Alexandre Ier of Russia

Alexandre Ier Pavlovitch Romanov (Александр I Павлович), more known under the name of Alexandre Ier (born with Saint-Pétersbourg, the December 23rd 1777 - died with Taganrog on February 1st 1825), wire of Paul I {{er}} and of Sophie-Dorothée of Wurtemberg; tsar of Russia of the March 23rd 1801 with its death, king of Poland of 1815 at 1825, it marries in 1793 Louise Augusta de Bade (1779 - 1826). Its reign coincided almost exactly with that of Napoleon, which it on several occasions fought until the victorious battle of 1814.

Biography

Reforming tsar?

Raised with the Frenchwoman, in particular by the Swiss colonel the Toothing-stone, it develops radically opposite liberal ideas with those of his/her father Paul I {{er}}. His/her grandmother, Catherine II, thought of making of him her direct successor, in the place of Paul but she died before to have been able to change the order of succession with the throne into her favor.

Informed of the plot against his father, Alexandre considered that it was only deposited; the plot having led to the assassination of Paul Ier, Alexandre remained all his life haunted by the idea to seem the accomplice of dead of its father.

A few months after its advent, he encourages a project of constitutionalization of the Russian government and grants the Senate a right of remonstrance. He also encourages the emancipation of the serfs (in particular in 1818, where he frees the serfs from the Baltic provinces). Supported by his/her brother Constantin, his policy was given up by its junior Nicolas Ier, who returned to the autocracy.

Alexandre Ier was the military main adversary of Napoleon: combined with the Austria and the Prussia, it is seriously demolishes with Austerlitz (1805), then after a fierce combat with Eylau (1807) is again demolishes with Friedland (1807). After the Treated of Tilsit (1807) and Erfurt (1808), it is combined in France against England and Sweden, in order to conquer the Finland (by the Traité of Frederikshaven) but is turned over against France while being combined with the Turks (treated of Bucharest): this inversion of alliance was the main cause of the countryside of Russia, which saw the occupation of Moscow by the French troops and the Russian victory of Bérézina, the November 29th 1812.

On the religious level, Alexandre develops, starting from 1814, a mystical crisis which makes it convert with a kind of methodism, the biblical Company. In 1825, a few months before its death, it sends its aide-de-camp to Rome, to inform the pope Leon XII of his desire to abjure orthodoxy and to bring back the Russia in the Roman Catholic church.

A discussed death

Alexandre Ier dies the 1 {{er}} December 1825 with Taganrog at the edge of the Mer of Azov; he is buried with Saint-Petersbourg.

As of the advertisement of its death, doubts are born in Russia, supplied with the fact that many people, ravelling in front of her corpse, do not manage to recognize it. The rumor settles then according to which the tsar would have simulated his death and would have withdrawn himself far from the men, while one substituted to him the corpse of a soldier resembling to him vaguely.

A few years later, indeed, a hermit of the name of Fédor Kousmistch was recognized by many people as being Alexandre Ier: decree, whipped then off-set in Siberia, it became staretz and died the January 20th 1864 with Tomsk, in Siberia.

The identity of Fédor Kousmistch and Alexandre Ier is allowed today by certain historians, as far as it would be divided by the Romanov family. These historians affirm that Alexandre voluntarily withdrew itself from the world, probably for expier the murder of his father, Paul Ier, to which it would involuntarily have taken share by giving its support to the conspiracy which was to assassinate the lunatic tsar.

This rumor neither was confirmed, nor cancelled, the more so as exist a certain number of obstacles to such a substitution (in particular, the fact that the empress Elisabeth Alexeievna, wife of Alexandre Ier, was then reached of tuberculosis and that it is not very probable that the tsar gave up his condemned wife).

An element comes, however, to increase the disorder: when Alexandre III of Russia made open the tomb of Alexandre Ier, in order to check the cogency of the rumors of survival, the coffin was discovered empty…

See too

Random links: