the proposals, or run the risk of losing half his empire, if hostilities against Russia were resumed. News arrived that Sweden had finally agreed a military treaty with the Western powers on 21 November – an ominous development for Russia if the allies were to launch a new campaign in the Baltic. Even Frederick William IV, the Prussian king, declared that he might be forced to join the Western powers against Russia, if Alexander continued with a war that ‘threatened the stability of all legitimate government’ on the Continent. ‘I beg you, my dear nephew,’ he wrote to Alexander, ‘go as far as you can in your concessions, weighing carefully the consequences for the true interests of Russia, for Prussia and the whole of Europe, if this atrocious war is continued. Subversive passions, once unchained, could have revolutionary effects that nobody could calculate.’ Yet, in the face of all these warnings, Alexander remained adamant. ‘We have reached the utmost limit of what is possible and compatible with Russia’s honour,’ he wrote to Gorchakov on 23 December. ‘I will never accept humiliating conditions and am convinced that every true Russian feels as I do. It only remains for us – crossing ourselves – to march straight ahead and by our united efforts to defend our native land and our national honour.’55
Two days later Alexander finally received the Austrian ultimatum with the allied terms. The Tsar called a council of his father’s most trusted advisers to consider the Russian reply. Older and calmer heads than the Tsar’s prevailed at this meeting in the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. The key speech was made by Kiselev, the reformist Minister of State Domains, who had charge of the 20 million peasants owned by the state. He clearly spoke for the other councillors. Russia lacked the means to continue with the war, Kiselev argued. The neutral powers were moving to the side of the Western alliance, and it would be imprudent to run the risk of fighting against the whole of Europe. Even a resumption of hostilities against the Western powers was unwise: Russia could not win, and it would result in even harsher peace terms from the enemy. While the mass of the Russian people shared the Tsar’s patriotic feelings, Kiselev believed, there were elements that might begin to waver if the war became prolonged – there was the possibility of revolutionary disturbances. There were already signs of serious unrest among the peasantry, who were carrying the main burden of the war. They should not reject the Austrian proposals, argued Kiselev, but they might propose amendments to uphold Russia’s territorial integrity. The council agreed with Kiselev’s views. A reply was sent to the Austrians accepting their peace terms, but rejecting the cession of Bessarabia and the addition of the fifth point.
The Russian counter-proposals divided the allies. The Austrians, who had an interest in Bessarabia, immediately threatened to break off relations with Russia; but the French were not prepared to jeopardize the peace negotiations ‘for a few scraps of land in Bessarabia!’ as Napoleon explained to Queen Victoria in a letter on 14 January. The Queen was of the opinion that they should postpone negotiations to exploit divisions between Russia and the Austrians. It was sound advice. Like his father, Alexander feared the prospect of a war with Austria more than anything, and perhaps only this would bring him round to accept their proposals. On 12 January Buol informed the Russians that Austria would break off relations six days later if they failed to accept the peace terms. Frederick William expressed his support for the Austrian proposals in a telegraph to St Petersburg. The Tsar was now on his own.
On 15 January Alexander called another meeting of his council in the Winter Palace. This time Nesselrode made the key speech. He warned the Tsar that in the coming year the allies had decided to concentrate their forces on the Danube and Bessarabia, close to the Austrian border. Austria was likely to be drawn into the hostilities against Russia, and its decision would affect the remaining neutral powers, Sweden and Prussia, most decisively. If Russia refused to make peace now, it was in danger of finding itself in a war against the whole of Europe. The old Prince Vorontsov, formerly the viceroy of the Caucasus, supported Nesselrode. Speaking in a voice charged with emotion, he urged the Tsar to accept the Austrian terms, however painful they might be. Nothing more could be achieved through a continuation of the struggle, and resistance might lead to an even more humiliating peace, perhaps the loss of the Crimea, the Caucasus, even Finland and Poland. Kiselev agreed, adding that the people of Volhynia and Podolia in the Ukraine were just as likely as the Finns and Poles to rise up against Russian rule, if the war went on and Austrian troops approached those Western borderlands. Compared to these dangers, the sacrifices demanded by the ultimatum were insignificant. One by one, the Tsar’s officials urged him to accept the terms for peace. Only Alexander’s younger brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, advocated fighting on, but he had no office in the government, and however patriotic his appeal to the spirit of resistance of 1812 may have sounded to their Russian hearts, it lacked the reasoning to change their minds. The Tsar had decided. The next day the Austrians received a note from Nesselrode announcing his acceptance of their peace terms.56
In Sevastopol, the troops had been preparing to spend a second winter in the Crimea. No one really knew if they would have to fight again, but there were all sorts of rumours about being sent to the Danube or the Caucasus or some other quarter of the Russian Empire for a spring campaign. ‘What will become of us?’ wrote the battalion commander Joseph Fervel to Marshal de Castellane on 15 December. ‘Where will we find ourselves next year? That is the question everybody asks but no one can answer.’57
Meanwhile, the troops occupied themselves with the daily business of survival on the heights above Sevastopol. Supplies improved and the soldiers were provided with better tents and wooden huts. The bars and shops at Kamiesh and Kadikoi were always full, and Mary Seacole’s hotel did a roaring trade. There were various amusements to keep the soldiers occupied – theatre, gambling, billiards, hunting and horse racing on the plain while the weather allowed it. Boatloads of tourists arrived from Britain to see the famous battle sites and collect souvenirs – a Russian gun or sword, or a bit of uniform plundered from the bodies of the Russian dead that remained in the trenches for weeks and even months following the capture of Sevastopol. ‘Only the English could have such ideas,’ noted a French officer, who was amazed by the morbid fascinations of these war tourists.58
Towards the end of January, as news of the impending peace arrived, the allied soldiers began to fraternize increasingly with the Russians. Prokofii Podpalov, the young soldier who had taken part in the defence of the Redan, was among the Russians encamped by the Chernaia river, the site of the bloody battle in August. ‘Every day we became more friendly with the French soldiers on the other side of the river,’ he recalled. ‘We were told by our officers to be polite to them. Usually, we would go up to the river and throw across (the river wasn’t wide) some things for them: crosses, coins and so on; and the French would throw us cigarettes, leather purses, knives, money. This is how we talked: the French would say “Russkii camarade!” and the Russians: “Franchy brothers!”’ Eventually, the French ventured over the river and visited the Russians in their camp. They drank and ate together, sang their songs for each other, and conversed in sign language. The visits became regular. One day, on leaving the Russian camp, the French soldiers handed out some cards on which they had written their names and regiments, and invited the Russians to visit them in their camp. They did not return for a few days, so Podpalov and some of his comrades decided to visit the French camp. They were amazed by what they saw. ‘It was clean and tidy everywhere, there were even flowers growing by the tents of the officers,’ Podpalov recalled. The Russians found their friends, and they were invited to their tents, where they drank rum with them. The French soldiers walked them back to the river, embraced them many times, and invited them to come again. A week later Podpalov returned to the French camp on his own, but he could not find his friends. They had left for Paris, he was told.59
12
Paris and the New Order
The Peace Congress was scheduled to begin at the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d’Orsay in the afternoon of 25 February. By midday a large and excited crowd of spectators had gathered along the Quai d’Orsay to watch the arrival of the delegates. Stretching from the Pont de la Concorde to the rue d’Iena, the onlookers had to be kept back by infantrymen and the gendarmerie to allow the carriages of the foreign dignitaries to pass by and pull up outside the newly completed buildings of the Foreign Ministry. The delegates arrived from one o’clock, each
