lieve it is
true that there was, as has been rumored, a will left by the Empress
naming as her heir the grandson whom she had carefully prepared to be
her successor, and that this paper was destroyed by the conspirators.

There is one wise act to record in the reign of Paul--although it was
probably prompted not by a desire to benefit the future so much as to
reverse the past. Peter the Great, probably on account of his perverse
son Alexis, had set aside the principle of primogeniture; a principle
not Slavonic, but established by the Muscovite Princes. Peter, the
ruthless reformer, placed in the hands of the sovereign the power to
choose his own successor. Paul reestablished this principle, and
thereby bestowed a great benefit upon Russia.

CHAPTER XX

NAPOLEON IN RUSSIA--HOLY ALLIANCE

A youth of twenty-five years was Tsar and Autocrat of All the Russias.
Alexander had from his birth been withdrawn entirely from his father's
influence. The tutor chosen by his grandmother was Laharpe, a Swiss
Republican, and the principles of political freedom were at the
foundation of his training. It was of course during the period of her
own liberal tendencies that Alexander was imbued with the advanced
theories which had captured intellectual Europe in the days before the
French Revolution. The new Emperor declared in a manifesto that his
reign should be inspired by the aims and principles of Catherine II.
He then quickly freed himself from the conspirators who had murdered
his father, and drew about him a group of young men like himself,
utterly inexperienced, but enthusiastic dreamers of a reign of goodwill
which should regenerate Russia. With the utmost confidence, reforms of
the most radical nature were proposed and discussed. There was to be a
gradual emancipation of the serfs, and misery of all sorts to be lifted
from the land by a new and benign system of government which should be
representative and constitutional. Many changes were at once
instituted. The old system of "colleges," or departments, established
by Peter the Great was removed and a group of ministers after the
European custom constituted the Tsar's official household, or what
would once have been called his _Drujina_. In the very first year of
this reign there began an accession of territory in Asia, which
gravitated as if by natural law toward the huge mass. The picturesque
old kingdom of Georgia, lying south of the Caucasus between the B