Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  Alexander’s taste for simplicity and asceticism seduced part of the court and his close entourage, who saw this return to the simplicity of manners of Peter the Great as a noticeable affirmation of a break with a lofty conception of the Russian monarchy inherited from Catherine and Paul. But it was not understood in this way by everybody, far from it, and several of those closest to him reproached him for it. Coming back to St. Petersburg in 1801, Laharpe wrote to him in August to warn him against too much simplicity. Paradoxically, the person who had inculcated a frank aversion to luxury and pomp seemed to be counseling a more nuanced position.

  First, it seems to me that for you the highest importance is to play the emperor,27 both when you appear in public and when you deal with men to whom you have entrusted some department. I am not a blind panegyrist of etiquette, but when the Head of a nation presents himself, speaks, or acts as such, he should (in the picturesque expression of Demosthenes) be clothed in the dignity of his country. Your nation has been long accustomed, especially in the interior of the Empire, to attach much importance to this, and I believe it has need of it. Your youth, Sire, commands you perhaps all the more imperiously not to relax on this point.28

  Similarly, Maria Feodorovna often complained to him about this simplicity. In her eyes, by adopting a spartan way of life that was much too simple for subjects accustomed to being dazzled by a sovereign whose power proceeded from divine will, the emperor was devaluing symbolically and politically the function entrusted to him. In 1806 she wrote a long letter in which she posed the relationship between the tsar’s behavior, the symbolic system of power, and the nature of his duty:

  You ascended the throne at the age of twenty-three. At this time of life, one captures love, interest, and tenderness, but respect is only obtained with age, especially when, like you, dear Alexander, one is not surrounded with the prestige of any grandeur. You have abolished it all, differing on this point completely from your Grandmother’s way of thinking, who wanted to give the public, by the frame of grandeur with which she surrounded even the youngest of your sisters, a motive for respecting herself. On the contrary, from your advent you have abolished in your person any glow that in the eyes of the vulgar would mark your grandeur, and in many respects you have placed yourself at the level of others. […] The great feast days now have no other ceremony than ordinary Sundays in the time of the departed Empress; and on ordinary Sundays, the Court is deserted and the Great do not frequent it. When the people know that their Sovereign and his family are at church and they see the Great promenading in the streets […], then the comparison with the past comes to mind and is disadvantageous to the Sovereign, for it proves a lack of eagerness by the public to see him and shows there is less religion among our Great, who abstain from the duties prescribed by the Church. These reflections diminish respect for the Sovereign, respect for our Great, and perhaps even have a harmful influence on the people’s religion. […]

  Finally, all this magic of grandeur that once impressed the public no longer exists. On top of that, neither the Great nor the public are flattered by the Sovereign; decorations, not even being presented from your hands, are less esteemed and prized (although perhaps still desired) because the rewards cannot be compared either in their allure or magnificence to those once granted by the late Empress and late Emperor. You conclude that as both motives of amour-propre and interest no longer exist, then you should, you alone, dear Alexander, by your virtue and by dint of great and fine qualities and good actions, captivate the sentiments and support once enjoyed by Sovereigns who employed and benefited from all the advantages of Sovereignty. We live as individuals in ease and wealth—but not in the style suitable for crowned heads. […] A complaint that people have against you, dear Alexander, is of not esteeming and grasping your place as emperor, having set aside all the apparatus of grandeur.29

  The simplicity of Alexander I did not escape foreigners posted to the court, either. The ambassador from the King of Sardinia, who arrived in May 1803, Joseph de Maistre, a counter-Enlightenment philosopher, mentions in one of his first dispatches that “the emperor often goes out alone and without servants,”30 that he wears neither jewels nor rings nor a watch,31 that he often walks without an escort, and requires of subjects whom he meets outside merely a respectful salute: no need to kneel nor even halt when he passes. But the diplomat deplores also the fact that Alexander’s good qualities are not appreciated sufficiently in Russia, and he attributes this situation to the absence of maturity in the Russian people:

  When the emperor meets someone he knows on the Quai,32 he does not require that person to leave the carriage to salute him, just a wave suffices. Unfortunately this simplicity that might be suitable in southern countries where people know how to appreciate majesty without pomp does not produce the same impression in Russia. Personal respect is very weakened. Such a virtue cannot be appreciated by such a people. However, one must salute his great love of men and of his duties.33

  While at his ascension the new sovereign experienced phases of melancholy, he did not live in despondency, nor did he live as a recluse. By his side the young Empress Elizabeth radiated beauty and charm. The Minister of Saxony, Rosenweig, wrote fervently of her:

  It is difficult to render all the Empress’s charms: features of extreme fineness and regularity, a Greek profile, large blue eyes, and hair deliciously blonde. Her person radiates elegance and majesty and her movement is quite aerial. In short, she is no doubt one of the most beautiful women in the world.34

  And Nikita Panin used similar language in a letter he sent to his wife in April 1801:

  I passed through the Great Court, and meeting by chance Their Imperial Majesties who were going to prayer, I was presented to the young empress when I was least expecting it. She is embellished and changed totally in her manners. A tone of ease and full of dignity has replaced that excessive timidity that formerly prevented her from taking advantage of the means she has for presenting herself at court.35

  Still, Elizabeth’s discreet nature was not long in coming to the fore; the young woman quickly accustomed herself to the simplicity demanded by Alexander and to the prerogatives that the emperor granted to his mother, although they were at her own expense. Meanwhile, despite Elizabeth’s human qualities—her attention to others, her modesty, her culture and curious mind—the shared trials did not bring the young couple closer together. Was this perhaps because the presence of the person who was by his side the night of the parricide might have reminded Alexander constantly of his own guilt? Or perhaps because Elizabeth was smitten with Prince Czartoryski and had been unfaithful to her husband? Whatever the case, by 1801 their marriage was already just a facade.

  Admittedly, Elizabeth assumed with charm and intelligence her duties at court; admittedly, Alexander always demonstrated affection for her in public, thus presenting the appearance of a harmonious marriage. But in reality, their relations had been strained since 1796, and they deteriorated even more between 1800 and 1801. Alexander had many ephemeral liaisons: Madame Phillis, a French lyric singer, was succeeded by a French actress, Madame Chevallier, before the emperor became smitten with several ladies at the court whose husbands, obliged to be accommodating, turned a blind eye. In parallel, Alexander maintained a relation that was quite ambiguous with his young sister Catherine; for whole years he addressed passionate and equivocal letters to her. In September 1805 he wrote to her characteristically:

  If you are a madwoman, at least you are the most delicious one who ever existed. I declare that you have conquered me totally and that I am mad for you. Do you hear? Adieu, Bissiamovna [his pet name for her], I adore you.36

  And the next month:

  What is happening to the dear nose that I find so much pleasure in flattening and kissing? I do fear it is hardening during this eternity that we are separated! Oh, what a temptation I have to come in the place of a messenger to give you a kiss and afterward return to my post!37

  Four days later:

  S
eeing myself loved by you is indispensable to my happiness, for you are one of the prettiest creatures in the world. Adieu, dear madwoman of my soul, I adore you, provided that you do not despise me.38

  During the Carnival festivities in March 1801, Alexander fell under the charm of Maria Naryshkina, who attracted him less by her intelligence (reputedly mediocre) than by her extraordinary Raphaelite beauty (Wiegel said this beauty seemed impossible, almost supernatural), her gaiety, and her love of life. Daughter of the Polish Prince Antoine-Stanislas Chetvertinski, Maria was born in February 1779; in 1794, at the age of fifteen, she was named demoiselle d’honneur to Catherine II before marrying in the following year Prince Dimitri Naryshkin, one of the richest lords in the time of Catherine II. She then became one of the most visible women at court, and her marriage was celebrated in a poem by Gavrila Derzhavin entitled “The Establishment of the Newly Married.” It was also to her that Derzhavin addressed the epistle Aspasia. But the marriage soon proved to be a mismatch and turned into a fiasco: Naryshkin, indifferent to his wife’s beauty, rapidly adopted the role of indulgent husband, and in 1801 Maria was the mistress of Count Zubov before becoming two years later the mistress of the emperor—as we shall see later.

  •••

  If by affirming his preference for simplicity Alexander distinguished himself from the lifestyle of both Paul and Catherine II, the young sovereign did not break completely with the values and habits that had been inculcated in him since childhood. From his grandmother he inherited a pronounced taste for the pleasures of conversation, lively exchanges in salons, and a love of the theater.

  He was very fond of the French theater, and even our actors; he treated them with a benevolence that they sometimes abused by a familiarity that was in bad taste, which would have shocked a monarch who was less good and less indulgent than he.39

  Alexander particularly appreciated the comedies and classical tragedies of the seventeenth century, as well as Russian works belonging to this vein. He was attuned to the talent of the playwright Vladislas Ozerov (1770–1816). A career soldier who had become a major general (he left the army in 1808), Ozerov wrote five plays—The Death of Oleg (1798), Oedipus in Athens (1804), Fingal (1805), Dmitri Donskoy (1807), and Polyxenes (1809)—that seduced Alexander and were very successful among the elites of St. Petersburg. Often inspired by historical themes, these plays showed the interior anguish of souls—like the work of Racine, of whom Ozerov was a great admirer—and earned him the reputation as the founder of Russian tragedy.40 On the other hand Alexander liked poetry much less, although it was in vogue in Russia at the start of the nineteenth century.

  He also loved balls and parties given in his honor by great figures at court; rarely going to bed before three o’clock in the morning, he reproached himself in French and undoubtedly recalled the warning from Laharpe about time wasted in useless distractions:

  You are sleeping, miserable wretch, and a load of affairs await you. You are neglecting your duty and give yourself to sleep and to pleasure, and unfortunates are suffering while you are wallowing on your mattresses. For shame! You do not have the courage to overcome the idleness that has always been your prerogative. Get up, shake off the yoke of your own weakness, become again a man and citizen useful to your country.41

  In parallel, he had inherited from Paul a pronounced taste for military exercises, reviews, and maneuvers (for “parade-mania,” in Prince Czartoryski’s expression), as well as an obsessive concern for detail and order that would turn into a mania as the years passed.

  So, while affirming a new way of living from the first weeks of his accession to the throne, Alexander was also rapidly adopting an ensemble of measures on both domestic and foreign levels.

  Measures of Symbolic and Political Scope

  A manifesto issued on the morning Alexander ascended the throne, written by Trochtchinkski, Catherine’s former crown prosecutor, stressed the heritage of her reign:

  We, in receiving the inheritance of the Imperial Throne of all the Russias, receive at the same time the obligation to govern the nation that God has entrusted to Us according to the laws and according to the heart of Our Very August Grandmother who reposes in God, the Empress Catherine the Second, whose memory will be eternally dear to Us as to the whole country, with the hope of bringing Russia to the summit of its glory and offering indestructible happiness to all our faithful subjects by following her wise intentions.42

  Yet this faithfulness to the work of Catherine II should not be overestimated: although we may detect many undeniable elements of continuity, Alexander as a critical observer of his grandmother’s practices, especially those from the twilight of her reign, aspired on a certain number of points to distinguish himself from this heritage, as he did from that of Paul I.

  On March 11 the new sovereign moved from the St. Michael Palace to live in the Winter Palace, like Catherine II before him. Concerned to break with the excesses of Paul’s reign, he began by lifting the clothing restrictions: French-style round hats, coattails, and English-style waistcoats were again permitted; the Russian uniform was restored to the Army; a number of freedoms confiscated by Paul were reestablished. On April 3 Alexander restored the freedom to travel, adopting a ukase on “the free movement of persons who are returning to Russia or leaving it.”43 On April 12 he authorized the domestic printing of works of foreign literature and abrogated the decree of April 1800 that had banned the import of foreign books and music; as in the time of Catherine, private printing was again authorized and censorship was considerably relaxed; henceforth, each Russian could freely subscribe to foreign newspapers and reviews. The results of this relaxation were quickly felt: whereas in 1800 there were only a thousand books printed in Russia, this number had quadrupled by 1807.

  Meanwhile, loudly proclaiming his desire to abolish the repressive dimension of Paul’s regime, Alexander proclaimed an amnesty on all those who had left the empire to flee tyranny. He recalled from exile 12,000 civilian and military victims who had been disgraced by his father: for example, the radical writer Radishchev, who had been liberated from Siberia but forced to live in exile in the province of Kaluga, and the lieutenant colonel of artillery, Ermolov, once banished to Kostroma. He also freed all political prisoners who were held in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Similarly, from the outset he freed all religious sectarians who had been condemned and imprisoned by his predecessors. Flagellants, castrates, and dukhobory (the millenarian “spirit fighters”) were now authorized to move freely and without surveillance from local authorities. After decades of persecution, the Old Believers now had the right to build their own churches and to have their own cemeteries.

  On April 14 Alexander issued a manifesto that dissolved the “secret expedition,” i.e., the political police. He asserted his desire to end such abuses of power: he wanted to act in conformity with the law. This proclamation is fundamental: beginning in the first weeks, it introduced references to the law (directly inspired by principles taught by Laharpe)44 and to rights as supreme principles, thereby inaugurating a “legalist” as well as a “reformist” reign. To give this proclamation concrete effect in a humanitarian spirit that might recall the principles of Catherine II in the Nakaz (legal code) as well as Laharpe’s course (in particular his digression on the Calas Affair45), the monarch in April put an end to public hangings, and then in September he abolished torture.

  On April 14, despite his deep distrust of the nobility, he reestablished the full validity of the 1785 Charter, restoring prerogatives that Paul had suspended. Henceforth, nobles were no longer subject to obligatory service; they had the right to possess villages of serfs; they were free of any personal tax, had the right to travel and serve freely abroad, and could name their representatives to local and regional bodies. Finally, they were not liable to any form of corporal punishment.46 Similarly, in June, Alexander exempted members of the clergy and deacons from any corporal punishment in cases where they were guilty of crimes.

  Still on the poli
tical plane, he announced on April 17 the creation of a permanent council of high dignitaries. He organized it into four distinct sections charged with managing, respectively, the national economy, foreign and commercial affairs, military and naval affairs, and civil and religious affairs. On June 17 he created a commission to prepare a legal code, presided over by the formerly proscribed Radishchev, demonstrating his commitment to establishing a state based on the rule of law. The same day, he called on members of the senate to present him with a report on the cause of this institution’s decline, on its rights and duties. Shortly before mid-June, Alexander gave Alexander Vorontsov the task of drawing up a text similar to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Called “Charter Addressed to the Russian People,”47 it was to be promulgated in time for the coronation festivities. Like the French document, the charter, whose first draft came by the end of June, proclaimed freedom of thought, expression, and worship for all the empire’s subjects and guaranteed to the nobility full freedom to circulate both inside and outside the borders; with respect to justice, it advanced the rights mentioned in British habeas corpus law and in Catherine’s Nakaz: any individual had the right to personal security, he was presumed innocent as long as his guilt was not proven, his imprisonment or confiscation of his goods was only possible once his guilt had been established by verdict. But, on the other hand, the text remained silent on the thorny question of serfdom. However, this silence did not prevent the emperor on June 9, 1801, in his first (modest) decision touching the question of peasants, from banning announcements of sales of serfs without land. During the coronation festivities in September, flouting a tradition he considered infamous, he made no gifts of state peasants.

  Thus, in barely a few weeks Alexander adopted key measures that demonstrated his will to break with Paul’s arbitrary and repressive practices and to install in Russia a regime based on the law. Important changes were rapidly formulated for the domestic scene. Meanwhile, decisions just as novel were adopted in the realm of diplomacy.