tighten up the plans he had laid with Alexander at Tilsit for a Franco
Russian pincer movement on India.
But, the insincerity of the two parties apart, events had already moved
on since Tilsit. The Czar was increasingly convinced that even the
stopgap accord at Tilsit had been simply one-way traffic in Napoleon's
favour. He liked the Emperor personally, but his affection was not shared
at the Russian court. When he returned home after Tilsit, he was alarmed
to find how high feelings were running on the treaty. There were even
whispers of a coup to replace him with a more Francophobe ruler.
Remembering the fate of his father, who had been betrayed by his
courtiers for precisely this reason, Alexander began to renege on Tilsit.
The anti-French party at St Petersburg certainly had a case when they
argued that the entente with France worked against Russian interests.
French hegemony in the Baltic stood in the way of Russian expansion
into Finland. The Grand Duchy of Warsaw, a French vassal state in the
Russian 'sphere of influence', especially rankled. In Prussia France had
agreed to evacuate the country by I October I 8o8 but showed no signs of
a phased withdrawal; Napoleon indeed was delaying the evacuation on
the grounds that he had to have every last penny of the war indemnity
before pulling out. And whereas Napoleon had agreed to a division of
Turkey and often talked about it, he remained evasively silent on the key
question of who would control Constantinople.
Most disadvantageous of all were the economic protocols agreed at
Tilsit. Exports of corn, hemp and wood destined for England had been
embargoed because of the Continental System; moreover, France made
no offer of compensation but retained a favourable balance of trade with
Russia, leaving her with a ruinous glut of hemp, wood, tallow, pitch,
potassium, leather and iron. Of 338 ships recorded as leaving Russian
ports in I8o9, only one was bound for Bordeaux and meanwhile France
exported to Russia luxuries like spirits, scents, porcelain and jewellery
instead of the goods she really needed.
A gesture of goodwill in advance of the Erfurt conference was needed,
so Napoleon announced he would evacuate Prussia immediately, pro
vided the fu ll reparations of 140 million fr ancs were paid first and Prussia
agreed to limit its army to 42,000 men. But even this concession did not
seem to thaw the frosty relations between Paris and St Petersburg.
Napoleon's secret instructions to Talleyrand were to secure a treaty that
would tighten the screws on England and make Russia in effe ct Austria's
gaoler while giving him a fr ee hand in Spain. Since the duplicitous
Talleyrand was already working against him, this seemed a forlorn hope,
but the Emperor limited the fo reign minister's scope for double-dealing
marcin
(Marcin)
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