Russia
Paul I - Russian Emperor: 17 November 1796 – 23 March 1801
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Imperial monogram of Paul I.
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Paul  I (Russian: Па́вел I Петро́вич; Pavel Petrovich)  (1 October [O.S.  20 September] 1754 – 23 March [O.S.  11 March] 1801) reigned as Emperor of Russia between 1796 and 1801.  Officially, he was the only son of Peter III (reigned January to July 1762) and of Catherine the Great (reigned 1762-1796), though  Catherine hinted that he was fathered by her lover Sergei Saltykov .

Paul remained overshadowed by his mother for much of his life. His reign  lasted five years, ending with his assassination by conspirators. His most  important achievement^{[citation  needed]} was the adoption of the laws of succession to the Russian throne -  rules that lasted until the end of the Romanov dynasty and of the Russian  Empire.

He became de facto Grand Master of the Order of Hospitallers , and ordered the  construction of a number of Maltese thrones (as of 2016 on display in the State Hermitage Museum , Gatchina Palace and the Kremlin Armoury ).

Childhood

Paul was born in the Palace of Empress Elizabeth in St Petersburg . He was the son of the Grand  Duchess Catherine, later Empress Catherine the Great , who was the wife of  Elizabeth's heir and nephew, the Grand Duke Peter, later Emperor Peter III .

During his infancy, Paul was taken immediately from his mother by the Empress  Elizabeth , whose overwhelming attention may  have done him more harm than good. As a boy, he was reported to be intelligent  and good-looking. His pug-nosed facial features in later life are attributed to  an attack of typhus , from which he suffered in 1771. Some  claim that his mother Catherine hated him, and was restrained from putting him  to death. Massie is more compassionate towards Catherine;  in his 2011 biography of her he claims that once Catherine had done her duty in  providing an heir to the throne Elizabeth had no more use for her, and Paul was  taken from his mother at birth and withheld from her presence except during very  limited moments. Paul was put in the charge of a trustworthy governor, Nikita Ivanovich Panin , and of competent  tutors. It is interesting to note that Panin's nephew went on to become one of  Paul's assassins.

The Russian Imperial court, first of Elizabeth and then of Catherine, was not  an ideal home for a lonely, needy and often sickly boy. However, Catherine took  great trouble to arrange his first marriage with Wilhelmina Louise (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 that he was "always in a hurry",  acting and speaking without reflection.

Life from 1774 to 1796

 

After Paul's first wife died in childbirth, his mother arranged another  marriage on 7 October 1776, with the beautiful Sophia Dorothea of Württemberg , who received the new Orthodox name Maria Feodorovna.

The use made of his name by the rebel Yemelyan Pugachev , who 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, an unpopular stance  at the time.

Relationship with Catherine the Great

Catherine the Great and her son and heir, the future Paul I, maintained a  distant relationship throughout the reign of the former. The aunt of Catherine's  husband, Empress Elizabeth , took up the child as a  passing fancy.^[5]:28  Elizabeth proved an obsessive but incapable caretaker, as she had raised no  children of her own. Paul was supervised by a variety of caregivers. Roderick  McGrew briefly relates the neglect to which the infant heir was sometimes  subject: "On one occasion he fell out of his crib and slept the night away  unnoticed on the floor."^[5]:30  Even after Elizabeth's death, relations with Catherine hardly improved. Paul was  often jealous of the favors she would shower upon her lovers. In one instance  the empress gave to one of her court favourites fifty-thousand rubles on her  birthday, while Paul received a cheap watch.^[6]  Paul's early isolation from his mother created a distance between them which  later events would reinforce. She never considered inviting him to share her  power in governing Russia. And once Paul's son Alexander was born, it appeared  that she had found a more suitable heir.

Catherine's absolute power and the delicate balance of courtier-status  greatly influenced the relationship at Court with Paul, who openly disregarded  his mother's opinions. Paul adamantly protested his mother’s policies, writing a  veiled criticism in his Reflections, a dissertation on military reform.^[6]  In it he directly disparaged expansionist warfare in favour of a more defensive  military policy. Unenthusiastically received by his mother, Reflections  appeared a threat to her authority and added weight to her suspicion of an  internal conspiracy with Paul at its center. For a courtier to have openly  supported or shown intimacy towards Paul, especially following this publication,  would have meant political suicide.

Paul spent the following years away from the Imperial Court, contented to  remain at his private estates at Gatchina with his growing family and to perform  Prussian drill-exercises. As Catherine II grew older she became less concerned  that her son attend court functions; her attentions focused primarily on Paul's  son, the future Emperor Alexander I.

It was not until 1787 that Catherine II may have in fact decided to exclude  her son from succession.^[5]:184  After Paul's sons Alexander and Constantine were born, she immediately had them  placed under her charge, just as Elizabeth had done with Paul. That Catherine  grew to favour Alexander as sovereign of Russia rather than Paul is  unsurprising. She met secretly with Alexander’s tutor de La Harpe to discuss his pupil's ascension,  and attempted to convince Maria, his mother, to sign a proposal authorizing her  son's legitimacy. Both efforts proved fruitless, and though Alexander agreed to  his grandmother's wishes, he remained respectful of his father's position as  immediate successor to the Russian throne.

Accession to the  throne

 

 

Catherine suffered a stroke on 17 November 1796, and died without  regaining consciousness. Paul's first act as Emperor was to inquire about and,  if possible, destroy her testament, as he feared it would exclude him from  succession and leave the throne to Alexander. These fears may have contributed  to Paul's promulgation of the Pauline Laws , which established the strict  principle of primogeniture in the House of Romanov , leaving the throne to the  next male heir.

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  accession. His father Peter was reburied with great pomp at the royal sepulchre  in the Peter and Paul Cathedral . Paul responded to the  rumour of his illegitimacy by parading his descent from Peter the Great . The aged Count Aleksey Orlov , who had been involved in Peter  III's murder 35 years earlier, was forced to carry the imperial crown behind the  coffin on the way to its new resting place. The inscription on the monument to the first Emperor of Russia near  the St. Michael's Castle reads in Russian "To the Great-Grandfather from the  Great-Grandson". This is an allusion to the Latin "PETRO PRIMO CATHARINA SECUNDA", the  dedication by Catherine on the 'Bronze  Horseman' of Peter the Great.

Purported  eccentricities

Emperor Paul was idealistic and capable of great generosity, but he was also  mercurial and capable of vindictiveness. 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 Schlüsselburg fortress , and also Tadeusz Kościuszko , yet after liberation both  were confined to 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 Kutuzov , Arakcheyev , Rostopchin ) he granted more serfs during the  five years of his reign than his mother had presented to her lovers during her  thirty-four years. 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. By this, Paul is sometimes being regarded as a sympathizer of Polish people due to his deep respect upon  them.

Paul made several idiosyncratic and deeply unpopular attempts to reform the  army. Under Catherine's reign, Grigori Potemkin introduced new uniforms that  were cheap, comfortable and practical, and designed in a distinctly Russian  style. Paul decided to fulfill his predecessor Peter III's intention of  introducing Prussian uniforms. Impractical for active duty, these were deeply  unpopular with the men, as was the effort required to maintain them.^[7]  His love of parades and ceremony was not well-liked either. He ordered that Wachtparad (Watch parades) took place early every morning in the  parade ground of the palace, regardless of the weather conditions.^[8]  He would personally sentence soldiers to be flogged if they made a mistake, and  at one point literally ordered his guard regiment to march to Siberia when they  became disordered during manoeuvers, although he changed his mind after they  walked for about 10 miles.^[9][10]  He 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 largely upon show and glamour, but his greatest commander, Suvorov completely ignored them, believing them  to be worthless.

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 .

Emperor Paul also ordered the bones of Grigory Potemkin, one of his mother's  lovers, dug out of their grave and scattered.^[11]

Foreign affairs

 

Paul's early foreign policy can largely be seen as reactions against his  mother's. In foreign policy, this meant that he opposed the many expansionary  wars she 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 60,000 men she had promised to Britain and  Austria to help them defeat the French.^[12]  Paul hated the French before their revolution, and afterwards, with their  republican and anti-religious views, he detested them even more.^[13]  In addition to this, he knew French expansion hurt Russian interests, but he  recalled his mother's troops primarily because he firmly opposed wars of  expansion. He also 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.^[5]:283

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.^[5]:286  This treaty, with its affirmation of French control over islands in the  Mediterranean and the partitioning of the Republic of Venice , upset Paul, who saw it as  creating more instability in the region and displaying France's ambitions in the  Mediterranean. In response, he offered asylum to the Prince de Condé and his army, as well as Louis XVIII , both of whom had been forced out  of Austria by the treaty.^{[5]:288–289}  By this point, the French Republic had seized Italy, the Netherlands, and  Switzerland, establishing 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.^{[5]:289–290}  In this goal he found a willing ally in the Austrian chancellor Baron Thugut , who hated the French and loudly  criticized revolutionary principles. Britain and the Ottoman Empire joined  Austria and Russia to stop French expansion, free territories under their  control 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.^{[5]:286–287}  Despite the Prussians’ reluctance, Paul decided to move ahead with the war,  promising 60,000 men to support Austria in Italy and 45,000 men to help England  in North Germany and the Netherlands.^[13]

Another important factor in Paul's decision to go to war with France was the  island of 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 Russian land.^[14]:46–48  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 Priories  of Poland to St. Petersburg in January 1797.^[14]:48  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.^[14]:49–50

In June 1798, Napoleon seized Malta ; this greatly offended  Paul.^[14]:51  In September, the Priory of St. Petersburg declared that Grand Master Hompesch had betrayed the Order by  selling Malta to Napoleon. A month later the Priory elected Paul Grand Master .^{[14]:55–58[15][16]}  This election resulted in the establishment of the Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller   within the Imperial Orders of Russia. 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 or any of the other of the Order's priories  approved it. This delay created political issues between Paul, who insisted on  defending his legitimacy, and the priories’ respective countries.^[14]:59  Though 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.

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.^[17]  However, by this point in time, cracks had started to appear in the  Russo-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.^[5]:299  The Austrians, therefore, happily saw Suvorov and his army out of Italy in 1799  to go meet up with the army of Alexander Korsakov , at the time assisting the  Austrian Archduke Charles expel the French armies  currently occupying Switzerland.^[18]  However, the campaign in Switzerland 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 and forcing Suvorov to fight  his way out of Switzerland, suffering heavy losses.^[19]  Suvorov, shamed, 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.^[20]

Although by the fall of 1799 the Russo-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.^[5]:309  The Anglo-Russian 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, and their success evaporated.^[21]  As the month wore on, the weather worsened and the allies suffered more and more  losses, eventually signing an armistice in October 1799.^[22]  The Russians suffered three-quarters of allied losses and the British left their  troops on an island in the Channel after the retreat, as Britain did not want  them on the mainland.^{[5]:309–310}  This defeat and subsequent maltreating of Russian troops strained Russo-British  relations, but a definite break did not occur until later.^[5]:311  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: Bonaparte released 7,000 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 (Whitworth)  recalled (1800) and Britain did not replace him, with no clear reason given as  to why; and Britain, needing to choose between their two allies, chose Austria,  who had certainly committed to fighting the French to the end.^[23]  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 as well as impound  British ships and cargo; second, even though the allies resolved this crisis,  Paul could not forgive the British for Admiral 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.^[24]  In a drastic response, Paul seized all British vessels in Russian ports, sent  their crews to detention camps and took British traders hostage until he  received satisfaction.^[25]  Over the next winter, he went further, using his new Armed Neutrality coalition with Sweden, Denmark  and Prussia to prepare the Baltic against possible British attack, prevent the  British from searching neutral merchant vessels, and freeze all British trade in  Northern Europe.^[26]  As France had already closed all of Western and Southern Europe to British  trade, Britain, which relied heavily upon imports (especially for timber, naval  products, and grain) felt seriously threatened by Paul's move and reacted fast.^[27]  In March 1801, Britain sent a fleet to Denmark, bombarding Copenhagen and  forcing the Danes to surrender in the beginning of April.^[28]  Nelson then sailed towards St. Petersburg, reaching Reval (14 May 1801), but after the conspiracy  assassinated Paul (23 March 1801), the new Tsar Alexander had opened  peace-negotiations shortly after taking the throne.^[5]:314

The most original aspect of Paul I’s foreign policy was his rapprochement  with France after the coalition fell apart. Several scholars have argued that  this change in position, radical though it seemed, made sense, as Bonaparte  became First Consul and made France a more  conservative state, consistent with Paul’s view of the world.^[29]  Even Paul's decision to send a Cossack army to take British  India , bizarre as it may seem, makes a certain amount of sense:  Britain itself was almost impervious to direct attack, being an island nation  with a formidable navy, but the British had left India largely unguarded and  would have great difficulty staving off a force that came over land to attack  it.^[30]  The British themselves considered this enough of a problem that they signed  three treaties with Persia, in 1801, 1809 and 1812, to guard against an army  attacking India through Central Asia.^[31]  Paul sought to attack the British where they were weakest: through their  commerce and their colonies. Throughout his reign, his policies focused  reestablishing peace and the balance of power in Europe, while supporting  autocracy and old monarchies, without seeking to expand Russia's borders.^[32]

Irano-Georgian matters

 

In spite of Russia's failure to honour the terms of the Treaty of Georgievsk , as Qajar Iran reinvaded Georgia and captured and sacked Tbilisi , Georgian rulers  felt they had nowhere else to turn now that Georgia was again re-subjugated by  Iran. Tbilisi was captured and burnt to the ground, and eastern Georgia  reconquered. Agha Mohammad Khan however, Persia's ruler, was  assassinated in 1797 in Shusha , after which the Persian grip on Georgia  softened once again. Erekle however, still dreaming of a united Georgia, died a  year afterwards. After Erekle's death, a civil war broke out over the succession  to the throne of Kartli-Kakheti and one of the rival candidates called on Russia  to intervene and decide matters. On 8 January 1801, Tsar Paul I signed a decree  on the incorporation of Georgia (Kartli-Kakheti) within the Russian Empire^[33][34]  which was confirmed by Tsar Alexander I on 12 September 1801.^[35][36]  The Georgian envoy in Saint Petersburg, Garsevan Chavchavadze , reacted with a note of  protest that was presented to the Russian vice-chancellor Alexander Kurakin .^[37]  In May 1801, Russian General Carl Heinrich von Knorring removed the Georgian  heir to the throne, David Batonishvili , from power and deployed a  provisional government headed by General Ivan Petrovich Lazarev .^[38]

Some of the Georgian nobility did not accept the decree until April 1802,  when General Knorring held the nobility in Tbilisi 's Sioni Cathedral and forced them to take an oath  on the imperial crown of Russia. Those who disagreed were arrested.^[39]  Wanting to secure the northernmost reaches of his empire, as well as knowing  that the grip on Georgia was drastically loosening with Russia's formal entrance  into Tbilisi, Agha Mohammad Khan's successor, Fath Ali Shah Qajar got involved into the Russo-Persian War (1804-1813) . In the summer of  1805, Russian troops on the Askerani River and near Zagam defeated the  Persian army, saving Tbilisi from its attack and re-subjugation. In 1810, the  kingdom of Imereti (Western Georgia) was annexed by the Russian Empire after the suppression of King Solomon II 's resistance.^[40]  In 1813, Qajar Iran was officially forced to cede Georgia to Russia per the Treaty of Gulistan of 1813.^[41]  This marked the official start of the Russian period in Georgia.

Assassination

 

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 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.^[42]  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 Nikolay Zubov , one of the assassins, announced  his accession, accompanied by the admonition, "Time to grow up! Go and rule!"

Legacy

 

There is some evidence that Paul I was venerated as a saint among the Russian  Orthodox populace,^[43]  even though he was never officially canonized by any of the Orthodox Churches.

Portrayals in literature, theatre and film

In 1906 Dmitry Merezhkovsky published his tragedy "Paul I". Its most  prominent performance was made on the Soviet Army Theatre's stage in 1989, with Oleg Borisov as Paul.

The 1937 Soviet film Lieutenant Kijé , directed by Aleksandr  Faintsimmer and based on a novella of the same name by Yury Tynyanov, satirizes  Paul's obsession with rigid drill, instant obedience and martinet discipline.

The 1987 Soviet experimental film Assa has a subplot revolving around Paul's  murder; Paul is portrayed by Dmitry Dolinin .

A film about Paul's rule 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 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 ten children; nine survived to adulthood (and from whom  can be traced 19 grandchildren ):

* Disputed.

Gallery

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  Family of Paul I of Russia, by Gerhard von Kügelgen
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  Pavel Petrovich as a Child (1761), by Fedor Rokotov
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  The rooms of Gatchina palace where Grand Duke  Paul spent his youth
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  State Arms under Emperor Paul, incorporating the cross of the Order of Malta , 1799