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
