Paul I of Russia - Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs

Paul came to power following the death of his mother, Catherine the Great, in late 1796, and his early policies can largely be seen as reactions against hers. In foreign policy, this meant that he opposed to the many expansionary wars that she fought and instead preferred to pursue a more peaceful, diplomatic path. Immediately upon taking the throne, he recalled all troops outside Russian borders, including the struggling expedition Catherine II had sent to conquer Iran through the Caucasus and the 60,000 men she had promised to Britain and Austria to help them defeat the French. Paul hated the French before their revolution, and afterwards, with their republican and anti-religious views, he detested them even more. In addition to this, he knew French expansion hurt Russian interests, but he recalled his mother's troops primarily because he firmly opposed wars of expansion. He also believed that Russia needed substantial governmental and military reforms to avoid an economic collapse and a revolution, before Russia could wage war on foreign soil.

Paul offered to mediate between Austria and France through Prussia and pushed Austria to make peace, but the two countries made peace without his assistance, signing the Treaty of Campoformio in October 1797. This treaty, with its affirmation of French control over islands in the Mediterranean and the partitioning of the Republic of Venice, upset Paul, who saw it as creating more instability in the region and displaying France's ambitions in the Mediterranean. In response, he offered asylum to the Prince de Condé and his army, as well as Louis XVIII, both of whom had been forced out of Austria by the treaty. By this point, Napoleon had seized Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, establishing republics with constitutions in each, and Paul felt that Russia now needed to play an active role in Europe in order to overthrow what the republic had created and restore traditional authorities. In this goal he found a willing ally in the Austrian chancellor Baron Thugut, who hated the French and loudly criticized revolutionary principles. Britain and the Ottoman Empire joined Austria and Russia to stop French expansion, free territories under their control and re-establish the old monarchies. The only major power in Europe who did not join Paul in his anti-French campaign was Prussia, whose historic neutrality with Napoleon, distrust of Austria, and the security they got from their current relationship with France prevented them from joining the coalition. Despite the Prussians’ reluctance, Paul decided to move ahead with the war, promising 60,000 men to support Austria in Italy and 45,000 men to help England in North Germany and the Netherlands.

Another important factor in Paul’s decision to go to war with France was the island of Malta, the home of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. In addition to Malta, the Order had "Priories" in the Catholic nations of Europe that held large estates and paid the revenue from them to the Order. In 1796, the Order approached Paul about the Priory of Poland, which had been in a state of neglect and paid no revenue for 100 years, and was now on Russian land. Paul as a child had read the histories of the Order and was impressed by their honor and connection to the old order it represented. He relocated the Priories of Poland to St. Petersburg in January 1797. The knights responded by making him a protector of the Order in August of that same year, an honor he had not expected but that he happily accepted.

In June 1798, Napoleon seized Malta; this greatly offended Paul. In September, the Priory of St. Petersburg declared that Grand Master Hompesch had betrayed the Order by selling Malta to Napoleon. A month later the Priory elected Paul Grand Master. The election of the sovereign of an Orthodox nation as the head of a Catholic order was controversial, and it was some time before the Vatican or any of the other Priories of Europe approved it. This delay created a political issue between Paul, who insisted on defending his legitimacy, and the Priories’ respective nations. Though recognition of Paul’s election would become a more divisive issue later in his reign, the election immediately gave Paul, as Grand Master of the Order, another reason to fight the French Republic: to reclaim the Order’s ancestral home.

The Russian army in Italy technically played the role of an auxiliary force sent to support the Austrians, though the Austrians offered the position of chief commander over all the allied armies to Alexander Suvorov, a distinguished Russian general. Under Suvorov, the allies managed to push the French out of Italy, though they suffered heavy losses. However, by this point in time, cracks had started to appear in the Russo-Austrian alliance, due to their different goals in Italy. While Paul and Suvorov wanted the liberation and restoration of the Italian monarchies, the Austrians sought territorial acquisitions in Italy, and were willing to sacrifice later Russian support to acquire them. The Austrians, therefore, happily saw Suvorov and his army out of Italy in 1799 to go meet up with the army of Alexander Korsakov, at the time assisting the Austrian Archduke Charles expel the French armies currently occupying Switzerland. However, the campaign in Switzerland had become a stalemate, without much activity on either side until the Austrians withdrew. Unfortunately, they withdrew before Korsakov and Suvorov could meet up, allowing the French to attack their armies one at a time, destroying Korsakov and forcing Suvorov to fight his way out of Switzerland, suffering heavy losses. Suvorov, shamed, blamed the Austrians for the terrible defeat in Switzerland, as did his furious sovereign. This defeat, combined with refusal to reinstate the old monarchies in Italy and their disrespect of the Russian flag during the taking of Ancona, led to the formal cessation of the alliance in October 1799.

Although by the fall of 1799 the Russo-Austrian alliance had more or less fallen apart, Paul still cooperated willingly with the British. Together, they planned to invade the Netherlands, and through that country attack France proper. Unlike Austria, neither country had any secret territorial ambitions, they both simply sought the removal of Napoleon. The campaign started well, with a British victory in the north, but when the Russian army arrived in September, the allies found themselves faced with bad weather, poor coordination, and unexpectedly fierce resistance from the Dutch and the French, and their success evaporated. As the month wore on, the weather worsened and the allies suffered more and more losses, eventually signing an armistice in October 1799. The Russians suffered three-quarters of allied losses and the British left their troops on an island in the Channel after the retreat, as Britain did not want them on the mainland. This defeat and subsequent maltreating of Russian troops strained Russo-British relations, but a definite break did not occur until later. The reasons for this break are less clear and simple than those of the split with Austria, but there several key events occurred over the winter of 1799–1800 that helped: Bonaparte released 7,000 captive Russian troops that Britain had refused to pay the ransom for; Paul grew closer to the Scandinavian countries of Denmark and Sweden, whose claim to neutral shipping rights offended Britain; Paul had the British ambassador in St. Petersburg recalled and Britain did not replace him, with no clear reason given as to why; and Britain, needing to choose between their two allies, chose Austria, who had certainly committed to fighting Napoleon to the end. Finally, two events occurred in rapid succession that destroyed the alliance completely: first, in July 1800, the British seized a Danish frigate, prompting Paul to close the British trading factories in St. Petersburg as well as impound British ships and cargo; second, even though the allies resolved this crisis, Paul could not forgive the British for Admiral Nelson's refusal to return Malta to the Order of St. John, and therefore to Paul, when the British captured it from the French in September 1800. Paul's drastic response was to seize all British vessels in Russian ports, send their crews to detention camps and take British traders hostage until he received satisfaction. Over the next winter, he went further, using his new Armed Neutrality coalition with Sweden, Denmark and Prussia to prepare the Baltic against possible British attack, prevent the British from searching neutral merchant vessels, and freeze all British trade in Northern Europe. As Napoleon had already closed all of Western and Southern Europe to British trade, Britain, which relied heavily upon imports (especially for timber, naval products, and grain) was seriously threatened by Paul’s move and reacted fast. In March 1801, Britain sent a fleet to Denmark, bombarding Copenhagen and forcing them to surrender in the beginning of April. This fleet then prepared to head to St. Petersburg, but by this time the conspiracy had already assassinated Paul and Alexander made peace shortly after taking the throne.

The oddest part of Paul I’s foreign policy seems to be his rapprochement with Napoleon after the coalition fell apart. Recently, however, several scholars have argued that this change in position, radical though it seemed, made sense, as Bonaparte became First Consul, moved away from Jacobinism, and made France a more conservative state, consistent with Paul’s view of the world. Even Paul’s decision to send a Cossack army to take British India, bizarre as it may seem, makes a certain amount of sense: Britain itself was almost impervious to direct attack, being an island nation with a formidable navy, but the British had left India largely unguarded and would have great difficulty staving off a force that came over land to attack it. The British themselves considered this enough of a problem that they signed three treaties with Persia, in 1801, 1809 and 1812, to guard against an army attacking India through Central Asia. Paul sought to attack the British where they were weakest: through their commerce and their colonies. Throughout his reign, his policies focused reestablishing peace and the balance of power in Europe, while supporting autocracy and old monarchies, without seeking to expand Russia’s borders.