Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich of Russia

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Constantine Pavlovich Romanov (Russian: Константи́н Па́влович Рома́нов) (27 April 1779–27 June 1831), grand duke and tsesarevich of Russia, was prepared by his grandmother, Catherine the Great, to become an emperor of a would-be restored Byzantine Empire. Although he was never crowned, he is sometimes listed among the Russian emperors as Constantine I. He was mainly known for his abdication from the throne in 1825, which led to the Decembrist rebellion later that year. In his capacity of the commander-in-chief and de facto viceroy of the Congress Kingdom of Poland, he is remembered as a ruthless ruler.[1]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Napoleonic Wars 3 Governor of Poland 4 One inch from the throne 5 References

[edit] Early life

Constantine was born at Tsarskoye Selo on 27 April 1779. Of the sons born to the tsar Paul Petrovich and his wife Maria Feodorovna, the princess of Württemberg, none more closely resembled his father in bodily and mental characteristics than did the second, Constantine Pavlovich.

The direction of the boy's upbringing was entirely in the hands of his grandmother, the empress Catherine II. As in the case of her eldest grandson (afterwards the emperor Alexander I), she regulated every detail of his physical and mental education; but in accordance with her usual custom she left the carrying out of her views to the men who were in her confidence. Count Nicolai Ivanovich Saltykov was supposed to be the actual tutor, but he too in his turn transferred the burden to another, only interfering personally on quite exceptional occasions, and exercised no influence upon the character of the passionate, restless and headstrong boy. The only person who exerted a responsible influence was Cesar La Harpe, who was tutor-in-chief from 1783 to May 1795 and educated both the empress's grandsons.

Like Alexander, Constantine was married by Catherine when he was sixteen years of age (26 February 1796); he made his wife, Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (Queen Victoria's aunt), intensely miserable. After the first separation in the year 1799, she went back permanently to her German home in 1801. An attempt by Constantine in 1814 to win her back broke down on her firm opposition.

[edit] Napoleonic Wars

During the time of this tragic marriage Constantine's first campaign took place under the leadership of Suvorov. The battle of Bassignano was lost by Constantine's fault; but at Novi he distinguished himself by personal bravery, so that the emperor Paul bestowed on him the title of tsesarevich, which according to the fundamental law of the constitution belonged only to the heir to the throne. Though it cannot be proved that this action of the tsar denoted any far-reaching plan, it yet shows that Paul already distrusted the grand-duke Alexander.

Constantine never tried to secure the throne. After his father's death (1801) he led a disorderly bachelor life. He abstained from politics, but remained faithful to his military inclinations, without manifesting anything more than a preference for the externalities of the service. In command of the Guards during the campaign of 1805, he had a share of the responsibility for the Russian defeat at the battle of Austerlitz; while in 1807 neither his skill nor his fortune in war showed any improvement.

After the peace of Tilsit he became an ardent admirer of Napoleon and an upholder of the Russo-French alliance. He therefore lost the confidence of his brother Alexander; to the latter, the French alliance was merely a means to end. This view was not held by Constantine; even in 1812, after the fall of Moscow, he pressed for a speedy conclusion of peace with Napoleon, and, like field-marshal Kutuzov, he too opposed the policy which carried the war across the Russian frontier to victorious conclusion upon French soil.

During the campaign, Barclay de Tolly was twice obliged to send him away from the army due to his disorderly conduct. His share in the battles in Germany and France was insignificant. At Dresden, on the 26th of August, his military knowledge failed him at the decisive moment, but at La Fère-Champenoise he distinguished himself by personal bravery. In Paris the grand-duke excited public ridicule by the manifestation of his petty military fads. His first visit was to the stables, and it was said that he had been marching and drilling even in his private rooms.

[edit] Governor of Poland

Constantine's importance in political history dates from when his brother, Tsar Alexander, installed him in the Congress Kingdom of Poland as de facto viceroy (however he was not the 'official viceroy' - namestnik of the Kingdom of Poland), with a task of the militarization and discipline of Poland. In the Congress Poland created by Alexander he received the post of commander-in-chief of the forces of the kingdom; to which was added later (1819) the command of the Lithuanian troops and of those of the Russian provinces that had formerly belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

His efforts to strengthen the secret police (Ochrana) and suppress the Polish patriotic movements led to popular discontent among his subjects. Ill-tempered and brutal [Lukowski, p.125], Constantine also persecuted the liberal opposition, replaced Poles with Russians on important posts in local administration and the army, and often insulted and assaulted his subordinates, which led to conflicts within the officer corps. Finally, his disobedience of the constitution he was personally proud of, conflicted him with the Polish parliament, until then mostly dominated by supporters of the personal union with Russia. In Poland, he was viewed as a tyrant, and hated by both the military and civilian population. In Polish literature Constantine is represented as a cruel and despotic person.[Kucherskaya] [PWN]

After nineteen years of separation, the marriage of Constantine and Juliane was formally annulled on 20 March 1820. Two months later, on 27 May, Constantine married the Polish Countess Joanna Grudzińska, who was given the title of Her Serenity Duchess of Lowicz. Connected with this, he renounced any claim to the Russian succession, which was formally completed in 1822. After this marriage, in the late 1820s, he became increasingly attached to his new home, Poland. [Lukowski,[2]p.127]

[edit] One inch from the throne

When Alexander I died on the 1st of December 1825, the grand-duke Nicholas had Constantine proclaimed emperor in St. Petersburg, in connection with which occurred the revolt of the Russian Liberals, known as the rising of the Decembrists. He renounced the throne later that month.

Under the emperor Nicholas I, Constantine maintained his position in Poland. Differences soon arose between him and his brother, in consequence of the share taken by the Poles in the Decembrist conspiracy. Constantine hindered the unveiling of the organized plotting for independence which had been going on in Poland for many years, and held obstinately to the belief that the army and the bureaucracy were loyally devoted to the Russian empire. The eastern policy of the tsar and the Turkish War of 1828 and 1829 caused a fresh breach between them. It was due to the opposition of Constantine that the Polish army took no part in this war.

The insurrection at Warsaw in November 1830 took Constantine completely by surprise. It was because of his failure to grasp the situation that the Polish regiments passed over to the revolutionaries; and during the revolution he showed himself incompetent and lacking in judgment. He was considered an enemy by most of the Polish insurgents. One of the opening events of the uprising included an assassination attempt on him [Lukowski, p.132]. Although he fled behind Russian lines, Constantine nevertheless expressed pride at the victories of "his" Polish soldiers. He did not live to see the suppression of the revolution, and died of cholera at Vitebsk on the 27th of June 1831.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Karnovich's The Cesarevich Constantine Pavlovich (2 vols., St Petersburg, 1899).
• Pienkos, Angela T. (1987): The Imperfect Autocrat. Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich and the Polish Congress Kingdom, New York.
• (Polish) KONSTANTY PAWŁOWICZ, Nowa encyklopedia powszechna PWN
• Maya Kucherskaya, Deviant behavior of Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich as the trigger of his success and failure, last accessed on 4 May 2006
• Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki, A Concise History of Poland, Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-55917-0