Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  But suddenly Catherine’s tone changed. On 25 September she heard that Bagration had died from the wounds he sustained at Borodino. Her memory returned to the days when she was nineteen and he the dashing commander of the Pavlovsk garrison. It was not, however, romantic sentiment that mellowed her mood. She had a request for her brother. ‘You remember’, she wrote to Alexander, ‘the relations I had with him and that I told you he holds papers which could cruelly compromise me should they fall into strange hands. He swore to me a hundred times that he had destroyed them, but what I know of his character has always made me doubt it … I beg you have his papers sealed up and handed over to you so that I can recover those which belong to me.’52 And Alexander, in the middle of his sorrows for gutted Moscow and his doubts of Kutuzov’s strategy, was forced to attend to his sister’s embarrassment. A special emissary was despatched to the province of Vladimir to secure Bagration’s papers and preserve what was left of her good name.

  At the end of the first week in October Alexander was able to reassure Catherine. ‘Tell me, dearest friend, is it possible for anyone to love you more than I do?’ he asked, with justifiable complacency, as he let her know he had carried out her request.53 And four days later Catherine wrote back from Yaroslavl, ‘It would be a sin in the eyes of God to doubt my devotion to you.’54‡ The intensity of their mutual affection ruled out further talk of plots to depose the one in favour of the other. Nor is there any evidence whom the Tsar suspected of being ‘Napoleon’s tool’ in these alleged intrigues. Henceforth, however, both brother and sister shared an antipathy towards Rostopchin, formerly Catherine’s protegé, and their prejudice may not entirely have sprung from the burning of Moscow.

  Alexander refuses to make Peace

  While these curious exchanges were passing between St Petersburg and Yaroslavl, Marshal Kutuzov and the main Russian army were encamped fifty-five miles south-west of Moscow around the twin villages of Tarutino and Letacheva. The Marshal intended to wait throughout the autumn for a favourable moment to attack the French: he was astride the old road from Moscow to Kaluga and was little more than sixty miles from Tula, the principal Russian ordnance centre. He had every hope of reinforcements in men and weapons reaching him from the south, while partisan detachments were beginning to raid the long line of Napoleon’s communications back to his forward base in Vilna and his depots in Poland and Germany. Meanwhile, there was an unofficial truce around Moscow. Individual Russian commanders exchanged courtesies and gifts with Murat and Marshal Bessières. Napoleon himself did not approve of such fraternization, but he was gratified to learn from Murat that the Russians appeared eager for peace. This confirmed his own convictions. It seemed, however, strange to him that no messenger had as yet reached Moscow from Alexander with a proposal for negotiations.55

  By the beginning of October there was still no word from St Petersburg and Napoleon was becoming increasingly uneasy at his position. He could not winter in Moscow for, quite apart from the destruction caused to the city by the fire, it would be impossible to continue governing the French Empire from improvised headquarters on what was to him the outer fringe of Asia. To his Marshals he proposed a re-grouping of the army which would enable him to shift his point of concentration northwards so as to threaten St Petersburg. They thought the project impracticable. More and more Napoleon was anxious to dictate peace while still holding ‘the political position of Moscow’, to use his own phrase. On 3 October he sent for Caulaincourt, who had accompanied him across Europe from Dresden, and asked him to set out for St Petersburg. ‘You would see the Tsar Alexander. I would entrust you with a letter and you would make peace.’ But Caulaincourt argued that his arrival in the Russian capital would merely convince the Tsar of the weakness of the French position, and he advised Napoleon not to place any confidence in the influence he had once enjoyed at Court as ambassador and friend. As an alternative, Napoleon sent for Caulaincourt’s successor, Lauriston, and ordered him to go to Kutuzov’s headquarters and seek a safe-conduct for St Petersburg. ‘I wish for peace. I must have it. I need it at all costs except my honour’, Napoleon declared to Lauriston.56

  At midnight on 5–6 October Kutuzov received Lauriston. He said nothing about a safe-conduct to the capital (an idea Lauriston disliked as much as Caulaincourt) and he refused the French proposal for an immediate armistice pending negotiations, but he agreed to send Prince Volkonsky to St Petersburg with a copy of the letter Napoleon had written to the Tsar. Napoleon was well satisfied with what Lauriston had achieved. He was sure Alexander, like himself, was seeking peace with honour and that he had now taken the necessary diplomatic initiative to end the campaign. ‘When they receive my letter in Petersburg, they will celebrate with bonfires’, he declared.57

  Once more, however, he was wrong. Volkonsky arrived in the capital on 16 October to find Alexander back in residence at the Winter Palace. The Tsar read Kutuzov’s account of his talk with Lauriston and the copy of Napoleon’s message. He was far from pleased. ‘Peace?’ Alexander declared to Volkonsky. ‘But as yet we have not made war. My campaign is only just beginning.’ He would not deign to acknowledge Napoleon’s message, but sent Volkonsky back to Kutuzov five days later with orders that there should be no more parleying with the French: peace was impossible so long as the enemy was on Russian territory.58

  As Caulaincourt and Lauriston had predicted, the knowledge that Napoleon was anxious for negotiations heartened Alexander, even if he rebuked Kutuzov for holding conversations with Napoleon’s envoys without authority. ‘The peace party about the Court’ was said to be ‘growing stronger’, Adams noted in his journal on 21 October, though he thought ‘this information … extremely questionable’.59 After Volkonsky’s report, however, Alexander was not in the least interested in seeking terms from the French. He was confident there would soon be good news from the battle fronts.

  It began to reach him even before the end of the week. On 24 October the first reports arrived in St Petersburg of a substantial victory by Wittgenstein’s corps at Polotsk, menacing the northern flank of Napoleon’s main line of communication. On the same day came news that Kutuzov had resumed operations against Murat’s vanguard south-west of Moscow and that Cossack patrols had even entered the streets of the old capital. Two days later there was an impressive Te Deum to celebrate this beginning of the counter-offensive. Adams noted in his journal that the storming of Polotsk had accomplished a ‘change from despondency to confidence’.60

  But the most welcome news of all only reached St Petersburg at noon on 27 October: for it was then that salvoes from the ceremonial cannon at the fortress of St Peter and St Paul let the people of the capital know that Moscow had been retaken by the Russians and Napoleon was in retreat. ‘At last God Almighty is leading us forwards’, wrote Elizabeth that night to her mother.61 Next day Alexander, Elizabeth, Marie Feodorovna, the Grand Dukes Constantine, Nicholas and Michael and the Grand Duchess Anna, together with all the ministers of the government and all the diplomatic corps, went once again to the Kazan Cathedral to give thanks to God for the deliverance of Moscow. ‘The music of the Te Deum was remarkably fine’, noted Adams, who was not by nature sympathetic to religious ceremonial, and he added in his journal, ‘When the Emperor left the church to return to the palace, he was greeted with three shouts by the crowd of people who surrounded the church.’62 It was only a month and a day since the terrifying silence of the Coronation anniversary.

  Napoleon had, in fact, left Moscow on 19 October, originally striking south along the Kaluga road with the intention of inflicting a defeat on Kutuzov and, if the weather held out, destroying the arms centre of Tula before retiring on Smolensk. Although he was withdrawing from Moscow, he was not as yet technically in retreat and he was already considering how to regroup his armies for the assault on St Petersburg in the spring of 1813, assuming of course that the Tsar had not, in the intervening months, had the good sense to seek peace. For Napoleon the decisive day was yet to come. On 24 October a predomin
antly Italian Corps of the Grand Army, commanded by Napoleon’s stepson Eugène Beauharnais, disputed possession of the small town of Maloyaroslavets with a force of some 15,000 Russians under General Docturov. In the end the town was captured by Eugène’s men and Napoleon’s bulletin subsequently claimed a victory. So, for that matter, did Kutuzov; and this time strategically he was fully justified in so doing.63 For Maloyaroslavets showed the limits of Napoleon’s power. He could not bring the main Russian army to battle for it was impossible to exploit Eugène’s success. Instead, Napoleon’s Marshals almost unanimously urged him to head at once for Mozhaisk and Smolensk rather than pursue the elusive Kutuzov along the Kaluga road. And on 26 October, he turned north-westwards, away from the Russians at last.

  When, six days later, Alexander heard of Maloyaroslavets and of the French withdrawal he did not immediately assume the tide had turned. He had far too healthy a respect for Napoleon’s military genius to make a snap judgement of this kind. Perhaps, too, he tended to treat Kutuzov’s reports with discretion. He certainly seems to have given greater credence to bulletins from Wittgenstein’s sector than from the commander-in-chief. For much of November Alexander was content to remain quietly in his study, assessing the reports and messages which came to him and running his eye over the maps which his staff provided. By now he had also a new occupation for the mind.64 During the black weeks of October he had been impressed by the religious fortitude of three close companions: his wife, Elizabeth; his old friend, Prince Alexander Golitsyn, once a notorious rake; and young Rodion Koshelev, the cavalry officer he had employed on diplomatic missions to Vienna and who was now Grand Master of the Court. From these three friends Alexander discovered the comfort and inspiration of turning in hours of crisis to the Scriptures. He read the Psalms, he read the Old Testament prophets, he remembered the moments in Moscow when he had felt uplifted by a religious experience, and he grafted on to his Orthodox mysticism some of the zeal for truth in God of Protestant fundamentalism. It made a powerful combination. ‘I simply devoured the Bible’, Alexander said later, ‘finding that its words poured an unknown peace into my heart and quenched the thirst of my soul. Our Lord, in His infinite kindness, inspired me in order to permit me to understand what I was reading.’65 Thus it was with the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel before him that Alexander watched the Lord confounding His enemies on the freezing Russian plain.

  For within a week of receiving Kutuzov’s account of Maloyaroslavets, Alexander could see from the palace window great blocks of ice floating down the Neva. The temperature dropped suddenly in St Petersburg on the night of 7–8 November and, a couple of days later, sledges were passing over the snow in the streets and the canals were frozen over. The severity of the snowfall surprised people: winter was coming more than a fortnight earlier than in the two previous years.66 Away from the Baltic zone, in the unbroken countryside west of Viazma, it was hard going for the armies. There the snow began to fall on 4 November and within forty-eight hours a blizzard was blowing on the retreating troops as they struggled to reach Smolensk. It was rarely possible to see more than a hundred yards ahead and there was always the danger of tumbling into drifts.67 Conditions were terrifying, not only for Napoleon, but for Kutuzov, whose cavalry had been harassing the flank of the Grand Army constantly. Momentarily the blizzards put an end to operations. But to those who studied the map at headquarters or in St Petersburg, the suspension of fighting mattered little. For to Alexander and his staff it seemed as if Napoleon was stumbling back into a trap. In the north, Wittgenstein had already retaken Vitebsk, while to the south-west Chichagov, with the combined forces of what had once been his ‘Army of Moldavia’ and Tormassov’s ‘Third Army’, was advancing eastwards on Minsk. Three Russian armies were thus converging on Napoleon, heading for the long line of the river Berezina. There, surely, the French would be encircled – if, that is, they had not already been destroyed by the Cossacks and the cavalry, or by the ravages of winter.68

  Momentarily Alexander thought he would himself once more take to the field. He told Catherine on 20 November that he intended to leave St Petersburg in a few days and join Wittgenstein who, he explained, ‘according to the plan now being carried out, will link up with Chichagov’s army and, facing about, will thus become the first line while the main army will become the second line’.69 It is not clear why he gave up this idea. Possibly it was no more than an impulse. His leg was still troubling him and the blizzards made it difficult to get through to Novgorod, let alone to Wittgenstein’s advance headquarters in Vitebsk. Moreover there was a real need for the Tsar to remain in touch with affairs at the centre of his Empire. By now encouraging reports were coming through from the battle area: it was clear that on 17 November, at Krasnoe, Napoleon had been nearly captured and that Ney and Davout had been badly mauled; and there were also strange rumours from beyond the frontiers. As Alexander was going to bed on 21 November he received a message from Kutuzov saying that his troops had captured a French General who told him a revolution had broken out in Paris, forcing the Empress Marie Louise to flee the capital. This tale was presumably based upon garbled reports of Malet’s abortive conspiracy a month previously, of which Napoleon had been informed on 6 November.70 Although these stories of dissension within France were vastly exaggerated, they excited Alexander considerably. With Marshal Davout’s captured baton on display to the curious in the Kazan Cathedral there could no longer be any doubt that the enemy was in full flight towards the frontier. ‘The Lord Almighty’, he declared to Catherine in his new apocalyptic style, ‘is sending down upon the head of Napoleon the very ills he destined for us.’71

  By the first week in December there was once again a mood of exultant expectancy in St Petersburg. It seemed, wrote Adams, ‘morally impossible’ that the remnant of the Grand Army would escape the trap the Russians were springing on the Berezina.72 But, as after Borodino, there was a sudden absence of news, which seemed ominous to the doubters. On 8–9 December the city was full of contradictory rumours: that the Russians had gained a striking victory over Napoleon, whose body was found on the field of battle; that two Russian armies had been utterly defeated; that Chichagov had been unable to halt Napoleon, who had outpaced his pursuers. At last it became clear that the third report was nearest to the truth. The French had deceived Chichagov by an elaborate diversion when they reached the Berezina near Borisov and between the afternoon of 26 November and 28–29 November some 50,000 men were able to cross the river and head north-westwards towards Vilna and the Prussian frontier. But Wittgenstein and Kutuzov were so close upon their heels that the improvised bridges over the river had to be destroyed before all the stragglers had made the crossing. Hence, although Napoleon had escaped, the French losses had been considerable: the Grand Army was now no better than a fugitive horde.

  Alexander was disappointed that Napoleon had made his escape. He blamed Kutuzov for not having moved decisively both at Krasnoe and east of Borisov. But already by the time news of what had happened at the Berezina reached Petersburg, Napoleon had left the soil of Russia; he abandoned what remained of his army at Smorgonie on the evening of 5 December and set out on an eleven-hundred-mile journey to Paris, accompanied only by Caulaincourt and a Polish interpreter.73 It was during these final days of the French retreat that the cold was cruellest, the temperature falling at times to twenty-five degrees of frost. Harassed by Cossacks and partisans, the residue of the Grand Army fell back through Vilna to the river Niemen. On 13 December the shattered rearguard under Marshal Ney finally crossed into Prussia at Kaunas: nearly half a million men of the Grand Army failed to return from Russia.

  That same day Kutuzov entered Vilna. It was a city he knew well as he had twice commanded the garrison there but, though it had suffered little damage from the war, it was now scarcely recognizable. ‘The town looked like some Tartar hell, everywhere appalling dirt and smells’, wrote one of the Prussians serving on his staff.74 The Marshal was acutely conscious of the danger of dis
ease, but he was also anxious to find somewhere for his troops to recuperate after the pursuit through the snows. He had informed Alexander as early as 7 December of the total weariness of the regular troops, and his first despatch reporting the capture of Vilna again emphasized the privations which the Russian soldiers had endured in the previous five weeks.75 Yet from St Petersburg it seemed to the Tsar as if Kutuzov must be exaggerating, and he could not hold himself back any longer. Even before Borodino he had resolved to carry the war across his frontiers and into Germany, as he had told the British ambassador at the end of August.76 Now it was intolerable for Kutuzov to be complaining that the army needed rest and re-organizing. Clearly it was essential to see for himself the true state of affairs on the frontier. In the small hours of 19 December Alexander set out from the Winter Palace for Vilna once more. He was not to return to his capital for another eighteen months, and by then Napoleon would be immured on the island of Elba.

  * Mme de Staël, then aged forty-six, was the only child of the great Jacques Necker, finance minister to Louis XVI on the eve of the Revolution. The prestige of her salon in Paris among French intellectuals earned her the early displeasure of Napoleon, intensified by her novels and works of criticism, notably her book De l’Allemagne (of which he ordered the seizure and destruction of the whole first edition in 1810). Although intensely loyal to her concept of France, Germaine de Staël regarded Napoleon as a personal adversary and was prepared to work with his enemies so long as they distinguished between the French people and their sovereign. She crossed into Russia from Austria shortly before the beginning of hostilities. Among her companions was her second son, Albert de Staël, whose real father was Narbonne, the last envoy sent by Napoleon to Alexander.