[1] Pavel spent his childhood years in Kazan; early exposure to diverse Asiatic cultures explains his lasting interest in the Orient.

[4] By this time, tsar Paul's haphazard management had reduced military education to mere exhibition drill; Schilling's proper training commenced only after graduation, in 1802.

[4] He was commissioned as a podporuchik, posted to the Quartermaster general's office commanded by Theodor von Schubert and assigned cartographical surveying duties.

He then joined the foreign service as a language officer,[6] and dispatched to the Russian legation in Munich, where his stepfather Karl von Bühler was the minister.

25 August] 1813 he was posted to commander Alexander Seslavin's Sumy hussars with the rank of Shtabs-rotmistr (i.e. Captain Lieutenant)[13][6][note 1] Schilling arrived at the regiment shortly after the Battle of Dresden.

[14][15][6] After the fall of Paris Schilling requested transfer from the Army back to civil service, and in October of the same year he returned to Foreign Affairs in Saint Petersburg.

[22] Apart from disseminating reports, maps and instructions within the foreign service, Schilling's shop also produced daily summaries of intercepted letters and other covert surveillance.

[25] Schilling was not engaged in diplomacy, but was perceived as a diplomat; the deception was supported by the facts that he often travelled abroad and met foreign dignitaries without apparent restrictions.

[25] Secrecy was compensated with generous payouts, for example in 1830 Nicholas I authorised a bonus payment of 1000 golden ducats;[note 3] Schilling's subordinates received lesser, but still substantial rewards.

Schilling set up an electrical engineering workshop in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and recruited Moritz von Jacobi from Dorpat University to act as his assistant there.

[32] He requested permission to travel to Europe for medical help, and with the help of Nesselrode secured the tsar's written consent that was actually an order for an industrial espionage mission, in areas from telegraphy to charcoal kilns.

[36] All records, models and equipment left by Schilling passed to Moritz von Jacobi, who would build the first operational telegraph line in Russia, connecting the Winter Palace with the Army Headquarters, in 1841.

[38] Each bigram consisted of two letters of source plaintext (in French language, the lingua franca of diplomacy), separated with a predetermined number of characters.

[38] The first three sets of codetables prepared by Schilling were issued to viceroy of Poland Grand Duke Konstantin, special envoy to Persia prince Alexander Menshikov, and to foreign minister Karl Nesselrode on his journey to the United States.

[42][45][note 4] Schilling's main, covert mission was to evaluate the spread of Buddhism among local tribes, to outline the course of action to contain it, and to compile a binding statute that would regulate all aspects of Buddhist religious practice.

[49] Officially, the mission was limited to "studies of population and international trade on the Russo-Chinese frontier"; any research apart from these tasks had to be paid by Schilling personally.

According to Bichurin, Schilling spent most of his time with Tibetan and Mongolian lamas, studying ancient Buddhist scriptures; he was concerned more with linguistics and history of Far Eastern peoples, rather than ethnography.

[57] However, he soon found out that the Buryats of the Russian Empire owned three copies of three different editions of the Kangyur; one of the three was preserved in Chikoy, less than twenty miles east from Kyakhta.

[59] According to Leonid Chuguevsky,[note 7] it is likely that the lamas were aware of Schilling's mission and his liberal view towards state control over religion, and in their own way tried to appease the friendly but dangerous visitor.

[69] Schilling returned to Moscow in March 1832,[70] and one month later[44] arrived in Saint Petersburg with reports and drafts of statutes on cross-border trade and on Buddhist clergy.

[75] He agreed with the use of electrical telegraphy for selected military and civil offices, but prohibited public discussion of telegraph technology, including even reports on foreign inventions.

After the death of Schilling, in 1841, Moritz von Jacobi tried to do it, and the journal containing his review article was confiscated and destroyed by a special order of the tsar.

[77] The demonstration set consisted of a double-wire copper line and two terminals, each having a voltaic pile providing current of around 200 mA,[74] a Schweigger multiplier for indication, a send-receive switch and a bidirectional telegraph key.

[88] In 1836, Nicholas I created a commission of inquiry to advise on installation of Schilling's telegraph between Kronstadt, an important naval base, and Peterhof Palace.

[91] Menshikov submitted a favourable report and secured the tsar's approval to connect Peterhof with the naval base at Kronstadt, across the Gulf of Finland.

[27] Another field of Schilling's research, directly related to telegraphy, was practical military applications of electricity for remote control of land and naval mines.

[109] Schilder pushed the proposal through the bureaucracy, and in April 1828 the Inspector general of military engineers authorised development of electrically-fired mines for series production.

[112] In March 1834 Schilder test-fired the first naval mine employing insulated wires invented by Schilling; in 1835 the military performed the first test demolition of a bridge with an electrically-fired underwater charge.

He arranged publications of historical manuscripts and provided oriental sorts and matrices to European print shops; however, during his lifetime he never attempted to publish a book in his own name or to submit an article to a journal.

[69] Later, various authors wrote about Schilling's oriental studies and travels, his collaborations with European academics and Russian poets, but none managed to grasp all the facets of his personality.