These details would be sufficient of themselves to account for the melancholy that haunted Alexander in the later years of his reign, and which was painfully manifest in his countenance. But he had to undergo other sufferings.
[1825 A.D.]
He was not more than sixteen years of age when his grandmother, Catherine II, had married him to the amiable and beautiful princess Maria of Baden, then scarcely fifteen.[67] The match was better assorted than is usually the case in the highest conditions of life, but it was not a happy one. It might have been so if it had been delayed until the young couple were of more mature years, and had not the empress unwisely restricted their freedom after marriage, and spoiled her grandson as a husband by attempting to make him a good one in obedience to her orders. Moreover, the tie of offspring was wanting which might have drawn the parents’ hearts together, for two daughters, born in the first two years of their union, died early. Alexander formed other attachments, one of which with the countess Narishkin, lasted eleven years, until it was dissolved by her inconstancy. She had borne him three children; only one was left, a girl as beautiful as her mother, who was now the sole joy of her father’s sad heart. But the health of Sophia Narishkin was delicate, and he was compelled to part with her, that she might be removed to a milder climate. She returned too soon, and died on the eve of her marriage, in her eighteenth year. The news was communicated to Alexander one morning when he was reviewing his guard. “I receive the reward of my deeds,” were the first words that escaped from his agonised heart.
Elizabeth, whose love had survived long years of neglect, had tears to shed for the daughter of her rival, and none sympathised more deeply than she with the suffering father. He began to see in her what his people had long seen, an angel of goodness and resignation; his affection for her revived, and he strove to wean her from the bitter recollections of the past by his constant and devoted attention. But long-continued sorrows had undermined Elizabeth’s health, and her physicians ordered that she should be removed to her native air. She refused, however, to comply with this advice, declaring that the wife of the emperor of Russia should die nowhere else than in his dominions. It was then proposed to try the southern provinces of the empire, and Alexander selected for her residence the little town of Taganrog, on the sea of Azov, resolving himself to make all the arrangements for her reception in that remote and little frequented spot. A journey of 1800 versts, after the many other journeys he had already made since the opening of the year, was a fatigue too great for him to sustain without injury, suffering as he still was from erysipelas; but he was accustomed to listen to no advice on the subject of his movements, and two or three thousand versts were nothing in his estimation; besides, on this occasion, in the very fatigue of travelling he sought his repose: he would fulfil a duty which was to appease his conscience. He quitted St. Petersburg in the beginning of September, 1825, preceding the empress by several days. His principal travelling companions were Prince Volkhonski, one of the friends of his youth of whom we have already heard; his aide-de-camp general, Baron Diebitsch, a distinguished military man who had been made over to him by the king of Prussia; and his physician, Sir James Wylie, who had been about his person for thirty years, and was at the head of the army medical department.
The journey was prosperous, and was accomplished with Alexander’s usual rapidity in twelve days, the travellers passing over 150 versts a day; but his mind was oppressed with gloomy forebodings, and these were strengthened by the sight of a comet; for though brought up by a philosophic grandmother, and by a free-thinking tutor, he was by no means exempt from superstition. “Ilia,” he called out to his old and faithful coachman, “have you seen the new star? Do you know that a comet always presages misfortune? But God’s will be done!” A very favourable change having taken place in the empress’s health in Taganrog, Alexander ventured to leave her early in October, for a short excursion through the Crimea. On the 26th of that month Dr. Robert Lee, family physician to Count Vorontzov was one of the emperor’s guests at Alupka. He relates that at dinner Alexander repeatedly expressed how much he was pleased with Orianda, where he had been that day, and stated that it was his determination to have a palace built there as expeditiously as possible. “To my amazement,” says Dr. Lee, “he said after a pause, ‘When I give in my demission, I shall return and fix myself at Orianda, and wear the costume of the Taurida.’ Not a word was uttered when this extraordinary resolution was announced, and I thought that I must have misunderstood the emperor; but this could not have been, for in a short time, when Count Vorontzov proposed that the large open flat space of ground to the westward of Orianda should be converted into pleasure-grounds for his majesty, he replied: ‘I wish this to be purchased for General Diebitsch, as it is right that the chief of my état-major and I should be neighbours.’”
During the latter part of his tour in the Crimea, Alexander had some threatenings of illness, but peremptorily refused all medical treatment. He returned to Taganrog on the 17th of November, with evident symptoms of a severe attack of the bilious remittent fever of the Crimea. He persisted in rejecting medical aid until it was too late, and died on the 1st of December. For a long time the belief prevailed throughout Europe that he had been assassinated; but it is now established beyond question that his death was a natural one. The empress survived him but five months.
Alexander’s last days were embittered by fresh disclosures brought to him by General Count de Witt, respecting the conspiracy by which, if the official report is to be believed, he was doomed to assassination. From that time he declared himself disgusted with life. Once when Sir James Wylie was pressing him to take some medicine, “My friend,” said Alexander, “it is the state of my nerves to which you must attend; they are in frightful disorder.”—“Alas!” rejoined the physician, “that happens more frequently to kings than to ordinary men.”—“Yes,” said the emperor, with animation, “but with me in particular there are many special reasons, and at the present hour more so than ever.” Some days afterwards, when his brain was almost delirious, the czar gazed intently on the doctor, his whole countenance manifesting intense fear. “Oh, my friend,” he exclaimed, “what an act, what a horrible act! The monsters! the ungrateful monsters! I designed nothing but their happiness.”[e]
“It is difficult to represent the condition of St. Petersburg during the last years of the reign of the emperor Alexander,” writes a contemporary. “It was as though enveloped in a moral fog; Alexander’s gloomy views, more sad than stern, were reflected in its inhabitants. Many people said: What does he want more? He stands at the zenith of power. Each one explained after his own fashion the inconsolable grief of the emperor. For a man who must live to all eternity, who was famed as the friend of liberty, and who had out of necessity become her oppressor, it was grievous to think that he must renounce the love of his contemporaries and the praise of posterity. Many other circumstances and some family ones also weighed on his soul. The last years of Alexander’s life,” writes in conclusion the eye-witness of these sorrowful days, “may be termed a prolonged eclipse.”