"The Russians and Austrians were defeated at Austerlitz in 1805. Alexander joined his army to that of Prussia, and both were disastrously defeated at Friedland in 1807, and the emperor was obliged to conclude a peace with Napoleon at Tilsit, in which he was arrayed against England and Sweden. The French stirred up a war in Turkey, in which the Russians obtained Moldavia and Wallachia. A war with Sweden resulted in the conquest of Finland. In 1810 Alexander, finding that he had nothing more to gain by an alliance with France,--that his commerce was suffering under the provisions of the treaty of Tilsit, and that the marriage of Napoleon with Maria Louise would prevent him from obtaining any more territory from Austria,--broke the treaty, and prepared for war. In 1812 Napoleon marched into Russia late in the season, with half a million soldiers, intending to crush Russia. The Russians lost the terrible battle of Borodino, near Moscow, and even this city fell into the hands of the French; but those who could not defend it burned it. The winter suddenly set in, and the army of Napoleon, robbed of their expected supplies and shelter in Moscow, commenced that disastrous retreat which ended only in the total destruction of the Grand Army. Prussia and Austria joined Russia the next year; in the battle of Leipsic, the power of the French was effectually broken, and in 1814 the allies entered Paris, and Napoleon was sent to Elba. He returned, and was finally defeated in the battle of Waterloo, and sent to St. Helena. The war ended, and Alexander turned his attention to the internal affairs of the nation. He labored earnestly to promote the civilization of his people, and to develop the immense resources of his vast empire. In 1825 he set out on a tour through his dominions, and died at Taganrag, near the mouth of the Don, of the Crimean fever. He had been the champion of absolute power, and had welded more closely the chains of Poland; yet, judged by the Russian standard, he was an amiable and good man. "At his death his brother Constantine was the Czarovitz; but this prince had voluntarily renounced his right to the throne in favor of his younger and only surviving brother Nicholas, who was proclaimed Czar. A conspiracy, fomented before his accession, was sternly and severely suppressed. Nicholas, like his brother, was despotic in his ideas, and remorselessly crushed the insurrection in Poland in 1830, making the kingdom a province of Russia. He enlarged his dominions, and carried on the war in Circassia, which lasted fifty years. In 1853 Nicholas demanded of the Turkish government certain guarantees of the rights of Greek Christians in Turkey, which the latter could not give without yielding its sovereign rights, and a war ensued, in which England, France, and Sardinia took part with the Turks. It was the evident design of the Czar to conquer Turkey, and extend his dominions to the Mediterranean.