by Jane Cook
The count replied with his own biblical allusion: “There had once been a confusion of tongues, and now . . . was the time for confusion of mind.”
In a separate private meeting about this time, Romanzoff and John also discussed the latest news from France, which was as intriguing as a novel. With Bonaparte being pursued, King Louis XVIII had issued a proclamation to the people of France. He was ready to take his country back. To Adams, the idea of France returning to a monarchy “reminded me of the resurrection of dry bones in the prophet of Ezekiel.”
The dry bones of France’s royal family were ready to be resurrected in place of Napoleon. Romanzoff agreed that sooner or later the Bourbons would reclaim France: “It was certain that never since the commencement of the French Revolution had there been so many obstacles removed to the return of the Bourbons as there was at present.”
Romanzoff did not believe that the French emperor’s overthrow would instantly bring peace to Europe. Adams agreed: “Napoleon might be considered as the Don Quixote of monarchy.”
Bonaparte had overthrown many monarchs. Through the pretense of liberty and the backing of a puppet constitution, he had become a monarch behind the mask of emperor. People either loved or hated him. Napoleon was on the run but not quite ready to surrender. The Cossacks thought his political and military careers were near death, but his bones weren’t quite dry.
Confusing reports continued to come from the ever-changing center of battle. Adams was beckoned to another Te Deum at the Winter Palace on May 13. This service celebrated a victory of Russian troops over the French army near Lutzen, which is twelve miles from Leipzig in Prussia, or present-day Germany.
“We were told that the Emperor Alexander actually commanded—was on the field, and twice rallied his troops—but he chose to have the Te Deum at the chapel and not at the Kazan church to avoid appearance of ostentation.”
John was surprised that the palace called for a Te Deum when so few details were known. Early reports suggested that fifteen thousand Frenchmen were killed and sixteen cannon taken. Absent was information about Russian losses. More confusing details came forward days after the Te Deum. Some reports suggested that more than twenty-five thousand Frenchmen were slain and thirty-six cannon were captured. The Russians and Prussians were in full pursuit of the fugitives. Within a week Mr. Harris heard that the battle was not nearly as decisive. The outcome was merely the Russian possession of the battlefield. By the end of May, the news was worse. The Russians and the Prussians were retreating, while the French were threatening Berlin.
“The situation of things is critical in the highest degree,” John wrote in his diary.
In the midst of all this, John learned that the Hornet, an eighteen-gun US sloop of war, had defeated the eighteen-gun Royal Navy brig Peacock on February 24, 1813. America’s miracles at sea remained a treasure chest of hope.
The news from Europe continued in a confusing clash of couriers. William Smith first heard the most disastrous report on June 6 that a three-day battle resulted in a total defeat of the Russian and Prussian armies. The French were said to be in possession of Hamburg. A few days later another report repudiated it and gave the truth. The combined armies were not defeated but had merely retreated to distract the French.
“Napoleon and his army are again in the most imminent danger of having their retreat cut off. In these last battles he lost nearly double the number of men that the combined army did, and prisoners and cannon—whereas they lost none.”
They also heard that Napoleon sent Caulaincourt to Alexander’s headquarters, but the czar refused to see him.
Soon fresh news proved better than any of the previous reports. The Austrians had declared war against Napoleon and turned on the man who had married their princess. The alliance sent the French Grande Armée retreating to Dresden. The allies were ready to chase the French back to Paris. If they succeeded, King Louis XVIII might just reclaim France. Dry bones would indeed be resurrected.
John also received hope for his resurrection. The prospect of breaking up his establishment in St. Petersburg might soon become a reality. He called on Romanzoff on June 15 to give him the news. The chancellor already knew of John’s prospects for departing. His broad grin broke the long lines of his face.
“He then showed me a copy of Monroe’s answer to the proposals.”
Secretary of State Monroe accepted the mediation “in very handsome terms” and promised to send US negotiators to St. Petersburg. The count “was gratified that this measure had been so received by the United States.”
“The report of Messrs Gallatin and Bayard being destined to come out as commissioners—of the accuracy of which I had my doubts,” Adams told the count.
According to newspapers, US Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, a Republican, and US Senator James Bayard, a Federalist, were on a ship bound for St. Petersburg. Adams doubted they were coming for the mediation: “I presumed that a commission would be appointed, but I questioned whether they would be the men. Mr. Gallatin could not easily be spared, and he and Mr. Bayard were so opposed to each other and our politics that I thought it doubtful whether they would be joined in one commission.”
Adams knew both of them. No pair could have been more opposite had Madison appointed former presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to the same team. Romanzoff’s reply, however, showed his savvy insight into a republic.
The count said, “In a government like [y]ours that might be the very reason for joining them, so that the great opposing interests might all be represented.”
What Adams did not say in that moment was his personal political calculation. He suspected that one of the two men would replace him as minister to Russia and that the other would be a special envoy to the mediation.
Months earlier, when he wrote Monroe asking for a recall, he had suggested that the military vessel bringing his replacement should take him and his family home. He had not forgotten the agony of traveling on the merchant ship Horace instead of a military frigate or the embarrassment of traveling without a passport. He took great pains to prevent a repeat homeward-bound voyage.
One question remained. Had England accepted the mediation as well? Not yet. But neither were the British tattooing their sailors as Sir Francis suggested.
The count “did not think the mediation would be directly refused by the British government. It would cause some embarrassment to the ministry.”
Negotiating for peace would have been one of the most honorable exits to Adams’s “honorable exile.” No matter. At least the prospect of leaving St. Petersburg was within sight. Though he did not have an honorable position waiting for him at home, his dry bones might be resurrected soon—so he thought.
PART 3
Journey Resurrected
EN ROUTE TO PARIS, FEBRUARY 1815
PORT DE MONTEBELLO, PARIS, PAR VICTOR-JEAN NICOLLE (1754–1826).
THIS IMAGE IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN BECAUSE ITS COPYRIGHT HAS EXPIRED. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
52
Escape
DESPITE HER PAST FEELINGS, LOUISA CATHERINE JOHNSON ADAMS was certain about one fact as she heard the river ice crack that late afternoon in February 1815. She did not want to die as her carriage broke through the frozen Vistula River near Poland. More than that, she absolutely did not want to lose Charles.
“It required a violent effort in the horses to prevent the coach from upsetting on the bank,” she recorded of the near-death encounter.
Although the ice gave way, her drivers’ skill and the horses’ determination saved Louisa, seven-year-old Charles, Madame Babet, and her servants from icy deaths. “We got over and reached the other side of the river in safety.”
Shaken but relieved, they resumed their journey through this corner of Poland. Though the villages they passed were among the most filthy and beggarly that Louisa had ever seen, she was not fearful but grateful to be alive and en route toward Paris. She would do anything to feel the comfort of her husband’s embrace on
ce again. Thankfully they traveled without incident or delay until reaching Poland’s border with Prussia.
“Here I had to wait three hours for horses, and the people were so much inclined to be impudent.”
Such rudeness was somewhat surprising. After all, the Prussians had abandoned the French army to join Alexander, his Cossacks, the Austrians, and the Swedes in pursuit of Napoleon. After winning the Battle of Nations at Leipzig in October 1813, the allies had pushed the French emperor and his regrouped army five hundred miles back to his Parisian power center. When Alexander marched triumphantly into Paris in March 1814, Bonaparte abdicated. King Louis XVIII reclaimed the throne for the Bourbon family. Napoleon went into exile at the Tuscan island of Elba in April 1814.
The sight of the Russian insignia on Louisa’s carriage window alarmed the Prussian border officer in spite of his country’s alliance with the czar.
“I was obliged to produce my letter and to inform the master of the house, that I should write immediately to the [Russian] minister of the interior, and complain of his conduct,” Louisa later wrote. Her threats to wield influence with Alexander’s government worked.
“The man appeared to be much alarmed, made a great many apologies, and said the horses should be ready immediately.”
There was a catch, of course. She would have to take two extra horses, six instead of four.
“He thought the carriage very heavy—This is an exaction to which travelers were constantly exposed, and to pay the tax was an absolute necessity if you wished to avoid delay.”
What would John have done in that moment? Could he have convinced the border guard that they needed only four horses? Was the agent taking advantage of her because she was a woman traveling without a male protector? She expected to encounter such hardships on this journey, but matters of business and monetary transactions unraveled her insecurity more than other challenges.
“I cannot rely [at] all on my own judgment more especially as I have never before been obliged to rely on myself,” she had complained with emphasis to John in a letter the previous summer.
She felt the same way now. Why did she have to make such a difficult journey alone? Everyone had abandoned her—her husband, their aides, her now married sister, and her chambermaid, Martha.
This was hardly the way she imagined escaping her so-called exile from Russia. So much in the past year had been beyond her control. Ever since John left her and Charles in April 1814—the same month that Napoleon went into exile—to travel to Göteborg, Sweden, he had promised to return to St. Petersburg as quickly as possible. During his absence, she'd tried to manage their finances by renting the cheapest place she could find. The apartment was too small, but she had done her best.
“Although I do everything in my power to lessen the expense, I am sure you will think me imprudent in the management of the house,” she worriedly wrote to John.
Louisa faced what everyone in St. Petersburg confronted: post-Napoleonic war inflation. Horses were three times more expensive. Dresses for formal events now cost sixteen hundred rubles, more than twice the amount she had paid years earlier when they arrived in St. Petersburg.
Much had changed since then. Too much.
The year 1813 did not immediately lead to John’s escape from exile as he originally told Romanzoff in June when he thought Madison was sending someone to replace him. Instead John waited for months in anticipation that Alexander’s offer to mediate a peace treaty between the United States and Britain would soon take place in St. Petersburg.
Madison initially responded by sending a two-man delegation to Russia. When Treasury Secretary Gallatin and Senator Bayard arrived in St. Petersburg in July 1813, John expected that one of them would replace him and that he, Louisa, Charles, Kitty, William, and Martha would return home on the same ship that brought Gallatin, Bayard, their families, and the son of Dolley Madison to Russia. He was wrong. Far from recalling him, President Madison instead named Adams along with Gallatin and Bayard as US negotiators for the mediation. He was wrong, too, about Gallatin’s usefulness to Madison at home. Gallatin had grown weary of the job of treasury secretary, especially when former minister to France John Armstrong became war secretary, an appointment Gallatin opposed. Because he was a naturalized American born in Sweden, Gallatin agreed with the president that his knowledge of Europe would make him useful abroad.
Madison also gave John the prestigious job of negotiating a separate trade agreement with Russia. They waited in St. Petersburg for word on whether the British would also accept the czar’s mediation and send delegates. For six months they knocked on Romanzoff’s door for an answer. The chancellor could give no official word. Then they discovered through informal channels that the British government had scoffed at Alexander’s offer but would not officially refuse it. Arrogantly ignoring the mediation option and insulting Alexander, the British foreign minister instead wrote Secretary Monroe and offered to negotiate directly with the United States but demanded that the talks take place on European soil. Nonetheless Russia’s pressure had pushed England to the peace table, which was a triumph and a result of John’s positive influence on Alexander and Romanzoff.
Madison accepted and appointed John along with Gallatin, Bayard, and two other distinguished Americans to treat for peace in hopes of ending the 1812 war with Britain. John left St. Petersburg, the city of his so-called exile, on April 28, 1814.
“With this prospect of a general peace in Europe I commenced my journey to contribute, if possible, to the restoration of peace to my own country.”
He traveled first to Göteborg, Sweden. He waited there for weeks, only to learn that the British government had changed the location and decided to send its representatives instead to Ghent, a city in the newly formed province of Flanders, also known as Belgium.
John and the Americans arrived in Ghent in July 1814, much sooner than their English counterparts, which gave Adams plenty of time to rest, recreate, and write. His correspondence to Louisa was as comforting as it was lengthy, full of flourishes and details. He chronicled what delighted him about art, literature, politics, and other subjects. One of his most poetic lines came after studying some paintings. “Upon the canvas I never look but for two things: beauty for the eye, and sentiment for the soul.”
She hoped he still looked at her the same way, but the longer their separation continued, the more her doubts grew. Their need for reunion with their children expanded into a need for reunion with each other.
Nevertheless, the letter he wrote to her on August 9, 1814, gave her the greatest hope yet of his imminent return: “As I have written [to the secretary of state] to ask again to be recalled from the Russian mission, we shall probably be there at all events until next spring.”
The joy of finally being reunited with George and John finally seemed on the horizon. The possibility of reunion with him was even closer.
“At present I do not think that the negotiation will be of long continuance,” he also wrote.
Although the British commissioners proclaimed to have “liberal and highly pacific” intentions at their first meeting with the US delegates on August 9, 1814, Adams doubted their seriousness about negotiating peace. He freely gave Louisa his reasons.
Over several weeks newspaper editors under the thumb of the British government had predicted there would be no peace as often as they had washed printing press ink from their hands. One gazette described the negotiations as a hopeless farce. Other theatrics also suggested that the British were not serious about the negotiations. In the closing session of Parliament, the prince regent claimed that he wanted peace with America. He also declared that, in the meantime, they would carry on the war “with increased vigor.”
As much as Adams wanted to return to his wife and children, he was fearful for his country’s future and its ability to maintain independence. The British were stalling, waiting to hear more news from the war on America’s shores. They believed that a significant British land victory in the f
all of 1814 would bring Adams and his American colleagues to their knees.
“If they choose to play this game of chicanery they may, I know not how long. But if they will take no for an answer, we shall be released in two or three days.”
He was so confident that the British would break off negotiations by the first of September and he would return to St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1814 that he asked Louisa to stop writing letters to him.
He miscalculated both assumptions.
As she continued her journey into Prussia in February 1815, Louisa pushed her postilions to drive as quickly as they could. They arrived at post houses late at night and left at daybreak the next morning. One day Louisa discovered just how traumatized Charles was from their close call on the Vistula River.
“We came suddenly upon a view of the [Baltic] Sea, and were apparently driving immediately into it, when Charles became dreadfully alarmed, and turning as white as a sheet, asked me if we were going into that great water.”
Assuring him that they would not be going into the sea, she mapped out their plan. They would travel inland in as few days as possible to Berlin. There they would rest, restock their supplies, and visit a few old friends. After that they would aggressively push toward Paris. However, as they continued, their servant Baptiste made her fearful.
“Baptiste . . . began to assume a tone not by any means agreeable, and I began to be somewhat uneasy.”
Not understanding her urgency, he may have disagreed with her insistence on pushing through the mountains when the roads looked dark and gloomy.
“I intimated to him that he might leave me as soon as he pleased, as I was in a country where I was very well known, as I had lived four years in Berlin, and was acquainted with the king and all the royal family.”
Baptiste’s “great desire was to return to his own country, and . . . he did not wish to leave me.” He wanted to get to France and “understood I had agreed to take him the whole way.”