guidance in texts and passages of scripture. It was not,
however, according to his own account, till he met the Baroness
de Krudener--a religious adventuress who made the conversion
of princes her special mission--at Basel, in the autumn of
1813, that his soul found peace. From this time a mystic
pietism became the avowed force of his political, as of his
private actions. Madame de Krudener, and her colleague, the
evangelist Empaytaz, became the confidants of the emperor's
most secret thoughts; and during the campaign that ended in
the occupation of Paris the imperial prayer-meetings were
the oracle on whose revelations hung the fate of the world.
Such was Alexander's mood when the downfall of Napoleon left
him the most powerful sovereign in Europe. With the memory
of Tilsit still fresh in men's minds, it was not unnatural
that to cynical men of the world like Metternich he merely
seemed to be disguising ``under the language of evangelical
abnegation'' vast and perilous schemes of ambition. The puzzled
powers were, in fact, the more inclined to be suspicious in
view of other, and seemingly inconsistent, tendencies of the
emperor, which yet seemed all to point to a like disquieting
conclusion. For Madame de Krudener was not the only influence
behind the throne; and, though Alexander had declared war
against the Revolution, Laharpe was once more at his elbow,
and the catchwords of the gospel of humanity were still on his
lips. The very proclamations which denounced Napoleon
as ``the genius of evil,'' denounced him in the name of
``liberty,'' and of ``enlightenment.'' A monstrous intrigue
was suspected for the alliance of the eastern autocrat with
the Jacobinism of all Europe, which would have issued in the
substitution of an all-powerful Russia for an all-powerful
France. At the congress of Vienna Alexander's attitude
accentuated this distrust. Castlereagh, whose single-minded
aim was the restoration of ``a just equilibrium'' in Europe,
reproached the tsar to his face for a ``conscience'' which
suffered him to imperil the concert of the powers by keeping
his hold on Poland in violation of his treaty obligation.7
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.
