Russia Against Napoleon

Though Nikolai Rumiantsev remained foreign minister in name, he was completely excluded from the making of foreign policy. Alexander claimed to have left him behind in Petersburg to preserve his health. It was indeed true that Rumiantsev had suffered a minor stroke while on campaign with Alexander in 1812. For the emperor this was just a good excuse to escape from his foreign minister in 1813. The last thing Alexander wanted was an ‘Old Russian’ foreign minister, distrusted by all Russia’s current allies and critical of the emperor’s policy, looking over his shoulder. In Rumiantsev’s opinion Alexander’s crusade against Napoleon was wrong-headed. As he said to John Quincy Adams, Napoleon was by no means the only issue in Russian foreign relations. By concentrating so exclusively on Napoleon’s defeat, Alexander was downgrading Russian policy towards the Ottoman Empire and Persia, and even allowing historical Russian interests to be sacrificed to a desire to placate the Austrians and the British. Rumiantsev on occasion even upbraided Alexander in thinly camouflaged terms for forgetting his ancestors’ proud legacy.

The foreign minister also feared anarchy as a result of the efforts being made to incite mass risings against Napoleon, especially in Germany. In Rumiantsev’s words, this was ‘in essence a return of Jacobinism. Napoleon might be considered the Don Quixote of monarchy. He had, to be sure, overthrown many monarchs, but he had nothing against monarchy. By affecting to make his person the only object of hostility, and by setting the populace to work to run him down, there would be a foundation laid for many future and formidable disorders.’ Alexander could afford to ignore Rumiantsev, both far away and sidelined, though when Metternich made precisely the same points two months later he was forced to pay far more attention.¹

Decorations and fireworks greeted Alexander’s arrival in Vilna. The day after his arrival was his birthday and Kutuzov hosted a great ball in his honour. Captured French standards were thrown down at Alexander’s feet in the ballroom. Further celebrations and parades followed. The price of luxuries in Vilna became exorbitant. Even Lieutenant Chicherin, an aristocratic Guards officer, could not afford to have a new uniform tailored with the appropriate gold braid. The glitter and congratulations could not conceal even from the emperor the terrible suffering in Vilna at that time. Forty thousand frozen corpses lay in the city and its suburbs awaiting the spring thaw when they could be burned or buried. Starving and typhus-ridden scarecrows roamed the streets, collapsing and dying across the doorways of Vilna’s citizens. The Guards artillery was used to transport the corpses to the frozen walls and hillocks of bodies awaiting disposal outside the town. A third of the soldiers involved fell ill with typhus themselves. Worst of all were the scenes in the hospitals. To his credit, Alexander visited the French hospitals, but there was not much the overstretched Russian medical services could do to help. The emperor recalled a visit ‘in the evening. One single lamp lighted the high vaulted room, in which they had heaped up the piles of corpses as high as the walls. I cannot express the horror I felt, when in the midst of these inanimate bodies, I suddenly saw living beings.’²

On the surface all was harmony between a grateful emperor and his devoted commander-in-chief. Alexander awarded Kutuzov the Grand Cross of the Order of St George, the rarest and most prized of honours any Russian monarch could bestow. In reality, however, the emperor was dissatisfied with Kutuzov’s pursuit of Napoleon and determined to assert control over military operations. Petr Konovnitsyn, the army’s chief of staff, went on extended sick leave. In his place Alexander appointed Petr Volkonsky. Kutuzov would continue to command and to play the leading role in strategic planning but he would do so under the close eye of the emperor and his most trusted lieutenant. In terms of administrative efficiency Volkonsky’s arrival was of great benefit. Both Kutuzov and Konovnitsyn were lazy and inefficient administrators. Key documents went unsigned and unattended for days. Serge Maevsky, a staff officer in Kutuzov’s headquarters, commented that

it seemed to me that the field-marshal was extremely unhappy about this appointment because now the tsar’s witness could pass on a true picture of the field-marshal. In addition he worked with us when he felt like it but he was forced to work with Volkonsky even when he didn’t want to. Volkonsky was very hard-working and exhausted the old man by numerous discussions of problems. It is true that our business flew along. That isn’t to be wondered at: in one day Volkonsky would decide matters that before him had piled up for months.³