Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  CHAPTER 2

  “The Monarch-in-Training”

  From Alexander’s infancy—although she had suffered from having been deprived by Empress Elizabeth of her own son, Paul, from birth—Catherine withdrew him from the grand ducal couple on the pretext that Maria Feodorovna and Paul were too young (he was 23 and his wife 18) to be capable of taking care of a future emperor’s well-being and education.

  The break was not as radical as the one that had separated Catherine from her son, since Alexander did maintain ties with his parents. He visited them from time to time, and as soon as he was old enough, he wrote to them. Childish and rather terse, Alexander’s letters1 (which until 1790–17922 were written under the gaze of—and even dictated by—his tutors) lack warmth and spontaneity, but their very existence contributed to maintain a small flame of filial love. Moreover, Catherine II proved generous with the young couple: upon Alexander’s birth, she offered them a comfortable allowance and a domain of 400 hectares to construct a residential palace to suit their taste. This would be the Pavlovsk Castle, to the design and decoration of which Maria would devote immense energy. Nevertheless, deprived of their son, the parents of Alexander could only be silent and powerless witnesses of a childhood exclusively controlled by Catherine to suit her own values and humors.

  Grandmother and Grandson

  From his first months, Alexander occupied a major place in the preoccupations and time of Catherine II, and over the years the person whom she called “the Monarch-in-Training”3 became the almost exclusive object of her tenderness and marvel.

  Buoyed by the theories of Rousseau and Pestalozzi that she had read (and continued to read)4 in order to play her role of grandmother, Catherine was keen to dictate the principles of childhood education that were to be put into practice with Alexander. She gave her grandson a Russian governess, Sophie Benckendorff, and a British maid, Prascovie Gessler; at the empress’s express demand, they accustomed the baby to sleep with the windows open, not in a crib but in a small iron bed protected by a balustrade and stuffed with austere leather cushions. Each morning, in a room whose temperature was never above 16 or 17 degrees Celsius, he was given a cold bath or shower. Catherine wanted him raised “in the old style,” in a spartan manner, in order to make him tougher, although Maria Feodorovna was worried by these methods.

  The empress went so far as to design Alexander’s wardrobe, and here she showed great modernity. In a letter to Grimm, she described proudly the practical and comfortable outfit she had invented for her grandson, even accompanying the description with a little sketch.

  But since you speak of Monsieur Alexander […] here is how he has been dressed since he was six months: all is sewed together so it can be put on fast and fastened behind with four or five little hooks; on the edge of the costume is a fringe and this suits perfectly. The King of Sweden and the Prince of Prussia have asked for and obtained the pattern […]. There is no tying up and he is almost unaware of being dressed: his arms and legs are simultaneously inserted into his costume and it is finished—a bit of genius on my part.5

  Day after day, week after week, Catherine observed, supervised, and commented in detail on the toddler’s physical and intellectual development. She scrutinized the smallest progress, and in her correspondence with Grimm she surprisingly recounted the slightest change with fulsome details, addressing someone more comfortable with political and literary issues than with arcane matters of child psychology! Her tenderness for Alexander did not cease to grow: she happily cultivated the art of being a grandmother while boasting—we recognize her egocentric nature—of exercising a strong influence on the child and making what she wanted of him. At the end of May 1779, when Alexander was 18 months old, she wrote:

  But do you know that in speaking about Monsieur Alexander you are taking me at my weakest? I told you he was a prince who was doing well, but presently it is quite another matter: he begins to show a singular intelligence for a child of this age: I delight in him, and this kid would spend his life with me if they let him. He is steady in his humor because he is doing well, and this humor consists of being always gay, welcoming, considerate, fearing nothing, and lovely as love. This child delights everybody, and in particular me; I can do with him what I want; he walks on his own; when he is growing teeth, even the pain does not change his humor; he shows the pain he feels by laughing and frolicking. He understands everything that is said to him; by signs and sounds, he has formed a very intelligible language of his own. The gayest music is what pleases him most. Paisiello will tell you what role he plays in the concerts that he arranges and sometimes de-ranges in his fashion, and how he comes to beg them to play any sort of air that pleases him, after which he thanks them in his fashion.6

  Over the months, Alexander occupied a growing place in Catherine’s schedule; there were daily rites in the relationship between the grandmother and her grandson.

  I have already said, and I repeat, that I delight in this kid. Each day we discover new things: of each toy we make ten or twelve others, and one of us develops his genius even more. It is extraordinary how industrious we have become. […] Mother Nature has made us robust and intelligent, everybody exclaims at the miracle of grandmamma, and we continue to play together. After dinner my kid comes to me as often as he wants, and he spends three or four hours a day in my room, often without my paying attention to him. If he gets bored, he goes away, but this rarely happens.7

  On May 8, 1779, Maria Feodorovna gave birth to a second son, whom Catherine decided to name Constantine, a choice that would soon resonate as a geopolitical manifesto, reflecting the imperial desire to place her second grandson on the throne of Constantinople. Now the two boys would be raised together, entrusted to the same nurses and same maids. But Catherine kept a special affection for the elder and continued to educate him herself, according to methods she invented and put into practice. In July 1779 she undertook to teach him the letters of the alphabet and ten months later, in May 1780, she composed a little ABC primer for him, accompanied by short maxims:

  It begins by telling him that he is a kid born naked, like a hand that knows nothing, that all kids are born like that, that by birth all men are equal,8 that by studying they differ infinitely from each other; then from one maxim to another,9 strung like pearls, we go from one thing to another. I have only two goals: to open his mind to the impression of things, and to raise the soul by training the heart. My ABC is full of plates, but all of it striking and directed to the goal. Everybody, papa and mama included, says that this is good.10

  At the same time, still under the influence of Rousseau’s theories, Catherine deeply wanted to awaken her grandsons to manual and physical activities that were in harmony with nature; from the age of three or four, Alexander and Constantine were by turns metamorphosed into gardeners, butchers, and carpenters.11

  During the first years Catherine’s influence on her grandchildren was all the greater and more exclusive because for more than a year (September 1781 to November 1782), at the demand of the empress, Paul and Maria traveled incognito (under the names of “Count and Countess of the North”) throughout Europe. Their journey was modeled on the Grand Tour that any Russian aristocrat of the second half of the eighteenth century who was concerned to perfect his cultural and political knowledge was supposed to take across European soil. In their absence and then when they returned, Catherine watched over the primary education of her grandsons, while continuing to govern her whole empire just as energetically. In 1783, pushed by her favorite and chamberlain, Prince Potemkin, she engaged in a new showdown with the Ottoman Empire that led to the de facto annexation of the Crimea and allowed Russia to control both shores of the Sea of Azov. Was she not dreaming of offering the throne of Constantinople to little Constantine?

  •••

  In July 1783 Maria gave birth to her first daughter, Alexandra, nicknamed Alexandrine. To salute this birth, Catherine II again proved very generous, offering the young parents the Gatchina Palace
that she had just bought from the heirs of her former favorite Gregory Orlov. But this time, she was not concerned to take the baby girl from her parents; like her five sisters,12 Alexandra would be raised by her father and mother. For Catherine the fate of her granddaughters was of relatively little interest, as she frankly expressed in a letter to Grimm in August 1783:

  To tell you the truth, I love boys infinitely more than girls. Mine are perfectly doing well, running and jumping, adroit and nimble, resolutely rowing with oars and steering marvelously on canals where there is a foot of water, and God knows what all they do: they read, write, sketch, dance, all of their own will.13

  Still supervising the formal education given to the grand dukes, Catherine soon wanted them to receive structured and systematic knowledge: faithful to her methodical spirit and her desire to manage everything, she drew up an education plan largely inspired by the writings of Locke and Rousseau.

  She finished her child-rearing manual in March 178414 and sent it as “instructions composed for the governor Nicholas Saltykov,”15 the person now promoted to “grand master” of the grand dukes, who was charged with watching over their physical and intellectual development.

  Written in Russian and organized into thematic chapters, the plan deals successively with health and dress (chapter 1), the need and means for inciting children to do good (chapter 2), the virtues and Christian values that must be inculcated in them (chapter 3), good manners (chapter 4), and their use in relations with adults and in society (chapter 5), disciplines to teach them and learning methods to be utilized (chapter 6), before she decrees rules to which children should conform in relations with their various minders, teachers, and tutors.

  Catherine brought to the preparation of this text meticulous care, and she “legislated,” prescribed, or proscribed regarding the smallest details of daily life. The chapter devoted to health care and nourishment is particularly representative. As regards dress: “Whatever the season, not overly warm clothing, the chest should not be compromised. Clothes as simple and light as possible.” As for food, the empress prescribed simple and frugal nourishment:

  Without spices or fermenting roots and without too much salt. When Their Highnesses want to eat between dinner and supper, they should be given a piece of bread. Wine is prohibited, unless on a doctor’s order. In summer, one may serve for lunch (or else between dinner and supper): cherries, strawberries, gooseberries, apples, and ripe pears. They should not be asked to eat or drink when they do not feel the need. They should not drink when they are sweating or warmed up.

  Lingering over hygiene in the life of the grand dukes, Catherine insisted on the need to aerate their apartments “in winter at least twice during the day by opening the fan-windows,” by leaving the children “in the open air, winter and summer, at least as long as this does not harm their health,” by avoiding as much as possible “that in winter they keep near the fire,” by ensuring that “their apartments will only be heated to sixteen or seventeen degrees Celsius.” They should “sleep on mattresses, not on duvets, and under light bed coverings, in summer simple Persians lined with a bed-sheet, quilted in winter. They will sleep with head uncovered and as long as they want, since sleep does children good, but since it is healthy to get up early, Their Highnesses will be habituated to go to bed early. After age seven, 8 or 9 hours of sleep appear to suffice.”

  Finally, the Young Highnesses should be encouraged to play or to study but “never to remain idle. If they are not studying or playing, they should be conversed with as befitting their age and their intelligence, and in order to augment their knowledge.”

  In this first chapter we find a synthesis between the spartan model of endurance and frugality, which Catherine had been trying to put into practice from the birth of Alexander, and more modern pedagogic prescriptions: thus the importance she gives to play, “for movement develops children’s physiques and intellectual capacities,” and to sleep.

  Chapters 2 and 3 then deal with the conduct of children and the moral traits that should be encouraged—or on the contrary should be reproved. Affability, leniency, honesty, and the taste for justice—including in games and pleasantries—should be advocated, whereas “pride, impudence, presumption, and dissimulation are unbearable” and therefore to be punished.

  Christian virtue and “true knowledge of God, the Creator of the visible and the invisible, on which our happiness depends, to the love of which we owe all the good that we possess, which merits our whole admiration by our deeds and prayers, as the most perfect Being” are the essential qualities that should be taught by “the high priest of Saint-Sophia, Samborski.” But the grand dukes should also be taught “absolute obedience toward Us and Our imperial power. What is ordered by grandmother must be executed without question; what she has prohibited must not be done in any way; may it seem to them as impossible to infringe as to change the weather according to their will.” The aim is clear: on the model of all other subjects of the Russian Empire, the young grand dukes should prove themselves obedient, loyal, and faithful.

  In their games and distractions they will be forbidden to lie and to cheat and “to torment or kill inoffensive animals such as birds, butterflies, flies, dogs, cats, any more than to damage something intentionally; on the contrary, they must be habituated to care for the dog, bird, squirrel or any other animal that belongs to them, and even for potted flowers, by watering them. As soon as something that belongs to them no longer attracts their attention, it will be taken away, since everything in life demands care.” Finally, there should be removed “from the eyes and ears of Their Highnesses any bad or vicious example”; everybody is forbidden from pronouncing in front of them “vulgar, indecent, or hurtful words”; and they should develop courtesy toward others.

  Having thus proclaimed instructions of an essentially moral character, the empress in chapter 4 (titled “Instructions concerning knowledge to be acquired”) comes to properly pedagogic considerations. The purpose of study and the duty assigned to tutors “is to teach their students courtesy, healthy notions of things, proper conduct for every occasion, principles of virtue, obedience to Us, respect for their father and mother, love of truth, benevolence toward humankind, leniency to their kin.” Then Catherine pronounces the methods she is promoting.

  Lessons should never last longer than a half hour “since it is difficult for children to apply themselves” and lessons will be interrupted before they start to get bored. No constraint will be exercised on the boys to make them study; no reproach will be made to them in the course of learning, but they will be showered with praise when they obtain good results. Tutors should be patient and of equanimity, for “fear does not teach. One cannot make education enter a soul obsessed with fear, any more than one can write on a sheet of paper that trembles.” As an enlightened monarch of the eighteenth century, Catherine believed in the virtue of pedagogy and not in constraint.

  Moreover, the children will be taught foreign languages, including French, German, and ancient Greek, but it is important that “above all they will not forget the language of their native country; so they should be spoken to and read to in Russian, and care taken that they become perfect masters of their mother tongue.” This point is very interesting: while she seems open to the West, Catherine remains no less attached to giving her grandsons an education anchored in Russianness. While mathematics, geography, astronomy, and history will be taught, the children should in their daily use of time devote several hours to their knowledge of Russia. This will be done concretely on the basis of geographical and geological cards that will allow them to discover its territory, resources, bodies of water, population, and so forth. Finally, they will be encouraged to engage in physical activities like horse riding, swimming, acrobatics, fencing, archery, and wrestling and to perform manual work if they want to. But there will be no music or poetry, which are considered to be useless.

  The education of the two young grand dukes as advocated by Catherine II in her plan of study a
s written for General Saltykov aimed to make them virtuous Christians, obedient to imperial power, cultivated and open to the external world, but very informed about Russian realities and of irreproachable morality. This program appears particularly ambitious, calling for the implementation of a specific organization of learning and the inculcation of significant capacities. In her March 1784 letter to Grimm announcing that she has composed “a fine instruction for the educations of Messieurs Alexander and Constantine, which I will send as soon as I have a presentable translation,” the empress confides that she expects much from an educational model that takes into account the precocious qualities demonstrated by the elder of her grandchildren:

  M. Laharpe will be one of those placed close to Monsieur Alexander with the express order to speak to him in French; another will speak to him in German; he already speaks English. […] In everything—height, strength, intelligence, amiability, and knowledge—he is well above his age. In my opinion he will become an excellent personage, provided that the second-rate ones [her son and daughter-in-law] do not slow me down in his progress.16

  But what was Alexander really like? Were Catherine’s aspirations satisfied? Were the promises of the plan fulfilled?

  Alexander’s Education and Training

  In 1783–1784 Alexander and Constantine had reached the ages of six and five respectively. To achieve her ambitious plan, Catherine replaced the nurses and maids who had surrounded the little boys since their births with exclusively male personnel. In March 1784 Count Nicholas Saltykov, field marshal and minister of war, was named “grand master”: he took charge of directing all the staff assigned to the boys’ education. He was seconded by General Protasov, individual tutor to Alexander, and by Baron Osten-Sacken, tutor to Constantine. Alongside these three men, several teachers, of whom some were famous, were appointed to provide specific subjects. Charles François Philibert Masson taught mathematics and Georg-Wolfgang Kraft taught physics. The author Mikhail Muravyov17 was in charge of Russian history and literature, and the explorer Pallas covered geography and the natural sciences. Finally, the children also received lessons in German, a class in French taught by the Swiss tutor Laharpe, and classes in English given by the archpriest Andrey Samborski, who had lived 14 years in London as chaplain to the Russian legation and had married an Englishwoman and so was in a position to teach them the language of Shakespeare as well as scripture.