Russia Against Napoleon_ The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace - Dominic Lieven [38]
There are many reasons to believe that, in principle, Alexander favoured representative institutions but Russian realities were a powerful disincentive to constitutional reform. Given the weakness of the state administration and the power of the Petersburg patron–client networks, did the emperor really want to strengthen these networks by giving them a parliament through which to exert extra influence on laws, taxation and government? Any representative institutions in Russia would be dominated by the serf-owners: no other group could remotely match their wealth, education or status. Would not such institutions make it harder to modernize Russia and abolish serfdom? Did it not make more sense to improve the bureaucracy so that it could bring enlightened reform to a conservative society? Still less could the emperor be blamed for his approach to foreign affairs. In desiring a more peaceful and cooperative international order while pursuing his own country’s interests he was no more hypocritical than the allied leaders after both twentieth-century world wars.72
Though in retrospect one can advance these arguments in Alexander’s favour, at the time he was widely perceived as well-meaning but feminine and weak. In 1812 this perception mattered greatly. The Austrian foreign minister, Count Metternich, spoke for most foreign diplomats and many members of the Russian elite when he wrote that ‘I count on no shred of firmness from the Emperor Alexander’, as the French penetrated ever deeper into Russia and finally took Moscow. Napoleon’s own strategy makes little sense unless one takes such calculations into account. But in fact Alexander’s courage did not desert him in 1812. It also sufficed to overcome the enormous risks and difficulties of invading central Europe in 1813, building an international coalition, and leading it all the way to Paris.73
Back in September 1810, as Franco-Russian relations began their descent into war, the French ambassador in Petersburg tried to warn his government that Alexander was much tougher than he seemed.
People believe him to be weak but they are wrong. Undoubtedly he can put up with many upsets and hide his discontent but that is because he has before him an ultimate goal, which is peace in Europe, and one which he hopes to achieve without a violent crisis. But his amenable personality has its limits, and he will not go beyond them: these limits are as strong as iron and will not be abandoned. His personality is by nature well-meaning, sincere and loyal, and his sentiments and principles are elevated but beneath all this there exists an acquired royal dissimulation and a dogged persistence which nothing can overcome.74
3
The Russo-French Alliance
After ratifying the treaties of peace and alliance with France Alexander left Tilsit and travelled back to Petersburg, where he arrived on 16 July 1807. The previous day the capital had witnessed a twenty-one-gun salute and a service in the Kazan cathedral to celebrate peace. Similar celebrations occurred in Moscow, where Bishop Augustin put a good face on events by telling his congregation that Napoleon had been so impressed by the Russian troops’ courage that he had decided he needed Russia for a friend. The Orthodox Church did have some explaining to do since, on the orders of the government, it had been declaiming from the pulpit for many months against Napoleon the Antichrist. Apparently, the story now went round many Russian villages that the tsar had met Napoleon in the middle of a river in order to wash away his sins.1
Alexander could afford for the moment to ignore the bafflement of his peasant subjects over his sudden friendship for the former Antichrist. He could not be so nonchalant about the opinion of the Moscow