glamour of the fame of Napoleon, who was then First Consul and seemed to
be destined for the dictatorship of the world. But that crime, and worse
than crime, that mistake, as Talleyrand put it—the murder of the Duc
d’Enghien at Vincennes in March, 1804—aroused the greatest indignation
in the mind of Alexander, and the Russian chargé d’affaires at Paris
was instructed to express that feeling in no measured terms. The First
Consul’s reply was, in effect, a request that the Emperor would mind his
own business. A further note was sent, recapitulating the claims and
remonstrances of Russia, and M. d’Oubril asked for his passports.
The tragedy of Vincennes had provoked the anger of Alexander; the
coronation of Napoleon as Emperor by the Pope summoned from Rome to
do his bidding, on the 19th of November in the same year, called up a
totally different but no less hostile feeling. That a Corsican adventurer
should robe himself in the Imperial purple and pretend to equal rank with
himself, was something which the proud Romanoff could not brook. The
disgust and indignation engendered by Napoleon’s cruelty and pretensions
were enhanced by his territorial encroachments. Alexander threw himself
heart and soul into the combination against the French, and Europe was
once more ablaze with war until the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, when on
board a raft anchored in the river Niemen, the two Emperors fell into one
another’s arms, kissed, and swore eternal friendship.
It would be outside of the purview of my task to dwell upon this event
were it not for the interest attaching to the secret treaty entered
into upon that occasion, an instrument the conditions of which were not
made public until the year 1834, but which so clearly illustrated the
ambitions of both nations. Napoleon undertook that Russia should become
possessed of European Turkey, with Constantinople and the outlet into
the Mediterranean, and pursue her conquests in Asia as far as she chose,
India being, of course, understood as the objective. France was to have
Egypt, Malta, the assistance of the Russian fleet in the capture of
Gibraltar—the navigation of the Mediterranean being confined to French,
Russian, Spanish and Italian ships. There were other provisions and much
detail, but the above were the chief points. The amusing feature of this
still-born treaty was that neither party honestly meant business. Each
thought that he was jockeying the other, with the firm intention of
carrying out no more of it than was for his own advantage. Tomini, who
was aide-de-camp to Napoleon,[19] wrote and told Paris that Alexander
had been made to swallow a strong dose of opium, which would keep him
quiet for some time, while Boutourlin told St. Petersburg that the terms
of the treaty imposed such liabilities upon Russia that it must only be
looked upon as a means of gaining time.
Alexander was present at the meeting of the German princes called
together by Napoleon at Erfurt in the following year. Napoleon had
provided for the entertainment of what it would be irony to call his
guests, by summoning from Paris the famous Talma with his troupe of
actors. One of the plays chosen was Voltaire’s _Œdipe_, and when the
player came to the line:—
“L’amitié d’un grand homme est un bienfait des Dieux,”
the gigantic Russian Emperor leant over and theatrically seizing
Napoleon’s hand, said “Je n’ai jamais mieux senti!” The stage effect
missed fire, for the great little friend was quietly dozing, and had
to be aroused to consciousness of what was happening. The “parterre de
Rois,” the “pit of Kings,” smiled and applauded, but the demonstration
was a fiasco.
The “bienfait des Dieux” was not long lived. In four short years after
the meeting at Erfurt Napoleon made the greatest mistake of his life. He
was at Moscow, and there we may leave him, standing on the Sparrow Hill
in his favourite attitude, his arms folded, his brows bent, looking upon
the barbaric splendour of the fantastic pink towers and battlements of
the Kremlin, waiting for the delivery of the keys of the citadel—the keys
which never came.
The mystery of the burning of Moscow will never be cleared up. Was the
city fired by Rostopchin? Did he even connive at the deed? He himself
denied it in a pamphlet published at Paris in 1823, but in my day nobody
with whom I spoke on the subject believed him. The general opinion was
that this great act of patriotism, which was the beginning of Napoleon’s
downfall, was indeed his work. He burnt his own country house and
destroyed his property, so that nothing should fall into the hands of
the enemy—what more consistent than that he should deprive them of all
supplies and all communication by burning the sacred capital after
removing as many of its inhabitants as was possible. I have called the
fire an act of patriotism. I ought to have said Russian patriotism. The
attachment of the Russian to the soil is something sacred. The Mujik
has two religions—the religion of God and the religion of the soil.
Holy Russia is to him not a mere jingle of words, and Rostopchin, when
he punished the sacrilege of the invader, knew that he could count upon
having with him the most sacred feelings of his fellow-countrymen. He
was, indeed, the typical Russian of his time. The placard which he put
on the village church, the only building on the property which he left
standing, is characteristic:
“For eight years I have been embellishing this place, and I
have lived here happily in the bosom of my family. At your
approach the seventeen hundred and twenty inhabitants of this
property are leaving it, and I set fire to my house that it may
not be polluted by your presence. Frenchmen! I have left you my
two houses in Moscow, with their contents worth half a million
roubles; here you will find nothing but ashes.”
This, of a surety, was a brave, a determined and patriotic man—a true
Russian. He had been a great favourite of the Emperor Paul, and by
his sage advice saved that unhappy man from many follies. It was said
that had he been at St. Petersburg on the fatal 24th of March, 1801,
the murder might not have been committed. During the early years of
Alexander’s reign Rostopchin was out of favour. But there came a time
when the Emperor became aware of his worth and courage, and made him Lord
Chamberlain and Governor of Moscow. He was a descendant of the Great
Mongol warrior of the twelfth century, Genghis Khan, and so he described
himself in the following lines:
“Je suis né Tatare,
Je voulais être Romain.
Les Français m’ont fait barbare,
Et les Russes Georges Dandin.”
There is an excellent article on Rostopchin in the “Biographie Générale,”
the book that Carlyle used to prize so highly.
The Emperor Alexander the First died in 1825 in circumstances which
gave rise to some suspicion. He had left St. Petersburg in the month of
December, with the Empress, who was ailing, his object being to take
her to a warmer climate. He seems to have been for some time depressed
and haunted by the sinister idea that his death was not far off. He was
always more or less dominated by the spell of mysticism, and, indeed, it
was under the influence of a mystic, a certain Madame de Krüdener, that
he was induced to found the Holy Alliance. Before leaving St. Petersburg
it is said that he went to the Church of the Convent of St. Alexander
Nevski and caused a funeral service to be read. As he left the town he
stopped his carriage to cast a last yearning look upon the city where he
had been born and which he loved so well. He left the Empress at Taganrog
on the Sea of Azov, and went to the Crimea, where he caught a fever,
hurried back to Taganrog and died, not before he was made aware of the
discovery of a plot to murder him and the whole Imperial Family.
It is difficult to understand why any Russian should have wished his
death. Educated as he had been by his Swiss tutor, the famous La Harpe,
in the most liberal principles, in his domestic policy he devoted
himself heart and soul to the good of his people. Early in his reign
he abolished serfdom in Esthonia, Livonia and Kurland. He introduced
reforms into the older universities and created new ones. He promoted the
study of science, and gave his active patronage to all the educational
institutions in the Empire. He did away with the so-called Secret
Tribunal, a sort of Star Chamber, for the arbitrary trial of political
offences. Commerce and industry were special objects of his care. He
built new harbours and made roads, and in 1818 extended to the peasants
the right of establishing manufactories and commercial undertakings, a
privilege which up to his time had been confined to the upper classes.
If, later in his reign, he seemed rather inclined to go back upon these
liberal principles, it must be ascribed to the poor and unsympathetic
return with which his endeavours were met. The country was hardly ripe
for his audacious programme—certainly not for parliamentary government,
which at one time he had in view. His own wish was to substitute a
constitution for the absolutism which had existed up to his day. He was
before his time. Napoleon might sneer at his duplicity and call him “un
Grec du bas Empire,” but he recognized his talent and his capacity for
governing. The vast majority of his people adored the handsome giant, but
treachery and treason were plotting underground, and rebellion broke out,
as we shall see, as soon as his soul had left his body. That sorrow he
was mercifully spared, though the knowledge that it was coming arrived to
embitter his last days.
[Illustration: THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER I.
_From an engraving after a portrait by Wolkoff._
[_To face p. 260._]
The Emperor Nicholas came to the throne at a moment when a political
storm of the greatest violence was ready to burst. More than one division
of the army was known to have been tampered with and to be disaffected,
and many of the chief nobles were conspiring for a constitutional
government. The warning—or was it more than a warning?—received by the
dead Emperor was sufficient to prove this, and there were at that moment
special circumstances in the succession to the throne which were markedly
favourable to revolution.
Alexander, deeply imbued, as I have said, with mysticism, had a
foreboding that he would not be long-lived. He deposited with the Council
of the Empire a packet, the seals of which were not to be broken without
his command except in the event of his death, in which case it was to
be opened at once and acted upon forthwith. As he died without issue,
the Imperial Crown would, in accordance with the law of succession
fixed by his father Paul, devolve upon his next brother, Constantine.
He, however, was unwilling to reign. He preferred to remain as he was,
governor and practically sovereign of Poland. Tsar of all the Russias he
would not be. The mysterious packet was found to contain a letter from
him, renouncing his claim to the throne in favour of his younger brother
Nicholas. As soon as this was known, Nicholas most scrupulously did all
in his power to induce his brother to alter his determination. He even
went so far as to proclaim Constantine Emperor. The latter, however, in
spite of repeated appeals from his brother, held to his fixed purpose,
and Nicholas became Emperor against his own will and endeavours.
The conspirators found in these difficulties a rare opportunity for the
attempt to carry out their plans. The interregnum had lasted fifteen
days, and it was not till the 24th of December that Nicholas took
possession of the Imperial Palace. On the 25th of December he read to the
council the final renunciation of the Crown by Constantine, and on the
following day he was proclaimed Emperor. That day the conspirators and
the rebels assembled in the huge square—the Isaac Place—and shouted for
Constantine and “his bride, the Constitution,” the soldiers believing
in their innocence that “Constitution” was the name of the Grand Duke’s
real wife. Nicholas, unarmed, but attended by General Milarodowitch,
the Governor of St. Petersburg, and a battalion of faithful grenadiers,
and accompanied by M. de la Ferronays, the French Ambassador, left the
Palace and faced the rebels. The general, who was greatly beloved by the
whole army, went forward and tried to speak with them, but he was at once
bayoneted and shot.
The new Emperor showed the greatest courage and patience, and it was
not until near nightfall that, the rebels having fired the first shot,
he ordered his artillery to put an end to the trouble. Some two hundred
men were killed by grape and canister. The five ringleaders were taken
prisoners, tried and hanged some months later. One of the Princes
Troubetzkoi, who had been foremost in his threats against the Emperor’s
life, being sent for by the Tsar, threw himself at his feet and implored
his pardon. “Sit down,” said Nicholas, “and write to your wife at my
dictation.” The Prince sat down and the Tsar dictated: “My life is
spared.” The Prince was so overcome that he could write no more. “Now
seal your letter and go,” said the Tsar; “take your life, and spend it in
remorse and repentance.”
The remainder of the conspirators, men of noble family, were sent to
Siberia—so many of them as were still alive were pardoned and set free
by that generous and noble sovereign, Alexander the Second, on his
accession to the throne thirty years later. With the Dekabrists, the
“men of December,” as they were called, the cry for Constantine was a
mere pretext—the seizing of a possible chance. The real object was the
abolition of Royalty and the proclaiming of a constitution. Nicholas
has sometimes been accused of taking too stern measures against the
Dekabrists. With that judgment I cannot agree. He was attacked with armed
force, his murder and that of his whole family being the object; he did
not strike the first blow. He could not expect to quell a formidable
revolution in the army with rose-water. It was no sudden, passionate
outburst of a people aching under the sense of wrong. The murderous
plot, long meditated and carefully prepared, had been executed in cold
blood. His brother lay dead at Taganrog. He and his dearly-loved boy,
whom he had left entrusted to sure hands in the palace, were to have
been the next victims. The whole conspiracy lay revealed as in an open
book. It was all the more dangerous in that it was not a mob riot, but a
conspiracy of men of high birth, education and position, corrupting the
army itself. Put yourselves in his place. That he was horror-stricken at
the massacre was proved by the pathetic cry which he uttered to M. de la
Ferronays, the French Ambassador, who never left his side throughout that
cruel day: “Ah! quel commencement de règne.” It was to him the skeleton
at the feast throughout his life.
Shortly after his accession to the throne the Duke of Wellington was
sent to Russia as special ambassador, nominally to congratulate him, but
also with the object of inducing the new Tsar to adopt a conciliatory
attitude towards the Sultan, between whom and the Greeks there was much
trouble. The irony of Fate made the Duke take with him as Secretary of
Embassy, Lord Fitzroy Somerset (Lord Raglan), the general whose victories
twenty-nine years later in the defence of Turkey were to break the proud
heart of that same Tsar. It was during these negotiations that Nicholas
formed his estimate of the Duke’s character, and caused him to cherish
in his heart the memory of the great soldier as of a model to be copied.
It was then, too, that he first declared that he had no higher ambition
than to be a “gentleman,” using the English word; and whatever may have
been his faults, whatever his ambition, a truthful, honest gentleman he
remained to his life’s end. To the Duke of Wellington he made no secret
of his determination to allow no foreign Power, or Powers, to interfere
between himself and the Porte. That was his lifelong consistent policy.
If Nicholas was reactionary, if he hated education and opposed the spread
of science, if he strained the powers of absolutism almost to the
breaking point, he did so openly, and it was the tragedy of his accession
which poisoned his many fine qualities.
During his reign the ship of State was seldom in smooth waters. He sent
Prince Mentschikoff to Persia to announce his accession to the throne,
with instructions to enter into negotiations for the settlement of the
frontier questions which were in dispute. If the maintenance of peace
be the proper aim of diplomacy, Mentschikoff was not a successful
ambassador. His mission to Persia ended in war, as did his embassy to
Turkey more than a quarter of a century later. The Russians, under Prince
Paskiewitch, were victorious, and the province of Erivan was added to
Russia.
Poland was the chief thorn in his side in 1828; two years after his
coronation at Moscow he caused himself to be crowned King of Poland at
Warsaw. The ceremonial was gorgeous, and the King-Emperor, invoking the
Supreme Majesty of Heaven, prayed that he might govern for the happiness
of his people. He also wrote to the Pope, thanking His Holiness for the
reception given to the Tsarevitch, promising to “protect the well-being
of his Catholic subjects respecting their convictions,” etc. That he was
sincere in these undertakings admits of little doubt. Unfortunately he
was represented at Warsaw by his brother Constantine, who, as his elder,
and as having renounced the throne in his favour, had more influence than
an ordinary governor would have had. The revolution in Poland broke out
in 1830, and Prince Sanguszko, the head of one of the noblest families in
the country, people whom I afterwards knew, was one of the leaders. He
was taken prisoner and degraded, and his estates were forfeited. It was
said that when he was sent to Siberia, the Emperor, with his own hand,
wrote that the journey was to be made on foot. When I was in Russia many
years later, I had reason to believe that this was not true. The troubles
in Poland lasted for many years—indeed, were never extinguished—and they
led to gross exaggerations.
I was in Paris as a small boy in 1845, and I well remember hearing all
the horrors that were hawked about there, and all the stories of cruelty.
Especially I recollect one day how when certain news came to one of the
Prince de la Moskowa’s concerts—he was the son of Marshal Ney and an
accomplished musician and conductor—the pious Roman Catholics present
lashed themselves into a fury of emotion over the sufferings of the nuns
of St. Basil. It was affirmed that they had been stripped naked, flogged
and tortured, and that when they were starving and begged for food their
mouths were filled with earthworms. Those were the lies by which the
indignation of their co-religionists was aroused by Polish agents. The
best informed people did not believe them. That the Poles were cruelly
treated, and harshly misgoverned, was certainly to be laid to the charge
of the Grand Duke Constantine. He had inherited the still-living hatreds
and the memory of Moscow in the beginning of the seventeenth century.
There were old scores to be settled, and his doctrine was an eye for an
eye, the _lex talionis_ in its greatest rigidity. It would have been a
hard matter in any case for the Tsar to bring Russia and Poland into
harmony. With Constantine at Warsaw it was impossible—yet the Grand Duke
had married a Polish lady.
The affairs of Poland were an apple of discord between France and Russia.
The military successes of Nicholas were really confined to the Persian
campaign, for although in his subsequent operations on the Danube in
1828 (poor Wallachia and Moldavia), his troops had some success, and
even took Varna, the expedition served no great purpose, while it
effectually showed the Tsar’s incapacity as a leader, for having taken
the field in person, he had to return to St. Petersburg a pronounced
failure—recognized as such by his own generals.
A civil triumph was the codification of the Russian law, begun in
1827 and finished in 1846, by which the peasants greatly benefited;
was the chief feat in internal administration by which his reign was
distinguished.
In 1844 the Emperor Nicholas came to England and visited Queen Victoria
at Windsor. The object of his visit was twofold. The Queen had received
Louis Philippe, whom he hated and despised, and he was determined to see
whether he could not counteract the wily old King’s influence. Secondly,
the Convention of London of 1841 placed the Ottoman dominions under the
protection of the Powers, and this manifestly did not suit the Tsar’s
book. He had his own views as to the Sublime Porte, and would brook no
interference between himself and the Sultan, whose Christian subjects he
wished to place under his own shield. That was for him a principle of
religion. It was a momentous visit, destined to bear bitter fruit ten
years later.
Sir Robert Peel was at this time Prime Minister, and Lord Aberdeen
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. It was only natural that the
Foreign Secretary should have much conversation with his Sovereign’s
illustrious guest, and Lord Aberdeen was, by his gentle and conciliatory
manners, the man, above all others, fitted to charm the Tsar, who to the
last retained an affectionate admiration for him. Perhaps Lord Aberdeen’s
deportment towards the Emperor was a little too deferential; at any rate,
he left Nicholas convinced that the Russian views as to Turkey were
shared by the British Government, and it was with unfeigned joy that in
1852 the Emperor learnt of the accession to power as Prime Minister of
a man whom he flattered himself that he had talked over to his way of
thinking, and whose peace-loving disposition would never allow him to go
to war on behalf of the autonomy of Turkey. That he honestly believed
that he had had such an assurance from Lord Aberdeen cannot be doubted.
In its main features the story of the Crimean War will never be
forgotten. The storming of the heights of the Alma, which Nicholas
believed to be impregnable, the beating back of the tidal wave of Russian
infantry at Inkermann, when my old friend, Billy Hewitt, ordered to spike
his guns and retire, answered, “Spike be damned!” and went on firing till
they were red hot and the enemy were in retreat—just one gallant deed
among many of that bloody battle; above all, the heroic charge of the six
hundred at Balaclava, are feats of arms which must set men on fire as
long as they have pulses to quicken. But how many men are there nowadays
who could give any account of the causes which led to the war?
The quarrels between the monks of the Greek and Latin churches in
Palestine seem trivial enough reason to have started so great a
catastrophe. The custody of the key of the Church of the Nativity at
Bethlehem, the right to worship in the Church of the Virgin near the
Garden of Gethsemane, and the custody of the Sanctuaries of Jerusalem,
were the first pretexts of hostilities. That there was in the mind of the
Emperor Nicholas a far wider-reaching motive, hardly suspected perhaps
even by himself, will be seen presently.
In the year 1740 a treaty concluded between Louis XV. and the Porte,
practically gave the care of the Sacred Places to the Latin Church. To
the Greeks certain similar concessions had been made later on by firmans,
or edicts of the Sultan, which, however, could not technically be held to
over-ride the solemn treaty with France. Louis Napoleon took up the cause
of the Latins, and his ambassador, M. de Lavalette, insisted with some
violence on the exclusive rights of the Latin monks. The French people
at large probably cared little for these squabbles between the rival
creeds. But to Louis Napoleon they furnished an opportunity for securing
to himself, as Defender of the Faith, a powerful friend in the Church. He
wished to arrogate to himself those sacred rights of primogeniture which
had been the pride of the Kings of France. It was, moreover, an outlet
for that feverish activity which his home policy had made a necessity for
him. In the month of December, 1852, a silver star, graven with the arms
of France, was deposited in the church at Bethlehem with much pompous
ceremonial, attended by the Turkish officials, and the Latin Patriarch
with triumphant joy received the coveted keys of the church and Holy
Manger.