Russia is an absolute monarchy. Its ruler, Tsar Alexander I, theoretically exercises complete authority over every aspect of the life of every Russian citizen. In reality, the Tsar delegates much of this power to his ministers and representatives. While most of Russia’s most important military commanders are native Russians, the majority of Tsar Alexander’s closest civilian advisors, interestingly, are not Russian but rather foreigners or the descendants of foreigners. Talented Germans, for example, who have found themselves out of favor in their homelands or who seek greater wealth and influence-such as the former Prussian chief minister, Baron Heinrich vom und zu Stein-have made their way to the Tsar’s court, as have Germans and others who were displaced by Napoleon’s conquests of their native lands. Other individuals who can catch and hold the Tsar’s attention can also rise to power, based on their talent, their charm, or simply because something about them has struck the Tsar’s fancy. Perhaps more so than in any other great European power, the personality of the monarch shapes the nation’s policy and the officials who carry it out. Also powerful, within Russia, are the great aristocratic families, whose lavish lifestyle is supported by one of the last remaining feudal systems in Europe: unfree serfs toil on the land of the nobles’ estates, as they did elsewhere in Europe in the Middle Ages. The Russian government also depends on a vast network of spies and ruthless secret police to keep its subjects in their place; one former British ambassador to Russia remarked, after his service there, “Wherever there are three Russians, at least one must be a spy.”
A few words about Tsar Alexander himself are in order. Alexander (age 37) is physically imposing -over six feet tall, blond, blue-eyed, and broad-shouldered-with a strong personality to match. He is charming, dashing, and very successful with women. He had a reputation for riding to the hunt all day and dancing all night at various soirées. Needless to say, he stands at the top of the A-list in any European city to which he travels, Vienna being no exception.
Alexander’s ambitions match his expansive personality. He firmly believes in the ideas of divine-right monarchy. Like Louis XIV of France a century earlier, he sees his nation’s glory and his own as identical; both, he believes, are superior to those of any other ruler in Europe. After all, while the Russians did initially suffer defeat at the hands of Napoleon, he never successfully invaded their nation. In fact, Alexander seems to believe that Russia has been divinely ordained both to bring about Napoleon’s downfall and to serve as the main guarantor and coordinator of European security following that fall. The first of these missions has been accomplished, giving Alexander evidence that his belief in Russia’s special destiny is correct. Now, with renewed zeal, he sets about fulfilling the second divinely ordained mission, at the Congress of Vienna. The fact that Alexander wants to move Russia’s effective borders several hundred miles west, by the annexation of Poland-which, he has declared, he intends to rule as an independent nation that would be joined to Russia only in a personal union of loyalty to himself-should be viewed with no alarm at all by the rest of the powers of Europe…or so Alexander believes. After all, his tutors and advisors from childhood on have educated him in the best European liberal traditions, so he will rule his expanded empire as an enlightened monarch.
Other nations, however, view Russian expansionism with a great deal of alarm. To a large degree, this alarm is the result of the skepticism prevalent among the rest of Europe’s heads of state regarding the mental stability of the Russian monarch, skepticism that Alexander’s behavior occasionally does not do much to alleviate. Like many of his Romanov ancestors, Alexander has a strong mystical religious streak, believing that his actions are being aided by God, and that his personal destiny and Russia’s are one. His actions immediately preceding the Congress of Vienna illustrate nicely the contradictions and conundrums of his personality.
One of his Tsarina’s ladies in waiting is of Greek ancestry: Roxandre de Stourdza, Countess d’Edling. This countess has for some years been a disciple of an ethnic-German mystic from the Baltic region of Russia’s empire, Baroness Julie von Kruedener, who by 1814 is gaining a notable following in Europe due to her reputation as a prophetess. (The baroness currently is predicting that Napoleon will escape from his comfortable prison on the island of Elba to trouble Europe once more.) One of her mystical ideas is that “spiritual marriages” can be contracted between persons to allow their souls, through the power of prayer, to commune with each other over long distances and thereby to support each other spiritually. In July 1814, just a few months before the Congress, Tsar Alexander contracted a “spiritual marriage” with his wife’s lady-in-waiting, Countess d’Edling. An outsider might have considered it a complication that the countess was at the time already contracted in “spiritual marriage” with another man: Jung Stilling, a Saxon theosophist, a friend of Goethe in his youth, and currently a councillor to the Grand Duke of Baden (the Tsarina’s brother). But, as the mystics would point out, affairs of the spirit work differently than affairs of the flesh. As such relationships are purely spiritual, one may be “spiritually married” to more than one person at a time; indeed, such multiple “marriages” permit all the persons connected to one another by such a bond to commune with one another in spirit. Alexander actually knew about Countess d’Edling’s prior spiritual connection with Schilling. Indeed, it was a meeting between Schilling and the Tsar, arranged by the countess, that prompted the Tsar to decide that he wanted to join the other two in a three-way “spiritual marriage” that eventually also came to include Countess d’Edling’s mentor, the prophetic Baroness Kruedener. The Tsar believes that these three-Kruedener, d’Edling, and Schiller-serve as a “phalanx of angels,” who by their spiritual connections constantly reinforce his resolve to do right at the Congress of Vienna. Incidentally, despite this four-way “spiritual marriage,” Alexander has not felt compelled to give up his earthly mistress, Princess Maria Naryshkina, by whom he already has three illegitimate children. After all, affairs of the spirit do move in a different sphere than affairs of the flesh.
Alexander’s wife, Tsarina Elisabeth (age 35)-originally a German princess named Louise of Baden (she had to convert to the Russian Orthodox Church upon her marriage, and took the name Elisabeth)-bears her husband’s spiritual and fleshly affairs with great patience. She is greatly admired in European high society for her beauty, charm, and kindness, as well as for the great dignity she maintains in the face of her husband’s unchivalrous treatment of her (he has been overheard criticizing her, to her face, for not being as beautiful or intelligent as other aristocratic ladies at the Congress). Sadly, neither of the children she has borne has lived, and it is presumed that one of Alexander’s brothers eventually will succeed him as Tsar.
The leaders of the other nations of Europe view Alexander’s flights into mysticism with skepticism and dismay. In the opinion of these less spiritually-inclined heads of state, Alexander’s preoccupation with mysticism indicates a degree of unreliability and imbalance that is not to be desired in the absolute ruler of a Great Power, especially one with seriously expansionist ambitions. Moreover, the Tsar’s mysticism gives him an unshakable conviction in the rightness of his policies, which makes negotiations with him rather difficult at times.
Russia joined the war against France late. Until 1801, Russia was ruled by Alexander’s father, Tsar Paul, whose foreign policy tended towards immediate pursuit of Russian territorial interest. One reason Prussia and Austria did not put the full weight of their military power into attacks in revolutionary France when Napoleon Bonaparte was still a mere general was fear that Russian troops in the east might take advantage of their engagement against France in the west to attack them from the rear. Furthermore, in 1800 Tsar Paul organized the Scandinavian nations into the Armed Neutrality of the North, an economic and military association directed against Britain. At home, Paul’s marked paranoia and occasionally violent erratic behavior, however, moved a number of prominent Russian nobles to conspire against him; with the full knowledge and agreement of his son Alexander, they assassinated Tsar Paul in 1801, whereupon Alexander became Tsar.
Alexander immediately reversed many of his father’s policies, making peace with Britain and taking a harder line towards France. When war broke out again after the Peace of Amiens, Russia joined Britain, Austria, and Prussia against Napoleon in 1805. In 1807, however, Napoleon defeated the Russians, who he had been pressing very hard, at the Battle of Friedland. Alexander sought an armistice, which was led to the Treaty of Tilsit later that year. Yet Alexander soon became dissatisfied with Napoleon’s conduct. The help Napoleon had promised he would give Russia against the Turks was not forthcoming; in Alexander’s opinion, Napoleon was far too active in the affairs of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (i.e., Poland), which Alexander wanted for Russia; and participation in the Continental System intended to starve Britain into submission by excluding British goods from Europe turned out to be much harder on the Russian economy than it was on the British. So Alexander withdrew from the Continental System, and in response Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812. The disastrous results of that invasion for the French army led to Napoleon’s eventual defeat by a combined Austrian, Prussian, and Russian force at the Battle of Leipzig in Germany the next year, and then to the invasion of France by the Allied Powers in 1814 and Napoleon’s abdication and exile to Elba.
With France defeated and her armies mostly disbanded, Russia stands as the most populous of the great powers, with by far the most manpower at its disposal, with approximately 600,000 men under arms and the capacity to raise more. Many of those troops presently are garrisoned outside Russia, with large numbers in Poland and in the smaller central German states. Even though many of Russia’s troops are not well equipped or trained, their sheer numbers and their reputation for toughness makes Russia a formidable player at the negotiating table at the Congress.
As for its navy, there is hardly one to speak of; a mere 36 ships of the line comprise the Black Sea fleet, with only a dozen in the north. Russia’s power is in her vast population and the armies it can produce.
Russia wishes to expand its power west into Europe. On the one hand, this has always been the policy of the Tsars, as reflected in the various partitions of Poland in the 1700s. Russia’s policy hinges on gaining control of Poland. Napoleon had reconstituted the Polish nation as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (in reality, a puppet state of the French Empire), and now that Napoleon has been defeated, the Russians would like to see this territory pass to Alexander. He has said that he would maintain Poland as a separate nation, ruling it as king of Poland and adopting enlightened policies. Some Polish nationalists favor this idea, since the probable alternative is re-division and absorption by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Others remain doubtful about the sincerity of Alexander’s declarations that he intends to maintain Poland as a separate nation from Russia, should he becoem its king. Because Napoleon annexed significant chunks of Prussia in 1807 to pad out the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, however, the Prussians insist that they be compensated if they are to agree to Russian control of Poland. The Prussians are asking for Saxony in return for their territory taken by Napoleon, and the Russians happily support this plan, in a quid pro quo for Prussia’s support of their own designs on Poland. Austria, on the other hand, is very unhappy with this idea, and the British dislike the power imbalance that it would cause.
Yet Alexander is not merely ambitious in a material way, although he certainly is that. His religious enthusiasm has led him to be convinced that he is uniquely suited, because of his superior spiritual nature and God’s personal choice of him, to guarantee peace in Europe. Naturally, Russia would be best able to fulfill its divinely ordained role as the guardian of European peace if its armies were further west.
Most intelligent people realize that all Russians are not like Alexander. But, nonetheless, in many ways Alexander typifies Russians for other Europeans. In their eyes, Russians-the aristocrats, that is, but who else matters?-are luxuriously wealthy, colorful, delighting in parties, balls, soirées, and other social entertainments. They can be a great deal of fun. On the whole, though, they also are somewhat underdeveloped culturally, certainly “foreign” (which is code for “backward and oriental”). After all, they’ve still got serfs, for heaven’s sake! And they are superstitious and overly given to religious enthusiasm, which surely is a sign of backwardness. There are exceptions, of course, such as the fabulously wealthy Count Razumovsky, who lives in Vienna and is married to an Austrian noblewoman; he is a famous patron of art and music, and as cultured as any western European. Or the Tsar’s elegant cousin, Princess Bagration. But to most non-Russians’ minds, Razumovsky and Princess Bagration are the exceptions that prove the rule about all those other slightly barbaric, superstitious Russians.