Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  Their Majesties the emperor of Austria, the king of Prussia, and the emperor of Russia, after the great events that have marked Europe in the course of the past years, and principally the good deeds it has pleased Providence to spread over states whose governments have placed their confidence and their hope in it alone, having acquired the conviction that it is necessary to found the paths of powers in their mutual relations on the sublime truths taught us by the eternal religion of the Saving Lord:

  We solemnly declare that the present act has the goal of manifesting to the Universe their unshakeable determination to govern their conduct, either in the administration of their respective states or in their political relations with any other government, by the precepts of this holy religion, by the precepts of justice, charity, and peace.91

  With this framework established, article 1 asserted that “in conformity with the words of Holy Scripture that commands all men to regard each other as brothers,” the three monarchs were to consider each other as “compatriots,” ready to help in any circumstance, and to conduct themselves as “fathers of family” with respect to their subjects and their armies “to protect religion peace, and justice.” The second article repeated these themes, insisting on the need for the three governments of the signatory monarchs “to consider themselves all as members of the same Christian nation,” “delegated by Providence to govern three branches of the same family,” “confessing that the Christian nation, of which they and their peoples are part, has no other lord than He to whom power belongs, for in Him alone is found all the treasures of love, science, and infinite wisdom, that is to say, in God, our divine Savior Jesus Christ, the Almighty Word of Life.” The third and final article stated that the Holy Alliance was ready to welcome “all powers that want solemnly to accept the sacred principles that are proclaimed in the present act.”

  The spiritual tone of the text, its style full of mystical effusion, has given credence to the idea that the Baroness de Krüdener had played a key role in composing it. In fact, the Swedenborgian mystic had been maintaining a spiritual correspondence with Alexander since 1814, and she had visited him during his stay in the German town of Heilbronn in May 1815; she was in Paris during his second stay. She was very much enjoyed the favor—if not the infatuation—of the Russian sovereign, whose spiritual quest had led him into the web of her sermons; she thought him “chosen.” Three days before his first meeting with Madame de Krüdener, he wrote to Catherine, herself on the verge of meeting the pietist.

  Tell her that my affection for her is eternal, that despite all the ways it could be analyzed, it is so pure, so much a tributary of the admiration that my soul bears her soul, that it is impossible to disfigure it. Virginie92 knows that I have never asked anything of her, so why should she be angry with me? May she leave me my worship of her, it makes no demand on her, and is identified with my existence.93

  Here we may detect the excessive (and hardly Christian) nature of the cult the tsar was devoting to this singular mystic.

  Other sources confirm this influence. The Countess de Boigne, who frequented her in Paris, described the Baroness de Krüdener, then aged about 50, as thin and pale, with sunken eyes and “straight grey hair parted over her forehead,” dressed in black, living in a fine apartment on the Faubourg-Saint-Honoré run with extreme austerity:

  The mirrors, decorations, and ornaments of all kinds, the furniture were all covered with grey cloth; even the clocks were shrouded so you could see only the face. The garden extended to the Champs-Elysees, and this was how Emperor Alexander lodged at the place, went to visit Madame de Krüdener at all hours of the day and night.94

  She had skillfully benefited from her immense credit with the tsar.

  Countess95 de Krüdener did not tell me how she has reached intimacy with the emperor, but she did manage it. She had invented for him a new form of adulation. He was blasé about those that represented him as the first potentate on earth, the Agamemnon of kings, etc., so she did not speak to him of his worldly power, but of the mystical power of his prayers. The purity of his soul lent then a force that no other mortal could attain, for nobody had resisted so many seductions. And by surmounting them, he showed himself the most virtuous of men and consequently the more powerful with God. It was with the aid of this skillful flattery that she led him to do her bidding. She had him pray for her, for himself, for Russia, for France. She had him fast, give alms, impose privations on himself, renounce all his tastes. She obtained everything from him in the hope of increasing his credit in heaven.96

  The Countess de Boigne insinuated that the many concessions obtained by Alexander for France’s benefit had in fact been dictated by Madame de Krüdener, herself under the influence of Talleyrand. The latter had been in disfavor with Alexander since the revelation by Napoleon of the secret treaty directed against Russia, and thus he had recourse to an intermediary. While this hypothesis cannot be supported by sources, this testimony still illustrates in a striking way that Alexander was then a man under the influence, profoundly marked by German pietism and the mystical transports of the Baroness de Krüdener. But nevertheless, he was the sole drafter of the Holy Alliance text. Alexander Stourdza, the tsar’s personal secretary, latter confided that he was “the first to copy and retouch the Act of Holy Alliance, written wholly in pencil by the emperor’s hand.”97

  On the diplomatic plane the Holy Alliance seemed to be a success since between 1815 and 1817 it was adhered to by Austria, Prussia, France, Spain, Piedmont, Sicily, Holland, Denmark, Saxony, Bavaria, Württemberg, and Portugal, and then Switzerland and small German states. Only the British government—which still declared it accepted its principles—and the Holy See (hostile to a text that it saw (with reason) as affirmation of a Christian ecumenism that contravened the all-powerfulness of Catholicism and as a contestation of its temporal power (it had not been proposed to place it at the head of the Holy Alliance)), would refuse to join the other signatories. The Ottoman Empire denounced the treaty as propitious to a new crusade. However, in reality, two serious reservations stood out. On the one hand, the text signed in September had been expurgated by Chancellor Metternich of everything that could be considered subversive. For example, he considered the allusion to “the fraternity of subjects” among the three initial states as too liberal. And while article 1 in Alexander’s formulation stated, “In conformity with the words of Holy Scripture that ordered all men to regard each other as brothers, the subjects of the three contracting states will remain united by the ties of true fraternity,” the text actually adopted said, “In conformity with the words of Holy Scripture that ordered all men to regard each other as brother, the three contracting monarchs will remain united by the ties of a veritable and indissoluble fraternity.”98

  This revision imposed on the tsar paved the way for a conservative application of the text. Moreover, many of the signatories seemed to rally to the idealism professed by Alexander in foreign policy, but this support was only opportunism of pure facade that changed nothing about their practices.

  By contrast, Alexander’s sincere attachment to this text cannot be doubted. He often referred to it in his correspondence, considering it as the crowning achievement of the Congress of Vienna and by ukase had the original text (not the one expurgated by Metternich) read aloud every year on the anniversary of its signature in all the churches of the empire. He indeed aspired to make the Holy Alliance the high point of his foreign policy. But this generous plan soon ran up against an international reality that was less and less favorable to it.

  PART FOUR

  AN INCREASINGLY CONSERVATIVE REIGN, 1815–1825

  CHAPTER 13

  Mystic Exaltation, Reformist Aspiration, and Conservative Practice

  1815–1820

  After four years marked by the omnipresence of military and diplomatic issues, Alexander I gave priority back to the domestic scene. From the end of 1812, the tsar confided to several of his interlocutors, including Madame de Staël, his desire
to remedy the condition of the peasants1 and after so many years of hesitation to finally make happy his “beloved Russian nation.” In 1814 he told Countess Edling, “Yes, I love my nation, despite the fact that I have not yet done much for her; I especially love this fine people! Although I do not show the people the predilection I bear, my affection can be guessed, and I am convinced that they count on mine. A great task to fulfill remains for me: to give liberty to a people who have so well merited it. I have no illusions about the difficulty attached to this great issue, but believe me, I could not die peacefully if I did not manage to resolve it before my death.”2

  In fact, the people’s expectations were great. Devastated by the conflict, the country still lacked the most elementary infrastructure—before the war, no paved road linked Moscow to St. Petersburg—and would have to be reconstructed, if not constructed. Many saw in this work an opportunity to build a Russia that was more just and more fraternal—like the Holy Alliance—and more modern. Humble people, particularly the peasants who had paid such a heavy price for victory, hoped in a confused way for better tomorrows that could bring them emancipation. And among the officers who had accompanied the tsar as far as Paris, many in the course of their travels through western Europe, had taken the measure of the Russian Empire’s backwardness—political, economic, and material. Returning to their native soil, they had decided to work for the common good. These expectations were of an almost millenarian nature—after the suffering and the triumph over the Antichrist, it was time for redemption, but was the monarch capable of grasping and fulfilling such hopes?

  A Tsar Transformed

  Alexander returned to Russia haloed by his successes: public opinion was ready to celebrate publicly his triumph over Napoleon. Yet his return was discreet and austere; known for his taste for parades and perfectly executed military maneuvers, the emperor in fact celebrated his success over the “hydra” by prayers and praise to God. There was no national festival to commune collectively over the memory of the ordeals undergone. This behavior as well as the monarch’s long absence—he had gone on military campaign in 1813 and then been long delayed in Paris and Vienna—were surprising and even disturbing to people whose hopes born of the war were so immense.

  Upon his return to Russian land, Alexander was unanimously saluted as the savior of Russia. The title “blessed” with which the senate wanted to honor him testifies to the fervor surrounding the monarch, which was very real among the people (in 1816 Moscow gave him a warm welcome amid the building works). But very soon among the elites the criticism began mounting, and the sacred union that had been observed in 1812 began to fray. The responsibility of Alexander for this evolution is not negligible: the emperor had completely internalized his combat against Napoleon, and once victory was achieved, he had difficulty making the patriotic war an object of national pride, a memorial reference to weld together the nation and its tsar. Admittedly, in August of 1814, he published a ukase honoring the valor and courage of the Russian people, announcing domestic reforms, and expressing his desire to improve the existence of the social classes that had participated in the war effort. And he did try to apply his success to the urban space: in 1817, the first stone was laid in Moscow for a church to be built in memory of the dead of the 1812 war; an arch of triumph celebrating the victory over Napoleon was erected on the square of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg during its restoration by Carlo Rossi and Vasily Stasov. But in general, the great deeds of the war were only sparingly commemorated: no statue nor monument recalled any campaign of 1813–1814, however costly in Russian lives—even while Alexander ordered celebrated in Russian churches every year the Holy Alliance anniversary.

  Barely comprehensible, Alexander’s behavior with respect to his triumph, both personal and national, was even more the subject of criticism with respect to his foreign policy. For many court dignitaries the high cost of the war and the sacrifices seemed to justify a more offensive diplomacy on the emperor’s part, one that would be less generous to France and especially to Poland, widely perceived as guilty of having supported Napoleon. Shortly after the signing of the second treaty of Paris, Count Vorontsov wrote bitterly to his son Mikhail:

  It appears they are more concerned with the advantages of others than with the well being of our own country. At the very least, we could have obtained for all those sacrifices, especially from Prussia (which has grown enormously), the city of Memel in order to have a natural border by the Niemen. But we were occupied only with Poland, which remains without any link to Russia but attached to her only through the person of Alexander, against whose successors Poland will make war every time we are occupied by some other embarrassing war. All this makes one weep.3

  To this incomprehension about Alexander’s diplomatic choices were added suspicions about the many diplomats of foreign origin who had gone into the service of Russia; they were accused at best of incompetence and at worst of deliberately sabotaging national interests. Alexander defended himself against this double accusation, stressing the devotion of the foreign diplomats and the incapacity of the Russians themselves. As early as 1806 he had retorted:

  If I do not choose to resort to the help of foreigners who are well known and whose talents are proven, then the number of capable men, already very limited, will be even more reduced. […] What would Peter have done if he had not employed foreigners? At the same time, I feel that it is bad. […] But how can one arrest the course of events until our nationals are at the top?4

  This did not prevent accusations being leveled at foreigners, as well as at subjects of the Russian Empire who were not themselves Russian. Combined with the tsar’s long absence and his personal participation in the endeavors of the Congress of Vienna, the idea grew in public opinion that the emperor cared more about European questions than the future of his own country, that because he was wholly preoccupied with the destiny of Europe, Alexander had already turned away from Russia.

  This sentiment was exacerbated in 1814–1815 because during the tsar’s absence in Vienna, it was the redoubtable Arakcheev who stood in for the emperor. Placed at the head of Alexander’s secretariat in 1812, in August 1814 promoted to liaison between the work of the Committee of Ministers and the emperor,5 then raised in December 1815 to the post of supervisor of that work, Arakcheev was gaining in power month by month. He acquitted himself seriously, devoted to the tasks that the tsar gave him. He never overstepped his role, taking care to remain the zealous executor of the imperial will. But the man was frightening: his stubbornness, his cruelty, his narrowness of mind, his political conservatism, and his customary acts of violence were all well known. For many Russians at court and foreign observers, Arakcheev incarnated an autocracy at its zenith, which ill suited the liberal spirit proclaimed by Alexander.

  However, this allegation does not do justice to the tsar’s own efforts. Even when far away, Alexander continued to administer the empire and to take important decisions. Even while the war was still going on, he was engaged in lifting Moscow from the rubble and reconstructing it as quickly as possible under attentive state control and according to town-planning and aesthetic rules. From the end of 1812, he ordered emergency financial aid for the most deprived Muscovites; in May 1813 he set up a construction commission to which he assigned three main objectives: to reconstruct houses and shops that had been destroyed, to conceive a development plan for a “new” city, and to embellish the city with architecture of neoclassical style,6 designed to celebrate imperial power.7 Very involved in the project to restore the city, Alexander insisted on the need to give Moscow new monuments, symbols of its renaissance after the catastrophe. Thus Red Square was entirely redesigned—embellished with new neoclassical buildings housing shops, it would welcome in February 1818 a statue dedicated to Minin and Pozharski8 that commemorated Russian resistance to the Polish invasion of 1612. As for Theater Square—larger than the Place de la Concorde in Paris or St. Peter’s Square in Rome9—it would serve as the setting for the new Bolshoi
Theater.10 Only a few years after the cataclysm of 1812, by way of thumbing its nose at Napoleon, Moscow had become one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, the only capital in the “Empire” style.

  But while the sacred union forged in the ordeals of 1812 seemed to augur a new union between the monarch and his people, in reality a much more ambiguous relationship set in. But Alexander was not aware of this ambiguity, wholly engaged as he was by his faith in God and in the miracle of revelation that had taken place.

  •••

  The year 1812 had changed the tsar’s life, had brought him to God, but as he confided in 1818 to Abbot Eylert, this path was not without many struggles and doubts. From his return to Russia until around 1820, he did not cease pursuing his quest through reading and the spiritual exercises to which he was devoted, plus meetings with spiritual advisors. The influence of the illuminism and pietism of the Baroness de Krüdener was patent, at least until 1816. But other influences can be detected, above all, that of Alexander Golitsyn, who had been named in 1803 (“against his conscience and ideas”11) the procurator of the Holy Synod. As a deist and functionally anti-clerical, he was leading a very dissolute life. Then he gradually converted to reading the Bible—to the point of becoming the person who in 1812 initiated the tsar to meditation on holy scripture. Fed by references to German mysticism, an amateur of the kabbalah and gnosticism, an adept of the ideas of Saint-Martin, who called each believer to form an “interior church,”12 Alexander Golitsyn preached an individual faith that had few ties to the rites and dogmas of the Orthodox Church. While he was not officially the tsar’s confessor, he was de facto his spiritual director. In July 1820 or 1821, he wrote to him: “Continue, Sire, to follow the path of Jesus Christ, he will pull you and deliver you to Himself, and He will communicate to you His gifts, and then Himself. Such are my wishes and prayers for your spiritual journey.”13