NAPOLEON IN RUSSIA--HOLY ALLIANCE
A youth of twenty-five years was Tsar and Autocrat of All the Russias.
Alexander had from his birth been withdrawn entirely from his father's
influence. The tutor chosen by his grandmother was Laharpe, a Swiss
Republican, and the principles of political freedom were at the
foundation of his training. It was of course during the period of her
own liberal tendencies that Alexander was imbued with the advanced
theories which had captured intellectual Europe in the days before the
French Revolution. The new Emperor declared in a manifesto that his
reign should be inspired by the aims and principles of Catherine II.
He then quickly freed himself from the conspirators who had murdered
his father, and drew about him a group of young men like himself,
utterly inexperienced, but enthusiastic dreamers of a reign of goodwill
which should regenerate Russia. With the utmost confidence, reforms of
the most radical nature were proposed and discussed. There was to be a
gradual emancipation of the serfs, and misery of all sorts to be lifted
from the land by a new and benign system of government which should be
representative and constitutional. Many changes were at once
instituted. The old system of "colleges," or departments, established
by Peter the Great was removed and a group of ministers after the
European custom constituted the Tsar's official household, or what
would once have been called his _Drujina_. In the very first year of
this reign there began an accession of territory in Asia, which
gravitated as if by natural law toward the huge mass. The picturesque
old kingdom of Georgia, lying south of the Caucasus between the Black
and Caspian seas, was the home of that fair and gifted race which,
fallen from its high estate, had become the victim of the Turks, and,
with its congener Circassia, had long provided the harems of the
Ottoman Empire with beautiful slaves. The Georgians had often appealed
to the Tsars for protection, and in 1810 the treaty was signed which
incorporated the suffering kingdom with Russia.
A portion of the state passed to Russia in 1801, at the commencement of
Alexander's reign; but the formal surrender of the whole by treaty was
not until 1810.
So day by day, while the young Emperor and his friends were living in
their pleasant Utopia, Russia, with all its incoherent elements, with
its vast energies, its vast riches, and its vast miseries, was
expanding and assuming a more dominating position in Europe. What
would be done at St. Petersburg, was the question of supreme
importance; and Alexander was being importuned to join the coalition
against the common enemy Bonaparte.
The night before the 2d of October, 1805, the Russian Emperor and his
young officers, as confident of victory as they were of their ability
to reconstruct Russia, were impatiently waiting for the morrow, and the
conflict at Austerlitz. With a ridiculous assurance the young
Alexander sent by the young Prince Dolgoruki a note addressed--not to
the Emperor--but to the "Head of the French Nation," stating his
demands for the abandonment of Italy and immediate peace! Before
sundown the next day the "Battle of the Three Emperors" had been
fought; the Russian army was scattered after frightful loss, and
Alexander, attended by an orderly and two Cossacks, was galloping away
as fast as his horse could carry him. Then Napoleon was in
Vienna--Francis II. at his bidding took off his imperial crown--the
"Confederation of the Rhine" was formed out of Germanic States; and
then the terrible and invincible man turned toward Prussia, defeated a
Russian army which came to its rescue, and in 1806 was in
Berlin--master and arbiter of Europe!
Alexander, the romantic champion of right and justice, the dreamer of
ideal dreams, had been carried by the whirlpool of events into currents
too strong for him. He stood alone on the continent of Europe face to
face with the man who was subjugating it. His army was broken in
pieces, and perhaps an invasion of his own empire was at hand. Should
he make terms with this man whose career had so revolted him?--or
should he defy him and accept the risk of an invasion, which, by
offering freedom to the serfs and independence to the Poles, might give
the invader the immediate support of millions of his own subjects?
Then added to the conflict with his old self, there was the
irresistible magic of Napoleon's personal influence. A two-hours'
interview on the raft at Tilsit--June 25, 1807--changed the whole
direction of Alexander's policy, and made him an ally of the despot he
had detested, whom he now joined in determining the fate of Europe.
Together they decided who should occupy thrones and who should not; to
whom there should be recompense, and who should be despoiled; and the
Emperor of Russia consented to join the Emperor of the French in a war
upon the commercial prosperity of England--his old friend and ally--by
means of a continental blockade.
Times were changed. It was not so long ago--just one hundred
years--since Peter the Great had opened one small window for the light
from civilized Europe to glimmer through; and now the Tsar of that same
Russia, in a two-hours' interview on a raft, was deciding what should
be the fate of Europe!
The Emperor's young companions, with small experience and lofty aims,
were keenly disappointed in him. This alliance was in contravention of
all their ideals. He began to grow distrustful and cold toward them,
leaning entirely upon Speranski, his prime minister, who was French in
his sympathies and a profound admirer of Napoleon. Alexander, no less
zealous for reforms than before, hurt at the defection of his friends
and trying to justify himself to himself, said "Does not this man
represent the new forces in conflict with the old?" But he was not at
ease. He and his minister worked laboriously; a systematic plan of
reform was prepared. Speranski considered the Code Napoleon the model
of all progressive legislation. Its adoption was desired, but it was
suited only to a homogeneous people; it was a modern garment and not to
be worn by a nation in which feudalism lingered, in which there was not
a perfect equality before the law; hence the emancipation of the serfs
must be the corner-stone of the new structure. The difficulties grew
larger as they were approached. He had disappointed the friends of his
youth, had displeased his nobility, and a general feeling of irritation
prevailed upon finding themselves involved by the Franco-Russian
alliance in wars with England, Austria, and Sweden, and the prosperity
of the empire seriously impaired by the continental blockade. But when
Bonaparte began to show scant courtesy to his Russian ally, and to act
as if he were his master, then Alexander's disenchantment was complete.
He freed himself from the unnatural alliance, and faced the inevitable
consequences.
Napoleon, also glad to be freed from a sentimental friendship not at
all to his taste, prepared to carry out his long-contemplated design.
In July of 1812, by way of Poland, he entered Russia with an army of
over 678,000 souls. It was a human avalanche collected mainly from the
people he had conquered, with which he intended to overwhelm the
Russian Empire. It was of little consequence that thirty or forty
thousand fell as this or that town was captured by the way. He had
expected victory to be costly, and on he pressed with diminished
numbers toward Moscow, armies retreating and villages burning before
him. If St. Petersburg was the brain of Russia, Moscow--Moscow the
Holy--was its heart! What should they do? Should they lure the French
army on to its destruction and then burn and retreat? or should they
there take their stand and sacrifice the last army of Russia to save
Moscow? With tears streaming down their cheeks they yielded to the
words of Kutuzof, who said: "When it becomes a matter of the salvation
of Russia, Moscow is only a city like any other. Let us retreat." The
archives and treasures of the churches and palaces were carried to
Valdimir, such as could of the people following them, and the city was
left to its fate.
On September the 14th, 1812, the French troops defiled through the
streets of Moscow singing the Marseillaise, and Napoleon established
himself in the ancient palace of the Ivans within the walls of the
Kremlin. The torches had been distributed, and were in the hands of
the Muscovites. The stores of brandy, and boats loaded with alcohol,
were simultaneously ignited, and a fierce conflagration like a sea of
flame raged below the Kremlin. Napoleon, compelled to force his way
through these volcanic fires himself, narrowly escaped.
For five days they continued, devouring supplies and everything upon
which the army had depended for shelter and subsistence. For
thirty-five days more they waited among the blackened ruins. All was
over with the French conquest. The troops were eating their horses,
and thousands were already perishing with hunger. Then the elements
began to fight for Russia--the snow-flakes came, then the bitter polar
winds, cutting like a razor; and a winding sheet of snow enveloped the
land. On the 13th of October, after lighting a mine under the Kremlin,
with sullen rage the French troops marched out of Moscow. The Great
Tower of Ivan erected by Boris was cracked and some portions of palaces
and gateways destroyed by this vicious and useless act of revenge.
Then, instead of marching upon St. Petersburg as he had expected,
Napoleon escaped alone to the frontier, leaving his perishing wreck of
an army to get back as it could. The peasantry, the mushiks, whom the
Russians had feared to trust--infuriated by the destruction of their
homes, committed awful atrocities upon the starving, freezing soldiers,
who, maddened by cold and hunger and by the singing in their ears of
the rarefied air, many of them leaped into the bivouac fires. It was a
colossal tragedy. Of the 678,000 soldiers only 80,000 ever returned.
The extinction of the grand army of invasion was complete. But in the
following year, with another great army, the indomitable Napoleon was
conducting a campaign in Germany which ended with the final defeat at
Leipzig--then the march upon Paris--and in March, 1814, Alexander at
the head of the Allies was in the French capital, dictating the terms
of surrender. This young man had played the most brilliant part in the
great drama of Liberation. He was hailed as a Deliverer, and exerted a
more powerful influence than any of the other sovereigns, in the long
period required for rearranging Europe after the passing of
Napoleon--the disturber of the peace of the world.
In 1809 Sweden had surrendered to Russia Finland, which had belonged to
that country for six centuries. The kindly-intentioned Alexander
conceded to the Finns many privileges similar to those enjoyed by
Poland, which until recent years have not been seriously interfered
with. He guaranteed to them a Diet, a separate army, and the
continuance of their own language and customs. A ukase just issued by
the present emperor seriously invades these privileges, and a forcible
Russification of Finland threatens to bring a wave of Finnish
emigration to America (1899).
When the Emperor Alexander returned after the Treaty of Paris he was
thirty-four years old. Many of the illusions of his youth had faded.
His marriage with Elizabeth of Baden was unhappy. His plans for reform
had not been understood by the people whom they were intended to
benefit. He had yielded finally to the demands of his angry nobility,
had dismissed his liberal adviser Speranski and substituted Araktcheef,
an intolerant, reactionary leader. He grew morose, gloomy, and
suspicious, and a reign of extreme severity under Araktcheef commenced.
In 1819 he consented to join in a league with Austria and Prussia for
the purpose of suppressing the very tendencies he himself had once
promoted. The League was called the "Holy Alliance," and its object
was to reinstate the principle of the divine right of Kings and to
destroy democratic tendencies in the germ. Araktcheef's severities,
directed against the lower classes and the peasantry, produced more
serious disorders than had yet developed. There were popular
uprisings, and in 1823 at Kief there was held secretly a convention at
which the people were told that "the obstacle to their liberties was
the Romanoff dynasty. They must shrink from nothing--not from the
murder of the Emperor, nor the extermination of the Imperial family."
The peasants were promised freedom if they would join in the plot, and
a definite time was proposed for the assassination of Alexander when he
should inspect the troops in the Ukraine in 1824.
When the Tsar heard of this conspiracy in the South he exclaimed: "Ah,
the monsters! And I planned for nothing but their happiness!" He
brooded over his lost illusions and his father's assassination. His
health became seriously disordered, and he was advised to go to the
South for change of climate. At Taganrog, on the 1st of December,
1825, he suddenly expired. Almost his last words were: "They may say
of me what they will, but I have lived and shall die republican." A
statement difficult to accept, regarding a man who helped to create the
"Holy Alliance."