Star Media Babich-Design Grand Duke Pavel Petrovitch
was running along the corridors of the Winter Palace. His mother
Catherine the Great was dying. Only a few steps separated
him from the throne… but for the secret
testament of the Empress. No! He’ll find and destroy
it! By any means! Otherwise, the power will go to his son Alexander
instead of him, the direct heir. Alexander was born to become an Emperor. He had everything for that:
wit, beauty and talent. Except for one thing – the will to rule. This is it! The end! Pavel has
been waiting for it for 34 years! He is the Emperor! In four years, four months and four days Alexander will stand over
his father’s dead body, and somebody would say tentatively:
“Congratulations. Now YOU are the Emperor”. THE HOUSE OF ROMANOV. Episode Six The birth of Prince Pavel
Petrovitch was a happy event. As a great-grandson of Peter the Great,
he filled in a gap in the dynasty. He lived the major part of his life
in a shadow of his great mother. He was an eternal prince –
lonely, romantic and secretive. He lived in his own world
he had thoughtfully created. Many people considered him a lunatic. He was called “The Russian
Hamlet”, and for a good reason. Chapter One. Pavel I Petrovitch No sooner had he come into
this world than his granny Empress Elizabeth Petrovna
took him away from his mother, future Catherine the Great, and
let he see her son once a week. His father, future Peter
III, hadn’t seen him much too. People rumored that his real
father was chamberlain Saltykov. Some even stated that Catherina
gave birth to a dead baby and it was replaced with a Finnish
baby from the village of Kotly. The version that Pavel wasn’t Peter’s
son was popular among the courtiers. Only when Pavel Petrovitch grew up
his contemporaries started to recognize the madness of his father and
his military-style manners in him. Pavel didn’t look like his
father but was his psychic copy up to his illnesses and habits. For
example, he used to walk the room with large steps and talk
to his company senselessly, most often with his wife. Maria
Fedorovna was forced to hide her husband’s madness from the
people, like Catherine II used to do. Elizabeth loved her
only grandchild. With time, she started
to think of a way to hand the throne over to
Pavel bypassing his father whom she considered a lunatic. She concerned herself
with the education of the heir and invited
the best teachers for him. The future Emperor studied five languages,
history, literature, mathematics, psychics, drawing and architecture.
Riding, fencing, dancing, turning and chess were obligatory. The program
didn’t stipulate the military science, however Pavel insisted
on studying it. For his navigation lessons a large table was painted in
blue and drawn like a sea map. When Pavel was seven, Elizabeth
died. In another six months, he lost his father who died in
Ropsha under unclear circumstances. His mother became the Empress. There were rumors
that she promised to hand the throne over to
her son when he came of age, that was in 14 years. He had to wait for what had been promised
for 34 years. As a teenager, Pavel was prone to
regular neuroses and depressions. However, his teachers noted his great
wit and interest of the young Prince to hard science, art
and mystical philosophy. He had a cherished dream of
becoming a knight of the Malta about whom he read
in some old book. Being an Emperor seemed a scary and
hard fate for him. He was ashamed of his mother "whom he considered lecherous;
he was afraid of her favorites " and felt weighted down with the
free atmosphere of the court. His only salvation was friendship
with a young Count Andrei Razumovskiy. Pavel used to write
enthusiastic letters to him: “Your friendship worked a
miracle in me. I start to defy my former suspiciousness. No more
chimeras, no more worrying troubles!” When Pavel turned 19, his mother
found a bride for him – an 18-year old Augusta Wilhelmina Louisa,
Princess of Hessen-Darmstadt. Pavel fell in love with
her from her first glance. Wilhelmina converted to Orthodoxy
under the name of Natalia Alexeyevna. During the 4th year of their marriage
she died in birth together with the baby. Pavel almost went mad with sorrow. His caring mother decided
to console him by showing letters of Natalia to Andrei Razumovskiy. The letters proved that his wife was unfaithful
to him with his best friend. Pavel will never go over that blow. He will never ever be able
to trust anybody again. The Empress found another
German Princess for the heir. In just six months, Pavel was engaged
with Sophia Maria Dorothea of Wurttemberg who converted to Orthodoxy
as Maria Fedorovna. The second marriage of Pavel turned
out to be happy and very fecund. In the course of 25 years of family
life Maria Fedorovna gave birth to 10 children and provided the
dynasty with healthy male descendants for 150 years forward. Her sons were Emperors Alexander
I and Nicolay I, her grandson – Alexander II,
great-grandson – Alexander III, great-great-grandson
– Nicolay II. All the now living
representatives of the House of Romanov
are her descendants too. Right after the wedding, the
newlyweds went for a trip to Europe. They traveled incognito, under the
name of Count and Counter Severniy (“du Norr” in French). The
European capitals received Pavel with respect he had never
experienced in his homeland. In the court theatre of Vienna
Count du Norr and his wife planned to watch “Hamlet”. However,
the leading actor refused to play. “I won’t be able to play a part
of a prince he wants to revenge for his murdered father when his
double is watching the performance from the royal lodge”, he said. Pavel had been called “the
Russian Hamlet” ever since… Empress Catherine didn’t let
Pavel interfere in state affairs. She didn’t even let him bring his
sons Alexander and Konstantin up and took her grandsons away. To keep him from being an eyesore, she gave him the Gatchina
Palace as a present. The Russian Hamlet
got his Excelsior. In the course of 13 years of life in Gatchina Pavel
created his own world there – with knight palaces scaled
1 to 5, an army of 2,000 soldiers dressed in the Prussian
uniforms and with powdered plaits. Catherina’s courtiers sparkled with
spiteful wit. Count Rastopchin wrote to Count Vorontsov: “One can’t watch what the Grand
Duke is doing without despise. He imagines
himself to be the Prussian King! He arranges maneuvers every Wednesday…” The troops from Gatchina had
never taken part in battles and had no chance to
demonstrate their achievements. However, the plans of trainings
show that those regiments practiced the most difficult of the
military techniques: methods of volley fire and bayonet fight, crossing of
water obstacles and repulsing of sea landing parties. Special
trainings for artillery were held. By 1796, those units were
among the most disciplined and well-trained divisions
of the Russian army. The Gatchina drills
went down in legends. Before sending a person on duty, he was screwed up into a special
stand to make him bear his back and head straight and to
train to stay immobilized. White tight trousers were to
be wetted and dried on the body so that there was
not a single fold. The officers taught the soldiers to march
with a glass of water on the head. If the water spilled, it meant that the steps
were not straight enough. Physical
punishments were used for any blunders. The parade stride of the ceremonial
guard that we see during solemn ceremonies today used to be an ordinary
kind of step at Pavel’s time. Trooping the colors that is
still used in today’s army is nothing more than
Pavel’s change of the guard. However, it lasted not for 15
minutes but for a few hours. Catherina mockingly called
Pavel’s army “daddy’s troops”. She didn’t like to receive
her son at the court but spared no effort for bringing
up of her grandson Alexander. In fact, she repeated the actions
of her predecessor Elizabeth whom she disapproved. Catherina married Alexander
when he had just turned 16 and started to ask the courtiers
whether they were ready to pass the crown over to her grandson instead of her son. Pavel began to seriously
fear for his life. At night of November 6, 1796
Pavel and his wife Maria Fedorovna saw the same dream: an unseen force
rose them up and took somewhere. They woke up in horror. At that time a messenger on
a foamy horse came to Gatchina with a piece of news:
the Empress was dying. In a few hours, a 42-year
old Pavel became the Emperor. No sooner had he ascended the throne
than he started to act feverishly. He as if felt that he had little time. In the course of 4,5 years of Pavel’s I rule 7,865
legislative acts and decrees were issued. It is twice as much as
during the 43-year rule of Peter I and 1,5 times more than during
34 years of Catherine’s rule. Besides, Pavel had time to issue
14,207 orders about the army. The Emperor got up at 4 a.m. and
worked in his office up to 9 a.m., receiving reports and people. Then he rode out, usually accompanied by the Grand Duke Alexander, to
visit some state establishment. At 11 a.m. changing of
the guards started. From 12 a.m. to 1 p.m. the Emperor walked the streets.
Then he returned to the drill grounds and inspected the
troops personally. He measured the
length of the plaits, checked quality and quantity of
powder in each soldier’s hair. He always punished the commanders
severely for any little blunder. Just in the first three days of
his rule 16 Lieutenant Generals, 57 Major Generals and
3 Generals got the boot. In the course of 4 years, 2,594
officers including 333 generals resigned. The close circle of the Emperor
was in a state of constant stress. The wife of his military adjutant
Countess Daria Lyven remembered: “The stream of victims to the fortress
didn’t stop. Often their only fault was too long hair or
a too short jacket. It was strictly prohibited to wear vests. Should the Emperor
notice a vest somewhere in the street, the ill-fated owner of the vest
was sent to the guards house. The ladies got there too sometimes,
if they failed to jump out of their carriages quick
enough on seeing Pavel or failed to make a deep
enough curtsey. Thanks to that around the time of the Emperor’s usual
walk Petersburg’s street got empty. Everybody was terrified of the Emperor”. Pavel imagined himself to be an ideal
of a medieval knight on the throne. To realize his childhood dream he
became the chef of the Maltese Order. When Napoleon conquered Malta,
Pavel offered shelter to the order in Russia and even became its
Great magister despite the fact that the order was catholic
and Pavel was Orthodox. He was the first Romanov to meet the
Pope and he even invited His Holiness to Russia – to pay a
visit or to stay for good, for Rome had already been
conquered by Napoleon. In Pavel’s eyes, Napoleon embodied
the world evil against which any knight should fight. That’s why the Russian Emperor joined the Anti-Napoleon collation and sent
an army under the lead of the glorious Field Marshal Suvorov
against the Frenchmen. Suvorov’s troops defeated the
French trice in Switzerland and made the famous
crossing of the Alps. They crossed the Saint-Goddard, which only experienced and fully equipped
climbers dare ascend even today. Pavel didn’t like Suvorov but couldn’t keep from
praising him in his letter: “You only lacked glory of one
kind – to win over nature itself. You gained the upper hand over it now”… Pavel had an aim: to destroy
everything created by his mother. He declared the war against the nobles whose
Golden Age started in Catherine’s times. He renewed all
the taxes and physical punishments for the nobles, abolished many
privileges and limited their civil rights. He was trying to watch
everything and everybody. A mountain of unread reports and
claims piled up on the Emperor’s table. Because of mass firings of the
bureaucrats there was nobody left to work in state bodies. The Ambassador of England
in Russia Charles Whitworth who was watching the Emperor
carefully wrote troubling reports to his government: “The Emperor
went crazy. Since the time he had ascended the throne his
psychical state deteriorated”… The behavior of the ruler
became more and more weird. Pavel avoided going out into
the embankment – he was afraid that strong winds might blow
his head off like a soap bubble. The Emperor couldn’t sleep at night. Even medicines with opium didn’t
help. Maria Fedorovna had to walk with her husband all the
night through to keep him from bothering the guards
with senseless questions. By that time, the conspiracy
against Pavel was ready. It included the governor of
Sankt-Petersburg Count Palen, Vice-Chancellor Nikita Panin,
favorite of Catherina II Platon Zubov, Generals Bennigsen and Uvarov,
the Ambassador of England Whitworth and many others, according to
some estimates – up to 300 people. The Grand Duke Alexander
didn’t join the conspirators but didn’t interfere
with them either. He only demanded that not a single hair should
fall from his father’s head. The conspirators swore on that. They
wanted Pavel to sign the abdication and retire to his favorite
Mikhaylovskiy Palace… or, as a last resort, they
planned to lock him in a fortress. The Mikhaylovskiy Palace
was Pavel’s embodied dream. He had been drawing
it for 12 years. Architects Bazhenov and Brenna turned the Emperor’s drawings
into an architectural project. The palace was built in the
record three and a half years. By the moment of its solemn opening the
internal decorations were not finished. Dark stairs and horrible corridors
in which the lamps were shining both day and night made the
palace look like a labyrinth. The wind wailed on the landings.
Nevertheless, Pavel was glad and ordered to court to move to the
palace of his dreams immediately. Soon the Emperor started
to behave even weirder. He would fall deep into thoughts often and watch
his wife and sons with growing suspicion. He wrote a letter which he didn’t show to anybody and hid it in a chest with a
note: “This letter shall be read by one of my descendants
in exactly 100 years”. It was known that it concerned
the fate of the dynasty and that the ruler wrote it after his
conversation with one of the inmates of the Peter and Pavel
Fortress – a monk named Abel. A monk Abel the Prophet born
Vasiliy Vasiliyev in 1757 took the monastic vows
in the Valaam monastery where he acquired the gift
of seeing into the future. Later he travelled and wrote
hand-written books of his prophesies. He foresaw a series of events,
some of which took place while he was still alive
(death of Catherine the Great, death of Pavel I, invasion of
Napoleon and the fire in Moscow, the revolt of the Decembrists) and
many events in the distant future (the First World War and the
revolution, the shooting of the Tsar, the Civil War, mass repressions,
the war with Hitler). He ended up in the fortress for his
prophesy about Catherine’s death. He was freed by Pavel,
talked one-on-one with him and was sent back to the fortress again. Abel said to the Emperor:
“Your ruling will be short. You’ll be strangled by bandits
whom you’re cherishing on your bosom in your own bedroom." The memory of Saint Sophronius of Jerusalem
Church on March 11. On March 11, 1801 when
dining with his elder sons, Pavel was unusually
merry and even joked. He looked into the mirror and
said: “What a funny mirror! I can see myself with
a broken neck in it”. At that time, the last meeting of the conspirators
was taking place at Palen’s house. Someone asked: “What
shall we do if the tyrant resists”? Palen answered with a French saying: “One can’t cook an omelet
without breaking the eggs”. After the dinner, the Emperor
suddenly said: “What will be will be” and went to his bedroom. He checked the doors and windows. He wondered why the crows in the
Summer Garden were making fuss. The conspirators passed the Summer
Garden and approached the palace. The guards let them come in. On hearing heavy footsteps
in the corridor, Pavel realized: they’d come for him. The conspirators who burst into his
bedroom didn’t see Pavel at once – he hid behind a screen. They tried to
make the Emperor sign the abdication. “No, gentlemen, no! I won’t sign anything”
– Pavel repeated without a break. Platon Zubov hit him
in his temple with a golden snuffbox like with a knife. Pavel
fell. An ugly scene followed: the guards officers trampled
their ruler with their feet. Pavel fought bravely
– one against a dozen – and was strangled with his own
officer scarf made of while atlas. Three medics and a court artist
spent the rest of the night over the ruler’s body trying to
conceal the traces of beating. The people were informed
that Emperor Pavel I died in a result of an
apoplectic stroke. Courtiers joked: “an apoplectic stroke of
a snuffbox to the temple”. A French artist Elizabeth
Vizhe-Lebraine witnessed the reaction to the Emperor’s death. “The city went crazy out of happiness. People were singing, dancing
and kissing in the streets. The people I knew would run up to my carriage,
shake my hands and exclaim: “We’re free now”!
Many households were illuminated on the eve of that day. The death of that poor Emperor evoked revelry”. The new 24-year old Emperor
Alexander Palvovitch issued a manifest in a few hours after his father’s
death in which he promised to rule “in accordance with wits
and heart of my late grandmother”. He seemed not to hear
congratulations and merriness, unable to come to his senses after
the nightmare of the previous night. He wanted what was best – to protect
the country from a lunatic ruler and to protect the ruler from
the country that hated him. However, good intentions
pave the way to hell. It was his personal hell that would
stay with him for the rest of his life. Chapter Two. Alexander I Pavlovitch It was Catherine the
Great who gave him the name that is translated from Greek
as “the protector of people”. According to the official
version, he was named so in honor of the Holy Prince of the
Neva, and in reality – in honor of the great war leader
Alexander of Macedonia. The Empress poured all her unused
motherly love on her first grandson whom she took away from his parents. The boy turned out to
be extremely handsome. Catherine wrote about the little
prince to her old friend Baron Grimm with pride: “He’ll be
courteous, I am not mistaken. He is fun and obedient and
works on people to like him”. Everybody expected
something of the child. He was watched all the time. He felt as if on stage and with time gathered a set
of masks for all occasions. Baron Modest Korf, a bureaucrat close
to the court noted in his memoires: “The ruler could conquer
minds and get to the bottom of other people’s souls hiding
his own feelings and thoughts”. Alexander knew that his grandmother
wanted to hand the throne over to him instead of his father,
and was afraid of that. The only person he trusted was his teacher, a
Swiss Frederick La Harpe. It was Catherine who invited a
republican and an idealistic philosopher La Harpe. She wanted the
young prince to get acquainted with the humanistic ideals, ideas about
the well-being of the state and people. Alexander hadn’t even
turned 15 when the Empress ordered to bring two sisters to him –
Princesses of Baden, a 12-year old Louise and a 10-year old Dorothea.
Alexander was to choose a bride. He chose the elder sister who converted to Orthodoxy
under the name of Elizabeth Alexeyena. A fanciful
wedding took place in a year. The courtiers called the touching
newlyweds “Amur and Psyche”. A beautiful and clever Elizabeth
inspired artists and poets. Fedor Glinka wrote about
her: “A gentle Tsarina, a beauty of the earthy tsars, your
heavenly face is worthy of altars”. Beethoven dedicated his famous
piano play “Fur Elise” to her. Elizabeth Alexeyevna became a
real patriot of Russia. In 1812, she founded a patriotic society
that granted allowances to the sick and wounded and paid for
their treatment in hospitals. She opened orphanages and state schools
for the children of the perished officers, founded the Orphanage Institutes
and the Houses of Hardworking. Elizabeth Alexeyevna was
the Dame Belle of that epoch. The guards and the city societies found
clubs inspired by love to Elizabeth Alexeycvna. Young people
chose her to be the “lady-love”. Even a masonic lodge “Elizabeth
for Virtue” was founded. After Pavel had ascended the throne,
careless and brilliant life ended. The gloomy atmosphere at the
court, eternal faultfinding… Empress Maria Fedorovna didn’t
like her daughter-in-law, Emperor Pavel recouped
himself on his unloved son. Besides Amur and Psyche grew up. It turned out that
romantic coolness of Elizabeth didn’t suit
Alexander’s hot heart well. Their family life wasn’t happy. Affairs and
infatuations started. However, during the 6th year
of marriage Elizabeth gave birth to a daughter who
died at the age of one. With each passing
year, Alexander realized: he didn’t want to be the Emperor. He had a
dream – to leave everything behind and to go to the bank of
the Rhine with his wife to spend the rest of the
life in romantic isolation. In a letter to his close friend
Count Kochubey Alexander confessed: “I realize that I wasn’t born for
the title I bear now and even less – for the one predestined
for me in the future. I swore to myself to refuse to accept it
in one way or another”. The drill grounds in Gatchina became
a place of psychological relaxation. During one of the drills a cannon
shot close to Grand Duke Alexander. His left ear went deaf after
that. Because of his deafness, Alexander became suspicious. It seemed to him all the time that people were laughing or mocking at him. Once three generals
were telling jokes to each other and laughing in the
yard of the palace in Tsarskoye Selo. Alexander passed them by. In ten minutes, he summoned
one of the generals to his office. Alexander was examining himself
in the large mirror and asked: “What is funny about
me? Why did you laugh at me”? It was hard to convince him that
they were laughing at a joke. The first thing Alexander did
when he got over the chock – he cancelled all the unpopular
decrees and orders issued by Pavel. He closed the Secret Chancellery,
allowed people to go abroad, restore the rights and
privileges of the nobility. Everybody was offering him
controversial plans and projects. Alexander gathered a new team
that consisted of his friends and like-minded people, young liberals
educated in the European style. In a result of the two years
of work of the Secret Committee new ministries were founded
instead of the outdated collegiums, a progressive reform of
education was carried out (the higher education became open
for all estates, the censorship was moderated, five new universities
were opened), the first attempt to solve the peasants’
issue was made. A decree of free plowmen was issued according to
which landowners had a right to free peasants with
the land for redemption. The reforms moved slowly
and with difficulties. Alexander was disappointed. It seemed to him that
everybody was thinking about his own interests and not
about his dream of the “common good”. However, Alexander found a man who was
destined to realize all his good intentions. He was a former seminarian and
a genius of law Mikhail Speranskiy. First, he was a secretary
of the Secret Committee. Later the Emperor made
him his trusted person. The Emperor himself plunged into the
intricacies of the foreign policy. Something grandiose was looming. The First Consul of the
French Republic who soon became Emperor
Napoleon Bonaparte was waging one victorious war after another
striving for power over the entire Europe. In 1805, they met by Austerlitz
in a “battle of three Emperors”: Alexander I of Russia and the Austrian
Emperor Franz II against Napoleon. The old and experienced
General Mikhail Kutuzov was the official commander-in-chief
of the Russian army. However, Alexander was
jealous of Napoleon’s glory and decided to head the army himself. Alexander saw his army run and was
forced to run himself to save his life. Many people saw the
Emperor crying and shaking. He couldn’t brace himself
even in his soldiers’ presence. The Cossacks brought him some wine. He calmed down with difficulty
and fell asleep in a shed on straw. After the shameful Austerlitz,
Alexander never ever interfered in his war leaders’
actions again. He indulged into diplomacy he was incredibly good at. Even his sworn enemy Napoleon
was forced to recognize it: “The Russian Emperor
creeps into your soul easily. However, one can’t trust
him: he is not sincere. He is a real Greek of
the Ancient Byzantine”. In two years and a few more battles, Alexander
offered Napoleon to conclude peace. At that time both Emperors
were in Eastern Prussia near Tilsit. The River
Neman separated their troops. The French miners built pontoons
and put a raft right in the middle of the river in the
course of just one night. There, Alexander and Napoleon met in a roofed tent – one-on-one,
without any court generals, and talked for about two hours. A peace treaty was concluded in
Tilsit. According to its conditions, Russia joined the continental
blockade against England. For that reason, the Russian
export decreased for 20% that had negative
impact on the economy. The French export decreased for the same 20%. However, Russia got a few years of break to get ready for a
large-scale war. Alexander had no doubts that the war was unavoidable. After the Tilsit peace treaty, Alexander almost doubled
the expenses for the army – from 63,400,000 rubles
to 118,500,000 rubles. At night of June 12, 1812
450,000 of Napoleon’s soldiers started the crossing
over the River Neman. Alexander had no more
than 200,000 soldiers. On the first day of the war, Alexander came to Moscow to address
his people from the ancient capital. He was moved to the bottom of his
heart when during a public prayer at the Poklonnaya Mountain a
common peasant shouted to him: “Lead us, father! We’ll die,
all of us, but we’ll win!” The next day the Rescript of His
Imperial Highness Alexander I was issued that said: “I won’t lay down my
arms until not a single enemy soldier remains in my kingdom”. The hot heads like Bagration
wished to start a decisive battle. However, Alexander knew the
repercussions well and approved a tactics of prolonged retreat
offered by Barclay de Tolly. Napoleon couldn’t do anything but
move forward hoping to get an offer to sign peace at each bivouac, and
trying to catch up and to destroy the main forces of the
Russians at each crossing. The residents of the capital
were preparing for the escape fearing that Napoleon
might turn to Petersburg. Alexander started to see his dead father’s powdered
face in his nightmares again. He was sure that it was his fault,
for he was a patricide and the invasion was a punishment for
his terrible sin. Once he dared tell
about his fears to his old friend
Prince Golitsin. Golitsin wanted
to read something from the Holy Scripture for the
Emperor and dropped the heavy book. It opened on Psalm 90: “My shelter
and my protection is my God, whom I entrust myself”… Alexander
had never been interested in the religion before and
it influenced him greatly. He wrote to his friend about his state of mind: “I was
eating the Bible feeling that Its words are pouring the new, unknown
before peace into my heart and quench the thirst of my soul”… The Emperor stepped aside
from the military problems and appointed the 67-year old Prince
Kutuzov the commander-in-chief. Kutuzov had four wars and half
a dozen of battles behind him. At last, he decided to go for a
general battle awaited by everybody – Napoleon, Alexander, half a million of
soldiers and officers from both sides. To raise the spirits of the people
an unreserved victory was announced. All participants of the Borodino battle
who were alive were awarded like victors. The more
unexpected and scary was the news that Kutuzov decided
to leave Moscow. After receiving his report the Emperor went to his office
and paced it all the night through. When he went out in the morning,
his younger brother Konstantin attacked him with reproaches; the
Mother Empress went hysterical. Only his wife noticed that he
turned half-grey during that night. On September 2, Napoleon
entered the Kremlin and settled in the Emperor Alexander’s
parade apartments. The very same day Moscow started to burn, set
on fire from several places. In four days, Napoleon sent his first
letter to Alexander with an offer to conclude peace. There was no answer. Napoleon made two more attempts to conclude peace. Alexander kept silence. All admonitions and
persuasions were in vain. The Emperor only shared this
thoughts and intentions in letters to his beloved sister
Ekaterina Pavlovna: “I’d rather cut my
existence short than make peace with a monster that
brings unhappiness to everybody. I hope for God, for the
incredible spirit of my people and for the resoluteness
with which I decided not to bow down before the invader”. In one month, Napoleon left ravaged
and burnt for two-thirds Moscow. In another month, the French
army started to run away. On November 16, in six months after
the start of the war, 9,000 of ragged, hungry and demoralized soldiers
crossed the Berezina River. They were the pitiful leftovers,
1/50 of the great Napoleon’s army. The Patriotic War ended. Over 200,000 Russians
soldiers and officers died. Nobody counted casualties
among the civilians. However, Alexander wasn’t
going to lay the weapons down. The Russian army went for a
foreign campaign – to catch up with the defeated but
not overthrown Napoleon. Alexander I went about
Europe giving back crowns that Bonaparte threw
down to the monarchs and evoking fear and respect
among the European peoples. On March 19, 1814, Alexander entered Paris
in the lead of all the allied troops. The Europe was at his feet. In London a future queen,
a crown princess was born who was called after the Russian
Emperor – Alexandrina Victoria. In Berlin, the main city square was
named in his honor – Alexanderplatz. In Paris saloons, he produced
great impression with his arguments about the Constitution
and freedoms. The residents of Paris were in awe
of the Russian Emperor. He was tall, well built, had golden hair, blue eyes and mild smile. It was his favorite part – “le belle roi”, the great king. After Paris Vienne applauded to Alexander, where a congress dedicated to the organization
of post-war Europe was taking place. It was a
meeting of the most cunning and intricate diplomats of that
epoch, and the Russian Emperor took a decent place among them. He controlled
himself brilliantly and was a virtuoso in concealing
his feelings and intentions. “The mysterious Russian Sphinx”,
people called him in Europe. The division of Europe
presented him with new titles. He was now “The All-Russia
ruler, the Tsar of Poland, the Grand Duke of Finland”
– 55 titles in total. After the victory over Napoleon he
was solemnly called the “Blessed”. Alexander returned to Russia being
not that hot-headed and handsome boy who wanted to grand freedom to
everybody and dreamt about common good. Alexander wasn’t even 40
yet, but he already turned into a monument to himself. Decorations were always
important for Alexander. Everything was to be
symmetrical, faultless and neat. His uniforms were always
irreproachable and fitted him ideally. Nobody had ever seen the Emperor
carelessly dressed, even at home. However, by 40 he had
become a real pedant. Papers of one size were placed on his table in neat piles. The furniture in the chambers stood according to a plan, and nobody
was allowed to misplace a chair or to move a vase. If only one could establish the same order in the entire Russia… It was not the enlightened reformer
Speranskiy but the old soldier Count Alexei Andreyevitch Arakcheyev
from the Gatchina’s officers, an unsurpassable master of drills who
was closest to Alexander at that time. People couldn’t forgive Arakcheyev
his closeness to the Emperor. They hated him and were scared of
him, called him “the brute soldier” and “gorilla” – behind
his back, of course. Incredible rumors
circulated about the Count. People said that he tore
moustaches off soldiers in fury and even bit one soldier’s ear off once. However, he was a brilliant
military specialist, honest and personally loyal
to the Emperor. That’s why Alexander’s trust to Arakcheyev was absolute. He entrusted him with realization of an idea he borrowed from the social
utopist Owen from England: the military settlements where soldiers
lived together with their families and combined service
with agriculture. Arakcheyev tried
to talk Alexander out of that weird idea. He
even kneeled before the Emperor. However, he got a respective
order and executed it to the point. The Emperor believed that
settlements were for the good. The soldiers could stay with their
relatives, the army provided itself with food, absolute
order was everywhere. Therefore, he was surprised to get to know about the
revolts among the settlers. The life in the settlements was regulated,
up to the everyday and family details. Everything was the same, from houses to pots. People got up, stoked their fire and worked
in the fields in accordance with the command. The children enrolled
in the army from the age of seven and submitted not to the
parents but to commanders. Physical punishments were
used for the smallest faults. In that way, Alexander’s good
intentions turned into their opposites. He dreamt of granting
freedom to everybody. Now his liberalism was gone. "Censorship became tougher in Russia;
all masonic lodges were prohibited." Free-thinkers were placed under
supervision or sent to the exile. In reports about secret societies
Alexander saw mostly well-known names: Trubetskoy, brothers
Muravyovs, Volkonskiy, Pestel. However, he didn’t act against them
saying: “I can’t judge them too strictly. I used to share their
ideas sometime ago”. The Emperor was moving away from ruling the country more and more. From a letter of Emperor
Alexander to the French diplomat August de Choiselle-Guffier: “One should step in my shoes to understand what I feel when I
think that I will have to report to God for the life of each
of my soldiers. No, the throne is
not my calling. If I could change the
circumstances of my life with honor, I’d do that with pleasure. I’ll confess to you that sometimes I feel like beating my
head against the wall”. The murder of his father
that put him on the throne. The death of thousands
of the Russian soldiers. Endless race for glory that didn’t cost anything now. Heunderlined the words from the Bible: “I saw everything that
was going on under the sun, and everything is vanity of vanities”. His Psyche, Empress Elizabeth
Alexeyevna came to his rescue. For many years they lived
separately like strangers. But now, like in the youth, he saw her as a
loyal friend with whom one could talk about anything or keep
silence about anything. On getting to know that Elizabeth had tuberculosis
Alexander got scared. They had to leave Petersburg with
its wet climate as soon as possible. He pondered on that
for a long time. He wrote to his old friend Prince Peter Volkonskiy from
one of his inspection trips: “I’ll soon move to the Crimea
and live as a private person. I served for 25 years. In that
term a soldier may retire”. However, they decided to move
to the provincial Taganrog. The Emperor visited it once with
an inspection and liked it there. Hurried frantic
preparation started. It seemed to Alexander
and Elizabeth that in Taganrog they would be
able to live like in an idyllic hut on the bank of the Rhine
they dreamt of in the past. Alexander came there first to prepare
everything for his wife’s arrival. He settled in a one-storied
building in Grecheskaya Street 40, cleaned the paths in the garden
himself, helped to hang engravings in the rooms and move furniture.
When Elizabeth Alexeyevna came, they led calm life. They went forwalks, bowing
to people they knew. They read each other’s
favorite books aloud. They prayed together. Alexander got a new lease of life and felt almost happy. However, living as a private person he remained the Emperor. He didn’t sign the abdication act. That weird carelessness of
Alexander became a pretext for the Decembrists’ revolt a few
months later that led to the death of a few hundred people. However, the Emperor didn’t live to see that. His “southern idyll“ only
lasted for two months. On November 19, 1825 Alexander I died of an infectious
illness that culminated in meningitis. In six months Elizabeth Alexeyevna died. The Emperor’s sudden death
seemed weird for many. Rumors appears that Alexander staged
his death and was hiding somewhere. In ten years a news surfaces
about some mysterious old man named Fedor Kuzmitch who lived
in a settlement near Tomsk. He was well-educated, spoke several
foreign languages, was very religious but didn’t receive communions. He said that he couldn’t
receive communions because a requiem service was
already carried out over him. "The old man was tall and
broad-shouldered; he stooped a bit " and was half-deaf. Fedor Kuzmitch
died in 1864 and was buried on the cemetery of the
Tomsk male monastery. A note is inscribed on his cross: “This is a grave of the
Great Blessed Old Man Fedor Kuzmitch”. The identity of Fedor Kuzmitch
and Alexander I the Blessed is neither proved nor
disproved to this day. In two years before his death,
Alexander talked to his younger brother, the Grand Duke Nicolay Pavlovitch
about his intention to abdicate in his favor. Nicolay’s wife wrote in her diary: “Talking to us about his abdication the Emperor said: “I’d be so glad to see you pass me by! I’ll mingle in the
crowd and shout “Hurray!” to you”! Hosted by Denis Bespaliy
and Lyubov Germanova Created by Marina Bandilenko
together with Maksim Kalsin Directed by Maksim Bespaliy Director of Photography
- Ivan Barkhvart Music by Boris Kukoba Art Director
- Vladimir Markovitch The End
