The Power of the Weak Opponent: The Diplomacy of Alexander I in Tilsit

Abstract

Not only in Soviet patriotic historiography the conduct of war and the foreign policy of Alexander i were regarded as heroic only from the battle of Borodino onward. The earlier years of the Napoleonic Era and the retreat of Russian armies during the summer of 1812 appeared in a negative light. Revisionist research in Russia and abroad offers another interpretation. When the French army in 1807 after some victorious battles reached the Russian border Alexander maintained a much better bargaining position in talks with Napoleon than disappointed critics among the Russian elite recognized. The emperor of the French was not prepared to continue the war on Russian soil and did not make territorial demands on Russia. Napoleon wanted not only an armistice and peace, but also an alliance with Russia against Britain. Thus Alexander, using the power of the weak opponent, succeeded in winning time. Russia was able not only to maintain her strategic goals against the Ottoman Empire in the Rumanian principalities and in the Black Sea, but also to defend the political existence of Prussia as a possible Russian ally in a future coalition with Austria against Napoleon, which meant a sacrifice of Polish interests by Russia.