Treaties of Tilsit

The Treaties of Tilsit signify the public conversion of a recent war into an official relationship between Emperor Alexander I and Napoleon. Their importance lies not only in the preliminaries of peace signed at Tilsit, but in the disorienting speed with which hostile armies, uniforms, titles, and emotions were rearranged: what had been called the enemy became an emperor and guest, while the political spectacle of friendship concealed the resentment that still survived in the army.

Causes and Diplomatic Background

The settlement emerged from the military and political crisis produced by the Napoleonic Wars. Before the meeting at Tilsit, Russian opinion had treated Napoleon as an illegitimate and dangerous enemy. Nikolai Rostov had recently argued that, if Napoleon were captured, he should be treated not as a sovereign but as a criminal, and he had insisted that peace between a legitimate sovereign and Napoleon was impossible. At headquarters, however, the political language changed before the army's feelings did: former enemies were suddenly described as friends, and the defeated or exhausted conflict was being translated into diplomatic ceremony.

The contrast begins in the earlier public rhetoric of war. At Anna Pavlovna Scherer's reception, the prospect that Genoa and Lucca had become family estates of the Buonapartes was treated as proof of Napoleon's infamy and as a possible cause for war. At a later gathering, the declaration of war was justified through the language of imperial safety, dignity, alliances, and the establishment of peace in Europe. These explanations give the conflict an official coherence, but the later settlement demonstrates how quickly such formal principles can be replaced by a new political arrangement.

The Meeting at Tilsit

On June 13, the two emperors arrived at Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy was among the few people permitted to witness the meeting at the Niemen. He saw the raft decorated with monograms, Napoleon pass before the French Guards on the farther bank, and Emperor Alexander waiting in silence in a tavern beside the river. When the boats approached, Napoleon reached the raft first, stepped forward quickly, and held out his hand to Alexander; the two emperors then withdrew into the pavilion.

Boris observed the encounter with the careful attention of a man building his career through proximity to power. He recorded the names and uniforms of those accompanying Napoleon, watched the movements of the important personages, and noted the precise duration of the private interview: one hour and fifty-three minutes. The event therefore functions simultaneously as international diplomacy and as a scene of social advancement. Boris's access to it makes him known at court, and the fact that people have grown accustomed to his presence appears to him as an assurance that his position is secure.

The diplomatic reconciliation was made visible through ritual. On June 27, the preliminaries of peace were signed. Emperor Alexander received the Cross of the Legion of Honor, while Napoleon received the Order of St. Andrew of the First Degree. A banquet was arranged by a battalion of the French Guards for the Preobrazhensky battalion, and the emperors were expected to attend. Russian and French colors, flags, bunting, and immense monograms of A and N were displayed through the town, turning political change into a public decoration of streets, uniforms, and buildings.

Contrasting Experiences of the Peace

The ceremonies at Tilsit do not produce a single shared emotional response. Boris welcomes the new atmosphere because it gives him access, recognition, and advancement. He lodges with Count Zhilinski, a Pole educated in Paris who is passionately fond of the French, and almost every day French officers of the Guard and French headquarters dine and lunch with them. A supper organized for French guests includes an aide-de-camp of Napoleon, several French Guards officers, and a page from an old aristocratic French family.

Nikolai Rostov encounters the same gathering from the opposite emotional position. He comes to Tilsit in civilian dress and under cover of darkness, hoping to advance Vasily Denisov's petition to the Emperor, but the sight of a French officer at Boris's lodging immediately revives the hostility he has always felt toward the enemy. The uniforms that now circulate as signs of fellowship are the same uniforms he had been accustomed to see from the outposts of the flank. Boris's first expression is one of annoyance, though he quickly replaces it with a smile, and Rostov notices the difference between the spontaneous reaction and the diplomatic performance.

Rostov's mission is also made more difficult by the timing of the settlement. He has arrived on the very day least suitable for a petition: he is in civilian clothes, has entered Tilsit without permission, and cannot easily reach the general in attendance. Boris, even if willing, cannot act on the following day because the preliminaries of peace are being signed and the imperial banquet occupies the court. Rostov ultimately avoids Boris, wanders through a town decorated for reconciliation, and remains determined to deliver Denisov's letter even while concluding that the former intimacy between himself and Boris has ended.

Political Theater and Historical Consequences

The peace at Tilsit establishes a new diplomatic reality, but the narrative refuses to treat official agreement as the disappearance of conflict. In 1812, the French army crosses the Niemen and war begins again. The later outbreak is presented as an event involving millions of men and an immense chain of crimes that those committing them do not at the time regard as crimes. The renewed war retrospectively exposes the instability of the earlier reconciliation: the decorated raft, exchanged orders, and shared banquet had created a political arrangement, not a permanent transformation of human hostility.

When the news of the French crossing reaches Emperor Alexander during a ball, the courtly world of expectation is suddenly interrupted. Alexander orders that it be declared that he will make no peace while a single armed Frenchman remains on Russian soil, and he writes to Napoleon that the crossing of the Russian frontier has forced Russia to repel an attack. The language recalls the earlier insistence on imperial dignity and humanity, but now it reopens the division that Tilsit had publicly closed.

The later French invasion also reveals what the diplomatic spectacle could not contain: the material consequences of power. When the French enter Moscow, they are hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their original number, though they still march in good order. Once dispersed among deserted houses, however, the army ceases to function as an army and becomes a population of marauders. The Tilsit vision of disciplined imperial partnership is thus answered by occupation, hunger, looting, and military disintegration.

Narrative Significance

The Treaties of Tilsit are narrated through a sharp contrast between official history and lived perception. The emperors meet in a carefully staged setting, exchange honors, and allow their new relationship to circulate through flags, banquets, and courtly access. Yet Rostov's unease shows that the emotional and moral effects of war cannot be reorganized as quickly as diplomatic language. The same French officers who are welcomed by Boris remain, to Rostov, embodiments of a recent enemy.

The event also helps define the novel's skepticism toward explanations centered on great men. The settlement appears to be produced by emperors, generals, and diplomatic arrangements, but its meaning changes according to the observer's position: Boris experiences it as a career opportunity, Rostov as an obstacle to loyalty and friendship, and the wider army as a confusing reversal of established enmity. The later return to war makes the reversal still more ironic. Tilsit is therefore both a genuine political settlement and a revealing interval in which ceremony attempts to impose a new order on feelings, institutions, and armies that have not truly been transformed.