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CHAPTER XXVIII
THE REIGN OF PAUL I

From 1796 to 1801

Accession of Paul I. to the Throne.—Influence of the Hereditary Transmission of Power.—Extravagance of Paul.—His Despotism.—The Horse Court Martialed.—Progress of the French Revolution.—Fears and Violence of Paul I.—Hostility to Foreigners.—Russia Joins the Coalition against France.—March of Suwarrow.—Character of Suwarrow.—Battle on the Adda.—Battle of Novi.—Suwarrow Marches to the Rhine.—His Defeat and Death.—Paul Abandons the Coalition and Joins France.—Conspiracies at St. Petersburg.

Few sovereigns have ever ascended the throne more ignorant of affairs of state than was Paul I. Catharine had endeavored to protract his childhood, entrusting him with no responsibilities, and regulating herself minutely all his domestic and private concerns. He was carefully excluded from any participation in national affairs and was not permitted to superintend even his own household. Catharine took his children under her own protection as soon as they were born, and the parents were seldom allowed to see them. Paul I. had experienced, in his own person, all the burden of despotism ere he ascended Russia's despotic throne. Naturally desirous to secure popularity, he commenced his reign with acts which were much applauded. He introduced economy into the expenditures of the court, forbade the depreciation of the currency and the further issue of paper money, and withdrew the army which Catharine had sent to Persia on a career of conquest.

Paul I. did not love his mother. He did not believe that he was her legitimate child. Still, as his only title to the throne was founded on his being the reputed child of Peter III., he did what he could to rescue the memory of that prince from the infamy to which it had been very properly consigned. He had felt so humiliated by the domineering spirit of Catharine, that he resolved that Russia should not again fall under the reign of a woman, and issued a decree that henceforth the crown should descend in the male line only, and from father to son. The new emperor manifested his hostility to his mother, by endeavoring in various ways to undo what she had done.

The history of Europe is but a continued comment upon the folly of the law of the hereditary descent of power, a law which is more likely to place the crown upon the brow of a knave, a fool or a madman, than upon that of one qualified to govern. Russia soon awoke to the consciousness that the destinies of thirty millions of people were in the hands of a maniac, whose conduct seemed to prove that his only proper place was in one of the wards of Bedlam. The grossest contradictions followed each other in constant succession. Today he would caress his wife, to-morrow place her under military arrest. At one hour he would load his children with favors, and the next endeavor to expose them publicly to shame.

Though Paul severely blamed his mother for the vast sums she lavished upon her court, these complaints did not prevent him from surpassing her in extravagance. The innumerable palaces she had reared and embellished with more than oriental splendor, were not sufficient for him. Neither the Winter palace, nor the Summer palace, nor the palace of Anitschkoff, nor the Marble palace, nor the Hermitage, whose fairy-like gorgeousness amazed all beholders, nor a crowd of other royal residences, too numerous to mention, and nearly all world-renowned, were deemed worthy of the residence of the new monarch. Pretending that he had received a celestial injunction to construct a new palace, he built, reckless of expense, the chateau of St. Michael.

The crown of Catharine was the wonder of Europe, but it was not rich enough for the brow of Paul. A new one was constructed, and his coronation at Moscow was attended with freaks of expenditure which impoverished provinces. Boundless gifts were lavished upon his favorites. But that he might enrich a single noble, ten thousand peasants were robbed. The crown peasants were vassals, enjoying very considerable freedom and many privileges. The peasantry of the nobles were slaves, nearly as much so as those on a Cuban plantation, with the single exception that custom prevented their being sold except with the land. Like the buildings, the oaks and the elms, they were inseparably attached to the soil. The emperor, at his coronation, gave away eighty thousand families to his favorites. Their labor henceforth, for life, was all to go to enrich their masters. These courtiers, reveling in boundless luxury, surrendered their slaves to overseers, whose reputation depended upon extorting as much as possible from the miserable boors.

The extravagance of Catharine II. had rendered it necessary for her to triple the capitation, or, as we should call it, the poll-tax, imposed upon the peasants. Paul now doubled this tax, which his mother had already tripled. The King of Prussia had issued a decree that no subject should fall upon his knees before him, but that every man should maintain in his presence and in that of the law the dignity of humanity. Paul, on the contrary, reëstablished, in all its rigor, the oriental etiquette, which Peter I. and Catharine had allowed to pass into disuse, which required every individual, whether a citizen or a stranger, to fall instantly upon his knees whenever the tzar made his appearance. Thus, when Paul passed along the streets on horseback or in his carriage, every man, woman and child, within sight of the royal cortege, was compelled to kneel, whether in mud or snow, until the cortege had passed. No one was exempted from the rule. Strangers and citizens, nobles and peasants, were compelled to the degrading homage. Those on horseback or in carriages were required instantly to dismount and prostrate themselves before the despot.

A noble lady who came to St. Petersburg in her carriage, in great haste, to seek medical aid for her husband, who had been suddenly taken sick, in her trouble not having recognized the imperial livery, was dragged from her carriage and thrust into prison. Her four servants, who accompanied her, were seized and sent to the army, although they plead earnestly that, coming from a distance, they were ignorant of the law, the infraction of which was attributed to them as a crime. The unhappy lady, thus separated from her sick husband, and plunged into a dungeon, was so overwhelmed with anguish that she was thrown into a fever. Reason was dethroned, and she became a hopeless maniac. The husband died, being deprived of the succor his wife had attempted to obtain.

The son of a rich merchant, passing rapidly in his sleigh, muffled in furs, did not perceive the carriage of the emperor which he met, until it had passed. The police seized him; his sleigh and horses were confiscated. He was placed in close confinement for a month, and then, after receiving fifty blows from the terrible knout, was delivered to his friends a mangled form, barely alive.

A young lady, by some accident, had not thrown herself upon her knees quick enough at the appearance of the imperial carriage in the streets of Moscow. She was an orphan and resided with an aunt. They were both imprisoned for a month and fed upon bread and water; the young lady for failing in respect to the emperor, and the aunt for not having better instructed her niece. How strange is this power of despotism, by which one madman compels forty millions of people to tremble before him!

One of the freaks of this crazy prince was to court-martial his horse. The noble steed had tripped beneath his rider. A council was convened, composed of the equerries of the palace. The horse was proved guilty of failing in respect to his majesty, and was condemned to receive fifty blows from a heavy whip. Paul stood by, as the sentence was executed, counting off the blows.²⁴

Twelve Polish gentlemen were condemned, for being "wanting in respect to his majesty," to have their noses and ears cut off, and were then sent to perpetual Siberian exile. When any one was admitted to an audience with the tzar, it was necessary for him to fall upon his knees so suddenly and heavily that his bones would ring upon the floor like the butt of a musket. No gentle genuflexion satisfied the tzar. A prince Gallatin was imprisoned for "kneeling and kissing the emperor's hand too negligently." This contempt for humanity soon rendered Paul very unpopular. He well knew that his legitimacy was doubted, and that if an illegitimate child he had no right whatever to the throne. He seemed to wish to prove that he was the son of Peter III. by imitating all the silly and cruel caprices of that most contemptible prince.

The French Revolution was now in progress, the crushed people of that kingdom endeavoring to throw off the yoke of intolerable oppression. All the despots in Europe were alarmed lest popular liberty in France should undermine their thrones. None were more alarmed than Paul. He was so fearful that democratic ideas might enter his kingdom that he forbade the introduction into his realms of any French journal or pamphlet. All Frenchmen in his kingdom were also ordered immediately to depart. All ships arriving were searched and if any French subjects were on board, men or women, they were not permitted to land, but were immediately sent out of the kingdom. Merchants, who had left their families and their business for a temporary absence, were not permitted again to set foot in the kingdom. The suffering which this cruel edict occasioned was very great.

Day after day new decrees were issued, of ever increasing violence. The tzar became suspicious of all strangers of whatever nation, and endeavored to rear a wall of separation around his whole kingdom which should exclude it from all intercourse with other parts of Europe. The German universities were all declared to be tainted with superstition, and all Russians were prohibited, under penalty of the confiscation of their estates, from sending their sons to those institutions. No foreigner, of whatever nation, was allowed to take part in any civil or ecclesiastical service. The young Russians who were already in the German universities, were commanded immediately to return to their homes.

Apprehensive that knowledge itself, by whomsoever communicated, might make the people restless under their enormous wrongs, Paul suppressed nearly all the schools which had been founded by Catharine II., reserving only a few to communicate instruction in the military art. All books, but those issued under the surveillance of the government, were interdicted. The greatest efforts were made to draw a broad line of distinction between the people and the nobles, and to place a barrier there which no plebeian could pass. Some one informed Paul that in France the revolutionists wore the chapeau, or three-cornered hat, with one of the corners in front. The tzar immediately issued a decree that in Russia the hat should be worn with the corner behind.

We have said that Paul was bitterly hostile to all foreigners. The emigrants, however, who fled from France, with arms in their hands, imploring the courts of Europe to crush republican liberty in France, he welcomed with the greatest cordiality and loaded with favors. The princes and nobles of the French court received from Paul large pensions, while, at the same time, he ignobly made them feel that he was their master and they were his slaves. His dread of French liberty was so great, that with all his soul he entered into the wide-spread European coalition which the genius of Pitt had organized against France, and which embraced even Turkey. And now for the first time the spectacle was seen of the Russian and Turkish squadrons combining against a common foe. Paul sent an army of one hundred thousand men to coöperate with the allies. Republican France gathered up her energies to resist Europe in arms. The young Napoleon, heading a heroic band of half-famished soldiers, turned the Alps and fell like a thunderbolt into the Austrian camp upon the plains of Italy. In a series of victories which astounded the world he swept the foe before him, and compelled the Austrians to sue for peace. The embassadors of France and Germany met at Rastadt, in congress, and after spending many months in negotiations, the congress was dissolved by the Emperor of Germany, in April, 1799. The French embassadors set out to return, and were less than a quarter of a mile from the city, when a troop of Austrian hussars fell upon them, and two of their number, Roberjeot and Bonnier, were treacherously assassinated. The third, Delry, though left for dead, revived so far as to be able, covered with wounds and blood, to crawl back to Rastadt.²⁵

Napoleon was at this time in Egypt, endeavoring to assail England, the most formidable foe of France, in India, the only vulnerable point which could be reached. Fifty thousand Russians, in a single band, were marching through Germany to coöperate with the Austrians on the French frontiers. The more polished Germans were astonished at the barbaric character of their allies. A Russian officer, in a freak of passion, shot an Austrian postilion, and then took out his purse and enquired of the employer of the postilion what damage was to be paid, as coolly as if he had merely killed a horse or a cow. Even German law was compelled to wink at such outrages, for an ally so essential as Russia it was needful to conciliate at all hazards. Paul deemed himself the most illustrious monarch of Europe, and resolved that none but a Russian general should lead the allied armies. The Germans, on the contrary, regarded the Russians as barbarians of wolfish courage and gigantic strength, but far too ignorant of military science to be entrusted with the plan of a campaign. After much contention the Emperor of Austria was compelled to yield, and an old Russian general, Suwarrow, was placed in command of the armies of the two most powerful empires then on the globe.

And who was Suwarrow? Behold his portrait. Born in a village of the Ukraine, the boy was sent by his father, an army officer, to the military academy at St. Petersburg, whence he entered the army as a common soldier, and ever after, for more than sixty years, he lived in incessant battles in Sweden, Turkey, Poland. In the storm of Ismael, forty thousand men, women and, children fell in indiscriminate massacre at his command. In the campaign which resulted in the partition of Poland, twenty thousand Poles were cut down by his dragoons. A stranger to fear, grossly illiterate, and with no human sympathies, he appears on the arena but as a thunderbolt of war. Next to the emperor Paul, he was perhaps the most fantastic man on the continent. In a war with the Turks he killed a large number with his own hands, and brought, on his shoulders, a sackful of heads, which he rolled out at the feet of his general. This was the commencement of his reputation.²⁶ His whole military career was in accordance with this act. He had but one passion, love of war. He would often, even in mid-winter, have one or two pailsful of cold water poured upon him, as he rose from his bed, and then, in his shirt, leap upon an unsaddled horse and scour the camp with the speed of the wind. Sometimes he would appear, in the early morning, at the door of his tent, stark naked, and crow like a cock. This was a signal for the tented host to spring to arms. Occasionally he would visit the hospital, pretending that he was a physician, and would prescribe medicine for those whom he thought sick, and scourgings for those whom he imagined to be feigning sickness. Sometimes he would turn all the patients out of the doors, sick and well, saying that it was not permitted for the soldiers of Suwarrow to be sick. He was as merciless to himself as he was to his soldiers. Hunger, cold, fatigue, seemed to him to be pleasures. Hardships which to many would render life a scene of insupportable torture, were to him joys. He usually traveled in a coarse cart, which he made his home, sleeping in it at night, with but the slightest protection from the weather. Whenever he lodged in a house, his aides took the precaution to remove the windows from his room, as he would otherwise inevitably smash every glass.

Notwithstanding this ostentatious display of his hatred of all luxury, he was excessively fond of diamonds and other precious stones. He was also exceedingly superstitious, ever falling upon his knees before whatever priest he might meet, and imploring his benediction. Such men generally feel that the observance of ceremonial rites absolves them from the guilt of social crimes. With these democratic manners Suwarrow utterly detested liberty. The French, as the most liberty-loving people of Europe, he abhorred above all others. He foamed with rage when he spoke of them. In the sham fights with which he frequently exercised the army, when he gave the order to "charge the miserable French," every soldier was to make two thrusts of the bayonet in advance, as if twice to pierce the heart of the foe, and a third thrust into the ground, that the man, twice bayoneted, might be pinned in death to the earth. Such was the general whom Paul sent "to destroy the impious government," as he expressed it, "which dominated over France."

With blind confidence Suwarrow marched down upon the plains of Lombardy, dreaming that in those fertile realms nothing awaited him but an easy triumph over those who had been guilty of the crime of abolishing despotism. The French had heard appalling rumors of the prowess and ferocity of these warriors of the North, and awaited the shock with no little solicitude.²⁷ The two armies met on the banks of the Adda, which flows into the northern part of the Lake of Como. Suwarrow led sixty thousand Russians and Austrians. The French general, Moreau, to oppose them, had the wreck of an army, consisting of twenty-five thousand men, disheartened by defeat. On the 17th of April, 1799, the first Russian regiment appeared in sight of the bridge of Lecco. The French, indignant at the interference of the Russians in a quarrel with which they had no concern, dashed upon them with their bayonets, and repulsed them with great carnage. But the hosts of Russia and Austria came pouring on in such overwhelming numbers, that Moreau, with his forces reduced to twenty thousand men, was compelled to retreat before an army which could concentrate ninety thousand troops in line of battle. Pressed by the enemy, he retreated through Milan to Turin. Suwarrow tarried in Milan to enjoy a triumph accorded to him by the priests and the nobles, the creatures of Austria.

Moreau entrenched himself at Alexandria, awaiting the arrival of General Macdonald with reinforcements. Suwarrow approached with an army now exceeding one hundred thousand men. Again Moreau was compelled to retreat, pursued by Suwarrow, and took refuge on the crest of the Apennines, in the vicinity of Genoa. By immense exertions he had assembled forty thousand men. Suwarrow came thundering upon him with sixty thousand. The French army was formed in a semicircle on the slopes of the Monte Rotundo, about twenty miles north of Genoa. The Austro-Russian army spread over the whole plain below. At five o'clock in the morning of the 15th of August, 1799, the fierce battle of Novi commenced. Suwarrow, a fierce fighter, but totally unacquainted with the science of strategy, in characteristic words gave the order of battle. "Kray," said he, "will attack the left—the Russians the center—Melas the right." To the soldiers he said, "God wills, the emperor orders, Suwarrow commands, that to-morrow the enemy be conquered." Dressed in his usual costume, in his shirt down to the waist, he led his troops into battle. Enormous slaughter ensued; numbers prevailing against science, and the French, driven out of Italy, took refuge along the ridges of the Apennines.

Suwarrow, satisfied with his dearly-bought victory, for he had lost ten thousand men in the conflict, did not venture to pursue the retiring foe, but with his bleeding and exhausted army fell back to Coni; and thence established garrisons throughout Piedmont and Lombardy. Paul was almost delirious with joy at this great victory. He issued a decree declaring Suwarrow to be the greatest general "of all times, of all peoples and of all quarters of the globe." In his pride he declared that republican France, for the crime of rebelling against legitimate authority, should receive punishment which should warn all nations against following her example. The Russian squadron combined with that of the Turks, formed a junction with the victorious fleet of Nelson, and sailing from the bay of Aboukir, swept the French fleet from the Mediterranean.

The Austrians and Russians, thus victorious, now marched to assail Massena at Zurich on the Rhine, intending there to cross the stream and invade France. For a month, in September and October, 1799, there was a series of incessant battles. But the republican armies were triumphant. The banners of France struggled proudly through many scenes of blood and woe, and the shores of Lake Zurich and the fastnesses of the Alps, were strewed with the dead bodies of the Russians. In fourteen days twenty thousand Russians and six thousand Austrians were slain. Suwarrow, the intrepid barbarian, with but ten thousand men saved from his proud army, retreated overwhelmed with confusion and rage. Republican France was saved. The rage which Suwarrow displayed is represented as truly maniacal. He foamed at the mouth and roared like a bull. As a wounded lion turns upon his pursuers, from time to time he stopped in his retreat, and rushed back upon the foe. He was crushed in body and mind by this defeat. Having wearied himself in denouncing, in unmeasured terms, all his generals and soldiers, he became taciturn and moody. Secluding himself from his fellow-men he courted solitude, and surrendered himself to a fantastic and superstitious devotion. Enveloped in a cloak, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground, he would occasionally pass through the camp, condescending to notice no one.

Paul had also sent an army into Holland, against France, which had been utterly repulsed by General Brune, with the loss of many slain and taken prisoners. The tidings of these disasters roused, in the bosom of Paul, fury equal to that which Suwarrow had displayed. He bitterly cursed his allies, England and Austria, declaring that they, in the pursuit of their own selfish interests, had abandoned his armies to destruction. Suwarrow, deprived of further command, and overwhelmed with disgrace, retired to one of his rural retreats where he soon died of chagrin.

The Austrian and English embassadors at the court of St. Petersburg, Paul loaded with reproaches and even with insults. His conduct became so whimsical as to lead many to suppose that he was actually insane. He had long hated the French republicans, but now, with a new and a fresher fury, he hated the allies. The wrecks of his armies were ordered to return to Russia, and he ceased to take an active part in the prosecution of the war, without however professing, in any way, to withdraw from the coalition. Neither the Austrian nor the English embassador could obtain an audience with the emperor. He treated them with utter neglect, and, the court following the example of the sovereign, these embassadors were left in perfect solitude. They could not even secure an audience with any of the ministry.

Paul had been very justly called the Don Quixote of the coalition, and the other powers were now not a little apprehensive of the course he might adopt, for madman as he was, he was the powerful monarch of some forty millions of people. Soon he ordered the Russian fleet, which in coöperation with the squadrons of the allies was blockading Malta, to withdraw from the conflict. Then he recalled his ministers from London and Vienna, declaring that neither England nor Austria was contending for any principle, but that they were fighting merely for their own selfish interests. England had already openly declared her intention of appropriating Malta to herself.

Napoleon had now returned from Egypt and had been invested with the supreme power in France as First Consul. There were many French prisoners in the hands of the allies. France had also ten thousand Russian prisoners. Napoleon proposed an exchange. Both England and Austria refused to exchange French prisoners for Russians.

"What," exclaimed Napoleon, "do you refuse to liberate the Russians, who were your allies, who were fighting in your ranks and under your commanders? Do you refuse to restore to their country those men to whom you are indebted for your victories and conquests in Italy, and who have left in your hands a multitude of French prisoners whom they have taken? Such injustice excites my indignation."

With characteristic magnanimity he added, "I will restore them to the tzar without exchange. He shall see how I esteem brave men."

These Russian prisoners were assembled at Aix la Chapelle. They were all furnished with a complete suit of new clothing, in the uniform of their own regiments, and were thoroughly supplied with weapons of the best French manufacture. And thus they were returned to their homes. Paul was exactly in that mood of mind which best enabled him to appreciate such a deed. He at once abandoned the alliance, and with his own hand wrote to Napoleon as follows:

"Citizen First Consul,—I do not write to you to discuss the rights of men or of citizens. Every country governs itself as it pleases. Whenever I see, at the head of a nation, a man who knows how to rule and how to fight, my heart is attracted towards him. I write to acquaint you with my dissatisfaction with England, who violates every article of the law of nations and has no guide but her egotism and her interest. I wish to unite with you to put an end to the unjust proceedings of that government."

Friendly relations were immediately established between France and Russia, and they exchanged embassadors. Paul had conferred an annual pension of two hundred thousand rubles (about $150,000) upon the Count of Provence, subsequently Louis XVIII., and had given him an asylum at Mittau. He now withdrew that pension and protection. He induced the King of Denmark to forbid the English fleet from passing the Sound, which led into the Baltic Sea, engaging, should the English attempt to force the passage, to send a fleet of twenty-one ships to assist the Danes. The battle of Hohenlinden and the peace of Luneville detached Austria from the coalition, and England was left to struggle alone against the new opinions in France.

The nobles of Russia, harmonizing with the aristocracy of Europe, were quite dissatisfied with this alliance between Russia and France. Though the form of the republic was changed to that of the consulate, they saw that the principles of popular liberty remained unchanged in France. The wife of Paul and her children, victims of the inexplicable caprice of the tzar, lived in constant constraint and fear. The empress had three sons—Alexander, Constantine and Nicholas. The heir apparent, Alexander, was watched with the most rigorous scrutiny, and was exposed to a thousand mortifications. The suspicious father became the jailer of his son, examining all his correspondence, and superintending his mode of life in its minutest details. The most whimsical and annoying orders were issued, which rendered life, in the vicinity of the court, almost a burden. The army officers were forbidden to attend evening parties lest they should be too weary for morning parade. Every one who passed the imperial palace, even in the most inclement weather, was compelled to go with head uncovered. The enforcement of his arbitrary measures rendered the intervention of the troops often necessary. The palace was so fortified and guarded as to resemble a prison. St. Petersburg, filled with the machinery of war, presented the aspect of a city besieged. Every one was exposed to arrest. No one was sure of passing the night in tranquillity, there were so many domiciliary visits; and many persons, silently arrested, disappeared without it ever being known what became of them. Spies moved about everywhere, and their number was infinite. Paul thus enlisted against himself the animosity of all classes of his subjects—his own family, foreigners, the court, the nobles and the bourgeois. Such were the influences which originated the conspiracy which resulted in the assassination of the tzar.

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