Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  That Thursday evening a sixteen-year-old girl, Ververa Bakounina, saw Alexander ride into the city and recorded the event in her diary. She was impressed by the religious rapture with which the townsfolk knelt in the streets for the Tsar’s blessing as his horses bore him, ‘so sad and so beautiful’ along the route he had followed on the eve of his coronation. He stayed for eight days in all within the Kremlin, and on that first Thursday night a huge crowd assembled outside its walls in loyalty to their sovereign, waiting almost silently, ‘rippling under the moon like the sea in summer’.3 For a young and romantic diarist it was a deeply moving experience.

  So it was too for Alexander himself, though in a different way. He had come to Moscow wretchedly weary. The conflicts at Drissa between his advisers and his Generals, the agonizing doubts over the wisdom of leaving the army, the curious shadow-boxing of the first month’s campaigning, all these uncertainties weighed heavily on his health. During his week on the road he ate little, sitting disconsolately in his carriage for mile after mile, wrapped in brooding silence. But once within Moscow his confidence revived and with it his vitality. He was spiritually uplifted by the Te Deum sung for the Bucharest Peace amid the relics and holy mysteries of the Kremlin cathedrals. The faith of his subjects in him and in their God re-charged the dynamism of Tsardom. On the very day after his arrival he wrote to Catherine Pavlovna, ‘The mood of the people here is excellent … I cannot tell you what delightful memories of happy times … I have experienced at the sight of Moscow. It made me cry like a child.’4

  There were, however, too many urgent problems for him long to indulge himself in bitter-sweet nostalgia. He needed troops and he needed money; and with Rostopchin’s assistance he obtained both during his eight days in the city. On Monday, 27 July, he was received by separate assemblies of the merchants and the nobility. ‘Sire, take everything, take our lives and our property’, declared one of the more enthusiastic merchants, eager to assist any government ready to destroy the architect of the hated Continental System.5 A subscription list was opened so that the merchants could show their patriotism by declaring at once the amount they would offer. The system was not exactly foolproof: one small tradesman, in an excess of generosity, wrote 5,000 roubles rather than 500 but was too proud and too excited to admit his error (which, since he could not afford even the original sum, was anyhow a largely academic question); but other merchants were ready to pledge amounts of money genuinely corresponding to their wealth which, it is safe to assume, they would only grudgingly have surrendered to any tax-gatherer. ‘They wished to sacrifice a part of their fortune in order to save the rest’, wrote Rostopchin later, with characteristic acerbity.6 Yet, whatever the motive behind their actions, the contributions came flowing in – two million roubles in all – and Alexander was well pleased with the response.

  At the second assembly of nominated representatives from the gentry and nobility of the Moscow region, Alexander sought, and obtained, more than mere money. He needed serfs for the militia and freemen volunteers as well, especially to organize and officer the new regiments. The first enrolment of militia recruits in Moscow took place on 29 July, while Alexander was still in the city. Within a month seven different regiments of militia from the area around the old capital were ready to augment the regular army, even though they were deficient in training and woefully short of weapons.7 Whatever Alexander’s faults as a supreme commander, no one could deny his effectiveness as a recruiting sergeant.

  To appeal to the people for aid in throwing back the invader needed courage on the part of any Tsar. Rostopchin was uneasy, and so were others in Alexander’s entourage; there was always a risk that the latest war with the French would be treated with apathy and that the sacrifices for which the Tsar called would be resented. Yet in relying on the loyalty of his subjects, Alexander showed a sound understanding of the new patriotic sentiments which had begun to penetrate all classes in Russia, even the serfs. It is impossible to tell how far this feeling for country was a response to an instinct of external danger and how far it was a xenophobic reaction to alien traditions of life and culture; but there is abundant evidence it was present in 1812, even before the months of crisis. Mme de Staël, who was travelling through the countryside south of Moscow at this very time, sensed ‘the remarkable spirit’ of the Russians and attempted to analyse it: ‘The reputation for invincibility which their many successes have brought to this nation, the natural pride of the nobility, the inherent inclination towards devotion in the character of the people, the deep influence of religion, the hatred of foreigners … which is … rooted in the blood of the Russians and is occasionally roused, all these causes combine to make them a most energetic people’, she wrote.8 But she did not see how recent was this sense of nationhood. In proclaiming the struggle against Napoleon to be ‘a national Holy War for the Fatherland’, Alexander was responding to a flowering of patriotism as deep as in the England of Elizabeth or the Britain of Nelson. It was fitting Alexander should make his call for a Holy War at Moscow. With six cathedrals and fifteen hundred churches, there was no better place in Russia from which to issue such a proclamation.

  The Clamour for Kutuzov

  Alexander, having kissed Rostopchin farewell on both cheeks, left Moscow in the small hours of 31 July and hurried to Tver, which he reached late on that same Friday afternoon. He spent no more than a night at his sister’s residence and there is no record of their discussions. Since Catherine was expecting a second child within a month it is likely much of their talk concerned trivialities. At all events the letters they subsequently exchanged show that Alexander did not then raise one of the problems uppermost in his mind – a warning he had received ‘eight or ten days’ before setting out for Vilna (i.e. in the second week of April) that Napoleon intended to discredit him in his family circle and to foment intrigues centred on the Grand Duchess herself.9 Clearly Alexander decided not to tax his sister with such matters so near her confinement, and we learn of them only from a letter he wrote four weeks after Catherine had given birth to her baby son. But at least he was able to see there was no overt scheming at her Court. Troubled as usual by regrets that he could not spend longer with his ‘dearest Catherine and George’, he hastened back to the capital.10

  He arrived in St Petersburg ‘about two o’clock in the morning’ on Monday, 3 August, slipping into the town almost unobserved: ‘I walked before breakfast in the Summer Gardens’, wrote Adams in his journal that day, ‘and in turning round … I perceived the Imperial flag flying over the palace, which first gave me notice of the Emperor’s return.’11 This near-anonymity set the fashion for the remainder of the summer and autumn. Alexander made few public appearances and gave no balls or grand receptions: the Empire was at war and he was determined to emphasize the contrast with the halcyon days of the Tilsit Peace. Most of the following weeks he spent working in the small palace on Kammionyi Island. ‘You can well imagine the endless jobs heaped upon me in Petersburg after so long an absence and especially under present conditions’, he wrote to Catherine, and he added the significant comment, ‘Here I have found a worse frame of mind than at Moscow or in the interior.’12

  The truth was that people at Court and in Society were becoming more and more anxious over the way in which the war was being fought. While Alexander was in Moscow the rival armies had faced each other briefly outside Vitebsk but Barclay, painfully conscious of his inferior numbers, had declined to give battle and had fallen back eastwards overnight, closer and closer to Smolensk. The only good news reaching St Petersburg was from General Tormassov’s Third Army in Volhynia. Tormassov checked an incursion by a Saxon corps at Kobrin, near Brest, and went over to the offensive; but although Tormassov’s victory was celebrated in St Petersburg, no one could disguise the fact that the Third Army’s operations were essentially peripheral to the main arena of battle. What mattered was the vast concentration of 170,000 men – French, Germans, Italians, Poles, Croats and others – pressing inexorably forward toward
s Smolensk, an arrow thrust into the heart of Muscovy.

  At times Alexander found the lack of reliable news intolerable. He no longer frittered away the hours with Maria Naryshkin. As in other moments of crisis he looked for support to Elizabeth, and she gave it to him. She remained magnificently resolute. ‘How painful not to be able to tell you of what occupies my thoughts every moment of my day and my night, whether or not I sleep’, she wrote to her mother a week after Alexander’s return. ‘Greetings from my dear and well-beloved Russia for whom I feel in this hour as for a darling child wretchedly sick! I am certain God will not abandon her but she will suffer and I with her, sharing every spasm of her anguish.’13 So intensely was Elizabeth conscious of the perils facing Russia that she thus re-opened the deepest wound in her personal experience in order to identify herself with the tribulations of her adopted fatherland; while, as a practical gesture of sympathy, she established a fund for war orphans and handed over nine-tenths of her annual allowance to charities.14

  Meanwhile from Russian headquarters there continued to come nothing but recrimination and excuses. Bagration, who at last linked up with Barclay in Smolensk, poured out pages of accumulated scorn in letters to Arakcheev. The Grand Duke Constantine penned bad advice to his brother, mostly at Barclay’s expense. Barclay himself – ‘the Minister’, as his enemies insisted on calling him so as to detract from his military command – wrote directly to Alexander, patiently explaining how he was saving the army for the right moment; and that, after all, was the last order he had received from the Tsar at Polotsk.15 But Alexander thought little of Barclay’s explanations. ‘There is’, he wrote to Catherine, ‘a great indignation here against the Minister of War who, I must confess, gives good grounds for it by indecision in conduct and by the chaos of his work.’16 He was, however, reluctant to remove him from the high command: for who would take his place?

  On 17 August Alexander received a letter from General Prince Shuvalov brought to him by his personal aide-de-camp, Prince Volkonsky. Shuvalov urgently begged Alexander to appoint another commander-in-chief ‘or Russia will be lost’. That evening Alexander summoned a special committee of six generals, headed by Arakcheev and Saltykov. He left them to study the reports from the war zone and to advise him who should be given command of the armies. After three and a half hours of discussion they signed a resolution which unanimously proposed the appointment of Kutuzov, the popular idol of Moscow and St Petersburg and the true Russian father figure revered by the rank and file of the army at large.17 Their choice did not surprise Alexander – ‘I found everybody in Petersburg crying out to give old Kutuzov the chief command’, he explained later18 – but it could scarcely please him. It was hard to forget the humiliations of the Austerlitz campaign.

  For three days Alexander hesitated. He seems to have considered appointing Bennigsen, or inviting Bernadotte to cross the Baltic and lead the armies against his old compatriots. Perhaps Alexander toyed again with the idea of once more putting himself at the head of his troops. His mind was made up by three letters: one from the Governor-General of Moscow; one from the Grand Duchess, who had moved from Tver to Yaroslavl for her confinement; and the third from her husband, George of Oldenburg. Rostopchin simply informed the Tsar that in Moscow, too, everyone was eager to see Kutuzov given the supreme command.19 Prince George, having just received news from headquarters in Smolensk, supported the claims of Bagration whom, he insisted, ‘the army longs to serve under, even if you do not like him yourself’.20 Catherine agreed with her husband but her criticisms went deeper: ‘If things go on like this’, she wrote bluntly, ‘the enemy will be in Moscow in ten days’ time. George points out one way for you and there are others besides, but in God’s name do not choose to command in person yourself. It is essential to appoint, without delay, a leader in whom the troops have confidence, and on that score you inspire none at all … I beg you to forgive me if my letter causes you displeasure and will only plead my good intentions and personal devotion which you can never hold in doubt.’21

  Alexander forgave her; but nothing would induce him to give the supreme command to Bagration. He had long distrusted him and was still incensed by his apparent disobedience to the strategic plan in July. If it was really necessary to hand over the army to an Austerlitz veteran, better Kutuzov than Bagration, for at least the ‘old fox’ might delegate decisions of importance to Bennigsen. Hence, on 20 August, Alexander at last sent for Kutuzov who, since returning from the Turkish Front, had been organizing the militia in the capital. A decree nominating him commander-in-chief was signed that same day. Bennigsen would serve him as chief-of-staff, Barclay de Tolly and Bagration were confirmed in their respective army commands, and Barclay remained nominally Minister of War. It was a cumbersome arrangement, though a popular one with the men in the field. ‘A true Russian exorcized the evil genius of the foreigners’, wrote the Prussian Colonel, Karl von Clausewitz, with heavy irony.22 But was it already too late? Kutuzov did not reach Barclay’s headquarters until 29 August. By then Napoleon’s Grand Army had passed through the burning wreck of Smolensk and captured Vyazma, little more than one hundred and fifty miles from Moscow. Time was running out for Russia: in less than seven weeks Barclay had retreated over five hundred miles.

  Bernadotte; General Wilson; and Germaine de Staël

  ‘People wanted his appointment: I named him. As for me, I wash my hands of it’, Alexander is reported to have told one of his closest friends before Kutuzov left the capital.23 These words show a lack of responsibility at variance with Alexander’s whole approach to the campaign, yet there is no doubt he was angry at the pressures brought to bear on him, and he may well have made some such remark in a fit of pique. Certainly he did not wait to give the new commander-in-chief a detailed directive. He had already undertaken to make a visit to Finland for talks on the general situation in Europe with Bernadotte, the Prince Royal of Sweden, and he set out for the Gulf of Bothnia as soon as the decree nominating Kutuzov was published.

  The meeting, which took place at Äbo (now Turku), created great interest. As usual on such occasions, it produced a fine crop of rumousr.24 It was said Alexander had offered Bernadotte a high Russian command with the possibility that, should he eventually liberate Paris from the Corsican, there would be no better candidate for the French throne. But, whatever may have been discussed in private, the public results of the meeting were meagre: an undertaking that the Swedes would not enter the war against Russia and would indeed ally with Alexander, provided the Russians assisted the Swedes with an attack on French-held Zealand and recognized the eventual cession of Norway to Sweden as compensation for the loss of Finland. Bernadotte also offered to police Finland with Swedish troops so as to relieve the Russian garrisons for service elsewhere, but the Tsar was not inclined to assist the Swedish army to return to territory seized from it by his own troops only three years previously. Alexander was accompanied to Äbo by Rumiantsev as well as by Nesselrode, but the principal discussions were conducted by the Tsar himself rather than his ministers. The main consequence of the Äbo meeting was thus the sealing of the friendship between Alexander and Bernadotte: the Tsar assured Lord Cathcart, the new British ambassador (whom Alexander first met at Äbo) that ‘he was fully satisfied of the zeal and of the generous and loyal principles of the Prince Royal.’25 This, as far as it went, was satisfactory; but it did not bring any Swedish aid across the Baltic to relieve the pressure on Kutuzov. Although it was no doubt valuable to be told by a Marshal of France that retreat in depth would ‘exhaust the enemy’ and ‘worry the French soldier’, some of Alexander’s companions wondered not unnaturally in whose interest Bernadotte was tendering such sound advice. Loyalties and friendships changed these days with disconcerting rapidity.

  The point was not lost on Alexander when he returned to St Petersburg on 3 September. Five years previously he had ordered the expulsion from his Empire of the British General, Sir Robert Wilson, who had repaid the Tsar’s hospitality by clumsy patriotic i
ntriguing against the Tilsit policy. Since then General Wilson had acquired a European reputation as an expert on Russia at war: his Brief Remarks on the Character and Composition of the Russian Army was published in 1810 and was studied by the military specialists of the age, including Napoleon himself. When, in the spring of 1812, it became obvious that war would be renewed between Russia and France, Wilson was sent by the British government from Turkey to the Russian Front, where he arrived in time to witness the fall of Smolensk But politics were always as fascinating to Wilson as war and within two weeks of returning to Russia he was again revelling in the intrigues of the high command.26 He was sent to St Petersburg by officers at headquarters with a request he should inform the Tsar that ‘if His Majesty would no longer give his confidence to advisers whose policy they mistrusted, they would testify their allegiance by exertions and sacrifices which would add splendour to the crown and security to the throne under every adversity.’ When Alexander heard that Wilson had arrived in the capital during his absence in Finland, he at once invited him to dinner, asked his impressions of the army, and was duly given the message which the officers had entrusted to ‘the English General’ (as Wilson always referred to himself in his memoirs).27