Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  Napoleon’s advance menaced both Leipzig and Dresden, where Alexander had celebrated the Orthodox Easter only a week previously. The two armies met on 2 May on high ground south of Lützen.21 The position was nearly eighty miles west of Dresden but it was so strategically situated that the outcome of the battle would decide the fate of the whole of Saxony. In many respects it was an indeterminate engagement. The French suffered greater casualties than the Allies, but it was Wittgenstein and Blücher who were forced to retire and the battle was therefore technically a Napoleonic victory. Once the Russians were in retreat it was difficult for them to halt and turn about, although Miloradovich fought a brave delaying action against Eugène Beauharnais on 5 May at Colditz (where there was a fortress which was to gain notoriety in a later war). Wittgenstein hesitated on the right bank of the Elbe, for he knew that Alexander (back at headquarters in Görlitz) wished him to stand and fight with the river behind him. But Wittgenstein had no intention of repeating the mistake Bennigsen had made so disastrously at Friedland; and on 10 May the Russians re-crossed the Elbe ‘with a bloody nose’, as the old Marshal had predicted two months before. Napoleon was thus able to establish his advanced headquarters in Dresden, where King Frederick Augustus of Saxony, whose loyalties of late had been wavering, came down firmly and fatally on the side of the French big battalions.

  The loss of Dresden chilled the faint hearts in the Allied camp. ‘God in Heaven, does this then mean I must go back to Memel after all?’ asked Frederick William of Prussia plaintively at the news of Napoleon’s success;22 and the Grand Duchess Catherine, who arrived in Teplitz (which is only twenty-five miles across the frontier from Dresden) on 7 May, decided she would be safer in Prague, and hurriedly had her horses re-harnessed, just in case Napoleon chose to pursue her brother into neutral Austria.23 But in all this panic Alexander at least kept his nerve. He was furious with Wittgenstein for ‘having re-crossed the Elbe … when we should have attacked since the enemy was near to rout’; but he did not think the general situation grave, for he was convinced the French could not exploit their gains.24 The loss of Dresden helped him to resolve one problem. If Wittgenstein could not be relied upon to keep his head, there was no point in entrusting him with supreme command. The Tsar accordingly summoned back Barclay de Tolly, who was senior to any other Russian General in the field. Although the enemy as a whole had little respect for Barclay, he was less likely to arouse friction and resentment as commander-in-chief than anybody else now that his old rivals, Bagration and Kutuzov, were both dead.

  There were, however, some anxious moments in the fourth week of May when Napoleon won another victory at Bautzen, thirty-five miles east of Dresden, and Barclay began to urge a retreat back into Poland.25 But Alexander would have none of it. Peace was in the air. Metternich, eager to acquire status for Austria and himself, had sent two special envoys of considerable diplomatic experience to the rival headquarters in the hope that they would be able to induce Napoleon and Alexander to accept a compromise settlement, which would end the war for Europe as a whole.26 Napoleon at heart was anxious to be rid of the whole folly of a campaign against Russia: he might have the men but he did not have the horses or guns, and supplies no longer came through from Paris with the regularity of his earlier enterprises. But Napoleon did not want to be dependent upon Austria. What he needed was a breathing-space in which he could see if it were possible to come to terms with the enemy. If it were not, he could reinforce tired regiments and replenish his ordnance. Once again he remembered Tilsit; and he sent for Caulaincourt. He was to go to Alexander’s headquarters and ‘rescue him from Metternich’s clutches’. Napoleon was still convinced he was dealing with a man of easily impressionable character, whom anybody with a honeyed tongue could entice provided they treated him with sufficient flattery. ‘If the Emperor Alexander and I could have just one talk together’, Napoleon confided to Caulaincourt, ‘I am certain we would end up agreeing with each other … A single conversation at Russian headquarters and we could divide the world between us!’ He was even willing to give Alexander public credit for bestowing peace on Europe, if that would please him.27

  On 25 May Caulaincourt wrote to Nesselrode asking if he might pay his respects to Alexander and arrange an armistice between the opposing armies. But the Tsar had no intention of receiving Caulaincourt in audience. Armistice negotiations were carried on with proper diplomatic protocol between Caulaincourt and a Russian and a Prussian plenipotentiary, first at Waldstatt and later at Plaeswitz. On 4 June, after five days of bargaining, an armistice was signed: the French would retire to Liegnitz while the Allies held a line running south-westwards from Breslau to the Austrian frontier at Landshut, with a neutral corridor some thirty miles wide between the opposing armies; and all hostilities would cease for at least six weeks.28

  Alexander was well satisfied. He preferred the pace to be set by Nesselrode rather than by the Austrians, whom he distrusted as much as did Napoleon. The Armistice of Plaeswitz was, to the Tsar, as good as a battle won, and without the cost in men and material. For the first time, in mid-summer, Napoleon had felt it necessary to halt the Grand Army short of its objectives. If this was not an admission of defeat, it was at least a concession that decisive victory was not in sight for the French; and there seemed at last a prospect of a compromise peace.

  But was this what Alexander wanted? A patched-up Europe in which the French still exercised considerable power was far short of the ideals which had inspired the Tsar when his troops first entered Poland and Germany. The time had come for him to decide what sort of Europe he wished to see imposed on Napoleon when the fighting ended. The period of armistice now beginning was for Alexander – and as well for his brother sovereigns of Prussia and Austria – a hectic interlude of bluff and bargaining in which the diplomats rather than the generals held the centre of the stage.

  Diplomatic Interlude (June–August 1813)

  In earlier years Alexander had made clear his war aims with elaborate detail; but in 1813 he retained considerable freedom of action, and was reluctant to lose it. This independence was caused in part by accident: the nominal Chancellor, Rumiantsev, remained in St Petersburg ‘for the sake of signing passports’(as he complained);29 and Nesselrode was too self-effacing as yet to have a policy of his own, or to impose his opinions upon his master. Alexander was thus left to decide on policy to a greater extent than ever before in his reign. Since he had also to resolve questions of military strategy it is hardly surprising that he found no time to prepare an elaborate grand design for Europe. Necessity had induced him to offer no more than the vaguest statements on war aims; and with the British as well as the Austrians seeking to bind him to specific terms, it was natural he took advantage of his freedom from commitments to stand aside as long as possible.

  He knew of course what he wanted in central Europe: expulsion of the French from Germany and the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw and the reunification of the Polish lands under his own suzerainty. But what did he mean by ‘Germany’ and ‘Poland’? He had at first encouraged Stein to proclaim a patriotic war for the German Fatherland, administering the territories liberated by his army; but on 25 March the Russians issued, in Kutuzov’s name, an ‘appeal to the princes and peoples of Germany’ which, while calling for the abolition of the Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine, fell far short of Stein’s hopes for a unified German State. Similarly Alexander had given private assurances to the Austrians that he favoured restoration to Emperor Francis of the territories he had lost to Napoleon in successive wars and that he hoped the Habsburgs would again be recognized as the master dynasty in Germany once the French were expelled beyond the Rhine. All this was confusing enough: it was made no easier by the promise contained in the Prussian treaty of Kalisch that if Frederick William ceded his Polish lands to Alexander, he would receive territorial compensation elsewhere in Germany.30

  Alexander’s evasiveness irritated the British Foreign Secretary, Castlereagh, and perplexed Metternich (as he intended
that it should). Castlereagh; seeking to pin down the Tsar, sent Cathcart a copy of Pitt’s ‘despatch on which the confederacy of 1805 was founded’ in the hope that the ambassador would ‘learn the bearings’ of Alexander’s mind on ‘so masterly an outline for the restoration of Europe’.31 The Tsar, however, had found it difficult to understand Pitt’s principles at the time, and the passage of eight years did not make comprehension any easier. He was prepared to give an assurance that he would not sign a final peace with France without consulting his British ally; and now that Castlereagh was proposing a £2 million subsidy to Russia and another one of the same amount to Prussia, Alexander was willing to look favourably on the British efforts at defeating Napoleon, even ordering a Te Deum to be sung in honour of Wellington’s triumph at Vittoria. But, though Cathcart and Alexander trusted and liked each other, not even sentiments of friendship could induce the Tsar to let Castlereagh have a clear statement of his war aims. A few months ago, when there was no immediate likelihood of Napoleon’s downfall, Alexander had occasionally spoken of the need to find a new ruler for the French once ‘Buonaparte’ was overthrown, but now that the liberation of Europe had started in earnest Cathcart did not find him inclined to return to the subject.32 It was all very exasperating.

  With the Austrians Alexander had, in the end, to be more precise. Early in May Count Stadion, one of the most experienced Austrian diplomats and a former Foreign Minister, arrived at Russo-Prussian headquarters to discuss the terms under which Russia would accept peace from the French. Stadion was as much an avowed enemy of Napoleon as Stein and he made it clear to Alexander that if Napoleon rejected Austrian mediation Emperor Francis would enter the war on the Allied side.33 In the second week of June Metternich himself travelled to Bohemia, met the Grand Duchess Catherine in Prague and let her know that he was anxious to co-ordinate policy with her brother.34 Eventually it was arranged that Alexander should leave his headquarters near Reichenbach (Dzierzoniow) in Silesia on 16 June and cross the Austrian frontier to spend some days at a castle belonging to Count Colloredo at Opotschna, where he would be joined by his sisters Catherine and Marie – and by Metternich, who had travelled north to join Emperor Francis at the Austrian army headquarters in Gitschin.35

  Alexander had only seen Metternich on one other occasion, his visit in November 1805 to Potsdam and Berlin, where Metternich was then serving as Austrian ambassador. Although they had remained in contact both before and after Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, Alexander still tended to distrust Metternich as the man responsible for the Bonaparte-Habsburg marriage; and he was especially afraid that Metternich, unlike Stadion, wanted to secure reasonable peace terms for Napoleon precisely because the dynastic connection was his own first diplomatic triumph. When therefore the two men met at Opotschna on 18–19 June, Alexander was unusually reserved and gave Metternich the impression he believed him still to be ‘totally on the side of the French’.36 But real progress was made towards a general agreement. Alexander accepted four fundamental points as a basis for peace: an end to French military control of the Confederation of the Rhine and the re-constitution of Hamburg and Lübeck as Free Cities; the recovery by Prussia of the territory lost to French satellites in 1807; the return to Austria of her lost provinces on the Adriatic; and the formal dissolution of the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw. Napoleon was to be given the opportunity of accepting these terms as a basis for a peace conference; and had he not done so by 20 July, Austria would join the Allies and continue the war until Holland, Spain, Germany and all Italy were freed from French domination. These proposals, which had already been settled by Stadion and Nesselrode in discussion, became the minimum peace programme acceptable to Alexander; and they were formally incorporated in the Reichenbach Convention, concluded by Russia, Austria and Prussia on 27 June.

  The Tsar returned to Reichenbach from Opotschna, delighted at his talks with his sisters, if not at those with Metternich. Now there was nothing to be done except await a response from the French. Metternich was summoned to Dresden for an audience with Napoleon almost as soon as he had left Alexander. There followed the famous interview of 26 June at the Marcolini Palace, in which Napoleon’s histrionics revealed to Metternich the essential weakness of the French Imperial titles and their dependence upon continued military success.37 After four days in Dresden Napoleon persuaded Metternich that he would accept the armed mediation of Austria and send a representative to a peace conference in Prague on 10 July provided that there were no military operations for another month after the conference ended. These conditions did not correspond with the points Alexander had made in the Opotschna talks or with the terms of the newly signed Reichenbach Convention, and Metternich had no right to extend an armistice of which Austria was not a signatory for another three weeks; but he was certainly not going to risk losing his position as arbiter by returning from Dresden to Gitschin empty-handed.

  Alexander was angry at Metternich’s apparent duplicity: this confirmed his worst fears of the man. He had no intention of going to Prague himself, nor was he prepared for Nesselrode to waste valuable days listening to Metternich pontificating in the capital of Bohemia. Russia, he decided, would be fittingly represented by an Alsatian émigré, Jean Anstedt, who hated Napoleon and was at the same time ‘one of the most bitter enemies of Austria’.38 Anstedt would certainly never allow Metternich to commit Russia to a compromise truce with the French, nor indeed – if he could help it – to show any diplomatic initiative whatsoever. At the same time Alexander proposed to his sister Catherine (who was enjoying herself in Prague when not taking the waters of Eger) that she might discover ‘what is needed to make Metternich wholly ours’, adding significantly ‘I have the funds, so do not stint yourself’;39 but he did not specify precisely what Catherine was to do with the money, nor does she appear to have sent him a written account of her activities.

  The Prague Conference in itself was unworthy of all this attention. Napoleon sent Caulaincourt, but permitted him only to sound out the Allied delegates, not to discuss the Reichenbach proposals; and Metternich was mainly concerned to let the Emperor Francis see how deeply his son-in-law was in the wrong, for there was still some reluctance on the Emperor’s part to order the Austrian army to march against his favourite daughter’s husband. It would have been wiser for Alexander to send Nesselrode, for Anstedt was unable (and unwilling) to discover from Caulaincourt so much about the war-weariness of the French as someone with a better knowledge of the Parisian pressure groups. As it was, Metternich gained much useful information from his talks with Caulaincourt, but he was disinclined to put it at the disposal of the Russians. He was, however, so convinced of the need for an Allied army to march speedily on France and dictate terms when poised on the frontiers that he delivered a virtual ultimatum on 8 August. Since no reply was received from the French, the Austrians joined Russia, Britain, Prussia and Sweden in the coalition against Napoleon on 12 August. The Armistice was at an end, and fighting was resumed in Silesia four days later.40

  The Battles of Dresden and Leipzig and the Race for Frankfurt

  Alexander was at that moment in Prague, meeting Emperor Francis for the first time since their harrowing encounter at Czeitsch on the day after Austerlitz. Today, as then, they were faced by an urgent military problem, although fortunately one dictated by strength rather than weakness. For there was now in Germany an allied force of more than 800,000 men, easily outnumbering Napoleon’s army which, though almost twice as large as before the Armistice, contained many regiments filled by raw conscripts and some contingents from the remaining satellites (Bavaria and Saxony) of wavering loyalty. But who was to command this Allied army of liberation? Alexander had never thought any of his Russian Generals could co-ordinate so heterogeneous a force. For a time he favoured Bernadotte, who visited him at Reichenbach during the Armistice and was now commanding a joint Swedish-Prussian force south of Berlin; and he considered both the Prussian Blücher and the Austrian Archduke Charles, who was, however, out of favour with h
is brother, Emperor Francis. Eventually, on 6 August, it was agreed that another Austrian, Prince Schwarzenberg, should serve as supreme commander. There was much to be said for Schwarzenberg: his generalship was respected by Napoleon; he knew his opponents, for he had been ambassador in Paris as well as commanding the Austrian auxiliaries attached to the Grand Army in 1812; and he was both personally brave and strategically ambitious, with the experience of a quarter of a century of warfare behind him. But no sooner had the Tsar given his approval of Schwarzenberg’s appointment than he changed his mind – and requested the supreme command for himself.41

  This proposal pleased nobody. Politically it would have confirmed the Tsar’s status as leader of ‘the Good Cause’ against Bonaparte, to the chagrin of the ruler of Austria and his ministers. Militarily it would have been disastrous. Alexander had as yet been present only on one battlefield, Austerlitz. He remained impetuous and inclined to give undue weight to the theories of his discovery of the moment, thereby tending to favour a persuasive staff-officer at the expense of more taciturn men of greater experience. The Austrians flatly refused to give him the military authority for which he asked. Metternich threatened that Austria would withdraw from the coalition if the Tsar would not confirm Schwarzenberg’s appointment; and he even hinted that they might put their troops at the disposal of Napoleon, enforcing peace with him rather than against him.42 With a bad grace Alexander gave way: now he had yet another reason for resenting the Austrian minister.