Biography of Alexander 3
He was the second son of Emperor Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna and the heir to the throne was not. He was supposed to occupy him by Alexander's older brother - Grand Duke Nikolai Alexandrovich. The boy was called Alexander in honor of his father and in memory of the cousin, who was deeply revered in the royal family of Alexander I - the winner of Napoleon. The future Russian emperor Alexander III was born on March 10, February 26, Alexander received a military engineering education traditional for the Grand Duchy.
In the process of studying, he studied the law of God, mathematics, history, Russian and foreign languages, geography, was engaged in riding, fencing. Among his mentors were: professor, rector of Moscow University Sergey Solovyov, Yakov Grot, professor of the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff, Colonel Mikhail Dragomirov, well -known lawyer Konstantin Vysonostsev. The Grand Duke was thoroughly fond of history, music, architecture and visual arts, especially painting.
The main attention of parents and teachers was aimed at the education of the heir to the throne - Grand Duke Nikolai Nix, as his relatives called. Alexander was prepared for a military career and nothing portended a different development of events. But on April 12, a family tragedy could not cause a dynastic crisis, so the case of raising the new heir to the throne and preparation of it for government was continued.
Emperor Alexander II increasingly invited his son to important meetings, dedicating him to the management of a huge empire. With the beginning of the Russo-Turkish war in the city of Alexander Alexandrovich, the command of the Rushchuk detachment was entrusted. The heir to the throne was divided into the hardships of army life fully with his colleagues, conscientiously fulfilling his hard duties.
In the Russo-Turkish war, he saw the death and severe wounds of the soldiers, his cousin, Prince Sergey Leuchtenberg, died here. These tests largely formed Alexander’s attitude to military conflicts and he will make every effort so that in his reign the blood of the Russian soldier would not be shed. After the war, Alexander participated in the creation of a voluntary fleet - a joint -stock shipping company designed to promote the foreign economic policy of the government.
The mourning for the untimely departed brother very closely brought his bride - the Danish Princess Dagmar and Alexander. Experiencing the common grief, they recognized each other better and experienced mutual love. Soon, the young received the blessing of crowned parents and married. It was a happy marriage, and the family of Alexander III was truly exemplary, love and respect have always reigned in it.
Father did not dull souls in them and easily forgave them small leprosy and pranks. What he did not throw with them, and he played with them like a child. Children's memories should preserve more than one feature of his inexhaustible good -naturedness, his unchanged affection, his hearty greetings. ” Sheremetev almost weekly the imperial couple visited the theater or opera. Often the music sounded in their palace - the spouses loved to play piano in four hands of Beethoven, Glinka, and Schumann.
Sheremetev noted in his memoirs: “He really loved Russian literature. It happened that you are talking about, he knows everything, he read everything. Pushkin, Lermontov, were, of course, his favorite poets. Gogol was very fond of and here his judgments were very tags. ”Empress Maria Fedorovna always served as a faithful support to her wife. She survived her royal husband for more than three decades.
From the first years of life in Russia, she headed the department of the Empress Maria's institutions, founded by the wife of Paul I and enjoyed great authority among her wards. She always found time to visit educational institutions, hospitals and shelters, generously sacrificing her personal funds for charity. Having experienced all the hardships of the revolutionary time, including the searches and threats of execution, in the last years of her life, Maria Fedorovna spent in her homeland in Denmark, where she died in G.
in her testament, she asked her to transfer her ashes to Russia to rest next to her husband. Her will was fulfilled only in September G. Three days before the tragic death of Alexander II Tsarevich turned 36 years old. It was an adult, mature, absolutely formed in his views and beliefs, a person who has accumulated a certain experience of state and military service. The first documents signed by the new king were the manifesto on the accession to the throne and the decree of the Senate on bringing to the oath of peasants.
For the first time, the Russian peasant swore allegiance to his sovereign as a free citizen. By a special manifesto, Alexander III outlined a list of reforms he planned, the main purpose of which was to put order in the country, based on the traditional principles of autocracy. The new emperor abandoned the idea of a constitutional project and other liberal transformations - in a country shaking from terrorist acts, it was necessary to restore order.The revolutionaries who had a hunt for his father and put a daring ultimatum to a new autocrat, Alexander III was not going to do any concessions.
We urge all the faithful subjects of ours to serve us and the state by faith and truth, to the eradication of the vile sedition to Russian, to the affirmation of faith and morality, to the good upbringing of children, to the extermination of unrighteousness and embezzlement to the water and truth in the action of institutions granted to Russia by the benefactor of our beloved by our parent.
” From the manifesto of the unshakability of the autocracy, the issue of ensuring the safety of his family, Alexander III, decided radically - he moved to permanent residence in the Gatchinsky Palace, reducing his representative duties, family meetings and other ceremonies, freeing time for public affairs. In Gatchina, under the strengthened protection of troops and police, the first years of the reign of the new king passed.
Here, the emperor listened to stories about the trial of the killers of Alexander II. Even before the trial, Count Lev Tolstoy wrote a letter to the king in which he asked for the pardon of the murderers and convinced him not to start reign from the “evil deed”, but to try to strangle evil only by good. Alexander III asked to tell Tolstoy that he could forgive those who had eaten on his life, but he did not have the right to forgive the killers of his father.
This was the last public execution in Russia. The death of his father shocked Alexander so much that, becoming the new Russian emperor, he officially crowned only two years later. The ritual of coronation was carefully developed and was distinguished by extraordinary solemnity. Later, the nature of the ceremony has changed somewhat. On the eve of his coronation, Alexander III “with a command for flags for decorating buildings in solemn occasions” established: “In solemn occasions, when it is possible to allow the decoration of buildings with flags, we use exclusively a Russian flag consisting of three lanes: the upper - white, middle - blue and lower - red colors”.
From the highest decree of April 25, gendarmes were rode ahead, and then the dragons of the Pskov regiment, whose chief was Empress Maria Fedorovna, Cossacks, cavalry guards in brilliant helmets, crowned with golden eagles, followed by his own convoy of his imperial majesty in picturesque bright red traffickers. Closed the procession of deputies from the Asian peoples that were part of the Russian state.
The emperor on the horse of a light gray suit, dismounted and accepted the blessing of the Metropolitan near the Iveron chapel at the entrance to Red Square. Two days later, the heralds solemnly announced the upcoming coronation. Two squadron of cavalry guards and horse -guards lined up on the Ivanovo Square of the Kremlin. At exactly 9 a.m., pipes sounded; The heralds raised gilded rods, and the Senate secretary read an announcement of the upcoming coronation.
Before the coronation, the royal family moved to the Alexander Palace in the Neskuchny Garden and spent three days there in strict post and prayers, while celebrations were already going on throughout Moscow. On the eve of the ceremony, imperial regalia were transferred from the weapons chamber of the Moscow Kremlin: a large imperial crown, a small crown, a scepter, power, porphyry, crown signs of the Order of St.
Andrew the First -Called, the state ceremonial seal, the state sword, the state banner, the thrones for the emperor and the empress. On the morning of May 15, all life concentrated in the Kremlin, where the people flocked from early morning. Here is how eyewitnesses described this event: “The area between the cathedrals does not lend itself to the description of the words: it was so amazingly bright, so it was full of a cloth of her platform, a gold of uniforms and a luxurious variety of robes.
The wide amphitheater of the stands with a semicircle covered the square from the Annunciation Cathedral to the Church of the Twelve Apostles to the Assumption Cathedral of the sovereign and the sovereign followed the magnificent canopy, which was carried by 16-adhthars, and 16 more aduls general supported the Badakhin cords. ” The troops standing in the front line gave them to the Majesties "Honor with music and a drum battle." Imperial regalia were met at the southern gates of the temple and "brought into the cathedral in turn sprinkled by holy water." The emperor at the door of the temple was met by Metropolitans of Moscow, Novgorod and Kyiv.
Under the singing of the psalms, the emperor and the empress entered the temple, and triplingly bowing before the royal gates and attached to the local icons, ascended to the throne place. The sovereign sat on the throne of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Ahead of him towered a brocade table with imperial regalia. Prince Menshikov held the state banner, and Count Milyutin - a state sword.
At the beginning of the solemn rite, Metropolitan Novgorod turned to the sovereign with parting words and "offered him to read the symbol of Vera, which His Majesty fulfilled." The metropolitans brought the emperor Porphyry and the diamond chain of the Order of St. Andrew the First -Called.In the pavement of Porphyra, the emperor “knocked the chapter, and the primary Metropolitan overshadowed His Majesty with a sign of the Cross and, losing his hands on the monarch’s head, read the laid prayers.” At the end of the prayer, the emperor ordered him to give him a crown and personally laid it on his head.
Taking a scepter in his right hand, and in the left power, he sat on the throne, and then, putting both regalia on the pillows filed by their persons who carried them, his Majesty deigned to call the empress to himself. Her Majesty kneaded her knee in front of her august husband. The monarch, taking off his crown, touched it to the head of the empress. His Majesty was served a smaller crown, which he laid on the head of the empress.
Then his majesty was brought by Porphyry and the chain of the Order of Andrei the First -Called, which he also laid on the empress. All those present in the cathedral, leaving their places with a triple bow brought congratulations to his majesty. After the Divine Liturgy and the rite of anointing, the emperor with the empress in the crows dazzlingly shining in the sun during bell ringing, cannon firing and enthusiastic clicks of folk, in solemn march, proceeded through the northern gates of the Assumption Cathedral past the bell tower of Ivan the Great and the King-Call to the Arkhangelsk Cathedral.
” In the Arkhangelsk Cathedral, the imperial couple applied to the icons and, leaving the western doors, proceeded to the Annunciation Cathedral. From the cathedral, the solemn procession headed for the palace, where lunch took place in the granious ward. At coronation celebrations in Moscow, more than half a million people gathered. Imagine an embarrassment in what London would be plunged if it were announced that three quarters of a million diets and wagons with beer barrels will be distributed in the Hyde Park by the faithful Majesty!
But Russian men with children's simplicity and joy accepted the baskets with provisions and clay circles as a precious memory of their father-priest and throughout the day looked cheerfully at the performances arranged for them in theaters and the fantastic procession of the circus. ” From the article in the newspaper Times, the festive illumination of the Kremlin lit up - all the architectural lines of walls and towers were illuminated: with the last blow of the chimes on the Spasskaya tower, “as if by the wave of a magic wand, the whole bell tower of Ivan the Great broke out to the bottom.
The Kremlin presented a picture of a peculiar and amazing beauty. ”