The personal character of Catherine the Great was not blameless. "I know," said Voltaire, "that she is reproached with some trifles about her husband; but these are family affairs with which I do not meddle." Her lovers were countless; her lavishness toward them almost incredible; she distributed among them more than one hundred and fifty thousand serfs and nearly ninety million rubles. Prince Potemkin received in two years nine million rubles and thirty-seven thousand serfs. But if she thus threw away the treasure of the Empire, "no monarch since Ivan the Terrible had extended its frontiers by such vast conquests." She was planning other enterprises when she died, suddenly, at the age of sixty-seven, and was succeeded by her son Paul.
How the Russian Hamlet
WROUGHT HIS OWN UNDOING
Russia was exhausted by forty years of ceaseless war. The new Emperor, a man of generous impulses, announced that he could not refuse his subjects the peace for which they longed; he recalled his army from Persia, and refused to take part in the contest with France, though he promised to oppose by all possible means the progress of the mad French Republic which threatened Europe with total ruin by the destruction of laws, privileges, property, religion, and manners." He established the exiled Louis XVIII. in the ducal palace of Mitava and gave him a pension.
But peace was of short duration; Napoleon's ambition forced Europe into a general war. Paul made an alliance with England, Austria, and Naples; even Turkey joined the league. A Turko-Russian fleet cruised among the Ionian Islands; a Russia army was sent to Holland; and Suvorof was recalled from exile to command the united armies of upper Italy. He entered Milan and abolished the Cis-Alpine republic. He fought the bloody battle of the Trebbia and captured Mantua. This was his creed: "A quick glance, speed, dash! The van of the army must not wait for the rear; musket balls are fools; bayonets are the fine fellows." Leaving Italy, the intrepid old man found himself entangled in the Alps. His allies were defeated in the battle of Zurich; he was surrounded by the French. He crossed the St. Gothard, that "kingdom of terrors," as he called it, drove the enemy before him, and made his famous retreat across the snows of Mont Bragil and Glarus.
PALACE OF PAUL THE FIRST.
Paul was angry with the "treachery" of Austria and England, and hastened to make an alliance with the First Consul, with whom he arranged the famous plan for the expedition to overthrow English rule in India. Eleven regiments of Kazaks had even started on the hazardous march through Asia when they were recalled by a sudden change in the government.
The Emperor's mind was narrow; his character capricious. He delighted in showing his authority. "Know," said he, "that the only person of consideration in Russia is the person whom I address and only during the time that I am addressing him." It is said that he ordered a whole regiment of the guard to Siberia because they misunderstood an order. He obliged his subjects to fall on their knees when hp passed; even women had to go down into the mud oz snow. This "Russian Hamlet" went in all things contrary to his Empress mother; he prohibited the use of her favorite words "citizen" and "society," he kept the theatre and the press under the strictest censorship, forbade European books to be imported,, and recalled Russian students and travellers from abroad. As time went on his violence increased, he often broke out into threats against his wife, the beautiful Empress Maria, and his eldest son Alexander. No one felt safe. The peace with Napoleon and the rupture with England brought the crisis; a conspiracy was put on foot to force Paul to abdicate. Alexander consented to the scheme. The guard of the palace was won over. The conspirators went to Paul's chamber and presented the act of abdication. A struggle ensued; the lamp went out, and in the darkness the Emperor was strangled with an officer's scarf.
The Russian Hamlet
Alexander mounted the throne and vowed to "govern according to the principles and after the heart of Catherine." He was full of illusions and hope; his "Triumvirate" of young friends, liberal and progressive in their ideas, incited him to reform. Paul's tyrannical measures were repealed; Western books and theories came once more into vogue; the emancipation of the serfs was the topic of the time; once more the wandering sheep of the church" were protected; a set of dancing dissenters were allowed to perform their rites in the Mikhail Palace.
THE MIKHAIL PALACE.
The rule of the liberal triumvirate lasted six years; they worshipped the English constitution, and it was not strange that the alliance with France was given up for that of Great Britain. England and Russia agreed together to drive the newly crowned Emperor Napoleon from Northern Germany, and to declare Holland and Switzerland independent. Sweden and Naples joined the coalition. Alexander had the famous interview with the King and Queen of Prussia near the tomb of Frederick the Great, and Prussia agreed to furnish eighty thousand men. Austria had already begun the war. The Russian army was endangered by the defeat of the latter near Ulm and by the capture of Vienna, but the Russians and Austrians joined forces at Olmutz. Then came the epic battle of "the three emperors" at Austerlitz, when Alexander himself was obliged to flee almost unattended, and the loss of the Russians was twenty-one thousand men, two hundred cannon, and thirty flags. Napoleon reached the summit of his power; the Confederation of the Rhine brought him one hundred and fifty thousand men; his brothers sat on the thrones of Naples and Holland.
ALEXANDER I.
A new war arose; again England, Sweden, Prussia, and Russia united against the Corsican; again Russia's chief ally was too hasty; the battles of Jena and Auerstadt endangered the Prussian monarchy. The French entered Berlin and Prussian Poland. Alexander proclaimed that the war was made "not for vainglory but for the salvation of the fatherland." Nevertheless his General-in-chief; Bennigsen, was driven out of Poland with a loss of ten thousand men and eighty cannon. A winter campaign ended disastrously with the battle of Eylau, which was one of the bloodiest on record. Whole regiments were swept away in a breath; the Russians lost twenty-six thousand men. The French remained masters of the field; but as the Russians withdrew safely under cover of the darkness the Te Deum of victory was sung. Napoleon stayed a week at Eylau and tried to dictate terms to Prussia. But Frederick William still clung to the Russian alliance, and the war went on. In the spring Bennigsen, with one hundred and ten thousand men, fought several bloody battles with Marshal Ney, and being obliged to retreat, took up a most dangerous position in the ravine of the Alle, near Friedland. Napoleon saw that his opponent had left himself no chance of retreat. No," said he, it is not every day that an enemy is caught in such a blunder." The event proved as the great general foresaw; Ney led an irresistible charge; the three bridges behind the Russians were cannonaded; the Russian army was almost annihilated. Alexander was obliged to treat, and the two Emperors had their famous meeting on the raft in the midst of the Niemen. The King of Prussia waited on the shore, impatiently urging his horse into the water and gazing on the raft where his fate was being decided. The result of the interview finished the fall of Prussia.
MARSHALL NEV.
Alexander the Weak, to his shame, suddenly turned his back upon England, allowed "the two wings of the Prussian eagle to be broken," and as a reward took all Finland from his brother-in-law, the King of Sweden, and allowed Napoleon to form the Grand Duchy of Warsaw upon his borders.
Alexander had already freed himself from the liberal friends of his youth who favored England, and was under the influence of Speranski, who was devoted to the French. Speranski was the son of a poor priest who by sheer ability had risen to distinction during the two preceding reigns. In proportion as he won the Emperor's favor he drew upon himself the hatred of his associates.