NAPOLEON IN EUROPE--ATTITUDE OF RUSSIA Paul was forty-one years old when he ascended the throne he had for twenty years believed was rightfully his.

The mystery surrounding the death of his father Peter III., the humiliations he had suffered at his mother's court, and what he considered her usurpation of his rights--all these had been for years fermenting in his narrow brain.
His first act gave vent to his long-smothered indignation and his suspicions regarding his father's death.

Peter's remains were exhumed--placed beside those of Catherine lying in state, to share all the honors of her obsequies and to be entombed with her; while Alexis Orlof, his supposed murderer, was compelled to march beside the coffin, bearing his crown.
Then when Paul had abolished from the official language the words "society" and "citizen," which his mother had delighted to honor--when he had forbidden the wearing of frock-coats, high collars, and neckties, and refused to allow Frenchmen to enter his territory--and when he had compelled his people to get out of their carriages and kneel in the mud as he passed--he supposed he was strengthening the foundations of authority which Catherine II.

had loosened.
To him is attributed the famous saying, "Know that the only person of consideration in Russia is the person whom I address, and he only during the time I am addressing him." He was a born despot, and his reforms consisted in a return to Prussian methods and to an Oriental servility.

The policy he announced was one of peace with Europe--a cessation of those wars by which his mother had for thirty-four years been draining the treasury.