• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2465 0

than those that had been proposed by Britain, while, to cover his tracks the First Consul fell upon Morkov at a state dinner at the Tuileries, and accused him in the most violent of language of both spying and being in league with emigré conspirators. Not surprisingly, there followed a sharp exchange of correspondence, and the end result was that the ambassador left Paris for home: he claimed, indeed, that he was in fear of being poisoned. Much angered, Alexander responded by trying to pressurize both Prussia and Austria into a defensive alliance and raising the possibility of an alliance with Britain. With rumours circulating of either an impending French invasion of the Greek mainland or a French-inspired revolt in the Peloponnese, the Russians also strengthened their position in the eastern Mediterranean by reinforcing the small Russian garrison that had been left in the Ionian islands and restoring friendly relations with the independent Christian principality of Montenegro, which had been disrupted for the past two years by intrigues in the court of its prince-bishop ruler, Peter Negos. As Czartoryski observed, ‘For once the laughs were not on the side of the First Consul.’45

By the end of 1803, then, relations between Napoleon and the central figure in any future coalition had started to unravel. As yet, however, there was little sign that Russia was willing actively to take up arms: indeed, her approaches to Britain, Austria and Prussia had all essentially been designed to get them to do all the necessary fighting and keep the bulk of the Russian army out of harm’s way. Opinion in St Petersburg was deeply divided. Czartoryski and Vorontzov favoured war, but Alexander opposed the anti-Prussian aspects of the former’s policies and distrusted the British nearly as much as his father had done, while plenty of observers could be found who wanted Russia to have no truck at all with the affairs of the West. And if Czartoryski wanted war with France and Prussia, he did not want Britain to acquire a share in the future of the Ottoman Empire. To push Russia over the brink, something more was needed, and, Napoleon being Napoleon, this was soon forthcoming.

We come here to the so-called ‘tragedy of Vincennes’. On 20 March 1804 the Duc d’Enghien, a distant connection of the French royal family, was kidnapped from his country retreat in neutral Baden and executed after a summary trial on suspicion of involvement in a royalist conspiracy. According to the Napoleonic legend, this was a necessary act of statecraft and by no means a step that the French ruler embarked on lightly. ‘After the sentence had been executed,’ wrote a young Belgian nobleman who was shortly to become a senior official at the Napoleonic court, ‘as soon as the emperor heard of it at Malmaison, he was observed to be troubled, preoccupied, sunk in thought . . . walking up and down his apartment, his hands at his back, his head bent. And thus he remained a long time, absorbed in contemplation.’46 Other observers were less convinced. Now unhappily married to Napoleon’s brother Louis, Hortense de Beauharnais had a very different impression. ‘I remain convinced, from the knowledge that I have of Napoleon’s character . . . that he never felt the need to justify himself. As doubt was not something which he ever acknowledged, his view, I am sure, was “I did the thing; therefore I had the right to do it.” ’47 At the same time, as she observed, the execution bestowed certain political advantages on Napoleon: ‘From that moment all those who had rallied to the Revolution attached themselves to the First Consul. “He will not be a Monk,” they said. “Herewith the proof. One can count on him.” ’48 And that Napoleon was aware of this, there was no doubt. Indeed, according to Pasquier, it was precisely for this reason that he had the duke executed. As the future Prefect of Police wrote, ‘Bonaparte . . . let it be known . . . that he wanted . . . to inspire all those who had attached themselves to his fortune with the confidence that all chance of a reconciliation between himself