The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 17

by Unknown

CHAPTER XI. THE REIGN OF NICHOLAS I

Nicholas Pavlovitch triumphed over two military revolts; then, as if the twelve days’ interregnum had not existed, he dated his reign from the 1st of December, 1825, the day of Alexander’s death. During the first ten or twelve years of his reign embarrassments of every kind, followed hard upon one another. These embarrassments were foreign war, first with Persia, and next with Turkey; the enmity of Austria whilst this latter struggle was going on; the abandonment of the Russian alliance by France, in consequence of the revolution of July, 1830; the insurrection of Poland; the epidemic of Asiatic cholera in 1831 and the popular riots to which this scourge gave rise, especially in St. Petersburg; a revolt in the heart of the military colonies; a famine which desolated the southern provinces during the years 1834 and 1835; the fires at Åbo, Tula, Kazan, and at last (December, 1837) at the emperor’s own residence, the Winter Palace. But all these cruel trials did not daunt the courage of the new autocrat; they served only to bring out the firmness of his mind and the strong cast of his character.—Schnitzler.[c]

THE INTERREGNUM

[1825-1855 A.D.]

After the 24th of November, 1825, Adjutant-general Diebitsch had begun to send information to Warsaw of the illness of the emperor Alexander, by means of letters addressed to General Kuruta. The first courier, bearing this alarming news, arrived at Warsaw on the 1st of December in the evening of the very day of the emperor Alexander’s death.

The czarevitch Constantine Pavlovitch did not conceal the painful presentiment that took possession of him, and wrote to Baron Diebitsch the same day in the following terms: “In spite of all the consolations expressed in your letter, I cannot rid myself of the painful impression it has produced on me. I tell you frankly that if I were to obey the dictates of my heart I should set off and come to you. But unfortunately my duties and my position do not permit me to give way to these natural sentiments.”

The grand duke Michael Pavlovitch was at that time at Warsaw, and the czarevitch hid even from him and Princess Lovitch the alarming letters that he received from Taganrog. “I do not speak to you of the condition of mind in which I now find myself,” wrote the czarevitch to Adjutant-general Diebitsch on the 5th of December, “for you know only too well of my devotion and sincere attachment to the best of brothers and monarchs to doubt them. My position is rendered all the more painful from the fact that, the emperor’s illness is only known to me and my old friend Kuruta and my doctor; the news has not yet reached here, so that in society I have to appear calm, although there is no such calmness in my soul. My wife and brother do not suspect anything, so that I had to invent an explanation for the arrival of your first messenger, which I shall have to do again to-day. If I were to obey only the suggestions of my heart of course I should have been with you long ago, but you will naturally understand what hinders me.”

[1825 A.D.]

Meanwhile couriers continued to follow upon each others’ heels and finally on December 7th, at seven in the evening, the czarevitch received the fatal intelligence of the death of his brother. The report of Adjutant-general Diebitsch did not shake the czarevitch’s decision as to the question of the succession to the throne, and he then said to the grand duke Michael Pavlovitch, “Now the solemn moment has come to show that my previous mode of action was not a mask, and to terminate the matter with the same firmness with which it was commenced. My intentions and my determinations have not changed one iota, and my will to renounce the throne is more unchangeable than ever.”

Summoning the persons of his entourage and informing them of the loss that had overtaken Russia, the czarevitch read them his correspondence with the emperor Alexander in 1822 and ordered that letters to the empress Marie Feodorovna, and to the grand duke Nicholas Pavlovitch, should be prepared, stating that he ceded his rights to the succession to the throne to his younger brother, by virtue of the rescript of the emperor Alexander of the 14th of February, 1822. The czarevitch here used the expression “cede the throne to the grand duke Nicholas Pavlovitch,” because he knew nothing of the existence of the state act which as long ago as 1824 had invested this cession with the power of a law. Such were the misapprehensions with which was accompanied Alexander’s secret and evasive manner of action in regard to the question of the succession.

Meanwhile what was taking place in St. Petersburg? The news of the death of the emperor Alexander was received in the capital only on December 9th, during prayers which were being said for the recovery of the emperor in the church of the Winter Palace. The circumstances are thus narrated by the empress Elizabeth Alexievna herself:

On the 9th inst. at the termination of the liturgy, when prayers for the health of the emperor had already commenced, his highness was called out from the sacristy by Count Miloradovitch and informed by him that all was over. His imperial highness became faint, but recovering himself he returned with Doctor Rule to the sacristy. The empress was on her knees and being already prepared by the grand duke’s prolonged absence, and guessing her lot from his face she grew faint; meanwhile the priest presented the cross to her, and as she kissed it she lost consciousness.

His imperial highness, turning to his wife, said to her “Take care of our mother, and I will go and do my duty.” With these words he entered the church, ordered that a reading desk should be brought in, and took the oath of allegiance to his beloved brother and emperor, Constantine, which he ratified by his signature; some others who happened to be there also subscribed to the same: they were the minister of war Tatistchev, General Kutusov, the general in waiting Potapov, and all the others who were present.

Then he presented himself before the Preobrajenski regiment that was on guard in the palace (the company of his majesty’s grenadiers), and informed them of the emperor’s death and proclaimed Constantine emperor. The grenadiers received the announcement with tears, and immediately took the oath of allegiance. After this his imperial highness commissioned the general in waiting, Potapov, to inform the chief and all the other guards of what had taken place and to bring them from their posts to take the oath, which was done without delay and with sorrow and zeal; meanwhile General Neitgart was sent to the Nevski monastery, where were all the general officers of the guards’ corps, with the proposal to General Voinov to do the same throughout all the regiments of the guards. Finally similar announcements and instructions were sent to all the regiments and detachments in both the city and its environs.

Meanwhile the council of the state had assembled and opened its sitting by the proposal to break the seals of the envelope which contained the will of the late emperor. Some discussion arose, and finally it was decided to unseal the packet, in order to learn the last will of the czar.

In the act was drawn up the renunciation of the throne by the czarevitch and the nomination of the grand duke Nicholas as the emperor’s heir. Some discussion again arose upon this question, but it was cut short by the suggestion that his highness should be invited into the presence of the council. Count Miloradovitch replied that his highness had already taken the oath and that in any case he considered it unfitting that his highness should be called, or should come to the council, but offered to bring all this to his knowledge and to ask that they might be allowed to come to him in order to report all that had taken place; this was done and the grand duke replied that he could not hinder their coming.

Nicholas I

(1796-1855)

When the members of the council presented themselves before the grand duke he informed them that the contents of the act had long been known to him, namely since July 25th, 1819, but that in no case would he dare to occupy the place of his elder brother, from whose supreme will his lot depended, and that holding it as a sacred obligation most humbly to obey him in all things, he had therefore taken the oath and felt entirely certain that the council, having in view the welfare of the state, would follow his example.

The council followed his highness into the church and at his request took the oath before him; they were then introduced by him into the presence of the empress mother, who was pleased to inform them that the act and its content were known to her, and were made with her maternal consent, but that she also was enthusiastic over her son’s conduct. Confirming all his actions she requested the council by their united endeavours to preserve the tranquillity of the empire.

In accordance with the measures taken, by three o’clock in the afternoon the troops as well as all grades of officials in the government service had taken the oath confirming the accession to the throne of the emperor Constantine. During the whole time tranquillity and order were preserved. It is easy to imagine the astonishment and vexation of the czarevitch when, instead of receiving the expected commands of the new emperor, he was informed that all Russia had taken the oath of allegiance to him as lawful sovereign, and that the will of the late emperor had not been fulfilled.

Meanwhile early in the morning of December 15th the grand duke Michael Pavlovitch arrived in St. Petersburg with letters from the czarevitch. To the amazement of the court and the inhabitants, the grand duke did not follow the general example of swearing fidelity to the emperor Constantine. He did not conceal his regret at what had taken place in St. Petersburg, nor the apprehension with which the necessity of a new oath filled him. He dwelt on the difficulty of explaining to the public why the place of the elder brother to whom allegiance had already been sworn should suddenly be taken by the younger. The grand duke Nicholas in answer to his brother repeated what he had already said, that he could not have acted otherwise in such a position as that in which he was placed by his ignorance of the sacred acts of the late emperor, and that neither his conscience nor his reason reproached him. “Everything, however,” added he, “might yet be amended and take a more favourable turn if the czarevitch himself were to come to St. Petersburg; his obstinacy in remaining at Warsaw may occasion disasters, the possibility of which I do not deny, but of which in all probability I shall myself be the first victim.”

After long deliberation the grand duke Nicholas decided to write a fresh persuasive letter to the emperor Constantine, in which he asked him to decide finally what his fate was to be; and in conclusion he wrote, “In God’s name, come.” The empress Marie Feodorovna added her persuasions to those of her son, and not satisfied with these measures it was decided a few days later to despatch the grand duke Michael to Warsaw to convince the czarevitch of the necessity of his presence in St. Petersburg.

An answer from the czarevitch to the grand duke Nicholas’ letter dated the 14th of December was brought to St. Petersburg by Lazarev, aid-de-camp to Nicholas: “Your aide-de-camp, dear Nicholas, on his arrival here, confided your letter to me with all exactitude. I read it with the deepest grief and sorrow. My decision is unalterable and consecrated by my late benefactor the emperor and sovereign. Your invitation to come quickly cannot be accepted by me, and I must tell you that I shall remove myself yet further away, if all is not arranged in accordance with the will of our late emperor. Your faithful and sincere friend and brother for life.” But even this letter did not decide the matter; the return of Belussov from Warsaw with the answer to the grand duke Nicholas’ letter of December 15th had yet to be awaited.

A new complication remained to be added to all these difficulties. On December 24th there came to St. Petersburg and presented himself to the grand duke Nicholas, Colonel Baron Fredericks of the Izmailovski Life Guards, who had fulfilled the functions of commandant in Taganrog. He brought to the grand duke a packet from Baron Diebitsch addressed to his imperial majesty, to be given into his own hands. To the question as to whether he knew of the contents of the packet, Fredericks replied in the negative, but added that as the place of residence of the emperor was unknown in Taganrog, exactly the same paper had been sent also to Warsaw.

Nothing therefore remained for Nicholas to do but to open the mysterious packet and “at the first rapid glance over its contents,” writes Baron Korv, “an inexpressible horror took possession of him.” It was on reading the report contained in this packet that the grand duke first learned of the existence of secret societies formed with the object of destroying to the very roots the tranquillity of the empire. The existence of these societies had been carefully hidden from him by the late emperor Alexander.

Almost immediately thereafter the courier Belussov returned from Warsaw with the czarevitch’s decisive answer, which put an end to the interregnum. Nicholas Pavlovitch was emperor. At nine o’clock in the evening the emperor sent the following postscript to Adjutant-general Diebitsch:

The decisive courier has returned; by the morning of the day after to-morrow I shall be emperor or else dead. I sacrifice myself for my brother; happy if as a subject I fulfil his will. But how will it be with Russia? What about the army? General Tolle is here and I shall send him to Mohilev to bear the news to Count Saken. I am looking out for a trustworthy person for the same commission to Tultchin and to Ermolov. In a word, I hope to be worthy of my calling, not in fear and mistrustfulness, but in the hope that even as I fulfil my duty so will others fulfil their duty to me. But if anywhere anything is brewing and you hear of it, I authorise you to go at once where your presence is necessary. I rely entirely upon you and give you leave beforehand to take all the measures you deem necessary. The day after to-morrow if I am alive I will send you, I do not know by whom, information as to how matters have passed off; on your part do not leave me without news of how everything is going on around you, especially with Ermolov. I again repeat that here until now everything is incomprehensibly quiet, but calm often precedes a storm. Enough of this, God’s will be done! In me there must only be seen the vicar and executor of the late emperor’s will and therefore I am ready for everything. I shall ever be your sincere well wisher,

Nicholas.

THE ACCESSION OF NICHOLAS

The czarevitch’s decisive answer was brought by Belussov, not through Riga, but by the Brest-Lithuani road; and therefore the grand duke Michael Pavlovitch was still in ignorance of the events at Nennal. The emperor Nicholas immediately sent an express after him commanding him to hasten to St. Petersburg. The return of the grand duke to the capital where his presence was of urgent necessity was thus by chance delayed.

Nicholas had now to occupy himself with the composition of his manifesto; the inexplicable had to be explained and it presented a task of no little difficulty: Karamzin and Speranski were set to work upon it. The emperor Nicholas signed the manifesto on the 25th of December, but dated it the 24th, as the day on which the question of his accession had been definitely settled by the czarevitch. It was proposed to keep the manifesto secret until the arrival of the grand duke Michael, but it was decided that the troops should take the oath of allegiance on the 26th of December; meanwhile notifications were sent to the members of the council of state, calling upon them to assemble on Sunday, December 25th, at eight in the evening, for a general secret meeting.

When the council of state had assembled at the hour designated, Prince Sopukhin announced that the grand duke Michael would be present at the sitting. The hours passed in anxious expectation; midnight approached and the expected arrival of the grand duke did not take place. Then Nicholas decided to be present at the sitting alone. Taking the place of the president, Nicholas himself began to read the manifesto announcing his acceptance of the imperial dignity in consequence of the persisted rejection of it by the czarevitch Constantine Pavlovitch. Then the emperor ordered that the czarevitch’s rescript, addressed to Prince Sopukhin, president of the council, should be read. The 26th of December, 1825, had come. Commands had been issued that on that day all persons having access to the court should assemble at the Winter Palace for a Te Deum; eleven o’clock was the hour first named, but this was afterwards changed to two. Circumstances arose, however, which postponed the Te Deum to a still later hour. The members of the secret society decided to take advantage of the end of the interregnum and the approach of the new oath of allegiance in order to incite the troops to rebellion and to overthrow the existing order of things in Russia. The secrecy in which the negotiations with Russia had been enveloped had given occasion for various rumours and suppositions, and for the spread of false reports which occasioned alarm in society and especially in the barracks: all this favoured the undertakings and designs of the conspirators.

The only issue from the position that had been created by Nicholas in a moment of chivalrous enthusiasm “undoubtedly noble, but perhaps not entirely wise,” would have been the arrival of the grand duke Constantine in the capital with the object of publicly and solemnly proclaiming his renunciation of the throne. But the czarevitch flatly refused to employ this means of extricating his brother from the difficult position in which he placed himself; Constantine considered that it was not for him to suffer from the consequences of an imprudence which was not his, and the danger of which might have been averted if matters had not been hurried on, and if he had been previously applied to for advice and instructions. Thus led into error, some of the lower ranks of the guards’ regiments refused to take the oath of allegiance to Nicholas Pavlovitch, and assembled at the Pelrovski square, before the senate buildings, appearing as though they were the defenders of the lawful rights of the czarevitch Constantine to the throne.

Meanwhile distinguished persons of both sexes began to drive up to the Winter Palace. Amidst the general stir and movement going on in the palace, there sat isolated and immoveable three magnates, “like three monuments,” writes Karamzin: Prince Lopukhin, Count Araktcheiev, and Prince A. B. Kurakin. At the time when the military men had already gone out on the square, Count Araktcheiev, as might have been expected, preferred to remain in the palace. “It was pitiful to look at him,” writes V. R. Martchenko in his Mémoires.

The rioters were stubborn for a long time and would not yield to exhortation; Count Miloradovitch fell mortally wounded. It began to grow dusk. Then the emperor Nicholas, at last convinced of the impossibility of pacifying the rioters without bloodshed, gave orders with a breaking heart for the artillery to fire. A few grape-shot decided the fate of the day; the rioters were dispersed, and tranquillity at once reigned in the capital.

The Te Deum announced could take place only at half past six. The troops bivouacked round the palace. “Dear, dear Constantine,” wrote the emperor the same evening to the czarevitch, “your will is fulfilled: I am emperor, but at what price, my God!—at the price of the blood of my subjects.” Arrests were made during that night and investigations pursued to discover the leaders of the revolt. And thus in the troubles of the 26th of December, the 1st of December, 1825, was terribly recalled. “The day was one of misfortune for Russia,” writes Prince Viasenski, “and the epoch which it signalised in such a bloody manner was an awful judgment for deeds, opinions, and ideas, rooted in the past and governing the present.” According to the words of Karamzin, on that day Russia was saved from a calamity “which, if it had not destroyed her, would certainly have torn her to pieces.” “If I am emperor even for an hour, I will show that I was worthy of it”; thus spoke Nicholas on the morning of December 26th to the commanders of the guard regiments assembled at the Winter Palace; and on that awful day he triumphantly justified his first and impressive words.

TRIAL OF THE CONSPIRATORS (1826 A.D.)

[1826 A.D.]

The emperor Nicholas gave all possible publicity to the proceedings against the secret societies, the Southern, Northern, the United Slavonians, and the Polish; then the whole matter was transferred to the supreme criminal court, which had to pronounce sentence on the principal participators in the conspiracy. Of the accused, Rileeks, Muraviev-Alostob, Bestuzhev-Riumin, Pesteb, and Kakhovski were condemned to death, and the remaining members of the secret societies brought before the court were exiled to Siberia or other places of incarceration.

No one had expected such a termination to the affair. During the whole of Alexander’s reign there had not been one case of capital punishment, and it was looked upon as entirely abolished. “It is impossible to describe in words the horror and despair which have taken possession of all,” writes a contemporary and eye witness of the events of 1826 in Moscow. This frame of mind was reflected in the coronation ceremonies. The emperor Nicholas appeared extremely gloomy; the future seemed more sad and fuller of anxiety than ever; all was in sharp contrast to the enthusiasm and hopes that had accompanied the coronation of Alexander in 1801.

THE CORONATION OF NICHOLAS (1826 A.D.)

Immediately after the termination of the trial of the Dekabrists, the court proceeded to Moscow for the approaching coronation, which took place on the 3rd of September. Previously the emperor was rejoiced at the unexpected arrival of the grand duke Constantine Pavlovitch. According to Benkendorf “the czarevitch’s appearance was a brilliant public testimony of his submission to the new emperor and of his conscientious renunciation of the throne; it was at the same time a precious pledge of the harmony which bound together all the members of the reigning family, a harmony conducive to the peace of the empire. The public was delighted and the corps diplomatique completely astounded. The people expressed their satisfaction to the czarevitch by unanimous acclamations, whilst the dignitaries of the state surrounded him with marks of respectful veneration.”

The day of the coronation was signalised by an important reform in the administration of the court; the ministry of the imperial court was created, and confided to Prince P. M. Volkonski. Thus the old and tried companion of the emperor Alexander I again occupied the post of a trusty dignitary by the side of his successor. Prince Volkonski remained minister of the court until his decease, which took place in 1852. Amongst the favours and the mitigations of punishments which were granted on the 3rd of September, the state criminals who had lately been condemned were not forgotten; by special ukases the sentences of all those sent to the galleys, to penal settlements, and hard labour were mitigated. Those who had been sent to the Siberian, Orenburg, and Caucasian garrisons, both with and without deprivation of the rights of nobility, were enrolled in the regiments of the Caucasian corps.

During the emperor’s stay in Moscow, the poet Pushkin, who had been banished to the village of Mikhailovski, was recalled. From that moment he regained his lost liberty, besides which the emperor Nicholas said to him: “In future you are to send me all you write—henceforth I will be your censor.”

CHANGES IN INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION

On the 18th of October, 1826, the emperor Nicholas returned to St. Petersburg; although his accession to the throne did not constitute the opening of a new era for Russia, yet certain changes were made in the system of administration which had prevailed during the last decade of the reign of Alexander I. After Count Araktcheiev had been relieved of the management of the general affairs of the state, it was to be foreseen that he would not remain long at the head of the direction of the military settlements. And thus it turned out. In the spring of 1826 Count Araktcheiev, on account of illness, was given leave to go abroad. In the report presented by him on this occasion to the emperor he announced to him economies of more than 32,000,000 rubles made on the military settlements, and concluded his epistle by observing, “Those impartial judges—posterity and the future—will pronounce a just sentence on all things.”

On the return of Count Araktcheiev in the autumn from his travels abroad he did not again take up his duties. In accordance with a ukase which then followed, the staff office of the military settlements was united to the general staff of his imperial majesty, under the jurisdiction of its adjutant-general Baron Diebitsch. At the same time the Novgorod military settlement passed under the entire direction of General Prince Schahovski, who was nominated commander of the grenadier corps; the Kherson and Iekaterinoslav settlements were put under the supervision of their chief, Count Vitt (who was also commander of a separate corps), while the settlements in the villages of the Ukraine and Mohilev governments remained under the jurisdiction of their former chiefs, who bore the rank of commanders of divisions. Count Araktcheiev, when he had finally bidden adieu to his administrative career, settled on his Georgian estates, where he died in 1834.

Having delivered Russia from the administrative guardianship of Count Araktcheiev, the emperor Nicholas, in addition, delivered Russian instruction from the influence of Michael Leontievitch Magnitzki. On the 18th of May, 1826, a ukase was issued in which it was stated that “the curator of the University of Kazan and of its educational district, the actual councillor of state Magnitzki, is by our command relieved of his functions and of his position as member of the administration of schools.” But the matter was not limited to this ukase. Magnitzki continued to live in Kazan and in accordance with his character he continued to intrigue as usual and indirectly to influence the university he had left. General Jeltukhin, who had been commissioned to make a detailed revision of the Kazan University, brought this fact to the emperor’s knowledge. Nicholas’ reply was rapid and decisive; a courier was sent with orders to the governor to arrest Magnitzki and send him to Revel under the surveillance of the commandant. Magnitzki lived there six years, having given his promise not to absent himself.

An equally sad fate overtook the champion and imitator of Magnitzki, Dmitri Pavlovitch Runitch, who had filled the office of curator of the St. Petersburg educational district. By a ukase of the 7th of July, 1826, Runitch was deprived of his functions and of the position of member of the chief administration of schools, for his incompetence in the matter of the direction of the St. Petersburg educational district. The requital experienced by Runitch for his educational labours was a terrible one; he languished beneath the consequences for sixteen years and died in 1860 in the conviction that he had formerly saved Russia, and was suffering for the good work he had accomplished in the University of St. Petersburg.

Reforms in the Administration of Justice

The lamentable condition of the administration of justice in Russia was one of the first subjects to which the careful attention of the emperor Nicholas was directed. In a speech pronounced by the sovereign many years later, in 1833, before the council of state, Nicholas Pavlovitch thus expressed himself:

“From my very accession to the throne I was obliged to turn my attention to various administrative matters, of which I had scarcely any notion. The chief subject that occupied me was naturally legislation. Even from my early youth I had constantly heard of our deficiencies in this respect, of chicanery, of extortion, of the insufficiency of the existing laws or of their admixture through the extraordinary number of ukases which were not infrequently in contradiction to one another. This incited me from the very first days of my reign to examine into the state of the commission appointed for the constitution of the laws. To my regret, the information presented to me proved to me that its labours had remained almost fruitless. It was not difficult to discover the cause of this: the deficient results proceeded chiefly from the fact that the commission always directed its attention to the formation of new laws, when in reality the old ones should have been established on a firm foundation. This inspired me above all with a desire to establish a definite aim towards which the government must direct its actions in the matter of legislation; from the methods proposed to me I selected one in entire opposition to the former methods of reform. Instead of drawing up new laws, I commanded that first those which already existed should be collected and set in order, whilst I took the matter itself, on account of its great importance, under my own immediate direction and closed the previous commission.”

Married Woman of Valdai

With this object was formed and opened on the 6th of May, 1826, the “second section of his imperial majesty’s own chancery.” M. A. Balongianski was appointed chief of the second section, but in reality the work itself was confided to Speranski. The emperor’s choice rested on the latter, out of necessity, as he did not find anyone more capable around him. When Balongianski was appointed chief of the second section, the emperor, in conversing with his former tutor, said to him, speaking of Speranski: “See that he does not play any pranks, as in 1810.” Nevertheless, in proportion to Speranski’s successful accomplishment of the work confided to him, the emperor Nicholas’ prejudices against him gradually softened and finally gave way to sincere favour and full confidence. All the accusations and calumnies directed against Speranski were, in accordance with the emperor’s own expression, “scattered like dust.”

Thus the emperor Nicholas in his almost involuntary choice was favoured by a peculiarly fortunate chance and could hardly have found a person better fitted for the accomplishment of the work he had planned. The results of Speranski’s fresh efforts, under completely different circumstances from those against which he had formerly contended, were the “complete collection of laws,” and a systematic code.

Even before the termination of the trial of the Dekabrists, the emperor Nicholas took another important measure, which left an imprint on all the succeeding years of his reign and is directly connected with the events of the 26th of December. On the 15th of July, 1826, a supreme edict was issued in the name of the minister of the interior Lanskoi, by which the private chancery of that ministry was abolished and transformed into the third section of his imperial majesty’s own chancery. In fulfilment of this ukase, it was prescribed that the governors of provinces, in matters which entered within the sphere of the former division, should no longer present their reports to the ministry of the interior, but should submit them directly to his majesty.

A Woman (Sailor) of the Nogai Tribe

Some days before, on the emperor Nicholas’ birthday, the 6th of July, a supreme order appeared naming the chief of the first cuirassier division, Adjutant-general Benkendorf, chief of the gendarmerie and commandant of the emperor’s headquarters; to him was confided the direction of the third section. Adjutant-general Benkendorf explains in his memoirs in the following manner the reasons for establishing the institution confided to his direction: “The emperor Nicholas aimed at the extirpation of the abuses that had crept into many branches of the administration, and was convinced by the sudden discovery of the conspiracy which had stained the first moments of the new reign with blood, of the necessity of a universal and more diligent surveillance. The emperor chose me to organise a higher police, which should protect the oppressed and guard the nation against conspiracies and conspirators. Never having thought of preparing myself for this sort of service, I had hardly the most superficial understanding of it; but the noble and beneficent motives which inspired the sovereign in his creation of this institution and the desire to be of use to him, forbade me to evade the duty to which his high confidence had called me. I set to work without delay and God helped me to fulfil my new duties to the satisfaction of the emperor and without setting general opinion against me. I succeeded in showing favours to many, in discovering many conspiracies, and averting much evil.” With the creation of the new third section, the committee of the 13th of January, 1807, established by the emperor Alexander, became superfluous; and on the 29th of January a ukase was issued closing it.

The disturbances of the year 1825 did not pass without leaving traces on the peasant population; a momentary confusion ensued, freedom was talked of, and disorders arose in some provinces—a phenomenon often seen in previous times. The movement amongst the peasants incited the emperor Nicholas to publish, on the 24th of May, 1826, a manifesto in which it was declared that all “talk of exempting the villagers in the state settlements from paying taxes and of freeing landowner’s peasants and menials from subjection to their landowners are false rumours, imagined and spread by evil intentioned persons out of mere cupidity with the object of enriching themselves through these rumours at the expense of the peasants, by taking advantage of their simplicity.” It was further said in the manifesto that all classes throughout the empire must absolutely submit to the authorities placed over them, and that disturbers of the public tranquillity would be prosecuted and punished in accordance with the full severity of the laws. It was commanded that the manifesto should be read in all the churches and at the markets and fairs during a space of six months; the governors of provinces were sternly admonished to be watchful in anticipating disorders.

If, however, the emperor Nicholas was forced by circumstances to promulgate this punitive manifesto, he also issued two rescripts in the name of the minister of the interior, enjoining upon the nobility behaviour towards their peasants, which should be in accordance with the laws of Christianity, thus clearly expressing his desire to protect the peasant against the arbitrariness and tyranny of the landowners. “In all cases,” wrote the emperor: “I find it, and shall ever find it, better to prevent evil, than to pursue it by punishment when it has already arisen.”

Finally the solicitude of the emperor Nicholas for the peasant classes manifested itself by yet another action. On the 18th of December, 1826, a special secret committee was formed to which was confided the inspection of the entire state organisation and administration, with the order to represent the conclusions it arrived at as to the changes deemed necessary; the labours of the committee were to be directed also to the consideration of the peasant question. Besides this the emperor did not leave without attention what had been said by the Dekabrists, during the time of their examination before a committee of inquiry, in regard to the internal conditions of the state in the reign of Alexander I. The emperor ordered a separate memorandum of these opinions to be drawn up for him and often perused this curious document, from which he extracted much that was pertinent.[b]

WAR WITH PERSIA (1826-1828 A.D.)

[1826-1828 A.D.]

The shah of Persia thought he saw in the change of rulers and the troubles by which it was accompanied circumstances favourable to the recovery of the provinces ceded to Russia by the Treaty of Gulistan. In August, 1826, he ordered his troops to move forward. The solemnity of his coronation, which was then being celebrated and whose splendour was enhanced by the presence of the czarevitch, did not prevent Nicholas from promptly organising the defence of the empire. A few weeks afterwards General Paskevitch defeated the Persians at Ielisavetpol, and in the following year, transferring the theatre of war to the enemy’s territory, he seized the celebrated convent of Etchmiadzine, the seat of the Armenian patriarch, and Erivan, one of the great towns of Armenia; he moreover penetrated as far as Tauris, capital of the Azerbaijan and residence of the prince royal, Abbas Mirza. Then the shah asked for peace. It was signed at Turkmantchaï, the 22nd of February, 1828, and advanced Russia as far as the line of the Araxes, by giving up to her the provinces of Erivan and Nakhitchevan.

WAR WITH TURKEY (1828-1829 A.D.)

This treaty was concluded, to the great regret of Persia, when the war with Turkey broke out. This war had been threatening for years; for, deeply affected by the violences to which the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire had been exposed ever since the hetaerist insurrection of 1821, and by the martyrdom which the Greek patriarch had been made to suffer, Alexander left the sword in its sheath only out of deference to the members of the Holy Alliance. His successor was thoroughly determined no longer to subordinate the direction of his cabinet’s policy to the interested views of these princes and to their fears, though it is true that the latter were well founded. The Divan, by signing the Treaty of Akerman (October 6th, 1826), had momentarily averted the storm which was ready to burst; but still more irritating disputes had afterwards arisen. The conclusion of the Treaty of London of the 6th of July, 1827, in virtue of which France, England, and Russia gave existence to a Christian kingdom of Greece placed under their common protection, was shortly followed by the naval battle of Navarino, fought on the 20th of October of the same year by the combined fleets of the three powers, against Ibrahim Pasha, commander-in-chief of the Egyptian forces in the Morea; and in this memorable conflict, expected by no one, but a subject of joy to some whilst judged untoward by others, the whole of the navy which the Porte still had at its disposal was destroyed. Very soon Mahmud II, yielding to the national desire, let it be understood that he had never had any intention of lending himself to the execution of a treaty in virtue of which Moldavia, Wallachia, and Servia were almost as much the czar’s vassals as his own. This was the beginning of a rupture, and Nicholas answered it by a declaration of war, which appeared June 4th, 1828, when his army had already crossed the Pruth.

The campaign of 1828, which accomplished nothing more than the taking of Braila and Varna, did not give a high idea of the strength of Russia; and when the emperor made up his mind to take part in it in person, his presence wrought no change in the feebleness of the results. But it was not the same with the campaign which followed. Not only did the Russians again pass the Danube, but after having beaten the grand vizir, Reschid Pasha, at Koulevtcha, on the 11th of June, Diebitsch marched them across the Balkans for the first time, a feat which won him the name of Sabalkanski, and proceeded straight to Adrianople, where he was scarcely more than two hundred kilometres (about 125 miles) from the Ottoman capital. At the same time Paskevitch took Erzerum in Asia, and the two generals would doubtless have joined hands in Constantinople but for the efforts of diplomacy and the fear of a general conflagration. For Russia was already too powerful; she had been allowed more than was compatible with the policy of the system of balance, no doubt from the fear of incurring a grave responsibility by troubling the peace of Europe. But a prospect like that of the occupation by Russia of Constantinople and the Straits silenced this fear.

[1829 A.D.]

Austria was ready to send her troops to the help of the Turks, and the English also seemed likely to declare for the vanquished. It was therefore necessary to come to a halt. Russia reflected that, after all, “the sultan was the least costly governor-general she could have at Constantinople,” and lent an ear to moderate conditions of peace. Nevertheless, if the Treaty of Adrianople, signed September 14th, 1829, delivered nothing to her in Europe save the mouths of the Danube, in itself a very important point, it enlarged her territories in Asia by a part of the pashalik of Akhalzikh, with the fortress of that name, besides abandoning to her those of Anapa and Pothi on the Black Sea; it considerably strengthened Muscovite influence in the principalities, and still further weakened Turkey, not only morally but also materially by the great pecuniary sacrifices to which she had to subscribe. That power, once so formidable, was henceforth at the mercy of her northern neighbour, the principal instrument of her decay.

THE POLISH INSURRECTION (1830-1831 A.D.)

[1830 A.D.]

But Russia was in her turn rudely shaken by the insurrection in Poland, always her mortal enemy after she had ceased to be her rival.[c]

It was in Moscow that the emperor Nicholas received news of the further progress of the Belgian revolution, in consequence of which the king of the Netherlands found himself obliged to ask for the assistance of his allies by virtue of the existing treaties. The emperor at once despatched orders to Count Tchernishev, Field-marshal Saken, and the czarevitch to place the army on a war footing. The czarevitch was not pleased at the martial turn given to the diplomatic negotiations; still more dissatisfied was the Polish Society of that time, which sympathised with the revolution of July; neither was the army in sympathy with the approaching campaign, which would bring it into armed collision with France in the name of the principles of the Holy Alliance. Although tranquillity apparently reigned in Warsaw, yet the secret societies continued to carry on their destructive work with success.

Count Diebitsch-Sabalkanski

(1785-1831)

Various ominous signs of the approaching catastrophe were not, however, wanting; but the czarevitch continued to lull himself with impossible hopes that all was peaceful and tranquil and would remain so. As to the European powers allied to Russia, they did not enter into the matter with such decided zeal. In the present case it was the Russian autocrat alone who was ready with entire disinterestedness to take up the defence of the infringed lawful order. The other powers found it incomparably more expedient to have recourse to the co-operation of diplomatic remedies; the result was that, instead of an armed intervention, a general European conference for the settlement of the Belgian question by peaceful means took place in London.

Count Diebitsch was still in Berlin awaiting the termination of the negotiations confided to him, when they were suddenly broken off by an event upon which the field-marshal had not in the least calculated at the given moment. On the 3rd of December, 1830, Diebitsch received from the Prussian minister, Count Berastorf, news of the revolution which had taken place in Warsaw on the 29th of November: the Polish army, forming a prepared coalition, had taken up arms against Russia. There remained but one thing for Diebitsch to do and that was to hasten to St. Petersburg as quickly as possible. Meanwhile in St. Petersburg the emperor Nicholas had received only the report of the czarevitch concerning the rising of the troops and of inhabitants of Warsaw on the evening of the 7th of December, 1830.

On the next day a parade of the Preobrajenski regiment was appointed to take place, and as usual the emperor came to the riding school. At first everything proceeded in the usual manner; there were even no traces of inward agitation manifest upon the handsome face with its regular, classic profile, which preserved its habitual expression of majestic nobility. At the termination of the parade the emperor rode into the middle of the riding school, called the officers around him, and personally communicated to them the intelligence of the Warsaw rebellion: “I have already made arrangements that the troops designated by me should move on Warsaw, and if necessary you too shall go, to punish the traitors and re-establish order and the offended honour of Russia. I know that under every circumstance I can rely upon you,” said the emperor. A unanimous outburst of indignation momentarily seized upon all present and then enthusiastic cries resounded: “Lead us against the rebels: we will revenge the offended honour of Russia.” They kissed the emperor’s hands and feet and the hem of his garment with shouts and cheers. The outburst of indignation was so violent that Nicholas considered it necessary to moderate it, and with the majesty that was natural to him he reminded the officers surrounding him that not all the Poles had broken their oath; that the ringleaders of the insurrection must be punished, but that vengeance must not be taken on the people: that the repentant must be pardoned and hatred not allowed.

From the subsequent reports of the grand duke the emperor learned that the czarevitch had permitted the portion of the Polish army that remained with him to return to Warsaw; in exchange for this the deputies who came to the czarevitch promised him and the Russian detachment a free passage to the frontiers of the empire. It was decided that a sufficient number of troops should be concentrated in the Polish frontier to allow of decisive measures being taken against the insurgents. Count Diebitsch was appointed commander-in-chief of the acting army, whilst the office of chief of the staff was filled by Count Tolle.

When the czarevitch reached the Russian frontier he wrote as follows to the emperor Nicholas: “And now the work of sixteen years is completely destroyed by a set of ensign-bearers, young officers, and students. I will not further enlarge on the matter, but duty commands me to bear witness to you that the landed proprietors, the rural population, and in general all holders of property of any kind are up in despair over this. The officers and generals as well as the soldiers are unable to keep from joining the general movement, being carried away by the young people and ensign-bearers who led everyone astray. In a word, the position of affairs is extremely bad, and I really do not know what will come of it. All my measures of surveillance have led to nothing, in spite of the fact that everything was beginning to be discovered. Here are we Russians at the frontier, but great God in what a condition!—almost barefoot, for we all came out as if at the sound of an alarm, in the hopes of returning to barracks, whilst instead awful marches have had to be made. The officers have been deprived of everything and have almost nothing with which to clothe themselves. I am broken hearted; at the age of fifty-one and a half years I never thought to finish my career in this lamentable manner after thirty-five and a half years of service. I pray to God that the army to which I have devoted sixteen years of my life may be brought to reason, and return to the path of duty and honour, acknowledging its previous errors, before coercive measures have to be taken. But this is too much to expect from the age in which we live, and I greatly doubt the realisation of my desires.”

Any agreement with Poland became daily more impossible and both sides prepared for war. On the 17th of December the emperor Nicholas’ proclamation to the Polish army and nation was issued, and on the 24th a manifesto was published offering means of reconciliation to all those who returned to their duty. Meanwhile General Chlopicki was installed as dictator in Warsaw, but he was unable to save Poland from a rupture with Russia. Two deputies were sent to St. Petersburg to enter into negotiations with the emperor Nicholas; they were the minister of finance, Prince Lubetzki and a member of the diet, Count Ezerski. But neither could these negotiations avert the bloody events of the year 1831. “It is hard to foresee the future,” wrote the emperor to the czarevitch; “but weighing the relative probabilities of success, it is difficult to suppose that the new year will show itself more distressing for us than the year 1830; God grant that I may not be mistaken. I should like to see you peacefully settled in your Belvedere and order re-established throughout; but how much there yet remains to be accomplished before we are in a condition to attain to this! Which of the two must perish—for it appears inevitable that one must perish, Russia or Poland? Decide for yourself. I have exhausted all possible means in order to avert such a calamity—all means compatible with honour and my conscience—but they are exhausted. What remains for me to do?”

[1831 A.D.]

Soon the diet assembled in Warsaw took a decision which completed the rupture between Poland and Russia. On the 25th of January, 1831, the diet declared the Romanov dynasty to be deprived of the throne of Poland. The Poles themselves thus unbound the hands of the emperor, and the duel between Russia and Poland became inevitable. The emperor replied to the challenge by a manifesto in accordance with which the Russian troops crossed the Polish frontier, and on the 25th of February a decisive battle took place before Prague at Grokhov, by which the Polish army was obliged to retreat to Warsaw with a loss of twelve thousand men.

But Count Diebitsch did not recognise the possibility of taking advantage of the victory gained, and which would have been inevitably completed by the occupation of the Polish capital; and Sabalkanski was not fated to become prince of Warsaw. The Polish troops retreated unhindered across the only bridge to Warsaw; the new Polish commander-in-chief Skrjinetzski set out to reorganise the army, the rising spread even to the Russian governments, and the campaign, against all expectations, dragged on for six months. Meanwhile it was a war upon which depended, according to the expression used by the emperor, “the political existence of Russia.”

On the 26th of May Diebitsch gained a second victory over the Polish army, which also terminated by the favourable retreat of the latter; and on the 13th of June, the emperor found occasion to write to his field-marshal: “Act at length so that I can understand you.” The letter was however not read by Count Diebitsch, for on the 10th of June the field-marshal suddenly died of cholera in the village of Kleshov near Pultiusk. He was replaced by Field-marshal Count Paskevitch-Erivanski, who was as early as April, 1831, called by the emperor from Tiflis to St. Petersburg. It was decided to cross the lower Vis-Suta and move towards Warsaw. The czarevitch Constantine outlived Count Diebitsch only by a few days. He also died suddenly of cholera at Vitebsk, in the night between the 26th and 27th of June of the year 1831.

Field-marshal Paskevitch

(1782-1856)

The Polish insurrection from that time daily grew nearer to its definitive conclusion; it was determined by the two days’ storming of Warsaw, which took place on the 7th and 8th of September. Finally Field-marshal Paskevitch was able to communicate to the emperor the news that “Warsaw is at the feet of your imperial majesty.” Prince Suvorov, aide-de-camp of the emperor, was the bearer of this intelligence to Tsarskoi Selo on the 16th of September.

Nicholas wrote as follows to his victorious field-marshal: “With the help of the all-merciful God, you have again raised the splendour and glory of our arms, you have punished the disloyal traitors, you have avenged Russia, you have subdued Warsaw—from henceforth you are the most serene prince of Warsaw. Let posterity remember that the honour and glory of the Russian army are inseparable from your name, and may your name preserve for everyone the memory of the day on which the name of Russia was again made glorious. This is the sincere expression of the grateful heart of your sovereign, your friend, and your old subordinate.”

After the fall of Warsaw the war still continued for a while, but not for long. The chief forces of the Polish army, which had retired to Novogeorgievsk, finished by passing into Prussian territory at the end of September, and on the 21st of October the last fortress surrendered. The Polish insurrection was at an end. But the peace, attained by such heavy sacrifice, was accompanied by a new evil for Russia; in Europe appeared the Polish emigration, carrying with it hatred and vociferations against Russia and preparing the inimical conditions of public opinion in the west against the Russian government.

THE OUTBREAK OF CHOLERA AND THE RIOTS OCCASIONED BY IT (1830 A.D.)

The emperor had hardly returned to St. Petersburg from opening the diet in Warsaw, when suddenly a new care occupied the attention of the government. The cholera made its appearance in the empire. This terrible illness, until then known to Russia only by name and by narratives describing its devastations, brought with it still greater fear, because no one knew or could indicate either medical or police measures to be taken against it. General opinion inclined, however, towards the advantages to be derived from quarantine and isolation, such as had been employed against the plague, and the government immediately took necessary measures in this direction with the activity that the emperor’s strong will managed to instil into all his dispositions. Troops were without delay stationed at various points and cordons formed from them and the local inhabitants, in order to save the governments in the interior and the two capitals from the calamity.

In spite of all precautions, however, a fresh source of grief was added to all the cares and anxieties that pressed upon the emperor at that period. Since the 26th of June the cholera had appeared in St. Petersburg and in a few days had attained menacing dimensions. This awful illness threw all classes of the population into a state of the greatest terror, particularly the common people by whom all the measures taken for the preservation of the public health—such as increased police surveillance, the surrounding of the towns with troops, and even the removal of those stricken with cholera to hospitals—were at first regarded as persecutions. Mobs began to assemble, strangers were stopped in the streets and searched for the poison they were supposed to carry on them, while doctors were publicly accused of poisoning the people. Finally, on the 4th of July, the mob, excited by rumours and suspicions, gathered together at the Hay Market and attacked the house in which a temporary cholera hospital had been established. They broke the windows, threw the furniture out into the street, wounded and cast out the sick, thrashed the hospital servants, and killed several of the doctors. The police were powerless to restore order and even the final appearance of the military governor-general Count Essen did not attain the necessary result. A battalion of the Semenov regiment forced the people to disperse from the square into the side streets, but was far from putting a stop to the disturbance.

The next day the emperor Nicholas went on a steamer from St. Petersburg to Elagium Island. When he had heard the reports of various persons as to the state of the town he got into a carriage with Adjutant-general Prince Menshikov and drove to the Preobrajenski parade-ground in the town, where a battalion of the Preobrajenski regiment was encamped. When he had thanked the troops, the emperor continued his way along the carriage road where he threatened with his displeasure some crowds and shopkeepers; from there he drove to the Hay Market where about five thousand people had assembled. Standing up in his carriage and turning to the mob, the emperor spoke as follows: “Misdeeds were committed yesterday, public order was disturbed; shame on the Russian people for forgetting the faith of their fathers and imitating the turbulence of the French and Poles! They have taught you this: seize them and take those suspected to the authorities; but wickedness has been committed here, here we have offended and angered God—let us turn to the church, down on your knees, and beg the forgiveness of the Almighty!”

The people fell on their knees and crossed themselves in contrition; the emperor prostrated himself also, and exclamations of “We have sinned, accursed ones that we are!” resounded throughout the air. Continuing his speech to the people, the emperor again admonished the crowd: “I have sworn before God to preserve the prosperity of the people entrusted to me by providence; I am answerable before God for these disorders: and therefore I will not allow them. Woe be to the disobedient!”

At this moment some men in the crowd raised their voices. The emperor then replied: “What do you want—whom do you want? Is it I? I am not afraid of anything—here I am!” and with these words he pointed to his breast. Cries of enthusiasm ensued. After this the emperor, probably as a sign of reconciliation, embraced an old man in the crowd and returned, first to Elagium and afterwards to Peterhov. The day afterwards the emperor again visited the capital. Order was re-established, but the cholera continued to rage. Six hundred persons died daily, and it was only from the middle of July that the mortality began to diminish.

Far more dangerous in its consequences was the revolt that arose in the Novgorod military settlements. Here the cholera and rumours of poisoning only served as a pretext for rebellion; the seed of general dissatisfaction among the population belonging to this creation of Count Araktcheiev continued to exist in spite of all the changes introduced by the emperor Nicholas into the administration of the military settlements. A spark was sufficient to produce in the settlements an explosion of hitherto unprecedented fury, and the cholera served as the spark. Order was however finally re-established in the settlements and then the emperor Nicholas set off for them quite alone and presented himself before the assembled battalions, which had stained themselves with the blood of their officers and stood awaiting, trembling and in silence the judgment of their sovereign.[b]

THE WAR IN THE CAUCASUS (1829-1840 A.D.)

The possession of the Caucasus is a question vitally affecting the interests of Russia in her provinces beyond that range of mountains, and her ulterior projects with regard to the regions of Persia and Central Asia. Here are the terms in which this subject is handled in a report printed at St. Petersburg, and addressed to the emperor after the expedition of General Emmanuel to Elbruz in 1829:

“The Circassians (Tsherkessians) bar out Russia from the south, and may at their pleasure open or close the passage to the nations of Asia. At present their intestine dissensions, fostered by Russia, hinder them from uniting under one leader; but it must not be forgotten that, according to traditions religiously preserved amongst them, the sway of their ancestors extended as far as to the Black Sea. They believe that a mighty people, descended from their ancestors, and whose existence is verified by the ruins of Madjar, has once already overrun the fine plains adjacent to the Danube, and finally settled in Panonia. Add to this consideration their superiority in arms. Perfect horsemen, extremely well armed, inured to war by the continual freebooting they exercise against their neighbours, courageous, and disdaining the advantages of our civilisation, the imagination is appalled at the consequences which their union under one leader might have for Russia, which has no other bulwark against their ravages than a military line, too extensive to be very strong.”

For the better understanding of the war which Russia has been so long waging with the mountaineers, let us glance at the topography of the Caucasus, and the respective positions of the belligerents.

The chain of the Caucasus exhibits a peculiar conformation, altogether different from that of any of the European chains. The Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Carpathians are accessible only by the valleys, and in these the inhabitants of the country find their subsistence, and agriculture developes its wealth. The contrary is the case in the Caucasus. From the fortress of Anapa on the Black Sea, all along to the Caspian, the northern slope presents only immense inclined plains, rising in terraces to a height of 3,000 or 4,000 yards above the sea level. These plains, rent on all directions by deep and narrow valleys and vertical clefts, often form real steppes, and possess on their loftiest heights rich pastures, where the inhabitants, secure from all attack, find fresh grass for their cattle in the sultriest days of summer. The valleys on the other hand are frightful abysses, the steep sides of which are clothed with brambles, while the bottoms are filled with rapid torrents foaming over beds of rocks and stones. Such is the singular spectacle generally presented by the northern slope of the Caucasus. This brief description may give an idea of the difficulties to be encountered by an invading army. Obliged to occupy the heights, it is incessantly checked in its march by impassable ravines, which do not allow of the employment of cavalry, and for the most part prevent the passage of artillery. The ordinary tactics of the mountaineers is to fall back before the enemy, until the nature of the ground or the want of supplies obliges the latter to begin a retrograde movement. Then it is that they attack the invaders, and, intrenched in their forests behind impregnable rocks, they inflict the most terrible carnage on them with little danger to themselves.

On the south the character of the Caucasian chain is different. From Anapa to Gagri, along the shores of the Black Sea, we observe a secondary chain composed of schistous mountains, seldom exceeding 1000 yards in height. But the nature of their soil, and of their rocks, would be enough to render them almost impracticable for European armies, even were they not covered with impenetrable forests. The inhabitants of this region, who are called Circassians, are entirely independent, and constitute one of the most warlike peoples of the Caucasus.

The great chain begins in reality at Gagri, but the mountains recede from the shore, and nothing is to be seen along the coast as far as Mingrelia but secondary hills, commanded by immense crags, that completely cut off all approach to the central part of the Caucasus. This region, so feebly defended by its topographical conformation, is Abkhasia, the inhabitants of which have been forced to submit to Russia. To the north and on the northern slope, westward of the military road from Mozdok to Tiflis, dwell a considerable number of tribes, some of them ruled by a sort of feudal system, others constituted into little republics. Those of the west, dependent on Circassia and Abadja, are in continual war with the empire, whilst the Nogaians, who inhabit the plains on the left bank of the Kuma, and the tribes of the great Kabarda, own the sovereignty of the czar; but their wavering and dubious submission cannot be relied on. In the centre, at the foot of the Elbruz, dwell the Suanetians, an unsubdued people, and near them, occupying both sides of the pass of Dariel, are the Ingutches and Ossetans, exceptional tribes, essentially different from the aboriginal peoples. Finally we have, eastward of the great Tiflis road, near the Terek, little Kabarda, and the country of the Kumicks, for the present subjugated; and then those indomitable tribes, the Lesghians and Tchetchens, of whom Schamyl is the Ab del Kadir, and who extended over the two slopes of the Caucasus to the vicinity of the Caspian.

In reality, the Kuban and the Terek, that rise from the central chain, and fall, the one into the Black Sea, the other into the Caspian, may be considered as the northern political limits of independent Caucasus. It is along those two rivers that Russia has formed her armed line, defended by Cossacks, and detachments from the regular army. The Russians have, indeed, penetrated those northern frontiers at sundry points, and have planted some forts within the country of the Lesghians and Tchetchens. But those lonely posts, in which a few unhappy garrisons are surrounded on all sides, and generally without a chance of escape, cannot be regarded as a real occupation of the soil on which they stand. They are, in fact, only so many pickets, whose business is only to watch more closely the movements of the mountaineers. In the south, from Anapa to Gagri, along the Black Sea, the imperial possessions never extended beyond a few detached forts, completely isolated, and deprived of all means of communication by land. A rigorous blockade was established on this coast; but the Circassians, as intrepid in their frail barks as among their mountains, often passed by night through the Russian line of vessels, and reached Trebizond and Constantinople. Elsewhere, from Mingrelia to the Caspian, the frontiers are less precisely defined, and generally run parallel with the great chain of the Caucasus.

[1835 A.D.]

Thus limited, the Caucasus, including the territory occupied by the subject tribes, presents a surface of scarcely 5000 leagues; and it is in this narrow region that a virgin and chivalric nation, amounting at most to 2,000,000 of souls, proudly upholds its independence against the might of the Russian empire, and has for upwards of twenty years sustained one of the most obstinate struggles known to modern history.

The Russian line of the Kuban, which is exactly similar to that of the Terek, is defended by the Cossacks of the Black Sea, the poor remains of the famous Zaparogians, whom Catherine II subdued with so much difficulty, and whom she colonised at the foot of the Caucasus, as a bulwark against the incursions of the mountaineers. The line consists of small forts and watch stations; the latter are merely a kind of sentry-box raised on four posts, about fifty feet from the ground. Two Cossacks keep watch in them day and night. On the least movement of the enemy in the vast plain of reeds that fringe both banks of the river, a beacon fire is kindled on the top of the watch box. If the danger becomes more pressing, an enormous torch of straw and tar is set fire to. The signal is repeated from post to post, the whole line springs to arms, and 500 or 600 men are instantly assembled on the point threatened. These posts, composed generally of a dozen men, are very close to each other, particularly in the most dangerous places. Small forts have been erected at intervals with earthworks, and a few pieces of cannon; they contain each from 150 to 200 men.

But notwithstanding all the vigilance of the Cossacks, often aided by the troops of the line, the mountaineers not unfrequently cross the frontier and carry their incursions, which are always marked with massacre and pillage, into the adjacent provinces. There are bloody but justifiable reprisals. In 1835 a body of fifty horsemen entered the country of the Cossacks, and proceeded to a distance of 120 leagues, to plunder the German colony of Madjar and the important village of Vladimirovka, on the Kuma, and what is most remarkable they got back to their mountains without being interrupted. The same year Kisliar, on the Caspian, was sacked by the Lesghians. These daring expeditions prove of themselves how insufficient is the armed line of the Caucasus, and to what dangers that part of southern Russia is exposed.

The line of forts until lately existing along the Black Sea was quite as weak, and the Circassians there were quite as daring. They used to carry off the Russian soldiers from beneath the fire of their redoubts, and come up to the very foot of their walls to insult the garrison. Hommaire de Hell relates that, at the time he was exploring the mouths of the Kuban, a hostile chief had the audacity to appear one day before the gates of Anapa. He did all he could to irritate the Russians, and abusing them as cowards and woman-hearted, he defied them to single combat. Exasperated by his invectives, the commandant ordered that he should be fired on with grape. The horse of the mountaineer reared and threw off his rider, who, without letting go the bridle, instantly mounted again, and, advancing still nearer to the walls, discharged his pistol almost at point-blank distance at the soldiers, and galloped off to the mountains.

As for the blockade by sea, the imperial squadron has not been expert enough to render it really effectual. It was only a few armed boats, manned by Cossacks, that gave the Circassians any serious uneasiness. These Cossacks like those of the Black Sea, are descended from the Zaparogians. Previously to the last war with Turkey they were settled on the right bank of the Danube, where their ancestors had taken refuge after the destruction of their Setcha. During the campaigns of 1828-29, pains were taken to revive their national feelings, they were brought again by fair means or by force under the imperial sway, and were then settled in the forts along the Caucasian shore, the keeping of which was committed to their charge. Courageous, enterprising, and worthy rivals of their foes, they waged a most active war against the skiffs of the mountaineers in their boats, which carry crews of fifty or sixty men.

The treaty of Adrianople was in a manner the opening of a new era in the relations of Russia with the mountaineers; for it was by virtue of that treaty that the czar, already master of Anapa and Sudjuk Kaleh, pretended to the sovereignty of Circassia and of the whole seaboard of the Black Sea. True to the invariable principles of its foreign policy, the government at first employed means of corruption, and strove to seduce the various chiefs of the country by pensions, decorations, and military appointments. But the mountaineers, who had the example of the Persian provinces before their eyes, sternly rejected all the overtures of Russia, and repudiated the clauses of the convention of Adrianople; the political and commercial independence of their country became their rallying cry, and they would not treat on any other condition. All such ideas were totally at variance with Nicholas’ schemes of absolute dominion; therefore he had recourse to arms to obtain by force what he had been unable to accomplish by other means.

Abkhasia, situated on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, and easily accessible, was the first invaded. A Russian force occupied the country in 1839, under the ordinary pretence of supporting one of its princes, and putting an end to anarchy. In the same year General Paskevitch, then governor-general of the Caucasus, for the first time made an armed exploration of the country of the Circassians beyond the Kuban; but he effected absolutely nothing, and his expedition only resulted in great loss of men and stores. In the following year war broke out in Daghestan with the Lesghians and the Tchetchens. The celebrated Kadi Mulah, giving himself out for a prophet, gathered together a considerable number of partisans; but unfortunately for him there was no unanimity among the tribes, and the princes were continually counteracting each other. Kadi Mulah never was able to bring more than 3,000 or 4,000 men together; nevertheless, he maintained the struggle with a courage worthy of a better fate, and Russia knows what it cost her to put down the revolt of Daghestan. As for any real progress in that part of the Caucasus, the Russians made none; they did no more than replace things on the old footing. Daghestan soon became again more hostile than ever, and the Tchetchens and Lesghians continued in separate detachments to plunder and ravage the adjacent provinces up to the time when the ascendancy of the celebrated Schamyl, the worthy successor of Kadi Mulah, gave a fresh impulse to the warlike tribes of the mountain, and rendered them more formidable than ever.

After taking possession of Anapa and Sudjuk Kaleh, the Russians thought of seizing the whole seaboard of Circassia, and especially the various points suitable for the establishment of military posts. They made themselves masters of Guelendchik and the important position of Gagri, which commands the pass between Circassia and Abkhasia. The Circassians heroically defended their territory; but how could they have withstood the guns of the ships of war that mowed them down whilst the soldiers were landing and constructing their redoubts? The blockade of the coasts was declared in 1838, and all foreign communication with the Caucasus ostensibly intercepted. During the four following years Russia suffered heavy losses; and all her successes were limited to the establishment of some small isolated forts on the sea-coast. She then increased her army, laid down the military road from the Kuban to Guelendchik, across the last western offshoot of the Caucasus, set on foot an exploration of the enemy’s whole coast, and prepared to push the war with renewed vigour.

In 1837 the emperor Nicholas visited the Caucasus. He would see for himself the theatre of a war so disastrous to his arms, and try what impression his imperial presence could make on the mountaineers. The chiefs of the country were invited to various conferences, to which they boldly repaired on the faith of the Russian parole; but instead of conciliating them by words of peace and moderation, the emperor only exasperated them by his threatening and haughty language. “Do you know,” said he to them, “that I have powder enough to blow up all your mountains?”

[1839 A.D.]

During the three following years there was an incessant succession of expeditions. Golovin, on the frontiers of Georgia, Grabe on the north, and Racivski on the Circassian seaboard, left nothing untried to accomplish their master’s orders. The sacrifices incurred by Russia were enormous; the greater part of her fleet was destroyed by a storm, but all efforts failed against the intrepidity and tactics of the mountaineers. Some new forts erected under cover of the ships, were all that resulted from these disastrous campaigns. “I was in the Caucasus in 1839,” says Hommaire de Hell, “when Grabe returned from his famous expedition against Shamyl. When the army marched it had numbered 6000 men, 1,000 of whom, and 120 officers, were cut off in three months. But as the general had advanced further into the country than any of his predecessors, Russia sang pæans, and Grabe became the hero of the day, although the imperial troops had been forced to retreat and entirely evacuate the country they had invaded. All the other expeditions were similar to this one, and achieved in reality nothing but the burning and destruction of a few villages. It is true the mountaineers are far from being victorious in all their encounters with the Russians, whose artillery they cannot easily withstand; but if they are obliged to give way to numbers, or to engineering, nevertheless they remain in the end masters of the ground, and annul all the momentary advantages gained by their enemies.”

The year 1840 was still more fatal to the arms of Nicholas. Almost all the new forts on the seaboard were taken by the Circassians, who bravely attacked and carried the best fortified posts without artillery. The military road from the Kuban to Guelendchik was intercepted, Fort St. Nicholas, which commanded it, was stormed and the garrison massacred. Never yet had Russia endured such heavy blows. The disasters were such that the official journals themselves, after many months’ silence, were at last obliged to speak of them; but the most serious losses, the destruction of the new road from the Kuban, the taking of Fort St. Nicholas, and that of several other forts, were entirely forgotten in the official statement.

On the eastern side of the mountain the war was fully as disastrous for the invaders. The imperial army lost four hundred petty officers and soldiers, and twenty-nine officers in the battle of Valrik against the Tchetchens. The military colonies of the Terek were attacked and plundered, and when General Golovin retired to his winter quarters at the end of the campaign, he had lost more than three-fourths of his men.

The great Kabarda did not remain an indifferent spectator of the offensive league formed by the tribes of the Caucasus; and when Russia, suspecting with reason the unfriendly disposition of some tribes, made an armed exploration on the banks of the Laba in order to construct redoubts, and thus cut off the subjugated tribes from the others, the general found the country, wherever he advanced, but a desert. All the inhabitants had already retired to the other side of the Laba to join their warlike neighbours.[d]

THE EMPEROR’S CONSERVATIVE PATRIOTISM

However, in spite of all these disastrous campaigns, Nicholas had not lost sight of his most important task—that of consolidating internal order by reforms. His attention had been directed above all to the administration, from the heart of which he had sought especially to exterminate corruption with a severity and courage proportioned to the immensity of the evil. Then he had announced his firm desire to perfect the laws, and had charged Count Speranski to work at them under his personal direction. The digest (svod) promulgated in 1833 was the first fruit of these efforts and was followed by various special codes. Finally, turning his attention to public instruction, he had assigned to it as a basis the national traditions and religion and charged Uvarov, president of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, a man of learning and talent, to animate it with this spirit, so hostile to the ideas of the west, but—let us say it at once—better suited to the real needs of the country.

Nicholas, allowing himself to be ruled by this spirit, plunged further and further into a system which, though contrary to that of Peter the Great, we do not pretend absolutely to condemn on that account, and which the marquis de Custine[e] has highly extolled in his celebrated book, La Russie en 1839. “The emperor Nicholas,” he said, “thought that the day of mere seeming was past for Russia, and that the whole structure of civilisation was to remake in that country. He has relaid the foundations of society. Peter, called the Great, would have overturned it a second time in order to rebuild it: Nicholas is more skilful. I am struck with admiration for this man who is secretly struggling, with all the strength of his will, against the work of Peter the Great’s genius. He is restoring individuality to a nation which has strayed for more than a century in the paths of imitation.”

Without ceasing to borrow diligently from Europe her inventions and arts, her progress in industry, in administration, in the conduct of land and sea armies—in a word, all the material improvements which she devises and realises, he endeavoured to close Russia to her ideas on philosophy, politics, and religion. He condemned exotic tendencies as pernicious to his states, and, without depriving himself of the services of the Germans, the principal depositaries of superior enlightenment in that country, as yet only imperfectly moulded to civilisation, he relied by preference on the party of the old Russians, which included the clergy, whom he treated with respect in spite of the inferiority of their position. Nationality, autocracy, orthodoxy—these three words, taken as the national watchword, sum up the ideas to which he subordinated his internal policy. The expression, Holy Russia, which has been the object of such profound astonishment to the Latin world, reflects also this spirit.

He surrounded with great solemnity those acts which he performed in his quality of head of the church in his own country, and posed as the protector of all his co-religionists in Moldavia, Wallachia, Servia, Montenegro, and other countries. Like his ancestors of preceding dynasties, he adorned himself on solemn occasions with a gold cross which he wore diagonally on his breast. This bias was summed up in the new word cæsaropapism. He regarded with special enthusiasm that one act on account of which, the accusation of religious intolerance was fixed upon him—an accusation justified by many of his deeds. In consequence of the decisions of the council of Florence, and up till 1839, there were in Russia 1,500,000 United Greeks, subjected to the papal obedience. At their head was the archbishop, sometimes the metropolitan, of White Russia, and the bishop, or archbishop, of Lithuania. In 1839 these two prelates, having met in conjunction with a third, at Polotsk, the seat of the first of these eparchies, had signed a document in which they expressed the wish to unite, they and their church, with the national and primitive church, and prayed the emperor to sanction this union. Nicholas referred the matter to the holy synod, and, the latter having with great eagerness signified its approval of the act, he sanctioned it in his turn, adding these words beneath his signature: “I thank God and I authorize it.” It is well known to what complaints on the part of the pope this suppression of the uniate Greek church soon afterward gave rise.[c]

UNVEILING OF THE MONUMENT AT BORODINO

The emperor Nicholas was fond of great gatherings of the troops, and an occasion for such was afforded in 1839 by the unveiling of the monument erected on the battle-field of Borodino. The thought of this muster of the troops had already occupied the emperor’s mind since 1838, but at that time he had in view not merely the participation of the troops in manœuvres and exercises, but the immortalisation of the tradition of the valorous exploits of the Russian army in the defence of the fatherland against the invasion of Napoleon. On the day of the unveiling of the Borodino monument, August 26th, 120,000 men were gathered around it. The emperor invited to take part in the solemnities all the surviving comrades of Kutuzov and many foreign guests.

On the anniversary of the battle of Borodino a great review of all the troops assembled on this historic spot took place. In the morning, before the review began, the following order of his imperial majesty, written by the emperor’s hand, was read to the troops:

“Children. Before you stands the monument which bears witness to the glorious deeds of your comrades. Here, on this same spot, 27 years ago, the arrogant enemy dreamed of conquering the Russian army which fought in defence of the faith, the czar and the fatherland. God punished the foolish: the bones of the insolent invaders were scattered from Moscow to the Niemen—and we entered Paris. The time has now come to render glory to a great exploit. And thus, may the eternal memory of the emperor Alexander I be immortal to us: for by his firm will Russia was saved; may the glory of your comrades who fell as heroes be also everlasting, and may their exploits serve as an example to us and our further posterity. You will ever be the hope and support of your sovereign and our common mother Russia.”

This order aroused the greatest enthusiasm amongst the troops, but it was highly displeasing to the foreigners; it appeared to them strange and almost offensive, they considered that “in reality it was nothing but high sounding phrases.”

Three days later the emperor Nicholas had the battle of Borodino reproduced. After the unveiling of the Borodino monument the laying of the first stone of the cathedral of Christ the Saviour took place in Moscow. This solemnity brought to a close the commemoration of the year 1812 which had delivered Russia from a foreign invasion and was the dawn of the liberation of Europe.

The year 1839 was remarkable for yet another important event: the reunion of the Uniates.[68]

DEATH OR RETIREMENT OF THE OLD MINISTERS

Little by little the workers in the political arena of Alexander’s reign had disappeared. Count V. P. Kotchulzi, who had been president of the senate since 1827 and afterwards chancellor of the interior, died in 1834 and had been replaced by N. N. Novseltsev as president of the senate. After his death the emperor Nicholas appointed to that office Count I. V. Vasiltchikov, who remained at his post until his death, which took place in 1847.

The emperor was above all grieved at the death of Speranski in the year 1837. He recognised this loss as irreparable, and in speaking of him said: “Not everyone understood Speranski or knew how to value him sufficiently; at first I myself was in this respect perhaps more in fault than anyone. I was told much of his liberal ideas; calumny even touched him in reference to the history of December 26th. But afterwards all these accusations were scattered like dust, and I found in him the most faithful, devoted and zealous servant, with vast knowledge and vast experience. Everyone now knows how great are my obligations and those of Russia to him—and the calumniators are silenced. The only reproach I could make him was his feeling against my late brother; but that too is over”.... The emperor stopped without finishing his thought, which probably contained a secret, involuntary justification of Speranski.

In 1844 died another statesman who was still nearer and dearer to the emperor Nicholas; this was Count Benkendorv of whom the emperor said: “He never set me at variance with anyone, but reconciled me with many.” His successor in the direction of the third section was Count A. F. Orlov; he remained at this post during all the succeeding years of the emperor Nicholas’ reign.

In that same year Count E. F. Kankrin who had been minister of finance even under Alexander I was obliged on account of ill health to leave the ministry of which he had been head during twenty-two years. As his biographer justly observes Kankrin left Russia as an heritage: “Well organised finances, a firm metal currency, and a rate of exchange corresponding with the requirements of the country. Russia was in financial respects a mighty power whose credit it was impossible to injure. And all this was attained without any considerable loans, and without great increase in taxes, by the determination, the thrift and the genius of one man, who placed the welfare of the nation above all considerations and understood how to serve it.”

But at the same time it must not be forgotten that all these brilliant results were attainable only because behind Count Kankrin stood the emperor Nicholas. The enemies of the minister and of his monetary reforms were many; but the snares they laid were destroyed before the all powerful will of a person who never wavered. This time that inflexible will was directed in the right path, and the results showed unprecedented financial progress, in spite of the three wars which it had been impossible for Russia to avoid, despite the ideally peace-loving disposition of her ruler; and to these calamities must be added also the cholera and bad harvests. Kankrin’s resignation was accompanied by important consequences; he was replaced by the incapable Vrontchenko, while Nicholas took the finances of the empire into his own hands, as he had previously acted regarding the other branches of the administration of the state.

Among the old-time servitors of Alexander I, Prince P. M. Volkonski remained longest in office. He lived until he attained the rank of field-marshal and died in 1852, having filled the office of minister of the court during twenty-five years.

One of the younger workers of the Alexandrine period, P. D. Kisselev, former chief of the staff of the second army, attained to unusual eminence in the reign of the emperor Nicholas. In 1825 his star nearly set forever, but soon it shone again with renewed brilliancy and on his return from the Danubian provinces, which he had administered since 1829, Kisselev was created minister and count. “You will be my chief of the staff for the peasant department,” said the emperor to him, and with this object, on the 13th of January, 1838 there was established the ministry of state domains, formed from the department which had until that time been attached to the ministry of finance.

GREAT FIRE IN THE WINTER PALACE

A disastrous fire at the Winter Palace began on the evening of the 29th of December, 1837, and no human means were able to stay the flames; only the Hermitage with its collection of ancient and priceless treasures was saved. The ruins of the palace continued to burn during three days and nights. The emperor and the imperial family took up their abode in the Anitchkov palace.

The rebuilding of the Winter Palace upon its previous plan was begun immediately; the palace was consecrated on the 6th of April, 1839 and the emperor and his family were installed there as previously. As a token of gratitude to all those who had taken part in the rebuilding of the palace a medal was struck with the inscription: “I thank you.”—“Work overcomes everything.”

On the last day of the Easter holidays the emperor Nicholas resolved to allow visitors access to all the state rooms, galleries, etc.; and in that one day as many as 200,000 persons visited the palace between the hours of six in the evening and two in the morning.

Twice the emperor and his family passed in all directions through the palace that was thronged with the public. An eye-witness writes that “the public by prolonging their visitation for seven hours so filled the palace with damp, steamy, suffocating air that the walls, the columns, and carvings on the lower windows sweated, and streams of damp poured down on to the parquet flooring and spoiled everything, while the marble changed to a dull yellowish hue.” 35,000 paper rubles were required to repair the damage. But the matter did not terminate with this; during one night that summer, fortunately while the imperial family were staying at Peterhov, the ceiling in the saloon of St. George fell down with the seventeen massive lustres depending from it.

THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CORONATION OF NICHOLAS I (1851 A.D.)

[1851 A.D.]

In August 1851, upon the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his coronation the emperor Nicholas left St. Petersburg for Moscow, accompanied by his family. For the first time the journey was accomplished by the newly completed Moscow railway, constructed in accordance with the will of the emperor, and in opposition to the desires of many of his enlightened contemporaries. The opening of the railway to the public followed only on the 13th of November. In Moscow the emperor was met by Field-marshal Paskevitch, prince of Warsaw. On the eve of the festivities in honour of the anniversary of the coronation Nicholas visited the field-marshal, and addressed the following memorable words to him:

“To-morrow will complete twenty-five years of my reign—a reign which you, Ivan Feodorovitch, have made illustrious by your valiant service to Russia. It was under sorrowful prognostications that I ascended the throne of Russia and my reign had to begin with punishments and banishments. I did not find around the throne persons who could guide the czar—I was obliged to create men; I had none devoted to me. Affairs in the east required the appointment there of a man of your intellect, of your military capacity, of your will. My choice rested on you. Providence itself directed me to you. You had enemies: in spite of all that was said against you, I held fast to you, Ivan Feodorovitch. You proved, commander, that I was right. Hardly had affairs in the east quieted down when my empire was overtaken by a public calamity—the cholera. The people ascribe every misfortune to the person who governs. God knows how much suffering this national affliction cost me. The war with Poland was another grievous trial. Russian blood was shed because of our errors or because of chastisement sent from above. Our affairs were in a bad way. And again I had resource to you, Ivan Feodorovitch, as the only means of salvation for Russia; and again you did not betray my trust, again you exalted my empire. By your twenty years’ administration of the Polish land you have laid the foundation for the happiness of two kindred yet hostile elements. I hope that the Russian and the Pole will constitute one Russian Empire—the Slavonic Empire; and that your name will be preserved in history beside the name of Nicholas. It is not so long ago—when western Europe was agitated by aspirations after wild, unbridled freedom; when the people overthrew lawful authority and thrones; when I decided to give a helping hand to my brother and ally, the monarch of Austria—that you, commander, led my soldiers to a new warfare: you tamed the hydra of rebellion. In six weeks you had finished the war in Hungary, you supported and strengthened the tottering throne of Austria, Ivan Feodorovitch. You are the glory of my twenty-five years’ reign. You are the history of the reign of Nicholas I.”

THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS’ VIEWS ON LOUIS NAPOLEON

When Prince Louis Napoleon had accomplished his coup d’état of the 2nd of December, 1851, and the restoration of the second empire was to be expected, the emperor Nicholas, judging by a letter which he had received from Frederick William IV, said: “Before the end of next year Louis Napoleon will become our colleague. Let him become what he likes, even the great mufti, if it pleases him, but to the title of Emperor or King I do not think he will be so imprudent as to aspire.” According to the emperor’s opinion, as soon as Louis Napoleon desired to make himself emperor he would become a usurper, because he did not possess the divine right—he would be emperor in fact but never by right; in a word, “a second Louis Philippe, less the odious character of that scoundrel.”

[1853 A.D.]

When the French diplomatic representatives in St. Petersburg and Warsaw evidenced an intention to celebrate the 15th of August, the emperor Nicholas drew up the following resolution: “A public church service for Napoleon cannot be allowed, because he ceased to be emperor, being banished and confined to the island of St. Helena. There is no propriety in celebrating the birthday of the late Napoleon in our country, whence he was despatched with befitting honour.” The Napoleonic empire had already transcended the limits which the emperor Nicholas would at one time have allowed; it was in direct contradiction to the stipulations of the congress of Vienna, which formed the basis of the national law of Europe. The emperor’s allies, however, looked on the matter somewhat differently. Austria and Prussia recognised Napoleon III; it therefore only remained to the emperor Nicholas, against his will, to follow their example; but still he departed from the usually accepted diplomatic forms, and in his letter to Napoleon III he did not call him brother, but “le bon ami” (good friend). Soon on the political horizon appeared the Eastern question, artfully put forward with a secret motive by Napoleon III; his cunning calculations were justified without delay; the Russian troops crossed the Pruth in 1853, and occupied the principality, as a guarantee, until the demands presented to the Ottoman Porte by the emperor Nicholas were complied with. Austrian ingratitude opened a safe path for the snares of Anglo-French diplomacy. The Eastern War began, at first upon Turkish territory and afterwards concentrated itself in the Crimean peninsula around Sebastopol; France, England, and afterwards, in 1855, little Sardinia, in alliance with Turkey, took up arms against Russia; on the side of the allies lay the sympathy of all neutral Europe, which already dreamed of wresting Russia’s conquests from her.[b]

EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE CRIMEAN WAR

The revolution of July, 1830, by threatening Europe with the ideas then triumphing in France, had tightened the bonds, previously a little relaxed, between the czar and the two great German powers, Austria and Prussia. Independently of diplomatic conferences, the three monarchs had frequent interviews for the purpose of adopting measures to oppose the invasion of the revolutionary principle. Even whilst affecting to abandon the west to the dissolution towards which he felt it was marching, and to regard it as afflicted with approaching senility, Nicholas by no means lost sight of its development. But the East, then in combustion, remained the true mark of Russian policy. A movement was on foot for the overthrow of the declining Ottoman power, and its substitution by an Arab power, inaugurated by Muhammed Ali, the pasha of Egypt. France regarded this movement with no unfriendly eye, but Russia entered a protest. By giving the most colossal proportions to this Eastern Question, which extended as far as the countries of central Asia, the situation created grave embarrassments for the British government. For, to begin with, when, in 1833, Ibrahim Pasha, at the head of the Egyptian army, was ready to cross the Taurus and march on Constantinople, within two months the northern power (summoned to aid by that very sultan whom Russia had hitherto so greatly humiliated) landed on the Asiatic coast of the Bosporus a body of fifteen thousand men in readiness to protect that capital; then the secret treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi (July 8th, 1833) granted her, as the price of an offensive and defensive alliance with the Porte, the withdrawal in her exclusive favour of the prohibition forbidding armed vessels of foreign nations to enter the waters of Constantinople; finally, by the conclusion of the Treaty of London July 15th, 1840, which left France, still obstinately attached to the cause of Muhammed Ali, outside the European concert, she had the joy of causing the rupture of the entente cordiale between that country and Great Britain—but only momentarily, for a new treaty, concluded the 13th of July, 1841, likewise in London, readmitted the French government to the concert.

The events of the year 1848, by bringing back the Russians into Moldavia and Wallachia, afforded Europe new apprehensions relative to the preservation, growing daily more difficult, of the Ottoman Empire and the political balance, the latter of which was seriously threatened if not destroyed by the colossus of the north, with its population now increased to as much as sixty-five million souls. But Germany was absorbed by the serious situation of her own affairs, to which the czar was far from remaining a stranger; and the latter linked himself by new ties to Austria, in whose favour he had already renounced his share in the protectorate over the republic of Cracow, when at the request of the Vienna cabinet he marched against insurgent Hungary (June, 1849) an army which beat the insurrectionary forces, compelled them to submission, and thus closed the abyss in which one of the oldest monarchies of Christendom was about to be engulfed. Then, in 1850, chosen as arbiter between Austria and Prussia, who were on the point of a rupture, the czar turned the scale in favour of Austria, and kept Prussia in check by threats.

“Austria will soon astonish the world by her immense ingratitude”: this famous prophetic saying of Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg, prime minister of the young emperor Francis Joseph, was not slow of accomplishment. The ingratitude was a necessity which the history of Austria explains; for in her case, as for the rest of Europe, the continued and immoderate aggrandisement of Russia was the greatest of dangers. This leads us, in finishing this general glance over the history of the period, to say a word on the complications which, at the moment of the empire’s attaining its apogee, commenced for it a new phase.

We have elsewhere explained the final cause of the decay of Turkey. That decay was consummated in favour of the northern neighbour who followed with attentive gaze the progress of what she called the death struggle. Certain words pronounced by the autocrat on this subject, and consigned to diplomatic despatches, had, not long ago, a great circulation. But the influence of Russia was counterbalanced by that of France and that of Great Britain. The cabinets of Paris and Vienna obtained important concessions, we might say diplomatic triumphs, from Constantinople—the one in relation to the Holy Places, the other on the subject of Montenegro. Russian jealousy immediately awoke. According to the czar, Turkey had a choice between two things only: she must regard Prussia as either her greatest friend or her greatest enemy. To remind her of this, and to neutralise the embassy of the prince of Linanges on behalf of Austria, Nicholas sent Prince Menshikov, one of his ministers and confidants, to Constantinople. Arriving February 28th, 1853, Menshikov exhibited a haughty and irritable demeanour; and, after astonishing the Divan by his noisy opposition, put forward pretensions relative to the Holy Places which were only designed to lull the vigilance of England, but were soon followed by others more serious and exorbitant; for they amounted to nothing less than the restoration to the czar of the protectorate over all the sultan’s subjects professing the Græco-Russian worship—that is to say the great majority of the inhabitants of Turkey in Europe.

OUTBREAK OF THE CRIMEAN WAR (1853 A.D.)

In vain the Divan protested; in vain the friendly powers interceded. Unable to obtain the satisfaction he was demanding with the extreme of violence, the Russian ambassador extraordinary quitted the Bosporous with menace on his lips. And, in effect, on the 2nd of July, the czar’s troops crossed the Pruth to occupy, contrary to all treaty stipulations, the two Danubian principalities. Nicholas was not prepared for war and did not expect to be obliged to have recourse to that last appeal; he hoped to triumph over the Divan by audacity. Moreover, he did not think the western powers were in a position to come to an understanding and to act in common. He was mistaken: Turkey’s death struggle did not prevent her from making a supreme effort to sell her life dearly, if it were impossible for her to save it; and on the 26th of September the sultan declared war on the aggressor. Hostilities began in the course of the month of October, first on the Danube and afterwards in Asia, where a surprise made the Turks masters of the little maritime fort of St. Nicholas or Chefketil. The Porte was not long abandoned to its own resources, for the time of political torpor in regard to the territorial aggrandisement of the Muscovite colossus had gone by; the eyes of all were at last opened and a European crisis was inevitable. At that moment, the fleets of France and England were already at the entrance of the Dardanelles; and even before the end of October these fine naval armies passed the straits under the authority of a firman, and approached Constantinople. In consequence of the position taken up by these two states, the autocrat broke off relations with them in the beginning of February, 1854. On the 21st of the same month he informed his subjects of the fact in a manifesto, recalling to some extent, by its tone, by its biblical references, and its exalted language, the Treaty of the Holy Alliance. It may be worth while to reproduce here the following passage:

“Against Russia fighting for orthodoxy England and France enter the lists as champions of the enemies of Christianity. But Russia will not fail in her sacred vocation; if the frontier is invaded by the enemy we are ready to resist him with the energy of which our ancestors have bequeathed us the example. Are we not to-day still the same people whose valour was attested by the memorable displays of the year 1812? May the Most High aid us to prove it by our deeds. In this hope, and fighting for our oppressed brothers who confess the faith of Christ, Russia will have but one heart and voice to cry: ‘God, our Saviour! whom have we to fear? Let Christ arise and let his enemies be scattered!’”

FRANCE, ENGLAND, AND TURKEY IN ALLIANCE

[1854 A.D.]

Thus, by an almost miraculous concourse of circumstances, an alliance was formed between France and England, those two ancient and ardent rivals. Preceded by a formal alliance with the Porte (March 12th), it was signed in London, April 10th, 1854. This was not all: this memorable document was immediately submitted to the governments of Austria and Prussia and sanctioned by a protocol signed at Vienna by the four powers, by which the justice of the cause sustained by those of the west was solemnly proclaimed. Austria and Prussia laid down the conditions of their eventual participation in the war in another treaty, that of Berlin, of the 20th of April, 1854, to which the Germanic Confederation on its side gave its adhesion. Finally at Baïadji-Keui, on the 14th of June, 1854, the great Danubian power also concluded a treaty with the Ottoman Porte, in virtue of which she was authorised to enter into military occupation of the principalities, whether she should have previously expelled the Russian army or whether the latter should of its own will have decided to evacuate them. Russia was in the most complete isolation; the Scandinavian states, who had hitherto been her allies, declared themselves neutral; an insurrection in her favour, which was preparing in Servia, was prevented; that of the Greeks, openly favoured by King Otto, was stifled. The Turks, thus effectively protected, were able to turn all their forces on the frontiers, and to prove by heroic acts that they had not lost all the bravery of their ancestors. In return for Europe’s efforts in favour of the integrity of his empire, and in order to ward off the reproach they might incur by supporting the cause of the crescent against a Christian state, the sultan as early as the 6th of June, 1854, published an edict or irade, by which he improved in a notable manner the condition of the rayas, and prepared for their civil freedom, as well as for a complete remodelling of the laws which, governing up to that day the internal government of the Ottoman Empire, seemed to render its preservation almost impossible.

Thus that movement of expansion to which Russia had been impelled during four centuries, and which by conquest after conquest, due either to diplomacy or the sword, had made Russian power the bugbear of Europe, finds itself suddenly arrested. “Republican or Cossack,” was the famous prognostic of Napoleon.[c]

The immense superiority of the marines belonging to the allies made it possible to attack Russia on every sea. They bombarded the military port of Odessa on the Black Sea (April 22nd, 1854), but respected the city and the commercial port; the Russian establishments in the Caucasus had been burned by the Russians themselves. They blockaded Kronstadt on the Baltic, landed on the islands of Åland, and took the fortress of Bomarsund (August 16th, 1854).[f]

THE TAKING OF BOMARSUND

This fight had lasted from four in the morning until four in the evening, when the allies saw a white flag over the tower battlements. The commander asked an armistice of two hours, which was granted. He recommenced firing before the interval was over. The French batteries overthrew the armaments, whilst the Vincennes chasseurs acting as free-shooters attacked the cannoneers. Resistance ceased towards evening and the tower yielded at three o’clock in the morning. One officer and thirty men were made prisoners. On Monday no notice was taken of provocation from the fortress, but preparations were made for the morrow.

On the morning of August 15th the English attacked the north tower. In six hours three of their large cannon had been able to pierce the granite and make a breach of twenty feet. The north tower was not long in surrendering; four English and two French vessels directed their fire on the large fortress. A white flag was hoisted on the rampart nearest the sea. Two officers of the fleet were sent to the governor, who said, “I yield to the marine.” This officer had only a few dead and seventy wounded, but smoke poured in through the badly constructed windows, bombs burst in the middle of the fortress, without mentioning the carbine fire of the free-shooters. A longer resistance was useless.[g]

In 1855 the Russians bombarded Sveaborg. The allies attacked the fortified monastery of Solovetski, in the White Sea, and in the sea of Okhotsk they blockaded the Siberian ports, destroyed the arsenals of Petropavlovsk, and disturbed the tranquillity of the Russians on the river Amur.

Menaced by the Austrian concentration in Transylvania, and by the landing of English and French troops at Gallipoli and Varna, the Russians made a last and vain attempt to gain possession of Silistria, which they had held in a state of siege from April to July at the cost of a great number of men. In the Dobrudja an expedition directed by the French was without result from a military point of view, the soldiers being thinned out by cholera and paludal fevers. The Russians decided to evacuate the principalities, which were at once occupied by the Austrians in accord with Europe and the sultan. The war on the Danube was at an end.

THE SEAT OF WAR TRANSFERRED TO THE CRIMEA (1854 A.D.)

The war in the Crimea was just about to commence.[f] Siege-trains were ordered from England and France, transports were prepared, and other preparations were gradually made. But the cholera attacked both the armies and the fleets, which for two months lay prostrate under this dreadful scourge.

In the Black Sea, meantime, the preparations for the Crimean expedition were pressed forward with greater energy in proportion as the cholera abated. But many successive delays occurred. Originally the invading force was to have sailed on the 15th of August; then the 20th was the day; then the 22nd; then the 26th; then the 1st of September (by which time the French siege-train would have arrived at Varna); then the 2nd of September. At length all was ready; and 58,000, out of 75,000 men, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, were embarked at Baltjik on the 7th. The French numbered 25,000, the English the same; and there was a picked corps of about 8,000 Turks. In a flotilla of between two and three hundred vessels, this first and much larger part of the united army were transported up the coast to Fidonisi, or the Island of Serpents; from which point to Cape Tarkhan, in the Crimea, they would make both the shortest and the most sheltered passage. Being reviewed and found all ready at Fidonisi, the armada took its second departure on the 11th, and reached without accident the destined shore on the 14th. On that day the troops were landed prosperously at “Old Fort,” some twenty miles beyond Eupatoria, or Koslov, within four or five easy days’ march from Sebastopol. Upon this great fortress the columns were at once directed; while the transports returned in haste to fetch the reserves, amounting to about 15,000 men.

Contrary to the expectation of the allies, Prince Menshikov, who commanded in the Crimea, had resolved not to oppose their landing, but to await them on the left, or southern, bank of the river Alma. The nature of his position may be gathered from Lord Raglan’s despatch. He says:

“In order that the gallantry exhibited by her majesty’s troops, and the difficulties they had to meet, may be fairly estimated, I deem it right, even at the risk of being considered tedious, to endeavour to make you acquainted with the position the Russians had taken up.

“It crossed the great road about two miles and a half from the sea, and is very strong by nature. The bold and almost precipitous range of heights, of from 350 to 400 feet, that from the sea closely border the left bank of the river, here ceases and formed their left, and turning thence round a great amphitheatre or wide valley, terminates at a salient pinnacle where their right rested, and whence the descent to the plain was more gradual. The front was about two miles in extent. Across the mouth of this great opening is a lower ridge at different heights, varying from 60 to 150 feet, parallel to the river, and at distances from it of from 600 to 800 yards. The river itself is generally fordable for troops, but its banks are extremely rugged, and in most parts steep; the willows along it had been cut down, in order to prevent them from affording cover to the attacking party, and in fact everything had been done to deprive an assailant of any species of shelter. In front of the position on the right bank, at about 200 yards from the Alma, is the village of Burliuk, and near it a timber bridge, which had been partly destroyed by the enemy. The high pinnacle and ridge before alluded to was the key of the position, and consequently, there the greatest preparations had been made for defence. Half-way down the height and across its front was a trench of the extent of some hundred yards, to afford cover against an advance up the even steep slope of the hill. On the right, and a little retired, was a powerful covered battery, armed with heavy guns, which flanked the whole of the right of the position. Artillery, at the same time, was posted at the points that best commanded the passage of the river and its approaches generally. On the slopes of these hills (forming a sort of table land) were placed dense masses of the enemy’s infantry, whilst on the height above was his great reserve, the whole amounting, it is supposed, to between 45,000 and 50,000 men.”

It was against this fortress—for it was little less—the British, French, and Turkish forces were led, having broken up their camp at Kimishi on the 19th of September. The way led along continual steppes, affording no shelter from the burning heat of the sun, nor water to assuage the intolerable thirst suffered by all. The only relief was afforded by the muddy stream of Bulganak, which the men drank with avidity. That day an insignificant skirmish took place between a body of Cossacks and the light division. On passing over the brow of a hill, the former were discovered drawn up in order. A slight fire was opened, which wounded three or four of the allies, but a gun drove up and threw a shell with such wonderful precision in the midst of the enemy that above a dozen were knocked over by this one projectile, and the Cossacks speedily disappeared.[d]

THE BATTLE OF THE ALMA (1854 A.D.)

The allies’ plan of aggression was quite as simple as the Russian plan of defence. It consisted in turning the enemy’s two wings and then overwhelming them by a front attack. On the extreme right General Bosquet, in advance of the rest of the army, was to approach rapidly the Alma, cross it at a point not far from its mouth, ascend the slopes at all costs, then fall suddenly on the Russians’ left, surround them, and throw them back on the centre. This movement carried out, Canrobert’s and Prince Napoleon’s divisions, supported by a portion of the English army, would cross the river, climb the heights between Almatamak and Burliuk, and make the grand attack. At the same moment the English army at the left of the French lines would endeavour to turn the enemy’s right, and thus secure the day. Forey’s division would remain in reserve ready to help either the weaker columns or those in immediate danger, as the case might be. On the evening of the 19th of September Field-Marshal Saint-Arnaud had sent to each division a tracing of the proposed order of battle. The plan was so simple that the soldiers had already anticipated and guessed it. At nightfall they gathered round the camp fires and discussed the chances of the plan with gleeful excitement. They pointed out to each other the Russian camp fires, scintillating dots of light shining out on the hill sides, and tried to reckon up the enemy’s number by the number of lights. A good deal of imagination mingled with their calculations, but the results did not frighten them, they were convinced that the following day they would rest victorious on the plateau.

At the first sounds of the reveille the troops of Bosquet’s division were a-foot and ready to start, very proud of the place assigned them by the confidence of the commander-in-chief. The fog having somewhat lifted, at seven o’clock they left the banks of the Bulganak and marched off in quick time towards the Alma. They were not more than two kilometres distant from it when one of the field-marshal’s aides-de-camp arrived hot-foot with orders to halt, as the English were not ready. Obedience was yielded with some degree of unwillingness, which grew to impatience as the halt was prolonged. It was already half-past eleven when the march was resumed. The division was formed into two columns; Autemarre’s brigade marched towards Almatamak, where the French scouts had just discovered a ford; the other brigade, under Bouat, turned towards the sea, so as to cross the river near its mouth by a sand bank shown them by a steam pinnace. From their dominating positions the Russians could see this manœuvre, but they paid no attention to it, judging that nature had provided sufficient defence for them on that side. They looked upon the whole of this movement as merely a diversion, and concentrated all their watchfulness on the main body of the army, which had hitherto remained motionless three kilometres to the rear of the Alma.

In the mean time Autemarre’s brigade, close on Almatamak and hitherto hidden from the enemy by the escarpments of the neighbouring cliff, began to cross the Alma. The 3rd zouaves were the first over the ford, and began with amazing “go” to climb the plateau. This ascent, which the Russians, heavily equipped and accustomed to the level, believed impossible, was relatively easy for men accustomed time out of mind to the foot-tracks of African mountains. It was wonderful to see these strong, agile soldiers springing up the slopes, giving a helping hand to one another, clinging to tufts of grass and scrub, and profiting by the smallest foothold. The Algerian sharp-shooters followed, then the 50th foot. The most difficult matter was to get the artillery over, and the boldest faltered before such a task. By a sheer miracle of stout-heartedness and energy they managed to hoist several pieces the whole length of the escarpments. Suddenly the zouaves appeared at the top of the hill, before the very eyes of the astonished Russians, and by a brisk fire drove off the enemy’s vedettes. In another moment Algerian sharp-shooters and men of the 50th foot climbed the last slopes in their turn; then the field guns, dragged up to the heights, were placed in line. At this identical moment Bouat’s brigade, which had been delayed in crossing the bar, appeared on the extreme right and began to scale the cliffs nearest the sea. Only the second battalion of the Minsk infantry occupied this position, which had hitherto been held impregnable. Debouching from the little village of Aklese they ran forward; but confused by the fantastic aspect of this unexpected enemy, flurried by the gaps made in their ranks by the French long-range guns, they wasted no time over doubling back. Soon, running away altogether, they threw themselves on the Russian reserves, followed by the shots of French artillery and by the missiles thrown on to the plateau by the fleet at anchor near the shore.

Saint-Arnaud, from his position in the rear of the Alma, had watched the zouaves climb the hill. When they had disappeared over the crest, he had listened anxiously for the sharp-shooters to open fire. Soon the roar of cannon was heard, but it was difficult to believe that the artillery was already engaged. “Are they French guns or Russian guns?” asked the staff-officers grouped round the commander-in-chief. But the field-marshal joyfully cried: “I assure you it is Bosquet’s cannon; he has reached the heights.” Then searching the distance with his glasses: “I can see red trousers. Ah! there I recognise my African veteran Bosquet!” Summoning his generals, Saint-Arnaud gave then the final instructions. The sound of the guns had revived his failing strength; his voice was as strong as in his palmiest days, and his face was lighted up with confidence, a last and touching reflection of his warrior spirit. By a gesture he indicated to his officers the course of the river and the hills which shut in the horizon: “Gentlemen,” he said, “this battle will be known as the battle of the Alma.”

It being now one o’clock in the afternoon, the front attack was immediately begun. The first division, under command of General Canrobert, held the right; to the left was drawn up the 3rd division commanded by Prince Napoleon. Following the common plan, the latter was to attach itself to the English right, but it did so only imperfectly, on account of the slowness of the allies. Set in motion simultaneously, the two French divisions marched towards the Alma. This time the Russians had anticipated the attack and were ready to repulse it. Sheltered by clumps of trees, enclosing walls, and the gardens bordering the river, innumerable sharp-shooters directed a well-sustained fire against the enemy, and, in addition, a battery established on the edge of the plateau covered the plain with missiles. Overwhelmed by this murderous fire the French troops halted. But the artillery of the 1st and 3rd divisions shelled the ravines, compelling the Russian sharp-shooters to retreat against a high bank on the left, and by thus diverting their attention enabled the rest of the French army to advance as far as the Alma. Laying down their knapsacks the soldiers themselves sounded the river with branches of trees and boldly crossed wherever it appeared practicable. Towards two in the afternoon the 3rd division effected a crossing not far from Burluk. As to Canrobert’s division, it had, almost entirely, already found a footing on the left bank a little above Almatamak. His first battalions had already reached the heights and slanted off to the right so as to join hands with Bosquet’s division.

It was quite time. When Prince Menshikov was informed of the appearance of Bosquet on the heights near the mouth of the Alma, he at first refused to believe the news and only the roar of the cannon had convinced him. Realising the greatness of the danger, the Russian commander-in-chief immediately hurried to reinforce his left flank, which in his excess of confidence he had left almost uncovered. As the brigades of Autemarre and Bouat took up a position, fresh Russian troops debouched on the western side of the plateau. First a battery of light artillery, which arrived before the infantry it was summoned to support, lost half its number in a few moments; then four battalions of the Moscow infantry regiment supported by another battery. Shortly after this occurred, Prince Menshikov, having himself visited the scene of action, decided to make a fresh attempt. By his orders three battalions of the Minsk regiment, four squadrons of hussars and two batteries of Cossacks were drawn from the reserve to afford active support to the troops already engaged. Happily for the French these troops arrived only in driblets, so that their impact was weakened by being broken up. Even so their little main body, launched on the plateau with no retreat possible, found itself in a position almost as critical as it was glorious. If it continued to penetrate into the Russian flank victory was assured, but if it faltered it had no other prospect than to be brought to bay on one escarpment after another and routed in the valley, beyond hope of salvation. The Russian troops were not more numerous than the French, but the twelve guns of the latter could scarcely hope to hold out against the forty pieces which the Russians had brought into this part of the field. On receiving overnight the commander-in-chief’s instructions, General Bosquet had replied: “You can count on me, but remember I cannot hold out for more than two hours.”

The general weariness was great and moreover the ammunition was giving out. With growing anguish Bosquet turned his gaze towards the plain, waiting for the general attack which was to lighten his task. His joy may be imagined when he heard on the left, above Almatamak, the sharp crack of the zouaves’ rifles, and saw appearing over the edge of the plateau General Canrobert’s first battalions.

Alexander Sergevitch Menshikov

(1787-1869)

Help was at hand, and with help the almost certainty of victory. At that very moment a happy inspiration of Saint-Arnaud’s rendered assurance sure. Judging that the moment had arrived for calling on his reserves, he sent orders to General Forey to bring up one of his brigades to succour Bosquet, and with the other to support General Canrobert. From that moment the tide of battle set steadily against the Russians. Surrounded on their left wing, outflanked in their centre, threatened by the French reserves, they yielded step by step, no doubt with fearful reprisals, but finally they retired. It was in vain that the Minsk and Moscow regiments, retreating obliquely, tried to resist both Bosquet’s and Canrobert’s divisions; these brave endeavours only prolonged the resistance without affecting the result. After losing the greater number of their leaders they were compelled to retreat behind the heights and to retire to a tower for telegraphic communication which marked the enemy’s centre. There a final bloody engagement took place. At last the flags of the 3rd zouaves and the 39th foot were hoisted on the top of the tower, signal of the victory which the Russians thenceforward never disputed.[h]

The part taken by the British troops in the final assault is thus described by the special correspondent of the Times:

“The British line was struggling through the river and up the heights in masses, firm, indeed, but mowed down by the murderous fire of the batteries and by grape, round shot, shell, canister, case shot, and musketry, from some of the guns of the central battery, and from an immense and compact mass of Russian infantry. Then commenced one of the most bloody and determined struggles in the annals of war. The 2nd division, led by Sir De L. Evans in the most dashing manner, crossed the stream on the right. The 7th Fusiliers, led by Colonel Yea, were swept down by fifties. The 55th, 30th, and 95th, led by Brigadier Pennefather, who was in the thickest of the fight, cheering on his men, again and again were checked indeed, but never drew back in their onward progress, which was marked by a fierce roll of Minié musketry; and Brigadier Adams, with the 41st, 47th, and 49th, bravely charged up the hill, and aided them in the battle. Sir George Brown, conspicuous on a grey horse, rode in front of his light division, urging them with voice and gesture. Gallant fellows! they were worthy of such a gallant chief. The 7th, diminished by one-half, fell back to re-form their columns lost for the time; the 23rd, with eight officers dead and four wounded, were still rushing to the front, aided by the 19th, 33rd, 77th, and 88th. Down went Sir George in a cloud of dust in front of the battery. He was soon up and shouted, ‘23rd, I’m all right. Be sure I’ll remember this day,’ and led them on again, but in the shock produced by the fall of their chief the gallant regiment suffered terribly while paralysed for a moment. Meantime the Guards, on the right of the light division, and the brigade of Highlanders were storming the heights on the left. Their line was almost as regular as though they were in Hyde Park. Suddenly a tornado of round and grape rushed through from the terrible battery, and a roar of musketry from behind thinned their front ranks by dozens. It was evident that we were just able to contend against the Russians, favoured as they were by a great position. At this very time an immense mass of Russian infantry were seen moving down towards the battery. They halted. It was the crisis of the day. Sharp, angular, and solid, they looked as if they were cut out of the solid rock. It was beyond all doubt that if our infantry, harassed and thinned as they were, got into the battery they would have to encounter again a formidable fire, which they were but ill calculated to bear. Lord Raglan saw the difficulties of the situation. He asked if it would be possible to get a couple of guns to bear on these masses. The reply was, ‘Yes,’ and an artillery officer (Colonel Dixon) brought up two guns to fire on the Russian squares. The first shot missed, but the next, and the next, and the next cut through the ranks so cleanly, and so keenly, that a clear lane could be seen for a moment through the square. After a few rounds the square became broken, wavered to and fro, broke, and fled over the brow of the hill, leaving behind it six or seven distinct lines of dead, lying as close as possible to each other, marking the passage of the fatal messengers. This act relieved our infantry of a deadly incubus, and they continued their magnificent and fearful progress up the hill. The duke encouraged his men by voice and example, and proved himself worthy of his proud command and of the royal race from which he comes. ‘Highlanders,’ said Sir C. Campbell, ere they came to the charge, ‘don’t pull a trigger till you’re within a yard of the Russians!’ They charged, and well they obeyed their chieftain’s wish; Sir Colin had his horse shot under him, but his men took the battery at a bound. The Russians rushed out, and left multitudes of dead behind them. The Guards had stormed the right of the battery ere the Highlanders got into the left, and it is said the Scots Fusilier Guards were the first to enter. The second and light division crowned the heights. The French turned the guns on the hill against the flying masses, which the cavalry in vain tried to cover. A few faint struggles from the scattered infantry, a few rounds of cannon and musketry and the enemy fled to the southeast, leaving three generals, three guns, 700 prisoners, and 4,000 wounded behind them. The battle of the Alma was won. It is won with a loss of nearly 3,000 killed and wounded on our side. The Russians’ retreat was covered by their cavalry, but if we had had an adequate force we could have captured many guns and multitudes of prisoners.”

It appears from papers found in Prince Menshikov’s carriage, that he had counted on holding his position on the Alma for at least three weeks. He had erected scaffolds from which his ladies might view the military exploits during the period of obstruction he had provided for the invading force, but he was hurried away in the midst of a flying army, in a little more than three hours.

THE SEIZURE OF BALAKLAVA (1854 A.D.)

Without sufficient cavalry, and having exhausted the ammunition of the artillery, the allies did not pursue the defeated foe; but rested for a couple of days, to recruit the able-bodied, succour the wounded, and bury the dead. Then they went forward towards Sebastopol. A change now took place, as remarkable an incident as any in the campaign. Learning that the enemy had established a work of some force on the Belbek, and that this river could not readily be rendered a means of communication with the fleet, and calculating that preparations would be made for the defence of Sebastopol chiefly on the north side, the commanders resolved to change the line of operations, to turn the whole position of Sebastopol, and establish themselves at Balaklava. After resting for a couple of days, they started on the march, turned to the left after the first night’s bivouac, and struck across a woody country, in which the troops had to steer their way by compass; regained an open road from Bagtcheserai to Balaklava; encountered there at Khutor Mackenzia (Mackenzie’s Farm) a part of the Russian army, which fled in consternation at the unexpected meeting; and were in possession of Balaklava on the 26th—within four days after leaving the heights above the Alma. Thus an important post was occupied without a blow.

Balaklava is a close port, naturally cut by the waters in the living rock; so deep that the bowsprit of a ship at anchor can almost be touched on shore, so strong that the force possessing it could retain communication with the sea in spite of any enemy. It is a proof of Menshikov’s want of foresight, or of his extreme weakness after the battle of the 20th, that Balaklava was left without effectual defence. The change of operations reminds one of Nelson’s manœuvre at the Nile, in attacking the enemy on the shore side, where the ships were logged with lumber and unprepared for action.

By this date, however, the allies were destined to sustain a grave loss, in the departure of Marshal Saint-Arnaud. The French commander-in-chief had succeeded in three achievements, each one of which would be sufficient to mark the great soldier. He had thrown his forces into the battle on the Alma with all the ardour of which his countrymen are capable, but with that perfect command which the great general alone retains. He had succeeded in exciting the soldierly fire of the French, and yet in preserving the friendliest feelings towards their rivals and allies, the English. He had succeeded in retaining his place on horseback, notwithstanding mortal agonies that would have subdued the courage, or at least the physical endurance, of any other man. Many can meet death, numbers can sustain torture; but the power of holding out in action against the depressing and despairing misgivings of internal maladies, is a kind of resolution which nature confers upon very few indeed, and amongst those very few Marshal Saint-Arnaud will be ranked as one of the most distinguished. He was succeeded in the command of the French army by General Canrobert, and died at sea on the 29th. By this event Lord Raglan became commander-in-chief of the allied forces in the Crimea.

THE ADVANCE ON SEBASTOPOL

Had Marshal Saint-Arnaud lived, it is hardly to be doubted that he would have attempted to take Sebastopol by the summary process of breaching and storming instead of the slower one of a regular siege. The former plan might have been successful, for it is now known, upon the authority of the Russians themselves, that when the allies first broke ground before the fortress its preparations for resistance were very incomplete. On the other hand, events have too painfully demonstrated that the force with which the siege was undertaken was totally inadequate, both in numbers and weight of metal. It was not sufficient to invest the place on every side, or to hinder the garrison of one of the strongest fortresses in the world from receiving unlimited reinforcements and supplies of all kinds. Hence, to use General Peyronnet Thompson’s homely but very apt illustration, the operations before Sebastopol have hitherto been like the work of drawing a badger out of one end of a box, with an interminable series of badgers entering at the other.

The position occupied by the English before Sebastopol was to the right of the French, at a distance of six miles from their ships. They held the summit of a ridge, whence at long range, they could fire with some effect on the Russian outworks; but as they descended the slope, their force was broken in two or three parts, while they were exposed to a fire like that which destroyed so many brave men at the Alma. The French, on the left, rested on Cape Chersonesus, and were within three miles of their ships, in a position where, though they might suffer from the fire of the garrison, they were protected from the attacks of the Russian army in the field. The attack on the place by the land batteries and by the ships began on the 17th of October. The Russians had closed the entrance to the harbour by sinking two ships of the fine and two frigates (they subsequently sank all the rest of their fleet), and the fire of the allied ships at long range produced so very little effect, whilst the casualties sustained by them were so disproportionate to the damage they inflicted, that the experiment was not repeated.

Eight days afterwards the Russians in turn became the assailants. A large reinforcement having been received under Liprandi, that general was detached to the Tchernaia with some 30,000 troops to attack our rear. The peculiarity of the position of the allied army facilitated its efforts. It has already been explained that Balaklava is at some distance from the lines of the besiegers. The road connecting the two runs through a gorge in the heights which constitute the rear of the British position, and which overlook the small grassy plain that lies to the north of the inlet of Balaklava. The possession of the port and the connecting road are essential to the success of the siege. To defend them, Lord Raglan had placed a body of marines and sailors with some heavy guns on the heights above the village and landing place of Balaklava; beneath the heights he had stationed the 93rd Highlanders, under Sir Colin Campbell, who barred the road down to the village. The plain running northward towards the Tchernaia is intersected by a low, irregular ridge, about two miles and a half from the village, and running nearly at right angles to the rear of the heights on the northwestern slopes of which lay the British army. This ridge in the plain was defended by four redoubts, intervening between the Tchernaia and the British cavalry encamped on the southern part of the plain; and the rising ground in their rear was held by the zouaves, who had entrenched themselves at right angles with the redoubts. The extreme right of our position was on the road to Kamara; the centre about Kadakoi, with the Turkish redoubts in front; the left on the eastern slopes of the high lands running up to the Inkerman ravine.

THE BATTLE OF BALAKLAVA

The object of the Russians was to turn the right and seize Balaklava, burn the shipping in the port, and, cutting off our communication with the sea, establish themselves in our rear. To accomplish this, General Liprandi gathered up his troops behind the defiles at Tchorgun on the Tchernaia. Here, having previously reconnoitred our position, he divided his forces on the morning of the 25th of October, directing one body by the great military road, the other by Kamara, and debouching upon the plain near the Turkish redoubts. The redoubts were armed with two or three heavy ship-guns, and each manned by about 250 Turks. The Russians coming on with the dawn, some 12,000 strong, with from thirty to forty field-guns, attacked the redoubts with horse artillery, and carried them in succession; the Turks firing a few shots, and then flying in disorder under a fire of artillery and the swords of the Cossacks. Sir Colin Campbell, aroused by the firing, instantly drew up the 93rd in front of the village of Kadakoi; and the affrighted Turks rallied for a moment on the flanks of that “living wall of brass,” to use the language of a French writer, presented by the Highlanders. But the redoubts being taken, the enemy’s artillery advanced and opened fire; and the cavalry came rapidly up. As the 93rd was within range, Sir Colin Campbell drew them a little backward behind the crest of the hill. The British cavalry lay to the left of the Highlanders, and a large body of Russian cavalry menaced both. The larger section went towards the encampment of the British cavalry, and were met at once by the heavy brigade, under General Scarlett. A brief but brilliant encounter followed: for a moment the Greys and Enniskillens in the first line seemed swallowed up, in another they reappeared victorious. The long, dense line of the Russian horse had lapped over their flanks; but the second British line, consisting of the 4th and 5th Dragoons, charging, the Russians were broken and rapidly made off. While this was proceeding, a body of some 400 cavalry rode at the Highlanders, who, not deigning to form square, mounted the crest of the hill, behind which they had taken shelter, fired in line two deep, and sent the enemy flying.

But the fighting was not yet over. Seven guns taken in the redoubts yet remained in the possession of the enemy; and Lord Raglan sent an order to Lord Lucan to prevent the enemy from carrying off the guns, if possible. The order was wrongly interpreted as a peremptory order to charge, and in that sense it was repeated by Lord Lucan to Lord Cardigan, who obeyed it and charged into the very centre of the enemy’s position, with a desperate sacrifice of men, but not without inflicting severe blows upon the enemy. Nor was the loss of life entirely a waste. To the Russians the incident proved the unmeasured daring of the foe they had to face; to the British troops it showed the lengths to which discipline and fidelity can be carried. The light cavalry brigade mustered 607 sabres that morning; in the twenty minutes occupied by the charge and the return, they lost 335 horses, and had nearly as many officers and men killed or wounded. The heavy dragoons and the Chasseurs d’Afrique covered the retreat of the bleeding remnant of this daring band. It was now nearly noon: the fourth division, under Sir George Cathcart, and the first division, under the Duke of Cambridge, had come up; and the Russians abandoned all the redoubts, except the furthest one to the right. Nothing more was done that day. Looking to the extent of the position previously occupied. Lord Raglan determined to contract his line of defence to the immediate vicinity of Balaklava and the steeps in the right rear of the British army.

Next day the enemy sallied forth from Sebastopol, 7000 or 8000 strong, and attacked the right flank of the British army; but, steadily met by the second division under Sir De Lacy Evans, supported by the brigade of Guards, a regiment of Rifles, two guns from the light division, and two French battalions, the Russians were gallantly repelled, and then chased down to the slope, with a loss of some 600 killed and wounded, and 80 prisoners.

THE BATTLE OF INKERMAN (NOVEMBER 5TH, 1854)

Another fierce engagement, the most important of all in which the belligerents have yet been engaged, took place on the 5th of November. For some days previously, the Russians, who already possessed a large force in the prolonged fortifications, and others to the rear of the allies in the neighbourhood of Balaklava, had been observed to receive large reinforcements, which, added to Liprandi’s corps on the Russian left, of 30,000 or more, and the garrison, would probably justify Lord Raglan’s estimate of 60,000 men arrayed against the allies on the memorable 5th of November. To augment the weight of the force brought down to crush the besiegers, the now useless army of the Danube had been withdrawn from Moldavia, leaving Bessarabia still defended by its special army, but not, it is supposed, entirely exhausting the reinforcements to be brought from the interior. The effort of Menshikov to throw his strength into a succession of powerful and, if possible, decisive blows, is shown by the advance of Dannenberg’s army in the very lightest order, augmenting the numbers about Sebastopol without much regard either to their equipment or provision. The aim was to bear down by accumulated pressure; and it was with such a view that the batteries resumed the bombardment of the allies in their besieged camp, a strong force from the garrison moved out to act with Dannenberg’s army, and Liprandi made a feint, that might have been, had it succeeded, a penetrating attack towards the rear; and as it was, it did busy a portion of the British and French forces. Thus the allies were to be occupied all round, while the weak, unintrenched, and unfortified point in their position towards the valley of the Inkerman was to be penetrated by a force of great weight and momentum.[d]

The English encampments were established between Karabelnaia and the valley of the Tchernaia, on a plateau called Inkerman, which two ravines narrowed at the south in a way which made it a kind of isthmus. Two strong Russian columns, consisting together of thirty-six thousand men, converged in this direction. The first came out from Karabelnaia; the second descended from the heights on the opposite bank of the Tchernaia and crossed that river near its mouth in the bay.

They had to join in order to turn the English camp and take it from the back. Their movements were badly planned; each acted on its own initiative instead of joining. However, the English were in extreme danger. The Karabelnaia column surprised one of their divisions and nearly overwhelmed it by force of numbers. With a small reinforcement the English disputed every inch of ground with desperation and the struggle was prolonged through rain and fog, till the Russian general Soimonov was mortally wounded; fear struck his battalions: they ceased to advance, then retreated, not receiving any orders, and did not return to the combat.

The column which came from the opposite side of the Tchernaia, and which General Pavlov commanded, had in the meantime commenced its attack on the other part of the English camp. Here were furious shocks and long alternations of success and defeat. Although the English right had been joined by their left, having got rid of the Karabelnaia column, the inequality of numbers was still great. The English had driven back the advance guard of Pavlov’s column to the valley of the Tchernaia; but the greater part of this column, supported by an immense artillery (nearly one hundred guns) pushed forward its closely serried battalions with such violence that in the end they were masters of an earthwork, which protected the right side of the English camp (a battery of sand bags).

Had the Russians remained in this position, the allies would have lost the day. Till then the English had made it their pride to keep up the struggle without the help of the French. There was not a moment to lose; two of their generals were killed, several no longer able to fight; the soldiers were exhausted. Lord Raglan called the French, who were awaiting the signal.

General Bosquet, who commanded the corps nearest the English, sent out the first two battalions he had at hand. It would have been too late if the enemy had passed the fortification they had seized and had extended beyond the isthmus. The Russians had been less active than brave. The French foot soldiers renewed the marvellous charge of the English cavalry at Balaklava. In their vehemence, they drove the greater number of the Russians far behind the battery of sand bags; they were repulsed in their turn by the mass of the enemy; but the movement of the latter had nevertheless been checked. The Russian leaders were not able to manœuvre promptly enough to place themselves, as they might have done, between the English and the new reinforcements of French.

The French battalions arrived in double quick time with that agility already shown at Alma by the soldier trained in African wars. The Russians repulsed a second attack; they succumbed under a third made with more reinforcements. One of their regiments was precipitated by the French zouaves and turcos from the summit of the rocks into a deep ravine where it was shattered. The rest of the Russian troops made a slow and painful retreat under the terrible fire of the French artillery.

This sanguinary day cost the Russians twelve thousand men, killed, wounded, or missing. The English lost about twenty-six hundred men, the French seventeen to eighteen hundred. Beside their decisive intervention on the plateau of Inkerman, the French troops had repulsed a sortie of the garrison at Sebastopol.

According to military historians, the check of the Russians was due, to a great extent, to their want of mobility and their incapacity for manœuvring; the pedantic and circumstantial tactics imposed on them by Nicholas only served to hinder them in presence of the enemy.

The allies, victorious, but suffering after such a victory, suspended the assault and decided to keep on the defensive until the arrival of new forces. They completed the circumvallation which protected the plateau of Chersonesus, from Inkerman to Balaklava; the Russians had retired completely; the French protected themselves on the town side by a line of contravallation.[i]

While the allies were occupied in digging trenches, laying mines, and increasing the number of their batteries, the Russians, directed by the able Tottleben, strengthened those defences of the city that were already in existence and under the fire of the enemy erected new ones. The allies, in spite of the sufferings incident to a severe winter, established themselves more and more securely, and on a strip of sandy coast prepared to defy all the forces of the empire of the czar.

On the 26th of December, 1825, Nicholas had been consecrated by the blood of conspirators as the armed apostle of the principle of authority, the destroying angel of counter-revolution. This was a part that he played not without glory for thirty years, having put down the Polish, Hungarian, and Rumanian revolutions and prevented Prussia from yielding to the seductions of the German revolution. He had obstructed if not destroyed the French Revolution in all its legal manifestations, the monarchy of July, the republic, and the empire. He had saved the Austrian Empire and prevented the creation of a democratic German empire. Like Don Quixote he was chivalrous, generous, disinterested, but represented a superannuated principle that was out of place in the modern world. Day by day his character as chief of a chimerical alliance became more of an anachronism; particularly since 1848 aspirations of the people had been in direct contradiction to his theories of patriarchal despotism. In Europe this contradiction had diminished the glory of the czar, but in Russia his authority remained unimpaired owing to his successes in Turkey, Persia, Caucasus, Poland, and Hungary. All complaints against the police were forgotten as well as the restrictions laid on the press, and all efforts to control the government in matters of diplomacy, wars, and administration were relinquished; it was believed that the laborious monarch would foresee everything and bring all affairs of state to a fortunate conclusion. Indeed the success of this policy was sufficient to silence the opposition offered by a few timid souls, and to furnish justification for blind confidence in the existing government.

The disasters in the East were a terrible awakening; invincible as the Russian fleet had hitherto been considered, it was obliged to take refuge in its own ports or to be sunk in the harbour of Sebastopol. The army had been conquered at Alma by the allies and at Silistria by the despised Turks; a body of western troops fifty thousand strong was insolently established before Sebastopol, and of the two former allies Prussia was neutral and Austria had turned traitor. The enforced silence of the press for the last thirty years had favoured the committal of dishonest acts by employés, the organisation of the army had been destroyed by administrative corruption. Everything had been expected of the government, and now the Crimean War intervened and threatened complete bankruptcy to autocracy; absolute patriarchal monarchy was obliged to retreat before the Anglo-French invasion. The higher the hopes entertained for the conquest of Constantinople, the deliverance of Jerusalem and the extension of the Slavonic empire, the more cruel the disappointment. At this moment a prodigious activity manifested itself throughout Russia, tongues were unloosed, and a great manuscript literature was passed secretly from hand to hand, bringing audacious accusations against the government and all the hierarchy of officials:

“Awake, O Russia!” exhorted one of these anonymous pamphlets; “awake from your deep sleep of ignorance and apathy. Long enough we have been in bondage to the successors of the Tatar khans; rise to your full height before the throne of the despot and demand of him a reckoning for the national disaster. Tell him plainly that his throne is not God’s altar and that God has not condemned our race to eternal slavery. Russia, O czar, had given into your hands the supreme power, and how have you exerted it? Blinded by ignorance and passion, you have sought power for its own sake and have forgotten the interests of the country. You have consumed your life in reviewing troops, in altering uniforms, and in signing your name to the legislative projects of ignorant charlatans. You have created the detestable institution of press-censorship that you might enjoy peace and remain in ignorance of the needs and complaints of your people. You have buried Truth and rolled a great stone to the door of her sepulchre, and in the vanity of your heart you have exclaimed, ‘For her there shall be no resurrection!’ Notwithstanding, Truth rose on the third day and left the ranks of the dead. Czar, appear before the tribunal of history and of God! You have trodden truth under foot, and refused to others liberty while you were yourself a slave to passion. By your obstinacy and pride you have exhausted Russia and armed the rest of the world against her. Bow your haughty head to the dust and implore forgiveness, ask advice. Throw yourself upon the mercy of your people; with them lies your only hope of safety!”[f]

DEATH OF THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I

[1855 A.D.]

The chivalrous soul of the Emperor Nicholas could not reconcile itself to the complete wreck of all its political and spiritual ideals. Nicholas fell a sacrifice to his persistent pursuit of traditions bequeathed to him by the Alexandrine policy of the last decade.

On the 2nd of March, 1855, Russia, and all European nations, were dismayed by the unexpected news of the sudden death of the emperor Nicholas.[b] “Serve Russia!” were his last words to his son and heir. “I wished to overcome all national afflictions, to leave you a peaceful, well-organized and happy empire.... Providence has ordained otherwise!”[j]

SKRINE’S ESTIMATE OF NICHOLAS

Nicholas I died as grandly as he had lived, in the firm assurance that he had done his duty. The nations of Europe watched him shining as a pillar of fire amid the clouds of anarchy which beset the dawn of his reign. They stood aghast at his aggressions on Turkey and the relentless severity with which he crushed the Polish and Hungarian rebellions. For a generation he was the sword drawn against revolution. He saved Austria from dismemberment, and checked the premature creation of a democratic German Empire. Diplomatists styled him the “Don Quixote of politics”; and his chivalrous spirit had much in common with that of Cervantes’ immortal hero. While he ruled his subjects with a rod of iron, he was ever ready to serve them with an unselfishness which has no parallel in history. But his attempt to stereotype the existing order of things failed because it infringed the law of nature which decrees that all organisms must advance or decay. As the nineteenth century wore on, bringing with it inventions which linked mankind in closer bonds and stimulated the exchange of thought, the czar of all the Russias became an anachronism.

Nicholas’s conceptions of his duties as a ruler were equally based on illusions. He strove to cut Russia adrift from Europe, to place her in quarantine against the contagion of western ideals. Here, again, he essayed the impossible. Thought defied his custom’s barriers, his censorship, his secret police; and Russia was already too deeply impregnated with foreign influences to take the bias which the autocrat sought to give her energies. But, despite the calamities which it brought on his people, Nicholas’s reaction served as a corrective to the cardinal vice of Peter the Great’s reforms—their tendency to denationalise. The world saw in him a despot of the most unmitigated type. When the storm of hatred in which he went down to his grave had passed away, his bitterest foes were fain to admit that he had given to all the peoples of his empire the germs of a sense of brotherhood, a robust faith in Russia, which is the surest guarantee of a splendid and prosperous future. Nor were his subjects slow to recall his many admirable qualities. He was steadfast and true, devoted to the Fatherland, inexorable to himself even more than to others. He despised feudalism and privileges—those quicksands which engulphed the French monarchy and threaten the existence of others as venerable. When Metternich took exception to the grant of the highest Russian order to Field-Marshal Radetzki, on the score of the veteran’s humble origin, Nicholas replied that he valued a man, not for his ancestors but solely for his deserts. In the private relations of life—as a husband, father and friend, he shone with the serenest light, and conferred undying obligations on the empire. Before his reign men spoke of an imperial dynasty; they now allude to the house of Romanov as a “family”; and the domestic joys in which succeeding czars have sought relief from the cares of state find a counterpart in millions of Russian homes.[k]

FOOTNOTES

[68] [The Uniate is a part of the Greek church which has submitted to the supremacy of the pope.]