1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nicholas II.

​NICHOLAS II. (1868–⁠), emperor of Russia, eldest sonand successor of Alexander III., was born at St Petersburg onthe 18th of May 1868. He received the ordinary education ofRussian grand-dukes, under the direction of General Danilovitch,assisted by M. Pobêdonostsev and other eminent professors.Among these was an Englishman, Mr Charles Heath, for whomhe had great respect and affection. By the death of his grandfather,Alexander II., in 1881, he became heir-apparent(cesarevich). Though he received, like all the heirs-apparentto the Russian throne, a certain amount of military training,his personal tastes did not lie in that direction, nor did he showany inclination for the boisterous amusements of the jeunessedorée of St Petersburg. Like his father, he was nowhere happierthan in the family circle, and he was particularly attached tohis sister, the grand-duchess Xenia, who was seven years youngerthan himself. In 1890–1891 he made a tour in Greece, Egypt,India, Ceylon and Japan, where he narrowly escaped assassinationat the hands of a Japanese fanatic. On the return journeyby Siberia, at Vladivostok, he turned the first sod of the easternsection of the Siberian railway, and two years afterwards (1893)he was appointed president of the imperial committee for thatgreat undertaking. By the death of his father on the 1st ofNovember 1894 he became emperor, and on the 26th of thatmonth he married Princess Alix of Hesse (a grand-daughter ofQueen Victoria), to whom he had been betrothed in the presenceof his father during the latter’s last illness. Eighteen monthslater the coronation took place at Moscow with great pomp,but a gloom was thrown over the festivities by the unfortunateincident of the Khodinskoe Polye, a great open space near thecity, where a popular fête had been prepared and where, fromdefective police arrangements, a large number of men, womenand children, roughly estimated at 2000, were crushed andtrampled to death. Nicholas II. followed in the footsteps ofhis father, seeking to preserve peace in foreign relations, andcontinuing in home affairs, though in a much milder form, thepolicy of centralization and Russification which had characterizedthe previous reign. His pacific tendencies were shown by hissystematic opposition to all bellicose excitement, by his maintainingM. de Giers in the post of minister of foreign affairs, by hisoffering the post, on the death of that statesman, to M. de Staal,by his restraining France from dangerous adventures, and byinitiating the Peace Conference at the Hague. To these oughtperhaps to be added the transformation of the Franco-Russianentente cordiale into a formal alliance, since the alliance in questionmight be regarded as favourable to the preservation of thestatus quo in Europe. In the internal administration duringthe first years of his reign he introduced by his personal influence,and without any great change in the laws, a more humanespirit towards those of his subjects who did not belong bylanguage and tradition to the dominant nationality, and whowere not members of the Eastern Orthodox Church; but hedisappointed the men of liberal views by giving it to be clearlyunderstood soon after his accession that he had no intentionof circumscribing and weakening the autocratic power byconstitutional guarantees or parliamentary institutions. Inspite, however, of his desire for peace he let his country driftinto the disastrous war with Japan; and notwithstandinghis sincere attachment to the principles of bureaucratic autocracy,it was he who granted the constitutional reforms which alteredthe whole political outlook in Russia (see Russia).