PAUL I EMPEROR OF RUSSIA (1774)

Originally PAVEL PETROVICH.

Emperor of Russia from 1796 to 1801.
Son of Peter III (ruled 1762) and Catherine II the Great (ruled 1762-96).
Paul was reared by his father´s aunt the empress Elizabeth (ruled 1741-61).

After 1760 he was tutored by Catherine´s close adviser, the learned diplomat Nikita Ivanovich Panin, but the boy never developed good relations with his mother who usurped the imperial crown from both her husband and her son in 1762 and afterward consistently refused to allow Paul to participate actively in government affairs.

Having married Sophia Dorothea of Württemburg (Russian name Maria Fyodorovna) in 1776 shortly after his first wife died Wilhelmina of Darmstadt (Russian name Nataliya Alekseyevna), Paul and his wife were settled by Catherine on an estate at Gachina (1783) where Paul removed from the centre of government at St. Petersburg held his own small court and engaged himself in managing his estate drilling his private army corps and contemplating government reforms.

Despite Catherine´s apparent intention to name Paul´s son Alexandre her heir.
Paul succeeded her when she died (Nov. 17/ Nov. 6, O.S., 1796) and immediately repealed the decree issued by Peter I the Great in 1722 that had given each monarch the right to choose his successor and had provided the opportunity for Catherine to become empress. 
In its place Paul established a definite order of succession within the male line of the Romanov family (April 5, 1797, O.S.).
Paul also in an effort to strengthen the autocracy reversed many of Catherine´s policies: he re-established centralized administrative agencies she had abolished in 1775, increased bureaucratic control in local government, and denied the nobility its recently acquired rights to elect certain local officials, to gather in provincial assemblies and to be exempt from direct taxation.
In the process he provoked the hostility of the nobles and when he introduced harsh disciplinary measures in the army and displayed a marked preference for his Gachina troops, the military, particularly the prestigious guards units, also turned against him.

Confidence in his ability dropped even among his trusted supporters because of a number of actions.
He demonstrated an inconsistent policy toward the peasantry and rapidly shiftef from a peaceful foreign policy (1796) to involvement in the second coalition against Napoleon (1798) to an anti-British policy (1800).
By the end of 1800 he had manoeuvred Russia into the disadvantageous position of being officially at war with France, unofficially at war with Great Britain, without diplomatic relations with Austria, and on the verge of sending an army through the unmapped khanates in Central Asia to invade British-controlled India.

As a result of his inconsistent policies as well as his tyrannical and capricious manner of implementing them, a group of highly placed civil and military officials, led by Count Peter von Pahlen, governor general of St. Petersburg, and Gen. Leonty Leontyevich, count von Bennigsen, gained the approval of Alexander, the heir to the throne, and on March 23 (March 11, O.S.), 1801, seized the Mikhaylovsky Palace and assassinated Paul in his bedchamber.