This Monarch wanted to make himself the restorer of Europe, the one to redress all wrongs. He believed that in declaring that he had no designs of ambition, no interests [to pursue], he would prompt the others to do as much. . .[109]
Roderick McGrew comes to similar conclusions. 'Paul was a moralist rather than a politician; it was this which gave a utopian cast to those projects which were nearest to his heart, and a totalitarian tone to the ensemble of his poli- cies.'[110] A good example is his fascination with the Knights of Malta.
The knights of Malta, reformed and revived . . . were integral to his plans for confronting and defeating revolutionary Jacobinism. He . . . had invited Europe's displaced nobility to come to Russia where he was building a bastion against the destructive forces of the modern world ... It was for this great enterprise that he was taking over the knights, mobilizing the emigres, and inviting the pope's participation . . . From Paul's perspective, the knights would [also] . . . serve as a model for raising the moral consciousness of the Russian nobility . . . another means to further Paul's moral revolution.[111]
McGrew finds - as did the Chevalier de Bray - the fundamental elements of Paul's foreign policy to be stable and consistent. Paul found Russia's vital interests in a stable and lasting peace in Europe. He preferred hereditary monarchy, but the form of government was less important than its behaviour. It was the expansionist policy of the Directory rather than its republican nature that provoked Paul's hostility. Aggressive states were objectionable whether republican or monarchical.
His principles, in foreign as well as domestic policy, marked out the Russian future ... he attempted to open new directions in Russian foreign policy. In all of his efforts, he showed himself to be disinterested. He had no territorial claims to make; he offered himself as a mediator and ... a guardian [of the smaller powers]. The Europe Paul wanted to see was one in which each state would be safe, in which there was justice for the smaller principalities as well as protection . . . The ideas he pursued became the writ of post- Napoleonic Europe; what he failed to create at the end of the eighteenth century, Metternich finally realized between 1815 and 1848.[112]
Alexander I
As Alexander assumed power, the most urgent issue was the approach of the English fleet, which, having left the wreck of Copenhagen (2 April 1801) in its wake, was sailing for St Petersburg. Alexander assured his allies of the Armed Neutrality that he would not forsake them and their common principles, but he warned that these principles were subject to some accommodation with London. In the maritime convention embodying that accommodation, the English surrendered paper blockades, and the Russians surrendered everything else, including the issue of'free ships, free goods' as well as English rights of search of vessels under convoy. Denmark and Sweden adhered with obvious reluctance to the Anglo-Russian settlement. In the meantime, the British fleet left the Baltic, and Alexander lifted the Russian embargo on British trade.
There was irony in the Russian position in this conflict. According to the observation of a rather canny American diplomat on temporary assignment in Berlin, John Quincy Adams, 'the question whether free ships shall make free goods is to the empire of Russia, in point of interests, ofthe same importance that the question whether the seventh commandment is conformable to the law of Nature would be to the guardian of a Turkish Haram'.[113] Two sovereigns as different as Catherine and Paul had, however, subscribed to the same principle, and as Alexander wrote to his ambassador in Stockholm before the convention was signed, 'The pretensions of the English are absurd . . . their conduct is revolting, the exclusive dominion of the seas to which they presume is an outrage to the sovereigns of the commercial states and an offense to the rights of all peoples.'[114] Alexander was disgusted by the new British attack on Copenhagen, and he would repeat this whole set of attitudes both before and after Tilsit.
Once the crisis of conflict with Britain had passed, Alexander circulated to Russian embassies abroad his first general exposition of foreign policy. In traditionally familiar fashion, he announced the withdrawal of Russia from European affairs as formerly argued by N. I. Panin and represented in Alexander's own reign by V P. Kochubei. Aggrandisement, Alexander said, was inappropriate for so vast a state as Russia. He wanted no part of the 'intestine dissensions' of Europe and was indifferent to the question of the forms of foreign governments, as Paul obviously had been. His aim, rather, was to give his people the blessing of peace. In other words, he was at this point isolationist, non-interventionist. Yet even here there was a hint of ambivalence. If he took up arms, Alexander said, it would only be to protect his people or the victims of aggrandisement threatening the security of Europe.
As Alexander turned to the next major item of unfinished business inherited from his father, the negotiation with the First Consul, he found that he was, on the one hand, obliged by the treaties and other commitments of the previous reign; and, on the other hand, he was embarrassed by many of them. Though he admitted that his obligations in Italian questions were awkward, Alexander continued to solicit generous treatment for the kingdoms of Naples and Sardinia. In fact, Bonaparte, as soon as he learned of the death of Paul, hastened in both principalities to make pre-emptive arrangements - closing of ports, stationing of French troops in Naples, preparations for annexations in Sardinia - before Alexander could intervene, and Alexander was left with little choice in questions about which at the time he did not seem deeply to care. When the treaty of peace and the accompanying political convention were signed, they reflected French wishes. As in the treaty of Teschen, the two powers would mediate German indemnities. Russia was to mediate French peace with the Turks. Bonaparte engaged himselfto maintain the integrity of Naples as stipulated in the treaty that French troops had just imposed on it (28 March 1801), and French troops were to remain there until the fate of Egypt was settled. The reference to Sardinia was a gossamer gloss leaving the French army fully in charge there.
In the reorganisation of Germany, Alexander's wishes were simple: to alter the German constitution as little as possible and to strengthen Germany such as to avoid revolutionary anarchy and make it more capable of resisting French aggression. What happened here was that Bonaparte was able to use the principle of secularisation of ecclesiastical estates - how many divisions had the pope? - and the proximity and the power of France to reward and seduce the south German states, thus converting them from Russian clients into French satellites.
In the lull of 1801-5 between the two storms of the Second and Third Coalitions, Alexander found a respite for deliberate reflection on the issues of foreign affairs, and here we find a rare and genuinely interesting effort to enunciate something like an official doctrine of Russian foreign policy. The first compelling conception to emerge was the presentation ofV P. Kochubei to the Unofficial Committee in summer 1801. It envisaged a remarkable harmony of domestic and foreign policy, and its basic principles were clear and persuasive.
Russia had two natural enemies, Kochubei maintained, Sweden and Turkey, and two natural rivals, Austria and Prussia. Both Sweden and Turkey were weak, unable to challenge Russia dangerously, and the best policy was simply to maintain them in their present condition, weak enough to be harmless, not so weak as to require the protection of Russia from the designs of another great power. The notorious antagonism of Prussia and Austria required both to solicit the favour of Russia, a state of affairs that easily enabled Russia to preserve a constructive sphere of influence in the German Empire. Russia, Kochubei observed, was sufficiently great both in population and in geographical extent to enjoy extraordinary national security. It had little to fear from other powers so long as it did not interfere in their affairs; yet it had too often entered the quarrels of Europe that affected Russia only indirectly, entailing costly and useless wars. In so far as possible, Russia needed to remain aloof from European alliances and alignments, to establish a long period of peace and prudent administration.
109
F.-G. de Bray, 'La Russie sous Paul I',
113
Adams to Secretary of State, 31 January 1801; US National Archives, Record Group 59.
Emphasis added (HR).
114
Alexander to Budberg, 9/21 April 1801;