He guaranteed to them a Diet, a separate army, and the continuance of their own language and customs.

A ukase just issued by the present emperor seriously invades these privileges, and a forcible Russification of Finland threatens to bring a wave of Finnish emigration to America (1899).
When the Emperor Alexander returned after the Treaty of Paris he was thirty-four years old.

Many of the illusions of his youth had faded.
His marriage with Elizabeth of Baden was unhappy.

His plans for reform had not been understood by the people whom they were intended to benefit.

He had yielded finally to the demands of his angry nobility, had dismissed his liberal adviser Speranski and substituted Araktcheef, an intolerant, reactionary leader.