Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/118

92 foreign policy, and the laurels gained by the Russian generals on the battlefields of Russia and of Europe, diverted Alexander's attention from domestic weaknesses It may almost he said that the tsar was more at home in Europe than in Russia. Again and again, a strange restlessness drove him from St. Petersburg to Europe. Reactionary Europe, and Metternich above all, acquired a momentous influence over him. Thus it was that Alexander came to inaugurate the reactionary system which inevitably culminated in catastrophe.

In perfect accord with the reactionary spirit of the restoration epoch, Alexander became increasingly affected with religious sentimentalism, and inclined more and more towards clericalism The fact might seem to be sufficiently explained by the diffusion throughout Europe of medieval religious romanticism, but to this strong factor there was superadded in Alexander's case a yet more powerful personal motive. The tsar had had prior knowledge of the conspiracy that culminated in his father's death, and had tacitly assented to the crime. His uneasy conscience urged him ever further along the path of religious reaction. It has been asserted, and maintained even during his lifetime, that he wished to turn Catholic. The assertion is erroneous, but it is true that he hoped to secure absolution from the pope—this Orthodox imperator of the third Rome longed for the absolution of the Roman pope.

Alexander's young wife, Elizabeth Aleksěevna, was bold enough to approve the death of Paul. Three days after the murder the empress wrote: "I preached the revolution like a madwoman, for I had but one wish, that happiness should be restored to unhappy Russia, at any cost." We can imagine the conditions prevailing at the court of St. Petersburg when the empress could see no hope of her husband's delivery from his father's tyranny except by political crime. But liberation was not effected nor was happiness restored to Russia .The crime committed against his father separated Alexander from his wife, and he died without legitimate heirs.

Access to Alexander was secured, not only by serious and religiously inclined philosophers, authors, and politicians, but also by all kinds of religious fanatics. He consorted with sectaries and zealots, Protestant as well as Catholic. Baader, the Catholic romanticist, built his hopes upon Alexander. Jung-Stilling, Quakers, and Moravian Brethren, were among