The fame of these predictions sped over Europe. One of the first to hear of them was Czar Alexander. Worn out by the campaigns of 1813 and 1814, tormented by an uneasy conscience, grieved by the sudden death of his only child and by the desertion of its mother, a lady who had been his mistress for eleven years, but whose affections were now transferred to one of his aides-de-camp, enfeebled by excesses of every kind, Alexander was exactly in the condition to be influenced by pious mysticism.[2]
He had been brought up without any religious education whatever. When, during his depression after the capture of Moscow, Prince Galitzin recommended him to seek comfort in the study of the Bible, such a thing as a Russian Bible was not to be found in the Winter Palace, and he had to be contented for the time with a French translation of the Vulgate. The proceedings at the Congress of Vienna, the faithlessness of Austria, the ingratitude of France, and the animosity aroused by his favourite project, the rehabilitation of Poland, in that country itself, had completely shaken his faith in human nature. The surprise of Napoleon's return from Elba had shaken his nerves. From the moment of his mistress's desertion he came under the influence of his wife, the Empress Elizabeth, who in her deserted condition had long ago taken refuge in melancholy mysticism. She persuaded him when he was at Karlsruhe to visit Jung-Stilling and learn what was his opinion of the political situation, viewed from the standpoint of the Book of Revelation. Jung-Stilling assured him that Napoleon was none other than the Apollyon mentioned in the ninth chapter of that book, and that the millennium was at hand.
In 1814, at the court of Baden, Madame de Krüdener had made the acquaintance of the Czarina, and since then the ardent prophetess had carried on a correspondence with one of Elizabeth's maids of honour who had an enthusiastic admiration for the Czar, with the full intention that her letters should be shown to him. Certain sentences in them were unmistakably written for his reading, such as the following: "What you tell me of the Czar's great and noble qualities I have long known. I know, too, that the Lord will grant me the happiness of seeing him--that the Prince of Darkness will in vain endeavour to prevent our meeting. I have much to say to the Czar." Immediately after the despatch of the letter here quoted from, Madame de Krüdener moved to Heilbronn; the Russian headquarters were presently transferred there, and late in the evening of the 4th of June 1815, heedless of the aide-de-camp's rebuffs, she made her way, unannounced, into the Czar's presence, and remained closeted with him for three hours. When she left him, Alexander's eyes were full of tears, and he was much agitated. Soon her influence over him was complete. They would shut themselves up together for half a day at a time, praying, reading the Bible, and discussing theological problems.