Alexander I (1777 - 1825)
Alexander Pavlovich (1777-1825),
son of Emperor Paul I and Maria Fedorovna
Alexander Pavlovich (1777-1825),
by Jean-Louis Voille (1792)
Maria Fedorovna was only eighteen when, on 24 December 1777, she gave birth to her first child and named him after Alexander Nevsky, the warrior prince of the XIII century. The empress, delighted at the event but inclined to criticize the choice of the name, declared that Maria was too young to look after the boy and from earliest days she determined the details of Alexander's life. He was not to be coddled; his mattress should be filled with hay; his room should always have a window open, even in the Russian winter; he was to sleep in the wing of the Winter Palace beside the Admiralty so that he should grow accustomed to the cannon fire. It is not surprising that he began to suffer from deafness of the left ear. The empress was no less possessive towards Maria's second son, born on 22 April 1779. She insisted not only on how he was to be reared but on the name he shoud carry. He was baptized Constantine; Catherine II, whose armies were sweeping the Turks into the Black Sea, was convinced that this second grandson would one day reign as Emperor of a new Byzantium.
In the spring of 1783, when he was twenty-nine years old, a Swiss scholar, Frederic Cesar de La Harpe, came to Russia, originally as a tutor to the brother on one of Catherine's favorites. Ever since their parents had first gone abroad, Alexander and Constantine had been placed under the supervision of one of Catherine II's ladies-in-waiting, Sophia Benckendorff, who was in effect their governess. But on 19 September 1783 Sophia Benckendorff collapsed and died while in attendace on the empress at Tsarskoe Selo. The grand dukes now, the empress decided, should have not a mere tutor, but a governor and for this post she chose Nicholas Ivanovich Saltykov. She sent the general an able directive on the principles of education and selected a team of tutors who were to work together under Saltykov's direction.
Yet, in later years, people barely remembered Saltykov as one of the formative influences on Alexander's mind. It was La Harpe whom they commended or condemned, for the emperor's generous principles and Alexander himself was ever ready to acknowledge the debt. From La Harpe he learnt of ancient Greece and Rome, the contractual theories of John Locke (and how the Americans were interpreting them) and what it was that the empress had found fit to admire in Voltaire.
Catherine increasingly turned her thoughts towards her family and the dynasty. Already she had convinced herself that Alexander, with his good looks and charming manners, was warming the hearts of all the young ladies in St Petersburg society; and she may well have been right, even though he only celebrated his fourteenth birthday at the end of the year. A bride must be found for her favourite grandson. She would establish him with a court of his own, near her palace at Tsarskoe Selo. Were Alexander to marry and consolidate his hold on the affections of the people, there was every reason for Catherine to publish an edict which would debar Paul from the throne and proclaim her eldest grandson as heir to the empire. The thought had already occurred to many at the court and indeed to Paul himself. Rumour said a proclamation would be made on the day Alexander was married, but the empress was slow to give any sign of her intentions.
In September 1792, the empress sent Catherine Shuvalova, one of her ladies-in-waiting, to southern Germany with instructions to escort two daughters of Karl Ludwig of Baden to St Petersburg: Louise celebrated her fourteenth birthday that autumn and her younger sister, Frederica, was only eleven. They arrived in St Petersburg on the evening of 31 October and everyone welcomed the two girls, especially Louise. She reminded many people at the court of her aunt, who had been married to Paul in 1773 only to die in childbirth three years later. The only doubt was whether Alexander at fourteen was ready for married life. The empress was too ruthless a matchmaker and could see that Louise was soon completely infatuated with Alexander and she brushed aside her grandson's lack of ardour as a natural reticence.
Neither Paul nor Maria was consulted over Catherine's marriage project for their elder son though both travelled up to St Petersburg from Gatchina two days after the arrival of both princesses. Maria was as enthusiastic about young Louise as the empress herself. Paul, too, welcomed Louise and was at first amused by the high spirits of the two girls, but what was acceptable in the capital seemed out of place at Gatchina and, although Louise endeavoured to please Alexander's parents, it was difficult for a young girl not to find the atmosphere of a military camp oppressive and even harder not to show her real feelings.
In the second week of May 1793 Louise was received into the Orthodox Church and took the name Elizabeth Alexeyevna and on the next day she was formally betrothed to Alexander and created Grand Duchess. There followed several days of festivity. Elizabeth was happy, confiding amused comments to her young sister. Alexander found that he did not spend so much time at his studies, a development which saddened him little and no one had seen the empress so pleased with herself since Gregory Potemkin's death in 1791. In the first days of August her sister was packed off to Baden, apparently because she caught the eye of the last favorite of the empress, Platon Zubov, but Elizabeth's sorrow at the injustice towards her sister soon gave way to indignation at the tales of her own conduct. It was said that, while staying in Pavlovsk, she had pressed her charms prematurely on Alexander, climbing into his room through the window.
As summer passed into autumn, Catherine speeded the arrangements for the wedding. She had declared her intention of having 'a simple yet lofty' palace built for her grandson and his bride in the park at Tsarskoe Selo. It would be close to her own favourite residence and no more than fifteen miles from St Petersburg itself. By the end of September everything was ready, but for Elizabeth there was another disappointment. A sudden illness prevented her father from setting out from Germany and her mother chose to remain with him, perhaps from wifely concern but just possibly becasue she had once been a contender for the hand of Grand Duke Paul and Russia did not have for her the pleasant associations. The marriage was celebrated on 9 October 1793, in the court church. The ladies-in-waiting and their maids were expected to inform both Catherine and Maria of the relations between the newlyweds.
Alexander and Elizabeth were, indeed, far too young to assume the responsibilities of the married life. They were intelligent children, well-tutored but badly schooled, for neither had experienced any consistent formal education. There were evenings when Elizabeth would sing, Alexander play the violin, his elder sisters join in the duets and the great empress nod approvingly. While on other nights a play, an opera or a ballet would be presented in the little theatre at the Hermitage, with two generations watching Catherine uncertainly before venturing to applaud. St Petersburg's society was puzzled by this second grand ducal court. Alexander's household contained more dignitaries than Paul's had ever done. Yet rumours persisted in the capital that the empress was about to proclaim Alexander her successor. It was thought that the most likely time for an announcement of this kind would be as soon as he became a father. Throughout the summer of 1794 Elizabeth was embarrassed by pointed enquiries about her health and at one moment Maria asked Alexander outright if his wife was pregnant, but there was no immediate prospect of any child being born to the young couple. As if to mock poor Elizabeth, Maria herself gave birth to a seventh baby in January 1795, a girl baptized Anna, and within eighteen months she had yet another child, the future emperor Nicholas I. Even the empress began to show more intererst in the growing family at Pavlovsk and Gatchina than in Alexander and his wife.
It is not surprising that Elizabeth's letters home seem low spirited. To many in St Petersburg she now appeared a person of little significance. In her loneliness she became pathetically attached to the wife of the marshal of the court, Varvara Golovina, a woman twelve years her senior with whom she established an indiscreet relationship. Within less than twelve months of her marriage, Elizabeth was writing passionate notes to the countess, apparently with Alexander's complaisance.
La Harpe saw the danger for Russia and for Alexander personally of a deep conflict between the two grand ducal courts and he did what he could to prevent it. Yet, by the end of 1794, Catherine had become so suspicious of La Harpe's teachings that she decided to put an end to his services in Russia and encourage him to return to Switzerland. He had, however, one last task of importance to perform. In May 1795, on the eve of his departure La Harpe drove out to Gatchina. He later described how he had 'an interview of two hours' with Paul, urging a reconciliation between the father and his sons. Paul was moved and unexpectedly invited La Harpe to stay at Gatchina for a ball which was to be given in Constantine's honour. It is not clear how much La Harpe revealed of the empress' intentions over the succession, a subject on which she had spoken to him several times in the preceding eighteen months, but Paul took his advice to heart and made a point of seeing more of Alexander and Constantine in the following year. Even without La Harpe's intervention, Alexander would have sought to improve relations with his parents. Catherine still did not speak directly to him of her plans for the future, but she had tried to enlist the support of Maria and some councillors of state for a decree of exclusion. He was terrified of his father and, moreover, at heart, filial respect and a sound measure of common sense made him loyal to his father's claims. He diligently attended the manoeuvres at Gatchina throughout the summer of 1795 and on into 1796. Only Elizabeth fared badly from the family reconciliation, for she found it difficult to hide her dislike of Paul's mania for parades and was too high spirited not to resent Maria's domineering manner.
Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich (1777-1825)
Louise of Baden (1779-1826),
daughter of Karl Ludwig of Baden and Landgravine Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt
Varvara Golovina (1766-1819),
daugther of Nicholas Fedorovich Golitsyn and Praskovia Ivanovna Shuvalova,
sister of Ivan Shuvalov, one of Empress Elizabeth's favorites
Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich (1777-1825)
Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (1770-1861),
son of Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski and
Isabel Fleming
Grand Duchess Elizabeth Alexeyevna (1779-1826)
Eighteen months after her grandson's marriage, Catherine brought to St Petersburg two members of the Polish nobility, Adam Jerzy and Constantine Czartoryskis. It was inevitable that two charming and courteous newcomers, with topics of conversation fresh to him, should immediately attract the young grand duke's attention. He was, at that very moment, beginning to find friends outside the narrow circle prescribed for him by his family and his tutors. Naturally the Czartoryski brothers found themselves brought more and more into Alexander's company. A friendship rapidly developed between Adam Czartoryski and Catherine's eldest grandson and the Polish aristocrat became in effect a successor to La Harpe as Alexander's principal mentor and confidant. This was certainly not the empress' intention. The Czartoryskis were one of the most enlightened Polish aristocratic families, inclined in the past to co-operate with the Russians. But in 1794 they had supported Tadeusz Kosciuszko and were now therefore liable to lose their estates. The empress, however, gave an undertaking that if the two young princes of the family, Adam and Constantine, would come to St Petersburg and enter the Russian service as a guarantee of the family's good behaviour, then the Czartoryski estates would not be forfeited. Adam Czartoryski, who had been abroad during the Polish revolt and had not actively assisted Kosziuszko himself, arrived in St Petersburg in the spring of 1795. It was in the spring of 1796 when Alexander invited Adam to walk with him around the gardens of the Tauride Palace and explained to him his political hopes and principles. Adam was surprised by Alexander's liberal sentiments, which he may have taken rather more seriously than as warranted. The grand duke declared that he did not approve of the policies of the government and of the court, especially towards Poland.
Two other men besides Czartoryski influenced Alexander's development in these last years of Catherine's reign, Victor Kochubey and Colonel Alexis Arakcheev. Kochubey was a nephew of Bezborodko, one of Catherine's chief ministers, and had spent much of his youth abroad. Arakcheev, by contrast, was a professional soldier who came from a small provincial landowner's family. As a cadet Arakcheev worked so conscientiously at the school of artillery that he was seconded in 1792 to Paul's Gatchina Corps (a unit which had little appeal to members of the more aristocratic families). At Gatchina he won rapid promotions, partly because of his efficiency but also because his strict sense of discipline appealed to his master. When in 1795 Alexander and Constantine began to attend their father's parades and field exercises, Arakcheev was entrusted with the duty of introducing them to military service.
On 22 September 1796 the empress, belatedly thwarted in a plan to marry her eldest grand-daughter Alexandra to the young king of Sweden, suffered a slight apoplectic stroke. On 26 September a peremptory order was despatched to Gatchina requiring the immediate presence of Alexander in the capital. He came at once and had a long discussion with the empress. What exactly was said is not known, for no one else was present. Almost certainly Catherine at last formally told him of her desicion that he should succeed her on the throne. She entrusted him with a number of the state papers and it is probable that among the documents he received was an outline of the proclamation in which she would indicate both the future status of Paul and her final decision in Alexander's favour. Alexander neither accepted nor rejected whatever proposal had been made to him and Catherine may well have been puzzled over his attitude. On the morning of 15 November 1796 the empress suffered a second stroke; she collapsed and at once lost her consciousness. Neither her son nor her grandson were in the Winter Palace at the time: Paul was at Gatchina and Alexander, though resident in the capital, was that morning visiting Constantine Czartoryski. At once Paul ordered his carriage and with a small escort set out for St Petersburg. The night was frosty but clear, with no snow to muffle the sound of the procession as the racing wheels of the carriage thundered across the cobbles into the great square of the Winter Palace. There, on the steps, Alexander and Constantine awaited their father's coming. It was not until the evening of 17 November, two and a half days after the collapse, that Empress Catherine died.
Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich (1779-1831),
son of Paul I and Maria Fedorovna
Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (1781-1860),
Grand Duchess Anna Fedorovna,
daughter of Franz Friedrich Anton of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and
Augusta Caroline Sophie Reuss of Ebersdorf
Grand Duchess Elizabeth Alexeyevna by Elizabeth-Louise Vigee Le Brun
Life was harder now for the young grand dukes wives. Alexander's consort, Elizabeth, had at least come to know Russia before the sudden shock of Paul I's accession. Constantine, on the other hand, had married only a few months previously and his wife, Anna Fedorovna, hardly had time to accustom herself to the great contrast between life in Saxe-Coburg (where she was born) and in St Petersburg before everything was made even stranger by Catherine's death. Thus adversity fostered an especially deep friendship between Elizabeth and poor Anna. The emperor's conduct was bad enough; his daughters-in-law also resented their treatment by Empress Maria. They were expected to behave as though they were ladies-in-waiting, while Paul's recognised mistress, Catherine Nelidova, was treated with courtesy and respect at the court, even by the new empress herself. Yet let either Elizabeth or Anna show independence and they would be sternly rebuked.
There had been another cause for official celebrations in the capital during the spring of 1799, quite apart from General Suvorov's victories in Italy. For on 20 May Elizabeth gave birth to a girl, baptised Maria Alexandrovna. The baby was unusually dark, with black hair and features which seemed to correspond neither to her mother's nor to Alexander's. Aristocratic gossip maintained that the child's father was not the grand duke but his friend, Adam Czartoryski. There is no doubt the Polish prince had become passionately attached to the grand duchess and that their warm friendship was encouraged by Alexander himself. The fact that Czartoryski was hurriedly sent on a diplomatic mission in August 1798 and remained in exile until after Alexander's accession was accepted in some contemporary memoirs as the evidence that Paul had discovered the truth about the Pole's romance with Elizabeth and was determined to keep the lovers apart. But although Paul may have decided that Czartoryski was an unfortunate influence both upon his son and his daughter-in-law, he cannot have suspected the prince had fathered a child on Elizabeth. For Czartoryski left St Petersburg on 22 August 1798, nine months and one week before the baby's birth, almost certainly too early for Elizabeth to have discovered she was pregnant. The emperor treated Elizabeth with kindness rather than displeasure during her confinement and distributed honours to her household when the baby was born. Tragically little Maria died from convulsions when she was only fourteen months old, but during her brief life there is no suggestion of coolness between husband and wife. If Czartoryski was indeed the baby's father, it did not lessen Alexander's personal regard to him. On the other hand, Maria hardened her attitude towards Elizabeth and made no effort to disguise her dislike of the Czartoryskis.
Paul's unpopular policies led to a successful conspiracy to assassinate him on 11 March 1801. Historians still debate Alexander's role in his father's murder. The most common opinion is that he was let into the conspirators' plans and was willing to take the throne but insisted that his father should not be killed. On 12 March 1801, Peter Ludwig von der Pahlen, one of the plot's leaders and organisers, woke Alexander with the news that his father was dead. He told him that the threat of detention had thrown Paul into an apoplectic fit, from which he never recovered, but Alexander was not deceived and the new autocrat of Russia collapsed with grief. Elizabeth, though startled by the news, remained magnificently resolute. She begged her husband to steel his nerves, to show himself to the troops so as to prevent further mischief. Reluctantly and hardly able to move his legs for shock, he agreed to leave at once for the Winter Palace and assume his responsibilities as the sovereign of the empire. There were still terrible hours ahead of him that day and often he seemed to walk in a daze, barely conscious of what was going on. He told the troops that his father had died and that he would reign according to the spirit and principles of Empress Catherine II.
Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna,
dressed in mourning
by Gerhard von Kugelgen in 1801
Peter Ludwig von de Pahlen (1745-1826),
a Russian courtier and one of the conspirators of Paul I's assassination
Empress Maria collapsed in hysterical sobs as soon as she was told of Paul's death. At first she denounced Alexander for conniving at his father's death and she refused to receive him in her apartments. Momentarily, the grieving empress even claimed the throne for herself, insisting that the night's crime made a mockery of Paul's coronation and invalidated every pronouncement made on that occasion, including the decree regulating the succession. By noon, however, she was sufficiently recovered to talk sensibly to her eldest son, whose grief convinced her he had not known his father's life was in danger. Alexander's nerves were shattered. For weeks he could bear to dine only with Elizabeth, in his familiar surrounds of the Winter Palace. Yet as the months passed into years, with the murderers themselves going unpunished, it became clear that Alexander was haunted, not by the crime he never witnessed, but by the conspiracy of which he had known too much and too little.
Although Alexander buried himself in work during the spring and summer of 1801, he was too inexperienced to have real insight into his country's problems. Within a few weeks of his accession he established an informal council of close advisers, the Secret Committee, complementary to the official Permanent Council of State and to the Senatorial Committee of reform. The first meeting of the Secret Committee was held on 6 July 1801. It consisted of only four members - Adam Czartoryski, Nicholas Novosiltsev, Paul Stroganov and Victor Kochubey (who had been abroad at that time). From the very beginning of their meetings, the four members realised the opportunity awaiting them. In correspondence with each other - and indeed with Alexander himself - they maintained that their principal task was to help him discover what was the wisest policy for an enlightened autocrat to pursue.
For the first three months of his reign, there was little Alexander could do to free himself from Pahlen's overbearing authority. After the assassination he acquired an irreconcilable enemy in Dowager Empress Maria who prevented him from occupying any important post under Alexander's reign. And, on 1 April 1801, Pahlen was discharged from the service and ordered to withdraw into his estates in Courland. It was announced in the official gazette on 22 June that, because of ill-health, the count had resigned and was leaving St Petersburg to seek a spell of convalescence on his estates in Latvia. The other conspirators also found it discreet to retire from St Petersburg at the earliest opportunity and fade into provincial obscurity. Some were later entrusted by Alexander with high office: General Levin August von Benningsen, after serving a term as Governor-General of Lithuania, was appointed an army commander in 1806; Peter Volkonsky, who had taken smaller part in the conspiracy, became an aide-de-camp to Alexander and remained a close friend for the whole of his life. However, the terrible drama at the Mikhailovsky so played on Alexander's conscience that he wished, as much as possible, to avoid contact with any of the men who had plotted the palace revolution.
Within the court itself there was throughout the summer a strong desire for the emperor to travel south to Moscow and to be crowned in the old capital as soon as possible. Alexander and Elizabeth left St Petersburg on 11 September and travelled by easy stages to Novgorod and thence on to Tver. As he came nearer to Moscow, Alexander's impatience mounted. The imperial carriage and their escort clattered into Tver on the evening of 16 September, still a hundred miles from Moscow. In the evening of 17 September they reached the Petrovsky Palace, on the north-western approaches to Moscow. There, in the neoclassical elegance of one of Catherine II's later palaces, the imperial couple rested for three days before making their solemn entry into the old capital. The ceremonies began on 20 September, when the new emperor left the Petrovsky Palace and rode slowly astride a white horse along a four-mile route to the Kremlin. The imperial couple entered the cathedrals and churches, kissed the sacred icons and took up residence in the Slobodsky Palace. Throughout the following week there was a succession of banquets and solemn receptions and both Alexander and Elizabeth were thankful for each day's task completed. On 27 September 1801 the imperial couple were crowned.
The imperial couple remained in Moscow for a full month after the coronation ceremony. There were grand banquets for several hundred guests, masked balls to attend, a huge feast for the townsfolk, plays, concerts and military parades. Now that the most solemn purpose of the visit was safely accomplished Alexander's spirits began to rise and to some it seemed as if he were already ensnared by the charms of Maria Antonovna Naryshkina, a sultry Polish-born countess who pursued him relentlessly from one social evening to another and it is probable that her predatory activities account, in part, for Elizabeth's weariness with Moscow. The Moscow visit outlasted autumn, rain swept in from the east and with it the threat of sleet and snow. At last, on 27 October, the imperial cavalcade set out along the road towards Tver and the northern capital.
Although Alexander had never met Frederick III William or his consort Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, there was already a close friendship between the royal families of Berlin and St Petersburg. Alexander's second sister, Elena Pavlovna, had married Prince Frederick Ludwig of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and the young couple often visited Berlin, where Elena was a particular favourite of both King and Queen of Prussia. She had encouraged Alexander to go to Memel, convinced that her brother and the Prussian king were kindred spirits. Alexander arrived at Memel on 10 June 1802 and spent nearly a week there. Although it was only a few miles from his own Lithuanian territories, the town possessed a special fascination for Alexander on these long summer days. Never before had he been guest at a foreign court and the Prussians did all they could to flatter his vanity. Every evening there was a ball, at which he danced with the beautiful queen who was twenty-one months his senior. His actions won warm approval from Maria Fedorovna, to whom so close a bond between Russia and Prussia appeared almost as a diplomatic triumph from beyond the grave. Others in the capital were less happy: Empress Elizabeth, with family attachments to Baden, did not welcome the prospect of close collaboration with Prussia, nor was she pleased at the constant eulogies of Prussia's Queen.
Alexander still retained at the court the pleasant informality of manner which so marked off his reign from that of his father, but after fifteen months on the throne he was hardly less autocratic than Paul I had been. The growing resemblance between Alexander and his father was ominous and so, too, was his failure to invite the Secret Committee to resume its meetings in the palace. A decree published in the emperor's make on 20 September 1802 set up the government departments: Foreign Affairs, War, the Admiralty, the Interior, Finance, Justice, Commerce and Education. Each department was to be headed by a minister and a deputy minister appointed by the sovereign and directly responsible to him. Some aspects of life in Russia benefited from this reform: the Ministry of Education set up a surprisingly effective system of instruction in the larger cities and, during 1803 and 1804, founded the universities at Dorpat, Kazan, Kharkov and Vilna. In the Ministry of the Interior matters of public welfare were entrusted to an able departmental executive, Mikhail Speransky.
The September Decree of 1802 had the incidental effect of providing Victor Kochubey with an opportunity to leave the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the reshuffling of governmental responsibilities Alexander appointed him as Minister of the Interior and assigned him a member of the Secret Committee, Paul Stroganov, as a deputy. The emperor turned, for a new Foreign Affairs Minister, to Alexander Vorontsov, who began his career at the age of fifteen in the Izmailovsky Regiment of the Guards. In 1759, his uncle, the grand chancellor Mikhail Vorontsov, sent him to Strasbourg, Paris and Madrid to train him in diplomacy. Under Peter III, who was in love with his sister Elizabeth, he represented Russia for a short time at the court of George III in London. Catherine II created him a senator and a president of the Board of Trade, but she never liked him and ultimately, in 1791, compelled him to retire from public life. Alexander did not always agree with Vorontsov any more than he had with his predecessor, Victor Kochubey, but he treated his judgements with the greater respects. Privately he preferred to work with the man whom he had appointed as his deputy, Adam Czartoryski, but he was well aware of the hostility which the continued presence of a Polish prince at the court aroused among many of the older landed nobility. It suited Alexander to have a respected Russian nobleman as the head of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, even if his achievements in office belied his reputation.
Since the Knights of St John had conferred the Grand Mastership of the order on his father, Alexander claimed to be the rightful protector both of the Knights and their island. At first, the Malta affair brought France and Russia closer together, for it was in both their interests to encourage Britain to evacuate the island. However, Alexander had to modify the original attitude over Malta: better the British stay in the island than it should become the advanced base for a second French expedition to the East. The war was resumed between Britain and France in May 1803 and Alexander accepted the fact that he might have to abandon the principle of passive isolation. He was ready to pursue a vigorous foreign policy, although he was uncertain how or when he should intervene and whether he should concentrate on neutralising Napoleon Bonaparte or on building up a powerful combination against him. Once Alexander made up his mind that Alexis Arakcheev could bring order and efficiency into the training and preparation of an army for battle, nothing would prevent him from summoning the general back to active service. On 26 May he informed Arakcheev that he was appointing him Inspector-General of the Artillery. It would be his prime task to build up gunnery and establish effective systems of supply and command.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky (1772-1839),
a Russian reformist during the reign of Emperor Alexander I
Alexis Andreyevich Arakcheev (1769-1834),
a Russian general and statesman
Maria Antonovna Naryshkina (1779-1854),
daughter of a Polish prince Anton Stanislaw Czetwertynski-Swiatopelk and his wife Tekla;
wife of Dmirtry Lvovich Naryhskin from 1795;
mistress of Emperor Alexander I in 1799-1818
Countess Maria Antonovna Naryshkina
At the end of 1801 Alexander's affection for Elizabeth, together with the awareness of the political inconvenience of a Polish mistress, led the emperor to break formally with Maria. However, it was difficult for Alexander to avoid meeting a vivacious character who was married to one of the wealthiest men in the capital and he probably did not try hard and Maria was certainly no ordinary courtesan. The complexities of government, the failure of Elizabeth to provide him with an heir, the amorous vagaries of his brother Constantine, possibly even the growing authority within his councels of the Pole, Czartoryski - all these influences and others, too, prompted Alexander to turn more and more to the passionate Maria for sensual satisfaction. In that spring of 1803 he would slip away again and again to her palace by the Fontanka Canal and in the summer evenings he followed her to a villa on the islands. She had the power to indulge the coquetries and caprices of a siren and always found ways of attracting those whom she wished to bemuse. Sometime in July she became pregnant and, with heartless lack of compassion, flaunted herself before Elizabeth, not disguising the fatherhood of the child she was expecting. Perhaps she believed Alexander would induce the Orthodox hierarchy to annul his marriage and make her his wife and Empress. But, if she did so dream, she failed to understand the complexities of Tsardom or the ties which still bound sovereign and his consort.
No one in St Petersburg was shocked or surprised that the emperor should have a mistress, least of all his mother, who had always tended to treat Paul's courtesans as personal friends and companions, if he would permit her to do so. But Elizabeth was in a different position: she had no surviving children of her own; she remained a lonely un-Russian figure, never entirely assimilating the ways of her country of adoption; she was constantly upstaged by Dowager Empress, to whom the court etiquette assigned precedence at all public occasions and, above all, she continued to love her husband for himself rather than for the stature bestowed on him as a ruler of All of the Russias. She would not follow the example of her friend, Grand Duchess Anna Fedorovna, who, weary of Constantine's rages and infidelity, had returned (also childless) to Germany, and she was prepared to show patience. Though too often Alexander treated Elizabeth as a companion rather than a wife, there was a depth in their relationship which no exercises in insolent allurement could dispel.
A tragic episode in the following year of 1804 revealed once more the extent of Alexander's dependence on Elizabeth. In January Maria bore her lover a daughter and Alexander could not hide from Elizabeth the pride he felt in fatherhood. A few months later, however, the infant girl died, but Maria hardly allowed the tragedy to disturb the flow of her life. It was Elizabeth, rather than Maria, who perceived the depth of Alexander's grief and who gave to him reassurance and comfort.
As a young boy, visiting the grand ducal court, Alexander showed special devotion to his eldest sister, Alexandra, five and a half years his junior. In the autumn of 1799 she married Archduke Joseph, Palatine of Hungary, however, she died in childbirth in March 1801, in the same week as her father's murder. The coincidental timing of these two deaths preyed heavily on Alexander's mind. Soon after coming to the throne he began to find in his fourth sister, Catherine, who had been borne in May 1788, a consolation for the loss he had felt. By the coming of spring in 1803 Maria Fedorovna was looking for a suitor for Catherine. She had always liked Archduke Joseph and she now invited him to make another journey to Russia where, though this was left unsaid, he could well find a second wife from within the same family. But there were too many obstacles, political and religious, to the marriage and Joseph returned to Hungary without any prospect of a bride. However, the episode appears to have intensified Alexander's affection for his sister. Elizabeth, though fond of her own sisters and brother, could not abide Catherine. In this instance at least, she found it difficult to understand the intensity of Alexander's feelings. Alexander and Elizabeth continued to attend most of the formal functions together as they had been accustomed to do before his accession.
Throughout the summer of 1804 Russian diplomats were active in every capital not already under the dominance of the French and in St Petersburg all thoughts of domestic reform were abandoned in favour of a positive foreign policy. The Anglo-Russian Alliance, long under discussion and already drafted in April, was at last ratified on 28 July 1805. Twelve days later the Austrians, even more alarmed than the Russians or the British at the French activity in the Italian peninsula, added their signatures to the alliance. On 7 August 1805 the emperor sent a letter to Frederick William III urging him to allow Russian troops to pass through Prussia and for the following nine weeks secret messages were exchanged between the two monarchs. Most of August Alexander spent in St Petersburg, striking appropriately martial attitudes. Against the advice of Czartoryski and the diplomatic envoys of his Austrian ally, he had decided to follow his armies into the field and share their fortunes in battle.
Despite the knowledge that Napoleon had embarked on a full invasion of the Austrian lands, Alexander was in no hurry. He left Potsdam on the morning of 5 November and did not arrive at allied headquarters in Olmutz until the evening of 18 November. Some of the delay was accidental: winter came early, snow followed by a thaw leaving the roads of Bohemia heavy with slush and confusion over the precise siting of headquarters ruled out the shortest routes to Moravia. But Alexander himself added four or five days to the journey by suddenly deciding to make a detour and pay a visit to his eldest surviving sister, Maria Pavlovna, who had married Crown Prince of Saxe-Weimar in the previous year. The preceding month had brought the heaviest blows to the Austrian arms for over a century. After the capitulation at Ulm in October, effective control of the armies on the Danube devolved upon the commander of the Russian advance-guard, General Mikhail Kutuzov, who had no intention of wasting the lives of his men in order to keep the French out of the Austrian capital. The French followed after Kutuzov, but soon found themselves in a difficult position. Prussian intentions were unknown and could be hostile, the Russian and Austrian armies had converged and French lines of communication were extremely long, requiring strong garrisons to keep them open. Thus Napoleon realized that to capitalize on the success at Ulm, he had to force the Allies to battle and defeat them. On the Russian side, Kutuzov also realized Napoleon needed to do battle and, instead of clinging to the Austrian defense plan, he decided to retreat to Olmutz. Napoleon did not stay still and decided to set a psychological trap in order to lure the Allies out. Days before any fighting, he had been giving the impression that his army was weak and that he desired a negotiated peace. On 25 November, General Anne Jean Marie Rene Savary was sent to the Allied headquarters at Olmutz to deliver Napoleon's message expressing his desire to avoid a battle, while secretly examining the Allied forces' situation. As expected, the overture was seen as a sign of weakness. When Francis I offered an armistice on 27 November, Napoleon accepted enthusiastically. The next day he requested a personal interview with Alexander and received a visit from the emperor's most impetuous aide, Peter Dolgoruky. The meeting was another part of the main trap, as Napoleon intentionally expressed anxiety and hesitation to his opponents. Many of the Allied officers supported an immediate attack and appeared to sway Alexander. Kutuzov's plan to retreat further to the Carpathian region was rejected and the Allies soon fell into Napoleon's trap.
Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Austerlitz by Francois Gerard
The battle took place about six miles southeast of the town of Brno, between that town and Austerlitz in what is now the Czech Republic, on 2 December 1805. For two hours the fighting continued on either flank. The weather was rapidly deteriorating: no more sunshine, only an icy wind and grey rolling clouds threatening snow. The difficult position of the Allies was confirmed by the decision to send in the Russian Imperial Guard, commanded by Grand Duke Constantine, forcing a bloody effort and the only loss of a French standard in the battle. General panic now seized the Allied army and it abandoned the field in all possible directions. It seemed absurd to the Austrians to continue a war in which there was no immediate prospect of ousting the invader from their capital city; the longer the campaign dragged on, the harder would be the peace terms. Emperor Francis I resolved to send Johann I Joseph, Prince of Liechtenstein, to Napoleon in Austerlitz and seek an armistice, a personal meeting and a separate peace. Thus the hostilities between Austria and France duly ended on the following day (4 December) and it was agreed that the conditions of armistice should apply to the Russians as well, provided that they evacuated the Habsburg lands and retired across the river Bug to their own territories. The Holy Roman Empire was effectively wiped out, 1806 being seen as its final year. Napoleon created the Confederation of the Rhine, a string of German states meant to serve as a buffer between France and Prussia.
Alexander arrived at Gatchina shortly after midnight on 21 December. He exchanged no more than a few words with his mother and then insisted, with some of his old restlessness, on changing horses and driving through the night over the last thirty miles to the Winter Palace. He talked endlessly to Elizabeth of the frustration and disappointments of the campaign.
Througout the year of 1806 the people of Russia saw little of their emperor. He remained close to St Petersburg, venturing out occasionally as far as Pavlovsk or Gatchina, however, taking little part in the life of the capital. Inevitably Alexander's remoteness encouraged gossip and rumour. It was said that his character was coming more and more to resemble his father's: unpredictable moods and suspicion descending with the suddenness, black days when he wished to hide from the public eye and hours of deep remorse when (so they said) the memory of Austerlitz left him broken with tears. If St Petersburg saw little of Elizabeth that summer, it was not that she frowned on her husband's behaviour but that she needed long hours of rest in the quiet of Kamenny Island which was only three miles from the Winter Palace itself, and sometimes that summer and autumn, as the imperial carriage swept across the River Neva, it was carrying the emperor, not to the voluptuous Maria, but to his wife in Bezhenov's villa. On 15 November 1806 Elizabeth duly gave birth to her child. Alexander still had no son to succeed him, but, if pangs of regret troubled him, he hid his anguish with comforting reassurance and was delighted to be, once more, the father of a baby daughter.
By November 1806, when the child was born, Alexander had again become deeply involved in the European conflict. Within four months of Czartoryski's resignation the Russians were engaged in two wars which he had long anticipated: a campaign against Turkey on the lower Danube and a renewed campaign against the French on the plains of Poland. For, quite apart from normal difficulties of mobilising an army, Alexander was confronted by a problem peculiar to the conditions of the Russian service: he had to find a commander-in-chief acceptable to the majority of his senior officers, to Dowager Empress and, above all, to himself. He refused to consider Mikhail Kutuzov or Peter Bagration, resisted the claims of his brother Constantine and thought it impolitic to choose anyone not of Russian origin. Alexander eventually appointed Mikhail Kamensky, who was said to suffer from so many ailments that he was never sure which was troubling him at the moment. Effective control of the army in the field was entrusted to Levin Bennigsen, a far abler soldier than either of the old marshals but a man whose role in the conspiracy against Paul I had earned him the implacable hatred of Maria Fedorovna.
Within a week of the outbreak of war in 1806, Frederick William III's army was routed in the twin battles of Jena and Auerstadt on 14 October and, on 27 October, Napoleon entered Berlin itself. The Prussian ministers, broken and cowed by the experience of defeat, urged Frederick William III to sue at once for peace. It began to seem as if the Russians would not, after all, be required to march westwards that winter. Although as yet the danger from the French appeared remote to most of the Russian gentry, it was already posing a serious political problem for those members of the aristocracy who possessed lands in the Polish territories of the empire. For, on 27 November, French troops entered Warsaw, ejecting the Russian Corps which had advanced tentatively across the frontier a week before. Majority of the Poles welcomed Napoleon as a liberator, although the patrician families hesitated to commit themselves irrevocably to the French cause. Jozef Anton Poniatowski, the nephew of Stanislaw II Augustus, entered French service and most of the great families followed his example; by the middle of January Napoleon was ready to set up a provisional Polish administration in Warsaw.
On 26 December 1806 the French army attacked Bennigsen's position at Pultusk in the mistaken belief that they had stumbled on Kamensky's rearguard. After a desperate fight the French were thrown back, however, during the night, Bennigsen decided to retire and did so the next day, on 27 December, using the longer road to Rozan along the east bank of the Narew River. From there he continued his retreat to Ostroleka. The French was in no position to pursue the Russians and occupied Pultusk on 28 December.
Empress Elizabeth Alexeyevna (after 1806)
Levin August von Bennigsen (1745-1826),
a German general in the service of
the Russian Empire
The year of 1807 was opening for Russia full of hope and Bennigsen - past crimes forgiven in the intoxication of Pultusk - was confirmed as a commander-in-chief against Napoleon. At the end of the first week in February the two armies stumbled against each other, almost by accident, around the town of Preussich-Eylau - rolling countryside in which numerous lakes and marshes lay treacherously hidden beneath three or four feet of snow, indistinguishable from the fields between the villages. The battle of Eylau was fought on 8 February, almost in darkness and, with snow squalls swept down from the north by a strong wind, nearly fifty thousand men (French, Russian and Prussian) perishing in an indecisive conflict. Technically, however, Eylau was reckoned a Napoleonic victory. The Russians fell back on the city of Konigsberg, where King and Queen of Prussia were still in residence and the French were left masters of the field of battle. By mid-March there were signs of an early spring and Alexander became increasingly restive. He still faced difficulties with his won family, especially his mother. For Maria Fedorovna disliked the whole campaign, fearing that Russian lives were being sacrificed for the benefit of Prussia. She begged her son not to assume command in the field himself; Alexander was indeed conscious of the dangers she stressed, but his mind was made up. He left St Petersburg on the morning of 28 March and two days later was once more in Memel, where Frederick William III and his queen were waiting to talk of the past and plan the future. From Memel the emperor insisted on accompanying Frederick William III into the battle zone of the two armies and, in the last week of April, both monarchs signed a convention at Bartenstein as a supreme gesture of Russian-Prussian unity.
Napoleon receiving Louise of Prussia, in July 1807
Napoleon and Alexander say goodbye aftre the Treaty of Tilsit
On 14 June the opposing armies clashed in the small town of Friedland, on the banks of the Alle, seventy miles west of Alexander's headquarters. The major battle for which all Russia waited throughout the spring had come in the end, but victory rested once more with Napoleon. The Russians suffered heavy losses in the disorganized retreat over the river, with many soldiers drowning. With Bennigsen's army beaten, on 19 June, Alexander sent an envoy to seek an armistice with the French. Napoleon, too, wanted peace so as to concentrate his efforts against Britain and complete his re-organisation of the German lands and Italy. On that basis, the two emperors began peace negotiations at the town of Tilsit after meeting on an iconic raft on the River Niemen. The two emperors spent several days reviewing each other's armies, passing out medals and frequently talking about non-political subjects. An armistice of a month's duration was finally concluded on 21 June. However, it was not long before the enthusiasm of Tilsit began to wane. Meanwhile, the personal relations of Alexander and Napoleon were of the most cordial character and it was hoped that a fresh meeting might adjust all differences between them. The meeting took place at Erfurt in October 1808 and resulted in a treaty which defined the common policy of the two emperors. But Alexander's relations with Napoleon nonetheless suffered a change. He realised that in Napoleon sentiment never got the better of reason, that as a matter of fact he had never intended his proposed 'grand enterprise' seriously and only used it to preoccupy the mind of Alexander while he consolidated his own power in Central Europe.
On 12 May 1808, the tragedy enveloped the emperor's private life. Early in the morning his eighteen months old daughter 'Lisinka' died from convulsions in her mother's arms as Alexander and Elizabeth stood helplessly beside her cot. For Elizabeth the death of her daughter was an even greater wound, one from which her spirit never fully recovered. The infant daughter had been a bond strengthening her love for Alexander, enabling her to ignore all those hours he chose once more to pass with Maria Naryshkina, steeling her loyalty to him in the hard tussle with his family. Now that the little girl was gone the pleasures and quarrels of the world seemed ephemeral and for more than two years Elizabeth remained in mourning, appearing on the state occasions sombre behind the magnificence of Alexander and Maria Fedorovna. Being too busy to weep for long and readily indulging his passion for others, Alexander failed to recognise for more than a decade the inner loneliness of his consort. And the breach between husband and wife became wider with every month that passed, as everyone at the court could see.
Duke George of Oldenburg (1784-1812),
son of Duke Peter I of Oldenburg and
Duchess Frederica of Wurttemberg
Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna (1788-1819),
daughter of Paul I and Maria Fedorovna;
wife of Duke George of Oldenburg in 1809-1812 and William I of Wurttemberg in 1816-1819
In January 1809, Alexander was host to Frederick William III of Prussia in St Petersburg. The foreign residents in the capital noted with amazement the elaborate and expensive preparations ordered by the emperor for the visit of the king, who was accompanied by the queen and by two of his brothers. For three and a half weeks there was constant festivity at the court. Even Elizabeth, though still wretchedly miserable in spirit, was cheered by the spate of entertainments and showed a sincere affection towards Queen Louise, who she well knew had stirred her husband's heart so deeply over the preceding six years. By now, too, the tension was less acute between the court and Maria Fedorovna's establishment at Pavlovsk, for Alexander had convinced his mother that he was playing a deep game with Napoleon, so Dowager Empress co-operated readily with the reigning empress in showing favour to the Prussians. The visit was, indeed, essentially a winter frolic and towards the end poor Queen Louise found the pace of entertainment so exciting that she had to retire, with Elizabeth, for several days of rest at Tsarskoe Selo while the indefatigable Alexander took Frederick William III and his brothers to Kronstadt, Oranienbaum and Peterhof.
While the Prussian royalty were in St Petersburg the formal betrothal of Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna to George of Holstein-Oldenburg had taken place and now Alexander was trying to accept the marriage of the sister whom he had, for so long, come to regard as his own companion. He liked George well enough, but the prospect of beloved Catherine's marriage again affected his health and he was forced to take days of rest. However, the marriage took place quite happily in the first week of May, although Elizabeth, who could never bring herself to love her sister-in-law, found the ceremony 'overweighted with the grandeur'. As an official residence in the capital the grand duchess and her husband were assigned the Anichkov Palace. It only remained for Alexander to find for George a post in the Russian administration which would neither deprive the empire of his beloved sister's services, nor himself of her occasional company. He found what he wanted for George at Tver, the old city on the Upper Volga. He was solemnly appointed Governor-General of the provinces of Tver, Yaroslavl and Novgorod. It was agreed that they would move into the palace of Tver, which had been originally constructed for Empress Catherine II forty years before. Catherine, however, expected finer accommodation and, throughout the summer, there was an extensive rebuilding project in Tver, supervised by Carlo Rossi. And by the autumn Rossi had made sufficient progress for Catherine to set out for Tver and on 26 August she left the Tauride Palace amid scenes of tearful farewell, as though passing into lasting exile.
From 1809 to 1812, Mikhail Speransky became one of the most powerful in Russia. He was the son of a village priest in the province of Vladimir and was himself originally educated at a seminary and trained for the priesthood. He developed such remarkable gifts of logical analysis and synthesis that, like many other able members of the seminary, he served as principal secretary to Vice Chancellor Alexander Kurakin, who was entrusted with high office early in Paul I's reign. Like everyone else who met him, the emperor was impressed by Speransky's air of efficiency and his authoritative mastery of detail. But some public figures, including Arakcheev and Catherine Pavlovna, resented Speransky's cold manner, finding something alien in the rigid austerity of his bureaucratic mind. However, at that particular moment, Alexander was desperately short of reliable advisers and conscious of the unpopularity of Tilsit in many sections of society. He was appointed Assistant Minister of Justice, receiving in January 1810 the rank and title of State Secretary. Speransky was uncompromisingly honest, cold and reserved, lacked all ambition for customary rewards, seeking neither a fortune nor the prestige of enhanced status. It was difficult to find in his conscientious devotion to the governmental service any lust for power nor was there any suggestion of opportunism in his earlier career.
On 14 December 1809, Armand Augustin Louis de Coulaincourt, the French ambassador in Russia, received a letter in which he was told to find out if Alexander would sanction a marriage between Napoleon and his youngest sister, Anna Pavlovna. She was still a few days short of her fifteenth birthday and there seems to have been some doubt in her brother's mind whether she had yet reached puberty. Alexander courteously acknowledged Napoleon's request but explained that, by the will of Emperor Paul I, all such matters depended upon the sanction of Dowager Empress who was in residence at Gatchina. He asked for ten days in which to consult Maria Fedorovna and other members of the family. Although Napoleon's marriage overture was strictly confidential, the possibility of a Bonaparte-Romanov marriage somehow became a principal topic of conversation during the New Year's festivities. At the end of the first week in February Alexander at last gave Caulaincourt an audience in which he imparted the decision of the family: the ambassador was to inform Napoleon of the sense of flattery experienced by Dowager Empress at the prospect of a marriage between her younger daughter and the illustrious emperor of the French but he was to explain that Grand Duchess Anna had only recently celebrated her fifteenth birthday and since Dowager Empress 'had already been forced to mourn the loss of two daughters through premature marriages, no consideration could permit her to risk endangering the life of Grand Duchess by contracting matrimonial obligations so young' and the Russian imperial family hoped that Emperor Napoleon would thus perceive the wisdom of postponing marriage with Grand Duchess Anna for another two years. Napoleon became impatient and before details of Alexander's compromise reached Paris, everyone knew that the man who had twice in a decade had seized Vienna would soon be marrying the daughter of Emperor of Austria, a girl three years older than Anna Pavlovna and physically far more mature. On 23 May 1810, Alexander gave the finest ball of his term of residence in St Petersburg to celebrate the marriage of Emperor Napoleon and Archduchess Maria Louise. It was a splendid occasion attended by the imperial family, ambassadors, ministers and envoys and by the greatest names in Russia.
The agitation against Speransky, already active in 1810, had grown in intensity as the foreign crisis mounted and the burden of taxation increased to keep pace with the expanding army. Yet his most formidable adversary remained, as ever, Grand Duchess Catherine, who could never forgive him for insisting that her husband's reports should pass through the normal departments of the administration rather than receive direct and preferential treatment from his brother-in-law on the throne. It was Catherine who forwarded to Alexander a powerfully written memorandum and it appears to have been her who insisted to Alexander that the sacrifice of Speransky was essential if the emperor wished to rally his nobility and gentry in a patriotic front of resistance to the French. Thus on the morning of 29 March 1812, a messenger from the Winter Palace informed Speransky that the emperor would receive him that evening. For more than two hours the others waited, puzzled by the length of what was normally a formal occasion. At last about eleven at night Speransky emerged, visibly upset, and began to put his papers into his briefcase, without a word to those around him. Speransky hurried home, found the Minister of Police awaiting for him with an official carriage and departed that same night for exile at Nizhny Novgorod, the great trading centre on the Volga.
By 1811, it became clear that Napoleon was not keeping to his side of the terms of the Treaty of Tilsit. He had promised assistance to Russia in its war against Turkey, but as the campaign went on, France offered no support at all. With war imminent between France and Russia, Alexander started to prepare the ground diplomatically. In April 1812 Russia and Sweden signed an agreement for mutual defence. A month later Alexander secured his southern flank through the Treaty of Bucharest (1812) which formally ended the war against Turkey. His diplomats managed to extract promises from Prussia and Austria that if Napoleon invade Russia, the former would help Napoleon as little as possible and that the latter would give no aid at all. By now, no one doubted in St Petersburg that Napoleon was preparing for a campaign on an unprecedented scale: there were reports of troops on the move northwards from Spain and Italy, of great collections of food and fodder at the centres of Danzig and Konigsberg.
On 24 June 1812, Napoleon's Grand Army, the largest army assembled up to that point in European history, crossed the Niemen River and headed towards Moscow. All reports that reached Alexander indicated that invading army was far larger than any of his generals had anticipated when discussing war plans. This was to be no mere campaign along the frontiers of Alexander's vast empire. Thus church, nobility and people were united with the sovereign in their determination to wage war relentlessly against 'the universal disturber of the world's peace'. Napoleon entered Vilna on the afternoon of 28 June, during a heavy thunderstorm, with only light skirmishing. He was worried, partly because of the strain the weather was imposing on his troops and also because the Poles and Lithuanians had not welcomed their liberation so warmly as he had anticipated. The abandonment of Vilna to Napoleon and later the loss of Minsk led to rapid fall in morale both at St Petersburg and Moscow. To many Russian people it seemed ominous that, four weeks after the invasion, no bulletin had brought news of a major battle. Barclay de Tolly, the Russian commander-in-chief, refused to fight despite Peter Bagration's urgings. Several times he attempted to establish a strong defensive position, but each time the French advance was too quick for him to finish preparations and he was forced to retreat once more. Political pressure on Barclay de Tolly to give battle and the general's continuing reluctance to do so led to his removal. On 20 August, Alexander at last sent for Kutuzov who, since returning from the Turkish Front, had been organising the militia in the capital. Bennigsen would serve him as a chief-of-staff, Barclay de Tolly and Bagration were confirmed in their respective army commands. Kutuzov continued much along the line of the general strategy, fighting the occasional defensive engagement but being careful not to risk the army in an open battle. Instead the Russian army fell back even deeper into Russia's interior.
By then Napoleon's Grand Army had passed through the burning wreck of Smolensk and captured Vyazma, little more than 150 miles from Moscow. Unwilling to give up Moscow without a fight, Kutuzov took up a defensive position some 75 miles before Moscow at a small village of Borodino. On 7 September 1812, both armies were locked in the largest and bloodiest battle. The French eventually captured the main positions on the battlefield but failed to destroy the Russian army. Among the Russians who were mortally wounded was Bagration, struck by a splinter of grapeshot in the leg as he rallied the defenders within his entrenchments. Although his life lingered on for another seventeen days, the news that he had fallen spread dismay through the Russian left flank and gave the French the needed advantage. Before the sun broke through, Kutuzov began to pull back his troops towards Moscow, only seventy miles to the east. He chose to act in accordance with his scorched earth tactics and retreat, leaving the road to Moscow open. He also ordered the evacuation of the city. The state of exhaustion of the French forces and the lack of recognition of the state of the Russian Army led Napoleon to remain on the battlefield with his army instead of the forced pursuit that had marked other campaigns that he had conducted. The entirety of the Guard was still available to Napoleon and in refusing to use it he lost this singular chance to destroy the Russian army.
Mikhail Illaryonavich Kutuzov (1745-1813),
was a Field Marshal of the Russian Empire;
after the Battle of Borodino in 1812 was awarded with the title of Prince of Smolensk
The Battle of Borodino in 1812
Peter Bagration wounded at Borodino by Valentin Melik
On 14 September 1812, Napoleon moved into the empty city that was stripped of all supplies by its governor, Fedor Rostopchin. In addition to abandoning the city, Rostopchin had ordered the prisons to be opened. Later that night a couple of fires broke out in the suburbs. These were thought to be due to carelessness on the part of the French soldiers. Some looting occurred and a military government was hastily set up in an attempt to keep order, however, fires broke out across the north part of the city, spreading and merging over the next few days. Rostopchin had left a small detachment of police, whom he charged with burning the city to the ground. French troops endeavored to fight the fire with whatever means they could, struggling to prevent the armory from exploding and to keep the Kremlin from burning down. Moscow, composed of wooden buildings, burnt down almost completely. Sitting in the ashes of a ruined city with no foreseeable prospect of the Russian capitulation, Napoleon had little choice but to withdraw his army from Moscow. Although he was withdrawing from Moscow, he was not as yet technically in retreat and he was already considering how to regroup his armies for the assault on St Petersburg in the spring of 1813, assuming of course that the emperor had not, in the intervening months, had the good sense to seek peace. However, in early November 1812 Napoleon learned that General Claude de Malet had attempted a coup d'etat in France. He abandoned the army on 5 December and returned home on a sleigh, leaving Marshal Joachim Murat in command. Subsequently Murat left what was left of the Grand Army to try and save his Kingdom of Naples. He left Napoleon's former stepson, Eugene de Beauharnais, in command. It was during these final days of the French retreat that the cold was cruellest, the temperature falling at times at twenty-five degrees of frost. The Grand Army shrank further and on 14 December 1812 it left Russian territory.
Napoleon in burning Moscow by Adam Albrecht (1841)
On 3 March 1813, after Great Britain agreed to the Swedish claims to Norway, Sweden entered an alliance with Great Britain and declared war against France. On 17 March, Frederick William III of Prussia published a call to arms to his subjects and declared war on France as well. The first armed conflict occurred on 5 April in the Battle of Mockern, where combined Prussian-Russian forces defeated French troops. Initially, Austria remained loyal to France and foreign minister Klemens von Metternich aimed to mediate a peace between France and its continental enemies, but when it became apparent that Napoleon was not interested in compromise, Austria joined the Allies and declared war on France in August 1813.
In the last week of April in 1813 Alexander was faced by what was to him, at least, a series of unexpected crises. Kutuzov suffered a stroke and died on 28 April at Bunzlau, in Prussian Silesia: the emperor appointed Field Marshal Peter Wittgenstein to succeed him as a commander-in-chief but found two senior Russian generals, Alexander Tormassov and Mikhail Miloradovich, resented the promotion of a man of German origin junior in years of service to themselves. Thus Alexander was forced to put both of their corps under his personal command, leaving Wittgenstein with a predominantly Prussian force. It was at this point, on 30 April, that Napoleon took the initiative for the first time in six and a half months and sent the reconstituted Grand Army eastwards across the river Saale. The two armies met on 2 May on high ground south of Lutzen. The French suffered greater casualties than the Allies, but the battle was technically a Napoleonic victory. The emperor accordingly summoned back Barclay de Tolly, who was senior to any other Russian general in the field. Although the enemy as a whole had little respect for Barclay de Tolly, he was less likely to arouse friction and resentment as a commander-in-chief than anybody else now that his old rivals, Bagration and Kutuzov, were both dead.
There were some anxious moments in the fourth week of May when Napoleon won another victory at Bautzen, however, lacking reliable and numerous cavalry, he was unable to fully take advantage of his victory and could not avoid the destruction of a whole army corps at the Battle of Kulm, further weakening his army. He withdrew to Leipzig in Saxony where he thought he could fight a defensive action against the Allied armies converging on him. There, at the so-called Battle of Nations (on 16-19 October 1813) a French army found itself faced by three Allied armies. Over the following days the battle resulted in a defeat for Napoleon, who however was still able to manage a relatively orderly retreat westwards. However, as the French forces were pulling across the Elster, the bridge was prematurely blown and part of his troops were stranded to be taken prisoner by the Allied forces. After the battle, the Pro-French German Confederation of the Rhine collapsed, thereby losing Napoleon's hold on Germany east of the Rhine. The supreme commander of the Allies forces in the theatre and the paramount monarch among the three main monarchs, Alexander, then ordered all forces in Germany to cross the Rhine and invade France.
Under Robert Stewart Castlereagh's lead the Russians, British, Austrians and Prussians signed on 9 March 1814 at Chaumont a treaty of Grand Alliance: no separate peace and eventual settlement giving independence to the Netherlands and Switzerland, a confederated Germany and restitution of the old order in Spain and Italy and continuance of this alliance for twenty years after the ending of the present war, so as to prevent a resurgent France from disturbing the peace of Europe for a generation. Alexander sent an envoy to meet with the French to hasten the surrender. He offered generous terms to the French and, although willing to avenge Moscow more than a year earlier, declared himself to be bringing peace to France rather than its destruction.
Alexander I entering Paris in March 1814
Napoleon signing abdication at Fontainebleau
On 31 March 1814 Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, Minister of Foreign Affairs, gave the key of the city to the emperor. Later that day the Allies armies triumphantly entered the city with Alexander at the head of the army followed by King of Prussia and Prince Karl Philipp Schwarzenberg. Alexander became both the principal spokesman of the Allies and de facto ruler of France. It was therefore left to the Russian emperor to determine whether or not the Bourbons should be restored to the throne of their ancestors and what should be the fate of the Bonapartes. The French Senate - or rather the sixty-four senators who answered Talleyrand's summons - proclaimed the deposition of Napoleon on 2 April and 'freely called to the throne of France' King Louis XVIII, who was at that moment recovering from an attack of gout at the country house in Buckinghamshire where he had spent his final years of exile. However, the Bourbons, Alexander thought, were arrogant and incapable of winning the sympathy of a nation which had recast its institutions in their absence. Nevertheless, the dynastic question was settled and Napoleon signed an act of abdication on 6 April and now it remained to decide on the terms of monetary compensation, the nature of Napoleon's establishment on Elba and the position of Marie Louise and her son.
On 11 April the Allies agreed on Napoleon's fate: their terms were embodied in a formal document subsequently known as the Treaty of Fontainebleau. Based on the most significant terms of the accord, Napoleon was stripped of his powers as ruler of the French Empire, but both Napoleon and Marie Louise were permitted to preserve their respective titles as Emperor and Empress. Moreover, all of Napoleon's successors and family members were prohibited from attaining power in France. The treaty also established the island of Elba as a separate principality to be ruled by Napoleon. Duchy of Parma, Duchy of Placentia and Duchy of Guastalla were ceded to Empress Marie Louise and her direct male descendant would be known as Prince of Parma, Placentia and Guastalla. It was conveyed by Caulaincourt to Napoleon on the following day. After an abortive attempt to poison himself, Napoleon signed the treaty on 13 April and, seven days later, he set out for Elba.
The Treaty of Chaumont in March 1814 had reaffirmed decisions that had been made already and which would be ratified by the more important Congress of Vienna of 1814-1815. The most dangerous topic at the Congress was the so-called Polish-Saxon Crisis. Russia wanted most of Poland and Prussia wanted all of Saxony, whose king had allied with Napoleon. The Russian emperor would become King of Poland and Austria was fearful this would make Russia much too powerful, a view which was supported by Great Britain. The result was deadlock, for which Talleyrand proposed a solution: to admit France to the inner circle and France would support Austria and Great Britain. The three nations signed a secret treaty on 3 January 1815, agreeing to go to war against Russia and Prussia, if necessary, to prevent the Russian-Prussian plan from coming to fruition. On 7 March, however, staggering news reached Vienna: that morning Metternich opened a despatch from his consul in Genoa and discovered that Napoleon had disappeared from Elba. The news of Napoleon's return to France sobered the peacemakers in Vienna. They began to settle their business with as little delay as possible. From the middle of March onwards a special committee of thirty-three delegates and secretaries began drafting a Final Act, which would embody the decisions of the statesmen in a single document. The Final Act was signed on 9 June 1815. Its provisions included: Russia was given most of Duchy of Warsaw and was allowed to keep Finland (which it had annexed from Sweden in 1809 and held until 1917); Prussia was given a part of Saxony, a part of Duchy of Warsaw (Grand Duchy of Posen), Danzig and Westphalia; German Confederation of 38 states was created from the previous 360 of Holy Roman Empire, under the presidency of Austrian Emperor Francis I; the Netherlands and the Southern Netherlands (Belgium) were united in a constitutional monarchy, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, with the House of Orange-Nassau providing the king; Duchies of Parma, Placentia and Guastalla were given to Marie Louise, Napoleon's wife; Duchy of Lucca was created for the House of Bourbon-Parma, which would have reversionary rights to Parma after the death of Marie Louise; the Bourbon Ferdinand IV, King of Sicily, was restored to control of Kingdom of Naples after Joachim Murat, the king installed by Bonaparte, supported Napoleon in the Hundred Days and started the Neapolitan War by attacking Austria.
On 9 January 1816 Catherine Pavlovna was at last betrothed to William I of Wurttemberg. And soon afterwards she left Russia for the Neckar and the Black Forrest. She had not been able to visit Oldenburg in the lifetime of her first husband but conditions had changed in Europe with the creation of the German Confederation and William, as heir to the throne, was needed in Stuttgart. Within ten months Catherine Pavlovna became a queen and the mother of a daughter. She never saw Russia again and, though she continued to seek from Alexander favours for the Wurttemberg family, there is no evidence that she offered him advice any longer on any political questions.
A fortnight after Catherine's second marriage her sister, Anna Pavlovna, was betrothed to Prince WIlliam of Orange, the twenty-three years old heir to the throne of the Netherlands. He was popular with all the members of the Russian imperial family, which says much for his tact and charm. Since there was a difference of seventeen years between Alexander and Anna, he never became so closely attached to her as to his older sisters. Anna, for her part, had spent her childhood with Nicholas and Michael at Pavlovsk and Gatchina and looked on her elder brother as a distant and awe inspiring person. However, the prospect for her departure for the Netherlands drew all the family closer together. The wedding took place before the coming of Lent but the young couple remained in Russia until the end of June and that spring and summer there were long evenings of nostalgia and sentiment in the gardens of Tsarskoe Selo and beside the fountains of Peterhof.
In July 1817 Nicholas Pavlovich married the eldest daughter of Louise of Prussia, who was originally baptised Charlotte but took the name Alexandra Fedorovna on her reception into the Orthodox Church. Grand Duke Nicholas was considered in Berlin, not without justice, to be 'the most handsome prince in Europe' while his bride had her mother's beauty and vivacity to trouble the mind with ghostly memories. Alexander was pleased at the union of the two dynasties and his admiration for Alexandra's intelligence and light-hearted spirits led him to pay more attention to his younger brother Nicholas than in the past. With Grand Duke Constantine long separated from his wife and permanently resident in Warsaw, it was natural that Nicholas and Alexandra should be welcomed in the whirling centre of St Petersburg society.
In January 1819 a courier arrived from Stuttgart and Alexander learnt that Catherine was dead. It was so unexpected: Elizabeth was actually on the way from Karlsruhe to Stuttgart to pay her respects to her sister-in-law when she was intercepted by a messenger who told her what had happened and advised her not to proceed with her journey but to return to Russia. Everyone knew that she, of all Alexander's brothers and sisters, was the one most capable of provoking a personal enemy to murder and, as the young grand duchess wrote, 'the name of Prince Paul of Wurttemberg was whispered'. But, though there had indeed been tension between Catherine and her husband's younger brother, it appears certain she died from natural causes. It seems more likely that her constitution, weakened by the birth of two daughters within twenty months, was unable to throw off a bout of influenza. She had been Maria Fedorovna's favourite daughter and the sad news from Stuttgart almost unhinged her. Alexander was so concerned over his mother's health that the full sense of loss only came upon him gradually, reaching a climax when Elizabeth arrived home from Germany on 7 February. He could not mention the sister for whom he had felt so deep an affection without tears in his eyes.
There wasmuch in the emperor's behaviour during the three years following his sister's death to tax the patience off even the most loyal among his civil servants. For months at a time he was absent from the capital, sometimes travelling in the provinces of the empire or in his Polish Kingdom, crossing the frontier and attending the international congresses which were a feature of the diplomatic system in this period. The emperor's restlessness and his utter inability to stay for any length of time in one place could not be rationalised, however much Elizabeth might try to make it sound as if he were travelling in search of knowledge. He was tired and bored, interested in religion but in little else. Fortunately for Alexander the pace of public affairs slackened in the spring and summer of 1823. He began to speak of the possibility of abdication, leaving the problems of government at home and abroad to Nicholas. Although Constantine was still officially termed 'Tsarevich', it was clear he would never come to the throne. Privately the two eldest brothers had decided on this before Alexander's visit to Nicholas at Krasnoe Selo in 1819. A year later Constantine weakened his standing in the eyes of the Orthodox Church by securing an annulment of his marriage to Grand Duchess Anna Fedorovna (from whom he had been separated for over twenty years) and then morganatically taking as his second wife a Polish Countess, Joanna Grudzinska, who was a Roman Catholic. Technically there was no reason why Constantine should have forfeited his right of succession, but he was genuinely reluctant to rule and in January 1822 he wrote a letter to Alexander in which he formally renounced 'that eminence to which, by birth, I might have the right'. The summer of 1823 drew up a decree which recorded the voluntary renunciation by Constantine and at the same time declared Nicholas to be the rightful heir. The decree was, however, prepared in the utmost secrecy, neither of the brothers knowing of its existence until after Alexander's death. The original document was handed over to Metropolitan of Moscow for safekeeping alongside Paul I's coronation decree on the Succession in the Uspensky Cathedral.
Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna (1795-1865),
daugther of Paul I and Maria Fedorovna;
Grand Duchess of Luxembourg and
Queen of the Netherlands in 1840-1849
Empress Elizabeth Alexeyevna
by George Dawe, 1820
Emperor Alexander I in 1820s
It must be admitted that throughout the years 1823 and 1824 the behaviour of all three of his brothers troubled him. Constantine, who spent most of his days at the Belvedere outside Warsaw, was personally happier than at any previous time in his adult life. In Warsaw, on the other hand, his partiality for certain families alienated many of the great names in Poland, while his hot temper and liking for the parade-ground discipline reminded the older generation of his father's unstable temperament. By now, too, Alexander was less pleased than in earlier years with Nicholas. He faithfully reflected the views of the military establishment in the capital and made little effort to hide his hopes of seeing active service in a campaign against the Turks. But it was the youngest of his brothers, Michael - twenty-one years Alexander's junior - who remained the perpetual problem for all the family. He showed no desire whatever to take a wife, but in the closing months of 1823 he was betrothed to a Wurttemberg princess, who took the name Elena Pavlovna on being received into the Orthodox Church, and it was arranged that their marriage should take place early in the following year. There was, however, never any prospect of the marriage being a success. Elena Pavlovna was much too intelligent for him. Both Alexander and Elizabeth admired her wit and strength of character; her arrival at the Russian court was in part responsible for a happy change in Alexander's private life. Although her own existence at St Petersburg was, all too often, wretchedly depressing, she was fond both of her eldest brother-in-law and his empress. Since she was a kind-hearted girl, with courage and initiative, she went out of her way to see that Alexander and Elizabeth, though nearly thirty years her senior in age, rekindled the mutual warmth and affection they had once known and which was so sadly lacking in her own marriage.
Emperor Alexander I by George Dawe, 1826
Empress Elizabeth Alexeyevna
by George Dawe, 1826
Elizabeth accepted Alexander's infidelity over the years just as he had resigned himself to the attachment she felt, on more than one occasion, for Adam Czartoryski. Then suddenly, at the start of 1824, Alexander's emotions were stirred by the care which Elizabeth was lavishing on him and they recovered some of the lost raptures of love. The reconciliation, if such it may be called, began when Alexander at last succumbed to the physical collapse which had threatened him for so long. He looked so ill that Elizabeth was alarmed, though she was reassured to hear from Dr James Wylie that he believed it was a recurrence of the erysipelas in the leg from which the emperor had already suffered on two occasions. But this time his health seemed completely broken and he lay for few days in a torpor, barely conscious of what was going on around him. For nearly a fortnight he was slow to respond to treatment, momentary improvements giving way to relapses. For six weeks Alexander remained confined to his room in the Winter Palace and, indeed, it was there that Michael and Elena Pavlovna were married. Througout Alexander's battle against the infection in his leg Elizabeth was at his bedside, hours at a time. Sometimes she read to him, but often they were content simply to talk, rediscovering lost delights in a conversation, words and thoughts wandering on unhurried by imminence of public duty.
Less than a week later Elizabeth herself took to her bed with a fever which puzzled the doctors. It was not until the first week of February that she was allowed briefly out of the Winter Palace. Her four doctors do not appear to have agreed on the nature of her illness. She was never physically strong and for several years had been longing to take a holiday somewhere warm, where she could enjoy the delights of sea-bathing. But there is no doubt her collapse in the winter 1824-1825 was caused by a particular infection rather than by a general deterioration of her health. Almost certainly, she was suffering from rheumatic fever, which considerably weakened her heart and she never entirely recovered.
Although Alexander was well enough to travel to Tsarskoe Selo for a few days in April, it was not until the last week in June that he felt able to resume his full military duties. On 29 June 1824 he went to Krasnoe Selo for the annual manoeuvres. Elizabeth, who detested the regimental occasions, remained in the capital, but Grand Duchess Elena was at Krasnoe Selo, as Michael's brigade was engaged in the exercises. And that's when Alexander was bluntly informed that his only surviving daughter by Maria Naryshkina, Sophia, had died at the age of eighteen from consumption. The emperor had known she was terribly weak before he left the capital, but the shock of the sad news unnerved him. For the rest of the morning Alexander sat impassive and virtually silent on his horse. He was convinced yet again that his daughter's death was a punishment for his sins. Nor was there any comfort for the emperor in the political scene: the police reports indicated unrest in the garrisons of Western Russia and the messages from Constantinopole predicted a strengthening of Turkish resistance to the Greek patriots with the arrival of reinforcements from Egypt in the Peloponnese, commanded by the redoubtable Ibrahim Pasha.
In April it was agreed, in conversation between Alexander and Elizabeth, that they would leave St Petersburg before the coming of the autumn rain and mists. Elizabeth would have liked to go to Germany, but her physicians did not think a winter in Baden would benefit her. There was talk of Italy, but she did not want to spend several months in a foreign land. Moreover she hoped Alexander would accompany her and the political situation made it impossible for him to contemplate a long absence from Russia. Finally Dr James Wylie suggested that she should winter at Taganrog, a port on the sea of Azov.
With no comfortable palace, the imperial couple were established in a modest house in Taganrog by 5 October, where they were happy together living in intimate simplicity. On 4 November 1825, after returning from Crimea, Alexander's complexion became yellow, he had an almost insatiable thirst and he was drowsy, but he spent little time in bed, was dressed each morning and talked cheerfully to Elizabeth, Peter Volkonsky and Dr Wylie. As Alexander's condition worsened so the symptoms corresponded more and more with the 'Crimean Fever': there were days of apparent recovery, followed by a drastic relapse, burning sensations in the head began on 20 November and there were fainting fits, bouts of feverish perspiration, mental exhaustion and nausea. It was not until the evening of 22 November that Elizabeth became seriously alarmed by his condition: he seemed weak and yet he was obstinately refusing to take the medicine prescribed by Dr Wylie or to allow his doctors to bleed him with leeches. For the first time it was decided to inform Maria Fedorovna in the capital and Constantine in Warsaw of the emperor's illness, but not in such a way as to cause undue concern. On 27 November a Greek priest came to administer the sacraments to Alexander, urging him as a Christian duty to take the medicine and cures prescribed by his doctors. By now Alexander, too, knew he was gravely ill and placed himself fully in the hands of his physicians, but it was too late. Hour by hour he became increasingly weak, the periods of unconsciousness growing longer until he was virtually in a coma. In the morning, on 1 December 1825, Alexander died, with Elizabeth, his aides-de-camp and his physician around his bed.
There followed six weeks of misery and confusion for the little group at Taganrog and, in a different sense, for Russia as a whole. Elizabeth spent days of self-mortification, praying beside his bier and later beside the catafalque in the Greek church where his body rested: she hoped she would soon be reunited to him in another world. The body was examined by ten doctors, physicians from the local garrison as well as from the imperial household, thirty-two hours after Alexander's death. The post mortem showed that the liver was much enlarged, swollen with blood and dark in colour, the bile duct and colon were 'unusually large' and there appeared to have been a rush of blood to the head. The funeral procession did not set out for St Petersburg until 10 January 1826, nearly six weeks after the emperor's death, and the coffin was not finally lowered into a tomb in St Petersburg until 25 March.
Meanwhile, the confusion in the capital grew worse with every day. Nicholas and the Senate awaited the arrival of Constantine from Warsaw and they were surprised when Michael came instead of his brother. Maria Fedorovna, learning of Constantine's proclamation of his brother in Warsaw, urged Nicholas at once to accept the throne everyone was thrusting on him. But Nicholas still hesitated, sending messages back to Warsaw in the hope Constantine would change his mind.
The shock of Alexander's death weakened Elizabeth's own condition and it was clear by January 1826 she could not journey across the Russian steppes in the depth of winter. She remained in Taganrog until the snows melted and the warmth of spring came to southern Russia. On 4 May she prayed alone in the Greek church which held so many memories for her and set out slowly towards Kharkov, travelling no more than fifty miles a day. On the evening of 15 May she reached the small town of Belev, eighty miles north of Orel. She went to her bed, anticipating a visit next day from Maria Fedorovna, the first meeting with a member of the imperial family since Alexander's death. Possibly the anticipated strain of the encounter was too much for her. On 16 May Elizabeth's heart stopped beating and her soul was free to follow 'the angel' she had lost twenty-four weeks before. Elizabeth's death did not surprise those who knew her personally. To others this sudden disappearance of Alexander's consort intensified the mystery of his own fate.
Already, among a people accustomed to look for mystery in the death of sovereigns, there were disturbing rumours. The authorities would not open the coffin and there was nearly a riot. It was now two and a half months since the unskilled morticians of Taganrog had sought to embalm the corpse and there was good sense in the decision not to permit the corpse to be exposed. But the episode intensified the general air of mystification: another thread of doubt was added to the loom of legend. The belief that Alexander had, in some way, survived was however strengthened by tales of a Siberian starets or holy man, who began to excite attention in the early 1840s. He was an austere practitioner of a life of prayer and meditation and he was known as Fedor Kuzmich. Nobody was certain of his true age or his background, but he was someone with connections at the court, he enjoyed recalling the reign of Empress Catherine II and it was believed by those who met him that he occasionally received visits from eminent figures in the empire.
Empress Elizabeth Alexeyevna
by Peter Vasilyevich Basin
By the late of 1850s, when Kuzmich settled in a village near Tomsk, there were many people convinced he was in reality Emperor Alexander, expiating his sins by prayer, as a voluntary exile in the wastes of Siberia. There is no doubt Kuzmich was a remarkable personality, possibly an unfortunate offspring of the imperial family. But he cannot have been Alexander. Fedor Kuzmich did not die until February 1864 and it is impossible to believe a man of Alexander's constitution could have lived until the age of eighty-six. Yet while it seems certain that the legends of Alexander's survival are false and that he died at Taganrog on 1 December 1825, as the records maintain, there is still one peculiar circumstance for which there is no explanation. On at least two occasions, and possibly more, the tomb in the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul has been opened and found empty. Either no corpse was ever buried in it or the body that was laid in the sarcophagus was taken from the tomb in 1866, under the orders of Alexander II, and secretly buried in the principal cemetery of the city, the graveyard of the Nevsky Monastery.
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