She seemed to go further: she issued a decree prohibiting the enslavement of serfs. But unfortunately the palace intrigues, and the correspondence with the philosophers, and the destruction of Polish nationality left her no time to see the edict carried out. But Europe applauded—and the serfs waited. Two years after this came a deed which put an end to all this uncertainty. An edict was prepared ordering the peasants of Little Russia to remain forever on the estates where the day of publication should find them. This was vile; but what followed was diabolic. Court pets were let into the secret. These, by good promises, enticed hosts of peasants to their estates. The edict was now sprung; in an hour the courtiers were made rich, the peasants were made serfs, and Catharine II was made infamous forever. So, about a century after Peter, a wave of wrong rolled over Russia that not only drowned honor in the nobility, but drowned hope in the people.

As Russia entered the nineteenth century, the hearts of earnest men must have sunk within them. For Paul I, Catharine's son and successor, was infinitely more despotic than Catharine, and infinitely less restrained by public opinion. He had been born with savage instincts, and educated into ferocity. Tyranny was written on his features in his childhood. If he remained in Russia his mother sneered and showed hatred of him; if he journeyed in Western Europe crowds gathered about his coach to jeer at his ugliness. Most of those who have seen Gillray's caricature of him, issued in the height of English spite at Paul's homage to Bonaparte, have thought it hideously overdrawn; but those who have seen the portrait of Paul in the Cadet-Corps of St. Petersburg know well that Gillray did not exaggerate Paul's ugliness, for he could not.

And Paul's face was but a mirror of his character. Tyranny was wrought into his every fibre. He demanded an oriental homage. As his carriage whirled by, it was held the duty of all others in carriages to stop, descend into the mud, and bow themselves. Himself threw his despotism into this formula: "Know, Sir Ambassador, that in Russia there is no one noble or powerful except the man to whom I speak, and while I speak."

And yet within that hideous mass glowed sparks of reverence for right. When the nobles tried to get Paul's assent to more open arrangements for selling serfs apart from the soil, he utterly refused; and when they overtasked their human chattels Paul made a law that no serf should be required to give more than three days in the week to the tillage of his master's domain. But, within five years after his accession, Paul had developed into such a ravenous wild beast that it became necessary to murder him. This duty done, there came a change in the spirit of Russian sovereignty as from March to May; but, sadly for humanity, there came at the same time a change in the spirit of European politics, as from May to March.

For, although the new Czar, Alexander I, was mild and liberal, the storm of French ideas and armies had generally destroyed in monarchs' minds any poor germs of philanthropy which had ever found lodgement there. Still Alexander breasted this storm; found time to plan for his serfs, and in 1803 put his hand to the work of helping them toward freedom. His first edict was for the creation of the class of "free laborers." By this, masters and serfs were encouraged to enter into an arrangement which was to put the serf into immediate possession of himself, of a homestead and of a few acres, giving him time to indemnify his master by a series of payments. Alexander threw his heart into this scheme; and in his kindliness he supposed that the pretended willingness of the nobles meant something; but the serf-owning caste, without openly opposing, twisted up bad consequences with good, braided impossibilities into possibilities; the whole plan became a tangle, and was thrown aside.

The Czar now sought to foster other good efforts, especially those made by some earnest nobles to free their serfs by will. But this plan also the serf-owning caste entangled and thwarted. At last the storm of war set in with such fury that all internal reforms must be lost sight of. Russia had to make ready for those campaigns in which Napoleon gained every battle. Then came that peaceful meeting on the raft at Tilsit—worse for Russia than any warlike meeting; for thereby Napoleon seduced Alexander, for years, from plans of bettering his empire into dreams of extending it.

Coming out of these dreams, Alexander had to deal with such realities as the burning of Moscow, the Battle of Leipsic, and the occupation of France; yet, in the midst of those fearful times—when the grapple of the emperors was at the fiercest; in the very year of the burning of Moscow—Alexander rose in calm statesmanship, and admitted Bessarabia into the empire under a proviso which excluded serfage forever. Hardly was the great European tragedy ended, when Alexander again turned sorrowfully toward the wronged millions of his empire. He found that progress in civilization had but made the condition of the serfs worse. The newly ennobled parvenus were worse than the old boyars; they hugged the serf system more lovingly and the serfs more hatefully. The sight of these wrongs roused him. He seized a cross, and swore that the serf system should be abolished.

Straightway a great and good plan was prepared. Its main features were: a period of transition from serfage to personal liberty, extending through twelve or fourteen years; the arrival of the serf at personal freedom, with ownership of his cabin and the bit of land attached to it; the gradual reimbursement of masters by serfs; and after this advance to personal liberty, an advance by easy steps to a sort of political liberty. Favorable as was this plan to the serf-owners, they attacked it in various ways; but they could not kill it utterly. Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland became free. Having failed to arrest the growth of freedom, the serf-holding caste made every effort to blast the good fruits of freedom. In Courland they were thwarted; in Esthonia and Livonia they succeeded during many years; but the eternal laws were too strong for them, and the fruitage of liberty had grown richer and better.

After these good efforts, Alexander stopped, discouraged. A few patriotic nobles stood apart from their caste, and strengthened his hands, as Lafayette and Lincourt strengthened Louis XVI. They even drew up a plan of voluntary emancipation; formed an association for the purpose and gained many signatures; but the great weight of that besotted serf-owning caste was thrown against them, and all came to naught. Alexander was at last walled in from the great object of his ambition. Pretended theologians built, between him and emancipation, walls of Scriptural interpretation; pretended philosophers built walls of false political economy; pretended statesmen built walls of sham common-sense. If the Czar could but have mustered courage to cut the knot! Alas for Russia and for him, he wasted himself in efforts to untie it. His heart sickened at it; he welcomed death, which alone could remove him from it.

Alexander's successor, Nicholas I, had been known before his accession as a mere martinet, a good colonel for parade days, wonderful in detecting soiled uniforms, terrible in administering petty punishments. It seems like the story of stupid Brutus over again. Altered circumstances made a new man of him; and few things are more strange than the change wrought in his whole bearing and look by that week of energy in climbing his brother's throne. The great article in Nicholas's creed was a complete, downright faith in despotism, and in himself as despotism's apostle. Hence he hated, above all things, a limited monarchy. He told De Custine that a pure monarchy or pure republic he could understand; but that anything between these he could not understand. Of his former rule of Poland, as constitutional monarch, he spoke with loathing.

Of this hate which Nicholas felt for liberal forms of government there yet remain monuments in the great museum of the Kremlin. That museum holds an immense number of interesting things, and masses of jewels and plate which make all other European collections mean. The visitor wanders among clumps of diamonds and sacks of pearls and a nauseating wealth of rubies and sapphires and emeralds. There rise rows upon rows of jewelled cimeters, and vases and salvers of gold, and old saddles studded with diamonds and with stirrups of gold—presents of frightened Asiatic satraps or fawning European allies. There too are the crowns of Muscovy, of Russia, of Kazan, of Astrakhan, of Siberia, of the Crimea, and, pity to say it, of Poland. And next this is an index of despotic hate—for the Polish sceptre is broken and flung aside. Near this stands the full-length portrait of Alexander I, and at his feet are grouped captured flags of Hungary and Poland—some with blood-marks still upon them. But below all, far beneath the feet of the Emperor, in dust and ignominy and on the floor, is flung the very Constitution of Poland—parchment for parchment, ink for ink, good promise for good promise—which Alexander gave with so many smiles, and which Nicholas took away with so much bloodshed.

And not far from this monument of the deathless hate Nicholas bore that liberty he had stung to death stands a monument of his admiration for straightforward tyranny, even in the most dreaded enemy his house ever knew. Standing there is a statue in the purest of marble, the only statue in those vast halls. It has the place of honor. It looks proudly over all that glory and keeps ward over all that treasure; and that statue, in full majesty of imperial robes, and bees, and diadem, and face, is of the First Napoleon. Admiration of his tyrannic will has at last made him peaceful sovereign of the Kremlin.

This spirit of absolutism took its most offensive form in Nicholas's attitude toward Europe. He was the very incarnation of reaction against revolution, and he became the demigod of that horde of petty despots who infest Central Europe. Whenever, then, any tyrant's lie was to be baptized, he stood its godfather; whenever any God's truth was to be crucified, he led on those who passed by, reviling and wagging their heads. Whenever these oppressors revived some old feudal wrong, Nicholas backed them in the name of religion; whenever their nations struggled to preserve some great right, Nicholas crushed them in the name of law and order. With these pauper princes his children intermarried, and he fed them with his crumbs and clothed them with scraps of his purple. The visitor can see today, in every one of their dwarf palaces, some of his malachite vases or porcelain bowls or porphyry columns.

But the people of Western Europe distrusted him as much as their rulers worshipped; and some of these same presents to their rulers have become trifle-monuments of no mean value in showing that popular idea of Russian policy. Foremost among these stand those two bronze masses of statuary in front of the Royal Palace at Berlin, representing fiery horses restrained by strong men. Pompous inscriptions proclaim these presents from Nicholas; but the people, knowing the man and his measures, have fastened upon one of these curbed steeds the name of "Progress Checked," and on the other "Retrogression Encouraged."

A few days before Nicholas's self-will brought him to his deathbed we saw him ride through the St. Petersburg streets with no pomp and no attendants, yet in as great pride as ever despotism gave a man. At his approach, nobles uncovered and looked docile, soldiers faced about and became statues, long-bearded peasants bowed to the ground with the air of men on whose vision a miracle flashes. For there was one who could make or mar all fortunes—the absolute owner of street and houses and passers-by—one who owned the patent and dispensed the right to tread that soil, to breathe that air, to be glorified in that sunlight and amid those snow crystals. And he looked it all. Though at that moment his army was entrapped by military stratagem, and he himself was entrapped by diplomatic stratagem, that face and form were proud and confident as ever.

There was in this attitude toward Europe—in this standing forth as the representative man of absolutism, and breasting the nineteenth century—something of greatness; but in his attitude toward Russia this greatness was wretchedly diminished. For, as Alexander I was a good man enticed out of goodness by the baits of Napoleon, Nicholas was a great man scared out of greatness by the ever-recurring phantom of the French Revolution.

In those first days of his reign, when he enforced loyalty with grape-shot and halter, Nicholas dared much and stood firm; but his character soon showed another side. Fearless as he was before bright bayonets, he was an utter coward before bright ideas. He laughed at the flash of cannon, but he trembled at the flash of a new living thought. Whenever, then, he attempted a great thing for his nation, he was sure to be scared back from its completion by fear of revolution. And so, today, he who looks through Russia for Nicholas's works finds a number of great things he had done, but each is single, insulated, not preceded logically, not followed effectively. Take, as an example of this, his railway-building.

His own pride and Russian interest demanded railways. He scanned the world with that keen eye of his, saw that American energy was the best supplement to Russian capital; his will darted quickly, struck afar, and Americans came to build his road from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Nothing can be more complete. It is an air-line road, and so perfect that the traveller finds few places where the rails do not meet, before and behind him, in the horizon. The track is double, the rails very heavy and admirably ballasted; station-houses and engine-houses are splendid in build, perfect in arrangement, and surrounded by neat gardens. The whole work is worthy of the Pyramid builders. The traveller is whirled by culverts, abutments, and walls of dressed granite, through cuttings where the earth on either side is carefully paved or turfed to the summit. Ranges of Greek columns are reared as crossings in the midst of broad marshes, lions' heads in bronzed iron stare out upon vast wastes where never rose even the smoke from a serf's kennel.

All this seems good; and a ride of four hundred miles through such glories rarely fails to set the traveller at chanting the praises of the Emperor who conceived them. But when the traveller notes that complete isolation of the work from all conditions necessary to its success, his praises grow fainter. He sees that Nicholas held back from continuing the road to Odessa, though half the money spent in making the road an imperial plaything would have built a good, solid extension to that most important seaport; he sees that Nicholas dared not untie police regulations, and that commerce is wretchedly meagre. Contrary to what would obtain under a free system, this great public work found the country wretched and left it wretched. The traveller flies by no ranges of trim palings and tidy cottages; he sees the same dingy groups of huts here as elsewhere, the same cultivation looking for no morrow, the same tokens that the laborer is not thought worthy of his hire. This same tendency to great single works, this same fear of great connected systems, this same timid isolation of great creations from principles essential to their growth, is seen, too, in Nicholas's church-building.

Foremost of all the edifices on which Nicholas lavished the wealth of the empire stands the Isak Church in St. Petersburg. It is one of the largest and certainly the richest cathedral in Christendom. All is polished pink granite and marble and bronze. On all sides are double rows of Titanic columns, each a single block of polished granite with bronze capital. Colossal masses of bronze statuary are grouped over each front; high above the roof and surrounding the great drums of the domes are lines of giant columns in granite bearing giant statues in bronze; and crowning all rises the vast central dome, flanked by its four smaller domes, all heavily plated with gold.

The church within is one gorgeous mass of precious marbles and mosaics and silver and gold and jewels. On the tabernacle of the altar, in gold and malachite, on the screen of the altar, with its pilasters of lapis lazuli and its range of malachite columns fifty feet high, were lavished millions on millions. Bulging from the ceilings are massy bosses of Siberian porphyry and jasper. To decorate the walls with unfading pictures, Nicholas founded an establishment for mosaic work, where sixty pictures were commanded, each demanding, after all artistic labor, the mechanical labor of two men for four years.

Yet this vast work is not so striking a monument of Nicholas's luxury as of his timidity. For this cathedral and some others almost as grand were, in part at least, results of the deep wish of Nicholas to wean his people from their semi-idolatrous love for dark, confined, filthy sanctuaries, like those of Moscow; but here again is a timid purpose and half result; Nicholas dared set no adequate enginery working at the popular religious training or moral training. There had been such an organization, the Russian Bible Society, favored by Alexander I; but Nicholas swept it away at one stroke of the pen. Evidently, he feared lest Scriptural denunciations of certain sins in ancient politics might be popularly interpreted against certain sins in modern politics. The corruption system in Russia is old, organized, and respectable. Stories told of Russian bribes and thefts exceed belief only until one has been on the ground.

Nicholas began well. He made an imperial progress to Odessa, was welcomed in the morning by the governor in full pomp and robes and flow of smooth words; and at noon the same governor was working in the streets with ball and chain as a convict. But against such a chronic moral evil no government is so weak as your so-called "strong" government. Nicholas set out one day for the Kronstadt arsenals to look into the accounts there; but before he reached them, stores, storehouses, and account-books were in ashes. So at last Nicholas folded his arms and wrestled no more. For, apart from the trouble, there came ever in his dealings with thieves that old timid thought of his, that, if he examined too closely their chief tenure, they might examine too closely his despot tenure.

We have shown this vague fear in Nicholas's mind thus at length and in different workings, because thereby alone can be grasped the master-key to his dealings with the serf system. Toward his toiling millions Nicholas always showed sympathy. Let news of a single wrong to a serf get through the hedges about the Russian majesty, and woe to the guilty master! Many of these wrongs came to Nicholas's notice; and he came to hate the system, and tried to undermine it. Opposition met him, of course; not so much the ponderous laziness of Peter's time as an opposition, polite and elastic, which never ranted and never stood up—for then Nicholas would have throttled it and stamped upon it. But it did its best to entangle his reason and thwart his action. He was told that the serfs were well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed, well-provided with religion; were contented, and had no wish to leave their owners.

Now Nicholas was not strong at spinning sham reasons nor subtle at weaving false conscience; but, to his mind, the very fact that the system had so degraded a man that he could laugh and dance and sing, while other men took his wages, his wife, and homestead, was the crowning argument against the system. Then the political economists beset him, proving that without forced labor Russia must sink into sloth and poverty.

Yet all this could not shut out from Nicholas's sight the great black fact in the case. He saw, and winced as he saw, that, while other European nations, even under despots, were comparatively active and energetic, his own people were sluggish and stagnant; that, although great thoughts and great acts were towering in the West, there were in Russia, after all his galvanizing, no great authors, or scholars, or builders, or inventors, but only two main products of Russian civilization, dissolute lords and abject serfs.

Nearly twenty years went by in this timid dropping of grains of salt into a putrid sea. But at last, in 1842, Nicholas issued his ukase creating the class of "contracting peasants." Masters and serfs were empowered to enter into contracts, the serf receiving freedom, the master receiving payment in instalments. It was a moderate innovation, very moderate—nothing more than the first failure of the First Alexander. Yet even here that old timidity of Nicholas nearly spoiled what little good was hidden in the ukase. Notice after notice was given to the serf-owners that they were not to be molested, that no emancipation was contemplated, and that the ukase contained "nothing new." The result was as feeble as the policy. A few serfs were emancipated, and Nicholas halted. The revolutions of 1848 increased his fear of innovation; and finally the war in the Crimea took from him the power of innovation.

The great man died. We saw his cold dead face, in the midst of crowns and crosses, very pale then, very powerless then. One might stare at him, then, as at a serf's corpse; for he who had scared Europe during thirty years lay before us that day as a poor lump of chilled brain and withered muscle. And we stood by, when, amid chanting and flare of torches and roll of cannon, his sons wrapped him in his shroud of gold thread, and lowered him into the tomb of his fathers.

But there was shown in those days far greater tribute than the prayers of bishops or the reverence of ambassadors. Massed about the Winter Palace and the Fortress of Peter and Paul, stood thousands on thousands who, in far-distant serf-huts, had put on their best, had toiled wearily to the capital to give their last mute thanks to one who for years had stood between their welfare and their owners' greed. Sad that he had not done more. Yet they knew that he had wished their freedom and loathed their wrongs; for that came up the tribute of millions.

The new Emperor, Alexander II, had never been hoped for as one who could light the nation from his brain; the only hope was that he might warm the nation somewhat from his heart. He was said to be of a weak, silken fibre. The strength of the family was said to be concentrated in his younger brother, Constantine. But soon came a day when the young Czar revealed to Europe not merely kindliness, but strength. While his father's corpse was still lying within his palace, he received the diplomatic body. As the Emperor entered the audience-room he seemed feeble, indeed, for such a crisis. That fearful legacy of war seemed to weigh upon his heart; marks of plenteous tears were upon his face; Nesselrode, though old and bent and shrunk in stature, seemed stronger than his young master.

But as he began his speech it was seen that a strong man had mounted the throne. With earnestness he declared that he sorrowed over the existing war; but that, if the Holy Alliance had been broken, it was not through the fault of Russia. With bitterness he turned toward the Austrian minister, Esterhazy, and hinted at Russian services in 1848, and Austrian ingratitude. Calmly then, not as one who spoke a part but as one who announced a determination, he declared: "I am anxious for peace; but if the terms at the approaching congress are incompatible with the honor of my nation, I will put myself at the head of my faithful Russia and die sooner than yield."

Strong as Alexander showed himself by these words, he showed himself stronger by acts. A policy properly mingling firmness and conciliation brought peace to Europe and showed him equal to his father; a policy mingling love of liberty with love of order brought the dawn of prosperity to Russia and showed him the superior of his father. The reforms now begun were not stinted as of old, but free and hearty. In rapid succession were swept away restrictions on telegraphic communication, on printing, on the use of the Imperial Library, on strangers entering the country, on Russians leaving the country. A policy in public works was adopted which made Nicholas's greatest efforts seem petty; a vast network of railways was begun. A policy in commercial dealings with Western Europe was adopted, in which Alexander, though not apparently so imposing as Nicholas, was really far greater; he dared advance toward freedom of trade.

But soon rose again that great problem of old—that problem ever rising to meet a new autocrat, and, at each appearance, more dire than before—the serf question. The serfs in private hands now numbered more than twenty millions; above them stood more than a hundred thousand owners. The princely strength of the largest owners was best represented by a few men possessing over a hundred thousand serfs each, and, above all, by Count Scheremetieff, who boasted three hundred thousand. The luxury of the large owners was best represented by about four thousand men possessing more than a thousand serfs each. The pinching propensities of the small owners were best represented by fifty thousand men possessing fewer than twenty serfs each.

The serfs might be divided into two great classes. The first comprised those working under the old or corvee system, giving usually three days in the week to the tillage of the owner's domain; the second comprised those working under the new or obrok system, receiving a payment fixed by the owner and assessed by the community to which the serfs belonged. The character of the serfs had been moulded by the serf system. They had a simple shrewdness, which, under a better system, had made them enterprising; but this quality soon degenerated into cunning and cheatery—the weapons which the hopelessly oppressed always use. They had a reverence for things sacred, which under a better system might have given the nation a strengthening religion; but they now stood among the most religious peoples on earth and among the least moral. To the picture of Our Lady of Kazan they were ever ready to burn wax and oil; to truth and justice they constantly omitted the tribute of mere common honesty. They kept the Church fasts like saints; they kept the Church feasts like satyrs.

They had curiosity, which under a better system would have made them inventive; but their plough, in common use, was behind the plough described by Vergil. They had a love of gain, which under a better system would have made them hardworking; but it took ten serfs to do, languidly and poorly, what two free men in America would do quickly and well. They were naturally a kind people; but let one example show how serfage can transmute kindness. It is a rule, well known in Russia, that when an accident occurs, interference is to be left to the police. Hence you would see a man lying in a fit, and the bystanders giving no aid, but waiting for the authorities. Some years ago, as all the world remembers, a theatre took fire in St. Petersburg, and crowds of people were burned or stifled. The whole story is not so well known. The theatre was but a great temporary wooden shed—such as is run up every year at the holidays, in the public squares. When the fire burst forth, crowds of peasants hurried to the spot; but though they heard the shrieks of the dying, separated from them only by a thin planking, only one man in that multitude dared cut through and rescue some of the sufferers.

The serfs, when standing for great ideas, would die rather than yield. Napoleon I learned this at Eylau; Napoleon III learned it at Sebastopol; yet in daily life they were slavish beyond belief. On a certain day, in the year 1855, the most embarrassed man in all Russia was doubtless our excellent American minister. The serf coachman employed at wages was called up to receive his discharge for drunkenness. Coming into the presence of a sound-hearted American democrat, who never had dreamed of one mortal kneeling to another, Ivan throws himself on his knees, presses his forehead to the minister's feet, fawns like a tamed beast, and refuses to move until the minister relieves himself from this nightmare of servility by a full pardon.

Time after time we have entered the serf field and serf hut; have seen the simple round of serf toils and sports; have heard the simple chronicles of self joys and sorrows: but whether his livery were filthy sheepskin or gold-laced caftan; whether he lay on carpets at the door of his master, or in filth on the floor of his cabin; whether he gave us cold, stupid stories of his wrongs, or flippant details of his joys; whether he blessed his master or cursed him—we have wondered at the power which a serf system has to degrade and imbrute the image of God.

But astonishment was increased a thousand-fold at study of the reflex influence for evil upon the serf-owners themselves, upon the whole free community, upon the very soil of the whole country. On all those broad plains of Russia, on the daily life of that serf-owning aristocracy, on the whole class which was neither of serfs nor serf-owners, the curse of God was written in letters so big and so black that all mankind might read them. Farms were untilled, enterprise deadened, invention crippled, education neglected; life was of little value; labor was the badge of servility, laziness the very badge and passport of gentility. Despite the most specious half-measures, despite all efforts to galvanize it, to coax life into it, to sting life into it, the nation remained stagnant. Not one traveller who does not know that the evils brought on that land by the despotism of the autocrat were as nothing compared to that dark network of curses spread over it by a serf-owning aristocracy. Into the conflict with this evil Alexander II entered manfully. Having been two years upon the throne, having made a plan, having stirred some thought through certain authorized journals, he inspired the nobility in three of the northwestern provinces to memorialize him in regard to emancipation.

Straightway an answer was sent conveying the outlines of the Emperor's plan. The period of transition from serfage to freedom was set at twelve years; at the end of that time the serf was to be fully free and possessor of his cabin, with an adjoining piece of land. The provincial nobles were convoked to fill out these outlines with details as to the working out by the serfs of a fair indemnity to their masters. The whole world was stirred; but that province in which the Czar hoped most eagerly for a movement to meet him—the province where beat the old Muscovite heart, Moscow—was stirred least of all. Every earnest throb seemed stifled there by that strong aristocracy.

Yet Moscow moved at last. Some nobles who had not yet arrived at the callous period; some professors in the University who had not yet arrived at the heavy period, breathed life into the mass, dragged on the timid, fought off the malignant. The movement had soon a force which the retrograde party at Moscow dared not openly resist. So they sent answers to St. Petersburg, apparently favorable; but wrapped in their phrases were hints of difficulties, reservations, impossibilities. All this studied suggestion of difficulties profited the reactionists nothing. They were immediately informed that the imperial mind was made up, that the business of the Muscovite nobility was now to arrange that the serf be freed in twelve years, and put in possession of homestead and enclosure.

The next movement of the retrograde party was to misunderstand everything. The plainest things were found to need a world of debate; the simplest things became entangled; the noble assemblies played solemnly a ludicrous game of cross-purposes. Straightway came a notice from the Emperor which, stripped of official verbiage, said that they must understand. This set all in motion again. Imperial notices were sent to province after province, explanatory documents were issued, good men and strong were set to talk and work.

The nobility of Moscow made another move. To scare back the advancing forces of emancipation, they elected, as provincial leaders, three nobles bearing the greatest names of old Russia and haters of the new ideas. To defeat these came a successor of St. Gregory and St. Bavon, one who accepted the thought that when God advances great ideas the Church must marshal them. Philarete, Metropolitan of Moscow, upheld emancipation and condemned its foes; his earnest eloquence carried all. The work progressed unevenly—nobles in different governments differed in plan and aim—an assembly of delegates was brought together at St. Petersburg to combine and perfect a resultant plan under the eye of the Emperor. The Grand Council of the Empire, too, was set at the work. It was a most unpromising body, yet the Emperor's will stirred it.

The opposition now made the most brilliant stroke of its campaign. Just as James II of England prated of toleration and planned the enslavement of all thought, so now the bigoted plotters against emancipation began to prate of constitutional liberty. But Alexander held right on. It was even hinted that visions of a constitutional monarchy pleased him. But then came tests of Alexander's strength far more trying. Masses of peasants, hearing vague news of emancipation—learning, doubtless, from their masters' own spiteful lips that the Emperor was endeavoring to tear away property in serfs—took the masters at their word, and determined to help the Emperor. They rose in insurrection. To the bigoted serf-owners this was a godsend. They paraded it in all lights; therewith they threw life into all the old commonplaces on the French Revolution; timid men of good intentions wavered. The Czar would surely now be scared back.

Not so. Alexander now hurled his greatest weapon, and stunned reaction in a moment. He freed all the serfs on the Imperial estates without reserve. Now it was seen that he was in earnest; the opponents were disheartened; once more the plan moved and dragged them on. But there came other things to dishearten the Emperor; and not least of these was the attitude of those who moulded popular thought in England. Be it said here, to the credit of France, that from her came constant encouragement in the great work. Wolowski, Mazade, and other true-hearted men sent forth from leading reviews and journals words of sympathy, words of help, words of cheer.

Not so England. Just as in the French Revolution of 1789, while yet that Revolution was noble and good, while yet Lafayette and Bailly held it, leaders in English thought, who had quickened the opinions which had caused the Revolution, sent malignant prophecies and prompted foul blows, so in this battle of Alexander against a foul wrong they seized this time of all times to show all the wrongs and absurdities of which Russia ever had been or ever might be guilty—criticised, carped, sent much haughty advice, depressing sympathy, and malignant prophecy. Review articles, based on no real knowledge of Russia, announced a desire for serf-emancipation, and then, in the modern English way, with plentiful pyrotechnics of antithesis and paradox, threw a gloomy light into the skilfully pictured depths of imperial despotism, official corruption, and national bankruptcy.

They revived Old World objections, which, to one acquainted with the most every-day workings of serfage, were ridiculous. It was said that if the serfs lost the protection of their owners they might fall a prey to rapacious officials. As well might it have been argued that a mother should never loose her son from her apron-strings. It was said that "Serfism excludes pauperism"—that, if the serf owes work to his owner in the prime of life, the owner owes support to his serf in the decline of life. No lie could be more absurd to one who had seen Russian life. We were first greeted, on entering Russia, by a beggar who knelt in the mud; at Kovno eighteen beggars besieged the coach, and Kovno was hardly worse than scores of other towns; within a day's ride from St. Petersburg a woman begged piteously for means to keep soul and body together, and finished the refutation of that sonorous English theory, for she had been discharged from her master's service in the metropolis as too feeble, and had been sent back to his domain, afar in the country, on foot and without money.

It was said that freed peasants would not work. But, despite volleys of predictions that they would not work if freed, despite volleys of assertions that they could not work if freed, the peasants when set free, and not crushed by regulations, have sprung to their work with an earnestness and continued it with a vigor at which the philosophers of the old system stand aghast. The freed peasants of Wologda compare favorably with any in Europe. And when the old tirades had grown stale, English writers drew copiously from a new source—from La Verite sur la Russie—pleasingly indifferent to the fact that the author's praise in a previous work had notoriously been a thing of bargain and sale, and that there was in full process of development a train of facts which led the Parisian courts to find him guilty of demanding in one case a blackmail of fifty thousand rubles.

All this argument outside the empire helped the foes of emancipation inside the empire. But the Emperor met the whole body of his opponents with an argument overwhelming. On March 5, 1861, he issued his manifesto making the serfs free! He had struggled long to make some satisfactory previous arrangement; his motto now became: Emancipation first, arrangement afterward. Thus was the result of the great struggle decided.

NIKOLAI TURGENIEFF

In 1857 the Emperor Alexander II first raised the question of emancipation, and declared it was time for it to be accomplished. As might have been expected, the idea of emancipation met with great opposition from different sides. Yet the opposition was directed not so much against the personal emancipation of the serfs as against the appropriation to them, when liberated, of the land they held. The proprietors, assembled in different committees which were established all over the empire to discuss the matter, ended even by giving up their right of possession in the person of the serf, and, mentioning only their right to the land occupied by the peasants, claimed pecuniary indemnities if that land were delivered to them. The honorable gentlemen whom the Emperor intrusted with this important task, forming a committee ad hoc, declared from the first as a principle that the emancipated peasants must have land, about in the same quantity as they had hitherto occupied, on condition of a pecuniary indemnity to be paid to the proprietors. That principle prevailed, thanks to the Emperor's firmness.

During the discussion of that question in Russia, I published several writings on the matter. My chief purpose and warmest desire being to secure to the peasants as soon as possible their personal freedom and complete liberty of labor, I proposed a method of emancipation, claiming the entire property of their homes; that is to say, cottages and orchards and a small quantity of arable land, and that without the slightest indemnity from them to their masters, which was to be left to the Government. A sum of about two hundred million dollars, according to my calculation, would have been sufficient for it.

Meanwhile I inherited a small landed property, inhabited by about four hundred persons of both sexes. I hastened to put in practice my method. I abandoned one-third of the land, including their houses, to the peasants, and let them the two remaining thirds for a certain sum of money. In my agreement with them it was settled that, if the emancipation which the Government was preparing (1859) turned out more advantageous to them, they were to accept it in preference to mine. It is needless to add that, when the official emancipation was proclaimed, the peasants and I found it more advantageous and adopted it. If I were to compare the two methods, I should say that mine tended chiefly to the liberty of the peasants' person and labor, and that of the Government to give them a quantity of land sufficient for their subsistence.

The great inconvenience of this last method was that it obliged the peasants to pay a heavy rent to redeem their land, and that during forty-nine years! Nevertheless, their passion to possess land was so strong that they cheerfully submitted to such hard conditions. The redeeming rent (rente de rachat) was to be paid by the peasants, either in money, according to an estimate fixed by law, or by work done for the proprietor, i.e., by corvies. This last mode of payment, sanctioned by law only for a short period, disappeared more and more every day, so that the majority of the peasants no longer worked for the proprietors, but paid their rent in money.

I can say more: About two millions of peasants were entirely liberated with regard to the proprietors, thanks to an immediate payment of the redeeming rent. In such cases their annual rent (redevance) was capitalized, and the Government gave the proprietor an obligation for the amount of the capital, which bore five per cent, interest, and was to be redeemed in the course of forty-nine years by annual drawings (tirages); the peasants then to pay their redeeming rent to Government, and thus become free and independent proprietors. For some time both peasants and proprietors seemed to find this proceeding the most profitable, and agreements of this kind became more and more frequent every day.

I can hardly say how happy I was when I saw for the first time my dear, beloved, and deeply respected Russian peasants free at last, and proprietors of the land they had till then cultivated as serfs! What a change! The same creatures, serfs yesterday, became men, conscious of their human dignity; their aspect, their language, are those of free men. In the mean while, in getting rid of their serfdom, they preserved their usual good sense, wisdom, and bonhomie; no impertinence, no arrogance whatever can be detected in them; they are full of self-respect, yet polite. I saw them discussing with the authorities some business of theirs. They maintained their new rights, and, when wrong, never hesitated to acknowledge it.

Every district and every chef-lieu had every year an assembly of deputies who named a permanent committee for three years. This committee was charged with the municipal administration, under the control of the assembly. Everyone was called by law to the election of the deputies. It happened in many places that the peasants were the more numerous and could therefore dispose of all the places in the administrative committee. They were so informed. "No," was their answer; "we want one or two members of the committee taken from among ourselves; they will watch over our interests. As for defending them, as for action, the nobles we name will do it better than we, for they are more learned than we are." In one of the assemblies the nobles, moved by the tact and moderation of the peasants, insisted and almost forced a peasant to become president of the administrative committee of the district. When the salary of the members of the committee had to be decided, the peasants usually considered it too high for them, and, letting the nobles and the merchants have it, got it diminished by one-half for themselves.

All the district assemblies, after voting for the formation of the administrative committee, named the deputies for the larger assembly in the chief town in the province, which in its turn chose among its own members the members for the provincial administrative committee. The central committee seemed to interest the peasants less than those of the districts, and this too is owing to their modesty and moderation.

Another field was offered by the new law to the activity of the peasants in the local or municipal tribunals. The law united several rural communes in one canton (volost). Each canton, each commune, chose an ancient, assisted by a conseil In every canton was a tribunal to judge the peasants' affairs. Ancients and judges were elected by peasants; noblemen were not submitted to these tribunals, but it has happened that some of them preferred having their difficulties with peasants settled by municipal judges rather than by the usual tribunals. This jurisdiction, established merely for peasants, had great importance, owing chiefly to the privilege of deciding not only according to general law, but also according to local customs. Opportunities were not wanting for the good sense of the peasants to show itself in these municipal tribunals and councils, and the success of the institution was clear to everyone.



(1844-1861) CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY, Embracing the period covered in this volume, Daniel Edwin Wheeler

Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page.

Separate chronologies or the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with references showing where the several events are fully treated.

1844 - "INVENTION OF THE TELEGRAPH."

1845 - Florida and Texas admitted to the United States; beginning of President Folk's Administration.

- Sir John Franklin sails on his last search for the Northwest Passage.

- England and France war on the Argentine Confederation.

1846 - War between the United States and Mexico; General Taylor captures Monterey; California and New Mexico occupied by United States troops. See "THE ACQUISITION OF CALIFORNIA."

- Treaty with England arranges the Oregon boundary.

- Elias Howe patents the sewing-machine.

- "THE DISCOVERY OF NEPTUNE."

- Great Famine begins in Ireland. Corn-Law agitation at its height in England, "REPEAL OF THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS."

- Unsuccessful uprising of the Poles. Cracow annexed to Austria. Election of Pope Pius IX; his reforms. See "THE REFORMS OF Pius IX."

1847 - General Taylor conquers Northern Mexico; Battle of Buena Vista. General Scott captures Vera Cruz, marches on the city of Mexico, wins repeated battles, and enters the capital in triumph, September 14th. See "THE MEXICAN WAR."

- "FAMINE IN IRELAND."

- Tumult occasioned in Italy by the papal reforms; civil war of the Sonderbund in Switzerland; France finally subjugates Morocco. See "THE FALL OF ABD-EL-KADER."

1848 - Peace signed between Mexico and the United States; cession of large territory by Mexico.

- "DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA."

- The Mormons settle in Utah. See "MIGRATIONS OF THE MORMONS."

- Italian uprisings in Milan and Sicily; Sardinia grants a constitution to its subjects. See "THE REVOLUTION OF FEBRUARY IN FRANCE." Gathering of a workingmen's convention in Paris.

- Outbreak of revolution in Vienna (March 13th) and in Berlin (March 18th). See "REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS IN GERMANY."

- Meeting of the German Parliament at Frankfort.

- Venice declares itself a republic. Sardinia begins war for the "liberation of Italy"; Battle of Custozza. Bloody outbreak of communists in Paris. Unsuccessful revolts in Poland and Bohemia.

- "THE REVOLT OF HUNGARY."

- Storming of Vienna by government troops. Flight of Pius IX from Rome. Louis Napoleon elected President of France.

- The English crowd back the Boers in Southern Africa; the Boers migrate and form the Transvaal Republic.

1849 - Zachary Taylor inaugurated as President of the United States.

- Rome declared a republic. The Sardinian troops defeated by the Austrians at Novara, and the Sardinian King resigns his throne to his son, Victor Emmanuel II. Austria again dominant in Italy. Rome stormed by French troops. See "RISE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC."

- Venice surrenders to the Austrians after nearly a year of siege. Hungary declared a republic; her forces crushed by the

- Russians in aid of Austria.

- Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein at war. A German confederation established.

- "LIVINGSTONE'S AFRICAN DISCOVERIES."

- The Punjab annexed to British India.

1850 - Death of President Taylor.

- Congress passes the Clay compromise measures admitting California as a free State, but compelling the return of fugitive slaves by the North.

- Tai-ping rebellion begins in China.

1851 - First great world's fair in the Crystal Palace, London.

- "DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN AUSTRALIA."

- "THE COUP D'ETAT OF LOUIS NAPOLEON." Napoleon dismisses the Assembly, and is elected President of France for ten years.

1852 - Napoleon III proclaimed Emperor of France.

1853 - Franklin Pierce inaugurated as President of the United States.

- The Gadsden Purchase made from Mexico, including Southern Arizona and New Mexico. Surveys begin for a transcontinental railroad.

- Dr. Kane sets out on his arctic explorations.

- Russia quarrels with Turkey, claims a protectorate over all Christians in Turkish dominions; war begun, a Turkish fleet destroyed at Sinope. England and France interfere.

- Great successes of the Tai-pings in China.

1854 - Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill intensifies the slavery agitation in the United States; formation of the Republican party. See "THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY."

- France and England declare war against Russia; bombardment of

Bomarsund; the allies land in the Crimea; battles of the Alma, of Balaklava, of Inkerman, siege of Sebastopol.

- "THE OPENING OF JAPAN."

1855 - "THE CAPTURE OF SEBASTOPOL."

- Russian successes against the Turks in Asia.

- Overthrow of Santa Ana, Dictator of Mexico.

- Opening of a railway across the Isthmus of Panama. 1856 - Tumult and bloodshed in Kansas.

- Walker, the filibuster, seizes temporary control of Nicaragua.

- End of the Crimean War; Russia withdraws from the Danubian Provinces.

- Second war between England and China; Persians attack Afghanistan.

1857 - James Buchanan inaugurated as President of the United States.

The decision in the Dred Scott case extends slavery into the Territories.

- Mormon Revolt in Utah.

- "THE INDIAN MUTINY." Nana Sahib heads the insurgents; recapture of Delhi and Cawnpore; relief of Lucknow.

- England ends the Persian War. France joins England against China.

- The first Atlantic cable laid and broken.

1858 - Jews admitted to share in the government of England.

- End of the Indian Mutiny; the East Indian Company transfers its authority to the Crown.

1859 - John Brown's Raid.

- Charles Darwin announces the doctrine of evolution. See "DARWIN PUBLISHES His ORIGIN OF SPECIES."

- Russia captures Shamyl, and subdues the entire region of the Caucasus.

- Cavour, the chief statesman of Sardinia, arranges an alliance with France and begins a war with Austria to establish "United Italy."

- "BATTLES OF MAGENTA AND SOLFERINO."

- Lombardy added to the Italian Kingdom; Venice remains Austrian.

1860 - Garibaldi and his "Thousand" attack the Neapolitans in

Sicily; they capture Naples. Victor Emmanuel seizes the States of the Church. See "THE KINGDOM OF ITALY ESTABLISHED."

1860 - French and English troops seize Peking and dictate peace terms.

- Election of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, as President of the United States. South Carolina secedes from the Union.

1861 - "EMANCIPATION OF RUSSIAN SERFS."

THE END