unable to stand up to the Dowager Empress and feared that the fate he
had meted out to his father would be visited on him, the Czar was an
essentially stupid man masquerading as an intellectual. He had the
besetting sin of indecisive tyrants, in that he agreed with the last person
to speak to him; this explains why Talleyrand was able to twist him round
his little finger. But there was another dimension to Alexander's essential
stupidity: he was a religious maniac and, like later czars, easy prey for
quacks, charlatans, gurus and 'perfect masters'.
Alexander was in any case scarcely master in his own house for, apart
from pressure from the virulently anti-Bonapartist coterie around the
Dowager Empress, he had to face the fact of the Army high command's
hatred of Napoleon and the objective interests of the business commun
ity. Russia's economic interests were threatened both by the expansion of
French influence to the Baltic and by the Continental System. The
blockade of England destroyed the Russian export trade in corn, hemp,
wood, tallow, pitch, potassium, leather and iron. France meanwhile was
neither offering alternative outlets nor supplying Russia with the goods
she needed; instead she sent luxury goods like spirits, perfumes, porcelain
and jewellery. French traders in more basic necessities found it easier,
cheaper and more predictable to find markets in Italy and Germany,
where they had the might of the Grande Armee to back them. This was
the context of the Czar's ukase in December I8IO, when he effectively
barred French luxury imports by imposing high tariffs and opened his
port to neutral shipping.
By the beginning of I8I I relations between Czar and Emperor were
tense. Prince Poniatowski, Napoleon's faithful Polish captain, warned the
French that Alexander was preparing a pre-emptive strike against the
small portion of the Grand Army that remained east of the Elbe. The
intelligence was correct: Alexander had sounded his adviser Prince Adam
Czartoryski about the possibility of suborning the Poles to his side, but
Czartoryski replied that the price was an independent Poland. After a few
tentative overtures to Austria, Prussia and Sweden which led nowhere,
Alexander decided on a policy of 'wait and see'. A guarded correspond
ence with Napoleon ensued. On 28 February I8I I the Emperor wrote
him a letter which was superficially cheerful and friendly but which
contained a sting in the tail: referring to Alexander's virtual abandonment
of the Continental System, he warned of terrible consequences if the Czar
sought a rapprochement with the British. Alexander answered non
committally on 25 March, justifying his ukase by the crisis in Russia's
maritime trade and the fall in the exchange rate of the rouble.
Napoleon decided that war with Russia was the only solution. It has
marcin
(Marcin)
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