Alexander I of Russia
Views held by his contemporaries

Called both an autocrat and Jacobin, a man of the world and a mystic, Alexander appeared to his contemporaries as a riddle which each read according to his own temperament. Napoleon Bonaparte thought him a "shifty Byzantine ", and called him the Talma of the North, as ready to play any conspicuous part. To Metternich he was a madman to be humoured. Castlereagh, writing of him to Lord Liverpool, gave him credit for "grand qualities", but added that he is "suspicious and undecided"; and to Jefferson he was a man of estimable character, disposed to do good, and expected to diffuse through the mass of the Russian people "a sense of their natural rights". In 1803, Beethoven dedicated his Opus 30 Violin Sonatas to Alexander who in response gave the famous composer a diamond at the Congress of Vienna where they met in 1814.
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