Alexander II did nothing to guard against the German peril. He might have been the umpire of Central Europe as Alexander I had been fifty years before. He demanded no compensation for the enormous accession of power and territory which Germany had received through the victorious wars of 1863, 1866 and 1870. He insisted on no guarantees. When after Sedan, Thiers came to St. Petersburg to obtain the intervention of the Russian Empire, he was dismissed with empty words. One year after Thiers' fruitless journey, Emperor William paid an official visit to his nephew, Alexander II, and the Tsar once more proclaimed the indissoluble solidarity of Russia with Germany. Until the end of his reign the German-Austrian-Russian Alliance, the famous dynastic Alliance of the Three Emperors remained the keystone of European policy and the mainstay of Russian reaction.
XI
The influence of Germany at the Russian Court was strengthened by the influence of Germany on the Russian bureaucracy. An agricultural community without a middle class, Russia has had to recruit her civil services almost entirely
