Thus was Russia aggrandized during the reign of Catherine II., who not only added the Crimea to her dominions,—­an achievement to which Peter the Great aspired in vain,—­but dismembered Poland, and invaded Persia with her armies.  “Greece, Roumelia, Thessaly, Macedonia, Montenegro, and the islands of the Archipelago swarmed with her emissaries, who preached rebellion against the hateful Crescent, and promised Russian support, Russian money, and Russian arms.”  These promises however were not realized, being opposed by Austria,—­then virtually ruled by Prince Kaunitz, who would not consent to the partition of Poland without the abandonment of the ambitious projects of Catherine, incited by Prince Potemkin, the most influential of her advisers and favorites.  She had to renounce all idea of driving the Turks out of Turkey and founding a Greek empire ruled over by a Russian grand duke.  She was forced also to abandon her Greek and Slavonic allies, and pledge herself to maintain the independence of Wallachia and Moldavia.  Eight years later, in 1783, the Tartars lost their last foothold in the Crimea by means of a friendly alliance between Catherine and the Austrian emperor Joseph II., the effect of which was to make the Russians the masters of the Black Sea.

Catherine II., of German extraction, is generally regarded as the ablest female sovereign who has reigned since Semiramis, with the exception perhaps of Maria Theresa of Germany and Elizabeth of England; but she was infinitely below these princesses in moral worth,—­indeed, she was stained by the grossest immoralities that can degrade a woman.  She died in 1796, and her son Paul succeeded her,—­a prince whom his imperial mother had excluded from all active participation in the government of the empire because of his mental imbecility, or partial insanity.  A conspiracy naturally was formed against him in such unsettled times,—­it was at the height of Napoleon’s victorious career,—­resulting in his assassination, and his son Alexander I. reigned in his stead.

Alexander was twenty-four when, in 1801, he became the autocrat of all the Russias.  His reign is familiar to all the readers of the wars of Napoleon, during which Russia settled down as one of the great Powers.  At the Congress of Vienna in 1814 the duchy of Warsaw, comprising four-fifths of the ancient kingdom of Poland, was assigned to Russia.  During fifty years Russia had been gaining possession of new territory,—­of the Crimea in 1783, of Georgia in 1785, of Bessarabia and a part of Moldavia in 1812.  Alexander added to the empire several of the tribes of the Caucasus, Finland, and large territories ceded by Persia.  After the fall of Napoleon, Alexander did little to increase the boundaries of his empire, confining himself, with Austria and Prussia, to the suppression of revolutionary principles in Europe, the weakening of Turkey, and the extension of Russian influence in Persia.  In the internal government