At the time of the Emperor’s death Constantine, who was Viceroy of Poland, was residing at Cracow.  Nicholas, unaware of the circumstances, immediately took the oath of allegiance to his brother and also administered it to the troops at St. Petersburg.  It required some time for Constantine’s letter to arrive, stating his immovable determination to abide by the decision which would be found in his letter to the late Emperor.  There followed a contest of generosity—­Nicholas urging and protesting, and his brother refusing the elevation.  Three weeks passed—­weeks of disastrous uncertainty—­with no acknowledged head to the Empire.

Such an opportunity was not to be neglected by the revolutionists in the South nor their co-workers in the North.  Pestel, the leader, had long been organizing his recruits, and St. Petersburg and Moscow were the centers of secret political societies.  The time for action had unexpectedly come.  There must be a swift overturning:  the entire imperial family must be destroyed, and the Senate and Holy Synod must be compelled to adopt the Constitution which had been prepared.

The hour appointed for the beginning of this direful programme was the day when the senators and the troops should assemble to take the oath of allegiance to Nicholas.  The soldiers, who knew nothing of the plot, were incited to refuse to take the oath on the ground that Constantine’s resignation was false, and that he was a prisoner and in chains.  Constantine was their friend and going to increase their pay.  One Moscow regiment openly shouted:  “Long life to Constantine!” and when a few conspirators cried “Long live the Constitution!” the soldiers asked if that was Constantine’s wife.  So the ostensible cause of the revolt, which soon became general, was a fidelity to their rightful Emperor, who was being illegally deposed.  Under this mask worked Pestel and his co-conspirators, composed in large measure of men of high intelligence and standing, including even government officials and members of the aristocracy.

A few days were sufficient to overcome this abortive attempt at revolution in Russia.  Pestel, when he heard his death sentence, said, “My greatest error is that I tried to gather the harvest before sowing the seed”; and Ruileef, “I knew this enterprise would be my destruction—­but could no longer endure the sight of my country’s anguish under despotism.”  When we think of the magnitude of the offense, the monstrous crime which was contemplated; and when we remember that Nicholas was by nature the very incarnation of unrestrained authority, the punishment seems comparatively light.  There was no vindictiveness, no wholesale slaughter.  Five leaders were deliberately and ignominiously hanged, and hundreds of their misguided followers and sympathizers went into perpetual exile in Siberia—­there to expiate the folly of supposing that a handful of inexperienced enthusiasts and doctrinaires could in