by Alan Palmer
At times during these eight weeks in Vilna Alexander appeared to support contradictory policies, especially towards Russia’s neighbours. He could not, for example, decide if he should seek to perpetuate his private understanding with Metternich to limit Russo-Austrian hostilities or if he should encourage insurrection against the Austrians, as Napoleon’s most powerful allies, by fomenting trouble in southern Hungary and the Tyrol. Similarly he was unsure how far he might trust the Swedes not to seek a war of revenge for the loss of Finland. Nor could he make up his mind about the British, whose exercise of sea power he still resented: ought he to conclude a genuine alliance with Lord Liverpool’s new government in London, or would he benefit more from the independence that would be his through waging a parallel war against the French rather than becoming a partner in another coalition? Most of these questions remained unresolved when the invasion began at the end of June.13 Paradoxically at the very moment when Alexander delighted in having control of foreign affairs under his own hands, he left vital decisions to ambassadors. To a growing extent, in that uncertain summer of 1812, he was prepared to wait upon events rather than seek to determine them himself.
This apparent taste for procrastination did not spring from mere idleness. He spent most mornings in Vilna discussing problems with his military commanders or his political advisers, and he studied carefully the reports brought to him by couriers from St Petersburg or directly from the principal European cities. The truth is that he was wretchedly overworked. He had left General Saltykov in St Petersburg with nominal responsibility for administrative problems but it was clear he expected every important decision in home affairs as well as over foreign policy to be referred to him in Vilna; for why, otherwise, would Alexander have insisted on Speransky’s successor as State Secretary, Admiral Shishkov, coming to Lithuania rather than remaining in the capital?14 Even before the war began, the Grand Duchess Catherine was seeking to induce her brother to give up his idea of commanding the army in the field, partly because she feared for his prestige should there be reverses, but also because she genuinely thought it essential to control the Empire from the centre of affairs rather than from the fringe: ‘You must not only play the part of a captain but of a ruler as well’, she wrote to him bluntly.15 But he would not listen to her. He enjoyed his military role. As he wrote back to Catherine on 9 June: ‘I scribble these lines to you having snatched forty winks after returning from a round of sixty miles, twenty of them on horseback, setting out at five in the morning … Despite that, I feel very fresh and am going to saddle my horse again for another reconnaisance.’16 Vilna somehow brought out the eternal subaltern in him.
Yet if Alexander was half play-acting, so too was Napoleon; although his preference was for a pageant rather than an epic drama. He left St Cloud, with the Empress Marie Louise at his side, on 9 May, nearly a fortnight after the Tsar’s arrival in Lithuania. Although from the Oder to the Vistula half a million men were moving relentlessly eastwards, Napoleon was still not irrevocably committed to war. He travelled not directly to the area where the armies were concentrating but to Dresden, where he was fêted by the King of Saxony and flattered by all the rulers of Germany including his father-in-law from Vienna and the unfortunate Frederick William of Prussia.17 Napoleon decided to wait in Dresden until he could receive a report from one of his aides, Count Louis de Narbonne, whom he had sent from Berlin to the Tsar at Vilna in a last attempt to intimidate Russia back into the Continental System. Neither Napoleon nor his ministers believed Narbonne’s mission would succeed; but at least he would be able to let Napoleon know the mood of the Russian commanders; and the presence of an emissary of peace might prevent Alexander from ordering his vanguard across the frontier towards Warsaw before the Grand Army finally reached its war stations.
Narbonne’s mission took the Russians by surprise. He arrived in Vilna on 18 May and was received by Alexander the same day.18 The Tsar accepted a letter from Napoleon which emphasized yet again his desire for peace and assured Alexander that, even should the two Empires find themselves at war, his personal regard for the ruler of Russia would remain undiminished. Narbonne spoke airily of the power of the Grand Army and indicated that the Russians had only to close their ports to British trade for the war crisis to be over. But Alexander was not impressed. Napoleon, he complained, ‘is ranging all Europe against Russia’, and though as Tsar he had worked ‘to uphold a political system which might lead to universal peace’, he was prepared to risk an appeal to arms rather than ‘besmirch the honour of the nation over which I rule’. He added, with a flourish of high rhetoric, ‘If the Emperor Napoleon is determined on war, and if fortune does not smile on our just cause, his hunt for peace will take him to the uttermost ends of the World.’19
These sentiments were much more resolute than Narbonne had anticipated; but he was prepared to wait in Vilna, for he hoped the Tsar’s ministers might well induce him to modify his proud tone. Narbonne was well treated. He was invited on 19 May to watch the Tsar review two regiments and to dine at his table. But, though Narbonne would have lingered in Lithuania as long as anybody, his visit was cut short by three members of the Tsar’s suite who attended him on the following morning and informed him that, by early evening, his horses would be ready for him to set out for Dresden with Alexander’s reply. Five days later Narbonne duly handed the Tsar’s coldly polite letter to Napoleon and reported to him on his mission. Napoleon’s secretary, Baron Fain, has left a dramatic account of Narbonne’s audience: the Emperor paced up and down, deep in thought and suddenly exclaimed, ‘So all means of understanding are at an end! The spirit which dominates the Russian camp pushes us into war! … There is no more time to lose in fruitless negotiations.’20 Early on 29 May he set off across the Elbe for Danzig and the birch forests and marshes of Europe’s borderland, through which he had last ridden on his way back from Tilsit.
Exactly five weeks separate Narbonne’s departure from Vilna and the beginning of the invasion. For Alexander they were almost disturbingly free from incident. Life at Imperial headquarters was as much ridden by routine as in any garrison city in the provinces during time of peace. Alexander continued to combine his duties as commander-in-chief with his responsibilities of government, despite his sister’s warnings. He inspected troops and fortifications along the rivers, and he studied anxiously the despatches from Bucharest, where Kutuzov was seeking a speedy ending of the war against Turkey so as to free another army either for service on the western frontiers or for that diversionary thrust towards the Adriatic which still appealed to many of the leading Russian commanders.21 Occasionally reports of troop movements in Prussia or the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw raised a fresh alert at headquarters and sent couriers scurrying across the countryside, but even this excitement was becoming dulled by repetition long before midsummer.
The round of balls and banquets continued to provide entertainment far into the night. In order to repay hospitality from the local nobility and their families, Alexander’s aides accepted an offer from General Bennigsen to give a grand ball on his estate at Zakret, some two or three miles east of the city. They selected the night of Wednesday, 24 June, when there would be only a few hours of darkness and when a full moon would show the English-style lawns and fountains of Zakret to advantage. Two days previously a specially constructed ballroom collapsed, but the officers went ahead with their plans for the entertainment, with the dances beginning on the lawns and only moving later to the house itself.22 Unfortunately the fine moonlit nights that week favoured other enterprises, too.
The Countess Tiesenhausen (whom Alexander invited to partner him immediately after the wives of Generals Bennigsen and Barclay de Tolly) has left a vivid record of the evening:
The whole mansion ornamented with orange trees in full bloom, scenting the air … the musicians of the Imperial Guard playing favourite passages of music in differing parts of the park … the splendid uniforms with their diamond decorations … old trees massively green over the Vileka, whi
ch reflected in its winding course the colours of the setting sun … His Majesty wearing on that day the uniform of the Semeonovsky Guards, with light blue facings, which suited him well … supper served without formality at small tables in the open air … the weather so mild and still that the lights did not go out.23
Her account makes the occasion seem like a cross between a Cambridge May Ball and a garden party at the palace: there is no suggestion that Alexander knew Napoleon was already across the Niemen or even believed an invasion to be imminent. At least one Polish nobleman present at Zakret, Count Oginski, had seen for himself the activity of the French beyond the river little more than twenty-four hours previously and was surprised at the lack of concern in Vilna.24
Alexander learnt of the invasion while he was at the Zakret ball. There are slight variations in the reports of how he received the news. The Countess merely writes that he ‘retired during the supper’. Oginski maintains he discussed a variety of topics with Alexander during the evening but never noticed any change in the Tsar’s mood, even though (as he wrote) ‘I discovered afterwards he was aware the French had just crossed the Niemen.’ The traditional version, depending on the testimony of other guests at the ball, describes how Alexander’s chief of police, General Balashov, brought him news of the invasion as the musicians were beginning to play a mazurka. But the accounts agree in two respects: Alexander was surprised to learn the campaign had begun without a declaration of war; and he insisted on leaving Zakret as unobtrusively as possible for the Episcopal Palace in Vilna, where he had established his personal headquarters. On that same night, Napoleon was sixty-five miles away, having arrived at a Russian Orthodox monastery outside Kovno at almost the same time as the Bennigsens received Alexander at Zakret.25
Resolution and Retreat
The precise order of events in Vilna over the following two days is hard to establish, not least because the whole region was swept by an almost tropical thunderstorm during the early afternoon of 25 June and the poor quality roads were turned into mud tracks within a matter of hours.26 Communications were cut between vital outposts and messengers delayed in their journeys to Imperial headquarters. It is thus not clear when Alexander was informed that, in addition to Napoleon’s crossing of the Niemen near Kovno, a second force had bridged the river eighty miles farther north at Tilsit and was advancing along the Petersburg road on Riga; but it is probable he knew of the Tilsit crossing before nightfall. There seems, however, to have been little contact with the Russian Second Army, under Bagration, which was concentrated nearly a hundred miles to the south-west of Vilna, around Brest, Bialystok and Volkovisk. The Russian Third Army, commanded by General Tormassov, was still assembling south of the Pripet Marshes and was almost as independent of Alexander as Kutuzov’s army in Moldavia.
The Tsar spent the early hours of 25 June in conference with his chief aides-de-camp and with the State Secretary, Shishkov.27 The reports which reached him indicated the invading army was far larger than any of the Russian Generals had anticipated when discussing war plans: in fact – though this did not become apparent until later – Barclay de Tolly’s First Army was outnumbered four to one along the sector of the Vileka and the Niemen, between Vilna and Kovno. The mood at Imperial headquarters remained, however, resolute, despite disturbing rumours from the north and west. Alexander and Shishkov prepared a draft manifesto which was sent that evening to Saltykov in St Petersburg. It announced ‘the invasion of the Russian territories by the French’ in restrained and dignified language but it concluded with the solemn pledge, ‘I will not make peace so long as a single enemy soldier remains armed within my Empire.’28 And in a proclamation to his troops Alexander called down the wrath of God on ‘the man who started the war’.29 When the Tsar’s words were published in St Petersburg on 30 June they made a great impression. From the old capital Rostopchin sent to Alexander a proud message of loyal encouragement – ‘The Emperor of Russia will always remain formidable at Moscow, terrible at Kazan and invincible at Tobolsk.’ This was to be no mere campaign along the frontiers of Alexander’s vast Empire. Church, nobility and people were united with the sovereign in their determination to wage war relentlessly against ‘the universal disturber of the world’s peace’.30
Yet, in Lithuania, a lone voice pleaded for one last gesture of appeasement. On the same day on which the manifesto for Saltykov was drafted, Chancellor Rumiantsev wrote a hurried letter to the Tsar from the village of Nementschine, a staging post east of Vilna. It contained a strangely worded request: ‘Would it, Sire’, Rumiantsev asked, ‘be too inconvenient for you to write yourself to the Emperor Napoleon indicating that you are too protective of the blood, not only of your own subjects but of all peoples to expose it to being spilt through a misunderstanding?’31 And the letter went on to explain that messages from St Petersburg reported the French were angry because the Russian ambassador in Paris had asked for his passports twice in a single day, and this action was being interpreted by Napoleon as an indication that the Russians wanted war.
Alexander received Rumiantsev’s letter that same evening. He was already considering sending an emissary to Napoleon, and the Chancellor’s message finally determined his course of action. At ten o’clock at night he sent for Balashov and informed him that he was to undertake a special mission to the French camp.32 In the letter to Napoleon Alexander incorporated a final plea based, in part, on Rumiantsev’s initiative. For, though Alexander repeated his pledge not to make peace so long as the invaders were on Russian soil, he made it clear he was ready to negotiate once the Grand Army retired across the frontier: ‘If Your Majesty will order a withdrawal of your troops from Russian territory, I am prepared to regard what has passed as though it had never happened, and an agreement is still possible between us’, Alexander declared. With such a remarkable triumph as the crossing of the Niemen to his credit, there was never any prospect that Napoleon would order his troops to retreat purely through a faint hope of reconciliation. Alexander knew this as well as anybody: ‘Between you and me,’ he said to Balashov, ‘I do not expect your mission will put an end to the war. But at any rate Europe will know we did not begin it, as this letter will once more prove.’
The Tsar was indeed much concerned over the response of his peoples, and other governments, to the coming of the war. He discussed with Shishkov the publication of a long manifesto which would explain the real causes of the breach with Napoleon so as to place responsibility firmly on the French.33 A first draft was actually prepared which traced the intrigues of Napoleon in Poland, his aggression in northern Germany, his confiscation of the Duke of Oldenburg’s possessions, and finally the unjustified grievances of the French at the changes in the Russian tariffs at the close of 1810. But this formidable apologia was never made public for, before Alexander could complete work on it, the campaign had acquired such momentum that it became an early casualty of the war against which it protested.
During the third night of the French invasion alarming rumours reached Vilna. Murat and the French cavalry were said to be heading for the city, some reports even alleging advanced patrols were scouring the countryside around Zakret.34 Alexander had no wish to be surrounded in the first manoeuvres of the war. It was decided that Imperial headquarters should retire to Svencionys, forty miles to the north-east, a first stage in any retreat to Drissa. Meanwhile Barclay de Tolly would be left as commander-in-chief at Vilna with the responsibility of choosing either to make a stand against the French outside the city or to supervise the systematic withdrawal of his troops if this course seemed preferable. Alexander accordingly set out for Svencionys at three in the morning of 26 June, slipping unostentatiously through the streets of Vilna as dawn was breaking.35 His escort saw no sign of the French: only the bad state of the roads impeded his progress.
Once it became known the Tsar had left Vilna, there was a near-panic in the city. All the civilians who had followed their sovereign to Lithuania during the previous two months were eager to flee from the
advancing enemy. There was an acute shortage of horses, Barclay himself ordering the army to requisition animals so as to get guns and supplies away. ‘I remember that one distinguished lady insisted on having her horses brought up to her room on the first floor so as to prevent anyone seizing them’, wrote Count Oginski later.36 Although Barclay did not finally announce his intention of abandoning Vilna until more than twenty-four hours after Alexander’s departure, he never attempted to organize the defence of any part of the town except the gates and the bridges. Rather than risk battle with inferior forces, he chose to follow the traditional Russian policy of retirement in depth, much as Kutuzov had done in 1805 after the disaster at Ulm. The Russian troops filed out ‘in good order and with a most impressive silence’ (wrote Countess Tiesenhausen), after setting fire to the bridges and depots for such supplies as could not be loaded into wagons.37 Vilna did not offer the enemy ‘any advantageous positions’, wrote Barclay’s principal adjutant.
Nevertheless the abandonment of so important a city as Vilna without a fight caused heart-searching in Alexander’s entourage and, indeed, in St Petersburg and Moscow. It was difficult to appreciate a strategy which necessitated the surrender of a fortified position so closely associated in the public eye with the Tsar himself over the preceding two months. Precipitate withdrawal seemed to mock the patriotic sentiments of the war manifesto. Shishkov expressed the general feeling of disillusionment when Alexander heard that Barclay had left the city: ‘How terrible to lose Vilna only five days after the start of hostilities!’ he wrote. ‘To run away, to hand over so many towns and districts to the enemy and – on top of all that – actually to boast of such a beginning! What more could the enemy ask for? Nothing, except perhaps to be allowed to advance unhindered to the very gates of our two capitals! Oh Lord have mercy! Bitter tears stain the words I write.’38
