Background
The eldest son of Czar Paul I, Alexander was born on December 12, 1777. He was removed from the care of his parents and brought up under the careful guidance of his grandmother, Empress Catherine II.
The eldest son of Czar Paul I, Alexander was born on December 12, 1777. He was removed from the care of his parents and brought up under the careful guidance of his grandmother, Empress Catherine II.
His principal tutor was César La Harpe, a Swiss revolutionary who, however, was willing to compromise with czarist absolutism as a means to achieve his end. La Harpe was an ardent disciple of the Enlightenment and instilled in his student a sincere attachment for its philosophy. Alexander did not master the Russian language, but he spoke fluent English and excellent French. He ended his formal education after his marriage.
At his father's residence in Gatchina, where Alexander was a frequent visitor in the later years of Catherine's reign, he learned the art of warfare according to Prussian style. The exact military drill demanded of the soldiers by Paul I appealed to Alexander.
At the court of Catherine II, Alexander was groomed to become her successor. At Gatchina, Alexander befriended Aleksei Arakcheev, who later became a close adviser.
Since the relationship between Catherine and her son Paul was hostile, she attempted to change the succession to Alexander. A letter from Alexander to Catherine in 1796, the year of her death, reveals that he was fully aware of the plan and had approved it. Paul reigned for 5 years. On March 11, 1801, a palace uprising led to Paul's murder, with the collaboration of Alexander. None of the participants in the conspiracy was tried or officially punished, but there is evidence that Alexander never entirely freed himself from the memories of that night.
The succession of Alexander I to the throne brought closer relations between Russia and England. Alexander ordered the recall of the Cossacks that Paul had sent to conquer India, and diplomatic relations were improved. This disturbed Napoleon because in 1801 France was at war with England, and he had made plans to dispatch a French expedition to join the Russian force undertaking the conquest of India. Alexander distrusted Napoleon and resented the unceremonious way in which he dealt with the crowned heads of the German and Italian states. In spite of their differences, a Franco-Russian treaty of amity was signed on Oct. 11, 1801, which called for close cooperation in all matters of common interest and for joint endeavors to keep peace.
In June 1802 Alexander, without consulting the minister of foreign affairs, Count Kochubey, established a personal friendship with Frederick William III of Prussia that lasted through peace and war.
On April 11, 1805, an Anglo-Russian treaty was signed for the liberation of Holland, northern Germany, Italy, and Switzerland from Napoleonic rule. In the ensuing war an Austro-Russian army of 90, 000 men commanded by Gen. Mikhail Kutuzov was routed at the Battle of Austerlitz (Dec. 2, 1805). Alexander wept like a child during the retreat.
The war continued until July 1807, when the Franco-Russian treaty was signed at Tilsit. The alliance with France was not popular in Russia, and Mikhail Speranski, Alexander's secretary of state, felt that the Treaty of Tilsit contained practically all the ingredients of a future war between Russia and France. His fears were realized when Napoleon's army invaded Russia in June 1812. The severe Russian winter, however, proved insurmountable and led to disaster for Napoleon. By the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna on June 9, 1815, part of Poland was set up as a constitutional kingdom, and Alexander became its king.
When Alexander became czar, he was expected to initiate far-reaching constitutional and social reforms because of his liberalism. These hopes were nurtured by the early enlightened measures of his regime: the annulment of vexatious prohibitions enacted by Paul, provision for a broad amnesty, liberation of trade, permission to import foreign publications, removal of restriction on traveling abroad, and partial reform of the harsh penal procedure.
At Alexander's request Speranski drew up plans for constitutional reform. He recommended reforms of the government based on the doctrine of separation of powers— legislative, executive, and judicial—all of them, however, emanating from the czar. The right to vote was to be granted to all property owners. Although Speranski favored the eventual abolition of serfdom, he saw the difficulties in achieving emancipation.
Alexander rejected the doctrine of separation of powers, but Speranski did persuade Alexander to create a state council, a body to review laws passed by the emperor, although its decisions were not binding on the Crown. Alexander also approved Speranski's legislation of 1810-1811 for the reconstruction of the executive departments.
Speranski raised the civil service standards and instituted financial reforms. These measures infringed on the privileges of the landowning and bureaucratic classes, and to placate the nobility Alexander dismissed Speranski in 1812.
Alexander created the Holy Alliance in 1815, an agreement between the rulers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia that they would conduct themselves according to Christian principles. The Alliance became a symbol of repression and reaction, and Alexander's policies became more and more conservative.
The fact that Speranski's constitutional reforms were not carried out and that Alexander failed to fulfill his promise resulted in the emergence of organized political opposition in the form of secret societies. This opposition came from members of the upper classes and led to an abortive coup d'etat on Dec. 14, 1825.
Alexander I had died on November 19.
Once a supporter of limited liberalism, as seen in his approval of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland in 1815, 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 (23 March 1819), 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, symbolised by the Holy Alliance, against the policy of a dictatorship of the great powers, symbolised 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.
On 9 October 1793, Alexander married Louise of Baden, known as Elisabeth Alexeyevna after her conversion to the Orthodox Church. He later told his friend Frederick William III that the marriage, a political match devised by his grandmother, Catherine the Great, regrettably proved to be a misfortune for him and his spouse. Their two children died young. Their common sorrow drew the spouses closer together. Towards the close of his life their reconciliation was completed by the wise charity of the Empress in sympathising deeply with him over the death of his beloved daughter Sophia Naryshkina, the daughter of his mistress Maria Naryshkina, with whom he had a relationship from 1799 until 1818. In 1809, Alexander I was widely and famously rumored to have had an affair with the Finnish noble Ulla Möllersvärd and to have had a child by her, but this is not confirmed.