Thus was Nicholas in the latter years of his reign.  He was thwarted by foreign Powers, and deceived by his own instruments of despotic rule.  He found himself only a man, and like other men.  He became suspicious, bitter, and cruel.  His pride was wounded by defeat and opposition from least expected quarters.  He found his burdens intolerable to bear.  His cares interfered with what were once his pleasures.  The dreadful load of public affairs, which he could not shake off, weighed down his soul with anxiety and sorrow.  He realized, more than most monarchs, the truth of one of Shakespeare’s incomparable utterances,—­

     “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

The mistakes and disappointments of the Crimean war finally broke his heart; and he, armed with more power than any one man in the world, died with the consciousness of a great defeat.

It would be interesting to show how seldom the great rulers of this world have had an unchecked career to the close of their lives.  Most of them have had to ruminate on unexpected falls,—­like Napoleon, Louis Philippe, Metternich, Gladstone, Bismarck,—­or on unattained objects of ambition, like the great statesmen who have aspired to be presidents of the United States.  Nicholas thought that the capital of the “sick man” was, like ripe fruit, ready to fall into his hands.  After one hundred years of war, Russia discovered that this prize was no nearer her grasp.  Nicholas, at the head of a million of disciplined troops, was defeated; while his antagonist, the “sick man,” could scarcely muster a fifth part of the number, and yet survived to plague his thwarted will.

The obstacles to the conquest of Constantinople by Russia are, after all, very great.  There are only three ways by which a Russian general can gain this coveted object of desire.  The one which seems the easiest is to advance by sea from Sebastopol, through the Black Sea, to the Bosphorus, with a powerful fleet.  But Turkey has or had a fleet of equal size, while her allies, England and France, can sweep with ease from the Black Sea any fleet which Russia can possibly collect.

The ordinary course of Russian troops has been to cross the Pruth, which separates Russia from Moldavia, and advance through the Danubian provinces to the Balkans, dividing Bulgaria from Turkey in Europe.  Once the Russian armies succeeded, amid innumerable difficulties, in conquering all the fortresses in the way, like Silistria, Varna, and Shumla; in penetrating the mountain passes of the Balkans, and making their way to Adrianople.  But they were so demoralized, or weakened and broken, by disasters and privations, that they could get no farther than Adrianople with safety, and their retreat was a necessity.  And had the Balkan passes been properly defended, as they easily could have been, even a Napoleon could not have penetrated them with two hundred thousand men, or any army which the Russians could possibly have brought there.