her, but was one of
the most quiet of nations. This was in great measure due to the
character of the king. He was of the class of heavy men, and the first
part of his reign had been marked by the occurrence of troubles so
numerous and so great that his original dislike of change increased to
fanaticism. He was one of the framers of the Holy Alliance, which grew
out of the thorough fright which he and his friend the Czar felt during
the saddest days of 1813. Alexander told a Prussian clergyman, named
Egbert, in 1818, that, during one of their flights before
Napoleon,--probably on that doleful day when they had to retreat from
Dresden, amid wind and rain, and before the French reverse at Kulm had
put a good face on the affairs of the Alliance,--Frederick William III.
said to him: "Things cannot go on so! we are in the direction of the
east, and it is toward the west that we ought to march, that we must
march. We shall, God willing, arrive there. And if, as I trust, he
should bless our united efforts, we will proclaim in the face of Heaven
our conviction that to Him alone belongs the honor." Thereupon,
continued the Czar, "We promised, and exchanged a pressure of hands upon
it with sincerity." Both monarchs evidently thought they had succeeded
in bribing Heaven; for Alexander told his reverend hearer that great
victories soon came; "and," said he, "when we had arrived in Paris, we
had reached the end of our painful course. The king of Prussia reminded
me of the holy resolution of which he had entertained the first idea;
and Francis II., who had shared our views, our opinions, and our
tendencies, entered willingly into the association." Such was
Alexander's account of the origin of that famous league which so
perplexed and alarmed our fathers. It differs from the commonly received
belief as to its origin, which is, that it was the work of Alexander
himself, who was inspired by Madame de Krudener, who, having "played the
devil and written a novel,"--she was unfaithful to her marriage vow, and
wrote "Valerio,"--naturally became devout as old age approached. It
makes somewhat against the Czar's story, that the Holy Alliance was not
formed till the autumn of 1815, and that he and Frederick William
arrived at Paris in the spring of 1814; and that in the interval he and
Francis II. came very near going to war on the Polish question.
Alexander was crack-brained, and a mystic, and it is far more likely
that he should have originated