d in vain,--but dismembered Poland, and invaded Persia
with her armies. "Greece, Roumelia, Thessaly, Macedonia, Montenegro, and
the islands of the Archipelago swarmed with her emissaries, who preached
rebellion against the hateful Crescent, and promised Russian support,
Russian money, and Russian arms." These promises however were not
realized, being opposed by Austria,--then virtually ruled by Prince
Kaunitz, who would not consent to the partition of Poland without the
abandonment of the ambitious projects of Catherine, incited by Prince
Potemkin, the most influential of her advisers and favorites. She had to
renounce all idea of driving the Turks out of Turkey and founding a
Greek empire ruled over by a Russian grand duke. She was forced also to
abandon her Greek and Slavonic allies, and pledge herself to maintain
the independence of Wallachia and Moldavia. Eight years later, in 1783,
the Tartars lost their last foothold in the Crimea by means of a
friendly alliance between Catherine and the Austrian emperor Joseph II.,
the effect of which was to make the Russians the masters of the
Black Sea.

Catherine II., of German extraction, is generally regarded as the ablest
female sovereign who has reigned since Semiramis, with the exception
perhaps of Maria Theresa of Germany and Elizabeth of England; but she
was infinitely below these princesses in moral worth,--indeed, she was
stained by the grossest immoralities that can degrade a woman. She died
in 1796, and her son Paul succeeded her,--a prince whom his imperial
mother had excluded from all active participation in the government of
the empire because of his mental imbecility, or partial insanity. A
conspiracy naturally was formed against him in such unsettled times,--it
was at the height of Napoleon's victorious career,--resulting in his
assassination, and his son Alexander I. reigned in his stead.

Alexander was twenty-four when, in 1801, he became the autocrat of all
the Russias. His reign is familiar to all the readers of the wars of
Napoleon, during which Russia settled down as one of the great Powers.
At the Congress of Vienna in 1814 the duchy of Warsaw, comprising
four-fifths of the ancient kingdom of Poland, was assigned to Russia.
During fifty years Russia had been gaining possession of new
territory,--of the Crimea in 1783, of Georgia in 1785, of Bessarabia and
a part of Moldavia in 1812. Alexander added to the empire several of the
tribes of the Caucasus, Fi