The story of Paul 1 actually began with the fact that Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, the premarital daughter of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great (who by origin was supposed to be a Baltic peasant woman), not having her own children, invited her future father Paul to Russia. He was a native of the German city of Kiel, K.P. Ulrich Holstein-Gottorp, the duke, who received the name of Peter at baptism. This fourteen-year-old (at the time of invitation) young man was Elizabeth's nephew and had rights to both the Swedish and the Russian throne.
Who was the father of Paul the First is a mystery
Tsar Paul 1, like all people, could not choose his parents. His expectant mother arrived in Russia from Prussia at the age of 15, on the recommendation of Frederick II, as a potential bride for the Duke of Ulrich. Here she received the Orthodox name Catherine (Alekseevna), married in 1745, and only nine years later gave birth to her son Paul. History left a double opinion about the possible father of Paul the First. Some believe that Catherine hated her husband, so fatherhood is attributed to Catherine's lover Sergei Saltykov. Others believe that the father was still Ulrich (Peter the Third), since there is also an obvious portrait similarity, and it is also known about Catherine's strong hostility to her son, which may have originated from hatred of his father. Paul also did not like his mother throughout his life. A genetic examination of the remains of Paul has not yet been carried out, so it is not possible to accurately establish paternity for this Russian tsar.
Birth celebrated throughout the year
The future Emperor Pavel 1 was deprived of parental love and attention since childhood, since his grandmother Elizabeth, immediately after his birth, took her son from Catherine and transferred him to the care of nannies and teachers. He was a long-awaited child for the whole country, since after Peter the Great the Russian autocrats had problems with the succession of power due to the lack of heirs. Festivities and fireworks about his birth in Russia lasted a whole year.
The first victim of a palace plot
Elizabeth thanked Catherine for giving birth to a very large sum - 100 thousand rubles, but showed her mother’s son only six months after his birth. Due to the lack of his mother’s number and the lack of cluelessness of his overly diligent staff, Pavel 1, whose domestic and foreign policies were not logical in the future, grew up very impressionable, painful, and nervous. At 8 years old (in 1862), the young prince lost his father, who, having come to power in 1861 after the death of Elizaveta Petrovna, was killed a year later as a result of a palace plot.
More than thirty years before legal authority
Tsar Paul 1 received a very decent education for his time, which he could not put into practice for many years. From the age of four, even under Elizabeth, he was taught to read and write, then he mastered several foreign languages, knowledge of mathematics, applied sciences and history. Among his teachers were F. Bekhteev, S. Poroshin, N. Panin, and the future Metropolitan of Moscow Plato taught him the laws. By birth, Paul already had the right to the throne in 1862, but his mother, instead of regency, came to power herself with the help of the guard, declared herself Catherine II and ruled for 34 years.
Emperor Paul 1 was married twice. The first time - at 19 years old on Augustine-Wilhelmina (Natalia Alekseevna), who died during childbirth with her baby. The second time - in the year of the death of his first wife (at the insistence of Catherine) on Sofia-Augusta-Louise, the Württemberg princess (Maria Fedorovna), who will give birth to ten children to Pavel. His older children will suffer the same fate as himself - they will be taken to his reign by a reigning grandmother, and he will rarely see them. In addition to children born in church marriage, Paul had a son, Semyon, from his first love - maids of honor Sofya Ushakova and a daughter from L. Bagart.
Mother wanted to deprive him of the throne
Pavel 1 Romanov ascended the throne at the age of 42, after the death of his mother (Catherine died of a stroke) in November 1796. At this point, he had a set of views and habits that determined his future and the future of Russia until 1801. Thirteen years before the death of Catherine, in 1783, he reduced his relationship with his mother to a minimum (it was rumored that she wanted to deprive him of the right to the throne) and began to build his own model of state structure in Pavlovsk. At the age of 30, at the urging of Catherine, he got acquainted with the writings of Voltaire, Hume, Montesquieu and others. As a result, his point of view was as follows: the state should have “bliss for everyone and for everyone”, but only with a monarchical form of government.
Coalitions with Europe during the reign
At the same time, in Gatchina, removed from business at that time, the future emperor was engaged in the training of military battalions. His love of military affairs and discipline will partly determine what Paul’s foreign policy will be. And it will be quite peaceful in comparison with the time of Catherine II, but inconsistent. First, Paul fought against revolutionary France (with the participation of A. Suvorov) together with Britain, Turkey, Austria and others, then he broke off the alliance with Austria and withdrew troops from Europe. Attempts to go with the expedition together with England to the Netherlands were unsuccessful.
Paul 1 defended the Order of Malta
After Bonaparte in France concentrated all his power in his hands in 1799 and the probability of the spread of the revolution disappeared, he began to look for allies in other states. And he found them, including in the person of the Russian emperor. At that time, a coalition of combined fleets was discussed with France. The foreign policy of Paul 1 in the period near the end of his reign was associated with the final formation of a coalition against Britain, which became too aggressive at sea (attacked Malta, while Paul was the great master of the Order of Malta). So, in 1800, an alliance was concluded between Russia and a number of European states, which pursued a policy of armed neutrality with respect to England.
Utopian military projects
Paul 1, whose domestic and foreign policy was not always clear even to his circle, wanted to harm Britain and its Indian possessions at that time. He equipped an expedition to Central Asia from the Don army (about 22.5 thousand people) and set the task for them to go to the Indus and Ganges and “disturb” the British there, without touching those who oppose the British. By that time, even maps of the area did not exist, so the campaign in India was stopped in 1801, after the death of Paul, and the soldiers were returned from the steppes near Astrakhan, where they had already reached.
The reign of Paul 1 was marked by the fact that in these five years no foreign invasions were carried out on the territory of Russia, but no conquests were made either. In addition, the emperor, caring for the interests of the knights in Malta, almost pulled the country into direct conflict with the most powerful maritime power of the time - England. The British, perhaps, were his most important enemies, while he had great sympathy for Prussia, considering the organization of the army and life in those lands his ideal (which is not surprising, given its origin).
Fire Debt Reduction
The domestic policy of Paul 1 was aimed at improving life and strengthening order in Russian reality. In particular, he believed that the treasury belongs to the country, and not to him personally, as sovereign. Therefore, he ordered that some silver sets from the Winter Palace be melted into coins and two million rubles of paper money were burned to reduce public debt. He was more open to the people than his predecessors, and his followers, having hung out on the fence of his palace a box for transmitting petitions to his name, which often included caricatures of the king and the libel.
Strange Dead Body Ceremonies
The reign of Paul 1 was also marked by reforms in the army, where he introduced a single uniform, charter, uniform armament, believing that in the time of his mother the army was not an army, but just a crowd. In general, historians believe that much of what Paul did, he did in spite of his mother who passed away. There were even more than strange cases. For example, when he came to power, he extracted from the grave the remains of his murdered father, Peter the Third. After that, the ashes of his father and the corpse of his mother were crowned, laying a crown on his father's tomb, while his wife, Maria Fedorovna, laid another crown on the deceased Catherine. After that, both coffins were transported to the Peter and Paul Cathedral, while the killer of Peter the Great, Count Orlov, carried the imperial crown in front of his coffin. The remains were buried with one date of burial.
Paul 1, whose years of rule were short-lived, due to such events, won the misunderstanding of many. And the innovations introduced by him in different areas did not cause support from the environment. The emperor demanded that everyone fulfill their duties. A story is known when he gave the rank of officer to his batman for the fact that the first did not carry his military ammunition on his own. After such cases, discipline in the troops began to intensify. Pavel tried to instill tough orders in the civilian population as well, introducing prohibitions on wearing certain styles of dress and demanding that German-style clothes of a certain color with a given collar be worn.
The domestic policy of Paul 1 also touched on the sphere of education, in which, as expected, he helped to improve the situation of the Russian language. After entering the throne, the emperor forbade ornate phrases, ordering to express himself in writing extremely clearly and simply. He reduced the French influence on Russian society by banning books in this language (revolutionary, as he believed), forbade even playing cards. In addition, during his reign, it was decided to open many schools and colleges, restore the university in Derpt, and open the Medical and Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg. Among his associates were both gloomy personalities, such as Arakcheev, and G. Derzhavin, A. Suvorov, N. Saltykov, M. Speransky and others.
How the king helped the peasants
However, Paul 1, whose reign was 1796-1801, was rather unpopular than popular with his contemporaries. Caring for the peasants, whom he reasonably considered the breadwinners of all other classes of society, he introduced a three-day corvee and freed the farmers from work on Sunday. By this he incurred the discontent of the landlords, for example, in Russia, and the discontent of the peasants in Ukraine, where corvee was not at that time, but it appeared for three days. The landlords were dissatisfied with the ban on the separation of peasant families during the sale, the ban on ill-treatment, the removal of duties from the peasants to keep horses for the army and selling them bread and salt from state stocks at discounted prices. Paul 1, whose domestic and foreign policy was contradictory, at the same time ordered the peasants to obey the landlords in everything under penalty of punishment.
Violation of the privileges of the nobility
The Russian autocrat darted between prohibitions and permissions, which, perhaps, led to the subsequent murder of Paul 1. He closed all private printing houses so that it was not possible to spread the ideas of the French revolution, but at the same time gave shelter to high-ranking French nobles, such as Prince Conde or the future Ludwig the Eighth . He forbade corporal punishment for the nobility, but introduced for them to file twenty rubles per soul and a tax on the maintenance of local government.
The short-term reign of Paul 1 included events such as the ban on the resignation of nobles who had served for less than a year, the ban on filing collective noble petitions, the abolition of noble assemblies in provinces, and lawsuits against nobles who evaded service. The emperor also allowed state-owned peasants to sign up as tradesmen and merchants, which aroused the dissatisfaction of the latter.
Actually founded dog breeding in Russia
What actions did Paul 1 go down in history whose domestic and foreign policy is a thirst for large-scale transformations? This Russian tsar allowed the construction of churches according to the Old Believer faith (everywhere), forgave the Poles who participated in the Kosciuszko uprising, began to buy new breeds of dogs and sheep abroad, having actually founded dog breeding. Important is his succession law, which excluded the possibility of women ascending the throne and established the order of regency.
However, with all the positive aspects, the emperor was unpopular among the people, which created the prerequisites for repeated attempts on his life. The assassination of Paul 1 was committed by officers from several regiments in March 1801. It is believed that the conspiracy against the emperor was subsidized by the British government, which did not want to strengthen Russia in the Maltese region. The involvement of his sons in this action was not proved, but in the 19th century some restrictions were imposed on the study in Russia of the reign of this emperor.