CHAPTER TWENTY-TWOFrom the beginning of r811 it was clear to the shrewdest observers that
France and Russia were on a collision course. Some have even antedated
the process and claimed that the failure of the Russian marriage project
at the beginning of r8ro and the subsequent match with Marie-Louise
was the invisible Rubicon. But it is possible to go even further back and
claim that the disappointing conference at Erfurt in October r8o8 was the
beginning of the end; the failure of the Russian marriage then becomes
the occasion rather than the cause of a downward spiral in relations.
The Czar had both political and economic grievances arising from his
entente with Napoleon. Politically, the Emperor refused to allow
Alexander carte blanche in Turkey and kept postponing the promised
division of the Ottoman Empire, on the grounds that possession of
Constantinople would make Russia a Mediterranean power. He also
irritated the Czar by enlarging the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, flirting with
Polish nationalists and threatening to revive an independent Poland,
something totally unacceptable to the Russians. In both cases Napoleon
was being dog in the manger: he could not have a viable Polish kingdom
or defeat Turkey without Russian support, yet he refused to collaborate
with Alexander in seeking a rational settlement. Further political irritants
in r8ro were French annexation of the Hanseatic towns and the Duchy of
Oldenburg, to which the heir apparent was the Czar's brother-in-law,
and the installation of Bernadotte as King of Sweden - which Alexander
mistakenly thought meant an extension of French military power on his
northern flank.
Lest all this should suggest an innocent, peace-loving Czar Alexander
forced reluctantly into war by an expansionist Corsican ogre, it must be
emphasized that Alexander was systematically duplicitous in his dealings
with Napoleon and had Promethean ambitions of his own. Despite his
professed admiration for the Emperor, the one and only significant
reform Alexander took from Napoleon was to ape his method of
modernizing the apparatus of repression and introducing a secret police
force. Alexander managed to be both fool and knave. A coward who was