Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  Not that he was in any hurry to do so. Orders for Golitsyn to enter Galicia were only sent on 18 May, five days after Napoleon had entered Vienna itself. And even then another seventeen days were to elapse before Golitsyn’s corps began to move forward, showing, it seemed, more interest in securing the towns of the province than in giving battle to the Austrians.20 An unprejudiced observer might well have thought the Russian army was primarily engaged in containing Poniatowski’s Polish brigades, nominally its ally. Caulaincourt, who was by nature far from unprejudiced and by training a cavalry commander, had no doubt at all of Golitsyn’s intentions and he complained of them to Rumiantsev.21 But, where Polish questions were concerned, the Russians tended to assume treaty obligations were subject to liberal interpretation; and Caulaincourt received little satisfaction. As if to emphasize the tacit understanding between the two dynastic Empires, in mid-July the Austrian commander of Cracow, who had defied Poniatowski for nearly two months, handed over the city to Golitsyn’s Russians rather than surrender to a Pole. During the whole campaign the Russian army corps suffered only two casualties. Small wonder if the French felt their ally was scorning all the fair words of Tilsit and Erfurt.

  In St Petersburg prominent Russians made little effort to hide their sympathies. Normally the Empress Elizabeth avoided commenting on international affairs in her private letters, presumably for fear they might be intercepted; but in May she did not hesitate to let her mother know how ‘the bad news of Austria’s misfortune’ had saddened her and Alexander too.22 Rumiantsev, whom everyone in the capital regarded as an arch-Francophile, emphasized to Caulaincourt his determination to protect the Empire against resurgent Polish patriotic pride; and the French ambassador, though angered by Russia’s derisory rejection of her commitments, faithfully reported the mood of St Petersburg to Champagny, Napoleon’s Foreign Minister, who had followed the army to Vienna.23 Confidentially, in reply, Caulaincourt was informed that Napoleon himself ‘no longer believes in the Russian alliance’; but he was instructed not to modify his behaviour in any way, nor give Alexander any excuse for letting Europe see how fragile were the bonds between the Empires.24 Caulaincourt, as a good soldier, dutifully obeyed orders, though he found the warmth of Alexander’s friendship increasingly embarrassing at such a time.

  Napoleon’s changes of mood did not make Caulaincourt’s task any easier. For, even after the hollow mockery of Russian participation in his campaign, Napoleon was unwilling to break finally with Alexander. The peace settlement imposed on the Austrians that autumn showed some evidence of Napoleon’s concern for Russian sensitivity over Poland; for, though the Austrians were forced to make extensive sacrifices on the Adriatic, they were allowed to retain all those regions in Galicia acquired in the first Polish Partition (1772), ceding to the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw only the much smaller area annexed in 1795.25 And the Russians were even awarded compensation for this territorial addition to the Grand-Duchy, for Alexander was now permitted to annex the two Austrian districts of Czartow and Tarnopol, districts in eastern Galicia where the inhabitants were predominantly Ukrainians rather than Poles, but which had for centuries been reckoned an integral part of the Polish State.26 Thus, for the second time in three years, Russia extended her western frontier in Poland by grace of the Emperor of the French. Yet when Caulaincourt informed Alexander of the final peace terms at an audience on 27 October, he found the Tsar unusually cold and distant: he was alarmed at the extent to which the French were strengthening their foothold in western Croatia and Dalmatia, along the borders of the Turkish Empire; and he was disappointed that Russia had not received the city of Lemberg (Lvov), which now passed once more under Polish rule.

  Ten days later Caulaincourt had another audience with the Tsar. On this occasion the ambassador told him that Napoleon was willing to discuss with the Russians a final settlement of the Polish Question so as to ease the tension between the two Empires. As a start, the French proposed an undertaking that no use should be made, for the present or in the future, of the term ‘Poland’. This was a gesture Alexander understood and appreciated. He purred with contentment: it was, he said ‘something really in the spirit of the alliance’.27 For the next three months he left Caulaincourt and Rumiantsev to thrash out an understanding.

  It is impossible not to feel deep sympathy for Caulaincourt. He had no idea of Napoleon’s motives and he was hampered in the following weeks by the sudden departure of Alexander on the first of his journeys to Tver and Moscow, where he was received so rapturously by the people of the old capital that he returned to St Petersburg determined to let the French sense in his person the residual authority of the Princes of Muscovy.28 During Alexander’s absence the ambassador was startled by fresh instructions from Paris, which completely transformed the nature of his mission. For, on 14 December, Caulaincourt received a letter from Champagny (which had taken more than three weeks to cross Europe) in which he was told to find out if Alexander would sanction a marriage between Napoleon and his youngest sister, Anna Pavlovna.29 The Tsar’s absence in Moscow made it impossible for Caulaincourt to take any action for another fortnight. Life had been simpler for him when he was a mere General.

  A Russian Empress for the French?

  Alexander arrived back at the Winter Palace soon after ten at night on 26 December. Two evenings later he entertained Caulaincourt privately to dinner. It was only after he had listened to an enthusiastic account of the visit to Moscow that the ambassador was able to sound out Alexander on Napoleon’s proposal. Though Anna’s future was mentioned briefly at Erfurt, the Tsar does not appear to have given the question any further thought. She was still a few days short of her fifteenth birthday and there seems to have been some doubt in her brother’s mind whether she had yet reached puberty. The long delay in communications with Paris made Caulaincourt unusually pressing. He wanted a reply within forty-eight hours; but the Tsar was far too elated from his journey to take any decision couched in so peremptory a manner. He courteously acknowledged Napoleon’s request but explained that, by the will of Tsar Paul, all such matters depended upon the sanction of the Dowager Empress who was in residence at Gatchina. Alexander asked for ten days in which to consult Marie Feodorovna and other members of the family.* Caulaincourt tactfully indicated that he understood the Tsar’s difficulty and that he would let Paris know the reasons for the delay.30

  There followed three weeks of confused farce and prevarication. On the day after his interview with the Tsar, Caulaincourt entertained fifty members of the diplomatic corps to a sledging party on the ice-hills in the gardens of his villa on Kammionyi Island. Although Napoleon’s overture was strictly confidential, the possibility of a Bonaparte-Romanov marriage somehow became a principal topic of conversation during the New Year festivities; and everyone enjoyed watching Caulaincourt in the hope of detecting on that inscrutably sardonic face some estimate of the odds in the dynastic marriage stakes. He revealed nothing; and yet by 9 January Six d’Oterbeck, the Dutch minister, was roundly declaring that it was ‘certainly not a Russian Princess that the Emperor Napoleon is to marry’; and it was generally agreed that in such matters the Dutch minister, having little to do but listen to palace gossip, was rarely wrong.31

  Officially, however, no reply had as yet been made to Napoleon. The Russian Court moved slowly. It was not until 4 January (which, by the Russian Calendar, was 23 December) that Alexander informed his ‘dear sweet friend’ at Tver of what was proposed for their sister, and his letter to Catherine shows the uncertainty of his mood:32

  I send this to you to let you know of one of the most disagreeable plights in which I have ever found myself to be. Napoleon is seeking a divorce and casting eyes upon Anna. This time it is a real and lasting idea and I refer you to the details which Mother is giving you. It is difficult to choose the right course. My own view is that because of all the trouble, annoyance, bad-feeling and hatred aroused by that person it is easier to deny him his wishes than accept with a bad grace. I must do Mother justice
to add that she showed far more calm over it than I should have thought possible. She wishes, anyhow, to consult you and I think she is perfectly right to do so. I too seek your advice with that confidence which I place in your reason and your heart.

  This letter was mildly disingenuous; for the whole problem was much more complicated than Alexander revealed. Reports from Paris (and indeed Caulaincourt’s whole bearing) left him in little doubt that the marriage proposal and the Polish negotiations were closely linked in Napoleon’s mind.33 This development was awkward for Alexander: even though he might care little these days for the prospect of a Bonaparte brother-in-law, the bait of a Polish settlement was too tempting to be ignored; and he certainly had no wish to see exchanges between Rumiantsev and Caulaincourt over the future of the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw prove as fruitless as their talks on the Eastern Question, before Erfurt. It would be politically injudicious to offend Napoleon at such a time. But what was he to do? Though the Dowager Empress had not exploded in anger at the news of the French proposal, she rapidly began to see in it a worthless and cumbersome insult. Indeed, on the same day that Alexander was letting Catherine into the secret, Marie Feodorovna acquired her second wind and expressed herself with vigour on the Bonapartes, on France, and on the sufferings of Russia in general and her younger children in particular.34 She maintained that she was convinced economic necessity would drive Alexander to break with France, marriage or no marriage; and she roundly declared that, if she accepted Napoleon’s request for Anna’s hand, she would be ‘sacrificing a daughter to a man of vile character, for whom nothing is sacred and who knows no restraint because he does not believe in God.’ Nevertheless, she would not positively turn down the proposal: like Alexander she waited on a judgement from Tver.

  It was therefore left to Catherine Pavlovna to suggest a tactful compromise, which was framed so discreetly that one suspects it owes more to her husband’s good sense than to her own impetuous tongue.35 At the end of the first week in February Alexander at last gave Caulaincourt an audience in which he imparted the decision of the family: the ambassador was to inform Napoleon of the sense of flattery experienced by the Dowager Empress at the prospect of a marriage between her younger daughter and the illustrious Emperor of the French but he was to explain that, though ‘for some five months now her figure had been filling out’, the Grand Duchess Anna had only recently celebrated her fifteenth birthday and since the Dowager Empress ‘had already been forced to mourn the loss of two daughters through premature marriages, no consideration could permit her to risk endangering the life of the Grand Duchess by contracting matrimonial obligations so young’; and the Russian Imperial family hoped that the Emperor Napoleon would thus perceive the wisdom of postponing marriage with the Grand Duchess for another two years.36

  Alexander can hardly have put forward this compromise as a serious proposition. He had himself heard from Napoleon personally at Erfurt that the sole argument for separation from Josephine was need of a son to preserve the dynasty and it was therefore unreasonable to imagine that Napoleon, of all people, would be prepared to wait for a Grand Duchess, whom he had never seen, to grow into a mature woman. The Tsar hoped that marriage negotiations, becoming more and more hypothetical, would continue at least until the Russians had extracted from the French an acceptable treaty over Poland. He was, however, to be doubly disappointed. While letters were travelling from Petersburg to Tver and Gatchina and back again, the salons of Paris were filled with rival partisans of a Russian or an Austrian marriage; and as the only messages from Caulaincourt indicated hesitancy and delay, so the pro-Austrian party took heart and pressed the claims for attention of the Archduchess Marie Louise.37 Napoleon become impatient; and before details of Alexander’s compromise reached Paris, everyone knew that the man who had twice in half a decade seized Vienna would soon be marrying the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, a girl three years older than Anna Pavlovna and physically far more mature. The news reached St Petersburg on 23 February; and with it came a clear indication that Napoleon was no longer interested in concluding any paper agreement on Polish affairs.38

  Since Alexander had virtually rejected the marriage proposal, he had no grounds for disappointment at Napoleon’s decision to seek a Habsburg bride. But he was, in fact, intensely irritated at the turn in events and did not trouble to hide his displeasure from Caulaincourt. There were three principal reasons for his anger: the discovery that an approach had been made to the Austrians before the French received final word from St Petersburg on the original proposal of a Russian marriage; the apparent willingness of Napoleon to find in Austria a new political ally for his European schemes; and the revelation that the discussions over Poland were, as the Tsar had feared, only incidental to Napoleon’s dynastic ambitions. It was this frustration of his hopes for Poland which most stung Alexander. The Russians had prepared a draft treaty which included, in its first article, the categorical statement that ‘the Kingdom of Poland shall never be restored’.39 Now Napoleon refused to accept any such commitment: ‘Divinity alone can speak as Russia proposes’, he declared.40 Worse was to follow. The French began publicly to refer to the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw as ‘the Duchy of Poland’. With eight Polish provinces still within his Empire, this overt patronage of Polish national sentiment filled Alexander with genuine alarm and suspicion. He determined to gain a clearer impression of Napoleon’s policy than he could obtain either from his Francophile foreign minister or from Caulaincourt; and he turned for support to the two most dissimilar men among his confidants, Prince Adam Czartoryski and State Secretary Speransky.

  It was during the closing months of 1809 that Society in the Russian capital began to amuse itself in speculating why Czartoryski was to be seen once more at the Winter Palace and on Kammionyi Island. Gossips assumed he had returned from foreign travel to console the Empress Elizabeth; and it is true that, whatever her feelings may have been, he always remained as romantically attached to Elizabeth as Alexander did to Queen Louise. But on this occasion it was primarily Alexander who sought the Prince’s advice, hoping to discover from him the extent of loyal sentiment within the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw to its patron in Paris. After the Austrian marriage, Alexander’s conversations with his old friend became more frequent and recaptured much of the intimacy of their youth. More than once Alexander looked back regretfully to the abortive plans for a restored Poland with which he had toyed at Pulawy in 1805; and at their meeting on 5 April 1810, Czartoryski was startled to hear the Tsar predicting there would be a crisis in Franco-Russian affairs ‘nine months from now’ and to note on Alexander’s face that haggard expression of self-pity he had last observed on the day following Austerlitz. Czartoryski himself felt a conflict of loyalties between the Empire he had served and his compatriots; but he knew Alexander too well to encourage him to expect Polish support merely on a show of sentimental nostalgia. He asked the Tsar for details of the negotiations with Napoleon over the Polish Question; and when Alexander became evasive, Czartoryski for his part spoke of other things.41

  Yet these talks between the Tsar and his former director of foreign affairs had some significance for the future. Although Czartoryski doubted Alexander’s sincerity and suspected him of wishing to perpetuate the division of the Polish nation, he recognized a hardening of the Tsar’s mind against Napoleon’s policy. It was a phenomenon he had already seen in earlier years; and, although he had little doubt what his compatriots in the Grand-Duchy would tell him, he continued to sound out the aristocratic families.42 Unfortunately his conclusions brought Alexander small comfort: only a pledge to grant political unity to the Polish nation and the promise of constitutional government would make it possible for the Tsar of Russia to solicit Polish support so long as there remained a centralized administration in Warsaw dependent for its composition and character on the goodwill of the French. But Alexander was not prepared to give up hope of winning over the Poles; for what would happen to the Grand-Duchy once Napoleon’s position in Europe began to weak
en was anyone’s guess. Historical tradition and geographical common sense mocked the chances for survival of any Bonapartist creation on the Vistula; and it was half as far again from Warsaw to Paris as from Warsaw to St Petersburg.