Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  The final decade of Alexander’s reign was also marked by a significant growth in trade between the Russian Empire and the khanates of Central Asia; it was from there that Russia imported most of the silk and cotton it needed, exporting in return fabrics, sugar, tobacco, and metallurgic products. In parallel, efforts were made to try to stabilize political relations, which had suffered from the mutual absence of permanent representatives. But due to the distrust among the khans, contact remained irregular. Expeditions of exploration that were both political and military, and were launched with the tsar’s support, had mixed results: in 1819–1820, Admiral Mordvinov gave Captain Muravyov the mission to prepare the installation of a Russian fortress on the eastern bank of the Caspian Sea and to develop trade with Khiva,3 but contact with the khan resulted in nothing concrete. Three years later, Alexander sent from Orenburg to Bukhara a new diplomatic mission conducted by Negri: he had to obtain guarantees about the security of Russian trade caravans transiting through Bukhara, as well as an agreement to open a consulate there. But again, these first contacts petered out. Meanwhile, in the wake of the first attempts made by Catherine II, Russian diplomacy turned to China, trying to establish good neighbor relations that would enable Russian merchants to secure favorable conditions in the Chinese market and to gain access to resources and raw materials from that empire. This rapprochement proved very difficult: in October 1805 an embassy led by Senator Count Golovkin reached the Chinese border in Mongolia, where it was abruptly halted. Golovkin was obliged to abandon part of his escort—to which he agreed—in order to pursue his mission. In January 1806 he reached Urga,4 where during a banquet given in his honor, the local authorities required him to submit to a religious ceremonial to the glory of the Son of Heaven. But because he refused to perform ten genuflections that he considered humiliating to his own emperor, he was forced to turn around and go back to St. Petersburg empty-handed.5 Alexander approved of the ambassador’s conduct, but he also drew a lesson from it: relations with China were by nature complex, due to the opposition between two quite different cultural systems of representations, and they required more professionalism and better mutual understanding—hence the creation of the Asiatic department. But the effects of this initiative on Russo-Chinese relations would be felt much later, in the 1830s–1840s. Lastly, Russian diplomacy in the last decade of Alexander’s reign was also interested in the Pacific zone, where it soon ran into American interests.

  It was during the period of alliance with France that the Russian Empire, while pursuing its policy of strategic expansion in the Pacific, got a foothold on the Californian coast. In 1812 Baranov, governor of the Kodiak Islands,6 was behind an expedition that led to the construction of a small fort7 150 km north of San Francisco. For the Russians it was a matter of countering Spanish presence in a region considered strategic, which might become a “reservoir” able to supply vegetables and meat to Russian compatriots of the Pacific, those of Alaska principally. Thus, as early as the end of the 1810s, 300 Russians, Aleuts, and Californian Indians developed agricultural practices and hunted seals and sea lions, sending their products toward the Russian forward post on the island of Sitka, south of Alaska. But the dynamism of the Russian presence in these lands caused hostile reactions from both Spanish and American governments. In 1821 a ukase that extended Russian sovereignty to the south, to the fifty-first parallel, and forbade commerce with any ship other than Russian, caused a diplomatic crisis with the United States. In February 1822 a note from Secretary of State John Quincy Adams stated that “we should contest the right of Russia to any territorial establishment on this continent, and that we should assume distinctly the principle that the American continents are no longer subjects for any new European colonial establishments.”8 This note is the first formulation of the document to be adopted in December 1823 by President James Monroe and known thereafter as the “Monroe Doctrine.” Henceforth the American continent could no longer be considered as a territory of colonization for European powers. In return, the United States would not interfere in European affairs. In this tense context the rivalry between Russia and America ended in a compromise. In April 1824 a bilateral treaty allowed the Americans to contain Russian expansionism to 54 degrees 40 minutes latitude north, in exchange for exclusive rights granted to Russian ships. As regards the Mexican government, its concern to counter the Russian installation in the area led it to support an intense activity of religious proselytism that resulted in the founding of Catholic missions, including that of Sonoma in 1823.

  As these various directions of foreign activity attest, an expansion of spheres of presence and influence was witnessed in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. Now the Russian Empire asserted its Euro-Asian duality and a new interest in America. However, this looking elsewhere should not make us forget the predominant weight of European issues.

  Beginnings of a “Vienna System”

  Once the final text of the Congress of Vienna was signed in 1815, Russian diplomats were forced to accept amendments demanded by Metternich, but they still wanted to believe in the Holy Alliance as a global framework likely to foster a lasting peace in Europe. However, Russia had to deal with the views of other signatory nations, as well as with Britain, which supported the Holy Alliance but had refused to sign it. Consequently Russian diplomacy constantly oscillated between idealism and pragmatism.

  After the Congress, Russian diplomacy appeared at its zenith. Apart from Alexander’s personal prestige, there was dynamism in the institution itself. The Russian Empire had “extraordinary” ambassadors with full powers in Paris and London, plenipotentiary ministers in Vienna, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Dresden, Munich, Karlsruhe, Frankfurt, Rome, Madrid, Philadelphia, and Istanbul, plus ministers residing in Hamburg and Krakow, and chargés d’affaires in The Hague, Stuttgart, Florence, Bern, Lisbon, and Teheran. Thus, this active diplomacy benefited from a close network of representation in the known world.

  But this influence, combined with the geopolitical power acquired by the Russian Empire during the negotiations in 1814–1815, ultimately aroused the distrust of other European governments, and sharp tension with Britain particularly, which became patent in the autumn of 1815. Along with the negotiation of the second treaty of Paris, Lord Castlereagh suggested the formation of a Quadruple Alliance that, in the event of a return of a Bonaparte to the French throne or of a new challenge to the French borders legalized in Vienna and Paris, would call for joint military action. He also suggested frequent meetings among sovereigns (or their representatives) in order to ensure the Alliance’s smooth functioning. Here Castlereagh was somewhat the precursor of the summit conference; he saw such meetings as favorable for maintaining collective peace and security.9 However, Castlereagh’s Quadruple Alliance was not supposed either to constrain British diplomacy (many Britons aspired to a return to traditional isolationism) or to be prejudicial to its interests. Thus in October–November, throughout negotiations that autumn, British diplomats insisted that the prime function of the Quadruple Alliance was to keep France apart, while at the same time the Holy Alliance, conceived as an alliance of Christian thrones, intended to integrate France into the ranks of other nations. During the negotiations Alexander proposed that the new agreement should not take an anti-French line but should extend to other themes: the four powers would reciprocally guarantee all their possessions, they would mutually agree on oversight of the domestic affairs of member states, and they would have the right to intervene collectively against any revolutionary movement likely to destabilize the equilibrium obtained at the Congress of Vienna; finally, in order to coordinate their diplomatic positions, they would hold regular international conferences. But Castlereagh objected: while he was favorable to maintaining international security and to the concept of a balance of power,10 he was also viscerally hostile to the idea of any intervention aiming to consolidate authoritarian monarchical regimes, as well as to any general pact to guarantee borders, both of which he knew would be rejected by
the British Parliament. Consequently, Alexander’s project was set aside, and instead, on November 20, 1815, they signed a Quadruple Alliance that was given an administrative body—a conference of ambassadors in Paris that would be a diplomatic and military instrument potentially directed against France. The four powers declared that they had formed “a permanent league” designed to ensure respect for the second treaty of Paris; they reaffirmed that Napoleon and the members of his family were forever excluded from the French throne and agreed that in the event that “revolutionary principles” again “split France” and threatened “the repose of other states,” they would “cooperate with each other and with His Very Christian Majesty”11 to “adopt measures they judged necessary for the security of their respective states and for the general tranquility of Europe.”12 The only concession to Alexander’s plan—but one that also featured in Castlereagh’s—was the idea of summit meetings to promote “European cooperation” founded on collective action, not purely bilateral actions. Seen from St. Petersburg, this concession was quite minor so the content of the treaty of November 1815 disappointed the tsar a great deal.

  Meanwhile, more or less explicit subjects of tension appeared among the coalition powers. The Russians deplored the role played by the Austrians in German and Balkan matters, while the Bucharest treaty and Alexander’s propensity to pose as a champion of the interests of the Christian peoples in the Ottoman Empire irritated the cabinet of St. James. And rivalries were not limited to the European sphere: Britons and Russians were both interested in Central Asia and Afghanistan, upon which they had identical aims.

  In the months following the signature of the second Paris treaty, these disagreements among allies persisted. Views continued to diverge over the crucial issue of relations with France: for Alexander it was still imperative to develop good relations with Paris as guarantee of a counterweight to Vienna and London, and he constantly supported France’s aspiration to resume its role as a great European power. In 1816 he insisted to the Count of Noailles (the French ambassador to Russia) on the need for a solid entente between France and Russia “to guarantee the peace of Europe.”13 On the contrary, London (out of principle) and Vienna (to have a free hand in Italy) continued to want France kept apart from the rest of Europe.

  The allies also diverged on France’s political evolution. While Chancellor Metternich was supporting the ultraroyalists, advocating the revival of an absolute monarchy, Alexander I and his diplomats supported the Duke of Richelieu in his desire to safeguard the constitutional charter and to liberate the country as soon as possible from foreign occupation.

  Finally, desiring to proceed to the renovation of the European system, its security in particular, the tsar sent a letter to Lord Castlereagh in April 1816 proposing that Great Britain, and through her the other members of the Quadruple Alliance (whom he thought would take the British line), make a “reduction in armed forces of any kind whose maintenance on war footing attenuates the credibility of existing treaties and can only be onerous to all peoples.”14 He saw this measure as a pledge of collective security, and he justified its importance:

  But this proof of mutual trust15 and of perfect conformity in political views will still leave much to be desired if it is not followed by more effective and general measures to guarantee the durability of the new order of things and to encourage all peaceful nations to engage in it without fear for their complete security. This convincing and decisive measure would consist in the simultaneous reduction of armed forces of all kinds, which the powers would adopt for the salvation and independence of their peoples.

  If until now I have not proposed disarmament or executed it in my states, this is because the same motives that seem to dictate this measure, impose on sovereigns the duty to maturely consider all the circumstances and results in order to make its execution really salutary.16

  For the first time in European history, there was a proposal to move to multilateral disarmament that would relieve nations of the cost of a defense rendered useless by the treaties of 1815. With this unprecedented proposal the tsar allied idealism and pragmatism: devastated when the war ended, Russia aspired to reduce the volume of its troops. Yet his idea remained no less strong and original—even if British diplomats continued to be deaf to it.

  At the end of 1817 and the beginning of 1818, Russian diplomatic advances were still very modest, but the tsar remained attached to two major ideas: first, to resolve the fate of France quickly by liberating the troops occupying it, by giving it back its status as a grand power and integrating it into a Quintuple Alliance that would replace the Quadruple Alliance and offer Russia the best guarantees of a balance of power; second, to advance the establishment of a European system of security founded on the principles of the Holy Alliance that he was trying to promote “not for me, not for Russia, but in the interest of the whole world.”17

  In July 1818, on the eve of the Congress of Aachen, Kapodistrias prepared for Alexander a report on the forthcoming meeting.18 In this analytical text the diplomat recalled first that England and Austria were aiming to isolate Russia within the Quadruple Alliance and that other allies would have to be found. Then, according to a scheme given by Alexander, he developed the idea of a pan-European league that would respect the principles of the Holy Alliance, would integrate France, and would guarantee the peace of Europe by concrete measures. It would ensure the defense of small European states—including the German ones—against the appetites of the large ones and guarantee borders and political regimes, which would become as much as possible founded on constitutional monarchies. This last point should be stressed: in 1818, for both Kapodistrias and the tsar, the Holy Alliance was perceived as useful for security and for obtaining a balance of power in Europe—they did not yet perceive it as a weapon to be systematically turned against liberal ideas. But in both London and Vienna these plans were perceived as unacceptable. In August 1818, a few days before the opening of the Aachen Congress, an exasperated Metternich complained to Emperor Franz of the “moral and political proselytism of the terrible Emperor Alexander,”19 and he would prove an implacable adversary to most of the ideas that Alexander advanced. As regards Castlereagh, in a memorandum dated October 19 he rejected the Holy Alliance principles being incorporated into “the ordinary diplomatic obligations that link state to state”20 and virulently attacked the imperial project, arguing that “sustaining the state of succession, of government, and of possession in all other states against all violence or attack”21 would amount to a supranational government that he absolutely rejected.

  The Aachen Congress met from September 29 to November 21, 1818, gathering together representatives of the members of the Holy Alliance and of France: the three sovereigns (Alexander I, Franz I, and Frederick Wilhelm III) and their ministers (Metternich, Castlereagh, Nesselrode, and Kapodistrias), plus the Duke of Richelieu (the French prime minister) and the Duke of Wellington, commander of the allied occupation troops. The Congress held 47 plenary sessions, alternating working sessions and social receptions, in an atmosphere that was not always serene, so much did personalities and interests diverge. In one of his letters to the Countess of Lieven, Metternich admitted his relationship with Alexander:

  There are not two more essentially different persons in the world than he and I. So in relations over thirteen years, we have had, as perhaps never before with two individuals placed as we are in direct and sustained contact, many highs and lows.22

  Laborious and often strained, the work resulted in compromises both on the issue of how to treat France and on Alexander’s proposals. On October 9 a convention was signed that set the date of November 30 for the departure of the occupation troops—upon payment of a contribution of 260 million francs. Due to Russian insistence, France was finally reintegrated into the European concert on November 18, which de facto transformed the Quadruple Alliance into the Quintuple Alliance. But the Russian plan for a pan-European union was blocked by intransigent opposition from both Castlereagh and
Metternich. For the latter, Austria could not support (in writing) the least evolution toward constitutionalism; while Castlereagh did not want Great Britain to find itself forced to intervene—or to approve of intervention by the hypothetical league—in the domestic affairs of any European state. In this context it was a compromise document that was ultimately signed by the four countries on October 19; the obligations agreed in November 1815 when the Quadruple Alliance was founded were renewed but were only applicable in the event of war against France—in other words, they could not serve as the basis for any peaceful and lasting relations that should be established with a country now considered as a “member of the European system.” This final point is important: torn by Russia from England and Austria, the agreement put an end to France’s pariah status; to Alexander’s great satisfaction, it opened the way to a normalization of relations between France and its former enemies. Moreover, the text stressed that the five powers “do not wish—and will not be able—to decide questions touching the interests of other states without a request from the affected countries,”23 which implicitly sheltered France from any hostile and concerted action.

  While Alexander had largely won on the French question, his project for a pan-European league did not see the light of day; the tsar’s insistence on the need for allies to commit to precise obligations in order to guarantee the European order—that “the principle of the general coalition should be established and developed by rules”24—ran up against opposition from the other participants. A small consolation was offered: the protocol of the final declaration adopted at Aachen mentioned that “sovereigns recognize solemnly that their duties to God and toward the peoples they govern oblige them to give the world insofar as possible an example of justice, harmony, and moderation.” The text stressed the monarchs’ attachment to peace and domestic prosperity—another notion directly borrowed from the Holy Alliance. But Alexander was not duped by this symbolic mention; he remained extremely disappointed by the cautiousness of the coalition powers about his pan-European union plan.