the time, had to ask Catherine to temporarily return her bequest so the empress could pay off Peter.) Yet despite his father’s near-total indifference, it would be Peter III whom Paul would come to emulate.
Even as a boy, the future emperor was demonstrating some of Peter’s more unsettling characteristics—evidence, perhaps, that they were indeed father and son after all. He was often restless and agitated, with a mania for all things military, and possessed of a disturbing capacity for cruelty. “With the best intention in the world,” the boy’s tutor warned him, “you will make yourself thoroughly hated.”
Once, during a theatrical performance when he was ten, Paul was so outraged when some members of the audience dared applaud before he had himself indicated his reaction to the play that he asked his mother—now empress—to exile the offenders. Of course Catherine ignored this impudent demand, but she couldn’t ignore the emerging character deficits in her son that were so frighteningly reminiscent of her late, demented spouse. They left her cold.
“He is believed to be vindictive, headstrong and absolute in his ideas,” the French chargé d’affaires Sabatier de Cabre reported of Paul when he was fourteen. “It is only to be feared that by virtue of having his wings clipped, a potentially decided character may be rendered obstinate, that it may be replaced by duplicity, repressed hatred and perhaps pusillanimity, and that the high-mindedness which might have beendeveloped in him may be stifled at last by the terror that his mother has always inspired in him.… It is true that the Empress, who is careful of appearances so far as everything else is concerned, observes none of them in relation to her son. For him she always has the tone and manner of a sovereign, and this attitude is often combined with a coldness and neglect that disgust the young prince. She has never treated him as a mother treats her son. Therefore the Grand Duke [Paul] behaves with her as if he stood before a judge.”
Catherine II did indeed have a difficult time loving her son, who in his adolescence was becoming increasingly unstable as he seethed with suspicion and paranoia—especially toward the empress he was beginning to suspect had murdered his father. “The mere sight of her made him think of death,” wrote biographer Henri Troyat; “the breath of the tomb hung about her.” Once, after finding a few tiny shards of glass in his food, Paul, wild with fury, ran screaming through the palace and accused his mother to her face of trying to kill him. Even his appearance started to reflect his temperament. The features of the once-charming, fair-haired boy with his pert turned-up nose became grossly distorted as he grew—with thickened lips, facial tics, and flattened nostrils resembling those of a bulldog. Worst of all, Paul was beginning to pose a threat to his mother’s throne.
“This young Prince gives evidence of sinister and dangerous inclinations,” reported the French diplomat Bérenger. “A few days ago, he was asking why they had killed his father and why they had given his mother the throne that rightfully belonged to him. He added that when he grew up, he would get to the bottom of all that. People are saying … that the child allows himself too many remarks of that sort for them not to reach the ears of the Empress. Now, no one doubts that thatPrincess will take all possible precautions to prevent him from putting words into action.”
Catherine hoped that marriage might divert Paul from some of his more malignant passions, and, even better, produce an heir she could mold in her own image to carry on the policies her own son seemed to despise. Accordingly, she turned to Frederick the Great (the Prussian monarch who had helped arrange her own marriage to the future Peter III) to find Paul an eligible German bride—hopefully one possessing the same qualities the empress admired so much in
Even as a boy, the future emperor was demonstrating some of Peter’s more unsettling characteristics—evidence, perhaps, that they were indeed father and son after all. He was often restless and agitated, with a mania for all things military, and possessed of a disturbing capacity for cruelty. “With the best intention in the world,” the boy’s tutor warned him, “you will make yourself thoroughly hated.”
Once, during a theatrical performance when he was ten, Paul was so outraged when some members of the audience dared applaud before he had himself indicated his reaction to the play that he asked his mother—now empress—to exile the offenders. Of course Catherine ignored this impudent demand, but she couldn’t ignore the emerging character deficits in her son that were so frighteningly reminiscent of her late, demented spouse. They left her cold.
“He is believed to be vindictive, headstrong and absolute in his ideas,” the French chargé d’affaires Sabatier de Cabre reported of Paul when he was fourteen. “It is only to be feared that by virtue of having his wings clipped, a potentially decided character may be rendered obstinate, that it may be replaced by duplicity, repressed hatred and perhaps pusillanimity, and that the high-mindedness which might have beendeveloped in him may be stifled at last by the terror that his mother has always inspired in him.… It is true that the Empress, who is careful of appearances so far as everything else is concerned, observes none of them in relation to her son. For him she always has the tone and manner of a sovereign, and this attitude is often combined with a coldness and neglect that disgust the young prince. She has never treated him as a mother treats her son. Therefore the Grand Duke [Paul] behaves with her as if he stood before a judge.”
Catherine II did indeed have a difficult time loving her son, who in his adolescence was becoming increasingly unstable as he seethed with suspicion and paranoia—especially toward the empress he was beginning to suspect had murdered his father. “The mere sight of her made him think of death,” wrote biographer Henri Troyat; “the breath of the tomb hung about her.” Once, after finding a few tiny shards of glass in his food, Paul, wild with fury, ran screaming through the palace and accused his mother to her face of trying to kill him. Even his appearance started to reflect his temperament. The features of the once-charming, fair-haired boy with his pert turned-up nose became grossly distorted as he grew—with thickened lips, facial tics, and flattened nostrils resembling those of a bulldog. Worst of all, Paul was beginning to pose a threat to his mother’s throne.
“This young Prince gives evidence of sinister and dangerous inclinations,” reported the French diplomat Bérenger. “A few days ago, he was asking why they had killed his father and why they had given his mother the throne that rightfully belonged to him. He added that when he grew up, he would get to the bottom of all that. People are saying … that the child allows himself too many remarks of that sort for them not to reach the ears of the Empress. Now, no one doubts that thatPrincess will take all possible precautions to prevent him from putting words into action.”
Catherine hoped that marriage might divert Paul from some of his more malignant passions, and, even better, produce an heir she could mold in her own image to carry on the policies her own son seemed to despise. Accordingly, she turned to Frederick the Great (the Prussian monarch who had helped arrange her own marriage to the future Peter III) to find Paul an eligible German bride—hopefully one possessing the same qualities the empress admired so much in
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