Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  Soon expressing his desire to end the risky and bellicose policy of his father, Alexander began by annulling the expedition that was supposed to fight the British in India; a few days later, he gave up the title of Grand Master of the Order of Malta. In June 1801 the Russian government, now under the influence of the pro-English party—key roles were played by the Vorontsov brothers, Alexander and Simon,48 experienced senior officials of Catherine’s reign—signed a commercial agreement with England that soothed the relations that had been strained during Paul’s short reign, which also prefigured the signature of a bilateral statement of understanding. Diplomatic relations with Austria were reestablished, while a policy of appeasement with France was conducted. In October 1801 a peace treaty was concluded, which was accompanied by a secret convention with France.49 So Alexander expressed everywhere his desire for peace, shared with the new sovereign by Vice-Chancellor Kochubey, now in charge of foreign affairs. In his memoirs Prince Adam Czartoryski recalled the positions defended by Kochubey:

  Count Kochubey had adopted a system that he thought entirely in accord with the opinions and views of the Emperor, and at the same time in accord with his own sentiments. It was to stand back from the affairs of Europe, to stay uninvolved as much as possible, to be on good terms with the whole world, in order to be able to devote his time and attention to domestic improvements. This was indeed the advice and desire of the emperor and that of his intimates, but nobody adopted it with more conviction and supported it with more insistence, nobody decided to follow it with such unshakeable constancy, as Count Kochubey. He said “Russia is sufficiently large and powerful by its extent, its population, and its position; it has nothing to fear from any side, provided that it leaves others alone. It is overly involved in too many affairs that do not concern it directly; nothing could happen in Europe without it claiming to take part; it waged useless and costly wars. In its happy situation, the Emperor can remain at peace with the whole world and devote himself to domestic reforms without fearing that anybody would dare disturb him in his noble and salutary work. It is within that Russia can make immense conquests by establishing order, economy, and justice in all parts of the vast Empire, by making agriculture, commerce, and industry flourish.”50

  Thus, nonengagement in European affairs is largely explained by Alexander’s desire to ensure the peace that he needed to advance his reforms.

  In a few weeks ambitious and courageous sets of measures on both the internal and external levels, which aimed to prepare for the establishment of a legal Russian state, were adopted. But beginning in July 1801, we observe a certain amount of tension arising: the “Charter Addressed to the Russian People” was not promulgated, and Alexander’s distrust of the senators, though he had encouraged them to reflect on the future of their institution, started to grow.

  In their name, in August, Count Zavadovski presented the tsar with a plan that, first, would grant the senate preeminence over the prosecutor general; instituted by Peter the Great, this official dignitary had the power to confirm the senate’s decrees, and he had served as interface between tsar and senators, which gave him extended powers. Moreover, now elevating the senate, the plan would give it the right to propose taxes, plus the right to petition and make “remonstrances” in cases where an imperial decree might be “contrary to texts previously published, or unclear, or else harmful.”51 But quickly the tsar asserted that any constitutional reform would only come from him alone.52 So in September 1802 a decree made the senate the most important body in the regime after the emperor and granted it the right of remonstrance but did not satisfy any of its other requests.

  According to the historian Allen McConnell,53 these first liberal measures were supposedly imposed on Alexander, who was perhaps terrorized by Count Pahlen, then at the height of his power and a resolute partisan of a constitutional regime in the English style. Once Pahlen was got rid of—he was exiled to Courland in June 1801—McConnell says, Alexander gave up on more radical measures out of a concern to conserve his autocratic power in all his prerogatives.

  This thesis has the merit of underlining a point long neglected by historians: the dominant place occupied by Pahlen in the antechamber of imperial power in the three months following the killing of Paul. Indeed, his key position was stressed by many contemporary witnesses. In his memoirs Czartoryski attests to the fact that, under cover of sustaining the young emperor, Pahlen in fact dictated what lines to follow.54 For his part, General Duroc stressed in a dispatch sent to Bonaparte in May 1801 that “M. de Pahlen is always at the head of affairs and appears to have a great influence,”55 while Simon Vorontsov in a letter to Novosiltsev the same month was worried that “the Sovereign is in their hands. He may not have the will or security to oppose what this terrible cabal wants.”56 The personage of Pahlen was omnipresent: named military governor of St. Petersburg before Paul’s death, he became by the end of March a member of the College of Foreign Affairs and of the Council of State, and the civil administrator of the Baltic provinces, as well as of the province of St. Petersburg from June onward.

  Thus Pahlen’s power between March 24 and June 29 is a well-established fact—to the point that, despite the support of the procurator-general, Bekleshov, and of Maria Feodorovna and her entourage,57 Alexander delayed more than three months before the dismissal and condemnation to internal exile of the person who had organized the plot, whom he would not forgive for the death of his father. In August the person who first conceived of the general deed, Nikita Panin, suffered the same fate. Then it was the turn of those who had executed it: Major-General Yashvil and Colonel Tatarinov were also condemned to domestic exile, while Platon Zubov was obliged to leave the imperial territory at the start of 1802. Yet the consequences of these successive disgraces should not be overestimated: first, because although it was well-known that Pahlen was favorable to an evolution toward a constitutional regime, no document suggests that he exercised pressure on Alexander in this direction; second, because in the measures that Alexander did adopt, a clear continuity can be observed between those that preceded the fall of Pahlen and those that followed it. The preparation of the “Charter Addressed to the Russian People” was pursued until the end of June; it was subject to commentary from Alexander’s close collaborators in mid-August; the emperor submitted it himself for the approval of the permanent council on September 21—a few days before his coronation—before he decided to make a volte-face and to renounce its promulgation. Thirdly, according to the opinion of those close to him, Alexander’s sincere attachment to political reform was wholehearted in 1801. As a consequence, if changes can be perceived after the month of June that would be made concrete in the months and years that followed, this shift seems less related to the fall of Pahlen (properly speaking) than to the rise in power of other groups in the imperial entourage.

  The Tsar, His Advisors, and the Work of Reform

  While Pahlen still exercised a dominant influence on political affairs, Alexander dearly wanted to gather a small group of trustworthy friends, who would in fact constitute a “secret committee,” in order to help him in his reforming task.

  From the month of March, he recalled to St. Petersburg those whom Paul had forced out for their “suspicious characters.” Adam Czartoryski arrived in mid-March, joined a few weeks later by Novosiltsev and Kochubey. Kochubey wrote in April from Dresden, which he was on the verge of leaving to come back to Russia, a letter to Simon Vorontsov that revealed the state of mind of Alexander’s friends:

  I am leaving because I think I owe something to Grand Duke Alexander; I am leaving because I think that all honest men must gather around him and make every effort to heal the infinite wounds inflicted by his father upon the country.58

  Awaiting the arrival of his friends in St. Petersburg, Alexander summoned Paul Stroganov for a conversation in which he confirmed his reforming intentions in May. However, the method to be followed was not yet decided: this was the main subject of their discussion. For the count, it
was crucial to start to work on reorganizing the administration before coming around to the key question of a constitution. For Alexander, it was indeed proper to privilege administrative reform but without forgetting the establishment of a constitution whose purpose was both to set up a legal state and to guarantee citizens’ rights in a durable way. To conduct this ambitious planning, Stroganov proposed a committee be set up; the emperor agreed,59 and several weeks later, after the return of Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, and Kochubey, a “non-official”60 or “intimate” committee was created, which Alexander facetiously called “my Committee of Public Safety.”

  This structure benefited from no official status, and it functioned in parallel with the state apparatus, in the shadows and in great freedom. It met regularly from July 5, 1801, to May 17, 1802, then after a pause of a year and a half, resumed work and continued to meet (at least until September 1805).61 As we saw above, after August 1801 Kochubey was named vice-chancellor, and his functions as head of Russian diplomacy meant that he could no longer participate in the committee except at a distance in time and space.

  In his memoirs Czartoryski devoted fascinating pages to the informal functioning of the committee, its secret nature, and the role it played in Alexander’s reform plans. Czartoryski says that Alexander “had understood the often insurmountable obstacles that even the most elementary reforms would encounter in Russia. But he was anxious to prove to his circle that he still held to his former opinions despite the change in his position. However, they should not be revealed, and even less, be flaunted before a public that was so little prepared to appreciate them, and which would have considered them with both surprise and apprehension.”62

  Aware of the scope of the reforms that he wanted to undertake and the difficulties that he would unfailingly confront, the emperor chose to work in secret in order to work more freely. In a “summary of the fundamental principles of the organization of a Committee to cooperate in the government’s reform work” that he submitted to the emperor in May 1801, Paul Stroganov insisted, too, on the need to act in secret so as not to compromise the success of the enterprise.

  One might suggest in principle that the search for the state of the public mind cannot give exact results unless much secrecy accompanies the deliberations about government.

  It is secrecy alone that may overcome the reservations that would inevitably arise without that precaution.

  Before going farther, we can suggest here that secrecy should be one of the fundamental bases of the organization of this association.63

  That said, the method followed—meeting on the sly, the fact of working in parallel with existing state structures—also attests to the Romanesque character of the enterprise, even Alexander’s taste for mystery, if not transgression.

  We had the privilege of coming to dine with the emperor without a prior invitation; our confabs took place two or three times a week. After coffee and a moment of conversation, the emperor would withdraw and while the other guests departed, we four affiliates entered by a corridor into a small cabinet de toilette that directly led to the interior chambers of Their Majesties, where the emperor entered from his side. There various reform plans were discussed. There was no subject that was not up for discussion; each brought his ideas, sometimes his work or information he had gathered on what was happening in the current government situation and the abuses that had been noticed. The Emperor fully disclosed his thoughts and his true sentiments.64

  Two or three times a week, therefore, the group met in the emperor’s private apartments, generally after dinner,65 and the most fundamental subjects were tackled without taboos or reservations. This was particularly true at the session of November 30, 1801, when they dealt with the issue of serfdom. Novosiltsev feared the demoralization that this reform might produce in the Russian nobility, but Stroganov responded by enunciating a judgment that was brusque but speaks volumes about the radical tenor of discussions in the intimate committee:

  What are the principles that might bring about dangerous fermentations? Who are the parties or individuals that are discontented? What elements? It is the people and the nobility. What is the nobility that these gentlemen appear to fear? What is it composed of? What is its state of mind? Our nobility is composed of a quantity of people who became gentlemen only by service, who have received no education, and all of whose ideas are concerned with seeing nothing above the power of the emperor.

  Not right, not justice—nothing can give them the idea of the slightest resistance! It is the most ignorant class, the most villainous one, whose mind is the stupidest.66

  Throughout its existence, the nonofficial committee produced very animated discussions, even disputes, as attested by the letter of apology sent by Paul Stroganov to his sovereign:

  I must, Sire, make an apology for the vivacity with which I got carried away yesterday in the discussion that occupied us; I know that you are indulgent—sometimes too much—but I know that what I did is bad, and that what should characterize the propriety of actions is quite contrary to mine. Thus, if you have the goodness not to condemn me, I must do so myself, and have you know that I find my vivacity very reprehensible. I should not profit from the benefit of your indulgence by not noting the impropriety of my conduct.67

  But Alexander was concerned to maintain total freedom of thought and expression within the group, and so he was indulgent toward the count:

  My dear friend, I think you have become completely crazy! How is it possible to note this and to accuse you of a thing that is the best proof of your regard for me and of your love for the public good? Know that I have never misunderstood you and that while disagreeing with you, I pay justice to the feelings that animate you. For goodness sake, no more of these explanations that do not suit the friendship that unites us. What would not be appropriate for us in public may quite find its place when we are alone, and the greatest proof of friendship that you can give me is to scold me when necessary, when I merit it. Adieu, my dear friend. To you for life,—Alexander.68

  These working sessions, nourished by preparatory notes composed by Paul Stroganov at the request of the emperor, frequently tackled questions of reforming the state on a constitutional basis, as well as reforming the administration. The members of the little group all remained attached to the goals set by Alexander as far back as 1797, but over the weeks their positions became more and more cautious, which illustrates the difficulty of the enterprise. Moreover, the monarch’s intensions were not always very clear.

  If the various members of the nonofficial committee always agreed in thinking that reforms were indispensable and all of them pushed the emperor to move in this direction, they were rarely unanimous as concerns their concrete positions. Stroganov took positions that were the most openly constitutionalist; by contrast, Novosiltsev and Kochubey were more circumspect, if not pusillanimous: they supported less the establishment of freedoms and individual rights than the institution of a state of law as guarantee of the good functioning of institutions. They thus approached Alexander’s personal views. During the session of August 3, 1801, Novosiltsev declared himself hostile to the principle of the individual’s judicial security, although it was mentioned in the first draft of the charter.69 Then, when it came to the role and prerogatives to grant the senate, Novosiltsev, who was very pessimistic about the political intelligence of the senators, disapproved of any increase in that institution’s powers as liable to tie the sovereign’s hands. As for Czartoryski, he delivered a tirade against a senate “composed of men who for the most part were incompetent and without energy, selected for their insignificance,”70 while Stroganov stated violent contempt not only for the senators, but more generally for the nobility—from which the senators came for the most part.

  These positions for various reasons tended to push the emperor to moderation by making him aware of the scope of the obstacles along the road, and they converged somewhat paradoxically with the views of Laharpe. Two months after ascending the throne, in May 1801
, in answer to a letter on this occasion from his former tutor, Alexander responded to his mentor, who had meanwhile become a member of the Helvetian Directory, in a moving letter full of the affectionate gratitude he still felt:

  The first moment of true pleasure I have felt since finding myself at the head of the affairs of my unhappy country was what I felt when I received your letter, my dear and true friend. […]

  I will try to make myself worthy of having been your student and I will glory in this all my life. It was only due to obeying a strict order [from Paul] that I stopped writing to you, without ceasing to think of you and of the time we spent together. It would be sweet to hope it might come back, and it would make me happy. Here I submit absolutely to you and your domestic situation, for there are no others who could ever oppose this. But one favor that I ask of you is to write to me from time to time and give me your advice, which will be so salutary in a post like mine, which I have undertaken only to be useful to my country and to preserve it from new evils. If only you could be here to guide me with your experience and to save me from the traps to which I am exposed by my youth, and perhaps also by my ignorance of the blackness of perverted souls! One judges so often according to oneself; desiring the good, one flatters oneself that others have the same intentions, until experience comes along to prove the contrary. Then one is disillusioned, but perhaps too late, and the evil is done. My dear friend, this is why an enlightened and experienced friend is the greatest treasure that one may have.

  My occupations prevent me from writing to you more. I end by telling you that what gives me most difficulty and work is to reconcile individual interests and hatreds, and to make everybody cooperate for the single goal of generally being useful.