ALEXANDER II. 



11 



mounted the throne of the exhausted empire 

 on March 3, 1855. 



The spread of education in Russia had as 

 its concomitant an extension of liberal ideas. 

 The impressionable religious character of the 

 Russian mind causes a reform movement in 

 Russia to rapidly break out of the bounds 

 of the timely and the practicable. Relieved 

 from the repressive tyranny and the military 

 code of the reign of Nicholas, Young Russia 

 indulged in dreams of social regeneration 

 which were too bright to be realized. The 

 new Czar was in thorough sympathy with the 

 progressive spirit of the time. The reforms 

 which he instituted in the earlier part of his 

 reign seemed in the minds of the enthusiastic 

 revolutionists, who formed three quarters of 

 the educated people of Russia, to open an era 

 of liberty and enlightenment which was to 

 place Russia in the van of all the nations. 

 Alexander was not carried away with the ex- 

 travagant enthusiasm which was rife; but, 

 while proceeding with caution, he showed 

 himself disposed to follow to the farthest 

 practicable extent the path of social and politi- 

 cal reform. On the 3d of March, 1863, he ac- 

 complished by his fiat one of the most gigan- 

 tic and far-reaching revolutionary events of 

 all history the emancipation of the Russian 

 serfs. This was the one popular reform of his 

 reign which he never sought to modify or re- 

 call. As he was revered in his life-time by the 

 liberated peasantry as the Czar Emancipator, 

 so he will live in history by the same title as 

 one of the most illustrious of his line. Besides 

 the great act of his reign, he instituted internal 

 reforms of great importance. To strike off 

 the shackles of thought, to open the press for 

 the free expression of opinion, and to rid the 

 universities of the drill-masters who subjected 

 professors and students to the discipline of the 

 barracks and exercised a ruthless and ignorant 

 censorship over the studies, was one of the 

 earliest acts of the reforming Czar, and one of 

 the first to be revoked. The system of educa- 

 tion was in many particulars improved. The 

 army and navy were reorganized. Trade and 

 industry were specially encouraged. New 

 commercial routes were opened. A revision 

 of the laws was taken in hand. A judicial 

 system on the French model was instituted, the 

 penal code was framed, and the methods of civil 

 and criminal procedure were greatly simplified. 

 A new system of municipal administration 

 was introduced. Limited rights of local self- 

 government and taxation were accorded to 

 districts and provinces, to be exercised by elec- 

 tive assemblies. It was hoped and expected 

 that Alexander would end by conferring a con- 

 stitution upon Russia, and confide to the people 

 the control of the national destinies. Sudden- 

 ly the Czar stopped short in his progressive 

 course, reintroduced the harshest of the repres- 

 sive regulations which he had abolished, and 

 devoted the rest of his life in vainly striving to 

 lay the spirit which he had himself invoked. 



The courage with which he persisted in the re- 

 actionary policy, offending the most intelligent 

 section of the people, and standing in hourly 

 danger of assassination, was equal to that with 

 which he had faced the wrath of the aristoc- 

 racy in abolishing serfage. He probably made 

 up his mind tardily that the autocratic princi- 

 ple was essential to the unity and happiness of 

 Russia, and that he had imperiled it and must 

 rescue it at all hazards. The heterogeneous 

 races in Europe and Asia, standing on very 

 different planes of civilization, could hardly be 

 made the recipients of equal rights of repre- 

 sentation in a constitutional state without 

 swamping the culture of the very classes who 

 were clamoring for a constitution. Then the 

 idea of the autocracy is so bound up with the 

 religious sentiments of the mass of the people 

 that Alexander II probably recoiled from the 

 responsibility of subjecting their faith and 

 morals to the strain they would have to 

 undergo upon his abdicating his traditional au- 

 thority, and breaking off his paternal relations 

 to his people. 



Prudence and benevolence were the lead- 

 ing traits of Alexander's character. Without 

 being endowed with profound sagacity, he 

 sought conscientiously to make up his own 

 mind in every juncture, and in every course 

 which he chose was carried by circumstances 

 farther than he foresaw. He had far-sighted 

 men to advise him, but, instead of implicitly 

 trusting to their genius, he followed in great 

 matters his independent judgment, from a sense 

 of duty rather than from self-confidence. He 

 was never carried away with enthusiasm, nor 

 over-hopeful of grand results, but was easily 

 influenced by popular sentiment, which he 

 gave way to as far as his cautious nature would 

 admit. In the emancipation of the serfs his 

 heart was thoroughly enlisted, and he acted in 

 advance of public opinion ; in everything else 

 he followed hesitatingly, and always feeling his 

 way. The power of Russia was rapidly ex- 

 tended in Asia during the whole of Alexan- 

 der's reign. In 1860 a favorable treaty was 

 struck with China, by which Manchooria was 

 secured. In Central Asia one khanate after 

 the other was put through the gradual process 

 which ends in absorption into the Muscovite 

 dominion. In Europe, Russia was silent for 

 many years. She was not "sulking, but re- 

 cruiting," Gortchakoff declared. In 1863 the 

 Polish rebellion might have been successful 

 but for the aid of Prussia. Then Prince Gort- 

 chakoff informed the "Western powers that 

 Russia would listen to no intercessions on be- 

 half of the " kingdom of Poland." During the 

 Franco-German War the keen diplomat im- 

 proved the situation and repudiated the stipu- 

 lation in the Treaty of Paris forbidding Russia 

 to maintain a naval armament in the Black 

 Sea, on the ground that treaties are only bind- 

 ing so long as both parties are agreed ! This 

 cool declaration placed Russia again in her 

 traditional attitude. But for the events of 



