Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  Alexander had known both of them for several years. Princess Bagration, widow of the army’s heroic idol, was on her mother’s side a great-niece of Catherine II and therefore a second cousin of the Tsar. She had left her husband soon after their marriage and spent most of her adult life in Dresden or Vienna and was intermittently one of the mistresses of Metternich, by whom she had conceived a daughter in 1802. Wilhelmine of Sagan was also technically a subject of Alexander as she was the eldest of the four daughters of the last Duke of Courland and still possessed considerable properties in the Baltic provinces. She was, however, essentially a member of the cosmopolitan aristocracy since, in addition to her Russian lands and the vast estate of Sagan in Prussia, she had a palace in Prague and a château at Ratiborzitz in Bohemia, where she had entertained Alexander (and, on the following day, Metternich) during the Armistice of Plaeswitz in 1813.18 Her loyalties in Vienna were slightly strained: she was still excessively flattered by Metternich, to whom she had been a somewhat stormy mistress for the past eighteen months; she was visited and petted by Talleyrand, whose niece by marriage and official hostess at the Congress was her own youngest sister, Countess Dorothea de Périgord, later Duchess of Dino;* but she was also acutely conscious of the danger of losing her Russian and Prussian lands should there be a breach between Austria and the two other despoilers of Poland. The Tsar preferred the company of Princess Bagration who, at the age of thirty-two, retained the natural porcelain beauty of her youth, to which the years had added wit, intelligence and a mastery of the art of pleasing men. Wilhelmine, her rival, was more passionate but also more flagrantly libertine. Talleyrand, anxious to reassert the influence he had possessed over Alexander in Paris, encouraged Wilhelmine to fling herself wildly at the Tsar’s head. As both Alexander himself and the Austrian police agents testify, there was one occasion when (in Alexander’s words) ‘they even shut us up tête-à-tête in the same carriage’.19 But he considered himself too astute to fall for such clumsy wiles: he continued to visit the left wing of the Palais Palm, leaving Metternich, Talleyrand and others less discriminating to turn to the right and pay court to the Sagan.

  At times the whole business sank to the level of a cheap farce. Thus on 30 September Princess Bagration had retired early to bed with a headache, having sent her servants out of the house for the evening, when she was disturbed by the porter ringing her bell four times. The Princess, dressed only in her negligée, came down the staircase, admitted Alexander with a proper show of pleased surprise and modest confusion, and ushered him upstairs to her room. There he at once noticed a man’s hat, which had been left in a conspicuous position. ‘It belongs to my decorator, Moreau’, explained the Princess, ‘he has come to get the house ready for my ball tomorrow.’ Such an unlikely tale evidently satisfied the Tsar, for we are told they laughed heartily at his unfounded assumptions and he remained with her for two and a half hours; even the police agent who reported all this to Hager next day could not resist adding, at the end of his message, the injunction Honi soit qui mal y pense.20† And there were other episodes, hardly less ridiculous. Five evenings after the hat incident the Princess was disappointed to see, from her window, that Alexander’s carriage turned into her courtyard and then drove away again. The Tsar had noticed so many vehicles drawn up outside the Palais Palm that he assumed the Princess was surrounded by numerous visitors and he did not wish to be counted among them. It appears, however, that the Duchess of Sagan was hostess that night. ‘The poor Princess’, wrote the sympathetic police informant in due course, ‘was waiting for him quite alone, and she is waiting for him still.’21

  Congress Diplomacy (October 1814–February 1815)

  Meanwhile slowly, cautiously and reluctantly the statesmen were beginning their task of seeking a lasting settlement for Europe. The first talks had been held between Nesselrode, Castlereagh, Hardenberg of Prussia and Metternich before the Tsar arrived in Vienna. The ministers agreed on a method of work, if nothing more: decisions would be taken by the Big Four (Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia) and then submitted to the French and Spanish for comment and approval, before being sent to the Congress as a whole for ratification; an inner council of the Four, together with France and Spain, would determine future work for the Congress and would pass all protocols for drafting to a nominated Secretary, Friedrich von Gentz; and it was finally agreed that the five leading German States would form a special committee to prepare a constitution for a German Confederation. These decisions were at once challenged by Talleyrand who, reaching Vienna only a week before the Congress was due to open, objected to his colleagues’ refusal to give France equal status with the Big Four. The resultant procedural wrangles afforded Metternich an excuse for having the official opening of the Congress postponed until 1 November. In reality, as everyone knew, this delay was caused not so much by Talleyrand’s tactics, inconvenient though they were, as by the desire of the other Allies to wear down Alexander’s insistence on gaining for the Poles the settlement he had outlined at Pulawy. At Metternich’s request Castlereagh, as spokesman for a Power not directly concerned in Polish matters, undertook to sound out the Tsar and seek to reason with him.22

  There were two aspects of Alexander’s policy to which the Austrians and, for different reasons, the British objected: the incorporation of all the Polish lands in the Russian Empire, thereby assuring the Tsar of mastery in east-central Europe; and the prospect of handing over Saxony (which was, at that time, being administered by a Russian General) to Prussia as compensation for a renunciation of her former Polish possessions. Castlereagh failed to make any impression on Alexander, who said he would cede a small area in the north-west to Prussia but refused even to consider the return of the Tarnopol district to Austria. ‘I have conquered the Duchy and I have half a million men to keep it’, he declared bluntly to Castlereagh. ‘I will give Prussia what is due to her but not a single village to Austria.’23 In fact, though Castlereagh did not perceive it, Alexander was bitterly incensed with Metternich. He had expected to negotiate with the Austrians over the cession by them to his new Polish kingdom of the province of Galicia: he found instead a demand for the recovery of Tarnopol. He certainly had no intention of making concessions over Saxony, whose unfortunate King had come over to the Allied cause in the spring of 1813 and then returned to his old connection with Napoleon once the campaign opened in earnest. Although Alexander and Castlereagh exchanged elaborate verbal compliments and assured each other of their lasting friendship, the British Foreign Secretary was left in no doubt of Russian intentions. He continued to ply Alexander with arguments and memoranda throughout October, but he also made an effort to win over Hardenberg and thereby complete Alexander’s isolation.24

  In reality, the Tsar was in a far weaker position than Castlereagh appreciated. Though Nesselrode publicly backed up his sovereign’s policy, privately he was appalled at what he termed the Tsar’s ‘unfortunate ideas on this fatal Polish Question’.25 His doubts were shared by Pozzo di Borgo, who lost Alexander’s favour temporarily by writing a memorandum on the subject in October, and even by the Tsar’s old tutor La Harpe who had arrived in Vienna at the end of September, ostensibly to safeguard the interests of the Swiss cantons.26 Criticisms and difficulties, together with what Castlereagh happily described as ‘the impediments … of fêtes and private balls’, threw Alexander into petulant ill-humour while, at the same time, increasing his obstinacy. ‘There is always too much diplomacy around, and I don’t like hypocrisy’, he remarked loudly at a ball on the anniversary of the battle of Leipzig. ‘I see too many diplomats here, and these people bore me.’ And a week later he was grumbling testily in the salons, ‘I’m only a simple soldier and understand nothing about politics.’27 He convinced no one but himself.

  Inwardly, however, he was beginning to see it was impossible to fulfil the whole of the Pulawy programme. By now he had discovered that Hardenberg was wavering under Castlereagh’s pressure. But Alexander retained one trump. At the end of October he wou
ld accompany Frederick William and Francis to Hungary for peace celebrations in Buda. The sovereigns would not have their ministers in attendance. If he could delay any decision over the Polish Question, here would be an opportunity for the three autocrats themselves to settle matters without the tiresome diplomats fussing around them. Once they were agreed, they could come back to Vienna and send Metternich and his crew about their business. This would be a decisive gesture in the spirit of Tilsit: for had not Castlereagh hinted to Nesselrode only a few days previously that Russia was now the military legatee of Napoleon’s imperium?28

  First, however, Alexander was faced with difficult interviews with both Talleyrand and Metternich. The principal objection of the French to Alexander’s plan for Poland was that it necessitated compensation for Prussia in Saxony or, worse still, on the Rhine. Talleyrand was therefore authorized by Louis XVIII to make it clear to Alexander that France would not accept his solution of the Polish Question. The Tsar accorded Talleyrand an audience on 23 October (having caused a sensation earlier that day by driving to the Palais Palm and turning to the right for a private lunch with the Duchess of Sagan rather than visiting Katharina Bagration, on his left). Alexander does not appear to have been at his best during his talk with Talleyrand. The Frenchman sought to defend King Frederick Augustus of Saxony’s claims to the throne, on the ground that it would be dangerous for any sovereign to deprive a legitimate king of his rightful inheritance. ‘But’, maintained Alexander, ‘Frederick Augustus was a traitor to the common cause.’ ‘That, Sire’, replied Talleyrand blandly, ‘is a question of dates.’29 Alexander had found him far more reasonable six months ago in Paris.

  The meeting with Metternich on the following afternoon was even stormier. The Prince had been asked to present to the Tsar, on behalf of the other Allies, a choice between three possible solutions of the Polish problem: a genuinely independent State, a truncated Polish kingdom as in 1791, or a return to the partitioned boundaries of 1795. Alexander rejected all three suggestions: he would, he explained yet again, proclaim an independent Poland linked indissolubly to the Russian Crown. But, replied Metternich, Austria could just as well create an independent Poland under the Habsburgs rather than accept this solution. The remark irritated the Tsar and he lost his temper. In language which Metternich likened to Napoleon’s he made it clear that he did not consider the Austrian Foreign Minister a fit person to negotiate with him over Poland. ‘You are the only man in Austria who would dare to oppose me in such rebellious terms’, he declared; and for two hours he listed his grievances against Metternich and his way of work. It was impossible to transact any business that day. Soon rumour was embellishing the whole incident until it was said in the salons that the two men would have fought a duel but for the intervention of Emperor Francis.30 Matters were not that bad but they might well have been, for personal antagonism over the ladies of the Palais Palm added salt to what were essentially political injuries. For nearly five months Alexander and Metternich did not address a word directly to each other.

  The three sovereigns paid their brief State visit to Hungary in the closing days of October. It was a richly colourful pageant, dominated by the Magyar aristocrats and by Alexander’s brother-in-law, the Palatine Archduke Joseph. During the return journey up the Danube the Tsar at last had an opportunity to let his companions know his views on diplomacy in general and the conduct of individual ministers in particular. Yet if he hoped to gain a moral ascendancy over the Emperor Francis he was disappointed. By now Francis knew him too well to be impressed by his contention that a monarch should be served by a minister who would always reflect his master’s views. Alexander did not allow for the natural conservatism of Francis’s temperament: he had no wish to dismiss a Foreign Minister whose ways and objectives he knew and almost understood; better every time the familiar than the unknown. Amiably but firmly, the Tsar was told that Francis had found from experience it was wiser to allow a minister to conduct business with someone else’s minister or with an ambassador rather than with a king or emperor. Privately Francis appears to have been amused at Alexander’s difficulties with Metternich, about which Hager’s agents had, of course, kept him well informed.31 With Frederick William, on the other hand, the Tsar had more success. He was still sufficiently under Alexander’s influence to send for Hardenberg and instruct him, in the Tsar’s presence, not to hold any more confidential negotiations with Metternich or Castlereagh over the problems of Poland and Saxony. At the same time the Tsar agreed to order the transference of administration in occupied Saxony from his own Generals to the Prussian army. This gesture was interpreted in Vienna as a sign of Alexander’s growing impatience.32 Rather than tolerate Metternich’s delaying tactics any longer, the Tsar would impose his own solution of the Saxon-Polish Question and confront the Congress with a fait accompli. Even Princess Bagration was heard to complain that whenever she tried talking to Alexander about Poland and Saxony she found he would ‘not listen to reason’.33

  In reality, as Metternich and Gentz had foreseen, the Tsar could not impose his settlement of the Polish problem without sacrificing his older ambitions of reconstructing Europe as a whole according to generous principles of communal interest. As Stein made clear to him in a memorandum, the proposed bargain which would give Saxony to Prussia while leaving most of Poland under a Russian ruler was extremely unpopular with all the German States, including those with whom Alexander had traditional dynastic links.34 Pozzo di Borgo supported Stein’s arguments and, by the second week of November, it was clear to observers in Vienna that Nesselrode too was out of sympathy with his master’s Polish policy.35 Metternich, after the great quarrel at the end of October, refused to intervene but both Talleyrand and Castlereagh worried Alexander over the matter on which he was most sensitive, his image as a beneficent European statesman. The British Foreign Secretary wished to put the Polish Question before the Congress as a whole so that all the governments of Europe might see for themselves ‘His Imperial Majesty’s pretensions to an aggrandizement of Poland’, while Talleyrand more succinctly warned Alexander that if he persisted in his attitude on the Polish and Saxon Questions he ‘might sacrifice his fame as the pacificator of Europe’.36

  At the end of the second week in December Alexander’s mood changed with disconcerting rapidity. On 10 December he was so ill-disposed towards the Austrians that he could hardly bring himself to address any words to his host in the Hofburg: five days later he seemed full of benevolent goodwill, inviting Francis to meet him for two long discussions and showing for the first time a willingness to retrocede to Austria the Tarnopol region of eastern Galicia acquired, by grace of Napoleon, in 1809. Four days later still it was widely accepted in Vienna that the Tsar was ready to compromise over Poland and, a sone of Hager’s agents put it, ‘he was no longer warmly disposed towards Prussia’.37 There followed, at the beginning of the New Year, a highly artificial crisis when, for a couple of days, it seemed as if Prussia and Russia might risk war rather than give way over Poland and Saxony; but the scare was totally without foundation in fact. Sensing that the Tsar’s attitude towards them was indeed changing, the Prussians indulged in indiscreet sabre-rattling and their panic gestures were magnified by Talleyrand so as to improve the diplomatic status of France. A secret defensive alliance between Austria, Britain and France was actually concluded on 3 January 1815, theoretically to curb the pretensions of Alexander and the Prussians; but there was never any real prospect that the three signatories would be called upon to fight.38 If Talleyrand’s treaty had any significance at all it was as a bluff to call a bluff: Prussia lacked the resources to go to war for Saxony, and Alexander certainly had no intention of waging yet another campaign in Poland. The worst disputes were over before the alliance was concluded.

  By the end of January it was clear the Powers were at last making progress towards a settlement. The Russians gave no trouble over the territorial boundaries in Italy and made clear their willingness to accept Castlereagh’s design for a
united Kingdom of the Netherlands provided the British assumed responsibility for settling debts incurred by the Dutch to the Russians.39 More surprisingly, Alexander acquiesced in Castlereagh’s proposal that Corfu and the Ionian Islands should become a British protectorate, despite the active Russian interest in the southern Adriatic and the assurances which the Tsar had given to his Corfiote adviser, Capodistrias, that he would ‘never abandon the Ionian Islands’.40 There remained, in these opening weeks of 1815, a suspicion that Alexander was intriguing with Bernadotte to secure joint Russo-Swedish rights on the Baltic coast of Pomerania, but the fear was groundless: the Tsar stood by the pledge he had given in 1812 that Sweden should acquire Norway from Napoleon’s Danish ally as compensation for the loss of Finland, and although the British were uneasy at this particular territorial bargain, nobody at the Congress challenged it.41 By the middle of February the principal spokesmen at Vienna, having scared each other with war talk over Poland, were eager to compromise in all other matters; and even the Polish-Saxon problems no longer seemed intractable.

  Serious negotiations over Poland continued throughout the first six weeks of the New Year. It rapidly became clear Hager’s spies were correct: Alexander’s attitude had, indeed, mellowed during the Christmas period. He was now reluctant to support Prussian claims to the whole of Saxony and he abandoned the full Polish territorial demands which he had put forward in the autumn. In the third week of February he accepted a new partition of the Polish lands: Austria retained Galicia and received back Tarnopol and Czartow; Prussia recovered Poznania, including the towns of Posen (Poznan) and Thorn; Cracow, the ancient cultural and religious capital of the Polish nation, became a Free City; and the rest of Napoleon’s Grand-Duchy, including Warsaw itself, was created a kingdom to be ruled in perpetuity by the sovereign of Russia.42 This arrangement fell short of the generous scheme Alexander had outlined at Pulawy in September but the Polish aristocrats, hardened realists to the core by now, welcomed it as at least a partial restoration of their national State. They were fully prepared to co-operate with Czartoryski in preparing a constitution for the ‘Congress Kingdom’; and they were deeply conscious of the need to retain Alexander’s goodwill and his interest in their country’s future. Ultimately everything depended on the Tsar’s willingness to distinguish between his obligations as Autocrat of All the Russias and the new responsibilities he was assuming as a specifically Polish sovereign. Not everyone shared Czartoryski’s sanguine optimism.43