Paul I of Russia

Biography

Paul was born in 1754, the son of the future Peter III and of Catherine II, and was taken from his mother at birth by Empress Elizabeth. When Catherine deposed his father in 1762 he remained heir, but she kept him away from power for the rest of her reign, and he spent years on his estate at Gatchina, drilling a private force on the Prussian model. His second wife, Maria Feodorovna, bore the future Alexander I.

Paul became emperor on Catherine's death in November 1796 and reversed many of her policies. His Pauline Laws fixed the succession by male primogeniture, his manifesto of 1797 limited the labour serfs owed their lords to three days a week, and he tried to discipline the nobility and impose Prussian-style uniforms and drill on the army, dismissing hundreds of generals.

Angered by French expansion and the French seizure of Malta, he accepted election as Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller and in 1799 joined the Second Coalition, sending Suvorov to Italy and Switzerland and troops to Holland. After falling out with Austria and Britain he moved toward Bonaparte's France, formed the Second League of Armed Neutrality against British shipping, planned an attack on British India and decreed the annexation of the Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti in January 1801.

His erratic rule alienated the court and officer corps, and on the night of 23 March 1801 conspirators seeking to force his abdication killed him. His son Alexander succeeded him.