Paul I of Russia

Paul I (; – ) was Emperor of Russia from 1796 until his assassination. Officially, he was the only son of Peter III and Catherine the Great, although Catherine hinted that he was fathered by her lover Sergei Saltykov. Paul remained overshadowed by his mother for most of his life. He adopted the laws of succession to the Russian throne—rules that lasted until the end of the Romanov dynasty and of the Russian Empire. He also intervened in the French Revolutionary Wars and toward the end of his reign, added Kartli and Kakheti in Eastern Georgia into the empire, which was confirmed by his son and successor Alexander I. He was de facto Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller from 1799 to 1801 and ordered the construction of a number of priories of the Order of Malta. Paul's pro-German sentiments and unpredictable behavior made him unpopular among the Russian nobility, and he was secretly assassinated by his own officers. Early years Paul was son of Emperor Peter III of Russia, nephew and anointed heir of the Empress Elizabeth (second-eldest daughter of Tsar Peter the Great), and Catherine II, born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, daughter of a minor German prince, who married into the Russian Romanov dynasty and subsequently deposed Paul's father, Peter III, to take the Russian throne and become Catherine the Great. While Catherine hinted in the first edition of her memoirs published by Herzen that her lover Sergei Saltykov was Paul's biological father, she later recanted and asserted in the final edition that Peter III was Paul's true father. Paul was taken almost immediately after birth by the Empress Elizabeth, and had limited contact with his mother. As a boy, he was reported to be intelligent and good-looking, but sickly. His pug-nosed facial features in later life are attributed to an attack of typhus, from which he suffered in 1771. Paul was put in the charge of a trustworthy governor, Nikita Ivanovich Panin, and of competent tutors. Panin's nephew went on to become one of Paul's assassins. One of Paul's tutors, Poroshin, complained that he was "always in a hurry", acting and speaking without reflection.