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.”[1]
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!”[2] 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.”[3] 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.[4]
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’Istria.
Authorities.—F. de Martens, Recueil des traités conclus par la Russie, &c. (St Petersb., 1874, &c.); Wellington Despatches; Castlereagh Correspondence; Prince Adam Czartoryski, Mémoires et correspondance avec l’empereur Alexandre I. (Paris, 1887, 2 vols.). P. Bailleu (ed). Briefwechsel König Friedrich Wilhelm’s III. und der Königin 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 Napoléon d’après leur correspondance inédite (Paris, 1901); Joseph de Maistre, Mémoires historiques et correspondance diplomatique, ed. A. Blanc (2nd ed., 1859); Comtesse de Choiseul-Gouffier, Mémoires historiques sur l’empereur Alexandre (1829), and Reminiscences sur l’empereur Alexandre I., &c. (Paris, 1862); Rulemann Friedrich Eylert, Charakterzüge und historische Fragmente aus dem Leben König 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 Congrès 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, 6 vols.); Theodor Schiemann, Geschichte Russlands unter Kaiser 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, Napoléon 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.)
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
