AMAZING STORY.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15679, 4 October 1922, Page 3

AMAZING STORY.

FROM THE LONG AGO. WHAT HAPPENED TO A CZAR. Most legends are foolish and false, but some really embody unwritten history, and it seems possible that a Russian legend nearly a century ago deserves respect. It is the story that when Alexander I of Russia was reported as dead and buried in 1825 he did not die, but privately retired

from the throne, put on the raiment of a pilgrim, wandered in penitence from shrine to shrine, and finally passed away in religious seclusion at a monastery in far-off Siberia. That is the old story, and it has just received startling confirmation from the report that the Bolsheviks, in rifling churches and royal tombs in search of treasure, have opened the coffin supposed to contain the remains of Alexander. They found it empty. The tenantless coffin exactly accords with the tradition, for, in order that Alexander’s brother, Nicholas, might succeed without scandal it was necessary that Alexander should pretend to die >nd be carried in honour to the tomb.

The grandparents of English people low of middle age knew Alexander irst as an enemy allied'with Napol>on and prepared to crush British Tile in India ,and to halve the world

nth France; then as an ally, who, aided by the forces of winter, overthrew Napoleon on the first historic retreat from Moscow;' and finally as a greatly honoured visitor to England. It was his brother, Nicholas, whom we fought in the stupid Crimean war. He himself -was a blend of bad and good, with the good ultimately outweighing the bad. Turning from war, he attempted a course of reforms which, had he been courageous enough to enforce them against the will of his court, would' have made Russia happy and prosperous. He had fine ideals, but no persistence in well-doing, and he let the , cruel autocrats surrounding him have their way in enslaving a nation. Finally, sick at heart, according to the story then current, he secretly feigned death and burial and gave his closing years to sacrifice and service. There was a special reason why he should disappear quietly, if disappear he did, lest Europe -should subject the repetition of a former outrage. Alexander was the son of the brilliant but wicked Catherine 11. and that mad but wicked Paul, and he came to the throne through the foul and treacherous murder of his father.

Czar Paul was garroted in his palace by his nobles, like a poor traveller by Indian thugs. His empress was a party to the crime, and Alexander was a party to the conspiracy for dethronement, though not to the murder. The murdered man was supposed by all to have died a natural death, but. conscience made cowards and worse v of the guilty.

It happened that one night the father of our poet Tennyson was dining in Petrograd with the English Ambassador, and in the course of the meal he said aloud: “It-is perfectly well known in England how the Emperor Paul died: he was murdered bv Count So-and-So.” A deathlike silence fell upon the company, for, unknown to Tennyson, the very man who was sitting next to him was the count whom he had accused of the crime. ’

Of course Tennyson had to flee for his life. He rode and rode for weeks across Russia, till he reached a Crimean port, where he fell ill of fever, and would start up in his delirium terrified that he would not hear the horn blown by the English courier, who every three ' months, passed through the town. But Dr Tennyson did hear the horn; he crawled out to the courier, and was brought home to England. Had he not come home again there would have been no Lprd Tennyson. Alexander stayed, made war, made peace, and sought to make redress to his subjects for the wrong doing of his ancestors. In his life he was an enigma, in death the misty centre of a’ legend which seems, after all, to have been true. —Children’s Newspaper.