Napoleon called Tsar Alexander I a shifty Byzantine, and others found him equally puzzling
Alexander I talked like a liberal, ruled like an autocrat, and flipped Russia's stance toward Napoleon four times in eight years. Contemporaries could not agree whether he was a mystic, a madman or a reformer. He also got a violin sonata from Beethoven, and gave the composer a diamond in return.
Born in St Petersburg on 23 December 1777, Alexander was raised by his grandmother Catherine the Great, with Frederick the Great among his godfathers. A Swiss tutor filled him with Enlightenment ideals, a military governor with autocratic tradition, and an unusual clean-shaven priest who had lived in England taught him fluent English. At 15 he was married to a 14-year-old princess of Baden. Visits to his father Paul's court at Gatchina meant plain Prussian uniforms, endless drill and sudden rages.
Paul became emperor in 1796 and grew so erratic that Alexander called Russia a plaything for the insane. On 23 March 1801 conspirators killed Paul, and Alexander, then 23, became tsar. Historians still argue over his role; the common view is that he knew of the plot but insisted his father be spared, and the killing left him with lasting guilt.
Early on he gathered young friends to plan reforms, replaced old administrative colleges with ministries, and with the adviser Mikhail Speransky created a State Council meant to become an upper house. Universities in St Petersburg, Kharkiv and Kazan joined the existing three. He let most classes, including state peasants, buy land and created a category of voluntarily freed serfs, though most serfs stayed bound until 1861. A constitution and parliament never arrived.
Abroad he fought Napoleon, lost at Austerlitz and Friedland, allied with him at Tilsit in 1807, took Finland from Sweden, and then saw the French invasion of 1812 end in catastrophe, his greatest triumph. Afterwards he formed the Holy Alliance of monarchs, turned reactionary, expelled foreign teachers and built military farming colonies. He died of typhus in southern Russia in December 1825, leaving no surviving children and a succession muddle that preceded the Decembrist revolt.
Source: Alexander I of Russia
