The Story of Mankind [141]
``stability.'' He would advocate
a return to the normalcy of the good old days before the
war, when everybody was happy and nobody talked nonsense
about ``everybody being as good as everybody else.'' In this
attitude he was entirely sincere and as he was an able man of
great strength of will and a tremendous power of persuasion,
he was one of the most dangerous enemies of the Revolutionary
ideas. He did not die until the year 1859, and he therefore
lived long enough to see the complete failure of all his policies
when they were swept aside by the revolution of the year 1848.
He then found himself the most hated man of Europe and
more than once ran the risk of being lynched by angry crowds
of outraged citizens. But until the very last, he remained steadfast
in his belief that he had done the right thing.
He had always been convinced that people preferred peace
to liberty and he had tried to give them what was best for them.
And in all fairness, it ought to be said that his efforts to
establish universal peace were fairly successful. The great powers
did not fly at each other's throat for almost forty years, indeed
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 third hero of this waltzing congress was the Emperor
Alexander. He had been brought up at the court of his grand-
mother, 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 wit-
ness the wholesale slaughter of the Napoleonic battle-fields.
Then the tide had turned. His armies had won the day for the
Allies. Russia had become the saviour of Europe and the Tsar
of this mighty people was acclaimed as a half-god who would
cure the world of its many ills.
But Alexander was not very clever. He did not know
men and women as Talleyrand and Metternich knew them.
He did not understand the strange game of diplomacy. He
was vain (who would not be under the circumstances?) and
loved to hear the applause of the multitude and soon he had
become the main ``attraction'' of the Congress while Metternich
and Talleyrand and Castlereagh (the very able British
representative) sat around a table and drank a bottle of Tokay
and decided what was actually going to be done. They needed
Russia and therefore they were very polite to Alexander, but
the less he had personally to do with the actual work of the
Congress, the better they were pleased. They even encouraged
his plans for a Holy Alliance that he might be fully occupied
while they were engaged upon the work at hand.
Alexander was a sociable person who liked to go to parties
and meet people. Upon such occasions he was happy and gay
but there was a very different element in his character. He
tried to forget something which he could not forget. On the
night of the 23rd of March of the year 1801 he had been sitting
in a room of the St. Michael Palace in Petersburg, waiting for
the news of his father's abdication. But Paul had refused to
sign the document which the drunken officers had placed before
him on the table, and in their rage they had put a scarf
around his neck and had strangled him to death. Then they
had gone downstairs to tell Alexander that he was Emperor of
all the Russian lands.
The memory of this terrible night stayed with the Tsar
who was a very sensitive person. He had been educated in
the school of the great French philosophers who did not believe
in God but in Human Reason. But Reason
a return to the normalcy of the good old days before the
war, when everybody was happy and nobody talked nonsense
about ``everybody being as good as everybody else.'' In this
attitude he was entirely sincere and as he was an able man of
great strength of will and a tremendous power of persuasion,
he was one of the most dangerous enemies of the Revolutionary
ideas. He did not die until the year 1859, and he therefore
lived long enough to see the complete failure of all his policies
when they were swept aside by the revolution of the year 1848.
He then found himself the most hated man of Europe and
more than once ran the risk of being lynched by angry crowds
of outraged citizens. But until the very last, he remained steadfast
in his belief that he had done the right thing.
He had always been convinced that people preferred peace
to liberty and he had tried to give them what was best for them.
And in all fairness, it ought to be said that his efforts to
establish universal peace were fairly successful. The great powers
did not fly at each other's throat for almost forty years, indeed
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 third hero of this waltzing congress was the Emperor
Alexander. He had been brought up at the court of his grand-
mother, 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 wit-
ness the wholesale slaughter of the Napoleonic battle-fields.
Then the tide had turned. His armies had won the day for the
Allies. Russia had become the saviour of Europe and the Tsar
of this mighty people was acclaimed as a half-god who would
cure the world of its many ills.
But Alexander was not very clever. He did not know
men and women as Talleyrand and Metternich knew them.
He did not understand the strange game of diplomacy. He
was vain (who would not be under the circumstances?) and
loved to hear the applause of the multitude and soon he had
become the main ``attraction'' of the Congress while Metternich
and Talleyrand and Castlereagh (the very able British
representative) sat around a table and drank a bottle of Tokay
and decided what was actually going to be done. They needed
Russia and therefore they were very polite to Alexander, but
the less he had personally to do with the actual work of the
Congress, the better they were pleased. They even encouraged
his plans for a Holy Alliance that he might be fully occupied
while they were engaged upon the work at hand.
Alexander was a sociable person who liked to go to parties
and meet people. Upon such occasions he was happy and gay
but there was a very different element in his character. He
tried to forget something which he could not forget. On the
night of the 23rd of March of the year 1801 he had been sitting
in a room of the St. Michael Palace in Petersburg, waiting for
the news of his father's abdication. But Paul had refused to
sign the document which the drunken officers had placed before
him on the table, and in their rage they had put a scarf
around his neck and had strangled him to death. Then they
had gone downstairs to tell Alexander that he was Emperor of
all the Russian lands.
The memory of this terrible night stayed with the Tsar
who was a very sensitive person. He had been educated in
the school of the great French philosophers who did not believe
in God but in Human Reason. But Reason