From the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review. RUSSIA UNDER ALEXANDER AND NICHOLAS. Histoire intime de la Russie sous les Empéreurs Alexandre et Nicolas, et particulièrement pendant la crise de 1825. (Domestic History of Russia under the Emperors Alexander and Nicholas, and particularly during the crisis of 1825.) By J. H. SCHNITZLER. 2 vols. Paris: 1847 THIS is in many respects a remarkable work. | Persia, and Turkey, the affairs of Greece, Nearly a quarter of a century has elapsed the Polish insurrection, &c., &c. since the author (a Frenchman born and bred notwithstanding his German name) first set foot in Russia, where he resided for four years. He arrived in St. Petersburg in time to witness the issue of one of the most formidable movements recorded in the annals of the empire, the conspiracy of 1825; and he was present in St. Isaac's Place, on the 26th of December, when Nicholas had to do battle for life and crown with his own revolted soldiery, before he could grasp the awful power which had devolved on him by the death of one brother and the abdication of another. It was a spectacle to absorb in its contemplation all the powers of the soul, and determine their bent for the remainder of a lifetime. The impression it made on Schnitzler's mind is testified by the assiduity with which he has ever since devoted himself to the study of the Russian Empire, in all the details of its outward and inward life. The first fruits of his researches in this vast and imperfectly explored field, have been given to the world in several articles of the Encyclopédie des Gens du Monde," a valuable repository of science, literature, and art, edited by himself; and in two substantive works, Essai d'une statique générale de l'Empire de Russie," and "La Russie, la Pologne, et la Finlande." Statistics, geography, and ethnography, form the staple of these volumes, in which political questions, especially those of the present day, are only touched on incidentally. In the work now before us, the author takes higher ground, enters into the domain of contemporary history, and discusses the moral, social, and political physiology of Russia. It is his intention to publish a cycle of volumes, of which these two form the commencement, under the general title of "Etudes sur l'Empire des Tsars." The subsequent portions will embrace the whole history of the reign of Nicholas, and consist of monographs on the wars in the Caucasus, The copious journal which Schnitzler kept during his residence in Russia, and in which were recorded the fruits of his own assiduous observation, and of his intercourse with persons from whom he could derive original and authentic information, has lain intact until now, although it has always been his intention to make its contents public. Meanwhile his materials have been accumulating during an interval of twenty years; many new facts have become known to him, and old ones have gradually assumed in his eyes a more distinct development and significance. Such a slow process of literary incubation is a rare phenomenon in these days, and is really deserving of no common admiration, for it is a warrant that the author comprehends the importance and the difficulty of his task, and that he approaches it in a conscientious spirit. This gratifying anticipation is confirmed by the general tone of Schnitzler's book, which bears strong internal evidence of candor, honesty, and generosity. He tells the truth without disguise, but also without acrimony-a difficult matter when the theme is Russia; and the moderation of his language only gives the more weight to the grave censure, oftener implied than directly urged, in his pages. The contents of these volumes are considerably diversified. The conspiracy of 1825 and its consequences form the nucleus round which are agglomerated a variety of explanations, essays, and narratives. The history of Alexander's reign is succinctly narrated, and this is followed by a circumstantial account of his death, which is shown. to have been caused by a typhoid fever, caught in the Crimea, and not by poison. The latter opinion was for a long while very generally entertained, and still holds its ground in some quarters. Indeed, the probability is, that Alexander only escaped from assassination by a natural death; two of the conspirators, Yakubovitch and Kak hofski, were bent on regicide, and mocked | Three potent elements have coalesced together to produce our modern civilization: these are the genius of Rome and her solid and elaborate social institutions; those that took their growth in the wilds and forests of ancient Germany; and lastly, Christianity. To the combination of these three elements does Europe owe the peculiar spirit that so strongly distinguishes her from Asia, and which forms a common bond of union between all her peoples, whatever transient or secondary differences may divide them. Russia, which is now a province of this great confederation, was An interesting and instructive chapter is for a long while beyond its pale; hence the devoted to the moral condition of Russia many striking points of difference that still under Alexander, and to the history of the exist between its people and those living secret societies which were called into ex- west of them. Of the three elements above istence by causes mainly attributable to his mentioned, one has been wanting to it altofatal weakness and inconsistency. The gether; of the second, it has but a few isotrial of the conspirators is dwelt on at con-lated portions, and the third has entered siderable length, and occasion is thence into it under a peculiar form, hardly favora taken to survey the whole field of Muscovite ble to intellectual emancipation. legislation. The grand question of the emancipation of the serfs is discussed; the defects of the existing Russian institutions are laid bare, and several institutions are enumerated of which the empire stands in need, and which are totally wanting. "Thus," says Schnitzler, we have en deavored to make amends for the silence which the Russian writers are constrained to observe; we have proved the urgent need of reforms, and have ventured to tell a mighty nation and its government what Europe expects, before she will definitively recognise them as members of the great family." 66 Two appendices, occupying together about a third of the volumes, consist of fifty-five miscellaneous sketches, notes, and illustrations, many of which contain matter both recondite and instructive. Thus the entire work forms a sort of common-place of the modern history and biography of Russia; it is a budget stuffed full of facts of all kinds, and in order to increase its utility, the author has annexed to it a remarkably copious, exact, and con venient index. But we have not yet completed our enumeration of the matter contained in these well filled volumes; we have yet to speak of the introduction, to us the most interesting part of all. It is a general survey of all that is known of the past and present fortunes of Russia, made with a view to solve the question:-Whence comes she, and whither is she going? Let us follow our author in this inquiry. "The Roman sway never extended to the north of Europe and Asia. That cold and silent region re- mained inaccessible to the ancients who were accus versal formalism." "In the west, Italy and Germany were the honor. Religion then acquired an auxiliary in sources of modern civilization, whilst that of Rus-loyalty; and by and by were established those sia proceeded from the Greeks of the Lower Em- notions of rigorous morality from which the really pire; a worn out people, lapsed into second civilized man derives his rules of conduct, without childhood, bent beneath a despotic yoke, and ever seeking to evade their inflexible law. among whom religion, itself enslaved, had lost its regenerating virtue. For in Constantinople the church was become the humble handmaid of the state, the lustre of which it exalted without excit-at the most disastrous period of her history, when ing its jealousy; whereas in the west, a priest, seated on the tomb of St. Peter, boldly constituted himself the guardian of Gospel freedom, and never feared to encounter even the sceptres of kings with his pastor's crook, when he thought that danger threatened the spiritual interests of his flock. "Nor was this all. Implicated in the schism of the East, and consequently cut off entirely from the great Catholic family, Russia was left unaided the hordes of Genghis Khan, issuing from the deserts of Middle Asia, fell upon her like swarms of locusts, and reduced her to hard slavery. At first, perhaps, the united efforts of chivalry would have been inadequate to stem a torrent that afterwards bore them down at Liegnitz and Wahlstatt ; but at least with such help the struggle might have "Russia_then remained without the pale not been prolonged, Christian heroism might have only of the Roman world, but likewise of the Latin found a field for its display; and the fall might world, in the full extension of that term. By the have been less deep and less ignominious. The former cause she was deprived of a positive code mere idea of having the eyes of all Europe bent on of law-the fruit of a culture already ancient-the spectacle of its resistance, the certainty of exand of the heritage of institutions which, even at citing the sympathies of the whole civilized world, this day, have not yet lost all their value; whilst, might have exalted to the loftiest pitch the courage by not acknowledging the authority of the popes, of a people, not chivalric indeed, but not insensiwho were then the defenders of the rights of ble to military glory, strongly attached to the faith thought and the representatives of the spiritual prin- of their fathers, and animated by an ardent love ciple amidst the violence of the middle ages, she of country. Be this as it may, no appeal was was cut off from that great movement of the made to the valor of the warriors of the west; they Christian world that tended so directly to civiliza- were unmoved by the news of the Mongol invation; and the generous passions of our ancestors sion, and saw in it no reason for undertaking a crufound no echoes in her vast solitudes. Though sade to which the Church cared not to invite them. visited, as we have said, by Norman warriors, Vladimiria and Muscovy, remote provinces of who presented to it at least a glimpse of the ad- Kief, recently founded in the midst of Finnish poventurous life of the valiant heroes of the west,pulations, addicted to Paganism, were at the most Russia never was acquainted with feudalism;* known only by name; besides which, schismatics that vast and glittering net-work, that compressed were, in the eyes of the heroes of the Cross, scarceso strongly, indeed, beneath its iron meshes, the ly Christians. The Russians were completely races of Roman and Teutonic descent, but which overthrown in two battles (1224 and 1237), and covered them, at the same time, as with a tutelary subjected to the dominion of the Golden Horde and gis, beneath which they found order and systema- the Khan of the Steppes. Then ensued a pros tic organization; habits of life controlled by cer-tration which lasted two centuries, and left profound tain laws; and the means of instruction placed traces in the character of that people, European in within the reach of the humblest localities. Rus- [origin, as well as the Celts and Germans, but which sia went her own way, and remained sequestered from Europe. She alone, or nearly so, in all Christendom, responded not to the cry of religious enthusiasm which was the precursor not only of the Crusades that immense mêlée in which the nations, by learning to know each other, extended their respective horizons-but which was also the germ of chivalry. That institution, by ratifying the influence of women, softened the general manners; and, by exalting the sanctity of oaths above all considerations, subjected the brute force and the selfish impulses of the warrior to the law of The system of apanages established at first in Kief and afterwards in other Russian grand principalities, does not deserve this name; neither does serfdom (a thing of almost modern origin in Russia) constitute feudalism. In the latter we see a graduated scale of rank among men who know their own value, and limit it respectively; we behold a certain order, the pledge of progress, rather than a tyranny pressing upon a great number, and dividing society into two classes-masters and slaves. In order to judge of an institution we must take it in its early stage, and not in its state of decrepi tude. had been already fashioned to Oriental slavery by its connexion with Byzantium, and on which its conquerors imposed in a still higher degree, the immobility of Asiatic usages.” Muscovy was now utterly forgotten by Europe, and even when it recovered from its fall, and the cross again supplanted the crescent on its steeples, it had lost its only channel of intercourse with Christendom through the capture. of Byzantium by the Turks. Meanwhile, other portions of the inheritance of the sons of Rurik the Norman, claiming the exclusive right to bear the name of Russia, had acquired strength and importance, and had entered into the communion of the Latin Church. union of Lithuania with Poland made the latter the irreconcilable enemy of Muscovy. A long and bloody struggle, exasperated by national and religious hatred, ensued between them. The Poles won province after The or less ancient hereditary eminence; but the mem- province from their rivals, and at last be- | branches of the Rurik family, and of nobles of more came masters of their most venerated sanctuary, the Kreml of Moscow. The cause of the Muscovites seemed hopeless, but they retrieved their fortune by an extraordinary and almost incredible effort. Peace was concluded, but the rivalry of the two nations continued without intermission until the complete subjection of one of them in the last century. "A marvellous resurrection, begun under Ivan III. Vassilievitch, continued under Ivan IV. Vassilievitch, surnamed the Terrible, and consummated under the Tsars of the House of Romanof, revealed a new power to the astonished gaze of Europe. With wonder she beheld the blows which those Muscovites, but recently the humble subjects of the Mongols, now dealt out to all their enemies, the Poles, the Swedes, and the Tartars of the Crimea, vassals of Turkey. Thenceforth it was no longer possible to ignore their existence; the name of Christians could no longer be refused to those vanquishers of the Infidels, marching beneath the banner of the cross; and Europe carried her condescension towards them so far as to solicit their alliance against the common enemy, the Ottomans." solute, though less loathsome and less voluntary servility prevailed among the lower classes: the middle class, few in number even at this day, consisted then of but some hundred thousand families; and the husbandmen, whose humble villages were dispersed over vast deserts, attached to the soil since the reign of Boris Godunof, and left in the utmost neglect by a heedless clergy, grovelled in a state of debasing ignorance, from which their monotonous way of life afforded them little opportu nity of emerging. "Even in the upper ranks, life was without all charm. The women, shut up in the gyneceum, had no influence over the men, who were like themselves illiterate, and whose whole energy was wasted, in ordinary times, in paltry intrigues, silly quarrels for precedence, and endless outward observances of devotion. Encumbered with a heavy costume that impeded the free movements of the body, they were no less cramped in mind, and were filled with a dread of their master, fostered by the minutiæ of an imperious etiquette, and by the excessive cravings of their own ridiculous vanity." Such was the Russian people when Peter the Great undertook its transformation. Nevertheless, under the first Tsars of the House of Romanof, the government of Russia and the manners of her people stood in glaring contrast with those of her civilized He applied himself with an iron-strength of neighbors. The clergy were ignorant, and the Oriental character, and to remodel its will to efface from his country every trace of contented to be so; and the religion they taught was a system of outward forms, des- manners and customs after the example of titute of all life and spirit. The sovereign ceeded, at least with the upper classes; but Germany, Holland, and France. He suc was a fetish, whom his subjects worshipped as it was scarcely possible so to change the with faces prostrate in the dust Of aris-habits of the great mass of the people in a tocracy there was scarcely a trace under a system that recognised only a despot and his trembling slaves. If the phrase "The Tsar has ordained, the Boiars have advised," was ever seriously used, the case must have been exceptional,-and, at all events, there was an end to any such practice before the reign of Alexis Mikhailovitch, the father of Peter the Great. "Besides, the rank of Boiar was dependent on the good pleasure of the Tsar, and however high that dignity may have been, it was not hereditary. There existed, indeed, a privileged class, consisting of the princes descended from the various This is the correct orthography. Kremlin is a French corruption of the Russian word Kreml or Kremla (pronounced kremlya, a dissyllable). In old Slavonic krem, kremer, signifies stone, and among all the Slavonians krem, or kreml, is the common designation for a fortified enclosure. Various Russian towns have each their Kreml, and in other Slavonic countries we find the fortified towns of Kremenetz, Krementcharg, &c. country of such vast extent, a yawning gulph was opened between the immense majority of nobles on the other, together with the middle the nation on the one hand, and the civilized classes of the German towns and provinces, successively incorporated with the empire. Moreover, like a true Russian even in his innovations, Peter understood civilization only in its most palpable and material aspects. He did all that energy, almost superhuman, could effect, to increase the wealth and strength of the people, but he scarcely gave a thought to their moral and intellectual culture. of her policy; to command the course of her own "Peter the Great marked out for Russia the plan rivers; to keep the Baltic open to her vessels; to confine the Swedes to their peninsula, and weaken Poland by fomenting its intestine divisions; to profit as much as possible by the decadence of the Ottoman Empire, and attract within her sphere the Christians of Asia subject to the Turks and the : Persians; to extend still further her influence and their deliverance, under the auspices of a her views of a future commerce with a part of the power with which they could claim kindred world with which she was in contact along a vast in matters of religion. Thus was an addiline of frontier; lastly to contrive that she should be reckoned for something in the affairs of the tional means of aggrandizement afforded to west, so that the Tsar might cast a certain weight Russia; and she has not failed to avail herinto the balance wherein are weighed the interests self of it with unceasing industry. In 1779 of the great sovereigns of the great Christian fami- we find Russia arbitrating between the Emly such was the programme already devised by peror of Germany and Frederick the Great. Peter, amidst the almost inextricable embarrass- In the reign of Paul I. Muscovite armies ments in which his passion for reforms had enwere beheld in Italy and Holland; and the tangled him in the interior of his empire. continent submitted to the imperative behests of that monarch, backed as they were by the exploits of Suvorof. Paul's example was not lost on his son. He too assumed to be the dictator of Europe; nay more : though occupying a throne the succession to which was fixed by no rule, and was generally determined by violence, he set himself up as the champion of legitimacy, and undertook the defence of the old monarchies against the French Government. "This programme was put in execution. Each of the successors of the great man, often forced along, in spite of himself, by the mighty impulse of the governmental machine which Peter had organized and put in motion, contributed his part; but it was a woman, nay more, a foreigner, that crowned the work. 66 Under Catherine II. the west became habituated to take account of the new power it had so long scarcely deigned to notice. We used to neglect its immensity,' said the Marquis d'Argenson, in our contempt for its barbarity; but it is now become formidable; and it is high time that its excessive power should be curtailed.' The times indeed were changed; to deny the greatness of the new power, was not equivalent to suppressing it. Europe was constrained to modify her system; as she will do again at no distant date, when she shall have more exactly comprehended the dangers to which she is exposed by the daily aggrandizements of an empire that is now not very far from the Oder. If Peter the Great made Russia an European power in manners and acquirements, Catherine caused it to be recognised as such by her arms and her diplomacy; and inspired the world with so high an idea of her resources, that her alliance was soon eagerly courted. The partition of Poland brought into close union with her Prussia, and even Austria-the proud possessor of the sceptre of the Cæsars, which was then wielded by Maria Theresa, a woman of less ability, certainly, than Catherine, but whose personal conduct was a living reproach to the licentiousness of the Russian autocrat. Nevertheless, the pact of iniquity, unparalleled in history, and pregnant with disasters for Europe, was concluded; and the three courts of the north have ever since been bound together by the bond of a common complicity. It is but a few months since that bond has been drawn closer by the suppression of the republic of Cracow-the last fragment of Poland; and it will constitute their strength against the west, until the time comes when all equilibrium between them shall have been destroyed, and fear of one shall force the two others to separate their cause from hers, and seek a support elsewhere, or from each other. The partition of Poland was a first revolution in the European system; Catherine prepared another, that is still imminent, by the humiliation of Turkey, and its extinction as a power." Catherine's victories by sea and land produced an intense effect on the minds of the Greek and Slavonic subjects of the Porte; who thenceforth began to dream of "Even this was not enough for the ambition of that power of yesterday's growth. Under Alexander, in the time of the prodigies of the French empire, it held the balance between the latter and its numerous adversaries. Accordingly Napoleon, after having, for a while, accepted it as mediator between himself and England (1803), soon thought of sharing with it the civilized world, and so anticipating the march of time, which, if we may judge from certain symptoms, would seem to be preparing for Europe a partition into two lots, the one compact, the other perhaps grouped together as a confederation. After Napoleon's fall, Russia, availing herself of the lustre she once more derived from the personal qualities of her sovereign, played the first part in the congress of kings assembled at Vienna. Thenceforth nothing was done without her, not even the pacification of Spain, which, if it was not to be left to that country itself, was, at least, one would suppose, a which Russia, at the other extremity of Europe, question exclusively French and English, with could have no reason to concern herself. Under the present reign, the treaty of Adrianople (1829), and other skilful acts of diplomacy, have further augmented the preponderance of Russia." Now comes the important question: Is this preponderance established on a solid basis, or is it to be regarded as factitious and transient ? "The basis is large, it must be owned, for Russia is a world in itself. Its extent is more than half that of all Europe, more than ten times that, of France. In Asia it is prolonged without interruption over another territorial sur face, forming a third of that division of the globe. To speak more exactly; the surface of European Russia is nearly five millions and a half of square kilomètres; that of Russia in Asia is hardly less than fifteen millions; and that of American Russia is about one million; total, |