This ill fortune pursued France into the succeeding reign of Louis
XVI., for in April, 1782, Rodney's great victory over Count de Grasse
off Dominica transferred the Lesser Antilles from French to British
suzerainty.

The same sort of blight seemed to hang over France during Louis XV.'s
reign, as overshadowed the Russia of the ill-starred Nicholas II.
Nothing could possibly go right with either of them, and it may be
that the prime causes were the same: the assumption of absolute power
by an irresolute monarch, lacking the intellectual equipment which
alone would enable him to justify his claims to supreme power--though
I hasten to disclaim any comparison between these two rulers.

Between Louis XV., vicious, selfish and incapable, always tied to the
petticoat and caprices of some new mistress, and the unfortunate
Nicholas II., well-intentioned, and almost fanatically religious, the
affectionate father and the devoted husband, no comparison is
possible, except as regards their limitations for the supreme
positions they occupied.

I have recounted elsewhere how, when Nicholas II. visited India as
Heir Apparent in 1890, I saw a great deal of him, for he stayed ten
days with my brother-in-law, Lord Lansdowne, at Calcutta and
Barrackpore, and I was brought into daily contact with him. The
Czarevitch, as he then was, had a very high standard of duty, though
his intellectual equipment was but moderate. He had a perfect craze
about railway development, and it must not be forgotten that that
stupendous undertaking, the Trans-Siberian Railway, was entirely due
to his initiative. At the time of his visit to India, Nicholas II. was