r invited.
Righteousness and moral elevation did not exist in her character nor in
her reign; but for political insight, breadth of statesmanship, and a
powerful grasp upon the enormous problems in her heterogeneous empire,
she is entitled to rank with the few sovereigns who are called "Great."
A German by birth, a French-woman by intellectual tastes and
tendencies--she was above all else a Russian, and bent all the
resources of her powerful personality to the enlightenment and
advancement of the land of her adoption. Her people were not "knouted
into civilization," but invited and drawn into it. Her touch was
terribly firm--but elastic. She was arbitrary, but tolerant; and if
her reign was a despotism, it was a despotism of that broad type which
deals with the sources of things, and does not bear heavily upon
individuals. The Empress Catherine died suddenly in 1796, and Paul I.
was crowned Emperor of Russia.

CHAPTER XIX

NAPOLEON IN EUROPE--ATTITUDE OF RUSSIA

Paul was forty-one years old when he ascended the throne he had for
twenty years believed was rightfully his. The mystery surrounding the
death of his father Peter III., the humiliations he had suffered at his
mother's court, and what he considered her usurpation of his
rights--all these had been for years fermenting in his narrow brain.

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