<P> Emperor Napoleon, following a dispute with Tsar Alexander I, launched an invasion of Russia in 1812 . The campaign was a catastrophe . Although Napoleon's Grande Armée made its way to Moscow, the Russians' scorched earth strategy prevented the invaders from living off the country . In the bitter Russian Winter, thousands of French troops were ambushed and killed by peasant guerrilla fighters . As Napoleon's forces retreated, the Russian troops pursued them into Central and Western Europe and to the gates of Paris . After Russia and its allies defeated Napoleon, Alexander became known as the' saviour of Europe', and he presided over the redrawing of the map of Europe at the Congress of Vienna (1815), that ultimately made Alexander the monarch of Congress Poland . </P> <P> Although the Russian Empire would play a leading political role in the next century, thanks to its defeat of Napoleonic France, its retention of serfdom precluded economic progress of any significant degree . As Western European economic growth accelerated during the Industrial Revolution, Russia began to lag ever farther behind, creating new weaknesses for the Empire seeking to play a role as a great power . This status concealed the inefficiency of its government, the isolation of its people, and its economic backwardness . Following the defeat of Napoleon, Alexander I had been ready to discuss constitutional reforms, but though a few were introduced, no major changes were attempted . </P> <P> The liberal tsar was replaced by his younger brother, Nicholas I (1825--1855), who at the beginning of his reign was confronted with an uprising . The background of this revolt lay in the Napoleonic Wars, when a number of well - educated Russian officers travelled in Europe in the course of military campaigns, where their exposure to the liberalism of Western Europe encouraged them to seek change on their return to autocratic Russia . The result was the Decembrist revolt (December 1825), the work of a small circle of liberal nobles and army officers who wanted to install Nicholas' brother as a constitutional monarch . But the revolt was easily crushed, leading Nicholas to turn away from the modernization program begun by Peter the Great and champion the doctrine of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality . </P> <P> The retaliation for the revolt made "December Fourteenth" a day long remembered by later revolutionary movements . In order to repress further revolts, censorship was intensified, including the constant surveillance of schools and universities . Textbooks were strictly regulated by the government . Police spies were planted everywhere . Would - be revolutionaries were sent off to Siberia--under Nicholas I hundreds of thousands were sent to katorga there . </P>

According to the map which new state was a part of the russian empire before world war i