|
Russia
Paul I – Russian Emperor: 17 November 1796 – 23 March 1801
1797 EM Copper Kopek 28mm (20.41 grams)
Reference: C# 94.1, C# 94.2, C# 94.3
Imperial monogram of Paul I.
1. КОПЕЙКА 1797 Е.М.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
Paul I (Russian: Па́вел I Петро́вич; Pavel Petrovich) (1 October S. 20 September] 1754 – 23 March S. 11 March] 1801) reigned as Emperor of Russia between 1796 and 1801. Officially, he was the only son of Peter III (reigned January to July 1762) and of Catherine the Great (reigned 1762-1796), though Catherine hinted that he was fathered by her lover Sergei Saltykov .
Paul remained overshadowed by his mother for much of his life. His reign lasted five years, ending with his assassination by conspirators. His most important achievement was the adoption of the laws of succession to the Russian throne – rules that lasted until the end of the Romanov dynasty and of the Russian Empire.
He became de facto Grand Master of the Order of Hospitallers , and ordered the construction of a number of Maltese thrones (as of 2016 on display in the State Hermitage Museum , Gatchina Palace and the Kremlin Armoury).
Paul was born in the Palace of Empress Elizabeth in St Petersburg . He was the son of the Grand Duchess Catherine, later Empress Catherine the Great , who was the wife of Elizabeth’s heir and nephew, the Grand Duke Peter, later Emperor Peter III .
During his infancy, Paul was taken immediately from his mother by the Empress Elizabeth , whose overwhelming attention may have done him more harm than good. As a boy, he was reported to be intelligent and good-looking. His pug-nosed facial features in later life are attributed to an attack of typhus , from which he suffered in 1771. Some claim that his mother Catherine hated him, and was restrained from putting him to death. Massie is more compassionate towards Catherine; in his 2011 biography of her he claims that once Catherine had done her duty in providing an heir to the throne Elizabeth had no more use for her, and Paul was taken from his mother at birth and withheld from her presence except during very limited moments. Paul was put in the charge of a trustworthy governor, Nikita Ivanovich Panin , and of competent tutors. It is interesting to note that Panin’s nephew went on to become one of Paul’s assassins.
The Russian Imperial court, first of Elizabeth and then of Catherine, was not an ideal home for a lonely, needy and often sickly boy. However, Catherine took great trouble to arrange his first marriage with Wilhelmina Louise (who acquired the Russian name “Natalia Alexeievna”), one of the daughters of Ludwig IX , Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt , in 1773, and allowed him to attend the Council in order that he might be trained for his work as Emperor. His tutor, Poroshin,
complained that he was “always in a hurry”, acting and speaking without
reflection.
 After Paul’s first wife died in childbirth, his mother arranged another marriage on 7 October 1776, with the beautiful Sophia Dorothea of Württemberg , who received the new Orthodox name Maria Feodorovna.
The use made of his name by the rebel Yemelyan Pugachev , who impersonated his father Peter, tended no doubt to render Paul’s position more difficult. On the birth of his first child in 1777 the Empress gave him an estate, Pavlovsk . Paul and his wife gained leave to travel through western Europe in 1781–1782. In 1783 the Empress granted him another estate at Gatchina , where he was allowed to maintain a brigade of soldiers whom he drilled on the Prussian model, an unpopular stance at the time.
Relationship with Catherine the Great
Catherine the Great and her son and heir, the future Paul I, maintained a distant relationship throughout the reign of the former. The aunt of Catherine’s husband, Empress Elizabeth , took up the child as a passing fancy. 28 Elizabeth proved an obsessive but incapable caretaker, as she had raised no children of her own. Paul was supervised by a variety of caregivers. Roderick McGrew briefly relates the neglect to which the infant heir was sometimes subject: “On one occasion he fell out of his crib and slept the night away unnoticed on the floor.” 30 Even after Elizabeth’s death, relations with Catherine hardly improved. Paul was often jealous of the favors she would shower upon her lovers. In one instance the empress gave to one of her court favourites fifty-thousand rubles on her birthday, while Paul received a cheap watch. Paul’s early isolation from his mother created a distance between them which later events would reinforce. She never considered inviting him to share her power in governing Russia. And once Paul’s son Alexander was born, it appeared that she had found a more suitable heir.
Catherine’s absolute power and the delicate balance of courtier-status greatly influenced the relationship at Court with Paul, who openly disregarded his mother’s opinions. Paul adamantly protested his mother’s policies, writing a veiled criticism in his Reflections, a dissertation on military reform. In it he directly disparaged expansionist warfare in favour of a more defensive military policy. Unenthusiastically received by his mother, Reflections appeared a threat to her authority and added weight to her suspicion of an internal conspiracy with Paul at its center. For a courtier to have openly supported or shown intimacy towards Paul, especially following this publication, would have meant political suicide.
Paul spent the following years away from the Imperial Court, contented to remain at his private estates at Gatchina with his growing family and to perform Prussian drill-exercises. As Catherine II grew older she became less concerned that her son attend court functions; her attentions focused primarily on Paul’s son, the future Emperor Alexander I.
It was not until 1787 that Catherine II may have in fact decided to exclude her son from succession. 184 After Paul’s sons Alexander and Constantine were born, she immediately had them placed under her charge, just as Elizabeth had done with Paul. That Catherine grew to favour Alexander as sovereign of Russia rather than Paul is unsurprising. She met secretly with Alexander’s tutor de La Harpe to discuss his pupil’s ascension, and attempted to convince Maria, his mother, to sign a proposal authorizing her son’s legitimacy. Both efforts proved fruitless, and though Alexander agreed to his grandmother’s wishes, he remained respectful of his father’s position as immediate successor to the Russian throne.
Catherine suffered a stroke on 17 November 1796, and died without regaining consciousness. Paul’s first act as Emperor was to inquire about and, if possible, destroy her testament, as he feared it would exclude him from succession and leave the throne to Alexander. These fears may have contributed to Paul’s promulgation of the Pauline Laws , which established the strict principle of primogeniture in the House of Romanov , leaving the throne to the next male heir.
The army, then poised to attack Persia in accordance with Catherine’s last design, was recalled to the capital within one month of Paul’s accession. His father Peter was reburied with great pomp at the royal sepulchre in the Peter and Paul Cathedral . Paul responded to the rumour of his illegitimacy by parading his descent from Peter the Great . The aged Count Aleksey Orlov , who had been involved in Peter III’s murder 35 years earlier, was forced to carry the imperial crown behind the coffin on the way to its new resting place. The inscription on the monument to the first Emperor of Russia near the St. Michael’s Castle reads in Russian “To the Great-Grandfather from the Great-Grandson“. This is an allusion to the Latin “PETRO PRIMO CATHARINA SECUNDA”, the dedication by Catherine on the ‘Bronze Horseman’ of Peter the Great.
Emperor Paul was idealistic and capable of great generosity, but he was also mercurial and capable of vindictiveness. During the first year of his reign, Paul emphatically reversed many of the harsh policies of his mother. Although he accused many of Jacobinism , he allowed Catherine’s best known critic, Radishchev , to return from Siberian exile. Along with Radishchev, he liberated Novikov from Schlüsselburg fortress , and also Tadeusz Kościuszko , yet after liberation both were confined to their own estates under police supervision. He viewed the Russian nobility as decadent and corrupt, and was determined to transform them into a disciplined, principled, loyal caste resembling a medieval chivalric order . To those few who conformed to his view of a modern-day knight (e.g., his favourites Kutuzov , Arakcheyev , Rostopchin ) he granted more serfs during the five years of his reign than his mother had presented to her lovers during her thirty-four years. Those who did not share his chivalric views were dismissed or lost their places at court: seven field marshals and 333 generals fell into this category. By this, Paul is sometimes being regarded as a sympathizer of Polish people due to his deep respect upon them.
Paul made several idiosyncratic and deeply unpopular attempts to reform the army. Under Catherine’s reign, Grigori Potemkin introduced new uniforms that were cheap, comfortable and practical, and designed in a distinctly Russian style. Paul decided to fulfill his predecessor Peter III’s intention of introducing Prussian uniforms. Impractical for active duty, these were deeply unpopular with the men, as was the effort required to maintain them. His love of parades and ceremony was not well-liked either. He ordered that Wachtparad (Watch parades) took place early every morning in the parade ground of the palace, regardless of the weather conditions. He would personally sentence soldiers to be flogged if they made a mistake, and at one point literally ordered his guard regiment to march to Siberia when they became disordered during manoeuvers, although he changed his mind after they walked for about 10 miles. 10] He attempted to reform the organization of the army in 1796 by introducing The Infantry Codes; a series of guidelines that based the organization of the army largely upon show and glamour, but his greatest commander, Suvorov completely ignored them, believing them to be worthless.
At a great expense, he built three castles in or around the Russian capital. Much was made of his courtly love affair with Anna Lopukhina .
Emperor Paul also ordered the bones of Grigory Potemkin, one of his mother’s
lovers, dug out of their grave and scattered.
|
