Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  The reconciliation, if such it may be called, began when Alexander at last succumbed to the physical collapse which had threatened him for so long. At the Epiphany he again attended the blessing of the Neva: for hours at a time he stood bareheaded on the Jordan Steps above the frozen river, while a hole was bored through the ice and, with great solemnity, the Metropolitan sprinkled consecrated water over all who were present, and over the standards of the regiments in the capital as well. The Tsar returned to the Palace shivering with the cold. That night there was, as usual, a round of festivity in the Winter Palace from which Alexander could not escape. He remained unwell throughout the following week although he insisted on going to Tsarskoe Selo, travelling along roads on which a recent blizzard had piled the snow high, making the journey abnormally difficult. On Saturday, 24 January, he found himself so feverish he could hardly stand, and he ordered his carriage to take him back at once to the Winter Palace. He looked so ill that Elizabeth was alarmed, though she was reassured to hear from Wylie† that he believed it was a recurrence of the erysipelas in the leg from which the Tsar had already suffered on two occasions. But this time his health seemed completely broken, and he lay for several days in a torpor, barely conscious of what was going on around him.11

  For nearly a fortnight he was slow to respond to treatment, momentary improvements giving way to relapses. Elizabeth was worried both by the feebleness of his responses and by the resignation with which he accepted the illness: ‘Never have I seen the Emperor as patient in an illness as this time’, she wrote to her mother on 27 January, ‘and this both puzzles me and torments me.’12 Yet by the end of the month she was finding some comfort in nursing him. On 31 January she sent a deeply touching note to the Margravine:

  The day before yesterday he said something to me so dear to my heart that I wish to share it with you alone, Mamma. He said, ‘You will see that I shall owe my recovery to you’, for he thought he owed the first good night’s sleep he had enjoyed to a bolster I had given him for his head, from which he has been suffering severe pains these first days … When he tried my bolster, it suited him splendidly. Moreover I was responsible for finding the one stool which is convenient for his footing and allows him to be helped to sit in an armchair. You can imagine, dearest Mamma, how sweet all this is to me, but you can also imagine how I keep all this sense of delight secretly in my heart.13

  For six weeks Alexander remained confined to his room in the Winter Palace; and, indeed, it was there that Michael and Elena were married, in an antechamber converted into a chapel for the Tsar’s private devotions. Throughout Alexander’s battle against the infection in his leg Elizabeth was at his bedside, hours at a time. Sometimes she read to him, but often they were content simply to talk, re-discovering lost delights in timeless conversation, words and thoughts wandering on unhurried by imminence of public duty. With so few leisure hours spent together in recent years, the novelty of allowing their minds to meet again, pensively or playfully as the mood of the moment suggested, was in itself pleasantly recuperative. Elizabeth’s letters to the Margravine acquired a fresh serenity, although perhaps she was reluctant to admit he was recovering his strength, as winter gave way to spring. ‘Long and noisy visits from the Grand Dukes Nicholas and Michael brought on his fever again and left him in need of rest’, she complained as late as 1 March, and she added, ‘I begged the Empress [Marie Feodorovna] not to trouble him with matters that were not really urgent.’14 The truth was that she resented any draught of public business from the outer world, fearing it might dissipate the atmosphere of rapture which had glowed so warmly in the sick-room these past five weeks.

  It was only to the Margravine that Elizabeth confided this curious idyllic romance of wife and husband:

  Never had I seen him so ill, and never have I seen him, being ill, so patient and good. You must realize, Mamma, that this circumstance intensified the pain it caused me to see him suffering and aroused in me involuntary fears, especially when he said to me, ‘I don’t know whether it is the effect of illness or the effect of age but I feel less able now than ever before to fight against suffering’… One day in particular he appeared so weak and so exhausted that I could not look at him without a feeling of deep tenderness … You can imagine, dearest Mamma, what a time of trial and tribulation this has been for me. Yet it has been made to seem shorter by the real affection the Emperor has shown for me, as well as having me near him; he willingly accepted the little things I did for him, letting me watch beside his bedside when he slept and feed him his light meals … I could not say this to anyone but you. To some people it would all seem so natural and simple as not worth recording and to others it would seem like boasting, and of what? Of something ordained by all law, human and divine, the most simple thing in the world in other families; and yet, as I once wrote to you, the passions and rivalries in the family around the Emperor make me sometimes look upon myself as his mistress or as if we were secretly married.15

  The unconscious irony in the letter, the dutiful daughter at last happy to imagine herself mistress to her own husband, cannot have been lost on Elizabeth’s mother. But it seemed hardly likely that such a reconciliation could survive the buffeting of public affairs when the Tsar wished his subjects to see him once more as true Autocrat of All the Russias. Even Elizabeth had few illusions on this score.

  Her doubts were resolved by a strange and tragic episode, its origins rooted deep in their mutual experience. Although Alexander was well enough to travel to Tsarskoe Selo for a few days in April, it was not until the last week in June that he felt able to resume his full military duties. On 29 June he went to Krasnoe Selo for the annual manoeuvres. Elizabeth, who detested regimental occasions, remained in the capital; but the Grand Duchess Elena was at Krasnoe, as Michael’s brigade was engaged in the exercises.16

  No sooner had Alexander lifted himself into the saddle on the first morning of the manoeuvres than he became aware that his aides-de-camp were trying to keep something from him. Wylie, who though a brilliant physician was not always attuned to his patients’ psychological problems, bluntly informed him that they had just learnt from St Petersburg that his only surviving daughter by Maria Naryshkin, Sophia, had died at the age of eighteen from consumption. The Tsar had known she was terribly weak before he left the capital, but the shock of the sad news unnerved him. Momentarily it seemed to the officers around him as if he had once more been taken ill for, as Elizabeth wrote afterwards, ‘he could not hide his anguish’. But years of steeling himself to disasters and frustrations enabled him to recover. For the rest of the morning he sat impassive and virtually silent on his horse.

  That night, however, he collapsed. He was convinced yet again that his daughter’s death was a punishment for his sins. Elena, who knew nothing of the background to the affair, was shocked by his wretchedness, his certainty that his soul was cast already on the dust-heap. Yet through his despair there was one person to whom he looked constantly as an angel of salvation: and she was not with him, but at Tsarskoe Selo. Poor Elena, at seventeen, was lost in a world she could hardly begin to understand. She at once wrote to Elizabeth, guarded words sent off by a courier travelling through the night, not daring to tell the unfortunate Empress what had prompted her alarm; and she received a polite but slightly angry reply. Next night she wrote again, begging Elizabeth to comfort and protect Alexander in his misery.17 For Elizabeth it was, of course, a familiar role; but the knowledge that Alexander had spoken so affectionately of her to Elena made her willingly accept the task. She saw that the child’s death and the torment of conscience it provoked proved to Alexander he was still dependent on his wife, if he were to retain his sanity. Now she knew that, no matter how much duties of State might keep them apart, the understanding kindled during his illness would continue to link him to her spiritually in the months ahead.18

  There was another reason why Alexander began to turn more and more towards Elizabeth: that spring he was deprived of a valuable confidant. For twelve
years he had looked for religious guidance, in the first instance, to Prince Golitsyn. But Golitsyn’s wide responsibilities inevitably made him many enemies: ecclesiastics, such as the Metropolitan Seraphim, suspicious of his powers of patronage and distrusting his sympathy for the Bible Societies and other protestant sects; cultural xenophobes, like the educational publicist Magnitsky, who believed Golitsyn was too tolerant of Western ideas in the universities; and, above all, Arakcheev, intensely jealous of the only man more closely in his master’s confidence than himself.19 In May 1824 the combination of these three, very different, enemies succeeded in ousting Golitsyn from his privileged position at Court.

  Not, however, on their own. Two years earlier, shortly before the Tsar’s departure for Verona, Golitsyn had been introduced to a young monk, Photius, whose extraordinary powers of mental divination and protracted fasting were rapidly making him the spiritual darling of the Petersburg salons. This is not surprising; he was someone to whom interesting visions and exciting temptations were granted, experiences he showed little reticence in describing.20 When invited by Satan to walk across the waters of the Neva to the Winter Palace, he summoned the necessary willpower to cast the Evil One aside and took the bridge instead. However not every worldly proposal was so easily resisted, especially when demons assailed him in the form of young women, and soon Photius began to enjoy the type of fame which was to spur Gregory Rasputin into the histories of a later reign. Photius, like Rasputin, possessed dramatic talent and gifts of hypnosis; he also acquired a wealthy patron, the Countess Anna Orlova-Chemenskaya; and, in the summer of 1822 it looked as if he would soon have an Imperial protector as well, for Golitsyn was so impressed by the monk that he arranged for Alexander to receive him in a private audience.21

  Alexander was more accustomed to holy women than to visits from men of God. It was puzzling to receive a priest who knelt in long adoration before the ikon on the wall before acknowledging that he was in the Imperial presence. The Tsar kept Photius with him for three hours, asked for his blessing and received it, and subsequently gave him a cross of diamonds. But was he convinced? He took no notice of Photius’s efforts at proving to him that the Bible Societies were responsible for all the unrest in the young generation; but he nevertheless induced Golitsyn to have Photius elected Archimandrite of the monastery at Yurev, a post of some significance in the Church hierarchy. He had not, however, heard the last of Photius. Yurev was close to Arakcheev’s estate at Gruzino; and for the next eighteen months Arakcheev willingly acted as the mouthpiece of the Archimandrite at Court, occasionally seeing that messages of inspired revelation reached the Tsar personally. ‘Know, great Tsar, that the Lord has always shown me everything, and always will’, ran one. ‘There will be no misfortune if you heed the Lord, who speaks to you through me.’22 Just as the Stourdzas had encouraged Baroness von Krüdener, so now Arakcheev put Photius forward as the true voice of Russia’s religious conscience. It is a sad commentary on Alexander’s failing perception that he did not scent a conspiracy in so strange a partnership.

  The Tsar’s illness brought to a climax the latent conflict between the Procurator and his enemies. Ecclesiastics throughout the Empire prayed for Alexander’s recovery; so, in her Latvian place of exile, did Julie von Krüdener. The Baroness went further than prayer: she wrote to Golitsyn in February asking that Alexander should receive her in the Palace; and she received a reply, indicating that the Tsar would welcome a secret meeting. But the hostility shown towards Golitsyn and the sects made Alexander change his mind dramatically. Within ten days Golitsyn had to inform the Baroness’s daughter, Juliette, that a meeting was impossible and that it seemed to the Tsar advisable for the Baroness and the whole of her spiritual family to leave northern Russia as soon as conditions made travel possible and settle in the Crimea.23 At the same time Arakcheev sent a courier to Yurev urging the Archimandrite to set out at once for the capital.24

  Through Arakcheev’s offices, Photius was permitted the private audience with the Tsar for which Julie von Krüdener had asked in vain. It took place as soon as Alexander was sufficiently convalescent to attend to public business. This time the Archimandrite came directly to the point: the illness, he insisted, was a warning from God against the heresies permitted within Russia by the Procurator of the Synod; and it was therefore the will of God and His Church that Golitsyn should be dismissed from office. Alexander was impressed by Photius’s vehemence but he was not inclined to take a decision for or against Golitsyn without long thought and prayer; and he sent Photius back to Countess Orlova’s palace, where he was lodging in the city. There, however, Photius took affairs into his own hand. Golitsyn was invited to call on the Countess. When he arrived, he was received by the Archimandrite who demanded that he should confess his sins against the Church and make a fitting repentance. Naturally Golitsyn refused, and prepared to leave for his official residence in Senate Square. But, to the Prince’s amazement, Photius then pronounced a solemn curse upon him, dramatically hastening to the doorway of the Orlova palace and publicly declaring him to be anathema. Nor was Photius alone in showing hostility to the Prince. Magnitsky stirred up the officials in the Ministry of Education and by the end of the day the Metropolitan Seraphim had personally confirmed the validity of the Archimandrite’s act. Thus the Minister of Spiritual Affairs, senior lay official of the Russian Orthodox Church for the past two decades, was virtually excommunicated by a thirty-two-year-old monk who had climbed to social eminence on tall stories and fashionable shoulders; and there was nothing Alexander could do to save his friend.25 In the last week of May 1824 Golitsyn formally resigned as minister responsible for religious matters and education: he was permitted to remain Minister of Posts.

  Alexander was angry. He sent for Photius and did not spare his words. When the Archimandrite emerged from the audience it was noticed he was ‘soaked in sweat from head to foot’.26 Yet Photius possessed some strange persuasive power; for though the Tsar bitterly resented the way in which Golitsyn had been treated, he seems readily to have forgiven the Archimandrite and the Metropolitan and there is no evidence that he knew Arakcheev was involved in the conspiracy against Golitsyn. Twice in the following year Alexander invited Photius to the Winter Palace, treating him with respect and awe as a man favoured of God.27 With Golitsyn’s fall, and the disappearance of the Krüdener pietists to the Crimea, Alexander was left under the religious influence only of the established Orthodox hierarchy and the bigoted reactionary ideas of its favoured Archimandrite. Moreover his circle of personal friends was growing smaller; he was thankful for Elizabeth’s loyalty.28

  The Flood of 1824

  Late in August Alexander set out on one more journey into the interior of his Empire. This time he travelled to the western fringe of Siberia, seeing for himself the settlements in Perm (later renamed Molotov), Ekaterinburg (now Sverdlovsk) and Orenburg (Chkalov). It was a tour of inspection he had long wished to make, but there was little chance that he would be able to cover so great a distance in less than eight or nine weeks and he did not expect to return until the end of October. Once again Elizabeth was sad at his departure, although on this occasion the Tsar’s absence from the capital was less serious for the smooth running of government than in other years, if only because home and foreign affairs were, for once, totally becalmed. In January, on the eve of his illness, Alexander had proposed a solution of the Greek Question which envisaged the establishment of three autonomous principalities in Greece; he had also suggested holding an ambassadorial conference in St Petersburg to discuss a Near Eastern settlement in general.29 But nothing had come of his initiative for three reasons: the British and the Austrians were determined to obstruct any move which might extend Russian influence in the Balkans; the Greeks, and their sympathizers inside and outside Russia, were disappointed in a proposed solution which fell short of independence; and the Tsar’s own physical collapse meant that foreign affairs were left in the hands of Nesselrode, who strongly favoured a passive policy in Europe a
s a whole and the Balkans in particular.30 The intermittent discussions in St Petersburg on the Eastern Question during 1824 showed the Powers to be more concerned with manoeuvring for later diplomatic advantages than with securing any immediate solution; and by the autumn it was clear there was no chance of summoning Alexander’s full Congress until the following spring, if then. The Tsar was able to spend eight weeks away from the capital without any pressing problems. The weather was unusually fine and he returned home on 5 November ‘delighted with his expedition’.31

  Almost immediately the weather broke, and for a fortnight the whole of Europe from the Channel to the Urals was soaked with ceaseless rain, lashed for days on end by south-westerly gales. There was serious flooding of the Rhine, the Danube and the Vistula, but it was on St Petersburg that the full force of the tempest fell, the winds sweeping up the Gulf of Finland with such intensity that on the night of 18–19 November they seemed to reach hurricane force.32 By eleven o’clock in the morning the water in the Fontanka Canal was so high that it was lapping the surrounding streets while the river Neva itself was rapidly climbing the protective embankment in front of the Senate Square and the Winter Palace, where the Imperial family were in residence. The Grand Duchess Anna, paying her first visit home in seven years, described the scene in a letter to Holland: