FAMILY'S WRETCHED CAREER.
During her reign her lover, named Biren, held sway and distinguished himself by sending thousands of political exiles to Siberia. At the death of Anna, Ivan IV, her grandnephew, reigned, but was deposed and sent to prison for life, while Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Peter the Great, succeeded him. She permitted the government to be run on comparatively honest lines by favorites, and while they ruled she drank herself to death.
Her nephew, Peter III, succeeded her. He was incompetent and a tool in the Prussian hands. His wife was a German princess, and led a movement which ended in his being deposed, imprisoned and murdered.
Catherine, widow of the murdered Peter, succeeded. She was known as Catherine the Great, and is credited with having been the most infamous of women in all history. Catherine was succeeded by Paul, who was assassinated by his own courtiers when he was on the point of joining Napoleon Bonaparte in his conquest of India.
His son was Alexander I, who added Finland and Poland to Russia, and founded the Holy Alliance. He was followed by his son Nicholas, who ruled for 30 years, and crushed the Poles and Hungarians, but died of a broken heart in the Crimean War.
Next came Alexander II, who gained fame as liberator of the serfs, and died the victim of a Nihilist bomb thrower. Alexander III succeeded him, and then came Nicholas II, the last Czar, whose reign lasted 22 years. The beginning of the end was marked by the request of the workingmen in 1905 for an increase in civil rights. They were fired upon, and there was general disorder, until the Czar proclaimed a constitution, and established a Duma, or national parliament, which met for the first time in 1906.
BETRAYAL OF RUSSIA'S MILITARY PLANS.
The outbreak of the war was marked by the personal decree of the Czar to change the name of the capital, St. Petersburg, to Petrograd, but his evident intent to eliminate evidences of German influence did not stop the betrayal of Russia's military plans by German spys within the court circles, and it was charged that supplies were withheld from the Russian army by those within the charmed circle, who were friendly to Germany.
Russia was a party to the Franco-Russian and Anglo-Russian agreement, which constituted the basis of the Triple Entente, but conditions were such that the soldiers refused to fight, and the situation culminated in the uprising which ended with the abdication of the Czar, in behalf of his brother, who, however, declined to accept the throne, unless he should be elected by the votes of the Russian people. The Duma thereupon decided to organize a republican form of government, and so the Russian Republic came into being in March, 1917.
Spain, a fertile country in the southwestern part of Europe, has played a prominent part in the development of the world. She has a coastline extending nearly 1500 miles, and there are about 200,000 square miles included in her territory. The coastlands and the southern section of the country are especially rich in fruits and agriculture. Although watered by many rivers, the land, for the most part, is artificially irrigated.