by Alan Palmer
All these changes were of lasting value to Alexander’s Empire, and indeed to his successors. But the Tsar never fulfilled Speransky’s hopes. His enthusiasm for reform declined during the course of the year, partly because of the pressure of foreign affairs but also because he could not ignore the mood of the nobility on whose services he necessarily relied for national defence. Speransky became more and more unpopular. Despite the attempt to associate all members of the Council of State with the financial plan, the State Secretary inevitably became the scapegoat for every grievance; for there were many of the nobility only too pleased to remember that the constitutional reform was drafted by Speransky and that it was according to his financial plan that the new taxes were being levied. As Speransky himself ruefully admitted a year or so later, nobody is ever grateful to a man who imposes taxes. He became to some extent the victim of his own desire to escape the limelight: his public anonymity aggravated those at Court who wanted, for their own well-being, to discover a sinister influence behind the throne. It was widely rumoured, by the end of the year, that Speransky was proposing to introduce an income tax to set alongside the heavy stamp duties which his reforms had already introduced.32
Speransky was in an unenviable position. He could claim that public accountancy had improved, that there was even a prospect of balancing the budget, eventually. But in the second half of the year 1810 he found it increasingly necessary to remind Alexander of the purpose and principles which lay behind the Council of State, of the danger in setting up ad hoc committees to give speedy advice on specific problems, and of the way in which the Council had been planned as the apex of a pyramid of elected representative assemblies.33 Alexander, probably correctly, believed the external menace to Russia was too grave to authorize legislation for further internal reforms. At the end of the year Speransky wished to resign his post of State Secretary so as to concentrate on the legal complexities of codification, which now seemed to him the most important task for the future. But Alexander was always reluctant to accept the resignation of men in whom he had confidence. He still needed Speransky as State Secretary and he appears to have hoped to return to a policy of reform once the foreign situation eased again. Certainly he blamed the limited implementation of Speransky’s projects on the recurrent international crises. Hence he pressed Speransky to keep office rather than abandon the post created only twelve months previously. Like Arakcheev, Speransky felt bound in loyalty to do as the Tsar wished; and, like Arakcheev, he was soon to regret his decision.34
Speransky’s enemies, unable to oust the State Secretary from his position of primacy through legitimate complaints, had one old weapon to hand; they could smear his reputation by alleging he was an agent of the French. This particular tale had begun as soon as the Tsar returned from Erfurt, for it had seemed to some in attendance on Alexander that Speransky was unduly impressed by the institutions of French government during the Congress (though how he had found the time to study them in such unnatural surroundings nobody troubled to explain). From this story it was easy enough for jealous tongues to maintain Speransky had been persuaded (or, according to some, bribed) to introduce into Russia alien ideas of government which were deliberately based upon the constitutional usage of France and which were therefore surrounding the Tsar with dangerous revolutionary notions. Speransky, it was said, was morally guilty of treachery to the ancient ideals of Russia; and it was essential for someone to expose to the well-intentioned Tsar the viper which had infiltrated his throne-room.35 Throughout the years 1810 and 1811 the campaign against the State Secretary continued, but it was not until the following March that a mood of fear and exaggerated patriotism swept it to triumph; and its victim into exile from the capital.
* From October 1809 until April 1813 the United States were represented at St Petersburg by John Quincy Adams, son of the second President of the Union (and who was himself to become in 1824 the sixth President). It is significant that, although Adams kept a full diary of his mission to Russia, the printed version does not once record any meeting with Speransky, despite the obvious similarity of interests between the architect of Russia’s reform programme and an ex-Senator who knew by experience the faults and virtues of the finest product of eighteenth-century constitutional thought.
11
The Viceroy
Caulaincourt; The Prussian Royal Visit; and the Marriage of Catherine
The witch-hunt against Speransky was to some extent a method of easing individual consciences. For while there is no evidence the State Secretary or any other public figure received bribes from Napoleon, there was in St Petersburg hardly a member of the conservative aristocracy who had not, in some way or other, enjoyed French hospitality during the years of nominal alliance between the two Empires. General Armand de Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza, Master of the Horse to the Emperor of the French and Ambassador Extraordinary to the Emperor of All the Russias, held a position in Society worthy of his high-sounding titles and eminence. When Napoleon first sent him to Alexander’s Court four months after Tilsit he insisted Caulaincourt should take pains to impress the Russians by a show of lavish entertainment and, in particular, he urged him to cultivate the personal friendship of the Tsar. A generous allowance was placed at the ambassador’s disposal and increased after Erfurt, where Caulaincourt confessed that life in the Russian capital was running him heavily into debt.1 So eager was Napoleon for his mission to succeed that he would have granted him a fortune.
The ambassador fulfilled his instructions to the letter. There was no carriage in the Nevsky Prospect so smartly burnished as Caulaincourt’s, no horses so elegantly groomed. The gourmets of St Petersburg delighted in the creations of his chef, the intellectually fastidious admired the good taste of his social evenings, the ladies (and their consorts) thrilled to the glamour of masked balls which he mounted in quasi-royal splendour. ‘I was virtually the Viceroy of the Emperor at St Petersburg’, he wrote later.2 As well as a palace near the Hermitage, Caulaincourt had a country house on the road to Peterhof and a villa on Kammionyi Island, strategically placed between the Tsar’s retreat and Madame Naryshkin’s. A small supper party on the island would be planned for fifty guests, an embassy reception for three, four or five times that number.3 Though now and again some twist of French policy hardened feeling against Caulaincourt, the great families were too envious of his social ingenuity to maintain for long any self-denying censure. Those who remembered to disapprove of him as the velvet glove of a foreign tyranny attended his dinners and purged their patriotic souls by drawing up a mental inventory of the expenses. The results were startling: pears provided at a banquet for four hundred guests cost 300 francs each (about £13); festoons of candles illuminated every room; the finest vintage wines trundled across Europe in protective casks. In the twelve months following Erfurt it was calculated that the French ambassador’s expenses ‘amounted at least to four hundred thousand roubles’ and ‘probably to more than a million’.4 Whichever the figure, it was far in excess of his allowance from Napoleon.
For such lavish spending Caulaincourt expected, and received, preferential treatment among the foreign envoys. Though not the doyen of the diplomatic corps he asserted a precedence which nobody challenged. ‘The French ambassador took his station nearest the door and the Corps Diplomatique stood in succession after him’, Adams recorded in his journal when he attended his first ceremonial reception in December 1809. A few days later, at a New Year dinner in the Hermitage, Adams was intrigued to note that Caulaincourt was seated at the table ‘in the centre appropriated to the Imperial family’, while other foreign ministers had the second table to themselves. And similarly, while most envoys watched the annual blessing of the waters of the Neva from the windows of the palace, Caulaincourt throughout the ceremony remained in attendance on the Tsar as though he were a member of Alexander’s own suite.5 No one was allowed to forget the special relationship binding together the Russians and the French.
But did Caulaincourt really obtain an
ything of value for his money? Alexander showed him genuinely personal affection and the two men understood and sympathized with each other’s public and private problems. But Caulaincourt had few illusions over his influence: Alexander, he wrote to Napoleon, ‘appears to be weak but is really far from being so … Beneath all his natural benevolence, honesty and natural loyalty, beneath all his exalted ideas and principles, there is a strong element of royal dissimulation born of an obstinacy that nothing can conquer.’6 For most of the eighteen months which followed the Erfurt Congress, Caulaincourt was unable to exert any effective pressure whatsoever on Russian policy, even though this was the period in which he appeared to be at the height of his social eminence in St Petersburg. Alexander rode with him, dined with him, listened to his accounts of Napoleon’s policy, replied equably to the honeyed words and veiled threats from Paris – and proceeded to use every report of French embarrassment, whether in Spain and Portugal or later in Austria, as an opportunity for asserting Russia’s freedom of action. Thus the war with Sweden was pressed to a victorious conclusion with a remarkably daring crossing of the frozen Gulf of Bothnia; and the war with Turkey was allowed to flare up once more in the summer of 1809, with the Russians improving their position in Wallachia and, across the Black Sea in the forgotten Caucasus, establishing new bases in Georgia. Caulaincourt could not fail to see that reports of victories in the south, though often exaggerated, improved morale in St Petersburg; for the Turkish War was always far more popular than the campaign against the Swedes, which was interpreted as a non-Russian enterprise imposed on Alexander by the French.
Yet the first clear indication of Alexander’s independence in foreign affairs had come far closer to Erfurt than the resumption of the Turkish War. In January 1809, only twelve weeks after bidding Napoleon farewell, Alexander was host to Frederick William of Prussia in St Petersburg.7 Foreign residents in the capital noted with amazement the elaborate and expensive preparations ordered by the Tsar for the visit of the King, who was accompanied by Queen Louise and by two of his brothers. It was the first time a reigning sovereign of Prussia had ever come to the Russian capital; and, as if to compensate the Hohenzollerns for the humiliations they had suffered since Tilsit, Alexander entertained his friends with a hospitality as generous as his grandmother had bestowed on her favourites a generation ago. For three and a half weeks there was constant festivity at the Court – balls, banquets and theatrical presentations which soon outshone for Alexander the fading memories of Erfurt. Society, which in the recent past had been critical both of the Tsar and the Prussians, warmly supported Alexander, believing that in honouring the victims of Napoleon’s malice it was striking a gesture of defiance against the French. Even the Empress Elizabeth, though still wretchedly miserable in spirit, was cheered by the spate of entertainments and showed a sincere affection towards Louise, who she well knew had stirred her husband’s heart so deeply over the preceding six years. By now, too, the tension was less acute between the Court and Marie Feodorovna’s establishment at Pavlovsk, for Alexander had convinced his mother that he was playing a deep game with Napoleon; and the Dowager Empress co-operated readily with the reigning Empress in showing favour to the Prussians.
Caulaincourt was vexed by the hospitality which the Imperial family was so ostentatiously lavishing on the Hohenzollerns, a dynasty against whom Napoleon had never ceased to caution Alexander. At one of the aristocratic salons the ambassador’s customary tact deserted him. In a rash moment he brusquely declared: ‘There is no mystery about this visit – the Queen of Prussia has come to sleep with Tsar Alexander.’8 The remark, which was almost certainly an unjustified slander, was ill-received by those around the ambassador, and it was soon being repeated in tones of decorous prurience from one scandalized group to another. The unfortunate Caulaincourt felt his social position slipping. Belatedly he decided that before the royal couple set out for Königsberg he must honour their presence in the capital. It was, wrote Elizabeth in a letter to her mother, ‘a very fine ball’; and well it may have been, for Napoleon’s ambassador had the privilege of spending some thirty thousand roubles on entertaining two sovereigns whom his master’s troops were still preventing from returning to Berlin.9
Politically, of course, the visit of Frederick William had no immediate significance. Prussia was too weak to count for much in anyone’s calculations at the beginning of 1809. Alexander was at pains in his conversations with the French ambassador to insist that for him the visit was primarily a social occasion. ‘I did not talk politics with the King more than twice’, he assured Caulaincourt;10 and he added that, even then, he had concentrated on stressing to Frederick William the wisdom of seeking good relations with Napoleon. The visit was, indeed, essentially a winter frolic; and towards the end poor Louise found the pace of entertainment so exacting that she had to retire, with Elizabeth, for several days of rest at Tsarskoe Selo while the indefatigable Alexander took Frederick William and his brothers to Kronstadt, Oranienbaum and Peterhof.11 Yet, though disappointed she had seen ‘too little’ of the Tsar and sad that there seemed no immediate prospect of improving Prussia’s status among the nations, Louise was able once again to bring down the curtain with a dramatic flourish, even if only Alexander was aware of her action. For, while journeying back to Königsberg, she dashed off a message which was intended for Alexander’s eyes alone. In the note, she spoke of the love which bound her to the Tsar ‘beyond all expression’ and, as though conscious that this was truly a valediction, she commended to his care ‘the interests of the King, the future happiness of my children and of all Prussia’.12 Within eighteen months Louise was dead; and Alexander, who had sometimes wavered from the pledges of Memel and the oath of Potsdam, felt bound to honour the plea she had sent him for all the remaining years of his reign. Her hold on Alexander’s heart was more powerful from beyond the grave than ever in life.
All this, however, lay far in the future during those first months of 1809. Alexander’s immediate concern was with a family matter which distracted his thoughts until it seemed to him more pressing than even the latest communication from Napoleon. For while the Prussian royalty were in St Petersburg the formal betrothal of the Grand Duchess Catherine to George of Holstein-Oldenburg had taken place;13 and now Alexander was trying to accept the marriage of the sister whom he had, for so long, come to regard as his own companion and confidante. He liked George well enough; but the prospect of Catherine’s marriage again affected his health and he was forced to take ‘days of rest’ that spring. But the marriage took place quite happily in the first week of May, although Elizabeth, who could never bring herself to love her sister-in-law, found the ceremony ‘overweighted with grandeur’.14 As an official residence in the capital the Grand Duchess and her husband were assigned the Anichkov Palace, a delightful mid-eighteenth-century building newly remodelled by Quarenghi and standing at the point where the Nevsky Prospect crosses the Fontanka Canal. It only remained for Alexander to find for Prince George some post in the Russian administration which would neither deprive the Empire of Catherine’s services, nor himself of her occasional company.
He found what he wanted for George at Tver, the old city on the Upper Volga a hundred miles along the Petersburg road from Moscow. The Prince was solemnly appointed Governor-General of the provinces of Tver, Yaroslavl and Novgorod. It was agreed that George and Catherine would move into the palace of Tver, which had been originally constructed for Catherine II forty years previously. The Grand Duchess, however, expected finer accommodation and, throughout the summer, there was an extensive re-building project in Tver, supervised by Carlo Rossi (who was later to use his genius for classical unity to enrich the architecture of the capital). By the autumn Rossi’s workmen had made sufficient progress for Catherine to set out for Tver; and on 26 August she left the Tauride Palace amid scenes of tearful farewell, as though passing into lasting exile.15 In fact, however, as her brother soon realized, by establishing the Grand Duchess between St Petersburg and Moscow,
the Tsar was indirectly strengthening the influence of the dynasty in a vital region of the Empire. Until now Alexander had not once visited Moscow since his coronation; but with his sister and brother-in-law in Tver he found it expedient to make tours now and again to the ancient capital, beginning that very December, for, as Alexander himself remarked, ‘when I have a mind to go to Moscow I have only to take her in my pocket, and can then go without any of the expense and parade of an imperial journey’.16 Probably Catherine would not have found Alexander’s pragmatism flattering. She took her position at Tver very seriously and immediately began to try to emulate her sister Marie in Weimar by establishing a literary salon; but Catherine’s real interests remained in political intrigue, and at Tver she was sufficiently close to the estates of the Moscow nobility to make contact with all those conservative aristocrats who resented Speransky’s reforming zeal as much as she did. She had no intention of permitting the Empire to be robbed of her abilities.
Russia and Napoleon’s 1809 Campaign
While Alexander was fussing over the details of Catherine’s establishment, his nominal ally had to meet in Bavaria the Austrian challenge which he had long anticipated. As early as February a courier arrived in St Petersburg from Napoleon’s headquarters with messages which were intended to enable Caulaincourt to convince Alexander the Austrians were about to begin a preventive war in Germany. To the delight of the French ambassador, the Tsar immediately recognized that he had to honour the obligations he had assumed at Erfurt: ‘He has never spoken so cordially to me since first I had the privilege of treating with him,’ reported Caulaincourt to Paris.17 The Austrian ambassador was at once summoned to the Winter Palace and notified by Alexander personally that he had commitments to the French and would keep faith with his word. Eagerly Caulaincourt awaited news that the Russians were mobilizing an army in Poland so as to menace the Austrian position in Galicia; he hoped the Russian force would supplement the Polish brigades of Poniatowski, already raised under Napoleon’s auspices from among the population of the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw. But, for all his assurances, Alexander was reluctant to commit his troops to a campaign in central Europe and Francis’s military counsellors in Vienna were threatened from the east by nothing more formidable than words of reproof.18 In the second week of April the Austrians, untroubled by the thought of the Russians in their rear, crossed the River Inn and offered their challenge to the French. At St Petersburg that day they were celebrating a bitterly cold Easter, with the ice still on the Neva and the Gulf.19 Once the Easter festivities were over, Prince Golitsyn was assigned an army corps which was to assemble in southern Poland. By then the French and Austrians were already engaged in battle, with Napoleon once more advancing down the Danube Valley. Despite the brilliant generalship of Archduke Charles it soon became clear the Austrians would not be able to fight a long and sustained campaign. The French had no need of Russian assistance, but Alexander was resolved to fulfil the letter of his treaty obligations.
