And yet, within that hideous mass glowed some sparks of reverence for right.  When the nobles tried to get Paul’s assent to more open arrangements for selling serfs apart from the soil, he utterly refused; and when they overtasked their human chattels, Paul made a law that no serf should be required to give more than three days in the week to the tillage of his master’s domain.

But, within five years after his accession, Paul had developed into such a ravenous wild-beast that it became necessary to murder him.  This duty done, there came a change in the spirit of Russian sovereignty as from March to May; but, sadly for humanity, there came, at the same time, a change in the spirit of European politics as from May to March.

For, although the new Tzar, Alexander I., was mild and liberal, the storm of French ideas and armies had generally destroyed in monarchs’ minds any poor germs of philanthropy which had ever found lodgment there.  Still Alexander breasted this storm,—­found time to plan for his serfs, and in 1803 put his hand to the work of helping them toward freedom.  His first edict was for the creation of the class of “free laborers.”  By this, masters and serfs were encouraged to enter into an arrangement which was to put the serf into immediate possession of himself, of a homestead, and of a few acres,—­giving him time to indemnify his master by a series of payments.  Alexander threw his heart into this scheme; in his kindliness he supposed that the pretended willingness of the nobles meant something; but the serf-owning caste, without openly opposing, twisted up bad consequences with good, braided impossibilities into possibilities:  the whole plan became a tangle, and was thrown aside.

The Tzar now sought to foster other good efforts, especially those made by some earnest nobles to free their serfs by will.  But this plan, also, the serf-owning caste entangled and thwarted.

At last, the storm of war set in with such fury that all internal reforms must be lost sight of.  Russia had to make ready for those campaigns in which Napoleon gained every battle.  Then came that peaceful meeting on the raft at Tilsit,—­worse for Russia than any warlike meeting; for thereby Napoleon seduced Alexander, for years, from plans of bettering his Empire into dreams of extending it.

Coming out of these dreams, Alexander had to deal with such realities as the burning of Moscow, the Battle of Leipsic, and the occupation of France; yet, in the midst of those fearful times,—­when the grapple of the Emperors was at the fiercest,—­in the very year of the burning of Moscow,—­Alexander rose in calm statesmanship, and admitted Bessarabia into the Empire under a proviso which excluded serfage forever.

Hardly was the great European tragedy ended, when Alexander again turned sorrowfully toward the wronged millions of his Empire.  He found that progress in civilization had but made the condition of the serfs worse.  The newly ennobled parvenus were worse than the old boyars; they hugged the serf-system more lovingly and the serfs more hatefully.[G]