Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/392

 356 RUSSIA.

(September 11), 1848, to Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg, of which union there are issue four sons and two daughters, Nicholas, born February 2 (February 14), 1850 ; Olga, born August 22 (September 3), 1851 ; Vera, born February 4 (February 16), 1854 ; Constantine, born August 10 (August 22), 1858 ; Dimitri, born June 1 (June 13), 18G0 ; and Viatseheslav, born July 1 ( July 13), 1862. 4. Grand-Duke Nicholas, born July 27 (August 8), 1831 ; general in the Russian army ; married, January 25 (February 6), 1856, to Princess Alexandra of Oldenburg, of which marriage there are two sons, Nicholas, born November 6 (November 18), 1856, and Peter, born Jan. 10 (Jan. 22), 1864. 5. Grand-duke Michael, born October 13 (October 25), 1832 : married, August 16 (August 28), 1857, to Princess Cecilia of Baden, of which union there are issue five sons and one daughter, namely, Nicholas, born April 14 (April 26), 1859; Anastasia, born July 16 (July 28), 1860; Michael, born October 4 (October 16), 1861 ; George, born August 11 (August 23), 1863 ; Alexander, born April 1 (April 13), 1866 ; and Sergius, born October 7, 1869.

The reigning family of Russia descend, in the female line, from Michael Romanof, elected Tsar in 1613, after the extinction of the House of Rurik ; and in the male line from the duke Karl Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp, born in 1701, scion of a younger branch of the ducal family of Oldenburg. The union of his daughter Anne with Prince Karl Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp formed part of the great reform projects of Peter I., destined to bring Russia into closer contact with the western states of Europe. Peter I. was succeeded by his second wife, Catherine, the daughter of a Livonian peasant, and she by the grandson of Peter's elder brother, with whom the male line of the Romanofs terminated, in the year 1730. The next three sovereigns of Russia, Anne, Ivan III., and Elizabeth, of the female line of Romanof, formed a transition from the native to the German rulers of the empire, whose reign commenced with the accession of Peter III., of the house of Holstein-Gottorp. All the subsequent emperors allied themselves into German families, thus gradually becoming completely Teutonic, in blood as well as origin. The wife and successor of Peter III., daughter of the Prince of Anhalt Zerbst, general in the Prussian army, left the crown to her only son, Paul, who became the father of three emperors, Alexander I., Constantine, and Nicholas, and the grandfather of a fourth, the present Alexander II. All these sovereigns married German princesses, creating intimate family alliances, among others, with the reigning houses of Wiirtemberg, Baden, and Prussia.

The emperor is in possession of the whole revenue of the Crown domains, consisting of more than a million of square miles of cultivated land and forests, besides gold and other mines in Siberia, and