Alexanderwohl 35

The previous post in this series established that it is entirely plausible to think that Alexander I was on maneuvers in Poland in 1820. He was, after all, both tsar of Russia and king of Congress Poland, which means that both Warsaw and a large area around it was under his rule. This leaves us with one final question: Is there evidence that Tsar Alexander I was in Warsaw on 14 September 1820?

It is more difficult than one might imagine to find detailed evidence of the tsar’s comings and goings, but sometimes, as in this case, persistence and dumb luck pay off. The answer to our question is found in a book of memoirs written by Sophie de Tisenhaus Choiseul-Gouffier, a member of the Lithuanian nobility in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth of the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries. Sophie met Alexander I in 1812, and they remained close friends until his death in late 1825. One indication of the closeness of their relationship is that Alexander was godfather of Sophie’s only son with her husband, the French Count Louis Antoine de Choiseul Island Oktavija-Gufjė.

Choiseul-Gouffier was a prolific author, with a number of novels to her credit, but the work that is of interest to us is her 1829 Mémoires historiques sur l’empereur Alexandre et la cour de Russie, translated into English many years later as Historical Memoirs of the Emperor Alexander I. and the Court of Russia (1904). A friend and confidant of Alexander during the last two decades of his life, Choiseul-Gouffier serves as a reliable and contemporary source for information about the Russian tsar.

Choiseul-Gouffier reports, for example: “In the year 1816 I made a journey to Carlsbad, with my father and one of my relatives. Upon our return we stopped at Warsaw, where the emperor was expected on the 30th of September” (221). The year is wrong for our purposes, but the location is right. Further, one cannot help but be intrigued by what follows. After Alexander arrived, he and the other Warsaw elite attended a ball, where he danced and engaged in banter with Choiseul-Gouffier. Sometime later, she reports,

The emperor left the ball at eleven o’clock. He kept early hours, rising very early in the morning, either to be present at the drilling of the soldiers or to work with his ministers. The next day he had a grand review of the Polish army, on the plain of Povonski, which was covered with an immense throng of people in carriages, on foot, and on horseback, all come to witness this brilliant military spectacle. (222)

Still the wrong year, but now we have the right action: Alexander, clad in a “Polish uniform with the blue and white plume on his cap” (221), surveying the drilling of the soldiers and a “brilliant military spectacle” that Choiseul-Gouffier refers to, strikingly, as “manœuvres” (223). The military review took place on the plain of Povonski, a site said to be three miles from Warsaw at that time (no source indicates, however, which direction it lay from Warsaw).

This is not, fortunately, the only time that Choiseul-Gouffier encountered Alexander in Warsaw. Later she explains that she wished to leave Paris but without dishonoring her husband. She initially sought to have him appointed to a post in Russia, but that did not transpire due to Alexander making his choice before her letter arrived. Still, she remained determined to leave France, so

in 1820 I made a journey to Lithuania, and M. de C. [Choiseul-Gouffier’s husband] being engaged in defending himself against a very unjust lawsuit, I decided to go to Warsaw where his Majesty was at that time, and ask justice and protection from him. (241–42)

Now we are in the right year and the right place. Choiseul-Gouffier continues her account by noting that once again she and Alexander met at a ball, where they danced and conversed and she made her plea that Alexander intervene in the lawsuit in favor of her husband. Alexander agreed and asked her to supply the details of the case. Choiseul-Gouffier intended to do so at a following ball but arrived late and did not meet Alexander at all. The morning after the second ball, Choiseul-Gouffier reports, Alexander sent a messenger to inquire about her health, since he had not seen her the night before. We pick up Choiseul-Gouffier’s narrative at that point:

As I proposed to stay only a few days at Warsaw, his Majesty, learning that I was on the eve of my departure, deigned to come and receive my respectful adieux, saying that he had hoped that I would prolong my stay at Warsaw until the term fixed for his Majesty’s own departure, twelve days later, when he was to go to the conference of Troppan in Silesia. (244)

Here at last we find a piece of evidence that will enable us to date Alexander’s 1820 stay in Warsaw: the conference in Troppan, more commonly known as Troppau. In 1820 the five great European powers of the day—Russia, Austria, Prussia, United Kingdom, and France—met in the city of Troppau (modern Opava, Czech Republic) to discuss an uprising and revolution in Naples, Italy. The details of that conference can be ignored; what is crucial for our purposes is the date of the conference: it began 20 October 1820.

Troppau lay approximately 200 miles southwest of Warsaw, so if one estimates that Alexander and his party covered 30 miles a day (they no doubt traveled faster than the Mennonites emigrating from Przechovka to Molotschna), then their journey required a week. To be safe, we might imagine that it took anywhere between five and nine days, but we will use seven days for our rough calculations.

Let us assume that Alexander arrived no later than 19 October. A seven-day journey would have thus begun on 13 October. Alexander last saw Choiseul-Gouffier twelve days before his departure, which would have been, by our reckoning, 1 October. The several balls that Choiseul-Gouffier mentions took place before then, during the last week of September. Choiseul-Gouffier also reports that the tsar was already in Warsaw when she made her decision to travel there from Paris, which was no doubt a substantial and time-consuming journey.

What does this mean for our question? It seems indisputable that Alexander I was in Warsaw when the Mennonite group from Przechovka rested south of the city on and around 14 September 1820. At least the basic facts of the etiological tale are confirmed: Alexander and the Przechovka Mennonites were at the same place at the same time, just as the Alexanderwohl community report claims.

The only confirmation that we lack is that of Alexander participating in field maneuvers with Polish troops while the Przechovka church members rested for two days. However, the fact that he did exactly that in an earlier stay at Warsaw lends credence to the claim that he also did so in 1820. Emperors of all times generally like to be seen directing their troops; Alexander was presumably no exception.

All the pieces of the etiology either fit or seem highly plausible, so we have little reason to doubt the other main element of the report: Alexander conversed briefly with several church leaders and, upon learning from where they came and to where they were headed, wished them luck. We will, or course, never have definitive confirmation of this final detail, but we also have no valid reason to doubt it.

We are, however, not yet done with the etiological tale. Alexander’s wish and the name of the village still deserve careful examination, which we will do in the following post.

Work Cited

Choiseul-Gouffier, Sophie de Tisenhaus. 1904. Historical Memoirs of the Emperor Alexander I. and the Court of Russia. Translated by Mary Berenice Patterson. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner. Available online here. Originally published Mémoires historiques sur l’empereur Alexandre et la cour de Russie (1829). Available online here.