Paul I (1754 - 1801)
Pavel Petrovich (1754-1801),
son of Peter III and Catherine The Great
Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich (1754-1801) in 1770s
Andrey Kyrilovich Razumovsky (1752-1836),
son of Kyril Razumovsky and Catherine Naryshkina, a cousin to Empress Elizabeth
Paul (Pavel Petrovich) was born in the Summer Palace in St Petersburg on 20 September 1754. He was the son of Grand Duchess Catherine, later Empress Catherine II, who was the wife of Elizabeth's heir and nephew, Grand Duke Peter, later Emperor Peter III, though the rumors affirmed that the child was fathered by her then lover Sergey Saltykov. Empress Elizabeth, who wanted to ensure the dynasty's survival, closed her eyes to the affair and celebrated the birth of the future emperor with magnificent parties and masked balls.
During his infancy, Paul was taken away from his parents and raised for the first seven years of his life at the court of Empress Elizabeth. He was overseen by numerous nurses. maids and governesses. After 1760, Elizabeth confided the supervision of his education to Nikita Ivanovich Panin, promoted to his principal tutor. One of the best minds in Russia, Panin had studied all the latest teaching methods. However, Paul's education proved to be unsystematic; he was taught a lot in some areas and very little in others. Elizabeth wanted to familiarize him with the exercise of power, obliging him to attend audiences of foreign ambassadors; Paul was rarely permitted to play with children his own age and he had no friends apart from Alexander Kurakin and Andrey Razumovsky, and met his parents only once a week.
During a short period from December 1761 to June 1762, Empress Elizabeth died, Peter III became Emperor and Catherine II deposed him and became Empress herself. Far from being content with Regency, as Panin had hoped when he supported her coup, Catherine chose to exercise her power and to have herself crowned, by which the Orthodox Church gave her legitimacy. Now two mornings a week, Paul visited his mother, accompanied by Panin. Week after week the encounters were alike; while the child wanted to please his mother and arouse her tenderness, Catherine was cold and distant, distrustful of the one who could one day be the instrument of a plot to get rid of her. Yet young Paul still remained destined for the throne of Russia and it was for this purpose that Catherine continued to perfect his education. From the age of fourteen, he was taught politics, which left him cold, and military matters, about which he was passionate, to the regret of Panin, who wanted his pupil take an interest in managing the state.
The violent events of his childhood and his estrangement from his mother made young Paul irritable and suspicious of those around him. By the time he reached adolescence he, at least, was convinced that he was Peter III's son and Peter was the paternal figure the boy came to revere. Paul began to ask about the death of his father and why the throne had come to his mother instead of himself. He heard the rumours that Alexis Orlov, the brother of Gregory Orlov, his mother's then favourite, was suspected of being responsible for his father's death. Thereafter, the sight of the Orlov brothers at the court and the knowledge of his mother's relationship with one of them tormented him. At the same time, Paul was constructing an idealised image of Peter, modelling himself on Peter and imitating Peter's traits and behaviour. Aware that Peter had been passionately fond of everything connected with the army, Paul began playing with soldiers, first toys, then real soldiers, as Peter had done. Again following his father's lead, he turned to admire the greatest soldier of the age, Frederick II of Prussia.
In the summer of 1771, seventeen years old Paul endured a five-weeks battle with influenza. Catherine and Panin watched anxiously as he struggled with a high fever and debilitating diarrhea. Once he began to recover, the question of the succession asserted itself. Catherine knew that she could not postpone his official coming of age much beyond his eighteenth birthday in September 1772. It was Panin who, in this context, suggested that marriage to some healthy young woman might help mature the difficult young man. Upon Frederick II of Prussia recommendation, Catherine's eye shifted to the younger daughters of Ludwig IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt. Unable to decide which one was worthy, the empress sent an invitation to Wilhelmine, her sisters Amalie and Louise, and their mother to visit Russia. Hurriedly, the princesses studied to perfect their French, worked on their dancing, practiced dropping deep curtseys and completed their wardrobes.
At the end of June 1773, four Russian naval vessels arrived in Lubeck to carry the Hessian party up the Baltic Sea. The commander of the frigate transporting the young women and their mother was Paul's friend, Andrey Razumovsky, who was immediately captivated by these charming passengers and was particularly taken with Wilhelmine. She was also not insensible to the admiration of Andrey. In St Petersburg Paul took only two days to make his choice: it was the same as Andrey's. Unfortunately, Wilhelmine's reaction to the small, strange young man soon to be her husband was not enthusiastic. The empress noticed her hesitation, so did the girl's mother. Nevertheless, the machinery of diplomacy and protocol ground ahead. As had been the case with Catherine and her own mother, both the bride-to-be and the landgravine were indifferent to the requirements for a religious conversion. On 15 August 1773, Wilhelmine was received into the Orthodox Church as Natalya Alexeyevna. The next day she was betrothed to Paul and became a Russian grand duchess. The wedding of nineteen years old Paul and seventeen years old Natalya took place on 29 September 1773. It was followed by ten days of the court balls, theatrical performances and masquerades, while people in the streets drank free beer, ate hot meat pies and watched fireworks.
During the first few months of this marriage, Natalya's gaiety and spontaneity animated the whole court. The empress was delighted with her initially, however, as time passed difficulties started to appear. Natalya refused to learn Russian and schemed to help Paul win the throne. The empress soon heard rumours that Natalya's relationship with Andrey Razumovsky had grown excessively warm. In her lecture on his wife's extravagance, the empress added suggestions that Paul should keep an eye on her private behaviour. Paul was aware that something was wrong and that his marriage was a disappointment and his frivolous wife never encouraged his affection. When his mother talked of sending Andrey Rzaumovsky away, Paul, unaware of the whole affair, declared that he would never part with his friend, the person second only to his wife in his affections.
At the same time, Natalya was pregnant and Catherine didn't seem to care if the child was Paul's or Andrey's. The grand duchess was carrying the heir to the throne and for Catherine that was all that mattered. By March 1776 Natalya's pregnancy was proceeding so smoothly that the empress ordered the wet nurses for the coming infant. In the evening on 15 April, after five days of agony, Natalya finally delivered a stillborn son. The autopsy revealed that the baby had been too large to pass through the birth canal; the cause was an inoperable malformation of the bone, which the empress was told would have prevented Natalya from ever giving birth to a living child. Shortly afterwards, Natalya died. Paul, in a frenzy of grief, was refusing to allow his wife to be removed and insisting on remaining beside her body. He did not attend the burial at Alexander Nevsky Monastery.
Beyond Natalya's death and Paul's uncontrolled grief, the empress now faced the fact that three years of marriage and a pregnancy had produced no heir. Further, the grand duke's emotional state was such that no one could predict when he would be willing and able to fulfill his dynastic duty. At one moment rigid with grief, the next sobbing and screaming, throwing himself around the room, smashing furniture and threatening to kill himself, he refused ever to think of marrying again. To subdue this emotional storm, Catherine chose a cruel remedy. She broke into Natalya's desk, where, as she expected, she found the letters exchanged by the dead woman and Andrey Razumovsky. Furious at seeing her son weep over a wife who had betrayed him with his friend, the empress decided to use the letters to wrench him back to reality. She thrust the pages under Paul's eyes. He read the proof that the two people he had loved most had deceived him; he did not even know whether the dead child had been his. He demanded that Andrey Razumovsky be sent to Siberia, however, the empress, loyal to Andrey's father, Kyril Razumovsky, refused and simply ordered him to leave the capital immediately. Exhausted and almost unable to function, Paul then agreed to all of his mother's decisions.
Three years before, Sophia Dorothea of Wurttemberg had been Catherine's first choice as a bride for Paul, but she had been ruled out because she was only fourteen. Now, Sophia, almost seventeen, was in every respect exactly what Catherine sought: a German princess whose family was aristocratic but of modest circumstances. At sixteen, she spoke German, French, Italian and Latin; at seventeen, Sophia was tall, buxom and rosy cheeked with a sunny disposition. She had been brought up according to French fashion and refinements, as was the custom of that era, but with German bourgeois simplicity and family virtues were to be valued above all.
Sophia was a great-niece of Frederick II and Prince Herny of Prussia and, as Paul idealised Prussia and the Prussian monarch, Catherine hoped that Prince Henry would be able to persuade her distraught son to marry a relative of his hero. Prince Henry, knowing that his brother was always eager to strengthen ties with Russia, sent a message to Frederick II by the fastest courier and the Prussian king did everything he could to satisfy and please the Russian empress. He urged Sophia and her parents to accept the marriage, stressing its political advantages for Prussia and the potential financial benefits for the Wurttemberg House. However, an obstacle had to be overcome: Sophia was already engaged to Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt, who happened to be the brother of the recently deceased Natalya and therefore Paul's former brother-in-law. On Frederick II's orders, the Hesse engagement was broken off and, with the promise of a pension from Catherine and the hand of another Wurttemberg daughter, Ludwig was appeased.
The next step was to arrange a meeting of the prospective bride and groom, thus Frederick II summoned Sophia to Berlin, where Paul would travel to meet her. Foreign travel was what Paul needed as a distraction from the thoughts of Natalya's death and the stinging humiliation of her betrayal. The prospect of a trip to Berlin appeared certain to delight the young widower, who had never been abroad. The opportunity to meet Frederick II provided another powerful incentive. The journey to Berlin began on 13 June 1776, with Paul sitting in a large and comfortable carriage and Prince Henry at his side. When Paul reached Berlin, he was saluted by cannon, rode beneath triumphal arches and passed between double lines of soldiers. The grand duke, accustomed to playing an insignificant role at his mother's court, now found himself honoured and celebrated by Frederick The Great.
Wilhelmine Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt,
Grand Duchess Natalya Alexeyevna (1755-1776),
daughter of Ludwig IX of Hesse-Darmstadt and Caroline, Countess Palatine-Zweibrucken
Sophia Dorothea of Wurttemberg (1759-1828), daughter of Frederick II Eugene of Wurttemberg and Frederica Sophia Dorothea of Brandenburg-Schwedt
Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich (1754-1801) in 1770s
Alexander and Constantine
by Richard Brompton (1781)
Not only did the grand reception in Berlin thoroughly reconcile Paul to the idea of a second marriage, but he also developed an immediate liking for Sophia. And, because she had been recommended by Frederick II, she seemed to Paul twice as desirable. As for Sophia herself, she made no protest when her engagement to the handsome Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt was suddenly broken off and her great-uncles Frederick II and Prince Herny introduced the small, less attractive Paul. The next day, she wrote a glowing letter to a friend in which she declared that she was 'madly in love'.
On 24 August 1776, Sophia crossed the Russian frontier at Riga and on 31 August she and Paul were received by Empress Catherine at Tsarskoe Selo. On 6 September the empress, Paul and Sophia traveled from Tsarskoe Selo to St Petersburg. On 14 September Sophia's official conversion took place; she accepted Orthodoxy, took the name of Maria Fedorovna and became Grand Duchess of Russia. On 26 September, Paul and Maria were married and the new grand duchess set about her duty. Fourteen months later, on 12 December 1777, after only a few hours of labor and without any complications, Maria gave birth to a healthy boy, Catherine's first grandchild, named Alexander. Just three months later, the empress took the infant away to raise him on her terms without interference from the parents. The break was not as radical as the one that had separated Catherine from her son, since Alexander did maintain ties with his parents. He visited them from time to time and as soon as he was old enough, he wrote to them. Moreover, Catherine proved generous with the couple: upon Alexander's birth, she offered them a comfortable allowance and a domain to construct a residential palace to suit their taste. This would be the Pavlovsk Palace, to the design and decoration of which Maria would devote immense energy.
Day after day, week after week, the empress observed, supervised and commented in detail on the toddler's physical and intellectual development. Her tenderness for Alexander did not cease to grow: she happily cultivated the art of being a grandmother while boasting of exercising a strong influence on the child and making what she wanted of him. Over the months, Alexander occupied a growing place in Catherine's schedule and there were daily rites in the relationship between the grandmother and her grandson.
A second boy arrived on 27 April 1779, whom the empress, prompted by Gregory Potemkin, named Constantine and designated to become the emperor of Constantinopole after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Now the two boys would be raised together, entrusted to the same nurses and same maids. The empress wanted to awaken her grandsons to manual and physical activities that were in harmony with nature, thus Alexander and Constantine were by turns metamorphosed into gardeners, butchers and carpenters. During the first years the empress' influence on her grandchildren was all the greater and more exclusive because for more than a year, from September 1781 to November 1782, at the demand of the empress, Paul and Maria traveled incognito, as Count and Countess Severny, throughout Europe. It would take them over a year and carry them to Vienna, Italy, Maria's home in Wurttemberg and Paris, but would pointedly exclude Berlin. The grand duchess was eager to see her family, but her pleasure faded when she was told that her children would remain behind. Maria, upset to be leaving her sons, fainted three times before the carriage could get under way. Once on the road, however, she recovered and the tour was a triumph. Joseph II traveled to the Austrian frontier to welcome the heir to the Russian throne and Vienna celebrated the young couple's presence, whilst Maria reveled in the elegance of the Austrian court and aristocracy. The Habsburg princes in Italy continued the warm welcome, but the culmination of their long journey was Paris. At Versailles, Marie Antoinette, Joseph II's sister, concentrated on pleasing Paul and treated Maria as a dear friend. Presented with a rear porcelain dinner set produced at Sevres, Maria thought it was intended for Catherine II, her mother-in-law, until she saw the arms of Russia and Wurttemberg intertwined on the plates.
At the end of 1782, they returned to Russia and Maria devoted her attention to the Pavlovsk Palace, where, on 9 August 1783, she gave birth to Alexandra Pavlovna, the first of six daughters she would bear during the next twelve years. To celebrate Alexandra's birth, the empress gave them the Gatchina Palace that she had just bought from the heirs of her former favorite Gregory Orlov and that would occupy Paul's attention until he was called to the throne. This time, Catherine was not concerned to take the infant girl from her parents; like her five sisters, Alexandra would be raised by her father and mother. Living there with his family, Paul complained bitterly about his exclusion from power and responsibility. A humiliation he could never overcome and which kept him away from the court was the presence of his mother's favourites; they automatically became his enemies. The vast sums continually bestowed on these young men emphasised to Paul, himself always in debt, the difference between the way she treated them and him. Paul ran his estate as a miniature kingdom of its own, owing more in style to Prussia that to France. He built up a private army, dressed in Prussian uniforms and drilled by the codes introduced in Peter III's brief reign. The whole region around Gatchina rang with the harsh commands of army discipline.
Soon after the return from his European tour, Paul fell in love with one of Maria's ladies-in-waiting, Catherine Nelidova, who was 'small, exceedingly plain, swarthy, with a mouth that stretched from ear to ear', however, this petite brunette with sparkling black eyes was astonishingly quick and clever and a most elegant dancer. The grand duke never slept with her, who called herself his 'sister' and would have preferred to live in a monastery. Her chastity appealed to Paul's sentimental chivalry and, although he enjoyed fleeting sexual escapades with low-born mistresses, he valued Nelidova's faith in him and her humour. Paul's liaison was particularly painful for Maria, as the other woman had been her friend. Her relations with Nelidova became very bitter for several years. Later, however, she began to accept Paul's word that it was only a friendship and eventually Maria not only reconciled with the idea, but joined forces with Nelidova in an attempt to moderate Paul's increasingly neurotic temperament.
Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich (1754-1801)
by Vladimir Borovikovsky
Grand Duchess Maria Fedorovna (1759-1828)
Catherine Ivanovna Nelidova (1756-1839),
lady-in-waiting of Maria Fedorovna;
mistress of Pavel Petrovich in 1783-1798
At the end of 1786 Catherine accepted an invitation from Gregory Potemkin to visit southern Russia and the Crimea so as to see for herself the lands in which he had fought his Turkish campaigns. Since these territories were now part of the Russian Empire he hoped to inherit, Paul asked to accompany his mother. Catherine refused, but she proposed to take with her Alexander and Constantine. Paul was very angry and Maria joined him in protesting; for a region so recently freed from the Tatars and the Turks did not seem to them a fit place in which the boys of nine and seven should pass the cold winter months. However, on the eve of Catherine's departure, Constantine went down with measles and it was anticipated that Alexander would catch it from him. Their physicians insisted they remain in St Petersburg. When, that autumn, the war was renewed against the Turks Paul begged to be allowed to lead his troops into action, but Catherine would have none of it. And in these years of triumph against the Turks there was little that Paul could do, except send congratulaions to his mother.
It was not until 1787 that Empress Catherine may have in fact decided to exclude her son from succession. During the childhood of Paul and Maria's first son, Alexander, Catherine began to think seriously about disinheriting Paul and passing the succession directly to her grandson. There was no constitutional barrier to this: the law of succession decreed by Peter The Great empowered every reigning Russian sovereign to overrule the tradition of primogeniture and name his or her successor, male or female. That the empress was thinking of naming her gifted and handsome grandson to succeed her was widely suspected, especially by Paul. The empress appointed an experienced soldier Nicholas Saltykov as little Alexander's governor and hired a young Swiss tutor, Frederick Cesar de La Harpe, to teach him French.
Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich and his wife, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Alexeyevna,
born Louise of Baden
Emperor Paul I of Russia in 1796-1801
Empress Maria Fedorovna in 1796-1801
Anna Lopukhina-Gagarina (1777-1805),
daughter of Peter Vasilyevich Lopukhin and Praskovia Ivanovna Levshina;
mistress of Emperor Paul I in 1798-1801
Alexander remained Catherine's primary concern and her anxiety about the succession and the future of the dynasty led her to push him to marry early. Although his tutors believed that he was too immature for marriage, the empress, after receiving favorable impressions. in October 1792, invited two German princesses from Baden to visit St Petersburg. The elder sister Louise Maria Augusta was fourteen and Frederica Dorothea Wilhelmina was a year younger. The empress was delighted by Louise, finding her a model of beauty, charm and honesty. Louise herself was attracted to Alexander; he was tall and handsome. But, at first, Alexander was shy with his future bride - very young and inexperienced, he did not know how to treat her - and she mistook his reserve for dislike. However, the young couple soon grew fond of each other. Louise learned Russian, converted to the Orthodox Church, took the title of Grand Duchess and traded her name for Elizabeth Alexeyevna. The wedding took place on 28 September 1793.
Now living in the Alexander Palace built for them by the empress, the grand ducal couple's relationship suffered under this pressure. Very young when she was married, shy and naive, Elizabeth was ill-prepared for her new position. She was overwhelmed by the splendor of the Russian court and frightened by the vicious intrigues waged there with cold calculation. She was appalled by the intense sexual intrigues that flourished all around her in the court where adultery was an accepted form of everyday entertainment. Catherine herself, set the example for the licentious ways of the court. The first years of the marriage were relatively happy, however, the grand duchess disappointed the empress, who did not live to see a son be born to the young couple. Her death in November 1796 brought Elizabeth's father-in-law, Paul I, to the throne.
Two days after Catherine's death the new emperor ordered the abbot of Alexander Nevsky Monastery to disinter the coffin of her murdered husband, Peter III. The embalmed remains were then transferred to a richly decorated sarcophagus and laid in state beside Catherine's body. Finally Paul supervised arrangements for a joint burial and summoned Alexis Orlov, who had played a sinister part in Peter III's murder, to carry the crown through the streets immediately behind his victim's bier. This display of macabre theatricality raised the fresh doubts over Paul's sanity. Undoubtedly his mind was warped and yet he was by no means unintelligent. He spoke French and German better than either of his eldest sons, possessed some skill in applied mathematics and understood the old Slavonic language used by the Orthodox Church in its liturgy. Though harsh, he was not persistently cruel and there were moments when he showed kindness and generosity, above all towards the Polish patriots who had suffered for defying his mother's policy.
In April 1797 Paul travelled to Moscow for his coronation, accompanied by his sons and all the court. Later in the week, the customary coronation balls and receptions were held, for the new emperor was not the person to break tradition, but no one enjoyed themselves. It was exhausting and dispiriting, especially as so many of the younger generation had never before seen the wonder of the old capital. The nervous strain was too much for the eighteen years old Elizabeth: she collapsed on returning to St Petersburg and spent the early summer recuperating. On 24 April, the day he was crowned, the emperor published a decree formally superseding Peter I's ruling of 1722 by which the autocrat had been entitled to nominate his heir. Henceforth the imperial crown was to pass by the rule of primogeniture to the eldest son and, should he have no male offspring, to his brothers in order of seniority. Immediately after the coronation, the new emperor set out upon a grand progress through the western provinces of his empire and he ordered Alexander to accompany him. He believed, perfectly correctly, that it was essential for the heir to the throne to discover for himself the character of the Russian lands and get away from the artificial constriction of life in the capital.
Paul was idealistic and capable of great generosity, but he was also mercurial and capable of vindictiveness. During the first year of his reign, he reversed many of the harsh policies of his mother. Although he accused many of Jacobinism, he allowed Catherine's best known critic, Alexander Radishchev, to return from the Siberian exile. Along with Radishchev, he liberated a Russian philantropist Nicholas Novikov from Schlusselburg fortress, and also Tadeusz Kosciuszko, yet after the liberation both were confined to their own estates under the police supervision. Paul viewed the Russian nobility as decadent and corrupt and was determined to transform them into a disciplined, loyal caste resembling a medieval order.
Paul made several deeply unpopular attempts to reform the army. Under Catherine's reign, Gregory Potemkin introduced new uniforms that were cheap, comfortable, practical and designed in a distinctly Russian style. The emperor decided to fulfill his predecessor Peter III's intention of introducing the Prussian uniforms. Impractical for active duty, these were deeply unpopular with the men, as was the effort required to maintain them. His love of parades and ceremony was not well-liked either. He ordered that Watch Parade took place early every morning in the ground of the palace, regardless of the weather conditions. He would personally sentence soldiers to be flogged if they made a mistake and, at one point, ordered his guard regiment to march to Siberia when they became disordered during one of the manoeuvers, although he changed his mind after they walked for about 10 miles. Paul attempted to reform the organization of the army in 1796 by introducing The Infantry Codes: a series of guidelines that based the organization of the army upon show and glamour, but his greatest commander, Alexander Suvorov, completely ignored them, believing them to be worthless.
After twenty years in the shadows, the death of Catherine II in 1796 allowed Maria to have a prominent role as the empress consort. During Catherine's lifetime, Maria had no chance of interfering in the state affairs, but after her husband's accession to the throne, she took to politics, at first timidly, but increasingly resolutely afterwards. Maria's influence over her husband was great and in general beneficial. Even so, it is possible that the empress abused it in order to help her friends or hurt her enemies. Maria also helped as much as possible her poor relations, some of whom, for example her brother, Alexander of Wurttemberg, were invited to Russia.
Although Paul and his wife were not as close as they once had been, there remained a good deal of warmth between them. Their relationship suffered further in the last years of Paul's life. After Maria gave birth to her tenth and last child in 1798, Paul became infatuated with nineteen years old Anna Lopukhina and this time Paul assured his wife that his behavior was irreproachable and that the relationship was of a paternal nature. Lopukhina was the daughter of Peter Vasilyevich Lopukhin, from one of the oldest families of Russian nobility, which owed its distinction to Eudoxia Lopukhina's marriage to Peter I. Her life changed the day Paul cast an eye on her during a ball in 1796. His tenderness towards the girl was noted by a court faction which hoped to use her as a remedy against the influence of Maria. When Paul ordered her family to be brought to St Petersburg, the empress ineffectually attempted to interfere and sent an angry letter to Lopukhina pressing her to stay at home. The letter was intercepted and presented to the emperor in the most unfavourable light, thus sparking a quarrel between the spouses and ensuring Lopukhina's ascendance at the court. All things considered, Lopukhina's influence on Paul's character is reckoned to have been beneficial, although the emperor's constant attention seemed to importune her so much that in 1799 she asked his permission to marry her childhood friend, Pavel Gagarin. After Paul acquiesced, Gagarin was recalled from Alexander Suvorov's army then fighting in Italy and the wedding took place on 11 January 1800.
In foreign policy Paul opposed the many expansionary wars his mother fought and instead preferred to pursue a more peaceful, diplomatic path. Immediately upon taking the throne, he recalled all troops outside Russian borders, including the struggling expedition Catherine II had sent to conquer Iran through the Caucasus and the army she had promised to Britain and Austria to help them defeat France. He believed that Russia needed substantial governmental and military reforms to avoid an economic collapse and a revolution, before Russia could wage war on foreign soil. Paul offered to mediate between Austria and France through Prussia and pushed Austria to make peace, but the two countries made peace without his assistance, signing the Treaty of Campoformio in October 1797. This treaty, with its affirmation of the French control over the islands in the Mediterranean and the partitioning of the Republic of Venice, upset Paul who saw it as creating more instability in the region. In response, he offered asylum to Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince of Conde, and his army, as well as future Louis XVIII of France, both of whom had been forced out of Austria by the treaty. By this point, the French Republic had seized Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, establishing the republics with constitutions in each, and Paul felt that Russia now needed to play an active role in Europe in order to overthrow what the republic had created and restore traditional authorities. In this goal he found a willing ally in the Austrian chancellor Johann Amadeus Francis de Paula, Baron of Thugut, who loudly criticized revolutionary principles. Britain and the Ottoman Empire joined Austria and Russia to stop the French expansion and re-establish the old monarchies. The only major power in Europe who did not join Paul in his anti-French campaign was Prussia, whose distrust of Austria and the security they got from their current relationship with France prevented them from joining the coalition.
Another important factor in Paul's decision to go to war with France was Malta, the home of the Knights Hospitaller. In addition to Malta, the Order had priories in the Catholic countries of Europe that held large estates and paid the revenue from them to the Order. In 1796, the Order approached Paul about the Priory of Poland, which had been in a state of neglect and paid no revenue for 100 years and was now on the Russian land. Paul as a child had read the histories of the Order and was impressed by their honor and connection to the old order it represented. He relocated the Priory of Poland to St Petersburg in January 1797. The knights responded by making him a protector of the Order in August of that same year, an honor he had not expected but, in keeping with his chivalric ideals, he happily accepted. In June 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte seized Malta, which offended Paul. In September, it was declared that Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim had betrayed the Order by selling Malta to Napoleon. A month later Paul was elected as Grand Master. The election of the sovereign of an Orthodox nation as the head of a Catholic order was controversial and it was some time before the Holy See approved it. Though the recognition of Paul's election would become a more divisive issue later in his reign, the election immediately gave Paul, as Grand Master of the Order, another reason to fight the French Republic: to reclaim the Order's ancestral home.
Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov (1730-1800),
son of Vasily Suvorov and Avdotya Manukova;
a Russian military leader and national hero
Admiral Horatio Nelson, Duke of Bronte (1758-1805),
son of Edmund Nelson and Catherine Suckling;
a British flag officer in the Royal Navy
The Russian army in Italy played the role of an auxiliary force sent to support the Austrians, though the Austrians offered the position of chief commander over all the allied armies to Alexander Suvorov, a distinguished Russian general. Under Suvorov, the allies managed to push the French out of Italy, though they suffered heavy losses. By this point, cracks had started to appear in the Russian-Austrian alliance, due to their different goals in Italy. While Paul and Suvorov wanted the liberation and restoration of the Italian monarchies, the Austrians sought territorial acquisitions in Italy and were willing to sacrifice later Russian support to acquire them. The Austrians, therefore, happily saw Suvorov and his army out of Italy in 1799 to go meet up with the army of Alexander Rimsky-Korsakov, at the time assisting the Austrian Archduke Charles expel the French armies currently occupying Switzerland. However, the campaign had become a stalemate, without much activity on either side until the Austrians withdrew. Because this happened before Korsakov and Suvorov could unite their forces, the French could attack their armies one at a time, destroying Korsakov's one and forcing Suvorov to fight his way out of Switzerland, suffering heavy losses. Suvorov blamed the Austrians for the terrible defeat in Switzerland, as did his furious sovereign. This defeat, combined with refusal to reinstate the old monarchies in Italy and their disrespect of the Russian flag during the taking of Ancona, led to the formal cessation of the alliance in October 1799.
Although by the fall of 1799 the Russian-Austrian alliance had more or less fallen apart, Paul still cooperated willingly with the British. Together, they planned to invade the Netherlands and through that country attack France proper. Unlike Austria, neither Russia nor Britain appeared to have any secret territorial ambitions: they both simply sought to defeat the French. The invasion of Holland started well, with a British victory - the Battle of Callantsoog (27 August 1799) - in the north, but when the Russian army arrived in September, the allies found themselves faced with bad weather, poor coordination and unexpectedly fierce resistance from the Dutch and the French, thus their success evaporated. After a month, the weather worsened and the allies suffered more and more losses, eventually signing an armistice in October 1799. This defeat strained the Russian-British relations, but a definite break did not occur until later. The reasons for this break are less clear and simple than those of the split with Austria, but several key events occurred over the winter of 1799-1800 that helped: Napoleon released many captive Russian troops that Britain had refused to pay the ransom for; Paul grew closer to the Scandinavian countries of Denmark and Sweden, whose claim to neutral shipping rights offended Britain; Paul had the British ambassador in St Petersburg (Charles Whitworth) recalled and Britain did not replace him, with no clear reason given as to why; Britain, now needing to choose between their two allies, chose Austria, who had certainly committed to fighting the French to the end. Finally, two events occurred in rapid succession that destroyed the alliance completely: first, in July 1800, the British seized a Danish frigate, prompting Paul to close the British trading factories in St Petersburg; second, even though the allies resolved this crisis, Paul could not forgive the British for Admiral Horatio Nelson's refusal to return Malta to the Order of St John and therefore to Paul, when the British captured it from the French in September 1800. In a drastic response, Paul seized all British vessels in the Russian ports, sent their crews to the detention camps and took British traders hostage until he received satisfaction. As France had already closed all of Western and Southern Europe to British trade, Britain, which relied heavily upon imports felt seriously threatened by Paul's move and reacted fast. In March 1801, Britain sent a fleet to Denmark, bombarding Copenhagen and forcing the Danes to surrender in the beginning of April. Admiral Nelson then sailed towards St Petersburg, reaching Reval (14 May 1801), but after the conspiracy assassinated Paul (23 March 1801), the new emperor Alexander I had opened peace negotiations shortly after taking the throne.
The most terrifying aspect of Paul's character was the capricious ease with which his mood would change. One day he would honour someone at the court and on another banish him to his estate in disgrace or order him into the Siberian exile. Even his close advisers from Gatchina fell sudden victims to his suspicion and other people's tales. And on one of the extraordinary days Alexander, to whom his father had been especially gracious at a ball the previous night, was visited by one of Paul's aides who arrived with instructions from the emperor to read aloud to the grand duke a passage from a Russian chronicle describing the sufferings and death of Tsarevich Alexis, whom Peter I believed had plotted against him.
Alexander remained loyal to his father, though at times it took hard nerves to brazen out life in St Petersburg. But from the moment of General Suvorov's disgrace conspiracy was in the air and by the spring of 1800 it had begun to assume a definite shape. Its leaders were Admiral Jose de Ribas and Nikita Petrovich Panin, nephew and namesake of one of Paul's tutors and himself a trusted adviser on foreign affairs. Panin appears to have discussed his plans with the British ambassador, Lord Charles Whitworth, who had never been a friend of Paul or his policy. Arakcheev's successor as military commandant of the capital, Peter Ludwig von der Pahlen, also knew of the plot and sympathised with Panin. It was on his suggestion that Panin met Alexander about the time of Suvorov's funeral and did his best to persuade him that the hour had come to depose his father. Exactly what was said is not clear, but Alexander gained the impression that Panin intended the emperor to be placed under restraint while Alexander himself was proclaimed Regent. Nothing, however, came of the project. Alexander declined to commit himself. Indiscreet behaviour led Whitworth to be sent home to London in June; Panin incurred the emperor's displeasure for giving disagreeable advice on foreign policy and was banished to his estates and a heart attack removed Admiral Ribas in December. By the end of 1800 there remained of the would-be conspirators in the capital only Palen and the wavering Alexander.
Emperor Paul I of Russia in 1796-1801
Nikita Petrovich Panin (1770-1837),
State Chancellor and Foreign Affair Minister
in 1799-1800;
one of the conspirators of Paul I's assassination
Peter Ludwig von de Pahlen (1745-1826),
a Russian courtier and one of the conspirators of Paul I's assassination
Admiral Jose de Ribas (1749-1800),
a Spanish military officer in Russian service; one of the conspirators of Paul I's assassination
At the end of February 1801 Alexander had a meeting with Pahlen, for the count was again anxious to sound Alexander over the possibility of deposing Paul. But Alexander was genuinely troubled by the oath of fealty he had sworn in the coronation ceremony and he could not therefore approve any conspiracy which had, as its principal purpose, the abdication of the sovereign. Pahlen, however, persevered and eventually secured from the grand duke verbal consent to a plan for placing Paul under restraint and establishing Regency. Alexander insisted that no harm should come to his father. Most of Pahlen's fellow conspirators were recruited from Guards Regiments, who had always resented Paul's contemptuous disregard of their traditions. There were others with old scores to settle, the favourites from Catherine's reign like the Zubov brothers, aristocrats like Lev Mikhailovich Yashvil and Alexander Alexeyevich Viazemsky whom Paul had insulted, but the brain behind the conspiracy was the Hanoverian-born, General Levin August von Benningsen, a professional soldier who at fifty-five had spent nearly half his life in Russian service. On 11 March Pahlen summoned the principal conspirators to a meeting in the house of Olga Zherebtsova, sister of the Zubovs.
Meanwhile, in the Mikhailovsky Palace, Paul had seventeen guests to dinner that night. Both his elder sons and their wives were present and so was his fourteen years old daughter Maria. The visitors were mainly senior officers from the garrison, the most distinguished of them being General Mikhail Kutuzov, who was accompanied by his wife. Apart from Alexander, no one at the table knew what was planned for later that night. Paul, who had been morbidly suspicious all day, was now in a genial mood and was especially pleased with a new porcelain dinner service which depicted views of the Mikhailovsky Palace on every plate and dish. After the dinner, Alexander, pleading indigestion, retired to his apartment facing the Summer Garden. Paul went upstairs to his own suite of five rooms, diagonally opposite to his eldest son's across the courtyard. Every door was locked, including the one which communicated with Maria's apartments.
There are several accounts of what happened that night, some of them in marked contradiction to others. Pahlen headed at once for Alexander's rooms, although he moved quietly and made no attempt to wake the grand duke. General Benningsen led his group, swollen to eighteen drunk officers directly to the emperor's apartment. A single candle was burning but there was, at first, no sign of the emperor. Benningsen, however, holding the candle above his head, saw Paul crouching in terror behind a screen. There was a confused scuffle and Paul cried out for help. Nicholas Zubov picked up a heavy snuff box and struck Paul violently on the left temple. When he fell to the ground one of the other conspirators seized a silk scarf and began to strangle him and yet another officer had a malachite paperweight against his windpipe until he stopped breathing.
