VIII. 1821. martial. The St Petersburg papers all represented this CHAP. mutiny as the result merely of misgovernment on the part of its colonel, and unconnected with political events; but its succeeding so rapidly the military revolutions in Spain and Naples led to an opposite opinion being generally entertained, and it had no slight influence in producing the vigorous resolutions taken at the congresses of Troppau and Laybach against the insurgents in the south of Europe. This impression was increased by the emperor in the following year, after his annual journey to the southern provinces, after the usual great reviews of the army there, returning abruptly to St Petersburg.1 Ann. Hist. iv. 304. iii. 306, 307, 88. refuses to Greeks. In truth, Alexander was now seriously alarmed, and the suspicions which he had conceived as to the fidelity Alexander of his troops, and the dread of insurrection, not only support the embittered all the remaining years of his life, but materially modified his external policy. This appeared in the most decisive manner in his conduct in regard to the Greek revolution, which began in this year, and which will form the interesting subject of a subsequent chapter of this History. Everything within and without eminently favoured a great and decisive movement in favour of the Greeks, on whose behalf, as co-religionists, the warmest sympathy existed among all classes in the Russian empire. The army was unanimous in favour of it, and at a great review of his guards, fifty thousand strong, in September 1821, at Witepsk, the feelings of the soldiers were so strong on the subject that, amidst unbounded demonstrations of enthusiastic loyalty, they could not be prevented from giving vent to their warlike ardour in favour of their Greek brethren. The news of the insurrection of Prince Ipsilanti in Moldavia reached the emperor at Laybach, and such was the consternation of the European powers at the revolutions of Spain and Italy at that period, that no serious opposition was to be apprehended to any measures, how formidable soever, which he might have proposed, against VIII. 1821. CHAP. the Turks, or even their entire expulsion from Europe. But that very circumstance determined the Czar, in opposition to the declared wish of both his army and people, to disavow the insurrection. He saw in it, not, as heretofore, a movement in favour of the Christian faith, or an effort for religious freedom, but a revolutionary outbreak, similar to those of Spain and Italy, which he could not countenance without departing from his principles, or support without the most imminent risk of the contagion spreading to his own troops. He returned for answer, accordingly, to the earnest application for aid from the insurgent Greeks, "Not being able to consider the enterprise of Ipsilanti as anything but the effect of the excitement which characterises the present period, and of the inexperience and levity of that young man, he had given orders to the Minister of the Interior to dis1 Ann. Hist. approve of it formally." The consequence was that the Biog. Univ. insurrection was crushed, and a great number of the iv. 303,304; lvi. 186, 189. 89. of the Rus in North heroic youths who had taken up arms in defence of their faith perished under the sabres of the Mussulmans.1 * This year the already gigantic empire of the Czar reExtension ceived a huge addition by the appropriation of a vast terrisian empire tory opposite Kamtschatka, on the north-western coast of America. Several settlements of the Russians, chiefly for the purpose of fishing and the fur trade, had already been made on this desert and inhospitable coast from the opposite shores of Asia, which, in the immensity of the wilder America. The Emperor Alexander, in a highly-interesting conversation with M. de Chateaubriand at Verona in 1823, explained his views on this important subject: "Je suis bien aise," said he, " que vous soyez venu à Vérone, afin de rendre témoignage à la vérité. Auriez-vous cru, comme le disent nos ennemis, que l'Alliance n'est qu'un mot qui ne sert qu'à couvrir des ambitions? Cela eut pu être vrai dans l'ancien état des choses; mais il s'agit bien aujourd'hui de quelques intérêts particuliers, quand le monde civilisé est en péril. Il ne peut plus y avoir de Politique Anglaise, Française, Prussienne, Autrichienne. Il n'y a plus qu'une politique générale qui doit, pour le salut de tous, être admise en commun par les peuples et les rois. C'est à moi de me montrer le premier convaincu des principes, sur lesquels j'ai fondé l'Alliance. Une occasion s'est présentée, le soulèvement de la Grèce. Rien sans doute ne paraissait être plus dans mes intérêts, dans ceux de mon peuple, dans l'opinion de mon pays, qu' une VIII. 1821. 1821. ness, had scarcely been noticed even by the United States, CHAP. most interested in preventing them. They were for the most part made on the shores which had been discovered by Captain Cook and Vancouver, so that, on the footing of priority of discovery, the best claim to them belonged to Great Britain. But England already possessed an enormous territory, amounting to four million square miles, of which scarce a tenth was capable of cultivation, and her government was indifferent to the settlement of Russians on the coast of the Pacific. The consequence was that they were allowed quietly to take possession, and on the 16/28 September the Czar issued a ukase defining the Sept. 28, limits of the Russian territory in America, which embraced twice as much as the whole realm of France. The ukase also confined to Russian subjects the right of fishing along the coast from Behring Straits to the southern cape of the island of Ouroff, and forbade all foreign vessels to fish within a hundred miles of the coast, under pain of confiscation of their cargo. These assumed rights have not hitherto been called in question, but as the Anglo-Saxons in America are as aspiring as the Muscovites, and grow- Sept. 28, ing even more rapidly, it is not likely that this will long 1821; Ann. continue; and it is not impossible that the two great 304, 305; Biog. Univ. races which appear to divide the world are destined to lvi. 189. be first brought into collision on the shores of the Pacific.1 The increasing jealousy of the Czar at Liberal opinions, and the secret societies by which it was attempted to guerre religieuse contre la Turquie; mais j'ai cru remarquer, dans les troubles du Péloponèse, le signe révolutionnaire ; dès lors je me suis abstenu. Que n'at-on fait pour rompre l'Alliance? On a cherché tour à tour à me donner des provocations; on à blessé mon amour-propre; on m'a outragé ouvertement. On me connaissait bien mal, si l'on a cru que mes principes ne tenaient qu'à des vanités, ou pouvaient céder à des ressentiments. Non, je ne me séparerai jamais des monarques auxquels je me suis uni. Il doit être permis aux Rois d'avoir des alliances publiques, pour se défendre contre les sociétés secrètes. Qu'est-ce qui pourrait me tenter? Qu' ai-je besoin d'accroître mon empire? La Providence n'a pas mis à mes ordres huit cent mille soldats pour satisfaire mon ambition; mais pour protéger la religion, la morale, la justice; et pour faire régner ces principes d'ordre, sur lesquels repose la société humaine."-CHATEAUBRIAND, Congrès de Vérone, i. 221, 222. 1 Ukase, Hist. iv. VIII. 1823. 90. of free masons' and other secret societies. Oct. 15. Aug. 18, 1823. CHAP. propagate them in his dominions, was evinced in the same year by a decree suppressing the order of Free-masons throughout the whole of his dominions. In spite, howSuppression ever, of every precaution that could be taken, the secret societies continued and multiplied; and it was ere long ascertained that they embraced not only many of the first nobles in the country, but, what was far more dangerous, several of the officers high in the army, and even in the imperial guard. Obscure intimations of the existence of a vast conspiracy were frequently sent to the Government, but not in so distinct a form as to enable them to act upon it until 1823, when a ukase was issued, denouncing, under the severest penalties, all secret societies, especially in Poland; and a number of leaders of the "Patriotic Society," in particular Jukasinsky, Dobrogoyski, Machynicki, and several others, chiefly Poles, were arrested, and sent to Siberia. It was hoped at the time that the danger was thus removed, but it proved just the reverse. The seizure of these chiefs only served to warn the others of the necessity of the most rigorous secresy, and gave additional proof, as it seemed to them, of the necessity for a forcible reformation in the State. The secret societies rapidly spread, especially amongst the highest in rank, the first in patriotic spirit, and the most generous in feeling, both in the civil and military service; a melancholy state of things, when those who should be the guardians of order are leagued together for its overthrow, but the natural result of a state of society such as then existed in 1 Ann. Hist. Russia, where the power of the sovereign, entirely despotic, vi. 381, 383; was rested on the blind submission of the vast majority of the nation, and a longing for Liberal institutions and Hist. Int. the enjoyment of freedom existed only in a very limited circle of the most highly-educated classes, but was felt there in the utmost intensity.1 Biog. Univ. lvi. 189; Schnitzler, de la Russie, i. 90, 91. The desponding feelings of the Czar, occasioned by the discovery that his efforts for the amelioration of his country were only met by secret societies banded together for VIII. 1823. 91. failure of anthropic his destruction, was much aggravated by the failure of some CHAP. of his most favourite philanthropic projects. In many of the provinces in which the serfs had received from the sovereign or their lords the perilous gift of freedom, they had General suffered severely from the change. The newly enfranchised the Empepeasants, in many places, regretted the servitude which had ror's philsecured to them an asylum in sickness or old age. In the projects. province of Witepsk, where the change had been carried to a great extent, they refused to pay the capitation tax imposed on them in lieu of their bondage, alleging that they had not the means of doing so; and besieged the empress-dowager, who was known to adhere to old ideas, with the loudest complaints on the "fatal gift" which they had received. So serious did the disorders become among the new freemen, that they were only appeased by the quartering of a large military force on the disturbed districts. Russia suffered even more than the other countries of Europe, in this and the preceding year, from the depreciation of prices, which fell with unmitigated severity on the holders of the immense stores of its rude produce. Banks, by order of the emperor, were established in many places to relieve the distresses of the surcharged proprietors, but they did not meet with general success; and the advances meant to stimulate industry, were too often applied only to feed luxury or ii. 373. minister to depravity.1 1 Ann. Hist. vi. 319, 321; Tegoborski, 92. flood at St The external transactions of Russia in regard to the Congress of Verona, the Greek revolution, and the Turk- Dreadful ish war, will be recounted more suitably in the chapters Petersburg. which relate to those important subjects. But there are a few internal events in Russia which deserve notice before the melancholy period when Alexander paid the common debt of mortality. The first of these was the dreadful inundation at St Petersburg, in November 1824. The emperor had just returned from a visit to Orenburg, and the south-eastern provinces of his empire, to his palace at Tsarcko-Selo near St Petersburg, when a terrible hurri |