Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  You are the only person in the world who believes this approach can prevent evil and allow happiness and peace to be reborn. My Alexander, it is not so, you are fooling yourself in a criminal way; what you are doing to prevent misfortunes will bring them fully down on our heads. Bonaparte knew how to tear from you in Tilsit the promise of breaking with the English, making war with Sweden, and even this unfortunate meeting, and since the past shapes the terms for the future, this meeting will tear from you new bloody measures, carnage, and will entail the ruin of your country and finally your own. You will consent to act against Austria, against all Bonaparte’s enemies. You will come to share his views, you will act for him, thereby destroying yourself, for is it not evident that by weakening the forms of power that resist Bonaparte, you will exhaust yourself and you will increase the mass of forces that he will deploy someday against us?22

  But once again, despite the admonitions and criticism, Alexander stuck his ground. He thought he had to feign once more to believe in the alliance to gain time; far from being the dupe, the victim, or the plaything of Napoleon, the tsar appeared deeply determined, and in his answer to his mother, written the same day, he delivered a very pertinent geopolitical analysis:

  The moment chosen for this meeting is such that it imposes on me the duty not to evade it. Our interests have forced us in recent times to conclude a tight alliance with France; we will do everything to prove the sincerity and nobility of our way of acting. […] France has to believe that her political interest can be allied with that of Russia; as soon as she does not have this belief, she will see in Russia no more than an enemy that it will be in her interest to try to destroy. […] Was it not in Russia’s interest to get along with this fearful colossus, with the sole truly dangerous enemy that Russia can have? We will see his fall calmly, if such is the will of Providence; and it is more than plausible that the nations of Europe, tired of the evils they have so long suffered, will not even dream of beginning a struggle against Russia out of vengeance, just because she was allied with Napoleon at a time when each of them aspired only to that. […] If Providence has decreed the fall of this colossal state, I doubt that it can be sudden, but even in this case, it would be wiser to await this fall and only then to take measures. This is my opinion. […] How else could Russia conserve her union with France except by sharing its views for a while and proving that she can remain so without seeming to distrust her intentions and plans?

  In my political behavior, I can only follow the inclinations of my conscience, of my main convictions—my desire, that has never quit me, of being useful to my country. This, dear Mother, is what I judge to be my duty in answering your letter. I admit that it is painful for me to see, when I have only the interests of Russia in sight, that the sentiments that are the true force of my actions may be so misunderstood.23

  In September 1808 Alexander set off for Erfurt, accompanied by a modest retinue. Apart from his brother Constantine, the emperor brought two avowed Francophiles, Vice-Minister Mikhail Speranski and Chancellor Rumyantsev, Count Tolstoy, Prince (and minister) Alexander Golitsyn, and Princes Trubetskoy, Volkonsky, and Gagarin, who were his aides-de-camp. On the way, always faithful to his Prussian friendships, Alexander made a stop at Königsberg to meet the king and queen, who in unison with their prime minister, Baron von Stein, exhorted him to take the lead of a new anti-French coalition. But for Alexander the hour scarcely lent itself to a military engagement: the Russian army was undergoing a restructuring and was already fighting on the Ottoman front. In Erfurt he would again have to perform his role of friendship and play his part in the Napoleonic game, while waiting for a better chance.

  •••

  As in Tilsit, luster, pomp, and profusions of friendship were displayed on both sides. Alexander arrived in the town on September 25 in the evening, but only on the twenty-seventh did the official meeting of the two retinues take place, at some distance from Erfurt. Napoleon came on horseback and met the Russian sovereign. Barely out of his carriage, Alexander was presented with a magnificent grey mount, Eclipse, covered with a white bearskin. After kissing each other “fraternally,” the two sovereigns (Alexander in a green general’s uniform and Napoleon in the uniform of the chasseur guard) entered on horseback into the town of Erfurt, a small peaceful village that had not been predestined to receive guests of this rank:

  A tranquil village of bourgeois and officials, Erfurt did not have a taste for grandeur and its disposition did not lend itself to its new fortune. Its tortuous streets, badly paved and unlit at night, and its irregular squares seemed unsuitable for the deployment of retinues and the movement of troops. Its narrow houses, with sharp gables and picturesque facades, where the art of the sixteenth century had sculpted delicate ornaments, may have sufficed to house the intimate luxury of an opulent bourgeoisie, but could not answer the necessities or grand requirements of the court.24

  The town dressed up for the occasion in its finery to show itself worthy of the honor conferred on it; apart from the two sovereigns and their staffs, Erfurt welcomed several German princes (the kings of Bavaria, Saxony, Württemberg, Prince Wilhelm of Prussia), writers (including Goethe), and artists, including the famous actor Talma who gave in Weimar on October 6 a very fine and triumphant interpretation of Brutus in The Death of Caesar, a tragedy by Voltaire. Meetings lasted until October14, and as at Tilsit, personal meetings and working sessions alternated with public occasions. Regiments were reviewed, there were dances, parties, hunts (including a great stag hunt in the Forest of Ettersberg near Weimar), and past victories were commemorated. On October 14 (the anniversary of his victory of Jena), Napoleon took his ally on a tour of the battlefield that had seen the routing of the Prussian army. We may easily understand what it must have cost Alexander to keep a good countenance despite this provocation. Finally, every evening at 7:00 p.m., at Napoleon’s invitation, the French theater company performed before “an orchestra of kings”25 and of German princes and aristocrats, the plays of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire. The operation of seduction conducted by the French emperor was at its zenith: Napoleon wanted to celebrate in the greatest pomp his power—as well as this Franco-Russian alliance he needed so much. For in fact, the stakes were high: bogged down in Spanish and Portuguese campaigns, the French emperor wanted to secure from his ally real support in his struggle against Austria and England. He was open about this in his instructions to Talleyrand, who for a year had no longer been minister of foreign relations (he resigned upon returning from Tilsit) but who was brought to Erfurt to take part in negotiations:

  We are going to Erfurt. I wish to come back free to do in Spain what I want; I want to be sure that Austria will be worried and contained, and I do not want to be committed in any precise way with Russia as concerns affairs in the Levant. Prepare me an agreement that contents Emperor Alexander, that is above all directed against England, and over which I can be at my ease about the rest. […] Make your arrangements to leave; you must be at Erfurt a day or two ahead of me. You will find the means to see Emperor Alexander often. You know him well, you will speak to him in the language that suits him. You will tell him that, given how useful our alliance can be for men, one recognizes the will of Providence. […] I will help you! Prestige will not be lacking.26

  But Napoleon’s plan—which cynically wagered on Alexander’s naïveté—stumbled against a more complex situation because behind the ostentatious demonstrations of friendship, the political exchanges were tense. Very soon Napoleon realized that his “ally” had become much less malleable than the vanquished party of Tilsit had been. He complained bitterly to Caulaincourt: “Your emperor Alexander is stubborn as a mule. He is deaf to things that he does not want to hear. This devilish affair of Spain is costing me dear.”27 Arguing with Alexander, he even threw a comical scene:28 angry, he threw his hat on the ground and stamped on it, while the tsar replied with a calm smile: “You are violent, and I am stubborn. With me, anger gains nothing. Let us talk and be reasonable, or I am
leaving.”

  If Napoleon was irritated with negotiations to the point of losing his sangfroid (or feigning to lose it), this was because Alexander refused to cede to most of his demands. Admittedly, the tsar recognized the legitimacy of French conquests in Italy and Spain (but he was pertinently aware that the French positions in Spain were fragile, to say the least), and he reasserted his fidelity to the continental blockade despite its high financial and economic cost.29 But he balked at engaging alongside Napoleon in demanding the disarmament of Austria, and he merely promised, in case Austria recommenced hostilities, to commit to any new conflict an army of 150,000 men. Indeed, Alexander would never participate in the annihilation of Austria. Apart from the fact that this would be incompatible with his conception of the balance of powers, it might allow the Polish territories of Austria to emancipate themselves, to be joined to the duchy of Warsaw, and thus form a Poland under French influence, which would be still more powerful and more threatening.

  At the same time, while Napoleon was still counting on the tsar’s active engagement against England (in exchange for France’s recognition of the legitimacy of the annexation of Finland), Alexander remained vague. To secure his agreement, Napoleon said he was ready to accept new Russian conquests at the expense of Sweden, but Alexander did not wish to extend his territory in the direction of the North Sea. Lacking chips to bargain with, the tsar’s commitments to Napoleon remained limited: on the one hand, Alexander condescended to a common diplomatic approach in the form of a letter to the king of England, proposing peace talks on the basis of uti possidetis. And on October 12 he signed a theoretically secret agreement30 (valid for ten years) that reaffirmed the Tilsit commitments and stated that the concrete modes of military operations against England would be fixed during a forthcoming meeting between the two sovereigns. This final meeting, which was to take place later in the year, would never happen—and the outcome of their agreement would remain practically nil.

  On his side, while Alexander hoped to convince Napoleon to withdraw his troops from Prussia, this demand aroused a hostile reaction, and so the tsar had to settle for two minor concessions: reduction of the war reparations owed by Prussia (from 140 to 120 million francs), and extension of the duration of its payment (from a year and a half to three years). Despite this reversal that complicated his relations with the king and queen of Prussia, Alexander obtained something at Erfurt that was crucial with respect to his own court, apart from the recognition of the conquest of Finland: the legitimacy of the acquisition by Russia of the principalities of Walachia and Moldavia. Indeed, article 5 announced that the “high contracting parties are committed to regarding as an absolute condition of peace with England that they will recognize Finland, Walachia and Moldavia as part of the Empire of Russia.”31 So strengthened by this French assurance, Alexander would resume military hostilities against the Ottoman Empire in April 1809 in order to ensure the definitive possession of the Danube principalities.

  Throughout the eighteen days of the Erfurt conference, Alexander proved pugnacious, and overall he won his wager, drawing the best outcome from the Napoleonic game. In this result we should see the effect of the tsar’s personality, the expression of his desire to stand up to “Bonaparte” and to obtain at whatever cost from this new meeting the precious wins able to pacify minds in Russia. He was clear-sighted about a character who no longer fascinated him. But we must also detect the intervention of an external element: the support that Talleyrand was giving the tsar from the wings. Talleyrand had been at Erfurt from September 24, and it was he who received Alexander at his arrival the next day. Talleyrand was staying close to the tsar’s residence, and the two men saw each other almost every evening at the home of the sister of Queen Louise of Prussia, the princess of Thurn and Taxis. And in private Talleyrand told the Russian emperor things that are surprising, coming from someone who was supposed to be representing the interests of France:

  Sire, what are you doing here? It is up to you to save Europe and you will not manage unless you stand up to Napoleon. The French people are civilized, but their sovereign is not; the sovereign of Russia is civilized, but his people are not. Thus it is up to the sovereign of Russia to be the ally of the French people. […] The Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees were the conquests of France; the rest is the conquest of Napoleon and France has no attachment to it.32

  Talleyrand went even farther. He asserted to the tsar that “the plan for a war in the Indies and the sharing of the Ottoman Empire are only phantoms produced on a stage to draw the attention of Russia away until Spanish affairs are arranged,”33 and in parallel he pushed Alexander to do everything to reassure Austria of his peaceful intentions. Henceforth, the French emissary was playing a double game: fearful of Napoleon’s megalomania but incapable of arresting his crazy course, Talleyrand chose to betray the French emperor in order to remain faithful to his own idea of French interests. The confidence established between the tsar and the diplomat was such that Alexander did not hesitate to show him the final plan of the secret agreement; the emissary “took advantage of it to persuade the tsar to attenuate and dilute, to the point of insignificance, the articles regarding Austria.”34 Talleyrand’s biographer relevantly stresses the singular nature of the Erfurt negotiations: “The history of this treaty is unique in the annals of diplomacy. Talleyrand ‘played a hand’ on both sides, French and Russian, even though he was not present as an official minister.”35

  Similarly, when on October 12 Napoleon confided to Talleyrand his intention to divorce Josephine (with whom he still had no child) and to ask in marriage one of the tsar’s sisters, in order to further secure the Franco-Russian alliance and give his empire an heir, the French diplomat, who was hostile to the plan (“I admit I was frightened for Europe of one more alliance between Russia and France,”36 Talleyrand wrote in his memoirs) quickly passed this information on to Alexander. The latter immediately shared Talleyrand’s reservations and—a sign of the complicity that now linked them—confided the riposte he had decided to use to sabotage any marriage proposal. Talleyrand wrote:

  All the art I thought I needed with Emperor Alexander was unnecessary. At the first word, he understood me—and precisely as I wished to be understood: “If it was only a matter of me,” he said to me, “I would willingly give my consent, but it is not only mine that must be had, because my mother has kept over his daughters a power that I must not contest. I might try to give her guidance, and it is probable that she would follow, but I don’t dare answer for it. All this, inspired by true friendship, should satisfy emperor Napoleon.”37

  The diplomatic positions defended by Talleyrand were in fact mixed up with his selfish interests: at Erfurt, he obtained from Alexander for his nephew Edmond of Périgord, the hand of the very rich Princess Dorothea of Courland—just when the girl, aged only sixteen, was on the point of getting engaged to Adam Czartoryski! And after Erfurt it was in hard currency that Talleyrand would sell his services to the tsar.38

  •••

  Upon his return from Erfurt, Alexander, fearing that Napoleon would indeed ask for his sister Catherine in marriage, decided to prevent this union. Although not beautiful, the young woman, then aged twenty-one, was imaginative and sensual; she breathed intelligence and a lively mind. The mistress of General Bagration, she was seductive to those around her, including her own brother (as we have seen). Having decided to prevent any diplomatic embarrassment (even though the French emperor had not officially formulated any demand), Alexander hurried with the agreement of the person concerned and of Maria Feodorovna to marry “Cathau” to Prince George of Oldenburg, the younger son of Peter of Oldenburg and Frederika of Württemberg. The young man came from a princely family but had little money. So, in order to assure the couple an income worthy of the sumptuous lifestyle of his beloved sister, the tsar named his brother-in-law governor of the rich region of Tver. Alexander saw to it that the French alliance sealed at Tilsit and then at Erfurt would not be strengthened by any family t
ie that would later be liable to hinder his European policy.

  Slow Deterioration of Bilateral Relations

  Back in St. Petersburg Alexander did not play the role of a docile ally, for he conducted on all fronts an active diplomacy that soon annoyed the French. In January 1809 he received with a warm pomp the Prussian sovereigns who were visiting Russia; for 24 days, without regard for his French “ally,” he gave ostentatious demonstrations of his attachment to the cause of the Hohenzollerns. He showered the king with warmth and bestowed on Queen Louise sumptuous gifts (a gold toiletry set, fine Persian and Turkish shawls, and lace gowns). Furious at these manifestations that flouted the spirit of Erfurt, Caulaincourt lost his civility to the point of a rude remark, as reported by Joseph de Maistre in a letter to his minister:

  My pen is hardly able to render the speech that the ambassador of France made at the home of Princess Dolgoruki, but it is absolutely necessary to let you know this word. The ambassador said bluntly: “There is no mystery about this trip; the queen of Prussia is coming to have sex with emperor Alexander.” This is exactly what he said, but I do not know enough French to lend to such a horror the name it deserves.39

  This accusation was not only vulgar but unfounded: the fond relationship between Alexander and Louise remained platonic. We should see the demonstrations of friendship toward the Prussian sovereigns merely as a reflection of Alexander’s real compassion, crosscut with his own guilt: in fact, since Tilsit he had carried like a cross his participation in the dismembering of Prussia. The Prussian monarchs, despite the warm welcome they had received, were bitter about their situation, and on the eve of her departure from St. Petersburg, in a premonition of her coming death,40 Louise wrote in her diary: “I bring back from these brilliant parties only fatigue and pain. I return as I came. […] Henceforth, nothing will dazzle me any more: my kingdom is no longer of this world.”41