Then he told me that he in no way shared the ideas and doctrines of the cabinet at Court; that he was far from approving the policy and conduct of his grandmother, that he condemned her principles, that he wished well for Poland and its glorious struggle, that he had deplored its fall, that Kosciuszko was in his eyes a great man by his virtues and by the cause he was defending, which was that of humanity and justice. He admitted to me he detested despotism everywhere and however it was exercised, that he loved freedom, which was equally due to all men, that he took the liveliest interest in the French Revolution, that while disapproving of its terrible abuses, he wished for the success of the Republic and rejoiced over it.61
Similarly, in a letter sent in May 1796 to Viktor Kochubey (who was then in Italy), Alexander established in outline a parallel critique of the domestic state of his country and the expansionist policy of Catherine II. She had just taken advantage of the third partition of Poland, sealed at the end of 1795, and three years after the signing of the Treaty of Jassy that pushed back the borders of the Ottoman Empire for the benefit of Russia, she had just founded the military and commercial port of Odessa. He wrote: “Our affairs are in incredible disorder, we are pillaging on all sides; all our departments are badly administered; everywhere order seems banished, and the Empire only increases its territory.”62
Thus, by 1796 far from being content with the futile life in which Catherine tried to confine him, Alexander was henceforth sensitive to politics. Focused on the good of the state and the well-being of its people, Laharpe’s precepts seemed to be bearing their first fruits. But these reflections did not find any application, and the audience for them did not exceed the circle of Alexander’s close friends: the young man was kept out of political affairs—even the plan that concerned him most directly.
•••
As early as 1791, Catherine began to think about making Alexander her direct successor, thus depriving Paul of his right to mount the throne. On October 30, 1793, she summoned Laharpe to share her intentions, mentioning to him “the future elevation” of Alexander and soliciting his help to convince Alexander to rally to this plan. But Laharpe, out of a legitimist spirit as much as out of prudence, pretended not to understand what was expected of him, refusing de facto to help the empress enact her resolve:
My conversation63 with the Empress lasted two hours; we spoke of all possible things and from time to time the Empress hazarded by speaking a few words on the future of Russia, and omitting nothing to make me understand the true purpose of the interview, but without directly stating it. Having divined her intentions, I made every effort to prevent the Empress from disclosing her designs, and at the same time to allay any suspicion on her part that I had penetrated her secret. Happily I succeeded at both. But the two hours I spent in this moral torture are among the most difficult of my life, and their memory poisoned the rest of my stay in Russia.
Although the interview finished in a charming manner, I thereafter fled the society of the Court as much as possible, for I feared a repetition of these discussions, and the second time it would not have been possible to get out of the affair as easily as the first. Catherine twice reproached me, but finally when she saw that I was recalcitrant and that I came to Court only to occupy myself with my pupils, she must have been convinced that I was not disposed to play the role she was urging on me.64
Laharpe preferred not to get involved in this dangerous project: “If this secret had been discovered, all the responsibility would have fallen on the defenseless foreigner,” he lucidly wrote in his Memoirs. A year later, in 1794, when Alexander had just married, Catherine mentioned the plan again, this time to her closest advisors, advancing Paul’s “incompetence” and his incapacity to ensure the grandeur of the imperial state. But she encountered reservations and especially the opposition of Musin-Pushkin, who saw in this illegitimate plan a source of destabilization and potential political disorder. The issue of the succession was now set aside for a while, although Catherine did not give up on her plan. Having found no support from Alexander’s tutor or her advisors, Catherine turned to her own family. On July 7, 1796, when Maria Feodorovna had just given birth to a third son called Nikolay,65 and she found herself alone with Catherine at the Tsarskoye Selo palace, the empress tried to convince her daughter-in-law, whom she knew was very close to Alexander, to push Paul to renounce the throne. The testimony of Grand Duchess Anna, one of Maria Feodorovna’s daughters, who later became queen of the Netherlands, attests to this imperial pressure:
I since learned, from my husband’s mouth, that after the decease of my brother Emperor Alexander, when he hurried to Russia to share my family’s sorrow, that my mother went back to this distant past. In one of her effusive moments, she recounted to [my husband] that while she had just given birth to my brother Nicholas, Empress Catherine gave her a paper which raised the matter of requiring my father to renounce his rights to the Crown in favor of my brother Alexander, insisting that my mother sign this paper as a token of her adherence to this deed, which the Empress wanted to obtain. My mother felt justly indignant and refused to sign it.
Empress Catherine was very irritated, and the coldness that she showed [Mother] was the consequence of seeing her project thwarted.66
Maria Feodorovna’s refusal to sanction her project did not discourage the empress, who finally decided to broach it with the interested party himself. On September 16 (O.S.), 1796, Catherine confided in Alexander her intention to see him succeed her on the throne and informed him that for this purpose she had undertaken to write a manifesto, and soon she gave him a copy. Less flattered by the plan than worried about the responsibilities that would become his, Alexander’s answer remained vague; he said nothing of the resolution he had already formed.
September 24 (O.S.), 1796
Your Imperial Majesty!
Never will I be able to express my gratitude for the confidence with which Your Majesty has honored me, and the goodness with which She has deigned to write in her own hand something to serve as explanation of other papers. I hope Your Majesty will see, by my zeal to merit her precious acts of goodness, that I sense the whole cost. Truly I will never be able to pay even with my blood for what She has deigned and still wants to do for me.
These papers confirm all the reflections that Your Majesty wanted to communicate, which, if it is permitted to me to say so, cannot be more just.
It is by laying once more at the feet of Your Imperial Majesty the sentiments of keenest gratitude that I take the liberty of being with the deepest respect and most inviolable attachment
Of Your Imperial Majesty the very humble and very submissive subject and grandson,
Alexander.67
Thus, in the autumn of 1796, Alexander’s loyalist intentions were already firmly decided, and it is not by chance that he also addressed his father as “Majesty”; in his eyes, Paul should reign upon Catherine’s death and he would not usurp imperial power.
Two key factors explain Alexander’s attitude at this time. First, we must stress the nature of the education he had received and, once again, the role of Laharpe. Raised—even if formally—in absolute respect for family ties and educated in the hatred of tyranny, violence, and coups, the young Alexander could not, at barely 19 years of age, dream of himself as a usurper, even less so because in 1796 his filial love was very deep. The second crucial point is that, while Alexander felt interest in politics and he was apt to articulate critical judgments on the state of his country, as we saw above, he did not yet feel capable of remedying the evils from which the empire suffered. Paralyzed by a profound lack of self-confidence, he was not moved by any political ambition. In February 1796, in a letter addressed to Laharpe that he had Viktor Kochubey convey to his mother-in-law, the Margravine of Baden, for her to transmit to his tutor, he expressed the clear desire to “get out of his charge”68 as soon as possible. On May 22, 1796, in a letter to Kochubey, he confessed—and this is an important text—his inability to respond to the chal
lenge that the exercise of power constitutes and his aspiration to lead a simple and retired life, far from the turpitudes and corruption of a court he execrated:
Yes, my dear friend, I repeat, I am in no way satisfied with my position, it is much too brilliant for my character, which loves only tranquility and peace. The Court is not a habitation made for me; I suffer each time that I must perform there and it makes my blood boil when I see the baseness almost always committed to acquire some distinction for which I would not have given three pennies. I feel unhappy to be obliged to be in society with people I would not want to have as servants, and who here enjoy the prime places—such as P. Zubov, M. Passeck, Father Bariatinsky, the two Saltykovs, Miatlev, and a host of others who do not merit being named, who are as low as their inferiors and who crawl before the one they fear. Finally, my dear friend, I do not feel myself made for the place that I occupy at this moment and that I have sworn to renounce, one way or another. There, my dear friend, is the great secret that I have so long delayed to communicate to you.69
Later on, after having mentioned the disastrous state in which Russia found herself, Alexander adds:
How can a single man manage to govern it and even correct its abuses? This would be absolutely impossible not only for a man of ordinary abilities like me, but even for a genius, and I have always had the principle that it is better not to be entrusted with a job than to fulfill it badly; it is according to this principle that I took the resolution of which I spoke above.
My plan is that once I have renounced this scabrous place (I cannot set the date of such a renunciation), I will go settle with my wife on the banks of the Rhine, where I will live peacefully as a simple individual, making my happiness consist of the company of my friends and the study of nature. You will mock me; you will say that this is a chimerical plan: you are free to say that, but wait for the event and afterward I will allow you to judge. I know that you will blame me, but I cannot do otherwise, for a quiet conscience is my first rule, and it will never be quiet if I were to undertake something beyond my strength.70
This text is of crucial importance on the political level: in the spring of 1796, Alexander had already declared his conviction and would not change, despite the pressure from his grandmother, who felt her end approaching. But it is also precious because it reveals Alexander’s personality. At 19, the “monarch-in-waiting,” the one educated to reign without ever having been allowed to actually exercise power, in fact perceived himself as an ordinary man, with simple and modest tastes, a man incapable of rivaling the historical heroes described by Laharpe and therefore incapable of assuming the colossal task implied by the good government of the Russian Empire. Twice, in February and May 1796, Alexander affirmed that he did not feel up to the role for which he was destined, and that, convinced of his inadequacies, he had decided to abdicate and to retire to the banks of the Rhine. This meant on German territory, and perhaps we should see this trope as a fluctuation in his own identity: in 1796 Alexander did not feel himself truly “Russian.”
Whatever the case, his admission also reveals the flimsiness of Catherine II’s education: despite her affection and permanent attention, she had not succeeded in transmitting to Alexander her passion for power. It also reveals the partial failure of Laharpe’s educational model: of course, this teaching had given Alexander reference points and moral imperatives that broke with the corrupt and lying practices of Catherine’s court, and it also familiarized him with a certain number of political notions—liberty, equality, and justice—that would serve him after 1796 as an analytical grid for judging the Russian situation. But at the same time the historical references with which he was fed, both overwhelming by the exemplary values they put into play and inoperative on the political level because too distant and abstract, contributed to awakening doubts in him, even complexes, about his own competence. Raised to rule and to impose his will, Alexander at 19 was an adolescent unsure of himself and frightened by power.
On November 16, 1796, Catherine II, victim of a heart attack, plunged into a coma that lasted 22 hours. That very day, informed of his mother’s critical state, Paul left Gatchina to go to her bedside and watch over her until her death, which came in the early hours of November 17. Paul then asked Platon Zubov for all his mother’s personal papers and, having found Catherine’s will by which she transferred the throne to Alexander, he burned it. For his part, Alexander said nothing about the provisions made in his favor by his grandmother. The reign of Paul I could begin.
CHAPTER 4
The Tsarevich at Paul I’s Court
1796–1801
For many decades Paul I has been an unloved figure: historians paid little attention to him1—and were quite severe in their judgment of him. Unanimously described as an angry and capricious despot, affected by a paranoia that grew apace, he was said to have few coherent thoughts other than his hatred of Catherine II and his desire to obliterate her memory and deeds. Detested and feared by his contemporaries, who became increasingly worried by the erratic course of his reign, Paul seemed a character that belonged to an absurdist and grotesque novel.2 He was someone who met a tragic fate—and quite deserved it.
Today, this monochrome representation has been somewhat challenged, and a more nuanced interpretation is appearing. Without denying the many excesses and inconsistencies of his reign, current historiography3 tends to show that Paul was not acting in an impulsive and disorganized way but rather was pursuing objectives based on a political vision. And because this vision ran counter to the interests of certain elites, they were led to the plot to get rid of the emperor; through their writings and testimony after Paul’s reign, they then elaborated a black legend designed to justify his murder.
This current rereading is interesting: first, because it gives more strength to Paul’s character, but also because it tends implicitly toward a fresh hypothesis about the conditions under which Alexander came to power. Far from being a tragic episode made necessary by Paul’s insanity, the assassination of the emperor may find its true origin in a prosaic conspiracy deriving from realpolitik. What was Alexander’s precise role in the course of the months preceding the murder? What motivations could have pushed the grand duke to acquiesce in the plot? To try to see more clearly, we must look not only at Paul’s reign properly speaking but also at the life that the tsarevich led at his father’s court and at the interior journey that in barely five years transformed an adolescent of 19—unsure of himself, full of filial love, and without any noticeable taste for power—into a man who had decided to ascend to the throne and who, while wanting to spare his father’s life, sought to depose him.
The End of the “Reign of Women”
Arriving on the throne in November 1796 and crowned the following April, Paul quickly tried to get rid of both the symbols and actions that were his mother’s heritage. From the night when the empress was sinking in her coma, he hurried to destroy the personal papers of Catherine II. When assured of the full legitimacy of his power, he quickly asserted his desire for radical changes.
From the start, there would be no more “reign of women”;4 the era would belong not to his mother’s decadent fascination for immoral pleasures, frivolous beauty, and French fashions but to the cult of order and virility, inspired by the shades of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Paul immediately ordered the detested palace of Tsarskoye Selo closed down, and he moved to the Winter Palace, while continuing to spend the summer and autumn months at Gatchina or Pavlovsk. Barely proclaimed emperor, he launched into drawing up persnickety decrees (ukases) that aimed to reform what he considered the degenerate manners of the capital. From now on, nobles should eat in a frugal manner at one o’clock; a curfew would be set at ten p.m., and the main streets of St. Petersburg would be closed by barriers at night, only accessible to doctors and midwives; officers would be authorized to circulate only in open carriages or on horseback; finally, clothing should obey precise rules; everything that might recall French influence—now perceived as
subversive—was forbidden.
He banned going out in tailcoats; one could not appear outside one’s home except in the dress of one’s social station, sword at one’s side, and wearing decorations if one had them. Round hats, trousers, folded-down boots, and cordon shoes—all that was severely and immediately prohibited, such that the necessary time and pecuniary means were insufficient for passive obedience. Some people were forced to stay hidden at home, while others appeared as best they could: small round hats were transformed by means of pins into three-cornered hats, tail-coats had their turned-down collars removed and pockets added, trousers were hitched up at front and secured at the knees, hair was cut in the round, covered with powder and a queue was attached at the back.5
In the following months and years the restrictive measures only increased. By means of decrees, the emperor undertook to remodel everything, clothing as well as customs and language, buildings as well as landscapes. In February 1799 the waltz was banned; a few weeks later it was forbidden to “wear quiffs of hair that hung down on the forehead,” women could not “wear multicolored ribbons on the shoulders as men do and nobody should wear loops that fell too low.” Jabots and side whiskers were also banned; calm should preside everywhere; children were no longer permitted to go out in the streets without being accompanied—and coachmen and postilions no longer had the right to call loudly to their horses en route!6
These measures were matched with more substantial rules concerning censorship. In February 1797 a first ukase forbade reading and disseminating most French works; words of French origin (like citizen, club, society, and revolution—even when concerning the stars!) were now to be chopped out. In May 1798 censorship offices were established in all Russian ports in order to inspect all imported written documents. In April 1800 a new decree purely and simply banned the import of any foreign music score and any foreign book. Finally, the tsar forbade all young aristocrats from pursuing their studies abroad. Of course, all these measures exasperated the educated elites.
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