410 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



rather than political propaganda for bringing 

 about the national regeneration — there was a 

 small minority animated with a very different 

 spirit, and this minority greatly increased when 

 it became evident that the emperor was adopting 

 the policy of Metternich. Many came to see 

 that they had nothing to hope from voluntary 

 concessions on the part of his Majesty, and con- 

 cluded that the autocratic power must be abol- 

 ished. Some were in favor of constitutional 

 monarchy, but this idea met with little favor. 

 French writers had proved that all forms of gov- 

 ernment in which the supreme power is heredi- 

 tary must lead to despotism, while republican in- 

 stitutions preserve political liberty and insure a 

 wonderfully rapid development of the national 

 resources, all which was supposed to have been 

 proved to demonstration by the history of Greece 

 and Rome in ancient times, and more recently by 

 the history of the United States. 



These differences of opinion caused the so- 

 ciety to be broken up, and the more violent mem- 

 bers formed a new society, which took for its 

 principle of action the French saying of its Presi- 

 dent, Pestel: " Les demi-mesures ne valent ricn; 

 il faut faire maison nette ! " What Pestel under- 

 stood by these words was, to raise a military in- 

 surrection, to annihilate the imperial family, and 

 to form a provisional government under its own 

 presidency, after which the empire would be 

 transformed into a federation of semi-indepen- 

 dent provinces, resembling the United States of 

 America. 



When Alexander died, and Nicholas succeed- 

 ed in 1825, an attempt was made to carry out 

 the programme, but it failed most signally. On 

 the morning when the oath of allegiance was to 

 be administered to the troops in St. Petersburg, 

 several companies refused, and collected in the 

 Senate Square. So far the conspirators were 

 successful, but here their success ended. They 

 had rashly crossed the Rubicon without making 

 any plans for further action. The soldiers, de- 

 ceived as to the point at issue, were ready to 

 fight, but they had no leader. The command 

 was hastily offered to several officers in succes- 

 sion, and successively declined. Every one com- 

 manded and no one obeyed. All waited for 

 something, they knew not what, and in the mean 

 time the troops which had taken the oath were 

 being formed in front of them, under the com- 

 mand of Nicholas himself. The governor-gen- 

 eral of St. Petersburg rode in among the muti- 

 neers, and exhorted them to return to their duty, 

 but his words had no effect, and he was shot 



down by one of the officers. The two metropoli- 

 tans made a similar attempt, but with as little 

 success. At last, when all attempts at persua- 

 sion proved fruitless, the artillery fired a few 

 round of grape-shot and cleared the square. A 

 similar attempt in one of the southern provinces 

 proved equally unsuccessful. The whole thing 

 collapsed without any serious effort. A hundred 

 and twenty-one officers were tried for high trea- 

 son. Of these, five were condemned to the gal- 

 lows and executed, and the others were trans- 

 ported to Siberia. Here ends the first chapter in 

 the history of Russian secret societies. 



The Emperor Nicholas was very different 

 from his sentimental brother. At no period of 

 his life did he ever show even a platonic affection 

 for liberty in any form. He put his faith in mili- 

 tary discipline — especially in drill — and consid- 

 ered it one of the chief duties of a czar to stamp 

 out what the Liberals called "the spirit of the 

 time." To effect this, he adopted and pushed to 

 its extreme limit the Metternich system of police 

 supervision and repression, and for a time the 

 system served its purpose. During his reign 

 tranquility reigned in Russia. The administra- 

 tion was incredibly corrupt, but there were no 

 public expressions of disloyalty or liberalism — 

 two words which were in his Majesty's mind 

 synonymous — and no revolutionary movements 

 even in the stormy times of '48. The police 

 considered it necessary occasionally to send a few 

 " restless " people to Siberia, and once they dis- 

 covered — malicious, ill-intentioned people said 

 invented — a political conspiracy; but there was 

 nothing that could be called, even in elastic 

 official language, a secret society. Had Nicholas 

 died in 1852, his last moments might have been 

 comforted by the conviction that he had fulfilled 

 the whole duty of an autocrat, and that the sys- 

 tem he loved so well had proved a brilliant suc- 

 cess. That illusion was rudely dispelled by the 

 Crimean war. 



In the history of England and France that 

 war is but an episode of second-rate importance; 

 for Russia it was an event of the first magnitude, 

 for it was the direct cause, as I have elsewhere 

 explained, of all those great reforms which have 

 made the present reign one of the most impor- 

 tant epochs of Russian history. 



In many respects the present reign resembles 

 that of Alexander I. Both open with a violent 

 outburst of reform enthusiasm, and in both cases 

 the emperor puts himself at the head of the re- 

 form movement. For a time all goes well. Great 

 reforms are conceived and partly executed, and 



