Mary Platt Parmele - A Short History of Russia

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It was a bribe, followed by a threat. England coldly declined entering
into any stipulations without the concurrence of the other Powers. Her
Majesty's government could not be a party to a confidential arrangement
from which it was to derive a benefit. The negotiations had failed.
Nicholas was deeply incensed and disappointed. He could rely, however,
upon Austria and Prussia. He now thought of Louis Napoleon, the new
French Emperor, who was looking for recognition in Europe. The English
ambassador was coldly received, and for the first time since the
abdication of Charles X., the representative of France received a cordial
greeting, and was intrusted with a flattering message to the Emperor.
But France had not forgotten the retreat from Moscow, nor the presence of
Alexander in Paris, nor her attempted ostracism in Europe by Nicholas
himself; and, further, although Louis Napoleon was pleased with the
overtures made to win his friendship, he was not yet quite sure which
cause would best promote his own ends.

Fortunately Russia had a grievance against Turkey. It was a very small
one, but it was useful, and led to one of the most exciting crises in the
history of Europe. It was a question of the possession of the Holy
Shrines at Bethlehem and other places which tradition associates with the
birth and death of Jesus Christ; and whether the Latin or the Greek monks
had the right to the key of the great door of the Church at Bethlehem,
and the right to place a silver star over the grotto where our Saviour
was born. The Sultan had failed to carry out his promises in adjusting
these disputed points. And all Europe trembled when the great Prince
Menschikof, with imposing suite and threatening aspect, appeared at
Constantinople, demanding immediate settlement of the dispute. Turkey
was paralyzed with fright, until England sent her great diplomatist Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe--and France hers, M. de Lacour. No simpler
question was ever submitted to more distinguished consideration or was
watched with more breathless interest by five sovereigns and their
cabinets. In a few days all was settled--the questions of the shrines
and of the possession of the key of the great door of the church at
Bethlehem were happily adjusted. There were only a few "business
details" to arrange, and the episode would be closed. But the trouble
was not over. Hidden away among the "business details" was the germ of a
great war. The Emperor of Russia "felt obliged to demand guarantees,
formal and positive," assuring the security of the Greek Christians in
the Sultan's dominions. He had been constituted the Protector of
Christianity in the Turkish Empire, and demanded this by virtue of that
authority. The Sultan, strengthened now by the presence of the English
and French ambassadors, absolutely refused to give such guarantee,
appealing to the opinion of the world to sustain him in resisting such a
violation of his independence and of his rights. In vain did Lord
Stratford exchange notes and conferences with Count Nesselrode and Prince
Menschikof and the Grand Vizier and exhaust all the arts and powers of
the most skilled diplomacy. In July, 1853, the Russian troops had
invaded Turkish territory, and a French and English fleet soon after had
crossed the Dardanelles,--no longer closed to the enemies of Russia,--had
steamed by Constantinople, and was in the Bosphorus.

Austria joined England and France in a defensive though not an offensive
alliance, and Prussia held entirely aloof from the conflict.

Nicholas had failed in all his calculations. In vain had he tried to
lure England into a secret compact by the offer of Egypt--in vain had he
preserved Hungary to Austria--in vain sought to attach Prussia to himself
by acts of friendship; and his Nemesis was pursuing him, avenging a long
series of affronts to France. Unsupported by a single nation, he was at
war with three; and after a brilliant reign of twenty-eight years
unchecked by a single misfortune, he was about to die, leaving to his
empire the legacy of a disastrous war, which was to end in defeat and
humiliation.

But a strange thing had happened. For a thousand years Europe had been
trying to drive Mohammedanism out of the continent. No sacrifice had
been considered too great if it would help to rid Christendom of that
great iniquity. Now the Turkish Empire,--the spiritual heir and center
of this old enemy,--no less vicious--no less an offense to the instincts
of Christendom than before, was on the brink of extermination. It would
have been a surprise to Richard the lion-hearted, and to Louis IX. the
saint, if they could have foreseen what England and France would do eight
hundred years later when such a crisis arrived! While the Sultan in the
name of the Prophet was appealing to all the passions of a mad fanaticism
to arise and "drive out the foreign infidels who were assailing their
holy faith"--there was in England an enthusiasm for his defense as
splendid as if the cause were a righteous one.

It is not a simple thing to carry a bark deeply loaded with treasure
safely through swift and tortuous currents. England was loaded to the
water's edge with treasure. Her hope was in that sunken wreck of an
empire which fate had moored at the gateway leading to her Eastern
dominions, and what she most feared in this world was its removal. As a
matter of state policy, she may have followed the only course which was
open to her; but viewed from a loftier standpoint, it was a compromise
with unrighteousness when she joined Hands with the "Great Assassin" and
poured out the blood of her sons to keep him unharmed. For fifty years
that compromise has embarrassed her policy, and still continues to soil
her fair name. In the War of the Crimea, England, no less than Russia,
was fighting, not for the avowed, but unavowed object. But frankness is
not one of the virtues required by diplomacy, so perhaps of that we have
no right to complain.

On the 4th of January, 1854, the allied fleets entered the Black Sea.
The Emperor Nicholas, from his palace in St. Petersburg, watched the
progress of events. He saw Menschikof vainly measuring swords with Lord
Raglan at Odessa (April 22); then the overwhelming defeat at the Alma
(September 20); then the sinking of the Russian fleet to protect
Sebastopol, about which the battle was to rage until the end of the war.
He saw the invincible courage of his foe in that immortal act of valor,
the cavalry charge at Balaklava (November 5), in obedience to an order
wise when it was given, but useless and fatal when it was received--of
which someone made the oft-repeated criticism--"_C'est magnifique--mais
ce n'est pas la guerre_." And then he saw the power to endure during
that awful winter, when the elements and official mismanagement were
fighting for him, and when more English troops were perishing from cold
and neglect than had been killed by Russian shot and shell.

But the immense superiority of the armies of the allies could not be
doubted. His troops, vanquished at every point, were hopelessly
beleagured in Sebastopol. The majesty of his empire was on every side
insulted, his ports in every sea blockaded. Never before had he tasted
the bitterness of defeat and humiliation. Europe had bowed down before
him as the Agamemnon among Kings. He had saved Austria; had protected
Prussia; he had made France feel the weight of his august displeasure.
Wherever autocracy had been insulted, there he had been its champion and
striven to be its restorer. But ever since 1848 there had been something
in the air unsuited to his methods. He was the incarnation of an old
principle in a new world. It was time for him to depart. His day had
been a long and splendid one, but it was passing amid clouds and darkness.

A successful autocrat is quite a different person from an unsuccessful
one. Nicholas had been seen in the shining light of invincibility. But
a sudden and terrible awakening had come. The nation, stung by repeated
defeats, was angry. A flood of anonymous literature was scattered
broadcast, arraigning the Emperor--the administration--the ministers--the
diplomats--the generals. "Slaves, arise!" said one, "and stand erect
before the despot. We have been kept long enough in serfage to the
successors of Tatar Khans."

The Tsar grew gloomy and silent. "My successor," he said, "may do what
he likes. I cannot change." When he saw Austria at last actually in
alliance with his enemies he was sorely shaken. But it was the voice of
bitter reproach and hatred from his hitherto silent people which shook
his iron will and broke his heart. He no longer desired to live. While
suffering from an influenza he insisted upon going out in the intense
cold without his greatcoat and reviewing his guards. Five days later he
dictated the dispatch which was sent to every city in Russia: "The
Emperor is dying."

CHAPTER XXIII

LIBERALISM--EMANCIPATION OF SERFS

When his life and the hard-earned conquests of centuries were together
slipping away, the dying Emperor said to his son: "All my care has been
to leave Russia safe without and prosperous within. But you see how it
is. I am dying, and I leave you a burden which will be hard to bear."
Alexander II., the young man upon whom fell these responsibilities, was
thirty-seven years old. His mother was Princess Charlotte of Prussia,
sister of the late Emperor William, who succeeded to the throne of
Prussia, left vacant by his brother in 1861.

His first words to his people were a passionate justification of his
father,--"of blessed memory,"--his aims and purposes, and a solemn
declaration that he should remain true to his line of conduct, which
"God and history would vindicate." It was a man of ordinary flesh and
blood promising to act like a man of steel. His own nature and the
circumstances of his realm both forbade it. The man on the throne
could not help listening attentively to the voice of the people. There
must be peace. The country was drained of men and of money. There
were not enough peasants left to till the fields. The landed
proprietors with their serfs in the ranks were ruined, and had not
money with which to pay the taxes, upon which the prosecution of a
hopeless war depended. Victor Emmanuel had joined the allies with a
Sardinian army; and the French, by a tremendous onslaught, had captured
Malakof, the key to the situation in the Crimea. Prince Gortchakof,
who had replaced Prince Menschikof, was only able to cover a retreat
with a mantle of glory. The end had come.

A treaty of peace was signed March 30, 1856. Russia renounced the
claim of an exclusive protectorate over the Turkish provinces, yielded
the free navigation of the Danube, left Turkey the Roumanian
principalities, and, hardest of all, she lost the control of the Black
Sea. Its waters were forbidden to men-of-war of all nations; no
arsenals, military or maritime, to exist upon its shores. The fruits
of Russian policy since Peter the Great were annihilated, and the work
of two centuries of progress was canceled.

Who and what was to blame for these calamities? Why was it that the
Russian army could successfully compete with Turks and Asiatics, and
not with Europeans? The reason began to be obvious, even to stubborn
Russian Conservatives. A nation, in order to compete in war in this
age, must have a grasp upon the arts of peace. An army drawn from a
civilized nation is a more effective instrument than one drawn from a
barbarous one. The time had passed when there might be a few highly
educated and subtle intelligences thinking for millions of people in
brutish ignorance. The time had arrived when it must be recognized
that Russia was not made for a few great and powerful people, for whom
the rest, an undistinguishable mass, must toil and suffer. In other
words, it must be a nation--and not a dynasty nourished by misery and
supported by military force.

Men high in rank no longer flaunted their titles and insignia of
office. They shrank from drawing attention to their share of
responsibility in the great calamity, and listened almost humbly to the
suggestions of liberal leaders, suggestions which, a few months ago,
none dared whisper except behind closed doors. A new literature sprang
into life, unrebuked, dealing with questions of state policy with a
fearless freedom never before dreamed of. Conservative Russia had
suddenly vanished under a universal conviction that the hope of their
nation was in Liberalism.

The Emperor recalled from Siberia the exiles of the conspiracy of 1825,
and also the Polish exiles of 1831. There was an honest effort made to
reform the wretched judicial system and to adopt the methods which
Western experience had found were the best. The obstructions to
European influences were removed, and all joined hands in an effort to
devise means of bringing the whole people up to a higher standard of
intelligence and well-being. Russia was going to be regenerated. Men,
in a rapture of enthusiasm and with tears, embraced each other on the
streets. One wrote: "The heart trembles with joy. Russia is like a
stranded ship which the captain and the crew are powerless to move; now
there is to be a rising tide of national life which will raise and
float it."

Such was the prevailing public sentiment in 1861, when Emperor
Alexander affixed his name to the measure which was going to make it
forever glorious--the emancipation of over twenty-three million human
beings from serfdom. It would require another volume to tell even in
outline the wrongs and sufferings of this class, upon whom at last
rested the prosperity and even the life of the nation, who, absolutely
subject to the will of one man, might at his pleasure be conscripted
for military service for a term of from thirty to forty years, or at
his displeasure might be sent to Siberia to work in the mines for life;
and who, in no place or at no time, had protection from any form of
cruelty which the greed of the proprietor imposed upon them. Selling
the peasants without the land, unsanctioned by law, became sanctioned
by custom, until finally its right was recognized by imperial ukases,
so that serfdom, which in theory presented a mild exterior, was in
practice and in fact a terrible and unmitigated form of human slavery.

Patriarchalism has a benignant sound--it is better than something that
is worse! It is a step upward from a darker quagmire of human
condition. When Peter the Great, with his terrible broom, swept all
the free peasants into the same mass with the unfree serfs, and when he
established the empire upon a chain of service to be rendered to the
nobility by the peasantry, and then to the state by the nobility, he
simply applied to the whole state the Slavonic principle existing in
the social unit--the family. And while he was Europeanizing the
surface, he was completing a structure of paternalism, which was
Asiatic and incompatible with its new garment--an incongruity which in
time must bring disorder, and compel radical and difficult reforms.

To remove a foundation stone is a delicate and difficult operation. It
needed courage of no ordinary sort to break up this serfdom encrusted
with tyrannies. It was a gigantic social experiment, the results of
which none could foresee. Alexander's predecessors had thought and
talked of it, but had not dared to try it. Now the time was ripe, and
the man on the throne had the nerve required for its execution.

The means by which this revolution was effected may be briefly
described in a sentence. The Crown purchased from the proprietors the
land--with the peasants attached to it, and then bestowed the land upon
the peasants with the condition that for forty-five years they should
pay to the Crown six per cent. interest upon the amount paid by it for
the land. It was the commune or _mir_ which accepted the land and
assumed the obligation and the duty of seeing that every individual
paid his annual share of rental (or interest money) upon the land
within his inclosure, which was supposed to be sufficient for his own
maintenance and the payment of the government tax.

These simple people, who had been dreaming of emancipation for years,
as a vague promise of relief from sorrow, heard with astonishment that
now they were expected to pay for their land! Had it not always
belonged to them? The Slavonic idea of ownership of land through labor
was the only one of which they could conceive, and it had survived
through all the centuries of serfdom, when they were accustomed to say:
"We are yours, but the land is ours." Instead of twenty-five million
people rejoicing with grateful hearts, there was a ferment of
discontent and in some places uprisings--one peasant leader telling ten
thousand who rose at his call that the Emancipation Law was a forgery,
they were being deceived and not permitted to enjoy what the Tsar,
their "Little Father," had intended for their happiness. But
considering the intricate difficulties attending such a tremendous
change in the social conditions, the emancipation was easily effected
and the Russian peasants, by the survival of their old Patriarchal
institutions, were at once provided with a complete system of local
self-government in which the ancient Slavonic principle was unchanged.
At the head of the commune or _mir_ was the elder, a group of communes
formed a _Volost_, and the head of the _Volost_ was responsible for the
peace and order of the community. To this was later added the
_Zemstvo_ a representative assembly of peasants, for the regulation of
local matters.

Such a new reign of clemency awakened hope in Poland that it too might
share these benefits. First it was a Constitution such as had been
given to Hungary for which they prayed. Then, as Italy was
emancipating herself, they grew bolder, and, incited by societies of
Polish exiles, all over Europe, demanded more: that they be given
independence. Again the hope of a Polo-Lithuanian alliance, and a
recovery of the lost Polish provinces in the Ukraine, and the
reestablishment of an independent kingdom of Poland, dared to assert
itself, and to invite a more complete destruction.

The liberal Russians might have sympathized with the first moderate
demand, but when by the last there was an attempt made upon the
integrity of Russia, there was but one voice in the empire. So cruel
and so vindictive was the punishment of the Poles, by Liberals and
Conservatives alike, that Europe at last in 1863 protested. The Polish
language and even alphabet were prohibited. Every noble in the land
had been involved in this last conspiracy. They were ordered to sell
their lands, and all Poles were forbidden to be its purchasers.
Nothing of Poland was left which could ever rise again.

CHAPTER XXIV

TURCO-RUSSIAN WAR--TREATY OF BERLIN

Liberalism had received a check. In this outburst of severity, used to
repress the free instincts of a once great nation, the temper of the
Russian people had undergone a change. The warmth and ardor were
chilled. The Emperor's grasp tightened. Some even thought that
Finland ought to be Russianized precisely as Poland had been; but
convinced of its loyalty, the Grand Principality was spared, and the
privileges so graciously bestowed by Alexander the First were confirmed.

While the political reforms had been checked by the Polish
insurrection, there was an enormous advance in everything making for
material prosperity. Railways and telegraph-wires, and an improved
postal service, connected all the great cities in the empire, so that
there was rapid and regular communication with each other and all the
world. Factories were springing up, mines were working, and trade and
production and arts and literature were all throbbing with a new life.

In 1871, at the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War, the Emperor
Alexander saw his uncle William the First crowned Emperor of a United
Germany at Paris. The approval and the friendship of Russia at this
crisis were essential to the new German Empire as well as to France.
Gortchakof, the Russian Chancellor, saw his opportunity. He intimated
to the Powers the intention of Russia to resume its privileges in the
Black Sea, and after a brief diplomatic correspondence the Powers
formally abrogated the neutralization of those waters; and Russia
commenced to rebuild her ruined forts and to re-establish her naval
power in the South.

There had commenced to exist those close ties between the Russian and
other reigning families which have made European diplomacy seem almost
like a family affair--although in reality exercising very little
influence upon it. Alexander himself was the son of one of these
alliances, and had married a German Princess of the house of Hesse. In
1866 his son Alexander married Princess Dagmar, daughter of Christian
IX., King of Denmark, and in 1874 he gave his daughter Marie in
marriage to Queen Victoria's second son Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. It
was in the following year (1875) that Lord Beaconsfield took advantage
of a financial crisis in Turkey, and a financial stringency in Egypt,
to purchase of the Khedive his half-interest in the Suez Canal for the
sum of $20,000,000, which gave to England the ownership of nearly
nine-tenths of that important link in the waterway leading direct to
her empire in India.

During all the years since 1856, there was one subject which had been
constantly upper-most in the mind of England; and that one subject was
the one above all others which her Prime Minister tried to make people
forget. It was perfectly well known when one after another of the
Balkan states revolted against the Turk--first Herzegovina, then
Montenegro, then Bosnia--that they were suffering the cruelest
oppression, and that not one of the Sultan's promises made to the
Powers in 1856 had been kept. But in 1876 no one could any longer
feign ignorance. An insignificant outbreak in Bulgaria took place. In
answer to a telegram sent to Constantinople a body of improvised
militia, called Bashi-Bazuks, was sent to manage the affair after its
own fashion. The burning of seventy villages; the massacre of fifteen
thousand--some say forty thousand--people, chiefly women and children,
with attendant details too revolting to narrate; the subsequent
exposure of Bulgarian maidens for sale at Philippopolis--all this at
last secured attention. Pamphlets, newspaper articles, speeches, gave
voice to the horror of the English people. Lord Stratford de
Redcliffe, Gladstone, John Bright, Carlyle, Freeman, made powerful
arraignments of the government which was the supporter and made England
the accomplice of Turkey in this crime.

However much we may suspect the sincerity of Russia's solicitude
regarding her co-religionists in the East, it must be admitted that the
preservation of her Faith has always been treated--long before the
existence of the Eastern Question--as the most vital in her policy. In
every alliance, every negotiation, every treaty, it was the one thing
that never was compromised; and Greek Christianity certainly holds a
closer and more mystic relation to the government of Russia than the
Catholic or Protestant faiths do to those of other lands.

Russia girded herself to do what the best sentiment in England had in
vain demanded. She declared war against Turkey in support of the
oppressed provinces of Servia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro. In the
month of April, 1877, the Russian army crossed the frontier. Then came
the capture of Nikopolis, the repulse at Plevna, the battle of Shipka
Pass, another and successful battle of Plevna, the storming of Kars,
and then, the Balkans passed,--an advance upon Constantinople. On the
29th of January the last shot was fired. The Ottoman Empire had been
shaken into submission, and was absolutely at the mercy of the Tsar,
who dictated the following terms: The erection of Bulgaria into an
autonomous tributary principality, with a native Christian government;
the independence of Montenegro, Roumania, and Servia; a partial
autonomy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, besides a strip of territory upon
the Danube and a large war indemnity for Russia. Such were the terms
of the Treaty of San Stefano, signed in March, 1878. To the
undiplomatic mind this seems a happy conclusion of a vexed question.
The Balkan states were independent--or partially so; and the Ottoman
Empire, although so shorn and shaken as to be innocuous, still remained
as a dismantled wreck to block the passage to the East.

But to Beaconsfield and Bismarck and Andrassy, and the other
plenipotentiaries who hastened to Berlin in June for conference, it was
a very indiscreet proceeding, and must all be done over. Gortchakof
was compelled to relinquish the advantages gained by Russia. Bulgaria
was cut into three pieces, one of which was handed to the Sultan,
another made tributary to him, the third to be autonomous under certain
restrictions. Montenegro and Servia were recognized as independent,
Bosnia and Herzegovina were given to Austria; Bessarabia, lost by the
results of the Crimean War, was now returned to Russia, together with
territory about and adjacent to Kars. Most important of all--the
Turkish Empire was revitalized and restored to a position of stability
and independence by the friendly Powers!

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