The 19th century for Russia started from the coup d'etat. On March 11, 1801 Emperor Paul I was killed in his residence, Michael's Palace, by a group of conspirators. His son, a 24-years old Alexander I (1801-1825) ascended the throne. The young Emperor proclaimed liberal ideas cultivated by his teachers-republicans which enabled his subjects to expect from this enlightened ruler to establish the life in the country in the most reasonable way. These intensions were not to be realized as ambitions of another European polititian, Napoleon, plunged the continent into war. It was only the Russian army that could resist the onslaught of the army of Napoleon. Brilliant victory of Russia brought glory both to the state and`the monarch. In November 1825 Alexander I died in Taganrog.
On December 14, 1825 on the Senate Square in Saint Petersburg the army was supposed to swear allegiance to the new Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich. He was ascending the throne instead of his elder brother Konstantin who abdicated in favour of Nikolai because preferred to marry for love to the throne. The young generation of Russian nobility took with enthusiasm the victory over Napoleonic France and having acquainted with the spirit of freedom in Europe were striving to establish the new ways in Russia by means of the uprising. The “Decembrists” uprising was severely suppressed by Nicholas I (1825-1855) who ruled with an “iron hand” and oppressed any kind of dissidents. The period of his reign was completed with an ignominious Crimean war that demonstrated so many faults in the military and civil policies of this Emperor.
Alexander II Nikolaevich (1855-1881) came into history as a reformer. He liberated Russian peasantry and opened with his reforms a new epoch of Russian history. Freedom of thoughts stirred up by this reforming gave rise to an extremism and the tsar-liberator became its victim. He was killed by the terrorists on March 1, 1881. In his personal sympathies Alexander III (1881-1894) “took after his gandfather Nicholas I”, as one contemporary put it. “From his early childhood Alexander thought that too fast evolution of political establishments could be dangerous for the country”. After the tragic death of his father he strived to strengthen autocracy in coordination with liberal reforms of Alexander II.
“Nicholas II had no vice, but he possessed the defect that was the worst for a monarch, he was devoid of personality” wrote Maurice Paleolog, the French ambassador in Russia. The most dramatic events of the turn of the centuries - a war and revolutions - fell to the lot of this delicate and soft-hearted man, an irreproachable father and husband but irresolute polititian. The execution of Nicholas II and his family in 1918 put an end to the 300 years of the reign of the Romanovs dynasty.