Palmer Alexander I

Tsar of War and Peace
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-30587-2
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 520 Seiten

As Alan Palmer himself writes in his preface, 'Alexander 1, ruler of Russia for the first quarter of the nineteenth century, is remembered today mainly on three counts: as the Tsar who refused to make peace with the French when Moscow fell in 1812; as the idealist who sought to bind Europe's sovereigns in a Holy Alliance in 1815; and as the Emperor who died - or gave the impression of having died - at the remote southern seaport of Taganrog in the winter of 1825. Recent interest has concentrated , perhaps excessively, on the third of these dramatic episodes akthough it is natural that the epic years of the struggle with Napoleon should continue to excite the historical imagination.' He has been dubbed 'The Enigmatic Tsar'. There are many contrasting opinions of him. Thomas Jefferson declared 'A more virtuous man, I believe, does no exist, nor one who is more enthusiastically devoted to better the condition of mankind. Castlereagh thought well of him, too, but both Metternich and Napoleon considered him inconsistent and untrustworthy. And Pushkin famously described him as 'a Sphinx who carried his riddle with him to the tomb.' an assessment even more piquant if it is true, as some maintain, his tomb in empty. With his customary blend of meticulous scholarship and agreeable writing, Alan Palmer provides the most balanced and engaging portrait imaginable. 'A pleasure to read and unlikely to be replaced for many years' Philip Ziegler, The Times 'Excellent . . . a major biographical achievement, a notable contribution to our understanding of this still enigmatic monarch' Robert Blake, Spectator

Alan Palmer was head of History at Highgate School, London for nineteen years before retiring early to concentrate on historical writing and research. He is the author of more than three dozen works: narrative histories; biographies; historical dictionaries ir reference books. His main interests are in the Napoleonic era, nineteenth century diplomacy, the First World War and Eastern Europe, although his Northern Shores is a history of the Baltic Sea and its peoples from earliest times to 2004. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1980. Of Alan Palmer, Sir John Keegan has written, ' Alan Palmer writes the sort of history that dons did before ''accessible'' became an academic insult. It is cool, rational, scholarly, literate.' Faber Finds is reissuing a number of his titles: Alexander I, The Gardeners of Salonika, The Chancelleries of Europe, The East End, The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire, The Lands Between, Metternich, Twilight of the Habsburgs.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Palmer, Alan

Leseproben

2

Empire on Parade

The Grand Duke Comes to Town

Six weeks later St Petersburg was in turmoil. On the morning of 15 November 1796 the Empress suffered a second stroke; she collapsed while seated on her commode and at once lost consciousness. Neither her son nor her grandson were in the Winter Palace at the time: Paul was at Gatchina; and Alexander, though resident in the capital, was that morning visiting Constantine Czartoryski. General Saltykov sent a messenger to fetch Alexander to his grandmother’s sick-bed and he came at once. As soon as he reached the palace he realized Catherine was gravely ill. Significantly he made no attempt to claim succession for himself but immediately ordered a courtier to ride out to Gatchina and inform Paul he would await him in the capital. For this mission Alexander chose Theodore Rostopchin, a young landowner from Moscow who had fallen from grace with Catherine by an unauthorized marriage with a maid of honour but who remained attached to her son’s miniature Court. It is an interesting commentary on Alexander’s sense of filial duty that, at this moment, he should have turned for assistance to a trusted confidant of his father rather than to one of his own friends.

Rostopchin was not, however, the first messenger to leave St Petersburg that morning for Gatchina. The initiative was seized by the last of all Catherine’s favourites, Platon Zubov, who had ordered his brother Nicholas to head for Paul’s estate with news of the Empress’s illness while Alexander was still at Czartoryski’s house. Nicholas Zubov reached Gatchina in the early afternoon, but Paul was not there. He had ridden out to a distant corner of his estate to watch cavalry manoeuvres. In his absence the bodyguard at Gatchina treated Zubov with suspicion, for it was known that the Grand Duke was on the alert for a Court intrigue which would deprive him of the succession and no one trusted the Zubovs. A horseman was sent to inform Paul that the Count had arrived from St Petersburg with a message he would communicate only to the Grand Duke in person. This seemed to Paul such an ominous development that he discussed with his escorting officers the wisdom of placing Zubov under restraint and defying the mischief plotted against him in the capital. When Paul heard the reason for the Count’s journey, he showed no emotion. At once he ordered his carriage and with a small escort set out for St Petersburg.1 Although he hated the Zubov family, he found an early opportunity of rewarding the Count with a high decoration.

Paul’s carriage should have made the journey from Gatchina to the capital in a few hours, for it was less than thirty miles away. But this was no ordinary day. Allegiance was shifting visibly around him. First he was stopped by Rostopchin, with Alexander’s message. ‘Ah, Your Highness, what a moment this is for you!’ Rostopchin remarked as the Grand Duke warmly gripped his hand. ‘Wait, my dear fellow, only wait,’ Paul replied. ‘I have lived forty-two years and the Almighty has given me His help. Maybe He will now endow me with strength and willpower to measure up to my Destiny.’2 More than twenty other courtiers hailed Paul on his progress northwards. By the time the Grand Duke’s carriage reached the outskirts of St Petersburg his escort had multiplied so that it looked like a cavalcade of the men of yesterday and tomorrow, spurred and jackbooted for the occasion. The night was frosty but clear, with no snow to muffle the sound of the procession as the racing wheels of the carriages thundered across the cobbles into the great square of the Winter Palace. There, on the steps, Alexander and Constantine awaited their father’s coming. They were dressed in the cumbersome dark green uniforms of the Gatchina Corps, never before displayed on a public occasion in the capital. Silently they fell into step behind their father as he was ushered into the Palace. Paul was received, as Rostopchin noted, as though he were already Autocrat of All the Russias.

Yet he was not. So long as Catherine breathed there was still a possibility she might recover her power of speech, signify whom she wished to succeed her, perhaps even indicate where a draft proclamation could be found. For the next twenty hours there were extraordinary scenes at the Palace. Paul moved into a small study on the far side of the Empress’s bedroom so that, as the senior officers hurried to the Palace, they all had to pass the dying Empress on her bed in order to report to Paul in the inner room, where he sat hunched over official documents, eager to discover her secrets of government. At one moment Arakcheev arrived and Paul entrusted arrangements for his own security jointly to Alexander and this favourite ‘Corporal’ from Gatchina. Arakcheev’s horses had set such a pace on his journey to the capital that his collar was spattered with mud, and Alexander – who was genuinely sensitive over such matters – insisted on taking him to his own rooms and supplying him with a clean shirt, a gesture which deeply affected the hard-bitten artillery man.3 There were few such spontaneous actions during these tense hours of interregnum.

It was not until the evening of 17 November, two and a half days after her collapse, that Catherine died. An epoch ended overnight for St Petersburg and for all Russia. Whatever her faults she had reigned in the grand manner, her follies and failures on a scale commensurate with her greatness. She was succeeded by a petty tyrant eager to impose on civil society the archaic order he had already introduced in the regulation of his regiments. Within hours of Catherine’s death, St Petersburg was left in no doubt that Russia had a new master. Formal decrees from the Palace began to regulate social custom: neither round hats nor tail coats might be worn; the number of horses harnessed to a single carriage would be subject to standard regulation, which would vary according to the status of the person who owned the vehicle; large receptions or private parties might, in future, be held only with permission from the Imperial Household or (outside the capital) from the provincial Governor; and, at all times, officers would appear in uniform. Strict control was imposed on the importing of foreign books and on the activities of the academic institutions which had flourished in Catherine’s earlier years. The Winter Palace was ringed by a hideous line of new sentry-boxes within days of Paul’s accession. Nothing seemed to matter to the new Tsar but his daily exercising of his soldiers. As Masson, Alexander’s former tutor, wrote a few years later,

The guard-parade became for him the most important institution and focal point of government. Every day, no matter how cold it might be, he dedicated the same time to it, spending each morning in plain deep green uniform, great boots and a large hat exercising his guards … Surrounded by his sons and aides-de-camp he would stamp his heels on the stones to keep himself warm, his bald head bare, his nose in the air, one hand behind his back, the other raising and falling a baton as he beat time, crying out ‘Raz, dva – raz, dva’ [‘one, two – one, two’].4

It was a bleak prospect for an Empire of forty million.

Alexander had anticipated revolutionary changes once his father came to the throne, but, like everyone else, he was puzzled and worried by Paul’s behaviour. It was natural that, after more than thirty years of humiliation and neglect, Paul should feel embittered towards his mother and her policies. Yet, although he ousted Catherine’s favourites from St Petersburg, he did not impose harsh penalties on them, even though some might justly have been condemned for peculation. So far as he could, he avenged himself on his mother’s renown rather than on her admirers.5 The summer palace at Tsarskoe Selo was left empty so long as Paul was on the throne, weeds spreading through the English gardens in which Catherine delighted to sit. The Tauride Palace, rich with memories of her love for Potemkin, was turned into a cavalry barracks, with horse droppings heaped on the marble floor of the ballroom. Yet the strangest gesture of all was made at the very start of Paul’s reign, to the private consternation of his family. Two days after Catherine’s death the new Tsar ordered the abbot of the monastery of Alexander Nevsky to disinter the coffin of her murdered husband, Peter III. The embalmed remains were then transferred to a richly decorated sarcophagus and laid in state beside Catherine’s body. Finally Paul supervised arrangements for a joint burial of ‘Their Imperial Majesties’ and summoned Count Alexei Orlov, who had played a sinister part in Peter’s murder, to carry the crown through the streets immediately behind his victim’s bier.6 National mourning ‘for the late Emperor and Empress’ was ordered to last for twelve months.

This display of macabre theatricality raised fresh doubts over Paul’s sanity. Undoubtedly his mind was warped and yet he was by no means unintelligent. He spoke French and German better than either of his eldest sons, possessed some skill in applied mathematics, and understood the Old Slavonic language used by the Orthodox Church in its liturgy. Moreover he had some inkling of the weaknesses in Russian society, even if the drastic remedies he favoured were inappropriate and essentially superficial. Though harsh, he was not persistently cruel and there were moments when he showed kindness and generosity, above all towards the Polish...