Chapter IX: Russia in the Napoleonic Epoch (1)

Perhaps no sovereign since the days of the Antonines ever
was called to higher destinies, or more worthily filled an
important place in the theatre of the world, than the emperor
Alexander I. Placed at the head of the most powerful and
rising empire in existence, stationed midway between ancient
civilisation and barbaric vigour, he was called to take the
lead in the great struggle for European freedom; to combat
with the energy and enthusiasm of the desert the superiority
of advanced information, and meet the condensed military force
of a revolution, which had beaten down all the strength of
continental power, with the dauntless resolution and enduring
fortitude which arise in the earlier ages of social existence.
Well and nobly he fulfilled his destiny. Repeatedly defeated,
never subdued, he took counsel, like his great predecessor
Peter, from misfortune, and prepared in silence those
invincible bands which, in the day of trial, hurled back the
most terrible array which ambition had ever marshalled against
the liberties of mankind.--ALISON.[f]

EARLY MEASURES OF THE REIGN OF PAUL I

[Sidenote: [1796-1815 A.D.]]

The emperor Paul I, Catherine’s successor, had been long known for his singularities, his great dislike of the French, and to everything which Catherine had done. He appeared desirous of proceeding directly on the very opposite course to that which she had followed. She had chiefly directed her attention to foreign relations and affairs, whilst he appeared to occupy his mind solely with the internal state of his dominions. His very first act was a proof that he was quite ready to go in opposition to all the ordinary rules of political prudence, and when under the influence of his humour to follow his views, reckless of consequences. He caused splendid funeral honours and services to be performed for his murdered father, and forced the audacious and godless, though clever criminals, who had helped to place his mother on the throne, to be publicly exposed to the gaze of the people. Notwithstanding this, he suffered them to remain in possession of their honours and estates, whilst he designated them as murderers, and reminded the people that his mother had taken part in the murder of his father. The body of Peter III, which had been deposited in the convent of Alexander Nevski, was by his orders placed beside that of his wife; and it was notified by an inscription in the Russian language that, though separated in life, in death they were united.

[Sidenote: [1796 A.D.]]

Alexis Orlov and Prince Baratinski, two of the murderous band, were compelled to come to St. Petersburg to accompany the funeral procession on foot, but they were not so treated as to prevent them afterwards from doing further mischief. Alexis obtained permission to travel in foreign countries. Baratinski was ordered never again to show himself at court; which, under existing circumstances, could not to him be otherwise than an agreeable command. Single proofs of tender feeling, of a noble heart, and touching goodness, nay even the emperor’s magnanimous conduct towards Kosciuszko and his brethren in arms, combined with his sympathy with the fate of Poland, could not reconcile a court, such as that of Russia under Catherine II had become, and a city like that of St. Petersburg, to the change of the court into a guard-room, and to the daily varying humours of a man of eccentric and half-deranged mind. Even the improvements in the financial affairs of the country were regarded as ruinous innovations by those who in times past had profited by the confusion. The whole of Russia, and even the imperial family, were alarmed and terrified; a complete flood of decrees, often contradictory, and mutually abrogatory, followed one another in quick succession; and the mad schemes of the emperor, who was, nevertheless, by no means wicked or insensible to what was good and true, reminded all observers of the most unhappy times of declining Rome.[b]

_Imperial Eccentricities_

The guards, that dangerous body of men who had overturned the throne of the father, and who had long considered the accession of the son as the term of their military existence, were rendered incapable of injuring him by a bold and vigourous step, and treated without the least deference from the first day. Paul incorporated in the different regiments of guards his battalions that arrived from Gatshina, the officers of which he distributed among the various companies, promoting them at the same time two or three steps; so that simple lieutenants or captains in the army found themselves at once captains in the guards, a place so important and hitherto so honoured, and which gave the rank of colonel, or even of brigadier. Some of the old captains of the first families in the kingdom found themselves under the command of officers of no birth, who but a few years before had left their companies, as sergeants or corporals, to enter into the battalions of the grand duke. This bold and hasty change, which at any other time would have been fatal to its author, had only the effect of inducing a few hundreds of officers, subalterns and others, to retire.

Paul, alarmed and enraged at this general desertion, went to the barracks, flattered the soldiers, appeased the officers, and endeavoured to retain them by excluding from all employ, civil and military, those who should retire in future. He afterwards issued an order that every officer or subaltern who had resigned, or should give in his resignation, should quit the capital within four-and-twenty hours, and return to his own home. It did not enter into the head of the person who drew up the ukase that it contained an absurdity; for several of the officers were natives of St. Petersburg, and had families residing in the city. Accordingly, some of them retired to their homes without quitting the capital, not obeying the first part of the order, lest they should be found guilty of disobedience to the second. Arkarov, who was to see it put in force, having informed the emperor of this contradiction, directed that the injunction to quit St. Petersburg should alone be obeyed. A number of young men were consequently taken out of their houses as criminals, put out of the city, with orders not to re-enter it, and left in the road without shelter, and without any furred garments, in very severe weather. Those who belonged to very remote provinces, for the most part wanting money to carry them thither, wandered about the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg, where several perished from cold and want.

The finances of the empire, exhausted by the prodigalities and still more by the waste of Catherine’s reign, required a prompt remedy; and to this Paul seemed at first to turn his thoughts. Partly from hope, partly from fear, the paper money of the crown rose a little in value. It was to be supposed that the grand duke of all the Russias, who for thirty years had been obliged to live on an income of a hundred thousand rubles (£10,000) per annum, would at least have learned economy per force; but he was soon seen to rush into the most unmeasured sumptuosity, heap wealth upon some, and lavish favours upon others, with as much profusion as his mother, and with still less discernment. The spoils of Poland continued to add to the riches of men already too wealthy. All he could do towards restoring a sort of equilibrium between his receipts and disbursements was to lay an exorbitant tax on all the classes of his slaves. The poll-tax of the wretched serfs was doubled, and a new tax was imposed upon the nobles, which, however, the serfs would ultimately have to pay. After the first impressions which his accession caused in the heart of Paul, punishments and disgraces succeeded with the same rapidity and profusion with which he had lavished his favours. Several experienced the two extremes in a few days. It is true that most of these punishments at first appeared just; but then it must be allowed that Paul could scarcely strike any but the guilty, so corrupt had been all who were about the throne.

(1754-1801)]

A whim which caused no little surprise was the imperial prohibition of wearing round hats, or rather the sudden order to take them away or tear them to pieces on the heads of those who appeared in them. This occasioned some disgraceful scenes in the streets, and particularly near the palace. The Cossacks and soldiers of the police fell on the passengers to uncover their heads, and beat those who, not knowing the reason, attempted to defend themselves. An English merchant, going through the street in a sledge, was thus stopped, and his hat snatched off. Supposing it to be a robbery, he leaped out of his sledge, knocked down the soldier, and called the guard. Instead of the guard, arrived an officer, who overpowered and bound him; but as they were carrying him before the police, he was fortunate enough to meet the coach of the English minister, who was going to court, and claimed his protection. Sir Charles Whitworth made his complaint to the emperor; who, conjecturing that a round hat might be the national dress of the English as it was of the Swedes, said that his order had been misconceived, and he would explain himself more fully to Arkarov. The next day it was published in the streets and houses that strangers who were not in the emperor’s service, or naturalised, were not comprised in the prohibition. Round hats were now no longer pulled off; but those who were met with this unlucky headdress were conducted to the police to ascertain their country. If they were found to be Russians, they were sent for soldiers; and woe to a Frenchman who had been met with in this dress, for he would have been condemned as a Jacobin.

A regulation equally incomprehensible was the sudden prohibition of harnessing horses after the Russian mode. A fortnight was allowed for procuring harness in the German fashion; after the expiration of which, the police were ordered to cut the traces of every carriage the horses of which were harnessed in the ancient manner. As soon as this regulation was made public, several persons dared not venture abroad, still less appear in their carriages near the palace, for fear of being insulted. The harness-markers availed themselves of the occasion to charge exorbitant prices. To dress the _ishvoshtshki_, or Russian coachmen, in the German fashion, was attended with another inconvenience. Most of them would neither part with their long beards, their kaftans, nor their round hats; still less would they tie a false tail to their short hair, which produced the most ridiculous scenes and figures in the world. At length the emperor had the vexation to be obliged to change his rigorous order into a simple invitation to his subjects gradually to adopt the German fashion of dress, if they wished to merit his favour. Another reform with respect to carriages: the great number of splendid equipages that swarmed in the streets of St. Petersburg disappeared in an instant. The officers, even the generals, came to the parade on foot, or in little sledges, which also was not without its dangers.

It was anciently a point of etiquette for every person who met a Russian autocrat, his wife, or son, to stop his horse or coach, alight, and prostrate himself in the snow or in the mud. This barbarous homage, difficult to be paid in a large city where carriages pass in great numbers, and always on the gallop, had been completely abolished under the reign of the polished Catherine. One of the first cares of Paul was to re-establish it in all its rigour. A general officer, who passed on without his coachmen’s observing the emperor riding by on horseback, was stopped, and immediately put under arrest. The same unpleasant circumstance occurred to several others, so that nothing was so much dreaded, either on foot or in a carriage, as the meeting of the emperor.

The ceremony established within the palace became equally strict, and equally dreaded. Woe betide him who, when permitted to kiss the hand of Paul, did not make the floor resound by striking it with his knee as loud as a soldier with the butt-end of his firelock. It was requisite, too, that the salute of the lips on his hand should be heard, to certify the reality of the kiss, as well as of the genuflection. Prince George Galitzin, the chamberlain, was put under arrest on the spot by his majesty himself, for having made the bow and kissed the hand too negligently.

If this new reign was fatal to the army and to the poor gentry, it was still more so to the unhappy peasantry. A report being spread that Paul was about to restrict the power of masters over their slaves, and give the peasants of the lords the same advantages as those of the crown, the people of the capital were much pleased with the hopes of this change. At this juncture an officer set off for his regiment, which lay at Orenberg. On the road he was asked about the new emperor, and what new regulations he was making. He related what he had seen, and what he had heard; among the rest, mentioning the ukase which was soon to appear in favour of the peasants. At this news, those of Tver and Novgorod indulged in some tumultuous actions, which were considered as symptoms of rebellion. Their masters were violently enraged with them; and the cause that had led them into error was discovered. Marshal Repnin was immediately despatched at the head of some troops against the insurgents; and the officer who had unwittingly given rise to this false hope, by retailing the news of the city on his road, was soon brought back in confinement. The senate of St. Petersburg judged him deserving of death, and condemned him to be broken, to undergo the punishment of the knout, and if he survived this, to labour in the mines. The emperor confirmed the sentence. This was the first criminal trial that was laid before the public; and assuredly it justified but too well those remains of shame which had before kept secret similar outrages.

The most prominent of Paul’s eccentricities was that mania which, from his childhood, he displayed for the military dress and exercise. This passion in a prince no more indicates the general or the hero than a girl’s fondness for dressing and undressing her doll foretokens that she will be a good mother. Frederick the Great, the most accomplished soldier of his time, is well known to have had from his boyhood the most insuperable repugnance to all those minutiæ of a corporal to which his father would have subjected him; this was even the first source of that disagreement which ever subsisted between the father and the son. Frederick, however, became a hero; his father was never anything more than a corporal. Peter III pushed his soldato-mania to a ridiculous point, fancying he made Frederick his model. He loved soldiers and arms, as a man loves horses and dogs. He knew nothing but how to exercise a regiment, and never went abroad but in a captain’s uniform.

Paul, in his mode of life when grand duke, and his conduct after his accession, so strongly resembled his father that, changing names and dates, the history of the one might be taken for that of the other. Both were educated in a perfect ignorance of business, and resided at a distance from court, where they were treated as prisoners of state rather than heirs to the crown; and whenever they presented themselves appeared as aliens and strangers, having no concern with the royal family. The aunt of the father (Elizabeth) acted precisely as did the mother of the son. The endeavours of each were directed to prolong the infancy of their heirs, and to perpetuate the feebleness of their minds. The young princes were both distinguished by personal vivacity and mental insensibility, by an activity which, untrained and neglected, degenerated into turbulence; the father was sunk in debauchery, the son lost in the most insignificant trifles. An unconquerable aversion to study and reflection gave to both that infatuated taste for military parade, which would probably have displayed itself less forcibly in Paul had he been a witness of the ridicule they attached to Peter. The education of Paul, however, was much more attended to than that of his father. He was surrounded in infancy by persons of merit, and his youth promised a capacity of no ordinary kind. It must also be allowed that he was exempt from many of the vices which disgraced Peter; temperance and regularity of manners were prominent features of his character--features the more commendable, as before his mother and himself they were rarely to be found in a Russian autocrat. To the same cause, education, and his knowledge of the language and character of the nation, it was owing that he differed from his father in other valuable qualities.

The similarity which, in some instances, marked their conduct towards their wives, is still more striking; and in their amours, a singular coincidence of taste is observable. Catherine and Marie were the most beautiful women of the court, yet both failed to gain the affections of their husbands. Catherine had an ambitious soul, a cultivated mind, and the most amiable and polished manners. In a man, however, whose attachments were confined to soldiers, to the pleasures of the bottle, and the fumes of tobacco, she excited no other sentiment than disgust and aversion. He was smitten with an object less respectable, and less difficult to please. The countess Vorontzov, fat, ugly in her person and vulgar in her manners, was more suitable to his depraved military taste, and she became his mistress. In like manner, the regular beauty of Marie, the unalterable sweetness of her disposition, her unwearied complaisance, her docility as a wife, and her tenderness as a mother were not sufficient to prevent Paul from attaching himself to Mademoiselle Nelidov, whose disposition and qualities better accorded with his own, and afterwards to a young lady of the name of Lopukhin, who, it is believed, rejected his suit. To the honour of Paul it is related that he submitted to that mortifying repulse with the most chivalric patience and generosity. Nelidov was ugly and diminutive, but seemed desirous, by her wit and address, to compensate for the disadvantages of her person; for a woman to be in love with Paul it was necessary she should resemble him.

On their accession to the throne, neither the father nor the son were favourites with the court or the nation, yet both acquired immediate popularity and favour. The first steps of Paul appeared to be directed, but improved, by those of Peter. The liberation of Kosciuszko and other prisoners brought to public recollection the recall of Biron, Munich, and Lestocq, with this difference--that Peter III did not disgrace these acts of clemency and justice by ridiculous violences, or by odious and groundless persecutions. Both issued ukases extremely favourable to the nobility, but from motives essentially different, and little to the honour of the son. The father granted to the Russian gentry those natural rights which every man ought to enjoy; while the son attempted the folly of creating a heraldic nobility in Russia, where that Gothic institution had never been known. In the conduct which he observed towards the clergy, Paul, however, showed himself a superior politician. Instead of insulting the priests, and obliging them to shave their beards, he bestowed the orders of the empire on the bishops, to put them on a footing with the nobility, and flattered the populace and the priesthood by founding churches, in obedience to pretended inspiration.

In his military operations, however, his policy appears to have abandoned him, because here he gave the reins to his ruling passion. The quick and total change of discipline he introduced in his armies created him nearly as many enemies as there were officers and soldiers. In the distrust and suspicions which incessantly haunted him, his inferiority to his father is also evident. One of the first acts of Peter III was to abolish the political inquisition established by Elizabeth; whereas Paul prosecuted no scheme with greater alacrity than that of establishing a system of spies, and devising means for the encouragement of informers. The blind confidence of the father was his ruin, but it flowed from a humanity of disposition always worthy of respect. The distrust of the son did not save him; it was the offspring of a timorous mind, which by its suspicions was more apt to provoke than to elude treason.[k]

_Paul’s Foreign Policy_

In regard to foreign matters Paul’s initial policy was one of peace. He put a stop to the levying of recruits after the manner adopted by his mother--that is, in the proportion of three men to every five hundred souls--recalled his army from Persia, and left Georgia to take care of itself. He showed compassion for the Poles, recalled the prisoners from Siberia, transferred King Stanislaus from Grodno to St. Petersburg, visited Kosciuszko at Schlüsselburg and released him in company with the other prisoners. He bade Kolitchev, envoy extraordinary at Berlin, inform the king that he, Paul, wished neither conquest nor aggrandisement. He dictated to Ostermann a circular directed to the foreign powers, in which he declared that of all the countries of the world Russia alone had been constantly engaged in war since 1756; that forty years of warfare had reduced the population; that the emperor’s humanity would not allow him to withhold from his beloved subjects the peace for which they longed; that though on account of these considerations Russia could take no active part in the struggle against France, the emperor would “nevertheless remain closely united with his allies, and would use every means to oppose the rise of the mad French Republic which threatened all Europe with upheaval by the destruction of its laws, privileges, property, religion, and customs.” He refused all armed assistance to Austria, which was alarmed at Napoleon’s victories in Italy, and recalled the fleet that Catherine had adjoined to the English fleet for the purpose of blockading the coasts of France and Holland. He even received overtures made by Caillard, the French envoy to Prussia, and caused him to be informed that the emperor “did not consider himself at war with the French, that he had never done anything to harm them, but was rather disposed to keep peace with them, and would induce his allies to hasten the conclusion of war, to which end he offered the mediation of Russia.”

It was not long, however, before relations again became strained between France and Russia. By the Treaty of Campo Formio the Ionian Isles had been given to the French, who thus acquired a threatening position in the East and increased power over the Divan. The Directory authorised Dombrowski to organise Polish legions in Italy. Panin, at Berlin, intercepted a letter from the Directory to the French envoy, which spoke of a restoration of Poland under a prince of Brandenburg. Paul, on his side, took into his pay the troops of the prince of Condé, and established ten thousand émigrés in Volhinia and Podolia. He offered an asylum to Louis XVIII after his flight from Brunswick, and installed him in the ducal palace at Mitau with a pension of 200,000 rubles. The news that a French expedition was being secretly organised at Toulon made him fear for the security of the coasts of the Black Sea, which were immediately put in a state of defence. The abduction of Zagurski, the Russian consul at Corfu, the capture of Malta by Napoleon, the arrival at St. Petersburg of the banished knights who offered Paul the protectorate of their order and the title of grand master, the invasion of Helvetian territory by the Directory, the expulsion of the pope and the proclamation of the Roman Republic--all were events that precipitated the rupture.

Paul concluded an alliance with Turkey which had been disturbed by an Egyptian invasion, also with England, Austria, and the kingdom of Naples. Thus, by the double aggression of Bonaparte against Malta and Egypt, Russia and Turkey were led, contrary to all traditions, to make common cause. Paul pledged himself to unite his fleet with the Turkish and English squadron, and to furnish one body of troops for a descent on Holland, another for the conquest of the Ionian Isles, and a grand auxiliary army for the campaigns in Italy and Switzerland.

In the autumn of 1798 a Turkish-Russian fleet captured the French garrisons in the Ionian Isles. The king of Naples invaded the territory of the Roman Republic, but Championnet brought the Neapolitan troops back on to their own ground, and after making a triumphal entry into Naples proclaimed the Parthenopean Republic.

THE CAMPAIGNS OF KORSAKOV AND SUVAROV (1798-1799)

[Sidenote: [1798-1799 A.D.]]

The Russian army in Switzerland was placed under the command of Rimski-Korsakov, that of Holland under the orders of Hermann; while Austria, at the suggestion of England, requested that the victor of Fokshani and of the Rimnik should receive the command of the Austro-Russian army. Flattered by this mark of deference, Paul I recalled Suvarov from exile in his village. “Suvarov has no need of laurels,” wrote the czar, “but the country has need of Suvarov.”[c]

A few days after the battle of Magnano, Suvarov arrived on the Mincio with the first division of his forces, twenty thousand strong, and took the command of all the allied troops in Italy. The jealousy of the Austrian generals was naturally excited and they called a council of war, in order to examine his plans. The members of the council, beginning at the youngest, proposed their several schemes. Suvarov quietly heard them all, and when they had done, took a slate, drew two lines, and said, “Here, gentleman, are the French, and here the Russians; the latter will march against the former and beat them.” So saying, he rubbed out the French line, and added, “This is all my plan; the council is concluded.”

Suvarov kept his word, and in less than three months swept the French entirely out of Lombardy and Piedmont. Thrusting himself between the three French armies of Switzerland, northern Italy, and the Parthenopean Republic, it was his purpose, in concert with the archduke Charles of Austria, to penetrate into France on its most defenceless side, by the Vosges and the Jura, the same quarter on which the great invasion of 1814 was afterwards effected. The campaign opened on the 25th of April, on the steep banks of the Adda, behind which Moreau had posted his diminished force of twenty-eight thousand men in three divisions. The passage was forced with immense loss to the French, who were compelled to abandon Milan, which Suvarov entered in triumph on the 29th.

After a week’s delay, during which all the principal places of Lombardy surrendered to the allies, Suvarov followed Moreau’s retreat, and endeavoured to dislodge him from his advantageous position on the Po. Not succeeding in this attempt as rapidly as suited his impetuous habits, the Russian general suddenly changed his purpose, and advanced against Turin, whilst Moreau at the same moment had resolved to retire to Turin and the crests of the Apennines, in order to preserve his communications with France. On the 27th of May, Vukassovitch, who commanded the advance guard of the Russians, surprised Turin, and forced the French to take refuge in the citadel, leaving in the hands of the victors nearly three hundred pieces of artillery, sixty thousand muskets, and an enormous quantity of ammunition and military stores. Moreau’s army, thus deprived of all its resources, was saved from destruction only by the extraordinary ability of its commander, who led it safely towards Genoa by a mountain path, which was rendered practicable for artillery, in four days. With the exception of a few fortresses, nothing now remained to the French of all Napoleon’s conquests in northern Italy; they had been lost in less time than it had taken to make them.

[Sidenote: [1799 A.D.]]

Exulting in the brilliant success of his arms, Paul bestowed another surname, Italienski, or the Italian, on his victorious general, and ordered by an express ukase that Suvarov should be universally regarded as the greatest commander that had ever appeared. Meanwhile the results of his skill and vigour were neutralised by the selfish policy of the Austrian court, which had become by the Treaty of Campo Formio, and the acquisition of Venice, in some degree an actual accomplice with the aggressors against whom it was in arms. Suvarov was compelled to submit to the dictation of the emperor Francis I, and deeply disgusted he declared that he was no longer of any use in Italy, and that he desired nothing so ardently as to be recalled.

The disasters of the French in upper Italy were fatal to their ascendancy in the south, and Macdonald received orders to abandon the Parthenopean Republic, and unite his forces with those of Moreau. His retreat was exposed to great dangers by the universal insurrection of the peasants; but he accomplished it with great rapidity and skill. The two French commanders then concerted measures to dislodge the allies from their conquests--a project which seemed not unlikely to be fulfilled, so obstinately had the Aulic council adhered to the old system of dispersing the troops all over the territory which they occupied. Though the allies had above a hundred thousand men in the field, they could hardly assemble thirty thousand at any one point; and Macdonald might easily have destroyed them in detail could he have fallen upon them at once; but the time he spent in reorganising his army in Tuscany, and in concerting measures with Moreau, was well employed by Suvarov in promptly concentrating his forces. Macdonald advanced against him with an army of thirty-seven thousand men, taking Modena on his way, and driving Hohenzollern out of it after a bloody engagement. The two armies met on the Trebbia, where a first and indecisive action took place on the 17th of June; it was renewed on each of the two following days, and victory finally remained with the Russians. In this terrible battle of three days, the most obstinately contested and bloody that had occurred since the beginning of the war, the loss on both sides was excessive; that of the French was above twelve thousand in killed and wounded, and that of the allies not much less. But nearly equal losses told with very unequal severity on the respective combatants; those of the allies would speedily be retrieved by large reinforcements, but the republicans had expended their last resources, were cut off from Moreau, and had no second army to fall back upon. Macdonald with infinite difficulty regained the positions he had occupied before the advance to the Trebbia, after losing an immense number of prisoners.

The fall of the citadel of Turin on the 20th of June was of great importance to the allies; for besides disengaging their besieging force it put into their hands one of the strongest fortresses in Piedmont, and an immense quantity of artillery and ammunition. This event, and Suvarov’s victory on the Trebbia, checked the successful operations of Moreau, and compelled him to fall back to his former defensive position on the Apennines. Again, contrary to Suvarov’s wishes, the allied forces were divided for the purpose of reducing Mantua and Alexandria, and occupying Tuscany. After the fall of those two fortresses, Suvarov laid siege to Tortona, when Joubert, who had meanwhile superseded Moreau, marched against him at the head of the combined forces of the French. On the 15th of August, another desperate battle was fought at Novi, in which Joubert was killed, but from which neither side derived any particular advantage. The French returned to their former positions, and the Italian campaign was ended.

Suvarov now received orders to join his forces with those under Korsakov, who was on the Upper Rhine with thirty thousand men. The archduke Charles might, even without this fresh reinforcement, have already annihilated Massena had he not remained for three months, from June to August, in complete inactivity; at the very moment of Suvarov’s expected arrival, he allowed the important passes of the St. Gotthard to be again carried by a coup-de-main by the French, under General Lecourbe, who drove the Austrians from the Simplon, the Furka, the Grimsel, and the Devil’s Bridge. The archduke, after an unsuccessful attempt to push across the Aar at Dettingen, suddenly quitted the scene of war and advanced down the Rhine for the purpose of supporting the English expedition under the duke of York against Holland. This unexpected turn in affairs proceeded from Vienna. The Viennese cabinet was jealous of Russia. Suvarov played the master in Italy, favoured Sardinia at the expense of the house of Habsburg, and deprived the Austrians of the laurels and the advantages they had won. The archduke, accordingly, received orders to remain inactive, to abandon the Russians, and finally to withdraw to the north; by this movement Suvarov’s triumphant progress was checked, he was compelled to cross the Alps to the aid of Korsakov, and to involve himself in a mountain warfare ill-suited to the habits of his soldiery.

Korsakov, whom Bavaria had been bribed with Russian gold to furnish with a corps one thousand strong, was supported solely by Kray and Hotze with twenty thousand men. Massena, taking advantage of the departure of the archduke and the non-arrival of Suvarov, crossed the Limmat at Dietikon and shut Korsakov, who had imprudently stationed himself with his whole army in Zurich, so closely in that, after an engagement that lasted two days, from the 15th to the 17th of September, the Russian general was compelled to abandon his artillery and to force his way through the enemy. Ten thousand men were all that escaped. Hotze, who had advanced from the Grisons to Schwyz to Suvarov’s rencontre, was, at the same time, defeated and killed at Schanis. Suvarov, although aware that the road across the St. Gotthard was blocked by the Lake of Lucerne, on which there were no boats, had the temerity to attempt the passage. In Airolo, he was obstinately opposed by the French under Lecourbe, and, although Shveikovski contrived to turn this strong position by scaling the pathless rocks, numbers of the men were, owing to Suvarov’s impatience, sacrificed before it.

On the 24th of September, 1799, he at length climbed the St. Gotthard, and a bloody engagement, in which the French were worsted, took place on the Oberalpsee. Lecourbe blew up the Devil’s Bridge, but, leaving the Urnerloch open, the Russians pushed through that rocky gorge, and, dashing through the foaming Reuss, scaled the opposite rocks and drove the French from their position behind the Devil’s Bridge. Altorf on the lake was reached in safety by the Russian general, who was compelled, owing to the want of boats, to seek his way through the valleys of Schächen and Muotta, across the almost impassable rocks, to Schwyz. The heavy rains rendered the undertaking still more arduous; the Russians, owing to the badness of the road, were speedily barefoot; the provisions were also exhausted. In this wretched state they reached Muotta on the 29th of September and learned the discouraging news of Korsakov’s defeat. Massena had already set off in the hope of cutting off Suvarov, but had missed his way. He reached Altorr, where he joined Lecourbe on the 29th, when Suvarov was already at Muotta, whence Massena found on his arrival that he had again retired across the Bragelburg, through the Klönthal. He was opposed on the lake of Klönthal by Molitor, who was, however, forced to retire by Auffenberg, who had joined Suvarov at Altorf and formed his advanced guard, Rosen, at the same time, beating off Massena with the rearguard, taking five cannon and one thousand of his men prisoners. On the 1st of October, Suvarov entered Glarus, where he rested until the 4th, when he crossed the Panixer Mountains through snow two feet deep to the valley of the Rhine, which he reached on the 10th, after losing the whole of his beasts of burden and two hundred of his men down the precipices; and here ended his extraordinary march, which had cost him the whole of his artillery, almost all his horses, and a third of his men.

The archduke had, meanwhile, tarried on the Rhine, where he had taken Philippsburg and Mannheim, but had been unable to prevent the defeat of the English expedition under the duke of York by General Brune at Bergen, on the 19th of September. The archduke now, for the first time, made a retrograde movement, and approached Korsakov and Suvarov. The different leaders, however, did nothing but find fault with each other, and the czar, perceiving his project frustrated, suddenly recalled his troops, and the campaign came to a close.

Paul’s anger fell without measure or reason on his armies and their chiefs. All the officers who were missing, that is to say who were prisoners in France, were broken as deserters, and Suvarov, instead of being well received with well merited honours, was deprived of his command and not suffered to see the emperor’s face. This unjust severity broke the veteran’s heart. He died soon after his return to St. Petersburg; and no Russian courtier, nor any member of the diplomatic body except the English ambassador, followed his remains to the grave.

PAUL RECONCILED WITH FRANCE (1800 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1800 A.D.]]

Frustrated in the objects for which he had engaged in war, Paul was now in a mood easily to be moved to turn his arms against the allies who had deceived his hopes. He had fought for the re-establishment of monarchy in France, and of the old _status quo_ in Europe; and the only result had been the aggrandisement of Austria, his own immediate neighbour, of whom he had much more reason to be jealous than of the remote power of France. The rapid steps, too, which Bonaparte was taking for the restoration of monarchical forms in that country were especially calculated to conciliate Paul’s good-will towards the first consul. The latter and his able ministers promptly availed themselves of this favourable disposition through the connections they had made in St. Petersburg. Fouché had such confidential correspondence even with ladies in the Russian capital, that he afterwards received the earliest and most correct intelligence of the emperor’s murder. Two persons at the court of St. Petersburg were next gained over to France, or rather to Bonaparte’s rising empire; these were the minister Rostoptchin, and the emperor’s favourite, the Turk Kutaisov, who had risen with unusual rapidity from the situation of the emperor’s barber to the rank of one of the first Russian nobles. He was also nearly connected by relationship with Rostoptchin.

Rostoptchin first found means to send away General Dumourier from St. Petersburg, whither he had come for the purpose of carrying on his intrigues in favour of the Bourbons. He next sought to bring Louis Cobenzl also into discredit with the emperor, and he succeeded in this, shortly before the opening of the campaign in Italy in 1800, when the cabinet of Vienna was called upon to give a plain and direct answer to the questions peremptorily put by the emperor of Russia. Paul required that the cabinet should answer, without if or but, without circumlocution or reserve, whether or not Austria would, according to the terms of the treaty, restore the pope and the king to their dominions and sovereignty. Cobenzl was obliged to reply that if Austria were to give back Piedmont to the king of Sardinia it must still retain Tortona and Alessandria; and that it never would restore the three legations and Ancona. The measure of the emperor’s indignation was now full; he forbade Count Cobenzl the court, and at a later period not only ordered him to leave the country, but would not even allow an embassy or chargé-d’affaires to remain.

The emperor proceeded more deliberately with regard to the English. At first he acted as if he had no desire to break with them; and he even allowed the Russians, whom they had hired for the expedition against Holland, to remain in Guernsey under Viomesnil’s command, in order to assist their employers in an expedition against Brittany. The English government, however, at length provoked him to extremities. They refused to redeem the Russians who had been made prisoners in their service, by giving in exchange for them an equal number of French, of whom their prisons were full; they refused to listen to any arrangements respecting the grand mastership of the knights of Malta, or even as to the protectorate of the order, and gave the clearest intimations that they meant to keep the island for themselves. Bonaparte seized upon this favourable moment for flattering the emperor, by acting as if he had really more respect for Paul than the two powers for whom he had made such magnanimous sacrifices. Whilst the English refused to redeem the Russians made prisoners in their service by exchange, Bonaparte set them free without either exchange or ransom.

The emperor of Germany had broken his word, and neither restored the pope nor the king of Sardinia, whilst Bonaparte voluntarily offered to restore the one and give compensation to the other. He assailed the emperor in a masterly manner on his weak side, causing the six or seven thousand Russians, whom the English refused to exchange, to be provided with new clothing and arms, and he wrote a letter to Panin, the Russian minister, in which he said that he was unwilling to suffer such brave soldiers as these Russians were to remain longer away from their native land on account of the English. In the same letter he paid another compliment to the emperor, and threw an apple of mortal strife between him and England. Knowing as he did that his garrison in Malta could not hold out much longer, he offered to place the island in the hands of the emperor Paul, as a third party. This was precisely what the emperor desired; and Sprengporten, who was sent to France to bring away the Russians, and to thank the first consul, was to occupy Malta with them. The Russians were either to be conveyed thither by Nelson, who up to this time had kept the island closely blockaded, and was daily expecting its surrender, or at least he was to be ordered to let them pass; but both he and the English haughtily rejected the Russian mediation.

Paul now came to a complete breach with England. First of all he recalled his Russian troops from Guernsey, but on this occasion he was again baffled. It was of great importance to the English cabinet that Bonaparte should not immediately hear of the decided breach which had taken place between them and the emperor, and they therefore prevailed upon Viomesnil, an émigré, who had the command of the Russians in Guernsey, to remain some weeks longer, in opposition to the emperor’s will. Paul was vehemently indignant at this conduct; Viomesnil, however, entered the English service, and was provided for by the English government in Portugal.

Lord Whitworth was next obliged to leave Russia, as Count Cobenzl had previously been. Paul recalled his ambassadors from the courts of Vienna and London, and forthwith sent Count Kalitchev to Paris to enter into friendly negotiations with Bonaparte. In the meantime, the English had recourse to some new subterfuges, and promised, that in case Malta capitulated, they would consent to allow the island to be administered, till the conclusion of a peace, by commissioners appointed by Russia, England, and Naples. Paul had already named Bailli de la Ferrette for this purpose; but the English refused to acknowledge his nominee, and even to receive the Neapolitans in Malta. Before this took place, however, the emperor had come to issue with England on a totally different question.

The idea of a union among the neutral powers, in opposition to the right alleged by England, when at war with any power whatsoever, to subject the ships of all neutral powers to search, had been relinquished by the empress Catherine in 1781, to please the English ambassador at her court; Paul now resumed the idea. Bonaparte intimated his concurrence, and Paul followed up the matter with great energy and zeal, as in this way he had an opportunity of exhibiting himself in the character of an imperial protector of the weak, a defender of justice and right, and as the head of a general alliance of the European powers. Prussia also now appeared to do homage to him, for the weak king was made to believe, that by a close alliance between Russia and France, he might be helped to an extension of territory and an increase of subjects, without danger or cost to himself, or without war, which he abhorred beyond everything else. The first foundation, therefore, for an alliance between Russia and France, was laid in Berlin, where Beurnonville, the French ambassador, was commissioned to enter into negotiations with the Russian minister Von Krüderer. Beurnonville promised, in Bonaparte’s name, that the Russian mediation in favour of Naples and Sardinia would be accepted, and that, in the question of compensations for the German princes particular regard would be had to the cases of Baden and Würtemberg.

THE ARMED NEUTRALITY (1800 A.D.)

As to the armed neutrality by sea against England, Prussia could easily consent to join this alliance, because she had in fact no navy; but it was much more difficult for Sweden and Denmark, whose merchant ships were always accompanied by frigates. In case, therefore, the neutral powers came to an understanding that no merchant vessels which were accompanied by a ship of war should be compelled to submit to a search, this might at any time involve them in hostilities with England. In addition to Denmark, Sweden, and Prussia, which, under Paul’s protectorate, were to conclude an alliance for the protection of trading vessels belonging to neutral powers against the arrogant claims of England, Bonaparte endeavoured to prevail upon the North Americans to join the alliance. They were the only parties who, by a specific treaty in 1794, had acknowledged as a positive right what the others only submitted to as an unfounded pretension on the part of England. On that occasion the Americans had broken with the French Republic on the subject of his treaty, and Barras and Talleyrand had been shameless enough to propose that the Americans should pay a gratuity, in order to effect a renewal of their old friendship with France, which proposal, however, the Americans treated with contempt.

On the 30th of September, 1800, their ambassadors concluded an agreement at Bonaparte’s country seat of Morfontaine, which referred especially to the resistance which all the neutral powers under the protectorate of the emperor of Russia were desirous of making to the pretensions and claims of England. The Americans first of all declared that neutral flags should make a neutral cargo, except in cases where the ship was actually laden with goods contraband of war. It was afterwards precisely defined what were to be considered goods contraband of war. By the fourth article it was determined that neutral ships must submit to be detained, but that the ships of war so detaining a merchantman with a view to search should remain at least at the distance of a cannon-shot, and only be allowed to send a boat with three men to examine the ship’s papers and cargo; and that in all cases in which a merchantman should be under convoy of a ship of war, no right of search should exist, because the presence of the convoy should be regarded as a sufficient guarantee against contraband. Inasmuch as England and Denmark were at open issue concerning this last point, the Americans would have been inevitably involved in the dispute had they immediately ratified the treaty of Morfontaine: they were, however, far too cunning to fall into this difficulty; and they did not therefore ratify the treaty till the Russian confederation had been dissolved.

Sweden and Denmark had come to issue with England concerning the right of search in 1798 and 1799, when four frigates, two Swedish and two Danish, were captured and brought into English ports. True, they were afterwards given up, but without any satisfaction, for the English still insisted upon the right of search. The dispute became most vehement in the case of the Danish frigate _Freya_, which, together with the merchantmen under her convoy, were brought into an English port, after a sharp engagement on the 25th of July, 1800; and the English, aware of the hostile negotiations which were going on in the north, at once despatched an expedition against Denmark.

Sixteen English ships of war suddenly appeared before Copenhagen, and most unexpectedly threatened the harbour and city with a destructive bombardment, if Denmark did not at once acknowledge England’s right of search at sea. Had this acknowledgment been made, Bonaparte’s and the emperor’s plan would have been frustrated in its very origin; but Denmark had the good fortune to possess, in its minister Bernstorff, the greatest diplomatist of the whole revolutionary era, who contrived for that time to save Copenhagen without the surrender of any rights. It was quite impossible to resist by force, but he refused to enter upon the question of right or wrong; and in the agreement which he signed with Lord Whitworth on the 25th of August, 1800, he consented that in the meantime all occasion for dispute should be avoided, and thus the difficulty be postponed or removed. Denmark bound herself no longer to send her merchantmen under convoy--whereupon the _Freya_, and the vessels by which she was accompanied, were set at liberty. On this occasion the emperor Paul offered himself as arbitrator; and when Lord Whitworth rejected his interference or arbitration, he immediately laid an embargo on all the English ships in Russian ports.

The news of the agreement entered into at Copenhagen, however, no sooner reached St. Petersburg, than this first embargo was removed, and the dispute carried on merely in a diplomatic manner. At last the emperor Paul put an end to this paper war, when Vaubois, who had defended Malta since July, 1798, against the English, Russians, Neapolitans, and sometimes also the Portuguese, at length capitulated, on the 5th of September, 1800. The island was taken military possession of by the English without any reference whatever to the order, to Naples, to the promise which they had made to the emperor, or to Bailli de la Ferrette, whom Paul had named as the representative of the order. As soon as this news reached St. Petersburg, Paul’s rage and indignation knew no bounds. On the 7th of November, he not only laid an embargo upon three hundred English ships then in his ports, but sent the whole of their crews into the interior of Russia, and allowed them only a few kopecks a day for their support.

Lord Carysfort, the English ambassador in Berlin, was unable for six weeks to obtain any answer from the Prussian government with respect to its connection with the northern confederation, although he insisted strongly upon it; and yet Stedingk, the Swedish minister, and Rosenkranz, the Danish minister, had signed the agreement for an armed neutrality in the form of that of 1780 as early as the 17th of December, 1800, in St. Petersburg, and the Prussian minister, Von Luft, in the name of his king, had signified his acceptance of the alliance on the 18th. When Lord Carysfort at length obtained an answer on the 12th of February to his demands, so long and repeatedly urged in vain, Haugwitz had drawn it up equivocally both in form and contents. The emperor of Russia was so indignant at the ambiguity that he not only expressed his feelings on the subject warmly, but also took some hostile measures against Prussia.

On the other hand, the emperor invited Gustavus IV to St. Petersburg where he was received with the greatest splendour. He arrived at St. Petersburg at Christmas, 1800, and immediately, as if to insult the English, a grand meeting of the order of Malta was held; the king himself was loaded with marks of honour of every possible description, and at the end of December he signed a new agreement, by which the objects of that of the 16th of the same month were greatly enlarged. In the former alliance defensive operations alone were contemplated; but now offensive measures were also agreed upon, with the reservation, indeed, if they should become necessary. Paul took measures to refit his fleet, and an army was equipped which was to be placed under the commands of Soltikov, Pahlen, and Kutusov; the Danish fleet was in good condition; the Russian minister in Paris appeared to regard the circumstances as very favourable for gaining Hanover to his master without danger or risk; and Pitt himself considered the state of affairs so unfavourable, that he seriously contemplated the propriety of retiring and making way for a new ministry, in order to render a peace possible. This close confederacy against England was, however, dissolved at the very moment in which the first consul appeared to be disposed to favour Naples and Sardinia, in order to gratify the wishes of the emperor of Russia.

ASSASSINATION OF PAUL (1801 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1801 A.D.]]