The fame of these predictions sped over Europe. One of the first to hear of them was Czar Alexander. Worn out by the campaigns of 1813 and 1814, tormented by an uneasy conscience, grieved by the sudden death of his only child and by the desertion of its mother, a lady who had been his mistress for eleven years, but whose affections were now transferred to one of his aides-de-camp, enfeebled by excesses of every kind, Alexander was exactly in the condition to be influenced by pious mysticism.[2]
He had been brought up without any religious education whatever. When, during his depression after the capture of Moscow, Prince Galitzin recommended him to seek comfort in the study of the Bible, such a thing as a Russian Bible was not to be found in the Winter Palace, and he had to be contented for the time with a French translation of the Vulgate. The proceedings at the Congress of Vienna, the faithlessness of Austria, the ingratitude of France, and the animosity aroused by his favourite project, the rehabilitation of Poland, in that country itself, had completely shaken his faith in human nature. The surprise of Napoleon's return from Elba had shaken his nerves. From the moment of his mistress's desertion he came under the influence of his wife, the Empress Elizabeth, who in her deserted condition had long ago taken refuge in melancholy mysticism. She persuaded him when he was at Karlsruhe to visit Jung-Stilling and learn what was his opinion of the political situation, viewed from the standpoint of the Book of Revelation. Jung-Stilling assured him that Napoleon was none other than the Apollyon mentioned in the ninth chapter of that book, and that the millennium was at hand.
In 1814, at the court of Baden, Madame de Krüdener had made the acquaintance of the Czarina, and since then the ardent prophetess had carried on a correspondence with one of Elizabeth's maids of honour who had an enthusiastic admiration for the Czar, with the full intention that her letters should be shown to him. Certain sentences in them were unmistakably written for his reading, such as the following: "What you tell me of the Czar's great and noble qualities I have long known. I know, too, that the Lord will grant me the happiness of seeing him—that the Prince of Darkness will in vain endeavour to prevent our meeting. I have much to say to the Czar." Immediately after the despatch of the letter here quoted from, Madame de Krüdener moved to Heilbronn; the Russian headquarters were presently transferred there, and late in the evening of the 4th of June 1815, heedless of the aide-de-camp's rebuffs, she made her way, unannounced, into the Czar's presence, and remained closeted with him for three hours. When she left him, Alexander's eyes were full of tears, and he was much agitated. Soon her influence over him was complete. They would shut themselves up together for half a day at a time, praying, reading the Bible, and discussing theological problems.
The days immediately preceding the battle of Waterloo they spend at Heidelberg, occupied in studying the Psalms. The intelligence of the reverses at Ligny and Quatre-Bras on the 16th and 17th of June reaches Alexander when he is thus employed; the Psalms console him and convince him of the justice of his cause. He prays and fasts. On the 18th of June the battle of Waterloo is fought. Alexander immediately sets out for Paris, but with the understanding that Madame de Krüdener is to follow promptly. His greatest grief at this moment is that his brother Constantine is not converted too. Before leaving Heidelberg our prophetess visits the prisoners who are awaiting their sentence of death and preaches to them with great effect; then she follows the Czar, whose Christian disposition affords her intense satisfaction.
In Paris her influence reaches its culminating point. The Czar calls upon her on the evening of her arrival. Her apartments in the Hôtel Montchenu are so situated that he can come to her at any hour of the day from the Elysée-Bourbon Palace by a private garden door. No dissipation, no amusement had now any temptation for the man whom the Parisians remembered as being so gay but a few years previously. "I am a disciple of Christ," he said; "I go about with the Gospel in my hands, and know nothing else." And Madame de Krüdener writes of him: "Alexander is the elect of God. He is treading the path of renunciation." Only language borrowed from the Apocalypse could express what she saw in him—a founder of the kingdom of Christ upon earth, an angel of peace with the flaming sword of power, the prince of light, &c., &c. Napoleon, on the other hand, she, like Adam Müller and his followers, believed to be the devil himself. Alexander was to restore the power of Christianity upon earth, and to obliterate the last trace of the Revolution and its deeds.
Alexander's reverence and gratitude knew no bounds. In the beginning of September a great review of 150,000 Russian troops was held at the Camp des Vertus in Champagne. Madame de Krüdener's presence could not be dispensed with. The Czar's carriage was sent for her early in the morning, and he received her, not like a favourite subject, but like a messenger from heaven, sent to lead his troops to victory. "Bare-headed, or wearing the little straw-hat which she generally carried hanging from her arm; her still fair hair hanging in plaits upon her shoulders, with a stray curl falling on her brow; dressed in a plain, dark robe, to which its cut and her bearing imparted elegance, and which was confined at the waist by a simple girdle—thus she arrived at dawn of day, thus she stood at the moment of prayer in front of the astonished army."[3]
About a year before this Alexander had read a book by the German mystic Franz von Baader, On the Necessity Produced by the Revolution for a New and More Intimate Connection between Religion and Politics. Under its influence he had formed a vague project for uniting the Christian monarchs of Europe in a mysterious alliance, which was to be in a very special manner commended to the protection of God; but at Vienna he had been obliged to give up all thoughts of carrying this project into effect. Now he discussed it with Madame de Krüdener. She entered into it eagerly, declaring that she herself had already, by the grace of God, conceived the very same idea. And who dare say that it is impossible or even unlikely that such an idea as this, the plan of the Holy Alliance, should have originated in the brain of a poor, silly woman, whose head had been turned by the amours of her youth and the religious enthusiasm of her later years? It is, as a matter of fact, more than probable that Europe and civilisation owe their thanks to her for it. A man who is distinctly inclined to undervalue her influence, and who is wrong where he denies it, Queen Louisa of Prussia's beloved brother, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, writes: "Madame de Krüdener never exercised the smallest influence over my angelic sister of Prussia, nor yet over the King, her husband, who judged this lamentably famous woman perfectly correctly. Of the Emperor Alexander she had, on the contrary, taken such complete possession that the Holy Alliance, which he proposed and succeeded in forming, may be regarded as entirely her work; you may be sure that I should not say this unless I were certain of it."
Some days after her arrival in Paris, Alexander said to Madame de Krüdener: "I am leaving France; but before my departure I shall publish a manifesto, acknowledging our gratitude to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for His protection, and calling on all nations to unite in common submission to the Gospel." With these words he handed her a paper. It was the draft of the compact between the three sovereigns. Capefigue, who actually saw this document, writes: "I have lying before me the rough draft of the compact; it is from beginning to end in the Emperor Alexander's handwriting, with corrections by Madame de Krüdener. The words The Holy Alliance are written by that extraordinary woman." Thus even the name is of her devising. She chose it with a reference to the prophecies of the end of the world in the Book of the Prophet Daniel.
Having traced this woman's career from the very beginning, we know who and what she was; we have also some idea of what the Revolution was; consequently our first feeling is one of astonishment that these pious maxims and reminiscences of the Apocalypse written, with the same pen which wrote the Elegy to Sidonie, by the lady who a few years before was buying scarfs and hats à la Valérie, should have had power to stem the renewed impetus of the current of the Revolution for fifteen years. Not for fifteen years did inevitable evolution, the progress of science, the audacity of art, the rebellion of hearts, take shape in action which broke the charm.
The three monarchs "solemnly declare, in the name of the most holy and indivisible Trinity, that their intention in the present proclamation is to assert in face of the universe their irrevocable determination to be guided, both in the government of their own dominions and in their political relations with other governments, entirely by the rules of justice, love, and truth contained in the Christian religion. Far from being only applicable in private life, these prescriptions ought directly to influence the conduct of rulers, as indicating the only means of placing the institutions of society on a solid foundation and remedying their imperfections."