The assassination itself presents some points of resemblance to that of Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland. On the evening of March 23, 1801, General Talizin, chief of the Imperial Guards, gave a brilliant party, to which only gentlemen of great intrepidity and resoluteness, all of whom were known to be personal enemies of the Emperor, had been invited. When the guests were heated with wine and in a condition of semi-intoxication, Count Pahlen entered the salon in which the guests were assembled; he referred in a few impressive words to the despotism and tyranny of the Emperor, to the widespread spirit of rebellion, to the dissatisfaction prevailing among officers, people, and clergy, to the public disorders and disturbances breaking out on all sides, and closed his inflammatory harangue by appealing to his hearers to make an end of these intolerable conditions. He knew his speech would be enthusiastically received, and for several minutes there was perfect bedlam among the guests. Some of them hurled chairs above their heads, others grasped their knives or swords, and swore that they would kill the insane fool who had already too long disgraced the imperial throne.
The plan according to which the conspirators proceeded had been carefully projected. Pahlen, who was Governor-General of St. Petersburg, left the palace in the general confusion, but returned soon with a detachment of cavalry and guarded the one side of the Winter Palace. Talizin marched up from the other side with a regiment of grenadiers. When these soldiers marched through the botanical garden of the palace, their loud and heavy steps frightened away many thousand crows, which were sleeping upon the high lime-trees of the garden. The loud croaking of this immense army of black birds ought to have aroused Paul from his sleep and warned him of his impending danger. But he slept on.
After the palace was fully surrounded, the conspirators crossed the ditch on the ice. A battalion of soldiers, who were not in the secret, and who were on guard on the outposts, offered some resistance, but were easily overpowered and disarmed. Not a shot had been fired. After having passed the gates of the palace, the conspirators were joined by Colonel Marin, the Commandant of the palace, who conducted the riotous throng, among whom were hardly any sober persons, over winding-stairs up to the door of the Emperor’s bedroom. On the threshold of the door the guard was asleep, and when aroused and trying to resist, was very rudely handled and barely escaped alive. He ran down the stairs and called the guards to arms. They demanded to be taken to the Emperor’s rooms, but Marin interfered. He made them present arms, and in this position no Russian soldier dares move a limb or speak a word.
The crowd entered the bedroom. Prince Zubow and General Benningsen—the latter a Hanoverian by birth, but of great authority in the army on account of his energy and reckless audacity—stepped up to the bed of the Czar, brandishing their swords. “Sire,” said Benningsen, “you are my prisoner!” The Emperor stared at them in speechless surprise. “Sire,” continued Benningsen, “it is a question of life or death for you! Yield to circumstances and sign this act of abdication!” The room was becoming filled up with drunken conspirators, all of whom wanted to see what was going on, and tried to get in. In a moment of confusion caused by this pushing and crowding in, which others tried to prevent, the Emperor sprang from his bed and took refuge behind the screen of a stove, where he staggered over some obstacle and fell to the ground. “Sire,” exclaimed Benningsen once more, “submit to the inevitable! Your life is at stake!” At this moment a new noise was heard from the anteroom, and Benningsen, who so far had been the only protector of Paul’s life, turned to the door, to see whether the new-comers were friends or enemies. Paul was, for the moment, alone with his assailants. His courage returned. He ran up to a table upon which lay several pistols. He reached for them, but some of the conspirators had watched the motion of his hand; one of them almost severed it from his arm by a stroke of his sword. Agonized with pain the Czar rushed upon his enemies. A short struggle, a heavy fall, and it was all over.
The murder of Peter the Third was brought about by the use of a napkin; his son, Paul the First, was strangled with an officer’s sash. There is another point of resemblance in the assassination of the two Czars, father and son. Alexis Orloff and Nicholas Zubow, the murderers of the two Czars, had both taken dinner with their victims on the day of the murder.
When the death of their father was reported to the Grand Dukes, Alexander especially, the heir to the crown, was almost overcome with emotion and terror. The details of the murder were carefully concealed from him; on the contrary, he was made to believe that a fit of apoplexy brought on by the excitement of the scene had caused the Czar’s death. After much lamentation he was finally persuaded to address a proclamation to the Russian people in which apoplexy was given as the cause of the sudden and unexpected death of Czar Paul the First during the night of the twenty-third of March. Quite early next day this proclamation was promulgated throughout the city of Petersburg by military heralds. But the people were not deceived by these official lies. Everybody knew in what manner Paul the First had died. The news of the murder in all its details had spread with lightning-like rapidity through the streets and alleys to the remotest corners of the city.
The conspirators, far from denying their guilt, boasted of the crime as of an act of heroism and patriotism. Many officers who were at the time miles away from the palace of St. Michael claimed to have been witnesses of the tragedy and to have lent a helping hand in slaying “the tyrant.” It is recorded that Count Münster, the Prussian ambassador at the court of St. Petersburg, a short time after Paul’s assassination, spoke with horror and indignation of the catastrophe at a dinner party at which a number of the most prominent army officers and state officials were present; one of these officers quite unconcernedly defended the crime, saying: “Count, you should not blame us for defending ourselves! Our Magna Charta is tyranny, or if you prefer to call it so, absolutism, tempered by assassination, and our rulers should regulate their conduct accordingly!” And this state of affairs has existed in Russia to the present day.