During the six months which followed the meeting at Erfurt the main aim of Russian foreign policy was to avoid a Franco-Austrian war. Alexander and Rumiantsev were convinced that if war came, Austrian hopes of effective help from risings in Germany or British landings would prove false. The Habsburg army would certainly be defeated and Austria would either be destroyed or weakened to such a degree that she would be forced to become a French satellite. Russia would then be the only independent great power left to oppose Napoleon’s domination of the whole European continent. The emperor remained committed to the French alliance as the only way to buy time for Russia. If Petersburg openly sided with Austria not merely would Napoleon destroy the Habsburg army before Russian help could arrive, he would then turn all his forces against a Russia which was still far from ready for a life-and-death struggle.
Alexander refused Napoleon’s demand for concerted Franco-Russian warnings in Vienna, partly because he did not want to insult the Austrians and partly because he feared that too strong Russian support might even inspire Napoleon himself to start a war aimed at eliminating the Habsburg monarchy or simply at raiding the Austrian treasury to pay for the upkeep of his bloated army. Nevertheless he did warn the Austrians that if they attacked Napoleon Russia’s obligations under the Treaty of Tilsit would force her to fight on France’s side. On the other hand, since he believed that Austrian armaments could only be explained by fear of French aggression, he promised that, if the Austrians partially disarmed, Russia would publicly guarantee to come to their assistance in the event of a French attack. Right down to the outbreak of war on 10 April 1809 Alexander found it almost impossible to believe that Austria would take the suicidal risk of attacking Napoleon. When this actually happened, the emperor blamed the Habsburg government for allowing itself to be carried away by public opinion and its own emotions.24
The Austrian attack on Napoleon left Alexander no alternative but to declare war. Had he failed to meet his clear treaty obligations the Russo-French alliance would have collapsed and Russia and France would probably have been at war within a matter of weeks. While in theory Austria’s enemy, Russia’s overriding war aim was that the Austrian Empire should be weakened as little as possible. The last thing Russia wanted to do was damage the Austrian army, since its survival was the main guarantee against Napoleon imposing crushing peace terms on the Habsburgs. In addition, the Russians were strongly opposed to any addition of territory to the Duchy of Warsaw. The Russian army which invaded Austrian Galicia therefore devoted much of its efforts to avoiding the Habsburg forces and impeding the advance of the Duchy’s Polish army, which was supposedly its ally. Of course it was impossible to hide such tactics, especially when Russian correspondence intercepted by the Poles made their intentions clear. Napoleon was furious and never really believed again in the usefulness of the Russian alliance. Predictably, the war ended in Austria’s defeat. In the peace treaty of Schoönbrunn, signed in October 1809, Napoleon revenged himself on Alexander by handing a large slice of Galicia to the Poles.
The war between Austria and France was the beginning of the end of the Russo-French alliance but two developments over the winter of 1809–10 disguised this for a time. Napoleon agreed that his ambassador in Russia, Armand de Caulaincourt, should draft a Franco-Russian convention which would lay to rest Russian fears about Poland’s possible restoration. More or less simultaneously he divorced his wife, the Empress Josephine, and sought the hand of Alexander’s sister. Rumours that Napoleon was in pursuit of a Russian grand duchess had been floating around for some time. In March 1808 a very worried Empress Marie had asked the ambassador in Paris to find out whether this was a real danger. At that time the obvious target would have been the Grand Duchess Catherine. The marriage of this extremely feisty and strong-willed young woman with Napoleon would have been interesting and combustible. For all her ambition, however, Catherine could not stomach the idea of marrying the Corsican bandit. Perhaps to avoid any possibility of this, in 1809 she married her distant cousin, Prince George of Oldenburg, instead. This left the only possible Russian bride as the Grand Duchess Anna, just turned 16 when Napoleon’s proposal arrived.25
