History of Russia

While extraordinary precautions were taken by the police for the protection of the Czar, he was himself an unwilling accomplice to his enforced retirement. Though fully alive to the gravity of his position, instead of displaying cowardice he was prone to rashness. Every conceivable measure for his safety was adopted by the Director General of Police, upon whom rested the entire responsibility of the Emperor's well-being. Whenever he appeared in public the police patrols were doubled, and an army of detectives in plain clothes, and a body-guard of armed gentle-men, his devoted personal followers, shadowed his footsteps. The slightest pretext constituted grounds for arrest, and three thousand suspects and others were apprehended before the end of October. At Moscow when threatened with death by posted proclamation, after attending mass at the Kremlin, whence he returned on foot, he addressed the crowd from the palace steps. "I have been warned," he said, "that this day would be my last. I have, therefore, done what any other man would have done under similar circumstances. I have been to church to ask forgiveness for my sins and protection from on high. While my body, like my soul, is in the hands of God, I fear nothing." He then thanked them for their loyalty and entered the palace amid the wildest cheering.

Alexander III., unlike most of his royal predecessors, was credited with possessing a deep natural piety in addition to a marked devotion for his family. "He had a mind, not speculative but solid and sure, practical and sound. The mind of a man capable of inspiring and reposing confidence; an honest man, who endeavored to see everything from the standpoint of justice," and then automatically tried to do right. Though "with the heart of a little child and sincere faith in the providence of God," he was a man of stubborn resolve. A resolution once taken was never altered unless he was misinformed, when "with his sense of justice and honesty—his pre-eminent characteristics—he would publicly own his mistake." Scrupulously exact in the performance of his religious duties, he was a regular attendant at mass. Strong either to love or hate, he was more leniently disposed towards the Nihilists than were his own police, and regarded the conspiracies of the university students with a generous compassion but an officer once convicted of treason passed out of and beyond the pale of his forgiveness. Every inch an athlete and physically a Hercules, he had not imbibed the passionate love of his father for military display, and was apt to be lax in the maintenance of court etiquette. His self-expressed ambition was "not to be a great sovereign, but rather the sovereign of a great people," and he had a righteous horror of war; not for peace at any price, but for peace almost at any price, compatible with national honor, and the interests of Russia. In the light of these recorded characteristics, and viewing the policy of his rule from the vantage ground of accepted history, his actions as Emperor seem scarcely to have been in strict harmony with his declarations.

That the Emperor was not all-seeing, or omnipotent, that the administration was corrupt, that the municipal organization was vitiated by bribery at its electoral sources, and at the best incapable, were all undeniable truths and universally admitted. The special governmental evil in Russia, to quote front a high authority, consisted in "a vain attempt to reconcile representative institutions with irresistible absolutism, without at the same time fixing the limits between the sovereign power and the popular rights." Added to this hopeless condition of political disorder the three national vices of thriftlessness, indolence, and inebriety, also exercised their evil and united influence. The close of the first twelve months of the new Emperor's reign was marked by a rampant stale of militarism in every branch of the civil service, and with a horizon ominously clouded with rumors of regicidal plots.