Excerpts from history:

There Alexander II lay upon the snow, profusely bleeding, abandoned by every one of his followers! All had disappeared. It was cadets, returning from the parade, who lifted the suffering Tsar from the snow and put him in a sledge, covering his shivering body with a cadet mantle and his bare head with a cadet cap. And it was one of the terrorists, Emeliánoff, with a bomb wrapped in a paper under his arm, who, at the risk of being arrested on the spot and hanged, rushed with the cadets to the help of the wounded man. Human nature is full of contrasts. [from Memoirs of a Revolutionist by Peter Kropotkin - read it online now]

The Tsar characteristically refused to quit the scene until he had enquired into the condition of the wounded Cossacks. One of them were dead; the others must be removed to hospital and cared for at once. A police officer begged the Tsar to get into his sledge and drive away, but Alexander turned away from him. At that moment another of the gang of assassins hurried up and threw the bomb which blew the Tsar to bits. It was a terrific explosion. Even the Tsar's clothing was torn to rags and his orders and accouterments scattered on the snow. One of his legs were blown away; the other shattered to the top of his thigh. Windows a hundred yards away were broken. The assassin himself was by the same explosion blown to bits. [from Stephen Graham, 1935]

In 1861 Alexander issued his Emancipation Manifesto that proposed 17 legislative acts that would free the serfs in Russia. Alexander announced that personal serfdom would be abolished and all peasants would be able to buy land from their landlords. The State would advance the the money to the landlords and would recover it from the peasants in 49 annual sums known as redemption payments. [from Spartacus online encyclopedia]

With a population of sixty-seven million, Russia had twenty-three million serfs belonging to 103,000 landlords.