Authors: Mary McGrigor
The Tsar's Doctor (10 page)
‘Napoleon Thinks I Am No Better Than a Fool’
(Alexander to his sister Catherine Pavlovna, 8 October 1808)
Despite his personal sadness the tsar was soon forced back into the political arena as news came of the French Emperor Napoleon’s invasion of both Portugal and Spain. At once it became obvious that as troops were withdrawn from the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, he was now more than ever dependent upon Russian support to prevent renewed war with Austria.
In the last week of August 1808, swinging from apathy to action as was typical of his volatile nature, Alexander wrote to the French emperor telling him that he hoped to meet him in Erfurt, a small town in Thuringia, where they might again confer as they had at Tilsit the previous year.
Then with accustomed impetuosity, he was off once more, racing at breakneck speed in a
caleche
(light carriage) for a distance of 750 miles. Again there was joyous celebration as the two emperors rode into the town together among peeling bells and cheering crowds.
For a week they discussed politics, but by now the former camaraderie was beginning to wear thin. Each became increasingly suspicious of the other and Alexander, writing to his favourite sister Catherine, told her that he now thought it obvious that Napoleon thought him a fool.
The main source of their controversy was Napoleon’s attitude to the Austrians. Alexander wanted to confer with them, particularly on the subject of the Continental System whereby Napoleon planned to enforce an embargo on British trade. Desperate to return to the Iberian Peninsula, infuriated by such prevarication, the emperor threw his hat on the ground and stamped on it in uncontrollable rage. Later he complained to General Caulaincourt, his newly appointed ambassador to St Petersburg, that Alexander was as stubborn as a mule.
Eventually, however, despite the disagreements, a secret treaty was signed. By its terms the two emperors reaffirmed their alliance, and in view of the very real necessity for trade, resolved to approach George III of England with offers of peace. Finland and the provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia were to be acceded to Russia, although it was stated specifically that the province of Holstein-Oldenburg should not be annexed. Also it was conceded that all the Turkish lands, apart from areas around the Danube, were to remain under the sultan’s rule.
Official business concluded, Napoleon approached Alexander on the delicate subject of his marriage. Josephine was childless and he was planning to divorce her, being desperate for an heir. Suggestions had already been put forward to Alexander, via his ambassador, Count Armand de Caulaincourt, that his sister Catherine might be a suitable bride. Alexander, however, was revolted by the idea. Katya, as her family called her, was only twenty while Napoleon was twice her age. But this was the least of the reasons why the thought of his favourite sister being used as a political pawn as a wife for the self-made Emperor of France was something he could not entertain. Through words couched in diplomacy, Napoleon got the message that under no circumstances whatever would Alexander, whom he thought he held in his thrall, even countenance the idea of his marriage to either Catherine, or his youngest sister Anna. He did not receive it kindly. Never could Napoleon Bonaparte accept an insult to his pride. When they parted onlookers noted the French emperor’s mood to be grim.
Meanwhile, Alexander’s own marriage now seemed likely to fall apart. At the end of 1810 de Maistre, the Sardinian minister at the Russian Court, writing to Victor-Emanuel, the King of Naples, told him that the estrangement between the emperor and empress had now reached a state of impasse. Elizabeth had shown great dignity in turning a blind eye to her husband’s dalliances. His long-lasting affair with Maria Naryshkin, who had openly flaunted her pregnancies, had proved particularly hurtful to Elizabeth, but goaded as she was by this woman, to whom her mother-in-law showed great favour, Elizabeth forgave Alexander, whom she still slavishly adored.
Some time after Alexander’s return from Erfurt, however, when Elizabeth learned that a suite of rooms in the Winter Palace was being prepared for some woman, she succumbed to both anger and grief. The lady’s identity has never been identified: it may have been Naryshkina or a new mistress, whom Tolstoy mentions, although he does not give her name. Whoever it was, the insult of her husband’s mistress moving into the Winter Palace was more than Elizabeth could bear. She told her sister Amelia, who was living with her, that she could not stay under the same roof with any mistress and would return to Baden forthwith.
The domestic crisis of the emperor and empress transfixed the gossipmongers of St Petersburg. For a short time, all talk of threatened war was forgotten. Amelia wrote at once to their mother, who in turn sent a letter to Elizabeth, begging her to change her decision. Alexander, suddenly aware, it would seem for the first time, how greatly Elizabeth was distressed, suddenly came to his senses as he realized that he was about to lose the one woman he really loved, despite his many infidelities. Shocked into contrition, he begged her to forgive him. The workmen departed from the Winter Palace and the royal marriage, at least on the face of it, somehow continued to survive.
Wylie worked to improve the running of the army hospitals with a speed spurred on by the knowledge that war was about to be declared. Committed as he was to this project, his task was not made easier by the fact that as personal doctor to the imperial family he was ever at the beck and call of the tsar.
Alexander’s loathing of the tyranny of serfdom was by now well known. Although some landlords were benevolent, others were quite the reverse. No one was more aware of this than Wylie, as the following incident must prove.
Told of the appalling treatment that a certain aristocratic lady, who lived some way from Moscow, was meting out to her serfs, Alexander sent Wylie, dragging him from his most important work, to examine the condition of the peasants living on her land. Directed to act as he thought best, Wylie, after an inspection, was so horrified by what he found that he sent flour, meat and wine over a distance of 200 versts
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for the relief of the starving people for which the virago who was so maltreating them was forced to pay.
Alexander’s wish to abolish serfdom was by now well known. It was also common knowledge that, in view of what was seen to be a coming time of national crisis as Napoleon threatened war, and reliant as he was on the landlords for support, his aim was unlikely to succeed.
Foremost among the tsar’s advisors on his plans to give the mass of his people at least a voice of their own was Mikhail Speransky, the man who had now become the tsar’s private secretary. Speransky, the son of a village priest, had trained originally for the priesthood, then became a civil servant and, noted for his diligence and comprehension of finance, had gradually risen to be head of the Second Department in the Ministry of Interior.
The tsar, having recognized his competence, had requested his release from this employment to become his personal assistant. In doing so he must have known that Speransky was an admirer of the new regime in France, but plainly was unaware that Napoleon planned to exploit his known influence over the tsar.
Speransky returned from Erfurt to be made both State Secretary and Assistant Minister of Justice. As such, with Alexander he planned to make sweeping government reforms. Although supreme power would remain with the tsar and a Council of State, the people would have a voice through elected representative assemblies. He also proposed that the taxation system should be based on the agricultural wealth of the country, an idea much resented by the landlords, whose money came largely from their land.
Most dramatically Alexander supported Speransky’s decision to abolish the privileges which allowed the advancement of the aristocracy in the civil service. Still more drastically, he allowed him to enforce the applicants for these positions to take a written examination.
The resulting outrage was predictable. Many of the nobility were incapable of passing a test in mathematics set in Russian, let alone in the French or Latin that were declared to be obligatory. It was claimed that Speransky, the upstart, was exploiting the tsar’s favour by instigating revolutionary measures.
Most vociferous of his critics was Alexander’s sister, the Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna, who had just married Prince George of Oldenburg. She complained bitterly to her brother that her husband’s reports as Governor-General of Tver and other provinces should pass through the normal government departments, rather than be seen and dealt with exclusively by himself.
Added to Catherine’s antagonism was that of General Arakcheev, the tsar’s instructor in the arts of war at Gatchina, a man both autocratic and brutal. Now Minister of War, he believed Speransky to be dangerously left wing.
Conflict between the members of the hierarchy in the Russian government rose to a crescendo as the country faced the threat of war. Negotiations between the emperors of France and Russia continued but relations became increasingly strained. The tension rose as resentment mounted in Russia against the Continental System, which was ruining the country’s trade. The climax came in December when Alexander learned that Napoleon, having annexed all the northern coasts of Germany, was proposing to take over Oldenburg. This direct contravention of the agreement arranged at Erfurt forced him into action. On 31 December he consented to the tariff decree, by which goods coming overland from Europe were heavily taxed, while restrictions were removed on those entering Russian ports. Trade with maritime countries, including Great Britain, the main outlet for Russian grain, hemp and flax, was thus established once more.
In St Petersburg it was now generally accepted that war with France was inevitable. The French Ambassador Caulaincourt, about to be recalled on health grounds, was told prophetically by the tsar:
Should the Emperor Napoleon make war on me, it is possible, even probable, that we shall be defeated . . . I shall not be the first to draw my sword, but I shall be the last to sheath it . . . I should sooner retire to Kamchatka than yield provinces or put my signature to a treaty in my conquered capital which was no more than a truce.
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Fanned by the impending crisis, hostility towards Speransky increased. A sharp rise in taxation, to finance the expanding army, infuriated the landlords who felt themselves penalised by the expenditure of a man whose very loyalty had been questionable for some time. So great was the outcry of his enemies that Alexander, with much reluctance, complied with their request to allow the Chief of Police to watch Speransky. Nothing could be proved against him, but, faced as he was with an impending French invasion, Alexander’s hands were tied. Convinced that even if Speransky was innocent, as he himself believed him to be, he knew that in continuing to uphold him he was placing not only his own life but also his vast empire in jeopardy. Accordingly, on the evening of 29 March, Alexander received Speransky in private audience in the Winter Palace. They talked for two hours. Then Speransky came out, obviously upset, and began pushing papers into a briefcase. Behind him the door then burst open again as Alexander, tears coursing down his cheeks, rushed to embrace him with fond farewells.
Speransky went home to find the Minister of Police waiting for him with a carriage in which he was carried off to exile in Novgorod, the great port on the River Volga.
As snow left the streets of St Petersburg in the spring of 1812, Russia faced a state of national emergency, greater than any known before.
On 20 April, in an audience with the Marquis de Lauriston, the new French ambassador, Alexander told him that while he was prepared to modify the Russian tariff to help French trade, he insisted that Napoleon should abide by his promise to evacuate Prussia. In addition he must remove his troops from Swedish Pomerania, and should Napoleon continue to advance his armies towards Russia he would consider it an act of war.
Meanwhile from St Petersburg regiments began marching for the frontier. On 21 April, Alexander himself left his capital to drive westwards to Vilna (now Vilnius), the third largest city in Russia at the time which, being only about ninety miles from Napoleon’s newly formed Grand Duchy of Poland, lay directly before his expected advance.
Once there he was much entertained until, to return hospitality, he himself held a grand ball on the estate of General Bennigsen at Zakrêt on the outskirts of the city. There, while fountains played in the gardens beneath the light of a full moon and musicians of the Imperial Guard struck up the first notes of a mazurka, Alexander’s Chief of Police, General Balashov, arrived to tell him that Napoleon, with an army numbering 600,000 men, was already across the Niemen, only sixty-five miles away. Russia had been invaded, without declaration of war.
As Napoleon was known to be approaching Vilna, the tsar retired north-east to Drissa, a town on a tributary of the Dnieper some 160 miles west of Moscow. From there he made the long journey due east to Moscow where he appointed General Kutuzov, hero of the war with Turkey and now a man of sixty-seven, to the supreme command of his army.
At the same time Doctor James Wylie, still at the height of his strength at forty-four, became director of the medical department of the Ministry of War. The first indication of his efficiency as an administrator, soon to be so dramatically proved, is found in descriptions of the Russian army’s withdrawal under darkness from Vitebsk at the end of July, when not a single sick man was left behind.
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Furthermore General Langeron states in his memoirs that in the retreat of 1,200 versts from the Niemen to Moscow, during which the army fought two major battles, not even one sick or wounded soldier was left to be captured by the enemy.
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In early August, as Napoleon advanced across Russia, the first major battle took place at Smolensk. The town was left burning as the Russian forces retreated towards Moscow, leaving behind scorched fields to deprive the invaders of ripening crops. Hunger and fever were by now decimating the French forces but still they advanced with the force of a tempest destroying all in its path.