Author’s Note
138 Words
Author’s NoteThe fear engendered by the cruel, eccentric, tyrannical Czar Nicholas I (1825-55), undoubtedly the most alarming sovereign who ever reigned, changed the lives of his fifty million subjects.
There is nothing with which he did not interfere and nobody was safe from his jurisdiction.
If the fire bells rang in St. Petersburg, he ran out and told the firemen what to do about it. He banished Prince Yussupov to the Caucasus because he was having a love affair of which his mother did not approve.
When the daughter of a courtier was treated badly by her husband, he had the marriage annulled and wrote majestically, “This young person shall be considered a virgin.”
The Tsar’s Secret Police known as The Third Section were terrifying, merciless and inescapable. All Russia lived under the shadow of fear which continued even after Czar Nicholas’s death.
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