Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

It is impossible not to feel that Russia is about to occupy a new position in Europe, which, if no event occurs to obstruct her in her course, must greatly increase her influence and her power for good or for evil. She is to be the protector of Austria, not against foreign enemies, but against one of the nations of which that empire is composed. She is to re-establish and maintain, by military force, a government which has been unable to maintain itself against its internal enemies – a government which a nation of fourteen millions of people has rejected, fought, and beaten. A great power cannot interfere in the internal affairs of another state, to the extent of maintaining there by force of arms a government incapable of maintaining itself against the nation, without getting involved in the relations of the government it upholds, to an amount of which it is impossible to fix or to predict the limits, but of which the tendency has ever been, and must ever be, progressively to increase the power of the protecting over the protected government; and the single fact that the interests of Austria were in this manner inseparably bound up, for a time of indefinite duration, with those of Russia, would give to the great northern power a preponderance, both in Europe and in Asia, such as no hereditary monarchy has possessed in modern times.

With 150,000 or 180,000 men in Hungary, Wallachia, and Moldavia, the Russian armies would encircle the frontiers of Turkey, from the shores of the Adriatic to the frontiers of Persia. With a government in Austria dependent upon the support of those armies, the power that has hitherto been the chief security of Turkey against the military superiority of Russia, would be at the command of the court of St Petersburg. The Sclavonic tribes, which form the chief part of the Turkish population in Europe, seeing themselves enveloped by the armies of Russia, guiding and controlling the power of Austria, in addition to her own, must be thoroughly demoralised, even if Russia should abstain from all attempts to debauch them. They will feel that they have no course left but to court her, to look to her whose force is visibly developed before them, is in contact with them, surrounds them, and appears to be irresistible everywhere. They will find in the unity of race an inducement to adhere to the rising destinies of the great Sclavonic empire – their instincts will teach them to abandon, in time, the fabric that is about to fall.

Forced to involve herself in all the relations of the government she upholds, Russia will come into immediate contact with the minor German monarchies, whose governments may also stand in need of protection. There is no one kingdom in Germany that could then pretend to counterbalance her power, or to resist her policy. The same interests would carry her influence, and it may be her arms, into Italy. It will no longer be necessary to negotiate the passage of the Dardanelles by her fleet – the road will be open to her troops, and the passage of her fleet will no longer be opposed.

We have not attributed to the Emperor Nicholas, or to Russia, any ambitious ulterior views in affording assistance to Austria – we have supposed him to be influenced only by the most generous feelings towards a brother emperor. But, to suppose that he has no desire to extend his own or his country's influence and power – that he will not take advantage of favourable circumstances to extend them – would be absurd; and were he to set out with the firmest resolution to avoid such a result, the course on which he is now said to have entered, if he conducts it to a successful issue, must, in spite of himself, lead to that result. It is no answer, therefore, to say that the Emperor of Russia does not desire to extend his territory; that he has abstained with singular moderation from interfering in the affairs of Europe, while every capital was in tumult, and every country divided against itself. Giving him credit for every quality that can adorn the loftiest throne, the consequences of his present policy, if it be successfully carried out, are equally inevitable.

We must remember, on the other hand, that after all, the Emperor of Russia is but a man – but one man, in an empire containing above sixty millions of people. He is the greatest, no doubt, the most powerful, perhaps the ablest and wisest – the presiding and the guiding mind, with authority apparently absolute – but they little know the details of an autocratic government, who suppose that he is uninfluenced by the will of the nation, or has power to follow out his own intentions. He must see with other men's eyes, he must hear with other men's ears, he must speak with the tongues of other men. How much of what is said and done in his name, in his vast empire, and in every foreign country, is it possible that he can ever know? How much of his general policy must, from time to time, be directed by events prepared or consummated in furtherance of their own views, by his servants, and without his knowledge! How often must he be guided by the form in which facts are placed before him, and by the views of those who furnish them! It is important, therefore, to inquire what are the feelings and opinions, not of the Emperor only, but of his servants and guides – of the men who pioneer for him, and prepare the roads on which per force he must travel.

Shortly after the French revolution of February 1848, a Russian diplomatic memoir was handed about with an air of mystery in certain circles in Paris. M. de Bourgoing, formerly French minister at St Petersburg, and author of a recent work, entitled, Les guerres d'idiome et de nationalité, has published a commentary upon the Russian memoir, which he tells us was prepared by one of the ablest and best-informed employés in the Russian Chancellerie, after the events of February. He further informs us that it was presented to the Emperor of Russia, and, with the tacit consent of the Russian government, was sent to be printed in a German capital, (the impression being limited to twelve copies,) under the title of "Politique et moyens d'action de la Russie impartialement apprécié." The object of M. Bourgoing's commentary, as well as of his previous publication, appears to be to remove exaggerated apprehensions of the aggressive power and tendencies of Russia, and the fears of a general war in Europe, which her anticipated intervention in Austria, and the occupation in force of Wallachia and Moldavia by her troops, had excited in France. His fundamental position appears to be, that the wars of 1848 and 1849 are essentially wars of language and race; that France has therefore nothing to fear from them; and that Russia has neither a sufficient disposable force, nor the slightest desire to interfere, in a manner injurious to France, in the affairs of Western Europe. With this view he combats, with a gentle opposition, the reasoning of the Russian memoir, which he represents as "une déclaration où l'on est autorisé à voir une espèce de manifeste envoyé sans éclat par la Russie à ce qu'elle intitule la révolution." From the tendencies of M. Bourgoing's writings, which occasionally peep out somewhat thinly clothed, though they are generally well wrapped up, we should infer that the "ancien ministre de France en Russie" does not consider his connexion with the court of St Petersburg as finally terminated; and we do not doubt that he has good warrant for all he says of the history of this memoir.

But, whether or not we may be disposed to assign to it a character of so much authority as M. Bourgoing attributes to that document, we cannot but regard it as a curious illustration of the kind of memoirs that Russian diplomatists, "les plus habils et les plus instuits," present to the Emperor, and that the Russian government "tacitly consents" to have transmitted to a German capital to be printed "sur-le-champ."

The Russian memoir commences with the following general proposition, —

"Pour comprendre de quoi il s'agit dans la crise extrême où l'Europe vient d'entrer, voici ce qu'il faudrait se dire: Depuis longtemps il n'y a plus en Europe que deux puissances réelles, la Révolution et la Russie. Ces deux puissances sont maintenant en présence, et demain peut-être elles seront aux prises. Entre l'une et l'autre, il n'y a ni traité ni transaction possibles. La vie de l'une est la mort de l'autre. De l'issue de la lutte engagée entre elles, la plus grande des luttes dont le monde ait été témoin, dépend pour des siècles tout l'avenir politique et religieux de l'humanité.

La Russie est avant tout l'empire chrétien; le peuple russe est chrétien, non-seulement par l'orthodoxie de ses croyances, mais par quelque chose de plus intime encore que la croyance: il l'est par cette faculté du renoncement et du sacrifice, qui sont comme le fond de sa nature morale.

Il y a heureusement sur le trône de Russie un souverain en qui la pensée russe s'est incarnée, et dans l'état actuel du monde la pensée russe est la seule qui soit placée assez en dehors du milieu révolutionnaire pour pouvoir apprécier sainement les faits qui s'y produisent.

Tout ce qui reste à la Bohême de vraie vie nationale est dans ces croyances hussites, dans cette protestation toujours vivante de sa nationalité slave opprimée contre l'usurpation de l'église romaine, aussi bien que contre la domination de la nation allemande. C'est là le lien qui l'unit à tout son passé de lutte et de gloire, et c'est là aussi le chemin qui pourra rattacher un jour le Tchèque de la Bohême à ses frères d'Orient.

On ne saurait assez insister sur ce point, car ce sont précisément ces réminiscences sympathiques de l'église d'Orient, ce sont ces retours vers la vieille foi dont le hussitisme dans son temps n'a été qu'une expression imparfaite et défigurée, qui établissent une différence profonde entre la Pologne et la Bohême, entre la Bohême ne subissant que malgré elle le joug de la communauté occidentale, et cette Pologne factieusement catholique, seide fanatique de l'Occident, et toujours traître vis-à-vis des siens."

 

We add a few more extracts: —

"Que fera la Bohême, avec les peuples qui l'entourent, Moraves, Slovaques, c'est-à-dire, sept ou huit millions d'hommes de même langue et de même race qu'elle?.. En general c'est une chose digne de remarque, que cette faveur persévérante que la Russie, le nom Russe, sa gloire, son avenir n'ont cessé de rencontrer parmi les hommes nationaux de Prague." – (Page 15.)

At page 18 we find the following observations upon Hungary: —

"Cette enemie c'est la Hongrie, j'entend la Hongrie Magyar. De tous les ennemis de la Russie c'est peut-être celui qui la hait de la haine la plus furieuse. Le peuple Magyar, en qui la ferveur révolutionnaire vient de s'associer, par la plus étrange des combinaisons, à la brutalité d'une horde asiatique, et dont on pourrait dire avec tout autant de justice que des Turcs, qu'il ne fait que camper en Europe, vit entouré de peuples Sclaves, qui lui sont tons également odieux. Ennemi personel de cette race, il se retrouve, après des siècles d'agitation et de turbulence, toujours encore emprisonné au milieu d'elle. Tous ces peuple qui l'entourent, Serbes, Croates, Slovaques, Transylvaniens, et jusqu' au petits Russiens des Karpathes, sont les anneaux d'une chaine qu'il croyait à tort jamais briser. Et maintenant il sent, audessus de lui, une main qui pourra quand il lui plaira rejoindre ces anneaux, et resserrer la chaine à volonté. De là sa haine instinctive contre la Russie.

D'autre part, sur le foi de journalisme étranger, les meneurs actuel du parti se sont sérieusement persuadé que le peuples Magyar avait une grande mission à remplir dans l'Europe orthodoxe, que c'était à lui en un mot à tenir en échec les destinés de la Russie."

If these are the mutual sentiments of Russians and Majjars, we may form some idea of the kind of warfare that is about to be waged in Hungary.

It is curious to observe the confidence with which the Russian diplomatist assumes that the influence of his master over all the Sclavonic tribes of Hungary is completely established, and points to the Emperor of Russia, not to their sovereign, as the hand that is to clench the chain by which the Majjars are enclosed. When it is remembered that this memoir was circulated in Paris before any differences had arisen between Austria and Hungary – that the first movement hostile to the Majjars was made by Sclavonic tribes of the Greek Church, headed by the Patriarch – that Austria long hesitated before she resolved to break faith and peace with Hungary – that her own resources were inadequate to the enterprise she undertook – that her own interests appeared to forbid her undertaking it – one is forced to ponder and reflect on the means and influences by which she may have been led into so fatal an error.

We cannot refrain from giving one other extract from the Russian memoir, which is too pungent to be omitted: —

"Quelle ne serait pas l'horrible confusion où tomberaient les pays d'Occident aux prises avec la révolution, si le légitime souverain, si l'empereur orthodoxe d'Orient, tardait longtemps à y apparaître!

L'Occident s'en va; tout croule, tout s'abîme dans une conflagration générale, l'Europe de Charlemagne aussi bien que l'Europe des traités de 1815, la papaute de Rome et toutes les royautés de l'Occident, le catholicisme et le protestantisme, la foi depuis longtemps perdue et la raison réduite à l'absurde, l'ordre désormais impossible, la liberté desormais impossible, et sur toutes ces ruines amoncelées par elle, la civilisation se suicidant de ses propres mains!

Et lorsque, audessus de cet immense naufrage, nous voyons, comme une arche sainte, surnager cet empire plus immense encore, qui donc pourrait douter de sa mission? Et est-ce à nous, ses enfans, à nous montrer sceptiques et pusillanimes?"

Such then, it appears, are the sentiments of some of the most enlightened of the Russian diplomatists – such are the opinions and views presented to the Emperor by the men on whose reports and statements his foreign policy must of necessity be chiefly founded – such, above all, are the feelings and aspirations, the enmities and the means of action, which the nation fosters and on which it relies.

It has been said that, in attacking the Hungarians, Russia is but fighting her own battle against the Poles, who are said to compose a large proportion of the Hungarian army; and those who desire to throw discredit on the Hungarian movement have nicknamed it a Polo-Majjar revolution. They must have been ignorant or regardless of the facts. Whatever the Austrian journals or proclamations may assert, Russia must know full well that in the Hungarian army there are not more than five thousand Poles, and only two Polish general officers, Dembinsk and Bem.

That the Poles may think they see in a war between Russia and Hungary a favourable opportunity to revolt, is not improbable, and that, if the Poles should rise, they will find sympathy and support in the nation that Russia is attacking, must be inevitable.

In the mean time, the Hungarians are preparing for the unequal contest. They have a well-equipped army of 160,000 men in the field, and a levy of 200,000 more has been ordered. Such is the national enthusiasm, that this whole number may probably be raised. This feeling is not confined to the Majjars, but extends to the Sclavonic population also.

The following extracts from a letter received on the 14th May, by one of his correspondents, from an intelligent English merchant who has just returned from a visit to the Sclavonic districts of northern Hungary, on his commercial affairs, gives the latest authentic intelligence we have seen of the state of things in the Slovack counties, the only part of the country which the writer visited: —

"I am just returned from Hungary. I was exceedingly surprised to see so much enthusiasm. My candid opinion is that, even if the Russians join against them, the Hungarians will be victorious. They are certainly short of arms; if they could procure one or two hundred thousand muskets, the affair would be closed immediately. In the mountains the cultivation of the land proceeds as usual, although the whole neighbourhood was full of contending troops. As I came out of Hungary, the advanced guards were only two German miles apart. However, I found no inconvenience; the roads were quite safe; and if it were not for the guerillas, whom one expects every minute to issue from the woods, the thing would go on, for a stranger, comfortably enough. The new paper-money (Kossuth's) is taken everywhere, not only for the common necessaries of life, but also for large business transactions – the idea being that there is about equal security for Hungarian as for the Austrian bank-notes."

It must be confessed, that in circumstances calculated to try her prudence, Russia has acted with singular composure and wisdom. She abstained from interfering in the affairs of western Europe while the tide of republican frenzy was in flood. She contented herself with carefully and diligently increasing and organising her army – then, probably, in a more inefficient state than at any time during the last thirty years – and gradually concentrated her disposable troops on her western frontier, where magazines have been prepared for it. While continental Europe was convulsed by revolutions, she made no aggression – the occupation of Wallachia and Moldavia was her only move in advance. She avoided giving umbrage to the people, to the sovereigns, or to the successive governments that were formed, and established a right to demand confidence in her moderation and forbearance. She came to the aid of Austria at first with a small force in a distant province, just sufficient to show that the Austrian government had her support, and not enough to excite the jealousy of Germany. Now that her military preparations are completed, she comes to protect Austria, not until she is called, and at a time when the most formidable dangers she has to encounter are such as the friends of order, triumphant in the west, and we trust dominant everywhere, would be the last to evoke. Yet it is impossible to deny that the successful execution of her present project would be a great revolution – that it would more seriously derange the relative positions of nations, and the balance of power, than any or all of those revolutions which the two last eventful years have witnessed.

The adjustment of the differences between Austria and Hungary would avert this danger – would remove all hazard of throwing the power of Hungary into the scale with the enemies of monarchy – would re-establish the Austrian empire upon the only basis on which, as it appears to us, it is possible to reconstruct it as an independent empire; and would be "a heavy blow and great discouragement" to the anarchists, whose element is strife, whose native atmosphere is the whirlwind of evil passions. But if this may not be – if Austria uses the power of Russia to enforce injustice, and, with that view, is prepared to sacrifice her own independence – we should refuse to identify the cause of monarchy and order – the cause of constitutional liberty, morality, and public faith – with the dishonest conduct of Austria, or the national antipathies and dangerous aspirations of Russia.

FEUDALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

It is not exactly the best of all times to point out things that may be amiss in, nor to find fault with either portions or the whole of institutions which have received the approving sanction of time and experience; for the bad passions of the lower and less moral orders of men, in most European nations, have of late been so completely unchained, and the débacle of the revolutionary torrent has been so suddenly overwhelming, that no extra impetus is required to be put upon it. Rather should we build up and repair the ancient dams and dikes of society, anomalous and inconvenient though they may be, than attempt to remove them, even for the sake of what may appear better ones, while the waters of innovation are still out, and when the spirit of man is brooding over them for the elaboration of some new chaos, some new incarnation of evil. Nevertheless there are a few noxious, and many harmless, anomalies and contradictions in the feudal or aristocratic constitution of society, induced by the lapse of time, the wear and tear of ages, which, though they may not admit of removal now, may demand it on the first convenient opportunity; and then on several of the sterner and more fundamental principles of feudalism in ancient days, upon which the basis of modern society really exists, but which have been lost sight of, and yet which are forced into prominent notice, and ought to be put in action once more, by the morbid tendencies of popular violence. We shall be acquitted of all desire of change for change's sake; no one will accuse us of being habitual violators of ancient things, customs, and laws: it is rather because we love them, and venerate them, and wish to revive them on account of their intrinsic excellence, that we would call our reader's attention to a few things going on around us. He need not be afraid of our troubling him with a dry treatise on the theory of government – we are no constitution-mongers: he need not expect to be bored with pages of statistical details, nor to be satiated with the nostrums of political economy. We propose making one or two very commonplace observations, professing to take no other guide than a small modicum of common sense, and to have no other object than our readers' delectation and the good of our country.

(1.) How was it that nobles came to be nobles and commons came to be commons? how was it that the great territorial properties of this kingdom were originally set agoing and maintained? and how was it that you and I, and millions of others, came to be put in the apparently interminable predicament of having to toil and struggle with the world, or to be sentenced to something like labour, more or less hard, for life; you and I, we say, you and I, and our fathers and our children? Tell us that, gentle reader, whether you be good old Tory, or moderate Conservative, or slippery Peelite, or coldblooded Whig, or profligate Radical, or demoniac Chartist? Force, my good friend – FORCE, PHYSICAL FORCE – a good strong hand, and stout arm, and a heavy sword, and brave heart, and a firm determination – and no shilly-shally hesitation as to legality or illegality, no maudlin sympathy nor compunction – these were the things that did it; these carried the day; these were the moving powers of old; they raised the lever, and they settled down society into that bed in which it has been arranging itself ever since. And right good things they were, too, in their proper time and place; and so they ever will be: they are some of the mainsprings of the world; they may become concealed in their action, they may be forgotten, they may even fall into temporary inaction, but they come out again into full play ever and anon, and, when the wild storm of human passion drives over the world in a reckless tornado, they go along with the whirlwind, and they hover all around it, and they follow it, and they reassert their permanent sway over mankind. The Norman William's barons, the noble peers of Charlemagne, the princes and marshals of Napoleon, all found their estates at the points of their swords; and, while they kept their swords bright, their estates remained intact; but, when military prowess declined, legal astuteness and commercial craft crept in, and the broad lands decreased, because the sharp point and edge were blunted. The remote origin, the first title of every crowned head and noble family of Europe, is to be traced to the sword, or has been derived from it. We speak not of parvenus, we allude to the great families of the various realms of the ancient world; all old and real nobility is of the sword, and of the sword only. The French used to express this well, and understood the true footing on which nobility ought to stand; they always talked of la noblesse de l'epée, as contradistinguished from la noblesse de la robe: the former referred to the feudal families and their descendants, the latter to those who had become ennobled for services at the bar. As for nobility granted for any commercial or pecuniary causes, they never dreamed of such a thing; or, if a spurious ennobling took place, it was deemed a glaring and an odious violation of the fundamental laws of aristocratic society.

Now the ideas of the world have become so changed, or rather so corrupted, on this point, that the prime notion of nobility no longer is attached to military tenure or service; but, on the contrary, we find titles given, nay, bought and sold, for any the most miscellaneous services, and the meridian of nobleness, of elevation, of power, altogether eliminated from the qualifications that the nobleman ought to possess. Back-stair services, lobby services, electioneering services, counting-house services, any services as well as military services, have been deemed sufficient causes for procuring a patent of nobility to those who could allege them. Titles and causes of distinction they might have been, but surely not of nobility, not of hereditary honour and distinction, the tenure and essence of which should ever be attached to territorial power gained and held by the sword. And this lowering of the tone of nobility, this communising of what ought to be ever held up as a thing apart, as a thing originating with the first beginnings of a nation, and remaining fixed till the nation becomes itself extinct, has done no good to society: it has not raised the tone of the commons, it has only lowered that of the nobles: it has emasculated the one without adding any strength to the other. In all nations, as long as the nobility have remained essentially a military order, holding their own by their own strength, the fortunes of that nation have advanced; but whenever the nobles have become degenerate, and therefore the commons licentious – the former holding only by prescriptive respect, and the latter subjected to them only in theory, not in practice – the fate of that nation has been pronounced, and its decline has already begun. The destruction and absorption of the good fiefs of France, in the time of Louis XI., laid the way for the razing of the châteaux, and the decapitation of their owners by the Cardinal de Richelieu, in the time of Louis XIII.; and this gradual degenerating process of undermining the true strength of the nobles, led to the corruption of the nation, and to its reduction to the primary starting-point of society in the reign of Louis XVI. So, too, in England, the sapping of the strength of the nobles, in the reign of Henry VIII., added to the corrupt proceedings of the times of James I., caused the Great Rebellion in the reign of his successor. The nation has never recovered from this fatal revolution of the seventeenth century. Like France, England has shone awhile, and sustained itself both in arts and arms; but the dissolving process has begun long ago with us as it did with them. One order of the state – the order of nobles – has been constantly decreasing in power and influence; and the descent towards the level of anti-social democracy seems now as easy and as broad as that to the shades of Avernus. The nobles of Russia, on the contrary, still retain their feudal power – they all draw and use the sword: their nation is on the ascendant. In Spain and Italy the nobles have descended so far as almost to have lost their claim to the title of men; while in most parts of Germany the result of recent movements has shown that the power of the nobles had long been a mere shadow; and they have evaporated in empty smoke, while the nations are fast sinking to the level of a common and savage democracy.

We would propose a remedy for this state of things. We consider the profession of arms, when joined to the holding of territorial power, as the highest form of civilisation and political excellence to which man has yet been able to rise. It constitutes that union of all the highest and best feelings of human nature with the supreme possession of power and influence over material objects – over land and the produce of land – which seems to be the ultimate and the worthy object of the good and great in all ages. And, therefore, the nearer a nobleman can revert to the principles upon which his order is, or ought to be, based, the greater security, in the working out both for himself and the nation, that the strength and dignity of the whole people shall be maintained inviolate. Of all men in the state, the noble is he who is most endangered by any approximation to effeminacy and inactivity: he is the representative, the beau ideal, of the virility of the whole nation: he is the active principle of its force – the leader, the chief agent, in building up the fortunes of his country. Let him but once degenerate from the elevating task, and he renounces the main privileges of his order, he does wrong both to his fellow-countrymen and to himself – he diminishes his own force, and he weakens their national powers. Whenever, therefore, any such departure, more or less wide, from the ancient principles of his order has taken place, let the nobleman hasten to return to them, if he would stop the course of ruin before it become too late. We would hold it to be the duty of every nobleman in this country – and we include herein his immediate descendants – to enter the profession of arms, and to adopt no other save that of afterwards serving the state in the senate: we hold it to be his duty to avoid all approximation to the engagements of commerce – we would even say of the law, of any of the learned professions. These pursuits are intended for other orders of men, not less essential to the state than the noble, but still different orders. The noble is the leader, the type, the example of public military and political strength. Let him keep to that lofty function, and discharge it and no other.