Ever since the time of Ivan the Terrible, when the British made a direct northern route to Russia, they never for a second stopped interfering in the country's internal affairs. Bribery, elimination of dignitaries interfering with their interests - up to the murder of emperors, conspiracies, Masonic and various other secret communities. Ingoda gives the impression that the British establishment actually determined the foreign and sometimes domestic policy of Russia. In fact, not America, not Germany or Poland, but England has always been (and remains) the worst enemy of Russia!
Catherine II.
Catherine's dark shadow
- Catherine II, who killed her husband Peter the Third, and then killed another emperor - Ivan the Sixth (John Antonovich), who was kept in the Shlisselburg fortress from infancy, did not love her son Paul the First (apparently projecting this not love from his father). The son answered her "in return", loved his father dearly and considered his mother to be the culprit in his death. - There are many parallels between father and son: an unhappy childhood, an involuntary marriage, a sincere desire to make the life of his subjects better, ambiguous, ill-considered reforms and a violent death … such is mysticism.
- Pavel's first German wife, Wilhelmina of Hesse, died in childbirth, after which Catherine quickly finds him a new German wife - Dorothea of Würtenburg, a relative of the King of Prussia (the old, "good" Russian tradition is to put the Germans on the throne) and sends them into exile to live in Gatchina estate.
- Catherine unceremoniously selects immediately after the birth of their sons Alexander and Konstantin, allows them to see their parents only on certain days and does not allow her son to rule the state. Moreover, she prepared a will for the inheritance of power by his son Alexander, contrary to Paul's rights (and planted another bomb in the relationship between father and son).
- Pavel, who well understood the cruel nature of his mother, waits all his life for a repetition of the fate of his father, lives in fear and isolation. His only entertainment was the guard of soldiers and the Prussian wife (who strengthened his father's admiration for the Prussian order in the army and parades).
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Paul the First.
Desire and lack of skill
- We must pay tribute to Paul, having entered the reign after the death of Catherine, he begins with the most important: he occupied Tsarskoe Selo and burned his mother's will in the fireplace with the transfer of the throne to Alexander. Then he pays tribute to his father and orders him to be reburied next to Catherine (for details, see the article "The murder of the grandson of Peter the Great - the tragedy of Russia").
- Next, he issues a decree on succession to the throne, the meaning of which is in following the strict principle of automatic transfer of the right to the throne - all the rights of the heirs and the sequence are clearly laid out, and the king ascending the throne, during the coronation, had to take an oath to comply with the act of coronation (decree on succession to the throne). This rule was observed by all the following rulers from now on, until the abdication of Nicholas II.
- Having reached the throne at the age of 42 and having no idea how to govern the empire, Paul enthusiastically gets down to business … every day he marked the introduction of a new state decree. And this pace, of course, brought chaos to public administration, because it is impossible to comply with such a number of laws. He was in charge of everything. He issued a law on succession to the throne and at the same time on how long trousers should be worn, issued a law that nannies should walk with their children no less than such and such a time in winter and such and such a time in summer, forbade dancing the waltz, saying individual words …
- Pavel severely curtailed the privileges of the nobility favored by Catherine. Corporal punishment for this class was returned to legal practice, new taxes were established. Noblemen could go into civil service only with special permission. - With particular zeal is taken to establish order in the army. A new form was introduced, overcoats appeared for the first time. The officers' lists were thoroughly cleaned out and the requirements increased - now each officer was criminally responsible for the life of his subordinates (!).
“The soldiers got the right to complain about their commanders, and for their courage they could receive a silver medal - the first military order for privates in Russia. They were obliged to provide annual leave, the officers had no right to use them to work on their estates (!). The service life of the soldiers was reduced to 25 years, at the end of which a pension was assigned. Paul 1 formed a new division of the army: a courier corps, a pioneer regiment, etc. -On the other hand, disciplinary requirements rose to the skies, the army spent days in drill (the damning Prussian influence also affected it!).
Suvorov.
- The duties of the peasants changed a lot: the landowners could demand to work the corvee no more than three times a week, the grain duty was abolished.
- For national and religious minorities, concessions were made. In particular, Paul's decree allowed the construction of Old Believer churches.
- The most severe censorship was introduced to the point that it was forbidden to import books and study at European universities.
Paul the First is a knight of Malta.
In foreign policy, everything was also chaotic: either, standing up for the Knights of Malta, he organized an anti-French coalition, sending Suvorov to liberate northern Italy (the famous crossing of the Alps), or succumbing to the charm of Napoleon (who returned all captured Russian soldiers from captivity without any conditions, uniform in the form of their units at the expense of the French treasury!), concluded an anti-British alliance with him and even almost organized a campaign against the Indian possessions of the English crown, but … was the very "party" that ruled and kept him in power, as was the case with Peter the Great, for example (read more about this in the articles: "This strange Tsar Peter".
Suvorov's crossing over the Alps.
And of course, his fatal mistake was an alliance against England (fatal for him, but for the state it could be a deliverance from the troubles that subsequently fell on the empire: the war of 1812, the Turkish war, palace coups, the First World War and the Civil War - in all this, one England played the key roles). It came down to the arrest of merchant ships. The coup was a matter of time. With the money of the English crown, transferred by the Ambassador of England through his mistress, a spy Zherebtsova (sister of the Zubovs, who participated in the coup and murder with the whole family) to the conspirators, a conspiracy was organized and implemented with the aim of removing the legitimate emperor and the accession of a more compliant pretender. High officials and nobles took part, Alexander (the eldest son of Paul) was also involved in the conspiracy, in all likelihood he did not want murder, but he could certainly have assumed such an outcome. According to eyewitnesses, Paul had a presentiment of imminent death: an hour and a half before the murder, looking at himself in the mirror, it seemed to him as if his mouth were twisted, and his head tilted to the side, as if hanging. And in 1852, a monument to Paul I was unveiled in Gatchina. During the solemn ceremony, the covers were removed, but the rope remained on the neck of the statue - Emperor Nicholas I burst into tears. Mystic…..
The assassination of Paul the First.
The chronicle of the events of the murder, told by the conspirators, is sometimes contradictory. Everyone tried to present themselves in a noble manner. Paul's descriptions of how Paul dealt with the rebels differ. According to one version, he immediately agreed to abdicate the throne, according to another, he resisted the conspirators, due to which he was killed in a brawl. He was stabbed in the temple, either with a gold snuffbox, or with a pistol grip, and then he was cold-bloodedly strangled by an officer's belt scarf. At first, after his death, wide festivities with illumination swept through the capital, but then the first intoxication subsided and people realized that a lot of bad things would now come back and almost everyone said: Paul was our father. In the first parade, when the soldiers gathered in the exercirhaus, the officers walked between them, congratulating them, and said: “Rejoice, brothers,the tyrant died "- then they answered:" For us he was not a tyrant, but a father."