When we regard the whole history of that autocracy we begin to understand the tragedy of Russia. We dimly but surely perceive, in the dawn of European history, that amongst the families which wandered through the forests of Europe none were more democratic than, few were as democratic as, the early Slavs. We find this great family spread over an area so immense that it is further encouraged to cling to democratic, even communistic, life, and avoid the making of princes or kings. We then find the inevitable military chiefs, not born of the Slav people, intruding and creating princedoms: we find an oriental autocracy fastening itself, violently and parasitically, upon the helpless nation: we find the evil example and the tincture of foreign blood continuing the development until Princes of Moscow become Tsars of all the Russias, and convert a title dipped in blood into a title to rule by the grace of God and the affection of the people. And we find that Moscovite dynasty, from which the Romanoffs issued, playing such pranks before high heaven as few dynasties have played, until the old Slav spirit awakens at the call of the world and makes an end of it. That is the romance of the Romanoffs, of Russia and its rulers, which I propose to tell. This is not a history of Russia, but the history of its autocracy as an episode: of its real origin, its long-drawn brutality, its picturesque corruption, its sordid machinery of government, its selfish determination to keep Russia from the growing light, its terrible final struggle and defeat. To a democratic people there can be no more congenial study than this exposure of the crime and failure of an autocracy. To any who find romance in such behaviour as kings and nobles were permitted to flaunt in the eyes of their people in earlier ages the story of the Romanoffs must be exceptionally attractive. J. M. CONTENTS I The Primitive Democracy of the Slav II The Descent to Autocracy III The Moscovites Become Tsars IV The Rise of the Romanoffs V The Early Romanoffs VI A Romanoff Princess VII The Great Peter VIII Catherine the Little IX Romance Upon Romance X The Gay and Pious Elizabeth XI Catherine the Great XII In the Days of Napoleon XIII The Fight Against Liberalism XIV The Tragedy of Alexander II XV Enter Pobiedonostseff XVI The Last of the Romanoffs ILLUSTRATIONS The Tsar Nicholas II Vladimir, Grande Duke of Kieff, 980-1015 From an Ancient Banner Tatars of the Mongol Period Costume of Boyars in the Seventeenth Century The Patriarch Philaret, father of Mikhail Romanoff, the first Tsar of the New Dynasty. Seventeenth Century Ivan the Terrible, by Antokolsky View of Destroyed Tower of Nicholas, Arsenal, etc., in the Kremlin, A.D. 1812 From a Contemporary Drawing Peter the Great Room of the Tsar Mikhailovitch, Moscow Paul the First Catherine II The Red Square, Church of St. Basil and Redeemer Gate, Moscow