Poland. For the next twelve months Alexius was kept constantly
on the move. His wife joined him at Thorn in December, but
in April 1712 a peremptory ukaz ordered him off to the army in
Pomerania, and in the autumn of the same year he was forced
to accompany his father on a tour of inspection through
Finland. Evidently Peter was determined to tear his son
away from a life of indolent ease. Immediately on his
return from Finland Alexius was despatched by his father
to Staraya Rusya and Ladoga to see to the building of new
ships. This was the last commission entrusted to him.
On his return to the capital Peter, in order to see what
progress his son had made in mechanics and mathematics,
asked him to draw something of a technical nature for his
inspection. Alexius, in order to escape such an ordeal,
resorted to the abject expedient of disabling his right hand by a
pistol-shot. In no other way could the tsarevich have offended
his father so deeply. He had behaved like a cowardly recruit
who mutilates himself to escape military service. After
this, Peter seemed for a time to take no further interest in
Alexius. He left him entirely to himself. He employed him no
more. He no longer pressed him to attend public functions.
Alexius rejoiced at this welcome change, but he had cause
rather to fear it. It marked the deepening of a hatred which
might have been overcome. Alexius was evidently consoling
himself with the reflexion that the future belonged to
him. He was well aware that the mass of the Russian nation
was on his side. Nearly all the prelates were devoted to
him. Equally friendly were the great boyar families. All
Alexius had to do was to sit still, keep out of his father's
way as much as possible and await the natural course of
events. But with Peter the present was everything. He could
not afford to leave anything to chance. All his life long
he had been working incessantly with a single object --the
regeneration of Russia. What if his successor refused to tread
in his father's footsteps or, still worse, tried to destroy his
father's work? By some such process of reasoning as this must
the idea of changing the succession to the throne, by setting
aside Alexius, have first occurred to the mind of Peter the
Great. Nevertheless he made one last effort to reclaim his
son. On the 22nd of October 1715 Alexius' consort, the princess
Charlotte, died, after giving birth to a son, the grand-duke
Peter, afterwards Peter II. On the day of the funeral Peter
addressed to Alexius a stern letter of warning and remonstrance,
urging him no longer to resemble the slothful servant in the
parable, and threatening to cut him off, as though he were a
gangrenous swelling, if he did not acquiesce in his father's
plans. But it was now that Alexius showed what a poor
creature he really was. He wrote a pitiful reply to his
father, offering to renounce the succession in favour of his
baby half-brother Peter, who had been born the day after the
princess Charlotte's funeral. As if this were not enough, in
January 1716 he wrote to his father for permission to become a
monk. Still Peter did not despair. On the 26th of August
1716 he wrote to Alexius from abroad urging him, if he
desired to remain tsarevich, to join him and the army without
delay. Rather than face this ordeal Alexius fled to Vienna
and placed himself under the protection of his brother-in-law,
the emperor Charles VI., who sent him for safety first to the
Tirolean fortress of Ahrenberg, and finally to the castle of
San Elmo at Naples. He was accompanied throughout his journey
by his mistress, the Finnish girl Afrosina. That the emperor
sincerely sympathized with Alexius, and suspected Peter of
harbouring murderous designs against his son, is plain from
his confidential letter to George I. of England, whom he
consulted on this delicate affair. Peter's agitation was
extreme. The flight of the tsarevich to a foreign potentate
was a reproach and a scandal. He must be recovered and
brought back to Russia at all hazards. This difficult task
was accomplished by Count Peter Tolstoi, the most subtle and
unscrupulous of Peter's servants; but terrorized though he
was, Alexius would only consent to return on his father solemnly
swearing, ``before God and His judgment seat,'' that if he
came back he should not be punished in the least, but cherished
as a son and allowed to live quietly on his estates and marry
Afrosina. On the 31st of January 1718 the tsarevich reached
Moscow. Peter had already determined to institute a most searching
inquisition in order to get at the bottom of the mystery of the
flight. On the 18th of February a ``confession'' was extorted
from Alexius which implicated most of his friends, and he
then publicly renounced the succession to the throne in favour
of the baby grand-duke Peter Petrovich. A horrible reign of
terror ensued, in the course of which the ex-tsaritsa Eudoxia
was dragged from her monastery and publicly tried for alleged
adultery, while all who had in any way befriended Alexius were
impaled, broken on the wheel and otherwise lingeringly done to
death. All this was done to terrorize the reactionaries and
isolate the tsarevich. In April 1718 fresh confessions were
extorted from Alexius, now utterly broken and half idiotic with
fright. Yet even now there were no actual facts to go upon.
Alexius' ``evil designs'' were still in foro conscientiae,
and had not been, perhaps never would be, translated into
practice. The worst that could be brought against him was
that he had wished his father's death. In the eyes of Peter,
his son was now a self-convicted and most dangerous traitor,
whose life was forfeit. But there was no getting over the
fact that his father had sworn ``before the Almighty and His
judgment seat'' to pardon him and let him live in peace if he
returned to Russia. From Peter's point of view the question
was, did the enormity of the tsarevich's crime absolve the
tsar from the oath which he had taken to spare the life of
this prodigal son? This question was solemnly submitted to
a grand council of prelates, senators, ministers and other
dignitaries on the 13th of June 1718. The clergy left the
matter to the tsar's own decision. The temporal dignitaries
declared the evidence to be insufficient and suggested that
Alexius should be examined by torture. Accordingly, on
the 19th of June, the weak and ailing tsarevich received
twenty-five strokes with the knout (as then administered
nobody ever survived thirty), and on the 24th fifteen more.
It was hardly possible that he could survive such treatment;
the natural inference is that he was not intended to survive
it. Anyway, he expired two days later in the guardhouse of
the citadel of St Petersburg, two days after the senate had
condemned him to death for imagining rebellion against his
father, and for hoping for the co-operation of the common
people and the armed intervention of his brother-in-law, the
emperor. This shameful sentence was the outcome of mingled
terror and obsequiousness. Abominable, unnatural as Peter's
conduct to his unhappy and innocent son undoubtedly was,
there is no reason to suppose that he ever regretted it. He
argued that a single worthless life stood in the way of the
regeneration of Russia, and he therefore deliberately removed it.
See Robert Nisbet Bain, The First Romanovs (London, 1905). (R. N. B.)
ALFANI, DOMENICO, italian painter, was born at Perugia
towards the close of the 15th century. He was a contemporary
of Raphael, with whom he studied in the school of Perugino.
The two artists lived on terms of intimate friendship, and
the influence of the more distinguished of the two is so
clearly traceable in the works of the other, that these
have frequently been attributed to Raphael. Towards the
close of his life Alfani gradually changed his style and
approximated to that of the later Florentine school. The
date of his death, according to some, was 1540, while others
say he was alive in 1553. Pictures by Alfani may be seen in
collections at Florence and in several churches in Perugia.
ALFELD, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of
Hanover, 10 m. W. of Hildesheim, on the river Leine and
the Hanover-Cassel main line of railway. Pop. (1900)
4900. It has a handsome church with twin spires, and training
colleges for schoolmasters and theological candidates.
Its industries are flourishing, and embrace paper-making,
agricultural machine- works, iron-founding and flax-spinning.
ALFIERI, VITTORIO, COUNT (1749-1803), Italian dramatist,
was born on the 17th of January 1749 at Asti in Piedmont. He
lost his father in early infancy; but he continued to reside
with his mother, who married a second time, till his tenth
year, when he was placed at the academy of Turin. After
he had passed a twelvemonth at the academy, he went on a
short visit to a relation who dwelt at Coni; and during his
stay there he made his first poetical attempt in a sonnet
chiefly borrowed from lines in Ariosto and Metastasio,
the only poets he had at that time read. When thirteen
years of age he was induced to begin the study of civil and
canonical law; but the attempt only served to disgust him
with every species of application and to increase his relish
for the perusal of French romances. By the death of his
uncle, who had hitherto taken some charge of his education
and conduct, he was left, at the age of fourteen, to enjoy
without control his vast paternal inheritance, augmented by
the recent accession of his uncle's fortune. He now began
to attend the riding-school, where he acquired that rage
for horses and equestrian exercise which continued to be one
of his strongest passions till the close of his existence.
After some time spent in alternate fits of extravagant
dissipation and ill-directed study, he was seized with a desire
of travelling; and having obtained permission from the king,
he departed in 1766, under the care of an English preceptor.
Restless and unquiet, he posted with the utmost rapidity
through the towns of Italy; and his improvement was such as
was to be expected from his mode of travelling and his previous
habits. Hoping to find in foreign countries some relief from the
tedium and ennui with which he was oppressed, and being anxious
to become acquainted with the French theatre, he proceeded to
Paris. But he appears to have been completely dissatisfied
with everything he witnessed in France and contracted a
dislike to its people, which his intercourse in future years
rather contributed to augment than diminish. In Holland he
became deeply enamoured of a married lady, who returned his
attachment, but who was soon obliged to accompany her husband to
Switzerland. Alfieri, whose feelings were of the most impetuous
description, was in despair at this separation, and returned
to his own country in the utmost anguish and despondency of
mind. While under this depression of spirits he was induced
to seek alleviation from works of literature; and the perusal
of Plutarch's Lives, which he read with profound emotion,
inspired him with an enthusiastic passion for freedom and
independence. Under the influence of this rage for liberty
he recommenced his travels; and his only gratification, in
the absence of freedom among the continental states, appears
to have been derived from contemplating the wild and sterile
regions of the north of Sweden, where gloomy forests, lakes
and precipices conspired to excite those sublime and melancholy
ideas which were congenial to his disposition. Everywhere
