Alexander I: Tsar of War and Peace

by Alan Palmer

  In the fourth week of March fresh evidence came of internal discord. On 22 March a patrol of Cossacks intercepted a letter from Napoleon to Marie Louise which mentioned he was crossing the Marne so as to draw the invaders away from Paris.67 Other captured messages confirmed the demoralization among the Napoleonic officials still left in the capital; and in the morning of 24 March Alexander summoned Frederick William, Schwarzenberg and the other leading Generals in the field to an informal council of war west of Vitry. Since Metternich and Castlereagh, with the Emperor Francis, were at Dijon there was no one prepared to argue with Alexander: he insisted that on the following day (Friday, 25 March) the main Allied army should march on Paris, a hundred miles away, leaving a Russian Corps under General Wintzingerode to keep watch on Napoleon’s movements.68 The Tsar and the King, together with the Grand Duke Constantine, went forward with Schwarzenberg’s troops; and so, for that matter, did the King of Prussia’s seventeen-year-old son, William, who was to make a similar journey with a conquering army fifty-six years later.

  There was still some tough fighting ahead. On that very Friday Alexander came under heavy cannon fire at La Fère-Champenoise, where Constantine led impressive cavalry charges against a corps of brave but inexperienced young conscripts.69 But the Allied weight of numbers was decisive and within three days the road to Paris was open, though there was a last show of resistance on the slopes of Montmartre. By Wednesday afternoon Alexander was only eight miles from the capital. That night he established final headquarters of the campaign in the Château de Bondy, and it was there that the Prefect of Paris came to negotiate surrender of the city.70

  Next morning there was another unexpected visitor. Caulaincourt, appointed Foreign Minister by Napoleon on the eve of the invasion of France, had negotiated with the Allies intermittently for ten weeks, but the Tsar had always avoided receiving him, Now, however, he came on a mission directly from Napoleon, a last offer to negotiate peace before the fall of Paris; and Alexander, after some hesitation, agreed to see him. They had not met since their emotional farewell at St Petersburg in the spring of 1811. The Tsar greeted Caulaincourt warmly: he was ‘the friend who is always welcome’; but no personal appeals could rob Alexander of the solemn entry into the French capital, for this was a moment he had cherished in anticipation throughout the hard days of two winters.71 He explained to Caulaincourt that he came to Paris, not as a hostile invader, but as a liberator. He was convinced that France was as weary of the rule of Napoleon as was Europe and he had therefore resolved not to have any further dealings with Napoleon himself. The Seine was not the Niemen and Paris was a long way, in time and in space, from Tilsit.

  Alexander Enters Paris (31 March 1814)

  At eleven o’clock that same morning, 31 March, the first Russian cavalry reached the barrier of Pantin, on the eastern outskirts of Paris. They were followed by the Tsar’s personal Guard in full parade uniform, and then by Alexander himself, riding slowly down the cobbled streets with Frederick William beside him and Constantine and other dignitaries immediately behind them.72 Nobody appears to have noticed anyone in the procession apart from the Tsar, and this is hardly surprising. With the bright spring sunshine flashing on his golden epaulettes and collar, he looked the incarnation of one of the Gods in a classical myth. A smile of contentment was carved on his face as he acknowledged cheers by raising his right arm to his great green hat with its plume of cock feathers caught by the breeze. ‘Long live the Allies! Hurrah for Peace! Hurrah for Tsar Alexander!’ the onlookers called as the procession went by. No foreign conqueror had ridden into Paris for four hundred years. This was Alexander’s hour of apotheosis, and he had every intention of savouring the experience to the full.

  The Allied columns passed along the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin, through the old gate of Saint-Martin itself and eventually down the Rue Royale, past the place where the guillotine had stood during the Terror, and into the Champs Elysées. There Alexander halted at an improvised saluting base, beside the Marly Horses; the column turned and marched past the Tsar and the King before breaking ranks and finding bivouacs along the tree-covered mile to the (uncompleted) Arc de Triomphe or beneath the chestnuts of Chaillot. Guards were mounted at the city barriers for, although the fighting was no doubt over, Napoleon was still at Fontainebleau and there were other armies in the provinces. It was impossible to rule out completely a surprise assault on the city by the fallen Emperor.

  The parade was not over until after five o’clock in the afternoon. Alexander had still not finally announced where he wished to stay in Paris. The Tuileries was out of the question, for he did not want to offend the Bourbons. At first he thought he would move into the Elysée Palace but during the parade Nesselrode received one of those mysterious anonymous notes which helped determine policy in these weeks of uncertainty. This particular message was a warning that the Elysée had been mined and that its occupants would be blown sky high once they took up residence there. This tale was nonsense and was probably invented by the person who had already privately offered hospitality to the Tsar, the egregious Talleyrand. At all events Alexander decided not to move into the Elysée but to turn to the man whom he was convinced best understood the needs of France at that moment. In the failing light of early evening Alexander rode to Talleyrand’s residence at the corner of the Rue St Florentin and the Rue de Rivoli, diagonally across the Place de la Concorde from the Tsar’s saluting base. ‘Monsieur de Talleyrand,’ Alexander said as he dismounted, ‘I have decided I shall stay at your home since you possess the confidence of myself and of my allies.’73 Talleyrand put the first floor of the huge house at Alexander’s disposal and sentries from the Preobrazhensky Grenadiers mounted guard in the narrow Rue St Florentin. Perfect order and discipline reigned throughout the city. The candles shone through the windows of the large salon on Talleyrand’s first floor and there was a comforting air of agreed improvisation. ‘Hurrah for our liberators!’ a few Parisians called as the Allied spokesmen gathered that evening to seek the advice of Alexander and Talleyrand.74 It was a promising way for peace to break out: Moscow had experienced a more dramatic occupation.

  * In the autobiographical section of his Lettres et Papiers Nesselrode wrote: ‘My mother was a Protestant, my father a Catholic … I was baptized and became an Anglican for the remainder of my days’ (Volume II, p. 17).

  16

  Paris and London

  The Tsar, Talleyrand and Caulaincourt (April 1814)

  ‘I have come as a conqueror who seeks no other honour than the happiness of the vanquished’, Alexander declared in a note to Golitsyn written within hours of reaching Paris. Such a remark would have seemed intolerably unctuous from any other public figure of 1814, a cant phrase satisfying a conscience excited beyond reason at receiving the surrender of the French capital. But from Alexander’s pen the sentiment was genuine enough. For eighteen months he had seen himself as entrusted by the Almighty with a double mission: to rid Europe of the over-weening ambition of Napoleon; and to secure for the French people the benefits of an enlightened government, sufficiently stable to serve with Russia as a guarantor of peace in the new European order. With Napoleon isolated at Fontainebleau the first of these objectives was by now virtually achieved; but the second task was far from accomplished, not least because the Tsar himself remained uncertain how, in political terms, the vanquished were to be made happy.1

  For the first fortnight of April 1814 Alexander enjoyed a predominance in European affairs which he had never envisaged. He was both the principal spokesman of the Allies and de facto ruler of France. Castlereagh, Metternich and the Emperor Francis remained in Dijon, unwilling to incur the blame for imposing on the French a form of government which would appear to have arrived in their own baggage-train. Bernadotte had halted his Swedes in the Low Countries; he did not wish to invade France, either from sentiments of nostalgic patriotism or because he felt the odium of ousting Napoleon would damn his personal ambitions. Alexander therefore had with him in Pa
ris only Schwarzenberg (who was concerned solely with military matters), Nesselrode (who would do what he was told) and Frederick William of Prussia (who had the instincts and interests of a package tourist). It was therefore left to the Tsar to determine whether or not the Bourbons should be restored to the throne of their ancestors and what should be the fate of the Bonapartes. Over such matters Alexander turned naturally for advice to his host, who had served every régime in France for the past quarter of a century except the Jacobin Committees; and he found, hardly surprisingly, that Talleyrand was most helpful.2

  There were, in Alexander’s eyes, four possible solutions of the dynastic question: a Bourbon restoration; a Regency for the three-year-old son of Napoleon; a constitutional monarchy under Bernadotte; or, more drastically, the passing over of all monarchical claims and the establishment of a liberal republic, possibly with the Duke of Orleans as President. It was unlikely the Austrians or the British would accept the last of these four solutions and Alexander himself had become disenchanted with Bernadotte during the winter campaign when he had displayed what the Tsar considered to be a stubborn independence. Talleyrand had pressed on Alexander the claims of the Bourbons from their first meeting in the Rue St Florentin on the evening of 31 March, and the Tsar had undertaken to respect the wishes of the French Senate, a body of which Talleyrand as Vice-Grand Elector was the Chairman. The Senate – or rather the sixty-four senators who answered Talleyrand’s summons – proclaimed the deposition of Napoleon on 2 April and ‘freely called to the throne of France’ King Louis XVIII, who was at that moment recovering from an attack of gout at the country house in Buckinghamshire where he had spent his final years of exile. But Alexander did not regard himself as bound to accept the decision of a Senate meeting at which more than half the members were absent. He had no liking for the Bourbons. During his father’s reign Louis XVIII had, for a time, found sanctuary in Russia at Mittau and exaggerated tales of dynastic sensitivities prejudiced Alexander against the legitimist cause over the years. The Bourbons, he thought, were arrogant, outmoded and incapable of winning the sympathy of a nation which had recast its institutions in their absence. For the first ten days which he spent in Paris Alexander considered he had avoided committing himself over the dynastic question; and there were moments when he was personally inclined to support a Bonapartist Regency.3

  During the campaign in France Alexander repeatedly insisted to his allies he would not accept any personal dealings with Napoleon. Castlereagh, though gratified by his assurance, was nevertheless worried over what he termed ‘the chivalrous attitude of Emperor Alexander’; and he even warned London that the Tsar was ‘only looking for the opportunity of entering Paris at the head of his valiant army in order to display the greatness of his soul in retaliation for the destruction of his capital.’4 This was a shrewd analysis of the Tsar’s character. Alexander, like Napoleon but to a different degree, was fired by an instinct of good theatre: now the fighting was over, a proud gesture of magnanimity towards the fallen giant would crown his mission with final nobility of purpose. He was not prepared for Napoleon to remain on the throne of France but he wished him personally to be treated with generosity and he saw no reason why the autocratic system he had created in France need be cast aside if a large section of the population remained Bonapartist at heart. It is significant that on the very evening he arrived in the Rue St Florentin as Talleyrand’s guest Alexander found time to give Caulaincourt a further audience; and the same night officers of the Semeonovsky Regiment stopped royalist sympathizers from hauling down the statue of Napoleon from the column in the Place Vendôme.5 The sentiment of friendship so ostentatiously displayed at Erfurt was not entirely dead; and it is anyone’s guess what would have happened if Napoleon himself had contrived a meeting with Alexander during these days of uncertainty, for the combination of the fallen Emperor’s personal magnetism and the Tsar’s generosity of heart could well have deflected the intention of the Allies, even at this thirteenth hour. Small wonder so much store was set on keeping the two men apart.

  The only link between them now, as in earlier years, was through Caulaincourt. During the first ten days of April he had, in all, four long discussions with Alexander, riding back and forth between Talleyrand’s home and the palace of Fontainebleau, thirty-three miles away, where Napoleon remained from 31 March to 20 April.6 At first Napoleon believed he might still be able to restore his fortunes by a swift march on the capital with Marshal Marmont’s corps, which was holding the town of Essones halfway between Fontainebleau and Paris. But this proposal seemed to the remaining dignitaries of the Empire no more than a forlorn gamble and they persuaded Napoleon during the afternoon of Monday, 4 April, that there was no longer any reason to suppose that continuance of the war would improve his position. He accordingly chose three emissaries whom he sent to the Tsar with an offer to abdicate in favour of a Regency for his son. The original three envoys were Caulaincourt, Ney and Macdonald although they were subsequently joined by Marmont, who had already been in touch with the Austrians on his own initiative.

  They arrived in the Rue St Florentin about three o’clock on Tuesday morning, 5 April. Alexander was waiting for them and received them at once, ‘expressing in warm and chivalrous terms his admiration for the French forces’ says Macdonald.7 It was a curious situation. Downstairs Talleyrand was discussing detailed plans for the return to Paris of Louis XVIII’s brother, the Comte d’Artois, with the Bourbon representative, Baron Vitrolles. The two men knew that only a surprising development would have brought Caulaincourt and three Marshals to Alexander at such an hour of the morning. They could hear the clatter of the Marshals’ spurs on the parquet blocks above their heads. ‘This is an incident and we must see what happens’, Talleyrand remarked. ‘Tsar Alexander does unexpected things – after all he is the son of Paul I.’8

  But Alexander, unlike his father, rarely took decisions in a hurry. He listened for two hours to Caulaincourt’s arguments in favour of retaining the Bonaparte dynasty, noting in particular the stress which he (and the Marshals) put on the need for France to have a government ‘that would have no bitter memories to recall, and no reason for delving into an unhappy past’. The Tsar asked for a categorical assurance that Napoleon had consented to abdicate. ‘“In favour of his son” was our answer’, writes Caulaincourt, ‘which was well received.’ At five in the morning Alexander closed the discussion and asked for the four envoys to return later in the day.9

  They met again soon after midday. News had come through that Marmont’s corps had, in his absence, gone over to the Allies, thus depriving Napoleon of his last effective body of troops. Alexander received confirmation of this report during his meeting with the envoys, and at once went downstairs to consult Talleyrand who pressed him on no account to accept a Regency since Napoleon’s influence would dominate whoever was the nominal head of state. When Alexander returned to the first floor he had at last made up his mind. ‘A Regency gives France no prospect of repose’, he said. ‘The Emperor must abdicate unconditionally. He will be furnished with a living; he will be given an independent state.’ The Marshals left the conference but Alexander asked Caulaincourt to remain with him. Tentatively he enquired if Bernadotte would be more acceptable to the French than the Bourbons. Caulaincourt replied, ‘He has lost everything by coming here with your bayonets’; and he even suggested that Alexander might like to consider one of ‘the young Grand Dukes, your brothers’ as a Regent. But this extraordinary proposal fell on deaf ears. All that remained was to decide where Napoleon could exercise his ‘independent living’. Corsica? Sardinia? Corfu? In the end it seemed that the island of Elba was the least politically objectionable place of exile among those named.10 That evening there was yet another meeting between Alexander and the four envoys. The Tsar was courteous but firm; bluntly he told Caulaincourt and the Marshals to return to Fontainebleau and secure from Napoleon a definitive pledge of abdication. Further prevarication and delay would not be in the interests of Franc
e or of the Bonapartes, Alexander declared; but he sympathized with Caulaincourt in his difficult mission.

  The dynastic question was settled at last. Napoleon signed an act of abdication on Wednesday, 6 April, and Caulaincourt was back with the document in Paris at midnight.11 Never before had Alexander stood out so dramatically as arbiter of Europe’s destiny. It remained to decide on the terms of monetary compensation, the nature of Napoleon’s establishment on Elba, and the position of Marie Louise and her son. Over all these matters Alexander was co-operative and even sympathetic towards the fallen dynasty. He was not, however, left to resolve these problems by direct negotiation. The other Allies were becoming alarmed at his power and independence. Frederick William was still perfectly content to do whatever Alexander wished. Metternich and Castlereagh, on the other hand, were profoundly disturbed by the Tsar’s ascendancy. Both disliked the thought of sending Napoleon to Elba, believing it was far too near the mainland of Europe. Alexander was not prepared to change his decision on Elba to satisfy the Austrians or anyone else; but he did allow the Austrians a freer hand over settling the future of Marie Louise and her son than he had given Caulaincourt to understand.12 It was, after all, Metternich who had tied the marriage-favours in the first place.