Paul I of Russia

Paul I
Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias
Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias
Reign	17 November 1796 – 23 March 1801 (&00000000000000040000004 years, &0000000000000126000000126 days)
Coronation	April 5, 1797
Predecessor	Catherine II
Successor	Alexander I
Duke of Holstein-Gottorp
Reign	17 July 1762 – 1 July 1773
Predecessor	Carl Peter Ulrich
Successor	Christian VII of Denmark
Count of Oldenburg
Reign	1 July – 14 December 1773
Predecessor	Christian VII of Denmark
Successor	Frederick Augustus I
Spouse	Wilhelmina Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg
Issue
Alexander I Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich Archduchess Alexandra of Austria Elena, Hereditary Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin Maria, Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach Catherine, Queen of Württemberg Olga Pavlovna Anna, Queen of the Netherlands Nikolai I Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich
House	Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov
Father	Peter III
Mother	Catherine II
Born	1 October [O.S. 20 September] 1754 St Petersburg
Died	23 March [O.S. 11 March] 1801 St Michael's Castle
Signature

Paul I (Russian: Па́вел I Петро́вич; Pavel Petrovich) (1 October [O.S. 20 September] 1754 – 23 March [O.S. 11 March] 1801) was the Emperor of Russia between 1796 and 1801.

Childhood

Paul was born in the Palace of Empress Elisabeth in St Petersburg. He was the son of Elizabeth's heir, her nephew, the Grand Duke Peter, later Emperor Peter III, and his wife, the Grand Duchess Catherine, later Empress Catherine II. In her memoirs, Catherine strongly implies that Paul's father was not Peter, but one of her lovers, Sergei Saltykov. Supporters of Catherine's claim assume that Peter III was sterile, and was unable to even engage in normal sexual relations with her until he had a surgical operation performed, and so could not have sired the boy himself. Although the story was much aired by Paul's enemies, it is possible that this was simply an attempt to cast doubt on Paul's right to the throne, in order to prop up Catherine's own somewhat shaky claim. He physically resembled the Grand Duke so one might doubt the claims of illegitimacy.

During his infancy, Paul was taken from the care of his mother by the Empress Elizabeth, whose ill-judged fondness allegedly injured his health. As a boy, he was reported to be intelligent and good-looking. His pugnosed facial features in later life are attributed to an attack of typhus, from which he suffered in 1771. It has been asserted that his mother hated him, and was only restrained from putting him to death while he was still a boy by the fear of what the consequences of another palace crime might be to herself. Lord Buckinghamshire, the British Ambassador at her court, expressed this opinion as early as 1764. However, others suggest that the Empress, who was usually very fond of children, treated Paul with kindness. He was put in the charge of a trustworthy governor, Nikita Ivanovich Panin, and of competent tutors.

Grand Duchess Natalia Alexeievna of Russia. Portrait by Alexander Roslin, Hermitage Museum

Her dissolute court provided a bad home for a boy destined to become the sovereign, but Catherine took great trouble to arrange his first marriage with Wilhelmina Louisa (who acquired the Russian name "Natalia Alexeievna"), one of the daughters of Ludwig IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, in 1773, and allowed him to attend the Council in order that he might be trained for his work as Emperor. His tutor, Poroshin, complained of him that he was "always in a hurry," acting and speaking without reflection.

Early life

Maria Feodorovna, portrait by Alexander Roslin

After his first wife died in childbirth, his mother arranged another marriage on 7 October 1776, with the beautiful Sophia Dorothea of Württemberg, given the new name Maria Feodorovna. At this time he began to be involved in intrigues. He believed he was the target of assassination. He also suspected his mother of intending to kill him, and once openly accused her of causing broken glass to be mingled with his food.

Yet, though his mother removed him from the council and began to keep him at a distance, her actions can not be termed unkind. The use made of his name by the rebel Pugachev, who had impersonated his father Peter, tended no doubt to render Paul's position more difficult. On the birth of his first child in 1777 the Empress gave him an estate, Pavlovsk. Paul and his wife gained leave to travel through western Europe in 1781–1782. In 1783 the Empress granted him another estate at Gatchina, where he was allowed to maintain a brigade of soldiers whom he drilled on the Prussian model, still an unpopular stance at the time.

Accession to the throne

A statue of Emperor Paul in front of the Pavlovsk Palace.

Paul became emperor after Catherine suffered a stroke on 5 November 1796, and died in bed without having regained consciousness. His first action was to inquire about and, if possible, to destroy her testament, as it was rumoured that she had expressed wishes to exclude Paul from succession and to leave the throne to Alexander, her eldest grandson. These fears probably contributed to Paul's promulgation of the Pauline Laws, which established the strict principle of primogeniture in the House of Romanov and were not to be modified by his successors.

The army, then poised to attack Persia in accordance with Catherine's last design, was recalled to the capital within one month of Paul's ascension. His father Peter was reburied with great pomp at the royal sepulchre in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. To the rumour of his illegitimacy Paul responded by parading his descent from Peter the Great. The inscription on the monument to the first Emperor of Russia erected in Paul's time near the St. Michael's Castle reads in Russian "To the Great-Grandfather from the Great-Grandson", a subtle but obvious allusion to the Latin "PETRO PRIMO CATHERINA SECUNDA", the dedication by Catherine on the 'Bronze Horseman', the most famous statue of Peter in St Petersburg.

Purported eccentricities

Emperor Paul was idealistic and capable of great generosity, but he was also mercurial and capable of vindictiveness. Both qualities, it must be added, which the Russian people greatly favoured as typical of benevolent autocrats of the time. During the first year of his reign, Paul emphatically reversed many of the harsh policies of his mother. Although he accused many of Jacobinism, he allowed Catherine's best known critic, Radishchev, to return from Siberian exile. Along with Radishchev, he liberated Novikov from the fortress of Shlisselburg, and also Tadeusz Kościuszko, yet both liberated persons were kept in their own estates under police supervision. He viewed the Russian nobility as decadent and corrupt, and was determined to transform them into a disciplined, principled, loyal caste resembling a medieval chivalric order. To those few who conformed to his view of a modern-day knight (e.g., his favourites Kutusov, Arakcheyev, Rostopchin) he granted more serfs during five years of his reign than his mother had presented to her lovers during thirty-four years of her own. Those who did not share his chivalric views were dismissed or lost their places at court: seven field marshals and 333 generals fell into this category.

In accordance with his chivalric ideals, Paul was elected as the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, to whom he gave shelter following their ejection from Malta by Napoleon. His leadership resulted in the establishment of the Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller (Order of St John/Maltese Order) within the Imperial Orders of Russia. At a great expense, he built three castles in or around the Russian capital. Much was made of his courtly love affair with Anna Lopukhina, but the relationship seems to have been platonic and was barely more than another detail in his ideal of chivalric manhood.

Emperor Paul also ordered the bones of Grigory Potyomkin, one of his mother's lovers, dug out of their grave and scattered.^[1]

Foreign affairs

Paul's handling of foreign affairs plunged the country into successive wars against allies hastily abandoned. After withdrawing plans of a joint Russo-French naval assault on the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, he allied with the United Kingdom against Napoleon in the War of the Second Coalition. In 1798 he sent Suvorov to batter Napoleon in Switzerland and Ushakov to assist Nelson's operations in the Mediterranean. After hard won success in these campaigns, the emperor turned against the United Kingdom in 1801: realigning Russia in armed neutrality against the former ally and dispatching a Cossack expeditionary force to fight the British in India (see Indian March of Paul). In both cases it seems as if he acted on personal pique, quarreling with France because he took a "sentimental" interest in the Knights Hospitaller, and then with the United Kingdom after it had captured Malta, the Hospitaller's traditional home.

Assassination

St. Michael's palace, where Emperor Paul was murdered within weeks after the opening festivities.

Paul's premonitions of assassination were well-founded. His attempts to force the nobility to adopt a code of chivalry alienated many of his trusted advisors. The Emperor also discovered outrageous machinations and corruption in the Russian treasury. Although he repealed Catherine's law which allowed the corporal punishment of the free classes and directed reforms which resulted in greater rights for the peasantry, and better treatment for serfs on agricultural estates, most of his policies were viewed as a great annoyance to the noble class and induced his enemies to work out a plan of action.

A conspiracy was organized, some months before it was executed, by Counts Peter Ludwig von der Pahlen, Nikita Petrovich Panin, and the half-Spanish, half-Neapolitan adventurer Admiral Ribas. The death of Ribas delayed the execution. On the night of the 23 March [O.S. 11 March] 1801, Paul was murdered in his bedroom in the newly built St Michael's Castle by a band of dismissed officers headed by General Bennigsen, a Hanoverian in the Russian service, and General Yashvil, a Georgian. They charged into his bedroom, flushed with drink after supping together, and found Paul hiding behind some drapes in the corner.^[2] The conspirators pulled him out, forced him to the table, and tried to compel him to sign his abdication. Paul offered some resistance, and one of the assassins struck him with a sword, after which he was strangled and trampled to death. He was succeeded by his son, the 23-year-old Alexander I; who was actually in the palace, and to whom General Nicholas Zubov, one of the assassins, announced his accession, accompanied by the admonition, "Time to grow up! Go and rule!".

Legacy

As Dr Michael Foster points out^[3]: The popular view of Paul I has long been that he was mad, had a mistress, and accepted the office of Grand Master of the Order of St John, which furthered his delusions. These eccentricities and his unpredictability in other areas naturally led, this view goes, to his assassination. This portrait of Paul was promoted by his assassins and their supporters.

Military Parade of Emperor Paul in front of Mikhailovsky Castle painting by Alexandre Benois, taken from the art book World of Art.

There is some evidence that Paul I was venerated as a saint among the Russian Orthodox populace ^[4], even though he was never officially canonized by any of the Orthodox Churches.

A recent film on the rule of Paul I was produced by Lenfilm in 2003. Poor, Poor Paul ("Бедный бедный Павел") is directed by Vitaliy Mel'nikov and stars Viktor Sukhorukov as Paul and Oleg Yankovsky as Count Pahlen, who headed a conspiracy against him. The film portrays Paul I more compassionately than the long-existing stories about him. The movie won the Michael Tariverdiev Prize for best music to a film at the Open Russian Film Festival "Kinotavr" in 2003.

Issue

Paul and Sophie had the following children:

Gallery

Pavel Petrovich as a Child (1761), by Fedor Rokotov

The rooms of Gatchina palace where Grand Duke Paul spent his youth

State Arms under Emperor Paul, incorporating the cross of the Order of Malta, circa 1800

Ancestry

See also

• Manifesto of three-day corvee
• Tsars of Russia family tree

References

Further reading

• 1979 Reassessment of Paul: Hugh (Ed) Paul I: A reassessment of His Life and Reign, University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 1979
• For Paul's early life: K. Waliszewski, Autour d'un trone (Paris, 1894), or the English translation, The Story of a Throne (London, 1895), and P. Morane, Paul I. de Russie avant l'avenement (Paris, 1907)
• For Paul's reign: T. Schiemann, Geschichte Russlands unter Nikolaus I (Berlin, 1904), vol. i. and Die Ermordung Pauls, by the same author (Berlin, 1902)
• Other readings: (in Russian) V.V.Uzdenikov. Monety Rossiyi XVIII-nachala XX veka (Russian coinage from XVIII to the beginning of XX century). Moscow - 1994. ISBN 5-87613-001-X

External links

• http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/Paul.html
• (Russian) Pavel I - Prince of Gatchina. Digest & "Bednyy, bednyy Pavel". Film Vitaliy Melnikov about Paul I of Russia
• Tsar Paul and the Question of Madness by Hugh Ragsdale
• Godunov to Nicholas II by Saul Zaklad

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