First, however, Nicholas had an opportunity of crushing another revolt and chastising the supporters of the new ideas. The third revolutionary wave, which was definitely to destroy the old political order in Europe, began in 1848; and it began, as usual, in France. Louis Napoleon, who was destined to give that country its last and not most fortunate experiment in kingship, made an appeal to Nicholas for friendship, if not alliance. But Nicholas liked neither an authority which was set up by the will of the people nor a programme that pandered to the will of the people. He rejected Napoleon’s appeal, and turned rather to Austria, where insurrection seemed to be well on the way to shake even the Hapsburgs from the throne. The Hungarians were on the point of securing their independence, and the mediæval system which Metternich had so long maintained was about to be destroyed. Nicholas gladly supported his brother-autocrat. It was the Russian army of 190,000 men which propped up once more the tottering throne of the Hapsburgs and prolonged the struggle of darkness against light. Nicholas would learn presently the utter selfishness and ungratefulness of Austrian policy, as his last successor would learn at a later date.
The eyes of Nicholas were still upon the south, and the eyes of Europe were upon Nicholas. There can be very little doubt that the whole of the moralising Romanoffs of the nineteenth century had, behind their professions of disinterested regard for the victims of the Turk, a more or less clearly conceived design of gaining Constantinople and passing over the Balkans, to the Mediterranean. Whatever sincerity there was in their zeal for the protection of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, they were far from insensible to the fact that these helpless Greek Christians occupied territory which would, if it were annexed, bring Russia at last to a free and warm sea. In Alexander this motive was so far checked by an effort at sincerity, that he would not interfere between the Greek and the Turk; he would be true to his later resolution to help no insurgents. Nicholas held an even sterner attitude toward insurgents, but the moment Christian subjects of the Sultan rose against their ruler he entirely forgot that they were rebels against an hereditary autocracy. We shall find his successors equally lenient to rebellion in the Balkans; and it is scarcely a diplomatic secret that the Serbs, when they received the brotherly support of the last of the Romanoffs in 1914, looked silently and anxiously for a less disinterested purpose in the act of that monarch.
Nicholas now had the Sultan almost in a state of vassalage, and it seemed to him that he had so far raised the prestige of Russia, and won the gratitude of Austria, that he need hardly consider the western Powers. Hence in 1853 he made a pompous objection when the Sultan granted the French certain privileges in regard to the Christians of Palestine. He sent Prince Menshikoff to Constantinople to establish a definite Russian protectorate over all the Greek Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Secretly, however, Menshikoff was to arrange an alliance with Turkey against France, in case that Power gave trouble, and the secret mission became known to the other Powers. It has been the diplomatic pastime of the Sultans for several generations to take advantage of the mutual jealousy of the Christian Powers which read them such admirable lessons in virtue. Supported, behind the scenes, by the English ambassador, the Sultan refused the Russian proposals, and Nicholas decided upon war. He so little knew the secret action of England that he discussed with the English ambassador at St. Petersburg a plan for the division of the Ottoman Empire: England should, in the teeth of France, occupy Egypt, and Russia should take Constantinople. He at least expected England to be neutral.
It may at least be said for England, which naturally did not care to see the Russian giant cast his shadow over Egypt and the route to India, that it tried earnestly to avert war. France was less pacific. It would like to see Russia in difficulties with England, and it secured an alliance with England to the extent of pressing upon the Tsar a round-table conference on the matters in dispute. The conference was held at Vienna and a scheme of settlement was drawn up. This scheme the Sultan, supported by a growing feeling in his own country and an astute perception of the international jealousy, declined to accept without modification; and Russia refused to admit the modifications he suggested. Austria had played the Tsar false. In January (1854) the English and French fleets had entered the Black Sea. The Sultan had at the last moment signed the Vienna Note, and the Tsar had agreed to sign it with certain modifications. It was Austria that procured the rejection of these reserves. What came to be known as the Crimean War opened.
Nicholas has been severely judged by some historians for his policy. This censure is easy for the historian who has before his eyes the issue as well as the commencement of the war. Russia was beaten and humiliated. After appalling sacrifices she was compelled to sign a very disadvantageous peace, and her new prestige in Europe fell considerably. It is, perhaps, unfair to judge the man by the issue. But we may very well surmise that Nicholas did little more than cloak an aggressive design in the new mantle of righteousness which the Tsars affected. It was, as usual, the people who paid.
The course of the war need not be described here. By a rapid assault—which was represented in France and England as a premature outrage, and did much to influence popular passion—the Russian fleet destroyed the Turkish, and the Russian armies descended south once more. Before the end of March England and France declared war on Russia in alliance with the monarch who had for years reddened the soil of Greece and the Balkans with Christian blood. The language of the time reads curiously to-day. Nicholas issued a manifesto in which he warmly disclaimed any idea of conquest; he drew the sword, he said, only in defence of Christianity, and he was outraged to find France and England supporting the Mohammedan murderer. They must, he said, be jealous of Russia’s prosperity and eager to destroy it. England frankly sang in its streets that it would never let the Russians get Constantinople. France openly used the same language; though there were those who said that Napoleon was personally irritated at the Tsar’s haughty disdain of his credentials.
The war soon centred upon the Crimea, and its historic milestones—Alma, Balaclava, Inkermann, Sevastopol—are well known. It entered upon a second year, 1855, and the Russian people murmured bitterly. Nicholas himself must have felt the sting of many of the criticisms. During the long reign of his censors, when public opinion could not be brought to bear upon the administration, official corruption had increased, and both army and navy were far below the required standard of efficiency. Nicholas had isolated Russia from the west; yet from the west had come every stimulus to the improvement of the Russian forces. He had reversed the policy of Peter and Catherine, and he seemed to be in danger of losing the lands they had taken. A terrible fire of criticism and invective was maintained at St. Petersburg. The censors controlled the press—men circulated their views in manuscript. Nicholas was honest, and it is said that he at times doubted if the policy to which he had devoted his life was sound. But he was stubborn, and he thrust aside all suggestions of peace. In the midst of the struggle he caught a chill which led to pneumonia. He died on March 3rd, 1855.
Such was the opening of the last phase of the romance of the Romanoffs. The dynasty is sobered, not merely by the spirit of the age into which it has passed, but by the very impossibility of sustaining its gaieties. No monarch who showered the precious national revenues upon lovers or drinking comrades could long hold the throne in such an age. Insurrection has taken a new form. It is no longer the work of a coterie who would place a new monarch on the throne in order that they, the conspirators, may take the place of the late favourites in the golden rain. A new phrase, the rights of the people, is born, or re-born, in the world. A monarchy by the grace of God must do the work of God, not the work of the devil. Nicholas tries to reconcile the new and the old: the new idea of service and the old idea of autocracy. He will better the lot of the people, not because it is their will, but because it is his divine mission. And in order to protect his scheme he constructs a new machinery of despotism: secret police, and Cossacks, and priests, and censors, and sophists. Against this machinery we have now to see the Russian people bruise and crush their limbs until it and its autocratic makers are destroyed. First, however, one more effort will be made to pose as autocratic dispenser of Justice and Charity.
CHAPTER XIV
THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II
It is said that in his last year Nicholas I observed that he would leave a terrible burden to his son. He left a very costly war which turned monthly against Russia. He left an empty treasury, and a privy purse that was a million rubles in debt. He left a city and country that bitterly murmured against the rule which he had intended to make so benevolent. He left forty millions of his people in the condition of serfdom which the whole of the remaining civilised world had outgrown. He left a nation outpaced industrially and commercially by every other Power because he could not admit into it the science which made the others superior. As he brooded over his Bible at night he saw no solution. He died in distress; and, as in the case of the death of nearly every Romanoff, few mourned.