Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  Five years after, in September 1817, when he came to confess to a monk at the Monastery of Grottoes in Kiev, he told his aide-de-camp Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky that any monarch “should remain at his post as long as his physical strength allows. As concerns myself, I feel perfectly well at present, but in ten or fifteen years when I am fifty….”33

  It was in 1819, this time with family members and on two successive occasions, that Alexander mentioned the plan that still haunted him. In the summer, in his residence at Krasnoe Selo, during a dinner in the presence of the Grand Duke Nicholas and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, Alexander confided openly his desire to leave power, as his youngest brother’s wife remembered:

  One day after emperor Alexander had dined with us, he sat between us and chatted casually, but suddenly changed the subject and became serious, in the following terms telling us “that he had been satisfied this morning at the way his brother acquitted himself of his military command, that he was doubly happy to see Nicholas fulfill his duties well, since one day a great weight would rest on him, that he regarded him as his replacement, and much earlier than could be presumed, since it would happen while he was still alive.” We were seated like two statues, eyes wide open, dumbfounded. The emperor continued “You seem surprised, but know that my brother Constantine was never concerned about the throne and is more than ever determined to renounce it formally by passing his rights of succession to his brother Nicholas and his descendants. For myself, I am decided to leave my functions and to retire from the world. More than ever Europe needs young sovereigns with all their energetic strength; for me, I am no longer what I was, and I believe it is my duty to retire before it is too late; I believe that the King of Prussia will do the same, and put Fritz in his place.”

  Seeing us about to sob, he tried to console and reassure us, saying that this would not happen soon, that years would pass before he put his plan to execution, and then he left us alone—you can imagine in what state. Never had the shadow of such an idea come into our heads, not even in our dreams.

  We felt as if struck by lightning: the future appeared to us somber and as if closed to happiness! This was a memorable moment in our life.34

  A few weeks later, in September, in Warsaw, Alexander told Nicholas in the presence of Constantine:

  I should tell you, my brother, that I want to abdicate; I am tired and no longer have the strength to bear the burden of government. I warn you so that you can reflect on what you should do in that case. When the time has come to abdicate, I will let you know and you will convey what I am thinking to our mother.35

  Why precisely in 1819 did the emperor mention twice to his brothers his desire to abdicate? If his ever secretive personality does not allow a firm answer to this essential question, we may stress two factors. First, there is the role of his increasingly vibrant faith, which involved him in a quest for the “internal Church” that appeared less and less compatible with the exercise of absolute power over a land as huge as the Russian Empire. Then, a tragedy had struck the tsar in January 1819, from which he had not recovered: the terrible death of his favorite sister Catherine, carried off at age 30 by an erysipelas of the face. This death threw him into a depressive state, accentuating his distaste for any kind of activity.

  Whatever the cause, the issue of abdication posed a dual dilemma to Alexander. First, there was the religious dilemma because, since the tsar took his power from God, he was not in a position to undo what Providence had decreed—unless, that is, his power was not by divine rights, but constitutional. As Sergey ronenko has stressed with finesse, it was the very moment when Alexander was reflecting seriously but still secretly about a possible constitutional reform that he allowed himself to confide his desire to abdicate to his family members.36 It also posed a political dilemma, for in 1819 he had to find out who would truly be able to succeed him. In 1814, after the death of the two daughters born of his union with Elizabeth, the tsar could no longer hope for a direct heir. By the general act of succession to the throne adopted by Paul in 1797 and confirmed by Alexander at his ascension, Constantine was the first in line. But the latter, who had been separated since 1801 from his wife Princess Juliana of Saxe-Coburg, was childless and living with a Polish and Catholic countess, Jeanne Grudzinska; thus, he could not inherit the throne, to which he did not aspire anyway. In contrast, Nicholas was the irreproachable husband of Alexandra Feodorovna, born Charlotte of Prussia,37 and father of a small Alexander born in 1818; he offered all the moral and religious guarantees. So when in September 1819 the sovereign visited Constantine, it was tacitly to authorize him to divorce and then marry morganatically Countess Grudzinska in exchange for renouncing the throne in favor of Nicholas. On April 2, 1820, a ukase reaffirmed a certain number of rules, including the requirement for any Russian sovereign to choose as wife a young woman of royal or princely blood who had converted to Orthodoxy. A few days later, Constantine thus broke his marriage and wed Countess Grudzinska.38

  So, in short, the tsar was deeply transformed when he returned in 1815: however, increasingly absorbed by his faith and tempted to an abdication that would allow him to be totally devoted to the search for God, Alexander was still keen to conduct major reforms.

  Reforms Implemented, Reforms Sketched

  When he returned, Alexander got down to giving “his” Poland both its own status and constitution. For the tsar, Poland was a crucial gamble. Because Napoleon had bet on the nationalism of the Polish elites to win it over against the tsar and had made many fallacious promises, Alexander had obtained from the Congress of Vienna the reconstitution of the kingdom—and he dreamed of being that clement, liberal, and constitutional sovereign. It was here that he would make his reform aspirations concrete and give free rein to his taste for liberalism and his interest in constitutionalism. It was in the new Poland, transformed into a political laboratory, that he was going to experiment with the reality of a representative government.

  He entered Poland on November 12, 1815, symbolically dressed in a Polish uniform; two weeks later he signed the charter that made him a constitutional king. This text was the fruit of deliberations begun long months before with Czartoryski on the one hand, and with Novosiltsev, Kochubey, and his diplomatic advisors Kapodistrias and Pozzo di Borgo on the other hand. It had not gone without difficulty: the tsar’s plan to give “his” Poland a constitution had aroused much criticism.

  In October 1814, while Alexander and his advisors were still at the Congress of Vienna, Pozzo di Borgo, although of liberal convictions, had composed a long memorandum39 in which he explained the dangers of making Poland into “a separate state body,” as he said. First, there was a diplomatic danger: as soon as rights had been conceded to the Polish subjects of the Russian Empire, the Polish subjects of the Prussian and Austrian monarchs would demand to be affiliated with Russia; “from the moment there exists a diet, a form of representation, a Polish army, it would be a flag summoning them to a rallying sign,” which would cause tension, even conflicts with Prussia and Austria. There was also a political danger because “the title of King of Poland can never be compatible with that of autocratic emperor of all the Russias—these two titles can never go together.” Moreover, Pozzo di Borgo was viscerally hostile to attaching the current Polish provinces of the Russian Empire to the new entity; he saw it as discrimination among the subjects of the empire and likely to engender frustration. In effect, the “Polish” lands that had been integrated into the empire for several decades would now be governed by a constitution, while the rest of the empire40 would stay under an autocratic regime. Moreover, the “old” Polish provinces not attached to this new Poland would also escape reform—another source of tension. Finally, he stressed the danger represented by a sovereign Poland to the development and civilization of the Russian Empire.

  As soon as the mass of nine million formed as a nation exists between Russia and the rest of civilized Europe, then the reciprocal influence and communications that derive from immediate contac
t will diminish perceptibly. […] The delay that this separation might bring to the development of [Russian] moral faculties, to [Russian] education, to the communication of enlightenment, arts and liberal ideas—is incalculable. It was in order to plunge Russia into barbarism and make it exclusively an Asiatic power that Napoleon imagined re-establishing Poland, as it was to make Russians take a distinguished rank among the most civilized nations of Europe that the predecessors of Your Majesty41 planned conquests that would necessarily amalgamate with them.42

  This passage is of fundamental importance: beyond the diplomatic and geopolitical situation, the whole stake of the Polish question was for Pozzo di Borgo actually about Russia’s relation to Europe, the crucial issue of its belonging to “civilized” Europe. For the diplomat a Poland integrated into the empire was likely to serve as a lever to increase ties to Europe. But an independent Poland, by contrast, claiming its cultural superiority over Russia, would turn as soon as possible away from Russia and abandon her to her backwardness and Asiatic barbarity, because the “habitual hatred”43 of the Pole for the Russian would take the upper hand over their gratitude. But the tsar dismissed Pozzo di Borgo’s warnings, and the latter was not able to make himself heard. The sovereignty of a territorially enlarged Poland was for Alexander a moral imperative—in 1796 he had disapproved (like his father Paul) of the iniquitous partitions of which Poland had been victim—as well as a political one. Napoleon’s having failed in his plan to reestablish Poland, it came down to him to succeed in this, while preserving Russia’s security interests as best he could. This is what he told Czartoryski in 1813 and Kosciuszko in 1814. Finally, while he shared Pozzo di Borgo’s conviction that Poland as a land of contact with western Europe was indispensable to the development and modernization of Russia, he was more optimistic than his diplomat. A Poland that was independent but dynastically tied to the Russian Empire might better than an annexed Poland play the role of “cultural intermediary” that both men assigned it, for it would infuse a liberalism propitious to trade and initiatives.

  A few weeks after the treaty that set Poland’s destiny in May 1815, Alexander decreed a ukase explaining his choices to the Russians. He affirmed that a sovereign Polish state, with its own institutions but linked to Russia, would be the best token of security. He then44 announced to the Poles their new kingdom in the form of a constitutional state with its own army, and he signed a text called “Bases of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland.” The fruit of a collaboration of several Polish nobles under the aegis of Czartoryski, this text decreed the outlines of the future constitution,45 to be written by a commission. A charter would guarantee individual liberty; no arbitrary arrest would be authorized; the Catholic Church would enjoy special status, but all Christian religions would be tolerated without discrimination. All official posts would be occupied by subjects of the kingdom, and public debates would be conducted in Polish. The diet would have responsibility for the budget and finances. A Council of State presided over by the viceroy would prepare the new legislation. Judges appointed for life by the monarch would ensure the independence of justice. The army would be national; if Russian contingents should happen to be stationed in the kingdom, the Russian treasury would pay for their maintenance. Education would be national and free. Cities would administer themselves, peasants would keep individual freedom and the right to acquire land. Finally, the situation of the Jews would be improved.

  On the basis of this working document, ambitious and generous, full of a liberal spirit and Enlightenment thinking, the definitive text of a constitutional charter was adopted by Alexander on November 27, 1815. He personally approved its 165 articles after having made some revisions to earlier versions,46 so invested was he in this document.

  The kingdom of Poland was “forever” united with the Russian Empire (article 1) and therefore was not the master of its foreign policy, not authorized to keep plenipotentiary agents abroad.47 Its institutions were now based on a constitutional charter48 that guaranteed all inhabitants their individual freedom and equality before the law; there was freedom of the press and of property, the use of the Polish language at all levels of administration and in the courts. A diet (Sejm) was formed, composed of the emperor and two chambers. The upper chamber (or senate) was composed of members appointed for life by the emperor; their number would never exceed half the number of representatives in the lower house. The latter, the deputy chamber, would be composed of 128 elected representatives. Voting rights were granted to all land-owning nobles aged over 21, to property owners who paid taxes, and to people of “merit” (teachers, artists)—i.e., the professions—which would result in an electoral body of almost 100,000 adults.49 (In France at the time, the electoral body was only 80,000 persons, and it remained until 1848 completely closed to the professions, despite repeated demands from liberals.) The tsar as king of Poland held executive power, with the sole right to declare war and conclude treaties, and he appointed all administrative jobs; he was head of the army. He also benefited from wide prerogatives with respect to legislation: he alone could initiate it, and laws proposed by the diet required his approval. However, the diet also had a right to veto proposed laws emanating from the emperor.

  The charter was therefore a major text that granted freedoms unique to Polish lands (neither Austria nor Prussia would respect the commitments made in Vienna), as well as compared to the Russian Empire; these rights went even beyond those enjoyed in Finland. It expressed Alexander’s attachment to Enlightenment ideas and his concern to make Poland into an experimental laboratory for reforms to be conducted in the rest of the empire. However, this spirit of openness did not prevent Alexander from carefully preserving Russian interests: he made his brother Constantine the commander in chief of the 35,000 soldiers of the new Polish army; he named the malleable General Joseph Zajaczek as viceroy, depriving Adam Czartoryski of a post he coveted and that would normally have come to him, but in Alexander’s eyes Czartoryski’s strong personality and the renown of his family would have given this post too much prestige. Finally, Alexander named his friend Novosiltsev, a Russian, as the tsar’s “personal commissioner” to the Polish government, charged with attending its meetings. So, while Poland was granted inalienable rights and freedoms, it still remained tightly linked to the Russian Empire and to the imperial family. For the tsar this link was meant to become even stronger because the constitutional experiment would serve as a model for the rest of the empire, “a first step on the road to the Russian constitution.”50

  •••

  Indeed Alexander’s objective in this constitutional experiment was to generalize it eventually to all of his empire. Those close to him were convinced that this was his plan: in a letter of May 1818 to her brother Constantine, the young Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna (now the Princess of Orange) said she was “seized with admiration” for the speech given by Alexander during the closing session of the diet, stressing that because she lived in a constitutional country, she was able to appreciate its full value.51

  In November 1815, in a conversation with Mikhail Oginski, a Pole who continued to plead for attaching the western provinces of the empire to the Polish kingdom, Alexander confided that such a move, which he did not want because he intended to maintain strong links with “his” Polish lands, was even less justified on the political level because the constitutional model granted to the kingdom w ould in future be the norm throughout imperial territory.52 But while this declaration seems very important, it remained private and therefore without consequences. By contrast, less than three years later, his public and solemn speech at the opening of the Polish diet on March 27, 1818, had a much more resonant impact. Alexander had written it himself in French, and although he had got advice from Kapodistrias, he scarcely followed it, preferring his own over the various versions prepared by his prudent diplomat. His was significantly more engaged on the political level and no doubt written after intense discussions with Novosiltsev.53 A sign of the importance he gave th
is speech (pronounced in French)54 was that he had the translation printed in several Russian newspapers in the two capitals.55

  Representatives of the Kingdom of Poland!

  Your hopes and my wishes are accomplished. The people you are called to represent finally enjoy a national existence, guaranteed by the institutions that time has ripened and sanctioned.

  The most sincere forgetting of the past alone could produce your generation. It [the existence of the nation] was irrevocably decided upon in my mind, from the moment I could count on the means to realize it.

  Jealous of my country’s glory, my ambition was to have it gather a new distinction.

  Russia after a disastrous war, by rendering good for evil according to the precepts of Christian morality, has extended its fraternal arms to you, and among the advantages that victory gave it, it has preferred one alone: the honor of lifting up and restoring a valiant and estimable nation.

  And by contributing, I obeyed an internal conviction that has been powerfully seconded by events. […]

  The organization that was in vigor in your century permitted the immediate establishment of what I gave you, by putting into practice the principles of these liberal institutions that have always been the object of my solicitude, and I hope with God’s help to extend their salutary influence over all the lands that Providence has entrusted to my care.

  You have thus offered me the means to show my country what I have long been preparing for it, and which it will obtain, when the elements of such an important task have reached the necessary development.