STORY OF A GRAND DUKE.
When Alexander the First--elder brother of Constantine and
Nicolas--died, unexpectedly, at Taganrog, on the distant Sea of Azof,
leaving no son to reign in his stead, the crown descended, by law and
usage, to the brother next in birth. Constantine was then at Warsaw,
with his Polish wife; Nicolas was at St. Petersburg, with his guards.
Constantine was called the heir; and up to that hour no one seems to
have doubted that he would wear the crown, in case the Emperor's life
should fail. There was, however, a party in the Senate and the barrack
against him; the old Russian party, who could not pardon him his
Polish wife.
When couriers brought the news from Taganrog to St. Petersburg,
Nicolas, having formed no plans as yet, called up the guards,
announced his brother's advent to the throne, and set them an example
of loyalty by taking the oath of allegiance to his Imperial Majesty
Constantine the First. The guards being sworn, the generals and
staff-officers signed the act of accession and took the oaths.
Cantering off to their several barracks, these officers put the
various regiments of St. Petersburg under fealty to Constantine the
First; and Nicolas sent news that night to Warsaw that the new Emperor
had begun to reign.
But while the messengers were tearing through the winter snows, some
members of the Senate came to Nicolas with yet more startling news.
Alexander, they said, had left with them a sealed paper, contents
unknown, which they were not to open until they heard that he was
dead. On opening this packet, they found in it two papers; one a
letter from the Grand Duke Constantine, written in 1822, renouncing
his rights in the crown; the second, a manifesto by the dead Emperor,
written in 1823, accepting that renunciation and adopting his brother
Nicolas as his lawful heir. A similar packet, they alleged, had been
secretly left with Philaret of Moscow, and would be found in the
sacristy of his cathedral church. Nicolas scanned these documents
closely; saw good reason to put them by; and urged the whole body of
the Senate to swear fidelity to Constantine the First. In every office
of the State the imperial functionaries took this oath. All Russia, in
fact all Europe, saw that Constantine had opened his reign in peace.
Then followed a surprise. Some letters passed between the two grand
dukes, in which (it was said) the brothers were each endeavoring to
force the other to ascend the throne; Nicolas urging that Constantine
was the elder born and rightful heir; Constantine urging that Nicolas
had better health and a more active spirit. Ten days rolled by. The
Empire was without a chief. A plot, of which Pestel, Rostovtsef, and
Mouravief were leading spirits, was on the point of explosion. But on
Christmas Eve, the Grand Duke Nicolas made up his mind to take the
crown. He spent the night in drawing up a manifesto, setting forth the
facts which led him to occupy his brother's seat; and on Christmas Day
he read this paper in the Senate, by which body he was at once
proclaimed Autocrat and Tsar. A hundred generals rode to the various
barracks, to read the new proclamation, and to get those troops who
had sworn but a week ago to uphold his majesty Constantine the First,
to cast that oath to the winds, and swear a second time to uphold his
majesty Nicolas the First. But, if most of the regiments were quick to
unswear themselves by word of command, a part of the guards, and
chiefly the marines and grenadiers, refused; and, marching from their
quarters into St. Isaac's Square, took up a menacing position towards
the new Emperor, while a cry rose wildly from the crowd, of "Long live
Constantine the First!"
A shot was heard.
Count Miloradovitch, governor-general of St. Petersburg, fell dead; a
brave general who had passed through fifty battles, killed as he was
trying to harangue his troops. A line of fire now opened on the
square. Colonel Stürler fell, at the head of his regiment of guards.
When night came down, the ground was covered with dead and dying men;
but Nicolas was master of the square. A charge of grape-shot swept the
streets clear of rioters just as night was coming down.
When the trials to which the events of that day gave rise came on, it
suited both the Government and the conspirators to keep the grand duke
out of sight. Count Nesselrode told the courts that this revolt was
revolutionary, not dynastic; and Nicolas denounced the leaders to his
people as men who wished to bring "a foreign contagion upon their
sacred soil."
The grand duke and his Polish wife remained in Warsaw, living at the
summer garden of Belvedere, in the midst of woods and lakes, of
pictures, and works of art. Once, indeed, he left his charming villa
for a season; to appear, quite unexpectedly (the court declared), in
the Kremlin, and assist in placing the Imperial crown on his brother's
head. That act of grace accomplished, he returned to Warsaw; where he
reigned as viceroy; keeping a modest court, and leading an almost
private life. But the country was excited, the army was not content.
One war was forced by Nicolas on Persia, a second on Turkey; both of
them glorious for the Russian arms; yet men were said to be troubled
at the sight of a younger brother on the throne; a sentiment of
reverence for the elder son being one of the strongest feelings in a
Slavonic breast; and all these troubles were kept alive by the social
and political writhings of the Poles.
Two prosperous wars had made the Emperor so proud and haughty that
when news came in from Paris, telling him of the fall of Charles the
Tenth, he summoned his minister of war, and ordered his troops to
march. He said he would move on Paris, and his Kozaks began to talk of
picqueting their horses on the Seine. But the French have agencies of
mischief in every town of Poland; and in less than five months after
Charles the Tenth left Paris, Warsaw was in arms.
Every act of this Polish rising seems, so far as concerns the Grand
Duke Constantine, to admit of being told in different ways.
A band of young men stole into the Belvedere in the gloom of a
November night, and ravaged through the rooms. They killed General
Gendre; they killed the vice-president of police, Lubowicki; and they
suffered the grand duke to escape by the garden gate. These are the
facts; but whether he escaped by chance is what remains in doubt. The
Russian version was that these young fellows came to kill the prince,
as well as Gendre and Lubowicki; that a servant, hearing the tumult
near the palace, ran to his master's room, and led him through the
domestic passages into the open air. The Polish version was, that
these young men desired to find the prince; not to murder him, but to
use him as either hostage or emperor in their revolt against his
brother's rule.
Arriving in Warsaw from his country-house, the grand duke, finding
that city in the power of a revolted soldiery, moved some posts on the
road towards the Russian frontier. Agents came to assure him that no
harm was meant to him; that he was free to march with his guards and
stores; that no one would follow him or molest him on the road. Some
Polish companies were with him; and four days after his departure from
Belvedere, he received in his camp near Warsaw a deputation, sent to
him by his own request, from the insurgent chiefs. Then came the act
which roused the anger of his brother's court; and led, as some folk
think, to the mystery and sympathy which cling around his name.
He asked the deputation to state their terms. "A living Poland!" they
replied; "the charter of Alexander the First; a Polish army and
police; the restoration of our ancient frontier." In return, he told
these deputies that he had not sent to Lithuania for troops; and he
consented that the Polish companies in his camp should return to
Warsaw and join the insurgent bands! For such a surrender to the
rebels any other general in the service would certainly have been
tried and shot. The Emperor, when he heard the news, went almost mad
with rage; and every one wishing to stand well at court began to
whisper that the Grand Duke Constantine had forfeited his honor and
his life.
Constantine died suddenly at Minsk. The disease was cholera; the
corpse was carried to St. Petersburg; and the prince, who had lost a
crown for love, was laid with honor among the ashes of his race, in
the gloomy fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul.
But no gazetteer could make the common people believe that their
prince was gone from them forever. Like his father Paul, and like his
grandfather Peter, he was only hiding in some secret place; and
putting their heads together by the winter fires they told each other
he would come again.
In the year of emancipation (1861) a man appeared in the province of
Penza, who announced himself not only as the grand duke, but as a
prophet, a leader, and a messenger from the Tsar. He told the people
they were being deceived by their priests and lords, that the Emperor
was on their side, that the emancipation act gave them the land
without purchase and rent-charge, and that they must support the
Emperor in his design to do them good. A crowd of peasants, gathering
to his voice, and carrying a red banner, marched through the villages,
crying death to the priests and nobles. General Dreniakine, an
aide-de-camp of the Emperor, a prompt and confidential officer, was
sent from St. Petersburg against the grand duke, whom in his
proclamation he called Egortsof, and after a smart affair, in which
eight men were killed and twenty-six badly hurt, the peasants fled
before the troops. The grand duke was suffered to escape; and nothing
more has been heard of him, except an official hint that he is dead.
What wonder that a credulous people fancies the hero of such
adventures may be still alive?
In every country which has virtue enough to keep the memory of a
better day, the popular mind is apt to clothe its hopes in this
legendary form. In England, the commons expected Arthur to awake; in
Portugal, they expected Sebastian to return; in Germany they believed
that Barbarossa sat on his lonely peak. Masses of men believe that
Peter the Third is living, and will yet resume his throne.
Before landing in the Holy Isles, I gave much thought to this mystery
of the grand duke, and nursed a very faint hope of being able to
resolve the spectre into some mortal shape.