194 DISGRACE AND EXILEaccredited to the Tsar, took careful note of the event. But not all
of them understood its full implication, or ascribed to it the same
importance. Curiously enough, Count Lauriston, the French Ambas-
sador, barely mentioned the event in his regular dispatch. But
Napoleon, correctly discerning it as a potential harbinger of further
changes in Russian policy, pressed for more details. In the meantime,
Napoleon tried to obtain the desired details from the Russian
Ambassador in Paris, Prince A. B. Kurakin. But the latter was quite
ignorant of what had happened in St. Petersburg. 1 Eventually
Lauriston was able to satisfy his master's curiosity better. The Austrian
charge d'affaires, Saint-Julien, took a serious view of Speransky's exile
and accompanied his report with a lengthy analysis of Russian policy.
This interesting document concerns Speransky only indirectly, and as it
has been cited in full by Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, we need
not repeat or summarize it.^2 John Quincy Adams, the American
Minister, rather sparse in his comments on the Russian domestic scene
and the members of the Russian government, tersely reported' in the
last paragraph of his dispatch to Washington: "The Secretary General
of the Empire and the Secretary of the Imperial Council for the
Department of Legislation [i.e. Magnitskii], were last evening arrested
and sent into banishment. They were persons of distinguished talents
and very recently in high favor. The cause of their sudden disgrace is
attributed to improper communications with France, but neither is,
no}" probably will be, known with certainty." 3
But soon Europe became first the spectator and then the active
participant in the final act of Napoleon's career. The world's attention
was deflected from the lonely and not very significant - when viewed
against the dramatic events of the day - person of the former State
Secretary of the Russian Empire. While Moscow burned and the
1 Prince A. B. Kurakin reported to Rumiantsev from Paris on 15/27 April 1812:
"(Napoleon asked Kurakin that same day) Mais dites-moi, j'ai appris que Speransky
vient d'etre arrete'. Pouvez vous m'apprendre les causes de cet evenement? - Je
[e.g. Kurakin] repondis encore qu'on ne m'avait rien appris sur la catastrophe de
Speransky et que mon courrier m'avait dit seulement qu'il n'etait plus en place,
ni meme it St. Petersbourg." "Doneseniia imperatoru Aleksandru I kniazia A. B.
Kurakina i doneseniia ego zhe kantsleru Rumiantsevu za 1811 i 1812 gg," Sbornik
fRIO, Vol. 21 (1877), p. 377. See also ibid., p. 386 (report dated 20 April/2 May,
1812) in which Kurakin summarizes what the Duke of Bassano has told him about
Speransky's exile on the basis of the dispatch of the French Ambassador Lauriston).
CL also the dispatches of Lauriston (in Russian translation), Russkii Arkhiv, (1882),
No.1 pp. 169-176 and Grand Duc Nicolas Mikhailowitsch, Les relations diploma-
tiques de la Russie et de la France, vol. VI, pp. 253-255.
a Grand Duc Nicolas Mikhailowitsch, L'Empereur Alexandre ler, I, pp. 92-94.
3 U.S. Department of State - Russia, John Quincy Adams to the Secretary of
State, dispatch No. 82, dated 31 March 1812.