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Alexander I was a ruler with high aspirations for the people of Russia. Cosseted as a young grand duke by Catherine the Great, he ascended to the throne in 1801 after the brutal assassination of his father. In this magisterial biography, Marie-Pierre Rey illuminates the complex forces that shaped Alexander’s tumultuous reign and sheds brilliant new light on the handsome ruler known to his people as "the Sphinx."
Despite an early and ambitious commitment to sweeping political reforms, Alexander saw his liberal aspirations overwhelmed by civil unrest in his own country and by costly confrontations with Napoleon, which culminated in the French invasion of Russia and the burning of Moscow in 1812. Eventually, Alexander turned back Napoleon’s forces and entered Paris a victor two years later, but by then he had already grown weary of military glory. As the years passed, the tsar who defeated Napoleon would become increasingly preoccupied with his own spiritual salvation, an obsession that led him to pursue a rapprochement between the Orthodox and Roman churches.
When in exile, Napoleon once remarked of his Russian rival: “He could go far. If I die here, he will be my true heir in Europe.” It was not to be. Napoleon died on Saint Helena and Alexander succumbed to typhus four years later at the age of forty-eight. But in this richly nuanced portrait, Rey breathes new life into the tsar who stood at the center of the political chessboard of early nineteenth-century Europe, a key figure at the heart of diplomacy, war, and international intrigue during that region’s most tumultuous years.
- Sales Rank: #932472 in eBooks
- Published on: 2012-11-15
- Released on: 2012-11-15
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Booklist
Napoleon is, of course, a familiar figure to even those only vaguely aware of the details of his career. Tsar Alexander I, the ruler most directly responsible for ending the supposed invincibility of Napoleon, receives little notice, especially on this side of the Atlantic. Rey, a professor of Russian and Soviet history at the Sorbonne, has written a detailed yet highly readable biography of a man whose character remains elusive and controversial. Alexander, the grandson of Catherine the Great, ascended the throne in 1801 after the brutal murder of his father by disgruntled nobles. Like his grandmother, he seemed influenced by Enlightenment ideas, proposed a series of liberal reforms, yet eventually became a staunch defender of autocracy. As a military leader, he could be mercurial, but he showed considerable steel in his spine in resisting Napoleon’s invasion. Rey probes but never resolves Alexander’s contradictory impulses, but this is a well-done biography that is appropriate for general readers interested in European history. --Jay Freeman
Review
"Alexander's great strength was the same as his fatal flaw: unbound by filial piety or consistent ideological conviction, he considered himself to be elect, the beneficiary of inspiration denied to other men. It is a truism that hubris of this kind leads reliably to disaster. What makes Rey's book so poignant and vital is the way she shows what else it can produce."
—London Review of Books
“Rey … has written a detailed yet highly readable biography of a man whose character remains elusive and controversial…. This is a well-done biography that is appropriate for general readers interested in European history.”
—Booklist
"This book does not dispel the mystery – an impossible task – but it is the most detailed biography available in English, and Rey makes extensive use of direct quotation to provide a revealing portrayal of an assertive, convinced reformer on the throne. Highly recommended."
–CHOICE
“Marie-Pierre Rey has written a new biography of Tsar Alexander I that should become the standard work in any language.”
—TheJournal of Modern History
"This magisterial study of Alexander I rests on meticulous archival research and scholarly reading in multiple languages....This work will be a definitive study of Alexander I and the political history of his era."
—Slavic Review
“This is a well-researched, comprehensive and balanced biography of Alexander I.”
—Canadian-American Slavic Studies
"This new biography by Marie-Pierre Rey, a specialist in Russian history, is by far the best. Far from just reading the immense output of books and memoirs of the time, she has taken up the whole case by systematically consulting archives in several countries and the results are as splendid as the effort. . . . In this magisterial work there is no lapse; Marie-Pierre Rey is nuanced and subtle, her mastery of history is allied with the highest knowledge of the available sources."
(Le Monde)
"Marie-Pierre Rey with her Alexander I will surprise even the finest connoisseurs of Tsarism. First because she relies on a good number of unpublished sources and underused archives, then because she knows how to derive the most from them, and finally because she delivers a full psychology of a character who vertiginously tried to seize the course of history."
(Le Figaro)
About the Author
Marie-Pierre Rey is professor of Russian and Soviet history at the University of Paris I (Sorbonne) and director of the Slavic Research Center. She has written De la Russie à l’Union Sovietique: La Construction de l’Empire 1462-1953 and Le Dilemme Russe: La Russie et l’Europe Occidental d’Ivan le Terrible à Boris Eltsine. An American translator of twenty years standing, Susan Emanuel has specialized in sociology, history, cultural studies, international relations, religion, and biography.
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Very indepth assessment of Alexander I
By Elizabeth Boldy
I found this to be an excellent book, both in the style of its writing which was very readable and in its in depth insight into the history of this fascinating man. It is not perhaps a book for a light reader as it is scholarly in its approach, and very much involved in the European politics of the period. But it is all the more interesting for that. The portrait of Alexander leaves one with the view that he was a man to be admired, while at the same time, blind to the sometimes inefficiency of some of his foreign policy, particularly in his dealings with Napoleon and later in his life to problems within Russia itself. This is one of the most fascinating parts of the book. I highly recommend this biography to anyone interested in Czarist Russia.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Incompetent translation, fact-checking, and editing
By Eclipsegroupie
This book is a mess. The translation is clumsy, the vocabulary often quirky in the extreme, and serious fact-checking and editing glaringly absent.
One would think that in a scholarly work (which this purports to be) someone would have noticed that there is a difference between Elbe (the river) and Elba (the island). Not so: "Prussia lost ... all its lands situated to the west of the Elba" [p.184] as well as some "land east of the Elba" [p.185]. And in 1813 Alexander celebrated Easter "on the banks of the Elba" [p.266]. Well, at least they're consistent.
Yaroslavl is a town in Russia, "Yaroslav" [p.128] isn't. Jena is a town in Germany, "Iena" [p.362] isn't. Sebastopol [p.377] lies in California, Sevastopol in Russia. Alexander had his summer residence on Kamenny (not "Kammeny" [p.132]) Island. The 1721 and 1743 peace treaties between Russia and Sweden were concluded in Nystad (not "Nystadt" [p.120]) and Åbo (not "Abbo" [p. 218]), respectively. And, since the Finnish (rather than the original Swedish) names of towns in Finland are consistently used elsewhere in the text, one would expect to see Uusikaupunki and Turku here. But perhaps someone didn't know that these were Finnish towns? The original Swedish name for Hamina is Fredrikshamn, not "Friedrichshamm" [p.406 n.27].
Mikhail Speransky couldn't possibly have been chancellor of the University of Turku [p.223] since that institution didn't come into being until 1920. He was chancellor of the Imperial Academy (Kejserliga Akademien) in Turku. Konstantin Pobedonostsev was not the "procurer of the Holy Synod" [p.382], he was its Chief Procurator. "Non nobis, sed nomine tuo, Domine" (Psalm 113 in the Vulgate, 115 in the King James) means "Not to us, but to thy name, O Lord (give glory)", not "Blessed be the name of the Lord" [p.258].
The translator shows all the signs of being a non-native speaker of English who has used a dictionary to look up a French word and then, seemingly at random, chosen one of the many English translations proffered. "The years from 1801 to 1805 were thus dense years in the life of Emperor Alexander" [p.136]. Dense? Alexander was "received with luster and sympathy" [p.141]. Luster? Alexander was confident "in the immensity of the Russian climate" [p,234]. Immensity? Territorial losses are described as "amputations" [p.185], Pushkin became an "assiduous member" of a literary society [p.307], and Alexander opened the Polish parliament with a speech "pronounced in French" [p.314]. The French refused to grant the Russians a "blank signature" (carte blanche?) on the Ottoman issue [p.193], and one Russian commander was unable to "federate" the Russian armies [p.242], but his successor was able to "cement" them [p.244]. Alexander, towards the end of his life, engaged in "bulimic traveling" [p.351].
The treatment of the prepositions of nobility is confused throughout. Here's the rule: if they are part of a title, translate them. If they're part of a proper name, don't. Thus "Sophie-Dorothea de Württemberg" should be Sophie-Dorothea of Württemberg (that's her title), but the Swedish ambassador was not "Count of Stedingk" [p.188] but Count von Stedingk (that's his name). "S.E." [p.368] stands for 'Son Excellence' - why not translate that?
Competent editing could have cleared up many of these messes, but such editing was, obviously, not available. In 1806, we learn, France was planning to deprive Prussia "of Hanover to give instead to England" [p.174]. Was France was going to give the German province of Hanover to its archenemy England?! Alexander "remained viscerally hostile to the one who continued to call himself in private correspondence 'Bonaparte' or 'the Corsican' "[p.182]. Did Napoleon call himself "Bonaparte" or "the Corsican"?! We're rewriting history here.
I could go on, but you get the idea. You find yourself bumping into so many misbegotten trees that you begin to lose sight of - not to speak of interest in - the whole bloody forest. But there is a tale here, of an autocrat who acceded to the throne after the murder of his father (in which he was probably complicit), who was brought up in the spirit of the Enlightenment and therefore opposed serfdom, who anticipated the Napoleonic invasion and saw clearly how to repel it, who occupied France after Napoleon's defeat and gave France (and Finland and Poland) liberal (for the times) constitutions, but who then fell under the influence of religious mystics, shed his Enlightenment heritage and turned into a reactionary intent on preserving autocracy and the divine rights of kings, and who, fueled by messianic delusions, apparently approached the pope in an attempt to unify the Orthodox and Latin churches. He died without legitimate heirs at the age of 47 - or did he? Perhaps he, like the Elvis of myth, faked his own death and lived out his life as a holy man in Siberia.
Fascinating guy, apparently, this Alexander. But how far can you trust a source that claims that the inhabitants of Riga are Lithuanians [p.141]? Oy vey!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent Book on Alexander
By Nicholas Roberts
This is the best biography on Alexander out there for sure. It covers all aspects of his life and not only the military and political parts. I got the idea of his personality and how he was the way he was from this book. It covers his childhood, adolescence, adulthood as well as his political life. No part of Alexander's life is left untouched by this book. To make things even better the book is well written and enjoyable. I would highly recommend reading this if you want to learn more about Alexander.
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