Muskets, Militarism, Megalomania: Tsar Paul I of Russia
As with many of its neighboring countries, the strength of the Russian Empire was always inextricably connected to the ruler in power. No matter the number of cunning advisors, brave troops, or brilliant generals in Russia, the tsar’s smarts, temperament, and ability to delegate would ultimately direct Russia through the course of history.
Under the hapless Peter III, for example, Russia lost influence and power in European diplomatic circles. When Peter ascended to the throne in January of 1762, he failed to constantly consider the best interests of Russia. Peter was loathed for his militarism and love for Frederick the Great of Prussia. A former Prussian citizen and a self-proclaimed Teutophile, Peter directly helped the burgeoning Prussian Empire continue its dominance in Central Europe. After a July 1762 coup, Peter’s ineffective and brief reign was replaced by a period of golden prosperity: the time of Catherine the Great.
Catherine, who ruled from 1762-1796, embodied the three crucial traits of a great tsar: smarts, temperament, and ability to delegate. Catherine was a voracious reader and darling of Europe’s most brilliant philosophers, who called her an “enlightened despot.” Though known for taking many lovers, she never let a single one possess too much political power, and she remained a steadfast and composed tsar throughout her tenure. Lastly, Catherine is renowned for her ability to delegate, surrounding herself with advisors such as the skilled Grigory Potemkin, the masterful Grigory Orlov, or the undefeated Alexander Suvorov.
By the time of Catherine’s death in 1796, Russia was again a powerful European empire, restored to its former position of prominence on the back of an adept leader. In Catherine’s place came a mysterious figure: her son Paul.
Paul’s reign was brief—he served from 1796 until a successful assassination attempt in 1801. Paul was the zenith of Russia’s idiosyncratic autocracy: he was hated for his mercurially cruel attitude, and derided as “the mad tsar.”
Though Paul was indeed an uncompromising man of militarism, he was not born a mad martinet. A fascinating story of what can happen to a country when under the power of a singularly volatile monarch, Paul’s life and reign were shaped by a motherless, loveless childhood, coupled with a painful series of experiences that haunted him forever.
The pressure on a tsar to produce an heir was paramount. Paul I of Russia began as a quota: Elizabeth I, tsar at the time, pressured her eventual successor, Peter III, and his wife, the German Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst (the future Catherine the Great), to give birth to a son. On September 20th, 1754, Paul was born in St. Petersburg. From the moment of his birth, Paul was “immediately swept up and kidnapped by [Elizabeth I], thrilled to have an heir.” Once she had provided her a male heir, Elizabeth lost all interest in Catherine and rarely met with her. As a result of Elizabeth’s avarice, Paul seldom saw his mother during his most formative years, growing up to be a meek and sickly boy.
Empress Elizabeth died in 1762, when Paul was only eight years old, and his father, Peter III, took the throne. Within a span of eight months, though, Peter was deposed and murdered in a coup organized by Paul’s mother, Catherine the Great. The loss of his Father deeply hurt Paul. Additionally, Paul was tutored and advised by Nikita Panin, who instilled in him the idea that a female ruler could never be capable of good leadership. This misogynistic ideology, coupled with the nature of his father’s death and his mother’s cruelty, left Paul hungry for power. The result of Paul’s upbringing would be a feud with Catherine that would last his entire lifetime.
As he came of age, Paul, the immediate heir to the Russian throne, took the title of Grand Duke of Russia, indicating his supremacy in the line of succession. Like the tsars before him and those that would follow, Paul was pressured to produce an heir before his brief reign had even commenced. In 1773, Paul married Princess Wilhemina of Hesse-Darmstadt, who took the Russian name Natalia Alexeivna. According to Russian historian Robert K. Massie, the wedding “was followed by ten days of court balls, theatrical performances, and masquerades, while people in the streets drank free beer, ate hot meat pies, and watched fireworks… Paul was exultant; a new life and a new freedom seemed to be offering itself.” However, after only two years of marriage, Natalia died in childbirth in 1776.
Naturally, Paul was crushed. Russian historian Simon Montefiore writes that “Paul, half mad with grief, was understandably reluctant to consider a new wife—but the Empire needed its heir. Catherine callously showed him his wife's love letters to his best friend, Andrei Razumovsky…” Catherine worsened Paul’s emotional torment: not only had his beloved wife died, Catherine had known she was unfaithful all along. Paul was quickly but reluctantly remarried to Sophia Dorothea of Wurttemberg, who was renowned for her beauty. By 1777, Paul had achieved a key milestone in his career: Sophia had given birth to a son. In the same way that Elizabeth had adored Paul, stripping him from Catherine, Catherine was enraptured with Paul’s son, whom he named Alexander. Catherine, according to Montefiore, “raved about Alexander’s ‘rare beauty’ and brilliant mind, ordering his toys, designing him the world’s first romper suit, and writing an ABC textbook for his education.” To solidify his hatred of his mother, Catherine seemed to love Alexander more than she ever had Paul: Catherine soon called Alexander “the monarch in training,” as though Paul simply did not exist.
By April of 1779, Sophia had given birth to a second son, Constantine. To reward Paul and Sophia for giving her two heirs, Catherine granted Paul a private palace at Gatchina, outside of St. Petersburg, in 1783.
As Paul grew older, he spent his years brooding in his private palace in Gatchina. Every day, Paul “commanded 130 officers and 2000 men” in military drills around the palace grounds. He felt, according to Montefiore, a sense of “consolation in the simple military life at Gatchina.” Though Paul was temporarily satisfied, it seemed, playing war like a child, his aides and advisors despised him for his mercurial temper—a temper born from the pain wrought by Catherine. Count Fyodor Rostopchin, advisor to Paul, wrote in his memoirs: “The Grand Duke invents new ways to make himself hated by everyone… He punishes indiscriminately without distinction… He imagines himself to be the late King of Prussia. The slightest delay or contradiction unhinges him and inflames him with fury.”
Paul, a lover of all things Prussian, was a stickler for even the smallest details. As historian Robert E. Jones comments, Paul was “a man with strong, indeed compulsive ideas of how things ought to be, who was often intensely frustrated with things as they really were. In the end, everyone—friends, advisors, allies, family members—failed to live up to Paul's expectations, and although he probably did not see it or would not admit it, so too did he.”
Paul as a young man.
Indeed, Paul’s mental state and relationship with Catherine remained in disrepair. Though her building him a secluded palace may have appeared a congratulatory gesture, Catherine’s desire to exclude Paul from the political scene was undeniably an ulterior motive. As Montefiore contends, “Catherine could hear the artillery booming over at Gatchina as she walked her greyhounds at Tsarskoe Selo. She loathed Paul’s militarism and saw in him Peter III redux. He was so bitter that she compared him to ‘mustard after dinner.’”
On November 5th, 1796, Catherine died, leaving Paul as her heir—despite many of her efforts to see Alexander take the throne. In recompense for the years of psychological torment he received from Catherine, Paul barely seemed to notice his mother’s death: he ordered his men to start guarding the Winter Palace. He pettily made Alexander and Constantine don imperial Prussian uniforms while Catherine was still wheezing on her deathbed. His reign seemed to commence the second Catherine died. Paul brought with him a cohort of nefarious advisors: Count Alexei Arakcheev, the “Ape in Uniform” and co-commandant of St. Petersburg; Nikita Akharov, “Minister of Terror” and former Gatchina henchman; Peter von der Pahlen, “Professor of Cunning” and governor of St. Petersburg. Paul sought his advisors not based on capability, but on agreeability. After a lifetime of feeling neglected, Paul wanted his court filled with toadies who would blindly agree with him. As Rostopchin wrote: “The Grand Duke is surrounded by such people that the most honest would deserve to be hanged.”
Paul ascended to the throne armed with a slew of laws to alter Russia the way he saw fit. First, Paul made sure Catherine would be the last woman to rule Russia: he passed a series of legislation known as the Pauline Laws, adopted from Panin’s misogynistic teachings, which advocated for a strict system of male primogeniture. Paul was passionate about his grip on power, and he despised the ongoing French Revolution as a result. Although a tsar in the Age of Enlightenment, intellectual freedom and civil liberties were anathema to Paul. it is not incredibly surprising, then, that Paul was unpopular.
Paul was quick to change everything related to Catherine’s reign. Thumping his chest and declaring “here is the law,” Paul started his tenure with days of celebration and parades with his “ostrogothic” Prussianized Gatchina Guards in November of 1796. Paul moved his father’s corpse to the same royal grave as Catherine, ordering Catherine’s former advisors to carry the coffin through St. Petersburg in a macho display of despotism. Additionally, Paul exhumed the bones of Catherine’s trusted advisor and lover, Grigori Potemkin, and ordered them scattered. With the body of Catherine still fresh in its grave, Paul lost no time in reversing his mother’s policies.
Paul’s most hated laws dealt with fashion. A determined opponent of the French Revolution, Paul banned certain “revolutionary” hairstyles in his court: “His Imperial Majesty deigned to indicate that all ladies, no matter what rank and title, would not go to His Majesty's court, wearing their hair tucked up on their heads, according to the latest French fashion, called à la guillotine…” Paul forbade his subjects from dancing the waltz, wearing taffeta, and even banned the wearing of vests, instead unsurprisingly mandating the wearing of German camisoles instead. The most outlandish aspect of Paul’s reign, though, was not his laws, but the way he expected people to react to them. Paul expected to be obeyed by his citizenry the same way he had reluctantly obeyed Catherine, though his dreams of deferential obeisance were never realized. Paul’s poor ability to delegate left him stranded with an inner circle of advisors who would say yes to him no matter the circumstance. Paul lived in his own world, it seemed, numb to the rest of Russia.
Paul placed the most pride in his “reformed military,” though his Prussianization of the army, according to Montefiore, made soldiers look “like old portraits of German officers walking out of their frames.” Paul organized daily Wachtparades to show off his military’s punctilious organization. The new uniform decrees were highly unpopular among the soldiers, since the Prussian style required soldiers to wear scratchy powdered wigs and keep their uniforms—not suited for the Russian cold—spotlessly clean. One of the few men to stand up to Paul was Russia’s greatest general, the undefeated Alexander Suvorov: “Sire, there is powder and powder; curls are not cannon, a pigtail is not a bayonet, and I’m not a Prussian but a pure-blooded Russian.” In one of his most notable blunders, Paul dismissed his country’s invincible hero during a Wachtparade, announcing: “Marshal Suvorov, having declared to his Imperial Highness that since there is no war he had nothing to do, is to remain without service for making such a remark.” Paul had complete and utter control: during one parade he ordered a regiment to march to Siberia after a breach of the rules. Paul was focused on the wrong things during his reign. As serfs remained shackled to the land, and quality of life had deteriorated since Catherine’s time, Paul, like his boyish former self in Gatchina, seemed to be wholly focused on his army and laws alone.
A pauline Wachtparade.
As time passed, Paul’s mercurial tendencies came to the fore. Paul was known for having a temper “more changeable than a weathervane.” After an affair with mistress Anna Lopukhina, who adored waltzes, Paul made sure waltzing went from being banned to compulsory. After a delay in implementing Paul’s uniform changes, Paul wrote an edict, ordering to banish the Privy Councillor in charge of the operation. The same councillor was later recalled by Paul, who “with tears in his eyes apologized for his petulance” and gave the councillor back his old position.
In classic Pauline fashion, the rules kept coming. Paul issued more than 2,000 edicts in his first year alone. Paul employed Akharov to oversee enforcement of his whimsical laws. One of the most unpopular laws was one forbidding officers to eat lunch with their hats on. Though Paul’s subjects hated his laws, Paul’s advisors and deputies kept enforcing and promoting them, which made Paul believe everything was fine. Paul’s laws, and his unceasing enforcement of them, inspired “fear and ridicule” in his subjects, and, according to Montefiore, though they feared him, “they laughed too. And nothing saps authority like laughter.”
Internationally, Paul was a subject of much laughter, as well. “The emperor is literally not in his senses,” British Ambassador Charles Whitworth wrote to London. Paul served at a key period in European geopolitics: Napoleon posed a looming threat to the rest of Europe. Whitworth, who wanted an Anglo-Russian Alliance, feared Paul’s mercurial attitude and potential love for Napoleon’s autocratic style. Though Paul claimed that he would not fall victim to the same errors as his father, his growing love for Napoleon mimicked Peter III’s crush on Frederick the Great. Paul advocated for anti-British alliances and even drew up plans to invade the British Raj with a combined Franco-Russian force. Luckily, Paul, who served as the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, became outraged at Napoleon’s 1798 seizure of the island, leading to a rapprochement in Anglo-Russian relations. Paul even challenged Napoleon to a duel, with his Turkish barber as backup.
After years of new laws, Gestapo-like fashion police, and idiosyncratic whimsy, a massive contingent of Paul’s court had decided that they’d had enough of “the mad tsar.” As his reign came to an end, Paul one-by-one destroyed his most loyal advisors and promoted many of the conspirators devoted to his destruction. It was Peter von der Pahlen, Paul’s former Governor of St. Petersburg, who decided the Emperor’s time had come, quipping: “The weak man talks, the brave man acts.” Pahlen spread rumours of conspiracy and anti-Pauline sentiment around Paul’s court like a virus. Alexander, Paul’s son, was even part of the conspiracy. By early 1801, Pahlen had created a plan to kill the emperor, who spent much of his time in St. Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Palace. Although the palace was well-guarded, a building is only as impenetrable as the men who guard it, and Pahlen, “the Prince of Cunning,” was aware of all passcodes.
On the night of March 24th, 1801, the conspiracy sprang into action, but not without a touch of initial reluctance. During a dinner party to celebrate the oncoming coup, one conspirator posed the question: what if Paul resisted? Pahlen’s response was curt: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” The coup was on.
As the conspirators brusquely burst into Paul’s chamber, it appeared he was nowhere to be found. Upon further inspection, though, Paul’s feet could be seen quivering behind a pair of drapes in the corner of the room.
Paul’s death was grisly. Conspirators, many of them drunk from the dinner party, senselessly beat Paul to a pulp with clubs and knives, and even tried to strangle him with his own bedsheets. The next day, people were exuberant with the news. The soldiers at the next morning’s military parade ripped off their wigs and burned their old uniforms. Alexander passed legislation to undo much of Paul’s work, dissolving the secret police, pardoning exiles, and working to restore ties with Great Britain. Paul’s reign and influence was quickly done away with.
Pahlen and the conspirators assassinate Paul.
Though Paul was killed by physical weapons, he had cemented his fate as an assassinated tsar long before the night of his murder through his emotional and intellectual shortcomings. Paul surrounded himself with people who would fail him—he could never realize that his laws were deeply unpopular among his populus because any advisor who told him so would be sent to Siberia during one of his abrupt fits of rage. Paul’s odd and cruel laws did nothing but satisfy himself, to that end they served as a pernicious tumor that plagued his subjects, reputation, and reign. Though his laws were unquestionably nonsensical, they came from a logical place of emotional trauma: after a life of being counted out, Paul wanted to feel that he had power over something. Paul lived an unhappy childhood away from his mother, who, he was taught, had killed his father. Paul was emotionally obliterated by the death of his first wife, Natalia, and the knowledge that she had cheated on him with his best friend. Upon the birth of Alexander, Paul received no recognition, and his son was loved by Catherine more than Paul ever was. Paul’s difficult life events created a man who singlehandedly provided the impetus for his own assassination. Although Paul focused wholly on his army, his greatest enemy was not from a foreign nation—it was, by his own doing, from within.
Bibliography
Farquhar, Michael (2001). A Treasure of Royal Scandals, p.192. Penguin Books, New York. ISBN 0-7394-2025-9.
Jones, Robert E. Review of Paul I of Russia, 1754-1801, by Roderick McGrew. The Russian Review 53 (July 1994): 450-51. https://www.jstor.org/stable/131217.
Massie, Robert K. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. New York, USA: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2012.
Montefiore, Simon Sebag. The Romanovs: 1613-1918. New York, USA: Vintage Books, A division of Penguin Random House, 2017.
Paul I of Russia. "Extract from the Highest Orders regarding Police Surveillance." 1798. Accessed January 16, 2021. http://www.vostlit.info/Texts/Dokumenty/Russ/XVIII/1740-1760/Pavel_I/RS/82/text.htm.
———. "The Highest Command Forbidding Ladies to Wear the Hairstyle of the Alaguillotin." 1796. Accessed January 16, 2021. http://www.vostlit.info/Texts/Dokumenty/Russ/XVIII/1740-1760/Pavel_I/DNR/2/text.htm.
Ragsdale, Hugh. (1988). Tsar Paul and the Question of Madness: An Essay in History and Psychology. Westport., Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. Contributions to the Study of World History.
