by Alan Palmer
For the first three months of his reign, there was little he could do to free himself from Pahlen’s over-bearing authority. Then a curious incident in June gave Alexander his opportunity. Early in the month Pahlen discovered that a priest in St Petersburg was claiming to have received a miraculous ikon from the Holy Virgin on which was inscribed the ominous threat, ‘God punishes all the murderers of Paul I.’ Pahlen at once interrogated the priest and had him flogged; but he maintained he was acting with Marie Feodorovna’s blessing and that she, too, had experienced a spiritual revelation which cried out for vengeance. At this point Pahlen raised the question with Alexander, who found his mother already incensed by Pahlen’s behaviour and demanding his dismissal. The Tsar sent a message to Pahlen asking for suggestions on how to ease the tension at Court. At once Pahlen offered to surrender all his official posts, confident that Alexander was still too inexperienced to let him go. ‘That is a very good solution he has found’, Alexander commented. ‘Now let him make it perfect by a quick departure from the city.’18 Within hours Pahlen was on his way to Riga. It was announced in the official gazette on 22 June that, because of ill-health, Count Pahlen had resigned and was leaving St Petersburg to seek a spell of convalescence on his estate at Eckau in Latvia. The hardy climate seems to have benefited him: he lived for another quarter of a century, but took no further part in public affairs.
Most of the other conspirators found it discreet to retire from the capital at the earliest opportunity and fade into provincial obscurity. Some were later entrusted by Alexander with high office: thus General Bennigsen, after serving a term as Governor-General of Lithuania, was appointed an army commander in 1806; while Prince Peter Volkonsky, who had taken a smaller part in the conspiracy, became an aide-de-camp to Alexander and remained a close friend for the whole of his life. But the terrible drama at the Mikhailovsky so played on Alexander’s conscience that he wished, as much as possible, to avoid contact with any of the men who had plotted the palace revolution.19 Count Panin was in a different position, for though he had first spoken to Alexander of the need to remove Paul from the throne, he had been absent from St Petersburg on the night of the murder and was less implicated than Alexander himself. Panin’s father and uncle had been influential figures at Catherine II’s Court and, in his desire to associate the new reign with his grandmother’s achievements, Alexander turned to Panin at the beginning of April 1801 when he wished to find a respected dignitary who would take charge of foreign affairs. In practice, Panin was far too reactionary for Alexander’s policy of conciliating France; and Panin, for his part, openly expressed his dislike of Alexander’s ‘liberal opinions or the prejudices which La Harpe inspired in his youth’.20 By mid-summer of 1801 it had become clear that the two men were so different in temperament and attitude that they could not work together, but Panin possessed remarkable talents in organizing the routine business of a government department and it suited Alexander to retain his services until order was achieved in the diplomatic services. He remained in office until after the Tsar’s coronation.
Alexander’s Coronation in Moscow (September 1801)
Within the Court itself there was throughout the summer a strong desire for the Tsar to travel south to Moscow and be crowned in the old capital as soon as possible. Alexander shared this sentiment: he knew he would only be recognized as undoubted ‘Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias’ when he had accomplished the elaborate ritual of coronation in the Uspensky Cathedral. Etiquette demanded the lapse of a reasonable length of time from his father’s burial, but common sense dictated that the ceremony should take place before winter. Eventually it was agreed that the coronation should be celebrated in mid-September by the Russian calendar (27 September by the calendar of western Europe), and, as the first rains of autumn came to Russia, the great nobles and their retainers set off from St Petersburg for Moscow, four hundred miles away. Only four years and five months had passed since they made similar journeys for Paul’s coronation.
Alexander and Elizabeth left St Petersburg on 11 September and travelled by easy stages to Novgorod and thence on to Tver.21 As he came nearer to Moscow, however, Alexander’s impatience mounted. The Imperial carriage and their escort clattered into Tver on the evening of 16 September, still a hundred miles from Moscow. To the consternation of his aides – and, indeed, of his wife – Alexander decided to snatch a hurried meal, stretch out for a couple of hours on a couch, and then resume his journey at two in the morning. His restless energy was a strain on everyone’s nerves. The road was extremely primitive, little more than a dirt track, and Alexander insisted on covering the hundred miles in sixteen hours, including a break for a light meal in the afternoon. ‘At dinner’, wrote Elizabeth to her mother on the following morning, ‘we were able to have a quick wash, of which we had a great need for I believe I have never been so filthy in my life. During all the journey we raised a frightful cloud of dust.’22 At six in the evening of 17 September Alexander and Elizabeth reached the Petrovsky Palace, on the north-western approaches to Moscow. There, in the neo-classical elegance of one of Catherine’s later palaces, they rested for three days before making their solemn entry into the old capital. Even Elizabeth was puzzled why her husband should have been in such a hurry; but it was not the last time that he forced his horses to be driven recklessly for no logical reason, a spontaneous gust of temperament governing his senses.
The coronation ceremonies of the Tsars always emphasized the close relationship between ecclesiastical authority and secular sovereignty in ‘Holy Russia’. For nearly four centuries Moscow had been accorded a unique status as the repository of the soul of Russian Orthodoxy, a national shrine to millions of devout believers. In 1801 Moscow was still a city of glittering domes and cupolas, its streets filled with the constant pealing of church-bells; one man in every fifty of its inhabitants was a priest, and there were more basilicas within its walls than in Rome.23 But the city was not only a spiritual centre: it was the traditional home of the Tsars and the solemn entry of a new sovereign through the Tver Gate and down the long avenue to the Kremlin was a moment of deep significance for each of his subjects, an assertion of continuity between the heritage of Muscovy and the empire which Peter had created from his artificial capital in the Northern marshes. Hence, although the climax to the ceremonies was the formal act of crowning within the Uspensky Cathedral, the coronation was preceded by a week of elaborate spectacle hallowed for every true Russian by history and convention.
For Alexander the ceremonies began on Sunday, 20 September, when he left the Petrovsky Palace and rode slowly astride a white horse along a four-mile route to the Kremlin. It was a gloriously fine autumnal day and the city streets were filled with thousands of people, who knelt and made the sign of the cross in blessing as their ‘Little Father’, their ‘Dear Angel’, passed before them. Some tried to kiss his riding boots or even, very dangerously, the legs of his horse. He acknowledged their devotion as though in a dream, a carved smile lighting his face with the spirituality of an idol. Ahead of him rode the cavalry of the Guard regiments, their horses caparisoned in red and gold, and the nobility of Moscow wearing braided costumes far older in cut than anyone would see in Petersburg. The Empress Elizabeth followed her husband in a golden coach drawn by eight greys: she was less at ease than Alexander, perhaps because she could not identify herself as he could with Moscow’s deep sense of the past. The coach reminded her of a lantern on wheels and she felt slightly ridiculous as it trundled her slowly into the city with four small pages perched precariously on the coach-board facing her. But, apart from the formal procession into the city, the day’s events were not unduly taxing. The Imperial couple entered the principal cathedrals and churches, kissed the sacred ikons and took up residence in the Slobodsky Palace. There were more exhausting occasions ahead.24
Throughout the following week there was a succession of banquets and solemn receptions, and both Alexander and Elizabeth were thankful for each day’s task completed. The
Tsar’s training in self-control and his gift in dissimulation enabled him to greet people with an open affability on which they commented with extravagant warmth – ‘the cloudless sun of his smile’, ‘the coming of Spring casting from the mind the dark anguish of Winter.’25 Elizabeth, who had been unhappy in Moscow during Paul’s coronation festivities, was not at ease with the gentry of the old capital: ‘Not knowing their names or their families, I am hard-pressed what to say’, she confessed to her mother after the first big reception; and she added that she had been happier dining with the Governor-General of Moscow, ‘the greater part of his circle being from Petersburg’.26 By the end of the week she was complaining, too, of the ‘constant moving around’: three nights when they arrived from Tver at the Petrovsky, five nights in the Slobodsky, five more in the Imperial apartments of the Kremlin, and then the prospect of returning to the Slobodsky for the remainder of their stay in the city.27 The truth was that both husband and wife were beginning to suffer from intensive stage-fright as the protracted theatricals of the Moscow visit approached their climax. Czartoryski wrote later that ‘the young and handsome couple who were to be crowned did not look happy’, and he added that Alexander ‘had never more strongly felt remorse at having contributed, against his intentions, to his father’s death.’28 The Act of Succession, which Paul had issued on his coronation day, was preserved in a casket among the holy relics behind the altar-screen of the Uspensky, and Alexander felt his father’s spiritual presence around him in the Kremlin. At times the burden of self-criticism drove him to tears; and on this occasion his wife was little comfort to him, for on the very eve of the coronation she was forced to retire to her room with ‘a bilious fever’.29 The thought of the five-hour religious ceremony was agony to both of them.
The weather remained fine for coronation day itself.30 Heralds rode through the streets soon after dawn proclaiming that this day – Sunday, 27 September 1801 – an Emperor would be crowned within the city. Tables spread with food and drink for the townsfolk were set up along the thoroughfare from the Krasnyia Gate through the poorer districts to the Nikolsky Gate in the Kremlin wall; but few of the ordinary people saw anything of the ceremony itself. Alexander and Elizabeth were robed in their apartments and passed in procession through the Hall of St Vladimir, with its black and red silk banners, to the ‘Beautiful Stairs’ – often translated as ‘Red Staircase’ – where briefly their subjects could see them beneath a golden baldichino as they moved slowly to the porch of the Uspensky Cathedral, less than a hundred yards away. The atmosphere within the church was heavy with centuries of accumulated piety, reflected candlelight flickering mysteriously from frescoes around the walls and ceiling, catching the jewels of the ikonostasis and the gold of vestments and banners. Alexander was escorted by the higher church dignitaries past a raised dais in the nave to a throne encrusted with nearly a thousand precious stones; and Elizabeth was seated beside him on an ivory throne, originally carved for the daughter of the last Byzantine Emperor. Although Metropolitan Platon of Moscow presided over the Liturgy, the Tsars by tradition were not mere recipients in their coronation service. It was Alexander who said the Orthodox Confession and who knelt on his knees to pray aloud for his empire and his subjects. After being anointed with Holy Oil by the Metropolitan, Alexander swore a solemn oath to preserve the integrity of the Russian lands and the sacred concept of autocracy; and he was then permitted, as one blessed by God, to pass through the Royal Doors into the Sanctuary where the Tsars had, on this one occasion of their lives, the privilege of administering to themselves the Holy Sacrament. But Alexander felt unworthy to exercise the priestly office in this way; and, as Platon offered him the chalice, he knelt to receive communion as a member of the laity. Although only the higher clergy and their acolytes witnessed this gesture of humility, it was soon known in the city at large and created a deep impression of the new Tsar’s sense of spiritual discipline.31
At last the Metropolitan led Alexander back from the Sanctuary and up to the coronation platform. He handed him the Imperial crown made originally for his grandmother in 1762. Alexander lifted the crown and held it high for a moment, a nine-pound weight of gold and diamonds. Then he lowered it firmly on his head. He next crowned Elizabeth and when sovereign and consort had received the Metropolitan’s blessing, they returned to their thrones and accepted homage from the members of the Imperial family. Finally they were robed in special vestments of rich brocade, escorted back up the Beautiful Stairs and formally presented to the people, to whom they bowed three times in honour of the Trinity. At once the bells of the Kremlin towers and the ceremonial roar of cannon let Moscow, and all the countryside around, know that Alexander was, indeed, the crowned Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias.
The Imperial couple remained in Moscow for a full month after the coronation ceremony. There were banquets for several hundred guests, masked balls to attend, a huge open-air feast for the townsfolk, plays, concerts and military parades. Now that the most solemn purpose of the visit was safely accomplished Alexander’s spirits began to rise. His good humour spread to all his attendants and friends, so that they commented on the change of mood as though it were a transition from Lent to Easter. To some it seemed as if he were already ensnared by the charms of Maria Naryshkin, a sultry Polish-born Countess who pursued him relentlessly from one social evening to another, and it is probable that her predatory activities account, in part, for Elizabeth’s weariness with Moscow.32 But much of Alexander’s high spirits were spontaneous, he always enjoyed a waltz and the polonaise, even the restrained orderliness of a quadrille. So, one suspects, did Elizabeth for, although she continued to complain of having to go to ‘ball after ball’, her letters listed the delights of the various entertainments: at Madame Apraxine’s there were few people present and one could dance freely; so one could, too, at Count Saltykov’s, though the company was duller; and at Count Chremetiev’s villa, two miles beyond the city limits, there were fireworks and illuminations; while there was another nobleman – unspecified, and therefore presumably anxious for recognition – who was organizing an afternoon horse race, a novelty which Elizabeth was determined not to miss.33
But not all the events of the coronation visit were frivolous. On the eve of their eighth wedding anniversary Alexander and Elizabeth went on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Sergius at the Troitsa Monastery, forty miles from Moscow on the road to Yaroslavl; and there was another day when the Imperial couple had a chance to distribute gifts to the foundlings of the city. Moreover, by tradition, the coronation was a moment for bestowing titles, gifts, and land on faithful courtiers; but Alexander gave only a few honours and refused to hand over Crown peasants in serfdom to the nobility and gentry who had given him their support. Though he might not be sure how to remedy the miseries of serfdom, at least he was determined that the institution should not be allowed to grow while he was on the throne. In a negative way, his decision was a portent. The landowners were not sure how to interpret it; and there were many at the coronation who looked in surprise at the medal they were given for their services. On one side it showed Alexander’s profile, austerely proud as a Roman Emperor, and on the obverse was engraved a pillar, bearing the word ‘Law’, surmounted by a replica of the coronation crown and the inscription ‘Such is the guarantee of universal happiness.’34 It could mean much, or nothing: who was there to read the young Tsar’s mind?
The Moscow visit outlasted autumn. Rain swept in from the east and with it the threat of sleet and snow. At last, on Tuesday, 27 October, the Imperial calvalcade set out along the road towards Tver and the northern capital. The route, which had been dry and dusty six weeks before, was now thick with mud. It made no difference to Alexander’s madcap haste. ‘The Emperor was absolutely determined to complete the journey in less than five days’, wrote Elizabeth afterwards; and in consequence they had only a few hours’ sleep on the first two nights and drove throughout the fourth, arriving in St Petersburg late on the Saturday evening. They wer
e mud-stained and exhausted, relieved (as Elizabeth said) to have a moment to clean their teeth – but they were thoroughly happy in laughing at the misfortunes they had brought on themselves.35 For, though he was now crowned sovereign of the largest empire in the world, Alexander was still some weeks short of his twenty-fourth birthday; and, despite Countess Naryshkin, Elizabeth at twenty-three remained his chief companion and sole confidante.
* To assist Elizabeth to recover from the shock of the events at the Mikhailovsky, Alexander invited his father-in-law and his mother-in-law to Russia. They arrived in St Petersburg on 23 July 1801, accompanied by Elizabeth’s brother Charles (aged fifteen) and her sisters Amelia (twenty-four) and Marie (nineteen). The Badenese royal family remained in Russia throughout what was left of the summer, and Amelia stayed on as a companion for Elizabeth for several years. The remainder of the party travelled to Sweden in September. On 16 December Elizabeth’s father died as a result of injuries received when his sledge overturned near the Swedish town of Arboga.
† Karazin subsequently became the first Administrative Secretary of the Directorate of Schools (established in 1803) and played a considerable part in securing governmental support for a University at Kharkov, which was opened in January 1805. He owned estates in Kharkov Province.
‘The Emperor wants it Thus’
Foreign Affairs: Isolation or Alignment?
Alexander returned to St Petersburg with a new sense of elation and inner confidence. During the summer of 1801 people had noticed how, from time to time, he would appear distracted, walking diffidently with stumbling steps: now, in November, he strode rapidly, shook hands with an iron grip and looked as if he had a purpose in all he was doing.1 It was not difficult to find a reason for this change of mood. The coronation ceremonies were safely behind him and he had seen for himself the depth and warmth of his subjects’ loyalties. They received him as a sovereign in his own right, not as a usurper or a parricide. For the first time since his accession Alexander could convince himself that his father’s ghost was laid. Cautiously he was beginning to assert his individuality. A week before leaving Moscow he granted Count Panin three years’ leave of absence ‘for reasons of health’, thus freeing the administration from the last of the men who had conspired against Paul. For, though he might wish to modify the structure of government, Alexander was determined to exercise his absolute will over questions which – as he said later – ‘sovereigns alone are capable of deciding’.2 Foremost among such matters was the conduct of international affairs. With Panin ‘resting’ on his estate at Marfino, the Tsar would find it easier to make his début on the diplomatic stage.