book xvii
. (c. 20 B.C.), the work of Quintus Curtius (c. A.D. 42), Plutarch's (c. 45-125 A.D.) Life of Alexander, Arrian's Anabasis and Indica (c. A.D. 150), and the relevant books of Justin's abridgment (2nd cent. A.D.) of the history of Trogus (c. 10 B.C.?). To these we may add the Latin Itinerarium Alexandri, a skeleton outline of Alexander's campaigns dedicated to the emperor Constantius (A.D. 324-361), printed at the end of the Didot edition of Arrian, and the Epitome Rerum Gestarum Alexandri magni, an abridgment made in the 4th or 5th century of a lost Latin work of uncertain date, combining history with elements taken from the Romance (edited by O. Wagner, Leipzig, 1900). The relation of these works to the various original sources constitutes the critical problem before the modern historian in reference to the history of Alexander. See Droysen vol. i. appendix i.; A. Schoene, De rerum Alexandri Magni scriptorum imprimis Arriani & Plutarchi fontibus (1870); Fraenkel, Die Geschichtschreiber Alex. d. Grossen (1883); O. Maas, Kleitarch und Diodor (Petersburg, 1894); Kaerst, Ferechungen zur Gesch. Alex. d. Grossen (1887), and Gesch. d. hellenist. Zeitalters (vol. i., 1901 ), pp. 421 f.; F. L. Schoenle, Diodorstudien ( 1891 ); E. Schwartz, articles ``Aristobulos (14),'' ``Arrianus,'' ``Quintus Curtius,'' ``Diodorus'' in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopadie.
For modern views of Alexander see Thirlwall, History of Greece; Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History (Eng. trans. rev. by author, 1852) Grote, History of Greece; Droysen, Histoire de l'Hellenisme (translation by Bouche-Leclerq); Ad. Holm, History of Greece (Eng. trans., 1898); B. Niese, Gesch. der griech. u. maked. Staaten (vol. i.); Kaerst, Gesch. des hellenist. Zeitalters (1901); J. Beloch, Griechische Gesch. (vol. iii., 1904); J. B. Bury, History of Greece (1902); A. von Gutschmid, Geschichte Irans (1888). Among the mass of monographs and special articles, reference may be made to Freeman, Historical Essays, 2nd series, pp. 182 f.; Dodge, Alexander (in a series called Great Captains) 1890; Mahaffy, Problems in Greek History (1892, ch. viii.; D. G. Hogarth, Philip and Alexander of Macedon (1897), a striking effort of historical imagination to reconstruct Alexander as a man of the real world: Benjamin I. Wheeler, Alexander the Great (1900) in the ``Heroes of the Nations Series.'' The purely military aspect of Alexander's campaigns is treated in general histories of warfare (Rustow-Kochly, Bauer, Delbruck, Verdy du Vernois), and in special monographs by Hogarth, Journ. of Philol. vol. xvii., 1888, pp. 1 foll.; H. Droysen, Untersuchungen uber A. des Gr. Heerwesen (1885), and Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, Kurze Ubersicht der Feldzuge A. de Gr. (1897). For further references to the literature on Alexander, see Kaerst's article in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopadie (1894). (E. R. B.)
1 The use of the surname is proved as far back as the 1st century B.C. (Nepos, De Reg. 2).
2 See Bauer,``Die Schlacht bei Issus'' in Jahreshefte d.osterr. archaol. Instit. ii. pp. 105 f.; A. Janke. Auf Alex. d. grossen Pfaden; Gruhn, Das Schlachtfeld von Issus; Lammert in Berl. Philol. Wochenschr. (1905), col. 1596 f.
3 Pridik, De Alex. Mog. epist. commercio (Dorpat, 1893); Schwartz, art. ``Curtius'' in Pauly-Wissowa, col. 1884.
4 The story of Alexander's visit to Jerusalem rests on no better authority than a later Jewish romance.
5 The best opinion now confirms Abbott's identification of Aornus with Mahaban--Deane, Journ. R. Asiat. Soc. (Oct. 1896), p. 673; them, Report of an Archaeological Tour with the Buner Field Force (Lahore, 1898), pp. 45-48.
6 Beside V. Smith (cited below) see Schubert, ``Die Porusschlacht,'' in Rhein. Mus. lvi., 1901, p. 543.
7 There seems nothing to fix the exact spot of this town; the common identification with Multan is, according to Raverty and V. Smith, certainly wrong.
8 For the indian campaigns of Alexander see especially McCrindle, Invasion of India by Alexander the Great (1896); Vincent A. Smith, Early History of India (1904), and the references there given to the researches of Sir T. H. Holdich, Raverty and Foucher; A. Anspach, De Alex. Magni exped. ind. (1903).
9 Tomaschek, ``Topographische Erlauterung der Kustenfahrt Nearchs'' in the Sitzungsberichte der kaiserl. Akad. d. Wissensch. of Vienna (Philosoph.-histor. Klasse, vol. cxxi.); Major P. M. Sykes, Ten Thousand Miles in Persia (1902), pp. 166 f.
10 For Alexander's funeral, see F. Jacoby in Rhein. Mus. (1903), pp. 461 f.
The Romance of Alexander.
The figure of Alexander naturally impressed itself upon the imagination of the world which his career had shaken. Even in India we are told that he was held in honour by the native kings who took his farthest provinces in possession. But Eastern tradition, so tenacious of the old myths of primitive man, has a short memory for actual history, and five centuries later Alexander was only remembered in Iran as the accursed destroyer of the sacred books, whose wisdom he had at the same time pilfered by causing translations to be made into ``Roman.'' That the East to-day has so much to tell about Alexander is only due to the fact that old mythical stories of gods or heroes who go travelling through lands of monsters and darkness, of magical fountains and unearthly oceans, became attached to his name in the popular literature of the Roman empire, and this mythical Alexander was reintroduced in the 7th century A.D. into the farther East, where the historical Alexander was almost forgotten. The romance of Alexander is found written in the languages of nearly all peoples from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, but all these versions are derived, mediately or immediately, from the Greek original which circulated under the false name of Callisthenes. The Greek pseudo-Callisthenes (otherwise Aisopos we possess in three recensions, based all upon a book produced in Egypt in the 2nd century A.D. But this book itself was a farrago of heterogeneous elements--pieces of genuine history, ancient stories once told in Babylon of Gilgamesh or Etanna, literary forgeries of the days soon after Alexander, like the oldest part of the ``Testament of Alexander,'' variations due to Egyptian patriotic sentiment, like that which made Alexander the son of the last Pharaoh, Nectanebus. As the story was reproduced, variations were freely introduced according to the bent of different times and peoples; in the Persian version Alexander (Iskander) became a son of Darius; among the Mahommedans he turned into a prophet, hot against idols; the pen of Christian monks made him an ascetic saint.
The Alexander romance found its way into Europe through the medium of Latin, but originated mainly from the versions of the pseudo-Callisthenes, not from the more sober narrative of Quintus Curtius. The pseudo-Callisthenes, in a recension which has not been preserved, was translated into Latin by Julius Valerius about the end of the 3rd century, and an epitome of this translation, also in Latin, was made some time before the 9th century, and is introduced by Vincent de Beauvais into his Speculum historiale. Much of the legend is a running travesty of the true history of the conqueror. The first book deals with his birth and early exploits. The trace of Alexandrian influence is to be found in the pretence that his actual father was Nectanebus, a fugitive king of Egypt. The latter was a great magician, able, by operating upon waxen figures of the armies and ships of his enemies, to obtain complete power over their real
## actions. Obliged, however, to flee to Pella in Macedonia, he
established himself as an astrologer, and as such was consulted by the childless Olympias. Having promised that Zeus Ammon would visit her in the form of a dragon, he himself assumed the disguise. In due course Alexander was born, and Philip's suspicions were overcome by a second appearance of the dragon, which was held to prove the divine fatherhood. The child was small and somewhat deformed, but of great courage and intelligence. When he was twelve years old he was instructed in starcraft by Nectanebus, who was killed by a fall into a pit, into which he had been playfully pushed by Alexander. The first book also relates his conquests in Italy, Africa, Syria and Asia Minor; his return to Macedonia and the submission of Greece. The second book continues the history of his conquests, and the third contains the victory over Porus, the relations with the Brahmins, the letter to Aristotle on the wonders of India, the histories of Candace and the Amazons, the letter to Olympias on the marvels of Farther Asia, and lastly the account of Alexander's death in Babylon.
The most wide-spread Latin version of the story, however, was the Historia de proeliis,1 printed at Strassburg in 1486, which began to supersede the Epitome of Julius Valerius in general favour about the end of the 13th century. It is said to have been written by the Neapolitan arch-presbyter Leo, who was sent by Johannes and Marinus, dukes of Campania (941-965) to Constantinople, where he found his Greek original. Auxiliary sources for the medieval romance-writers were:--the opuscule (4th century) known as Alexandri magni iter ad Paradisum, a fable of Eastern origin directed against ambition; the Itinerarium Alexandri (340), based partly on Julius Valerius and dedicated to Constans, son of the emperor Constantine; the letter of Alexander to Aristotle (Epist. de situ et mirabilibus Indiae), and the correspondence between Alexander and the king of the Brahmins, Dindimus, both of which are often contained in MSS. of the Epitome; and the treatise (based on a lost history of Alexander by Onesicritus), De gentibus Indiae et Bragmanibus, ascribed without certainty to Palladius (d. c. 430), successively bishop of Helenopolis and Aspona.
The Ethiopic versions are of great interest as a striking example of literary ``accommodation.'' Not only is the whole atmosphere Christian in colouring, but we actually find the Greek gods in the guise of Enoch, Elijah, &c., while Philip is a Christian martyr, and Alexander himself a great apostle, even a saint; quotations from the Bible are frequent. Syriac and Armenian versions were made in the 5th century. Persians and Arabs told the deeds of Iskander; and Firdousi made use of the story in the Shahnama. Another early Persian poet, Nizami, made the story specially his own. The crusaders brought back fresh developments; Gog and Magog (partly Arab and partly Greek) and some Jewish stories were then added. In the 11th century Simeon Seth, protovestiarius at the Byzantine court, translated the fabulous history from the Persian back into Greek.
The Alexander legend was the theme of poetry in all European languages; six or seven German poets dealt with the subject, and it may be read in French, English, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Flemish and Bohemian.
French.--The earliest known French romance of Alexander, by Alberic of Besancon (or more properly Briancon), was, until the discovery of a fragment of 100 lines at Florence in 1852, known only through the German adaptation by Lamprecht the preacher, who wrote towards the end of the 12th century, and by the version made by a Poitevin poet named Simon in decasyllabic lines. Alberic followed the epitome of Julius Valerius. He had some knowledge of authentic history, and rejected the more marvellous elements of the story. The French feudal romance, Li Romans d'Alexandre, was written in the 12th century by Lambert li Tors of Chateaudun, Alexandre de Bernai, surnamed de Paris, and others. It contained 20,000 lines, and was written in twelve-syllabled lines, whence the term ``alexandrine'' verse. The authors endowed Alexander with the fashionable virtues of the chivalric hero, making him especially the type of lavish generosity. They used as their sources Valerius, the letter to Aristotle and the Iter ad Paradisum, adding much of their own. Pierre de Saint Cloud, the writer of the fourth section of the romance, was evidently acquainted with the Historia de proeliis. The incident of the Fuerre de Gadres (Foray of Gaza), interpolated in the second section, is assigned to a certain Eustache. The redaction of the whole work is due to Alexandre de Bernai, who replaced the original assonance by rhyme. According to all the traditions of romance it was necessary to avenge the death of Alexander. At the end of the 12th century Gui de Cambrai and Jean le Nevelon (or Nevelaux or Venelais), each wrote a Vengeance d'Alexandre. Jean le Nevelon relates how Alior, the son of Alexander and Candace, avenged his father's death on Antipater and others. Between 1310 and 1315 Jacques de Longuyon (or Langhion) introduced into the account of the Indian war Les Voeux du paon, a romanesque and fantastic episode very loosely connected with Alexander. It is interesting for its connexion with the 15th-century romance of Perceforest, since in it Alexander visits Britain, where he bestows Scotland on Gadifer and England on Betis (otherwise Perceforest). Les Voeux du paon enjoyed great popularity, and had two sequels, Le Restor du paon, written before 1338 by Jean Brisebarre de Douai, and Le Parfait du paon, written in 1340 by Jean de la Mote. Florimont, a 12th-century poem by Aimon de Varenne, relates to a fictitious personage said to have been the grandfather of Alexander. This poem gave rise to two prose romances--La Conqueste de Grece faicte par Philippe de Madien, by Perrinet du Pin, first printed in 1527, and Histoire du roi Florimond (1528). Quintus Curtius was largely used for the Alexandreis (c. 1180) of Gaultier de Lille or de Chatillon (Galtherus ab Insulis or de Castellione). It is a Latin poem in ten books of hexameters, and contains a curious admixture of Biblical history. It was translated at the end of the next century into Flemish by J. van Maerlant and into German by Ulrich von Eschenbach.
Of the French prose versions of the Historia de proeliis may be noticed the late romance, L'Histoire du noble et vaillant roy Alixandre le Grant (1506). After an account of the ancient history of Macedonia and of the intrigue of Nectanebus we are told how Philip dies, and how Alexander subdues Rome and receives tribute from all European nations. He then makes his Persian expedition; the Indian campaign gives occasion for descriptions of all kinds of wonders. The conqueror visits a cannibal kingdom and finds many marvels in the palace of Porus, among them a vine with golden branches, emerald leaves and fruit of other precious stones. In one country he meets with women who, after the burial in the winter, become alive again in the spring full of youth and beauty. Having reached the ends of the earth and conquered all nations, he aspires to the dominion of the air. He obtains a magic glass cage, yoked with eight griffins, flies through the clouds, and, thanks to enchanters who know the language of birds, gets information as to their manners and customs, and ultimately receives their submission. The excessive heat of the upper regions compels him to descend, and he next visits the bottom of the sea in a kind of diving-bell. The fish crowd round him and pay homage. Alexander returns to Babylon, is crowned with much pomp and mass is celebrated. He dies by poison soon afterwards.
English Versions.--The Alexander cycle was no less popular in Great Britain. The letter from Alexander to Aristotle and his correspondence with Dindimus are found in Early English versions dating from the 11th century. These are printed by O. Cockayne in his Narratiunculae Anglice conscriptae (1861). The Monk (De Cas. ill. vir.) in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales prefaces his account of Alexander with the statement that his story is so common
That every wight that hath discrecioun Hath herd somewhat or all of his fortune. There are two considerable fragments of an English alliterative romance on the subject written in the west midland dialect, and dating from the second half of the 14th century. The first, The Gestes of the Worthy King and Emperor Alisaunder of Macedoine (ed. W. W. Skeat, E.E.T.S., 1877, with William of Palermo) contains an account of the wars of Philip, of Nectanebus and of the education of Alexander. A second fragment (ed. Skeat, E.E.T.S., 1878) contains Alexander's visit to the Gymnosophists and his correspondence with Dindimus. Another alliterative poem in the northern dialect, of 15th-century origin, is based on the Historia de proeliis, and was edited by Skeat for the E.E.T.S. (1886) as The Wars of Alexander. Earlier than any of these is the rhyming Lyfe of Alisaunder (c. 1330) which is printed in H. Weber's Metrical Romances (vol. i., 1810). It is written in unusually picturesque and vigorous language, and is based on the Roman de toute chevalerie, a French compilation made about 1250 by a certain Eustace or Thomas of Kent. Fragments of another rhyming poem (pr. c. 1550) are preserved in the British Museum. The Scots Buik of the most noble and vailyzeand Conqueror Alexander the Great, printed by Alexander Arbuthnot (d. 1585) about 1580, reprinted in 1831 for the Bannatyne Club, is not really a life. It contains three episodes of the cycle, the ``Forray of Gadderis'' (not taken from the Fuerre de Gadres but from the Assaut de Tyr in the Romans d'Alixandre), ``The Avowes of Alexander,'' and ``The Great Battel of Effesoun,'' taken from the Voeux du paon. Many passages in John Barbour's Bruce are almost identical with this book, and it is suggested by G. Neilson (John Barbour, Poet and Translator, London, 1900) that Barbour was the author, although the colophon states that it was written in 1438. Bruce at Bannockburn makes the same oration as Alexander at ``Effesoun.'' A Buke of the Conqueror Alexander the Great by Sir Gilbert Hay (fl. 1456) is in MS. at Taymouth Castle.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The best sketch of the Alexander romance literature is by Paul Meyer. Alexandre le grand dans la litterature francaise au moyen age (2 vols., Paris, 1886). The first volume contains some French texts, and the second a detailed discussion of the various versions from the pseudo-Callisthenes downwards. See also J. Zacher, Pseudo-Callisthenes, Forschungen zur . . . . Alexandersage (Halle, 1867), and for Oriental versions, T. Noldeke, ksl. Akad. d. Wissenschaben, Phil.-hist. Klasse, vol. 38: Vienna, 1890). For early printed versions see Brunet, Manuel du libraire, s.v. ``Alexandre.''
The text of the pseudo-Callisthenes was edited by C. W. Muller from three MSS. in the Bibl. Nat. and printed in the Arrian of the Coll. Didot (Paris, 1846), and by H. Meusel (Leipzig, 1871) from a Leiden MS. A. Mai edited Julius Valerius (Milan, 1817) and the Itinerarium Alexandri (Class. Auct. vol. vii.; Milan, 1835); J. Zacher, the Epitome Halle, 1867) and Alex. iter ad Paradisum (Regensburg, 1859); the Oxford MS. of the Epitome was edited by G. Cilli (Strassburg, 1903); G. Landgraf, Die ``Vita Alexandri'' . . . des Archpresbyter Leo (Historia de proeliis), (Erlangen, 1885); Alexander's letter to Aristotle and his correspondence with Dindimus are included in the Teubner edition of Julius Valerius (ed. B. Kubler, Leipzig, 1888). A newly discovered anonymous Epitome was edited by O. Wagner (Leipzig, 1900).
The fragment by Alberic was edited by P. Heyse (Berlin, 1856); Lamprecht's German text by H. Weismann (Frankfort, 1850) and by C. Kinzel (Halle, 1884); the Alexandreis of Gaultier de Lille, by F. A. W. Muldener (Leipzig, 1863); an Icelandic prose version (c. 1250) of the same, Alexanders Saga, by C. R. Unger (Christiania, 1848); Li Romans d'Alexandre, by H. Michelant (Stuttgart, 1846); the Ethiopic version by E. A. T. Wallis Budge (1896, 2 vols., with English translation); the Syriac text of pseudo-Callisthenes by Budge (Cambridge, 1889); cp. K. F. Weymann, Die athiopische und arabische Ubersetzungen des Pseudo-Kallisthenes (Kirchhain, 1901).
Besides the English editions quoted in the text, the alliterative English poems were partially edited by J. Stevenson for the Roxburghe Club (1849). There is a great deal of information on the various texts in H. L. Wood's Catalogue of Romances in the British Museum (1883, vol. i. pp. 94 et seq.). See also A. Hermann, Untersuchungen uber das Scottische Alexanderbuch (1893); and Unters. uber das med. Gedicht, The Wars of Alexander (Berlin, 1889). Among other works see E. Ronde, Der griechische Roman (2nd ed. Leipzig, 1900); B. Meissner, Alexander u. Gilgamos (Leipzig, 1894); F. Kampers, ``Alex. d. Grosse und die Idee des Weltimperiums in Prophetic und Sage'' (in H. Granert's Studien, &c., Freiburg, 1901); Adolf Ausfeld, Der griechische Alexanderroman (Leipzig, 1907), edited after the author's death by W. Kroll; Wilhelm Hertz, ``Aristoteles in den Alex. Dichtungen d. Mittelalters'' (Kgl. Acad. d. Wissenschaften, Munich, 1891); H. Becker, Die Brahmanen in d. Alex. Sage (Konigsberg, 1889). (M. BR.)
1 Nativitas et victoriae Alexandri magni regis was the original title.
ALEXANDER, tagus or despot of Pherae in Thessaly, ruled from 369 to 358 B.C. His tyranny caused the Aleuadae of Larissa to invoke the aid of Alexander II. of Macedon, whose intervention was successful, but after his withdrawal Alexander treated his subjects as cruelly as before. The Thessalians now applied to Thebes; Pelopidas, who was sent to their assistance, was treacherously seized and thrown into prison (368), and it was necessary to send Epaminondas with a large army to secure his release. Alexander's conduct caused renewed intervention; in 364 he was defeated at Cynoscephalae by the Thebans, although the victory was dearly bought by the loss of Pelopidas, who fell in the battle. Alexander was at last crushed by the Thebans, compelled to acknowledge the freedom of the Thessalian cities and to limit his rule to Pherae, and forced to join the Boeotian league. He was murdered by his wife's brother at her instigation. Ancient accounts agree in describing Alexander as a typically cruel and suspicious tyrant.
ALEXANDER (1461-1506), king of Poland and grand- duke of Lithuania, fourth son of Casimir IV., king of Poland, was elected grand-duke of Lithuania on the death of his father in 1492, and king of Poland on the death of his brother John Albert in 1501. His extreme impecuniosity made him from the first subservient to the Polish senate and nobles (szlachta), who deprived him of the control of the mint--then one of the most lucrative sources of revenue of the Polish kings--curtailed his prerogative, and generally endeavoured to reduce him to a subordinate position. This ill-timed parsimony reacted injuriously upon Polish politics. Thus, for want of funds, Alexander was unable to assist the Grand Master of the Order of the Sword against Muscovite aggression, or prevent Tsar Ivan III. from ravaging Lithuania with the Tatars. The utmost the king could do was to garrison Smolensk and other fortresses and employ his wife Helena, the tsar's daughter, to mediate a truce between his father-in-law and himself. During his reign Poland suffered much humiliation from the attempts of her subject principalities, Prussia and Moldavia, to throw off her yoke. Only the death of Stephen, the great hospodar of Moldavia, enabled Poland still to hold her own on the Danube; while the liberality of Pope Julius II., who issued no fewer than 29 bulls in favour of Poland and granted Alexander Peter's Pence and other financial help, enabled the Polish king to restrain somewhat the arrogance of the Teutonic Order. In Alexander the characteristic virtues of the Jagiellos, patience and generosity, degenerated into slothfulness and extravagance. Frequently he was too poor to pay the expenses of his own table. But he never felt at home in Poland, and bestowed his favour principally upon his fellow-countrymen, the most notable of whom was the wealthy Lithuanian magnate Michael Glinsky, who justified his master's confidence by his great victory over the Tatars at Kleck (August 5, 1506), the news of which was brought to Alexander on his deathbed.
See V. Czerny, The Reigns of John Albert and Alexander Jagiello (Pol.) (Cracow, 1882).
ALEXANDER, the name of eight popes:--
ALEXANDER I. was bishop of Rome from about 106 to 115. He has been identified, without any foundation, with Alexander, a martyr of the Via Nomentana, whose day is the 3rd of May.
ALEXANDER II. (Anselmo Baggio), pope from 1061 to 1073, was a native of Milan. As bishop of Lucca he had been an energetic coadjutor with Hildebrand in endeavouring to suppress simony, and to enforce the celibacy of the clergy. His election, which Hildebrand had arranged in conformity with the decree of 1059 (see NICHOLAS II.), was not sanctioned by the imperial court of Germany. This court, faithful to the practice observed by it in the preceding elections, nominatod another candidate, Cadalus, bishop of Parma, who was proclaimed at the council of Basel under the name of Honorius II., marched to Rome, and for a long time jeopardized his rival's position. At length, however, he was abandoned by the Germanic court and deposed by a council held at Mantua; and Alexander's position remained unchallenged. Alexander was succeeded by his associate Hildebrand, who took the title of Gregory VII. (L. D.*)
ALEXANDER III. (Orlando Bandinelli), pope from 1159 to 1181, was a Siennese, and as a teacher of canon law in Bologna composed the Stroma or the Summa Magistri Rolandi, one of the earliest commentaries on the Decretum Gratiani. In October 1150 Eugenius III. created him cardinal deacon SS. Cosmae and Damiani; later he became cardinal priest of St Mark's. Probably about this time he composed his Sentences, based on the Introductio ad theologiam of Abelard. In 1153 he became papal chancellor, and was the leader of the cardinals opposed to Frederick Barbarossa. On the 7th of September 1159 he was chosen the successor of Adrian IV., a minority of the cardinals, however, electing the cardinal priest Octavian, who assumed the name of Victor IV. This antipope, and his successors Paschal III. (1164-1168) and Calixtus III. (1168-1178), had the imperial support; but after the defeat of Legnano, Barbarossa finally (in the peace of Venice, 1177) recognized Alexander as pope. On the 12th of March 1178 Alexander returned to Rome, which he had been compelled to leave twice, namely, from 1162 until the 23rd of November 1165, and again in 1167. The first period he spent in France, the latter chiefly in Gaeta, Benevento, Anagni and Venice. In March 1179 Alexander held the third Lateran synod, a brilliant assemblage, reckoned by the Roman church as the eleventh oecumenical council; its acts embody several of the pope's proposals for the betterment of the condition of the church, among them the present law requiring that no one may be elected pope without the votes of two-thirds of the cardinals. This synod marks the summit of Alexander's power. Besides checkmating Barbarossa, he had humbled Henry II. of England in the affair of Thomas Becket, he had confirmed the right of Alphonso I. of Portugal to the crown, and even as a fugitive had enjoyed the favour and protection of Louis VII. of France. Nevertheless, soon after the close of the synod the Roman republic forced Alexander to leave the city, which he never re-entered; and on the 29th of September 1179 some nobles set up the antipope Innocent III. By the judicious use of money, however, Alexander got him into his power, so that he was deposed in January 1180. In 1181 Alexander excommunicated William the Lion of Scotland and put the kingdom under the interdict. The great pope died at Civita Castellana on the 30th of August 1181.
See Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopadie, 3rd ed., i. 340-344; Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexikon, 2nd ed., 1481. The most elaborate biography is H. Reuter, Geschichte Alexanders III. und der Kirche seiner Zeit (3 vols., 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1860). (W. W. R.*)
ALEXANDER IV. (Rinaldo), pope from 1254 to 1261, was, like Innocent III. and Gregory IX., a member of the family of the counts of Segni. His uncle Gregory IX. made him cardinal deacon in 1227 and cardinal bishop of Ostia in 1231. On the death of Innocent IV. he was elected pope at Naples on the 12th of December 1254. He is described as a stout man, kindly, cheerful, but of no great brilliancy. He succeeded Innocent IV. as guardian of Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen, promising him his benevolent protection; but in less than a fortnight he conspired against him and bitterly opposed Conradin's uncle Manfred. Alexander fulminated with excommunication and interdict against the party of Manfred, but in vain; nor could he enlist the kings of England and Norway in a crusade against the Hohenstaufen. Rome itself became too Ghibelline for the pope, who withdrew to Viterbo, where he died on the 25th of May 1261. His pontificate was signalized by efforts to unite the Greek and Latin churches, by the establishment of the Inquisition in France, by favours shown to the mendicant orders, and by an attempt to organize a crusade against the Tatars.
The registers of Alexander IV. are published by Bourel de la Ronciere and others in the Bibliotheque des Ecoles francaises d'Athenes et de Rome, Paris, 1895 ff. (W. W. R.*)
ALEXANDER V. (Peter Philarges), pope 1409-1410, was born in Crete of unknown parents and entered the order of St Francis, for which, as for the other mendicant orders, he later manifested his affection in a striking manner. He was a member in turn of the universities of Oxford and Paris, and finally settled in Lombardy, where, thanks to the favour of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, he became bishop, first of Piacenza, then of Vincenza, then of Novara, and afterwards archbishop of Milan. On being created cardinal by Innocent VII. he devoted all his energies from 1408 onwards to the realization of the union of the church, in spite of the two rival popes. He was one of the promoters of the council of Pisa, and after that assembly had declared Gregory XII. and Benedict NIII. deposed, the cardinals assembled in conclave thought they could not do better than crown with the tiara this cosmopolitan prelate, who had an equal mastery of the Latin and Greek languages, and was renowned not only for his learning in theology but for his affability (June 26, 1409). As a matter of fact, the only effect of this election was to aggravate the schism by adding a third to the number of rival pontiffs. During his short reign of ten months Alexander V.'s aim was to extend his obedience with the assistance of France, and, notably, of the duke Louis II. of Anjou, upon whom he conferred the investiture of the kingdom of Sicily, together with the title of gonfalonier of the church. He proclaimed and promised rather than effected a certain number of reforms: the abandonment of the rights of ``spoils'' and ``procurations,'' the re-establishment of the system of canonical election in the cathedral churches and principal monasteries, &c. But death came upon him almost without warning at Bologna, in the night of the 3rd-4th May 1410. A rumour went about that he had been poisoned by the cardinal Baldassare Cossa, impatient to be his successor, who succeeded him in fact under the name of John XXIII. The crime has, however, never been proved, though a Milanese physician, who performed the task of dissecting the corpse of Peter Philarges, seems to have thought that he found traces of poison. (N. V.)
ALEXANDER VI. (Rodrigo Borgia) (1431-1503), pope from 1492 to his death, is the most memorable of the corrupt and secular popes of the Renaissance. He was born (January 1, 1431) at Xativa, near Valencia in Spain, and his father's surname was Lanzol or Llancol; that of his mother's family, Borgia or Borja, was assumed by him on the elevation of his maternal uncle to the papacy as Calixtus III. (April 8, 1455). He studied law at Bologna, and after his uncle's election he was created successively bishop, cardinal and vice-chancellor of the church, an act of nepotism characteristic of the age. He served in the Curia under five popes and acquired much administrative experience, influence and wealth, although no great power; he was economical in his habits; on occasion he displayed great splendour and lived in a fine palace. His manners were agreeable and his appearance fascinating, but, like many other prelates of the day, his morals were far from blameless, his two dominant passions being greed of gold and love of women, and he was devotedly fond of the children whom his mistresses bore him. Although ecclesiastical corruption was then at its height, his riotous mode of life called down upon him a very severe reprimand from Pope Pius II., who succeeded Calixtus III. in 1458. Of his many mistresses the one for whom his passion lasted longest was a certain Vannozza (Giovanna) dei Cattani, born in 1442, and wife of three successive husbands. The connexion began in 1470, and she bore him many children whom he openly acknowledged as his own: Giovanni, afterwards duke of Gandia (born 1474), Cesare (born 1476), Lucrezia (born 1480), and Goffredo or Giuffre (born 1481 or 1482). His other children--Girolamo, Isabella and Pier Luigi--were of uncertain parentage. Before his elevation to the papacy Cardinal Borgia's passion for Vannozza somewhat diminished, and she subsequently led a very retired life. Her place in his affections was filled by the beautiful Giulia Farnese (Giulia Bella), wife of an Orsini, but his love for his children by Vannozza remained as strong as ever and proved, indeed, the determining factor of his whole career. He lavished vast sums on them and loaded them with every honour. A characteristic instance of the corruption of the papal court is the fact that Borgia's daughter Lucrezia (see BORGIA, LUCREZIA) lived with his mistress Giulia, who bore him a daughter Laura in 1492.
On the death of Pope Innocent VIII. the three likely candidates for the Holy See were Cardinals Borgia, Ascanio Sforza and Giuliano della Rovere; at no previous or subsequent election were such immense sums of money spent on bribery, and Borgia by his great wealth succeeded in buying the largest number of votes, including that of Sforza, and to his intense joy he was elected on the 10th of August 1492, assuming the name of Alexander VI. Borgia's elevation did not at the time excite much alarm, except in some of the cardinals who knew him, and at first his reign was marked by a strict administration of justice and an orderly method of government in satisfactory contrast with the anarchy of the previous pontificate, as well as by great outward splendour. But it was not long before his unbridled passion for endowing his relatives at the expense of the church and of his neighbours became manifest. For this object he was ready to commit any crime and to plunge all Italy into war. Cesare, then a youth of sixteen and a student at Pisa, was made archbishop of Valencia, his nephew Giovanni received a cardinal's hat, and for the duke of Gandia and Giuffre the pope proposed to carve fiefs out of the papal states and the kingdom of Naples. Among the fiefs destined for the duke of Gandia were Cervetri and Anguillara, lately acquired by Virginio Orsini, head of that powerful and turbulent house, with the pecuniary help of Ferdinand of Aragon, king of Naples (Don Ferrante). This brought the latter into conflict with Alexander, who determined to revenge himself by making an alliance with the king's enemies, especially the Sforza family, lords of Milan. In this he was opposed by Cardinal della Rovere, whose candidature for the papacy had been backed by Ferdinand. Della Rovere, feeling that Rome was a dangerous place for him, fortified himself in his bishopric of Ostia at the Tiber's mouth, while Ferdinand allied himself with Florence, Milan, Venice, and the pope formed a league against Naples (April 25, 1493) and prepared for war. Ferdinand appealed to Spain for help; but Spain was anxious to be on good terms with the pope to obtain a title over the newly discovered continent of America and could not afford to quarrel with him.
Alexander meditated great marriages for his children. Lucrezia had been married to the Spaniard Don Gasparo de Procida, but on her father's elevation to the papacy the union was annulled, and in 1493 she was married to Giovanni Sforza. lord of Pesaro, the ceremony being celebrated at the Vatican with unparalleled magnificence. But in spite of the splendours of the court, the condition of Rome became every day more deplorable. The city swarmed with Spanish adventurers, assassins, prostitutes and informers; murder and robbery were committed with impunity, heretics and Jews were admitted to the city on payment of bribes, and the pope himself shamelessly cast aside all show of decorum, living a purely secular and immoral life, and indujging in the chase, dancing, stage plays and indecent orgies. One of his boon companions was Jem, the brother of the sultan Bayezid, detained as a hostage.
The general political outlook in Italy was of the gloomiest, and the country was on the eve of the catastrophe of foreign invasion. At Milan Lodovico Sforza (il Moro) ruled, nominally as regent for the youthful duke Gian Galeazzo, but really with a view to making himself master of the state. He made many alliances to secure his position, but fearing himself isolated he sought help from Charles VIII. of France, and as the king of Naples threatened to come to the aid of Gian Galeazzo, who had married his grand- daughter, he encouraged the French king in his schemes for the conquest of Naples. Alexander carried on a double policy, always ready to seize opportunities to aggrandize his family. But through the intervention of the Spanish ambassador he made peace with Naples in July 1493 and also with the Orsini; the peace was cemented by a marriage between the pope's son Giuffre and Dona Sancha, Ferdinand's grand-daughter. In order to dominate the Sacred College more completely he created twelve new cardinals, among them his own son Cesare, then only eighteen years old, and Alessandro Farnese, the brother of Giulia Bella, one of the pope's mistresses, creations which caused much scandal. On the 25th of January 1494 Ferdinand died and was succeeded by his son Alphonso II. Charles of France now advanced formal claims on the kingdom, and Alexander drew him to his side and authorized him to pass through Rome ostensibly on a crusade against the Turks, without mentioning Naples. But when the French invasion became a reality he was alarmed, recognized Alphonso as king, and concluded an alliance with him in exchange for various fiefs to his sons (July 1494). Preparations for defence were made; a Neapolitan army was to advance through the Romagna and attack Milan, while the fleet was to seize Genoa; but both expeditions were badly conducted and failed, and on the 8th of September Charles crossed the Alps and joined Lodovico il Moro at Milan. The papal states were in a turmoil, and the powerful Colonna faction seized Ostia in the name of France. Charles rapidly advanced southward, and after a short stay in Florence set out for Rome (November 1494). Alexander appealed to Ascanio Sforza for help, and even to the sultan. He tried to collect troops and put Rome in a state of defence, but his position was most insecure, and the Orsini offered to admit the French to their castles. This defection decided the pope to come to terms, and on the 31st of December Charles entered Rome with his troops and the cardinals of the French faction. Alexander now feared that the king might depose him for simony and summon a council, but he won over the bishop of St Malo, who had much influence over the king, with a cardinal's hat, and agreed to send Cesare, as legate, to Naples with the French army, to deliver Jem to Charles and to give him Civitavecchia (January 16, 1495). On the 28th Charles departed for Naples with Jem and Cesare, but the latter escaped to Spoleto. Neapolitan resistance collapsed; Alphonso fled and abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand II., who also had to fly abandoned by all, and the kingdom was conquered with surprising ease. But a reaction against Charles soon set in, for all the powers were alarmed at his success, and on the 31st of March a league between the pope, the emperor, Venice, Lodovico il Moro and Ferdinand of Spain was formed, ostensibly against the Turks, but in reality to expel the French from Italy. Charles had himself crowned king of Naples on the 12th of May, but a few days later began his retreat northward. He encountered the allies at Fornovo, and after a drawn battle cut his way through them and was back in France by November; Ferdinand II. with Spanish help was reinstated at Naples soon afterwards. The expedition, if it produced no material results, laid bare the weakness of the Italian political system and the country's incapacity for resistance.
Alexander availed himself of the defeat of the French to break the power of the Orsini, following the general tendency of all the princes of the day to crush the great feudatories and establish a centralized despotism. Virginio Orsini, who had been captured by the Spaniards, died a prisoner at Naples, and the pope confiscated his property. But the rest of the clan still held out, and the papal troops sent against them under Guidobaldo duke of Urbino and the duke of Gandia were defeated at Soriano (January 1497). Peace was made through Venetian mediation, the Orsini paying 50,000 ducats in exchange for their confiscated lands; the duke of Urbino, whom they had captured, was left by the pope to pay his own ransom. The Orsini still remained very powerful, and Alexander could count on none but his 3000 Spaniards. His only success had been the capture of Ostia and the submission of the Francophile cardinals Colonna and Savelli.
Now occurred the first of those ugly domestic tragedies for which the house of Borgia remained famous. On the 14th of June the duke of Gandia, lately created duke of Benevento, disappeared; the next day his corpse was found in the Tiber. Alexander, overwhelmed with grief, shut himself up in Castle St Angelo, and then declared that the reform of the church would be the sole object of his life henceforth--a resolution which he did not keep. Every effort was made to discover the assassin, and suspicion fell on various highly placed personages. Suddenly the rumour spread about that Cesare, the pope's second son, was the author of the deed, and although the inquiries then ceased and no conclusive evidence has yet come to light, there is every probability that the charge was well founded. No doubt Cesare, who contemplated quitting the church, was inspired by jealousy. of Gandia's influence with the pope. Violent and revengeful, he now became the most powerful man in Rome, and even his father quailed before him. As he needed funds to carry out his various schemes, the pope began a series of confiscations, of which one of the victims was his own secretary, in order to enrich him. The process was a simple one: any cardinal, nobleman or official who was known to be rich would be accused of some offence; imprisonment and perhaps murder followed at once, and then the confiscation of his property. The disorganization of the Curia was appalling, the sale of offices became a veritable scandal, the least opposition to the Borgia was punished with death, and even in that corrupt age the state of things shocked public opinion. The story of Alexander's relations with Savonarola is narrated under the latter heading; it is sufficient to say here that the pope's hostility was due to the friar's outspoken invectives against papal corruption and to his appeals for a General Council. Alexander, although he could not get Savonarola into his own hands, browbeat the Florentine government into condemning the reformer to death (May 23, 1498). The pope was unable to maintain order in his own dominions; the houses of Colonna and Orsini were at open war with each other, but after much fighting they made peace on a basis of alliance against the pope. Thus further weakened, he felt more than ever that he had only his own kin to rely upon, and his thoughts were ever turned on family aggrandizement. He had annulled Lucrezia's marriage with Sforza in 1497, and, unable to arrange a union between Cesare and the daughter of Frederick, king of Naples (who had succeeded Ferdinand II. the previous year), he induced the latter by threats to agree to a marriage between the duke of Bisceglie, a natural son of Alphonso II., and Lucrezia. Cesare, who renounced his cardinalate, was sent on a mission to France at the end of the year, bearing a bull of divorce for the new king Louis XII., in exchange for which he obtained the duchy of Valentinois (hence his title of Duca Valentino) and a promise of material assistance in his schemes to subjugate the feudal princelings of Romagna; he married a princess of Navarre. Alexander hoped that Louis's help would be more profitable to his house than that of Charles had been and, in spite of the remonstrances of Spain and of the Sforza, he allied himself with France in January 1499 and was joined by Venice. By the autumn Louis was in Italy and expelled Lodovico Sforza from the Milanese. In order to consolidate his possessions still further, now that French success seemed assured, the pope determined to deal drastically with Romagna, which although nominally under papal rule was divided up into a number of practically independent lordships on which Venice, Milan and Florence cast hungry eyes. Cesare, nominated gonfaloniere of the Church, and strong in French favour, proceeded to attack the turbulent cities one by one (for detail see BORGIA CESARE.) But the expulsion of the French from Milan and the return of Lodovico Sforza interrupted his conquests, and he returned to Rome early in 1500. This year was a jubilee year, and crowds of pilgrims flocked to the city from all parts of the world bringing money for the purchase of indulgences, so that Alexander was able to furnish Cesare with funds for his enterprise. In the north the pendulum swung back once more and the French reoccupied Milan in April, causing the downfall of the Sforzas, much to Alexander's gratification. But there was no end to the Vatican tragedies, and in July the duke of Bisceglie, whose existence was no longer advantageous, was murdered by Cesare's orders; this left Lucrezia free to contract another marriage. The pope, ever in need of money, now created twelve new cardinals, from whom he received 120,000 ducats, and fresh conquests for Cesare were considered. But while a crusade was talked of, the real object was central Italy, and in the autumn Cesare, favoured by France and Venice, set forth with 10,000 men to complete his interrupted enterprise. The local despots of Romagna were dispossessed and an administration was set up, which, if tyrannical and cruel, was at least orderly and strong, and aroused the admiration of Machiavelli (q.v..) On his return to Rome (June 1501) he was created duke of Romagna. Louis XII., having succeeded in the north, determined to conquer southern Italy as well, and concluded a treaty with Spain for the division of the Neapolitan kingdom, which was ratified by the pope on the 25th of June, Frederick being formally deposed. The French army proceeded to invade Naples, and Alexander took the opportunity, with the help of the Orsini, to reduce the Colonna to obedience. In his absence he left Lucrezia as regent, offering the astounding spectacle of a pope's natural daughter in charge of the Holy See. Shortly afterwards he induced Alphonso d'Este, son of the duke of Ferrara, to marry her, thus establishing her as heiress to one of the most important principalities in Italy (January 1502). About this time a Borgia of doubtful parentage was born, Giovanni, described in some papal documents as Alexander's son and in others as Cesare's.
As France and Spain were quarrelling over the division of Naples and the Campagna barons were quiet, Cesare set out once more in search of conquests. In June he seized Camerino and Urbino, the news of which capture filled the pope with childish joy. But his military force was uncertain, for the condottieri were not to be trusted. His attempt to draw Florence into an alliance failed, but in July Louis of France again invaded Italy and was at once bombarded with complaints from the Borgia's enemies. Alexander's diplomacy, however, turned the tide, and Cesare, in exchange for promising to assist the French in the south, was given a free hand in central Italy. A new danger now arose in the shape of a conspiracy against him on the part of the deposed despots, the Orsini and some of his own condottieri. At first the papal troops were defeated and things looked black for the house of Borgia. But a promise of French help at once forced the confederates to come to terms, and Cesare by an act of treachery seized the ringleaders at Senigallia, and put Oliverotto da Fermo and Vitellozzo Vitelli to death (Dec. 31, 1502). As soon as Alexander heard the news he decoyed Cardinal Orsini to the Vatican and cast him into a dungeon, where he died. His goods were confiscated, his aged mother turned into the street and numbers of other members of the clan in Rome were arrested, while Giuffre Borgia led an expedition into the Campagna and seized their castles. Thus the two great houses of Orsini and Colonna, who had long fought for predominance in Rome and often flouted the pope's authority, were subjugated, and a great step achieved towards consolidating the Borgia's power. Cesare then returned to Rome, where his father wished him to assist Giuffre in reducing the last Orsini strongholds; this for some reason he was unwilling to do, much to Alexander's annoyance, but he eventually marched out, captured Ceri and made peace with Giulio Orsini, who surrendered Bracciano. Three more high personages fell victims to the Borgia's greed this year, viz. Cardinal Michiel, who was poisoned in April, J. da Santa Croce, who had helped to seize Cardinal Orsini, and Troches or Troccio, one of the family's most faithful assassins; all these murders brought immense sums to the pope. About Cardinal Ferrari's death there is more doubt; he probably died of fever, but the pope immediately confiscated his goods.
The war between France and Spain for the possession of Naples dragged on, and Alexander was ever intriguing, ready to ally himself with whichever power promised at the moment most advantageous terms. He offered to help Louis on condition that Sicily be given to Cesare, and then offered to help Spain in exchange for Siena, Pisa and Bologna. Cesare was preparing for another expedition into central Italy in July 1503, when, in the midst of all these projects and negotiations, both he and his father were taken ill with fever. The occurrence was of course attributed to poison, although quite without foundation, being merely due to malaria, at that time very prevalent in Rome. On the 18th of August Alexander died at the age of 72. His death was followed by scenes of wild disorder, and Cesare, being himself ill, could not attend to business, but sent Don Michelotto, his chief bravo, to seize the pope's treasures before the demise was publicly announced. When the body was exhibited to the people the next day it was in a shocking state of decomposition, which of course strengthened the suspicion of poison. At the funeral a brawl occurred between the soldiers and the priests, and the coffin having been made too short the body without the mitre was driven into it by main force and covered with an oil-cloth. Alexander's successor on the chair of St Peter was Francesco Todeschini-Piccolomini, who assumed the name of Pius III.
Alexander VI. has become almost a mythical character, and countless legends and traditions are attached to his name. As a matter of fact he cannot be regarded in any sense as a great man. His career shows no great political ideas, and none of his actions indicate genius. His one thought was family aggrandizement, and while it is unlikely that he meditated making the papacy hereditary in the house of Borgia, he certainly gave away its temporal estates to his children as though they belonged to him. The secularization of the church was carried to a pitch never before dreamed of, and it was clear to all Italy that he regarded the papacy as an instrument of worldly schemes with no thought of its religious aspect. During his pontificate the church was brought to its lowest level of degradation. The condition of his subjects was deplorable, and if Cesare's rule in Romagna was an improvement on that of the local tyrants, the people of Rome have seldom been more oppressed than under the Borgia. Alexander was not the only person responsible for the general unrest in Italy and the foreign invasions, but he was ever ready to profit by them. Even if we do not accept all the stories of his murders and poisonings and immoralities as true, there is no doubt that his greed for money and his essentially vicious nature led him to commit a great number of crimes. For many of his misdeeds his terrible son Cesare was responsible, but of others the pope cannot be acquitted. The one pleasing aspect of his life is his patronage of the arts, and in his days a new architectural era was initiated in Rome with the coming of Bramante. Raphael, Michelangelo and Pinturicchio all worked for him, and a curious contrast, characteristic of the age, is afforded by the fact that a family so steeped in vice and crime could take pleasure in the most exquisite works of art.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The chief contemporary authorities for this reign are: the diary of Alexander's master of ceremonies, Johannes Burchardus, edited by L. Thuasne (Paris, 1883-1884), which is characterized by accuracy and extraordinary candour often amounting to gross indecency; the despatches of Giustiniani, the Venetian ambassador, edited by P. Villari (Florence, 1876), which show great insight and are based on the most accurate information; and Paolo Cappelli's ``Diarii'' in E. Alberi's Relazioni, series ii., iii. Among modern works the most important are: F. Gregorovius's Geschichte der Stadt Rom (3rd ed., Stuttgart, 1881), a work of immense research and admirable synthesis, giving a very unfavourable view of the Borgia; A. von Reumont's Geschichte der Stadt Rom (Berlin, 1867-1870), also a valuable book; M. Creighton's History of the Papacy (London, 1897) is very learned and accurate, but the author is more lenient towards Alexander; F. Gregorovius's Lucrezia Borgia (Stuttgart, 1874) contains a great deal of information on the Borgia family; P. Villari's Machiavelli (English translation, new ed., 1892) deals with the subject at some length. Of the Catholic writers L. Pastor, Geschichte der Papste (Freiburg i. B, 1886) should be consulted, for although the author tries to extenuate the pope to some extent, on the whole he is fair. (L. V.*)
ALEXANDER VII. (Fabio Chigi), pope from 1655 to 1667, was born at Siena on the 13th of February 1599. He was successively inquisitor at Malta, vice-legate at Ferrara and nuncio in Cologne (1639-1651). Though expected to take part in the negotiations which led in 1648 to the peace of Westphalia, he refused to deliberate with heretics, and protested against the treaties when completed. Innocent X. subsequently made him cardinal secretary of state. When Innocent died, Chigi, the candidate favoured by Spain, was elected pope on the 7th of April 1655. The conclave believed he was strongly opposed to the nepotism then prevalent. In the first year of his reign Alexander VII. forbade his relations even to visit Rome; but in 1656 he gave them the best-paid civil and ecclesiastical offices, also palaces and princely estates. Alexander disliked business of state, preferring literature and philosophy; a collection of his Latin poems appeared at Paris in 1656 under the title Philomathi Labores Juveniles. He also encouraged architecture, and in particular constructed the beautiful colonnade in the piazza of St Peter's. He favoured the Jesuits, especially in their conflict with the Jansenists, forbade in 1661 the translation of the Roman Missal into French, and in 1665 canonized Francis of Sales. His pontificate was marked by protracted controversies with France and Portugal. He died on the 22nd of May 1667. (W. W. R.*)
ALEXANDER VIII. (Pietro Ottoboni), pope from 1689 to 1691, was born in 1610 of a noble Venetian family, was created cardinal, and then successively bishop of Brescia and datary. The ambassador of Louis XIV. succeeded in procuring his election on the 6th of October 1689 as successor to Innocent XI.; nevertheless, after months of negotiation Alexander finally condemned the declaration made in 1682 by the French clergy concerning the liberties of the Gallican church. Charities on a large scale and unbounded nepotism exhausted the papal treasury. He bought the books and manuscripts of Queen Christina of Sweden for the Vatican library. Alexander condemned in 1690 the doctrines of so-called philosophic sin, taught in the Jesuit schools. He died on the 1st of February 1691. (W. W. R.*)
ALEXANDER I. (ALEKSANDER PAVLOVICH) (1777-1825), emperor of Russia, son of the grand-duke Paul Petrovich, afterwards Paul I., and Maria Fedorovna, daughter of Frederick Eugene of Wurttemberg, was born on the 28th of December 1777. The strange contradictions of his character make Alexander one of the most interesting as he is one of the most important figures in the history of the 19th century. Autocrat and ``Jacobin,'' man of the world and mystic, he was to his contemporaries a riddle which each read according to his own temperament. Napoleon thought him a ``shifty Byzantine,'' and called him the Talma of the North, as ready to play any conspicuous part. To Metternich he was a madman to be humoured. Castlereagh, writing of him to Lord Liverpool, gives him credit for ``grand qualities,'' but adds that he is ``suspicious and undecided.'' His complex nature was, in truth, the outcome of the complex character of his early environment and education. Reared in the free-thinking atmosphere of the court of Catherine II. he had imbibed from his Swiss tutor, Frederic Cesar de Laharpe, the principles of Rousseau's gospel of humanity; from his military governor, General Soltikov, the traditions of Russian autocracy; while his father had inspired him with his own passion of military parade, and taught him to combine a theoretical love of mankind with a practical contempt for men. These contradictory tendencies remained with him through life, revealed in the fluctuations of his policy and influencing through him the fate of the world. Another element in his character discovered itself when in 1801 he mounted the throne over the body of his murdered father: a mystic melancholy liable at any moment to issue in extravagant action. At first, indeed, this exercised but little influence on the emperor's life. Young, emotional, impressionable, well-meaning and egotistic, Alexander displayed from the first an intention of playing a great part on the world's stage, and plunged with all the ardour of youth into the task of realizing his political ideals. While retaining for a time the old ministers who had served and overthrown the emperor Paul, one of the first acts of his reign was to appoint a secret committee, called ironically the ``Comite du salut public,'' consisting of young and enthusiastic friends of his own--Victor Gavovich Kochubey, Nikolai Nikolaevich Novosiltsov, Paul Alexandrovich Strogonov and Adam Czartoryski--to draw up a scheme of internal reform. Their aims, inspired by their admiration for English institutions, were far in advance of the possibilities of the time, and even after they had been raised to regular ministerial positions but little of their programme could be realized. For Russia was not ripe for liberty; and Alexander, the disciple of the revolutionist Laharpe, was--as he himself said--but ``a happy accident'' on the throne of the tsars. He spoke, indeed, bitterly of ``the state of barbarism in which the country had been left by the traffic in men.'' ``Under Paul,'' he said, ``three thousand peasants had been given away like a bag of diamonds. If civilization were more advanced, I would abolish this slavery, if it cost me my head.''1 But the universal corruption, he complained, had left him no men; and the filling up of the government offices with Germans and other foreigners merely accentuated the sullen resistance of the ``old Russians'' to his reforms. That Alexander's reign, which began with so large a promise of amelioration, ended by riveting still tighter the chains of the Russian people was, however, due less to the corruption and backwardness of Russian life than to the defects of the tsar himself. His love of liberty, though sincere, was in fact unreal. It flattered his vanity to pose before the world as the dispenser of benefits; but his theoretical liberalism was mated with an autocratic will which brooked no contradiction. ``You always want to instruct me!'' he exlaimed to Derzhavin, the minister of justice, ``but I am the autocratic emperor, and I will this, and nothing else!'' ``He would gladly have agreed,'' wrote Adam Czartoryski, ``that every one should be free, if every one had freely done only what he wished.'' Moreover, with this masterful temper was joined an infirmity of purpose which ever let ``I dare not wait upon I would,'' and which seized upon any excuse for postponing measures the principles of which he had publicly approved. The codification of the laws initiated in 1801 was never carried out during his reign; nothing was done to improve the intolerable status of the Russian peasantry; the constitution drawn up by Speranski, and passed by the emperor, remained unsigned. Alexander, in fact, who, without being consciously tyrannical, possessed in full measure the tyrant's characteristic distrust of men of ability and independent judgment, lacked also the first requisite for a reforming sovereign: confidence in his people; and it was this want that vitiated such reforms as were actually realized. He experimented in the outlying provinces of his empire; and the Russians noted with open murmurs that, not content with governing through foreign instruments, he was conferring on Poland, Finland and the Baltic provinces benefits denied to themselves. In Russia, too, certain reforms were carried out; but they could not survive the suspicious interference of the autocrat and his officials. The newly created council of ministers, and the senate, endowed for the first time with certain theoretical powers, became in the end but the slavish instruments of the tsar and his favourites of the moment. The elaborate system of education, culminating in the reconstituted, or new-founded, universities of Dorpat, Vilna, Kazan and Kharkov, was strangled in the supposed interests of ``order'' and of orthodox piety; while the military colonies which Alexander proclaimed as a blessing to both soldiers and state were forced on the unwilling peasantry and army with pitiless cruelty. Even the Bible Society, through which the emperor in his later mood of evangelical zeal proposed to bless his people, was conducted on the same ruthless lines. The Roman archbishop and the Orthodox metropolitans were forced to serve on its committee side by side with Protestant pastors; and village popes, trained to regard any tampering with the letter of the traditional documents of the church as mortal sin, became the unwilling instruments for the propagation of what they regarded as works of the devil.
Alexander's grandiose imagination was, however, more strongly attracted by the great questions of European politics than by attempts at domestic reform which, on the whole, wounded his pride by proving to him the narrow limits of absolute power. On the morrow of his accession he had reversed the policy of Paul, denounced the League of Neutrals, and made peace with England (April 1801), at the same time opening negotiations with Austria. Soon afterwards at Memel he entered into a close alliance with Prussia, not as he boasted from motives of policy, but in the spirit of true chivalry, out of friendship for the young king Frederick William and his beautiful wife. The development of this alliance was interrupted by the short-lived peace of October 1801; and for a while it seemed as though France and Russia might come to an understanding. Carried away by the enthusiasm of Laharpe, who had returned to Russia from Paris, Alexander began openly to proclaim his admiration for French institutions and for the person of Bonaparte. Soon, however, came a change. Laharpe, after a new visit to Paris, presented to the tsar his Reflexions on the True Nature of the Consulship for Life, which, as Alexander said, tore the veil from his eyes, and revealed Bonaparte ``as not a true patriot,'' but only as ``the most famous tyrant the world has produced.'' His disillusionment was completed by the murder of the duc d'Enghien. The Russian court went into mourning for the last of the Condes, and diplomatic relations with Paris were broken off.
The events of the war that followed belong to the general history of Europe; but the tsar's attitude throughout is personal to himself, though pregnant with issues momentous for the world. In opposing Napoleon, ``the oppressor of Europe and the disturber of the world's peace,'' Alexander in fact already believed himself to be fulfilling a divine mission. In his instructions to Novosiltsov, his special envoy in London, the tsar elaborated the motives of his policy in language which appealed as little to the common sense of Pitt as did later the treaty of the Holy Alliance to that of Castlereagh. Yet the document is of great interest, as in it we find formulated for the first time in an official despatch those exalted ideals of international policy which were to play so conspicuous a part in the affairs of the world at the close of the revolutionary epoch, and issued at the end of the 19th century in the Rescript of Nicholas II.2 and the conference of the Hague. The outcome of the war, Alexander argued, was not to be only the liberation of France, but the universal triumph of ``the sacred rights of humanity.'' To attain this it would be necessary ``after having attached the nations to their government by making these incapable of acting save in the greatest interests of their subjects, to fix the relations of the states amongst each other on more precise rules, and such as it is to their interest to respect.'' A general treaty was to become the basis of the relations of the states forming ``the European Confederation''; and this, though ``it was no question of realizing the dream of universal peace, would attain some of its results if, at the conclusion of the general war, it were possible to establish on clear principles the prescriptions of the rights of nations.'' ``Why could not one submit to it,'' the tsar continued, ``the positive rights of nations, assure the privilege of neutrality, insert the obligation of never beginning war until all the resources which the mediation of a third party could offer have been exhausted, having by this means brought to light the respective grievances, and tried to remove them? It is on such principles as these that one could proceed to a general pacification, and give birth to a league of which the stipulations would form, so to speak, a new code of the law of nations, which, sanctioned by the greater part of the nations of Europe, would without difficulty become the immutable rule of the cabinets, while those who should try to infringe it would risk bringing upon themselves the forces of the new union.''3
Meanwhile Napoleon, little deterred by the Russian autocrat's youthful idealogy, never gave up hope of detaching him from the coalition. He had no sooner entered Vienna in triumph than he opened negotiations with him; he resumed them after Austerlitz. Russia and France, he urged, were ``geographical allies''; there was, and could be, between them no true conflict of interests; together they might rule the world. But Alexander was still determined ``to persist in the system of disinterestedness in respect of all the states of Europe which he had thus far followed,'' and he again allied himself with Prussia. The campaign of Jena and the battle of Eylau followed; and Napoleon, though still intent on the Russian alliance, stirred up Poles, Turks and Persians to break the obstinacy of the tsar. A party too in Russia itself, headed by the tsar's brother the grand-duke Constantine, was clamorous for peace; but Alexander, after a vain attempt to form a new coalition, summoned the Russian nation to a holy war against Napoleon as the enemy of the orthodox faith. The outcome was the rout of Friedland (June 13 and 14, 1807). Napoleon saw his chance and seized it. Instead of making heavy terms, he offered to the chastened autocrat his alliance, and a partnership in his glory.
The two emperors met at Tilsit on the 25th of June. Alexander, dazzled by Napoleon's genius and overwhelmed by his apparent generosity, was completely won. Napoleon knew well how to appeal to the exuberant imagination of his new-found friend. He would divide with Alexander the empire of the world; as a first step he would leave him in possession of the Danubian principalities and give him a free hand to deal with Finland; and, afterwards, the emperors of the East and West, when the time should be ripe, would drive the Turks from Europe and march across Asia to the conquest of India. A programme so stupendous awoke in Alexander's impressionable mind an ambition to which he had hitherto been a stranger. The interests of Europe were forgotten. ``What is Europe?'' he exclaimed to the French ambassador. ``Where is it, if it is not you and we?''4
The brilliance of these new visions did not, however, blind Alexander to the obligations of friendship; and he refused to retain the Danubian principalities as the price for suffering a further dismemberment of Prussia. ``We have made loyal war,'' he said, ``we must make a loyal peace.'' It was not long before the first enthusiasm of Tilsit began to wane. Napoleon was prodigal of promises, but niggard of their fulfilment. The French remained in Prussia, the Russians on the Danube; and each accused the other of breach of faith. Meanwhile, however, the personal relations of Alexander and Napoleon were of the most cordial character; and it was hoped that a fresh meeting might adjust all differences between them. The meeting took place at Erfurt in October 1808, and resulted in a treaty which defined the common policy of the two emperors. But Alexander's relations with Napoleon none the less suffered a change. He realized that in Napoleon sentiment never got the better of reason, that as a matter of fact he had never intended his proposed ``grand enterprise'' seriously, and had only used it to preoccupy the mind of the tsar while he consolidated his own power in central Europe. From this moment the French alliance was for Alexander also not a fraternal agreement to rule the world, but an affair of pure policy. He used it, in the first instance, to remove ``the geographical enemy'' from the gates of St Petersburg by wresting Finland from the Swedes (1809); and he hoped by means of it to make the Danube the southern frontier of Russia. Events were in fact rapidly tending to the rupture of the Franco-Russian alliance. Alexander, indeed, assisted Napoleon in the war of 1809, but he declared plainly that he would not allow Austria to be crushed out of existence; and Napoleon complained bitterly of the inactivity of the Russian troops during the campaign. The tsar in his turn protested against Napoleon's encouragement of the Poles. In the matter of the French alliance he knew himself to be practically isolated in Russia, and he declared that he could not sacrifice the interest of his people and empire to his affection for Napoleon. ``I don't want anything for myself,'' he said to the French ambassador, ``therefore the world is not large enough to come to an understanding on the affairs of Poland, if it is a question of its restoration.''5 The treaty of Vienna, which added largely to the grand-duchy of Warsaw, he complained had ``ill requited him for his loyalty,'' and he was only mollified for the time by Napoleon's public declaration that he had no intention of restoring Poland, and by a convention, signed on the 4th of January 1810 but not ratified, abolishing the Polish name and orders of chivalry.
But if Alexander suspected Napoleon, Napoleon was no less suspicious of Alexander; and, partly to test his sincerity, he sent an almost peremptory request for the hand of the grand- duchess Anne, the tsar's youngest sister. After some little delay Alexander returned a polite refusal, on the plea of the princess's tender age and the objection of the dowager empress to the marriage. Napoleon's answer was to refuse to ratify the convention of the 4th of January, and to announce his engagement to the archduchess Marie Louise in such a way as to lead Alexander to suppose that the two marriage treaties had been negotiated simultaneously. From this time the relation between the two emperors gradually became more and more strained. The annexation of Oldenburg, of which the duke was the tsar's uncle, to France in December 1810, added another to the personal grievances of Alexander against Napoleon; while the ruinous reaction of ``the continental system'' on Russian trade made it impossible for the tsar to maintain a policy which was Napoleon's chief motive for the alliance. An acid correspondence followed, and ill-concealed armaments, which culminated in the summer of 1812 in Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Yet, even after the French had passed the frontier, Alexander still protested that his personal sentiments towards the emperor were unaltered; ``but,'' he added, ``God Himself cannot undo the past.'' It was the occupation of Moscow and the desecration of the Kremlin, the sacred centre of Holy Russia, that changed his sentiment for Napoleon into passionate hatred. In vain the French emperor, within eight days of his entry into Moscow, wrote to the tsar a letter, which was one long cry of distress, revealing the desperate straits of the Grand Army, and appealed to ``any remnant of his former sentiments.'' Alexander returned no answer to these ``fanfaronnades.'' ``No more peace with Napoleon!'' he cried, ``He or I, I or He: we cannot longer reign together!''6
The campaign of 1812 was the turning-point of Alexander's life; and its horrors, for which his sensitive nature felt much of the responsibility, overset still more a mind never too well balanced. At the burning of Moscow, he declared afterwards, his own soul had found illumination, and he had realized once for all the divine revelation to him of his mission as the peacemaker of Europe. He tried to calm the unrest of his conscience by correspondence with the leaders of the evangelical revival on the continent, and sought for omens and supernatural guidance in texts and passages of scripture. It was not, however, according to his own account, till he met the Baroness de Krudener--a religious adventuress who made the conversion of princes her special mission--at Basel, in the autumn of 1813, that his soul found peace. From this time a mystic pietism became the avowed force of his political, as of his private actions. Madame de Krudener, and her colleague, the evangelist Empaytaz, became the confidants of the emperor's most secret thoughts; and during the campaign that ended in the occupation of Paris the imperial prayer-meetings were the oracle on whose revelations hung the fate of the world.
Such was Alexander's mood when the downfall of Napoleon left him the most powerful sovereign in Europe. With the memory of Tilsit still fresh in men's minds, it was not unnatural that to cynical men of the world like Metternich he merely seemed to be disguising ``under the language of evangelical abnegation'' vast and perilous schemes of ambition. The puzzled powers were, in fact, the more inclined to be suspicious in view of other, and seemingly inconsistent, tendencies of the emperor, which yet seemed all to point to a like disquieting conclusion. For Madame de Krudener was not the only influence behind the throne; and, though Alexander had declared war against the Revolution, Laharpe was once more at his elbow, and the catchwords of the gospel of humanity were still on his lips. The very proclamations which denounced Napoleon as ``the genius of evil,'' denounced him in the name of ``liberty,'' and of ``enlightenment.'' A monstrous intrigue was suspected for the alliance of the eastern autocrat with the Jacobinism of all Europe, which would have issued in the substitution of an all-powerful Russia for an all-powerful France. At the congress of Vienna Alexander's attitude accentuated this distrust. Castlereagh, whose single-minded aim was the restoration of ``a just equilibrium'' in Europe, reproached the tsar to his face for a ``conscience'' which suffered him to imperil the concert of the powers by keeping his hold on Poland in violation of his treaty obligation.7
Yet Alexander was sincere. Even the Holy Alliance, the pet offspring of his pietism, does not deserve the sinister reputation it has since obtained. To the other powers it seemed, at best ``verbiage'' and ``exalted nonsense,'' at worst an effort of the tsar to establish the hegemony of Russia on the goodwill of the smaller signatory powers. To the Liberals, then and afterwards it was clearly a hypocritical conspiracy against freedom. Yet to Alexander himself it seemed the only means of placing the ``confederation of Europe'' on a firm basis of principle8 and, so far from its being directed against liberty he declared roundly to all the signatory powers that ``free constitutions were the logical outcome of its doctrines.'' Europe, in fact, owed much at this time to Alexander's exalted temper. During the period when his influence was supreme, the fateful years, that is, between the Moscow campaign and the close of the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, it had been used largely in the interests of moderation and liberty. To him mainly it was due that France was saved from dismemberment, and received a constitution which, to use his own words, ``united crown and representatives of the people in a sense of common interests.''9 By his wise intervention Switzerland was saved from violent reaction, and suffered to preserve the essential gains of the Revolution. To his protection it was due that the weak beginnings of constitutional freedom in Germany were able for a while to defy the hatred of Austria. Lastly, whatever its ultimate outcome, the constitution of Poland was, in its inception, a genuine effort to respond to the appeal of the Poles for a national existence.
From the end of the year 1818 Alexander's views began to change. A revolutionary conspiracy among the officers of the guard, and a foolish plot to kidnap him on his way to the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (q.v.), are said to have shaken the foundations of his Liberalism. At Aix he came for the first time into intimate contact with Metternich, and the astute Austrian was swift to take advantage of the psychological moment. From this time dates the ascendancy of Metternich over the mind of the Russian emperor and in the councils of Europe. It was, however, no case of sudden conversion. Though alarmed by the revolutionary agitation in Germany, which culminated in the murder of his agent, the dramatist Kotzebue (q.v.), Alexander approved of Castlereagh's protest against Metternich's policy of ``the governments contracting an alliance against the peoples,'' as formulated in the Carlsbad decrees, 1819, and deprecated any intervention of Europe to support ``a league of which the sole object is the absurd pretensions of absolute power.''10 He still declared his belief in ``free institutions, though not in such as age forced from feebleness, nor contracts ordered by popular leaders from their sovereigns, nor constitutions granted in difficult circumstances to tide over a crisis. ``Liberty,'' he maintained, ``should be confined within just limits. And the limits of liberty are the principles of order.''11
It was the apparent triumph of the principles of disorder in the revolutions of Naples and Piedmont, combined with increasingly disquieting symptoms of discontent in France, Germany and among his own people, that completed Alexander's conversion. In the seclusion of the little town of Troppau, where in October of 1820 the powers met in conference, Metternich found an opportunity for cementing his influence over Alexander which had been wanting amid the turmoil and feminine intrigues of Vienna and Aix. Here, in confidence begotten of friendly chats over afternoon tea, the disillusioned autocrat confessed his mistake. ``You have nothing to regret,'' he said sadly to the exultant chancellor, ``but I have!''12 The issue was momentous. In January Alexander had still upheld the ideal of a free confederation of the European states, symbolized by the Holy Alliance, against the policy of a dictatorship of the great powers, symbolized by the Quadruple Treaty; he had still protested against the claims of collective Europe to interfere in the internal concerns of the sovereign states. On the 19th of November he signed the Troppau Protocol, which consecrated the principle of intervention and wrecked the harmony of the concert. (See TROPPAU, CONGRESS OF.)
At Laibach, whither in the spring of 1821 the congress had been adjourned, Alexander first heard of the revolt of the Greeks. From this time until his death his mind was torn between his anxiety to realize his dream of a confederation of Europe and his traditional mission as leader of the Orthodox crusade against the Turks. At first, under the careful nursing of Metternich, the former motive prevailed. He struck the name of Alexander Ypsilanti from the Russian army list, and directed his foreign minister, Count Capo d'Istria, himself a Greek, to disavow all sympathy of Russia with his enterprise; and, next year, a deputation of the Greeks of the Morea on its way to the congress of Verona was turned back by his orders on the road. He made, indeed, some effort to reconcile the principles at conflict in his mind. He offered to surrender the claim, successfully asserted when the sultan had been excluded from the Holy Alliance and the affairs of the Ottoman empire from the deliberations of Vienna, that the affairs of the East were the ``domestic concerns of Russia,'' and to march into Turkey, as Austria had marched into Naples, ``as the mandatory of Europe.''13 Metternich's opposition to this, illogical, but natural from the Austrian point of view, first opened his eyes to the true character of Austria's attitude towards his ideals. Once more in Russia, far from the fascination of Metternich's personality, the immemorial spirit of his people drew him back into itself; and when, in the autumn of 1825, he took his dying empress for change of air to the south of Russia, in order--as all Europe supposed--to place himself at the head of the great army concentrated near the Ottoman frontiers, his language was no longer that of ``the peace-maker of Europe,'' but of the Orthodox tsar determined to take the interests of his people and of his religion ``into his own hands.'' Before the momentous issue could be decided, however, Alexander died at Taganrog on the 1st of December (November 18, O.S.) 1825, ``crushed'', to use his own words, ``beneath the terrible burden of a crown'' which he had more than once declared his intention of resigning. A report, current at the time and often revived, affirmed that he did not in fact die. By some it is supposed that a mysterious hermit named Fomich, who lived at Tomsk until 1870 and was treated with peculiar deference by successive tsars, was none other than Alexander.14
Modern history knows no more tragic figure than that of Alexander. The brilliant promise of his early years; the haunting memory of the crime by which he had obtained the power to realize his ideals; and, in the end, the terrible legacy he left to Russia: a principle of government which, under lofty pretensions, veiled a tyranny supported by spies and secret police; an uncertain succession; an army permeated by organized disaffection; an armed Poland, whose hunger for liberty the tsar had whetted but not satisfied; the quarrel with Turkey, with its alternative of war or humiliation for Russia; an educational system rotten with official hypocrisy; a Church in which conduct counted for nothing, orthodoxy and ceremonial observance for everything; economical and financial conditions scarce recovering from the verge of ruin; and lastly, that curse of Russia,--serfdom.
In private life Alexander displayed many lovable qualities. All authorities combine in praising his handsome presence and the affability and charm of his address, together with a certain simplicity of personal tastes, which led him in his intercourse with his friends or with the representatives of friendly powers to dispense with ceremonial and etiquette. His personal friendship, too, once bestowed, was never lightly withdrawn. By nature he was sociable and pleasure-loving, he proved himself a notable patron of the arts and he took a conspicuous part in all the gaieties of the congress of Vienna. In his later years, however, he fell into a mood of settled melancholy; and, though still accessible to all who chose to approach him with complaints or petitions, he withdrew from all but the most essential social functions, and lived a life of strenuous work and of Spartan simplicity. His gloom had been increased by domestic misfortune. He had been married, in 1793, without his wishes being consulted, to the beautiful and amiable Princess Maria Louisa of Baden (Elizabeth Feodorovna), a political match which, as he regretfully confessed to his friend Frederick William of Prussia, had proved the misfortune of both; and he consoled himself in the traditional manner. The only child of the marriage, a little grand-duchess, died on the 12th of May 1808; and their common sorrow drew husband and wife closer together. Towards the close of his life their reconciliation was completed by the wise charity of the empress in sympathizing deeply with him over the death of his beloved daughter by Madame Narishkine.
See also EUROPE; RUSSIA; FRANCE; TURKEY; VIENNA, CONGRESS OF; NAPOLEON; METTERNICH; CAPO D'ISTARIA.
AUTHORITIES.--F. de Martins, Recueil des traites conclus par la Russie, &c. (St Petersb., 1874, &c.); Wellington Despatches Castlereagh Correspondence; Prince Adam Czartoryski, Memoires et correspondance avec l'empereur Alexandre I. (Paris, 1887, 2 vols.). P. Bailleu (ed). Briefwechsel Konig Friedrich Wilhelm's III. und der Konigin Luise mit Kaiser Alexander I. (Leipzig, 1900); Laharpe, Le Gouverneur d'un Prince (F. C de Laharpe et Alexandre I. de Russie) 1902; Serge Tatischeff, Alexandre I. et Napoleon d'apres leur correspondance inedite (Paris, 1901); Joseph de Maistre, Memoires historiques et correspondance diplomatique, ed. A. Blanc (2nd ed., 1859); Comtesse de Choiseul-Gouffier, Memoires historiques sur l'empereur Alexandre (1829), and Reminiscences sur l'empereur Alexandre I., &c. (Paris, 1862); Rulemann Friedrich Eylert, Charakterzuge und historische Fragmente aus dem Leben Konig Friedrich Wilhelm's III. (1846); H. L. Empaytaz, Notice sur Alexandre Empereur de Russie (2nd ed., Paris, 1840); Comte A. de la Garde- Chambonas, Souvenirs du Congres de Vienne; publ. avec introd. et notes par le Cte. Fleury (1901).
LIVES.--The principal life of Alexander I. is that, in Russian, by Nikolai Karlovich Schilder, Imperator Aleksander, &c. (4 vols., St Petersb., 1897, 1898). See also Bogdanovich, History of the Government of the Emperor Alexander I. (St Petersburg, 1869-1871, Nikolaus I. Band i. Kaiser Alexander I. und die Ergebnisse seiner Lebensarbeit (Berl., 1904), a valuable study based upon much new material from the state archives of St Petersburg, Paris, Berlin and Vienna; A. Vandal, Napoleon et Alexandre I.: l'alliance Russe sous le premier empire (3 vols., Paris, 1891-1896); A. N. Pypin, Political and Literary Movements under Alexander I. (Russian, 2nd ed. St Petersburg, 1885; German, Berlin, 1894). Among the numerous less authoritative biographies may be mentioned Ivan Golovin, Histoire d'Alexandre I. (Leipzig, 1859), and C. Joyneville, Life and Times of Alexander I. (3 vols., 1875). This last contains much valuable information, but the references in footnotes are often wanting in precision, and it has no index. (W. A. P.)
1 Savary to Napoleon, Nov. 4, 1807. Tatischeff, p. 226.
2 Circular of Count Muraviev, Aug. 24, 1898.
3 Instructions to M. Novosiltsov, Sept. 11, 1804. Tatiseheff, p. 82.
4 Savary to Napoleon, Nov. 18, 1807. Tatischeff, p. 232.
5 Coulaincourt to Napoleon, 4th report, Aug. 3, 1809. Tatischeff, p. 496.
6 Alexander speaking to Colonel Michaud. Tatischeff, p. 612.
7 Castlereagh to Liverpool, Oct. 2, 1814. F.O. Papers. Vienna VII.
8 Martens IV. oart i. p. 49.
9 Etat des negociations actueelles, &c., mem. prepared by order of the Tsar, July 16, 1815, enclosed in Castlereagh to Liverpool, F.O. Cont. papers. Congress Paris, Castlereagh, 22.
10 Despatch of Lieven, Nov. 30 (Dec. 12), 1819, and Russ. Circular of Jan. 27, 1820. Martens IV. part i . p. 270.
11 Apercu des idees de l'Empereur, Martens IV. part i . p. 269.
12 Metternich Mem.
13 Martens IV.