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whilst he appeared to occupy his mind solely with the internal state
of his dominions. His very first act was a proof that he was quite
ready to go in opposition to all the ordinary rules of political
prudence, and when under the influence of his humour to follow his
views, reckless of consequences. He caused splendid funeral
honours and services to be performed for his murdered father, and
forced the audacious and godless, though clever criminals, who had
helped to place his mother on the throne, to be publicly exposed to
the gaze of the people. Notwithstanding this, he suffered them to
remain in possession of their honours and estates, whilst he
designated them as murderers, and reminded the people that his
mother had taken part in the murder of his father. The body of Peter
III, which had been deposited in the convent of Alexander Nevski,
was by his orders placed beside that of his wife; and it was notified
by an inscription in the Russian language that, though separated in
life, in death they were united.
Alexis Orlov and Prince Baratinski, two of the
[1796 a.d.] murderous band, were compelled to come to St.
Petersburg to accompany the funeral
procession on foot, but they were not so treated as to prevent them
afterwards from doing further mischief. Alexis obtained permission to
travel in foreign countries. Baratinski was ordered never again to
show himself at court; which, under existing circumstances, could
not to him be otherwise than an agreeable command. Single proofs
of tender feeling, of a noble heart, and touching goodness, nay even
the emperor’s magnanimous conduct towards Kosciuszko and his
brethren in arms, combined with his sympathy with the fate of
Poland, could not reconcile a court, such as that of Russia under
Catherine II had become, and a city like that of St. Petersburg, to the
change of the court into a guard-room, and to the daily varying
humours of a man of eccentric and half-deranged mind. Even the
improvements in the financial affairs of the country were regarded as
ruinous innovations by those who in times past had profited by the
confusion. The whole of Russia, and even the imperial family, were
alarmed and terrified; a complete flood of decrees, often
contradictory, and mutually abrogatory, followed one another in quick
succession; and the mad schemes of the emperor, who was,
nevertheless, by no means wicked or insensible to what was good
and true, reminded all observers of the most unhappy times of
declining Rome.b

Imperial Eccentricities

The guards, that dangerous body of men who had overturned the
throne of the father, and who had long considered the accession of
the son as the term of their military existence, were rendered
incapable of injuring him by a bold and vigourous step, and treated
without the least deference from the first day. Paul incorporated in
the different regiments of guards his battalions that arrived from
Gatshina, the officers of which he distributed among the various
companies, promoting them at the same time two or three steps; so
that simple lieutenants or captains in the army found themselves at
once captains in the guards, a place so important and hitherto so
honoured, and which gave the rank of colonel, or even of brigadier.
Some of the old captains of the first families in the kingdom found
themselves under the command of officers of no birth, who but a few
years before had left their companies, as sergeants or corporals, to
enter into the battalions of the grand duke. This bold and hasty
change, which at any other time would have been fatal to its author,
had only the effect of inducing a few hundreds of officers, subalterns
and others, to retire.
Paul, alarmed and enraged at this general desertion, went to the
barracks, flattered the soldiers, appeased the officers, and
endeavoured to retain them by excluding from all employ, civil and
military, those who should retire in future. He afterwards issued an
order that every officer or subaltern who had resigned, or should give
in his resignation, should quit the capital within four-and-twenty
hours, and return to his own home. It did not enter into the head of
the person who drew up the ukase that it contained an absurdity; for
several of the officers were natives of St. Petersburg, and had
families residing in the city. Accordingly, some of them retired to their
homes without quitting the capital, not obeying the first part of the
order, lest they should be found guilty of disobedience to the second.
Arkarov, who was to see it put in force, having informed the emperor
of this contradiction, directed that the injunction to quit St. Petersburg
should alone be obeyed. A number of young men were consequently
taken out of their houses as criminals, put out of the city, with orders
not to re-enter it, and left in the road without shelter, and without any
furred garments, in very severe weather. Those who belonged to
very remote provinces, for the most part wanting money to carry
them thither, wandered about the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg,
where several perished from cold and want.
The finances of the empire, exhausted by the prodigalities and still
more by the waste of Catherine’s reign, required a prompt remedy;
and to this Paul seemed at first to turn his thoughts. Partly from
hope, partly from fear, the paper money of the crown rose a little in
value. It was to be supposed that the grand duke of all the Russias,
who for thirty years had been obliged to live on an income of a
hundred thousand rubles (£10,000) per annum, would at least have
learned economy per force; but he was soon seen to rush into the
most unmeasured sumptuosity, heap wealth upon some, and lavish
favours upon others, with as much profusion as his mother, and with
still less discernment. The spoils of Poland continued to add to the
riches of men already too wealthy. All he could do towards restoring
a sort of equilibrium between his receipts and disbursements was to
lay an exorbitant tax on all the classes of his slaves. The poll-tax of
the wretched serfs was doubled, and a new tax was imposed upon
the nobles, which, however, the serfs would ultimately have to pay.
After the first impressions which his accession caused in the heart of
Paul, punishments and disgraces succeeded with the same rapidity
and profusion with which he had lavished his favours. Several
experienced the two extremes in a few days. It is true that most of
these punishments at first appeared just; but then it must be allowed
that Paul could scarcely strike any but the guilty, so corrupt had been
all who were about the throne.
A whim which caused no little surprise was the imperial prohibition
of wearing round hats, or rather the sudden order to take them away
or tear them to pieces on the heads of those who appeared in them.
This occasioned some disgraceful scenes in the streets, and
particularly near the palace. The
Cossacks and soldiers of the
police fell on the passengers to
uncover their heads, and beat
those who, not knowing the
reason, attempted to defend
themselves. An English
merchant, going through the
street in a sledge, was thus
stopped, and his hat snatched
off. Supposing it to be a robbery,
he leaped out of his sledge,
knocked down the soldier, and
called the guard. Instead of the
guard, arrived an officer, who
overpowered and bound him;
but as they were carrying him
Paul I
before the police, he was
fortunate enough to meet the (1754-1801)
coach of the English minister,
who was going to court, and
claimed his protection. Sir Charles Whitworth made his complaint to
the emperor; who, conjecturing that a round hat might be the
national dress of the English as it was of the Swedes, said that his
order had been misconceived, and he would explain himself more
fully to Arkarov. The next day it was published in the streets and
houses that strangers who were not in the emperor’s service, or
naturalised, were not comprised in the prohibition. Round hats were
now no longer pulled off; but those who were met with this unlucky
headdress were conducted to the police to ascertain their country. If
they were found to be Russians, they were sent for soldiers; and
woe to a Frenchman who had been met with in this dress, for he
would have been condemned as a Jacobin.
A regulation equally incomprehensible was the sudden prohibition
of harnessing horses after the Russian mode. A fortnight was
allowed for procuring harness in the German fashion; after the
expiration of which, the police were ordered to cut the traces of every
carriage the horses of which were harnessed in the ancient manner.
As soon as this regulation was made public, several persons dared
not venture abroad, still less appear in their carriages near the
palace, for fear of being insulted. The harness-markers availed
themselves of the occasion to charge exorbitant prices. To dress the
ishvoshtshki, or Russian coachmen, in the German fashion, was
attended with another inconvenience. Most of them would neither
part with their long beards, their kaftans, nor their round hats; still
less would they tie a false tail to their short hair, which produced the
most ridiculous scenes and figures in the world. At length the
emperor had the vexation to be obliged to change his rigorous order
into a simple invitation to his subjects gradually to adopt the German
fashion of dress, if they wished to merit his favour. Another reform
with respect to carriages: the great number of splendid equipages
that swarmed in the streets of St. Petersburg disappeared in an
instant. The officers, even the generals, came to the parade on foot,
or in little sledges, which also was not without its dangers.
It was anciently a point of etiquette for every person who met a
Russian autocrat, his wife, or son, to stop his horse or coach, alight,
and prostrate himself in the snow or in the mud. This barbarous
homage, difficult to be paid in a large city where carriages pass in
great numbers, and always on the gallop, had been completely
abolished under the reign of the polished Catherine. One of the first
cares of Paul was to re-establish it in all its rigour. A general officer,
who passed on without his coachmen’s observing the emperor riding
by on horseback, was stopped, and immediately put under arrest.
The same unpleasant circumstance occurred to several others, so
that nothing was so much dreaded, either on foot or in a carriage, as
the meeting of the emperor.
The ceremony established within the palace became equally strict,
and equally dreaded. Woe betide him who, when permitted to kiss
the hand of Paul, did not make the floor resound by striking it with his
knee as loud as a soldier with the butt-end of his firelock. It was
requisite, too, that the salute of the lips on his hand should be heard,
to certify the reality of the kiss, as well as of the genuflection. Prince
George Galitzin, the chamberlain, was put under arrest on the spot
by his majesty himself, for having made the bow and kissed the hand
too negligently.
If this new reign was fatal to the army and to the poor gentry, it
was still more so to the unhappy peasantry. A report being spread
that Paul was about to restrict the power of masters over their
slaves, and give the peasants of the lords the same advantages as
those of the crown, the people of the capital were much pleased with
the hopes of this change. At this juncture an officer set off for his
regiment, which lay at Orenberg. On the road he was asked about
the new emperor, and what new regulations he was making. He
related what he had seen, and what he had heard; among the rest,
mentioning the ukase which was soon to appear in favour of the
peasants. At this news, those of Tver and Novgorod indulged in
some tumultuous actions, which were considered as symptoms of
rebellion. Their masters were violently enraged with them; and the
cause that had led them into error was discovered. Marshal Repnin
was immediately despatched at the head of some troops against the
insurgents; and the officer who had unwittingly given rise to this false
hope, by retailing the news of the city on his road, was soon brought
back in confinement. The senate of St. Petersburg judged him
deserving of death, and condemned him to be broken, to undergo
the punishment of the knout, and if he survived this, to labour in the
mines. The emperor confirmed the sentence. This was the first
criminal trial that was laid before the public; and assuredly it justified
but too well those remains of shame which had before kept secret
similar outrages.
The most prominent of Paul’s eccentricities was that mania which,
from his childhood, he displayed for the military dress and exercise.
This passion in a prince no more indicates the general or the hero
than a girl’s fondness for dressing and undressing her doll
foretokens that she will be a good mother. Frederick the Great, the
most accomplished soldier of his time, is well known to have had
from his boyhood the most insuperable repugnance to all those
minutiæ of a corporal to which his father would have subjected him;
this was even the first source of that disagreement which ever
subsisted between the father and the son. Frederick, however,
became a hero; his father was never anything more than a corporal.
Peter III pushed his soldato-mania to a ridiculous point, fancying he
made Frederick his model. He loved soldiers and arms, as a man
loves horses and dogs. He knew nothing but how to exercise a
regiment, and never went abroad but in a captain’s uniform.
Paul, in his mode of life when grand duke, and his conduct after
his accession, so strongly resembled his father that, changing
names and dates, the history of the one might be taken for that of
the other. Both were educated in a perfect ignorance of business,
and resided at a distance from court, where they were treated as
prisoners of state rather than heirs to the crown; and whenever they
presented themselves appeared as aliens and strangers, having no
concern with the royal family. The aunt of the father (Elizabeth) acted
precisely as did the mother of the son. The endeavours of each were
directed to prolong the infancy of their heirs, and to perpetuate the
feebleness of their minds. The young princes were both
distinguished by personal vivacity and mental insensibility, by an
activity which, untrained and neglected, degenerated into turbulence;
the father was sunk in debauchery, the son lost in the most
insignificant trifles. An unconquerable aversion to study and
reflection gave to both that infatuated taste for military parade, which
would probably have displayed itself less forcibly in Paul had he
been a witness of the ridicule they attached to Peter. The education
of Paul, however, was much more attended to than that of his father.
He was surrounded in infancy by persons of merit, and his youth
promised a capacity of no ordinary kind. It must also be allowed that
he was exempt from many of the vices which disgraced Peter;
temperance and regularity of manners were prominent features of
his character—features the more commendable, as before his
mother and himself they were rarely to be found in a Russian
autocrat. To the same cause, education, and his knowledge of the
language and character of the nation, it was owing that he differed
from his father in other valuable qualities.
The similarity which, in some instances, marked their conduct
towards their wives, is still more striking; and in their amours, a
singular coincidence of taste is observable. Catherine and Marie
were the most beautiful women of the court, yet both failed to gain
the affections of their husbands. Catherine had an ambitious soul, a
cultivated mind, and the most amiable and polished manners. In a
man, however, whose attachments were confined to soldiers, to the
pleasures of the bottle, and the fumes of tobacco, she excited no
other sentiment than disgust and aversion. He was smitten with an
object less respectable, and less difficult to please. The countess
Vorontzov, fat, ugly in her person and vulgar in her manners, was
more suitable to his depraved military taste, and she became his
mistress. In like manner, the regular beauty of Marie, the unalterable
sweetness of her disposition, her unwearied complaisance, her
docility as a wife, and her tenderness as a mother were not sufficient
to prevent Paul from attaching himself to Mademoiselle Nelidov,
whose disposition and qualities better accorded with his own, and
afterwards to a young lady of the name of Lopukhin, who, it is
believed, rejected his suit. To the honour of Paul it is related that he
submitted to that mortifying repulse with the most chivalric patience
and generosity. Nelidov was ugly and diminutive, but seemed
desirous, by her wit and address, to compensate for the
disadvantages of her person; for a woman to be in love with Paul it
was necessary she should resemble him.
On their accession to the throne, neither the father nor the son
were favourites with the court or the nation, yet both acquired
immediate popularity and favour. The first steps of Paul appeared to
be directed, but improved, by those of Peter. The liberation of
Kosciuszko and other prisoners brought to public recollection the
recall of Biron, Munich, and Lestocq, with this difference—that Peter
III did not disgrace these acts of clemency and justice by ridiculous
violences, or by odious and groundless persecutions. Both issued
ukases extremely favourable to the nobility, but from motives
essentially different, and little to the honour of the son. The father
granted to the Russian gentry those natural rights which every man
ought to enjoy; while the son attempted the folly of creating a
heraldic nobility in Russia, where that Gothic institution had never
been known. In the conduct which he observed towards the clergy,
Paul, however, showed himself a superior politician. Instead of
insulting the priests, and obliging them to shave their beards, he
bestowed the orders of the empire on the bishops, to put them on a
footing with the nobility, and flattered the populace and the
priesthood by founding churches, in obedience to pretended
inspiration.
In his military operations, however, his policy appears to have
abandoned him, because here he gave the reins to his ruling
passion. The quick and total change of discipline he introduced in his
armies created him nearly as many enemies as there were officers
and soldiers. In the distrust and suspicions which incessantly
haunted him, his inferiority to his father is also evident. One of the
first acts of Peter III was to abolish the political inquisition
established by Elizabeth; whereas Paul prosecuted no scheme with
greater alacrity than that of establishing a system of spies, and
devising means for the encouragement of informers. The blind
confidence of the father was his ruin, but it flowed from a humanity of
disposition always worthy of respect. The distrust of the son did not
save him; it was the offspring of a timorous mind, which by its
suspicions was more apt to provoke than to elude treason.k

Paul’s Foreign Policy

In regard to foreign matters Paul’s initial policy was one of peace.

He put a stop to the levying of recruits after the manner adopted by
his mother—that is, in the proportion of three men to every five
hundred souls—recalled his army from Persia, and left Georgia to
take care of itself. He showed compassion for the Poles, recalled the
prisoners from Siberia, transferred King Stanislaus from Grodno to
St. Petersburg, visited Kosciuszko at Schlüsselburg and released
him in company with the other prisoners. He bade Kolitchev, envoy
extraordinary at Berlin, inform the king that he, Paul, wished neither
conquest nor aggrandisement. He dictated to Ostermann a circular
directed to the foreign powers, in which he declared that of all the
countries of the world Russia alone had been constantly engaged in
war since 1756; that forty years of warfare had reduced the
population; that the emperor’s humanity would not allow him to
withhold from his beloved subjects the peace for which they longed;
that though on account of these considerations Russia could take no
active part in the struggle against France, the emperor would
“nevertheless remain closely united with his allies, and would use
every means to oppose the rise of the mad French Republic which
threatened all Europe with upheaval by the destruction of its laws,
privileges, property, religion, and customs.” He refused all armed
assistance to Austria, which was alarmed at Napoleon’s victories in
Italy, and recalled the fleet that Catherine had adjoined to the English
fleet for the purpose of blockading the coasts of France and Holland.
He even received overtures made by Caillard, the French envoy to
Prussia, and caused him to be informed that the emperor “did not
consider himself at war with the French, that he had never done
anything to harm them, but was rather disposed to keep peace with
them, and would induce his allies to hasten the conclusion of war, to
which end he offered the mediation of Russia.”
It was not long, however, before relations again became strained
between France and Russia. By the Treaty of Campo Formio the
Ionian Isles had been given to the French, who thus acquired a
threatening position in the East and increased power over the Divan.
The Directory authorised Dombrowski to organise Polish legions in
Italy. Panin, at Berlin, intercepted a letter from the Directory to the
French envoy, which spoke of a restoration of Poland under a prince
of Brandenburg. Paul, on his side, took into his pay the troops of the
prince of Condé, and established ten thousand émigrés in Volhinia
and Podolia. He offered an asylum to Louis XVIII after his flight from
Brunswick, and installed him in the ducal palace at Mitau with a
pension of 200,000 rubles. The news that a French expedition was
being secretly organised at Toulon made him fear for the security of
the coasts of the Black Sea, which were immediately put in a state of
defence. The abduction of Zagurski, the Russian consul at Corfu, the
capture of Malta by Napoleon, the arrival at St. Petersburg of the
banished knights who offered Paul the protectorate of their order and
the title of grand master, the invasion of Helvetian territory by the
Directory, the expulsion of the pope and the proclamation of the
Roman Republic—all were events that precipitated the rupture.
 Paul concluded an alliance with Turkey which had been disturbed
by an Egyptian invasion, also with England, Austria, and the
kingdom of Naples. Thus, by the double aggression of Bonaparte
against Malta and Egypt, Russia and Turkey were led, contrary to all
traditions, to make common cause. Paul pledged himself to unite his
fleet with the Turkish and English squadron, and to furnish one body
of troops for a descent on Holland, another for the conquest of the
Ionian Isles, and a grand auxiliary army for the campaigns in Italy
and Switzerland.
In the autumn of 1798 a Turkish-Russian fleet captured the French
garrisons in the Ionian Isles. The king of Naples invaded the territory
of the Roman Republic, but Championnet brought the Neapolitan
troops back on to their own ground, and after making a triumphal
entry into Naples proclaimed the Parthenopean Republic.

THE CAMPAIGNS OF KORSAKOV AND SUVAROV (1798-1799)

The Russian army in Switzerland was placed

[1798-1799 a.d.] under the command of Rimski-Korsakov, that of
Holland under the orders of Hermann; while
Austria, at the suggestion of England, requested that the victor of
Fokshani and of the Rimnik should receive the command of the
Austro-Russian army. Flattered by this mark of deference, Paul I
recalled Suvarov from exile in his village. “Suvarov has no need of
laurels,” wrote the czar, “but the country has need of Suvarov.”c
A few days after the battle of Magnano, Suvarov arrived on the
Mincio with the first division of his forces, twenty thousand strong,
and took the command of all the allied troops in Italy. The jealousy of
the Austrian generals was naturally excited and they called a council
of war, in order to examine his plans. The members of the council,
beginning at the youngest, proposed their several schemes. Suvarov
quietly heard them all, and when they had done, took a slate, drew
two lines, and said, “Here, gentleman, are the French, and here the
Russians; the latter will march against the former and beat them.” So
saying, he rubbed out the French line, and added, “This is all my
plan; the council is concluded.”
 Suvarov kept his word, and in less than three months swept the
French entirely out of Lombardy and Piedmont. Thrusting himself
between the three French armies of Switzerland, northern Italy, and
the Parthenopean Republic, it was his purpose, in concert with the
archduke Charles of Austria, to penetrate into France on its most
defenceless side, by the Vosges and the Jura, the same quarter on
which the great invasion of 1814 was afterwards effected. The
campaign opened on the 25th of April, on the steep banks of the
Adda, behind which Moreau had posted his diminished force of
twenty-eight thousand men in three divisions. The passage was
forced with immense loss to the French, who were compelled to
abandon Milan, which Suvarov entered in triumph on the 29th.
After a week’s delay, during which all the principal places of
Lombardy surrendered to the allies, Suvarov followed Moreau’s
retreat, and endeavoured to dislodge him from his advantageous
position on the Po. Not succeeding in this attempt as rapidly as
suited his impetuous habits, the Russian general suddenly changed
his purpose, and advanced against Turin, whilst Moreau at the same
moment had resolved to retire to Turin and the crests of the
Apennines, in order to preserve his communications with France. On
the 27th of May, Vukassovitch, who commanded the advance guard
of the Russians, surprised Turin, and forced the French to take
refuge in the citadel, leaving in the hands of the victors nearly three
hundred pieces of artillery, sixty thousand muskets, and an
enormous quantity of ammunition and military stores. Moreau’s army,
thus deprived of all its resources, was saved from destruction only by
the extraordinary ability of its commander, who led it safely towards
Genoa by a mountain path, which was rendered practicable for
artillery, in four days. With the exception of a few fortresses, nothing
now remained to the French of all Napoleon’s conquests in northern
Italy; they had been lost in less time than it had taken to make them.
Exulting in the brilliant success of his arms,
[1799 a.d.] Paul bestowed another surname, Italienski, or
the Italian, on his victorious general, and
ordered by an express ukase that Suvarov should be universally
regarded as the greatest commander that had ever appeared.
Meanwhile the results of his skill and vigour were neutralised by the
selfish policy of the Austrian court, which had become by the Treaty
of Campo Formio, and the acquisition of Venice, in some degree an
actual accomplice with the aggressors against whom it was in arms.
Suvarov was compelled to submit to the dictation of the emperor
Francis I, and deeply disgusted he declared that he was no longer of
any use in Italy, and that he desired nothing so ardently as to be
recalled.
The disasters of the French in upper Italy were fatal to their
ascendancy in the south, and Macdonald received orders to
abandon the Parthenopean Republic, and unite his forces with those
of Moreau. His retreat was exposed to great dangers by the
universal insurrection of the peasants; but he accomplished it with
great rapidity and skill. The two French commanders then concerted
measures to dislodge the allies from their conquests—a project
which seemed not unlikely to be fulfilled, so obstinately had the Aulic
council adhered to the old system of dispersing the troops all over
the territory which they occupied. Though the allies had above a
hundred thousand men in the field, they could hardly assemble thirty
thousand at any one point; and Macdonald might easily have
destroyed them in detail could he have fallen upon them at once; but
the time he spent in reorganising his army in Tuscany, and in
concerting measures with Moreau, was well employed by Suvarov in
promptly concentrating his forces. Macdonald advanced against him
with an army of thirty-seven thousand men, taking Modena on his
way, and driving Hohenzollern out of it after a bloody engagement.
The two armies met on the Trebbia, where a first and indecisive
action took place on the 17th of June; it was renewed on each of the
two following days, and victory finally remained with the Russians. In
this terrible battle of three days, the most obstinately contested and
bloody that had occurred since the beginning of the war, the loss on
both sides was excessive; that of the French was above twelve
thousand in killed and wounded, and that of the allies not much less.
But nearly equal losses told with very unequal severity on the
respective combatants; those of the allies would speedily be
retrieved by large reinforcements, but the republicans had expended
their last resources, were cut off from Moreau, and had no second
army to fall back upon. Macdonald with infinite difficulty regained the
positions he had occupied before the advance to the Trebbia, after
losing an immense number of prisoners.
The fall of the citadel of Turin on the 20th of June was of great
importance to the allies; for besides disengaging their besieging
force it put into their hands one of the strongest fortresses in
Piedmont, and an immense quantity of artillery and ammunition. This
event, and Suvarov’s victory on the Trebbia, checked the successful
operations of Moreau, and compelled him to fall back to his former
defensive position on the Apennines. Again, contrary to Suvarov’s
wishes, the allied forces were divided for the purpose of reducing
Mantua and Alexandria, and occupying Tuscany. After the fall of
those two fortresses, Suvarov laid siege to Tortona, when Joubert,
who had meanwhile superseded Moreau, marched against him at
the head of the combined forces of the French. On the 15th of
August, another desperate battle was fought at Novi, in which
Joubert was killed, but from which neither side derived any particular
advantage. The French returned to their former positions, and the
Italian campaign was ended.
Suvarov now received orders to join his forces with those under
Korsakov, who was on the Upper Rhine with thirty thousand men.
The archduke Charles might, even without this fresh reinforcement,
have already annihilated Massena had he not remained for three
months, from June to August, in complete inactivity; at the very
moment of Suvarov’s expected arrival, he allowed the important
passes of the St. Gotthard to be again carried by a coup-de-main by
the French, under General Lecourbe, who drove the Austrians from
the Simplon, the Furka, the Grimsel, and the Devil’s Bridge. The
archduke, after an unsuccessful attempt to push across the Aar at
Dettingen, suddenly quitted the scene of war and advanced down
the Rhine for the purpose of supporting the English expedition under
the duke of York against Holland. This unexpected turn in affairs
proceeded from Vienna. The Viennese cabinet was jealous of
Russia. Suvarov played the master in Italy, favoured Sardinia at the
expense of the house of Habsburg, and deprived the Austrians of the
laurels and the advantages they had won. The archduke,
accordingly, received orders to remain inactive, to abandon the
Russians, and finally to withdraw to the north; by this movement
Suvarov’s triumphant progress was checked, he was compelled to
cross the Alps to the aid of Korsakov, and to involve himself in a
mountain warfare ill-suited to the habits of his soldiery.
Korsakov, whom Bavaria had been bribed with Russian gold to
furnish with a corps one thousand strong, was supported solely by
Kray and Hotze with twenty thousand men. Massena, taking
advantage of the departure of the archduke and the non-arrival of
Suvarov, crossed the Limmat at Dietikon and shut Korsakov, who
had imprudently stationed himself with his whole army in Zurich, so
closely in that, after an engagement that lasted two days, from the
15th to the 17th of September, the Russian general was compelled
to abandon his artillery and to force his way through the enemy. Ten
thousand men were all that escaped. Hotze, who had advanced from
the Grisons to Schwyz to Suvarov’s rencontre, was, at the same
time, defeated and killed at Schanis. Suvarov, although aware that
the road across the St. Gotthard was blocked by the Lake of
Lucerne, on which there were no boats, had the temerity to attempt
the passage. In Airolo, he was obstinately opposed by the French
under Lecourbe, and, although Shveikovski contrived to turn this
strong position by scaling the pathless rocks, numbers of the men
were, owing to Suvarov’s impatience, sacrificed before it.
On the 24th of September, 1799, he at length climbed the St.
Gotthard, and a bloody engagement, in which the French were
worsted, took place on the Oberalpsee. Lecourbe blew up the Devil’s
Bridge, but, leaving the Urnerloch open, the Russians pushed
through that rocky gorge, and, dashing through the foaming Reuss,
scaled the opposite rocks and drove the French from their position
behind the Devil’s Bridge. Altorf on the lake was reached in safety by
the Russian general, who was compelled, owing to the want of
boats, to seek his way through the valleys of Schächen and Muotta,
across the almost impassable rocks, to Schwyz. The heavy rains
rendered the undertaking still more arduous; the Russians, owing to
the badness of the road, were speedily barefoot; the provisions were
also exhausted. In this wretched state they reached Muotta on the
29th of September and learned the discouraging news of Korsakov’s
defeat. Massena had already set off in the hope of cutting off
Suvarov, but had missed his way. He reached Altorr, where he joined
Lecourbe on the 29th, when Suvarov was already at Muotta, whence
Massena found on his arrival that he had again retired across the
Bragelburg, through the Klönthal. He was opposed on the lake of
Klönthal by Molitor, who was, however, forced to retire by
Auffenberg, who had joined Suvarov at Altorf and formed his
advanced guard, Rosen, at the same time, beating off Massena with
the rearguard, taking five cannon and one thousand of his men
prisoners. On the 1st of October, Suvarov entered Glarus, where he
rested until the 4th, when he crossed the Panixer Mountains through
snow two feet deep to the valley of the Rhine, which he reached on
the 10th, after losing the whole of his beasts of burden and two
hundred of his men down the precipices; and here ended his
extraordinary march, which had cost him the whole of his artillery,
almost all his horses, and a third of his men.
The archduke had, meanwhile, tarried on the Rhine, where he had
taken Philippsburg and Mannheim, but had been unable to prevent
the defeat of the English expedition under the duke of York by
General Brune at Bergen, on the 19th of September. The archduke
now, for the first time, made a retrograde movement, and
approached Korsakov and Suvarov. The different leaders, however,
did nothing but find fault with each other, and the czar, perceiving his
project frustrated, suddenly recalled his troops, and the campaign
came to a close.
Paul’s anger fell without measure or reason on his armies and
their chiefs. All the officers who were missing, that is to say who
were prisoners in France, were broken as deserters, and Suvarov,
instead of being well received with well merited honours, was
deprived of his command and not suffered to see the emperor’s face.
This unjust severity broke the veteran’s heart. He died soon after his
return to St. Petersburg; and no Russian courtier, nor any member of
the diplomatic body except the English ambassador, followed his
remains to the grave.
 PAUL RECONCILED WITH FRANCE (1800 A.D.)

Frustrated in the objects for which he had

[1800 a.d.] engaged in war, Paul was now in a mood easily
to be moved to turn his arms against the allies
who had deceived his hopes. He had fought for the re-establishment
of monarchy in France, and of the old status quo in Europe; and the
only result had been the aggrandisement of Austria, his own
immediate neighbour, of whom he had much more reason to be
jealous than of the remote power of France. The rapid steps, too,
which Bonaparte was taking for the restoration of monarchical forms
in that country were especially calculated to conciliate Paul’s good-
will towards the first consul. The latter and his able ministers
promptly availed themselves of this favourable disposition through
the connections they had made in St. Petersburg. Fouché had such
confidential correspondence even with ladies in the Russian capital,
that he afterwards received the earliest and most correct intelligence
of the emperor’s murder. Two persons at the court of St. Petersburg
were next gained over to France, or rather to Bonaparte’s rising
empire; these were the minister Rostoptchin, and the emperor’s
favourite, the Turk Kutaisov, who had risen with unusual rapidity from
the situation of the emperor’s barber to the rank of one of the first
Russian nobles. He was also nearly connected by relationship with
Rostoptchin.
Rostoptchin first found means to send away General Dumourier
from St. Petersburg, whither he had come for the purpose of carrying
on his intrigues in favour of the Bourbons. He next sought to bring
Louis Cobenzl also into discredit with the emperor, and he
succeeded in this, shortly before the opening of the campaign in Italy
in 1800, when the cabinet of Vienna was called upon to give a plain
and direct answer to the questions peremptorily put by the emperor
of Russia. Paul required that the cabinet should answer, without if or
but, without circumlocution or reserve, whether or not Austria would,
according to the terms of the treaty, restore the pope and the king to
their dominions and sovereignty. Cobenzl was obliged to reply that if
Austria were to give back Piedmont to the king of Sardinia it must
still retain Tortona and Alessandria; and that it never would restore
the three legations and Ancona. The measure of the emperor’s
indignation was now full; he forbade Count Cobenzl the court, and at
a later period not only ordered him to leave the country, but would
not even allow an embassy or chargé-d’affaires to remain.
The emperor proceeded more deliberately with regard to the
English. At first he acted as if he had no desire to break with them;
and he even allowed the Russians, whom they had hired for the
expedition against Holland, to remain in Guernsey under Viomesnil’s
command, in order to assist their employers in an expedition against
Brittany. The English government, however, at length provoked him
to extremities. They refused to redeem the Russians who had been
made prisoners in their service, by giving in exchange for them an
equal number of French, of whom their prisons were full; they
refused to listen to any arrangements respecting the grand
mastership of the knights of Malta, or even as to the protectorate of
the order, and gave the clearest intimations that they meant to keep
the island for themselves. Bonaparte seized upon this favourable
moment for flattering the emperor, by acting as if he had really more
respect for Paul than the two powers for whom he had made such
magnanimous sacrifices. Whilst the English refused to redeem the
Russians made prisoners in their service by exchange, Bonaparte
set them free without either exchange or ransom.
The emperor of Germany had broken his word, and neither
restored the pope nor the king of Sardinia, whilst Bonaparte
voluntarily offered to restore the one and give compensation to the
other. He assailed the emperor in a masterly manner on his weak
side, causing the six or seven thousand Russians, whom the English
refused to exchange, to be provided with new clothing and arms, and
he wrote a letter to Panin, the Russian minister, in which he said that
he was unwilling to suffer such brave soldiers as these Russians
were to remain longer away from their native land on account of the
English. In the same letter he paid another compliment to the
emperor, and threw an apple of mortal strife between him and
England. Knowing as he did that his garrison in Malta could not hold
out much longer, he offered to place the island in the hands of the
emperor Paul, as a third party. This was precisely what the emperor
desired; and Sprengporten, who was sent to France to bring away
the Russians, and to thank the first consul, was to occupy Malta with
them. The Russians were either to be conveyed thither by Nelson,
who up to this time had kept the island closely blockaded, and was
daily expecting its surrender, or at least he was to be ordered to let
them pass; but both he and the English haughtily rejected the
Russian mediation.
Paul now came to a complete breach with England. First of all he
recalled his Russian troops from Guernsey, but on this occasion he
was again baffled. It was of great importance to the English cabinet
that Bonaparte should not immediately hear of the decided breach
which had taken place between them and the emperor, and they
therefore prevailed upon Viomesnil, an émigré, who had the
command of the Russians in Guernsey, to remain some weeks
longer, in opposition to the emperor’s will. Paul was vehemently
indignant at this conduct; Viomesnil, however, entered the English
service, and was provided for by the English government in Portugal.
Lord Whitworth was next obliged to leave Russia, as Count
Cobenzl had previously been. Paul recalled his ambassadors from
the courts of Vienna and London, and forthwith sent Count Kalitchev
to Paris to enter into friendly negotiations with Bonaparte. In the
meantime, the English had recourse to some new subterfuges, and
promised, that in case Malta capitulated, they would consent to allow
the island to be administered, till the conclusion of a peace, by
commissioners appointed by Russia, England, and Naples. Paul had
already named Bailli de la Ferrette for this purpose; but the English
refused to acknowledge his nominee, and even to receive the
Neapolitans in Malta. Before this took place, however, the emperor
had come to issue with England on a totally different question.
The idea of a union among the neutral powers, in opposition to the
right alleged by England, when at war with any power whatsoever, to
subject the ships of all neutral powers to search, had been
relinquished by the empress Catherine in 1781, to please the English
ambassador at her court; Paul now resumed the idea. Bonaparte
intimated his concurrence, and Paul followed up the matter with
great energy and zeal, as in this way he had an opportunity of
exhibiting himself in the character of an imperial protector of the
weak, a defender of justice and right, and as the head of a general
alliance of the European powers. Prussia also now appeared to do
homage to him, for the weak king was made to believe, that by a
close alliance between Russia and France, he might be helped to an
extension of territory and an increase of subjects, without danger or
cost to himself, or without war, which he abhorred beyond everything
else. The first foundation, therefore, for an alliance between Russia
and France, was laid in Berlin, where Beurnonville, the French
ambassador, was commissioned to enter into negotiations with the
Russian minister Von Krüderer. Beurnonville promised, in
Bonaparte’s name, that the Russian mediation in favour of Naples
and Sardinia would be accepted, and that, in the question of
compensations for the German princes particular regard would be
had to the cases of Baden and Würtemberg.

THE ARMED NEUTRALITY (1800 A.D.)

As to the armed neutrality by sea against England, Prussia could

easily consent to join this alliance, because she had in fact no navy;
but it was much more difficult for Sweden and Denmark, whose
merchant ships were always accompanied by frigates. In case,
therefore, the neutral powers came to an understanding that no
merchant vessels which were accompanied by a ship of war should
be compelled to submit to a search, this might at any time involve
them in hostilities with England. In addition to Denmark, Sweden,
and Prussia, which, under Paul’s protectorate, were to conclude an
alliance for the protection of trading vessels belonging to neutral
powers against the arrogant claims of England, Bonaparte
endeavoured to prevail upon the North Americans to join the
alliance. They were the only parties who, by a specific treaty in 1794,
had acknowledged as a positive right what the others only submitted
to as an unfounded pretension on the part of England. On that
occasion the Americans had broken with the French Republic on the
subject of his treaty, and Barras and Talleyrand had been shameless
enough to propose that the Americans should pay a gratuity, in order