1823 ALEXANDER I the BLESSED Antique Russian UNPUBLISHED 1 Kopek Coin i55159

Item: i55159

 Authentic Coin of:

Russia
Alexander I the Blessed 
– Emperor: 23 March 1801 – 1 December 1825
1823 EM ΦΓ Copper 1 Kopek 25mm (5.63 grams) 
Ekaterinburg mint
Reference: POSSIBLY UNPUBLISHED with MINTMASTER ΦΓ
Royal coat of arms, the crowned imperial double eagle; below, 
ΦΓ 1823.
1 КОПѢEЙKA E.M. with crown above; all within wreath.

* Numismatic Note: It seems the EM coins in Krause have HM as mint master 
(C#117.3), not ΦΓ as seen here, so therefore I 
consider this coin possibly unpublished.

You are bidding on the exact item pictured, 

Authenticity.

Alexander I, reigned as
Emperor of Russia
from 23 March 1801 to 1 
December 1825. He was the first Russian
King of Poland
, reigning from 1815 to 1825, as 
well as the first Russian
Grand Duke of Finland
.

He was born in
Saint Petersburg
to
Grand Duke
Paul Petrovich, later Emperor
Paul I
and succeeded to the throne after his 
father was murdered. He ruled Russia during the chaotic period of the
Napoleonic Wars
. As prince and tsar, Alexander 
often used liberal rhetoric, but continued Russia’s absolutist policies in 
practice. In the first years of his reign, he initiated some minor social 
reforms and, in 1803-04, major, liberal educational reforms. He promised 
constitutional reforms and a desperately needed reform of
serfdom
but made no concrete proposals and 
nothing happened. In the second half of his reign he was increasingly arbitrary, 
reactionary and fearful of plots against him; he ended many earlier reforms. He 
purged schools of foreign teachers, as education became more religiously 
oriented as well as politically conservative.

In foreign policy, he switched Russia back and forth four times in 1804-1812 
from neutral peacemaker to anti-Napoleon to an ally of Napoleon, winding up in 
1812 as Napoleon’s enemy. In 1805, he joined Britain in the
War of the Third Coalition
against Napoleon, 
but after the massive defeat at the
Battle of Austerlitz
he switched and formed an 
alliance with Napoleon by the
Treaty of Tilsit
(1807) and joined Napoleon’s
Continental System
. He fought
a small-scale naval war against Britain, 1807-12
. 
He and Napoleon could never agree, especially about Poland, and the alliance 
collapsed by 1810. The tsar’s greatest triumph came in 1812 as Napoleon’s 
invasion proved a total disaster for the French. As part of the winning 
coalition against Napoleon he gained some spoils in Finland and Poland. He 
formed the
Holy Alliance
to suppress revolutionary 
movements in Europe that he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian 
monarchs. He helped Austria’s
Klemens von Metternich
in suppressing all 
national and liberal movements.

Alexander died without issue and after great confusion that included the 
failed
Decembrist revolt
of liberal army officers he 
was succeeded by his younger brother,
Nicholas I
.

Early life

Alexander and his younger brother
Constantine
were raised by their grandmother,
Catherine the Great
. Some sources allege that 
she planned to remove her son (Alexander’s father) Paul I from the succession 
altogether. Both she and his father tried to use Alexander for their own 
purposes, and he was torn emotionally between them. This taught Alexander very 
early on how to manipulate those who loved him, and he became like a chameleon, 
changing his views and personality depending on whom he was with at the time. 
From the free-thinking atmosphere of the court of Catherine and his Swiss tutor,
Frédéric-César de La Harpe
, he imbibed the 
principles of
Rousseau
‘s gospel of humanity. But from his 
military governor,
Nikolay Saltykov
, he imbibed the traditions of 
Russian autocracy.
Andrey Afanasyevich Samborsky
, whom his 
grandmother chose for his religious instruction, was an atypical, unbearded
Orthodox
priest. Samborsky had long lived in 
England and taught Alexander (and Constantine) excellent English, very uncommon 
for potential Russian autocrats at the time.

On 9 October 1793, when Alexander was still 15 years old, he married 
14-year-old
Louise of Baden
, who took the name Elizabeth 
Alexeievna. Meanwhile, the death of Catherine in November 1796, before she could 
appoint Alexander as her successor, brought his father, Paul I, to the throne. 
Paul’s attempts at reform were met with hostility and many of his closest 
advisers, as well as Alexander, were against his proposed changes. Some of 
Russia’s most powerful noblemen began to plot Paul’s assassination. Indeed, 
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 the 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. 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 Nicholas Zubov, one of the 
assassins, announced his accession, accompanied by the admonition, “Time to grow 
up! Go and rule!”. Historians still debate Alexander’s role in his father’s 
murder. The most common opinion is that he was let into the conspirators’ secret 
and was willing to take the throne but insisted that his father should not be 
killed. Alexander’s having become Tsar through a crime that cost his father’s 
life would give him a strong sense of remorse and shame

Succession to the 
throne

Alexander I succeeded to the throne on 24 March 1801, and was crowned in the
Kremlin
on 15 September of that year.

Domestic policy

At first, the Orthodox Church exercised little influence on Alexander’s life. 
The young tsar was determined to reform the inefficient highly centralised 
systems of government that Russia relied upon. While retaining for a time the 
old ministers, one of the first acts of his reign was to appoint the
Private Committee
, comprising young and 
enthusiastic friends of his own—Victor 
Kochubey,
Nikolay Novosiltsev
,
Pavel Stroganov
and
Adam Jerzy Czartoryski
—to draw up a plan of 
domestic reform, which was supposed to result in the establishment of a
constitutional monarchy
in accordance with the 
teachings of the
Age of Enlightenment
.

In a few years the liberal
Mikhail Speransky
became one of the Tsar’s 
closest advisors, and drew up many plans for elaborate reforms. By the
Government reform of Alexander I
the old
Collegia
were abolished and new Ministries 
created in their place, having at their head ministers responsible to the Crown. 
A Council of Ministers under the chairmanship of the Sovereign dealt with all 
interdepartmental matters.
The State Council
was created in order to 
improve technique of legislation. It was intended to become the Second Chamber 
of representative legislature. The
Governing Senate
was reorganized as the Supreme 
Court of the Empire. The codification of the laws initiated in 1801 was never 
carried out during his reign.

Alexander wanted to resolve another crucial issue in Russia—the
status of the serfs
, although this was not 
achieved until 1861 (during the reign of his nephew
Alexander II
). His advisors quietly discussed 
the options at length. Cautiously, he extended the right to own land to most 
classes of subjects, including state-owned peasants, in 1801 and created a new 
social category of “free agriculturalist,” for peasants voluntarily emancipated 
by their masters, in 1803. The great majority of serfs were not affected.

When Alexander’s reign began, there were three universities in Russia, at
Moscow
,
Vilna
(Vilnius), and
Dorpat
(Tartu). These were strengthened, and 
three others were founded at
St. Petersburg
,
Kharkov
, and
Kazan
. Literary and scientific bodies were 
established or encouraged, and the reign became noted for the aid lent to the 
sciences and arts by the Emperor and the wealthy nobility. Alexander later 
expelled foreign scholars.

After 1815 the
military settlements
(farms worked by soldiers 
and their families under military control) were introduced, with the idea of 
making the army, or part of it, self-supporting economically and for providing 
it with recruits.

Napoleonic wars

 

Imperial Monogram

Views held 
by his contemporaries

Autocrat and “Jacobin“, 
man of the world and mystic, Alexander appeared to his contemporaries as a 
riddle which each read according to his own temperament.
Napoleon Bonaparte
thought him a “shifty
Byzantine
“, and called him the
Talma
of the North, as ready to play any 
conspicuous part. To
Metternich
he was a madman to be humoured.
Castlereagh
, writing of him to Lord Liverpool, 
gives him credit for “grand qualities”, but adds that he is “suspicious and 
undecided”; and to
Jefferson
he was a man of estimable character, 
disposed to do good, and expected to diffuse through the mass of the Russian 
people “a sense of their natural rights.”

Alliances with 
other powers

Upon his accession, Alexander reversed the policy of his father, Paul, 
denounced the
League of Armed Neutrality
, and made peace with
Britain
(April 1801). At the same time he 
opened negotiations with
Francis II
of the Holy Roman Empire. Soon 
afterwards at 
Memel
he entered into a close alliance with
Prussia
, not as he boasted from motives of 
policy, but in the spirit of true
chivalry
, out of
friendship
for the young King
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
France
and Russia might come to an 
understanding. Carried away by the enthusiasm of La Harpe, who had returned to 
Russia from Paris, Alexander began openly to proclaim his admiration for French 
institutions and for the person of Napoleon Bonaparte. Soon, however, came a 
change. La Harpe, after a new visit to Paris, presented to the Tsar his 
Reflections on the True Nature of the Consul for Life, which, as Alexander said, 
tore the veil from his eyes, and revealed Bonaparte “as not a true
patriot
“, but only as “the most famous tyrant 
the world has produced”. Alexander’s disillusionment was completed by the 
execution of the
duc d’Enghien
on trumped up charges. The 
Russian court went into mourning for the last member of the
House of Condé
, and diplomatic relations with 
France were broken off. The Tsar was especially alarmed, and decided he had to 
somehow curb Napoleon’s power.

Opposition to Napoleon

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,
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 dispatch the 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
and the conference of the
Hague
. Alexander argued that the outcome of the 
war was not to be only the liberation of France, but the universal triumph of 
“the sacred
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 
realising 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

 

Portrait of Alexander I (1824) by
George Dawe

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 Alexander; he resumed them after the
Battle of Austerlitz
(2 December).
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, Turks and Persians to 
break the obstinacy of the Tsar. A party too in Russia itself, headed by the 
Tsar’s brother 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
(13/14 June 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 25 June 1807. Alexander, dazzled by 
Napoleon’s genius and overwhelmed by his apparent generosity, was completely won 
over. 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
Danubian
principalities and give him a free 
hand to deal with Finland; and, afterwards, the Emperors of the
East
and
West
, when the time should be ripe, would drive 
the 
Turks
from Europe and march across Asia to the 
conquest of
India
, a realization of which was finally 
achieved by the
British
a few years later, and would change the 
course of modern history. Nevertheless, a thought awoke in Alexander’s 
impressionable mind an ambition to which he had hitherto been a stranger. The 
interests of Europe as a whole were utterly 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. 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 nonetheless suffered a change. He realised 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 Sweden
(1809); and he 
hoped by means of it to make the Danube the southern frontier of Russia.

Franco-Russian 
alliance

 

Meeting of Napoleon and Alexander I in
Tilsit
, a 19th-century painting

Events were in fact rapidly heading towards the rupture of the Franco-Russian 
alliance. While Alexander did indeed assist Napoleon in the war of 1809, he 
declared plainly that he would not allow the
Austrian Empire
to be crushed out of existence. 
Napoleon subsequently 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”.

Alexander complained that the
Treaty of Vienna
, which added largely to the
Duchy of Warsaw
, had “ill requited him for his 
loyalty”, and he was only mollified for the time being by Napoleon’s public 
declaration that he had no intention of restoring Poland, and by a convention, 
signed on 4 January 1810, but not ratified, abolishing the Polish name and 
orders of chivalry.

But if Alexander suspected Napoleon’s intentions, Napoleon was no less 
suspicious of Alexander. Partly to test his sincerity, Napoleon sent an almost 
peremptory request for the hand of the grand-duchess
Anna Pavlovna
, the tsar’s youngest sister. 
After some little delay Alexander returned a polite refusal, pleading the 
princess’s tender age and the objection of the dowager empress to the marriage. 
Napoleon’s answer was to refuse to ratify the 4 January convention, and to 
announce his engagement to the archduchess Marie Louise in such a way as to lead 
Alexander to suppose that the two marriage treaties had been negotiated 
simultaneously. From this time on, the relationship between the two emperors 
gradually became more and more strained.

The annexation of
Oldenburg
, of which
The Duke of Oldenburg
(3 January 1754 – 2 July 
1823) was the Tsar’s uncle, by France in December 1810, added to the personal 
grievances of Alexander against Napoleon, while the ruinous impact 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.

Alexander kept Russia neutral as possible in the ongoing French war with 
Britain. He allowed Russians to secretly continue to trade with Britain and did 
not enforce the blockade required by the Continental System. In 1810 he withdrew 
Russia from the Continental System and trade between Britain and Russia grew.

Franco-Russian relations
became progressively 
worse after 1810. By 1811, it became clear that Napoleon was not keeping to his 
side of the terms of the Treaty of Tilsit. He had promised assistance to Russia 
in its
war against Turkey
, but as the campaign went 
on, France offered no support at all.

 

The retreat across the
Berezina
of the remnants of 
Napoleon’s
Grande Armée
in November 1812.

With war imminent between France and Russia, Alexander started to prepare the 
ground diplomatically. In April 1812 Russia and Sweden signed an agreement for 
mutual defence. A month later Alexander secured his southern flank through the
Treaty of Bucharest (1812)
which formally ended 
the war against Turkey. His diplomats managed to extract promises from Prussia 
and Austria that should Napoleon invade Russia, the former would help Napoleon 
as little as possible and that the latter would give no aid at all.

Militarily Mikhail Speransky had managed to improve the standard of the 
Russian land forces above that before the start of the 1807 campaign. Primarily 
on the advice of his sister and Count
Aleksey Arakcheyev
, Alexander did not take 
operational control as he had done during the 1807 campaign, but delegated 
control to his generals, Prince
Michael Barclay de Tolly
, Prince
Pyotr Bagration
and
Mikhail Kutuzov
.

French invasion

In the summer of 1812 Napoleon
invaded Russia
. 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 Napoleon 
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 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. 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.

Postbellum

Peace of Paris and the Congress of Vienna

Alexander tried to calm the unrest of his conscience by correspondence with 
the leaders of the 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
Baroness de Krüdener
—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 Krüdener, 
and her colleague, the evangelist
Henri-Louis 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.

 

Polish General’s Uniform of Emperor Alexander I

Such was Alexander’s mood when the downfall of Napoleon left him the most 
powerful sovereign in Europe. With the memory of the
treaty of Tilsit
still fresh in men’s minds, it 
was not unnatural that to cynical men of the world like
Klemens Wenzel von Metternich
he merely seemed 
to be disguising “under the language of evangelical abnegation” vast and 
perilous schemes of ambition. The puzzled powers were, in fact, the more 
inclined to be suspicious in view of other, and seemingly inconsistent, 
tendencies of the emperor, which yet seemed all to point to a like disquieting 
conclusion. For Madame de Krüdener was not the only influence behind the throne; 
and, though Alexander had declared war against the Revolution,
La Harpe
(his erstwhile tutor) was once more at 
his elbow, and the catchwords of the gospel of humanity were still on his lips. 
The very proclamations which denounced Napoleon as “the genius of evil”, 
denounced him in the name of “liberty,” and of “enlightenment”. A monstrous 
intrigue was suspected for the alliance of the eastern autocrat with the 
Jacobinism of all Europe, which would have issued in the submission of an 
all-powerful Russia for an all-powerful France. At the
Congress of Vienna
Alexander’s attitude 
accentuated this distrust. Castlereagh, whose single-minded aim was the 
restoration of “a just equilibrium” in Europe, reproached the Tsar to his face 
for a “conscience” which suffered him to imperil the concert of the powers by 
keeping his hold on Poland in violation of his treaty obligation.

Liberal political 
views

Once a supporter of limited liberalism, as seen in his approval of the
Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland
in 1815, from the end of the year 1818 Alexander’s 
views began to change. A
revolutionary

conspiracy
among the officers of the guard, and 
a foolish plot to kidnap him on his way to the
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. 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
(23 March 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
, 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 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, symbolised by the Holy Alliance, 
against the policy of a dictatorship of the great powers, symbolised 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.

Revolt of the Greeks

At the
Congress of Laibach
, to which the congress had 
been adjourned in the spring of 1821, Alexander first heard of the
Revolt of the Greeks
. From this time until his 
death, his mind was torn between his anxiety to realise 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
(a colonel in the Imperial 
Cavalry and a leader of the Greek revolt) from the Russian army list, and 
directed his foreign minister, Ioannis Kapodistrias or
Giovanni, Count Capo d’Istria
, himself a Greek, 
to disavow all sympathy of Russia with his enterprise; and, in 1822, issued 
orders to turn back a deputation of the
Morea
to the
Congress of Verona
on the road.

He made 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 Alexander’s 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 timeless spirit of his people drew him back into 
itself.

Private life

On 9 October 1793, Alexander married
Louise of Baden
, known as Elisabeth Alexeyevna 
after her conversion to the
Orthodox Church
. He later told his friend
Frederick William III
that the marriage, a 
political match devised by his grandmother,
Catherine the Great
, regrettably proved to be a 
misfortune for him and his wife. Their two children died young. 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 
sympathising deeply with him over the death of his beloved daughter
Sophia Naryshkina
, the daughter of his mistress
Princess Maria Naryshkina
.

Death

Tsar Alexander I became increasingly suspicious of those around him, 
especially after an attempt was made to kidnap him when he was on his way to the 
conference in 
Aachen
, Germany. In the autumn of 1825 the 
Emperor undertook a voyage to the south of Russia due to the increasing illness 
of his wife. During his trip he himself caught a cold which developed into
typhus
from which he died in the southern city 
of 
Taganrog
on 19 November (O.S.)/ 1 December 
1825. His two brothers disputed who would become tsar—each wanted the other to 
become tsar. Rumors circulated for years that he had not died but had become a 
monk somewhere. His wife died a few months later as the emperor’s body was 
transported to
Saint Petersburg
for the funeral. He was 
interred at the Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral of the
Peter and Paul Fortress
in Saint Petersburg on 
13 March 1826.

• 
  

  Death of Alexander I in Taganrog (19th century lithograph.

• 
  

  Alexander I Palace
  in Taganrog, 
  where the Russian Emperor died in 1825.

• 
  

  The funeral procession from Taganrog to St. Petersburg St. Petersburgg