Russia
Napoleonic Malta
One of the many surprises Paul gave his contemporaries was his alliance with the Ottomans. This followed Admiral Nelson’s great victory over Napoleon’s fleet at Aboukir Bay, close to Alexandria, in summer 1798 (the Battle of the Nile); after this, the British were able to expel French armies from Egypt, though not before Napoleon had despoiled the country of vast…
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MONGOL RULE IN RUSSIA AT ITSÂ HEIGHT
When Batu, son of JOCHI and grandson of CHINGGIS KHAN, established his gold-hung ORDO (palace-tent) along the lower Volga, he followed Mongol precedents and required all Russian rulers personally to attend his court to inherit their thrones. From then on “going to the (Golden) Horde” (a word derived from the…
Gendarme of Europe
Nicholas I (Nikolai I Pavlovich; 6 July 1796 – 2 March 1855) was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855. He was also the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland. He is best known as a political conservative whose reign was marked by geographical expansion, repression of…
TSARIST RUSSIA
Petr Yakovlevich Chaadaev The repression was particularly tough in Russia, the second of Europe’s pre-eminent absolutist regimes. If Metternich cast Austria in the role of Central Europe’s policeman, then Tsar Nicholas I saw himself as gendarme for the entire continent. The Russian empire had been in his iron, autocratic grip…
FROM THE CRISIS OF 1846 TO THE REVOLUTIONS OFÂ 1848
Karl Wilhelm von Willisen The revolutionary crisis of the middle of the nineteenth century which shattered most of the European countries in protest against the political system established by the Congress of Vienna is usually associated with the memorable year of 1848, with the so-called “spring of the peoples.” It…