FRANCO-RUSSIAN RELATIONS, 1740-1746. (2 VOLUMES)

678 Pages·029.989 MB·English

by  HOROWITZ, SIDNEY

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THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED.
LIBRARY OF
NCT YORK UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY HEISHTS
FRANCO-RUSSIAN RELATIONS. 1740-1746
By
Sidney Horowitz
A dissertation in the department of
history submitted in partial fulfill­
ment of the requirements for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy at
New York University.
Vo\. \
C O N T E N T S
PREFACE i
I. Envoy Extraordinary 1
II. The Coup D'Etat of December 5th 56
III. The Failure of a Mission 88
IV. Disaster and Recovery 199
V. Finis Chetardiae 519
VI. The Last Effort and Disaster 414
Bibliography 625
i.
P R E F A C E
An intensive study of projects for Franco-Russian alliance during
the turbulent years of 1740 to 1748 might well preface itself with cogent
a priori questions. These problems bear in themselves the dangerous
seeds of annihilating the whole topic under survey; but an objective ap­
praisal begs that they at least be discussed. When mellowed by a ple­
thora of evidence, often contradictory and incongruous, it becomes diffi­
cult to weave a consistent red thread through a skein of entangling fabric.
It is sobering and salutary to permit such data as is available, of itself,
to dissolve arbitrary assumptions and vaporize superimposed patterns in the
quest "wie es eigentlich gewesen.” One must per se avoid the pitfalls of
fitting round pegs into square apertures.
Historians are ever guilty of fishing in the murky past for props
or lessons to be derived in didactic clarification of contemporary issues.
Unfortunately, the majority of secondary studies on the subject suffer from
this lamentable defect. The exigencies of the Dual Alliance of 1894 pro­
duced a flurry of interest in the past relations of the two powers con­
cerned. Apparently, it was insufficient to buttress the handshake across
the Continent with coffre-fort francs and Slav cannon fodder; it was neces­
sary to demonstrate that both peoples had in the course of their histories
been on the verge of entente amicale, but that accidents and mistakes had
prevented his happy consummation. In the full bloom of the political
romance between Republican Marianne and Tsarist Ivan, there appeared sev­
eral works designed to implement contemporary realities with the halo of
tradition. By virtue of size and detail, Vandal’s special book on
Louis XV and Elizabeth represents the most intensive study of the pros­
pects for understanding during the War of the Austrian Succession and the
Seven Years War. The point of view germane to Vandal's thesis is that a
Franco-Russian alliance was imminent. Had it eventuated, it would have
been the logical denouement of Tsaritza Elizabeth's empathy for Gallic
culture and civilization. That it failed must be attributed to the lack
of information and the general ineptitude of leading statesmen in both
camps. Historical development called for it, for by one stroke Ver­
sailles would have obtained the eternal amity of the glorious new Eastern
constellation and have freed her hands to carry through a successful dom­
ination of Western Europe and a termination of Britannia's selfish aspir­
ations in colonial supremacy. Russia, too, would have benefited in
prestige and power; alliance with the mightiest monarchy in Western
Europe would have bolstered her parvenu status, endorsed her full accept­
ance in the European sphere and enabled her to exercise hegemony over the
entire Central-Eastern corridor. In self-castigation Monsieur Vandal
takes the government of Louis XV to task and attempts to show that a few
painful sacrifices made in the interests of visionary statesmanship might
have easily effected this fortuitous outcome. Both nations were close
enough to the realization so that the big question was not its impossi­
bility but rather why it failed to be carried through to completion.
"... the Court of France in its relations with that of Petersburg had to
choose between two big policies. The first and bolder would have been
to unite quite overtly with Russia, which on several occasions sought our
friendship and seemed drawn toward us by some inner empathy. To effect
this union, it would have been necessary for us to surrender our most
venerable traditions.... Unfortunately, our diplomacy in the eighteenth
century with respect to Russia suffered from indecision. At times the
French cabinet ventured timid attempts at alliance with the Great Northern
monarchy; sometimes it feebly opposed its progress; at no time did it de-
1
vise a certain, feasible and persevering program of action."
This concept of an impending alliance was adopted by subsequent
writers. Gustave Fagniez and the Baron de M^neval writing in the Revue
Hebdomadaire (1916) and the Revue d'Histoire Diplomatique (1922) respect­
ively, reaffirm the validity of the thesis, and an anonymous long article
in the Russkaya Starina of .1897 follows the same essential line. There­
fore, it is not to be wondered that a survey of most secondary sources
must perforce lead to the foregone conclusion that the alliance was a
feasible reality in the early forties and a real thing during the Seven
Years War.
It would be equally unfair to swing completely with the pendulum
and devote a dissertation to a point by point refutation of the French
historian's presentation. Monsieur Waliszewski has already attempted
this task in his excellently documented "La Derniere des Romanov."
Vandal's monolithic distortions are not entirely divorced from fact; suf­
ficient provocative correspondence exists to elicit or better to make us
comprehend his ready acceptance of the alliance myth. Discretion dic­
tates a questioning critical juste milieu, an evaluation notable, not for
its decorous proof or disproof of alliance possibilities, but rather a
gestalt taking as many elements into consideration as are necessary for
a total picture. There is enough material to indicate alliance
1 Albert Vandal, Louis XV et Elizabeth (Paris E. Plon, 1882)
Introd. pp. VII - VIII.
iv.
approaches were hatched, and that during this period, they might have come
to fruition. A priori fatalism in either polarized direction is unwar­
ranted. Even more germane to the topic is the qualification that the
political climate, the environment for alliance germination differed from
month to month. A realistic analysis rather than a more a priori deter­
minism shows us several high points. These were the months following
French connivance in the revolution of December 1741, ^ the return of
the Marquis de la Chetardie for the express purpose of gaining over Russia
2
in the winter of 1743-44 and the last great alliance offensive of
3
D'Argenson and Dalion in 1745. The overall picture, however, was
generally negative because of the acrimonious reminders of the recent
past. Versailles would have to undo a generation of odious diplomatic
manoeuvering. It readied itself for this volte-face and even after sev­
eral serious reverses continued the'pursuit of Petersburg bonds. As for
Russian policy, while basically antipathetical to the Versailles-Berlin
"combinat," it was capable of being tempered. Elizabeth and the Hol­
stein Young Court faction were not at all unreceptive. Only the vice-
chancellor, (after 1744 the grand-chancellor) Alexei 3estuzhev-Riumin was
the staunch ignis fatuus of French tentatives; yet even he might alter
his "patriotic" outlook if the proposition were made sufficiently at­
tractive in terms of monetary compensation and persuasive arguments.
Further, the fact that we possess very few documents of the high Russian
^ Sboraik Imperatorskago Russkago Obschestva (Petersburg 1874-1900)
Vol. 9 pp. 1-352
^ Sbornik, op. cit. Vol. 105 pp. 184-399
^ PP* 381-397
Court circle's opinions at critical junctures, reduces us to conjectures
about Muscovite orientation vis-a-vis the French. The most favorable
circumstance, however, was the Silesian wars for they created that tem­
porary survival resiliency making any combination possible. Frederick
deserted Versailles twice and was frustrated by the French once; France
and Austria several times came to the point of reconciliation, less than
a year after full blown hostilities, Petersburg and Stockholm entered
into a dynastic and then a political alliance. Whitehall constantly
was engaged in trafficking the interests of Schoenbrunn, her supposedly
close ally; Saxony-Poland dwelt for a long time in limbo. In our day,
we have witnessed how war makes strange bedfellows, and how several years
after the Molotov pact, the Anglo-Saxon powers cooperated with the U.S.S.R.
against a common menace in the face of conflicting ideologies, a recent
past of ill will and an atmosphere charged with suspicion and subterfuge.
The proper study of Franco-Russian relations in this limited period lies
in the examination and close scrutiny of history as it unfolded, taking
into account factors which cannot be ignored by the most partisan of
determinists — accident, the character of the leading makers of policy,
and the variable circumstances of the moment.
Since the tempo of diplomatic fluctuations is accelerated during
a period of hostilities, the War of Austrian Succession coming at a focal
reorientation of the post-Utrecht schematic, created a vacuum propitious
for total realignment. The forties constituted a decade which was not
only a dissolvent of past groupings, but also a crucible for the clarifi­
cation of issues and forces. However, this elucidation became more ap­
parent to those who could afford the luxury of hindsight clairvoyance.
To the participants of "competition for empire" and Continental domination,
the game was a perilous venture in which high stakes hung in the balance.
The normal course of eighteenth century cabinet politics — inter-bellum —
is diffuse enough, but the conduct of diplomacy between battles is a
phantasmagoric frenzy of confusion. It poses the serious problem of
separating traditional objectives from expedient bargains, and cleaving
doctrinaire concepts from empirical moves. Chotusitz, Wilmanstrand,
Friedberg and Fonteney presented chancelleries with hard and fast alter­
natives of quickly gearing their alliance dictates to the exigencies of
the moment. For the student, it is necessary to determine whether quick
shifts in the European chessboard in time of war can be dignified with
alliance classification. Certainly, the obsequious behaviour of French
diplomats at Petersburg was in no small measure a war-time pose designed
to prevent the titanic Slav might from sustaining the Pragmatic guaran­
tees. However, while initial French approaches may have been motivated
largely by negative considerations, they by no means remained wholly so —
another instance of the degree to which war diplomacy can metamorphosize
traditional systems. At any rate, we ought to be aware constantly that
alliance feelers between the two courts was not a slow motion operation
against a backdrop of relative tranquility. Jenkins' patriotic protest­
ations and Marie Theresa's cries of outrage loosened the war dogs which
threatened to unhinge the whole structure created by the Peace of West­
phalia a century earlier. Aix-la-Chapelle did not wreck the whole
pattern, nor did it resolve the evolution of 18th Century issues, but it
was a milestone on the road to decisive Paris and Hubertusburg. Because
the Silesian Wars, like most conflicts of the 18th Century were a series