencies baffled strangers and exasperated those who, like Czartoryski, knew him well. Yet the possibility that he was contradicting himself troubled Alexander little. For now he was about to do great things he found he loved the anticipation of action more than the deed itself. It was exhilarating to feel one’s word could send the Guards marching to the Vistula and a nod of approval awaken the nation of Sobieski. Indeed it was so gratifying that Alexander dared not risk disillusionment by either saying the word or giving the nod. Confident he was champion of their cause, the Polish aristocracy flattered the Tsar, and he was charmed by their courtesies. Thoughtfully Princess Radziwill let Empress Elizabeth know how happy everyone was at Pulawy;43 and Alexander himself found time to dash off seven notes of affectionate nonsense to his sister Catherine in the dozen days which it took Napoleon to lead an army from the Rhine to the Danube.44
Oddly enough, it was the movement of French troops elsewhere which at last decided Alexander on his course of action. For, on the Tsar’s third day in Pulawy, Marshal Bernadotte’s corps marched through the Prussian enclave of Ansbach in its haste to join the force which Napoleon was concentrating in Bavaria. When news reached Berlin that the French had thus violated Prussian territory, Frederick William was so infuriated by this cavalier disregard for his neutrality that he consented to the Russian request for a right of passage across Prussian Silesia. So sudden was Frederick William’s change of mood that Dolgoruky had actually begun his return journey to Poland convinced his mission was a failure when he was overtaken by a messenger summoning him back for another audience. The King was now anxious to meet the Tsar in Prussia as soon as possible, preferably at a secret rendezvous near the frontier.45
Reports of the French incursion into Ansbach also provoked a reaction in Alexander. On 16 October he suddenly informed Czartoryski he was leaving Pulawy for military headquarters at Kozienice: he would not now be going to Warsaw, nor making a visit to Poniatowski on his estates in southern Prussia, as was at one time planned.46 The Tsar’s decision convinced Czartoryski that he had, after all, decided against the Polish project. Now he was primarily interested in going to Berlin, for he intended that all Europe should see that Prussia had broken with the French; and hence he had no liking for Frederick William’s proposal of a clandestine exchange of views in a remote corner of his kingdom. Once he had reached Kozienice Alexander gave all his confidence to Dolgoruky, who had travelled with news from Berlin; and on 21 October – the day on which the fleet of his British ally gave battle to the French and Spanish squadrons off Cape Trafalgar – Alexander announced he would go in person to the Prussian capital and settle matters with Frederick William.47 He ordered Czartoryski to be in attendance as assistant minister for Foreign Affairs. Bitter at heart and conscious of the disillusionment felt by his fellow Poles, Czartoryski rode westwards in the Imperial cavalcade as his sovereign headed for Berlin across the dreary rainswept plain, listening to Dolgoruky’s briefing on the conflict of factions at the Prussian Court. When Dolgoruky paused there were long silences.48
Alexander’s entry into Berlin on 25 October was an impressive exercise in ceremonial, for though Frederick William would have preferred a less ostentatious encounter, he was determined to please the Tsar by receiving him with all the respect due to Imperial dignity.49 As at Memel three years previously, all the external trappings were brought out for the occasion: fireworks, displays, splendid receptions and banquets, reviews of regiments which had so nearly found themselves having to resist a Russian invasion. Alexander, as usual, stole the scene in every moment of pageantry, confident in himself and confident of the defeats his armies would soon inflict upon the French. Here was a conqueror-to-be in whom it was hard to recognize the wavering dreamer of Brest and Pulawy. Only to a few observers did there seem something unreal in the certainty with which he predicted Napoleon’s coming defeat. The Austrian ambassador, Clement von Metternich, whom Alexander met for the first time on 29 October, was flattered by the Tsar’s gracious comments; but he shrewdly sought to bring Alexander’s enthusiasm for his royal hosts down to earth.50 What was needed was a military alliance not lofty sentiment.
By 3 November a draft secret treaty had been drawn up for signature between the two monarchs. It fell far short of what Metternich had wished and it seemed ‘calamitous’ to Czartoryski; but Alexander and Dolgoruky were well satisfied with its terms. If France refused to accept proposals for peace from Frederick William based on the agreements reached between the Russians, Austrians and British, then Prussia would enter the war against Napoleon by the end of the year; and should Frederick William be able to bring an army of 180,000 men into the field within the following six weeks, Alexander undertook to seek from his English ally the eventual cession to Prussia of the Electorate of Hanover. Only pessimists doubted if there would still be a war for Prussia to enter in six weeks time.51
There remained for Alexander one last gesture of theatricality before he resumed his protracted departure for the wars. Late at night, on 4 November, the Tsar, the King and Queen Louise left the palace at Potsdam and went on foot to the garrison church. Descending in weirdly flickering candle-light to the tiny crypt, the two monarchs faced each other across the wooden coffin in which Frederick the Great had been laid to rest. With tears of emotion running down his cheeks, Alexander embraced Frederick William as each sovereign swore an oath of eternal friendship, pledging that never again would the interests or the fate of Prussia and Russia run in conflict.52 Next day the Tsar’s carriage headed south for Wittenberg, Leipzig and reality.
Austerlitz and After
Alexander and Kutuzov in Moravia
Despite the knowledge that Napoleon had embarked on a full-scale invasion of the Austrian lands, Alexander was still in no hurry. He left Potsdam on the morning of 5 November: he did not arrive at allied headquarters in Olmütz (Olomouc) until the evening of 18 November. By then it had taken his car
riages nearly a fortnight to cover 320 miles – an instructive contrast to his speed when returning to St Petersburg from his coronation four years before. Some of the delay was accidental: winter came early, snow followed by a thaw leaving the roads of Bohemia heavy with slush; and confusion over the precise siting of headquarters ruled out the shortest routes to Moravia. But Alexander himself added four or five days to the journey by suddenly deciding to make a westward detour and pay a visit to his eldest surviving sister, Marie Pavlovna, who had married the Crown Prince of Saxe-Weimar in the previous year. Marie, an intelligent nineteen-year-old girl with much artistic talent, insisted on presenting to her brother the great literary figures who so enriched the cultural life of Weimar at this time. Alexander enjoyed the intellectual stimulus of conversations with Goethe, Herder and Wieland and stayed longer in Weimar than good sense warranted.1 On the same day that Alexander said his farewells the Emperor whom he had set out to fight was installing himself in the Habsburg summer palace at Schönbrunn and the tricolour flag flew over Vienna. Small wonder if, when his carriages clattered at last into Olmütz, Alexander was received by his Austrian ally with a formality as frigid as the weather.
The preceding month had brought the heaviest blows to Austrian arms for over a century. When hostilities began in the first week of September the Allies assumed they would take Napoleon off his guard and strike westwards before the Grand Army could concentrate on the Rhine; but the French moved with far greater speed than their enemies, and the principal Austrian army was encircled at Ulm in mid-October and forced to capitulate. After this disaster Emperor Francis relied primarily upon the Russian advance-guard to stem the French thrust down the Danube while he re-grouped the remaining Austrian forces to the north and the south and awaited the arrival of the Russians in full strength. It proved an expensive strategic manoeuvre, at least in terms of prestige. For, after the capitulation at Ulm, effective control of the armies on the Danube devolved upon the commander of the Russian advance-guard, General Mikhail Kutuzov, who had no intention of wasting the lives of his men in order to keep the French out of the Austrian capital.
Kutuzov was the most distinguished surviving veteran of Catherine the Great’s reign.2 He had learnt the science of war on the vast plains of southern Russia where armies moved across the emptiness of steppe-land with the freedom of battle-fleets at sea. His principal mentor was the legendary Suvorov beside whom he had fought at Alushta in 1774 (where he lost the sight of his right eye) and at the siege of Ismail in 1791. It was after this final Turkish campaign that Suvorov had said of Kutuzov, ‘He commanded my left flank but he was my right arm.’ Yet, though he possessed some of Suvorov’s qualities, he owed many of his strategic ideas to another of Catherine’s generals, P. A. Rumiantsev, who had once declared, ‘The objective is not the occupation of a geographical position but the destruction of enemy forces.’ This maxim dominated Kutuzov’s thinking in the wars against Napoleon. Hence, although in 1805 the Russians fought tenacious actions to delay the French cavalry whenever it threatened the main column of retreat, Kutuzov systematically evacuated the string of small towns along the Danube as soon as they came under attack and it was natural for him to order his men to retire north-eastwards across the river rather than make a show of defending Vienna. While refusing to offer the French a set-piece battle with inferior numbers, he could claim he was luring Napoleon eastwards so as to expose his line of communications to flank attack from the north and south.
Even so, the long retreat across an unfamiliar countryside in the depths of winter imposed a heavy strain on Kutuzov’s men. Sometimes they had to go more than twenty-four hours without food for themselves or fodder for their horses. By 19 November, when they made contact with the main Russian army in Moravia, they were utterly weary and exhausted, but they had denied Napoleon the decisive early victory he needed to complete the triumph of Ulm. When Kutuzov reported to Alexander in Olmütz he was a tired but satisfied man.3 Now that the allied armies had at last come together, they possessed a numerical advantage over the French which, though slight at the moment, would grow considerably as further reinforcements arrived from Poland. Time, so Kutuzov argued, was on the side of the Russians and Austrians: Napoleon, whose troops were also under severe strain, was unlikely to attack; once the Russians had rested, re-organized and received fresh supplies from the East, they would be ready to launch a counter-offensive, but for the moment it was important to stand on the defensive and allow the thrusts and skirmishing of recent weeks to die away in the worsening weather.
Kutuzov’s advice made such sound sense that Alexander might well have heeded it had it come from any other commander. But he personally never felt sure of Kutuzov: there was so much about the man which ran counter to the Tsar’s image of an ideal officer. For Kutuzov never possessed the romantic fire of a hero on horseback. Though only sixty he had begun to show the failings of old age without its redeeming serenity: he would not commit himself to final verdicts on the assessments of other officers nor – if he could help it – did he go so far as to add his signature to any formal orders. He fussed over matters of personal comfort: soft beds; easy chairs; good food and wine; the opportunity to sleep long hours at night and in the afternoon. On the other hand he disliked the parade uniforms affected by the Tsar and his entourage at every military occasion: they might wear cocked hats trimmed with plumes of feathers; but he was content to place on his carefully powdered white hair a flat round cap, not unlike a sailor’s, with a red ribbon encircling it to match the red lapels on his old green greatcoat. Since the cap carried no mark of distinction it was the most distinguished article of headgear in the Russian army. He was shrewd enough to use the legend of his own indolence as a means of avoiding decisions which he preferred others to take and to hide from those who opposed him the resilience and tenacity which had held Suvorov’s regard in earlier years. Like Suvorov he tended to express his judgements verbally rather than on paper, showing a peasant’s flair for proverbs and fables and a gift of imagery which appealed to the common soldiers but perplexed gentlemen who had learnt strategy and tactics from some manual of instruction. Alexander had known Kutuzov for more than a decade and appointed him as commander of the army he despatched to aid the Austrians because he was, to outward appearances, so much the heir of Suvorov. But Alexander never fully understood Kutuzov and sensed that there must always be a strained reserve between the General and himself: for Kutuzov and his wife had dined as Paul’s guests at the Mikhailovsky in March 1801, on that last evening before his murder. Though tact might ensure silence, memory imposed a barrier between the two men.
But there were other reasons why, at Olmütz, the Tsar should have rejected Kutuzov’s advice. Alexander arrived in Moravia with a swollen retinue of friends, courtiers and experts.4 Dolgoruky and Czartoryski were still with him, each suspicious of the other’s next move. Paul Stroganov and Novosiltsov were also in attendance; and so, too, were Peter Volkonsky and Arakcheev (who, like Alexander, was seeing active service for the first time). And, as well as these close associates, there were several senior officers who owed their promotion to the young Tsar’s favour: General Buxhöwden, who commanded the corps which had linked up with Kutuzov on 19 November; Count Wintzingerode, a Württemberger General whom hatred of Napoleon had driven into Russian service and who had already acted as the Tsar’s personal envoy on diplomatic missions; General Sukhtelen, a bearded giant of Dutch descent appointed Quartermaster-General by Alexander on the eve of the campaign; and the Comte de Langeron, royalist émigré from Provence and now a commander of a Russian division. None of these men agreed entirely with Kutuzov although, since Dolgoruky was impatient for action, Czartoryski favoured a general policy of waiting upon events. Alexander confirmed Kutuzov’s position as commander-in-chief and then proceeded, throughout the remaining days of November, to ignore any proposal he made. Langeron, more sympathetic to Kutuzov than most of the non-Russians in Alexander’s circle, was indignant at the treatment accorded to him.
‘The young men around the Emperor’, he wrote later, ‘referred to him as General Dawdler and he was left without authority and without influence.’5
It had been anticipated that the arrival of their sovereign would fire the Russian rank and file with enthusiasm. But, as Langeron noticed, they remained largely indifferent to his presence and resented the intrusion into camp-life of parade martinets like Arakcheev. Friction between the new arrivals and the veteran commanders was so marked that Czartoryski even claims to have advised the Tsar to give the army his blessing, leave his Generals to fight the enemy, and return to St Petersburg to govern his Empire. Alexander, however, had no intention of allowing others to claim credit for defeating Napoleon. Dolgoruky encouraged him with bursts of contemptuous anger towards ‘the usurper Bonaparte and his horde’; and messages from St Petersburg strengthened his resolve to remain with his army, for it was clear the people of his capital daily expected news of their beloved sovereign’s triumph.6
Alexander, though flattered by these signs of confidence, inwardly knew he was too inexperienced to make detailed dispositions for battle. Clearly, if Napoleon was to be successfully challenged on the Moravian plateau, it was essential for the operational planning to be entrusted to someone who knew the terrain; and accordingly Alexander turned, in the first instance, not to one of the favourites he had brought with him from St Petersburg, but to an Austrian, General Weyrother, chief-of-staff to the Emperor Francis.7 This gesture towards an ally, whose troops were outnumbered in Moravia five to one by the Russians, did much to break down the reserve with which the Austrians had treated Alexander and his senior officers. Weyrother, whom Alexander met briefly at Pulawy early in October, possessed none of the prestige of Prince Schwarzenberg or Prince Johann von Liechtenstein, who were with Emperor Francis at Olmütz; but in 1804 Weyrother had conducted manoeuvres in this part of Moravia and he claimed to know every stream and every undulation in the fields. Both Emperors, Francis and Alexander, thought themselves fortunate to have so meticulous an expert to brief their corps commanders.
