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By Root 2537 0

therefore hoped to persuade the tsar to rejoin the fight and even send troops to Denmark himself. But in all this, Canning had badly misjudged the situation. Alexander had always seen himself as the champion of the smaller states of central Europe, and in any case had no desire to risk another Friedland. Meanwhile, he had also just acquired a new foreign minister in the person of Count Nicolai Rumiantsev, who was the son of one of the greatest heroes of Catherine the Great’s wars against the Turks and as such convinced that Russia should not be fighting Napoleon but rather marching on Constantinople. Bitterly anti-British, indeed, he had been a fierce opponent of the Third Coalition. In short, all Canning had achieved had been to drive Russia even deeper into Napoleon’s arms.

The impression of belligerence generated by the Portland administration was reinforced by the fruitless efforts of the continental powers to get Britain to make peace. Head of the queue was the diplomatic activity engaged in by Russia in the late summer and early autumn of 1807. At Tilsit Alexander I had agreed to go to war against Britain if the latter did not make peace by November, but in the first instance all he was called upon to do was to offer Russian mediation. In this goal he genuinely hoped he might be successful, while the fact that Russia would in effect not be called upon actively to take up arms until, say, May 1808, on account of the long northern winter and the icing-over of the Baltic, was also reassuring. The delay would, after all, give more time for the Continental Blockade to take effect and allow Alexander to share in victory without necessarily having to fire a shot. As early as the beginning of August, then, the new Russian ambassador to London, Maximilian Alopeus, presented the British government with the offer of Russia’s good offices. Although this had in fact been settled at Tilsit - essentially Britain could have Hanover in exchange for surrendering all her conquests in the wider world - the form a settlement might take was not revealed, and Canning therefore responded that Britain would not open peace talks until she had heard the terms on offer - terms, moreover, that she expected to favour Britain. When a supplementary message arrived to the effect that Alexander had only done a deal with Napoleon in order to check any further French progress in Poland and the Baltic, the answer returned was scarcely less conciliatory: this time Canning demanded not only the conditions of the proposed Russian mediation, but a detailed explanation both of the treaty of Tilsit and the general trend of Russian policy.

In a situation in which Russia could make no progress, it was unlikely that anything more could be expected from Austria or Prussia. Both powers had a strong interest in peace - the Prussians, especially, were deeply aware of the likely impact of the Continental Blockade - while both had good reason to curry favour with Napoleon. Terrified at their isolation, the Austrians were currently trying to secure an alliance with France. The governments of both Francis and Frederick William therefore instructed their ambassadors in London to raise the possibility of a general peace. In this they acted in very different fashions. Fearing that they were about to be attacked themselves and seeing no other means of propitiating Napoleon, the Austrians adopted a hectoring tone, whereas the Prussians, who saw a general negotiation as the only means of getting a better deal than the one they had got at Tilsit, were flattering and conciliatory. Yet neither approach had any effect. The Prussians were told that there was no hope of peace negotiations being opened for the foreseeable future, and the Austrians, who had, like the Russians, offered themselves as mediators, that nothing could be agreed until it was learned on what basis the peace should be negotiated. As Napoleon would not consent to do any specifics, Vienna was no more successful than St Petersburg. The process took some time - the Austrian ambassador in London, Count Starhemberg,