Alexander I’s biscuits in “War and Peace” and Vyazemsky’s objections to the episode

The phrase “If they have no bread, let them eat cake!” was pinned on the unfortunate Marie Antoinette. The original goes back to a text by Rousseau. But the Russian Emperor Alexander I also found himself entangled in an unpleasant story, when he threw biscuits to the crowd, and people fought over the crumbs of biscuit from the imperial hand.

The episode is given in War and Peace, in the scene of the Emperor's arrival at the Moscow Kremlin.

“A fairly large piece of the biscuit that the Sovereign was holding in his hand broke off and fell onto the balcony rail, and from the rail to the ground. The coachman in a sleeveless coat who stood nearest rushed to that bit of biscuit and seized it. Some of the crowd rushed at the coachman. Noticing this, the Sovereign ordered a plate of biscuits to be brought him and began throwing them from the balcony. Petya's eyes grew bloodshot, the danger of being crushed excited him still more, and he threw himself at the biscuits. He did not know why, but he had to get one biscuit from the Tsar's hand, and he must not give way. He rushed forward and knocked over an old woman who was catching at a biscuit. But the old woman did not consider herself beaten, though she was lying on the ground (she had been trying to catch biscuits and missing them with her hands). Petya knocked her hand away with his knee, seized a biscuit, and, as if afraid of being too late, again shouted “Hurrah!” in a voice already hoarse.”

Can this anecdote describe a real event? Soon after publication, Prince Vyazemsky came out with a rebuttal of the episode and accused Tolstoy of slandering the character of Emperor Alexander. The Emperor could not have behaved so, and did not. Tolstoy replied that he was relying on the testimony of contemporaries. The authenticity of the story, however, has never been confirmed by documents. Yet the Russian literary scholar Boris Eikhenbaum found a similar incident in the book by the Moscow burgher Ryazantsev, Recollections of an Eyewitness of the Frenchman's Sojourn in Moscow in 1812. There it is indeed described how the Emperor, noticing people looking from the palace parapet through the open windows at the imperial meal, ordered the valets of the chamber to bring several baskets of fruit and, with his own hands and with great graciousness, began to hand them out to the people. Not biscuits, to be sure, but Tolstoy cannot be charged with slander either.