Alexander I was the Emperor of Russia (Tsar) between 1801 and 1825. He was also the King of Congress Poland from 1815-1825, and the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland. During his reign, more measures for internal reform were inaugurated than under any of his predecessors, from the days of Peter the Great. He prepared the way for the emancipation of the serfs and promoted education, agriculture, commerce, and literature.
Background
Alexander I was born on December 23 (O.S. 12 December) 1777, in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, to Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich (later Paul I) and Grand Duchess Maria Fyodorovna, a princess of Württemberg-Montbéliard. His grandmother, the reigning Empress Catherine II (the Great), took him from his parents and raised him herself to prepare him to succeed her. She was determined to disinherit her own son, Pavel, who repelled her by his instability.
Some sources allege that she created the plan to remove Paul from the succession altogether. Both sides tried to use Alexander for their own purposes and he was torn emotionally between his grandmother and his father, the heir to the throne. This taught Alexander very early on how to manipulate those who loved him, and he became a natural chameleon, changing his views and personality depending on whom he was with at the time.
Education
Alexander began his education at the age of six under the tutelage of General Nikolai Ivanovich Saltykov. As for his upbringing, Alexander I inherited deep complications from his father's side, and his education was to be a challenge, to put it mildly, in that whilst he was destined to become an autocratic sovereign in the orthodox religion, in 1784 Catherine II gave him a protestant, free-thinking and profoundly republican tutor, in the form of Frederick-Caesar de La Harpe.
La Harpe was personally chosen by Catherine to mold Alexander's personality and give him a broad education. The Empress had no fear of having a future Tsar's education in the hands of a republican, for she knew the strength of the autocracy and the underdeveloped political awareness of Russia at the time. Catherine expected that a liberal education would help Alexander to reign wisely for the benefit of the country.
Under La Harpe's tutelage Alexander was well versed in European culture, history, and political principals - the young prince became an idealist in the tradition of the Enlightenment - however, La Harpe's focus on theoretical, abstract principals left Alexander without the strength of character and resolve to be a truly effective leader.
Alexander received an excellent education: when selecting his tutors, Empress Catherine consulted with the best minds of the time, in particular with the French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot. Catherine prepared her grandson to become heir to the throne and planned to transfer power directly to him, bypassing his father, her estranged son, Paul. The Empress saw in her grandson the future ideal monarch and an heir to continue her many programs and plans.
As an adolescent, Alexander was allowed to visit his father at Gatchina, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, away from the court. There, Pavel had created a ridiculous little kingdom where he devoted himself to military exercises and parades. Alexander received his military training there under the direction of a tough and rigid officer, Aleksey Arakcheyev, who was faithfully attached to him and whom Alexander loved throughout his life.
Catherine died on November 6, 1796, and her son Paul assumed the throne. He quickly instituted a number of new laws to undermine those aspects of his mother's reign he disagreed with. Paul's actions went much too far, he infuriated the country and especially the nobility. Aristocratic plots were hatched against Paul's life. With the tacit approval of Alexander, the Tsar was murdered at the Mikhailovski Castle in St. Petersburg during the night of March 11, 1801.
In 1801, aged 23, Alexander was crowned Tsar. Good-looking and charming, the young Emperor was extremely popular. True to the ideals of his liberal schooling, he set out to reform the outdated, centralized system of government of his massive empire. He embarked on a range of social reforms, much of them drawn up by a close advisor, Mikhail Speransky. When he assumed the throne, Alexander set out a series of Enlightenment-inspired reforms, including a relaxing of state censorship and the prohibition of torture as a means of interrogation. Although serfdom was yet to be abolished, he devised a system by which serfs could earn their freedom. The ambitious vision went as far as setting up a parliament and giving Russia a constitution.
Alexander tried to instate a rule of law based on government apparatus, under which the social class structure, the relationship of the classes with each other and with the higher powers, and the activities of all administrative bodies were guaranteed by fundamental laws of the state that proceeded from an enlightened monarch. Alexander also reformed and standardized the Russian bureaucracy, long a haven of Russian nobles looking for financially rewarding, but undemanding, positions for children and relatives. He even reformed the education system to give greater access to non-noble Russians. Most importantly, Alexander began developing plans to create a parliament and write a constitution for the Russian state.
Alexander reformed the state administration, creating in 1801 a system of ministries under the direction of a Cabinet of Ministers, and established a legislative advisory body, the State Council, in 1810. Under the leadership of Mikhail Speransky, Russian legislation was systemized and the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire compiled. Plans were drafted for the phased abolition of serfdom but were not actually implemented, and only the Law on Free Cultivators was published, which allowed the nobles to voluntarily liberate their serfs and grant them land.
These forward-looking reforms came to a halt when the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire invaded Russia. At the beginning of the 19th century, Russian forces had fought France in Austria and Poland. After several defeats, the Russians signed an uneasy truce with Napoleon. In 1812, Napoleon broke the truce and invaded Russia. Expecting a short campaign, Napoleon did not equip his troops for the harsh Russian winter. As a result, both Napoleon and his soldiers paid dearly. Not only did Russia eventually push Napoleon out of Russia, but it also joined Austria, Great Britain, and Prussia in the Quadruple Alliance, agreeing to negotiate with Russia as a group until he was forced from office.
Napoleon’s eventual downfall left Alexander as one of the most powerful rulers in Europe. Alexander was concerned by France's military power. Anxious, he turned to the religion offered by his close friends, A.N. Golitsyn and R. Kochelev, who were both profoundly mystical. During the German Campaign in 1813, Alexander visited important communities of Moravian Brethren in Herrenhut and Gnadenfrei and, in 1814 he went to London to make contact with the Quakers.
In December 1814, increasingly mystical, the Tsar delivered a note to all the members of the Congress of Vienna, in which he affirmed that the "unchanging principles of the Christian religion common to all [should be] the sole basis of the political order, as well as for the social order." Furthermore, after the definitive fall of Napoleon and the creation of the Holy Alliance on 26 September 1815, he granted a constitution to Finland (seceded by Sweden) and Poland, where serfdom had been abolished by the Emperor of the French.
He opened the Russian borders to mystics from German Switzerland, Alsace, and Baden-Württemberg; more than 30,000 came and were shipped to the shores of the Black Sea. Alexander abolished serfdom in places where the nobles were the most understanding, such as in the Baltic provinces: on 23 May 1816 in Estonia, on 25 August 1817 in Courland, and on 26 March 1819 in Livonia. In 1818, he instructed Novosiltsev to write a liberal draft constitution which was called the Fundamental Charter of the Russian Empire, but it remained a dead letter. The same year, he asked Paul I's friend, General Arakcheev, to whom he was also associated, to plan a Charter for the progressive freedom of serfs, which would also remain ineffective.
At home, Alexander started another wave of reforms. A plan to abolish serfdom was prepared and a constitution drafted. But soon his views changed. Russian officers returning from their European campaigns brought with them ideas of freedom and wanted modernization. But much of the nobility opposed Alexander’s plans - the Tsar backed down. Supported by his new right-hand man, Count Aleksey Arakcheev, he repealed many of his early changes, police control was reinforced and censorship tightened. One of the most disastrous projects of the time were the so-called military settlements - the villages combining military service and farming.
They were supposed to improve the soldiers’ living conditions and cut state military spending. But their economic benefits proved poor and, forced on the unwilling peasants, they prompted frequent unrest. This period of Alexander’s reign was dubbed arakcheevshchina - derived from the name of his favorite and synonymous with reaction and oppression.
For Alexander, it was a period of lassitude, discouragement, and dark thoughts. For Russia, it was a period of reaction, obscurantism, and struggle against real and imagined subversion. Alexander thought he saw "the reign of Satan" everywhere. In opposition, secret societies spread, composed of young men, mostly from the military, who sought to regenerate and liberalize the country. Plots were made. Alexander was warned of them, but he refused to act decisively. His crown weighed heavily on him, and he did not hide from his family and close friends his desire to abdicate.
Alexander became increasingly involved in mysticism and increasingly more suspicious of those around him. On the way to the conference in Aachen, Germany, an attempt to kidnap him made him more suspicious of those around him. At the same time, and paradoxically, with his entourage of mystics, including Golitsyn (now Minister of Religious Affairs and of Public Education), the Tsar began a policy of religious revival. On 18 March 1817, he wrote the "Constitution of the Churches", which raised various protestant churches to the rank of State churches and, on 27 October 1817, he officially recognized the Moravian Brethren; finally, he allowed Golitsyn to recruit German catholic priests for the edification of the faithful in St Petersburg.
All these measures turned the orthodox clergy against him, as well as the police, who saw in the sects hidden complicity with the secret societies. The Tsar was also forced to expel the Jesuits in February 1820, and to face the rebellion of the Semenovsky regiment. At the instigation of the monk Photius, coming from the orthodox clergy, Alexander decided to ban all secret societies, broke away from his liberal Minister Capo d'Istria, and finally dismissed his friend Golitsyn.
In the autumn of 1825, due to the increasing illness of Alexander's wife, the emperor undertook a voyage to the south of Russia. This dismal, windy townlet was a strange watering place. The royal pair, however, who had been so long estranged, enjoyed calm happiness there. Soon after, during a tour of inspection in Crimea, Alexander contracted pneumonia or malaria and died on his return to Taganrog.
The Tsar’s sudden death, his mysticism, and the bewilderment and the blunders of his entourage all went into the creation of the legend of his "departure" to a Siberian retreat. The refusal to open the tsar’s coffin after his death has only served to deepen the mystery. The Soviet Government fanned the flames of these rumors when it announced his coffin had been opened in the 1920s and was found to be empty.
Alexander, the oldest son of Pavel I and his wife Maria Fyodorovna, and heir to the throne, remains one of the most enigmatic figures in the Romanov Dynasty. He won successful wars with Turkey (1806-1812), Persia (1804-1813), and Sweden (1808-1809). Under Alexander I, the territories of Eastern Georgia (1801), Finland (1809), Bessarabia (1812), the former Duchy of Warsaw were annexed to Russia (1815).
Alexander's greatest achievement was his victory over Napoleon, who had attacked Russia in 1812. After, he was one of the leaders of the Vienna Congress of 1814-1815 and also one of the organizers of the Holy Alliance. In foreign policy Alexander gained a certain success, winning several campaigns. Under his rule, Russia acquired Finland and part of Poland.
Religion
Religion initially exercised little influence on Alexander's life, but later in life, he became very involved in religious mysticism.
Politics
In the first half of his rule, Alexander tried to introduce liberal reforms. He was influenced by the French philosophers as well as the events in France. At the very beginning, several notable steps were made, including establishing freedom for publishing houses, the winding down of activities in the intelligence services, and the prohibition of torture. It was Alexander I who first created in Russia a system of ministries, each of which had its own area of responsibility. The country was very excited at the prospects of Alexander's reign; there were great hopes for the future of Russia and anticipation of a more liberal form of government and increased freedom. Some went so far as to hope for an end to the institution of serfdom, which sapped the nation of its energy.
At first, the Tsar did little to discourage these aspirations. Slowly, for a number of reasons, Alexander turned away from his childhood dreams and principles. From the end of 1818, Alexander's views began to change. Increasingly he found it easier to get results by using the power of autocracy. Once he began using autocratic power, administered through men who served at his will, it corrupted him. The longer he used this method of ruling Russia, the more difficult he began for him to return to the principles of good government and the role of the monarch he had learned in his youth.
Displaying an astonishing inconstancy, Alexander abandoned his internal reforms to devote himself to foreign policy, to which he would commit the major portion of his reign. Sensitive to fluctuations in continental politics, he was a "European" who hoped for peace and unity. He felt that he was called to be a mediator, like his grandmother, who had been called the "Arbiter of Europe."
As soon as he came to power, Alexander resealed an alliance with England that had been broken by Paul I. He nonetheless maintained good relations with France in the hope of "moderating" Bonaparte by restraining his spirit of conquest. A feeling of chivalry attached Alexander to the king of Prussia, Frederick William III, and to Queen Louisa, and a treaty of friendship was signed with Prussia. Later, he got on good terms with Austria. His idealism persuaded him that these alliances would lead to a European federation.
As Napoleonic wars echoed in Russia, Alexander, although initially admiring Napoleon, entered an anti-French coalition. In December 1805 Austria and Russia lost the battle of Austerlitz, called Napoleon’s greatest victory. After a disastrous defeat in Poland two years later, Alexander had had enough. The two Emperors signed a peace treaty, allying Russia to France. But it wasn’t long before the friendship waned. On June 12, 1812, Napoleon began his fatal campaign, known in Russia as the Patriotic War. Opposing Napoleon, Alexander believed he was fulfilling a divine mission.
By December, reduced to a fraction of their initial might, the French army was expelled from Russia. Two years later, with Alexander riding at their head, Russian troops made a glorious entry to Paris. This was the triumph of his reign - hailed as a hero across Europe he turned into one of its most powerful monarchs. Seeing himself as Europe’s liberator and peace-maker, the Tsar became the driving force behind the Holy Alliance - a coalition of Russia, Austria and Prussia signed in 1815.
The alliance was supposed to bring peace based on Christian love to the monarchs and peoples of Europe. It is possible to see in the alliance the beginnings of a European federation, but it would have been a federation with ecumenical, rather than political, foundations. Designed to counter any new revolutions and protect stability in Europe, the alliance was the first international peacekeeping organization of sorts.
The idealistic tsar’s vision came to a sad end, for the alliance became a league of monarchs against their peoples. When a series of uprisings against despotic regimes in Italy and Spain broke out, the “holy allies” responded with bloody repression. Alexander himself was badly shaken by the mutiny of his Semyonovsky regiment and thought he detected the presence of revolutionary radicalism. This marked the end of his liberal dreams, for, from then on, all revolt appeared to him as a rebellion against God.
Views
Immediately after the accession to the throne, Alexander I pardoned more than one hundred prisoners, and also removed the punishment from more than 12 thousand people dismissed from service or exiled by his father. It was Alexander I who rehabilitated the famous writer Radishchev, who fell into disgrace for his work and was convicted by order of Paul I.
It was under Alexander I when secret societies began to appear, which later turned into the societies of the Decembrist conspirators. However, the emperor refused to punish them in any way, believing that he had no right to punish those whose views he himself shared in the past.
He was aware of the existence of revolutionary-minded groups of nobles, but he did not take any action against them. The emperor declared that he had no moral right to punish those whose views he himself once shared when he was young.
Among other reforms, the emperor lifted the ban on the import of foreign books and musical notes into Russia, which had been in effect for a long time.
Quotations:
"Stop! I'm with you! I am your king!"
Personality
Alexander I was distinguished by a rather peaceful character, he did not have the habit of severely punishing the guilty or raising his voice to someone. The Emperor often complained that he was oppressed by the burden of power, and he dreamed of leaving the throne, giving the people a democratic constitution, and settling as a hermit somewhere in a house on the banks of the Rhine. In the last years of his life, Alexander I more and more often returned to this idea, and when he did die, rumors circulated among the people for a long time that in fact, the emperor had faked his death in order to realize his old dream.
Interests
Music & Bands
Ludwig van Beethoven, John Field
Connections
Alexander was 17 in 1793 when he married Elizabeth of Baden, a pretty princess who was only fourteen years old. They were very happy together in the first years of their marriage. Elizabeth looked upon Alexander as her handsome "prince charming" and he loved her in return. As a wedding present, Catherine gave Alexander the Alexander Palace, showing her preference for his grandson over her son, Paul, by granting Alexander a larger court than his father's.
During the reign of Emperor Paul, Alexander and Elizabeth Alexeievna’s marriage started to falter. Alexander started a long-term affair with Maria Antonovna Naryshkina in 1799 and Elizabeth Alexeievna sought affection with her husband’s friend Prince Adam Czartoryski, a Polish noble. In 1799, Elizabeth Alexeievna gave birth to a daughter Maria Alexandrovna, who had dark eyes and dark hair like Prince Adam Czartoryski, unlike the blond-hair and blue-eyes of both Alexander and Elizabeth Alexeievna. Sadly, the child died when she was 13 months old.
After Alexander became Emperor, his marriage was really one in name only. Both Alexander and Elizabeth Alexeievna fulfilled their duties as Emperor and Empress. However, Alexander continued his long-term affair with Maria Antonovna Naryshkina, and Elizabeth Alexeievna continued her affair with Prince Adam Czartoryski. This affair lasted until Elizabeth Alexeievna began a new affair with Captain Alexis Okhotnikov.
In 1806, Elizabeth Alexeievna gave birth to another daughter, Elizabeth Alexandrovna, who died of an infection when she was 17 months old. Rumors circulated that Elizabeth Alexandrovna was really the daughter of Alexis Okhotnikov. In 1807, Alexis Okhotnikov was killed and suspicions arose that either Emperor Alexander I or his brother Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich had ordered him killed.
Although the death of Elizabeth Alexandrovna brought Alexander and Elizabeth Alexeievna temporarily closer, they had no more children. Besides, Maria Naryshkina, Alexander had several mistresses and, according to some estimates, could have had up to eleven illegitimate children.
On the night of March 23, 1801, a group of conspirators charged into Paul’s bedroom, forced him to abdicate, and then strangled and trampled him to death. Alexander, who probably knew about the coup but not the murder plot, succeeded as Alexander I, Emperor of All Russia at the age of 23. From his father Paul, who had weekly visits with his son, Alexander developed a passion for all things military.
Mother:
Maria Feodorovna
Alexander's mother, Maria, refused to speak to her son for a long while, she never entirely forgave him for his complicity in his father's murder.
Spouse:
Elizabeth Alexeievna
Alexander and Elizabeth's marriage was a political match which, as he regretfully confessed to his friend Frederick William III, had turned to misfortune for both; and he consoled himself in the traditional manner. The two children of the marriage both died.
Their common sorrow drew husband and wife closer together. Towards the close of his life, their reconciliation was completed by the wise charity of the empress in sympathizing deeply with him over the death of his beloved daughter by Princess Maria Naryshkina.
In 1819, Alexander became the godfather of the daughter of the Duke of Kent Edward Augustus, who received the name Alexandrina in his honor, and Victoria in honor of his mother. Later she became the famous British Queen Victoria.
The emperor was named Alexander by his grandmother Catherine II (the Great), Empress of All Russia in honor of Alexander Nevsky, a famous 13th-century ruling prince from the Rurik dynasty who is a saint in the Russian Orthodox religion. Three months after his birth, Empress Catherine took the infant Alexander to live in her own apartments so she could raise him.
Daughter:
Maria Alexandrovna
Daughter:
Elizabeth Alexandrovna
Mistress:
Maria Naryshkina
Maria attracted the attention of the heir to the throne, Alexander Pavlovich. The future emperor had already become famous for his numerous affairs before meeting her, but their relationship with Mary was not at all a short-term affair. Alexander I devoted 15 years to Maria.
Son:
Nikolai Lukash
Lukash is considered to be the first illegitimate son of Alexander I from Princess Sofia Sergeevna Meshcherskaya (Vsevolozhskaya).
Mistress:
Sofia Sergeevna Meshcherskaya
Sofia had a love affair with Emperor Alexander I.
References
Alexander I: The Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon
Alexander I was a ruler with high aspirations for the people of Russia. Cosseted as a young grand duke by Catherine the Great, he ascended to the throne in 1801 after the brutal assassination of his father. In this magisterial biography, Marie-Pierre Rey illuminates the complex forces that shaped Alexander’s tumultuous reign and sheds brilliant new light on the handsome ruler known to his people as "the Sphinx."
