Tsar Alexander II

The weakness of the regency in Germany, which his recent visit to the court must have revealed to him, the unpopularity of German popes and prelates in Italy, especially in Lombardy, the strength of Duke Godfrey in the northern half and of the Normans in the southern half of the peninsula, led him to conceive the design of making the apostolic see the independent center of all national life in Italy, the originating source and directing spirit of all religious movements, not only there, but in every part of Western Christendom.

End of Section 6 Section 7 of Hildebrand and His Times by William Richard Ward Stevens This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Pamela Nagami Chapter 5 Pontificate of Nicholas II Decree Respecting Method of Election to the Papacy Alliance with the Normans Degradation of Benedict X Election of Alexander II Catalysts of Parma Elected Antipope 1059-62 Part 1 Two great foundations of papal power were laid in the pontificate of Nicholas II.

One of these was an alliance with the Normans.

The other was the decree passed immediately after his election at a great Lateran council.

Outside Italy, the papacy could reckon on moral support at least in Gaul, and from the weak government in Germany no serious resistance could be apprehended.

After a visit to Benevento, where he held a synod, the pope returned to Florence, of which he held the bishopric to the end of his life, and here he spent most of his time, only visiting Rome at Easter to preside in the great synods.

End of Section 7 Chapter 5 Pontificate of Nicholas II Decree Respecting Method of Election to the Papacy Alliance with the Normans Degradation of Benedict X Election of Alexander II Cagulus of Parma Elected Antipope 1059-62 Part 2 Hildebrand about this time was made archdeacon.

He became more than ever the moving spring of all business in Rome, and he now lived in such constant intercourse with men of the world, and assumed so much secular grandeur in his dress, retinue, and general style of living, as to shock some of his more ascetic friends, especially Peter Damiani.

Wow.

So the Russians, under Tsar Alexander II, were not so fond of the Jewish population.

The Jewish population actually had been kind of corralled into a relatively large area called the Pale of Russia for a long time, but right before the family emigrated to America, there was some agitation, a wave of anti-Semitism percolating throughout.

A lot of Jewish people actually moved to Siberia willingly, where land was on offer.

She was baptized as Alexandrina Victoria.

Alexandrina, after one of her godparents, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, and Victoria, after her mother, while her royal title was Her Royal Highness Princess Victoria of Kent.

She was described as a studious, thoughtful, and quietly serious child, qualities which would stand her in good stead when she became queen in 1837.

The House of Hanover, to which Victoria belonged, had ruled Britain since 1714.

Several connections were formed with the German states, including through the marriage of their third child, Princess Alice, to Grand Duke Louis IV of the German state of Hesse.

Their daughter, Alix, went on to marry the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II.

Connections with Russia had already been formed when Victoria's fourth child, Prince Alfred, was married to the Grand Duchess Marie, daughter of Tsar Alexander II.

Their fifth child, Princess Helena, married Prince Frederick Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, further solidifying relations with the German states.

More or less.

But of course, Russia, when Alexander...

Is it II? You're Russian, you should know.

Alexander II, I think, emancipated the serfs in 18-

Mm

... is it '71? Something like that.

OK, so we think we know what he's referring to over here.

Purim time in the year 1881, there was a group of Russian anarchists, or whatever you want to call them, who shot and killed Tsar Alexander II right before Purim 1881.

Of course, it's blamed on the Jews.

And as a result, there are many pogroms that break out against the Jewish community in those years.

Just blame the Jewish.

So in 1881, the Russian Tsar, their emperor, Alexander II, was assassinated.

Yeah.

assassinated.

Okay, so today we're going to dive into Universal Service Reform, Conception to Implementation 1873-83 by Robert F. Baumann.

In January 1874, Tsar Alexander II proclaimed the final of the so-called Great Reforms, the establishment of a system of universal military service.

In the view of War Minister D.A. Milyutin, conscription embracing all social states and nationalities was to be the basis not only for the revision of army organisation, but for the renewal of Russia's military spirit.

Central to the organisational agenda was was the creation of an enlarged, trained reserve pool, essentially to support a new and vastly expanded scheme for mobilisation.

the creation of an equitable system of rules governing terms of service and exemptions that would enable the extension of a draft lottery to all social estates and the progressive incorporation into the regular army of the diverse subject nationalities of the empire.

So a good way of developing the education, educational levels within your population is to educate them in the army.

It is possible that in doing so, you can provide mass education where it would never have reached you wouldn't have reached into peasant villages but in the army you can do that what does this do well not only does it make for a better army you know if people can read they can do all sorts of things if they're more educated and have better levels of understanding they're going to be better soldiers but also you improve society in general the fear of course that the landowning classes in the church always had was that you didn't want the peasants becoming too well educated and there is all sorts of interesting evidence in and around 1917 of where generational education in the army kind of leads to Milutin's goals for the future are best appreciated in light of the recent past humiliating defeat in the Crimean War though hardly a strategic catastrophe exposed gaping tears in the fabric of the empire and dealt Russia a psychological shock of sufficient magnitude to force fundamental re-evaluation of imperial institutions among them serfdom this is obviously the the kind of Alexander II's starting point is the shock of the Crimean War, where essentially Russian military chauvinism looked upon Britain and France as little countries.

The idea that they could get the better of Russia was quite inconceivable.