NICHOLAS II (1868- )
Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, 1910, vol. 19, pg 655
Emperor of Russia, eldest son and successor of Alexander III., was born at
St Petersburg on the 18th of May 1868. He received the ordinary education of
Russian grand-dukes, under the direction of General Danilovitch, assisted by M.
Pobodonostsev and other eminent professors. Among these was an Englishman, Mr
Charles Heath, for whom he had great respect and affection. By the death of his
grand father, Alexander II., in 1881, he became heir-apparent (cesarevich).
Though he received, like all the heirs-apparent to the Russian throne, a
certain amount of military training, his personal tastes did not lie in that
direction, nor did he show any inclination for the boisterous amusements of the
jeunesse doree of St Petersburg. Like his father, he was nowhere happier
than in the family circle, and he was particularly attached to his sister, the
grand-duchess Xenia, who was seven years younger than himself. In 1890~1891 he
made a tour in Greece, Egypt, India, Ceylon and Japan, where he narrowly
escaped assassination at the hands of a Japanese fanatic. On the return journey
by Siberia, at Vladivostok, he turned the first sod of the eastern section of
the Siberian railway, and two years afterwards (1893) he was appointed
president of the imperial committee for that great undertaking. By the death of
his father on the 1st of November 1894 he became emperor, and on the 26th of
that month he married Princess Alix of Hesse (a grand-daughter of Queen
Victoria), to whom he had been betrothed in the presence of his father during
the latter's last illness. Eighteen months latcr the coronation took place at
Moscow with great pomp, but a gloom was thrown over the festivities by the
unfortunate incident of the Khodinskoe Polye, a great open space near the city,
where a popular fete had been prepared and where, from defective police
arrangements, a large number of men, women and children, roughly estimated at
2000, were crushed and trampled to death. Nicholas II. followed in the
footsteps of his father, seeking to preserve peace in foreign relations, and
continuing in home affairs, though in a much milder form, the policy of
centralization and Russification which had characterized the previous reign.
His pacific tendencies were shown by his systematic opposition to all bellicose
excitement, by his maintaining M. de Giers in the post of minister of foreign
affairs, by his offering the post, on the death of that statesman, to M. de
Staal, by his restraining France from dangerous adventures, and by initiating
the Peace Conference at the Hague. To these ought perhaps to be added the
transformation of the Franco-Russian entente cordiale into a formal
alliance, since the alliance in question might be regarded as favourable to the
preservation of the status quo in Europe. In the internal administration
during the first years of his reign he introduced by his personal influence,
and without any great change in the laws, a more humane spirit towards those of
his subjects who did not belong by language and tradition to the dominant
nationality, and who were not members of the Eastern Orthodox Church; but he
disappointed the men of liberal views by giving it to be clearly understood
soon after his accession that he had no intention of circumscribing and
weakening the autocratic power by constitutional guarantees or parliamentary
institutions. In spite, however, of his desire for peace he let his country
drift into the disastrous war with Japan; and notwithstanding his sincere
attachment to the principles of bureaucratic autocracy, it was he who granted
the constitutional reforms which altered the whole political outlook in Russia
(see RUSSIA).