Speaker 1: One quick note before we begin. If you're enjoying Noble Blood,
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Speaker 1: Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Minky. Listener discretion is advised. On
Speaker 1: July sixty two, the woman who would go on to
Speaker 1: be known as Catherine the Great got word that the
Speaker 1: moment had come for the coup she had been planning
Speaker 1: with her closest advisors and generals. Next morning, while her husband,
Speaker 1: the ineffectual Emperor Peter the Third, lingered with a mistress
Speaker 1: at a palace outside of the city, Catherine rode in
Speaker 1: military uniform through the barracks, solidifying her support and her
Speaker 1: loyalty amongst the troops of Russia. Her husband had been
Speaker 1: the czar for fewer than six months when he was
Speaker 1: captured by guardsman loyal to Catherine and forced to abdicate.
Speaker 1: Just eight days after that, the imprisoned Peter died, likely
Speaker 1: of strangulation, although the official autopsy would declare it to
Speaker 1: be apoplexy. Such began in earnest the long and illustrious
Speaker 1: reign of Catherine the Great, the minor princess turned consort
Speaker 1: turned empress who ushered in a new era of Enlightenment
Speaker 1: philosophy in an attempt to bring westernized political theory to
Speaker 1: the country. The coup itself, it's machinations, and the many
Speaker 1: place as it almost went wrong, is fascinating, and I
Speaker 1: urge you, if you haven't already, to listen to the
Speaker 1: episode that we did about it on this very podcast,
Speaker 1: because today we're not talking about Catherine the Great, we're
Speaker 1: discussing instead her son, Paul the First. Imagine the scene
Speaker 1: during the coup, Catherine and her lover riding gallantly on
Speaker 1: magnificent stallions through the city to where Catherine would take
Speaker 1: her oath of office. Now turn the camera a little
Speaker 1: to the side to a distant palace window where a small,
Speaker 1: not terribly attractive child of seven years old might have
Speaker 1: been looking out. Little Paul the First saw his ambitious
Speaker 1: mother sees power from his father. If she wasn't responsible
Speaker 1: for his father's death directly, then, at least indirectly, the
Speaker 1: boy ultimately grew up into a resentful, bitter man, with
Speaker 1: both enemies and allies would politely question his sanity. He's
Speaker 1: an edible case that Freud himself would have salivated over.
Speaker 1: Paul the First might have been a smart man, but
Speaker 1: he was a man who let his insecurities and idiosyncrasies
Speaker 1: control him to the point where his own nobles turned
Speaker 1: against him. Being an emperor is a precarious position at
Speaker 1: the best of times. Unfortunately for Paul the First, his
Speaker 1: mother made politics look easy. For Paul the Crown would
Speaker 1: cost him his life. I'm Danis Schwartz, and this is
Speaker 1: noble blood. One quick historical quirk that we're going to
Speaker 1: have to talk about before we start the changing of
Speaker 1: the calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian. Pope Gregory
Speaker 1: sanctioned a small change to the calendar to prevent drift.
Speaker 1: The actual solar year is slightly shorter than having one
Speaker 1: leap day every four years accounts for, and so under
Speaker 1: the Julian calendar we were getting an extra day every
Speaker 1: one d twenty eight years. The Gregorian calendar fixed that
Speaker 1: and basically fast forward it a few days to catch
Speaker 1: up to where the sun was the days that we
Speaker 1: had lost during the Julian calendar. But the tricky thing
Speaker 1: is that different countries adopted the Gregorian calendar at different times.
Speaker 1: Catholic countries like France took to it almost right away,
Speaker 1: right when Pope Gregory thirteenth did in the sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: but England, for example, didn't adopt it until seventeen fifty two.
Speaker 1: The year one September two was followed by September four.
Speaker 1: Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: which means that some of the dates in this story
Speaker 1: occurred eleven days earlier in Russia than people would have
Speaker 1: recorded them as happening in her up. For example, Catherine
Speaker 1: the Great would say that she led her coup in St.
Speaker 1: Petersburg on June, while someone in France would think that
Speaker 1: it happened on July nine. Some historians deal with this
Speaker 1: discrepancy by marking certain dates as OS or n s
Speaker 1: for Old Style or New Style. So back in os Russia,
Speaker 1: Paul the First would say that his birthday was September
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty four. He was the first child born to
Speaker 1: Peter and Catherine back when they were just the Grand
Speaker 1: Duke and Duchess of Russia. The future Katherine the Great
Speaker 1: was far too ambitious on her own behalf to concern
Speaker 1: herself too much with an hair. Thanks to her husband's
Speaker 1: impotence and their general distaste for each other, it had
Speaker 1: taken the two of them a decade to conceive The
Speaker 1: rumors fanned by Katherine herself said that the child was
Speaker 1: actually her lover, Seragei Seltokov's. Later in life, Catherine would
Speaker 1: say that those rumors were just to make her husband jealous,
Speaker 1: that of course they were his children. But there are
Speaker 1: strong arguments to be made on either side. On one hand,
Speaker 1: Peter did struggle with impotence, and he never impregnated any
Speaker 1: of his mistresses, and it would be in Catherine's best
Speaker 1: interest to lie later on after the coup to link
Speaker 1: her child back to the Romanov dynasty because she wasn't
Speaker 1: a Russian royal by blood. On the other hand, Paul
Speaker 1: does bear a resemblance to Peter the Third, and Peter
Speaker 1: never disavowed the child or denounced Katherine as an adultress.
Speaker 1: He disliked his wife so much that one imagined given
Speaker 1: her precarious situation at court, back when she was just
Speaker 1: a grand duchess, that if she did Bearrison by someone else,
Speaker 1: Peter could have used that to get rid of her.
Speaker 1: Assuming Paul was Peters son, the circumstances of his birth
Speaker 1: would be just as hold and loveless as those of
Speaker 1: his conception. The Empress, Elizabeth, Peter's aunt, was eager for
Speaker 1: Catherine and Peter to have a male heir in there
Speaker 1: that she could mold to her satisfaction. Catherine was made
Speaker 1: to give birth in a room right next to the
Speaker 1: Empress's chambers. Just moments after the umbilical cord was cut,
Speaker 1: baby Paul was swept into a blanket and out of
Speaker 1: the room to be presented to the Empress. The new mother,
Speaker 1: Catherine was all but forgotten in the room where she
Speaker 1: had just given birth. For hours, no one cleaned the
Speaker 1: room or gave Catherine any warmth or comfort or food.
Speaker 1: It seemed to her that they had just forgotten that
Speaker 1: she was there. She bled and sweat and shivered against
Speaker 1: the chill of an open window, all alone and too
Speaker 1: weak to call for help, and two to get up
Speaker 1: to go to her own comfortable bed chambers. Catherine never
Speaker 1: held her infant to her own breast. Eager as Empress,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth was for a baby to care for in theory,
Speaker 1: in practice, she was wildly neglectful. On the rare occasions
Speaker 1: that she did give baby Paul attention, she doated on him,
Speaker 1: but then she quickly lost interest. Paul was brought up
Speaker 1: by tutors and a governor. His diet was nutritionally deficient,
Speaker 1: and he was lonely with very little interaction from either parent.
Speaker 1: And then, when he was seven years old and Brisce
Speaker 1: Elizabeth died six months later, Paul's father, the Emperor, was
Speaker 1: overthrown by his mother and his father was killed. Catherine
Speaker 1: was the Empress then, but it turns out she had
Speaker 1: abowed as much interest in the stranger that they said
Speaker 1: was her son as his eight great aunts. During her
Speaker 1: neglectful periods, Katherine and Paul never bonded and never would bond.
Speaker 1: She resented him for being sickly and a not very
Speaker 1: attractive child, and for being an implicit threat to her
Speaker 1: power because he was a Romanov by blood. He resented
Speaker 1: her because well, he blamed the death of his father
Speaker 1: on her. Neither trusted the other, probably for good reason,
Speaker 1: and Catherine had no interest in training him to be
Speaker 1: her heir, lest he tried to force her to share
Speaker 1: some of her power. The best thing to do with
Speaker 1: her son, then was just marry him off. When Paul
Speaker 1: was nineteen, Katherine chose a princess for him, Wilhelmina, from
Speaker 1: one of the many non United German kingdoms. Just three
Speaker 1: years into that marriage, the woman died in childbirth, which,
Speaker 1: at least in Paul's mind, was probably for the best.
Speaker 1: Wilhelmina had already taken a ever in their brief marriage,
Speaker 1: and given her strong willed ways and open ambition, she
Speaker 1: had reminded Paul of his mother. Now a young single
Speaker 1: man in his early twenties, Paul started openly talking about
Speaker 1: co ruling with Katherine. That wouldn't do for Katherine, and so,
Speaker 1: just six months after he became a widower, Katherine married
Speaker 1: her son to another Germanic princess, a woman named Sophia Dorothea,
Speaker 1: who which would become Russianized to Maria Federovna. This marriage
Speaker 1: proved to be a little longer lasting. The pair had
Speaker 1: a son within a year, a little charubic thing they
Speaker 1: named Alexander, just as it had been done to her
Speaker 1: newborn infant. Katherine swept the baby away immediately after he
Speaker 1: was born to raise him herself as her heir. To
Speaker 1: keep her son occupied and placid, Katherine granted Paul a
Speaker 1: nice estate out in the suburbs Garcina, where Paul kept
Speaker 1: a brigade of soldiers. Over the years, the little that
Speaker 1: Paul knew about his own father became embellished in his mind.
Speaker 1: Like his father, Paul became fascinated by the Prussian model
Speaker 1: of military dress and discipline, and so like his father,
Speaker 1: he forced his soldiers to drill and parade around for
Speaker 1: his amusement. Paul and his wife had what was by
Speaker 1: eighteenth century standards a successful marriage, even though Paul had
Speaker 1: two mistresses over twenty two years. He and his wife
Speaker 1: would go on to have ten children. One of those children,
Speaker 1: of course, was Alexander, the firstborn son that Catherine had
Speaker 1: been grooming for the throne since his infancy. In seventeen seven,
Speaker 1: rumors began to spread that Catherine was going to name Alexander,
Speaker 1: not Paul, her heir, sipping over Paul completely. Word is
Speaker 1: that Katherine even met secretly with Alexander's tutors and with
Speaker 1: Alexander's mother Maria, but ultimately those plans would never come
Speaker 1: to fruition. In seventy six, when Catherine died of a stroke,
Speaker 1: Paul instantly sprung into action to seize power. He destroyed
Speaker 1: Catherine's will, which was probably unnecessary given there was no
Speaker 1: indication that his son Alexander would have been willing to
Speaker 1: honor her wishes over his own father's. Now, at forty
Speaker 1: two years old, Paul was finally in charge, and the
Speaker 1: first thing he did was repeal the practice of rulers
Speaker 1: being allowed to choose their successors willy nilly. Instead, he
Speaker 1: declared that should always be the oldest, most eligible son
Speaker 1: who was next in line for the throne, and that
Speaker 1: women would only inherit the throne if there were no
Speaker 1: legitimately born male heirs in the family. The years of
Speaker 1: repressed bitterness towards his mother emerged in policy. All meant
Speaker 1: to undo everything that Catherine had done and to defend
Speaker 1: the memory of his long dead father, Paul had the
Speaker 1: bones of Gregory Potemkin, Catherine's lover, dug up and scattered.
Speaker 1: He immediately recalled all troops located outside Russia, because, unlike
Speaker 1: his mother, Paul had no expansionist ideals. Paul was incredibly vindictive,
Speaker 1: willing to hurt himself and hurt Russia just despite his
Speaker 1: dead mother, Catherine, had loved French culture and philosophy. She
Speaker 1: regularly read French philosophers and famously corresponded with Voltaire. Paul
Speaker 1: saw French culture as a threat After the French Revolution,
Speaker 1: Paul did everything in his power to prevent that ideology
Speaker 1: from reaching Russia. He banned foreign books, banned for newspapers,
Speaker 1: and forbid anyone in court from wearing French fashions. Some
Speaker 1: of that seems logical. If you're an absolutist ruler, you
Speaker 1: don't want your people to get any bright revolutionary ideas.
Speaker 1: But Paul wasn't a rational ruler. He was prone to
Speaker 1: fit a violent rage that terrified his friends and servants.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he made decisions for the country that seemed so
Speaker 1: arbitrary and self defeating, like randomly becoming wild with rage
Speaker 1: that Napoleon had conquered Malta that his friend privately wondered
Speaker 1: if maybe Paul wasn't all there, I mean, what did
Speaker 1: Russia have to do with Malta anyway? Why did he care?
Speaker 1: As Emperor Paul put his troops in Prussian style uniforms
Speaker 1: and forced them to parade outside his palace at eleven
Speaker 1: am every single day. If you can imagine, the elite
Speaker 1: soldiers who served Bazar did not enjoy being treated like
Speaker 1: chopin these But Paul's real troubles would come from offending
Speaker 1: the nobles. Some of Paul's political ideals weren't bad. He
Speaker 1: banned corporal punishment for the lower classes and tried, not
Speaker 1: quite successfully, to make things a little bit better for
Speaker 1: the serfs. But those efforts were part of a larger
Speaker 1: campaign for Paul to weaken the entrenched aristocracy that had
Speaker 1: been the center of his mother's world. But as Paul
Speaker 1: would learn, even tsars can overestimate their power too deadly consequences.
Speaker 1: Part of Paul's strangeness was an obsession with medieval chivalry
Speaker 1: and knights of old. He forced all of his advisers
Speaker 1: to adopt a code of chivalry with random rules of
Speaker 1: bowing and kneeling. If any of them weren't dressed to
Speaker 1: Paul's exact specifications, even something as little as a missing button,
Speaker 1: he went wild. Frankly, all of his advisers thought it
Speaker 1: was a little much Paul knew that he had enemies,
Speaker 1: and so his paranoia was probably justified when he declared
Speaker 1: that he wanted a new grand palace built in St.
Speaker 1: Petersburg because he no longer felt safe in the Winter Palace,
Speaker 1: and so the Palace of St. Michael was built according
Speaker 1: to his exact specifications, an architectural camera that was half
Speaker 1: Russian classical style and half Medieval English castle, complete with
Speaker 1: full moat and drawbridge. It was completed in eighteen o one,
Speaker 1: but Paul would sleep there for only forty nights before
Speaker 1: his murder. On a cold Monday night, Sir Paul the
Speaker 1: first hosted dinner at the Palace of St. Michael. His
Speaker 1: son Alexander was present, sitting on the far side of
Speaker 1: the table and struggling to make icon intact with his father.
Speaker 1: With some food and drink still on the table, Paul stood,
Speaker 1: shoving his chair away and declared that he was off
Speaker 1: to bed to retire in his own apartments. The eating,
Speaker 1: but more importantly, the drinking, didn't stop for some of
Speaker 1: the other high ranking officers present. They drank and continued
Speaker 1: to drink, and then they made their move. A group
Speaker 1: of disgruntled officers made their way to Paul's bed chambers,
Speaker 1: where they physically overpowered two valets and knocked down Paul's door.
Speaker 1: The bedroom was empty. There was a single burning candle
Speaker 1: and a bed with rumpled cheats, but no Emperor Paul.
Speaker 1: The bird has flown, one of the men said. Another
Speaker 1: felt the sheets of the bed, perhaps, but not far,
Speaker 1: you responded, The nest is still warm. They found the
Speaker 1: emperor cow we're in behind a curtain. Though the Tsar
Speaker 1: tried to beat them away, he was battered and strangled
Speaker 1: with a scarf and ultimately stabbed with a sword by
Speaker 1: General Nicolay Zubov. The rest of the group forced him
Speaker 1: to the ground and trampled him to death. It's possible
Speaker 1: that the group hadn't initially planned on murdering the Emperor,
Speaker 1: that they drunk on adrenaline and liquor simply got carried away.
Speaker 1: They had brought with them abdication papers that presumably they
Speaker 1: were planning on forcing Paul to sign. But then again,
Speaker 1: one of the conspirators had asked another what they would
Speaker 1: do if Paul wasn't willing to sign away his power.
Speaker 1: Making an omelet requires the breaking of eggs. The other
Speaker 1: man replied ominously Immediately after the tsar was killed, Nicolay
Speaker 1: went to find the young Alexander, twenty three years old
Speaker 1: and the new emperor time to grow up. Niko I said,
Speaker 1: go and rule. Alexander knew that the men were planning
Speaker 1: on overthrowing his father, but no one had told him
Speaker 1: that his father's blood would be on his hands. He
Speaker 1: would have a guilty conscience for the rest of his life,
Speaker 1: but he wouldn't punish the assassins. Alexander went on ruling,
Speaker 1: and the official court physician declared that Emperor Paul the
Speaker 1: First had died of apoplexy. Coincidentally, that's the exact same
Speaker 1: thing that the official reports had said Paul's own father, Peter,
Speaker 1: had died of That's the sad short reign of Paul
Speaker 1: the First. But keep listening after this brief sponsor break
Speaker 1: to hear a little bit more about his legacy. In
Speaker 1: terms of popular Russian monarchs, Paul is pretty much overshadowed
Speaker 1: by his much more famous mother, But he did get
Speaker 1: the big screen treatment a film called The Patriot, directed
Speaker 1: by Ernest Lubitch. The film was mostly silent, but it
Speaker 1: won the second ever Oscar for Best Writing. It was
Speaker 1: also nominated for Best Picture, and so I assume it
Speaker 1: had to have been a great movie. I used the
Speaker 1: past tense there, because the movie is lost. Only pieces
Speaker 1: of it are left to date. No complete copy of
Speaker 1: the film The Patriot has ever been found. It's the
Speaker 1: only Best Picture nominee in history for which that's true.
Speaker 1: But some pieces of Paul's legacy are still around, at
Speaker 1: least his genetic legacy. Out of the ten children that
Speaker 1: he and his wife had, several went on to marry
Speaker 1: into prominent European monarchies. Through his grandchildren, Paul the First
Speaker 1: is an ancestor of the current royal families of Denmark,
Speaker 1: Netherlands and Sweden, and he's related through the late Prince
Speaker 1: Philip to Charles, Prince of Wales. M Noble Blood is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Manky. The show is written and hosted by
Speaker 1: Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at
Speaker 1: Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the
Speaker 1: show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more
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