Emperor Nicholas I

NICHOLAS I (1796-1855), Russian emperor (1825-1855), the third son of Paul I, was born on June 25 (July 6) 1796 in Tsarskoe Selo (Pushkin). His education was limited to military sciences. In 1814 he traveled abroad for the first time with the Russian army under the command of his elder brother Alexander I. In 1816 he made a three-month journey across European Russia, and from October 1816 to May 1817 he traveled and lived in England. In 1817 he married the eldest daughter of the Prussian king Frederick Wilhelm II, Princess Charlotte Frederick Louise, who took the name of Alexandra Feodorovna. After the death of Alexander I and the renunciation of the throne of Grand Duke Constantine, Nicholas was proclaimed emperor on December 2 (14), 1825. By this day, the conspiratorial officers (who later became known as "Decembrists") timed a rebellion to seize power. After the suppression of the rebellion and large-scale repressions, Nicholas I strengthened the military-bureaucratic apparatus, centralized the administrative system, established a political police (the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery), and instituted strict censorship. He significantly expanded the territory of Russia after the wars with Persia (1826-1828) and Turkey (1828-1829), but his attempt to make the Black Sea an internal Russian sea met with resistance from the great powers led by Great Britain. An attempt by Russia, ousted from the markets of the Middle East by England and France, to restore and strengthen its position in this region led to a clash of powers in the Middle East, which resulted in the Crimean War (1853-1856).