Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  In the fourth week of August Alexander sadly showed how limited was his knowledge of military affairs. The Allies were anxious to seize the initiative and advance on Leipzig before Napoleon could attack them. Alexander himself wished first to recover Dresden, a city to which he attached especial importance. Against the advice of the Austrians and with the reluctant consent of his own commanders, Alexander insisted that Schwarzenberg should make a frontal assault on Dresden from the hills to the south-west of the city.43 The Tsar and Frederick William watched the battle from the Racknitz Heights on the afternoon of 26 August. At first the Allies seemed to make good progress. Then suddenly through his telescope Alexander saw the long dark line of the Old Guard sweeping into the city along the right bank of the Elbe and, behind them, what seemed endless columns of reinforcements streaming in from Bautzen. The Tsar sensed the Allies had attacked too late and could not now gain a victory. He wished to break off the engagement at once. Unexpectedly Frederick William, standing beside him on the Racknitz Heights, took a tougher line: ‘Why should 200,000 Allied soldiers give way before the Guard of one man?’ he demanded. Alexander, perhaps already conscious he should not have insisted on an attack in the first place, acknowledged the validity of the King’s objection and did not interfere again. Yet, although the battle continued well into the second day, it was no longer possible for the Allies to make any impression in the French defences, and before nightfall on 27 August they were falling back towards the mountains.44

  Momentarily the battle of Dresden endangered the whole Allied position; for two days later French cavalry crossed into Austria and came to within five miles of the joint headquarters which the sovereigns had established at Teplitz. But on 30 August they were finally checked at Külm, and Schwarzenberg began slowly to build up his forces again for the thrust into western Saxony towards Leipzig. Although Alexander continued to give his opinions at the conference table the lesson of Dresden temporarily chastened him. He allowed the commander-in-chief to make his own dispositions, only complaining from time to time that Schwarzenberg was over-cautious and slow.45

  At Teplitz the Tsar was soon distracted from military affairs to diplomatic questions once more. His partners were disturbed that there was still no formal understanding between the Allies on war aims. This was not a matter which especially worried Alexander since he still believed it was his mission to destroy the Napoleonic State and then seek revelation of what was to take place. But Metternich and Hardenberg (the chief minister of Prussia) were practical men, and so indeed was Nesselrode. Negotiations led on 9 September to the conclusion of three bilateral pacts binding Russia, Austria and Prussia, the basis of the continental alliance against Napoleon and indeed of the understanding between the three autocracies which endured for much of the next half-century. Collectively the pacts were known as the Teplitz Treaties. Publicly they announced the principal war aim as ‘the re-establishment of a just equilibrium between the Powers’. Secret clauses expanded this vague intention a little more precisely, though not much: the Confederation of the Rhine and the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw were to be swept from the map as Napoleonic bric-à-brac; Austria and Prussia would recover ‘as closely as possible’ their territorial extent as in 1805; the smaller German states would enjoy ‘entire and absolute independence’; and the future of Poland would be settled by amicable arrangements between the three Powers at a later stage. Far more issues were shirked by the Teplitz Treaties than were solved.46 But at least Alexander could now count on the continued partnership of the Austrians in the grand march westwards.

  The Allied advance began in earnest in the first week of October. Napoleon, who was painfully conscious of his inferiority in numbers, sought to shorten his lines and concentrate around Leipzig, while leaving garrisons to defend Dresden and other towns and cities in the east. After a preliminary skirmish outside Leipzig on 14 October the main battle for the city began two days later and continued intermittently for sixty hours. Alexander participated in the fighting more directly than in any previous engagement and was at one point in some danger when his escort had to throw themselves into the mêlée in order to check a French counter-attack. By nightfall on 18 October it was clear to Napoleon that he would have to break off the battle, or risk annihilation. Leipzig was a battle in attrition, won by the Allies because they possessed the men and the material which Napoleon lacked; it was a triumph in determination rather than a victory of arms.47

  A popular print circulated in England and Germany soon afterwards showed the three sovereigns of Russia, Austria and Prussia kneeling in prayer in the middle of the battlefield to give thanks to the Almighty for the success of their soldiery. The scene is no doubt apocryphal but the mood of pious thanksgiving genuine enough. In a letter to his friend, Golitsyn, on 21 October Alexander wrote:

  Almighty God has granted us a glorious victory over the renowned Napoleon after a four day battle beneath the walls of Leipzig. The Almighty has demonstrated that in His eyes nobody in this world is strong or great except those whom He Himself exalts. Twenty-seven Generals captured, almost three hundred heavy cannon and 37,000 prisoners – such is the result of these four stirring days. And now we are no more than two marches away from Frankfurt-am-Main! You can well imagine what I am feeling and thinking!48

  The whole of Germany, right to the banks of the Rhine, lay open to invaders. Bavaria and Württemberg had deserted Napoleon before Leipzig, and Saxony during the battle itself. Now the French, routed and demoralized, were on their own. There was indeed good cause for thanksgiving.

  The pursuit of the French across Germany trailed away as the weather broke and the roads turned to mud. But it was still possible to make an extra effort for any gain of particular substance. Thus in the first days of November there was a dignified race for Frankfurt, the traditional coronation city of the old Holy Roman Empire. The race was won by Metternich who reached Frankfurt on the evening of 4 November, but Alexander arrived with the cavalry outriders next morning, having left the main body of Russian infantry far behind. Together Metternich and Alexander arranged a grand ceremonial entry for the Emperor Francis on 6 November. It was especially gratifying for the ruler of distant Russia to escort the last bearer of the old Imperial dignities to the doors of the church where he had received the German crown twenty-one years before.49 Henceforth it would be difficult to banish a Tsar to the outer fringe of Europe or to settle the affairs of Germany without reference to St Petersburg as well as to Vienna.

  There were, however, more urgent problems of policy which could not be resolved by grandiose gestures in historic places. While Alexander and the Austrians were racing for Frankfurt, the last troops of Napoleon’s command re-crossed the Rhine at Mainz. Ought the Allies to press on at once into France or should there be a final attempt to achieve a general peace? And if so, on what terms? Alexander, as ever, wished to maintain the pursuit.50 The Prussians and Austrians hesitated. Many of them, including Schwarzenberg himself, had marched on Paris in 1792 only to be checked by the patriotic spirit of the revolutionary army once its soil was sullied by the invader. The Allies could not risk a major defeat in a winter campaign when it would be difficult to bring up reinforcements and supplies. There was evidence that Napoleon wanted to negotiate, or rather that his marshals and ministers wanted him to negotiate. Among the prisoners taken in Germany was Caulaincourt’s brother-in-law, Baron de St Aignan, and Metternich proposed he should be sent as rapidly as possible to Paris with an assurance to Napoleon that the Allies would offer generous terms to France, recognizing the right to retain ‘her natural frontiers’, including Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine. Alexander, perhaps preoccupied with military questions, approved Metternich’s proposal although Nesselrode thought the Allies should, from the start of talks with Napoleon, insist on far stiffer terms.51 It would certainly have been wiser to define their position more clearly; and, indeed, to have co-ordinated objectives with their ally across the Channel.

  Outwardly relations between Alexan
der and Metternich were by now better than they had been in Bohemia: ‘Prince Metternich has ready access to H.I.M. and he [the Tsar] certainly listens to his suggestions with confidence’, reported Cathcart to London.52 Basically, however, there remained a wide difference in their respective attitudes towards the problems of peace. Metternich’s experience of three months’ negotiating with the Russians convinced him Europe needed a strong, though not predominant, Bonapartist State to assist Austria to counter the Russo-Prussian combination in the post-war period. Alexander, on the other hand, still regarded himself as an instrument of divine retribution, seeking vengeance on Napoleon for the sufferings of 1812. The thought of entering Paris excluded all other considerations from his policy: by all means let there be talk of peace but let the advance continue; let it strike at the heart of France even as Napoleon had struck at the heart of Russia fifteen months before.53

  Blücher and the Prussians agreed with Alexander: they urged the immediate crossing of the middle Rhine and a march through Lorraine. Schwarzenberg, unhappy at the pressures around the conference tables, hesitated to pit tired troops against the concentric fortresses long built to safeguard the old Kingdom of France. On 19 November, still in Frankfurt, Alexander accepted a compromise: the main army would wheel south through Basle and into the Belfort Gap while Blücher, with what had once been the ‘Army of Silesia’, would strike at Nancy and head for the upper Marne.54 The Allies crossed the Rhine three days before Christmas, but the Tsar remained in southern Germany until the end of the first week of the New Year. While there was a possibility of an emissary from Napoleon arriving at Allied headquarters to seek peace, Alexander was determined not to allow Metternich a free hand. He would have preferred to be thrusting forward with the army but he was not prepared to leave Frederick William, Francis and Metternich to plot against him, especially now that the British Foreign Secretary, Castlereagh, was on his way to headquarters with plenipotentiary powers. Alexander had already heard of his own popularity in Britain. He awaited the coming of Castlereagh with lively curiosity.

  The Campaign in France, 1814

  In general, Alexander was as elated at the beginning of the year 1814 as twelve months previously at Vilna. From Freiburg, on 3 January, he sent a letter to his old tutor, La Harpe, which rang with an almost boyish enthusiasm for the winter campaign.55 A week later he crossed into Switzerland and joined his brother sovereigns and Metternich at Basle. But he thought Schwarzenberg was making dismally slow progress and he grew restless. Metternich wrote to his friend Gentz on 13 January, ‘Tsar Alexander believes it is his duty to Moscow to blow up the Tuileries: they will not be blown up.’56 This, of course, was an over-simplification of Alexander’s intentions, for he did not wish to harm the city of Paris, only its ruler; but Metternich’s remark caught faithfully enough the irrationality of Alexander’s mood. His gusts of anger and impatience were exasperating to those around him. Even the pliable Nesselrode was out of sympathy with him: ‘There are some men who want to push as far as Paris’, he wrote obliquely to his wife on 16 January, ‘but I only want to push as far as negotiations.’57 It was on that day that Alexander felt he could contain himself no longer. Schwarzenberg had by now established field headquarters on the plateau of Langres, little more than 150 miles from Paris. Why was he waiting there? Alexander decided abruptly to leave Basle and go to stir him up. Poor Schwarzenberg! It is vexing to be unsure if one is to be visited by St George or by the Dragon.

  Alexander found it increasingly difficult to separate these two roles. He thought there were good reasons why he should go to Langres rather than wait in Basle. The winter that year was colder and more intense than anyone could ever remember in western Europe, and the Tsar believed these conditions favoured his troops at the expense of the French (and, indeed, of the other Allied contingents). It seemed to him essential for Schwarzenberg to keep up the pressure on Napoleon’s dwindling troops. In reality Alexander was misjudging Schwarzenberg and over-rating the mobility of his own army, and the achievements of the three Allied contingents in the appalling snow-drifts on the plateau were remarkable.58 Militarily there was certainly no need for Alexander to go to Langres and politically the decision to leave Basle when he did was a serious mistake. Two days after his departure Castlereagh at last arrived and spent a week discussing war plans and peace terms with Metternich. Together they privately disposed of most of Alexander’s projects: Castlereagh did not understand all the talk of Poland, but he indicated that he believed Metternich was right in fearing an exclusively Russo-Prussian solution of the problem; and when Metternich mentioned Alexander’s inclination to see Bernadotte on the throne of France, he found Castlereagh agreeing with him that any such proposal would make nonsense of the dynastic principle upon which all good government must rest. By the closing week in January, when Metternich and Castlereagh crossed from Basle to Langres, they were united on almost every question of policy; and Alexander was starkly isolated.59

  At the time, he did not care very much. On 1 February the Allies gained their first victory against the French on the soil of their homeland: Blücher, supported by Schwarzenberg, Barclay and Wittgenstein, attacked Napoleon and Ney at La Rothière and forced them to retire. Alexander urged the Generals to march at once on Paris and they agreed, sensing from the evidence of French desertions that morale was low. When therefore Metternich and Castlereagh tried to discover the Tsar’s latest thoughts over peace terms, they found him too engrossed in military matters to give them particular attention. After five days of discussion he undertook to send a representative to Chatillon, on the upper Seine, for peace talks with Caulaincourt; but he indicated he had little faith in negotiating a peace settlement until Paris had fallen. On the other hand he raised no objections to a proposal by Metternich that the final form of the new Europe should be settled by a grand congress of the Powers to be held in Vienna. Meanwhile he encouraged Schwarzenberg to advance Allied headquarters to Troyes, only ninety miles from the French capital. Metternich decided to remain with Alexander; Castlereagh went to Chatillon.60

  Within a week Castlereagh had been urgently summoned back to Troyes. Metternich found he could not hold the Tsar to any of his commitments with the Allies. Alexander had decided to order a direct march on Paris, to suspend all negotiations until after the fall of the capital, and then to summon an assembly of French dignitaries who would determine, in consultation with the Tsar, how France was to be ruled.61 This was too much for his allies. On 13–14 February Alexander had two long and outspoken interviews with Castlereagh, having already exhausted Metternich. The Tsar refused to change his attitude, and Metternich once again tried to frighten him with threats of a separate peace.62 But so great was Alexander’s influence with the Generals in the field that he was not impressed by arguments or warnings: he took note only of the fortunes of war and the information which seeped through to headquarters from inside Paris.

  Yet, at the very time when Alexander was behaving so intransigently towards Castlereagh, Napoleon was inflicting the first military reversals which the Allies had suffered since the end of August.63 Blücher’s Prussians were checked at Montmirail on 11 February and defeated again in the neighbouring village of Vauchamps three days later. Schwarzenberg, too, had encountered fierce opposition as he fumbled towards the forest of Fontainebleau and by 17 February the Allies were falling back and the sovereigns preparing to evacuate Troyes in order to establish new headquarters at Chaumont on the upper Marne. These sudden signs of French determination to resist brought Alexander to his senses and he belatedly instructed Razumovsky, his delegate to the Chatillon Conference, to co-operate with the British and Austrians in seeking for a negotiated peace.64 By now, however, Napoleon thought he could gain better terms and exploit Austro-Russian difficulties; and he, in his turn, was not prepared to accept the Allied proposals. There was never any hope that the Chatillon charade would lead to a settlement. Alexander was right in believing that it was the roar of the cannon rather than the persuasiveness
of the diplomats which would bring the war to an end.

  The chief effect of Napoleon’s February victories was to unify the Allies at last. Under Castlereagh’s lead the Russians, British, Austrians and Prussians signed on 9 March at Chaumont a treaty of Grand Alliance: no separate peace; an eventual settlement giving independence to the Netherlands and Switzerland, a confederated Germany and restitution of the old order in Spain and Italy (so far as was practicable); and continuance of this Quadruple Alliance for twenty years after the ending of the present war, so as to prevent a resurgent France from disturbing the peace of Europe for a generation.65 Nothing was said of the future government of France – or, indeed, of other major problems, notably the fate of the Polish lands – but at least there was a prospect of the Allies remaining in concert rather than falling out among themselves before the fighting was even concluded.

  But the war could not go on much longer. Napoleon had no resources apart from his own military genius. By the end of the first week in March both Blücher and Schwarzenberg had recovered the initiative and were prepared to resume their advance westwards. On 10 March an emissary arrived at Chatillon from within Paris with an unsigned letter for Nesselrode: ‘You are groping about like children on crutches: make use of your legs and stride forward on stilts, for you can achieve anything you wish to achieve.’66 There was little doubt in Nesselrode’s mind that the message came, in the first instance, from Talleyrand and he hurried to let Alexander, Metternich and Castlereagh know what it said. Yet, for the moment, it was not possible ‘to stride forward on stilts’. On that same day Blücher captured Laon but Napoleon began to move south-eastwards up the Marne as though threatening to take Schwarzenberg’s army in the rear. No matter how eloquent Nesselrode and Alexander might be, it was impossible for them to induce the Austrian to risk encirclement and march boldly westwards.