Russia Against Napoleon (14 page)

By the time the Russian semi-rejection reached Napoleon in February 1810 he had long since opted for his second-best option, namely marriage with the daughter of the Austrian emperor, the Archduchess Marie-Louise. Alexander stifled both his resentment that Napoleon had been simultaneously negotiating with both courts and his deep fear that an Austrian marriage would contribute to the breakdown of the Franco-Russian alliance and Russia’s isolation. Almost simultaneously he was shocked to learn that Napoleon had refused to ratify the convention barring the restoration of Poland. Napoleon assured the Russians that he had no intention of restoring a Polish kingdom but could not sign a convention which bound France to stop anyone else, including the Poles themselves, from doing so. In a sense the dispute over the convention’s wording was nonsensical: no one could hold Napoleon to any agreement he signed and his record of fidelity to treaties was not impressive. In a way, however, that made his refusal even to pretend to meet Russian wishes as regards Poland even more suspicious in Russian eyes. From this moment on Franco-Russian relations went into a steep decline, which continued until the outbreak of war in June 1812. It was no coincidence that in early March 1810 the new minister of war, Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, drafted his first memorandum on measures for the defence of Russia’s western border from French attack.
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Meanwhile the Continental System was beginning to cause Russia major difficulties. Alexander recognized always that Russian adherence to Napoleon’s economic blockade of Britain was ‘the basis of our alliance’ with France. To restore relations with Britain would be to breach the core of the Treaty of Tilsit and make war with Napoleon inevitable. For that reason he refrained from doing this until French troops actually crossed his border in June 1812. By 1810, however, it was clear that something had to be done to reduce the damage being caused to Russia by the Continental System.
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The biggest single problem was the collapsing value of the paper ruble, which by 1811 was almost the only currency in use in the empire’s Russian heartlands. In June 1804 the paper ruble had been worth more than three-quarters of its silver equivalent: by June 1811 it was valued at less than one-quarter. This had two key causes. In the first place, the only way the state could pay for its enormous military expenditures in 1805–10 was by printing more and more paper money. Secondly, the Continental System, added to general economic and political uncertainties, had resulted in a collapse in business confidence. Even the silver ruble lost one-fifth of its value against the pound sterling in 1807–12. The value of the paper ruble on the foreign exchanges plummeted. This had a dramatic effect on the cost of sustaining Russian armies fighting in Finland, Moldavia, the Caucasus and Poland: Caulaincourt reckoned that the campaign against the Swedes was costing Alexander the equivalent of fifteen French silver francs per man per day, commenting that ‘the Swedish war is ruining Russia’. By 1809 state income was less than half of expenditure and crisis was looming. The real value of the government’s tax income that year was 73 per cent of what it had been five years before. At a time when Russia needed to prepare for war against Napoleon’s empire this was nothing short of a potential catastrophe.
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The government’s response to this crisis took a number of forms. A resounding statement was issued pledging that the paper rubles were seen as a state debt and would be redeemed. No more printing of paper money was to be permitted. All unnecessary expenditures were to be cut and taxes raised. Above all, the import of all luxury or inessential items was to be banned outright or charged prohibitive duties. Meanwhile encouragement and protection would be given to neutral ships docking at Russian ports and carrying Russian exports. The emergency taxes brought in little cash and when war broke out again in 1812 the pledge on new printing of paper money had to be forgotten. But the ban on imports and the encouragement of neutral shipping did make an immediate impact on Russian trade and finance.

Unfortunately, they also made a big impact on Napoleon. He claimed – in fact falsely – that French imports to Russia were being targeted. With more truth he argued that neutral ships were being used as a cover for trade with Britain. Since he himself at this very time was annexing much of north Germany in order to tighten controls on trade, Russian and French policy was diametrically opposed. Alexander refused to back down in the face of French protests, however. He argued that necessity forced these changes and that it was his right as a sovereign ruler to determine tariffs and trade rules so long as these did not contravene his treaty obligations.

Dire financial crisis as well as Russian pride was involved in his stubbornness. Both the emperor and Rumiantsev might have been more inclined to compromise had they not come to the correct conclusion that the Continental System had largely been transformed from a measure of economic war against Britain into a policy whereby France bled the rest of Europe white in order to boost its own trade and revenues. At a time when Napoleon was demanding the virtual elimination of Russian foreign trade, he was issuing more and more licences for French merchants to trade with Britain. To rub salt into Russian wounds, the occasional French vessel armed with such licences even tried to sell British goods in Russia. As Caulaincourt told Napoleon, the Russians could hardly be expected to accept the costs of France’s economic war with Britain when France itself was increasingly evading them. The Continental System’s effects had long since been denounced by many Russian statesmen. By early 1812, however, even Rumiantsev admitted that Napoleon’s policy lacked any honesty or coherence, telling John Quincy Adams that ‘the system of licences is founded upon falsehood and immorality’.
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By now, however, the key issue had long since become not specific sources of disagreement between France and Russia but the clear evidence that Napoleon was planning a massive invasion of the tsar’s empire. At the beginning of January 1812 the French minister of war boasted that Napoleon’s army had never before been so well equipped, trained and supplied for a forthcoming war: ‘We have been making preparations for more than fifteen months.’ In keeping with the general level of French security before 1812 the boast was made within earshot of a Russian informant. The Russians were in fact exceptionally well informed about French intentions and preparations. Already in the summer of 1810 a number of young and usually very competent officers had been sent as attachés in the Russian missions scattered throughout Germany’s princely courts. Their job was to gather intelligence. Within Germany the greatest source of intelligence was the Russian mission in Berlin, since January 1810 headed by Christoph Lieven. The majority of Napoleon’s units preparing to invade Russia either travelled across Prussia or deployed within it. Since the Prussians loathed the French it was not difficult to gain abundant information about all these units and their movements.
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By far the most important source of intelligence, however, were Russia’s diplomatic and military representatives in Paris. Petr Tolstoy was recalled in October 1808 and replaced as ambassador to Napoleon by Aleksandr Kurakin. By 1810, however, Kurakin had been partly sidelined not just by Napoleon but also by Alexander and Rumiantsev. In part this was because the ambassador, already a martyr to gout, was badly burned in a fire at the Austrian embassy early in 1810 during a great ball to celebrate Napoleon’s marriage to the Archduchess Marie-Louise. It was also, however, because Kurakin was overshadowed by two exceptionally able younger Russian diplomats in Paris.

One of these men was Count Karl von Nesselrode, who served as deputy head of mission under first Tolstoy and then Kurakin. Nesselrode in fact was secretly in direct communication with Alexander via Mikhail Speransky. The other Russian was Aleksandr Chernyshev, not a diplomat but an officer of the Chevaliers Gardes, an aide-de-camp of Alexander I and the emperor’s former page. When first appointed deputy head of mission in Paris Nesselrode was 27 years old. When Chernyshev was first sent by Alexander with personal messages for Napoleon he was only 22. Partly as a result of their brilliant performance during these crucial years in Paris both men made outstanding careers. Ultimately Nesselrode was to serve as foreign minister and Chernyshev as war minister for decades.

In certain respects the two young men were very different. Karl Nesselrode came from an aristocratic family from the Rhineland. His father’s career in the service of the Elector Palatine ended in dramatic style when the elector took objection to his wife’s infatuation with young Count Wilhelm. After serving the kings of France and Prussia, Wilhelm von Nesselrode worked as Russian minister in Portugal, where his son Karl was born and christened as an Anglican at the church of the British legation in Lisbon. Not until late adolescence did Karl Nesselrode have any experience of life in Russia but his subsequent marriage to the daughter of the finance minister, Dmitrii Gurev, strengthened his position in Petersburg society. Nesselrode was a calm, tactful and even at times self-effacing man. That led some observers to miss his great intelligence, subtlety and determination.

No one ever called Aleksandr Chernyshev self-effacing. On the contrary, he was a genius at self-promotion. Chernyshev came from the Russian aristocracy. An uncle, Aleksandr Lanskoy, had been one of Catherine II’s lovers. Aleksandr Chernyshev first gained the Emperor Alexander’s attention at a ball given by Prince Kurakin to celebrate the tsar’s coronation in 1801. The poise, wit and confidence of the 15-year-old immediately struck the emperor and resulted in Chernyshev’s selection as an imperial page. This was to be a fitting start to the career of an elegant and handsome man who glittered in society and always loved the limelight. Chernyshev once wrote of a fellow-officer that he was ‘full of that noble ambition which obliges any individual who feels it to make himself known’. This certainly was a self-portrait too. But Chernyshev was much more than mere ambition and glitter: he was a man of outstanding intelligence, courage and resolution. Though an excellent soldier, in common with other intelligent aristocratic officers of his day his vision was far broader than the narrow military world. Just as Nesselrode’s reports sometimes discussed grand strategy, so too Chernyshev was deeply aware of the political context of Napoleonic warfare.
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Together the two young men ran the Russian espionage operation in Paris. It helped that they saw eye to eye as regards French intentions and became firm friends. On the whole, as one would expect, Nesselrode’s sources were mostly diplomatic and Chernyshev’s most often military but there were many overlaps. Nesselrode, for example, procured one report on the military resources of the Duchy of Warsaw. He spent a good deal of money buying secret documents, paying 3,000– 4,000 francs for some memoranda. The serving French minister of police, Joseph Fouché, and the former foreign minister, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, both appear to have been providers of these materials but whether there were other intermediaries and precisely how payments were arranged and documents acquired are matters which Nesselrode – very sensibly – did not go into in his reports.

The information he bought or otherwise acquired covered a range of topics. One report, for instance, concerned Napoleon’s eccentricities, eating habits and growing forgetfulness during a period at the palace of Rambouillet. Given the extent to which the survival of Napoleon’s empire and the fate of Europe hung on this one man’s life and health such reports were significant. Nesselrode begged Speransky to ensure that only he and the emperor saw or mentioned this material. These details of Napoleon’s behaviour were so private that any leak would result in his source being revealed. Nesselrode made a similar plea for total secrecy about another purchased memorandum detailing intelligence operations in Russia’s western borderlands and naming many names. He added that his source for this document was extremely valuable and could produce further such documents if protected. The crucial point was that Russian counter-intelligence must watch the individuals mentioned but stage its arrests in a manner to protect his source at all costs.
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Probably the single most important document bought by Nesselrode was a top secret memorandum on future French policy submitted by the French foreign minister, Champagny, to Napoleon at the emperor’s request on 16 March 1810, in other words at precisely the crucial turning point when the plan to marry a Russian princess had failed, Napoleon had refused to ratify the convention on Poland, and Barclay de Tolly was drawing up his first report on the defence of Russia’s western frontier. Champagny wrote that geopolitics and trade meant that Britain was Russia’s natural ally and a rapprochement between the two powers was to be expected. France must return to its traditional policy of building up Turkey, Poland and Sweden. It must, for instance, ensure that the Turks were kept ready as allies for a future war with Russia. Indeed, French agents were already working quietly on the Ottomans to this end.

As regards Poland, even Champagny’s more modest scenario was to increase the power of the King of Saxony, who was also Grand Duke of Warsaw, by giving him Silesia. A second scenario, which Champagny called ‘more grandiose and decisive and perhaps more worthy of Your Majesty’s genius’, envisaged a full-scale restoration of Poland after a victorious war with Russia. This would entail pushing the Russian border back beyond the river Dnieper, turning Austria eastwards against Russia and compensating it in Illyria for Polish lands it would have to give to the new Polish kingdom. In all circumstances Prussia must be destroyed since it was an outpost of Russian influence in Europe. Within a matter of weeks the memorandum was on Alexander’s desk. In the circumstances its contents were little short of dynamite.
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Aleksandr Chernyshev also had a number of permanent, paid agents. One of them worked in the council of state near the heart of Napoleon’s government, another was in military administration, and a third served in a key bureau of the war ministry. There may well have been more, at least on an occasional basis. The published documents provide rather more details about the content of their reports than is the case with most of the memoranda purchased by Nesselrode. We have everything from general memoranda on the domestic political situation and the position in Spain to detailed information about the redeployment of artillery to infantry battalions, the organization of transport and rear services for future campaigns, and reports on new arms and equipment.