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VIII.

1824.

CHAP. smaller streams, forming by their intersection so many isles, some covered with streets, and forming the most populous quarters; others adorned by beautiful villas and public gardens, the recreation of the citizens during their brief but brilliant summer. But these canals open so many entrances for the floods of the Neva or waves of the Baltic to penetrate into every part of the city. None of it is elevated in its foundations more than a few feet above the ordinary level of the water, and the spectator shudders to think that the rise of the flood, even in a small degree, may threaten the entire city with destruction.1

1 Custine,
i. 268, 269;

Schnitzler,

i. 83, 84,

85.

95.

dation of

Nov. 19, 1824.

This was what in effect happened at this time. On Great inun- several former occasions the river had been much swollen : St Peters once, immediately before the birth of the present emperor, burg. it was ten feet above its ordinary level. But this was as nothing compared to the terrible inundation which now presaged his death. All the 19th of November the wind blew from the south-west with terrific violence, and brought the Baltic waves in such a prodigious mass to the mouth of the Neva that its waters were made to regorge, and soon the quays were overflowed, and the lower parts of the city began to be submerged. This at first, however, excited very little attention, as such floods were not uncommon in the end of autumn; but the alarm soon spread, and terror was depicted in every visage, when it rapidly ascended and spread over the whole town. By half-past ten the water in the Perspective Newski was ten feet deep; in the highest parts of the city it was five. The Neva had risen four fathoms above its ordinary level, and, worse still, it was continuing to rise. The whole inhabitants crowded to the upper stories of the houses. Despair now seized on every heart; the reality of the danger came home to every mind; the awful scenes of the Deluge were realised in the very centre of modern civilisation. At Cronstadt a ship of the line was lifted up from a dry dock, and floated over the adjacent houses into the great square. At eight in the morning the cannon of alarm began to be discharged. The terrible warning, repeated every minute, so unusual

VIII.

1824.

amidst the ordinary stillness of the capital, proved the CHAP. terror which was felt by government, and augmented the general consternation. Ships torn up from their anchors; boats filled with trembling fugitives; stacks of corn borne on the surface of the waves from a great distance; cattle buffeting with the torrent, intermingled with corpses of persons drowned, or at their last gasp, imploring aid; and immense quantities of furniture, and movables of every description, were floated on to the most intricate and secluded parts of the city. The waters continued to rise till four in the afternoon, and every one imagined that all who could not save themselves in boats would be drowned. The rush was dreadful, accordingly, into every vessel that could be seized on, and numbers perished in striving to get on board. At five in the evening the wind fell, and the water sunk as rapidly as it had risen, and by the next morning the Neva had returned to its former channel. The total loss occasioned by the wind and the inundation Schnitzwas estimated at 100,000,000 rubles (£4,000,000); five 87; Ann. hundred persons perished in the waves, and twice that number, sick or infirm, were drowned in their houses. Gazette de Such had been the violence of the wind and flood, that burg, Nov. 20, 21, when the waters subsided they were found to have floated 1824. from their place cannons weighing two tons and a half.1

ler, i. 86,

Hist. vii.

386, 387;

St Peters

96.

charity of

At the sight of this terrible calamity, which for a time seemed to bid defiance to the utmost human efforts, the Noble Czar in despair stretched forth his hands to Heaven, and the emperor implored that its anger might fall upon his own head, and and nobles. spare his people. He did not, however, neglect all human means of mitigating the calamity. Throwing himself into a bark, he visited in person the quarters most threatened, distributed the troops in the way most likely to be serviceable, and exposed himself to death repeatedly in order to save his people. All would have been unavailing, however, and the city totally destroyed, if the wind had not mercifully abated, and the waters of the Neva found their usual vent into the Baltic. Munificent subscriptions followed the calamity; the emperor headed the list with

VIII.

1824.

CHAP. fifty thousand pounds. The most solid houses were impregnated with salt, and in a manner ruined; and a severe frost which set in immediately after, before the water had left the houses, augmented the general suffering by filling them with large blocks of ice. Even the most solid granite was exfoliated, and crumbled away before spring, from the effects of the frost on the humid structures. The people regarded this calamity as a judgment of Heaven for not 1 Schnitzler, having assisted their Christian brethren during their recent Ann. Hist. and frightful persecutions from the Turks-the emperor as a punishment for sins of which he was more immediately concerned in his domestic relations.1

i. 89, 91;

vii. 386,

388.

97.

Internal measures of 1824,

of Russian

Aug. 27.

The year 1824 was marked by a ukase ordering a levy of two in five hundred males over the whole empire-a measure which brought 120,000 men to the imperial and settle standards. As this measure was adopted during the conboundaries test in Greece, and when all thought was turned towards America. the liberation of its inhabitants from the Ottoman yoke, it was obeyed with alacrity, and even enthusiasm. The persons drawn took their departure as for a holy war, amidst the shouts of their relations and neighbours; and from them, in great part, were formed the redoubtable bands which in a few years carried the Russian eagles to Varna, Erivan, and Adrianople. A dangerous revolt in the same year broke out in the province of Novgorod, owing to the peasants having been misled into the belief that the emperor had given them their freedom, and that it was withheld by their lords, which was only crushed by a great display of military force and considerable bloodshed. It was the more alarming, from its being ascertained that the conspiracy had its roots in the military colonies recently established in the southern provinces. The financial measures adopted in 1820 and 1822, for withdrawing a large part of the assignats from circulation, were continued with vigour and success--a circumstance which, of course, made a progressive rise in the value of money, and fall in that of produce, and added

VIII.

1824.

much to the general distress felt among the class of pro- CHAP. ducers. Already the ruble was worth 50 per cent more than it had been a few years before. A treaty was signed on the 27th April between Russia and the United States, which settled the respective limits of their vast possessions in North America: the line of demarcation was fixed at 54° north latitude; all to the north was Russian, all to the south American; and the reciprocal right was secured Hist. Int. i. to the inhabitants of both countries, of fishing on each 92; Treaty, April 17, other's coasts, navigating the Pacific, and 'disembarking 1824; Ann. on places not occupied, but for the purpose only of trade 389, 644. with the inhabitants, or supplies for themselves.1

1Schnitzler,

Hist. vii.

press of

parentage,

and charac

1793.

When, in 1793, the Empress Catherine deemed it 98. time to select a spouse for her grandson, Alexander, The Emshe cast her eyes on the family of the Grand-duke of Russia: Baden, who at that time had three daughters, gifted her birth, with all the virtue and graces, and much of the beauty marriage, of their sex. They all made splendid alliances. The ter. eldest became Queen of Sweden; the youngest, Queen of Bavaria; the second, Empress of Russia. Married on 9th October 1793 to the young Alexander, then only Oct. 9, sixteen years of age, when she was fifteen, she took, according to the Russian custom, the name of Elizabeth Alexejiona instead of her own, which was LouiseMarie-Auguste, under which she had been baptised. The pair, though too young for the serious duties of their station, charmed every eye by the beauty of their figures, and the affability of their manners. But the union, however ushered in by splendid prognostications, proved unfortunate it shared the fate of nearly all in every rank which are formed by parental authority, before the disposition has declared itself, the constitution strengthened, or the tastes formed. The young empress was gifted with all the virtues and many of the graces of her sex. Her countenance, though not regular, was lightened by a sweet expression; her hair, which she wore in locks over her shoulders, beautiful: her figure

VOL. II.

0

CHAP. VIII. 1824.

was elegant, and her motions so graceful that she seemed to realise the visions of the poet, which made the goddess reveal herself by her step. In disposition she was in the highest degree amiable and exemplary, self-denying, generous, and affectionate. But with all these charms and virtues she wanted the one thing needful for a man of a thoughtful and superior turn of mind: she was not a companion. She had little conversation, few ideas, and none of that elasticity of mind which is necessary for the charm of conversational intercourse. Hence even du Congrès the earliest years of their marriage were productive of 1.283; Cha- no lasting ties; they seldom met, save in public; and the Congrès de death of their two only children, both of whom were daughters, deprived them of the enduring bond of parental love.1

1Schnitzler,

i. 96, 97; Lagarde,

Souvenirs

de Vérone,

teabriand,

Vérone, i.

207.

99.

the Czar.

No one need be told that conjugal fidelity is of all others the virtue most difficult to practise on the throne, and that it is never so much so as to sovereigns of the most energetic and powerful minds.

thing, they are not less so in another

Ardent in one

of few, from Julius Cæsar to Henry IV., can it be said that they are, like Charles XII.,

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Alexander was not a sensualist, and he had not the Amours of passion for meritricious variety, which so often in high rank has disgraced the most illustrious characters. But his mind was ardent, his heart tender, and he had the highest enjoyment in the confidential épanchements which, rarely felt by any save with those of the opposite sex, can never be so but with them-by sovereigns whose elevation keeps all of their own at a distance. Before many years of his married life had passed, Alexander had yielded to these dispositions; and the knowledge of his infidelities completed the estrangement of the illustrious couple. Out of these infidelities arose," says

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* "Et vera incessu patuit Dea."-VIRGIL.

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