Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon
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Shortly after the Hohenzollern stay in Russia, it was the turn of the Austrian prince Schwarzenberg to pay a visit to St. Petersburg. Charged with announcing to Alexander that Austria had decided as part of a future coalition to resume hostilities with France, the emissary from Vienna had the task of obtaining from the tsar the neutrality of Russia in the war to come. Little desiring to be dragged into a conflict that he thought premature, the tsar hesitated for several weeks before opting for a compromise solution. During the audience granted to Schwarzenberg (in a secret document) he committed to guarantee de facto Russia’s neutrality, while specifying that in accord with the letter of the Erfurt agreement, Russia would have to declare war on Austria.
While in the winter and spring of 1809 the Austrian question preoccupied the tsar, his mind was especially on the war with Sweden. Having recommenced in the winter of 1808, the conflict went to the advantage of the 35,000 men led by Bagration, faced with 20,000 Swedish and Finnish soldiers. The outcome of an attack on Stockholm at the start of 1809 was the Swedish surrender; then the tsar went to Finland to witness the opening of the Finnish national diet at Porvoo on March 15, before concluding the Peace of Hamina a few months later. This gave Russia the Aland Islands and made Finland a grand duchy that was integrally a part of the Russian Empire. Alexander was enthusiastic:
This peace is perfect and absolutely the one I wanted. I cannot thank the Supreme Being enough. The entire concession of Finland with the Aland Islands, the adhesion to the continental system, the closing of ports to England, and finally the peace with the allies of Russia: all settled without intermediaries. There is enough to sing a fine Te Deum Laudamus—so our Te Deum in St. Isaac Cathedral tomorrow, with its military pomp, will not be sneezed at!42
This strategic advantage to the northwest strengthened the hegemony of the empire over the Baltic seas and culminated the work of Peter the Great by anchoring Russia in northern Europe. However, this conquest aroused the disapproval of Laharpe (who saw it as the expression of a guilty and costly expansionism liable to turn the tsar away from domestic reforms);43 nor did it dazzle the emperor. Admittedly, Russian military prestige was burnished and some luster restored to imperial troops in want of glory, but Alexander was not intoxicated by his success—still less because in the weeks following his stay in Finland, the European theater was becoming worrying.
By mid-April, the Austro-French war was at its height; Napoleon demanded via Caulaincourt the military support from Russia that had been promised at Erfurt. But he would not get it. While Alexander did mass along the border with Austria some 70,000 men under the command of Prince Golitsyn, he knowingly delayed their movement. The marching order (promised to Napoleon for April 27) was not given until May 18, and once the Russian troops were en route, they advanced very slowly to the border, which they crossed while carefully avoiding meeting the enemy on the terrain. Meanwhile, the Grande Armée had progressed to the point of occupying Vienna as soon as May 13 and inflicting on Emperor Franz I at Wagram a severe defeat on July 6 that obliged him to sue for peace. Despite victories that in fact made Russia’s military involvement superfluous, Napoleon was furious with Alexander and no longer believed in the viability of the alliance. On June 2, 1809, the foreign affairs minister, Champagny, wrote to Caulaincourt:
Mr. Ambassador, the Emperor does not want me to hide from you that the recent circumstances have made him lose much confidence in the alliance with Russia, and that they are for him a sign of the bad faith of this government. One never pretended to protect the ambassador of a power on which war is declared! Six weeks passed, and the Russian army made no move, and the Austrian army occupied the grand duchy like one of its provinces. […] The Emperor’s heart is wounded; because of that he no longer writes to Emperor Alexander; he cannot express a trust he no longer feels. He says nothing; he does not complain; he holds his displeasure within himself, but he no longer values the alliance with Russia. […] The 40,000 men that Russia should have sent to the grand duchy would have been a real service, and would at least have maintained some illusion about a phantom alliance.
Consequently, Champagny concluded by enjoining Caulaincourt to stick purely to a game of appearances:
Let the Court of Russia be always as content with you as you appear to be with her; even though the Emperor no longer believes in the Russian alliance, it is all the more important to him that this belief of which he himself is disabused be shared by the rest of Europe.44
Henceforth, distrust was mutual; the following months were nothing but a succession of misunderstandings, disagreements, and outrages that made the march to war increasingly inexorable.
•••
On October 14, 1809, the Treaty of Vienna inflicted on Austria heavy territorial losses in Galicia, in the Salzburg region, and in the Illyrian provinces. As a recompense for the pseudo-participation by Russia in the war (Napoleon wanted to save appearances), it was granted the Galician district of Tarnopol, but it also paid a price for its passivity: it was forced to ratify the shift of the lands taken from Austria to the duchy of Warsaw, which was substantially enlarged, to the great displeasure of Alexander, who did not want to see on the borders of Russia an “independent” Poland under French tutelage; moreover, nationalist public opinion was furious at Russia’s losing influence over the Polish question. Mentioning the toxic reaction of aristocrats at court the day after the treaty was signed, a worried Caulaincourt wrote to his minister that “he had not yet seen ferment at this level and of this scope.” Then he reported the aggressive and contemptuous remarks about Alexander in the capital’s salons:
They say the emperor is good but stupid, and Rumyantsev an imbecile, they never know how to take sides. Making war, they had only to start by seizing Galicia, and the Poles would never come to dispute it. The emperor should be made a monk and maintain peace at the monastery; Naryshkina should be made a nun to service the chaplain and gardener, especially if they were Polish [we recall the tsar’s mistress was of Polish origin]. As for Rumyantsev, he should be made a merchant of kvass.45
This gossip shows that even many of the educated public found the tsar’s European policy incomprehensible.
In this context, in January 1810, Rumyantsev and Caulaincourt met in St. Petersburg to draft a bilateral agreement on the Polish question. Its first article stated that “the Kingdom of Poland will never be re-established” and article 5 banned any new territorial enlargement of the duchy of Warsaw. Five days later Caulaincourt informed the tsar of Napoleon’s intention to divorce Josephine and his wish to marry Princess Anna Pavlovna; in exchange for this demand in marriage, valid for only 48 hours, he offered Alexander I the chance to work for a mutual understanding over the Polish question. Alexander said he was honored—but asked for a delay of ten days before giving his answer because, he said, under Paul’s testament, Maria Feodorovna kept full power over the marriages of her daughters, and therefore she had to be consulted. To Caulaincourt’s great concern, when the deadline passed, there was no response from the Romanovs. It was only on February 3 that the tsar, “rallying to the opinion” expressed by Maria Feodorovna (in fact they had shared the same view since the start) announced to the diplomat that Anna, then aged 14, could not marry the French emperor until two years had passed. This “diplomatic” answer actually masked the Romanovs’ visceral opposition to this marriage: young Anna would never marry the illegitimate “Bonaparte” and find herself banned from all the great courts of Europe, with an uncertain and dangerous future. Meanwhile, though, Napoleon had engaged unbeknownst to many of his diplomats (including Caulaincourt) in negotiations with Franz I of Austria and had already obtained the hand of Archduchess Marie Louise. Sent on February 7 and received in St. Petersburg on February 23, the dispatch announcing the imperial marriage was a real snub for the tsar.
For Napoleon the Russian procrastination and the subsequent marriage refusal attested, yet again, to the failure of the alliance; thus he reneged on his Polish promises and the Polish plan
drafted at the end of December. On February 6 he wrote to Champagny to disavow his minister and his ambassador in St. Petersburg:
I cannot say that the kingdom of Poland will never be reestablished, for that would mean saying that if one day the Lithuanians, or other circumstances, wanted to re-establish it, I would be obliged to send troops to oppose this. This is contrary to my dignity. […] My goal is to pacify Russia and to attain this, an article will suffice in the following terms: Emperor Napoleon promises to never give aid or assistance to any power or any internal uprising that might happen to try to reestablish the kingdom of Poland.46
This declaration is interesting: it attests to a Napoleonic conception of Poland that rested on historical and not just linguistic facts, which could therefore only worry the Russians.
Thus, in February a new text was prepared; however it would not be ratified by Napoleon, and in the course of 1810, while diplomats endeavored to save the peace, the military men were already preparing for war, as grievances accumulated on both sides.
For two months, the tsar delegated to Paris an ambassador extraordinaire, Prince Alexey Kurakin (Alexander Kurakin’s brother), to try once more to make progress on the Polish issue. But he met with a flat refusal, and when he took leave of Napoleon in August 1810, the war was already looming in the latter’s mind as well as in his statements.
•••
Further subjects of contention accumulated, starting with a trade war. While the continental blockade of Britain was increasingly hindering Russian foreign trade and weakening the empire’s economy,47 Napoleon showed no sign of understanding his ally’s dilemma. He rightly reproached the tsar for his ill-will in carrying out the blockade but made even more demands: in 1810 the French emperor published a new tariff forbidding the importation into France of any colonial goods on board either French or neutral ships, and he asked his ally to do the same. But on December 30, 1810, Alexander refused to comply, considering that the measure would do additional damage to the Russian economy, and he adopted a ukase that, pointing at the fall of the ruble, prohibited the entry by land of merchandise coming from France—silk goods in particular—and opened all Russian ports to neutral vessels, introducing a serious breach in the blockade.
A month later a new subject of tension arose, this time over the Swedish question. Whereas geographically and geopolitically Russia considered Sweden as one of its primary zones of interest, his French ally had kept Alexander out of the deal that led to the elevation of Bernadotte to the Swedish throne. Another subject of contention was that Napoleon decided to annex the Hanseatic towns and the duchy of Oldenburg, on the grounds that the duchy had become a “warehouse for contraband British merchandise” that had to be annexed to ensure the blockade. This act aroused the fury of both tsar and the court because of the kinship between the duchy and the imperial family.48 To pacify Alexander, Napoleon proposed to pay off the Duke of Oldenburg by offering him Erfurt; but this bargain was judged odious by both the duke and the tsar and was refused. So, on March 13, 1811, Alexander expressed to Napoleon in restrained but clear terms the scope of his resentment as well as his determination not to yield to his “ally’s” demands:
Neither my sentiments nor my policy has changed; I desire only the maintenance and consolidation of our alliance. Is it not permitted to suppose that it is Your Majesty who has changed in regard to me? Your Majesty accuses me of having protested against the Oldenburg affair, but how could I not? A little corner of land possessed by the one individual who belongs to my family, who has performed all the formalities required of him, a member of the confederation, and therefore under the protection of Your Majesty, and whose possessions are guaranteed by an article of the Treaty of Tilsit, finds himself dispossessed—and without Your Majesty saying a word beforehand!
Of what importance could this piece of land have for France and how could this process prove to Europe Your Majesty’s friendship for me? All the letters written from everywhere at this time prove that it was seen as a desire by Your Majesty to hurt us. […] You suppose that my ukase on the tariff is directed against France. I must combat this opinion as gratuitous and unjust. […] [The ukase] has two goals: first, by prohibiting most severely British commerce, it grants some facilities to American commerce as the only sea transport that Russia may use to export products too bulky to go by land; second, it restrains as much as possible the importation by land as more disadvantageous for our balance of trade. […] I think I may rightly say that Russia has observed the Treaty of Tilsit more scrupulously than France. […] The Erfurt agreement assures me of the possession of Moldavia and Walachia, and so I am entirely in order. As for the conquest of Finland, it was not in my policy, and Your Majesty should remember that I only undertook the war against Sweden as a consequence of your continental system. The success of my arms won me the possession of Finland. […] But if Your Majesty cites the advantages that Russia has drawn from her alliance with France, may I not cite those drawn by France and the many unions she has formed in parts of Italy, in northern Germany, Holland, etc.? […] Coveting nothing from my neighbors, loving France—what interest would I have in wanting war? Russia has no need of conquests and perhaps already has too much land. The superior genius for war that I recognize in Your Majesty leaves me no illusion about the difficulty of the struggle that might occur between us. […] Moreover, my pride is attached to the union with France. Having established it as a policy of principle for Russia, having had to combat for a long time old opinions that were against it, it is not reasonable to suppose I now have a desire to destroy my work and make war on Your Majesty. And if you desire this as little as I do, very certainly it will not happen. […] [But if war must break out] I will know how to fight and sell my existence very dearly.49
In March 1811 the tension reached its height, and the gears of war were set in motion, even if the tsar still tried to avoid confrontation. However, in the eyes of some historians, neither the Polish question nor the issue of the duchy of Oldenburg was of a nature to trigger a confrontation between France and Russia. For them, the vital interests of Russia were not threatened. In fact, given the coming patriotic war’s scope and cost (human as well as economic and social), they feel justified in wondering whether Alexander had engaged himself, imprudently or not, in a conflict he could have avoided. But the archive sources and materials I have consulted do not show that the tsar was guilty of thoughtlessness or imprudence. Admittedly, there is no doubt that Alexander reacted instinctively as well as politically in the Oldenburg affair, but that incident was merely superimposed on a set of disagreements and contentions that had built up. And if we remember that it is only reluctantly (and braving the opposition of those close to him) that Alexander I had entered into the Tilsit alliance, then it is clear that after 1810–1811 he was almost relieved to end the playacting he had performed for many long months. The hour had now come to have a fight with the “tyrant,” the usurper who in contempt of all practice continued to use force or intimidation to modify the map of Europe to suit himself, putting into peril the security of all powers, and foremost the Russian Empire. For Alexander, the French game in the Balkans and the territorial aggrandizement that Napoleon had granted the Grand Duchy of Warsaw without consulting his ally, were intolerable threats to the interests and security of Russia.
Since 1810 the tsar had been urgently reorganizing his army and had set up in Paris a precious information service to give him data of great value about the state and structure of the French forces.50 However, all his confidential remarks made in this period demonstrate that he feared the shock of the war to come and was well aware of his daunting task.
•••
At the end of 1810 and the start of 1811, the tsar entertained a plan to conduct an offensive war on German and Polish territory—which would spare Russian land—with the support of Polish patriots to whom he was ready to promise the reestablishment of a kingdom of Poland under Russian authority before the start of military operations against Fran
ce. In two letters dated January 1810 and February 181151 to Prince Czartoryski (then in his estate in Pulawy), Alexander declared himself in favor of a “union of all the lands that formerly comprised Poland, including Russian provinces except for White Russia.” He proposed that this reconstituted kingdom would be “forever united with Russia and the emperor would henceforth carry the title of ‘Emperor of Russia and King of Poland.’” Finally, he invited Czartoryski to sound out discreetly the leaders of the Polish nation and army on their intentions, specifying that “as long as I cannot be sure of Polish cooperation, I have decided not to start the war with France.” He went on: “If the Poles back me up, success cannot be doubted because it is founded not on a hope of counterbalancing the talents of Napoleon but solely on the lack for forces in which he will find himself, combined with the exasperation that ferments against him throughout Germany.”52
But Alexander absolutely had to know the intentions and mood of the inhabitants of the duchy of Warsaw. Hence his questions: What would be their attitude in the event of a war between France and Russia? Would they be prepared to follow the tsar if he promised them political status and rights? To give more weight to his plan, the tsar calculated precisely in his first letter the forces that could be mustered: 100,000 Russians, 50,000 Poles (if they chose the Russian side), 50,000 Prussians, 30,000 Danes—i.e., 230,000 men who might be rapidly deployed and reinforced by 100,000 more Russians; faced (in Alexander’s view) for the time being with only 60,000 French spread over Germany, Holland, and eastern France, 30,000 Saxons, 30,000 Bavarians, 20,000 soldiers from Württemberg and 15,000 from Westphalia—or 155,000 in all. But this estimate of French forces might be reduced because if the Polish rallied to the Russians, then the German troops might be tempted to do the same, which would reduce the Grande Armée to its French base.53