by Alan Palmer
But neither Alexander nor his ministers could afford to be complacent over the economic ills of the Continental System. The Tilsit commitments had produced severe dislocations of commerce in the first eighteen months of alliance with France, although trade began to pick up again during the year of 1809. But inevitably the Russian merchants and their credit institutions were hit by the failure of the Rodda Bank in Lübeck and other signs of commercial panic in the old Hanseatic cities. Moreover, at this very moment, all the old resentment at French interference with traditional Anglo-Russian trading arrangements was revived by the Trianon and Fontainebleau Decrees, which tightened the blockade against English goods. There was much talk in St Petersburg of seeking release from a system that prevented Russia exporting hemp, grain and flax or from receiving English manufactured goods while permitting the Empire to be flooded with French luxuries, perfumes and wines. Chancellor Rumiantsev might maintain to the Senate in mid-October that the Continental System was stimulating industry within Russia and helping the merchants to find new markets; but few people found his arguments convincing. Trade restraint remained the most unpopular aspect of the French alliance, as Alexander himself well knew.15
Yet what precisely should be done? The Council of State considered ways of gradually easing Russia out of the Continental System, and the question was also discussed between Alexander and his ministers. Rumiantsev opposed any change in tariffs, primarily because he did not want to force a crisis of diplomacy with the French; Speransky, leaning heavily on the theories of Adam Smith, favoured freer trade and the Minister of Finance supported him; but the Tsar was unable to make up his mind. Tentatively, in the third week of December, he approved a decree allowing the landowners freedom to export grain;16 but hardly had this measure been published when rumours reached St Petersburg that Napoleon had incorporated all the northern coasts of Germany into metropolitan France and was proposing to annex the Duchy of Oldenburg.† This sudden activity by Napoleon in a region of political and dynastic concern to Alexander hardened his wavering resolution. On 31 December 1810 he approved the famous tariff decree which imposed heavy duties on goods coming overland while removing restrictions on imports by sea and allowing almost complete freedom to Russian exports. In practical terms, this measure was seen as a blow against French luxuries and in favour of renewed trade with the maritime powers, including Britain. Small wonder that at the Tsar’s New Year ball a few days later Caulaincourt was ‘seized with a swimming in the head’ and left early.17
The War Scare of 1811
Alexander knew well enough the gravity of the steps he was taking; but it was the fate of Oldenburg which was uppermost in his mind. A week after publishing the Tariff Decree he unburdened some of his thoughts to Catherine and her husband (who was heir to the threatened Duchy). ‘Everything is beginning to look intensely gloomy’, he wrote. ‘It seems that blood must flow again, but at least I have done all that is humanly possible to avoid it’; and he then proceeded, in a style markedly distinct from the usual tone of his Tver correspondence, to list fifteen topics which he intended to discuss with George and Catherine when he next visited them.18 Although three of these headings related to Speransky and his institutions, more than half of them were directly concerned with military affairs, including the siting of reserve depots and the organization of a defensive militia. Alexander was thus prepared to recognize even in the first days of January 1811 the probability of invasion; but, as he was not proposing to travel to Tver and discuss these matters for several weeks, he clearly did not anticipate an early breach with the French.
It is, however, difficult to discover exactly what Alexander did wish to do. Even before receiving confirmation that Napoleon was annexing Oldenburg, he had once again written to Czartoryski and urged him to sound out the Polish aristocrats to see if their allegiance to the French was any less loyal than in the previous spring.19 And yet, as late as 2 February, Alexander personally drafted instructions for a new envoy he was sending to the King of Sardinia in Cagliari and used precisely the same phrases which he would have included at any time in the preceding three and a half years: an assertion of the value to Russia of her French alliance; and a careful denunciation of the predatory activities of the British on the high seas.20 Although by his actions in Germany Napoleon had broken the terms of Tilsit, Alexander was still outwardly conforming to the spirit of friendship between the two Empires.
Yet that spirit was rapidly running dry. Alexander was certainly tempted by an alternative policy, which he had first sketched in the letter to Czartoryski. He calculated that, with the French military effort primarily concentrated in Spain, Napoleon had in Germany a mere 46,000 regular troops, commanded by Davout. Even with the auxiliaries from the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw and from his ally in Dresden, Napoleon could put into the field scarcely more than 100,000 men, many of indifferent fighting quality and experience. By contrast, Alexander could rapidly concentrate along his western frontiers two armies, totalling in all a quarter of a million. A speedy Russian invasion of Germany might lead to a Prussian rising against the French and possibly to Austrian intervention: the armies of the three Eastern autocracies would thus roll back the limits of Napoleon’s Empire before its master could mount a counter-offensive. But the success of such a strategy depended to a large extent upon the attitude of the Poles: if the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw remained loyal to its French patron, Poniatowski’s men would endanger the Russian left flank and might delay the Russian advance into Germany long enough for Napoleon to strike back. Hence, on 12 February, Alexander wrote for a second time to Czartoryski and offered to proclaim a Polish Kingdom, to which he would guarantee a liberal constitution as well as a national government and army, provided that the principal political and military figures in the Grand-Duchy would give Czartoryski written pledges of support for the Russian plan. ‘I cannot start a war against France until I have received guarantees of Polish co-operation’, Alexander told Czartoryski bluntly.21
This latest grand design was potentially disastrous, militarily and politically. Like the Prussian plan of 1806 and the Austrian three years later, it took no account of Napoleon’s skill in improvising armies and moving them speedily to points in the battle zone where he could seize the initiative. But was Alexander in earnest? In the third week of February he wrote to Frederick William III, taking him partly into his confidence, and to Emperor Francis of Austria, to whom he offered to hand over most of the territory captured from the Turks in Moldavia and Wallachia, provided the Austrians ceded to Russia what remained of their Polish lands.22 By thus recklessly advertising his intentions to Warsaw, Berlin and Vienna, Alexander totally destroyed any chances of taking Napoleon by surprise. For his diplomatic initiative Alexander had selected three cities from which he could be certain French intelligence would hear of his plans within a matter of days. Yet, as if to give credence to his change of policy, five divisions were removed from the Turkish war-zone and set out for Poland; 180 heavy cannon were ostentatiously sent westwards from St Petersburg; General Kamensky was summoned back from his triumphs against the Turks ‘for a more important command’ (or so the foreign envoys in Petersburg were told); and orders were given for the arms factories at Tula and Alexandrovsk to continue to turn out weapons and munitions each day of the year rather than close on the great festivals of the Church.23 Even Holy Russia, it seemed, was girding herself for war.
If Alexander really hoped for partners in his enterprise he was swiftly disappointed. Frederick William was blandly non-committal. Czartoryski found the Polish magnates bound to Napoleon by sentiments of ‘loyalty, gratitude, confidence and fear’. Emperor Francis made it clear he thought more highly of Galicia than of Moldavia or Wallachia, and his Foreign Minister, Metternich, was as yet too dependent upon Napoleon’s goodwill to countenance independent bargaining with a potential enemy of the French.24 The most Alexander could achieve was some strengthening of his relations with Vienna; the status of the Austrian and Russian ambassadors in the respecti
ve capitals was raised; and a young diplomat, Ludwig von Lebzeltern, was despatched by Metternich to St Petersburg with orders to establish personal contact with the Tsar and find out what he wanted, as opposed to the official policy of Chancellor Rumiantsev. Although Lebzeltern’s mission was of service to Alexander in the crisis months a year later, he was hardly a substitute for the phantom army conjured up in Alexander’s original plan.
Yet if, on the other hand, the Tsar had merely intended to threaten Napoleon at a time when the French economy was under strain so as to call a halt to further encroachments in east-central Europe, then he did indeed have some success. The French were already puzzled by the change in Russia’s tariff policy. By the last week in February there was genuine disquiet in Paris over Alexander’s attitude. On the final day of the month Napoleon sent for General Chernyshev, one of the Tsar’s aides-de-camp who was attached to the Russian embassy in Paris, and entrusted to him a special letter for speedy communication to his sovereign.25 It was a remarkably subtle document, couched in terms of pained surprise rather than of anger and holding out some prospect of negotiation in order to remove the misunderstandings which had sprung up in recent months between the two Empires.
It took Chernyshev eighteen days to travel from Paris to St Petersburg and another three weeks to complete his discussions in the capital and make the return journey.26 During Chernyshev’s absence, the war scare in Paris intensified rather than diminished. Poniatowski informed the French of Czartoryski’s activities and further reports came in from Berlin, Dresden and Vienna, all of which confirmed the seriousness of Russian preparations for a campaign. Napoleon was sufficiently alarmed by the news to have a contingency plan drafted: if the Russians attacked, Poniatowski should evacuate his troops from the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw and subsequently collaborate with Marshal Davout in a holding operation on the Oder, preparatory to a grand counter-offensive by the main French army which would be assisted (or so Napoleon believed) by the Austrians. It is significant that Davout’s troops in Germany, together with the armies of the Grand-Duchy and the German dependencies, were kept on the alert from mid-March until the beginning of May.27
Tension relaxed in St Petersburg as soon as Chernyshev arrived from Paris on 17 March. Within twenty-four hours of his coming, it was being said among foreign diplomats that Napoleon’s letter to Alexander showed a warmth of friendship more cordial than any communication exchanged between the two men for many months.28 Rumiantsev, with Alexander’s written approval, drafted a long despatch to Kurakin (the ambassador in Paris) which held out some prospect of revising the Russian tariff so as to maintain the fiction of a Continental System; and Alexander himself handed Chernyshev a pleasantly phrased letter for Napoleon personally.29 After attending the annual requiem on the tenth anniversary of his father’s death, Alexander set out on his long-projected visit to Tver; and there was widespread relief among the foreign community in the capital.30 With Alexander turning his carriage southwards rather than towards the frontier and with his aide-de-camp speeding back to Paris, it was generally accepted that the prospect of another campaign against the French had receded. As St Petersburg basked in a warmer and finer Easter than its sovereign could ever remember – or so Alexander assured the American minister – it became increasingly difficult to take the war scare too seriously; and at the start of May Caulaincourt, writing to Napoleon, could report that Alexander had described the Franco-Russian alliance as ‘better able than any other possible combination to maintain the peace of Europe’.31
Discomforted Diplomats
Yet though pretty phrases might flow like honey between St Petersburg and St Cloud, the old special relationship of the two Empires was at an end, as Caulaincourt himself had long sensed. On 8 May the Marquis de Lauriston arrived in Russia to take up his duties as French ambassador, Napoleon at last having agreed to re-call Caulaincourt ‘for reasons of health’.32 Significantly Caulaincourt had been forbidden to leave Russia until the coming of his successor since it seemed to Napoleon vital for France to have a responsible spokesman at St Petersburg during these weeks of alarming rumours and uncertainty. Now it only remained for ‘the Viceroy’ to make a dignified exit.
On the morning of 18 May, the day before his departure, he was received in a farewell audience by the Tsar.33 It was a touching occasion, with Alexander treating Caulaincourt as a personal friend and even shedding tears. But if the ambassador’s account is genuine, the Tsar appears to have spoken with prophetic insight:
Should the Emperor Napoleon make war on me, it is possible, even probable, that we shall be defeated. But this will not give him peace … We shall enter into no compromise agreements; we have plenty of open spaces in our rear, and we shall preserve a well-organized army … I shall not be the first to draw my sword, but I shall be the last to sheath it … I should sooner retire to Kamchatka than yield provinces or put my signature to a treaty in my conquered capital which was no more than a truce.
Whether or not Alexander used these particular words, the audience left no doubt in Caulaincourt’s mind of the new spirit of determination in St Petersburg; and when he reached Paris at the end of the first week in June, he attempted to convince Napoleon he was no longer dealing with the affable young charmer of Tilsit and Erfurt. But, although Napoleon was prepared to complain that Alexander was ‘feeble and fickle’, ‘untrustworthy’ and ‘ambitious to achieve some hidden purpose through war’, he would not admit that the Tsar was ever likely to prove a serious adversary. ‘Puh! You speak like a Russian’, he told Caulaincourt. ‘One good battle will see the end of all your friend Alexander’s fine resolutions – and his castles of sand as well!’34
Throughout the early summer of 1811 talks continued between Lauriston and Rumiantsev over possible compensation for the annexation of Oldenburg; and in Paris Kurakin continued to give hints of a modification in the tariffs. But, almost imperceptibly, the two Empires were drifting into a position where each accepted the inevitability of war and maintained the forms of diplomacy from mere habit and convention. By mid-July Alexander was writing privately to his sister Catherine about Napoleon’s utter unreasonableness: ‘Is he a creature who may not be expected to loosen his grip on any prize unless compelled by force of arms? And do we have the force of arms to compel him?’ he asked in a burst of gloomy rhetoric. ‘It seems to me’, he added, ‘most hopeful to look for time to aid us, and even to the very size of this evil … In one way or another, this state of affairs is bound to come to an end.’ And, with a marked lack of charity towards the brother sovereign he had saluted so ardently at Erfurt, Alexander told Catherine of the rumour that a young man had recently tried to assassinate Napoleon, a deed which, he added, ‘will have admirers and imitators’.35
On 15 August Napoleon celebrated his forty-second birthday. In St Petersburg Lauriston gave a dinner for some fifty or sixty guests which followed closely the pattern determined in previous years by Caulaincourt. But this time everything was as formal as on a ceremonial occasion: ‘The dinner was short’, Adams remarked, ‘and the company all very soon afterwards retired.’36 In Paris, too, the birthday was celebrated in customary splendour, the Emperor receiving congratulations from the diplomatic corps, with ambassadors and ministers lined up in the throne room at the Tuileries, as though they were a guard of honour ready for inspection. Three years previously Napoleon had used the occasion to rebuke Metternich, who was then Austrian ambassador in Paris, for the military preparations which led, within a year, to the Wagram Campaign.37 Now Napoleon accorded precisely the same treatment to Alexander’s representative, Prince Kurakin. For half an hour, speaking so rapidly that Kurakin could say little in reply, Napoleon poured out all his complaints against Alexander’s policy – his championship of Oldenburg, his intrigues in Poland, his willingness to become enmeshed once more in the wicked machinations of the English, his secret military preparations along the Polish frontier. He threatened Russia with another campaign in which she would be left to fight without allies and
would suffer defeats just as Austria had done in 1809. Finally he proposed that all these difficulties might yet be solved if the Russians were prepared to sit down with the French and draft a new treaty of alliance; and when Kurakin explained that he had no powers to conclude so important a document, Napoleon brusquely dismissed the objection as irrelevant. ‘No powers?’ he exclaimed. ‘Then you must write at once to the Tsar and request them.’38
There was in this embarrassing scene a considerable amount of poor play-acting. Napoleon himself hinted as much when, soon afterwards, he tried to soothe the ruffled feelings of the unfortunate Caulaincourt, who had been present at the Tuileries reception and had thus heard his own views misrepresented by the Emperor for Kurakin’s benefit.39 In speaking as he did, Napoleon was relying on his conviction that he understood Russia and its sovereign better than any of the envoys he had sent to the Court in St Petersburg. He believed he could count on Rumiantsev to champion the interests of France in any discussions with the Tsar; and he was confident that Kurakin, who had been the chief negotiator with Talleyrand at Tilsit, would readily accept a new draft treaty if given the authority. Moreover, Napoleon knew that the incident with Metternich three years previously had created a major diplomatic sensation abroad (especially in Russia) and that all formal receptions thereafter were treated with particular respect by the ambassadors at his Court. No one would miss the significance of what he had said. But if Napoleon really imagined he could bully Russia back into nominal friendship, he was wrong. He failed to realize Alexander could never risk another blow to his popular reputation by a surrender to French hectoring, nor did he allow for Kurakin’s affronted pride and the decline in Rumiantsev’s influence on Alexander. Both Maret (Napoleon’s foreign minister) and Lauriston sensed that this scene in the Tuileries harmed Franco-Russian relations; and each man independently sought to explain away the Emperor’s threats.40 But without success. Alexander was not interested in drawing up another paper treaty with the French. Napoleon’s boorishness convinced him that for the French, as for the Russians, what had been signed at Tilsit was now essentially a historical relic, merely a collector’s item for the muniments room.