attempt a feeble retaliation, react upon the unfortunate Kalmucks.  At this crisis, it is probable that envy and wounded pride, upon witnessing the splendid victories of Oubacha and Momotbacha over the 15 Turks and Bashkirs, contributed strength to the Russian irritation.  And it must have been through the intrigues of those nobles about her person who chiefly smarted under these feelings that the Czarina could ever have lent herself to the unwise and ungrateful policy pursued 20 at this critical period toward the Kalmuck Khan.  That Czarina was no longer Elizabeth Petrowna; it was Catharine II.—­a princess who did not often err so injuriously (injuriously for herself as much as for others) in the measures of her government.  She had soon ample reason for 25 repenting of her false policy.  Meantime, how much it must have co-operated with the other motives previously acting upon Oubacha in sustaining his determination to revolt, and how powerfully it must have assisted the efforts of all the Tartar chieftains in preparing the minds of their 30 people to feel the necessity of this difficult enterprise, by arming their pride and their suspicions against the Russian Government, through the keenness of their sympathy with the wrongs of their insulted prince, may be readily imagined.  It is a fact, and it has been confessed by candid Russians themselves when treating of this great dismemberment, that the conduct of the Russian Cabinet throughout the period of suspense, and during the crisis of hesitation in the Kalmuck Council, was exactly such 5 as was most desirable for the purposes of the conspirators; it was such, in fact, as to set the seal to all their machinations, by supplying distinct evidences and official vouchers for what could otherwise have been at the most matters of doubtful suspicion and indirect presumption. 10

Nevertheless, in the face of all these arguments, and even allowing their weight so far as not at all to deny the injustice or the impolicy of the imperial ministers, it is contended by many persons who have reviewed the affair with a command of all the documents bearing on the case, 15 more especially the letters or minutes of council subsequently discovered in the handwriting of Zebek-Dorchi, and the important evidence of the Russian captive, Weseloff, who was carried off by the Kalmucks in their flight, that beyond all doubt Oubacha was powerless for any 20 purpose of impeding or even of delaying the revolt.  He himself, indeed, was under religious obligations of the most terrific solemnity never to flinch from the enterprise or even to slacken in his zeal; for Zebek-Dorchi, distrusting the firmness of his resolution under any unusual 25 pressure of alarm or difficulty, had, in the very earliest stage of the conspiracy, availed himself of the Khan’s well-known superstition, to engage him, by means of previous concert with the priests