gan to fight for Russia--the snow-flakes came, then the bitter polar
winds, cutting like a razor; and a winding sheet of snow enveloped the
land. On the 13th of October, after lighting a mine under the Kremlin,
with sullen rage the French troops marched out of Moscow. The Great
Tower of Ivan erected by Boris was cracked and some portions of palaces
and gateways destroyed by this vicious and useless act of revenge.

Then, instead of marching upon St. Petersburg as he had expected,
Napoleon escaped alone to the frontier, leaving his perishing wreck of
an army to get back as it could. The peasantry, the mushiks, whom the
Russians had feared to trust--infuriated by the destruction of their
homes, committed awful atrocities upon the starving, freezing soldiers,
who, maddened by cold and hunger and by the singing in their ears of
the rarefied air, many of them leaped into the bivouac fires. It was a
colossal tragedy. Of the 678,000 soldiers only 80,000 ever returned.

The extinction of the grand army of invasion was complete. But in the
following year, with another great army, the indomitable Napoleon was
conducting a campaign in Germany which ended with the final defeat at
Leipzig--then the march upon Paris--and in March, 1814, Alexander at
the head of the Allies was in the French capital, dictating the terms
of surrender. This young man had played the most brilliant part in the
great drama of Liberation. He was hailed as a Deliverer, and exerted a
more powerful influence than any of the other sovereigns, in the long
period required for rearranging Europe after the passing of
Napoleon--the disturber of the peace of the world.

In 1809 Sweden had surrendered to Russia Finland, which had belonged to
that country for six centuries. The kindly-intentioned Alexander
conceded to the Finns many privileges similar to those enjoyed by
Poland, which until recent years have not been seriously interfered
with. He guaranteed to them a Diet, a separate army, and the
continuance of their own language and customs. A ukase just issued by
the present emperor seriously invades these privileges, and a forcible
Russification of Finland threatens to bring a wave of Finnish
emigration to America (1899).

When the Emperor Alexander returned after the Treaty of Paris he was
thirty-four years old. Many of the illusions of his youth had faded.
His marriage with Elizabeth of Baden was unhappy. His plans for reform
had not been understoo