A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year Part 12

[Sidenote: Araktcheyev]

[Sidenote: The Russian succession]

[Sidenote: Conflicting proclamations]

[Sidenote: Nicholas, Czar of Russia]

[Sidenote: Moscow mutiny]

[Sidenote: Miloradovitch shot]

[Sidenote: End of revolt]

When Alexander came under the influence of Madame de Krudener and the more baneful ascendency of Metternich everything was changed for the worse. The publication of Bibles was stopped; the censorship was re-established in its full rigor; Speranski's great undertaking of a Russian code of laws was nipped in the bud; Galytsin, the liberal Minister of Publication, had to resign, and Araktcheyev, a reactionary of extreme type, was put in his place. Some idea of the dark days that followed may be gathered from Araktcheyev's first measures. The teaching of the geological theories of Buffon and of the systems of Copernicus and Newton were forbidden as contrary to Holy Writ. Medical dissection was prohibited, and the practice of medicine was reduced to that of faith cure. All professors who had studied at seats of learning abroad were dismissed. Then it was that the secret societies sprang up in Poland and in the north and south of Russia.

One of the foremost conspirators was Pestel, who had undertaken to frame a new code of laws for Russia. When Alexander died, Russia was on the brink of a military revolution. It was the intention of the conspirators to a.s.sa.s.sinate the Czar in the presence of his troops and to proclaim a const.i.tution; but his unexpected departure to the Black Sea frustrated the plan. Alexander's death threw the Russian court into confusion. For a while it was not known who was to succeed him. The supposed heir to the throne was Alexander's brother, Constantine. Unbeknown to the people he had formally renounced his right to the throne. At the time of his brother's death he was in Warsaw. His younger brother, Nicholas, at St. Petersburg, had him proclaimed emperor. When they brought him Constantine's written abdication, Nicholas refused to acknowledge it and caused the troops to take their oath of allegiance to his brother. Constantine in Warsaw proclaimed Nicholas emperor. Nicholas would not accept the crown unless by the direct command of his elder brother. At length the matter was adjusted, after an interregnum of three weeks. On Christmas Day, Nicholas ascended the imperial throne. The confusion at St. Petersburg was turned to account by the military conspirators who had plotted against Alexander's life. To the common soldiers they denounced Nicholas as a usurper who was trying to make them break their recent oath to Constantine. When ordered to take the oath to Nicholas, the Moscow regiment refused, and marched to the open place in front of the Senate House. There they formed a square and were joined by other bodies of mutineering soldiers. It is gravely a.s.serted by Russian historians that the poor wretches, ignorant of the very meaning of the word const.i.tution, shouted for it, believing it to be the name of Constantine's wife. An attack upon them by the household cavalry was repulsed. When General Miloradovitch, a veteran of fifty-two battles against Napoleon, tried to make himself heard, he was shot. The mutineers would not listen even to the Emperor. Not until evening could the new Czar be brought to use more decisive measures. Then he ordered out the artillery and had them fire grapeshot into the square. The effect was appalling. In a few minutes the square was cleared and the insurrection was over. Its leaders were wanting at the moment of action. A rising in the south of Russia was quelled by a single regiment. Before the year ended, Nicholas was undisputed master of Russia.

[Sidenote: Death of Fresnel]

By the death of Augustin Jean Fresnel, France lost a brilliant scientist, who shares with Thomas Young the honor of discrediting the old emission theory of light, and of formulating the undulatory theory.

[Sidenote: Death of David]

Jacques Louis David, founder of the new French school of cla.s.sicism in painting, died at the close of the year at Brussels. Many of his paintings were on exhibition before the fall of the old regime in France. In the days of the French Revolution, David was a Jacobite and friend of Robespierre, and suffered in prison after the latter's fall. It was not, however, until the time of the First Empire that David's fame spread. He then reached the zenith of his success. His masterpieces of this period are "Napoleon Crossing the Alps"--a canvas on which is founded Hauff's story of "The Picture of the Emperor"--"The Coronation of Napoleon," "Napoleon in His Imperial Robes," and the "Distribution of the Eagles." Equally famous is his portrait of "Madame Recamier resting on a Chaiselongue." After the fall of the First Empire, David was exiled from France, and retired to Brussels. David, unlike so many other beneficiaries of the Empire, remained warmly attached to Napoleon. Once when the Duke of Wellington visited his studio in Brussels and expressed a wish that the great artist would paint him, David coldly replied, "I never paint Englishmen." In his declining years he painted subjects taken from Grecian mythology. Among the paintings executed by David during his banishment were "Love and Psyche," "The Wrath of Achilles," and "Mars Disarmed by Venus." The number of David's pupils who acquired distinction was very great, among whom the best known were Gros, Gerard, Derdranais Girodet, Jugros, Abel de Pujel and Droming.

1826

[Sidenote: Czar Nicholas' measures]

[Sidenote: Ryleyev and Pestel hanged]

[Sidenote: Russian laws codified]

Driven to a.s.sert his rights to the crown by bloodshed, Nicholas I. showed himself resolved to maintain the absolute principles of his throne. He accorded a disdainful pardon to Prince Trubetskoi, whom the conspirators of the capital had chosen as head of the government. The ma.s.s of misled soldiery was likewise treated with clemency. But against the real instigators of the insurrection the Czar proceeded with uncompromising severity. One hundred and twenty were deported to Siberia; and the five foremost men, among whom were Ryleyev, the head of the society in the north, and Pestel, were condemned to be hanged. All died courageously.

Pestel's chief concern was for his Code: "I am certain," said he, "that one day Russia will find in this book a refuge against violent commotions. My greatest error was that I wished to gather the harvest before sowing the seed." In a way the teachings of these men gave an impetus to Russia that their death could not destroy. Even the Czar, with his pa.s.sion for military autocracy, made it his first care to take up the work of codifying the Russian laws. Alexis Mikhaielovitch during the next four years turned out his "Complete Code of the Laws of the Russian Empire."

[Sidenote: Persian war]

[Sidenote: Defence of Choucha]

[Sidenote: Russian victories]

[Sidenote: Persia abandoned by England]

[Sidenote: Russia's ultimatum to Turkey]

[Sidenote: Ma.s.sacre of Janizaries]

The military ambitions of Nicholas found a vent in the direction of Persia.

The encroachments of Ermolov, the Governor-General of the Caucasus, so exasperated the Persians that soon a holy war was preached against Russia.

Ebbas-Mirza, the Prince Royal of Persia, collected an army of 35,000 men on the banks of the Araxes. A number of English officers joined his ranks.

Nicholas at once despatched General Kasevitch with reinforcements for Ermolov. Ebbas-Mirza was checked on his march on Tivlas by the heroic defence of Choucha. In the meanwhile the Russians concentrated their forces. The Persian vanguard, 15,000 strong, was defeated at Elizabethpol.

On the banks of the Djeham, Paskevitch, with a division of the Russian army, overthrew the main body of the Persians and forced them back over the Araxes. The Persians continued their resistance, relying on the terms of the treaty of Teheran, wherein England had promised financial and military subsidies in case of invasion. The English, promise was not kept. Hence forth the Persians were at the mercy of the Russian army of invasion.

Almost simultaneously a rebellion against the Chinese Government broke out in Kashgar. Undeterred by this diversion, Nicholas took up a vigorous stand against the Turks. In March he presented an ultimatum insisting on the autonomy of Moldavia, Wallachia and Servia, and on the final cession to Russia of disputed Turkish territory on the Asiatic frontier. Turkey yielded. Nicholas then joined in an ultimatum with England and France for an immediate stop of the Turkish outrages in Greece. In this matter Nicholas, who regarded the Greeks as rebels, showed himself more lenient to the Turks, and negotiations with the Porte were permitted to drag. The Sultan profited by the lull to execute a long contemplated stroke against the Janizaries. The whole of this famous corps of bodyguards was ma.s.sacred.

[Sidenote: Death of Bennigsen and Rostopchin]

During this year two men died in Russia who had distinguished themselves at the time of Napoleon's invasion. One was General Bennigsen, a soldier of German extraction and training, who took a leading part in all the Russian campaigns against Napoleon. The other was Prince Rostopchin, who as Governor of Moscow consigned that city to the flames after Napoleon's triumphant entry.

[Sidenote: Death of Hastings and Heber]

[Sidenote: Alfred Tennyson]

[Sidenote: English letters flourishing]

[Sidenote: Scientific progress]

England lost two men who had distinguished themselves in India. One was the Marquis of Hastings, who had but lately relinquished his Governor-Generalship of British India, and whose rule there both from a military and from a political-economical point of view must be regarded as pre-eminently successful. The other was Reginald Heber, the Bishop of Calcutta, who endeared himself to Anglo-Indians by his translations of the folk songs and cla.s.sic writings of Hindustan. In other respects this year is notable in English literary annals. Alfred Tennyson published his earliest verses in conjunction with his brother; Elizabeth Barrett also brought out her first poems; Macaulay had begun to captivate England by his essays; Thomas Hood issued his "Whims and Oddities"; Scott and Coleridge were then in the heyday of literary favor. Scott had just brought out his "Talisman" and "The Betrothed," and now published "Woodstock." Coleridge contributed his "Aids to Reflection." A new impetus was given to scholarship by the foundation of the Western and Eastern literary inst.i.tutions of England, and the establishment of a professorship for political economy at Oxford. London University was chartered. Drummond's namesake, Lieutenant Thomas Drummond, perpetuated his name by his limelight, produced by heating lime to incandescence in the oxy-hydrogen flame.

[Sidenote: English lotteries suppressed]

While Herschel was working out his spectrum a.n.a.lysis, Fox Talbot contributed his share by his observation of the orange line of strontium.

John Walker perfected his invention of friction matches. Industrially, on the contrary, England still suffered from the canker of the corn laws and the recent financial crisis resulting from the operations of ill-fated stock companies. In Lancashire nearly a thousand power looms were destroyed by the distressed operatives. Some relief was given by Canning's abolition of all public lotteries.

[Sidenote: Louis I. of Bavaria]

[Sidenote: Munich embellished]

[Sidenote: German romantic literature]

[Sidenote: "Die Wacht am Rhein"]

[Sidenote: Froebel]

In Germany, arts and literature flourished in the same degree. King Louis I. of Bavaria, upon his accession to the throne, gathered about him in Munich some of the foremost artists and writers of Germany. The capital of Munich was embellished with public monuments; public buildings were decorated with fresco paintings, and art galleries were established. The University of Bavaria was transferred from Landshut to Munich, and other inst.i.tutions of learning were erected by its side. Streets were widened, new avenues and public squares laid out, and public lighting introduced throughout the city. Within a short time the quasi-medieval town of Munich was changed into a modern metropolis and became the Mecca of German art.

Among the artists who gathered round Louis of Bavaria were Moritz von Schwind, Cornelius, Hess, Raupp, and the elder Piloti. Among the writers who drew upon themselves the notice of this liberal king were the Count of Platen, who during this year published his "Ghazels" and the comedy "The Fatal Fork"; and Hauff, who brought out his romantic masterpiece, "Lichtenstein." Of the rising writers, Heinrich Heine alone withstood the blandishments of Louis with verses of biting satire. Little noticed at the time was the appearance of Reichardt's "Wacht am Rhein," a song which was destined to become the battle hymn of Germany. Scant attention, likewise, was given to Froebel's epoch-making work, "The Education of Man." On the other hand much pother was made over some curious exchanges of sovereignty, characteristic of German politics in those days. The Dukes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Meiningen exchanged their respective possessions.

Saalfeld Meiningen received Gotha. Altenburg was a.s.signed to Saxe-Hilburghausen, which latter princ.i.p.ality in turn was relinquished to Meiningen. The settlements of the succession in those petty princ.i.p.alities called forth volumes of legal lore.

Jens Baggesen, the most prolific Danish humorist, died this year, seventy-two years of age. After his death Baggesen's writings declined in popularity.

[Sidenote: American semi-centennial]

[Sidenote: Death of Jefferson and Adams]

[Sidenote: "The Father of Democracy"]