Together the two young men ran the Russian espionage operation in Paris. It helped that they saw eye to eye as regards French intentions and became firm friends. On the whole, as one would expect, Nesselrode’s sources were mostly diplomatic and Chernyshev’s most often military but there were many overlaps. Nesselrode, for example, procured one report on the military resources of the Duchy of Warsaw. He spent a good deal of money buying secret documents, paying 3,000– 4,000 francs for some memoranda. The serving French minister of police, Joseph Fouché, and the former foreign minister, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, both appear to have been providers of these materials but whether there were other intermediaries and precisely how payments were arranged and documents acquired are matters which Nesselrode – very sensibly – did not go into in his reports.
The information he bought or otherwise acquired covered a range of topics. One report, for instance, concerned Napoleon’s eccentricities, eating habits and growing forgetfulness during a period at the palace of Rambouillet. Given the extent to which the survival of Napoleon’s empire and the fate of Europe hung on this one man’s life and health such reports were significant. Nesselrode begged Speransky to ensure that only he and the emperor saw or mentioned this material. These details of Napoleon’s behaviour were so private that any leak would result in his source being revealed. Nesselrode made a similar plea for total secrecy about another purchased memorandum detailing intelligence operations in Russia’s western borderlands and naming many names. He added that his source for this document was extremely valuable and could produce further such documents if protected. The crucial point was that Russian counter-intelligence must watch the individuals mentioned but stage its arrests in a manner to protect his source at all costs.33
Probably the single most important document bought by Nesselrode was a top secret memorandum on future French policy submitted by the French foreign minister, Champagny, to Napoleon at the emperor’s request on 16 March 1810, in other words at precisely the crucial turning point when the plan to marry a Russian princess had failed, Napoleon had refused to ratify the convention on Poland, and Barclay de Tolly was drawing up his first report on the defence of Russia’s western frontier. Champagny wrote that geopolitics and trade meant that Britain was Russia’s natural ally and a rapprochement between the two powers was to be expected. France must return to its traditional policy of building up Turkey, Poland and Sweden. It must, for instance, ensure that the Turks were kept ready as allies for a future war with Russia. Indeed, French agents were already working quietly on the Ottomans to this end.
As regards Poland, even Champagny’s more modest scenario was to increase the power of the King of Saxony, who was also Grand Duke of Warsaw, by giving him Silesia. A second scenario, which Champagny called ‘more grandiose and decisive and perhaps more worthy of Your Majesty’s genius’, envisaged a full-scale restoration of Poland after a victorious war with Russia. This would entail pushing the Russian border back beyond the river Dnieper, turning Austria eastwards against Russia and compensating it in Illyria for Polish lands it would have to give to the new Polish kingdom. In all circumstances Prussia must be destroyed since it was an outpost of Russian influence in Europe. Within a matter of weeks the memorandum was on Alexander’s desk. In the circumstances its contents were little short of dynamite.34
Aleksandr Chernyshev also had a number of permanent, paid agents. One of them worked in the council of state near the heart of Napoleon’s government, another was in military administration, and a third served in a key bureau of the war ministry. There may well have been more, at least on an occasional basis. The published documents provide rather more details about the content of their reports than is the case with most of the memoranda purchased by Nesselrode. We have everything from general memoranda on the domestic political situation and the position in Spain to detailed information about the redeployment of artillery to infantry battalions, the organization of transport and rear services for future campaigns, and reports on new arms and equipment.
