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By Root 2542 0

slice of Prussian Poland - but she did grant Napoleon a free hand in Europe, recognize the Napoleonic settlement in Italy, Germany, the Low Countries and Poland, agree to French occupation of the Ionian islands and Cattaro and effectively commit herself not only to joining the Continental Blockade and going to war with Britain, but also forcing Sweden, Denmark and Austria to do the same. Concealed here was French acquiescence in a descent on Swedish Finland, while Russian hegemonism was also flattered by an agreement to dispatch a large army against Persia as a first step in a march on India. As for the Russo-Turkish War, Napoleon would mediate a settlement, and then go to war with Constantinople should it prove obdurate (to get around the problem of France’s alliance with Turkey, it was claimed that this had been the fruit of a personal accord between Napoleon and Selim III, the point here being that the latter had been toppled in a palace coup on May). Beyond this there is no record of what was decided, but it is generally assumed that there was a common understanding that France’s intervention would be followed by the partition of the whole of the Balkans. Whether Russia would get out of all this the peace and security that Alexander hoped for was a moot point, but for Britain it was a bitter blow. To quote a private letter penned by the new British Foreign Secretary, George Canning, to the British ambassador to Constantinople, ‘The peace with France is as little so as we could wish . . . If after all France is peremptory, and Bonaparte retains at [St] Petersburg . . . all the influence which he acquired over the emperor’s mind at Tilsit, we must be prepared for the worst . . . Make our peace with Turkey as soon as you can.’60

Setting Britain’s difficulties aside, on the surface at least, Russia did quite well out of Tilsit and Alexander came away believing that Napoleon was both friend and partner. In the first place, it was not just Turkey that had been betrayed but also distant Persia. As we have seen, contacts had been steadily improving between Napoleon and the Shah, and on 4 May 1807 a treaty signed at Finkenstein had duly committed France to guaranteeing the integrity of the Persian empire, recognizing Georgia as a possession of Persia and forcing the Russians to withdraw to their original frontiers. All this, however, had been ignored at Tilsit, and the French mission to Tehran was thereafter in effect abandoned to its own devices. Though instructed to maintain friendly relations with the Persians in the hope of keeping the way open for a future invasion of India, its head, General Gardanne, was given no support other than a tardy letter to the Shah full of empty promises. In February 1808 he was authorized to mediate between the Persian government and its Russian assailants, and in April an armistice was signed that temporarily brought hostilities to an end. Realizing the fragility of their position, the Persians made the most of the few cards they had and explicitly warned the French that the consequence of abandoning them would be a growth in British influence. This, however, availed them nothing at all: at Erfurt (see below) the subject of Persia was again avoided, while the Russians were allowed to resume hostilities. As for the Gardanne mission, in February 1809 it left Persia for home, an angry Shah being left to sign a treaty of friendship with Britain whereby he committed himself to resist any attempt to send troops across his territory towards India in exchange for British support against Russia (consisting of nothing very substantial, this could not change the fact of Russian military superiority, though it was not until 1813 that the Persians finally gave up the struggle and surrendered all claim to Georgia). Much of this lay in the future, but even so Alexander had good reason to hope that Persia would be left to him to settle as he wished. Nor was this an end to the advantages offered him by Tilsit. The negotiations with Napoleon also promised victory in the Balkans. At Tilsit the Russians had agreed