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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Nicholas I Biography NICHOLAS I, Pavlovitch (1796–1855). Emperor of Russia from 1825 to 1855. He was the son of Paul I and Maria Feodorovna and was born at Tsarskoie Selo July 6 (old style June 25), 1796. His early education was under the direction of his mother, a princess of Württemberg, and of Charlotte von Lieven, a lady from Courland and widow of the Governor-General of Kiev. Nicholas was five years old when his father Paul was murdered and his brother Alexander I (q.v.) ascended the throne. His education thereafter was intrusted to Count M. Lamsdorff, who was ex-Governor of Courland and Director of the Cadets' Corps (Military Academy). In 1816 he traveled in England and on the Continent and also made a tour through the Russian provinces. On July 13, 1817, he married Charlotte, the eldest daughter of Frederick William III of Prussia. The death of Alexander I, in December, 1825, and the previous renunciation by his elder brother, the Grand Duke Constantine (q.v.), of his claims to the throne (1822), made Nicholas Emperor, but he was obliged to meet at the outset a military conspiracy, which was stamped out with ruthless severity—the celebrated rising of the Decembrists. (See Russia.) Capital punishment, abolished by the Empress Elizabeth, was revived, for the purpose of inflicting it upon the leaders of the insurrection. Nicholas, like other czars, showed at the beginning of his reign some zeal for reform; but the spirit died out, giving place to the old despotism, and he became the embodiment of the reactionary spirit of the Holy Alliance. Suspicious of the nobility because of the Decembrist uprising, he extended the field and powers of the bureaucracy and governed the country through obedient officials, ignoring entirely the institutions of the nobility. The guiding ideas of Nicholas I, and through him of all official Russia, were summed up in the famous phrase: Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and National Unity (which meant the complete rule of the dominant Great Russian element of the population ). Still in his own way Nicholas I was sincerely devoted to his country and people and undertook a number of changes which he thought would benefit the country. The codification of Russian law, commenced in 1827, was continued and completed in 1846. A reform of the monetary system was begun by which silver was made the only legal tender and the issue of treasury notes introduced. A separate Ministry of Imperial Estates was established and several measures were passed for the purpose of improving the condition of the peasants. A war with Persia began soon after his accession, and was concluded on Feb. 28, 1828, by the Peace of Turkmantchai, which gave Persian Armenia to Russia. Close upon this followed a successful but costly war with Turkey, concluded by the Peace of Adrianople (q.v.) which obtained for Russia another increase of territory, the free navigation of the Danube, the right of free passage between the Black and Mediterranean seas, and the protectorate over Moldavia and Wallachia. The revolutionary agitation of 1830 communicated itself to Russian Poland, where there was a national rising, suppressed after a contest of nine months, which taxed the military resources of the Empire. Nicholas converted the Kingdom of Poland into a Russian province, and began the process of Russification, which has since been in progress. Russia, which had been approaching more closely the standards of western Europe, gradually lost its newer aspect. The press was placed under a strict censorship, and education was directed, not to the development of the people, but to preparation for the work of the state. In the colleges (Gymnasiums) Latin and Greek were given chief attention; in the universities inspectors were appointed for the purpose of watching the students and of reporting their political inclinations. The famous "Third Division" was established to handle the affairs of the secret police which was to spy upon the people and clean the country of individuals with "suspicious" or "dangerous" political ideas. The process of Russification, begun in Poland, was to be carried out all over the Empire, until all the foreign elements were completely Russianized and unified in people and religion. The independence of the mountaineers of the Caucasus was inconsistent with the Emperor's schemes, and war was waged against them with the greatest energy and perseverance, but at the cost of immense sacrifices both of money and lives. Nicholas sought to check the advance of British influence in Central Asia, and to counteract it tried various means, among which was the expedition for the conquest of Khiva in 1839, which ended in disaster. Between 1844 and 1846 he visited England, Austria, and Italy. When the revolution of 1848 broke upon Europe, Nicholas availed himself of the first opportunity to interfere on behalf of its tottering thrones, and sent his troops to aid Austria in the suppression of the Hungarian national uprising. Nicholas was intent on carrying into effect the hereditary Russian designs upon Constantinople, and in 1853 provoked a war with the Sultan; but the opposition of Great Britain and France plunged Nicholas into a much more terrible struggle than he had anticipated. (See Crimean War.) In the course of the war he died at St. Petersburg, March 2, 1855, his death having undoubtedly been hastened by chagrin at the repeated defeats which his arms sustained, and the excessive labor he underwent to repair his losses. He was remarkable for temperance, frugality, and patriotism, but equally so for vanity, ostentation, and narrow-mindedness. Consult: S. M. Schmucker, Nicholas I (Philadelphia, 1860); Alphonse Balleydier, Histoire de l'empereur Nicolas (2 vols., Paris, 1857); Paul Lacroix, Histoire de Nicolas I (8 vols., ib., 1864—75); H. S. Edwards, The Romanoffs (London, 1890); Th. Shieman, Geschichte Russlands unter Kaiser Nikolaus I. (3 vols., Berlin, 1904–13). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol XVII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 125-126. |