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cabinet reading and deciding on reports and despatches—such was his ordinary day’s work. Yet, in spite of all this, his activity could not but prove the narrow limits of autocratic power. Under the “Iron Tsar” the outward semblance of authority was perfectly maintained; but behind this imposing façade the whole structure of the Russian administrative system continued to rot and crumble. The process was even hastened; for the emperor’s stern discipline crushed out all independence of initiative and silenced all honest criticism. The secret police provided but a poor substitute for the assistance which an argus-eyed and articulate public opinion gives to the efficient working of a constitutional system; for the greatest of autocrats has but two eyes, and it is no difficult task to deceive him. Thus it came about that, as Professor Schiemann puts it, “Potemkin’s scenery was brought out again,” and Nicholas walked with conscious self-approval through a Russia seemingly well ordered, but in fact merely temporarily prepared for each stage of his progress.

War is the ultimate and sharpest test of the soundness of a state, and to this test Russia was submitted soon after the accession of Nicholas, who could not be blind to the revelations that resulted, though he drew the wrong moral. These revelations had, indeed, begun before the outbreak of the war with Turkey in 1828. The new tsar had devoted especial attention to the reform and reconstruction of the navy, which under Alexander I. had been suffered to decay. Yet the newly organized squadron which in 1827 set out on the cruise which ended at Navarino only reached Plymouth with difficulty, and there had to be completely refitted. The disastrous Balkan campaign of 1828 was an even more astounding revelation of corruption, disorganization and folly in high places; and the presence of the emperor did nothing to mitigate the attendant evils. He was indefatigable, in war as in peace, in parading and inspecting; the weary and starving soldiers were forced to turn out amid the marshes of the Dobrudscha as spick and span as on the parade grounds of St Petersburg; but he could do nothing to set order in the confusion of the commissariat, which caused the troops to die like flies of dysentery and scurvy; or to remedy the scandals of the hospitals, which inflicted on the wounded unspeakable sufferings. On the other hand, his presence was sufficient to hamper the initiative of Prince Wittgenstein, the nominal commander-in-chief; for Nicholas was constitutionally incapable of leaving him a free hand. This was one reason for the failure of the opening campaign.^[1] Another was more creditable to the tsar’s heart than to his head; he turned from the sight of wounds and blood, and would not make up his mind to sanction operations which, at the cost of a few hundred lives, would have saved thousands who perished miserably of disease.^[2]

These then were the leading principles which underlay Nicholas’s domestic and foreign policy from first to last: to discipline Russia, and by means of a disciplined Russia to discipline the world. So far as the latter task was concerned, he again sharply divided the issues which Alexander had confused. The mission of Russia in the West was, in accordance with the principles of the Holy Alliance as Nicholas interpreted them, to uphold the cause of legitimacy and autocracy against the Revolution; her mission in the East was, with or without the co-operation of “Europe,” to advance the cause of Orthodox Christianity, of which she was the natural protector, at the expense of the decaying Ottoman empire. The sympathy of Europe with the insurgent Greeks gave the tsar his opportunity. The duke of Wellington was sent to St Petersburg in 1826 to congratulate the new tsar on his accession and arrange a concert in the Eastern Question. The upshot proved the diplomatic value of Nicholas’s apparent sincerity of purpose and charm of manner; the “Iron Duke” was to the “Iron Tsar” as soft iron to steel; Great Britain, without efficient guarantees for the future, stood committed to the policy which ended in the destruction of the Ottoman sea-power at Navarino and the march of the Russians on Constantinople. By the treaty of Adrianople in 1829 Turkey seemed to become little better than a vassal state of the tsar, a relation intensified, after the first revolt of Mehemet Ali, by the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi in 1833 (see Mehemet Ali). In the West, meanwhile, the revolutions of 1830 had modified the balance of forces. Nicholas himself proposed an armed intervention of the Alliance in order “to restore order” in Belgium and France;^[3] and when his allies held back even proposed to intervene alone, a project rendered impossible by the outbreak of the great insurrection in Poland, which tied the hands of all three powers (see Poland: History). In the circumstances, Nicholas was forced to give a grudging recognition to the title of Louis Philippe as king of the French; his recognition of that of Leopold, king of the Belgians, was postponed until King William of the Netherlands had finally resigned his rights. Then, the insurrection in Poland once crushed, and Poland itself scarce surviving even as a geographical expression,^[4] he drew the three eastern autocratic powers together in a new “Holy Alliance” by the secret convention of Berlin (3rd Oct. 1833) reaffirming the right and duty of intervention at the request of a legitimate sovereign. The cordial understanding with Austria, cemented at Münchengrätz and Berlin, was renewed, after the accession of the emperor Ferdinand, at Prague and Töplitz (1835); on the latter occasion it was decided “without difficulty” to suppress the republic of Cracow, as a centre of revolutionary agitation.^[5] The Triple Alliance was now, in the tsar’s opinion, “the last anchor of safety for the monarchical cause.” To its maintenance he had sacrificed “his religious convictions” and “the traditions of Russian policy” in consenting to uphold the integrity of Turkey; a sacrifice perhaps the less hard to make since, as he added, the Ottoman empire no longer existed.^[6] He allowed himself to be persuaded by Metternich to support the cause of Don Carlos in Spain,^[7] and so early as May 1837, in view of the agitation in Hungary, he announced that “in every case” Austria might count on Russia.

These cordial ties were loosened, however, by the fresh crisis in the Eastern Question after 1838. Metternich was anxious to summon a European conference to Vienna, with a view to placing Turkey under a collective guarantee. To Nicholas this seemed to be a blow aimed at Russia, and he refused to be a party to it.^[8] Moreover, in view of the tendency of Austria to forget the conventions of Münchengrätz and Töplitz, and to approach the maritime powers, he determined to checkmate her by himself coming to an agreement with Great Britain, in order to settle the Eastern Question according to his own views: a double gain, if by this means Queen Victoria (a “legitimate” sovereign) could be drawn away from her unholy alliance with the Jacobin Louis Philippe. This is the explanation of those concessions in the Eastern Question which ended in the Quadruple Alliance of 1840 and the humiliation of Louis Philippe’s government (see Mehemet Ali).

The new Anglo-Russian entente led in 1844 to a visit of the

1. Nicholas remained in Russia in 1829, and Diabitsch had a free hand.
2. He once sentenced an unhappy Jew to run the gauntlet of 10,000 strokes, exclaiming as he signed the warrant, “Thank God, we have no capital punishment in Russia!” Yet his nature had its kindly side: “He feels kindness deeply—and his love for his wife and children, and for all children, is very great” (Queen Victoria, loc. cit). He also spent much personal effort in organizing the charitable institutions of the dowager empress Maria, and founded a great number of institutions for technical education.
3. Martens, Recueil, viii. 164, &c., especially the autograph mem. of the tsar on the situation (p. 168): “But apart from honour, is it to our interest to consent to this fresh iniquity? . . . . Even if France invade Austria, Prussia says she will give her moral support! Is that—Great God!—the alliance created by the immortal emperor? . . . . Let us preserve the sacred fire for the moment of the struggle with the infernal powers!”
4. Nicholas himself ascribed his hatred of Poles and Jews to the stories told him by his English nurse, Miss Lyon, of her sufferings during the siege of Warsaw in 1794.—Schiemann, i. 181.
5. This convention was not acted upon till 1846.
6. Conversation with Count Ficquelmont (Feb. 13, 1833) in Martens Recueil, iv. pt. i. p. 443.
7. Ib. p. 475.
8. Ib. p. 481.