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"Tsar-Liberator," yet his murder became the preeminent objective of Russian revolutionaries. The assassins went to extraordinary lengths. Once, near Moscow, they purchased a building near the railway track and tunneled a gallery from the building under the track, where they planted a huge mine. The Tsar was saved when
    * Tolstoy had left the Church, and the excommunication was only a formal acknowledgment of this fact. Still, Pobedonostsev may have taken a personal satisfaction in expelling the great novelist. Since 1877, when Tolstoy completed Anna Karenina, it had been rumored that the character of Alexis Karenin, the coldly pompous bureaucrat whom Anna cuckolds and then divorces, was modeled on an episode in the family life of Constantine Pobedonostsev.
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    his train left Moscow in a different direction. Six other attempts were made, and on March 1i, 1881—ironically, only a few hours after the Tsar had approved the establishment of a national representative body to advise on legislation—the assassins succeeded. As his carriage rolled through the streets of St. Petersburg, a bomb, thrown from the sidewalk, sailed under it. The explosion shattered the vehicle and wounded his horses, his equerries and one of his Cossack escorts, but the Tsar himself was unhurt. Stepping from the splintered carriage, Alexander II spoke to the wounded men and even asked gently about the bomb thrower, who had been arrested. Just then a second assassin ran up, shouting, "It is too early to thank God," and threw a second bomb directly between the Tsar's feet. In the sheet of flame and metal Alexander II's legs were torn away, his stomach ripped open, his face mutilated. Still alive and conscious, he whispered, "To the palace, to die there." What remained of him was picked up and carried into the Winter Palace, leaving a trail of thick drops of black blood up the marble stairs. Unconscious, he was laid on a couch, his right leg torn off, his left leg shattered, one eye closed, the other open but vacant. One after another, the horrified members of the Imperial family crowded into the room. Nicholas, aged thirteen, wearing a blue sailor suit, came in deathly pale and watched from the end of the bed. His mother, who had been ice-skating, arrived still clutching her skates. At the window looking out stood his father, the Heir Apparent, his broad shoulders hunched and shaking, his fists clenching and unclenching. "The Emperor is dead," announced the surgeon, letting go of the blood-covered wrist. The new Tsar, Alexander III, nodded grimly and motioned to his wife. Together they walked out of the palace, now surrounded by guardsmen of the Preobrajensky Regiment with bayonets fixed. He stood for a moment, saluting, then jumped into his carriage and drove away "accompanied by a whole regiment of Don Cossacks, in attack formation, their red lances shining brightly in the last rays of a crimson March sunset." In his accession manifesto, Alexander III proclaimed that he would rule "with faith in the power and right of autocracy." For the thirteen years of his father's reign, Nicholas saw Russia ruled according to the theories of Pobedonostsev.
    Nicholas, at twenty-one, was a slender youth of five feet seven inches, with his father's square, open face and his mother's expressive eyes and magnetic personal charm. His own best qualities were gentleness, kindliness and friendliness. "Nicky smiled his usual tender, shy,
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    slightly sad smile," wrote his young cousin and intimate companion Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich. Himself prepared to like everybody, Nicholas hoped that people liked him. As best he could tell through the thickets of flattery and etiquette surrounding his rank, they did.
    In many respects, his education was excellent. He had an unusual memory and had done well in history. He spoke French and German, and his English was so good that he could have fooled an Oxford professor into mistaking him for an Englishman. He rode beautifully,