Elisabeth Alexeievna (Louise of Baden)
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Empress Elisabeth Alexeievna of Russia (in Russian, Elisaveta Alexeievna), born Louise Maria Auguste, Princess of Baden (13/24 January 1779 - 4 May/16 May, 1826) was the wife of Tsar Alexander I of Russia.
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[edit] Princess of Baden
Elisabeth Alexeievna was born in Karlsruhe, on 24 January, 1779 as Princess Louise Maria Auguste of Baden of the House of Zähringen. She was the third of the seven children of Charles Louis, Hereditary Prince of Baden and his wife Amelia Frederica of Hesse-Darmstadt. Her grandfathers were Charles Frederick, Margrave of Baden and Louis IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt.
Princess Louise of Baden grew up in a close warmth family environment. She would remain particularly attached to her mother with whom she would keep an intimate correspondence until her death (The Landgravine of Baden outlived her daughter). Princess Louise was only twelve years old when her fate was sealed. Empress Catherine II "the Great" of Russia was looking for a bride for her eldest grandson, the future Alexander I, and set her eyes on the Princesses of Baden. After receiving favorable impressions about them, the two eldest single princesses of Baden, Lousia and her younger sister Frederica, were invited to come to Russia. In the fall of 1792 the two sisters arrived in St. Petersburg.
The Russian Empress, Catherine II, was delighted with Louise finding her a model of beauty, charms and honesty. Louise was attracted to Alexander, he was tall and handsome. At first Alexander was shy with his future bride, and she mistook his reserve for dislike. Very young and inexperience he simply did not know how to treat her. But the young couple soon grew fond of each other. “ You tell me that I hold the happiness of a certain person in my hands,” she wrote to Alexander. “ If that is true, then his happiness is assured forever… this person loves me tenderly, and I love him in return, and that will be my happiness … you can be certain that I love you more than ever can say,” she added. They were engaged in May 1793.
The Princess of Baden learned Russian, converted to the Orthodox Church, took the title of Grand Duchess of Russia and traded the name Louise Maria for Elisabeth Alexeievna. The wedding took place on 28 September 1793 . “It was a marriage between Psyche and Cupid” Catherine wrote to the Prince of Ligne. Elisabeth was only fourteen, her husband a year older.
[edit] Grand Duchess of Russia
Too young when she was married, shy and naïve, Elisabeth Alexeievna 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 a court where adultery was an accepted form of entertainment. The Empress herself, Catherine II, set the example for the licentious ways of the court. Catherine’s II young lover, Platon Zubov, even tried to seduce Elisabeth Alexeievna.
The Grand Duchess felt lonely and homesick, particularly after her sister Frederica returned to Baden. Elisabeth was abandoned in an alien world where she could never be herself, even among her servants and ladies-in-waiting. The relationship with Alexander was her only source of solace. “Without my husband, who alone makes me happy, I should have died a thousand deaths” Elisabeth Alexeievna wrote to her mother less than six months after her wedding.
The first years of the marriage were relatively happy, but the Grand Duchess disappointed Catherine II who did not live to see a son be born to the young couple. The death of Catherine the Great in November, 1796 brought Elisabeth’s father-in-law, Paul I, to the Russian throne. During the years of his reign, Elisabeth avoided Paul’s court. She utterly disliked her father-in-law, disapproved the injustices of his government and the bluntness of his character.
The first cracks in Elisabeth’s marriage began to appear. She did not find fulfillment for her romantic nature in a husband who neglected her. Elisabeth looked for emotional solace elsewhere. She first found refuge for her loneliness in a close intimate friendship with the beautiful Countess Golovina. Later she started a romantic liaison with Alexander’s best friend the dashing and clever Polish prince, Adam Czartoryski. Their relationship lasted for three years.
After more than five years of a childless marriage, on May 18, 1799, Elisabeth gave birth to a daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna. At court, some attributed the paternity to the Polish Prince. The child had black hair and dark eyes and at the baptism, Tsar Paul I did not fail to remark his amazement that two blonde, blue eyed parents had had a dark haired child. Elisabeth Alexeievna soon lost both her lover and her daughter. Adam Czartoryski was sent in a diplomatic mission abroad and Elisabeth’s baby daughter did not live long. “As of this morning, I no longer have a child, she is dead” she wrote to her mother on July 27, 1800. “Not an hour of the day passes without my thinking of her, and certainly not a day without my giving her bitter tears. It cannot be otherwise so long as I live, even if she were to be replaced by two dozen children.”
[edit] Personality
Elisabeth Alexeievna was distinguished by an angelic face and a soft, melodious voice. She had a perfect oval face of regular delicate features; Greek profile; large almond-shaped blue eyes and curly ash blond hair, which she usually left floating on her shoulders. Her figure was elegant and regal in her carriage.
She was shy, sweet, kind, gentle and generous. Charming and intelligent, she loved reading and the arts. She did not lack character but had a withdrawn personality. With few friends, she liked simplicity and solitude. Elisabeth Alexeivna loved her husband and encouraged him in many personal and political crisis, but Alexander neglected her and for most part of their marriage, they would live in harmony but emotionally apart, both had love affairs outside their marriage in a tacit agreement.
With her retiring private ways Elisabeth Alexeievna was not popular at court or had the affection of her husband’s family. She would not find happiness in her marriage or fulfillment in her position in Russia.
[edit] Russian Empress
The eccentricities of Tsar Paul I led to a plot to ovethrown him and place Alexander I on the Russian throne. Elisabeth was well aware of this scheme and on the night of Paul’s assassination, she was with her husband giving him support.
Once Alexander I became Emperor, Elisabeth Alexeievna encouraged him to leave behind the trauma of Paul’s I murder and dedicate to serve Russia. As Empress consort, she took part in court life and the duties of representation, but the first female rank in the empire was reserved for her mother-in-law Maria Feodorovna.
Alexander I treated his wife indifferently, he was polite toward her in public ceremonies and made an effort to have his meals in her company. Elisabeth was too soft and placid to keep a hold in a restless and soul tortured man as her husband. In 1803 Alexander began a love affair that would continue for more than fifteen years with the polish Princess Maria Czetwertynska, wife of Prince Dmitri Naryshkin. Princess Maria Naryshkina flaunted her liaison at court in a tasteless blatant fashion.
Elisabeth Alexeievna on her part found solace in her relationship with Adam Czartorysky, who had returned to Russia at Alexander I’s ascension to the throne. This liaison ended when Elisabeth Alexeievna started a love affair with a handsome staff-captain, Alexis Okhotnikov. All the correspondence between Elisabeth and Alexis Okhotnikov (and some of her diaries) were obliterated by the Emperor Nicholas I after her death.
The affair with Okhotnikov had a tragic end. The staff-captain died in 1807 after an attempt at his life. Many contemporaries considered that Alexander I or his brother Grand Duke Konstantin had ordered him killed.
On November 16, 1806, Elisabeth gave birth to a second daughter. There were rumors that the new born, Grand Duchess Elisabeth Alexandrovna, was not a child of Emperor Alexander but Okhotnikov. After his tragic death Elisabet Alexeievna felt more abandoned than ever and poured out all her affection on her daughter Elisabeth, “ Lisinka.” Fifteen months later the little girl died suddenly of an infection brought on by teething. “Now,” wrote Elisabeth to her mother, “I am not longer good for anything in this world, my soul has no more strength to recover from this last blow.”
The death of their daughter temporally brought husband and wife closer. Although Elisabeth Alexeievna was not yet thirty years old neither she nor Alexander had hopes to have a family and they would not have more children.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Elisabeth Alexeievna was a reliable supporter of her husband’s policies as she had been in other personal and political crisis. After the fall of Napoleon, she joined her husband and many of the crown heads of Europe in the Congress of Vienna (1814), there she got reunited with her old paramour, Adam Czartorysky. He was still in love with her and forgave her past infidelity with Okhotnikov. Their re-encounter was short lived.
Once she reached forty, Elisabeth Alexeievna beauty was largely faded; she left behind any romantic pretensions. Her husband also experienced a personal transformation than drove the couple closer than they ever were. In 1819 Alexander I, immersed in religious mysticism, broke his long relationship with Maria Narishkina. From then on husband and wife started to spend more time together. The Empress sympathized deeply with him and Alexander found her support when he lost his beloved natural daughter Sophia. The marked reconciliation between the Emperor and the Empress, rose general surprise “I am reduce to think of myself sometimes as Alexander’s mistress, or as if we had been married secretly...” Elisabeth wrote to her mother.
By 1825 Elisabeth Alexeievna health was frail; she suffered from a lung condition and a nervous indisposition. The doctors recommended her to take a rest in a temperate climate and suggested the southern city of Taganrog , in the sea of Azov. With no comfortable Palace, the Imperial couple were established in a modest house in Taganrog by October 5. The were happy together living in intimate simplicity. On November 17, 1825 Alexander returned to Tangarog from visiting Crimea with a cold which developed into typhus, from which he died that December in the arms of his wife. Elisabeth was stricken by her loss, writing ‘I do not understand myself, I do not understand my destiny.” And later “ What am I to do with my will, which was entirely subjected to him, with my life, which I loved to devote to him?”
The now dowager tsarina was too frail to come back to St. Petersburg for the funeral. When Elisabeth Alexeievna finally started her returning journey to the capital, she felt so sick that had to stop at Belev, Tula Province, in the road from Taganrog to St. Petersburg just a few hours before she was to meet her mother-in-law, who was coming south to greet her. On the early hours of May 16, 1826, toward four thirty in the morning, when her lady’s maid went to check on the Empress, she found her dead in bed. Elisabeth Alexeievna had died of heart failure.
Three days after her husband’s death Elisabeth had written her mother, “Do not worry too much about me, but if I dared, I would like to follow the one who has been my very life.”
[edit] Children
Alexander I and Elisabeth Alexeievna had two daughters, both died in early childhood. Their common sorrow drew husband and wife closer together for a brief time.
- Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia (St.Petersburg 29 May 1799 - St. Petersburg 8 Jul 1800)
- Grand Duchess Elisabeth Alexandrovna of Russia (St. Petersburg 15 Nov 1806 - St. Petersburg 12 May 1808)
[edit] References
- Lincoln, W. Bruce, The Romanovs: Autocrats of All the Russias, Anchor, ISBN 0-385-27908-6.
- Bergamini, John, The Tragic Dynasty: A History of The Romanovs, Konecky&Konecky, ISBN 1-56852-160-X
- Troyat, Henri, Alexander of Russia, E.P Dutton, Inc, ISBN 0-525-24144-2
- Troyat, Henri, Catherine the Great, Plume, ISBN 0-452-01120-5
| Preceded by Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg |
Royal Consorts of Russia 1801 – 1825 |
Succeeded by Charlotte of Prussia |
