CHAPTER LX.
RUSSIA SINCE THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA.
Alexander I. and the Holy Alliance.—Upon the downfall of Napoleon, Alexander I. (1801–1825) of Russia organized the celebrated union known as the Holy Alliance. This was a league embracing as its chief members Russia, Austria, and Prussia, the ostensible object of which was the maintenance of religion, peace, and order in Europe, and the reduction to practice in politics of the maxims of Christ. The several sovereigns entering into the union promised to be fathers to their people, to rule in love and with reference solely to the promotion of the welfare of their subjects, and to help one another as brothers to maintain just government and prevent wrong.
All this had a very millennial look. But the "Holy Alliance" very soon became practically a league for the maintenance of absolute principles of government, in opposition to the liberal tendencies of the age. Under the pretext of maintaining religion, justice, and order, the sovereigns of the union acted in concert to suppress every aspiration among their subjects for political liberty. Yet, when Alexander founded the alliance, he meant all that he said. But conspiracies among his own subjects, and popular uprisings throughout Europe, all tended to create in him a revulsion of feeling. From an ardent apostle of liberal ideas, such as he was during all the earlier part of his reign, he was transformed into a violent absolutist, and spent all his later years in aiding the despotic rulers of Spain, Italy, and Germany to crush every uprising among their subjects for political freedom.
This reactionary policy of Alexander caused bitter disappointment among the Liberals in Russia, the number of whom was large,
