Part 17

The time which I spent in Russia in 1863-64 was a transition period. Transition periods in history are always difficult to describe, and still more difficult to explain. It is comparatively easy to tell the story of some great concrete fact, a world-encompassing war, a revolution, the upheaval of a dynasty; but to set out the causes which, working during a period of externally unruffled calm, are brewing the hell-broth; to show the hidden powers which are silently operating under the surface to bring about a mighty change—that is a task before which even those who have the best information may well hesitate.

Every skilled newspaper correspondent will, without much difficulty, write a brilliant description of an earthquake with all the harrowing and soul-stirring horrors of the upheaval; but even the most experienced seismologist hardly dares to set on paper his estimate of the mysterious hidden forces, which, battling in the bowels of the earth, unseen and unsuspected, burst out in their wrath to wreak the tragedies of Lisbon or of Catania. So it is with transition periods in history. They are generally marked by peace and prosperity. There are often no outward signs to sound the alarm that there is trouble ahead.

The political catastrophe, like the earthquake, comes without warning; like the wrecking typhoon, it may be preceded by a dead calm. It will be said with justice that these violent similes do not fit the case of Russia. There has been no great epidemic of violence, no fierce upheaval like that of the French Revolution. Individual murders there have been. The pages of Russian history are stained by cruelty and murder, culminating in the barbarous tragedy of the death of the Emperor Alexander the Second; but the changes which have taken place have been wrought without disturbing the atmosphere of the world at large. None the less, the revolution here has been far-reaching.

The Russia of to-day differs _toto coelo_ from the Russia of a hundred years ago. Absolutism died with the Emperor Nicholas, and no Russian Tsar will ever again be able to rule, or even try to rule, without taking into account the will of his people. The relations between the sovereign and his subjects are for that very reason happier than they ever were, and the events of the last two years have shown that loyalty has not perished because autocracy has given up the ghost. The strength of Holy Russia to-day, in the face of the German war of aggression, lies in the determined attitude of the people—in their pious love for their country, in their almost fanatical belief in their Church, and in their veneration for the great White Tsar who is the head of that Church.

The nineteenth century opened darkly enough for Russia. The Emperor Paul had been on the throne for four years—a gloomy, unhappy man, not without ability, not without the wish to do what was right, until his mind was unhinged by madness. The first acts of his reign were worthy of all praise. He showed kindly feeling, clemency, and even generosity to the Poles, setting free those that had been imprisoned, and making ample provision for their heroic leader, Kosciusko. His edict enacting that the succession to the throne should be determined, not by the will or caprice of the reigning sovereign, but by a fixed and certain law of primogeniture, was a wise measure, calculated to save his country from the intrigues and bloodshed under which she had suffered so long.

But the early days of his reign were embittered by the knowledge conveyed to him by his Vice-Chancellor, Count Bezbarooks, that it had been the intention of his mother, Catherine the Great, to exclude him from the succession in favour of his own son, Alexander. Apart from that, he was a haunted man. Haunted by the murder of his father, Peter the Third, knowing full well that if the hand was the hand of Orloff, the dictating voice was the voice of his mother, Catherine.

[Illustration: THE EMPEROR PAUL I.

_From a contemporary Print._

[_To face p. 248._]

Haunted by suspicion, unable to trust any living soul—if a curtain rustled, stirred by the wind, a murderer stood hidden behind it; if two courtiers spoke in a whisper, it was a conspiracy; a cough was the signal to a confederate; once when the Empress was talking in a low voice to a foreign ambassador, he bade her speak up, saying: “You may be prepared to play the part of Catherine, but I would have you remember that in me you will not find a Peter the Third.” A terrible speech, showing what he knew of the past, what he dreaded in the future!

His wife, his ministers, his officers, were all under suspicion. He looked upon his Court as a hotbed of treason, conspiracy and murder. It was not to be wondered at that in a brain so tortured, the seeds of hereditary madness should have been swift to germinate. Then came all those grotesquely savage edicts which could only be accounted for by insanity. The wearing of trousers, or of a round hat, were crimes to be punished by the knut; short hair without pigtails constituted a criminal offence; ladies must stop their carriages and step out into the snow and mud to salute him when his sleigh or carriage came in sight. Three ladies who disobeyed the order—one of whom was hurrying to fetch a doctor to her dying husband—were seized by the police, carried off to the guard-house, stripped, shaved and whipped. It was clear that the man was as mad as Bedlam, but there were no Anticyræ for Tsars.

Russia took the law into her own hands. A conspiracy was formed, with Count Peter Pahlen, Minister President and Military Governor of Petersburg, at its head, to put an end to despotism—a cruel weapon in the hands of a lunatic. The conspirators were men of the highest rank by birth and by virtue of office—Pahlen himself, prime minister and the trusted friend of his Sovereign, who delighted in loading him with honours. In the night of the 24th of March they forced their way into the Michailow Palace, surprised the unhappy Emperor in his bedroom and strangled him with his own military sash. He fought with the demoniac fury of a madman, for he was of strong and muscular build, and it was no easy matter to overpower him. He tried to burst into the Empress’s apartments, which adjoined his, but here his distrust of her proved his undoing—he had caused the door which led to her rooms to be hermetically fastened. His suspicions closed to him the one possibility of escape, the one refuge with the wife who would not have failed him in his sore need.

Paul’s foreign policy was feeble. He detested the French Revolution, and yet threw himself into the arms of Napoleon; at other times he was prepared to flirt with England. The most noteworthy of his acts was the edict in regard to the succession to which I have alluded above. Its importance lay especially in the fact that it drove the first nail into the coffin of absolutism. It is evident that an “absolute” monarch, who has been deprived of his omnipotence in any one particular, ceases _ipso facto_ to be flawlessly absolute. Certainly, absolutism did not finally die till fifty-five years later. But a rift in the panoply of the Tsars had been made by the Emperor Paul.

I heard much about the reign of the mad Tsar when I was at St. Petersburg in 1863. There were still some old people who could talk about those days. Count Peter Pahlen had been long dead; after the murder he betook himself to his country place and disappeared from public life. But I had to represent my chief at the funeral of his brother, who commanded the cavalry against Napoleon in 1812, and with a still younger brother, Count Nicholas Pahlen, I was intimate in London for several years. Another link with that time was old Countess Rasumowski, who had been divorced and banished from the Court, but forgiven and taken into favour again by Paul. It was one of his acts of clemency. She was sister-in-law of Beethoven’s friend to whom he dedicated the famous quartets. How old she was I know not, but she was a great figurehead in Russian society, and on her name-day all St. Petersburg, from the Emperor downwards, flocked to her house. I had to go, as my chief had a cold, and I represented him. The dear naughty old lady was sitting in state, dressed all in white like a bride, with a wreath of pink roses round her head. That and the rouge with which she had plastered her poor withered cheeks made her look quite antediluvian. She must certainly have been near a hundred. The memory of Count Ribeaupierre, who was Grand Maitre de la Cour, and with whom I was also acquainted, went even further back. He had been page of honour to the Empress Catherine, who died in 1796. These are names only worth mentioning, in order to show that some of my impressions of the unhappy Tsar’s reign were drawn at first-hand.

Judging from the accounts given by the few old people who themselves remembered those times, and from the talk of younger men who had heard from their own fathers—perhaps actors in the crime—the whole history of that midnight murder, the outrage did not arouse any excitement commensurate with the horror of the deed. Men had become callous; they had grown used to seeing the rulers of the reigning dynasty disappear by violent or mysterious deaths. What really would have startled them would have been to hear that a Tsar had died a peaceful death in his bed, for murder had come to be looked upon as the natural end of a Romanoff. On the morning of the 24th of March St. Petersburg, awakening to the gruesome news of the night, heaved a sigh of relief, and went about its business. That business was the accession of a new Tsar.

Alexander has been accused of being privy to his father’s murder, but from all the evidence which I was able to gather, this was a calumny. There is no doubt that he was in touch with the conspirators, and that he was a consenting party to his father’s removal from the throne. Paul’s state was such that not even a son could wish to see his father remain vested with the terrible power of the autocrat of all the Russias. But murder, let alone parricide, was not in his nature. All the acts of his reign gave the lie to so hideous a charge. The man who set free the political exiles in Siberia, who abolished torture from the criminal code of his country, who made it illegal to hold sales of serfs, who helped to extend the blessings of education by founding universities, was a wise and humane ruler. Even the policy which made him countenance the conspiracy against his father was in the interests of humanity. Had he known the extremity to which that plot was to be pushed, we may be sure that he would have fought rather than not interpose his authority.

At the outset of his reign the young Emperor was hypnotized by the 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.