Alexander I of Russia
Alexander I of Russia defeated Napoleon and spent his last years in mysticism. Born in St Petersburg in 1777, he was taken from his parents at birth by his grandmother Catherine the Great, who supervised his education under a Swiss republican tutor, La Harpe, and intended him to succeed her in place of his father. He acceded in March 1801 after officers murdered his father Paul I in a coup he had known about and had been assured would not be fatal. The guilt is generally held to have marked him permanently. His early reign was reformist. He founded universities, relaxed censorship, permitted landowners to free serfs voluntarily, and had Mikhail Speransky draft constitutional proposals, most of which were not implemented. He was beaten by Napoleon at Austerlitz in 1805 and Friedland in 1807, and made peace at Tilsit on a raft in the Niemen, joining the Continental System and then withdrawing from it, which precipitated the invasion of 1812. He appointed Kutuzov, accepted the loss of Moscow, and refused every offer of negotiation while French troops remained on Russian soil — the decision that destroyed the Grande Armée. He then insisted on pursuing into Europe, entered Paris in 1814, and pressed for the Bourbon restoration. At Vienna he obtained most of Poland and granted it a constitution more liberal than Russia's. He became increasingly religious, formed the Holy Alliance, and turned reactionary at home under Arakcheev. He died at Taganrog in 1825, and a persistent Russian legend holds that he faked his death and lived as a Siberian hermit.
- Lived: 1777 CE – 1825 CE
- Nationality: Russian
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader
