zar, taking advantage of this return to friendliness,
remarked,

"I have promised to deliver up to you Moroson and his confederates in
the government. Their acts I admit to have been very unjust, but their
personal relations to me renders it peculiarly trying for me to
condemn them. I hope the people will not deny the first request I have
ever made to them, which is, that these men, whom I have displaced,
may be pardoned. I will answer for them for the future, and assure you
that their conduct shall be such as to give you cause to rejoice at
your lenity."

The people were so moved by this address, which the tzar pronounced
with tears, that, as with one accord, they shouted, "God grant his
majesty a long and happy life. The will of God and of the tzar be
done." Peace was thus restored between the government and the people,
and great good accrued to Russia from this successful insurrection.

During the early reign of Alexis, there were no foreign wars of any
note. The Poles were all the time busy in endeavors to beat back the
Turks, who, in wave after wave of invasion, were crossing the Danube.
Upon the death of Ladislaus, King of Poland, Alexis, who had then a
fine army at his command, offered to march to repel the Turks, if the
Poles would choose him King of Poland. But at the same time France
made a still more alluring offer, in case they would choose John
Casimir, a prince in the interests of France, as their sovereign. The
choice fell upon John Casimir. The provinces of Smolensk, Kiof and
Tchernigov were then in possession of the Poles, having been, in
former wars, wrested from Russia. The Poles had conquered them by
taking advantage of internal troubles in Russia, which enabled them
with success to invade the empire.

Alexis now thought it right, in his turn, to take advantage of the
weakness of Poland, harassed by the Turks, to recover these lost
provinces. He accordingly marched to the city of Smolensk, and
encamped before it with an army of three hundred thousand men.
Smolensk was one of the strongest places which military art had then
been able to rear. The Poles had received sufficient warning of the
attack to enable them to garrison the fortifications to their utmost
capacity and to supply the town abundantly with all the materials of
war. The siege was continued for a full year, with all the usual
accompaniments of carnage and misery which attend a beleaguered
fortress. At last the city, battered into ru