(_Secret History of the Court and Government of Russia, under the
Emperors Alexander and Nicholas._ By H. SCHNITZLER. Two vols. Bentley:
London.)
Russia is the most extraordinary country on the globe, in the four most
important particulars of empire,—its history, its extent, its
population, and its power.
It has for Europe another interest,—the interest of alarm, the evidence
of an ambition which has existed for a hundred and fifty years, and has
never paused; an increase of territory which has never suffered the
slightest casualty of fortune; the most complete security against the
retaliation of European war; and a government at once despotic and
popular; exhibiting the most boundless authority in the sovereign, and
the most boundless submission in the people; a mixture of habitual
obedience, and divine homage: the reverence to a monarch, with almost
the prostration to a divinity.
Its history has another superb anomaly: Russia gives the most memorable
instance in human annals, of the powers which lie within the mind of
individual man. Peter the Great was not the restorer, or the reformer of
Russia; he was its moral _creator_. He found it, not as Augustus found
Rome, according to the famous adage, “brick, and left it marble:” he
found it a living swamp, and left it covered with the fertility of laws,
energy, and knowledge: he found it Asiatic, and left it European: he
removed it as far from Scythia, as if he had placed the diameter of the
globe between: he found it not brick, but mire, and he transformed a
region of huts into the magnificence of empire.
Russia first appears in European history in the middle of the ninth
century. Its climate and its soil had till then retained it in primitive
barbarism. The sullenness of its winter had prevented invasion by
civilised nations, and the nature of its soil, one immense plain, had
given full scope to the roving habits of its half famished tribes. The
great invasions which broke down the Roman empire, had drained away the
population from the north, and left nothing but remnants of clans
behind. Russia had no Sea, by which she might send her bold savages to
plunder or to trade with Southern and Western Europe. And, while the man
of Scandinavia was subduing kingdoms, or carrying back spoil to his
northern crags and lakes, the Russian remained, like the bears of his
forest, in his cavern during the long winter of his country; and even
when the summer came, was still but a melancholy savage, living like the
bear upon the roots and fruits of his ungenial soil.
It was to one of those Normans, who, instead of steering his bark
towards the opulence of the south, turned his dreary adventure to the
north, that Russia owed her first connexion with intelligent mankind.
The people of Novgorod, a people of traders, finding themselves
overpowered by their barbarian neighbours, solicited the aid of Ruric, a
Baltic chieftain, and, of course, a pirate and a robber. The name of the
Norman had earned old renown in the north. Ruric came, rescued the city,
but paid himself by the seizure of the surrounding territory, and
founded a kingdom, which he transmitted to his descendants, and which
lasted until the middle of the sixteenth century.
In the subsequent reign we see the effect of the northern pupillage; and
an expedition, in the style of the Baltic exploits, was sent to plunder
Constantinople. This expedition consisted of two thousand canoes, with
eighty thousand men on board. The expedition was defeated, for the
Greeks had not yet sunk into the degeneracy of later times. They fought
stoutly for their capital, and roasted the pirates in their own canoes,
by showers of the famous “Greek fire.”
Those invasions, however, were tempting to the idleness and poverty, or
to the avarice and ambition of the Russians; and Constantinople
continued to be the great object of cupidity and assault, for three
hundred years. But the city of Constantine was destined to fall to a
mightier conqueror.
Still, the northern barbarian had now learned the road to Greece, and
the intercourse was mutually beneficial. Greece found daring allies in
her old plunderers, and in the eleventh century she gave the Grand-duke
Vladimir a wife, in the person of Anna, sister of the emperor Basil II;
a gift made more important by its being accompanied by his conversion to
Christianity.
A settled succession is the great secret of royal peace: but among those
bold riders of the desert, nothing was ever settled, save by the sword;
and the first act of all the sons, on the decease of their father, was,
to slaughter each other; until the contest was settled in their graves,
and the last survivor quietly ascended the throne.
But war, on a mightier scale than the Russian Steppes had ever
witnessed, was now rolling over Central Asia. The cavalry of Genghiz
Khan, which came, not in squadrons, but in nations, and charged, not
like troops, but like thunderclouds, began to pour down upon the valley
of the Wolga. Yet the conquest of Russia was not to be added to the
triumphs of the great Tartar chieftain; a mightier conqueror stopped him
on his way, and the Tartar died.
His son Toushi, lit the beginning of the thirteenth century, burst over
the frontier at the head of half a million of horsemen. The Russian
princes, hastily making up their quarrels, advanced to meet the invader;
but their army was instantly trampled down, and, before the middle of
the century, all the provinces, and all the cities of Russia, were the
prey of the men of the wilderness. Novgorod alone escaped.
The history of this great city would be highly interesting, if it were
possible now to recover its details. It was the chief depot of the
northern Asiatic commerce with Europe; it had a government, laws, and
privileges of its own, with which it suffered not even the Khan or the
Tartars to interfere. Its population amounted to four hundred
thousand—then nearly equal to the population of a kingdom. In the
thirteenth century it connected itself still more effectively with
European commerce, by becoming a member of the Hanseatic League; and the
wonder and pride of the Russians were expressed in the well-known
half-profane proverb, “Who can resist GOD, and the great Novgorod?”
There is always something almost approaching to picturesque grandeur in
the triumphs of barbarism. The Turk, until he was fool enough to throw
away the turban, was the most showy personage in the world. The Arabs,
under Mahomet, were the most stately of warriors, and the Spanish Moors
threw all the pomp, and even all the romance, of Europe into the shade.
Even the chiefs of the “Golden Horde” seemed to have had as picturesque
a conception of supremacy as the Saracen. Their only city was a vast
camp, in the plains between the Caspian and the Wolga; and while they
left the provinces in the hands of the native princes, and enjoyed
themselves in the manlier sports of hunting through the plains and
mountains, they commanded that every vassal prince should attend at the
imperial tent to receive permission to reign, or perhaps to live; and
that, even when they sent their Tartar collectors to receive the
tribute, the Russian princes should lead the Tartar’s horse by the
bridle, and give him a feed of oats out of their _cap of state_!
But another of those sweeping devastators, one of those gigantic
executioners, who seem to have been sent from time to time to punish the
horrible profligacies of Asia, now rose upon the north. Timour Khan, the
Tamerlane of European story, the Invincible, the Lord of the Tartar
World, rushed with his countless troops upon the sovereignties of
Western Asia. This universal conqueror crushed the Tartar dynasty of
Russia, and then burst away, like an inundation, to overwhelm other
lands. But the native Russians again made head against their Tartar
masters, and a century and a half of sanguinary warfare followed, with
various fortunes, and without any other result than blood.
Without touching on topics exclusively religious, it becomes a matter of
high interest to mark the vengeances, furies, and massacres, of
heathenism, in every age of the world. Yet while we believe, and have
such resistless reason to believe, in the Providential government, what
grounds can be discovered for this sufferance of perpetual horrors? For
this we have one solution, and but one: stern as the inflictions are,
may they not be in mercy? may not the struggles of barbarian life be
permitted, simply to retard the headlong course of barbarian corruption?
may there not be excesses of wickedness, extremes of national vice, an
accumulation of offences against the laws of moral nature, (which are
the original laws of Heaven,) actually incompatible with the Divine
mercy? Nothing can be clearer to the understanding, than that there are
limits which the Divine Being has prescribed to his endurance of the
guilt of man, and prescribed doubtless for the highest objects of
general mercy; as there are offences which, by human laws, are
incompatible with the existence of society.
The crimes of the world before the flood were evidently of an intense
iniquity, which precluded the possibility of purification; and thus it
became necessary to extinguish a race, whose continued existence could
only have corrupted every future generation of mankind.
War, savage feuds, famines, and pestilences, may have been only Divine
expedients to save the world from another accumulation of intolerable
iniquity, by depriving nations of the power of utter self-destruction,
by thinning their numbers, by compelling them to feel the miseries of
mutual aggression, and even by reducing them to that degree of poverty
which supplied the most effective antidote to their total corruption.
Still, those sufferings were punishments, but punishments fully earned
by their fierce passions, savage propensities, remorseless cruelties,
and general disobedience of that natural law of virtue, which, earlier
even than Judaism or Christianity, the Eternal had implanted in the
heart of his creatures.
In the fifteenth century Russia began to assume a form. Ivan III. broke
off the vassalage of Russia to the “Golden Horde.” He had married
Sophia, the niece of the Greek emperor, to which we may attribute his
civilisation; and he received the embassies of Germany, Venice, and
Rome, at Moscow. His son, Ivan IV., took Novgorod, which he ruined, and
continued to fight the Poles and Tartars until he died. His son Ivan, in
the middle of the sixteenth century, was crowned by the title of Czar,
formed the first standing army of Russia, named the Strelitzes, and
established a code of laws. In 1598, by the death of the Czar Feodor
without children, the male line of Ruric, which had held the throne for
seven hundred and thirty-six years, and under fifty-six sovereigns,
became extinct.
Another dynasty of remarkable distinction ascended the throne, in the
beginning of the seventeenth century. Michael Romanoff, descended from
the line of Ruric by the female side, was declared Czar. His son Alexis
was the father of Peter the Great, who, with his brother Ivan, was
placed on the throne at the decease of their father, but both under the
guardianship of the Princess Sophia. But the Princess, who was the
daughter of Alexis, exhibiting an intention to seize the crown for
herself, a revolution took place in 1689, in which the Princess was sent
to a convent. Ivan, who was imbecile in mind and body, surrendered the
throne, and Peter became sole sovereign of Russia.
The accession of Peter began the last and greatest period of Russian
history. Though a man of fierce passions and barbarian habits, he had
formed a high conception of the value of European arts, chiefly through
an intelligent Genevese, Lefort, who had been his tutor.
The first object of the young emperor was to form an army; his next was
to construct a fleet. But both operations were too slow for his rapidity
of conception; and, in 1697, he travelled to Holland and England for the
purpose of learning the art of ship-building. He was forced to return to
Russia after an absence of two years, by the revolt of the Strelitzes in
favour of the Princess Sophia. The Strelitzes wore disbanded and
slaughtered, and Peter felt himself a monarch for the first time.
The cession of Azof by the Turks, at the peace of Carlowitz in 1699,
gave him a port on the Black Sea. But the Baltic acted on him like a
spell; and, to obtain an influence on its shores, he hazarded the ruin
of his throne.
Sweden, governed by Charles XII., was then the first military power of
the north. The fame of Gustavus Adolphus in the German wars, had given
the Swedes the example and the renown of their great king; and Charles,
bold, reckless, and half lunatic, despising the feebleness of Russia,
had turned his arms against Denmark and Poland. But the junction of
Russia with the “Northern League” only gave him a new triumph. He fell
upon the Russian army, and broke it up on the memorable field of Narva,
in 1700.
Peter still proceeded with his original vigour. St Petersburg was
founded in 1703. The war was prosecuted for six years, until the Russian
troops obtained a degree of discipline which enabled them to meet the
Swedes on equal terms. In 1708, Charles was defeated in the memorable
battle of Pultowa. His army was utterly ruined, and himself forced to
take refuge in Turkey. Peter was now at the head of northern power.
Frederic Augustus was placed on the throne of Poland by the arms of
Russia, and from this period Poland was under Russian influence.
Peter now took the title of “Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias.”
In 1716 he again travelled in Europe. In 1723 he obtained the provinces
on the Caspian, by an attack on Persia. But his vigorous, ambitious, and
singularly successful career was now come to a close. The death of a
Russian prince is seldom attributed to the course of nature; and Peter
died at the age of fifty-two, a time when the bodily powers are still
undecayed, and the mental are in the highest degree of activity. The
day, still recorded by the Russians with the interest due to his
extraordinary career, was the 28th of January 1725. In thirty-six years
he had raised Russia from obscurity to a rank with the oldest powers of
Europe.
We hasten to the close of this sketch, and pass by the complicated
successions from the death of Peter to the reign of the Empress
Catherine.
The Russian army had made their first appearance in Germany, in
consequence of a treaty with Maria Theresa; and their bravery in the
“Seven Years’ War,” in the middle of the last century, established their
distinction for soldiership.
Peter III. withdrew from the Austrian alliance, and concluded peace with
Prussia. But his reign was not destined to be long. At once weak in
intellect, and profligate in habits, he offended and alarmed his
empress, by personal neglect, and by threats of sending her to a
convent. Catherine, a German, and not accustomed to the submissiveness
of Russian wives, formed a party against him. The people were on her
side; and, what was of more importance, the Guards declared for her. An
insurrection took place; the foolish Czar, after a six months’ reign,
was dethroned July 1762, was sent to a prison, and within a week was no
more. The Russians assigned his death to poison, to strangulation, or to
some other species of atrocity. Europe talked for a while of the
“Russian Tragedy!” but the emperor left no regrets behind him; and
“Catherina, Princess of Anhalt Zerbst,” handsome, young, accomplished,
and splendid, ascended a throne of which her subjects were proud; which
collected round it the elite of Germany, its philosophers and soldiers;
which the empress connected with the _beaux esprits_ of France, and the
orators and statesmen of England; and which, during her long,
prosperous, and ambitious reign, united the pomp of Asia with the
brilliancy and power of Europe. The shroud of the Czar was speedily
forgotten, in the embroidered robe which Catherine threw over the
empire.
But the greatest crime of European annals was committed in this bold and
triumphant reign. Russia, Prussia, and Austria, tempted by the
helplessness of Poland, formed a league to seize upon portions of its
territory; and the partition of 1772 took place, to the utter
astonishment of Europe, but with scarcely a remonstrance from its
leading powers.
Poland had so long been contented to receive its sovereign from Russia,
its religions disputes had so utterly weakened the people, its nobility
were so profligate, and its peasantry were so poor, that it had lost all
the sinews of national defence. It therefore fell an easy prey; and only
waited, like a slave in the market, till the bargain for its sale was
complete.
In 1793, a second partition was effected. In the next year, the Polish
troops took up arms under the celebrated Kosciusko; but the Russians
advanced on Warsaw with a force which defied all resistance. Warsaw was
stormed, twenty thousand gallant men were slain in its defence,
Suwarroff was master of the unfortunate capital; and, in 1795, the third
and last partition extinguished the kingdom.
Having performed this terrible exploit, which was to be as terribly
avenged, the career of Catherine was closed. She died suddenly in 1796.
Paul, her son, ascended the throne, which he held for five years; a
mixture of the imbecility of his father, and the daring spirit of his
mother. Zealous for the honour of Russia, yet capricious as the winds,
he first made war upon the French Republic, and then formed a naval
league to destroy the maritime supremacy of England. This measure was
his ruin; England was the old ally of Russia,—France was the new enemy.
The nation hated the arrogance and the atheism of France, and resolved
on the overthrow of the Czar. In Russia the monarch is so far removed
from his people, that he has no refuge among them in case of disaster.
Paul was believed to be mad, and madness, on a despotic throne, justly
startles a nation. A band of conspirators broke into his palace at
midnight, strangled the master of fifty millions of men, and the nation,
at morning, was in a tumult of joy.
His son, Alexander, ascended the throne amid universal acclamation. His
first act was peace with England. In 1805, his troops joined the
Austrian army, and bore their share in the sufferings of the campaign of
Austerlitz. The French invasion of Poland, in two years after, the
desperate drawn battle of Eylau, and the disaster of Friedland, led to
the peace of Tilsit. Alexander then joined the Continental system of
Napoleon; but this system was soon found to be so ruinous to Russian
commerce, as to be intolerable. Napoleon, already marked for downfall,
was rejoiced to take advantage of the Russian reluctance, and instantly
marched across the Polish frontier, at the head of a French and allied
army amounting to the astonishing number of five hundred thousand men.
Infatuation was now visible in every step of his career. Instead of
organising Poland into a kingdom, which would have been a place of
retreat in case of disaster; and, whether in disaster or victory, would
have been a vast national fortification against the advance of Russia,
he left it behind him; and, instead of waiting for the return of spring,
commenced his campaign on the verge of winter, in the land of winter
itself, and madly ran all the hazards of invading a boundless empire of
which he knew nothing, of which the people were brave, united, and
attached to their sovereign; and of which, if the armies had fled like
deer, the elements would have fought the battle.
Napoleon was now _infatuated_ in all things, infatuated in his diplomacy
at Moscow, and infatuated in the rashness, the hurry, and the confusion
of his retreat. His army perished by brigades and divisions. On the
returning spring, three hundred thousand men were found buried in the
snow; all his spoil was lost, his veteran troops were utterly destroyed,
his fame was tarnished, and his throne was shaken.
He was followed into France by the troops of Russia and Germany. In
1814, the British army under Wellington crossed the Pyrenees, and
liberated the southern provinces of France. In the same year, the
Austrian, Prussian, and Russian armies marched to Paris, captured the
capital, and expelled Napoleon. The battle of Waterloo, in the year
after, destroyed the remnant of his legions in the field, threw him into
the hands of the British government, and exiled him to St Helena, where
he remained a British prisoner until he died.
Alexander died in 1825, at the age of forty-eight, and, leaving no sons,
was succeeded by his brother Nicholas, the third son of Paul—Constantine
having resigned his claims to the throne. We pass over, for the moment,
the various events of the present imperial reign. Its policy has been
constantly turned to the acquisition of territory; and that policy has
been always successful. The two great objects of all Russian cabinets,
since the days of Constantine, have been the possession of Turkey and
the command of the Mediterranean. Either would inevitably produce a
universal war; and while we deprecate so tremendous a calamity to the
world, and rely on the rational and honourable qualities of the Emperor,
to rescue both Russia and Europe from so desperate a struggle, we feel
that it is only wise to be prepared for all the contingencies that may
result from the greatest mass of power that the world has ever seen,
moved by a despotic will, and that will itself subject to the common
caprices of the mind of man.
The volumes to which we shall now occasionally refer, are written by an
intelligent observer, who began his study of Russia by an office under
her government, and who has, since that period, been occupied in
acquiring additional knowledge of her habits, finances, population, and
general system of administration. A Frenchman by birth, but a German by
descent, he in a very considerable degree unites the descriptive
dexterity of the one with the grave exactness of the other. His subject
is of the first importance to European politicians, and he seems capable
of giving them the material of sound conclusions.
The author commences with the reign of Alexander, and gives a just
panegyric to the kindliness of his disposition, the moderation of his
temper, and his sincere desire to promote the happiness of his people.
Nothing but this disposition could have saved him from all the vices of
ambition, profligacy, and irreligion; for his tutor was La Harpe, one of
the savans of the Swiss school, a man of accomplishment and talent, but
a scoffer. But the English reader should be reminded, that when men of
this rank of ability are pronounced hostile to religion, their hostility
was not to the principles of Christianity, but to the religion of
France; to the performances of the national worship, to the burlesque
miracles wrought at the tomb of the Abbé Paris, and to that whole system
of human inventions and monkish follies, which was as much disbelieved
in France as it was disdained in England.
In fact, the religion of the gospel had never come into their thoughts;
and when they talked of revelation, they thought only of the breviary.
The Empress Catherine, finding no literature in Russia, afraid, or
ashamed of being known as a German, and extravagantly fond of fame,
attached herself to the showy pamphleteers of France, and courted every
gale of French adulation in return. She even corresponded personally
with some of the French _litterateurs_, and was French in every thing
except living in St Petersburg, and wearing the Russian diadem. She was
even so much the slave of fashion as to adopt, or pretend to adopt, the
fantasies in government which the French were now beginning to mingle
with their fantasies in religious.
She wrote thus to Zimmerman, the author of the dreamy and dreary work on
“Solitude,” “I have been attached to philosophy, because my soul has
always been singularly _republican_. I confess that this tendency stands
in strange contrast with the unlimited power of my _place_.”
If the quiet times of Europe had continued, and France had exhibited the
undisturbed pomps of her ancient court, Alexander would probably have
been a Frenchman and _philosophe_ on the banks of the Neva; but stirring
times were to give him more rational ideas, and the necessities of
Russia reclaimed him from the absurdities of his education.
La Harpe himself was a man of some distinction—a Swiss, though
thoroughly French and revolutionary. After leaving Russia, he became
prominent, even in France, as an abettor of republican principles, and
was one of the members of the Swiss Directory. La Harpe survived the
Revolution, the Empire, and the Bourbons, and died in 1838.
The commencement of Alexander’s reign was singularly popular, for it
began with treaties on every side. Paul, who had sent a challenge to all
the sovereigns of Europe to fight him in person, had alarmed his people
with the prospect of a universal war. Alexander was the universal
pacificator; he made peace with England, peace with France, and a
commercial treaty with Sweden. He now seemed resolved to avoid all
foreign wars, to keep clear of European politics, and to devote all his
thoughts to the improvement of his empire. Commencing this rational and
meritorious task with zeal, he narrowed the censorship of the press, and
enlarged the importation of foreign works. He broke up the system of
espionage—formed a Council of State—reduced the taxes—abolished the
punishment by torture—refused to make grants of peasants—constituted the
Senate into a high court of justice divided into departments, in order
to remedy the slowness of law proceedings—established universities and
schools—allowed every subject to choose his own profession; and, as the
most important and characteristic of all his reforms, allowed his
nobility to sell portions of land to their serfs, with the right of
personal freedom: by this last act laying the foundation of a new and
free race of proprietors in Russia.
The abolition of serfdom was a great experiment, whose merits the serfs
themselves scarcely appreciated, but which is absolutely necessary to
any elevation of the national character. It has been always opposed by
the nobles, who regard it as the actual plunder of their inheritance;
but Alexander honourably exhibited his more humane and rational views on
the subject, whenever the question came within his decision.
A nobleman of the highest rank had requested an estate “with its serfs,”
as an imperial mark of favour. Alexander wrote to him in this style:
“The peasants of Russia are for the most part _slaves_. I need not
expatiate on the degradation, or on the misfortune of such a condition.
Accordingly, I have made a vow not to increase the number; and to this
end I have laid down the principle _not_ to give away peasants as
property.”
The Emperor sometimes did striking things in his private capacity. A
princess of the first rank applied to him to protect her husband from
his creditors, intimating that “the emperor was above the law.”
Alexander answered, “I do not wish, madam, to put myself above the law,
even if I could, for in all the world I do not recognise any authority
but that which comes from the law. On the contrary, I feel more than any
one else the obligation of watching over its observance, and even in
cases where others may be indulgent, _I_ can only be just.”
The French war checked all those projects of improvement; and the march
of his troops to the aid of Austria in 1805, commenced a series of
hostilities, which, for seven years, occupied the resources of the
empire, and had nearly subverted his throne. But he behaved bravely
throughout the contest. When Austria was beaten and signed a treaty,
Alexander refused to join in the negotiation. When Prussia, under the
influence of counsels at once rash and negligent—too slow to aid
Austria, and too feeble to encounter France—was preparing to resist
Napoleon in 1805, Alexander, Frederic William, and his queen Louisa,
made a visit by torch-light to the tomb of Frederic the Great in
Potsdam; and there, on their knees, the two monarchs joined their hands
over the tomb, and pledged themselves to stand by each other to the
last.
When Prussia was defeated, Alexander still fought two desperate battles;
and it was not until the advance of the French made him dread the rising
of Poland in his rear, that he made peace in 1802.
At this peace, he was charged with bartering his principles for the
extension of his dominions by the seizure of Turkey, and even of the
extravagance of dividing the world with Napoleon. But these charges were
never proved.
We, too, have our theory, and it is, that the fear of seeing Poland in
insurrection alone compelled Alexander to submit to the treaty of
Tilsit; but that he felt all the insolence of the French Emperor, in
demanding the closing of the Russian ports against England; and felt the
treaty as a chain, which he was determined to break on the first
provocation. We think it probable that the knowledge of the “secret
articles” of that treaty was conveyed from the Russian Court to England;
and, without pretending to know from what direct hand it came, we
believe that the seizure of the Danish fleet, which was the immediate
result of that knowledge, was as gratifying to Alexander as it was to
the English cabinet, notwithstanding the diplomatic wrath which it
pleased him to affect on that memorable occasion.
But other times were ripening. It has been justly observed, that the
Spanish war was the true origin of Napoleon’s ruin. He perished by his
own perfidy. The resistance of Spain awoke the resistance of Europe. All
Germany, impoverished by French plunder, and indignant at French
insults, longed to rise in arms. The Russians then boldly demanded the
emancipation of their commerce, and issued a relaxed tariff in 1811.
British vessels then began to crowd the Russian ports. Napoleon was
indignant and threatened. Alexander was offended, and remonstrated. The
French Emperor instantly launched one of his fiery proclamations;
declared that the House of Romanoff was undone; and, on the 24th of June
1812, threw his mighty army across the Niemen.
We pass over the events of that memorable war as universally known; but
justice is not done to the Russian emperor, unless we recollect how
large a portion of the liberation of Europe was due to his magnanimity.
To refuse obedience to the commercial tyranny of Napoleon, where it
menaced the ruin of his people, was an act of personal magnanimity, for
it inevitably exposed his throne and life to the hazards of war with a
universal conqueror. On the declaration of war, he determined to join
his armies in the field, another act of magnanimity, which was prevented
only by the remonstrance of his generals, who represented to him the
obstacles which must be produced by the presence of the emperor. But,
when the invasion of France was resolved on, and negotiations might
require his presence, he was instantly in the camp, and was of the
highest importance to the final success of the campaign. He threw vigour
into the councils of the Austrian generalissimo, and, with the aid of
the British ambassador, actually urged and effected the “March to
Paris.”
In Paris, however, his magnanimity was unfortunate, his generosity was
misplaced, his chivalric feelings had to deal with craft, and his
reliance on the pledges of Napoleon ultimately cost Europe one of the
bloodiest of its campaigns. A wiser policy would have given Napoleon
over to the dungeon, or sent him before a military tribunal, as he had
sent the unfortunate Duc d’Enghien, with not the thousandth part of the
reason or the necessity, and the peace of the Continent would thus have
been secured at once. But a more theatric policy prevailed. The promises
of a man who had never kept a promise were taken; the stimulant of an
imperial title was kept up, when he ought to have been stripped of all
honours; an independent revenue was issued to him, which was sure to be
expended in bribing the officials and soldiery of France; and, by the
last folly of a series of generous absurdities, Napoleon was placed in
the very spot which he himself would have chosen, and probably _did_
choose, for the centre of a correspondence, between the corruption of
Italy and the corruption of France.
The result was predicted by every politician of Europe, except the
politicians of the Tuileries. France was speedily prepared for revolt;
the army had their tricoloured cockades in their knapsacks. The
Bourbons, who thought that the world was to be governed by going to
mass, were forced to flee at midnight. Napoleon drove into the capital,
with all the traitors of the army and the councils clinging to his
wheels, cost France another “March to Paris,” the loss of another
veteran army, and himself another exile, where he was sent to linger out
his few wretched and humiliated years in the African Ocean.
The Holy Alliance was the first conception of Alexander on the return of
peace. It died too suddenly to exhibit either its good or its evil. It
has been calumniated, because it has been misunderstood. But it seems to
have been a noble conception. France which laughs at every thing,
laughed at the idea of ruling Europe on principles of honour. Germany,
which is always wrapped in a republican doze, reprobated a project which
seemed to secure the safety of thrones by establishing honour as a
principle. And England, then governed by a cabinet doubtful of public
feeling, and not less doubtful of foreign integrity, shrank from all
junction with projects which she could not control, and with governments
in which she would not confide. Thus the Holy Alliance perished. Still,
the conception was noble. Its only fault was, that it was applied to men
before men had become angels.
The author of the volumes now before us is evidently a republican one—of
the “Movement”—one of that class who would first stimulate mankind into
restlessness, and then pronounce the restlessness to be a law of nature.
Metternich is of course his bugbear, and the policy of Austria is to him
the policy of the “kingdom of darkness.” But, if there is no wiser maxim
than “to judge of the tree by its fruits,” how much wiser has that great
statesman been than all the bustling innovators of his day, and how much
more substantial is that policy by which he has kept the Austrian empire
in happy and grateful tranquillity, while the Continent has been
convulsed around him!
No man knows better than Prince Metternich, the shallowness, and even
the shabbiness, of the partisans of overthrow, their utter incapacity
for rational freedom, the utter perfidy of their intentions, and the
selfish villany of their objects. He knows, as every man of sense knows,
that those Solons and Catos of revolution are composed of lawyers
without practice, traders without business, ruined gamblers, and the
whole swarm of characterless and contemptible idlers, who infest all the
cities of Europe. He knows from full experience that the object of such
men is, not to procure rights for the people, but to compel governments
to buy their silence; that their only idea of liberty, is liberty of
pillage; and that, with them, revolution is only an expedient for rapine
and a license for revenge. Therefore he puts them down; he stifles their
declamation by the scourge, he curbs their theories by the dungeon, he
cools their political fever by banishing them from the land; and thus
governing Austria for nearly the last forty years, he has kept it free
from popular violence, from republican ferocity, from revolutionary
bloodshed, and from the infinite wretchedness, poverty, and shame, which
smites a people exposed to the swindling of political impostors.
Thus, Austria is peaceful and powerful, while Spain is shattered by
conspiracy; while Portugal lives, protected from herself only under the
guns of the British fleet; while Italy is committing its feeble
mischiefs, and frightening its opera-hunting potentates out of their
senses; while every petty province of Germany has its beer-drinking
conspirators; and while the French king guards himself by bastions and
batteries, and cannot take an evening’s drive without fear of the
blunderbuss, or lay his head on his pillow without the chance of being
wakened by the roar of insurrection. These are the “fruits of the tree;”
but it is only to be lamented that the same sagacity and vigour, the
same determination of character, and the same perseverance in principle,
are not to be found in every cabinet of Europe. We should then hear no
more of revolutions.
The life of the Russian emperor was a cloudy one. The external splendour
of royalty naturally captivates the eye, but the realities of the diadem
are often melancholy. It would be scarcely possible to conceive a
loftier preparative for human happiness than that which surrounds the
throne of the Russias. Alexander married early. A princess of Baden was
chosen for him, by the irresistible will of Catherine, at a period when
he himself was incapable of forming any choice. He was married at
sixteen, his wife being one year younger. He never had a son, but he had
two daughters, who died. And the distractions of the campaign of Moscow,
which must have been a source of anxiety to any man in Russia, were
naturally felt by the emperor in proportion to the immense stake which
he had in the safety of the country.
For some years after the fall of Napoleon, Alexander was deeply engaged
in a variety of anxious negotiations in Germany, and subsequently, he
was still more deeply agitated by the failing constitution of the
empress. The physicians had declared that her case was hopeless if she
remained in Russia, and advised her return to her native air. But she,
in the spirit of romance, replied, that the wife of the Emperor of
Russia must not die but within his dominions. The Crimea was then
proposed, as the most genial climate. But the emperor decided on
Taganrog, a small town on the sea of Azof, but at the tremendous
distance of nearly fifteen hundred miles from St Petersburg.
The present empress has been wiser, for, abandoning the romance, she
spent her winter in Naples, where she seems to have recovered her
health. The climate of Taganrog, though so far to the south, is
unfavorable, and in winter it is exposed to the terrible winds which
sweep across the desert, unobstructed from the pole. But Alexander
determined to attend to her health there himself, and preceded her by
some days to make preparations. A strange and singularly depressing
ceremony preceded his departure. For some years he had been liable to
melancholy impressions on the subject of religion. The Greek church,
which differs little from the Romish, except in refusing allegiance to
the bishop of Rome, abounds in formalities, some stately, and some
severe. Alexander, educated under the Swiss, who could not have taught
him more of Christianity than was known by a French _philosophe_, and
having only the dangerous morals of the Russian court for his practical
guide, suffered himself, when in Paris, to listen to the mystical
absurdities of the well-known Madame de Krudener, and from that time
became a mystic. He had the distorted dreams and the heavy reveries, and
talked the unintelligible theories which the Germans talk by the fumes
of their meerschaums, and propagate by the vapours of their swamps. He
lost his activity of mind; and if he had lived a few years longer, he
would probably have finished his career in a cell, and died, like
Charles V., an idiot, in the “odour of sanctity.”
The preparation for his journey had the colouring of that superstition
which already began to cloud his mind.
It was his custom, in his journeys from St Petersburg, to start from the
cathedral of “Our Lady of Kasan.” But on this occasion, he gave notice
to the Greek bishop, that he should require him to chant a service at
four o’clock in the morning, at the monastery of St Alexander Newski, in
the full assembly of ecclesiastics, at which he would be present.
On this occasion every thing took an ominous shape, in the opinion of
the people. They said that the service chanted was the service for the
dead, though the official report stated that it was the _Te Deum_. The
monastery of St Alexander Newski is surrounded by the chief cemetery of
St Petersburg, where various members of the reigning family, who had not
worn the crown, were interred, and among them the two infant daughters
of the emperor. The popular report was, that the ecclesiastics wore
mourning robes; but this is contradicted, whether truly or not, by the
official report, which states that they wore vestures of crimson worked
with gold.
Just at dawn the emperor came alone in his calèche, not even attended by
a servant. The outer gates were then carefully reclosed, the mass was
said, the old prelate gave him a crucifix to accompany him on his
journey, the priests once more chanted their anthem, they then conducted
him to the gate, and the ceremonial closed.
But the more curious feature of the scene was to follow.
Seraphim, the old prelate, invited the emperor to his cell, where, when
they were alone, he said, “I know your Majesty feels a particular
interest in the _Schimnik_.” (These are monks who live in the interior
of the convents in the deepest solitude, following strictly all the
austerities prescribed to their order, and are venerated as saints.) “We
for some time have had a Schimnik within the walls of the Holy Lavra.
Would it be the pleasure of your majesty that he should be
summoned?”—“Be it so,” was the reply, and a venerable man, with an
emaciated face and figure, entered. Alexander received his blessing, and
the monk asked him to visit his cell. Black cloth covered the floor, the
walls were painted black, a colossal crucifix occupied a considerable
portion of the cell. Benches painted black were ranged around, and the
only light was given by the glimmer of a lamp, which burned night and
day before the pictures of saints! When the emperor entered, the monk
prostrated himself before the crucifix, and said, “Let us pray.” The
three then knelt and engaged in silent prayer. The emperor whispered to
the bishop, “Is this his only cell? where is his bed?” The answer was,
“He sleeps upon this floor, stretched before the crucifix.”—“No, sire,”
said the monk, “I have the same bed with every other man; approach, and
you shall see.” He then led the emperor into a small recess, screened
off from the cell, where, placed upon a table, was a black coffin, half
open, containing a shroud, and surrounded by tapers. “Here is _my_ bed,”
said the monk, “a bed common to man; there, sire, we shall all rest in
our last long sleep.”
The emperor gazed upon the coffin, and the monk gave him an exhortation
on the crimes of the people, which, he said, had been restrained by the
pestilence, and the war of 1812, but when those two plagues had passed
by, had grown worse than ever.
But we must abridge this pious pantomime, which seems evidently to have
been _got up_ for the occasion, and which would have been enough to
dispirit any one who had left his bed at four in the morning in the
chill of a Russian September.
The emperor at length left the convent, evidently dejected and depressed
by this sort of theatrical anticipation of death and burial, and drove
off with his eyes filled with tears.
On his journey he was unattended. He took with him but two
aides-de-camp, and his physician, Sir James Wylie, a clever Scotsman,
who had been thirty years in the imperial service. The journey was
rapid, and without accident, but his mind was still full of omens. A
comet had appeared. “It presages misfortune,” said the emperor; “but the
will of Heaven be done.”
The change of air was beneficial to the empress, who reached Taganrog
after a journey of three weeks; and the emperor remained with her,
paying her great attention, and constantly accompanying her in her rides
and drives. The season happened to be mild, and Alexander proposed to
visit the Crimea, at the suggestion of Count Woronzoff, governor of the
province. This excursion, with all its agreeabilities, was evidently a
trying one to a frame already shaken, and a mind harassed by its own
feelings. He rode a considerable part of the journey, visited
Sebastopol, inspected fortifications in all quarters, received officers,
dined with governors, visited places where endemics made their haunt;
ate the delicious, but dangerous fruits of the country, received Muftis
and Tartar princes; in short did every thing that he ought not to have
done, and finally found himself ill.
He remarked to Sir James Wylie, that his stomach was disordered, and
that he had had but little sleep for several nights. The physician
recommended immediate medicine, but Alexander was obstinate. “I have no
confidence,” said he, “in potions; my life is in the hands of Heaven;
nothing can stand against its will.” But the illness continued, and the
emperor began to grow lethargic, and slept much in his carriage. With a
rashness which seems to be the prevalent misfortune of sovereigns, he
still persisted in defying disease, and suffered himself to be driven
every where, visiting all the remarkable points of the Crimea, yet
growing day by day more incapable of feeling an interest in any thing.
He was at length shivering under intermittent fever, and he hurried back
to the empress. On being asked by Prince Volkonski, whom he had left as
the manager of his household, what was the state of his health,—“Well
enough,” was the answer, “except that I have got a touch of the fever of
the Crimea.” The prince entreated him to take care of his health, and
not to treat it as he “would have done when he was twenty years old.” On
the next day his illness had assumed a determined character, and was
declared to be dangerous, and a typhus.
Unfortunately, at this period, an officer of rank arrived with details
of one of those conspiracies which had been notoriously on foot for some
time. His tidings ought to have been concealed: but sovereigns must hear
every thing, and the tidings were communicated to the emperor. He was
indignant and agitated. The empress exhibited the most unwearied
kindness; but all efforts were now hopeless. On the 1st of December he
sank and died.
The blow was felt by the whole empire; during the long journey of four
months, from Taganrog to St Petersburg, where the body was interred in
the church of St Peter and St Paul, the people crowded from every part
of the adjoining country to follow the funeral; and troops, chiefs,
nobles, and the multitude, gave this melancholy ceremonial all the usual
pomp of imperial funeral rites, and more than the usual sincerity of
national sorrow.
Europe had been so often startled by the assassination of Russian
sovereigns, that the death of Alexander was attributed to conspiracy.
Ivan, Peter III., and Paul I., had notoriously died by violence. It is
perfectly true, that the life of Alexander was threatened, and that his
death by the typhus alone saved him from at least attempted
assassination. It was subsequently ascertained that his murder had been
resolved on; and one of the conspirators, a furious and savage man,
rushed into their meeting, exclaiming at the delay which had suffered
Alexander to die a natural death, and thus deprived him of the
_enjoyment_ of shedding the imperial blood.
The origin of those conspiracies is still among the problems of history.
Nothing could be less obnoxious than the personal conduct and character
of Alexander. His reign exhibited none of the banishments or the
bloodshed of former reigns. He was of a gentle disposition; his habits
were manly; and he had shared the glory of the Russian victories. The
assassinations of the former sovereigns had assignable motives, though
the act must be always incapable of justification. They had perished by
intrigues of the palace; but the death of Alexander was the object of a
crowd of conspirators widely scattered, scarcely communicating with each
other, and united only by the frenzy of revolution.
In the imperfection of the documents hitherto published, we should be
strongly inclined to refer the principle of this revolutionary movement
to Poland. That unhappy country had been the national sin of Russia; and
though Moscow had already paid a severe price for its atonement, from
Poland came that restless revenge, which seemed resolved, if it could
not shake Russia, at least to imbitter the Russian supremacy.
The death of Alexander had disappointed the chief conspirators. But the
conspiracy continued, and the choice of his successor revived all its
determination.
The house of Romanoff had received the diadem by a species of election.
Michael Romanoff, a descendant of the house of Ruric only by the female
line, had been chosen by all the heads of the nation. The law of
primogeniture was declared. But Peter the Great, disgusted by the vices
or the imbecility of his son Alexis, had changed the law of succession,
and enacted, that the sovereign should have the choice of his successor,
not even limiting that choice to the royal line. Nothing is so fatal to
the peace of a country as an unsettled succession; and this rash and
prejudiced change produced all the confusions of Russian history from
1722 to 1797, when the Emperor Paul restored the right of primogeniture
in the male line, in failure of which alone was the crown to devolve on
the female line. In which case, the throne was to devolve on the
princess next in relation to the deceased emperor; and, in case of her
dying childless, the other princesses were to follow in the order of
relationship. Alexander, in 1807, confirmed the act of Paul, and
strengthened it by an additional act in 1820; stating, that the issue of
marriages, authorised by the reigning emperor, and those who should
themselves contract marriages, authorised by the reigning emperor,
should alone possess the right of succession.
Alexander had left three brothers—the Grand-duke Constantine, born in
1779; the Grand-duke Nicholas, born in 1796; and the Grand-duke Michael,
born in 1798: two of his surviving sisters had been married, one to the
Grand-duke of Saxe Weimar, and the other to the King of Holland. Thus,
according to the law of Russia, Constantine was the next heir to the
throne.
The singular commotion which gave so melancholy a prestige of the reign
of Nicholas, receives a very full explanation from this author. The
Grand-duke Constantine had the countenance of a Calmuck and the manners
of a Calmuck. But those were the countenance and manners of his father
Paul. The other sons resembled their mother, the Princess of Wirtemberg,
a woman of striking appearance and of commanding mind. Constantine was
violent, passionate, and insulting; and in his viceroyalty of Poland
rendered himself unpopular in the extreme. The result was, that
Alexander dreaded to leave him as successor to the throne. Constantine,
when scarcely beyond boyhood, had been married to one of the princesses
of Saxe Cobourg, not yet fifteen. They soon quarrelled, and at the end
of four years finally separated. In two years after, proposals were made
to her to return. But she recollected too deeply the vexations of the
past, and refused to leave Germany. Constantine now became enamoured of
the daughter of a Polish count, and proposed to marry her. The Greek
Church is stern on the subject of divorce, but its sternness can give
way on due occasion. The consent of the emperor extinguished all its
scruples, and Constantine divorced his princess, and married the Polish
girl; yet, by that left-handed marriage, which precludes her from
inheriting titles or estates. But the emperor shortly after conferred on
her the title of Princess of Lowictz, from an estate which he gave her,
and both which were capable of descending to her family.
It was subsequently ascertained that, at this period, Alexander had
proposed to Constantine the resignation of his right to the throne;
either as the price of his consent to the divorce, or from the common
conviction of both, that the succession would only bring evil on
Constantine and the empire. That Alexander was perfectly disinterested,
is only consonant to his manly nature, and that Constantine had come to
a wise decision, is equally probable. He knew his own failings, the
haste of his temper, his unpopularity, and the offence which he was in
the habit of giving to all classes. He probably, also, had a sufficient
dread of the fate of his father, whom, as he resembled in every thing
else, he might also resemble in his death. His present position
fulfilled all the wishes of a man who loved power without
responsibility, and enjoyed occupation without relinquishing his ease.
The transaction was complete, and Alexander was tranquillised for the
fate of Russia.
When the intelligence of the emperor’s death reached St Petersburg,
Nicholas attended the meeting of the Senate, to take the oath of
allegiance to Constantine. But they determined that their first act
should be the reading of a packet, which had been placed in their hands
by Alexander, with orders to be opened immediately on his decease. The
president broke the seal, and found documents dated in 1822 and 1823,
from Constantine, resigning the right of succession, and from Alexander
accepting the resignation. Constantine’s letter stated thus: “Conscious
that I do not possess the genius, the talents, or the strength,
necessary to fit me for the dignity of sovereign, to which my birth
would give me a right, I entreat your imperial majesty to transfer that
right to him to whom it belongs, after me; and thus assure for ever the
stability of the empire.
“As to myself, I shall add, by this renunciation, a new guarantee and a
new force to the engagement which I spontaneously and solemnly
contracted on the occasion of my divorce from my first wife. All the
circumstances in which I find myself strengthen my determination to
adhere to this resolution, which will prove to the empire and to the
whole world the sincerity of my sentiments.”
Another of those documents appointed Nicholas as the heir to the throne.
The Senate now declared that Nicholas was emperor. But he refused the
title, until he had the acknowledgment from Constantine himself, that he
had resigned. The suspense continued three weeks. At length the formal
renunciation of Constantine was received, Nicholas was emperor, and the
day was appointed to receive the oath of allegiance of the great
functionaries of the army and of the people. The emperor dated his
accession from the day of the death of Alexander, December the 1st,
1825.
The interregnum was honourable to both the brothers; but it had nearly
proved fatal to Russia: it unsettled the national feelings, it perplexed
the army, and it gave sudden hopes to the conspirators against the
throne.
The heads of the conspiracy in St Petersburg were, Sergius, Prince
Troubetskoi; Eugene, Prince Obalenskoi, and Conrad Ryleieff. The first
was highly connected and highly employed, colonel of the Etat Major, and
military governor of Kief. The second was a lieutenant in the imperial
guard, poor, but a man of talent and ambition. In Russia all the sons of
a prince are princes, which often leaves their rental bare. The third
was simply a noble, educated in the corps of cadets, but who had left
the army, and had taken the secretaryship of the American company. He
was a man of letters, had written some popular poems, and was an
enthusiastic republican. Connected with those were some general officers
and colonels, whose revolutionary spirit might chiefly be traced to
their expulsion from employment, military disgrace, or disappointed
ambition. The Russian campaigns in France, and the residence of the army
of occupation, under the command of the great English general, had
naturally given the Russian troops an insight into principles of
national government, which they could not have acquired within the
Russian frontier. The pretext of the conspirators was a constitutional
government, which the talkers of St Petersburg seemed to regard as the
inevitable pouring of sudden prosperity of all kinds into the empire.
The old illusion of all the advocates of change is, that every thing
depends on government, and that government can do every thing. There
cannot be a greater folly, or a more glaring fiction. Government can do
nothing more than prevent the existence of obstacles to public wealth.
It cannot give wealth, it cannot create commerce, it cannot fertilise
the soil, it cannot put in action any of those great instruments by
which a nation rises superior to its contemporaries. Those means must be
in the people themselves, they cannot be the work of cabinets;
governments can do no more than give them their free course, protect
them from false legislation, and leave the rest to Providence.
The Russian conspirators called themselves patriots, and professed to
desire a bloodless revolution. But to overthrow a government at the head
of five hundred thousand men, must be a sanguinary effort; and there
could be no doubt that the establishment of a revolutionary government
in Russia would have been the signal for a universal war.
On the 24th and 25th of December, the conspirators met in St Petersburg,
and as Nicholas was to be proclaimed on the next day, they determined to
lead the battalions to which they respectively belonged, into the great
square, seize on the emperor, and establish a provisional government.
They were then to raise a national guard, establish two legislative
chambers, and proclaim liberty to Russia. The question next arose, what
was to be done with the members of the imperial family after victory. It
was answered significantly, that “circumstances must decide.” At this
anxious moment one of the members told them that information had been
given to the emperor. “Comrades,” said he, “you will find that we are
betrayed, the court are in possession of much information; but they do
not know our entire plans, and our strength is quite sufficient.” A
voice exclaimed, “the scabbards are broken, we can no longer hide our
sabres.”
Reports of various kinds now came crowding on them. An officer arrived
to say that, in one of the armies, one hundred thousand men were ready
to join them. A member of the Senate came to tell them that the council
of the empire was to meet at seven o’clock the next morning, to take the
oath to the emperor. The time for action was now fixed. The officers of
the guard were directed to join their regiments, and persuade them to
refuse the oath. Then all kinds of desperate measures were proposed. It
was suggested that they should force open the spirit shops and taverns,
in order to make the soldiery and populace drunk, then begin a general
pillage, carry off banners from the churches, and rush upon the winter
palace. This, the most mischievous of all the measures, was also the
most feasible, for the number of unemployed peasants and idlers of all
kinds was computed at seventy thousand and upwards, and from their
poverty and profligacy together, there could be little doubt that,
between drunkenness and the prospect of pillage, they would be ready for
any atrocity. “When the Russians break their chains,” says Schiller, “it
will not be before the freeman, but before the slave, that the community
must tremble.”
It must be acknowledged that some were not equally ferocious. But when a
military revolt has once begun, who shall limit it to works of wisdom,
moderation, or security? If the revolt had succeeded, St Petersburg must
have been a scene of massacre.
We shrink from all details on this painful subject. The conspirators
remained in deliberation all night. As the morning dawned, they went to
the barracks of their regiments, and told the soldiers that Constantine
was really their emperor, that he was marching to the capital at the
head of the army from Poland, and that to take the oath to Nicholas
would consequently be treason. In several instances they succeeded, and
collected a considerable body of troops in the Great Izaak Square. But
there they seem to have lost their senses. An insurrection which stands
still, is an insurrection ruined. They were rapidly surrounded by the
garrison. Terms were offered, which they neither accepted nor refused.
The gallant Milarodowitch, the hero of the Russian pursuit of the
French, advancing to parley with them, was brutally shot. When all hope
of submission was at an end, when the day was declining, and alarm was
excited for the condition of the capital during the night, artillery was
brought to bear upon them; and, after some firing on both sides, the
mutineers dispersed. The police were then let loose, and numerous
arrests were made.
In five months after, a high court was constituted for the trial of the
leaders. A hundred and twenty-one were named in the act of accusation,
many of them belonging to the first families, and in the highest ranks
of civil and military employment. But the sentence was the reverse of
sanguinary. Only five were put to death in St Petersburg, the remainder
were chiefly sent to Siberia. But Siberia is now by no means the place
of horrors which it once was. It is now tolerably peopled, it has been
partially civilised; the soil is fertile; towns have sprung up; and,
though the winter is severe, the climate is healthy. Many of the
families of the exiles were suffered to accompany them; and probably, on
the whole, the exchange was not a calamitous one, from the anxieties of
Russian life, the pressure of narrow circumstances in Europe, and the
common disappointments to which all competitors for distinction, or even
for a livelihood, are exposed in the crowded and struggling population
of the west, to the undisturbed existence and sufficient provision,
which were to be found in the east of this almost boundless empire.
Among the anecdotical parts of these volumes, is a slight account of the
appearance of the Duke of Wellington as ambassador to Russia, in the
beginning of the new reign. Count Nesselrode, on the accession of the
Czar, had sent a circular to the European courts, stating his wishes for
amicable relations with them all. But England dreaded to see a collision
with Turkey, and Canning selected the Duke as the most important
authority on the part of England. The Duke took with him Lord Fitzroy
Somerset as his secretary. On his arrival at Berlin, he was treated with
great distinction by Frederic William. Gneisenau, at the head of the
Prussian general officers, paid him a visit in his hotel; and he was
fêted in all directions. General officers were sent from St Petersburg
to meet him on the Russian frontier. The emperor appointed a mansion for
him, beside the palace of the Hermitage, paid him all the honours of a
Russian field-marshal, (he was then the _only_ one in the service,)
placed him on a footing with the princes of the imperial family, and was
frequently in his society. The people were boundless in their marks of
respect.
But the Duke is evidently not a favourite with the Frenchman—and we do
not much wonder at this feeling in a Frenchman, poor as it is. Without
giving any opinion of his own, he inserts a little sneer from the work
of Lacretelle on the “Consulate and the Empire.” On this authority,
Wellington is “a general of excellent understanding, _phlegmatic_ and
_tenacious_, proceeding not by _enthusiasm_, but by _order_,
_discipline_, and _slow_ combinations, trusting but little _to chance_,
and employing about him all the popular and vindictive passions, from
which he himself is _exempt_.” By all which, M. Lacretelle means, that
the Duke is a dull dog, without a particle of genius; simply a plodding,
positive man, who, by mere toil and time, gained his objects, which any
Dutchman could have gained as well, and which any Frenchman would have
scorned to gain. With this French folly we have not sufficient time, nor
have we sufficient respect for the national _failing_, to argue.
But the true view of Wellington’s character as a soldier would be,
_brilliancy_ of conception. What more brilliant conception than his
first great battle, Assaye, which finished the Indian war? What more
brilliant conception than his capture of Badajoz and Ciudad in the face
of the two armies of Masséna and Soult advancing on him from the south
and north, and each equal to his own force; while he thus snatched away
the prize in the actual presence of each, and left the two French
generals the mortification of having marched three hundred miles
a-piece, only to be lookers-on? What more brilliant conception than his
march of four hundred miles, without a stop, from Portugal to Vittoria;
where he crushed the French army, captured one hundred and fifty pieces
of cannon, and sent the French king and all his courtiers flying over
the Pyrenees? What, again, more brilliant conception, than his storming
the Pyrenees, and being the first of the European generals to enter
France? and, finally, his massacre of the French army, with Soult, Ney,
and Napoleon at their head, on the crowning day of Waterloo?
But all this was mere “pugnacity and _tenacity_,” and sulkiness and
stupidity, because it was not done with a theatrical programme, and with
the air of an opera-dancer. Yet M. Lacretelle’s sketch, invidious as he
intends it to be, gives, involuntarily, the very highest rank of
generalship to its object. For, what higher qualities can a general
have, than trusting nothing to chance, being superior to
enthusiasm—which, in the French vocabulary, means extravagance and
giddiness—and acting by deep and effective combinations, which, as every
man knows, are the most profound problems and the most brilliant
triumphs of military genius? Let it be remembered, too, that in the
seven years’ war of the Peninsula, Wellington never had twenty-five
thousand English bayonets in the field; that the Spanish armies were
almost wholly disorganised, and that the Portuguese were raw troops;
while the French had nearly two hundred thousand men constantly
recruited and supplied from France:—Yet, that Wellington never was
beaten, that he met either six or seven of the French field-marshals and
beat them all; and that at Waterloo, with a motley army of recruits, of
whom but thirty thousand were English—and those new troops—and ten
thousand German, he beat Napoleon at the head of seventy-two thousand
Frenchmen, all veterans; trampled his army in the field, hunted him to
Paris, took every fortress on the road, captured Paris, destroyed his
dynasty, dissolved the remnants of the French army on the Loire; and
sent Napoleon himself to expiate his guilt and finish his career, under
an English guard, in St Helena.
We need not envy the Frenchman his taste for “enthusiasm,” his scorn of
“science,” his disdain of “profound combinations,” and his passion for
winning battles by the magic of a village conjuror.
M. Schnitzler disapproves even of the physiognomy of the Duke. “His nose
was too aquiline, and stood out too prominently on his sunburnt
countenance, and his features, all strongly marked, were not devoid of
an air of pretension.” He objects to his appearing “without a splendid
military costume, to _improve his appearance_!” And yet, all this
foolery is the wisdom of foreigners. No man, however renowned, must
forget “the _imposing_.” Hannibal, or Alexander the Great, would have
been nothing in their eyes, except in the uniform of the “Legion of
Honour.” His walking, and walking without attendants, through the
streets, was a horror, rendered worse and worse by his “wearing a black
frock-coat and round hat.” Even when he appeared in uniform on state
occasions, “he was equally luckless;” for the _costume_ of a Russian
field-marshal, which had been given to him by Alexander, did not fit
him, and was too large for his thinness. On the whole, the Duke
_failed_, as we are told, to “gain any remarkable success in the Russian
salons.” The countesses could make nothing of him; the princesses smiled
on without his returning the smile; the courtiers told him _bons mots_
without much effect; and the politicians were of opinion that a Duke so
taciturn had no tongue.
Still the emperor’s attentions to him continued; and, on the day of
distributing medals to the army, he gave Wellington the regiment of
Smolensk, formed by Peter the Great, and of high reputation in the
service.
But he succeeded in his chief object, which referred to Greece; and
which ultimately, in giving independence to a nation, the classic
honours of whose forefathers covered the shame of their descendants,—and
by a succession of diplomatic blunders, has turned a Turkish province
into a European pensioner, enfeebling Turkey without benefiting Europe,
and merely making a new source of contention between France, Russia, and
England.
The career of Nicholas has been peaceable; and the empire has been
undisturbed but by the guilty Circassian war, which yet seems to be
carried on rather as a field of exercise for the Russian armies, than
for purposes of conquest.
But all nations now require something to occupy the public mind; and an
impression appears to be rising in Russia, that the residence of the
sovereign should be transferred to Moscow. Nothing could be more likely
to produce a national convulsion, and operate a total change on the
European policy of Russia, and the relations of the northern courts. Yet
it is by no means improbable, that the singular avidity of the Russian
court to make Poland not merely a dependency, but an integral part of
the empire, by the suppression of its very name, the change of its
language, and the transfer of large portions of its people to other
lands, may have for its especial purpose the greater security of Russia
on the West, while she fixes her whole interest on a vigorous progress
in the South.
There are some problems which still perplex historians, and will
probably perplex them for many an age; and among those are, the good or
evil predominant in the Crusades, the use of a Pope in Italy, (where he
obviously offers, and must _always_ offer, the strongest obstacle to the
_union_ of the Italian States into a national government,) the true
character of Peter the Great, and the true policy of placing the capital
of Russia in the northern extremity of the empire.
It appears to be now at least approaching to a public question,—Whether
Peter showed more of good sense, or of savage determination, in building
a magnificent city in a swamp, where man had never before built any
thing but a fisherman’s hut; and in condemning his posterity for ever to
live in the most repulsive climate of Europe? Some pages in these
volumes are given to the inquiry into the wisdom of deserting an
ancient, natural, and superb seat of empire in the South, for a new,
unnatural, and decaying seat of sovereignty in the vicinage of the
Arctic circle; of retarding the progress of civilisation by the
insuperable difficulties of a climate, where the sea is frozen up for
six months in the year, and the rivers and land are frozen up for nine!
The question now is, Whether Peter had not equally frozen up the Russian
energies, impeded the natural prosperity of the empire, and flung the
people back into the age of Ivan I.?
Of course, no one doubts that the Russian empire is of vast extent and
substantial power; but its chief power is in its central provinces, and
in its faculty of expansion into the south. Its northern provinces defy
improvement, and can be sustained only by the toil of government.
The probable view of the case is, that Peter was deluded by his passion
for naval supremacy. He had seen the fleets of Western Europe trained in
their boisterous but ever-open seas; and he determined to have a fleet
in a sea which, throughout the winter, is a sheet of ice, and where the
ships are imbedded as if they were on dry ground. He had then no Black
Sea for his field of exercise, and no Sebastopol for his dockyard. He
touched upon no sea but the Baltic; and, under the infatuation of being
a naval power, he threw the Russian government as far as he could
towards the North Pole.
Moscow should have remained the Russian capital. With an admirable
climate, at once keen enough to keep the human frame in its vigour, and
with the warm summer of the south, to supply all the vegetable products
of Europe; its position commanding the finest provinces of Western Asia,
Russia would have been mistress of the Black Sea a century earlier, had
probably been in possession of Asia Minor, and have fixed a Viceroy in
the city of the Sultans.
The policy of Catherine II., evidently took this direction; she made no
_northern_ conquests; she withdrew her armies on the first opportunity
from the Prussian war, in which Russia had been involved by the blunders
of her foolish husband; and though she engaged in that desperate act by
which Poland was partitioned—an act which, though perfidious, was
originally pacific—the whole force of her empire was thrown into
southern war.
This policy is still partially maintained. The war of the Caucasus, an
unfortunate and unjustifiable war, now exhibits the only hostilities on
which Russia expends any portion of her power. The success of that war
would evidently put the eastern, as well as the northern shore of the
Black Sea, in her possession. The southern shore could then make no
resistance, if it were the will of Russia to cast an eye of ambition on
the land of the Turk. We by no means infer that such _is_ her will; we
hope that higher motives, and a sense of national justice, will rescue
her reputation from an act of such atrocity. But Asia Minor, on the
first crash of war, would be open to the squadrons of the Scythian. This
policy was interrupted in the reign of Alexander only by the French war.
When the providential time was come for the destruction of Napoleon, his
rage of conquest acted the part for him which the false prophets were
accustomed to act for the kings of Judah and Israel. It urged him
headlong to his ruin, and all his distinguishing qualities were turned
to his overthrow. His ardour in the field became precipitancy; his
sagacity became a fierce self-dependence; the old tactic which had led
him to strike the first blow at the capitals of Europe, urged him into
the heart of the wilderness; his diplomatic confidence there exposed him
to be baffled by the plain sense of Russia, and his daring reliance on
his fortune stripped him of an army and a throne.
But, when Russia had recovered from this invasion, her first efforts
were pointed in the old direction. She recommenced the Turkish war,
seized Moldavia and Wallachia, crossed the Balkan, threatened
Constantinople, and, with the city of Constantine in her grasp, retired
only on the remonstrances of the European powers.
M. Schnitzler imagines that the direction of Russian conquest will be
towards Germany, and contemplates the all-swallowing gluttony which is
to absorb all the states from the Vistula to the Rhine. We wholly differ
from those views. The condition of Europe must be totally changed before
the policy of Russia will attempt to make vassals of these iron tribes.
It would have too many battles to fight, and too little to gain by them.
To attempt the absorption of any one leading German power would produce
a universal war. Poland is still a thorn in its side; and it would take
a century to convert its intense hostility into cordial obedience.
Prussia and Austria are the political “Pillars of Hercules” which no
invader _can_ pass; and if Germany can but secure herself from the
restless and insatiable ambition of France, she need never shrink from
the terrors of a Tartar war.
If war should inflame the Continent again, the Russian trumpets will be
heard, _not_ on the Elbe, but on the shores of the Propontis. Asia Minor
and Syria will be a lovelier and a more lucrative prey; while probably
Egypt will be the prize which will draw to the waters of the
Mediterranean, the maritime force of the world.
On the whole, the volumes of this Franco-German are intelligent, and may
be studied with advantage by all who desire to comprehend the actual
condition of an empire, which extends from the Baltic to the Sea of
Kamtschatka, which contains seven millions of square miles, nearly sixty
millions of souls, is capable of containing ten times the number, and
which is evidently intended to exercise a most important influence on
the globe.