As for me, dear one, all I can answer for is my heart and my intentions and my zeal for everything that can tend to the good and to the utility of my fatherland, according to my best convictions. As for talent, perhaps I lack some, but it is not provided; it is a blessing of nature and nobody has ever procured it. Seconded as badly as I am, lacking instruments on all sides, directing so enormous a machine in a terrible crisis and against an infernal antagonist who possesses the most horrible wickedness joined to the most eminent talent and is helped by all the forces of Europe as a whole, and by a mass of talented men who have been trained for twenty years in war and revolution, one would be obliged to agree, if one is far, that it is not astonishing that I feel reversals.
[…] You will recall that often I foresaw this in talking with you; the very loss of two capitals was believed to be possible, and it is perseverance alone that was considered to be the remedy for the evils of this cruel period. Far from discouraging me despite all the setbacks I have suffered, I am resolved more than ever to persevere in the struggle, and all my care goes to this goal. It is with frankness I admit to you that being misunderstood by the public or by a mass of beings who know me poorly or not at all, is a lesser pain for me than that of being similarly treated by the small number of those to whom I have devoted all my affections and who I hope would know me deeply. But even if this pain was added to all those others I bear, I protest before God that I would not accuse them and would see in this only the common fate of unfortunate beings, that of being abandoned.
A letter from Alexander I to his sister Catherine on September 7, 1812. From Alexander I: The Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon by Marie-Pierre Rey translated by Susan Emanuel, pg 255. (via tsar-and-autocrat-of-all-russia)