Alexander had barely returned to St Petersburg before he received a letter from King Frederick William III of Prussia. He suggested that the two should meet to discuss the affairs of Europe as the threat of the avaricious French First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, increased.
In February 1802, Alexander, in reply to yet another missive from Frederick, agreed that a personal discussion would be of much advantage to them both. Although strangers to each other they already had a common bond in that Alexander’s second eldest sister Helen, married to Frederick Louis, Prince of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, was a great favourite with both King Frederick and his lovely Queen Louise.
Alexander, accompanied by a train of courtiers – including his doctor James Wylie – arrived at Memel on 10 June.24 The port, founded by the Knights of the Livonian Order in 1252, defended by a citadel, commands a strong position at the mouth of the River Neman on the shore of the sound of the Memeler Tief, an inlet of the Baltic Sea. Some ninety miles north-east of Königsberg, Memel (now Klaipeda and the most northerly town in Germany) was, then as now, an important port, trading largely in timber, wheat and fish.
For Wylie the town held nostalgia, for sea ports are the same worldwide. Memories of his boyhood came back to him as he saw the masts in the harbour so much like those in Kincardine, whence some of the vessels had probably come. But now it was a harbour with a difference, for men other than seamen swarmed along the crowded quays.
As guests of the king of Prussia, Alexander and the members of his entourage were greatly entertained. Banquets were followed by balls at which Alexander, so strikingly handsome in uniform, danced and flirted with ladies, once again bewitched by his charm. He, for his part, was enchanted with Frederick William’s beautiful wife, Princess Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who was the niece of Queen Charlotte, wife of George III of England. However, whereas her aunt was plain, Louise outshone the court ladies with the gracefulness of her movements and the lustre of her wide-set brown eyes.
Everyone thought she was lovely. Alexander was swept off his feet. Both were young, Louise being just a year older than Alexander, and together they danced in the ballrooms throughout the long summer nights.
In the daytime, however, he discussed politics with her husband. Alexander was willing to support Frederick’s authority over the German principalities but the princes themselves, unsure of the worth of the new tsar, were more inclined to deal with Napoleon, now seen as an invincible force.
The Treaty of Amiens, signed between France and Britain in 1802, produced a temperate respite from warfare, which, as most people predicted, was far too good to be true. When war between England and France began again in May 1803, Alexander, although anxious to protect Russian acquisitions in the Mediterranean made by his father during the Second Coalition of 1799, maintained his country’s neutrality. But in March 1803 came devastating news. The Duc d’Enghien, a member of the French royal family, had been kidnapped in Baden, home of Alexander’s wife Elizabeth, and taken to France, had been tried and executed on the orders of Napoleon himself.
Alexander was horrified, the news that Napoleon had now proclaimed himself Emperor of the French adding to his sense of outrage against what he considered to be regicide. Encouraged by Prince Adam Czartoryski, the Polish nobleman who, formerly his aide, and possibly the lover of his wife, had now become his Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander formed his Grand Design by which Russia, Austria and Britain would unite against Napoleon, forcing him to abandon his avaricious claims. Accordingly the Third Coalition was finally agreed on 28 July 1805.
By the terms of the treaty Napoleon’s empire was to be assaulted by a pincer movement from three sides. The Austrians were to attack southern Germany, supported by a Russian army. The British would send a strong force to the mouth of the River Weser from where, together with Swedish and Russian detachments, they would head through Hanover for the Netherlands. Meanwhile, as Austria attacked Venetia and Lombardy, a joint force of Russian and British soldiers would invade the Kingdom of Naples, whose monarch had pledged his support.
Alexander determined immediately to go with his soldiers. Not even the pleas of Prince Czartoryski would persuade him to change his mind. Wylie would of course go with him. Hastily Wylie assembled his instruments and together with his orderlies packed the bandages, splints and available drugs – mainly laudanum as a painkiller and wine to ease the shock of injury and amputation – into the medical chests which could be carried to the front. All was in readiness when, on the morning of 21 September, after praying for a long time in the cathedral, the tsar led his entourage from St Petersburg to the battlefields ahead.