ALEXANDER, Paulovich, emperor of Russia, was born on 28th December 1777. He was the son of Paul, afterwards emperor, by Maria, daughter of Prince Eugene of Württemberg. His early education was conducted under his excellent mother, and afterwards was carefully directed by his grandmother, the Empress Catherine II., who confided its general superintendence to Laharpe, of whom Alexander ever afterwards retained a grateful recollection. The death of Catherine, in 1796, made room for the accession of her son Paul, whose wild eccentricities were so extravagant and prejudicial to his country, that they ended in his assassination in 1801; and Alexander was immediately placed on the Russian throne.
The policy of the young emperor was indicated by his concluding a peace with Britain, against which his father had declared war; and after the recommencement of hostilities between us and France in 1803, Alexander joined Austria and Sweden in a coalition with Great Britain against the pretensions of France in 1805. This war was very disastrous to the allies. The armies of Austria were totally defeated in a succession of battles between the 6th and 13th of October of that year; and the combined Austrian and Russian armies, under the two emperors, were defeated by Napoleon in the great battle of Austerlitz on the 2d of December. Austria concluded a separate treaty of peace, and Alexander led the remains of his army into his own dominions. Britain thus left single-handed to contend with the increased power of France, was probably saved from the worst consequences of the contest, by the annihilation of the combined navies of France and Spain, in the battle of Trafalgar, on 21st of October, on the very day on which General Mack surrendered a fine Austrian army of 36,000 men at Ulm to Napoleon.
Prussia, which had injudiciously stood neutral while France was humbling Austria and Russia, rashly engaged in hostilities with Napoleon in 1806, while her allies, the Russians, were still beyond the Vistula; but the defeats at Auerstadt and Jena laid Prussia prostrate; and in the succeeding year,
the battles of Eylau and Friedland, in which the Russians were fairly beaten, led to the dismemberment of Prussia, and the treaty of Tilsit with Russia. A few days after the last battle, Alexander and Napoleon met on a raft anchored in the river Niemen, and agreed to the articles of a treaty which was signed at Tilsit, on July 7. Napoleon gained so on Alexander, as to obtain his consent to a secret article of the treaty, by which Alexander was not only to withdraw from his connection with Britain, but to become her enemy; and he declared war against her on the 26th of October.
For nearly five years, Alexander appeared attached to the alliance of France; but the privations of his subjects by the interruption of the commerce with England, and the intolerable load of Napoleon's "Continental System," at length induced him to return to his old alliance, and to declare war against France on March 19. 1812. On the 24th April, he left St Petersburg, to join his armies on the west frontier of Lithuania. Napoleon assembled the most numerous and magnificent army that had ever been brought together in modern times, augmented by the unwilling levies of Prussia and Austria, and entered Russia on the 25th of June 1812. The first encounter was at Borodino, where there was a well-contested action, in which each army suffered the loss of 25,000 men. Kutusoff made a skilful retreat; and as the French advanced, they found a deserted wasted country to the confines of Moscow, which Napoleon entered on the 14th September; but in a few hours the city was in flames, supplies of every kind intercepted, and the approach of winter compelled Napoleon to leave its smoking ruins. The enterprising generals, Kutusoff, Wittenstein, and Tschichagoff, hung on his retreat like thunderclouds; and the destruction of his gallant army at the passage of the Berezina, and the firmness of Alexander through the mighty contest, gave the first blow to Napoleon's colossal power, which had well nigh annihilated the independence of Continental Europe.
In 1813, the advancing Russians were successively joined by the forces of Prussia, Austria, and Sweden. Alexander continued with the allied armies, and he was especially present in the battles of Dresden and Leipzig. The extraordinary military genius of Napoleon had made wonderful exertions to repair his losses in the early part of 1814; but the victories of Wellington in Spain, and his advance into the heart of France, favoured the progress of the allies; and on March 30. 1814, 150,000 men of the allied armies took possession of Paris, which was entered next day by Alexander and the king of Prussia.
After the deposition of Napoleon, the allied sovereigns visited England. By the treaty of Vienna, Alexander was acknowledged king of Poland; but before the Congress of Vienna had separated, Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and was enthusiastically received at Paris. The two eastern emperors and the king of Prussia remained together, until the battle of Waterloo gave peace to Europe.
On the advance of the British and Prussians to Paris, the three allied sovereigns again made their entry into Paris, where they concluded, on September 26, that treaty which has been misnamed the Holy Alliance.
After that period, Alexander was chiefly occupied in the internal administration of his vast dominions, which certainly advanced in every kind of improvement during the twenty-five years of his reign, more than under any of his predecessors from the time of Peter I. The gradual abolition of the feudal servitude of the peasantry, begun by the most enlightened of his predecessors, was continued under Alexander. Education, agriculture, manufactures, commerce, were also greatly extended; while literature and the fine arts were liberally encouraged. His disposition has been represented by his subjects as mild and merciful; yet his influence in the affairs of Europe was not exerted in the
cause of public liberty. But this could hardly be expected from the autocrat of an unmitigated despotism in his own territories. He will, however, bear a very favourable comparison with any Russian sovereign, or even with his European contemporary princes.
Early in the winter of 1825, he left St Petersburg for the last time on a tour of inspection of his southern provinces. About the middle of November, he was attacked by a violent intermittent fever, which is endemical in those countries; and when he reached Taganrog, on the Gulf of Azof, he was alarmingly ill from reiterated accessions of the disease, which carried him off on December 1. 1825. In foreign countries his death has been attributed to poison; but this is refuted by the history of his disease, and is very improbable, from his great popularity with his countrymen. He was married in 1793, to Louisa Maria Augusta, princess of Baden, but left no issue, and was succeeded by his second brother Nicolas, the present emperor. (T. S. T.)