Alexander of Russia: Napoleon's Conqueror

In Paris and London, the crowds hailed him as the man who had conquered Napoleon, as the liberator of Europe, and as a benevolent, enlightened monarch. At home he came to be feared as a reactionary, oppressive autocrat in a country where millions of serfs were still treated as little more than personal property. A grandson of Catherine the Great, a conspirator in the assassination of his own father, and an idealistic and ineffective participant at the Congress of Vienna, Alexander was torn ...