The Romance of the Romanoffs

by Joseph McCabe

Napoleon’s famous Russian campaign of 1812 need not be described here. The Poles hailed him as a deliverer, and he ran on until the continuous retreat of the Russians and the appalling desolation they created as they retreated made him uneasy. It was Alexander’s generals who were responsible for that strategy. The Tsar himself expressed impatience. At length, on September 15th, Napoleon gazed upon the golden roofs of Moscow and felt that the end was in sight. How could Russia yield its ancient capital and not acknowledge defeat? The next day began the historic fire of Moscow, already evacuated by its population. Whether or no General Rostopchin ordered the fire, the Tsar was not privy to it. He wept when he heard of the tragedy. But it was a tragedy for Napoleon also. The grip of winter soon began to close upon the desolated land. The Tsar was whipping up his weary people with manifests after manifests, imploring them to break the tyrant and help to take “the blessings of liberty” to other nations. We shall see presently that at this period he became almost fanatically religious.

At the head of his inspirited troops—he would, he said, not again leave his armies to unenterprising generals, who could only retreat—Alexander followed the pale and emaciated remnant of Napoleon’s “grand army” across the corpse-strewn wastes. Then came Leipsic, the first nail in Napoleon’s coffin. The Austrian statesman Metternich saw the Tsar at Frankfort, and was for moderation in victory. On to Paris, said the Tsar; and the encircling movement pushed the French gradually in toward their capital. He was at Paris for the end, and he spent a few weeks in London before he returned to receive a magnificent, and not unmerited, ovation at St. Petersburg.

Alexander went himself to Vienna for the Congress which was to settle the map of Europe. Again one must glance at his portrait to imagine him at Vienna. He was the modest arbiter of the destinies of Europe, the conqueror of Napoleon, Behind the scenes, however, was a limping diplomatist named Talleyrand, who had returned to office with Louis XVIII, and he and Metternich and Castlereagh ruled. Against Alexander’s wish Poland was again divided, only Cracow and its district receiving a republican independence. Napoleon suspended their intrigues for a season by his dramatic return, but after Waterloo the monarchs and statesmen met again at Paris to complete their work.

Here the personality of Alexander attracted considerable, and not very flattering, attention, and we may linger over one of the last bits of personal romance—of very chaste romance—in the story of the Romanoffs. In the house adjoining his hotel, and connected with it, Alexander established a lady who was soon known to all Paris. This was the Baroness Barbara Juliana von Krüdener. In her youth Juliana had been a fascinating and gay lady, of Prussian birth, who had virtually deserted her elderly and prosy German baron for a French officer. Her nerves deteriorated with her charms, and in 1804, her fortieth year, she had been very seriously converted. A gentleman who was paying court to her had fallen dead at her feet. Wandering to and fro in a state of extreme nervousness, she came into touch with the Moravian Brethren and “got religion.” The long war and comprehensive disturbance of Europe had led to remarkable eruptions of mysticism. Napoleon was anti-Christ: the end of the world was at hand. Prophets arose in every German village; and Juliana eagerly sought them. She became convinced that it was her mission to preach the millennium which was to precede the end.

In 1814 she met the Tsarina Elizabeth at Baden, and through her she attempted to reach the Tsar. Alexander refused for some time to see her, but he in turn went to Baden in 1815 and he allowed her to call. She found him in a receptive mood. Since the burning of Moscow he had spent much time over the Scriptures, and he was at this moment brooding over the open page, seeking in vain the remedy of his mysterious restlessness. Juliana harangued him, stormily, for three hours, and captured him. He brought her to Paris, put her in the house next his own, and attended her prayer-meetings. Nobles and famous writers of Paris attended. Over all the horrors of the past men saw dawning the glory of a new religious epoch.

All this has more historical and practical import than may be imagined. Alexander invented a “Holy Alliance” of monarchs to put into force the lofty moral tenets of the new mysticism. He showed the Baroness one day—she annoyed him afterwards by claiming that she had written it—the draft of a manifest of the Alliance. In three short articles the royal signatories would bind themselves thenceforward to be guided, in domestic and foreign policy, by “the precepts of that holy religion [Christianity], namely, the precepts of Justice, Charity, and Peace.” The whole document breathed the spiritual exaltation in which the Tsar was at the time. The King of Prussia signed it without wincing—to oblige his friend. Francis of Austria, very pious, but taught by the Jesuits to suspect heresy everywhere, consulted Metternich, who said it was a harmless piece of folly. He signed it. Castlereagh advised the English Prince Regent that it was a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense; and the gay Regent accepted it in principle, without signing it, and assured the Tsar that he would follow its “sacred maxims.” The Pope refused to sign.

The practical importance of the matter is that the Holy Alliance became, in effect, an alliance for the bloody suppression of democracy and enlightenment, and the charter drawn up by Alexander became the code of his persecuting successors and their nationalist supporters. Western Christianity became faithless; it compromised with democracy, with science, with liberalism. So the “holy religion” must be the uncompromising Church of Russia, with its profound reverence for autocracy and its hostility to enlightenment.

Alexander became sensitive that his association with the Baroness made him seem rather ridiculous. He got rid of her, and from that time maintained only a coldly polite correspondence. The astute Metternich gained increasing influence over him, and there was no vagueness about Metternich. Kings must guard their crowns, and ministers their portfolios, against anybody—adventurers or democracies—who wanted them. When the Greeks rose against Turkey in 1821 the Baroness rushed to St. Petersburg and urged her pupil to take up “the holy war.” Metternich told him that the situation was that the Greeks had rebelled against their lawful sovereign, the Sultan. So Alexander would not send a gun to aid either the Slav or Greek victims of the terrible Turk. The whole Russian nation opposed him. When a great flood brought tragedy upon St. Petersburg in 1824, men said that God was punishing the Tsar. He was troubled, but did nothing. Justice, Charity, and Peace he still loved; but he would lend no aid to insurrection. For the remainder of his life he defended the absolute divine right of kings and assisted in attempting to retard the birth of modernism.

The Poles felt his gradual deterioration. Russian Poland was at first, with a show of generosity, converted into an autonomous kingdom under the Russian crown. Alexander was the king; though the Poles had their old flag with the white eagle. The Grand Duke Constantine was commander of the army; though it was a Polish army. An officer of Napoleon’s army was made Viceroy, and a general amnesty was granted. But Warsaw was far away, and the harsh Constantine and the Tsar’s more reactionary ministers ruled it. The Diet was soon left in abeyance, and the promises of reform unfulfilled. The Poles angrily muttered that they had been duped, and secret societies spread, with a result which we shall see later.