At the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian throne suffered a terrible shock: on a March night of 1801 a group of guards conspirators led by St. Petersburg Governor-General and head of the secret police P.A. Palen penetrated the chambers of Emperor Pavel Petrovich and killed him, thereby making a palace coup, As a result of which the son of the sovereign Alexander ascended to the throne.
The reign that began with the assassination
The mother of the murdered king, Catherine II, wanted to make him a successor of her progressive endeavors. That is why N. Panin, the outstanding statesman of his time, was the main educator of Paul. But fate decreed otherwise. Paul wanted to lead his line. He was proud and ambitious, like many rulers of Russia. The years of the reign of this monarch were short-lived, but he managed to earn universal hatred.
It was not new for the brave guardsmen to overthrow rulers who were objectionable to them from the throne. Both the temporary worker Biron and the young Ivan VI Antonovich, the formal king of Russia, are examples of this. It happened to them that they completely kick the spirit out of the unlucky monarch - the blood of the murdered king Peter III on their hands.
The whole brief story - from Peter 1 to Nicholas 2 - is full of conspiracies and coups, but in this case there was one detail that gave the assassination a special character. There is reason to believe that the son of Paul, the heir to the throne, Alexander, was aware of the impending plot. Without even participating personally in the complete villainy, in this case, he became, although passive, but a father-killer, and this night, March 12, 1801, his whole life burned his conscience.
Alexander 1: years of reign
When the crown of the Russian Empire crowned the head of Alexander I, he was twenty-four years old. Despite his youth, he possessed progressive thinking and carried out a number of moderately liberal reforms. In his warehouse, Alexander was a representative of enlightened absolutism, like his grandmother Catherine II. He did not encroach on the stronghold of serfdom, but he saw the guarantee of progress in education. Under him, several privileged educational institutions were opened, including the famous Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum.
By the labor of the young emperor, the system of administrative management of the state was transformed. In place of the old Peter's colleges, on the European model, ministries were established. There was even a real attempt to bestow upon the citizens a constitution, but it remained only among good intentions. Already in the second half of the reign, Alexander carried out a reform in the army, supplementing a very cumbersome system of recruitment by the notorious Arakcheev military settlements.
Talented politician and bad commander
The years of the reign of this monarch fell on the era of the Napoleonic Wars. Despite the fact that the troops of the anti-French coalition created in 1905 were officially led by M.I. Kutuzov, all decisions were made by Alexander personally, and he was responsible for the defeat of the Russian-Austrian army in the battle of Austerlitz. He was not an outstanding commander, but possessed the gift of an outstanding politician.
Skillfully using the situation, the sovereign concluded in 1808 a profitable peace with Napoleon. In the same years, Finland, Bessarabia and Eastern Georgia were annexed to Russia. Despite the fact that the name of Alexander I is associated mainly with the war of 1812, his merit in victory is limited, perhaps, only to a harsh policy towards Napoleon and non-interference in command of the army, brilliantly carried out by M.I. Kutuzov.
The Legend of Death
Alexander 1, whose reign was accompanied by a stormy domestic and foreign policy of the country, at the end of his reign often spoke of the desire to abdicate and devote himself to God. This was the reason that after his death, which followed during a trip to Taganrog in 1725, rumors began to circulate that a coffin with the body of another person was brought to the capital, and the sovereign himself in deaf forest skirts under the name of the old man Fyodor Kuzmich obliterates sin patricide, which twenty-four years ago elevated him to the pinnacle of power. Whether this version has a foundation is unknown to this day.
The new reign that began with rebellion
All who ruled after Paul 1 in Russia were monarchs of a new European type. This fully applies to Emperor Nicholas I, who replaced his brother on the throne in 1825. Despite the severity of government inherent in Eastern despotism, he made a lot of efforts to create a well-established administrative system in the country, using the progressive experience of foreign countries.
Just like his brother’s, Nicholas I’s title “All-Russian Emperor” was sprinkled with shed blood. And again they were the guards, this time openly speaking on December 14 on the Senate Square of the capital. To eradicate possible further unrest, Nicholas took radical measures that subsequently created him a reputation as a gendarme and a strangler of freedom. Under him, the notorious “Third Division” was founded - the secret police, which carried out total surveillance of dissidents.
His foreign policy was a complete reflection of domestic. Milestones in the history of the reign of Nicholas I were: the suppression of the Polish and Hungarian uprisings, the war with Turkey 1828-1829, the war with Persia, and finally the stupidly lost Crimean campaign, before which he died on February 18, 1855.
Reformer King
Among those who ruled after Paul 1 in Russia, the next anointed of God, Emperor Alexander II, gained fame as the most progressive reformer. Unlike his father, he tried to bring the spirit of freedom and humanism to his fatherland. His most historically significant act is the abolition of serfdom, proclaimed in 1861.
In addition, the history of his reign included: the elimination of military settlements and the reform of the armed forces, higher and secondary education, finance, as well as zemstvos and legal proceedings. Hardly even one of those who ruled Russia after Paul the 1st managed to transform the face of the state in this way, but nevertheless the great reformer died at the hands of his subjects. Seven attempts were organized against him, of which the last, committed on March 1, 1881 by the terrorist organization Narodnaya Volya, cost him his life.
Tsar peacemaker and counterreformer
His son, also Alexander, who ascended the throne after the death of his father, deservedly received the nickname of the king-peacemaker among the people. A unique case in the history of the Russian autocracy - for all the years of his reign, the country did not wage a single war, and not a single soldier fell on the battlefield. According to his convictions, Alexander III was a Slavophile and a supporter of the “special path” of Russia's development. This forced him to implement a series of counter-reforms aimed at preserving in the country the foundations of his former life alien to foreign influences.
He passed away before he was fifty years old. Possessing a powerful physique and extraordinary energy, the king suffered from chronic kidney disease, which caused damage to the heart and blood vessels at the end of his life. His death on September 21, 1894 was the beginning of the reign of the last representative of the Romanov dynasty. The name and patronymic of the emperor who completed the three hundred year dynasty is Nicholas II Alexandrovich.
Last of the dynasty
His coronation, which took place in 1896, caused a tragedy that occurred on the Khodynka field, where as a result of the crowds of thousands of people who came to receive the gifts promised for the celebration, a terrible crush was formed, as a result of which 1379 people were killed and about 1000 were injured. Among the people it was regarded as a bad omen, and a gloomy memory of the event was preserved throughout all the years of his reign.
Nicholas II, like all the rulers of Russia and Russia that preceded him, should be considered by us in the context of his century. It fell to him to rule the state, which made up the sixth of the Earth, in the most dramatic period of its history. These were the years when, along with rapid economic development, social tension grew, resulting in three revolutions, the last of which became destructive for the reigning dynasty and for the empire as a whole.
The influence of Rasputin
But at the same time, he, like all the rulers of Russia and Russia, is responsible for the state of the state, which was the result of his reign. The catastrophe that ended the era of Romanov rule was largely caused by ill-conceived decisions in the field of domestic and foreign policy - this is the conclusion most modern researchers come to.
Like the previous rulers of Russia, whose years of rule were marked by rebellion and unrest, Nicholas II sought support both in military power and in the intercession of God. Hence his blind faith in the "holy elder" - Gregory Rasputin, whose influence in many respects exacerbated the already critical state in which the empire found itself. The last years of the reign are characterized by a hectic series of successive ministers and senior government officials. These were desperate attempts to lead the country out of the crisis, guided by the old man’s advice, instilled into him through his wife, Empress Alexandra Fedorovna.
The last empress of Russia
If you look at the list of empresses of Russia, you can see that many of them left a good memory about themselves in history. This and reigned in different years, Catherine, and Elizabeth, but the last of them - Alexandra Fedorovna - had a chance to drink a bitter cup of popular hatred. She was unfoundedly accused of betrayal, profligacy, and the fact that it was she who made her husband drag Russia into a war so unpopular among ordinary people. She completed a list of empresses of Russia.
The February Revolution of 1917 deprived Nicholas II of the throne. He denied it and then, together with his family, was placed under house arrest in Tsarskoye Selo Palace. Soon, the Provisional Government sent them into exile in Tobolsk, and in 1918, by decision of the Bolsheviks, the imperial family ended up in Yekaterinburg. There, in the basement of Ipatiev’s house, on the night of July 17, 1918, the whole family was shot dead along with a servant and Dr. Botkin who accompanied them.