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By Root 2705 0

from Castlereagh: in fact the tsar stood for an entirely different solution to Europe’s problems. The basic objection to the ideas put forward by the British Foreign Secretary and, for that matter, Metternich, was that they took no account of the idea that revolution might stem from legitimate political, social and economic grievances. In their eyes, revolutionary ideology was self-evidently erroneous - lunatic even - and the men who espoused it little more than unprincipled adventurers. For them to take this line was understandable, perhaps - to recognize the legitimacy of liberal and nationalist aspirations would have been to challenge the very basis of the states which they represented. But it flew in the face of reality: the French Revolution, the Serbian revolt of 1804 and the convulsions which Spain had experienced in 1808, not to mention the enthusiasm felt by many Italians and even more Poles for the Napoleonic satellite states in which they found themselves, had all been the product of genuine grievances against the ancien régime. Deeply influenced as he was by a variety of progressive ideas, Alexander insisted that the victors could not remain blind to this problem. Since as early as 1804 he had been advocating a policy designed to lance the revolutionary boil. ‘We shall see which shall succeed best,’ Alexander had said on his return to Vilna in December 1812, ‘to make oneself feared, or to make oneself loved.’1 Rather than turning the clock back to 1789, the great powers should be building a new Europe in which its different peoples would be given constitutions that would defend them against despotism and aristocratic privilege and at the same time be organized in national states based on the principles of self-determination. This in itself would go a long way to safeguarding the peace, but there would also have to be a variety of institutional safeguards, especially a code of international law and a confederation of Europe.

Various factors had contributed to this programme over the years, including not least Alexander’s own vanity, the urgings of Czartoryski in respect of Poland and, more widely, Eastern Europe, and the desire to push the Russian frontier ever further westwards. In the course of the past two years, however, one interest in particular had become ever more important. As we have seen, Alexander had undergone a great conversion experience in the wake of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and this had played a large part in driving him onwards after the last French troops had staggered over the river Niemen into East Prussia. In the course of 1814 his religious fervour had intensified still further. One reason for this was simple gratitude for divine mercy, but in the course of his journey from the Vistula to the Rhine the tsar had encountered a variety of German mystic and pietist writers with whom he had not previously been familiar. Invited to Britain in the summer of 1814, in addition to being subjected to enough popular adulation to have turned far steadier heads, Alexander then came into contact with representatives of the Quakers, and was deeply moved by their morality and pacifism. Finally, there seems to have been a great feeling of guilt: with Europe devastated by war and disease, the constant round of balls, banquets and receptions that were the staple diet of the allied dignitaries grated upon the tsar and made him all the more convinced something must be done for the future of the Continent.

This thinking had been visible in Alexander’s conduct since at least 1812. As we have seen, he had initially been hostile to the restoration of the Bourbons and had instead wanted to give France a ruler more in tune with the feelings of the age - a lesser Napoleon who could recreate the domestic glories of the Consulate without at the same time indulging in dreams of foreign conquest - and it was in fact Alexander who insisted the new France should be given a constitution, just as it was also Alexander who took steps to ensure the Helvetic Confederation did not lose the constitution she had been granted