Departure for Sweden.--Passage through Finland.
The emperor quitted Petersburg, and I learned that he was gone to
Abo, where he was to meet General Bernadotte, Prince Royal of
Sweden. This news left no farther doubt about the determination of
that prince to take part in the present war, and nothing could be
more important at that moment for the salvation of Russia, and
consequently for that of Europe. We shall see the influence of it
developed in the sequel of this narrative. The news of the entrance
of the French into Smolensko arrived during the conferences of the
prince of Sweden with the emperor of Russia; and it was there that
Alexander contracted the engagement with himself and the Prince
Royal, his ally, never to sign a treaty of peace. "Should Petersburg
be taken," said he, "I will retire into Siberia. I will there resume
our ancient customs, and like our long-bearded ancestors, we will
return anew to conquer the Empire." "This resolution will liberate
Europe," exclaimed the Prince Royal, and his prediction begins to be
accomplishing.
I saw the Emperor Alexander a second time upon his return from Abo,
and the conversation I had the honor of holding with him, satisfied
me to that degree of the firmness of his determination, that in
spite of the capture of Moscow, and all the reports which followed
it, I firmly believed that he would never yield. He was so good as
to tell me, that after the capture of Smolensko, Marshal Berthier
had written to the Russian commander in chief respecting some
military matters, and terminated his letter by saying that the
Emperor Napoleon always preserved the tenderest friendship for the
Emperor Alexander, a stale mystification which the emperor of Russia
received as it deserved. Napoleon had given him some lessons in
politics, and lessons in war, abandoning himself in the first to the
quackery of vice, and in the second to the pleasure of exhibiting a
disdainful carelessness. He was deceived in the Emperor Alexander;
he had mistaken the nobleness of his character for dupery; he had
not been able to perceive that if the emperor of Russia had allowed
himself to go too far in his enthusiasm for him, it was because
he believed him a partizan of the first principles of the French
revolution, which agreed with his own opinions; but never had
Alexander the idea of associating with Napoleon to reduce
Europe to slavery. Napoleon thought in that, as well as in all
other circumstances, to succeed in blinding a man by a false
representation of his interest; but he encountered conscience, and
his calculations were entirely baffled; for that is an element, of
the strength of which he knows nothing, and which he never allows to
enter into his combinations.
Although General Barclay de Tolly was a military man of great
reputation, yet as he had met with reverses at the beginning of the
campaign, the general opinion designated as his successor, a general
of great renown, Prince Kutusow; he took the command fifteen days
before the entry of the French into Moscow, but he got to the army
only six days before the great battle which took place almost at the
gates of that city, at Borodino. I went to see him the day before
his departure; he was an old man of the most graceful manners, and
lively physiognomy, although he had lost an eye by one of the
numerous wounds he had received in the course of a fifty years'
service. On looking at him, I was afraid that he had not sufficient
strength to struggle with the rough young men who were pouncing upon
Russia from all corners of Europe: but the Russian courtiers at
Petersburg become Tartars at the army: and we have seen by Suwarow
that neither age nor honors can enervate their physical and moral
energy. I was moved at taking leave of this illustrious Marshal
Kutusow; I knew not whether I was embracing a conqueror or a martyr,
but I saw that he had the fullest sense of the grandeur of the cause
in which he was employed. It was for the defence, or rather for the
restoration of all the moral virtues which man owes to Christianity,
of all the dignity he derives from God, of all the independence
which he is allowed by nature; it was for the rescuing of all these
advantages from the clutches of one man, for the French are as
little to be accused as the Germans and Italians who followed his
train, of the crimes of his armies. Before his departure, Marshal
Kutusow went to offer up prayers in the church of Our Lady of Casan,
and all the people who followed his steps, called out to him to be
the saviour of Russia. What a moment for a mortal being! His age
gave him no hope of surviving the fatigues of the campaign; but
there are moments when man has a wish to die for the satisfaction of
his soul. Certain of the generous opinions and of the noble conduct
of the Prince of Sweden, I was more than ever confirmed in the
resolution of going to Stockholm, previous to embarking for England;
towards the end of September I quitted Petersburg to repair to
Sweden through Finland. My new friends, those whom a community of
sentiment had brought about me, came to bid me adieu; Sir Robert
Wilson, who seeks every where an opportunity of fighting, and
inflaming his friends by his spirit: M. de Stein, a man of antique
character, who only lived in the hope of seeing the deliverance of
his country; the Spanish envoy; and the English minister, Lord
Tyrconnel; the witty Admiral Bentinck; Alexis de Noailles, the only
French emigrant from the imperial tyranny, the only one who was
there, like me, to bear witness for France; Colonel Dornberg, that
intrepid Hessian whom nothing has turned from the object of his
pursuit; and several Russians, whose names have been since
celebrated by their exploits. Never was the fate of the world
exposed to greater dangers; no one dared to say so, but all knew it:
I only, as a female, was not exposed to it; but I might reckon what
I had suffered as something. I knew not in bidding adieu to these
worthy knights of the human race, which of them I should ever see
again, and already two of them are no longer in existence. When the
passions of man rouse man against his fellows, when nations attack
each other with fury, we recognize, with sorrow, human destiny in
the miseries of humanity; but when a single being, similar to the
idols of the Laplanders, to whom the incense of fear is offered up,
spreads misery over the earth in torrents, we experience a sort of
superstitious fear which leads us to consider all honorable persons
as his victims.
On entering into Finland, every thing indicates that you have passed
into another country, and that you have to do with a very different
race from the Sclavonians. The Finns are said to come immediately
from the North of Asia; their language also is said to have no
resemblance to the Swedish, which is an intermediate one between the
English and the German. The countenances of the Finns, however, are
generally perfectly German: their fair hair, and white complexions,
bear no resemblance to the vivacity of the Russian countenance; but
their manners are also much milder; the common people have a settled
probity, the result of protestant instruction, and purity of
manners. On Sundays, the young women are seen returning from sermon
on horseback, and the young men following them. You will frequently
receive hospitality from the pastors of Finland, who regard it as
their duty to give a lodging to travellers, and nothing can be more
pure or delightful than the reception you meet with in those
families; there are scarcely any noblemens' seats in Finland, so
that the pastors are generally the most important personages of the
country. In several Finnish songs, the young girls offer to their
lovers to sacrifice the residence of the pastor, even if it was
offered to them to share. This reminds me of the expression of a
young shepherd, "If I was a king, I would keep my sheep on
horseback." The imagination itself scarcely goes beyond what is
known.
The aspect of nature is very different in Finland to what it is in
Russia; in place of the marshes and plains which surround St.
Petersburg, you find rocks, almost mountains, and forests: but after
a time, these mountains, and those forests, composed of the same
trees, the fir and the birch, become monotonous. The enormous blocks
of granite which are seen scattered through the country, and on the
borders of the high roads, give the country an air of vigor; but
there is very little life around these great bones of the earth, and
vegetation begins to decrease from the latitude of Finland to the
last degree of the animated world. We passed through a forest half
consumed by fire; the north winds which add to the force of the
flames, render these fires very frequent, both in the towns and in
the country. Man has in all ways great difficulty in maintaining the
struggle with nature in these frozen climates. You meet with few
towns in Finland, and those few are very thinly peopled. There is no
centre, no emulation, nothing to say, and very little to do, in a
northern Swedish or Russian province, and during eight months of the
year, the whole of animated nature is asleep.
The Emperor Alexander possessed himself of Finland after the treaty
of Tilsit, and at a period when the deranged intellects of the
monarch who then reigned in Sweden, Gustavus IV., rendered him
incapable of defending his country. The moral character of this
prince was very estimable, but from his infancy, he had been
sensible himself that he could not hold the reins of government. The
Swedes fought in Finland with the greatest courage; but without a
warlike chief on the throne, a nation which is not numerous cannot
triumph over a powerful enemy. The Emperor Alexander became master
of Finland by conquest, and by treaties founded on force; but we
must do him the justice to say, that he treated this new province
very well, and respected the liberties she enjoyed. He allowed the
Finns all their privileges relative to the raising of taxes and men;
he sent very generous assistance to the towns which had been burnt,
and his favors compensated to a certain extent what the Finns
possessed as rights, if free men can ever accede voluntarily to that
sort of exchange. Finally, one of the prevailing ideas of the
nineteenth century, natural boundaries, rendered Finland as
necessary to Russia, as Norway to Sweden; and it must be admitted as
a truth, that wherever these natural limits have not existed, they
have been the source of perpetual wars.
I embarked at Abo, the capital of Finland. There is an university in
that city, and they make some attempts in it to cultivate the
intellect: but the vicinity of the bears and wolves during the
winter is so close, that all ideas are absorbed in the necessity of
ensuring a tolerable physical existence; and the difficulty which is
felt in obtaining that in the countries of the north, consumes at
great part of the time which' is elsewhere consecrated to the
enjoyment of the intellectual arts. As some compensation, however,
it may be said that the very difficulties with which nature
surrounds men give greater firmness to their character, and prevent
the admission into their mind of all the disorders occasioned by
idleness. I could not help, however every moment regretting those
rays of the South which had penetrated to my very soul.
The mythological ideas of the inhabitants of the North are
constantly representing to them ghosts and phantoms; day is there
equally favorable to apparitions as night; something pale and cloudy
seems to summon the dead to return to the earth, to breathe the cold
air, as the tomb with which the living are surrounded. In these
countries the two extremities are generally more conspicuous than
the intermediate ones; where men are entirely occupied with
conquering their existence from nature, mental labors very easily
become mystical, because man draws entirely from himself, and is in
no degree inspired by external objects.
Since I have been so cruelly persecuted by the Emperor, I have lost
all kind of confidence in destiny; I have however a stronger belief
in the protection of providence, but it is not in the form of
happiness on this earth. The result is, that all resolutions terrify
me, and yet exile obliges me frequently to adopt some. I dreaded the
sea, although every one said, all the world makes this passage, and
no harm happens to any one. Such is the language which encourages
almost all travellers: but the imagination does not allow itself to
be chained by this kind of consolation, and that abyss, from which
so slight an obstacle separates you, is always tormenting to the
mind. Mr. Schlegel saw the terror I felt about the frail vessel
which was to carry us to Stockholm. He showed me, near Abo, the
prison in which one of the most unfortunate kings of Sweden, Eric
XIV. had been confined some time before he died in another prison
near Gripsholm. "If you were confined there," he said to me, "how
much would you envy the passage of this sea, which at present so
terrifies you." This just reflection speedily gave another turn to
my ideas, and the first days of our voyage were sufficiently
pleasant. We passed between the islands, and although there was more
danger close to the land than in the open sea, one never feels the
same terror which the sight of the waves appearing to touch the sky
makes one experience. I made them show me the land in the horizon,
as far as I could perceive it; infinity is as fearful to the sight
as it is pleasant to the soul. We passed by the isle of Aland, where
the plenipotentiaries of Peter I. and Charles XII. negociated a
peace, and endeavored to fix boundaries to their ambition in this
frozen part of the world, which the blood of their subjects alone
had been able to thaw for a moment. We hoped to reach Stockholm the
following day, but a decidedly contrary wind obliged us to cast
anchor by the side of an island entirely covered with rocks
interspersed with trees, which hardly grew higher than the stones
which surrounded them. We hastened, however, to take a walk on this
island, in order to feel the earth under our feet.
I have always been very subject to ennui, and far from knowing how
to occupy myself at those moments of entire leisure which seem
destined for study.
Here the manuscript breaks off.
After a passage which was not without danger, my mother was landed
safely at Stockholm. She was received in Sweden with the greatest
kindness, and spent eight months there, and it was there she wrote
the present journal. Shortly after, she departed for London, and
there published her work on Germany, which the Imperial police had
suppressed. But her health, already cruelly affected by Bonaparte's
persecutions, having suffered from the fatigues of a long voyage,
she felt herself obliged without farther delay to undertake the
history of the political life of her father, and to adjourn to a
future period all other labors, until she had finished that which
her filial affection made her regard as a duty. She then conceived
the plan of her Considerations on the French Revolution. That work
even she was not spared to finish, and the manuscript of her Ten
Years' Exile remained in her portfolio in the state in which I now
publish it.
(End of Note by the Editor.)