d by the people whom they were intended to
benefit. He had yielded finally to the demands of his angry nobility,
had dismissed his liberal adviser Speranski and substituted Araktcheef,
an intolerant, reactionary leader. He grew morose, gloomy, and
suspicious, and a reign of extreme severity under Araktcheef commenced.
In 1819 he consented to join in a league with Austria and Prussia for
the purpose of suppressing the very tendencies he himself had once
promoted. The League was called the "Holy Alliance," and its object
was to reinstate the principle of the divine right of Kings and to
destroy democratic tendencies in the germ. Araktcheef's severities,
directed against the lower classes and the peasantry, produced more
serious disorders than had yet developed. There were popular
uprisings, and in 1823 at Kief there was held secretly a convention at
which the people were told that "the obstacle to their liberties was
the Romanoff dynasty. They must shrink from nothing--not from the
murder of the Emperor, nor the extermination of the Imperial family."
The peasants were promised freedom if they would join in the plot, and
a definite time was proposed for the assassination of Alexander when he
should inspect the troops in the Ukraine in 1824.

When the Tsar heard of this conspiracy in the South he exclaimed: "Ah,
the monsters! And I planned for nothing but their happiness!" He
brooded over his lost illusions and his father's assassination. His
health became seriously disordered, and he was advised to go to the
South for change of climate. At Taganrog, on the 1st of December,
1825, he suddenly expired. Almost his last words were: "They may say
of me what they will, but I have lived and shall die republican." A
statement difficult to accept, regarding a man who helped to create the
"Holy Alliance."

CHAPTER XXI

RUSSIA ORIENTALIZED--EASTERN QUESTION

As Alexander left no sons, by the law of primogeniture his brother
Constantine, the next oldest in the family of Paul I., should have been
his successor. But Constantine had already privately renounced the
throne in favor of his brother Nicholas. The actual reason for this
renunciation was the Grand Duke's deep attachment to a Polish lady for
whom he was willing even to relinquish a crown. The letter announcing
his intention contained these words: "Being conscious that I have
neither genius, talents, nor energy necessary for my elevation, I beg
your Imper