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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
Napoleon Bonaparte used a variety of means of appealing to the Russians When he needed them, as he often did. He asked Alexander I for an interview before the battle of Austerlitz, a request which Alexander must later have regretted turning down. He marched to Friedland and Tilsit for the inauguration of the Grand Empire two years later. And in 1812 he pursued them all the way to Moscow, only to be eluded.
But the occasion of his earliest overtures to the Russians, the rapprochement with Tsar Paul during the winter of 1800-1801—an arrangement in which Albert Sorel found all the “grands projet et les grandes rȇveries” of Tilsit—though often remarked, has remained little understood. The Russians had withdrawn from the Second Coalition, but they had not reestablished diplomatic relations with France.
1 Ford, Guy Stanton, Hanover and Prussia, 1795-1803 (New York, 1903), pp. 231–35.Google Scholar
2 Thugut, Franz de Paula von, Vertrauliche Briefe, Vol. II (Vienna, 1872), Nos. MCXLVII, MCLVI, MCCXVGoogle Scholar.
3 Correspondence de Napolion I, Vol. VI (Paris, 1861), No. 4860.
4 Ibid., No. 4873.
5 “Correspondance de Talleyrand avec le Premier Consul pendant la campagne de Marengo,” Revue d'histoire diplomatique, Jan. 1892, p. 286.
6 Correspondance de Napoléon I, XXX, 473; Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, Mémoires, I (New York, 1891), 210.
7 Miliutin, Dmitrii A., Istoriia voiny 1799 g., V (St. Petersburg, 1853), 267.Google Scholar
8 Sbornik russkago istoricheskago obshchestva, LXX : Diplomaticheskie snosheniia Frantsii i Rossii vo vremia Napoleona I, 1800-1802 (St. Petersburg, 1890), 1-3. Hereafter cited as Sbornik.
9 Oct. 8, 1800, ibid., pp. 10-n. All dates are N.S.
10 Dec. 2i, 1800, ibid., p. 26.
11 Paul's instructions to Kriudener; see Miliutin, V, 499.
12 Correspondence de Napoléon I, Vol. VI, No. 4873.
13 Letter to Bonaparte, early July, in “Correspondance de Talleyrand,” p. 304.
14 Correspondence with the Spanish ambassador, April 1800, Sbornik, LXX, 650.
15 Letter of Sept. 18, ibid., p. 651.
16 Bourgoing to Talleyrand, July 31, 1800, ibid., p. 653. Bourgoing was right; Panin was a rabid Anglophile. Materialy dlia zhizneopisaniia grafa N. P. Panina, V (St. Petersburg, 1891), 185 : “I have already declared that my hand will never sign a treaty with France except after the reestablishment of the monarchy or for a general pacification.“
17 Sbornik, LXX, 653-54.
18 Ernest Daudet, L'histoire de l'émigration, III (Paris, 1907), 158.
19 It was not long before this that the Prussian ambassador in Paris reported that Beurnonville had requested 50, 000 francs for secret expenses (Bericht von Sandoz-Rollin aus Paris, Preussen und Frankreich von 1795 bis 1807, Vol.I [Leipzig, 1881], No. 337).
20 This interesting tale is from an equally interesting source, Allonville, Armand Francois de, ed., Mimoires tiroes des papiers d'un homme d'état; sur les causes secretes qui out determines la politique des cabinets dans la guerre de la Revolution, 1792-1815, VII (Paris, 1828), 438–39Google Scholar. The identity of the author and the authenticity of his work have been much debated. Ranke and Mathiez accept it as the work of Prince Hardenberg. See the controversy summarized in Biro, S. S., The German Policy of Revolutionary France, II (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), 1024Google Scholar. III the case of the episode related here the account is corroborated in almost every detail by one or another of the other sources cited above.
21 Rostopchin to S. R. Vorontsov, April 9, 1800, in Arkhiv kniazia Vorontsova, VIII (Moscow, 1876), 276.
22 Russkii arkhiv, 1878, 1, 103-10.
23 Rostopchin probably coined this famous phrase.
24 The First Consul wrote his brother Joseph, at the Lunéville negotiations, in January, after receiving a letter from Paul : “Peace with the Emperor is nothing compared with an alliance that would subdue England and save Egypt for us” (Correspondance de Napoléon 1, Vol. VI, No. 5315).
25 Russhii arkhiv, 1878, 1, 110.
26 See the letter of Catherine to Joseph II, Sept. 10, 1782, in Alfred Ritter von Arneth, cd., Joseph II und Katharina von Russland : IhrBriefwechsel (Vienna, 1869), pp. 143-58.
27 Guttin to the Ministry of Foreign Relations, Oct. 25, 1799, Sbornih, LXX, 647-48.
28 Preussen und Frankreich, Vol. II, No. 30.
