by Alan Palmer
Within five months an unforeseen event posed questions he had wished not to answer. On 22 September 1796 the Empress Catherine, belatedly thwarted in a plan to marry her eldest grand-daughter Alexandra Pavlovna to the young King of Sweden, suffered a slight apoplectic stroke. Although a few days later she assured Melchior Grimm that she was once more ‘as busy as a bird’, she knew a decision over the succession could not be delayed much longer: and on 26 September a peremptory order was despatched to Gatchina requiring the immediate presence of Alexander in the capital.50
He came at once, and had a long discussion with the Empress. What exactly was said is not known, for no one else was present. Almost certainly Catherine at last formally told him of her wish that he should succeed her on the throne. She entrusted him with a number of state papers, including explanatory memoranda which she had herself drafted. It is probable that among the documents he received was an outline of the proclamation in which she would indicate both the future status of Paul and her decision in Alexander’s favour. None of these papers have survived, but Alexander’s reply to Catherine’s proposals gives a clear indication of their significance. Sent on 4 October, it is an interesting exercise in diplomatic dissimulation:
Never shall I be able to express gratitude for the confidence with which Your Majesty has graciously honoured me and the kindness with which you have written in your own hand a commentary to clarify the other papers. I hope Your Majesty will see by my zeal that I am worthy of this inestimable trust, the true value of which I perceive. [J’espère que Votre Majesté verra, par mon zèle, à mériter ses precieuses bontés, que j’en sens tout le prix.] I can never repay, even with my blood, all that you have done and still wish to do for me. These papers clearly confirm all the thoughts which Your Majesty has been so kind as to communicate to me, and which, if I may offer an opinion, could not be more just. Once more assuring Your Imperial Majesty of my deepest gratitude, I take the liberty to remain, with profound reverence and indissoluble attachment, Your Imperial Majesty’s most humble and most obedient servant and grandson,
Alexander.51
The Grand Duke thus neither accepted nor rejected whatever proposal had been made to him, and Catherine may well have been puzzled over his attitude. No proclamation was made, even though Alexander remained for most of the following month in the capital. It is possible that he still did not know precisely what he wanted. There was another wild moment when he told some friends he was thinking of casting away all his privileges and settling as a private citizen in America; and yet, on the day before sending this reply to the Empress, he permitted himself a slip of phraseology in a letter to Arakcheev, referring to his father with anticipatory respect as ‘His Imperial Majesty’.52 Alexander was developing masterly skill at concealing his innermost feelings. At times he hid them even from himself.
Empire on Parade
The Grand Duke Comes to Town
Six weeks later St Petersburg was in turmoil. On the morning of 15 November 1796 the Empress suffered a second stroke; she collapsed while seated on her commode and at once lost consciousness. Neither her son nor her grandson were in the Winter Palace at the time: Paul was at Gatchina; and Alexander, though resident in the capital, was that morning visiting Constantine Czartoryski. General Saltykov sent a messenger to fetch Alexander to his grandmother’s sick-bed and he came at once. As soon as he reached the palace he realized Catherine was gravely ill. Significantly he made no attempt to claim succession for himself but immediately ordered a courtier to ride out to Gatchina and inform Paul he would await him in the capital. For this mission Alexander chose Theodore Rostopchin, a young landowner from Moscow who had fallen from grace with Catherine by an unauthorized marriage with a maid of honour but who remained attached to her son’s miniature Court. It is an interesting commentary on Alexander’s sense of filial duty that, at this moment, he should have turned for assistance to a trusted confidant of his father rather than to one of his own friends.
Rostopchin was not, however, the first messenger to leave St Petersburg that morning for Gatchina. The initiative was seized by the last of all Catherine’s favourites, Platon Zubov, who had ordered his brother Nicholas to head for Paul’s estate with news of the Empress’s illness while Alexander was still at Czartoryski’s house. Nicholas Zubov reached Gatchina in the early afternoon, but Paul was not there. He had ridden out to a distant corner of his estate to watch cavalry manoeuvres. In his absence the bodyguard at Gatchina treated Zubov with suspicion, for it was known that the Grand Duke was on the alert for a Court intrigue which would deprive him of the succession and no one trusted the Zubovs. A horseman was sent to inform Paul that the Count had arrived from St Petersburg with a message he would communicate only to the Grand Duke in person. This seemed to Paul such an ominous development that he discussed with his escorting officers the wisdom of placing Zubov under restraint and defying the mischief plotted against him in the capital. When Paul heard the reason for the Count’s journey, he showed no emotion. At once he ordered his carriage and with a small escort set out for St Petersburg.1 Although he hated the Zubov family, he found an early opportunity of rewarding the Count with a high decoration.
Paul’s carriage should have made the journey from Gatchina to the capital in a few hours, for it was less than thirty miles away. But this was no ordinary day. Allegiance was shifting visibly around him. First he was stopped by Rostopchin, with Alexander’s message. ‘Ah, Your Highness, what a moment this is for you!’ Rostopchin remarked as the Grand Duke warmly gripped his hand. ‘Wait, my dear fellow, only wait,’ Paul replied. ‘I have lived forty-two years and the Almighty has given me His help. Maybe He will now endow me with strength and willpower to measure up to my Destiny.’2 More than twenty other courtiers hailed Paul on his progress northwards. By the time the Grand Duke’s carriage reached the outskirts of St Petersburg his escort had multiplied so that it looked like a cavalcade of the men of yesterday and tomorrow, spurred and jackbooted for the occasion. The night was frosty but clear, with no snow to muffle the sound of the procession as the racing wheels of the carriages thundered across the cobbles into the great square of the Winter Palace. There, on the steps, Alexander and Constantine awaited their father’s coming. They were dressed in the cumbersome dark green uniforms of the Gatchina Corps, never before displayed on a public occasion in the capital. Silently they fell into step behind their father as he was ushered into the Palace. Paul was received, as Rostopchin noted, as though he were already Autocrat of All the Russias.
Yet he was not. So long as Catherine breathed there was still a possibility she might recover her power of speech, signify whom she wished to succeed her, perhaps even indicate where a draft proclamation could be found. For the next twenty hours there were extraordinary scenes at the Palace. Paul moved into a small study on the far side of the Empress’s bedroom so that, as the senior officers hurried to the Palace, they all had to pass the dying Empress on her bed in order to report to Paul in the inner room, where he sat hunched over official documents, eager to discover her secrets of government. At one moment Arakcheev arrived and Paul entrusted arrangements for his own security jointly to Alexander and this favourite ‘Corporal’ from Gatchina. Arakcheev’s horses had set such a pace on his journey to the capital that his collar was spattered with mud, and Alexander – who was genuinely sensitive over such matters – insisted on taking him to his own rooms and supplying him with a clean shirt, a gesture which deeply affected the hard-bitten artillery man.3 There were few such spontaneous actions during these tense hours of interregnum.
It was not until the evening of 17 November, two and a half days after her collapse, that Catherine died. An epoch ended overnight for St Petersburg and for all Russia. Whatever her faults she had reigned in the grand manner, her follies and failures on a scale commensurate with her greatness. She was succeeded by a petty tyrant eager to impose on civil society the archaic order he had already introduced in the regulation of his regiments. Within hours of Cat
herine’s death, St Petersburg was left in no doubt that Russia had a new master. Formal decrees from the Palace began to regulate social custom: neither round hats nor tail coats might be worn; the number of horses harnessed to a single carriage would be subject to standard regulation, which would vary according to the status of the person who owned the vehicle; large receptions or private parties might, in future, be held only with permission from the Imperial Household or (outside the capital) from the provincial Governor; and, at all times, officers would appear in uniform. Strict control was imposed on the importing of foreign books and on the activities of the academic institutions which had flourished in Catherine’s earlier years. The Winter Palace was ringed by a hideous line of new sentry-boxes within days of Paul’s accession. Nothing seemed to matter to the new Tsar but his daily exercising of his soldiers. As Masson, Alexander’s former tutor, wrote a few years later,
The guard-parade became for him the most important institution and focal point of government. Every day, no matter how cold it might be, he dedicated the same time to it, spending each morning in plain deep green uniform, great boots and a large hat exercising his guards … Surrounded by his sons and aides-de-camp he would stamp his heels on the stones to keep himself warm, his bald head bare, his nose in the air, one hand behind his back, the other raising and falling a baton as he beat time, crying out ‘Raz, dva – raz, dva’ [‘one, two – one, two’].4
It was a bleak prospect for an Empire of forty million.
Alexander had anticipated revolutionary changes once his father came to the throne, but, like everyone else, he was puzzled and worried by Paul’s behaviour. It was natural that, after more than thirty years of humiliation and neglect, Paul should feel embittered towards his mother and her policies. Yet, although he ousted Catherine’s favourites from St Petersburg, he did not impose harsh penalties on them, even though some might justly have been condemned for peculation. So far as he could, he avenged himself on his mother’s renown rather than on her admirers.5 The summer palace at Tsarskoe Selo was left empty so long as Paul was on the throne, weeds spreading through the English gardens in which Catherine delighted to sit. The Tauride Palace, rich with memories of her love for Potemkin, was turned into a cavalry barracks, with horse droppings heaped on the marble floor of the ballroom. Yet the strangest gesture of all was made at the very start of Paul’s reign, to the private consternation of his family. Two days after Catherine’s death the new Tsar ordered the abbot of the monastery of Alexander Nevsky 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 of ‘Their Imperial Majesties’ and summoned Count Alexei Orlov, who had played a sinister part in Peter’s murder, to carry the crown through the streets immediately behind his victim’s bier.6 National mourning ‘for the late Emperor and Empress’ was ordered to last for twelve months.
This display of macabre theatricality raised 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. Moreover he had some inkling of the weaknesses in Russian society, even if the drastic remedies he favoured were inappropriate and essentially superficial. 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. But the Russian nobility, especially the army officers, were terrified by Paul’s sudden fits of rage over trivial affronts. So, for that matter, were his two sons. Week after week they were expected to remain at Court fulfilling the duties of regimental officers. Although to some extent both Alexander and Constantine inherited their father’s delight in parade-ground choreography, much of the drill and the garrison duties was tedious. Moreover, with their father’s uncertain temper, it was frequently humiliating. And, at times, once off the parade-ground Alexander collapsed in tears of frustration and bewilderment.
Life was harder still for the young Grand Dukes’ wives. Alexander’s consort, Elizabeth, had at least come to know Russia before the sudden shock of Paul’s accession. Constantine, on the other hand, had married only a few months previously and his wife, Anna Feodorovna, hardly had time to accustom herself to the great contrast between life in Saxe-Coburg (where she was born) and in Imperial Petersburg before everything was made even stranger by Catherine’s death. Though Constantine was too boorish to feel for Anna the sympathetic affection which linked Alexander and Elizabeth, the uncertainties of their father’s whim temporarily acted as a bond bringing together both brothers and their wives. Adversity fostered an especially deep friendship between Elizabeth and poor Anna.
Elizabeth’s letters to her mother provide a vivid commentary on the new reign, although she had to be certain she could rely upon the courier, for it would have been disastrous had her messages fallen into Paul’s hands. Ten weeks after his accession she risked committing her first impressions to paper:
I am certain, dear Mother, that the death of the good Empress affected you deeply. As for me, I can assure you that I cannot cease thinking of it. You have no idea how every little thing has been turned upside down. All this made such a wretched impression on me, especially in the first days, that I scarcely recognized myself. Oh, how awful those first days were! Anna was my only consolation, as I was hers. She practically lived with me, coming here in the morning, dressing here, having dinner on most occasions and remaining all day until we would go together in attendance on the Emperor. Our husbands were hardly ever at home and we could find little to do with ourselves, the way of life not having been regulated in every respect. It was necessary for us to hold ourselves ready to be summoned to the Empress [Marie Feodorovna] at any moment. You have no idea of the terrible emptiness that there was, of how sad and gloomy everybody seemed, except the new Majesties [les nouvelles Majestés]. Oh, I have been so shocked by the Emperor’s lack of grief. It would seem as if it were his father who had just died and not his mother, for he speaks only of the former, providing every room with his portrait and saying not a word of his mother, except to condemn and roundly abuse everything that was done in her day.7
The Tsar’s conduct was bad enough: his daughters-in-law also resented their treatment by Marie Feodorovna. They were expected to behave as though they were ladies-in-waiting, while Paul’s recognized mistress, Catherine Nelidova, was treated with courtesy and respect at Court, even by the new Empress herself. Yet let either Elizabeth or Anna show independence and they would be sternly rebuked. ‘That kind of thing will never do on a parade occasion’, Marie Feodorovna remarked icily as she tore roses from a buckle with which Elizabeth was seeking to relieve the severity of a formal gown.8 ‘What silly things Mother does’, Alexander confessed to Elizabeth, ‘she really has no idea at all how to conduct herself.’9 With so much tension in the family circle Alexander and Elizabeth drew closer together in spirit than at any time since those first days of their marriage. But Elizabeth wept for the privacy and self-respect they had lost when ‘the good Empress’ passed away.
Doubts of a Tsarevich
In April 1797 Tsar Paul travelled to Moscow for his coronation, accompanied by his sons and all the Court. His mother’s coronation in 1762 was already enshrined in popular legend. She had spent several months in residence at the Kremlin, entertaining so prodigiously that life in retrospect seemed an endless carnival, with gifts distributed to every class in society. By contrast, the coronation of Paul was an austere religious ceremony which was followed by formal acts of homage and the inevitable military review.10 Later in the week, the customary coronation balls and receptions were held – for Paul was not the person to break tradition. But no one enjoyed themselves. Strict etiquette was enforced on all the Imperial Family, who w
ere expected to wear throughout the Moscow visit their ceremonial robes or full-dress uniforms. 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-year-old Elizabeth: she collapsed on returning to St Petersburg and spent the early summer recuperating.
For Alexander, however, his father’s coronation was important in two respects, dynastic and personal. On the day he was crowned (24 April) Paul published a decree formally superseding Peter the Great’s ruling of 1722 by which the Tsar and Autocrat had been entitled to nominate his heir.11 Henceforth the Imperial crown was to pass by the normal rule of primogeniture to the eldest son and, should he have no male offspring, to his brothers in order of seniority. Alexander was now officially recognized as Tsarevich, principal Grand Duke in the Empire, a status enjoyed by his father in Catherine’s reign only during those months when he was permitted to travel abroad. The immediate effect was to enhance Alexander’s standing among his brother officers. Yet the most interesting consequence of his visit to Moscow was a widening of his circle of friends. It was there for the first time that he met Paul Stroganov and Nikolai Novosiltsov his cousin.12 Both young men (Stroganov was twenty-five and Novosiltsov ten years older) were close acquaintances of the Czartoryski brothers, sharing their liberal sympathies and cultural interests. They were pleasantly clubbable men who enjoyed gambling and amusing themselves as much as anybody else at Court, but they imbued conversation with a mental vigour new to Alexander and refreshingly different from the small talk of fashionable society, or the even smaller talk of Paul’s Gatchina officers. Although far more warm-hearted than the sceptical intellectuals of the West, Alexander’s new friends had interests which were free-ranging, rational and cultivated. They provided him with that sharpening of the mind normally associated with a university education. Inevitably many of the ideas he picked up were superficial, a digest of current thought rather than the real thing; but at least his intellectual sights were raised above the level of a parade ground.
