Curse Not the King (38 page)

His only genuine emotion was the regret foreseen by Plato Zubov; someone had been found to do the thing he dared not do himself, and now that it was accomplished, and their uses at an end, he discovered that hostility rather than gratitude was all he felt for them.

Marie crystallized his feelings with her question.

“What are your plans for Count Pahlen, my son?”

Alexander stared over her head; she suddenly noticed an expression of obstinate hauteur that she had never seen before.

“I am considering, Mother.”

“Won't you discuss it with me, Alexis, after all …”

“
No,
Mother. I don't intend to discuss it with anyone. The Emperor's decisions are his own. If you will excuse me, now.…”

He rose and offered his hand which she took and kissed like any subject. For a moment it did not seem possible that this cold stranger was her son. He bowed to her and walked over to the window and drew back the curtain to look out. The attitude reminded her instantly of someone else who used to adopt that stance when thinking. As she left the room, she remembered who it was.

It was the Empress Catherine Alexeievna.

Alexander heard her go, but he did not turn round. His mother was hurt, and he only hoped that her sense of rebuff was seasoned with fear; the necessity to bear with her had passed, it ended that night on the eleventh of March, when Pahlen and Nicholas Zubov burst into his room to tell him that the Emperor Paul was dead.…

Pahlen, the Zubovs, Bennigsen.… They were the principals, he thought, and frowned. Even his mother, whose intelligence he despised, had seen that the presence of these men around him was unseemly. So would the world see it, and public opinion would declare that the monarch who spared the murderers had contrived the crime, and that was a judgment Alexander was very anxious to avoid. He looked out of the window and his frown became a scowl. Pahlen was the most dangerous, and what Pahlen had dared once, he might even dare again.…

For a long time the Emperor Alexander remained by the window, looking at nothing. But when he finally turned away, his face had cleared, and a resemblance to Catherine Alexeievna was suddenly evident in the line of his jaw and the expression in his eyes.

He went to his desk and made a little note in his diary, dated a few months ahead.

He had made up his mind.

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CHAPTER ONE

“Your Majesty, the Russian Emperor is about to embark.” The man seated behind the wide desk looked up at his aide.

“I am aware of that, Henri. I shall be ready in five minutes.”

He took up his pen and began writing; the aide bowed and withdrew. Five minutes would ensure that the Russians were inconvenienced, and it was part of his policy to keep them waiting.

He frowned and scratched out a word of what he had written; his face was fine featured, but inclined to fat; portraits and the official stamp on French coins flattered him. He signed and pushed the papers away and withdrew a gold watch out of his pocket. It was nearly time to leave. He had just beaten Austria, Prussia and Russia after a war lasting eighteen months, a war begun by these powers because Napoleon Bonaparte, whose father was a poor lawyer in Corsica, had dared to proclaim himself Emperor of the French.

The young General of the Revolution had become the General of the Directory which followed the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Terror. The shabby young officer who was always at such a social disadvantage in the elegant salons of the new ruling class in Paris had won victory after victory for France. He had made a fool of himself by marrying Josephine Beauharnais, who was years older, and had only agreed to the match because her protector Barras insisted; it was a good way of getting rid of her; he would help the gauche husband with a promising Command. The Command was Italy, and the result—Napoleon, who knew exactly why the Director Barras had smiled on his union with Josephine—Napoleon smiled in his turn when he thought of it.

He had dissolved the Directory after a military
coup d'état
and made himself First Consul. A further series of victories and wholesale annexations of conquered territories had culminated in two things.

The discovery of a Royalist plot to assassinate him—had given him the excuse to have the Bourbon Due D'Enghien kidnapped out of Germany, tried by court martial for complicity, and shot in Vincennes prison.

That settled any question of re-establishing the old Royal dynasty.

He then made himself Emperor of France.

He had never doubted that he could defeat Austria; the real military question mark was Russia, and though Russian forces took part in the battle of Austerlitz, where the Austrian army was annihilated, the result was less conclusive than Napoleon had hoped. The Russians fought well, but their organization was appalling and their Emperor Alexander had taken Supreme Command. One thing Austerlitz proved, and that was the Czar's lack of military skill. But properly equipped and led by a good general, the Russian soldier might give a very different account of himself.

Napoleon frowned slightly; after Austerlitz the Prussians had come into the war and been hopelessly beaten at Jena and then at Friedland. At Friedland the Russians were defeated for the second time, a defeat which not even their Emperor could deny. The Prussian Army was destroyed, the Russians suffered heavy losses in men and materials, and the Czar led his troops in headlong retreat to Tilsit, and crossed the Niemen into Russia.

Russian emissaries came to Napoleon, hinting at peace without any hope of success. The French had reached Tilsit and were encamped on the opposite bank from the exhausted Russian Army. All Napoleon had to do was cross the river. To everyone's amazement he had agreed to an armistice.

It was the Czar who suggested that a raft be built and moored in the middle of the Niemen so that both rulers could meet in a neutral area; it was a shrewd suggestion because it saved Alexander the indignity of going across the Russian frontier to meet his enemy.

Napoleon saw through it, and his estimation of his opponent rose.

It was a long time since he had been so curious about anyone as he was about the Emperor Alexander; a study of his Ambassador's reports and the facts known about him had presented Napoleon with a puzzle he was determined to solve.

He was gentle, eye-witnesses said, with irresistible charm and a rather shy manner; he professed Liberal sympathies in a country where freedom was unknown, and surrounded himself with young men of similar ideals. He had even talked wistfully of abdicating. If there was any defect in his character it was weakness, the tendency to bend to stronger personalities. Everyone Napoleon questioned agreed on one point. Alexander of Russia was the most handsome man they had ever seen.

Napoleon had then compared this portrait of a good-looking figurehead with the facts; and the facts didn't blend with the portrait. Alexander was the son of Paul I, a madman and a genius whose name was the synonym for terror, and he was the grandson of Catherine the Great.

It was unlikely, Napoleon thought grimly, that such a heredity had produced either a Liberal or a weakling.

It was even more unlikely when one remembered that at the age of twenty-four the gentle humanist of the ambassadorial reports had had his own father brutally murdered and taken the Crown. He had then disposed of the murderers one by one when his position was established.

He was reputed to have had as many women as Napoleon himself, but to have fallen in love with none of them.

And he, the youngest of the three monarchs concerned in the late war, had been the instigator of the whole attempt to smash France and dethrone her new Emperor. He had also been the first to abandon Prussia and sue for Napoleon's friendship as well as for peace.

He had been lucky, Napoleon decided, that peace and friendship were also in French interest at that time. An alliance with Russia and the promise to cease trading with England were what Napoleon hoped to gain from this meeting. In return he would promise Russia a free hand against Turkey; she could attack her hereditary enemy and France would see that no one in Europe dared to interfere. He would resurrect the dream of Paul I, a world divided between France and Russia, as the price of Russian support against England. Once he had beaten England, by strangling her trade and attacking her allies, then he could destroy Russia in his own time.

He never doubted his ability to ensnare the Czar; whether he proved to be a fool or a schemer, Napoleon was quite certain of success. He had matched his wits against the wiliest men in France, seized power and outraged the principals of the Revolution by re-establishing not just the monarchy, but an Empire. The most brilliant diplomats in Europe had failed to stand against his cunning in politics, falling as low as his opponents in the field.

The twenty-nine-year-old ruler of Russia would never succeed where everyone else had failed.

Napoleon looked at his watch again, and rising, called for his valet.

“My hat and my sword.”

He stood while his sword-belt was buckled on, a tiny figure of a man, less than five feet four inches tall, in the uniform of the Imperial Old Guard, without any decoration but the red ribbon of the Legion d'Honneur which he had instituted himself. He put on his wide cocked hat; the valet bowed.

“Send for Duroc,” Napoleon ordered. “I am ready to leave.”

An enormous wooden raft was moored in the middle of the river, and a pavilion the size of a small floating palace had been erected on it. The June sun was shining that day, glistening on the swelling water, on the gilt, the standards, the coloured tents clustered on the raft, and on the vast encampments on either side of the Niemen, the victorious army of France and the defeated troops of Holy Russia.

In the private sitting-room in an inn on the banks of the Niemen, Alexander of Russia waited with his personal friend and aide, Colonel Novossiltsov.

“Your Majesty, he's late!” the Colonel exclaimed angrily. “This is an insult, it's deliberate!”

Alexander looked down at him and smiled.

“Have patience. I arrived early, if you remember. It is arranged that we land at the same time. A lot depends on appearances, my friend. The King of Prussia has been left to wait on shore.”

“I am not concerned with Prussia, Sire. But this is an insult to you!”

Novossiltsov watched his Emperor and frowned; he had learnt at last that Alexander's gentleness was a sign of danger. When he was angry he froze; emotionally touched, he wept; when he was planning something he smiled, as he was doing then.

The Czar's blue eyes turned away from him.

“This is to be an alliance, you understand,” he said quietly. “Not a peace treaty in which we appear the defeated.”

Novossiltsov stared at him.

“No, Sire. Of course not.”

Alexander knew what he was thinking, knew that he was remembering the battlefield at Austerlitz, the thousands of Russian dead stiffening in the frozen swamps of the Goldbach, the unforgettable horror of their flight across the Lake of Tollnitz where the ice gave under them and hundreds drowned. Then Friedland, where 40,000 troops had faced a French force of twice that number, and after losing fifteen thousand men, were driven back to Tilsit.

They were not defeated, he had said, and watched the confusion and resentment on Novossiltsov's face as he agreed to the lie. He knew the truth, he and the other members of Alexander's staff who had been engaged in the war, and they were blaming the Czar for having tried to direct the army himself. They were also blaming him for making peace instead of trying to redeem his honour, blinded by anger and pride to the fact that they were practically disarmed, their troops in utter confusion, and that their enemy was the foremost strategist in the world.

They were unused to defeat; the tradition of Catherine the Great and Russian invincibility would not admit it. They wanted to fight, to be annihilated if necessary, rather than return without glory; they would never forgive Alexander for arranging this meeting, and he knew it. The peace party in Russia who had opposed the war in the first place would never forgive him either, for having proved them right.

“Novossiltsov,” he said.

The Colonel turned to him. “Sire?”

“I had to make peace while we were still in a position of some strength, do you understand? He would have invaded Russia and no one could have stopped him. He wants peace now, my friend, so whatever his terms I shall be able to safeguard the interests of Russia, you may be certain of that.”

“I know that, Sire,” the Colonel said quickly. “Believe me, it's just that I resent …”

“You resent Austerlitz and Friedland, Novossiltsov. And so do I. I had to ride for my life from the battlefield; do you think I shall ever forget that?”

The Colonel scowled. “None of us will, Sire.”

Alexander smiled sadly.

“You will have to trust me, my friend. Trust me to do what is best for Russia.”