cultivated by every right-minded tsar. His elder brother
when on his deathbed had expressed a wish that his affianced
bride, Princess Dagmar of Denmark, should marry his successor,
and this wish was realized on the 9th of November 1866. The
union proved a most happy one and remained unclouded to the
end. During those years when he was heir-apparent--1865 to
1881--he did not play a prominent part in public affairs, but
he allowed it to become known that he had certain ideas of his
own which did not coincide with the principles of the existing
government. He deprecated what he considered undue foreign
influence in general, and German influence in particular, and
he longed to see the adoption of genuine national principles
in all spheres of official activity, with a view to realizing
his ideal of a homogeneous Russia--homogeneous in language,
administration and religion. With such ideas and aspirations
he could hardly remain permanently in cordial agreement
with his father, who, though a good patriot according to his
lights, had strong German sympathies, often used the German
language in his private relations, occasionally ridiculed
the exaggerations and eccentricities of the Slavophils and
based his foreign policy on the Prussian alliance. The
antagonism first appeared publicly during the Franco-German
War, when the tsar supported the cabinet of Berlin and the
cesarevich did not conceal his sympathies with the French.
It reappeared in an intermittent fashion during the years
1875-1879, when the Eastern question produced so much excitement
in all ranks of Russian society. At first the cesarevich was
more Slavophil than the government, but his phlegmatic nature
preserved him from many of the exaggerations indulged in by
others, and any of the prevalent popular illusions he may
have imbibed were soon dispelled by personal observation in
Bulgaria, where he commanded the left wing of the invading
army. The Bulgarians had been represented in St Petersburg
and Moscow not only as martyrs but also as saints, and a
very little personal experience sufficed to correct the
error. Like most of his brother officers he could not feel
any very great affection for the ``little brothers,'' as the
Bulgarians were then commonly called, and he was constrained to
admit that the Turks were by no means so black as they had been
painted. He did not, however, scandalize the believers by any
public expression of his opinions, and did not indeed make himself
conspicuous in any way during the campaign. Never consulted
on political questions, he confined himself to his military
duties and fulfilled them in a conscientious and unobtrusive
manner. After many mistakes and disappointments, the army
reached Constantinople and the treaty of San Stefano was
signed, but much that had been obtained by that important
document had to be sacrificed at the congress of Berlin.
Prince Bismarck failed to do what was confidently expected of
him. In return for the Russian support, which had enabled
him to create the German empire, it was thought that he would
help Russia to solve the Eastern question in accordance with
her own interests, but to the surprise and indignation of
the cabinet of St Petersburg he confined himself to acting
the part of ``honest broker'' at the congress, and shortly
afterwards he ostentatiously contracted an alliance with
Austria for the express purpose of counteracting Russian
designs in Eastern Europe. The cesarevich could point to
these results as confirming the views he had expressed during
the Franco-German War, and he drew from them the practical
conclusion that for Russia the best thing to do was to recover
as quickly as possible from her temporary exhaustion and
to prepare for future contingencies by a radical scheme of
military and naval reorganization. In accordance with this
conviction, he suggested that certain reforms should be
introduced. During the campaign in Bulgaria he had found by
painful experience that grave disorders and gross corruption
existed in the military administration, and after his return
to St Petersburg he had discovered that similar abuses existed
in the naval department. For these abuses, several high-placed
personages--among others two of the grand-dukes-- were believed
to be responsible, and he called his father's attention
to the subject. His representations were not favourably
received. Alexander II. had lost much of the reforming zeal
which distinguished the first decade of his reign, and had no
longer the energy required to undertake the task suggested to
him. The consequence was that the relations between father
and son became more strained. The latter must have felt that
there would be no important reforms until he himself succeeded
to the direction of affairs. That change was much nearer
at hand than was commonly supposed. On the 13th of March
1881 Alexander II. was assassinated by a band of Nihilists,
and the autocratic power passed to the hands of his son.
In the last years of his reign, Alexander II. had been
much exercised by the spread of Nihilist doctrines and the
increasing number of anarchist conspiracies, and for some
time he had hesitated between strengthening the hands of the
executive and making concessions to the widespread political
aspirations of the educated classes. Finally he decided in
favour of the latter course, and on the very day of his death
he signed a ukaz, creating a number of consultative commissions
which might have been easily transformed into an assembly of
notables. Alexander III. determined to adopt the opposite
policy. He at once cancelled the ukaz before it was published,
and in the manifesto announcing his accession to the throne
he let it be very clearly understood that he had no intention
of limiting or weakening the autocratic power which he had
inherited from his ancestors. Nor did he afterwards show any
inclination to change his mind. All the internal reforms which
he initiated were intended to correct what he considered as
the too liberal tendencies of the previous reign, so that he
left behind him the reputation of a sovereign of the retrograde
type. In his opinion Russia was to be saved from anarchical
disorders and revolutionary agitation, not by the parliamentary
institutions and so-called liberalism of western Europe, but by
the three principles which the elder generation of the Slavophils
systematically recommended--nationality, Eastern Orthodoxy and
autocracy. His political ideal was a nation containing only
one nationality, one language, one religion and one form
of administration; and he did his utmost to prepare for the
realization of this ideal by imposing the Russian language and
Russian schools on his German, Polish and Finnish subjects, by
fostering Eastern Orthodoxy at the expense of other confessions,
by persecuting the Jews and by destroying the remnants of
German, Polish and Swedish institutions in the outlying
provinces. In the other provinces he sought to counteract
what he considered the excessive liberalism of his father's
reign. For this purpose he clipped the feeble wings of the
zemstvo, an elective local administration resembling the county
and parish councils in England, and placed the autonomous
administration of the peasant communes under the supervision
of landed proprietors appointed by the government. At the
same time he sought to strengthen and centralize the imperial
administration, and to bring it more under his personal
control. In foreign affairs he was emphatically a man of
peace, but not at all a partisan of the docrrine of peace at any
price, and he followed the principle that the best means of
averting war is to be well prepared for it. Though indignant
at the conduct of Prince Bismarck towards Russia, he avoided
an open rupture with Germany, and even revived for a time the
Three Emperors' Alliance. It was only in the last years of
his reign, when M. Katkov had acquired a certain influence
over him, that he adopted towards the cabinet of Berlin a
more hostile attitude, and even then he confined himself to
keeping a large quantity of troops near the German frontier,
and establishing cordial relations with France. With regard
to Bulgaria he exercised similar self-control. The efforts of
Prince Alexander and afterwards of Stamboloff to destroy Russian
influence in the principality excited his indignation, but
he persistently vetoed all proposals to intervene by force of
arms. In Central Asian affairs he followed the traditional
policy of gradually extending Russian domination without
provoking a conflict with Great Britain, and he never allowed
the bellicose partisans of a forward policy to get out of
hand. As a whole his reign cannot be regarded as one of the
eventful periods of Russian history; but it must be admitted that
under his hard unsympathetic rule the country made considerable
progress. He died at Livadia on the 1st of November 1894,
and was succeeded by his eldest son, Nicholas II. (D. M. W.)
ALEXANDER I. (c. 1078-1124), king of Scotland, was the fourth
son of Malcolm Canmore by his wife (St) Margaret, grand-niece
of Edward the Confessor. On the death of his brother Edgar
in 1107 he succeeded to the Scottish crown; but, in accordance
with Edgar's instructions, he inherited only a part of its
possessions. By a partition, the motive of which is not
quite certain, the districts south of the Forth and Clyde
were erected into an earldom for Alexander's younger brother,
David. Alexander, dissatisfied, sought to obtain the whole,
but without success. A curious combination of the fierce
warrior and the pious churchman, he manifested the one
aspect of his character in his ruthless suppression of an
insurrection in his northern dominion (thus gaining for himself
the title of ``the Fierce''), the other in his munificent
foundation of bishoprics and abbeys. Among the latter were
those of Scone and Inchcolm. His strong championship of the
independence of the Scottish church involved him in struggles
with both the English metropolitan sees. He died on the 27th
of April 1124, and was succeeded by his brother, David I.
ALEXANDER II. (1198-1249), king of Scotland, son of William
the Lion and Ermengarde of Beaumont, was born at Haddington
in 1198, and succeeded to the kingdom on the death of his
father in 1214. The year after his accession the clans
MacWilliam and MacHeth, inveterate enemies of the Scottish
crown, broke into revolt; but the insurrection was speedily
quelled. In the same year Alexander joined the English
barons in their struggle against John, and led an army into
England in support of their cause; but on the conclusion of
peace after John's death between his youthful son Henry III.
and the French prince Louis, the Scottish king was included
in the pacification. The reconciliation thus effected
was further strengthened by the marriage of Alexander to
Henry's sister Joanna in 1221. The next year was marked by
the subjection of the hitherto semi-independent district of
Argyll. A revolt in Galloway in 1235 was crushed without
difficulty; nor did an invasion attempted soon afterwards
by its exiled leaders meet with any better fortune. Soon
afterwards a claim for homage from Henry of England drew
forth from Alexander a counter-claim to the northern English
counties. The dispute, however, was settled by a compromise in
1237. A threat of invasion by Henry in 1243 for a time
interrupted the friendly relations between the two countries;
but the prompt action of Alexander in anticipating his
attack, and the disinclination of the English barons for
