Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  Polish people! Recovering as you are from the harmful prejudices that caused you so much evil—it is up to you to consolidate our renaissance.

  This is indissolubly linked to the destinies of Russia: all your effort should tend to fortifying our salutary and protective union.

  Your restoration is defined by solemn treaties. It is sanctioned by the constitutional charter. The inviolability of these external commitments and this fundamental law now assure to Poland an honorable rank among the nations of Europe, a precious good it has long sought in vain amid the most cruel ordeals. […]

  The constitutional order is applied successively to all parts of the administration. The legal system is going to be organized. Drafts of civil and penal laws will be submitted to you. I am pleased to believe that in examining them with sustained attention, you will produce laws designed to guarantee the most precious benefits; the security of persons, that of your property, and the freedom of your opinions.

  Despite my efforts, perhaps all the evils under which you have been groaning are not yet repaired. That is the nature of things: good is only grown slowly and perfection remains inaccessible to human weakness. […] May God make our work prosper.56

  In this text, Alexander publicly reaffirms his attachment to and his trust in the liberal principles that Napoleon had warped; for the first time he officially asserts his plan to extend to the whole empire what he had granted to the kingdom of Poland. Making a strong impression on Polish opinion, this speech aroused more varied reactions on the Russian side. For some skeptics a declaration of intention did not amount to action, and they wanted see what really became of it;57 for others who were more enthusiastic—in the forefront the future Decembrists58—the speech announced a veritable political and social revolution; and for still others, including Karamzin, the text was dangerous. By calling implicitly for the abolition of serfdom, it could only destabilize the current political and social order in Russia. But Alexander ignored these mixed reactions because for him the real stakes were the civilization of the Russian Empire, as he confided in 1818 in a conversation with Borstell, a Prussian general:

  Poland is necessary to me for the civilization of my Empire, which is too vast to want to enlarge it any more. I gave it a constitution and I hope it will be worthy of this mark of confidence, it is an attempt over which I will watch.59 The peace of the world and the civilization of Russia—that is my ambition, that is the purpose of my policy—and may lightning strike me if ever I fail these holy principles!60

  This desire to extend the Polish experiment for civilizing purposes can also be perceived in the status Alexander gave in April 1818 to Bessarabia, taken from the Ottoman Empire by the treaty of 1812. A large autonomy was handed over; legislative and executive powers were given to a higher council composed of five members named by the tsar and six deputies elected by the provincial nobility.61

  In parallel, in the greatest secrecy, without the knowledge of Tsarevich Constantine, the emperor gave to Novosiltsev, the imperial commissioner in Warsaw, in June 1818 the task of preparing a comprehensive constitutional document.62 The chancellery went to work. The poet Peter Viazemsky, who had entered the service of the state a year earlier, played a major role in writing the text, translating and adapting into Russian the political concepts borrowed from the French, with the help of the French jurist Péchard-Deschamps, secretary to Novosiltsev since 1799. In October 1819 the latter presented to Alexander (who was in Warsaw) a first draft of the constitution. But the tsar was not satisfied and allowed two more months for a new version.63 Given the scope of the modifications demanded by the emperor and the brevity of the available time, it was an entirely new and shorter text, written in French and titled “Précis of the Constitutional Charter for the Russian Empire” that was offered to Alexander two months later. As regards the complete and final text, it was submitted to the emperor during his new stay in Warsaw in the fall of 1820; one copy was in French and the other in Russian.64 Composed of 191 articles divided into six “titles” or headings, this work was largely inspired by the Polish charter, but also by the U.S. Constitution with respect to the federative organization of the empire.

  In its preliminary provisions the constitution stressed the empire’s administrative structure, now divided into major districts called lieutenancies, themselves subdivided into governments, cantons, towns, hamlets, and villages. Indivisible sovereignty resided in the person of the monarch (article 11); the crown was hereditary (article 9); article 12 defined the powers of the monarch: “The sovereign is the sole source of all powers—civil, political, legislative, and military—of the Empire. He exercises executive power in all its plenitude. Any administrative and judicial executive authority can only emanate from him.” Yet article 13 provided that legislative power would be exercised “by the sovereign concurrently with the Diet of the Empire,” and so his power was not absolute. The monarch did benefit from extremely extensive powers, and here we find many of the provisions contained in the Polish constitutional charter: he is the supreme head of the general administration; he watches over internal and external security; he alone has the right to declare war and to conclude treaties and conventions; he is chief of the army and appoints commanding generals and officers; he directs diplomacy and designates all ambassadors; he names all civil, administrative, and legal posts; he is the head of the Orthodox Church and names all the titles in the ecclesiastical hierarchy; finally, he has the sole right of pardon. He can adopt decrees, has the right to dissolve the chamber of deputies, but shares with the diet the responsibility for pronouncing laws. He is assisted by a Council of State (article 35) formed of ministers, advisors, and state secretaries and charged with preparing and editing all proposed laws concerned with the general administration of the empire (article 42). In each district the sovereign would be represented by a lieutenant assisted by a council (article 49). The Orthodox religion is proclaimed “the dominant religion of the state, of the sovereign, and of the imperial family,” but freedom of worship is recognized; “the law protects all citizens with no distinction” (article 80), and nobody can be punished without having been informed beforehand of the crime of which he is accused, interrogated within three days of his arrest, and being judged in court (article 81); freedom of the press is guaranteed (article 89); any Russian subject has the right to live abroad and to take his fortune there (article 97). Finally, on a more purely political level, article 91 affirms that “the Russian nation will forever have a national representation” ensured by the diet. This would be formed of the sovereign and two chambers, high (senate) and low (deputies). This article is of capital importance since it is the legal basis for a representative form of government.

  The general diet, convened by the sovereign (article 126) will meet every five years, and the diets of the lieutenancies every three years; so the diets are not a permanent organ, and this is the first limit on constitutionalism. But the general diet possesses wide legislative prerogatives and a right to veto proposals emanating from the emperor. The senate is composed of grand dukes and those of the imperial house aged more than 18, and of members named for life by the sovereign (article 136) who have fulfilled a number of conditions: to be aged over 35, to have passed exams for the lower grades, to benefit from a revenue in real estate of at least 1,000 rubles per year; the total number of senators should never exceed a quarter the number of deputies in the lower chamber. The deputies are to be chosen by the sovereign from among the elected of the diet of each lieutenancy, and to be elected a deputy, one has to be 30, enjoy civic rights, and pay a certain tax contribution determined by each lieutenancy according to local conditions.

  At the community level, assemblies of all property owners will be held every three years in order to present to the government a “table of their needs.” Jews65 could not sit in any of these assemblies, and they could exercise no political rights (article 166). Finally, courts are to be composed of judges, some of whom are appointed by the sovereign and others are
elected (article 176).

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  What can we conclude from this document? It concedes new rights and essential liberties, but nowhere mentions the issue of serfdom, which remains the great lacuna. It gives the monarch very wide prerogatives and makes him the exclusive depository of sovereignty. If the word “nation” does figure in the text, the idea of national sovereignty is absent. But despite these limits, it was a totally unprecedented attempt in Russia to circumscribe the absolutist power of the monarch with the establishment of an elected diet that enjoys powers of legislation; it attests to the undeniable will of the tsar to give the Russian Empire a constitutional government. However, although written under Alexander’s leadership as begetter of its spirit and form, the fruit of rigorous work led by Novosiltsev and his chancellery, awaited by all those who in 1818 had seen the imperial speech given to the Warsaw diet as the promise of a peaceful political revolution, this text was never unveiled in Alexander’s lifetime. It is almost by chance, thanks to Polish events in 1831, that the document was exhumed from the papers of Novosiltsev in Warsaw.

  Why this decision? How can we explain what seems like a reversal?

  Alexander never expressed himself on this point; and he was not likely to talk about a decision that remained secret, as had been the very preparation of a text written in Warsaw, far from St. Petersburg in order to limit the risk of indiscretion. The historian is reduced to formulating hypotheses that are buttressed by the chronology of domestic and foreign events. In 1818 the emperor still believed in the virtue of liberal ideas and of constitutionalism: the speech he gave to the Warsaw diet illustrates a sincere desire to advance along this road. But two years later, when the text was finally ready, its provisions had changed as the result of three lines of influence. First, conservatives at court (Karamzin, author of that Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia presented to the emperor in 1811, Rostopchin, etc.) and in imperial administration had refused any evolution toward a constitutional government likely to destabilize the political and social order and weaken the empire. In 1803 Karamzin had written a monumental History of the Russian State; despite vicissitudes (in 1812 he lost his personal library in the Moscow fire), the work made him one of the most famous historians of the nineteenth century. Printed in eight volumes in 1816, the first editions sold 3,000 copies in barely a few months, and for Russia at that time, this represented a publishing success. Eight years later, in 1824, the work was finally complete and published in a dozen volumes. By the scope of its philosophical and political thinking, the fine analysis of Russian customs, the wealth of knowledge put to use, and the acuity and vivacity of the psychological portraits he drew (particularly of Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godunov), Karamzin raised history to the rank of an art, initiated Russian elites into their past, and allowed them to appropriate it with pride. But the work was also a vibrant plea for maintaining an autocratic and centralized regime, the only form of government possible, the author thought, for a country as large as Russia. In this sense, Karamzin’s history weighed heavily in Alexander’s gradual conversion toward conservative ideas. The second influence was that of Golitsyn and the mystics who surrounded the emperor, which we know had been growing from 1815 to 1820; for them, the ideas of the Enlightenment carried the germ of atheism, and as such they should be combated. Finally, the third influence came from outside: in 1818–1819 the international situation was marked by the rise of revolutionary movements in Europe and the ferment of destabilization in France, where the Duke de Berry was assassinated in 1820; in Germany, where Kotzebue, a writer and spy for the Russians, was killed by a student in 1819; in Portugal, in Spain, in Naples, and in Piedmont. All these movements entrained monarchs toward a conservative hardening that also had an effect on the tsar. In a symptomatic way the speech that Alexander gave in September 182066 to the Polish diet was quite different from the one he had given two years previously. The words “liberal” and “liberalism” no longer figure in the text, and while Alexander does not deny his constitutional effort, he insists on the need to combat the spirit of evil everywhere it arises, announcing that he will be inflexible on this point:

  I feel real satisfaction seeing myself for the second time among you; and I repeat with pleasure that in gathering you here, and calling on you to cooperate in maintaining and developing your national institutions, I am obeying an impulse of my heart, realizing one of my dearest wishes.

  Resulting from the confidence I placed in you, these institutions are made firmer by the confidence you place in me. […]

  Let us not forget that institutions are only the work of men. They need, like men, support against weakness, conscience against error, and like men they find this support, this conscience, only in Christian morality and its divine precepts.[…]

  Representatives of the Kingdom of Poland! Show your country that—strengthened by your experience, your principles, your sentiments—you have conserved under the auspices of your laws a calm independence and a pure freedom. […] Elsewhere, uses and abuses have been placed on the same level; elsewhere, by exciting the factitious need for servile imitation, the genius of evil has tried to reassert his woeful empire, and already he floats over a part of Europe, already he accumulates forfeits and catastrophes.

  Amid these calamities, my system of government will remain invariable. I have drawn its principles from the intimate sense of my duty. I will always fulfill this duty in good faith. Nevertheless, this good faith would not be complete if I misrecognized the great truths taught by experience.

  The century in which we are living undoubtedly demands that the social order have tutelary laws as a base and guarantee. But this century imposes on governments the obligation to preserve these same laws from the fatal influence of passions, always restless, always blind.

  Under this relation, a grave responsibility weighs on you, as on me. It orders you to follow faithfully the route that your wisdom and loyalty indicate. It commands me to warn you frankly of the perils that might surround you and to guarantee your institutions: it requires me to judge the measures on which I will be called to pronounce, according to their real consequences and not how they are described, because party spirit either blackens or decorates them. It obliges me, in short, to prevent the birth of evil or the necessity of violent remedies, to extirpate the germs of disorganization as soon as they are perceived.67

  These various influences all converged to make such an impact on Alexander that as of 1820 he could believe his empire in turn had been taken over by unrest and disturbances. One October night, when the tsar was absent to take part in the Congress of Troppau,68 the Semenovsky Regiment, his preferred one, which we remember as supporting him during his accession to the throne, mutinied against a brutal colonel. There was no seditious political intent underlying this gesture of anger and even despair; it was the repeated and unjust mistreatment of his men by the colonel that was the cause. But, already shaken in his liberal convictions, the tsar became convinced that the regiment had been tainted by revolutionary propaganda. Even though a report written by Kochubey69 gave credence to the thesis of a spontaneous revolt triggered by Colonel Schwarz’s cruelty and that the incident had no link to any ideological premises, Alexander was stubbornly convinced that behind the soldiers’ uprising lay something other than a desperate reaction against a cruel officer.

  In Troppau Alexander told Metternich that revolutionaries had tried in his absence to destabilize the army, to weaken his authority, and to sap the foundations of the empire. Metternich was not convinced, but he, too, noticed how much the Russian emperor had changed in only a few months:

  The tsar believes there is a reason why three thousand soldiers let themselves go in an act that is so unlike the national character. He goes so far as to figure that radicals did the deed in order to intimidate him and to make him come back to St. Petersburg. I am not of his opinion. It would be unlikely that in Russia radicals could already dispose of entire regiments. But this proves how much the emperor has changed.7
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  Fighting this “subversive” element, Alexander was pitiless: the mutineers each had to suffer 6,000 strokes of the rod, and those who survived were condemned to forced labor, while the regiment was entirely disbanded.

  Similarly, in Poland after the great hopes born in 1815, political practice gradually toughened: the constitutional government was maintained, of course, but the powers with which the diet was theoretically endowed were not put into effect. Gradually, it started to function as a consultative body rather than a representative one: between 1815 and 1830, it was not authorized to debate the state budget. Bitterly, Adam Czartoryski, himself distanced from any real responsibility by the tsar—he was reduced to the rank of curator of the University of Vilnius—witnessed this hardening of the line.

  Thus within five years the political hopes born in 1815 had evaporated. There was no question of giving the empire a constitutional government. The outlined reform campaign had been aborted. However, in this period not everything was in vain: on the periphery of the empire, reforms were underway on the agrarian question. But the benefits that could have resulted were not sufficient to counterbalance the utopia of the new military colonies that became a disastrous dystopia.

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  From the start of his reign, Alexander had a plan to put an end to the moral, religious, and social scandal of serfdom, as well as to its ineffectiveness on the economic level. This plan was accentuated by the war of 1812. The enormous human and material losses suffered in the countryside during the patriotic war and the courage displayed by peasants in the time of conflict called in effect for a strong gesture in exchange for their sacrifices. The tsar discussed this plan with several interlocutors. But unlike the political question that was the object of public declarations, this more sensitive terrain required acting with much discretion. When the emperor consented in 1816–1817 that freedom should be given to peasants in the Baltic provinces, it was in the shadows that he resumed reflection about the abolition of serfdom and the means to bring it about, while he was starting work on the first military colonies.