Paul, the son of Catherine the
Great, was born in 1754, when Catherine was still Grand Duchess during
Elizabeth's reign. Elizabeth immediately took Paul as her own, attempting
to indoctrinate him with her own tutors. Her care was minimal at best;
stories were told of the infant Paul falling out of his crib and sleeping on
the floor through the night until morning when his lackluster caregivers
noticed. As he grew, Paul proved to be quite intelligent and made up
for his uncaring home-life by immersing himself in stories of chivalry and
fantasy.
The distance between mother and son
was finalized when Paul's son Alexander was born. Catherine took
Alexander from Paul as he had been taken from her and trained him with her own
tutors. It became clear that Catherine wished to pass over Paul, even
contacting his mother Maria for confirmation, but all parties seemed to agree
that traditional succession meant Paul would have his time to rule. When
Catherine suffered a stroke in 1796, Paul became Tsar of All Russias.
Even before his rule, Paul was
known as an eccentric. He was fascinated by chivalry and immediately
began laws reforming the ruling class. Paul repealed his mother's
legalization of corporal punishment for nobles (a popular move) but also
enacted new policies attempting to forge a new age of noble knights,
dispensing generous gifts on those who agreed and banishing those who opposed
him. He reformed the army, dismissing many generals and recreating the
uniforms to emulate the stylish, if ineffectual, Prussians.
Paul also welcomed the Knights Hospitaller, who had fled their home in
Malta from General Napoleon, and they elected him Grand Master, a title in
which he reveled.
While his domestic policy caused
turmoil, Paul struggled with foreign affairs. He first recalled his
mother's final expedition of 13,000 troops who were prepared to march on Iran,
ending expansionism. Paul also had inherited an alliance with
Austria and Britain against Republican France, whom he despised as an
illegitimate uprising against nobility. While first enthusiastic about
battling to return order to Europe, Paul was soon betrayed. It became
clear that Austria was attempting territorial gain in Italy. The
Austro-Russian campaign in Switzerland proved fruitless, and the Austrians
retreated, leaving the Russians to fight as rearguard with heavy losses.
Meanwhile, an Anglo-Russian invasion of the Netherlands also turned to a
retreat, and Paul was disappointed with the efforts of allied troops.
When Britain seized a Danish frigate in violation of Scandinavian neutrality
and refused to return Malta to the Knights Hospitaller, Paul ended his alliance
with Britain as he had Austria.
Meanwhile, foreign relations with
France improved dramatically. Napoleon had overthrown the republic's
Directory and installed himself as First Consul, which matched Paul's worldview
of noble rule much more closely. After Napoleon generously returned 7,000
Russian prisoners despite Britain's failure to pay promised ransom, Paul began
secret communications for an anti-British alliance. The two concocted a
scheme to march overland through Persia to harass India, Britain's valued
market. In January of 1801, Paul ordered Ataman Orlov and 20,000 Cossack
cavalry to begin the preliminary march to India to map an invasion route.
Two months later, a contingent of
drunken dismissed officers burst into Paul's rooms in the newly
constructed St. Michael's Castle. Paul hid behind the curtains but
was found, and the officers attempted to force him to sign an abdication.
Paul refused and, during the scuffle, managed to escape his room. He
called for guards, finally finding those loyal enough to defend him. His
attackers were executed and an investigation found, tracing some funding from
British agents reacting to Paul's seizure of British ships and factories in
Russia.
Anti-British fervor swept the
country, coinciding with the arrival of British Admiral Horatio Nelson's fleet
in Reval that May. He was fresh from Copenhagen, where
the ships had bombarded the city and forced the Danes to comply in
Britain's destruction of the Armed Neutrality Coaltion between the Scandinavian
countries. Russia attempted to fight off the fleet, but the British ships
overcame them at the Battle of Reval and sailed for St. Petersburg. Paul
remained in the city despite suggestions to flee and organized the use of
small fire ships piloted toward Nelson's fleet, emulating the battle
against the Spanish Armada. Nelson refused to be defeated by Russians,
going down with his flagship as the sabotaged ships eventually retreated.
Paul and Napoleon dispatched their invasion
in August of 1801 in Astrabad on the Caspian Sea. Napoleon contributed
scientists and artists, much as he had done with his Egyptian expedition, while
Paul dispatched brightly colored cloth for sale and fireworks for
displays. They passed into Persia, where Fath Ali Shah had signed an
Anglo-Persian treaty earlier that year, stating, "Should it ever happen
that an army of the French nation attempts to settle on any of the islands or
shores of Persia, a conjunct force shall be appointed by the two high
contracted parties, to act in cooperation, to destroy it." A British
force marched out from India, but the Persians, upon recognizing that neither
France nor Russia intended conquest thanks to Paul's rejection of
expansionistic warfare, capitulated and signed a new alliance with France and
Russia. The British were defeated at the Battle of Kandahar, and the
Russo-French force marched into India.
Britain began to panic and
struggled to create a new coalition. Scandinavia refused and again ousted
British authority with a coalition of neutrality. Austro-Hungary joined
with Britain as Napoleon expanded again into Italy; Prussia joined later as the
war spread to Germany. At the indecisive Battle of Trafalgar,
Britain attempted to destroy the combined French-Spanish navy but merely
wounded it before returning to protect the Channel. Meanwhile, at Paul's
encouragement, Napoleon dispatched the fleets to harass Britain's colonies
where they would be most vulnerable. As colony after colony fell or
became disrupted, Britain's economy crashed. Finally in 1812, the world
came to peace with a final armistice requested by Britain.
Through the nineteenth century,
Europe recuperated and began a new wave of colonization began in Africa and
Asia. Paul, however, worked to continue his reforms inside Russia,
welcoming French technological improvements while solidifying his chivalric
order. After the death of his son Alexander due to typhus in 1825, Paul
began to groom his grandson Alexander II for rule, but the tsar died the next
year. Eight-year-old Alexander II was made tsar, advised by a council
whose powers were expanded during the wave of revolutions following the death
of Napoleon II in 1848. Russia came late into the race to colonize,
taking only a few areas in Central Asia while France dominated the Middle East
and Britain took hold of much of China, paring it with Prussia and
Batavia as they had in Africa. Paul's legacy of reform improved much
in the lives of the average Russians, but finally his aged chivalric order was
overthrown in 1919 by revolts calling for a greater share of wealth for the populace.
--
In reality, Paul was
assassinated. He refused to sign the abdication and was stabbed with a
sword. His son Alexander was told by one of the assassins, General Zubov,
"Time to grow up! Go and rule!" Alexander became determined to
defeat Napoleon and overturned his father's pro-French plans. After Napoleon's
defeat at sea by Nelson in 1805 and on land in Russia by Alexander in
1812, the French Empire finally crumbled.
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