Part 36

KRONSTADT or CRONSTADT, a strongly fortified seaport town of Russia, the chief naval station of the Russian fleet in the northern seas, and the seat of the Russian admiralty. Pop. (1867), 45,115; (1897), 59,539. It is situated on the island of Kotlin, near the head of the Gulf of Finland, 20 m. W. of St Petersburg, of which it is the chief port, in 59° 59´ 30´´ N. and 29° 46´ 30´´ E. Kronstadt, always strong, has been thoroughly refortified on modern principles. The old "three-decker" forts, five in number, which formerly constituted the principal defences of the place, and defied the Anglo-French fleets during the Crimean War, are now of secondary importance. From the plans of Todleben a new fort, Constantine, and four batteries were constructed (1856-1871) to defend the principal approach, and seven batteries to cover the shallower northern channel. All these modern fortifications are low and thickly armoured earthworks, powerfully armed with heavy Krupp guns in turrets. The town itself is surrounded with an _enceinte_. The island of Kotlin, or Kettle (Finn., _Retusari_, or Rat Island) in general outline forms an elongated triangle, 7½ m. in length by about 1 in breadth, with its base towards St Petersburg. The eastern or broad end is occupied by the town of Kronstadt, and shoals extend for a mile and a half from the western point of the island to the rock on which the Tolbaaken lighthouse is built. The island thus divides the seaward approach to St Petersburg into two channels; that on the northern side is obstructed by shoals which extend across it from Kotlin to Lisynos on the Finnish mainland, and is only passable by vessels drawing less than 15 ft. of water; the southern channel, the highway to the capital, is narrowed by a spit which projects from opposite Oranienbaum on the Russian mainland, and, lying close to Kronstadt, has been strongly guarded by batteries. The approach to the capital has been greatly facilitated by the construction in 1875-1885 of a canal, 23 ft. deep, through the shallows. The town of Kronstadt is built on level ground, and is thus exposed to inundations, from one of which it suffered in 1824. On the south side of the town there are three harbours--the large western or merchant harbour, the western flank of which is formed by a great mole joining the fortifications which traverse the breadth of the island on this side; the middle harbour, used chiefly for fitting out and repairing vessels; and the eastern or war harbour for vessels of the Russian navy. The Peter and Catherine canals, communicating with the merchant and middle harbours, traverse the town. Between them stood the old Italian palace of Prince Menshikov, the site of which is now occupied by the pilot school. Among other public buildings are the naval hospital, the British seaman's hospital (established in 1867), the civic hospital, admiralty (founded 1785), arsenal, dockyards and foundries, school of marine engineering, the cathedral of St Andrew, and the English church. The port is ice-bound for 140 to 160 days in the year, from the beginning of December till April. A very large proportion of the inhabitants are sailors, and large numbers of artisans are employed in the dockyards. Kronstadt was founded in 1710 by Peter the Great, who took the island of Kotlin from the Swedes in 1703, when the first fortifications were constructed. (P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)

KROONSTAD, a town of Orange River Colony, 127 m. by rail N.E. of Bloemfontein and 130 m. S.W. of Johannesburg. Pop. (1904), 7191, of whom 3708 were whites. Kroonstad lies 4489 ft. above the sea and is built on the banks of the Valsch River, a perennial tributary of the Vaal. It is a busy town, being the centre of a rich agricultural district and of the diamond and coal-mining industry of the north-western parts of the colony. It is also a favourite residential place and resort of visitors from Johannesburg. It enjoys a healthy climate, affords opportunities for boating rare in South Africa, and boasts a golf-links. The principal building is the Dutch Reformed church in the centre of the market square.

On the capture of Bloemfontein by the British during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 Kroonstad was chosen by the Orange Free State Boers as the capital of the state, a dignity it held from the 13th of March to the 11th of May 1900. On the following day the town was occupied by Lord Roberts. The linking of the town in 1906 with the Natal system made the route via Kroonstad the shortest railway connexion between Cape Town and Durban. Another line goes N.W. from Kroonstad to Klerksdorp, passing (17 miles) the Lace diamond mine and (45 miles) the coal mines at Vierfontein.

KROPOTKIN, PETER ALEXEIVICH, PRINCE (1842- ), Russian geographer, author and revolutionary, was born at Moscow in 1842. His father, Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, belonged to the old Russian nobility; his mother, the daughter of a general in the Russian army, had remarkable literary and liberal tastes. At the age of fifteen Prince Peter Kropotkin, who had been designed by his father for the army, entered the Corps of Pages at St Petersburg (1857). Only a hundred and fifty boys--mostly children of the nobility belonging to the court--were educated in this privileged corps, which combined the character of a military school endowed with special rights and of a Court institution attached to the imperial household. Here he remained till 1862, reading widely on his own account, and giving special attention to the works of the French encyclopaedists and to modern French history. Before he left Moscow Prince Kropotkin had developed an interest in the condition of the Russian peasantry, and this interest increased as he grew older. The years 1857-1861 witnessed a rich growth in the intellectual forces of Russia, and Kropotkin came under the influence of the new Liberal-revolutionary literature, which indeed largely expressed his own aspirations. In 1862 he was promoted from the Corps of Pages to the army. The members of the corps had the prescriptive right of choosing the regiment to which they would be attached. Kropotkin had never wished for a military career, but, as he had not the means to enter the St Petersburg University, he elected to join a Siberian Cossack regiment in the recently annexed Amur district, where there were prospects of administrative work. For some time he was aide de camp to the governor of Transbaikalia at Chita, subsequently being appointed attaché for Cossack affairs to the governor-general of East Siberia at Irkutsk. Opportunities for administrative work, however, were scanty, and in 1864 Kropotkin accepted charge of a geographical survey expedition, crossing North Manchuria from Transbaikalia to the Amur, and shortly afterwards was attached to another expedition which proceeded up the Sungari River into the heart of Manchuria. Both these expeditions yielded most valuable geographical results. The impossibility of obtaining any real administrative reforms in Siberia now induced Kropotkin to devote himself almost entirely to scientific exploration, in which he continued to be highly successful. In 1867 he quitted the army and returned to St Petersburg, where he entered the university, becoming at the same time secretary to the physical geography section of the Russian Geographical Society. In 1873 he published an important contribution to science, a map and paper in which he proved that the existing maps of Asia entirely misrepresented the physical formation of the country, the main structural lines being in fact from south-west to north-east, not from north to south, or from east to west as had been previously supposed. In 1871 he explored the glacial deposits of Finland and Sweden for the Russian Geographical Society, and while engaged in this work was offered the secretaryship of that society. But by this time he had determined that it was his duty not to work at fresh discoveries but to aid in diffusing existing knowledge among the people at large, and he accordingly refused the offer, and returned to St Petersburg, where he joined the revolutionary party. In 1872 he visited Switzerland, and became a member of the International Workingmen's Association at Geneva. The socialism of this body was not, however, advanced enough for his views, and after studying the programme of the more violent Jura Federation at Neuchâtel and spending some time in the company of the leading members, he definitely adopted the creed of anarchism (q.v.) and, on returning to Russia, took an active part in spreading the nihilist propaganda. In 1874 he was arrested and imprisoned, but escaped in 1876 and went to England, removing after a short stay to Switzerland, where he joined the Jura Federation. In 1877 he went to Paris, where he helped to start the socialist movement, returning to Switzerland in 1878, where he edited for the Jura Federation a revolutionary newspaper, _Le Révolté_, subsequently also publishing various revolutionary pamphlets. Shortly after the assassination of the tsar Alexander II. (1881) Kropotkin was expelled from Switzerland by the Swiss government, and after a short stay at Thonon (Savoy) went to London, where he remained for nearly a year, returning to Thonon towards the end of 1882. Shortly afterwards he was arrested by the French government, and, after a trial at Lyons, sentenced by a police-court magistrate (under a special law passed on the fall of the Commune) to five years' imprisonment, on the ground that he had belonged to the International Workingmen's Association (1883). In 1886 however, as the result of repeated agitation on his behalf in the French Chamber, he was released, and settled near London.

Prince Kropotkin's authority as a writer on Russia is universally acknowledged, and he has contributed largely to the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. Among his other works may be named _Paroles d'un révolté_ (1884); _La Conquête du pain_ (1888); _L'Anarchie: sa philosophie, son idéal_ (1896); _The State, its Part in History_ (1898); _Fields, Factories and Workshops_ (1899); _Memoirs of a Revolutionist_ (1900); _Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution_ (1902); _Modern Science and Anarchism_ (Philadelphia, 1903); _The Desiccation of Asia_ (1904); The Orography of Asia (1904); and _Russian Literature_ (1905).

KROTOSCHIN (in Polish, _Krotoszyn_), a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Posen, 32 m. S.E. of Posen. Pop. (1900), 12,373. It has three churches, a synagogue, steam saw-mills, and a steam brewery, and carries on trade in grain and seeds. The castle of Krotoschin is the chief place of a mediatized principality which was formed in 1819 out of the domains of the Prussian crown and was granted to the prince of Thurn and Taxis in compensation for the relinquishment by him of the monopoly of the Prussian postal system, formerly held by his family.

KRÜDENER, BARBARA JULIANA, BARONESS VON (1764-1824), Russian religious mystic and author, was born at Riga in Livonia on the 11th of November 1764. Her father, Otto Hermann von Vietinghoff, who had fought as a colonel in Catherine II.'s wars, was one of the two councillors for Livonia and a man of immense wealth; her mother, _née_ Countess Anna Ulrica von Münnich, was a grand-daughter of the celebrated field marshal. Juliana, as she was usually called, was one of a numerous family. Her education, according to her own account, consisted of lessons in French spelling, deportment and sewing; and at the age of eighteen (Sept. 29, 1782) she was married to Baron Burckhard Alexis Constantin von Krüdener, a widower sixteen years her senior. The baron, a diplomatist of distinction, was cold and reserved; the baroness was frivolous, pleasure-loving, and possessed of an insatiable thirst for attention and flattery; and the strained relations due to this incompatibility of temper were embittered by her limitless extravagance, which constantly involved herself and her husband in financial difficulties. At first indeed all went well. On the 31st of January 1784 a son was born to them, named Paul after the grand-duke Paul (afterwards emperor), who acted as god-father. The same year Baron Krüdener became ambassador at Venice,[1] where he remained until transferred to Copenhagen in 1786.

In 1787 the birth of a daughter (Juliette) aggravated the nervous disorders from which the baroness had for some time been suffering, and it was decided that she must go to the south for her health; she accordingly left, with her infant daughter and her step-daughter Sophie. In 1789 she was at Paris when the states general met; a year later, at Montpellier, she met a young cavalry captain, Charles Louis de Frégeville, and a passionate attachment sprang up between them. They returned together to Copenhagen, where the baroness told her husband that her heart could no longer be his. The baron was coldly kind; he refused to hear of a divorce and attempted to arrange a _modus vivendi_, which was facilitated by the departure of De Frégeville for the war. All was useless; Juliana refused to remain at Copenhagen, and, setting out on her travels, visited Riga, St Petersburg--where her father had become a senator[2]--Berlin, Leipzig and Switzerland. In 1798 her husband became ambassador at Berlin, and she joined him there. But the stiff court society of Prussia was irksome to her; money difficulties continued; and by way of climax, the murder of the tsar Paul, in whose favour Baron Krüdener had stood high, made the position of the ambassador extremely precarious. The baroness seized the occasion to leave for the baths of Teplitz, whence she wrote to her husband that the doctors had ordered her to winter in the south. He died on the 14th of June 1802, without ever having seen her again.

Meanwhile the baroness had been revelling in the intellectual society of Coppet and of Paris. She was now thirty-six; her charms were fading, but her passion for admiration survived. She had tried the effect of the shawl dance, in imitation of Emma, Lady Hamilton; she now sought fame in literature, and in 1803, after consulting Châteaubriand and other writers of distinction, published her _Valérie_, a sentimental romance, of which under a thin veil of anonymity she herself was the heroine. In January 1804 she returned to Livonia.

At Riga occurred her "conversion." A gentleman of her acquaintance when about to salute her fell dying at her feet. The shock overset her not too well balanced mind; she sought for consolation, and found it in the ministrations of her shoemaker, an ardent disciple of the Moravian Brethren. Though she had "found peace," however, the disorder of her nerves continued, and she was ordered by her doctor to the baths of Wiesbaden. At Königsberg she had an interview with Queen Louise, and, more important still, with one Adam Müller, a rough peasant, to whom the Lord had revealed a prophetic mission to King Frederick William III. "Chiliasm" was in the air. Napoleon was evidently Antichrist; and the "latter days" were about to be accomplished. Under the influence of the pietistic movement the belief was widely spread, in royal courts, in country parsonages, in peasants' hovels: a man would be raised up "from the north ... from the rising of the sun" (Isa. xli. 25); Antichrist would be overthrown, and Christ would come to reign a thousand years upon the earth. The interview determined the direction of the baroness's religious development. A short visit to the Moravians at Herrenhut followed; then she went, via Dresden, to Karlsruhe, to sit at the feet of Heinrich Jung-Stilling (q.v.), the high priest of occultist pietism, whose influence was supreme at the court of Baden and infected those of Stockholm and St Petersburg.[3] By him she was instructed in the chiliastic faith and in the mysteries of the supernatural world. Then, hearing that a certain pastor in the Vosges, Jean Frédéric Fontaines, was prophesying and working miracles, she determined to go to him. On the 5th of June 1801, accordingly, she arrived at the Protestant parsonage of Sainte Marie-aux-Mines, accompanied by her daughter Juliette, her step-daughter Sophie and a Russian valet.

This remained for two years her headquarters. Fontaines, half-charlatan, half-dupe, had introduced into his household a prophetess named Marie Gottliebin Kummer,[4] whose visions, carefully calculated for her own purposes, became the oracle of the divine mysteries for the baroness. Under this influence she believed more firmly than ever in the approaching millennium and her own mission to proclaim it. Her rank, her reckless charities, and her exuberant eloquence produced a great effect on the simple country folk; and when, in 1809, it was decided to found a colony of the "elect" in order to wait for "the coming of the Lord," many wretched peasants sold or distributed all they possessed and followed the baroness and Fontaines into Württemberg, where the settlement was established at Catharinenplaisir and the château of Bönnigheim, only to be dispersed (May 1) by an unsympathetic government.[5] Further wanderings followed: to Lichtenthal near Baden; to Karlsruhe and the congenial society of pietistic princesses; to Riga, where she was present at the death-bed of her mother (Jan. 24, 1811); then back to Karlsruhe. The influence of Fontaines, to whom she had been "spiritually married" (Madame Fontaines being content with the part of Martha in the household, so long as the baroness's funds lasted), had now waned, and she had fallen under that of Johann Kaspar Wegelin (1766-1833), a pious linen-draper of Strassburg, who taught her the sweetness of "complete annihilation of the will and mystic death." Her preaching and her indiscriminate charities now began to attract curious crowds from afar; and her appearance everywhere was accompanied by an epidemic of visions and prophesyings, which culminated in the appearance in 1811 of the comet, a sure sign of the approaching end. In 1812 she was at Strassburg, whence she paid more than one visit to J. F. Oberlin (q.v.), the famous pastor of Waldbach in Steinthal (Ban de la Roche), and where she had the glory of converting her host, Adrien de Lazay-Marnesia, the prefect. In 1813 she was at Geneva, where she established the faith of a band of young pietists in revolt against the Calvinist Church authorities--notably Henri Louis Empeytaz, afterwards destined to be the companion of her crowning evangelistic triumph. In September 1814 she was again at Waldbach, where Empeytaz had preceded her; and at Strassburg, where the party was joined by Franz Karl von Berckheim, who afterwards married Juliette.[6] At the end of the year she returned with her daughters and Empeytaz to Baden, a fateful migration.

The empress Elizabeth of Russia was now at Karlsruhe; and she and the pietist ladies of her entourage hoped that the emperor Alexander might find at the hands of Madame de Krüdener the peace which an interview with Jung-Stilling had failed to bring him. The baroness herself wrote urgent letters to Roxane de Stourdza, sister of the tsar's Rumanian secretary, begging her to procure an interview. There seemed to be no result; but the correspondence paved the way for the opportunity which a strange chance was to give her of realizing her ambition. In the spring of 1815 the baroness was settled at Schlüchtern, a piece of Baden territory _enclavé_ in Württemberg, busy persuading the peasants to sell all and fly from the wrath to come. Near this, at Heilbronn, the emperor Alexander established his headquarters on the 4th of June. That very night the baroness sought and obtained an interview. To the tsar, who had been brooding alone over an open Bible, her sudden arrival seemed an answer to his prayers; for three hours the prophetess preached her strange gospel, while the most powerful man in Europe sat, his face buried in his hands, sobbing like a child; until at last he declared that he had "found peace." At the tsar's request she followed him to Heidelberg and later to Paris, where she was lodged at the Hôtel Montchenu, next door to the imperial headquarters in the Elysée Palace. A private door connected the establishments, and every evening the emperor went to take part in the prayer-meetings conducted by the baroness and Empeytaz. Chiliasm seemed to have found an entrance into the high councils of Europe, and the baroness von Krüdener had become a political force to be reckoned with. Admission to her religious gatherings was sought by a crowd of people celebrated in the intellectual and social world; Châteaubriand came, and Benjamin Constant, Madame Récamier, the duchesse de Bourbon, and Madame de Duras. The fame of the wonderful conversion, moreover, attracted other members of the chiliastic fraternity, among them Fontaines, who brought with him the prophetess Marie Kummer.

In this religious forcing-house the idea of the Holy Alliance germinated and grew to rapid maturity. On the 26th of September the portentous proclamation, which was to herald the opening of a new age of peace and goodwill on earth, was signed by the sovereigns of Russia, Austria and Prussia (see HOLY ALLIANCE; and EUROPE: _History_). Its authorship has ever been a matter of dispute. Madame de Krüdener herself claimed that she had suggested the idea, and that Alexander had submitted the draft for her approval. This is probably correct, though the tsar later, when he had recovered his mental equilibrium, reproved her for her indiscretion in talking of the matter. His eyes, indeed, had begun to be opened before he left Paris, and Marie Kummer was the unintentional cause. At the very first séance the prophetess, whose revelations had been praised by the baroness in extravagant terms, had the evil inspiration to announce in her trance to the emperor that it was God's will that he should endow the religious colony to which she belonged! Alexander merely remarked that he had received too many such revelations before to be impressed. The baroness's influence was shaken but not destroyed, and before he left Paris Alexander gave her a passport to Russia. She was not, however, destined to see him again.

She left Paris on the 22nd of October 1815, intending to travel to St Petersburg by way of Switzerland. The tsar, however, offended by her indiscretions and sensible of the ridicule which his relations with her had brought upon him, showed little disposition to hurry her arrival. She remained in Switzerland, where she presently fell under the influence of an unscrupulous adventurer named J. G. Kellner. For months Empeytaz, an honest enthusiast, struggled to save her from this man's clutches, but in vain. Kellner too well knew how to flatter the baroness's inordinate vanity: the author of the Holy Alliance could be none other than the "woman clothed with the sun" of Rev. xii. 1. She wandered with Kellner from place to place, proclaiming her mission, working miracles, persuading her converts to sell all and follow her. Crowds of beggars and rapscallions of every description gathered wherever she went, supported by the charities squandered from the common fund. She became a nuisance to the authorities and a menace to the peace; Württemberg had expelled her, and the example was followed by every Swiss canton she entered in turn. At last, in August 1817, she set out for her estate in Livonia, accompanied by Kellner and a remnant of the elect.