After his death, Alfred Nobel had bequeathed 10 million crowns to the League for Peace of Ludwig Quidde, the famous German pacifist. This sum was endowed with a prize awarded to "the one who has done the most for the cause of peace". Nicolas II was rewarded in 1898. He was thus the first unofficial "Nobel Peace Prize", before Henri Dunant and Frédéric Passy in 1901.
A French link to a source:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5303859/f1.item.r=%22nicolas%20II%22nobelgen%C3%A8veligue%20nobel%20gen%C3%A8ve%20ligue.zoom
Interesting info, but as you can see from the notice in Le Gaulois it was merely a rumour (which the newspaper treated as a bad joke).
Here, in a German version of a biography of the Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie I found the same rumour referred to. It was evidently the Norwegian author and peace and minorities activist Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson who had suggested that NII should receive a Nobel peace prize. But apparantly no peace prize was actually awarded that year. But one could say that NII was nominated as a candidate.
The biography further notes that Bjørnson and the rest of the European peace activist intelligentsia were relieved that it hadn't been awarded to him when NII issued the February Manifesto in February 1899, severely limiting Finland's autonomy and aiming at Russification. Four years later, when Bjørnson himself was made Nobel Laureate in Literature, he wrote a poem called
Ved modtagelsen av sidste post fra Finland (At the Reception of the Latest Post from Finland) about NII and his role in the Russification process in Finland, containing this verse:
Men han som et folk henretter,
(det lykkes dog ingensinde!)
er født af en nordisk kvinde,
og leged' på danske sletter.
Å Danmark, hvis bøddelen kommer,
da vær ham en folke-sund dommer:
Forbyd ham at træde på jorden;
thi den er de fries i Norden!=
But he who is executing a people,
(though it will never succeed!)
was born to a Nordic woman,
and once played on Danish plains.
Oh Denmark, if the executioner comes,
then be a national-sound judge of him:
Deny him to step on the earth;
because in the North it belongs to the free!
=
Mais celui qui exécute un peuple,
(bien que cela ne réussira jamais!)
est né d'une femme nordique,
et jouît dans des plaines danoises.
Ô Danemark, si le bourreau vient,
sois un juge sain-national de lui:
Dénie-lui de mettre les pieds sur la terre;
parce que dans le Nord elle appartient aux libres!
If the rumour about NII declaring that Bjørnson was his favourite author when Bjørnson wanted to award him a peace prize (not likely to be true and sounds like something Donald Trump would say!), it certainly wasn't after this indictment!
