Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  Yet even if confusion and disorder were a factor in the execution of this coup, the plot was not enacted in an improvised way. On the contrary, it was the outcome of a carefully conceived machination, prepared long before Paul was killed.

  Back in 1798–1799, the Russian court was full of rumors of assassination, and in the tsar’s immediate entourage an opposition started to build around Count Nikita Petrovich Panin. Vice Chancellor and nephew of Catherine II’s former chancellor, a childhood friend of Paul’s, Panin professed liberal and Anglophile convictions that he shared with Admiral Ribas, the Zubov brothers, and their sister Olga Zherebtsova, at the time the mistress of the British ambassador, Lord Whitworth. Deeply worried at the way the regime was evolving, which they perceived as increasingly despotic and dangerously Anglophobe, the little group that met frequently at Olga’s gradually came up with a plan to depose the tsar, without bloodshed, in favor of his son Alexander, who would be proclaimed regent. So it was a matter of implementing a peaceful palace revolution. But the plan remained vague. In the spring of 1800, the Zubov brothers and their sister, who had served Catherine II and thus incarnated in Paul’s eyes a past period that he hated, were sent away from St. Petersburg; shortly afterward, Lord Whitworth, victim of a crisis in Russo-British relations, was also forced to leave the country. From that date, the plot appeared compromised, but Panin did not give up, as signaled in a barely covert way in the letter addressed to him by the British lord on the eve of his departure.

  Think of me, as I will think often of you. The last wish I make is to exhort you to courage, patience, resignation. Think how much depends on you in these critical circumstances. As long as you are devoted to the cause, I will not lose all hope.7

  It was also at this moment that Panin began approaching Alexander. During a secret meeting at the baths, he tried (without managing to obtain) the tsarevich’s tacit consent for his plan. In parallel he began the material preparation with the financial support of Lord Whitworth. In fact, the British archives attest to the fact that in May 1800, the Lord borrowed and spent the sum of 40,000 rubles “necessary for the accomplishment of my mission”—and “in accord with His Majesty’s secret services,” he later said.8 In his meticulous article devoted to the affair,9 the historian James Kenney concludes that most of this sum was devoted to bribing individuals close to Paul; thus Kutaisov, his barber and confidant, was given a stipend to persuade the emperor to bring the Zubovs back to St. Petersburg. From the British archives it appears that the Foreign Office was not the direct commissioner of the murder, but that the British secret services, informed of what was being set in motion, gave full initiative to Whitworth. Returning to London in May 1800, almost ten months before the plot was put into effect, he could not be accused of anything.

  In November 1800 Panin was disgraced and in turn forced to leave St. Petersburg; it was now Count Peter Pahlen, a distant cousin of Panin and governor-general of St. Petersburg, who, increasingly opposed to Paul’s anti-British policy, would ensure the practical organization of the plot, aided by generous funds from Britain put at his disposal by Panin.

  Skillfully, Pahlen began to work on the army, in particular the regiments of the Imperial Guard, by distilling for several months any remarks and criticisms of the tsar’s despotism and arbitrary use of power.10 Then he methodically organized the coup:

  I wanted to be seconded by people more solid than this body of whippersnappers;11 I wanted to rely on friends whose energy and courage were known to me. I wanted to use the Zubovs and Bennigsen, but how to get them back to Petersburg? They were disgraced and exiled and I had no pretext for having their exile lifted.12

  Using his credit with the emperor and the funds that Panin paid him to bribe Kutaisov and others, Pahlen tore from Paul I an amnesty that allowed several hundred banished officers to come back to the capital. From among these humiliated discontents the count would recruit his accomplices, around 60 persons, including General Bennigsen, the three Zubov brothers, General Talyzin (commander of the Preobrazhensky Regiment), General Uvarov (commander of the Horseguards) and the Georgian Prince Yashvil. Pahlen, although valued by Paul (who in February 1801 named him Director of Postal Administration and two days later President of the Foreign Affairs Council), remained faithful to the plan he had set himself. To succeed, he had to obtain, if not the support of the Grand Duke Alexander, then at least his tacit approval. He soon applied himself to this task, while promising Alexander that his father’s life would be spared:

  For more than six months, my projects had settled on the necessity of toppling Emperor Paul from the throne, but it appeared impossible (and indeed it was) to manage without having the consent and even the cooperation of Grand Duke Alexander—or at least without warning him. I sounded him on this subject, at first lightly and vaguely, contenting myself with throwing out a few words on the dangers of his father’s character. Alexander listened to me, sighing and not responding.

  This is not what I wanted and so I decided to break the ice and say openly and frankly what appeared to me indispensable to do. At first Alexander seemed revolted by my plan; he told me he did not dissimulate either the tsar’s dangers to the empire or to himself, but he was resigned to suffer everything and determined to undertake nothing against his father. I was not discouraged and renewed my attempts, making him feel the indispensable necessity of a change, which each day a new mad act made even more indispensable. By dint of flattering him or frightening him about his own future, by presenting the alternative of the throne or a dungeon and possible death, I managed to shake his filial piety and even to make him decide upon a denouement whose urgency he could not conceal.

  But I owe it to the truth to say that Grand Duke Alexander did not consent to anything before having required my most sacred word that no attempt would be made on the life of his father; I gave it, I was not so deprived of commonsense as to commit myself internally to an impossible thing, but it was necessary to calm the scruples of my future sovereign and so I flattered his intentions, sure that they could not be fulfilled. I knew perfectly well that a revolution had to be achieved or else not undertaken, and that if Paul did not cease to exist, then the doors of his prison would soon be open, the most frightful reaction would take place, and the blood of innocents as well as the guilty would soon inundate the capital and the provinces. The Emperor had become suspicious about my contact with Grand Duke Alexander. We were aware of this; I could not appear with this young prince, we did not dare to speak to each other for a long while, despite the relations our places gave us. So it was by means of notes (imprudent and dangerous but necessary) that we communicated our thoughts and the arrangements to be made; these notes were sent via Count Panin: the Grand Duke Alexander answered in notes that Panin transmitted to me. We read them, we answered and burned them on the spot.13

  Now sure of Alexander’s approval, Pahlen envisaged proceeding at the end of March, but circumstances obliged him to bring this forward. On March 19, at seven in the morning, he was summoned by the emperor, who had just learned of a plot against him and that Pahlen was the instigator. Demonstrating his presence of mind and sangfroid, Pahlen replied with aplomb that he was indeed implicated in the conspiracy but only in order to control and thwart it when the time came. Pahlen gave Paul I a list of the conspirators, adding the names of grand dukes Alexander and Constantine and that of the Empress Maria Feodorovna. Reassured of the intentions of the governor-general and of his personal loyalty, Paul then signed arrest orders aimed at the three “conspirators” and gave them to Pahlen to use when the latter judged it appropriate. Armed with these documents, Pahlen now informed Alexander of the imminent threat hanging over him and his family and thus convinced him that it was time to act. Alexander set the date of the night of March 23 to 24, since the guard outside the castle would be the third battalion of the Semenovsky Regiment, “of which he was more sure than the two others.”14 Once again he exhorted Pahlen to spare his father’s life.

  Henceforth thing
s happened fast. On the evening of the twenty-third, Paul was newly suspicious and put Alexander and Constantine under arrest in their rooms and forbade them to leave the castle; meanwhile the conspirators met at 11 p.m. in the apartment of General Talyzin in a wing of the Preobrazhensky barracks; an hour later, they marched to St. Michael’s Castle whose heavy walls, moats, and drawbridges seemed memories of bygone days. The first group was led by Pahlen, the second by Bennigsen and Platon Zubov. Since Pahlen voluntarily hung back to avoid playing even a minor role at the key moment, it was Bennigsen and Zubov who were the first into the tsar’s apartment and so would take direct responsibility for Paul’s death.

  No longer doubting the deed’s favorable outcome, Pahlen quickly took over management of operations, worried about the attitude of the troops, many of whom were deeply attached to Paul. It was he who announced the sinister news to Alexander, and when the young man burst into tears, he thrust him forward with “That’s enough of being a child. Go reign. Come show yourself to the guards!”15 before taking him to appear before the regiments assembled in the interior courtyard of the castle.

  Thus the new emperor made his first public declaration. Stating that his father had died of an attack of apoplexy, he asserted his will to pursue the work of his grandmother. And so in the early morning of the twenty-fourth, it was under the auspices of Catherine II that the young Alexander chose to inaugurate his reign.

  •••

  Several biographers of Alexander have taken an interest in his implication in the plot that cost Paul I his life; their conclusions diverge. For some, who refer to Pahlen’s testimony, Alexander’s involvement was essentially passive: the tsarevich did not wish for his father’s death but only his deposition. For others, Paul would never have abdicated voluntarily because the nature of his autocratic power received from God prevented any renunciation of the throne. Moreover, he benefited from wide popularity within the army, and hence a deadly outcome was inevitable,16 of which deep inside himself Alexander must have been perfectly aware.17 Still today it is difficult to settle this debate: certainly the facts that Alexander feared for his life and that the erring ways of his father gradually fixed in him the idea that it was his moral and political responsibility to seize the throne by force cannot be doubted, which would lay full responsibility upon him. However, it is impossible to establish whether Alexander sincerely hoped his father’s life would be saved, or whether he tried to convince himself in order to exonerate his own culpability.

  Whatever the case and the degree of involvement, it should be stressed that a deep feeling of guilt would not cease to haunt Alexander until the end of his days. His wife Elizabeth felt this on the night of the tragedy, when she wrote to her mother: “The Grand Duke Alexander, today an emperor, was absolutely devastated by the death of his father, by the way in which he died; his sensitive soul will always remain torn apart.”18

  Time would never manage to assuage the feeling of an irreparable wrong committed: parricide and tsaricide, two sins in the sight of God. Whether sanctioned consciously or unconsciously, the memory would remain an open wound in Alexander forever. The very breadth of this guilt and its durable impact on the emperor’s behavior invite the historian to wonder precisely about his motives during the drama of March 23, 1801: why and how did this 23-year-old prince, gentle and timid, who confessed many years later that he was “always embarrassed to appear in public,”19 ultimately decide (or was he cajoled?) to assume the role of a parricide and “a crowned Hamlet”?20 Were ambition, taste for power, cynicism, or hatred at work? Or should we take into account a bundle of circumstances that are more complex and subtle? At least part of the answer is to be sought in the childhood and adolescence of Alexander.

  PART ONE

  THE CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF AN EMPEROR, 1777–1801

  CHAPTER 1

  Monsieur Alexander and Catherine the Great

  Do you know Monsieur Alexander? Do you often go to Versailles? Do you know the assistants to the assistants of Monsieur Alexander? At least you know Monsieur Alexander as the subject of The Ingenu. But I bet you do not know him at all, at least the one I am speaking about. It is not Alexander the Great but a very small Alexander who has just been born, the twelfth of this month at ten forty-five in the morning. This is to say that the Grand Duchess has just given birth to a son who, in honor of Saint Alexander Nevsky, has received the formal name of Alexander, and whom I call Monsieur Alexander because he partakes of life without fail; in time, his assistants will have assistants. This is the prophecy and gossip of grandmothers. […] My God, what will become of this child? […] I console myself with reading Bayle and the father of Tristram Shandy, who was of the opinion that one’s name influences the person: a proud one and he is illustrious. […] Family models also have some effect, what do you think? The choice is sometimes embarrassing. But examples have nothing to do with it: to believe the venerable evangelist Pastor Wagner, it is nature that does it all, but where do you find that? Is it at the bottom of the bag of a good constitution? […] It is a shame that fairies are out of fashion; they could give you a child who has all that you could wish; me, I would have given them fine presents and would have whispered in their ears: Ladies, give him what is natural, a tiny bit of nature, and experience will gradually do the rest. Adieu. Take care.1

  On December 25, 1777 (by our calendar), with these playful words, Empress Catherine II announced to the German Baron Grimm the coming into the world of her first grandson. Friedrich Melchior Grimm lived in Paris and penned a “literary correspondence” paper that he disseminated in fifteen copies solely to monarchs and princes who desired to be up to date with Parisian cultural life. Concerned to promote her image as an enlightened monarch, Catherine was a subscriber.2 In 1775 Grimm had gone to St. Petersburg on the tsarina’s invitation; upon his return with a stipend from the empress, he kept up a correspondence with her. This regular correspondence, pursued over the course of 20 years and very varied in themes and topics (Grimm was a confidant, an informer, a cultural agent), is a precious source for grasping the psychology and intimate life of Catherine II. This letter sharing the news of Alexander’s birth attests to her joy as well as her worry: “My God, what will become of this child?”

  On December 23, 200 cannon shots boomed from the Peter and Paul Citadel and the Admiralty; a Te Deum was celebrated in the palace chapel. Eight days later the child was baptized in the great chapel of the Winter Palace by Father Ivan Panfilov, the empress’s confessor. Paul had chosen the first name of his son in honor of Alexander Nevsky, the patron saint of St. Petersburg. Catherine as godmother had persuaded Emperor Joseph II of Austria and the king of Prussia, Frederick II, to act as godfathers, although they were not present at the christening. For the empress, nothing was too solemn or too prestigious to salute the birth of the future emperor of All the Russias, whose reign, she thought, could not help being an extension of her own.

  At Alexander’s birth, Catherine was 48 years old. She had reigned since July 9, 1762, the date of the military coup that led to the deposition and assassination of Tsar Peter III, her husband—and that raised her, a former minor German princess called Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, to the imperial throne. In that reign of 15 years, Catherine had contributed to a significant assertion of Russian power and to major changes on the domestic level, but an assessment in 1777 would be mixed. Although she wanted to be an enlightened sovereign, Catherine remained no less attached to her autocratic power—from which she distanced even her own son.

  The Russian Empire in 1777: Power and Modernization

  Starting in 1762, Catherine associated her actions with the legacy of Peter the Great, asserting her desire to pursue a foreign policy of intense diplomatic and military activity and a domestic policy of reform and modernization.

  On the diplomatic level she had her heart set on ensuring for the Russian Empire a choice place in European affairs. To her mind it should participate in the concert of nations on a par with England, France, Austri
a, and Prussia—and even try to become predominant on the continent. To do so, Catherine entrusted to Nikita Panin, the head of the College of Foreign Affairs, the direction of Russian diplomacy. With the support of William Pitt, the British prime minister, Panin went on to promote and apply the “Northern system,” meaning a union of Russia, Prussia, England, and Denmark directed against the union of the Bourbons, made up of the Catholic states of France, Spain, and Austria.

  This Northern policy was largely explained by Catherine’s expansionist aims: desirous to extend the southern frontiers of Russia to the Black Sea, to the detriment of an Ottoman Empire already allied with France, she needed solid support on the international scene. Armed with the Northern system, Russia began in 1768 an armed conflict with the Turkish Sublime Porte. Six years later, in 1774, this conflict led to the signing of the advantageous Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji that gave Russia major territorial gains, authorizing a Russian hold on the northern shores of the Black Sea and the annexation of the port of Kerch and declaring the khanate of Crimea independent of the Ottomans. Moreover, the treaty gave the Russian Empire significant economic advantages: its merchant ships acquired the right of free circulation in the Black Sea and the straits. Finally, on the political level, while the provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia still remained Ottoman possessions, Russia obtained the right to oversee the situation of Christians living in the Turkish Empire. This last proviso was fundamental: it effectively conferred on the Russian state immense international prestige as protector of Christian peoples who were held “prisoners in an ungodly land.”