NAPOLEON IN EUROPE--ATTITUDE OF RUSSIA
Paul was forty-one years old when he ascended the throne he had for
twenty years believed was rightfully his. The mystery surrounding the
death of his father Peter III., the humiliations he had suffered at his
mother's court, and what he considered her usurpation of his
rights--all these had been for years fermenting in his narrow brain.
His first act gave vent to his long-smothered indignation and his
suspicions regarding his father's death. Peter's remains were
exhumed--placed beside those of Catherine lying in state, to share all
the honors of her obsequies and to be entombed with her; while Alexis
Orlof, his supposed murderer, was compelled to march beside the coffin,
bearing his crown.
Then when Paul had abolished from the official language the words
"society" and "citizen," which his mother had delighted to honor--when
he had forbidden the wearing of frock-coats, high collars, and
neckties, and refused to allow Frenchmen to enter his territory--and
when he had compelled his people to get out of their carriages and
kneel in the mud as he passed--he supposed he was strengthening the
foundations of authority which Catherine II. had loosened.
To him is attributed the famous saying, "Know that the only person of
consideration in Russia is the person whom I address, and he only
during the time I am addressing him." He was a born despot, and his
reforms consisted in a return to Prussian methods and to an Oriental
servility. The policy he announced was one of peace with Europe--a
cessation of those wars by which his mother had for thirty-four years
been draining the treasury. He was going to turn his conquests toward
the East; and vast plans, with vague and indefinite outlines, were
forming in the narrow confines of his restless brain. But these were
interrupted by unexpected conditions.
In 1796 the military genius of a young man twenty-seven years old
electrified Europe. Napoleon Bonaparte, at the head of a ragged,
unpaid French army, overthrew Northern Italy, and out of the fragments
created a Cisalpine Republic. The possession of the Ionian Isles,
quickly followed by the occupation of Egypt, threatened the East. So
Turkey and Russia, contrary to all old traditions, formed a defensive
alliance, which was quickly followed by an offensive one between Russia
and Austria. But the tactics so successful against Poles and Turks
were unavailing against those employed by the new Conqueror. The
Russian commander Suvorov was defeated and returned in disgrace to his
enraged master at St. Petersburg, who refused to receive him. In 1798
Bonaparte had secured Belgium, had compelled Austria to cede to him
Lombardy, also to promise him help in getting the left bank of the
Rhine from the Germanic body, and to acknowledge his Cisalpine Republic.
The Emperor Paul's feelings underwent a swift change. He was blinded
by the glory of Napoleon's conquests and pleased with his despotic
methods. He conceived not only a friendship but a passion for the man
who could accomplish such things. Austria and England had both
offended him, so he readily fell into a plan for a Franco-Russian
understanding for mutual benefit, from which there developed a larger
plan.
The object of this was the overthrow of British dominion in India.
Paul was to move with a large army into Hindostan, there to be joined
by a French army from Egypt; then they would together sweep through the
country of the Great Mogul, gathering up the English settlements by the
way and so placating the native population and Princes that they would
join them in the liberation of their country from English tyranny and
usurpation. Paul said in his manifesto to the army that the Great
Mogul and the Sovereign Princes were to be undisturbed; nothing was to
be attacked but the commercial establishments acquired by money and
used to oppress and to enslave India. At the same time he said to his
army, "The treasures of the Indies shall be your recompense," failing
to state how these treasures were to be obtained without disturbing the
Sovereign Princes.
It is known that Napoleon had plans of an empire in the East, and it is
also known that some compact of this kind did exist between him and the
Emperor Paul. In 1801 eleven regiments of Cossacks, the vanguard of
the army which was to follow, had started upon the great undertaking,
when news was received that the Emperor Paul I. was dead.
The unbalanced course pursued by the Tsar, his unwise reforms, and his
capricious policy had not only alienated everyone, but caused serious
apprehensions for the safety of the empire. He had arrayed himself
against his wife and his children; had threatened to disinherit
Alexander, his oldest son and heir, whom he especially hated. A plot
was formed to compel his abdication. To that extent his sons Alexander
and Constantine were aware of and party to it.
On the night of the 23d of March, 1801, the conspirators entered Paul's
sleeping apartment after he had retired, and, sword in hand, presented
the abdication for him to sign. There was a struggle in which the lamp
was overturned, and in the darkness the Tsar, who had fallen upon the
floor, was strangled with an officer's scarf.
On the 24th of March, 1801, Alexander, who was entirely innocent of
complicity in this crime, was proclaimed Emperor of Russia.
It is said that when Bonaparte saw the downfall of his vast design, he
could not contain his rage; and pointing to England as the instigator
of the deed, he said in the _Moniteur_: "It is for history to clear up
the secret of this tragedy, and to say what national policy was
interested in such a catastrophe!"
The Emperor Paul had an acute, although narrow, intelligence, and was
not without generous impulses. But although he sometimes made
impetuous reparation for injury, although he recalled exiles from
Siberia and gave to Kosciusko and other patriots their freedom, unless
his kindness was properly met the reaction toward severity was
excessive. A little leaven of good with much that is evil sometimes
creates a very explosive mixture, and converts what would be a mild,
even tyranny into a vindictive and revengeful one. When we behold the
traits exhibited during this brief reign of five years, we are not
surprised at Catherine's unwillingness to resign to her son the empire
for which she had done so much; and we are inclined to believe it is
true that there was, as has been rumored, a will left by the Empress
naming as her heir the grandson whom she had carefully prepared to be
her successor, and that this paper was destroyed by the conspirators.
There is one wise act to record in the reign of Paul--although it was
probably prompted not by a desire to benefit the future so much as to
reverse the past. Peter the Great, probably on account of his perverse
son Alexis, had set aside the principle of primogeniture; a principle
not Slavonic, but established by the Muscovite Princes. Peter, the
ruthless reformer, placed in the hands of the sovereign the power to
choose his own successor. Paul reestablished this principle, and
thereby bestowed a great benefit upon Russia.