in his childhood. If he remained in Russia, his mother sneered and showed hatred to him; if he journeyed in Western Europe, crowds gathered about his coach to jeer at his ugliness. Most of those who have seen Gillray's caricature of him, issued in the height of English spite at Paul's homage to Bonaparte, have thought it hideously overdrawn; but those who have seen the portrait of Paul in the Cadet-Corps at St. Petersburg know well that Gillray did not exaggerate Paul's ugliness, for he could not.
And Paul's face was but a mirror of his character. Tyranny was wrought into his every fibre. He insisted on an Oriental homage. As his carriage whirled by, it was held the duty of all others in carriages to stop, descend into the mud, and bow themselves. Himself threw his despotism into this formula,—"Know, Sir Ambassador, that in Russia there is no one noble or powerful except the man to whom I speak, and while I speak."
And yet, within that hideous mass glowed some sparks of reverence for right. When the nobles tried to get Paul's assent to more open arrangements for selling serfs apart from the soil, he utterly refused; and when they overtasked their human chattels, Paul made a law that no serf should be required to give more than three days in the week to the tillage of his master's domain.
But, within five years after his accession, Paul had developed into such a ravenous wild-beast that it became necessary to murder him. This duty done, there came a change in the spirit of Russian sovereignty as from March to May; but, sadly for humanity, there came, at the same time, a change in the spirit of European politics as from May to March.
For, although the new Tzar, Alexander I., was mild and liberal, the storm of French ideas and armies had generally destroyed in monarchs' minds any poor germs of philanthropy which had ever found lodgment there. Still Alexander breasted this storm,—found time to plan for his serfs, and in 1803 put his hand to the work of helping them toward freedom. His first edict was for the creation of the class of "free laborers." By this, masters and serfs were encouraged to enter into an arrangement which was to put the serf into immediate possession of himself, of a homestead, and of a few acres,—giving him time to indemnify his master by a series of payments. Alexander threw his heart into this scheme; in his kindliness he supposed that the pretended willingness of the nobles meant something; but the serf-owning caste, without openly opposing, twisted up bad consequences with good, braided impossibilities into possibilities: the whole plan became a tangle, and was thrown aside.
The Tzar now sought to foster other good efforts, especially those made by some earnest nobles to free their serfs by will. But this plan, also, the serf-owning caste entangled and thwarted.
At last, the storm of war set in with such fury that all internal reforms must be lost sight of. Russia had to make ready for those campaigns in which Napoleon gained every battle. Then came that peaceful meeting on the raft at Tilsit,—worse for Russia than any warlike meeting; for thereby Napoleon seduced Alexander, for years, from plans of bettering his Empire into dreams of extending it.
Coming out of these dreams, Alexander had to deal with such realities as the burning of Moscow, the Battle of Leipsic, and the occupation of France; yet, in the midst of those fearful times,—when the grapple of the Emperors was at the fiercest,—in the very year of the burning of Moscow,—Alexander rose in calm statesmanship, and admitted Bessarabia into the Empire under a proviso which excluded serfage forever.
Hardly was the great European tragedy ended, when Alexander again turned sorrowfully toward the wronged millions of his Empire. He found that progress in civilization had but made the condition of the serfs worse. The newly ennobled parvenus were worse than the old boyars; they hugged the serf-system more lovingly and the serfs more hatefully.8
The sight of these wrongs roused him. He seized a cross, and swore upon it that the serf-system should be abolished.
Straightway a great and good plan was prepared. Its main features were, a period of transition from serfage to personal liberty, extending through twelve or fourteen years,—the arrival of the serf at personal freedom, with ownership of his cabin and the bit of land attached to it,—the gradual reimbursement of masters by serfs,—and after this advance to personal liberty, an advance by easy steps to a sort of political liberty.
Favorable as was this plan to the serf-owners, they attacked it in various ways; but they could not kill it utterly. Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland became free.
Having failed to arrest the growth of freedom, the serf-holding caste made every effort to blast the good fruits of freedom. In Courland they were thwarted; in Esthonia and Livonia they succeeded during many years; but the eternal laws were too strong for them, and the fruitage of liberty has grown richer and better.
After these good efforts, Alexander stopped, discouraged. A few patriotic nobles stood apart from their caste, and strengthened his hands, as Lafayette and Liancourt strengthened Louis XVI.; they even drew up a plan of voluntary emancipation, formed an association for the purpose, gained many signatures; but the great weight of that besotted serf-owning caste was thrown against them, and all came to nought. Alexander was at last walled in from the great object of his ambition. Pretended theologians built, between him and emancipation, walls of Scriptural interpretation,9 —pretended philosophers built walls of false political economy,—pretended statesmen built walls of sham common-sense.
If the Tzar could but have mustered courage to cut the knot! Alas for Russia and for him, he wasted himself in efforts to untie it. His heart sickened at it; he welcomed death, which alone could remove him from it.
Alexander's successor, Nicholas I., had been known before his accession as a mere martinet, a good colonel for parade-days, wonderful in detecting soiled uniforms, terrible in administering petty punishments. It seems like the story of stupid Brutus over again. Altered circumstances made a new man of him; and few things are more strange than the change wrought in his whole bearing and look by that week of agony and energy in climbing his brother's throne. The portraits of Nicholas the Grand Duke and Nicholas the Autocrat seem portraits of two different persons. The first face is averted, suspicious, harsh, with little meaning and less grandeur; the second is direct, commanding, not unkind, every feature telling of will to crush opposition, every line marking sense of Russian supremacy.
The great article of Nicholas's creed was a complete, downright faith in Despotism, and in himself as Despotism's apostle.
Hence he hated, above all things, a limited monarchy. He told De Custine that a pure monarchy or pure republic he could understand; but that anything between these he could not understand. Of his former rule of Poland, as constitutional monarch, he spoke with loathing.
Of this hate which Nicholas felt for liberal forms of government there yet remain monuments in the great museum of the Kremlin.
That museum holds an immense number of interesting things, and masses of jewels and plate which make all other European collections mean. The visitor wanders among clumps of diamonds, and sacks of pearls, and a nauseating wealth of rubies and sapphires and emeralds. There rise row after row of jewelled scymitars, and vases and salvers of gold, and old saddles studded with diamonds, and with stirrups of gold,—presents of frightened Asiatic satraps or fawning European allies.
There, too, are the crowns of Muscovy, of Russia, of Kazan, of Astrachan, of Siberia, of the Crimea, and, pity to say it, of Poland. And next this is an index of despotic hate,—for the Polish sceptre is broken and flung aside.
Near this stands the full-length portrait of the first Alexander; and at his feet are grouped captured flags of Hungary and Poland,—some with blood-marks still upon them.
But below all,—far beneath the feet of the Emperor,—in dust and ignominy and on the floor, is flung the very Constitution of Poland—parchment for parchment,
For proofs of this see Haxthausen.
Gurowski says that they used brilliantly "Cursed beCanaan," etc.
