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.