This book is a careful monographic study of an important chapter in the diplomatic history of modern Europe. It aims to do what no other work on the subject has done: to study the crucial alliance between Russia and France as a general European question. The author has made extensive use of the great wealth of documentary and other source material which has appeared during the last decade, but has also drawn heavily upon the unpublished diplomatic correspondence in the Vienna archives and upon the contemporary material. He has endeavored throughout to revive the viewpoint of the past and to explain the alliance by a consideration of the peculiar international situation existing at the time of its conclusion.