Armstrong, quitting Paris Sept. 10, 1810, wrote to Madison in his last despatch a few significant words on the subject,[330] suggesting that Napoleon’s true motive in reviving the energy of his restrictions on commerce was, among others, the assistance it lent to his views and influence on the Baltic. No other explanation was reasonable. Napoleon intended to force Russia into a dilemma, and he succeeded. The Czar, pressed beyond endurance, at last turned upon Napoleon with an act of defiance that startled and delighted Russia. December 1 Roumanzoff communicated to Caulaincourt the Czar’s refusal to seize, confiscate, or shut his ports against colonial produce.[331] At about the same time the merchants of St. Petersburg framed a memorial to the Imperial council, asking for a general prohibition of French luxuries as the only means of preventing the drain of specie and the further depreciation of the paper currency. On this memorial a hot debate occurred in the Imperial council. Roumanzoff opposed the measure as tending to a quarrel with France; and when overruled, he insisted on entering his formal protest on the journal.[332] The Czar acquiesced in the majority’s decision, and December 19 the Imperial ukase appeared, admitting American produce on terms remarkably liberal, but striking a violent blow at the industries of France.
Napoleon replied by recalling Caulaincourt and by sending a new ambassador, Count Lauriston, to St. Petersburg, carrying with his credentials an autograph letter to the Czar.[333]
“Your Majesty’s last ukase,” said this letter, “in substance, but particularly in form, is directed specially against France. In other times, before taking such a measure against my commerce, your Majesty would have let me know it, and perhaps I might have suggested means which, while accomplishing your chief object, might still have prevented it from appearing a change of system in the eyes of France. All Europe has so regarded it; and already, in the opinion of England and of Europe, our alliance exists no longer. If it were as entire in your Majesty’s heart as in mine, this general impression would be none the less a great evil.... For myself, I am always the same; but I am struck by the evidence of these facts, and by the thought that your Majesty is wholly disposed, as soon as circumstances permit it, to make an arrangement with England, which is the same thing as to kindle a war between the two empires.”
Adams’s diplomatic victory was Napoleonic in its magnitude and completeness. Even Caulaincourt, whom he overthrew, good-naturedly congratulated him after he had succeeded, against Caulaincourt’s utmost efforts, in saving all the American ships. “It seems you are great favorites here; you have found powerful protection,” said the defeated ambassador.[334] The American minister felt but one drawback,—he could not wholly believe that his victory was sure. Anxious by temperament, with little confidence in his own good fortune,—fighting his battles with energy, but rather with that of despair than of hope,—the younger Adams never allowed himself to enjoy the full relish of a triumph before it staled, while he never failed to taste with its fullest flavor, as though it were a precious wine, every drop in the bitter cup of his defeats. In this, the most brilliant success of his diplomatic career, he could not be blamed for doubting whether such fortune could last. That the Czar of Russia should persist in braving almost sure destruction in order to defend American rights which America herself proclaimed to be unassailed, passed the bounds of fiction.
Yet of all the facts with which Monroe, April 1, 1811, had to deal, this was the most important,—that Russia expected to fight France in order to protect neutral commerce. Already, Dec. 27, 1810, Adams notified his Government that Russia had determined to resist to the last, and that France had shown a spirit of hostility that proved an intention to make war. A few weeks later he wrote that military movements on both sides had begun on such a scale that the rumor of war was universal.[335] Napoleon’s harangue of March 24, 1811, to the Paris Chamber of Commerce was accepted in Russia as the announcement of a coming declaration, and the Russians waited uneasily for the blow to be struck which the Czar would not himself strike.
They waited, but Napoleon did not move. Hampered by the Spanish war and by the immense scale on which a campaign in Russia must be organized, he consumed time in diplomatic remonstrances which he knew to be useless. April 1, 1811, a week after his tirade to the Paris merchants, he dictated another lecture to the Czar, through Count Lauriston:[336] “Doubtless the smugglers will try every means of forming connections with the Continent; but that connection I will cut, if necessary, with the sword. Until now I have been indulgent; but this year I am determined to use rigor toward those who are concerned in contraband.” A great convoy, he said, was at that moment collecting in English ports for the Baltic; but the goods thus introduced would be everywhere seized, “even in Russia, whatever might be said to the contrary, because the Emperor Alexander has declared his wish to remain at war with the English as the only means of maintaining the peace of the Continent.” A few days afterward, April 5, Cadore was ordered to write again:[337] “It is probable that the least appearance of a peace with England will be the signal of war unless unforeseen circumstances lead the Emperor to prefer to gain time.” Alexander wished the moral advantage of appearing to be attacked, and he allowed Napoleon to gain time in these pretended remonstrances. Roumanzoff replied to them as seriously as though they were seriously meant. Once he quoted the American minister as authority for the genuine character of the admitted vessels. Napoleon treated the appeal with contempt:[338] “Let him know that there are no American ships; that all pretended American ships are English, or freighted on English account; that the English stop American vessels and do not let them navigate; that if the American minister sustains the contrary, he does not know what he is talking about.”
The American minister no longer needed to sustain the contrary; he had passed that stage, and had to struggle only with the completeness of his success. Although a large British squadron kept the Baltic open to commerce, few British merchantmen visited those waters in 1811. Their timidity was due to the violence with which Napoleon had seized and destroyed British property in 1810 wherever he found it, without respecting his own licenses. In consequence of British abstention, American vessels swarmed in Russian ports. In July, 1811, Adams wrote that two hundred American ships had already arrived,[339] and that Russia was glutted with colonial goods until the cargoes were unsalable at any price, while the great demand for return cargoes of Russian produce had raised the cost of such articles to extravagance. America enjoyed a monopoly of the Baltic trade; and Adams’s chief difficulty, like that of Napoleon, was only to resist the universal venality which made of the American flag a cover for British smuggling. Adams seemed unable to ask a favor which the Czar did not seem eager to grant; for in truth the result of admitting American ships pleased the friendly Czar and his people, who obtained their sugar and coffee at half cost, and sold their hemp and naval stores at double prices.
The Russians knew well the price they were to pay in the end, but in the mean time Napoleon became more and more pacific. If war was to come in 1811, every one supposed it would be announced in the French Emperor’s usual address to his legislative body, which opened its session June 16. The Address was brought in hot haste by special courier to St. Petersburg; but to the surprise of every one it contained no allusion to Russia. As usual, Napoleon pointed in the direction he meant not to take, and instead of denouncing Russia, he prophesied disaster to the victorious English in Spain:—
“When England shall be exhausted; when she shall have felt at last the evils that she has for twenty years poured with so much cruelty over the Continent; when half of her families shall be covered by the funeral veil,—then a thunder-stroke will end the peninsula troubles and the destinies of her armies, and will avenge Europe and Asia by closing this second Punic war.”
This Olympian prophecy meant only that Napoleon, for military reasons, preferred not to invade Russia until 1812. As the question of neutral trade was but one of the pretexts on which he forced Russia into war, and as it had served its purpose, he laid it aside. He closed the chapter August 25 by directing his ambassador, Lauriston, to cease further remonstrance.[340] One hundred and fifty ships, he said, under false American colors had arrived in Russia; the projects of Russia were unmasked; she wanted to renew her commerce with England; she no longer preserved appearances, but favored in every way the English trade; further remonstrance would be ridiculous and diplomatic notes useless.