chapter 28.

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NICOPOLIS, Armenia, Battle of (B. C. 66).

The decisive battle in which Pompeius defeated Mithridates and ended the long Mithridatic wars was fought, B. C. 66, in Lesser Armenia, at a place near which Pompeius founded a city called Nicopolis, the site of which is uncertain.

_G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 3, chapter 8._

NICOPOLIS: Battle of (B. C. 48).

See ROME: B. C. 47-46.

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NICOPOLIS, Bulgaria, Battle of (A. D. 1396).

See TURKS (THE OTTOMAN): A. D. 1389-1403.

NICOSIA: Taken and sacked by the Turks (1570).

See TURKS: A. D. 1566-1571.

NIEUPORT, Battle of (1600).

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1594-1609.

NIGER COMPANY, The Royal.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1891.

NIHILISM. NIHILISTS.

"In Tikomirov's work on Russia seven or eight pages are devoted to the severe condemnation of the use of the expressions 'nihilism' and 'nihilist.' Nevertheless … they are employed universally, and all the world understands what is meant by them in an approximate and relative way. … It was a novelist who first baptized the party who called themselves at that time, 'new men.' It was Ivan Turguenief, who by the mouth of one of the characters in his celebrated novel, 'Fathers and Sons,' gave the young generation the name of nihilists. But it was not of his coinage; Royer-Collard first stamped it; Victor Hugo had already said that the negation of the infinite led directly to nihilism, and Joseph Lemaistre had spoken of the nihilism, more or less sincere, of the contemporary generations; but it was reserved for the author of 'Virgin Soil' to bring to light and make famous this word; which after making a great stir in his own country attracted the attention of the whole world. The reign of Nicholas I. was an epoch of hard oppression. When he ascended the throne, the conspiracy of the Decembrists broke out, and this sudden revelation of the revolutionary spirit steeled the already inflexible soul of the Czar. Nicholas, although fond of letters and an assiduous reader of Homer, was disposed to throttle his enemies, and would not have hesitated to pluck out the brains of Russia; he was very near suppressing all the universities and schools, and inaugurating a voluntary retrocession to Asiatic barbarism. He did mutilate and reduce the instruction, he suppressed the chair of European political laws, and after the events of 1848 in France he seriously considered the idea of closing his frontiers with a cordon of troops to beat back foreign liberalism like the cholera or the plague. … However, it was under his sceptre, under his systematic oppression, that, by confession of the great revolutionary statesman Herzen, Russian thought developed as never before; that the emancipation of the intelligence, which this very statesman calls a tragic event, was accomplished, and a national literature was brought to light and began to flourish. When Alexander II. succeeded to the throne, when the bonds of despotism were loosened and the blockade with which Nicholas vainly tried to isolate his empire was raised, the field was ready for the intellectual and political strife. … Before explaining how nihilism is the outcome of intelligence, we must understand what is meant by intelligence in Russia. It means a class composed of all those, of whatever profession or estate, who have at heart the advancement of intellectual life, and contribute in every way toward it. It may be said, indeed, that such a class is to be found in every country; but there is this difference,—in other countries the class is not a unit; there are factions, or a large number of its members shun political and social discussion in order to enjoy the serene atmosphere of the world of art, while in Russia the intelligence means a common cause, a homogeneous spirit, subversive and revolutionary withal. … Whence came the revolutionary element in Russia? {2362} From the Occident, from France, from the negative, materialist, sensualist philosophy of the Encyclopædia, imported into Russia by Catherine II.; and later from Germany, from Kantism and Hegelianism, imbibed by Russian youth at the German universities, and which they diffused throughout their own country with characteristic Sclav impetuosity. By 'Pure Reason' and transcendental idealism, Herzen and Bakunine, the first apostles of nihilism, were inspired. But the ideas brought from Europe to Russia soon allied themselves with an indigenous or possibly an Oriental element; namely, a sort of quietist fatalism, which leads to the darkest and most despairing pessimism. On the whole, nihilism is rather a philosophical conception of the sum of life than a purely democratic and revolutionary movement. … Nihilism had no political color about it at the beginning. During the decade between 1860 and 1870 the youth of Russia was seized with a sort of fever for negation, a fierce antipathy toward everything that was,—authorities, institutions, customary ideas, and old-fashioned dogmas. In Turguenief's novel, 'Fathers and Sons,' we meet with Bazarof, a froward, ill-mannered, intolerable fellow, who represents this type. After 1871 the echo of the Paris Commune and emissaries of the Internationals crossed the frontier, and the nihilists began to bestir themselves, to meet together clandestinely, and to send out propaganda. Seven years later they organized an era of terror, assassination, and explosions. Thus three phases have followed upon one another,—thought, word, and deed,—along that road which is never so long as it looks, the road that leads from the word to the act, from Utopia to crime. And yet nihilism never became a political party as we understand the term. It has no defined creed or official programme. The fulness of its despair embraces all negatives and all acute revolutionary forms. Anarchists, federalists, cantonalists, covenanters, terrorists, all who are unanimous in a desire to sweep away the present order, are grouped under the ensign of nihil."

_E. P. Bazan, Russia, its People and its Literature, book 2, chapters 1-2._

"Out of Russia, an already extended list of revolutionary spirits in this land has attracted the attention and kept curiosity on the alert. We call them Nihilists,—of which the Russian pronunciation is neegilist, which, however, is now obsolete. Confined to the terrorist group in Europe, the number of these persons is certainly very small. Perhaps, as is thought in Russia, there are 500 in all, who busy themselves, even if reluctantly, with thoughts of resorting to bombs and murderous weapons to inspire terror. But it is not exactly this group that is meant when we speak of that nihilistic force in society which extends everywhere, into all circles, and finds support and strongholds at widely spread points. It is indeed not very different from what elsewhere in Europe is regarded as culture, advanced culture: the profound scepticism in regard to our existing institutions in their present form, what we call royal prerogative, church, marriage, property."

_Georg Brandes, Impressions of Russia,