, although the new Czar, Alexander I, was mild and liberal, the storm
of French ideas and armies had generally destroyed in monarchs' minds
any poor germs of philanthropy which had ever found lodgement there.
Still Alexander breasted this storm; found time to plan for his serfs,
and in 1803 put his hand to the work of helping them toward freedom. His
first edict was for the creation of the class of "free laborers." By
this, masters and serfs were encouraged to enter into an arrangement
which was to put the serf into immediate possession of himself, of a
homestead and of a few acres, giving him time to indemnify his master by
a series of payments. Alexander threw his heart into this scheme; and in
his kindliness he supposed that the pretended willingness of the nobles
meant something; but the serf-owning caste, without openly opposing,
twisted up bad consequences with good, braided impossibilities into
possibilities; the whole plan became a tangle, and was thrown aside.

The Czar now sought to foster other good efforts, especially those made
by some earnest nobles to free their serfs by will. But this plan also
the serf-owning caste entangled and thwarted. At last the storm of war
set in with such fury that all internal reforms must be lost sight of.
Russia had to make ready for those campaigns in which Napoleon gained
every battle. Then came that peaceful meeting on the raft at
Tilsit--worse for Russia than any warlike meeting; for thereby Napoleon
seduced Alexander, for years, from plans of bettering his empire into
dreams of extending it.

Coming out of these dreams, Alexander had to deal with such realities as
the burning of Moscow, the Battle of Leipsic, and the occupation of
France; yet, in the midst of those fearful times--when the grapple of
the emperors was at the fiercest; in the very year of the burning of
Moscow--Alexander rose in calm statesmanship, and admitted Bessarabia
into the empire under a proviso which excluded serfage forever. Hardly
was the great European tragedy ended, when Alexander again turned
sorrowfully toward the wronged millions of his empire. He found that
progress in civilization had but made the condition of the serfs worse.
The newly ennobled _parvenus_ were worse than the old _boyars_; they
hugged the serf system more lovingly and the serfs more hatefully. The
sight of these wrongs roused him. He seized a cross, and swore that the
serf system should be abolished.

Straightway a great