284: ALEXANDER (RUSSIA) of Prussia, born April 29, 1818. From the cradle he was the object of the most tender love of both his parents. His education was exceedingly careful. His father directed it, and gave almost daily attention to its progress. Gen. Frederics, and afterward Gen. Kavelin, were his immediate tutors. Contrary to the previous usage with Russian imperial princes, his uncle Alexander I. and his father were educated by foreigners. Alexander II. re- ceived instruction mainly from native Russians, among whom Zhukovsky, one of the greatest Russian poets, filled the chief place. Without transcendent abilities, Alexander learned well everything taught him. His judgment and perception were clear, and he seldom showed those outbreaks of violent passion which had always been prominent characteristics of the Romanoffs. This gentleness of character he inherited from his mother. Early in youth he showed a love of justice and forbearance, often trying to assuage the feelings which had been wounded by the asperity of his father. Before seeing foreign countries, according to the wish of Nicholas, he travelled all over Russia. When he approached manhood, the prince de Lieven, formerly Russian ambassador in Lon- don, was made his tutor, principally to acquaint him with the diplomacy of Europe, its routine and etiquette, and to accompany him in his travels in England, Germany, and Italy. His father's antipathy to Louis Philippe, however, prevented him from visiting France during the reign of that king. On April 28, 1841, he married Maria Alexandrovna, daughter of the grand duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, born in 1824. It was wholly a love match, the young prince having made his own choice among a host of German princesses. His majority was declared on May 8, 1834, and from the age of 18 he was admitted by his father to study the diffi- cult task of governing the empire, by attend- ance at all the sittings of ministers with the emperor ; and when in 1846 Nicholas resided for several months in Italy, he delegated to his son all his vast powers. Indeed, to the end of his father's life the relations of the two were most confidential and affectionate. On March 2, 1855, he mounted the throne, at a most critical moment for Russia. Nicholas had left the country engaged single-handed in a war against England, France, Turkey, and Sardinia, with Austria as a passive enemy. For a year Alexander unflinchingly continued the strife. Sebastopol was taken in September, 1855 ; but the allies won nothing more, and the Russian resistance continued. During the en- suing winter the neutral German states, espe- cially Prussia and Saxony, finding Louis Na- poleon not averse to peace, offered mediation. An armistice was agreed upon in March, 1856, a conference convoked at Paris, and a final treaty concluded there on the 30th of that month. On Sept. 7, 1856, Alexander was solemnly crowned at Moscow. Since then he has relaxed the lines drawn to the utmost ten- sion by his predecessor. He began with eman- cipating the nation from the military routine which permeated every branch of the adminis- tration. He reorganized the army, dissolved the greater part of the military colonies, freed public instruction from military discipline, and, instead of placing discharged officers as tutors and professors at the head of the educational establishments, appointed men fitted by special studies for these positions. The censorship was considerably relaxed and limited, and for the first time genuine publicity was introduced into Russia. He prohibited espionage, and in- stituted measures against official corruption, allowing it to be ferreted out and exposed. He advanced young men in the different branches of the public service, superseding those whose only merit was long routine. He gave a new impulse to internal industry and trade, t the same time that he sought to de- velop the national commercial marine, and to induce native merchants to extend their rela- tions with foreign countries. He annulled the impediments which prevented Russians from visiting foreign lands ; granted a general am- nesty for political offenders, Poles and Russians, recalling the exiles from Siberia, and allowing fugitives to return ; and inaugurated that vast system of internal communication which is to cover his immense empire with nets of rail- roads. His greatest measure of reform, how- ever, is the emancipation of the serfs. He had conceived from his earliest youth the idea of this measure, and was assisted by Nicholas Milutin and Gen. Rostoftzoff in the preliminary steps. He silenced the opposition of the serf- owners by intimating to them that if there was to be revolution, it had better begin at the summit than at the bottom of society. Their emancipation was decreed March 8, 1861, and carried out within the following two years. His reformatory activity, however, was in- terrupted, and to a degree checked, by the Polish insurrection of January, 1863, which was finally crushed in the spring of 1864, and punished by the most rigorous measures against Polish nationality, followed by re- strictions of a milder kind imposed upon other non-Russian provinces of the empire. In 1865 the czar rejected the demand of the old Mos- cow nobility for a representative government. An attempt upon his life, April 16, 1866, by Dimitri Karakozoff, was frustrated by the in- terposition of the peasant Komisaroff, who was ennobled as a reward for his action. A second attempt upon his life was made at the Paris exhibition of 1867, by Berezowski, a Pole. The work of reform was resumed in 1870, when the surprising successes of the Germans startled the Russian nation. The hereditary character of the priesthood was abolished, the army system was reorganized on the Prussian model, and vast measures for education were inaugurated. While persever- ing in his steady progress of annexation in central Asia, the czar in 1867 divested him-
