Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace

by Dominic Lieven

  Much more interesting than the rather meaningless negotiations and agreements at Erfurt were the letters between Alexander and his family concerning the meeting with Napoleon, for they reveal much about his innermost thoughts. One week before the emperor’s departure his mother had written him a long letter imploring him not to go. In the light of Napoleon’s kidnapping of the Spanish royal family, the Empress Marie was nervous about her son’s safety in a foreign town garrisoned by French troops and controlled by a man devoid of any scruples or limits. Though she admitted that peace had been a necessity at Tilsit, she spelled out the dangerous subsequent results of the alliance with France. Napoleon had manipulated Russia into waging an expensive and immoral war against Sweden, while blocking peace with the Ottomans and even trying to insinuate himself into Russo-Persian relations. Still worse were the domestic consequences of the disastrous break with Britain and adherence to the Continental System. Commerce had collapsed and prices of basic necessities had shot up, halving the real value of salaries and forcing officials to steal in order to feed their families. Declining state revenues and the demoralization and corruption of government officials threatened a crisis. However, Napoleon’s difficulties in Spain and Austrian rearmament offered Russia a chance to unite with France’s enemies and end her dominion of Europe. At such a moment, argued the empress, it would be disastrous for Alexander’s prestige and Russia’s interests if he made a pilgrimage to visit Napoleon and consolidate the Franco-Russian alliance.21

  Marie’s arguments were not new. Many of Alexander’s diplomats could have made exactly the same points, and Count Tolstoy had indeed frequently done so in his dispatches from Paris. Alexander could ignore his officials much more easily than his mother, however. Though often exasperated by Marie, he was at heart not just a loyal and polite son but also a devoted one. So before departing for Erfurt he set out and justified his policies in a long handwritten letter to her.

  Alexander opened by stating that in a matter of such huge importance, the only consideration had to be Russia’s interests and well-being, to which all his cares were devoted. It would be ‘criminal’ if he allowed himself to be swayed by ignorant, shallow and shifting public opinion. Instead he must consult his own conscience and reason, looking realities squarely in the eye and not giving way to false hopes or emotions. The basic reality at present was that France was immensely powerful, more powerful and better placed than even Russia and Austria combined. If even republican France in the 1790s, weakened by misgovernment and civil war, could defeat all Europe, what must one say now about the French Empire, led by an autocratic sovereign who was also a military genius and sustained by an army of veterans hardened by fifteen years of war? It was an illusion to think that a few setbacks in Spain could seriously shake this power.

  At present Russia’s salvation lay in avoiding conflict with Napoleon, which could only be done by making him believe that Russia shared his interests. ‘All our efforts must be devoted to this so that we can breathe freely for some time. During this precious time we can build up our resources and our forces. But we must do this in complete silence and not in making our armaments and preparations public or in declaiming in public against this man whom we distrust.’ Not to go to a meeting with Napoleon which had been planned for so long would arouse his suspicions and could prove fatal at such a moment of international tension. If Austria started a war now, it would be blind to its own interests and weaknesses. Everything must be done to save Austria from this folly and to preserve her resources until the moment arrived when they could be used for the general good. But this moment had not yet come and, if his expedition to Erfurt resulted in ‘stopping so deplorable a catastrophe’ as Austria’s defeat and destruction, it would repay with interest all the unpleasant aspects of meeting with Napoleon.22

  There is good reason to believe that in this letter to his mother Alexander was speaking from the heart. Knowing her loathing for Napoleon, however, it is possible that he was exaggerating his dislike and distrust of the French monarch. Alexander had no such reason for pretence when writing to his sister Catherine, who was probably the person whom he trusted more than anyone else in the world. After departing from Erfurt and bidding an unctuous farewell to Napoleon he wrote to her that ‘Bonaparte thinks that I am nothing but an idiot. “They laugh longest who laugh last!” I put all my trust in God.’23

  During the six months which followed the meeting at Erfurt the main aim of Russian foreign policy was to avoid a Franco-Austrian war. Alexander and Rumiantsev were convinced that if war came, Austrian hopes of effective help from risings in Germany or British landings would prove false. The Habsburg army would certainly be defeated and Austria would either be destroyed or weakened to such a degree that she would be forced to become a French satellite. Russia would then be the only independent great power left to oppose Napoleon’s domination of the whole European continent. The emperor remained committed to the French alliance as the only way to buy time for Russia. If Petersburg openly sided with Austria not merely would Napoleon destroy the Habsburg army before Russian help could arrive, he would then turn all his forces against a Russia which was still far from ready for a life-and-death struggle.

  Alexander refused Napoleon’s demand for concerted Franco-Russian warnings in Vienna, partly because he did not want to insult the Austrians and partly because he feared that too strong Russian support might even inspire Napoleon himself to start a war aimed at eliminating the Habsburg monarchy or simply at raiding the Austrian treasury to pay for the upkeep of his bloated army. Nevertheless he did warn the Austrians that if they attacked Napoleon Russia’s obligations under the Treaty of Tilsit would force her to fight on France’s side. On the other hand, since he believed that Austrian armaments could only be explained by fear of French aggression, he promised that, if the Austrians partially disarmed, Russia would publicly guarantee to come to their assistance in the event of a French attack. Right down to the outbreak of war on 10 April 1809 Alexander found it almost impossible to believe that Austria would take the suicidal risk of attacking Napoleon. When this actually happened, the emperor blamed the Habsburg government for allowing itself to be carried away by public opinion and its own emotions.24

  The Austrian attack on Napoleon left Alexander no alternative but to declare war. Had he failed to meet his clear treaty obligations the Russo-French alliance would have collapsed and Russia and France would probably have been at war within a matter of weeks. While in theory Austria’s enemy, Russia’s overriding war aim was that the Austrian Empire should be weakened as little as possible. The last thing Russia wanted to do was damage the Austrian army, since its survival was the main guarantee against Napoleon imposing crushing peace terms on the Habsburgs. In addition, the Russians were strongly opposed to any addition of territory to the Duchy of Warsaw. The Russian army which invaded Austrian Galicia therefore devoted much of its efforts to avoiding the Habsburg forces and impeding the advance of the Duchy’s Polish army, which was supposedly its ally. Of course it was impossible to hide such tactics, especially when Russian correspondence intercepted by the Poles made their intentions clear. Napoleon was furious and never really believed again in the usefulness of the Russian alliance. Predictably, the war ended in Austria’s defeat. In the peace treaty of Schoönbrunn, signed in October 1809, Napoleon revenged himself on Alexander by handing a large slice of Galicia to the Poles.

  The war between Austria and France was the beginning of the end of the Russo-French alliance but two developments over the winter of 1809–10 disguised this for a time. Napoleon agreed that his ambassador in Russia, Armand de Caulaincourt, should draft a Franco-Russian convention which would lay to rest Russian fears about Poland’s possible restoration. More or less simultaneously he divorced his wife, the Empress Josephine, and sought the hand of Alexander’s sister. Rumours that Napoleon was in pursuit of a Russian grand duchess had been floating around for some time. In March 1808 a very worried Empress Marie had asked the ambassador in Pa
ris to find out whether this was a real danger. At that time the obvious target would have been the Grand Duchess Catherine. The marriage of this extremely feisty and strong-willed young woman with Napoleon would have been interesting and combustible. For all her ambition, however, Catherine could not stomach the idea of marrying the Corsican bandit. Perhaps to avoid any possibility of this, in 1809 she married her distant cousin, Prince George of Oldenburg, instead. This left the only possible Russian bride as the Grand Duchess Anna, just turned 16 when Napoleon’s proposal arrived.25

  Napoleon’s request for Anna’s hand was very unwelcome to Alexander. He neither wanted to marry his sister to a Bonaparte nor to insult the French emperor by refusing to do so. Paul I had decreed in his will that his daughters’ marriages should be in their mother’s hands and in a sense this was a glorious excuse for Alexander to dodge the issue, though by pleading inability to impose his will on a mere woman he confirmed all Napoleon’s suspicions about his weakness. Alexander rather dreaded a tantrum from the empress on this issue but in fact mother and son saw eye to eye on the matter and this was just one sign of their growing agreement on political questions. Of course Marie was horrified by the idea of the marriage but she fully understood the dangers of annoying Napoleon. She wrote to her daughter Catherine that Alexander had told her that Russia’s western frontier was very vulnerable, with no fortresses to cover the likely invasion routes: ‘The Emperor told me that if God granted him five years’ peace, he would have ten fortresses, and his finances in order.’ The Empress accepted the fact that it was the duty of the imperial family to sacrifice themselves for the good of the state but she could not bear the thought of losing her daughter, who was still a child, to Napoleon. The fact that two of her older daughters had been married young and that both had died in childbirth strengthened this revulsion. In the end the Grand Duchess Catherine came up with a compromise: Napoleon would not be refused outright but merely told that, having lost two daughters, the Empress was determined that her last one should not marry before the age of 18.26

  By the time the Russian semi-rejection reached Napoleon in February 1810 he had long since opted for his second-best option, namely marriage with the daughter of the Austrian emperor, the Archduchess Marie-Louise. Alexander stifled both his resentment that Napoleon had been simultaneously negotiating with both courts and his deep fear that an Austrian marriage would contribute to the breakdown of the Franco-Russian alliance and Russia’s isolation. Almost simultaneously he was shocked to learn that Napoleon had refused to ratify the convention barring the restoration of Poland. Napoleon assured the Russians that he had no intention of restoring a Polish kingdom but could not sign a convention which bound France to stop anyone else, including the Poles themselves, from doing so. In a sense the dispute over the convention’s wording was nonsensical: no one could hold Napoleon to any agreement he signed and his record of fidelity to treaties was not impressive. In a way, however, that made his refusal even to pretend to meet Russian wishes as regards Poland even more suspicious in Russian eyes. From this moment on Franco-Russian relations went into a steep decline, which continued until the outbreak of war in June 1812. It was no coincidence that in early March 1810 the new minister of war, Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, drafted his first memorandum on measures for the defence of Russia’s western border from French attack.27

  Meanwhile the Continental System was beginning to cause Russia major difficulties. Alexander recognized always that Russian adherence to Napoleon’s economic blockade of Britain was ‘the basis of our alliance’ with France. To restore relations with Britain would be to breach the core of the Treaty of Tilsit and make war with Napoleon inevitable. For that reason he refrained from doing this until French troops actually crossed his border in June 1812. By 1810, however, it was clear that something had to be done to reduce the damage being caused to Russia by the Continental System.28

  The biggest single problem was the collapsing value of the paper ruble, which by 1811 was almost the only currency in use in the empire’s Russian heartlands. In June 1804 the paper ruble had been worth more than three-quarters of its silver equivalent: by June 1811 it was valued at less than one-quarter. This had two key causes. In the first place, the only way the state could pay for its enormous military expenditures in 1805–10 was by printing more and more paper money. Secondly, the Continental System, added to general economic and political uncertainties, had resulted in a collapse in business confidence. Even the silver ruble lost one-fifth of its value against the pound sterling in 1807–12. The value of the paper ruble on the foreign exchanges plummeted. This had a dramatic effect on the cost of sustaining Russian armies fighting in Finland, Moldavia, the Caucasus and Poland: Caulaincourt reckoned that the campaign against the Swedes was costing Alexander the equivalent of fifteen French silver francs per man per day, commenting that ‘the Swedish war is ruining Russia’. By 1809 state income was less than half of expenditure and crisis was looming. The real value of the government’s tax income that year was 73 per cent of what it had been five years before. At a time when Russia needed to prepare for war against Napoleon’s empire this was nothing short of a potential catastrophe.29

  The government’s response to this crisis took a number of forms. A resounding statement was issued pledging that the paper rubles were seen as a state debt and would be redeemed. No more printing of paper money was to be permitted. All unnecessary expenditures were to be cut and taxes raised. Above all, the import of all luxury or inessential items was to be banned outright or charged prohibitive duties. Meanwhile encouragement and protection would be given to neutral ships docking at Russian ports and carrying Russian exports. The emergency taxes brought in little cash and when war broke out again in 1812 the pledge on new printing of paper money had to be forgotten. But the ban on imports and the encouragement of neutral shipping did make an immediate impact on Russian trade and finance.

  Unfortunately, they also made a big impact on Napoleon. He claimed – in fact falsely – that French imports to Russia were being targeted. With more truth he argued that neutral ships were being used as a cover for trade with Britain. Since he himself at this very time was annexing much of north Germany in order to tighten controls on trade, Russian and French policy was diametrically opposed. Alexander refused to back down in the face of French protests, however. He argued that necessity forced these changes and that it was his right as a sovereign ruler to determine tariffs and trade rules so long as these did not contravene his treaty obligations.

  Dire financial crisis as well as Russian pride was involved in his stubbornness. Both the emperor and Rumiantsev might have been more inclined to compromise had they not come to the correct conclusion that the Continental System had largely been transformed from a measure of economic war against Britain into a policy whereby France bled the rest of Europe white in order to boost its own trade and revenues. At a time when Napoleon was demanding the virtual elimination of Russian foreign trade, he was issuing more and more licences for French merchants to trade with Britain. To rub salt into Russian wounds, the occasional French vessel armed with such licences even tried to sell British goods in Russia. As Caulaincourt told Napoleon, the Russians could hardly be expected to accept the costs of France’s economic war with Britain when France itself was increasingly evading them. The Continental System’s effects had long since been denounced by many Russian statesmen. By early 1812, however, even Rumiantsev admitted that Napoleon’s policy lacked any honesty or coherence, telling John Quincy Adams that ‘the system of licences is founded upon falsehood and immorality’.30

  By now, however, the key issue had long since become not specific sources of disagreement between France and Russia but the clear evidence that Napoleon was planning a massive invasion of the tsar’s empire. At the beginning of January 1812 the French minister of war boasted that Napoleon’s army had never before been so well equipped, trained and supplied for a forthcoming war: ‘We have been making preparations for more than fifteen mon
ths.’ In keeping with the general level of French security before 1812 the boast was made within earshot of a Russian informant. The Russians were in fact exceptionally well informed about French intentions and preparations. Already in the summer of 1810 a number of young and usually very competent officers had been sent as attachés in the Russian missions scattered throughout Germany’s princely courts. Their job was to gather intelligence. Within Germany the greatest source of intelligence was the Russian mission in Berlin, since January 1810 headed by Christoph Lieven. The majority of Napoleon’s units preparing to invade Russia either travelled across Prussia or deployed within it. Since the Prussians loathed the French it was not difficult to gain abundant information about all these units and their movements.31

  By far the most important source of intelligence, however, were Russia’s diplomatic and military representatives in Paris. Petr Tolstoy was recalled in October 1808 and replaced as ambassador to Napoleon by Aleksandr Kurakin. By 1810, however, Kurakin had been partly sidelined not just by Napoleon but also by Alexander and Rumiantsev. In part this was because the ambassador, already a martyr to gout, was badly burned in a fire at the Austrian embassy early in 1810 during a great ball to celebrate Napoleon’s marriage to the Archduchess Marie-Louise. It was also, however, because Kurakin was overshadowed by two exceptionally able younger Russian diplomats in Paris.

  One of these men was Count Karl von Nesselrode, who served as deputy head of mission under first Tolstoy and then Kurakin. Nesselrode in fact was secretly in direct communication with Alexander via Mikhail Speransky. The other Russian was Aleksandr Chernyshev, not a diplomat but an officer of the Chevaliers Gardes, an aide-de-camp of Alexander I and the emperor’s former page. When first appointed deputy head of mission in Paris Nesselrode was 27 years old. When Chernyshev was first sent by Alexander with personal messages for Napoleon he was only 22. Partly as a result of their brilliant performance during these crucial years in Paris both men made outstanding careers. Ultimately Nesselrode was to serve as foreign minister and Chernyshev as war minister for decades.