Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  It was an interesting appointment. At times Vorontsov seemed almost a Whig in his sympathies. In the summer of 1801 he had been principal sponsor of a draft ‘Charter for the Russian People’ which he had wished Alexander to publish in Moscow on coronation day as a pledge of liberal reform.22 The Tsar, after sounding out the Secret Committee, had declined so radical a break with tradition but he held the Count in deep respect and, when he proposed that Vorontsov should become Foreign Minister, he coupled the offer with a promise of the rank of State Chancellor. Such a title was only rarely accorded to those who supervised the diplomatic activities of the Empire, and the foreign community in St Petersburg assumed that its bestowal proved the Tsar’s concern to magnify Russia’s status as a European Power.

  There was, however, little likelihood of the new Chancellor becoming a Russian Richelieu or a Kaunitz. Age and temperament inhibited Vorontsov from initiating a positive policy of his own; had it been otherwise Alexander would hardly have appointed him. For, though Vorontsov was an unconventional representative of the landowning class within Russia, the changes he had witnessed in the relative status of other governments made him look upon European affairs with caution and distrust. He knew Russia could not face a major campaign abroad so long as her economy depended on free passage of the Baltic and he shared many of the instinctive doubts of his predecessor, Kochubey. Indeed there was no real change in policy, although Vorontsov’s years of office under Catherine enabled him to handle her grandson with greater tact. Everyone in St Petersburg looked upon Vorontsov as an Anglophile but he never listened so readily to the British as his brother, Simon, ambassador in London and close confidant of the younger Pitt. If forced to choose between alliance with Napoleon or George III or Frederick William of Prussia, then he would opt for the British connection before any other. He preferred, however, to steer clear of foreign entanglements and, soon after becoming Chancellor, declined to respond to tentative proposals from London for a closer understanding on future policy. Alexander did not always agree with Vorontsov any more than he had with his predecessor, but he treated his judgements with greater respect. Privately the Tsar preferred to work with the man whom he had appointed as Vorontsov’s deputy, Adam Czartoryski; but he was well aware of the hostility which the continued presence of a Polish Prince at Court aroused among many of the older landed nobility; and it suited Alexander to have a respected Russian nobleman as the formal head of the Foreign Ministry, even if his achievements in office belied his reputation.23

  The beginning of Vorontsov’s Chancellorship in the autumn of 1802 coincided with the first respite from war which Europe had enjoyed for a decade. In March 1802 the Treaty of Amiens ended open hostilities between France and Britain while three months later peace was concluded between France and her forgotten enemy, Turkey. For a few months Europe seemed strangely normal. The British flocked to Paris, with the more adventurous spirits travelling farther east, crossing the Rhine to the German cities and Vienna, and some even reaching St Petersburg. The Russian aristocracy, too, found it easier to move freely on the continent now the armies were no longer on the march. Thus, at the very moment when Alexander and his ministers were committed to an isolationist policy, the European Courts and capitals were drawing closer together than they had been since the downfall of the French monarchy in 1792. But, as diplomats and travellers alike soon perceived, it was easier to silence the guns than make peace. The problems of Germany and Italy, the future of Malta (held since 1800 by the British, but promised to be restored to the Knights of St John), and the uncertain fate of distant colonies testified to the hollowness of treaty obligations. By the closing months of 1802 it was clear the contest between the Powers would soon be resumed. In each of the European chancelleries the diplomats began to assess the prospects of keeping out of war; and most of them found the outlook gloomy.24

  Even had he wished to do so, Alexander could not ignore the succession of crises in Europe. The French had treated Russia with scant respect since the conclusion of the Peace Treaty of Paris in October 1801, and scoffed at Memel and its display of sentimental diplomacy. But when the details of the new German settlement were ready for presentation to the Austrians at the end of 1802, the French found they needed Russian support in order to persuade Emperor Francis in Vienna to accept such a diminution of the traditional Habsburg rights. Alexander, for his part, was prepared to follow the French lead in such matters: he asked only that Napoleon would treat generously German Princes who had close dynastic links with Russia and show sympathy for the rulers of states to whom Russia had assumed especial obligations. This, of course, was a tall order. Napoleon was willing for Elizabeth’s homeland, Baden, to receive the towns of Heidelberg and Mannheim and he also gave additional territory (and a new Electoral dignity) to Alexander’s first cousin, Frederick of Württemberg; but he was not inclined to admit that the Tsar had any right to protect the interests of Sardinia (whose sovereign had once been his father’s ally) nor to concern himself with the affairs of Switzerland out of loyalty to an extutor.25 Moreover, the Russians continued to show what was to the French a tiresome obsession with the Mediterranean. Napoleon, like everybody in Europe, was puzzled at Alexander’s attitude over Malta. Since the Knights of St John had conferred the Grand Mastership of their order on his father, Alexander claimed to be the rightful protector both of the Knights and their island. At first, the Maltese Question brought France and Russia closer together, for it was in both their interests to encourage Britain to evacuate the island. But in the first weeks of 1803 there were widespread reports of intrigues by French agents in the Levant and in the Balkans. The possibility that Napoleon might be about to embark on a forward policy in regions to which Russia was so sensitive induced Alexander and Vorontsov to modify their original attitude over Malta: better the British stay in the island than that it should become the advanced base for a second French expedition to the East.26

  In England the rumours of a Franco-Russian rift over Mediterranean questions encouraged the critics of the Peace of Amiens. Already, at the Foreign Office, Lord Hawkesbury was thinking in terms of a new defensive coalition of Russia, Austria and Britain. This optimism was, however, premature. Whatever views Simon Vorontsov might express at the embassy in London, his brother the Chancellor was still hesitant about involving Russia in a major land campaign, and when war was resumed between Britain and France in May 1803, Tsar Alexander was angered by a new series of naval incidents in the Baltic.27 By now, however, Alexander accepted the fact that he might have to abandon the principle of passive isolation. He was ready to pursue a vigorous foreign policy, although he was uncertain how or when he should intervene and whether he should concentrate on neutralizing Napoleon or on building up a powerful combination against him. All the Tsar wished was assurance that, should war come, the Russian army would be able to hold its own against the inspired soldiery of the Bonapartist levies. No one, unfortunately, could offer him encouragement from among the senior commanders: the army seemed short of muskets, short of cannon, short of ideas, and even short of men.

  In Alexander’s judgement there was one person capable of knocking the army into shape; and this was his old companion-in-arms, Alexei Arakcheev. Since October 1799 Arakcheev had remained on his estate at Gruzino, some eighty miles south-east of the capital. It was there, on 9 May 1803, that he received a message from the Tsar: ‘Alexei Andreevich, I need you and I ask you to come to St Petersburg.’28 Within a few days the General was back in the capital, still wearing the pattern of uniform laid down in Paul’s regulations and with his hair knotted above the neck in the Gatchina fashion of old. His arrival caused consternation among the liberals. Discreet approaches were made to the Tsar in the hope he might be dissuaded from reinstating a man so closely associated with the tyranny of the previous reign. To Alexander, however, Arakcheev remained the friend who had once initiated him into the mysteries of garrison duty and the Prussian drill code. It was as natural for him, when faced by a military problem, to t
urn to Arakcheev for guidance as it was for him to look to La Harpe in constitutional matters. Once Alexander made up his mind that Arakcheev could bring order and efficiency into the training and preparation of an army for battle, nothing would prevent him from summoning the General back to active service. On 26 May he informed Arakcheev that he was appointing him Inspector-General of Artillery. It would be his prime task to build up gunnery and establish effective systems of supply and command, travelling through the Empire spurring on casual officers as he had once done the Tavrichesky Grenadiers at Kovno. If it came to war with Napoleon – the greatest artillery commander of his age – the concentrated fire-power of the French would be answered, not by horsemen and infantry with guns in support, but by new regiments and the heavy cannon from the Tula Arms Works, provided always that Arakcheev had time to accomplish his task before the muster-drums began to roll once more.

  Alexander, Elizabeth and Maria Naryshkin

  Throughout the winter of 1802–3 and the following summer Alexander was increasingly concerned with military affairs and the problems of a grand European policy. His zest for the social life of St Petersburg flagged: the Empress had considerable difficulty in inducing him to participate in the Carnival balls and theatrical presentations preceding the Lenten abstinence of 1803; and, when he attended any major Society occasion, he continued to complain afterwards how tedious he had found it – ‘All the next day I have to listen to his self-pity for having been there’, wrote Elizabeth to her mother on 26 February.29 Unfortunately, it was a year which required a special effort, for in May the city of St Petersburg celebrated its centenary with a combination of ceremonial pomp and popular rejoicing, which continued through much of the summer. There was a long Te Deum in the Isaac Cathedral on 28 May, followed by a grand parade in which regiment after regiment filed past the Tsar as he stood beside Falconet’s statue of Peter the Great; and at night the city was illuminated, while Society amused itself with masked balls, with concerts and private theatrical performances.30 There was a carnival atmosphere, too, for the general populace including a fashionable diversion which invariably caused wonder, the ascent from the centre of Petersburg of an air balloon. Yet, though willing enough to take the salute from his Guards or from one or other of the military academies, Alexander did not share the festive spirit. The self-assurance he had shown after the coronation was dissipated. Once more he was sunk in youthful melancholy, as in the black days which followed his father’s murder. Then he had at least found consolation with Elizabeth. Now she sensed he was turning away from her. As she confessed in a letter to her mother that spring, life was fast becoming ‘an endless winter’.31

  The truth was that Alexander could no longer summon the will-power to fight against his infatuation with Countess Maria Naryshkin, the Polish-born beauty who had attracted him two years previously in Moscow. At the end of 1801 affection for Elizabeth – together, one suspects, with awareness of the political inconvenience of a Polish mistress – led him to break formally with the Countess. One of the chamberlains of the Court conveyed to her a final message of renunciation.32 But it was difficult for Alexander to avoid meeting a vivacious and designing character who was married to one of the wealthiest men in the capital; and he probably did not try very hard. Maria Naryshkin was certainly no ordinary courtesan. By 1803 Society was already calling her ‘the Aspasia of the North’, a title which flattered her wit and culture and, indeed, her companion’s gifts of statesmanship. For though in later years there were some who hailed Alexander as the new Agamemnon, it was hard to see him as Pericles. His love for Maria Naryshkin was in a lower key. The complexities of government, the failure of Elizabeth to provide him with an heir, the amorous vagaries of his brother Constantine, possibly even the growing authority within his counsels of the Pole, Czartoryski – all these influences and others, too, prompted Alexander to turn more and more to the passionate Maria for sensual satisfaction.

  In that spring of 1803 Alexander would slip away again and again to her palace by the Fontanka Canal and in the summer evenings he followed her to a villa on the islands. She had the power to indulge the coquetries and caprices of a siren and always found ways of attracting those whom she wished to bemuse. Sometime that July she became pregnant and, with heartless lack of compassion, flaunted herself before Elizabeth, not disguising the fatherhood of the child she was expecting. Perhaps she believed Alexander would induce the Orthodox hierarchy to annul his marriage and her own marriage, and make her his wife and Empress. But, if she did so dream, she failed to understand the complexities of Tsardom or the ties which still bound sovereign and consort.33

  No one in St Petersburg was shocked or surprised that the Tsar should have a recognized mistress, least of all his mother, who had always tended to treat Paul’s courtesans as personal friends and companions, if he would permit her to do so. But Elizabeth was in a different position: she had no surviving children of her own; she remained a lonely un-Russian figure, never entirely assimilating the ways of her country of adoption; she was constantly upstaged by the Dowager Empress, to whom Court etiquette assigned precedence at every public occasion; and, above all, she continued to love her husband for himself rather than for the stature bestowed on him as ruler of All the Russias.34 To Elizabeth ‘the Naryshkin woman’ was simply a harlot bent on destroying what was for her still a romance, after nearly ten years of marriage. She would not follow the example of her friend, the Grand Duchess Anna, who, weary of Constantine’s rages and infidelity, had returned (also childless) to Germany; and she was prepared to show patience, though at times resignation gave way to tears of despair. For, ultimately, Elizabeth possessed one advantage denied to any other woman who sought to captivate Alexander. She alone knew the full emotional confusion of her husband. Occasionally, instinct even helped her to understand it. And she therefore counted on him in the end to return the love which she felt towards him.

  This belief was no mere hopeful flicker lightening the gloom of life within the Palace. For Alexander could not be constantly inconstant. It was impossible for him to be certain of his illusions, least of all those which sprang from the heart rather than from the mind. Though he rightly sensed he needed Maria Naryshkin, he was by nature too conscious of guilt to gain from his newest love the relaxed contentment of genuine happiness. The Countess might prattle inconsequentially of fashion and clothes and the impossibility of not receiving or giving pleasure; her moods might range from light flirtation to heavy passion; but she was breathing warmth into an artificial atmosphere, not firing the hopes and despair of real existence. Though too often Alexander treated Elizabeth as a companion rather than a wife, there was a depth in their relationship which no exercises in insolent allurement could dispel. It was solely with Elizabeth that Alexander might share retrospective delight in old amusements and sense once more the comforting bond of sympathy first forged in Paul’s reign. Yet it was in the very moments when some mirror from the past caught this present posturing in all its insincerity that Alexander sought to hide himself from public ceremony, victim to what Elizabeth herself called ‘a fit of indolence terrible for Society’.35 When sensitivity thus tortured his conscience there was no joy left in anything which they undertook, only recrimination and complaint; but equally, in such a mood, stolen hours with Maria could not bring him lasting satisfaction. Although in public policy the Emperor might expect his will to be obeyed (as Kochubey had complained), he was as unsure how to seek private happiness as in the days when his loyalties had been torn between grandmother and father.

  A tragic episode in the following year revealed once more the extent of Alexander’s dependence on Elizabeth.36 In January Maria Naryshkin bore her lover a daughter. Alexander could not hide from Elizabeth the pride he felt in fatherhood. A few months later, however, the little girl died. Countess Maria hardly allowed the tragedy to disturb the flow of her life. It was Elizabeth, rather than Maria, who perceived the depth of Alexander’s grief and who gave to him reassurance and comfort. A
nd this is not surprising; for it was only she who knew how, with each successive personal sorrow, the Tsar felt the cumulative burden of guilt weigh more heavily on his shoulders.

  Had the Naryshkin affair been the only source of emotional confusion to Alexander during these years of mounting foreign menace, it is likely that husband and wife would speedily have found reconciliation. But Alexander could never resolve the problems of affection towards his own family. He was the eldest child in a brood of four boys and five girls; but, apart from his brother Constantine, he had seen little of the other members of the family in their infancy. As a young boy, visiting the Grand-Ducal Court almost as a stranger, he showed special devotion to his eldest sister, Alexandra, five and a half years his junior. In the winter of 1799–1800 Alexandra Pavlovna married Archduke Joseph, the Palatine of Hungary, but she died in child-birth in March 1801, in the same week as her father’s murder. The coincidental timing of these two deaths preyed heavily on Alexander’s mind.37 Soon after coming to the throne he began to find in his fourth sister, Catherine, who had been born in May 1788, a consolation for the loss he had felt. He always made a point of travelling to Pavlovsk for Grand Duchess Catherine’s birthday and he regularly observed the feasts of her name-day, with an attention he did not accord to other younger members of the family. By the coming of spring in 1803 Marie Feodorovna was looking for a suitor for Catherine. She had always liked Archduke Joseph, and she now invited him to make another journey to Russia where, though this was left unsaid, it was felt he could well find a second wife from within the same family.