Then Paul began to enforce his grand schemes of military reform—and alienate the army. They must abandon those new and serviceable uniforms which Potiamkin had given them. They must return to powdered hair and pigtails. Paul went along the line, on parade, and used his cane freely. Old General Suvoroff grumbled, and was banished; though he had to be recalled when war broke out. A regiment one day threw Paul into one of his hurricanes of rage. “March—to Siberia,” he thundered; and they marched, but were stopped on the way. Everything must be done on the German model. Anything that reminded him of France was anathema. More than 12,000 people were exiled or imprisoned in four years, generally for trivial offences. He made some useful changes, but so many that were petty and irritating that men thought him insane. He was, in fact, on the road to insanity. He suffered from insomnia, and took opium. People fled at his approach.
Paul sincerely wanted peace, but the French were overrunning Europe, and he joined forces with Austria against them. Austria co-operated so badly that his army, ably led by Suvoroff, had to retreat disastrously. Bonaparte watched him astutely, and bribed his chief ministers. Next England irritated him. Like Catherine, he challenged England’s right to search neutral vessels, and, whereas England kept its Russian prisoners, Bonaparte sent home, neatly dressed and armed, those that had been taken by France. When England went on to take Malta, Bonaparte had an easy victim. Paul had become grand master of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and he considered that this gave him a special interest in Malta.
At the beginning of 1801 Paul was pledged to France and set about the formation of a league against England. And on March 24th, after a gloomy reign of four and a half years, Paul met the end he had expected. He had heavily fortified the Mikhailovski Palace, in which he lived, but about midnight (March 23-24) Count Zuboff, Count Pahlen, General Bennigsen, and a few others entered his chamber, roused him, and invited him to abdicate. He refused, and it is presumed that a scuffle followed. It is at least certain that Paul was strangled. It was officially announced that Paul died of “apoplexy.” “Isn’t it time they invented a new disease in Russia?” said Talleyrand when he heard. Napoleon was furious.
Alexander I lay upon his bed, dressed, when Count Zuboff rushed in to say that “all was over.” He started, but he was at once addressed as Emperor and could not misunderstand. He had agreed to the enforcement of his father’s abdication, but had assuredly done no more. Whether he had looked beyond or no we cannot say, but Alexander was a high-minded man, a new type of Romanoff. While they talked, Paul’s widow came and heard the news. She shrieked that she was Empress, and begged the soldiers to support her rights. There was a second horrible scene in the darkness of that winter night. They drew her away, and, when the day broke, St. Petersburg burst into open and enthusiastic rejoicing, such as Romans had shown at the death of Domitian, that the gloomy and misguided Paul had gone the way of so many Tsars and princes. Strangers embraced in the streets. There was no trial, but those who had been in the plot were leniently removed.
Alexander I, the monarch who opens the new phase, came to the throne with large and vague and lofty ideals. Not only should Russia become happy and prosperous under his benevolent despotism, but all Europe should be illumined. He averted the threatened war with England, which had sent a fleet to the Baltic, and reaffirmed the friendship with Napoleon. His new minister of foreign affairs, Kotchubey, agreed with him. Russia must be kept clear of the entanglement of war and concentrate upon internal reform. Kotchubey had soon to give place to the Pole Czartoryski, who more sincerely shared Alexander’s romantic idealism. The Tsar of Russia was to inaugurate “a new era of justice and right” for the whole of Europe. An envoy was sent to London to propose—there is nothing new under the sun—a sort of League to Enforce Peace. England and Russia, the two powers which desired no further territory, were to form its nucleus. Other Powers might join.
One hears plainly the echo of the French humanitarians and the English whom they inspired. But how was the league to enforce peace upon France? Russia moved slowly toward war. In 1804 the Duc d’Enghien was murdered, and Alexander was outraged. He came to an agreement with England to chastise Napoleon: only—as far as Alexander was concerned—for his monstrous breaches of international law. Napoleon became Emperor and King of Italy, and Alexander was further outraged. Kings were born, not made. In 1805 he joined the Austrians on the battle-fields of Italy.
The story of Alexander I, the monarch who was going to impose peace upon a foolish and distracted world, is one long story of wars, and it does not enter into the scheme of this book to describe wars. How far Alexander was to blame for the entry of his country into the struggle against Napoleon, or into Napoleon’s struggle against England, is a point on which opinions differ. His entire change of attitude—from neutrality to war against France, then to friendship with Napoleon, then back to the English alliance—annoyed his ministers and people, and lays him open to a charge of nervous instability. Such a charge he would have rebutted with warmth and astonishment. His portrait is familiar: a smooth-faced, dignified man, reflecting righteousness in every feature. He would have given a hundred reasons for each change in his policy. We will notice these and the issues of his wars briefly, before we consider his personality and his domestic work.
His first war ended in the historic rout of Austerlitz (1805), and his optimism was sadly clouded. But when his mind was fixed upon what he regarded as a righteous cause, he could be obstinate. Prussia and Austria came to terms with France, and Alexander’s advisers were for doing the same, but he refused. He entered the new coalition (Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and England). Napoleon smote the Prussians at Jena, frightened the Swedes into peace, and inflicted appalling losses upon the Russians at Eylau. Alexander would not desist. He saw the King of Prussia and swore eternal alliance, and Napoleon overran Poland (1806-7). But Napoleon understood the naive mind of the Tsar, and knew that he was angry at the remissness of England in supporting him. Before long he met Alexander on a raft in the middle of the Niemen, and the charm of his manner and righteousness of his proposals won the large heart of the Tsar; besides that Napoleon cleverly conveyed to his mind the impression that he thought seriously of choosing Alexander’s sister Anna as his second wife. At the entreaty of his new friend Napoleon spared the sovereignty of Frederick William of Prussia, though he relieved him of his Polish gains and turned Poland into a Duchy of Warsaw.
Kornilov, the ablest of recent Russian historians, maintains that Alexander was not duped. He wanted time, and played his cards skilfully. It is not easy to credit Alexander with such subtlety; and there are those who think that Alexander sacrificed his honour and the interest of his country. He was to break with England, when all St. Petersburg had been educated to admire England, and he was not to receive Constantinople as his reward. St. Petersburg was thoroughly angry at the change of policy, and Alexander had to change his ministers. The Russian ambassador at Paris secured a confidential document in which Napoleon declared that Russia was the natural ally of Austria and inevitable enemy of France. Still Alexander persisted, though he was not a very useful ally. He did, it is true, make war upon Sweden because it would not place an embargo on British ships; but out of that war he got the remainder of Finland, with 900,000 souls, for Russia.
The two Emperors met again at Erfurt in 1810. Napoleon had there a mighty gathering of his royal vassals, partly to impress Alexander, and he seemed to succeed. In later years, however, Napoleon himself considered that Alexander was fooling him. He said that the Tsar had “the duplicity of a Byzantine Greek.” Napoleon was a judge of duplicity, but I prefer to believe in the simple-mindedness of Alexander, and do not even see ground to seek psychological explanations of his vacillations. He respected to the end the genius of Napoleon, but the alliance was hollow, and in the next year the causes of quarrel multiplied. Napoleon said no more about the Tsarevna Anna: he married an Austrian. He seemed anxious to turn Poland into a French province. On the other hand, Napoleon complained that his ally spoiled his continental blockade against England, and put heavy duties on French wine. Alexander, pushed by intriguers, got rid of his ablest minister, Speranski, who was pro-French, made peace with Turkey and Sweden, and at length entered into an alliance with England and Sweden. Both Emperors now massed their troops at the frontier and joined them.