The Romance Of The Romanoffs

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THE ROMANCE of the ROMANOFFS

THE/FSAR NICHOLAS II

THE ROMANCE

of the

ROMANOFFS

BY

JOSEPH McCABE

AUTHOR OF
W THB TYRANNY OF SHAMS," "THE SOUL OF EUROPE," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YOEK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1917

T, 1917,

DOJDD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.

*> *

PREFACE

THE history of Russia has attracted many writers
and inspired many volumes during the last twenty
years, yet its most romantic and most interesting
feature has not been fully appreciated.

Thirteen years ago, when the long struggle of
the Russian democrats culminated in a bloody revo
lution, I had occasion to translate into English an
essay written by a learned professor who belonged
to what was called "the Russophile School." It was
a silken apology for murder. The Russian soul,
the writer said, was oriental, not western. The true
line of separation of east and west was, not the great
ridge of mountains which raised its inert barrier
from the Caspian Sea to the frozen ocean, but the
western limit of the land of the Slavs. In their
character the Slavs were an eastern race, fitted only
for autocratic rule, indifferent to those ideas of de
mocracy and progress which stirred to its muddy
depths the life of western Europe. They loved the
"Little Father." They clung, with all the fervour
of their mild and peaceful souls, to their old-world
Church. They had the placid wisdom of the east,
the health that came of living close to mother-earth,

PREFACE

the tranquillity of ignorance. Was not the Tsar
justified in protecting his people from the feverish
illusions which agitated western Europe and
America?

Thus, in very graceful and impressive language,
wrote the "sound" professors, the clients of the aris
tocracy, the more learned of the silk-draped priests.
The Russia which they interpreted to us, the Russia
of the boundless horizon, could not read their works.
It was almost wholly illiterate. It could not belie
them. Indeed, if one could have interrogated some
earth-bound peasant among those hundred and
twenty millions, he would have heard with dull as
tonishment that he had cmy philosophy of life.
His cattle lived by instinct: Ms path was traced by
the priest and the official.

But the American onlooker found one fatal de
fect in the Russophile theory. These agents of the
autocracy contended that the soul of Russia re
jected western ideas; yet they were spending mil
lions of roubles every year, they were destroying
hundreds of fine-minded men and women every
year, they were packing the large jails of Russia
until they reeked with typhus and other deadly
maladies, in an effort to keep those ideas away from
the Russian soul. While Russophile professors
were penning their plausible theories of the Russian
character, the autocracy which they defended was
being shaken by ,as brave and grim a revolution as

vi

PREFACE

any that has upset thrones in modern Europe.
Moscow, the shrine of this supposed beautiful do
cility, was red with the blood of its children. In
the jails and police-cells of Russia about 200,000
men and women, boys and girls, quivered under
the lash or sank upon fever-beds, and almost as
many more dragged out a living death in the melan
choly wastes of Siberia. They wanted democracy
and progress; and their introduction of those ideas
to the peasantry had awakened so ready and fer
vent a response that it had been necessary to seal
their lips with blood.

We looked back along the history of Russia, and
we found that the struggle was nearly a century
old. The ghastly route to Siberia had been opened
eighty years before. Russia had felt the revolu
tionary wave which swept over Europe during the
thirties of the nineteenth century, and the Tsar of
those days had fought not less savagely than the
rulers of Austria, Spain, and Portugal for his au
tocracy. Every democratic advance that has since
been won in western Europe has provoked a cor
responding effort to advance in Russia, and that
effort has always been truculently suppressed.
Nearly every other country in Europe has had the
courage to educate its people and enable them to
study its institutions with open mind. Russia re
mains illiterate to the extent of seventy-five per
cent, and its rulers have ever discouraged or re-

vii

PREFACE

stricted education. The autocracy rested, not upon
the affection, but upon the ignorance, of its people.

When we regard the whole history of that au
tocracy we begin to understand the tragedy of
Russia. We dimly but surely perceive, in the dawn
of European history, that amongst the families
which wandered through, the forests of Europe
none were more democratic than, few were as demo
cratic as, the early Slavs. We find this great family
spread over an area so immense that it is further en
couraged to cling to democratic, even communistic,
life, and avoid the making of princes or kings. We
then find the inevitable military chiefs, not born
of the Slav people, intruding and creating prince
doms : we find an oriental autocracy fastening itself,
violently and parasitically, upon the helpless nation:
we find the evil example and the tincture of foreign
blood continuing the development until Princes of
Moscow become Tsars of all the Russias, and con
vert & title dipped in blood into a title to rule by
the grace of God and the affection of the people.
And we find that Moscovite dynasty, from which
the Romanoffs issued, playing such pranks before
high heaven as few dynasties have played, until the
old Slav spirit awakens at the call of the world and
makes an end of it.

That is the romance of the Romanoffs, of Russia
and its rulers, which I propose to tell. This is not
a history of Russia, but the history of its autocracy

viii

PREFACE

as an episode: of its real origin, its long-drawn
brutality, its picturesque corruption, its sordid ma
chinery of government, its selfish determination to
keep Russia from the growing light, its terrible
final struggle and defeat. To a democratic people
there can be no more congenial study than this ex
posure of the crime and failure of an autocracy.
To any who find romance in such behaviour as kings
and nobles were permitted to flaunt in the eyes of
their people in earlier ages the story of the Roman
offs must be exceptionally attractive. ^^-^^^^ ^

3 . '. 61

. 82

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ["PAGE

I THE PRIMITIVE DEMOCRACY OF THE

SLAV . 1

II THE DESCENT TO AUTOCRACY . . 17

III THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS . 37

IV THE RISE OF THE ROMANOFFS . . 61
V " THE EARLY ROMANOFFS .... 82

VI A ROMANOFF PRINCESS , ... 101

VII THE GREAT PETER 126

VIII CATHERINE THE LITTLE .... 161

IX ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE . . . 179

X THE GAY AND Pious ELIZABETH. . 206

XI CATHERINE THE GREAT .... 228

XII IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON ... 258

XIII THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM . 284

XIV THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II . S06
XV ENTER POBIEDONOSTSEFF ... 338

XVI THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS . . 337

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Tsar Nicholas II Frontispiece

FACING
PAGE

Vladimir, Grande Duke of Kieff, 980-1015 10

From an Ancient Banner

Tatars of the Mongol Period 28

Costume of Boyars in the Seventeenth Cen
tury 44

The Patriarch Philaret, father of Mikhail
Romanoff, the first Tsar of the New
Dynasty. Seventeenth Century ... 68

Ivan the Terrible, by Antokolsky . . .86

View of Destroyed Tower of Nicholas, Arse
nal, etc., in the Kremlin, A.D. 1812 . 108

From a Contemporary Drawing

Peter the Great 134

Room of the Tsar Mikhailovitch, Moscow . 182
Paul the First . 214

Catherine II . . 240

xiii

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
I' AGE

The Red Square, Church of St. Basil and Re
deemer Gate, Moscow 66

Winter Palace, Petrograd 290

Cathedral Erected In Petrograd in Memory
of Alexander II .312

Tauride Palace, Petrograd, Meeting Place of
the Duma 348

Session Chamber of the Duma, Tauride
Palace, Petrograd 348

The Tsarina Alexandra ...... 366

xiv

THE ROMANCE of the ROMANOFFS

THE ROMANCE OF THE

ROMANOFFS

CHAPTER I

THE PRIMITIVE DEMOCRACY OF THE SLAT

A LITTLE south of the centre of Europe rises the
great curve of the Carpathian mountains. The
sprawling bulk of this long chain, rising in places
until its crown shines with snow and ice, formed a
natural harrier to the spread of Roman civilisation.
It enfolded and protected the plains of Hungary
and the green valley of the Danube, and it seemed
to set a limit to every decent ambition. Beyond it
men saw a vast and dreary plain filled with wild
peoples whom the Romans and Greeks called
"Scythians." It was, in effect, in those days, al
most the dividing line of Europe and Asia. One
branch of the great European race had gone down
into Greece and, becoming civilised, remained there.
Another branch had found the blue waters and
sunny skies in Italy. A third, the vast horde of
the Teutons, was moving heavily and slowly south
ward in the west.

1

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

But about the eastern feet of the Carpathians
was a little northern people, the Slavs, which may
one day fill the earth's chronicle when Teuton has
followed Greek and Roman into the inevitable
tomb of warriors. Where these Slavs came from,
and what was their precise kinship to the other
northerners and to the Asiatic peoples, we do not
confidently know. Some tens of thousands of years
before the Christian Era the last spell of the Ice-
Age had locked the north of Europe. It seems that
a branch of the human family followed the retreat
ing ice-sheet and, in the bracing winds which blew
off the frozen regions, shed its weaklings and be
came the vigorous "northern race." From this
came the successive waves of Greeks and Romans,
Goths and Vandals, English and Norman and Ger
man. From these northern forests seem also to
have come the Slavs, who split at the barrier of the
Carpathians into two great streams: Bohemians
and Serbs to the west, and Russians (as they were
later called) to the east.

We have not much information about this people
which settled across the limit of civilisation. To the
Romans they were part of the medley of barbarism
which got a rude living out of the bleak north.
A few later Greek writers had some acquaintance
with them, and an early Russian monk, Nestor,
gathered their traditions into a chronicle, and de
scribed them as they were before the development

2

PRIMITIVE SLAV DEMOCRACY

of autocracy obliterated their native features. From
these sources we learn that the Slavs were singu
larly democratic for a people at their stage of evo
lution.

We know to-day the real origin of kingships and
princedoms,, which was hidden from our fathers by
legends of "divine right." The right of a man to
rule his fellows came of his possession of a stronger
arm or a wiser head, or a combination of the two : a
plausible enough theory until kings began to insist-
on leaving the power to their sons, whether or no
they left them the strong arm and the wise head.
As a rule the hunt and the battle gave the strong
man his opportunity, and in every other nation at
the level of the Slavs we find chiefs, who dispense
justice and direct warfare, and exact a reward pro
portionate to their services.

It is a common and surprised observation of the
early writers who notice the Slavs that they had no
chiefs. The monk Nestor, who wrote in their midst
at the beginning of the twelfth century, says that
they had "chiefs," but would not tolerate "tyranny."
The primitive life of the Slavs had then been modi
fied, as we shall see, but the reports may be recon
ciled. The Slavs had no hereditary families of
chiefs, no rulers of tribes who exacted tribute.
Nestor gives a very different character to the vari
ous tribes of the Slav family. Being a monk, he is
unable to give any of them a good character in their

8

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

pagan days, but we may make a genial allowance
for this natural prejudice. Perhaps some of the
tribes, who were in closer touch with the fierce Finns
and Scythians, had chiefs. Warfare is the great
king-maker. Clearly the primitive and normal
condition of a Slav community was exceptionally
democratic.

The one definite institution of those early days
that is known to us is the village-council; the insti
tution that, being most deeply rooted in the heart
of the Slav, has survived all autocracies by divine
right and is familiar to-day to the whole world as
the Mir. In ancient Slavdom the family was not
the basis of the state. It was the state, or there was
no state. An enlarged family for the Slavs were
a social and peaceful folk, and the young, founding
a new family, clung to the home until it grew too
small and some must wander afield with cousins
and children and grand-children, was the unit. The
father had patriarchal power in his little colony,
and when he departed the next oldest and wisest,
a brother generally, took up the mild sway. Such
families grew into villages or settlements in a few
generations: not too large, for they lived on the
land, yet compact, for there were plenty of human
wolves east of the Carpathians. The Finns and
other Asiatic tribes then filled, or roamed over, the
vast area we now call Russia, and their code did not
f qprbid the plunder of peaceful argriculturists. New

4

PRIMITIVE SLAV DEMOCRACY

colonies would be founded near the old and form
villages. Out of this grew the Mir, the council in
which the heads of the various households met to
discuss and decide their common affairs.

No doubt some kind of chairman, some sage elder,
would be chosen to preside, but it is clear from later
practice and early comment that the council only
acted upon a unanimous decision. That form of
democracy had inconveniences, and, when Russia
begins to have chroniclers, we find that unanimity
was often secured, in a struggle, by pitching the mi
nority into the river. That, at all events, was the
original Slav custom. In theory even a majority
could not tyrannise over a minority, much less a
minority over a majority.

There would be frequent calls for these village-
councils, as the land, on which most of them worked,
was held in common. The head of a family owned
only his house and enclosure, and was entitled to
the harvest of his own labour. Then there were the
rights of hunting in the forest and fishing in the
rivers, the constant need to send out new colonies
into the eastern wilderness, and especially the need
to protect these new colonies from the wandering
Asiatics. Flanked by the Carpathians, up which
they could not spread, the tribes had to push steadily
eastward, and the land was full of Asiatics, for the
most part swift and ruthless horsemen. Co-opera
tive defence was as necessary as co-operative coun-

5

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

seL The elders of many neighbouring villages met
together in a larger council. There was a rough
organisation of villages into a canton or Volost.
Again there would probably be a president, and
some think that a temporary chief or leader might
be appointed in an emergency. But the Slavs had
no hereditary rulers, no heads of the various tribes.
It also helped to sustain their democratic and
communistic life that they had no priests. When
priests later come upon the scene we shall find them
very easily becoming the instruments of autocracy*
We shall find, as is usual, the autocrat enriching
the clergy, and the clergy discovering very im j
pressive legends upon which he may establish his
title to rule. In the pagan days of the Slavs there
were no priests. The religion was the kind of primi
tive interpretation of nature which we always find*
at that level of mental development. The fire of
the sun, the roar of the storm, the mysterious fer
tility of the earth, and the awful solemnity of the
forest filled the child-like mind with wonder and
dread. These things were felt to have life, a greater
life than the puny and limited life of man; and the
Slavs learned to bow down to the mighty spirits of
the sun and the river and the wind and the earth.
In particular they mourned the death of the sun,
and celebrated joyously its annual re-birth and res
toration to full glory. But they had no priests.

fi

PRIMITIVE SLAV DEMOCRACY

The heads of the family or the village performed
the invocations and the sacrifices.

We must remember that even in these primitive
and patriarchal arrangements there was the germ
of autocracy. The eldest. male was an autocrat.
So absolute was his power that it is said that, when
he died, wife and servants and horse had to follow
him into the nether world. There seems here to be
some confusion between different tribes, and there
is evidence that, as among the Teutons, woman was
generally respected; although there were ancient
marriage-rites which suggest that at one time brides
were stolen, and there was some practice of polyg
amy. However that may have been, the father of
the household was an autocrat. We may plead only
that he does not seem to have had, as in ancient
Rome, power of life and death over his mate.

Such was the Slav people when we first discover
them about the feet of the Carpathians. We have
next to see how they became the Russian people,
and how contact with civilisation and the growth of
commerce modified their primitive communism.

The towering masses of the mountains checked
the western expansion of the growing tribes. The
Danube and the outposts of the Roman Empire
the fathers of the Rumans shut them from the
south. They were, as their number increased, bound
to travel eastward, and their pioneers would dis-

r

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

cover that the central part of this mighty waste of
eastern Europe was a particularly fertile region.
From the foot of the Carpathians the land spreads
in one of the largest plains of the world until it be
gins to rise toward the Ural mountains. Between
the forests and bleak deserts of the north and the
arid prairies of the south there are about a hundred
and fifty million acres of "black earth," as rich and
fertile as any to be found, and south of these a
hundred and fifty million acres of ordinary arable
land. At the beginning of the Christian Era this
great area would be for the most part forest and
morass, chequered by vast spaces of grassy plain,
furrowed by broad rivers. The advancing colonies
of the Slavs would discover the fertility of the soil
and clear the ground for their corn and flax. The
rivers gave them abundant fish. The forests
swarmed with animals which afforded fur and meat,
and the innumerable wild bees gave them stores of
honey and wax for the long winters. Timber for
the vapour-bath, which the Slav family seems al
ready to have held in affection, lay on every side.

We find the Slavs especially spreading over this
fertile heart of Russia about the eighth century of
the present era. The land had long been held by
the Finns and other Asiatic tribes when, in the
third century, the Goths from the north fell upon
them and drove them eastward. In the next cen-
tu|*y began that more formidable invasion from

8

PRIMITIVE SLAV DEMOCRACY

Asia which flung the Finns westward once more,
and cast the Teutons upon the crumbling barrier of
the Roman Empire. In the seventh century a new
semi-civilised race, the Khazars, created an empire
in south-eastern Russia, and drove the Asiatic Finns
definitely to the north. It was at the close of these
great'movements that the Slavs moved rapidly over
the fertile regions, between the land of the Finns
and the southern kingdom of the Khazars. By the
end of the eighth century the various Slav tribes
had overrun the central part of western Russia.

The chief change which this migration caused in
the life of the Slavs was the development of com
merce. The great rivers of the land at once be
came the highways. Fishers as well as tillers of the
soil, the Slavs would, spread along the river-valleys,
and the junctions of the rivers would naturally be
come the chief stations for what intercourse there
was between the scattered villages. It is probable
that in those days, when four-fifths of Russia was
marsh and forest, the rivers were deeper than they
are to-day. In our time they are for the most part
shallow throughout the summer. Only in the
spring, when the melting snows and rains flush the
broad channels, can large boats ascend them; and,
in the winter their frozen waters make good passage
for the sledge. They became the high-roads of the
new commonwealth, as the site of the older cities
indicates when one glances at the map.

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

The Slavs had at that time probably little or no
commerce. Some exchange, in kind, of fish, fur,
honey, or corn might take place, but the resources
were much the same for each village. In a short
time after the settlement, however, a busy commer
cial system was inaugurated. Further north than
the Finns were the Scandinavians, whose skill in
metal-working was early developed. The Slavs
traded with them for swords and spears and axes.

To the south, beyond the land of the Khazars,
was the chief representative of civilisation in the
west, the Byzantine (or Constantinopolitan) Em
pire. The northern tribes had now shattered Ro
man civilisation. The solid roads, the ample schools,
the courts of law and municipal institutions estab
lished by the Romans in southern Europe were in
complete decay, and four-fifths of the city of Rome
was a charred and desolate wilderness. But the
city which Constantine had founded on the Bos-
phorus, on the site of ancient Byzantium, lay out
of the path of most of the barbarians, and the glory
of Constantinople penetrated feebly into the distant
forests of Russia. Its soldiers give us our first di
rect knowledge of the Slavs. Its merchants crossed
the Black Sea, ascended the rivers of Russia, and
Spread before the eager eyes of the Slavs the silks
a^id damasks and velvets, the shining metal-work
and imitation- jewels, of the great "Tsargracl," or
City of the Emperors. For these the Slavs could

10

PRIMITIVE SLAV DEMOCRACY

offer choice furs, for an enormous variety of fur-
clad animals roamed their forests, as well as honey
for the table and wax for the myriad tapers of the
Byzantine churches.

This busy commerce increased the importance of
the settlements at the junction of the rivers. The
evenness of the Russian plains, the great depth of
soil or clay or glacial rubbish which uniformly cov
ers the level strata below, make stone scarce in
the greater part of the country then occupied by
the Slavs, The ordinary village was a cluster of
' rude huts made of timber, with roofs of straw and
mud. The towns also were of timber, and the ac
cumulation of merchandise in them for traffic or
fairs attracted the Asiatic marauders and increased
the need of defence The Veclie, or democratic
council of the district, grew in importance. Stock
ades of timber were erected. The Slavs, preferring
peace as an agricultural people always does, were
compelled to acquire some skill in the art of war.

Up to this point, the ninth century, the democ
racy of the Slavs was unaltered. The villagers were
still free and independent men, while the peasantry
over the rest of Europe were slaves or serfs. They
regulated their own affairs in their Mir, recognised
no central government, and paid tribute to neither
chiefs nor priests. There was plenty of timber to
heat their stoves during the long winter, and in the
summer the song and dance cheered the leisure from

11

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

their labours. The plot of corn and the nests of the
wild bees fed them; the plot of flax clothed them;
and the winter harvest of furs, taken to the nearest
town or fair, gave them many a tawdry luxury from
the great cities of the south. Even in the towns they
had still no money or currency. It was not until
long afterwards that they cut disks of leather to
serve the purpose of coinage. And even in the
largest settlements or towns, such as Novgorod in
the north and Kieff in the south, the democratic
council, with unanimous decision, ruled their little
affairs.

The defect of a primitive democracy of this na
ture soon became apparent. When the less peace
ful neighbours who surrounded them on every side
made an attack in force the isolated towns or com
munities could not defend themselves. The Kha-
zars of the south overspread the nearest Slav dis
tricts and virtually enslaved them. The Scandina
vian pirates of the Baltic pushed southward from
the coast and wrung tribute from them. Either
they must establish a compact military organisation,
which their loose social texture did not easily per
mit, or they must hire defenders. They chose the
latter course, not knowing, as we do, the ultimate
price of engaging military chiefs.

The Scandinavians or Norsemen were as little
pacific as any people of Europe, and their large
frames and mighty weapons made of them f ormid-

12

PRIMITIVE SLAV DEMOCRACY

able warriors. The Slavs were well acquainted
with them. Somehow they had found the way
across Russia to Constantinople, where their ser
vices were richly paid. From the southern shores
of the Baltic they descended the northern rivers,
and, crossing short stretches of country from river
to river, they sailed down the broad waterways to
the Black Sea. In the ninth century the Slavs were
familiar with the tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired
giants, with heavy spears and formidable axes. The
Greeks of the south, who called them Varangians,
; clothed them in rich armour and made of them a
J special imperial guard. The Slavs called them Rus,
)Jor "sea-farers" (if not "pirates'') , a name they seem
to have borrowed from the Finns.
J! This, at least, is what modern scholars make of
'* ^the ancient legend, given in Nestor, that the men
of Rus were foreign warriors invited by the Slavs
to come and settle and undertake military service.
The story runs that the Slavs of the north, wearied
by invasion and pillage, invited these soldiers to de
fend them and share their goods. Some historians
suspect that the legend may be invented by the
,v vanity of the Slavs, who did not care to confess
^ that the northerners had subdued them, but it is
not unlikely that they were invited to defend the
Slavs as they were invited to defend the Emperors
of Constantinople, They had already shown the
Slavs that those who did not pay voluntarily might

13

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

have to pay involuntarily. As the democratic in
stitutions of the Slavs survived most strongly in the
city where the Norsemen first settled, Novgorod, it
does not seem as if they settled in virtue of con
quest. In western Europe the northerners, wher
ever they settled, established the feudal system,
which never existed in Russia.

The story handed down in Russia as the land
of the Slavs soon came to be called was that three
brothers, Rurik, Sineus, and Truvor, answered the
call of the Slavs, and, with their kinsmen and fol
lowers, settled on the Baltic coast. This is as
signed to the year 862. From those seats they can
not have defended, or raised taxes from, much of
Russia, but when Sineus and Truvor died Rurik
went to settle in Novgorod. That city, about a
hundred and twenty miles south of Petrograd, was
the chief town in the northern part of the route
from north to south. Rurik seems to have built a
stone fort overlooking the timber settlement and
been content with a kind of tribute for his military
services. Novgorod remained until centuries aft
erwards a jealously democratic community.

The chief Slav town in the south was Kieff, and
to this two of the unruly officers of Rurik's troop,
Askold and Dir, led a company of the northerners.
As is well known, these northern barbarians, once
their barriers were broken down, wandered from
end to end of Europe, and even to Carthage and

14

PRIMITIVE SLAV DEMOCRACY

Alexandria, terrifying the natives everywhere with
their gigantic frames, their immense axes and
swords, their guttural grunts, and their infinite ca
pacity for liquor. The Slavs of Kieff, voluntarily
or involuntarily, received the warriors, and a fresh
colony of men of Rus was planted. They seem to
have infected even some of the Slavs with their
piratical spirit, for we read of them leading an ex
pedition down the river and across the Black Sea
against Constantinople itself.

The next step was to unite the towns of Novgo
rod and Kieff, and bring the remainder of the Slavs
under the vague lordship of the Norsemen. This
was done by Rurik's brother and successor, Oleg.
The Teutonic rule of hereditary succession came
in with the northerners, and the men of Novgorod
seem to have had no further choice. Oleg assumed
command, and he marched his troop against the
smaller body of his countrymen in the south. Ask-
old and Dir had, he said, acted without orders,
and had usurped a lordship which belonged to his
brother. Kieff had no more choice than Novgorod.
Oleg found it a finer town than the settlement
among the marshes of the north. He set up there
his court of brawling, drunken warriors, and grad
ually induced all the tribes of the Slavs to pay him
tribute and furnish soldiers. He was so success
ful that one year he embarked his men on two
thousand boats, led them against the imperial city,

15

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

and forced the Greeks themselves to add to his
treasury.

The land of Rus was in those days not the spa
cious Russia of our time. It spread little eastward
beyond Novgorod and Kieff, and it was bounded
by the Khazars to the south and the Finns and
Lithuanians to the north. But it was now Russia,
a group of Slav tribes dominated by a military
caste. It was, however, not yet a nation, certainly
not a monarchy. Tax-gathering and defence were
the sole duties of the military chief, and as the
Slavs had demanded the one they were not unpre
pared for the other. But the germ of autocracy
was now planted in the soil, and the terrible events
of the next few centuries would foster its baleful
development.

16

CHAPTER II

THE DESCENT TO AUTOCRACY

IT is sometimes said that the Slav people lost its
democratic institutions because it was too pacific
to defend them. It is true that an agricultural
people would tend to be more pacific than hunting
tribes like the Asiatics who surrounded them, but
the native peacefulness of the Slav has probably
been exaggerated. The early Russians seem to have
been as much addicted to hunting and fishing as
to tilling the soil, and the long winter, when all
agricultural work was suspended for six months,
would encourage the men to hunt the furry animals
which abounded. Certain it is that both the monk
Nestor and the Greek Emperor Maurice represent
the primitive Slav as far from meek, and the chron
icle informs us of constant and even deadly quar
relling.

The truth is that the democracy of the Slavs
was too little developed. It was nearer akin to
Anarchism than to Socialism, and the mind of the
race was not as yet sufficiently advanced to grasp
the political exigencies of the new situation. There

17

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

was no national consciousness, and there could be no
national defence and administration, because there
was no nation; and a body of disconnected com
munities, scattered over a wide area, was in those
days bound to succumb to marauders.

Russian historians of the official school eagerly
point out that the situation plainly called for a
monarchic institution, and that the monarchs ren
dered great service in welding the scattered com
munities into a nation. That they did unite the
people and make the great Russia of to-day is
obvious. It is equally obvious that, with rare ex
ceptions, they did this in their own interest, and
that in all cases they exacted a reward which made
serfs of the independent Slavs, sowed corruption
amongst the rising middle class, and laid upon all
an intolerable burden.

The period of the Norse warrior-chiefs and their
descendants lasted about three centuries, and it
fully exposes the fallacy of the monarchic principle.
From being military servants the Norsemen rap
idly became, as is customary, princes and parasites*
As long as they discharged their duty, binding the
communities and securing for them the necessary
peace against external foes, this departure from
the primitive democracy might be regarded as
merely a regrettable necessity. But the sheep soon
found that the protecting dog was first-cousin of
^he wolf. The principle of hereditary succession

18

THE DESCENT TO AUTOCRACY

and the practice of providing for all sons and rela
tives soon led to a worse confusion than ever, and
the distracted and weakened country was prepared
for a foreign invasion. The long and sanguinary
history of the descendants of Rurik may he briefly
sketched before we see how the autocratic Mongols
beat a path for the autocratic Tsars.

Oleg, who had united the Slav tribes under his
ill-defined rule, was murdered in the year 945. To
the north of Kieff a tribe known as the Drevlians
("tree-folk 5 ') wandered in the forests and paid a
reluctant and uncertain tribute in furs. When
Oleg tried to enforce his tax upon these, they cap
tured him and tied him to two young trees in such
fashion that, when the bent trees were released,
Oleg's body was torn asunder. Oleg's widow, Olga,
was a handsome Valkyrie of the masterful northern
type, and she sent her armies to scatter the thun
ders of Thor among the wild foresters. It is said
that she afterwards visited the Greek capital and
was won to the Christian religion. She lives as
St. Olga in the calendar of the Russian Church.
Her successor involved the Russians in long and
terrible wars with Constantinople, to enforce his
ambitious claim to Bulgaria, and at his death the
fierce feuds and murders of his three sons plunged
the country into a condition of bloody anarchy.

From this sordid strife of the shepherds whom
the Slavs had hired to protect them there emerged

19

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

in 972, over the corpses of his brothers, the blond
beast St. Vladimir, the founder of Christianity in
Russia, To what extent the lusty and lustful
Prince Vladimir was, as the priestly chronicles
maintain, transformed into a saint during his life
we need not stay to consider. He seems to have
been converted as superficially as his prototype, the
Emperor Constantine. He was married to a beau
tiful nun who had been torn from a convent during
one of the raids upon the Greek Empire, and whom
he had taken from his murdered brother; and
thousands of concubines relieved the comparative
tedium of her companionship. The monastic chron
icle tells us, in trite language, that he at length
wearied of sin and sought more substantial spirit
ual aid than the paganism of his fathers could af
ford. Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christian
ity now offered their rival assurances to such a
promising penitent, and it is said that Vladimir,
with the broadmindedness of a modern Japanese,
sent his servants to inquire into the merits of the
three religions. The rich ritual of the Greek Chris
tians at Constantinople prevailed over the more
sober practices of the Mohammedans and the less
consoling assurances of the religion of the Old Tes
tament, and Vladimir became a Christian and a
saint.

But the chronicles also recount that Vladimir,
whose principality of Russia was now so important

20

. THE DESCENT TO AUTOCRACY

that it could sustain wars with the Greeks, sought
a matrimonial alliance with the royal house of Con
stantinople, and the prosy imagination of our time
finds here a safer clue to the development. The
Emperors Basil and Constantine replied that the
hand of their sister Anne would be bestowed upon
the experienced barbarian if he would consent to
baptism; and Greek priests, who were apt also to
be courtiers, were sent to expound to him the new
religion. Vladimir readily consented to pay so small
a price for so great an honour and advantage. He
threw into the river the idols of the Russian gods
these carven figures had been introduced since
the settlement in Russia and lent his energy and
truculence to the extirpation of paganism. His
people were driven in troops into the rivers, the
Greek priests pronounced over them the sacred
formula, and in a very short time the nature-gods
of the old Slavs and Norsemen were turned into
devils and the cross of Christ glittered above gilded
domes in the wooden settlements of the land. Vlad
imir was so generous to the new clergy that he
died in the odour of sanctity.

But the sins of Vladimir's pagan manhood lived
after him. Seven sons, by various legitimate moth
ers, claimed the succession to his dominions, and
there ensued such bloody anarchy as the handsome
Teutonic princes, no matter what gods they wor
shipped, knew how to create. As usual the fitter

21

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

to survive in such a world the more lusty and less
scrupulous emerged from the struggle, and Prince
laroslaf , one of the heroes of early Russian history,
reunited the various regions under his rule.

laroslaf has heen compared, not quite ineptly, to
Charlemagne. From Novgorod, which his father
had left him, he cut his way to Kieff, and definitely
made the southern city the metropolis of the coun
try. Kieff was enriched and adorned with a splen
dour which, in the mind of the Russians, rivalled that
of Constantinople. The southern rivers now bore
thousands of Greek artists and architects, musicians
and scholars, priests and courtiers, to the new capi
tal of barbai-ism. Four hundred churches soon
shone like gilt mushrooms in the summer sun, and
the grateful clergy discovered that a monarchy
which rested on a divine foundation in Constan
tinople could hardly have an inferior basis in Kieff.
laroslaf, it is true, was not a monarch in title. Rus
sia had no constitution or political organisation. It
was still semi-barbaric in culture and judicial pro
cedure. The duel, the ordeal, and the payment ofi
blood-money still flourished, and literacy existed
only in the form of feeble lamps here and there in
the vast darkness. It must be remembered that
Constantinople itself was, with all its splendour of
gold and mosaics and jewels and silks, half bar
baric in its moral complexion. The most sordid
and brutal crimes disgraced its palace-life on the

22

THE DESCENT' TO AUTOCRACY

shores of the Sea of Marmora, and the most re
volting penalties of vice and crime were publicly
inflicted. The discovery by modern apologists that
there was a glow-worm here and there does not re
lieve the terrible gloom of the Dark Ages.

In such an age, amidst so scattered and helpless
a people, laroslaf needed no kingly title to enable
him to act as monarch. To sustain the new splen
dour of Kieff and his court his sister and daugh
ters married into the royal families of Poland, Nor
way, France, and Hungary a larger tribute from
the people was needed, and it was not meekly so
licited. Russian historians of the old school have
dilated upon the magnificence with which laroslaf
invested his capital and the measure of prestige
which Russia gained in the eyes of the world. They
do not point out that this concentration of light at
Kieff and the court darkened the life of the Rus
sian people. For the first time we now encounter
the odious name for a child of the soil moujik.
Foreigners who lightly repeat that name to-day are
unaware that it is in origin a term of disdain. It
means "mannikin." The warriors in glittering ar
mour or shining silks who gathered about the court
were the prince's "men." The vast mass of the peo
ple, whose labour ultimately paid for this magnifi
cence, were "mannikins."

The burden fell most heavily upon the scattered
peasantry. Not only were the "legitimate" taxes

23

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

wrung from them, but the military leaders exacted
tribute to support their own splendour and pleasure.
The feudal system, which now prevailed over the
remainder of Europe, was not introduced. The
land was still the possession of the people, and mil
itary chiefs remained about the court instead of
raising, as they did where stone abounded, massive
provincial castles from which they might enslave
the peasantry and even defy the ruler. But in their
excursions the soldiers behaved as wantonly as feu
dal barons of the west, and the people sank under
the burden. Slavery still flourished in Christen
dom, and many a Slav found his way to the distant
market at Constantinople. Moreover, under the
degenerate Greek influence there was introduced
the practice of flogging and torture which the rough
chivalry of the northerners had hitherto avoided.

To say that the unity of faith, the protection
against invaders, and the introduction of art and a
small amount of mediocre culture compensate for
these evils is an historical mockery. The death of
laroslaf at once revealed the insecurity and selfish
ness of the regime he had established. It was fol
lowed by two hundred years of civil warfare
and murderous confusion. Eighty-three struggles
which seem worthy of the name of wars devastated
Russia during those two centuries, and over the en
feebled frontiers the waiting tribes repeatedly
poured while the guardians of the Russian people

24

THE DESCENT TO AUTOCRACY '

slew each other for their petty principalities. Sons,
legitimate and illegitimate, abounded in that world
of blond warriors, and the successful chief provided
for each out of his dominion. Titles were disputed,
or the old title of the longer sword was boldly ad
vanced. A dozen large principalities were carved
out of the princedom of laroslaf, and fragments
of these were constantly detached by heredity and
restored by war.

* It is not my intention to follow the grisly
chronicles over this prolonged anarchy and select
for admiration the heroic butcheries of some strong-
armed soldier. For our purpose it suffices to notice
that the mass of the Russian people were, as a rule,
the passive and suffering spectators of this brutal
pandemonium. During the summers they sowed
and gathered their com and flax, and the long win
ters occupied them with the making of clothes and
the quest of fur. The Mir was still the centre of -
every village. But a tithe of its produce had now
to go to sustain this costly petty monarchy, a tithe
to support the whitened monasteries and gold-
domed churches, and a tithe to repair the damage
when the tornado of civil war or some fierce band
of Asiatics had passed over their district. There
were, we shall see, provinces of Russia where the
larger intelligence of the townsmen saw that the
proper thing to do was to form a strong republic,
armed in its own defence. These still hated "ty-

25

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

rarmy" and sustained the old tradition of the race.
But the greater part of the Russian people were
not sufficiently developed to perceive this, or were
too scattered to achieve it, and they sank under the
military power they had invited to serve them.

A few pages borrowed from the story of this
dark period of anarchy will suffice to explain how
Russia was prepared for the later schemes of the
Moscovites. Kieff remained "the mother of Rus
sian cities/' and it was natural that, as its princes
founded petty princedoms hwe and there for their
descendants, the more ambitious of these should in
vent a title to the rule of the metropolis itself or
found rival cities. One of the chief of these new
principalities was Suzdal, on the Volga and the
Oka. Here, at the extremity of the Russia of the
time, a large dominion was created out of the
marshes and forests, and braced by incessant con
flicts with the neighbouring Finns. George Dolgo-
ruki, who, after failing to get Kieff, had founded
this principality, regarded it as in an especial sense
his own creation and possession, and his monarchic
sentiment was strengthened.

But the democratic tradition was not wholly
obliterated, and the military caste itself the boy-
ars, or captains of the troops formed some check
upon the will of the prince. George's successor,
therefore, Andrew Bogolyubski, an astute and am
bitious man, made a new capital of a small town

26

THE DESCENT TO AUTOCRACY

or village called Vladimir. Andrew possessed the
supposed miraculous painting of the face of Christ,
which had once been the great treasure of Con
stantinople, and he professed that this gave him
some special measure of divine guidance. He
pitched his camp near the village of Vladimir, and
shortly afterward the people of Suzdal heard with
consternation that he had been divinely directed to '
convert the little settlement into his capital. An
drew had the great advantage of being extremely
pious and generous to the clergy, as nearly every
great Russian adventurer has been. The priests
warmly supported him, and Vladimir soon grew
into a city.

Kieff still had an immeasurably greater splen
dour, and was irf closer touch with Constantinople.
Andrew raised a large army and led it south against
the metropolis. A three days' siege was followed
by three days of such pillage that Kieff lost for
ever its supremacy. Even the churches and monas
teries were looted, and the golden treasures of both
palace and cathedral were carried off to enrich the
aspiring city of Vladimir. Flushed with this and
other triumphs Andrew then turned his arms
against the republic of Novgorod, where the old
democratic spirit was best preserved, and, after
fierce fighting, compelled it to accept a prince of
his own nomination. He extended his rule in other
directions, setting a conspicuous example of autoc-

27

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

racy and ambition to the Princes of Moscow who
would later issue from his blood. But Russia was
not yet reduced to the state of servility which An
drew's design of supremacy required. In 1174 his
powerful boyars rebelled and assassinated him, and
the oppressed people rose in turn and vented their
democratic sentiment in the pillage and slaughter
of the rich.

This is but one outstanding figure amidst the
host of brutal soldiers or scheming princes who fill
the chronicle of the time with blood. It is a weari
some repetition of the same process. A strong or
unscrupulous man unites a large part of Russia un
der his sway, then a group of less strong, but not
less ambitious, sons and grandsons fight for the
spoil over the helpless bodies of the peasantry-
Those who succeed must reward their boyars and
the clergy, and the land of Russia passes more and
more into the hands of large proprietors and is
worked by slaves. "If you want the honey, you
musj kill the bees/' was the characteristic remark
of one of these descendants of Rurik, as he des
patched his victims; and the little restraint which
their new faith imposed upon them may be gath
ered from the flippant retort of another princeling,
who was accused of breaking an oath solemnly made
over a cross: "It was only a little cross."

There were, as I said, northern parts where the
democratic evolution proceeded healthily* Novgo-

28

TATARS OF THE MONGOL PERIOD

THE DESCENT TO AUTOCRACY

rod, a large northern city of a hundred thousand
souls, rising in the centre of a beautiful plain
fringed by forests, had become a republic with wide
territory and three hundred thousand subjects be
yond the rude defences of the city. There is a leg
end that it had rebelled even against Rurik, the
first Scandinavian adventurer. It accepted, of its
own choice, what had come to be called princes, but
it endorsed or rejected them, and curtailed their
powers, with a good deal of civic pride and inde
pendence. "Come and rule us yourself or else we
will choose a prince," the citizens said to a Grand
Prince of Kieff who ordered them to receive his
nominee. To another Grand Prince, who would
send his son to govern them, a later generation of
citizens replied: "Send him if he has a head to
spare." They had even an independent Church
and elected their archbishop. The old democratic
Veche, or council of citizens, was the central insti
tution of the city, and the great bell summoned
all to the market-square whenever some business of
importance called for a decision. The neighbouring
republics of Pskoff and Viatka were hardly less
faithful to the democratic tradition. While these
territories were the farthest from Constantinople,
they were nearest to Germany and the Baltic, and
they were enriched by the commerce which was then
beginning to civilise the northern cities.

Even Novgorod, we saw, felt the heavy hand of

29

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Andrew of Vladimir, and the remainder of Russia
steadily lost its vitality under the drain of civil war.
Upon this distracted and enfeebled population there
now fell an autocratic ruler of the most arbitrary
character. The year 1287 is, in the chronicles, one
of calamities and portents. The fires which so
often devoured the timber settlements of the Slavs
were more numerous and destructive than ever.
Drought and famine made haggard faces over large
regions, and from the sky a terrifying eclipse and
other portents seemed to mock their prayers for
deliverance. As the dreadful year passed a new
evil broke upon them. Into the southern principali
ties poured crowds of fugitives from the east, who
told that immense hordes of ferocious and inhuman
horsemen were covering the land and completing
its desolation. Toward the close of the year the
first wave of the Tatars shook the southern fron
tiers of the Slavs.

Asia had, as well as Europe, its adventurers, and
the baleful dream of conquest had lit the imagina
tion of a Tatar chief, Dchingis Khan, amidst the
dreary wastes of Siberia, Gathering about him the
rough tribes of his race, a swarm of hardy shep
herds who knew not what a house, much less a city,
was, he led them against the civilisation of the south.
His men lived in the saddle, and each was a master
in the use of the bow, the sabre, and the lance. Cam
els and buffaloes bore their (at first) scanty pos-

30

THE DESCENT TO AUTOCRACY

sessions, and they moved with all the speed of de
vouring nomads. The villages of Manchuria, the
tame and placid cities of China, and all the wide
spaces of central Asia were successively overrun
and forced to pay tribute. From the civilised Chi
nese the wonderful and profoundly ignorant barba
rian quickly learned the art of gathering taxes and
enjoying luxury, and he moved further west in a
vague design of conquering the earth.

This strange and terrifying horde, a cloud of
fiercely yelling centaurs with troops of animals
which no Russian had ever seen, first fell upon the
southern Russians in 1224. Their method was to
press the peasantry into their service and attempt
to disarm the towns with hollow assurances of
friendship, but, in whatever way the town was
taken, there followed a merciless slaughter and a
thorough pillage. The Russians, alarmed by the
reports of the outlying tribes, sent out a great army
to meet the Mongols on the steppes, and were
crushingly defeated. The Mongols had, however,
retired to Asia, where their dominion was not sol
idly established, and it was a vaster army, under
a new Khan, that appeared in the south of Russia
in 1287.

From 1237 to 1240 the Khan Batu led his army
of 600,000 men, with appalling destruction, across
the various principalities of Russia. Weakened by
feuds, severed by their selfish rivalries, the
31

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

various provinces fell one by one under the feet of
the merciless invaders. Rape, murder, fire, and pil
lage were the invariable sequels of success. The
Russians appealed to the nations of the nearer west
to help them to dam this Asiatic flood, but the Latin
Christians were not minded to stir themselves for
semi-barbarians who did not respect the Pope.
When the Khan passed over the prostrate body of
Russia and advanced still further, in his determi
nation to conquer an earth of which he knew less
than a child in a modern infant-school, the Poles
and Hungarians at length spread their barrier of
steel across his path. But the check did not now
profit Russia. Batu retired upon Russia, built a
city, Sarai, on the banks of the Volga (beyond the
limits of the principalities), and began a life of
organised parasitism upon the unfortunate people.
The comparative unity brought about by their
Norse defenders had prepared the way for the
Khan. The Khan was to prepare the way for the
Moscovite.

Again we may ignore the crowded details, the
rise and fall and eternal feuds of petty princes, of
the Russian chronicle. What matters is that the
entire country which was then known as Russia was
overspread by a network of tax-gatherers, and the
people learned to tremble at the commands of a
distant autocrat. At Sarai the Mongols estab
lished a court of barbaric magnificence, and this in

32

THE DESCENT TO AUTOCRACY

time declared itself independent of the Tatar Em
pire in Asia and sought the nourishment of its lux
ury in Russia. The western sovereignty came to
be known throughout Europe as the Golden Horde,
and the western nations heard with indifference the
cynical extravagance and the occasional brutality
with which it treated schismatic Slavs.

No prince could now don his tattered dignity in
Russia without the august permission of the semi-
civilised ruler on the Volga, and a system was soon
evolved which enabled the courtiers and concubines
of the Khan to share the good fortune of their lord.
In the constant disputes about succession claimants
to the various Slav principalities made the perilous
journey to Sarai, and the richness of the presents
they brought sufficed to illumine the obscurity of
their titles. Occasionally a prince whose loyalty to
the Mongols was suspected was summoned to Sa
rai, and not a few who could not pass the humiliat
ing tests left tfyeir bones among the Mohammedan
Tatars. To those who bent their backs or tendered
the cup with servile respect the Khan was gra
cious. They returned with power to extort the taxes
for the Tatars and a large additional sum for them
selves. If their people or rival princes were restive,
a troop of the dreaded Tatar horse was put at their
disposal, and the lash and the sabre cowed every
attempt at revolt. The spying and flogging with
which the servants of the Khan protected their mas-

33

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

ter's interests were copied by the Slav-Norse
princes. The Byzantine civilisation had itself intro
duced many devices of autocratic barbarism, for the
jails of Constantinople, especially the dungeons of
the superb imperial palace, witnessed ghastly tor
tures and mutilations. The cruelty of the Asiatic
completed this machinery of the later Tsars; and
the Princes of Moscow were the readiest of all to
be the tax-gatherers of the Khan and the pupils of
his unscrupulous ministers.

The scattered Slavs had, after the three or four
years of terror, returned from the forests to their
burned villages and their plundered towns. The
gold and silver had gone from their churches: the
inmates of their nunneries were the playthings of
the Asiatic officers : their democracy was a mockery.
Their industry soon healed the torn face of the
country, but lands and lives now belonged to the
foreign master. One-tenth of all their produce
must be paid in taxes, and they might at any time
be summoned to do military service. Kieff was in
large part a ruin; Suzdal, Moscow, Riazan, and
other cities were despoiled. Even Novgorod and
Pskoff had, after a bloody resistance, to present
their fleece to the shearer.

The miserable condition of the Slavs was further
darkened by the behaviour of their Christian neigh
bours on the w;est. The Swedes, pleading that the
men of Novgorod hindered the conversion to the

34

THE DESCENT TO AUTOCRACY

true faith of the remaining pagans of the north, in
duced the Pope to declare a holy crusade, with the
customary spiritual and temporal advantages,
against Russia, and a zealous army advanced
against Novgorod. It was shattered, but the Cath
olic zeal of the west was not extinguished. The
Knights of the Sword, the German order which
enforced baptism as truculently as the early Mo
hammedans had enforced the Koran, next appeared
on the Russian frontier, and took Pskoff. The
Teutonic adventurers were not less formidable in
white mantle and red cross than they had been in
the dress of the pagan Norsemen, and were hardly
less ferocious, but they had to retreat before the
stalwart Novgorodians, In the fourteenth century,
however, the united Lithuanians and Poles crossed
into Russia and added to the miseries of the people.
Only half a dozen of the Russian principalities
could hold out against the invaders. The Tatars
were now in decay, and the red spears of the Lith
uanian knights were even seen as far south as the
Black Sea.

It is to this demoralisation of the Russians rather
than to any direct Tatar influence that we must
turn our attention. There was little mingling of
Mongol and Slav blood, beyond the occasional mar
riage of a Tatar princess by some sycophantic
prince, and the enslavement of Russian women in

85

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS"

the spacious harems of the Asiatics. "Scratch a
Russian and you will find a Tatar" is an untruth.
Few races in the civilised world are purer in blood
than the Russian Slavs. Nor did the Khans mod
ify the Russian culture more than the levying of
tribute demanded. With the clergy they were on
friendly terms, knowing their power over the igno
rant peasants, and they suppressed neither the Mir
of the village -nor the Veche of the town, as long
as it furnished the collective tribute. On the other
hand, they entirely broke the original spirit of in
dependence; they organised the country for pur
poses of extortion, and disorganised it for purposes
of self-defence; they helped to convert the brutal
and masterful Norseman into a calculating and
coldly selfish prince; and they encouraged the sub
jection of women which the teaching of the Byzan-
tian priests and monks had begun.

96

CHAPTER III

THE MOSCOYITES BECOME TSAES

THE name Moscow has up to the present entered
so little into the chronicle that we must retrace our
steps and briefly consider its origin. Three succes
sive types of rulers prepared the way for the
Romanoff dynasty: the Norsemen, the Tatars, and
the Princes of Moscow, or the Moscovites. We
have now to see how the third class rose upon the
ruins of the Tatar dominion, maintained the evil
machinery of subjection which it had constructed,
and brought "all the Russias" under a new despot
ism.

In the year 1147 the Prince of Suzdal, George
Dolgoruki, found a village, the site of which is now
covered by the opulent Kreml, on the banks of the
Moscowa, and is said to have conceived an aif ection
for it. His patronage cannot have extended far,
since we find that it remains an obscure village, or
small town, for more than a century. It then
passed, with a few other towns, to a son of the
heroic Alexander Nevski, who (by sharp practice
a fit beginning of the fortune of the Moscovites)

37

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

enlarged his little principality and bequeathed it to
an even less scrupulous brother.

George Danielovitch (1303-25) laid claim to the
principality of Tver and took very powerful argu
ments to enforce his claim, in the shape of handsome
presents, to the Mongol court at Sarai. He g#t
his title, 'a sister of the Khan for wife, and a Mon
gol army; but he did not get the principality, and
the Khan, scenting a larger bargain, summoned
both claimants to Sarai. There George ended the
argument by having his rival assassinated. He in
turn was assassinated, and a terrible feud subsisted
for half a century between Moscow and Tver.
Ivan, the successor of George, secured another
Mongol army to reduce Tver, induced the Khan
to remove his rival to another world, and entered
upon a series of annexations and purchases which
made Moscow the centre of a fairly large dominion,
the seat of an archbishop, and a prosperous soil for
churches and monasteries ; for the piety of all these
lords of Moscow was even more conspicuous than
their craft and insidious truculence.

This malodorous tradition was sustained by the
later princes. There was Simeon the Proud (1341-
53) who, at the death of his father Ivan, found the
largest bribe for the Mongols and ousted his com
petitors. At least he held in some check the law
lessness which was bleeding Russia, and it is one
of those painful dilemmas of the historian that the

38

THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS

valuable service rendered by the crafty Simeon was
entirely neglected by his pious and gentle brother
and successor, Ivan II. But Dmitri Ivanovitch,
the son .and successor of Ivan, returned to the
sturdy lines of princely tradition. He defied and
defeated the Tatars, and in the hour of triumph
cried to Russia: "Their hour is past." But the cry
was premature. A rival Russian prince arranged
a coalition against Dmitri of the Catholic Lithuan
ians, and the Mohammedan Tatars, and the great
army of Dmitri once more cut to pieces its oppo
nents. In the meantime, however, the famous Tatar
general, Timur, had come from Asia and fallen
upon the "usurpers" of the Golden Horde. Dmitri
unwisely refused the friendship which Timur of
fered him, and before long the fierce Mongols set
flame to the splendid buildings of his capital and
littered the streets with the corpses of its children.

Dmitri recovered and handed down a fair prin
cipality to his son Vassili (1389-1425), who
shrewdly preserved his territory by a friendly alli
ance with the Tatars on the one hand and a matri
monial alliance with the Lithuanians on the other.
His son, Vassili the Blond, was equally submissive
to the Tatars and friendly with the Lithuanians.
Then, in 1462, there came to the throne Ivan III,
the first of the two great makers of imperial Rus
sia.

At the time when Ivan III ascended the throne

39

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

the principality of Moscow was a small and feeble
territory menaced by the Lithuanian empire to the
west and the Mongol empire to the east. Most of
the other Russian principalities had either won a
precarious independence or were subject to Lithu
ania. The republics of Novgorod and Pskoff alter
nately lost and recovered their freedom, and wa
vered between the Lithuanian and the Mongol
alliance. Riazan and Tver remained independent
and regarded with jealous eyes the growth of Mos
cow. This was the Russia of the fifteenth century,
a mere fragment of the country which bears that
name to-day.

Nor was this lack of unity the only reproach
which we may bring against the princes who had
torn the land in their selfish struggles for suprem
acy. Round the whitened monasteries and gilded
shrines the feuds of the princes had gone on with
out intermission for so many centuries that the
blood ran thin in the veins of Russia. It had
neither the vitality nor the organisation required
to meet its external foes, and every few years some
hostile army scattered the customary desolation
over the country. On every side, "also, were troops
of free lances and brigands, who constantly
swooped upon the miserable peasantry. It is the
claim of the orthodox historians that the Mosco-
vite princes we have now to describe rescued Rus
sia from this degradation, and we must examine

40

THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS

their methods, their motives, and their attain
ments.

Ivan III is, in the existing portraits, a lean-
faced, sombre-looking man, with large melancholy
eyes and the patriarchal beard which the Slavs still
preserved. These portraits probably accentuate the
ostentatious piety of the man, and give us no idea
of the cold ferocity which could light his heavy fea
tures. It is said that women were known to faint
when they met his eye. Certain it is that Ivan
united all the craft and calculating cruelty of the
degenerate Greeks with professions of humility and
peacefulness which provoke our disgust. Conspira
tors against his terrible rule were burned alive in
cages, and the horrible Byzantine practice of cut
ting out a prisoner's eyes was more than once em
ployed. Even priests, for whom he affected a
humble veneration, were brutally flogged when
they departed from the customary subservience of
the clergy and took the part of the people. In
war he was a coward. All the impulsive and sav
age bravery of the Norseman had in him degen
erated into the mean and shifty hypocrisy of a
dishonest huckster.

Ivan ascended the petty throne of Moscow in
the year 1462. The city of Moscow was at that
time still little more than a large cluster of mud-
huts, with a few streets of merchants, about the
princely palace and the rich shrines. Ivan looked

41

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

to his revenues and before long was confronted
with the firm refusal of the citizens of Novgorod
to pay the tribute he demanded. The Grand
Prince proceeded with his habitual craft. Instead
of setting out to enforce his demands, he formu
lated a complaint that the Russian people of Nov
gorod were oppressed by a wealthy faction, and
that this faction contemplated an alliance with the
heretics of Poland. We may assume that there was
some truth in the charges. Novgorod, still demo
cratic and independent, still proud of the popular
parliament on its market-place, was full of factions.
In such a city a mutual hostility of rich and poor
was inevitable, and Ivan's agents seem to have en
couraged the aggrieved workers to appeal to him
against what were represented to be the oligarchs.
The wealthier and more powerful faction was led
by a woman named Marf a, and may very well have
contemplated an alliance with Poland against the
ambitions of Moscow.

In 1470 Ivan sent against the city a strong Mon
gol and Moscovite army, and the ruin which it
spread over the lands of Novgorod, as it ap
proached, induced the citizens to compromise. But
the Grand Prince wanted more than tribute, and his
agents continued to foster the grievances of the pop
ular party and encourage appeals to Moscow.
When the time was ripe Ivan wrought the republi
can spirit of Novgorod to a fury by describing him-

42

THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS

self. In his official documents, as "sovereign" of that
city. The educated citizens saw in this the doom
of their liberty, and, acting in the violent mood of
the time, they put to death the supporters of Mos
cow. The story runs that the clergy and boyars of
Moscow now gathered round their humane and re
luctant ruler, and demanded that he should make
war upon Novgorod. Certainly Ivan III did not
love the hazards of war, especially as it was still the
custom for a Russian prince to lead his troops. But
we may measure his humanity by the sequel.

The conscience of the Grand Prince was recon
ciled by conceiving the campaign as a "holy war"
against the allies of the Pope, and a formidable
army took the road north. The partial resistance
of the distracted republic was overcome, and Ivan
set about the extirpation of its spirit of independ
ence. The democratic nobles were transplanted to
other soil. The commercial prosperity, which
Novgorod had developed in its relations with the
cities of north Germany, was systematically de
stroyed. The stores of merchandise and other
treasures were transferred to Moscow. The shadow
of the popular council, the TecJiS, remained
Ivan's son would complete the work but a very
severe blow had been struck by the Moscovite at
what remained of Slav democracy.

The dependent republic of Pskoff submitted to
Moscow, and was permitted to retain its institu-

43

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

tions. The principality of Viatka was next recov
ered, from the Tatars, and added to the dominion of
Moscow. The victorious troops, indeed, went on
to annex a large part of more northern Russia, and
the first thin slice of Asiatic territory fell under the
rule of the Slav. At a later date the principality
of Tver was drawn into the growing empire. Its
prince aif orded a specious pretext by allying him
self with the unholy followers of the Roman Pontiff ,
the Lithuanians, and religious zeal again edged the
swords of the troops.

It will be gathered that the power of the Mongols
had now sunk too low to arrest the progress of
Moscow. On an earlier page we have seen how
Timur had come from Asia and chastised the
Khans who had dared to set up an independent
sovereignty in Europe. For some reason Timur
did not overrun Russia as his predecessor had done.
The clerical traditions of Russia attribute the es
cape to one of the miracles which seem to have been
so frequent in that age, but the superior attractions
of the new Ottoman Empire in the south, which
was then displacing Greece and taking over its
treasures, may be regarded as a more satisfactory
explanation.

Timur had reduced the strength of the Golden
Horde, and the dissensions which followed further
enfeebled it. Here was an opportunity after the
heart of Ivan III. Dispossessed Tatar princes

44

COSTUME OF BOYARS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS

fled to his court, and he sent them back with their
animosities inflamed, while he made the customary
presents to the ruling Khan. In 1478 either Ivan
or his advisers felt that the time had come to end
the Tatar yoke, and Ivan nervously found himself
at the head of 150,000 men making for the land
of the dreaded Mongol. The issue is one of the
most laughable in history. The two large armies
encamped in sight of each other for days and dared
each other to come on. Priests and officers spurred
Ivan to the attack, and his rare fits of confidence,
or professions of confidence, alternated with long
periods of what we must regard as cowardice.
Possibly the intensely superstitious prince thought
that one of those miracles of which the clergy spoke
so freely would spare him the hazard of war. A
miracle, indeed, appeared, and it is difficult for the
profane historian to penetrate its mysterious work
ing. Both armies at length, and simultaneously,
struck their camps and retreated hastily to their
respective homes! The Tatar had sunk as low as
the Moscovite.

Ivan's troops, which did not share the timidity
of their high commander, next reduced Bulgaria,
and the death of his brothers enabled Ivan to add
still further, and with less title, to his dominions.
His brother Andrew was, in 1493, accused of the
usual perfidy and corresponding with the Polish-
Lithuanian kingdom. He was thrown into prison,

45

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

and there he conveniently died. Ivan summoned
his bishops and monks and, as the tears trickled
down his gaunt face and grey beard, confessed that
he had sinned in sanctioning the cruel treatment of
his brother. But he added Andrew's territory, and
that of two other brothers, to his large dominion.

In the following year the lover of peace attacked
the joint kingdom of Lithuania and Poland, which
had so long afflicted Russia. Ivan had married
his daughter to the Polish king, and had strictly
stipulated that she should have entire freedom to
practise the true religion amongst the adherents of
the Pope; In 1494 Ivan found that this agreement
was grossly disregarded, and his beloved daughter
ran some peril of her soul. Later Russian histo
rians have learned from the daughter's letters that
she had no complaint except against the interested
intrigues of Ivan himself. However, a holy war
was proclaimed, and a good deal of western Russia
was wrested from the Poles and added to the Mos-
covite dominion.

Such were the methods by which Ivan III
doubled the patrimony of his fathers, and accumu
lated the wealth and power by which his more
famous grandson would create the great Russia of
the Romanoffs. It remains to see how Ivan or
ganised his dominion, strengthened the autocracy,
and raised the culture and splendour of his capital.

Ivan was by nature autocratic. He did not make

46

THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS

counsellors of his boyars, as had been the custom,
and they were compelled to learn the art of silence
in presence of their master. But it was Ivan's wife
who directed this disposition and created a Court in
harmony with it. The Turks had taken Constanti
nople and had driven the remnants of half a dozen
rival Greek royal families, and all that remained
of Greek culture, into Italy. Amongst the fugi
tives was the clever and ambitious niece of the last
emperor, Sophia Palseologus. The Pope, who saw
in this heavy chastisement of the Greek schism a
ray of hope of the reunion of Christendom, fathered
the homeless princess and sought for her a useful
marriage. Ivan accepted her and the Papal dowry.
They were married early in his reign (in 1472) , and
her forceful ambition was behind many of the
schemes of conquest we have reviewed. It was
especially she and the clergy who forced upon the
prince his inglorious campaign against the Tatars.
But we may see her influence especially in the
growing splendour and despotism of the Moscovite
court. Bred in the sacred palace by the Bosphorus,
where there still lingered, until the Turk came,
some remains of the most imposing court of the old
world, she was made impatient by the thin coat of
gilt which covered the Russian barbarism. Accus
tomed to a city of marble palaces, with walls of
mosaic or porphyry, with bronze gates guarded by
hundreds of silk-clad servants, and gold and silver

47

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

vessels so heavy that they had to be lifted on to the
tables by mechanical devices, she knew how to use
the increasing wealth of her husband's kingdom.
He was now the successor of Constantine and the
Roman Emperors. The two-headed eagle, which
had been the . blatant emblem of Greek vanity,
passed with the hand of Sophia to Moscow, and
was emblazoned on the banners and plate of the
new dynasty. Ivan did not take the title of "Tsar."
His grandson would complete his work.

Sophia invited to her court Greek scholars and
Italian architects and engineers, and the splendour
of Moscow soon became so famous that its prince
corresponded with Popes and Sultans, Kings of
Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, and Austria, and
even with the Grand Mogul of India. Italy was
at that time in the flush of the Renaissance, and
much of its colour, and of the less manly art of the
Byzantinians, was brought to Moscow. Whatever
one may think of the religious quarrel, it can hardly
be doubted that the civilisation of Russia would
have gained by submission to Rome. The Papacy
was then enjoying that period of artistic license
which provoked the Reformation, and probably
Russia would have joined the Reformers. By its
severance from Rome it maintained a barrier
against the west, where civilisation was making
rapid progress, and prolonged the inferior culture
and conservative influence of the late Greek em-

48

THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS

pire. The glory of the new Russia was but a coat
of paint upon barbarism.

In the court the oppressive servility and childish
pageantry of the Byzantine palace were encour
aged. Golden mechanical lions barked before a
golden throne, as they had done at Constantinople,
and filled the visitor with mingled admiration and
disdain. A very numerous guard of nobles, in high
white fur caps and long caftans of white satin, with
heavy silver axes on their shoulders, protected the
sacred person of the monarch, and crowds of cour
tiers in cloth of gold or bright silk, with costly
necklaces round their necks, vied with each other
in flattery of speech and humility of demeanour.
Yet these glittering aristocrats still carried a spoon
in their jewelled girdles, for knives and forks were
not yet substituted for fingers at a Russian feast.

The wives of the boyars were not less .splendid.
The combined influence of Mongol princes and
Byzantinian monks had, as I said, lowered the con
dition of the Slav women. The terem, or women's
quarters of the house, was screened as carefully as
the gynecceum had been in ancient Athens or in
Constantinople. The Russians had not indeed in
troduced that later Greek security for the behaviour
of their women, the eunuch, and the frailer protec
tion of religion did not prevent disorders; but the
women were, as a rule, carefully guarded at home
and abroad, while their husbands claimed the free

49

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

use of slaves and courtesans. In public the wives
of the boyars or, as we may now call them, nobles
presented a curious spectacle. They painted as
liberally as the Greeks had done. Thick coats of
vivid red and white covered their faces, necks, and
even hands ; and their eyelashes, and even teeth at
times, were dyed. In obedience to the ascetic teach
ing of the monks great masses of scarlet or gold
cloth, silk, satin, and velvet, concealed, or preserved
for the admiration of their husbands, the opulent
lines of their figures; for a full habit of body was
religiously cultivated.

Round this glittering court, with its Gargantuan
banquets and its daily intoxication, spread the
wooden city of Moscow, whose hundred thousand
inhabitants lived, for the most part, in squalor and
grossness. Beyond were the broad provinces of
Russia which bore the burden of this barbaric
splendour. The mass of the people had at an earlier
date, we saw, become moujiks, or "mannikins."
Others called them "stinkers." Now, by one of the
most curious freaks of Russian development, they
were known as "the Christians"; as if the quintes
sence of the Christian doctrine, as it was expounded
by the Russian priests, was obedience to a lord and
master. Their women had the hardest lot; the
priests were content to urge the peasant or artisan,
who, like his betters, drank heavily, not to beat his
wife with a staff shod with iron or one of a dan-

50

. THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS

gerous weight, Drink was one of the few luxuries
left, for the priests and monks gave fiery warnings
against the song and dance and games that had
formerly lightened the life of the people. Drink
ing heavily themselves, they could not, as a rule,
rigorously forbid intoxication.

Such was the Russia created by Ivan and his
Greek wife, with the aid of the Greek-minded
clergy, and bequeathed to their second son Vassili.
That prince, zealously educated by his mother, sus
tained the policy of enlarging and coercing his
dominions. The republic of Pskoff had, we saw,
retained its democratic forms. Vassili held a court
at Novgorod, and thither he summoned the chief
men of the neighbouring republic to do homage.
Too weak to rebel, yet aware that the monarch
sought to swallow the last remnant of the primitive
democracy, the citizens appealed eloquently to the
sense of honour which the Moscovite might be as
sumed to have. It was useless, and the republic
was dismantled. Amidst the tears of the citizens
and the laments of the patriotic poets Vassili re
moved the great bell to Novgorod and suppressed
the Vichk, or democratic council. The commercial
life of Pskoff was ruined, and three hundred docile
families from Moscow were substituted for three^
hundred who had clung to independence and were
now sent into exile.

Riazan was the next victim. The familiar crime

51

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

of corresponding with heretics with the Khan of
the Crimea was charged against its prince, and
the fertile province was added to the Moscow prin
cipality. Vassili recovered territory also from the
Tatars and the Lithuanians. Russia expanded
rapidly, and the splendour and autocracy of the
court proportionately increased. There was now
only one court for the innumerable descendants of
the earlier princes and boyars, and the sternness
of the competition for rewards made the nobles
more and more sycophantic. Even less than his
father did Vassili ask the counsel of his boyars.

The death of Vassili in 1588 led to a romantic and
important interlude. Vassili's first wife had been
thrust into a convent on the ground that she could
not furnish an heir to the brilliant throne. Whether
or no it is true that she disturbed the solitude of the
cloister with the pangs of motherhood, it seems clear
that the chief motive for the divorce was that Vas
sili had fallen in love with the very pretty and ca
pable daughter of a Lithuanian refugee, Helena
Glinski. Helena gave birth to two sons, but the
eldest was only three years old at the time of his
father's death. The mother vigorously grasped the
regency and held power from the furious boyars.
Only the Master of Horse, Prince Telepnieff, was
allowed to share her despotism, as he shared her
affection. The nobles split into factions, and they
presently found that the easy-going princess could

52

THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS

use the most truculent machinery of despotism.
When the heads of a few of them had fallen, they
poisoned Helena and her lover, and there followed
a sordid scramble for power and plunder.

Now of the two children of Helena one was the
boy who would live, even in the history of Russia,
as "Ivan the Terrible." Ingenious historians have
found a milder meaning for this epithet, or discov
ered that Ivan underwent some strange degenera
tion in his later years. But the boy who was
brought up amidst dogs andtgrooms, who for sheer
pleasure cast his dogs from the walls of his palace
and watched them writhe, who stabbed his favourite
jester for the most trifling fault, is the same Ivan
who in later years soaked petitioners in brandy and
set fire to them. His impulses were barbaric, and
the unhappy features of his education had stimu
lated rather than curbed them. He was eight years
old at the time his mother was murdered, but he
was clever, observant, and self-conscious. He saw
the boyars plunder the palace, which was now his,
and fleece the long-suffering country. He noticed
that any servant to whom he became attached was
removed or murdered. He read much, and he grew
up rapidly in his solitary world.

And during the Christmas festivities of 1543
Ivan, then thirteen years old, summoned his boyars
before Mm and let loose upon them an unexpected
storm of reproach. Andrew Chiuski, the most pow-

53

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

erf ul of them, he handed over at once to his groom-
attendants one wonders how far they had inspired
this precocious display and the great noble was
soon dispatched. One account runs that by Ivan's
orders he was torn to pieces by the hounds : others
say that the grooms acted without orders. Other
nobles were banished. The short golden age of the
boyars was over. The shadow of a sterner autoc
racy than ever began to creep over the court.

Ivan had himself crowned in January, 1547, and
he chose the title, which now first appears, of "Tsar
of all the Russias." Shortly afterwards he an
nounced that he would marry, and his servants ar
ranged the kind of matrimonial parade which had
been customary at Constantinople when a prince
was to wed. A preliminary survey was made of the
daughters of all the nobles of the kingdom, and fif
teen hundred of the most healthy and beautiful of
them were brought to Moscow and crowded into
the palace. A medical examination ensured that
they were virtuous enough to wed a prince who was
already expert in 'every variety of vice, and Ivan
made the round of the trembling maids. He chose
the lovely daughter of a small noble named Roman,
a man of either Prussian ( Slav as the old Prus
sians were) or Lithuanian extraction. Anastasia
Romanovna became the first Tsarina and the
founder of the fortune of the Romanoff family. It
was in the same year that Ivan had some deputies,

54

THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS

who came from Pskoff to set out the grievances of
the town, soaked in brandy and set afire.

The boyars were still powerful. In the same
year, 1547, a fire destroyed a great part of Moscow,
and the nobles charged it to the account of the
Tsar's maternal relatives. The homeless people
heard with horror that the Glinskis had stewed hu
man hearts and watered the streets with the magic
brew, and they fell upon the Glinski palaces. Even
the young Tsar wavered for a moment, and the boy
ars gained ground. Three years later, however, he
summoned a great assembly of all orders of the
people except "the Christians," who counted no
longer in the Red Square in front of the Kreml
and impeached the boyars. Reforms were intro
duced in the holding of land and the administration
of justice, and an arrangement was made for the
presentation of complaints.

Ivan was still young, and the insolence of the
boyars continued. In 1553 he was dangerously ill,
and he was aware that they plotted to put a cousin
of his upon the throne instead of reserving it for
his infant son. Ivan was, like his grandfather, not
a man of much personal courage, and he continued
nervously to tolerate the opposition and corruption
of the nobles. In 1560 he impeached and disgraced
their leaders, Sylvester and Adacheff. His wife
Anastasia had died, and he suspected poison. A
state of intolerable friction and danger now set in,

55

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

and in the middle of the winter of 1564 all Moscow
was alarmed to see a great imperial cortege leave
the palace and retire to the country. Ivan had
packed on waggons his plate and treasures, his
furniture and sacred ikons; and his court and fol
lowers went with him on his strange adventure.
The correspondence which followed ended in a
curious compromise. Ivan virtually divided Russia
into two parts. The greater part of it was to be
ruled by the boyars, the remainder by himself and
his court.

But the young Tsar had reserved the right to
punish treason,, and on his return to Moscow he
created the machinery by which he could do so. He
formed a special guard of a thousand picked boyars
and sons of boyars, and the dog's head which he
gave them as emblem indicated his disposition. A
reign of terror followed. Thousands of nobles and
their followers were slain with every circumstance
of brutality. Such legends grew out of the red
terror that we handle them with some reserve, but
we have a document in which Ivan coldly commends
to the prayers of the Church 3,470 victims nobles
and priests, men, women, and children of his new
policy. Prince Vladimir (the cousin whom the
nobles would have substituted for his son) and his
mother were killed; and there is no grave reason to
doubt the story that they were murdered in Ivan's
presence, aad that he then had their maids stripped,

56

. THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS

whipped through the streets, and shot or cut down
as they ran. Naked exposure and scourging were
common incidents of the terror.

In 1570 a man reported that Novgorod contem
plated going over to Poland. A letter to that ef
fect would, he said, be found hidden behind a pic
ture in a certain monastery. Ivan's servants found
the letter where the man had put it, and the Tsar
and his troops moved grimly to Novgorod. Priests
and monks were brutally flogged, so that many of
them died, and then the citizens were brought, in
batches of a hundred, before the Tsar. Some were
roasted over slow fires in the great square, where
once the Veclie had been held: others were driven
in sledges, the children tied to their mothers, down
an incline into the icy river, where soldiers with
pikes saw that none escaped death. The horror
lasted five weeks, and so vaguely terrible was the
city's recollection of it that the number of victims
is variously stated as 500, 3,000, 60,000, and even
700,000. The Archbishop of the city is said to have
been sewn in a bear-skin and flung to the dogs, but
many of the stories of the time of Ivan stabbing
babes and raping mothers, of his soldiers using
white-hot lances, and so on may be figments of the
horrified imagination.

Ivan, we must remember, was not a burly mon
ster, cruel from his own indifference to suffering.
He was rather a nervous, calculating man, shrink-

57

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

ing behind soldiers chosen for their brutality, coldly
following a policy of terror. When he had sacked
the shops and palaces, and ravaged the whole ter
ritory of Novgorod, he turned upon Pskoff. It is
recorded to his credit that he murdered none in that
innocent city, but he relieved it of its wealth and
banished many of the leading citizens. He entered
Moscow with all the pomp of a great Roman con
queror, and soon set up his bloody tribunal in the
capital. Hundreds were executed, and the most
barbarous torture was inflicted even upon women.
That was in 1570, and from that time onward
Ivan ruled his empire by the knout and the knife.
His end was as inglorious as his reign. Anastasia
had given him two sons, Ivan and Feodor. The
three legitimate wives and various illegitimate part
ners whom, he took after Anastasia's death do not
seem to have much enlarged his family, and Prince
Ivan grew up in confident expectation of the throne.
He was on such good terms with his father that one
tradition speaks of them as exchanging mistresses.
In 1581, however, the Tsar was annoyed with his
son's wife, and, with his customary lack of re
straint, he struck her with the iron-shod staff which
he usually carried. She was pregnant, and the blow
was fatal. His son expostulated, and the Tsar
again used his staff, or spear, and inflicted a fatal
wound. For a time he professed acute remorse. He
shed floods of tears and declared that he was un-

58

THE MOSCOVITES BECOME TSARS

worthy of the throne. His supporters, lay and
clerical, did not share his momentary estimate of
himself, and he then, it seems, entered upon a period
of worse debauch than ever. We cannot very con
fidently pierce the darkness which falls over the
palace after 1581 a but it seems to have rivalled in
vice the Golden House of Nero. In 1584 Ivan died.

Russian historians are apt to claim that Ivan was
a great man marred by a cruel disposition and an
environment which fostered it. No one will doubt
either the savagery t of his disposition or the bar
barity and peculiar pressure of his environment, but
his constructive work hardly entitles him to be
called great. His domestic reforms seem to have
been made out of antipathy to the boyars, and we
should probably not be far wrong in attributing his
other services to Russia mainly to a selfish motive.
He broke the remaining power of the Finns and
Mongols, slew or sold into slavery whole tribes of
them, and made Russian provinces of their territory.
He conquered Astrakhan and its territory, and ex- .
tended the rule of Russia in the direction of Persia,
He, after a long struggle, beat the Livonian
Knights, and secured respectful peace from Poland
and Sweden.

The greatest part of his policy was his endeavour
to bring Russia into contact with the west. From
Livonia to Hungary a line of fanatical Catholic
powers shut out Russia from intercourse with the

59

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

advancing civilisation of the west. Ivan could
hardly realise the historical law that isolation means
stagnation, but he did see clearly that everything
new and valuable such as muskets and cannon-
came from the west. Early in his reign, in 1553,
some English merchants sailed round by the Protes
tant north to Russia, and Ivan became passion
ately eager for an alliance with England. There
is good ground to believe that his envoys begged
for him the hand of Queen Elizabeth herself! Her
contemptuous refusal, softened by diplomacy, an
gered him for a time, but in later life he asked at
least the hand of her cousin, Mary ttastings. He
had just taken on his sixth consort, and neither
Mary nor Elizabeth liked the prospect. The English
court, which wanted the profit of trade with Russia,
was embarrassed, but as it was in the same year that
the Tsar killed his son and entered upon his last
sombre phase the difficulty did not remain long.

We have now seen how the Moscovites had made
the new Russia the autocratic and imperial Russia
which succeeded the democratic and smaller country
of the Slavs. How much "the genius of the Slav
people" had to do with the creation of that autoc
racy the reader will now understand. We have
also seen the children of a certain Roman, the Ro
manoffs, enter the chronicle, and we have next to
see how they mount the imperial throne and found
a lengthy dynasty.

60

CHAPTER IV

THE BISE OF THE ROMANOFFS

THE second son of Ivan the Terrible, who now
became the Tsar Feodor, was a. piquant contrast to
his father and brother. Not wives and mistresses,
but the ornate services of the Church or long private
devotions, occupied his hours. He was as meek as
his father had been truculent, and the nobles began
to raise their heads once more. His uncle, Mkita
Romanoff, brother .of the first Tsarina, naturally
held the first place in his confidence and relieved
him of the profane task of governing his dominions.
But the pious Feodor had married, and his wife
Irene had a masterful and ambitious brother, Boris
Godunoff, The Godunofff are said to have de
scended from a Tatar chief, who had embraced
Christianity and settled in Moscow. Irene was de
voted to her brother, and she used her influence over
the feeble-minded Tsar to promote him. Before
long the palace was split into two factions, and
the familiar struggle for power and wealth set in.
Nikita Romanoff was a man of ability, but he had
a more astute rival Boris Godunoff secured two

61

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

measures which greatly increased his support in
Moscow and the country.

The first measure won for him the gratitude of
the clergy. The Russian Church was still in effect
the Greek Church. Its supreme head was the Pa
triarch of Constantinople, who sustained his tattered
dignity among the Mohammedans. Boris induced
this man to create a Patriarch of Moscow, and he
thus won the increasing favour of the clergy. His
other measure was one of great and terrible signifi
cance for the poor "Christians." The expansion
of Russia had created large new estates, and the
great land-owners continually attracted peasants
away from the smaller estates. But the small land
owners, who formed the yeomanry or cavalry of the
Empire, were not a body to be despised, either in
the interest of the country or of an aspiring poli
tician. It is said that in 1592 Boris played for
their support by issuing an imperial decree which
forbade the peasants to go from one estate to an
other. Some Russian historians deny this. If the
document is genuine, they say, it meant only that
Boris legally fixed a practice which had gradually
arisen, on account of the mischief of these peasant-
naigrations. However that may be, there is no
loubt that Boris Godunoff legally established serf-
lorn in Russia at a time when it was being aban-
Joned elsewhere. The peasants grumbled and suf-

62

THE RISE OF THE ROMANOFFS

f ered, but they now had upon their backs an autoc
racy that treated their wishes with entire contempt.

As the reign of Feodor (1584-1598) wore on, and
no son appeared, Boris pushed his ambition to
greater lengths. The heir to the throne would now
be the young Prince Dmitri, the son of Ivan the
Terrible's seventh wife. Early in the reign of
Feodor the nobles had compelled Dmitri's ambi
tious mother to take her infant son and her relatives
to a remote provincial estate, and from that exile the
mother and her kin nervously studied the failing
health of Tsar Feodor and the condition of his wife.
The subjection of women in Russia does not seem
to have extinguished their ambition, and there was
at the court itself the usual party, out of power,
which espoused the hope of a possible dynasty.
The court seethed once more with sordid passion.

In 1591 the Dmitri faction at court was shattered
by the announcement that the young prince was
dead. Boris ordered an inquiry, and as a result he
announced that, owing to the carelessness of his
mother in supervising him, Dmitri had committed
suicide. With becoming zeal the virtual Regent
forced the mother to enter a nunnery and consigned
her relatives to various prisons. Moscow at large,
reflecting that the tragedy removed an important
obstacle from Boris's path to the throne, preferred
to believe that his servants had murdered the prince.
That is the general opinion of historians, but there

63

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

are some who maintain that the child was not mur
dered at all, and that the adventurer who will pres
ently enter the story was really Dmitri.

For the present, at all events, the way was
cleared, and the death of Feodor in 1598 left the
throne vacant. The nobles and people offered their
allegiance to the Tsarina, but Irene, suddenly dis
covering a remarkable distrust of her powers and
dislike of the world, fled to a nunnery. Boris had,
with equal modesty, retired to the same nunnery,
but his supporters worked for him, and presently
the convent was sought by an impressive procession
of the clergy (headed by the obsequious patriarchs) ,
the boyars, and the people of Moscow, offering the
crown to Boris, He declined an invitation which
seemed to him to come from too small a section, and
the general council of the Empire was then con
voked, and it repeated the offer. After a further
mockery of resistance he accepted and became Tsar
Boris.

I have said that Boris Godunoff was as able a
man to fill the autocracy as could have been found
at that time, and he endeavoured to complete the
plans of Ivan the Terrible. He kept in check Swe
den and Poland, consolidated the gains in Asia,
and maintained close and profitable relations with
Queen Elizabeth. He encouraged Russian stu
dents to go to western countries for the comple
tion of their education. But we are concerned

64

THE RISE OF THE ROMANOFFS

with the rise of the Romanoffs and may summarise
other matters.

Three years after the accession of Boris a dread
ful famine spread over the land. It lasted three
years, and so great was the destitution that in
later years horrible stories were whispered of par
ents devouring their own children Streams of the
suffering country-folk poured into Moscow, and,
as its own provisions were soon exhausted, the
streets of the capital were filled with pale and ema
ciated ghosts. It is said that hundreds of thousands
died in Moscow alone, and throughout the land the
superstitious people spoke of the sin of Boris Go-
dunoff in murdering the heir to the throne. The
nobles themselves stirred, and Boris put into oper
ation the usual machinery. The Romanoff family
seemed to be an especial source of danger, and the
chief representative of that family, Feodor Roman
off, was thrust into a monastery and buried under
the monkish title of Philaret. His wife was com
pelled to enter a nunnery and assume the name of
Marfa.

The scattered feeling of discontent at length
gathered round the person of a singular adventurer.
In the summer of 1604 the news spread through
Russia that Dmitri, the third son of Ivan the Ter
rible, was not dead, but was approaching Moscow
with a Polish army to oust the usurper and put an
end to their miseries. Gregory Otrepieff, who Is

65

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

generally believed to have been "the false Dmitri/'
had been a roving monk who had turned brigand
with a band of Cossacks. From the southern
steppes he had gone to Poland, and there, it was
announced, he had, believing himself to be at the
point of death, revealed to a Jesuit confessor the
secret of his birth and shown the priest a jewelled
cross which proved his identity. The Jesuits were
still in their melodramatic phase of secret conspiracy
for the Church, and may well have invented, or em
broidered, the story. They pressed Dmitri upon
the Catholic king and nobles of Poland, and in
October he crossed the frontier of Russia with an
irregular force. Would the Jesuits add to their
many triumphs the submission of Russia to the
Vatican after so many centuries of resistance?

Otrepieff 's force was defeated, but there was a
good deal of treachery, and presently a large body
of the Cossacks came to join the army of their
former companion. At this juncture, in 1605, Boris
died, and priests, soldiers, and people declared that
they were convinced of the genuineness of the ad
venturer. The late Tsar's wife and son were mur
dered with the usual barBarity. The people of Mos
cow lustily received the monk-brigand, when he
came for his coronation, and even the widow of Ivan
IV publicly fell upon his neck and identified him.
Her relatives were, of course, promoted to wealth
and honour, and even the Romanoffs returned from

THE RISE OF THE ROMANOFFS

the monastic shades to the sunlight of prosperity.
Monk Philaret was made a Metropolitan, or Arch
bishop.

But the rise to power was not so speedy as the
fall from it, and both give us some measure of the
ignorance and barbarism of the times. Otrepieff
was a clever and accomplished man, but he either
lacked, or disdained to use in so credulous a world,
the art of tact. He brought a Polish wife whose
suite laughed at the uncouth ways of the Russians.
He himself too openly railed at the backwardness of
the country, surrounded himself with foreigners,
and acted with scandalous independence. He was
plainly, as his adventures would indicate, a sceptic,
and he snapped his fingers at the Pope and the Jes
uits the moment they had secured the throne for
him; but he was no more respectful to the clergy
and religious forms of Russia. He disdained
monks and ikons, asked no blessing on his table v ,
and refused to follow any of the court-traditions.
And within a month of his entrance into the Kreml
the adventurer lay dead upon the stones of its court
yard. People, amazed at their own credulity, now
exclaimed that he was a sorcerer, and the spell had
to be broken by blowing the ashes of his burned
corpse from the mouth of a cannon.

The succession to the throne had now been inter
rupted, and a ruler had _ to be chosen. Vassili
Chuiski, a military noble o? distinguished family, a

67

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

bald myopic man of little energy, secured the suf
frages of Moscow and mounted the throne. But
while the sluggishness of communication enabled
Moscow thus to choose a sovereign for the entire
country, it left the provinces in such a state of con
fusion and unsettlement that any rebel could find
support there. Another Dmitri arose, and was
accepted. People recollected that the real Dmitri
had, like a true Russian, worn a beard, while Otrep-
ieff had had none. The new claimant had a beard.
A regiment of nobles in one province, an army of
disaffected peasants and brigands in another, raised
the standard of the new adventurer and united their
forces within sight of Moscow. There the nobles
quarrelled with and deserted their baser comrades,
and the new claimant ended ori a gallows.

But the name "Dmitri" was now a phrase under
which any kind of rebellion might find shelter. A
number of men who claimed that they were sons
or grandsons of Ivan the Terrible appeared, and
the known morals of that monarch did not make
the number implausible. A "third false Dmitri,"
a very poor type of adventurer, was fabricated, and
before long the rebels again set up within sight of
Moscow the court of "the real monarch." The new
impostor went so far as to claim that he was not
merely the Prince, but the first "false Dmitri" also,
having escaped assassination, and he sent tender
messages to his "wife" Maryna (who had married

68

THE PATRIARCH PHILARET, FATHER OF MIKHAIL

ROMANOFF, THE FIRST TSAR OF THE NEW

DYNASTY. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

THE RISE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Otrepieff) and her father. In later years they
maintained that the impostor had, after killing their
servants, torn them from their home and brought
them to Moscow, but such trickery was common.
Maryna's father, still thirsting for a crown for his
daughter and a share of its magnificence for him
self, brought his daughter to Moscow and bade her
open her arms to her recovered "husband." "I
would die first," she said, after seeing the worthless
adventurer; but the father persisted, and soon the
"genuine" Tsar and Tsarina held court outside
Moscow, while Chuiski and his friends nervously
kept the city.

The situation was complicated by the insidious
behaviour of the king of Poland. King Sigismund
continued with a hypocritical pretence of justice to
support the claimant, while he negotiated a surer
way of getting the crown. He claimed the Russian
throne for his own son Ladislas, and sent an army
against Moscow. The terrified boyars now com
pelled the useless Chuiski to resign and formed a
council, including one of the Romanoffs, Ivan Ni-
kititch, to direct the affairs of the distracted coun
try. This small group of boyars accepted Ladislas.
But it became clear that Sigismund and his Jesuits
put forward Ladislas only as a pretext to seize the
throne, and a terrible agitation seized the people.
Their historic faith was in danger. The shadow
of the Pope fell upon their very walls. The small

69

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Polish army had to be conducted into the city dur
ing the night. The people awoke to find Popery
in their midst, and soldiers and the nobles who sup
ported Poland, including the Romanoffs, had to
shelter in the Kreml.

The impostor was at length driven away from
Moscow, and in December the news came that he
had been slain by the Tatars. But this removal of
one element of strife now only embittered the peo
ple further against the Poles. King Sigismund was
taking Russian towns in the east : the Swedes were
busy in the north. Russia had returned to as grave
and costly a confusion as it had ever witnessed, and
the long-suffering peasants looked up with dull
eyes from their plough to hear the latest news of
their masters, or fled before the unrestrained bands
of brigands. In Moscow itself a row between the
people and the Polish soldiers led to days of murder
and burning of houses, and the skirmish was turned
into regular warfare by the arrival of an army of
Cossacks. The Poles and a number of Moscow
nobles, including the wife and son of Archbishop
Philaret, who had gone to plead with the Polish
king and been held prisoner by him, were closely
besieged in the Kreml.

It was a butcher of Nijni-Novgorod who raised at
length a national standard and rallied the best
elements of the country. His forceful and sin
cere personality bound together his townsmen in a

70

THE RISE OF THE ROMANOFFS

league of effort and sacrifice, and in the late sum
mer of 1612 a large and solemn army, headed by
the priests and monks and sacred pictures, came
within sight of the golden domes of the metropolis.
The townsfolk eagerly joined them, and the few
hundred Poles who remained in the Kreml were
summoned to surrender. Worn with famine,
though they had begun to eat the flesh of their
slain comrades, and had made soup of the old parch
ments in the Archives, the brave troops at first stub
bornly refused to yield without an order from their
king. They surrendered on October 26th, and a
company of living ghosts emerged from the sacred
enclosure. Amongst them was Ivan Nikititch, of
the Romanoff family, and Philaret's wife Marfa;
and with Marfa, his large eyes wondering at the
scenes of horror, was her son Michael who was
destined to be the first Romanoff ruler.

A provisional government was formed, and a
summons to a great popular assembly was sent
over the country. A number of loosely chosen
representatives except of the peasants, who no
longer counted came to Moscow, and the task of
choosing a monarch was confronted. The nobles
were generally in favour of Ladislas of Poland, but
the bitter anti-Roman and anti-Polish feeling re
strained these. They must have a Russian mon
arch, and men naturally asked if they had not still
amongst them some man of royal blood. From

71

THE ROMANCE OF THE .ROMANOFFS

Philaret, whose embassy had won him some pres
tige, but whose clerical condition debarred him from
the throne, attention was soon drawn to his son.

The mother, Marfa, had left Moscow after is
suing from the Kreml, and had gone to a country
estate at Kastroma. There were, however, other
Romanoffs in the assembly, and Philaret himself
(who, however, is said to have urged the election
of a boyar) maintained contact with it from his
exile. Most zealous for the boy for Michael was
only seventeen years old was a crafty old fox who
had married a niece of Philaret, and might rea
sonably expect some reward. To the nobles he
pointed out that the youth and feebleness of Mi
chael would leave them a larger power. To the
clergy he observed that to have the father of the
Tsar a Metropolitan of their Church held out a
large prospect of power for them. In short, the no
bles were induced to realise that blood was the thing
that mattered, while the clergy and monks were
guided by supernatural visions in which the boy
appeared as "God's chosen one/' Michael was
elected on February 21st. Three weeks later a
solemn procession approached the monastery at
Kastroma in which Marfa guarded her precious
son. She wept at the prospect of Michael assum
ing so dangerous a dignity tears are second only
to blood in the chronicles of Moscow and for sev
eral days maintained a most virtuous resistance.

72

THE RISE OF THE ROMANOFFS

And on May 2nd Marfa and Michael entered the
Kreml once more, the chosen rulers of Russia.

There can be little doubt that the hesitation of
the nobles, who really had no prominent candidate
before their eyes, was chiefly overborne in favour
of the Romanoffs by a consideration of the youth
of Michael. Marfa was not one of the strong
women who abound in the Russian chronicles. We
shall soon see her return to the convent from which
the national agitation had drawn her. Philaret was
a prisoner in the hands of the Poles, and none could
surmise when he would return. We see in the elec
tion little of the national spirit which had cleared
Moscow, yet the country groaned for the creative
genius of ,a statesman and the virility of a strong
soldier. The ravages of war had terribly enfeebled
it; its industrial life was in decay; its hereditary
enemies threatened it on every front.

Michael was a feeble youth whose eyes still
looked dully upon the strange scenes he had wit
nessed. He passed at once into the hands of his
mother and her relatives, the Saltykoffs, and the
court hummed once more with petty intrigue for
money and offices. Marfa appropriated the heredi
tary treasure of the Tsarina and, knowing some
thing of the history of Russia, formed about her a
body of spies and supporters. The older nobles
resisted the upstarts, and fierce quarrels for prece
dence and appointments occurred even in the pres-

73

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

encc of the Tsar. At times the knout was laid upon
too offensive shoulders, but several years passed
in these selfish recriminations.

There were, however, urgent affairs to be set
tled, and by raising the taxation to one fourth of
the individual's income sufficient money was gath
ered, and escaped the fingers of the nobles, to raise
an army. So great had been the disorder of the
previous twenty years that Moscow itself had lost
a third of its population, and the impoverished
merchants writhed under the tax. But the Cos
sacks were threatening. The romantic Maryna,
who will be remembered as the wife of the first
and companion of the second false Dmitri, had
given birth to a son, and she transferred her versa
tile affection to the Cossack leader, Zarutski, and
relied upon him to secure the crown for her little
Ivan. Zarutski swept triumphantly from town to
town, while other brigands emptied villages, and
the Swedes and Poles pursued their accustomed in
roads. The new army scattered the Cossacks, im
paled their leader, and hanged the little Ivan an
infant of three years in order effectually to settle
the brood of pretenders. Maryna ended her curious
career in prison, and southern Russia was restored
to comparative calm*

The councillors of Marf a now turned toward the
Swedes and Poles. A direct struggle with such ad
versaries was impossible, and Russian envoys made

74

THE RISE OF THE ROMANOFFS

the round of Europe seeking either money and
men to meet them or mediation to disarm them. At
the western courts the Moscovites did not convey
a favourable impression of their country. Their
gross manners and dirty ways affronted even the
English ,and Dutch of the early seventeenth cen
tury, nor were the silver articles of the table or the
maids on the streets quite safe from their ready
hands. But England and Holland had, besides the
moderate advantage of hating Rome, a keen de
sire to trade with Russia and the East, and they
endeavoured to secure peace. Poland scornfully
refused to treat with "the son of a Pope" who had
usurped the throne of their Ladislas.. In 1617,
however, Gastavus Adolphus, of Sweden, was
bought off by a large indemnity and a few towns,
and Russia was able to oppose a stronger defence
to Poland. King Sigismund now offered a truce,
and at a conference it was arranged that he should
renounce the claim to the Russian crown, but keep
Smolensk and other cities.

The peace was followed by an exchange of pris
oners, and in the summer of 1619 the Archbishop
Philaret hastened to secure the power which awaited
him. It happened th$t the patriarchal throne of
Moscow was vacant, and Philaret occupied it. That
he was a priest malgre lui> and enjoyed the more
luxurious and comforting tastes of a profane lay
man, did not much matter in that world. Far more

75

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

religious prelates than Philaret drank heavily and
habitually. The patriarchate was the highest power
he could nominally and legally hold, and he was
not wanting either in energy or ambition. For a<
patriarch, however, to have a wife about the court
was scarcely seemly, and he "persuaded" Marfa to
return to her convent. He felt also that it was
expedient to remove some of her friends, and in
order to do this with a show of justice he reopened
a very curious case that had been settled in his
absence.

In the year 1616 Michael had decided to wed a
young woman of obscure family named Maria Iva-
novna Khlopoff. Her name was, in accordance
with custom, changed to Anastasia; her espousals
were celebrated; the day of the sacred ceremony
which would make her Tsarina was within her de
lighted view. Then the luckless Maria fell ill, which
no bride of a Tsar must dare to do. The doctors
examined her and pronounced her "unfit to serve
the delight of the Tsar," and the unhappy maiden
and her relatives were suddenly dispatched to Si
beria. Philaret, who knew with what anxiety the
existing favourites at a Russian court regarded
the coming of a crowd of relatives with a Tsar's
bride, and how frequently the chosen maid met
with accidents before the wedding-day, looked into
the affair when he returned. Her confessor ad
mitted that she was, innocent it now transpired

70

THE RISE OF THE ROMANOFFS

that a certain indiscretion in eating fruit was the
full extent of her fault and she was recalled from
Siberia and permitted to settle, with a small pen
sion, at Nijni-Novgorod.

It appears that Philaret had hope of securing a
more distinguished Tsarina. During the next few
years he approached the courts of Denmark and
Sweden, but without success. The king of Den
mark bluntly remarked that the air of Moscow was
not good for the chosen brides of Tsars. So Phi
laret returned to the affair of Maria Khlopoff, and
was now convinced that the jealous Saltykoffs.
(Mar fa's people) had fabricated the charge. He
fell upon them with great severity, and drove sev
eral into exile. Marfa, however, succeeded in sav
ing the remainder of the family, and also in pre
venting the return to court of Maria. To cut the
story short, yet fitly introduce the next generation
of palace-squabblers, we may say that in 1624 Mi
chael married Princess Maria Dolgoruki; and, as
she died soon afterwards, he married a woman of
undistinguished family, Eudoxia Strecknieff. The
new Tsarina provided a son, Alexis, and the pre
cious dynasty of the Romanoffs was saved from a
premature extinction.

Philaret had ability, and we need not quarrel
with the way in which he took the power from the
hands of his feeble and incompetent son. That
he was a Wolsey or a Richelieu, as some histo-

77

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

rians conceive him, is far too flattering an exaggera
tion. The Cossacks, the Poles, and the Swedes
were disarmed while he was still absent, and when
the Poles renewed the war in 1682 Philaret's army
was badly beaten, and he could think of nothing
better than to have its generals executed. He had
friendly relations with France and England, be
cause both wanted to enter, through Russia, into
a profitable commerce with Persia; which was re
fused. The Turks, of course, barred the Mediter
ranean route to the east. The Sultan offered Phi-
laret an alliance against the Poles, but he was at
that time unprepared for a big war. On the whole
it was a balance of interests rather than statesman
ship which gave Russia some years of peace.

Internally Philaret did more active service. The
question had already arisen whether Russia should
be Europeanised. The colony of foreign merchants
whidh now grew just outside the walls of Moscow
exhibited a higher culture. The western armies
were constantly superior to the Russian in equip
ment. The envoys to France, England, and Hol
land spoke of refinements which made the luxury
of Moscow seem tawdry. On the other hand were
the inevitable croakers who protested that Russian
trade, Russian religion, or even the Russian State,
would not survive an invasion of western ideas.
Philaret boldly adopted the progressive view and
summoned foreign teachers to Moscow. Astrono-

78

THE RISE OF THE ROMANOFFS

mers brought their marvellous instruments to as
tonish or scare the populace; mathematicians and
literary men opened schools in the metropolis.
Against one western discovery, tobacco, the Rus
sians remained obdurate; while the man who was
caught surreptitiously taking snuff, as the west
erners did, had his nose cut off.

The religious controversy also contributed to the
sharpening of the wits of the nation. The Jesuits
still lingered heroically on the fringe of the Empire
and sought to bring it under the rule of the Papacy.
Even a new pretender was tried a son of Maryna
who had escaped murder, they said but the man,
a commonplace peasant, was not chosen with their
usual skill, and little harm was done. In the Rus
sian provinces which were subject to Poland, how
ever, they worked with such effect that the Church
was rent by a great schism. Some of the Russian
prelates were for union with Rome. The struggle
had an echo in Russia, and some education for con
troversial purposes was inaugurated. We must,
however, not exaggerate the effect on the Russian
mind of this controversy. It is estimated by Rus
sian historians that at that time not one person
in a thousand, at the most, could read, and even
in the city-circles in which the points at issue were
debated the clash of ideas must have been of the
crudest conceivable nature.

Philaret, who sincerely endeavoured to introduce

79

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

some western culture Into this dense jungle of ig
norance and superstition, died in 1633. Michael
continued for twelve years to sustain feebly the
plans of his father, and the period may be de
scribed as one of slow recovery. An amusing epi
sode of Michael's last year will give some idea of
the condition even of the court.

In 1641 Prince Valdemar of Denmark came to
Russia on behalf of his father. The court decided
that it would like him to wed the Princess Irene,
and, when Valdemar was deaf to hints and returned
to Copenhagen, a deputation was sent to consult
with his father. King Christian favoured the pro
posal, but Valdemar had seen Moscow and was not
.attracted. When one of the envoys fervently
pledged his head as a guarantee that all would be
well, the young prince asked : "What should I do
with your head?" At the beginning of 1645, how
ever, he submitted* so far to the pressure as to go
to Moscow, and a quaint struggle followed. For
v five months the prince fought against the marriage.
In vain were the person and virtues of Irene im
pressed upon him. He was assured that she never
got drunk, as other Russian ladies did, and her
personal attractions, which seem to have been feeble,
were eloquently exaggerated. Valdemar found the
pretext that his evangelical faith was in grave
danger if he joined the Russian court, and he pro
posed to return to Denmark. He was virtually a

80

THE RISE OF THE ROMANOFFS

prisoner in the Kreml, and on one occasion he cre
ated a scandal by drawing the sword and threat
ening to cut his way out. In July Michael died,
and his successor allowed the Danish prince to re
turn home.

81

CHAPTER V

THE EARLY KOMANWFS

THE feeble Michael had, we saw, provided (an
heir to the golden throne, and, owing to the com
parative length of his reign, his son Alexis had
reached ,a mature age when his turn came to rule.
The portraits of all the Tsars have been so thickly
overlaid with rhetorical paint that we have some dif
ficulty in discerning their true historical features.
Alexis seems to have been a ruler of generally ex
cellent intentions and very moderate ability. He
was at the time of his .accession a youth of sixteen :
a tall, handsome youth, physically stronger than
his father and fond of hunting, but nervous and ir
ritable. It needed no keenness of vision to see that
Russia was in a deplorable condition. The nobles
and officials were as corrupt as ever; the fiscal sys
tem and administration of justice were atrocious;
the merchants struggled feebly against foreign
competition, and the serfs were crushed to the
ground under their burdens. Alexis assuredly re
sented this corruption and incompetence, and sus-

82

THE EARLY ROMANOFFS

tained the small efforts of his father and grand
father to improve the country.

The Tsar's mother died soon after his accession,
and the customary place of chief favourite and vir
tual ruler fell to Boris Ivanovitch Morozoff, who
had for the preceding three years had charge of
the prince's education. Morozoff had the ambition
and moral indelicacy which were common to his
time and class, and he and his friends grew rich.
But there was one cloud on the horizon of their
prosperity. Alexis must soon marry, and hehind
the bride, whoever she might be, Morozoff and his
friends saw the usual crowd of greedy relatives has
tening to Moscow and clamouring for wealth and
power. Morozoff cleverly conceived his plans to
avoid this danger.

In the early part of the year 1647 the thrilling
message went through the Empire that the young
Tsar would choose a bride, and every noble or com
moner who had, or thought that he had, a youth
ful daughter with the required degree of health,
beauty, and virtue, made application to the officials.
A swarm of officers spread over the Empire and
conducted the preliminary examination. Then
some two hundred picked beauties, rotund and
blushing, were drafted to the imperial palace and
packed into what might seem to be a large harem.
At night, when the palpitating maids had retired
to bed, the Tsar and his medical attendant went

83

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

from bed to bed and inspected the very wakeful
beauties. The golden rose fell on this occasion to
Euphemia Voievolojski, the daughter of a noble
who was in poor circumstances. But the unex
pected honour was too much for the obscure provin
cial girL She fainted from joy and agitation, and
the party of Morozoff, who were apprehensive of
the coming of rivals, put a grave interpretation up
on her weakness. She must be epileptic, and en
tirely unfit to rear a brood of little Romanoffs ; and
poor Euphemia and her relatives, who for a mo
ment had had golden visions, were dispatched to
Siberia.

Morozoff had another plan for marrying the
Tsar. An obscure man of the boyar class named
Miloslavski had two pretty daughters, and Moro
zoff designed to wed one and make a Tsarina of
the other. Whether he was already in love with
Anna Miloslavski, or whether he merely felt it pru
dent to annex her and her relatives when the Tsar
married her sister, is not apparent. It is enough
that Alexis married Maria, and ten days afterwards
MorozoiF wedded her sister Anna, and neatly se
cured the linking of the ambition of Miloslavski
with his own. Legend afterwards said that the two
girls had, not long before, sold mushrooms in the
public market at Moscow. Certainly their father
had been poor and insignificant, and just as cer
tainly he and his relatives at once began to heap up

THE EARLY ROMANOFFS

wealth by every corrupt device known in the tra
dition of the Moscovite court. Other Miloslavskis
came to court, and a fresh brood of parasites fas
tened upon the veins of the country.

The Tsar was a good-humoured, indulgent man.
Good-humour, which really meant an indolent and
short-sighted habit of extracting whatever pleasure
the actual circumstances afforded, was at that time,
and remained until the present crisis, the chief char
acteristic of Russia. The democratic peasant of
the primitive tribe had relieved his labours with the
song and the dance. The serf now had little joy
in life, but, while the song and dance were banned,
a new and potent element of gaiety had been in
troduced: brandy. Everybody drank, and nearly
everybody drank copiously. Alexis himself was
sober in habit, though even he liked to intoxicate
others at his table, but drunkenness was the daily
rule. The Patriarch of Moscow got drunk, the
priests and monks got drunk, and the people as
far as their means went followed the example of
their lords and pastors. Vast quantities of wine,
hydromel, and especially brandy were consumed,
and pepper was mixed with the brandy to improve
its sting. Babies drank neat brandy. Wives lay
drunk, side by side with their husbands, in a state
of alarming deshabille, in the sleighs and coaches
which ran noisily along the street. The few who
resisted were, as a jest, compelled to drink. Even

85

ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

nuns and delicate young girls had more tlian once
the option of emptying a flagon of brandy or en
during a whipping. Women at times prostituted
themselves, and men sold their clothes, in order to
get the precious vodka.

Russian life generally did not rise much above
this level The people were, as I said, so illiterate
and ignorant that scarcely one in a thousand could
read. Superstition throve in proportion to the ig
norance, and vice and brutality were not far be
hind. Women were atrociously treated. The wom
en of the richer class contrived, as we shall see, to
creep through the restrictions imposed upon them
and share the license of their lords, but in the great
mass of the people the mother had a generally de
plorable position. Wives were often whipped or
beaten until the blood flowed, and many a brutal
husband rubbed salt into the wounds. At times a
frantic wife killed her husband, and in such cases
the law exacted an awful penalty. In other castfs
bloodshed was too common an event to be severely
punished. Moscow was distinguished among Euro
pean cities for violence and bloodshed.

Vice and coarseness were still common enough
all over Europe, but it is the almost unanimous
opinion of the foreign visitors to Russia at the time,
who wrote their impressions, that vice was particu
larly free at Moscow. Unnatural vice was a matter
of jest. When the theatre became popular, as it

86

IVAN THE TERRIBLE, BY ANTOKOLSKY

THE EARLY ROMANOFFS

presently did, the vice was coarsely suggested on
the stage. Word and gesture everywhere were li
centious. As the immense majority of the Rus
sian families, which were usually large, huddled
over the stove in one room, day and night, during
the six months' winter, the atmosphere that the
children breathed may be left to the imagination.
Except amongst the wealthier nobles, who were be
ing modified at this time by foreign culture and re
finement, manners were indescribably gross. On
all this the mass of the clergy had, and purported
to have, no influence. The greater part of the
monks were as gross as the monks of Europe had
been generally before the Reformation, and the
false standards of the better monks who laid a
fierce anathema upon chess or the dance or Sun
day-work and a blessing upon ignorance made
their influence small and ineffective. Kiss the
ikons and be docile, was the general philosophy
they recommended.

That the early Romanoffs made a few improve
ments in this chaotic and half -barbarous world is
not saying very much to their credit. But beyond
a vague perception that more foreign light must be
imported they had no plan or statesmanship, and
they proceeded piece-meal, under pressure. The
foreign merchants who were introduced or permit
ted to enter kept industry and trade in their own
hands, and did little for the native development of

87

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Russia. The avarice and corruption of the <?ourt
and officials thought only of extortion, never of
wise development. The people, even of Moscow,
sank under taxation and injustice, and a certain
measure of independence grew out of their very
misery.

One day in the summer of 1648 the Tsar and
the Patriarch were returning to the palace from
some ceremony when a frantic group of the people
approached with cries of grievances. They were,
as usual, driven off; but the distress was acute and
soon an angry and dangerous throng of soldiers,
artisans, and small merchants and shop-keepers
besieged the Kreml and demanded the justice of
the Tsar upon the bloodsuckers. Either in fear or
in anger for Alexis was apt to boil over when the
misdeeds of some noble "son of a bitch" (as the
Emperor put it) were brought to his notice the
Tsar handed over to the mob two of the most hated
officials, and they wez*e savagely murdered. The
Clerk of the Council, who was held particularly
responsible for the salt-tax, which restricted the ;
supply of salt-fish, was assassinated on a dung-hill.
The whetted appetite then turned against Moro-
zoff's palace, but it was ingeniously protected
from destruction by the Tsar's sending to the mob
an assurance that it was his own property. Moro-
zoff himself was hidden in a monastery until the
fury of the storm spent itself, but the Tsar had to

88

THE EARLY ROMANOFFS

promise to punish Mm, and to appoint a reform-
commission. The autocrat shed a flood of facile
Moscovite tears as he protested that the people's
grievances should be remedied ; and his servants dis
creetly scattered money amongst the soldiers, who
formed the more dangerous part of the mob. The
fires which now threatened the entire city were ex
tinguished, and the people slowly and sullenly re
turned to discipline.

The insurrection had spread to the provinces, and
the former republics of Pskoff and Novgorod
showed that their spirit of independence was not
extinct. Pskoff, in fact, inaugurated a genuine re
bellion and had to be reduced by the imperial troops,
after a siege. Novgorod plundered the stores of its
foreign merchants and murdered more than one
supporter of the corrupt autocracy. When the
Archbishop Nikon (of whom we shall see more) at
tempted to defend the cause of the Tsar ( as he was
careful to write to that monarch), his palace was
invaded and he sank under a rain of stones which
nearly ended his life. Only the sworn promise of
a reform of the Empire put an end to the bloody
insurrection.

It was under these circumstances, and with the
added evil of an economic system which failed
yearly and a constant danger from the Poles, that
the second Romanoff began the reform of his king
dom. Morozoff was condemned to a luxurious in-

89

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

ternment in a monastery, from which he contrived
for a long time to watch his interests and influence
the Tsar, and the sturdy Archbishop of Novgorod
began to enjoy favour. A commission of inquiry
was appointed, and many reforms of the taxes, the
administration of justice, and the court were
brought about.

In 1652 the Patriarch of Moscow died, and Ni
kon, who had steadily advanced, was appointed to
fill his place. For the next six years Nikon was
chief favourite and councillor, and his story is so
characteristic of the time that it must be briefly
told. He was the son of a provincial peasant: a
man of robust constitution and conscience, and of
no small ambition. His success as a ruler of monks
had won for him the archbishopric of Novgorod,
and he knew how to capture the nervous and super
stitious monarch. He claimed visions, and his
shrewdness was at least supported by a vigorous
will. Before long the Tsar was little more than
an instrument of his will, and an abject spiritual
pupil. He would protest with tears that he was
unworthy to wear the crown, and it was only by
reliance upon the Patriarch's strong counsel that
he was dissuaded from abdicating.

The Tsar, like his predecessors, loved the elabo
rate ritual of the Church, and Nikon interested him
in the work of ecclesiastical reform. The Slav
translation of the Bible was very corrupt, and the

90

THE EARLY ROMANOFFS

, corrupt texts and ancient superstitious usages were
to be rooted out. While Poles and Swedes and
Turks threatened while the country rotted in ig
norance and economic folly an immense zeal was
concentrated upon the purification of the text of
the Scriptures and upon such grave issues as the
shaving of the beard, and the number of fingers
that one must use in making the sign of the cross.
The court was purified of "heretics" and the forces
of the Empire were put at the Patriarch's disposal
for the purification of the entire country. Easy
going Russia had as yet not recognised its many
heresies. Provided that one repudiated the Pope
one was esteemed orthodox; and indeed most of the
priests and monks were too densely ignorant to
examine a man's orthodoxy.

It was now seen that a vast amount of heresy
existed in Russia, and every weird phase of dissent
was truculently persecuted. Whole colonies of
monks were infected, and in places their monaster
ies sustained for several years the attacks of im
perial troops. Nikon was astute as well as am
bitious. He would invite some ragged popular
fanatic of Moscow to drink wine at his table, and
would make great nobles tremble before his power.
He acquired enormous wealth, made an impressive
display of pomp and luxury, and contrived to in
dulge the heavy sensuality which then belonged to

91

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

all classes, Russia had become an autocracy. Ni
kon would make it a theocracy.

But in such a court a man must have the trucu-
lence of Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great to
hold such a power, and the undercurrents of in
trigue began in 1657 to weaken the Patriarch's po
sition. Old believers, dissenters, and discontented
nobles concentrated their hatred upon him. It ^vas
in the summer of 1658 that he began to perceive the
effect. A foreign prince was to be entertained, and
Nikon was not invited to .the banquet. He com
plained, and was insulted; and he next perceived
that Alexis was absent from Ms functions. He re
solved to try a desperate remedy. Summoning his
clergy and the people, he solemnly and tearfully
laid his sacred vestments upon the altar and de
clared that enemies compelled him to abandon his
high office. He retired to the New Jerusalem mon
astery near Moscow to await the summons of the
Tsar to return to office, but no summons came.

For several years Nikon fiercely fought his cleri
cal and lay opponents from the monastery. "Brig
and, pagan, stinking dog," he howled at his ene
mies; and they retorted that he was a "mad wolf,"
In 1664 two high oriental prelates, the Patriarchs
of Alexandria and Antioch, visited Moscow, and it
was felt that they might be induced to end the
scandal by condemning Nikon's reforms. But Ni
kon was undoubtedly right, and the Tsar had to

92

THE EARLY ROMANOFFS

end it in his own way. The Patriarch was degraded
and imprisoned for life in a distant monastery. The
issue is a sad page of ecclesiastical history. The
ageing Nikon lit up the monastery with debauch.
Not only did his large consumption of brandy im
moderately increase, but he loved to have women,
especially young women, brought into the monas
tery and stupefied with drink. At night his cell
took on a Rabelaisian aspect; and he died in an
odour of sulphur, and was solemnly buried with all
the honours of a patriarch, in the year 1681.

By this time another interesting revolution had
taken place at the court. Power had passed to the
Miloslavskis, the family of the Tsarina, and they
followed the familiar tradition. It may at least
be said that under their lead, and that of the boyar
Nastchokin, a measure of reform was carried out,
and the country was strengthened against its ene
mies. The Cossacks of the south were still under
the dominion of Poland, and, after many years of
oppression and revolt, they appealed to Moscow for
help and protection. In 1654 the Tsar declared
war upon Poland and wrested a good deal of Rus
sian territory from it. The Swedes also were at war
with Poland, and in the north the ambition of Rus
sia clashed with that of Sweden. Alexis made peace
with Poland and entered upon an unsuccessful war
with Sweden. It ended indecisively, and the Poles
returned to the attack and inflicted severe defeats

93

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

upon the Russians. The war later ended in a costly
compromise.

The economic condition of the country was such
that the new drain caused frightful distress, and
the people of Moscow stirred once more. Copper
roubles had had to be coined, and poverty became
deeper. One summer day in 1662 the Tsar was at
chapel in his country mansion, a few miles from
Moscow, when he was told that a crowd from Mos
cow beset the palace and clamoured to be heard,
His officers had dared to tear down a placard on
which they had exposed their grievances. The pious
Tsar vigorously refused to leave his devotions for
so profane a cause, but he was overruled, and he
confronted the mob. He would, he said, proceed
to Moscow at the close of the service and make an
inquiry. He must come at once, with them, they
answered; and a few of the bolder climbed the
balcony and pulled at his cloak. He was, however,
permitted to return and finish his devotions after
he had taken a solemn oath to inquire into their
grievances. When he came down to carry out his
promise, he found that a larger and more violent
crowd surrounded the palace. Two regiments of
the militia were summoned and, as the vast crowd
still jeered and flourished weapons, the order was
given, and thousands of the people were shot. Hun
dreds of others were afterwards exiled, and the

THE EARLY ROMANOFFS

growing spirit of popular independence was, ap
parently, stifled.

Favourite succeeded favourite at court. Nast-
chokin and the Miloslavskis gave way to a new and
remarkable noble named Artaman Matveeff. Ni
kon had, as I said, disposed the Tsar in favour of
progress, of a kind, and Matveeff was for still larg
er and more comprehensive progress. The indus
trious and gifted son of a small official, he had be
come one of the most accomplished and refined of
the progressive party. His wife was a Scottish
woman of the Hamilton family. Like so many
other -foreigners, many of the Scots who were driven
from their country by Cromwell found their way
to Moscow and settled in trade there. The foreign
colony outside the walls grew, and its comparative
refinement and culture impressed the imagination
of many of the Russians. Matveeff married the
refugee, and his home had a western complexion.
The Scottish lady would not be confined behind cur
tains. The furniture was of the more elegant west
ern kind. A library, and even a chemical labora
tory, formed part of the establishment.

Matveeff seems to have won the attention of the
Tsar in the course of some employment about the
court, and he went on to secure his friendship. He
was promoted to the office of chief minister, and
the Tsar liked to visit him in his stimulating home.
We may presume that it was in the foreign quar-

95

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

ter, where the neat brick villas, surrounded by flow
er-gardens and shrubs, were in vivid contrast to the
dull and slovenly aspect of the clusters of wooden
Russian houses. A new romance of the court was
born of this intercourse.

MatveefF adopted a beautiful orphan girl named
Natalia Naryshkin, whose father had been a cap
tain of the militia. The Tsar, whose wife had died
in 1667, without (as we shall see) leaving a very
promising heir to the throne amongst her numer
ous children, was much struck with the charm of
Natalia, as she waited at table. Legend says that
he at once offered to "find her a husband." He at
all events decided to marry her, and told Matveeff .
But the courtier was too prudent to provide a wife
for the Tsar in this personal fashion. He per
suaded Alexis to issue the customary summons to a
competition of health and beauty, and some hun
dreds were lodged in the palace and gravely in
spected. There seems to have been some danger of
Natalia losing her fortune, or else the comedy was
carried out very thoroughly. Another maiden was
selected, and the opponents of Matveeff pressed her
charms. But it was decided that her hands were
too thin for a model of Russian beauty, and the
intrigue was defeated. The Tsar duly discovered
the grace and gifts of the pretty brunette Natalia
which he was not supposed to have seen in any re-

96

THE EARLY ROMANOFFS

spectable Russian house and in January, 1671,
she was raised to the throne.

The young girl had no conception of the opposi
tion which her entrance into the court would cause.
Not only were the brother and other relatives of
the late Tsarina entrenched in lucrative positions,
but several of her children survived, and a grim si
lent struggle for the succession grew up about the
ageing monarch. Every act of the new mistress
was invidiously discussed. She declined to be se
cluded in women's quarters; she refused to have
closed curtains to her litter when she went abroad;
she despised paint and the tawdry display which
Russian women usually made. A Russian envoy
who had visited Italy brought news of a magical
form of entertainment known as a theatre, in which
painted scenes of castles and landscapes were put
together and disappeared, and life was remarkably
imitated. Natalia and MatveeiF set up a theatre,
and, although they did not venture beyond biblical
plays, the monks and reactionaries and envious
made a great outcry. She brought into the world,
on May 20th, 1672, a wonderfully vigorous boy
the future Peter the Great and malicious tongues
whispered that such a child was assuredly not the
son of Tsar Alexis, whose earlier sons had been
feeble. Two daughters followed in the next three
years, and the silent struggle became more tragic.
Which of the two families that of the first or the

97

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

second Tsarina would secure the succession? The
Tsar himself brooded over the difficult problem;
and in the midst of his brooding, in 1676, he died,
and left the settlement to the court.

Maria Miloslavski had had thirteen children, and
of these two sons and six daughters were alive
when the Tsar died. The younger son, Ivan, was a
weak-witted boy whom none could seriously re
gard as a future ruler of Russia. The two eldest
sons had died. There remained Prince Feodor,
and the Miloslavskis had little trouble in securing
his accession. A charge of magic and other evil
practices was trumped up against Matveeff , and he
was flogged and sent to Siberia. Natalia and her
three children were still at court, and she made a
spirited stand against the grown-up daughters of
her predecessor and the three aunts who lived at
court with them. Her brother Ivan was banished,
and she seemed to be in danger of losing all hope,
when a fresh court-revolution modified and compli
cated the struggle.

The young Tsar, Feodor, was an invalid. Few
expected him to live long, and the prospect gave
edge to the keen rivalry for power. But a former
tutor of Feodor's elder brother now crept into
favour and cut out the Miloslavskis. This man and
his brother were admirers of Poland, and, in order
to prepare the way for Polish influence, they in
duced the sickly Tsar to wed a young and undis-

98

THE EARLY ROMANOFFS

tinguished woman of Polish extraction named Aga
tha Grouchstska. Polish nobles and officers flocked
to the court, and an entirely new prospect was
opened when, in July, 1681, a child was born. Na
talia and her children were now living in a village
not far from Moscow. The Miloslavskis had been
disposed to make a nun of her, but they were now
fighting desperately for their own power. Agatha,
to their relief, died in childbirth, and the baby died
a few weeks later. The resolute friends of Poland
made a last effort. They induced the dying Tsar
to wed a relative of his dead wife. But death made
an end of the mockery. Feodor died, in his twenty-
first year, a few weeks after his marriage, and the
intriguing Poles were swept out of court.

Before the Miloslavskis had time to marshal their
forces, the friends and relatives of Natalia, the
Naryshkin, got together the boyars and persuaded
them that the boy Peter was now the only possible
heir to the throne. The elder prince, Ivan, son of
the first wife of Alexis, was, as I said, an obvious
imbecile. Peter, on the other hand, was a sturdy
and intelligent boy who promised to become a vig
orous man. Before the day was out on which
Feodor died Natalia was summoned to Moscow by
the news that her son was Tsar, and she herself soon
rejoiced in the titles of Tsaritsa and Regent. Her
brother was recalled, and a speedy messenger was
sent to bring back her friend and patron, Matveeff ,

99

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

from Siberia, It was on April 27th, 1682, that
Feodor died and Natalia returned to power. On
May llth Matveeff arrived from Siberia, and re
ceived the respect of the troops. The new regime
seemed to be solidly established. And four days
later Moscow was shaken by one of the most san
guinary revolutions that we find in its chronicles,
and the Miloslavskis returned to power. The story
of that revolution introduces us to one of the strang
est princesses of the Rdlnanoff house, who was to
rule Russia for the n^t seven years.

100

CHAPTER VI

A ROMANOFF PEINCESS

THE surviving family of Maria Miloslavski and
Tsar Alexis consisted of six sturdy daughters and
one purblind, weak-pated boy. On the approved
principles of Russian, especially imperial, educa
tion, these daughters ought to have been reconciled
to the modest position to which the inferiority of
their sex condemned them, and, as their brother was
plainly incapable of ruling, they ought to have
passed into convents or been distributed amongst
the households of wealthy courtiers. But there was
at least one daughter, Sophia, who had not the
least intention of submitting to the priestly theory.
If her fifteen-year old brother could make no ef
fort for the throne, she would make it for him.
She would fight the hated Anastasia.

Visitors to the court have left us very different
impressions of this remarkable princess, but we
have little difficulty in removing the thick coat of
flattery and obtaining a satisfactory glimpse of her.
She was twentyrfive years pld at the death of Feo-
dor: a short, very stout, aria very vigorous young
woman, her face covered to some extent with a fine

101

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS'

hair which gave her an even more masculine ap
pearance. Probably she had led the usual en
closed life during her father's reign, but in the
time of her invalid brother she had had more free
dom. She especially made the acquaintance of Vas-
sili Gallitzin, a very clever and accomplished prince,
of European culture, who overlooked her entire
lack of personal charm and either then or at a
later date became her lover. In her apartments
she formed a literary circle, and through her visit
ors she got into touch with remote elements of Mos
cow society.

One of these sections of the population of Mos
cow which a conspirator would naturally explore
was the military force known as the streltsui: a
privileged corporation of soldiers who handed on
the office from father to son and gave themselves
airs of importance. We have no direct proof that
Sophia got into communication with this body, but
the historical facts, and the later action and ex
pressions of Peter the Great, seem to put it beyond
question. The streltsui were mutinous at the time
of the death of Feodor, because their pay was, as
usual, in arrears. They were reduced to silence by
the application of the knout, publicly, to the shoul
ders of their officers, but they remained sullen and
inflammable. It is said that the agents of Sophia
and her uncle went amongst them distributing
money and whispering poisonous libels. The late

102

A ROMANOFF PRINCESS

Emperor, it was suggested to them, had died of
poison.

When Matveeff returned from Siberia, they
greeted him with apparent respect, and the court
settled to its usual prosperous life. Four days
later, however, the Kreml awoke to find a grave
and ominous movement afoot. Twenty regiments
of the streltsui had seized their arms and were ir
regularly massed in front of the Kreml. The
sleeves of their red shirts were rolled up, as if for
butchery, and a close observer would have found
that they reeked with vodka. Behind them was the
rabble of the town. The bells were calling shrilly
from the steeples. Drums were beaten, and can
non rumbled toward the palace. The servants of
the court learned that some one had spread amongst
them a report that Princes Ivan and Peter had
been strangled, and a brother of Natalia had seized
the crown. Natalia hastened to show the princes
at the top of the red staircase, to the crowd, and for
a moment it seemed to be baulked. Matveeff and
the Patriarch prudently addressed the men, and
they were about to disperse.

It is said that Prince Dolgoruki, one of the group
of courtiers about the Tsarina, then made offensive
and arrogant remarks to the soldiers, and the whole
mass of inflammable material took flame. The
prince was soon flung from the head of the steps
and caught on the spears of the soldiers below.

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

MatveefF was cut to pieces, and the murderers
searched the palace for Natalia's brother. After
murdering one or two wrong men, they found him
in the chapel and dispatched him. Another brother
was torn from Natalia's arms and cut to pieces.
Three younger brothers escaped from Moscow.
For three days the friends and relatives of the
Tsarina were sought and butchered: dragged by the
hair through the streets, knouted to death, flung
from windows upon the spears, roasted with red-
hot spears, cut to pieces, and so on. One does not
like to dwell upon the horrors, but there will come
presently a page in the life of Peter the Great that
requires explanation. Peter, then nine years old,
trembled by the side of his mother in the Kreml
while her friends and relatives were barbarously
slain on every side by the streltsui. It is said that
Sophia at length interceded and arrested the
butchery; and that she gave ten roubles each to
the streltsui.

A week later the emboldened soldiers came again
and demanded that the idiot Ivan should be asso
ciated with Peter in the Tsardom. Most of the
boyars were opposed to so ridiculous and unprec
edented a change, but the Patriarch and other min
isters were conveniently at hand, and it was done.
In a few more days there was a fresh riot. Ivan,
being the elder, must have precedence of Peter;
and so it was appointed. Some historians find it

104

A ROMANOFF PRINCESS

not unnatural that after this display of zeal for
her brother Sophia should provide a feast for the
streltsui, and with her own plump hand pour out
their wine. Perhaps it was just as natural that
the streltsui should next return with a demand that
Sophia be appointed Regent for the young Tsars.
The nobles now saw how the wind sat, and they
obeyed. A double throne was ordered of the Dutch
merchants and, when it came, Sophia had a hole,
decently veiled, cut into the back, so that she could
listen to the audiences. She occupied the place of
the Tsarina and, with the aid of her lover Gallitzin,
ruled the Empire. Gallitzin was married, but, at
Sophia's suggestion, it is said, he "persuaded" his
wife to enter a convent, which left him free to marry
again. Apparently the virago would wed him and
share the throne with him.

But the streltsui were old-fashioned believers,
and were in no mind to see the traditions of Rus
sian decency thus violated. Their murmurs were
strengthened by those of other malcontents. So
phia was more punctilious about ritual and doctrine
than conduct, and, like Nikon, she laid a heavy hand
upon dissenters. One of their leaders at Moscow
was executed. The rumble in the city grew louder,
and Sophia, affecting at least to believe that the
streltsui now threatened her life, fled with her court
to the large and fortified monastery at Troitsa,
eighteen miles from Moscow. She prudently took

105

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

with her Ivan and Peter, and she issued a frantic
summons to the country to protect her and them.
Tens of thousands of boyars and soldiers streamed
to Troitsa, and the streltsui became apprehensive.
Their leader, Khovanski, and his son were invited to
come and confer with Sophia at Troitsa, and they
unsuspectingly went. They were arrested on the
way and put to death; and the streltsui, cowed by
her strength, came, with ropes round their necks,
to Troitsa, to ask and obtain forgiveness.

But the discontent was not eased at Moscow, and
the policy upon which Sophia and Gallitzin now
concentrated their resources fed the murmurs. All
Europe was alarmed at the continuous menace of
the Turks, and in 1686 Gallitzin led south a large
army for the purpose of chastising them and their
Tatar allies, and regaining territory for Russia.
The costly army, terribly reduced in the southern
wilderness, was forced to return without having
even sighted the Turks, and the complaints and sat
ire of Moscow were loud. Sophia and Gallitzin en
deavoured to cover the disgrace by sending to Si
beria an inoffensive general and loading the soldiers
with honours. It was, however, necessary to redeem
the failure, and in 1689 a second grand army was
entrusted to Gallitzin. His nerve may have been
shaken when, as he was starting, he found a coffin,
placed by unknown hands, on his doorstep ; and he
can scarcely have been unaware that it was gen-

106

A ROMANOFF PRINCESS

erally believed that during his absence Sophia con
soled herself with the attentions of his colleague
Shakloviti. He failed once more, and all Sophia's
pretence of triumph could not hide his disgrace. She
walked in triumphal procession, distributed brandy,
and heaped honours upon the "victors/'

Men now spoke of her with contempt. It was
rumoured that she had a melodramatic plot of mar
rying Ivan and since he would have no children
providing his wife with a lover. When this woman
bore a son, Peter could be thrust aside as not in the
line of succession; and, when Peter was excluded
from the situation, the illegitimacy of the child
might be discovered, and Sophia and Gallitzin
might rule in peace. The plot was so ludicrous
that she can scarcely have entertained it, but it
served to fan the growing resentment of her rule.

That rule was, however, now threatened by Peter
himself. During these years the boy had grown
up sturdily, with his mother, in a village a few
miles from Moscow. On important occasions he
would be driven into Moscow, to sit beside his gog
gle-eyed half-brother on the golden throne, but he
detested the Kreml and loved the free, open-air life
of the village. His -mother, Natalia, seems to have
belied entirely the excellence of her early years and
scandalously neglected his education. He learned
to read, and he read a great and confusing assort
ment of books of history and adventure. He learned

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

to write, but the lesson stopped at so rudimentary a
stage that he always had great difficulty in spelling.
His days were spent amongst grooms, servants, and
any boys with whom he pleased to associate. He
became a creature of impulse, and in that world in
which he grew up the impulses one followed were
neither gentle nor decent. The theory that Peter
the Great profited by his rude education in contact
with nature and real human beings, instead of being
reared in the artificial atmosphere of the imperial
terem, may point with some pride to his energy, his
promptness, his scorn of conventions; but it must
embrace also those impulsive outbursts of ferocity
and those unchecked debauches which kept his char
acter throughout life little above the level of a
savage.

Peter had lately passed his seventeenth birth
day when, in 1689, Gallitzin returned from his sec
ond failure. The one imperial idea which grew
amidst his vices was the thought that he would some
day command the military forces of Russia, and
his play constantly turned upon soldiering. He
formed companies out of his servants and asso
ciates. He had a fort built at the village of Preo-
brajenshote, which he made his chief centre, and
a kind of rough, informal court grew up about him.
Nobles and boyars joined his military games, his
mimic regiments ; and they joined also in his nightly
revels. He must have heard much disdainful talk

108

A ROMANOFF PRINCESS

about the campaigns of Prince Gallitzin, and no
doubt there were ambitious men who urged him to
act. The city, he would know, now openly com
plained. One day a paper was found in one of the
squares telling the finder that a valuable paper was
hidden behind a picture of the Virgin in a certain
church. A crowd sought the miraculous communi
cation, and found a lampoon on the Regent Sophia.

Hence when Sophia would prepare a triumphal
return for her lover, and grant honours to the de
feated soldiers, Peter refused his imperial consent.
When Gallitzin thought it prudent to visit Preobra-
jenshote, after Sophia had acted on her own ac
count, Peter refused to see him. The two camps
began to glower at each other; and men began to
pass from the Kreml to the village.

During the night of August 7th, a few weeks
after Gallitzin's return, Peter was roused from
sleep with the news that his half-sister was gather
ing troops at the Kreml which were to come and
destroy him. It transpired afterwards that there
was a troop assembled at the Kreml that night.
Sophia declared that the soldiers were to accom
pany her on a pilgrimage on the morrow, but it
seems to be proved that Sophia and her friends dis
cussed the idea of dispatching Peter, and it was,
apparently, some of the soldiers themselves who
brought the news. Peter was not a youth of cour
age. He jumped out of bed, got a horse from the

109

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

stables, and rode hard, in his shirt, for the forest.
A few officers and soldiers took his clothes and
joined him, and they galloped to the famous mon
astery at Troitsa. They arrived at six in the morn
ing, and Peter, shuddering with fright, the tears
streaming down his blanched cheeks, implored the
archimandrite (abbot) to protect him.

During the day Natalia joined her son, bringing
the young wife, Eudoxia, whom she had driven him
to wed, but whom he had promptly discarded for
coarser pleasures. A few regiments of soldiers came,
and the monastery-fortress was put into shape
for a fight. The majority of the troops had not yet
made up their minds which of the royal autocrats
they would support, and a period of uncertainty and
parleying followed. With Peter there were able
nobles like Boris Gallitzin, cousin of Vassili, and
they urged him to be bold. He ordered detach
ments of the various regiments at Moscow to appear
before him at Troitsa. Sophia's servants inter
cepted the orders, and she bade the troops, under
penalty of death, to keep to their barracks. But
the balance of confidence was on the side of Peter,
and as time went on furtive streams of soldiers and
nobles passed to Troitsa. A formidable army grew
up there.

On the other hand, Moscow was very far from
united in favour of Sophia. Her troops melted
away. The dissenters, whom she had heavily pun-

110

A ROMANOFF PRINCESS

ished, gathered boldly about the Kreml and noisily
advised her to go into a convent. Vassili Gallitzin
wanted to go to Poland, to borrow an army.
Whether or no Sophia distrusted her nervous as
sociate, she refused to consent, and Vassili deserted
her and retired to his country seat. She sent the
Patriarch to Troitsa, and presently learned that the
prelate had decided to remain there, a supporter of
her detested half-brother. Then she boldly set out
for a personal discussion with Peter she had twice
as much courage as he and, at that time, three times
as much energy but troops barred her way and
sent her back to Moscow. She threw herself upon
the gratitude of the streltsui, and they loudly swore
that they would die for her. But in a few days
they came to demand that her second favourite,
Shakloviti, be surrendered, as a scapegoat, to Troi
tsa, and, after a frantic and tearful resistance, she
was compelled to yield.

She had, for the moment, lost the struggle.
Shakloviti was knouted until he conf essecf that there
was a plot against Peter* and he was then beheaded.
Vassili Gallitzin, the man of many accomplishments
and few capabilities, crawled to the feet of Peter's
rude throne and begged forgiveness. He was ban
ished to the frozen north. Other nobles were exe
cuted or exiled, and Sophia was at her brother's
mercy. She would foresee the hated sentence.
Peter permitted her to choose her own convent, and

111

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

she chose the convent of the Virgin, near Moscow.
She may have smiled at his leniency.

But Peter had wanted merely security for his
wild life, not the heavy duties and responsibilities
of reigning. His simple half-brother Ivan he did
not notice, and it is much to his credit one of the
very few things to the credit of his personal char
acter that as long as the weak-witted man lived
Peter left him untouched. It was not the Mosco-
vite way. He let Boris Gallitzin and his mother's
relatives squabble for power, as was the custom,
and he returned to the almost useless, and partly
disgraceful, life he led on the outskirts of Moscow.

Peter was now a well-formed and handsome
young giant, more than six feet high, with intelli
gence enough to know his duty and strength enough
to achieve it. To say, as is said, that he was slowly
preparing himself for a great task is mendacious
flattery. He was enjoying himself, and he cared
for naught else. What there is in his later life to
entitle this flower of the Romanoff shoot to be
called "great" we will consider in the next chapter,
but well into his manhood he was merely vicious, im
pulsive, and selfish. He disliked the pomp and con
ventions of the court, and avoided them, mainly be
cause he had the taste of a boor, and was happier
in squalid rooms where he could spit, and slop
brandy, and riot as he willed. His days, especially
in the summer, were spent in hard work, because

112

A ROMANOFF PRINCESS

he loved it. He worked at ship-building there
was a large lake at hand with just the same zest
and motive that a boy does, not from any far-
sighted vision of a need to cleave a path for Russia
to the sea. He drilled and drilled, and gradually
formed regiments which would one day be famous,
because he had a passion for soldiering and, as I
said, a vague imperial idea of one day commanding
armies and gaining great victories. And when the
work was over, or when the fierce grip of winter
arrested all work, he sat down to orgies which few
could endure long.

Between the village where he lived and Moscow
lay the foreign settlement to which I have occa
sionally referred, and here Peter got some educa-
tion. The neat brick villas did not impress his im
agination, for he had not even an elementary taste,
but he had a mechanical, inquiring mind, and the
instruments these foreigners brought into the heart
of Russia piqued and stimulated him. Somehow
these people beyond the plains could do everything
better than the Russians. They could make
clocks, watches, astronomical instruments, elabo
rate tools, superb weapons, magnificent fire-arms.
He heard that they could make ships compared
with which his boats on the lake were like children's
toys. He must get these secrets for Russia. One
secret he learned the making of fireworks and

113

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

the whole country reeked and stank with his con
stant displays.

And they could drink, these English and Scots
and Germans of the foreign quarter. Caravans of
wine and brandy poured into the quarter, and Peter
would come along, black with the smoke of his fire
works or streaming with perspiration from drill or
shipbuilding, and sit down to a glorious carouse.
His great friend was a Swiss named Lef ort, whose
capacity for drink was phenomenal. Peter built a
small palace, with a huge ballroom, for Lef ort, and
made it the headquarters of their debauches. It
was a general rule that everybody was drunk every
night. If a woman refused a pot of brandy Peter
would fetch her a clap on the side of the head to
which drunkenness was preferable. Decent women
kept far away from the two colonies. Peter sober
had little self-restraint, but Peter drunk . . ,

The shipping idea grew upon him until, in 1693
he had wasted four years since the retirement of
Sophia he decided to visit Archangel. It is curi-*
ous to read of such a man asking, like a boy, his
mother's permission, and promising not to go upon
the water. He, of course, took no notice of his
promise when he got there and saw the ocean. A
ship he had ordered from Amsterdam was out in the
roads and he impulsively started off in a totally un
suitable boat to visit it. He was nearly drowned.
When he trod the deck, dressed as a Dutch captain,

114

A ROMANOFF PRINCESS

and saw the great sails belly in the wind above him,
he went into transports. He sat for hours drinking
hard with the Dutch sailors and listening to stories
of their voyages round the world. There was no
country like Holland, and he there and then
adopted for Russia the Dutch red, white and blue
flag, reversing the order of the colours. In Janu
ary he was summoned back to Moscow with the
.news that his mother was dying. She died so slowly,
and kept him so long from the sea, that he cursed
volubly. But he shed copious tears, boy as he was,
when she died; and he fled like the wind back to
Archangel.

That there was any large profit in this minute
study of ships and sailors may be confidently de
nied. Monarchs and statesmen have built fleets
.without knowing the difference between port and
starboard. Peter was enjoying himself. But in his
wild mind there was inevitably growing a recogni
tion of his position and opportunities. He was now
more than twenty years old, and intelligent. It was
quite time that he recollected that the destiny of
Russia was entrusted to him. Of its internal con
dition he does not seem to have had the glimmer
of an idea, but it suited his passion to believe that
Russia needed a fleet, and must first have a sea to
put the fleet on. The powerful Swedes dominated
the Baltic, so he turned south and decided to take
Azoff, on the Black Sea, from the Tatars. He may

115

'THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

have known that the country was disgusted and
scandalised at his idleness, and that Sophia watched
eagerly from her convent.

His expedition against Azoff was crudely con
ceived and a total failure. He saw at least that
he and his amateur foreign friends were inade
quate, and on his return to Moscow, he
sent abroad for skilled men: sailors and ship
wrights from Holland and England, soldiers and
engineers from Austria and Prussia. Some came,
and many of these, when they saw the crowds and
the country, returned. All drank copiously. But
Peter's mighty energy was roused, and in a re
markably short time he had a sea-going fleet built
on the Don, ready to co-operate with his land-
attack upon Azoff. He took it, and returned in
triumph to Moscow.

The one vague imperial idea in his wild and
much-abused, brain fed on his success and grew
larger. Russia must have a mighty fleet, like
Holland and England, and must learn this western
art of doing things. He sent fifty officers abroad
for education. But he must see these wonderful
lands himself he must know everything himself
and he began the preparations for the famous
melodramatic journey which shocked Russia, and
scandalised Europe, and undoubtedly brought
great profit to him and his country. Boyish in all
things, he would go incognito. Russian historians

116

A ROMANOFF PRINCESS

have invented a score of interpretations of every
weird action of the hero. He hated pomp and
ceremony, it is said; but the truth is that he sulked
heavily when he was not recognised. The simple
fact is that he had a boyish, impulsive, muddled
mind, its great strength and originality marred by
a wicked education and by debauch. He would
pretend that it was a deputation of Russian envoys,
and he made a sort of prince of his friend Lefort,
giving him a suite of forty-four gentlemen and
servants. He would hide his own figure he was
six feet eight inches in height, and wore disguises
that would attract attention at a hundred yards
in the crowd under the modest title of Peter
Mikhailoff, a non-commissioned officer of the
Preobrajenshote regiment.

The journey was to start in February, after the
carnival revels, about which a word may be said
later. But a plot against his life was discovered
at the last moment, and he delayed to punish it.
A former servant of Sophia, named Tsikler, and
some of the streltsui were implicated in it. The
implication of the Miloslavskis brought on one of
those blind rages in which he behaved as one de
mented. He had the body of Ivan Miloslavski,
which had rotted in the grave for twelve years,
dug up and brought on a sledge, drawn by twelve
hogs, to Preobrajenshote. There it was placed, in
an open coffin, under the scaffold on which Tsikler

117

'THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

and his chief accomplice were hacked to pieces, so
that the blood of the traitors might splash upon
what was left of the mouldering remains of So
phia's relative.

Leaving a large army to overawe Moscow, he
set out in March, 1697. The journey has been
described so often that only a few details concern
ing his behaviour need be noted here. From
Sweden, where his incognito was respected with
a cynical correctness which infuriated him, he
passed to Germany, where the Elector of Branden
burg was eager to conciliate him. His conduct was
rather worse than that of an undergraduate on a
holiday, as he did not even know the elements of
polite behaviour. The Elector sent his Master of
Ceremonies, a grave and learned gentleman, to
greet Peter at his lodging, since he refused to be
recognised on the ship by the prince sent to re
ceive him. Peter snatched Johann von Besser's
powdered wig and flung it away. "Who is this?"
he demanded sullenly; and, when the old gentle
man's functions were explained to him, he broke
out: "Let him bring me a wench, then." Later,
when a noble came to announce that the Elector
could not call upon him, Peter, drinking heavily
and slobbering over his friend Lefort, started an
grily to his feet, grasped the noble by the throat,
and almost suffocated him. In the street he met
a lady of the court and startled her with a gruff

118

A ROMANOFF PRINCESS

"Halt"; then he curiously examined the watch at
her wrist and let her go. One night, when he
supped with the Elector, a servant dropped a
plate. Peter sprang up, sword in hand, livid with
excitement; and he was not pacified until the serv
ant was flogged. They had, in the city, a wheel
on which criminals were broken, but they pro
tested, in answer to Peter's wish to see it work,
that they were without a criminal, "Let them
have one of my men," he said coolly.

His adventures at Koenigsberg would precede
him, and he made his way loutishly from court to
court until he reached Holland. Every one knows
the idyllic picture of Peter the Great serving a
long apprenticeship to shipbuilding in the village
of Saardam. It is another exploded myth of our
childhood. Peter remained there only a week, stay
ing at the village inn (where he seduced the maid),
smoking large pipes and drinking large pots with
the boatmen. That he used an adze is certain, but
there was little romance. His tall, slovenly form,
very untidily dressed in Dutch fashion, attracted
the stones of the little boys, and he moved on. He
appeared in more polite quarters in a brown over
coat with horn buttons, coarse darned socks, and
dirty shoes.

Some one suggested that he would see better
shipbuilding at London, and he crossed, and bewil
dered London. He had a fine brown skin and

119

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

large handsome eyes and thick hair, but, apart from
his habitual untidiness of dress, he had a nervous
malady which caused a twitching of the limbs and
a remarkable habit of grimacing. He constantly
took for it a powder made of the flesh and wings
of the magpie. At table his habits were atrocious.
In fact, he and his servant Menshikoff discovered
a little tavern on Tower Hill where he could smoke
his pipe and drink peppered brandy as if he were
at home. At Deptford, where he lived in Ev
elyn's house while he studied shipping, he made
such filth and damage that Evelyn estimated the
repairs at 1,750 dollars. Here, as elsewhere, his
morals were notorious. Professor Morfill politely
observes -in his "History of Russia": "The great
monarch was somewhat irregular in these matters,
it must be confessed." The phrase would have sent
the great monarch into convulsions of horse-laugh
ter. There is grave reason to believe that such
irregularities were not his worst vices.

The redeeming feature of his journey was that
he learned a vast amount in those few months.
Much of his learning was a result of sheer nervous
instability and did more harm than good. He
studied dentistry the dentistry of the seventeenth
century and took implements home with him, to
the terror of his friends. When his valet one day
complained to him that his wife refused to discharge
her conjugal duty on the ground of tooth-ache, the

120

A ROMANOFF PRINCESS

Tsar had the woman brought to him, and he ex
tracted a tooth. He gathered also a box of surgi
cal instruments, and often used them. On one oc
casion he tapped a poor woman of Moscow, who
suffered from dropsy, and caused her death. He
pried into everything, rushing from place to place
and working with prodigious energy; though it is
said that he ended every day of his life intoxicated.
What came of it all for the development of Russia
we shall see in the next chapter.

The voyage came to an abrupt end at Vienna
in the late summer. There had, he heard, been a
new revolt of the streltsui. General Shein had put
it down, and severely punished the rebels, but Peter
decided to return to Moscow. On the day after
his return the nobles came respectfully to Pre-
obrajenshote to do homage and share a banquet.
Peter, half drunk, called for scissors, and soon the
beards of his nobles the beards which an almost
sacred tradition imposed in Russia were falling
upon the floor. Was it a drunken man's joke?
Peter did far worse things in liquor. He cut right
and left with his sword: he caned an offending
servant until he died; he ran his sword through an
abbot who offended him; he even one day knocked
down and trampled on his intimate friend Lefort.
But this was not a jest. The ukase went forth
that in future Russians must shave. He was go
ing to westernise Russia.

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Some Russian historians, seeking to palliate the
horror of what is to follow, apply to it in some
measure the idea of reform. The streltsui were
in the way of the reform of the army. They were
undisciplined, obsolete, incompetent. Their last
revolt had given him the right to destroy them,
and he would. But there was much more than this.
He was convinced that Sophia was at the bottom
of the revolt, and he would make a terrible inquiry.

There seems to be little doubt that Sophia had
fomented the spirit of revolt and attempted to di
rect it in her interest. All the Russian world was
scandalised at the Tsar's conduct, and she had from
her convent watched the spread of the discontent.
At last, while Peter was in England, some repre
sentatives of the streltsui had come to Moscow to
complain of their treatment. After the taking of
Azoff Peter had brought his favourite regiments
to share his triumph and pleasure at Moscow, and
had left the streltsui to rebuild the shattered fortifi
cations in the distant south. With something of
their old independence they had sent a: few men to
Moscow to lay their grievances before the Tsar.
There they were astounded and further angered
to hear that the Tsar had left Russia months be
fore, and no man knew where he was. There
could be no redress for grievances when the Tsar
turned his back upon his people and wasted his life
amongst the detested foreigners, Sophia's friends

122

A ROMANOFF PRINCESS

and servants pressed the lesson deep. Was it not
advisable to think of a new ruler, one who would
be considerate to the streltsui?

The men probably saw the great strength of the
garrison at Moscow, and they returned to Azoff
only with a sullen report of their helplessness. The
military authorities then ordered part of the strelt
sui to the Polish frontier, and this drove the men
to fury. They set out on the long march to Mos
cow, in full mutiny, with the intention, apparently,
of exterminating Peter's supporters. But the Tsar
had left his best generals, Shein and Patrick Gor
don, in command of the troops, and they met the
mutineers outside Moscow. After a futile parley
the cannon and the cavalry were turned upon the
helpless foot-soldiers, hundreds were slain and thou
sands captured. The revolt was thoroughly sup
pressed long before Peter reached Vienna.

But the young Tsar was in one of his moods of
deliberate ruthlessness. The streltsui had deluged
his mother's palace with blood when he was a child;
they had commemorated his departure by a plot and
had taken advantage of his absence to rebel.
These paid servants, these antiquated soldiers, pre
sumed to criticise his plans and fancy themselves
as masters of the Russian throne! And behind all
their revolts he saw always, barely concealed in the
gloom, the figure of his masterful half-sister. He

123

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

resolved once for all to remove this source of irri
tation from his Empire.

Immediately after his return fourteen torture-
chambers were fitted up in the village of Preobra-
jenshote, and the captured streltsui were soon suf
fering all the agonies that Byzantine and Mosco-
vite ingenuity could devise and the fiendish temper
of the Tsar could augment. Peter himself hovered
round while his victims writhed on human grid
irons or had their flesh torn from the bones by the
knout. Many of their womenfolk were included
in the ghastly torture, which went on night and
day for three days. But Peter got no confession
of the guilt of his sister, and he decided to act
without it. On September 30th a first batch of
two hundred of the unhappy rebels, part of them
scarred and drawn with torture, were brought up
for execution. It is credibly reported that Peter
wielded the axe himself and severed five beads. His
companions were told to follow his example, and
few dared draw back. His infamous servant, Men-
shikoff, is said to have cut off twenty heads, and
the horror of incompetent bungling by amateurs
in such matters may be seen in other pages of me-
diseval history.

In brief, the slaughter extended over several
months, and thousands of the streltsui were exe
cuted. The ancient corporation was entirely
broken and the fragments were included in the

124

A ROMANOFF PRINCESS

new army. In the Red Square at Moscow the
heads of the rebels remained on the points of pikes
until they rotted into grinning skulls. The wives
and children were driven from Moscow. It was
decreed that none should give them bread, and
they disappeared silently into the plains and for
ests beyond. How many escaped famine or the
wolves no man knows. Russia learned that it had
an autocrat : Peter the Great.

And this meant the end of the career of the
masculine Sophia, As she shuddered in her convent
two hundred of the rebels were brought up and
hanged within sight of her windows. Some of
them held in their dead hands copies of a petition
to her to see their grievances remedied. Then
Peter turned upon her. She must lose her rank,
have her hair shorn, and pass the rest of her life
in strict seclusion as a nun. With the name of
"Sister Susanna" the forceful and unscrupulous
woman passes out of sight. Although there was
no evidence of her guilt, and it is indeed unlikely
that she was involved, Peter's wife, Eudokia La-
pukhin, was condemned to the same fate. She
was at least guilty of refusing to share Peter's
tastes, and he had lived little with her. He was free ;
and from the horrible shambles he turned to the
revels of the carnival of 1698 and the more conge
nial company of the women of his favourite district.

125

CHAPTER VII

THE GEEAT PETEE

THE Tsar Peter was near the end of his third
decade of life when he broke the power of the
streltsui and definitely expelled his sister from the
sphere of public life. The fortune and destiny of
Russia now lay in his hands, and the heavy discon
tent of his people, coerced as it was by the appal
ling punishment of the rebels, invited him to take
up the serious duties of kingship. It would be, even
if we admitted that the intelligence of a genius was
allied with his strange character, too much to ex
pect that such a man would settle down to the
study of the constructive problems that confronted
him. He was at all times incapable of sustained
intellectual concentration, of patiently working out
into detailed plans the large ideas which arose in
his feverish imagination. Congenital nervous dis
ease might have been corrected by the hard labour
in the open air in which he delighted, but the de
bauch which regularly closed his labour undid its
effect. He returned, even after his recent ghastly
experience and his tour of Europe, to his disordered
ways.

126

THE GREAT PETER

It will be enough to illustrate the kind of life
which he and his companions led by a short account
of one of their pastimes. I have said that the ex
pedition to Holland and England, which had in
part the object of seeking grave alliances for the
Empire in the west, was preceded by the revels of
the carnival. These took the form of such pagean
try and rioting as one found in most countries of
Europe at the time, but there was an incident of
the Moscow procession which introduces us to a
startling feature of the life of Peter's circle. One
of the leading figures of the procession was a
drunken old man who was dressed in ludicrous im
itation of the Patriarch, the head of the Russian
Church, riding on an ox, and accompanied by his
spiritual court, an equally drunken and dissolute
crowd, on the backs of hogs, bears, and goats.
These were Peter's intimate friends, and the entire
masquerade was designed by him.

The mock Patriarch was Zotoff, the tutor whom
Natalia had given her son in his youth and who
had suffered Peter to contract at an early date a
love of every kind of dissoluteness. Some time be
fore this year Peter, who led the revels in the for
eign quarter and outdid all in boisterous practical
jokes, had dubbed the old man he was now nearly
seventy, though he took his wine and brandy with
the youngest "Archbishop of Presburg and Patri
arch of the banks of the laouza [the neighbouring

127

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

stream], and the whole of the Kaukaui [a slang
name of the wild foreign quarter]," The joke
grew upon the heavy taste of the Tsar. He de
clared himself the Patriarch's "deacon," and his
friends were formed into a group of "cardinals/'
who must hold occasional "conclaves." The ridi
cule of the Papal Court was doubtless appreciated
at Moscow, but even the most thoughtless may have
been sobered by the equal burlesque of the head
of the Russian Church. Historians again break
into a dozen different explanations. Some hold
that he was preparing the way for his destruction
of the power of the Russian clergy: which is to
credit him with a large foresight and deliberateness
of action that one finds it impossible to accept. It
is more likely that he acted from sheer mockery of
religion, adding the Papal details so as partially
to disarm or perplex his Russian pietists. We need
not suppose that Peter had definite sceptical con
victions. There were few definite convictions of
any kind in his sodden mind.

Earlier Tsars had humbly walked beside the
Patriarch, holding the bridle of his mule, in the
great procession on Palm Sunday. Peter substi
tuted for this the procession of his mock Patriarch,
an aged toper who must have made a pretty Sile-
nus, and his court. The "cardinals" were, as I
said, the hardest drinkers and most dissolute adven
turers of Peter's intimate circle. The Frenchman

128

THE GREAT PETER

(or Genevan) Lefort and the Scot Patrick Gordon
were prominent amongst them; and there were
other foreigners. They sprang from the lowest
ranks of the people or from the highest nobility.
Race, religion, or rank counted for nothing in
"The Council of the Mad Ones/' as the society was
(amongst other titles) known. From cunning and
policy, and out of his constant itching to test his
authority, Peter included also men of high taste
and character. When men were forced to take
quarts of wine and brandy they were apt to speak
their thoughts, and Peter always kept a sober ear.

This was the detail of the carnival-procession of
1697. It was repeated in 1698, at the conclusion
of the red horror of the streltsui. A mitre
crowned the white locks of the intoxicated Zotoff,
who was otherwise dressed as Bacchus, and a crowd
of Bacchantes (probably the lady-friends of the
cardinals from the foreign quarter) performed the
well-known lascivious dance around him. With
that freakishness which often gave something akin
to the license of insanity to Peter's imagination,
he ordered his Bacchantes to bear burning tobacco-
leaves. In England he had disposed of the tobacco-
monopoly, and he was determined in spite of the
frowns of the clergy to make his subjects smoke.
The "Mad Ones" followed on their fantastic
steeds.

It is necessary, if one would pass a comprehen-

129

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

sive verdict upon Peter "the great," to tell that this
was something far more than a carnival- jest. He
maintained the institution all his life, and was ever
inventing fresh enormities for it. When a man
was, willingly or unwillingly, appointed to the
"council/' he had to go to the house of the Patri
arch, where four stutterers belonging to the large
troupe of entertainers in the Tsar's household intro
duced him. He received his red cardinalitial robes,
and went to the "Consistory," or meeting of the
cardinals. There they sat on casks before the
throne of Zotoff, were served with much wine by
men dressed as Roman monks, and went in proces
sion to the "Conclave," which was held in a house
prepared as a parody of the Sistine Chapel at
Rome during an election of a Pope. They were
confined there for three days and nights, and plied
constantly with drink by Peter's servants; and
Peter himself listened in secret for any hint of
treasonable inclination. The kind of language
used, and the things done, may be gathered from
the extant letters of Peter to his Patriarch. At
their normal meetings various women, of whom we
will see something presently, were present.

Two incidents will show how Peter sustained to
the end of his life the frame of mind which he
shows in these things ; for it was he who laboriously
invented every detail of the riot. In 1714, in the
midst of his heavy struggle with Sweden, he de-

130

THE GREAT PETER

elded that he would marry Zotoff, who was then
eighty-four years old, to a lady of noble birth
sixty years old. The most elaborate and costly
preparations were made for months, and a brilliant
pageant was put upon the streets of St. Petersburg.
All the nobles, sober or dissolute, had to take part,
dressed as savages or bishops, making a hideous
discord with every instrument of noise that could
be invented. A banquet and mighty drinking bout,
prolonged for several days, closed the ceremony.

Zotoff died a few years later, and it was neces
sary to proceed to the election of an "Archbishop
of St. Petersburg in the diocese of drunkards, glut
tons, and madmen/" The Conclave was held in a
mock nunnery, presided over by a lady of noble
birth and dissolute habits; and the "cardinals"
kissed her breasts as they took the ballot-balls
(eggs) from her hands. Later still, within a few
years of his death, Peter decided that his new Patri
arch must marry Zotoff 's widow. After ceremonies
which could only partly be described the couple
were married, thoroughly intoxicated, and put to
bed in a monument in the public square where the
populace could enjoy the spectacle in its own indeli
cate way. In fine, only two years before the Tsar's
death, the Patriarch died, and it was necessary to
elect another. Peter's idea on this occasion, which
was carried out, was to enclose the "cardinals" for
twenty-four hours, saturating them all the time

131

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

with wine and brandy, and then let them choose
a, spiritual head.

It is not "history" delicately to suppress these
things, or merely hint that Peter sought relief from
his colossal labours in somewhat boisterous jokes,
and then enumerate the deeds by which he earned
the title of "the great." These, and his ferocious
bursts of rage his brutal attacks on a man or
woman who offended, and his truculent torture and
murder of graver offenders are part of his normal
character. He had no feeling of decency or morals ;
indeed his whole life was a mockery of it. He was
wholly devoid of any kind of fine or tender senti
ment. Occasionally, with a dull air of generosity,
he pardoned an offender; and he set up many phil
anthropic institutions at Moscow and St. Peters
burg. Habitually he was coarse and unrestrained
in the last degree. He would in public play with the
breasts of noble ladies of the court, and many of
his private acts and expressions cannot be described.
I am not stressing the fact that Peter was immoral,
which is not inconsistent with greatness, even of
character. He was, in these and a thousand other
things, little, petty, shallow, uncivilised.

It would, however, be not less unjust to dwell
upon these matters to the exclusion of those serv
ices to his country which have, it is generally under
stood, made Peter the one great monarch of the
Romanoff dynasty. These must be duly consid-

132

THE GREAT PETER

ered They fall naturally into two categories : the
reforms by which he at least broke some of the ice
which locked Russia in its rigid medievalism, and
the wars by which he lessened the power of its he
reditary enemies and profitably extended its
boundaries.

The habit of writing history from a dynastic
point of view is so deep-rooted that many a reputa
tion lingers in our democratic age after the senti
ments on which it was originally based have disap
peared. This applies in part to Peter's fame as a
conqueror. He created an army and a navy, he
weakened and thrust back the Swedes, and he re
gained a large part of southern Russia. These
were large and needed services, but without pass
ing minutely from battlefield to battlefield, which
is not the purpose of this study we must see how
far these aims were plainly conceived in a master
mind and with what ability they were achieved.

Peter had spent ten precious years playing at
soldiers and making boats in the vicinity of Mos
cow. The shallowness of the plea that he was seri
ously preparing for a great task is seen the moment
he sets out on his first military adventure. He
decided to attack Sweden. Some historians would
have us picture the young genius brooding over a
map of Russia and considering in which direction
he may cut a channel for its commerce (which
hardly existed) to the sea and the broad world be-

183

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

yond. That was not his way. His one imperial
idea was, as I said, that he would create an army
and a navy, and would use them. It was fairly
obvious that they must he used against Sweden,
hut his journey had, in any case, lodged this idea
in his mind. It had begun in Sweden, where the
King had treated the young boor with the disdain
he felt for his person and his power. It ended in
Poland, which had succumbed to Sweden and hated
it. From Vienna, at the end of his trip, Peter had
gone to Rawa and spent a few days with Augustus
II of Poland. Augustus was a man after his own
heart: a tall, strong man, a great hunter and hard
drinker and loose liver. They talked much about
Sweden and, with the fervour of intoxicated youth,
decided to smite that formidable power.

Sweden was still at the top of the wave which
lifted up and cast down one European nation after
another, and many powers were jealous of it.
Peter and Augustus entered upon a crude diplo
matic campaign for the formation of a league
against it. The Prussians were too cool and cyni
cal to promise to*do more than share the spoils of
any victory, but the Danes and Dutch consented.
In 1700 Peter secured peace with the Turks in the
south and joyously led his grand new army, of
40,000 men, to the siege of Narva, He would,
he said, avenge the insults put upon his imperial
majesty in Sweden: to which he had gone as a

134

PETER THE GREAT

THE GREAT PETER

non-commissioned officer of the Preobrajenshote
regiment. His artillery made little impression
upon the town, and his long carouses left him im
perfectly informed on the larger situation. In
point of fact the King of Sweden had patched up
a peace with Denmark and was hurrying to Narva.
On November 17th the Tsar heard that King
Charles and his seasoned soldiers were a day's
march away from his camp, and he fled. It is
suggested that his officers prevailed upon him not
to expose his valuable life to danger. It is claimed
that he hurried off to spur on his lagging reinforce
ments. It is said by himself that he did not
know of the nearness of the Swedish King. From
all which the majority of soldiers and historians
conclude that Peter fell into a panic at the first
smell of real gunpowder, and fled. His grand new
army could dq no better, and a Swedish force not
one-fourth as large sent the Russians scurrying
back to their frontier.

It seems to have been the laughter of Europe
which roused the Tsar from the half -hysterical
condition into which he fell, and it may be said
that from that time forward Jhe became a more
vigorous and skilful, and generally courageous,
commander. That he ever became a great soldier
is emphatically denied by many competent authori
ties. But he had, we saw, two qualities of value:
a colossal nervous energy, and a great promptness

135

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

to seek teachers in the more advanced west. He
entered upon terrific preparations for a more prom
ising campaign. Brushing aside the clergy, he
melted down their bells to make cannon, and he,
swinging from place to place with giant strides,
spurred his subjects to throw all their energy into
the task. That he had a clear and statesmanlike
idea of opening "a window upon Europe" may very
well be questioned. It is more in accord with his
psychology to suppose that his mind did not go
much beyond a fierce resolve to beat Sweden. But
out of his very need to create an army for this pur
pose he began to develop his Empire,, He needed
money, and his merchants must earn more money.
He needed metal, and it must be found. He was
stung by the opinion of the world that Russia was
still barbaric, and he struck fiercely at cherished
old traditions. He saw the Church, especially on
its monastic side, as a great fat pale fungus sucking
the national sap, and he attacked it.

Many of his internal reforms beloiig , to this
period. In 1698, we saw, he had fallen, scissors
in hand, upon the Russian beard, and desecrated it.
A ukase ordered all Russians to shave the chin,
and even this change cost a mighty struggle. An
cient texts of Scripture plainly sanctioned the
beard: sacred ikons showed that the saints, and
even Christ, had always worn beards : and, in fine,

136

THE GREAT PETER

it was not comfortable to have to face the piercing
Russian winds in the winter with a clean-shaven
face. Peter fought for years against this symbol
of the power of antiquity Soldiers were put at
the doors of churches and instructed to pull out
the beards of rebels. Heavy fines were imposed.

With this went a reform of the clothing. Long,
skirted coats were traditional and had become
sacred ; and they were considered warmer in a Rus
sian winter. Peter ordered shorter and more
workman-like coats, and patterns were exhibited in
the streets to the outraged people. The nobles
were, as a rule, not unwilling to dress in western
fashion. The poor were allowed a few years in
which to wear out their long coats. But it was a
long and futile struggle, as pictures of Russian
peasants show to-day. Even women were ordered
to trail less cloth and, to the boisterous amusement
of the crowd, the skirts of the recalcitrant were
lifted up in the street by officials and torn or
sheared.

The position of woman was a more direct reli
gious concern. The customs which made the Rus
sian woman, especially of the middle and better
class, a slave of her menfolk and easy victim of the
clergy, had been elaborated and codified by the
clergy themselves, though in substance the zealous
enclosure of women was, we saw, borrowed alike
from Tatars and Greeks. A girl lived in terror

1ST

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

behind locked doors, growing fat for the marriage-
mart. The way out from her quarters was through
the father's room, and, whenever she was suffered
to go out, she was heavily veiled. Marriages were
arranged by deputies. Even during the ceremony
bride and bridegroom were separated by a curtain.
The bride went to bed while her new husband was
thoroughly intoxicated below the worse the bar
gain his relatives had made for him the more care
fully he was stupefied with drink and when he at
length reeled into the room, she showed her face
for the first time. Usually he did not examine her
face closely. If he were sober enough to find that
he had a pock-marked, cross-eyed, lean and skinny
spouse, he might there and then bully her into a
promise to enter a nunnery and leave him free. The
marriage was generally consummated before he
came to dislike her, but the resource was still open
to a resourceful man. The stick was a powerful
instrument of persuasion, and it was used gener
ally and brutally. Women drank heavily in their
miserable quarters, and remained in the last degree
of ignorance and superstition.

Peter's mother, and the example of Sophia, had
already raised some defiance of this tradition.
Peter himself loathed it and violently assailed it:
partly because it was one of the antique practices
which made Russia ridiculous and kept it unpro-
gressive, partly because he genuinely wanted the

138

THE GREAT PETER

women, morals or no morals, to enjoy life as his
gay women-friends of the foreign quarter, and
later of his court, did. He kicked over the harriers
and encouraged women to come out. He ordered
a six weeks' interval hetween hetrothal and mar
riage, and wanted girls to see men hefore they
married them. He gave his daughters a French
governess, and urged his nohles to do the same, or
send their daughters abroad to be educated. In
1704 he startled and outraged Moscow by having
a procession of young ladies on the street, scatter
ing flowers and showing their fresh faces to the
world.

Toward the close of his reign (in 1718) he des
perately ordered his people to hold periodical re
ceptions, or "drawing-room" entertainments, in
their houses from four in the afternoon until ten.
It is understood that his recent visit to Paris gave
him the idea. Chess and smoking and dancing and
drinking but no cards or dice were to be pro
vided, and men and women were to mix socially*
But social intercourse enforced by the knout is not
apt to be genial. They were, as far as the law was
obeyed, melancholy entertainments.

To all these reforms. the clergy, a^ad monks were
opposed, and he quickly attacked their power and
wealth. In the December of 1699 he flouted the
Church-calendar and decreed that henceforward, as
in the rest of the civilised world, the year would

139

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

begin on the First of January. An entire reform
of the calendar was beyond even his audacity, and
Russia still lingered behind the world. In 1700 he
ordered the opening of apothecaries' shops in Mos
cow, and, although the bulk of the messes sold in
such places at the time were not much more effica
cious than charms or the prayers of the monks, it
was a healthy assault on tradition and the trade of
the priests. In the same year he began his direct
assault upon the ecclesiastical authorities.

The Patriarch of Moscow died in October, and
Peter boldly refused to appoint a successor. It
could not be pretended that such an institution was
an essential part of the Russian tradition, as the
patriarchate of Moscow had been founded only by
Boris Godunoff, but the murmurs of the clergy
may be imagined. Peter appointed instead a
"Superintendent of the Patriarchal Throne," and
through this man he got control of the wealth and
affairs of the Church. A separate department took
control of the monasteries, and the Tsar made a
bold attack upon this economic evil. Monasteries
and convents were full of men and women who were
religious only in name and dress. Frequently they
took no vows, and their sole intention was to enjoy
the immunities, the well-fed idleness, and the fre
quent dissoluteness of the religious institutions. As
in other lands, centuries of ignorant piety had
showered wealth upon an institution which at first

140

THE GREAT PETER

had won sympathy by its austerity and now re*
tained it by hypocrisy. Such a condition, when
Peter sought for war-purposes every rouble he
could get, stirred his wrath, and he had little piety
to restrain him. He "regulated" the incomes of the
monasteries and convents in such fashion that they
became less attractive to economic parasites and sen
sual hypocrites. As time went on he increased the
restrictions of monastic life, and tried to compel the
monks to teach or work.

To the dissenters he was, naturally, mere lenient
than his predecessors, though he took advantage of
their nonconformity to secure heavy fines for his
treasury; and to foreign heretics he gave complete
liberty. Clergy, monks, and dissenters roared their
discontent, openly calling him "Antichrist," but
Peter was content with an occasional execution or
application of the knout to some monk's broad
shoulders. In 1721 he at length conceived a plan
of Church-government, and created the "Ecclesias
tical College," as the supreme clerical authority,
which became in time the Holy Synod. His futile
efforts to educate Russia out of its morass of su
perstition and conservatism will be noticed later.
For the moment I would recall only how the mighty
problems raised by the appalling condition of the
country forced themselves upon him in the course
of his one clearly conceived design: the destruc
tion of the Swede. When he thus saw an abuse he

141

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

smote it, angrily and unscientifically. He had not
the mood or mind to sit down to the elaboration of
a constructive programme. He probably devoted
more time, and more cheerfully, to creating the
rules and orgies of his "Mad Ones" than to the con
ception of a system of education.

In 1701 he, after a mighty drinking bout with
Augustus, made a fresh treaty with Poland and
renewed the war with Sweden. The war went on
with varying success until, in 1703, Peter took the
marshy region which included the mouth of the
river Neva. For some reason it may have been
because it was believed that here Rurik and his
brothers had entered Russia the Tsar fell into the
wildest rejoicing, and began almost immediately
to form a wooden settlement on the bank of the
river. This was the humble foundation of St. Pe
tersburg. It seems to have been at a later date that
he conceived the idea of making it the new capi
tal of Russia, and his choice has been very severely
criticised. For a metropolis it was too near Swe
den, the great hostile power of the time, and not
easy of defence. For commercial purposes it was
inferior to Riga or Libau, which he afterwards
took, and could only with great difficulty and sacri
fice be converted at all into a centre of commerce.
But Peter loathed Moscow, with its musty air of
conservatism and its gilded palaces and churches.
He must have a new capital, and a centre of the

142

THE GREAT PETER

northern region he was gaining. His genius was
energy, not insight or foresight. With the labours
of it is said hundreds of thousands of Swedish
prisoners, whose lives were recklessly squandered,
he raised the primitive St. Petersburg and embod
ied in it, as he thought, the new spirit of progress.

He was now creating, with dim large vision of
a great future, and his wild Dionysiac nature re
joiced in the labour and in the rewarding feast. In
the next year, 1704, he took Narva, after a long
and bloody siege; and in his morbid nervous way,
with his wretched lack of self-control and chivalrous
feeling, he struck the brave Swedish commander
across the mouth, for resisting so long, when that
general was brought before him, and, with pitiful
spite, had the body of the man's wife dug up and
thrown into the river. Still he had to fight on for
years, with varying fortune. All the time he
wrung money out of his country and urged his gen
erally incompetent and despised envoys abroad to
get for him money and allies. Poland deserted'him
and made peace with Sweden; and just at that time
trouble arose in the south, among the Cossacks, to
divert his attention.

Ivan Mazeppa, the hetman of the Cossacks of
Little Russia, or the Ukraine, disliked finding
taxes for Peter, and entered into negotiations with
the Swedes. The Ukraine was, like most of Rus
sia, full of bitter discontent. There seemed some

143

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

hope of securing independence, A Cossack chief
whose daughter was seduced by Mazeppa fled to
Peter and warned him; but Peter's insight failed,
as it often did, and he handed the informer to Ma
zeppa for punishment. Mazeppa continued to cor
respond with the Swedes and promise co-operation
if they invaded Russia. It was the early summer
of 1708 before Charles of Sweden entered Russia,
and Peter decided to baffle him as Napoleon would
be baffled at a later date. The Russians fell back,
laying waste the provinces as they retired, and drew
the Swedes on to spend a winter in the frozen
plains. The details do not concern us. Charles
in time found himself threatened with famine.
Mazeppa found, when he was at length stung into
action, that only two thousand of his Cossacks
would follow his adventurous banner; and he
packed his gold in two barrels and set out on his
hopeless enterprise. And Peter, reaping at last
the reward of all his toil, fell upon the Swedes at
Poltava and defeated them.

It is true that King Charles was wounded and
the Swedish army worn and demoralised ; and it is
true that Peter, eager to celebrate his victory in
the usual way, allowed the Swedes to retire more
cheaply than a great commander would have done.
But he had redeemed his failures, and had dealt
a great blow at Sweden. Incidentally he had done
much to recover, or gain, his personal repute, so

144

THE GREAT PETEK

badly shaken since he had fled at Narva. In the
battle of Poltava he faced the bullets, and got one
through his hat and another rather a disputable
one this on the breast, which broke its force mi
raculously on his jewelled cross. He was soon back
in Moscow arranging a pageant. He posed as
Hercules in the procession.

The next few years were spent in feverish dreams
of larger armies and imperial expansion, checked
periodically by bad diplomacy and poor economics.
His generals took Riga for him, however, and
overran the Baltic provinces. Then the wily Swede
roused on his flank a more terrible enemy than the
Cossack. At the beginning of 1711 he heard that
the Turks and Tatars were afield, and he hurried
south with 45,000 men : also many thousand women
and camp-followers, for, when the Tsar would take
his Catherine, other officers would have their wives
or some equivalent. The result was that the large
and unwieldy body soon found itself in a worse situ
ation than that into which the Russians had drawn
Charles. An army of Turks and Tatars, four or
five times as numerous as the Russians, closed
round them on the river Pruth. There was no es
cape.

From the many accounts of Peter's behaviour on
that occasion one seems bound to conclude that he
lost his new courage, and fell into a state of maud
lin despair. It seems also to be a myth that his

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Catherine roused and saved him. His generals for
tunately knew the venality of Turkish commanders,
and a very heavy bribe including, apparently,
Catherine's jewels passed to the Grand Vizier's
camp. The terms, one would think, were hardly
worth so large a bribe. Peter was to evacuate
Azoff and all the territory in the south that he had
taken from the Turk: he was to give up the Baltic
provinces to Sweden, except the district at the
mouth of the Neva, for which he passionately plead
ed; and he was to pay a very large indemnity. He
swaggered back to Moscow and endeavoured to
brazen it out.

Again he settled down to stern exertions, to pre
pare an army and navy and seek allies. In 1717
he went to Paris in search of aid, carefully leaving
Catherine behind, though (as we shall see) he had
now married her. His conduct was more sober than
on the earlier journey, though it was eccentric
enough and gave Paris food for talk for many
years. When they had at length found Peter a
lodging more or less to his taste, he declared that
the young king, Louis XV, must come to see him;
and 9 eager as he was to see the sights of Paris, he
kept his hotel three days and nights in the hope of
forcing the visit. But we need not again enlarge
upon his eccentricities. He came away without
hope of alliance, and France played with him to
the en<J of his life. Two years later he proposed

146

THE GREAT PETER

to marry his daughter Elizabeth to Louis XV, hav
ing failed to get the grandson of George I. When
that project was at last very firmly declined, he
asked at least for a prince of the Hood, and he was
humoured with negotiations until he died. As we
shall see, Elizabeth was the illegitimate daughter
(legitimised by later marriage) of Peter and a
peasant-woman who had been for a time almost
common camp-property.

In brief, to make an end of wars, Peter took
Finland and beat the Swedes on the Baltic, but he
brought the terrible English fleet upon his new ves
sels. A peace was arranged at ISTystadt in 1721,
and, for a payment of two million crowns, Peter
was suffered to keep his gains on the Baltic. There
was a stupendous flow of beer and wine and brandy
at St. Petersburg. Peter lit the fireworks with his
own hand, and, although the Senate now gravely
nominated him "Father of his Country" and "Em
peror of all the Russias," he mingled with the
crowd, wore a fancy dress, and danced and sang
and leaped on to tables like a school-boy.

Peter had, therefore, as a result of twenty years
of costly warfare, which embittered his subjects,
been permitted to 'buy the fringe of JjeixitQiy.wM^
brought his Empire to the shores of the Baltic: the
Cossacks of the Don and the Ukraine were, of
course, already subject to Russia, and were merely
prevented from breaking away. This, and the ere-

147

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

ation of an army and navy and lowering of the
prestige of Sweden, were his accomplishments on
that side. His other ventures in the way of ex
pansion were crude and unsuccessful. Several
times he made fruitless efforts to reach India and
Persia, but was always defeated. In 1721 the gov
ernor of Astrakhan sent word that the Turks
would forestall his design upon Persia, and in the
following May, having peace with Sweden, he led
100,000 men south from Astrakhan. The expedi
tion was poorly organised, and had to return in
some disgrace.

In the following year, 1723, he made his last and
wildest effort. Two frigates set sail, secretly and
hastily, from the port of the capital, and were pres
ently driven hack by storms. These two vessels,
of poor capacity, had actually been ordered by
Peter, in the prime of his age, to take the island of
Madagascar, and possibly sail on from there to In
dia! Peter had heard that the Swedes were about
to do this, and he had written a letter to "the king
of Madagascar," urging him to see that a Russian
was better than a' Swedish protectorate. Such was
the value of the Tsar's famous training in ship
building that he insisted that a few useless altera
tions should be made and the boats should start
again, and he fell furiously upon his officers when
they pointed out the impossibility.

The illt&m4,ieforais which he effected were of
*

THE GREAT PETER

that large, violent, and unsystematic character
which one would expect from his nature. I have
described some of these, and shown how they were,
in great measure, angry and impulsive thrusts at
evils which thwarted his plans. Brigandage was still
very common, on a large scale, in Russia, and in
terfered with the industry which was to supply his
sinews of war, so Peter attacked it vigorously.
Mendicancy had, as everywhere in the Middle Ages,
become an opportunity of virtue and a wicked leak
of the nation's energy. The lash of Peter's knout
fell upon the beggars. Men still killed each other
instead of killing Swedes and Turks, and Peter for
bade them to carry knives. He fostered and pro
tected home-industries, and sent young men to Hol
land and Italy to learn trades. He spurred the na
tive production of iron and copper, sent expedi
tions in search of gold, dug miles of canals, and tried
by heavy punishments to break Russia** traders of
their notorious dishonesty. He pressed reform in
agriculture, introduced breeding studs, and slightly
alleviated the lot of the serfs, who were now sold
like cattle or negroes. He regulated municipal^lif e,
dividing the country into administrative areas and
created a Senate. Nothing w^s done thoroughly,
and all was done for the purpose of extracting (by
a crude fiscal system and thoroughly dishonest of
ficials) more money for the army and navy. Yet
tl^ese were all valuable innovations, and they enti-

149

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

tied Peter, as far as they went, to a name only a
little less than "great."

His most beneficent design, and his chief fail
ure, was in the matter of education; general illiter
acy was still the rule in Europe. Russia was merely
a few degrees worse than other countries in that
respect. But social visionaries were appearing here
and there, pointing out the connection between ig
norance and crime and poverty, and some of them
found the ear of Peter. Impulsively, as usual, he
declared that he would have universal, compulsory
education in Russia, A Ukase of February 28th,
1714 ordered the opening of provincial schools, and
. Peter rushed to other tasks. Five years later he
learned from an official report that one such school
had been opened, and it had twenty-six pupils. He
returned again and again to the subject, and failed
as much from his own lack of patient study as from
the general hostility of his subjects. His ideas of
schooling were extremely crude, and they stultified
themselves in practice. All that we can say is that,
as in the case of most of the other reforms, he did
bring a few rays of light into the mediaeval dark
ness of Russia, and is for that entitled to grateful
recognition.

Had these reforms been associated with a dif
ferent type of character they might very well, in
spite of their grave incompleteness, dispose us to
grant the title of "Peter the Great." But if that

150

THE GREAT PETER

epithet is to measure the stature of the whole man
we must strenuously refuse it. The Tsar was ener
getic, persevering in congenial tasks, even highly
endowed in intellect; but his gifts and accomplish
ments were marred hy deep, habitual vices and
weaknesses which make it ludicrous to call him a
great man. To this aspect we turn again before
we consider the closing tragedies of his reign.

I have sufficiently introduced the kind of men
who were the intimate friends and coworkers of
the Tsar in his youth. Lefort and Gordon both
died in 1699, and new favourites arose. Some of
these were, like General Sheremetieff, fine and
loyal servants of proved worth. Some were, like
Romodanovski, nobles of high birth and ability
who, in spite of their insufferable haughtiness and
despotism, served the Tsar and the State well. But
a large number were mere adventurers whom a
glib tongue, a large capacity for liquor, or a con
temptible obsequiousness commended to the Tsar,
and who then plundered the Empire with utter un-
scrupulousness. Of these Menshikoff was the most
prominent, most successful, and most infamous.

Legends grew like mushrooms in the dank soil
of Peter's reign, and Menshikoff's origin is, like
that of many of his colleagues, very obscure. It
seems certain that, either as a boy or a young man,
he sold meat-pies on the streets of Moscow; and
Peter lets us know that he was an illegitimate

151

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMAFOFFS

child. The wit with which he plied his trade at
tracted Lef ort, who made a valet of him, and then
attracted Peter, who appropriated him. Peter
gave him a license which many historians interpret
in accordance with the morals of the time. He
went everywhere with the Tsar and became rich.
In 1706, for no public merit, he became a Prince;
in 1711 he bought the Duchy of Courland. He was
the most corrupt and venal of Peter's corrupt min
isters, and was, on various occasions, compelled to
disgorge a total sum of two and a half million dol
lars, yet remained fabulously rich, and as haughty
and brutal to his serfs and servants as he was rich.
Count Golovin, in later years, found a similar type
of man, a boot-black, and pushed him at court as a
rival of Menshikoff . He did become Public Prose
cutor, but he never dislodged Menshikoff.

After 1700 this man was Peter's chief associate
and private minister. The young Tsar, as we saw
in the last chapter, built a palace for him in the
foreign quarter, and made it the chief scene of his
rollicking. Menshikoff had two sisters, Marie and
Anne, who, with Daria and Barbara Arsenieff and
Anisia Tolstoi, formed the nucleus of the loose
young women of the colony. Peter had, at his
mother's instance, married Eudoxia Lapukhin, who
bojce him two children, Alexander (who died
young) and Alexis. She was a typical Russian,
of a type as different as possible from that of the

152

THE GREAT PETER

Menshikoffs and Arsenieffs. When his mother,
Natalia, died, he scattered Eudoxia's relatives and
practically deserted her. He is said to have soaked
her brother in spirits of wine and set fire to him.
Some historians have a light way of marking these
stories "incredible/ 5 but very little was incredible
in Peter's world. His pious sister-in-law, Prascovia,
widow of the Tsar Feodor, one day poured her
bottle of brandy over an offending servant, set fire
to it, and beat him with her cane on the sore spot.

To finish for the moment with Eudoxia, Peter's
first and, apparently, only legitimate wife. In
1698, as we saw, he condemned her to enter a con
vent, though there was not the least evidence that
she was involved in the conspiracy. She struggled
hard, but a coach bore her away to Suzdal, where
we will resume her strange adventures later.

Lefort had been intimate with a young woman
named Anna Mons, the daughter of a German
wineseller (or, according to others, jeweller) of
the colony. Peter, as in other cases, took over his
friend's relict, and set her up, as chief favourite, in
a handsome house. In 1703, however, the Saxon
envoy was drowned near Moscow, and tender let
ters from Anna were found in his pocket, it is
said. At all events Anna went to prison for in
gratitude, but she found the way out and joined the
establishment of the Prussian envoy: who, when he
presumed to ask of Peter some favour on the

153

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

ground of his new position, heard her described in
terms which may not be translated.

But the list of Peter's amours, curious and inter
esting as it is, would unduly swell the dimensions
of this volume. It is enough to note here that his
mistresses, of an hour or a year, were almost all of
the most common fleshy type: buxom, sensual, and
coarse. One must say seriously, in connection with
Peter's character, that it was as much a matter of
economy as of taste. And this is the simple key
to his association with the woman whom he even
tually, legally or illegally, married and made his
Tsarina.

The Empress Catherine shall have a chapter to
herself, in which we will tell her early story. From
orphan-maid in a Lutheran pastor's house at Ma-
rienburg she had, in 1702, passed to the Russian
icamp and been successively promoted until she
shared the tent of the General, and then entered the
harem of MenshikoiF. There Peter had discovered
her and annexed her. She was then eighteen and,
by all accounts, not a beauty. But she had the
large hips and full bosom, the round red lips and
cheeks, the rolling sensual eyes, which Peter loved.
Candid observers speak of the eyes as insipid and
staring, and describe the nose as turned up; but
she must have had qualities. Probably she was
shrewd, pliant, simple-minded, and rather motherly
in his hours of rage and illness. She settled with

154

THE GREAT PETER

him in Ms humble cottage at St. Petersburg and
washed his shirts. She bore him two sons, and
went with him on his campaigns; and in 1712 he
went through the form of marriage with her.

Catherine bore Peter in all eleven children, but
the heir to the throne was Prince Alexis, son of his
first wife. Eudoxia had had two sons. Alexander
had died, and Alexis was, when his mother was
enclosed in a convent in 1699, entrusted to the egre
gious care of Menshikoff for education. One of
MenshikofFs first tasks was to teach him to drink
brandy, and he acquired a truly Russian capacity
for drink. As he matured, he was similarly edu
cated in license of conduct. He was, like his father,
nervous and unstable, and he became irritable,
moody, and coarse. But there was a singular dif
ference between father and son. Alexis was very
pious. Piety, in Russia, was apt to lodge in a spe
cial part of the brain, and did not exclude drunken
and dissolute habits. Alexis loved Moscow and its
churches and rich ritual and legends of the saints.
And, naturally, the spreading discontent at Peter's
"reforms" and blasphemies found something in the
nature of a focus in the court of Alexis. As he
grew up, he intensely disliked his father's policy.

Peter roughly summoned him to quit Moscow
and prepare, by a military education, for the throne.
He quailed and protested that he did not want to
be a soldier. Peter sent him to Dresden, and, hear-

155

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

ing that his lady-friends were too numerous and
notorious, married him to Princess Charlotte of
Wolf enbiittel : a gentle, religious, pock-marked
young lady, who could not compete with the live
lier dames. She died in childbirth, and Alexis con
tinued to drink and riot and admire the religious art
of Dresden. Peter again sharply scolded him, and
gave him the alternative of becoming either a sol
dier (and Tsar) or a monk. Alexis whined that
he would rather be a monk than a rough, and bloody
soldier; though he shuddered at the ascetic pros
pect, and, apparently, intended to escape at his
father's death on the ground that he had taken the
vows under compulsion. He still dallied.

In 1716, Alexis being now twenty-six years old,
the Tsar peremptorily bade him enter the monas
tery at Tver or join the army. He replied that he
was corning to Russia, and he begged to be allowed
to bring his latest passion, a young lady named
Euphrosyne. After a short delay Peter heard that
Alexis and Euphrosyne had fled, and in a terrible
rage he sent his agents over Europe in search of
his son. They traced him and his lady to an ancient
castle in Austria. Alexis had fled to Vienna and
hysterically begged the Emperor's protection, and
the Emperor had sent him to the obscure castle
until he could bring about a reconciliation. When
it was known that Russian spies watched the castle,
the Emperor ordered the Prince to leave behind all

156

THE GREAT PETER

his Russian comrades, who encouraged him in deep
drinking, and fly to Naples; and Alexis, taking
only one page for whom he passionately pleaded
it was Euphrosyne, in male dress fled to the south.
Naples was then under the Empire.

The Russian agents at the court of Vienna de
manded the surrender of Alexis. Dreading the
anger of the Tsar, the Emperor sent them on to
Naples, and directed his Viceroy that they must
have an interview with the Prince. The doors
were thrown open, and the agents persuaded
Alexis, by lying representations, that Peter would
forgive him. Their last argument was that Eu-
phrosyne would be taken away from him unless he
complied, and the girl a lusty, thick-lipped peas
ant-girl, like Catherine, it seems tearfully begged
her royal lover to go. The jade had been bribed by
Peter's agents. She was pregnant and was left in
Italy, where the price of her treason was quickly
spent. Alexis, full of the promise that he had only
to ask forgiveness and he could retire to his coun
try-seat and wed his dear Euphrosyne, hurried joy
fully to Moscow.

He arrived on the last day of January (1718) f
and Moscow, ignorant of the arts by which he had
been entrapped, beheld him with tragic astonish
ment. The Tsar was in one of his worst moods.
Three days later a court of clerical and lay digni
taries was formed, and father and son met before

157

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

them. Peter showered invectives on his miserable
son, and then, as Alexis flung himself to the
ground and asked pardon, promised to forgive him
if he would renounce his right to the throne and be
tray the accomplices of his supposed plot. Every
man or woman to whom Alexis had disparaged his
father was named, and Peter shuddered with rage.
There had been no conspiracy, Alexis said : nothing
but vague murmurs. But the torture-chambers
soon rang with shrieks, and Russian blood streamed
again upon the stones of Moscow.

In his bloodshot fury Peter conceived, or af
fected, a suspicion that his first wife, Eudoxia, had
been in the plot, and a gang of "questioners" went
to the convent at Suzdal. Fifty nuns were flogged
and questioned, but the innocence of Eudoxia could
not be brought under suspicion. Unhappily a curi
ous page of Eudoxia's conventual life, which had
ended years before, was brought to light. She had
had a lover in the convent. A noble named Gleboff
had befriended her, and from friendship they
passed to intimacy. Her impassioned love-letters
of eight years before were put before the Tsar, and
he saw red. Gleboff was horribly tortured and
wrapped in furs, as it was cold, to preserve his vi
tality and torture a little longer impaled. It is
said, but of this we cannot be sure, that Eudoxia
was scourged, naked, by two monks. She was, at
all events, confined more strictly from that time.

158

THE GREAT PETER

Alexis had complied with the conditions, Wut
Peter "the Great" had not done with his son. The
vile Euphrosyne was brought to Moscow, and she
supplied fresh "evidence/ 5 A new court was con
voked, and it shrank from the murder that the Tsar
plainly contemplated. Alexis was confronted with
his faithless lover: he was knouted: and" he held to
his simple story that he could not be a soldier, and
had done no more than criticise. A third court was
set up, and it issued sentence of death; and a few
days later the Prince's body was exposed to the
public gaze, with a story that God had spared the
father the blood of his son by visiting Alexis with
apoplexy. How the Prince really died no man
knows, but few, now or then, would believe the story
of natural death. ... It was June 26th; and on
June 29th, we read, a new ship was launched, and
Peter joined with his usual robustness in the mer
rymaking.

In 1719 Catherine's son Peter died, and, on the
hereditary principle, the crown should pass to little
Peter, son of the dead Alexis and Charlotte of
WolfenbiitteL The Tsar was worried, but took no
effective steps to settle the very grave matter of
the succession. Catherine, too, was worried, for
Peter had a new mistress, a woman of far greater
charm than she, and it was well within the sphere
of his ingenuity to secure a divorce and wed again.
But the romance of Peter Mikhailoff has already,

159

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

in spite of condensation, run to such length, and
the new romance so largely concerns Catherine,
that we may open a new chapter and present that
lady properly to the reader before describing the
last phase.

160

CHAPTER VIII

CATHEBINE THE LITTLE

THE whims of monarchs have created more ro
mances in the history of women than the fancy of
the novelist has ever invented, and the story of
Peter's wife and successor is one of the most pi
quant of these real adventures. Although in the
years of her prosperity she did not shrink from the
mention of her humble origin, the details of her
childhood were never confidently known and are
a matter of endless speculation. It is generally
believed that she was the daughter of a Livonian
peasant, but she makes her first certain appearance
as maid-of -all-work in the house of a poor Ger
man pastor. Profoundly ignorant, plain of fea
ture, coarse in taste, this woman became in time the
sole mistress of the Russian Empire.

At the beginning of the Swedish war, in 1702,
General Sheremetieff and the Russian forces be
sieged Marienburg. The Swedish commander
threatened to blow up the fort rather than sur
render, and the inhabitants fled to the Russian lines.
Amongst them, brandishing his credentials (his

161

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Bible), was the Lutheran pastor of the town, with
his wife and children and maid. He was suf
fered to proceed to Russia, but the maid remained
in the camp. She was then seventeen years old,
a lusty and vigorous peasant-girl such as soldiers
covet. The pastor had eked out his slender income
by taking lodgers, and it may or may not be true
that Catherine, or Martha, as she is believed to have
been named at the time, was too intimate with them,
and had been married by the pastor for the protec
tion of her morals. She had no more morals than
Peter. In the camp she now gained rapid promo
tion. At first she washed the shirts and shared the
bed and board of a non-commissioned officer; then
she had the favour of General Sheremetieff ; then
the florid taste of Menshikoff was attracted to her,
and she was drafted to his household, and harem,
at Moscow. There Peter saw and appropriated
her.

There is, as I said, little reason to seek some se
cret of her success. She was of the robust sensual
type that Peter preferred. But she must have been
at once shrewd and amiable to have kept his affec
tion as long as she did. His letters to her show, be
sides the link of common coarseness and frank sen
suality, a good deal of affection on both sides.
Peter took her to the cottage which he built on the
banks of the Neva, where her second boy was born.
It was a small two-roomed cottage, of rough-hewn

162

CATHERINE THE LITTLE

trunks of trees, only about fifty feet in frontage
and less in depth. In one of the plain rooms, the
walls of which were covered with canvas, Peter
planned and received visitors. In the other Cath
erine and he dined, with an occasional intimate
friend, and slept. In 1708 he huilt a larger and
rather finer cottage, more neatly furnished, but,
as in earlier days, he preferred to let Menshikoff
keep a palace in which, with all splendour of gold
plate and powdered lackeys and an army of cooks,
he could give his banquets. In the cottage with
Catherine he ate his large coarse meals, drank his
tea and gin and brandy, and smoked great quan
tities of tobacco. He carried about with him his
wooden spoon and bone-handled knife and fork.
Catherine darned his woollen socks and washed his
shirts fine clean linen was almost the one luxury
he liked and babies appeared with great regular
ity. Often when the tramp of his heavy boots told
that he was in a mood of fury, when servants and
friends fled, for he would hit out with fist or cane
or even sword at such times, Catherine took his
blood-congested head in her plump hands and ran
her fingers through his thick hair; and he gradually
sank to sleep on her breast.

She was good to him, he felt, and he must pro
vide for her and the children. But he was now a
great monarch, corresponding with all the courts

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

of Europe and visiting many of them. The idea of
marrying her must be given long consideration.
There were Eudoxia's sons, and there were Cather
ine's sons. It was a puzzling business, and Peter
did not attack a puzzling business when it could
wait. In 1706 he seemed to make up his mind. He
took the whole company of "the girls" Cather
ine, and Anisia Tolstoi, and the two Menshikoffs
and two Arsenieffs to Kieff, summoned Menshi-
koff, and told him that he must marry Daria Ar-
senieff and become respectable. Menshikoff was
not the man to be restricted by vows of marriage,
and he obeyed. But Peter did not, as Catherine
expected, follow his friend's example. He was
content to make a will in which he assigned her
and her four children an imperial legacy of 1,500
dollars !

By 1711 he let it be understood that Catherine
was his wife, and he publicly went through the form
of marriage with her. Whether there was a valid
marriage or no is not clear, Catherine is said to
have been married at Marienburg, and Peter's first
marriage does not seem to have been annulled by
the proper authorities. Russia and Europe would
not inquire too closely. Catherine went with him
everywhere, except to Paris, and shared his long
rides on horseback and his rough camp-life. She
never attempted to interfere in affairs of State;
but she secretly made large sums of money by get-

CATHERINE THE LITTLE

ting favours or pardon for offenders. She re
mained very friendly with Menshikoff, who taught
her the security of foreign investments-

Peter discovered her trickery, and a cloud came
over their relations, hut the question of the succes
sion worried him. The new complication was that
he was intimate with the charming daughter of
Prince Kantemir of Wallachia. The Prince had
lost his little principality after Peter's defeat on the
Pruth, and had come to St. Petersburg to seek
compensation. He knew the relation of the Tsar
to his daughter Maria and expected him to divorce
Catherine and wed her. It was a very anxious time
for all. Alexis died, or was executed, in 1718;
Catherine's second son died in 1719; and in 1722
Maria Kantemir, who was then at Astrakhan, ex
pected a child. To the relief of Catherine and her
party, and the violent anger of Peter, Maria had
a miscarriage and nearly died.

Catherine now got the title of Empress, and in
1724 she was crowned. Still Peter, although his
health gave great concern, evaded the problem of
the succession, but he allowed Catherine a superb
coronation. When she showed him her magnificent
robe, which cost 2,000 dollars, he impatiently
pushed it aside, but he let her have a crown made
which cost nearly a million dollars. And within
little over six months she, by her reckless and. un~

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

grateful conduct, forfeited whatever right she may
have had and barely escaped with her life.

We remember the giddy Anna Mons, Peter's
mistress for a time in the foreign settlement at
Moscow. Anna's brother William was one of
Catherine's chamberlains, and the whole court be
lieved that they were intimate. At length a letter
which is said to have proved it fell into Peter's
hands. He seems to have felt bitterly the ignominy
of publicly discrowning his new Empress, and for
a long time he did nothing, beyond torturing a
witness or two to extract proof. They thought that
he had decided to overlook it, and both Catherine
and Mons were at supper with him one night in
November. "What time is it?" he suddenly asked,
and Catherine replied that it was nine. He grimly
took her watch, put it on three hours, and said
that, as it was midnight, everybody would go to
bed. Mons was arrested and tortured, and, after
a few days, beheaded on the ground of corrupt
practices. His sister Matrena was knouted and
sent to Siberia. Catherine's personal fortune was
taken out of her hands for administration, and of
ficials were forbidden in future to take any orders
from her.

The iron nerve of the woman in those awful days
proves that, in spite of her origin and ways, she
had a steady head and strong character. Peter
took her for a drive, and passed so close to the

166

CATHERINE THE LITTLE

scaffold that her dress almost brushed against the
body of Mons. She did not flinch. He had the
head put into a glass vessel of spirits of wine and
placed in her room. She took no notice. When
he angrily smashed a costly Venetian glass with his
fist, saying that he would so treat her and her rela-
tivs, she scolded him for the waste. He still saw
Maria Kantemir daily, and he now professed to
make a discovery which doubled his fury. He had
the Greek doctor who had attended Maria in 1725?
"questioned," and Catherine was accused of having
procured the miscarriage.

What his precise reasons were for riot prosecut
ing and disowning Catherine we do not know.
Some think that he spared her out of affection:
some that, as he still sought a French prince for
his and her daughter, he shrank from the scandal.
His mind was in a maudlin state. Decades of ter
rific work and constant debauch had brought their
inevitable consequence, yet, with periods of en
forced sobriety, he still maintained his wild ways.
The year 1724 had been one of reckless orgies and
much illness, and it was in 1725 that he caused the
death of an aged noble by making him sit for
hours, naked, on the frozen Neva because he would
not join their licentious and childish revels. Peter
was still the man who, in 1715, had dissected with
his own hands the corpse of his aunt Apraxin to
see if she was really a virgin.

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

In the first month of 1725 he had a superficial
reconciliation with Catherine. A few weeks later,
however, he caught a fatal chill, and he died within
a fortnight. Russia did not mourn. His great and
real services were such as only a later age could ap
preciate. His rugged, vicious, cruel personality was
known to all, and the cost of his work had heen
heavy. One might say that there was in Peter the
material of a great man, but the Romanoff dynasty
never produced a great man. The material, in
this one opportunity, was too deeply vitiated to
develop. Peter was an incarnation of the national
vices and except indolence the weaknesses he
ought to have assailed.

The unsuhstantiality of most of his work appears
in the sequel Before he was dead there began
the traditional squabble for power, the familiar
grouping and intriguing of parties. The great ma-
jority of the nobles and clergy were in favour of
Peter, the young son of Alexis and Charlotte.
Catherine was too closely identified with the dying
Tsar and all his hated schemes and reforms. But
a few great nobles like Prince Menshikoif and
Count Tolstoi knew that their fortune was bound
up with that of Catherine, and they set to work as
soon as the Tsar's illness proved fatal. The troops
were discontented, their pay in arrears and their
limbs weary from the heavy constructive work to
which Peter had put them. Catherine was directed

168

CATHERINE THE LITTLE

to appeal to them for support and promise ample
pay. The higher clergy who held power under
Peter's new scheme of Church-government were
equally interested in sustaining his work* The pal
ace was full of whispers and secret movements.

The Council met while Peter lay dying, and the
spokesmen of the majority confidently proposed his
grandson for the throne. Tolstoi attacked them,
and proposed Catherine; and after a long and fu
rious debate Catherine was declared Autocrat of
all the Russias. They found her weeping at Pe
ter's bedside, and there was a rush to take the oath.
Moscow was mutinous for a time, But the army was
won by generous treatment, and the country fol
lowed. The guards were provided with new uni
forms and pay, and it was decreed that in future
soldiers must not be employed upon such work as
the making of canals. For the mass of the people,
too, a great relief was afforded by the reduction,
by one third, of the crushing poll-tax which Peter
had imposed; and a political amnesty brought back
thousands to their homes from the squalid jails or
the frozen wastes of the north and of Sibera.

Catherine gladly suffered the power she had ob
tained to pass into the hands of the nobles who had
fought for it. We may, in fact, dismiss her rule,
in its personal aspect, with the remark that she did
not rule at all. She had the wealth and security
which she desired, and her one concern was to re-

169

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

tain them through all the quarrels and intrigues
of her court, and, if possible, transmit them to one
of her daughters. As trouble increased, she re
tired more and more to the privacy of her luxurious
apartments and sought oblivion in intoxication.

A half dozen nobles who had been trained in the
school of Peter formed a small aristocratic clique
which governed the country and sustained some of
the late Tsar's innovations. Of these Menshikoff
was, naturally, the most powerful and most promi
nent, and the haughtiness of the former vender of
pies rose so high that it is said to have even in
spired him with a hope of attaining the crown. He
now acquired wealth without restriction, and pro
moted rivals to distant employments or punished
critics as if he were already the Autocrat. The
bribing of the army and the reduction of taxation
left the exchequer in a parlous condition. Troops
were disbanded, and superfluous officials removed,
but the treasury still cried for funds, and the cor
rupt tax-gatherers were hardly checked.

A good deal of discontent arose, and it found a
spokesman in one of the most powerful prelates,
the Archbishop of Novgorod. The prelate had
supported the election of Catherine, but he had ex
pected her to show her gratitude by reviving the
patriarchate and entrusting it to him. Quite pos
sibly some such promise had been made. It was a
world of consummate knavery. Theodosius, there-

270

CATHERINE THE LITTLE

fore, when lie saw that there was no intention of
reviving the patriarchate, discovered, and angrily
declared, that it was little less than a scandal to have
a woman at the head of the Russian Church. Men-
shikoff made short work of the hypocritical zealot,
whose ways were notorious. It was soon established
that Theodosius had appropriated for domestic use
the gold and silver vessels of the altar, and had
melted down such ornaments as could not be put
to profane use. He was disgraced and banished.
A more curious rival of the favourite a rival
even, according to some, in the affection of the
dissipated Empress was Charles Frederick, Duke
of Holstein, nephew of Charles XII of Sweden.
He was an amiable, mediocre youth who had lost
his duchy in the European scramble for fragments
of the broken Swedish kingdom, and he had come
to the Russian court with a pretension to the Swe
dish throne itself. Catherine's protection of him
gave great offence in England and embarrassed
her ministers. George I had no wish to see the
question of the old Swedish possessions reopened,
and in all the courts of Europe his representatives
fought, and defeated, those of Russia. Indeed in
the spring of 1706 he sent a fleet to Russia, and
the admiral insolently announced that he had come
to compel the Russian fleet to keep to its harbours.
The English had heard that Catherine was collect
ing troops for some enterprise in the interest of

1T1

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

her favourite. She or her able minister Oster-
mann made a bold reply, and joined the Spanish-
Austrian League which confronted England and
her allies. Fortunately, the struggle did not reach
the strain of war, or the loose and shifty adminis
tration of Russia might have suffered.

Charles Frederick remained for the present at
the Russian court and was assiduous in attendance
upon the Empress. He was made a member of
the Privy Council of six which took affairs out of
the hands of the listless Catherine, and on May
21st, 1725, he married the Princess Anne. Neither
Anne nor Peter had welcomed his offer, but Cath
erine now urged the match.

The other leading members of the Privy Coun
cil, or the oligarchy, were Count Tolstoi and the
foreign minister Ostermann. Tolstoi was one of
the envoys of Peter who had enticed Alexis from
Naples: a polished and supple courtier, an astute
diplomatist, and an unscrupulous adventurer, who
watched Menshikoff as one sharper watches an
other. Ostermann was one of the ablest, and cer
tainly the most conscientious of the group; while
a fourth of Peter's men, Yaguzhinsky, a man of
poor origin who had attracted the late Tsar's es
teem by his vivacity and his extraordinary capacity
for liquor, was the most bitter and outspoken critic
of Menshikoif. Before Peter had been buried
many days they quarrelled violently, and Yaguz-

172

CATHERINE THE LITTLE

hinsky, who was drunk, went to the tomb of his
late master, during service, and dug with nails and
teeth into the lid of the coffin. He was not ad
mitted to the Privy Council, which led to a fresh
outburst; and he may have felt some justification
when it was known that Menshikoff had invited his
fellow-Councillors to a banquet before their first
sitting, and all had got so drunk that business was
impossible.

Catherine was only forty-two years old, and a
woman of robust constitution, but in the second
year of her reign her unhealthy habits began to un
dermine her health and give concern. She, as I
said, kept apart, drinking in seclusion. Only Men
shikoff and a few others were admitted to the rooms
where, her stout and somewhat bloated frame
dressed in heavy and tawdry finery, a bunch of or
ders and little figures of saints dangling on her
breast, she sank deeper into the great national
failing. She drank great quantities of Tokay. Her
legs began to swell. The eternal question of the
succession to the throne was reopened, and the
violent quarrels and rivalries ran once more to
secret intrigues.

There was a growing party in favour of the
boy Peter, grandson of the late Tsar. Peter the
Great had disliked the son of his rebellious son, and
had disdainfully thrust him out of notice. Peter
had, in fact, issued a pronouncement in which he

173

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

claimed that the autocrat had the power to leave
his throne to whomsoever he willed. He had, we
saw, never carried out this intention and appointed
a successor, and the hereditary principle was still
strong in the mind of Russia ; while the nobles and
dignitaries still claimed, in effect, the right to choose
between such candidates as the hereditary principle
seemed to designate. It was now a question
whether the throne should pass to the boy Peter or
to one of the young daughters, Anne and Eliza
beth, of Catherine and the late Tsar. The Duchess
Anne, a tall and stately brunette, but quiet and
yielding, was not very popular. The choice seemed
to lie between the boy Peter and the Duchess Eliza
beth, the younger and sprightlier of Catherine's
daughters : a very merry and saucy child with pink
cheeks and laughing blue eyes and golden hair, and
a forwardness which would very soon lead her into
mischief.

Ostermann, who had charge of Peter's education
and saw that he and Elizabeth were attached, boldly
proposed to marry them (when they came of age
they were yet children) and thus reconcile the
factions. But Elizabeth was Peter's aunt, and
Menshikoff turned impatiently away from the
learned Teutonic arguments by which Ostermann
sought to justify his plan*, Catherine, of course,
wanted the crown to pass to one of her daughters,
but the feeling that Peter was the rightful heir

174

CATHERINE THE LITTLE

grew in strength. Anonymous letters accused
Menshikoff and Catherine of usurping power. The
majority of the courtiers were looking to Peter.
There was at court a powerful body of old-fash
ioned nobles who had never been reconciled to the
innovations, and these were naturally disposed to
adopt the son of the pious Alexis, who had died for
the sacred traditions of Russia. They might then
bring back the late Tsar's first wife, Eudoxia, from
her convent and let her religious and conservative
influence rule the boy.

Menshikoff at length discovered, and informed
Catherine, that the feeling in favour of Peter was
irresistible. He had a daughter, Maria, and he had
resolved to wed this girl to Peter and thus secure
his own position under the new regime. Oster-
mann, a decent and sober statesman who sought the
good of the country, adhered to this plan, and
Catherine was compelled by her favourite, and vir
tual master, to agree to it. Count Tolstoi, how
ever, violently opposed it. He foresaw that Men
shikoff would become more powerful than ever,
and he dreaded the reappearance of Eudoxia, as
he had very strongly supported the late Tsar in
persecuting her. The Count led Catherine's
daughters to her room and made a stirring appeal
for them. The young women fell upon their knees
and wept, as only Russians could, imploring their
mother's protection against the impending dangers,

175

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

But the failing Empress could only murmur that
Menshikoff had decided, and she was powerless.

Tolstoi turned to the court and tried to form a
party. It had little prestige, though there were
always a few in the Russian court who were willing
to gamble on the desperate chances of an outsider,
and it in turn split on the question which of the
sisters ought to be adopted. The struggle became
more tense as Catherine's health sank. In April,
1727, she passed into a grave condition, and Men-
shikoff induced her, though she made a maudlin
demonstration in favour of Elizabeth, to sign a
will bequeathing the crown to Peter. This did not
put an end to intrigue, as it was a question whether
the nobles would recognise this right of legacy
which had been arbitrarily created by Peter.

Toward the end of April it was thought that
the Empress was dying, and Menshikoff, with her*
will in his possession, carefully guarded her from
alien influences. At length her hour, apparently,
caine, and the whole court was permitted to as
semble about her chamber. Through the open door
the glazed eye of the former maid and washer
woman fell upon the brilliant throng who waited,
with intense strain, the opening of another chapter
in the history of the Romanoffs. The Duke of Hoi-
stein saw the last chance of his wife's succession
ebbing away, and he nervously implored Count
Tolstoi to make his way to the dying woman's side

176

CATHERINE THE LITTLE

and plead for Anne. Tolstoi shook his head. Men-
shikoff watched the play with rapid pulse, count
ing the moments before the danger was over. And
suddenly his opponents were delivered into his
hands. One of Tolstoi's party. Count Devier, was
intoxicated, and he hegan to behave in a way that
certainly desecrated the chamber of death. Quick
as thought Menshikoff had the rooms cleared and
Devier arrested. The ever-ready torture-chamber
was opened, and, under the lash of the knout, De
vier betrayed Tolstoi and his associates. Tolstoi
and his son went to Siberia, and Devier to the shores
of the Arctic. And on the same day, May 16th,
1727, Catherine laid down her sceptre and passed
away.

Her will or the document which Menshikoff
had composed and she was supposed to have signed
was read to the dignitaries and notabilities. The
son of Alexis and Charlotte was named Peter II,
and there was little disinclination to take the oath
to a grandson of the great monarch. Few, in the
agitation of the hour, saw the possibility of a re
action from a son of Alexis, and the few who per
ceived that possibility thought that they had pro
vided against it. The Privy Council, headed by
Menshikoff, was entrusted with the Regency; and
Menshikoff would see that his relation to the boy-
Emperor would soon become more intimate. In
the event of the boy's death the crown must pass

177

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

to Anne: in case of her death to Elizabeth. Never
before had there been so clearly conceived and far-
seeing a plan of succession; yet within the next
three years there were to be two revolutions, with
the usual terrible consequences, at that court of
greed and passion.

178

CHAPTER IX

BOMANCE UPON BOMANCE

PETER II was a fine, handsome lad of eleven sum
mers, the fruit of the unhappy union of the miser
able Alexis and hardly less miserable Charlotte
of Wolfenbiittel. From such a stock Peter the
Great had expected no good. He disliked to think
of the boy, and, careful as he generally was about
education, he allowed the child to pass to the hands
of ignorant and incompetent trainers. Catherine,
or Menshikoff, who may have early conceived his
plan of the future, altered this state of things at
the death of Peter the Great. The conscientious
German minister Ostermann was charged with the
education of the young prince, and we perceive by
his scheme of lessons, which survives, that he was
prepared even for the duties of a monarch.

Unhappily, the best scheme of education depends
for its result upon the co-operation of the pupil,
and Peter was a bad pupil. He liked Ostermann,
but he disliked lessons; and the consciousness that
he was now a monarch did not dispose his lively
imagination to submit to prosy toil There was a

179

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

strain of nervous Instability in nearly the whole of
the Romanoffs at this stage. Peter liked sport
and riding and play. His sister Natalia, two years
older than he, was a good playmate; even better
was Aunt Elizabeth, the younger daughter of the
late Empress. Elizabeth was now a very sprightly
and pretty young lady of sixteen, the exact op
posite of what a Russian princess ought to be on
the old standards. She shunned books, but took
like a boy to riding and hunting and fencing. Her
lively tongue and merry blue eyes attracted young
officers; and she was the daughter of Catherine
and Peter in such matters.

Menshikoff did not like the intimacy and he car
ried Peter off to one of his palaces and put trusted
servants and the sober Ostermann about him. He
also Introduced the young Tsar to the charm of his
own domestic circle, and he presently announced
to the Privy Council that Peter had honoured him
by asking the hand of his daughter Maria. The
ceremony of betrothal was, in fact, publicly cele
brated. Inconvenient or critical people were
humanely removed by appointments abroad. Even
the Duke of Holstein was induced to return to his
native land and take his Duchess with him; and
they were treated very generously in the matter
of provision. Honours and offices were distributed
with such generosity as was consistent with the
supreme power and increasing wealth of the for-

180

ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE

r. Members of old noble families, like
the Dqlgorukis and Golitzuins, were promoted.

With the aid of Ostermann for foreign affairs
Menshikoff ruled the country advantageously.
There was, fortunately, no stress at home or
abroad, for he had no ability as a statesman, but
he passed a number of measures which promoted
trade or tranquillity. The Cossacks were more
than pacified by the concessions he made to them.
Eudoxia was liberated from the rigorous and dis
mal confinement to which Peter the Great had con
demned her; which greatly pleased the orthodox. 1 "
The tariff was lowered. The ghastly poles and
spikes on which it had been customary to fix the
heads or limbs of criminals were abolished.

But in the world which the Romanoffs had
created, or suffered to develop, the supreme con
cern was the fortune of the individual. I do not
mean, of course, that this selfishness was unknown
at the court of Louis XV or of George I, but the
sequel will show how far Russia lagged behind even
the primitive morality of those elegant courts.
There were few who did not look with green eyes
upon the princely fortune of the adventurer, and
there were some who felt it an outrage upon the
nobility. Russia was prosperous; but could a land
prosper indefinitely when the national genius
was mocked by foreign innovations and the sacred
traditions of Moscow were scouted? The nobles

181

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

gave an idealist complexion to their discontent, and
whispers reached the ear of the growing prince.

Menshikoff was imprudent in meeting Peter's
first movements of resentment. One day the young
Tsar received what appears to have been a per
sonal payment of nine thousand ducats, and he
sent it to his sister Natalia. Menshikoff met the
messenger and took away the money. Peter, he
said, did not yet understand the value of money.
Peter sent for him and gave him, to his amazement,
an imperial scolding. He might have recognised
a bit of his old master in the stamping and raging
boy, but he did not take the lesson. Soon after
wards Peter sent to Natalia a fine service of plate
which had been presented to him, and MenshikofF
tried to make her restore it. The First Minister
was then compelled to take to his bed for some
weeks. When he recovered, he found that Peter
had gone to the palace at Peterhof, some miles
away, and was wildly enjoying himself with Na
talia and Aunt Elizabeth. Ostermann and the
Dolgorukis also were there. Menshikoff , as an off
set, demanded the accounts of the palace, and dis
charged a servant for some item he found; and
the boy-Tsar, in a fiery interview, told him to mind
his own business.

This was in August. Menshikoff, now seriously
concerned, thought that the influence of Ostermann
was mischievous, and he got up a violent quarrel

182

ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE

with him and threatened to send him to Siberia.
From a loyal colleague Ostermann became one
more enemy of the First Minister, and the story
of his fall ran rapidly. On September 6th Men-
shikoff went out to Peterhof to pay respectful
homage to the Tsar. Peter not only turned his
back upon him, but drew the attention of his smil
ing courtiers to the fact that he did. The minister
prepared a festival, and, when the Tsar scouted
his invitation, he nervously begged an interview.
The answer was a troop of soldiers such as he him
self had sent to darken many a home, and he fell
to the ground in a swoon.

A few days later the fallen man appeared be
fore the Privy Council and received sentence. He
was fined, for conspiracy against the throne, 375,-
000 dollars, stripped of all his honours and offices,
and ordered to retire to the dreary waste of the
steppes. But his wife Daria we remember Peter
the Great forcing him to marry that merry lady
appealed passionately against the brutal sentence,
and he was suffered to retire, instead, to a beautiful
estate he had in the Ukraine. Few wept when,
one morning in September, a long caravan bore
Menshikoff and his wife and daughter out of the
life of Russia. But his enemies were not satisfied.
The Dolgorukis, who caine to power, tramped up
a charge of conspiracy in the following year, and,
on the miserable word of tortured witnesses, which

183

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

in Russia was still admitted* banished the broken
hearted adventurer to the frozen shores of the
Arctic. There for two years, until death set him
free and ended one of the great romances of that
stirring period, Menshikoff supported by the la
bour of his own hands his devoted wife and the
unlucky girl who had thought to become an Em
press.

Ostermann remained the most important and
most useful statesman, but the Golitzuins, Dol-
gorukis, and other families of the old nobility now
came to power and they made an effort to drag
Russia back to the ruts from which Peter the
Great had violently shifted it. They were of what
came to be called in the nineteenth century the
"Russophile school": narrow-minded conservatives
who railed at all innovation and foreign influence,
and persuaded themselves that the genius of Rus
sia was different from that of other European na
tions. St. Petersburg was to them the hated sym
bol of the new order, and they induced Peter to
return to Moscow. He was crowned there on Feb
ruary 25th (1728) with all the archaic ceremonies
of Russian tradition, and they took care to im
press him with the contrast between the compara
tively bright and healthy air of Moscow and the
dank climate of the northern metropolis. This court
remained at Moscow, and the departments of State
were presently transferred to it.

184

ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE

To complete the transformation from the ideals
uf Peter the Great to those of Alexis the aged
Eudoxia was appointed Regent, and a court of the
old type gathered about her. Ostennann was
alarmed, and the reactionaries tried to remove him.
Peter, fortunately for Russia, would not hear of
the dismissal of his old director, but he allowed the
conservative nobles to act much as they pleased
and he was encouraged by them to spend his time
in hunting and laborious idleness. The fleet was
suffered to rot in harbour, and only the steady
effect of such internal reforms as Peter the Great
had introduced kept the country in some degree
of prosperity. The old indolence returned. Since
there were now no costly schemes to be realised, and
the favourable turn of foreign relations brought
no war, the taxes were not enforced, and the coun
try enjoyed a fallacious happiness.

In December ISTatalia died of consumption.
Through her Ostennann had at times got a warn
ing word to the ear of his pupil, and the levity
of the Tsar now increased. He spent his days with
Elizabeth, and the Dolgorukis feared that what
Ostermann had once recommended the marriage
of the aunt and nephew would come to pass. As
it was their aim, in spite of all the warnings of Rus
sian history, to marry him to a girl of their own
family, Elizabeth must go ; and the frivolity of that
precocious lady gave them ample opportunities.

185

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

She was scarcely out of her teens, yet her amours
were notorious, and her lovers were not of noble
rank. A word was whispered to Peter, who was a
sober and strict-living youth, and Aunt Elizabeth
ceased to be his constant companion.

Austria, Russia's ally, looked with concern upon
this reaction and indolence, and its representatives
joined with Ostermann in pressing Peter to return
to St. Petersburg and attend to his military re
sources. A tense, if more or less veiled, struggle
for the guidance of the Tsar set in. For the mo
ment the ambitious Dolgorukis won. They carried
Peter a hundred miles away for a grand and pro
longed hunt and series of entertainments. The en
tire family surrounded him and kept him for weeks
in a state of febrile exhilaration. When they re
turned to Moscow, Alexis Dolgoruki announced
that the Tsar was to wed his daughter Catherine,
and the ceremony of betrothal was pompously con
ducted. The Dolgorukis now closed round the
youthful Tsar, kept their angry rivals away, and
began a premature plunder of the court and treas
ury as confidently as if such things had never be
fore left their awful monuments in Russian his
tory.

The wedding was fixed for January 30th, 1730.
Peter would then be only fourteen years old, but
the Dolgorukis were anxious. Already the Tsar
was peevish and moody, and he gave at times

186

EOMANCE UPON ROMANCE

alarmingly sharp replies. One day as the favoured
family gathered round him and amused him with
a game of forfeits, it fell to him, as a forfeit, to
kiss his betrothed. To their consternation he
walked out of the room. About the middle of the
month a worse cloud than ever came over their
hour of sunshine. Peter fell ill and it was whis
pered among the pale-faced family the malady
was the dreaded small-pox. Frantic conferences
were held, and some of the family, in their sordid
greed and selfishness, actually proposed to wed the
semi-conscious boy and put the girl abed with him.
But Ostermann guarded the chamber, and on Jan
uary 30th, the <?ay appointed for the wedding,
Peter II ended hfs brief reign.

The succession to the throne was now so open
that Moscow teemed with melodramatic conspir
acies. The young bloods of the Dolgoruki party
are said to have forged a will in which Peter left
the crown to his betrothed, but the older men ridi
culed the proposal, and the document does not seem
to have been produced. On the other hand, the
physician of the Tsarevna Elizabeth, a born con
spirator, roused that young lady from her sleep
and urged her to seize the throne, Elizabeth flut
tered over the romantic proposal, then turned over
in bed and deferred it to the morrow. On the mor
row it was too late, for the Privy Council had held

187

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

an all-night sitting and come to a singular de
cision.

Prince Demetrius Golitzuin, one of the older
nobles who had never enjoyed what he regarded as
his full share of wealth and power, felt that it was
his turn to make a monarch and enjoy the reward.
He decked his plan with a plausible air of reform.
This recent concentration of power in the hands
of an autocrat was the root of all evil, since one
monarch usually meant one favourite. Let them
choose a ruler who would promise in advance
promise on paper to resign the power to the Privy
Council He drew up a scheme in which the future
sovereign pledged himself or herself to take no im
portant action to declare war, or levy taxes, or
punish a noble, or marry, and so on without their
consent. What candidate would be likely to sign
and respect such a promise? Elizabeth could not
be relied upon; in fact, Golitzuin, a proud and ar
rogant noble of the old school, detested Peter the
Great and regarded his marriage as void and his
daughters as illegitimate. But Peter's elder
brother, the weak-minded Ivan V, had left three
daughters, and the second of these, Anne, Duchess
of Courland, would, it was thought, agree to almost
any conditions if she were offered the crown.

Anne, who was then thirty-seven years old, had
had a dull and vexatious life. Peter had made her
and her mother, Prascovia, move to St. Petersburg,

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and he had compelled Anne, in her eighteenth year,
to marry the Duke of Courland, for political rea
sons. The Duke, however, had found Russian hos
pitality so overpowering that he had died on the
way home, and the young princess, childless and
isolated, had been compelled to continue the jour
ney and settle at Mitau, the capital of the Duchy.
To control her purse and administer her affairs
Peter had sent Count Besthuzeff, and he laughed
heartily when he heard that Anne had made a lover
of him. Presently there came along the familiar
type of handsome and unscrupulous adventurer.
The grandson of a groom of an earlier Duke,
named Biren, had a sister in a modest office at court.
She was, however, also a mistress of the Count, and
she got a place for her brother. Biren was clever
and ambitious, and it was not long before he sup
planted Besthuzeff in the affection of the Duchess
and got him dismissed. Biren married after a time,
and it is claimed that Anne's very intimate rela
tions to him after his marriage were purely Pla
tonic. In any case he remained master of her
court, and he would no doubt be consulted on the
strange new problem that confronted her. She
had costly tastes and little money, and glittering
Moscow suddenly and unexpectedly rose on her
horizon.

The Privy Councillors had decided that Anne
was the most likely of the surviving Romanoffs

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Peter was the last male of the family to accept the
crown at a reduced price. They had sent a depu
tation to Mitau, and a courier presently came back
with the news that she had signed the conditions.
Yaguzhinsky, the drunken and turbulent general
who had often given trouble, had tried a little
intrigue of his own. He had sent a disguised mes
senger to Mitau to warn Anne, but his messenger
had been caught by Golitzuin's watchful servants
on the return journey. A general meeting of the
great officials and nobles was called, and the Privy
Councillors announced to them that Anne had ac
cepted, and resigned all power to the Council. It
is quaint to read, in letters of the time, that the
once democratic Russians now trembled with anger
at this surrender of the sacred autocracy. The an
nouncement was received in ominous silence.
Golitzuin turned fiercely upon Yaguzhinsky and
forced him to avow his plot; and the general and
his associates were arrested and disgraced. The
malcontents were cowed, and Anne came to Mos
cow.

There can be very little doubt that Anne, who
was intelligent, perfectly understood the situation
and was ready, on any pretext, to disavow her oath.
Although Golitzuin set a close guard of servants
and soldiers about her, she soon learned that there
was a powerful party in opposition to the Privy
Council, and she entered into correspondence with

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ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE

it. Count Biren's baby was her godchild, and she
insisted that it be brought to her chamber every
morning to be fondled. A baby and nurse could
do little harm, the sentries thought ; but there were
notes from the conspirators pinned underneath the
baby's bib. Letters were smuggled in presents to
the sovereign. Another of the older nobles, Prince
Tcherkasky, was aiming at power, on the approved
lines of Russian tradition (the invariable ghastly
ends of which no one seemed to study), and was
organising the conspiracy.

On the morning of May 8th, ten weeks after
Anne's arrival, about eight hundred of the nobles
and gentry assembled in the courtyard of the
Kreml, and, with a select body of officers of the
guard, trooped to Anne's apartments and asked a
hearing. The comedy was gravely enacted. Anne,
surrounded by her court, graciously received the
petitioners, and heard with astonishment that there
was dissatisfaction at her surrender of the autoc
racy. The Privy Councillors were summoned, and
Tcherkasky and DolgoniH fought for the lead.
Anne hesitated, but her elder sister, the Duchess
of Mecklenburg, turned the scale against the Privy
Council. She would reconsider her act. In the
afternoon the parties returned, and Anne turned
severely upon the Councillors. "Were not those
articles you submitted to me framed with the con
sent of my subjects?" she asked. It was boister-

191

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

ously affirmed by the crowd that they were not.
"Then you lied/' she said to the great nobles; and
the autocracy was restored, and the roll of drums
and roar of guns and clangour of bells announced
with what joy Moscow took the yoke on its
shoulders once more.

For a time it seemed as if the new ruler was too
humane to exact the usual penalties. The Privy
Council was abolished, but the Senate was reor
ganised and the Golitzuins and Dolgorukis were,
to their surprise, included in the new body. Their
wives were welcomed at court, their relatives pro
moted. But either Anne awaited the advice of
Biren, who had remained at Mitau for a time, or
she prudently ascertained her strength. In April
a flash of the brutal Romanoff temper lit Moscow
once more. Alexis Dolgomki and his family were
arrested and convicted of causing the death of the
late Tsar. The aged father went to Siberia, the
younger men were knouted and exiled, and the
young Catherine, the betrothed of Peter II, was,
with a refinement of cruelty, sent to the very spot
in the frozen north where Menshikoff 5 s daughter,
the earlier aspirant to the crown, had lamented her
bitter disappointment. The great proud family
was shattered to atoms.

And the power that their fellow-nobles had
snatched from them now passed mainly to foreign
ers. Biren established himself in the palace, close

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ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE

to Anne's apartments, and became the real auto
crat. Anne was too intelligent to part with the
old and experienced ministers. Indeed an inner
cabinet, consisting of Ostermann, Tcherkasky, and
Golovkin, was formed, and the affairs of the State
were conscientiously administered. But the bulk
of the lucrative offices fell to Germans and Cour-
landers. Russians grumbled, and were snubbed.
The fiery Yaguzhinsky was dissatisfied with his
promotion and, in his cups, he spoke freely about
the foreigners. One day, at table, he insulted and
drew his sword upon Biren. He was appointed
minister at Berlin. Other nobles were punished for
criticising, and Count Biren settled down to his
reign.

The external fortune of the country may be
briefly sketched. In the eternal rise and fall of
nations Poland had now sunk to almost its lowest
depth; Sweden was sinking; France was at its
zenith, and was in deadly antagonism to Austria;
Prussia was watching and preparing astutely, and
snatching every advantage it could from the quar
rels of its neighbours. The obvious policy of Rus
sia was to remain on good terms with the nearer
of the great Powers, Austria, and it was just as
obviously the policy of France to detach Russia
and weaken Austria. The diplomatic battle rose
to a furious pitch over the succession to the throne
of Poland, which Augustus II would soon quit.

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

He naturally wished to leave the crown to his son,
and the French king wished to secure it for his
Polish father-in-law, Lesczynski. Both sides of
fered bribes to Biren, and he looked lovingly at the
magnificent French offer of half a million ducats
and the Duchy of Courland, but so violent and dan
gerous a change of Russian policy was not to be
contemplated.

Augustus died, and the Poles were induced to
accept Lesczynski. Poland was now "the sick man
of Europe," as every aspirant to its throne was
ready to barter away some portion of its territory
to the greedy Powers. But Russia would not en
dure the French candidate, and in the summer of
1733 a Russian army invaded and subdued the
Poles. The French retorted, in the manner of the
time, by spurring the Swedes and the Turks to
draw off the Russians, and a long war (1736-1739)
with Turkey followed. Azoff was retaken, and
the Russian generals had a hope of annexing the
northern coast of the Black Sea. Anne, however,
watched the progress of the long and costly opera
tions with feminine emotion, and the withdrawal of
Austria from the war gave her and her Coun
cil an opportunity to end it. It had cost the lives
of a hundred thousand men and had strained the
Russian treasury; and all that the grumbling coun
try gained was the city of Azoff and a small area
of the surrounding region. It should be added,

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ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE

however, that, cumbrous as the Russian army was,
its prestige rose in the mind of Europe. Its Ger
man commanders and engineers counted for some
thing.

To the people at large, when the last fireworks
had been discharged, the burden of the war was a
new grievance, Anne was not without shrewdness.
She contrived to wring from the impoverished peo
ple even the arrears of taxes, which the frivolity of
the late administration had allowed to accumulate,
without ever confronting a serious threat to her
rule. But her careful and generally intelligent
government was guilty of one extravagance which
further angered the people. She loved pomp and
display, and she gradually impressed upon her
court and aristocracy a standard of living, es
pecially of dressing, which threatened many with
ruin.

The court returned in 1732 to St. Petersburg,
and Biren and she attempted to give it the elegance
and splendour of the first courts of Europe.
Neither had at first much refinement of taste, and
foreign visitors described with amused disdain the
veneer of display on the lingering barbarism of
Russia. New uniforms of the most gaudy charac
ter were supplied to the guard and the servants of
the court. The nobles were compelled to spend
what seemed to Russians colossal sums in bringing
themselves up to the new standard, and a bewigged

195

jTHE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

$

and bepowdered crowd, in dazzling blue or green
or pink silks and satins, replaced the sober-clad
boyars of earlier years. Banquets and balls fol
lowed each other in rapid succession, and new
dresses must adorn each occasion; while it is said
that the demand for the services of the elaborate
hair-dressers was such that ladies had at times to
have their hair dressed two or three days in ad
vance and carefully preserve the structure until
the evening of the ball.

In her later years Anne, perhaps taught by the
pungent criticisms of foreign guests, developed a
sober taste. She was a very tall woman, of large
and not ungraceful build, with grave dark blue eyes
and black hair. In her later years she exchanged
her bright blues and greens for gold brocade or
brown silk, her diamonds for pearls; and her officers
Iiad black and yellow liveries, embroidered with
silver braid. She did much to raise the taste of
Russia. Although champagne was now introduced
into Russia, she frowned upon the ancient daily
habit of intoxication. Only on one day of the year
the anniversary of her coronation- did she tol
erate heavy drinking. She introduced also a cer
tain lightness and elegance into open-air feasts,
which had in Peter's day been orgies of drink and
roughness, and she insisted on better manners at
table. It was not long since, at a Russian dinner,
one plate had had to serve a guest through the long

196

ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE

and varied series of courses the punctilious man
wiped his plate with his finger or napkin, or poured
the gravy on to the floor and a servant had torn
scraps of linen or calico off a roll for the use of
those who desired napkins. Into the state of such
rooms when the doors were locked for many hours,
as they often were, the polite modern must not in
quire too closely. A good deal of this grossness
lingered In Russia, and Anne set her face against it.

She the earlier lover of Besthuzeff and Biren
was not less warmly opposed to laxity of morals.
Moderate gambling she herself Introduced and en
couraged, but the young folk whom she liked to
have about her had to be careful. When Elizabeth
did not reform her free ways, after a few lovers
had been sent to Siberia, she was threatened with a
convent. Anne's favourite was a niece, Princess
Anne of Mecklenburg, an insipid, good-natured
girl whom she was preparing for the throne. The
Saxon envoy, Count Lynar, was discovered In too
close a relation to this young lady, and was sent
back to Saxony; whence we shall find him return
as soon as the Tsarina is dead and his lover is on
the throne.

In other respects the character of Anne was at
the lowest Romanoff level. She not only delighted
in the dwarfs and buffoons, and the rough knock
about comedies, which had always been popular at
the court, but she found pleasure in refinements of

197

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

cruelty which Peter would have thought unchiv-
alrous. She would rock with laughter when her
dwarfs got to bloody noses in their cock-fights, and
she sank to the depth of compelling noble men and
women who incurred her anger to enter these vulgar
troops and provide the most puerile amusement. A
noble of merit was condemned to this disgraceful
service because Anne hated his wife; another be
cause he joined the Roman Church. But the most
curious and brutal of all her whims was her treat
ment of a noble of the great Golitzuin family.

The man had travelled in Italy and married a
Roman Catholic. He was forty years old and of
high birth, yet he was compelled to enter the com
pany of Anne's pages and buffoons. When his
wife at length died, Anaae said that she would
choose a second for him, and she selected a coarse
and ugly Kalmuck woman from the uncivilised
fringe of her Empire. The wedding must be not
merely public, but of a nature to attract the atten
tion of the whole of Russia to his disgrace, and
specimens of all the backward peoples of the Em
pire were summoned to it. A long procession of
Finns, Lapps, Samoyedes, etc., riding in carts
drawn by pigs or reindeer or other unusual animals,
preceded the miserable groom and his bride, who
rode on an elephant, to the church. All St. Peters
burg turned out to see it. In the evening a large
banquet was served to the guests, and the wedded

198

ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE

pair then went to the house which had been made
for them. It was the month of February, and a
house had been cut out of solid ice. Cannons of
ice exploded at the door, all the furniture was of
ice, and the unfortunate noble and his hideous com
panion were enclosed for the night in a room, and
upon a bed, of naked ice. This was in the very
year of the Empress's death.

Anne was scarcely less to blame for the conduct
of her favourite. While Russia groaned under her
taxes, his wealth grew to a colossal fortune. His
wife's diamonds alone were valued at three million
rubles. His stables, his plate, his palaces, were
amongst the most superb in Europe. This wealth
was notoriously amassed by corruption and pro
tected by a system of spies and bullies. In his
Duchy of Courland, which he obtained in 1737 by
bribing the electors, his name spelt terror to the
poor folk from whom he had sprung. In Russia
itself he ruled by the knout and the executioner.
In 1739 he felt that the Dolgorukis were not quite
beyond the power of making mischief, if the Em
press died, and he dragged them from their exiles
and had a fresh trial. One was broken on the
wheel, two were beheaded, and others were impris
oned for life. In the following year he was in
sulted in the Council by a certain Voluinsky, whom
he had adopted, but who had turned against him.
The man must be broken or he would himself leave

199

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

the country, he told the Empress. She sadly con
sented, and the man was taken to a scaffold which
bore instruments so horrible that his robust nerve
gave way. At the last moment the Empress be
nevolently commuted his sentence; he merely lost
his right hand and his head. His companions lost
their heads or their tongues, or joined the melan
choly colony in Siberia.

In the summer of 1740 the Princess Anne, who
had married Prince Anthony of Brunswick-Be-
vern, bore a son, and, as Anne's health failed, the
feverish dispute about the succession reopened. It
was understood that this infant was to be nomi
nated Tsar, and the natural course would be to
make his parents the Regents. Biren, however,
took care to have himself nominated for the Re
gency, and he pressed the Empress, whose end was
in sight, to endorse the arrangement. She refused
for some days, but on October 26th she signed the
document, and two days later she died.

Another, and still stranger romance, was now
to be added to the weird chronicle of the court of
the Romanoffs. Anne of Mecklenburg was the
daughter of the late Empress's elder sister, who
had, we saw, been a daughter of Peter the Great's
elder brother. She seems to have been very unlike
the other members of the family, though her mother
had been a quiet and temperate princess. Anne
herself was a blonde, good-natured nonentity; a

200

ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE

pawn in the game played by her elders. Prince
Anthony, who had even less intelligence and char
acter than she, had been brought young from Aus
tria, and trained for his marital and royal duties
under the eye of the late Empress. His wife dis
dained him, and Biren, seeing her dislike before
they were married, suggested that she should marry
instead his fifteen-year-old son. This proposal she
rejected even more vehemently, and in the summer
of 1739 she had coldly given her hand to Anthony.

Biren perceived the delicacy of his position, and
he tried, by concessions to the troops and a reduc
tion of the extravagance which the late Empress
had imposed, to conciliate the country. But from,
the first day of his Regency a sullen murmur rose
about him and gathered volume. Prince Anthony
was the first to rebel. It was, he said, infamous to
exclude him from the Regency when his son was
Tsar; but when Biren brought him before an as
sembly of the nobles he saw the shadow of the
scaffold and broke into hysterical tears. He was
relieved of his appointments and ordered to confine
himself to his wife's apartments. Anne herself
then murmured, and Biren threatened to retain the
babe, and send her and her husband to Mecklen
burg.

In the group of dignitaries was a German mili
tary engineer, Munnich, who had never yet gambled
in the intrigue of making a ruler of the Russian

201

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Empire, and chance and spite now offered him an
opportunity. On November 19th, a few weeks
after the death of the late Empress, he had some
business at the chamber of the Princess Anne, and
the young mother tearfully confided to him her
humiliations. She and her husband, she sobbed,
would take their child and quit Russia for ever,
Munnich was sympathetic: as she may have been
forewarned. Biren had not given him the post of
Commander in Chief, which he coveted. He told
Anne to confide entirely in him, and went off to
dine, jovially enough, with Biren. He was back
afterwards at Anne's chamber, telling her to be
ready for action at three the next morning; and,
in order the better to mask his intrigue, he returned
to sup and crack a bottle with the Regent.

Munnich was Lieutenant-Colonel of the Guard,
and at two in the morning he told his plan to the
awakened officers, and they led a picked body of
troops to the Summer Palace. Bluffing the guards
with a statement that he was conducting the Prin
cess Anne to see Biren on some important busi
ness, he took his men to the room in which Biren
and his wife slept. One glance at the massed uni
forms behind the Colonel told the amazing adven
turer that his hour had come. He fought like a
madman, but was overpowered and carried off in
a quilt. Before the day broke his brothers and
reliable supporters were under arrest, and St.

202

ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE

Petersburg awoke to find that another revolution
had been successfully accomplished at the palace.
The hated Courlander was stripped of all his pos
sessions, and he took that dreary route to Siberia
that had been trodden by thousands of his victims.

But this last romance of this particular series
had only begun with the pretty adventure of the
German engineer. Miinnich inherited Biren's
vanity and corruption, as well as his power and
wealth, but not his astuteness. In two months he
is said to have heaped up a fortune hardly less than
that of Biren, and it was at the grave cost of the
State. The .War of the Austrian Succession had
opened, and Frederick of Prussia heavily bribed
Miinnich to put Russia on his side instead of that
of Maria Theresa. This was too much for the
sagacious Ostermann, who secured a redistribution
of power and responsibility. His conceited fellow-
countryman, overestimating the stupidity of the
Regents, tendered his resignation, and it was ac
cepted. Ostermann now resumed the control of
foreign policy, but such matters concern us little
here. It is enough to say that Sweden was spurred
by France to a new attack upon Russia, and was
defeated.

In the meantime the new romance was rapidly
developing in the court. A young German woman
named Julia Mengden secured, not merely the
favours, but the passionate attachment, of the

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Regent Anne, and the court was filled afresh with
disgust. Anne, an idle and insipid creature, would
spend almost the whole day playing cards with
Julia, She was often too lazy or too listless to
dress, and courtiers found her scantily draped in
Julia's room at all hours. Other Mengdens were
attracted from the depths of Germany. A new
brood of thick-tongued foreigners swarmed about
the court.

Then Count Lynar, the Saxon envoy whom the
late Empress had thought it prudent to remove,
returned to St. Petersburg, and to the palace.
Julia married him, but there seems no room for
doubt that she was chiefly concerned to mask her
royal friend's liaison with the Count. Anne had a
second legitimate child, but within a few weeks
Julia was holding her door while Lynar was within.
As Anne had no redeeming charm or grace of char
acter, the court looked on with disdain. Lynar, it
was feared, would succeed to the place of Miinnich,
Biren, and Menshikoff, and few had a word for
Anne. To her court she presented always a dull
and bored look, and her husband she openly de
spised.

In the circumstances a fresh intrigue was almost
inevitable, and the only other surviving Romanoff
was the Princess Elizabeth. There was, moreover,
a French envoy at St. Petersburg who had the
romantic imagination in its liveliest form, and who

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ROMANCE UPO:N T ROMANCE

concluded that Elizabeth was precisely the ruler
who would best suit the interests of his country.
To obtain power she would, he thought, desert St.
Petersburg for Moscow and surrender the Baltic
provinces to the Swedes, He got into touch with
Elizabeth and proposed that she should do this, if
he arranged, simultaneously, a rising in St. Peters
burg and an invasion by the Swedes. Elizabeth
refused to yield territory, but she continued the.
negotiations. In December Anne detected her cor
respondence and warmly scolded her, but the quar
rel ended in embraces. That was on December 4th ;
and in the early morning of December 6th, as Anne
slept with her beloved Julia, a troop of grenadiers,
with Princess Elizabeth at their head, entered the
room and made an end of the reign of little Ivan VI
and the Regency of his parents. How that was
done belongs to the romance of the romantic Em
press Elizabeth.

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CHAPTER X

THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH

ELIZABETH has already entered so frequently, and
so picturesquely, into the story that little further
introduction is necessary. She was the younger of
the two surviving daughters of Peter the Great and
Catherine, and she inherited the independent tem
per of her father. Her pretty, merry figure was
one of the most piquant of the court, and she had
hardly attained a precocious puberty when it be
came necessary to watch her movements. She had,
during the last three reigns, regarded both the court
and its rulers with disdain. For the belated prudery
of the Empress Anne she had no respect; it was
the awful threat of confining her hot blood in a
convent which had for a time curbed her public
behaviour. For the baby-Emperor and his foolish
parents she felt contempt, and she was prepared at
any time to see the wheel of fortune turn toward
her.

It was, as I said, the enterprising Marquis de la
Chetardie who opened for her a plausible path to
the throne. I would not stress her virtue in refus
ing to promise to yield Russian territory to Sweden.

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THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH

She knew, and the Marquis ought to have known,
that such a concession would have cost her the
throne. But she continued to negotiate with him,
and her French physician, Lestocq, assisted in the
plot. Count Ostermann, the wise old German
councillor who survived all revolutions at court,
suspected her, and she had to use strategy. Che-
tardie took a villa up the ISTeva, and Elizabeth was
fond of boating. She contrived to meet him
casually and discuss the plot. She had, further, a
few confidants at court, who were ready to specu
late on the chances of a revolution, and she had, es
pecially, the affection of the guards. Like her
mother she was amiable with the soldiers. She held
their children at the font and inquired genially
about their families. Ostermann, we saw, detected
the conspiracy, and Anne was directed to charge
her with treasonable relations with France and
Sweden, the enemies of Russia. The interview
ended in sisterly tears and embraces, and the con
spirators got speedily to work.

Ostermann, seeing the weakness of Anne, or
dered the guard to be ready to leave for the frontier
within twenty-four hours. It was probable, he
mendaciously said, that Sweden was about to re
open the war. He had recently quarrelled with
Elizabeth, and had no mind to see her Empress.
This was on December 5th, the day after her inter
view with Anne, That night at ten the eonspira-

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

tors met to decide upon immediate action. Lestocq,
the doctor, went out into the snow to see that all
lights were out at Ostermann's mansion and the
palace. They were as feeble a group of conspira
tors as ever engineered a revolution in Russia, and
Elizabeth wavered between dread of a convent and
eagerness for the throne. The most active and elo
quent of them was the French physician. Then
there were Vorontsoff, her chamberlain; Schwartz,
her music-master; the brothers Shuvaloff, gentle
men of her household; and Alexis Razuinovsky, her
lover at the time, of whom we will see more. They
raised Elizabeth's courage to the required pitch,
and Lestocq stealthily introduced twenty grena
diers of the guard who professed that they were
for a consideration ready to die for her. Eliza
beth donned a cuirass under her cloak and slung a
crucifix at her breast, and then, after a long and
fervent prayer, committed her fortunes to Provi
dence and the modest skill of her friends. Her
lover was left to guard the house.

At two in the morning the party passed swiftly
through the frozen streets to the Preobrajensky
barracks. A small crowd of about two hundred
soldiers gathered round Elizabeth and listened to
her appeal to support her, the daughter of Peter,
and exterminate the foreigners. They would cut
them to pieces, they assured her; and she had to
explain that she would have no bloodshed. Other

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THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH

soldiers joined them, and presently a troop of four
hundred inarched with her and her supporters to
the palace. It was the tamest revolution Russia
had yet seen. Ostermann, Golovkin, and the other
leading ministers were pinned into their mansions;
the few loyal guards at the palace were thrust aside;
and, as I said, Anne and Julia awoke to find Eliza
beth in their bedroom at the head of a crowd of
grenadiers.

Anne was not of the stuff of heroines. She
meekly begged Elizabeth to spare her family and
not take away her dear Julia, and she and her im
perial baby were put upon the sledge and driven
to Elizabeth's house. The blaze of fires in the
courtyards and noise of soldiers soon roused the
city, and courtiers and soldiers rushed out to study
the situation. It is said of Lacy, the Irish com
mander, that, when a friend asked him which party
he stood for, he promptly replied: "For the party
that is in power." Few were so candid in speech,
but all behaved alike. They rushed to take the new
oath of allegiance, and the Empress Elizabeth in
augurated her reign.

Elizabeth insisted that there should be no blood
shed, but what happened may give the true measure
of such advance as this indicated. Little Ivan and
his parents must, she said, receive a pension and
go back to Germany. Anne and Anthony, glad to
escape so lightly, started for the frontier, but a

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

courier reached them before they had left Russia,
and they were imprisoned at Riga. After a time
they were transferred, still prisoners, to Oranien-
baum. Whether Elizabeth was struggling with her
own glimmer of a conscience or with less humane
counsellors it would be difficult to say. She con
sulted everybody. Was her life really in danger, or
might she follow her impulse of humanity and let
the weak-minded couple depart? Humanity was
a new and rare thing in Russia.

In 1744, when Anne expected a third baby, the
deposed couple were, at the instigation of Fred
erick of Prussia, confined in the fortress of Schliis-
selburg, and four months later they were put upon
sledges and driven north. They were to be impris
oned in a monastery on an island near Archangel.
When, however, they reached Kholnagory, on the
coast, the state of the ice would not allow the
guards to take them to the island and they were
left in the village. There, on the bleak shore of
the Arctic, father and mother and five children
Anne added two to the family before she sickened
and died three years later lived and slept together
in a common Russian hut. The children grew up
feebler in mind and body even than their parents,
but Russia would have it that the pale-faced Ivan
was still the nucleus of a conspiracy. He was in
1756, in his thirteenth year, removed to a remote
dungeon, to await his murder under the reign of

210

THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH

Catherine. Prince Anthony was weak-minded
enough to survive the horrors for thirty years, and
his children were at length released by Catherine
and sent to live on a small pension in Denmark.

The "clemency" of Elizabeth of which the de
crees of the time speak was equally exhibited to
ward the surviving servants of her father and her
predecessor. Away with the Germans, was the
cry; and a few distinguished Russians were in
cluded in the batch of prisoners who now looked
forward to the customary reprisals. Old Oster-
mann, gouty and stoical, had fought Elizabeth, and
he knew that his forty years of sound service would
count for nothing. He was to be broken on the
wheel. Miinnich was to lose his hands and his head;
Golovkin his head; and so on. A vast crowd gath
ered in the square on January 29th to see the "trai
tors" butchered. At the last moment an order of
the Empress spared Ostermann the wheel and
changed the sentence to decapitation. The old man
moved toward the block, and a new order changed
the punishment to exile. He quietly asked for his
coat, and was packed off to the bleak northern
region to which he had once helped to send Men-
shikoff. The crowd murmured when fresh orders
from the Empress cheated them of the sight of
blood. Miinnich was sent to the spot the very
house in Siberia to which he had sent Biren, who
was summoned back to life. They met on the way,

211

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

in Siberia, and bowed; and the great soldier settled
down to rearing chickens and growing vegetables.
The others were scattered over the bleak north.
There had been no torture of witnesses though
much suborning of witnesses and no bloodshed.
Russia was improving.

While the goats were scattered, the sheep were
gathered on the right hand. Vorontsoff became a
leading minister, and his humble colleagues strutted
also in gold lace and silks. Lestocq, first physician
of the new court, was so richly rewarded with gold
and favour that he imagined himself the prime
spirit of the new regime, and will presently come
to grief. The Marquis de la Chetardie became a
saviour of Russia (which he would like to ruin in
the interest of France, and indeed expected to be
at least gravely weakened under the rule of Eliza
beth), and soldiers kissed his hand. The guards,
heavily rewarded, put on insufferable airs, and
wandered insolently about the palace as if they
were part owners of it. The state of the court was
chaotic, and foreign envoys sent word home that
Russia would sink back into barbarism.

The strange fortune of Alexis Razumovsky de
serves a paragraph, since it cannot have a chapter.
He was a tall, handsome Cossack, with fine black
eyes and eyebrows and a rich black beard; a man
in his thirty-fourth year when wealth and power
were tl^us thrust upon him. Twenty years earlier

212

' GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH '

he had been a guardian of his father's sheep and a
chorister in the church of the little Cossack village
where his mother kept an inn. An imperial courier,
passing through, had heard him sing, and had sent
him to SL Petersburg to be trained and then got
him a place in the choir of the imperial palace at
Moscow. He was then twenty-two, and Elizabeth
saw and appropriated him for her household. The
Marquis de la Chetardie says that one of her maids
first appropriated the handsome Cossack and Eliza
beth got the news from her. To tell all the legends
of the Russian court would need many volumes,
and would offend the taste of our polite age, but
no one seriously questions that Razumovsky took
the place of Elizabeth's latest lover whom Anne
had sent to Siberia.

At Elizabeth's accession he was made a Count
and a Field Marshal He was never spoiled by
prosperity "you may make me a Field Marshal/'
he said genially, "but you'll never make me a
soldier" and never interfered in politics. He took
his great wealth pleasantly and generously, and
drank royally. His brothers and relatives were
not by him, but by the Empress similarly en
riched, and even his old Cossack mother was
brought from her inn, richly dressed, and presented
at court. There was a story that the bewildered
woman took her own reflection in the glass for the
Empress and nervously curtsied to it; which would

" 213

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

not flatter Elizabeth, as she was still one of the
most handsome women of Russia.

Whether Elizabeth ever married Razumovsky
cannot be exactly determined. It is generally ac
cepted that she privately, at the instigation of her
confessor, married him in the fall of 1742. Eliza
beth openly doted on him and would always have
him with her. He kept his even temper when, in
her later years, she returned to her early license,
and lie was present at her death ; after which, it is
said, he was seen to burn a casket of papers which
may have included a wedding-certificate.

A still greater favourite, in a different way, was
Elizabeth's nephew, Karl Peter TJlrich, son of the
Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and Anne of Mecklen
burg, the elder daughter of Catherine and Peter.
His mother had died of consumption a few months
after his birth at Kiel, in 1728, and her sickly taint
was on the boy. He was mean in body, intellect
and character, and, as his father had died when
he was eleven, his education had been rough. Eliza
beth sent for him, gave him excellent tutors, and
completely spoiled what bit of manliness he had.
He was made a Grand Duke and heir to the throne
being the last male with any Romanoff blood
and, as he disliked the Empress's feminine circle,
he surrounded himself with Germans, affected a
contempt for Russia, and laughed at his aunt's
amours.

214

PAUL THE FIRST

THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH

But Elizabeth was very far from being a fool.
She adopted Peter in order to keep the crown in
her father's family, making, out of dynastic feel
ing, a mistake which wise men like Marcus Aurelins
had made. For the government of the country she
chose her men wel! 5 as a rule, and she tried to put
a stop to the disgraceful rivalry which had so often
rent the court. At first her chief ministers were
her Grand Chamberlain, Prince Tcherkasky, a cor
rupt old noble of the traditional school, and his son-
in-law Trubetskoi. But she saw the greater merit
of Michael BestuzheiF, the Grand Marshal of her
household, a grave and learned man, and his able
younger brother, Alexis, who was to become her
chief minister.

Elizabeth herself was lazy. She let documents
wait weeks for her signature and at ordinary times
paid little attention to affairs. Her more resolute
admirers say that she was so conscientious that she
took weeks to consider a matter. She was, in point
of fact, a thorough patriot, eager to maintain the
work of her father; but most of her time was spent
in the preservation of her health and beauty and
the satisfaction of her insatiable thirst for pleasure.
Her toilet took several hours every day, and it did
not generally begin before midday, as she was apt
to sit up with her intimate friends until the early
hours of the morning. It is said that she drank
heavily in her later years, but that is disputed. Her

215

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

chief passion was for dress and entertainment. In
a palace-fire she lost four thousand costly dresses,
yet there were fifteen thousand in her wardrobe
when she died. She had a large and opulent figure
a little too opulent as time went on a face with
few rivals in Russia, charming blue eyes and dark-
golden hair.

One of her characteristics was a love of dressing
as a soldier or sailor. She had good warrant for
this in the example of her parents; and, to say the
truth, she thought that no lady of her court could
match her in male dress. So fancy-balls became
very frequent, and Elizabeth, who was still fond
of dancing and hunting until she grew too heavy,
made a handsome Dutch sailor or colonel of the
guard. She would change her garments three times
in a ball; a dozen times in a day. Like Anne, she
set her face against the old Russian debauches, and
was for a French elegance, or a poor imitation of
it. Luxury of every kind she encouraged, until the
court shone with diamonds and gold brocade; and
for her operas singers were brought from the ends
of Europe. Reading was bad for the health, she
said, and she avoided it.

She was, and always had been, very pious. There
she differed emphatically from her father, and the
orthodox clergy fell furiously upon dissenters and
seceders. She observed the fasts rigorously, she
knelt in prayer until she fainted, and she had a

216

THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH

great veneration for the relics of the saints and
holy places. To the end she made pilgrimages
afoot to famous shrines like the Troitsa monastery*
In her youth she had made the journey in a day,
and had had a lover to meet her there. Now she
would walk out a few miles from Moscow the
court spent one year in four at Moscow then ride
back to the city, and begin her pilgrimage on the
morrow at the point where she had left it the day
before. It often took weeks to make a pilgrimage.
She insisted so closely on decency that one day, as
she prayed in church, it occurred to her that the
angels painted on the walls were really eupids, and
she had them repainted. Her own elderly gal
lantries we will see later.

With all this she, as I said, paid substantial at
tention to the interests of Russia. Sweden had col
lapsed in the late struggle, but Chetardie and
Lestocq were instructed to induce her to be gener
ous and give it some of the territory taken from it,
It is generally difficult to disentangle the action of
a sovereign from that of her advisers, and Eliza
beth may have more credit for firmness than she de
serves. She, at all events, refused, and the war
went on until Sweden was crushed. Russia kept a
large part of Finland. At last intercepted letters
made it plain to the Empress that the gallant
French marquis who bowed and flattered her was
really trying to injure Russia in the interest of his

217

THE ROMANCE OF THE BOMANOFFS

country, and lie had to go. She was, however, still
infatuated with France and her French doctor,
though Count Bestuzheff , who became her chief ad
viser, persistently warned her against France.
Lestocq, who took bribes from all Powers and
fancied himself a master of intrigue, now, with the
aid of the French minister, made a desperate at
tempt to win her

Elizabeth's chief rival in good looks was Natalia
Lapukhin, a noble lady of equal freedom in man
ners and morals who had viciously tormented Eliza
beth when she was the Cinderella of the court. To
her surprise she had been, at the coronation, made
a Lady in Waiting. But she remained insolent,
and at a ball she appeared in a pink robe and with
pink roses in her hair ; and pink was understood to
be an imperial monopoly at Elizabeth's court.
Elizabeth's temper was much shorter than her
prayers. Many a maid got the heavy imperial slip
per across her mouth for talking when the Empress
dozed on her couch, and her language at times re
sembled that of the guards. She had a buffoon
cruelly tortured for playing a trick which fright
ened and upset her. She now fell furiously upon
the audacious Lady in Waiting. She sent for scis
sors, made her kneel while she cut off the roses (and
hair along with them) , and cuffed her twice across
the face. "Serves her right/ 5 she said, when they
told her that the countess had fainted. To her bosom

218

THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH

friend, the Countess Bestuzheva, wife of the elder
Bestuzheff, Xatalia often told what she thought of
the Empress, and in both families the talk over tea
was mildly seditious. Lestocq got his agents to

ply Natalia's son, young Colonel Lapukhin, with
drink and learn it.

And on July 21st, 174*8, the physician rushed to
the palace with a report of a conspiracy. Elizabeth
lived in daily dread of a conspiracy, knowing how
easy such things were in Russia. She cowered be
hind a hedge of soldiers and let Lestocq arrest
whom he would. She had humanely abolished tor
ture and the death-sentence; but this was a differ
ent matter. ISTatalia and her husband and a score
of others were imprisoned, and the old torture-
chambers rang again with the shrieks of delicate
women whose limbs were stretched until they
cracked. It is said, but Is difficult to believe, that
Elizabeth was secretly at hand to hear their con
fessions. There was, in fact, no conspiracy to con
fess, but Lestocq was one of the three commis
sioners appointed to examine the prisoners, and
Elizabeth was stung by the table-talk that was
wrung from them. One of the women was preg
nant, and the Empress was asked to spare her the
torture. "She did not spare me," said the daughter
of Peter the Great.

They were all condemned to death. For ten
days Elizabeth lingered over the sentence, but in

219

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

the end, she observed her own decree. She com
muted the sentence to exile, flogging, and muti
lation. Natalia Lapukhin, a beautiful woman in
the prime of life, was partly stripped before an
immense crowd, and brutally knouted. She sank,
covered with blood, to the floor of the scaffold, and
the executioner roughly finished his work, and, with
a brutal laugh, offered to sell her tongue to the high
est bidder. Countess Bestuzheva slipped a bribe
into the man's hands. The lash fell less heavily on
her white back, and less of her tongue was cut out.
The mutilated wretches weixt the worn way to
Siberia and the north. Count Michael Bestuzheff,
who was innocent^ was despatched on a foreign
embassy. Alexis, at whom the French had chiefly
aimed, was untouched. He was astute as well as
able.

At the end of the year Elizabeth transferred the
court to Moscow and prepared it for a new sensa
tion. She had chosen a bride, or a girl to be trained
as bride, for her wastrel of a nephew. After her
weakness for France, which was then a deadly rival
of Russia, came a weakness for Frederick the
Great, who was far more cynical and crafty in his
professions of friendship and determination to sac
rifice Russia's interests to his own. He flattered
Elizabeth, and laughed at her. Hearing that there
was question of a future Empress, he strongly
recommended the daughter of the Prince of An-

220

THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH

halt-Zerbst, one of his own generals. A courier
sped to the little court where Sophia Augusta
Frederika lived quietly with her mother, and that
lady, a remarkably ambitious person for her sta
tion in life, hurried to St. Petersburg, and on to
Moscow. Both Peter and Elizabeth were inde
cently impatient to see the bride-elect, and they
professed themselves entirely satisfied with the
quick-eyed, precocious maiden of fourteen who
would one day be Catherine the Great.

Sophia and her mother were lodged in the Kreml,
and the work of preparation began. The young
princess soon realised her destiny and determined
not to spoil it. But she had three near misses with
in a year. She worked so hard at the Russian that
she would get up during the night and pace the
room, repeating her lessons, in bare feet; and she
caught pneumonia and nearly died a few weeks
after her arrival. Incidentally she won the Em
press's favour completely. In the hour of danger
they asked if she would see her Lutheran pastor.
No, she said, the Russian priest; and the rumour
of her piety, which she afterwards said was
really policy, spread through the court. She was
received Into the Russian Church in July, and sol
emnly betrothed to Peter. Then Peter had the
smallpox and nearly died; and In fine her mother
nearly spoiled her prospect. She had come with
secret instructions from Frederick of Prussia* and*

221

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

like a good German, she stealthily pushed his in*
terest. The inquiry into the supposed Bestuzheff
plot exposed her, and she retired to her obscure
province. But Elizabeth liked her daughter, and
Catherine her name was changed on entering the
Orthodox Church remained, and married Peter
in the following year*

The years that followed were filled with Euro
pean struggle, which does not much concern us
here. The capture of the letters of Chetardie ex
posed the machinations of both France and Prus
sia. Elizabeth found herself described as living in
a state of "voluptuous lethargy," and her passion
for France and Frederick suddenly chilled. Alexis
Bestuzheff became her chief counsellor, and in
clined her toward England and Austria. The
court was honeycombed by intrigue, and even the
favourite, Lestocq, was at length (1748) detected
in his treachery. He was put to the torture and
banished.

Elizabeth was not long drawn out of her "volup
tuous lethargy." In fact, the attainment of mid
dle age seemed to bring back the looseness of her
youth, and her lovers were the jest of the courts of
Europe. One of her pages, Ivan Shuvaloff, was
promoted and placed in apartments near those
of the Empress. Ivan took his good fortune
modestly, but the customary tribe of relatives ap
peared and blossomed into wealthy and influential

222

THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH

courtiers. Count BestuzheiF and others were
alarmed, and they put in the way of the Empress
a very handsome young amateur actor named Bek-
etoff, Elizabeth genially added the youth to the
intimate circle which caroused in her room at night,
hut Peter Shuvaloff, uncle of the earlier favourite,
did not like the prospect. The more credible
version of his action is that he met young Beketoif
one day, and, impressing upon him how much the
Empress liked to see her favourites fresh and
healthy, gave him a box of ointment for his face.
There was in the stuff something which caused an
eruption of the skin, and his condition was repre
sented to the Empress in such a light that he fled.

It should be added that she still guarded the
propriety of her subjects. The elder Count Bes~
tuzheff held that his wife's crime had dissolved his
marriage, and he wished to take a second wife.
Elizabeth sternly refused to consent, holding that
marriage was indissoluble. When the desper'ate
Count did at length marry she refused to receive
his "paramour" at court.

In many other respects she tried to continue the
process of cleaning the face of Russia. At first
she had undone her father's control of the monks,
and let them gather enormous wealth. As the
needs of war pressed on her, she revoked this and
checked them. She endeavoured also to check the
irregularities and dispel the ignorance of the secu-

223

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

lar clergy. Wandering priests would gather in the
streets of Moscow and importune passers-by to
give them the price of a mass. Some are said to
have held a crust in their hands, and threatened to
eat (which would make them unable to say mass
that day) , unless a man offered his purse. Eliza
beth set the bishops to remove these and other ir
regularities. She promoted letters, since it was the
proper thing for an enlightened monarch to do, and-'
her ministers attempted to improve trade and agri
culture. Agricultural bants were opened; indus
tries were protected; mines were sunk; Siberia
and the southern steppes were partly colonised. It
was forbidden for men and women to mix in the
public baths. These were, on the whole, slight im
provements of a terribly backward* country. Ig
norance, violence, drunkenness, dishonesty in trade,
official corruption, brigandage, listlessness, and idle
ness were still general.

The later years of the reign were filled with the
inevitable Prussian war. After years of diplomatic
struggle Elizabeth, in 1756, concluded an alliance
with England. To her great disgust, and Bes-
tuzheff's grave danger, England then formed an
alliance with Frederick, and the French redoubled
their efforts to oust Bestuzheff and receive the
friendship of Russia. By this time the Princess
Catherine openly disdained her husband and went
her own way. For years the Empress, eager to

224

THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH

see an heir to the throne she would leave to Peter,
tried to bring them together, but each hated the
other, and Catherine found consolation elsewhere.
In 1754, however, Catherine had a son who was
presumed to be a Romanoff. Elizabeth fell ill, and
Bestuzheff, believing that she would die, ap
proached Catherine, through her latest lover,
Poniatowski, and suggested that he could make
her Empress if she would support his anti-French
and anti-Prussian policy.

Elizabeth recovered, however, and declared that
the good of the world demanded the destruction of
Frederick of Prussia, who had said caustic things
about her. The Seven Years 5 War opened, and
Russia joined France and Austria against Prussia.
The Russian army under General Apraksin won
a great victory, and then, instead of pressing it,
retired. Now this coincided with a second serious
illness of the Empress, and the French envoy raised
a cry of treachery. Vorontsoff, who waited im
patiently for the official shoes of Count Bestuzheff,
and hated Catherine, joined the French in demand
ing an inquiry. Bestuzheff 's papers were searched,
and it was found that he had been in communica
tion with Catherine. A plot was easily constructed
out of this material. Bestuzheff was to raise Cath
erine's baby to the throne and make her Regent;
and Apraksin's troops were withdrawn toward the
capital for the event of the death of Elizabeth.

225

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Catherine in later years looked back with a shud
der upon that critical time. Bestuzheff contrived to
send her word that he had burned her letters, and
there was no danger, but she saw a very serious
danger. She wrote to Elizabeth, and for weeks she
received no answer. At last she was summoned to
the Empress's room. Her enemy, Alexis Shuva-
loff, was with the Empress; her husband, another
enemy, waited in the room; and on the table she
saw letters that she had written to Apraksin. They
were innocent letters, but what right had she to
communicate with commanders in the field, as if
she were already Empress? With tears and pray
ers she mollified the angry Empress, and her ene
mies were beaten. Apraksin died of apoplexy, and
Bestuzheff was compelled to retire to his estates.

For the brief remainder of the reign of the Em
press Elizabeth Catherine went warily. Elizabeth,
who was little beyond her fiftieth birthday, would
not control her appetites, and her health slowly
departed. She became a chronic invalid and would
lie for hours on a couch admiring the little babe,
Paul, who would carry on the line of the Roma
noffs. Some misgiving in regard to the future
seemed to trouble her. Peter, though a Romanoff,
was emphatically a brutal German. He lived in
an entirely German atmosphere; an atmosphere of
smoke and beer-fumes and Teutonic disdain of
everything Russian. Catherine, on the other hand,

226

THE GAY AND PIOUS ELIZABETH

had developed into a thorough Russian. Her
strong sense and feeling of policy told her to eradi
cate all Germanism from her composition and
wholly transnational herself. Peter had an im
mense admiration of Prussia and Frederick, while
Catherine was a Russian patriot.

And Elizabeth hated Prussia. Throughout her
last years she kept alive the League against Fred
erick and spurred her generals in the struggle.
Frederick sought peace, and she refused it. France
and Austria became faint under their efforts and
sacrifices, and she lashed them to the task. All
through the year 1761 her strength ebbed, and she
saw Frederick sinking from defeat to defeat.
Would death spare her to see Prussia crushed?
Would that unhappy nephew take over her power
before her work was completed, and spare his idol?
Her own ministers drooped, and her resources wore
thin, but she cried for decisive and utter victory.
In December a fit of coughing brought on hemor
rhage, and she entered the last stage. She died on
January llth, 1762, in the fifty-third year of her
age, not the least picturesque figure of the Roma
noff gallery of monarchs.

227.

CHAPTER XI

CATHERINE THE GREAT

WAUSZHEWSKI, a vivid historical writer who has
covered nearly the whole period of the dynasty,
calls the Empress Elizabeth "the last of the Ro
manoffs." If every rumour of those gossipy days
were admitted, few genealogical trees of the Rus
sian aristocracy would hold good. There have not
been wanting historians who have claimed that
Catherine the Great was a natural daughter of
Frederick the Great; and a grave writer has said
of Catherine's son, Paul, that the only ground for
regarding him as the son of Peter III is his re
semblance to that monarch. We may assume that
Peter, who now peacefully ascended the throne
and continued the dynasty, was the grandson of
Peter the Great, the son of his daughter Anne.

It is, however, true that the moral physiognomy
of the Romanoffs changes with Peter III, and it
is not clear how a German father and a few years
of early life in Germany could so thoroughly Teu-
tonise his blood. We must, of course, not forget
that most of what we read about him was written

228

CATHERINE THE GREAT

by his wife or by other enemies. Mr. Bain refuses
to believe that he was brutal to Catherine, as she
says. At his accession he paid her heavy debts and
settled upon her the large domains of the late Em
press. His unfaithfulness to her was at least bal
anced by her own vagaries. She, a German, took
the throne from him, and she was bound to make a
dark case against him in order to justify her usur
pation. They were, at all events, as ill-assorted a
pair as ever mounted a throne, and every informed
person in Europe wondered what would be the is
sue, and was prepared for another revolution.

We have seen a little about their earlier years.
Elizabeth drew them in their childhood from Ger
many, changed their religion, and appointed tutors
to prepare them for the throne. Catherine pre
pared very diligently, but Peter went in a precisely
opposite direction. While Catherine steeped her
self in the Russian spirit, he remained German,
looked with contempt upon Russian ways, and sur
rounded himself with foreigners. He had the vices,
without the good qualities, of the Romanoffs. He
drank heavily, was boorish to those about him, and
lived loosely. Catherine tells a story which is a
cameo of life at the court, if so sordid a sketch may
be compared with a work of art. Empress Eliza
beth's private room, in which the little suppers of
the later part of her reign were held, was separated
only by a door from one of Peter's rooms. The

229

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

noise he heard in it at nights piqued him, and he
bored holes in the door, and found Elizabeth, lightly
dressed, carousing with her lover and a few intimate
courtiers. He called Catherine, who (she says)
refused to peep, and then he called a bunch of ladies
of their court to come and enjoy the spectacle.
Catherine pictures him keeping dogs in their bed
room and coming to bed, very drunk, in the early
morning to kick and pummel her.

There can be little doubt that the young prince
was coarse, violent, and drunken; and Catherine
hated his insipid, pock-marked face and boorish
ways. Long before the death of Elizabeth she
took a lover, Sergius Saltykoff, a handsome young
fellow of Peter's suite. Bestuzheff sent Sergius
on a mission abroad, but his place was soon taken
by a handsome young Pole, Count Poniatovski. In
the meantime, Catherine had given birth to her
son Paul, and the genuineness of the claim of the
later Tsars to be considered Romanoffs hangs upon
the very slender thread of Catherine's morals.
Saltykoff was at the time generally regarded as
the father. The boy, however, grew up to resem
ble Peter, morally and physically, so closely that
historians now generally consider him a son of
Peter. It looks as if Catherine, to save her posi
tion with Elizabeth, who pressed for an heir, reluct
antly consented to provide one. Legend has it that
the court deliberately instructed her to have a child

230

CATHERINE THE GREAT

by her lover If she could not be reconciled to her
husband. Catherine tells us that, when the child
waJs born, Elizabeth sent her a present of fifty thou
sand dollars, and that Peter got the draft cancelled.
It is sometimes said that PoniatovskI, who is de
scribed as being put in Catherine's way by politi
cal schemers, was detected by Peter and fled to es
cape a whipping. The legend really runs that he
was held up by Peter's servants, as he left the pal
ace, and brought before Peter. He was a youth
of twenty-two, of no courage, and he expected a
whipping, but Peter laughed at his fright. Peter's
mistress at the time, and until his death, was Eliza
beth Vorontsoff, niece of a great noble of the
court; a very plain and insignificant little woman
whom Catherine disdained to notice. The prince
felt that he could now force Catherine to be cour
teous to his mistress, and It is said that he arranged
suppers for the quartet. The Empress, however,
heard of the liaison, and Ponlatovski had to go.
Catherine had a second child, Anna, in 1758, who
Is believed to be the daughter of the Pole, The
court was by this time, we saw, thoroughly demor
alised, as all knew that the Empress herself ca
roused at night, and Catherine cast aside all pre
tence of propriety. At the time of the Empress's
death her lover was Gregory Orloff, a very dashing
young officer: a young man of superb and colossal

231

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

frame, of features that fascinated women and of
the time-honoured habits of dissipation.

If we are to understand the character of Cath
erine, we must endeavour to regard these irregu
larities with her eyes. It is sheer nonsense to seek
to put her on a moral level with Elizabeth or any
other aristocratic Russian dame who mingled
amours with prayers, and equally venerated monks
and lovers. Catherine had not the least inner re
spect for the Russian Church, or any branch of
the Christian Church, and its ideals. For political
reasons she conformed outwardly, but it is difficult
to find that she had more than a vague and not very
serious deism. She read and corresponded with
the French "philosophers," and in her letters to
them (when she became her own mistress) she ridi
culed the "mummeries" of the priests. "I con
gratulate myself that I am one of the imbeciles
who believe in God," is the extent of her profession
of faith. She did not respect the authority and
ideals of the Church, and so she regarded herself
as free. These irregularities need not in them
selves be considered inconsistent with her title of
"the Great"

Liberal writers express some surprise that her
lovers were never more than handsome and sensual
blockheads. We shall see that Orloff, little intelli
gence as he had, could work for her, but that she
probably never weighed. She was a woman of high

232

CATHERINE THE GREAT

intelligence and self -confidence. She chose minis
ters to do work and lovers only for enjoyment.
There is no psychological mystery in such an at
titude.

When Peter ascended the throne he surprised
all by his policy of conciliation. He issued an am
nesty, and from all the frozen recesses of the Em
pire came the victims the sobered Lestocq, old
Marshal Miinxdeh, Julia Mengden and her sister,
the Birens, and so on of the earlier revolutions.
Then he set himself to conciliate his subjects. Peter
the Great had forced education and public service
upon the reluctant nobles: Peter the Little re
moved the compulsion, flatteringly observing that
it was no longer necessary. Peter the Great had
created a secret police which had ruled the aristoc
racy by terror and corruption: Peter III abol
ished it. Peter the Great had put crushing taxes
upon peasants and dissenters: Peter III relieved
them, and, caring nothing about Russian ortho
doxy, favoured the industrious dissenters. He
abolished the corporal punishment of officers; he
confiscated the wealth of the clergy and the monks,
making them an annual allowance; he bade the
monks educate themselves, and forbade them to
take young novices.

But these reforms angered one very powerful
class the clergy and the monks and Peter went
on to alienate the army. He despised everything

233

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Russian. Elizabeth had given him the palace (built
by MenshikofF) of Oranienbaum, about twenty-
seven miles from St. Petersburg, and there he had
established a few companies of Holstein soldiers,
the nucleus or model of his future army. He fan
cied himself a soldier, and spent his time there as
Peter had spent his at Preobrajenshote. After his
accession he announced that the army was to be
Germanised. ]\ T ew uniforms were provided. Old
regiments were threatened with extinction. What
was worse, he made peace with Frederick of Prus
sia, who might now have been utterly crushed, and
held up that monarch to Russia as a model king
and soldier.

To Catherine he was at first, as I said, generous,
but serious rumours got about that he intended to
send her into a convent and marry his Vorontsoff.
At a public and important banquet he is said to have
insulted her, calling across the table that she was
"a fool." In short, he put together an admirable
collection of combustible material, and he was sur
prised when the flame of revolution burst forth.

How it was arranged is not very clear, as Cath
erine afterwards claimed the entire merit, yet a
dozen others claimed the merit and the reward.
As far as one can judge, Catherine was nervous
and did little. Gregory Orloff and his brothers had
not so clear a vision of the possibilities, in case of
failure, and they worked zealously. Catherine's

234

CATHERINE THE GREAT

little friend, Princess Dashkoff, a very romantic
young lady who read Voltaire and Diderot and
had great ideas, claims that she -did more than any
body; she clearly helped to buy or convert sup
porters. The French agents found money, the sol
diers were secretly canvassed, and the growing dis
content with the Emperor was carefully nourished.
A statesman, Panin, was more or less won: some
say at the cost of the virtue of Princess Dashkoff,
Catherine herself had, about this time (April,
1762), a third child, who was quite acknowledged
to be the son of Orloff.

The last blunder of Peter was that, after mak
ing an ignominious peace w r ith Prussia, he wanted
to make war upon the Danes for his little princi
pality of Holstein. On June 24th he went, with
Elizabeth, to Oranienbaum, and ordered Catherine,
whom he refused to regard as a serious danger, to
the palace of Peterhof. The Emperor's name-
day feast fell on July 10th, and he sent word that
he would spend it with Catherine at Peterhof. He
arrived there on July 9th, to find that Catherine
had fled, with one of the Orloff s, in the early morn
ing; and before many hours he learned that the
capital was taking the oath of allegiance to her.

On the previous evening one of the chief con
spirators, Captain Passek, had been arrested, and
Gregory Orloff had been kept under observation
by an agent carousing and playing cards with him

235

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

all night. Princess Dashkoff says that she ran
about, stirring the conspirators, and saved the situ
ation. At all events Alexis Orloff rushed into
Catherine's bedroom, at Peterhof, at five in the
morning, and urged her to come to St. Petersburg
and begin the revolt at once. They arrived at the
barracks of the most reliable regiment at seven, and
roused the soldiers. There were soon a copious
supply of brandy and shouts of "Long Live the
Empress." Catherine went to the Winter Palace,
and courtiers stumbled over each other in their
eagerness to offer allegiance. Catherine mali
ciously says that Princess Dashkoff was one of the
last to arrive. The soldiers cast off their new Ger
man uniforms, and begged to be led against those
accursed Holsteiners of Peter's; and Catherine
she and the little, snub-nosed Dashkoff dressed as
officers led twenty thousand men to Oranienbaum.
Peter had sent for his Holstein guards and
loudly protested that he would fight. As the news
from the capital trickled in, however, he changed
his mind and took boat to Kronstadt. It is said
that when the sentinel, in the dark, challenged him,
and was told that he was the Emperor, the man
said; "Go away; there is no Emperor." He re
turned, shaking with fear, to Oranienbaum, and
offered to share his throne with Catherine. She
contemptuously refused that dangerous half -meas
ure. Peter, weeping like a child, and begging that

236

CATHERINE THE GREAT

4-

they would not separate him from Elizabeth, ab
dicated, and was sent into the country about
twenty miles away. Elizabeth Vorontsoff was sent
to Moscow.

What precisely happened to Peter III is one of
the many dark mysteries of the romance of the Ro-%
manoffs. Five days later Catherine coldly an
nounced that the late Emperor had died of a colic
which had sent a fatal flow of blood to his brain.
There is a rumour that he was poisoned. There is
another rumour, which is generally accepted, that
Alexis Orloff, who conducted him to Ropcha,
strangled him; and there is no evidence whether
Catherine was or was not (as is generally believed)
a party to the murder.

There were the usual sunny days for all who had
assisted in the revolution* In three months nearly
half a million dollars in money, and great gifts of
land and serfs, were showered upon the new court-
Many of the courtiers, however, did not long en
joy favour. In 1768, when Catherine had gone to
Moscow for her coronation, a certain Feodor
Hitrovo was arrested for treason, For some time
there had been rumours of plots to put Ivan V, the
son of Anne and Anthony whom Elizabeth had
displaced, back upon the throne. Peter III had
brought the poor youth, now almost an idiot, to St.
Petersburg, and Catherine had confined him in the
fortress of Schliisselburg. The latest rumour in

237

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

the capital was that Catherine was to wed Oiioff,
and that the jealous courtiers were determined to
prevent her or to kill Orloff. Whether there was
a plot or no, it is clear that the promotion of the
Orloffs had caused grave murmurs. Princess
Dashkoff , Panin, Captain Passek, and other con
spirators of 1762, were, to their mighty indignation,
arrested on suspicion of treason. They were re
leased, but their term of favour was from that mo
ment clouded.

Another of the blots on Catherine's reign, or one
of those dark tragedies into which the historian can
not penetrate, occurred in the following year. The
unfortunate Prince Ivan was killed in prison. An
officer of the garrison named Mirovitch plotted to
release him, and it is said that his guardians, who
had orders to despatch him in case of a dangerous
effort to free him, carried out that instruction.
Mirovitch was executed, but it was remarked that
there was no inquiry, and there was not the custo
mary punishment of the relatives of the executed
criminal. It seems, however, absurd to suppose
that Mirovitch was hired to give the opportunity
of killing Ivan. History, again, gives Catherine
a not very cheerful verdict of "not proven."

These early threats or suspicions of revolt were
attributed by Catherine to the traditional discon
tent and ambition of courtiers who were ever ready
to create a new throne for their own profit. But

238

CATHERINE THE GREAT

she saw clearly enough the miserable condition of
the country at large, and she opened her reign with
a determination to apply the remedy prescribed by
the liberal and humane principles of her French
teachers. There must be education, and in 1764
she issued an instruction to the authorities who
were to take up that work. Her own ideas were
necessarily vague and unscientific, and she soon
found herself confronted by the traditional diffi
culties: a massive and general ignorance so dense
that it did not want education, a shortage of funds,
and a corrupt and listless body of officials, A
number of technical and normal schools in all
about 200 schools were founded, and at St. Pe
tersburg Catherine established a large and admi
rable school for girls, but her vague general scheme
came to naught. Russia lingered on in the darkness
of the Middle Ages.

The reform of law and justice was the next great
need. Catherine eagerly devoured the writings of
such reformers as Montesquieu and Beccaria, and
in 1767 she issued an instruction which was so lib
eral that it was not permitted to appear in French.
It abounds in humane reflections which illustrate
the soundness of her attitude as a ruler in her ear
lier years. "The laws must see that the serfs are
not left to themselves in their old age and illness,"
she said; and "The people are not created for us,

239

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

but we for the people." She laid it down, vaguely,
that "the rich must not oppress the poor/' and
"every man must have food and clothing accord
ing to his condition." There were even echoes of
the new French words, liberty and equality. The
torture of witnesses was described as a barbaric
practice. Sentence of death must be imposed only
in the case of political offenders.

Little came of her large scheme of reform. A
Legislative Assembly, drawn from all ranks of the
people, met in 1767 to give definite shape to her
ideals, but its two hundred sittings ended in futile
disagreement. No one wished to better the con
dition of the serfs at the expense of the landowners,
and Catherine partly undid with one hand what she
did for them with the other. The serfs of the ec
clesiastical estates, which she secularised, were
set on the way to freedom, and Catherine the
oretically wanted to see the end of a virtual
slavery which was inconsistent with her philoso
phy. But she herself gave enormous estates, with
tens of thousands of serfs, to her favourites,
and she knew that human beings who were
transferred like cattle were treated like cattle. In
her reign the Countess Daria Saltykoff had to be
imprisoned for barbarously causing the death of a
hundred and thirty-eight of her serfs. They were
still bought and sold as blacks were in America, and
their proprietors could for slight causes send them

240

CATHERINE II

CATHERINE THE GREAT

to Siberia. The great mass of the Russian people
lived in this state of degradation.

Catherine's strong will nearly always failed be
fore an internal problem of this kind 8 The nobles
triumphed, and Russia remained in darkness and
chains. In her later years, when her early benevo
lent despotism had given place to a fierce hatred of
democracy, she persuaded herself that her people
were better off than most of the peoples of Europe,
She clung, however, to other parts of her pro
gramme of reform. Few were knouted, and no
other torture was permitted in her reign; and she
boasted that she never signed a sentence of death.
Men were, nevertheless, put to death, as we shall
see ; and it was commonly said that the secret police
were merely replaced by Her mysterious official,
Tchechkoffski, who suavely invited suspected folk
to his house. It was believed that the chair on which
his visitor sat sank below the floor, leaving only the
man's face invisible to the servants in the joom be
low who applied torture to his limbs.

While Catherine pursued these and other designs
of reform, which we will consider later, her prodi
gality toward her favourites caused much murmur
ing, and to this grievance she added the costly 'bur
den of war. It is clear that in her early years she
trusted to remain at peace, and had no thought of
the enlargement of the country. But the greed
of Frederick the Great now turned upon the de-

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

caying kingdom of Poland, and, to obtain his large
share, he had to invite the participation of Russia
in the plunder. Catherine, we saw, had hated Fred
erick, her husband's idol. It is said that amongst
her husband's papers she found a letter in which
Frederick spoke flatteringly of her, and she began
to turn to him. She did, at all events, change her
attitude, and share with him in the historic crime
which is known as the partition of Poland. She
joined Frederick in imposing upon the Poles her
old lover, Poniatovski, and her armies went to the
support of his rule against the rebellion which fol
lowed.

France and Austria were now opposed to Russia
and Prussia, and France resorted to the familiar
stratagem of inciting Turkey to attack Russia.
Catherine, whose energy was now fully roused,
spurred her generals to meet the Turks. They
took the Crimea and a large part of the Slav do
minions of the Turk, but Austria now threatened
to oppose the southward expansion of Russia and
suggested that compensation should be sought in
Poland. The first partition took place in 1771, and
Catherine secured "White Russia," with a popula
tion of 1,600,000 souls. Turkey, in turn, was
forced to surrender the Crimea, pay a large indem
nity, and open the Dardanelles to Russian ships
and the Ottoman Empire to Russian trade.

But the burden of the war had fallen, as usual,

242

CATHERINE THE GREAT

upon the impoverished people, and murmurs rum
bled from one end of Russia to the other. The
plague broke out at Moscow, and tens of thousands
died. The country seethed with discontent, and it
chanced that at that moment a figure appeared
round which the discontent might crystallise. A
Cossack named Pugatcheff claimed that he was the
Empress's husband, Peter III, who was supposed
to have been murdered at Ropeha, and his little
troop quickly grew into a formidable and devasta
ting army. Soldiers sent against him enlisted under
his banner; brigands, barbarians, and Poles joined
in his campaign of loot and slaughter; an immense
area of the country was captured or laid waste by
him. The revolt went on for four years, when Pu-
gatcheff was captured and beheaded. From that
date Catherine's zeal for "the people" abated; and
it was with some recollection of this that she in a
later year put an end for ever to the power and
remaining independence of the Cossacks.

The Empress, nevertheless, continued her work
of reform. Official and judicial corruption was as
rife as ever, and she retraced more practically the
spheres of jurisdiction, and separated the admin
istrative from the judiciary officers. Like Peter
(though unlike him in her extravagant liberality
to favourites, which increased the evil) she hated
and sternly prosecuted official corruption. Her
scheme, both of administration and of the dispens-

248

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

ing of justice, was a great reform, embracing every
class of her people, if we take a liberal view of the
little she did for the serfs. She encouraged agri
culture and industry, made wise efforts to ensure
the colonisation of the fertile steppes of the south
which she had acquired, founded about two hun
dred new towns, and secularised (with just com
pensation) the enormous property of the clergy
and the monks. She pressed the introduction of
medical service, in order to combat the appalling
death-rate of the prolific people, and boldly sub
mitted to vaccination and imposed it upon her
people. Her philanthropic institutions included a
school for nearly 500 girls and a large Foundling
Hospital which, during her reign, received forty
thousand children. In reforming the terribly loose
fiscal system she made notable improvements and
raised the national revenue from ten to eighty mil
lion roubles; but the increasing extravagance of
her court made a mockery of her financial reforms.
In fine, as is well known, she corresponded with
Voltaire and the other leading French thinkers,
and made strenuous efforts, in her earlier years, to
arouse a corresponding culture in Russia. Her let
ters to Voltaire are now believed to have been
written, at least in part, by Alexis Shuvaloff, and
one cannot say, nor would one expect, that her
genuine letters and other writings indicate any

244

CATHERINE THE GREAT

great literary skill; though her constant humour
and vivacious personality make them good reading.
She purchased the libraries of Voltaire and Diderot,
and made famous collections of works of art, rather
because it was the part of a great monarch to pat
ronise art than from any personal taste. To Rus
sian art and science, apart from (to some extent)
letters and history, she gave no impulse; and her
own "discoveries" in the field of science were ami
able nonsense. However, the great literary output
which she stimulated, the foundation of an Acad
emy (on the Parisian model) at St. Petersburg,
and the encouragement of the theatre must be
counted amongst her untiring efforts to educate
Russia. How the French Revolution checked her
ardour, and turned her love of France into hatred,
we shall see later.

This programme of work, which I am compelled
to compress into a few paragraphs, fairly entitles
Catherine, when we take its results in conjunction
with her extension of her Empire, to the epithet
of "the Great.'* That sfie chose men of ability to
carry out her will, even to assist her in making
plans, goes without saying; but she paid close and
industrious attention to all that was done, and she
fierily resented the obstacles to the complete reali
sation of her scheme. I have doubted if the mod
ern spirit can grant Peter the title of "the Great"
for two reasons: first, because of features of his

245

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

character which we must describe as brutal; sec
ondly, because of the vagueness and casualness of
many of Ms plans and the lack of obstinacy in real
ising them. Catherine was far from brutal. Her
character had defects, which we will consider, but
they are not such as to make us refuse her the
homage her work deserves. That, on the other
hand, her plans were imperfect, inadequate to the
vast need, often sketchy and not enforced with mas
culine stubbornness, we must admit; but she was a
great ruler. Let us complete her work before we
regard the personal features that lower her prestige.

The Crimea, now part of Russia, remained in a
state of constant disorder, and this became at
length an open revolt. Catherine suppressed the
rebellion, and a few years later Turkey was induced
to relinquish all claim to the old Tatar principality.
Catherine was now supremely eager for a further
extension toward the blue waters of the Mediter
ranean, the immovable goal of all Russian policy.
She suggested to the Austrian Emperor, with
whom she was now on excellent terms, that Turkey
should be dismembered. Austria should take the
nearer provinces; a new kingdom of Dacia should
be founded, recognising the Orthodox Church; and
the Greek Empire should be revived and extended
so as to embrace Constantinople. Her grandson
Constantine was to be the first Greek Emperor.

Austria accepted the scheme, and Russian agents

246

CATHERINE THE GREAT

were sent to agitate in the Slav provinces of Tur
key. In 1787 Catherine herself made an imposing
journey in the south. Turkey clearly saw the
threat to its Empire, and in 1787 it declared war.
Potiamkin, Catherine's favourite at the time, was
entrusted with the supreme command, and marched
south. Then the ever-ready Swede fell upon the
flank of Russia, and Catherine, who could from St.
Petersburg hear the roar of the Swedish guns on
the Baltic, had a momentary fright. She called up
all her energy and stirred her commanders, and in
the following year she had peace with Sweden and
was free to attack Turkey, in conjunction with the
Austrians. The details do not concern us. The
war lasted five years, and a little more of the coast
of the Black Sea was brought within the Russian
Empire. It may be added, briefly, that continued
internal trouble in Poland, of which Catherine took
as mean an advantage as any, led to the second and
third partitions of that country. Poland ceased to
exist ; the once great kingdom, ruined by the quar
rels and obstinate conservatism of its nobles, was
divided between Russia, Prussia, and Austria.

The vast addition to her territory which Catherine
obtained from the spoils of Poland will not be re
garded by the modern mind as a title to glory.
More creditable was the wresting of territory from
the Turks, but her chief merit lies in the reform-

247

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

edicts (she counted 211 of her ukases under that
head) with which she sought to uplift Russia.
Against this we have her personal repute as it is
given in many historians. There were those at the
time who called her "the Messalina of the north,"
and writers on her still differ in their estimate of
her moral personality.

That she was, in the narrow sense of the word,
flagrantly immoral no one questions. We may re
call that Europe at large was still very far from the
standard of these matters which adorns our genera
tion. Paris under Louis XV 3 or the Directorate,
or even Napoleon; London under the Georges;
even Rome under the Popes of the period would
not pass modern scrutiny. Russia was a little more
mediaeval than the others, and Catherine inherited
a court in which an Empress of advanced years and
conspicuous piety had given an example of wild
debauch. To a woman of Catherine's views and
strong personality there would seem to be no rea
son for restraint; and she observed none.

We have seen her early lovers, and I do not in
tend to examine the lengthy gallery with any mi
nuteness. Gregory Orloff, an indolent and very
sensuous Adonis, enjoyed her extravagant favour
until 1772. His three brothers and he cost her, in
those few years, about nine million dollars. In
1772 she sent Orloff on a mission to the Turks, and
during his absence another mere sensualist, Vas-

248

CATHERINE THE GREAT

siltchikoff, earned her favour, Gregory heard it,
and covered the two thousand miles which sepa
rated him from St. Petersburg with a speed that
beat all records. He was directed to retire to his
provincial estate, and from there he bombarded the
palace with entreaties. Catherine hardly attended
to imperial business for several months. At length
she definitely discharged Orloff with an annual in
come of 75,000 dollars, a present of 10,000 peas
ants, and the right to use the imperial palaces and
horses w r hen he willed.

Vassiltchikoff made way in 1774s to the famous
Patiomkin, a different type of man from any of the
others. He was in his thirty-fifth year and, as we
saw, he had ability. Her letters to him show the
nearest approach to tender feeling that we ever find
in Catherine, except in her relations with her grand
children and her dogs. Patiomkin was of an age to
take his position philosophically when his two years
of intimate relationship were over, and he remained
her favourite minister. From first to last it is cal
culated that he cost her about twenty-five million
dollars.

After Patiomkin there was a period of what one
is almost tempted to call promiscuity, Man after
man was lodged for a brief period in the luxurious
chambers near Catherine's room,. and any handsome
young officer felt that promotion lay within his
power. Stories are told of ambitious young mer

249

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

persistently mistaking their rooms and of Catherine
maternally sending them home for correction. No
young soldier of athletic build and fair face knew
when he would be drafted to the well-known suite,
and find a preliminary present of 50,000 dollars in
gold in his cabinet. For the closer details of his
initiation I must refer the reader to Waliszewski's
"Roman d'une Imperatrice." In 1780 Lanskoi
seemed to have taken firmer root, but he died in
Catherine's arms in the same year. JermolofF suc
ceeded him, and in 1792, when Catherine was sixty-
three years old, she adopted her last and strangest
lover, Plato Zuboff, a handsome youth of twenty-
two. On this series of mere ministers to her pleas
ure Catherine spent a sum which is estimated at
more than forty million dollars. That was a na
tional scandal and entirely unworthy of her char
acter.

It is curious that in other respects Catherine had
a great regard for propriety. None dared repeat
in her presence the kind of story or verse that would
have pleased Peter the Great, and she discharged
several officials for loose conduct. She also forbade
mixed bathing; though she allowed artists to enter
the women's baths. She was sober in eating and
drinking. The chief luxury of her plain table was
boiled beef with salted cucumbers, and until her
later years, when she took a little wine, she gener
ally drank water coloured with a little gooseberry-

250

CATHERINE THE GREAT

juice. She knew well, however, that in other parts
of her palace her favourites were enjoying the most
luxurious banquets, and she never checked their
criminal waste. Her own son, Bobrinski, whom she
seems to have regarded with indifference, continu
ally outran his generous income and contracted
heavy debts. She virtually exiled him to the prov
inces. It was reserved for her lovers to riot as they
pleased; that is to say, as far as money was con
cerned, for she had the strictest guard kept upon
their conduct.

With all her strength of will and tireless energy
she loved social intercourse of the liveliest descrip
tion. She would play with children, especially her
grandchildren, for hours, and she had not the least
affectation of haughtiness. Although she never
visited her nobles, she was just as reluctant to re
ceive the ceremonious and tedious visits of foreign
sovereigns. To her smiling favourites she re
sponded, as we saw, with an almost criminal gener
osity. When PotiamMn's niece married, she gave
her half a million dollars, though her uncle had al
ready been enriched beyond any man in Russia;
and she gave the same sum to the bridegroom to
pay his debts. When, on the other hand, she
wanted some difficult work done, especially by her
commanders, she had a persuasiveness that none
could resist. Scores of times her mingled pleading

251

THE ROMANCE OF THE KOMANOFFS

and driving induced her armies to do what seemed
to her generals impossible.

She had occasional flashes of temper, but her
quick humour seized upon this defect and helped
her to control it. This other, occasional self she
called "my cousin/' and she watched it carefully.
Normally her good nature was remarkable, and one
could give three anecdotes in illustration of it for
every anecdote that refers to her irregularities.
She rose at five or six every morning, and would
often light the fire herself. One morning, when
she had done this, she heard shrieks and curses up
the chimney, and realised that a sweep was at work
in it. She hastily put out her fire
man's pardon. On another occasion iu i
her to ask, during a long drive, if the
servants had dined. She learned that
and she held up the carriage while they did so.
When she heard that a lady she liked was undergo
ing a dangerous delivery, she had herself driven to
the house, and she put on an apron and assisted the
midwife. If her pen became bad, she would (or
did in one case) scribble on and tell her correspond
ent that she had not courage to trouble a valet to
bring a new one. On one occasion she went out of
her room to find a valet for that purpose. She found
him playing cards, and she took his hand while he
ran for a pen. But perhaps the best anecdote is
that which tells of one of her secretaries whom she

252

CATHERINE THE GREAT

overheard saying, after she had angrily scolded an
ambassador: "What a pity she loses her temper."
He was summoned to her room, and in an agony
of apprehension he fell upon his knees. Catherine
handed him a diamond snuff-box and quietly ad
vised him in future to take a pinch when he was
tempted to give useful advice to his sovereign.

This geniality was in her later years somewhat
soured. The first cause of the change was the
French Revolution ; the second was the unfortunate
development of her son Paul. A short considera
tion of these two points will form a useful introduc
tion to the change which, with the nineteenth cen-
twy, p " :^pver the rule of the Romanoffs.

nr " _jj|anitarian zeal with which Catherine
* z reform her country, and which she was i
cart, di Lo communicate to the grandson Alexander
whom she reared for the throne, was plainly due to
the influence of the French philosophers. If, like
modern Europe, she learned irreligion from them,
she also, like the modern world, learned the elemen
tary lesson of the rights of man. She introduced
tolerance into Russia. That she sheltered the Jes
uits, when even the Pope sought to extinguish them,
was not wholly a matter of toleration. "Scoun
drels" as they were (to use her own genial descrip
tion), they helped her to keep Poland quiet. But
she believed in toleration, and she believed that the
state of the mass of the people was a reproach to

258

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

any right-minded monarch. Peter's reforms had
had a utilitarian basis: Catherine's were humani
tarian, learned from the French humanitarians.

But the dark development of the Revolution
turned her zeal for France and democracy into
hatred. In 1791 she wrote that if the Revolution
succeeded it would be as bad for Europe as if
Dchingis Khan had come to life again. In 1793,
when she heard of the execution of the king, she
wrote: "The very name of the French must be
exterminated," She proposed that all the Protes
tant nations should embrace the Greek religion "in
order to preserve themselves from the irreligious,
immoral, anarchic, scoundrelly, and diabolical pest,
the enemy of God and of thrones ; it alone is apos
tolic and truly Christian." We see the new Russia
already foreshadowed: a Russia fighting western
ideas in the name of sound ideals. But Catherine
took no action beyond controlling the importation
of French literature. Even in that she showed her
old personality. She read the Parisian journal, the
Moniteur, herself before she allowed it to circulate.
One day she found herself described in it as "the
Messalina of the North." "That's my business,"
she said; and she allowed the issue to pass.

The second source of annoyance was her son
Paul. It seems though the point is disputed
that ifrom the first she was cold to him (a fair indi
cation that he was Peter's son), and to her grief

254

CATHERINE THE GREAT

he grew up into a counterpart, in some respects,
of Peter. It is said that she one day learned that
he asked why his mother had killed his father and
occupied the throne. He visited Frederick at Ber
lin against her wish, and he married a German
princess, the Princess of Hesse, whom she disliked.
This lady died in 1776, and he then married another
German princess, the Princess of Wiirttemberg.
He was thoroughly German, flattered and duped*
by Frederick. "Russia will become a province of
Prussia when I am dead," Catherine sighed.

In 1781 she sent the pair on a tour of Europe.
"The Count and Countess du Nord," as they styled
themselves, had a magnificent reception at Paris,
which made little impression on Paul, and a fresh
grievance awaited them on their return. Their
sons, the little grand Dukes Alexander and Con-
stantine, had been removed by the Tsarina for edu
cation, and she declined to give them up. The
Prince and his wife had to live apart, and Paul
brooded darkly over every feature of his mother's
conduct. He had the Romanoff taint in a form not
unlike that we find in Peter III, except as regards
drink and coarseness. He was moody, irritable,
sensitive, suspicious, and obstinate. He quarrelled
with every good man, and as a result had about him
a circle of dissembling adventurers. Some said thai
he was epileptic; others that he took drugs. It i
said that when he was at Vienna an actor refuse(

255

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

to play Hamlet, observing that one Hamlet was
enough.

Such a man readily accepted the rumour that
Catherine intended to disinherit him and pass on
the crown to his elder son. She kept him out of
affairs, and, although he fancied himself a soldier
and, like Peter, brooded over dreams of military
reform, she kept him out of the war. He retorted
with pungent criticisms of her young lovers; and
they insolently repaid him. "Have I said some
thing silly?" Zuboff asked one day when Paul ex
pressed approval of what he had said.

It is believed that if Catherine had lived six
months longer, Paul would have been excluded
from the succession. The Grand Duke Alexander,
his eldest son, was now a fine and promising youth
of twenty. Catherine had taken minute pains with
his education, and even with the choice of a bride
for him. Eleven German princesses were invited to
St. Petersburg, and sent away disappointed, before
the young Princess of Baden-Durlach was selected.
The parents were not consulted. Everybody ex
pected that Alexander would succeed his grand
mother; indeed it was rumoured that the decree was
already composed and would be published on Janu
ary 1st, 1797.

And on November 17th, 1796, Catherine died
suddenly of apoplexy. There seems little doubt
that the cynical sensuality of her seventh decade of

256

CATHERINE THE GREAT

life destroyed her strong constitution, I say cyni
cal, not that she was ordinarily cynical, but because
there seems to be in her later conduct a somewhat
cynical defiance of moral and religious traditions.
This' was weakness rather than strength; the same
weakness which squandered forty million dollars
upon lovers when the national treasury had to be
replenished by extortion. Her mind was greater
than her character; her achievements were greater
than both. Russia the mighty Russian people
was still chained in the dungeon of medievalism.
But Catherine, the German who divested herself
of Germanism "Take out the last drop of Ger
man blood from my veins," she said to her physician
the pupil of the French humanitarians, impressed
the fact upon the Romanoffs that they ruled a semi-
civilised world.

257

CHAPTER XII

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON

THE story of the Romanoffs has three phases.
The first is the preparation, when the primitive
democracy of the Slavs is slowly destroyed and the
people are enslaved to an autocracy. The second,
and longest, phase is the enjoyment of power by
the Romanoffs: the succession of brutal or genial,
strong or weak, merry or pious sovereigns whom
the accident of birth or the red hand of revolution
raises to the throne. A certain nervous instability
runs through nearly the whole series, but it is
almost invariably expressed in a determination to
enjoy to kill, to drink, to love, to spend, to seize
territory, to use power for self -gratification. In
Peter the Great we find a glimmer, amidst the old
disorder, of a new day. In Catherine the Great it
revives and grows. Now the middle phase is over.
We enter upon a period of grave and sober-living
monarchs, at first bent upon the reform of their
people, according to their ideals, then struggling in
fear against the people they have awakened from
a long slumber.

258

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON"

The reign of Paul I Is merely a dark episode be
tween the second and the third phase. He was now
forty-two years old: a short, ugly, bald, sour-tem
pered man, of diseased nerves. He hardly con
cealed his joy as he hastened to the throne and
strove to obliterate the memory of his great mother.
If she must have an imperial funeral, his martyred
father shall have one also. He digs up the corpse,
or what is left of it after thirty-four years, puts
it in a magnificent coffin, and makes the survivors
of the conspiracy of 1762 walk humbly behind it,
before they are exiled. St, Petersburg is still a
land of rumours, and we do not know precisely what
form his mad idea took. Some say that there was
body enough left to seat in the throne; some say
that the skull was put upon the altar and crowned
with a superb diadem; some say that only the boots
and a few fragments of Peter III were found.
Whatever there was received an imperial funeral;
and the bones of Potiamkin were dug up and cast
into a ditch. The usual golden shower descended
upon the new brood of favourites.

Then Paul began to enforce his grand schemes
of military reform and alienate the army. They
must abandon those new and serviceable uniforms
which Potiamkin had given them. They must re
turn to powdered hair and pigtails. Paul went
along the line, on parade, and used his cane freely,
Old General Suvoroff grumbled, and was banished;

259

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

though he had to be recalled when war broke out,
A regiment one day threw Paul into one of his
hurricanes of rage. "March to Siberia/' he thun
dered; and they marched, but were stopped on the
way. Everything must be done on the German
model. Anything that reminded him of France
was anathema. More than 12,000 people were
exiled or imprisoned in four years, generally for
trivial offences. He made some useful changes,
but so many that were petty and irritating that
men thought him insane. He was, in fact, on the
road to insanity. He suffered from insomnia, and
took opium. People fled at his approach.

Paul sincerely wanted peace, but the French
were overrunning Europe, and he joined forces
with Austria against them. Austria co-operated so
badly that his army, ably led by Suvoroff, had
to. retreat disastrously. Bonaparte watched him
astutely, and bribed his chief ministers. Next Eng
land irritated him. Like Catherine, he challenged
England's right to search neutral vessels, and,
whereas England kept its Russian prisoners, Bona
parte sent home, neatly dressed and armed, those
that had been taken by France. When England
went on to take Malta, Bonaparte had an easy
victim. Paul had become grand master of the
Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and he considered
that tMs gave him a special interest in Malta.

At the beginning of 1801 Paul was pledged to

260

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON

France and set about the formation of a league
against England. And on March 24th, after a
gloomy reign of four and a half years, Paul met the
end he had expected. He had heavily f ortified the
Mikhailovski Palace, in which he lived, but about
midnight (March 23-24) Count Zuboff, Count
Pahlen, General Bennigsen, and a few others en
tered his chamber, roused him, and invited him
to abdicate. He refused, and it is presumed that
a scuffle followed. *It is at least certain that Paul ;
was strangled. It was officially announced that
Paul died of "apoplexy." "Isn't it time they in
vented a new disease in Russia?" said Talleyrand
when he heard. Napoleon was furious.

Alexander I lay upon his bed, dressed, when
Count Zuboff rushed in to say that "all was over."
He started, 'but he was at once addressed as Em
peror and could not misunderstand. He had
agreed to the enforcement of his father's abdication,
but had assuredly done no more. Whether he had
looked beyond or no we cannot say, but Alexander
was ajjigh-minded man, a new type of Romanoff.
.While they talked, Paul's widow came and heard
the news. She shrieked that she was Empress, and
begged the soldiers to support her rights. There
was a second horrible scene in the darkness of
that winter night. They drew her away, and, when
the day broke, St. Petersburg burst into open and
enthusiastic rejoicing, such as Romans had shown

261

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

at the death of Domitian, that the gloomy
and misguided Paul had gone the way of so many
Tsars and princes. Strangers embraced in the
streets. There was no trial, but those who had been
in the plot were leniently removed.

Alexander I, the monarch who opens the new
phase, came to the throne with large and vague
and lofty ideals. Not only should Russia become
happy and prosperous under his benevolent despot
ism, but all Europe should be illumined. He
averted the threatened war with England, which
had sent a fleet to the Baltic, and reaffirmed the
friendship with Napoleon. His new minister of for
eign affairs, Kotchubey, agreed with him. Russia
must be kept clear of the entanglement of war and
concentrate upon internal reform. Kotchubey had
soon to give place to the Pole Czartoryski, who
more sincerely shared Alexander's romantic ideal
ism. The Tsar of Russia was to inaugurate "a
new era of justice and right" for the whole of Eu
rope. An envoy was sent to London to propose
there is nothing new under the sun a sort of
League to Enforce Peace. England and Russia,
the two powers which desired no further territory,
were to form its nucleus. Other Powers might
join.

One hears plainly the echo of the French humani-
tariang and the English whom they inspired. But
how was the league to enforce peace upon France?

262

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON

Russia moved slowly toward war. In 1804 the
Due d'Enghien was murdered, and Alexander was
outraged. He came to an agreement with England
to chastise Napoleon: only as far as Alexander
was concerned for his monstrous breaches of in
ternational law. Napoleon became Emperor and
King of Italy, and Alexander was further out
raged. Kings were born, not made. In 1805 he
joined the Austrians on the battle-fields of Italy.
The story of Alexander I, the monarch who
was going to impose peace upon a foolish and dis
tracted world, is one long story of wars, and it does
not enter into the scheme of this book to describe
wars. How far Alexander was to blame for the
entry of his country into the struggle against Na
poleon, or into Napoleon's struggle against Eng
land, is a point on which opinions differ. His
entire change of attitude from neutrality to war
against France, then to friendship with Napoleon,
then back to the English alliance annoyed his
ministers and people, and lays him open to a charge
of nervous instability. Such a charge he would
have rebutted with warmth and astonishment. His
portrait is familiar: a smooth-faced, dignified man,
reflecting righteousness in every feature. He
would have given a hundred reasons for each
change in his policy. We will notice these and
the issues of his wars briefly, before we consider Ms
personality and his domestic work.

263

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

His first war ended in the historic rout of
Austerlitz (1805), and his optimism was sadly
clouded. But when his mind was fixed upon what
he regarded as a righteous cause, he could be ob
stinate. Prussia and Austria came to terms with
France, and Alexander's advisers were for doing
the same, but he refused. He entered the new
coalition (Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and England).
Napoleon smote the Prussians at Jena, frightened
the Swedes into peace, and inflicted appalling
losses upon the Russians at Eylau. Alexander
would not desist. He saw the King of Prussia and
swore eternal alliance, and Napoleon overran Po
land (1806-7). But Napoleon understood the
naive mind of the Tsar, and knew that he was
angry at the remissness of England in supporting
him. Before long he met Alexander on a raft in
the middle of the Niemen, and the charm of his
manner and righteousness of his proposals won the
large heart of the Tsar; besides that Napoleon
cleverly conveyed to his mind the impression that
he thought seriously of choosing Alexander's sister
Anna as his second wife. At the entreaty of his
new friend Napoleon spared the sovereignty of
Frederick William of Prussia, though he relieved
him of his Polish gains and turned Poland into a
Duchy of Warsaw.

Kornilov, the ablest of recent Russian historians,
maintains that Alexander was not duped. He

264

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON

wanted time, and played his cards skilfully. It is

not easy to credit Alexander with snch subtlety; and
there are those who think that Alexander sacrificed
his honour and the interest of his country. He
was^to break with England, when all St. Peters
burg had been educated to admire England, and
he was not to receive Constantinople as his reward.
St. Petersburg was thoroughly angry at the change
of policy, and Alexander had to change his min
isters. The Russian ambassador at Paris secured
a confidential document in which Napoleon de
clared that Russia was the natural ally of Austria
and inevitable enemy of France. Still Alexander
persisted, though he was not a very useful ally.
He did, it is true, make war upon Sweden because
it would not place an embargo on British ships;
but out of that war he got the remainder of Finland,
with 900,000 souls, for Russia.

The two Emperors met again at Erfurt in 1810,
Napoleon had there a mighty gathering of Ms
royal vassals, partly to impress Alexander, and he
seemed to succeed. In later years, however, Na
poleon himself considered that Alexander was fool
ing him. He said that the Tsar had "the duplicity
of a Byzantine Greek." Napoleon was a judge
of duplicity, but I prefer to believe in the simple-
mindedness of Alexander, and do not even see
ground to seek psychological explanations of his
vacillations. He respected to the end the genius

265

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

of Napoleon, but the alliance was hollow, and in
the next year the causes of quarrel multiplied. Na
poleon said no more about the Tsarevna Anna: he
married an Austrian. He seemed anxious to turn
Poland into a French province. On the other
hand, Napoleon complained that his ally spoiled
his continental blockade against England, and put
heavy duties on French wine. Alexander, pushed
by intriguers, got rid of his ablest minister, Speran-
ski, who was pro-French, made peace with Turkey
and Sweden, and at length entered into an alliance
with England and Sweden. Both Emperors now
massed their troops at the frontier and joined them.
Napoleon's famous Russian campaign of 1812
need not be described here. The Poles hailed him
as a deliverer, and he ran on until the continuous
retreat of the Russians and the appalling desola
tion they created as they retreated made him un
easy. It was Alexander's generals who were re
sponsible for that strategy. The Tsar himself ex
pressed impatience. At length, on September
15th, Napoleon gazed upon the golden roofs of
Moscow and felt that the end was in sight. How
could Russia yield its ancient capital and not ac
knowledge defeat? The next day began the his
toric fire of Moscow, already evacuated by its
population. Whether or no General Rostopchin
ordered the fire, the Tsar was not privy to it. He
wept when he heard of the tragedy. But it was a

266

8

a
u

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON

tragedy for Napoleon also. The grip of winter
soon began to close upon the desolated land. The
Tsar was whipping up his weary people with mani
fests after manifests, imploring them to break the
tyrant and help to take "the blessings of liberty 55
to other nations. We shall see presently that at
this period he became almost fanatically religious.

At the head of his inspirited troops he would,
he said, not again leave his armies to unenterprising
generals, who could only retreat Alexander fol
lowed the pale and emaciated remnant of Na
poleon's "grand army" across the corpse-strewn
wastes. Then came Leipsic, the first nail in Xa~
poleon's coffin. The Austrian statesman Metter-
nich saw the Tsar at Frankfort, and was for mod
eration in Tictory. On to Paris, said the Tsar; and
the encircling movement pushed the French gradu
ally in toward their capital. He was at Paris for
the end, and he spent a few weeks in London before
he returned to receive a magnificent, and not un
merited, ovation at St. Petersburg.

Alexander went himself to Vienna for the Con
gress which was to settle the map of Europe.
Again one must glance at his portrait to imagine
him at Vienna. He was the modest arbiter of the
destinies of Europe, the conqueror of Napoleon.
Behind the scenes, however, was a limping diplo
matist named Talleyrand, who had returned to of
fice with Louis XVIII, and he and Metternich and

267

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Castlereagh ruled. Against Alexander's wish Po
land was again divided, only Cracow and its dis
trict receiving a republican independence. Na
poleon suspended their intrigues for a season by his
dramatic return, but after Waterloo the monarchs
and statesmen met again at Paris to complete their
work.

Here the personality of Alexander attracted
considerable, and not very flattering, attention, and
we may linger over one of the last bits of personal
romance of very chaste romance in the story of
the Romanoffs. In the house adjoining his hotel,
and connected with it, Alexander established a
lady who was soon known to all Paris. This was
the Baroness Barbara Juliana von Kriidener. In
her youth Juliana had been a fascinating and gay
lady, of Prussian birth, who had virtually deserted
her elderly and prosy German baron for a French
officer. Her nerves deteriorated with her charms,
and in 1804, her fortieth year, she had been very
seriously converted. A gentleman who was paying
court to her had fallen dead at her feet. Wander
ing to and fro in a state of extreme nervousness, she
came into touch with the Moravian Brethren and
"got religion/' The long war and comprehensive
disturbance of Europe had led to remarkable erup
tions of mysticism. Napoleon was anti- Christ: the
end of the world was at hand. Prophets arose in
every German village; and Juliana eagerly sought

268

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON

them. She became convinced that It was her mis
sion to preach the millennium which was to precede
the end.

In 1814 she met the Tsarina Elizabeth at Baden,
and through her she attempted to reach the Tsar.
Alexander refused for some time to see her, but he
in turn went to Baden in 1815 and he allowed her
to call. She found him in a receptive mood. Since
the burning of Moscow he had spent much time
over the Scriptures, and he was at this moment
brooding over the open page, seeking in vain the
remedy of his mysterious restlessness. Juliana
harangued him, stormily, for three hours, and cap
tured him. He brought her to Paris, put her in
the house next his own, and attended her prayer-
meetings. Nobles and famous writers of Paris
attended. Over all the horrors of the past men saw
dawning the glory of a new religious epoch.

All this has more historical and practical import
than may be imagined. Alexander invented a
"Holy Alliance" of monarchs to put into force the
lofty moral tenets of the new mysticism. He
showed the Baroness one day she annoyed him
afterwards by claiming that she had written it
the draft of a manifest of the Alliance. In three
short articles the royal signatories would bind them
selves thenceforward to be guided, in domestic and
foreign policy, by "the precepts of that holy re
ligion [Christianity], namely, the precepts of Jus-

269

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

tice, Charity, and Peace," The whole document
breathed the spiritual exaltation in which the Tsar
was at the time. The King of Prussia signed it
without wincing to oblige his friend. Francis of
Austria, very pious, but taught by the Jesuits to
suspect heresy everywhere, consulted Metternich,
who said it was a harmless piece of folly. He
signed it. Castlereagh advised the English Prince
Regent that it was a piece of sublime mysticism and
nonsense; and the gay Regent accepted it in prin
ciple, without signing it, and assured the Tsar that
he would follow its "sacred maxims." The Pope
refused to sign.

The practical importance of the matter is that the
Holy Alliance became, in effect, an alliance for the
bloody suppression of democracy and enlighten
ment, and the charter drawn up by Alexander be
came the code of his persecuting successors and
their nationalist supporters. Western Christianity
became faithless; it compromised with democracy,
with science, with liberalism. So the "holy reli
gion" must be the uncompromising Church of
Russia, with its profound reverence for autocracy
and its hostility to enlightenment.

Alexander became sensitive that his association
with the Baroness made him seem rather ridiculous.
He got rid of her, and from that time maintained
only a coldly polite correspondence. The astute
Mettemich gained increasing influence over him,

270

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON]

and there was no vagueness about Metternich.
Kings must guard their crowns, and ministers their
portfolios, against anybody adventurers or dem
ocracies who wanted them. When the Greeks
rose against Turkey in 1821 the Baroness rushed
to St. Petersburg and urged her pupil to take up
"the holy war." Metternich told him that the situa
tion was that the Greeks had rebelled against their
lawful sovereign, the Sultan. So Alexander would
not send a gun to aid either the Slav or Greek
victims of the terrible Turk. The whole Russian
nation opposed him. When a great flood brought
tragedy upon St. Petersburg in 1824, men said that
God was punishing the Tsar. He was troubled,
but did nothing. Justice, Charity, and Peace he
still loved; but he would lend no aid to insurrection.
For the remainder of his life he defended the abso
lute divine right of kings and assisted in attempting
to retard the birth of modernism.

The Poles felt his gradual deterioration, Rus
sian Poland was at first, with a show of generosity,
converted into an autonomous kingdom under the
Russian crown. Alexander was the king; though
the Poles had their old flag with the white eagle.
The Grand Duke Constantine was commander of
the army; though it was a Polish army. An officer
of ISFapoleon's army was made Viceroy, and a gen
eral amnesty was granted* But Warsaw was far
away, and the harsh Constantine and the Tsar's

271

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

more reactionary ministers ruled it. The Diet was
soon left in abeyance, and the promises of reform
unfulfilled. The Poles angrily muttered that they
had been duped, and secret societies spread, with a
result which we shall see later.

But we are passing to Alexander's last phase,
the phase of reaction, without having considered the
reforms which came of his early humanitarian
zeal. He had, we saw, been educated (in part)
by humanitarians like La Harpe, imbued with the
French spirit. Catherine herself had, as I said,
leaned to reaction, and let her reforms droop, in her
later years; and the interlude of Paul's reign had
been thoroughly bad. Yet Alexander came to the
throne with a magnificent resolution to reform Rus
sia. He was dreamy by temperament, and he had
neither the positive knowledge nor the quality of
painstaking perseverance which were necessary to
construct a detailed scheme of reform for so com
prehensively backward a country. However, he
appointed a Committee of Reform^and he followed
its deliberations with keen interest.

During many years, especially from 1807-1812,
Alexander had for this work the splendid ability
and devotion of a remarkably enlightened and
democratic statesman named Speranski. Profes
sor Kornilov regards him as "one of the most re
markable statesmen in all Russian history." He
was the son of an obscure priest, a child of the

272

IN THE DAYS OF XABOLEON

people; and his large mind and great capacity for
detail enabled him to give definite shape to the
Tsar's vague dreams of justice. He not only
studied the new democratic constitution of the
United States, of which the Tsar obtained a copy
from Washington, but he followed Napoleon's con
structive work with much sympathy and admira
tion* To Speranski the Tsar owed the great
scheme of reform which at first he made some effort
to impose upon Russia. It, unhappily, remained
for the most part a paper-scheme. Years after
wards, in 1830, the rebellious Poles found a copy
of Speranski's liberal constitution and printed it,
but Nicholas I emphatically suppressed it.

The first task was to reform the central part of
the administration, which was chaotic. Eight min
istries were created, and, although the Tsar made
tie inevitable blunder of appointing favourites
rather than competent men in some cases, the
change helped to create a more effective machine.
The heads of the departments were to form a cab
inet, or Cpuncil t ^ responsible to the
Emperor, and below them the administrative
structure went down gradually as far as the Mir,
or village-council. The legis&alfare .macbjnerjr-.also
beganj^thjh^31ir^ and coded with, th& DW5L% or
national ^council, from which there could be an ap
peal to the Imperial Council. The administration
of justice was to begin in the village and end in

273

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

a reconstituted Senate; and Speranski sketched a
new code of laws on the model of the Code Napo
leon.

Of this great scheme very little was carried out.
The reformed Senate found most of its proposals
opposed by the Imperial Council, and the Tsar
himself, who was to be guided by it, chafed when
it did not fall in with his wishes, and often issued
ukases in defiance of the opinion of the majority.
The new code of laws was put upon the shelf, and
remained there until the reign of Nicholas I. The
hierarchy of popular councils was not created.
Alexander seemed to shrink from the logical con
sequences of his "sacred maxims" when they were
drawn out on paper by a practical statesman, and
he lent too ready an ear to the reactionaries. As
his piety increased, the conservatives found it con
venient to represent to him that these progressive
ideas were associated with atheism and revolt. The
familiar type of political adventurer, a man named
Arakcheeff, appeared at court and secured wealth
and power. This man and his associates suggested
to Alexander, in 1812, that Speranski was promot
ing Freemasonry and subversive ideas, and the
great statesman a man so far from Voltairean-
ism that he had translated "The Imitation of
Christ" into Russian had to go. The Tsar wept
maudlin tears while he dismissed him.

The mimstry of education, or of National En-

274

IN THE DAYS OF XAPOLEO N

lightenment, whose task was vital to the reform of
the country, seemed to make greater progress,
Alexander entrusted It to his mother's educational
adviser, Count Tzadovski, and his own tutor
Muravieff. Afterwards it was controlled by
Prince Golitzin, a follower of the new mysticism,
but a serious and liberal statesman. He was a
patron of the Protestant Bible Society, which
Alexander permitted to open premises in St. Pe
tersburg in 1812. Alexander found from two to
three million rubles a year for the education de
partment, and paid out of his own purse for the
translation of western works. Students were sent
abroad for pedagogical training, and after a time
training-colleges were established in Russia. Three
new universities (Dorpat, Kazan, and Kharkoff)
were founded, and these and the older universities
were to become central points in a scheme of en
lightenment for the various districts of Russia.

It is, however, usual to exaggerate the work
done. We have already heard much about the re
forms of various rulers of Philaret, of Peter I,
of Elizabeth, and of Catherine but the fact re
mains that far more than ninety per cent of the
Russian people were still illiterate and densely ig
norant at the death of Alexander, and, although
we shall hear of further reforms, at least eighty-
five per cent of the Russian people were illiterate
at the beginning of the twentieth century. The

275

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

sum provided for education was ludicrously insuffi
cient for the task, and the opposition was consid
erable. Merchants grumbled that they must pay
for the teaching of something more than reading,
writing, and arithmetic; the bulk of the nobles
wanted only a military education for their sons. In
all about 200 higher schools (with classes of Latin
and Greek) and 2,000 elementary schools were
founded : barely enough to educate the five per cent
of the population which was attracted to new ideas.
The work, like all the other reforms, languished in
Alexander's later years, and was deliberately
checked, in the interest of the dynasty, by his suc
cessor.

The next great problem was the emancipation
of the serfs, and here the Tsar's vacillation between
his sentiments of benevolence and his vague per
ception that they threatened the aristocratic system
is more apparent than ever. Catherine had had
the same experience. She had spoken of liberty
and equality; and she had bestowed upon her fa
vourites hundreds of thousands of serfs who would,
she must have known, be regarded and treated as
cattle. The restriction of the freedom of the peas
ant, by which Godunoff had converted him into a
serf, really handed over his freedom to the higher
authorities or put it into the hand of the landowner.
Wlp^n a peasant wished to move, he might secure
permission from his lord by a payment of money.

276

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON

When a noble obtained a grant of new lands he
had to buy, or obtain by favour, a great batch of
serfs to work it. In practice the wealthy landown
ers bought and sold the population just as cotton-
planters then did in America, and the serfs were
generally treated with brutality.

Nearly every other country in Europe had long
since abolished serfdom, and Alexander saw clearly
enough how inconsistent the institution was with
his "sacred maxims." He discussed with his friends
this "barbarous 55 traffic in human beings, and we
can understand how they assisted him to salve his
conscience. Reform must be gradual; an evil
which was centuries old, and rooted in the very
structure of Russian society, could not be cured
in a day. In other words, the great sacrifice, which
justice demanded, must be thrown upon a later
generation. Alexander expended his zeal upon
small alleviations of the sufferings of the serfs. He
forbade the masters to break up families,, or to en
force marriage upon reluctant serfs. He restricted
the right of punishment, opened the courts to the
serf, and set aside large sums for the emancipation
of batches of serfs. He had a pamphlet published
in which owners were urged to treat the serfs hu
manely and promote emancipation. So much was
done under pressure of the humanitarians, but it
was only a trifling mitigation of the worst evil of
mediaeval Russia, and the new regulations were not

277

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

properly enforced. Russia was the land of the
wealthy. The millions of descendants of the orig
inal free Slavs must toil on in squalor and igno
rance. The day of reckoning was still to come.

Arakcheeff tried an experiment in this connec
tion which was bitterly resented. He induced the
Tsar to settle regiments of soldiers, with their fam
ilies, on the crown-lands, in military colonies. They
were to be special breeding grounds for recruits,
and were to spread amongst the peasants the spirit
of military discipline. They were so carefully or
ganised for Arakcheeff had ability that even the
mother was provided with a set of rules which she
must hang beside the holy ikons. The peasants
hated the innovation, and on Arakcheeff's own es
tate they rebelled and killed his mistress, who ruled
them with the brutality that he encouraged. The
institution was afterward suffered to decay.

In the fiscal world, which was but another section
of the Augean stable of the Russian system, Alex
ander set out to make enlightened reforms, and
ended in the usual listlessness. The treasury had
long been artificially filled by the excessive creation
of paper-money. Alexander recalled a large pro
portion of it, but the strain of the war put an end
to this reform. An Imperial Bank was .fauoded,
a pinking fund was started, and it was decided to
publish an annual budget. It was proposed, and
partly attempted, to relieve the duty on the impor-

278

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON

tation of raw materials and impose heavy duties on
luxuries. At the same time the abandonment of
Catherine's extravagance at court relieved the
exchequer. These reforms were, like the others,
a comparatively slight mitigation of a great evil,
and were in Alexander's later years suffered to
droop.

In fine one must mention prison-reform, though
the state of Russian jails decades later does not
dispose us to attach much importance to it. Dur
ing Alexander's earlier years, we saw, there was
at St. Petersburg a great regard for English ideas,
and at that time England was producing many
humanitarians. Robert Owen was then elaborating
his comprehensive and advanced schemes of reform,
from the betterment of schools and prisons to the
substitution of arbitration for war. It is the en
feebled echo of these liberal English ideas, and
of American and French ideas, that we find in the
Russian schemes. One of the English prison-re
formers, Mr. Venning, asked permission to visit
the Russian jails. The Tsar, who was still in
his early humanitarian fervour, gladly assented,
and asked Venning to make a report to him on what
he saw. As a result a Society for the Welfare of
Prisoners was founded at St. Petersburg, and
afterwards at Moscow,

These liberal ideas represent, it must be under
stood, the early attitude of the Emperor. After

279

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

the fall of Speranski in 1812, and especially after
the Tsar's close association with Metternich in
1814, Alexander passed slowly from a state of
nebulous zeal for Charity and Justice to an atti
tude of positive reaction, tempered by a faint lin
gering glow of his early dreams. Metternich per
suaded him that the real struggle of light and dark
ness was the struggle of the enlightened monarch
ies against these democratic and "atheistic" emana
tions from the smothered volcano of the French
Revolution. In private he cynically observed to
his friends: "I have the Tsar safely at anchor."
The humanitarian ideas on which the United States
had been set up, and the early and sane part of the
French Revolution had been based, remained in the
mind of Europe. They threatened the restored
monarchies, which reverted to mediaeval ideas of
their power, and the terrible conflict which fills the
first half of the nineteenth century in Europe began
long before the death of Alexander. It is to his
credit that he recognised the blunders and crimes
of his f ellow-monarchs and never entirely sacrificed
his early ideals.

But the sinister Arakcheeff and the dreamy Go-
litzin spoiled the efforts of Speranski. Golitzin
introduced to the Tsar a "converted atheist"
named Magnitski, an abominable adventurer, and
the man was put in control of the universities. The
higher teaching was reduced to a comedy. Golit-

280

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON

zin himself was too liberal and cultivated for the
plotters, and Admiral Shishkoff replaced him in
charge of the ministry of National Enlightenment.
Shishkoff hated liberalism, and would suffer no
education that did not strengthen in the pupils*
mind a spirit of blind subservience to the Church
and the autocracy. A third power among the re
actionary forces was the Novgorod abbot, Photi,
a zealot of the old type who gathered about him
a crowd of aristocratic women and worked through
them. Professors who had any tincture of liberal
ism were now expelled from the schools. Some of
the new schools were suffered to disappear, and in
all, lower and higher, the teaching was rendered
ridiculous by the fierce determination to protect the
pupils* respect for his pastors and masters. Polit
ical economy and the new discoveries of science
were rigorously banned. The Russophile school
was established; the fight against enlightenment
was inaugurated.

But enlightenment could no more be suppressed
in Russia than in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and
France, where the Papacy and the restored mon-
archs used the old bludgeons against it. A large
payt of the nobles was, as in France before the
Revolution, imbued with the new ideas; and the
economic and other reforms were creating a middle
class which, as in England, gave many recruits to
the humanitarian cause. Students, teachers, wri-

281

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

ters, medical and other professional men joined the
emancipated nobles. The army of light began
slowly to gather round its various banners and
face the army of darkness. As repression in
creased, the many societies and liberal journals
were merely driven underground and their rhetoric
became more fiery. There were "unions" for
everything of an advanced nature. In obscure
clubs young men began to talk even of a Russian
Republic. The Tsar's refusal to help the Slav and
Greek rebels against the Turk increased the anger
of the liberals and gave them a basis in the popular
mind.

By the year 1824 Alexander had fallen into so
morbid a state that he spoke of resigning. He
wept over his Bible and wondered if his sins were
not the curse of Russia. Even his domestic life
was a burden. He had married a Princess of
Baden, and her lack of good looks was not re
deemed by any other charm except the cold adorn
ments of virtue and piety. She dressed dowdily,
and she generally presented at his board a face as
melancholy, as her creed. For many years Alex
ander had lived apart from her, and he had no chil
dren. The genial dignity and self-esteem of his
earlier years broke down altogether. His next
brother, Constantine, had made a morganatic mar
riage, and forfeited the throne, and Alexander
distrusted the third brother, Nicholas. Alexander

282

IN THE DAYS OF NAPOLEON

slowly and sadly drifted toward the grave. His
courtiers discovered a plot against the autocracy,
but he would do nothing. He died on December
1st, 1825: a high-minded, well-meaning man, too
little endowed in intellect and strength of will to
solve the mighty problems which were raised by
his own ideals.

283

CHAPTER XIII

THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM

Oisr an earlier page I remarked that the element
of romance passed out of the story of the Roman
offs with the last lovers of Catherine and the mur
der of Paul. This is true of what we may call
personal romance,, but it will have been apparent
that a larger, impersonal romance now opens. Not
individual Romanoffs, but the Romanoff dynasty,
must fight for existence. Life at court is now too
earnest for bibulous companions of monarchs, and
handsome lovers of queens, and plots of the ante
room. The comedy is over; if one may call a
comedy the enthronement of a selfish and profligate
monarchy upon the poverty and ignorance 'of mil-
Eons of human 'beings. The play now assumes the
sombre note of tragedy. The people, represented
by a few of the educated few, begin to awaken and
claim their rights. The rest of the story is a ghastly
record of the efforts of the Romanoffs to prevent
the spread of that awakening.

Nicholas I, who succeeded Alexander, repre
sents the struggle of the dynasty in a form which

284

THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM

might be reconciled with conscience. He differed
materially from Alexander in two respects. First,
although he was, like Alexander, moderately en
dowed in intellect, he had great strength of char
acter and would stubbornly pursue any policy
which he adopted. In the second place, that policy
was inevitably shaped by the accident that he was
born many years after Alexander. The eldest son
of Paul I had received his education at a time when
Catherine was under the influence of the French
humanitarians, Nicholas came to the years of dis
cretion during her second phase, when the Revolu
tion had soured her taste of all things French and
liberal His chief tutor had been a French emi
grant, an incompetent teacher and a bitter enemy
of liberal ideas. Nicholas had grown up a rough
and conceited boy. Later he had had abler teach
ers, but he had yawned over their lessons. He
had in 1817 married a daughter of the King of
Prussia, and, like almost all the Romanoffs, he
thought a minute acquaintance with military drill
the first equipment for life. In spite of hints from
Alexander he refused to prepare for the serious
task of governing a great nation. By an unfortu
nate accident his vague despotic mood was at the
very'opening of his reign hardened into an attitude
of fierce hostility to the new culture.

His elder brother Constantine had, as I said,
forfeited his right to the throne. He had fallen

285

THE KOMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

in love with a charming Polish lady, the Countess
Jeannette Grudzinsky, after divorcing his first
wife. As no amount of personal charm, not asso
ciated with royal Wood, fitted a woman to occupy
the throne of Elizabeth and Catherine, the Tsar
had, in 1822, given him the alternative of losing
either the lady or his right to the throne. Constan-
tine had not a regal disposition. He married Jean
nette and abdicated the right he had to the throne
on the restored principle of inheritance.

Nicholas knew of this abdication, though it was
otherwise known only to a few intimate councillors.
But he knew that there was much feeling against
him in St. Petersburg, and he proceeded diplo
matically. He proclaimed Constantine Tsar.
Prince Golitzin and others who knew of the abdi
cation begged him to refrain until the Council had
opened a certain sealed letter which Alexander had
left, but Nicholas persisted and sent word to his
brother at Warsaw. Constantine refused the
throne, and for several weeks letters went backward
and forward. Nicholas was very much attached to
his brother, but it is probable that he wanted time
to study the threatening situation in St. Petersburg
and secure the stability of his throne. He yielded
on December 13th, and fixed the following day for
the taking of the oath of allegiance.

On the 14th a large body of troops and the cus
tomary crowd of citizens assembled in the square,

286

THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM

and suddenly the cry "Long Live Constantine"
rang from the lips of various companies of the sol
diers. "Long Live the Constitution" was also
shouted; and it is said that the ignorant troops,
who had been told to add this, thought that it was
the name of Constantine's Polish wife. Nicholas,
who did not lack courage, came out of the palace
and endeavoured quietly to convince the soldiers
that his brother had abdicated. They repeated
their cries, and the nucleus of mutineers began to
grow and form a compact body. It is thought that
if those who had arranged the plot had had more
courage it might have succeeded. But Prince
Trubetzkoi, the leader, kept out of sight, and there
was no vigorous direction. General Milorado-
vitch approached the soldiers to reason with them,
and was shot. The Metropolitan of St. Peters
burg, his golden cross lifted high in the air, next
addressed them, and he was contemptuously told
to go home and mind his own business. The night
was falling, and it was feared that under its cover
a serious riot would occur. Nicholas ordered blank
firing and, when the rebels jeered, ordered grape-
shot; and the rebellion was over.

After the burial of the victims came the inquiry,
and it was thorough and protracted. Two hundred
and forty were arrested, and they included men
of the highest rank in St. Petersburg and many
officers of the army. Princes, counts, barons, and

287

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

generals were on the list of the condemned. The
five ringleaders, including two colonels of military
distinction, were sentenced to be quartered, but
the Tsar commuted the sentence to hanging. The
death-sentence had become so unusual in Russia
that a bungling amateur made a horrible tragedy
of the business ; but those five first martyrs of the
Russian people met their death with impressive
dignity and courage. Thirty-one were sentenced
to be beheaded, and were sent to the mines for life.
Seventeen were condemned to the mines, and had
their sentences changed to twenty years 5 imprison
ment. Others went, with their wives and families,
to Siberia or to remote provinces* And Tsar
Nicholas I went to Moscow to be crowned.

Nicholas was sufficiently intelligent to realise
that this conspiracy of soldiers and nobles and in
tellectuals was a new thing in the annals of Russia.
He had a very candid memorandum drawn up from
the subversive literature which was taken with the
conspirators, and he carefully studied the condition
of Russia as they had seen it. The new Tsar had
a type of mind entirely different from that of his
brother. He had a clear, robust, and narrow in
telligence, unclouded either by mysticism or moral
hypocrisy. He seriously considered the evils of the
Empire: the corruption of officials, the arrears of
payment which led to extortion, the heavy taxes,
the parody of justice, the general squalor and igno-

288

THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM

ranee, the State-monopoly of drink, the shocking
condition of the serfs, and so on. These things
must be remedied; and they must be remedied by
the god-appointed person the Tsar. That was
his attitude. In his Coronation-Manifesto he said :

"The statutes of the land are gradually per
fected, the faults corrected, the abuses remedied,
not by insolent dreams of destruction, but from
above."

The new Tsar was for "true enlightenment.''
Any other enlightenment, any unauthorised en-
lightener, must look out.

That was the note of the early part of the reign
of Nicholas I. Speranski was brought from his
retirement and told to carry out the reforms he had
projected. His older code of laws was not passed,
but he was directed to codify the existing laws of
Russia; which was something. There were not
competent lawyers in Russia to ensure the proper
administration of justice, and young men were sent
abroad to study law. But no youth must go and
acquire education abroad for any other purpose.
No foreign teachers or tutors must be tolerated
any more in Russia. No foreign ideas must be
permitted to taint the purity of the docile Russian
soul. No noble could remain abroad more than five
years, and no commoner more than three years.

A very rigorous and complete censorship was
set up. All manuscripts, even the manuscripts of

289

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

journalistic copy, must be revised before they
reached the printer. Any that ventured to recom
mend the ideas which were in France leading up
to the Revolution of 1830, and in England to the
Reform Bill of 1832, were suppressed. Intellec
tual life must concern itself with the native contents
of the Russian tradition. It was stifled. Russia,
was just at the stage of a literary renaissance, but
it was directed into this channel, and, as it was
mainly artistic, it contrived to thrive on nationalist
soil. Pushkin and Gogol wrote their famous
stories and poems. Karamsin founded Russian
history of the dynastic type. Young men like
Turgenieff, Dostoievski, and Tolstoi began, at the
end of the reign, to take up the artistic tradition.
The national drama was advanced. But it was all
genuinely Russian. The new theologies and phi
losophies and sciences of the west were banned.

The censorship was moderated a little in 1830,
when Prince Lieven, a religious but cultivated
man, became minister of education. For a time the
anathema was confined to matters which had a plain
political import. But after a few years a reaction
ary succeeded Prince Lieven, and the task of pre
venting enlightenment was rigorously resumed.
The second revolutionary wave was slowly spread
ing over Europe. The stupid and harsh dynasty
of the French kings went forever. The reform of
the parliamentary franchise was now won in Eng-

290

THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM

land. An historic fight for freedom and knowledge
was raging in Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal
Everywhere it was this detestable new middle
class which was assailing the old traditions. Young
men of the working class to-day have little concep
tion in how overwhelming a proportion the cham
pions and martyrs of "the people 5 ' in those san
guinary days belonged to the middle class. The
task of rulers plainly was to check literature and
the university-life, which were manufacturing this
intellectual middle class. Literature of a modern
kind was entirely suppressed. The universities
were watched by the police the new secret police
which Nicholas created as an instrument of the
threatened autocracy and controlled after a time
by the clergy. The Slavophile creed was elevated
to the rank of a philosophy. Against this bold
scheme of human development which the liberals
were basing upon the philosophy of Hegel, the
"sound" teachers pitted a very plausible static creed.
It was, they said, the peculiar gift of the Russian
soul to reconcile the jarring elements of life, which
in the west created only discord. These new no
tions of democracy and evolution (which was just
emerging from the pit in England) and rationalism
only increased the misery of life. Look at the con
trast of the restless proletariate of England or
France and the Russian peasant! Self -absorption
in love, as taught by Russian Christianity, not self-

291

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

assertion, as taught by religious and political ra
tionalism, was the creed to make people happy.

The influence of the Church was ardently en
listed. Nicholas was sincere he read a page of the
Bible every night to his wife and liked to have sin
cere people about him. He got rid of Arakcheeff
and the converted atheist Magnitski, and he upheld
the abbot Photi. The Bible Society was directed
to return to England, and its property was confis
cated. The Roman Catholic Church had made
progress under the liberal Alexander. It was
checked, and its property confiscated. The secret
police penetrated study and boudoir in search of
traces of heresy. In Poland four and a half mil
lion Roman Catholics were "converted" to the Or
thodox Church. In Protestant Livonia the Rus
sian priests and officials did almost as they willed.
School-children were damped with holy water and
oil, and counted members of the Orthodox Church.
Presents of money or land, settled the hesitating
consciences of their parents. The Russian Church
supported the autocracy and anathematised cul
ture: all Russians must therefore belong to the
Russian Church.

It must not be supposed that this drastic cam
paign extinguished the light in Russia. It merely
compelled men to hide their light underground, or
to speak and write with discretion. A sullen and
stern fight went on all the time. Once the Catho-

292

THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM

lies of Poland and Hungary had tried to shut off
Russia from the culture of the west and they had
eventually failed. Now the Tsars, who had torn
down the barrier, would set up a barrier of their
own. It had no greater chance of lasting success,
though it did postpone the awakening of Russia.
In the end, when a third revolutionary wave spread
over Europe, Nicholas doubled his precautions.
Not more than three hundred students were al
lowed at each university. This was "true enlighten
ment." But a nobler race was rising amidst the
densely ignorant mass, and Nicholas I could not
crush it.

It may be asked what he did for the honest im
provement of the country which he had sincerely
regarded as the task of the autocracy. Very little.
To educate the mass of the people was, of course, a
mischievous delusion in the creed of Nicholas I.
The spread of elementary education was either ar
rested or carefully controlled. Under Speranski's
early influence he appointed an official, Count Kis-
seleff, to look after the eighteen million serfs on
the Crown Estates, and the official was a good man.
Schools of a kind were established. The filthy and
unhealthy habits of the people were partly cor
rected. In 1842 a serf was enabled by statute to
purchase his freedom. In 1848 it was enacted that
the serfs of an insolvent landowner might collect
ively purchase the estate. Nicholas encouraged

293

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

nobles to free their serfs. Then came the French
Revolution of 1848, with its echoes all over Europe,
and Nicholas abandoned reform. Even within the
limits of his own plan he had rendered insignifi
cant service, in comparison with the task which
the papers of the conspirators had impressed on
him. The thirty years of his reign were occupied
in fighting the light which from all sides now sought
to penetrate the darkness of Russia.

The wars which interrupted or accompanied the
Emperor's efforts do not properly concern us, but
in some features they illustrate his personality and
work. On this side also the new morality of the
Romanoffs was degenerating rapidly into casuistry.
Alexander had sought neither war nor territory.
The dynasty was converted from the brutal atti
tude which had put the quintessence of glory in
conquest by the sword. Alexander interfered in
European affairs only in the lofty interests of jus
tice and civilisation. Nicholas also was a lover of
peace and justice, and on this plea he started, or
resumed, the Russian policy of expansion south
ward which has since cost Europe so much blood.

As is well-known, Nicholas had provocation; in
deed, until some other force can secure protection
for the weak, it remains an act of chivalry for the
strong to do battle for them. That at least was the
almost universal sentiment in the earlier half of the
nineteenth century, and we saw that the people of

294

THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM

St. Petersburg bitterly blamed Alexander for not
interfering on behalf of the Greeks. Nicholas at
once took up the task that his brother had declined.
Greeks and Serbs were trying to throw off the bru
tal tyranny of the Turk, and the Sultan had sent
the most fanatical and least civilised of his soldiers
to chastise the insolent Christians. Europe rang
with the horror of the massacres, the mutilations,
the rapes and burnings. It was assuredly the place
of a monarch who was of like creed to the Greeks
and of the same blood as the Serbs to demand jus
tice for them, and Nicholas promptly demanded it.
He bade the Sultan evacuate the Balkans and
grant autonomy to his Christian provinces. Eng
land and France were equally moved by the out
rages, and not a little jealous of any action of Rus
sia, and the three Powers gave the Sultan an ul
timatum. His refusal to comply led to the destruc
tion of his fleet at Navarino in 1828, and Greece
won its independence.

It was the beginning of the abominable inter
national jealousy which has so long suffered the
Turk to play the savage in Europe. The Sultan
knew that Austria was sufficiently jealous of Rus
sia to support him, and he believed that England
was in the same frame of mind. He therefore sent
a pompous complaint to Russia, and demanded an
indemnity. Nicholas, knowing well the jealousy of
the other Powers, baffled them by a straightforward

295

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

inquiry whether he would not be justified in chas
tising the Turks. He would, he said, seize no ter
ritory in Europe, and would be content to reduce
the Sultan merely to a decent sense of his duty to
his Christian subjects. Austria trimmed in its
reply, but England, France, and Prussia con
sented, and Nicholas led his legions southward.
Again I refer to histories of Russia for the details
of the eighteen months' war. It ended with the
victory of Russia and the Treaty of Adrianople
( September 14th, 1829) . Moldavia and Wallachia
(now Rumania) and Serbia were declared autono
mous. The Dardanelles was opened to Russian
commerce. Russia secured an indemnity and the
right to protect Orthodox Christians in the Otto
man Empire.

In the meantime a new page had opened in the
relations of Russia and Poland. The Grand Duke
Constantine ruled the kingdom with more force
than wisdom, and he begged his brother, who had
not been crowned King of Poland, to come and im
press the people of Warsaw by that ceremony.
Nicholas went, and swore to maintain the consti
tution which Alexander had granted the Poles in
1818. He made matters worse, however, by his
arbitrariness. It was with difficulty that he could
be induced to tolerate a service of thanksgiving in
the Roman Catholic cathedral; he opened the Diet
with a speech in French; and he usurped a func-

296

THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM

tion of the Diet in nominating Senators. The dis
content of the Poles, who had absorbed western
ideas, was greatly increased. It is said that there
was a plot to kidnap the Tsar. At all events, the
complaints in the Diet became so bitter that he
closed it, in violation of the constitution, and the
discontent ran to underground conspiracy.

This plot was another element in the autocratic
education of Nicholas I and his successors. In
July (1880) occurred the second French Revo
lution, followed by an insurrection at Berlin.
Nicholas was so indignant that he thought of de
claring war upon France, and he did offer troops
to the King of Prussia. But at the end of Septem
ber he was infuriated to learn that the spirit of re
volt had spread to his own kingdom of Poland.
Pro-Russians had been massacred, and an attempt
had been made to capture the person of the Grand
Duke, who had fled to Russia with his few troops.
General Chlopicki and the Polish regiments had
joined the revolutionaries. A Provisional Govern
ment, including Princes Czartoriski and Radziwill,
had been established.

In his sternest mood Nicholas sent 120,000 men
against the Poles, who hastily closed their intestine
differences and gathered an army of 90,000 men.
They fought with magnificent bravery, but the su
perior Russian forces wore them down and en
tered Warsaw (September 7th, 1831). It suited

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

the humour of Nicholas to suppress a rebellion;
and the suppression, like the earlier partition, is
one of the grim memories which lie between Po
land and Russia to-day. After punishing the cap
tured rebels, Nicholas went on to remove the very
soil in which another rebellion might grow. He de
stroyed almost the last remnant of Polish nation
ality. The flag of the white eagle was abolished,
the constitution torn up, the higher schools and
universities closed. On February 26th Poland
was declared to be henceforth a province of Rus
sia.

At the other end of the Empire trouble in Geor
gia and Circassia gave occasion to strengthen in
that direction the rule of the Tsar. He now reigned
over the largest Empire in Europe, and almost
every other Power, but especially England and
France, regarded the growth of Russia with appre
hension. Nicholas got the Dardanelles closed
against foreign warships, and so secured his Black
Sea coast against attack. He had assisted the
Sultan to chastise one of Ms rebels Mehemed Ali,
of Egypt and was rewarded with this concession.
Europe moved toward the Crimean War.

First, however, Nicholas had an opportunity of
crushing another revolt and chastising the sup
porters of the new ideas. The third revolutionary
wave, which was definitely to destroy the old po
litical order in Europe, began in 1848; and it be-

298

THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM

gan, as usual, in France. Louis Napoleon, who
was destined to give that country its last and not
most fortunate experiment in kingship, made an
appeal to Nicholas for friendship, if not alliance.
But Nicholas liked neither an authority which was
set up by the will of the people nor a programme
that ^pandered to the will of the people. He re
jected Napoleon's appeal, and turned rather to
Austria, where insurrection seemed to be well on
the way to shake even the Hapsburgs from the
throne. The Hungarians were on the point of se
curing their independence, and the mediseval sys
tem which Metternich had so long maintained was
about to be destroyed. Nicholas gladly supported
his brother-autocrat. It was the Russian army of
190,000 men which propped up once more the tot
tering throne of the Hapsburgs and prolonged the
struggle of darkness against light. Nicholas would
learn presently the utter selfishness and ungrateful
ness of Austrian policy, as his last successor would
learn at a later date.

The eyes of Nicholas were still upon the south,
and the eyes of Europe were upon Nicholas.
There can be very little doubt that the whole of
the moralising Romanoffs of the nineteenth cen
tury had, behind their professions of disinterested
regard for the victims of the Turk, a more or less
clearly conceived design of gaining Constantinople
and passing over the Balkans to the Mediterra-

299

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

nean. Whatever sincerity there was in their zeal for
the protection of the Christian subjects of the Sul
tan, they were far from insensible to the fact that
these helpless Greek Christians occupied territory
which would, if it were annexed, bring Russia at
last to a free and warm sea. In Alexander this mo
tive was so far checked by an effort at sincerity
that he would not interfere between the Greek and
the Turk; he would be true to his later resolution
to help no insurgents. Nicholas held an even
sterner attitude toward insurgents, but the moment
Christian subjects of the Sultan rose against their
ruler he entirely forgot that they were rebels
against an hereditary autocracy. We shall find
his successors equally lenient to rebellion in the
Balkans ; and it is scarcely a diplomatic secret that
the Serbs, when they received the brotherly sup
port of the last of the Romanoffs in 1914, looked
silently and anxiously for a less disinterested pur
pose in the act of that monarch.

Nicholas now had the Sultan almost in a state of
vassalage, and it seemed to him that he had so far
raised the prestige of Russia, and won the grati
tude of Austria, that he need hardly consider the
western Powers. Hence in 1853 he made a pom
pous objection when the Sultan granted the
French certain privileges in regard to the Chris
tians of Palestine. He sent Prince Menshikoff
to Constantinople to establish a definite Russian

300

THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM

protectorate over all the Greek Christians in the
Ottoman Empire. Secretly, however, Menshikofif
was to arrange an alliance with Turkey against
France, in case that Power gave trouble, and the
secret mission became known to the other Powers.
It has been the diplomatic pastime of the Sultans
for several generations to take advantage of the
mutual jealousy of the Christian Powers which
read them such admirable lessons in virtue. Sup
ported, behind the scenes, by the English ambas
sador, the Sultan refused the Russian proposals,
and Nicholas decided upon war. He so little knew
the secret action of England that he discussed with
the English ambassador at St. Petersburg a plan
for the division of the Ottoman Empire: England
should, in the teeth of France, occupy Egypt, and
Russia should take Constantinople. He at least
expected England to be neutral.

It may at least be said for England, which nat
urally did not care to see the Russian giant cast
his shadow over Egypt and the route to India, that
it tried earnestly to "avert war. France was less
pacific. It would like to see Russia in difficulties
with England, and it secured an alliance with Eng
land to the extent of pressing upon the Tsar a
round-table conference on the matters in dispute.
The conference was held at Vienna and a scheme
of settlement was drawn up. This scheme the Sul
tan, supported by a growing feeling in his own

301

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

country and an astute perception of the interna
tional jealousy,, declined to accept without modi
fication; and Russia refused to admit the modifi
cations he suggested. Austria had played the Tsar
false. In January (1854) the English and French
fleets had entered the Black Sea. The Sultan had
at the last moment signed the Vienna Note, and
the Tsar had agreed to sign it with certain modifi
cations. It was Austria that procured the re
jection of these reserves. What came to be known
as the Crimean War opened.

Nicholas has been severely judged by some his
torians for his policy. This censure is easy for
the historian who has before his eyes the issue as
well as the commencement of the war. Russia was
beaten and humiliated. After appalling sacrifices
she was compelled to sign a very disadvantageous
peace, and her new prestige in Europe fell con
siderably. It is, perhaps, unfair to judge the man
by the issue. But we may very well surmise that
Nicholas did little more than cloak an aggressive
design in the new mantle of righteousness which
the Tsars affected. It was, as usual, the people
who paid.

The course of the war need not be described here.
By a rapid assault which was represented in
France and England as a premature outrage, and
did much to influence popular passion the Rus
sian fleet destroyed the Turkish, and the Russian

302

THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM

armies descended south once more. Before the
end of March England and France declared war
on Russia in alliance with the monarch who
had for years reddened the soil of Greece and
the Balkans with Christian blood. The language
of the time reads curiously to-day. Nicholas is
sued a manifesto in which he warmly disclaimed
any idea of conquest; he drew the sword, he said,
only in defence of Christianity, and he was out
raged to find France and England supporting the
Mohammedan murderer. They must, he said, be
jealous of Russia's prosperity and eager to de
stroy it. England frankly sang in its streets that
it would never let the Russians get Constantinople.
France openly used the same language; though
there were those who said that Napoleon was per
sonally irritated at the Tsar's haughty disdain of
his credentials.

The wax soon centred upon the Crimea, and its
historic milestones Alma, Balaclava, Inkermann,
Sevastopol are well known. It entered upon a
second year, 1855, and the Russian people mur
mured bitterly. Nicholas himself must have felt
the sting of many of the criticisms. During the
long reign of his censors, when public opinion could
not be brought to bear upon the administration, of
ficial corruption had increased, and both army and
navy were far below the required standard of ef
ficiency. Nicholas had isolated Russia from the

303

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

west; yet from the west had come every stimulus
to the improvement of the Russian forces. He had
reversed the policy of Peter and Catherine, and he
seemed to be in danger of losing the lands they had
taken. A terrible fire of criticism and invective
was maintained at St. Petersburg. The censors
controlled the press men circulated their views in
manuscript. Nicholas was honest, and it is said
that he at times doubted if the policy to which he
had devoted his life was sound. But he was stub
born, and he thrust aside all suggestions of peace.
In the midst of the struggle he caught a chill which
led to pneumonia. He died on March 3rd, 1855.
Such was the opening of the last phase of the
romance of the Romanoffs. The dynasty is so
bered, not merely by the spirit of the age into which
it has passed, but by the very impossibility of sus
taining its gaieties. No monarch who showered
the precious national revenues upon lovers or
drinking comrades could long hold the throne in
such an age. Insurrection has taken a new form.
It is no longer the work of a coterie who would
place a new monarch on the throne in order that
they, the conspirators, may take the place of the
late favourites in the golden rain. A new phrase,
the rights of the people, is born, or re-born, in the
world. A monarchy by the grace of God must do
the work of God, not the work of the devil. NicJiQr
las tries to reconcile the new and the old: the new

304 ' ' ~~""'

THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM

idea of service and the old idea of autocracy. He
will better the lot of the people, not because it is
their will, but because it is his divine mission. And
in order to protect his scheme he constructs a new
machinery of despotism: secret police, and Cos
sacks, and priests, and censors, and sophists.
Against this machinery we have now to see the
Russian people bruise and crush their limbs until
it and its autocratic makers are destroyed. First,
however, one more effort will be made to pose as
autocratic dispenser of Justice and Charity.

305

CHAPTER XIV

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

IT is said that in his last year Nicholas I observed
that he would leave a terrible burden to his son.
He left a very costly war which turned monthly
against Russia. He left an empty treasury, and
a privy purse that was a million rubles in debt. He
left a city and country that bitterly murmured
against the rule which he had intended to make so
benevolent. He left forty millions of his people
in the condition of serfdom which the whole of the
remaining civilised world had outgrown. He left
a nation outpaced industrially and commercially
by every other Power because he could not admit
into it the science which made the others supe
rior. As he brooded over his Bible at night he saw
no solution. He died in distress; and, as in the
case of the death of nearly every Romanoff, few
mourned.

His son, Alexander II, who confidently took over
the legacy, was much closer to Alexander I than to
his father. He had the mediocre intellect of the
dynasty (after Peter I), but the sunny tempera*

306

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

ment of Catherine, sobered. Unlike his father, who
had listened only to the wrong teachers, Alexander
II had been an exemplary pupil, and he had had
good teachers. The new domestic atmosphere of the
court is less interesting than the old, and we need
not linger over it. The picture of Nicholas read
ing the Bible every night to his wife will suffice.
The Tsarina was a model German Hausfrau on
an imperial scale. Alexander breathed this atmos
phere easily. He was an exemplary youth. On
the night after the death of his father he took the
Bible to his mother's room and read to her. His
chief tutor had learned teaching from Pestalozzi,
and his lessons, which we have in part, were worthy
of Marcus Aurelius. They were exalted in prin
ciple, if vague in application. Alexander was to
make duty his star: his duty to his people and to
civilisation. He had travelled all over the Empire,
even in Siberia; and the sight of the exiles had so
touched his warm heart that he had persuaded his
stern father to modify the treatment even of some
of the conspirators at his accession.

What would a young monarch Alexander was
thirty-seven years old of this type make of the
formidable problem which his father had created?
We are quite prepared to hear that he is going to
disarm rebellion and win his subjects by kindness.
He will make the autocracy so beneficent that men
will love it. A comparatively simple thing, the

307

THE ROMANCE OF. THE ROMANOFFS

young man thought. But the tragedy of the life of
Alexander II is that it was during his reign that
Nihilism arose, dagger in hand, and he himself fell
hy the homh of an assassin who represented "the
people."

Russian funds rose in the European market when
Alexander II mounted the throne. He was well
known: an amiable, kindly man, gently punctilious
about etiquette, very sober in meat and drink, very
cold to flatterers. Europe looked to him for peace;
his people, who sank under their burdens, looked
to him for relief; liberals looked, not too confi
dently, to him for justice. But Alexander felt that
his first duty was to bring the war, not merely to
an end, but a successful end. He would not be
crowned until that was attained. A few weeks
after the death of his father he sent a representa
tive to Vienna to take part in a peace-conference.
When France demanded that the Black Sea should
be neutralised and the naval strength of Russia
limited by agreement, he refused and he bade the
war go on.

It went on, as is known, until Sevastopol fell, and
Russia soothed her feelings a little by taking Kars.
Then the diplomats gathered round a table to see
what difference to the world the death of hundreds
of thousands of men and the squandering of three
nations' resources must make. There was in Rus
sia no chance of disguising the defeat. The Black

308

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

Sea was neutralised. All the ships and forts on
which so much had been spent must go. Kars must
be surrendered. The mouth of the Danube must
be yielded. The protectorate of the Christian sub
jects of the Sultan must be abandoned. One war
had put Turkey at the feet of Russia; another war
had put Turkey upon its own feet once more, and
had set back Russia.

It was, however, peace, and the country looked
eagerly for the domestic programme of the young
Tsar. He was crowned in August, 1856, and he
at once disclosed his policy. He would, of course,
maintain the work of his revered father; but it soon
fell to pieces. An amnesty was granted, and the
rebels came back to the sunlight. The military
colonies of Arakcheeff were finally abandoned.
Arrears of taxes to the extent of twenty-four mil
lion rubles were remitted to the impoverished
people. The censorship was suspended, and St,
Petersburg poured into liberalism like a stream
when the dam is broken. The manuscripts that
had passed stealthily from hand to hand, and been
read behind locked doors, were now sent to the
press. Periodicals and pamphlets snowed upon
the metropolis. Unions and leagues for everything
new and beneficent and western sprang up like
mushrooms. All the talk of English radicalism
filled the salons: self-government and emancipation
of women, biblical criticism and Darwinism, banks

309

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

and railways and manufactures, education and co
operation and political reform.

Presently the discussion would strike a deeper
note. A certain Robert Owen of England had
advocated a scheme which he called Socialism.
Certain Germans were beginning to take the germ
of Owen's patriarchal theory and make a "scien
tific system" of it. Russia was now free to travel,
and to import books. The mind which has been ar
tificially repressed will, if the process be not con
tinued too long, expand more rapidly than the
mind which is suffered to grow normally.

In all this babel of humanitarian tongues, each
reformer stridently denouncing his brother as a
charlatan, as is the way of reformers, there was one
steady and persistent note. Serfdom must be abol
ished. Here the mass of the people agreed with the
intellectuals. We are tempted to picture the great
body of the Russian people as too stunted in mind,
too dazed by labour and the stupefying conditions
of their life, to understand anything of this reform-
language. But there is plenty of evidence that
they were quite alive to the idea of emancipation.
They had looked to each new Tsar, as he eloquently
unfolded his- lofty aims on coronation-day, to abol
ish serfdom. They looked with particular eager
ness to Alexander. "Constitution" was too large
a word for them. But they knew what it meant to
be free and to have their Mir and their bit of land.

310

THE TBAGEDY OF ALEXANDER It

Forty-two and a half million people in Russia,
were still serfs in the year 1856: nine centuries
after the establishment of the Russian Church,
two hundred years after the beginning of the rule
of the Romanoffs. I have, incidentally, given suf
ficient evidence in earlier chapters that this serf
dom differed little from slavery. The peasant was,
in polite phraseology, attached to the glebe When
a rich man ruined himself in the dissipations of St.
Petersburg and sold his estates, he sold the peasants
with the land. When a man opened new estates,
he bought peasants to work it. They had no liberty
of movement, which is the fundamental condition
of liberty. They owned no land (except a small
number who secured the advantages offered by the
last two Tsars) and were therefore not masters of
their own labour. Half their labour must be given
gratuitously to their lord this was the new, de
cent sort of serfdom who would then allow them
to wring a miserable living for themselves and
family out of a fraction of his land with the other
half of their time. Not much earlier, we saw, great
land-owners, even women, could inflict on them
such torture and death as few Romans are said
to have inflicted on their slaves in the worst days
of the Empire. They were still slaves, though hu
manely treated on the Crown Lands, much as a
wise farmer gives good conditions to his cattle.
The lot of the peasant of Russia to-day is hard

311

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

enough. Imagine it sixty years ago with the
added yoke of serfdom.

Assuredly serfdom was the first and most
monstrous evil to be removed, and we saw that for
fifty years or more the rulers of Russia had been
ashamed of this great stigma on their civilisation.
At the very beginning of the reign the rumour
went out that Alexander would free the serfs, and
their wealthy owners were anxious. Alexander re
assured them to some extent. He would like to see
an end of serf dom, but it was an evil to be remedied
gradually,, He would like to see individuals reduce
it by freeing their serfs. Soon after the close of the
war the Tsar again addressed the nobles, and
begged them to give serious attention to the eman
cipation of the serfs. It was plain that little would
be done in this fashion, and a few months later he
appointed Provincial Committees of land-owners
to give practical consideration to the problem.

Historians seem to differ in discussing whether
Alexander was moved by his own idealism or by
the pressure of the growing liberalism of St. Pe
tersburg and the clamours of the peasants. The
point is of some interest in forming a general esti
mate of the Tsar-Emancipator. Professor Kor-
nilov, while ascribing great reforms to Alexander
II, maintains that he was impelled from without
rather than within: that his moralising tutor had
not been a liberal or a man of definite social views,

312

CATHEDRAL ERECTED IN PETROGRAD iisr MEMORY
OF ALEXANDER II

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

and had implanted in his mind only such general
regard for humanity and justice as a conservative
may profess. Others would represent the Tsar as
a practical reformer of a liberal type, a little soured
in the end by the excesses and violence of "ad
vanced" people. Perhaps we are nearest to the
truth if we picture Alexander II as a man who
united a real detestation of serfdom with a sincere
regard for justice in the abstract, yet would never
have overcome the conservatism of many of his
advisers and the immense practical difficulties but
for the very effective pressure put upon him by the
rising impatience of educated Russians.

The Provincial Committees wasted many months
in futile discussion and wrangling. Around them
there now waged a great battle of amateur sociolo
gists, and half a dozen different theories of eman
cipation had their schools of defenders. There was,
to begin with, a vital difference of views between
the serfs and their owners. The peasant wanted
land even more than liberty; the owner felt that
it was emancipation to give liberty, and he was, as
a rule, unwilling to part with land. There was the
question of compensation, which inspired endless
discussion. A serf was worth a hundred dollars.
In short, the committees of local owners did not
want the work to proceed, and Alexander formed,
at the beginning of 1857, a Central Committee of
twelve members under his own presidency. The

313

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

work was to be done "from on high." Emancipa
tion was to be a voluntary gift from the Tsar.

The work still dragged. In 1855 Alexander had
appointed the liberal Lanskoi Minister of the In-
terior, and he zealously promoted the scheme and
secured the liberal Milyutin as colleague. But
other ministers were of the old school and unsym
pathetic. They pointed out that behind the demand
for emancipation other and more disturbing de
mands were becoming articulate. Liberal nobles
who were ready to emancipate their serfs already
claimed that this ought to be followed by their own
political emancipation. They demanded a Duma.
However, even members of the imperial family,
like the Grand Duke Constantine, pressed for the
reform, and the Tsar at length formed an Imperial
Commission, on which the conservative opposition
was checked. A law was drafted, and on February
19th, 1861, Alexander announced to Russia and
the world, with a very natural exaltation, that the
serfs were to be freed.

The serfs fell into three classes. Those on the
Crown Lands were, as we saw, already in an im
proved condition. The law of 1861 did not affect
them, but they were later (1866) put in the same
position as the emancipated serfs. Then there were
a million and a half serfs who were not on the
land, but in personal service. These were ordered
to continue their service for two further years, and

314

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

they would then be free. The main body were the
twenty-one million serfs on the estates of private
owners. Each was now to own his house, and the
small strip of land encircling it, and the entire com
munity of peasants in a village were to have, in com
mon, a part of the arable land of the owner. The
Slavophiles had secured this reversion to the primi
tive custom of owning in common, and one may
justly suspect that they felt that the arrangement
would make the peasants more or less impervious
to the new ideas about property which were being
imported from Germany. The Mir was re-estab
lished. But the land-owners were to sell, not give,
their land; and they were to be compensated for the
loss of serf -labour. The entire value was esti
mated, the State paid it, and the peasants were to
refund the sum within a space of forty-nine years.
The Mir was responsible for the payments.

Alexander looked out upon his Empire for the
signs of jubilation, and at first he saw many. Even
so drastic a rebel as Hertzen rejoiced. The jour
nals and pamphlets of the metropolis turned from
acidity to a temporary sweetness. Deputations of
peasants, carefully chosen, were brought to thank
the Tsar, and in the tearful accents of the aged
serfs he thought that he heard the voice of twenty
millions. But it was not long before the reaction
began, and a chill affected the liberalism of the
Tsar.

315

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

It was a very general belief of the peasants that
the land belonged, by ancient right, to them, and it
had been in some way stolen from them by the
wealthy and noble. When, therefore, they heard
of the scheme of compensation, the payments which
must be made annually until the death of the
youngest of them, they began to murmur. The
officials, they said in many places, must have falsi
fied the words of the Tsar. There were other griev
ances. The allowance of land to each had, in the
heat of discussion, been cut down to very small pro
portions. The owners were not bound to sell even
this, and in many places they refused ; and, where
they sold, they generally attempted to sell inferior
land. Officials, charged with the administration of
the law, took bribes, and there was a vast amount of
foul play. In fine, the emancipated serfs now
found that a free man had to shoulder a burden
of taxes heavier than they had imagined.

In short, hopes had been improperly inflated, and
the disillusion was exasperating; nor was there now
any lack of men imbued with the new ideas who
fostered the discontent. Lanskoi and Milyutin
were dismissed from office, through the intrigue of
the conservatives, and the new minister, Valuyeff,
had not the same scrupulous regard for the success
of the law. In various places there were risings of
the peasants, and the troops had to use their mus
kets. In the government of Kazan ten thousand

316

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

peasants revolted, under the lead of Anton Petroff,
and the new era was stained heavily with blood.
Petroff was executed; eighty of the emancipated
serfs were shot with arms in their hands. At the
university of Kazan the students boldly held a re
quiem service in honour of the dead, and Alexander
had to punish even the monks who celebrated it.
The "Tsar-Emancipator" did not long enjoy his
popularity. The clouds closed slowly, after the
short burst of sunshine, and would cover the skies
of Russia henceforward until the last Romanoff
quitted the throne.

An even graver cause of distrust now arose.
Alexander had visited Poland soon after his ac
cession and had paternally promised to make the
Poles happy, if they were good. "No more
dreams," he said genially to them. His father's
work was to be maintained, he told them. Poland
was to be a province of Russia. He appointed a
moderate governor, Prince Gorchakoff, and de
clared an amnesty. Since the terrible repression
of the rebellion by Nicholas I a large number of
Poles had lived in the various capitals of Europe,
and there they had been thoroughly educated in
modern ideas. In London, particularly, they had
been steeped in the sober radicalism that had fol
lowed the failure of the Chartist movement, the
fervour for the deliverance of Hungarians and
Italians, the popular indignation against Russia.

317

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Most of them would not return to a Poland which
was not free, "but some did, and they assisted in the
education of the Poles. There arose a very general
cry among the educated Poles for a constitution;
and Alexander believed no more than his fathers,
or than Pius IX, in giving a constitution that was
asked as a right.

In November, 1860, a great demonstration was
held in memory of the revolution of 1830, and the
authorities were annoyed. Demonstrations in
creased for all kinds of undesirable objects, and
the troops at Warsaw fired and killed five Poles.
A vast crowd of one hundred thousand attended the
funeral. The Tsar tried to conciliate them by small
gifts. He appointed a Polish Director of Public
Instruction and Cults. He created municipal coun
cils for the large towns, and electoral councils for
each government and district. But he would not
grant a constitution, and the agitation increased.
A great crowd went to the Viceroy's palace to for
mulate their demands, and soon two hundred of
them lay dead upon the pavement. The whole
city went into mourning.

A new Viceroy, General Lambert, was ap
pointed, and the Tsar instructed him to carry out
conscientiously the reforms he had promised. But
the officials who were to carry them out were Rus
sians, and the greater reforms were withheld.
There were further demonstrations, and further

318

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

shootings. A reactionary soldier, Count Luders,
was then made Viceroy. His life was attempted.
The Poles now openly demanded independence and
a restoration of Lithuania. Arrests and banish
ment were useless. The whole educated nation
seemed to be aflame. So on January 15th the au
thorities decided to decimate the enthusiasts by an
enforced recruiting for the army, and Poland en
tered upon another futile rebellion. Those who
escaped the police fled to the country, secured
arms, and formed guerilla bands.

It was one of the most pathetic of rebellions. The
insurgents had no artillery, no transport or medi
cal service. They moved about, often led by
priests, as they were hunted, living on the sympa
thetic gentry and peasants, occasionally hanging
or shooting a pro-Russian landowner. It was not
war, and the Russian troops hanged or shot all
they captured. The most curious feature of it
was that a secret committee or council guided the
insurrection, levied taxe.s, and issued decrees from
the University of Warsaw itself without being de
tected by the police. Poles abroad fierily preached
the wrongs of their countrymen, and the English,
French, and Austrian governments formally re
quested the Tsar (1863) to put an end to the an
archy. Two months later they formulated for the
Tsar what seemed to them the reasonable demands
of the Poles : a general amnesty, parliamentary rep-

319

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

reservation, reform of the law of recruiting, com
plete liberty of religion, admission of Poles to of
fice, and so on. Alexander indignantly refused.
He did not add one wonders if lie reflected that
it was precisely because the Sultan would not grant
such rights to his Christian subjects that Russia had
made war upon the Turk. Prussia supported, %nd
promised assistance to, the Tsar.

The last sparks of the rebellion were stamped
out in May (1864), and the punishment began.
The few traces that Nicholas had left of a Polish
nationality were now destroyed. The Polish lan
guage was banned from schools and universities,
and the chief rebels were executed. It was the
nobles, the educated class, that Alexander chiefly
blamed ; and it was on that account that he granted
the peasants of Poland the right to share the land.

Alexander was less to blame in connection with
another event, two years later, which moved Europe
to express its indignation. The settlement of the
Caucasic region was completed, and some hundreds
of thousands of Mohammedan Circassians and
Georgians migrated from the occupied territory
and sought shelter in Turkey. The English Gov
ernment again made a protest at St. Petersburg,
which was neatly countered by a reminder that the
state of Ireland hardly justified England in posing
as a moralist. The Circassians were, in fact, hand
some ruffians with whose ways the English were

320

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

imperfectly acquainted. They freely sold their
daughters, the famous Circassian maids, to the ha
rems of Constantinople, and they were the most ex
pert cattle-thieves and least industrious workers of
Europe or Asia. They were largely settled by the
Turks on the farms of the reluctant Bulgarians,
and they willingly joined the bashi-bazouks in cut
ting off Christian ears.

The brutality that was used in the suppression
of the Polish insurrection reacted upon the in
tellectuals of St. Petersburg, just as the insurrec
tion itself reacted upon the more or less benevo
lent designs of the Tsar. But before we consider
how the reign of Alexander II came to inaugurate
the terror which would for the next sixty years
brood over Russia, it is proper that we should
briefly examine the remainder of his reforms.

The emancipation of the serfs, though a measure
of elementary justice that had been too long de
nied, must nevertheless command our admiration
when we consider the stubborn opposition which
the Tsar had to overcome. It was not followed by
the political emancipation of the nation at large, but
the Tsar created a popular institution which would,
at a -later date, prove a valuable instrument of re
form. The Mir was re-established by the com
munal ownership of the land. The district coun
cil, the Zemstvo, was now established (1864). Each
government (or province) of Russia was already

321

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

divided into districts, and there was to be in each
of these a Zemstvo, or popular council, formed of
deputies who were elected for a term of three years.
They included representatives of the landowners,
the artisans, and the peasants, and were to meet
at least once a year, with a permanent executive
committee. A general Zemstvo for each province
was also created.

At the time the Zemstvo had, in so far as it was
obliged to act, few and simple functions the care
of roads, bridges, sanitation, etc. and the imperial
taxes were so heavy that it could not raise sufficient
money for other work. The Imperial Government,
moreover, jealously watched, and often interfered
with, the work of the popular council. Yet it was
an important instalment of reform, and at a later
date we shall find the Zemstvo playing a greater
part than the Tsar intended, in the enlightenment
and emancipation of Russia. Already it had the
option of building schools, and in many places it
did so.

There was a corresponding improvement in the
administration of justice. The slovenly and cor
rupt traditional system was condemned, and an
entire series of new tribunals, framed on western
models, was created. There was a court for each
district and a court of appeal, from which a final
appeal for revision might be made to the Senate.
On the French model the magistrates were to con-

322

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

duct the preliminary inquiry which had hitherto
been left, with disastrous results, to the police, and
public trial by jury was introduced. In the rural
districts justices of the peace, who were generally
large landed proprietors, heard the petty cases
which had earlier been made a matter of rough
justice, or injustice, between the serf and his
master. In such cases an appeal might be made to
a bench of justices if there was question of a fine
of more than thirty rubles (fifteen dollars) or more
than three days' imprisonment. Such appeals were
rare, as it was found that the hardy peasant pre
ferred a few strokes of the lash, as in the old days,
to a loss of his money or his time. In the higher
courts, as well as in the army, flogging was abol
ished.

Here again the demands of the liberals were, in
theory, generously met; and in practice they were
largely evaded. Incompetence was inevitable at
the beginning of so large a reform, and some de
gree of ill-will and abuse of power had to be ex
pected. These defects do not detract from the
merit of the Tsar and his liberal ministers. But
there was from the first a tendency on the part of
the imperial government to regard cases as politi
cal and reserve them for the kind of treatment they
had always received. As the radical agitation grew,'
and the Tsar was driven into the arms of the re
actionaries at the court, this interference naturally

323

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

increased. Long before the end of Alexander's
reign the civil courts were habitually ignored in
precisely those cases which needed the most impar
tial consideration, and men were detained and pun
ished in thousands at the whim of brutal and irre
sponsible servants of the autocracy.

These were the principal measures of reform
granted by Alexander II in his period of benevo
lence. With the fiscal improvements we are not
much concerned, but it may be noted that for a
time a Budget was published. Much was done in
those early years (1861-1866) for education. The
restriction upon the number of students attending
the universities was removed, and there was a re
markable eagerness to obtain higher education.
Youths earned their living while they attended the
classes, and some scholarships were founded. Girls
were excluded from the universities, but we shall
see presently how they broke through the barriers
and joined the youths of Russia in the demand for
enlightenment. A large number of secondary and
elementary schools were established. In 1877 it was
claimed that there were 25,000 schools. The press
was offered the alternative of submitting its copy
to a censorship or risking the attentions of the po
lice. The very name of Censor was hated, after
the experience under Nicholas I, and for a time
periodicals and books poured out upon an eager
public. The restriction upon travel also was re-

324

THE TRAGEDY OP ALEXANDER II

moved, and men passed freely to the outer world
which terrified the Slavophiles,*and came back with
the language of Mazzini and other apostles upon
their lips. Foreigners in Russia received civil
rights for the first time. The restrictions upon the
movements of the Jews were modified, though "the
Pale" was not abolished.

The history of that stirring period has been so
frequently written in the last thirty years that we
no longer profess to find a mystery in the fact that
this reforming Romanoff fell by the hand of an
assassin. Here it is necessary only to give a short
summary of the development after 1860 which en
tirely changed the character of his reign. We must
remember that from the first Alexander II did not,
recognise the rights of man. In his best and most
benevolent mood he was concerned only with the
duties of monarchs. The authority divinely en
trusted to him was accompanied by a divine man
date to make his people virtuous and happy. With
in the limits of a strict maintenance of the au
thority of the autocracy and of the clergy he would
do so. The more enlightened of his subjects might
respectfully offer suggestions, though that was
properly the function of the ministers he chose to
guide him, but the correct attitude of the people
was to await, in patience and respect, the measures
of reform which the wisdom of his council sanc
tioned him in granting.

325

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

This was a fundamental anachronism, and, how
ever generous the intentions of the Tsar may have
been and however misguided and exaggerated some
of the radicals, a conflict was as inevitable as the
sunrise. Seeing that the policy of his early liberal
ministers did not pacify the country, which became
louder and bolder in its demands the more he gave
it, Alexander fell back upon the worn maxims of
autocracy and surrounded himself more and more
with reactionaries. The wealth of the great land
owners and the power of the clergy and monks were
as much threatened by the new spirit as was the
autocracy of the Tsars. In the recesses of the court
there was, therefore, a complacent agreement upon
the kind of theory which has at all times reconciled
the consciences of good men with persecution. The
"extremists," it was said, were few in number and
morbid or perverse in sentiment. They must not
be suffered to abuse liberty to the detriment of the
nation. Coercion was justified. To coercion
which meant, in practice, the most wanton brutality
and violence on the part of baffled police some re
plied with violence. In effect, war was declared.

The crowd of young men who flocked to the Uni
versity of St. Petersburg when the restrictions
were removed were the nucleus of the radical move
ment which was gradually raised to a revolutionary
heat. The teaching of liberal professors, who were
reconciled to gradual and moderate reforms, only

326

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

prepared them for a more highly seasoned political
diet, and there were powerful writers to purvey it.
Hertzen, who was in exile, sent his propaganda into
the country much as Mazzini taught the youth of
Italy. His very radical organ, "The Bell," was
the delight of the young folk who, in all ages, scorn
the timidity of age and are convinced that the im
maturity of the youthful mind is amply compen
sated by its superior candour. Bakunin, who for a
time joined Hertzen in London, and then settled
in Switzerland, taught a gospel which gradually
approached, and finally reached, anarchy. Tschai-
kovsky, who also was compelled to leave Russia,
was the inspiration of a "circle," or discussion-so
ciety, at St. Petersburg which had branches or af
filiated societies in every town of Russia. Bielinski
and other radicals assisted the ferment of emotions
and philosophies. Krapotkin and Stepiak were
coming upon the scene.

We have seen how the mind of Russian youth was
prepared for these advanced gospels. The monot
onous misery and poverty of the country in spite of
every change of ruler, the corruption and brutality
of officials, the harsh measures of Nicholas I, the
disastrous issue of the Crimean War, the severity
of the repression of the Poles, the disappointing re
sults of the emancipation of the serfs, and the in
creasing perception that Russia lagged behind
every other country in Europe put a mass of in-

327

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

flammable material into the minds of the educated.
As early as 1862 a student was caught spreading a
pamphlet in which he advocated a bloody revolution
against the dynasty, and was exiled to Siberia. In
the same year a series of mysterious fires in St.
Petersburg increased the agitation. Conservatives
ascribed them to the violent radicals: the radicals
retorted that they were due to agents of the reac
tionaries who wanted to provide a ground for strin
gent action. The left wing of the reformers
moved rapidly further west, and its language in
creased in violence. The authorities raised the
fees at the universities and endeavoured to suppress
the numerous students' societies, but the agitation
continued. Many of the nobles themselves were in
sympathy with the intellectual revolt. In 1862
several gatherings of nobles and gentry passed a
demand for parliamentary institutions.

At the other end of the movement the conviction
increased that no form of centralised government
would remain honest and disinterested, and the phi
losophy of anarchy was framed. At first it was
moral rather than political, as it is in the minds of
many Anarchists to-day. The individual was to be
relieved of the swathing bonds of all religious and
moral and other traditions, and the theory was that
he would then develop healthily. To this theory
was first applied the name "Nihilism," which was
afterwards, as Anarchy became more and more po-

328

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

litical in complexion, extended to the whole revo
lutionary movement; though Socialism gained con
siderably on Anarchy as time went on. It was the
period of Karl Marx and the early German So
cialists, and the imposing structure of Marx's argu
ment won large numbers of adherents.

One of the most disturbing features in the mind
of conservatives was the way in which young women
adopted the advanced creed. The attempts of
Peter the Great to break down the barriers which
confined the life of women had almost ceased at
his death. In the world of wealth, as Tolstoi's nov
els show, women kept the liberty of the reigns of
Elizabeth and Catherine. The new austerity of the
court was not accompanied by any general asceti
cism amongst the aristocracy. The philosophy of
anarchy provided a principle for what had hitherto
been an inconsistent defiance of religious traditions
which were nominally respected. But the mass of
Russian women and girls, above the level of the
peasantry, had hitherto been unaffected by these
liberties of the aristocracy. Now the cry of the
emancipation of woman penetrated remote country
houses, and many a girl broke loose from the con
trol of a tearful mother or an infuriated father, and
sought the centre of enlightenment in the city.
The authorities refused to allow unmarried women
to attend the higher schools. They retorted, as
Roman women had done nearly two thousand years

329

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

before, by entering into fictitious marriages. Grad
ually they won the right to attend certain lectures
at the university, and many of them were found in
the students' circles where the reconstruction of
the universe was heatedly discussed.

The next development was that the intellectuals
decided to educate the workers. An officer of the
army resigned his commission and turned weaver.
Sophia Perovskaia and other daughters of wealthy
parents got into touch with the working and do
mestic women. The police of the "Third Section"
(the secret police created by Nicholas) grew in
numbers and dogged the steps of these fiery young
apostles. In 1866 a man named Karakosoff, who
had formed a society to promote the welfare of the
people, attempted to shoot the Tsar. An isolated
fanatic, the Tsar was told; and at that time there
was certainly no real organisation of assassination.
But the pressure of the police and the daily risk
of arrest drove the agitation underground, and to
their new quarters the spies and informers and
police followed them. There was now, plainly, no
question of persuading Alexander II to complete
his scheme of reform. There was increasing ques
tion of making war upon him and the autocracy. It
was the Russian tradition. When a Tsar was ob
noxious you removed him ; but to do so in the name
of justice, not in the name of a covetous group of
courtiers, was revolution of the worst order.

330

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

By this time, the early seventies, the Tsar saw
that he had not merely to deal with a few unbal
anced individuals. The jails were full of political
prisoners. All the well-known leaders were in
jail or exile, yet the work proceeded amazingly.
In 1874 there were 1,500 arrests. The new courts
were not called upon to decide the guilt of the
prisoners. They were knouted, or thrust into
prison, or sent to Siberia. Large numbers died in
the overcrowded jails. Some went insane or com
mitted suicide. When the experiment of a public
trial was at last made, in 1877, people were
amazed at the calm courage and high idealism of
the young "criminals." In 1878 nearly two hun
dred of them were tried. Many received terms of
imprisonment, or penal servitude, of from ten *to
twenty years.

The rebels were now at war with the brutal min
isters of the autocracy, and they began to use the
same weapons. A young girl from the country
came to St. Petersburg and shot the head of the
police; and, amidst great enthusiasm, she was ac
quitted by a jury. Another head of the police was
in the same year (1878) stabbed at Odessa. Spies
were shot. Groups of young men who were sur
prised in secret council by the police produced re.
volvers and fought. The governor of Kharkoff,
who treated political prisoners with great brutality,

331

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

was assassinated. Another attempt was made to
shoot the Tsar (1879).

In the meantime, it will be remembered, the
Russo-Turkish war had occurred, and it had the
customary effect of increasing the people's burden
and the discontent. The Slavophile party natu
rally gave birth to a Pan-$lav party, and the tradi
tional Russian ambition to spread over the Balkans
was revived. The Turks continued to treat their
Balkan subjects with great brutality, and in 1874
Bosnia and Herzegovina broke into revolt, while
Serbia and Montenegro, which were semi-inde
pendent, joined with their compatriots in the war.
The Pan-Slavs now pressed for war, and there
were those in the Tsar's circle, such as his brother,
the Grand Duke Nicholas, who warmly supported
the agitation. The financial minister, on the other
hand, who had carefully nursed the treasury into
something like prosperity, strongly opposed the
adventure. The Tsar wavered between his hope
of getting the ignominous treaty of 1856 set aside
and his love of peace and dread of the costly chances
of war.

There is now no doubt that Bismarck helped to
urge him to war. Alexander was pro-German, and
had in 1870 secured the neutrality of Austria while
Prussia attacked France. It is true that, when the
Germans meditated a fresh attack upon the French
in 1875, the Tsar interfered on behalf of France

332

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

and greatly angered Bismarck. That statesman,
however, retained influence at St. Petersburg, and,
on the Frederician tradition of encouraging rivals
to wear out each other, he urged Russia to attack
Turkey. In 1877 (April) Russia entered the war,
and its progress was so rapid that in the following
March it compelled Turkey to sign the humiliating
Treaty of San Stefano. Russia took from it very
little territory directly, but, besides securing the
recognition of the complete independence of Ser
bia and Rumania, it created a large principality of
Bulgaria in which it hoped to have a predominant
interest.

England was, unfortunately, still in its mood of
favouring the Turk, through jealousy of Russia,
and Austria was less openly hostile. A desultory
war continued, and Bismarck astutely offered the
services of Germany as mediator, with the inten
tion of curtailing its gains. By the Treaty of Ber
lin (July 13th, 1878) the San Stefano Treaty was
torn up, and Bulgaria was cut down by half. Once
more a costly war had, in the eyes of the people,
done little for Russia ; and there was the customary,
and not unjust, cry that the course of the war had
revealed a great deal of official corruption. The
tragedy of the reign of Alexander ran on to its
ghastly finale.

In 1878 it was decreed that in future political
prisoners should be tried by courts martial, and in

333

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

the following year the Tsar appointed Governors
General of St. Petersburg, Kharkoff, and Odessa,
and gave additional and formidable powers to the
Governors of Moscow, Warsaw, and Kieff. The
system of repression was to be drastically pursued.
The revolutionaries retorted by attempting to blow
up the train in which Alexander returned from a
visit to the Crimea. Three mines were laid. Near
Moscow Sophia Perovskaia and a few associates
had worked for two months digging a tunnel to
the line from a house they had taken. The prepara
tions were in this case perfect, but the Tsar es
caped. The police had arranged three trains, and,
as the Tsar changed train on approaching Moscow,
leaving the middle for the first train, he was al
lowed to pass unharmed, and it was the second train
that was blown to pieces. Sophia Perovskaia and
her associates escaped and returned to their plot
ting. The heads of the revolutionary movement
had decreed the death of Alexander II.

For the next fifteen months there was a thrilling
war between the revolutionaries and the "Third
Section." Time and again the Tsar's advisers de
clared that only a few dozen rebels were left, and
the country was substantially loyal. But, although
hundreds were arrested annually, though bribes and
spies and all the ignominious machinery of the po
lice were brought into play, the "red terror" held
the field against the "white terror." In February,

334

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

1880, not only the Tsar, but all the imperial fam
ily, had a narrow escape. A revolutionary named
Halturin entered the service of the Winter Palace
as waiter. He discovered that the waiters' quarters
were, with an intervening floor occupied by troops,
directly underneath the dining-room, and he pro
posed to fire a mine there. Day by day he smug
gled into the palace small quantities of dynamite
and stored them with his belongings. The police
discovered a plan, on which the imperial dining-
room was marked with a cross, and they searched
the floors beneath it. They did not find the ex
plosive, but from that day a stricter watch was
kept, and no more dynamite could be introduced.
Halturin believed that he had enough, and on Feb
ruary 17th he fired the mine at a time when the im
perial family ought to be assembled for a festive
dinner. But the Tsar was late for dinner, and
again he escaped unhurt.

The closing scene is one of dramatic interest. It
was decided to lay a mine under a street through
which the Tsar had frequently to pass, near the
palace, and at the same time station men with spe
cial bombs to throw at the carriage, in case the mine
failed. The conspirators hired a shop, and, while
some of them conducted a brisk and honest trade
in eggs and butter, others tunnelled beneath the
street. The soil was removed in the empty boxes,
and, though the police several times visited the

335

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

shop, they detected nothing beyond a popular
grocery business. The tunnel was complete, and
the mine ready, about the middle of March (1881) .
The dramatic feature is that meantime Alexan
der II was being induced to consider proposals of
reform. He had, after the outrage at the palace,
removed the Governor General of St. Petersburg
and entrusted the repression of anarchy to a Su
preme Commanding Commission. The leading
spirit of this was General Loris Melikoff, who had
had some success as Governor General of Khar-
koff. Melikoff 's method was to isolate the terror
ists by granting reforms which would conciliate the
general body of malcontents. He pressed this
method upon the Tsar, as Alexander, distracted and
weary, perhaps a little anxious about his life, de
cided to try it. The prisons and the settlements of
Siberia were explored, and large numbers were re
stored to their homes. About two thousand stu
dents were permitted to return to the universities,
and the scholarships were restored. Melikoff then
proposed a scheme of popular representation which,
though it did not exactly give Russia a constitu
tion, might have conciliated many. The reactionary
ministers and courtiers now doubled their efforts to
restrain the Tsar, but he accepted Melikoff 's draft,
and kept it several days for revision. He probably
wavered and postponed the fatal decision. And it

336

THE TRAGEDY OF ALEXANDER II

was during that week of delay that the conspirators
completed their preparations.

On March 16th Alexander read the draft to his
ministers and approved it. His relief at having
reached a definite policy was great, and in happier
mood he drove out to review his troops. As he re
turned to the palace a young woman in the street
waved her handkerchief. She was the redoubtable
Sophia Perovskaia, and was giving the signal A
bomb was thrown, and the carriage was wrapped
in a cloud of smoke, while Cossacks writhed on the
ground. But out of the smoke and litter the Tsar
again emerged unhurt. Against the advice of his
officers he lingered to say a word to the wounded,
and it is said that he congratulated himself on his
escape. "It is too early to congratulate yourself/ 5
said a young man who, through some oversight, had
been permitted to approach. He flung his bomb,
and the Tsar fell, fearfully and mortally wounded.
He died at the palace two hours later. "They who
draw the sword shall perish by the sword," the
rebels grimly commented. The doctrine of the
assassination of tyrants of men who stifled con
stitutional demands by the shedding of blood was
then held by even moderate radicals in many lands.
There were others who pointed out that Alexander
II, who had inherited an empty purse, left many
millions of rubles to be divided amongst his family.

337

CHAPTER XV

ENTER POBIEDONOSTSEFF

THE romance of the Romanoffs has now passed the
phase of comparative dulness which set in with the
conversion of the dynasty from its license of per
sonal conduct, and has entered upon its final stage
of mingled melodrama and tragedy. The Russian
people is awakening to a consciousness that what
some call an autocracy by divine right is a foreign
intrusion into the life of the Slavs, an infringement
of the rights of man. Three ways of meeting the
crisis were open to the new Emperor, Alexander
III. He might grant the full constitutional liberty
that had now been won in every civilisation of the
world except China; he might follow the course
traced by Melikoff and prolong the life of the
dynasty; he might prefer to extinguish every de
mand and insist upon an unadulterated autocracy.
Alexander III chose, with such modifications as
his vacillations allowed, the third course.

He was the second son of Alexander II. Thp
eldest son had died in 1865 of consumption, b;^,
Alexander was a man of exceptionally strong coi),-

338

ENTER POBIEDONOSTSEFF

stitution. There Is a tradition that he could take
a horse-shoe in his mighty hand and bend it until
the points touched. Such a youth would make a
fine soldier, and as a soldier he was trained. He
was cool, courageous (as he showed on various occa
sions), regular in life, sincerely religious, and very
little cultivated. When his brother died, he had to
be prepared for the business of ruling a very unruly
Empire. But he was now twenty years old, dull
in intellect, and altogether indisposed to acquire the
varied culture which his future required. One of
his tutors was the famous Pobiedonostseff : who was
not at that time a pronounced reactionary, but his
office prepared the way for power in his reactionary
days. It is said that his wife, the Princess Dagmar
of Denmark, induced him to prepare more care
fully for the throne; but that seems to be a legend
of the court. All that men knew about him was
that he liked soldiering and music and patronised
historical research, and thought that there were far
too many Germans in Russia.

On this last feature some built a faint hope. Ger
many was now an Empire, and the "League of the
Three Emperors" (Germany, Austria and Russia)
beded no good for democracy. Bismarck encour-;
aged both the policy of repression in Russia and/
tH policy of aggression abroad because he did not \
*.sh to see Russia develop her mighty resources. f
the other hand, Alexander was a soldier, a man
339

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

steeped in the Romanoff tradition of a divine autoc
racy and entirely out of sympathy with humani
tarian or progressive ideas. The only question was
whether from policy he would follow the lead of
Melikoff- When the oath of allegiance w r as taken
he announced, ambiguously,, that he would walk in
the steps of his father. Which set of steps?
Melikoff showed him the draft of a pseudo-consti
tution initialled by the late Tsar. "There will be
no change/ 5 he said. But men were uncertain. The
fearful end of his father must have embittered him.
The rebels were, of course, drastically punished.
Eight hundred more arrests were made. Sophia
Perovskaia, the wonderful woman of those bloody
days, and four others were executed. There is a
grounded suspicion that they were first tortured.
Another woman was condemned, but she was preg
nant, and her sentence was changed to exile.

It is thought by many that an injudicious step
taken by the revolutionaries helped to fix the
Tsar's plan. They somehow got into his hands a
long letter or manifesto, in which, while pleading
for reform, they very plainly held a sword over his
head ; and their demands were not at all moderate.
I doubt if Alexander III ever hesitated. His
strong and narrow mind and soldierly attitude dis
posed him to "enforce discipline." Pobiedonostseff
was soon at his side. He was Procurator of the
Holy Synod (since the preceding year). When

340

ENTER POBIEDONOSTSEFF

MelikofFs scheme was brought forward for discus
sion he bitterly opposed it, and predicted that it
would ruin Russia. He was now a Russophile of
the narrowest and most fanatical description.
Alexander leaned to that side. The German
Emperor had, he said, warned his father against
making any concessions to constitutionalism. The
"Holy League" a fanatical Russophile society
led by the Grand Duke Vladimir pressed for
coercion.

Out of the struggle there emerged at last (on
April 29th) the new Tsar's message to his people.
It was probably written by Pobiedonostseff. In
it Alexander firmly contended that the autocracy
was of divine origin, and he would protect it against
all encroachments. But the reforms granted by his
father would not be withdrawn. Education, popu
lar councils, municipal institutions, and so on, were
to be maintained. The people were to be admitted
to some share in the management of the Empire's
affairs. That was to be the note of the new reign:
something more moderate than Pobiedonostseff and
less "advanced" than Melikoff.

Melikoff resigned, and his place as Minister of
the Interior was taken by General Ignatieff , a man
of moderate conservative views, or a man who at
least felt the need of concessions. On the one hand
he looked with criminal toleration upon the mas
sacres of the Jews which now broke out all over

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Russia. On the other he advised the Tsar that
large reforms were needed. The peasants were
assisted in paying off the crippling annual interest
on their "emancipation." Popular councils were
set up in Poland, Siberia, and the Baltic provinces,
which had not hitherto had them. Above all he de
vised, and imposed upon the Tsar, a feeble pre
tence of a national parliament. Members of the
provincial councils "informed men/' as they were
diplomatically called were gathered into a de
liberating assembly at St. Petersburg, and it was
through them that the reforms were gradually
drafted. There was an improvement in the harsh
manner of collecting the taxes, and the burden was
shifted a little more on to the shoulders of the
wealthy. Banks were opened for the peasapts.

The conservatives stormed the Tsar with pro-
tests against these dangerous concessions, and in
the spring of 1882 General Ignatieff was forced
to retire. His place was taken by Count Dmitri
Tolstoi, one of the men of the last reign whom
liberals hated above all others. He had been the
Minister of Education during the late Tsar's dras
tic restriction of the schools and universities. He
and PobiedonostsefF and a few other rabid Slavo
philes now closed round Alexander III and dictated
the policy of his reign. That policy was one of, at
home, unswerving, unscrupulous, unmerciful Russi-
fication; that is to say, complete obliteration of all

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ENTER POBIEDONOSTSEFF

criticism of the autocracy in native Russia and all
religious or racial characters in the subject-
provinces of alien race or religion. Abroad, the
policy was naturally Pan-Slav, aggressive, im
perialistic; but here the Emperor and his limited
resources curbed the fanatics, so that the reign
passed without a war. Russia was orientated for
the final struggle in the next reign. For the reign
of Alexander we need only glance at the various
branches of the machinery of despotism which was
created for the defence of the Romanoffs.

Education was the great source of evil, but in a
world where education was now adopted as an
elementary principle of civilisation it was no longer
possible to return to the absolute illiteracy of the
Middle Ages. A compromise was found in the easy
distinction between sound and unsound education.
The figures of educational progress during the
reign of Alexander III are at first sight impressive.
In 1877 the eight universities had had 5629 stu
dents : in 1886 the number had arisen to 14,000. In
the same period the number of high schools rose
from 200 to about a thousand: the number of ele
mentary schools from 25,077 to 35,517. There were
now, in all, more than two million pupils in the
elementary schools of the Empire. It should be
added that the population of the Empire was now
113,000,000 ; that most of the schools were founded,
independently of St. Petersburg, by the zealous

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Zemstvos; and that very many of them were mere
huts or sheds with ludicrously incompetent teachers.

Count Tolstoi, having been for sixteen years
Minister of Education, controlled this department
in the interest of the Slavophiles and imperialists.
Pobiedonostseff, indeed, wanted to have all the
elementary schools put under the control of the
Holy Synod, or under the clergy. I have said little
about the Russian Church during this period for a
reason which will be understood. It was a mere
docile instrument of the dynasty. Its ordinary
priests were rough, ignorant men, little superior to
the peasants themselves. Its higher clergy mur
mured not one single syllable at the cruelty, just as
they had murmured none at the earlier vices, of the
Romanoffs.

The Zemstvos, however, in most cases refused to
hand over their schools, and the secular part of the
government had neither the funds to devote to the
work nor the wish to have serious trouble with the
Zemstvos. We shall see that they found it easier
to capture the Zemstvos themselves and control
their action. The Holy Synod also began the policy
of creating religious schools in opposition to those
of the Zemstvos, and securing imperial favour for
these nurseries of docility. The high schools were
re-modelled, and were now forbidden by law to ad
mit the children of the poorer types of workers.
Some technical improvements were made in them,

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ENTER POBIEDONOSTSEFF

but the general effect was to reduce the stimulating
influence of the education. The universities were
more drastically controlled. No students' societies
were permitted, and the curriculum was carefully
purged. Inspectors were attached to them, and the
grant of scholarships was made to depend upon the
reports of these spies of orthodoxy. There were
serious riots of the students in 1882 and 1887, but
the energy of the reactionary officials gradually
drove professors into silence or exile and pupils in
to subjection.

The press was in 1882 controlled by "temporary
rules/' which proved to have a long duration. If
a journal had, after three warnings, incurred sus
pension, it must, at the expiration of the term,
henceforward submit a copy of the next day's issue
to the censors before eleven at night. This ef
fectively silenced the majority of the liberal peri
odicals, and eviscerated the others. When some
tried to evade the gag by using language of a veiled
or ambiguous character, a junta of four Ministers
was empowered to suppress any periodical which
seemed to them to have a mischievous tendency. By
these and other means progressive literature was
extinguished. The few revolutionaries continued,
of course, to establish private presses, which were
constantly detected and the workers sent to Siberia
or the mines, but the work of political education
was generally suspended.

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

The political scheme which had been set up was
similarly "revised." The Zemstvos were, as I said,
stubborn. Even the nobles were jealous of their
local powers, and at first antagonistic to the new
regime. Large numbers of them were won by
stories of dangerous tendencies amongst the peas
antry. It is said that in their attacks upon the Jews
the people had said: "We will make our breakfast
of the Jews, our dinner of the landowners, and our
supper of the priests/ 5 Priests and nobles fell into
line with the ministers. In 1889 and 1890 the
nobles were given a preponderating influence over
the other representatives in the Zemstvos. They
became little more than assemblies of loyal land
owners, open to the direct influence of the govern
ment. The Mir was similarly enfeebled, and lost
its popular representative value,

The judicial system was correspondingly modi
fied. Public executions were abandoned, in the
spirit of the age, and some other improvements were
introduced. But the general scheme set up by Alex
ander II had been too grossly ignored in the later
years of that monarch, and it was now modified by
decree. The jury-system was reduced; the justices
of the peace abolished. Petty cases fell back to the
reorganised Zemstvos.

The financial system, on the other hand, remained
for many years under the control of an enlightened
minister, Bunge, and was greatly improved.

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ENTER POBIEDONOSTSEFF

Finance was in any case a department into which
it was profitable to admit modern science. The
coinage was improved, and more banks were estab
lished. Home-industry was fostered, and the great
extension of the Empire in Asia opened new mar
kets. Railways were multiplied, and in 1891 the
Grand Duke Nicholas opened the terminal station
of the proposed Trans-Siberian railway at Vladi-
vostock. Russia had already made commercial
treaties with Korea and Japan. We will return
presently to this dangerous extension of Russian
ambition.

Most important and characteristic of all was the
process of Russification in which all these engines
of reaction were combined. One can understand the
fascination of the Slavophile dream as it was
formed in the mind of honest conservatives. Every
concession made in the western democracies and
limited monarchies had led to further demands.
Napoleon III had lost his throne. The Papacy had
lost its temporal power. William I and Bismarck
were struggling against a portentous growth of
Socialism. France was rapidly shedding its reli
gion. Even in England the republican movement
was at that time (the eighties) strong, and lower
depths of radicalism were disclosed every decade.
Liberalism, either in religion or politics, was evi
dently a slope; you could not remain long else
where than at the top or the bottom. So Russia

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

must be made thoroughly, homogeneously autocra
tic and religious. In spite of the well-known facts
of Russian history the Church agreed warmly with
the Romanoffs that the autocracy was divinely ap
pointed. If all could be made docile to the Church,
the autocracy would have an easier task.

So began the process of Russification which
passed with the brutality of a steam-roller over
every sect or fragment of the nation that was not
Russian in creed and dynastic in politics. The Jews
formed the gravest problem. Long experience had
shown that no power on earth could erase the re
ligious and racial peculiarities of the Jew, yet there
were nearly five million Jews in the Russian Em
pire. Their intelligence and skill in trade were but
additional grievances. There were, even then, parts
of Russia in which the Jews showed that, under
proper treatment, they were as capable as any of
settling upon the soil, but as a rule they avoided
agriculture. The slightest relaxation of pressure
allowed them to pour into a city or even a district,
and as traders and money-lenders they soon had
the poor and thriftless Russians in their power.
Hence, in great measure, the readiness of the peo
ple to rise against them, which was gradually ex
ploited rather than checked from St. Petersburg.

The first procedure of the reactionary ministers
was to overlook the massacres which took place
from the beginning of the rule of Alexander III.

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Presently, a series of "temporary rules" were issued
against them. Even in the Pale of Settlement they
were compelled to live in the towns and were for
bidden to purchase real estate in the country. In
1888 they were ordered to go back to the place in
which they had lived before the year 1882. About
a million and a half of the Jews were affected by
this rule, and the chaotic abandonment of their
several businesses and properties cast large num
bers of them into deep and undeserved poverty,
Vast aggregations of them, growing at a prodigious
rate on account of their high fertility, huddled to
gether in the towns of the Pale, and lived in great
privation. In 1891 a new application of the rules
exiled and ruined seventeen thousand Jewish arti
sans of Moscow.

Still more stupid, and hardly less cruel, was the
restriction upon the development of their ability.
The civil service and the professions* were closed
against them. They might not, without special
license, have a Christian servant, and notaries were
forbidden to have Jewish clerks. Their zeal for
education was similarly repressed. In the univer
sities which were situated in the Pale Jewish
students must not number more than a tenth of the
whole. At other provincial universities they must
not number more than five per cent. ; at the metro
politan universities not more than two per cent. By
these contemptuous repressive measures the igno-

349

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

rant people were prepared for the pogroms which
would disgrace the reign of the last of the
Romanoffs.

The Poles were the next most conspicuous vic
tims of the Slavophile policy. We saw that Alex
ander II had ordered the extinction of their nation
ality, but a people with an acute memory of hav
ing been a great civilisation at a time when the
Russians were a disorderly mass of semi-barbarians
could not easily resign itself to obliteration. The
religious tradition here coincided with the national,
as in Ireland (the Poland of the west), and the
priests generally fostered insurgence. Alexander's
ruthless ministers had but to apply more stringently
the laws already in force against the Poles. From
the University of Warsaw to the smallest ele
mentary school the teaching was entirely Russian-
ised. Even the Bank of Warsaw was suppressed,
and Polish trade forced into a branch of the Rus
sian bank. There was a futile rising in 1885, but
four executions and two hundred arrests completed
the work of "pacifying" the country, or eliminating
'from it every man of spirit and courage. Even
Finland, which was still autonomous, had to com
plain to the Tsar of encroachments upon the lib
erties which his father had sworn to respect. In
the other Baltic provinces the Russian roller was
used as in Poland.

The dissenters and heretics of every kind in Rus-

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ENTER POBIEDONOSTSEFF

sia itself were similarly treated. To the tenacious
dissenters of the last century or two were now
added sects like the Doukhobors and the followers
of Tolstoi, and upon these the Tsar's ministers fell
with particular malevolence. Alexander was igno
rant enough to believe quite sincerely in the doc
trines of the Orthodox Church, but he knew that
these new sects had more than a religious signifi
cance. Prayer-meetings were prohibited. Even
children were separated in some cases from their
parents and forced into the rigid Slavophile mould.
It will be understood, after this description of the
machinery that was set up by Tolstoi and Pobie-
donostseff, that the chronicle of revolt in the reign
of Alexander II is comparatively slender. It is
computed that by the end of the reign there were
about a hundred thousand rebels in the jails, the
mines, and the Siberian .colonies, and to these one
must add the 'graves of the bolder spirits and the
large numbers of Russians who sought abroad the
liberty that had died in Russia. Men still risked
their lives in printing and disseminating the new
ideas, but as the long reign wore on, and tyranny
was still enthroned, the open spurts of defiance
grew less in number. The revolutionaries and lib
erals felt that, if their race was not to be extin
guished, as the reactionaries desired, the work must
proceed in different form. We shall see in the next
and final chapter how it proceeded until, after

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

further bloody revolts against the intolerable
tyranny, it succeeded in awakening the people and
shaking the Romanoffs from their throne.

It remains to see how the Pan- Slav movement,
the twin-brother of the Slavophile philosophy, also
prepared the way for the next reign. We have seen
how every expansion of Russia, every enlargement
of its stupendous population and therefore ultimate
resources, alarmed some other European Power.
Russia now made new advances and opened the way
for fresh conflicts. It had reached the eastern coast
of Asia. Now it began its interference in Korea
and attracted the attention of Japan. It spread
south toward India and still further alarmed
England. Journals of the imperialist school at St.
Petersburg openly boasted that their armies were
beating a path to the Indian Ocean, and it may be
said in justification of England's long distrust of
Russia that the Romanoffs wholly encouraged this
dream until an Asiatic Power proved to them that
Asia was not the helpless world they had imagined.
When the southern limit of Asiatic Russia was ex
tended until it came, at certain points, within a
hundred and forty miles of India, when Russian
agents swarmed in Afghanistan, it was not un
natural that London should be nervous. Alexan
der III, however, took a keen personal interest in
foreign affairs, and he succeeded in averting serious
trouble with England.

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ENTER POBIEDONOSTSEFF

Still more dangerous to the peace of the world
was the ambition of the Pan- Slavs to overrun the
Balkans. Our generation is familiar enough with
the philosophy in the form of Pan-Germanism, and
from this the mood of Russia in the days of Alex
ander III will he understood. The creed of the
Pan-Slavs was a mixture of commercial greed, im
perialistic ambition, the impulses of soldiers to use
their weapons, and the desire of priests to enlarge
their Church. As the little peoples of the Balkans
were largely Slav though the Bulgars are as much
Asiatic as Slav, and the Rumans take more pride
in their remote descent from, the Romans it was
inevitable that, in spite of the jealous watchfulness
of all the Great Powers of Europe, the new im
perialists of St. Petersburg should push their wok
in the Balkans.

There is this almost single advantage in the reign
of Alexander III that he distrusted Germany and
did not allow his ambitious ministers to embroil the
country in war. Bismarck would like to see Russia
weakened, as it periodically was, by war, and there
seemed to be every prospect of war over the Bal
kan peoples. Behind the specious plea of liberat
ing Christians from the brutality of the Turk and
conveying civilisation to the backward peoples of
the Balkans there was at that time, as in our own
days, a dual rivalry. Austria and the Papacy had
an ambition which was directly opposed to the am-

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

bition of the statesmen and priests of St. Peters
burg. The path to the Mediterranean and the
commercial advantage of exploiting the Balkan
peoples were not more eagerly sought by politicians
and merchants than the religious allegiance of the
independent Balkan Churches was sought by the
Vatican and the Holy Synod.

Russia pushed its ambition in Bulgaria Austria
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been en
trusted to its "protection." But the little Balkan
peoples were now almost entirely awake to the de
signs of the ministers of Alexander III. The Tsar
said on one occasion that the King of Montenegro
was the only friend lie had in Europe. The Serbs
and Rumans drew nearer to .Austria, the Bulgars
began to resent the presence amongst them of so
many officers of the Russian army and agents of
the Russian Government. After the Bulgar revo
lution of 1885 there seemed to be grave prospect of
a war between Austria and Russia. But Alexander
was made sensible of the disgusting duplicity with
which Bismarck tried to draw Russia into danger
ous waters in the south, and he withdrew his officers
from Bulgaria. He complained to the German
Emperor of the procedure of the Chancellor, but he
maintained the commercial alliance with Germany
and the ostensibly friendly relations.

Out of this rivalry of interests and clash of in
trigue, in which Alexander III acted with caution

354

ENTER POBIEDONOSTSEFF

and shrewdness, there gradually emerged the set of
alliances which would one day deluge Europe with
blood. Germany and Austria made a common lot
of their interests and drew together. Italy, jealous
of the French support of the Papacy and won by
the deceitful promises of Germany, joined them
and formed the Triple Alliance. Russia could no
longer remain isolated and Alexander III slowly
and reluctantly overcame his imperial dislike of the
French Republic. Little acts of mutual courtesy
led up to the floating of a large loan in France in
1887. The financial link with Germany was almost
severed. In the following year a Russian repre
sentative was appointed to the Vatican. In 1890
a large French fleet appeared at Cronstadt, and was
boisterously welcomed. In 1893, the year before
the death of Alexander, a commercial treaty with
France was signed.

Thus in both domestic and foreign policy the
reign of Alexander III was one of preparation fqr
the final chapter of the romance of the Romanoffs.
It created at home a machinery of despotism which
would prove so heavy that it roused the very peo
ple whom it was designed to suppress. Abroad it
entered upon imperialistic ventures which would
lead to wars that would expose the disgusting
growth of corruption under the shelter of the uni
versal censorship. Alexander III died in 1894
(November 1st), and left to the last of his line a

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

country which he had apparently pacified. He was
honest in his creed of orthodoxy and autocracy?
though we will not suppose that he was insensible
of its profit to himself and his family; but he had
not the intelligence to see that such an anachronism
as his mediaeval suppression of a people's sentiments
could not live in the atmosphere of the end of the
nineteenth century.

856

CHAPTER XVI

THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

THE crowning act of the drama of the Romanoffs
has a peculiar irony. One could well imagine a
Romanoff of the seventeenth or eighteenth century
making a ferocious struggle against the democratic
forces which now threatened the autocracy. For
those older monarchs power had been a means of
obtaining wealth, of enlarging their individual
pleasures to royal or imperial proportions, and they
would use all the machinery of despotism to main
tain their splendid privileges. But in proportion
as the democratic menace grew in the nineteenth
century the voluptuous selfishness of the Russian
monarchs diminished. The serious, almost ascetic,
standard set up by Alexander I lingered in the
imperial palaces, and it seemed that the less per
sonal gratification the monarch received from his
autocratic power the more resolutely he fought to
retain it. The last of the Romanoffs was one of the
most sober and industrious of his line; and his reign
was disgraced by a more bloody and cruel coercion

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

than had reddened the reign of any of his prede
cessors.

Nicholas II, son of Alexander III and Princess
Dagmar of Denmark, is one of those tantalising
personalities whom one knows to be in themselves
far removed from subtlety, yet whom one cannot
honestly pretend to understand. He came to the
throne an unknown man, eagerly scrutinised by
every moderate reformer in Russia. He departs
from it with his personality and actions still largely
enveloped" in mystery. This obscurity is, as I
said, not due to any depth or subtlety in the mind
of the Tsar; it is due rather to the weakness of his
character. Two sets of influences surrounded him,
bending to their will his frail personality and sub
stituting their cupidity or prejudice for his native
impulses. The inner circle was that of his family,
in which his mother and uncles were the leading
and most mischievous figures. The outer circle
was the ring of adventurers or reactionaries whom
the strength of his older relatives or the febrility
of his own character invested successively with min
isterial power. Beyond these, again, were the
religious charlatans who at times preyed upon the
superstition of the Tsar and Tsarina, the great
body of ecclesiastical and other officers whose inter
est it was to maintain the existing system, and the
doctrinaire conservatives who, with purblind eyes,
insisted upon the isolation of Russia from the

358

THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

progress of the world. Through this maze of in
trigue and influence it is difficult to reach the per
sonality of Nicholas II with confidence, and the
fierce partisanship of writers on both sides in the
great struggle increases our task of disentangling
the precise parts in the final catastrophe.

It seems, however, to be an error to regard the
last of the Romanoffs as a mere puppet, a tearful
and hysterical implement, of the reactionary in
fluences which surrounded him. Nicholas had not
the robustness of his father, whose dwarf intellect
had been lodged in the frame of a Russian giant,
but he was stronger than many literary portraits
of him suggest to us. His education had been
severely controlled. Distinguished experts had
taught him those branches of culture law, history,
and political economy which were deemed neces
sary in a successor of Alexander III, and a rigorous
physical training had braced the comparative
feebleness of his person. He swam and rowed with
skill, he played tennis and hunted, and throughout
his reign he loved a long walk, often of ten or fif
teen miles, and would at times burden himself with
all the equipment of a common infantryman. It
is said that the sabre-cut on the head which he re
ceived from a Japanese fanatic in 1891, when he
made a tour of the Empire and further Asia, in
jured his brain and led to nervous instability; but
this is one of the many statements of revolutionary

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

writers which have not been checked by sober criti
cism. He came to the throne in 1894, a cool, self-
possessed, carefully-educated young man of twenty-
six, and some hope was excited in the breast of
moderate Russian liberalism.

To this it may be added that throughout his reign
Nicholas II adhered to a sober and industrious
standard of life. Here, indeed, the writers of the
opposing schools begin to differ. That he was a
man of comparatively simple and sober tastes none
disputes. His table was temperate and conspicuous
for old Russian dishes. He spent his leisure in the
domestic circle, playing dominoes or billiards in the
metropolitan palaces, sharing walks or rides or sails
with his family in the provinces. He opened every
day with religious observances, had the family ikons
brought on voyages, and rigorously kept the fasts
of the Church.

But his industry and attention to affairs are dif
ferently represented. Conservatives picture him
a model of severe self-sacrifice. He worked, they
say, without secretaries, ten or twelve hours every
day. He minutely studied and annotated every
document. He wore his pencil to tlie stump the
conservative pen records this with awed amaze
ment and then gave the stump gravely to his son.
One imagines him relaxing from the cares^of Em
pire but for an hour in the evening. The revolu
tionary writers, however, depict him differently.

360

THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

They represent that he attended impatiently to se
rious affairs and spent an abnormal proportion of
the day in the petty amusements of the domestic
circle. The truth lies between the extremes.
Nicholas II was industrious, and he attempted to
discharge his functions very seriously within the
limits of his narrow and mediocre conceptions.

His people were not long in doubt as to the
nature of his ideal. It was the ideal which each
Romanoff of the century had naively conceived
afresh; a complete retention of the autocracy
coupled with a benevolent intention to help his peo
ple. On the day of his father's death Nicholas is
sued a manifesto in which he promised to promote
"the progress and peaceful glory of his dear Russia
and the happiness of his faithful subjects." To
the deputies who came to congratulate him he said
that as his foreign minister, M. de Giers, also as
sured foreign Powers he would maintain his
father's policy. Plainly the young Emperor ap
proached his task with the customary confidence of
youth. He would avoid the error of his predeces
sors and, by wise moderation, disarm the malcon
tents and sustain a benevolent despotism.

But Nicholas soon discovered that the last reign
still survived in such power as to admit no new
experiments. His mother, the Dowager-Empress,
was a harsh and arrogant woman, uniting to her
political ignorance and incompetence a fierce reso-

361

THE ROMANCE OF THE flROMANOFFS

lution to have her husband's policy sustained.
Nicholas's uncles, the Grand Dukes Sergius and
Alexander, were of the same harshly despotic tem
per, and Pobiedonostseff, the head of the Holy
'Synod, was the enthusiastic supporter of their
wishes, These four, with the reactionary ministers
Plehve, Muravieff, and Brezobrazoff (later Ad
miral Alexieif and others), whom they gradually
discovered and promoted, formed what came to be
known as the "Immortal Seven," the caucus which
led the dynasty to its destruction,

Nicholas was not married at the time of his ac
cession. It was not until November that he mar
ried Princess .Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt, who en
tered the Orthodox Church and adopted .the name
of Alexandra Feodorovna. It is said that at the
last moment the Dowager-Empress took a violent
dislike to her and enlivened'the palace with lamen
table exhibitions of her violent temper. It is at least
clear that in the earlier years the Tsarina had no
influence. Only in the last phase did she, by her
pro-German leanings and her ignorant susceptibil
ity to the intrigues of religious adventurers, con
tribute to the downfall of the monarchy.

Nicholas was crowned at Moscow on May 26th,
189.5, and a terrible catastrophe clouded the very
opening of his reign. Hundreds of thousands of
peasants flocked to Moscow for the festivity, and
for the presents which were promised them, and

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THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

they spent the night packed into the field of Kho-
dynski. A panic arose amongst them, and about a
thousand of them some say several thousand
were trodden under foot or cast into the ditch and
perished. It was a bad beginning, and the Tsar
soon made matters worse. In July nearly two
hundred delegations brought to his palace the con
gratulations of every class of his people, and faint
and respectful suggestions of reform were inserted
in the bouquets of traditional compliment. From
the province of Tver, especially, came a demand for
liberal institutions, and the Emperor received it
with a smiling disdain which showed how little he
understood his country. These were "foolish
dreams," he said; he would devote all his strength
to the welfare of his country, but he would, "with
equal firmness, maintain the autocracy."

A few reforms were introduced. 'Count de
Witte fought his way to the head of the Treasury
and improved the finances. The immense flow of
paper money was checked, and gold was accumu
lated at the banks or put into circulation. Ukases
were passed which directed the building of model
houses for the workers, and regulated to some ex
tent their condition in the growing industries of
Russia. New railways were built and canals pro
jected. The army was partly reorganised; the
administrative and judiciary institutions of the
Empire extended to Siberia, the development of

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

which was energetically pushed ; a measure to give
separated married women the control of their prop
erty was passed; education was further enforced,
though in this respect the reform was weakened or
undone by the desperate efforts of the clergy to
wrest the elementary schools from the Zemstvos.

These reforms, however, like those of the pre
ceding reigns, were trivial in comparison with the
mighty needs of Russia, and it was now felt by all
but the incurable conservatives and the parasites
of the autocracy that self-government, through
popular institutions, was the first and essential con
dition of reform. On this issue the dynasty, or the
misguided group who undertook to guide its for
tunes, staked its existence. How far any of the
reactionaries really believed that the autocracy was
for the welfare of the Russian people it is not our
place to consider here. The antagonistic forces
moved slowly toward the field of battle.

With the general policy and personal adventures
of Nicholas II I am not concerned. The whole in
terest of the story is now concentrated in the growth
of the conflict which will presently put an end to
the Romanoffs. It suffices to say that Russo-
philism and Pan-Slavism continued to act together,
and were equally responsible for the fall of the
dynasty. Nicholas II professed a humane dislike
of the coercive policy of his father, and in some
respects, in the early years, the zeal of officials in

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THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

persecuting dissenters was moderated. But the
facts of the entire reign are within the memory of
my readers and their ghastly inconsistence with this
humane profession need scarcely be emphasised.
Never since the Middle Ages had the Jews suf
fered so brutally at the hands of their Christian
masters. Unscrupulous officials and bodies of ig
norant men like the "Black Hundreds" soon learned
that massacre and pillage of the Jews were looked
upon with favour at the palace, and the repeated
"pogroms" are in themselves an indelible disgrace
upon the name of Nicholas II. The Russianisa-
tion of the Poles for which Russia pays heavily
to-day and the Lithuanians was maintained with
all the earlier brutality, and in regard to the Finns
Nicholas II incurred a peculiar stigma. He had at
his accession sworn to respect the rights and the
constitution of the Finns, but before long his offi
cials tore up his oath and began to strip the vigorous
little people of its nationality. Hardly a year of
the Tsar's reign passed without some callous viola
tion of his solemn promise, done with his express
authority. The whole Empire must, in spite of
every obligation, be squeezed into the Russian
mould. The only extenuating feature of this sec
tion of the Tsar's work that one can suggest is that
the Russian people generally were in accord with
this harsh and unjust procedure.

The imperialistic tendency which led to this in-

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

justice equally shaped the disastrous foreign policy
of Nicholas II. There can be little doubt that the
Tsar desired a continuance of the peace which Rus
sia had enjoyed during his father's reign, and for
my part I am ready to recognise his sincerity in
issuing a summons to a Peace Congress (August
24th, 1898), the aims of which Nicholas defined in
a personal letter (January llth, 1899). It was,
as we now know, Germany which chiefly frustrated
that well-meant effort. The Tsar remained
friendly with Germany, which then wavered be
tween a Russian and an English entente, while fur
ther strengthening his alliance with France.

But the Tsar's desire of peace was, from the gen
eral practical point of view, rendered nugatory by
his imperialistic policy. In the Balkans he main
tained that policy of secret and subtle infiltration
which prepared the way for a conflict with Austria*
Alexander III had in effect retired from the
Balkans, disgusted at the ingratitude of the prin
cipalities Russia had helped to set up. Nicholas II
resumed the policy of disguised penetration, and it
is not too much to say that the southern Slavs felt
almost as much apprehension at the shadow of Rus
sia as at the encroachments of Austria. It was,
however, the imperialist adventures in the Far East
which contained the gravest danger and were least
respectable in principle.

It was entirely natural that Russia should spread
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THE TSARINA ALEXANDRA

THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

along its Trans-Siberian line, -develop its vast do
mains in Asia, and seek ice-free ports on the eastern
coast. This national ambition was, however, com
plicated by sordid speculations on the part of men
and women who, directly or indirectly, had influ
ence over the Tsar. Revolutionary writers say
that the Dowager-Empress herself speculated heav
ily in Asiatic properties, and at least it may be re
garded as certain that the Grand Dukes and ad
herents of the court sought fortune in that direction.
From Siberia these cupidities reached out toward
Manchuria and Korea, and had large and vague
designs upon helpless China. Russia so the
formula ran was the heir of Dchingis Khan and
Timur. It had a "divine mission" to impose its
Kultur upon Asia. The very thin strain of Tatar
blood in the veins of Russia was at length discovered
to have some value.

The Chino-Japanese War occurred in the first
year of the reign of Nicholas II, and the rise of an
Asiatic power in the path of Russian ambition
caused a momentary concern. Japan must be
promptly checked, and at the close of the war Rus
sia bluntly refused to allow Japan to occupy any of
the territory it had seized. Germany astutely
watched and fostered the dangerous adventure
which diverted Russia from Europe to the Far
East. Under cover of its supposed protection of
China, Russia then established itself in Manchuria,

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

secured (with money borrowed from France and
England) a financial hold on China, and in 1898
obtained a long lease of Port Arthur and Talien-
wan. The cold anger of the Japanese at this piece
of perfidy was little disguised, and presently Rus
sia was requested to carry out its promise to evacu
ate Manchuria. From its new ports, it was plain
to all, Russia would spread to Korea. The other
European Powers now joined in the protest of
Japan, and Russia sought to gain time by long
negotiations, while it pressed the development of
Port Arthur and Dalny. These devices Japan, in
1904, sternly cut short by making war.

The documentary evidence in regard to those
aspects of the Russo-Japanese War which concern
us here is in the same unsatisfactory condition as so
much of the evidence on which we must rely in this
chapter. It awaits the impartial sifting of history.
The suppression of truth in Russia throughout the
reign of Nicholas II had the inevitable effect of pro
voking abroad a stream of something more than the
truth. Writers and orators of revolutionary par
ties do not usually make calm and conscientious re
flection on the statements they repeat, and in every
country of the world the Russian writers found a
large public eager to hear sensational stories about
the court and the bureaucracy. It is at present
entirely impossible to select with any confidence the
reliable statements from the mass of legends which

368

THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

were published in Europe and America by the crit
ics of the dynasty. Their fellows in Russia were,
we shall see, being butchered in thousands, and were
in tens of thousands suffering an agony which they
often terminated by suicide ; and, on the other hand,
many of the chief agents of this bloody system were
undoubtedly corrupt adventurers or cynical ego
ists. In the vast anti-Romanoff literature, there
fore, we cannot look for judicious impartiality, and
if the reader misses from this chapter many a pic
turesque legend which he has read in the scorching
pages of revolutionary writers he must not be sur
prised. The history of that appalling reign is still
to be written.

As far as the Russo-Japanese War is concerned
we need not hesitate to admit three points. The
first is that the Tsar, if not some of his ministers,
sincerely believed that the little nation of the Far
East would never have the audacity to fight mighty
Russia; and that Germany encouraged the Russian
court in this view. Japan was bluffing, the Tsar
was assured, and he might pursue his eastern ex
tension under cover of a hollow and dilatory diplo
matic negotiation. The second clear point is that
this eastern extension of Russia was very largely
due to the corrupt and selfish ambitions of influen
tial individuals. Stories about the investments of
the Dowager-Empress or the Grand Dukes or
other persons of the Tsar's circle may or may not be

369

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

true. There is fair evidence that the speculative
fever penetrated the court. In any case the "divine
mission" of Russia in the Far East was as hollow a
pretence as the divine mission of Germany in the
west in 1914. The third established point, and the
one of most importance for our purpose, is that
members of the imperial family and servants of the
reactionary regime made vast sums of money by
a corrupt diversion of goods and funds from the
purposes of war to their private purses.

The knowledge of these facts came to thoughtful
people in Russia as the ignominious campaign
dragged on from month to month. Public opinion,
startled by the success of what they had been taught
to regard as a tribe of "monkeys" against their
great army, looked for hidden reasons of Russia's
failure, and they were brought to light. It was
known that aristocratic officers gambled and rioted
in the Asiatic towns; it was known that trained
regiments of the regular army were kept at home to
coerce Russia while crowds of reservists were hur
ried out to meet the deadly Japanese fire; it was
known that the large sums extorted from the people
for the prosecution of the war were to a great ex
tent diverted; it was known that Count de Witte
and Count Lamsdorff had tried to avert war, and
that Manchurian affairs had then been entrusted to
a favourite of the palace-clique, Admiral Alexieff.

370

THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

Before the war was half over the revolution was
again aflame in Russia, and it grew daily,

We are told by writers who seem to have had the
confidence of the revolutionaries that the complete
suppression of overt criticism by Alexander III
and his son had led to the formation of a new and
very powerful secret movement. It had branches
in all parts of Russia, and it is said to have had as
many as three million members in the year 1904,
Twelve men of distinguished ability directed its
propaganda, and many wealthy Russians, disgusted
at or injured by the atrocious system which Nich
olas II maintained, devoted their whole fortunes
to its work. Many of the stories told of its secret
action are melodramatic and improbable, but it can
not be doubted that a vast and well-organised move
ment existed, not unlike the secret republican or
ganisation which was then being formed in Portu
gal. The Russian movement, however, was not
definitely republican. It aimed at converting the
Tsar, under pressure of his people, to constitutional
views. It resented and despised the turbulent
movements of the students and Socialists, and it
countenanced assassination only in very grave and
carefully-selected cases. We are told that its
agents repeatedly placed on the Tsar's desk let
ters in which the situation was fully described and
Nicholas was urged to make peace with his people

371

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

by granting a constitution and casting off the in
fluence of the Dowager-Empress.

The early agitation was crushed with the custom
ary brutality. One of the most repulsive adventur
ers of the time, Plehve, had become Minister of
the Interior, and under his genial lead the police
and magistrates fell upon every suspicion of revolt.
Over the greater part of Russia the protection of
civil law had been virtually suspended since 1881.
Under what was called "The Regulation for Re
inforced Protection" suspects might be at any time
arrested and imprisoned, journals suppressed, the
civil courts entirely ignored. In the year 1903
nearly 400 men and women had been arrested un
der this barbarous system, and it was estimated
that there were already more than 100,000 in the
jails of Russia and in Siberia, The work had con
tinued, however, and the revolutionaries boast that
in the very year before the war, the year when they
seemed to be feeblest, they circulated two million
pamphlets among the Russian people. As the agi
tation grew with the war, Plehve retorted with in
creased savagery; and on July 28th (1904), he
was, in spite of his extraordinary precautions, as
sassinated. The murderer, Sazonoff, was sentenced
only to twenty years' imprisonment, and Nicholas
reduced this to fourteen years. The revolutiona
ries claim that they warned the Tsar that he
answered with his life for the life of Sazonoff. It

372

THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

was, at all events, made plain to the Tsar by the
press of Europe that his system of ruling was re
garded as barbarous.

A more moderate man, or one who claimed at
least to have some sympathy with liberalism, Prince
Stiatopolk-Mirski, was put in charge of the minis
try of the interior, and the struggle passed to a new
phase. On November 19th the police of St. Peters
burg permitted a large meeting of members of the
provincial Zemstvos, and a deputation of these was
allowed to see Prince Mirski. They demanded
free parliamentary institutions and manhood suf
frage, and the Prince undertook to lay their de
mands before the Tsar. It is reported that the
Dowager-Empress, the Grand Dukes, and the re
actionary ministers violently opposed any conces
sion, and we must assume both that they would be
consulted and that they would give this advice.
The Tsar was nervous and timorous, physically and
mentally unequal to the great burden which now
lay upon him. On December 12th he issued a
ukase in which he promised reforms, but he de
scribed the demands of the representatives of the
Zemstvos as "inadmissible" and inconsistent with
"the fundamental laws of the Empire." The bulk
of his people were, he said, "true to the old founda
tions of the State-organisation," and he would pro
tect them from the intrigues of agitators.

The battle continued. A great meeting at St.

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Petersburg was addressed openly by writers and
scholars of distinction, and amongst the crowd the
cry "Down with the Autocracy" was heard. Peti
tions and demands for representative institutions
rained upon the Tsar from all classes of his sub
jects. Strikes and riots filled the daily press. On
January 9th the notorious Father Gapon led
300,000 workers to the Winter Palace, to lay their
grievances before the "Little Father/' and before
evening the snows of St. Petersburg were stained
with the blood of thousands. There were spurts of
revolt at KichinefF, Odessa, Moscow, and even
Kronstadt.

On February 4th the Grand Duke Sergius, the
most corrupt of the reactionaries, was assassinated.
Prince Mirski resigned and was succeeded by Buly-
gin. Before the new minister was established, the
Tsar issued a new ukase affirming the autocratic
principle, but Bulygin insisted that he should mod
ify this act of mad defiance, dictated by the palace-
clique, by issuing on the same day a promise to
convoke a consultative assembly of representatives
of the people. He appointed a commission of in
quiry, and in reply to a deputation from a second
conference of the Zemstvos he announced that a
National Assembly would soon be granted. The
long-expected ukase appeared on May 10th, It
opened on a note of repentance:

"A State cannot be solid unless it holds as sacred

374

THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS ,

the traditions of the past. We have failed in this,
and God has punished us. The sovereignty of
ancient Russia was indissoluhly bound up with
c the voice of the land/ with the representatives of
the people assembled in council/ 5

For the first time the Romanoffs perceived that,
centuries before their dynasty was cradled, Russia
had had a past, and a democratic past.

But the project of the new assembly, the first
Duma, turned this avowal into derision. The busi
ness of the representatives of the people was merely
to examine proposals which would be laid before
the Imperial Council: the Tsar alone could initiate
and pass legislation. By further regulations, in
fact, the members of the Duma were put at the
mercy of the conservative Senate. The autocracy
was maintained in all its medisevalism. Liberals
and radicals now united in a fierce demand of re
form. Russia was paralysed by a general strike
and the suspension of traffic. More than a million
workers were on strike. In a" momentary panic
the Tsar directed Count de Witte to draw up a list
of reforms, and on October 30th (1905) he issued
the famous ukase which has since given a name to
the vast body of moderate Russian reformers (the
"Octobrists"). He would grant manhood suf
frage, real national representation, freedom of
speech and religion, and so on. As usual, the first
breath of liberty let loose a passion of discussion.

375

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

The radicals and independents united to form the
powerful body of the Constitutional Democrats
(the "Cadets," or K. D.s). A council of labour
deputies was formed with the express purpose of
holding the supreme power when the Tsar had been
deposed.

In brief, Russia was seen aflame with revolution.
There were mutinies in the fleet at Kronstadt and
at Sevastopol, and the audacity of the more radical
elements led, at Moscow, to the futile and pathetic
rebellion in which large numbers of students lost
their lives. The revolution was premature. The
troops were unprepared for revolt on such an issue
as the constitution, and the "Black Bands" every
where aided the police and dipped their hands in the
blood of Jews and radicals. The active rebellion
was truculently suppressed, and the jails were
packed to suffocation. His reactionary advisers
urged the triumphant Tsar to refuse all conces
sions, but the rumble of the more moderate malcon
tents was still heard on every side, and the promise
of some sort of national assembly had to be carried
out.

It was in these circumstances that, on May 10th,
1906, Nicholas opened the first Duma. The name
had been invented by the reforming minister of
Alexander I, Speranski, and it represented the
measure of popular representation which might
have been regarded as satisfactory in those semi-

376

THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

feudal days. For a civilisation of the twentieth
century it was ridiculously inadequate, and it soon
proved only a channel for the comparatively safe
release of the boiling sentiment which filled the
country. Before the Romanoff dynasty fell it was
customary for polite journalists and essayists to
explain that the excesses of the radicals frustrated
the work of the new institution. It is unhappily
true that the left wing of every reform-movement
uses a rhetoric which is little in accord with its loud
insistence on justice, but in this case even the work
of moderate members of the Duma was obnoxious
to the authorities. Day by day the state of the
Russian jails, the gross conduct of police and mili
tary authorities, and the barbarous practices of their
subordinates were brought to light. Week by week
men waited, and waited in vain, for the further in
stalments of reform which had been promised.

The Duma grew more and more vehement in its
attacks upon the Government. The Cadets formed
the majority of its members, and they formulated
their demands for adult suffrage, real parliamen
tary institutions, the abolition of capital punish
ment, a political amnesty, the suppression of the
Imperial Council, and the expropriation of the
large land-owners. Goremykin, a tool of the
palace-clique which had put him in the place of
Count de Witte, refused to comply, and on July
28rd the Tsar dissolved the Duma, The measure

377

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

was a failure, and Goremykin had to surrender his
place to Stolypin- The ejected Cadets retired to
Finland, and appealed to the people to refuse to
pay taxes or render military service: for which,
three years later, they were condemned to im
prisonment and the loss of their civil rights.

Stolypin had the ingenious idea of severing the
great mass of the peasants from the radicals hy
separate concessions, and in October and November
the Tsar appealed for their support. They were
put on the same footing as other classes in regard
to the right of entering the public service or
schools, the issue of passports, and in rural elec
tions. They were released from obligatory resi
dence in the district in which they were registered,
permitted to take away their share of the communal
property, and protected from punishment without
trial. By these means, and by tampering with the
electoral law (which he dare not yet alter) Stolypin
secured a second Duma in which the Cadets were
greatly reduced. Instead of 185 seats they now
had only 108. But they still formed the largest
party, and their leader Golovkin was President of
the Duma, In face of their demands the Tsar
authorised Stolypin to offer the crown-lands and
imperial estates to be shared amongst the peasants,
but the radicals were not appeased, and on June
14th, three months after the opening of the Duma,
Stolypin demanded a secret session in order to con-

378

THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

sider an indictment of the Social Democrats, whose
number had increased to 77 at the last election.
Almost the whole of them were charged with com
plicity in a plot to undermine the loyalty of the
army and navy.

The Duma was still overwhelmingly radical a
sufficient commentary on the Tsar's claim that the
mass of his people clung to the old traditions and
refused to lend itself to this manoeuvre. Two days
later, June 16th, Nicholas again asserted his power
and dissolved the second Duma. It was, he de
clared, not representative of the "Russian spirit"
and would not support his government in suppress
ing disorder. To make it more representative of
this Russian spirit, which was supposed to animate
the bulk of the population, he narrowed the electoral
qualifications, in violation of his 1905 ukase, and
reduced the membership from 524 to 442. The
Cadets now sank from 108 to 45, the Socialists
from 77 to 17. The conservatives rose from 60 to
100, and the Octobrists from 31 to 110. Liberal
ism, of one shade or another, still greatly out
weighed conservatism even in this mangled repre
sentation of the Russian people; and assassinations,
strikes, and fiery rhetoric impressed upon Europe
the grievances of those who were excluded from
representation. In the year 1907 there were 627
executions, and about 70,000 were sent into exile.
In 1908 there were 786 executions, and the number

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THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

of exiles rose to 180,000, The population of the
jails of Russia rose from 91,000 in the year 1904
to 174,000 in the year 1910.

This was the "comparative tranquillity" which
the chroniclers of Russian events ascribe to the
country hetween 19.07 and 1917. Quarterly
notices of the number of political executions were
put into small type in English and American jour
nals, and from the sombre silence that brooded over
the land there issued at times the lurid message of
assassination. In 1909 occurred the astounding
revelation of the secret-police spy and professed
Socialist Azeff, and it became known that outrages
were instigated by the police in order to strengthen
their system. The former head of the police had to
be sentenced to five years' imprisonment; the head
of the secret police of St. Petersburg was assassi
nated. In 1911 Stolypin was permitted by the
Tsar to suspend the Imperial Council and the
Duma, so that he could avail himself of the clause
of the constitution which enabled him to pass laws
while the councils were not sitting; and on Septem
ber 14th, while Nicholas sat in his box in the opera
at Eaeff, he had the horror of witnessing the murder
of his complaisant minister. Still he clung to his
poor rags of autocracy. Still religious adventurers
and spiritist mediums plied their lucratic charla
tanry in the palaces. Still the flower of the young
generation rotted in the overcrowded jails or lan-

380

THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

guished in Siberia. The jails had a "maximum
accommodation" for 107,000 prisoners, and in 1910
about 180,000 men and women were crowded into
them. Typhus flourished in them. Suicides of
prisoners rose to 160 in a single month. The most
brutal outrages were committed on young women
and men.

These facts one learned, as I experienced at the
time, by a laborious comparison of the statements
of little-read writers and statistics. To the world
at large a diff erent picture was offered. Men were
told how, in 1906, a group of affrighted Polish
peasants, headed by an abbess, came to St. Peters
burg to inquire if it was really true that (as zealous
Roman Catholic proselytisers had told them) the
Tsar had made his submission to the Pope. They
saw a minister, on Easter morn, and to their solemn
salutation, "Christ is risen/ 'he blunderingly replied,
"Good Day"; and their hearts sank. But they
also saw Nicholas, and to their faltering religious
salute he replied cheerfully, "In truth He is risen,"
and they fell sobbing at his feet. Or it was the
festival of Poltava in 1909, when Nicholas, seeing
his carriage surrounded by a dense throng of
peasants, alighted and talked familiarly with them
for two hours. And there was the story of how at
Christmas, 1912, when the members of the Duma
were presented to him, he summoned the shrinking
peasant-deputies from the last row and honoured

381

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

them above the others, Nicholas II knew quite
well what was happening in Russia, His small
mind thought that tasting the food of soldiers and
sailors before a camera visiting the hospitals,
and embracing carefully-selected peasants would
save the autocracy in the twentieth century.

The five-year period of the third Duma expired
in 1912, and the new election proved a victory for
the conservatives. The Octobrists had ventured to
resist the demand of the clergy that the elementary
schools should be handed over to them, and the
popes had fiercely and unscrupulously canvassed
the peasant-electors. Still, however, 285 Octobrists
and other radicals faced the 155 members of the
Right, and small measures of reform had to be
passed. They were inadequate, and the year 1913
saw another great wave of disturbance. The num
ber of strikers rose to 460,000. At Kieff a great
gathering of representatives of all the towns of the
Empire condemned the Government. The Oc
tobrists united with the other radicals of the Duma
and, by 146 votes to 113 (many abstaining) con
demned the ministers for not proceeding in the path
of reform. But I need not run in detail over
events which are still fresh in the general memory.
These brief notices will suffice to indicate that the
spirit of progress lived and grew in spite of every
effort of Nicholas II to strangle it.

The conflict entered upon its last stage. That

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THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

Nicholas II wanted war, however much he may
have hoped to profit by the aid of France and
England, we have no reason whatever to believe.
Nor is it possible as yet to pass a sober opinion
upon the charge that he intended, when the war
dragged, to make a separate peace with Germany.
That his German wife was won by the miserable
adventurer Rasputin, and some of his ministers by
German bribery, seems clear enough; and, although
he had been second only to the Kaiser in the vigor
ous lead of his nation until the end of 1916, there
is grave reason to think that he was then won by the
prayers of his family and intrigues of his ministers.
But the Russian revolution was not based on this
theory as much as is generally believed. The mass
of the people were bewildered by the war, and have
n,ot since shown any great zeal to prosecute it.
The educated malcontents were, as we saw,
thoroughly organised and ready to grasp any pre
text for a successful revolution. Only a minority
of military men and liberal politicians were essen
tially moved by the failure of the dynasty to arm
Russia efficiently and prosecute the war.

The food-supply was the immediate ground of
the revolution. On February 8th, when the five-
year period of the Duma of 1912 approached its
term, the Tsar was urged to extend its life, as was
done in other countries. The Tsar refused, and
he spoke of elections in the coming fall. The sus-

383

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

picion that he was going to proceed irregularly coin
cided with a shortage of grain in the large cities,
especially Petrograd (as the capital was now
named), which was gradually stirring the anger of
the people. We may assume that the revolutionary
organisation exploited this anger with all their
power, and especially undermined the loyalty of
the few regiments which were left at Petrograd.

On March 8th the people of Petrograd, espe
cially the women, began to throng the streets, and
the workers to quit the factories. Rodzianko, the
President of the Duma, summoned a conference on
the food-question, and he and Professor Milyukoff,
the second hero of the revolution, strongly criti
cised the incompetence of the ministers. Rodzi-
anko, a former officer of the Guards and husband
of a Golitzin princess, was a noble of distinction,
but he was an Octpbrist and a friend of the people.
The crowds were still larger in the streets on March
9th; and on Sunday, the llth, they turned out in
immense numbers and fraternised with the few
troops who were visible. The guards, however,
were imperfectly won, and on the Sunday after
noon they fired a volley into the crowd and about
a hundred were killed or wounded. It is one of
the strangest testimonies to the amazing condition
of Russia that the crowds remained on the streets
and said, sympathetically, to the soldiers: "We

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THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFFS

are sorry for you, brothers, you had to do your
duty."

On the Monday morning it became known that
the Tsar had suspended for two months the sittings
of the Duma and the Imperial Council, and the rev
olution was inaugurated. Troops to the number
of about 30,000 marched upon the arsenal, dis
tributed arms to the people, and fought the police
and the loyal troops. The Progressives and the
Socialists formed a committee of twelve of their
ablest representatives, including Rodzianko, Milyu-
koff, and Kerenski ; and Rodzianko telegraphed to
the Tsar a peremptory demand for a new govern
ment. The fight with the police, who mounted the
roofs with rifles and machine-guns, was continued
on the following day, but the public buildings fell
one by one into the hands of the revolutionaries, and
about midnight of the 13-14th the enterprise was
crowned by the submission to the Provisional Gov
ernment of the Preobrajensky Guards, Moscow
soon sent its adhesion, and the troops in the field
gradually assured the new government of their al
legiance.

Nicholas II was with the army, at the head
quarters of General Russky, when the alarming
news from Petrograd reached him. He would re
turn to the capital, he said; but at Bolgoe station
he was quietly persuaded to return to Pskoff.
There, in a small, dimly lighted room, the last of the

385

THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMANOFFS

Romanoffs received the delegates of the people
M. Gutchkoff and a conservative member of the
Duma. It is said that Nicholas asked calmly what
was required of him, and, when he was told that he
must abdicate, he at once demanded a piece of
paper. He would not, however, resign the crown
to his son, as they wished. He would not be parted
from his son, he said : and it is probable that he was
moved by his deep affection for the boy. He would
leave the throne to his brother Michael. The fate
ful document was there and then composed, and
Nicholas II signed away his power: signed, as it
proved, the death-warrant of the Romanoff dynasty.
He remains ambiguous in his last imperial pro
nouncement. In words of singular dignity and de
tachment he answers the call of the Russian people
to lay down his autocracy, and he prays for a
speedy victory over Germany. But for the ghastly,
unforgettable horrors which stain his reign we could
find words of admiration for the last weak descend
ant of Michael Romanoff.

386

INDEX

Adacheff, 55

Adrianople, Treaty of, 296

Alexander I, 361-283

Alexander II, 306-337

Alexander III, 338-356

Alexandra, the Empress, 362

Alexis I, 82-88 '

Alexis II, 152, 156-159

Anne of Mecklenburg, 191, 197,

200-202, 214
Anne, the Empress, 187-200, 206-

210
Anthony of Brunswick, 200-201,

209

Arakcheef, 278, 280, 292
Arsenieff, Daria, 152, 164, 183
Arsenieff, Marie, 152, 164
Askold, 14

Astrakhan, Expedition to, 148
Augustus II, 134, 142, 193
AusterHtz, 264

Bakunin, 327

^atu, 31

Beard prohibited, 136-7

Beketoff, 223

Bennigsen, 261

Bestuzheff, Alexis, 215, 220, 222

Bestuzheff, Mickael, 215, 217, 219,

220, 223
Bestuzheva, Countess, 219

Bible Society at Petrograd, 275,

292

Bielinsky, 327
Biren, Count, 189-203
Bismarck, 332, 333, 353
Bobrinski, 251
Bogolyubski, Andrew, 26-28
Bulgaria created, 333
Bulygin, 374
Byzantine Empire, the, 10, 34

Cadets, the, 376, 377, 378
Calendar, reform of the, 139-

140

Castlereagh, 267, 270
Catherine I, 145-6, 155, 161-176
Catherine II, 221, 223-227, 228-

257
Catherine II, character of, 246,

248-254
Charles Frederick of Holstein,

171, 172

Charles of Sweden, 135, 144, 145
Charlotte of Wolfenbiittel, 156
Qie"tardie, Marquis de la, 212,

213, 217, 222

Chino-Japanese War, the, 367
Chiuski, Andrew, 53
Chiuski, Vassili, 67
Christianity, entry of, 20
Church, reform of the, 136
Circassia, annexation of, 320

387

INDEX

Clothing, reform of, 137
Communism of the early Slavs,

6-7
Constantine, the Grand Duke,

271, 282, 285, 986, 287, 296
Constantinople, 10, 20, 21, 22,

24
Crimean War, the, 302, 303, 308,

309
Czartoryski, 262

Dagmar, the Empress, 339, 358,

361, 362
Dalny, 368

Danielovitch, George, 38
Dashkoff, Princess, 235, 236
Dchingis Khan, 30
Democracy of the early Slavs, 3,

17

Devier, Count, 177
Dmitri, Prince, 63
Dolgoruki, Alexis, 185, 186, 192
Dolgoruki, Catherine, 186, 192
Dolgoruki, George, 26, 37
Dolgoruki, Maria, 77
Dolgoruki, Prince, 103
Drunkenness in Russia, .85, 196
Duma, the First, 376, 377
Duma, the Second, 378, 379
Duma, the Third, 379, 382, 383

Elizabeth, Queen, 60, 64
Elizabeth, the Empress, 171, 174,

180, 187, 199-227
England and Medieval Russia,

60, 75

Erfurt, 265
Eudoxia, the Empress, 110, 152,

158, 164
Euphrosyne, 156

Feodor I, 61, 63
Feodor II, 98

Finns, the, 4

France, alliance with, 355
Frederick the Great, 222, 224,
228, 241

Gallitzin, Boris, 110, 112
Gallitein, Vassili, 105, 106, 107,

108, 109, 110, 111
Gastavus Adolphus, 75
Gleboff, 158
Glinski, Helena, 52
Godunoif, Boris, 61, 62, 64, 65
Godunoff, Irene, 61
Golden Horde, the, 33
Golitzin, Prince, 275, 280
Golitzuin, Demetrius, 188, 190,

192

Golovkin, 152, 193
Gorchakoff, Prince, 317
Gordon, Patrick, 123, 151
Goremykin, 377
Greeks, Russia and the, 295
Grudzinski, Jeannette, 286
Gutchkoff, 386

Hague Congress, the, 366

Halturin, 335

Hastings, Mary, 60

Hertzen, 327

Holland, Peter the Great in, 118-

120

Holy Alliance, the, 269
Holy League, the, 341
Holy Synod, founding of the, 141

laroslaf, 22, 23, 24
IgnatiefF, General, 342
Ivan III, 39-48

388

INDEX

Ivan IV, 51-59
Ivan V, 238
Ivanovitch, Dmitri, 39

Japan, Russia and, 367-368
Jesuits, the, in Russia, 66, 67, 69
Jews, the, in Russia, 348-350, 365

Kantemir, Maria, 165, 167

Karakasoff, 330

Karamsin, 290

Kerenski, 385

Khazars, the, 9

Khlopoff, Maria, 76

Khodynski, 363

Khovanski, 106

Kieff, 12, 14, 15, 19

Kings, origin of, 3

Kisseleff, Count, 293

Kotchubey, 262

Krudener, Juliana von, 268, 269

Ladislas of Poland, 69, 71

Lambert, General, 318

Lamsdorff, Count, 370

Lanskoi, 250, 314

Lapukhin, Natalia, 218, 219, 220

Lefort, 114, 117, 151, 152, 153

Lescyznski, 194

Lestocq, 207, 208, 212, 219

Lieven, Prince, 290

Lithuanians, the, 35, 39

London, Peter the Great in, 119-

120

Louis XV, 146
Luders, Count, 319

Magnitski, 280
Manchuria, 367
Marfa, 42, 72, 73

Marriage, 138

Maryna, 68, G9, 74

Matveef, Artaman, 93, 94, 97, 98,

103

Maurice, the Emperor, 17
Mazeppa, Ivan, 143, 144
Melikoff, Loris, 336, 341
Mengden, Julia, 203-205, 209
Menshikoff, Prince, 151, 162, 163,

168-177, 182, 183
Metternich, Prince, 267, 270 271,

280

Michael I, 72, 73
Mikhailoff, Peter, 117
Miloradovitch, General, 287
Miloslavski, Anna, 84
Milyukoff, Professor, 384, 385
Milyutin, 314
Mir, the, 4, 5, 11, 315
Mirovitch, 238
Mirski, Prince, 373
Mongols, the, 31-36, 42-44
Mons, Anna, 153, 166
Mons, Peter, 166
Morozoff, Boris, 83, 84, 88-90
Moscow, 34, 37, 41-44
Moscow, Patriarchate of, 62, 140
Moujik, 23
Miinnick, Count, 201, 203, 204,

211, 233
Muravieff, 275

Napoleon I, 260, 262, 263, 264,

265, 266, 267

Narva, the battle of, 134, 143
Naryshkin, Natalia, 96, 97, 99,

100, 110
Nestor, 3, 17
Nevski, Alexander, 37
Nicholas I, 284-307

389

INDEX

Nicholas II, 357-386
Nihilism, 328
Nikititch, Ivan, 71
Nikon, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93
Norsemen, the, 12, 14, 15, 18-28
Novgorod, 12, U 9 27, 42, 43, 51, 58
Nystadt, the Peace of, 147

Octobrists, the, 98, 375, 379, 382

Oleg, 15, 19

Olga, 19

Oranienbaum, 234, 235

Orloff, Gregory, 234, 235, 248,

249
Ostermann, Count, 172, 174, 175,

182, 183, 184, 185, 207, 208,

209
Otrepieff, Gregory, 65

Pahlen, Count, 261

Palaeologus, Sophia, 47

Panslavism, 332, 353

Paris, Peter the Great at, 146

Passek, Captain, 238

Paul I, 230, 253-262

Peacefulness of the Slavs, 11

Perovskaia, Sophia, 330, 334

Peter II, 169-187

Peter III, 214, 215, 228, 229, 230,

231, 233-7
Peter the Great, birth of, 97

character of, 126

education of, 112

family of, 152, 162-164

journey of, 117-121

reforms of, 136-140, 148-150

revels of, 126

seizes power, 108-112
Petrograd, foundation of, 142-3
PMlaret, 67, 72, 75, 76, 77, 78

Plehve, 372

Pobiedonostseff, 339, 340, 341,

342, 344, 362
Poles, the, 33, 35, 42, 45, 70, 134,

242, 248, 271, 296, 318, 350
Poltava, the battle of, 144, 145
Poniatovski, Count, 230, 231, 242
Port Arthur, 368
Potiamkin, 251
Prascovia, 153, 189
Preobrajenshots, 108, 109
Pruth, the battle of, 145
Pskoff, 29, 34, 43, 51, 58

Rasputin-, 383

Razumovsky, Alexis, 208, 212

Regulation for Reinforced Pro
tection, 366-368

Religion of the Early Slavs, 6

Revolution, the French, 254

Riazan, 51

Rodzianko, 384, 385

Romanoffs, beginning of the, 53-
56, 72

Romano vn a, Anastasia, 54, 58

Rumania, independence of, 333

Rumans, the, 7

Rurik, 14, 15

Rus, the, 13, 16

Russo-Japanese War the, 368-370

Russo-Turkish War, the, 301

Saardam, 119

Saltykoff, Daria, 240

SaltykofF, Sergius, 230

San Stefano Treaty, the, 333

Sarai, 32, 33

Sazonoff, 372

Scythians, the, 4

Serbia, independence of, 333

390

INDEX

Serfdom, growth of, 62, 240
Serfdom, suppression of, 276,

310-315

Sergius, Grand Duke, 369, 374
Seven Years' War, the, 225
Shein, General, 121
Sheremetieff, General, 151, 161,

162

Shishkoff, 281
Shuvaloff, Alexis, 244
Shuvaloff, Ivan, 222
Sigismund of Poland, 69, 75
Simeon the Proud, 38
Slavophile Creed, the, 291
Slavs, origin of the, 2-12
Socialism, beginning of, 310
Sophia, the Princess, 101-125
Sperenski, 272, 273, 274, 289
Stolypin, 378, 380
Strecknieff, Eudoxia, 77
Streltsui, the, 102, 123
Suvoroff, General, 260
Suzdal, 26, 27, 34
Swedes the, 34

Tatars, the, 30, 37, 39
Tcherkasky, Prince, 215
Telepnieff, Prince, 52
Terem, the, 49
Teutonic knights, the, 35
Theodosius, 171
Third Section, the, 330
Timur, 39, 44
Tolstoi, Anisia, 152, 164
Tolstoi, Dmitri, 351
Triple Alliance, the, 355
Troitsa, 106

Trubetskoi, Prince, 287
Tsar, title of; 48, 54
Tsikler, 117
Tzadovski, Count, 275

Ukraine, the, 43, 147
United States, the, and Russia,
273

Valdemar of Denmark, 80
Varangians, the, 13
Vassili, son of Ivan III, 51
Vassili the Blond, 39
Vassiltchikoff, 248
Vche", the, 11, 29, 36
Yenning, Mr., 279
Viatka, 29
Vice in Russia, 85-7
Vienna Congress, the, 267
Vladimir, 27
Vladimir, St., 20-21
Voievolojski, Euphemia, 84
Volost, the, 6

Voltaire and Catherine, 244-5
Vorontsoff, Elizabeth, 231

Witte, Count de, 363, 370, 375,

377
Woman in Russia, 49, 85, 137, 329

YaguzMnsky, 172, 190

Zarutski, 74

Zemstvo, the, 321, 344

Zotoff, 127

Zuboff, Plato, 250, 256, 261

391

10948