Catherine II had 23 lovers and at least three illegitimate children. At the lecture "Secrets of the Imperial House" at the Tretyakov Gallery, I learned a lot of curious, funny and sad facts from the life of the Empress.

Namely:

Paul is not the son of Catherine the Great

Historians suggest that the firstborn Paul (future Emperor Paul I) is not the son of Catherine the Great, but one of the illegitimate children of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. As if in fact, a girl was born to Catherine II, but during childbirth she was changed to a boy who was completely different from his mother. The version is confirmed by the fact that from the first minutes of birth Elizabeth raised Paul herself, and Catherine treated him coolly all her life.

Scheduled dates

Paul's "son" was taken away from Catherine immediately after giving birth and was shown only 40 days later. For 9 months, the woman saw the child only 3 times. Another confirmation of the motherhood of Elizaveta Petrovna: it was probably she who nursed Pavel.

"Second Madame" for her own husband

The husband of Catherine II - Peter III did not like his wife, called him “the second madam” and openly started novels. It is known that on the first wedding night, Peter preferred the game of soldiers. “I saw very well that the Grand Duke didn’t love me at all,” Catherine later recalled, “two weeks after the wedding, he told me that he was in love with the maid Karr, the Empress’s maid of honor. He shared with Count Divier, his chamberlains, that there is not even any comparison between this girl and me. "

How to hide a pregnancy from your husband?

Catherine gave birth to lovers and gave birth to children from them. At the same time, she easily managed to hide the pregnancy from her husband (remember how comfortable the dresses were for this!). When the illegitimate Alyosha (son of Grigory Orlov) was born in 1762, she ordered a servant to distract her husband with an impromptu fire. Pyotr Fedorovich was very fond of watching other people's houses burning. When he returned from "fun", the child was no longer in the palace. The wife stood smart and slender, as if nothing had happened. However, as soon as Peter left, the exhausted Catherine fainted. She was a woman of amazing fortitude!

"Left" son

Alyosha had to give up his beloved son. The first time Catherine saw him only a year after birth. But even being apart from him, Catherine actively arranged Alexei's life: she bought estates with serf souls, sent cadets to school, and provided money. In addition, she was in constant correspondence with the guardians, asking everything about him.

What is Alyosha?

Alyosha grew up shy and meek. In children's portraits, he looks more like a girl, like a little clone of Catherine herself.

The guardians did not hide that the boy was of poor health, withdrawn and indifferent to games. "Isn't he weak in reason?" - the mother worried. The boy has a bad heredity: his father's grandmother went crazy, later the same thing happened to Alyosha's father, Count Orlov.

Beavers are kind

Catherine's favorite word was "beavers". :). It was no coincidence that she bought Alyosha the Bobriki estate, and then gave him his last name - Bobrinsky. It has nothing to do with love for animals. The newborn Alyosha was carried away from home in a beaver skin.

Snub-noses

Catherine was the first in Russia to be vaccinated against smallpox. And her "son" Pavel was the first person whose nose tip rotted due to complications after sinusitis. He survived, but remained snub-nosed.

Smolyanka and cadets

At one of the cadet balls, Alyosha, who did not yet know about his origin, was squeezed in a dark corner by a noble girl from the Smolensk Institute and began to cram into her friends. "We are both shy, both orphans, we need to be together!" The girl hinted. The frightened Alyosha complained to Catherine. The enterprising mother took urgent measures: she gave the girl in marriage, and even gave her dresses as a dowry. Needless to say, after this incident, the girls of the Smolensk Institute rushed at Alyosha in droves. :).

The first love

When Alyosha fell in love with Potemkin's niece, Katenka, he lost his former modesty. The Empress describes it this way: “Little Bobrinsky says that Katenka has more intelligence than all other women and girls in the city. They wanted to know what he was basing this opinion on. He said that, in his opinion, this was proved only by the fact that she was less blush and adorned with jewelry than others. In the opera, he planned to break the bars of his box, because it prevented him from seeing Katenka and being visible by her; finally, I don’t know in what way he managed to enlarge one of the cells of the lattice - and then, goodbye to the opera, he did not pay more attention to the action ”. To cool the feelings of her son, the empress finally reveals to him the secret of birth. But that's a completely different story :).

And wherever the scriptwriters of melodramas look ...

Lecturer- Marina Petrova, Ph.D. in art history, leading researcher at the State Tretyakov Gallery.

LECTURE III

The reign of Paul I. - His place in history. - Biographical information. - The general nature of Paul's government activities. - The peasant question under Paul. - Paul's attitude to other estates. - The attitude of society towards Paul. - The position of finance in the reign of Paul and his foreign policy. - Results of the reign.

The Significance of Paul's Reign

Portrait of Emperor Paul. Artist S. Shchukin

At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the four-year reign of Paul lies.

This short period, which until recently was in many respects under censorship, has long incited the curiosity of the public, like everything mysterious and forbidden. On the other hand, historians, psychologists, biographers, playwrights and novelists were naturally attracted by the original personality of the married psychopath and the exceptional setting in which his drama, which ended so tragically, took place.

From the point of view from which we consider historical events, this reign is, however, of secondary importance. Although it lies at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. and separates the "age of Catherine" from the "age of Alexander", it can in no case be regarded as a transitional one. On the contrary, in the historical process of the development of the Russian people that interests us, it is some kind of sudden invasion, some kind of unexpected flurry that came from the outside, confused everything, turned everything temporarily upside down, but could not interrupt or deeply change the natural the course of the ongoing process. In view of the significance of the reign of Paul and Alexander, as soon as he ascended the throne, there was no choice but to cross out almost everything done by his father and, having healed as soon as possible the shallow but painful wounds he inflicted on the state organism, to start the matter from the place where the hand of Catherine, weakened and hesitating in old age, stopped.

Such a view of this reign by no means prevents us, of course, from realizing the deep influence that his horrors had personally on Emperor Alexander and on the final formation of his character. But this will be discussed later. We also do not deny the significance of some individual government acts of Paul and do not deny the deplorable influence on Alexander, and then on Nicholas, of the court-military parade system that has since been established at the Russian court. But even these circumstances do not impart, of course, to the reign of Paul the meaning of a transitional era, connecting between two adjacent reigns ...

In any case, the very reign of Paul is interesting for us not for its tragicomic phenomena, but for the changes that nevertheless took place in the situation of the population at that time, and that movement in the minds that caused the terror of government power in society. Even more important for us is international relations, which were conditioned, on the one hand, by the peculiarities of Paul's character, and on the other, by the great events that took place in the West.

The personality of Emperor Paul

Therefore, we will not deal here with a detailed exposition of the biography of Pavel and refer everyone interested in it to the well-known work of Schilder, who dealt precisely with the personal biography of Pavel, and to another, shorter biography, compiled largely according to Schilder by Mr. Shumigorsky. Actually, for our purposes, the following brief biographical information will be sufficient. Paul was born in 1754, eight years before Catherine's accession to the throne. His childhood passed in completely abnormal conditions: Empress Elizabeth took him away from his parents as soon as he was born, and took up her own upbringing. As a child, he was surrounded by various mothers and nannies, and his entire upbringing was of a hothouse nature. Soon he was assigned, however, a man who in himself was an outstanding personality, namely gr. Nikita Ivanovich Panin. Panin was a statesman with a very broad mind, but he was not a thoughtful teacher and did not pay enough attention to his work.

Catherine was distrustful of Panin, and it was clear to her that he was a bad teacher, but she was afraid to eliminate him, since, having taken the throne not by right, she was afraid of those rumors that circulated in well-known circles that she wanted to eliminate Paul completely ... Fearing to give a reason for the growth of these rumors and knowing that public opinion was such that Paul was intact while he was in Panin's care, Catherine did not dare to eliminate Panin, and he remained Paul's educator and with her. Pavel grew up, but Catherine did not feel any closeness to him, she had a low opinion of his mental and spiritual properties. She did not allow him to participate in state affairs; she even removed him from the affairs of military administration, to which he had a great inclination. Paul's first marriage was short-lived and unsuccessful, and his wife, who died of childbirth, managed to further spoil the already bad relationship between Paul and Catherine. When Pavel married a second time to the Württemberg princess, who received the name of Maria Feodorovna during her conversion to Orthodoxy, Catherine gave the young couple Gatchina and left them to lead the life of private people in her; but when they had children, she acted towards Paul and his wife in the same way that Elizabeth herself had done with her earlier, that is, she selected children from the very moment they were born and raised them herself. The removal of Paul from public affairs and the disrespectful treatment of the Empress's favorites, especially Potemkin, constantly added fuel to the fire and aroused hatred in Paul for the entire Catherine's court. He waited impatiently for thirty years, when, finally, he himself would have to reign and dispose in his own way.

Portrait of Maria Feodorovna, wife of Emperor Paul. Artist Jean-Louis Veil, 1790s

It should be added that at the end of Catherine's reign, Paul even began to fear that Catherine would remove him from the throne; now it is known that such a plan was really outlined and did not come true, apparently only because Alexander did not want or did not dare to ascend the throne besides his father, and this circumstance made it difficult to implement Catherine's already matured intentions.

When Paul ascended the throne, then the hatred accumulated in his soul for everything that his mother was doing began to be realized. Not having a clear idea of ​​the real needs of the state, Paul began indiscriminately to cancel everything that his mother had done, and with feverish speed to carry out his semi-fantastic plans, which he had worked out in Gatchina seclusion. Outwardly, in some respects, he was returning to the old. Thus, he restored almost all the old economic colleges, but did not give them a correctly delimited competence, and meanwhile their old competence was completely destroyed by the establishment of treasury chambers and other local institutions. He long ago came up with a special plan for the reorganization of the entire central administration; but this plan was reduced, in essence, to the abolition of all state institutions and to the concentration of the entire administration directly in the hands of the sovereign himself and could hardly be carried out in practice.

The reign of Emperor Paul

At the beginning of Paul's reign, however, two serious government measures were taken, the significance of which remained in the future. The first of these measures was the law on succession to the throne, which Paul worked out when he was his heir, and which was published by him on April 5, 1797. This law meant to eliminate the arbitrariness in appointing an heir to the throne, which had ruled in Russia since the time of Peter and thanks to which happened in the 18th century. so many palace coups. The law issued by Paul, which operated with minor additions until recently, introduced a really strict order in the inheritance of the imperial throne in Russia, mainly through the male line. In this regard, a detailed regulation on the imperial family was issued, and in the types of material support of its members, a special economic institution was formed called "appanages", under the jurisdiction of which were listed those palace peasants who had previously been exploited for the needs of the imperial court and to which individual estates belonging to members of the royal family were now ranked. All these peasants received the name "appanage", and special institutions and special rules were created to manage them, thanks to which their position later turned out to be more satisfactory than the position of ordinary serfs and even state peasants, which were in charge of the zemstvo police who shamelessly exploited them.

Paul especially persistently strove to destroy all those rights and privileges that were granted by Catherine to individual estates. Thus, he abolished letters of gratitude to cities and nobility and not only abolished the right of noble societies to petition about their needs, but even canceled the exemption of nobles from corporal punishment by court.

There is a view that Paul, having a completely negative attitude to the privileges of the upper classes, was sympathetic to the people and even allegedly sought to free the people from the tyranny of the landowners and oppressors.

Emperor Paul's measures against peasants

Perhaps he had some good intentions, but it is hardly possible to ascribe to him any seriously thought-out system in this respect. Usually, in the form of proof of the correctness of this view of Paul, they point to the manifesto of April 5, 1797, which established a Sunday rest and a three-day corvee, but this manifesto is not quite accurately conveyed. They were categorically prohibited only from festive work for the landowner, and then, already in the form of a maxim, it was said that three days of corvee were enough to maintain the landlord's economy. The very form of expressing this desire, in the absence of any sanction, indicates that it was not, in essence, a certain law establishing a three-day corvee, although it was subsequently interpreted that way. On the other hand, it must be said that, for example, in Little Russia, a three-day corvee would not be beneficial for the peasants, since a two-day corvee was practiced there, as was customary. Another law, issued by Pavel on the initiative of Chancellor Bezborodko in favor of the peasants, prohibiting the sale of serfs without land, extended only to Little Russia.

The position that Paul took in relation to the peasant unrest and the complaints of the serfs about the oppression of the landowners is extremely characteristic. At the beginning of Paul's reign, peasant unrest broke out in 32 provinces. Paul sent to pacify them whole large detachments with Field Marshal Prince. Repnin at the head. Repnin very quickly pacified the peasants by taking extremely drastic measures. With the pacification in the Oryol province 12 thousand peasants of the landowners Apraksin and Prince. Golitsyn, a whole battle took place, and of the peasants there were 20 killed and up to 70 wounded. Repnin ordered to bury the killed peasants behind the fence of the cemetery, and on a stake placed over their common grave, he wrote: "Here lie criminals before God, the sovereign and the landowner, justly punished by the law of God." The houses of these peasants were destroyed and razed to the ground. Paul not only approved all these actions, but also issued a special manifesto on January 29, 1797, which, under the threat of such measures, prescribed the uncomplaining obedience of the serfs to the landowners.

In another case, the courtyards of some landowners living in St. Petersburg tried to complain to Paul about the cruelty and oppression they suffered from them. Pavel, without investigating the case, ordered the complainants to be sent to the square and punished with a whip "as much as their landlords themselves want."

In general, Paul is hardly guilty of striving to seriously improve the situation of the landlord peasants. He looked at the landowners as gratuitous police masters - he believed that as long as there are 100 thousand of these police masters in Russia, the peace of the state was guaranteed, and he was not averse to even increasing this number by distributing state peasants to private individuals: in four years he managed in this way, to distribute 530 thousand souls of both sexes of state peasants to various landowners and officials, seriously claiming that he renders a blessing to these peasants, since the position of the peasants under state administration, in his opinion, was worse than under the landlords, with which, of course, it was impossible to agree. The value of the given figure distributed into private hands of state peasants can be judged by the data that are given above about the number of peasants of different categories; but this figure is even more striking if we recall that Catherine, who willingly rewarded her favorites and other persons with peasants, nevertheless managed to distribute no more than 800 thousand souls of both sexes in all 34 years of her reign, and Pavel distributed 530 thousand.

To this it should be added that at the very beginning of Paul's reign, another act was issued against the freedom of the peasants: by a decree on December 12, 1796, the transfer of peasants who settled on private lands among the Cossack lands in the Don region and in the provinces of Yekaterinoslav, was finally stopped. Voznesenskaya, Caucasian and Tavricheskaya.

Russian enlightenment and clergy in the reign of Paul

Of the rest of the estates, the clergy, whom Paul favored, or at least wanted to favor, had reason to be pleased with Paul more than others. Being a religious person and considering himself also the head of the Orthodox Church, Paul was concerned about the position of the clergy, but even here the results were sometimes strange. These concerns of his were sometimes ambiguous, so that one of his former mentors, his teacher of the Law - and at this time already the Moscow Metropolitan - Plato, to whom Paul in his youth, and even then, after his accession to the throne, treated with great respect, was among the protesters against some of the measures that Paul took. The protest with which Plato had to speak, concerned, among other things, a strange innovation - the rewarding of clergy with orders. It seemed to Plato that, from the canonical point of view, it was completely unacceptable for civil authorities to reward the ministers of the church, not to mention the fact that in general the wearing of orders did not at all correspond to the meaning of priestly, and even more so, monastic dignity. The Metropolitan on his knees asked Paul not to award him the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called, but in the end he had to accept it. In itself, this circumstance does not seem to be particularly important, but it is characteristic precisely of Paul's attitude to the class that he most respected.

Much more important in a positive sense is Paul's attitude toward theological educational institutions. He did quite a lot for them - he allocated for them a significant amount of money from the income from estates previously belonging to bishops' houses and monasteries and confiscated by Catherine.

Under him, two theological academies were reopened - in St. Petersburg and Kazan - and eight seminaries, and both the newly opened and the previous educational institutions were provided with staff sums: the academies began to receive from 10 to 12 thousand rubles. a year, and seminaries on average from 3 to 4 thousand, that is, almost twice as much against what was released to them under Catherine.

Here we should also note Paul's favorable attitude towards the non-Orthodox clergy, even not Christian, especially his favorable attitude towards the Catholic clergy. This can be explained, perhaps, by his sincere religiosity in general and his lofty notion of pastoral duties; as far as the Catholic clergy proper is concerned, here their attitude to the Maltese spiritual knightly order was of great importance. Pavel not only assumed the supreme patronage of this order, but even allowed him to form a special priesthood in St. Petersburg. This circumstance, explained by Paul's strange fantasies, then led, as we shall see, to very important consequences in the field of international relations.

Portrait of Paul I wearing the crown, attire and insignia of the Order of Malta. Artist V.L.Borovikovsky, circa 1800

Another important fact in the sphere of church life under Paul was his rather peaceful attitude towards schismatics. In this one respect, Paul continued the policy of Catherine, the traces of whose reign with such energy he tried to destroy with all his other measures. At the request of Metropolitan Platon, he agreed to take a rather important measure - namely, he allowed the Old Believers to publicly conduct divine services in the so-called churches of the same faith, thanks to which, for the first time, a serious opportunity opened up for reconciliation of the most peaceful groups of the Old Believers with the Orthodox Church.

As for Paul's attitude to secular enlightenment, his activity in this direction was brightly reactionary and, one might say, downright destructive. Even at the end of Catherine's reign, private printing houses were closed, and then the publication of books was extremely reduced. Under Paul, the number of published books, especially in the last two years of his reign, was reduced to an absolutely insignificant amount, and the very nature of the books also changed dramatically - almost exclusively textbooks and books of practical content began to be published. The import of books published abroad was completely prohibited at the end of the reign; since 1800, everything published abroad, regardless of content, even musical notes, did not have access to Russia. Even earlier, at the very beginning of the reign, the free entry of foreigners into Russia was prohibited.

Another measure was even more important - namely, the summoning to Russia of all young people who studied abroad, who turned out to be 65 people in Jena, 36 in Leipzig, and the prohibition of young people to leave for educational purposes in foreign lands, in return for which it was proposed to open a university in Dorpat.

Government oppression during the reign of Paul

Out of hatred for revolutionary ideas and for liberalism in general, Paul, with the persistence of a maniac, pursued all sorts of outward manifestations of liberalism. Hence the war against round hats and boots with lapels, which were worn in France, against tailcoats and tricolor ribbons. Quite civilians were subjected to the most serious penalties, officials were driven out of service, private individuals were arrested, many were expelled from capitals and even sometimes to more or less remote places. The same penalties were imposed for the violation of that strange etiquette, the observance of which was mandatory when meeting with the emperor. Thanks to this etiquette, the meeting with the sovereign was considered a misfortune, which they tried to avoid in every possible way: seeing the sovereign, the subjects rushed to hide behind gates, fences, etc.

Under such circumstances, those who were exiled, imprisoned and imprisoned in fortresses and, in general, victims under Paul for committed trifles were counted in the thousands, so when Alexander, upon accession to the throne, rehabilitated such persons, according to some sources, there were 15 thousand of them, according to others - more than 12 thousand people.

The oppression of the Pavlovian reign was especially hard on the armies, from soldiers to officers and generals. Endless drill, harsh punishments for the slightest error in the fruit, senseless teaching methods, the most uncomfortable clothes, extremely shy for a common person, especially when marching, which was then brought almost to the level of ballet art; Finally, the obligatory wearing of broccoli and braids, smeared with lard and sprinkled with flour or brick powder - all this complicated the difficulty of the already heavy soldier's service, which then lasted 25 years.

Officers and generals had to tremble every hour for their fate, since the slightest malfunction of any of the subordinates could entail the most cruel consequences for them, if the emperor was out of sorts.

Assessment of the reign of Pavel Karamzin

These were the manifestations of government oppression, which developed under Paul to the highest limits. An interesting review about Paul, made 10 years after his death by a strict conservative and staunch supporter of autocracy N.M. Karamzin in his "Note on Ancient and New Russia" presented to Alexander I in 1811 as an objection to the liberal reforms that Alexander then conceived. Being the antagonist of the liberal emperor, Karamzin, however, characterized the reign of his predecessor: “Paul came to the throne at a time favorable for autocracy, when the horrors of the French revolution cured Europe from dreams of civil liberty and equality; but what the Jacobins did in relation to the republics, Paul did in relation to the autocracy; made to hate its abuse. Because of the pitiful delusion of the mind and because of the many personal discomforts it endured, he wanted to be John IV; but the Russians already had Catherine II, they knew that the sovereign, no less than his subjects, must fulfill his holy duties, whose violation destroys the ancient covenants of power with obedience and overthrows the people from the degree of civic consciousness into the chaos of private natural law. Catherine's son could be strict and deserve the gratitude of the fatherland; to the inexplicable surprise of the Russians, he began to dominate the general horror, not following any statutes except his whim; considered us not subjects, but slaves; executed without guilt, awarded without merit, took away shame from execution, from rewards - charm, humiliated ranks and ribbons with wastefulness in them; frivolously consumed the long-term fruits of statesmanship, hating in them the work of his mother; killed in our regiments the noble spirit of the military, brought up by Catherine, and replaced it with the spirit of corporality. He taught heroes accustomed to victories to march, turned the nobles away from military service; despising the soul, respected hats and collars; having, as a man, a natural inclination to do good, he fed on the bile of evil: every day he invented ways to frighten people and he himself was more afraid of all; thought to build an impregnable palace for himself - and built a tomb ... Note, - adds Karamzin, - a feature interesting for the observer: in this reign of horror, according to foreigners, Russians were even afraid to think; No! spoke and boldly, silent only from boredom and frequent repetition, believed each other and were not deceived. A spirit of sincere brotherhood prevailed in the capitals; a common misfortune brought hearts closer together, and a generous frenzy against the abuse of power drowned out the voice of personal caution. " Similar responses are found in the notes of Vigel and Grech, also people of the conservative camp ...

It should, however, be said that the "generous frenzy" did not translate into action. Society did not even try to express its attitude towards Paul with any public protest. It hated in silence, but, of course, it was precisely this mood that gave the few leaders of the coup on March 11, 1801 the courage to suddenly remove Paul.

The economic and financial situation of Russia during the reign of Paul

The economic situation of the country could not have changed too much under Paul, due to the shortness of his reign; the financial position of Russia under him was heavily dependent on his foreign policy and the bizarre changes that were taking place in it. Paul began by making peace with Persia and canceling the recruitment appointed under Catherine; refused to send 40 thousand army against the French republic, to which Catherine agreed in 1795 thanks to the insistence of the British ambassador Whitworth, and demanded back the Russian ships sent to help the English fleet. Then the beginning of the repayment of the banknote debt was laid. The government decided to confiscate part of the banknotes issued on the market; there was a ceremonial burning in the presence of Paul himself of banknotes worth 6 million rubles. Thus, the total number of issued banknotes decreased from 157 million rubles. up to 151 million rubles, that is, less than 4%, but in this area, of course, any, even small, decrease is significant, because it indicates the government's intention to pay off debts, and not increase them. At the same time, steps were taken to establish a solid exchange rate for the silver coin; the constant weight of the silver ruble was established, which was recognized as equal to the weight of four silver francs. Then the restoration of the relatively free customs tariff of 1782 was of great importance.However, Paul was guided, however, not by sympathy for free trade, but did so out of a desire to abolish the tariff of 1793 issued by Catherine.

The introduction of the new tariff was supposed to promote the development of trade relations. For large-scale industry, the discovery of coal in the Donetsk basin was of great importance. This discovery, made in the south of Russia, in a country poor in forests, immediately affected the state of industry in the Novorossiysk Territory. Of great importance for the development of internal trade relations and for the delivery of certain products to the ports was the breaking of new canals under Paul, partly begun under Catherine. In 1797, the Oginsky Canal, which connected the Dniester basin with the Neman, was started and even completed under Paul; Sivers dug a channel to bypass about. Ilmenya; one of the Ladoga Canals began, and work continued on the construction of the Mariinsky Canal. Under him, a porto franco was established in the Crimea, beneficial for the revitalization of the southern region.

Emperor Paul's foreign policy

But the improvement in the country's economic situation did not last long, and public finances soon had to experience new fluctuations. In 1798, the peaceful course of affairs suddenly stopped. Just at this time, Napoleon Bonaparte set off on his campaign in Egypt and in passing captured the island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea. Malta, which belonged to the Order of Malta, had an impregnable fortress, but the grandmaster of the order for unknown reasons (treason was suspected) surrendered the fortress without a fight, took the archive, orders and jewels and retired to Venice, the St. For some time, to everyone's surprise, Paul, who considered himself the head of the Orthodox Church, personally assumed the grandmaster of this Catholic order, subordinate to the pope. Tradition persisted that this strange step in Paul's mind was combined with a fantastic enterprise - with the widespread destruction of the revolution at the root by uniting all the nobles of all countries of the world in the Order of Malta. Whether it was so is difficult to decide; but, of course, this idea was not realized. Declaring war on France and not wanting to act alone, Paul helped the British Minister Pete to create a fairly strong coalition against France. He entered into an alliance with Austria and England, which were then in hostile or strained relations with France, then the kingdom of Sardinia and even Turkey, which suffered from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria, were involved in the coalition. The alliance with Turkey was concluded on very favorable terms for Russia and, with a consistent policy, could be of great importance. In view of the fact that French troops occupied various Turkish lands (among other things, the Ionian Islands), it was decided to expel the French from there by combined forces, and for this the Porta agreed to let through the Constantinople and Dardanelles straits not only Russian merchant ships, but also warships, while taking on the obligation not to let foreign warships into the Black Sea. The force of this treaty was to last eight years, after which it could be renewed by mutual agreement of the contracting parties. The Russian fleet immediately took advantage of this right and, having carried through the straits a significant landing on military ships, occupied the Ionian Islands, which thereafter were under Russian rule until the Peace of Tilsit (that is, until 1807).

On the continent of Europe, it was necessary to act against the French armies in alliance with the Austrians and the British. Pavel, following the advice of the Austrian emperor, appointed Suvorov to command over the united armies of Russia and Austria. Suvorov at that time was in disgrace and lived on his estate under the supervision of the police: he reacted negatively to Paul's military innovations and knew how to make him feel it under the guise of jokes and tomfoolery, for which he paid with disgrace and exile.

Now Pavel turned to Suvorov on his own behalf and on behalf of the Austrian emperor. Suvorov gladly took command of the army. This campaign was marked by his brilliant victories in Northern Italy over the French troops and the famous crossing of the Alps.

But when northern Italy was cleared of the French, Austria decided that this was enough for her, and refused to support Suvorov in his further plans. Thus, Suvorov could not carry out his intention to invade France and go to Paris. This "Austrian treason" led to the defeat of the Russian detachment of General Rimsky-Korsakov by the French. Paul became extremely indignant, withdrew the army, and thus the war between Russia and France actually ended here. The Russian corps, sent against the French to Holland, was not sufficiently supported by the British, who did not pay timely and monetary subsidies, to which they were obliged by the treaty, which also caused the indignation of Paul, who withdrew his troops from this point.

Meanwhile, Napoleon Bonaparte returned from Egypt to carry out his first coup d'état: on the 18th Brumaire he overthrew the legitimate government of the Directory and became the first consul, that is, in essence, the de facto sovereign in France. Paul, seeing that things were moving towards the restoration of monarchical power, albeit on the part of the "usurper," changed his attitude towards France, expecting that Napoleon would do away with the remnants of the revolution. Napoleon, for his part, deftly pleased him, sending without exchange all the Russian prisoners to their homeland at the French expense and supplying them with gifts. This touched Paul's knightly heart, and, hoping that Napoleon would be his like-minded person in all other matters, Paul entered into negotiations with him for peace and an alliance against England, to which Paul attributed the failure of his troops in Holland. It was all the easier for Napoleon to restore it against England, because at this time the British took Malta from the French, but did not return it to the order.

Immediately, ignoring all sorts of international treatises, Paul imposed an embargo (arrest) on all English merchant ships, introduced drastic changes in the customs tariff and finally completely prohibited the export and import of goods into Russia not only from England, but also from Prussia, since Prussia was in relations with England. By these measures directed against the British, Paul shocked all Russian trade. He did not confine himself to customs constraints, but even ordered the seizure of all English goods in shops, which was never done in such circumstances. Encouraged by Napoleon and not content with this series of hostile actions against England, Paul finally decided to stab her in the most sore spot: he decided to conquer India, believing that he would do it easily by sending some Cossacks there. And so, on his order, 40 regiments of Don Cossacks suddenly set off to conquer India, taking with them a double set of horses, but without fodder, in winter, without correct maps, through the impenetrable steppes. Of course, this army was doomed to perish. The senselessness of this act was so obvious to Pavel's contemporaries that Princess Lieven, the wife of the close Adjutant General Pavel, even claims in her memoirs that this undertaking was undertaken by Paul with the aim of deliberately destroying the Cossack army, in which he suspected a freedom-loving spirit. This assumption, of course, is incorrect, but it shows what thoughts could be attributed to Paul by his associates. Fortunately, this campaign began two months before the elimination of Paul, and Alexander, having barely ascended the throne, on the very night of the coup, hastened to send a courier to return the unfortunate Cossacks; it turned out that the Cossacks had not yet managed to reach the Russian border, but had already lost a significant part of their horses ...

This fact especially vividly depicts Paul's madness and the dire consequences that the measures he took could have. All these campaigns and wars of the last two years of Paul's reign, of course, affected the state of finances in the most disastrous way. At the beginning of his reign, Paul burned, as we have seen, 6 million banknotes, but the war required emergency expenses. Pavel again had to resort to issuing banknotes, since there were no other means for waging war. Thus, by the end of his reign, the total amount of issued banknotes rose from 151 million to 212 million rubles, which finally dropped the exchange rate of the paper ruble.

Results of the reign of Paul

Summing up the results of Paul's reign, we see that the boundaries of the state territory remained with him in the same form. True, the Georgian king, pressed by Persia, in January 1801 announced his desire to become a citizen of Russia, but the final annexation of Georgia took place already under Alexander.

As for the situation of the population, no matter how harmful many of the measures taken by Paul were, they could not bring about profound changes in four years. The most sad change in the position of the peasants was, of course, the transfer from the state peasants to the serfs of those 530 thousand souls that Pavel managed to distribute to private individuals.

As for trade and industry, despite a number of favorable conditions at the beginning of the reign, by the end of his foreign trade was completely destroyed, while the internal one was in the most chaotic state. Even greater chaos has turned out in the state of higher and provincial government.

This was the state of the state when Paul ceased to exist.

See Paul's note about this, found in 1826 in the papers of the im. Alexandra. It is published in volume 90. “Collection. Rus. ist. General ”, pp. 1–4. Paul's government activities are now undergoing new study and revision in the book prof. V. M. Klochkova, reacted to her very favorably. Despite the considerable material collected by Mr. Klochkov in support of his apologetic attitude to this activity, I cannot recognize his conclusions as convincing and, in general, remain with my previous view of the reign of Paul. I expressed my opinion about the work of Mr. Klochkov in a special review published in Russkaya Mysl, 1917, no.

It should be mentioned here, however, that good deeds were also among the cancellations of measures taken by Catherine. These include: the release of Novikov from Shlisselburg, the return of Radishchev from exile to Ilimsk, and the ceremonial release from captivity with special honors of Kostyushka and other Polish prisoners held in St. Petersburg.

Pavel really did strive to settle and improve the position of the state peasants, as can be seen from the study of Mr. Klochkov, but all the assumptions related to this remained, in essence, only on paper until the formation of the Emperor. Nikolae of the Ministry of State Property with c. Kiselev at the head.

The first volume, Op. Storch's "Gemälde des Russischen Reichs" was published in 1797 in Riga, the rest of the volumes were printed abroad; but Storch was persona grata at the court of Paul: he was the personal reader of the imp. Maria Feodorovna and dedicated his book (1st volume) to Paul.

"Russian Archive" for 1870, pp. 2267–2268. There is a separate edition, ed. the town of Sipovsky. SPb., 1913.

The son of Catherine II, Pavel Petrovich, was born in 1754, and immediately the then Empress Elizaveta Petrovna took the newborn to her to raise an heir from him. Catherine saw her son only a few weeks after his birth. The boy did not know parental affection, and over the years, relations with his parents, especially with his mother, did not get better. Coldness, aloofness, and mistrust shared mother and son. The boy grew up without a child's environment, painful, overly impressionable. His tutor N.I. Panin gave Pavel a good education, but at the same time turned him against his mother and her policies.

I. G. Pullman. Portrait of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich

Paul was brought up as a future “good king”, as a “knight” with medieval concepts of honor, nobility in relation to a woman and a friend. At the same time, this developed pompousness in the boy, an interest in theatricality, in external, petty manifestations of form, and not content. Over the years, this instilled in Paul's soul insoluble contradictions between the real and the imagined world. This was expressed in fits of unbridled anger, Paul's tantrums, and at the same time in secrecy, an interest in mysticism. Later, when Catherine became empress, she herself sought to see her son less often. The fact was that on the eve of the death of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, part of the nobility, led by Pavel's educator, Count Nikita Panin, saw in the young man the direct heir of Elizabeth herself.

With this approach to the succession to the throne, the boy's parents, Peter Fedorovich and Ekaterina Alekseevna, were removed from power. And although, contrary to these plans, Peter III ascended the throne, and then Catherine II came to power, such plans and intentions sharply hurt the new empress. She saw in her son a political rival and tried to keep him away from public affairs. This naturally did little to bring Paul closer to his mother. Not without reason, he feared that after the death of his mother, the throne would pass not to him, but to his son Alexander. Rumors about such intentions of the empress were very persistent, and they naturally reached Paul.

Preparing in the mid-1780s the famous project "Order to the Senate", Catherine II especially carefully worked out a topic that was important for her at that moment - the possibility of depriving her previously approved heir of the right to the throne. Working on this project, Catherine II got acquainted with the fundamental Peter's acts on this topic. The empress identified several reasons that would allow the heir to refuse: the heir's attempt to overthrow the reigning monarch, his participation in the rebellion against the sovereign, the heir's lack of human qualities and abilities necessary for rule, belonging to a faith other than Orthodox, possession of the throne of another state, and, finally, the act of the reigning monarch to remove the heir from the throne. Of fundamental importance was the provision on the creation - in the case of the minority of the heir - a system of regency, and the regent is appointed from among the members of the imperial family by the highest government institutions - the Council and the Senate, which must ensure compliance with the law on succession to the throne. All this careful work on the provision on the abdication of the heir was directly related to the modern project "Order to the Senate", the dynastic situation, the difficult situation in the imperial family. Relations between Catherine II and her son - the heir to the throne Paul - were uneven, but in the 1780s, these relations became frankly bad and remained so until the death of Catherine II. The society was full of rumors about Catherine's intention, taking advantage of the law of 1722, to deprive her son of the throne and transfer these rights to her grandson Alexander Pavlovich, in whom she doted. This is what Peter the Great did with Tsarevich Alexei in his time.

The philosophy of power of Tsarevich Paul was complex and contradictory. He tried to combine the rule of autocracy and human freedom, "the rule of law", proceeding from ideas about traditions, desired ideals and even a geographical factor. But the years passed, the projects of state reorganization, which he drew up in the quiet of his office, were covered with dust, were forgotten. Outside the window slowly went a hopeless life for the heir - the power of the mother was enormous, the victories of her armies were stunning. Few people remembered him.

View of the Gatchina Palace and park

After the death of G.G. Orlov, Catherine gave Pavel the Gatchino estate (later - Gatchina), where he settled with his young wife Maria Fedorovna. She was the German princess of Württemberg Dorothea Sophia Augusta Louise and was married (after her adoption of Orthodoxy) to Paul in 1776. Gatchina (and then Pavlovsk) became a true stepfather's home for the heir's large family. Far from the “big court”, which aroused Paul's fear and hatred, the heir created his own special world in Gatchina. It was a world of military discipline, with the spirit of a military camp with a distinctly pro-Russian order. Indeed, for Paul, as once for his father Peter III, the prussian king Frederick II was the ideal of the sovereign. Here, behind the gates and checkpoints, Pavel felt safe. He was surrounded by loyal people, albeit not very smart and educated, and there were no limits to his will. All this influenced the character of Paul, who was accustomed to obedience, intolerant of all kinds of "free-thinking." The French Revolution that began before his eyes aggravated the conservatism and intolerance of Paul, who departed from the dreams of his youth and soul-saving conversations with Panin. In Gatchina he became what we know him later - nervous, painfully proud, capricious, suspicious.

Let's look at the source

The parallel with Tsarevich Alexei is not far-fetched. Noteworthy are Catherine's notes of a historical nature about his case, in which the Empress reflects on the right of the parent-sovereign: “It must be confessed that the parent who sees himself compelled to abandon his offspring in order to save the common cause is unhappy. Here the autocratic and parental power is copulating (or copulating is). So, I respect that the wise Tsar Peter I, undoubtedly, had the greatest reasons to alienate his ungrateful, disobedient and incapable son. "

And then follows such a vivid and vivid characterization of Tsarevich Alexei, who died 10 years before the birth of Catherine herself, that through the negative features of the heir of Peter the Great drawn by the empress, the appearance of another, more familiar person to her, Tsarevich Pavel clearly appears:

“This one was filled with hatred, malice, malicious envy against him, sought out in his father's deeds and actions in the basket of good a speck of evil, listened to caress, separated the truth from his ears and nothing could please him so much as reviling and speaking badly about the glorious his parent. He himself was already lazy, cowardly, twofold, unsteady, stern, timid, drunk, hot, stubborn, prude, ignorant, of a very mediocre mind and poor health. "

Death came to Catherine II unexpectedly, and she did not have time, as she may have thought before, to exercise the right to appoint her successor. On November 6, 1796, Paul I freely ascended the Russian throne.

He could not have children due to chronic alcoholism and, interested in the birth of an heir, turned a blind eye to the closeness of her daughter-in-law, first with Choglokov, and then with the chamberlain of the grand ducal court Saltykov. A number of historians consider the paternity of Saltykov to be an undeniable fact. Later it was even claimed that Paul was not the son of Catherine either. In "Materials for the biography of Emperor Paul I" (Leipzig, 1874) it is reported that a dead child was allegedly born from Saltykov, who was replaced by a Chukhon boy, that is, Paul I is not only not the son of his parents, but not even Russian.

In 1773, before reaching 20 years old, he married the Hesse-Darmstadt princess Wilhelmina (in Orthodoxy - Natalya Alekseevna), but three years later she died in childbirth, and in the same 1776 Paul married again, to the princess of Württemberg Sophia - Dorothea (in Orthodoxy - Maria Fedorovna). Catherine II tried not to allow the Grand Duke to participate in the discussion of state affairs, and he, in turn, began to increasingly critically assess her mother's policy. Paul believed that this policy was based on popularity and pretense, dreamed of establishing in Russia under the aegis of the autocracy a strictly lawful government, restricting the rights of the nobility, introducing the strictest, according to the Prussian model, discipline in the army.

Biography of Empress Catherine II the GreatThe reign of Catherine II lasted more than three and a half decades, from 1762 to 1796. It was filled with many events in internal and external affairs, the implementation of plans that continued what was done under Peter the Great.

In 1794, the empress decided to remove her son from the throne and hand him over to her eldest grandson, Alexander Pavlovich, but did not meet with sympathy from the highest state dignitaries. The death of Catherine II on November 6, 1796 opened the way for Paul to the throne.

The new emperor immediately tried to cross out what had been done in the thirty-four years of the reign of Catherine II, and this became one of the most important motives of his policy.

The emperor sought to replace the collegial principle of organizing government with a sole one. An important legislative act of Paul was the law on succession to the throne, issued in 1797, which was in effect in Russia until 1917.

In the army, Paul strove to introduce the Prussian military order. He believed that the army is a machine and the main thing in it is the mechanical coordination of troops and diligence. In the field of class policy, the main goal was to transform the Russian nobility into a disciplined, polls serving class. Paul's policy towards the peasantry was contradictory. During the four years of his reign, he gave away about 600 thousand serfs, sincerely believing that they would live better behind the landowner.

In everyday life, certain styles of clothing, hairstyles, and dances were banned, in which the emperor saw manifestations of free thought. Tough censorship was introduced, and the import of books from abroad was prohibited.

The foreign policy of Paul I was notable for its haphazard nature. Russia constantly changed allies in Europe. In 1798 Paul joined the second coalition against France; at the insistence of the allies, he put Alexander Suvorov at the head of the Russian army, under whose command the heroic Italian and Swiss campaigns were made.

The capture of Malta by the British, which Paul took under his protection, accepting in 1798 the title of Grand Master of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem (Order of Malta), quarreled him with England. Russian troops were withdrawn, and in 1800 the coalition finally disintegrated. Not content with this, Paul began to draw closer to France and conceived a joint struggle with her against England.

On January 12, 1801, Pavel sent the ataman of the Don army, General Orlov, an order to go with the entire army on a campaign against India. A little over a month later, the Cossacks began a campaign in the number of 22507 people. This event, accompanied by terrible hardships, was not, however, brought to an end.

Paul's policies, combined with his oppressive nature, unpredictability and eccentricity, caused discontent in a wide variety of social strata. Soon after his accession to the throne, a conspiracy began to ripen against him. On the night of March 11 (23), 1801, Paul I was strangled to death in his own bedroom in the Mikhailovsky Castle. The conspirators burst into the chambers of the emperor demanding to abdicate the throne. As a result of the skirmish, Paul I was killed. It was announced to the people that the emperor had died of a stroke.

The body of Paul I was buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

The story of the illegitimate son of Catherine II and Grigory Orlov.

F.S.Rokotov Portrait of A.G. Bobrinsky in childhood

Alexey Grigorievich was the illegitimate son of Empress Catherine II and Grigory Grigorievich Orlov. The future founder of the Bobrinsky family was born in the Winter Palace on April 11 (April 22, new style) in 1762. Immediately after birth, the baby was given by Catherine II to her wardrobe master Vasily Grigorievich Shkurin, in whose family he was brought up until 1774, along with the sons of Shkurin.

F.S. Rokotov. PortraitCatherineII .

A. I. Cherny (Chernov). Portrait of Count G. G. Orlov. Copper, enamel. State Hermitage

By order of the Empress, the child was taken in 1775 and handed over to I.I. Betskoy, and Catherine II decided to assign the child who bore the name Alexei Grigorievich, the surname Bobrinsky, after the village of Spassky, also known as Bobriki, Epifan district, Tula province, bought for his material support back in 1763, by order of Catherine II, from Ladyzhensky ...

The child, according to Betsky, was of a weak physique, fearful, timid, shy, insensitive to anything, but meek and obedient. His knowledge at the age of 13 was limited only to French and German, the beginnings of arithmetic and very little information from geography.

Khristinek, Karl Ludwig - Portrait of Count Alexei Grigorievich Bobrinsky

Soon Bobrinsky was placed in the land cadet corps, where he was under the special supervision of Ribas (who was a censor in the corps at that time), and continued to visit Betsky, whose location he apparently used. In 1782, Bobrinsky completed a course in the corps and was awarded a gold medal of a lesser value and the rank of lieutenant in the army. Soon he was granted a lieutenant in the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment and was dismissed on leave to travel across Russia and abroad, according to the charter of the cadet corps of that time, along with other best graduates of his graduation. Betskoy then wrote instructions for the trip and instructed Colonel Alexei Mikhailovich Bushuev to accompany the young people (who informed Betskoy in detail about the journey), as well as Academician Ozeretskovsky, who made the entire trip with them across Russia.

The Bobrinsky mansion is one of the best and most complete examples of lordly architecture of the late 18th century. The house was built by the architect Luigi Rusca.

Bobrinsky visited Moscow, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Bilimbaevsky plant, Ufa, Simbirsk, Saratov, Astrakhan, Kizlyar, Taganrog, Kherson, Kiev and then arrived in Warsaw, from where he went on a further trip to Europe. Visited Vienna, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Turin, Geneva, Bobrinsky finally arrived with his companions in Paris in the spring of 1785.
The entire trip was made with money received from St. Petersburg by Bobrinsky, in the amount of three thousand rubles a month, and constituted interest on the capital deposited in his name in the board of trustees of Catherine II.

(Portrait of Count A.G. Bobrinsky in a fancy dress

On the back there is a paper sticker, which says that the portrait was found in the attic of the Bobrinskys' house (on Galernaya Street in St. Petersburg); in his face, you really catch the resemblance to his mother.)

At that time, Betskoy was in charge of this capital, who regularly transferred Bobrinsky abroad through banks money, which soon became a source of discord and displeasure between Bobrinsky and his companions, as well as Betsky. The companions, in need of money, constantly asked for them from Bobrinsky, who was reluctant to satisfy such requests and often even rejected them completely.
Bushuev said on this occasion: "It is hardly possible to find another young man like him (Bobrinsky) who would love property so much" (November 9); or, in another place: "I urged him to at least think about his comrades that they do not have money ... for this he wanted to assign them a sum, but to this day he does not ... all the troubles of our situation are difficult to describe."

The reason for this prudence was that Bobrinsky did not escape his natural hobbies for women and the game in his years and began to need money himself. He wrote to the Empress about this, complaining about the failure to send him money by Betsky, who soon ordered Bushuev to "immediately return to Petersburg with all his companions." Bobrinsky was allowed to stay if he did not wish to return.

Bobrinsky did not go to Russia, continued to live in Paris and received 74,426 rubles on the orders of Catherine, in addition to the money he received monthly. At the same time, the Empress wrote to the famous Melchior Grimm about Bobrinsky, entrusted the young man with his caring care, asked him to arrange the latter's financial affairs in Paris and, if necessary, provide him even with money up to a thousand louis, but no more.

Portrait. 1790.

At the end of 1787, Bobrinsky moved from Paris to London, but did not stay there for long. According to Komarovsky, a person familiar to Bobrinsky suddenly left for Paris, and Bobrinsky immediately followed her.
Meanwhile, the Russian ambassador in London, Count S.R. Vorontsov, received an order from the empress on January 3, 1788, to demand an immediate return to Russia through Riga. Count P.V. Zavadovsky, who instead of I.P. Betsky was entrusted with the guardianship of Bobrinsky, wrote to the same Vorontsov that he would try to send Bobrinsky as soon as possible, but not let him feel that in St. Petersburg he was dissatisfied with his behavior.

On February 5, 1788, Grimm informed Vorontsov that Bobrinsky, having spent only three days in Paris in great secrecy, went back to London, promising to return soon and go with the aforementioned person to Italy. Despite Vorontsov's convictions, rather to go to Russia, Bobrinsky still hesitated to leave.
Only on April 27, the Empress informed Grimm about Bobrinsky's arrival in Riga, from where he was sent to live in Revel; at the same time, to arrange his affairs and to explain with him, he was sent to Revel Zavadovsky.

During his stay abroad, Bobrinsky was successively promoted from lieutenant to second-captain (January 1, 1785).
In Revel, Bobrinsky soon shook himself off of foreign impressions, repented of his lifestyle abroad, expressed a desire to enter active service and asked, in the form of special mercy, permission to appear in Petersburg and fall at the feet of the Empress.
Catherine II answered him that she had forgotten his past behavior and appointed him, for his own correction, the city of Reval, in which he certainly misses, but can easily correct himself. Regarding Bobrinsky's request to come to the capital, the Empress added that Zavadovsky would inform him when the time would come to leave Revel.

Soon after this, Bobrinsky asked to be dismissed from the captain of the Horse Guards. This request was granted, and on June 18, 1790, he was dismissed with the rank of brigadier.
Bobrinsky spent the rest of the reign of Catherine II in Revel, despite a second request for permission to come to St. Petersburg. Zavadovsky, as a guardian, took care of putting his affairs in order and paying off his debts and sent him money for living.

Castle Ober-Pahlen from above

With the Imperial permission, Bobrinsky in 1794 bought himself an estate in Livonia, near the city of Yuryev (Dorpat), the Ober-Palen castle, and on January 16, 1796 he married the maiden Baroness Anna Vladimirovna Ungern-Sternberg (born January 9, 1769, died 28 March 1846), whose parents owned the Kirna estate near Revel, where Bobrinsky often visited them and met his future wife.

Soon after the wedding, Bobrinsky and his wife came to St. Petersburg for a very short time, the Empress and his wife appeared, was kindly received, but returned to Ober-Palen again, where he lived until the death of Empress Catherine II.

Married to Baroness Anna Ungern-Sternberg (1769-1846) had children:

Maria Alekseevna (1798-1835), married to the chamberlain Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Gagarin (1784-1842). According to the reviews of a contemporary, she was smart and educated, she died suddenly in great suffering.

Alexey Alekseevich (1800-1868), a famous agriculturalist and sugar refinery.
He was married to the maid of honor Sophia Alexandrovna Samoilova (1797-1866), daughter of Count A. N. Samoilov.

Pavel Alekseevich (1801-1830), staff captain, was killed in a duel in Florence. He was married since 1822 to Yulia Stanislavovna Sobakina, nee Youth-Belinskaya (1804-1892) and had 2 sons and 3 daughters.

Vasily Alekseevich (1804-1874), served in the Life Guards Hussar Regiment, Decembrist.

On November 11, 1796, Prosecutor General Count Samoilov informed Bobrinsky of the Imperial order of the new Emperor to come to Petersburg, "and Bobrinsky can leave freely whenever he pleases." He did not hesitate to take advantage of this and appeared to Paul I, and on November 12, 1796, being a retired brigadier, he was appointed commander of the fourth squadron of the Life Guards Horse Guards and elevated to the count of the Russian Empire, together with his newly born son Alexei. (This son died on June 20, 1797). In addition, Pavel I granted Bobrinsky a huge house of Prince Orlov (the so-called Shtegelmansky house; a little later this house was bought from Bobrinsky for the Alexander Orphan Institute).

On the day of the coronation of the Emperor, April 5 (April 19) 1797, Bobrinsky was promoted to major general, with the abandonment of the Horse Guards, and on June 31 he was granted the command of the Gdov district, consisting of 11 villages, awarded to the Knight of the Order of St. Anna of the first degree ...
But already on September 17 of the same year, Major General of the Horse Guards, Count Bobrinsky, who commanded the second battalion of this, was ordered to be enlisted in the army and wear a general cavalry uniform, and on December 24, 1797 he was admitted to the number of honorary guardians of the council, at the St. Petersburg orphanage.

Then, on September 2, 1798, he was dismissed from military service, and on September 25, he resigned the title of honorary guardian and retired to the Tula province, in Bogoroditsk, where he lived for most of the year, continuing to visit Ober-Palen and Petersburg.
He was engaged in agriculture, mineralogy and astronomy, and over his house on Galernaya Street he made himself a turret that served as his observatory.

At the end of his life, Bobrinsky, according to his contemporaries, ceased to care about his appearance, only occasionally, in front of guests, he hastily put on a wig on his large, early bald head, often on one side. He wore greasy clothes, went for a walk in an old-fashioned gray frock coat, the pockets of which were filled with coins handed out to the poor.
Bobrinsky was buried in the family crypt in Bobriki. Burial Bobrinsky was destroyed in the 20s. XX century, but restored in 2003