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Alexander I of Russia

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'''Aleksander I Pavlovich Romanov''' (Russian language Russian: Ð?Ð»ÐµÐºÑ?Ð°Ð½Ð´Ñ€ I ÐŸÐ°Ð²Ð»Ð¾Ð²Ð¸Ñ‡) (December 23, 1777–December 1, 1825), was Tsar Emperor of Russia from March 23, 1801–December 1, 1825 and King of Poland from 1815–1825, as well as the first Grand Duke of Finland. He was born in Saint Petersburg to Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, afterwards Paul I of Russia Paul I, and Sophie Marie Dorothea of WÃ¼rttemberg Maria Fedorovna, daughter of the Friedrich II Eugen, Duke of WÃ¼rttemberg Duke of WÃ¼rttemberg. Alexander succeeded to the throne after his father was murdered, and ruled Russia during the chaotic period of the Napoleonic Wars. The strange contradictions of his character make Alexander one of the most interesting Tsars, and he is one of the most important figures in the history of 19th century Europe. Image:Aldawe.jpg thumb|250px|Portrait of Alexander I in the [[Military Gallery of the Winter Palace.]]

Early life
His complex nature resulted, in truth, from the outcome of the complex character of his early environment and education. Reared in the free-thinking atmosphere of the court of Catherine II of Russia Catherine the Great, he had imbibed from his Swiss tutor, Frederic Caesar de Laharpe, the principles of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Rousseau's gospel of humanity; from his military governor, Nikolay Saltykov, the traditions of Russian autocracy; while his father had inspired him with his own passion of military parade, and taught him to combine a theoretical love of mankind with a practical contempt for men. These contradictory tendencies remained with him through life, revealed in the fluctuations of his policy and influencing through him the fate of the world.

Succession to the throne
Another element in his character emerged when on March 23, 1801 he mounted the throne over the body of his murdered father: a mystic melancholy liable at any moment to issue in extravagant action. At first, indeed, this exercised but little influence on the Emperor of Russia Emperor's life. Young, emotional, impressionable, well-meaning and egotistic, Alexander displayed from the first an intention of playing a great part on the world's stage, and plunged with all the ardour of youth into the task of realizing his political ideals. While retaining for a time the old Political minister ministers who had served and overthrown the Emperor Paul, one of the first acts of his reign was to appoint the Private Committee, also called ironically the "Committee of Public Safety Comite du salut public," comprising young and enthusiastic friends of his own - Victor Palvovich Kochubey Victor Kochubey, Nikolay Nikolayevich Novosiltsev Nikolay Novosiltsev, Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov Pavel Stroganov and Adam Jerzy Czartoryski - to draw up a scheme of internal reform. Most importantly the liberal Mikhail Speransky became one of the Tsar's closest advisors, and drew up many plans for elaborate reforms. Their aims, inspired by their admiration for Kingdom of Great Britain English institutions, far outstripped the possibilities of the time, and even after they had been raised to regular ministerial positions but little of their programme could come to pass. For Imperial Russia Russia was not ripe for liberty; and Alexander, the disciple of the revolutionist Laharpe, was—as he himself said—but "a happy accident" on the throne of the tsars. He spoke, indeed, bitterly of "the state of barbarism in which the country had been left by the traffic in men."

Early reign
"Under Paul," he said, "three thousand peasants had been given away like a bag of diamonds. If civilization were more advanced, I would abolish this slavery, if it cost me my head (anatomy) head." But the universal Political corruption corruption, he complained, had left him no men; and the filling up of the government offices with German people Germans and other foreigners merely accentuated the sullen resistance of the "old Russians" to his reforms. That Alexander's reign, which began with so large a promise of amelioration, ended by riveting still tighter the chains of the Russian people was, however, due less to the corruption and backwardness of Russian life than to the defects of the tsar himself. His love of liberty, though sincere, was in fact unreal. It flattered his vanity to pose before the world as the dispenser of benefits; but his theoretical liberalism linked with an autocratic will which brooked no contradiction. "You always want to instruct me!" he exclaimed to Gavril Romanovich Derzhavin Derzhavin, the List of Justice Ministers of Imperial Russia Minister of Justice, "but I am the autocratic emperor, and I will this, and nothing else!" "He would gladly have agreed," wrote Prince Czartoryski, "that every one should be free, if every one had freely done only what he wished." Moreover, this masterful temper joined an infirmity of purpose which ever let "I dare not wait upon I would," and which seized upon any excuse for postponing measures, the principles of which he had publicly approved.

Legal reform
Image:Althorv.jpg thumb|225px|Bust of Alexander I, by [[Thorvaldsen.]] The codification of the laws initiated in 1801 was never carried out during his reign; nothing was done to improve the intolerable status of the Russian peasantry; the constitution drawn up by Mikhail Speransky, and passed by the emperor, remained unsigned. Alexander, in fact, who, without being consciously tyrannical, possessed in full measure the tyrant's characteristic distrust of men of ability and independent judgment, lacked also the first requisite for a reforming sovereign: confidence in his people; and it was this want that vitiated such reforms as were actually realized. He experimented in the outlying provinces of his Empire; and the Russians noted with open murmurs that, not content with governing through foreign instruments, he was conferring on Poland, Finland and the Baltic States Baltic provinces benefits denied to themselves.

Social reforms
::''Main articles: Government reform of Alexander I and Mikhail Speransky'' In Russia, too, certain reforms were carried out, but they could not survive the suspicious interference of the autocrat and his officials. The newly created Russian Council of Ministers Council of Ministers and State Council under Governing Senate, endowed for the first time with certain theoretical powers, became in the end but the slavish instruments of the Tsar and his favorites of the moment. The elaborate system of Education, culminating in the reconstituted, or new-founded, university universities of Dorpat, Vilna, Kazan and Kharkov, was strangled in the supposed interests of "order" and of Russian Orthodox Church Orthodox piety; while the military settlements which Alexander proclaimed as a blessing to both soldiers and state were forced on the unwilling peasantry and army with pitiless cruelty. Even the Bible Society, through which the Emperor in his later mood of evangelism evangelical zeal proposed to bless his people, was conducted on the same ruthless lines. The Roman Catholic Church Roman Archbishop and the Orthodox Metropolitan bishop Metropolitans were forced to serve on its committee side by side with Protestant pastors; and village priests, trained to regard any tampering with the letter of the traditional documents of the Christian Church Church as mortal sin, became the unwilling instruments for the propagation of what they regarded as works of the Devil.

Influence on European politics

Views held by his contemporaries
Autocrat and "Jacobin", man of the world and mystic, he appeared to his contemporaries as a riddle which each read according to his own temperament. Napoleon I of France Napoleon I thought him a "shifty Derogatory use of Byzantine Byzantine", and called him the FranÃ§ois Joseph Talma Talma of the North, as ready to play any conspicuous part. To Klemens Wenzel von Metternich Metternich he was a madman to be humoured. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh Castlereagh, writing of him to Lord Liverpool, gives him credit for "grand qualities," but adds that he is "suspicious and undecided". Alexander's grandiose imagination was, however, more strongly attracted by the great questions of European politics than by attempts at domestic reform which, on the whole, wounded his pride by proving to him the narrow limits of absolute power.

Alliances with other powers
On the morrow of his accession he had reversed the policy of Paul, denounced the League of Neutrals, and made peace with United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (April, 1801), at the same time opening negotiations with Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II. Soon afterwards at Memel he entered into a close alliance with Kingdom of Prussia Prussia, not as he boasted from motives of policy, but in the spirit of true chivalry, out of friendship for the young List of Kings of Prussia King Frederick William III of Prussia Frederick William III and his beautiful wife Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The development of this alliance was interrupted by the short-lived peace of October, 1801; and for a while it seemed as though French Consulate France and Imperial Russia Russia might come to an understanding. Carried away by the enthusiasm of Laharpe, who had returned to Russia from Paris, Alexander began openly to proclaim his admiration for French institutions and for the person of Napoleon I of France NapolÃ©on Bonaparte . Soon, however, came a change. Laharpe, after a new visit to Paris, presented to the Tsar his Reflections on the True Nature of the Consulship for Life, which, as Alexander said, tore the veil from his eyes, and revealed Bonaparte "as not a true Patriotism patriot", but only as "the most famous tyrant the world has produced." His disillusionment was completed by the murder of the Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-CondÃ©, duc d'Enghien duc d'Enghien. The Russian court went into mourning for the last of the Prince of CondÃ© CondÃ©s, and diplomatic relations with Paris were broken off.

Opposition to Napoleon
The events of the Napoleonic Wars that followed belong to the general history of Europe; but the Tsar's attitude throughout is personal to himself, though pregnant with issues momentous for the world. In opposing Napoleon I, "the oppressor of Europe and the disturber of the world's peace," Alexander in fact already believed himself to be fulfilling a divine mission. In his instructions to Novosiltsov, his special envoy in London, the Tsar elaborated the motives of his policy in language which appealed as little to the common sense of the prime minister, William Pitt the Younger Pitt, as did later the treaty of the Holy Alliance to that of the foreign minister, Castlereagh. Yet the document is of great interest, as in it we find formulated for the first time in an official despatch those exalted ideals of international policy which were to play so conspicuous a part in the affairs of the world at the close of the revolutionary epoch, and issued at the end of the 19th century in the Rescript of Nicholas II of Russia Nicholas II and the conference of the Hague. The outcome of the war, Alexander argued, was not to be only the liberation of France, but the universal triumph of "the sacred Human rights rights of humanity". To attain this it would be necessary "after having attached the nations to their government by making these incapable of acting save in the greatest interests of their subjects, to fix the relations of the states amongst each other on more precise rules, and such as it is to their interest to respect." A general treaty was to become the basis of the relations of the states forming "the European Confederation"; and this, though "it was no question of realizing the dream of universal peace, would attain some of its results if, at the conclusion of the general war, it were possible to establish on clear principles the prescriptions of the rights of nations." "Why could not one submit to it," the Tsar continued, "the positive rights of nations, assure the privilege of neutrality, insert the obligation of never beginning war until all the resources which the mediation of a third party could offer have been exhausted, having by this means brought to light the respective grievances, and tried to remove them? It is on such principles as these that one could proceed to a general pacification, and give birth to a league of which the stipulations would form, so to speak, a new code of the law of nations, which, sanctioned by the greater part of the nations of Europe, would without difficulty become the immutable rule of the cabinets, while those who should try to infringe it would risk bringing upon themselves the forces of the new union."

1807 loss to French forces
Image:Alkruger.jpg thumb|300px|Equestrian portrait of Alexander I (1812) Meanwhile Napoleon, a little deterred by the Russian autocrat's youthful ideology, never gave up hope of detaching him from the coalition. He had no sooner entered Vienna in triumph than he opened negotiations with him; he resumed them after the Battle of Austerlitz (December 2, 1805). Imperial Russia and France, he urged, were "geographical allies"; there was, and could be, between them no true conflict of interests; together they might rule the world. But Alexander was still determined "to persist in the system of disinterestedness in respect of all the states of Europe which he had thus far followed," and he again allied himself with the Kingdom of Prussia. The campaign of Jena and the battle of Eylau followed; and Napoleon, though still intent on the Russian alliance, stirred up Poles, Turkic peoples Turks and Persians to break the obstinacy of the Tsar. A party too in Russia itself, headed by the Tsar's brother Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich of Russia Constantine Pavlovich, was clamorous for peace; but Alexander, after a vain attempt to form a new coalition, summoned the Russian nation to a holy war against Napoleon as the enemy of the Orthodox faith. The outcome was the rout of Friedland (June 13/ June 14 14, 1807). Napoleon saw his chance and seized it. Instead of making heavy terms, he offered to the chastened autocrat his alliance, and a partnership in his glory. The two Emperors met at Tilsit on the 25 June, 1807. Alexander, dazzled by Napoleon's genius and overwhelmed by his apparent generosity, was completely won. Napoleon knew well how to appeal to the exuberant imagination of his new-found friend. He would divide with Alexander the Empire of the world; as a first step he would leave him in possession of the Danube River Danubian principalities and give him a free hand to deal with Finland; and, afterwards, the Emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire East and Western Roman Empire West, when the time should be ripe, would drive the Ottoman Empire Turks from Europe and march across Asia to the conquest of Indian subcontinent India. A programme so stupendous awoke in Alexander's impressionable mind an ambition to which he had hitherto been a stranger. The interests of Europe were forgotten. "What is Europe?" he exclaimed to the French ambassador. "Where is it, if it is not you and we?"

Prussia
The brilliance of these new visions did not, however, blind Alexander to the obligations of friendship; and he refused to retain the Danubian principalities as the price for suffering a further dismemberment of Prussia. "We have made loyal war," he said, "we must make a loyal peace." It was not long before the first enthusiasm of Tilsit began to wane. Napoleon I was prodigal of promises, but niggard of their fulfilment. The French remained in Prussia, the Russians on the Danube; and each accused the other of breach of faith. Meanwhile, however, the personal relations of Alexander and Napoleon were of the most cordial character; and it was hoped that a fresh meeting might adjust all differences between them. The meeting took place at Erfurt in October, 1808, and resulted in a treaty which defined the common policy of the two Emperors. But Alexander's relations with Napoleon none the less suffered a change. He realized that in Napoleon sentiment never got the better of reason, that as a matter of fact he had never intended his proposed "grand enterprise" seriously, and had only used it to preoccupy the mind of the Tsar while he consolidated his own power in Central Europe. From this moment the French alliance was for Alexander also not a fraternal agreement to rule the world, but an affair of pure policy. He used it, in the first instance, to remove "the geographical enemy" from the gates of Saint Petersburg by wresting Finland from the Sweden Swedes (1809); and he hoped by means of it to make the Danube the southern frontier of Russia.

Franco-Russian Alliance
Events were in fact rapidly tending to the rupture of the Franco-Russian alliance. Alexander, indeed, assisted Napoleon in the war of 1809, but he declared plainly that he would not allow the Austrian Empire to be crushed out of existence; and Napoleon complained bitterly of the inactivity of the Russian troops during the campaign. The Tsar in his turn protested against Napoleon's encouragement of the Poles. In the matter of the French alliance he knew himself to be practically isolated in Russia, and he declared that he could not sacrifice the interest of his people and empire to his affection for Napoleon. "I don't want anything for myself," he said to the French ambassador, "therefore the world is not large enough to come to an understanding on the affairs of Poland, if it is a question of its restoration." The treaty of Vienna, which added largely to the Duchy of Warsaw, he complained had "ill requited him for his loyalty," and he was only mollified for the time by Napoleon's public declaration that he had no intention of restoring Poland, and by a convention, signed on the 4 January, 1810 but not ratified, abolishing the Polish name and orders of chivalry. But if Alexander suspected Napoleon, Napoleon was no less suspicious of Alexander; and, partly to test his sincerity, he sent an almost peremptory request for the hand of the Grand Duchess Anne, the younger sister of the Tsar. After some little delay Alexander returned a polite refusal, on the plea of the tender age of the Princess and the objection of the Empress dowager Sophie Marie Dorothea of WÃ¼rttemberg Maria Fyodorovna to the marriage. Napoleon's answer was to refuse to ratify the convention of the 4 January, 1810 and to announce his engagement to the Archduke Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria Marie Louise in such a way as to lead Alexander to suppose that the two marriage treaties had been negotiated simultaneously. From this time the relation between the two emperors gradually became more and more strained. The annexation of Oldenburg (state) Oldenburg, of which the Peter Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Oldenburg Duke of Oldenburg (January 3, 1754–July 2, 1823) was the Tsar's uncle, to France in December, 1810, added another to the personal grievances of Alexander against Napoleon; while the ruinous reaction of "the continental system" on Russian trade made it impossible for the Tsar to maintain a policy which was Napoleon's chief motive for the alliance. An acid correspondence followed, and ill-concealed armaments, which culminated in the Summer of 1812 in Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Yet, even after the French had passed the frontier, Alexander still protested that his personal sentiments towards the Emperor were unaltered; "but," he added, "God Himself cannot undo the past." It was the occupation of Moscow and the desecration of the Kremlin, the sacred centre of Holy Russia, that changed his sentiment for Napoleon into passionate hatred. In vain the French Emperor, within eight days of his entry into Moscow, wrote to the Tsar a letter, which was one long cry of distress, revealing the desperate straits of the Grand Army, and appealed to "any remnant of his former sentiments." Alexander returned no answer to these "fanfaronnades." "No more peace with Napoleon!" he cried, "He or I, I or He: we cannot longer reign together!"

The campaign of 1812
Image:Russparis.jpg thumb|350px|''Russian army enters [[Paris in 1814''.]] The campaign of 1812 was the turning-point of Alexander's life; and its horrors, for which his sensitive nature felt much of the responsibility, overset still more a mind never too well balanced. When Napoleon crossed the Russian border with his Grand Army, Alexander I was quite unprepared for the war, trusting the Francophile chancellor Rumyantsev Nikolay Rumyantsev more than his French ambassador Alexander Kurakin, who had warned him about Napoleon's bellicose plans. Russia proclaimed a Napoleon's invasion of Russia Patriotic War in defence of the Motherland. At the burning of Moscow, he declared afterwards, his own soul had found illumination, and he had realized once for all the divine revelation to him of his mission as the peacemaker of Europe. He tried to calm the unrest of his conscience by correspondence with the leaders of the evangelicalism evangelical revival on the continent, and sought for omens and supernatural guidance in texts and passages of scripture. It was not, however, according to his own account, till he met the Barbara Juliana, Baroness von Krudener Baroness de KrÃ¼dener — a religious adventuress who made the conversion of princes her special mission—at Basel, in the Autumn of 1813, that his soul found peace. From this time a mystic pietism became the avowed force of his political, as of his private actions. Madame de KrÃ¼dener, and her colleague, the evangelist Empaytaz, became the confidants of the Emperor's most secret thoughts; and during the campaign that ended in the occupation of Paris the imperial prayer-meetings were the oracle on whose revelations hung the fate of the world.

Liberal political views
From the end of the year 1818 Alexander's views began to change. A revolutionary conspiracy (political) conspiracy among the officers of the guard, and a foolish plot to kidnap him on his way to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818) Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, are said to have shaken the foundations of his Liberalism. At Aix he came for the first time into intimate contact with Metternich, and the astute Austrian was swift to take advantage of the psychological moment. From this time dates the ascendancy of Metternich over the mind of the Russian Emperor and in the councils of Europe. It was, however, no case of sudden conversion. Though alarmed by the revolutionary agitation in Germany, which culminated in the murder of his agent, the dramatist August von Kotzebue (March 23, 1819), Alexander approved of Castlereagh's protest against Metternich's policy of "the governments contracting an alliance against the peoples," as formulated in the Carlsbad Decrees of July, 1819, and deprecated any intervention of Europe to support "a league of which the sole object is the absurd pretensions of absolute power." He still declared his belief in "free institutions, though not in such as age forced from feebleness, nor contracts ordered by popular leaders from their sovereigns, nor constitutions granted in difficult circumstances to tide over a crisis. "Liberty," he maintained, "should be confined within just limits. And the limits of liberty are the principles of order". It was the apparent triumph of the principles of disorder in the revolutions of Naples and Piedmont (Italy) Piedmont, combined with increasingly disquieting symptoms of discontent in France, Germany, and among his own people, that completed Alexander's conversion. In the seclusion of the little town of Troppau, where in October of 1820 the powers met in conference, Metternich found an opportunity for cementing his influence over Alexander, which had been wanting amid the turmoil and feminine intrigues of Vienna and Aix. Here, in confidence begotten of friendly chats over afternoon tea, the disillusioned autocrat confessed his mistake. "You have nothing to regret," he said sadly to the exultant chancellor, "but I have!" The issue was momentous. In January Alexander had still upheld the ideal of a free confederation of the European states, symbolized by the Holy Alliance, against the policy of a dictatorship of the great powers, symbolized by the Quadruple Treaty; he had still protested against the claims of collective Europe to interfere in the internal concerns of the sovereign states. On 19 November he signed the Troppau Protocol, which consecrated the principle of intervention and wrecked the harmony of the concert.

The revolt of the Greeks
At Congress of Laibach, whither in the Spring (season) Spring of 1821 the congress had been adjourned, Alexander first heard of the Greek War of Independence Revolt of the Greeks. From this time until his death his mind was torn between his anxiety to realize his dream of a confederation of Europe and his traditional mission as leader of the Orthodox crusade against the Ottoman Empire. At first, under the careful nursing of Metternich, the former motive prevailed. He struck the name of Alexander Ypsilanti (1792-1828) Alexander Ypsilanti from the Russian army list, and directed his foreign minister, John Capodistria Giovanni, Count Capo d'Istria, himself a Greek, to disavow all sympathy of Russia with his enterprise; and, next year, a deputation of the Morea Greeks on its way to the Congress of Verona was turned back by his orders on the road. He made, indeed, some effort to reconcile the principles at conflict in his mind. He offered to surrender the claim, successfully asserted when the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II had been excluded from the Holy Alliance and the affairs of the Ottoman empire from the deliberations of Vienna, that the affairs of the East were the "domestic concerns of Russia," and to march into the Ottoman Empire, as Austria had marched into Naples, "as the mandatory of Europe." Metternich's opposition to this, illogical, but natural from the Austrian point of view, first opened his eyes to the true character of Austria's attitude towards his ideals. Once more in Russia, far from the fascination of Metternich's personality, the immemorial spirit of his people drew him back into itself; and when, in the Autumn of 1825, he took his dying Empress Louise of Baden (January 24, 1779–May 26, 1826) for change of air to the south of Russia, in order—as all Europe supposed—to place himself at the head of the great army concentrated near the Ottoman frontiers, his language was no longer that of "the peace-maker of Europe," but of the Orthodox Tsar determined to take the interests of his people and of his religion "into his own hands". Before the momentous issue could be decided, however, Alexander died in Taganrog on 1 December (November 18, Julian calendar O.S.) 1825, "crushed", to use his own words, "beneath the terrible burden of a crown" which he had more than once declared his intention of resigning. A report, current at the time and often revived, affirmed that he did not in fact die. By some it is supposed that a mysterious hermit named Fomich, who lived at Tomsk until 1870 and was treated with peculiar deference by successive Tsars Nicholas I of Russia Nicholas I and Alexander II of Russia Alexander II, was none other than Alexander.

A tragic figure
Modern history knows no more tragic figure than that of Alexander. The brilliant promise of his early years; the haunting memory of the crime by which he had obtained the power to realize his ideals; and, in the end, the terrible legacy he left to Russia: a principle of government which, under lofty pretensions, veiled a tyranny supported by spies and secret police; an uncertain succession; an army permeated by organized disaffection; an armed Poland, whose hunger for liberty the tsar had whetted but not satisfied; the quarrel with the Ottoman Empire, with its alternative of war or humiliation for Russia; an educational system rotten with official hypocrisy; a Church in which conduct counted for nothing, Orthodoxy and ceremonial observance for everything; economical and financial conditions scarce recovering from the verge of ruin; and lastly, that curse of Russia—serfdom.

Private life
In private life Alexander displayed many lovable qualities. All authorities combine in praising his handsome presence and the affability and charm of his address, together with a certain simplicity of personal tastes, which led him in his intercourse with his friends or with the representatives of friendly powers to dispense with ceremony and etiquette. His personal friendship, too, once bestowed, was never lightly withdrawn. By nature he was sociable and pleasure-loving, he proved himself a notable patron of the arts and he took a conspicuous part in all the gaieties of the congress of Vienna. In his later years, however, he fell into a mood of settled melancholy; and, though still accessible to all who chose to approach him with complaints or petitions, he withdrew from all but the most essential social functions, and lived a life of strenuous work and of Spartan simplicity. His gloom had been increased by domestic misfortune. He had been married, on October 9, 1793, without his wishes being consulted, to the beautiful and amiable princess Louise of Baden (Elisabeth Alexeyevna), a political match which, as he regretfully confessed to his friend Frederick William III of Prussia Frederick William III, had proved the misfortune of both; and he consoled himself in the traditional manner. The two children of the marriage, grandduchess Maria died on 26 June (or 8 July) 1800, and the grandduchess Elizaveta died on 12 May 1808. Their common sorrow drew husband and wife closer together. Towards the close of his life their reconciliation was completed by the wise charity of the Empress in sympathizing deeply with him over the death of his beloved daughter by Princess Maria Naryshkina.

Death
Tsar Alexander I, the man of mystery, became increasingly involved in mysticism and increasingly more suspicious of those around him. On the way to the conference in Aachen, Germany, an attempt had been made to kidnap him. Now he would trust no one. At home, his young daughter, an only child, died, and his wife became ill. In 1825, the "Tsar of All the Russians" died in the city of Taganrog. After an official announcement of the Tsar's death, a British ambassador at the Russian court said he had seen Alexander boarding a ship. It was later rumored that a monk in Siberia, Feodor Kuzmich, was really the former ruler. Whatever the truth, when the Soviet Government opened Alexander's grave many, many years later, it was empty. Within weeks of Alexander's death, there was an unsuccessful attempt by liberal-minded military officers to seize power from the crown, now known as the Decembrist Revolt. The Decembrists were caught off guard by confusion regarding the order of succession. Historians believe that the secret societies to wrest power from the crown appeared after the Russian officers' return from their Napoleonic wars Napoleonic campaigns in Europe in 1815.

Offspring
He had other illegitimate children, nine all together. His other mistresses were Sophia Vsevolojsky, Maria Ivanovna Katatcharova, Veronica Dzierzanowska, Marguerite-Josephine Weimer, and Princess Barbara Tourkestanova. {{start box}} {{succession box three to one|before1=Paul I of Russia Paul I|before2=Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden Gustav IV Adolf|before3=—|title1=Emperor of Russia.html">Grand Duke of Finland title3=King of Poland|years1=March 23, 1801–December 1, 1825|after=Nicholas I of Russia|years2=1809–1825|years3=1815–1825}} {{end box}} ----- {{1911}} Category:1777 births Category:1825 deaths Category:Natives of Saint Petersburg Category:Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov Category:Russian emperors Category:Rulers of Finland Alexander I of Russia bg:Ð?Ð»ÐµÐºÑ?Ð°Ð½Ð´ÑŠÑ€ I (Ð ÑƒÑ?Ð¸Ñ?) cs:Alexandr I. PavloviÄ? da:Alexander 1. af Rusland de:Alexander I. (Russland) et:Aleksander I es:Alejandro I de Rusia eo:Aleksandro la 1-a (Rusio) fr:Alexandre Ier de Russie ko:ëŸ¬ì‹œì•„ì?˜ ì•Œë ‰ì‚°ë“œë¥´ 1ì„¸ id:Alexander I dari Rusia it:Alessandro I di Russia he:×?×œ×›×¡× ×“×¨ ×”×¨×?×©×•×Ÿ ×§×™×¡×¨ ×¨×•×¡×™×” lt:Aleksandras I, Rusija nl:Alexander I van Rusland ja:ã‚¢ãƒ¬ã‚¯ã‚µãƒ³ãƒ‰ãƒ«1ä¸– no:Alexander I av Russland pl:Aleksander I Romanow pt:Alexandre I da RÃºssia ru:Ð?Ð»ÐµÐºÑ?Ð°Ð½Ð´Ñ€ I sq:Aleksandri I sr:Ð?Ð»ÐµÐºÑ?Ð°Ð½Ð´Ð°Ñ€ I Ð Ð¾Ð¼Ð°Ð½Ð¾Ð² fi:Aleksanteri I (VenÃ¤jÃ¤) sv:Alexander I av Ryssland uk:ÐžÐ»ÐµÐºÑ?Ð°Ð½Ð´Ñ€ Ð† (Ñ€Ð¾Ñ?Ñ–Ð¹Ñ?ÑŒÐºÐ¸Ð¹ Ñ–Ð¼Ð¿ÐµÑ€Ð°Ñ‚Ð¾Ñ€) zh:äºšåŽ†å±±å¤§ä¸€ä¸– (ä¿„å›½)

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