JOHN VISITED COUNT LAURISTON ON JUNE 19. THE TWO HAD BANTERED several times the past few months. With each new conversation, Lauriston increasingly carped. Why wouldn’t Alexander negotiate? What was the reason for war?
On this occasion, Adams found Lauriston as he had never seen him: physically unwell. His headaches were the size of Russia. Lauriston complained of both tremors in his head and the diplomatic dueling that precedes war.
He was “soured and exasperated, principally by the refusal to allow him passports to go to Vilna.”
Vilna was one of many ancient names for an East Prussian city, which is present-day Vilnius, Lithuania. The Russian government continued to deny the French ambassador’s request to leave Russia. Back then a passport was required to leave a country, a leftover practice from the French Revolution.
John discovered even more interesting news from Lauriston. The French government had also denied Prince Kurakin, the Russian ambassador to France, a passport to leave Paris. Though the prince was highly esteemed by many, politics was behind the pretense. Adams fished for more news.
“I asked him where Emperor Napoleon was.”
Lauriston did not know.
“Perhaps at Warsaw. He heard the Russians had concentrated their forces [there], because they said the Emperor Napoleon always attacks the center.”
Lauriston then let his vehemence flow: “They think because he has done so before, he will do so again.” He chastised the Russians for thinking Napoleon would follow previous strategies: “But with such a man as that, they will find their calculations fail them. He will do something that they do not expect. He does not copy himself nor any other. He does something new.”
All Adams could do was let Lauriston vent. Later he wrote his own assessment: “The facts show at once the extreme jealousy, suspicion, and distrust existing between the parties, and the reluctance they have to begin the war, with the anxiety on each side to throw the first act of aggression upon the other one.”
During this time John did what he often did in the summer. He took advantage of the long hours of sunlight to read. He opened a collection of sermons by an English preacher. One on the topic of anxiety caught his attention.
“My own disposition has in it too much anxiety,” he reflected. “And the experience of life has a great tendency to increase that propensity.”
The sermon addressed the scriptural concept of “take no thought for tomorrow” and “do not worry about what he shall eat or drink.” These were tough principles for Adams.
“A father of a family in this world must take thought of tomorrow—not for what he himself shall eat or drink, or wherewithal he shall be clothed, but for his wife and children.” Since becoming a husband and father, he had encountered “perpetual temptations and stimulations to waste the means of provision bestowed upon me by the goodness of that Heavenly Father, who feeds the fowls of the air and who clothes the lilies of the field.”
Focusing on the future—tomorrow—drove him to provide for his family. His fear of poverty outweighed his lust for lavishness. Just as Atlas held the world on his back, so Adams bore the responsibility to care for his family’s temporal needs. No matter how much he worried, life was beyond the power of his pen and purse.
Never before were so many circumstances beyond his control at once, not at least since he had formed a family of his own. He understood what his mother and father had experienced during the American Revolution when chaos reigned. They couldn’t stop King George III from sending troops to Boston any more than John Quincy could stop Napoleon from threatening Russia or convince Britain's prime minister to revoke the Orders in Council.
Most intimately of all, he couldn’t stop his daughter’s convulsions or his wife’s sobbing or find a way to return to America. He was now living in a so-called exile that was no longer practical or productive. The feeling of a wasted life glared brighter than the comet’s tail overhead. He felt more useless than ever.
“What with all the thought that I do bestow, and all the precautions that I can take . . . frequent untoward events and unforeseen accidents disconcert all my prudence, and require new sacrifices of feeling, of pleasure, and even of indulgence, to [the] thought of tomorrow.”
The sermon gnawed on his conscience and tugged on his sense of spiritual truth. He concluded that this passage did not suggest that man should abandon his responsibility to himself or his family. Quite the contrary. Instead these verses warned humans against excessive worry and promoted trust in Providence. Faith was all he had.
The immediate morrow, the next day, brought more conflict and raised the stakes. Adams learned that once again the Russian government had denied Lauriston’s latest request for a passport to leave. He had applied three times. Likewise Kurakin had applied three times in France to return to Russia. The French government gave passports to everyone in Kurakin’s family except the prince himself. Both diplomats were being held hostage, tormented exiles to countries that had turned from ally to enemy.
Lauriston may have believed that Alexander let the dogs of war loose, but it was Napoleon who crossed the Rubicon. Just as Caesar had made his decision and crossed the Rubicon River in Italy centuries earlier, so Napoleon invaded Russia by crossing a river, the Memel, and invading Russia. Also called the Neman, the Memel separated Russia from Prussia in what is present-day Lithuania. Some historians mark the day as “June 22, 1812.” Others say “June 23,” and still others note “June 24, 1812” as the day of Napoleon’s Rubicon into Russia. The sheer size of his force and the time it would take for such a large army to cross the Neman make the discrepancies in dates understandable.
Napoleon’s Grande Armée of 600,000 was the largest allied military force in history to date. More than 400,000 soldiers advanced in three armies while 200,000 initially stayed behind in Prussia as reserves. Half were French. The rest were Germans, Austrians, Prussians, Poles, Italians, and others. Napoleon’s marriage to an Austrian princess required Austria to be an ally.
His fast-paced plan was designed to split the Russian front line into two and encircle them. He expected to achieve victory without going any farther than fifty miles. Surely a force of more than half a million soldiers against Russia’s forces of fewer than two hundred thousand would intimidate Alexander into capitulation. So Napoleon thought.
Adams first heard the news of the invasion on June 28, when the secretary of the French embassy called on him to let him know he was leaving Russia, though Lauriston remained passport-less. Another sign that the hostilities had begun was a change at the palace. The empress and the empress mother usually spent their summers at palaces in the countryside. They had returned to the Winter Palace, as was the custom during wartime.
Two days later the St. Petersburg Gazette provided more information. Alexander responded to the invasion by issuing a resolution. No matter that he was outnumbered. He had time, space, and most important, climate on his side. He declared that he would not make peace as long as the enemy remained under arms on his turf—hardly the response Napoleon wanted.