The peoples of the Baltic littoral entered the nineteenth century in a fragmented state. The governing social orders of Estland, Livland, Kurland, Latgale (Inflanty), and the Lithuanian lands had to deal with the unpredictability of monarchs in St. Petersburg, the backwash of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic invasion of the Russian Empire, the lagging incomes of their own landed properties, and the collective resentments of the enserfed peasantries. Liberally inclined intellectuals – the Gelehrtenstand – provisioned Baltic cultural space with increasingly precise descriptions of the littoral and with writings in the vernacular languages, while many among them worried that the restless peasantry were insufficiently civilized (germanized or polonized) to handle any new freedoms they might be granted. In this autocratic political system, however, the chief reference points were always the personality and governance style of the tsar-emperor, and the main themes of the littoral's history in the first half of the nineteenth century were indeed set in many ways by the concerns and policies of two tsars – Catherine the Great's grandsons Alexander I (1801–1825) and his younger brother, Nicholas I (1825–1855). Alexander I prided himself on being a westernizer, ruling in the style of European absolutist monarchs, which in his view meant the encouragement of reform, particularly in the area of agrarian relations. His brother Nicholas was far more conservative, and sought to diminish regional autonomy by emphasizing the military character of his rule and heightening controls over wayward provinces.