However, the emperor’s attachment to peace whatever the cost in the name of national interest was arousing critical reactions and even anguish. Joseph de Maistre, ambassador of Sardinia in St. Petersburg, wrote testily in May 1803:
Russia, assuming a more threatening attitude and raising its voice, could easily have restored some kind of equilibrium to Europe, but just try to put such ideas into a head stuffed by la Harpe! The emperor of Russia has only two thoughts, “peace and the economy.”20
The meeting between d’Oubril and Talleyrand having got no reaction from the French, the tsar was confirmed in this negative opinion of Bonaparte, though he did not opt for an aggressive policy toward France. His priority always remained neutrality in European affairs in order to have room to maneuver in his policy of southern expansion. But this preference could not resist either the evolution in Balkan affairs or the scandal provoked in Russia (as everywhere in Europe) by the kidnapping by French dragoons of the Duke d’Enghien (the last Bourbon survivor of the House of Condé) and his execution.
In July 1802 a peace treaty between France and the Ottoman Empire had been signed that caused worry among Russian diplomats because since 1799 the Turks had been tied by an alliance that guaranteed Russian ships free access to the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits. At the same time the concentration of French troops in Italy, ready to intervene in the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and more generally France’s new interest in the region, both thwarted Russian diplomacy; for several decades Russia had considered the region a zone of privileged influence. Russian reaction came soon: although the 1801 agreement with France had stated that the Ionian Islands would be free of all foreign troops, in the month of August, with the active support of Kochubey (who in February had declared himself in favor), 1,600 troops were sent from Odessa to make the islands a Russian military base. By autumn 1804 there were almost 11,000 Russian soldiers and 16 warships in the archipelago, and a military advisor for their defense was set up in Corfu at Alexander’s request.21 These measures show the tsar’s singular strategy: he wanted to make the strategically important islands a symbolic space where Russian domination would prove infinitely more lenient than French domination, as well as a laboratory for experimenting with a constitution. It was this dual plan that lay behind the preparation in 1803 of a constitution, drafted by the viceroy of the islands, Count Mocenigo, and then refined in St. Petersburg by a German jurist from Latvia, Baron Gustav Rosenkampf. It created an Ionian senate of 17 members holding executive power and initiating laws, a chamber of representatives that would vote on those laws, and a college of three censors supervising respect for (and application of) this constitution. These three bodies were elected by peer assemblies, including not only the hereditary landed aristocracy but also the upper bourgeoisie and senior figures in commerce, industry, arts, and sciences. This achievement is what must have led the tsar later to tell Napoleon that in this region he had helped to create “a qualified constitutional nobility” while preserving the hereditary aristocracy.22
At the same time French intrigues in the Balkans caused intense discussions in the emperor’s entourage.23 Alexander Vorontsov took a position in a report presented in November 1803: the French advances in Italy and the Balkans were direct threats to Russian interests because they aimed in time to dismember the Ottoman Empire for France’s benefit.24 Czartoryski’s analysis was subtler: he was not so vehemently alarmed about the danger from France but suggested a rapprochement with England with a view to an alliance.25 Thus, Russia began envisaging a war against France in the winter of 1803–1804. In March 1804 Czartoryski confirmed in writing to Vorontsov that Alexander I was ready to enter into a struggle against Napoleon as soon as circumstances required it, while calling for consultations with England on the Balkan issues and still hoping to avoid war.26
In this tense context the kidnapping of the Duke d’Enghien in March 1804 in Baden, a German territory particularly dear to the tsar’s family (the empress was born Louisa of Baden), and then his summary execution back in France caused grief and anger at the Russian court as soon as it was learned. For the monarch and those around him, it was an intolerable provocation. In a dispatch to his sovereign in April, Joseph de Maistre wrote:
Indignation is at its height. The good empresses cried over it. Grand Duke [Constantine] is furious and his Imperial Majesty no less deeply affected. The French legation is no longer received or spoken to. […] The emperor is in mourning and notice of a seven-day mourning has been sent to the whole diplomatic corps. Today there is a service in the Catholic Church. […] I have never seen such emphatic public opinion.27
For Alexander, French violation of the neutrality of Baden and its contempt for international law demonstrated, if there was still need, how dangerous Bonaparte’s power was, and he took the incident as a personal affront that convinced him of the need to oppose the First Consul, whatever the cost. On April 17 a meeting of the council of state gathered around the tsar:28 all its members plus the Count of Morkov, General Budberg, and Prince Czartoryski (de facto minister of foreign affairs since Vorontsov had retired for health reasons). At seven p.m. Czartoryski opened the meeting with a text he had prepared overnight at the tsar’s request:29
His Imperial Majesty, indignant over an infraction as glaring as possible against what the equity and law of nations can prescribe as most obligatory, feels repugnance at keeping relations any longer with a government that knows neither brake nor duty of any kind, and which, stained by an atrocious assassination, can now be regarded only as a brigands’ lair.30
Alexander wanted to break off diplomatic relations with France: Russia would now quit the uncomfortable position of mediator it had occupied until now and from which it had gained nothing: England continued to occupy Malta, Bonaparte had refused any compensation to the king of Piedmont Sardinia, and France had not ceased growing in power and influence in the Balkans, the Near East, Italy, and Germany. The majority of those present at the council, including Kochubey and Czartoryski, spoke in a single voice and encouraged the sovereign to make a political alliance against France with England, Austria, and Prussia. But a few called for moderation, like Rumyantsev (minister of commerce) and Zavadovski (education); they considered that Russia should not get mixed up in German affairs and that the death of the duke, as reprehensible as it was, did not contravene Russian interests.31 These different viewpoints led Alexander to a more nuanced position: he gave up the idea of breaking off diplomatic relations and upon this advice simply marked his discontent publicly. He also sent to the Imperial Diet a solemn protest against the violation of Baden territory, while the tone of letters exchanged between Russian and French diplomats grew increasingly sharp. By the intermediary of his representative in Paris, d’Oubril, Alexander demanded that the freedom and security of Germany be assured and again demanded the evacuation of the kingdom of Naples and compensation for the kingdom of Piedmont Sardinia. At the same time the tsar opened negotiations with Emperor Franz of Austria; in April 1804 the latter declared himself ready to supply an army of 200,000 men in case of conflict with Napoleon, but Alexander preferred a defensive alliance. He still hoped to avoid war, although the international situation was deteriorating constantly. Not only were the Russian demands not accepted by French diplomats, but a stinging note sent on May 16, 1804, by Talleyrand (French minister of foreign relations) to d’Oubril added still more dissension. After stressing that “the First Consul does not meddle in parties or opinions that might divide Russia, therefore His Majesty the Emperor has no right to meddle in parties and opinions that might divide France,” Talleyrand perfidiously remarked that “the complaint that Russia raises today leads to wondering whether, when England was contemplating the assassination of Paul I, if it had been known that the authors of plots were found a league from the border, someone would not have been in a hurry to have them seized.”32 His provocative sally was to make the tsar deeply and lastingly resentful of both Talleyrand and Napoleon. Then d’Oubril g
ot the order to leave Paris with all the staff of the Russian legation, and General Hédouville, who had become persona non grata at the Russian court, went back to France at Napoleon’s request. Soon the only person left in St. Petersburg was a simple chargé d’affaires, Rayneval, to deal with current issues.
Before his departure d’Oubril tried again to avoid war by sending an ultimatum to Talleyrand on July 21. But while on Napoleon’s order Talleyrand was procrastinating, France was making military preparations. The French minister only sent his “negative” response to d’Oubril on August 28; at the same time he expressed his consummate contempt for Russian diplomats, as attested by a note to French representatives abroad on August 2:
There is perhaps no court as devoid of able men as that of Russia. M. de Morkov is an eagle there. The Vorontsovs are well-known for being all English. […] They are no longer Russians; for a long time this British faction has sought to sell the national interests of Russia to the cabinet in London.33
D’Oubril left his post in Paris in August 1804, but Russia did not immediately embark on a war with France. The tsar was now convinced that Russia could no longer stand apart from European issues and should therefore oppose Napoleon’s ambitions. For him it was crucial to make a military entente against the French emperor, but this alliance had to be given an ideological dimension, by pledging to an ambitious plan for Europe. This was the source of the diplomatic mission on which he sent Novosiltsev in September 1804, when Rayneval in turn left St. Petersburg.
Commitment against Napoleon
In 1803, when he was still only a personal advisor for diplomatic affairs, Prince Adam Czartoryski (at the tsar’s request) wrote with the aid of his Italian secretary, the former abbot Piatoli,34 a long Memorandum on the political system that Russia ought to follow, which would be completed in 1804 by an Article for the arrangement of affairs in Europe after a successful war.35
Calling on Russia to conduct a policy that was “generous and great” for “the general good of nations,” Czartoryski first proposed ending the Napoleonic expansionism judged to be intolerable and doing so by committing Russia to a military alliance with England. However, once the enemy was defeated, Russia should not remain there but consolidate this alliance by setting up a European system based on new foundations. Under the leadership of Russia and England, this new system should make peace in Europe its prime goal and should seek to manage international relations by resorting to reasoned arguments and by refusing the “state of nature”36 that currently dominated. For Czartoryski it was a matter of transferring onto the international scale the Enlightenment values of reason, openness, and tolerance.
This new system would be inscribed—the second important idea in the memorandum—in a European space that Czartoryski suggested be modeled on two key principles: liberalism and (an unprecedented) respect for nationalities. Behind this adherence to the principle of nationalities, perceived as a prime factor in the reconstructed system, lay no doubt the patriotic sentiment of a Polish prince in the face of the painful disappearance of his country over three successive divisions at the end of the eighteenth century. But we should also detect the influence of some philosophers, including Herder. Like him, Czartoryski saw nations as organic groups “with their own ways of seeing and feeling”37 that should under no circumstance suffer from foreign domination, which is “contrary to the balance of things.”38
These two principles led to defining the European system as an ensemble of liberal states, organized into republics or constitutional monarchies that respected the principle of nationality. From this perspective states could take the form of either nation-states (the case of France but also Switzerland or ideally Poland) or else federal states (he envisaged the creation of federations in northern Italy and in Germany). Finally Czartoryski mentioned the case of the Ottoman Empire: if it crumbled, then distinct states should be fostered but united in a federation “on which Russia might have a decisive and legal influence by means of the title of emperor or else ‘protector of the Slavs and of the Orient’ that would be given to His Imperial Majesty.”39
These texts—and the master idea that underlay them of establishing a Russian-British alliance—caught the tsar’s interest. When in August 1804 the fall of the British minister Addington led to Pitt’s becoming prime minister, it seemed a propitious occasion for a rapprochement, and Alexander took the decision to send to London a secret emissary, his personal friend Count Novosiltsev. Unknown to Simon Vorontsov, his ambassador in post whom he suspected of being blinded by his Anglophilia, the tsar gave Novosiltsev the mission of negotiating secretly with the new prime minister toward a rapprochement that was not just limited to anti-Napoleonic tactics but might evolve toward an ambitious program to reconstruct Europe. To explain his objectives, Alexander gave Novosiltsev his Secret Instructions40 on the eve of his departure (September 11, 1804 [O.S.]).
•••
From the start—and this is crucial—the tsar was making his project part of a major ideological struggle that was to be won against Napoleon. For him, Napoleonic propaganda had cleverly manipulated for its own benefit certain principles and ideas that now had to be reappropriated. Thus Alexander asserted:
The most powerful weapon the French have used until the present and with which they still threaten all countries, is the universal opinion they have been able to spread that their cause is that of liberty and the prosperity of peoples. It would be shameful for humanity if such a fine cause had to be considered as specific to a government that in no way merits being its defender. It would be dangerous for all states to leave any longer to the French the marked advantage of keeping up this appearance. The good of humanity, the true interest of legal authorities, and the success of an enterprise that the two powers41 would propose must require that they tear from the French this formidable weapon, appropriate it, and use it against them.42
The stakes being established, the tsar said he was favorable to an alliance between Britain and Russia that might have “a really useful and benevolent goal,”43 and in his Instructions he details his conception.
On the political level he begins by mentioning the cases of countries subject to French tutelage and says he is favorable to the reestablishment of the king of Sardinia on this throne—provided that Russia and England jointly agree to exhort the king to “give his people a free and wise constitution”; he wants to guarantee the existence and political organization of Switzerland and Holland, stressing that this should be done out of respect for the national will.44
The French case then inspires a very long development: first, it would be unthinkable to reestablish in France any divine-right monarchy:
Finding it repugnant to make humanity go backward, I would like for the two governments to agree between them that, far from claiming to re-establish, in a country that must be freed from the yoke of Bonaparte, some other abuses and a state of things that minds that have tasted forms of independence could not bear, we will on the contrary try to assure them of freedom founded on veritable bases.45
This point shows Alexander’s political sense. For him, neither the memory of the French Revolution nor what Napoleon had achieved could be obscured. But his advocacy—surprising in someone who had inherited four years before an autocratic regime of divine right—does not derive from simple opportunism. For a disciple of Laharpe, if it was a matter of taking account of the heritage of the French Revolution and of beating Napoleon on his own ideological ground, then it mattered even more to remodel the European continent according to some principles to which he was attached.
Underlining that the coalition powers “desire nothing other than liberating France from the despotism under which it is groaning and giving her free choice of the government she wants to have,”46 he declared himself in favor of the institution in France of a constitutional monarchy—if that was the wish of the French.47 He then enlarged his statements to other European countries, launching into a veritable plea in favor of regimes that respected �
�the sacred rights of humanity,” telling Novosiltsev:
This is neither the place nor the moment to trace the various forms of government that might be established in these various countries. I leave you complete latitude to deal with the English minister on this important objective. The principles no doubt should be the same everywhere, and above all [we] must agree on this point. Everywhere they should be based on the sacred rights of humanity, producing the order that is its necessary consequence; everywhere the same spirit of wisdom and benevolence should guide institutions. But the application of the same principles might vary from place to place, and the two powers, in order to agree on this, will find the means to procure just, impartial, and detailed facts about each place—which should be trustworthy.48
This dense passage reflects Alexander’s deep attachment to Enlightenment ideas and illustrates his desire to distinguish himself from Napoleonic practices. By proposing to associate people with the choice of their government, he rejects the Napoleonic method that imposed his model by force of arms. One might naturally object that at the very moment when the tsar was making himself the herald of constitutional and liberal ideas, he remained at the head of an empire that he governed as an autocrat—and that he had refused to grant the Charter to the Russian People. But in his eyes this apparent contradiction was not actually a clash: Russia was simply not yet mature enough for a representative and liberal regime.
On a more geopolitical level the Secret Instructions were even more innovative: they advanced the concept of a European federation.49 In Alexander’s conception it should be built upon respect for human rights and on principles formalized in a “treaty that would become the basis for reciprocal relations of European states.” Thus he wrote in lyrical style:
Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon Page 20