Page:Van Loon--The Story of Mankind.djvu/431

Rh not until the Crimean war between Russia and England, France and Italy and Turkey, in the year 1854. That means a record for the European continent.

THE REAL CONGRESS OF VIENNA

The third hero of this waltzing congress was the Emperor Alexander. He had been brought up at the court of his grandmother, the famous Catherine the Great. Between the lessons of this shrewd old woman, who taught him to regard the glory of Russia as the most important thing in life, and those of his private tutor, a Swiss admirer of Voltaire and Rousseau, who filled his mind with a general love of humanity, the boy grew up to be a strange mixture of a selfish tyrant and a sentimental revolutionist. He had suffered great indignities during the life of his crazy father, Paul I. He had been obliged to