Secret Lives of the Tsars (21 page)

The date set for deposing Paul and forcing his abdication was set for mid-March 1801. In the meantime, however, the emperor was growing suspicious. After being warned of a possible plot against him, he abruptly summoned Pahlen to his study and demanded to know if any members of the imperial family might be involved. As if prepared for such a confrontation, the leader of the forthcoming coup laughed and replied merrily, “But, Sire, if there is a conspiracy, I am part of
it. I hold the strings of everything and nothing escapes my knowledge. Set your mind at ease; no conspiracy is possible without me. I’ll stake my life on that.”

Paul was only partially reassured by Pahlen’s soothing deception and remained broody and snappish—particularly toward his family. “Our existence is not cheerful,” Empress Maria confided to a friend, “because our dear master is not at all so. In his soul there is underlying sorrow that preys upon him; his appetite suffers; he no longer eats as before and rarely has a smile on his lips.” Even the relentlessly rainy weather seemed to reflect the sense of gloomy foreboding. “It is always dark,” one wrote at the time, “weeks pass without our seeing the sun; one has no desire to go out. Besides, one does not go out without danger. It is as if God had turned away from us.”

It was only on the last day of his life that the emperor’s spirits seemed to lift a little. Whereas at dinner the night before he sat stewing, disconcerting his guests and reducing his wife to tears, Paul now beamed with affability during his last supper at the recently constructed Mikhailovsky (or St. Michael’s) Castle. But just as soon as the meal was concluded the emperor abruptly got up and left the room without saying a word. Then, at the entrance to his private apartments, he angrily confronted the commander of the Horse Guards regiment and accused the sentries posted at his rooms of being subversives. “I know what’s what,” Paul declared to the commander. “Dismiss your men.” As the soldiers marched away, the emperor summoned two castle lackeys to replace them. And, with that, he went into his bedroom, followed by his little dog Spitz—never to emerge again.

Meanwhile, at around ten o’clock that night, the band of fifty or so conspirators—representing nearly every branch of the military—gathered at the regimental barracks of the Preobrazhensky
Guard adjacent to the Winter Palace. “We are among ourselves, gentlemen,” Pahlen declared, “and we understand one another. Are you ready? We are going to drink of champagne to the health of the new sovereign. The reign of Paul I is over. We are not guided by a spirit of revenge, but we wish to put an end to the outrageous humiliations and the shame of the motherland. We are Romans. We all know the significance of the Ides of March.… All precautions have been taken.” When one of the gathered asked what would happen if the emperor resisted, Pahlen replied, “You all know, gentlemen, that to make an omelet one must break eggs.”

Flush with alcohol and patriotic fervor, the men made their way to Mikhailovsky Castle and slipped inside. They were surprised to find not a regiment of sentries there, but the two lackeys, one of whom was quickly dispatched while the other fled in terror. Now that the path was clear, though, the enormity of what they were about to do struck some of the conspirators and they retreated. The remainder proceeded into the apartments. There they found an empty bed. “The bird has flown!” Zubov exclaimed furiously. But upon feeling the sheets, another concluded, “The nest is still warm, the bird cannot be far off!” And that’s when they saw two bare feet poking out from beneath a screen.

Behind it was the quivering emperor in his nightclothes. “What do you want of me?” he stammered in terror. “What are you doing here?” Paul was told he was under arrest, to which he replied, “Under arrest? Under arrest? What does that mean?” Zubov then interrupted him. “We come in the name of the motherland to beg Your Majesty to abdicate,” he announced. “The security of your person and suitable maintenance are guaranteed to you by your son and by the State.” Another of the leaders, General Bennigsen, added: “Your
Majesty can no longer govern millions of men. You make them unhappy; you should abdicate. No one wants to make an attempt on your life; I am here to defend you. Sign the act of abdication.” With that, the emperor was pushed toward a table upon which the document was spread, and an officer held out a pen. Paul resisted. “No, I will not sign this!” he shouted.

An uproar then erupted among the agitated men as the emperor remained obdurate. A scuffle broke out and the single candle lighting the room was tipped over. Now, in the semidarkness, the conspirators fell upon Paul, who fought back ferociously. Finally, a sash was drawn around his neck and tightened until the breath finally left him. Hearing the commotion, Empress Maria rushed to the room, but her passage was blocked.
“Päulchen, Päulchen!”
the horrified woman screamed in German. She was perhaps the only one left who still cared about the mad monarch.

While Paul met his end upstairs, his son Alexander waited anxiously downstairs in his own apartments to learn what the night had wrought. Pahlen found him clinging to his wife, their foreheads touching in tender uncertainty. Then, when he was told what had transpired, the new emperor burst into sobs—stricken by the fact that he had passively participated not only in parricide, but regicide as well. Pahlen addressed him sternly: “That’s enough childishness. Go reign. Come show yourself to the Guards!” His wife Elizabeth exhorted him as well.

“It was a night,” she wrote, “that I shall never forget.”

*
1
Shockingly, the young princess seemed to be equally attracted to the pug-faced prince. “I am more than content,” she wrote after meeting Paul. “Never, dear friend, could I be happier. The Grand Duke could not be more kind. I pride myself on the fact that my dear bridegroom loves me a great deal, and this makes me very, very fortunate.” After their engagement Sophia Dorothea wrote to Paul: “I cannot go to bed, my dear and adored Prince, without telling you once again that I love and adore you madly.”

*
2
Paul and Maria would have ten children in all, including the future emperor Nicholas I.

Alexander I (1801–1825): Napoleon’s Conqueror

One of us—either he, Napoleon, or I, Alexander—must lose his crown.

—E
MPEROR
A
LEXANDER
I

To Russians, it is known as the Patriotic War of 1812—the great struggle that inspired Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. But behind all the bloodshed and misery that accompanied France’s ill-fated invasion of Russia, the war was also a personal confrontation between two emperors: the seemingly invincible upstart Napoleon and the fourteenth Romanov of the line, the brooding, duplicitous Alexander I
.

It was the opening salvo of an epic clash. And it came in the form of an insult—a stinging barb delivered by Napoleon Bonaparte, the potbellied Corsican who was about to proclaim himself emperor of France, and aimed right at the heart of the Russian sovereign, Alexander I.

In 1804, the French leader had ordered the abduction and subsequent execution of the Duke d’Enghien, a member of France’s deposed Bourbon dynasty. Alexander was appalled that the base-born Bonaparte would dare lay hands on a person
of royal blood. Yet with Russia in no position to respond militarily to such “revolting high-handedness,” all the emperor could do at the time was order a week’s mourning for the murdered prince and erect a memorial cenotaph in St. Petersburg dedicated to the victim “of a Corsican Monster, the Terror of Europe, the Scourge of Mankind.”

Alexander also issued a tepid protest. Napoleon’s response, however, was anything but: Were the murderers of Emperor Paul ever arrested? he asked belligerently through his foreign minister, Talleyrand, while sharply reminding Alexander that France had never protested against
that
regicide and suggested the Russian emperor similarly restrain himself now.

The staggering punch was published in a widely read newspaper, which made excruciatingly public what had privately tormented Alexander since his father’s murder three years before. Not only did Napoleon give lie to the official story that Paul had died of apoplexy; he also drew unwelcome attention to the fact that the dead emperor’s son had stood by and allowed the killers to escape justice.

Thus, while Alexander I had politically opposed Bonaparte and his expansionism in Europe, the Russian emperor’s opposition now became a personal vendetta against the man he described as “one of the most famous tyrants that history has produced.”

The very idea of Napoleon in his assumed role of a royal personage offended Alexander, who, though educated with certain egalitarian principles, certainly knew what an emperor was. And the raw greed with which the Corsican upstart eyed his neighbors made him all the more odious. “This man is
insatiable,” the emperor exclaimed. “His ambition knows no bounds; he is the scourge of the world. He wants war, does he? Very well, he shall have it, and the sooner the better.”

Though Russian interests were not directly compromised as Napoleon gobbled up neighboring territory, Alexander nevertheless allowed himself to be drawn into a coalition with Britain and Austria to halt his outsized ambitions. It was a moral imperative for the emperor; the first step in what he idealistically hoped would result in a harmonious union of civilized nations, where conflicts would be arbitrated to avoid bloodshed and “the sacred rights of humanity” would triumph. As historian Adam Zamoyski wrote, “He had assumed the role of knightly defender of a Christian monarchical tradition against the onslaught of the barbarism as represented by Napoleon.” Plus, like any young man steeped in martial tradition and training—yet who had never seen war—the emperor longed to test his mettle in actual combat.

Napoleon, who saw no purpose or gain from war with Russia, tried to dissuade Alexander from the alliance, but the emperor was unmoved. In fact, in his haughty rejection of Bonaparte’s peace overture, he addressed him as “the Head of the French Government,” so insufferable did he find Napoleon’s recent adoption of the imperial title. Yet while Alexander avoided addressing his adversary as
emperor
, he could not escape that quality most closely associated with Bonaparte: military genius. Soon enough, he would see it for himself at Austerlitz.

Proud and splendid, Alexander I rode out to confront his enemy at Wischau (now part of the Czech Republic) on November 25, 1805—the first Russian monarch to do so since Peter the Great. It was a minor victory for the Russians and their Austrian allies, who now became more convinced of
their superiority. “We are certain of success,” proclaimed the emperor’s aide-de-camp, Peter Dolgoruky; “we have only to go forward, as we did at Wischau.” But then, ten days later, came Austerlitz. It was an overwhelming rout, one that decimated the ranks and sent them fleeing for their lives. Twenty-five thousand soldiers were killed—“only a drop of blood” for Russia, as the Sardinian ambassador Joseph de Maistre noted—but one that devastated Alexander nonetheless. “A deep sorrow could be read on his face,” General Alexis Ermolov said later; “the remnants of all the regiments were passing before him and he had tears in his eyes.” Indeed, that evening the crushed sovereign, once so certain of victory, sat under a tree and sobbed.

Napoleon, meanwhile, was jubilant. “I have defeated the Austro-Russian Army commanded by two emperors,” he crowed in a letter to his wife, Josephine. “The battle of Austerlitz is the finest of all I have fought.” Invigorated by his triumph, which forced Austria out of the coalition and sent Alexander home in shame, Bonaparte gave no thought to peace. And therein victory was the seed of his ultimate destruction: All Europe was now aroused against him. Thus, as his biographer Alan Schom noted, “The Austerlitz campaign was to prove one of the greatest mistakes of his career.”

The Napoleonic rampage through Europe continued. Soon after Austerlitz, he dissolved the centuries-old Holy Roman Empire in Germany and essentially took over most of it. Alexander watched in dismay, but with his army depleted and bled dry, there was little he could do except try to ensure the security of his own borders through flaccid negotiation.