19c: Alexander and Napoleon

Catherine was succeed on her death in 1796 by her son Paul I. Not without reason, Paul despised his illustrious mother. He thought she had deposed his father (true), had him killed (likely false), and turned Russia from its proper path with her liberal notions (open to discussion). To dishonor her memory, Paul took several steps, including a decree forbidding females from succeeding to Russia's throne. He withdrew rights that Catherine had granted to the nobility and brutally stamped out any signs of liberal thought, even forbidding the importation of books. More than 12,000 Russians were arrested and deprived of their rights during his reign. On a more positive note, Paul was the first Russian emperor to confront Napoleon, sending troops over the Alps and into Italy in 1798. But the more influential nobles were fed up with Paul's rough treatment, and assassinated him in 1801. His oldest son Alexander I, who ruled from 1801-1825. followed him upon the throne. Alexander certainly knew about the coup and likely knew about the assassination plans too. Despite being educated by tutors Catherine the Great had handpicked for him, he also took after his father in ways. Already a complex personality, Alexander was driven by these external conflicts into sometimes contradictory actions. Indeed, Alexander I was known as "The Sphinx of Europe."

Like his grandmother Catherine the Great, Alexander was at first open to liberal reforms. He promised a reign guided by the rule of law, abolished restrictions on education, and broke up the secret police forces. He freed all of the serfs in Russia's Baltic territories (although giving them no land) as a possible trial run for freeing all of Russia's serfs. He also toyed with the idea of granting a constitution and an elective assembly called the Duma.  But foreign affairs intervened. In 1807 France and Russia signed the treaty of Tilsit. This treaty won Russia the five years of peace necessary to conquer Finland from the Swedish (1808) and large parts of the Caucasus (1804-1813) from Persia. But when Napoleon's growing European empire and his trade policies began wreaking havoc on the Russian economy, Alexander prepared for a brawl. He put the Caucasus war on hold, made military treaties with Prussia, Austria, Spain and Great Britain, and won the Swedes' promise to support Russia. He still hoped to avoid war with Napoleon, but hoped Russia would be ready if it came.

In June, 1812, Napoleon's Grand Army of about 550,000 men crossed the Russian border. Although the Russians had only about 200,000 effective soldiers to repel the invasion, Alexander's generals practiced the time honored Russian tactic of scorched earth and retreat, drawing Napoleon's forces ever deeper into Russia just in time for the wretched Russian winter. The Russian peasant armies fought well against Napoleon's well trained veterans - whether they were fighting for the Tsar, or for Mother Russia, or for the tiny sliver of Mother Russia each could call his own. Had Napoleon known about Russia's long history of oppressing its serfs, and its history of peasant revolts, he might have won enough of them over to his side to make a difference. More than a century later, Hitler would make the same mistake in winning over the peasants oppressed by the Soviet Union. Mid-October found Napoleon in Moscow, at the end of his line of supply, and with an army no longer able to fight. The Russians had chosen to burn their capital nearly to the ground rather than let Napoleon use it as a winter base. Napoleon was finished and he knew it. The ever-narrowing red and green stripes on this graph illustrate the sad decline of Napoleon's army. The Russian armies pressed Napoleon all the way back to Paris, and in 1814 accepted his surrender. The triumphant Alexander was applauded as the savior of Europe. Nobody blinked an eye when he claimed all of Poland, all of Finland and the Caucasian territories taken from Persia. But claiming the Caucasus was one thing and ruling it was another. As you can see from the map, there were many different khanates, each with a keen sense of its own nationality. There is also a big white blot where the Chechens lived, and no date for its absorption into the Empire. Under brutal conquistadors such as General Alexander Yermolov, Russia began making bitter enemies of the native Muslims: the roots of today's Russian-Chechen crisis are found here.

After the defeat of Napoleon, Alexander should have been well pleased with his accomplishments. He was now free to continue the reforms he had considered before the Napoleonic Wars. The young, well-educated nobles who had served in his armies and seen Western ways at first hand stood ready to help. At a similar point in Roman history, veterans came home from the Greek East and spread Hellenistic ways - much to Rome's benefit. In fact, many of the young noblemen, well aware of the classical parallels. dreamed of a Russia in which they could be citizens instead of subjects. Unfortunately, Alexander's experiences with Napoleon had driven all thoughts of reform from his head. He tried to crush the young nobles' semi-revolutionary spirit by forbidding them to discuss politics. Even informal meetings were snooped on by his new secret police. But strangely, the tighter Alexander's controls on the Russian people, the more liberal he was with the conquered Poles and Finns. The Poles got their own constitution and army, under Alexander's brother Grand Duke Konstantin as viceroy. The Finns were allowed an even freer hand - much to the disgust of Alexander's Russian veterans. They rightly wondered why Alexander gave the Poles and Finns rights that he aggressively denied his own people. Toward the end of Alexander's reign, two major groups arose to discuss ways of achieving Western-style freedoms. The "Northern Society," based in Saint Petersburg, was more moderate in its outlook and aspired toward a constitutional monarchy like that found in England. The "Southern Society," based in modern Ukraine, favored a radical program including elimination of the monarchy. The two factions never coordinated their efforts, partly to avoid notice but also because of genuine philosophical differences. When Alexander I died in December 1825, it was assumed that his next oldest brother, Grand Duke Konstantin, would succeed him. What followed instead was bloody confusion: a pathetically botched revolution, and three decades of reactionary militarism.