Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  Yet at first it was by no means clear what role he should play. When Paul was murdered the war of the Second Coalition, which had begun two years before with Suvorov’s remarkable performance on the battlefields of Lombardy, was dragging its way through an inconclusive final act. French victories against the Austrians at Marengo and Hohenlinden reestablished Napoleon’s mastery of northern Italy by the end of 1800 and forced the Austrians to sue for peace; and Paul himself, in the closing months of his reign, was co-operating with Denmark, Sweden and Prussia in a League of Armed Neutrality, a combination calculated to put pressure on the British in northern Germany and the Baltic. But this alignment was short-lived. Five days after Paul’s murder the British naval action against the Danish fleet at Copenhagen led to the dissolution of the League and intensified the desire of the new Tsar’s advisers to reach an understanding with Addington’s Government in London (which had itself already approached the French with an offer to open negotiations for a general peace settlement). There were accordingly four courses of action open to Alexander: he could work closely with the French; he could ally with the British; he could offer his services as a general mediator in Europe’s affairs; or he could ignore the disputes and rivalries of other Powers and concentrate on domestic reform in a golden era of peace for his Empire. Each of these possibilities had supporters in St Petersburg, and until after his coronation Alexander continued to hesitate over which course to pursue.

  So long as Panin remained in effective control of Russian policy, it was the Anglophile party which flourished. The British ambassador, Lord St Helens, found Panin agreeable company and the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Hawkesbury, even induced King George III to send a friendly letter to the new Tsar.3 Since most disputes between Britain and Russia arose from the attempts of the Royal Navy to maintain a blockade of France and her dependencies, it was not difficult to reach an understanding. The Anglo-Russian Convention of June 1801 duly ended all immediate risk of hostilities in the Baltic. But Alexander, despite the gracious words of His Britannic Majesty, was less inclined than Panin to be conciliatory. He did not trust the British, especially after the raid on Copenhagen, and much that Consul Bonaparte was achieving in France appealed to his own political instincts. Provided Napoleon had no territorial ambitions in the Balkans or the eastern Mediterranean, Alexander could see no reason for a clash of interests between France and Russia. The Emperor’s ‘young friends’ on the Secret Committee agreed in general with him rather than with Panin, and when Alexander discussed foreign affairs with them during the late summer of 1801, they received the impression that he favoured settling differences with France as a preliminary to a policy of passive isolation.4 As St Helens wrote to Hawkesbury shortly before Alexander’s departure for Moscow, ‘The members of the Emperor’s Council, with whom he is particularly connected … have been … zealous in promoting the intended peace with France, it being their professed System to endeavour to disengage the Emperor from all foreign Concerns … and induce him to direct his principal attention to the Affairs of the Interior.’5

  The events of the following month appeared to confirm the ambassador’s analysis. At the end of the first week in October a treaty was signed by Russia and France in Paris which formally restored peace between the two countries: the French recognized Russia’s interest in the eastern Mediterranean and conceded the principle that Alexander should be consulted over re-shaping the territorial boundaries of the German states.6 When, a few days later, it was announced that Panin would retire to his estates and hand over responsibility for the conduct of foreign affairs to Prince Kochubey, most of the diplomats in St Petersburg believed the Tsar and his minister would pursue a simple policy of external peace and internal reform. They were convinced that ‘this zealous and talented nobleman’, with his knowledge of Europe and understanding of his sovereign, would be the real arbiter of Russian policy for several years ahead.7

  So, indeed, thought Kochubey himself, even though he insisted he would rather have concentrated on administrative reform than on the frustrations of diplomacy. But Kochubey and the ambassadors underestimated Alexander. He was outwardly so full of charm and good intentions, so often lost in the enthusiasms and uncertainties of a protracted adolescence, that it seemed impossible he should seek to rule as an autocrat. Yet increasingly in the winter of 1801–2 the Tsar was behaving as though he were his own foreign minister. By the Spring his interest in European affairs was sufficiently marked for him to spurn the advice of the Secret Committee. Paul Stroganov noted on 28 March that Alexander ‘appeared very determined in his outlook’ and a week later there was a head-on clash between the Tsar and his friends, with Alexander actually proposing that Russia should seek to weave a network of alliances rather than isolate herself from what was taking place in western and central Europe.8

  Kochubey was puzzled. The Secret Committee tended privately to blame Marie Feodorovna for any intractable mood on the part of her son, who made a point of dining with his mother once a week during the first winter of his reign;9 and no doubt at times her iron hostility to the new men entered into his soul. But there was another reason for Alexander’s attitude. On his return from Moscow the Tsar received a letter from King Frederick William III of Prussia proposing that the two monarchs might meet and discuss the affairs of the German states and central Europe.10 Early in the New Year the King repeated his suggestion and invited Alexander to come to Prussia; and on 8 February the Tsar sent Frederick William a personal note in which he made it clear that he would welcome a meeting of this kind.11 Alexander did not inform Kochubey of his correspondence with the King until the middle of April, when it was far too late for any change to be made in the arrangements, and the Secret Committee only heard of the projected meeting a few days before the Tsar’s departure. Understandably Kochubey was angry: ‘Imagine a minister for foreign affairs who had no knowledge at all of this escapade’, he wrote in a private letter to Simon Vorontsov, the ambassador in London.12 And, although both Kochubey and Novosiltsov accompanied Alexander when he crossed the frontier to meet Frederick William III at Memel, he made it embarrassingly clear to both of them who was in the saddle. It was rare for a Tsar and Autocrat of All the Russias to undertake a state visit: on such an occasion Alexander reckoned he should seek advice from neither friends nor ministers.

  Although Alexander had never met Frederick William or his consort Queen Louise, there was already a close friendship between the royal families of Berlin and St Petersburg. Alexander’s second sister, Helen, had married the Prince of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and the young couple often visited Berlin, where Helen was a particular favourite of both the King and the Queen. Helen had encouraged Alexander to go to Memel, convinced that her brother and Frederick William were kindred spirits. Politically a meeting made good sense to both sovereigns: each was concerned over Napoleon’s encroachments on central Europe; Alexander rated highly the Prussian army; and Frederick William believed the Tsar had some influence on Napoleon because of the clause in the Franco-Russian Treaty of the previous October which placed the two emperors on an equal footing if it were necessary for outsiders to mediate on the future of the German lands. But ultimately the question of ‘joint mediation’ proved far less important than the personal consequences of this first meeting between the Tsar and the Prussian King and Queen.

  Alexander arrived at Memel on 10 June and spent nearly a week there.13 Although it was only a few miles from his own Lithuanian territories, the town possessed a special fascination for Alexander on these long summer days. Never before had he been guest at a foreign Court, and the Prussians did all they could to flatter his vanity. Every evening there was a ball, at which he danced with the beautiful Queen who was twenty-one months his senior. He enjoyed flirting with Louise, and she for her part was overwhelmed with admiration for his kindness and nobility. Alexander was impressed by all he saw but especially by the army, the Potsdam regiments marching and counter-marching on the parade ground with that rigid precision whic
h poor Paul had once tried to impose on his own Guard battalions. To Kochubey’s alarm it seemed almost as if Alexander were assuming the character of his father, impatient and short-tempered when he was not with his host and hostess, endlessly fussing over the trivia of uniforms and military decorations. The air was heavy with faint echoes of old triumphs and half-forgotten conflicts: each morning the Tsar of Russia would ride out beside the King of Prussia deep in conversation, the grandson of Catherine II and the great-nephew of Frederick II holding forth on soldiery and politics, determining the fate of a continent in their saddle-talk as though they, rather than Bonaparte, were the true masters of the central European plain. ‘The two sovereigns settled matters personally’, wrote Kochubey four days after reaching Memel, and he added wryly, ‘In such a state of affairs, I am often reduced to silence.’14

  But what matters could they settle? French military successes ensured it was in Paris that the map-makers would first outline the new frontiers of Europe, not in Berlin or St Petersburg, and certainly not in remote Memel. All that the two sovereigns could decide was how to assert claims based on past habits of thought in a revolutionary era. Inevitably they exaggerated their own influence and minimized the awe in which others held the First Consul. So pleased was Alexander with the attentions paid to him at Memel that he would certainly have championed Prussia’s claims to leadership in Germany, had Napoleon been prepared to listen to him. But, as yet, nobody except Frederick William especially wished to consult a young and inexperienced Tsar of Russia. The other German Princes preferred to settle directly with Napoleon, as he had always anticipated that they would do; and in consequence the original formula of ‘joint mediation’ became a simple process by which the Russians were invited to approve what the French had already determined to impose. In time, Alexander came to resent such treatment by the French and rejected a policy which required Russia to encourage others to shore up the Bonaparte State. But in 1802 he still hoped Russia and Prussia could enjoy freedom of manoeuvre within the new European order; and the tearful leavetaking of the two sovereigns on 16 June made it easy for him to believe that the pleasantries of Memel would possess a lasting significance.

  So, indeed, they did. A commemorative medal, struck in honour of the visit, showed on one side the Emperor and the King in profile and, on the obverse, two hands clasped in eternal friendship.15 In later years Alexander looked back with affection on the warmth of Frederick William’s companionship and the limpid beauty of Queen Louise recollected in tranquillity, and there is no doubt that the Tsar’s emotional response to political questions afforded Prussia generous treatment. But these imponderables lay in the future, and when he arrived back in St Petersburg Alexander found there were those who questioned the value of his trip to Memel.16 His actions won warm approval from Marie Feodorovna, to whom so close a bond between Russia and Prussia appeared almost as a diplomatic triumph from beyond the grave. Others in the capital were less happy. The Empress Elizabeth, with family attachments to Baden, did not welcome the prospect of close collaboration with Prussia (nor, one suspects, was she pleased at the constant eulogies of Prussia’s Queen). Kochubey was anxious to prevent Alexander abandoning his self-imposed obligations as an impartial umpire of Europe’s affairs, and Czartoryski’s Polish patriotism made him distrust all signs of cordiality between the Romanov and Hohenzollern dynasties. The Tsar, on his return to the capital, was ready with assurances of good intent: he insisted to Kochubey that he would not sign any Russo-Prussian alliance nor become an active participant in the European squabbles.17 Yet by now the honeymoon period of the reign was over; Kochubey was far from convinced Alexander was keeping faith with his professed principles.

  At the end of July the Foreign Minister was even contemplating resignation. He found that Alexander would give him orders which he was expected to execute without disputing their wisdom or timing. ‘I am reduced to saying “The Emperor wants it thus”,’ he explained in a private letter. ‘And to the question “Why?” I am forced to reply, “I know nothing about it – such is his supreme will.”’18 Although Alexander still retained at Court the pleasant informality of manner which so marked off his reign from that of his father, after fifteen months on the throne he was hardly less autocratic than Paul had been. The growing resemblance between Alexander and his father was ominous. So, too, was the Tsar’s failure to invite the Secret Committee to resume its meetings in the Palace.

  Governmental Reform and the Primacy of Vorontsov

  It was, however, at this very moment when Alexander appeared to be turning his back on domestic reform that plans were completed for the establishment of a new bureaucratic system in Russia. A decree published in the Tsar’s name on 20 September 1802 set up eight government departments, Foreign Affairs, War, the Admiralty, the Interior, Finance, Justice, Commerce and Education.19 Each department was to be headed by a minister and a deputy minister appointed by the sovereign and directly responsible to him. Proposals for governmental reform had, of course, long been in the air and the September Decree was less revolutionary than the scheme discussed by the Secret Committee and by the Senatorial Commission in the previous year; it made, however, for more orderly administration, at least on paper. Detailed regulations subsequently set out the organization and procedure of each of these new departments, sometimes with admirable clarity but occasionally with an impracticable precision which only converted chaos into confusion. Some aspects of life in Russia benefited considerably from the reform: the Ministry of Education established a Directorate of Schools which set up a surprisingly effective system of instruction in the larger cities and, during 1803 and 1804, founded universities at Dorpat, Kazan, Kharkov and Vilna; and in the Ministry of the Interior matters of public welfare were entrusted to a young and able departmental executive, Michael Speransky, who was soon to achieve greater distinction than any of the ministers whom he served. But several government departments were so hide-bound with convention that they fitted awkwardly into the new system: chief among these was the Ministry of War, an institution over-burdened with Generals and over-shadowed by the Tsar himself.

  The September Decree also established a Committee of Ministers.20 Although purely an advisory body and not an embryonic cabinet on the British model, the Committee served as a convenient centre for discussion. Normally its sessions were presided over by the Tsar, who intended the Committee to be a means of co-ordinating policy while avoiding all notions of collective responsibility. Originally Alexander took the work of the Committee of Ministers seriously; he insisted that it should meet frequently, and he attended all but three of the sixty-five sessions held in the first fifteen months of the Committee’s existence. He gave orders that the ministers should come together at five in the afternoon on every Tuesday and Friday and that he should receive an agenda on the morning of every day the Committee was to sit. This, of course, was far too rigid and exacting a plan to be effective. Ministers began to suggest to Elizabeth and others at Court that the Tsar was working too hard; and in due course they approached Alexander himself. By the end of 1804 his enthusiasm for the Committee was on the wane; and in the following year it met no more than sixteen times, with Alexander present at only the first four sessions.

  To a limited extent the Tuesday and Friday meetings of the Committee of Ministers provided Alexander with a safety-valve for his autocratic inclinations. But otherwise the value of the Committee’s work during these years is questionable. By temperament Alexander was able to co-operate closely only with one individual at a time and he was therefore unsuited to preside over any council, least of all one in which he was seeking to keep a balance of interests between ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’. Alexander was also suspicious of any potential challenge to his prerogatives, especially one caused by excessive reliance on a single minister or adviser. In consequence, the principal power game within the Committee consisted of attempts to alert the Tsar to the alleged pretensions of the favoured man of the moment. It was a game which broadene
d rather than narrowed the differences between the political factions, and it could hardly help the Committee to become an efficient instrument of government.

  The September Decree had the incidental effect of providing Kochubey with an opportunity to leave the Foreign Ministry with dignity. In the reshuffling of governmental responsibilities Alexander appointed him as Minister of the Interior and assigned him another member of the Secret Committee, Paul Stroganov, as a deputy. The Tsar turned, for a new Foreign Minister, to Count Alexander Vorontsov, a sexagenarian who began his diplomatic career forty years before when he presented his credentials as ambassador to the young George III in London. Subsequently he had gained considerable experience of administrative problems during the reign of Catherine II; and more recently his wise moderation in the Senate had earned him respect from the younger generation, even though Vorontsov outwardly possessed more of the attributes and graces of an elder statesman than any other leader of the Russian nobility.21