French republicans.  Catharine II. had had the sense to keep out of the war that had been waged against France, though no person in Europe—­not even George III. himself—­hated the revolutionists more intensely.  She wished to see them subdued, but she preferred that the work of subjugation should be done by others, so that she might be at liberty to pursue her designs against Poland and Turkey and Persia.  The destruction of Poland she completed, but she was called away before she could conquer the followers of Omar and of Ali.  Paul was a party to the second coalition against France, and his armies tore Italy from its conquerors, and but for the stupidity of Austria there might have been a Russian restoration of the Bourbons in 1709.  Alexander resumed the policy which his father had adopted only to discard, and though at one period of his reign he appeared well inclined to Napoleon, there never was any sincerity in the alliance between the two masters of so many millions.  The Czar was easily induced to favor the strange scheme of an Italian adventurer for the rehabilitation of Europe, which had been adopted by his friend and counsellor, the Prince Czartoryski, and which ultimately furnished the basis, and many of the details, of that pacification which was effected in 1815.  We have seen the treaties of that memorable year torn to tatters by Napoleon III., but the adoption of Piatoli’s project by Alexander affected the last generation as intimately as the French Emperor’s conduct has affected the men of to-day.  It led the Czar away from his original purpose, and converted him, from a benevolent ruler, into a harsh, suspicious, unfeeling despot.  There could be nothing done for Russian serfs while their sovereign was crusading it for the benefit of the Bourbons in particular and of legitimacy in general.  “God is in heaven, and the Czar is afar off!” words once common with the suffering serfs, were of peculiar force when the Czar, who believed himself to be the chosen instrument of Heaven, was at Paris or Vienna, laboring for the settlement of Europe according to ideas adopted in the early years of his reign.  Napoleonism and Liberalism were the same thing in the mind of Alexander, and he finally came to regard serfdom itself as something that should not be touched.  It was a stone in that social edifice which he was determined to maintain at all hazards.  The plan of emancipation had worked well in the outlying Baltic provinces, where there were few or no Russians, but he discouraged its application to other portions of his dominions.  Some of his greatest nobles were anxious to take the lead as emancipationists, but he would not allow them to proceed in the only way that promised success, and so the bondage system was continued with the approbation of the Czar.  In his last years, Alexander, though still quite a young man,—­he was but forty-eight when he died,—­was the most determined enemy of liberty in Europe or Asia.