A Short History of Russia Part 8

Alexander, the romantic champion of right and justice, the dreamer of ideal dreams, had been carried by the whirlpool of events into currents too strong for him. He stood alone on the continent of Europe face to face with the man who was subjugating it. His army was broken in pieces, and perhaps an invasion of his own empire was at hand. Should he make terms with this man whose career had so revolted him?--or should he defy him and accept the risk of an invasion, which, by offering freedom to the serfs and independence to the Poles, might give the invader the immediate support of millions of his own subjects?

Then added to the conflict with his old self, there was the irresistible magic of Napoleon's personal influence. A two-hours'

interview on the raft at Tilsit--June 25, 1807--changed the whole direction of Alexander's policy, and made him an ally of the despot he had detested, whom he now joined in determining the fate of Europe.

Together they decided who should occupy thrones and who should not; to whom there should be recompense, and who should be despoiled; and the Emperor of Russia consented to join the Emperor of the French in a war upon the commercial prosperity of England--his old friend and ally--by means of a continental blockade.

Times were changed. It was not so long ago--just one hundred years--since Peter the Great had opened one small window for the light from civilized Europe to glimmer through; and now the Tsar of that same Russia, in a two-hours' interview on a raft, was deciding what should be the fate of Europe!

The Emperor's young companions, with small experience and lofty aims, were keenly disappointed in him. This alliance was in contravention of all their ideals. He began to grow distrustful and cold toward them, leaning entirely upon Speranski, his prime minister, who was French in his sympathies and a profound admirer of Napoleon. Alexander, no less zealous for reforms than before, hurt at the defection of his friends and trying to justify himself to himself, said "Does not this man represent the new forces in conflict with the old?" But he was not at ease. He and his minister worked laboriously; a systematic plan of reform was prepared. Speranski considered the Code Napoleon the model of all progressive legislation. Its adoption was desired, but it was suited only to a h.o.m.ogeneous people; it was a modern garment and not to be worn by a nation in which feudalism lingered, in which there was not a perfect equality before the law; hence the emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs must be the corner-stone of the new structure. The difficulties grew larger as they were approached. He had disappointed the friends of his youth, had displeased his n.o.bility, and a general feeling of irritation prevailed upon finding themselves involved by the Franco-Russian alliance in wars with England, Austria, and Sweden, and the prosperity of the empire seriously impaired by the continental blockade. But when Bonaparte began to show scant courtesy to his Russian ally, and to act as if he were his master, then Alexander's disenchantment was complete.

He freed himself from the unnatural alliance, and faced the inevitable consequences.

Napoleon, also glad to be freed from a sentimental friendship not at all to his taste, prepared to carry out his long-contemplated design.

In July of 1812, by way of Poland, he entered Russia with an army of over 678,000 souls. It was a human avalanche collected mainly from the people he had conquered, with which he intended to overwhelm the Russian Empire. It was of little consequence that thirty or forty thousand fell as this or that town was captured by the way. He had expected victory to be costly, and on he pressed with diminished numbers toward Moscow, armies retreating and villages burning before him. If St. Petersburg was the brain of Russia, Moscow--Moscow the Holy--was its heart! What should they do? Should they lure the French army on to its destruction and then burn and retreat? or should they there take their stand and sacrifice the last army of Russia to save Moscow? With tears streaming down their cheeks they yielded to the words of Kutuzof, who said: "When it becomes a matter of the salvation of Russia, Moscow is only a city like any other. Let us retreat." The archives and treasures of the churches and palaces were carried to Valdimir, such as could of the people following them, and the city was left to its fate.

On September the 14th, 1812, the French troops defiled through the streets of Moscow singing the Ma.r.s.eillaise, and Napoleon established himself in the ancient palace of the Ivans within the walls of the Kremlin. The torches had been distributed, and were in the hands of the Muscovites. The stores of brandy, and boats loaded with alcohol, were simultaneously ignited, and a fierce conflagration like a sea of flame raged below the Kremlin. Napoleon, compelled to force his way through these volcanic fires himself, narrowly escaped.

For five days they continued, devouring supplies and everything upon which the army had depended for shelter and subsistence. For thirty-five days more they waited among the blackened ruins. All was over with the French conquest. The troops were eating their horses, and thousands were already perishing with hunger. Then the elements began to fight for Russia--the snow-flakes came, then the bitter polar winds, cutting like a razor; and a winding sheet of snow enveloped the land. On the 13th of October, after lighting a mine under the Kremlin, with sullen rage the French troops marched out of Moscow. The Great Tower of Ivan erected by Boris was cracked and some portions of palaces and gateways destroyed by this vicious and useless act of revenge.

Then, instead of marching upon St. Petersburg as he had expected, Napoleon escaped alone to the frontier, leaving his perishing wreck of an army to get back as it could. The peasantry, the mushiks, whom the Russians had feared to trust--infuriated by the destruction of their homes, committed awful atrocities upon the starving, freezing soldiers, who, maddened by cold and hunger and by the singing in their ears of the rarefied air, many of them leaped into the bivouac fires. It was a colossal tragedy. Of the 678,000 soldiers only 80,000 ever returned.

The extinction of the grand army of invasion was complete. But in the following year, with another great army, the indomitable Napoleon was conducting a campaign in Germany which ended with the final defeat at Leipzig--then the march upon Paris--and in March, 1814, Alexander at the head of the Allies was in the French capital, dictating the terms of surrender. This young man had played the most brilliant part in the great drama of Liberation. He was hailed as a Deliverer, and exerted a more powerful influence than any of the other sovereigns, in the long period required for rearranging Europe after the pa.s.sing of Napoleon--the disturber of the peace of the world.

In 1809 Sweden had surrendered to Russia Finland, which had belonged to that country for six centuries. The kindly-intentioned Alexander conceded to the Finns many privileges similar to those enjoyed by Poland, which until recent years have not been seriously interfered with. He guaranteed to them a Diet, a separate army, and the continuance of their own language and customs. A ukase just issued by the present emperor seriously invades these privileges, and a forcible Russification of Finland threatens to bring a wave of Finnish emigration to America (1899).

When the Emperor Alexander returned after the Treaty of Paris he was thirty-four years old. Many of the illusions of his youth had faded.

His marriage with Elizabeth of Baden was unhappy. His plans for reform had not been understood by the people whom they were intended to benefit. He had yielded finally to the demands of his angry n.o.bility, had dismissed his liberal adviser Speranski and subst.i.tuted Araktcheef, an intolerant, reactionary leader. He grew morose, gloomy, and suspicious, and a reign of extreme severity under Araktcheef commenced.

In 1819 he consented to join in a league with Austria and Prussia for the purpose of suppressing the very tendencies he himself had once promoted. The League was called the "Holy Alliance," and its object was to reinstate the principle of the divine right of Kings and to destroy democratic tendencies in the germ. Araktcheef's severities, directed against the lower cla.s.ses and the peasantry, produced more serious disorders than had yet developed. There were popular uprisings, and in 1823 at Kief there was held secretly a convention at which the people were told that "the obstacle to their liberties was the Romanoff dynasty. They must shrink from nothing--not from the murder of the Emperor, nor the extermination of the Imperial family."

The peasants were promised freedom if they would join in the plot, and a definite time was proposed for the a.s.sa.s.sination of Alexander when he should inspect the troops in the Ukraine in 1824.

When the Tsar heard of this conspiracy in the South he exclaimed: "Ah, the monsters! And I planned for nothing but their happiness!" He brooded over his lost illusions and his father's a.s.sa.s.sination. His health became seriously disordered, and he was advised to go to the South for change of climate. At Taganrog, on the 1st of December, 1825, he suddenly expired. Almost his last words were: "They may say of me what they will, but I have lived and shall die republican." A statement difficult to accept, regarding a man who helped to create the "Holy Alliance."

CHAPTER XXI

RUSSIA ORIENTALIZED--EASTERN QUESTION

As Alexander left no sons, by the law of primogeniture his brother Constantine, the next oldest in the family of Paul I., should have been his successor. But Constantine had already privately renounced the throne in favor of his brother Nicholas. The actual reason for this renunciation was the Grand Duke's deep attachment to a Polish lady for whom he was willing even to relinquish a crown. The letter announcing his intention contained these words: "Being conscious that I have neither genius, talents, nor energy necessary for my elevation, I beg your Imperial Majesty to transfer this right to my brother Nicholas, the next in succession." The doc.u.ment accepting the renunciation and acknowledging Nicholas as his successor was safely deposited by Alexander, its existence remaining a profound secret even to Nicholas himself.

At the time of the Emperor's death Constantine, who was Viceroy of Poland, was residing at Cracow. Nicholas, unaware of the circ.u.mstances, immediately took the oath of allegiance to his brother and also administered it to the troops at St. Petersburg. It required some time for Constantine's letter to arrive, stating his immovable determination to abide by the decision which would be found in his letter to the late Emperor. There followed a contest of generosity--Nicholas urging and protesting, and his brother refusing the elevation. Three weeks pa.s.sed--weeks of disastrous uncertainty--with no acknowledged head to the Empire.

Such an opportunity was not to be neglected by the revolutionists in the South nor their co-workers in the North. Pestel, the leader, had long been organizing his recruits, and St. Petersburg and Moscow were the centers of secret political societies. The time for action had unexpectedly come. There must be a swift overturning: the entire imperial family must be destroyed, and the Senate and Holy Synod must be compelled to adopt the Const.i.tution which had been prepared.

The hour appointed for the beginning of this direful programme was the day when the senators and the troops should a.s.semble to take the oath of allegiance to Nicholas. The soldiers, who knew nothing of the plot, were incited to refuse to take the oath on the ground that Constantine's resignation was false, and that he was a prisoner and in chains. Constantine was their friend and going to increase their pay.

One Moscow regiment openly shouted: "Long life to Constantine!" and when a few conspirators cried "Long live the Const.i.tution!" the soldiers asked if that was Constantine's wife. So the ostensible cause of the revolt, which soon became general, was a fidelity to their rightful Emperor, who was being illegally deposed. Under this mask worked Pestel and his co-conspirators, composed in large measure of men of high intelligence and standing, including even government officials and members of the aristocracy.

A few days were sufficient to overcome this abortive attempt at revolution in Russia. Pestel, when he heard his death sentence, said, "My greatest error is that I tried to gather the harvest before sowing the seed"; and Ruileef, "I knew this enterprise would be my destruction--but could no longer endure the sight of my country's anguish under despotism." When we think of the magnitude of the offense, the monstrous crime which was contemplated; and when we remember that Nicholas was by nature the very incarnation of unrestrained authority, the punishment seems comparatively light.

There was no vindictiveness, no wholesale slaughter. Five leaders were deliberately and ignominiously hanged, and hundreds of their misguided followers and sympathizers went into perpetual exile in Siberia--there to expiate the folly of supposing that a handful of inexperienced enthusiasts and doctrinaires could in their studies create new and ideal conditions, and build up with one hand while they were recklessly destroying with the other. Their aims were the abolition of serfdom, the destruction of all existing inst.i.tutions, and a perfect equality under a const.i.tutional government. They were definite and sweeping--and so were the means for accomplishing them. Their benign government was going to rest upon crime and violence. We should call these men Nihilists now. There were among them writers and thinkers, n.o.ble souls which, under the stress of oppression and sympathy, had gone astray. They had failed, but they had proved that there were men in Russia capable of dying for an ideal. When the cause had its martyrs it had become sacred--and though it might sleep, it would not die.

The man sitting upon the throne of Russia now was not torn by conflicts between his ideals and inexorable circ.u.mstance. His natural instincts and the conditions of his empire both pointed to the same simple course--an unmitigated autocracy--an absolute rule supported by military power. Instead of opening wider the doors leading into Europe, he intended to close them, and if necessary even to lock them.

Instead of encouraging his people to be more European, he was going to be the champion of a new Pan-Slavism and to strive to intensify the Russian national traits. The time had come for this great empire to turn its face away from the West and toward the East, where its true interests were. Such a plan may not have been formulated by Nicholas, but such were the policies instinctively pursued from the beginning of his reign to its close.

Such an att.i.tude naturally brought him at once into conflict with Turkey, with which country he was almost immediately at war. Of course no one suspected him of sentimental sympathy when he espoused the cause of Greece in the picturesque struggle with the Turks which brought Western Europe at last to her rescue. It was only a part of a much larger plan, and when Nicholas had proclaimed himself the Protector of the Orthodox Christians in the East, he had placed himself in a relation to the Eastern Question which could be held by no other sovereign in Europe; for persecuted Christians in the East were not Catholic but Orthodox; and was not he the head of the Orthodox Church?

It was to secure this first move in the game of diplomacy that Russia joined England and France, and placed the struggling little state of Greece upon its feet in 1832.

But the conditions in Western Europe were unfavorable to the tranquil pursuit of autocratic ends. Charles X. had presumed too far upon the patient submission of the French people. In 1830 Paris was in a state of insurrection; Charles, the last of the Bourbons, had abdicated; and Louis Philippe, under a new liberal Const.i.tution _approved by the people_, was King of the French. The indignation of Nicholas at this overturning was still greater when the epidemic of revolt spread to Belgium and to Italy, and then leaped, as such epidemics will, across the intervening s.p.a.ce to Russian Poland. The surface calm in that unhappy state ruled by the Grand Duke Constantine swiftly vanished and revealed an entire people waiting for the day when, at any cost, they might make one more stand for freedom. The plan was a desperate one.

It was to a.s.sa.s.sinate Constantine, who had relinquished a throne rather than leave them; to induce Lithuania, their old ally, to join them; and to create an independent Polish state which would bar the Russians from entering Europe.

In 1831 the brief struggle was ended, and Europe had received the historic announcement, "Order reigns at Warsaw." Not only Warsaw, but Poland, was at the feet of the Emperor. Confiscations, imprisonments, and banishments to Siberia were the least terrible of the punishments.

Every germ of a Polish nationality was destroyed--the army and the Diet effaced, Russian systems of taxes, justice, and coinage, and the metric system of weights and measures used in Russia were introduced,--the Julian Calendar superseded the one adopted all over the world--the University of Warsaw was carried to Moscow, and the Polish language was prohibited to be taught in the schools. Indemnity and pardon were offered to those who abjured the Roman Catholic faith, and many were received into the bosom of the National Orthodox Church; those refusing this offer of clemency being subjected to great cruelties. Poland was no more. Polish exiles were scattered all over Europe. In France, Hungary, Italy, wherever there were lovers of freedom, there were thousands of these emigrants without a country, living ill.u.s.trations of what an unrestrained despotism might do, and everywhere intensifying the desires of patriots to achieve political freedom in their own lands.

Nicholas, as the chief representative of conservatism in Europe, looked upon France with especial aversion. Paris was the center of these pernicious movements which periodically shook Europe to its foundations. It had overthrown his ally Charles X., and had been the direct cause of the insurrection in Poland which had cost him thousands of rubles and lives; and now nowhere else was such sympathetic welcome given to the Polish refugees, thousands of whom were in the French army. His relations with Louis Philippe became strained, and he was looking about for an opportunity to manifest his ill will. In the meantime he addressed himself to what he considered the _reforms_ in his own empire. He was going to establish a sort of political quarantine to keep out European influences. It was forbidden to send young men to Western universities--the term of absence in foreign countries was limited to five years for n.o.bles, three for Russian subjects. The Russian language, literature, and history were to be given prominence over all studies in the schools. German free-thought was especially disliked by him. His instincts were not mistaken, for what the Encyclopedists had been to the Revolution of 1789, the new school of thought in Germany would be to that of 1848. So from his point of view he was wise in excluding philosophy from the universities and permitting it to be taught only by ecclesiastics.

The Khedive of Egypt, who ruled under a Turkish protectorate, in 1832 was at war with his master the Sultan. It suited the Emperor of Russia at this time to do the Sultan a kindness, so he joined him in bringing the Khedive to terms, and as his reward received a secret promise from the Porte to close the Dardanelles in case of war against Russia--to permit no foreign warships to pa.s.s through upon any pretext. There was indignation in Europe when this was known, and out of the whole imbroglio there came just what Nicholas and his minister Nesselrode had intended--a joint protection of Turkey by the Great Powers, from which France was excluded on account of her avowed sympathy for the Khedive in the recent troubles.

The great game of diplomacy had begun. Nicholas, for the sake of humiliating France, had allied himself with England, his natural enemy, and had a.s.sumed the part of Protector of an Ottoman integrity which he more than anyone else had tried to destroy! There were to be many strange roles played in this Eastern drama--many surprises for Christendom; and for Nicholas the surprise of a crushing defeat a few years later to which France contributed, possibly in retaliation for this humiliation.

The Ottoman Empire had reached its zenith in 1550 under Suleyman the Magnificent, when, with its eastern frontier in the heart of Asia, its European frontier touching Russia and Austria, it held in its grasp Egypt, the northern coast of Africa, and almost every city famous in biblical and cla.s.sical history. Then commenced a decline; and when its terrible Janizaries were a source of danger instead of defense, when its own Sultan was compelled to destroy them in 1826 for the protection of his empire, it was only a helpless ma.s.s in the throes of dissolution.

But Turkey as a living and advancing power was less alarming to Europe than Turkey as a perishing one. Lying at the gateway between the East and the West, it occupied the most commanding strategic position in Europe. If that position were held by a living instead of a dying power, that power would be master of the Continent. No one state would ever be permitted by the rest to reach such an ascendency; and the next alternative of a division of the territory after the manner of Poland, was fraught with almost as much danger. The only hope for the peace of Europe was to keep in its integrity this crumbling wreck of a wicked, crime-stained old empire. Such was the policy now inaugurated by Russia, Great Britain, Austria, and Prussia; and such in brief is the "Eastern Question," which for more than half a century has overshadowed all others in European diplomacy, and more than any other has strained the conscience and the moral sense of Christian nations. We wish we might say that one nation had been able to resist this invitation to a moral turpitude masked by diplomatic subterfuges. But there is not one.

Although the question of the balance of power was of importance to all, it was England and Russia to whom the interests involved in the Eastern Question were most vital. Every year which made England's Indian Empire a more important possession also increased the necessity for her having free access to it; while Russian policy more and more revolved about an actual and a potential empire in the East. So just because they were natural enemies they became allies, each desiring to tie the other's hands by the principle of Ottoman integrity.

But daily and noiselessly the Russian outposts crept toward the East; first into Persia, then stretching out the left hand toward Khiva, pressing on through Bokhara into Chinese territory; and then, with a prescience of coming events which should make Western Europe tremble before such a subtle instinct for power, Russia obtained from the Chinese Emperor the privilege of establishing at Canton a school of instruction where Russian youths--prohibited from attending European universities--might learn the Chinese language and become familiarized with Chinese methods! But this was the sort of instinct that impels a glacier to creep surely toward a lower level. Not content with owning half of Europe and all of Northern Asia, the Russian glacier was moving noiselessly,--as all things must,--on the line of least resistance, toward the East.

The Emperor Nicholas, who comprehended so well the secret of imperial expansion, and so little understood the expanding qualities within his empire, was an impressive object to look upon. With his colossal stature and his imposing presence, always tightly b.u.t.toned in his uniform, he carried with him an air of majesty never to be forgotten if once it was seen. But while he supposed he was extinguishing the living forces and arresting the advancing power of mind in his empire, a new world was maturing beneath the smooth hard surface he had created. The Russian intellect, in spite of all, was blossoming from seed scattered long before his time. There were historians, and poets, and romanticists, and cla.s.sicists, just as in the rest of Europe.

There were the conservative writers who felt contempt for the West, and for the new, and who believed Russia was as much better before Ivan III. than after, as Ivan the Great was superior to Peter the Great; and there were Pushkin and Gogol, and Koltsof and Turguenief, whom they hated, because their voice was the voice of the New Russia.

Turguenief, who with smothered sense of Russia's oppression was then girding himself for his battle with serfdom, says: "My proof used to come back to me from the censor half erased, and stained with red ink like blood. Ah! they were painful times!" But in spite of all, Russian genius was spreading its wings, and perhaps from this very repression was to come that pa.s.sionate intensity which makes it so great.

CHAPTER XXII

1848 IN EUROPE--CRIMEAN WAR.

The Revolution of 1831 was only the mild precursor of the one which shook Europe to its foundations in 1848. It had centers wherever there were patriots and aching hearts. In Paris, Louis Philippe had fled at the sound of the word Republic, and when in Paris workmen were waving the national banner of Poland, with awakened hope, even that land was quivering with excitement. In Vienna the Emperor Ferdinand, unable to meet the storm, abdicated in favor of his young nephew, Francis Joseph.

Hungary, obedient to the voice of her great patriot, Louis Kossuth, in April, 1849, declared itself free and independent. It was the Hungarians who had offered the most encouragement and sympathy to the Poles in 1831; so Nicholas determined to make them feel the weight of his hand. Upon the pretext that thousands of Polish exiles--his subjects--were in the ranks of the insurgents, a Russian army marched into Hungary. By the following August the revolution was over--thousands of Hungarian patriots had died for naught, thousands more had fled to Turkey, and still other thousands were suffering from Austrian vengeance administered by the terrible General Haynau. Francis Joseph, that gentle and benign sovereign, who sits today upon the throne at Vienna, subjected Hungary to more cruelties than had been inflicted by Nicholas in Poland. Not only were the germs of nationality destroyed--the Const.i.tution and the Diet abolished, the national language, church, and inst.i.tutions effaced; but revolting cruelties and executions continued for years. Kossuth, who with a few other leaders, was an exile and a prisoner in Asia Minor, was freed by the intervention of European sentiment in 1851. The United States government then sent a frigate and conveyed him and his friends to America, where the great Hungarian thrilled the people by the magic of his eloquence in their own language, which he had mastered during his imprisonment by means of a Bible and a dictionary.

It was to Russia that Austria was indebted for a result so satisfactory.

The Emperor Nicholas returned to St. Petersburg, feeling that he had earned the everlasting grat.i.tude of the young ruler Francis Joseph, little suspecting that he was before long to say of him that "his ingrat.i.tude astonished Europe."

There can be no doubt that the Emperor Nicholas, while he was, in common with the other powers, professing to desire the preservation of Ottoman integrity, had secretly resolved not to leave the Eastern Question to posterity, but to crown his own reign by its solution in a way favorable to Russia. His position was a very strong one. By the Treaty of 1841 his headship as protector of Eastern Christendom had been acknowledged.

Austria was now bound to him irrevocably by the tie of grat.i.tude, and Prussia by close family ties and by sympathy. It was only necessary to win over England. In 1853, in a series of private, informal interviews with the English amba.s.sador, he disclosed his plan that there should be a confidential understanding between him and Her Majesty's government. He said in substance: "England and Russia must be friends. Never was the necessity greater. If we agree, I have no solicitude about Europe. What others think is really of small consequence. I am as desirous as you for the continued existence of the Turkish Empire. But we have on our hands a sick man--a very sick man: he may suddenly die. Is it not the part of prudence for us to come to an understanding regarding what should be done in case of such a catastrophe? It may as well be understood at once that I should never permit an attempt to reconstruct a Byzantine Empire, and still less should I allow the part.i.tion of Turkey into small republics--ready-made asylums for Kossuths and Mazzinis and European revolutionists; and I also tell you very frankly that I should never permit England or any of the Powers to have a foothold in Constantinople.

I am willing to bind myself also not to occupy it--except, perhaps, as a guardian. But I should have no objection to your occupying Egypt. I quite understand its importance to your government--and perhaps the island of Candia might suit you. I see no objection to that island becoming also an English possession. I do not ask for a treaty--only an understanding; between gentlemen that is sufficient. I have no desire to increase my empire. It is large enough; but I repeat--the sick man is dying; and if we are taken by surprise, if proper precautions are not taken in advance, circ.u.mstances may arise which will make it necessary for me to occupy Constantinople."

It was a bribe, followed by a threat. England coldly declined entering into any stipulations without the concurrence of the other Powers. Her Majesty's government could not be a party to a confidential arrangement from which it was to derive a benefit. The negotiations had failed.

Nicholas was deeply incensed and disappointed. He could rely, however, upon Austria and Prussia. He now thought of Louis Napoleon, the new French Emperor, who was looking for recognition in Europe. The English amba.s.sador was coldly received, and for the first time since the abdication of Charles X., the representative of France received a cordial greeting, and was intrusted with a flattering message to the Emperor.

But France had not forgotten the retreat from Moscow, nor the presence of Alexander in Paris, nor her attempted ostracism in Europe by Nicholas himself; and, further, although Louis Napoleon was pleased with the overtures made to win his friendship, he was not yet quite sure which cause would best promote his own ends.