Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  Occasionally the two Emperors would invite Frederick William to dine with them. He seemed, however, unable to rise to the inspired sublimity of their verbal exchanges, probably because he was worried over the fate of his kingdom; and they were always glad when he left them. (‘A nasty king, a nasty nation, a nasty army’, said Napoleon to Alexander one night after Frederick William had gone back to his temporary home.) Once or twice Frederick William accompanied the Emperors on their rides through the East Prussian countryside but he was not such a good horseman and often he would trail at their heels like some puzzled and faithful dog, left dazed and uncomprehending by the sudden shifts of fortune. In desperation he sent a letter to Memel imploring Queen Louise to come to Tilsit and charm Alexander back into his senses, or, if that were impossible, at least remind him of the Potsdam Oath and the solemn pledges of Bartenstein a mere two months ago.17

  The King was not the only person who failed to understand all that was happening. Formal military orders reminded the Russian soldiery to be civil to the French whenever they met them and refer to their leader as the Emperor Napoleon rather than as ‘Buonaparte’. Senior officers were called to make harder sacrifices of conscience. It was all too much for General Budberg, whose health conveniently gave way shortly before the arrival of Talleyrand so that the duties of Foreign Minister had to be undertaken by Prince Kurakin (who, in his turn, promptly confined himself to bed in the vain hope of acquiring a high fever so as to avoid any responsibility for the negotiations).18 To others it seemed as if Alexander, in his desire to keep Napoleon’s confidence, was in danger of losing his dignity. As the days went by with no clear news from Tilsit, the cities of the Empire were again filled with alarming rumours, as they had been after Austerlitz: was Holy Russia to be sold to the Antichrist? For, whatever the fashion on the Niemen, in St Petersburg and Moscow the Church still thundered on Sundays against Bonaparte, that ‘worshipper of idols and whores’. The Holy Synod was unaccustomed to diplomatic revolution.

  Among the Tsar’s severest critics were those members of his family who had most urged him to make peace. Alexander sought to justify his behaviour in letters to his mother and to his sister Catherine, now almost nineteen. To Marie Feodorovna he wrote: ‘Happily Bonaparte, for all his genius, has a vulnerable side; this is his vanity. And I have decided to sacrifice my own self-respect for the salvation of the Empire.’19 But this explanation sounded too fine to be true. Nor did it accord with Constantine’s accounts of the pleasure Alexander was finding in Napoleon’s company. Marie Feodorovna remained unconvinced; and Kurakin’s letters, which emphasized the personal nature of the Tsar’s policy, were hardly likely to mollify her.20

  With his sister, Alexander was more honest. In the small hours of 29 June he sent Catherine a note written when he was too weary to dissimulate:

  God has saved us: instead of having to make sacrifices, we have emerged almost gloriously from the struggle. But what do you think of all these events? Just imagine my spending days with Bonaparte, talking for hours quite alone with him! I ask you, does not all this seem like a dream? It is past midnight and he has only just left me. How I wish you could be an invisible witness of all that was going on! Adieu, my dearest friend, I do not write often to you but, on my honour, I have hardly a minute in which to breathe.21

  The questions may have been rhetorical but they received from Catherine a response which could have left Alexander in no doubt of his favourite sister’s feelings:

  We shall have made huge sacrifices and for what? … I wish to see [Russia] respected not in words but in reality, since she certainly has the means and the right to be so. While I live I shall not get used to the idea of knowing that you pass your days with Bonaparte. When people say so, it seems like a bad joke and impossible. All the coaxing he has tried on this nation is only so much deceit, for the man is a blend of cunning, ambition and pretence … He does himself honour by being with you … Forgive the flow of words, my friend, but it is only from the well of my heart that the mouth speaks. Adieu, Alexander, my sincere devotion will end only with my life.22

  There had at one moment in the exchanges of Napoleon and Alexander been a suggestion that the Bonaparte family might provide Catherine with a husband, presumably the twenty-two-year-old Jerome. It is, perhaps, as well nothing more was heard of the project. She was becoming a woman of too strong character for a Bonaparte in full Imperial plumage.

  The Tilsit Settlement (July 1807)

  By the time Catherine’s fiery reply reached her brother everything was settled in Tilsit. Six days of conversations enabled the two Emperors to focus their eyes on immediate issues rather than on the distant horizons to which each felt more naturally attracted.23 Even so, the range of problems they discussed was remarkable: the way in which Britain might be forced into peace; the boundaries of the new Germany and, in particular, of Prussia; the future of Poland, now that the French held Warsaw; and the likely fate of Turkey, where the Janissary Corps had recently dethroned the Sultan. Occasionally, especially when Napoleon and Alexander considered the evident weakness of the Ottoman Empire, their talk was flavoured by old ambitions until it seemed as if they were preparing to partition the civilized world, assigning provinces to one another like the triumvirs in the closing years of the Roman Republic. But in such matters neither ruler could afford to be honest with the other and there remained a studied vagueness over detail.

  The problem of Britain gave them little trouble. Alexander was justified in complaining that the London Government had done little for Russia during the previous two years and had shown some hostility to Russian activity in the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean. The Tsar was willing to halt all trade with England, summon her to make peace by surrendering her colonial conquests and recognizing freedom of the seas, and to declare war if she ignored his mediation. Napoleon was gratified but he wanted other states besides Russia to make a clear break with England: all the continent must come together and stifle this nation of higglers and hucksters. He accordingly proposed that pressure should be applied to Denmark and Sweden (and, indeed, Portugal) to induce these countries to enter his economic system and Alexander agreed to support the diplomatic initiative of the French. If necessary, Russia would even undertake a campaign in the Baltic against the Swedes: successes on the shores of the Gulf of Finland might strengthen the future security of St Petersburg; and a new Northern War against a traditional enemy would help the army recover its lost prestige. The Tsar’s willingness to commit his Empire to the Napoleonic ‘Continental System’ was a major miscalculation. He had no idea of the damage which a breach with Britain and a war in the Baltic would inflict on Russian commerce. For the merchants of Petersburg and Riga his secret pledge at Tilsit was an error of judgement they found hard to forgive.

  Over Germany Alexander was less acquiescent. He was prepared to recognize French hegemony west of the Elbe and the establishment of an impromptu throne for Napoleon’s brother, Jerome, in Westphalia but towards Prussia his mood changed from hour to hour. Marie Feodorovna had, for months past, begged him not to sacrifice the needs of his own Empire for the sake of the Hohenzollerns; and now Napoleon was at hand to remind him that Frederick William was ‘utterly ruined, a man without character and without means’.24 It was tempting to let the French have their way and see Prussia wiped from the map of Europe, especially when a share of her Polish lands might strengthen Russia’s own position on the Vistula. But treachery of this magnitude overstretched Alexander’s conscience. He was deeply moved by the reproaches of Queen Louise, who arrived at Tilsit on 6 July. ‘You have cruelly deceived me,’ she complained to the friend from whom she had expected so much.25 Even Napoleon likened her to a great tragedienne acting Corneille and, though he might claim to have resisted her blandishments, the Tsar’s sensitive soul was easily subjected to such a show of emotion. He insisted that the throne of the Hohenzollerns should be preserved and that two-thirds of Frederick William’s hereditary territories be returned to him. A phrase in
the final treaty between France and Prussia made it clear that the restoration to Frederick William of the heart of his kingdom was ‘from consideration of the wishes of His Majesty the Emperor of All the Russias’. To Queen Louise this phrase was yet another instance of the humiliation to which Napoleon constantly exposed her; but her husband remained for the rest of his days sentimentally grateful to his ‘divine friend’ Alexander for the special favour which his intercession had won from the victor of Jena. ‘I have done everything humanly possible,’ the Tsar declared in a private note to Frederick William, ‘but it remains cruelly disappointing for me that I should now have lost even the hope of serving you as my heart would have wished.’26 And the King of Prussia, with a heavy indemnity imposed on his people and with what was left of his land permanently occupied by French troops, took Alexander at his word. He had no option if he wished to comfort himself with any illusions for the future.

  The disposal of the Prussian lands was closely involved with the fate of Poland. The landed gentry of the region around Warsaw welcomed the French as allies as soon as Murat entered the city, and had established a provisional government in the hopes that Napoleon would undo the wrong of the Partitions. But the Emperor of the French as yet felt no especial obligation towards any of the Slav peoples, least of all to a nation so loyal in its Catholicism as the Poles. He was prepared at first to hand over to Alexander the areas his troops had occupied, provided that the Tsar recognized the cession of Prussian Silesia to Jerome Bonaparte as King of Westphalia and that Alexander restored a Polish State in personal union with the Russian Crown, for Napoleon was determined at all costs never to allow the Prussians back in Warsaw. This solution corresponded in many respects with the proposals which Czartoryski had put forward in 1805 and, once again, Alexander was tempted to accept Napoleon’s offer. He declined it allegedly from ‘what was left of my regard for unfortunate Prussia’; but it is probable that, once having made the offer, Napoleon had second thoughts.27 For when the Tsar remarked that the Vistula was the natural boundary for Russian Poland – a suggestion corresponding closely to the ideas Napoleon had expressed to Lobanov a few days previously – he found that the French were openly alarmed at the prospect of seeing a Russian garrison quartered opposite Warsaw. In the end, Alexander’s conscience permitted him to accept one fragment of formerly Prussian territory, the province of Bialystok. The rest of what had been Prussian Poland (apart from a small area around Danzig, left to Frederick William) was established as the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, nominally ruled by the King of Saxony but in practice under the personal protection of Napoleon and garrisoned by 30,000 French troops. Poland thus appeared resurrected by grace of the French Emperor; and Warsaw, the city which his young friends had urged Alexander to seize two years before, was now the eastern outpost of the Grand Army, the natural base for an attack on Russia should all these protestations of friendship ring hollow in later years. To most Russians, it did not seem an ideal solution of the Polish Question.

  Alexander, however, believed he was extricating himself adroitly from the pains of military defeat. Despite Russia’s disastrous record in the German campaigns, he lost no territory to the French on his western frontier and by the annexation of Bialystok even added a new town to his Polish lands. But Napoleon, as a true son of the Latin South, was far less accommodating over the Russian presence in the Mediterranean. Though he appeared to encourage Russia to resume the traditional policy of expansion around the shores of the Black Sea, Napoleon in reality set distinct limits to what Alexander might acquire in south-eastern Europe. The Tsar was obliged to renounce all the Empire’s recent gains in the southern Adriatic and the Ionian Sea, ceding to the French both Cattaro (Kotor) and the strategically important string of islands from Corfu to Zante. Napoleon suggested he should mediate between Russia and Turkey so as to end the war which had begun in the Danubian Principalities during the late autumn of the previous year, and he induced Alexander to promise that the Russian forces would evacuate the Principalities on condition that the Turks did not re-occupy them until a peace treaty had been signed. But it was also agreed between the two Emperors that, should the Sultan decline to make peace within three months, the French would assist the Russians to expel the Turks from most of the Balkan peninsula and thereby establish an entirely new order in south-eastern Europe. Once again that old elusive dream of ousting the Turks from Constantinople fascinated a Russian ruler.

  But Napoleon never intended Alexander to become master of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. Though he did not have any clear idea of what he sought in the Balkans, he was occasionally attracted by the fantasy of himself entering in triumph the old gates of Byzantium. ‘Constantinople’, he remarked to Meneval, his principal secretary, during his stay in Tilsit, ‘is the centre of world empire.’28 It therefore followed that so rich a prize could not fall to a mere latterday neophyte, like the Tsar of Russia. A compromise was essential, preferably one which would bind Alexander to the virtue of self-denial. Accordingly the two Emperors solemnly agreed that when the time came to partition the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan might retain his capital and most of Thrace. At heart neither seriously believed the other would be bound by such an undertaking and assented to the compromise with inner reservations of conscience. Each was perfectly well aware that over Constantinople it was impossible for them to remain in step; but for the moment it was better not to permit unworthy doubts to mar the delights of Tilsit. Outwardly agreement had been reached over the future of the Ottoman Empire and old ambitions were restrained by the need to act in concert.

  By the end of the first week in July agreement was, indeed, close at hand on most matters. It only remained for Talleyrand and Kurakin to draw up suitable documents for signature: a public treaty of peace between Russia and France and a secret treaty of alliance. Then, while a suitable engagement was hurriedly prepared to bind Prussia to the Napoleonic system, the whole pageant of Tilsit could be brought to an end with appropriate ceremonial. Both Emperors were by now in a hurry to return to their capitals: Napoleon had been absent from Paris for ten months and wished to turn his attention to other problems of government; and, though Alexander had been away from St Petersburg for a much shorter period, it was becoming pressing for him to show the people of the capital who was really in the saddle. It was difficult to hold Empires together from the obscurity of East Prussia.

  On Tuesday, 7 July, just three weeks and two days after the futile slaughter of Friedland, the Franco-Russian treaties were ready for signature. With both sovereigns present the formalities of ratification were settled within forty-eight hours and on Thursday, 9 July 1807, the French and Russian Empires were formally linked in alliance.29 The whole of Wednesday was spent in farewell courtesies. Napoleon visited Alexander’s lodgings and bestowed on him the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, and at the same time decorated Grand Duke Constantine, Bennigsen and all the other senior Russian commanders. The Tsar duly conferred on Napoleon the highest of the Russian orders of chivalry, the Cross of St Andrew; and there then followed the famous incident in which Napoleon gave his own cross of the Legion to a Russian Grenadier as a gesture of admiration for the valour of Alexander’s army. The two Emperors dined together for the last time at Tilsit and talked, as on so many previous days, long into the night.

  But they had still not made their formal farewells. At noon on the Thursday the Tsar, wearing the scarlet ribbon of the Legion of Honour, left his residence on horseback and rode down the main street of Tilsit to meet Napoleon, who was decorated with the blue cordon of St Andrew. On Alexander’s left, the street was lined by a battalion of the Preobrazhensky Regiment in ceremonial green and red; and on his right was a long line of tall bearskins as the French Imperial Guard presented arms for its sovereign’s newest ally. The Emperors returned to Alexander’s lodging to seal the treaties and spent another couple of hours in conversation, each assuring the other of his lasting friendship. Then, in mid-afternoon, Napoleon accompanied Alexander down to the banks of th
e Niemen, embraced him amid cheers and salutes from the two armies, and watched as the enemy who had now become so close a friend was rowed back across the river, the familiar tricorn hat raised in a last gesture of farewell. That night Alexander’s carriage began the journey to Riga and St Petersburg; and Napoleon, not wishing to waste any time on the King and Queen of Prussia now that the Tsar had gone, set out down the long road to the West. Frederick William and Louise travelled slowly and disconsolately to Memel, for with French garrisons parading in Berlin they had no desire to return to the heart of the kingdom. For the French and Russians a war may have ended at Tilsit: but for the Prussians what followed was hardly peace.

  As Destiny Demands

  The Effects of Tilsit Abroad

  The first reports of the Tilsit talks began to circulate in Europe even before the two Emperors arrived back in their capitals. Everyone accepted that Tilsit was a grand occasion, but there was uncertainty over its significance. Recent history showed Russian policy capable of startling vacillation and there seemed no good reason for assuming Alexander would be any more successful than his father in reconciling the great Russian families to French mastery of the continent. On the other hand, it was felt that Napoleon had admitted the military impossibility of a successful invasion of the Russian lands and that the tide of French conquest had at last reached its natural limits. In despatches to Paris Napoleon insisted that the Tilsit Peace should be presented as a diplomatic triumph, a dramatic recognition of the victories gained by the Grand Army in its long march across the continent;1 but behind all the excitement and celebration there lingered a suspicion that the Tsar of Russia, though vanquished on the field, had shown his Empire, by its very size, to be the equal of Napoleon’s. Only in the smaller German cities and in neutral Vienna was there genuine alarm at the reversal of alliances, a sense of abandonment and isolation. Metternich, now in his second year as Austrian ambassador in Paris, declared that ‘the day when the French and Russian Emperors will fall out is inevitable, and, according to my innermost feelings, much nearer than many people suppose.’2 But, with Austria deprived of all influence in the German lands, in Poland and in the Balkans, there were few in Vienna with such confident optimism.