Russian funds rose in the European market when Alexander II mounted the throne. He was well known: an amiable, kindly man, gently punctilious about etiquette, very sober in meat and drink, very cold to flatterers. Europe looked to him for peace; his people, who sank under their burdens, looked to him for relief; liberals looked, not too confidently, to him for justice. But Alexander felt that his first duty was to bring the war, not merely to an end, but a successful end. He would not be crowned until that was attained. A few weeks after the death of his father he sent a representative to Vienna to take part in a peace-conference. When France demanded that the Black Sea should be neutralised and the naval strength of Russia limited by agreement, he refused and he bade the war go on. It went on, as is known, until Sevastopol fell, and Russia soothed her feelings a little by taking Kars. Then the diplomats gathered round a table to see what difference to the world the death of hundreds of thousands of men and the squandering of three nations’ resources must make. There was in Russia no chance of disguising the defeat. The Black Sea _was_ neutralised. All the ships and forts on which so much had been spent must go. Kars must be surrendered. The mouth of the Danube must be yielded. The protectorate of the Christian subjects of the Sultan must be abandoned. One war had put Turkey at the feet of Russia; another war had put Turkey upon its own feet once more, and had set back Russia. It was, however, peace, and the country looked eagerly for the domestic programme of the young Tsar. He was crowned in August, 1856, and he at once disclosed his policy. He would, of course, maintain the work of his revered father; but it soon fell to pieces. An amnesty was granted, and the rebels came back to the sunlight. The military colonies of Arakcheeff were finally abandoned. Arrears of taxes to the extent of twenty-four million rubles were remitted to the impoverished people. The censorship was suspended, and St. Petersburg poured into liberalism like a stream when the dam is broken. The manuscripts that had passed stealthily from hand to hand, and been read behind locked doors, were now sent to the press. Periodicals and pamphlets snowed upon the metropolis. Unions and leagues for everything new and beneficent and western sprang up like mushrooms. All the talk of English radicalism filled the salons: self-government and emancipation of women, biblical criticism and Darwinism, banks and railways and manufactures, education and co-operation and political reform.