Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/119

Rh 1767-1831.] RUSSIA 101 On May 9, 1812, Napoleon left Paris for Dresden, and the Russian and French ambassadors received their passports. The grand army comprised 678,000 men, 356,000 of them being French ; and, to oppose them, the Russians assembled 372,000 men. Napoleon crossed the Niemen and advanced by forced marches to Smolensk. Here he defeated the Russians, and again at the terrible battle of Borodino, and then entered Moscow, which had been abandoned by most of the inhabitants ; soon after- wards a fire broke out (probably caused by the order of Rostopchin the governor), which raged six days and destroyed the greater part of the city. Notwithstanding this disaster, Napoleon lingered five weeks among the ruins, endeavouring to negotiate a peace, which he seemed to think Alexander would be sure to grant ; but he had mistaken the spirit of the emperor and his people. On the 18th of October Napoleon reluctantly commenced his backward march. The weather was unusually severe, and the country all round had been devastated by the French on their march. With their ranks continually thinned by cold, hunger, and the skirmishes of the Cossacks who hung upon their rear, the French reached the Beresina, which they crossed near Studianka on the 26th-29th of November with great loss. The struggle on the banks of this river forms one of the most terrible pictures in history. At Smorgoni, between Vilna and Minsk, Napoleon left the army and hurried to Paris. Finally the wreck of the grande armee under Ney crossed the Niemen. Not more than eighty thousand of the whole army are said to have returned. Frederick William III. of Prussia now issued a mani- festo, and concluded an alliance with Russia for the re- establishment of the Prussian monarchy. In 1813 took place the battle of Dresden, and the so-called Battle of the Nations at Leipsic on October 16 and the two fol- lowing days. In 1814 the Russians invaded France with the allies, and lost many men in the assault upon Paris. After the battle of Waterloo, and the conveyance of Napoleon to the island of St Helena, it fell to the Russian forces to occupy Champagne and Lorraine. In the same year Poland was re-established in a mutilated form, with a constitution which Alexander, who was crowned king, swore to observe. In 1825 the emperor died suddenly at Taganrog at the mouth of the Don, while visiting the southern provinces of his empire. He had added to the Russian dominions Finland, Poland, Bessarabia, and that part of the Caucasus which includes Daghestan, Shirvan, Mingrelia, and Imeretia. Much was done in this reign to improve the condition of the serfs. The Raskolniks were better treated; many efforts were made to improve public education, and the universities of Kazan, Kharkoff, and St Petersburg were founded. One of the chief agents of these reforms was the minister Speranski, who for some time enjoyed the favour of the emperor, but he attacked so many interests by his measures that a coalition vas formed against him. He was denounced as a traitor, and his enemies succeeded in getting him removed and sent as governor to Nijni- Novgorod. In 1819, when the storm raised against him had somewhat abated, he was appointed to the important post of governor of Siberia. In 1821 he returned to St Petersburg, but he never regained his former power. To the mild influence of Speranski succeeded that of Shishkoff, Novosiltzefi, and Arakcheeff. The last of these men made himself universally detested in Russia. He rose to great influence in the time of Paul, and managed to continue in favour under his son. Besides many other pernicious measures, it was to him that Russia owed the military colonies which were so unpopular and led to serious riots. The censorship of the press became much stricter, and many professors of liberal tendencies were dismissed from their chairs in the universities. The country was now filled with secret societies, and the emperor became gloomy and suspicious. In this condition of mind he died, a man thoroughly disenchanted and weary of life. He has been judged harshly by some authors ; readers will remember that Napoleon said of him that he was false as a Byzantine Greek. To us he appears as a well-intentioned man, utterly unable to cope with the discordant elements around him. He had discovered that his life was a failure. The heir to the throne according to the principles of succession recognized in Russia was Constantine, the second son of the emperor Paul, since Alexander left no children. But he had of his own free will secretly renounced his claim in 1822, having espoused a Roman Catholic, the Polish princess Julia Grudzinska. In consequence of this change in the devolution of the sovereign's authority, the conspiracy of the Dekabrists 1 broke out at the end of the year, their object being to take advantage of the confusion caused by the alteration of the succession to get consti- tutional government in Russia. Their efforts failed, but the rebellion was not put down without great bloodshed. Five of the conspirators were executed, and a great many sent to Siberia. Some of the men implicated were among the most remarkable of their time in Russia, but the whole country had been long honeycombed with secret societies, and many of the Russian officers had learned liberal ideas while engaged in the campaign against Napo- leon. So ignorant, however, were the common people of the most ordinary political terms that when told to shout for Constantine and the constitution (constitutzia) they naively asked if the latter was Constantine's wife. The new emperor, Nicholas, the next brother in succession, Nicholas, showed throughout his reign reactionary tendencies ; all liberalism was sternly repressed. In 1830 appeared the Complete Collection of the Laivs of the Russian Empire^ which Nicholas had caused to be codified. He partly restored the right of primogeniture which had been taken away by the empress Anna as contrary to Russian usages, allowing a father to make his eldest son his sole heir. In spite of the increased severity of the censorship of the press, literature made great progress in his reign. From 1826 to 1828 Nicholas was engaged in a war with Persia, in which the Russians were completely victorious, having beaten the enemy at Elizabetpol, and again under Paskewitch at Javan Bulak. The war was terminated by the peace of Turkmantchai (February 22, 1828), by which Persia ceded to Russia the provinces of Erivan and Nakhitchevan, and paid twenty millions of roubles as an indemnity. The next foreign enemy was Turkey. Nicholas had sympa- thized with the Greeks in their struggle for independence, in opposition to the policy of Alexander ; he had also a part to play as protector of the Orthodox Christians, who formed a large number of the sultan's subjects. In con- sequence of the sanguinary war which the Turks were carrying on against the Greeks and the utter collapse of the latter, England, France, and Russia signed the treaty of London in 1827, by which they forced themselves upon the belligerents as mediators. From this union resulted the battle of Navarino (October 20, 1827), in which the Turkish fleet was annihilated by that of the allies. Nicholas now pursued the war with Turkey on his own account ; in Asia Paskewitch, defeated two Turkish armies, and conquered Erzeroum, and in Europe Diebitsch defeated the grand vizier. The Russians crossed the Balkans and advanced to Adrianople, where a treaty was signed in 1829 very disadvantageous to Turkey. In 1831 broke out the Polish insurrection, of which a 1 Literally, the men of December, the month in which Alexander died.