The dissenters and heretics of every kind in Russia itself were similarly treated. To the tenacious dissenters of the last century or two were now added sects like the Doukhobors and the followers of Tolstoi, and upon these the Tsar’s ministers fell with particular malevolence. Alexander was ignorant enough to believe quite sincerely in the doctrines of the Orthodox Church, but he knew that these new sects had more than a religious significance. Prayer-meetings were prohibited. Even children were separated in some cases from their parents and forced into the rigid Slavophile mould. It will be understood, after this description of the machinery that was set up by Tolstoi and Pobiedonostseff, that the chronicle of revolt in the reign of Alexander II is comparatively slender. It is computed that by the end of the reign there were about a hundred thousand rebels in the jails, the mines, and the Siberian colonies, and to these one must add the graves of the bolder spirits and the large numbers of Russians who sought abroad the liberty that had died in Russia. Men still risked their lives in printing and disseminating the new ideas, but as the long reign wore on, and tyranny was still enthroned, the open spurts of defiance grew less in number. The revolutionaries and liberals felt that, if their race was not to be extinguished, as the reactionaries desired, the work must proceed in different form. We shall see in the next and final chapter how it proceeded until, after further bloody revolts against the intolerable tyranny, it succeeded in awakening the people and shaking the Romanoffs from their throne. It remains to see how the Pan-Slav movement, the twin-brother of the Slavophile philosophy, also prepared the way for the next reign. We have seen how every expansion of Russia, every enlargement of its stupendous population and therefore ultimate resources, alarmed some other European Power. Russia now made new advances and opened the way for fresh conflicts. It had reached the eastern coast of Asia. Now it began its interference in Korea and attracted the attention of Japan. It spread south toward India and still further alarmed England. Journals of the imperialist school at St. Petersburg openly boasted that their armies were beating a path to the Indian Ocean, and it may be said in justification of England’s long distrust of Russia that the Romanoffs wholly encouraged this dream until an Asiatic Power proved to them that Asia was not the helpless world they had imagined. When the southern limit of Asiatic Russia was extended until it came, at certain points, within a hundred and forty miles of India, when Russian agents swarmed in Afghanistan, it was not unnatural that London should be nervous. Alexander III, however, took a keen personal interest in foreign affairs, and he succeeded in averting serious trouble with England.