Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  All these episodes, whether spontaneous or dramatically posed, were uniformly trivial, and it is hardly surprising if Napoleon felt Alexander to be the same immature hero-worshipper whom he had bewitched at Tilsit. But he was not. The more exaggerated his gesture, the less sincere were his expressions of goodwill. Napoleon, though himself gifted with a sense of theatre, did not have a sharp eye for pretence and affectation in others. There is no evidence he realized that, at Weimar, Alexander was acting the role of a simple dupe; and yet it was from Weimar that the Tsar sent his sister Catherine a significant comment: ‘Napoleon thinks I am no better than a fool, but he who laughs last laughs longest’ (Napoleon pense que je ne suis qu’un sot, rira mieux qui rira le dernier).45 When, after the interlude at Weimar, the two sovereigns returned to Erfurt and sought agreement on their general policy, Napoleon was startled from his complacency by clear signs of obstinacy in the Tsar’s attitude; could it possibly be that, after all, they were not brothers in destiny?

  Napoleon’s prime concern at Erfurt was to use the threat of Russian power to keep the Austrians quiet while he disposed of the Spanish and Portuguese troubles. The Erfurt Congress had begun, as he wished, with a graciously cold acknowledgement of Emperor Francis’s representative by the assembled Princes of the French Empire and Germany, with the Tsar supporting them.46 But there was all the difference in the world between humiliating the unfortunate Baron Vincent and agreeing to joint Franco-Russian action against the Austrians, so as to force Francis to order total disarmament of the troops along his frontiers. Alexander preferred to invite the Austrians to a conference where all members of the Continental System would thrash out the problems that might otherwise menace the stability of the new European order. Protracted talks of this nature did not suit Napoleon’s timetable; and the idea of having to listen to the grievances of the Austrians and Prussians as well as of his German satellites threw Napoleon into a fit of rage. Furiously he seized his hat, hurled it on the floor and then trampled on it. Alexander, who like Napoleon was pacing the length of the room in which they were talking, paused and fixed his companion with a calm smile: ‘You are violent’, he said ‘and I am stubborn. Anger will gain nothing with me. Let us talk, let us reason – or else I shall go away.’47 Hastily Napoleon recovered his temper and the interminable discussion was resumed, but it made no progress. Later Napoleon complained testily to Caulaincourt, ‘That Emperor Alexander of yours is as stubborn as a mule: he turns a deaf ear to anything he does not want to hear.’48 It was all sadly disillusioning.

  Alexander convinced himself that he resisted Napoleon’s blandishments from his own sense of what was good for Russia and for Europe. Perhaps so: but it must be admitted that his judgement over such questions was helped by advice from an unexpected quarter. Talleyrand, whom the Tsar first met at Tilsit, had handed over the French Foreign Ministry to Champagny in August 1807 but he retained considerable influence as Grand Chamberlain and Vice-Grand Elector, third highest state dignitary in the Empire, and he was invited to Erfurt by Napoleon because of his experience in ‘speaking the language’ of diplomacy. Throughout Alexander’s visit to Erfurt, Talleyrand was one of a group of visitors to the drawing-room of the Princess de Thurn-Taxis (a sister of Queen Louise) where small talk lacked sympathy with Napoleon and where there was an opportunity of more serious conversation with the Tsar.49 Exactly what words were exchanged between the two men remains unknown: but it is clear that Talleyrand emphasized the need for Russia to co-operate with Austria in restraining Napoleon rather than participating in any campaign to destroy the last vestiges of Austrian power in central Europe. Talleyrand later claimed to have told Alexander, ‘Sire, it is in your power to save Europe, and you will not succeed by giving way to Napoleon. The French people are civilized, their sovereign is not. The sovereign of Russia is civilized, his people are not. The sovereign of Russia must therefore be the ally of the people of France.’50 Whether or not these words were used, it was certainly on the basis of some such syllogism that Talleyrand and Alexander came to work together. The understanding they achieved at Erfurt outlasted the Napoleonic Empire itself.

  The general affairs of Europe were settled – in so far as they were determined at all – by a secret Franco-Russian treaty signed on 12 October by Champagny and Rumiantsev.51 Its provisions were a disappointment for Napoleon: the two Emperors re-affirmed their alliance and undertook to make a fresh personal approach to George III for peace; Finland and the Danubian Provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia were to be annexed to the Russian Empire; all the Turkish lands, apart from the Danubian Provinces, were to remain under the Sultan’s rule and were to be respected by both Emperors; and, should Austria launch an attack upon France, the Russians would ‘make common cause’ with the French. Nothing was said of the grand partition of the Ottoman Empire or of the march into Asia or, indeed, of putting pressure on the Austrians to disarm. Equally, however, there was no mention in the treaty of evacuation by the French of their garrisons from Prussia. The Tsar assured Napoleon he would let the Austrians know that Russia had commitments to France in the hope of dissuading Emperor Francis from consenting to war; and Napoleon similarly gave verbal pledges of his intention to withdraw all his forces from the Prussian lands, apart from a small token army under Davout. There was still sufficient goodwill between the two Emperors for each to carry out his undertaking.

  The Erfurt Congress did not dissolve until two days after the signing of the secret treaty; for there remained a delicate question which had not as yet been raised and which Napoleon wished to discuss in his private meetings with the Tsar. Ever since Napoleon’s return from Tilsit rumours had circulated in Paris and other capital cities maintaining that the Emperor wished to divorce Josephine and seek a new wife capable of bearing him a son. Only thus, it was said, would the position of the Bonaparte dynasty be consolidated on the throne. Most frequently these reports mentioned the Grand Duchess Catherine as Napoleon’s likely choice, but Alexander, who had raised objections to three or four other suitors (including Emperor Francis), did not wish his favourite sister to be installed in the Tuileries; and Marie Fcodorovna, with whom all questions of marriage finally rested, was resolutely opposed to a link between the Romanovs and the Bonapartes. Napoleon remained officially silent on the matter but Caulaincourt – apparently on his own initiative – went to considerable pains to let Paris know of the Grand Duchess’s favours and interests; although when, at the end of February 1808, he solemnly noted that ‘The Grand Duchess Catherine is going to marry the Emperor for she is learning how to dance French quadrilles’ one suspects the ambassador was salting his despatches with dry humour.52

  At Erfurt Napoleon hoped Alexander would mention the rumours. But the Tsar, no doubt thinking of coming domestic battles with the Dowager Empress, tactfully kept silent. At last, prompted by Napoleon, both Talleyrand and Caulaincourt privately pressed Alexander to raise the delicate question in general terms.53 At one of their final meetings, Alexander duly expressed his hope that Napoleon would crown his work by a new marriage and the foundation of a dynasty. The possibility of a family alliance was considered: Catherine’s name was not mentioned, although there was a brief reference to the future prospects of the Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna, Alexander’s youngest sister, who was then aged thirteen. But Napoleon was not prepared to commit himself to an engagement: there were fifteen other Princesses on his list of possible consorts; and he was still so affectionately attached to Josephine that he was reluctant to take any irrevocable step towards a divorce. The conversation with Alexander turned to other matters; and the Tsar prepared to set out for home, without having compromised his family. Within a month it was announced that the Grand Duchess Catherine would marry Prince George of Holstein-Oldenburg, her second cousin, who was already serving in the Russian army and had every intention of settling in Russia.

  Outwardly the Erfurt Congress ended on a high note of festivity, with the relations of France and Russia as cordial as ever. On 14 October the t
wo Emperors rode out together along the route towards Weimar, with all the noisy ceremonial which had accompanied their arrival two and a half weeks before. At Münchenholzen they dismounted and remained, for a time, deep in conversation. Yet nothing was agreed about any visit from Alexander to Paris, still less for Napoleon to come in state to St Petersburg. They embraced each other, Alexander climbed into his coach and started back on the long journey to his capital.54 Napoleon watched the dust of his escort disappearing, turned his horse towards Erfurt, and throughout the ride back to his residence remained silent, his face sad and grim. For eighteen days of festivity and talk, his material gains were slight; and the fabric of friendship with Alexander was worn transparently thin. They were never to meet again.

  10

  The Primacy of Speransky

  The Rise of Michael Speransky

  Most of the dignitaries who accompanied Alexander to Erfurt were members of families distinguished through several generations of service to the Russian Empire. Their names – Volkonsky, Golitsyn, Rumiantsev, and so on – were familiar enough to the Germans and the French. In many cases they were themselves personal acquaintances, sometimes even related by marriage to the famous dynasties of western and central Europe. Yet among this closely knit group there was one unexpected newcomer, a sharp-featured man in his mid-thirties, prematurely bald and coldly courteous. His origins were so unaristocratic that he had been baptized quite simply, ‘Michael, son of the priest Michael’; but for a career these days one needed a patronymic and in its absence he had chosen, as a student, a surname of impeccably Latin origin; hence he was now known as Michael Speransky.1 It was a happily prophetic inspiration.

  Technically, in 1808, Speransky was merely a high grade civil servant, head of the Second Department in the Ministry of the Interior, released from his desk to act as secretary to the Tsar. But outside observers perceived in him an influence greater than his modest rank. At Erfurt the French, always inclined to search among the shadows for advisers who really mattered, readily accorded him respect. Napoleon studied him with a shrewd eye; Talleyrand encouraged him to talk.2 They found Speransky too intelligent to reveal inner thoughts and aspirations; and this discovery therefore convinced them they were right in judging him to be a figure of substance. He was, they thought, not just an administrative bureaucrat but a personal assistant to his master, someone who understood Alexander’s intentions better than the Foreign Minister, Rumiantsev. And Caulaincourt, the French ambassador, who had first met Speransky at a private dinner-party given by the Tsar early in the previous July,3 returned to St Petersburg determined to watch his progress with lively interest.

  Speransky was, indeed, an unexpected person to find in the circle of Alexander’s closest advisers. He was nearly six years older than the Tsar and, like most of his generation, had absorbed the ideas and the philosophy fashionable in the cultural outposts of Catherine II’s Empire. But there was a difference between the way in which Speransky had trained his mind and the intellectual dabbling of the nobility, so many of whose thoughts were rendered giddily unrealistic by the Enlightenment. He was the eldest son of a village priest in the province of Vladimir and was himself originally educated at a seminary and trained for the priesthood. His natural intelligence carried him to what was, in effect, the central theological faculty of the Russian Orthodox Church at the end of the eighteenth century, a seminary attached to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in St Petersburg. Some of Speransky’s tutors there showed an intellectual comprehension which was far broader than the traditional academic disciplines of seminarists; and the young student was introduced to the ideas of Descartes, Locke, Leibnitz, Newton, Voltaire, Diderot and Kant as well as to the new sciences of men like Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Priestley. He developed such remarkable gifts of logical analysis and synthesis that, like many other able members of the seminary, he was seconded to the lay world before completing his theological studies; and he served as principal secretary to Prince Kurakin, who was entrusted with high office early in Paul’s reign. Kurakin, for his part, was deeply impressed with Speransky; and in the spring of 1797 the Prince secured the permanent transference of the brilliant young seminarist to the civil service.4 It was, almost certainly, his natural vocation.

  Ten years passed before Speransky attracted the attention of Tsar Alexander. But from 1802 onwards his remarkable memoranda on the opportunities and limits for reform within the Russian social system began to supply ideas for Kochubey, and other members of the Secret Committee as well.5 It is therefore probable that Alexander was familiar with many of Speransky’s projects long before they ever met, though he cannot have known their origin. Speransky’s language and processes of thought would inevitably appeal to someone who still valued the precepts and teachings of La Harpe.

  Alexander first became aware of Speransky as a person largely by chance. Shortly after the Tsar’s return to St Petersburg from Tilsit, Kochubey (who was at that time still Minister of the Interior) fell ill and was unable to make his regular oral report to the sovereign. In his place Kochubey sent Speransky who, as the most competent of his departmental chiefs, was a natural deputy for the minister. Like everyone else who met him, the Tsar was impressed by Speransky’s air of efficiency and his authoritative mastery of detail. Some public figures – including Arakcheev and Alexander’s sister, Catherine Pavlovna – resented Speransky’s manner, finding something alien in the rigid austerity of his bureaucratic mind.6 But, at that particular moment, Alexander was desperately short of reliable advisers and acutely conscious of the unpopularity of Tilsit in many sections of society. He needed someone who understood the causes of discontent at home, who could explain why the purchasing power of the paper rouble was only a quarter the purchasing power of the silver rouble, who could distinguish between the real and theoretical obligations of serf-owners, and who knew the ways in which legal practice varied from province to province and district to district. Above all, Alexander wanted someone new around him, a person unassociated with the hopes and disappointments of the past five years, and a man of peace rather than a soldierly pensionary. The qualities in Speransky that put General Arakcheev and the Grand Duchess on their guard were the very ones which most appealed to Alexander. If the Tsar were once again to encourage internal reforms, Speransky would be as valuable a servant for him as anyone in St Petersburg. Instinctively Alexander sensed the genius of the man who gave him such clear and comprehensive reports. He insisted on retaining him in his own service rather than allowing him to continue at the Ministry of the Interior; and in October 1807 Speransky accompanied Alexander on his short tour of inspection in Byelo-Russia.7 By the following autumn he had become so indispensable to the efficient working of the Tsar’s chancery that it was natural for Alexander to command him to make the long journey to Erfurt, even though he was primarily concerned with domestic matters. When he returned to St Petersburg he was appointed Assistant Minister of Justice, receiving in January 1810 the rank and title of State Secretary. Throughout the three and a half years which followed Erfurt he remained Alexander’s most trusted political confidant. As Joseph de Maistre (who did not like him) was to write in the spring of 1812, Speransky was ‘virtually prime minister … great and all-powerful’.8

  For the orphaned son of a poor country priest such advancement was meteoric, and in Russia unique. During the preceding half century men of insignificant birth occasionally climbed the social ladder with astonishing rapidity, yet they were always helped upwards either by tales of manly courage in battle or by a graceful skill in polished compliment, and sometimes by both. Even Arakcheev, uncouth though he was in many ways, knew when to fawn and how to flatter. But Speransky possessed none of these social gifts. He was uncompromisingly honest, ascetically cold and reserved, almost non-Russian in his faceless personality; he lacked all ambition for customary rewards, seeking neither a fortune nor the prestige of enhanced status. It was difficult to find in his conscientious devotion to governmental service any lust for power;
nor was there any suggestion of opportunism in his earlier career for, though he was at one stage under the patronage of the well-known Court chaplain Andrei Samborsky, he never made use of any contacts in society for his own betterment. The aristocrats of the cities and the great landowners on their estates did not easily accustom themselves to government by a bureaucrat of whom it was said that ‘his heart was fragrant with fresh, clean air’.9 They had disapproved of Czartoryski as a Pole and Budberg as an alleged Swede and many of them continued to frown on the coarse-fibred arrogance of Arakcheev, but they could not even begin to understand why Alexander placed so much trust in this thick-skinned Puritan from Vladimir. Years afterwards one of Speransky’s fellow-seminarists recalled how in 1792 the future State Secretary (who was then aged twenty) was authorized to preach a practice sermon at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery on the Last Judgement. It was ‘delivered … with such enthusiasm that the signs of conviction visibly spread on the faces of his listeners.’10 Russia’s rulers had not hitherto looked to the pulpits to supply them with government ministers.

  Naturally scandal-mongers scoured Speransky’s private life for morsels, but they did so in vain. When he was twenty-six he had married an English girl, Elizabeth Stephens, the daughter of a widowed governess whom he met at Samborsky’s home, where many members of the English colony in St Petersburg were accustomed to gather. But Elizabeth did not live long enough to influence her husband’s ideas: she died from tuberculosis less than twelve months after her marriage. The tragedy ravaged so deeply Speransky’s reason that he was forced to impose a barrier on every emotion. Only by tireless employment of the mind was he able to dissipate his grief. He scorned the diversions of high society, preferring to seek mental relaxation in spiritual exercises. Thus during the years he was State Secretary (and for long afterwards) Speransky was engaged in completing the first Russian translation of Thomas à Kempis. It was an unexpected pursuit for the chief minister of a Tsar; and, against the glittering back-cloth of Petersburg fashion, an anachronistic one.11