war of revenge. He even proposed a punitive expedition against Paris and to blow up the Tena Bridge in mere wanton vindictiveness. Alexander I insisted that not a stone of the French capital should be touched, although the French armies only two years before had destroyed Moscow, the heart and sanctuary of Holy Russia. Prussia also demanded that a despotic Government should be imposed upon the French people, even as in 1873 Bismarck demanded that a revolutionary Government should be imposed on the French people. Alexander I insisted that the Bourbons should grant a constitutional Government.
Unfortunately the disinterested foreign policy of Russia was generally placed at the service of Prussia and Austria. On the assumption that a political understanding of the three Conservative Empires was a necessary condition of the preservation of law and order, Russia made common cause with her neighbours. As M. de Wesselitsky recently abundantly proved in his illuminating book, the Triple Alliance has been the most sinister influence of Russian and European politics in the nineteenth century, and the only Power to profit by the Alliance of the Emperors was the Kingdom of Prussia. No
