At these heroic words the light flashed once more across the clouded face of Alexander. “You reassure me, colonel,” he said. “Well then, return to the army. Say to our brave men, say to all my subjects wherever you meet them, that if I had not a soldier left, I should put myself at the head of my dear nobles, of my faithful peasants, and expend to the uttermost the resources of my empire. They are greater than my enemies think. But if it be the will of God that my dynasty shall cease to reign upon the throne of my ancestors, then—after having done all else that man can do—I will let my beard grow to this,” said Alexander, placing his hand upon his breast, “and I will eat potatoes like the lowest of my mujiks, rather than sign the humiliation of my country and of my dear people, whose sacrifices for my sake I appreciate.” Here his voice failed: it was easier to speak of his own ruin than of the love of his subjects. Greatly moved, he turned away from Michaud, and walked to the other end of the cabinet. But he came back almost immediately with long and rapid strides, and a face that had quickly changed from a deadly pallor to a fiery flush. Pressing his hand on the arm of the officer, he said, “Colonel Michaud, do not forget my words; perhaps one day we shall remember them with pleasure. Napoleon or I—I or Napoleon—we can no longer reign together. I know him now; he shall never deceive me again.”
“Sire,” cried the colonel joyfully, “your Majesty signs in this moment the glory of the nation and the deliverance of Europe.”
His words were true—with this qualification, that the glory of Russia and the deliverance of Europe were not the work of a moment, but of long months of patient, heroic resolution. Alexander had not wished for war—perhaps, indeed, he had striven too long to avert it. Personally, in his earlier years, he admired Napoleon: the fact is undeniable, though it has been the subject of much exaggeration. From the dawn of manhood his favourite dream had been of a universal and durable peace, and he imagined he saw in the victories of Napoleon so many steps to its attainment. What are now called “Les idées Napoléoniques,” seem to have captivated for a season this young, ardent, somewhat visionary mind. But the veil once torn from his eyes by the insatiable ambition and the repeated perfidies of the French usurper, thenceforward it was between them war to the death.
When Napoleon suddenly poured his enormous hosts across the Niemen, Alexander at once and emphatically announced his resolution, “I will not sheathe the sword while a single foreigner remains in arms upon the soil of Russia.” At that moment the eyes of all Europe were upon him, and neither friend nor foe believed it possible that he could make good his word.
“Napoleon,” said an astute observer, “thought he could terrify the Emperor of Russia by his menaces without drawing a sword; he thought he could make him lose his head by beginning the war suddenly in the midst of negotiations; he thought he could end that war by a single battle. But nothing happened that he thought.”[31] In a letter written by him about this time, which was intercepted and brought to his rival, were these words: “Alexander is a child. I will make him weep tears of blood.” Alexander upon reading it remarked: “He said to me himself that in war determination always carries the day. We shall see who has the most determination, he or I.”
But the determination of the strongest heart might well have quailed before the perils that beset the Czar in this solemn crisis of his own and his people’s history. Six hundred and fifty thousand fighting men had crossed his border under a leader hitherto invincible, whose name was the terror of the civilized world. No man felt more keenly than Alexander his own inferiority to Napoleon as a general. The bitter memory of Austerlitz, his “unfortunate day,” never left him. Nor had he any commander whose surpassing merit might inspire the army with confidence. The excellent Barclay de Tolly had unfortunately become so unpopular both with the army and the nation, that Alexander, though with much regret, was obliged to remove him. Of his successor, the aged Kutusov, he had no very high opinion; but when everything depended upon the cordial support of his people, he was in a manner obliged to consult their wishes.
Meanwhile the French were marching onwards into the very heart of the country. The retreat of the Russians before them was no doubt a master-stroke of policy, but to the sovereign of Russia it was unutterably painful. From the thought of the sufferings of his people,—the murders, the plundering, the desolation,—his sensitive heart recoiled in horror. Nearer and nearer came the fiery deluge, leaving a track of ruin behind it. Consternation seized his counsellors, his court, his very family. The foreign envoys at St. Petersburg packed up their effects in readiness for an immediate flight. Even the Grand Duke Constantine made the hard task of the brother he idolized harder still by assuring every one that the French would inevitably conquer,—it was hopeless to resist them. He called for peace, it was said, “as men call for water in a conflagration.”
To aggravate and crown all this misery, dejection, and terror, came the overwhelming tidings of the destruction of Moscow. In some ways it was a calamity more bitter, more crushing than that of St. Petersburg would have been. While the one was the official capital, the other was the real heart of the old Muscovite empire. Here the Czars were baptized, were crowned, were buried; here were heaped all the treasures, were concentrated all the glories of their past. It was their holy city, their Jerusalem. No one knew as yet that its destruction had been a signal act of patriotism and self-sacrifice; almost all the world, including the Czar himself, believed that the French had consummated their atrocities by setting fire to the city. Nor could he or others foresee the future, or discern at once amidst the dust and smoke of the conflict that the victory, in truth, was won. The final hour of Napoleon’s triumph had struck, but the toll of fate was audible neither to friend nor foe; and to Alexander and to Russia the day that saw the fall of Moscow seemed the darkest that had ever dawned upon them.
In the heart of Alexander it left “a profound and bitter sorrow,” which neither time, nor victory, nor glory could ever wholly obliterate. Long afterwards, when conquered France offered the conqueror pecuniary compensation, he answered with proud sadness, “Gold can never give me Moscow back again.” Yet not for one moment did his courage fail or his determination falter. His wife implored him with tears to make peace, or to allow her to leave the empire. His mother, less submissive, actually prepared to go. He gently dissuaded her from a course so injurious to the interests of the country, and at last, when she refused to listen, he said firmly, “I have entreated you as a son; I now command you as your sovereign. You shall not go.” Amidst the universal panic he alone stood firm. Naturally susceptible, tender-hearted, perhaps even irresolute, the hour of trial found him undaunted as the fiercest of his barbarian ancestors. Like the delicate mainspring of some complicated machine which sustains a pressure that would shatter a bar of iron, so this fine sensitive nature assumed the best attributes of strength, and bore up triumphantly against a world in arms.
Amongst the first words which he addressed to his people after the fall of Moscow were these:—“An oppressed world looks to us for encouragement, and can we shrink from the honourable mission? Let us kiss the hand that selected us to act as the leader of nations in the struggle for independence, and contend with courage and constancy to obtain a durable peace, not only for ourselves, but for those unhappy countries forced by the tyrant to fight in his quarrel: it is glorious, it is worthy of a great nation, to render good for ill.” The proclamation ends with a prayer:—“Almighty God, is the cause for which we are battling not just? Cast an eye of compassion on our holy Church. Preserve to this people its courage and constancy. Suffer it to triumph over its adversary and thine. May it be in thy hand the instrument of his destruction; and in delivering itself, redeem the independence of nations and of kings.”