Encyclopedia
Aleksander I Pavlovich , was
Emperor of
Russia from March 23, 1801–December 1, 1825 and
King of Poland from 1815–1825, as well as the first Grand Duke of Finland.
He was born in
Saint Petersburg to Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later Emperor
Paul I, and Maria Fedorovna, daughter of the Duke of Württemberg. Alexander succeeded to the throne after his father was murdered, and ruled Russia during the chaotic period of the
Napoleonic Wars. In the first half of his ruling Alexander tried to introduce liberal reforms whilst in the second half he turned to a much more arbitrary manner of conduct, which led to the abolishing of many early reforms. In foreign policy Alexander gained certain success, having won several campaigns. In particular under his rule Russia acquired Finland and part of Poland. The strange contradictions of his character make Alexander one of the most interesting Tsars.
Early life
Soon after his birth he was taken from
his father by his grandmother
Catherine the Great, who utterly disliked Paul and did not want him to have any influence on the future emperor. Some sources allege that she created the plan to remove Paul from succession and proclaim Alexander as the one instead. Both sides tried to use him for their own purposes and he was torn emotionally between his grandmother and his father, the heir to the throne. This taught Alexander, very early on, how to manipulate those who loved him and he became a natural chameleon, changing his views and personality depending on whom he was with at the time. Reared in the free-thinking atmosphere of the court of
Catherine, he had imbibed from his
Swiss tutor, Frederic Caesar de Laharpe, the principles of
Rousseau's gospel of humanity; from his military governor, Nikolay Saltykov, the traditions of Russian autocracy. Young Alexander sympathised with
French and
Polish revolutionaries. However, his father seems to have taught him to combine a theoretical love of mankind with a practical contempt for men. These contradictory tendencies remained with him through life, and this can be seen through his fluctuations in policy, both domestic and military.
In 1793 he married
Louise of Baden, who was only 14 years old at the time. Meanwhile the death of
Catherine the Great in November 1796 brought his father,
Paul I to the throne. His attempts at reforms were conducted in a hostile environment where many of his closest advisors, and his own son, were against his proposed changes. The Tsar was murdered in March 1801.
Succession to the throne
Alexander I succeeded to the throne on March 23, 1801, and was crowned in the
Kremlin on September 15 of that year. Historians still debate about Alexander’s role in this murder. The most common opinion is that he was in favor of taking the throne but insisted that his
father would not be killed. At first, indeed, this exercised little influence on the
Emperor's life. The young Tsar was determined to reform the outdated, centralised systems of government that Russia relied upon. While retaining for a time the old ministers who had served and overthrown the Emperor Paul, one of the first acts of his reign was to appoint the Private Committee, also called ironically the "Comite du salut public", comprising young and enthusiastic friends of his own - Victor Kochubey, Nikolay Novosiltsev, Pavel Stroganov and
Adam Jerzy Czartoryski - to draw up a scheme of internal reform, which was supposed to result in an establishing of
constitutional monarchy. Alexander intended to draw a
constitution and grant political liberties in accordance with teachings of the
Age of Enlightenment. Also Alexander wanted to resolve another crucial issue in Russia - the future of the
serfs. The regime looked into the possibilities of
emancipating the serfs, although this was not achieved until 1861. In the very beginning of Alexander's rule several notable steps were made, including establishing freedom for
publishing houses, the winding down of activities in the intelligence services and prohibition of
torture. Several years later the liberal
Mikhail Speransky became one of the Tsar's closest advisors, and drew up many plans for elaborate reforms. Their aims, inspired by their admiration for
English institutions, far outstripped the possibilities of the time, and even after they had been raised to regular ministerial positions little of their programme could come to pass.
Russia was not ready for a more
liberal society; and Alexander, the disciple of the progressive teacher Laharpe, was—as he himself said—but "a happy accident" on the throne of the tsars. He spoke, indeed, bitterly of "the state of barbarism in which the country had been left by the traffic in men”.
Legal reform
The codification of the laws initiated in 1801 was never carried out during his reign; nothing was done to improve the intolerable status of the Russian peasantry; the constitution drawn up by
Mikhail Speransky, and passed by the emperor, remained unsigned. Finally elaborate intrigues against Speransky initiated by his political rivals led to the loss of support of Alexander and subsequent removal in March 1812. Alexander, in fact, who, without being consciously tyrannical, possessed in full measure the
tyrant's characteristic distrust of men of ability and independent judgment, lacked also the first requisite for a reforming sovereign: confidence in his people; and it was this want that vitiated such reforms as were actually realized. He experimented in the outlying provinces of his
Empire; and the Russians noted with open murmurs that, not content with governing through foreign instruments, he was conferring on
Poland,
Finland and the
Baltic provinces benefits denied to themselves.
Social reforms
Main articles: Government reform of Alexander I and Mikhail SperanskyIn Russia, too, certain reforms were carried out, but they could not survive the suspicious interference of the autocrat and his officials. The newly created Council of Ministers and State Council under Governing Senate, endowed for the first time with certain theoretical powers, became in the end but the slavish instruments of the Tsar and his favorites of the moment. The elaborate system of education, culminating in the reconstituted, or new-founded,
universities of
Dorpat,
Vilna,
Kazan and
Kharkov, was strangled in the supposed interests of "order" and of
Russian Orthodox Church; while the military settlements which Alexander proclaimed as a blessing to both soldiers and state were forced on the unwilling peasantry and army with pitiless cruelty. Though they were supposed to improve living conditions of soldiers, the economic effect in fact was poor and harsh military discipline caused frequent unrest. Even the Bible Society, through which the Emperor in his later mood of
evangelical zeal proposed to bless his people, was conducted on the same ruthless lines. The
Roman Archbishop and the Orthodox Metropolitans were forced to serve on its committee side by side with Protestant pastors; and village
priests, trained to regard any tampering with the letter of the traditional documents of the Church as mortal sin, became the unwilling instruments for the propagation of what they regarded as works of the
Devil.
Influence on European politics
Views held by his contemporaries
Autocrat and "Jacobin", man of the world and mystic, he appeared to his contemporaries as a riddle which each read according to his own temperament.
Napoleon I thought him a "shifty Byzantine", and called him the Talma of the North, as ready to play any conspicuous part. To
Metternich he was a madman to be humoured.
Castlereagh, writing of him to Lord Liverpool, gives him credit for "grand qualities", but adds that he is "suspicious and undecided".
Alexander's grandiose imagination was, however, more strongly attracted by the great questions of European politics than by attempts at domestic reform which, on the whole, wounded his pride by proving to him the narrow limits of absolute power.
Alliances with other powers
Upon his accession, Alexander reversed the policy of his father, Paul, denounced the League of Neutrals, and made peace with the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . At the same time he opened negotiations with
Francis II of the Holy Roman Empire. Soon afterwards at
Memel he entered into a close alliance with
Prussia, not as he boasted from motives of policy, but in the spirit of true
chivalry, out of
friendship for the young
King Frederick William III and his beautiful wife
Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The development of this alliance was interrupted by the short-lived peace of October 1801; and for a while it seemed as though
France and
Russia might come to an understanding. Carried away by the enthusiasm of Laharpe, who had returned to
Russia from
Paris, Alexander began openly to proclaim his admiration for French institutions and for the person of
Napoléon Bonaparte . Soon, however, came a change. Laharpe, after a new visit to Paris, presented to the Tsar his Reflections on the True Nature of the Consulship for Life, which, as Alexander said, tore the veil from his eyes, and revealed Bonaparte "as not a true
patriot", but only as "the most famous tyrant the world has produced." His disillusionment was completed by the murder of the
duc d'Enghien. The Russian court went into mourning for the last of the
Condés, and diplomatic relations with Paris were broken off.
Opposition to Napoleon
The events of the
Napoleonic Wars that followed belong to the general history of Europe; but the Tsar's attitude throughout is personal to himself, though pregnant with issues momentous for the world. In opposing Napoleon I, "the oppressor of Europe and the disturber of the world's peace", Alexander in fact already believed himself to be fulfilling a divine mission. In his instructions to Novosiltsov, his special envoy in
London, the Tsar elaborated the motives of his policy in language which appealed as little to the common sense of the prime minister,
Pitt, as did later the treaty of the Holy Alliance to that of the foreign minister, Castlereagh. Yet the document is of great interest, as in it we find formulated for the first time in an official despatch those exalted ideals of international policy which were to play so conspicuous a part in the affairs of the world at the close of the revolutionary epoch, and issued at the end of the 19th century in the Rescript of
Nicholas II and the conference of the
Hague. The outcome of the war, Alexander argued, was not to be only the liberation of France, but the universal triumph of "the sacred
rights of humanity". To attain this it would be necessary "after having attached the nations to their government by making these incapable of acting save in the greatest interests of their subjects, to fix the relations of the states amongst each other on more precise rules, and such as it is to their interest to respect."
A general treaty was to become the basis of the relations of the states forming "the European Confederation"; and this, though "it was no question of realizing the dream of universal peace, would attain some of its results if, at the conclusion of the general war, it were possible to establish on clear principles the prescriptions of the rights of nations." "Why could not one submit to it", the Tsar continued, "the positive rights of nations, assure the privilege of neutrality, insert the obligation of never beginning war until all the resources which the mediation of a third party could offer have been exhausted, having by this means brought to light the respective grievances, and tried to remove them? It is on such principles as these that one could proceed to a general pacification, and give birth to a league of which the stipulations would form, so to speak, a new code of the law of nations, which, sanctioned by the greater part of the nations of Europe, would without difficulty become the immutable rule of the cabinets, while those who should try to infringe it would risk bringing upon themselves the forces of the new union."
1807 loss to French forces
Meanwhile Napoleon, a little deterred by the Russian autocrat's youthful ideology, never gave up hope of detaching him from the coalition. He had no sooner entered
Vienna in triumph than he opened negotiations with him; he resumed them after the
Battle of Austerlitz .
Imperial Russia and France, he urged, were "geographical allies"; there was, and could be, between them no true conflict of interests; together they might rule the world. But Alexander was still determined "to persist in the system of disinterestedness in respect of all the states of Europe which he had thus far followed", and he again allied himself with the
Kingdom of Prussia. The campaign of Jena and the
battle of Eylau followed; and Napoleon, though still intent on the Russian alliance, stirred up
Poles,
Turks and
Persians to break the obstinacy of the Tsar. A party too in Russia itself, headed by the Tsar's brother
Constantine Pavlovich, was clamorous for peace; but Alexander, after a vain attempt to form a new coalition, summoned the Russian nation to a holy war against Napoleon as the enemy of the Orthodox faith. The outcome was the rout of Friedland . Napoleon saw his chance and seized it. Instead of making heavy terms, he offered to the chastened autocrat his alliance, and a partnership in his glory.
The two Emperors met at
Tilsit on 25 June, 1807. Alexander, dazzled by Napoleon's
genius and overwhelmed by his apparent generosity, was completely won. Napoleon knew well how to appeal to the exuberant imagination of his new-found friend. He would divide with Alexander the Empire of the world; as a first step he would leave him in possession of the
Danubian principalities and give him a free hand to deal with
Finland; and, afterwards, the Emperors of the
East and
West, when the time should be ripe, would drive the
Turks from Europe and march across Asia to the conquest of
India. A programme so stupendous awoke in Alexander's impressionable mind an ambition to which he had hitherto been a stranger. The interests of Europe were forgotten. "What is Europe?" he exclaimed to the French ambassador. "Where is it, if it is not you and we?"
Prussia
The brilliance of these new visions did not, however, blind Alexander to the obligations of friendship; and he refused to retain the Danubian principalities as the price for suffering a further dismemberment of Prussia. "We have made loyal war", he said, "we must make a loyal peace." It was not long before the first enthusiasm of
Tilsit began to wane. Napoleon I was prodigal of promises, but niggard of their fulfilment. The French remained in Prussia, the Russians on the Danube; and each accused the other of breach of faith. Meanwhile, however, the personal relations of Alexander and Napoleon were of the most cordial character; and it was hoped that a fresh meeting might adjust all differences between
them. The meeting took place at
Erfurt in October, 1808, and resulted in a treaty which defined the common policy of the two Emperors. But Alexander's relations with Napoleon none the less suffered a change. He realized that in Napoleon sentiment never got the better of reason, that as a matter of fact he had never intended his proposed "grand enterprise" seriously, and had only used it to preoccupy the mind of the Tsar while he consolidated his own power in
Central Europe. From this moment the French alliance was for Alexander also not a fraternal agreement to rule the world, but an affair of pure policy. He used it, in the first instance, to remove "the geographical enemy" from the gates of
Saint Petersburg by wresting
Finland from the
Swedes ; and he hoped by means of it to make the Danube the southern frontier of Russia.
Franco-Russian Alliance
Events were in fact rapidly tending to the rupture of the Franco-Russian alliance. Alexander, indeed, assisted Napoleon in the war of 1809, but he declared plainly that he would not allow the
Austrian Empire to be crushed out of existence; and Napoleon complained bitterly of the inactivity of the Russian troops during the campaign. The Tsar in his turn protested against Napoleon's encouragement of the
Poles. In the matter of the French alliance he knew himself to be practically isolated in Russia, and he declared that he could not sacrifice the interest of his people and empire to his affection for Napoleon. "I don't want anything for myself", he said to the French ambassador, "therefore the world is not large enough to come to an understanding on the affairs of
Poland, if it is a question of its restoration."
The Treaty of Vienna, which added largely to the
Duchy of Warsaw, he complained had "ill requited him for his loyalty", and he was only mollified for the time by Napoleon's public declaration that he had no intention of restoring Poland, and by a convention, signed on the 4 January, 1810 but not ratified, abolishing the Polish name and orders of
chivalry.
But if Alexander suspected Napoleon, Napoleon was no less suspicious of Alexander; and, partly to test his sincerity, he sent an almost peremptory request for the hand of the Grand Duchess Anne, the younger sister of the Tsar. After some little delay Alexander returned a polite refusal, on the plea of the tender age of the Princess and the objection of the Empress dowager Maria Fyodorovna to the marriage. Napoleon's answer was to refuse to ratify the convention of the 4 January, 1810 and to announce his engagement to the Archduchess
Marie Louise in such a way as to lead Alexander to suppose that the two marriage treaties had been negotiated simultaneously. From this time the relation between the two emperors gradually became more and more strained.
The annexation of
Oldenburg, of which the Duke of Oldenburg was the Tsar's uncle, to
France in December, 1810, added another to the personal grievances of Alexander against Napoleon; while the ruinous reaction of "the continental system" on Russian trade made it impossible for the Tsar to maintain a policy which was Napoleon's chief motive for the alliance. An acid correspondence followed, and ill-concealed armaments, which culminated in the [summer of 1812 in Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Yet, even after the French had passed the frontier, Alexander still protested that his personal sentiments towards the Emperor were unaltered; "but", he added, "
God Himself cannot undo the past." It was the occupation of
Moscow and the desecration of the
Kremlin, the sacred centre of Holy Russia, that changed his sentiment for Napoleon into passionate hatred. In vain the French Emperor, within eight days of his entry into Moscow, wrote to the Tsar a letter, which was one long cry of distress, revealing the desperate straits of the
Grand Army, and appealed to "any remnant of his former sentiments." Alexander returned no answer to these
"fanfaronnades." "No more peace with Napoleon!" he cried, "He or I, I or He: we cannot longer reign together!"
The campaign of 1812
The campaign of 1812 was the turning-point of Alexander's life; and its horrors, for which his sensitive nature felt much of the responsibility, overset still more a mind never too well balanced. When Napoleon crossed the Russian border with his
Grand Army, Alexander I was quite unprepared for the war, trusting the Francophile chancellor
Nikolay Rumyantsev more than his French ambassador
Alexander Kurakin, who had warned him about Napoleon's bellicose plans. Russia proclaimed a
Patriotic War in defence of the Motherland. At the burning of
Moscow, he declared afterwards, his own soul had found illumination, and he had realized once for all the divine revelation to him of his mission as the peacemaker of Europe. He tried to calm the unrest of his conscience by correspondence with the leaders of the evangelical revival on the
continent, and sought for omens and
supernatural guidance in texts and passages of
scripture. It was not, however, according to his own account, till he met the
Baroness de Krüdener — a religious adventuress who made the conversion of princes her special mission—at
Basel, in the autumn of 1813, that his soul found peace. From this time a
mystic pietism became the avowed force of his political, as of his private actions. Madame de Krüdener, and her colleague, the evangelist Empaytaz, became the confidants of the Emperor's most secret thoughts; and during the campaign that ended in the occupation of
Paris the imperial
prayer-meetings were the oracle on whose revelations hung the fate of the world.
Liberal political views
From the end of the year 1818 Alexander's views began to change. A
revolutionary conspiracy among the officers of the guard, and a foolish plot to kidnap him on his way to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, are said to have shaken the foundations of his
Liberalism. At Aix he came for the first time into intimate contact with
Metternich. From this time dates the ascendancy of Metternich over the mind of the Russian Emperor and in the councils of Europe. It was, however, no case of sudden conversion. Though alarmed by the revolutionary agitation in Germany, which culminated in the murder of his agent, the dramatist August von Kotzebue , Alexander approved of Castlereagh's protest against Metternich's policy of "the governments contracting an alliance against the peoples", as formulated in the Carlsbad Decrees of July 1819, and deprecated any intervention of Europe to support "a league of which the sole object is the absurd pretensions of absolute power."
He still declared his belief in "free institutions, though not in such as age forced from feebleness, nor contracts ordered by popular leaders from their sovereigns, nor constitutions granted in difficult circumstances to tide over a crisis. "Liberty", he maintained, "should be confined within just limits. And the limits of liberty are the principles of order".
It was the apparent triumph of the principles of disorder in the revolutions of
Naples and
Piedmont, combined with increasingly disquieting symptoms of discontent in France, Germany, and among his own people, that completed Alexander's conversion. In the seclusion of the little town of
Troppau, where in October 1820 the powers met in conference,
Metternich found an opportunity for cementing his influence over Alexander, which had been wanting amid the turmoil and feminine intrigues of Vienna and Aix. Here, in confidence begotten of friendly chats over afternoon tea, the disillusioned autocrat confessed his mistake. "You have nothing to regret", he said sadly to the exultant chancellor, "but I have!"
The issue was momentous. In January Alexander had still upheld the ideal of a free confederation of the European states, symbolized by the Holy Alliance, against the policy of a dictatorship of the great powers, symbolized by the Quadruple Treaty; he had still protested against the claims of collective Europe to interfere in the internal concerns of the sovereign states. On 19 November he signed the Troppau Protocol, which consecrated the principle of intervention and wrecked the harmony of the concert.
The revolt of the Greeks
At Congress of Laibach, whither in the spring of 1821 the congress had been adjourned, Alexander first heard of the
Revolt of the Greeks. From this time until his death his mind was torn between his anxiety to realize his dream of a confederation of Europe and his traditional mission as leader of the Orthodox crusade against the
Ottoman Empire. At first, under the careful nursing of
Metternich, the former motive prevailed.
He struck the name of Alexander Ypsilanti from the Russian army list, and directed his foreign minister,
Giovanni, Count Capo d'Istria, himself a Greek, to disavow all sympathy of
Russia with his enterprise; and, next year, a deputation of the
Morea Greeks on its way to the Congress of Verona was turned back by his orders on the road.
He made, indeed, some effort to reconcile the principles at conflict in his mind. He offered to surrender the claim, successfully asserted when the Ottoman Sultan
Mahmud II had been excluded from the Holy Alliance and the affairs of the Ottoman empire from the deliberations of Vienna, that the affairs of the East were the "domestic concerns of Russia", and to march into the Ottoman Empire, as Austria had marched into
Naples, "as the mandatory of Europe."
Metternich's opposition to this, illogical, but natural from the Austrian point of view, first opened his eyes to the true character of Austria's attitude towards his ideals. Once more in Russia, far from the fascination of Metternich's personality, the immemorial spirit of his people drew him back into itself; and when, in the autumn of 1825, he took his dying Empress
Louise of Baden for change of air to the south of Russia, in order—as all Europe supposed—to place himself at the head of the great army concentrated near the Ottoman frontiers, his language was no longer that of "the peace-maker of Europe", but of the Orthodox Tsar determined to take the interests of his people and of his religion "into his own hands". Before the momentous issue could be decided, however, Alexander died, "crushed", to use his own words, "beneath the terrible burden of a crown" which he had more than once declared his intention of resigning.
Private life
He had been married, on October 9, 1793, without his wishes being consulted, to the princess
Louise of Baden , a political match which, as he regretfully confessed to his friend
Frederick William III, had proved the misfortune of both; and he consoled himself in the traditional manner. The two children of the marriage, grandduchess Maria died on 26 June 1800, and the grandduchess Elizaveta died on 12 May 1808. Their common sorrow drew husband and wife closer together. Towards the close of his life their reconciliation was completed by the wise charity of the Empress in sympathizing deeply with him over the death of his beloved daughter by Princess Maria Naryshkina.
Death
Tsar Alexander I, became increasingly involved in
mysticism and increasingly more suspicious of those around him. On the way to the conference in
Aachen,
Germany, an attempt had been made to kidnap him which made him more suspicious of the people around him.
In the autumn of 1825, due to increasing illness of Alexander's wife, the Emperor undertook a voyage to the south of Russia. During this trip, he himself caught a cold which developed into typhus, from which he died in the southern city of
Taganrog on November 19 /December 1, 1825. His wife died few weeks later, as the emperor's body was transported to
St. Petersburg for the funeral. He was interred at the Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral of the
Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg on March 13, 1826.
The unexpected death of the
Emperor of Russia far from the capital caused persistent rumours that his death and funeral were staged, while the emperor allegedly renounced the crown and retired to spend the rest of his life in solitude. It was rumoured that a "soldier" was buried as Alexander, or that the grave was empty, or that a British ambassador at the Russian court said he had seen Alexander boarding a ship. Some claimed that the former emperor had become a
monk in either
Pochaev Lavra or
Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra</ 
