Russian tsars: everything you wanted to know

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast, fascinating historical conversations from BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed. Did the Russians consider themselves as to the Roman emperors? How did a foreign-born princess manage to exert control over the imperial court in St. Petersburg? And was the downfall of the Russian monarchy all but inevitable in 1917? In today's episode, Simon Seabagmond Furey speaks to Danny Bird to answer your questions on the lavish and formidable rulers of imperial Russia. Simon, welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Today, in this episode of Everything You Wanted To Know, we'll be looking at Russian's and I'd like to kick us off by posing a question we've received on Instagram from James Dallin who asks, "What was a czar and what distinguished them from other rulers in Europe and Asia?" Thank you very much. It's great to be here and it's great to be on History Extra. Great question about the czars. The czars were the rulers of the Grand Duchy of a Muscovy. They were originally Grand Princes and over time they adopted the additional title of "Zar", which was based on Caesar, and came from the Roman title. And it was part of the Grand Duke's, the Grand Princes of Muscovy claiming to be the successors, the heirs of the Roman emperors of Byzantium. We've also had a question from Bukhé of Sharpen pencils, 152 on Instagram. And they're curious to know a little bit more about this inheritance from the Roman emperors. So could you perhaps elaborate a little bit on the iconography of Zarrism, such as the double headed eagle? No one quite knows where the double headed eagle comes from in fact. And it might come from the Roman emperors. It might come from the Habsburgs who also have eagles in there in their insignia. There are lots of theories about these things and of course the best thing is not to be too dogmatic about that sort of thing. But as for the inheritance from Byzantium, that is important. I mean, Byzantium fell to the Ottoman unsalton in 1453. And after that, over time, Zarrs began to rebrand themselves as the heirs. And they began to rebrand Muscovy as the third Rome after Rome and Constantinople by Byzantium. Of course they were already orthodox Christians. And their original conversion had been as orthodox Christians. And the patrons of which were the sponsors of that conversion were the Byzantine emperors. So there was an orthodox inheritance already. The Byzantine legacy was extremely important in terms of the Christianity. And also in terms of the idea of Zardom, of the inheritance of the Caesars. But I think that the Mongol inheritance, which is less well known in the West and more obscure, was actually, I think, more or as important to the way that Russian sovereigns developed and the nature of the Russian crown developed. That's really interesting. And just on your point about how the title of Zarr came from the Roman Empire, essentially. Do we have a date of when Russian rulers started using that title as a regal title? I'm in the third and I'm in the fourth with the Zarrs who began to adopt the titles are. And I'm in the fourth. I'm in the terrible was the first Zarr to formally be crowned as Zarr. And it was a title that then ran all the way through Moscow, and Russian history right until 1918. But in the early 18th century, Peter the Great adopted the title, Imperato, Emperor's Well. And from then on, you can use it interchangeably. Zarr being kind of regarded as more Russian, more slava file, more native, if you like, more indigenous, and Imperato Emperor being regarded as more international. Would you elaborate on what exactly Zarr's autocracy was? Zarr's autocracy was the nature of the prerogative of Russian rulers, which was different from other rulers in that there was no mediating institutions, no mediating society, no mediating civics, a civil society. It was power without any boundaries. It was autocracy. And when it started, when the Zarr started at the time of the Mongol conquest, when the first Grand Princes of Muscovy emerged, they were typical of the rulers of the East, in fact, and most rulers, especially in the Mongol world, did not have any boundaries on their limits, on their rule. But as time went on, Western Europe, it became traditional for all sorts of different reasons, for other powerful institutions to develop the church, the nobility, and so on, the army, officers, and trade, organizations, and so on. And ultimately, legislatures and parliament in different countries. In Russia, that didn't happen. And that was the major difference. So by the time you get to the 18th century, when you look at Western Europe, there were all sorts of legal and institutional limits on rulers, on monarchs. While in Russia, there was still none. There were occasionally, during times of great crisis, gatherings, Zensky-Sobort, where there were sort of elections, which we don't know the exact nature of. For example, at the end of the time of troubles when the Roman orps were selected as the ruling dynasty, but they never had any lasting effect. And gradually, you know, Russia and Monarchy developed as uniquely limitless, and without any boundaries, without any restraints on the ruler. Russia is of course famous for its immense size. How did the Zars govern such a vast empire? Well, that's a great question. From the very beginning, the Russian state, the state of the Grand Princes of Muscovy, began to gather in other rural kid principalities that were spread around Russia, and they began to consume them into Muscovy. And Muscovy, therefore, from really from very early in its development, was an expanding, expansive state. And so it started from the very beginning. And one of the features of Russia, and this is very relevant throughout history, is that there were no limits, there were no boundaries on Russia. East and West, there was just the Great Eurasian step, and the course of a great rivers, there were the Urals in the north, there was the Arctic and the South, the Black Sea, but otherwise there was just an open step across which from the east the Mongols had galloped. And of course, Russian history is all about a series of invasions from the West as well. But from the Russian point of view, this was also a benefit that there was no limit to their expansion until they reached the Pacific. And so from the very start, Russian rulers were military figures. Russians are always, always aspired to be active commanders in chief. And the Tsarist Court always functioned as a sort of military headquarters. And we see that right until, in the 18th century, in the 19th century, right up until 1918, and then again, under Stalin, and again today under Putin. So Russia expanded because it could, how did it expand? It basically expanded because of the unique alliance between the monarch and the nobility. It was unique because in other countries, the nobility began to amass privileges and rights and the states that gave them the abilities stand up against the power of the monarchy. But in Russia that didn't happen. They could make their nobility, they could destroy their nobility. And again, that's something you see today with the oligarchs, for example, in Putin's Russia. A lot of these features, of course, it's extremely different now. But a lot of these features, you see right the way through Russian history, right until the 21st century. And perhaps related to that last question, we've had one from MHFQ on Instagram, who has asked, was being a successful czar an almost impossible task? It's a very good question. It wasn't impossible task because the upside with having no limits, no restraints to your power is that, of course, you can do anything, you can order anything. But of course, the responsibility is massive, the expectation is enormous. And when things go wrong, though like all politicians, you know, Zars were extremely good at blaming their own ministers and executing them, were necessary in throwing them to the crowds or the wolves as it were. The fact is, the buck really did stop with the monarch. And that placed immense pressure on them, particularly from Peter the Great. Peter the Great had an incredibly long reign at the end of the 17th, beginning of 18th century. He actually raised the level, I'm expected of Amzad and Prince of Russia. And he also effectively invented Russia. He renamed the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, the Principality of Muscovy. He renamed it Rusea Russia. And he really invented Russia. He also reinvented the role of the Zahimprah. His legacy is really endeared to today. He was in effect, his own Prime Minister, his own Bishop, his own General, his own Field Marshal, his own Engineer. He was everything. And no one knew that. And Rupp's sense has really come up to his standard he set. And the example of success that he set almost impossible to equal. I think Stalin is the only real person, maybe Alexander I, who really came close. And now a question about where the Tsars used to reside. Could you tell us a little bit please about palaces and the cities they'd roll to? The principality of Muscovy was based in Moscow. Moscow became a great city because of the growth of this kingdom and this empire. At the beginning they lived in the Kremlin unexpectedly. The Kremlin is not a building like Tendán Street or the White House. It's more like a city within a city. I think it's about 70 acres in size. And it's filled with palaces, with churches, with squares, with its cobbled streets. The ancient Tsars under the Rorakids and the early Romanovs all resided in the Kremlin. And it's really a rather amazing place. It's surrounded with the sort of extraordinary red walls and red battlements and towers. And it's really, it's very beautiful. It's regarded as very Russian. In fact, these walls were built by Italian architects, brought from the court of the Medici in Italy. But Peter the Great moved the capital to a new city to St. Petersburg. He started off living in a small cottage. He was himself very modest in his tastes. And in fact it was a feature of the Tsars, all of them at the Amprus, that though they lived in these massive palaces, like all of us, they actually wanted to live in a very cozy suite of rooms and apartments. And so that's one of the interesting things when you explore these palaces to find those cozy bits as it were. So he started off in that hut when he was building St. Petersburg. And as he built it, he then founded a summer palace and a winter palace. And then suburban palaces outside, Asco's cello, his daughter expanded and almost nearly a veta and Peterhof, which is still an extraordinary and astoundingly grand palace. And they're also smaller houses in both those places where different Tsars lived. Some of them quite modest. And so there are sort of multiple palaces, old and new, modern and really quite ancient in both places. That point you made about modesty is very interesting as we've had a question from Waterfist on Instagram. And they want to know how detached were they the ordinary people of the empire. It's a very interesting question. They were extremely detached from their people. And increasingly so, as time went on, the court became increasingly elaborate. But they were very much religious figures as well as political figures. And with Peter the Great, that really changed radically. He made the Tsars into much more sort of active and practical figures. But he also lived very modestly and plainly. And he kind of prided himself on living in a German boot, German military coat. And oftentimes he sort of took part in the building of things. He built ships. He built guns. He took part in the shooting of guns, the training of soldiers. And so he was very much a sort of hands-on autocrat who didn't stand on ceremony. The downside of that was that he was there when things went wrong. He was there to check everything. He was incredibly active. He traveled the empire the whole time. And God forbid when he turned up and you hadn't done something. I mean, there are many, many examples of him turning up during the building of Peter's book. Or in his various wars, he'd take a whip or his walking stick and beat you himself. Or punch you in the face. So you really wanted to make sure that if he was around, you were doing what you were told. So there was quite a downside for him being kind of a hands-on czar. But his successors, many of them were female. And so of course they weren't able to be kind of out with the armies as much. So they did go from the Great and Elizabeth had to go inspection to us. Then later you got a lot of czars in the 18th century to Peter III and Paul I, who were kind of obsessional parade homaniacs who kind of drilled their soldiers and beat them when they didn't parade properly. That was the kind of mark of a beginning of a real gap between the people and the rulers. And of course that got worse in the 19th century. Because Nicholas I brought in a very elaborate, Germanic court system with lots of titles and very, very complicated uniforms and rules and etiquette and so on. And by that point, the court life was very, very separate and got more so. We've had several listeners ask this question and that is who was the first czar? The first czar was Ivan the Terrible. And he was also one of the great conquerors of new territory. When he conquered Astrakhan, he conquered Kazan. And that's why he built St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square to celebrate that. Ivan the Terrible was a fascinating character. He was striking looking, strappingly strong, created wild eyes. He was clearly highly intelligent. But he also had an insane temper. He was unbalanced. He was extremely dangerous. He was extremely sadistic. He was vicious. He started off extremely well. He made these conquests in the south of these two carnates, which were, you know, Mongol successor states. From the Genghis Khan Empire, he really started to expand Russia from Muskavi into an empire. He also expanded massively eastwards into Siberia. And he was really responsible for the beginning of the conquest of Siberia. He was the first czar of Siberia as well. But he enormously overreached. First of all, he started a war to try and expand, to become king of Poland, to get control over the Baltic. And the wars that he started placed him under enormous pressure, placed Muskavi under immense pressure. And I think it's generally agreed now that he actually became insane, gradually. And yet, he never lost the sort of cunning that enabled him to keep control over his empire. Even when he faced kind of massive political defeats, he was still a brilliant manipulator of people. But he also devised sort of extremely strange and eccentric plans to keep control, to expand his control, to intensify his autocracy. He was paranoid as well. So he was constantly having people hunted down and executed. He created a sort of dual state at one point where he split the whole kingdom into two. Part of it was ruled by the Oprichniki, which was a sort of special part of the empire. But he ruled himself through almost like a secret police elite, who hunted down enemies. At one point he was warned by Suth Sayers that he would lose control or die if he was on the throne. So he actually abdicated and gave the throne to a mongol prince for a number of months. He constantly remarried. He was probably bisexual. His private life was extremely complicated. He was partly a priestly, highly religious character. On the other part of him, he loved war. He loved debauchery. He was an orgyist. Very complicated figure. Between 1598 and 1613, Russia was plunged into a period of Anarchy known as the Time of Troubles. Could you explain what caused that crisis and how it was resolved? I mean, the time of Troubles was originally caused by Ivan the Terrible's killing of his son, Elder Sun Ivan Avanovich, who was the heir to the throne. Now, it's interesting in Russia, there was no kind of rule of succession. The ruler could just choose his successor. Again, something that's true now. But the trouble with that system is that if you kill your heir, then you have a big problem. So when he killed his heir, he was only after the very inferior heir, when he died as well. There was no heir to the kingdom. Boris Gudinoff, who was one of Ivan the Terrible's henchmen, who he'd promoted to a high position, actually claimed the throne for a while, tried to found a new dynasty, made himself Tsar. But lacked the authority. When he died, the empire just fell into complete chaos. There were a series of different claimants. Three of them were called Demetri, the False Demetries, which are called the Love by School Boys. We think it's terribly funny, that they all called themselves Demetri. They claimed to be the missing heir to the Muscovite throne. And each of them rose to power. And lost power was murdered. And in the end, the Muscovite principality began to completely disintegrate. It was invaded from all sides, from the south, the Mongol cons of the Tukrimi, from the north, from the sweet, and from the east, from the poles. And this is where the Russian fear and suspicion of Poland originates from. Because there was a time when the poles actually took Muscov, and occupied Muscov. It looked like Russia, Muscovy, would cease to exist as a state. There were moments when it looked as if Poland could have could have been the empire of the East, in which case there had been a Catholic Russia, or a Catholic Polish Empire, which would have been a very different animal to Russia. But the nobles, the Kossaks, the army, the church, all gathered together and chose the Roman of Dynasty to be a new dynasty. And they chose Michael Romanov, who was an imperfect, an imperfect, you know, child, weak, bad eyesight, limping. But he was closely connected by family to the Rura Kid Dynasty, which was now extinct. He was a teenager. He had the advantage that no one disliked him. He'd been hunted down by the invaders who wanted to kill him, and he'd been hidden in various monasteries. And he was pure. He was untouched. No one could say he was controlled by any group. And so they went to find him. Such was the state of Muscovy that when they went to offer in the throne, he and his mother, sobbed and begged them to leave. But they insisted that he accepted the throne several times, and in the end he accepted it and became the Tsar. I must say, of course, looking back to 1613 when that happened, it looked like it was going to be a disaster. It must have looked extremely doubtful that Russia would recover, but it did. And it was that success that laid the foundation for the Roman of Dynasty. So we've had a question from Sweden Hungary on Instagram related to this topic. And he wants to know, whether any other contenders for the throne besides micro-Romanov in 1613. There were many other contenders for it. There are seven possible eight possible contenders, but all of them came with a lot of baggage. And all of them had severe disadvantages. They'd either tried too hard to claim the throne. They were too ambitious. They'd supported one or other of the fullster meetries. They'd collaborated with the Poles, the Swedes, or the Tartars. It was a desperate situation. The other thing that he had, which was very useful, he was a teenager, but his father was in prison in Poland. And so the great thing was that he wasn't controlled even by his own father, and yet he was a teenager. So he was far and away the best candidate. And the only one that could unite all the factions. Many people will be aware that Peter the Great introduced a series of reforms to Russia that were inspired by Western ideals. Could you explain his motivation for this and what the reforms and hailed? Peter the Great was just the most extraordinary ruler of Russia. He was extraordinary looking. He was like six foot six or six foot seven. He was really a giant. And there he's kind of always looks kind of incredibly kind of tough and grand in his portraits. What you don't see about that is that he had a twitch. And his face was constantly twitching. He was probably an epileptic. He suffered a fits quite often. So he was doubly terrifying basically. But he also was that extraordinary thing, a deep talent to put a petition on every level. And he had three of the features that were really kind of essential to all successful politicians. He had vision, he had acumen, the ability to put his vision into practice. And then he had that thing that which we're lacking today in Saint England, which is resources. The resources to be actually be able to afford to do the things that you want to do. He had all of those. We always misunderstand reformers in Russia and think that they just really want to bring in kind of Western system, Western values. Your question mentioned values in fact. But Peter the Great's reforms had nothing to do with Western values whatsoever. He was an autocrat. He believed in autocracy. He was a savage and terrifying dictator. Who even his Russian henchman, his Russian courtiers, grumbled was a terrifying tyrant. But what he wanted to do was to bring in Western technology to make Russia more powerful. And what he particularly wanted to do was to bring in military technology. And really that was particularly artillery. He wanted to bring in the artillery that worked much better in the West. Had all these newly developed artillery technology. He went to the West to get it on his great tour, on his grand tour. And everywhere he went, he recruited Western officers to train his Russians and to bring in this top technology, the artillery. And the other thing he brought in was shipbuilding. Russia had no tradition of a navy. And Peter the Great wanted to conquer the Black Sea. And he was not successful in doing that. And then he moved his focus to the Baltic. Rather like Ivan the Terrible had done before. And Ivan the Terrible had failed to do this. But Peter the Great saw an opportunity. Sweden was at the time ruled by a very young king. There was a Swedish empire controlled the whole Baltic effectively. And he launched a war against it. He got Poland to back him. And he began to put into effect the reforms and the technologies that he'd learned, the military technologies he'd learned from the West. And he did that very successfully at first. But it took time to work. It took over 20 years to be completely successful. During that time he also founded a new city, Peter's burg, which he named after himself after his patron saint. And for that too was a new way of thinking. But again, it wasn't so much Western values. It was the ability for Russia to expand into the West, to reach towards the West, to expand Russian power into Germany, into Poland. And to do that and to draw in Western expertise, he believed that he should create a new city. And it was also a place where he could base his new fleet. He founded a Baltic fleet with Dutch and English know-how. So he was a reformer. He did do things like, you know, he famously cut off the beards of the boyars and created a sort of service nobility. But all of it was really about creating Russia as a great military power. And increasing his own power. He was the ultimate autocrat. After Peter's death, the rest of the 18th century witnessed a succession of female Russian rulers culminating, of course, in the reign of Catherine the Great. But I want to get to hold a little bit later on. And so could you please outline who these other female rulers were? His successor was Catherine the First. Keep it, Catherine the Great was Catherine the Second, just if people are wondering who this who this other Catherine was. Her reign was only about two or three years. But she was an extraordinary character in her own right, fascinating person. She'd literally started as a camp follower, the mistress of Shere Matav, Peter the Great's top field marshal. And then the mistress, possibly of Prince Menchekov, another henchman. And then the mistress of Peter the Great himself. He fell in love with it. She became the love of his life. She was obviously a formidable character, fascinating character. But it's quite extraordinary that Peter the Great was so powerful that while other rulers in Europe married into other all families, princesses, he felt confident enough to marry this woman whose background would have been completely unacceptable than any other kingdom in Europe. But they had a very sweet relationship. She was also very tolerant of his other mistresses. And in one point he caught for Neural disease. And she was very forgiving about that. And they had a daughter together. They actually had two daughters together. But the sons all died. And so they still had no air when Peter the Great died. And she succeeded, which was quite extraordinary. I mean her rise was really the most meteoric rise in Europe before Napoleon, if you think of her background. She was completely unroyal. She wasn't even Russian. She wasn't even noble. She started off as not much better than a mistress of Cortezan. However you put it, it was an amazing a meteoric rise. But that's how it became a century of female empresses. So she was empress. She died partly of drinking. She was a huge drinker like Peter the Great. There was then Peter the Great's grandson. Peter the Second became emperor for a very short time. He died very quickly. And then the throne was taken over by a niece of Peter the Great Anna, who was quite a brutal character. She favored sports like dwarf fraring. And it was really a deeply sort of grotesque and cruel woman, not a very good ruler. But she chose quite able ministers to rule for one of them was her lover, Biron, who she made Duke of Corland. But she was a slightly sort of sort of, she was a kind of slightly vicious character, not unlike one of those queens and game of thrones, with similar tastes in sadism. And so it went on through the century. Moving on now to Catherine the Great herself, could you explain how she came to rule Russia and what made her such an extraordinary monarch? That's a lovely question. I've mentioned the empress Anne. I've mentioned how it came to be that female rulers came to rule Russia during this 18th century. And I mentioned that Peter the Great and Catherine the First, his consul who became empress in her own had had children and one of these children was Elizabetha, who was extremely beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed and like her father, Amazonian, very tall. And in 1741 she seized the throne in a really quite dramatic coup where she rode wearing a grassiest brass plate and carrying a rifle and a spear on the back of a sleigh and she led the guards to seize power to arrest the various officers who were really ruling at that time. She also rested the baby, Ivan VI, I don't know how you arrest a baby but she did and she seized power in this very dramatic coup in Snowy St. Petersburg and she was an extraordinary character again like her father. She was pretty capable but very capricious. She loved dresses, she loved diamonds, she loved jewels, she loved palaces and she loved men and she had many lovers and just as Catherine the Great was supposed to in Western legend be a sort of nymphomaniac. In fact Elizabetha was much more like that. She had multiple lovers, did exactly what she wanted but she never had any children and she never married probably as far as we know. And so she needed to get her nephew to come and be her heir who was her sister Anna's son and he was a German Peter, Duke of Holstein, deeply unattractive, deeply incapable and inept Poxy German youth brought over from Holstein who worshipped all things German and hated all things Russian and he of course needed a wife so she brought with the help of her contemporary who she by the way she hated Frederick the Great. She brought over a girl Sophie of Anhalc Serbs, a small principality in Germany, age 14. She brought this princess Sophie over to marry Peter and renamed her Catherine and she arrived in a very very frightening court. She was 14 years old, she spoke German, she arrived with her mother who was soon sent home after having all sorts of unsuitable love affairs with people with courtiers. And Catherine had to learn Russian and then learn to navigate this incredibly dangerous court, this bare pit of a court ruled by a very very capricious and dangerous, often vicious empress, I mean there's a veta who quite liked Catherine but was also very suspicious of her and her main job Catherine's main job was to get pregnant by Peter but their marriage was extremely unhappy. It may have gone through phases that were slightly happier than we know of because the only account of the marriage was really left by Catherine herself later and she by that point she hated her husband but either way he sounds like a pre-alful character. One point he, according to her, he hanged a rat by their marital bed and there's a punishment for something that the rat had done. She spent his whole time drilling soldiers, he worshipped Frederick the Great and Prussia and hated Russia. Catherine was brilliant, she became the Russian candidate for the throne, she learnt perfect Russian, she charmed everybody at court, charmed all the men, she was very attractive, blue eyes, all-burned hair, covecious, highly intelligent, very funny, she said that the key to the court was making friends with the old women and she learnt the names of all their poodles and pug dogs and that was very useful and when Elizabeth a died Peter the third succeeded to the throne and within six months he defended and alienated every single faction at court, the army, the church, the nobility and he was threatening to have Catherine herself, his wife, arrested, possibly killed. And so she seized power in a coup on the 28th June 1762 and rather like Elizabeth a she rode into town from Peterhof and Zasco Salo seized the winter palace with her troops, then went back and arrested the unfortunate Peter the third. She was backed by her lover, Gregorio Lofan, his tough brutal brothers who were all godsmen and who all hated the unfortunate Peter the third and inevitably he was strangled by her faction, by the all off brothers who had everything to gain, they hoped to marry her themselves and he was strangled viciously in a sort of drunken brawl but in a very kind of Russian touch the press release that was put out said that he'd actually died of piles, of hemorrhoids, and Dalenberg, the French, the French, a philosoph was invited later by Catherine the great to visit her in St Petersburg. He said, I don't think my dad go because I suffer from hemorrhoids which in Russia can be a fatal condition. So that's how Catherine became Empress. What was the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on the Russian monarchy? And Alexander the First was the Emperor during the Pernionic period and he is often regarded as really thanks to Napoleon's own comments about him as a sort of slightly weak, slightly ineffective ruler who was nothing compared to Napoleon and it's certainly true that Napoleon was the ruling genius, the ruling spirit of his age, of a military genius. And Alexander the First wasn't that but I think he's massively underrated and actually proved ultimately to be the nemesis of Napoleon, to destroy Napoleon. His father Paul was the son of Catherine the Great and Peter the Third, the husband who she overthrew and who was ultimately strangled. Paul was extremely like his father Peter the Third and though people often imply that Paul wasn't the son of Peter the Third seems pretty likely he was because they both, they were very similar, they were very good alienating people, they lacked empathy which you needed to be as a czar. One of the problems of Russian power, particularly the monarchy but also now is that there's no really way to get rid of a Russian ruler and that means that often the only way to get rid of them is to overthrow them in a coup and then kill them. Paul proved to be an extremely incompetent and inconsistent and capricious and inept czar when he succeeded his mother, Catherine the Great in 1796. Within about four years he was surrounded by conspiracies against him on every side amongst his closest courtiers and in fact it's a feature again of the Russian monarchy that they're virtually always overthrown by their own family and their own courtiers. To overthrow him they needed the position of his elder son Alexander and so they asked his permission and Alexander himself was in danger of being imprisoned even killed by his father who was displaying signs of madness, certainly grotesque inconsistency and so he agreed to have his father overthrowing, providing his father wasn't killed and there was a terrible moment as he waited downstairs for his father to be overthrown upstairs. In fact he was probably always going to be killed, the conspirators always planned to kill him. When they burst into his room they found him hiding behind a tapestry and they saw his bare feet, they pulled him out, there was a fracas, many of the conspirators were drunk and many of them hated him, he'd had them beaten in front of the army and so they hit him with a giant marble ash tray and then when he was on the ground they jumped on him and strangled him and when he was dead they then stomped his head with their boots, they so hated him. Then the leader of the conspiracy, von der Parle and went downstairs where Alexander was waiting and they said "your majesty" and Alexander realized that his father had been murdered partly on his own orders. So he was a very very conflicted, agonised person, he never got over the murder of his own father on his own orders but he also fancied himself as a great military ruler and when Napoleon at wars began against France he believed that he could command the armies, he had no clue how to do that and the result was a series of appalling defeats, most grievously the defeated Ausdolitz and it no five, when Napoleon the height of his genius defeated the Austrian and Russian armies, completely humiliating Alexander. Secretly he called Napoleon the ogre, the Corsican ogre but in public he kind of kissed the hand and Napoleon very patronisingly treated him as a kind of slightly sort of handsome fool that he could order around but actually Alexander was planning revenge. When he began to undermine Napoleon's continental system Napoleon decided that he would have to invade Russia and he put together the biggest army of Europe had ever seen 600,000 men, only half of whom were French, the other half were Germans, Italians, Austrians and they invaded. Alexander was confused, unsure what to do, his commanders were unsure what to do but they fell back, smallensk fell. And then Alexander had to face an even greater humiliation, which was to call out of retirement the great, very experienced general, Koutuzov, who he had to hand over the Russian army to. And really, it was a moment that he only agreed to this because his father had been killed, his grandfather had been killed. And he himself, I would have said, was in danger of being destroyed in some way or other. Koutuzov was forced to face Napoleon in the pitch battle in Tamboradino. One of the most terrible battles, the killing was the most intense killing in a battle in Europe before the battle at the Thesson in 1916. So it gives you an idea of the sort of bloodshed. Afterwards, the battle was the sort of draw and he withdrew through Moscow and gave up Moscow to Napoleon. It looked like a great Napoleon victory. It wasn't. Alexander was absolutely determined not to negotiate. And ultimately, Napoleon, as we all know, had to retreat from Moscow. And at that point, Alexander comes into his own and he now was determined to take his revenge. He pursues Napoleon all the way to Paris. And it's really the height of the Russian monarchy, in fact. 1814, Alexander I leads that Russian army into Paris and leads the coalition that overthrows Napoleon himself and that decides the future of Europe at the Congress of Vienna. It's an amazing achievement. In 1945, when Stalin had taken Berlin from Hitler and defeated Hitler, it was an interesting moment when the US ambassador, Admiral Haramon, said, "Marshall Stalin, can I congratulate you? You've taken Berlin and Stalin "quick as a flash replied, 'Yes,' "but Alexander I took Paris.'" Moving slightly further into the 19th century now, but perhaps looking back on incidents such as liberation of the Serfs and the impact that had on the Empire, we've had a question from Pickle and Jinjo on Instagram, who asks, "Was the Roman of dynasty already doomed "before Nicholas II came to the throne?" That's a great question. It's a million dollar question. Of course, no one knows the answer to that. One thing that I think your questioner is kind of suggesting, and I think this is an interesting point. The Russian state couldn't really develop without abolishing Serfdom. The system of Serfdom condemned the Russian state to a primitive state organization under Serfdom. And yet, the destruction of Serfdom, the abolition of Serfdom in 1861, Alexander II, was extremely unsatisfactory arrangement that didn't really satisfy the peasantry, but it also fatally undermined the nobility. We talked earlier about how the Russian Empire was really conquered in the sort of unique alliance between the monarchy and the nobility. And the nobility were a sort of military nobility that really helped conquer this ever-expanding empire. And in return received huge grants of land, prizes of Serfs and land, which were divided up by the Zars. And so the noblemen, the princes or council, or whatever they were that ruled the countryside, they ruled their estates, rather like the Zars, ruled the empire. In abolition of Serfdom in 1861, this alliance was kind of broken. And partly, in retrospect, one can see that the alliance between the nobility and the monarchy was also broken at that point. So I can argue that 1861 was the beginning of the end of the Zara's monarchy, but a lot had to happen before then. I mean, one could argue that a genius, a political genius like Peter or Catherine could have found a way of reforming the Russian Empire from above. It was only possible from above. The problem was that very strict reforms could kind of kill the patient, rather than cure him, and bring down the whole monarchy. So it's arguable. I mean, I think that one could say that it was only possible with extremely drastic reforms. The problem with the drastic reforms was that those reforms would threaten the autocracy itself. And none of the Zars, even Alexander II, were really willing to sacrifice autocracy in order to bring about reform. Alexander II, my favorites are of the 19th century, really, was the only one who began to even consider real reforms. There were all to the relationship between the autocrat and the state. And before his assassination in 1881, he had signed, on the day of his assassination, in fact, he had signed a law that may have been the beginning of bringing in some sort of representative government. And that was the moment that could have changed Russian history. Had he remained in power, had he lived, it could have changed everything. But on his death, his son, Alexander III, ended all the reforms and brought in strict repression that ended the liberal experiment. And his son, Nicholas II, was also a stream opponent of anything that limited or curtailed the autocracy. But of course, he was forced to bring in a constitution, which had he embraced it, and had he worked out how to make it work. And there may have been ways to make it work. And had he had more time, who knows, that could have changed history too. Why did the Russian monarchy collapse? And what made 1917 a particularly revolutionary year for Russia? The Russian monarchy collapsed in the wider sense because the Russian autocracy was unable, and in often cases unwilling to really reform itself, and really unwilling to take the risk of embracing popular and representative politics. That was the only way that the monarchy could have endured. And that didn't mean necessarily bringing in full democracy, I mean, a Western sense. But it did require a widening of representation and a widening of participation in government. And of course, if you were a kind of ordinary person, you had no chance of any access. To any power at all. That changed in 1905 with the constitution that Nicholas II gave to the Russian people in his words. By 1914, something interesting had happened. And this isn't often realized when people talk about Russia, which was that Nicholas II had in a way made, found a way, to make the constitution that he'd been forced to yield in 1905. He'd made it work. And he'd clawed back a lot of the powers of the autocracy. So he was ruling with the doomer as an autocrat, but with a representative system that was a kind of cosplay parliament. But that was all ruined by war. In 1914, we know about the beginning of World War I, the assassination of France, Ferdinand, et cetera. It was all almost impossible for Russia to stay out of World War I. Because Russia had faced massive humiliations. Nicholas II had not gone to war with Germany during the Bosnia crisis in 1908. And he really could not afford another humiliation. And we've talked earlier in this poll pollster about what happened to SARS when they were inconsistent or weak. They were overfroding coup d'etatement. They were often killed. He simply couldn't afford that. But more than that, he couldn't abandon his allies, Serbia, and also he was a Romanov born and bred. And a Romanov was an empire builder. And Russia had to be a great power, one of the greatest imperial powers. And to stay out of World War I would have not been to fulfill those roles. So they were he resisted and tried to find a way out of the beginning of World War I. He had to end to World War I. However, a World War was going to place the monarchy under massive strain. Nicholas II was not capable of commanding the army, though he tried to command it. I mean, technically, why was 1917 a revolutionary? In 1905 revolution, which Trotsky called the Dres rehearsal for revolution, Nicholas II had managed to survive by, as we said, giving a constitution, but also keeping the loyalty of the army and specifically the guard's regiments, guard's regiments with the Praetorians of the Russian Empire, the monarchy. And he was able to reconquer Russia, province by province with this army, and with great brutality. I mean, he killed tens of thousands of people. He was not the sort of meat gentleman that appears in romantic histories. But in 1916, Russia launched a pretty successful offensive, the Brusalov offensive commander by General Brusalov. But in the end, it ground to a halt when the Germans came to the rescue of the Austrians. And Nicholas II threw in his guard's regiments into that battle, and they will completely liquidate. They were wiped out. They were annihilated. So when I'm in 1917, bread riots began in Petrograd, as Peter's Burg was then called, the guard's regiments no longer existed. There was no Praetorian guard to protect the monarchy. And in a very unusual situation, the Zars found themselves without this kind of Praetorian protection. Without a strong security force to protect them, and they lacked the ability to put down the rebellion, probably. And they also were betrayed by the army itself. And it was really 1917 wasn't just a street rebellion. It was also a military coup d'etat in effect, where the generals told Nicholas a second that he had to advocate. And that was the end of the monarchy. If there's one thing most people probably know about Imperial Russia, it is that Nicholas and his family were ultimately murdered. But for the benefit of those listeners, you may be unfamiliar with the details. Could you paint a picture of what exactly happened to the Romanovs in July 1918? Perhaps we have some background as to how they arrived at that faithful summer following Nicholas' abdication. After Nicholas II abdicated, he was brought back to Petra Groud and back to Zasco Salo to rejoin his wife and ex-Andre and the five children. And he hoped to go and live in the Crimea. There was some talk at one point of him on being rescued by George V and taken to Britain. What people don't realize is, of course, George V was not an executive ruler. It was actually Lloyd George's call. And in the end, the opportunity was very short to rescue them and actually it never really presented itself fully, in fact. So the whole debate about whether the British royal family was to blame for this is a moot. But anyway, they were kept there for a while. And then they were sent by Karenski to Siberia to Bulsk, partly to get them away from the crowds and the more radical elements in the political scene who were becoming ever more extreme. But that didn't save them, of course, because in October 1917, the Bolsheviks launched a coup against Karenski over through him. And one of the decisions that they faced Lenin, Trotsky Star and the other leaders was what to do with the royal family who were sitting into Bulsk. And were already becoming quite dangerous prisoners. In the sense that they were very charming. It was very hard to get guards who weren't in the end charmed, especially by the four girls, or Tamar, as they were known by their initials, who were fine and charming and even began flirtations with the guards. But more than that was the problem of what to do if the royal family was captured by the whites, who were the armies that were threatening the Bolshevik rule, the Reds in Russia. And there was a massive civil war in 1980 to 1920. And at one point, the whites were advancing on all fronts. And it looked like the Bolshevik regime of Lenin might not survive. But the problem that they faced was what if the Tsar was captured. So they decided to bring the Tsar nearer to Moscow. And there was a plan to try them in Moscow possibly, which of course would have ended with the execution of the Tsar and the Tsarina probably, but not necessarily the children. But as it looked like the Tsar and the family might fall into the hands of the whites, Lenin decided to have them executed, to have them murdered. I mean, Lenin was an extremely ruthless person. He often said, you know, what's the point of a revolution without firing squads? And he regularly specified how people would be hanged in public and mass executions and so on. We know, even though there's no specific order ordering this, but we know the evidence that we do have, that Lenin sent orders to the leaders in Yikaterinburg, where the Tsar and his family were then kept in a sort of boarded up house, that they, in the Apatiya of House, the house formally owned by a business man called Apatiya. And they ordered that they were to be killed before they fell into the hands of the advancing whites. And Yorovsky was the checkist, the secret policeman, who was ordered to do the job. And on the night of the 17th of July 1918, they were awoken in the early hours, brought downstairs. And they thought they were going to be traveling somewhere. They were told to sit down. One of the tragedies of this whole story, there are many, is that they had sewn into their clothes the jewels of the Roman of dynasty, which were incredibly heavy. You can imagine. Their underwear was full of these jewels. But when they knew they were to be moved, and the girls put on these very diamond laden underclothes, and they all came downstairs, Alexey, who had hemophilia, and had recently suffered an attack was carried by the czar himself. And they were taken down, and they were shown into a cellar. They were given chairs for the czar and the czar, you know, who was unwell. And they waited. And it must have been a scene, a bit like a sort of portrait, of sort of, as if they were gallowed for a photograph, because they stood behind the chairs. The next moment, a posse of gummin' walked into the room and stood there and suddenly raised their weapons. And they were ordered fire to fire. And the czar, you know, raised his hand, but the bullets hit them. Each of them was given a member of the Imperial family, all their servants to kill. And in the initial sort of moments, there was chaos. The guns rang out, powder from the ceiling, and the walls filled the room. Everyone was screaming. Some of the people were here and killed. But mostly they weren't. Virtually all of them were still alive after the first folly. And this was partly because of the diamonds. The diamonds were like a bulletproof vest. So the bullets bounced off or just wounded many of them. And in the second, after the first barrage, virtually everyone was alive on the floor. The only two people who were dead were the Zarenz Arena, probably. This may have been because the killers didn't really want to kill children and girls. But the ones who were supposed to fire at the girls and the little boy may well have just fired at the czar. So they were all alive. And they had to wade their way through them and kill them with bayonets and shots to the head in a very, very messy execution that took many minutes to take place and was terrifying for them. It was really one of the most terrible crimes. And there ended the Romanoff dynasty. This is the question we received from Garof Short on Instagram. And he asks, is it true that Queen Victoria discouraged her children from marrying members of the Russian imperial family? Yes, it is true. And in fact, the person who most nearly married into the Romano was a Queen Victoria herself. She very nearly married the future Alexander the Second, who was very good looking. And she flirted with him a lot when he visited London. And she was told and known certain terms that it was absolutely impossible for her to marry. The future's are. Of course, it would have been incredibly complicated to how to manage that. As for her own children, she believed that the Russian royal family was extremely unstable. And it was true that of the last sort of 12s, our six were six died violently. And one way or another, either from assassination or murder or Paris coup. So she was right. It was extremely unstable. She thought that the Russian system was barbers the autocracy. And the third thing was we forget now is that Russia was really the chief enemy of the British Empire through the 19th century. We fought a war against them in the Crimean War. We stopped them with the threat of war in 1877, '78. So the Russian and British Empire didn't really make friends until the early years of the 20th century. So yes, she did discourage it. And when her granddaughter, Alexandra, wanted to marry into the family, she was initially very against it too. She regarded it as very unstable and very dangerous. And finally, Simon, in your opinion, who are the three most significant Russians, Az and why? The three greatest SARS-- and of course, the criteria for these may not be particularly those prize in a liberal democracy today. But the three most successful SARS were, or of course, the two greats-- Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. We've talked about in some detail. And I guess the third one, I would say, has to be for the same reason, Alexander the First, because he took Paris. And 1814, 1815 was really the height of Russian power before 1945. And of course, they're three fascinating characters in their own way. And if you want to understand what's happening today in Ukraine, Peter the Great, but particularly, Catherine the Great and her partner, Prince Potemkin, are kind of essential to understand what's happening there today. All three of these rulers were avid imperialists. There was no doubt that they were-- they were people who believed that their prime duty was to expand the Russian empire. And that's not necessarily a virtue in 2023. That was Simon C. Bergmont of Fury, author of the best-selling books, Catherine the Great and Potemkin, and the Romanov's 1613 to 1918. Simon's most recent book, The World of Family History, is out now published by Orion. And if you're interested in learning more about the likes of Catherine the Great and the downfall of the Romanov's, check out our website, historyextra.com. Thanks for listening to the History Extra podcast. This podcast was produced by Sam Lielguin.