6 ^/ 5^ f §' JOHN [Vi ;'5 uLiN CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 068 919 81 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924068919814 ALEXANDER III OF RUSSIA A I.I' \.\NI)I u III ALEXANDER III OF RUSSIA BY CHARLES LOWE, M.A. AUTHOR OF "prince ihsmarck : an msToRicAr, BIOGRAPHV," ETC NEW YOEK MACMILLAN AND CO. 1895 ^M£RS7rX CONTENTS CHAPTER I PREDKCEHSOUS The Romanoffs — IIolstein-Gottorps — Paul, the Madman — Alexander I. — Tale of a sucking-pig — Nicholas I. — Instances of his despotism — Alexander II. — Character - sketch — " Sasha " the " Military Tailor " — The " Tsar Emancipator" — Cycle of autocratic reforms .... Pp. 1-13 CHAPTER II IIElR-APrARENT Death of the Tsarevitch Nicholas — Alexander heir-apparent — His first Rescript — " My son, my heir " — Youthful Charac- teristics — Marriage — Marie Fcodorovna — A Teutophobe — — "Thank God for Woronzoff!" — In opposition — Franco- German war — Visit to England — Anglo-Russian Press amen- ities — Marie Alexandrowna — Alexander II, in London — The Eastern Question — A Panslavist champion — Russo-Turkish War — Army of the Lom — Character as a commander — Courageous or cowardly ? — The foe of falsehood and cor- ruption — Under arrest — The eve of action . Pp. 14-42 CHAPTER HI CIRCUMSTANCES OF HIS ACCESSION March 13, i88i — The Anitchkoff Palace — An Equerry's message — Assassination of Alexander II. — Alexander III.'s Mani- festo — Accession formalities — Imperial funeral — English viii CONTENTS sympathy— Nihilist ultimatum — National slip between cup and lip — Loris-Melikoff's Constitution — A tap-room Parlia- ment — Reform or Reaction ? — Despotism by Divine right — The choice of Hercules-Alexander . . Pp. 43-64 CUAPTER IV THE lord's anointed Autocrat of All the Russias — Moscow — Triumphal entry — Oath to Imperial Standard — Proclamation Urbi el Oihi — Ambas- sadors of the Press — Church of the Assumption — Coronation Ceremony — ■ Second burning of Moscow — The Kazan Cathedral . . . I'p. 65-76 CHAPTER V THE TSAK PEACE-KEEPER Foreign Policy Circular — Imperial meeting at Dantzig — Its results — Skobeleff the Teutophobe — M. de Giers — His meetings with Bismarck — Mr. Gladstone and the Tsar — Russo-German icipprochmiciU — The Three Emperors at Skierniwiece — The Tsar and Francis Joseph — Germany's "Hecuba" — Fresh Russo-German misunderstanding — The Tsar in Berlin — His interview with Bismarck — The Forged Despatches — Friends once more — Bismarck on the Tsar — " Printer's Ink" — The Kaiser in St. Petersburg — The Tsar in Berlin — "Hurrah for the Russian Army! " — Results of the meeting — Russia's ''One Friend" — The "Key of your House " — The Kaiser at Narva — The Tsar at Kiel — " Long live the German Navy!" — " Vii'i; la Maiim Fiangaise! " — Beauty and the Beast — Franco-Russian relations — A Peters- bourg ! a Petersbourg ! -The French at Cronstadt " F'or the sake of our dear France" — ' You must marry me" — The Russians at Toulon — Gold I'ctsits Glulrc — *' Souvenirs dc Sebastopol" — Customs-War — "La Fiaiue, c'cst I'Ennemi !" — Russia in Central Asia — Skobeleft's prophecy — English " Mervousness " again — " Beati possiiieiUcs ! " — The Penj- deh Incident — Si vis pacem, para bellum — John Bull puts on his Boots — Arms or Arbitration ? — The Russo-Afghan CONTENTS ix Frontier — Central Asian and Siberian Railways — The Black Sea Fleet — Masterful Declaration of the Tsar — Batoum versus Bulgaria . . . Pp. 77-131 CHAPTER VI THE TWO ALEXANDERS The two cousins — Prince Alexander of Battenberg — A glimpse of him at Bucharest — Prince of Bulgaria Elect — Explosion at the Winter Palace — The Tsar says, " Do your best ! " - Muscovite art of managing men — A Russian Satrapy — The Prince and his Nessus-shirt — " Good, as long as it lasts " • Pour dccnurager les autres — Fat on the Russian fire — Kaulbars and Soboleff — Tactics of the Duumvirs — " Cowardly King Milan" — " Power into Russian hands" — Prince Alexander at Moscow — Turning of the Russian tide — The two deputa- tions— "Not at home!" — ■• Aiit Ccesar, aiit nulliis !" — M. Jonin bullies the Battenberger — The Prince takes the trick — "Je siiis hcnrcux ct travqnilUsi ! " — "Swine, rascals, per- jured rabble ! " — " The Tsar is not Russia" — Military quar- rels — The Prince dances with Madame Jonin — The Prince in England and Austria — His confidences to Herr von Huhn — The Tsar cannot stand liars — A thunderbolt from Russia — The Servians rush to arms — But have to reel back on their pig-styes and their Russian patrons — The two Bul- garias — Climax and anti-climax — La Russie boiide — Cons- piracies to "remove " the Prince — " Beware of the Struma regiment!" — The Piiiizctiraiib — "Here may you see a traitor I " — Muscovite " stouthriet and hamesucken " — An exchange of telegrams— " Farewell to Bulgaria!" — The Prince's Seven Years' War — Worried to death — A thunder- loud "No!" .... Pp. 132-177 CHAPTER VII THE TSAR PANSLAVIST The * ' Father of Lies " — Shuffling of the pack — Domestic policy — IgnatiefTs circular — The Tsar bad at figures — His sovereign responsibility —" One King, one Faith, one Law" — " Rus- X CONTENTS sia for the Russians " — Character of Finland and the Finns — The hall-mark of Muscovy — Violation of Finnish rights — The Baltic Provinces — A bear's skin on the Teutonic bird — German "a foreign language" — Vladimir at Dorpat — Anti-German edicts — Panslavism in Poland — High-handed measures — The Tsar "the best cosmopolite" — Ignorance the pillar of Autocracy — The Tsar as Press Censor — His second sceptre a blacking-brush — The demoralisation of Russia — Famine, fetters ami finance — " C'cst a prendre, on a laisscr ! " — The Russian army — Duelling decree — Another ukase Pp. 178-202 CHAPTER VHI THE TSAR PERSECUTOR A new King o\'er Egypt — M. Pobedonostseff — Are the Jews Revolutionists? — Anti-Semitic riots — Ignalieff's circular — The Tsar Jew-baiter — Race or religion ? - The Russian Ghetto — The ''May Laws" — Prince Metchersky on mi- crobes — Mr. Gladstone and lliu conscience of England Cruildhall meeting and Memorial— Returned by the Tsar un- opened — The Russian Herod — The Tsar Persecutor — Polish Catholics — Baltic Province Lutherans — Barclay de Tolly — The Stundists— History and progress of the sect — Their principles and character — An archiepiscopa! anathema — Anti-Stundist alliance between Church and State — " Gentle pressure" — A modern Torquemada — Mr. Swinburne's counter-anathema . . Pp. 203-234 CHAPTER IX A KEiGN 01-" TERUOli Assassination and executions — A Terrorist ultimatum — What the Nihilists want — A chat with " Stepniak " — Party of the " People's Will " — And of the " People's Rights " — Spiritual and material means — De propagandd fuie — Congress of Lipetsk — Nihilist organisation — Mass trial of Terrorists — Suchanoff executed — General Strelikoff shot — A basketful of eggs — Coronation of the Tsar — Tactics of the Terrorists at Moscow CONTENTS xi — "Nor I either" — Nihilism in the Army — Murder of Colonel Sudeikin — Colonel Aschenbrenner and Baron Stromberg — Vera Filipoff, a tempting Terrorist — Arrests and assassinations— Plots against the Emperor— A life of fear and precaution— Anecdotes— The Grand Morskaia plot, and the Executive Committee — Another mass trial — " Education to be abolished!'' — The Borki catastrophe — "Oh, papa, they'll come and murder us all ! " — A bomb factory at Ziirich — "A paper bullet of the brain " — Madame Tzebri- kova's letter — Its consequences to her — Sophie Giinsberg — General Seliverskoff shot at Paris — A French Exhibition at Moscow — Dynamite one of its exhibits — Proof against bribes — The Moujik Tsar — Shaken nerves — A Ministry of per- sonal protection — The greatest Terrorist of all — A revolting manifesto . . . Pp. 235-272 CHAPTER X ILLNESS AND DEATH Weep, Russia ! "—A Sore Saint — Monscigneur of Kharkoff versus Professor Zacharin — Origin and Course of Illness — Belovishaya — Spala— Story of a Duck — Professor Leyden — Livadia, the Russian Cannes — Father Ivan, the " Wonder- Worker" — Corfu — Princess Alix of Hesse — Diary of Disease —An Angel on Earth— Death— Last Hours— Nature of Malady— A Funeral-Drama in Five Acts— Yalta— Sebastopol — Moscow— St. Petersburg— Processional Pageant— Scene in the Fortress Church— A Prayer by the dead— "The Tsar is dead! Long live the Tsar ! " . Pp. 273-303 CHAPTER XI CHARACTERISTrCS \ "Psychological Enigma" — A Compound Monarch— Not a Military One— The " Peace-keeper ' of Europe— Examina- tion of his Claim to the Title— A Treaty-breaker if a Peace-keeper— European Peace and Russian War— A Second Ivan the Terrible— A " Moujik Tsar "—The " Tsar Pri- soner "—Truth-lover and Truth-teller— His real Feelings di CONTENTS towards France — The Great Mistake of his Reign — The Dumb Ruler of a Voiceless People — Model Husband and Father — Family Life — Denmark an Asylum — "Uncle Sasha " — Contemporary, not of Queen Victoria, but of Queen Isabel — The "Two Alexanders" — Opinions of Lords Rose- bery and Salisbury — M. Leroy-Beaulieu — Mr. Harold Frederic — Professor Geffcken — The Times — A Personal as well as a Political Autocrat — Lady Randolph Churchill — His daily Habits described by Mr. " Lanin " — General Richter, the " Sandalphon of the Empire" — Great Physical Strength — Fondness for Animals — " Sullen, Taciturn, Curt " — Intellectual Tastes — Domestic Habits — De mortins nil niil honnm — Canon Wilberforce — " Resistance to Tyranny is Obedience to God " . Pp. 304-33G CHAPTER XII NICHOLAS II 'What is Nicholas II. ? " — His Teachers — A Panslavist Tutor — General Danilovitch and his Method — Not much of a Soldier — Youthful Characteristics — His Tastes and Reading — " Nothing but good to say of Him " — " Good all Round " — A "Globe-trotter" — Visit to India — In Japan — Narrow Escape at Ossu — His Saviour describes the Incident — " I admired Nicky's Pluck" — At Vladivostock — The Trans- Siberian Railway — The Great Famine — Anecdote by "An Englishman " — The Princesses of Hesse- Darmstadt — " Every one to Heaven in his own way ! " — Betrothal — The Royal Wedding at Coburg — Second Visit to England — Sketch of in the House of Commons — Accession Manifesto — What will he do ? — The Finns — The Jews — Dr. Geffcken on the New Tsar — His Foreign Policy — The Kaiser and the Tsar — Nicholas II. less anti-German than his Father — Two Thousand Telegrams from France — The Emperor and the President — " Grovelling before the Tsar " — England and Russia — Marriage — " Nonsense about me "—See-saw System of Russian Government — A Tsar-Emancipator of his sub- jects' souls ? . . Pp. 337-370 ALEXANDER III CHAPTER I PREDECESSORS The Romanoffs — Holstein-Ciottorps — Paul, llie Madman — Alexander I. — Tale of a sucking-pig — Nicholas I. — Instances of his despotism — Alexander II. — Character- sketch— " Sasha " the "Military Tailor"— The " Tsar Emancipator'' — ^Cyclc of autocratic reforms. Alexander Alexandrovitch Romanoff, the third of his name who ruled All the Russias, was born at St. Petersburg on March lo (O.S. February 26), 1845. He was the second son of Alexander II., who will be known in history as the "Emancipator of the Serfs," and Princess Maria of Hesse-Darm- stadt. For more than a century the Russian Tsars had come to Germany for their wives, so that the' dynasty of the Romanoffs had now little or no Russian blood left in it, as the poet Pushkin used to exemplify by the ingenious process of adding tumbler after tumbler of water to a glass of wine till the mixture at last retained no taste of the original juice of the grape. It was a curious cir- 2 Al.l'XANDEK III cumstance that the founder of the dynast}', which was henceforth to rule by divine right alone in Russia, bhould have been elevated to the Imperial throne by an elective assembly of the various estates. But I do not intend to ask the company of my readers into the mediaeval mists of Muscovite history. Peter the Great was the last of the pure Russian Tsars, who thenceforth became merged by marriage into the IIolstein-Gottorps to such an extent that German blood at last usurped that of the Romanoffs as much as it also replaced that of the Stuarts with us in England. When Prince Peter Dolgoruki, acting as secretary to the Russian Embassy in Paris, was summoned home b}' the Emperor Nicholas, in consequence of something he had written, he replied by offering to send his photo- graph iii.stead, and by begging his Majesty to remember that his (Dolgoruki's) ancestors " were Grand Dukes of Moscow, when those of his Majesty were not even Dukes of Molstein-Gottorp." It will be well to remember the fact of this pre- dominance of the German element in the race of the modern Romanoffs when we come to consider the marked antipathy of some of their number, the subject of the present sketch included, to the country of their origin. l'~or the Anieric;in naval lieutenant was not entirely right when he said, at the taking of the Taku forts, that blood was always thicker than water. It is a curious circumstance, this tendency of modern nations to fall under the sway of alien races and d^'nasties, as witness the Guelph-Saxe-Coburgs in England, the Danes in PREDECESSORS 3 Greece, the Italian Napoleons and Gambettas in France, the French Bernadottes in Norway-Sweden, the Hapsburgs in Mexico, the English in India, the Battenbergs in Bulgaria, and the Holstein-Gottorps in Russia. The subjoined genealogical table shows the descent of Alexander III. as far as from Catherine II., of Catherine II. I r.iui. _l I ' ' 'I Alexandei- I. Nicholas I. Alexander II, Constaiitine. Nicholas. Michael. I I I I I Nicholas. Alexander III. Vladimir. Ale.\is. Marie Scrgius . Paul. (Duchess of Edinburgh). Nicholas. George. XSnia. Michael. Olga. notorious memory, and further back we need not go. As a man must naturally inherit some of the qualities of his ancestors, it may be well to say just a few words about the immediate predecessors of Alexander III. Paul, the son of Catherine II. (though it is not quite so certain that her legitimate husband was his father), was a wildly insane despot. He knouted his subjects into the observance of his slightest caprices. Once asked by a foreign visitor 4 ALEXANDER III who were the most important men in Russia, he replied that there were none save those lie hap- pened to be speaking to, and that their importance lasted only just as long as his conversation with them. Unlike his mother, he was incapable of literature ; Init he once wrote a paragraph for liis own official gazette in which he proposed that quarrels between States should in future be settled by personal encounters between their Sovereigns, each combatant to be attended by his Premier in the character of second. He then caused the paragraph to be copied into a Hamburg print, with the remark that " this was apparently some notion of that madman, Paul." Among other mad things, he conceived the idea of helping Napoleon to expel tlic English from India. His hatred of the modern spirit was so great that he enjoined the players to use the word "permission" instead of " liberty" on their bills, and forbade the Academy of Science to use the word " revolution " when speaking of the courses of the heavenly bodies. Eventually he succumbed to a revolution dii palais. Some of his courtiers thought him much too mad even for a Russian despot, and forced him to abdicate — strangling him to death in the process. His son and successor, vMexander I. (who had been privy to the conspiracy for dethroning his father, but guiltless of his murder), was of a gentle and affectionate disposition, mildly mannered, and sympathetic — weirdly made up of strength and softness, of " manly qualities and feminine weak- ness," as was written of him by Metternich. PREDECESSORS 5 Madame de Stael once told him that his character in itself was " a charter and constitution for his subjects." Like Frederick the Great, he had been educated by a French tutor (La Harpe), by whom his mind had been imbued with very liberal, almost republican, ideas. He was honestly concerned for the welfare of his subjects ; but, while intent on the work of domestic reform, he kept a steady eye on the external aggrandisement of his Empire. With this latter object he entered into a compact with Napoleon for the pursuit of a common career of conquest, but ultimately he fell out witli the Satanic Corsican — as robbers generally do — over the distri- bution of their spoil, and then banded himself with Prussia and other foes of the French. " Napoleon," says an inscription on the battlefield of Borodino, "entered Moscow, 1812 ; Alexander entered Paris, 1814." In the latter year he came over to London, and was immensely feted, as he well deserved to be ; and public curiosity was strongly excited by the Cossacks, mounted on their small white horses with their long spears grounded, keeping guard at the door of Lawrence, the painter, while he took the portrait of their Hetman, Platoff. The Senate at St. Peters- burg voted his political canonisation, and begged him to accept the title " Blessed." " I have always endea- voured," replied Alexander L, " to set the nation an example of simplicity and moderation. I could not accept the title you offer me without departing from my principles." It was then proposed to erect a monument to him. " It is for posterity," he said. 6 ALEXANDER III " to lionour my memory in that way if it deems me worthy of it." His solicitude for the weal of his subjects was warm and genuine, though his good intentions were frequently thwarted by the apathy, the falsehood, and the corruption of his officials. One story will serve to show what he and all the Tsars of Russia have ever had to contend with in this respect. On paying a visit to one of the military colonies, Alexander resolved to inspect every house, so as to satisfy himself as to the condition of the establishment. On every table he found a com- missariat dinner prepared, one of the staple articles of which was a sucking-pig. At last, one of his Majesty's attendants, Prince Volkhonski, suspecting some trick, slily cut off the pig's tail and slipped it into his pocket. On entering the next house, there again Avas a roast pig on the table — but this time without a tail / "I think," said the Prince, "that we have an old friend here." On being questioned as to his meaning, he produced the missing tail, and fitted it to the place from which it had been sliced. Disheartened and disgusted by innumerable frauds of this kind, Alexander I. abandoned the helm in despair to his Minister, Araktcheief, and the Empire returned to its old routine. He died in 1S25, and was succeeded by his second younger brother, Nicholas ; for the real heir to the crown, Constan- tine, was such a startling copy, in mind and person, of his mad father, Paul, that he had to be passed over and allowed to indulge his brutal and eccentric passions in the innocuous obscurity of private life. PREDECESSORS 7 Now came the reign of Nicholas, who, fonuiiig a singular contrast to liis predecessor on the throne, was a despot of the most ancient and approved type. Tall, well-built, handsome, imperious, and impressive, he might have sat to a painter as the incarnation of human pride and autocratic will. Having managed to insert the thin end of the wedge in the reign of Alexander, the friends of freedom in Russia thought they could not have a better opportunity than the present change of sceptre, with all its uncertainties, for widening the rift. But they soon found out that Nicholas was not a man to be trifled with in this respect. For the echoes of the cannon that had saluted his accession had barely died away wlicn the streets of St. Petersburg were again reverberating with the roar of guns, which the new Emperor had turned with terrible effect upon the revolutionists of his capital. Great numbers were killed, and their bodies thrust into the Neva through holes cut in the ice ; while hundreds of the other conspirators were at once packed off to Siberia. Many of these victims of the insurrection had not the faintest notion what they wanted. Some of them had cried : " Long live Constantine ! The Constitution for ever ! " and then inquired : " But who is this Conslilucia ? Is she the wife of the Emperor ? " " Let there be no mind in Russia — I, Nicholas the Tsar, so will it " — such was the ukase practically ascribed to him by a foreign noble. His whole administration was well illustrated by an incident connected with the construction of the railway 8 ALEXANDER III between St. Petersburg and Moscow. The engi- neers had wrangled and jangled so long over the precise direction which this line should take, that at last the Emperor grew utterly sick of the discussion. " Give me a ruler," said his Majesty; and with that he sharply drew a straight line between his two capitals, adding, " Let that be the route." And to this day it is the route, with the result that con- siderable towns and centres of commerce, which it ought to be the function of a railway to connect, are left en I'air, so to speak, at several miles' distance on either side of the line. Once, as head of the Russian Church, he was requested by the Holy Synod, in a long memorandum, to declare whether or not the existence of purgatory was an Orthodox doctrine. " No purgatory," was all he wrote on the margin of the memorial. During his reign which lasted about thirty years, he engaged in four campaigns — that of 1S28-29 against Turkey; that of 1 83 1 for the suppression of the Poles, who had writhed under and risen against his iron rule ; that of 1848—49, in which he joined hands with his fellow-despot at Vienna in order to quench the flames of Hungarian liberty and independence, which had been kindled by Kossuth ; and that of the Crimea, of which the failure broke his proud and sensitive heart. Yet on his death-bed — and this seems to be an authenticated fact — he exhorted his son and successor to liberate the serfs. This son was Alexander II., who was just as un- like his father Nicholas, as the latter had been unlike PREDECESSORS 9 his brother Alexander I. On the other hand, the two first Alexanders, uncle and nephew, had a good deal in common, both being humane, cultured, up- right, and indulgent, comparatively speaking, towards their subjects. The first half-dozen years of Alex- ander II. 's reign formed a period less of reform than of relief; and it was not till 1861 that he managed to act on the advice of his father by issuing what was called " the law for the amelioration of the peasantry," or, in other words, for the emancipation of the serfs. " Of a kind-hearted, humane dispo- sition," wrote Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace of him, " sincerely desirous of maintaining the national honour, but singularly free from military ambition, and imbued with no fanatical belief in the drill- sergeant system of government, Alexander II. was by no means insensible to the spirit of the time. He was well aware of the existing abuses, many of which had been partially concealed from his father, and he had seen how fruitless had been the attempts to eradicate them by a mere repressive system of administration. As hch-apparent, he had taken no part in public affairs, and was consequently in no way bound by antecedents. He had, however, none of the sentimental enthusiasm for liberal institutions which had charg.cteriscd his uncle, Alexander I. On the contrary, he had inherited from his father a strong dislike to sentimentalism and rhetoric of all kinds. This dislike, joined to a goodly portion of sober common sense and a consciousness of enor- mous responsibility, prevented him from being carried away bj' the prevailing excitement. With all that lo ALEXANDER III was generous and humane in the movement he thoroughly sympathised, and he allowed the popular ideas and aspirations to find free utterance ; but he did not at once commit himself to any definite policy, and carefully refrained from all exaggerated expres- sions of reforming zeal." "Though possessing,'' said a writer in the Times, " neither the transcendent genius and Herculean energy of Peter the Great, nor the wonderful intel- ligence and far-sighted political wisdom of Cathe- rine IJ., he did, perhaps, as much as either of these great Sovereigns towards raising his country to the level of West European civilisation. His early life gave little indication of his subsequent activity, and, up till the moment of his accession, no one ever imagined that he would one day play the part of a great reformer." " My son Sasha is an old woman (baba)," said his very father Nicholas of him. " There will be nothing great done in his time." At first, too, that began to be the opinion of '•' Sasha's " own subjects, who could see nothing in their new Sovereign but the making of a " military tailor " — the nickname applied to him from his passion for altering the uniforms of his troops. " I suppose you fancy we have little freedom of speech," said a liberal-minded Russian to M. Leroy-Beaulieu. " Well, one day a student of one of the great Crown colleges, in talking over with his comrades the reforms of Alexander II., declared that the Emperor was nothing but a tailor, meaning to insinuate that he was too fond of altering military uniforms. These words came to the cars of the police, who PREDECESSORS ii carried them to the Sovereign. Tlie iinpiudent youth was summoned by Imperial order to the palace. His parents already saw him on the road to Siberia. And what punishment do you think was inflicted on him ? The Emperor ordered him to be presented with a complete uniform ! " But it was not long before the " military tailor " bloomed out into the "Emancipator of the Serfs." One evening he came into his wife's salon, very much excited, and, showing a paper which he held in his hand, remarked in a tone of vehemence, quite at variance with his usual demeanour, " Here is a description of the inhuman treatment a pro- prietress has been inflicting on her domestic serfs. I shall never sleep calmly till I have put a stop to all that ! " Involving as it did the reconstruction, so to speak, of the whole of Russian society, the emancipation of the serfs was not a thing that could be done with a mere ''sic volo, sic ftibeo " on the part of the Emperor. The main point at issue was whetlier the serfs should become agricultural labourers dependent economically and administra- tively on the landlords, or should be transformed into a class of independent communal proprietors. The Emperor favoured the latter proposal, and the Russian peasantry acquired privileges such as are enjoyed by no others of their class in Europe. Besides this great and sweeping change, which gained for Alexander II. the title of "Tsar Emancipator," his Majesty also appointed and per- sonally presided over a variety of Commissions for the elaboration of other reforms, which included a 12 ALEXANDER III judicial organisation on the fVench model ; a new penal code, and a greatly simplified system of civil and criminal procedure ; a system of local self- government, in which each district and province had its elective assembly, possessing a restricted right of taxation ; a new rural and municipal police under the direction of the Minister of the Interior ; and new municipal institutions, more in accordance with modern notions of civic equality. " The reign of Nicholas," says M. Leroy-Beaulieu in his deep and elaborate work on "The Empire of the Tsars," "had shown that, with all its omni- potence, autocracy was not strong enough to keep Russia fi-om rolling down the incline on which Peter the Great had started her. The Crimean War made patent to all eyes, together with the feebleness of the stationary system, the necessity for Russia of placing herself, socially, if not as yet politically, on a level with the West, if only to be in a condition to stand her own against it. Under Alexander II. the gates were thrown open, and the reform came at last that was to reconcile Russia to herself as well as with Europe. This time it was not a white-washing or a patching-up of the facade-stucco, or mere outer-casing ; it was an upheaving and a remodelling of the very founda- tions of society ; it was the whole people, not one class, that was called to liberty and civilisation. Until the emancipation of the serfs, the work of Peter 1., having left out the bulk of the nation, lacked a basis ; the emancipation gave it one. . . . The reign of Alexander II. may be considered as PREDECESSORS 13 the closing of a long historical cycle — the cycle of autocratic reforms." The Emperor Paul had been little better than a madman. Alexander I. was little better than a dreamer. In Nicholas " the old Muscovite Tsars appeared to revive, rejuvenated and polished up after the modern fashion." Alexander II. was a benevolent if cautious reformer, and his son, Alexander III. — what was he ? The following pages will attempt to show. CHAPTER II HEIR-APPARENT Death of theTsarevitch Nicholas — Alexander heir-apparent — His first rescript — " My son, my heir " — Youthful charac- teristics — Marriage — Marie Feodorovna — A Teutophobe — "Thank God for WoronzofF!" — In opposition — Franco- German war — Visit to England — Anglo-Russian Press amenities — Marie Alexandrowna — Alexander II. in London — The Eastern Ouestion — A Panslavist champion — Russo-Turkish War — Army of the Lom — Character as a commander — Courageous or cowardly ? — The foe of falsehood and corruption — Under arrest — The eve of action. As the second son of his father, the Grand Duke Alexander received the training of a soldier more than of a Sovereign. His elder brother, Nicholas, a fine, tall, amiable Prince, was Tsarevitch, and a very promising heir-apparent he was. But he died at Nice in April 1865 just about the time of Presi- dent Lincoln's assassination, and then his brother, Alexander, became heir to the throne. The disease — -cerebro-spinal meningitis — which carried off the Grand Duke Nicholas had been lurking in his system for several years. It had been aggravated by a fall from his horse, but it was said to have origi- HEIR-APPARENT 15 iiated in the overstrain of a wrestling match to which the Tsarevitch had challenged his cousin, Prince Nicholas of Leuchtenberg. " A post-uwrtem examination," wrote the Lancet, " showed that a tubercular tendency exists in the constitution of a Royal family likely to exercise a most important influence on the history of Europe and the world."* The Tsar himself had hurried to Nice with several members of his family (the Empress was there already), and it is said that the special train which carried the Imperial party from the French frontier to the shore of the Mediterranean was driven by a Polish exile ! Among others wlio had hastened to Nice on the illness of the Tsarevitch taking so serious a turn were the Queen, and Crown Prince, and Princess Dagmar of Denmark, who had been affianced to the Grand Duke Nicholas. With his bride-elect the dying Prince had an interview immediately on her arrival, and confided her to the love and care of his brother Alexander, whom he described as a much better man than himself. Plis obsequies were celebrated at Nice with great cere- * " It is