The news of this abduction and judicial murder caused a violent wave of reaction in all the courts of Europe, and nowhere more than in St Petersburg. By his act, Bonaparte had violated the territorial integrity of Baden, which was the principality of the Empress’s mother; and to this political indignation was added personal grief for the handsome, high-spirited young Prince, whom the imperial family had known and loved. The Empress Elisabeth broke down and wept at the news of his execution, and a full week of formal mourning was ordered for the Court.
The Emperor was incensed, regarding the incident as a personal affront; and his antipathy towards Bonaparte was further strengthened when, only two months later, the Corsican had himself declared Emperor of the French. When that piece of news had arrived, Anne had reminded the Count of their discussion at the ball in Paris about ambition.
‘Emperor of France today; ruler of the world tomorrow. Can anyone now doubt that that is his desire?’
‘It was inevitable he should take this step,’ the Count replied with a shrug. ‘Ambition of his sort has only one, well-marked path it can tread. As First Consul, he had the power, but not the mystery: he was too vulnerable. You remember that line from Hamlet – “There is a divinity which hedgeth round a king”?’
‘But can he think it will protect him?’ Anne said. ‘Kings are made of flesh and blood: they can be murdered.’
‘It isn’t a matter of that. He has a large country to rule, and hopes to make it larger. An elected consul is only one government official ruling over others, and in every province there would be ambitious men eager to take his place. But a king – or an emperor – occupies a realm far removed from government office. He can be adulated by the people – almost worshipped – and he cannot be demoted.’
‘Yes, I see that,’ Anne said. ‘And I suppose in time people would forget how he came by his royal state.’
‘Don’t forget, either, that kings can also leave sons to carry on after them,’ the Count said. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. ‘It is all inevitable, you know – everything that has happened, and that will happen, in France. Men do not change. Once the Revolution began, it was inevitable that one man would emerge to take power, and that having power, he would seek to establish his own dynasty. Now every man’s hand will be against him. Europe will be convulsed with war, and men will die. Eventually Bonaparte will be defeated, at great cost to everyone; and all of that is inevitable too. We learn nothing from history; it is in our nature that we never will.’
‘And will Russia go to war?’ Anne asked.
‘I think so,’ the Count said. ‘I told you once that whether or not we joined the war would be the personal decision of the Tsar; and this business with d’Enghien has afforded just the personal reason he needs.’
The Count had proved right. By April 1805, Russia had signed treaties of alliance with Austria, Sweden and England, and in August, Kirov, resplendent in the white and gold uniform of a colonel of cavalry, rode off to take up his command in Poland.
That had been an anxious year for Anne, waiting day by day for news of the planned invasion of England by Bonaparte – now calling himself the Emperor Napoleon – with the army he had assembled along the Channel coast. Deprived of the support of the Count’s presence and worried for his safety, she yet had to try to comfort the Countess for the same pains she was suffering herself. The news of the great sea battle off Cape Trafalgar in October 1805, in which the English fleet under Admiral Nelson had destroyed the combined French and Spanish force, relieved Anne’s mind of one anxiety. It was impossible that the French, blockaded as they were, would be able to build another fleet. As long as the English navy ruled the seas, England herself was safe.
But bad news followed good: in December a terrible and bloody battle was fought at Austerlitz, seventy miles from Vienna, and the combined Russian and Austrian army was utterly routed by the French. In an incredibly short time, Napoleon had marched the army he had assembled at Boulogne for the invasion of England over 700 miles across France and Bavaria into Austria, there to defeat a force twice as large. Of the allied army, twenty-seven thousand men were killed or captured; after the battle, the Emperor Alexander, who had insisted on directing the campaign in person, sat down among the Russian dead and wept.
With Vienna occupied by French troops, the Austrian Emperor was forced to submit to Napoleon. The Holy Roman Empire was no more: Austria was stripped of half its territories in the Treaty of Pressburg, and Napoleon was recognised in his newly assumed title of King of Italy. With Tsar Alexander back in Petersburg and his army licking its wounds in winter camp, the war might have ended there; for with the death of Pitt there was a change of government in England, and the new government under Fox was anxious for peace.
Through spring and summer of 1806, tentative talks went on between the emissaries of England and France, with Hanover – principality of the King of England, but at present occupied by French troops – as the bait and the prize. But even as they talked, Napoleon formed sixteen small German states into a single entity, called the Confederation of the Rhine, making it a state within the French Empire with himself as Protector, and it seemed increasingly unlikely that he meant to let Hanover go. When he prepared to invade the previously neutral Portugal, the English sent a fleet to Lisbon to protect it, and the prospect of peace receded.
The Count spent a month at home in August 1806, and Vera Borisovna brought Sergei to visit his father. The talk was inevitably of war, with Sergei fretting that he was not old enough to serve alongside his father.
‘Don’t worry, Seryosha,’ the Count said with a grim smile. ‘There will be plenty more fighting to come. You will have your share.’
‘But isn’t it all over?’ Sergei asked. ‘I thought, after Austerlitz–’
‘No, no, my dear. Napoleon has Austria; now he will have Prussia. The Confederation of the Rhine is the first step towards extending his empire northwards, right to the banks of the Nieman. He has a great belief in what he calls ‘natural territory’ – a sort of geographical logic, you know.’
‘You don’t think – he won’t try to take Russia too?’ the Countess asked faintly.
The Count frowned. ‘I think not–’
‘He could not do it,’ Sergei broke in boisterously. ‘No one could conquer Russia – it’s too big! He would not be so mad as to try!’
‘Apart from that,’ the Count went on calmly, ‘I don’t believe Napoleon would attempt it for another reason. He has a strange admiration for our Emperor – looks upon him as a sort of spiritual brother. It is not widely known that before Austerlitz he sent twice to our camp asking for a personal meeting with the Tsar to talk peace; and that after the battle, he sent another message along the same lines. It’s my belief that he thinks it would be a fulfilment of the natural order of things, if Europe were divided into two great empires, France and Russia, ruled by himself and Alexander, bound together in brotherly love.’
‘He is mad, then?’ Anne said quietly.
The Count looked at her for a moment. ‘Yes, I think so,’ he said at last. ‘And yet – there is something appealing about such magnitude of vision. It is the faint scent on the breeze, the hint that man could be greater than he is.’
‘At the price of so many thousands dead,’ Anne reminded him.
‘Yes,’ the Count said. ‘An unacceptable price, of course. We do not yet seem to have found another way to greatness.’
‘But what about music, painting, architecture?’ Anne protested. ‘Look at Petersburg, for instance. Is that not greater than the sum of the men who built it?’