Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  A few months later, during the international congress that took place in Verona from September to December 1822, the Greek issue was once again examined, and now the tsar joined the chorus of other monarchs to denounce the Greek revolt as “a criminal enterprise.”47 The congress also studied the Spanish problem: the Bourbon king was calling for French assistance in a looming civil war. Despite the opposition of the British government (now represented by Lord Canning), the powers decided on armed intervention and gave command of it to the French Bourbons. In April 1823 Ferdinand VII was consolidated in power; however, despite Alexander’s insistence, the congress refused to support the Spanish king in his struggle to reconquer his American colonies.

  Relations between the French and Russians were at their zenith during the Congress of Verona, which resulted in France’s full integration into the European system by giving it the right to intervene militarily in Spain. There arose a veritable political and intellectual complicity between Alexander and Chateaubriand, the French minister of foreign affairs. In their exchanges, the tsar detailed his positions on the Greek question, arguing once again for the need to preserve the current political order in the face of revolutionary dangers:

  Would you believe, as our enemies say, that “alliance” is a word that merely camouflages ambitions? Possibly that might have been true in the former state of things, but today it is a matter of particular interests, when the civilized world is in peril.

  There can no longer be distinct English, French, Russian, Prussian, and Austrian policies; there is only a general policy that should, for the benefit of all, be accepted by peoples and by kings alike. It is up to me to be the first to demonstrate that I am convinced of the principles on which I founded the Alliance. An opportunity has presented itself: the uprising in Greece. Nothing might appear more in my interests, in those of my peoples, in my country’s opinion, than a religious war against Turkey. But I believed I saw in the troubles of the Peloponnese a revolutionary sign and so I abstained. They did everything they possibly could to break the Alliance, but I resisted. People tried in turn to warn me and to wound my amour-propre; I was openly offended. They know me very badly, those who believe that my principles relate only to vanity or else might yield to resentment. No, I will never separate myself from the monarchs to whom I am united. Kings should be permitted to have public alliances to defend themselves against secret societies. What could tempt me? Why would I need to increase my empire? Providence has not placed 800,000 soldiers under my command in order to satisfy my ambition, but to protect religion, morality and justice, to make the principles of order prevail, those upon which human society is based.48

  A few months after the Verona congress closed, the Greek issue came again to the fore of the international stage due to a spurt in the insurrection. Alexander proposed in 1824 holding a ministerial conference in St. Petersburg; in the circular he sent his European interlocutors, he proposed to reflect on the creation of three Greek principalities to be placed under Ottoman protectorate. The plan was publicized in the French press and soon aroused objections from British diplomats, who refused to take part in a conference to which the Ottomans were not invited. Furious with this response, Alexander I persisted and organized a meeting in the spring of 1825, in the absence of any British delegation; the result was very disappointing to both Russian diplomacy and to the Greek liberals. In turn, Metternich, because he feared they would fall into the Russian orbit, was hostile to the creation of Greek principalities under Ottoman protection; so he advanced a counterproposal—the formation of an independent Greek state. But this suggestion ran up against Russian opposition. Alexander would not consider (as per his diplomatic credo mentioned above) touching the territorial sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. So the conference ended in the summer of 1825 without any tangible decision. In the long term this failure would have a major impact on Russian diplomacy because it convinced the tsar—and later his successor—that the difficult question of the Orient could not be solved by European cooperation and that therefore Russia should resume its full and complete room for maneuver.

  Ten years after the triumphal inauguration of the Holy Alliance, Alexander’s diplomacy, on the eve of his demise, offered a mixed result. Admittedly, the tsar had managed to preserve Russian interests towards the Ottoman Empire, to reintegrate France into the European cooperation and thereby to counterbalance the influence of Great Britain and Austria, to reequilibrate the geopolitical order in Russia’s favor. But none of his repeated proposals for the creation of a league of European nations and for disarmament had been adopted. Even more seriously, to the great regret of his main diplomatic advisors, Kapodistrias in the forefront, the Holy Alliance had mutated into a weapon in the service of conservative monarchies. On the diplomatic front, as on the domestic one, Alexander’s utopian aims had failed.

  CHAPTER 15

  Twilight

  1820–1825

  On the domestic scene—with the final abandonment of the plan for a constitutional charter—well as on the international front—the Russian signing of the Troppau convention—the year 1820 marked a final turning point in the reign of Alexander I. From this date until the tsar’s death in November 1825, his power evolved toward a repressive conservatism, while he appeared to have abandoned the empire to the tyrannical management of Arakcheev. Of course, the emperor still reigned as an autocrat and constantly proclaimed his personal authority by a growing intransigence, by his presence, by trips within his empire that became increasingly frequent and increasingly long. As Jean-Henri Schnitzler stressed as early as 1847, “If you can believe an idle calculation, Alexander during his lifetime travelled no less than 200,000 verstes [160,000 miles] and as these distant travels became more frequent, all the departures and arrivals and stays were minutely planned.”1

  But, at the same time, authoritarian crises that attest to a state of tension in his power alternated with phases of deep despondency that were not propitious for taking action. Tired, embittered by dissident movements that were cropping up across the country, and also bitter about his own political and diplomatic failures, miserable about the blows of fate that struck those close to him (which he saw, with almost pathological anguish, as punishment from God)—Alexander became more and more distant from his empire. Well before his actual death, increasingly indifferent to the world around him, he had already left it.

  “I Almost Never Go Out”

  Over the course of the years 1820 to 1825, even in the opinion of those close to him, the personality and behavior of Alexander I were becoming confused. The tsar was proving more and more shut off, suspicious, and even paranoid. In her memoirs Alexandra Feodorovna (wife of Grand Duke Nicholas) gave a perceptive account of the brutal changes over these years. Whereas in 1817 the imperial family still led a joyous lifestyle—she recalls agreeable promenades and boat excursions on a trip to Kronstadt—a year later, and still more after 1820, she remembers a totally different atmosphere, infinitely heavier and more tense. She lays responsibility for this degradation on the emperor’s growing deafness:

  Without being precisely deaf, he had difficulty hearing those across from him at table, and preferred to speak one-on-one. He imagined seeing things that nobody would have thought of doing: that people were making fun of him, that they were comically imitating him, that people were making signs he was not supposed to notice. In a word, such foolishness that attests to a pettiness that was painful in a man so distinguished in heart and mind. I cried so much when he made such remarks and reproaches to me that I almost choked. But since then, there has never been a cloud between us, and he believes in my good faith, my friendship for him, which derives from adoration going so far as exaltation—and certainly not mockery.2

  Alexander I led a solitary and retired life. While in the first years of his reign he enjoyed the theater and music, a noticeable narrowing of his foci of interest3 marked the years 1820–1825. Dramatic and musical performances at the Hermitage had ceased; the emperor woul
d read only works of piety or theology, had no literary correspondents abroad, and consented to exchange intellectual talk with only Karamzin and spiritual reflections with only Golitsyn, Koshelev, and some preachers. He who in the past particularly enjoyed salon discussions on all kinds of topics now went to visit others very sporadically. To the Countess of Nesselrode, the wife of the chancellor, who wrote that she was sad that he no longer came to see them, Alexander unambiguously replied in a letter dated April 1825:

  In my defense, I will tell you, Madame, that for some years I almost never go out, not having the leisure because of my occupations, which up to now have not diminished but rather augmented. This wrong on my part—if it is one—affects many people whom I frequented in the past, although very rarely, and now not at all.4

  More and more strict, his daily schedule unfolded in an unvarying and persnickety order. In the fine season that he spent at Tsarskoye Selo, he rose at five, worked until eight, and then walked in the park, before returning to the castle for his frugal lunch. At midday, without escort, accompanied only by one or two servants, he set off by barouche for Pavlovsk, where he visited members of his family. Upon his return, he dined alone or in the company of Elizabeth and then disappeared into his apartments to hold audiences, to work, or else to read pious books. The Countess of Choiseul-Gouffier left a very precise description of her stay over several summer days in the intimacy of sovereigns in 1824:

  Emperor Alexander led in Czarskoye-Selo a kind of country lifestyle: there was no court, and in the absence of the Grand Marshal, it was the emperor himself who asked for the accounts of household expenses. He received only his ministers on specified days of the week. Ordinarily Alexander rose at five, performed his toilette, wrote, then descended into the park, or he visited his farm, viewed new constructions, gave audiences to persons who had memorandums to present to him, and who sometimes pursued him through the park, which was always open both night and day. The emperor walked alone there without any misgivings, though there were sentinels only in the chateau and palace. Obliged because of his health to observe a strict diet, Alexander dined alone in his apartment, and out of habit went to bed early. In this retreat, the guards played music under his windows, almost always melancholy airs, which I could hear from my apartment.

  Empress Elizabeth, for her part, lived in deep solitude; she had only one maid of honor with her, and received nobody at Czarskoye-Selo.5

  In the poor season, the emperor resided in St. Petersburg at the Winter Palace, but his schedule varied little: rising at six, the sovereign spent the early morning on political matters, then at nine precisely he went to the exercise hall in the palace courtyard to witness the guards’ parade. Around midday he left the palace by carriage or sleigh (with a team of only one horse) and visited his relatives. Returning about two o’clock, he had his meal and retired to work, to receive ministers, or to meditate. He showed himself seldom at court. Except for individual audiences he had requested from concerned ambassadors, the diplomatic corps saw the emperor only three or four times a year, during ceremonial appearances.

  His obsession for order—his mania—grew constantly. An impeccable order reigned over his worktable; nothing could disturb the very symmetrical arrangement of objects, and the tsar required that papers brought for his signature should always have the same format.6 A Frenchman, Dupré de Saint-Maur, who lived at the court of St. Petersburg from 1824 to 1829, stressed this obsessive attention to detail and to perfection:

  His love of order and utmost neatness shows itself in the smallest things. All the tables, all the desks on which he writes are of an admirable cleanliness; he cannot bear the least disorder, not the slightest trace of dust, nor the smallest scrap of paper foreign to his work. He cleans up and puts back in place everything he uses. One sees on all his desks a folded cambric handkerchief, and ten newly trimmed pens, which are reshaped even if they have been used for only one signature. This daily upkeep was a real business: the pen trimmer, for this service, receives 3,000 rubles a year.

  Would one believe it? Every time I happen to enter one of the emperor’s apartments, I am never envious of him, of all his power—apart from these ten fine and clean pens that invite you to write, yet never give their master the anguish of the penknife.7

  With age—and this point strikes historians—Alexander was coming to resemble more and more his father. He now had the latter’s distrust, his obsession with order down to the most minor details, his fits of anger—and sometimes also of indifference, as shown by his intransigent attitude to the sufferings of peasants in revolt against the military colonies.

  He loved to walk around his capital but also travelled a lot. In the summer of 1819, laid low by dejection due to the sudden death of his sister Catherine, he left on a long sojourn through the northern territories. Leaving St. Petersburg on August 4, he reached Arkhangelsk on August 9, then went to Finland, where he stayed until the end of August. At the beginning of September, he was back on the road to inspect the military colonies of the Novgorod government and then went to Warsaw before returning. A year later, in the spring of 1820, the tsar was again roaming, visiting Arakcheev in Gruzino, where he inspected the southern military colonies before reaching Warsaw on August 27 to participate in the session of the diet, staying there two months, then to Troppau in October. In the spring of 1821, he returned to spend a week in Gruzino, then back to St. Petersburg before going to Vitebsk in September. The following year he went to Vilnius and Gruzino, stayed again in Warsaw from August 1822 to January 1823. In the course of 1823, he stopped twice at Gruzino, in March and June, and then went on a voyage of two and a half months: first to Moscow, then on a journey that led him to Yaroslav, then to Rostov, where he stopped in a monastery, then the military colonies of the Mogilev government, and from there to Volhynia and Podolia. In the town of Czernowice, situated on the Austrian frontier, he met the emperor of Austria before leaving for Bessarabia, staying a long time to inspect his troops, and then returning to St. Petersburg by mid-November. The following year, he remained a month in Gruzino, before undertaking from August to October a new trip through his provinces to the southeast: Riazan, Tambov, Penza, Simbirsk, Orenburg, Ekaterinburg were all stops on his itinerary.8

  This constant movement—which does not fit with his aspiration to meditation and retreat—has aroused a great deal of commentary from historians. For some, these repeated voyages are explained less by the tsar’s concern for his empire than by his desire to flee the memory of parricide—and thereby to flee himself. For others, because he never trusted anybody, Alexander aimed by frenetically travelling thousands of miles to ensure the docility and trustworthiness of his local representatives, or perhaps the success of the military colonies. For still other historians, these tours through the empire were part of his insatiable quest for God—as the repeated halts at monasteries demonstrate. Whatever the cause, one can only be struck, observing this bulimic traveling, by the way in which the son, again, was imitating the father.

  When he was not going to meditate in monasteries or to visit anchorites, Alexander continued to devote himself to deepening his faith; his whole spirituality tended to make him drop political activity for the sake of religious meditation. In his letter to Alexander Golitsyn in February 1821, he confessed of his relation to God:

  I abandon myself completely to His guidance, to His decisions, and it is He who brings and decides things. I merely follow in total abandon, persuaded as I am in my heart that this can only lead to that goal that His Economy has decided for the common good.9