page_title: Personality and reputation of Paul I of Russia
section_title: Upbringing and as Crown Prince
hierarchical_section_title: Personality and reputation of Paul I of Russia / Upbringing and as Crown Prince
context_page_description: Paul I was Emperor of All Russia between 1796 and 1801, when he was deposed and assassinated in a palace coup. During his lifetime contemporaries, both at home and abroad speculated as to his mental health, and modern historians have continued to do so. Paul succeeded to the throne on the death of his mother, Catherine the Great, and almost immediately launched a campaign to revoke her legacy. Paul appears to have borne a great hatred for his mother and her acts as Empress, on account of both his upbringing—a lonely one spent mostly away from court—and the fact that Paul held her responsible for the overthrow and death of his father, Peter III, from whom she had taken the throne. As a result, Paul revoked many of her decrees from the day of his accession, and at the same time, he denigrated her memory and promoted that of Peter. Where Catherine had generally worked with the Russian nobility and treated them sympathetically, Paul distrusted them as a class. He believed them to have become weak and disorganised to need strict treatment; as a result, he revoked many of their privileges and treated them harshly.
context_section_description: His upbringing was a tension between different ideas and aspirations for his future rule. On the one hand, he was expected to be an enlightened constitutionalist; conversely, he was also encouraged t live up to the aggressive martial reputation of his predecessor, Peter the Great. Paul had begun demonstrating eccentric behaviour before his accession, which usually expressed themselves in outbursts of incandescent rage, whether to, for example, dismissing an entire platoon because it lost an order, or threatening to beat his gardener with a stick. He had gained his legal majority in 1772 but had not received any official offices or positions as a result.
  Before Catherine's death, there was uncertainty regarding the succession. A British observer in St Petersburg told how he had heard in 1792 that Paul intended to "make alterations and regulations which would make it more difficult to commit abuses", and the following year he was told that "at the empress's death, all may not go well perhaps".
  
  Foreign diplomats reported to their masters on Paul's behaviour. Whitworth wrote about Paul's "acrimony of disposition", while the Austrian ambassador, Louis Cobenzl, observed that "one absolutely does not know what to count on with the Grand Duke, he changes his language and his sentiments almost every moment". The French emissary believed that Paul could have been deranged, and the French charge d'affaires, Sabatier de Cabre, reported when Paul was 14 years old that Paul
  Is believed to be vindictive, headstrong and absolute in his ideas. It is only to be feared that by virtue of having his wings clipped, a potentially decided character may be rendered obstinate, that it may be replaced by duplicity, repressed hatred and perhaps pusillanimity, and that the high-mindedness which might have been developed in him may be stifled at last by the terror that his mother has always inspired in him.
  McGrew argues that Paul's reputation for disturbing behaviour was established in St Petersburg by 1794 following a number of incidents at court relating to Paul's pursuit of a lady, Yekaterina Nelidova. This affair was the immediate cause of Catherine's intention to change her heir apparent. The Austrian ambassador, Cobenzl, had already worked with Paul on occasion, and not only was he aware of his propensity for fits of anger and was apprehensive as to the future; he had not, he wrote home, seen any sign so far that the prince possessed the necessary leadership qualities and could only hope that he would learn them soon. This though, comments McGrew, "was a very slender hope. Paul was 42 years old, his personality was firmly set and he had long since decided who his enemies were." The end of the year, however, showed no indication that this had occurred.
  The roots of Paul's distrustful nature may be found in his upbringing which was a lonely one. Catherine had acceded the Imperial throne following the deposition and murder of her husband, Emperor Peter III, who was officially Paul's father. Catherine kept him sequestered at Gatchina, a rural estate far from St Petersburg and power, and seems likely that, before her death, Catherine intended to supplant Paul as her heir with his son, Alexander, although she died before this could be legislated for. Here, increasingly isolated, he spent most of his time organising his personal regiment, parading and punishing them to the point of tyranny, comments Marie-Pierre Rey.
caption: Paul, as Grand Duke of Russia
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