Conservative Congress

September 1814

In September of 1812, French troops were in Moscow, fruitlessly waiting for Emperor Alexander I to begin peace negotiations – on Napoleon’s terms, of course. By September 1814, there had been a dramatic turnaround. The intervening years had seen the Fire of Moscow, the deadly retreat of the Grande Armée along the snow-covered Smolensk Road, heavy fighting in Europe, and, finally, the capitulation of French forces and Napoleon’s banishment to Elba.

In his never-completed tenth chapter of Eugene Onegin, Pushkin describes this turn of events in terms not terribly kind to Russia’s leadership:

A monarch weak and also cunning,
A fop gone bald, toil’s arrant foe,
Whom fame had, by strange chance, been sunning,
Was then our ruler, as you know.
He looked more crestfallen than regal
When all the foreign cooks were bent
On plucking the two-headed eagle
Not far from Bonaparte’s tent.
And who, then, came to our assistance
When we were bowed beneath the rod
In 1812? The folk’s resistance,
The winter, Barclay, Russia’s God?
God helped, complaints did not embarrass
The State for long; the course of things
Soon brought us, if you please, to Paris,
Where Russia’s tsar was king of kings.*

Властитель слабый и лукавый,
Плешивый щеголь, враг труда,
Нечаянно пригреты славой,
Над нами царствовал тогда.
Его мы очень смирным знали,
Когда не наши повара
Орла двуглавого щипали
У Бонапартова шатра.
Гроза двенадцатого года
Настала – кто тут нам помог?
Остервенение народа, зима,
Барклай иль русский бог?
Но бог помог, стал ропот ниже
И скоро силою вещей
Мы оказалися в Париже,
А русский царь главой царей.

Several decades later, Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy, who knew nothing of Pushkin’s somewhat cryptic text, ironically described the same events in his History of the Russian State. “Just when it seemed things would not go our way/Look! We’re in Paris with Louis le Désiré” ( «Казалося, ну ниже/ Нельзя сидеть в дыре/Ан глядь, уж мы в Париже/ с Louis le Désiré»).

The astounding improvement in the fortunes of Alexander I (the “fop gone bald”) and his country surprised and delighted not only Russia, but most of Europe. In 1814, when Russian troops pitched their tents along the Champs Elysées, politicians and journalists of every stripe extolled the Russian tsar as “Agamemnon of the people”** and “the king of kings” who had liberated Europe from the “Corsican
monster.” It looked as if everyone was happy (Napoleon’s loyal followers tended to keep their
opinions to themselves).

One of the few who did not share in the general jubilation was Alexander, who fell deeper into despondency with each month that passed after his victory over Napoleon. He had failed to fulfill the dream of reforms that inspired his early reign, and a mood of discontent was growing in Russia. Alexander was far from pleased with the way his life and reign were turning out. When he took the throne in 1801, he was certain that he would liberate the serfs and introduce a constitution, but the nobility did not share his enthusiasm for these changes and the cautious tsar made what he thought was a strategic and temporary retreat. Then came war with Napoleon – hardly a suitable time to upend society with radical reform.

Now the war was over, but Alexander still was not able to focus on his long-term plans for Russia. It was not enough to defeat Napoleon: there was the geopolitical task of ensuring an enduring peace in Europe.

In September 1814, the victorious powers convened in Vienna to shape Europe’s future. Apparently many of the representatives who came to Vienna believed that the order that existed before the disruptions of the French Revolution and Napoleonic campaigns – the old borders, the old monarchs – could simply be restored, and the intervening decade could be forgotten like a bad dream.

To some extent, that is what happened. France was deprived of its conquered territories, and the kings Napoleon had banished from Spain, Naples, Piedmont, and, of course, France, were returned to their thrones (until the next wave of revolution), eager to forget the indignities of exile. King Ferdinand of Sicily refused to take walks down the alleys where the French had planted trees. Apparently the sight of them unsettled his nerves.

Alexander, however, understood that restoring the old order would not work. He began putting pressure on the French king, Louis XVIII (aka Louis le Désiré), brother of the guillotined Louis XVI. What did the Russian autocrat want out of the French ruler, placed on his ancestral throne after years of emigration? Odd as it may sound, a constitution. Alexander, who was never able to muster the courage to give his own country a constitution, was able to convince Louis to implement one, despite the fact that the French king – unlike his Russian counterpart – had never wanted to preside over a constitutional monarchy. France was given its Charter, a document with flaws and weaknesses, but a constitution nonetheless.

Why was this so important to Alexander? Was he simply a realist who understood that France, after living through revolution and Napoleon’s rule would not be able to return to the old ways? Did he want to protect the aging Louis from mimicking his own mistakes? Or did he want to hold up France as an example for the Russian nobility? Whatever the case may have been, he managed in France what he failed to achieve in his own country.

Another question preoccupying the Russian tsar at the Congress of Vienna was Poland, which had disappeared from the map of Europe in 1795, having been carved up and divided among Russia, Austria, and Prussia. In his youth, the ardent Grand Duke Alexander had once upon a time promised his friend, the Polish prince Adam Czartoryski, that when he became tsar he would do everything in his power to revive Poland. The time had come to fulfill that promise.

Napoleon had partially restored Poland in the form of the Duchy of Warsaw. Now the fate of the Poles – who had enthusiastically supported the French emperor – rested in the hands of Napoleon’s vanquishers.

Alexander I wanted all Poland to be given to Russia, but the other European powers were not prepared to give “the king of kings” such a sweet deal. Nevertheless, Russia did get a large share of Polish lands, and the Kingdom of Poland (also known as Congress Poland) became a part of the Russian Empire.

Soon after the Congress concluded, Poland also acquired a constitution. Now, not just faraway France, but a part of the empire itself was a constitutional state. Meanwhile, in Russia proper nothing changed. The Russian officers who had risked their lives for the motherland felt betrayed and intensified their underground plots to force change. It seemed to them that the tsar, who had inspired great hope early in his reign, favored Poland over Russia and considered Russians unworthy of freedom. In a familiar twist of historical fate, Alexander’s liberalism in granting a constitution to Poland drove many Russian revolutionaries toward more radical action. Some even debated whether the tsar should be targeted for assassination.

So was Alexander’s constitution promoting in Europe a sign of things to come in Russia?

Far from it, because another major outcome of the Congress of Vienna was the creation of a new association, the Holy Alliance, a pact between all the monarchs of Europe. It was the brainchild of the Russian tsar and Austria’s foreign minister, Klemens von Metternich. They decided that the European rulers had to unite to prevent any force from encroaching on their divine right and absolute power. The idea was quickly put into effect. Over the coming decades, the Holy Alliance would decide a wide array of “common European problems” and defend – sometimes using force – monarchs from revolutionaries, those same revolutionaries who were driven by a desire for a constitution – like the ones introduced in France and Poland, or maybe like those dreamt of by Russian revolutionaries, outraged that the tsar continued to rule as an autocrat.

How could such contradictory ideas coexist in Alexander’s head? Why did the power of the monarch have to be limited in one place, while in others, absolute power had to be defended? And which approach was best for Russia?

Poor Alexander. He never found a clear answer to this question, and the cognitive dissonance tormented him for the rest of his life.

If only in 1815 he had done for Russia what he did for France and Poland, Russia would be an entirely different country today.

NOTES:

* Translation by Babette Deutsch (1895-1982).

** Agamemnon was the Greek commander-in-chief during the Trojan War. In Greek mythology, he was a representative of “kingly authority,” but his character was distinguished by an extreme haughtiness that ended up wreaking disaster on the Greeks.