Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  Alexander immediately named General Osten-Sacken as governor of Paris, with three local commanders (Goltz, Herzogenberg, and Rochechouart, a French émigré in Russia’s service). The same day, around 3 p.m., when the troop parade was finished, he had published in the name of the three allied powers a very explicit declaration:

  The armies of the allied powers have occupied the capital of France. The allied sovereigns welcome the greeting of the French nation. They declare that if the conditions of peace had to contain the strongest guarantees when it came to chaining up the ambition of Buonaparte,30 the conditions should be more favorable when, by a return to wise government, France itself will offer the assurance of this rest.

  Consequently the sovereigns proclaim:

  That they will no longer deal with Napoleon Bonaparte, nor with any of his family;

  That they respect the integrity of ancient France such as it existed under its legitimate kings; they may even do more because they still profess the principle that for the happiness of Europe, France must be great and strong;

  That they will recognize and guarantee the constitution that the French nation will adopt. They thereby invite the Senate to designate a provisional government that will be able to answer the needs of the administration and prepare a constitution that suits the French people.

  The intentions I have just expressed are shared with all the allied powers.31

  This first public declaration by Alexander in Paris is to be stressed on several counts. It shows his intransigence with respect to Napoleon, his pacific concern toward the French nation, and his attachment to a monarchical power that he perceives as the only legitimate one. But he also wants France to remain strong in order to serve as counterweight to balance British power and Austrian power. On this point he had not forgotten the geopolitical arguments that Kutuzov had put to him. Moreover, aware that the experience and memory of the French Revolution could not be totally obliterated, he solemnly reaffirmed his support for the idea of the establishment of a constitutional regime in France. Here again, the principal of balance of power was essential in Alexander’s thinking.

  This point—to which we shall return—is of great importance, and it does contradict a theme of Soviet historiography, which saw Alexander’s campaign of 1813–1814 as the expression of his supposed desire to reestablish a conservative monarchy in France. In reality, this interpretation is an anachronistic view of this period that is supported only by the way in which Russian diplomacy evolved after 1818, but it does not take into account the objectives that the emperor was pursuing in 1813–1814. At this time, what was most important to him was to set up in France a political regime that would respond to the wishes of the French people, that would take account of their history and their collective memory, and that would, through its stability and moderation, guarantee peace in Europe. In Alexander’s eyes—as he constantly explained in a clear and instructive way to his interlocutors—the fate of France and that of Europe were linked to each other, and so they should be treated with balance and moderation. The tsar’s viewpoint seemed perfectly rational, and this clarity was underlined by Chancellor Metternich: “I found the emperor of Russia’s views very reasonable,” he wrote to Emperor Franz I when he had just arrived in Paris. “He talks much less nonsense than I would have believed.”32

  In any case, in the short term, for Parisians forced to undergo foreign occupation, the tsar’s declaration appeared rather reassuring. And the Russian sovereign’s stay in the French capital, where he proved to be alternately magnanimous and seductive, only confirmed this favorable first impression.

  The “Liberating Tsar” and “Benefactor” of Europe

  Alexander’s Parisian sojourn is known to us from many French sources: writers who rushed into the capital’s salons to salute the victor included Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, Chateaubriand, and the Countess of Boigne. All of them wrote about their presentation to the tsar and sketched lively portraits of him. But to grasp the details of this sojourn and its atmosphere, two sources are particularly precious. The first comes from the tsar’s aide-de-camp, Lieutenant General Alexander Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky. A brave fighter—he was seriously wounded at the Battle of Borodino—he was a refined and cultivated man: he had studied at the University of Göttingen; he spoke German and French, as well as Russian; and he knew Latin. Subsequently becoming a confidant of the tsar, he was asked by the latter to write the official history of the campaign of Russia, becoming the first historian of the war of 1812, about which he gathered abundant documentation.33 From 1808 to 1839, he wrote in Russian a diary34 that was precise and detailed as regards the activities of the tsar while he was in France. In December 1814 Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky put his diary aside to write in French a small brochure of memories titled Reflections on the Years 1812, 1813, and 1814 as They Touch Me, which was to be published after his death. Thus, both brochure and diary are particularly interesting. The second source is an anonymous brochure published in Paris in 1815 under the title Alexandrana, or Sallies and Remarkable Words of Alexander I. Written by someone on his general staff, either a Russian or a Frenchman who went into his service, the work celebrates the tsar’s glory, while reporting many anecdotes and interesting details of his stay in France.

  Upon his arrival in Paris, Alexander did not wish to stay in the imperial Tuileries chateau and wanted to reside in the Elysée Palace, but Talleyrand dissuaded him for security reasons. The building would be listened to, offering risks of an attack, and so Talleyrand pressed him to stay at his own home; Alexander ended up accepting. Thus it was at Talleyrand’s home in rue Saint-Florentin that a first grand political conference took place, drawing monarchs and dignitaries. In the course of this meeting to deal with France’s political future, participants decided to reestablish the house of Bourbon on the throne. In the interim, 64 senators would designate a provisional government, of which Talleyrand was named president. That very day Alexander freed 1,500 soldiers who had been taken prisoner during the campaign in France. That evening at the invitation of the master of ceremonies, Talleyrand, he attended at the Opéra a great party given in his honor. Singers and actors celebrated the glory of the new hero with “bad couplets,”35 singing on the air of the song Le Roi Henri:

  Vive Alexandre! / Long live Alexander!

  Vive ce roi des rois / Long live the king of kings!

  Sans rien prétendre, / This victorious commander

  Sans nous dicter de lois / No harsh conditions brings.

  / Laying no commands on us,

  Ce prince auguste / This prince in whom we trust

  A ce triple renom / Has three claims to renown:

  De héros, de juste, / He’s a hero, he is just,

  De nous rendre un Bourbon.36 / He gives the Bourbons back a crown.37

  While sensitive to this flattery, as maladroit as it was, the “king of kings” was not exhilarated by his success. His generosity and leniency were eminently sincere and in accord with his faith, but their manifestation also aimed to reassure both elite and public opinion that Russia, despite the hostile propaganda in the Grande Armée’s bulletins, was indeed part of Europe, at the very heart of the European civilization that had been perverted by Napoleonic tyranny but that was now being regenerated.

  Aware that the coalition armies, who had suffered so much from the French invasion, might be tempted to execute reprisals against the population—in April and May, while Russian troops advanced into France, there had been looting38—Alexander demanded irreproachable conduct from his officers and his soldiers, prescribing punishment up to the death penalty for those who behaved badly. He also forbade them from attending entertainments during Holy Week, since the Orthodox should be respectful of religious customs. These requirements were quickly crowned with success. Whereas, on the eve of the coalition invasion, the simple mention of the word “Cossack” was synonymous with the ultimate in barbarism and aroused terror in a population that had been swayed by Napoleonic propaganda, the reality
proved quite different and soon opened the eyes of the French. Admittedly, for many Parisians, the bivouacking of Cossacks on the Champs-Elysées—the officers had billets in private homes but not the troops—was an exotic spectacle:

  It was a singular sight for our eyes and minds to see these inhabitants of the Don peacefully following their ways and customs in the heart of Paris. They had no tents or shelter of any kind; three or four horses were attached to each tree and their horsemen sat near them on the ground, talking together in soft voices and harmonious accents. Most of them sewed, they fixed their rags or fitted and prepared new ones, repaired their shoes and horse harnesses, or fashioned for their use their share of the booty from previous days. Yet they were regular Cossacks of the guard and since they were rarely used as scouts, they were less fortunate in the looting than their brothers, the irregular Cossacks.

  Their uniform was very pretty: large blue pantaloons, a dalmatic tunic, also blue, padded on the chest and tightly cinched at the waist by a large belt of shiny black leather, with buckles and ornaments in bright copper that held their weapons. This semi-Oriental costume and their bizarre attitude on horseback (where they were totally upright, the height of the saddle meant they did not bend their knees) made them objects of great curiosity to the passers-by of Paris. They let themselves be approached easily, especially by women, and children who were willingly put up on their shoulders.39

  In his valuable study of the French occupation in 1814, Jacques Hantraye claims that “during the invasion, regional inhabitants who had been still spared felt doubts about the poor reputation of the Cossacks. But a police report of January 1814 noted that the Parisian bourgeoisie said ‘they were nasty only in the gazettes.’”40

  The young Victor Hugo, then aged 12, similarly wrote many years later that “the Cossack ogres were lambs.”41 And Jacques Hantraye comments: “In 1815, there were no recorded incidents imputed to the troops of Alexander, unlike what was attributed to the Prussians.”42 Thus, from the first months of the occupation of France by coalition troops, Russia’s image, forged through the forced contacts that were established between civilians and military personnel, evolved in a very favorable way. On the model of their emperor, the Russian troops were the embodiment of dignity and gentleness—of the “civilization” to which both peoples were similarly attached. From this standpoint, with respect to collective representations and imagery, Alexander in barely a few weeks fully attained his objective.

  On April 10, Easter Day,43 proclaiming a will for ecumenical peace, Alexander had celebrated on the Place de la Concorde a solemn thanksgiving service by seven Orthodox ministers assisted by chaplains of the imperial chapel. A Te Deum resounded in the same place where Louis XVI had been guillotined. For the tsar, the instant was full of immense spiritual emotion:

  It was a solemn moment for my heart, moving and terrible. I told myself, and so, by the unfathomable will of Providence, I brought my Orthodox warriors from the depth of their cold Nordic country here, in order to see them raising toward the Lord our common prayers in the capital of these foreigners who recently, were attacking Russia, at the very place where the royal victim succumbed to popular fury. […] One might say that the sons of the North celebrated the funeral of the King of France. The Tsar of Russia prayed according to the Orthodox rites, along with his people, and thus purified the bloodstained square. […] Our spiritual triumph has fully reached its goal. I was even amused to see the French marshals and generals jostle each other to be able to kiss the Russian cross!44

  The last remark indicates Alexander’s clarity; despite his vigorous religious faith, at the top of his glory the tsar still remains capable of irony, both toward himself and others.

  Publicly expressing the sincerity of his religious faith, Alexander did not lead a reclusive life in Paris—far from it. He invited the king of Prussia and the emperor of Austria to dinner and entertained them with sumptuous meals. He showed up at salons in the capital, where he polished his image as a cultivated, spiritual, and modest man. He visited the monuments of French culture and history. On May 11 he went to Versailles, visiting the chateau accompanied by his brothers Nicholas and Mikhail and by the king of Prussia and his sons. In front of the statue at the Place Vendôme, forged from the bronze of cannons taken from the Russian and Austrian armies at Austerlitz, which represented Napoleon as Caesar, he quipped, “If I were placed so high, I would fear getting dizzy,”45 while taking measures to protect the effigy from the anger of the royalists. At his request the statue of the emperor was taken down and put under cover, temporarily replaced by a white flag. French royalists had asked him to debaptize the bridge named after Austerlitz, but he elegantly replied that “it is enough that people know that Emperor Alexander passed by there with his armies.”46 Visiting the Tuileries Palace, he stopped at the hall of peace and humorously asked his guides, “What use was this room to Buonaparte?”47

  During his stay, among the many French intellectuals he met, the tsar received Abbot Sicard and invited him to dine, out of filial tenderness as much as out of sympathy for the man. Sicard was director of the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb of France and well known to Maria Feodorovna, who admired his work and had invited to St. Petersburg one of his disciples to establish similar teaching in Russia. In homage to his work, Sicard had been decorated by the tsar with the Order of St. Vladimir, but Napoleon had forbidden him to wear it;48 Alexander’s visit thus allowed him to establish direct contact with this humanist. Finally, the most astonishing aspect of his stay in Paris was that Alexander went frequently to meet Empress Josephine or to see her daughter, Hortense. The small group dined, listened to music, and picnicked in the park (to the understandable distress of the Bourbons, who were furious at this open mark of sympathy with the family of the fallen emperor). But these singular moments had a tragic outcome: by the end of May, Josephine died after catching cold during a promenade in the company of Alexander I.

  The prestige and aura of the Russian monarch were such that he was constantly solicited by individuals coming to ask him to intercede in their favor to obtain some favor or position. A general of the Grande Armée went as far as to beg for his intervention for a decoration from the future king as a reward for his deeds of bravery—against the Russians! This shows how Alexander’s presence in Paris tended to blur elementary markers. On arrival, the sovereign who had just been emotionally reunited with Laharpe, asked him to serve as special secretary and to answer in his name the flood of such requests. But Laharpe’s goodwill did not suffice; so the tsar was soon forced to have Nesselrode publish a note in which he stated that “His Imperial Majesty has come to France to help bring back peace and happiness, but he has the self-imposed rule of not exerting any influence on all that relates to the execution of laws and rules of French public administration. Consequently, all persons who might have requests to make are invited to address the responsible authorities of the provisional government.”49

  Taken up by his social activities, Alexander still remained active on the political level, expressing firm convictions on the future of France.

  •••

  From his first public declaration (March 31), as mentioned above, he had stressed the need to promote a strong and moderate France that had a constitution. Two days later, speaking to the senate, the tsar reasserted his attachment to liberalism: “I am the friend of the French people; it is just and it is wise to give France liberal institutions that relate to current enlightenment; my allies and I are here only to protect the freedom of your decisions.”50 In the following weeks, he asked the Count of Provence (the future Louis XVIII, who had not yet returned to France) to grant a constitution, which irritated the monarch, who was angry at this interference in French affairs.

  In 1813 a correspondence was established between the two men, although no trust was born from it. Alexander felt contempt for the Bourbons, whom he personally considered unworthy of regaining the throne of France; the future king was irritated by the tsar’s treatment o
f him and by what he thought of as the unjustified concessions that Alexander wanted to impose on him. The Russian emperor’s open contempt can be detected in his correspondence with the future Louis XVIII; he repeatedly addressed him as “Monsieur le Comte,” while the heir to the French throne called him “Monsieur my Brother and Cousin.” It was only after the letter of April 17, 1814, that Alexander decided to use the expected phrase “Monsieur my Brother.” In the same letter he announced that he was sending his minister Pozzo di Borgo to him. Insisting, in a way that could only irritate Louis, on the legitimacy that he had acquired by his engagement in the struggle against Napoleon, he preached again in favor of a liberal regime:

  In the meantime, if my enterprises in this holy and stubborn war have been of some utility in Your Majesty’s cause, if I have thereby acquired the right to his friendship and trust, then he will listen with some interest to General Pozzo di Borgo. […] There is no doubt that the Kingdom of France expects its happiness and regeneration from Your Majesty, but it is no less true that there exists a general will. Your Majesty will subjugate all hearts if he shows liberal ideas that tend to maintain and strengthen the organic institutions of France.51

  During his first audience with the king of France, Pozzo di Borgo stressed in his turn the need for Louis to set up a constitution, for “it is only on this condition that he can ensure for his government the authority and force necessary to pacify minds in France and the security of domestic order.”52 In the king’s immediate entourage some did understand the tsar’s viewpoint very clearly. For example, Chateaubriand in his Memoires d’outre-tombe pointed out that “the head of two supreme authorities, doubly autocratic by sword and by religion, he alone of all the sovereigns of Europe had understood that France at the age of civilization it had reached could only be governed thanks to a free constitution.”53 Louis XVIII finally rallied to the tsar’s viewpoint and ended up conceding the need for political rights and granting a constitutional charter. But relations between Alexander and the Bourbons remained difficult: their attachment to the white cockade (where Alexander thought the French army should keep the tricolor cockade),54 their desire to maintain ancient etiquette, and their rigid behavior all exasperated Alexander very much, as attested by the Countess of Boigne in an astonishing anecdote. The tsar thought highly of Caulaincourt (the Duke of Vicenza) and tried to end the ostracism of which Louis XVIII made him the victim (he was blamed for involvement in the death of the Duke d’Enghien by inviting the Count d’Artois55 to dine with him). But the attempted rapprochement turned into a fiasco and made Alexander even more bitter toward the Bourbons: