Paul I of Russia

His mother arranged his first marriage to Natalia Alexeievna, who was the daughter of Ludwig IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, in 1773. Unfortunately she died during child birth of their first offspring.

In October 1776, he married for the second time to Sophia Dorothea from the German state of Wurttemberg. She was a beautiful woman who later came to be known as Maria Feodorovna. They had their first child, named Alexander, a year after their marriage and were gifted the Pavlovsk palace as a token of approval by the Empress.

However, the differences with his mother persisted and he always received second grade treatment from Empress Catherine the Great, who showered expensive gifts on her lovers and ignored him.

Paul was born on 01 October 1754 in Saint Petersburg to Grand Duke Peter (later Emperor Peter III) and Grand Duchess Catherine (later Empress Catherine II the Great of Russia). Catherine later fell out with Empress Elizabeth, who took young Paul under her fold. It was rumoured that Paul’s actual father was a court member named Sergei Saltykov, as Peter and Catherine were childless for the first ten years of their marriage.

The Empress put him under the charge of her trusted governor, Nikita Ivanovich Panin, and arranged for his private tutoring to groom him to become the future Emperor of Russia. He also attended Council to get acquainted with the duties of an Emperor.

However, the Empress lacked experience in bringing up children, as she had no children of her own. In fact, Paul was often left unattended because his own mother felt ignored by the Empress and built up hatred towards her son.

Paul was a good looking and intelligent boy. However, his tutors found him to be a bit rash in his ways. He was sickly as a child and lacked company of his age in the palace of Empress Elizabeth, where he was brought up.

He travelled around Western Europe with his wife from 1781 to 1782 and was gifted the Gatchina Estate in 1783, where he raised a brigade worth of soldiers whom he trained on the Prussian model. This was not a popular system in Russia.

He had a strained relationship with his mother, and when Catherine the Great became Empress of Russia, she did not involve Paul in governing the Empire. He was openly against her expansionist policies and advocated a defensive outlook, which was contrary to his mother’s policies. This was looked upon as a threat by the Empress.

Empress Catherine tried to encourage her grandson, Alexander, to ascend the throne after her. However, Alexander remained loyal to Paul when it came to succession.

Catherine the Great suffered a stroke on 17 November 1796 and died a sudden death. In the absence of a statement from the late Empress, Paul took over as the Emperor of Russia, with the title Paul I of Russia. The first thing he did was to promulgate the Pauline Laws, which specified that the throne would automatically go to the next male heir in the Romanov dynasty.

The next step he took was to recall his army that was poised to attack Persia as per the plans of Catherine the Great. In order to put to rest rumours about him being an illegitimate son, he reburied his father alongside his mother with great pomp and show in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Paul I brought in several reforms in the Army and administration in order to curb the powers of the nobility, whom he considered to be corrupt. He instilled more of bureaucracy to keep a check on the functioning of his government. However, his policies were not popular and led to his ultimate assassination.