Paul I's campaign in India. Madness or a great idea that could have changed history

In February 1801, Russian Emperor Paul I signed a document that would go down in history as one of the strangest and most mysterious decrees of its time. On a sheet covered in hurried handwriting stood a clear objective — to send a Cossack army on a campaign to India. More than twenty thousand armed and trained men were to cross the Caspian Sea, Persia, and the mountains of Afghanistan to strike the British Empire and “liberate” Indian lands. This was no local military adventure — it was a challenge to the entire world order. But just three weeks after signing the order, Paul was murdered in his bedroom. The army never set out, and the very idea vanished along with the emperor’s body, laid to rest in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Paul I remains one of the most controversial figures in Russian history. Historians alternately call him a madman or a visionary far ahead of his time. After decades of palace intrigues and British influence, Russia had grown tired of being a pawn in other people’s games. Paul saw Britain as the main enemy — the power preventing Russia from becoming an independent center of strength. His flirtation with Napoleon, his talk of a continental alliance — all of it seemed a step away from the familiar Western course. In his mind formed a plan that carried both military logic and geopolitical daring: if Russia could not defeat England at sea, it should strike at her most valuable possession — India.

The order for the campaign was prepared in complete secrecy. Not even the ministers knew of it — only a few trusted men: Count Orlov, Ataman Denisov, and several generals. The plan was audacious: the army would travel more than 12,000 kilometers through Astrakhan, Mangyshlak, Bukhara, and the Hindu Kush. Supplies were to be obtained along the way, and the hardy Cossacks — men and horses alike — were believed capable of enduring any hardship. According to calculations, by autumn the army could reach the Indus River and join forces with Bonaparte’s troops marching from Egypt. Such a joint strike would have caught the British completely off guard.

But all of this existed only in the emperor’s mind and on the pages of a secret order. Panic began to spread in St. Petersburg. Advisors whispered of the sovereign’s madness, claiming he had lost touch with reality. Paul suddenly changed decrees, banned French fashions at court, imposed barracks-style discipline on the army, and granted noble titles to those he personally favored. The court, accustomed to the splendor of Catherine’s reign, despised the new tsar. He was unpredictable, trusted no one — and that became his downfall.

On the night of March 11–12, 1801, conspirators — guards officers, ministers, and even close associates of the heir Alexander — burst into the Mikhailovsky Castle. Paul tried to resist but was strangled with an officer’s scarf. His death was presented as an “accident,” but by morning the rumor had spread: the tsar was dead. The new emperor, Alexander I, immediately canceled all decrees his father had issued in recent months. Among them was the one sending the Cossacks to India.

By that time, the army was already preparing for the campaign. In Astrakhan, Don Cossack detachments had gathered from across the south. They trained, stocked provisions, and awaited orders from the capital. When a messenger brought news of the emperor’s death, many refused to believe it. But soon an official decree arrived — the campaign was canceled. Legend has it that Ataman Orlov, hearing the news, fell silent, then removed his glove, threw it into the fire, and said: “Our destiny has burned away.”

Historians still debate whether the plan was madness or brilliant foresight. At first glance, it was indeed an impossible venture — logistically and strategically. Yet on a broader scale, Paul anticipated the very strategy that great powers would later adopt: striking at enemy communications, gaining access to warm seas, and controlling the East. His death delayed that vision by nearly a century — until the reign of Nicholas II, when Russia once again sought a route to the Indian Ocean through Persia and Afghanistan.

In the archives, one surviving copy of the “Decree on the Indian Campaign” remains — yellowed paper, barely legible handwriting, the signature “Paul,” and the imperial seal — a silent witness to a design ahead of its time. The expedition’s plans, maps, and calculations were long kept in the secret collections of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; in Soviet times, copies found their way to the Military-Historical Archive. Whenever historians unfold these documents, they sense not just a monarch’s ambition, but Russia’s desperate struggle to break free from Western dependence and assert itself as a civilization in its own right.

Paul I often repeated the phrase: “Better to die standing on the road to a great goal than to live crawling in the shadow of another.” His march to India became exactly that — a symbol balanced between madness and revelation. Perhaps he knew he would not be supported, but he acted as if defying fate itself. And fate answered — with a scarf around his neck and a conspiracy in his chamber.

Today this episode seems almost legendary, yet it reveals how close Russia came to turning history onto a different course. Had Paul lived just one more month, the Cossacks might have reached Persia, met the French, and the 19th-century world could have been utterly transformed. Instead of the British Empire, a new colossus might have arisen — a union of Russia and France bound by a common goal.

Paul I died before reaching his India. But his dream — a breakthrough toward the East — became prophetic. After him, Russia would never again be merely a European power. She turned her face toward Asia, toward the steppes, toward Siberia, toward a future where borders were only lines in the sand. And that turning point began with one mad order, signed at night by the trembling hand of an emperor who wanted to change the world.