Such was the bond of the Holy Alliance.  It was drawn up in the hand-writing of Alexander.  Subsequently it was signed by the Kings of England and France, and by nearly all the sovereigns of Europe.  The pope declined signing, as it was not consistent with his dignity to be a member of a confederacy of which he was not the head.  These principles, apparently so true and salutary, became vitiated by the underlying of principles which gave them all their force.  The alliance became in reality a conspiracy of the crowned heads of Europe against the liberties of their subjects; and thus despotism sat enthroned.  The liberal spirit, which was then breaking out all over the continent of Europe, was thus, for a time, effectually crushed.  It can hardly be supposed that Alexander intended the Holy Alliance to accomplish the work which it subsequently performed.

Alexander, on his return to Russia, devoted himself energetically to the government of his vast realms, taking long and fatiguing journeys, and manifesting much interest in the elevation of the serfs to freedom.  The latter years of Alexander were clouded with sorrow.  He was not on good terms with his wife, and the death of all his children rendered his home desolate.  His health failed and some deep grief seemed ever to prey upon his spirits.  It is supposed that the melancholy fate of Napoleon, dying in a hut at St. Helena, and of whom he had said, “Never did I love a man as I have loved that man!” weighed heavily upon him.  He was constantly haunted by fears of a rising of the oppressed people, and to repel that danger was becoming continually more despotic.

In the year 1825, Alexander, sick, anxious and melancholy, took a long journey, with his wife, to Tanganroy, a small town upon the Sea of Azof, fifteen hundred miles from St. Petersburg.  He had for some time looked forward with dread to his appearance before the bar of God.  A sense of sin oppressed him, and he had long sought relief with prayers and tears.  His despondency led him to many forebodings that he should not live to return from this journey.

The morning before he left St. Petersburg, at the early hour of four o’clock, he visited the monastery where the remains of his children were entombed, and at their grave spent some time in prayer.  Wrapped in his cloak, in unbroken silence he listened to the “chant for the dead,” and then commenced his journey.  No peasant whom he met on the way had a heavier heart than throbbed in the bosom of the sovereign.  For hours he sat in the carriage with the empress, with whom in grief he had become reconciled, and hardly a word was uttered.  At length they arrived upon the shores of Azof.  The emperor took a rapid tour through these provinces, visiting among other places Sevastopol, which he had long been fortifying.  He was so much struck with the magnificence of this place that he remarked, “Should I ever resign the reins of government, I should wish to retire to this city, that I might here terminate my career!”