The last army gathered by an Achaemenian king was shattered in

the battle called popularly after the city of Arbela some 60 m.

distant, or more precisely after the village of Gaugamela hard

by. Darius fled eastwards into Media and again Alexander waited

till he had secured the provinces to the south. He followed the

Tigris into Babylonia, the central seat of the empire and its

richest region, and from Babylon went on to seize the fabulous

riches which the Persian kings had amassed in their spring

residence, Susa. Thence he at last ascended upon the Iranian

plateau. The mountain tribes on the road (the Oxii, Pers,

Huzha), accustomed to exact blackmail even from the king's

train, learnt by a bitter lesson that a stronger hand had

come to wield the empire. Alexander entered Persis, the

cradle of the Achaemenian house, and came upon fresh masses of

treasure in the royal city, Persepolis. He destroyed the royal

palace by fire, an act which has been variously estimated by

historians. Ostensibly a solemn revenge for the burning of Greek

temples by Xerxes, it has been justified as a symbolical act

calculated to impress usefully the imagination of the East, and

condemned as a senseless and vainglorious work of destruction.

With the spring of 330 Alexander was prepared for further

pursuit. Darius fled northwards from Ecbatana upon his

approach. At Ecbatana new masses of treasure were seized,

but when once the necessary measures which its disposal and

the occupation of the Median capital entailed were taken,

Alexander continued the pursuit. It was an exciting chase of

king by king, in which each covered the ground by incredible

exertions, shedding their slower-going followers as they went,

past Rhagae (Rai) and the Caspian gates, till early one morning

Alexander came in sight of the broken train which still clung

to the fallen king. He had become a puppet in the hands of his

cousin Bessus and the Persian magnates with him (see DARIUS

III.), and at this extremity they stabbed him and allowed

Alexander to become master only of his corpse (summer 330).

The pursuit had brought Alexander into that region of

mountains to the south of the Caspian which connects western

Iran with the provinces to the east of the great central

desert. To conquer this remaining portion of the empire,

Alexander now went on through the mountain belt, teaching the

power of his arms to the hillsmen, Tapyri and Mardi, till he

came, passing through Zadracarta (Asterabad), to Parthia

and thence to Aria. In these further provinces of Iran

the Macedonian invader had for the first time to encounter a

serious national opposition, for in the west the Iranian rule

had been merely the supremacy of an alien power over native

populations indifferent or hostile. Here the ruling race was at

home. In Asia Alexander learnt that Bessus, had taken the

diadem as Darius' successor in Bactria, but so soon as he

marched against him Aria rose in his rear, and Alexander had

to return in all haste to bring the revolt under. Nor did

he, when this was accomplished, again strike directly at

Bactria, but made a wide turning movement through Seistan

over Kandahar into the Kabul valley. It was on the way, in

Seistan at Prophthasia (mod. Farrah?), that the alienation

between Alexander and his Macedonian followers, which becomes

sensible in the latter part of his career, first showed itself

in an ugly form. Alexander had come to merge the characters

of Macedonian king and Hellenic Captain-general, with which

he had set out, in that of Oriental despot (Spieker. Hof

u. Hofordnung Al. d. Gr., 1904). He wore on occasions of

state the Persian dress. (According to pseudo-Plutarch, de

fort. Al. i. 8, it was the simpler Persian dress, not the

Median.) A discontent began to work among the Macedonians,

and at Prophthasia the commander of the Macedonian cavalry

Philotas, the son of Parmenio, and certain others were arraigned

before the army on the charge of conspiring against the king's

life. They were condemned and put to death. Not satisfied

with procuring this, Alexander had Parmenio himself, who

had been left in command in Media, put to death by secret

orders. It is perhaps the worst crime, because the most

cold-blooded and ungenerous, which can be laid to his

charge. By the winter of 329-328 Alexander had reached the

Kabul valley at the foot of the Paropamisadae (Hindu Kush).

The ordinarily received chronology makes Alexander reach

the Kabul valley in the winter of 330-329. That to fit

the actions and distances covered by Alexander into such a

scheme, assuming that he went by Seistan and Kandahar, would

involve physical impossibilities has been pointed out by

Count Yorck v. Wartenburg and Mr D. G. Hogarth. Kaerst and

Beloch continue to give the ordinary chronology untroubled.

Invasion of Northern India.

In the spring of 328 Alexander crossed the Hindu Kush into

Bactria and followed the retreat of Bessus across the Oxus and

into Sogdiana (Bokhara). Here Bessus was at last caught and

treated with the barbaric cruelty which the rule of the old

Persian monarchy prescribed for rebels. Till the spring of

327 Alexander was moving to and fro in Bactria and Sogdiana,

beating down the recurrent rebellions and planting Greek

cities. Just as in 335 he had crossed the Danube, so he now

made one raid across the frontier river, the Jaxartes (Sir

Daria), to teach the fear of his name to the outlying peoples

of the steppe (summer 328). And meanwhile the rift between

Alexander and his European followers continued to show itself in

dark incidents--the murder of Clitus at Maracanda (Samarkand),

when Alexander struck down an old friend, both being hot

with wine; the claim that Alexander should be approached with

prostration (proskynesis), urged in the spring of 327, and

opposed boldly by the philosopher Callisthenes, Aristotle's

nephew, who had come in the king's train; the conspiracy of

the pages at Bactria, which was made an occasion for putting

Callisthenes to death. It was now that Alexander completed

the conquest of the provinces north of the Hindu Kush by

the reduction of the last mountain strongholds of the native

princes. In one of them he captured Roxana, the daughter

of Oxyartes, whom he made his wife. Before the summer of

327 he had once more crossed the Hindu Kush on his way to

India (for the campaigns in the N.E. see F. von Schwarz,

Alex. d. Grossen Feldzuge in Turkestan, 1893, v.).

Whilst the heavier troops moved down the Kabul valley to

Pencelaotis (Charsadda) under Perdiccas and Hephaestion,

Alexander with a body of lighter-armed troops and cavalry pushed

up the valleys which join the Kabul from the north--through

the regions now known as Bajour, Swat and Buner, inhabited

by Indian hill peoples, as fierce then against the western

intruder as their Pathan successors are against the British

columns. The books give a number of their ``cities''

reduced by Alexander--walled mountain villages which can

in some cases be identified more or less certainly with

places where the clans are established to-day. The crowning

exploit was the reduction of Aornus,5 a stronghold perched

on a precipitous summit above the Indus, which it was said

that Heracles had failed to take. How much of the story of

Alexander's discovery of the sacred mountain of the Nysa and

the traces of Dionysus is due to the invention of Aristobulus

and Clitarchus (Arrian did not find it in Ptolemy) we cannot

say. Meantime Perdiccas and Hephaestion had built a bridge

over the Indus, and by this in the spring of 326 Alexander

passed into the Punjab (at Ohind, 16 m. above Attock, according

to Foucher, Notes sur la geogr. anc. du Gandhara,

1902). The country into which he came was dominated by three

principalities, that of Ambhi (Gr. Omphis, Curt. viii. 12.

6) between the Indus and the Hydaspes (Jhelum, Jehlam),

centred in the great city of Takkasila (Gr. Taxila), that

of the Paurara rajah (Gr. Porus) between the Hydaspes and

Acesines (Chenab), and that of Abhisara (Gr. Abisares)

between the same two rivers higher up, on the confines of

Kashmir (Stein, Rajatarangini, transl. bk. i. 180, v.

217). The kings of Taxila and Porus were at enmity, and for

this cause the invader could reckon upon Omphis as a firm

ally. Porus was prepared to contest the passage of the

Hydaspes with all his strength. Abisares preferred to play

a double game and wait upon events. Alexander reached the

Hydaspes just as the rains broke, when the river was already

swollen. Porus held the opposite bank with a powerful army,

including 200 elephants. Alexander succeeded in taking

a part of his forces across the river higher up during a

night of torrential rain, and then he fought the fourth

and last of his pitched battles in Asia, the one which put

to proof more shrewdly than any of the others the quality

of the Macedonian army as an instrument of war, and yet

again emerged victorious. Porus fell sorely wounded into

his hands.6 Porus had saved his honour, and now Alexander

tried, and not in vain, to gain him as a friend. When he

continued his progress eastwards across the Acesines, Porus

was an active ally. Alexander moved along close under the

hills. After crossing the Hydraotes (Ravi) he once

more came into contact with hostile tribes, and the work of

storming petty towns began again. Then the Hyphasis (Beas)

was reached, and here the Macedonian army refused to go any

farther. It was a bitter mortification to Alexander, before

whose imagination new vistas had just opened out eastwards,

where there beckoned the unknown world of the Ganges and

its splendid kings. For three days the will of king and

people were locked in antagonism; then Alexander gave way;

the long eastward movement was ended; the return began.

The return.

Alexander left the conquered portion of India east of the

Indus to be governed under Porus, Omphis of Taxila, and

Abisares, the country west of the Indus under Macedonian

governors, and set out to explore the great river to its mouth

(for the organization of the Indian provinces, see especially

Niese, vol. i. pp. 500 f.). The fleet prepared on the

Hydaspes sailed in October, while a land army moved along the

bank. The confluence of the Hydaspes and Acesines passed,

the Macedonians were once more in a region of hostile tribes

with towns to be stormed. It was at one of these, a town

of the Malli, that a memorable incident occurred, such as

characterized the personality of Alexander for all succeeding

time. He leapt from the wall with only three companions

into the hostile town, and, before the army behind him

could effect an entrance, lay wounded almost to death.7

He recovered and beat down the resistance of the tribes,

leaving them annexed to the Macedonian satrapy west of the

Indus. Below the confluence of the Punjab rivers into the

single stream of the Indus the territory of loose tribes

was succeeded by another group of regular principalities,

under the rajahs called by the Greeks Musicanus, Oxycanus and

Sambus. These opposed a national resistance to the Macedonians,

the fires of which were fanned by the Brahmins, but still

the strong arm of the western people prevailed. The rajah of

Patala at the apex of the Indus delta abandoned his country and

fled. It was the high summer of 325 when Alexander reached

Patala. From here he explored both arms of the delta

to the ocean, now seen by the Macedonians for the first

time. He had determined that the Indus fleet should be

used to explore this new world and try to find a waterway

between the Indus and the Persian Gulf. A great part of the

land-forces had been already sent off under Craterus in the

earlier summer to return west by Kandahar and Seistan; the

fleet was to sail under the Greek Nearchus from the Indus

mouth with the winter monsoon; Alexander himself with the rest

of the land-forces set out in October to go by the coast of

Baluchistan, through the appalling sand-wastes of the Mekran.8

He would seem to have kept down to the coast until the

headland of Ras Malan was reached, scattering before him

the bands of Arabitae and Oritae who were the inhabitants

of this well-provisioned tract. For the 150 miles between

Ras Malan and Pasni Alexander was compelled by the natural

barriers to march inland, and it was here that his troops

sank under the horrors of heat and thirst and sand. The coast

once regained, the way was easy; no such desert had to be

traversed, when Alexander again struck inland for the chief

city of the Gedrosians (Pura), and thence made his way into

Carmania. Here the spent troops rested; here the army

of Craterus joined them, and Nearchus came to announce

his safe arrival at the entrance of the Persian Gulf.9

The machine of empire had not functioned altogether smoothly

while the king had been absent, and on Alexander's re-appearance

many incapables and rogues in high office had to be replaced

by better men. In Carmania, in Persis, complaints from the

provinces continued to reach him, as well as the news of

disorders in Macedonia and Greece. New orders and appointments

served to bring the empire into hand again, and at Susa in

the spring of 324 Alexander rested, the task of conquering and

compassing the Achaemenian realm achieved. The task of its

internal reorganization now began to occupy him--changes, for

instance, in the military system which tended to assimilate

Macedonians and Orientals. The same policy of fusion was

furthered by the great marriage festival at Susa, when

Alexander took two more wives from the Persian royal house,

married a number of his generals to Oriental princesses, and

even induced as many as he could of the rank-and-file to take

Asiatic wives. This policy did not allay the discontent of

the Macedonian army, and when Alexander in the summer of 324

moved to the cooler region of Media, an actual mutiny of the

Macedonians broke out on the way at Opis on the Tigris. It

was occasioned by the discharge of the Macedonian veterans,

and only the personal magnetism of Alexander and his threat to

entrust himself altogether to the Orientals availed to quell

it. At Ecbatana the death of Hephaestion for a time plunged

Alexander into a passion of mourning. But by the winter

(324-323) he was again active, bringing the hill- tribes on

the S.W. border of Media, the Cossaei, into subjection. In

the spring of 323 he moved down to Babylon, receiving on the

way embassies from lands as far as the confines of the known

world, for the eyes of all nations were now turned with fear

or wonder to the figure which had appeared with so superhuman

an effect upon the world's stage. The embassy from Rome,

however, is almost certainly a later, and an inevitable,

invention. The exploration of the waterways round about the

empire was Alexander's immediate concern, the discovery of

the presumed connexion of the Caspian with the Northern Ocean,

the opening of a maritime route from Babylon to Egypt round

Arabia. The latter enterprise Alexander designed to conduct

in person; under his supervision was prepared in Babylon an

immense fleet, a great basin dug out to contain 1000 ships,

and the water- communications of Babylonia taken in hand.

Innovations were carried out in the tactical system of the

army which were to modify considerably the methods of future

battle-fields. At last all was ready; the 20th of the month

Daesius (? June 5) was fixed for the king's setting forth.

Illness and death.

On the 15th and 16th Alexander caroused deep into the night at

the house of the favourite Medius. On the 17th he developed

fever; for a time he treated it as a momentary impediment to the

expedition; but on the 27th his speech was gone, and the Macedonian

army were suffered to pass man by man through his chamber to

bid him farewell. On the 28th (? June 13) Alexander died.10

His son by Roxana, the so-called ALEXANDER ``AEGUS,'' was

born a few months later. He and his uncle Philip, as joint

kings, were placed under the guardianship of Perdiccas,

Peithon and Antipater in succession. After the death of

Antipater (319) Roxana fled with him to Epirus, and was

afterwards taken back to Macedonia, together with Olympias, by

Polyperchon. All three fell into the hands of Cassander;

Alexander and his mother were in 310-309 put to death by

order of Cassander (Justin xiv. 6, xv. 2). The meaningless

surname of Aegus, still given in some books to this

Alexander, is derived simply from a modern misreading of

the text of the Astronomical Canon, AIGOU for ALLOU.

Character and policy.

Alexander the Great is one of the instances of the vanity

of appealing from contemporary disputes to ``the verdict of

posterity''; his character and his policy are estimated to-day

as variously as ever. Certain features--the high physical

courage, the impulsive energy, the fervid imagination--stand

out clear; beyond that disagreement begins. That he was a

great master of war is admitted by most of those who judge

his character unfavourably, but even this has been seriously

questioned (e.g. by Beloch, Griech. Gesch. iii. (i.),

p. 66). There is a dispute as to his real designs. That

he aimed at conquering the whole world and demanded to be

worshipped as a god is the traditional view. Droysen denies

the former, and Niese maintains that his ambition was limited

by the bounds of the Persian empire and that the claim to

divine honours is fabulous (Historische Zeitschr. lxxix.,

1897, 1 f.). It is true that our best authority, Arrian,

fails to substantiate the traditional view satisfactorily;

on the other hand those who maintain it urge that Arrian's

interests were mainly military, and that the other authorities,

if inferior in trustworthiness, are completer in range of

vision. Of those, again, who maintain the traditional view,

some, like Niebuhr and Grote, regard it as convicting Alexander

of mad ambition and vainglory, whilst to Kaerst Alexander

only incorporates ideas which were the timely fruit of a

long historical development. The policy of fusing Greeks and

Orientals again is diversely judged. To Droysen and Kaerst

it accords with the historical conditions; to Grote and to

Beloch it is a betrayal of the prerogative of Hellenism.

Some notion of the personal appearance of Alexander may be

got from the literature and the surviving monuments. He is

described as of an athletic frame, though not taller than the

common, and a white and ruddy complexion. The expression

of his eyes had something ``liquid and melting'' (ton

ommaton ten diachusin kai ugroteta), and the hair

which stood up over his forehead gave the suggestion of a

lion. He had a way of carrying his head somewhat aslant. (See

especially Plut. Alex. 4; de Alex. fort. ii. 2.) The

greatest masters of the time executed portraits of him, Lysippus

in sculpture, Apelles in painting and Pyrgoteles in graven

gems. Among surviving monuments, we have no completely

certified portraits except the Tivoli herm (now in the Louvre)

and the coins struck by his successors. The herm is a dry

work and the head upon the coins shows various degrees of

idealization. There are, however, a considerable number of

works which can make out a better or worse claim either to

be portraits of Alexander or to reproduce his type, and a

large field of discussion is therefore open as to their values

and classification (F. Kopp, Uber das Bildnis Alexanders

d. Grossen (1892); K. J. Ujfalvy, Le Type physique

d'Alexandre le Grand (1902); T. Schreiber, Studien uber das

Bildnis Alexanders d. Grossen (1903); J. J. Bernoulli,

Die erhaltenen Darstellungen Alexanders d. Grossen

(1905). Alexander shaved clean, and set the fashion in this

respect for the Graeco-Roman world for the next 500 years.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The campaigns and life of Alexander did not

lack contemporary historians, some of them eye-witnesses and even

associates. They included the philosopher Callisthenes, put to

death by Alexander in 327, whose history went up to the death

of Darius, Alexander's general Ptolemy, afterwards king in

Egypt, Nearchus who commanded the fleet that sailed from the

Indus to the Persian Gulf, Onesicritus who served as pilot in

the same fleet, Aristobulus who was with Alexander in India,

Clitarchus, a contemporary, if not an eye-witness, important

from the fact that his highly coloured version of the life

of Alexander became the popular authority for the succeeding

centuries. Besides the historical narrative, there were

works mainly geographical or topographical left by persons

like Baeton and Diognetus, whom Alexander had employed (as

bematistai) to survey the roads over which he passed. All

such original sources have now perished. The fragments are

collected in the Didot edition of Arrian by Karl Muller. Not

reckoning scattered notices, we depend principally opon five

later compositions, Diodorus, book xvii. (c. 20 B.C.),

the work of Quintus Curtius (c. A.D. 42), Plutarch's (c.

45-125 A.D.) Life of Alexander, Arrian's Anabasis and

Indica (c. A.D. 150), and the relevant books of Justin's

abridgment (2nd cent. A.D.) of the history of Trogus (c.

10 B.C.?). To these we may add the Latin Itinerarium

Alexandri, a skeleton outline of Alexander's campaigns dedicated

to the emperor Constantius (A.D. 324-361), printed at the

end of the Didot edition of Arrian, and the Epitome Rerum

Gestarum Alexandri magni, an abridgment made in the 4th or

5th century of a lost Latin work of uncertain date, combining

history with elements taken from the Romance (edited by O.

Wagner, Leipzig, 1900). The relation of these works to the

various original sources constitutes the critical problem

before the modern historian in reference to the history of

Alexander. See Droysen vol. i. appendix i.; A. Schoene, De

rerum Alexandri Magni scriptorum imprimis Arriani & Plutarchi

fontibus (1870); Fraenkel, Die Geschichtschreiber Alex.

d. Grossen (1883); O. Maas, Kleitarch und Diodor (Petersburg,

1894); Kaerst, Ferechungen zur Gesch. Alex. d. Grossen

(1887), and Gesch. d. hellenist. Zeitalters (vol. i., 1901

), pp. 421 f.; F. L. Schoenle, Diodorstudien ( 1891 ); E.

Schwartz, articles ``Aristobulos (14),'' ``Arrianus,'' ``Quintus

Curtius,'' ``Diodorus'' in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopadie.

For modern views of Alexander see Thirlwall, History of Greece;

Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History (Eng. trans. rev. by

author, 1852) Grote, History of Greece; Droysen, Histoire

de l'Hellenisme (translation by Bouche-Leclerq); Ad. Holm,

History of Greece (Eng. trans., 1898); B. Niese, Gesch.

der griech. u. maked. Staaten (vol. i.); Kaerst, Gesch. des

hellenist. Zeitalters (1901); J. Beloch, Griechische

Gesch. (vol. iii., 1904); J. B. Bury, History of Greece

(1902); A. von Gutschmid, Geschichte Irans (1888). Among

the mass of monographs and special articles, reference may

be made to Freeman, Historical Essays, 2nd series, pp. 182

f.; Dodge, Alexander (in a series called Great Captains)

1890; Mahaffy, Problems in Greek History (1892, ch. viii.;

D. G. Hogarth, Philip and Alexander of Macedon (1897),

a striking effort of historical imagination to reconstruct

Alexander as a man of the real world: Benjamin I. Wheeler,

Alexander the Great (1900) in the ``Heroes of the Nations

Series.'' The purely military aspect of Alexander's campaigns

is treated in general histories of warfare (Rustow-Kochly,

Bauer, Delbruck, Verdy du Vernois), and in special monographs

by Hogarth, Journ. of Philol. vol. xvii., 1888, pp.

1 foll.; H. Droysen, Untersuchungen uber A. des Gr.

Heerwesen (1885), and Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, Kurze

Ubersicht der Feldzuge A. de Gr. (1897). For further

references to the literature on Alexander, see Kaerst's article

in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopadie (1894). (E. R. B.)

1 The use of the surname is proved as far back

as the 1st century B.C. (Nepos, De Reg. 2).

2 See Bauer,``Die Schlacht bei Issus'' in Jahreshefte

d.osterr. archaol. Instit. ii. pp. 105 f.; A. Janke. Auf

Alex. d. grossen Pfaden; Gruhn, Das Schlachtfeld von Issus;

Lammert in Berl. Philol. Wochenschr. (1905), col. 1596 f.

3 Pridik, De Alex. Mog. epist. commercio (Dorpat, 1893);

Schwartz, art. ``Curtius'' in Pauly-Wissowa, col. 1884.

4 The story of Alexander's visit to Jerusalem rests

on no better authority than a later Jewish romance.

5 The best opinion now confirms Abbott's identification

of Aornus with Mahaban--Deane, Journ. R. Asiat. Soc.

(Oct. 1896), p. 673; them, Report of an Archaeological

Tour with the Buner Field Force (Lahore, 1898), pp. 45-48.

6 Beside V. Smith (cited below) see Schubert, ``Die

Porusschlacht,'' in Rhein. Mus. lvi., 1901, p. 543.

7 There seems nothing to fix the exact spot of

this town; the common identification with Multan is,

according to Raverty and V. Smith, certainly wrong.

8 For the indian campaigns of Alexander see especially McCrindle,

Invasion of India by Alexander the Great (1896); Vincent A.

Smith, Early History of India (1904), and the references

there given to the researches of Sir T. H. Holdich, Raverty

and Foucher; A. Anspach, De Alex. Magni exped. ind. (1903).

9 Tomaschek, ``Topographische Erlauterung der Kustenfahrt Nearchs''

in the Sitzungsberichte der kaiserl. Akad. d. Wissensch.

of Vienna (Philosoph.-histor. Klasse, vol. cxxi.); Major

P. M. Sykes, Ten Thousand Miles in Persia (1902), pp. 166 f.

10 For Alexander's funeral, see F.

Jacoby in Rhein. Mus. (1903), pp. 461 f.

The Romance of Alexander.

The figure of Alexander naturally impressed itself upon the

imagination of the world which his career had shaken. Even

in India we are told that he was held in honour by the native

kings who took his farthest provinces in possession. But

Eastern tradition, so tenacious of the old myths of primitive

man, has a short memory for actual history, and five centuries

later Alexander was only remembered in Iran as the accursed

destroyer of the sacred books, whose wisdom he had at the

same time pilfered by causing translations to be made into

``Roman.'' That the East to-day has so much to tell about

Alexander is only due to the fact that old mythical stories of

gods or heroes who go travelling through lands of monsters and

darkness, of magical fountains and unearthly oceans, became

attached to his name in the popular literature of the Roman

empire, and this mythical Alexander was reintroduced in the

7th century A.D. into the farther East, where the historical

Alexander was almost forgotten. The romance of Alexander

is found written in the languages of nearly all peoples from

the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, but all these versions are

derived, mediately or immediately, from the Greek original

which circulated under the false name of Callisthenes. The

Greek pseudo-Callisthenes (otherwise Aisopos we possess in

three recensions, based all upon a book produced in Egypt in

the 2nd century A.D. But this book itself was a farrago of

heterogeneous elements--pieces of genuine history, ancient

stories once told in Babylon of Gilgamesh or Etanna, literary

forgeries of the days soon after Alexander, like the oldest

part of the ``Testament of Alexander,'' variations due to

Egyptian patriotic sentiment, like that which made Alexander

the son of the last Pharaoh, Nectanebus. As the story was

reproduced, variations were freely introduced according

to the bent of different times and peoples; in the Persian

version Alexander (Iskander) became a son of Darius; among

the Mahommedans he turned into a prophet, hot against

idols; the pen of Christian monks made him an ascetic saint.

The Alexander romance found its way into Europe through the

medium of Latin, but originated mainly from the versions of

the pseudo-Callisthenes, not from the more sober narrative

of Quintus Curtius. The pseudo-Callisthenes, in a recension

which has not been preserved, was translated into Latin by

Julius Valerius about the end of the 3rd century, and an

epitome of this translation, also in Latin, was made some

time before the 9th century, and is introduced by Vincent

de Beauvais into his Speculum historiale. Much of the

legend is a running travesty of the true history of the

conqueror. The first book deals with his birth and early

exploits. The trace of Alexandrian influence is to be found

in the pretence that his actual father was Nectanebus, a

fugitive king of Egypt. The latter was a great magician,

able, by operating upon waxen figures of the armies and ships

of his enemies, to obtain complete power over their real

actions. Obliged, however, to flee to Pella in Macedonia, he

established himself as an astrologer, and as such was consulted

by the childless Olympias. Having promised that Zeus Ammon

would visit her in the form of a dragon, he himself assumed the

disguise. In due course Alexander was born, and Philip's

suspicions were overcome by a second appearance of the dragon,

which was held to prove the divine fatherhood. The child

was small and somewhat deformed, but of great courage and

intelligence. When he was twelve years old he was instructed

in starcraft by Nectanebus, who was killed by a fall into a

pit, into which he had been playfully pushed by Alexander. The

first book also relates his conquests in Italy, Africa, Syria

and Asia Minor; his return to Macedonia and the submission of

Greece. The second book continues the history of his

conquests, and the third contains the victory over Porus,

the relations with the Brahmins, the letter to Aristotle

on the wonders of India, the histories of Candace and the

Amazons, the letter to Olympias on the marvels of Farther

Asia, and lastly the account of Alexander's death in Babylon.

The most wide-spread Latin version of the story, however, was

the Historia de proeliis,1 printed at Strassburg in 1486,

which began to supersede the Epitome of Julius Valerius

in general favour about the end of the 13th century. It is

said to have been written by the Neapolitan arch-presbyter

Leo, who was sent by Johannes and Marinus, dukes of Campania

(941-965) to Constantinople, where he found his Greek

original. Auxiliary sources for the medieval romance-writers

were:--the opuscule (4th century) known as Alexandri magni

iter ad Paradisum, a fable of Eastern origin directed

against ambition; the Itinerarium Alexandri (340),

based partly on Julius Valerius and dedicated to Constans,

son of the emperor Constantine; the letter of Alexander

to Aristotle (Epist. de situ et mirabilibus Indiae), and

the correspondence between Alexander and the king of the

Brahmins, Dindimus, both of which are often contained in

MSS. of the Epitome; and the treatise (based on a lost

history of Alexander by Onesicritus), De gentibus Indiae et

Bragmanibus, ascribed without certainty to Palladius (d.

c. 430), successively bishop of Helenopolis and Aspona.

The Ethiopic versions are of great interest as a striking

example of literary ``accommodation.'' Not only is the

whole atmosphere Christian in colouring, but we actually

find the Greek gods in the guise of Enoch, Elijah, &c.,

while Philip is a Christian martyr, and Alexander himself a

great apostle, even a saint; quotations from the Bible are

frequent. Syriac and Armenian versions were made in the 5th

century. Persians and Arabs told the deeds of Iskander; and

Firdousi made use of the story in the Shahnama. Another

early Persian poet, Nizami, made the story specially his

own. The crusaders brought back fresh developments; Gog

and Magog (partly Arab and partly Greek) and some Jewish

stories were then added. In the 11th century Simeon

Seth, protovestiarius at the Byzantine court, translated

the fabulous history from the Persian back into Greek.

The Alexander legend was the theme of poetry in all

European languages; six or seven German poets dealt

with the subject, and it may be read in French, English,

Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Flemish and Bohemian.

French.--The earliest known French romance of Alexander,

by Alberic of Besancon (or more properly Briancon), was,

until the discovery of a fragment of 100 lines at Florence in

1852, known only through the German adaptation by Lamprecht

the preacher, who wrote towards the end of the 12th century,

and by the version made by a Poitevin poet named Simon in

decasyllabic lines. Alberic followed the epitome of Julius

Valerius. He had some knowledge of authentic history, and

rejected the more marvellous elements of the story. The

French feudal romance, Li Romans d'Alexandre, was written

in the 12th century by Lambert li Tors of Chateaudun,

Alexandre de Bernai, surnamed de Paris, and others. It

contained 20,000 lines, and was written in twelve-syllabled

lines, whence the term ``alexandrine'' verse. The authors

endowed Alexander with the fashionable virtues of the

chivalric hero, making him especially the type of lavish

generosity. They used as their sources Valerius, the letter

to Aristotle and the Iter ad Paradisum, adding much of their

own. Pierre de Saint Cloud, the writer of the fourth section

of the romance, was evidently acquainted with the Historia de

proeliis. The incident of the Fuerre de Gadres (Foray of

Gaza), interpolated in the second section, is assigned to a

certain Eustache. The redaction of the whole work is due to

Alexandre de Bernai, who replaced the original assonance by

rhyme. According to all the traditions of romance it was

necessary to avenge the death of Alexander. At the end of the

12th century Gui de Cambrai and Jean le Nevelon (or Nevelaux

or Venelais), each wrote a Vengeance d'Alexandre. Jean le

Nevelon relates how Alior, the son of Alexander and Candace,

avenged his father's death on Antipater and others. Between

1310 and 1315 Jacques de Longuyon (or Langhion) introduced

into the account of the Indian war Les Voeux du paon, a

romanesque and fantastic episode very loosely connected with

Alexander. It is interesting for its connexion with the

15th-century romance of Perceforest, since in it Alexander

visits Britain, where he bestows Scotland on Gadifer and

England on Betis (otherwise Perceforest). Les Voeux du

paon enjoyed great popularity, and had two sequels, Le

Restor du paon, written before 1338 by Jean Brisebarre de

Douai, and Le Parfait du paon, written in 1340 by Jean

de la Mote. Florimont, a 12th-century poem by Aimon de

Varenne, relates to a fictitious personage said to have

been the grandfather of Alexander. This poem gave rise

to two prose romances--La Conqueste de Grece faicte par

Philippe de Madien, by Perrinet du Pin, first printed in

1527, and Histoire du roi Florimond (1528). Quintus

Curtius was largely used for the Alexandreis (c. 1180) of

Gaultier de Lille or de Chatillon (Galtherus ab Insulis or de

Castellione). It is a Latin poem in ten books of hexameters,

and contains a curious admixture of Biblical history. It

was translated at the end of the next century into Flemish

by J. van Maerlant and into German by Ulrich von Eschenbach.

Of the French prose versions of the Historia de proeliis

may be noticed the late romance, L'Histoire du noble et

vaillant roy Alixandre le Grant (1506). After an account

of the ancient history of Macedonia and of the intrigue of

Nectanebus we are told how Philip dies, and how Alexander

subdues Rome and receives tribute from all European

nations. He then makes his Persian expedition; the Indian

campaign gives occasion for descriptions of all kinds of

wonders. The conqueror visits a cannibal kingdom and finds

many marvels in the palace of Porus, among them a vine with

golden branches, emerald leaves and fruit of other precious

stones. In one country he meets with women who, after the

burial in the winter, become alive again in the spring full

of youth and beauty. Having reached the ends of the earth

and conquered all nations, he aspires to the dominion of the

air. He obtains a magic glass cage, yoked with eight

griffins, flies through the clouds, and, thanks to enchanters

who know the language of birds, gets information as to

their manners and customs, and ultimately receives their

submission. The excessive heat of the upper regions compels

him to descend, and he next visits the bottom of the sea

in a kind of diving-bell. The fish crowd round him and pay

homage. Alexander returns to Babylon, is crowned with much

pomp and mass is celebrated. He dies by poison soon afterwards.

English Versions.--The Alexander cycle was no less

popular in Great Britain. The letter from Alexander to

Aristotle and his correspondence with Dindimus are found

in Early English versions dating from the 11th century.

These are printed by O. Cockayne in his Narratiunculae

Anglice conscriptae (1861). The Monk (De Cas. ill. vir.)

in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales prefaces his account of

Alexander with the statement that his story is so common

That every wight that hath discrecioun

Hath herd somewhat or all of his fortune.

There are two considerable fragments of an English

alliterative romance on the subject written in the west

midland dialect, and dating from the second half of the 14th

century. The first, The Gestes of the Worthy King and

Emperor Alisaunder of Macedoine (ed. W. W. Skeat, E.E.T.S.,

1877, with William of Palermo) contains an account of

the wars of Philip, of Nectanebus and of the education of

Alexander. A second fragment (ed. Skeat, E.E.T.S., 1878)

contains Alexander's visit to the Gymnosophists and his

correspondence with Dindimus. Another alliterative poem in

the northern dialect, of 15th-century origin, is based on

the Historia de proeliis, and was edited by Skeat for the

E.E.T.S. (1886) as The Wars of Alexander. Earlier than

any of these is the rhyming Lyfe of Alisaunder (c. 1330)

which is printed in H. Weber's Metrical Romances (vol. i.,

1810). It is written in unusually picturesque and vigorous

language, and is based on the Roman de toute chevalerie,

a French compilation made about 1250 by a certain Eustace or

Thomas of Kent. Fragments of another rhyming poem (pr. c.

1550) are preserved in the British Museum. The Scots Buik

of the most noble and vailyzeand Conqueror Alexander the

Great, printed by Alexander Arbuthnot (d. 1585) about 1580,

reprinted in 1831 for the Bannatyne Club, is not really a

life. It contains three episodes of the cycle, the ``Forray

of Gadderis'' (not taken from the Fuerre de Gadres but

from the Assaut de Tyr in the Romans d'Alixandre),

``The Avowes of Alexander,'' and ``The Great Battel of

Effesoun,'' taken from the Voeux du paon. Many passages

in John Barbour's Bruce are almost identical with this

book, and it is suggested by G. Neilson (John Barbour, Poet

and Translator, London, 1900) that Barbour was the author,

although the colophon states that it was written in 1438.

Bruce at Bannockburn makes the same oration as Alexander at

``Effesoun.'' A Buke of the Conqueror Alexander the Great

by Sir Gilbert Hay (fl. 1456) is in MS. at Taymouth Castle.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The best sketch of the Alexander romance

literature is by Paul Meyer. Alexandre le grand dans la

litterature francaise au moyen age (2 vols., Paris,

1886). The first volume contains some French texts, and

the second a detailed discussion of the various versions

from the pseudo-Callisthenes downwards. See also J.

Zacher, Pseudo-Callisthenes, Forschungen zur . . . .

Alexandersage (Halle, 1867), and for Oriental versions,

T. Noldeke, ksl. Akad. d. Wissenschaben, Phil.-hist.

Klasse, vol. 38: Vienna, 1890). For early printed versions

see Brunet, Manuel du libraire, s.v. ``Alexandre.''

The text of the pseudo-Callisthenes was edited by C. W.

Muller from three MSS. in the Bibl. Nat. and printed in the

Arrian of the Coll. Didot (Paris, 1846), and by H. Meusel

(Leipzig, 1871) from a Leiden MS. A. Mai edited Julius

Valerius (Milan, 1817) and the Itinerarium Alexandri

(Class. Auct. vol. vii.; Milan, 1835); J. Zacher, the Epitome

Halle, 1867) and Alex. iter ad Paradisum (Regensburg,

1859); the Oxford MS. of the Epitome was edited by G. Cilli

(Strassburg, 1903); G. Landgraf, Die ``Vita Alexandri'' .

. . des Archpresbyter Leo (Historia de proeliis), (Erlangen,

1885); Alexander's letter to Aristotle and his correspondence

with Dindimus are included in the Teubner edition of Julius

Valerius (ed. B. Kubler, Leipzig, 1888). A newly discovered

anonymous Epitome was edited by O. Wagner (Leipzig, 1900).

The fragment by Alberic was edited by P. Heyse (Berlin, 1856);

Lamprecht's German text by H. Weismann (Frankfort, 1850) and

by C. Kinzel (Halle, 1884); the Alexandreis of Gaultier de

Lille, by F. A. W. Muldener (Leipzig, 1863); an Icelandic

prose version (c. 1250) of the same, Alexanders Saga, by

C. R. Unger (Christiania, 1848); Li Romans d'Alexandre, by

H. Michelant (Stuttgart, 1846); the Ethiopic version by E.

A. T. Wallis Budge (1896, 2 vols., with English translation);

the Syriac text of pseudo-Callisthenes by Budge (Cambridge,

1889); cp. K. F. Weymann, Die athiopische und arabische

Ubersetzungen des Pseudo-Kallisthenes (Kirchhain, 1901).

Besides the English editions quoted in the text, the

alliterative English poems were partially edited by J. Stevenson

for the Roxburghe Club (1849). There is a great deal of

information on the various texts in H. L. Wood's Catalogue

of Romances in the British Museum (1883, vol. i. pp. 94 et

seq.). See also A. Hermann, Untersuchungen uber das

Scottische Alexanderbuch (1893); and Unters. uber das

med. Gedicht, The Wars of Alexander (Berlin, 1889).

Among other works see E. Ronde, Der griechische Roman (2nd

ed. Leipzig, 1900); B. Meissner, Alexander u. Gilgamos

(Leipzig, 1894); F. Kampers, ``Alex. d. Grosse und die Idee

des Weltimperiums in Prophetic und Sage'' (in H. Granert's

Studien, &c., Freiburg, 1901); Adolf Ausfeld, Der griechische

Alexanderroman (Leipzig, 1907), edited after the author's

death by W. Kroll; Wilhelm Hertz, ``Aristoteles in den

Alex. Dichtungen d. Mittelalters'' (Kgl. Acad. d.

Wissenschaften, Munich, 1891); H. Becker, Die Brahmanen

in d. Alex. Sage (Konigsberg, 1889). (M. BR.)

1 Nativitas et victoriae Alexandri magni regis was the original title.

ALEXANDER, tagus or despot of Pherae in Thessaly, ruled

from 369 to 358 B.C. His tyranny caused the Aleuadae of

Larissa to invoke the aid of Alexander II. of Macedon, whose

intervention was successful, but after his withdrawal Alexander

treated his subjects as cruelly as before. The Thessalians

now applied to Thebes; Pelopidas, who was sent to their

assistance, was treacherously seized and thrown into prison

(368), and it was necessary to send Epaminondas with a large

army to secure his release. Alexander's conduct caused renewed

intervention; in 364 he was defeated at Cynoscephalae by the

Thebans, although the victory was dearly bought by the loss

of Pelopidas, who fell in the battle. Alexander was at last

crushed by the Thebans, compelled to acknowledge the freedom

of the Thessalian cities and to limit his rule to Pherae, and

forced to join the Boeotian league. He was murdered by his

wife's brother at her instigation. Ancient accounts agree in

describing Alexander as a typically cruel and suspicious tyrant.

ALEXANDER (1461-1506), king of Poland and grand- duke of

Lithuania, fourth son of Casimir IV., king of Poland, was

elected grand-duke of Lithuania on the death of his father

in 1492, and king of Poland on the death of his brother

John Albert in 1501. His extreme impecuniosity made him

from the first subservient to the Polish senate and nobles

(szlachta), who deprived him of the control of the mint--then

one of the most lucrative sources of revenue of the Polish

kings--curtailed his prerogative, and generally endeavoured

to reduce him to a subordinate position. This ill-timed

parsimony reacted injuriously upon Polish politics. Thus,

for want of funds, Alexander was unable to assist the Grand

Master of the Order of the Sword against Muscovite aggression,

or prevent Tsar Ivan III. from ravaging Lithuania with the

Tatars. The utmost the king could do was to garrison Smolensk

and other fortresses and employ his wife Helena, the tsar's

daughter, to mediate a truce between his father-in-law and

himself. During his reign Poland suffered much humiliation

from the attempts of her subject principalities, Prussia and

Moldavia, to throw off her yoke. Only the death of Stephen,

the great hospodar of Moldavia, enabled Poland still to hold her

own on the Danube; while the liberality of Pope Julius II., who

issued no fewer than 29 bulls in favour of Poland and granted

Alexander Peter's Pence and other financial help, enabled the

Polish king to restrain somewhat the arrogance of the Teutonic

Order. In Alexander the characteristic virtues of the Jagiellos,

patience and generosity, degenerated into slothfulness and

extravagance. Frequently he was too poor to pay the expenses

of his own table. But he never felt at home in Poland, and

bestowed his favour principally upon his fellow-countrymen,

the most notable of whom was the wealthy Lithuanian magnate

Michael Glinsky, who justified his master's confidence by

his great victory over the Tatars at Kleck (August 5, 1506),

the news of which was brought to Alexander on his deathbed.

See V. Czerny, The Reigns of John Albert and

Alexander Jagiello (Pol.) (Cracow, 1882).

ALEXANDER, the name of eight popes:--

ALEXANDER I. was bishop of Rome from about 106 to 115. He

has been identified, without any foundation, with Alexander,

a martyr of the Via Nomentana, whose day is the 3rd of May.

ALEXANDER II. (Anselmo Baggio), pope from 1061 to 1073, was

a native of Milan. As bishop of Lucca he had been an energetic

coadjutor with Hildebrand in endeavouring to suppress simony,

and to enforce the celibacy of the clergy. His election, which

Hildebrand had arranged in conformity with the decree of 1059

(see NICHOLAS II.), was not sanctioned by the imperial court of

Germany. This court, faithful to the practice observed by

it in the preceding elections, nominatod another candidate,

Cadalus, bishop of Parma, who was proclaimed at the council

of Basel under the name of Honorius II., marched to Rome, and

for a long time jeopardized his rival's position. At length,

however, he was abandoned by the Germanic court and deposed

by a council held at Mantua; and Alexander's position remained

unchallenged. Alexander was succeeded by his associate

Hildebrand, who took the title of Gregory VII. (L. D.*)

ALEXANDER III. (Orlando Bandinelli), pope from 1159 to

1181, was a Siennese, and as a teacher of canon law in Bologna

composed the Stroma or the Summa Magistri Rolandi, one

of the earliest commentaries on the Decretum Gratiani. In

October 1150 Eugenius III. created him cardinal deacon SS.

Cosmae and Damiani; later he became cardinal priest of St

Mark's. Probably about this time he composed his Sentences,

based on the Introductio ad theologiam of Abelard. In

1153 he became papal chancellor, and was the leader of the

cardinals opposed to Frederick Barbarossa. On the 7th of

September 1159 he was chosen the successor of Adrian IV.,

a minority of the cardinals, however, electing the cardinal

priest Octavian, who assumed the name of Victor IV. This

antipope, and his successors Paschal III. (1164-1168) and

Calixtus III. (1168-1178), had the imperial support; but after

the defeat of Legnano, Barbarossa finally (in the peace of

Venice, 1177) recognized Alexander as pope. On the 12th

of March 1178 Alexander returned to Rome, which he had been

compelled to leave twice, namely, from 1162 until the 23rd of

November 1165, and again in 1167. The first period he spent

in France, the latter chiefly in Gaeta, Benevento, Anagni and

Venice. In March 1179 Alexander held the third Lateran synod,

a brilliant assemblage, reckoned by the Roman church as the

eleventh oecumenical council; its acts embody several of the

pope's proposals for the betterment of the condition of the

church, among them the present law requiring that no one

may be elected pope without the votes of two-thirds of the

cardinals. This synod marks the summit of Alexander's

power. Besides checkmating Barbarossa, he had humbled

Henry II. of England in the affair of Thomas Becket, he

had confirmed the right of Alphonso I. of Portugal to the

crown, and even as a fugitive had enjoyed the favour and

protection of Louis VII. of France. Nevertheless, soon after

the close of the synod the Roman republic forced Alexander

to leave the city, which he never re-entered; and on the 29th

of September 1179 some nobles set up the antipope Innocent

III. By the judicious use of money, however, Alexander

got him into his power, so that he was deposed in January

1180. In 1181 Alexander excommunicated William the Lion of

Scotland and put the kingdom under the interdict. The great

pope died at Civita Castellana on the 30th of August 1181.

See Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopadie, 3rd ed., i. 340-344; Wetzer

and Welte, Kirchenlexikon, 2nd ed., 1481. The most elaborate

biography is H. Reuter, Geschichte Alexanders III. und der Kirche

seiner Zeit (3 vols., 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1860). (W. W. R.*)

ALEXANDER IV. (Rinaldo), pope from 1254 to 1261, was, like

Innocent III. and Gregory IX., a member of the family of the

counts of Segni. His uncle Gregory IX. made him cardinal deacon

in 1227 and cardinal bishop of Ostia in 1231. On the death of

Innocent IV. he was elected pope at Naples on the 12th of December

1254. He is described as a stout man, kindly, cheerful, but

of no great brilliancy. He succeeded Innocent IV. as guardian

of Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen, promising him

his benevolent protection; but in less than a fortnight he

conspired against him and bitterly opposed Conradin's uncle

Manfred. Alexander fulminated with excommunication and interdict

against the party of Manfred, but in vain; nor could he enlist

the kings of England and Norway in a crusade against the

Hohenstaufen. Rome itself became too Ghibelline for the pope,

who withdrew to Viterbo, where he died on the 25th of May

1261. His pontificate was signalized by efforts to unite

the Greek and Latin churches, by the establishment of the

Inquisition in France, by favours shown to the mendicant orders,

and by an attempt to organize a crusade against the Tatars.

The registers of Alexander IV. are published by Bourel de la

Ronciere and others in the Bibliotheque des Ecoles francaises

d'Athenes et de Rome, Paris, 1895 ff. (W. W. R.*)

ALEXANDER V. (Peter Philarges), pope 1409-1410, was born

in Crete of unknown parents and entered the order of St

Francis, for which, as for the other mendicant orders,

he later manifested his affection in a striking manner.

He was a member in turn of the universities of Oxford and

Paris, and finally settled in Lombardy, where, thanks to the

favour of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, he became bishop, first of

Piacenza, then of Vincenza, then of Novara, and afterwards

archbishop of Milan. On being created cardinal by Innocent

VII. he devoted all his energies from 1408 onwards to the

realization of the union of the church, in spite of the two

rival popes. He was one of the promoters of the council of

Pisa, and after that assembly had declared Gregory XII. and

Benedict NIII. deposed, the cardinals assembled in conclave

thought they could not do better than crown with the tiara

this cosmopolitan prelate, who had an equal mastery of the

Latin and Greek languages, and was renowned not only for

his learning in theology but for his affability (June 26,

1409). As a matter of fact, the only effect of this election

was to aggravate the schism by adding a third to the number

of rival pontiffs. During his short reign of ten months

Alexander V.'s aim was to extend his obedience with the

assistance of France, and, notably, of the duke Louis II. of

Anjou, upon whom he conferred the investiture of the kingdom

of Sicily, together with the title of gonfalonier of the

church. He proclaimed and promised rather than effected a

certain number of reforms: the abandonment of the rights of

``spoils'' and ``procurations,'' the re-establishment of the

system of canonical election in the cathedral churches and

principal monasteries, &c. But death came upon him almost

without warning at Bologna, in the night of the 3rd-4th May

1410. A rumour went about that he had been poisoned by the

cardinal Baldassare Cossa, impatient to be his successor, who

succeeded him in fact under the name of John XXIII. The crime

has, however, never been proved, though a Milanese physician, who

performed the task of dissecting the corpse of Peter Philarges,

seems to have thought that he found traces of poison. (N. V.)

ALEXANDER VI. (Rodrigo Borgia) (1431-1503), pope from 1492

to his death, is the most memorable of the corrupt and secular

popes of the Renaissance. He was born (January 1, 1431) at

Xativa, near Valencia in Spain, and his father's surname was

Lanzol or Llancol; that of his mother's family, Borgia or

Borja, was assumed by him on the elevation of his maternal

uncle to the papacy as Calixtus III. (April 8, 1455). He

studied law at Bologna, and after his uncle's election he

was created successively bishop, cardinal and vice-chancellor

of the church, an act of nepotism characteristic of the

age. He served in the Curia under five popes and acquired

much administrative experience, influence and wealth,

although no great power; he was economical in his habits;

on occasion he displayed great splendour and lived in a fine

palace. His manners were agreeable and his appearance

fascinating, but, like many other prelates of the day, his

morals were far from blameless, his two dominant passions

being greed of gold and love of women, and he was devotedly

fond of the children whom his mistresses bore him. Although

ecclesiastical corruption was then at its height, his

riotous mode of life called down upon him a very severe

reprimand from Pope Pius II., who succeeded Calixtus III. in

1458. Of his many mistresses the one for whom his passion

lasted longest was a certain Vannozza (Giovanna) dei Cattani,

born in 1442, and wife of three successive husbands. The

connexion began in 1470, and she bore him many children whom

he openly acknowledged as his own: Giovanni, afterwards duke

of Gandia (born 1474), Cesare (born 1476), Lucrezia (born

1480), and Goffredo or Giuffre (born 1481 or 1482). His other

children--Girolamo, Isabella and Pier Luigi--were of uncertain

parentage. Before his elevation to the papacy Cardinal

Borgia's passion for Vannozza somewhat diminished, and she

subsequently led a very retired life. Her place in his

affections was filled by the beautiful Giulia Farnese (Giulia

Bella), wife of an Orsini, but his love for his children by

Vannozza remained as strong as ever and proved, indeed, the

determining factor of his whole career. He lavished vast sums

on them and loaded them with every honour. A characteristic

instance of the corruption of the papal court is the fact that

Borgia's daughter Lucrezia (see BORGIA, LUCREZIA) lived with

his mistress Giulia, who bore him a daughter Laura in 1492.

On the death of Pope Innocent VIII. the three likely candidates

for the Holy See were Cardinals Borgia, Ascanio Sforza and

Giuliano della Rovere; at no previous or subsequent election

were such immense sums of money spent on bribery, and Borgia

by his great wealth succeeded in buying the largest number of

votes, including that of Sforza, and to his intense joy he

was elected on the 10th of August 1492, assuming the name of

Alexander VI. Borgia's elevation did not at the time excite

much alarm, except in some of the cardinals who knew him, and

at first his reign was marked by a strict administration of

justice and an orderly method of government in satisfactory

contrast with the anarchy of the previous pontificate, as

well as by great outward splendour. But it was not long

before his unbridled passion for endowing his relatives

at the expense of the church and of his neighbours became

manifest. For this object he was ready to commit any crime

and to plunge all Italy into war. Cesare, then a youth

of sixteen and a student at Pisa, was made archbishop of

Valencia, his nephew Giovanni received a cardinal's hat,

and for the duke of Gandia and Giuffre the pope proposed

to carve fiefs out of the papal states and the kingdom of

Naples. Among the fiefs destined for the duke of Gandia

were Cervetri and Anguillara, lately acquired by Virginio

Orsini, head of that powerful and turbulent house, with the

pecuniary help of Ferdinand of Aragon, king of Naples (Don

Ferrante). This brought the latter into conflict with

Alexander, who determined to revenge himself by making an

alliance with the king's enemies, especially the Sforza family,

lords of Milan. In this he was opposed by Cardinal della

Rovere, whose candidature for the papacy had been backed by

Ferdinand. Della Rovere, feeling that Rome was a dangerous

place for him, fortified himself in his bishopric of Ostia at

the Tiber's mouth, while Ferdinand allied himself with Florence,

Milan, Venice, and the pope formed a league against Naples

(April 25, 1493) and prepared for war. Ferdinand appealed

to Spain for help; but Spain was anxious to be on good terms

with the pope to obtain a title over the newly discovered

continent of America and could not afford to quarrel with him.

Alexander meditated great marriages for his children. Lucrezia

had been married to the Spaniard Don Gasparo de Procida,

but on her father's elevation to the papacy the union was

annulled, and in 1493 she was married to Giovanni Sforza. lord

of Pesaro, the ceremony being celebrated at the Vatican with

unparalleled magnificence. But in spite of the splendours

of the court, the condition of Rome became every day more

deplorable. The city swarmed with Spanish adventurers,

assassins, prostitutes and informers; murder and robbery were

committed with impunity, heretics and Jews were admitted to

the city on payment of bribes, and the pope himself shamelessly

cast aside all show of decorum, living a purely secular and

immoral life, and indujging in the chase, dancing, stage

plays and indecent orgies. One of his boon companions was

Jem, the brother of the sultan Bayezid, detained as a hostage.

The general political outlook in Italy was of the gloomiest,

and the country was on the eve of the catastrophe of foreign

invasion. At Milan Lodovico Sforza (il Moro) ruled,

nominally as regent for the youthful duke Gian Galeazzo,

but really with a view to making himself master of the

state. He made many alliances to secure his position, but

fearing himself isolated he sought help from Charles VIII. of

France, and as the king of Naples threatened to come to the

aid of Gian Galeazzo, who had married his grand- daughter, he

encouraged the French king in his schemes for the conquest of

Naples. Alexander carried on a double policy, always ready

to seize opportunities to aggrandize his family. But through

the intervention of the Spanish ambassador he made peace with

Naples in July 1493 and also with the Orsini; the peace was

cemented by a marriage between the pope's son Giuffre and Dona

Sancha, Ferdinand's grand-daughter. In order to dominate

the Sacred College more completely he created twelve new

cardinals, among them his own son Cesare, then only eighteen

years old, and Alessandro Farnese, the brother of Giulia Bella,

one of the pope's mistresses, creations which caused much

scandal. On the 25th of January 1494 Ferdinand died and

was succeeded by his son Alphonso II. Charles of France now

advanced formal claims on the kingdom, and Alexander drew

him to his side and authorized him to pass through Rome

ostensibly on a crusade against the Turks, without mentioning

Naples. But when the French invasion became a reality he was

alarmed, recognized Alphonso as king, and concluded an alliance

with him in exchange for various fiefs to his sons (July

1494). Preparations for defence were made; a Neapolitan

army was to advance through the Romagna and attack Milan,

while the fleet was to seize Genoa; but both expeditions

were badly conducted and failed, and on the 8th of September

Charles crossed the Alps and joined Lodovico il Moro at

Milan. The papal states were in a turmoil, and the powerful

Colonna faction seized Ostia in the name of France. Charles

rapidly advanced southward, and after a short stay in Florence

set out for Rome (November 1494). Alexander appealed to

Ascanio Sforza for help, and even to the sultan. He tried

to collect troops and put Rome in a state of defence, but his

position was most insecure, and the Orsini offered to admit

the French to their castles. This defection decided the

pope to come to terms, and on the 31st of December Charles

entered Rome with his troops and the cardinals of the French

faction. Alexander now feared that the king might depose him

for simony and summon a council, but he won over the bishop of St

Malo, who had much influence over the king, with a cardinal's

hat, and agreed to send Cesare, as legate, to Naples with

the French army, to deliver Jem to Charles and to give him

Civitavecchia (January 16, 1495). On the 28th Charles departed

for Naples with Jem and Cesare, but the latter escaped to

Spoleto. Neapolitan resistance collapsed; Alphonso fled and

abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand II., who also had

to fly abandoned by all, and the kingdom was conquered with

surprising ease. But a reaction against Charles soon set

in, for all the powers were alarmed at his success, and on

the 31st of March a league between the pope, the emperor,

Venice, Lodovico il Moro and Ferdinand of Spain was formed,

ostensibly against the Turks, but in reality to expel the

French from Italy. Charles had himself crowned king of Naples

on the 12th of May, but a few days later began his retreat

northward. He encountered the allies at Fornovo, and after a

drawn battle cut his way through them and was back in France

by November; Ferdinand II. with Spanish help was reinstated

at Naples soon afterwards. The expedition, if it produced

no material results, laid bare the weakness of the Italian

political system and the country's incapacity for resistance.

Alexander availed himself of the defeat of the French to

break the power of the Orsini, following the general tendency

of all the princes of the day to crush the great feudatories

and establish a centralized despotism. Virginio Orsini,

who had been captured by the Spaniards, died a prisoner at

Naples, and the pope confiscated his property. But the

rest of the clan still held out, and the papal troops sent

against them under Guidobaldo duke of Urbino and the duke of

Gandia were defeated at Soriano (January 1497). Peace was

made through Venetian mediation, the Orsini paying 50,000

ducats in exchange for their confiscated lands; the duke of

Urbino, whom they had captured, was left by the pope to pay

his own ransom. The Orsini still remained very powerful,

and Alexander could count on none but his 3000 Spaniards.

His only success had been the capture of Ostia and the

submission of the Francophile cardinals Colonna and Savelli.

Now occurred the first of those ugly domestic tragedies for

which the house of Borgia remained famous. On the 14th of

June the duke of Gandia, lately created duke of Benevento,

disappeared; the next day his corpse was found in the Tiber.

Alexander, overwhelmed with grief, shut himself up in Castle

St Angelo, and then declared that the reform of the church

would be the sole object of his life henceforth--a resolution

which he did not keep. Every effort was made to discover

the assassin, and suspicion fell on various highly placed

personages. Suddenly the rumour spread about that Cesare, the

pope's second son, was the author of the deed, and although the

inquiries then ceased and no conclusive evidence has yet come

to light, there is every probability that the charge was well

founded. No doubt Cesare, who contemplated quitting the

church, was inspired by jealousy. of Gandia's influence with

the pope. Violent and revengeful, he now became the most

powerful man in Rome, and even his father quailed before

him. As he needed funds to carry out his various schemes,

the pope began a series of confiscations, of which one of the

victims was his own secretary, in order to enrich him. The

process was a simple one: any cardinal, nobleman or official

who was known to be rich would be accused of some offence;

imprisonment and perhaps murder followed at once, and then

the confiscation of his property. The disorganization of the

Curia was appalling, the sale of offices became a veritable

scandal, the least opposition to the Borgia was punished

with death, and even in that corrupt age the state of things

shocked public opinion. The story of Alexander's relations

with Savonarola is narrated under the latter heading; it is

sufficient to say here that the pope's hostility was due to

the friar's outspoken invectives against papal corruption and

to his appeals for a General Council. Alexander, although

he could not get Savonarola into his own hands, browbeat the

Florentine government into condemning the reformer to death

(May 23, 1498). The pope was unable to maintain order in

his own dominions; the houses of Colonna and Orsini were at

open war with each other, but after much fighting they made

peace on a basis of alliance against the pope. Thus further

weakened, he felt more than ever that he had only his own

kin to rely upon, and his thoughts were ever turned on family

aggrandizement. He had annulled Lucrezia's marriage with Sforza

in 1497, and, unable to arrange a union between Cesare and

the daughter of Frederick, king of Naples (who had succeeded

Ferdinand II. the previous year), he induced the latter by

threats to agree to a marriage between the duke of Bisceglie,

a natural son of Alphonso II., and Lucrezia. Cesare, who

renounced his cardinalate, was sent on a mission to France

at the end of the year, bearing a bull of divorce for the

new king Louis XII., in exchange for which he obtained the

duchy of Valentinois (hence his title of Duca Valentino) and

a promise of material assistance in his schemes to subjugate

the feudal princelings of Romagna; he married a princess of

Navarre. Alexander hoped that Louis's help would be more

profitable to his house than that of Charles had been and,

in spite of the remonstrances of Spain and of the Sforza, he

allied himself with France in January 1499 and was joined by

Venice. By the autumn Louis was in Italy and expelled

Lodovico Sforza from the Milanese. In order to consolidate

his possessions still further, now that French success seemed

assured, the pope determined to deal drastically with Romagna,

which although nominally under papal rule was divided up

into a number of practically independent lordships on which

Venice, Milan and Florence cast hungry eyes. Cesare, nominated

gonfaloniere of the Church, and strong in French favour,

proceeded to attack the turbulent cities one by one (for

detail see BORGIA CESARE.) But the expulsion of the French

from Milan and the return of Lodovico Sforza interrupted his

conquests, and he returned to Rome early in 1500. This year

was a jubilee year, and crowds of pilgrims flocked to the city

from all parts of the world bringing money for the purchase

of indulgences, so that Alexander was able to furnish Cesare

with funds for his enterprise. In the north the pendulum

swung back once more and the French reoccupied Milan in April,

causing the downfall of the Sforzas, much to Alexander's

gratification. But there was no end to the Vatican tragedies,

and in July the duke of Bisceglie, whose existence was no

longer advantageous, was murdered by Cesare's orders; this

left Lucrezia free to contract another marriage. The pope,

ever in need of money, now created twelve new cardinals,

from whom he received 120,000 ducats, and fresh conquests

for Cesare were considered. But while a crusade was talked

of, the real object was central Italy, and in the autumn

Cesare, favoured by France and Venice, set forth with 10,000

men to complete his interrupted enterprise. The local despots

of Romagna were dispossessed and an administration was set

up, which, if tyrannical and cruel, was at least orderly and

strong, and aroused the admiration of Machiavelli (q.v..)

On his return to Rome (June 1501) he was created duke of

Romagna. Louis XII., having succeeded in the north, determined

to conquer southern Italy as well, and concluded a treaty

with Spain for the division of the Neapolitan kingdom, which

was ratified by the pope on the 25th of June, Frederick

being formally deposed. The French army proceeded to invade

Naples, and Alexander took the opportunity, with the help

of the Orsini, to reduce the Colonna to obedience. In his

absence he left Lucrezia as regent, offering the astounding

spectacle of a pope's natural daughter in charge of the Holy

See. Shortly afterwards he induced Alphonso d'Este, son of

the duke of Ferrara, to marry her, thus establishing her

as heiress to one of the most important principalities in

Italy (January 1502). About this time a Borgia of doubtful

parentage was born, Giovanni, described in some papal

documents as Alexander's son and in others as Cesare's.

As France and Spain were quarrelling over the division of

Naples and the Campagna barons were quiet, Cesare set out once

more in search of conquests. In June he seized Camerino and

Urbino, the news of which capture filled the pope with childish

joy. But his military force was uncertain, for the condottieri

were not to be trusted. His attempt to draw Florence into an

alliance failed, but in July Louis of France again invaded Italy

and was at once bombarded with complaints from the Borgia's

enemies. Alexander's diplomacy, however, turned the tide, and

Cesare, in exchange for promising to assist the French in the

south, was given a free hand in central Italy. A new danger

now arose in the shape of a conspiracy against him on the

part of the deposed despots, the Orsini and some of his own

condottieri. At first the papal troops were defeated and

things looked black for the house of Borgia. But a promise of

French help at once forced the confederates to come to terms,

and Cesare by an act of treachery seized the ringleaders at

Senigallia, and put Oliverotto da Fermo and Vitellozzo Vitelli

to death (Dec. 31, 1502). As soon as Alexander heard the

news he decoyed Cardinal Orsini to the Vatican and cast him

into a dungeon, where he died. His goods were confiscated,

his aged mother turned into the street and numbers of other

members of the clan in Rome were arrested, while Giuffre

Borgia led an expedition into the Campagna and seized their

castles. Thus the two great houses of Orsini and Colonna,

who had long fought for predominance in Rome and often flouted

the pope's authority, were subjugated, and a great step

achieved towards consolidating the Borgia's power. Cesare

then returned to Rome, where his father wished him to assist

Giuffre in reducing the last Orsini strongholds; this for some

reason he was unwilling to do, much to Alexander's annoyance,

but he eventually marched out, captured Ceri and made peace

with Giulio Orsini, who surrendered Bracciano. Three more

high personages fell victims to the Borgia's greed this year,

viz. Cardinal Michiel, who was poisoned in April, J. da Santa

Croce, who had helped to seize Cardinal Orsini, and Troches

or Troccio, one of the family's most faithful assassins;

all these murders brought immense sums to the pope. About

Cardinal Ferrari's death there is more doubt; he probably

died of fever, but the pope immediately confiscated his goods.

The war between France and Spain for the possession of Naples

dragged on, and Alexander was ever intriguing, ready to ally

himself with whichever power promised at the moment most

advantageous terms. He offered to help Louis on condition that

Sicily be given to Cesare, and then offered to help Spain in

exchange for Siena, Pisa and Bologna. Cesare was preparing

for another expedition into central Italy in July 1503, when,

in the midst of all these projects and negotiations, both

he and his father were taken ill with fever. The occurrence

was of course attributed to poison, although quite without

foundation, being merely due to malaria, at that time very

prevalent in Rome. On the 18th of August Alexander died

at the age of 72. His death was followed by scenes of wild

disorder, and Cesare, being himself ill, could not attend

to business, but sent Don Michelotto, his chief bravo, to

seize the pope's treasures before the demise was publicly

announced. When the body was exhibited to the people the next

day it was in a shocking state of decomposition, which of course

strengthened the suspicion of poison. At the funeral a brawl

occurred between the soldiers and the priests, and the coffin

having been made too short the body without the mitre was

driven into it by main force and covered with an oil-cloth.

Alexander's successor on the chair of St Peter was Francesco

Todeschini-Piccolomini, who assumed the name of Pius III.

Alexander VI. has become almost a mythical character, and

countless legends and traditions are attached to his name. As

a matter of fact he cannot be regarded in any sense as a great

man. His career shows no great political ideas, and none

of his actions indicate genius. His one thought was family

aggrandizement, and while it is unlikely that he meditated

making the papacy hereditary in the house of Borgia, he

certainly gave away its temporal estates to his children

as though they belonged to him. The secularization of the

church was carried to a pitch never before dreamed of, and

it was clear to all Italy that he regarded the papacy as an

instrument of worldly schemes with no thought of its religious

aspect. During his pontificate the church was brought to its

lowest level of degradation. The condition of his subjects was

deplorable, and if Cesare's rule in Romagna was an improvement

on that of the local tyrants, the people of Rome have seldom

been more oppressed than under the Borgia. Alexander was not

the only person responsible for the general unrest in Italy

and the foreign invasions, but he was ever ready to profit by

them. Even if we do not accept all the stories of his murders

and poisonings and immoralities as true, there is no doubt

that his greed for money and his essentially vicious nature

led him to commit a great number of crimes. For many of

his misdeeds his terrible son Cesare was responsible, but of

others the pope cannot be acquitted. The one pleasing aspect

of his life is his patronage of the arts, and in his days a

new architectural era was initiated in Rome with the coming of

Bramante. Raphael, Michelangelo and Pinturicchio all worked

for him, and a curious contrast, characteristic of the age,

is afforded by the fact that a family so steeped in vice and

crime could take pleasure in the most exquisite works of art.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The chief contemporary authorities for this

reign are: the diary of Alexander's master of ceremonies,

Johannes Burchardus, edited by L. Thuasne (Paris, 1883-1884),

which is characterized by accuracy and extraordinary candour

often amounting to gross indecency; the despatches of

Giustiniani, the Venetian ambassador, edited by P. Villari

(Florence, 1876), which show great insight and are based on

the most accurate information; and Paolo Cappelli's ``Diarii''

in E. Alberi's Relazioni, series ii., iii. Among modern

works the most important are: F. Gregorovius's Geschichte

der Stadt Rom (3rd ed., Stuttgart, 1881), a work of immense

research and admirable synthesis, giving a very unfavourable

view of the Borgia; A. von Reumont's Geschichte der Stadt

Rom (Berlin, 1867-1870), also a valuable book; M. Creighton's

History of the Papacy (London, 1897) is very learned and

accurate, but the author is more lenient towards Alexander; F.

Gregorovius's Lucrezia Borgia (Stuttgart, 1874) contains a

great deal of information on the Borgia family; P. Villari's

Machiavelli (English translation, new ed., 1892) deals

with the subject at some length. Of the Catholic writers L.

Pastor, Geschichte der Papste (Freiburg i. B, 1886) should

be consulted, for although the author tries to extenuate

the pope to some extent, on the whole he is fair. (L. V.*)

ALEXANDER VII. (Fabio Chigi), pope from 1655 to 1667, was

born at Siena on the 13th of February 1599. He was successively

inquisitor at Malta, vice-legate at Ferrara and nuncio in Cologne

(1639-1651). Though expected to take part in the negotiations

which led in 1648 to the peace of Westphalia, he refused to

deliberate with heretics, and protested against the treaties

when completed. Innocent X. subsequently made him cardinal

secretary of state. When Innocent died, Chigi, the candidate

favoured by Spain, was elected pope on the 7th of April

1655. The conclave believed he was strongly opposed to the

nepotism then prevalent. In the first year of his reign

Alexander VII. forbade his relations even to visit Rome; but

in 1656 he gave them the best-paid civil and ecclesiastical

offices, also palaces and princely estates. Alexander disliked

business of state, preferring literature and philosophy; a

collection of his Latin poems appeared at Paris in 1656 under

the title Philomathi Labores Juveniles. He also encouraged

architecture, and in particular constructed the beautiful

colonnade in the piazza of St Peter's. He favoured the

Jesuits, especially in their conflict with the Jansenists,

forbade in 1661 the translation of the Roman Missal into

French, and in 1665 canonized Francis of Sales. His pontificate

was marked by protracted controversies with France and

Portugal. He died on the 22nd of May 1667. (W. W. R.*)

ALEXANDER VIII. (Pietro Ottoboni), pope from 1689 to 1691,

was born in 1610 of a noble Venetian family, was created

cardinal, and then successively bishop of Brescia and datary.

The ambassador of Louis XIV. succeeded in procuring his election

on the 6th of October 1689 as successor to Innocent XI.;

nevertheless, after months of negotiation Alexander finally

condemned the declaration made in 1682 by the French clergy

concerning the liberties of the Gallican church. Charities

on a large scale and unbounded nepotism exhausted the papal

treasury. He bought the books and manuscripts of Queen Christina

of Sweden for the Vatican library. Alexander condemned in 1690

the doctrines of so-called philosophic sin, taught in the Jesuit

schools. He died on the 1st of February 1691. (W. W. R.*)

ALEXANDER I. (ALEKSANDER PAVLOVICH) (1777-1825), emperor

of Russia, son of the grand-duke Paul Petrovich, afterwards

Paul I., and Maria Fedorovna, daughter of Frederick Eugene of

Wurttemberg, was born on the 28th of December 1777. The

strange contradictions of his character make Alexander one

of the most interesting as he is one of the most important

figures in the history of the 19th century. Autocrat and

``Jacobin,'' man of the world and mystic, he was to his

contemporaries a riddle which each read according to his own

temperament. Napoleon thought him a ``shifty Byzantine,''

and called him the Talma of the North, as ready to play

any conspicuous part. To Metternich he was a madman to be

humoured. Castlereagh, writing of him to Lord Liverpool,

gives him credit for ``grand qualities,'' but adds that he

is ``suspicious and undecided.'' His complex nature was, in

truth, the outcome of the complex character of his early

environment and education. Reared in the free-thinking

atmosphere of the court of Catherine II. he had imbibed from

his Swiss tutor, Frederic Cesar de Laharpe, the principles

of Rousseau's gospel of humanity; from his military governor,

General Soltikov, the traditions of Russian autocracy; while

his father had inspired him with his own passion of military

parade, and taught him to combine a theoretical love of

mankind with a practical contempt for men. These contradictory

tendencies remained with him through life, revealed in

the fluctuations of his policy and influencing through him

the fate of the world. Another element in his character

discovered itself when in 1801 he mounted the throne over

the body of his murdered father: a mystic melancholy liable

at any moment to issue in extravagant action. At first,

indeed, this exercised but little influence on the emperor's

life. Young, emotional, impressionable, well-meaning and

egotistic, Alexander displayed from the first an intention of

playing a great part on the world's stage, and plunged with all

the ardour of youth into the task of realizing his political

ideals. While retaining for a time the old ministers who

had served and overthrown the emperor Paul, one of the first

acts of his reign was to appoint a secret committee, called

ironically the ``Comite du salut public,'' consisting of

young and enthusiastic friends of his own--Victor Gavovich

Kochubey, Nikolai Nikolaevich Novosiltsov, Paul Alexandrovich

Strogonov and Adam Czartoryski--to draw up a scheme of internal

reform. Their aims, inspired by their admiration for English

institutions, were far in advance of the possibilities of

the time, and even after they had been raised to regular

ministerial positions but little of their programme could be

realized. For Russia was not ripe for liberty; and Alexander,

the disciple of the revolutionist Laharpe, was--as he

himself said--but ``a happy accident'' on the throne of the

tsars. He spoke, indeed, bitterly of ``the state of barbarism

in which the country had been left by the traffic in men.''

``Under Paul,'' he said, ``three thousand peasants had been

given away like a bag of diamonds. If civilization were more

advanced, I would abolish this slavery, if it cost me my

head.''1 But the universal corruption, he complained, had

left him no men; and the filling up of the government offices

with Germans and other foreigners merely accentuated the

sullen resistance of the ``old Russians'' to his reforms.

That Alexander's reign, which began with so large a promise of

amelioration, ended by riveting still tighter the chains of

the Russian people was, however, due less to the corruption and

backwardness of Russian life than to the defects of the tsar

himself. His love of liberty, though sincere, was in fact

unreal. It flattered his vanity to pose before the world as

the dispenser of benefits; but his theoretical liberalism was

mated with an autocratic will which brooked no contradiction.

``You always want to instruct me!'' he exlaimed to Derzhavin,

the minister of justice, ``but I am the autocratic emperor,

and I will this, and nothing else!'' ``He would gladly have

agreed,'' wrote Adam Czartoryski, ``that every one should be

free, if every one had freely done only what he wished.''

Moreover, with this masterful temper was joined an infirmity

of purpose which ever let ``I dare not wait upon I would,''

and which seized upon any excuse for postponing measures the

principles of which he had publicly approved. The codification

of the laws initiated in 1801 was never carried out during his

reign; nothing was done to improve the intolerable status of

the Russian peasantry; the constitution drawn up by Speranski,

and passed by the emperor, remained unsigned. Alexander, in

fact, who, without being consciously tyrannical, possessed

in full measure the tyrant's characteristic distrust of men

of ability and independent judgment, lacked also the first

requisite for a reforming sovereign: confidence in his people;

and it was this want that vitiated such reforms as were actually

realized. He experimented in the outlying provinces of his

empire; and the Russians noted with open murmurs that, not content

with governing through foreign instruments, he was conferring

on Poland, Finland and the Baltic provinces benefits denied to

themselves. In Russia, too, certain reforms were carried

out; but they could not survive the suspicious interference

of the autocrat and his officials. The newly created council

of ministers, and the senate, endowed for the first time

with certain theoretical powers, became in the end but the

slavish instruments of the tsar and his favourites of the

moment. The elaborate system of education, culminating in the

reconstituted, or new-founded, universities of Dorpat, Vilna,

Kazan and Kharkov, was strangled in the supposed interests of

``order'' and of orthodox piety; while the military colonies

which Alexander proclaimed as a blessing to both soldiers

and state were forced on the unwilling peasantry and army

with pitiless cruelty. Even the Bible Society, through which

the emperor in his later mood of evangelical zeal proposed

to bless his people, was conducted on the same ruthless

lines. The Roman archbishop and the Orthodox metropolitans

were forced to serve on its committee side by side with

Protestant pastors; and village popes, trained to regard any

tampering with the letter of the traditional documents of the

church as mortal sin, became the unwilling instruments for

the propagation of what they regarded as works of the devil.

Alexander's grandiose imagination was, however, more strongly

attracted by the great questions of European politics than

by attempts at domestic reform which, on the whole, wounded

his pride by proving to him the narrow limits of absolute

power. On the morrow of his accession he had reversed the

policy of Paul, denounced the League of Neutrals, and made

peace with England (April 1801), at the same time opening

negotiations with Austria. Soon afterwards at Memel he

entered into a close alliance with Prussia, not as he boasted

from motives of policy, but in the spirit of true chivalry,

out of friendship for the young king Frederick William and

his beautiful wife. The development of this alliance was

interrupted by the short-lived peace of October 1801; and for

a while it seemed as though France and Russia might come to an

understanding. Carried away by the enthusiasm of Laharpe,

who had returned to Russia from Paris, Alexander began

openly to proclaim his admiration for French institutions

and for the person of Bonaparte. Soon, however, came a

change. Laharpe, after a new visit to Paris, presented to

the tsar his Reflexions on the True Nature of the Consulship

for Life, which, as Alexander said, tore the veil from his

eyes, and revealed Bonaparte ``as not a true patriot,'' but

only as ``the most famous tyrant the world has produced.''

His disillusionment was completed by the murder of the duc

d'Enghien. The Russian court went into mourning for the last of

the Condes, and diplomatic relations with Paris were broken off.

The events of the war that followed belong to the general

history of Europe; but the tsar's attitude throughout is

personal to himself, though pregnant with issues momentous

for the world. In opposing Napoleon, ``the oppressor of

Europe and the disturber of the world's peace,'' Alexander

in fact already believed himself to be fulfilling a divine

mission. In his instructions to Novosiltsov, his special

envoy in London, the tsar elaborated the motives of his policy

in language which appealed as little to the common sense of

Pitt as did later the treaty of the Holy Alliance to that of

Castlereagh. Yet the document is of great interest, as in it

we find formulated for the first time in an official despatch

those exalted ideals of international policy which were to

play so conspicuous a part in the affairs of the world at the

close of the revolutionary epoch, and issued at the end of

the 19th century in the Rescript of Nicholas II.2 and the

conference of the Hague. The outcome of the war, Alexander

argued, was not to be only the liberation of France, but the

universal triumph of ``the sacred rights of humanity.'' To

attain this it would be necessary ``after having attached the

nations to their government by making these incapable of acting

save in the greatest interests of their subjects, to fix the

relations of the states amongst each other on more precise

rules, and such as it is to their interest to respect.'' A

general treaty was to become the basis of the relations of

the states forming ``the European Confederation''; and this,

though ``it was no question of realizing the dream of universal

peace, would attain some of its results if, at the conclusion

of the general war, it were possible to establish on clear

principles the prescriptions of the rights of nations.'' ``Why

could not one submit to it,'' the tsar continued, ``the positive

rights of nations, assure the privilege of neutrality, insert

the obligation of never beginning war until all the resources

which the mediation of a third party could offer have been

exhausted, having by this means brought to light the respective

grievances, and tried to remove them? It is on such principles

as these that one could proceed to a general pacification,

and give birth to a league of which the stipulations would

form, so to speak, a new code of the law of nations, which,

sanctioned by the greater part of the nations of Europe,

would without difficulty become the immutable rule of the

cabinets, while those who should try to infringe it would

risk bringing upon themselves the forces of the new union.''3

Meanwhile Napoleon, little deterred by the Russian autocrat's

youthful idealogy, never gave up hope of detaching him from

the coalition. He had no sooner entered Vienna in triumph

than he opened negotiations with him; he resumed them after

Austerlitz. Russia and France, he urged, were ``geographical

allies''; there was, and could be, between them no true

conflict of interests; together they might rule the world. But

Alexander was still determined ``to persist in the system of

disinterestedness in respect of all the states of Europe which

he had thus far followed,'' and he again allied himself with

Prussia. The campaign of Jena and the battle of Eylau followed;

and Napoleon, though still intent on the Russian alliance,

stirred up Poles, Turks and Persians to break the obstinacy of

the tsar. A party too in Russia itself, headed by the tsar's

brother the grand-duke Constantine, was clamorous for peace;

but Alexander, after a vain attempt to form a new coalition,

summoned the Russian nation to a holy war against Napoleon as

the enemy of the orthodox faith. The outcome was the rout of

Friedland (June 13 and 14, 1807). Napoleon saw his chance and

seized it. Instead of making heavy terms, he offered to the

chastened autocrat his alliance, and a partnership in his glory.

The two emperors met at Tilsit on the 25th of June. Alexander,

dazzled by Napoleon's genius and overwhelmed by his apparent

generosity, was completely won. Napoleon knew well how to

appeal to the exuberant imagination of his new-found friend.

He would divide with Alexander the empire of the world; as a

first step he would leave him in possession of the Danubian

principalities and give him a free hand to deal with Finland;

and, afterwards, the emperors of the East and West, when the

time should be ripe, would drive the Turks from Europe and

march across Asia to the conquest of India. A programme so

stupendous awoke in Alexander's impressionable mind an ambition

to which he had hitherto been a stranger. The interests of

Europe were forgotten. ``What is Europe?'' he exclaimed to the

French ambassador. ``Where is it, if it is not you and we?''4

The brilliance of these new visions did not, however, blind

Alexander to the obligations of friendship; and he refused

to retain the Danubian principalities as the price for

suffering a further dismemberment of Prussia. ``We have made

loyal war,'' he said, ``we must make a loyal peace.'' It

was not long before the first enthusiasm of Tilsit began to

wane. Napoleon was prodigal of promises, but niggard of their

fulfilment. The French remained in Prussia, the Russians on

the Danube; and each accused the other of breach of faith.

Meanwhile, however, the personal relations of Alexander and

Napoleon were of the most cordial character; and it was hoped

that a fresh meeting might adjust all differences between

them. The meeting took place at Erfurt in October 1808, and

resulted in a treaty which defined the common policy of the two

emperors. But Alexander's relations with Napoleon none

the less suffered a change. He realized that in Napoleon

sentiment never got the better of reason, that as a matter of

fact he had never intended his proposed ``grand enterprise''

seriously, and had only used it to preoccupy the mind of the

tsar while he consolidated his own power in central Europe.

From this moment the French alliance was for Alexander also

not a fraternal agreement to rule the world, but an affair

of pure policy. He used it, in the first instance, to remove

``the geographical enemy'' from the gates of St Petersburg

by wresting Finland from the Swedes (1809); and he hoped

by means of it to make the Danube the southern frontier of

Russia. Events were in fact rapidly tending to the rupture

of the Franco-Russian alliance. Alexander, indeed, assisted

Napoleon in the war of 1809, but he declared plainly that

he would not allow Austria to be crushed out of existence;

and Napoleon complained bitterly of the inactivity of the

Russian troops during the campaign. The tsar in his turn

protested against Napoleon's encouragement of the Poles.

In the matter of the French alliance he knew himself to be

practically isolated in Russia, and he declared that he could

not sacrifice the interest of his people and empire to his

affection for Napoleon. ``I don't want anything for myself,''

he said to the French ambassador, ``therefore the world is

not large enough to come to an understanding on the affairs

of Poland, if it is a question of its restoration.''5 The

treaty of Vienna, which added largely to the grand-duchy of

Warsaw, he complained had ``ill requited him for his loyalty,''

and he was only mollified for the time by Napoleon's public

declaration that he had no intention of restoring Poland, and

by a convention, signed on the 4th of January 1810 but not

ratified, abolishing the Polish name and orders of chivalry.

But if Alexander suspected Napoleon, Napoleon was no less

suspicious of Alexander; and, partly to test his sincerity, he

sent an almost peremptory request for the hand of the grand-

duchess Anne, the tsar's youngest sister. After some little

delay Alexander returned a polite refusal, on the plea of the

princess's tender age and the objection of the dowager empress

to the marriage. Napoleon's answer was to refuse to ratify

the convention of the 4th of January, and to announce his

engagement to the archduchess Marie Louise in such a way as to

lead Alexander to suppose that the two marriage treaties had

been negotiated simultaneously. From this time the relation

between the two emperors gradually became more and more

strained. The annexation of Oldenburg, of which the duke was

the tsar's uncle, to France in December 1810, added another to

the personal grievances of Alexander against Napoleon; while

the ruinous reaction of ``the continental system'' on Russian

trade made it impossible for the tsar to maintain a policy

which was Napoleon's chief motive for the alliance. An acid

correspondence followed, and ill-concealed armaments, which

culminated in the summer of 1812 in Napoleon's invasion of

Russia. Yet, even after the French had passed the frontier,

Alexander still protested that his personal sentiments towards

the emperor were unaltered; ``but,'' he added, ``God Himself

cannot undo the past.'' It was the occupation of Moscow and

the desecration of the Kremlin, the sacred centre of Holy

Russia, that changed his sentiment for Napoleon into passionate

hatred. In vain the French emperor, within eight days of

his entry into Moscow, wrote to the tsar a letter, which was

one long cry of distress, revealing the desperate straits

of the Grand Army, and appealed to ``any remnant of his

former sentiments.'' Alexander returned no answer to these

``fanfaronnades.'' ``No more peace with Napoleon!'' he cried,

``He or I, I or He: we cannot longer reign together!''6

The campaign of 1812 was the turning-point of Alexander's life;

and its horrors, for which his sensitive nature felt much of

the responsibility, overset still more a mind never too well

balanced. At the burning of Moscow, he declared afterwards,

his own soul had found illumination, and he had realized once

for all the divine revelation to him of his mission as the

peacemaker of Europe. He tried to calm the unrest of his

conscience by correspondence with the leaders of the evangelical

revival on the continent, and sought for omens and supernatural

guidance in texts and passages of scripture. It was not,

however, according to his own account, till he met the Baroness

de Krudener--a religious adventuress who made the conversion

of princes her special mission--at Basel, in the autumn of

1813, that his soul found peace. From this time a mystic

pietism became the avowed force of his political, as of his

private actions. Madame de Krudener, and her colleague, the

evangelist Empaytaz, became the confidants of the emperor's

most secret thoughts; and during the campaign that ended in

the occupation of Paris the imperial prayer-meetings were

the oracle on whose revelations hung the fate of the world.

Such was Alexander's mood when the downfall of Napoleon left

him the most powerful sovereign in Europe. With the memory

of Tilsit still fresh in men's minds, it was not unnatural

that to cynical men of the world like Metternich he merely

seemed to be disguising ``under the language of evangelical

abnegation'' vast and perilous schemes of ambition. The puzzled

powers were, in fact, the more inclined to be suspicious in

view of other, and seemingly inconsistent, tendencies of the

emperor, which yet seemed all to point to a like disquieting

conclusion. For Madame de Krudener was not the only influence

behind the throne; and, though Alexander had declared war

against the Revolution, Laharpe was once more at his elbow,

and the catchwords of the gospel of humanity were still on his

lips. The very proclamations which denounced Napoleon

as ``the genius of evil,'' denounced him in the name of

``liberty,'' and of ``enlightenment.'' A monstrous intrigue

was suspected for the alliance of the eastern autocrat with

the Jacobinism of all Europe, which would have issued in the

substitution of an all-powerful Russia for an all-powerful

France. At the congress of Vienna Alexander's attitude

accentuated this distrust. Castlereagh, whose single-minded

aim was the restoration of ``a just equilibrium'' in Europe,

reproached the tsar to his face for a ``conscience'' which

suffered him to imperil the concert of the powers by keeping

his hold on Poland in violation of his treaty obligation.7

Yet Alexander was sincere. Even the Holy Alliance, the pet

offspring of his pietism, does not deserve the sinister reputation

it has since obtained. To the other powers it seemed, at best

``verbiage'' and ``exalted nonsense,'' at worst an effort of

the tsar to establish the hegemony of Russia on the goodwill

of the smaller signatory powers. To the Liberals, then and

afterwards it was clearly a hypocritical conspiracy against

freedom. Yet to Alexander himself it seemed the only means

of placing the ``confederation of Europe'' on a firm basis of

principle8 and, so far from its being directed against liberty

he declared roundly to all the signatory powers that ``free

constitutions were the logical outcome of its doctrines.''

Europe, in fact, owed much at this time to Alexander's exalted

temper. During the period when his influence was supreme,

the fateful years, that is, between the Moscow campaign and

the close of the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, it had been used

largely in the interests of moderation and liberty. To him

mainly it was due that France was saved from dismemberment,

and received a constitution which, to use his own words,

``united crown and representatives of the people in a sense

of common interests.''9 By his wise intervention Switzerland

was saved from violent reaction, and suffered to preserve

the essential gains of the Revolution. To his protection it

was due that the weak beginnings of constitutional freedom in

Germany were able for a while to defy the hatred of Austria.

Lastly, whatever its ultimate outcome, the constitution of

Poland was, in its inception, a genuine effort to respond

to the appeal of the Poles for a national existence.

From the end of the year 1818 Alexander's views began to

change. A revolutionary conspiracy among the officers of the

guard, and a foolish plot to kidnap him on his way to the

congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (q.v.), are said to have shaken

the foundations of his Liberalism. At Aix he came for the

first time into intimate contact with Metternich, and the

astute Austrian was swift to take advantage of the psychological

moment. From this time dates the ascendancy of Metternich

over the mind of the Russian emperor and in the councils of

Europe. It was, however, no case of sudden conversion.

Though alarmed by the revolutionary agitation in Germany,

which culminated in the murder of his agent, the dramatist

Kotzebue (q.v.), Alexander approved of Castlereagh's protest

against Metternich's policy of ``the governments contracting

an alliance against the peoples,'' as formulated in the

Carlsbad decrees, 1819, and deprecated any intervention of

Europe to support ``a league of which the sole object is the

absurd pretensions of absolute power.''10 He still declared

his belief in ``free institutions, though not in such as

age forced from feebleness, nor contracts ordered by popular

leaders from their sovereigns, nor constitutions granted in

difficult circumstances to tide over a crisis. ``Liberty,''

he maintained, ``should be confined within just limits.

And the limits of liberty are the principles of order.''11

It was the apparent triumph of the principles of disorder

in the revolutions of Naples and Piedmont, combined with

increasingly disquieting symptoms of discontent in France,

Germany and among his own people, that completed Alexander's

conversion. In the seclusion of the little town of Troppau,

where in October of 1820 the powers met in conference, Metternich

found an opportunity for cementing his influence over Alexander

which had been wanting amid the turmoil and feminine intrigues

of Vienna and Aix. Here, in confidence begotten of friendly

chats over afternoon tea, the disillusioned autocrat confessed

his mistake. ``You have nothing to regret,'' he said sadly

to the exultant chancellor, ``but I have!''12 The issue was

momentous. In January Alexander had still upheld the ideal

of a free confederation of the European states, symbolized

by the Holy Alliance, against the policy of a dictatorship

of the great powers, symbolized by the Quadruple Treaty; he

had still protested against the claims of collective Europe

to interfere in the internal concerns of the sovereign

states. On the 19th of November he signed the Troppau Protocol,

which consecrated the principle of intervention and wrecked

the harmony of the concert. (See TROPPAU, CONGRESS OF.)

At Laibach, whither in the spring of 1821 the congress had

been adjourned, Alexander first heard of the revolt of the

Greeks. From this time until his death his mind was torn between

his anxiety to realize his dream of a confederation of Europe

and his traditional mission as leader of the Orthodox crusade

against the Turks. At first, under the careful nursing of

Metternich, the former motive prevailed. He struck the name

of Alexander Ypsilanti from the Russian army list, and directed

his foreign minister, Count Capo d'Istria, himself a Greek, to

disavow all sympathy of Russia with his enterprise; and, next

year, a deputation of the Greeks of the Morea on its way to

the congress of Verona was turned back by his orders on the

road. He made, indeed, some effort to reconcile the principles

at conflict in his mind. He offered to surrender the claim,

successfully asserted when the sultan had been excluded from

the Holy Alliance and the affairs of the Ottoman empire from

the deliberations of Vienna, that the affairs of the East

were the ``domestic concerns of Russia,'' and to march into

Turkey, as Austria had marched into Naples, ``as the mandatory

of Europe.''13 Metternich's opposition to this, illogical,

but natural from the Austrian point of view, first opened his

eyes to the true character of Austria's attitude towards his

ideals. Once more in Russia, far from the fascination of

Metternich's personality, the immemorial spirit of his people

drew him back into itself; and when, in the autumn of 1825,

he took his dying empress for change of air to the south of

Russia, in order--as all Europe supposed--to place himself

at the head of the great army concentrated near the Ottoman

frontiers, his language was no longer that of ``the peace-maker

of Europe,'' but of the Orthodox tsar determined to take the

interests of his people and of his religion ``into his own

hands.'' Before the momentous issue could be decided, however,

Alexander died at Taganrog on the 1st of December (November

18, O.S.) 1825, ``crushed'', to use his own words, ``beneath

the terrible burden of a crown'' which he had more than once

declared his intention of resigning. A report, current at

the time and often revived, affirmed that he did not in fact

die. By some it is supposed that a mysterious hermit named

Fomich, who lived at Tomsk until 1870 and was treated with peculiar

deference by successive tsars, was none other than Alexander.14

Modern history knows no more tragic figure than that of

Alexander. The brilliant promise of his early years; the

haunting memory of the crime by which he had obtained the

power to realize his ideals; and, in the end, the terrible

legacy he left to Russia: a principle of government which,

under lofty pretensions, veiled a tyranny supported by

spies and secret police; an uncertain succession; an army

permeated by organized disaffection; an armed Poland, whose

hunger for liberty the tsar had whetted but not satisfied;

the quarrel with Turkey, with its alternative of war or

humiliation for Russia; an educational system rotten with

official hypocrisy; a Church in which conduct counted for

nothing, orthodoxy and ceremonial observance for everything;

economical and financial conditions scarce recovering from

the verge of ruin; and lastly, that curse of Russia,--serfdom.

In private life Alexander displayed many lovable qualities.

All authorities combine in praising his handsome presence

and the affability and charm of his address, together with a

certain simplicity of personal tastes, which led him in his

intercourse with his friends or with the representatives of

friendly powers to dispense with ceremonial and etiquette.

His personal friendship, too, once bestowed, was never lightly

withdrawn. By nature he was sociable and pleasure-loving,

he proved himself a notable patron of the arts and he took

a conspicuous part in all the gaieties of the congress of

Vienna. In his later years, however, he fell into a mood

of settled melancholy; and, though still accessible to all

who chose to approach him with complaints or petitions, he

withdrew from all but the most essential social functions, and

lived a life of strenuous work and of Spartan simplicity. His

gloom had been increased by domestic misfortune. He had been

married, in 1793, without his wishes being consulted, to the

beautiful and amiable Princess Maria Louisa of Baden (Elizabeth

Feodorovna), a political match which, as he regretfully

confessed to his friend Frederick William of Prussia, had

proved the misfortune of both; and he consoled himself in the

traditional manner. The only child of the marriage, a little

grand-duchess, died on the 12th of May 1808; and their common

sorrow drew husband and wife closer together. Towards the

close of his life their reconciliation was completed by the

wise charity of the empress in sympathizing deeply with him

over the death of his beloved daughter by Madame Narishkine.

See also EUROPE; RUSSIA; FRANCE; TURKEY; VIENNA,

CONGRESS OF; NAPOLEON; METTERNICH; CAPO D'ISTARIA.

AUTHORITIES.--F. de Martins, Recueil des traites conclus

par la Russie, &c. (St Petersb., 1874, &c.); Wellington

Despatches Castlereagh Correspondence; Prince Adam Czartoryski,

Memoires et correspondance avec l'empereur Alexandre I.

(Paris, 1887, 2 vols.). P. Bailleu (ed). Briefwechsel Konig

Friedrich Wilhelm's III. und der Konigin Luise mit Kaiser

Alexander I. (Leipzig, 1900); Laharpe, Le Gouverneur d'un

Prince (F. C de Laharpe et Alexandre I. de Russie) 1902;

Serge Tatischeff, Alexandre I. et Napoleon d'apres leur

correspondance inedite (Paris, 1901); Joseph de Maistre,

Memoires historiques et correspondance diplomatique,

ed. A. Blanc (2nd ed., 1859); Comtesse de Choiseul-Gouffier,

Memoires historiques sur l'empereur Alexandre (1829),

and Reminiscences sur l'empereur Alexandre I., &c.

(Paris, 1862); Rulemann Friedrich Eylert, Charakterzuge

und historische Fragmente aus dem Leben Konig Friedrich

Wilhelm's III. (1846); H. L. Empaytaz, Notice sur Alexandre

Empereur de Russie (2nd ed., Paris, 1840); Comte A. de

la Garde- Chambonas, Souvenirs du Congres de Vienne;

publ. avec introd. et notes par le Cte. Fleury (1901).

LIVES.--The principal life of Alexander I. is that, in

Russian, by Nikolai Karlovich Schilder, Imperator Aleksander,

&c. (4 vols., St Petersb., 1897, 1898). See also Bogdanovich,

History of the Government of the Emperor Alexander I.

(St Petersburg, 1869-1871, Nikolaus I. Band i. Kaiser

Alexander I. und die Ergebnisse seiner Lebensarbeit (Berl.,

1904), a valuable study based upon much new material from the

state archives of St Petersburg, Paris, Berlin and Vienna;

A. Vandal, Napoleon et Alexandre I.: l'alliance Russe

sous le premier empire (3 vols., Paris, 1891-1896); A. N.

Pypin, Political and Literary Movements under Alexander

I. (Russian, 2nd ed. St Petersburg, 1885; German, Berlin,

1894). Among the numerous less authoritative biographies

may be mentioned Ivan Golovin, Histoire d'Alexandre I.

(Leipzig, 1859), and C. Joyneville, Life and Times of

Alexander I. (3 vols., 1875). This last contains much

valuable information, but the references in footnotes are

often wanting in precision, and it has no index. (W. A. P.)

1 Savary to Napoleon, Nov. 4, 1807. Tatischeff, p. 226.

2 Circular of Count Muraviev, Aug. 24, 1898.

3 Instructions to M. Novosiltsov, Sept. 11, 1804. Tatiseheff, p. 82.

4 Savary to Napoleon, Nov. 18, 1807. Tatischeff, p. 232.

5 Coulaincourt to Napoleon, 4th report, Aug. 3, 1809. Tatischeff, p. 496.

6 Alexander speaking to Colonel Michaud. Tatischeff, p. 612.

7 Castlereagh to Liverpool, Oct. 2, 1814. F.O. Papers. Vienna VII.

8 Martens IV. oart i. p. 49.

9 Etat des negociations actueelles, &c., mem. prepared by

order of the Tsar, July 16, 1815, enclosed in Castlereagh to

Liverpool, F.O. Cont. papers. Congress Paris, Castlereagh, 22.

10 Despatch of Lieven, Nov. 30 (Dec. 12), 1819, and

Russ. Circular of Jan. 27, 1820. Martens IV. part i. p. 270.

11 Apercu des idees de l'Empereur, Martens IV. part i. p. 269.

12 Metternich Mem.

13 Martens IV. part i. pp. 307, &c.

14 See W. Gasiorowski, Tragic Russia,

translated by Viscount de Busancy (London, 1908).

ALEXANDER II. (1818-1881), emperor of Russia, eldest

son of Nicholas I., was born on the 29th of April 1818.

His early life gave little indication of his subsequent

activity, and up to the moment of his accession in 1855 no

one ever imagined that he would be known to posterity as a

great reformer. In so far as he had any decided political

convictions, he seemed to be animated with that reactionary

spirit which was predominant in Europe at the time of his

birth, and continued in Russia to the end of his father's

reign. In the period of thirty years during which he was

heir-apparent, the moral atmosphere of St Petersburg was

very unfavourable to the development of any originality of

thought or character. It was a time of government on martinet

principles, under which all freedom of thought and all private

initiative were as far as possible suppressed vigorously by the

administration. Political topics were studiously avoided in

general conversation, and books or newspapers in which the

most keen-scented press-censor could detect the least odour of

political or religious free-thinking were strictly prohibited.

Criticism of existing authorities was regarded as a serious

offence. The common policeman, the insignificant scribe

in a public office, and even the actors in the ``imperial''

theatres, were protected against public censure as effectually

as the government itself; for the whole administration was

considered as one and indivisible, and an attack on the humblest

representative of the imperial authority was looked on as

an indirect attack on the fountain from which that authority

flowed. Such was the moral atmosphere in which young Alexander

Nicolaevich grew up to manhood. He received the education

commonly given to young Russians of good family at that time--a

smattering of a great many subjects, and a good practical

acquaintance with the chief modern European languages.

Like so many of his countryman he displayed great linguistic

ability, and his quick ear caught up even peculiarities of

dialect. His ordinary life was that of an officer of the

Guards, modified by the ceremonial duties incumbent on him as

heir to the throne. Nominally he held the post of director

of the military schools, but he took little personal interest

in military affairs. To the disappointment of his father,

in whom the military instinct was ever predominant, he showed

no love of soldiering, and gave evidence of a kindliness of

disposition and a tender-heartedness which were considered

out of place in one destined to become a military autocrat.

These tendencies had been fostered by his tutor Zhukovsky,

the amiable humanitarian poet, who had made the Russian

public acquainted with the literature of the German romantic

school, and they remained with him all through life, though

they did not prevent him from being severe in his official

position when he believed severity to be necessary. In 1841

he married the daughter of the grand-duke Louis II. of Hesse,

Maximilienne Wilhelmine Marie, thenceforward known as Maria

Alexandrovna, who bore him six sons and two daughters. He

did not travel much abroad, for his father, in his desire to

exclude from Holy Russia the subversive ideas current in Western

Europe, disapproved foreign tours, and could not consistently

encourage in his own family what he tried to prevent among

the rest of his subjects. He visited England, however, in

1839, and in the years immediately preceding his accession he

was entrusted with several missions to the courts of Berlin

and Vienna. On the 2nd of March 1855, during the Crimean

War, he succeeded to the throne on the death of his father.

The first year of the new reign was devoted to the prosecution

of the war, and after the fall of Sevastopol, to negotiations for

peace. Then began a period of radical reforms, recommended

by public opinion and carried out by the autocratic

power. The rule of Nicholas, which had sacrificed all other

interests to that of making Russia an irresistibly strong

military power, had been tried by the Crimean War and found

wanting. A new system must, therefore, be adopted. All

who had any pretensions to enlightenment declared loudly

that the country had been exhausted and humiliated by the

war, and that the only way of restoring it to its proper

position in Europe was to develop its natural resources and

to reform thoroughly all branches of the administration.

The government found, therefore, in the educated classes a

new-born public spirit, anxious to assist it in any work of

reform that it might think fit to undertake. Fortunately

for Russia the autocratic power was now in the hands of a

man who was impressionable enough to be deeply influenced by

the spirit of the time, and who had sufficient prudence and

practical common-sense to prevent his being carried away by

the prevailing excitement into the dangerous region of Utopian

dreaming. Unlike some of his predecessors, he had no grand,

original schemes of his own to impose by force on unwilling

subjects, and no pet crotchets to lead his judgment astray;

and he instinctively looked with a suspicious, critical eye on

the panaceas which more imaginative and less cautious people

recommended. These traits of character, together with the

peculiar circumstances in which he was placed, determined the

part which he was to play. He moderated, guided and in great

measure realized the reform aspirations of the educated classes.

Emancipation of the serfs.

Though he carefully guarded his autocratic rights and

privileges, and obstinately resisted all efforts to push him

farther than he felt inclined to go he acted for several years

somewhat like a constitutional sovereign of the continental

type. At first he moved so slowly that many of the impatient,

would-be reformers began to murmur at the unnecessary

delay. In reality not much time was lost. Soon after

the conclusion of peace important changes were made in the

legislation concerning industry and commerce, and the new

freedom thus accorded produced a large number of limited

liability companies. At the same time plans were formed

for constructing a great network of railways, partly for the

purpose of developing the natural resources of the country, and

partly for the purpose of increasing its powers of defence and

attack. Then it was found that further progress was blocked

by a great obstacle, the existence of serfage: and Alexander

II. showed that, unlike his father, he meant to grapple boldly

with the difficult and dangerous problem. Taking advantage of

a petition presented by the Polish landed proprietors of the

Lithuanian provinces, praying that their relations with the

serfs might be regulated in a more satisfactory way--meaning

in a way more satisfactory for the proprietors--he authorized

the formation of committees ``for ameliorating the condition

of the peasants,'' and laid down the principles on which the

amelioration was to be effected. This was a decided step

and it was followed by one still more significant. Without

consulting his ordinary advisers, his majesty ordered the

minister of the interior to send a circular to the provincial

governors of European Russia, containing a copy of the

instructions forwarded to the governor-general of Lithuania,

praising the supposed generous, patriotic intentions of the

Lithuanian landed proprietors, and suggesting that perhaps the

landed proprietors of other provinces might express a similar

desire. The hint was taken, of course, and in all provinces

where serfage existed emancipation committees were formed.

The deliberations at once raised a host of important, thorny

questions. The emancipation was not merely a humanitarian

question capable of being solved instantaneously by imperial

ukaz. It contained very complicated problems affecting

deeply the economic, social and political future of the

nation. Alexander II. had little of the special knowledge

required for dealing successfully with such problems, and

he had to restrict himself to choosing between the different

measures recommended to him. The main point at issue was

whether the serfs should become agricultural labourers

dependent economically and administratively on the landlords,

or should be transformed into a class of independent communal

proprietors. The emperor gave his support to the latter

project, and the Russian peasantry accordingly acquired rights

and privileges such as are enjoyed by no other peasantry in

Europe. In the numerous other questions submitted to him be{sic}

began by consulting carefully the conflicting authorities, and

while leaning as a rule rather to the side of those who were

known as ``Liberals,'' he never went so far as they desired,

and always sought some middle course by which conflicting

interests might be reconciled. On the 3rd of March 1861,

the sixth anniversary of his accession, the emancipation law

was signed and published. Other reforms followed in quick

succession during the next five or six years: army and navy

organization, a new judicial administration on the French

model, a new penal code and a greatly simplified system of

civil and criminal procedure, an elaborate scheme of local

self-government for the rural districts and the large towns, with

elective assemhljes possessing a restricted right of taxation,

and a new rural and municipal police under the direction of

the minister of the interior. These new institutions were

incomparably better than the old ones which they replaced, but

they did not work such miracles as inexperienced enthusiasts

expected. Comparisons were made, not with the past, but with

an ideal state of things which never existed in Russia or

elsewhere. Hence arose a general feeling of disappointment,

which acted on different natures in different ways. Some of

the enthusiasts sank into a sceptical, reactionary frame of

mind; while others, with deeper convictions or capable of more

lasting excitement, attributed the failure to the fact that

only half- measures and compromises had been adopted by the

government. Thus appeared in the educated classes two extreme

groups: on the one hand, the discontented Conservatives,

who recommended a return to a more severe disciplinarian

regime; and on the other, the discontented Radicals, who

would have been satisfied with nothing less than the adoption

of a throughgoing socialistic programme. Between the two

extremes stood the discontented Moderates, who indulged freely

in grumbling without knowing how the unsatisfactory state of

things was to be remedied. For some years the emperor, with

his sound common-sense and dislike of exaggeration, held the

balance fairly between the two extremes; but long years of

uninterrupted labour, anxiety and disappointment weakened his

zeal for reform, and when radicalism assumed more and more

the form of secret societies and revolutionary agitation,

he felt constrained to adopt severe repressive measures.

Nihilism.