Alexander, whose reign began in 1801, was moved by a sincere desire to get rid of serfdom.  Schnitzler says that he “solemnly declared that he would not endure the habit of making grants of peasants, a practice hitherto common with the autocrats, and forbade the announcement in public papers of the sales of human beings,”—­and that “he permitted his nobles to sell to their serfs, together with their personal liberty, portions of land, which should thus become the bona fide property of the serf purchaser.  This was a most important act; for Alexander thus laid the basis of a class of free cultivators.”  A public man having requested an estate with its serfs as hereditary possessions, the Czar replied as follows:—­“The peasants of Russia are for the most part slaves.  I need not expatiate upon the degradation or the misfortune of such a condition.  Accordingly, I have made a vow not to augment the number; and to this end I have laid down the principle, that I will not give away peasants as property.”  The Czar was determined to go farther than this.  Not only would he not increase the number of the serfs, but he would lessen their number.  The serfs of Esthonia were first favored, their emancipation beginning in 1802, and being completed in 1816, the year in which Alexander may be regarded as having been at the height of his greatness, for he had completed the overthrow of Napoleon, and had seen France saved from partition through his influence and exertions.  The Courland serfs were emancipated in 1817.  Two years later, the nobles of Livonia formed a plan of emancipation in their country, and when they submitted it to the Czar, his answer was,—­“I am delighted to see that the nobility of Livonia have fulfilled my expectations.  You have set an example that ought to be imitated.  You have acted in the spirit of our age, and have felt that liberal principles alone can form the basis of the people’s happiness.”  So long as Alexander remained true to liberal principles himself, there was some hope that he might abolish serfdom throughout his dominions.  He abhorred the “peculiar institution” of his empire with all the force of a mind that certainly was generous, and which had a strong bias in the direction of justice.  Once he made a solemn religious vow that he would abolish it.  It is probable that he would have made an attempt at complete emancipation, if the circumstances of his time and his country had enabled him to concentrate his thoughts and his labors upon domestic affairs.  Unhappily for Russia, and for the Czar’s fame, he was soon drawn into the European vortex, and became one of the principal actors in the grand drama of that age, so that Russian interests were sacrificed to ambition, to the love of military glory, and to the Czar’s desire to become Don Quixote with an imperial crown and sceptre.  He wished to reconstruct the map of Europe, which had been so terribly deranged by those terrible map-destroyers and map-makers, the