As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate disclosure.

Home / People / Nicholas I of Russia

Historical person

Nicholas I of Russia

1796–1855

Nicholas I was emperor of Russia from 1825 to 1855, beginning his reign amid the Decembrist Revolt. He strengthened censorship, political policing and autocratic administration, intervened against revolution in Europe and led Russia into the Crimean War.

Nicholas I of Russia also held the offices or ranks of Emperor of all the Russias and Grand Duke of Finland. Nicholas I of Russia belonged to the Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov and operated within Russian Empire. Nicholas I of Russia was born in Pushkin and died in Saint Petersburg.

Geoffrey Trease’s The Iron Tsar makes Nicholas I’s police state and post-Decembrist suspicion the force constraining young conspirators in 1831 St Petersburg. Allan Mallinson’s On His Majesty’s Service sends Matthew Hervey to observe Nicholas’s army during the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29, allowing the tsar’s imperial ambitions to be seen from inside Russian campaigning. Cynthia Harrod-Eagles’ Fleur places its romance in Nicholas’s aristocratic Russia on the eve of the Crimean War, while Hourly History’s Crimean War examines the conflict that began under his rule and exposed major weaknesses in the empire. Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs situates Nicholas within the dynasty as an autocratic ruler whose insistence on order shaped Russia between the Decembrist revolt and the crisis of the 1850s.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Nicholas I of Russia (3 series)

Morland Dynasty in Order

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 36 books 4.4(27,265)

The Morland Dynasty is a thirty-six-book family saga tracing the fictional Morlands of Yorkshire from 1434 to the approach of the Second World War. Beginning with the marriage of Robert Morland and Eleanor, a ward of the Beaufort family, the sequence follows successive generations as Morland Place grows…

All books in this series

Matthew Hervey in Order

by Allan Mallinson 14 books 4.2(11,911)

The Matthew Hervey novels follow an English cavalry officer from the final campaign against Napoleon into the unsettled decades after Waterloo. Beginning as a young cornet in the 6th Light Dragoons, Hervey advances through command while trying to reconcile professional duty, personal honour, family obligations and the often…

All books in this series

Kirov Trilogy in Order

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 3 books 4.2(935)

The Kirov Trilogy follows three generations connected with the fictional Kirov family against the splendour and violence of Imperial Russia. Beginning in 1803, the sequence moves from the Napoleonic invasion through the Crimean War to the First World War and the Russian Revolution, linking English heroines with a…

All books in this series

Standalone books

Standalone books featuring Nicholas I of Russia (1 book)

Non Fiction

Non Fiction featuring Nicholas I of Russia (3 books)

Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.