He failed to destroy the powerful enemies he made, and they therefore destroyed him

Paul was not the first ruler of Russia to suffer from paranoia, nor would he be the last . But unlike his more ruthless predecessors he failed to destroy the powerful enemies he made, and they therefore destroyed him. One of the least wise acts of Paul’s brief and self-destructive reign was to launch and assault on the military elite who had brought Russian arms to unheard-of heights during his mother’s reign

O. Matthews, Glorious Misadventures (2013), 121

The archives of the Irkutsk criminal court record at least one murder every day

The drinking dens and gaming tables of Irkutsk were as notorious in eighteenth-century Russia as those of Deadwood would become in nineteenth-century America. The archives of the Irkutsk criminal court record at least one murder every day.

O. Matthews, Glorious Misadventures (2013), 33