ridicule by the manifestation of his petty military fads. His first visit was to the stables, and it was said that he had marching and drilling even in his private rooms. In the great political decisions of those days Constantine took not the smallest part. His importance in political history dates only from the moment when the emperor Alexander entrusted him in Poland with a task which enabled him to concentrate all the one-sidedness of his talents and all the doggedness of his nature on a definite object: that of the militarization and outward discipline of Poland. With this begins the part played by the grand-duke in history. In the Congress-Poland created by Alexander he received the post of commander-in-chief of the forces of the kingdom; to which was added later (1819) the command of the Lithuanian troops and of those of the Russian provinces that had formerly belonged to the kingdom of Poland. In effect he was the actual ruler of the country, and soon became the most zealous advocate of the separate position of Poland created by the constitution granted by Alexander. He organized their army for the Poles, and felt himself more a Pole than a Russian, especially after his marriage, on the 27th of May 1820, with a Polish lady, Johanna Grudzinska. Connected with this was his renunciation of any claim to the Russian succession, which was formally completed in 1822. It is well known how, in spite of this, when Alexander I. died on the 1st of December 1825 the grand-duke Nicholas had him proclaimed emperor in St Petersburg, in connexion with which occurred the famous revolt of the Russian Liberals, known as the rising of the Dekabrists. In this crisis Constantine's attitude had been very correct, far more so than that of his brother, which was vacillating and uncertain. Under the emperor Nicholas also Constantine maintained his position in Poland. But differences soon arose between him and his brother in consequence of the share taken by the Poles in the Dekabrist conspiracy. Constantine hindered the unveiling of the organized plotting for independence which had been going on in Poland for many years, and held obstinately to the belief that the army and the bureaucracy were loyally devoted to the Russian empire. The eastern policy of the tsar and the Turkish War of 1828 and 1829 caused a fresh breach between them. It was owing to the opposition of Constantine that the Polish army took no part in this war, so that there was in consequence no Russo-Polish comradeship in arms, such as might perhaps have led to a reconciliation between the two nations.