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III. A L E X A N D E R to the education of Nicholas as cesarevitch, whereas exaggerations indulged in by others, and any of the Alexander received only the perfunctory and inadequate prevalent popular illusions he may have imbibed were soon training of an ordinary grand duke of that period, which dispelled by personal observation in Bulgaria, where he did not go much beyond primary and secondary instruc- commanded the left wing of the invading army. The tion, practical acquaintance with French, English, and Bulgarians had been represented in St Petersburg and German, and a certain amount of drill. When he became Moscow not only as martyrs but also as saints, and a very heir-apparent by the death of his elder brother in 1865, little personal experience sufficed to correct the error. Like he began to study the principles of law and administration most of his brother officers he could not feel any very under Professor Podedonostsef, who did not succeed in great affection for the “ little brothers,” as the Bulgarians awakening in his pupil a love of abstract studies or pro- were then commonly called, and he was constrained to longed intellectual exertion, but who influenced the admit that the Turks were by no means so black as they character of his reign by instilling into his mind the belief had been painted. He did not, however, scandalize the that zeal for Eastern Orthodoxy ought, as an essential believers by any public expression of his opinions, and did factor of Russian patriotism, to be specially cultivated by not indeed make himself conspicuous in any way during every right-minded Tsar. His elder brother when on his the campaign. Never consulted on political questions, he deathbed had expressed a wish that his affianced bride, confined himself to his military duties, and fulfilled them Princess Dagmar of Denmark, should marry his successor, in a conscientious and unobtrusive manner. After many and this wish was realized on 9th November 1866. The mistakes and disappointments, the army reached Constanunion proved a most happy one and remained unclouded tinople and the treaty of San Stefano was signed, but to the end. During those years when he was heir- much that had been obtained by that important document apparent—1865 to 1881—he did not play a prominent had to be sacrificed at the Congress of Berlin. Prince Bismarck failed to do what was confidently expected of him. In return for the Russian support, which had enabled him to create the German empire, it was thought that he would help Russia to solve the Eastern Question in accordance with her own interests, but to the surprise and indignation of the Cabinet of St Petersburg he confined himself to acting the part of “honest broker” at the Congress, and shortly afterwards he ostentatiously contracted an alliance with Austria for the express purpose of counteracting Russian designs in Eastern Europe. The cesarevitch could point to these results as confirming the views he had expressed during the Franco-German war,, and he drew from them the practical conclusion that for Russia the best thing to do was to recover as quickly as possible from her temporary exhaustion and to prepare for future contingencies by a radical scheme of military and naval reorganization. In accordance with this conviction,, he suggested that certain reforms should be introduced. During the campaign in Bulgaria he had found by painful experience that grave disorders and gross corruption existed in the military administration, and after his return to St Petersburg he had discovered that similar abuses existed in the naval department. For these abuses, several high-placed personages—-among others two of the grand Alexander III. dukes—were believed to be responsible, and he called his part in public affairs, but he allowed it to become known father’s attention to the subject. His representations were that he had certain ideas of his own which did not not favourably received. Alexander II. had lost much of coincide with the principles of the existing Government. the reforming zeal which distinguished the first decade of He deprecated what he considered undue foreign influence his reign, and had no longer the energy required to underin general, and German influence in particular, and he take the task suggested to him. The consequence was that longed to see the adoption of genuine national principles the relations between father and son became more in all spheres of official activity, with a view to realizing strained. The latter must have felt that there would be his ideal of a homogeneous Russia — homogeneous in no important reforms until he himself succeeded to the language, administration, and religion. With such ideas direction of affairs. That change was much nearer at hand and aspirations he could hardly remain permanently in than was commonly supposed. On 13th March 1881, cordial agreement with his father, who, though a good Alexander II. was assassinated by a band of Nihilists, and patriot according to his lights, had strong German the autocratic power passed to the hands of his son. In the last years of his reign, Alexander II. had been sympathies, often used the German language in his private relations, occasionally ridiculed the exaggerations and much exercised by the spread of Nihilist doctrines, and the eccentricities of the Slavophils, and based his foreign increasing number of anarchist conspiracies, and for some policy on the Prussian alliance. The antagonism first time he had hesitated between strengthening the hands of appeared publicly during the Franco-German war, when the executive and making concessions to the widespread the Tsar supported the Cabinet of Berlin and the cesare- political aspirations of the educated classes. Finally he vitch did not conceal his sympathies with the French. It decided in favour of the latter course, and on the very day reappeared in an intermittent fashion during the years of his death he signed an ukaz, creating a number of 1875-79, when the Eastern Question produced so much consultative commissions which might have been easily excitement in all ranks of Russian society. At first the transformed into an assembly of notables. Alexander III. cesarevitch was more Slavophil than the Government, but determined to adopt the opposite policy. He at once his phlegmatic nature preserved him from many of the cancelled the ukaz before it was published, and in the 260