American Phoenix

by Jane Cook

  The immediate morrow, the next day, brought more conflict and raised the stakes. Adams learned that once again the Russian government had denied Lauriston’s latest request for a passport to leave. He had applied three times. Likewise Kurakin had applied three times in France to return to Russia. The French government gave passports to everyone in Kurakin’s family except the prince himself. Both diplomats were being held hostage, tormented exiles to countries that had turned from ally to enemy.

  Lauriston may have believed that Alexander let the dogs of war loose, but it was Napoleon who crossed the Rubicon. Just as Caesar had made his decision and crossed the Rubicon River in Italy centuries earlier, so Napoleon invaded Russia by crossing a river, the Memel, and invading Russia. Also called the Neman, the Memel separated Russia from Prussia in what is present-day Lithuania. Some historians mark the day as “June 22, 1812.” Others say “June 23,” and still others note “June 24, 1812” as the day of Napoleon’s Rubicon into Russia. The sheer size of his force and the time it would take for such a large army to cross the Neman make the discrepancies in dates understandable.

  Napoleon’s Grande Armée of 600,000 was the largest allied military force in history to date. More than 400,000 soldiers advanced in three armies while 200,000 initially stayed behind in Prussia as reserves. Half were French. The rest were Germans, Austrians, Prussians, Poles, Italians, and others. Napoleon’s marriage to an Austrian princess required Austria to be an ally.

  His fast-paced plan was designed to split the Russian front line into two and encircle them. He expected to achieve victory without going any farther than fifty miles. Surely a force of more than half a million soldiers against Russia’s forces of fewer than two hundred thousand would intimidate Alexander into capitulation. So Napoleon thought.

  Adams first heard the news of the invasion on June 28, when the secretary of the French embassy called on him to let him know he was leaving Russia, though Lauriston remained passport-less. Another sign that the hostilities had begun was a change at the palace. The empress and the empress mother usually spent their summers at palaces in the countryside. They had returned to the Winter Palace, as was the custom during wartime.

  Two days later the St. Petersburg Gazette provided more information. Alexander responded to the invasion by issuing a resolution. No matter that he was outnumbered. He had time, space, and most important, climate on his side. He declared that he would not make peace as long as the enemy remained under arms on his turf—hardly the response Napoleon wanted.

  47

  Heaven

  NOT ONLY COULD ADAMS HAVE USED A TELEPHONE, BUT HE AND the rest of America and England desperately could have used the nonexistent television in the summer of 1812. Had the technology existed, it just might have prevented war.

  “We have lived in eventful times, but in the course of my life I have no recollection of a moment so full of portent as the present,” John wrote ominously to his father the day after he learned of Napoleon’s invasion.

  Weighing on him more than Bonaparte was shocking news from England. Through recently arrived British newspapers, which were increasingly warlike and threatening against America, he learned of the prime minister’s assassination.

  “The most powerful patron and supporter of the Orders in Council, Mr. Perceval . . . was murdered within the walls of the House of Commons on the 11th of last month by an individual of [a] disordered mind.”

  The prime minister, the man in England who most supported the Orders in Council, was now dead. Though tragic, this news gave John a glimmer of hope that a new prime minister might revoke the British Orders in Council, which would avoid war. How he longed to take a walk with his father in the gardens of Peacefield and discuss the possibility.

  His pen was his only substitute: “I had flattered myself when the survivors of the Perceval administration resigned, that their successors would immediately remove the great stumbling block, the Orders in Council, and that we should be saved thereby from the impending war.”

  But there was a problem. The members of Parliament were quibbling among themselves. This internal battle delayed the out-of-power party’s ability to change the troublesome policy. The House of Commons asked the prince regent to form a new administration, with a friendly hint on how it was to be formed. The Perceval opposition began mining and countermining to launch one of their own into power to overthrow the Orders in Council.

  “The Perceval policy appears likely to maintain its ascendancy yet a little longer, long enough I fear to produce that catastrophe from which we have so long endeavored to preserve ourselves, but in which it seems the will of Heaven that we should be involved.”

  All he could do was wait for letters from home, newspapers from England, or word from the Russian front. With France blockading the Baltic and invading Russia, the postal system was mostly shut down.

  “I am 45 years old,” John recorded in his diary on his birthday, July 11, 1812. “Two thirds of a long life are past, and I have done nothing to distinguish it by usefulness to my country or to mankind. I have always lived with, I hope, a suitable sense of my duties in society, and with a sincere desire to perform them.”

  He blamed laziness for his inability to do anything worthwhile for his country. How wrong he was.

  Two days earlier, on July 9, John called upon Count Lauriston at his new quarters, a hotel. Because the Russian government no longer recognized France as an ally, Lauriston was no longer an ambassador. They evicted him from the French embassy, the mansion owned by Alexander.

  Lauriston longed to hear from the front. He applied for a passport again and wanted to know the truth. Was he a “hostage or a prisoner?” No one knew. St. Petersburg’s officials had not received directions from Alexander about Lauriston. They did not know what to do with him, whether to send him home or to keep him there.

  The Frenchman complained that peddlers had begun selling fusees, or illuminations, on St. Petersburg’s streets. The masses needed to be ready to light the skies for a victory celebration more widespread than the comet.

  “Ah,” said Lauriston. “They prepare for illumination beforehand. I know they will illuminate; let the event be what it will. But I shall look, the next day after, upon the map to see where the headquarters are.”

  The next day Lauriston’s fate was clear. He and the remaining members of the French legation received passports. The outgoing envoys were ordered to stay at Oranienbaum, a palace west of St. Petersburg. From there they could stage their departure at the palace’s sea channel on boats provided by the Russian government.

  Lauriston wanted to leave by land, but the Russians wisely denied his request. Because he was a French officer, they couldn’t afford for him to travel through the very frontier where they had placed soldiers. They couldn’t take the risk that he would gather intelligence and use it against them. The diplomats from France, Bavaria, and Westphalia were required to leave by water for their voyage to Memel, where Napoleon had crossed into Russia.

  In contrast the Prussians, Austrians, and Spanish received passports allowing them to return home by land. The Russian officials told them exactly where they could go and required them to ride in government carriages. By giving them better treatment than the French, Russia was sending a signal. Alexander wanted to court these nations as allies and perhaps turn them against Napoleon.

  Despite John’s birthday feelings of inferiority and lack of contribution to his country, evidence of his success on behalf of America and his revered status by his colleagues began arriving on his doorstep. Dozens of crates came to his residence. He received numerous wooden chests holding the archives and papers of the French embassy as well as the Dutch, Bavarian, Würtemberg, and Westphalian legations. He was one of the few diplomats left, and his colleagues trusted him so much that they left their nation’s paperwork with him. They could have sent their papers to a bank, but they chose Adams instead. If he left, they asked him to deliver the crates to the court banker, Mr. Krehmer.

/>   John wished he could join the departing diplomats. Yet he could not risk his daughter’s life by putting her on a boat or subjecting her to an extensive land voyage somewhere in Europe. She was too fragile. He had seen her body writhe unexpectedly and uncontrollably. The sight was heart wrenching. Just as her birth had prevented them from leaving Russia the previous year, so her illness and war now chained them there. As long as the French did not directly threaten Moscow or St. Petersburg, they would stay.

  While the diplomats fled, good news arrived from England. This time, Adams chose his mother to share the optimistic report. “On the 16th of June, the death blow was given in the British House of Commons to the political pestilence, which has been raging nearly five years under the denomination of the Orders in Council,” he wrote with hope on July 13.

  He called the revocation an exhortation. Finally Parliament had listened to the cries of its own starving people and revoked the Orders in Council. As jubilant as he was over the news, one serious fear plagued him: “My principal anxiety, therefore, now is for what may have been done in America.”

  He knew that the US government had been preparing for war. Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin proposed doubling the tariff on certain imports while increasing license fees and taxes on liquor, salt, sugar, and carriages. Gallatin also sought a loan of $10 million. With much debate and reluctance, Congress passed these tax increases and expanded government powers in case of war against a European nation. This was the strongest proof that they were preparing for battle. John’s worst fear was that Congress and the president had declared war before they learned of Perceval’s murder and the revocation of the Orders in Council, which along with impressment was the root cause of the conflict between the United States and Britain.

  “I am uneasy lest in the moment of hurry to show the seriousness of our intention to vindicate our right [to free trade] we may have lost the benefit of their tardy repentance, and put the weapon of defense from our own hands into theirs.”

  “My coachman this morning was taken for a soldier. In the evening he was released again upon payment of 25 rubles by his master,” Adams recorded in his diary.

  Because St. Petersburg was only a three-day journey from the war front, the city quickly moved into a military mind-set. Calls continued for money, men, and grain. The government required the nobility to give up one peasant for every ten they owned. These restrictions came faster than the comet-sprung spring floods. Alexander issued strict orders forbidding movement of foreigners, particularly the French. These declarations sparked confusion, which resulted in the arrest of Adams’s coachman.

  Cables were as absent from the ocean floor as satellites from the sky in 1812. In a world where carriages, boats, and horseback riders were the only channels of communication, no one could have imagined the instantaneous nature of telegraphs or television. Word from the war front came sporadically. What did come smacked of propaganda. Because the Russian government shut down its postal service, the officials could more easily control the messages that did arrive.

  “The official news from the armies is all favorable, and according to the hand-bills, they have had nothing but a series of successes from the first day of the campaign,” reported John.

  Official orders arrived in St. Petersburg. This time the police directed all inhabitants to be ready to post lanterns and other victorious illuminations on their houses when Alexander returned. He was expected any day.

  “I walked before breakfast in the Summer Gardens, and in turning around the boulevard, I perceived the imperial flag flying over the palace, which first gave me notice of the emperor’s return,” John observed on August 3.

  The sight brought relief but not good news. The czar and his army had been completely separated from the second army commanded by a Russian prince. Worse, they were retreating. Rather than engage Napoleon’s army, they chose the scorched earth policy of burning land—along with the precious commodities of grass and grain—as they traveled. The Russians failed to push back the French army at the borders. Napoleon was inching closer to Moscow.

  John received additional information about America three days later, on August 6. Soon newspaper accounts confirmed the news. After regaining his composure, he picked up his pen and wrote his mother a letter on August 10.

  “I then flattered myself that the revocation of the British Orders in Council, of which I had just been informed, would be known in the United States in season to prevent the war, which I knew would otherwise be unavoidable,” he began.

  Indeed he had ardently wished that the news of Perceval’s assassination had reached Washington before Congress declared war.

  “In this hope I have been disappointed.” An American, who had recently arrived in St. Petersburg, brought Adams a New York newspaper that included President Madison’s war proclamation. The newspaper’s date was June 22. Madison’s proclamation chronicled the correspondence between Secretary Monroe and British Minister Foster. Their failed negotiations left the president with no option but to declare war.

  “After reading Mr. Foster’s letter to Mr. Monroe of 30 May, I cannot indeed perceive any other course which was left to the American government without self degradation to pursue than that which they did adopt,” he wrote.

  Unaware of Parliament’s June 16 decision to revoke the Orders in Council, the House and Senate approved the war declaration and Madison signed it on June 18. Though the policy was extinguished, war was ignited nonetheless. Such was the irony that only instant communication could have prevented.

  “I lament the declaration of war as an event which in the actual state of things when it passed was altogether unnecessary.”

  The votes were seventy-nine in favor to forty-nine opposed in the House of Representatives, and nineteen to thirteen in the US Senate. Two senators were absent. War had come to America for the second time in its infant history.

  Adams concluded that there was “no alternative left but war or the abandonment of our right as an independent nation.”

  The United States now faced the giant that it had defeated thirty years earlier to gain its independence. Failure to stop the redcoats again could result in re-enslavement to Britain. King George III was mad, but not dead. America could lose its sovereignty. Liberty was thrown upon the chance of events.

  “How far the policy of our government will be affected by the revocation of the Orders in Council when they learn that it preceded the declaration of war, I can hardly foresee,” Adams moaned. “My own most fervent wishes and prayers are that peace may be restored before any further irritating and aggravating hostilities shall have been committed on either side.”

  How he longed for a touch of heaven to prevent his country—and his child—from experiencing hell on earth.

  In early September John learned of news from the front. After a severe four-day battle, the Russians continued their scorched earth policy. They set fire to the town of Smolensk, which was on the road to Moscow from the western border, and were continuing their retreat. Losses for the French were greater than for the Russians.

  Meanwhile baby Louisa was getting worse. Because she was cutting several teeth at once, Louisa decided to wean her from breast milk. The infant’s convulsions continued, and she developed dysentery. Her health was as precarious as ever.

  On September 6, Adams received an unexpected summons. A woman named Madame de Staël sent him an urgent note requesting him to meet her at the Hôtel de l’Europe. When he arrived at the hotel, standing in front of him was an Englishman named Lord Cathcart. He was no ordinary Brit but an envoy. Cathcart had recently arrived in St. Petersburg to present his credentials as the British ambassador to Russia.

  “I had not expected that in a state of declared war between Great Britain and the United States, he would have sent to us; but as he did, I concluded to return the civility in the usual form.”

  Adams was shocked that Cathcart wanted to meet him. The circumstances were odd indeed. John had enjoyed his status as t
he father of diplomacy in St. Petersburg. Although he was one of the few diplomats left, at least the others who remained were on friendly terms with America. Now standing before him was an official diplomat from a government at war with the United States.

  For once John was able to take advantage of the slow postal system. His knowledge about the war with England had come only through newspapers. He had not received official notification or new instructions from his government, which allowed him to more easily converse with Cathcart. The man seemed cordial enough, a proper Englishman.

  “He professed to have a particular attachment to America, with which he felt a strong personal relation (alluding, I suppose, to his having married an American lady) and to cherish a wish that the political differences between that country and England might yet be amicably settled.”

  “I assured him that my own sentiments in this respect altogether coincided with his. I believed peace and friendship to be easily attainable between them, and highly important to the best interests of both.”

  So went the diplomatic posturing.

  Meanwhile baby Louisa’s condition worsened. They took her to the country for several days. When the fresh air did not help, they returned to the city. Adams recorded on September 11 that Dr. Gibbs, a surgeon, came to lance one of the seven teeth cutting through the baby’s gums. The idea of lancing was to speed the teeth-cutting process and relieve the patient of extended pain. “But the violence of her illness increases,” John wrote.

  Having just returned from the war front, Count Romanzoff sent Adams an invitation to dine, but he declined because of the rapidly declining health of his child. He was very worried.

  “My dear child had a quiet and composed night, but early this morning was seized again with violent convulsions, which continued the whole day, and announce her approaching dissolution,” he gravely wrote on September 12.