Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  These developments coincided with the resumption of hostilities in central Europe. In July 1806 it seemed to Napoleon – and indeed to many Russians – as if there was a good prospect of establishing peace between the two empires. Oubril had arrived in Paris convinced his sovereign was eager for a settlement; and on 20 July he signed a treaty with Talleyrand in which the French conceded many of the points for which Alexander had pressed.28 But the Tsar subsequently refused to have the Oubril treaty ratified: he maintained that it sacrificed the interests of Russia in the Adriatic while acknowledging Napoleon’s right to determine the political structure of the German lands without reference to the other European Powers. For several months Russia and France thus continued to eye each other suspiciously, still locked in that curious state of suspended belligerency which had prevailed ever since the Tsar’s return from Austerlitz.

  Napoleon was irritated by the cavalier way in which the Oubril treaty was cast aside.29 He attributed Alexander’s change of heart to private exchanges with Frederick William in Berlin. In this he was perfectly correct. The King of Prussia, whose good German soul was almost as conscience-torn as Alexander’s, was alarmed by the reflection that after Austerlitz his country’s pusillanimity was hardly in accord with the macabre pledges the two sovereigns had made at Potsdam; and he continued throughout the summer of 1806 to keep in contact with Alexander.30 By midsummer there was a more prosaic reason for Russo-Prussian collaboration: the creation by Napoleon of a new Confederation of the Rhine, from which Prussia was excluded, lost Frederick William any opportunity he might have had for dominating northern Germany and made him believe that Hanover (which he had so long coveted) would become yet another French dependency. A secret Russo-Prussian declaration was signed in Berlin precisely one week before Oubril’s empty triumph in Paris.31 By the second week in August the Russian ambassador in Berlin was collaborating so closely with the Prussian ministers that Frederick William was justified in assuming he could rely on Russian military assistance if war with France came in the autumn.

  The pace of events in Germany was, however, much too rapid for Alexander. Despite commitments on the Turkish Front, he believed he could raise an army of 60,000 men to concentrate in Lithuania and Russian Poland by the end of October, with a further force of comparable size arriving within the following fortnight; but it was impossible for the Russians to be ready for operations in the German lands before the weather broke. For, quite apart from normal difficulties of mobilizing an army, Alexander was confronted by a problem peculiar to the conditions of Russian service: he had to find a commander-in-chief acceptable to the majority of his senior officers, to the Dowager Empress and, above all, to himself.32 He refused to consider Kutuzov or Bagration, resisted the claims of his brother Constantine, and thought it impolitic to choose anyone not of Russian origin. At the top of his short list were two veterans from the wars of his grandmother and father, Marshal Kamensky and Marshal Prozorovsky, whom it would have been kinder to leave vegetating in retirement. Since Prozorovsky’s eyesight was so bad that he could not even recognize his Tsar, Alexander eventually appointed Kamensky, who was said to suffer from so many ailments that he was never sure which was troubling him at any one moment. Effective control of the army in the field was entrusted to Bennigsen, a far abler soldier than either of the old Marshals but a man whose role in the conspiracy against Paul had earned him the implacable hatred of Marie Feodorovna. There was so little sense of urgency in St Petersburg that Kamensky did not even set out until 22 November, more than six weeks after the opening of the campaign.33

  Frederick William, on the other hand, acted with foolhardy impetuosity. At the end of September, the Prussian Prime Minister in Paris delivered an ultimatum demanding the immediate withdrawal of French troops from Germany east of the Rhine. There was never any possibility that the French would accept such imperious conditions, and war followed on 7 October. The Prussian high command hoped to surprise the French, inflict an initial defeat before the coming of winter, and then rely on Russian aid to tip the balance finally against Napoleon. But the French had anticipated Prussian action. Within a week of the outbreak of war, Frederick William’s army was routed in the twin battles of Jena and Auerstadt.34 The route to the Prussian capital lay open even before Alexander had begun to concentrate the vanguard of his army. Napoleon arrived at Potsdam on 24 October and entered Berlin itself three days later. The Prussian ministers, broken and cowed by the experience of defeat, urged Frederick William to sue at once for peace. It began to seem as if the Russians would not, after all, be required to march westwards that winter.

  There followed, however, a strange intrusion of private affairs into public policy. When the French armies were approaching Berlin, Frederick William and his Queen fled eastwards towards the Vistulan fortress towns and the comparative security of Königsberg; but they left so hurriedly that most of their personal belongings remained in the Charlottenburg Palace. As soon as Napoleon reached the city he ordered a search to be made among the archives and confidential papers for evidence of the diplomatic policy which his two enemies were pursuing. Diligent civil servants accordingly handed over to him copies of the correspondence between Alexander and Frederick William earlier in the year; and he thus received confirmation of what he had long suspected, that the Tsar was encouraging the King to resist the French at the very moment when, in Paris, they were negotiating the abortive treaty with Oubril. This revelation of Alexander’s duplicity made Napoleon unreasonably angry.35 He decided that, for the moment, he had no time for fair words and promises. Better to force the Russians to fight now as a means of imposing a general European settlement rather than to agree the limited peace which Frederick William desired. War with Prussia continued; and war with Russia would now begin in earnest.

  French snooping at Charlottenburg also led to another discovery. In the Queen’s private apartments, among her most cherished possessions, the French came across portraits of the Tsar, along with endearing letters and all the trifling mementoes of affection. Once again Napoleon was informed of what his servants had found, and he was unchivalrous enough to ridicule openly the romantic attachment between Louise and Alexander. He even amused the barrack-rooms of the Grand Army by inserting into several of the official Bulletins derisive invective intended to destroy the Queen’s reputation.36 It was now the turn of Frederick William and Alexander to be enraged. The Tsar spoke grandly of a war ‘for the finest and most just of causes’, though it remains uncertain whether the ideal which merited such superlatives was the defence of the Russian homeland, the honour of Queen Louise, or the sanctity of private correspondence.37 Orders went out from St Petersburg to the landowners for twice as many serfs to be conscripted for military service as in the previous years; and Alexander began to envisage a front-line army of some six hundred thousand men.

  Although as yet the danger from the French appeared remote to most of the Russian gentry, it was already posing a serious political problem for those members of the aristocracy who possessed lands in the Polish territories of the Empire. For, on 27 November, French troops entered Warsaw, ejecting a Russian Corps which had advanced tentatively across the frontier a week before. Many Poles welcomed Napoleon as a liberator, although the patrician families hesitated to commit themselves irrevocably to the French cause. Ought Alexander to forestall Napoleon by proclaiming a Polish Kingdom, issuing a guarantee of Polish liberties, and linking the crowns of Russia and Poland in a dynastic union similar to the bond between the Habsburgs and Hungary? So at least argued Czartoryski; and he was not the only great landowner in St Petersburg to do so.

  Alexander was tempted. In December he began once more to exchange views with his old friend. There was talk in St Petersburg of Czartoryski’s imminent return to office, with a free hand to wave the Polish flag enthusiastically whenever Napoleon seemed about to make concessions in Warsaw.38 But in the last resort Alexander’s nerve failed him. He did not wish to offend his Prussian ally at such a moment, nor wou
ld he risk a breach with Austria. The Polish Question had always been a matter of joint concern, not for unilateral action. If Napoleon became the patron of Polish patriotism, then at least it would be possible to see whose treachery merited reprisals when retribution fell on the invader. Czartoryski’s loyalty did not waver; but in what had been Prussian Poland the magnates waited no longer. Poniatowski entered French service and most of the great families followed his example; by the middle of January Napoleon was ready to set up a provisional Polish administration in Warsaw – and, despite his avowed concern over Alexander’s moral lapses, he too had by now acquired a Polish mistress, Maria Walewska.

  Yet while Alexander was reluctant to appear as a champion of Polish national sentiment, he needed to appeal to some feeling of exalted pride if he was to give his army a collective spirit capable of challenging the fervour of Bonapartism. He believed he had found it in the Church: let all Holy Russia condemn Napoleon as the Antichrist and to the peasant masses of his Empire the war with France would become a crusade. At the end of the year the Holy Synod duly pronounced a solemn anathema stigmatizing Napoleon Bonaparte as the accursed foe of Christendom. The thunder of denunciation rolled through every cathedral and church in the Russian lands as priests, richly robed before their altars, declaimed the six-hundred-word proclamation: let no one now doubt the turpitude of the monster who dared to call himself Emperor of the French. His sins were made known to the faithful in all the pomp and piety of Orthodoxy; and the scornful abuse of the Grand Army Bulletins was answered with the awe-inspiring cadence of accumulated authority. He was, declared the voice of the Church, ‘The principal enemy of Mankind, one who worships idols and whores’. Nor had he as yet completed the enormities of which his soul was capable: ‘he is planning to bring together every Judas in the World … in order that the Church of God may be destroyed’; and, moreover, ‘surpassing in wickedness every terrible crime he has already committed, he intends that he shall be hailed as the Messiah’.39 To make certain of invoking God’s blessing in the war against the Evil One, three additional prayers were inserted in the Liturgy: one in the Office of Preparation; one in the Litany of the Word; and one in the Post-Communion. Not since the early days of Muscovy had the Russian Church with such intensity called on all believers to render service to their Little Father in his struggle with the forces of darkness.

  Eylau and Friedland

  A winter war in eastern Prussia and the Polish lands could never rise to the climax of a crusade for either belligerent; and, once established on the Vistula, Napoleon for his part sought to halt all campaigning until the spring. The Russians, however, needed a triumph of arms, not only to offset the memory of Austerlitz twelve months before, but to hearten troops toiling slowly westwards through the interminable plains. There had never been much prospect of a victory from Marshal Kamensky; but he, poor man, found the journey to the frontier so exhausting that he took to his bed on reaching headquarters and only rose from it a week later in order to resign his command. During his seven days of almost active service Kamensky gave so many contradictory orders from his sickbed that he left the Russian Generals floundering in confusion. More remarkably, he also succeeded in confounding the enemy, who had no idea where the Russians were concentrating or whether they planned to advance or retreat. Kamensky’s departure left General Bennigsen with more freedom of action than anyone had anticipated, least of all the Tsar; and the Hanoverian was not the man to waste opportunities for swelling his own prestige. On 26 December the French attacked Bennigsen’s position at Pultusk in the mistaken belief that they had stumbled on Kamensky’s rearguard. Since the Russians outnumbered their assailants by more than two to one and had fifty field-pieces of artillery, the French were repulsed. Immediately, Bennigsen sent news to St Petersburg that he had thrown back Napoleon (who was over forty miles from Pultusk that day) and had defeated 60,000 Frenchmen (in reality 20,000); he omitted to add that he had subsequently abandoned Pultusk and was retiring northwards.40 But the details did not matter for Alexander. He had a victory to celebrate. The year 1807 was opening for Russia full of hope; and Bennigsen – past crimes forgiven in the intoxication of Pultusk – was confirmed as commander-in-chief against Napoleon.

  Disillusionment followed all too soon. Bennigsen genuinely wished to bring the French to battle and he made a number of tentative probes towards the garrison city of Thorn, but it was impossible to make any progress in the appalling conditions, the snow and ice worse than in Moravia before Austerlitz. At the end of the first week in February the two armies stumbled against each other, almost by accident, around the town of Preussich-Eylau – rolling countryside in which numerous lakes and marshes lay treacherously hidden beneath three or four feet of snow, indistinguishable from the fields between the villages. The battle of Eylau was fought on 8 February, almost in darkness and, with snow squalls swept down from the north by a strong wind, nearly fifty thousand men (French, Russian and Prussian) perishing in an indecisive conflict. Bagration and the rear-guard fought as valiantly as on the Danube a year previously but they could achieve nothing.* For years afterwards Russian officers remembered Eylau as the most senseless bloodbath in all the wars which they had fought; and when Napoleon dictated the Bulletin of the Grand Army in which he described his visits to the battlefield after the armies had retired, he said quite simply, ‘Such a sight as this should inspire rulers with love of peace and hatred of war.’41

  Technically, however, Eylau was reckoned a Napoleonic victory. The Russians fell back on the city of Königsberg, where the King and Queen of Prussia were still in residence; and the French were left masters of the field of battle. But Napoleon was deeply conscious that Eylau was no Austerlitz or Jena. He was grimly impressed by the courage and tenacity of the Russian troops and worried by problems of waging a winter campaign along the eastern fringe of Europe. Bennigsen even claimed Eylau as a strategic victory for the Russian command, since the French made no attempt to exploit their gains by threatening Königsberg, and asked for prayers of thanksgiving to be offered throughout the Empire for this second success of Russian arms. Alexander was willing enough to praise Bennigsen’s initiative: ceremonial salutes greeted the news of the battle in St Petersburg and the Tsar attended a Te Deum in the capital.42 But inwardly Alexander was troubled by fears of what would happen in the spring and summer. He was anxious to settle future military and diplomatic policy with Frederick William; and he longed to set out again for his armies.

  By mid-March there were signs of an early spring and Alexander became increasingly restive. He still faced difficulties with his own family, especially his mother. For Marie Feodorovna disliked the whole campaign, fearing that Russian lives were being sacrificed for the benefit of Prussia. She warned her son not to allow his sympathies for the Prussian royal family to warp his judgement; and she begged him not to assume command in the field himself. Alexander was indeed conscious of the dangers she stressed. But his mind was made up. He attended the religious services marking the sixth anniversary of his father’s death and his own accession; then left St Petersburg on the morning of 28 March. No one this time should accuse him of tardiness and inactivity. He forced his coachmen to drive the horses so hard that he covered the 320 miles to Riga in a mere forty-eight hours; and two days later he was once more in Memel, where Frederick William and his Queen were waiting to talk of the past and plan the future.43

  For Alexander it was a sad reunion. When he saw Louise, here at Memel in the summer of 1802, her ethereal beauty and her sense of life cast a spell upon him which he enjoyed far too deeply to resist. No other Queen of Prussia, before or after, radiated such bewitching qualities: in her presence even an honest dull-dog husband like Frederick William gleamed momentarily with refracted vitality. But now, less than five years since that first meeting, she was a tired and sick woman. To fight the apathetic despair of the Prussian Court she needed to draw on all her reserves of will-power and courage. Strained lines on her face told of the inner humiliation sh
e felt at insults in the French bulletins. Yet suffering accorded her an almost saintly nobility and, though moved by her frailty, Alexander found the outward magic of her personality undimmed by disaster. Despite all the cautioning from his mother and his friends, Alexander had never felt his fortune so closely intertwined with the honour of the Prussian Royal House.

  From Memel the Tsar insisted on accompanying Frederick William into the battle zone of the two armies and, in the last week of April, both monarchs signed a convention at Bartenstein as a supreme gesture of Russo-Prussian unity.44 The Tsar swore that in any peace with the French he would insist on the restoration of Prussia’s 1805 boundaries or the provision of equivalent compensation for Frederick William elsewhere in Germany. At the same time the two monarchs undertook to work for the establishment of a German federation, under Austro-Prussian protection, and with a military frontier along the line of the Rhine. Since all Germany was under French occupation, the Convention displayed an optimism which bordered on folly. Nor did its terms accord with the intentions of the Austrians, the British or the Swedes for the future of the German lands. Like the Potsdam Oath of November 1805 it was a token of Alexander’s romanticism rather than a tribute to his political sense.

  The sole justification for the Bartenstein Convention was a hope that, after two indecisive engagements at Pultusk and Eylau in the winter, a major battle fought over gentler terrain in midsummer would result in a Russian victory. The French, on the other hand, were determined to complete the defeat of Prussia by capturing the one remaining Prussian city, Königsberg. Bennigsen had reconnoitred most of the area south of Königsberg and he was anxious to relieve pressure on the city by forcing the French Sixth Corps, under Ney, to retire from its position some fifty miles to the south-east. Throughout the first ten days of June there was intermittent skirmishing over a wide area. Napoleon correctly interpreted Bennigsen’s movements and planned to draw him further away from the city in order to strike at it along one of the other roads; but Bennigsen, in his turn, spotted the French ruse and sought to offset it by retiring on a fortified camp in a commanding position on the river Alle. Although with so much marching and counter-marching the military situation remained strangely fluid, no one doubted a decisive battle was imminent – unless, of course, the Russians were prepared to abandon Königsberg and sue for peace.