on
St. Isaac's Square Nicolas' aggressive
foreign policy involved many expensive wars, having a disastrous effect on the empire's finances. Nicholas lavished attention on his very large army; of a population of 60–70 million people, the army counted one million men. They had outdated equipment and tactics, but the tsar, who dressed like a soldier and surrounded himself with officers, gloried in the victory over Napoleon in 1812 and took enormous pride in its smartness on parade. The cavalry horses, for example, were only trained in parade formations, and did poorly in battle. The glitter and braid masked profound weaknesses that he did not see. He put generals in charge of most of his civilian agencies regardless of their qualifications. An
agnostic who won fame in cavalry charges was made supervisor of Church affairs. The army became the vehicle of upward social mobility for noble youths from non-Russian areas, such as Poland, the Baltic, Finland, and Georgia. On the other hand, many miscreants, petty criminals, and undesirables were punished by local officials by being enlisted for life in the Army. The conscription system was highly unpopular with people, as was the practice of forcing peasants to house the soldiers for six months of the year. Curtiss finds that "The pedantry of Nicholas's military system, which stressed unthinking obedience and parade ground evolutions rather than combat training, produced ineffective commanders in time of war." His commanders in the Crimean War were old and incompetent, and indeed so were his muskets as the colonels sold the best equipment and the best food. For much of Nicholas' reign, Russia was seen as a major military power, with considerable strength. The Crimean War, fought shortly before Nicholas' death, demonstrated to both Russia and the world what few had previously realized: Russia was militarily weak, technologically backward, and administratively incompetent. Despite his grand ambitions toward the south and Turkey, Russia had not built railroad network in that direction, and communications were bad. The bureaucracy was unprepared for war being riddled with graft, corruption, and inefficiency. The Navy had few competent officers, the rank and file were poorly trained and most importantly its vessels were outdated; the army, although very large, was good only for parades, suffered from colonels who pocketed their men's pay, poor morale, and was even more out of touch with the latest technology as developed by
Britain and
France. By the war's end, Russia's leaders were determined to reform their military and society. As Fuller notes, "Russia had been beaten on the Crimean Peninsula, and the military feared that it would inevitably be beaten again unless steps were taken to surmount its military weakness." 's capital at New Archangel (present-day
Sitka, Alaska) in 1837 An intensely militaristic man, Nicholas regarded the Army as the best and greatest institution in Russia and as a model for society, saying: Nicholas was often exasperated by the slow pace of the Russian bureaucracy and had a marked preference for appointing generals and admirals to high government rank because of their perceived efficiency, overlooking or ignoring whether or not they were actually qualified for the role. Of the men who served as Nicholas's ministers, 61% had previously served as a general or an admiral. This proved to be something of a handicap in the sense that the sort of qualities that could make a man distinguished on the battlefields such as bravery did not necessarily make a man capable of running a ministry. The most notorious case was Prince
Alexander Sergeyevich Menshikov, a competent brigade commander in the Imperial Army who proved himself out of his depth as a Navy minister. Of the Emperor's ministers, 78% were ethnic Russians, 9.6% were Baltic Germans while the rest were foreigners in Russian service. Of the men who served as ministers under Nicholas, 14 had graduated from university while another 14 had graduated from a
lycée or a
gymnasium, the rest had all been educated by private tutors.
Europe In foreign policy, Nicholas I acted as the protector of ruling legitimism and as guardian against revolution. It has often been noted that such policies were linked with the
Metternich counter-revolutionary system through the Austrian ambassador Count
Karl Ludwig von Ficquelmont. Nicholas's offers to suppress revolution on the European continent, trying to follow the pattern set by his eldest brother, Alexander I, earned him the label of "gendarme of Europe". Immediately on his succession Nicholas began to limit the liberties that existed under the
constitutional monarchy in
Congress Poland. Nicholas was outraged when he learned of the
Belgian revolt against the Dutch in 1830 and ordered the
Imperial Russian Army to mobilize. Nicholas then petitioned the Prussian ambassador for Russian troops to be granted transit rights in order to march across Europe and restore Dutch hegemony over Belgium. But at the same time, a
cholera epidemic was decimating Russian troops and the revolt in Poland tied down Russian soldiers which might have been deployed against the Belgians. It seems likely that Nicholas's hawkish stance was not a sincere prelude towards invasion of the Low Countries, but rather an attempt to apply pressure on the other European powers. Nicholas made it clear he would only act if Prussia and Britain also participated as he feared that a Russian invasion of Belgium would cause a war with France. In 1815, Nicholas arrived in France, where he stayed with the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe, who soon become one of his best friends, with the grand duke being impressed with duke's personal warmth, intelligence, manners and grace. For Nicholas the worst sort of characters were nobility who supported liberalism, and when the duc d'Orleans became the king of the French as
Louis Philippe I in the July revolution of 1830, Nicholas took this as a personal betrayal, believing his friend had gone over as he saw it to the dark side of revolution and liberalism. Nicholas hated Louis-Philippe, the self-styled
Le roi citoyen ("the Citizen King") as a renegade nobleman and a "usurper", and his foreign policy starting in 1830 was primarily
anti-French, based upon reviving the coalition that had existed during the Napoleonic era of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Britain, to isolate France. Nicholas detested Louis-Philippe to the point that he refused to use his name, referring to him merely as "the usurper". Britain was unwilling to join the anti-French coalition, but Nicholas was successful in cementing existing close ties with Austria and Prussia and the three imperial states regularly held joint military reviews during this time. For much of the 1830s, a sort of "cold war" existed between the liberal "western bloc" of France and Britain vs. the reactionary "eastern bloc" of Austria, Prussia and Russia. After the
November Uprising broke out, in 1831 the
Polish parliament deposed Nicholas as king of Poland in response to his repeated curtailment of its constitutional rights. Nicholas reacted by sending Russian troops into Poland and brutally crushed the rebellion. Nicholas then proceeded to abrogate the
Polish constitution in virtual entirety and reduced Poland to the status of a province called
Vistula Land. Soon after, Nicholas embarked on a policy of repressing Polish culture beginning with suppressing the
Polish Catholic Church. In the 1840s, Nicholas reduced 64,000 Polish nobles to commoner status. In 1848, when a
series of revolutions convulsed Europe, Nicholas was at the forefront of reactionism. In 1849, he helped the
Habsburgs to suppress the
revolution in Hungary, and he also urged
Prussia not to adopt a liberal constitution.
Ottoman Empire and Persia , in October 1827, marked the effective end of
Ottoman rule in Greece. While Nicholas was attempting to maintain the status quo in Europe, he followed a somewhat more aggressive policy toward the neighbouring empires to the south, the
Ottoman Empire and
Persia. Nicholas was widely believed at the time to be following the traditional Russian policy of resolving the so-called
Eastern Question by seeking to partition the Ottoman Empire and establish a protectorate over the Orthodox population of the
Balkans, still largely under Ottoman control in the 1820s. In fact, Nicholas was deeply committed to upholding the status quo in Europe and feared any attempt to devour the decaying Ottoman Empire would both upset his ally Austria, which also had interests in the Balkans, and bring about an Anglo-French coalition in defense of the Ottomans. Nicholas' policy towards the Ottoman Empire was to use the
1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca which gave Russia a vague right as protector of Orthodox peoples in the Balkans, as a way of placing the Ottoman Empire into the Russian sphere of influence, which was felt to be a more achievable goal than conquering the entire Ottoman Empire. The Russian Foreign Minister
Karl Nesselrode wrote in letter to his ambassador in Constantinople Nikolai Muravyov that the victory of
Muhammad Ali of Egypt over Mahmud II would lead to a new dynasty ruling the Ottoman Empire. At the same time that Nicholas claimed the Ottoman Empire was within the Russian sphere of influence, he made it clear that he had no interest in annexing the empire. At another meeting with Ficquelmont in 1833, Nicholas, speaking with the "Greek Project" of Catherine the Great in mind said: "I know everything that has been said of the projects of the Empress Catherine, and Russia has renounced the goal she had set out. I wish to maintain the Turkish empire... It if falls, I do not desire its debris. I need nothing." Ultimately, Nicholas's policies in the Near East proved to be both costly and largely futile. fortress by Russian troops under leadership of
Ivan Paskevich in 1827 during the
Russo-Persian War In 1826–28, Nicholas fought the
Russo-Persian War (1826–28), which ended with Persia forced to cede its last remaining territories in the
Caucasus. Russia
had conquered all the territories of Iran in both the
North Caucasus and
South Caucasus, comprising modern-day
Georgia,
Dagestan,
Armenia, and
Azerbaijan, through the course of the 19th century. The treaty further conceded extraterritoriality to Russian subjects in Iran (capitulation). As Professor Virginia Aksan adds, the 1828
Treaty of Turkmenchay "removed Iran from the military equation." Russia fought a successful war against the Ottomans in
1828–29, but it did little to increase Russian power in Europe. Only a small Greek state became independent in the Balkans, with limited Russian influence. In 1833, Russia negotiated the
Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi with the Ottoman Empire. The major European parties mistakenly believed that the treaty contained a secret clause granting Russia the right to transit warships through the
Bosphorus and
Dardanelles straits. This misconception led to the
London Straits Convention of 1841, which affirmed Ottoman control over the straits and forbade any power, including Russia, from sending warships through them. Buoyed by his role in suppressing the revolutions of 1848 as well as his mistaken belief he could rely on British diplomatic support, Nicholas moved against the Ottomans, who declared war on Russia on 8 October 1853. On 30 November, Russian
Admiral Nakhimov caught the Turkish fleet in the harbor at Sinope and destroyed it. (later,
Shah) and Tsar Nicholas I of Russia in
Erivan in the
Armenian Oblast. The scene at the center shows the seven-year-old prince sitting on the tsar's lap, accompanied by an entourage. Created by Mohammad Esmail Esfahani in
Tehran, dated 1854 Fearing the results of a total Ottoman defeat by Russia, in 1854
Britain,
France, the
Kingdom of Sardinia formed a military coalition and joined forces with the Ottoman Empire against Russia. The preceding conflict became known as the
Crimean War in the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe, but was labelled in Russia the "Eastern War" (Russian: Восточная война,
Vostochnaya Vojna). In April 1854, Austria signed a defensive pact with Prussia. Thus, Russia found herself in a war with every Great Power of Europe either allied against her militarily or diplomatically. In 1853
Mikhail Pogodin, professor of history at Moscow University, wrote a memorandum to Nicholas. Nicholas himself read Pogodin's text and approvingly commented: "That is the whole point." Austria offered the Ottomans diplomatic support, and Prussia remained neutral, thus leaving Russia without any allies on the continent. The European allies landed in
Crimea and laid siege to the well-fortified Russian
Sevastopol Naval Base. The Russians lost battles at Alma in September 1854 and then at Inkerman. After the prolonged
Siege of Sevastopol (1854–55) the base fell, exposing Russia's inability to defend a major fortification on its own soil. On the death of Nicholas I, Alexander II became emperor. On 15 January 1856, the new emperor took Russia out of the war on very unfavorable terms, which included the loss of a naval fleet on the Black Sea. ==Death==