Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/530

Rh 492 ALEXANDER fided its general superintendence to Frederick Csesar de La Harpe. On the assassination of his father Paul in 1801, Alexander succeeded to the Russian throne. He had been married in 1793 to the Princess Louisa Maria of Baden, but the union proved an unhappy one, and had no issue. The policy of the young emperor was indicated by his concluding a peace with Britain, against which his father had declared war. In 1805 he joined Austria and Sweden in a coalition with Great Britain against the pretensions of France. The war that followed was disastrous to the allies. The armies of Austria were totally defeated in a succession of battles between the 6th and 13th October of that year; and the combined Austrian and Russian armies, under the two emperors, were defeated by Napoleon in the great battle of Austerlitz on the 2d December. Austria concluded a separate treaty of peace, and Alexander led the remains of his army into his own dominions. Prussia, which had injudiciously stood neutral while France was humbling Austria and Russia, rashly engaged in hostilities with Napoleon in 1806, while her allies, the Russians, were still beyond the Vistula ; but the defeats at Auerstadt and Jena laid Prussia prostrate ; and in the succeeding year the battles of Eylau and Friedland, in which the Russians were fairly beaten, led to the dis memberment of Prussia, and the treaty of Tilsit with Russia. A few days after the last battle, Alexander and Napoleon met on a raft anchored in the river Niemen, and agreed to the treaty, which was signed at Tilsit on July 7. By a secret article of this treaty Alexander was not only to withdraw from his connection with Britain, but to become her enemy; and he declared war against her on the 26th October. For nearly five years Alexander appeared attached to the alliance of France; but the privations of his subjects by the interruption of the commerce with England, and the intolerable load of Napoleon s &quot; Continental System,&quot; at length induced him to return to his old alliance, and to declare war against France on March 19, 1812. On the 24th April he left St Petersburg to join his armies on the west frontier of Lithuania. Napoleon assembled the most numerous and magnificent army that had ever been brought together in modern times, augmented by the unwilling levies of Prussia and Austria, and entered Russia on the 25th June 1812. The first encounter was at Borodino, where there was a well-contested action, in which each army suffered the loss of 25,000 men. The burning of Moscow, and the subsequent retreat of Napoleon, during which his army was all but annihilated, are among the best known events of modern history. In 1813 the advancing Russians were successively joined by the forces of Prussia, Austria, and Sweden. Alexander continued with the allied armies, and in particular was present at the battles of Dresden and Leipsic. Napoleon had made wonderful exertions to repair his losses in the early part of 1814; but the victories of Wellington in Spain, and his advance into the heart of France, favoured the progress of the allies ; and on March 30, 1814, 150,000 men of the allied armies took possession of Paris, which was entered next day by Alexander and the king of Prussia. After the deposition of Napoleon the allied sovereigns visited England. By the treaty of Vienna, Alexander was acknowledged king of Poland ; but before the congress of Vienna broke up, Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and was enthusiastically received at Paris. The two eastern emperors and the king of Prussia remained to gether until the battle of Waterloo gave peace to Europe. On the advance of the British and Prussians to Paris, the three allied sovereigns again made their entry into that capital, where they concluded, on September 26, the treaty which has been designated the Holy Alliance. Alexander was henceforward chiefly occupied in the internal administration of his vast dominions, which cer tainly improved more during the twenty-five years of his reign than under any of his predecessors from the time of Peter I. The gradual abolition of the feudal servitude of the peasantry, begun by the most enlightened of his pre decessors, was continued under Alexander. Education, rgriculture, manufactures, commerce, were also greatly extended ; while literature and the fine arts were liberally encouraged. His disposition has been represented by his subjects as mild and merciful; yet his influence in the affairs of Europe was not exerted in the cause of public liberty. But this could hardly be expected from the autocrat of an unmitigated despotism in his own terri tories. He will, however, bear very favourable comparison with any Russian sovereign, or even with any contem porary monarch. Early in the winter of 1825 he left St Petersburg for the last time on a tour of inspection of his southern pro vinces. About the middle of November he was attacked by a violent intermittent fever, which proved fatal at Taganrog on December 1, 1825. In foreign countries his death has been attributed to poison ; but this is refuted by the history of his disease, and is very improbable, from his great popularity with his countrymen. He was suc ceeded, in accordance with a family compact, by his second brother Nicholas. ALEXANDER JAROSLAWITZ NEVSKI, SAINT, Grand Duke of Wladimir, second son of the Grand Duke Jaroslaw II., was born at Wladimir in 1219, and died 14th November 1263. He became prince of Novgorod on the resignation of his father in 1239, his elder brother having died. While Batu Khan was sweeping with his Tatars over the south, the Swedes, Danes, and Livonian knights took advantage of this to oppress the north of Russia ; Alexander accordingly directed his arms against them, and gained a brilliant victory with his small army on the 15th July 1240. His surname of Nevsld was derived from this event, which took place near the Neva, and in the vicinity of the modern St Petersburg. In a second campaign in 1241 he was no less successful, and drove his enemies out of Pleskow in Kiew. In a third campaign he defeated them near lake Peipus (1242), and forced the Livonian knights to sue for peace and retire from the district of Pskow, which they had conquered a short time before. On his father s death in 1247, a younger brother (Andrew) opposed Alexander, and seized the duchy of Wladimir; but in 1251 the latter was estab lished in his rights by the khan of Kaptchak, the district which the Mongolian Batu had taken under his immediate authority. He firmly opposed the proposal of Pope Inno cent IV. to unite the Greek with the Roman church. He died at Gorodetz, 14th November 1263, on his return from a visit to Kassimcow. Towards the close of his life he is said to have taken holy orders, but the tradition rests on no sure basis. At his death the people universally spoke of him as their father and protector, and afterwards recorded his deeds in their songs, and honoured him as a saint. Peter the Great, when founding St Petersburg, erected a magnificent monastery to the east of the city in honour of the victory won there by his great predecessor, and created in 1722 one of the eight Russian orders, that of Alexander Nevski. The monastery is now one of the wealthiest in Russia, and has, according to Eckhardt, a yearly revenue of half a million silver roubles. ALEXANDER, ARCHIBALD, D.D., a Presbyterian divine of America, was born of a family, originally Scotch, in Rockbridge county, Virginia, on the 17th April 1772 (died