1801 Russian Czar Emperor PAUL I Catherine the Great Son 2 Kopeks Coin i56421

Item: i56421

Authentic Coin of:

Russia
Paul I – Russian Emperor: 17 November 1796 – 23 March 1801
1801 EM Copper 2 Kopeks 36mm (20.41 grams)
Reference: C# 95.3
Imperial monogram of Paul I.
2 КОПEЙКИ
1801 E.M.

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Authenticity.

Paul
I (Russian:
Па́вел I Петро́вич; Pavel Petrovich)
(1 October [O.S.
20 September] 1754 – 23 March [O.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^{[citation
needed]} 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
).

Childhood

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.

Life from 1774 to 1796

 

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.^[5]: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.”^[5]: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.^[6]
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.^[6]
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.^[5]: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.

Accession to the
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.

Purported
eccentricities

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.^[7]
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.^[8]
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.^[9][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.^[11]

Foreign affairs

 

Paul’s early foreign policy can largely be seen as reactions against his
mother’s. In foreign policy, this meant that he opposed the many expansionary
wars she fought and instead preferred to pursue a more peaceful, diplomatic
path. Immediately upon taking the throne, he recalled all troops outside Russian
borders, including the struggling expedition Catherine II had sent to conquer
Iran through the Caucasus and the 60,000 men she had promised to Britain and
Austria to help them defeat the French.^[12]
Paul hated the French before their revolution, and afterwards, with their
republican and anti-religious views, he detested them even more.^[13]
In addition to this, he knew French expansion hurt Russian interests, but he
recalled his mother’s troops primarily because he firmly opposed wars of
expansion. He also believed that Russia needed substantial governmental and
military reforms to avoid an economic collapse and a revolution, before Russia
could wage war on foreign soil.^[5]:283

Paul offered to mediate between Austria and France through Prussia and pushed
Austria to make peace, but the two countries made peace without his assistance,
signing the
Treaty of Campoformio
in October 1797.^[5]:286
This treaty, with its affirmation of French control over islands in the
Mediterranean and the partitioning of the
Republic of Venice
, upset Paul, who saw it as
creating more instability in the region and displaying France’s ambitions in the
Mediterranean. In response, he offered asylum to the
Prince de Condé
and his army, as well as
Louis XVIII
, both of whom had been forced out
of Austria by the treaty.^{[5]:288–289}
By this point, the French Republic had seized Italy, the Netherlands, and
Switzerland, establishing republics with constitutions in each, and Paul felt
that Russia now needed to play an active role in Europe in order to overthrow
what the republic had created and restore traditional authorities.^{[5]:289–290}
In this goal he found a willing ally in the Austrian chancellor
Baron Thugut
, who hated the French and loudly
criticized revolutionary principles. Britain and the Ottoman Empire joined
Austria and Russia to stop French expansion, free territories under their
control and re-establish the old monarchies. The only major power in Europe who
did not join Paul in his anti-French campaign was Prussia, whose distrust of
Austria and the security they got from their current relationship with France
prevented them from joining the coalition.^{[5]:286–287}
Despite the Prussians’ reluctance, Paul decided to move ahead with the war,
promising 60,000 men to support Austria in Italy and 45,000 men to help England
in North Germany and the Netherlands.^[13]

Another important factor in Paul’s decision to go to war with France was the
island of Malta
, the home of the
Knights Hospitaller
. In addition to Malta, the
Order had priories in the Catholic countries of Europe that held large estates
and paid the revenue from them to the Order. In 1796, the Order approached Paul
about the Priory of Poland, which had been in a state of neglect and paid no
revenue for 100 years, and was now on Russian land.^[14]:46–48
Paul as a child had read the histories of the Order and was impressed by their
honor and connection to the old order it represented. He relocated the Priories
of Poland to St. Petersburg in January 1797.^[14]:48
The knights responded by making him a protector of the Order in August of that
same year, an honor he had not expected but, in keeping with his chivalric
ideals, he happily accepted.^[14]:49–50

In June 1798,
Napoleon seized Malta
; this greatly offended
Paul.^[14]:51
In September, the Priory of St. Petersburg declared that
Grand Master Hompesch
had betrayed the Order by
selling Malta to Napoleon. A month later the Priory elected Paul
Grand Master
.^{[14]:55–58[15][16]}
This election resulted in the establishment of the
Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller

within the Imperial
Orders
of Russia. The election of the sovereign
of an Orthodox nation as the head of a Catholic order was controversial, and it
was some time before the Holy See or any of the other of the Order’s priories
approved it. This delay created political issues between Paul, who insisted on
defending his legitimacy, and the priories’ respective countries.^[14]:59
Though recognition of Paul’s election would become a more divisive issue later
in his reign, the election immediately gave Paul, as Grand Master of the Order,
another reason to fight the French Republic: to reclaim the Order’s ancestral
home.

The Russian army in Italy played the role of an auxiliary force sent to
support the Austrians, though the Austrians offered the position of chief
commander over all the allied armies to
Alexander Suvorov
, a distinguished Russian
general. Under Suvorov, the allies managed to push the French out of Italy,
though they suffered heavy losses.^[17]
However, by this point in time, cracks had started to appear in the
Russo-Austrian alliance, due to their different goals in Italy. While Paul and
Suvorov wanted the liberation and restoration of the Italian monarchies, the
Austrians sought territorial acquisitions in Italy, and were willing to
sacrifice later Russian support to acquire them.^[5]:299
The Austrians, therefore, happily saw Suvorov and his army out of Italy in 1799
to go meet up with the army of
Alexander Korsakov
, at the time assisting the
Austrian
Archduke Charles
expel the French armies
currently occupying Switzerland.^[18]
However, the campaign in Switzerland had become a stalemate, without much
activity on either side until the Austrians withdrew. Because this happened
before Korsakov and Suvorov could unite their forces, the French could attack
their armies one at a time, destroying Korsakov’s and forcing Suvorov to fight
his way out of Switzerland, suffering heavy losses.^[19]
Suvorov, shamed, blamed the Austrians for the terrible defeat in Switzerland, as
did his furious sovereign. This defeat, combined with refusal to reinstate the
old monarchies in Italy and their disrespect of the Russian flag during the
taking of Ancona, led to the formal cessation of the alliance in October 1799.^[20]

Although by the fall of 1799 the Russo-Austrian alliance had more or less
fallen apart, Paul still cooperated willingly with the British. Together, they
planned to invade the Netherlands, and through that country attack France
proper. Unlike Austria, neither Russia nor Britain appeared to have any secret
territorial ambitions: they both simply sought to defeat the French.^[5]:309
The
Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland
started well,
with a British victory – the
Battle of Callantsoog
(27 August 1799) – in the
north, but when the Russian army arrived in September, the allies found
themselves faced with bad weather, poor coordination, and unexpectedly fierce
resistance from the Dutch and the French, and their success evaporated.^[21]
As the month wore on, the weather worsened and the allies suffered more and more
losses, eventually signing an armistice in October 1799.^[22]
The Russians suffered three-quarters of allied losses and the British left their
troops on an island in the Channel after the retreat, as Britain did not want
them on the mainland.^{[5]:309–310}
This defeat and subsequent maltreating of Russian troops strained Russo-British
relations, but a definite break did not occur until later.^[5]:311
The reasons for this break are less clear and simple than those of the split
with Austria, but several key events occurred over the winter of 1799–1800 that
helped: Bonaparte released 7,000 captive Russian troops that Britain had refused
to pay the ransom for; Paul grew closer to the Scandinavian countries of Denmark
and Sweden, whose claim to neutral shipping rights offended Britain; Paul had
the British ambassador in St. Petersburg (Whitworth)
recalled (1800) and Britain did not replace him, with no clear reason given as
to why; and Britain, needing to choose between their two allies, chose Austria,
who had certainly committed to fighting the French to the end.^[23]
Finally, two events occurred in rapid succession that destroyed the alliance
completely: first, in July 1800, the British seized a Danish frigate, prompting
Paul to close the British trading factories in St. Petersburg as well as impound
British ships and cargo; second, even though the allies resolved this crisis,
Paul could not forgive the British for
Admiral Nelson’s
refusal to return Malta to the
Order of St. John, and therefore to Paul, when the British captured it from the
French in September 1800.^[24]
In a drastic response, Paul seized all British vessels in Russian ports, sent
their crews to detention camps and took British traders hostage until he
received satisfaction.^[25]
Over the next winter, he went further, using his new
Armed Neutrality coalition
with Sweden, Denmark
and Prussia to prepare the Baltic against possible British attack, prevent the
British from searching neutral merchant vessels, and freeze all British trade in
Northern Europe.^[26]
As France had already closed all of Western and Southern Europe to British
trade, Britain, which relied heavily upon imports (especially for timber, naval
products, and grain) felt seriously threatened by Paul’s move and reacted fast.^[27]
In March 1801, Britain sent a fleet to Denmark, bombarding Copenhagen and
forcing the Danes to surrender in the beginning of April.^[28]
Nelson then sailed towards St. Petersburg, reaching
Reval
(14 May 1801), but after the conspiracy
assassinated Paul (23 March 1801), the new Tsar Alexander had opened
peace-negotiations shortly after taking the throne.^[5]:314

The most original aspect of Paul I’s foreign policy was his rapprochement
with France after the coalition fell apart. Several scholars have argued that
this change in position, radical though it seemed, made sense, as Bonaparte
became
First Consul
and made France a more
conservative state, consistent with Paul’s view of the world.^[29]
Even
Paul’s decision to send a Cossack army to take British
India
, bizarre as it may seem, makes a certain amount of sense:
Britain itself was almost impervious to direct attack, being an island nation
with a formidable navy, but the British had left India largely unguarded and
would have great difficulty staving off a force that came over land to attack
it.^[30]
The British themselves considered this enough of a problem that they signed
three treaties with Persia, in 1801, 1809 and 1812, to guard against an army
attacking India through Central Asia.^[31]
Paul sought to attack the British where they were weakest: through their
commerce and their colonies. Throughout his reign, his policies focused
reestablishing peace and the balance of power in Europe, while supporting
autocracy and old monarchies, without seeking to expand Russia’s borders.^[32]

Irano-Georgian matters

 

In spite of Russia’s failure to honour the terms of the
Treaty of Georgievsk
, as
Qajar Iran
reinvaded Georgia and
captured and sacked Tbilisi
, Georgian rulers
felt they had nowhere else to turn now that Georgia was again re-subjugated by
Iran. Tbilisi was captured and burnt to the ground, and eastern Georgia
reconquered.
Agha Mohammad Khan
however, Persia’s ruler, was
assassinated in 1797 in
Shusha
, after which the Persian grip on Georgia
softened once again. Erekle however, still dreaming of a united Georgia, died a
year afterwards. After Erekle’s death, a civil war broke out over the succession
to the throne of Kartli-Kakheti and one of the rival candidates called on Russia
to intervene and decide matters. On 8 January 1801, Tsar Paul I signed a decree
on the incorporation of Georgia (Kartli-Kakheti) within the Russian Empire^[33][34]
which was confirmed by Tsar
Alexander I
on 12 September 1801.^[35][36]
The Georgian envoy in Saint Petersburg,
Garsevan Chavchavadze
, reacted with a note of
protest that was presented to the Russian vice-chancellor
Alexander Kurakin
.^[37]
In May 1801, Russian General
Carl Heinrich von Knorring
removed the Georgian
heir to the throne,
David

Batonishvili
, from power and deployed a
provisional government headed by General
Ivan Petrovich Lazarev
.^[38]

Some of the Georgian nobility did not accept the decree until April 1802,
when General Knorring held the nobility in
Tbilisi
‘s
Sioni Cathedral
and forced them to take an oath
on the imperial crown of Russia. Those who disagreed were arrested.^[39]
Wanting to secure the northernmost reaches of his empire, as well as knowing
that the grip on Georgia was drastically loosening with Russia’s formal entrance
into Tbilisi, Agha Mohammad Khan’s successor,
Fath Ali Shah Qajar
got involved into the
Russo-Persian War (1804-1813)
. In the summer of
1805, Russian troops on the
Askerani River
and near Zagam defeated the
Persian army, saving Tbilisi from its attack and re-subjugation. In 1810, the
kingdom of Imereti
(Western Georgia) was annexed by the
Russian Empire
after the suppression of King
Solomon II
‘s resistance.^[40]
In 1813, Qajar Iran was officially forced to cede Georgia to Russia per the
Treaty of Gulistan
of 1813.^[41]
This marked the official start of the Russian period in Georgia.

Assassination

 

Paul’s premonitions of assassination were well-founded. His attempts to force
the nobility to adopt a code of chivalry alienated many of his trusted advisors.
The Emperor also discovered outrageous machinations and corruption in the
Russian treasury. Although he repealed Catherine’s law which allowed the
corporal punishment of the free classes and directed reforms which resulted in
greater rights for the peasantry, and better treatment for serfs on agricultural
estates, most of his policies were viewed as a great annoyance to the noble
class and induced his enemies to work out a plan of action.

A conspiracy was organized, some months before it was executed, by Counts
Peter Ludwig von der Pahlen
,
Nikita Petrovich Panin
, and the half-Spanish,
half-Neapolitan adventurer
Admiral Ribas
. The death of Ribas delayed the
execution. On the night of 23 March [O.S.
11 March] 1801, Paul was murdered in his bedroom in the newly built
St Michael’s Castle
by a band of dismissed
officers headed by
General Bennigsen
, a
Hanoverian
in the Russian service, and
General Yashvil
, a
Georgian
. They charged into his bedroom,
flushed with drink after supping together, and found Paul hiding behind some
drapes in the corner.^[42]
The conspirators pulled him out, forced him to the table, and tried to compel
him to sign his abdication. Paul offered some resistance, and one of the
assassins struck him with a sword, after which he was strangled and trampled to
death. He was succeeded by his son, the 23-year-old
Alexander I
, who was actually in the palace,
and to whom General
Nikolay Zubov
, one of the assassins, announced
his accession, accompanied by the admonition, “Time to grow up! Go and rule!”

Legacy

 

There is some evidence that Paul I was venerated as a saint among the Russian
Orthodox populace,^[43]
even though he was never officially canonized by any of the Orthodox Churches.

Portrayals in literature, theatre and film

In 1906 Dmitry Merezhkovsky published his tragedy “Paul I”. Its most
prominent performance was made on the Soviet Army Theatre’s stage in 1989, with
Oleg Borisov
as Paul.

The 1937 Soviet film
Lieutenant Kijé
, directed by Aleksandr
Faintsimmer and based on a novella of the same name by Yury Tynyanov, satirizes
Paul’s obsession with rigid drill, instant obedience and martinet discipline.

The 1987 Soviet experimental film
Assa
has a subplot revolving around Paul’s
murder; Paul is portrayed by
Dmitry Dolinin
.

A film about Paul’s rule was produced by
Lenfilm
in 2003. Poor, Poor Paul (Бедный
бедный Павел) is directed by Vitaliy Mel’nikov and stars
Viktor Sukhorukov
as Paul and
Oleg Yankovsky
as Count Pahlen, who headed a
conspiracy against him. The film portrays Paul more compassionately than the
long-existing stories about him. The movie won the Michael Tariverdiev Prize for
best music to a film at the Open Russian Film Festival “Kinotavr”
in 2003.

Issue

Paul and Sophie had ten children; nine survived to adulthood (and from whom
can be traced
19 grandchildren
):

* Disputed.

Gallery

• 
  

  Family of Paul I of Russia, by
  Gerhard von Kügelgen

• 
  

  Pavel Petrovich as a Child (1761), by
  Fedor Rokotov

• 
  

  The rooms of
  Gatchina
  palace where Grand Duke
  Paul spent his youth

• 
  

  State Arms under Emperor Paul, incorporating the cross of the
  Order of Malta
  , 1799