The Czar, in fact, now inaugurated a forward Asiatic policy, and confided it to an able governor, Muravieff (1847).  The new departure was marked by the issue of an imperial ukase (1851) ordering the Russian settlers beyond Lake Baikal to conform to the Cossack system; that is, to become liable to military duties in return for the holding of land in the more exposed positions.  Three years later Muravieff ordered 6000 Cossacks to migrate from these trans-Baikal settlements to the land newly acquired from China on the borders of Manchuria[484].  In the same year the Russians established a station at the mouth of the Amur, and in 1853 gained control over part of the Island of Saghalien.

[Footnote 484:  Popowski, The Rival Powers in Central Asia, p. 13.]

For the present, then, everything seemed to favour Russia’s forward policy.  The tribes on the Amur were passive; an attack of an Anglo-French squadron on Petropaulovsk, a port in Kamchatka, failed (Aug. 1854); and the Russians hoped to be able to harry British commerce from this and other naval bases in the Pacific.  Finally, the rupture with England and France, and the beginning of the Taeping rebellion in China, induced the Court of Pekin to agree to Russia’s demands for the Amur boundary, and for a subsequent arrangement respecting the ownership of the districts between the mouth of that river and the bay on which now stands the port of Vladivostok (May 15, 1858).  The latter concession left the door open for Muravieff to push on Russia’s claims to this important wedge of territory.  His action was characteristic.  He settled Cossacks along the River Ussuri, a southern tributary of the Amur, and, by pressing ceaselessly on the celestials (then distracted by a war with England and France), he finally brought them to agree to the cession of the district around the new settlement, which was soon to receive the name of Vladivostok ("Lord of the East").  He also acquired for the Czar the Manchurian coast down to the bounds of Korea (November 2, 1860).  Russia thus threw her arms around the great province which had provided China with her dynasty and her warrior caste, and was still one of the wealthiest and most cherished lands of that Empire.  Having secured these points of vantage in Northern China, the Muscovites could await with confidence further developments in the decay of that once formidable organism.

Such, in brief, is the story of Russian expansion from the Urals to the Sea of Japan.  Probably no conquest of such magnitude was ever made with so little expenditure of blood and money.  In one sense this is its justification, that is, if we view the course of events, not by the limelight of abstract right, but by the ordinary daylight of expediency.  Conquests which strain the resources of the victors and leave the vanquished longing for revenge, carry their own condemnation.  On the other hand, the triumph of Russia over the ill-organised tribes of Siberia and northern Manchuria reminds one of the easy and unalterable methods of Nature, which compels a lower type of life to yield up its puny force for the benefit of a higher.  It resembles the victory of man over quadrupeds, of order over disorder, of well-regulated strength over weakness and stupidity.