Alexander III of Russia

Alexander III became Emperor of Russia on 13 March 1881 and spent his reign systematically dismantling his father Alexander II's liberal reforms, a program of "counter-reforms" that tightened autocratic control. Where his predecessors had courted conflict, he avoided it: Russia fought no major wars under his watch, earning him the title "The Peacemaker" that historians still use. His signature move in foreign policy was the Franco-Russian Alliance, a realignment that broke from the European order Otto von Bismarck had built and set the stage for a different kind of disaster. He ruled until his death on 1 November 1894, leaving behind a country that had stayed quiet on his watch but was wired into the treaty system that would detonate twenty years later.