330 The National Geographic Magazine 



brother, Nicolas. This renunciation 

 was known only to Alexander and their 

 mother, the Dowager Empress Maria, 

 and kept secret even from Nicolas him- 

 self. Two years later Alexander died. 

 Then ensued between the two surviving 

 brothers a contest almost without par- 

 allel. Constantine, then governor of 

 Poland, ordered the troops at Warsaw 

 to swear allegiance to Nicolas. Nicolas 

 at St Petersburg ordered the troops 

 throughout Russia to swear allegiance to 

 Constantine. The fraternal rivalry con- 

 tinued for three weeks. It was ended 

 only by the solemn declaration of Con- 

 stantine that he had once renounced the 

 succession, and that nothing could in- 

 duce him to go back upon his word. 



Constantine was the older. More- 

 over, he was a soldier and the idol of 

 the army, which had been determined 

 to enthrone him against his will. Nich- 

 olas was a younger brother and almost 

 unknown. There then existed in the 

 country two secret organizations — the 

 Society of the North and the Society of 

 the South — both imbued with the ideas 

 of the French Revolution and hostile to 

 the autocracy. By them the devotion 

 of the masses to the principle of legiti- 

 macy was cunningly made to serve an 

 attempt at revolution. Some of the 

 colonels at the capital, though favorable 

 to Constantine, were inclined to this lib- 

 eral party. Those officers ordered their 

 men to shout, ' ' Long live Constantine ' ' 

 and "Long live the Constitution" 

 (Constitutza)! "Who is this Con- 

 stitutza ? ' ' asked the puzzled soldiers. 

 ' ' Long live Constitutza ! She must be 

 Constantine' s wife." One colonel cried, 

 ' ' Long live the Republic ! ' ' The sol- 

 diers said, ' 1 Who is Republic ? That 

 is not the name of the Tsar. ' ' The col- 

 onel replied that it was the sort of gov- 

 ernment they were going to set up and 

 that there would not be any Tsar in it. 

 " Oh," said the soldiers, " then it isn't 

 the right thing for Russia. We have 

 got to have a Tsar." And they them- 

 selves arrested the colonel. 



Nicolas I, his son Alexander II, his 

 son Alexander III, his son Nicolas II, 

 the present Tsar, such is the succession 

 since that time to the present hour. 



It is not unusual to speak of these 

 men as irresponsible autocrats and to 

 regard the Russian system as an irre- 

 sponsible autocracy. But an irrespon- 

 sible autocrat never has held the scepter, 

 and irresponsible autocracy never has 

 existed, even in phlegmatic Russia. 



An irresponsible autocrat among peo- 

 ple of Indo-European stock is an utter 

 impossibility. Each autocrat is weighed 

 in the balances and judged — if need be 

 punished — by those over whom he 

 reigns. This judgment no Russian 

 autocrat from the accession of Michael 

 Romanoff has escaped. The kindly, 

 well-intentioned, feeble, self- contra- 

 dictory, ill-starred Nicolas II is being 

 weighed in that balance now. Your 

 judgment and mine, the judgment of 

 foreigners or of posterity, will concern 

 or affect him little. But long-suffering, 

 patient, little exacting as the Russian 

 people are, they are inexorable as fate, 

 merciless as doom once their judgment 

 made. 



The dumb popular heart makes no 

 harsh or hard demand upon its sover- 

 eigns. It asks that the autocrat shall 

 be profoundly Russian, Russian in feel- 

 ing and sympathy, in orthodoxy and 

 faith, in fidelity to old tradition, in 

 heart-whole devotion to her whom the 

 peasant reverently calls ' 1 Holy Russia. ' ' 

 It asks that he shall develop the na- 

 tional resources and augment the na- 

 tional strength ; that he shall increase 

 the national territory and maintain the 

 prestige of the national arms ; that he 

 shall keep Russia's name glorious. This 

 is not too much to require of him to 

 whom the nation has intrusted its all. 



THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE 

 TSARS 



When Peter III, unnatural and de- 

 bauched, drank in his orgies to the suc- 

 cess of foreign troops and gloated over 



