Alexander’s stern son, Nicholas I., was a nineteenth century Phalaris. His reign was inaugurated with an insurrectionary movement, whose failure accelerated the triumph of the Asiatic ideals in Russian policy. Nicholas, imbued with a strong antipathy to all that was Occidental, and convinced that the greatness of Russia abroad depended on tyranny at home, set himself the task of undoing the little his predecessors had done in the way of reform. ♦1830 and 1848♦ The Poles and the Hungarians experienced his relentless severity in a manner which, while filling Europe with horror, inspired little inclination for interference. In perfect consonance with the character and the principles of Nicholas was his treatment of the Jews, who, under him, lost all the poor privileges conferred upon them by his father, and were not only condemned again to the old sorrows of servitude, but by a special ukase, published in the beginning of September, 1828, they were for the first time subjected to the military conscription. Under Alexander II., the Czar Liberator, some of those oppressive measures were mitigated, and permission was granted for three Jews to settle at each railway station. But the improvement, limited as it was, did not last long. Like some of his ancestors, Alexander II. vacillated between the two antagonistic forces which wrestle for mastery in Russia: the party of progress and freedom and the party of reaction and despotism. Devoid of initiative and strength of purpose himself, this amiable ruler was led now to right, now to left. The disasters of the Crimean War had already shown that absolutism had failed in the one thing which justified its existence--military efficiency. If Russia could not achieve foreign supremacy, she ought at least to secure domestic prosperity. ♦1855♦ The party of progress carried the day, and the Emperor Nicholas with it, who, however, did not live to work out his repentance, but left the task to his son. As early as 1856 Alexander II. had a plan of a Constitution drawn up; but the design was postponed owing to more pressing needs. The years 1861–1864, however, witnessed the emancipation of the serfs, the abolition of the terrible corporal punishment by the knout, the institution of the zemstvos, or provincial assemblies, and other measures of reform which awakened the hopes and the enthusiasm of the Russian people. _Svobodnaya Rossia_--Free Russia--was on every man’s lips. A new era had dawned for the cowering masses of the Empire. ♦1863♦ The Polish rebellion diverted this enthusiasm from internal reform to the defence of the Fatherland against its hereditary enemy, who, it was suspected, was aided by some foreign powers.