General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1847 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER I. ALEXANDER I., PAULOVITCH. HIS CHARACTER AND REION. When, at the opening of the present century (24th March, 1801), the short and strange reign of the Emperor Paul closed, and his son Alexander succeeded to the throne, the work of Peter the Great was accomplished in its essential spirit. Russia was incorporated with the European system. She had discovered and realized the value of her maritime advance; she was in possession of an extensive foreign commerce, and she commanded the vigorous industry of a population which had been fully aroused. She possessed a powerful fleet, and was mistress of the course of her principal rivers as far as the sea. One blessing alone was denied her – the sun – which the severity of nature withheld from her. For a long course of time the emperors, czars, grand princes, patriarchs, and metropolitans of Muscovy, have had appended to their titles as such, the epithet,
of all the Russias. But the Russia of Galitets, or Red Russia, was, at the commencement of Alexander’s reign, as it still is, in the hands of strangers, fThe national boundaries of the empire were exposed on several points; and the new capital itself was planted on a soil which had never been by legal treaty made over to Russia. It was protected from Swedish invasion only by Finland, itself a conquered province. Born Dec. 13, 1777. t The partition of Poland gave it to Austria, together with Galici. i. Alexander, at the commencement of his reign, left the countries around him to weaken each other by their struggles together, whilst he turned his attention to the interior of his empire, whe…