His first act gave vent to his long-smothered indignation and his suspicions regarding his father’s death.  Peter’s remains were exhumed—­placed beside those of Catherine lying in state, to share all the honors of her obsequies and to be entombed with her; while Alexis Orlof, his supposed murderer, was compelled to march beside the coffin, bearing his crown.

Then when Paul had abolished from the official language the words “society” and “citizen,” which his mother had delighted to honor—­when he had forbidden the wearing of frock-coats, high collars, and neckties, and refused to allow Frenchmen to enter his territory—­and when he had compelled his people to get out of their carriages and kneel in the mud as he passed—­he supposed he was strengthening the foundations of authority which Catherine II. had loosened.

To him is attributed the famous saying, “Know that the only person of consideration in Russia is the person whom I address, and he only during the time I am addressing him.”  He was a born despot, and his reforms consisted in a return to Prussian methods and to an Oriental servility.  The policy he announced was one of peace with Europe—­a cessation of those wars by which his mother had for thirty-four years been draining the treasury.  He was going to turn his conquests toward the East; and vast plans, with vague and indefinite outlines, were forming in the narrow confines of his restless brain.  But these were interrupted by unexpected conditions.

In 1796 the military genius of a young man twenty-seven years old electrified Europe.  Napoleon Bonaparte, at the head of a ragged, unpaid French army, overthrew Northern Italy, and out of the fragments created a Cisalpine Republic.  The possession of the Ionian Isles, quickly followed by the occupation of Egypt, threatened the East.  So Turkey and Russia, contrary to all old traditions, formed a defensive alliance, which was quickly followed by an offensive one between Russia and Austria.  But the tactics so successful against Poles and Turks were unavailing against those employed by the new Conqueror.  The Russian commander Suvorov was defeated and returned in disgrace to his enraged master at St. Petersburg, who refused to receive him.  In 1798 Bonaparte had secured Belgium, had compelled Austria to cede to him Lombardy, also to promise him help in getting the left bank of the Rhine from the Germanic body, and to acknowledge his Cisalpine Republic.

The Emperor Paul’s feelings underwent a swift change.  He was blinded by the glory of Napoleon’s conquests and pleased with his despotic methods.  He conceived not only a friendship but a passion for the man who could accomplish such things.  Austria and England had both offended him, so he readily fell into a plan for a Franco-Russian understanding for mutual benefit, from which there developed a larger plan.