Alexander I Pavlovich Romanov (Александр I Павлович), better known as Alexander I (born in Saint-Petersburg, December 23, 1777 - died in Taganrog on December 1, 1825), son of Paul I and Sophie-Dorothée de Württemberg; Tsar of Russia from March 23, 1801 until his death, King of Poland from 1815 to 1825, he married in 1793 Louise Augusta de Bade (1779-1826). His reign coincided almost exactly with that of Napoleon, whom he repeatedly fought until the victorious battle of 1814.
Reforming Tsar?
Raised in the French way, in particular by the Swiss colonel La Harpe, he developed liberal ideas radically opposed to those of his father Paul I. His grandmother, Catherine II, considered making him her direct successor, in place of Paul, but she died before she could change the order of succession to the throne in his favour.
Informed of the plot against his father, Alexander considered that he would only be deposed; the plot having led to the assassination of Paul I, Alexander remained all his life haunted by the idea of appearing as the accomplice in the death of his father.
A few months after his accession, he encouraged a project to constitutionalize the Russian government and granted the Senate a right of remonstrance. He also encouraged the emancipation of the serfs (notably in 1818, when he freed the serfs of the Baltic provinces). Supported by his brother Constantine, his policy was abandoned by his younger brother Nicholas I, who returned to autocracy.
Alexander I was Napoleon's main military adversary:allied with Austria and Prussia, he was seriously defeated at Austerlitz (1805), then after a fierce fight at Eylau (1807) was again defeated at Friedland (1807). After the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and Erfurt (1808), he allied himself with France against England and Sweden, in order to conquer Finland (by the Treaty of Frederikshaven) but turned against France in allying with the Turks (Treaty of Bucharest:this reversal of alliance was the primary cause of the Russian campaign, which saw the occupation of Moscow by French troops and the Russian victory of Berezina, November 29, 1812.
On the religious level, Alexandre developed, from 1814, a mystical crisis which made him convert to a kind of Methodism, the Bible Society. In 1825, a few months before his death, he sent his aide-de-camp to Rome, to inform Pope Leo XII of his desire to abjure Orthodoxy and bring Russia back into the Roman Catholic Church.
A controversial death
Alexander I died on December 1, 1825 in Taganrog by the Sea of Azov; he is buried in Saint-Petersburg.
As soon as his death was announced, doubts arose in Russia, fueled by the fact that many people, filing past his corpse, failed to recognize him. Rumors then spread that the Tsar had faked his death and withdrew away from the men, while the corpse of a soldier vaguely resembling him was substituted.
A few years later, in fact, a hermit by the name of Fedor Kousmisch was recognized by many people as Alexander I:arrested, whipped and then deported to Siberia, he became a staretz and died on January 20, 1864 in Tomsk, Siberia.
The identity of Fedor Kousmisch and Alexander I is now accepted by some historians, as much as it would be shared by the Romanov family. These historians claim that Alexander voluntarily withdrew from the world, probably to atone for the murder of his father, Paul I, in which he unwittingly took part in giving his support to the conspiracy which was to assassinate the demented tsar.
This rumor has been neither confirmed nor invalidated, especially since there are a number of obstacles to such a substitution (in particular, the fact that Empress Elisabeth Alexeievna, wife of Alexander I, was then suffering from tuberculosis and that it is unlikely that the Tsar abandoned his doomed wife).
One element, however, increases the trouble:when Alexander III of Russia opened the tomb of Alexander I, in order to verify the validity of the rumors of survival, the coffin was discovered empty...