On March 3, 1861, Tsar Alexander II of Russia issued the Emancipation Manifesto, freeing millions of serfs from bondage. This dramatic act had been under contemplation for some time. As early as the reign of Catherine the Great, there had been plans, inspired by the liberal trends of the Enlightenment, to reform the legal and social relations between lords and their serfs and to provide peasants with more liberty and property. While many nobles had freed serfs on an individual basis or had adopted more flexible methods of exploitation on their manors, the majority held tenaciously to serfdom for economic, social, and psychological reasons.