Far Flies the Eagle (9 page)

The Prince was a member of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the Holy Roman Empire; a shrewd diplomat and an able soldier, he was as popular in Court circles as Caulaincourt was hated. When he entered, Alexander offered him his hand to kiss, and asked him to sit down. Schwarzenberg, who knew that the French Ambassador had only just left, thanked him and waited for Alexander to begin. There was a silence of several minutes, while the Czar fingered the ornaments on his desk, frowning slightly. Then he looked up at the Prince.

“Monsieur Caulaincourt informs me that your country is about to attack France. Is that correct, Prince Schwarzenberg?”

Schwarzenberg's expression did not change.

“It has been many nations' experience that France has a habit of accusing someone else of the aggression she intends to commit herself,” he said.

Alexander's blue eyes considered him, and the Prince saw in them a penetrating, stony look which he had never seen before; it occurred to him suddenly that Alexander's magnificent features could become inhumanly hard.

“I am bound by alliance to come to the aid of the French Emperor,” he said evenly. “So it would be wiser if you were more truthful and less diplomatic, Prince.”

Schwarzenburg bowed slightly; every instinct told him that evasion would gain him nothing.

“It is true,” he answered.

“Then I must condemn the proposal … officially,” Alexander remarked. “At the same time, I assure you of my personal friendship for Austria and for his Majesty the Emperor Francis. Should you undertake this war, you will have nothing to fear from Russian interference.”

He looked down as he spoke, and began scribbling a note, then he glanced up at Schwarzenberg and smiled his warm smile.

“I hope I shall see you at the reception this evening.
Au revoir,
my dear Prince.”

Bowing low, Schwarzenberg backed out. Meanwhile Caulaincourt sat in his study in the French Embassy, writing a dispatch assuring Napoleon of Alexander's passionate devotion to him, and to prove it, added that the Czar was at that moment warning the Austrian Ambassador that it his nation moved against France, Russia would immediately attack in defence of her ally.

INTERLUDE

On the 18th of April, 1809, the Archduke Charles of Austria began the offensive in Bavaria, but within nine days Marshal Davoust had defeated him at Eckmuhl and Napoleon marched on Vienna. Vienna surrendered on May 13th.

On May 17th he issued a decree annexing the remaining Papal States to the French Empire and reducing the Pope to the position of a Bishop of Rome in receipt of a yearly French stipend. The world gasped at the action; at that moment the struggle with Austria faded into insignificance as the most powerful temporal ruler on earth turned his strength against the leader of the Catholic Church.

Pius VII was a sick and ageing man, surrounded by enemies, and there were some who said he would submit, that the Papacy's only hope of survival was to bend in obedience to France.

The Pope's answer was to issue a Bull excommunicating Napoleon, and from his headquarters in Austria, the French Emperor sent orders to arrest him and imprison him in Florence.

Then he turned to drive the Archduke Charles from his position at Aspern-Essling, on the northern bank of the Danube, and there suffered a severe and unexpected defeat, losing 25,000 men.

On the island of Lobau, Napoleon gathered the remnants of his army, and went to Ebersdorf to his faithful servant Marshal Lannes, who was dying after the amputation of both legs. In the makeshift tent where Lannes lay bleeding to death, Napoleon wept for his own defeat as well as for the loss of his most loyal Marshal, and out of his emotion a new resolve was born, a fierce determination to avenge himself on Austria, to crush the treacherous Germans who were already rising in revolt after the news of his defeat.

On the banks of the Danube, in towns and cities all over Austria, the people were rejoicing, hoping that this reverse would end in the ruin of French power and the withdrawal of her armies, and the victorious Archduke Charles was hailed as the saviour of his nation. All this Napoleon knew, and he knew that if the Russian troops promised by Alexander had arrived at Essling, the battle would never have been lost. But no troops came; a token force had been assembled, but the order to march was not given till the 3rd of June, twelve days after the engagement took place.

Reorganizing his troops, Napoleon admitted finally that Alexander had tricked him, that the ally whose protestations of faith and friendship were still arriving by courier, was in fact his enemy.

From the Palace of Schoenbrunn, he dictated a secret letter to Caulaincourt, informing him that the alliance between France and Russia was invalidated by Alexander's treachery, and he was to act accordingly, while pretending that nothing was changed between his master and the Czar. And in Petersburg, Alexander waited for the outcome of the Austrian war, overwhelming the French Ambassador with favour and promises while he withheld the troops Napoleon needed. As usual, a large section of the Court deplored his caution, urging him to throw in his forces with Austria and the German nationalists who were in revolt in the Tyrol and Westphalia, to turn on Napoleon and crush him while he had the chance. But Alexander waited, and on the 5th of July, Napoleon proved him right by winning a decisive victory at Wagram. Within a hundred days, Austria had signed the Treaty of Vienna, the war was over, the revolt in the German states was ruthlessly stamped out, and Napoleon emerged more powerful than ever.

On his return to Paris, he sent for the Empress Josephine and informed her that she was to be divorced; pleas, tears and hysterics availed her nothing; she was retired to her estate at Malmaison, and on the 23rd of February, 1810, Caulaincourt delivered Napoleon's revenge on Alexander. While still negotiating for the hand of the Czar's sister, Anne, the French Emperor had concluded a marriage contract with the Archduchess Marie Louise, daughter of the Emperor of Austria.

Without betraying a sign of his anger and disquiet, Alexander sent his congratulations to Napoleon, and then retired in conference with Araktcheief. He also sent for the two Prussian tacticians Pfühl and Clausewitz, who had been exiles at his court since Tilsit. On April 2nd Marie Louise became Empress of France, and from the following month, Russian troops began arriving battalion by battalion to the Dwina, the Niemen, the Berezina and the Dnieper. The Russian frontiers were fortified, the work being carried Out in secret, while the formidable Araktcheief took over the organization of the Russian forces.

Alexander was informed that by 1811 he would have an army of a quarter of a million men, well trained and properly equipped. It only remained for him to inveigle Austria out of her alliance with Napoleon, in spite of her marriage tie, and to bribe the Poles into joining him by promising restoration of the Kingdom of Poland.

At this juncture, he came into real contact with the new Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs, the former Ambassador to France and the friend of Talleyrand, a man with the same insiduous charm as himself, a genius, a liar, a patriot, the most unscrupulous statesman and enigmatic personality of his age—Count Metternich.

As the long months passed, the rulers of Russia and France played out the last phase of the comedy of friendship, Alexander smiling, exuding charm and massing men and armaments within his boundaries, while Talleyrand kept him informed of Napoleon's position, of the unrest in France, where the blockade of English goods was causing hardship and abuse, of the smouldering nationalism of the German States which only needed a breath to burst into flame, and the endless bloody war with Spain.

Behind the façade of Imperial might, the foundations were beginning to crack under the strain of one man's unbridled autocracy, an autocracy which no longer tolerated advice or forgave criticism. The time was coming, Talleyrand told Tchernicheff, and Tchernicheff repeated his words to the Czar. The Empress Marie Louise was pregnant, the birth of an heir might mean the continuation of this unbearable dynasty from an infamous father onwards, unless Russia gave the signal to Europe and rose up against Napoleon. On March the 20th a son was born to Napoleon, but the event which he had imagined would stabilize his throne now turned to his disadvantage. The Czar congratulated Austria, and the hint followed that should the French Emperor lose his throne, Austrian power might rise to world eminence through the Regency of the Austrian born Empress for her infant son.

Metternich received this intimation without committing himself, but the cleverness of the diplomacy revealed the Czar Alexander in a very different guise to the one Metternich had previously assigned to him. The whole machinery of the conspiracy against Napoleon was conducted directly by Alexander; his Minister Speransky knew nothing, the Ambassador to Paris was the grotesquely incompetent Kurakin, behind whose back men like Tchernicheff and the diplomat-spy Nesselrode were intriguing and making their reports direct to the Czar. His contacts with Austria were made personally, with only his confidential secretary in collaboration. He was at once engaged in deceiving his own Ministers while he out-manœuvred Napoleon, and Metternich hastily amended his opinion of him as a handsome figurehead. A review of his achievements decided the Austrian that Alexander of Russia was a power to be reckoned with; of all Bonaparte's opponents, he was the only one who had lost nothing to him but a battle, and gained time by sheer diplomatic acumen in which to gather his forces and prepare for war.

Metternich responded cautiously to the Russian overtures, while the idea of an Austrian Regency for France appealed to him more and more, as Alexander hoped it would. It was understood that should Russia win the coming war, the Bourbons would never be restored to power. Alexander promised this to Austria, assuring her of his friendship as beguilingly as he had once assured Napoleon; it was Metternich's first error in his dealings with the Czar, that like that other arch-deceiver Bonaparte, he believed him and was himself deceived.

A less gullible pawn in the political game was Adam Czartorisky, still lured by Alexander's promises to restore his native Poland, but with the discovery of the Czar's efforts to extract an undertaking from Napoleon that Poland should never be reconstituted to shake his confidence. He had loved Alexander, forgiven him his treatment of the Czarina Elizabeth, because he trusted his word and believed him sincere in his Liberalism. But that trust was wavering; the calculating, ruthless monarch was not the gentle humanist of his youth, the enemy of Bonaparte was revealing himself as a Czar in the old pattern of autocracy and nationalism, and the fact that he was as mild mannered and charming as ever could no longer confuse one who had known him and served him for so long.

But love of his country urged Adam to place his confidence in the one man who had the power to carry out the intentions he expressed so convincingly. This time, if Poland rallied to Russia and turned on Napoleon, she might be rewarded with her independence. So Adam joined the conspiracy, and began urging the Poles to prepare for the day when they should rise against the French.

In the meantime, Alexander approached the country that had so far withstood Napoleon on land and sea and was surviving the blockade he had enforced throughout Europe.

Russia had a deep and friendly regard for England, and no wish to aid France in her attempt at economic strangulation. Russian ports would be secretly open to English ships, and Russian influence might be exerted in Sweden to secure a similar concession there. The English Prime Minister received the message and read into it the news that within a short time Russia and France would be at war. He hastened to return similar sentiments to Alexander, and the promise of English assistance in any contingency that might arise.

As he had promised, Alexander sent envoys to Sweden, assuring Napoleon that they were to investigate the charge that the new Crown Prince of Sweden, the former French Marshal Bernadotte, was betraying France by relaxing the blockade. In public, they conveyed reproaches, and in private persuaded Bernadotte to give entry to as many English ships as he wished, with Russia's blessing. Bernadotte, the Gascon soldier who had been made heir to the Crown of Sweden, was already breaking free of Napoleon's domination. Ambitious, ruthless and jealous of his own power, he promptly entered the conspiracy against his Emperor, and wrote to the Czar advising him on the best military tactics for defeating him. Avoid the pitched battle at which Napoleon excelled, drag on the war as long as possible. If the plot to attack him simultaneously through Austria, Poland, Germany and Prussia did not materialize, then draw him into Russia.

The rumours of a gigantic movement against him spurred Napoleon to speedy action; to enforce the blockade of English goods he annexed the Hanseatic territories from the Ems to the Weser, including the Duchy of Oldenburg, whose heir Catherine Pavlovna had married. The pretence of friendship was wearing threadbare between the two countries, and as the news of Alexander's gathering army reached Napoleon he began collecting his own forces to meet them.

A volley of threats forced Prussia to send 20,000 men to join the French army, and Francis of Austria dispatched 30,000 more, assured by Metternich that they could reverse their loyalties the moment Napoleon appeared likely to lose the war. Russia understood the plight of nations like Austria and Prussia, and knew that their aid was unwillingly given and unreliable. Besides, they dared do nothing else for the moment.

In the first months of the year 1812 a host of men began moving across Europe and massing on the Russian frontier, while the soldiers of Holy Russia swelled their encampments on the Niemen and stretched to the banks of the Dwina. From every capital in the world statesmen watched these preparations for the greatest conflict ever to be fought, between the invincible Napoleon and the man of whom little was known except that he had been France's ally for the last six years. Europe had felt the power of French arms, it knew and dreaded the genius of the oppressor, but almost nothing was known about Russia.