If Adams had consciously intrigued for a rupture between France and Russia, he could have invented no means so effective as to cause the Czar’s interference with Napoleon’s control of Denmark; but Adams’s favor was far from ending there. The winter of 1809–1810 passed without serious incident, but when spring came and the Baltic opened, the struggle between France and the United States at St. Petersburg began in earnest. Adams found himself a person of much consequence. The French ambassador, Caulaincourt, possessed every advantage that Napoleon and Nature could give him. Handsome, winning, and in all ways personally agreeable to the Czar, master of an establishment more splendid in its display than had been before known even at the splendid court of St. Petersburg, he enjoyed the privilege, always attached to ambassadors, of transacting business directly with the Czar; while the American minister, of a lower diplomatic grade, far too poor to enter upon the most modest social rivalry, labored under the diplomatic inferiority of having to transact business only through the worse than neutral medium of Roumanzoff. Caulaincourt made his demands and urged his arguments in the secrecy that surrounded the personal relation of the two Emperors, while Adams could not even learn, except indirectly after much time, what Caulaincourt was doing or what arguments he used.
Already in April, 1810, Adams reported[323] to his Government that the commercial dispute threatened a rupture between France and Russia. On one hand, Napoleon’s measures would prove ineffectual if Russia admitted neutral vessels, carrying as they would cargoes more or less to the advantage of England; on the other, Russia must become avowedly bankrupt if denied exports and restricted to imports of French luxuries, such as silks and champagnes, to be paid in specie. Russia, at war with Turkey and compelled to maintain an immense army with a depreciated currency, must have foreign trade or perish.
Napoleon wanted nothing better than to cripple Russia as well as England, and was not disposed to relax his system for the benefit of Russian military strength. During the summer of 1810 he redoubled his vigilance on the Baltic. Large numbers of vessels, either neutral or pretending to be neutral, entered the Baltic under the protection of the British fleet. Napoleon sent orders that no such vessels should be admitted. June 15 Denmark issued an ordinance prohibiting its ports to all American vessels of every description, and August 3 another to the same effect for the Duchy of Holstein. July 19 a similar ordinance was published by Prussia, and July 29 Mecklenburg followed the example. The same demand came from Caulaincourt to the Czar, and the French ambassador pressed it without intermission and without disguising the dangers which it involved to the peace of Europe. Alexander’s reply never varied.
“I want to run no more risks,” he told Caulaincourt.[324] “To draw nearer England I must separate from France and risk a new war with her, which I regard as the most dangerous of all wars. And for what object? To serve England; to support her maritime theories which are not mine? It would be madness on my part!... I will remain faithful to this policy. I will remain at war with England. I will keep my ports closed to her,—to the extent, however, which I have made known, and from which I cannot depart. In fact I cannot, as I have already told you, prohibit all commerce to my subjects, or forbid them to deal with the Americans.... We must keep to these terms, for I declare to you, were war at our doors, in regard to commercial matters I cannot go further.”
Thus the American trade became the apparent point of irritation between Alexander and Napoleon. The Russians were amused by Cadore’s letter to Armstrong of August 5, saying that the decrees were revoked, and that Napoleon loved the Americans; for they knew what Napoleon had done and was trying to do on the Baltic. The Czar was embarrassed and harassed by the struggle; for the American ships, finding themselves safe in Russian ports, flocked to Archangel and Riga, clamoring for special permission to dispose of their cargoes and to depart before navigation closed, while Napoleon insisted on their seizure, and left no means untried of effecting it. He took even the extravagant step of publicly repudiating the very licenses he was then engaged in forcing American ships to carry. July 10, 1810, the “Moniteur” published an official notice that the certificates of French consuls in the United States carried by American vessels in the Baltic were false, “and that the possessors of them must be considered as forgers,” inasmuch as the French consuls in America had some time before ceased to deliver any such certificates; and not satisfied with this ministerial act, Napoleon wrote with his own hand to the Czar that no true American trade existed, and that not a single American ship, even though guaranteed by his own licenses, could be received as neutral.
In the heat of this controversy Adams was obliged to ask, as a favor to the United States, that special orders might be given on behalf of the American vessels at Archangel. As before, Roumanzoff refused; and once more the Czar directed that the special orders should be given.[325] This repeated success of the American minister in overriding the established rules of the government, backed by the whole personal influence of Napoleon, made Roumanzoff uneasy. Friendly and even confidential with Adams, he did not disguise his anxiety; and while he warned the American minister that Cadore’s letter of August 5 had made no real change in Napoleon’s methods or objects, he added that the Americans had only one support, and this was the Czar himself, but that as yet the Czar’s friendship was unshaken. “Our attachment to the United States is obstinate,—more obstinate than you are aware of.”[326]
Adams then saw the full bearing of the struggle in which he was engaged; his sources of information were extended, his social relations were more intimate, and he watched with keen interest the effect of his remonstrances and efforts. He had every reason to be anxious, for Napoleon used diplomatic weapons as energetically as he used his army corps. Only ten days after Roumanzoff made his significant remark about the Czar’s obstinacy, Napoleon sent orders to Prussia, under threat of military occupation, to stop all British and colonial merchandise; and the following week, October 23, he wrote with his own hand to the Czar a letter of the gravest import:[327]—
“Six hundred English merchant-vessels which were wandering in the Baltic have been refused admission into Mecklenburg and Prussia, and have turned toward your Majesty’s States.... All this merchandise is on English account. It depends on your Majesty to obtain peace [with England] or to continue the war. Peace is and must be your desire. Your Majesty is certain to obtain it by confiscating these six hundred ships or their cargoes. Whatever papers they may have, under whatever names they may be masked,—French, German, Spanish, Danish, Russian, Swedish,—your Majesty may be sure that they are English.”
If Napoleon aimed at crippling Russia by forcing her into the alternative of bankruptcy for want of commerce or invasion as the penalty of trade, he followed a clear and skilful plan. Roumanzoff answered his appeal by pleading that Russia could not seize neutral property, and would not harm England even by doing so. November 4, two days after President Madison proclaimed the revocation of the French Decrees, Napoleon dictated his reply to Roumanzoff’s argument:[328]—
“As for the principle advanced,—that though wishing war on England we do not wish to wage it on neutrals,—this principle arises from an error. The English want no neutrals and suffer none; they allow the Americans to navigate, so far as they carry English merchandise and sail on English account; all the certificates of French consuls and all other papers with which they are furnished are false papers. In short, there is to-day no neutral, because the English want none, and stop every vessel not freighted on their account. Not a single vessel has entered the ports of Russia with so-called American papers which has not come really from England.”[329]