immediately popular and was translated into several languages, including English. It was followed by Schloss Avalon (1827), with regard to which the author adopted the same tactics and with equal success. These historical novels, however, were of considerable literary merit, and would doubtless have achieved popularity even without the borrowed plumage. Soon afterwards Häring published a number of successful short stories (Gesammelte Novellen, 4 vols., 1830–1831), some books of travel, and in the novels Das Haus Dusterweg (1835) and Zwölf Nächte (1838) showed for a while a leaning towards the “Young German” school. In Cabanis (1832), however, a story of the time of Frederick the Great, he entered the field of patriotic-historical romance, in which he so far excelled as to have earned the name of “der Märkische Walter Scott” (Walter Scott of the Mark). From 1840 onwards he published at short intervals a series of romances, each dealing with some epoch in the history of Brandenburg. Among them may be especially noted Der Roland von Berlin (1840), Der falsche Woldemar (1842), Die Hosen des Herrn von Bredow (1846–1848), Ruhe ist die erste Bürgerpflicht (1852), Isegrimm (1854) and Dorothe (1856). In all these the author shows himself as a keen observer of men and things; the characters, situations and natural surroundings are excellently delineated, and the patriotic feeling which pervades them is not overdone. Häring also made a name for himself in the field of criminology by commencing in 1842, in conjunction with the publicist, Julius Eduard Hitzig (1780–1849), the publication of Der neue Pitaval (continued by A. Vollert, 36 vols., Leipzig, 1842–1865; new edition, 24 vols., Leipzig, 1866–1891), a collection of criminal anecdotes culled from all nations and all times. This publication attained great popularity, and is to-day of psychological interest and value.
His Gesammelte Werke were published in 20 volumes (Berlin, 1874); the Vaterländische Romane separately in 8 volumes (Berlin, 1881, 1884), and since the expiry of the copyright in 1901, in many cheap reprints. Cp. W. Alexis’ Erinnerungen, edited by M. Ewert (1900), and essays by Julian Schmidt (Neue Bilder aus dem geistigen Leben unsrer Zeit, 1873), G. Freytag (Werke, vols. 16 and 23), A. Stern (Zur Literatur der Gegenwart, 1880) and T. Fontane (in Bayreuther Blätter, vi., 1883).
ALEXISBAD, a spa of Germany, in the duchy of Anhalt, lying under the Harz mountains, 1000 ft. above the sea, on the railway from Gernrode to Harzgerode. Pop. 1000. It is celebrated for its medicinal waters, of which the Alexisbrunnen, a ferruginous spring, is used for drinking, while the Selkebrunnen supplies the baths, which are of use in feminine disorders. The place was founded in 1810 by Duke Alexius of Anhalt-Bernburg.
ALEXIUS I. (1048–1118), emperor of the East, was the third son of John Comnenus, nephew of Isaac Comnenus, emperor 1057–1059. His father declined the throne on the abdication of Isaac, who was accordingly succeeded by four emperors of other families between that date and 1081. Under one of these emperors, Romanus Diogenes (1067–1071), he served with distinction against the Seljuk Turks. Under Michael Parapinaces (1071–1078) and Nicephorus Botaniates (1078–1081) he was also employed, along with his elder brother Isaac, against rebels in Asia Minor, Thrace and in Epirus (1071). The success of the Comneni roused the jealousy of Botaniates and his ministers, and the Comneni were almost compelled to take up arms in self-defence. Bontaniates was forced to abdicate and retire to a monastery, and Isaac declined the crown in favour of his younger brother Alexius, who then became emperor in the 33rd year of his age. His long reign of nearly 37 years was full of difficulties (see Roman Empire, Later). At the very outset he had to meet the formidable attack of the Normans (Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund), who took Dyrrhachium and Corfu, and laid siege to Larissa in Thessaly. The Norman danger ended for the time with Robert Guiscard’s death (1085) and the conquests were recovered. He had next to repel the invasions of Patzinaks (Petchenegs) and Kumans in Thrace, with whom the Manichaean sects of the Paulicians and Bogomilians made common cause; and thirdly, he had to cope with the fast-growing power of the Turks in Asia Minor. Above all he had to meet the difficulties caused by the arrival of the warriors of the First Crusade, which had been in a great degree initiated owing to the representations of his own ambassadors, though the help which he wanted from the West was simply mercenary forces and not the immense hosts which arrived to his consternation and embarrassment. The first part, under Peter the Hermit, he got rid of by sending them on to Asia Minor, where they were massacred by the Turks (1096). The second and much more serious host of warriors, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, he conducted also into Asia, promising to supply them with provisions in return for an oath of homage, and by their victories recovered for the Empire a number of important cities and islands—Nicaea, Chios, Rhodes, Smyrna, Ephesus, Philadelphia, Sardis, and in fact most of Asia Minor (1097–1099). This is ascribed as a credit to his policy and diplomacy by his daughter, by the Latin historians of the crusade to his treachery and falseness, but during the last twenty years of his life he lost much of his popularity. They were marked by persecution of the followers of the Paulician and Bogomilian heresies (one of his last acts was to burn Basilius, a Bogomilian leader, with whom he had engaged in a theological controversy), by renewed struggles with the Turks (1110–1117), by anxieties as to the succession, which his wife Irene wished to alter in favour of her daughter Anne’s husband, Nicephorus Bryennius for whose benefit the special title panhypersebastos (i.e. as it were augustissimus si quis alius) was created. This intrigue disturbed even his dying hours. He deserves the credit of having raised the Empire from a condition of anarchy and decay at a time when it was threatened on all sides by new dangers. No emperor devoted himself more laboriously or with a greater sense of duty to the task of ruling.
Authorities.—Zonaras xviii. 27-29; Anna Comnena’s Life; see also Du Cange, Familiae Byzantinae; Friedrich Wilken, Rerum ab Alexio I., Joanne, Manuele et Alexio II. Comnenis Romanorum, Byzantinorum imperatoribus gestarum, libri iv. Commentatio (Heidelberg, 1811); Finlay, History of Greece (vol. iii., Oxford, 1877); Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited with notes, &c., by Prof. J. B. Bury (London, 1898), where further authorities are cited; F. Chalandon, Essai sur le règne d’Alexis I er Comnène (1900). (J. B. B.)
ALEXIUS II. (Comnenus) (1167–1183), emperor of the East, was the son of Manuel Comnenus and Maria, daughter of Raymund, prince of Antioch, and was born at Constantinople on the 10th of September 1167. On Manuel’s death, Maria, who had been immured in a convent under the name of Xene, had herself proclaimed regent (1179–1180), and handing over her son to evil counsellors, who encouraged him in every vice, supported the government of Alexius the protosebastos (nephew of Manuel), who was supposed to be her lover. The young Alexius and his friends now tried to form a party against the empress mother and the protosebastos; and his sister Maria, wife of Caesar John, stirred up riots in the streets of the capital. Their party was defeated (May 2, 1182), but Andronicus Comnenus took advantage of these disorders to aim at the crown, entered Constantinople, where he was received with almost divine honours, and overthrew the regents. His arrival was celebrated by a barbarous massacre of the Latins in Constantinople, which he made no attempt to stop. He allowed Alexius to be crowned, but forced him to consent to the death of all his friends, including his mother, his sister and the Caesar, and refused to allow him the smallest voice in public affairs. The betrothal in 1180 of Alexius with Agnes, daughter of Louis VII. of France, a child of nine, was quashed, and he was married to Irene, daughter of Andronicus. The latter was now formally proclaimed as co-emperor, and not long afterwards, on the pretext that divided rule was injurious to the Empire, he caused Alexius to be strangled with a bow-string (October 1183).
(J. B. B.)
ALEXIUS III. (Angelus), emperor of the East, was the second son of Andronicus Angelus, nephew of Alexius I. In 1195, while his brother Isaac II. was away hunting in Thrace, he was proclaimed emperor by the troops; he captured Isaac at Stagira in Macedonia, put out his eyes, and kept him henceforth a close prisoner, though he had been redeemed by him from captivity at Antioch and loaded with honours. To compensate for this crime and to confirm his position as emperor, he had to scatter money
