Russia Against Napoleon

by Dominic Lieven

  A somewhat more real ‘Bonapartist’ was the minister of the navy, Admiral Pavel Chichagov. The admiral was a far more familiar type than Speransky in the Russian government of Alexander’s day. Though from a run-of-the-mill gentry family, Chichagov was well educated and himself the son of a prominent admiral. The French ambassador believed that Chichagov was one of the strongest supporters of the Franco-Russian alliance, and so too did many Russians. In September 1807, for instance, the admiral wrote to Alexander denouncing British maritime tyranny and hailing Napoleon’s genius. Aged only 40, still relatively young for a minister, the admiral was an intelligent and energetic man, with a lively mind. There were those who said that his conversation was more impressive than his deeds, but both Caulaincourt and Joseph de Maistre considered Chichagov to be one of the most intelligent and interesting figures in Petersburg. Among the admiral’s failings was a tendency to get somewhat carried away by his own wit and to go too far in conversation. Like most Russian noblemen, he was also very quick to take offence if he considered his pride to have been affronted. That could make him a poor subordinate and an overbearing commander. Much worse, Chichagov was generally disdainful of Russian backwardness and inclined to compare his own country unfavourably with others, above all with Napoleonic France. When he did this to a flagrant degree during a long stay in Paris, Russian diplomats there were very unamused. They kept a close eye on him in case he blurted out Russian secrets. Alexander actually shared many of Chichagov’s views, admired him and forgave him his outbursts. But by 1812 there were many knives in Petersburg long since sharpened and waiting to plunge into Chichagov’s back.11

  If the Russo-French alliance was to survive, however, the key group which Napoleon needed to cultivate in Petersburg was what Caulaincourt called the ‘Old Russians’ and whom one might realistically call the Russian isolationists. In almost all cases ethnic Russians and often from the older generation, these men saw no reason why Russia should involve itself in European affairs because of (as they would have whispered) Alexander’s infatuation with Queen Louise of Prussia or his fantasies of universal peace and brotherhood. In some cases a desire to avoid diplomatic and military entanglement in Europe went along with a dislike of Frenchified manners and values invading Russian society and ‘subverting’ its traditions. Many of the aristocratic isolationists, however, were highly cultivated men, as much at ease conversing in French as in Russian. Often isolationism also had its own aggressive strategic agenda. It saw expansion to the south against the Ottomans as Russia’s truly national interest and objective, looking back to the victorious wars of Catherine II as a model for future Russian grand strategy. Isolationists also recalled that the great leaders of Russian southward expansion under Catherine – field-marshals Petr Rumiantsev, Grigorii Potemkin and Alexander Suvorov – were all ethnic Russians, unlike so many of the men who commanded Alexander’s armies in the Napoleonic era.

  There were parallels between these Russian isolationists and eighteenth-century British debates about grand strategy. Many English politicians demanded a truly ‘national’ policy of colonial and maritime expansion, and denounced involvement on the continent of Europe as mere pandering to the Hanoverian dynasty. Opinions which could be shouted from the rooftops in Britain could only be whispered in Russia. Nor were the Romanovs as obviously foreign as the Hanoverians. But when the male line of the dynasty died out in 1730, the succession had passed down through a daughter of Peter the Great who had married into the princely house of Holstein. The deference of Peter III and his son Paul I to the ‘Great Frederick’ and his Prussian army suggested to some Old Russians that a distinctly German and poisonous element had entered the Romanovs’ bloodstream. In August 1809, thoroughly disillusioned by Alexander’s foreign policy, Field-Marshal Prince Prozorovsky wrote to Prince Serge Golitsyn, fellow ‘Old Russian’ aristocrat and veteran of Catherine’s wars, that if Napoleon continued to trick and weaken Russia then no doubt the Prozorovskys and Golitsyns would hang on to their estates one way or another but the ‘House of Holstein’ would cease to sit on the Russian throne.12

  The parallels between Russian and British debates on strategy reflected a basic common geopolitical reality. Britain and Russia were great powers on the European periphery. For both countries it was more profitable to use their power outside Europe, where pickings were easier and other European rivals found it almost impossible to intervene. Acquisitions in the European heartland were far more expensive to acquire and defend. By 1800, however, if both Britain and Russia could benefit from their peripheral position the key advantages rested with Britain. In terms of the security of the two empires’ core territory, the seas were a better barrier than the plains of Poland and Belorussia. To an extent, what Poland was to Russia, Ireland was to the English, in other words a vulnerable frontier territory inhabited by religious and historical enemies. Having expropriated almost the entire native elite, however, the English were confident that the Irish back door into Britain was secure unless the country was invaded by a large French army. The power of the Royal Navy made it almost certain that it would not be. No Russian statesman could feel a similar security about Poland.13

  The British were also much better placed as regards new acquisitions on the periphery. As Russian southward expansion brought them within range of Constantinople and even sent their fleet into the eastern Mediterranean they were entering a region which other great powers considered as crucial and where they could intervene effectively to block the Russians. Moreover, though southward expansion brought Russia gains in ‘Ukraine’ and on the Black Sea shore which were of great significance, they could not compare with the enormous advance of British power between 1793 and 1815. With the French, Spanish and Dutch navies all more or less eliminated, the British were able to take over much of South America’s trade, eliminate their key rivals in India, begin to use Indian exports to break into the Chinese market and consolidate their hold on naval bases which stretched across the globe and greatly enhanced their control of international trade. The basic geopolitical realities underlying the Napoleonic era pointed towards future British global predominance, especially since geopolitics was reinforced by the first signs of Britain’s Industrial Revolution. This had to cause unease in some Russian minds. On the other hand, the overriding current geopolitical priority was that both Russian and British security would be in great danger if any other power dominated continental Europe.14

  The most prominent representative of the ‘Old Russians’ between 1807 and 1812 was Count Nikolai Rumiantsev, the foreign minister in this period. Before Peter the Great’s time the Rumiantsev family had been middling gentry, far beneath the status of the princes Volkonsky, Lobanov or Golitsyn, but Nikolai’s grandfather, Aleksandr Rumiantsev, had been a close associate of Peter from childhood and throughout his reign. He died a full general, a count and a wealthy man. Peter ensured that Aleksandr Rumiantsev married into the core of the old Muscovite aristocracy. As a result, his grandson Nikolai’s connections were formidable: he was for example the first cousin of Aleksandr Kurakin.

  The relationship which really mattered, however, was with Nikolai’s father, the great hero of Catherine’s reign, Field-Marshal Count Petr Rumiantsev. As the Foreign Minister once said to Caulaincourt, ‘only the hope of achieving a great benefit for his country could inspire the son of Field-Marshal Rumiantsev’ to remain in public service. Acutely conscious of his heritage, Nikolai Rumiantsev was a ferociously proud Russian patriot, determined that his country should be second to none. One aspect of his patriotism was his enormous interest in old Russian manuscripts and other artefacts. Not only did he fund the collection, publication and display of these treasures, he also participated enthusiastically in expeditions across Russia to find them. Many of the greatest old Russian and Slavic collections in contemporary Russian libraries and museums owe their origins to this remarkable man, who ultimately bequeathed his treasures to the public.15

  In Rumiantsev’s youth not only had Russia been o
n the march southwards under his father’s command, it had also been Europe’s leading producer of iron. As Rumiantsev was well aware, however, by 1807 its relative economic position was slipping. During Rumiantsev’s service as Foreign Minister, Russia established diplomatic relations with the United States. The first American envoy to Russia was John Quincy Adams, the son of an American President and himself to hold this office in the 1820s. Rumiantsev once confided to Adams that ‘it was no subject for exaltation to a great empire that the choicest of its productions for exportation were hemp and tallow, and bees-wax and iron’. His interest in economic affairs was partly that of an immensely wealthy landowner, very aware of the impact of new farming methods in western Europe. In addition, however, he had run the empire’s canals and other waterways for many years, and had served as minister of trade since 1802. This was a unique background for a Russian foreign minister.16

  For Rumiantsev, Napoleon was in one sense a sideshow, in another an opportunity. What really concerned him was growing British domination of the global economy. The foreign minister welcomed Napoleon’s economic blockade of Britain: ‘It would be better that the whole commerce of the world should cease to exist for ten years, than to abandon it for ever to the control of England.’ As he told Adams, Russia would not go the way of India. As minister of trade, he had introduced new laws to ensure that foreigners did not take over Russian domestic trade or production. Meanwhile British control of Russian overseas trade threatened ‘a dominion, something like they had in India’ and this ‘could not be endured’. Rumiantsev cultivated the United States both as an alternative carrier of Russian trade and as a potential check on British domination of the global economy. He was constantly on the search for new markets for Russian goods in the Americas and China.17

  Rumiantsev faced an uphill task, however. Granted that Napoleon’s throttling of European trade offered involuntary protection to a number of nascent Russian industries such as sugar production, was Russian society or the Russian economy yet in a position to take advantage of this? Of course Caulaincourt welcomed Rumiantsev’s ideas, but even he believed that the absence of a middle class and of large numbers of skilled artisans would heavily constrain Russian economic potential. To a great extent, too, the Industrial Revolution depended on the marriage of coal and iron, but in Russia only the coming of the railways could span the distance between the country’s huge deposits. In more immediate and policy-related terms, Rumiantsev came to despair of Napoleon’s Continental System, the Pan-European blockade of British trade by which the emperor hoped to bring his arch-enemy to its knees. In Rumiantsev’s opinion it was actually harming Britain’s competitors and handing global trade to the British on a plate.18

  In political terms too the success of Rumiantsev’s strategy lay in Napoleon’s hands. Isolationism was only a viable strategy if Napoleon refrained from threatening Russian security. Above all, in Rumiantsev’s view, that meant no encouragement to the Poles. Any restored Polish state would be bound to want back its pre-partition frontiers, thereby depriving Russia of much of Ukraine and Belorussia. As he told Caulaincourt, though all his own political capital had been invested in the French alliance, ‘I will myself be the first person to tell the Emperor to sacrifice everything rather than consent to Poland’s re-establishment or to agree to any arrangements which even indirectly lead to its restoration or convey any idea about it’.19

  If Alexander himself did leave Tilsit with any illusions about the French alliance they were soon dissipated. The first dispute revolved around Moldavia and Wallachia, Ottoman provinces occupied by the Russian army during the ongoing war. The Russians wished to annex them to compensate for the costs of the war started by the Ottomans in 1806. Very possibly the arrival of Nikolai Rumiantsev as Foreign Minister increased their appetite for expansion at Turkey’s expense. Since this acquisition was not written into the Treaty of Tilsit the French claimed compensation for themselves to balance Russia’s gain. Alexander believed that Napoleon had encouraged him to annex these provinces in conversations at Tilsit, so he was taken aback by this demand. What truly appalled him, however, was the French claim for Silesia as compensation. Not only was Silesia far more valuable than the two Turkish provinces, it was also the richest remaining province of Prussia. To remove it would both dishonour Alexander before Frederick William and reduce Prussia to the status of a petty principality, totally incapable of shielding Russia’s western borders. In addition, Silesia was situated between Saxony and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, whose sovereign was the Saxon king. The Saxon-Polish monarchy was Napoleon’s leading outpost and client-state in eastern Europe. If (as was likely) Napoleon added Silesia with its large Polish population to the Saxon-Polish monarchy then Russian fears of a reborn Polish threat would increase enormously.

  This dispute over the Ottoman ‘principalities’ was sidelined by beginning Franco-Russian negotiations on the future of the whole Ottoman Empire. These revealed both Rumiantsev’s great appetite for Ottoman territory and total French unwillingness to give Russia Constantinople and access to the Mediterranean. These discussions were then overtaken by the crises caused by French and Russian efforts to implement the terms of the Treaty of Tilsit which called for the imposition of the Continental System on the rest of Europe. The Russian share of this enterprise was to impose the Continental System on the Swedes, which they achieved (at least on paper) as a result of defeating Sweden in the war of 1808–9. From the Russian perspective, the key justification for this expensive war was that it would lead to the annexation of Finland, thereby making Petersburg far more secure against Swedish attack in the event of any future conflicts. The peace treaty was signed at Friedrichsham in September 1809: Alexander signalled his satisfaction by promoting Rumiantsev to chancellor (the top position in the Russian civil administration) and granting the Finns a generous degree of autonomy.

  Meanwhile the French attempt to impose the Continental System on Iberia had gone disastrously wrong. The Portuguese government and royal family fled to Brazil, escorted by the British navy. Now completely dependent on British goodwill, they immediately opened the whole Portuguese Empire to British trade. Far worse were the results of Napoleon’s deposition of the Spanish Bourbons and attempted takeover of Spain. This exposed Alexander and Rumiantsev to even more criticism in Petersburg society for supporting Napoleon. It opened up not just Spain but also the Spanish Empire to British trade, thereby driving a further enormous hole into the Continental System. The Spanish insurrection also persuaded the Austrians that this might be their last opportunity to strike while Napoleon was absorbed elsewhere and their finances could still sustain the army of a great power.

  Alexander had explained his support for the Continental System to Frederick William by arguing that ‘I have reason to hope that this will be a means to hasten the general peace of which Europe has so urgent a need. So long as the war between France and England continues, there will be no tranquillity for the continent’s other states.’ Some of his advisers had warned him all along that it was fanciful to imagine that even combined Franco-Russian pressure could make Britain negotiate. Now Alexander himself was forced to acknowledge that Napoleon’s policy had made the peace which Russia needed more remote than ever. France’s blundering aggression in Spain had given Britain ‘immense advantages’ and spurred Austria into a military build-up which could unleash further war on the continent.20

  It was in the middle of this threatening international situation that Alexander travelled to Erfurt in central Germany in September 1808 for the long-awaited follow-up meeting to Tilsit. Amidst great festivities and a cascade of mutual admiration in public, the relationship between the two monarchs had noticeably chilled since the previous year. To an extent this simply reflected the fact that Russia’s relative position had improved, so there was more room for bargaining and less need for unlimited deference to Napoleon. Russia had long since recovered from the defeat of Friedland. French armies were no longer deployed threateningly on her borders.
Instead they were struggling in Spain or awaiting the possibility of a new war with Austria. France needed Russia and therefore abandoned her opposition to Russian annexation of Moldavia and Wallachia. In return, Alexander promised to support Napoleon in the event of an Austrian attack but since this was already implicit in the Treaty of Tilsit the Russians were not making any real concession.

  Much more interesting than the rather meaningless negotiations and agreements at Erfurt were the letters between Alexander and his family concerning the meeting with Napoleon, for they reveal much about his innermost thoughts. One week before the emperor’s departure his mother had written him a long letter imploring him not to go. In the light of Napoleon’s kidnapping of the Spanish royal family, the Empress Marie was nervous about her son’s safety in a foreign town garrisoned by French troops and controlled by a man devoid of any scruples or limits. Though she admitted that peace had been a necessity at Tilsit, she spelled out the dangerous subsequent results of the alliance with France. Napoleon had manipulated Russia into waging an expensive and immoral war against Sweden, while blocking peace with the Ottomans and even trying to insinuate himself into Russo-Persian relations. Still worse were the domestic consequences of the disastrous break with Britain and adherence to the Continental System. Commerce had collapsed and prices of basic necessities had shot up, halving the real value of salaries and forcing officials to steal in order to feed their families. Declining state revenues and the demoralization and corruption of government officials threatened a crisis. However, Napoleon’s difficulties in Spain and Austrian rearmament offered Russia a chance to unite with France’s enemies and end her dominion of Europe. At such a moment, argued the empress, it would be disastrous for Alexander’s prestige and Russia’s interests if he made a pilgrimage to visit Napoleon and consolidate the Franco-Russian alliance.21