Alexander I of Russia

Alexander was born at 10:45, on 23 December 1777 in Saint Petersburg, and he and his younger brother Constantine were raised by their grandmother, Catherine. He was baptized on 31 December in the Grand Church of the Winter Palace by mitred archpriest Ioann Ioannovich Panfilov (confessor of Empress Catherine II). His godmother was Catherine the Great, and his godfathers were Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, and Frederick the Great. He was named after Alexander Nevsky, the patron saint of Saint Petersburg. As competing aspects of his upbringing, he imbibed the principles of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's gospel of humanity from the free-thinking atmosphere of the court of Catherine and his Swiss tutor, Frédéric-César de La Harpe, whereas he imbibed the traditions of Russian autocracy from his military governor, Nikolay Saltykov. Andrey Afanasyevich Samborsky, whom his grandmother chose to be his religious instructor, was an atypical, unbearded Orthodox priest. Samborsky had long lived in England and taught Alexander and his brother Constantine excellent English, a very uncommon accomplishment for potential Russian autocrats of the time.

On 9 October 1793, when Alexander was still 15 years old, he married 14-year-old Princess Louise of Baden, who took the name Elizabeth Alexeievna. His grandmother was the one who presided over his marriage to the young princess. Until his grandmother's death, he was constantly walking the line of allegiance between his grandmother and his father. His steward, Nikolai Saltykov, helped him navigate the political landscape, engendering dislike for his grandmother and dread in dealing with his father.

Catherine had the Alexander Palace built for the couple. This did nothing to help his relationship with her, as Catherine would go out of her way to amuse them with dancing and parties, which annoyed his wife. Living at the palace also put pressure on him to perform as a husband, though he felt only a brother's love for the Grand Duchess. He began to sympathise more with his father, as he saw visiting his father's fiefdom at Gatchina Palace as a relief from the ostentatious court of the empress. There, they wore simple Prussian military uniforms, instead of the gaudy clothing popular at the French court they had to wear when visiting Catherine. Even so, visiting the tsarevich did not come without a bit of travail. Paul liked to have his guests perform military drills, which he also pushed upon his sons, Alexander and Constantine. He was also prone to fits of temper, and he often went into fits of rage when events did not go his way. Some sources allege that the empress Catherine planned to remove her son Paul from the succession altogether (in consideration of his unstable temperament and bizarre personality traits) and make Alexander her successor instead.

On 9 October 1793, Alexander married Louise of Baden, known as Elizabeth Alexeievna 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 spouse. Their two children died young, though their common sorrow drew the spouses closer together. After a relationship with his mistress Maria Naryshkina from 1799 until 1818, Alexander suffered the death of their beloved daughter Sophia Naryshkina, and the Empress' generous sympathy for his grief strengthened their marital bond.

In 1809, he was widely rumoured to have had an affair with the Finnish noblewoman Ulla Möllersvärd and to have had a child by her, but this is not confirmed.

Liberal political views

Once a supporter of limited liberalism, as seen in his approval of the representative institutions in the Ionian Islands, Grand Duchy of Finland and 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 Russian Imperial Guard, and a plot to kidnap him on his way to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, are said to have shaken his liberal beliefs. 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 joined Castlereagh's protest against Metternich's collective security policy of "the governments contracting an alliance against the peoples", as formulated in the Carlsbad Decrees of July 1819. Alexander deprecated any intervention of a European league in the affairs of individucal nations to support "the absurd pretensions of 'absolute power'". He still declared his belief in free institutions with limitations. "Liberty", he maintained, "should be confined within just limits. And the limits of liberty are the principles of order".

Alexander's conversion was completed by the 1820 revolutions in Naples and Piedmont, combined with increasingly disquieting symptoms of discontent in France, Germany, and among his own people. In the seclusion of the little town of Troppau, where in October 1820 the powers met in conference, Metternich cemented his influence over Alexander, which had been wanting amid the turmoil and intrigues of Vienna and Aix. During a friendly conversation 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, the Holy Alliance, against the policy of a dictatorship of the great powers, the Quadruple Treaty. He gave in on 19 November by signing the Troppau Protocol, which consecrated the claims of collective Europe to interfere in the internal concerns of the sovereign states.