Alexander's grandiose imagination was, however, more strongly
attracted by the great questions of European politics than
by attempts at domestic reform which, on the whole, wounded
his pride by proving to him the narrow limits of absolute
power. On the morrow of his accession he had reversed the
policy of Paul, denounced the League of Neutrals, and made
peace with England (April 1801), at the same time opening
negotiations with Austria. Soon afterwards at Memel he
entered into a close alliance with Prussia, not as he boasted
from motives of policy, but in the spirit of true chivalry,
out of friendship for the young king Frederick William and
his beautiful wife. The development of this alliance was
interrupted by the short-lived peace of October 1801; and for
a while it seemed as though France and Russia might come to an
understanding. Carried away by the enthusiasm of Laharpe,
who had returned to Russia from Paris, Alexander began
openly to proclaim his admiration for French institutions
and for the person of Bonaparte. Soon, however, came a
change. Laharpe, after a new visit to Paris, presented to
the tsar his Reflexions on the True Nature of the Consulship
for Life, which, as Alexander said, tore the veil from his
eyes, and revealed Bonaparte ``as not a true patriot,'' but
only as ``the most famous tyrant the world has produced.''
His disillusionment was completed by the murder of the duc
d'Enghien. The Russian court went into mourning for the last of
the Condes, and diplomatic relations with Paris were broken off.
The events of the war that followed belong to the general
history of Europe; but the tsar's attitude throughout is
personal to himself, though pregnant with issues momentous
for the world. In opposing Napoleon, ``the oppressor of
Europe and the disturber of the world's peace,'' Alexander
in fact already believed himself to be fulfilling a divine
mission. In his instructions to Novosiltsov, his special
envoy in London, the tsar elaborated the motives of his policy
in language which appealed as little to the common sense of
Pitt as did later the treaty of the Holy Alliance to that of
Castlereagh. Yet the document is of great interest, as in it
we find formulated for the first time in an official despatch
those exalted ideals of international policy which were to
play so conspicuous a part in the affairs of the world at the
close of the revolutionary epoch, and issued at the end of
the 19th century in the Rescript of Nicholas II.2 and the
conference of the Hague. The outcome of the war, Alexander
argued, was not to be only the liberation of France, but the
universal triumph of ``the sacred rights of humanity.'' To
attain this it would be necessary ``after having attached the
nations to their government by making these incapable of acting
save in the greatest interests of their subjects, to fix the
relations of the states amongst each other on more precise
rules, and such as it is to their interest to respect.'' A
general treaty was to become the basis of the relations of
the states forming ``the European Confederation''; and this,
though ``it was no question of realizing the dream of universal
peace, would attain some of its results if, at the conclusion
of the general war, it were possible to establish on clear
principles the prescriptions of the rights of nations.'' ``Why
could not one submit to it,'' the tsar continued, ``the positive
rights of nations, assure the privilege of neutrality, insert
the obligation of never beginning war until all the resources
which the mediation of a third party could offer have been
exhausted, having by this means brought to light the respective
grievances, and tried to remove them? It is on such principles
as these that one could proceed to a general pacification,
and give birth to a league of which the stipulations would
form, so to speak, a new code of the law of nations, which,
sanctioned by the greater part of the nations of Europe,
would without difficulty become the immutable rule of the
cabinets, while those who should try to infringe it would
risk bringing upon themselves the forces of the new union.''3
Meanwhile Napoleon, little deterred by the Russian autocrat's
youthful idealogy, never gave up hope of detaching him from
the coalition. He had no sooner entered Vienna in triumph
than he opened negotiations with him; he resumed them after
Austerlitz. Russia and France, he urged, were ``geographical
allies''; there was, and could be, between them no true
conflict of interests; together they might rule the world. But
Alexander was still determined ``to persist in the system of
disinterestedness in respect of all the states of Europe which
he had thus far followed,'' and he again allied himself with
Prussia. The campaign of Jena and the battle of Eylau followed;
and Napoleon, though still intent on the Russian alliance,
stirred up Poles, Turks and Persians to break the obstinacy of
the tsar. A party too in Russia itself, headed by the tsar's
brother the grand-duke Constantine, was clamorous for peace;
but Alexander, after a vain attempt to form a new coalition,
summoned the Russian nation to a holy war against Napoleon as
the enemy of the orthodox faith. The outcome was the rout of
Friedland (June 13 and 14, 1807). Napoleon saw his chance and
seized it. Instead of making heavy terms, he offered to the
chastened autocrat his alliance, and a partnership in his glory.
The two emperors met at Tilsit on the 25th of June. Alexander,
dazzled by Napoleon's genius and overwhelmed by his apparent
generosity, was completely won. Napoleon knew well how to
appeal to the exuberant imagination of his new-found friend.
He would divide with Alexander the empire of the world; as a
first step he would leave him in possession of the Danubian
principalities and give him a free hand to deal with Finland;
and, afterwards, the emperors of the East and West, when the
time should be ripe, would drive the Turks from Europe and
march across Asia to the conquest of India. A programme so
stupendous awoke in Alexander's impressionable mind an ambition
to which he had hitherto been a stranger. The interests of
Europe were forgotten. ``What is Europe?'' he exclaimed to the
French ambassador. ``Where is it, if it is not you and we?''4
The brilliance of these new visions did not, however, blind
Alexander to the obligations of friendship; and he refused
to retain the Danubian principalities as the price for
suffering a further dismemberment of Prussia. ``We have made
loyal war,'' he said, ``we must make a loyal peace.'' It
was not long before the first enthusiasm of Tilsit began to
wane. Napoleon was prodigal of promises, but niggard of their
fulfilment. The French remained in Prussia, the Russians on
the Danube; and each accused the other of breach of faith.
Meanwhile, however, the personal relations of Alexander and
Napoleon were of the most cordial character; and it was hoped
that a fresh meeting might adjust all differences between
them. The meeting took place at Erfurt in October 1808, and
resulted in a treaty which defined the common policy of the two
emperors. But Alexander's relations with Napoleon none
the less suffered a change. He realized that in Napoleon
sentiment never got the better of reason, that as a matter of
fact he had never intended his proposed ``grand enterprise''
seriously, and had only used it to preoccupy the mind of the
tsar while he consolidated his own power in central Europe.
From this moment the French alliance was for Alexander also
not a fraternal agreement to rule the world, but an affair
of pure policy. He used it, in the first instance, to remove
``the geographical enemy'' from the gates of St Petersburg
by wresting Finland from the Swedes (1809); and he hoped
by means of it to make the Danube the southern frontier of
Russia. Events were in fact rapidly tending to the rupture
of the Franco-Russian alliance. Alexander, indeed, assisted
Napoleon in the war of 1809, but he declared plainly that
he would not allow Austria to be crushed out of existence;
and Napoleon complained bitterly of the inactivity of the
Russian troops during the campaign. The tsar in his turn
protested against Napoleon's encouragement of the Poles.
In the matter of the French alliance he knew himself to be
practically isolated in Russia, and he declared that he could
not sacrifice the interest of his people and empire to his
affection for Napoleon. ``I don't want anything for myself,''
he said to the French ambassador, ``therefore the world is
not large enough to come to an understanding on the affairs
of Poland, if it is a question of its restoration.''5 The
treaty of Vienna, which added largely to the grand-duchy of
Warsaw, he complained had ``ill requited him for his loyalty,''
and he was only mollified for the time by Napoleon's public
declaration that he had no intention of restoring Poland, and
by a convention, signed on the 4th of January 1810 but not
ratified, abolishing the Polish name and orders of chivalry.
But if Alexander suspected Napoleon, Napoleon was no less
suspicious of Alexander; and, partly to test his sincerity, he
sent an almost peremptory request for the hand of the grand-
duchess Anne, the tsar's youngest sister. After some little
delay Alexander returned a polite refusal, on the plea of the
princess's tender age and the objection of the dowager empress
to the marriage. Napoleon's answer was to refuse to ratify
the convention of the 4th of January, and to announce his
engagement to the archduchess Marie Louise in such a way as to
lead Alexander to suppose that the two marriage treaties had
been negotiated simultaneously. From this time the relation
between the two emperors gradually became more and more
strained. The annexation of Oldenburg, of which the duke was
the tsar's uncle, to France in December 1810, added another to
the personal grievances of Alexander against Napoleon; while
the ruinous reaction of ``the continental system'' on Russian
trade made it impossible for the tsar to maintain a policy
which was Napoleon's chief motive for the alliance. An acid
correspondence followed, and ill-concealed armaments, which
culminated in the summer of 1812 in Napoleon's invasion of
Russia. Yet, even after the French had passed the frontier,
Alexander still protested that his personal sentiments towards
the emperor were unaltered; ``but,'' he added, ``God Himself
cannot undo the past.'' It was the occupation of Moscow and
the desecration of the Kremlin, the sacred centre of Holy
Russia, that changed his sentiment for Napoleon into passionate
hatred. In vain the French emperor, within eight days of
his entry into Moscow, wrote to the tsar a letter, which was
one long cry of distress, revealing the desperate straits
of the Grand Army, and appealed to ``any remnant of his
former sentiments.'' Alexander returned no answer to these
``fanfaronnades.'' ``No more peace with Napoleon!'' he cried,
``He or I, I or He: we cannot longer reign together!''6
The campaign of 1812 was the turning-point of Alexander's life;
and its horrors, for which his sensitive nature felt much of
the responsibility, overset still more a mind never too well
balanced. At the burning of Moscow, he declared afterwards,
his own soul had found illumination, and he had realized once
for all the divine revelation to him of his mission as the
peacemaker of Europe. He tried to calm the unrest of his
conscience by correspondence with the leaders of the evangelical
revival on the continent, and sought for omens and supernatural
