Even the half-
armed were always too much for the might of Russia, or, rather, of the
Tsardom. It was victorious only against the practically disarmed, as, in
regard to its ideal of territorial expansion, a glance at a map will
prove sufficiently. As an ally, Russia has been always unprofitable,
taking her share in the defeats rather than in the victories of her
friends, but always pushing her own claims with the arrogance of an
arbiter of military success. She has been unable to help to any purpose
a single principle to hold its own, not even the principle of authority
and legitimism which Nicholas the First had declared so haughtily to rest
under his special protection; just as Nicholas the Second has tried to
make the maintenance of peace on earth his own exclusive affair. And the
first Nicholas was a good Russian; he held the belief in the sacredness
of his realm with such an intensity of faith that he could not survive
the first shock of doubt. Rightly envisaged, the Crimean war was the end
of what remained of absolutism and legitimism in Europe. It threw the
way open for the liberation of Italy. The war in Manchuria makes an end
of absolutism in Russia, whoever has got to perish from the shock behind
a rampart of dead ukases, manifestoes, and rescripts.
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