Adams expected this answer, and at once assumed it to be final; but Roumanzoff checked him. “It would now be for consideration,” he continued, “whether, after the step thus taken by the American government [in sending commissioners to St. Petersburg], it would not be advisable to renew the proposition to Great Britain; upon which he should write to the Emperor.” Not because of any American request, but wholly of his own motion, Roumanzoff proposed to keep the mediation alive. His motives were for Adams to fathom. The chancellor did not avow them, but he hinted to Adams that the chances of war were many. “Perhaps it might be proper not to be discouraged by the ill success of his first advances. After considerations might produce more pacific dispositions in the British government. Unexpected things were happening every day; ‘and in our own affairs,’ said the count, ‘a very general report prevails that an armistice has taken place.’” A Congress had been proposed, and the United States were expressly named among the Powers to be invited to it.
Adams reported this conversation to his Government in a despatch dated June 26,[448] and waited for his two new colleagues, who arrived July 21. Personally the colleagues were agreeable to Adams, and the proposed negotiation was still more so, for the President sent him official notice that in case the negotiations were successful, Adams’s services would be required as minister in London; but with the strongest inducements to press the mediation, Adams could not but see that he and his colleagues depended on Roumanzoff, and that Roumanzoff depended not on Alexander, but on Napoleon. Roumanzoff’s only chance of aiding them was by clinging to office until the Czar should be weary of war.
Unwilling as Gallatin was to be thus made the sport of imperial policy, he was obliged, like his colleagues, to submit. Two days after their arrival, Roumanzoff told them that he meant, if possible, to begin the whole transaction anew.
“The count said he regretted much that there was such reason to believe the British would decline the mediation; but on transmitting the copy of the credential letter to the Emperor, he would determine whether to renew the proposal, as the opposition in England might make it an embarrassing charge against the Ministry if they should under such circumstances reject it.”[449]
Roumanzoff had written soon after June 22 to ask the Czar whether, on the arrival of the American commissioners, the offer of mediation should be renewed. The Czar, overwhelmed with business, wrote back, about July 20, approving Roumanzoff’s suggestion, and authorizing him to send a despatch directly to Count Lieven in London renewing the offer. The Czar’s letter was communicated to Adams August 10[450] by Roumanzoff, who was evidently much pleased and perhaps somewhat excited by it.
Such a letter warranted some excitement, for Roumanzoff could regard it only as a sign of hesitation and anxiety. Alexander was in a degree pledged to England to press the mediation no further. While he assured England through Nesselrode, July 9, that he was perfectly satisfied with the British reasons for refusing his offer of mediation “on a point of so much delicacy and importance,” he authorized Roumanzoff only ten days afterward to annoy England a second time with an offer which he had every reason to know must be rejected; and he did this without informing Nesselrode.
Gallatin and Bayard found themselves, August 10, condemned to wait two or three months for the British answer, which they knew must be unfavorable, because Gallatin received August 17 Baring’s letter announcing the determination of Castlereagh to negotiate separately. Roumanzoff’s conduct became more and more mysterious to the commissioners. He did not notify them of Castlereagh’s official offer to negotiate directly. He confounded Adams, August 19, by flatly denying his own information, given two months before, that England rejected mediation in principle because it involved doctrines of her internal government. Roumanzoff insisted that England had never refused to accept the mediation, although he held in his hands at least two despatches from Lieven, written as late as July 13, officially communicating England’s determination to negotiate directly or not at all. Castlereagh, foreseeing the possibility of misunderstanding, had read to Lieven the instructions of July 13 for communication to Roumanzoff, besides authorizing Cathcart to show them in extenso to the Czar.[451] In denying that such instructions had been given, Roumanzoff could not have expected the American commissioners to believe him.
The motive of Roumanzoff’s persistence might be open to the simple explanation that the chancellor hoped to recover power, and within a few months to re-establish his policy of antagonism to England. Alexander’s conduct could be explained by no such obvious interest. When Castlereagh’s letters of July 13 and 14 reached Cathcart at the Czar’s headquarters in Bohemia about August 10, they arrived at the most critical moment of the war. On that day the armistice expired. The next day Austria declared war on Napoleon. The combined armies of Russia, Prussia, and Austria concentrated behind the mountains, and then marched into Saxony. While starting on that campaign, August 20, the Czar was told by Lord Cathcart the reasons why his offer of mediation was rejected, and answered at once that in this case he could do nothing more.[452] Cathcart wrote to Nesselrode a formal note on the subject August 23 or 24, but did not at once communicate it,[453] because the campaign had then begun; the great battle of Dresden was fought August 26 and 27, and the allies, again beaten, retired into Bohemia August 28. The Czar saw his best military adviser Moreau killed by his side at Dresden, and he returned to Töplitz in no happy frame of mind.
At Töplitz, September 1, Cathcart delivered to Nesselrode his formal note,[454] refusing Russian mediation and communicating the offer of England to negotiate directly. In an ordinary condition of government Nesselrode should have taken care that the British note should be made known without delay to the American commissioners at St. Petersburg, but the Czar kept in his own hands the correspondence with Roumanzoff and the Americans, and neither he nor Nesselrode communicated Cathcart’s act to Roumanzoff.[455] Possibly their silence was due to the new military movements. August 29 the French marshal Vandamme with forty thousand men, pursuing the allies into Bohemia, was caught between the Prussians and Austrians August 30 and crushed. During the month of September severe fighting, favorable to the allies, occurred, but no general advance was made by the allied sovereigns.
Alexander next received at Töplitz toward September 20 a letter from Roumanzoff enclosing a renewal of the offer of mediation, to be proposed in a despatch to Lieven, read by Roumanzoff to the American commissioners August 24, and sent to London August 28. The Czar must have known the futility of this new step, as well as the mistake into which Roumanzoff had been led, and the awkward attitude of the American commissioners. Only a fortnight before, he had received Cathcart’s official note, and a few days earlier he had assured Cathcart that he should do no more in the matter. Yet, September 20, Alexander wrote with his own hand a note of four lines to Roumanzoff, approving his despatch to Lieven, and begging him to follow up the affair as he had begun it.[456]