Chapter XCIX: Act 1890: was passed and the reconstruction commenced in (5)

Yet Alexander was sincere. Even the Holy Alliance, the pet offspring of his pietism, does not deserve the sinister reputation it has since obtained. To the other powers it seemed, at best ``verbiage'' and ``exalted nonsense,'' at worst an effort of the tsar to establish the hegemony of Russia on the goodwill of the smaller signatory powers. To the Liberals, then and afterwards it was clearly a hypocritical conspiracy against freedom. Yet to Alexander himself it seemed the only means of placing the ``confederation of Europe'' on a firm basis of principle8 and, so far from its being directed against liberty he declared roundly to all the signatory powers that ``free constitutions were the logical outcome of its doctrines.'' Europe, in fact, owed much at this time to Alexander's exalted temper. During the period when his influence was supreme, the fateful years, that is, between the Moscow campaign and the close of the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, it had been used largely in the interests of moderation and liberty. To him mainly it was due that France was saved from dismemberment, and received a constitution which, to use his own words, ``united crown and representatives of the people in a sense of common interests.''9 By his wise intervention Switzerland was saved from violent reaction, and suffered to preserve the essential gains of the Revolution. To his protection it was due that the weak beginnings of constitutional freedom in Germany were able for a while to defy the hatred of Austria. Lastly, whatever its ultimate outcome, the constitution of Poland was, in its inception, a genuine effort to respond to the appeal of the Poles for a national existence.

From the end of the year 1818 Alexander's views began to change. A revolutionary conspiracy among the officers of the guard, and a foolish plot to kidnap him on his way to the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (q.v.), are said to have shaken the foundations of his Liberalism. At Aix he came for the first time into intimate contact with Metternich, and the astute Austrian was swift to take advantage of the psychological moment. From this time dates the ascendancy of Metternich over the mind of the Russian emperor and in the councils of Europe. It was, however, no case of sudden conversion. Though alarmed by the revolutionary agitation in Germany, which culminated in the murder of his agent, the dramatist Kotzebue (q.v.), Alexander approved of Castlereagh's protest against Metternich's policy of ``the governments contracting an alliance against the peoples,'' as formulated in the Carlsbad decrees, 1819, and deprecated any intervention of Europe to support ``a league of which the sole object is the absurd pretensions of absolute power.''10 He still declared his belief in ``free institutions, though not in such as age forced from feebleness, nor contracts ordered by popular leaders from their sovereigns, nor constitutions granted in difficult circumstances to tide over a crisis. ``Liberty,'' he maintained, ``should be confined within just limits. And the limits of liberty are the principles of order.''11

It was the apparent triumph of the principles of disorder in the revolutions of Naples and Piedmont, combined with increasingly disquieting symptoms of discontent in France, Germany and among his own people, that completed Alexander's conversion. In the seclusion of the little town of Troppau, where in October of 1820 the powers met in conference, Metternich found an opportunity for cementing his influence over Alexander which had been wanting amid the turmoil and feminine intrigues of Vienna and Aix. Here, in confidence begotten of friendly chats over afternoon tea, the disillusioned autocrat confessed his mistake. ``You have nothing to regret,'' he said sadly to the exultant chancellor, ``but I have!''12 The issue was momentous. In January Alexander had still upheld the ideal of a free confederation of the European states, symbolized by the Holy Alliance, against the policy of a dictatorship of the great powers, symbolized by the Quadruple Treaty; he had still protested against the claims of collective Europe to interfere in the internal concerns of the sovereign states. On the 19th of November he signed the Troppau Protocol, which consecrated the principle of intervention and wrecked the harmony of the concert. (See TROPPAU, CONGRESS OF.)

At Laibach, whither in the spring of 1821 the congress had been adjourned, Alexander first heard of the revolt of the Greeks. From this time until his death his mind was torn between his anxiety to realize his dream of a confederation of Europe and his traditional mission as leader of the Orthodox crusade against the Turks. At first, under the careful nursing of Metternich, the former motive prevailed. He struck the name of Alexander Ypsilanti from the Russian army list, and directed his foreign minister, Count Capo d'Istria, himself a Greek, to disavow all sympathy of Russia with his enterprise; and, next year, a deputation of the Greeks of the Morea on its way to the congress of Verona was turned back by his orders on the road. He made, indeed, some effort to reconcile the principles at conflict in his mind. He offered to surrender the claim, successfully asserted when the sultan had been excluded from the Holy Alliance and the affairs of the Ottoman empire from the deliberations of Vienna, that the affairs of the East were the ``domestic concerns of Russia,'' and to march into Turkey, as Austria had marched into Naples, ``as the mandatory of Europe.''13 Metternich's opposition to this, illogical, but natural from the Austrian point of view, first opened his eyes to the true character of Austria's attitude towards his ideals. Once more in Russia, far from the fascination of Metternich's personality, the immemorial spirit of his people drew him back into itself; and when, in the autumn of 1825, he took his dying empress for change of air to the south of Russia, in order--as all Europe supposed--to place himself at the head of the great army concentrated near the Ottoman frontiers, his language was no longer that of ``the peace-maker of Europe,'' but of the Orthodox tsar determined to take the interests of his people and of his religion ``into his own hands.'' Before the momentous issue could be decided, however, Alexander died at Taganrog on the 1st of December (November 18, O.S.) 1825, ``crushed'', to use his own words, ``beneath the terrible burden of a crown'' which he had more than once declared his intention of resigning. A report, current at the time and often revived, affirmed that he did not in fact die. By some it is supposed that a mysterious hermit named Fomich, who lived at Tomsk until 1870 and was treated with peculiar deference by successive tsars, was none other than Alexander.14

Modern history knows no more tragic figure than that of Alexander. The brilliant promise of his early years; the haunting memory of the crime by which he had obtained the power to realize his ideals; and, in the end, the terrible legacy he left to Russia: a principle of government which, under lofty pretensions, veiled a tyranny supported by spies and secret police; an uncertain succession; an army permeated by organized disaffection; an armed Poland, whose hunger for liberty the tsar had whetted but not satisfied; the quarrel with Turkey, with its alternative of war or humiliation for Russia; an educational system rotten with official hypocrisy; a Church in which conduct counted for nothing, orthodoxy and ceremonial observance for everything; economical and financial conditions scarce recovering from the verge of ruin; and lastly, that curse of Russia,--serfdom.

In private life Alexander displayed many lovable qualities. All authorities combine in praising his handsome presence and the affability and charm of his address, together with a certain simplicity of personal tastes, which led him in his intercourse with his friends or with the representatives of friendly powers to dispense with ceremonial and etiquette. His personal friendship, too, once bestowed, was never lightly withdrawn. By nature he was sociable and pleasure-loving, he proved himself a notable patron of the arts and he took a conspicuous part in all the gaieties of the congress of Vienna. In his later years, however, he fell into a mood of settled melancholy; and, though still accessible to all who chose to approach him with complaints or petitions, he withdrew from all but the most essential social functions, and lived a life of strenuous work and of Spartan simplicity. His gloom had been increased by domestic misfortune. He had been married, in 1793, without his wishes being consulted, to the beautiful and amiable Princess Maria Louisa of Baden (Elizabeth Feodorovna), a political match which, as he regretfully confessed to his friend Frederick William of Prussia, had proved the misfortune of both; and he consoled himself in the traditional manner. The only child of the marriage, a little grand-duchess, died on the 12th of May 1808; and their common sorrow drew husband and wife closer together. Towards the close of his life their reconciliation was completed by the wise charity of the empress in sympathizing deeply with him over the death of his beloved daughter by Madame Narishkine.

See also EUROPE; RUSSIA; FRANCE; TURKEY; VIENNA, CONGRESS OF; NAPOLEON; METTERNICH; CAPO D'ISTARIA.

AUTHORITIES.--F. de Martins, Recueil des traites conclus par la Russie, &c. (St Petersb., 1874, &c.); Wellington Despatches Castlereagh Correspondence; Prince Adam Czartoryski, Memoires et correspondance avec l'empereur Alexandre I. (Paris, 1887, 2 vols.). P. Bailleu (ed). Briefwechsel Konig Friedrich Wilhelm's III. und der Konigin Luise mit Kaiser Alexander I. (Leipzig, 1900); Laharpe, Le Gouverneur d'un Prince (F. C de Laharpe et Alexandre I. de Russie) 1902; Serge Tatischeff, Alexandre I. et Napoleon d'apres leur correspondance inedite (Paris, 1901); Joseph de Maistre, Memoires historiques et correspondance diplomatique, ed. A. Blanc (2nd ed., 1859); Comtesse de Choiseul-Gouffier, Memoires historiques sur l'empereur Alexandre (1829), and Reminiscences sur l'empereur Alexandre I., &c. (Paris, 1862); Rulemann Friedrich Eylert, Charakterzuge und historische Fragmente aus dem Leben Konig Friedrich Wilhelm's III. (1846); H. L. Empaytaz, Notice sur Alexandre Empereur de Russie (2nd ed., Paris, 1840); Comte A. de la Garde- Chambonas, Souvenirs du Congres de Vienne; publ. avec introd. et notes par le Cte. Fleury (1901).

LIVES.--The principal life of Alexander I. is that, in Russian, by Nikolai Karlovich Schilder, Imperator Aleksander, &c. (4 vols., St Petersb., 1897, 1898). See also Bogdanovich, History of the Government of the Emperor Alexander I. (St Petersburg, 1869-1871, Nikolaus I. Band i. Kaiser Alexander I. und die Ergebnisse seiner Lebensarbeit (Berl., 1904), a valuable study based upon much new material from the state archives of St Petersburg, Paris, Berlin and Vienna; A. Vandal, Napoleon et Alexandre I.: l'alliance Russe sous le premier empire (3 vols., Paris, 1891-1896); A. N. Pypin, Political and Literary Movements under Alexander I. (Russian, 2nd ed. St Petersburg, 1885; German, Berlin, 1894). Among the numerous less authoritative biographies may be mentioned Ivan Golovin, Histoire d'Alexandre I. (Leipzig, 1859), and C. Joyneville, Life and Times of Alexander I. (3 vols., 1875). This last contains much valuable information, but the references in footnotes are often wanting in precision, and it has no index. (W. A. P.)

1 Savary to Napoleon, Nov. 4, 1807. Tatischeff, p. 226.

2 Circular of Count Muraviev, Aug. 24, 1898.

3 Instructions to M. Novosiltsov, Sept. 11, 1804. Tatiseheff, p. 82.

4 Savary to Napoleon, Nov. 18, 1807. Tatischeff, p. 232.

5 Coulaincourt to Napoleon, 4th report, Aug. 3, 1809. Tatischeff, p. 496.

6 Alexander speaking to Colonel Michaud. Tatischeff, p. 612.

7 Castlereagh to Liverpool, Oct. 2, 1814. F.O. Papers. Vienna VII.

8 Martens IV. oart i. p. 49.

9 Etat des negociations actueelles, &c., mem. prepared by order of the Tsar, July 16, 1815, enclosed in Castlereagh to Liverpool, F.O. Cont. papers. Congress Paris, Castlereagh, 22.

10 Despatch of Lieven, Nov. 30 (Dec. 12), 1819, and Russ. Circular of Jan. 27, 1820. Martens IV. part i. p. 270.

11 Apercu des idees de l'Empereur, Martens IV. part i. p. 269.

12 Metternich Mem.

13 Martens IV. part i. pp. 307, &c.

14 See W. Gasiorowski, Tragic Russia, translated by Viscount de Busancy (London, 1908).

ALEXANDER II. (1818-1881), emperor of Russia, eldest son of Nicholas I., was born on the 29th of April 1818. His early life gave little indication of his subsequent activity, and up to the moment of his accession in 1855 no one ever imagined that he would be known to posterity as a great reformer. In so far as he had any decided political convictions, he seemed to be animated with that reactionary spirit which was predominant in Europe at the time of his birth, and continued in Russia to the end of his father's reign. In the period of thirty years during which he was heir-apparent, the moral atmosphere of St Petersburg was very unfavourable to the development of any originality of thought or character. It was a time of government on martinet principles, under which all freedom of thought and all private initiative were as far as possible suppressed vigorously by the administration. Political topics were studiously avoided in general conversation, and books or newspapers in which the most keen-scented press-censor could detect the least odour of political or religious free-thinking were strictly prohibited. Criticism of existing authorities was regarded as a serious offence. The common policeman, the insignificant scribe in a public office, and even the actors in the ``imperial'' theatres, were protected against public censure as effectually as the government itself; for the whole administration was considered as one and indivisible, and an attack on the humblest representative of the imperial authority was looked on as an indirect attack on the fountain from which that authority flowed. Such was the moral atmosphere in which young Alexander Nicolaevich grew up to manhood. He received the education commonly given to young Russians of good family at that time--a smattering of a great many subjects, and a good practical acquaintance with the chief modern European languages. Like so many of his countryman he displayed great linguistic ability, and his quick ear caught up even peculiarities of dialect. His ordinary life was that of an officer of the Guards, modified by the ceremonial duties incumbent on him as heir to the throne. Nominally he held the post of director of the military schools, but he took little personal interest in military affairs. To the disappointment of his father, in whom the military instinct was ever predominant, he showed no love of soldiering, and gave evidence of a kindliness of disposition and a tender-heartedness which were considered out of place in one destined to become a military autocrat. These tendencies had been fostered by his tutor Zhukovsky, the amiable humanitarian poet, who had made the Russian public acquainted with the literature of the German romantic school, and they remained with him all through life, though they did not prevent him from being severe in his official position when he believed severity to be necessary. In 1841 he married the daughter of the grand-duke Louis II. of Hesse, Maximilienne Wilhelmine Marie, thenceforward known as Maria Alexandrovna, who bore him six sons and two daughters. He did not travel much abroad, for his father, in his desire to exclude from Holy Russia the subversive ideas current in Western Europe, disapproved foreign tours, and could not consistently encourage in his own family what he tried to prevent among the rest of his subjects. He visited England, however, in 1839, and in the years immediately preceding his accession he was entrusted with several missions to the courts of Berlin and Vienna. On the 2nd of March 1855, during the Crimean War, he succeeded to the throne on the death of his father.

The first year of the new reign was devoted to the prosecution of the war, and after the fall of Sevastopol, to negotiations for peace. Then began a period of radical reforms, recommended by public opinion and carried out by the autocratic power. The rule of Nicholas, which had sacrificed all other interests to that of making Russia an irresistibly strong military power, had been tried by the Crimean War and found wanting. A new system must, therefore, be adopted. All who had any pretensions to enlightenment declared loudly that the country had been exhausted and humiliated by the war, and that the only way of restoring it to its proper position in Europe was to develop its natural resources and to reform thoroughly all branches of the administration. The government found, therefore, in the educated classes a new-born public spirit, anxious to assist it in any work of reform that it might think fit to undertake. Fortunately for Russia the autocratic power was now in the hands of a man who was impressionable enough to be deeply influenced by the spirit of the time, and who had sufficient prudence and practical common-sense to prevent his being carried away by the prevailing excitement into the dangerous region of Utopian dreaming. Unlike some of his predecessors, he had no grand, original schemes of his own to impose by force on unwilling subjects, and no pet crotchets to lead his judgment astray; and he instinctively looked with a suspicious, critical eye on the panaceas which more imaginative and less cautious people recommended. These traits of character, together with the peculiar circumstances in which he was placed, determined the part which he was to play. He moderated, guided and in great measure realized the reform aspirations of the educated classes.

Emancipation of the serfs.

Though he carefully guarded his autocratic rights and privileges, and obstinately resisted all efforts to push him farther than he felt inclined to go he acted for several years somewhat like a constitutional sovereign of the continental type. At first he moved so slowly that many of the impatient, would-be reformers began to murmur at the unnecessary delay. In reality not much time was lost. Soon after the conclusion of peace important changes were made in the legislation concerning industry and commerce, and the new freedom thus accorded produced a large number of limited liability companies. At the same time plans were formed for constructing a great network of railways, partly for the purpose of developing the natural resources of the country, and partly for the purpose of increasing its powers of defence and attack. Then it was found that further progress was blocked by a great obstacle, the existence of serfage: and Alexander II. showed that, unlike his father, he meant to grapple boldly with the difficult and dangerous problem. Taking advantage of a petition presented by the Polish landed proprietors of the Lithuanian provinces, praying that their relations with the serfs might be regulated in a more satisfactory way--meaning in a way more satisfactory for the proprietors--he authorized the formation of committees ``for ameliorating the condition of the peasants,'' and laid down the principles on which the amelioration was to be effected. This was a decided step and it was followed by one still more significant. Without consulting his ordinary advisers, his majesty ordered the minister of the interior to send a circular to the provincial governors of European Russia, containing a copy of the instructions forwarded to the governor-general of Lithuania, praising the supposed generous, patriotic intentions of the Lithuanian landed proprietors, and suggesting that perhaps the landed proprietors of other provinces might express a similar desire. The hint was taken, of course, and in all provinces where serfage existed emancipation committees were formed. The deliberations at once raised a host of important, thorny questions. The emancipation was not merely a humanitarian question capable of being solved instantaneously by imperial ukaz. It contained very complicated problems affecting deeply the economic, social and political future of the nation. Alexander II. had little of the special knowledge required for dealing successfully with such problems, and he had to restrict himself to choosing between the different measures recommended to him. The main point at issue was whether the serfs should become agricultural labourers dependent economically and administratively on the landlords, or should be transformed into a class of independent communal proprietors. The emperor gave his support to the latter project, and the Russian peasantry accordingly acquired rights and privileges such as are enjoyed by no other peasantry in Europe. In the numerous other questions submitted to him be{sic} began by consulting carefully the conflicting authorities, and while leaning as a rule rather to the side of those who were known as ``Liberals,'' he never went so far as they desired, and always sought some middle course by which conflicting interests might be reconciled. On the 3rd of March 1861, the sixth anniversary of his accession, the emancipation law was signed and published. Other reforms followed in quick succession during the next five or six years: army and navy organization, a new judicial administration on the French model, a new penal code and a greatly simplified system of civil and criminal procedure, an elaborate scheme of local self-government for the rural districts and the large towns, with elective assemhljes possessing a restricted right of taxation, and a new rural and municipal police under the direction of the minister of the interior. These new institutions were incomparably better than the old ones which they replaced, but they did not work such miracles as inexperienced enthusiasts expected. Comparisons were made, not with the past, but with an ideal state of things which never existed in Russia or elsewhere. Hence arose a general feeling of disappointment, which acted on different natures in different ways. Some of the enthusiasts sank into a sceptical, reactionary frame of mind; while others, with deeper convictions or capable of more lasting excitement, attributed the failure to the fact that only half- measures and compromises had been adopted by the government. Thus appeared in the educated classes two extreme groups: on the one hand, the discontented Conservatives, who recommended a return to a more severe disciplinarian regime; and on the other, the discontented Radicals, who would have been satisfied with nothing less than the adoption of a throughgoing socialistic programme. Between the two extremes stood the discontented Moderates, who indulged freely in grumbling without knowing how the unsatisfactory state of things was to be remedied. For some years the emperor, with his sound common-sense and dislike of exaggeration, held the balance fairly between the two extremes; but long years of uninterrupted labour, anxiety and disappointment weakened his zeal for reform, and when radicalism assumed more and more the form of secret societies and revolutionary agitation, he felt constrained to adopt severe repressive measures.

Nihilism.

The revolutionary agitation was of a very peculiar kind. It was confined to a section of the educated classes, and emanated from the universities and higher technical schools. At the beginning of the reform period there had been enthusiasm for scientific as opposed to classical education. Russia required, it was said, not classical scholars, but practical, scientific men, capable of developing her natural resources. The government, in accordance with this view, had encouraged scientific studies until it discovered to its astonishment that there was some mysterious connexion between natural science and revolutionary tendencies. Many of the young men and women, who were supposed to be qualifying as specialists in the various spheres of industrial and commercial enterprise, were in reality devoting their time to considering how human society in general, and Russian society in particular, could be reconstructed in accordance with the latest physiological, biological and sociological principles. Some of these young people wished to put their crude notions immediately into practice, and as their desire to make gigantic socialist experiments naturally alarmed the government, their activity was opposed by the police. Many of them were arrested and imprisoned or exiled to distant provinces, but the revolutionary work was continued with unabated zeal. Thus arose a struggle between the youthful, hot-headed partisans of revolutionary physical science and the zealous official guardians of political order--a struggle which has made the strange term Nihilism (q.v.) a familiar word not only in Russia but also in western Europe. The movement gradually assumed the form of terrorism, and aimed at the assassination of prominent officials, and even of the emperor himself, and the natural result was that the reactionary tendencies of the government were strengthened.

Foreign policy.

In foreign policy Alexander II. showed the same qualities of character as in internal affairs, ever trying prudently to steer a middle course. When he came to the throne a peace policy was imposed on him by circumstances. The Crimean War was still going on, but as there was no doubt as to the final issue, and the country was showing symptoms of exhaustion, he concluded peace with the allies as soon as he thought the national honour had been satisfied. Prince Gorchakov could then declare to Europe, ``La Russie ne boude pas elle se recueille''; and for fifteen years he avoided foreign complications, so that the internal strength of the country might be developed, while the national pride and ambition received a certain satisfaction by the expansion of Russian influence and domination in Asia. Twice, indeed, during that period the chancellor ran the risk of provoking war. The first occasion was in 1863, when the Western powers seemed inclined to interfere in the Polish question, and the Russian chancery declared categorically that no interference would be tolerated. The second occasion was during the Franco-German War of 1870-71, when the cabinet of St Petersburg boldly declared that it considered itself no longer bound by the Black Sea clause of the treaty of Paris. On both these occasions hostilities were averted. Not so on the next occasion, when Russia abandoned her attitude of recueillement. When the Eastern question was raised in 1875 by the insurrection of Herzegovina, Alexander II. had no intention or wish to provoke a great European war. No doubt he was waiting for an opportunity of recovering the portion of Bessarabia which had been ceded by the treaty of Paris, and he perceived in the disturbed state of Eastern Europe a possibility of obtaining the desired rectification of frontier, but he hoped to effect his purpose by diplomatic means in conjunction with Austria. At the same time he was anxious to obtain for the Christians of Turkey some amelioration of their condition, and to give thereby some satisfaction to his own subjects. As autocratic ruler of the nation which had long considered itself the defender of the Eastern Orthodox faith and the protector of the Slav nationalities, he could not remain inactive at such a crisis, and he gradually allowed himself to drift into a position from which he could not retreat without obtaining some tangible result. Supposing that the Porte would yield to diplomatic pressure and menace so far as to make some reasonable concessions, he delivered his famous Moscow speech, in which he declared that if Europe would not secure a better position for the oppressed Slavs he would act alone. The diplomatic pressure failed and war became inevitable. During the campaign he displayed the same perseverance and the same moderation that he had shown in the emancipation of the serfs. To those who began to despair of success, and advised him to conclude peace on almost any terms so as to avoid greater disasters, he turned a deaf ear, and brought the campaign to a successful conclusion; but when his more headstrong advisers urged him to insist on terms which would probably have produced a conflict with Great Britain and Austria, he resolved, after some hesitation, to make the requisite concessions. In this resolution he was influenced by the discovery that he could not rely on the expected support of Germany, and the discovery made him waver in his devotion to the German alliance, which had been the main pivot of his foreign policy; but his personal attachment to the emperor William prevented him from adopting a hostile attitude towards the empire he had helped to create.

The patriotic excitement produced by the war did not weaken the revolutionary agitation. The struggle between the Terrorists and the police authorities became more and more intense, and attempts at assassination became more and more frequent. Alexander II. succumbed by degrees to the mental depression produced originally by the disappointments which he experienced in his home and foreign policy; and in 1880, when he had reigned twenty-five years, he entrusted to Count Loris-Melikov a large share of the executive power. In that year the empress died, and a few weeks afterwards he married secretly a Princess Dolgoruki, with whom he had already entertained intimate relations for some years. Early in 1881, on the advice of Count Loris-Melikov, he determined to try the effect of some moderate liberal reforms on the revolutionary agitation, and for this purpose he caused a ukaz to be prepared creating special commissions, composed of high officials and private personages who should prepare reforms in various branches of the administration. On the very day on which this ukaz was signed--13th of March 1881--he fell a victim to a Nihilist plot. When driving in one of the central streets of St Petersburg, near the Winter Palace, he was mortally wounded by the explosion of some small bombs and died a few hours afterwards. (D. M. W.)

ALEXANDER III. (1845-1894), emperor of Russia, second son of Alexander II., was born on the 10th of March 1845. In natural disposition he bore little resemblance to his soft-hearted, liberal minded father, and still less to his refined, philosophic, sentimental, chivalrous, yet cunning grand-uncle Alexander I., who coveted the title of ``the first gentleman of Europe.'' With high culture, exquisite refinement and studied elegance he had no sympathy and never affected to have any. Indeed, he rather gloried in the idea of being of the same rough texture as the great majority of his subjects. His straightforward, abrupt manner savoured sometimes of gruffness, while his direct, unadorned method of expressing himself harmonized well with his rough-hewn, immobile features and somewhat sluggish movements. His education was not fitted to soften these peculiarities. During the first twenty years of his life he had no prospect of succeeding to the throne, because he had an elder brother, Nicholas, who seemed of a fairly robust constitution. Even when this elder brother showed symptoms of delicate health it was believed that his life might be indefinitely prolonged by proper care and attention, and precautions had been taken for the succession by his betrothal with Princess Dagmar of Denmark. Under these circumstances the greatest solicitude was devoted to the education of Nicholas as cesarevich, whereas Alexander received only the perfunctory and inadequate training of an ordinary grand- duke of that period, which did not go much beyond primary and secondary instruction, practical acquaintance with French, English and German, and a certain amount of drill. When he became heir-apparent by the death of his elder brother in 1865, he began to study the principles of law and administration under Professor Pobedonostsef, who did not succeed in awakening in his pupil a love of abstract studies or prolonged intellectual exertion, but who influenced the character of his reign by instilling into his mind the belief that zeal for Eastern Orthodoxy ought, as an essential factor of Russian patriotism, to be specially cultivated by every right-minded tsar. His elder brother when on his deathbed had expressed a wish that his affianced bride, Princess Dagmar of Denmark, should marry his successor, and this wish was realized on the 9th of November 1866. The union proved a most happy one and remained unclouded to the end. During those years when he was heir-apparent--1865 to 1881--he did not play a prominent part in public affairs, but he allowed it to become known that he had certain ideas of his own which did not coincide with the principles of the existing government. He deprecated what he considered undue foreign influence in general, and German influence in particular, and he longed to see the adoption of genuine national principles in all spheres of official activity, with a view to realizing his ideal of a homogeneous Russia--homogeneous in language, administration and religion. With such ideas and aspirations he could hardly remain permanently in cordial agreement with his father, who, though a good patriot according to his lights, had strong German sympathies, often used the German language in his private relations, occasionally ridiculed the exaggerations and eccentricities of the Slavophils and based his foreign policy on the Prussian alliance. The antagonism first appeared publicly during the Franco-German War, when the tsar supported the cabinet of Berlin and the cesarevich did not conceal his sympathies with the French. It reappeared in an intermittent fashion during the years 1875-1879, when the Eastern question produced so much excitement in all ranks of Russian society. At first the cesarevich was more Slavophil than the government, but his phlegmatic nature preserved him from many of the exaggerations indulged in by others, and any of the prevalent popular illusions he may have imbibed were soon dispelled by personal observation in Bulgaria, where he commanded the left wing of the invading army. The Bulgarians had been represented in St Petersburg and Moscow not only as martyrs but also as saints, and a very little personal experience sufficed to correct the error. Like most of his brother officers he could not feel any very great affection for the ``little brothers,'' as the Bulgarians were then commonly called, and he was constrained to admit that the Turks were by no means so black as they had been painted. He did not, however, scandalize the believers by any public expression of his opinions, and did not indeed make himself conspicuous in any way during the campaign. Never consulted on political questions, he confined himself to his military duties and fulfilled them in a conscientious and unobtrusive manner. After many mistakes and disappointments, the army reached Constantinople and the treaty of San Stefano was signed, but much that had been obtained by that important document had to be sacrificed at the congress of Berlin. Prince Bismarck failed to do what was confidently expected of him. In return for the Russian support, which had enabled him to create the German empire, it was thought that he would help Russia to solve the Eastern question in accordance with her own interests, but to the surprise and indignation of the cabinet of St Petersburg he confined himself to acting the part of ``honest broker'' at the congress, and shortly afterwards he ostentatiously contracted an alliance with Austria for the express purpose of counteracting Russian designs in Eastern Europe. The cesarevich could point to these results as confirming the views he had expressed during the Franco-German War, and he drew from them the practical conclusion that for Russia the best thing to do was to recover as quickly as possible from her temporary exhaustion and to prepare for future contingencies by a radical scheme of military and naval reorganization. In accordance with this conviction, he suggested that certain reforms should be introduced. During the campaign in Bulgaria he had found by painful experience that grave disorders and gross corruption existed in the military administration, and after his return to St Petersburg he had discovered that similar abuses existed in the naval department. For these abuses, several high-placed personages--among others two of the grand-dukes-- were believed to be responsible, and he called his father's attention to the subject. His representations were not favourably received. Alexander II. had lost much of the reforming zeal which distinguished the first decade of his reign, and had no longer the energy required to undertake the task suggested to him. The consequence was that the relations between father and son became more strained. The latter must have felt that there would be no important reforms until he himself succeeded to the direction of affairs. That change was much nearer at hand than was commonly supposed. On the 13th of March 1881 Alexander II. was assassinated by a band of Nihilists, and the autocratic power passed to the hands of his son.

In the last years of his reign, Alexander II. had been much exercised by the spread of Nihilist doctrines and the increasing number of anarchist conspiracies, and for some time he had hesitated between strengthening the hands of the executive and making concessions to the widespread political aspirations of the educated classes. Finally he decided in favour of the latter course, and on the very day of his death he signed a ukaz, creating a number of consultative commissions which might have been easily transformed into an assembly of notables. Alexander III. determined to adopt the opposite policy. He at once cancelled the ukaz before it was published, and in the manifesto announcing his accession to the throne he let it be very clearly understood that he had no intention of limiting or weakening the autocratic power which he had inherited from his ancestors. Nor did he afterwards show any inclination to change his mind. All the internal reforms which he initiated were intended to correct what he considered as the too liberal tendencies of the previous reign, so that he left behind him the reputation of a sovereign of the retrograde type. In his opinion Russia was to be saved from anarchical disorders and revolutionary agitation, not by the parliamentary institutions and so-called liberalism of western Europe, but by the three principles which the elder generation of the Slavophils systematically recommended--nationality, Eastern Orthodoxy and autocracy. His political ideal was a nation containing only one nationality, one language, one religion and one form of administration; and he did his utmost to prepare for the realization of this ideal by imposing the Russian language and Russian schools on his German, Polish and Finnish subjects, by fostering Eastern Orthodoxy at the expense of other confessions, by persecuting the Jews and by destroying the remnants of German, Polish and Swedish institutions in the outlying provinces. In the other provinces he sought to counteract what he considered the excessive liberalism of his father's reign. For this purpose he clipped the feeble wings of the zemstvo, an elective local administration resembling the county and parish councils in England, and placed the autonomous administration of the peasant communes under the supervision of landed proprietors appointed by the government. At the same time he sought to strengthen and centralize the imperial administration, and to bring it more under his personal control. In foreign affairs he was emphatically a man of peace, but not at all a partisan of the docrrine of peace at any price, and he followed the principle that the best means of averting war is to be well prepared for it. Though indignant at the conduct of Prince Bismarck towards Russia, he avoided an open rupture with Germany, and even revived for a time the Three Emperors' Alliance. It was only in the last years of his reign, when M. Katkov had acquired a certain influence over him, that he adopted towards the cabinet of Berlin a more hostile attitude, and even then he confined himself to keeping a large quantity of troops near the German frontier, and establishing cordial relations with France. With regard to Bulgaria he exercised similar self-control. The efforts of Prince Alexander and afterwards of Stamboloff to destroy Russian influence in the principality excited his indignation, but he persistently vetoed all proposals to intervene by force of arms. In Central Asian affairs he followed the traditional policy of gradually extending Russian domination without provoking a conflict with Great Britain, and he never allowed the bellicose partisans of a forward policy to get out of hand. As a whole his reign cannot be regarded as one of the eventful periods of Russian history; but it must be admitted that under his hard unsympathetic rule the country made considerable progress. He died at Livadia on the 1st of November 1894, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Nicholas II. (D. M. W.)

ALEXANDER I. (c. 1078-1124), king of Scotland, was the fourth son of Malcolm Canmore by his wife (St) Margaret, grand-niece of Edward the Confessor. On the death of his brother Edgar in 1107 he succeeded to the Scottish crown; but, in accordance with Edgar's instructions, he inherited only a part of its possessions. By a partition, the motive of which is not quite certain, the districts south of the Forth and Clyde were erected into an earldom for Alexander's younger brother, David. Alexander, dissatisfied, sought to obtain the whole, but without success. A curious combination of the fierce warrior and the pious churchman, he manifested the one aspect of his character in his ruthless suppression of an insurrection in his northern dominion (thus gaining for himself the title of ``the Fierce''), the other in his munificent foundation of bishoprics and abbeys. Among the latter were those of Scone and Inchcolm. His strong championship of the independence of the Scottish church involved him in struggles with both the English metropolitan sees. He died on the 27th of April 1124, and was succeeded by his brother, David I.

ALEXANDER II. (1198-1249), king of Scotland, son of William the Lion and Ermengarde of Beaumont, was born at Haddington in 1198, and succeeded to the kingdom on the death of his father in 1214. The year after his accession the clans MacWilliam and MacHeth, inveterate enemies of the Scottish crown, broke into revolt; but the insurrection was speedily quelled. In the same year Alexander joined the English barons in their struggle against John, and led an army into England in support of their cause; but on the conclusion of peace after John's death between his youthful son Henry III. and the French prince Louis, the Scottish king was included in the pacification. The reconciliation thus effected was further strengthened by the marriage of Alexander to Henry's sister Joanna in 1221. The next year was marked by the subjection of the hitherto semi-independent district of Argyll. A revolt in Galloway in 1235 was crushed without difficulty; nor did an invasion attempted soon afterwards by its exiled leaders meet with any better fortune. Soon afterwards a claim for homage from Henry of England drew forth from Alexander a counter-claim to the northern English counties. The dispute, however, was settled by a compromise in 1237. A threat of invasion by Henry in 1243 for a time interrupted the friendly relations between the two countries; but the prompt action of Alexander in anticipating his attack, and the disinclination of the English barons for war, compelled him to make peace next year at Newcastle. Alexander now turned his attention to securing the Western Isles, which still owned a nominal dependence on Norway. Negotiations and purchase were successively tried but without success. Alexander next attempted to seduce Ewen, the son of Duncan, lord of Argyll, from his allegiance to the Norwegian king. Ewen refused his overtures, and Alexander sailed forth to compel him. But on the way he was seized with fever at Kerrera, and died there on the 8th of July 1249.

ALEXANDER III. (1241-1285), king of Scotland, son of Alexander II. by his second wife Mary de Coucy, was born in 1241. At the age of eight years the death of his father called him to the throne. The years of his minority were marked by an embittered struggle for the control of affairs between two rival parties, the one led by Walter Comyn, earl of Menteith, the other by Alan Durward, the justiciar. The former was in the ascendant during the early years of the reign. At the marriage of Alexander to Margaret of England in 1251, Henry III. seized the opportunity to demand from his son-in-law homage for the Scottish kingdom, but the claim was refused. In 1255 an interview between the English and Scottish kings at Kelso resulted in the deposition of Menteith and his party in favour of their opponents. But though disgraced, they still retained great influence; and two years later, seizing the person of the king, they compelled their rivals to consent to the erection of a regency representative of both parties. On attaining his majority in 1262, Alexander declared his intention of resuming the projects on the Western Isles which had been cut short by the death of his father thirteen years before. A formal claim was laid before the Norwegian king Haakon. Not only was this unsuccessful, but next year Haakon replied by a formidable invasion. Sailing round the west coast of Scotland he halted off Arran, where negotiations were opened. These were artfully prolonged by Alexander until the autumn storms should begin. At length Haakon, weary of delay, attacked, only to encounter a terrific storm which greatly damaged his ships. The battle of Largs, fought next day, was indecisive. But even so Haakon's position was hopeless. Baffled he turned homewards, but died on the way. The Isles now lay at Alexander's feet, and in 1266 Haakon's successor concluded a treaty by which the Isle of Man and the Western Isles were ceded to Scotland in return for a money payment, Orkney and Shetland alone being retained. Towards the end of Alexander's reign, the death of all his three children within a few years made the question of the succession one of pressing importance. In 1284 he induced the Estates to recognize as his heir-presumptive his grand-daughter Margaret, the ``Maid of Norway''; and next year the desire for a male heir led him to contract a second marriage. But all such hopes were defeated by the sudden death of the king, who was killed by a fall from his horse in the dark while riding to visit the queen at Kinghorn on the 16th of March 1285.

ALEXANDER (ALEXANDER OBRENOVICH) (1876-1903), king of Servia, was born on the 14th of August 1876. On the 6th of March 1889 his father, King Milan, abdicated and proclaimed him king of Servia under a regency until he should attain his majority at eighteen years of age. King Alexander, on the 13th of April 1893, being then in his seventeenth year, made his notable first coup d'etat, proclaimed himself of full age, dismissed the regents and their government, and took the royal authority into his own hands. His action was popular, and was rendered still more so by his appointment of a radical ministry. In May 1894 King Alexander, by another coup d'etat, abolished the liberal constitution of 1889 and restored the conservative one of 1869. His attitude during the Turco-Greek war of 1897 was one of strict neutrality. In 1898 he appointed his father commander-in-chief of the Servian army, and from that time, or rather from his return to Servia in 1894 until 1900, ex-king Milan was regarded as the de facto ruler of the country. But while, during the summer of 1900, Milan was away from Servia taking waters in Carlsbad, and making arrangements to secure the hand of a German princess for his son, and while the premier, Dr Vladan Dyorevich, was visiting the Paris Universal Exhibition, King Alexander suddenly announced to the people of Servia his engagement to Mme Draga Mashin, a widow, formerly a lady-in-waiting to Queen Natalie. The projected union aroused great opposition at first. Ex-King Milan resigned his post; so did the government; and King Alexander had great difficulty in forming a new cabinet. But the opposition subsided somewhat on the publication of Tsar Nicholas's congratulations to the king on his engagement and of his acceptance to act as the principal witness at the wedding. The marriage was then duly celebrated on the 5th of August 1900. Still this union was unpopular and weakened the position of King Alexander in the army and the country. He tried to reconcile political parties by granting from his own initiative a liberal constitution (April 6, 1901), introducing for the first time in the constitutional history of Servia the system of two chambers (skupshtina and senate). This did in a certain measure reconcile the political parties, but did not reconcile the army, which, already dissatisfied with the king's marriage, became still more so at the rumours that one of the two unpopular brothers of Queen Draga, Lieutenant Nicodiye, was to be proclaimed heir- apparent to the throne. Meanwhile the independence of the senate and of the council of state caused growing irritation to King Alexander, which led him to another coup d'etat. He suspended (March 1903) the constitution for half an hour, time enough to publish the decrees by which the old senators and councillors of state were dismissed and replaced by new ones. This arbitrary act naturally increased the dissatisfaction in the country. The general impression was that inasmuch as the senate was packed with men devoted to the royal couple, and inasmuch as the government obtained a large majority at the general elections, King Alexander would not hesitate any longer to proclaim Queen Draga's brother as the heir to the throne. Apparently to prevent this, but in reality to replace Alexander Obrenovich by Peter Karageorgevich, a military conspiracy was organized. The conspirators penetrated into the palace and savagely murdered King Alexander and Queen Draga in the early morning of the 11th of June 1903. (C. MI.)

ALEXANDER, son of Numenius, Greek rhetorician, flourished in the first half of the second century A.D. In addition to general treatises on rhetoric, he wrote a special work Peri ton tes dianoias kai tes lexeos schematon, of which only an abridgment is extant; later epitomes were made in Latin by Aquila Romanus and Julius Rufinianus under the title De Figuris Sententiarum et Elocutionis. Another epitome was made in the fourth century by a Christian for use in Christian schools, containing additional examples from Gregory of Nazianzus.

Text in Spengel, Rhetores Graeci (1856).

ALEXANDER, ARCHIBALD (1772-1851), American Presbyterian divine, was born, of Scottish-Irish descent, in that part of Augusta county which is now Rockbridge county, Virginia, on the 17th of April 1772. After completing his preliminary education in the little school at Lexington, Virginia, which later developed into Washington and Lee University, he came under the influence of the religious movement known as the ``great revival'' (1789-1790) and devoted himself to the study of theology. Licensed to preach in 1791, he was engaged for several years as an itinerant Presbyterian preacher in his native state, and acquired during this period the facility in extemporaneous speaking for which he was remarkable. He was president of Hampden-Sidney College from 1796 to 1807, with a short intermission (in 1801-1802), and in 1807 became pastor of Pine Street Church, Philadelphia. In 1812 he became first professor in the newly established Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Princeton, New Jersey, where he remained until his death at Princeton on the 22nd of October 1851, filling successively the chairs of didactic and polemic theology (1812-1840), and pastoral and polemic theology (1840-1851). He married, in 1802, Janetta Waddel, the daughter of the celebrated blind preacher, James Waddel (1739-1805), whose eloquence was described in William Wirt's Letters of a British Spy (1803). Dr Alexander wrote a considerable number of theological works, which had a large circulation. Among these may be mentioned his Brief Outline of the Evidences of the Christian Religion (1825), which passed through several editions, and was translated into various languages; The Canon of the Old and New Testament Ascertained; or the Bible Complete without the Apocrypha and Unwritten Traditions (1826); A History of the Israelitish Nation (1852), and Outlines of Moral Science (1852), the last two being published posthumously.

See the biography (New York, 1854) by his son James W. Alexander.

ALEXANDER, FRANCIS (1800-1881), American portrait- painter, was born in Windham county, Connecticut, in February 1800. Brought up on a farm, he taught himself the use of colours, and in 1820 went to New York City and studied painting with Alexander Robertson. He spent the winters of 1831 and 1832 in Rome, and then for nearly a decade he lived in Boston, Massachusetts, where he had considerable vogue, and where in 1842 he painted a portrait of Charles Dickens. One of his best portraits is that of Mrs Fletcher Webster in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He died in 1881 in Florence.

ALEXANDER, GEORGE (1858- ), English actor, whose family name was Samson, was born in Reading on the 19th of June 1858, the son of a Scottish manufacturer. He went into business in London after leaving school, but having acted as an amateur he determined to make the stage his profession. His first appearance was at Nottingham in 1879, and after some seasons of provincial experience he made his first London appearance as Caleb Deecie in Two Roses in 1881 with Irving at the Lyceum. He was selected by W. S. Gilbert to support Mary Anderson in Comedy and Tragedy, returned for a time to the Lyceum, where he was Irving's principal associate, especially as Faust (1886) and Macduff (1888); and, after starting successfully under his own management at the Avenue Theatre in 1890 with Dr Bill, in 1891 became manager of the St James's Theatre. There he produced a number of successful plays, notably Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan and The Importance of being Earnest, Pinero's Second Mrs Tanqueray, The Princess and the Butterfiy, His House in Order and The Thunderbolt; C. Haddon Chambers's The Idler; H. A. Jones's Masqueraders; Alfred Sutro's John Glayde's Honour and The Builder of Bridges; Carton's Liberty Hall and The Tree of Knowledge; Anthony Hope's Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau; and Stephen Phillips's Paolo and Francesca, himself playing the leading parts with great distinction. In 1907 he was elected a member of the London County Council as a municipal reformer, but continued to act regularly at the St James's.