The Age of Revolution

THE AGE OF REVOLUTION (1789-
1865)
AN ESSAY IN UNIVERSAL HISTORY

From an Orthodox Christian Point of View
Volume III
1
Vladimir Moss
© Copyright, Vladimir Moss, 2019. All rights reserved.
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The French monarchy must decline into despotism or become a democracy - two opposite
kinds of revolution, but both calamitous.
The Princes of the Blood to King Louis XVI.
The government of the revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

Maximilien Robespierre (1794).
Lo, thy dread Empire, CHAOS! is restor'd;

Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And Universal Darkness buries All.
Alexander Pope, Dunciad.
Thou art a man, God is no more:

Thy own humanity learn to adore.
William Blake.
I am the new Prometheus, chained to the rock to be gnawed by vultures. Yes, I

have stolen the fire of Heaven, and made a gift of it to France. The fire has
returned to its source, and I am here.
Napoleon Bonaparte on St. Helena (1821).
These philosophers consider men in their experiments no more than they do

mice in an air pump.
Edmund Burke, To a Noble Lord (1796).
Out of the tomb of the murdered Monarchy in France, has arisen a vast,
tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which
ever yet overpowered the imagination and subdued the fortitude of man.
Edmund Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace (1797).
In a democratic state, one must be continually on guard against the desire for popularity.
It leads to aping the behaviour of the worst. And soon people come to think that it is of no
use – indeed, it is dangerous – to show too plain a superiority over the multitude which
one wants to win over.
Madame Germaine de Stael, On Literature and Society (1800).
God is love, but God is not equality.

St. Nikolai Velimirović.
He who serves the revolution ploughs the sea…

Simon Bolivar.
The cry “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death!” was much in vogue during
the Revolution. Liberty ended by covering France with prisons, Equality – by
multiplying titles and decorations, and Fraternity – by dividing us. Death
alone prevailed.
Louis de Bonald (1817).
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We have no government capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by
morality and religion… Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.
President John Adams.
Nationality exists in the minds of men… its only conceivable habitat… Outside men’s
minds there can be no nationality, because nationality is a manner of looking at oneself
not as an entity an sich. Common sense is able to detect it, and the only human
discipline that can describe and analyse it is psychology… This awareness, this sense of
nationality, this national sentiment, is more than a characteristic of a nation. It is
nationhood itself.
G.J. Renier.
Man seeks ecstasy and transcendence, and if he cannot find them in church, he will look
for them elsewhere.
Adam Zamoyski (1999).
Without religion, political science can create only despotism or anarchy.

Giuseppe Mazzini.
After Orthodoxy, faithfulness to the Tsar is our first Russian duty and the chief
foundation of true Christian piety.
St. Seraphim of Sarov.
Freedom is the new religion, the religion of our time. If Christ is not the god of this new
religion, he is nevertheless a high priest of it, and his name gleams beatifically into the
hearts of the apostles. But the French are the chosen people of the new religion, their
language records the first gospels and dogmas. Paris is the New Jerusalem, the Rhine is
the Jordan that separates the consecrated land of freedom from the land of the Philistines.
Heinrich Heine.
The King reigns, but does not rule.

Adolphe Thiers (1830).
Up to the moment before this palace of folly and illusion vanishes into the gulf of
universal ruin, human beings will boast about the progress of civilization and the
prospects of society. Nevertheless, reason will decay before men’s eyes. The simplest
truths will appear strange and remarkable and will scarcely be tolerated.
Abbé de Lamennais.
Property is theft… Anarchy is order.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1840).
Come to me, Lucifer, Satan, whoever you may be! Devil whom the faith of my fathers
contrasted with God and the Church. I will act as spokesman for you and will demand
nothing of you.
Proudhon, Idée générale de la revolution.
I may say without any vainglorious boast that we stand at the head of moral, social and
political civilization. Our task is to lead the way and direct the march of other nations.
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Lord Palmerston (1848).
The human I, wishing to depend only on itself, not recognizing and not accepting any
other law besides its own will - in a word, the human I, taking the place of God, - does
not, of course, constitute something new among men. But such has it become when
raised to the status of a political and social right, and when it strives, by virtue of this
right, to rule society. This is the new phenomenon which acquired the name of the French
revolution in 1789.
F.I. Tiutchev, Russia and the Revolution (1848).
Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that
one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gathering substance and
force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that
all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion.
Cardinal Newman, Biglietto Speech.
Some people by the word “freedom” understand the ability to do whatever one wants ...
The more people have allowed themselves to be enslaved to sins, passions and defilements
the more often than others they appear as zealots of external freedom, wanting to broaden
the laws as much as possible. But such a man uses external freedom only the more to
burden himself with inner slavery. True freedom is the active ability of a man who is not
enslaved to sin, who is not pricked by a condemning conscience, to choose the better in
the light of God's truth, and to bring it into actuality with the help of the gracious power
of God. This is the freedom of which neither heaven nor earth are restrictors.
St. Philaret of Moscow, Sermon on the Birthday of Emperor Nicholas I, 1851.
The root elements of our Russian life have been characterized long ago, and
they are so powerfully and completely expressed by the familiar words:
Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality. That is what we must preserve! When
these principles become weaker or fail, the Russian people will cease to be
Russian. It will then lose its sacred three-coloured flag.
St. Theophan the Recluse, Letters, VII, p. 289.
I do evil, knowing that's what I do... I say Long live Revolution! As I would say Long
live Destruction! Long live Expiation! Long live Punishment! Long live Death!
Charles Baudelaire (1866).
European politics in the nineteenth century fed on the French Revolution. No idea, no
dream, no fear, no conflict appeared which had not been worked through in that fateful
decade: democracy and socialism, reaction, dictatorship, nationalism, imperialism,
pacifism.
Golo Mann, The History of Germany since 1789 (1996).
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INTRODUCTION 9
I. THE WEST: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND NAPOLEON (1789-1815) 11
1. THE REVOLUTION AND FREEMASONRY 12
2. ILLUMINISM 25
3. THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 35
4. BURKE ON THE REVOLUTION 43
5. THE JACOBIN TERROR 53
6. THE REVOLUTION AND RELIGION 61
7. FROM THE DIRECTORY TO NAPOLEON 70
8. NAPOLEON AND THE ENGLISH 74
9. NAPOLEON AND RELIGION 79
10. FROM SALAMANCA TO WATERLOO 84
11. NAPOLEON THE MAN-GOD 90
II. THE EAST: RUSSIA AND NAPOLEON (1789-1815) 99
12. RUSSIA AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 100
13. TSAR PAUL I 103
14. THE ANNEXATION OF GEORGIA 110
15. THE OLD RITUALISTS AND THE YEDINOVERIE 117
16. THE MURDER OF TSAR PAUL 122
17. THE GOLDEN AGE OF MASONRY 128
18. TILSIT: SUMMIT OF THE EMPERORS 133
19. ALEXANDER, NAPOLEON AND SPERANSKY 142
20. NAPOLEON'S INVASION OF RUSSIA 150
21. THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 164
III. THE WEST: NATIONALISM, ROMANTICISM, HISTORICISM (1815-1830) 177
22. THE ORIGINS OF NATIONALISM 178
23. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (1) FRANCE 185
24. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (2) ITALY 196
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25. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (3) ISRAEL 203
26. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (4) LATIN AMERICA 217
27. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (5) GERMANY 221
28. NATIONALISM AND THE NATONS: (6) BRITAIN 234
29. GOETHE AND BEETHOVEN 242
30. THE REVOLUTION AND ROMANTICISM 254
31. REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION 263
32. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORICISM 273
IV. THE EAST: THE DEFEAT OF MASONRY (1815-1830) 293
33. THE CHILDREN OF 1812 294
34. THE POLISH AND JEWISH QUESTIONS 299
35. THE REACTION AGAINST MASONRY 308
36. THE RUSSIAN BIBLE PROJECT 316
37. THE GREEK REVOLUTION 320
38. THE FREE STATE OF GREECE 333
39. THE DECEMBRIST REBELLION 339
40. ST. SERAPHIM OF SAROV 346
V. THE WEST: LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM (1830-1865) 353
41. THE ROTHSCHILD CENTURY 354
43. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 360
44. THE AMERICAN DREAM 368
45. THE JULY DAYS 381
46. LIBERALISM, MONARCHISM AND CHRISTIANITY 384
47. THE GEOPOLITICS OF SLAVERY AND ABOLITION 394
48. VICTORIAN RELIGION AND MORALITY 405
49. MILL ON LIBERTY 421
50. UTOPIAN SOCIALISM 430
51. PATERNALISM VERSUS UTILITARIANISM 442
52. THE HUNGRY FORTIES AND THE IRISH FAMINE 460
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53. THE 1848 REVOLUTION: (1) FRANCE 467
54. THE 1848 REVOLUTION: (2) ITALY 475
55. THE 1848 REVOLUTION: (3) GERMANY 482
56. THE 1848 REVOLUTION: (4) AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 486
57. THE TRIUMPH OF REACTION 490
58. THE RISE OF ARTISTIC REALISM 498
59. THE BRITISH IN INDIA 503
60. THE INDIAN MUTINY 510
61. THE BRITISH IN CHINA 513
62. THE TAIPING REBELLION 518
63. WAGNER ON REPUBLICANISM AND MONARCHISM 522
64. EMANCIPATED JEWRY: (1) BENJAMIN DISRAELI 529
65. EMANCIPATED JEWRY: (2) HEINRICH HEINE 536
66. EMANCIPATED JEWRY: (3) KARL MARX 541
67. UNEMANCIPATED JEWRY: MOSES HESS AND THE PROTO-ZIONISTS 554
68. THE WORLD AS WILL: SCHOPENHAUER 566
69. DARWIN’S THEORY OF EVOLUTION 572
70. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 583
VI. THE EAST: THE GENDARME OF EUROPE (1830-1865) 601
71. TSAR NICHOLAS I 602
72. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (7) POLAND 610
73. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (8) UKRAINE 616
74. THE RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE ANGLICANS 623
75. THE JEWS UNDER NICHOLAS I 631
76. RUSSIAN HEGELIANISM 634
77. THE PEASANTS’ MIR AND PRAVDA 641
78. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (1) CHAADAEV VS. PUSHKIN 647
79. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (2) BELINSKY VS. GOGOL 656
80. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (3) HERZEN VS. KHOMIAKOV 666
81. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (4) KIREYEVSKY 673

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82. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (5) DOSTOYEVSKY 682
83. RUSSIAN MONARCHIST THINKERS 688
84. THE OLD RITUALISTS ACQUIRE A HIERARCHY 709
85. THE CRIMEAN WAR 713
86. RUSSIA IN THE BLACK SEA REGION 727
87. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (9) GREECE 732
88. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (10) SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO 743
89. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (11) ROMANIA 752
90. THE EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS 760
CONCLUSION. OPTINA DESERT AND THE FUTURE OF RUSSIA 771
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INTRODUCTION
This book represents a continuation of my earlier books, An Essay in Universal

History, Part 1: The Age of Faith (to 1453) and Part 2: The Age of Reason (1453-1789).
It follows the theme of the struggle between the Orthodox Autocracy and its
enemies into the age of revolution - that is, the age beginning with the storming
of the Bastille in 1789 and continuing with the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 to
the two great acts of emancipation: of the Russian serfs and the American slaves.
Of course, the revolution neither began nor ended in this period. But it may be
called the revolutionary age par excellence insofar as it presented all the main
ideas of the revolution in their classical French expression, and provided the
major themes and symbolism of the later, and still greater Russian revolution.
As in the previous volume in this series, this book is divided into alternating
sections on the East and the West. In the first and third sections, we see the first
French revolution, its continuation and internationalization under the despotism
of Napoleon I. In the second and fourth sections we see Autocratic Russia, "the
Gendarme of Europe", both administering the decisive blow to Napoleon I, and
forming the Holy Alliance of monarchist states that kept the revolution in check;
and we examine the impact of the Greek and Serbian revolutions. The fifth
section outlines the story of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and the
development of political and economic liberalism in England and America, and
of nationalism throughout Europe. The sixth section describes Tsar Nicholas I's
policy of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationhood", and continues with the
Crimean War, the debate between the Slavophiles and the Westerners and the
progress of the national revolutions in Eastern Europe.
After the Gregorian revolution of the eleventh century, the

Humanist-Protestant revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
the English revolution of the seventeenth century and the
Enlightenment Programme of the eighteenth century, the French
revolution of 1789 marks the fifth major turning-point in Western life
and thought. It was the decisive event that swept away the restraints
imposed on public and private life by Christianity and feudalism. In
some countries - England, for example, and still more America - some
of the less radical ideas of the French revolution had already been put
into effect, at least partially, well before 1789; while in others - Russia
and China, for example - they did not achieve dominance until the
twentieth century.
Eventually, however, the French revolutionary ideals of "Liberty,

Equality and Fraternity" and "the Rights of Man", combined with an
essentially secularist and utilitarian attitude to religion, became the
dominant ideology, not only of Europe and North America, but of the
whole world. For, as Eric Hobsbawm writes, "alone of all the
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contemporary revolutions, the French was ecumenical. Its armies set
out to revolutionize the world; its ideas actually did so.” 1
The French Revolution not only swept away the old religion of
Christianity from the forefront of European consciousness: it
introduced three new, closely related secular religions to fill the void
thus created: liberalism, nationalism and socialism. All three religions
preached liberty as the ultimate value – individual liberty (liberalism),
national liberty (nationalism) and proletarian liberty (socialism). Of
course, these three religions offer contradict each other; but they all
come from the same root in the Enlightenment and all serve the same
antichristian end. In the period covered in this book, liberalism and
socialism were still in their early stages of development, although
liberalism had already produced its first classic in Mills’ On Liberty,
and socialism had already produced its first classic in Marx and Engels’
The Communist Manifesto. However, nationalism was already in full
swing, with its own religious fervor, catechisms and martyrs for the
cause.
The period 1789-1815 can be compared, for its profound impact on the world,
only with the period 1914-45. Both periods are dominated by a national
revolution with enormous international ramifications - the French in the earlier
period, the Russian in the later - and by international war on a previously
unprecedented scale. In both periods the main victors were an Anglo-Saxon
nation (Britain in the earlier period, America in the later), on the one hand, and
Russia (Tsarist Russia in the earlier period, Soviet Russia in the later), on the
other. At the end of each period Russia became the dominant political power on
the continent of Europe, while the Anglo-Saxon nation became the dominant
power outside Europe, going on to dominate the world economically through
its exploitation of important scientific and technological discoveries...
As in my previous volumes, I acknowledge a great debt to many authors,

both Orthodox and Western. I should like to mention particularly three holy
ideologists of the Orthodox Autocracy: St. Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, St.
Ignaty (Brianchaninov), Bishop of the Black Sea, and St. Theophan the Recluse,
Bishop of Tambov. Among western writers, I have especially learned from the
writings of Adam Zamoyski, Sir Steven Runciman, Robert Tombs, Norman
Davies, Sir Richard Evans, Sir Geoffrey Hosking, Sir Isaiah Berlin, Niall
Ferguson, Francis Fukuyama, Misha Glenny and Yuval Noah Harari.
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have
mercy on us!
1
Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848, London: Abacus, 1992, p. 75.
11
I. THE WEST: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND
NAPOLEON (1789-1815)
12
1. THE REVOLUTION AND FREEMASONRY
Western civilization since its fall from Orthodoxy in the eleventh

century has been a tale of constant contrasts, of constant veering from
one extreme to the other in the religious, political and cultural spheres.
Like a spinning top, which as it slows down creates ever-widening
circles or parabolas, threatening a complete crash and irreversible
immobility and death, so western civilization has changed its
ideological and political and aesthetic fashions with ever-increasing
and more alarming rapidity. We can look on these transitions in a
positive sense: if the one extreme were not replaced by the other,
complete collapse would indeed be inevitable. But there is also a
negative aspect to this dynamic process: that each transition, while
necessary, took the civilization further away from its blessed origins in
the Orthodox Christian tradition. We can see this most clearly in the
transition from Catholicism to atheism, from despotism to democracy,
and from classicism to romanticism, that took place in “progressive”
European society during the nineteenth century as a result of that
archetypically giant step for “progress” that was the French revolution.
“European politics in the nineteenth century,” writes Golo Mann,

“fed on the French Revolution. No idea, no dream, no fear, no conflict
appeared which had not been worked through in that fateful decade:
democracy and socialism, reaction, dictatorship, nationalism,
imperialism, pacifism.” 2
The French revolution, like its English forerunner, went through

several phases; each on its own was profoundly influential outside the
borders of France. The first was the constitutional monarchy (1789-92).
The second was the Jacobin terror (1792-94). The third (after the
interregnum of the Directory) was the Napoleonic dictatorship and
empire (1799-1815). Just as the English revolution had its proto-
communist elements, so did the French (Babeuf's failed coup of 1796).
Just as the upshot of the English revolution was to transfer power from
the king to the landowning aristocracy, so the upshot of the French
revolution was to transfer power from the king and the aristocrats to
the bourgeoisie – a trend which came to dominate the whole of Western
Europe in the course of the nineteenth century.
It is striking, too, how similar was the sequence of events in the

French and English revolutions. Just as the English revolution started
with the king's compelling need to seek money for his war against the
Scots, so the French revolution started with a severe financial crisis
caused by the king's intervention in the American War of
Independence. And just as the English parliament's refusal to accede to
the king's request led successively to civil war, the overthrowing of the
2
Mann, op. cit, p. 35.
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State Church, the execution of the king, a radicalization of the country
to a state of near-communist revolution, foreign wars (in Scotland and
Ireland), and finally a military dictatorship under Cromwell that
restored order while preserving many of the fruits of the revolution, so
the refusal, first of the Nobles' Assembly and then of the Estates
General to accede to the French king's request led to a constitutional
monarchy, the overthrowing of the State Church, the execution of the
king, increased radicalization and the Great Terror, wars with both
internal and external enemies, and finally a military dictatorship under
Napoleon that restored order while consolidating many of the results
of the revolution.
But the French Revolution went much further than the English in
the number of its victims 3 , in the profundity of its effects, not only on
France but also on almost every country in Europe, and in its extreme
radicalism, even anti-theism. It truly marked – as the revolutionaries
intended it to be – a new (unprecedentedly evil) beginning in the
history of mankind. As Francis Fukuyama writes, “Early Chinese kings
exercised tyrannical power of a sort that few monarchs in either feudal
or early modern Europe attempted. They engaged in wholesale land
reforms, arbitrarily executed the administrators serving them, deported
entire populations, and engaged in made purges of aristocratic rivals…
This kind of unconstrained violence became much more prevalent only
after the French Revolution, when modernization swept away all of the
ancient inherited legal constraints of the old European order.” 4
From a sociological point of view, France in 1789 had not changed in

essence since the twelfth century; it was an agrarian, hierarchical
society consisting of four classes or Estates: those who prayed (the
clergy), those who fought (the nobility), those who talked (the
bourgeoisie, the lawyers and the intellectuals) and those who worked
(the rest, mainly peasants). The ideas of the Enlightenment and
Masonry had infected a narrow stratum of the more educated classes.
But the mass of the population lived and thought as they had lived and
thought for centuries.
It is customary to explain the revolution as the product of corrupt

political, social and economic conditions, and in particular of the vast
gap in wealth and power between the ancien régime and the people.
3
However, “The Jacobins,” writes Andre Marr, “killed nothing like as many people as did later
revolutionaries. It has been estimated that forty-five thousand people died in ‘the Terror’, by
public execution or to mob violence; regional fighting beyond Paris saw roadside executions,
hanginss and mass drownings in hulk. The death toll runs into hundreds of thousand if civil war
and famine are included right across France, but this was not the liquidation of an entire class, at
least physically. At the time, France had around 250,000 male aristocrats: the carnage barely
starts to compare to the millions killed by the Bolsheviks and the Chinese Communists” (A
History of the World, London: Pan, 2012, pp. 366-367).
4
Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order, London: Profile, 2012, pp. 331-332.
14
Discontent with social and economic injustices undoubtedly played a
large part in fuelling this horrific atheist and anti-theist outburst. 5 But
it was not the king who was primarily to blame for these injustices;
even the revolutionary Marat accepted that he was an essentially a
good man, assisted by good ministers. 6 In the years 1745-89 he and his
ministers made numerous attempts at economic reform and a more
equitable redistribution of the tax burden. But they were always foiled
by opposition at court and in the Parlements from the aristocrats, who
paid no tax. 7 Thus when five of his minister Turgot's Six Edicts were
rejected by the Paris Parlement in 1776, Louis XVI observed: "I see well
that there is no-one here but M. Turgot and myself who love the
people." 8
This prompted Alexis de Tocqueville's famous words: "The social

order destroyed by a revolution is almost always better than that which
preceded it; and experience shows that the most dangerous moment for
a bad government is generally that in which it sets about reform. Only
great genius can save a ruler who takes on the task of improving the lot
of his subjects after long oppression.” 9
The aristocrats claimed that their opposition was an expression of

Montesquieu's doctrine (acquired during his two-year sojourn in
England) of the necessity of a separation of powers and checks on
executive power. In fact, however, they were trying to replace a royal
"despotism" with their own aristocratic one. For, As Eric Hobsbawm
writes, "the Revolution began as an aristocratic attempt to recapture
the state." 10 And here, as so often in history, the "despotism" of one
man standing above the political fray turned out to be less harmful to
the majority of the population than the despotism of an oligarchical
clique pursuing only one class or factional interest or purely personal
interests. Indeed, the problem with the French monarchy was not its
excessive strength, but its weakness, its inability to impose its will on
the privileged class.
5
The Russian writer D.I. Fonvisin toured France in 1777-78, and in a letter to P.I. Panin
unfavourably compared the situation of the French, both morally and materially, with that of the
contemporary Russians. See N.G. Fyodorovsky, V Poiskakh Svoego Puti: Rossia mezhdu Evropoj i
Aziej (In Search of Her Path: Russia between Europe and Asia), Moscow, 1997, pp. 21-22.
6
Marr, op. cit., p. 368.
7
It is a striking fact that tax questions – in other words, Mammon – played such an important
part in all three of the early modern revolutions. Thus Roger Bootle writes: “The English Civil
War, which saw Charles I lose his head and England briefly become a republic, began initially as
a result of Parliament’s objections to Charles raising taxes to fund his wars. The French
Revolution of 1789 was similarly partly inspired by a rejection of punitive taxation. The
American Revolution of 1776 was also spurred by the issue of taxation, with the revolutionaries’
cry being ‘no taxation without representation’” (The Trouble with Europe, London: Nicholas
Brealey Publishing, 2013, p. 40).
8
Louis XVI, quoted in Stephen J. Lee, Aspects of European History, 1494-1789, London & New
York: Routledge, 1994, p. 279.
9
De Tocqueville, l'Ancien Régime et la Révolution (The Ancient Regime and the Revolution), 1856,
book 3, chapter 4.
10
15
*
However, there was much more to the Revolution than a conflict

between king and nobility, letting in the Third Estate that destroyed
them both…
In seeking the antecedents of the revolution, writes Richard Pipes,

“a brilliant if little-known French historian, Augustin Cochin… was led
to [investigate] the social and cultural circles formed in France in the
1760s and 1770s to promote ‘advanced’ ideas. These circles, which he
called sociétés de pensée, were made up of literary associations, Masonic
lodges, academies, as well as various ‘patriotic’ and cultural clubs.
According to Cochin, the sociétés de pensée insinuated themselves into a
society in which the traditional estates were in the process of
disintegration. To join them required severing connections with one’s
social group and dissolving one’s class (estate) identity in a community
bound exclusively by a commitment to common ideas. Jacobinism was
a natural product of this phenomenon: in France, unlike England, the
movement for change emanated not from parliamentary institutions
but from literary and philosophical clubs.
“These circles, in which the historian of Russia recognizes many of

the features of the Russian intelligentsia of a century later, had as their
main mission the forging of a consensus: they achieved cohesion not
through shared interests but through shared ideas, ruthlessly imposed
on their members and accompanied by vicious attacks on all who
thought differently: ‘Prior to the bloody terror of ’93, there existed,
between 1765 and 1780, a dry terror in the republic of letters, of which
the Encyclopedia was the Committee of Public Safety and d’Alembert
was Robespierre. It mowed down reputations as the other did heads: its
guillotine was defamation…’
“For intellectuals of this kind, the criterion of truth was not life:
they created their own reality, or rather, sur-reality, subject to
verification only with reference to opinions of which they approved.
Contradictory evidence was ignored: anyone inclined to heed such
evidence was ruthlessly cast out.
“This kind of thinking led to a progressive estrangement from life.

Cochin’s description of the atmosphere in the French sociétés de pensée
of the late eighteenth century perfectly fits that prevailing in
intelligentsia circles in Russia a century later: ‘Whereas in the real
world the arbiter of all thought is proof and its issue is the effect, in
this world the arbiter is the opinion of others, and the aim their
approbation… All thought, all intellectual effort here exists only by
way of concurrence. It is opinion that makes for existence. That is real
which others see, that true which they say, that good of which they
approve. Thus the natural order is reversed: opinion here is the cause,
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and not, as in real life, the effect. Appearance takes the place of being,
speaking, doing… And the goal… of that passive work is destruction. It
consists, in sum, of eliminating, of reducing. Thought which submits to
this initially loses the concern for the real, and then, little by little, the
sense of the real. And it is precisely to this deprivation that it owes its
freedom. It does not gain in freedom, orderliness, clarity except to the
extent that it sheds its real content, its hold on that which exists.’…
“Nowhere is this penchant for creating one’s own reality more

apparent – and pernicious – than in the intelligentsia’s conception of
the ‘people’. Radicals insist on speaking for and on acting on behalf of
the ‘people’ (sometimes described as ‘the popular masses’) against the
allegedly self-seeking elite in control of the state and the nation’s
wealth. In their view, the establishment of a just and free society
requires the destruction of the status quo. But contact with the people
of flesh and blood quickly reveals that few if any of them want their
familiar world to be destroyed: what they desire is satisfaction of
specific grievances – that is, partial reform, with everything else
remaining in place. It has been observed that spontaneous rebellions
are conservative rather than revolutionary, in that those involved
usually clamor for the restitution of rights of which they feel they have
been unjustly deprived: they look backward. In order to promote its
ideal of comprehensive change, the intelligentsia must, therefore,
create an abstraction called ‘the people’ to whom it can attribute its
own wishes. According to Cochin, the essence of Jacobinism lay not in
terror but in the striving of the intellectual elite to establish dictatorial
power over the people in the name of the people. The justification for
procedure was found in Rousseau’s concept of ‘general will’ which
defined the will of the people as what enlightened ‘opinion’ declared it
to be: ‘For the destruction of the [French revolutionary] regime, the
philosophes and politicians, from Rousseau and Mably to Brissot and
Robespierre, the true people is an ideal being. The general will, the will
of the citizenry, transcends the actual will, such as it is, of the greatest
number, as in Christian life grace dominates and transcends nature.
Rousseau has said it: the general will is not the will of numbers and it
has reason against it; the liberty of the citizen is not the independence
of the individual, and suppresses it. In 1789, the true people did not
exist except potentially, in the consciousness or imagination of ‘free
people’, of ‘patriots’, as they used to be called… that is to say, a small
number of initiates, recruited in their youth, trained without respite,
shaped all their lives in societies of philosophes… in the discipline of
liberty.’ It is only by reducing people of flesh and blood to a mere idea
that one can ignore the will of the majority in the name of democracy
and institute a dictatorship in the name of freedom.
“This whole ideology and behaviour to which it gave rise – a

mélange of ideas formulated by Helvétius and Rousseau – was
historically new, the creation of the French Revolution. It legitimized
the most savage social experiments. Although for personal reasons
17
Robespierre despised Helvétius (he believed him to have persecuted
his idol, Rousseau), his entire thinking was deeply influenced by him.
For Robespierre, the mission of politics was the ‘reign of virtue’.
Society was divided into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ citizens, from which premise
he concluded that ‘all those who do not think as we do must be
eliminated from the city’.
“Tocqueville was perplexed by this whole phenomenon when late in

life he turned his attention to the history of the French Revolution. A
year before his death, he confided to a friend: ‘There is something
special about the sickness of the French Revolution which I sense
without being able to describe it or analyze its causes. It is a virus of a
new and unfamiliar kind. The world has known violent revolution: but
the boundless, violent, radical, perplexed, bold, almost insane but still
strong and successful personality of these revolutionaries appears to
me to have no parallel in the great social upheavals of the past. From
whence comes this new race? Who created it? Who made it so
successful? Who kept it alive? Because we still have the same men
confronting us, although the circumstances differ, and they have left a
progeny in the whole civilized world. My spirit flags from the effort to
gain a clear picture of this object and to find the means of describing it
fairly. Independently of everything that is comprehensible in the
French Revolution, in its spirit and in its deeds, there is something that
remains inexplicable. I sense where the unknown is to be found but no
matter how hard I try, I cannot lift the veil that conceals it. I feel it
through a strange body which prevents me from really touching or
seeing it…’” 11
The spirit of the Revolution was “inexplicable” to Tocqueville

precisely because it was not human, but a spirit from hell. For it was not
simply atheist, but anti-theist, against God. For the essential conflict
between the revolutionaries and the ancien regime was a conflict
between two ideas of the origin of authority: between the idea that it
comes from above - ultimately, from God, and the idea that it comes
from below, from what the Masons called "Nature", ultimately – Satan,
the original revolutionary.
“It is, in my view, impossible,” writes Sir Roger Scruton, “to

understand the French Revolution if one does not see it as primarily a
religious phenomenon. The inner compulsion was to dethrone the gods
of the monarchical order, and to erect a new community in its place –
but a community demanding sacrifice, devotion, and slaughter,
establishing a right to obedience through the spilling of blood. The
leading revolutionary St-Just could say, in 1794, that a republic ‘is
constituted by the total destruction of that which is opposed to it, so
abolishing at a stroke the century of political thinking that had come to
fruition in revolutionary France. Membership, as St-Just’s remark
11
Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 1899-1919, London: Collins Harvil, 1990, pp. 129-130, 131-132.
18
makes clear, means the establishment of a ‘we’, and the easiest way to
invent this ‘we’ is through a fight to the death with ‘them’. The French
Revolution was prodigal of opponents – some of them real, as in the
Vendée uprising, some of them imaginary, like the quasi-supernatural
émigrés, crystallizing now in this person or club or gathering, now in
that, and everywhere the object of the most violent suspicion and
enmity. There is no need to dwell on the parallels with subsequent
revolutionary movements and their demons: the émigrés were simply
the first in a long line of victims – kulaks, Jews, the bourgeoisie –
prepared as sacrificial offerings on behalf of a new form of social
membership. It is from a deficit of membership that the urge to
revolution arises, and when people are hungry for membership,
collective violence issues as a matter of course.
“The French Revolution sought to replace one religion with another:

hence its fanaticism and exterminatory zeal. But the new religion of the
nation was demonic, fraught with contradictions and self-hatred, with
no power to survive. It quickly gave rise to the Napoleonic project of
empire, through which violence was externalized and a rule of law re-
established at home. In place of the attempt to build a religious form of
membership with the nation as the Supreme Being, there came the
desire for a political form of membership, in which the nation was the
precondition of citizenship rather than the object of worship. France
emerged from Bonaparte’s defeat as a territorial jurisdiction based in
national identity, rather than in a religion or a crown. Though both
religion and monarchy had been restored under Bonaparte’s regime, in
altered and republicanized versions, it was the code napoleon and its
promise of equal citizenship that confirmed the new identity of France.
France gained what America had effortlessly bestowed on itself thirty
years earlier: a concept of citizenship within a sovereign state ruled by
a secular law.” 12
The satanic spirit of the revolution was not single, but trifold, like
those “three unclean spirits” of the Apocalypse, “like frogs coming out
of the mouth of the dragon” (Revelation 16.13).
These three spirits correspond to the three main phases of the

revolution and infuse the three main forms of revolutionary humanism:
liberalism, socialism (communism) and nationalism (fascism).
For “as it spread and evolved,” writes Yuval Noah Harari,

“humanism “fragmented into several conflicting sects. All humanist
sects believe that experience is the supreme source of authority and
meaning, yet they interpret human experience in different ways.
12
ScruTon, The Rest and the West, London: Continuum, 2002, pp. 44-45.
19
“Humanism split into three main branches. The orthodox branch
holds that each human being is a unique individual possessing a
distinctive inner voice and a never-to-be-repeated series of experiences.
Every human being is a singular ray of light that illuminates the world
from a different perspective, and that adds colour, depth and meaning
to the universe. Hence we ought to give as much freedom as possible to
every individual to experience the world, follow his or her inner voice
and express his or her inner truth. Whether in politics, economics or
art, individual free will should have far more weight than state
interests or religious doctrines. The more liberty individuals enjoy, the
more beautiful, rich and meaningful is the world. Due to this emphasis
on liberty, the orthodox branch of humanism is known as ‘liberal
humanism’ or simply as ‘liberalism’.
“It is liberal politics that believes that the voter knows best. Liberal
art holds that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Liberal economics
maintains that the customer is always right. Liberal ethics advises us
that if it feels good, we should go ahead and do it. Liberal education
teaches us to think for ourselves, because we will find all the answers
within.
“During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as humanism

gained increasing social credibility and political power, it sprouted two
very different offshoots: socialist humanism, encompassed a plethora
of socialist and communist movements, and evolutionary humanism,
whose most famous advocates were the Nazis. Both offshoots agreed
with liberalism that human experience is the ultimate source of
meaning and authority. Neither believed in any transcendental power
or divine law book. If, for example, you had asked Karl Marx what was
wrong with ten-year-olds working twelve-hour shifts in smoky
factories, he would have answered that it makes the kids feel bad. We
should avoid exploitation, oppression and inequality not because God
said so, but because they make people miserable.
“However, both socialists and evolutionary humanists pointed out

that the liberal understanding of the human experience is flawed.
Liberals think the human experience is an individual phenomenon. But
there are many individuals in the world, and they often feel different
things and have contradictory desires. If all authority and meaning
flows from individual experiences, how do you settle contradictions
between different such experiences?” 13
There are two possible ways out of this conundrum from the
humanist perspective. One is to subordinate the “rights” and “validity”
of the individual experience to that of the collective. That is the way of
socialist humanism.
13
Harari, Homo Deus, London: Vintage, 2017, pp. 289-290.
20
“That’s why socialists discourage self-exploration and advocate the
establishment of strong collective institutions – such as socialist parties
and trade unions – that aim to decipher the world for us. Whereas in
liberal politics the voter knows best, and in socialist economics the
party knows best, and in socialist economics the trade union is always
right. Authority and meaning still come from human experience – both
the party and the trade union are composed of people and work to
alleviate human misery – yet individuals must listen to the party and
the trade union rather than to their personal feelings…
“Evolutionary humanism has a different solution to the problem of

conflicting human experiences. Rooting itself in the firm [!] ground of
Darwinian evolutionary theory, it insists that conflict is something to
applaud rather than lament. Conflict is the raw material of natural
selection, which pushes evolution forward. Some humans are simply
superior to others, and when human experiences collide, the fittest
humans should steamroll everyone else. The same logic that drives
humankind to exterminate wild wolves and to ruthlessly exploit
domesticated sheep also mandates the oppression of inferior humans
by their superiors. It’s a good thing that Europeans conquer Africans
and that shrewd businessmen drive the dim-witted to bankruptcy. If
we follows this evolutionary logic, humankind will gradually become
stronger and fitter, eventually giving rise to superhumans. Evolution
didn’t stop with Homo Sapiens – there is still a long way to go.
However, if in the name of human rights or human equality we
emasculate the fittest humans, it will prevent the rise of the superman,
and may even cause the degeneration and extinction of Homo Sapiens.
“Who exactly are these superior humans who herald the coming of
the superman? They might be entire races, particular tribes or
exceptional individual geniuses. Whoever they may be, what makes
them superior is that they have better abilities, manifested in the
creation of new knowledge, more advanced technology, more
prosperous societies or more beautiful art. The experience of an
Einstein or a Beethoven is far more valuable than that of a drunken
good-for-nothing, and it is ludicrous to treat them as if they have equal
merit. Similarly, if a particular nation has consistently spearheaded
human progress, we should rightly consider it superior to other nations
that contributed little or nothing to the evolution of humankind…” 14
Is there any correspondence between the famous slogan of the French

revolution, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, and these three kinds of
humanist religion? Up to a point… Thus liberal humanism emphasizes
liberty, and socialist humanism – equality. It is more difficult, however,
to see how evolutionary humanism – or any kind of humanism, for that
matter – fulfills the ideal of fraternity.
14
Harari, op. cit., pp. 295-296.
21
There are quasi-frathernities, however. Thus there is a certain
national fraternity unity of all Germans, say. And there is a kind of
liberal fraternity in liberals’ supposed respect for every individual
human. And then there is the supposed fraternity of all workers:
“Workers of the world, unite!”
Nevertheless, it is striking how little place real fraternity, or love,

there is in all three forms of humanism. Thus nineteenth-century
English liberalism co-existed very well with total indifference to the
fate of factory workers in Manchester or peasants in Ireland or opium
addicts in China or textile workers in India. Twentieth-century
liberalism has belatedly corrected itself somewhat in these areas. But
the hatred of liberals for unborn children, for example, is still
prevalent.
As for socialism, it has proved itself to be the most barbarous and

bloody belief system yet known to man. The revolutions of the
nineteenth century were bloody enough. Those of the twentieth century
were much worse…
Nothing better could be expected of evolutionary humanism. For it

is founded on the bloody and utterly egoistic doctrine of the survival of
the fittest. Love for the superman or the super-nation appears
necessarily to go together with hatred of the sub-humans of inferior
nations. Thus the nationalist humanisms begotten by the French
revolution and its German counter-revolutionary antithesis have
proved themselves to be completely contradictory to Christianity. This
has not stopped modernist Christians from trying to clothe these
revolutionary creeds in Christian clothes. But the wolf in the sheep’s
clothing still manages to snarl from behind its mask of meekness. For
the humanist religion that found its first organized and political
expression in the French revolution remains, for all its Christian-
sounding ideals, the religion of the man-god, not the God-man.
The organizational force of the revolution came, in its first, more

moderate phase, from Freemasonry.
1717, the year of the foundation of the Great Lodge of England, was
also important as being the date of an Anglo-French treaty by which
the Catholic Stuart pretender to the English throne was expelled from
France and the Protestant Hanoverian dynasty was recognized by the
French government. This facilitated the spread of Freemasonry to
France and the Continent. As a result, writes Viscount Leon de Poncins,
it “evolved in a distinctly revolutionary and anti-religious sense. The
Grand Orient of France led this movement, followed, with some
reserve, by the Grand Lodge of France, and became the guide of the
Grand Orients of Europe and South America. Freemasonry in the
22
United States, while maintaining its union and friendly relations with
the Grand Lodge of England, occupies an intermediate position
between English Freemasonry and the Grand Orient of Europe. Some of
its branches are nearer the English conception, and others the
European…
“English Freemasonry in 1723 was in no way Christian; it was

rationalist, vaguely deistic and secretly gnostic. The latter source of
inspiration is still active, but it had encountered the conservative,
traditional spirit of England. Most English Freemasons were men who
were scarcely concerned with philosophical or metaphysical
preoccupations. The revolutionary and anti-Christian inspiration which
constituted the essence of contemporary Freemasonry everywhere,
encountered a veiled and instinctive resistance in English Masons. The
pact which Freemasonry tacitly concluded with the Protestant
monarchy, to fight against Catholicism [and the Catholic Stuart
pretenders to the English monarchy], which it considered its principal
enemy, contributed to restrain the revolutionary tendencies of English
Freemasonry, whereas they developed freely in Europe and South
America, and rather more timidly in the United States. In short, the
revolutionary virus in Freemasonry is more or less inactive in England,
where Freemasonry is more an excuse for social reunion than an
organisation claiming to remake the world.” 15
This difference between English and Continental Masonry has been

denied by some writers. And of course, from a religious point of view,
at least until Grand Orient Masonry officially adopted atheism in 1877
and was “excommunicated” by the Grand Lodge of England, there was
little significant difference between the two. Nevertheless, from a
political point of view the distinction is both valid and important; for
English Masonry, linked as it was with the nobility and the monarchy
from the beginning, dissociated itself from the revolutionary activities
of its brother lodges on the Continent, and as late as 1929 reaffirmed
the ban on discussion of politics and religion within the lodge.
It was Continental Masonry, springing from the Grand Orient of

France, that was the real revolutionary force in eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Europe and beyond. However, the Continental
Masons managed to conceal their murderous intentions under a cover
of good works and conviviality. This was enough to fool even those
who should have been best informed. Thus Louis XVI’s queen, Marie
Antoinette, wrote to her sister Maria Christina in 1781: “It seems to me
that you attach too much significance to Masonry in France; it has by
no means played the same role in France as in other countries, thanks
to the fact that here everybody belongs to it and so we know
everything that goes on there. What danger do you see in it? I
understand that it would be possible to fear the spread of Masonry if it
15
De Poncins, Freemasonry and the Vatican, London: Britons Publishing Company, 1968, p. 116.
23
were a secret political society, but, you know, this society exists only
for good works and for entertainments; there they do a lot of eating,
drinking, discussing and singing, and the king says that people who
drink and sing cannot be conspirators. Thus it is impossible to call
Masonry a society of convinced atheists, for, as I have heard, they
constantly speak about God there. And besides, they give a lot of alms,
educate the children of the poor or dead members of the brotherhood,
give their daughters in marriage – I truly see nothing bad in all this.
The other day the Princess de Lambal was elected great mistress of one
lodge; she told me how nice they are to her there, but she said that
more was drunk than sung; the other day they offered to give dowries
to two girls. True, it seems to me that it would be possible to do good
without all these ceremonies, but, you know, everyone has his own way
of enjoying himself; as long as they do good, what has the rest to do
with us?” 16
However, she soon learned otherwise. On August 17, 1790 she wrote
to her brother, the Austrian Emperor Leopold II: “Forgive me, dear
brother, believe in the tender sentiments of your unhappy sister. The
main thing is, keep away from every Masonic society. In this way all
the horrors that are taking place here are striving to attain one and the
same end in all countries…”
The murderous potential of Masonry is seen especially in the 30th

degree of the Scottish rite, the Kadosch degree. Here the myth that
forms the core of the earlier degrees, the murder of Hiram or
Adoniram, the supposed architect of Solomon’s Temple, is replaced by
the myth of Jacques de Molay, the last great master of the order of the
Templars, who was burned alive on the orders of King Philippe the Fair
of France and Pope Clement V in 1314, and who was supposed to have
founded four Masonic lodges on his deathbed. The initiates of the
Kadosch degree avenge the death of the Templars’ leader by acting out
the murder of the French king and the Pope.
“The Kadosch adept,” writes V.F. Ivanov, “tramples on a crown as a

symbol of tyranny in general, and then tramples on the papal tiara as a
symbol of violence over the free human conscience.
“The king and the pope are symbols, and by these symbols we are
given to understand the struggle to the death against ‘civil and
ecclesiastical despotism’.” 17
This vengeful rite was not just theatre, but a preparation for real
revolutionary action. Thus in 1784 in Wilhemsbad a pan-European
congress of Masons in which the Illuminati, an extreme offshoot of
Masonry , took a leading role, decided on the murder of Louis XVI of
16
Ivanov, Russkaia Intelligentsia i Masonstvo: ot Petra I do nashikh dnej (The Russian Intelligentsia
and Masonry: from Peter I to our Days), Harbin, 1934, Moscow, 1997, p. 82.
17
Ivanov, op. cit., p. 64.
24
France and Gustavus Adolphus III of Sweden. Both sentences were
carried out…
The first stage of the French Revolution, from 1789 to 1791, was
almost entirely dominated by Masons, whose numbers grew at an
astonishing rate in the pre-revolutionary years. Adam Zamoyski writes
that "there were 104 lodges in France in 1772, 198 by 1776, and a
staggering 629 by 1789. Their membership included virtually every
grandee, writer, artist, lawyer, soldier or other professional in the
country, as well as notable foreigners such as Franklin and Jefferson -
some 30,000 people." 18
"Between 800 and 900 masonic lodges," writes William Doyle, "were
founded in France between 1732 and 1793, two-thirds of them after
1760. Between 1773 and 1779 well over 20,000 members were recruited.
Few towns of any consequence were without one or more lodges by the
1780s and, despite several papal condemnations of a deistic cult that
had originated in Protestant England, the élite of society flocked to
join. Voltaire was drafted in on his last visit to Paris, and it was before
the assembled brethren of the Nine Sisters Lodge that he exchanged
symbolic embraces with Franklin." 19
At the very peak of Masonic influence in Europe, in September, 1791, Mozart

composed The Magic Flute, a work that depicts magic, paganism (hymns to Isis
and Osiris) and initiatory rites very reminiscent of Masonry. It is known that
both the opera’s librettist Schikaneder and Mozart himself were Freemasons, as
was Ignaz Alberti, engraver and printer of the first libretto. According to one
interpretation, “The opera is also influenced by Enlightenment philosophy and
can be regarded as advocating enlightened absolutism. The Queen of the Night
is seen by some to represent a dangerous form of obscurantism, by others to
represent Roman Catholic Empress Maria Theresa, and still others see the
Roman Catholic Church itself, which was strongly anti-Masonic.”20 Even if the
opera can be considered an advertisement for Masonry (the aims of Sarastro’s
Temple are said to be supremely philanthropic), the music is glorious, showing
that the inspiration for the West’s finest art in this period was no longer
Christian. The creative impulse in Western Christianity had all but dried up…
18
Zamoyski, Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots and Revolutionaries, 1776-1871, London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1999, p. 51.
19
Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 64-65.
Franklin, as we have seen, was an American mason, a famous scientist, and a major player in the
American revolution in which French and Americans had co-operated in overthrowing British
monarchical rule. The American revolution had demonstrated that the ideas of the philosophes
were not just philosophical theory, but could be translated into reality. And the meeting of
Franklin and Voltaire showed that science and philosophy could meet in the womb of Masonry
to bring forth the common dream - liberty and "the pursuit of happiness".
20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Flute.
25
2. ILLUMINISM
The first phase of the revolution was led by the more idealistic kind
of Freemasons. But its later stages were controlled by the more radical
sect of the Illuminati.
Let us now look more closely at Illuminism.
The Illuminist order was founded in 1776 by a Jewish professor of

canon law at the Catholic University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria called
Adam Weishaupt 21 , who assumed the name of "Brother Spartacus"
(from the slave who rebelled against Rome in the first century BC).
Illuminism arose out of the dissatisfaction of a group of Masons with
the general state of Masonry. Thus another founder member, Count
Mirabeau, noted in the same year of 1776: "The Lodge Theodore de Bon
Conseil at Munich, where there were a few men with brains and hearts,
was tired of being tossed about by the vain promises and quarrels of
Masonry. The heads resolved to graft on to their branch another secret
association to which they gave the name of the Order of the Illuminés.
They modelled it on the Society of Jesus, whilst proposing to
themselves something diametrically opposed." 22
According to Mike Hanson, Weishaupt “recruited five freemasons

from prestigious Masonic lodges to form the Order of Perfectibilists,
commonly known as the Bavarian Illuminati, on May 1, 1776. 23 The
recruitment of Baron Knigge (a.k.a Adolf Francis), a major player in the
European Masonic scene, is considered to be his greatest coup; under
Knigge’s guidance, the ranks of the Illuminati grew to over 3,000. At
this point, however (1785), it was declared an outlaw conspiracy by the
Bavarian government, and Weishaupt quickly disappeared. According
to John Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy, the Illuminati organization
survived in a somewhat altered form and was the driving force behind
the French Revolution.” 24
Nesta Webster writes: "According to Lombard de Langres [writing

in 1820]: 'France in 1789 counted more than 2,000 lodges affiliated to
the Grand Orient; the number of adepts was more than 100,000. The
first events of 1789 were only Masonry in action. All the
21
Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, London: Constable, 1999, p. 114.
22
Nesta Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, Christian Book Club of America, 1924,
p. 205. According to his second-in-command, Baron von Knigge, Weishaupt, had a "Jesuitical
character" and his organization was "such a machine behind which perhaps Jesuits may be
concealed" (Webster, op. cit., p. 227).
23
May 1, which has been adopted as International Labour Day by the Socialists, was a feast, as
O.A. Platonov writes, "of satanic forces - witches, sorcerers, evil spirits, demons" (Ternovij Venets
Rossii (Russia's Crown of Thorns), Moscow: Rodnik, 1998, p. 194). It was called "Walpurgisnacht"
in Germany after the eighth-century English missionary to Germany, St. Walburga, whose feast
is May 1. (V.M.)
24
Hanson, Bohemian Grove: Cult of Conspiracy, Austin, Texas: RiverCrest Publishing, 2012.
26
revolutionaries of the Constituent Assembly were initiated into the
third degree. We place in this class the Duc d'Orléans, Valence, Syllery,
Laclos, Sièyes, Pétion, Menou, Biron, Montesquieu, Fauchet, Condorcet,
Lafayette, Mirabeau, Garat, Rabaud, Dubois-Crancé, Thiébaud,
Larochefoucauld, and others.'
"Amongst these others were not only the Brissotins, who formed the
nucleus of the Girondin party, but the men of the Terror - Marat,
Robespierre, Danton, and Desmoulins.
"It was these fiercer elements, true disciples of the I lluminati, who
were to sweep away the visionary Masons dreaming of equality and
brotherhood. Following the precedent set by [the founder of the
I lluminati,] Weishaupt, classical pseudonyms were adopted by these
leaders of the Jacobins, thus Chaumette was known as Anaxagoras,
Clootz as Anacharsis, Danton as Horace, Lacroix as Publicola, and
Ronsin as Scaevola; again, after the manner of the Illuminati, the names
of towns were changed and a revolutionary calendar was adopted. The
red cap and loose hair affected by the Jacobins appear also to have been
foreshadowed in the lodges of the Illuminati.
"Yet faithfully as the Terrorists carried out the plan of the Illuminati,
it would seem that they themselves were not initiated into the
innermost secrets of the conspiracy. Behind the Convention, behind the
clubs, behind the Revolutionary Tribunal, there existed, says Lombard
de Langres, that 'most secret convention [ convention sécrétissime] which
directed everything after May 31, an occult and terrible power of which
the other Convention became the slave and which was composed of the
prime initiates of Illuminism. This power was above Robespierre and
the committees of the government, it was this occult power which
appropriated to itself the treasures of the nation and distributed them
to the brothers and friends who had helped on the great work.' 25
Weishaupt has been credited with founding the idea of world revolution. 26
That may well be so. Certainly, Weishaupt's Illuminism represents perhaps the
first clearly organised expression of that philosophy which Hieromonk
Seraphim Rose called "the Nihilism of Destruction". 27
Fr. Seraphim considered that this nihilist philosophy was unique to

the twentieth century; but the evidence for its existence already in the
eighteenth century is overwhelming. With Illuminism, therefore, we
enter the atmosphere of the twentieth-century totalitarian
revolutions....
25
Webster, op. cit., pp. 244-245.
26
Yu.K. Begunov, A.D. Stepanov, K.Yu. Dushenov, Taina Bezzakonia (The Mystery of Iniquity), St.
Petersburg, 2002, p. 401.
27
Rose, Nihilism, Forestville, Ca.: Fr. Seraphim Rose Foundation, 1994, p. 54.
27
The goals of Illuminism, writes Niall Ferguson, “were lofty… As one
member of the Order recalled its founder saying, it was intended to be:
‘an association that, through the most subtle and secure methods, will
have as its goal the victory of virtue and wisdom over stupidity and
malice; an association that will make the most important discoveries in
all fields of science, that will teach its members to become both noble
and great; that will assure them of the certain prize of their complete
perfection in this world, that will protect them from persecution in all
its forms.’ The Order’s ultimate objective was to ‘enlighten the
understanding by the sun of reason, which will dispel the clouds of
superstition and of prejudice.’ ‘My goal is to give reason the upper
hand,’ declared the Order’s founder. ‘The sole intention of the league,’
according to its General Statutes (1781) was ‘education, not by
declamatory means, but by favouring and rewarding virtue.’ Yet the
Illuminati were to operate as a strictly secret fraternity. Members
adopted codenames, often of ancient Greek or Roman provenance: the
founder himself was ‘Brother Spartacus’. There were to be three ranks
or grades of membership – Novice, Minerval and Illuminate Minerval –
but the lower ranks were to be given only the vaguest insights into the
Order’s goals and methods. Elaborate initiation rites were devised -
among them an oath of secrecy, violation of which would be punished
with the most gruesome death. Each isolated cell of initiates reported
to a superior, whose real identity they did not know.” 28
"Our strength," wrote Weishaupt, "lies in secrecy. Therefore we

must without hesitation use as a cover some innocent societies. The
lodges of blue masonry are a fitting veil to hide our real aims, since the
world is accustomed to expecting nothing important or constructive
from them. Their ceremonies are considered pretty trifles for the
amusement of big children. The name of a learned society is also a
magnificent mask behind which we can hide our lower degrees." 29
"Weishaupt constructed his organization on several levels, revealing

his most radical plans only to his chosen co-workers. Weishaupt chose
the members of his organization mainly amidst young people, carefully
studying each candidature.
"Having sifted out the unreliable and dubious, the leaders of the order
performed on the rest a rite of consecration, which took place after a three-day
fast in a dark basement. Every candidate was consecrated separately, having first
had his arms and legs bound. [Then] from various corners of the dark basement
the most unexpected questions were showered upon the initiate.
"Having replied to the questions, he swore absolute obedience to the

leaders of the order. Every new member signed that he would preserve
the secrets of the organization under fear of the death penalty.
28
Ferguson, The Square and the Tower, London: Penguin, 2018, pp. 4-5.
29
Platonov, op. cit., p. 195.
28
"However, the newcomer was not yet considered to be a full
member of the organization, but received the status of novice and for
one to three months had to be under the observation of an experienced
illuminé. He was told to keep a special diary and regularly present it to
the leaders. The novice filled in numerous questionnaires, and also
prepared monthly accounts of all matters linking him with the order.
Having passed through all the trials, the novice underwent a second
initiation, now as a fully-fledged member.
"After his initiation the new member was given a distinguishing

sign, gesture and password, which changed depending on the rank he
occupied.
"The newcomer received a special pseudonym (order's name),

usually borrowed from ancient history..., and got to know an ancient
Persian method of timekeeping, the geography of the order, and also a
secret code.
"Weishaupt imposed into the order a system of global spying and

mutual tailing.
"Most of the members were at the lowest level of the hierarchy.
"No less than a thousand people entered the organization, but for
conspiratorial purposes each member knew only a few people. As
Weishaupt himself noted, 'directly under me there are two, who are
completely inspired by me myself, while under each of them are two,
etc. Thus I can stir up and put into motion a thousand people. This is
how one must command and act in politics." 30
"Do you realize sufficiently," he wrote in the discourse of the

reception of the Illuminatus Dirigens, "what it means to rule - to rule in
a secret society? Not only over the lesser or more important of the
populace, but over the best men, over men of all ranks, nations, and
religions, to rule without external force, to unite them indissolubly, to
breathe one spirit and soul into them, men distributed over all parts of
the world?" 31
The supposed aim of the new Order was to improve the present
system of government and to abolish "the slavery of the peasants, the
servitude of men to the soil, the rights of main morte and all the
customs and privileges which abase humanity, the corvées under the
condition of an equitable equivalent, all the corporations, all the
maîtrises, all the burdens imposed on industry and commerce by
customs, excise duties, and taxes... to procure a universal toleration for
30
Platonov, op. cit., pp. 195-196.
31
Webster, op. cit., p. 221.
29
all religious opinions... to take away all the arms of superstitions, to
favour the liberty of the press, etc." 32
This was almost exactly the same programme as that carried out by
the Constituent Assembly at the beginning of the revolution in 1789-91
under the leadership of, among others, the same Count Mirabeau - a
remarkable coincidence!
However, this liberal democratic programme was soon forgotten

when Weishaupt took over control of the Order. For "Spartacus" had
elaborated a much more radical programme, a programme that was to
resemble the socialism of the later, more radical stages of the
revolution. "Weishaupt had made into an absolute theory the
misanthropic gibes [ boutades] of Rousseau at the invention of property
and society, and without taking into account the statement so distinctly
formulated by Rousseau on the impossibility of suppressing property
and society once they had been established, he proposed as the end of
Illuminism the abolition of property, social authority, of nationality,
and the return of the human race to the happy state in which it formed
only a single family without artificial needs, without useless sciences,
every father being priest and magistrate. Priest of we know not what
religion, for in spite of their frequent invocations of the God of Nature,
many indications lead us to conclude that Weishaupt had, like Diderot
and d'Holbach, no other God than Nature herself..." 33
Weishaupt used the religious forms of Masonry, and invented a few

"mysteries" himself. But his aim was the foundation of a political secret
organization controlled by himself. His political theory, according to
Webster, was "no other than that of modern Anarchy, that man should
govern himself and rulers should be gradually done away with. But he
is careful to deprecate all ideas of violent revolution - the process is to
be accomplished by the most peaceful methods. Let us see how gently
he leads up to the final conclusion:
"'The first stage in the life of the whole human race is savagery, rough nature,
in which the family is the only society, and hunger and thirst are easily
satisfied... in which man enjoys the two most excellent goods, Equality and
Liberty, to their fullest extent. ... In these circumstances... health was his usual
condition... Happy men, who were not yet enough enlightened to lose their
peace of mind and to be conscious of the unhappy mainsprings and causes of
our misery, love of power... envy... illnesses and all the results of imagination.'
"The manner in which man fell from this primitive state of felicity is
then described:
32
33
Henri Martin, Histoire de France (History of France), XVI, 533; in Webster, op. cit., p. 207.
30
"'As families increased, means of subsistence began to lack, the
nomadic life ceased, property was instituted, men established
themselves firmly, and through agriculture families drew near each
other, thereby language developed and through living together men
began to measure themselves against each other, etc... But here was the
cause of the downfall of freedom; equality vanished. Man felt new
unknown needs...'
And in the passages that follow we find the old ruse of representing
Christ as a Communist and as a secret-society adept. Thus he goes on
to explain that 'if Jesus preaches contempt of riches, He wishes to teach
us the reasonable use of them and prepare for the community of goods
introduced by Him,' and in which, Weishaupt adds later, He lived with
His disciples. But this secret doctrine is only to be apprehended by
initiates...
"Weishaupt thus contrives to give a purely political interpretation to

Christ's teaching:
"'The secret preserved through the Disciplina Arcani, and the aim
appearing through all His words and deeds, is to give back to men
their original liberty and equality... Now one can understand how far
Jesus was the Redeemer and Saviour of the world.'
"The mission of Christ was therefore by means of Reason to make

men capable of freedom: 'When at last reason becomes the religion of
man, so will the problem be solved.'
"Weishaupt goes on to show that Freemasonry can be interpreted in

the same manner. The secret doctrine concealed in the teaching of
Christ was handed down by initiates who 'hid themselves and their
doctrine under the cover of Freemasonry,' and in a long explanation of
Masonic hieroglyphics he indicates the analogies between the Hiramic
legend and the story of Christ. 'I say then Hiram is Christ.'... In this
manner Weishaupt demonstrates that 'Freemasonry is hidden
Christianity... But this is of course only the secret of what Weishaupt
calls 'real Freemasonry' in contradistinction to the official kind, which
he regards as totally unenlightened." 34
But the whole of this religious side of Weishaupt's system is in fact simply a
ruse, a cover, by which to attract religious men. Weishaupt himself despised
religion: "You cannot imagine," he wrote, "what consideration and sensation
our Priest's degree is arousing. The most wonderful thing is that great
Protestant and reformed theologians who belong to 0 [Illuminism] still believe
that the religious teaching imparted in it contains the true and genuine spirit of
34
31
the Christian religion. Oh! men, of what cannot you be persuaded? I never
thought that I should become the founder of a new religion." 35
Only gradually, and only to a very few of his closest associates, did
Weishaupt reveal the real purpose of his order - the revolutionary
overthrow of the whole of society, civil and religious. Elements of all
religions and philosophical systems, including Christianity and
Masonry, were used by Weishaupt to enrol a body of influential men 36
who would obey him in all things while knowing neither him
personally nor the real aims of the secret society they had been
initiated into. The use of codes and pseudonyms, and the pyramidal
structure of his organization, whereby nobody on a lower level knew
what was happening on the one above his, while those on the higher
levels knew everything about what was happening below them, was
copied by all succeeding revolutionary organizations.
In 1782 Weishaupt convened a Universal Congress of Illuminati in

Wilhelmsbad, and was well on the way to taking over Freemasonry (under the
guise of its reform). By this time, writes Ferguson, “the Illuminati network
extended throughout much of Germany. Moreover, an impressive list of
German princes had joined the Order: Ferdinand, prince of Brunswick-
Lüneberg-Wolfenbüttel; Charles, prince of Hesse-Cassel; Ernest II, duke of Saxe-
Coburg-Altenburg; and Charles August, grand duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach;
as well as dozens of noblemen such as Franz Friedrich von Ditfurth, and the
rising star of the Rhineland clergy, Theodor von Dalberg. Serving many of the
most exalted Illuminati as advisers were other members of the Order.
Intellectuals, too, became Illuminati, notably the polymath Johann Wolfgang
Goethe, the philosophers Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Heinrich
Jacobi, the translator Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, and the Swiss
educationalist Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Though he did not join, the
dramatist Friedrich Schiller based the republican revolutionary character of
Posa in his Don Carlos (1787) on a leading member of the Illuminati. The
influence of Illuminism has sometimes been detected in Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute (1791).”37
In July, 1785, an Illuminatus was struck by lightning and papers found on

him led to the Bavarian government banning the organization. “Some fled
Bavaria. Others lost their jobs or were exiled. At least two were imprisoned. The
founder himself sought refuge in Gotha. For all intents and purposes the
Illuminati had ceased to function by the end of 1787. Nevertheless, their infamy
long outlived them. King Frederick William II of Prussia was warned that the
Illuminati remained a dangerously subversive force throughout Germany.” 38
35
36
Ridley, op. cit., p. 115. Ferguson says that the Order numbered only sixty members in 1779, rising
to more than 1,300 a few years later (op. cit., p. 4). By 1785, according to Hanson (op. cit.), it was over
3000.
37
Ferguson, op. cit. p. 4.
38
Ferguson, op. cit. p. 5.
32
Ferguson believes that the Illuminati were easily crushed and had no
significant effect on the French Revolution. Others, however, believe that
Weishaupt transferred the centre of his operations to France, where his
influence continued to spread. Thus the Parisian lodge of the Amis Réunis,
renamed the Ennemis Réunis, gathered together all the really radical Masons
from various other lodges, many of which were still royalist, and turned them,
often unconsciously, into agents of Weishaupt. These adepts included no less
than thirty princes. For it was characteristic of the revolution that among those
who were most swept up by the madness of its intoxication were those who
stood to lose most from it. Some far-sighted men, such as the Apostolic Nuncio
in Vienna and the Marquis de Luchet, warned against Illuminism, and de Luchet
predicted almost exactly the course of events that the revolution would take on
the basis of his knowledge of the order. But no one paid any attention. But then,
in October, 1789 a pamphlet was seized in the house of the wife of Mirabeau's
publisher among Mirabeau's papers and published two years later.
"Beginning with a diatribe against the French monarchy," writes

Webster, "the document goes on to say that 'in order to triumph over
this hydra-headed monster these are my ideas':
"'We must overthrow all order, suppress all laws, annul all power, and leave
the people in anarchy. The law we establish will not perhaps be in force at once,
but at any rate, having given back the power to the people, they will resist for
the sake of the liberty which they will believe they are preserving. We must
caress their vanity, flatter their hopes, promise them happiness after our work
has been in operation; we must elude their caprices and their systems at will,
for the people as legislators are very dangerous, they only establish laws which
coincide with their passions, their want of knowledge would besides only give
birth to abuses. But as the people are a lever which legislators can move at their
will, we must necessarily use them as a support, and render hateful to them
everything we wish to destroy and sow illusions in their path; we must also buy
all the mercenary pens which propagate our methods and which will instruct
the people concerning their enemies which we attack. The clergy, being the
most powerful through public opinion, can only be destroyed by ridiculing
religion, rendering its ministers odious, and only representing them as
hypocritical monsters& Libels must at every moment show fresh traces of
hatred against the clergy. To exaggerate their riches, to make the sins of an
individual appear to be common to all, to attribute to them all vices; calumny,
murder, irreligion, sacrilege, all is permitted in times of revolution.'
"'We must degrade the noblesse and attribute it to an odious origin,

establish a germ of equality which can never exist but which will flatter
the people; [we must] immolate the most obstinate, burn and destroy
their property in order to intimidate the rest, so that if we cannot
entirely destroy this prejudice we can weaken it and the people will
avenge their vanity and their jealousy by all the excesses which will
bring them to submission.'
33
"After describing how the soldiers are to be seduced from their
allegiance, and the magistrates represented to the people as despots,
'since the people, brutal and ignorant, only see the evil and never the
good of things,' the writer explains they must be given only limited
power in the municipalities.
"'Let us beware above all of giving them too much force; their
despotism is too dangerous, we must flatter the people by gratuitous
justice, promise them a great diminution in taxes and a more equal
division, more extension in fortunes, and less humiliation. These
phantasies [ vertiges] will fanaticise the people, who will flatten out all
resistance. What matter the victims and their numbers? Spoliations,
destructions, burnings, and all the necessary effects of a revolution?
Nothing must be sacred and we can say with Machiavelli: ‘What matter
the means as long as one arrives at the end?'” 39
In 1797, a former French Jesuit called Augustin de Barruel published

a five-volume Mémoire pour servir à l’histoire du jacobinisme , which
argued, as Norman Cohn writes, that “the French Revolution
represented the culmination of an age-old conspiracy of the most secret
of secret societies. As he saw it, the trouble began with the medieval
Order of Templars, which had not really been exterminated in 1314 but
had survived as a secret society. Pledged to abolish all monarchies, to
overthrow the papacy, to preach unrestricted liberty to all peoples and
to found a world-republic under its own control. Down the centuries
this secret society had poisoned a number of monarchs; and in the
eighteenth century it had captured the Order of Freemasons, which
now stood entirely under its control. In 1763 it had created a secret
literary academy, consisting of Voltaire, Turgot, Condorcet, Diderot,
and d’Alambert, and meeting regularly in the house of the Baron
d’Holbach; by its publications this body had undermined all morality
and true religion among the French. From 1776 onwards Condorcet and
the Abbé Sieyès had built up a vast revolutionary organization of half a
million Frenchmen, who were the Jacobins of the revolution. But the
heart of the conspiracy, the true leaders of the revolution, were the
Bavarian Illuminati under Adam Weishaupt - ‘enemies of the human
race, sons of Satan’. To this handful of Germans all the Freemasons and
Jacobins of France owed blind allegiance; and it was Barruel’s view that
unless it was stopped, this handful would soon dominate the world.” 40
In the same vein and at about the same time, writes Ferguson, “the
eminent Scottish physicist John Robison published Proofs of a Conspiracy
against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried out in the
Secret Meetings of the Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies, in
39
40
Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, London: Serif, 1996, p. 30.
34
which he claimed that, ‘through a course of fifty years, under the
specious pretexts of enlightening the world by the torch of philosophy,
and of dispelling the clouds of civil and religious superstition’, an
‘association’ had been ‘exerting itself zealously and systematically, till
it had become almost irresistible’, with the goal of ‘ROOTING OUT
ALL THE RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS, AND OVERTURNING ALL
THE EXISTING GOVERNMENTS OF EUROPE’. The culmination of the
association’s efforts, according to Robison, was nothing less than the
French Revolution…” 41
41
Ferguson, op. cit., p. 5.
35
3. THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
The revolution proper began on June 17, 1789, when the Third Estate –
composed mainly of lawyers and businessmen, “men of action and men of
affairs”42 - gathered a so-called National Assembly, of which they declared: "To
it, and it alone, belongs the right to interpret and express the general will of the
nation. Between the throne and this Assembly there can exist no veto, no power
of negation."43
This, writes Davies, "was the decisive break. Three days later, locked out of
their usual hall, the deputies met on the adjacent tennis court, le jeu de paume,
and swore an oath never to disband until France was given a Constitution. 'Tell
your master,' thundered Count Mirabeau to the troops sent to disperse them,
'that we are here by the will of the people, and will not disperse before the threat
of bayonets.'
"Pandemonium ensued. At court, the King's conciliatory ministers

fell out with their more aggressive colleagues. On 11 July [the chief
minister] Jacques Necker, who had received a rousing welcome at the
opening of the Estates General, was dismissed. Paris exploded. A
revolutionary headquarters coalesced round the Duc d'Orléans at the
Palais Royal. The gardens of the Palais Royal became a notorious
playground of free speech and free love. Sex shows sprang up
alongside every sort of political harangue. 'The exile of Necker,'
screamed the fiery orator Camille Desmoulins fearing reprisals, 'is the
signal for another St. Bartholomew of patriots.' The royal garrison was
won over. On the 13th a Committee of Public Safety was created, and
48,000 men were enrolled in a National Guard under General Lafayette.
Bands of insurgents tore down the hated barrières or internal customs
posts in the city, and ransacked the monastery of Saint-Lazare in the
search for arms. On the 14th, after 30,000 muskets were removed from
the Hôtel des Invalides, the royal fortress of the Bastille was besieged.
There was a brief exchange of gunfire, after which the governor
capitulated. The King had lost his capital." 44
Power appeared to have passed from the king to the National

Assembly and the Third Estate; but already at this early stage of the
revolution (as in February, 1917 in Russia), real power was neither with
the king nor with any of the Estates, but with the mob - or rather, with
those who incited and controlled the mob. Thus on July 20 Arthur
Young wrote: "I hear nothing of their [the Assembly's] moving from
Versailles; if they stay there under the control of an armed mob, they
must make a government that will please the mob; but they will, I
suppose, be wise enough to move to some central town, Tours, Blois or
42
J.M. Thompson, The French Revolution, Oxford, 1947, pp. 26-27.
43
M.J. Cohen and John Major, History in Quotations, London: Cassell, 2004, p. 516.
44
Norman Davies, Europe: A History, London: Pimlico, 1997, p. 694.
36
Orléans, where their deliberations may be free. But the Parisian spirit
of commotion spreads quickly..."
So quickly, in fact, that a year later Antoine, Comte de Rivarol could

write: "Three million armed peasants, from one end of the kingdom to
the other, stop travellers, check their papers, and bring the victims
back to Paris; the town hall cannot protect them from the fury of the
patriotic hangman; the National Assembly in raising Paris might well
have been able to topple the throne, but it cannot save a single citizen.
The time will come... when the National Assembly will say to the
citizen army: 'You have saved me from authority, but who will save me
from you?' When authority has been overthrown, its power passes
inevitably to the lowest classes of society... Such is today the state of
France and its capital." 45 I
It happened as the Princes of the Blood had prophesied to Louis

XVI: "The French monarchy must decline into despotism or become a
democracy - two opposite kinds of revolution, but both calamitous." 46
The success of the Revolution was assured by the weakness of the

King; for when "he who restrains" stops restraining, "then," as
Dostoyevsky said, "everything is permitted". William Doyle writes:
"News of the king's surrender to popular resistance broke all restraints.
His acquiescence in the defeat of the privileged orders was taken as a
signal for all his subjects to take their own measures against public
enemies. The prolonged political crisis has spawned countless wild
rumours of plots to thwart the patriotic cause by starving the people.
Monastic and noble granaries, reputedly bulging with the proceeds of
the previous season's rents, dues, and tithes, seemed obvious evidence
of their owners' wicked intentions. Equally suspicious were urban
merchants scouring country markets far beyond their usual circuits to
provide bread for hungry townsmen. Besides, the roads were thronged
with unprecedented numbers of men seeking work as a result of the
slump. Farmers had good reason to dread the depredations of bands of
travelling vagrants, and now took little persuading that the kingdom
was alive with brigands in aristocratic pay. It was just a year since the
notorious storms of July 1788, and as a promising harvest began to
ripen country people were particularly nervous. All this produced the
'Great Fear', a massive panic that swept whole provinces in the last
weeks of July and left only the most peripheral regions untouched.
Peasants assembled, armed themselves, and prepared to fight off the
ruthless hirelings of aristocracy. Seen from a distance, such armed
bands were often taken for brigands themselves, and so the panic
spread.
45
Young, in Jocelyn Hunt, The French Revolution, London: Routledge, 1998, pp. 25-26.
46
Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 515.
37
“In many areas villagers did not wait for the marauders to arrive.
Then it would be too late. They were determined to make sure of
aristocratic defeat by striking pre-emptively. After all, they would only
anticipating what the Assembly was bound to decree. As one country
priest explained, “When the inhabitants heard that everything was
going to be different they began to refuse to pay both tithes and dues,
considering themselves so permitted, they said, by the new law to
come.” 47
On August 4, under pressure from the peasant revolt, the National

or Constituent Assembly declared that it "abolishes the feudal system
in its entirety". It also proclaimed "King Louis XVI Restorer of French
Liberty"...
In his pamphlet What is the Third Estate? published in that year,

Abbé Sieyès asked: What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it
been in the political order up to the present? Nothing. What does it
demand? To become something…”
Now, after August 4, the Third Estate was something. Rarely, if

ever, in political history has a single act had such a huge and
immediate effect (the abdication of the Tsar in February, 1917 is
perhaps the only parallel).
On August 26, the Assembly passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the
Citizen, which listed the following “natural, inalienable and sacred rights”:
“’I. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can
only be founded on public utility.
‘II. The purpose of every political association is the preservation of the natural
and unprescriptible rights of men. These rights are liberty, property, and safety
from, and resistance to, oppression.
‘III. The principle of all sovereignty lies in the nation. No body of men, and no
individual, can exercise authority which does not emanate directly therefrom.
‘IV. Liberty consists in the ability to do anything which does not harm others.
‘V. The Law can only forbid actions which are injurious to society…
‘VI. The Law is the expression of the General Will… It should be the same for
all, whether to protect or to punish.
47
Doyle, op. cit., pp. 114-115.
38
‘VII. No man can be accused, arrested, or detained except in those instances
which are determined by law.
‘VIII. The Law should only establish punishments which are strictly
necessary. No person should be punished by retrospective legislation.
‘IX. No man [is] presumed innocent till found guilty…
‘X. No person should be troubled for his opinions, even religious ones, so
long as their manifestation does not threaten public order.
‘XI. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of men’s most
precious rights. Every citizen, therefore, can write, speak, and publish freely,
saving only the need to account for abuses defined by law.
‘XII. A public force is required to guarantee the [above] rights. It is instituted

for the benefit of all, not for the use of those to whom it is entrusted.
‘XIII. Public taxation is indispensable for the upkeep of the forces and the
administration. It should be divided among all citizens without distinction,
according to their abilities.
‘XIV. Citizens… have the right to approve the purposes, levels, and extent of
taxation.
‘XV. Society has the right to hold every public servant to account.
‘XVI. Any society in which rights are not guaranteed nor powers separated
does not have a constitution.
‘XVII. Property being a sacred and inviolable right, no person can be deprived
of it, except by public necessity, legal process, and just compensation.’
The neglect of women in the Declaration, pointed out by Condorcet, was soon
rectified. Thus in 1791 Olympe de Gouges wrote The Rights of Women and the
Citizen, in which she declared: “1. Woman is born free, and remains equal to
Man in rights… 4. The exercise of Woman’s natural rights has no limit other than
the tyranny of Man’s opposing them… 17. Property is shared or divided equally
by both sexes.”48 Then in 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman, in which she denied that there were any specifically feminine
qualities. Thus “I here throw down my gauntlet, and deny the existence of
sexual virtues, not excepting modesty.”49 In spite of rejecting marriage as a form
of legalized prostitution, this proto-feminist married the British anarchist,
William Godwin, by whom she had a daughter, Mary, who married the famous
poet Shelley and became the author of Frankenstein…
48
49
39
“In due course the original Declaration was joined by new ideas, notably
about human rights in the social and economic sphere. Article XXI of the revised
Declaration of June 1793 stated: ’Public assistance is a sacred obligation [dette].
Society owes subsistence to unfortunate citizens, whether in finding work for
them, or in assuring the means of survival of those incapable of working.’
Slavery was outlawed in 1794. Religious toleration was guaranteed.” 50
Pope Pius VI condemned the Declaration of Human Rights. In particular he

condemned the idea of “absolute liberty”, a liberty “which not only assures
people of the right not to be disturbed about their religious opinions but also
gives them this license to think, write and even have printed with impunity all
that the most unruly imagination can suggest about religion. It is a monstrous
right…”
For God also has rights, said the Pope: “What is more contrary to the rights of
the Creator God Who limited human freedom by prohibiting evil, than ‘this
liberty of thought and action which the National Assembly accords to man in
society as an inalienable right of nature’?”
There are two innovations in this revolutionary philosophy. First, the source
of authority in society is proclaimed to be neither God, nor any existing political
authority, but “the nation”. Hence nations are to be seen as free agents with
rights, and the source of all particular rights in their own societies.
But what constitutes the nation? The essence of the nation, and the source of
its rights, is what Rousseau called “the General Will” – a very vague term which
anybody can claim to represent. At the same time, this “nation” or “General
Will” ascribes to itself the most complete power, so that “no body of men, and no
individual, can exercise authority which does not emanate directly therefrom.”
This immediately destroys the authority, not only of the king, but also of the
Church – and indeed, of every other person and body.
Nation-worship, or the self-deification of the Nation, which developed over

the course of the next one hundred and fifty years, led directly to the nationalist
nightmares that have plagued the world to this day. For, as Metropolitan
Anastasy (Gribanovsky) wrote: “The nation, this collective organism, is just as
inclined to deify itself as the individual man. The madness of pride grows in this
case in the same progression, as every passion becomes inflamed in society,
being refracted in thousands and millions of souls…”51
The second innovation is the concept of “rights” that are “unprescriptible” –

that is, prescribed neither by God nor by man. (Where do they come from then?)
Man, according to the Declaration, has the unprescriptible “right” to do anything
he likes – providing he doesn’t harm others (article 4).
However, this latter qualification is not elaborated on, and was in practice
50
Davies, op. cit., pp. 713-714.
51
Gribanovsky, Besedy so sobstvennym svoim serdtsem (Conversations with my own heart),
Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1964.
40
ignored completely in the French revolutionary tradition. Thus man is in
principle free to do anything whatsoever. The only limitation on his freedom,
according to later liberal theory, is other men’s freedom: their right not to be
limited or restricted by him – but there is no mention of that in the French
declaration…
The development of the philosophy of human rights still had a long way to
go. But its essence is already discernible in the French Declaration.
In October a great crowd of hungry women brought the king from Versailles
to Paris. Thereafter the forging of a new Constitution that would include limited
powers for the king went ahead relatively peacefully. However, the king could
not make up his mind whether to accept or reject the Revolution 52; and this
vacillation, combined with his arrest at Varennes on June 21, 1791 while
attempting to flee the country, gradually undermined what remained of his
authority.53 For, as Hobsbawn points out, "traditional kings who abandon their
peoples lose the right to royalty".54
Meanwhile, while the Assembly passed a large number of laws, it

completely failed to solve the problems that had propelled it to power -
the financial insolvency of the country. It simply printed money that
rapidly deteriorated in value, fuelling inflation, and in 1791 collected
only 249 livres in taxes against 822.7 livres expended. 55
In spite of these problems, the first anniversary of the storming of

the Bastille, witnessed an extraordinary celebration of the revolution in
which even the king took part. As Zamoyski writes: “It was to be a
kind of Rousseauist troth-pledging, at which the nation would come
together and symbolically constitute itself as a body, simultaneously
paying homage to itself as such – the first of many acts of political
onanism. Bailly [the mayor of Paris] suggested that the solemnity
52
Rejection was probably his more constant and sincere opinion. In October, 1789 he wrote to the
Spanish King, his cousin, protesting "against all the decrees contrary to royal authority to which I
have been compelled by force to assent, since 15th July of this year. I beg your Majesty to keep
my protest secret until its publication becomes necessary" (Mark Almond, Revolution, London:
De Agostini Editions, 1996, p. 74). See also Munro Price, "Countering the Revolution", BBC
History Magazine, vol. 3, N 7, July, 2002, pp. 18-20.
53
The day before his attempted escape the king declared: "What remains to the King other than a
vain semblance of royalty?... The King does not think it possible to govern a kingdom of such
great extent and importance as France through the means established by the National
Assembly... The spirit of the clubs dominates everything... In view of all these facts, and the
impossibility of the King's being able to do the good and prevent the evil which is being
committed, is it surprising that the King has sought to recover his liberty and find security for
himself and his family?" (Hunt, op. cit., p. 41).
54
Hobsbawm, op. cit., p. 86. Here Tsar Nicholas II provides a sharp contrast. He neither
tried to flee his country, as did Louis, nor did he make the slightest concession to
revolutionary ideology.
55
Hunt, op. cit., p. 34.
41
should take the form of a ‘National Federation’, with delegations from
every corner of France meeting in Paris while those from surrounding
villages congregated in every provincial town. Lafayette steered the
whole exercise into the military sphere, substituting companies of
National Guards from every part of the country for civilian delegates.
“The capital was to be decked out in a fitting manner to greet those

making their long pilgrimage. Half the population of Paris spent three
days in the pouring rain putting up triumphant arches and decorations.
The Champ-de-Mars was transformed into a vast elliptical arena
surrounded by grass banks on which seats were erected for spectators.
At the end nearest the École Militaire there was a stand draped in the
tricolor for the members of the Assembly and important guests. At the
opposite end, nearest the River Seine, was the entrance, through a
triple triumphal arch in the Roman style. Between the two stood a
podium with a throne for the king and seats for the royal family, and,
towering above everything else, a great square plinth with steps on all
four sides, on which stood an altar.
“The morning of 14 July was wetter than ever, and the feet of the
300,000 Parisians soon turned the Champ-de-Mars into a quagmire.
This did not make the event any easier to manage, but good humour
triumphed. As they waited in the rain, people made jokes about being
baptized in the national rain, and groups from different parts of the
country showed off regional dances to each other.
“The king and queen arrived at noon, but it took a long time for
them to be settled into their stand. Then came a march-past by 50,000
National Guards. It was not until four in the afternoon that the Bishop
of Autun, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, attended by four
hundred priests wearing the tricolor, began to celebrate mass. The altar
at which he officiated was not a traditional liturgical mensa, but a
circular neoclassical affair redolent of burnt offerings in ancient Rome.
It was not the altar of God, on which sacrifice was offered up to the
Almighty, it was the autel de la patrie, on which citizens pledged their
devotion to the motherland.
“Lafayette was much in evidence all day on his white charger, and
when the mass was over, he took centre stage. As if by a miracle, the
weather cleared and the sun came out, bathing the whole scene in a soft
luminous aura. While trumpets blared, Lafayette ascended the steps of
the altar. As he began to swear loyalty to the king, the nation and the
law, he drew his sword with a flourish and laid it on the altar. Fifty
thousand National Guardsmen then repeated the same oath, followed
by the king. Next came the singing of the Te Deum specially composed
by François Gossec, during which people of all stations embraced
tearfully in a hundred thousand acts of national fraternity. Lafayette
was carried by the crowd to his white horse, on which he majestically
left the field, with people kissing his hands and his clothes…
42
“The Fête de la Fédération represented a reconciliation of all the
people living in France, and their betrothal as one nation. It mimicked
Rousseau’s vision of the Corsicans coming together to found their
nation through a common pledge The festival was also a recognition
that the Marquis de Lafayette and the humblest peasant in France were
brothers, both as members of a biological family and through the
ideological kinship represented by the oath. At the same time, the
celebration exposed a new reality. It showed how far the concept of
nationhood had altered from the Enlightenment vision of a congeries
living in consensus to something far more metaphysical and inherently
divine…” 56
56
Zamoyski, op. cit., pp. 60-62.
43
4. BURKE ON THE REVOLUTION
The ideas of the French revolution posed a great threat to the British.
Although they prided themselves on being the home of liberty, the British saw
that French revolutionary “liberty” would speedily destroy their own. Already
the American revolution had shown that libertarianism and empire made an
uncomfortable fit; and the fit would look still worse in India and Ireland as the
French ideas filtered through to the subject peoples there.
Moreover, the first effects of the industrial revolution on the industrial poor,
and of the “dark, satanic mills” of England’s “green and pleasant land”,
threatened to arouse revolutionary passions among them. “’Two causes, and
only two, will rouse a peasantry to rebellion,’ opined Robert Southey, a radical
turned Tory: ‘intolerable oppression, or religious zeal’. But that moderately
comforting scenario no longer applied: ‘A manufacturing poor is more easily
instigated to revolt: they have no local attachments… they know enough of what
is passing in the political world to think themselves politicians’. England’s rulers
must pay heed: ‘If the manufacturing system continues to be extended, I believe
that revolution inevitably must come, and in its most fearful shape’.” 57
Already during the years of the American revolution, 1778-83, a debate had
begun on whether the liberal ideas of John Locke that had inspired that
revolution, had been right after all. In 1783 the Baptist Noel Turner wondered
whether the “present national propensity” was the deployment of Locke on
behalf of the “many-headed majesty” of “king-people”. And in the same year
Josiah Tucker published his “On the Evil Consequences Arising from the
Propagation of Locke’s Democratic Principles”.
Tucker’s disciple Soame Jenyns refuted the Lockean philosophy of the Whigs,
writing:
I controvert these five positions

Which Whigs pretend are the conditions
Of civil rule and liberty;
That men are equal born – and free –
That kings derive their lawful sway
All from the people’s yea and nay –
That compact is the only ground,
On which a prince his rights can found –
Lastly, I scout that idle notion,
That government is put in motion,
And stopt again, like clock or chime,
Just as we want them to keep time.58
That said, when the first, Lockean phase of the French revolution broke out in
1789, it was generally accepted by men across the whole political spectrum, from
57
Roy Porter, Enlightenment, London: Penguin books, 2000, p. 451.
58
Mark Goldie, “John Locke: Icon of Liberty”, History Today, October, 2004, pp. 35, 36.
44
the Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger to the leader of the Whigs, Charles
Fox, who exclaimed: “How much the greatest event it is that ever happened in
the world! And how much the best!” Dissenters and poets were especially
enthusiastic. William Wordsworth wrote:
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven!
And “a Unitarian student at Cambridge, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, burned

‘Liberty’ and ‘Equality’ with gunpowder onto the velvety lawns of St. John’s and
Trinity. Dissenting intellectuals scrutinized political events for their prophetic
meaning, with ‘the Declaration of the Rights of Man in one hand, and the Book
of Revelation in the other,’ as Joseph Priestly put it.”59
However, as the news of the first atrocities filtered across the Channel, the
mood changed. In 1798 Coleridge repented of his previous enthusiasm:
When France in wrath her giant-limbs upreared

And with that oath, which smote air, earth and sea,
Stamped her strong foot, and said she would be free,
Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared!...
Forgive me, Freedom! O forgive those dreams!
The earlier debate on Locke – the acknowledged ideologue of the first phase
of the French revolution – was now renewed. Could the ideas of the urbane and
civilized Locke really have led to such barbarism? William Jones thought so. He
said that “with Mr. Locke in his hand”, that “mischievous infidel Voltaire” had
set about destroying Christianity. And Locke was “the oracle of those who
began and conducted the American Revolution, which led to the French
Revolution; which will lead (unless God in his mercy interfere) to the total
overthrow of religion and government in this kingdom, perhaps in the whole
Christian world.”60
The most famous debate that took place in England over the revolution was
between two men who had been on the same, liberal side during the American
Revolution, but now found themselves on opposing sides. Thomas Paine had
displayed his radical credentials and oratorical skill in the famous anti-
monarchist tract Common Sense (1776), and now enthusiastically backed his
revolutionary colleagues in France, who read his tracts in the National
Assembly. His opponent was the Anglo-Irish thinker and Whig parliamentarian
Edmund Burke, who could hardly be accused of being an enemy of freedom, for
he had defended the freedom of America and Ireland. 61
In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), written just one year after
the Declaration of the Rights of Man appeared, and well before the atrocities of
59
Robert Tombs, The English and Their History, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014, p. 384.
60
Goldie, op. cit., p. 36.
61
Witness his famous remark: “Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a
great empire and little minds go ill together” (Cohen and Major, History in Quotations, p. 503).
45
the Jacobin period, Burke prophetically attacked the liberal doctrine of universal
rights as being precisely the cause of the greatest tyranny. Burke, write Ofir
Haivry and Yoram Hazony, endorses “Selden’s argument that universal rights,
since they are based only on reason rather than ‘positive, recorded, hereditary
title,’ can be said to give everyone a claim to absolutely anything. Adopting a
political theory based on such universal rights has one obvious meaning: that the
‘sure inheritance’ of one’s nation will immediately be ‘scrambled for and torn to
pieces’ by ‘every wild litigious spirit’ who knows how to use universal rights to
make ever new demands.
“Burke’s argument is frequently quoted today by conservatives who assume

that his target was Rousseau and his followers in France. But Burke’s attack was
not primarily aimed at Rousseau, who had few enthusiasts in Britain or America
at the time. The actual target of his attack was contemporary followers of Grotius
and Locke - individuals such as Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, Charles James
Fox, Charles Grey, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. Price, who was the
explicit subject of Burke’s attack in the first pages of Reflections on the Revolution
in France, had opened his Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty (1776) with the
assertion that ‘the principles on which I have argued form the foundation of
every state as far as it is free; and are the same with those taught by Mr. Locke.’
And much the same could be said of the others, all of whom followed Locke in
claiming that the only true foundation for political and constitutional thought
was precisely in those ‘general theories concerning the rights of men’ that Burke
believed would bring turmoil and death to one country after another.
“The carnage taking place in France triggered a furious debate in England. It

pitted supporters of the conservatism of Coke and Selden (both Whigs and
Tories) against admirers of Locke’s universal rights theories (the so-called New
Whigs). The conservatives insisted that these theories would uproot every
traditional political and religious institution in England, just as they were doing
in France. It is against the backdrop of this debate that Burke reportedly stated in
Parliament that, of all the books ever written, [Locke’s] Second Treatise was ‘one
of the worst.’”62
According to David Starkey, “Burke… correctly identified from the beginning

that the operating principle of the Revolution was inhuman, abstract Reason,
which thought it could and should remodel politics, society and humanity itself
from scratch. This leveling Reason saw history, habit and tradition as mere
obstacles to progress that like any human opposition were to be destroyed by
the joyous, all-consuming bonfire of the vanities; ‘The Year One’ of human
history.
“For Burke, on the other hand, history and tradition were the foundation of
civilization and habit – the things that made us human. From time to time, they
might need reform. But reform should preserve, not destroy, their essence.
Monarchy, as the supreme embodiment of history and tradition, thus became a
test case. Was it the key obstacle to the new world, as the French quickly came to
62
Haivry and Hazony, “What is Conservatism?”, American Affairs, Summer, 2017, vol. I, no. 2.
46
see? Or was it the guarantor of stability and freedom, as the British had decided
(on Burke’s reading) in 1689, and would again, Burke predicted, once more?” 63
Burke foresaw that the revolution would bring in its train, not freedom, but
tyranny. And “the tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny”. 64 He accepted
Barruel’s theory that the revolution was led by Illuminati conspirators. Its result
would be: “laws overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without vigour;
commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished; a church
pillaged, and a state not relieved; civil and military anarchy made the
constitution of the kingdom; every thing human and divine sacrificed to the idol
of the public credit, and national bankruptcy the consequence.” 65 The main
problem with radical revolutionaries was that they did not take human nature
into account. They “are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man,
that they have totally forgotten his nature.”
“There is something satanic about the French Revolution that distinguishes it

from everything we have known, and perhaps from everything we will ever
witness,” wrote Joseph de Maistre, whose Considérations sur la France, published
in London in 1797, painted a blood-drenched picture of events. Burke agreed:
"We cannot, if we would, delude ourselves about the true state of this dreadful
contest. It is a religious war. It includes in its object undoubtedly every other
interest of society as well as this; but this is the principal and leading feature. It is
through this destruction of religion that our enemies propose the
accomplishment of all their other views. The French Revolution, impious at once
and fanatical, had no other plan for domestick power and foreign empire. Look
at all the proceedings of the National Assembly from the first day of declaring
itself such in the year 1789, to this very hour, and you will find full half of their
business to be directly on this subject. In fact it is the spirit of the whole. The
religious system, called the Constitutional Church, was on the face of the whole
proceeding set up only as a mere temporary amusement to the people, and so
constantly stated in all their conversations, till the time should come, when they
might with safety cast off the very appearance of all religion whatsoever, and
persecute Christianity throughout Europe with fire and sword. This religious
war is not a controversy between sect and sect as formerly, but a war against all
sects and all religions."66
So the real question that the Revolution sought to answer was not political or
economic, but theological or ideological, not: who pays the taxes?, but: who rules
the universe? Is it the God-Man, Jesus Christ, or the man-god, humanity or the
nation, what Noel Turner called the “many-headed majesty” of “king-people”?
The ancien regime declared the first; the revolution – the second.
63
Starkey, Crown & Country, London: Harper Press, 2011, pp. 442-443.
64
Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791).
65
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France.
66
Burke, Remarks on the Policy of the Allies (1793), in David P. Fidler and Jennifer M. Welsh (eds.),
Empire and Community: Edmund Burke's Writings and Speeches on International Relations, Oxford:
Westview Press, 1999, p. 280.
47
King Louis XVI had stated the Christian principle: "I have taken the firm and
sincere decision to remain loftily, publicly and generously faithful to Him Who
holds in His hand kings and kingdoms. I can only be great through Him,
because in Him alone is greatness, glory, majesty and power; and because I am
destined one day to be his living image on earth." 67 This firm, but humble
statement of the doctrine, not so much of the Divine right of kings, as of their
Divine dependence on the King of kings, was opposed by the satanic pride of the
revolution. For, as Desmoulins declared: “The Revolution… claims to found
society on the will of man instead of founding it on the will of God, which puts
the sovereignty of human reason in the place of the Divine law." 68
Since the ancien regime and the revolution had such diametrically opposed
views of the true foundation of society, it was inevitable that the latter would try
and destroy the former: “No Monarchy, limited or unlimited, nor any of the old
Republics, can possibly be safe as long as this strange, nameless, wild,
enthusiastic thing [the revolution] is established in the Centre of Europe.”
Bradley Birzer writes: “Burke asked exactly how one might categorize the
revolutionary government. Is it a monarchy of the democracy, a democracy of
the monarchy, some form of pure democracy, or a nasty oligarchy? Whatever it
claims to be, Burke continued, the intelligent person can simply dismiss that
label as a manifestation of, at best, poor thinking, and, at worst, malicious and
willful falsehood. Certainly, the revolutionary government and society had
veered far away from the course of nature, creating nothing but a mere
contrivance and shadow of reality.
“The Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher noted that it is worth

considering the notion that Revolutionary France is a modern attempt at
democracy. Drawing explicitly upon the writings of Aristotle, Burke asked what
the real difference was between a monarchy and a democracy: ‘Of this I am
certain, that in a democracy, the majority of its citizens is capable of exercising
the most cruel oppressions upon the minority, whenever strong divisions prevail
in that kind of policy, as they often must.’ However constituted, few forms of
government are more oppressive than a democracy armed with self-righteous
fury at all who oppose the will of the majority.
“In his own analysis written at the very beginning of the revolution, Burke
followed Plato and anticipated… Alexis de Tocqueville.
“Because the king is only one man, several things will restrain him (relatively
speaking, of course, for a monarch can easily go bad). First, by tradition, he will
recognize that while he might have mastery over things temporal, he cannot
fully control things spiritual. Second, by being one person, he cannot extend his
imagination beyond his own ego, thus having the limitations of his own mind
and his own experience. None of this is to suggest that a king cannot be ruthless,
brutal, and ferocious. Of course, he can, as Burke well understood. After all,
67
Louis XVI, in Foi Transmise et Sainte Tradition (Transmitted Faith and Holy Tradition), N 68,
January, 1993, p. 13.
68
Desmoulins, in M.V. Zyzykin, Patriarkh Nikon, Warsaw: Synodal Press, part III, 1931, p. 238.
48
Burke had just spent a considerable amount of time writing and speaking on the
evils and follies of Henry VIII. Still, no matter how far the king goes in each of
these things, he will encounter limits. For the ‘hive’ that is the democratic
mindset, however, the very spirit of democracy pushes its adherents to
surmount such limits, and to behave as one man with the will of a god. The very
animalistic thought process of the collective lends it toward a righteous stand
against any opposition, internally or externally. When opposed, they react with
‘fury’…
“Armed with the insane fury of the democratic will, the revolutionaries
believe themselves pure enough to pass absolutist judgments against the
corrupt. While the corrupt might be only eighty to ninety percent corrupted, it is
easiest for the presumed pure to claim it totally corrupt, destroy it utterly, and
begin anew. There is no cost to claiming the need to begin anew because there
yet exists no basis by which to judge that which has yet to come. As that which
has yet to come does not exist—except in the hearts of men—it therefore has no
weight or substance. By definition, that which has yet to come must be perfect,
as it exists only in our perfect thought and hopes, not in reality. How then, can
one ever compare that which is unreal but perfect with that very real thing
which, by its very existence in a fallen world, must be imperfect? Wisdom would
and should allow us to realize this, but democratic fury and passion dismiss
such reason as doubtful, traitorous, and, perhaps, insane.
“Listening to its opponents, one might think the French monarchy akin to the
bloodthirsty god-kings of the ancient Orient or, perhaps, to Satan himself
(though many of the revolutionaries, of course, did not believe in such
‘superstitions’ as God and the Devil). In the descriptions of the contemporary
French monarchy, one might envision a world at constant war, ignorant of all
arts and sciences, devoid of any economic securities—in manufacturing and
agriculture—and ‘where the human race itself melts away and perishes under
the eye of the observer.’
“Though not a proponent of the monarchy, Burke could not in good

conscience look away from the goodness—however limited—to be found in
much of France’s religion, laws, manners, and opinions. Could not some
corrective to the corruption of the monarchy be found in these? Why did men
fail to see the good and focus only on the evil?
“What sort of madness had gripped the revolutionaries? The madness of

democracy and its arrogant totalitarianism.”69
“Burke,” writes Tombs, “was angry that revolution was being treated as ‘a
spectator sport for middle-class intellectuals, tempted to believe that they can
proclaim governments illegitimate without anyone getting hurt’ – anyone who
mattered, anyway. He insisted that 1688 had not tried to invent an ideal system
from scratch – the dangerous French error. Every political community was
69
Birzer, “Edmund Burke and the Totalitarianism of Democracy”, The Imaginative Conservative,
April 17, 2107, http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2017/04/edmund-burke-
totalitarianism-democracy-bradley-birzer.html.
49
slowly shaped by ‘the wisdom of unlettered men’, in a permanent ‘partnership’
of the living, the dead and the yet unborn. A free society relied on voluntary
respect for its institutions, which ‘the longer they have lasted… the more we
cherished them.’ He insisted that revolution entailed suffering and loss, and was
‘the very last resource of the thinking and the good… I cannot conceive how any
man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption to consider his
country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he
pleases.’ Burke’s position was historical and philosophical, not religious, unlike
that of his opponents, whom he considered Puritan ‘bigots’. Many were shocked
that Burke, a leading Whig intellectual, supporter of American rights and
religious tolerance, and nemesis of the East India Company, should attack the
French Revolution. But his ideas were consistent. He had long dismissed
abstract theory – ‘the fairy hand of philosophy’ – as the basis for social
organization. Societies, he believed, grew organically, including by ‘sympathy’
and ‘imagination’. He denounced usurpations in which greed and intellectual
arrogance (by people who ‘have no respect for the wisdom of others; but… a
very full measure of confidence in their own’) destroyed legitimate authorities,
ancient rights, social relationships, and laws embodying the history and culture
of unique societies. Hence he regarded oppression by the British in India and
Ireland (he was a Dubliner) and oppression by the revolutionary authorities in
France as morally identical. ‘I do not like to see any thing destroyed; any void
produced in society; any ruin on the face of the land.’
“Reflections met a chorus of denunciation. ‘Cursed Stuff’, exclaimed his old

friend and ally Fox. Pitt thought it too extreme. Young idealists such as
Coleridge, Wordsworth and Keats continued to admire the French Revolution as
a revival of the ‘Good Old Cause’ of Sidney and ‘others who called Milton
friend’. Dozens of rebuttals were written, including by Priestley, the historian
Catherine Macaulay, and Mary Wollstonecraft in her Vindication of the Rights of
Man (1790) and Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), maintaining that ‘God-
given reason’ was the only source of legitimate authority. By far the most widely
read reply to what he called Burke’s ‘thundering attack’ was Paine’s The Rights of
Man (1791), dedicated to George Washington. Paine’s style was dogmatic
reiteration. He did not engage with Burke’s ideas, which he dismissed as foolish,
incomprehensible (‘all this jargon’) or dishonest. His position was exactly what
Burke rejected: judging political systems on ideological, not pragmatic grounds.
The new French constitution was ‘a rational order of things’; whereas the
English system [much admired by many French liberals] was tainted by
originating in conquest in 1066 by [William of Normandy] ‘the son of a
prostitute and the plunderer of the English nation’, and it was stained by ‘the
filth of rotten boroughs’, where ‘every man has his price’. Monarchy (‘the enemy
of mankind’), a hereditary peerage and an established Church were the roots of
evil. The remedy was simple: ‘For a nation to be free, it is sufficient that she wills
it.’
“… In June 1792, Paine was summoned for seditious libel, and escaped to
Paris to sit in the National Assembly. But Burke’s version of English history as a
50
long collective ‘partnership’ was no less influential, endowing its institutions
with a powerful legitimizing pedigree’.” 70
(Paine was soon cast into prison by the Jacobins and barely escaped the
guillotine. None the wiser for his experience, he fled to America, where he died
in poverty and unpopularity.)
Burke’s emphasis on the importance of tradition was important at a time

when the rage was all for the destruction of everything that was old and
venerable. In this respect (although not in others) he went against one of the
main presuppositions of Rousseau and the English social contract theorists,
following rather in the line of thought of the German Counter-Enlightenment
thinkers Hamann and Herder. “Society is indeed a contract,” he wrote, “[but]
becomes a partnership… between those who are living, those who are dead and
those who are to be born.”
As Sir Isaiah Berlin writes: “Burke’s famous onslaughts on the principles of

the French revolutionaries was founded upon the selfsame appeal to the myriad
strands that bind human beings into a historically hallowed whole, contrasted
with the utilitarian model of society as a trading-company held together by
contractual obligations, the world of ‘sophisters, oeconomists, and calculators’
who are blind and deaf to the unanalysable relationships that make a family, a
tribe, a nation, a movement, any association of human beings held together by
something more than a quest for mutual advantage, or by force, or by anything
that is not mutual love, loyalty, common history, emotion and outlook.” 71
Society exists over several generations, so why, asked Burke, should only one
generation’s interests be respected in drawing up the social contract? For, as Sir
Roger Scruton writes, “the social contract prejudices the interests of those who
are not alive to take part in it: the dead and the unborn. Yet they too have a
claim, maybe an indefinite claim, on the resources and institutions over which
the living so selfishly contend. To imagine society as a contract among its living
members, is to offer no rights to those who go before and after. But when we
neglect those absent souls, we neglect everything that endows law with its
authority, and which guarantees our own survival. We should therefore see the
social order as a partnership, in which the dead and the unborn are included
with the living.”72
“Every people,” writes L.A. Tikhomirov, “is, first of all, a certain historical
whole, a long row of consecutive generations, living over hundreds or
thousands of years in a common life handed down by inheritance. In this form a
people, a nation, is a certain socially organic phenomenon with more or less
clearly expressed laws of inner development… But political intriguers and the
democratic tendency does not look at a people in this form, as a historical,
socially organic phenomenon, but simply in the form of a sum of the individual
inhabitants of the country. This is the second point of view, which looks on a
70
Tombs, op. cit., pp. 385-386.
71
Berlin, “The Counter-Enlightenment”, in The Proper Study of Mankind, pp. 256-257.
72
Scruton, Modern Philosophy, London: Arrow Books, 1997, p. 417.
51
nation as a simple association of people united into a state because they wanted
that, living according to laws which they like, and arbitrarily changing the laws
of their life together when it occurs to them.”73
Burke rejected the idea that the French Revolution was simply the English
Revolution writ large. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was not a revolution in
the new, French sense, because it left English traditions, including English
traditions of liberty, intact: it “was made to preserve our ancient indisputable
laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only
security for law and liberty… We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do
now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers… All the
reformations we have hitherto made, have proceeded upon the principle of
reference to antiquity.”74 In fact, far from making the people the sovereign
power, the English parliament in 1688 had sworn “in the name of the people” to
“most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities” to
the Monarchs William and Mary “for ever”.
The French Revolution, by contrast, rejected all tradition. “You had,” he told
the French, “the elements of a constitution very nearly as good as could be
wished…; but you chose to act as if you have never been moulded into civil
society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by
despising everything that belonged to you.” “Your constitution, it is true,…
suffered waste and dilapidation; but you possessed in some parts the walls and,
in all, the foundations of a noble and venerable castle. You might have repaired
those walls; you might have built on those old foundations. Your constitution
was suspended before it was perfected.” “Rage and frenzy will pull down more
in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in an
hundred years.”75 The French Revolution was just another disaster “brought
upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy,
ungoverned zeal”. The “rights of man” were just a “pretext” invented by the
“wickedness” of human nature.76
“It was Burke’s Reflections,” writes G.P. Gooch, “which overthrew the
supremacy of Locke [for the time being], and formed the starting-point of a
number of schools of thought, agreeing in the rejection of the individualistic
rationalism which had dominated the eighteenth century. The work is not only
the greatest exposition of the philosophic basis of conservatism ever written, but
a declaration of the principles of evolution, continuity, and solidarity, which
must hold their place in all sound political thinking. Against the omnipotence of
the individual, he sets the collective reason; against the claims of the present, he
sets the accumulated experience of the past; for natural rights he offers social
rights; for liberty he substitutes law. Society is a partnership between those who
are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born.” 77
73
Tikhomirov, “Demokratia liberal’naia i sotsial’naia” (Liberal and Social Democracy), in Kritika
Demokratii (A Critique of Democracy), Moscow: “Moskva”, 1997, p. 122.
74
75
76
52
As William Doyle writes, Burke attributed the fall of the old order “to a
conspiracy. On the one hand were the ‘moneyed interests’, resentful at their lack
of esteem and greedy for new profits; on the other, and even more important,
were the so-called philosophers of the Enlightenment, a ‘literary cabal’
committed to the destruction of Christianity by any and every available means.
The idea of a philosophic conspiracy was not new. It went back to the only one
ever conclusively proved to have existed, the plot of the self-styled Illuminati to
undermine the Church-dominated government of Bavaria. The Bavarian
government published a sensational collection of documents to illustrate its
gravity, and Burke had read it. Although he was not the first to attribute events
in France to conspiracy of the sort thwarted in Bavaria, the way he included the
idea in the most comprehensive denunciation of the Revolution yet to appear
lent it unprecedented authority. Nor was the destruction of Christianity and the
triumph of atheism the only catastrophe he predicted. Disgusted by the way the
‘Republic of Paris’ and its ‘swinish multitude’ held the government captive, the
provinces would eventually cut loose and France would fall apart. The assignats
would drive out sound coinage and hasten, rather than avert, bankruptcy. The
only possible end to France’s self-induced anarchy would come when ‘some
popular general, who understand the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who
possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon
himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account… the moment in which
that event will happen, the person who really commands the army is your
master.’”78
Thus did Burke, having already prophesied the Jacobin terror, foresee its
sequel and consummation - the coming of Napoleon…
77
Gooch, “Europe and the French Revolution”, in The Cambridge Modern History, Cambridge
University Press, 1934, vol. VIII, p. 757.
78
53
5. THE JACOBIN TERROR
In June, 1791 Louis XVI tried, unsuccessfully, to flee abroad, and in

August the monarchs of Austria and Prussia met at Pillnitz to co-
ordinate action against the Revolution. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden
and Catherine of Russia also prepared to crush the "orang-outangs of
Europe". From the summer of 1791 to the summer of 1792 power
steadily slipped away from the elected Constituent Assembly, which
was still broadly in favour of a constitutional monarchy, and into the
hands of the mob, or the Paris Commune. Their passionate hatred of
refractory priests and monarchists inside the country was inflamed by
the first attempts of the foreign powers to invade France and restore
legitimate authority from outside.
The rhetoric became increasingly bloody. On April 25, the "Marseillaise" was
composed for the army of the Rhine; it spoke about "impure blood" drenching
the tracks of the conquering French armies. On the same day the new invention
of the Guillotine claimed its first victim... On June 20 the sansculottes ("without
breeches"), invaded the Tuileries. "By sheer weight of numbers," writes
Zamoyski, "the crowd pushed through the gates of the royal palace and came
face to face with Louis XVI in one of the upstairs salons, where the defenceless
monarch had to endure the abuse of the mob. Pistols and drawn sabres were
waved in his face, and he was threatened with death. More significantly, he
was made to don a red cap [symbol of the revolution] and drink the health of
the nation - and thereby to acknowledge its sovereignty. By acquiescing, he
toasted himself off the throne." 79
For a brief moment, on July 14, the third anniversary of the storming of the
Bastille, it looked as if constitutional monarchy could be saved. Louis was
called "king of the French" and "father of his country". But on the same day
Marie Antoinette's nephew, Francis II, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in
Frankfurt in a ceremony that reaffirmed with great splendour the monarchical
principle. Between the French revolution and the German monarchy there
could be no compromise: the centre, constitutionalism, could not hold...
Pressure mounted on the Assembly to declare the dethronement of the

king. Finally, on August 10, the Tuileries was again invaded, 600 Swiss
guards were brutally massacred, and the king was imprisoned. The Assembly
"had little alternative but to 'invite' the French people to form a convention 'to
assure the sovereignty of the people and the reign of liberty and equality. The
next day it decreed that the new assembly was to be elected by manhood
suffrage, without distinction between citizens. Only servants and the
unemployed had no vote."80
79
80
Doyle, op. cit., p. 193.
54
Paris was ruled by the mob now. In September the prisons were opened and
suspected royalists slaughtered. On September 20 the Prussian army was turned
back – more precisely, betrayed - at Valmy. It is difficult to say that it was
defeated when there were only 160 German casualties to the French army’s 300.
Rather, it was betrayed by the leader of the Prussian army, the Duke of
Brunswick, who also happened to be the leader of German Masonry, and who
quite clearly betrayed his country and an overwhelmingly superior position in
order to let the forces of the revolution win. 81 The next day the monarchy was
officially abolished.
It was at this point that the Jacobin dictatorship, which was much
closer to Illuminism than conventional Masonry, simply cast the
Masons aside, even though several of the leading Jacobins were adepts.
Thus Philippe d'Orléans, seeing the way the tide was moving against
the order, renounced it - but this did not save him from the guillotine.
"The brotherhoods were considered outposts of counter-revolution,
many disbanded themselves, some members emigrated, others stopped
all work. Only after the coming to power of Napoleon, who protected
the order, was its activity renewed and even broadened." 82
The assembly was replaced by a National Convention, whose was to legislate

for a new republican Constitution. It was divided between “Montagnards”
(Jacobins) on the left, led by Marat, Danton, Robespierre and the Parisian
delegates, and the “Girondins” on the right, led by Brissot, Vergniaud and the
“faction of the Gironde”. The Montagnards were identified with the interests of
the Paris mob and the most radical ideas of the Revolution; the Girondins – with
the interests of the provinces and the original liberal ideals of 1789. The
Montagnards stood for disposing of the king as soon as possible; the Girondins
wanted a referendum of the whole people to decide.
The Montagnard Saint-Just said that a trial was unnecessary; the people had
already judged the king on August 10; it remained only to punish him. For
“there is no innocent reign… every King is a rebel and a usurper.” 83 Robespierre
had voted against the death penalty in the Assembly, but now he said that
“Louis must die that the country may live”. And he agreed with Saint-Just:
“Louis cannot be judged, he has already been judged. He has been condemned,
81
Tim Williamson, “Battle of Valmy”, All about History, p. 59; L.A. Tikhomirov, Religiozno-
Filosofskie Osnovy Istorii (The Religious-Philosophical Foundations of History), Moscow, 1997, pp.
460-461,
82
O.F. Soloviev, Masonstvo v Mirovoj Politike XX Veke (Masonry in World Politics in the 20th
Century), Moscow: Rosspen, 1998, p. 22. The Mason Christopher Hodapp writes: "It was
rumoured for many years that Napoleon Bonaparte was a Freemason, but there is no historic
proof of it. Still, many of his military officers, members of his Grand Council for the Empire, and
22 of the 30 Marshals of France were. So were his four brothers, three of whom were made kings
by Napoleon. The Emperor's wife, Empress Josephine, was even admitted into a French female
lodge in 1804. Regardless of whether Napoleon was ever made a Mason, he did adopt the title
Protector of Freemasonry, along with the lengthy list of other titles he assumed when he became
emperor in 1804” (Freemasonry for Dummies, Indianapolis: Wiley, 2005, p. 42).
83
Hunt, op. cit., 1998, p. 37.
55
or else the Republic is not blameless. To suggest putting Louis XVI on trial, in
whatever way, is a step back towards royal and constitutional despotism; it is a
counter-revolutionary idea; because it puts the Revolution itself in the dock.
After all, if Louis can still be put on trial, Louis can be acquitted; he might be
innocent. Or rather, he is presumed to be until he is found guilty. But if Louis
can be presumed innocent, what becomes of the Revolution?” 84
There was a certain logic in these words: since the Revolution undermined all
the foundations of the ancien régime, the possibility that the head of that régime
might be innocent implied that the Revolution might be guilty. So
“revolutionary justice” required straight execution rather than a trial; it could
not afford to question the foundations of the Revolution itself. It was the same
logic that led to the execution without trial of Tsar Nicholas II in 1918...
But the majority of the deputies were not yet as “advanced” in their thinking
as Robespierre. So “during the third week of January 1793,” writes Ridley, “the
Convention voted four times on the issue. A resolution finding Louis guilty of
treason, and rejecting the idea of an appeal to the people by a plebiscite [so much
for Rousseauist democracy!], was carried by 426 votes to 278; the decision to
impose the death penalty was carried by 387 to 314. Philippe Egalité [the Duke
of Orléans and cousin of the king who became Grand Master of the Masons, then
a Jacobin, renouncing his title for the name ‘Philippe Egalité’] voted to convict
Louis and for the death penalty. A deputy then proposed that the question of
what to do with Louis should be postponed indefinitely. This was defeated by
361 to 360, a single vote. Philippe Egalité voted against the proposal, so his vote
decided the issue. On 20 January a resolution that the death sentence should be
immediately carried out was passed by 380 to 310, and Louis was guillotined the
next day.”85
After the execution a huge old man with a long beard who had been
prominent in the murdering of priests during the September riots mounted the
scaffold, plunged both hands into the king’s blood and sprinkled the people
with it, shouting: “People of France! I baptise you in the name of Jacob and
Freedom!”86
Who was Jacob? Jewry? Were the French now baptised into the ever-restless
spirit of the Jewish revolution?... Or was the execution of the king revenge on the
French monarchy for the execution of Jacques de Molet, last head of the
Templars and hero of Masonry’s 30th degree?...
84
Doyle, op. cit., p. 195. The Robespierrist lawyer Bertrand Barère said, borrowing a phrase from
Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty does not flourish unless moistened with the blood of kings.
I vote for death” (in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 522).
85
Ridley, op. cit., pp. 136-137.
86
Eliphas Levi, in Fomin, op. cit., p. 38. Who was Jacob? There are various theories. Some think it
was Jacob Molet, the leader of the Templars who was executed by the Catholic Church. Others
think it refers to Masons of the Scottish rite who were supporters of the Stuart Jacobites. Others
think it was a reference to the Patriarch Jacob’s “struggle with God” in Genesis 32.
56
“When the executioner help up his severed head for all to see, a few people in
the crowd cut their own throats, others threw themselves into the Seine. A
number went mad.
“This was not because they bore any particular affection for the king. It was
because he was the anointed of God, and it was he who gave validity to the
ideological and cultural compound that was France. Writing one hundred and
fifty years later, a man as modern as Albert Camus called this moment ‘the
turning-point of our contemporary history’. As far as he was concerned, the
execution of the king had secularized the French world and banished God from
the subsequent history of the French people. 87
“Traditionally, the death of a king of France was announced with the phrase:
‘Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!’, in order to stress the continuity of the institution of
monarchy. When the king’s head, was held aloft on that sunless day, the crowd
assembled around the scaffold shouted: ‘Vive la Nation!’ The message was
unequivocal. The nation had replaced the king as the sovereign and therefore as
the validating element in the state. The dead king’s God had been superseded by
‘Our Lord Mankind’, to use the words of one prominent revolutionary.” 88
The execution of the king was the signal for the abandonment of all restraint.
Robespierre proclaimed “the Terror”, which, as Simon Jenkins points out, “was a
specific policy, not a later description of anarchy. Robespierre said, ‘The
foundations of popular government in a revolution are virtue and terror; terror
without virtue is disastrous; virtue without terror is powerless. The Government
of the Revolution is the despotism of liberty over tyranny.’ This phraseology
became the thinking of dictators down the ages…”89
In February, 1793, after the British broke off relations because of the execution
of the king, the Convention declared war on the British and the Dutch, and in
effect “bade defiance to the whole of Europe. ‘They threaten you with kings!’
roared Danton to the Convention. ‘You have thrown down your gauntlet to
them, and this gauntlet is a king’s head, the signal of their coming death.’ ‘We
cannot be calm,’ claimed the ever-bombastic Brissot, ‘until Europe, all Europe, is
in flames.’”90
No matter that the Declaration of the Rights of Man had declared for the
freedom of every nation: revolutionary casuistry interpreted sovereignty to be
the right only of revolutionary nations; all others deserved to become slaves of
the Republic. On December 15, 1792 “generals were authorized in all occupied
territories to introduce the full social programme of the French Republic. All
87
“The condemnation of the king,” wrote Albert Camus, “is the crux of contemporary history. It
symbolizes the secularization of our history and the disincarnation of the Christian God. Up to
now, God played a part in history through the medium of kings. But His representative in
history has been killed…” (The Rebel, New York, 1956, p. 120) (V.M.)
88
89
Jenkins, A Short History of Europe, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2018, p. 176.
90
57
existing taxes, tithes, feudal dues, and servitudes were to be abolished. So was
nobility, and all types of privilege. The French motto would be, declared some
deputies, War on the castles, peace to the cottages! In the name of peace, help,
fraternity, liberty and equality, they would assist all people to establish ‘free and
popular’ governments, with whom they would then co-operate.” 91
But practice did not match theory: the theory of cosmopolitan universalism
too often gave way to the practice of imperialist nationalism. Thus when
Holland was conquered by the revolutionary armies, “it was compelled to cede
various southern territories, including control of the mouth of the Scheldt, and
pay for the upkeep of a French occupying army of 25,000 men. Finally, it was
forced to conclude an alliance with the French Republic whose chief attraction
was to place the supposedly formidable Dutch navy in the balance against Great
Britain. This, then, was what the fraternity and help of the French Republic
actually meant: total subordination to French needs and purposes.” 92 As Bernard
Simms writes, “the ‘reason’, ‘fraternity’, ‘equality’ and ‘liberty’ offered by France
were rejected not only because they were an outside imposition, but because
they were highly oppressive in practice. ‘I attest,’ Napoleon’s foreign minister,
Talleyrand, cautioned, ‘that any system which aims at taking freedom by open
force to other peoples will only make that freedom hated and prevent its
triumph.’”93
However, the revolutionary army under Dumouriez was defeated by the

Austrians at Neerwinden. Dumouriez then changed sides, and it was only the
army’s refusal to co-operate that prevented him from marching on Paris to
restore the constitution of 1791 with Louis XVII as king.94
Imperialism abroad was matched by despotism at home, forced conscription

and crippling taxes. And now for the first time there was massive resistance: the
peasants in the western regions of Brittany and the Vendée rebelled, and were
crushed with great cruelty and the loss of about 250,000 lives, about ten times
more than were claimed by the guillotine.95
General Westermann reported to the Convention: “The Vendée is no more… I

have buried it in the woods and marshes of Savenay… According to your
orders, I have trampled their children beneath our horses’ feet; I have massacred
their women, so they will no longer give birth to brigands. I do not have a single
prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated them all. The roads are sown with
corpses. At Savenay, brigands are arriving all the time claiming to surrender,
and we are shooting them non-stop… Mercy is not a revolutionary sentiment” 96
91
92
93
Simms, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, London: Allen Lane, 2013, pp. 166-167.
94
95
Jenkins (op. cit) claims that there were up to 400,000 deaths.
96
Westermann, in Davies, op. cit., p. 705.
58
The revolt in the Vendée was by far the most serious and prolonged that the
revolutionaries were to face. It was fought under the banner of the restoration of
the monarchy and the Church. The rebels wore “sacred hearts, crosses, and the
white cockade of royalism. ‘Long live the king and our good priests,’ was their
cry. ‘We want our king, our priests and the old regime.’”97
However, the counter-revolution in other parts of the country, and especially

in large cities such as Marseilles, Lyons and Bourdeaux, was less principled and
therefore much less effective. As one general reported of the Bordelais: “They
appeared to me determined not to involve themselves in Parisian affairs, but
more determined still to retain their liberty, their property, their opulence…
They don’t want a king: they want a republic, but a rich and tranquil republic.” 98
This difference in motivation between different parts of the counter-revolution,
and the failure of many of its leaders to condemn the revolution in toto and as
such, doomed it to failure in the long term. As long as the revolutionaries held
the centre, and were able to use the methods of terror and mass conscription to
send large armies into the field against their enemies, the advantage lay with
them. Again, we see a close parallel with the Russian Civil War, where the Reds
won because they held the centre and were more united ideologically than the
Whites.
Between May 31 and June 2, 1793 a coup was carried out against the
Girondists. Then, “in July 1793,” writes Jasper Ridley, “a young Girondin
woman, Charlotte Corday, gained admission to Marat’s house by pretending
that she wished to give him a list of names of Girondins to be guillotined.
Finding him sitting as usual in his bath to cure his skin disease, she stabbed him
to death.99 She was guillotined, and the Girondin party was suppressed.
“In Lyons, the Girondins had gained control of the Freemasons’ lodges. In the
summer of 1793 the Girondins there defied the authority of the Jacobin
government in Paris, and guillotined one of the local Jacobin leaders. The Lyons
Freemasons played a leading part in the rising against the Paris Jacobins; but the
Jacobins suppressed the revolt, and several of the leading Girondin Freemasons
of Lyons were guillotined.”100
On October 31, 1793 the Girondists went to the guillotine. In March it was the
turn of the Hébertists; in April – of the Dantonists. On March 27 the
Revolutionary Army was disbanded. By the end of April the commune had been
purged. As the Girondin Manon Roland said just before his execution: “Oh,
Liberty! How many crimes are committed in thy name!” 101
97
98
99
David’s painting of the dead Marat in his bath gave the revolution an “iconic” representation
of its first martyr. (V.M.)
100
Ridley, op. cit., p. 140.
101
Roland, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 523.
59
As Pierre Vergniaud said before the Convention in March, 1793: “It must be
feared that the Revolution, like Saturn, will devour its children one after the
other.”102 That is, the Masons were devouring their own brothers; for the
struggle between the Girondists and the Montagnards was in fact, according to
Lev Tikhomirov, a struggle between different layers of Masonry. 103
Now the Terror went into overdrive. The guillotine fell on traitors,
backsliders, suspects, speculators and “egoists”. “The spirit of moderation,”
declared Leclerc, needed to be expunged. On September 17 a comprehensive
Law of Suspects was passed, which empowered committees “to arrest anyone
who ‘either by their conduct, their contacts, their words or their writings,
showed themselves to be supporters of tyranny, of federalism, or to be enemies
of liberty’, as well as a number of more specific categories such as former nobles
‘who have not constantly manifested their attachment to the revolution.’
Practically anybody might fall foul of such a sweeping law. In the weeks
following even everyday speech acquired a sansculotte style. Those who refused
to call each other ‘citizen’ rather than the deferential ‘Monsieur’, and to use the
familiar form of address (tutoiement), fell under automatic suspicion. Then on 29
September the Convention passed a General Maximum Law which imposed
price controls on a wide range of goods defined as of first necessity from food
and drink to fuel, clothing, and even tobacco. Those who sold them above the
maximum would be fined and placed on the list of suspects. The Revolutionary
Army was at last set on foot…”104
The Committee of Public Safety 105 now took over control of the government,
subject only to the oversight of the Convention. This anti-democratic move was
said to be temporary and justified by the emergency situation. “It is impossible,”
said Saint-Just in the Committee’s name, “for revolutionary laws to be executed
if the government itself is not constituted in a revolutionary way.” 106 “Does your
government, then, resemble a despotism?” asked Robespierre. “Yes, as the
sword which glitters in the hands of liberty’s heroes resembles the use with
which tyranny’s lackeys are armed. Let the despot govern his brutalized subjects
by terror; he is right to do this, as a despot. Subdue liberty’s enemies by terror,
and you will be right, as founders of the Republic.” 107
102
Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 522).
103
Tikhomirov, op. cit., p. 458. “In the period of the terror the majority of Masonic lodges were
closed. As Louis Blanc explains, a significant number of Masons, though extremely liberal-
minded, could still not, in accordance with their personal interests, character and public position,
sympathize with the incitement of the maddened masses against the rich, to whom they
themselves belonged. In the hottest battle of the revolution it was those who split off into the
highest degrees who acted. The Masonic lodges were replaced by political clubs, although in the
political clubs, too, there began a sifting of the revolutionaries into the more moderate and the
extremists, so that quite a few Masons perished on the scaffolds from the hands of their
‘brothers’. After the overthrow of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor the Masonic lodges were again
opened.” (op. cit., p. 460).
104
105
In Russian: Komitet gosudarstvennoj bezopasnosti (KGB).
106
107
Robespierre, “Report of the Principles of Public Morality.
60
On October 12 the Committee “moved a decree that Lyons should be
destroyed. Its very name was to disappear, except on a monument among the
ruins which would proclaim ‘Lyons made war on Liberty. Lyons is no more.’” 108
Lyons was not completely destroyed, but whole ranges of houses were burnt
and thousands were guillotined and shot. “The effect… was designed to be a
salutory one. ‘What cement for the Revolution!’ gloated Achard in a letter to
Paris.”109
In order to carry out its totalitarian programme of control of the whole

population, the government issued “certificates of civisme – identity cards and
testimonials of public reliability all in one. Originally only foreigners had been
required to carry these documents, but the Law of Suspects made the
requirement general [thereby showing that for the revolutionary government all
citizens were aliens]. Those without them were liable to arrest and
imprisonment; and in fact up to half a million people may have been imprisoned
as suspects of one sort or another during the Terror. Up to 10,000 may have died
in custody, crowded into prisons never intended for such numbers, or makeshift
quarters no better equipped. These too deserve to be numbered among the
victims of the Terror, although not formally condemned. So do those who were
murdered or lynched without trial or official record during the chaotic, violent
autumn of 1793, when the supreme law of public safety seemed to override more
conventional and cumbersome procedures. Altogether the true total of those
who died under the Terror may have been twice the official figure – around
30,000 people in just under a year… Nor is it true that most of those killed in the
Terror were members of the former ‘privileged orders’, whatever the
Revolution’s anti-aristocratic rhetoric might suggest. Of the official death
sentences passed, less than 9 per cent fell upon nobles, and less than 7 per cent
on the clergy. Disproportionately high as these figures may have been relative to
the numbers of these groups in the population as a whole, they were not as high
as the quarter of the Terror’s victims who came from the middle classes. And the
vast majority of those who lost their lives in the proscriptions of 1793-4 – two-
thirds of those officially condemned and doubtless a far higher proportion of
those who disappeared unofficially – were ordinary people caught up in tragic
circumstances not of their own making, who made wrong choices in lethal times,
when indifference itself counted as a crime.”110
Still alive was the incarnation of the revolution in this, its bloodiest phase –
Robespierre, who said: “I am not a flatterer, a conciliator, an orator, a protector
of the people; I myself am the people.” But once if witnesses and defending
counsels were been decreed (on 10 June, 1794), to be no longer necessary in
trials, not even he was safe. On 27 June Robespierre fell from power. The next
day, screaming in terror, he was executed…
108
109
110
Doyle, op. cit., pp. 258, 259. For precise figures with breakdown according to class and sex, see
61
6. THE REVOLUTION AND RELIGION
The institution that suffered most in 1789-91 was the Catholic Church. First it
lost its feudal dues and lands. Then all the monasteries and convents except
those devoted to educational and charitable work were dissolved, and new
religious vows were forbidden. The Assembly then “replaced the 135 bishops
with 85, one for each département, and provided one curé for every 6,000
inhabitants. Bishops were henceforth to be elected (by an electorate including
non-believers, Protestants and Jews) without reference to Rome.” 111
The weakened position of the Church encouraged the Protestants, and in June
300 died in clashes between Catholics and Protestants in Nîmes. Meanwhile,
150,000 papal subjects living in Avignon and the Comtat agitated for integration
with France. Pope Pius VI rejected this, and in his letter Quod Aliquantum of
March 29, 1791 he condemned the Declaration of the Rights of Man and all the
religious legislation so far passed in the Assembly - “this absolute liberty which
not only assures people of the right not to be disturbed about their religious
opinions but also gives them this licence to think, write and even have printed
with impunity all that the most unruly imagination can suggest about religion. It
is a monstrous right, but it would seem to the Assembly to derive from the
equality and freedom natural to all men. But what could be more senseless than
to establish among men equality and this unbridled freedom which seems to
quench reason… What is more contrary to the rights of the Creator God Who
limited human freedom by prohibiting evil, than ‘this liberty of thought and
action which the National Assembly accords to man in society as an inalienable
right of nature’?” 112
On July 12 a Civil Constitution for the Clergy was passed, rationalizing the
Church’s organization, putting all the clergy on the State’s pay-roll and
decreeing the election of the clergy by lay assemblies who might included
Protestants and Jews as well as Catholics. The Pope had already, on July 10,
pleaded with the King to veto the Civil Constitution, but the king, advised by
weak bishops (although only 7 out of 160 took the oath), reluctantly agreed to it.
The acceptance or rejection of the Civil Constitution now became a test of faith
for Catholics. As opinion polarized, on October 30 thirty bishops from the
Assembly signed an Exposition of Principles, explaining that, as Doyle writes,
“they could not connive at such radical changes without consulting the Church
through either a council or the Pope. Nevertheless patriots saw it as an
incitement to disobey the law, and local authorities, clamorously supported by
Jacobin clubs, began to enforce it. Bishops began to be expelled from suppressed
sees; chapters were dissolved. In October and early November the first
departmental bishops were elected. But this time the clergy did not meekly
accept its fate. There were protests. ‘I can no more’, declared the incumbent of
the doomed see of Senez, ‘renounce the spiritual contract which binds me to my
111
Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 64.
112
Pope Pius VI, in Jean Comby, How to Read Church History, London: SCM Press, 1989, volume 2,
p. 113).
62
Church than I can renounce the promises of my baptism… I belong to my flock
in life and in death… If God wishes to test his own, the eighteenth century, like
the first century, will have its martyrs.’ The first elected bishop, the deputy
Expilly, who was chosen by the Finistère department, was refused confirmation
by the archbishop of Rennes. In Soissons, the bishop was dismissed by the
departmental authorities for denouncing the Civil Constitution. It was
impossible to dismiss all the 104 priests of Nantes who did the same, but their
salaries were stopped. Evidently there was to be no peaceful transition to a new
ecclesiastical order, and indignant local authorities bombarded the Assembly
with demands for action. Eventually, on 27 November, action was taken. The
deputies decided, after two days of bitter debate, to dismiss at once all clerics
who did not accept the new order unequivocally. And to test this acceptance
they imposed an oath. All beneficed clergy were to swear after mass on the first
available Sunday ‘to be faithful to the nation, the King and the law, and to
uphold with all their power the constitution declared by the National Assembly
and accepted by the king.’ All who refused were to be replaced at once through
the procedures laid down in the Civil Constitution.
“The French Revolution had many turning-points: but the oath of the clergy
was, if not the greatest, unquestionably one of them. It was certainly the
Constituent Assembly’s most serious mistake. For the first time the
revolutionaries forced fellow citizens to choose; to declare themselves publicly
for or against the new order… With no word from Rome, the king sanctioned
the new decree of 26 December, so that oath-taking (or refusal) dominated
public life throughout the country in January and February 1791. The clergy in
the Assembly themselves set the pattern, in that they were completely divided.
Only 109 took the oath, and only two bishops, one of them Talleyrand. As the
deadline approached on 4 January the Assembly was surrounded by crowds
shouting for nonjurors to be lynched; and the patriots, led unpersuasively by the
Protestant Barnave, used every possible argument and procedural ploy to sway
waverers. But there were none. And faced with this example from the majority
of clerical deputies, it is little wonder that so many clerics in the country at large
became refractories (as nonjurors were soon being called)… Above all, there was
a massive refusal of the oath throughout the west…In the end, about 54 per cent
of the parish clergy took the oath. This suggests that well over a third of the
country was now prepared to signal that the Revolution had gone far
enough…”113
There is a bitter irony in these events. How often, since the eleventh century,
had Popes bent western kings to their evil will! However, as present events now
demonstrated, these were pyrrhic victories, which, in weakening the Monarchy,
ultimately weakened the Church, too, in that Church and Monarchy are the two
essential pillars of every Christian society. Right up to the Reformation the
Popes had failed to understand that attacks on the throne were also attacks on
the altar, and that an accusation of “royal despotism” would almost invariably
be linked with one of “episcopal despotism”. The Counter-Reformation Popes
113
Doyle, op. cit, pp. 143-144, 145.
63
were more careful to respect monarchical authority, and Louis XIV’s abrupt
about-turn from Gallicanism to Ultramontanism witnessed to their continuing
influence. But the constant political intrigues of the papal Society of the Jesuits,
which made them a kind of “state within the state”, led to their being banned by
all the governments of Western Europe - a severe blow from which the power of
the Popes never fully recovered and which was an important condition of the
success of the revolution. The Masons and even more radical groups like the
Illuminati were quick to take the place of the Jesuits as the main threat to
established authority, while using the Jesuits’ methods. And now, at the end of
the eighteenth century, when papism was in full retreat before the onslaught of
enlightened despots like Joseph II and revolutionary democrats like the French
National Assembly, and the Popes were desperately in need of the support of
“Most Catholic Kings” such as Louis XVI, they paid the price for centuries of
papal anti-monarchism. Indeed, since it was Papism that destroyed the
Orthodox symphony of powers, and thereby created the conditions for the
revolution, there was reason in Catherine II’s suggestion that the European
powers “embrace the Greek religion to save themselves from this immoral,
anarchic, wicked and diabolical plague…”114
In its second, Jacobin phase the revolution revealed its anti-Christian essence
more clearly. Thus the eulogy at the funeral of Marat in July, 1793 it was
proclaimed: “O heart of Marat, sacré coeur… can the works and benevolence of
the son of Mary be compared with those of the Friend of the People and his
apostles to the Jacobins of our holy Mountain?… Their Jesus was but a false
prophet but Marat is a god…”115
The revolution was in essence anti-Christian because it gave birth to a new

faith instead of Christianity: the cult of the nation. Let us recall the earlier stages
in the rise of the cult of the nation: the oath to the nation that Rousseau provided
for Napoleon’s native Corsica; the birth of the American nation in 1776; the
abortive Irish revolution of 1783; the abortive Dutch revolution of 1785, which
declared liberty the “inalienable right” of every citizen, and whose “Leiden
draft” declared: “the Sovereign is none other than the vote of the people”. 116
These were important harbingers of the future. But they were mere dress-
rehearsals for the full emergence of the new faith, whose foundation stone, as we
have seen, was the third of the Rights of Man: “The principle of all sovereignty
lies in the nation. No body of men, and no individual, can exercise authority
which does not emanate directly therefrom.”
It should be understood that this was not simply an expression of patriotism,

but a new faith to replace all existing faiths. For “the nation, as Abbé Siéyès put it,
recognized no interest on earth above its own, and accepted no law or authority
other than its own – neither that of humanity at large nor of other nations” 117 –
nor, it goes without saying, of God. The nation therefore stood in the place of
114
Catherine II, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 520.
115
116
117
Hobsbawm, op. cit., p. 80.
64
God; in the strict sense of the word, it was an idol. As Hobsbawm rightly
comments: “’The people’ identified with ‘the nation’ was a revolutionary
concept; more revolutionary than the bourgeois-liberal programme which
purported to express it.”118
But what precisely was the nation? To this question the prophet of
nationalism, Rousseau, had provided the answer. The nation, he said, is revealed
in the general will, which was not to be identified with the will of any
individual, such as the king, or group, such as a parliamentary majority, but
only in some spontaneous, mystical upswelling of emotion that carried all before
it - was a “holy madness”, to use Lafayette’s phrase.119
“’He who would dare to undertake to establish a nation would have to feel
himself capable of altering, so to speak, human nature, to transform each
individual, who by his very nature is a unique and perfect whole, into a mere
part of a greater whole, from which this individual would in a sense receive his
life and his being,’ Rousseau had written. He understood that any polity,
however logical, simple, elegant, poetic or modern, would be inadequate to
replace the layered sacrality of something like the Crown of France and the
whole theological and mythical charge of the Catholic Church. Human emotions
needed something richer to feed on than a mere ‘system’ if they were to be
engaged. And engaged they must be, for if one removed religious control of
social behaviour and the monarch’s role as ultimate arbiter, the very fount-head
of civil sanction would dry up. Something had to be put in their place. The
question was ultimately how to induce people to be good in a godless society.
“As it was the people themselves who gave the state its legitimacy, it was
they who had to be invested with divinity. The monarch would be replaced by a
disembodied sovereign in the shape of the nation, which all citizens must be
taught to ‘adore’. ‘It is education that must give to the souls of men the national
form, and so direct their thoughts and their tastes, that they will be patriotic by
inclination, by passion, by necessity,’ Rousseau explained. This education
included not only teaching but also sport and public ceremonies designed to
inculcate the desired values. ‘From the excitement caused by this common
emulation will be born that patriotic intoxication which alone can elevate men
above themselves, and without which liberty is no more than an empty word
and legislation but an illusion.’
“A precondition of this was the total elimination of Christianity. Being a

sentimental person, Rousseau could not remain entirely unmoved by what he
saw as the ‘sublime’ core of Christianity. But the existence of a morally
independent religion alongside the civil institutions was bound to be
destructive. ‘Far from binding the hearts of the citizens to the state, it detaches
them from it, as from all earthly things,’ he writes: ‘I can think of nothing more
contrary to the social spirit.’ It forced on people ‘two sets of laws, two leaders,
118
119
65
two motherlands’, subjecting them to ‘contradictory duties’ and preventing them
from being ‘both devout practitioners and good citizens’. Christianity demanded
self-denial and submission, but only to God, and not to any creation of Man’s. A
Christian’s soul could not be fused with the ‘collective soul’ of the nation,
challenging the very basis of Rousseau’s proposition. His assertion that ‘a man is
virtuous when his particular will is in accordance in every respect with the
general will’, was heresy in Christian terms, according to which virtue consists
in doing the will of God. There was no room for someone whose ultimate loyalty
was to God in Rousseau’s model, which substituted the nation for God.” 120
“Anthropologically visualized as a universal ideal female, the nation kindled

desire for selfless sacrifice in its cause, and that was the great strength of the
French revolution. ‘Since it appeared to be more concerned with the
regeneration of the human race than with reforming France, it aroused feelings
that no political revolutions had hitherto managed to inspire,’ explained
Tocqueville. ‘It inspired proselytism and gave birth to the propagande,’ he
continued, and, ‘like Islam, flooded the whole world with its soldiers, its
apostles and its martyrs.’”121
A programme known as de-christianization was now launched. The calendar

and festivals of the old religion were replaced by those of the new, civic religion
of the nation. Thus July 14, August 10, January 21 (the day of the execution of
Louis XVI) and May 31 (the day of the establishment of the Jacobin tyranny)
were commanded to be celebrated as feast-days. As Bamber Gascoigne writes:
“August 10th was the first anniversary of the day on which the Paris mob had
stormed the Tuileries and had put an effective end to the monarchy. The
occasion was celebrated with a Festival of Regeneration, also known by the even
more uninspiring name of Festival of the Unity and Indivisibility of the
Republic. Among the ruins of the Bastille Jacques-Louis David had built a huge
figure of a seated woman. She was Mother Nature. From her breasts there
spurted two jets of water, at which delegates filled their cups and drank
libations. Three months later there was a Festival of Reason, in which an actress
from the opera played the Goddess of Reason and was enthroned in the
cathedral of Notre-Dame – with the red bonnet of Liberty on her head and a
crucifix beneath one of her elegant feet.”122
All the churches in Paris were closed, and the royal tombs destroyed. Then
there arrived in the Nièvre in September, 1793 the representative Fouché, who
“transformed it into a beacon of religious terror. Fouché, himself a former priest,
came from the Vendée, where he had witnessed the ability of the clergy to
inspire fanatical resistance to the Revolution’s authority. Christianity, he
concluded, could not coexist in any form with the Revolution and, brushing
aside what was left of the ‘constitutional’ Church, he inaugurated a civic religion
of his own devising with a ‘Feast of Brutus’ on 22 September at which he
denounced ‘religious sophistry’. Fouché particularly deplored clerical celibacy: it
120
121
122
Gascoigne, A Brief History of Christianity, London: Robinson, 2003, p. 215.
66
set the clergy apart, and in any case made no contribution to society’s need for
children. Clerics who refused to marry were ordered to adopt and support
orphans or aged citizens. The French people, Fouché declared in a manifesto
published on 10 October, recognized no other cult but that of universal morality;
and although the exercise of all creeds was proclaimed to be free and equal,
none might henceforth be practised in public. Graveyards should exhibit no
religious symbols, and at the gate of each would be an inscription Death is an
eternal sleep. Thus began the movement known as dechristianization. Soon
afterwards Fouché moved on to Lyons; but during his weeks in Nevers his work
had been watched by Chaumette, visiting his native town from Paris. He was to
carry the idea back to the capital, where it was energetically taken up by his
colleagues at the commune.
“Other representatives on mission, meanwhile, had also taken to attacking the

outward manifestations of the Catholic religion. At Abbeville, on the edge of
priest-ridden Flanders, Dumont favoured forced public abjuration of orders,
preferably by constitutional clergy whose continued loyalty to the Revolution
could only now be proved by such gestures. On October 7 in Rheims, Ruhl
personally supervised the smashing of the phial holding the sacred oil of Clovis
used to anoint French kings. None of this was authorized by the Convention: on
the other hand the adoption on 5 October of a new republican calendar marked a
further stage in the divorce between the French State and any sort of religion.
Years would no longer be numbered from the birth of Christ, but from the
inauguration of the French Republic on 22 September 1792. Thus it was already
the Year II. There would be twelve thirty-day months with evocative, seasonal
names; each month would have three ten-day weeks (décades) ending in a rest-
day (décadi). Sundays therefore disappeared and could not be observed unless
they coincided with the less-frequent décadis. The introduction of the system at
this moment only encouraged representatives on mission to intensify their lead;
and dechristianization became an important feature of the Terror in all the
former centres of rebellion when they were brought to heel. Once launched it
was eminently democratic. Anybody could join in smashing images, vandalizing
churches (the very word was coined to describe this outburst of iconoclasm), and
theft of vestments to wear in blasphemous mock ceremonies. Those needing
pretexts could preach national necessity when they tore down bells or walked
off with plate that could be recast into guns or coinage. Such activities were
particular favourites among the Revolutionary Armies. The Parisian
detachments marching to Lyons left a trail of pillaged and closed churches, and
smouldering bonfires of ornaments, vestments, and holy pictures all along their
route. Other contributions took more organization, but Jacobin clubs and
popular societies, not to mention local authorities, were quite happy to
orchestrate festivals of reason, harmony, wisdom, and other such worthy
attributes to former churches; and to recruit parties of priests who, at climactic
moments in these ceremonies, would renounce their vows and declare
themselves ready to marry. If their choice fell on a former nun, so much the
better.
67
“When Chaumetter returned from Nevers, the Paris Commune made
dechristianization its official policy. On 23 October the images of kings on the
front of Notre-Dame were ordered to be removed: the royal tombs at Saint-Denis
had already been emptied and desecrated by order of the Convention in August.
The word Saint began to be removed from street names, and busts of Marat
replaced religious statues. Again the Convention appeared to be encouraging the
trend when it decreed, on 20 October, that any priest (constitutional or
refractory) denounced for lack of civisme by six citizens would be subject to
deportation, and any previously sentenced to deportation but found in France
should be executed. Clerical dress was now forbidden in Paris, and on 7
November Gobel, the elected constitutional bishop, who had already sanctioned
clerical marriage for his clergy, came with eleven of them to the Convention and
ceremonially resigned his see. Removing the episcopal insignia, he put on a cap
of liberty and declared that the only religion of a free people should be that of
Liberty and Equality. In the next few days the handful of priests who were
deputies followed his example. Soon Grégoire, constitutional bishop of Blois,
was the only deputy left clinging to his priesthood and clerical dress. The
sections meanwhile were passing anti-clerical motions, and on 12 November that
of Gravilliers, whose idol had so recently been Jacques Roux, sent a deputation
to the Convention draped in ‘ornaments from churches in their district, spoils
taken from the superstitious credulity of our forefathers and repossessed by the
reason of free men’ to announce that all churches in the section had been closed.
This display followed a great public ceremony held in Notre-Dame, or the
‘Temple of Reason’, as it was now redesignated, on the tenth. On this occasion
relays of patriotic maidens in virginal white paraded reverently before a temple
of philosophy erected where the high altar had stood. From it emerged, at the
climax of the ceremony, a red-capped female figure representing Liberty.
Appreciatively described by an official recorder of the scene as ‘a masterpiece of
nature’, in daily life she was an actress; but in her symbolic role she led the
officials of the commune to the Convention, where she received the fraternal
embrace of the president and secretaries.
“However carefully choreographed, there was not much dignity about these
posturings; and attacks on parish churches and their incumbents (who were
mostly now popularly elected) risked making the Revolution more enemies than
friends. Small-town and anti-religious Jacobin zeal, for example, provoked a
minor revolt in the Brie in the second week in December. To shouts of Long live
the Catholic Religion, we want our priests, we want the Mass on Sundays and Holy
Days, crowds of peasants sacked the local club. Several thousands took up arms
and joined the movement, and only a force of National Guards and sansculottes
from the Revolutionary Army restored order in a district whose tranquillity was
vital to the regular passage of food supplies to the capital from southern
Champagne. But even before this the Committee of Public Safety was growing
anxious about the counter-productive effects of dechristianization. Robespierre
in particular, who believed that religious faith was indispensable to orderly,
civilized society, sounded the alarm. On November 21 he denounced anti-
religious excesses at the Jacobin club. They smacked of more fanaticism than
68
they extinguished.123 The people believed in a Supreme Being, he warned,
whereas atheism was aristocratic.124 At the same time he persuaded the
Committee to circularize popular societies warning them not to fan superstition
and fanaticism by persecution. On 6 December, finally, the Convention agreed to
reiterate the principle of religious freedom in a decree which formally prohibited
all violence or threats against the ‘liberty of cults’. But by then it was too late.
The example of Paris had encouraged Jacobin zealots everywhere, and with the
repression of revolt in full swing and the role of priests in the Vendée
particularly notorious, the remaining trappings of religion were too tempting a
target to ignore. The commune’s response to Robespierre on 23 November had
been to decree the closing of all churches in the capital; and soon local
authorities were shutting them wholesale throughout the country. By the spring,
churches were open for public worship only in the remotest corners of France,
such as the Jura mountains. By then, perhaps 20,000 priests had been bullied into
giving up their status, and 6,000 had given their renunciation the ultimate
confirmation by marrying. In some areas, such as Provence, dechristianization
only reached its peak in March or April 1794."125
Robespierre was still alive, preaching the new, revolutionary definition of

virtue and religion. A cult of the goddess reason was instituted, and by the
Decree of 18 Floréal (7 May) it was declared that the French people recognised a
Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul, and that a cult worthy of the
Supreme Being was the fulfilment of a man’s civic duties. Thus the emphasis
was still on man’s civic duties: religion had no independent function outside the
State, in accordance with the words of Abbé Guillaume Raynal in 1780: “The
State, it seems to me, is not made for religion, but religion for the State.” 126 It was
the same with morality, which was now defined to include among the highest
virtues “the hatred of bad faith and tyranny, the punishment of tyrants and
traitors, help to the unhappy, respect for the weak, protection to the oppressed,
to do all the good possible to others and to be unjust to nobody.”127
On 20 Prairial (8 June), Robespierre moved that “the nation should celebrate

the Supreme Being. Thus every locality was given a month to make its
preparations. The fact that 8 June was also Whit Sunday [Pentecost] may or may
not have been a coincidence; if not, it could have been conceived either as a
challenge or as an olive branch to Christianity. In the event little direction was
given to the localities on how to organize the festival. Some adopted the props of
all-too-recent festivals of reason, merely painting out old slogans with new ones.
123
He said: “There are people who are superstitious in perfectly good faith. They are sick people
whom we must restore to good health by winning their confidence. A forced curé would drive
them to fanaticism. Priests have been denounced for saying the Mass. They will continue to do so
all the longer if you try to prevent them. He who wants to prevent them is more fanatical than
the priest himself” (in Gascoigne, op. cit., p. 214). (V.M.).
124
He said: “Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great being who watches over oppressed
innocence, is altogether popular... If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”
(Hunt, op. cit., p. 68). (V.M.)
125
126
Raynal, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 518.
127
69
Others used the opportunity to allow mass to be said publicly for the first time
in months. But in Paris the organization of the occasion was entrusted to the
experienced hands of the painter David, himself a member of the Committee of
General Security. He built an artificial mountain in the Champ de Mars,
surmounted by a tree of liberty, and thither a mass procession made its way
from the Tuileries. At its head marched the members of the Convention, led by
their president, who happened that week to be Robespierre. He used the
opportunity to deliver two more eulogies of virtue and republican religion,
pointedly ignoring, though not failing to notice, the smirks of his fellow deputies
at the posturings of this pseudo-Pope. Others found it no laughing matter. ‘Look
at the bugger,’ muttered Thuriot, an old associate of Danton. ‘It’s not enough for
him to be master, he has to be God.’”128
Like the other gods of the revolution (on February 12, 1792 the Jacobin club
had ceremoniously called Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin and Mirabeau “gods” 129),
While the fall of Robespierre marked the end of the most fanatical phase in
the revolution, normal life was not restored quickly. “On 18 September 1794, the
Convention had carried the drift of the Revolution since 1790 to a logical
conclusion when it finally renounced the constitutional Church. The Republic, it
decreed, would no longer pay the costs or wages of any cult – not that it had
been paying them in practice for a considerable time already. It meant the end of
state recognition for the Supreme Being, a cult too closely identified with
Robespierre. But above all it marked the abandonment of the Revolution’s own
creation, the constitutional Church. For the first time ever in France, Church and
State were now formally separated. To some this decree looked like a return to
dechristianization, and here and there in the provinces there were renewed
bursts of persecution against refractories. But most read it, correctly, as an
attempt to deflect the hostility of those still faithful to the Church from the
Republic. The natural corollary came with the decree of 21 February 1795 which
proclaimed the freedom of all cults to worship as they liked. The tone of the law
was grudging, and it was introduced with much gratuitous denigration of
priestcraft and superstition. Religion was defined as a private affair, and local
authorities were forbidden to lend it any recognition or support. All outward
signs of religious affiliation in the form of priestly dress, ceremonies, or church
bells remained strictly forbidden. The faithful would have to buy or rent their
own places of worship and pay their own priests or ministers…” 130
128
129
130
70
7. FROM THE DIRECTORY TO NAPOLEON
Let us summarize the effects of the revolution so far … As regards

the Church, writes Comby, it was deprived of its autonomous position
within the State and its geography "was completely reshaped. The
dioceses were reduced from 235 to 185, one per department, of which
ten were archdioceses. There was to be one parish for every 6000
inhabitants. Bishops and priests would be elected by the same electors,
including non-Catholics, who elected the various officials of the
department or district. In this way, the legislators thought to return to
the origins of the church. A bishop would require his metropolitan
(archbishop) to install him; he would write to the pope only to inform
71
him of his appointment and to assure him that he was in communion
with him." 131
As for the nobles, writes Hampson, they "were never proscribed as such and
their property was not confiscated unless they went into exile or were
condemned for political offences. Some noble families suffered very heavy
casualties during the Terror; others survived without much difficulty. The
'anti-feudal' legislation of the Constituent Assembly bore heavily on those who
income was derived mainly from manorial dues; those whose wealth came
from their extensive acres may have gained more from the abolition of tithes
than they lost from increased taxation. Some made profitable investments in
church land which were the 'best buy' of the revolution since massive inflation
reduced to a nominal figure the price paid by those who had opted to buy in
instalments...Over the country as a whole the proportion of land owned by the
nobility was somewhat reduced by the revolution but in most parts a
substantial proportion of the landowners still came from the nobility, and the
land was the most important source of wealth until well into the nineteenth
century...
"The urban radicals whom the more radical - but nevertheless gentlemanly -
revolutionary leaders liked to eulogize as sans-culottes, fared badly... As an
observer reported in 1793, 'That class has suffered badly; it took the Bastille,
was responsible for the tenth of August and so on... Hébert and Marat, two of
the most extreme of the radical journalists, agreed that the sans-culottes were
worse off than they had been in 1789. Soon, of course, all this was going to
change... but it never did...
"The revolution did not 'give the land to the peasants'. They already
possessed about a quarter of it, although most of them did not own
enough to be self-sufficient. The Church lands were mostly snapped up
by the wealthier farmers or by outside speculators... The prevailing
economic theories persuaded the various assemblies to concentrate
very heavily on direct taxation, most of which fell on the land.
Requisitioning of food, horses and carts was borne exclusively by the
peasants....
"Once again the revolution greatly increased the impact of the state
on the day-to-day life of the community. This was especially obvious
where religion was concerned." 132
After Thermidor and the execution of Robespierre, a new phase of

the Revolution began. In 1795 a committee of five, the Directory, was
established. Fearing coups from the royalist right as well as from the
Jacobin left, it continued the slow torture of the Dauphin, known in
history as Louis XVII, who died in prison on June 10.
131
Comby, op. cit., p. 112.
132
Hampson, op. cit, pp. 235, 238.
72
“With the Directory,” writes Edmund Wilson, “the French Revolution had
passed into the period of reaction which was to make possible the domination of
Bonaparte. The great rising of the bourgeoisie, which, breaking out of the feudal
forms of the monarchy, dispossessing the nobility and the clergy, had presented
itself to society as a movement of liberation, had ended by depositing the wealth
in the hands of a relatively small number of people and creating a new conflict of
classes. With the reaction against the Terror, the ideals of the Revolution were
allowed to go by the board. The five politicians of the Directory and the
merchants and financiers allied with them were speculating in confiscated
property, profiteering in army supplies, recklessly inflating the currency and
gambling on the falling gold louis. And in the meantime, during the winter of
1795-96, the working people of Paris were dying of hunger and cold in the
streets.”133
This situation led to attempts to overthrow the government, the most

significant of which was that of “Gracchus” Babeuf, who “rallied around him
those elements of the Revolution who were trying to insist on its original aims.
In his paper, The Tribune of the People, he denounced the new constitution of 1795,
which had abolished universal suffrage and imposed a high property
qualification. He demanded not merely political but also economic equality. He
declared that he would prefer civil war itself to ‘this horrible concord which
strangles the hungry’. But the men who had expropriated the nobles and the
Church remained loyal to the principle of property itself. The Tribune of the People
was stopped, and Babeuf and his associates were sent to prison.
“While Babeuf was in jail, his seven-year-old daughter died of hunger. He

had managed to remain poor all his life. His popularity had been all with the
poor. His official posts had earned him only trouble. Now, as soon as he was free
again, he proceeded to found a political club, which opposed the policies of the
Directory and which came to be known as the Society of the Equals. They
demanded in a Manifesto of the Equals (not, however, at that time made public)
that there should be ‘no more individual property in land; the land belonged to
no one… We declare that we can no longer endure, with the enormous majority
of men, labor and sweat in the service and for the benefit of a small minority. It
is has now been long enough and too long that less than a million individuals
have been disposing of that which belongs to more than twenty millions of their
kind… Never has a vaster design been conceived or put into execution. Certain
men of genius, certain sages, have spoken of it from time to time in a low and
trembling voice. Not one of them has had the courage to tell the whole truth…
People of France! Open your eyes and your heart to the fullness of happiness.
Recognize and proclaim with us the Republic of Equals!’
“The Society of Equals was also suppressed; Bonaparte himself closed the
club. But, driven underground, they now plotted an insurrection; they proposed
to set up a new directory. And they drafted a constitution that provided for ‘a
great national community of goods’ and worked out with some precision the
133
Wilson, To the Finland Station, London: Phoenix, 2004, p. 71.
73
mechanics of a planned society. The cities were to be defiled and the population
distributed in villages. The State was to ‘seize upon the new-born individual,
watch over his early moments, guarantee the milk and care of his mother and
bring him to the maison nationale, where he was to acquire the virtue and
enlightenment of a true citizen.’ There was thus to be equal education for all. All
able-bodied persons were to work, and the work that was unpleasant or arduous
was to be accomplished by everybody’s taking turns. The necessities of life were
to be supplied by the government, and the people were to eat at communal
tables. The government was to control all foreign trade and to pass on
everything printed.
“In the meantime, the value of the paper money had depreciated almost to
zero. The Directory tried to save the situation by converting the currency into
land warrants, which were at a discount of eight-two per cent the day they were
issued; and there was a general belief on the part of the public that the
government had gone bankrupt. There were in Paris along some five hundred
thousand people in need of relief. The Babouvistes placarded the city with a
manifesto…; they declared that Nature had given to every man an equal right to
the enjoyment of every good, and it was the purpose of society to defend that
right, that Nature had imposed on every man the obligation to work, and that no
one could escape this obligation without committing a crime; that in ‘a true
society’ there would be neither rich nor poor; that the object of the Revolution
had been to destroy every inequality and to establish the well-being of all; that
they Revolution was therefore ‘not finished’, and that those who had done away
with the Constitution of 1793 were guilty of lèse majesté against the people…
“Babeuf’s ‘insurrectionary committee’ had agents in the army and the police,
and they were doing such effective work that the government tried to send its
troops out of Paris, and, when they refused to obey, disbanded them. During the
early days of May, 1796, on the eve of the projected uprising, the Equals were
betrayed by a stool pigeon and their leaders were arrested and put in jail. The
followers of Babeuf made an attempt to rally a sympathetic police squadron, but
were cut down by a new Battalion of the Guard which had been pressed into
service for the occasion.
“Babeuf was made a public example by being taken to Vendôme in a cage –

an indignity which not long before had filled the Parisians with fury when the
Austrians had inflicted it on a Frenchman…
“[At this trial] the vote, after much disagreement, went against Babeuf. One of
his sons had smuggled in to him a tin dagger made out of a candlestick, and
when he heard the verdict pronounced, he stabbed himself in the Roman
fashion, but only wounded himself horribly and did not die. The next morning
(May 27, 1797) he went to the guillotine. Of his followers thirty were executed
and many sentenced to penal servitude or deportation.”134
134
Wilson, op. cit., pp. 72-74, 79.
74
"The Babeuf plot of 1796," writes Malcolm Crook, "was a reflection
of the scant popular support that former Jacobins were now able to
muster. The imposition of a new order from above seemed to have
replaced the vision of a people seizing power for themselves from
below…" 135
The Directory gave Napoleon his chance to seize power. Napoleon was a
Corsican whose father had resisted the French takeover of Corsica in 1767. He
first showed his revolutionary mettle on October 5 1795 (13 Vendémiaire), when
he mowed down hundreds of moderate anti-Jacobins who were trying to take
over the city centre. In reward for this ruthless act, the revolution gave him
command of the Army of Italy, where he first showed his military genius by
comprehensively defeating the Austrians and occupying Venice in May, 1797.
For a time he rested on his laurels, while studying and cultivating the cultural
leaders of Paris. Then, on 19 Brumaire (November 10), 1799, his chance came. He
overthrew the Directory, describing parliamentarism as “hot air”, and frightened
the two elective assemblies into submission. On December 13 a new constitution
was proclaimed with Bonaparte as the first of three Consuls with full executive
powers. And on December 15 the three Consuls declared: “Citizens, the
Revolution is established upon its original principles: it is consummated…” 136
Paul Johnson writes: “The new First Consul was far more powerful than
Louis XIV, since he dominated the armed forces directly in a country that was
now organized as a military state. All the ancient restraints on divine-right
kingship – the Church, the aristocracy and its resources, the courts, the cities and
their charters, the universities and their privileges, the guilds and their
immunities – all had been swept away by the Revolution, leaving France a legal
blank on which Bonaparte could stamp the irresistible force of his
personality.”137
135
Crook, Napoleon comes to power, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996, p. 30.
136
137
Johnson, Napoleon, London: Phoenix, 2002, p. 46.
75
8. NAPOLEON AND THE ENGLISH
As Eric Hobsbawm notes, the Anglo-French conflict had “a persistence and
stubbornness unlike any other. [Embittered by the many wars they had already
fought in the eighteenth century,] neither side was really prepared to settle for
less than total victory” – a rare thing in those days, though a common one in our
still more savage times.138 The first legacy of the revolution, therefore, was total
war: war between classes, war between nations, war between religions (for the
revolution, as have seen, must be counted as a religion). David Bell argues that
many of the elements of “total war” – conscription, total disregard for the rules
of combat, guerilla warfare, the perverse idea of war for the sake of peace – were
first practised, not in the First World War, as often thought, but during
Napoleon’s revolutionary wars.139 Such was the “fraternity” created by the
revolution… As for the English, Napoleon had a particular animus against them,
that “nation of shopkeepers”, as he contemptuously called them, the one nation
he never succeeded in defeating on the battlefield, that fought him longer than
any other, and in whose captivity he finally died. The origin of this animus may
have been Britain’s temporary conquest of his own native land of Corsica.
But let us begin at the beginning of this titanic struggle… Tombs writes: “The
Royal Navy sailed into France’s base at Toulon in August 1793 to support rebels
there, but had to withdraw under the cannon fire of a young artillery officer,
Napoleon Bonaparte, in December, after capturing or torching the French
Mediterranean fleet. A landing at Quiberon Bay in July 1795 of a force of émigrés
to help other rebels in western France ended in massacre. Financial aid by
Britain to resurgent royalist parties in France, and the recruitment of agents at
the heart of the republican regime – even its police and army – by British secret
agents, came to nothing when the same General Bonaparte crushed a royalist
uprising in Paris in October 1795. Corsican patriots threw out the French and
asked to join the British Empire, but the island could not be held long and was
evacuated in 1796. The dynamic Bonaparte marched into Italy in 1796 and
crushingly defeated the Austrians, who were forced to yield control of northern
Italy to France and accept French annexation of the Austrian Netherlands and
the Rhineland. Britain’s naval bases in Italy were threatened, and in 1797 the
Royal Navy had to evacuate the Mediterranean. Pitt was willing to make peace
with a reasonable French republic, if such emerged. As early as December 1795
the King’s Speech had hinted at negotiations, but the French returned an
‘insolent’ response demanding the return of all colonies and acceptance of its
huge territorial expansion. [The Prime Minister William] Pitt was left hoping for
‘the return of reason to our deluded enemy’. Though he won a general election
in 1796, he and the Cabinet were close to despair over the war: ‘We shall be left
to sustain alone the conflict with France and Holland, probably joined by Spain,
and perhaps favoured more or less openly by the Northern powers,’ and though
‘with proper exertion we can make our party good against them all,’, victory
seemed inconceivable.
138
139
Bell, The First Total War, London: Bloomsbury, 2007.
76
“In 1798, hope suddenly dawned. Bonaparte led an invasion of Egypt, aiming
to dominate the Mediterranean and perhaps march on India: ‘Truly to
overthrow England,’ he argued, ‘we must occupy Egypt’. But his fleet was
annihilated by Nelson at the battle of the Nile in August: eleven out of thirteen
warships were destroyed or captured, and Bonaparte abandoned his army in
Egypt and escaped back to France. This gave a fillip to all France’s enemies, and
a ‘Second Coalition’ of Austria, Russia, Turkey and Britain prepared a final
effort. The revolution now seemed doomed: revolts erupted throughout the
occupied territories and in western and southern France, while pro-French rebels
in Ireland and Naples were bloodily crushed. In 1799 the Russians and Austrians
advanced through Italy, Switzerland and Germany. British and Russian troops
landed in Holland and captured the Dutch fleet. Bonaparte seized dictatorial
power as First Consul in November 1799, telling his troops that the politicians
were in British pay. He offered peace terms, which were promptly rejected.
London thought he was playing for time: ‘The whole game is in our hands now,
and it wants little more than patience to play it well, to the end.’ The final push was
set for the summer of 1800, with coordinated invasions of France from several
directions. But everything unraveled as the allies fell out and the French rallied.
Consul Bonaparte showed himself to be more than just another ambitious
general, when he ended internal rebellion by force and concession and then
marched an army rapidly over the Alps to defeat the surprised Austrians at
Marengo on 14 June. This effectively finished off the shaky Second Coalition.
Bonaparte sent a letter to the Austrian emperor, supposedly written on the field
of Marengo ‘surrounded by 15,000 corpses’, offering peace and blaming the war
solely on the greed of England – an explanation that many in Europe found
plausible.
“Now it was Britain that suddenly faced defeat. Austria and Russia sought
peace. Bonaparte was preparing all alliance with Spain to attack Ireland,
Portugal and India. Prussia occupied Hanover, the last British foothold in
Europe. Russia, Denmark and Sweden were forming an ‘Armed Neutrality’ and
excluding British ships from the Baltic. Gold reserves dwindled and bread prices
rose to three times their 1798 level. Oxford students were rationed; others less
fortunate starved. A wave of riots tied down a large part of the army. Demands
for peace became deafening. Pitt, on the edge of a breakdown, resigned in March
1801 when the king refused to extend equal right to Catholics following the
union with Ireland. The English now lived their recurring nightmare: an enemy
dominating the Continent. This had to be pre-empted by what a minister called
‘one brilliant act of British enterprise [that] would intervene to check and soften
the uniformity of calamity and defeat’. In fact there were two. In March 1801
General Abercrombie forced a landing in Egypt and went on to defeat a larger
French army – a remarkable success for the despised Redcoats. In April Nelson,
at the first battle of Copenhagen, destroyed the Danish fleet, threatened to
bombard the city, and forced Denmark to withdraw from the ‘Armed
Neutrality’, whose other members prudently did likewise. The pro-French Tsar
Paul was assassinated, and Russian rapprochement with France halted.
“So the unwinnable war could be ended. In November 1801, Pitt made a frank
admission to the Commons, if not of defeat, certainly of partial failure: ‘[Our]
77
great object… was defence in a war waged against most of the nations of
Europe, but against us with particular malignity… I had hopes of our being able
to put together the scattered fragments of that great and venerable edifice [the
French monarchy] in the stead of that mad system which threatened the
destruction of Europe… This, it is true, has been found unsustainable.’ Britain
concluded the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802, in which it agreed to return most
overseas conquests except Trinidad and Ceylon, and effectively recognized the
Continental hegemony of a much enlarged France, including even control of the
Low Countries. No agreement in our modern history, except that of Munich in
1938, has been so vilified and so welcomed. Food prices fell precipitously and
rioting subsided. A jubilant Lambeth publican gave away all his beer. The
London Corresponding Society wrote an adulatory letter to Bonaparte declaring
their devotion to France and thanking him that ‘peace reigns on earth, and this is
the work of Frenchmen.’ Charles James Fox owned that ‘the Triumph of the
French government over the English does in fact afford me a degree of pleasure
which it is very difficult to disguise.’ Tourists streamed across the Channel to see
what post-Revolutionary France was like: they found ruined churches and
chateaux, and lots of soldiers. Politicians (eighty-two MPs and thirty-one peers)
went in the hope of sizing up the charismatic Bonaparte. Dissenters identified
him as God’s latest instrument, in the words of one radical MP, ‘the Great Man
of the People of France, the Liberator of Europe’. Intellectuals admired him as a
macho version of themselves. Fox found him rather a bore, yet praised him in
the Commons as ‘the most stupendous monument of human wisdom’.” 140
As long as the human spirit is not completely corrupted and some flicker of
conscience remains alive in it, it will, with God’s help, detect the falsehood of the
Antichrist, albeit obscurely and without full understanding at first, and will seek
to escape his coils. This is what happened in England from 1803, in Germany
from 1806 and in Russia from 1807, in relation to that true forerunner of the
Antichrist, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon’s global ambitions, writes Tombs, “explain why peace [with

England] broke down after less than a year over the seemingly minor issue of
Malta. Its inhabitants had requested British aid to expel the French. The Treaty of
Amiens required Britain to evacuate the island. But Valetta’s fortified Grand
Harbour barred the way to Egypt and Asia, and the British stayed on.
Negotiations came to nothing, and on 12 May 1803, after an ultimatum, Britain
declared war. Ordinary people on both sides of the Channel were horrified,
foreseeing years of hunger, taxation, conscription and impressment. Seamen
sought safer jobs in coal mines and quarries. Landmen rioted when ballots for
militia service were ordered. In France, men married elderly widows to gain
exemption, chopped off their trigger fingers, or headed for the hills. Both
countries faced a deadly war of attrition. British ministers were remarkably
confident that France would crack first.
140
78
“The political climate in England changed. Many who had supported the
revolution in 1789 had been disillusioned, and had even less sympathy for
Bonaparte’s dictatorship. One minister actually appealed in the Commons for
support from English Jacobins, ‘as men of spirit, of lovers of what they call
liberty… [are they] content to be put under the yoke and crushed by France?’
France’s invasion of peaceful Switzerland in 1798 had already turned
Wordsworth against the revolution, even if his endorsement of England’s cause
was distinctly grudging: ‘O grief that Earth’s best hopes rest all with Thee!’
Many – including Wordsworth and Coleridge – took a grim pride that the
country stood alone. Most Dissenting Congregations now supported a defensive
war against a militaristic dictatorship…
“Like his predecessors in 1745, 1759 and 1779, the emperor Napoleon…
decided on invasion: ‘The Channel is a ditch which will be crossed when
someone has the boldness to try it.’ While still at peace he had started building
2,500 gunboats and landing craft, and he marshaled an Army of England of
165,000 men strung out between the Channel ports with its headquarters at
Boulogne. He was confident that ‘foggy weather and some luck will make me
master of London, of parliament and of the Bank of England.’…
“Was invasion possible? Napoleon thought so: ‘If we control the crossing for
twelve hours, England is dead.’ But some French naval officers feared that many
of his overloaded landing craft would sink even without the intervention of the
Royal Navy. In August 1805, Napoleon, Napoleon summoned his battle fleet up
the Channel to cover the invasion, but his naval commander, Admiral
Villeneuve, shied away from what he considered certain disaster, and later
committed suicide. Napoleon angrily abandoned the invasion and marched his
army off ‘to fight England in Germany,’ defeating the Austrians and the
Russians with chilling efficiency at Ulm on 20 October and Austerlitz on 2
December. Meanwhile, on 21 October, the French and Spanish fleets were no less
efficiently destroyed at Cape Trafalgar. This long remained in the forefront of
national memory as the victory that decisively ended the recurring threat of
invasion. England had expected that ‘every man will do his duty’, following the
example given by its most charismatic sailor, Horatio Nelson, who gave his life
and created a model hero for the age, combining audacity, vulnerability and
pathos (and, though this was played down, a rather turbulent private life).
Trafalgar was in reality a one-sided battle, as was now invariably the case when
the totally dominant Royal Navy got to grips with its enemies, inferior in
training, morale and physical health: two-thirds of the Franco-Spanish fleet of
thirty-three ships of the line were captured or destroyed by the twenty-nine
British at a cost of only 448 British lives. French casualties were appalling. The
Redoutable, for example, battered by the larger Victory and two other ships, had
571 of her 643 crew killed or wounded. Of 15,000 Frenchmen engaged, only 4,000
escaped. Napoleon did not give up: he soon ordered the construction all over
Europe of a massive fleet, with Antwerp chosen as the main base for future
invasion…
“By the last decades of the century, England was safe from invasion for the
first time in its history, and so it remained. The French in 1779 had shown that a
79
major landing might still have been possible, but Napoleon’s failure in 1805
showed that it no longer was. At the same time, the Royal Navy extended its
dominance round the globe. Sailing fleets in distant seas required roomy, deep
and sheltered anchorages, stores of spars, rope, sails and ammunition, and a
large hinterland for fresh food and water. The British secured bases round the
globe – Gibraltar, Malta, Halifax, Bermuda, Jamaica, Antigua, St. Helena,
Capetown, Mauritius, Bombay, Calcutta, Sydney – making a constant naval
presence possible. As France and its allies lost their bases, they lost the very
possibility of naval action. Domination of the European seas and the ability to
project invincible power across the oceans, and hence to exert pressure over the
world’s commercial and economic life, was the foundation of a power which no
other state or combination of states would seriously challenge until the Fascist
Axis of the Second World War.
“But direct British power stopped at the Channel and North Sea coasts:
strategically and politically, the French dominated the Continent, and the British
could do nothing in Europe without allies. When Napoleon signed the Treaty of
Tilsit with defeated Russia in 1807, Britain was alone. But there remained
economic warfare. Britain’s economy was doing rather well out of the conflict.
Since 1790 overseas trade had grown by nearly 60 percent, and colonial re-
exports, mainly sugar and coffee, by 187 percent. Domestic demand was strong.
Agriculture had increased the acreage under the plough. The City had received a
flood of capital and people seeking security and become truly international: rival
financial centres, notably Amsterdam and Frankfurt, have never caught up
since. Britain’s finances seemed able to withstand war indefinitely, and subsidize
other countries willing to fight the French. The French resorted to the guerre de
course, attacks on merchant shipping. This inflicted damage on British trade, but
it could not defeat Britain, which lost only 2 percent of its merchant fleet during
the Napoleonic Wars. The French themselves suffered far more: in 1803 they had
1,500 ocean-going merchant ships, but by 1812 only 179 – compared with
Britain’s 24,000. So Napoleon ordered a land blockade. In November 1806 his
‘Berlin Decrees’ prohibited all trade with Britain from France and its satellites,
and ordered the seizure of all British merchandise. This ‘Continental System’
aimed to wreck British trade and increase that of France: ‘England will end up
weeping tears of blood’. London retaliated with Orders in Council in November
1807 forbidding any ship from any country to trade with Napoleonic Europe
unless it first passed through a British port and paid a 25 percent duty.” 141
141
Tombs, op. cit., pp. 398-402, 405-406, 409-410.
80
9. NAPOLEON AND RELIGION
The Revolution had already swept away all the complex structures of
feudalism, thereby preparing the way for the totalitarian state. But Napoleon
went further. Thus in addition to the measures discussed above, he abolished
trade unions, introduced a standardized system of weights and measures, and a
standardized system of education and legislation, the famous Code Napoléon.
Everything, from religion and charity to economics and the government of
friendly sister-republics, such as Holland, had to be controlled from the centre.
And the centre was Napoleon.
Napoleon’s attitude towards religion was on the one hand respectful and on
the other hand manipulative and utilitarian. His respectfulness is revealed in the
following perceptive remark: “There are only two forces in the world: the sword
and the spirit; by spirit I mean the civil and religious institutions; in the long run
the sword is always defeated by the spirit.” 142 On the other hand, his essentially
unbelieving, utilitarian attitude is revealed in the following: “I see in religion not
the mystery of the Incarnation but the mystery of order in society”. 143 “What is it
that makes the poor man take it for granted that ten chimneys smoke in my
palace while he dies of cold, that I have ten changes of raiment in my wardrobe
while he is naked, that on my table at each meal there is enough to sustain a
family for a week? It is religion, which says to him that in another life I shall be
his equal, indeed that he has a better chance of being happy there than I have.”144
In other words, religion was powerful, and as such had to be respected. But it
was powerful not because it was true, but because it was a – perhaps the – major
means of establishing order in society. More particularly, it was the major means
of establishing obedience to his, Napoleon’s rule – which is why he issued an
Imperial Catechism whose purpose was to “bind by religious sanctions the
conscience of the people to the august person of the Emperor” 145:
Q: Why are we bound in all these duties towards our Emperor?

A: Because God… has made him the agent of His power on earth. Thus it is that to
honour and serve our Emperor is to honour and serve God Himself.146
Napoleon, writes Doyle, “never made the mistake of underestimating either

the power of religion or the resilience of the Church. Under orders in the spring
of 1796 to march on Rome to avenge the murder by a Roman mob of a French
142
Napoleon, in Vincent Cronin, Napoleon, London: HarperCollins, 1994, p. 202.
143
Napoleon, in Cronin, op. cit., p. 211.
144
Napoleon, in Gascoigne, op. cit., p. 216.
145
Napoleon, in Gascoigne, op. cit., p. 217.
146
Napoleon, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 532. In 1816 Napoleon gave another, less honest
account of his motives: “As soon as I had power, I immediately re-established religion. I made it
the groundwork and foundation upon which I built. I considered it as the support of sound
principles and good morality, both in doctrine and in practice. Besides, such is the restlessness of
man, that his mind requires that something undefined and marvellous which religion offers; and
it is better for him to find it there, than to seek it of Cagliostro, of Mademoiselle Lenormand, or of
the fortune-tellers and imposters” (Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 532).
81
envoy, he was confronted by a Spanish emissary from the pontiff. ’I told him
[the Spaniard reported], if you people take it into your heads to make the pope
say the slightest thing against dogma or anything touching on it, you are
deceiving yourselves, for he will never do it. You might, in revenge, sack, burn
and destroy Rome, St. Peter’s etc. but religion will remain standing in spite of
your attacks. If all you wish is that the pope urge peace in general, and
obedience to legitimate power, he will willingly do it. He appeared to me
captivated by this reasoning…’ Certainly he continued while in Italy to treat the
Pope with more restraint than the Directory had ordered: and when, early the
next year, the Cispadane Republic was established in territories largely taken
from the Holy See, he advised its founders that: ‘Everything is to be done by
degrees and with gentleness. Religion is to be treated like property.’ Devoid of
any personal faith, in Egypt he even made parade of following Islam in the
conviction that it would strengthen French rule. By the time he returned to
Europe, it was clear that Pope Pius VI would not after all be the last…
“This approach bore one important fruit: in his Christmas sermon for 1797 the
new Pope, Pius VII, declared that Christianity was not incompatible with
democracy – a very major concession to the revolution that later Popes would
take back.
“On his second entry into Milan, in June 1800, he convoked the city’s clergy to
the great cathedral, and declared, even before Marengo was fought: ‘It is my
firm intention that the Christian, Catholic and Roman religion shall be preserved
in its entirety, that it shall be publicly performed… No society can exist without
morality; there is no good morality without religion. It is religion alone,
therefore, that gives to the State a firm and durable support…’”147
Religious toleration was both in accordance with the ideals of democracy and
politically expedient. Thus to the same clergy he said: “The people is sovereign;
if it wants religion, respect its will.” And to his own Council of State he said:
“My policy is to govern men as the majority wish. That, I believe, is the way to
recognize the sovereignty of the people. It was by becoming catholic that I ended
the was in the Vendée, it was by turning Mohammedan that I gained a hold in
Egypt, it was by turning ultramontane that I won over people in Italy. If I were
governing Jews, I should rebuild Solomon’s temple.” 148
Napoleon’s remark about gaining a hold in Egypt by turning Mohammedan

was literally true. He “promised respect for the Islamic religion, even discussing
with the leading ulama the terms on which a mass conversion of his army might
be considered (circumcision proved a stumbling block).”149
It is in this astonishingly cynical attitude to religion that Napoleon reveals his

modernity, making him perhaps the closest forerunner to the Antichrist that had
147
148
Cronin, op. cit., p. 212; Ivan Ilyin, “O Monarkhii i Respublikanstve” (On Monarchy and
Republicanism), Sobrannie Sochinenia (Collected Works), Moscow, 1994, vol. 4, p. 492.
149
John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Rise & Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000, London: Penguin
Books, 2008, pp. 182-183.
82
yet appeared on the stage of world history, closer even, in some ways, than
Lenin or Stalin. For the Antichrist will not – at first – persecute religion; he will
rather try to be the champion of all religions – in order to subdue them all to his
will. And he will rebuild Solomon’s temple…
Napoleon’s first task in the religious sphere was to heal the breach between
the Constitutional Church, which had accepted the revolution, and the non-
jurors, who had rejected it. Only the non-jurors were recognised by the Pope, so
an agreement had to be reached with Rome. Finally, on July 15, 1801, a
Concordat was signed.
“This document,” writes Cronin, “opens with a preamble describing Roman

Catholicism as ‘the religion of the great majority of the French people’ and the
religion professed by the consuls. Worship was to be free and public. The Pope,
in agreement with the Government, was to re-map dioceses in such a way as to
reduce their number by more than half to sixty. The holders of bishoprics were
to resign and if they declined to do so, were to be replaced by the Pope. The First
Consul was to appoint new bishops; the Pope was to invest them. The
Government was to place at the disposal of bishops all the un-nationalized
churches necessary for worship, and to pay bishops and curés a suitable salary.
“The Concordat was an up-to-date version of the old Concordat, which had
regulated the Church in France for almost 300 years. But it was less Gallican, that
is, it gave the French hierarchy less autonomy. Napoleon conceded to the Pope
not only the power of investing bishops, which he had always enjoyed, but the
right, in certain circumstances, to depose them, which was something new.
Napoleon did this in order to be able to effect a clean sweep of bishops.
“Napoleon did not discuss the Concordat beforehand with his Council of
State. When he did show it to them they criticized it as insufficiently Gallican.
The assemblies, they predicted, would never make it law unless certain riders
were added. Finally seventy ‘organic articles’ were drawn up and added to the
Concordat [without consulting the pope]. For example, all bulls from Rome were
to be subject to the Government’s placet, one of which asserted that the Pope
must abide by the decisions of an ecumenical council…” 150
In April, 1802, Napoleon reopened the churches in France, which proved to

be one of his most popular measures, and it enabled him to enlist the Church in
support of his government – as did, of course, his coronation by the Pope.
Moreover, notes Johnson, “by making peace with the Church, he prepared the
way for a reconciliation with the old landowners and aristocrats who had been
driven into exile by the Revolution, and whom he wanted back to provide
further legitimacy to his regime.” 151 However, a group of French and Belgian
Catholics, numbering at one time as much as 100,000 people, rejected the
Concordat, forming the so-called Petite Église (Little Church).152
150
Cronin, op. cit., pp. 216-217.
151
Johnson, op. cit., p. 48.
152
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_%C3%89glise
83
“Even while seeking the Church’s support,” writes Cronin, “Napoleon kept
firmly to the principle that the temporal and spiritual are two separate realms,
and had to be kept separate in France. He might easily have used his growing
authority to subordinate the Church to the State, but although he was
occasionally tempted to do so, he quickly drew back… Equally, Napoleon
refrained from subordinating the State to the Church. When bishops urged him
to shut all shops and cabarets on Sundays so that the faithful should not be
enticed from Mass, Napoleon replied: ‘The curé’s power resides in exhortations
from the pulpit and in the confessional; police spies and prisons are bad ways of
trying to restore religious practices.’”153
However, while Napoleon wanted the Church to flourish, it could

do so only under the general control of the State. This was made
abundantly clear at his coronation in 1804, when instead of allowing
the Pope to crown him, he took the crown from his hands and crowned
himself! 154 “For the pope’s purposes,” he said to Cardinal Fesch, “I am
Charlemagne… I therefore expect the pope to accommodate his conduct
to my requirements. If he behaves well I shall make no outward
changes; if not, I shall reduce him to the status of bishop of Rome…” 155
Not for nothing did Napoleon say: “If I were not me, I would like to be
Gregory VII”. 156 Gregory had secularized the papacy by making it into
a secular kingdom. Napoleon had done the same from the opposite
direction…
However, the pope continued to put up a resistance. “As part of his war with
England, Napoleon wanted the pope to submit to the obligations of the
continental blockade: the ban on trade with England and her allies. The pope
refused, and the situation deteriorated. In 1808 Rome was occupied by French
troops. In May 1809 the Papal States were reunited with the French empire. The
pope excommunicated the usurpers. 157 On 6 July the pope was put under house
arrest at Savona (near Genoa) until March 1812. The bull of excommunication
was published in France despite the police. Pius VII then refused to consecrate
153
Cronin, op. cit., p. 220.
154
Again, there is a resemblance to Cromwell. “It was said that, in bringing to an end to
‘Barebone’s Parliament’, Cromwell took the crown from Christ and put it on his own head”
(Peter Ackroyd, The History of England, vol. III, Civil War, London: Macmillan, 2014, p. 333).
155
156
Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ, London: Bantam Press, 1988, p. 68.
157
When Napoleon removed the pope from his status as temporal ruler (in exchange for a
handsome salary), he said to him: “Our Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, “although a descendant of
David, did not want an earthly kingdom…” Pius then excommunicated Napoleon for his
“blasphemy” and refused to invest his nominees to vacant bishoprics.
In 1811 Monsieur Emery, the director of Saint-Sulpice, defended the Pope, reminding
Napoleon “that God had given the Pope spiritual power over all Christians. ‘But not temporal
power,’ objected Napoleon. ‘Charlemagne gave him that, and I, as Charlemagne’s successor,
intended to relieve him of it. What do you think of that, Monsieur Emery?’ ‘Sire, exactly what
Bossuet thought. In his Declaration du clergé de France he says that he congratulates not only the
Roman Church but the Universal Church on the Pope’s temporal sovereignty because, being
independent, he can more easily exercise his functions as father of all the faithful.’ Napoleon
replied that what was true for Bossuet’s day did not apply in 1811, when western Europe was
ruled by one man, not disputed by several” (Cronin, op. cit., pp. 220-223) (V.M.)
84
the bishops nominated by Napoleon and there were soon seventeen dioceses
without a bishop. So that he could marry Maria Theresa of Austria, Napoleon
obtained an annulment of his marriage with Josephine from the religious
authorities in Paris, who were cooperative. The Roman cardinals who were in
Paris refused to attend the wedding, which took place in 1810.
“In order to get out of the impasse caused by having dioceses without
bishops, Napoleon summoned a national council in Paris in 1811. The bishops
affirmed their loyalty to the pope but did not want to incur the emperor’s
displeasure, and undertook to win over Pius VII. However, he would not give
way. Napoleon had him taken to Fontainebleu in June 1812. When subjected to
force the pope made some concessions (the Concordat of Fontainebleu) which he
very quickly went back on. Military disasters led the emperor to send the pope
to Rome, where he made a triumphal entrance on 24 May 1814.”158
Thus in France, as in England, the established Church survived the

Revolution. The restoration of the one-man-rule under Napoleon went hand-in-
hand with the restoration of the Church, if not to a position of independence,
still less of “symphony” with the State, at any rate of greater influence than
during the 1790s. In the longer term, however, the Catholic Church’s authority
and influence continued to decline…
158
Comby, op. cit., p. 119.
85
10. FROM SALAMANCA TO WATERLOO
Napoleon was finally defeated by two enormous mistakes elicited by the

same cause: frustration at the failure of his economic war against Britain. First,
he invaded Spain and Portugal, because Lisbon was the weak point in his
Continental System; it was through that city that Britain continued to trade with
a continent that still coveted the goods that only the English could supply them
with. But the Spanish and Portuguese were conservative nations that did not
succumb to the lure of French revolutionary ideals; so, with English support,
they fought a cruel but effective guerrilla war against the invaders that became a
running sore in Napoleon’s western flank. The other mistake was Napoleon’s
disastrous invasion of Russia in revenge for Tsar Alexander’s reneging on the
anti-British alliance the two emperors had agreed on at Tilsit. When the tsar
announced that he would again allow his nation to trade with Britain, Napoleon
was humiliated and insulted. (He once admitted in a letter that his inability to
endure insults was a major weakness in his character. 159) He was especially
humiliated by his failure to defeat Britain, which he called, in a letter written
after Waterloo to King George III, “the most powerful, most constant and most
generous of my enemies”.160
“Napoleon’s Continental System,” writes Tombs, “required control of the

whole European coastline to try to exclude British imports. But the result was
vast organized smuggling to supply Europe’s insatiable appetite for tobacco,
cotton cloth, sugar, coffee, tea, chocolate, spices and manufactures. France’s
customs revenue collapsed. To close off access, Napoleon tried to take over
Portugal and Spain in 1807-08, provoking resistance in both countries, notably
the 2 May uprising in Madrid, immortalized by Goya’s painting. Despite Whig
opposition, Britain gave swift financial, naval and military assistance, eventually
under the highly capable control of the indomitable Arthur Wellesley, later Duke
of Wellington, dismissed by Napoleon as the ‘sepoy general’ as he had gained
his military experience in India. The peninsula was reduced to bloody chaos,
becoming in Napoleon’s phrase an ‘ulcer’ sapping French strength. Perhaps
twice as many of his soldiers would die there as in the disastrous invasion of
Russia in 1812. For the first time since Marlborough, Britain exerted significant
military power on the Continent, and five years of hard campaigning created an
army eventually as good as the French. It was a very British army: only 20
percent were English, and there were large Irish and Scottish contingents. But it
was at first small – around 30,000 men – and depended on Spanish and
Portuguese allies to divide enemy strength by constant guerrilla warfare. This
enabled Wellington to sally forth in 1809 from his base in Portugal, where he
was supplied by the navy, retreat back to it in 1810 when the French mustered
superior forces, and then mount decisive advances into Spain in 1812 and 1813.
The British army was, to put it mildly, hard-bitten, and it acquired a fearsome
reputation for drunkenness, looting and rape. Fortunately, Wellington and his
staff were capable administrators and usually maintained adequate supplies,
because, as the adjutant general put it, ‘A British army on short commons is no
159
Andrew Roberts, in his BBC documentary on Napoleon.
160
Jenkins, op. cit., p. 196.
86
easy thing to govern… heroic in action… and when he is well fed, but in retreat
where subsistence is short, [our soldier] becomes cross, unmanageable and too
much disposed to give the thing up.’ Some of its men were, in Wellington’s
words, the scum of the earth, but it also included adventurous or patriotic men
of some education, whose letters and diaries left some of the earliest pictures of
everyday campaigning. Victories in the peninsula, including at Talavera,
Salamanca and Vitoria, raised the status of both the army and the aristocracy in
public eyes.
“Once Britain was their ally, exports to Portugal, Spain and their South
American colonies increased. Yet English textile industries were still inevitably
affected by the barriers to trade imposed by the Continental System, and a peace
campaign again drew support. As in the 1790s, it fed off economic distress, on a
belief, strongest among the Dissenters, that the war was futile and immoral, and
of lingering admiration for the revolution and Napoleon. The crisis years were
1811-1812, when bad weather ravaged harvests, further damaging the economy
and government finances. Weavers, knitters and croppers in Lancashire,
Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, symbolically led by the folklore ‘Ned Ludd’,
began selective breaking of new machinery, which was threatening their jobs.
They were violently opposed by employers. Pitched battles took place.
Thousands of troops were deployed. Some subsequent historians have seen this
as an insurrection with revolutionary potential…
“… Disputes with the United States about its trade with Napoleonic Europe
led to an American attack in July 1812 and continual naval skirmishing. An
invasion of Canada was beaten off by a British-Shawnee alliance. A small British
force of 3,700 landed on American soil and burned Washington. The Americans
made peace in 1814, but fighting continued for some time before the news
arrived, and another small British force was defeated at New Orleans.
“Napoleon’s characteristically reckless invasion of Russia in 1812 because it

refused to ‘act as my second in my duel with England’, and in which his Grand
Army of 220,000 was almost annihilated by Russian resistance, disease and
weather, marked the beginning of the end of his brilliant and destructive career.
Allies abandoned him and defeated enemies resumed the struggle, now fuelled
by unprecedented amounts of British money. This was made possible by the
new income tax, by trade with India and North and South America, by taxes
levied in India, and by selling government bonds abroad. Money and weapons
flooded onto the Continent: within a year £10m and a million muskets were
distributed among thirty countries from Denmark to Sicily at around £1 per
soldier per month – still vastly less than British armies cost. Russia, Prussia and
Austria were enabled to field 700,000 men. Between 16 and 19 October 1813, the
multi-national armies clashed at Leipzig, the ‘Battle of the Nations’, the biggest
and bloodiest battle before the First World War. The French alone lost 60,000
men, and were forced to withdraw from Germany.
“Britain’s involvement in Europe was now more than merely financial. Many
Europeans believed that Britain was indifferent to their sufferings while it made
money; ‘we must not hide the fact from ourselves,’ wrote a British minister,
87
George Canning, ‘we are hated throughout Europe.’ Viscount Castlereagh,
Foreign Secretary from 1812, wanted to show that Britain was no longer willing
to leave the Continent in flames while it amassed colonial conquests and trading
profits. This required more generous cash handouts. Castlereagh, moreover,
built a partnership to guarantee a more secure Europe after Napoleon’s defeat.
He persuaded the allies to pledge peace for twenty years – ‘a systematic pledge
of preserving concert among the leading Powers’, he wrote, and ‘a refuge under
which all the minor states… may look forward to find their security.’
“Allied armies converged on France in later 1813 and early 1814 and support
for Napoleon dissolved. Wellington’s army, now 100,000 strong, crossed the
Pyrenees and were welcomed as liberators – not least because on Wellington’s
strict orders they paid hard cash for supplies, and he backed up those orders
with the lash and the noose… Napoleon’s faithful Marshal Soult, still trying to
resist Wellington’s advance, ‘was ashamed… that a town of 100,000 souls
[Bourdeaux] could get away with refusing to be defended and should greet a
few thousand Englishmen with acclamation.’ He met the same problem at
Toulouse: ‘Practically the whole city is against being defended.’ But defend it he
did, and the battle of Toulouse on 10 April 1814 was the last real battle in the
south, costing 4,500 Allied casualties and 2,700 French. Soult marched away
unpursued, and the British were greeted by the mayor, a band, and a crowd of
citizens who gave them a banquet. Napoleon had already abdicated on 6 April.
On the initiative on Tsar Alexander I, the ex-emperor was given as
compensation the island principality of Elba, off the Italian coast…”161
“On September 13 1814,” writes Montefiore, “Alexander was greeted by

Emperor Francis outside Vienna, where in perhaps the most self-indulgent
international junket of all history, a congress of two emperors, five kings, 209
reigning princes, about 20,000 officials, from marshals and ministers to clerks
and spies, and just about every gold-digger, mountebank and prostitute in
Europe, maybe 100,000 in all, bargained, blackmailed and fornicated their way
through banquets and balls, to reshape a continent after twenty years of war.”
In spite of all that, the peace achieved at the Congress was “a sensible,
pragmatic settlement, much more enduring than its twentieth-century
equivalent, the unrealistic and idealistic Treaty of Versailles of 1919…”162
However, as Sir Richard Evans writes, “before the victorious European

powers could get very far in drawing a line under the French Revolutionary and
Napoleonic past, they were confronted by the sudden return of Napoleon from
his enforced exile… The restored French monarchy under Louis XVIII (1755-
1824), brother of the executed Louis XVI (1754-93), had run into trouble almost
immediately, overwhelmed by the need to pay for the legacy of the war. It
retained the unpopular taxes imposed by Napoleon, imposed cutbacks in
161
Tombs, op. cit., pp. 411-412, 412-414.
162
Montefiore, The Romanovs, pp. 318, 321-322.
88
expenditure on the army, and reimposed censorship after decades of
impassioned debate. The proclamation of a militant Catholicism as the state
religion alienated many educated Frenchmen. There were widespread fears that
the king would try to restore lands confiscated by the Revolution to their
original clerical and aristocratic owners. Napoleon’s return thus triggered an
outburst of popular sentiment in favour of preserving the legacy of the
Revolution. ‘The people of the countryside,’ reported a local official in central
France, ‘are manifesting an extraordinary sense of enthusiasm [for Napoleon];
fires are lit every evening on elevated positions, and there are public celebrations
in many communes.’ And, he concluded, ‘It is commonly asserted that if the
emperor had not returned to put the aristocrats in their place they would have
been massacred by the peasants.’
“Such outbursts, compounded by demonstrations of support from Parisian

workers, alienated many bourgeois notables, and the former emperor faced
serious hostility among the clergy. In areas such as the Vendée, the Midi and
Brittany, traditionally favourable to the royalists, he was unable to win much
support. It was above all among his former soldiers, angered by the mass
dismissals and economic measures imposed by the restored monarchy, that
Napoleon was popular. ‘I only have the people and the Army up to captain level
for me,’ he remarked. ‘The rest are scared of me but I cannot rely on them.’ His
arrival exposed the deep divisions in French society left by a quarter of a century
of revolutionary change. However, within weeks of landing in France on 1
March 1815, he was able to muster 100,000 men, as the provincial administrators,
mostly appointed by him, did their job of recruitment as before, and veterans
rallied to the imperial flag. Breaking off their peace negotiations, the Allies acted
swiftly, fearing that if he remained in power the ex-emperor would quickly
resume his career of conquest and the pursuit of glory. Within a few weeks they
too managed to raise a formidable military force, consisting of 112,000 British,
Dutch and German troops under Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769-
1852). They held back Napoleon’s army at the village of Waterloo on 18 June
1815 until 116,000 Prussians under the veteran General Lebrecht von Blücher
(1742-1819), whom Napoleon wrongly thought he had disposed of at the Battle
of Ligny two days before, arrived at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Blücher rescued
the British and joined with them in a final assault that drove the French from the
battlefield and Napoleon into another enforced exile, this time safely on the
remote Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he died on 5 May 1821.
“Napoleon left behind a political legend that quickly developed into a potent
myth among liberal writers, politicians, army officers and students, who were
encouraged by his own turn (whether genuine or not) to liberal ideas during the
‘Hundred Days’ before Waterloo in an attempt to broaden his support. Very
much aware of the weakness of his situation, Napoleon had gone to some
lengths to reassure the world that his dreams of conquest were over, and the
French that he would respect the rights and liberties of the citizen and no longer
behave like an imperial dictator. He continued in the same vein in his writings in
exile before his death. In subsequent decades the legend of the ‘liberal Emperor’
gained still further in potency. ‘During his life,’ remarked the writer François
René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), ‘the world slipped through his grasp, but in
89
death he possessed it.’ In France, ‘Bonapartism’ came to stand for patriotism,
universal manhood suffrage, the sovereignty of the nation, the institution of an
efficient, centralized, bureaucratic administration that dealt equally with all
citizens, the periodic consultation of the people by its government through
plebiscites and referendums, and an implicit contract between Frenchmen and
the state that provided social order and political stability, national pride, and
military glory. Not so far removed from Republicanism, Bonapartism differed
from it by its greater emphasis on strong leadership and military prowess. But
like Republicanism, it struck deep roots in significant parts of the French
population…
“… For many people outside France, too, the cult of Napoleon stood for the
achievements of the Revolution, translated into purposeful reform after the
excesses of the terror in the early 1790s. Irish republicans and Polish nationalists
looked to Napoleon for inspiration in their political struggles. The Venezuelan
liberator of large swathes of South America from Spanish rule, Simón Bolívar
(1783-1830), admired Napoleon so much that he had made the journey to Milan
to see his hero crowned King of Italy. In China and Madagascar, Napoleon was
worshipped by some as a god…”163
“One of the most remarkable and panoramic descriptions of the battle of

Waterloo,” writes Sachs, “unfolds in The Charterhouse of Parma, a novel written in
1839 by Marie-Henri Beyle – better known by his nom de plume – Stendhal –
who had been attached to the French army off and on throughout Bonaparte’s
rule as first consul and reign as Emperor Napoleon I… Early in Charterhouse,
Fabrice del Dongo, the novel’s impetuous young protagonist runs away from his
aristocratic, ultraconservative father’s home to serve Napoleon; he observes the
battle that puts a decisive end to his hero’s career; then wonders how he can
possibly make something of himself now that the revolutionary-imperial
adventure has been snuffed out. And the same predicament dominates the lives
of the wholly different young male protagonists of Stendhal’s two other, earlier,
fictional masterpieces, The Red and the Black and the unfinished Lucien Leuwen.
All three characters seem to be consciously or subconsciously obsessed with one
question: What do we do, now that Napoleon is gone and all the enthusiasm-
engendering excitement is over?
“Stendhal, who was born in 1783, was curious about how the Napoleonic era,
viewed as a bygone epic, would affect post-Waterloo youths, because he knew
so very well what the emperor’s reign – which he called ‘the despotism of glory’
– had meant to young people of his own generation. He had witnessed and
subscribed to the initial idealism, to the notion that France’s mission was not
only to repulse the armies of the foreign monarchies allied against the forces of
the Revolution but also to liberate all of Europe from the tyranny of absolutism.
As the wars dragged on, however, he had seen those ideals subverted, reduced
to hollow, meaningless slogans and used as an excuse for conquest, with all of its
accompanying devastation. Later, in the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat,
Stendhal became one of the first literary figures to perceive the relationship
163
Evans, op. cit., pp. 11-12, 13.
90
between the death of the Revolution and the flowering of Romanticism –
Romanticism understood as a sublimation of the liberating principles of a
revolution that had first exploded across Europe and then imploded on
itself…”164
164
Sachs, op. cit., pp. 66-67.
91
11. NAPOLEON THE MAN-GOD
What was it about this man that caused even Fox, who had fought against
him for years, to adore him as “the most stupendous monument of human
wisdom”?!
That Napoleon was a man of astonishing energy who from a secular point of
view achieved great things – and not only on the battlefield – is undeniable.
Napoleon’s primary significance may be seen in his having spread the ideas of
the Enlightenment throughout Europe. Andrew Roberts writes: “Goethe himself
said that Napoleon was ‘always enlightened by reason… He was in a permanent
state of enlightenment’. A child of the Enlightenment who became an exponent
of the rationalism of Rousseau and Voltaire as a youth, Napoleon believed that
Europeans were on the cusp of the most important scientific and cultural
developments since the Renaissance. His correspondence with astronomers,
chemists, mathematicians and biologists expressed a respect for their work to be
expected from a member of the Institut, the headquarters of the French
Enlightenment of which he was so proud to have been elected a member.” 165
As Marr writes, his greatest civil achievement “was the French legal code, or
Code Napoléon, a radical simplification and rationalization of old laws,
producing a single coherent system, it reshaped France and was influential
across the continent. At its height the Napoleonic Empire would reach as far as
the Duchy of Warsaw, the tip of Italy and the Balkans, stripping away old
aristocratic rights, ending religious discrimination – including against the Jews –
and spreading its new laws and the metric system.”166
But what good he may have done was far outweighed by the evil – the evil of
a true forerunner of the Antichrist… The Holy Fathers teach that the Antichrist
will come at a time of anarchy, which he will use in order to consolidate his
power, presenting himself to the world as its saviour. Napoleon, as “the
forerunner of the Antichrist”, as the Russian Holy Synod proclaimed him in
1806, came to power at just such a period… Towards the end of the eighteenth
century, the French revolution appeared to have lost its way, consumed by
poverty, corruption and both civil and international war. It was saved, as
Edmund Burke had predicted, by a “popular general” - Napoleon Bonaparte. He
was as sincerely faithful to the spirit of the French revolution as Cromwell had
been to the spirit of the English revolution. Madame de Stael called him
Robespierre on horseback. After all, he came from Corsica, which in 1755 had
successfully rebelled from Genoa, and for which Rousseau had written one of
his most seminal works, Project de constitution pour la Corse, in 1765. But, like
Cromwell (and Caesar), Napoleon found that in order to “save” the republic he
had to take control of it and rule it like the most despotic of kings.
165
Roberts, “Why Napoleon Merits the Title ‘the Great’”, BBC History Magazine, November, 2014,
pp. 36-38.
166
92
Napoleon even declared himself emperor in May, 1804, declaring that
“Napoleon Bonaparte, at present First Consul of the Republic, is Emperor of the
French”, and that “the Imperial dignity is hereditary”. In a plebiscite on the
latter clause only, more than three million votes were received in favour, with
only three thousand against. Then, on December 2, having persuaded the Pope
to cross the Alps, at a lavish ceremony in Notre Dame “Napoleon knelt to
receive the triple unction from the Pope on his head, arms and hands, he took
the imperial crown and placed it on his own head. This had been agree with the
Pope beforehand, but it startled the congregation. Napoleon then crowned his
wife and the imperial couple sat enthroned through the Mass – Napoleon not
taking communion – before returning to the Tuileries past cheering crowds.” 167
After this Beethoven tore out the title-page of his Eroica symphony, which had
been dedicated to him, and said: “So he too is nothing but a man. Now he also
will trample all human rights underfoot, and only pander to his own ambition;
he will place himself above everyone else and become a tyrant…” 168 As de
Tocqueville wrote: “Absolute government found huge scope for its rebirth [in]
that man who was to be both the consummator and the nemesis of the
Revolution.” 169
But, again like Caesar and Cromwell, he could never confess to being a king
in the traditional sense. Under him, in Davies’ phrase, “a pseudo-monarchy
headed pseudo-democratic institutions.”170 The falseness and contradictoriness
of it was illustrated by French coinage of the time that bore the phrase:
République Française – Napoléon empéreur.171
Cromwell had eschewed the trappings of monarchy, but Napoleon embraced

them avidly. The trend towards monarchy and hierarchy developed; and
“earlier than is generally thought,” writes Philip Mansel, “the First Consul
Bonaparte aligned himself with this monarchical trend, acquiring in succession a
guard (1799), a palace (1800), court receptions and costumes (1800-02), a
household (1802-04), a dynasty (1804), finally a nobility (1808)… The
proclamation of the empire in May 1804, the establishment of the households of
the Emperor, the Empress and the Imperial Family in July, the coronation by the
pope in December of that year, were confirmations of an existing monarchical
reality.”172
Moreover, Napoleon spread his kind of monarchy everywhere, replacing the

Holy Roman Empire, which dissolved itself in 1806, as the “super-monarchy” of
Europe. Thus the kingdoms and Grand Duchies of Italy, Venice, Rome, Naples,
Lucca, Dubrovnik, Holland, Mainz, Bavaria, Württemburg, Saxony, Baden,
167
Richard Cavendish, “Napoleon is Crowned Emperor of he French”, History Today, December,
2004, p. 52.
168
169
De Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (The Old Regime and the Revolution), 1856,
book 3, chapter 8 ; in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 527.
170
Davies, op. cit., p. 701.
171
Simms, op. cit., p. 161.
172
Mansel, “Napoleon the Kingmaker”, History Today, vol. 48 (3), March, 1998, pp. 40, 41.
93
Hesse-Darmstadt, Westphalia and Spain were all established or re-established -
and all ruled by Napoleon’s relations by blood or marriage. As Simon Winder
writes, “many bishops, knights, dukes, abbesses and petty oligarchs lost out, but
others cleverly adapted. There is a funny painting of the young Elector of
Bavaria, Maximilian IV Joseph, all dolled up in his wig and jewels, the acme of
rococo flummery, which can be contrasted with the surprisingly different
painting of him as the brand new (from 1806) King of Bavaria. Maximilian I,
thanks to Napoleon, sporting his own hair, cut short and severe, and dressed in
a dark blue, almost undecorated uniform, faking the stern mien of the simple
soldier. This sort of graceless rebranding was going on everywhere.” 173
“The problem,” writes Niall Ferguson, “was that no matter how much he
wrapped himself in the trappings of legitimate rule, appropriating Egyptian,
Roman and Habsburg regalia and iconography, Napoleon could never achieve
the one thing on which hierarchical systems of rule depend (and insist upon:
legitimacy.”174 Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow called him a “not-born-in-the-
purple” (neporfirorodnij) – in other words, illegitimate - emperor, who destroyed
kingdoms in one place only to build others in another. 175
So, as J.M. Roberts writes, while Napoleon reinstituted monarchy, “it was in
no sense a restoration. Indeed, he took care so to affront the exiled Bourbon
family that any reconciliation with it was inconceivable. He sought popular
approval for the empire in a plebiscite and got it. 176
“This was a monarchy Frenchmen had voted for; it rested on popular

sovereignty, that is, the Revolution. It assumed the consolidation of the
Revolution which the Consulate had already begun. All the great institutional
reforms of the 1790s were confirmed or at least left intact; there was no
disturbance of the land sales which had followed the confiscation of Church
property, no resurrection of the old corporations, no questioning of the principle
of equality before the law. Some measures were even taken further, notably
when each department was given an administrative head, the prefect, who was
in his powers something like one of the emergency emissaries of the Terror…” 177
According to Stendhal, Napoleon’s court “totally corrupted” him “and

exalted his amour propre to the state of a disease… He was on the point of making
Europe one vast monarchy.”178 “’The French empire shall become the
metropolitan of all other sovereignties,’ Napoleon once said to a friend. ‘I want
to force every king in Europe to build a large palace for his use in Paris. When an
Emperor of the French is crowned, these kings shall come to Paris, and they shall
173
Winder, Danubia, London: Picador, 2013, p. 300.
174
Ferguson, The Square and the Tower, London: Penguin, 2018, p. 128.
175
Gosudarstvennoe Uchenie Filareta, Mitropolita Moskovskogo (The State Teaching of Metropolitan
Philaret of Moscow), Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1997, p. 30.
176
The result of the plebiscite was 3,571,329 ‘yes’ votes to 2,570 ‘noes’. As Johnson points out,
“Bonaparte was the first dictator to produce faction figures.” (op. cit., pp. 49-50). (V.M.)
177
Roberts, History of the World, Oxford: Helicon, 1996, pp. 589-590.
178
Stendhal, in Mansel, op. cit., p. 43.
94
adorn that imposing ceremony with their presence and salute it with their
homage.’”179
“As one of his secretaries Baron Meneval wrote, he saw himself as ‘the pillar
of royalty in Europe’. On January 18th, 1813, he wrote to his brother Jerome that
his enemies, by appealing to popular feeling, represented ‘upheavals and
revolutions… pernicious doctrines.’ In Napoleon’s opinion his fellow monarchs
were traitors to ‘their own cause’ when in 1813 they began to desert the French
Empire, or in 1814 refused to accept his territorial terms for peace…” 180
Thus Napoleon represents in his own person the clearest demonstration of

the inner relationship between democracy and despotism. He came to power as
a supporter of the revolution, and there was a liberal stamp to his legislation. He
often held plebiscites, that instrument of liberal democracy – but regularly
rigged them, which is a characteristic of despots. For if the revolution means
power to and from the people, it can just as well mean power to one man
representing the people. The deification of the people naturally leads to the
deification of one man from the people. What it cannot mean is power coming
from God or the Church. This was symbolized above all by Napoleon’s
coronation in 1804. Unlike Charlemagne one thousand years earlier, who
allowed himself to be crowned by the Pope, Napoleon took the crown out of the
Pope’s hands and crowned himself. In other words, he did not know his power
or legitimacy to anyone or anything except himself…
However, this did not prevent him pretending to have received the crown
from the people. “I have not at all usurped the crown,” he said. “I picked it up
from the gutter. The people put it on my head. We have to respect its acts!”181
Jocelyn Hunt writes: “Kings before 1791 were said to be absolute but were
limited by all kinds of constraints and controls. The Church had an almost
autonomous status. Bonaparte ensured that the Church was merely a branch of
the civil service. Kings were anointed by the Church, and thus owed their
authority to God: Bonaparte took power through his own strength, camouflaged
as ‘the General Will’ which, as Correlli Barnett acidly remarks, ‘became
synonymous with General Bonaparte’… 182
“The First Consul’s choice of ministers was a far more personal one than had
been possible for the kings of France. Bonaparte established a system of meeting
his ministers individually, in order to give his instructions. In the same way,
179
Adam Zamoyski, 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow, London: Harper, 2004, p. 9.
180
Mansel, op. cit., p. 43.
181
Napoleon, quoted by Ivan Ilyin, “O Monarkhii i Respublike” (On the Monarchy and the
Republic), Sobranie Sochinenij (Collected Works), Moscow, 1994, vol. 4, p. 429.
182
Johnson writes: “He liked the vague and abstract notion of Rousseau’s concept, the General
Will, offering a ruling elite that knew its business the opportunity to harness the people to a
national effort without any of the risks of democracy. In practice an elite always formed itself
into a pyramid, with one man at its summit. His will expressed the General Will… and gave it
decisiveness, the basis for action. Constitutions were important in the sense that window-
dressing was important in a shop. But the will was the product to be sold to the nation and, once
sold, imposed” (op. cit, p. 17). (V.M.)
95
Bonaparte chose which ‘ordinary’ citizens he would consult; kings of France had
mechanisms for consulting ‘the people’ but these had fallen into disuse and thus,
when the Estates General met in 1789, the effect was revolutionary. Bonaparte’s
legislative body was, until 1814, submissive and compliant.…
“Police control and limitations on personal freedom had been a focus of

condemnation by the Philosophes before the Revolution, but had not been
entirely efficient: a whole industry of importing and distributing banned texts
had flourished in the 1770s and 1780s. Bonaparte’s police were more thorough,
and so swingeing were the penalties that self-censorship rapidly became the
safest path for a newspaper to take. Bonaparte closed down sixty of the seventy-
three newspapers in Paris in January, 1800, and had a weekly summary
prepared of all printed material, but he was soon able to tell his Chief of Police,
Fouché, ‘They only print what I want them to.’ 183 In the same way, the hated
lettres de cachet appear limited and inefficient when compared to Bonaparte’s and
Fouché’s record of police spies, trials without jury and imprisonment without
trial. Bonaparte’s brief experience as a Jacobin leader in Ajaccio had taught him
how to recognise, and deal with, potential opponents.184
“The judiciary had stood apart from the kings of the ancien régime: while the
King was nominally the supreme Judge, the training of lawyers and judges had
been a matter for the Parlements, with their inherent privileges and mechanisms.
The Parlements decided whether the King’s laws were acceptable within the
fundamental laws of France. Under the Consulate, there were no such
constraints on the legislator. The judges were his appointees, and held office
entirely at his pleasure; the courts disposed of those who opposed or questioned
the government, far more rapidly that had been possible in the reign of Louis
XVI. Imprisonment and deportation became regularly used instruments of
control under Bonaparte.
“Kings of France were fathers to their people and had a sense of duty and
service. Bonaparte, too, believed that he was essential to the good and glory of
France, but was able to make his own decisions about what constituted the good
of France in a way which was not open to the king. Finally, while the monarchy
of France was hereditary and permanent, and the position of First Consul was
supposed to be held for ten years, Bonaparte’s strength was demonstrated when
he changed his own constitution, first to give him the role for life and then to
become a hereditary monarch. All in all, no monarch of the ancien régime had
anything approaching the power which Bonaparte had been permitted to take
for himself…
183
As he said to Metternich: “You see me master of France; well, I would not undertake to govern
her for three months with liberty of the press” (Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 530). (V.M.)
184
Johnson writes: “Fouché, who operated the world’s first secret police force, and who was the
prototype of Himmler or Beria, was an important element in Bonaparte’s legacy of evil, for some
of his methods were widely imitated in Austria and Prussia, where they became permanent, and
even in harmless Sweden, where they were carried out by Bonaparte’s marshal Jean-Baptiste
Bernadotte” (op. cit., p. 105). (V.M.)
96
“When a Royalist bomb plot was uncovered in December, 1800, Bonaparte
seized the opportunity to blame it on the Jacobins, and many were guillotined,
with over a hundred more being exiled or imprisoned. The regime of the Terror
had operated in similar ways to remove large numbers of potential or actual
opponents. Press censorship and the use of police spies ensured that anti-
government opinions were not publicly aired. The Declaration of the Rights of
Man had guaranteed freedom of expression; but this freedom had already been
eroded before Bonaparte’s coup. The Terror had seen both moral and political
censorship, and the Directory had on several occasions exercised its
constitutional right to censor the press. Bonaparte appears merely to have been
more efficient…
“Bonaparte certainly held power without consulting the French people; he

took away many of the freedoms they had been guaranteed in 1789; he taxed
them more heavily than they had been taxed before. [In 1803 he wrote: ‘I haven’t
been able to understand yet what good there is in an opposition. Whatever it
may say, its only result is to diminish the prestige of authority in the eyes of the
people’.”185
In 1806, writes Simon Jenkins, he “established a ‘continental system’ of

European customs controls, aimed at excluding British goods from continental
markets. In an intriguing premonition of the twentieth-century European Union,
he announced, ‘There is not enough sameness among the nations of Europe’.
There should be a single dominant power ‘with enough authority to force [the
nations] to live in harmony with one another’. That power should, of course, be
France…”186
As Schroeder put it, the decade of Napoleonic hegemony in Europe was an

exercise in European colonization…187
However, writes Adam Zamoyski, “it was not so much a matter of

France ‘über alles’. ‘European society needs a regeneration,’ Napoleon
asserted in conversation in 1805. ‘There must be a superior power
which dominates all the other powers, with enough authority to force
them to live in harmony with one another – and France is the best
placed for that purpose.’ He was, like many a tyrant, utopian in his
ambitions. ‘We must have a European legal system, a European appeal
court, a common currency, the same weights and measures the same
laws,’ Napoleon once said to [his chief of police] Joseph Fouché: ‘I must
make of all the peoples of Europe one people, and of Paris the capital
of the world.’” 188 And yet “at bottom,” as Johnson notes, “Bonaparte
despised the French, or perhaps it would be more exact to say the
Parisians, the heart of the ‘political nation’. He thought of them, on the
185
Hunt, op. cit., pp. 104, 105-106, 107, 108, 112.
186
Jenkins, A Short History of Europe, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2018, p. 188.
187
Schroeder, in Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, London: Penguin, 2002, p. 176.
188
Zamoyski, 1812, p. 9.
97
basis of his experience during the various phases of the Revolution, as
essentially frivolous.” 189
So Napoleon was undoubtedly a despot, but a despot who could claim many
precedents for his despotism in the behaviour of the Jacobins and Directory. And
if he was not faithful to the forms of the revolution in its early phase, replacing
democracy (of a despotic kind) with monarchy (of a populist kind), he
nevertheless remained faithful to its fundamental principles - the principle, on
the one hand, that nobody and nothing should be independent of the State (the
principle of totalitarianism), and on the other, the principle that the Nation was
the supreme value, and serving and dying for the Nation - the supreme glory.
The territorial states of the eighteenth century fought limited wars,

and formed a balance of power to prevent the emergence of any
hegemonic power. Since their primary motive was commerce, and since
commerce is advanced by peace, they aimed to avoid wars by
calculated concessions and adjustments. But Napoleon reverted to the
absolutist tradition of Louis XIV, aiming at complete dominance of his
neighbours. The basis of his power was therefore no kind of right,
dynastic or otherwise, but might. He came to power through military
might and retained only so long as he continued to win wars.
As Bernard Cornwell writes, Napoleon “was a superb administrator,

but that was not how he wanted to be remembered. Above all, he was a
warlord. His idol was Alexander the Great. In the middle of the
nineteenth century, in the American Civil War. Robert E. Lee, the great
Confederate General, watched his troops executing a brilliant and
battle-winning maneuver and said, memorably, ‘It is well that war is so
terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.’ Napoleon had grown too
fond of it, he loved war. Perhaps it was his first love, because it
combined the excitement of supreme risk with the joy of victory. He
had the incisive mind of a great strategist, yet when the marching was
done and the enemy outflanked he still demanded enormous sacrifices
of his men. After Austerlitz, when one of his generals lamented the
French lying dead on that frozen battlefield, the Emperor retorted that
‘the women of Paris can replace those men in one night’. 190 When
Metternich, the clever Austrian Foreign Minister, offered Napoleon
honourable peace terms in 1813 and reminded the Emperor of the
human cost of refusal, he received the scornful answer that Napoleon
would happily sacrifice a million to gain his ambitions. Napoleon was
careless about the lives of his troops, yet his soldiers adored him
because he had the common touch. He knew how to speak to them, how
to jest with them and how to inspire them. His soldiers might adore
him, but his generals feared him. Marshal Augereau, a foul-mouthed
disciplinarian, said, ‘This little bastard of a general scares me!’, and
General Vandamme, a hard man, said he ‘trembled like a child’ when
189
190
In this he was very different from Wellington, who hated war and wept over the deaths of his
soldiers. (V.M.)
98
he approached Napoleon. Yet Napoleon led them all to glory. That was
his drug, la Gloire! And in search of it he broke peace treaty after peace
treaty, and his armies marched beneath their Eagle standards from
Madrid to Moscow, from the Baltic to the Red Sea. He astonished
Europe with victories like Austerlitz and Friedland, but he also led his
Grande Armée to disaster in the Russian snow. Even his defeats were on
a gargantuan scale…” 191
The truth is, therefore, that it was neither the State nor the Nation
that Bonaparte exalted above all, – although he greatly increased the
worship of both in later European history, – but himself. So the spirit
that truly reigned in the Napoleonic era can most accurately be
described as the spirit of the man-god, of the Antichrist, of whom
Bonaparte himself was a forerunner.
As Tsaritsa Elizabeth wrote to her mother when her husband, Tsar Alexander
I, was still under Napoleon’s spell: “You know, Mamma, this man seems to me
like an irresistible seducer who by temptation or force succeeds in stealing the
hearts of his victims. Russia, the most virtuous of them, has defended herself for
a long time; but she has ended up no better than the others. And, in the person
of her Emperor, she has yielded as much to charm as to force. He [Alexander]
feels a secret attraction to his enticer which is apparent in all he does. I should
indeed like to know what magic it is that he [Napoleon] employs to change
people’s opinions so suddenly and so completely…”192
This antichristian, seductive, serpent-like quality comes out also in

Madame De Staël’s characterization: “I had the disturbing feeling that
no emotion of the heart could ever reach him. He regards a human
being like a fact or a thing, never as an equal person like himself. He
neither hates nor loves… The force of his will resides in the
imperturbable calculations of his egotism. He is a chess-master whose
opponents happen to be the rest of humanity… Neither pity nor
attraction, nor religion nor attachment would ever divert him from his
ends… I felt in his soul cold steel, I felt in his mind a deep irony
against which nothing great or good, even his own destiny, was proof;
for he despised the nation which he intended to govern, and no spark
of enthusiasm was mingled with his desire to astound the human
race…” 193
Hegel also saw this antichristian, man-god quality. Just before the
Battle of Jena in 1806, he saw Napoleon riding out to reconnoiter the
battlefield, and wrote: “I saw the Emperor – this world-soul – riding
out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to
191
Cornwell, Waterloo, London: William Collins, 2014, p. 23.
192
Quoted in Palmer, op. cit., p. 148.
193
De Staël, in Johnson, op. cit., p. 119.
99
see such an individual who, concentrated here at a single point, astride
a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.”
This is the nub of it: a “world-soul”, such as Napoleon or Hitler or

Stalin, has to conquer the whole world. The mastery of one nation, even
the greatest, will not satisfy him. In order to affirm and justify his
quasi-divine essence, he has to compel the assent and/or worship of all
men. In fact, he has to become not only a man-god, but the Antichrist,
the ruler of the world. And since, as Dostoyevsky pointed out,
universal brotherhood in the worship of one man is the innermost
desire of all men, then those who do not worship the one true God, the
God who became man, will inevitably worship the man who aspires to
be god.
100
II. THE EAST: RUSSIA AND NAPOLEON (1789-1815)
101
12. RUSSIA AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
The Russian educated classes in general shared the enthusiasm of the
Europeans for the French revolution in first, relatively liberal stage. “’Although
the Bastille had certainly not been a threat of any kind to any inhabitant of
Petersburg, wrote Segur, now French ambassador there, ‘I find it difficult to
express the enthusiasm aroused among the shop-keepers, merchants, townsfolk
and some young people of a higher class by the fall of this state prison and this
first triumph of a stormy liberty. Frenchmen, Russians, Danes, Germans,
Englishmen, Dutchmen, all were exchanging congratulations and embraces on
the streets, as though they had been delivered from some excessively heavy
chain that had been weighing down on them.’”194
The Empress Catherine had flirted with the ideas of the French
Enlightenment. “She founded a Society for the Translation of Foreign Books into
Russian, which she endowed with two thousand roubles. She corresponded with
Voltaire, who applauded her resolute actions against the Catholic Church (in
Poland). She offered Diderot a press and publishing facilities for the Encyclopédie
in Riga when he was having difficulties with the authorities in France and she
invited him to St. Petersburg, where they had long conversations in private.” 195
However, correctly seeing in the Jacobin terror the product of Enlightenment

ideas, she sharply changed her opinion of them. 196 In 1792 she invaded Poland
because she regarded Warsaw as “a brazier of Jacobinism”. 197“Yesterday I
remembered,” she wrote to Grimm in 1794, “that you told me more than once:
this century is the century of preparations. I will add that these preparations
consisted in preparing dirt and dirty people of various kinds, who produce,
have produced and will produce endless misfortunes and an infinite number of
unfortunate people.”
“The next year,” writes Ivanov, “she categorically declared that the
Encyclopédie had only two aims: the one – to annihilate the Christian religion,
and the other – royal power. ‘I will calmly wait for the right moment when you
will see how right is my opinion concerning the philosophers and their hangers-
on that they participated in the revolution…, for Helvétius and D’Alambert both
admitted to the deceased Prussian king that this book had only two aims: the
first – to annihilate the Christian religion, and the second – to annihilate royal
194
Adam Zamoyski, Holy Madness, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999, pp. 56-57.
195
Sir Geoffrey Hosking, Russia. People and Empire 1552-1917, London: HarperCollins, 1997, p.
116.
196
Actually, Catherine had never been a liberal. Thus in her Nakaz or “Instruction” of 1767 she
spoke against the state in which the idea of equality takes root in the people to such an extent
“that everyone aims at being equal to him… who is ordained by the Laws to rule over him”
(article 503). And when the dramatist A.P. Sumarokov said: "The majority of votes does not
confirm the truth; truth is confirmed by profound reason and impartiality," the empress replied
approvingly: "The majority does not confirm the truth, but only indicates the wishes of the
majority." (Isabel De Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, London: Phoenix Press,
2002, pp. 157, 159)
197
102
power. They spoke about this already in 1777.”198 Now she hastened to support
the traditional Orthodox concept of obedience to the authorities, and had the
following anathema added to the Rite of Orthodoxy: “To those who think that
with the anointing to the kingship the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not poured out
on them for the conduct of this lofty office; and therefore who dare to revolt and
to commit treason against them: anathema”.
In his estimate of Masonry and French influence, if in little else, Tsar Paul was
in agreement with his mother. ‘To isolate Russia from the contagion of the
French revolution, Paul forbade the import of books and journals, and, in an
extraordinary abrogation of previous practice, prohibited travel abroad – which
had been the normal way for Russian nobles to round off their education. He
also made abundant use of his intelligence service, the tainia ekspeditsia
(inherited, ironically, from his mother) to spy on nobles whom he suspected of
opposition to himself.”199 Well-known Masons were required to sign that they
would not open lodges (Paul was falsely accused of being a Mason himself 200),
and the great General Suvorov was sent to Vienna to join Austria and Britain in
fighting the revolutionary French armies.201
But the French continued to advance through Europe, and when, in 1797, as
Napoleon threatened the island of Malta, the Knights of the Order of the Maltese
Cross, who had ruled the island since the 16 th century, appealed to the protection
of Tsar Paul. Paul accepted the responsibility, and in gratitude the Maltese
offered that he become their Grand Master. Although the Order was Roman
Catholic, Paul accepted the honour because the Order was anti-French and anti-
revolutionary…202 “He intended that the order… should offer an example of
chivalry and inspire in nobles the ideals of service, self-sacrifice, duty and
discipline.”203
198
199
Hosking, op. cit., p. 121.
200
Sorokin, op. cit. The Maltese Order that he headed was a Roman Catholic, not a Masonic
institution.
201
Suvorov’s extraordinarily successful career was based, according to Lebedev, “on Orthodox
spirituality. He taught the soldiers prayer and life according to the commandments of God better
than any preacher, so that at times it was difficult to say what Suvorov taught his soldiers more –
to be a warrior or to be a real Orthodox Christian!” (Velikorossia, p. 234).
202
Sorokin, op. cit., pp. 33-34. Not too much should be of the fact that the Tsar was sympathetic,
or at least not antipathetic, towards Catholicism, which, as Nikolin points out, “was to a large
extent linked with fear of the French revolution, which had been cruel to believing Catholics,
monks and clergy. This relationship is attested by such facts as his offering the Pope of Rome to
settle in Russia, his cooperation with the establishment of the Jesuit order in Russia, and his
support for the establishment of a Roman Catholic chapel in St. Petersburg. At the same time
attention should be drawn to Paul I’s ukaz of March 18, 1797, which protected the consciences of
peasants whom landowners were trying to detach forcibly from Orthodoxy into the unia or
convert to Catholicism.” (Nikolin, op. cit., p. 106). “On October 12, 1799 the holy things of the
Order were triumphantly brought to Gatchina: the right hand of St. John the Baptist, a particle of the
Cross of the Lord and the icon of the Filerma Odigitria icon of the Mother of God . Only a spiritually
blind man, on learning this fact, would not see the Providence of God in the fact that the Tsar
became Master of the Maltese Order. October 12 was introduced into the number of festal days
by the Church, and a special service to this feast was composed…” (“Svyatoj Tsar-Muchenik
Pavel”, op. cit.).
203
103
Oliver Figes writes that “the Jacobin reign of terror undermined Russia’s
belief in Europe as a source of progress and enlightenment. ‘The “Age of
Enlightenment”! I do not recognize you in blood and flames,’ [The historian
Nikolai] Karamzin wrote with bitterness in 1795. It seemed to him, as to many of
his outlook, that a save of murder and destruction would ‘lay waste to Europe’,
destroying the ‘centre of all art and science and the precious treasures of the
human mind.’ Perhaps history was a futile cycle, not a path of progress after all,
in which ‘truth and error, virtue and vice, are constantly repeated’? Was it
possible that ‘the human species had advanced so far, only to be compelled to
fall back again into the depths of barbarism, like Sisyphus’ stone’?
“Karamzin’s anguish was widely shared by the European Russians of his age.
Brought up to believe that only good things came from France, his companions
could now see only bad. Their worst fears appeared to be confirmed by the
horror stories which they heard from the émigrés who had fled Paris for St.
Petersburg. The Russian government broke off relations with revolutionary
France. Politically the once Francophone nobility became Francophobes, as ‘the
French’ became a byword for inconstancy and godlessness, especially in
Moscow and the provinces, where Russian political customs and attitudes had
always mixed with foreign convention. In Petersburg, where the aristocracy was
totally immersed in French culture, the reaction against France was more
gradual and complicated – there were many liberal noblemen and patriots (like
Pierre Bezukhov in War and Peace) who retained their pro-French and
Napoleonic views even after Russia went to war with France in 1805. The use of
Gallicisims became frowned upon in the salons of St. Petersbug. Russian
noblemen gave up Cliquot and Lafite for kvas and vodka, haute cuisine for
cabbage soup.
“In this search for a new life on ‘Russian principles’ the Enlightenment ideal
of a universal culture was finally abandoned for the national way. ‘Let us
Russians be Russians, not copies of the French,’ wrote Princess Dashkova, ‘let us
remain patriots and retain the character of our ancestors.’ Karamzin, too,
renounced ‘humanity’ for ‘nationality’. Before the French Revolution he had
held the view that ‘the main thing is to be, not Slavs, but men. What is good for
Man, cannot be bad for the Russians; all that Englishmen or Germans have
invented for the benefit of mankind belongs to me as well, because I am a man.’
But by 1802 Karamzin was calling on his fellow writers to embrace the Russian
language and ‘become themselves’: ‘Our language is capable not only of lofty
eloquence, of sonorous descriptive poetry, but also of tender simplicity, of
sounds of feeling and sensibility. It is richer in harmonies than French; it lends
itself better to effusions of the soul… Man and nation may begin with imitation
but in time they must become themselves to have the right to say: ‘I exist
morally!’’ Here was the rallying cry of a new nationalism that flourished in the
era of 1812.”204
204
Figes, Natasha’s Dance, London: Penguin, 2002, pp. 67-68.
104
13. TSAR PAUL I
St. John Maximovich writes that the Tsarevich Paul, “was very different in his
character and convictions from the Empress Catherine. Catherine II preferred to
remove her son from the inheritance and make her eldest grandson, Alexander
Pavlovich, her heir… At the end of 1796 Catherine II finally decided to appoint
Alexander as her heir, passing Paul by, but she suddenly and unexpectedly died.
The heir, Tsarevich Paul Petrovich, ascended the throne…”205
A French courtier said of Tsar Paul: “His conversation, and everything he

said that I can recall, revealed not only an extremely penetrating and very
educated mind, but also a subtle understanding of all the nuances of our
customs and all the subtleties of our language.” 206 In general, however, he has
had a bad press from historians. He was considered eccentric, impulsive,
domineering, even mad. Some of his less attractive traits can doubtless be
explained by his upbringing, deprived of a father and of his mother’s affection
and respect. But the nobility, the main source of our knowledge about him, had
their own reasons for fearing and reviling him: after having been indulged so
much by Catherine the Great and her predecessors, they were reined in by Tsar
Paul, who began the slow process of restoring the ascendancy of the monarchy
over the nobility and its links with the people and the people’s faith, Orthodoxy.
The tsar had been educated by Metropolitan Platon of Moscow, and he shared
his teacher’s devotion to pre-Petrine Russia. And so at his coronation, before
putting on the purple, he was vested in the dalmatic, one of the royal vestments
of the Byzantine emperors. Thus the rite moved a significant step away from the
symbolism of the First Rome, which had been the model of Peter, and back to the
symbolism of the New Rome of Constantinople, the Mother-State of Holy Rus’.
Tsar Paul went a long way to restoring the Orthodox monarchy’s autocratic but
non-absolutist character after the absolutism of the eighteenth-century tsars. For,
as D.A. Khomiakov writes, “the tsar is ‘the denial of absolutism’ precisely
because it is bound by the confines of the people’s understanding and world-
view, which serve as that framework within which the power can and must
consider itself to be free.”207
Then, writes Archpriest Lev Lebedev, “he himself read out a new Statute
[Uchrezhdenie] on the Imperial Family which he had composed together with [the
Tsaritsa] Maria Fyodorovna. By this law he abolished Peter I’s decree of 1722 on
the right of the Russian Autocrat to appoint the Heir to the Throne according to
his will and revived the Basic Act of 1613. From now on and forever (!) a strict
order of succession was established according to which the eldest son became his
father’s heir, and in the case of childlessness – his elder brother. The law also
foresaw various other cases, determining the principles of the succession to the
205
St. John Maximovich, Proiskhozhdenie Zakona o Prestolonasledovanii v Rossii (The Origin of the
Law on the Succession to the Throne in Russia), Shanghai, 1936, Podolsk, 1994.
206
Alexis Trubetskoy, Imperial Legend, Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2003, p. 23.
207
Khomiakov, Pravoslavie, samoderzhavie, narodnost’ (Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality),
Minsk, 1997, p. 103.
105
Throne in accordance with the ancient, pre-Petrine (!) Russian customs and certain
important new rules (for example, a Member of the Imperial Family wanting to
preserve his rights to the succession must enter only into an equal by blood
marriage with a member of a royal or ruling house, that is, who is not lower than
himself by blood). Paul I’s new law once and for all cut off the danger in Russia
of those ‘revolution’-coups which had taken place in the eighteenth century.
And it meant that the power of the nobility over the Russian Tsars was ending;
now they could be independent of the nobility’s desires and sympathies. The
autocracy was restored in Russia! Deeply wounded and ‘offended’, the nobility
immediately, from the moment of the proclamation of the law ‘On the Imperial
Family’, entered into opposition to Paul I. The Tsar had to suffer the first and
most powerful blow of the opposition. This battle between the Autocrat and the
nobility was decisive, it determined the future destiny of the whole state. It also
revealed who was who in Great Russia. All the historians who hate Paul I are not
able to diminish the significance of the Law of 1797; they recognise that it was
exceptionally important and correct, but they remark that it was the only
outstanding act of this Emperor (there were no others supposedly). But such an
act would have been more than sufficient for the whole reign! For this act
signified a radical counter-coup – or, following the expression of the time,
counter-revolution - to that which Catherine II had accomplished.
“However, the haters lie here, as in everything else! The law was not the only
important act of his Majesty. On the same day of 1797 Paul I proclaimed a
manifesto in which for the first time the serf-peasants were obliged to make an oath
of allegiance to the Tsars and were called, not ‘slaves’, but ‘beloved subjects’, that is,
they were recognized as citizens of the State! There is more! Paul I issued a
decree forbidding landowners to force serfs to work corvée for more than three
days in the week: the other three days the peasants were to work for themselves,
and on Sundays – rest and celebrate ‘the day of the Lord’, like all Christians. 208
Under the threat of severe penalties it was confirmed that masters were
forbidden to sell families of peasants one by one. It was forbidden to subject serfs
older than seventy to physical punishments. (And at the same time it was
permitted to apply physical punishments to noblemen who had been condemned
for criminal acts.) All this was nothing other than the beginning of the liberation of
the Russian peasants from serfdom! In noble circles of the time it was called a
‘revolution from above’, and for the first time they said of about their Emperor:
‘He is mad!’ Let us recall that this word was used in relation to the ‘peasant’
politics of Paul I. He even received a special ‘Note’ from one assembly of nobles,
in which it was said that ‘the Russian people has not matured sufficiently for the
removal of physical punishments’.”209
208
The decree said: “The Law of God given to us in the ten commandments teaches us to devote
the seventh day to God; which is why on this day, which is glorified by the triumph of the Faith,
and on which we have been counted worthy to receive the sacred anointing and royal crowning
on our Forefathers’ Throne, we consider it our duty before the Creator and Giver of all good
things to confirm the exact and constant fulfillment of this law throughout our Empire,
commanding each and every one to observe it, so that no one should have any excuse to dare to
force his peasants to work on Sundays….”
209
Lebedev, Velikorossia (Great Russia), St. Petersburg, 1999, pp. 239-240.
106
“We know of a case when the Tsar came to the defence of some peasants
whose landowner was about to sell them severally, without their families and
land, so as to make use of the peasants’ property. The peasants refused to obey,
and the landowner informed the governor of the rebellion. But the governor did
not fail to carry out his duty and quickly worked out what was happening. On
receiving news about what was happening, Tsar Paul declared the deal invalid,
ordered that the peasants be left in their places, and that the landowner be
severely censured in his name. The landowner’s conscience began to speak to
him: he gathered the village commune and asked the peasants for forgiveness.
Later he set off for St. Petersburg and asked for an audience with his Majesty.
‘Well, what did you sort out with your peasants, my lord? What did they say?’
inquired the Emperor of the guilty man. ‘They said to me, your Majesty: God will
forgive…’ ‘Well, since God and they have forgiven you, I also forgive you. But
remember from now on that they are not your slaves, but my subjects just as you
are. You have just been entrusted with looking after them, and you are
responsible for them before me, as I am for Russia before God…’ concluded the
Sovereign.”210
The Tsar also acted to humble the pride of the Guards regiments which,
together with the nobility, had acted in the role of king-makers in the eighteenth
century. “He forbade the assigning of noblemen’s children, babies, into the
guards (which had been done before him to increase ‘the number of years
served’). The officers of the guards were forbidden to drive in four- or six-horse
carriages, to hide their hands in winter in fur muffs, or to wear civilian clothing
in public. No exception was made for them by comparison with other army
officers. At lectures and inspections the Guards were asked about rules and
codes with all strictness. How much, then and later, did they speak (and they
still write now!) about the ‘cane discipline’ and the amazing cruelties in the army
under Paul I, the nightmarish punishments which were simply means of
mocking the military…. Even among the historians who hate Paul I we find the
admission that the strictnesses of the Emperor related only to the officers (from
the nobility), while with regard to the soldiers he was most concerned about their
food and upkeep, manifesting a truly paternal attentiveness. By that time the
ordinary members of the Guards had long been not nobles, but peasants. And
the soldierly mass of the Guards of Paul I very much loved him and were
devoted to him. Officers were severely punished for excessive cruelty to
soldiers… On the fateful night of the murder of Paul I the Guards soldiers rushed
to support him. The Preobrazhensky regiment refused to shout ‘hurrah!’ to
Alexander Pavlovich as to the new Emperor, since they were not sure whether
his Majesty Paul I was truly dead. Two soldiers of the regiment demanded that
their commanders give them exact proof of the death of the former Emperor.
These soldiers were not only not punished, but were sent as an ‘embassy’ of the
Preobrazhensky to the grave of Paul I. On their return the regiment gave the
oath of allegiance to Alexander I. That was the real situation of the Russian
soldier of Paul’s times, and not their fictitious ‘rightlessness’!” 211
210
“Svyatoj Tsar-Muchenik Pavel”, Svecha Pokaiania, N 4, February, 2000, p. 18.
211
Lebedev, op. cit., pp. 240, 241.
107
“The Emperor Paul’s love of justice and care for the simple people was
expressed also in the accessibility with which he made his subjects happy,
establishing the famous box in the Winter palace whose key was possessed by
him personally and into which the first courtier and the last member of the
simple people could cast their letters with petitions for the Tsar’s immediate
defence or mercy. The Tsar himself emptied the box every day and read the
petitions, leaving not a single one of them unanswered.
“There was probably no sphere in the State which did not feel the influence of
the industrious Monarch. Thus he ordered the minting of silver rubles to
struggle against the deflation in the value of money. The Sovereign himself
sacrificed a part of the court’s silver on this important work. He said that he
himself would eat on tin ‘until the ruble recovers its rate’. And the regulation on
medical institutions worked out by the Emperor Paul could be used in Russia
even in our day.”212
In line with this financial reform, the tsar tried to restore stability to the state’s
finances. “On ascending the throne of All-Russia,” he wrote, “and entering in
accordance with duty into various parts of the state administration, at the very
beginning of the inspection We saw that the state economy, in spite of the
changes in income made at various times, had been subjected to extreme
discomforts from the continuation over many years of unceasing warfare and
other circumstances. Expenses exceeded income. The deficit was increasing from
year to year, multiplying the internal and external debts; in order to make up a
part of this deficit, large sums were borrowed, which brought great harm and
disorder with them.”213
The tsar was a great benefactor of the Church, increasing the lands of
hierarchical houses and the pay of the parish clergy, and freeing the clergy from
conscription into the army. The power of bishops was extended to all Church
institutions and to all diocesan servers. 214 He opened many seminaries, increased
the income of the theological academies by five times, and greatly broadened the
curriculum.215 “Paul I gave hierarchs in the Synod the right themselves to choose a
candidate for the post of over-procurator, took great care for the material
situation of the clergy, and the widows and orphans of priests, and forbade
physical punishments for priests before they had been defrocked.” 216
212
“Svyatoj Tsar-Muchenik Pavel”, op. cit.
213
Tsar Paul, in V.F. Ivanov, Russkaia Intelligentsia i Masonstvo: ot Petra I do nashikh dnej (The
Russian Intelligentsia and Masonry from Peter I to our days), Harbin, 1934, Moscow, 1997, p.
211.
214
Fr. Alexis Nikolin, Tserkov’ i Gosudarstvo (The Church and the State), Moscow, 1997, p. 106.
215
Yu. A. Sorokin, “Pavel I i ‘vol’nie kamenschiki’” (Paul I and the ‘Freemasons’), Voprosy Istorii,
11, 2005, p. 30.
216
Lebedev, Velikorossia, p. 242. A.P. Dobroklonsky writes: “At the beginning of the [19 th] century
the over-procurator Yakovlev planned to place [the consistories] in a position more independent
of the bishops and presented to the sovereign a report about establishing in them a special post
of procurator subject only to the over-procurator; but the realization of this report was hindered
by Metropolitan Ambrose Podobedov of St. Petersburg, who presented a report on his part that
in such a case the canonical authority of the bishops would be shaken and they would become
dependent on secular officials” (Rukovodstvo po istorii russkoj tserkvi (Handbook on the History of
the Russian Church), Moscow, 2001, p. 534).
108
In general, as K.A. Papmehl writes, “Paul proved to be much more generous
and responsive to the Church’s financial needs than his mother. Although this
may to some – perhaps a considerable – extent be attributed to his general
tendency to reverse her policies, it was probably due, in at least equal measure,
to his different attitude toward the Church based, as it undoubtedly was, on
sincere Christian belief…. One symptom of this different attitude was that,
unlike his predecessor – or, indeed, successor, Paul dealt with the Synod not
through the Ober-Prokurator, but through the senior ecclesiastical member: first
Gavriil and later Amvrosii.”217
“One of the Tsar’s contemporaries, N.A. Sablukov, who had the good fortune,
thanks to his service at the Royal Court, to know the Emperor personally,
remembered the Emperor Paul in his memoirs as ‘a deeply religious man, filled
with a true piety and the fear of God…. He was a magnanimous man, ready to
forgive offences and recognize his mistakes. He highly prized righteousness,
hated lies and deceit, cared for justice and was merciless in his persecution of all
kinds of abuses, in particular usury and bribery.’
“The well-known researcher of Paul, Shabelsky-Bork, writes: ‘While he was

Tsarevich and Heir, Paul would often spend the whole night in prayer. A little
carpet is preserved in Gatchina; on it he used to pray, and it is worn through by
his knees.’ The above-mentioned N.A. Sablukov recounts, in agreement with
this: ‘Right to the present day they show the places on which Paul was
accustomed to kneel, immersed in prayer and often drenched in tears. The
parquet is worn through in these places. The room of the officer sentry in which
I used to sit during my service in Gatchina was next to Paul’s private study, and
I often heard the Emperor’s sighs when he was standing at prayer.’
“The historical records of those years have preserved a description of the

following event: ‘A watchman had a strange and wonderful vision when he was
standing outside the summer palace… The Archangel Michael stood before the
watchman suddenly, in the light of heavenly glory, and the watchman was
stupefied and in trembling from this vision… And the Archangel ordered that a
cathedral should be raised in his honour there and that this command should be
passed on to the Emperor Paul immediately. The special event went up the chain
of command, of course, and Paul Petrovich was told about everything. But Paul
Petrovich replied: “I already know”: he had seen everything beforehand, and the
appearance to the watchman was a kind of repetition…’ From this story we can
draw the conclusion that Tsar Paul was counted worthy also of revelations from
the heavenly world…”218
Although Tsar Paul was traditional in his views, this did not prevent from
acknowledging sound views and good practice from less traditional sources.
Thus he accepted Voltaire’s arguments against torture. As Simon Sebag
Montefiore writes: “During the latter half of the 18 th century Prussia, Sweden,
217
Papmehl, Metropolitan Platon of Moscow, Newtonville: Oriental Research Partners, 1983, p. 78.
218
“Svyatoj Tsar-Muchenik Pavel”, op. cit. And after his death he himself appeared to people
from the other world. See http://lib.rus.ec/b/30838/read.
109
France, Austria and Tuscany all abolished judicial torture. In 1801, under Tsar
Paul, Russia decreed that ‘the very name of torture, bringing shame and
reproach on mankind, should be forever erased from the public memory.’” 219
In foreign policy, Tsar Paul brought a temporary end to the

seemingly endless expansion of Russia’s territorial dominion. This was
in accordance with a policy he had formulated during the reign of his
mother. For, as Alexander Bakhanov writes, “there were quite a few
people in Russia who did not consider the decision on endless
territorial expansion as correct; but nobody dared to contradict the will
of Catherine II. Only one man was found who cast doubt on the chosen
expansionist course. He was the Tsarevich Paul. In 1774 he presented a
note to Catherine – ‘Meditations on the state in general, on the number
of soldiers required to defend it, and the defence of all its borders’. The
twenty-year-old young man actually formulated a military-state
doctrine that after his enthronement would become the basic principle
of imperial politics.
“Its essence boiled down to three important points. First, Russia

should not conduct offensive wars, but only defensive ones. Secondly,
Russia should not expand her borders and should reject territorial
expansion. Thirdly, the army should be cut down, but reorganized on
the basis of strict reglamentation, thanks to which it would be possible
to obtain significant economies in state expenditures.
“Catherine did not simply ignore the suggestions offered by her son,
but she angrily rejected them, considering them to be ‘the stupidity of a
stupid man’…” 220
And yet this supposedly stupid man was the rightful ruler of
Russia, who, when permitted to inherit the throne on his mother’s
death, showed that he was indeed wise, being the man chosen by
Divine Providence to begin the return of Russian statehood to true
Autocracy… We should also not forget here the salutary influence of
Tsar Paul’s wife, Empress Maria Fyodorovna, who was very popular
among the people. A.V. Buganov writes: “While it was the inveterate
desire of the enserfed peasants throughout Russia to be liberated, in
the villages of Maria Fyodorovna the complete opposite was observed:
tradesmen and free men generally were assigned to the number of her
peasants. The empress took care that they had enough, and founded
village charitable-educational institutions. She often put on feasts for
her peasants in her park, where in her presence the young people sang
songs and had round dances. The summit of Maria Fyodorovna’s
activity and the crown of her charitable work was her educational
system, which was known as ‘the institutions of Empress Maria’. These
219
Montefiore, Titans of History, London: Quercus, 2012, p. 276.
220
Bakhanov, Pavel I (Paul I), Moscow: Veche, 2010, pp. 74-75.
110
included shelters and children’s homes and educational institutions,
especially for women.” 221
221
Buganov, “Lichnosti i sobytia istorii v pamiati russkikh krestian XIX – nachala XX veka”
(Personalities and historical events in the memory of the Russian peasants of the 19 th and
beginning of the 20th centuries), Voprosy Istorii (Questions of History), December, 2005, p. 120.
111
14. THE ANNEXATION OF GEORGIA
Tsar Paul’s love for the Church found expression in two important events in
the year 1800: the annexation of Georgia and the reunion of some of the Old
Ritualists with the Orthodox Church on a “One Faith” (Yedinoverie) basis. The
former strengthened the security of the Orthodox world against the external foe,
and the latter - its internal unity.
The Georgians had first appealed for Russian protection in 1587. Since then,
they had suffered almost continual invasions from the Persians and the Turks,
leading to many martyrdoms, of which the most famous was that of Queen
Ketevan in 1624. One king, Rostom, even adopted Islam and persecuted
Orthodoxy. In fact, from 1634 until the crowning of King Wakhtang in 1701, all
the sovereigns of Georgia were Muslim. The eighteenth century saw only a small
improvement, and in 1762 King Teimuraz II travelled to Russia for help. In 1783,
in the treaty of Georgievsk known as the Traktat, protection was formally offered
to King Erekli (Heraclius) II of Kartli-Kakhetia by Catherine II. Persian
domination was abjured in favour of Russian. This was a wise move, because the
tiny Georgian kingdoms were not viable in the longer term in the face of
unrelenting persecution by their Muslim neighbours.
However, Russian protection turned out to be ineffective in the following

years, and when Persia struck back in 1795, the Russians could do nothing to
help. For “the last, most heavy trial for the Church of Iberia,” writes P. Ioseliani,
“was the irruption of Mahomed-Khan into the weakened state of Georgia, in the
year 1795. In the month of September of that year the Persian army took the city
of Tiflis, seized almost all the valuable property of the royal house, and reduced
the palace and the whole of the city into a heap of ashes and of ruins. The whole
of Georgia, thus left at the mercy of the ruthless enemies of the name of Christ,
witnessed the profanation of everything holy, and the most abominable deeds
and practices carried on in the temples of God. Neither youth nor old age could
bring those cruel persecutors to pity; the churches were filled with troops of
murderers and children were killed at their mothers’ breasts. They took the
Archbishop of Tiflis, Dositheus, who had not come out of the Synod of Sion,
made him kneel down before an image of [the most holy Mother of God], and,
without mercy on his old age, threw him from a balcony into the river Kur; then
they plundered his house, and set fire to it. The pastors of the Church, unable to
hide the treasures and other valuable property of the Church, fell a sacrifice to
the ferocity of their foes. Many images of saints renowned in those days
perished for ever; as, for instance, among others, the image of [the most holy
Mother of God] of the Church of Metekh, and that of the Synod of Sion. The
enemy, having rifled churches, destroyed images, and profaned the tombs of
saints, revelled in the blood of Christians; and the inhuman Mahomed-Khan put
an end to these horrors only when there remained not a living soul in Tiflis.” 222
222
Ioseliani, A Short History of the Georgian Church, Jordanville, 1983, pp. 190-191.
112
“Russian prestige,” writes Donald Rayfield, “ was badly damaged: an Iranian
warlord had reduced their vassal kingdom to rubble in a matter of days. [King]
Erekle’s contemporaries, like later historians, suspected that Catherine
deliberately abandoned Erekle, just as Stalin, 150 years later, would let the Nazis
crush the Warsaw uprising, making it all the more easy to annexe a prostrate
country. Only in December did two Russian battalions cross the Daryal Pass,
Agha Mohammed Khan was now far away, quelling rebels in Khorasan; Russian
and Georgian troops easily reached the Caspian and retook Ganja. On 6
November 1796 Catherine the Great died. Her estranged son Paul immediately
reversed all her decisions. Erekle was abandoned again, and General Gudovich
was told to treat him merely as ‘a potential enemy of our enemies’. Garsevan
Chavchavadze’s warnings that Agha Mohammed Khan might return delayed
the Russian withdrawal, but the Iranians regained Erevan and Karabagh
unopposed. On 6 June 1797 Agha Mohammed Khan was murdered at Sadeq-
Andrea, an aide of Georgian origin whom he had threatened to execute, and
Erekle was able to recoup some losses. But in autumn the Russians withdrew
troops and financial support and, insisting on literal observance of the Traktat,
left Erekle politically and militarily paralysed.
“Kartli-Kakhetia was no longer viable: its population had fallen by half, to

some 200,000. There were too few peasants to feed a top-heavy royal family and
nobility, let alone an army big enough to defend the territory. International trade
dried up. On 11 January 1798 Erekle died. His son, Giorgi XII, was indecisive
and ill with gout. He was, his son-in-law said, ‘a man devoted no more than
three hours a day to affairs of state, and the rest of the time prayed or ate and
drank until he vomited and fell asleep.’…” 223
The royal family was split over who should be heir and whether or not to
submit to full union with Russia. “Tsar Paul made discussion irrelevant: he send
in November 1799 a regiment of Jäger and an ‘advisor’, Piotr Ivanovich
Kovalensky, to Tbilisi. The sun shone as 10,000 citizens of Tbilisi, the women in
white lining rooftops and balconies, watched their ‘liberators’ enter the city,
cannons firing, church bells ringing. Villages in Kakhetia tried to billet Russian
soldiers. Decades of raids and war, they thought were over…” 224
However, when Giorgi died in December, 1800, the new Tsar, Alexander I,
did not allow his heir to be crowned but took over the kingdom by force,
appointing the Russian General Lazarev as provisional governor. The Bagrations
and the nobility were deprived of all power in exchange for lands, serfs and
pensions in Russia. In September Alexander’s manifesto was read out: “Not for
increasing Our strength, not for greed, not for the extension of Our borders… do
we take upon Ourselves the burden of governing the Georgian kingdom;
dignity, honour and humanity alone impose on Us the sacred duty, having
listened to the prayers of the suffering, in order to deflect their griefs, to institute
223
Rayfield, Edge of Empires, a History of Georgia, London: Reaktion, 2012, p. 256.
224
Rayfield, op. cit., p. 257.
113
in Georgia a government which might establish justice, security of the person
and of property…”225
Russian occupation was harsh (that the Georgians accepted it voluntarily is a

fiction), but at least it brought relative peace for a while. “Georgia’s peasantry,
however, felt no relief. The first major rebellion broke out in spring 1804 at a
vulnerable place, just west of the Daryal pass. Local Ossetians protested about
grain and meat requisitions of Cossacks: a kapitan-ispravnik threw them into pits
full of dead cats, whey and excrement. Peasants were then forced to clear the
road of snow and rocks: two men were whipped to death, women were yoked to
sledges and beaten, others died in avalanches; horses and oxen were worked to
death. The Aragvi valley took up arms, killing seventeen to General Volkonsky’s
troops and occupying forts on the highway: in midsummer 4,000 rebels,
Georgians and Ossetians, asked Prince Parnaoz to lead them. On 3 August at the
battle of Lomisi, 300 Khevsurs encircled the Russians, who were saved only by
Kakhetian noblemen’s timidity and General Tsistianov’s return from besieging
Erevan. Hundreds of highlanders were bayoneted or captured: it was eight years
before anti-Russian violence broke out again.”226
What we have called “Georgia” was in fact the kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti in

Eastern Georgia. There was another kingdom on the Black Sea Coast, Mingrelia,
which was taken under Russian protection in 1803. And then there was another
independent Georgian kingdom in the West, Imeretia, whose capital was
Kutaisi. There, King Solomon II of Imeretia, “now allied to the Ottomans, fought
Russian troops until in 1810, with Solomon surrounded, [Tsar] Alexander
deposed him and annexed the kingdom.” 227 Solomon fled, refusing to surrender,
and died, still free and sovereign, in Trebizond, in 1815.
“After the king’s death, his confessor, Fr. Ise (the future Hieroschemamonk
Hilarion] intended to set out for Imeretia (then annexed to Russia) no matter
what the consequences. He informed all the courtiers, who numbered about six
hundred men, and suggested that they follow his example. Many of them
accepted his decision joyfully, but fear of the tsar’s wrath hampered this plan. Fr.
Ise reassured everyone, promising to take upon himself the task of mediating
before the tsar. He immediately wrote out a petition in the name of all the
princes and other members of the retinue, and sent it to the tsar. The sovereign
graciously received their petition, restored them to their former ranks, and
returned their estates…”228
Although in the long term Russian rule protected Georgia from the incursions
of the Muslims, in the shorter term it was harsh and deeply resented by the
225
226
227
Montefiore, The Romanovs, London: Vintage, 2011, p. 299, note.
228
“Tower of Virtue: The Life and Ascetic Labors of St. Hilarion the Georgian of Mount Athos”,
The Orthodox Word, vol. 39, NN 3-4 (230-231), May-August, 2003, pp. 117-118.
114
Georgians. Moreover, it had the unfortunate effect of destroying, not only the
independence of the Georgian kingdoms, but also the autocephaly of the
Georgian Church.
Archpriest Zakaria Machitadze writes: “The foreign officials sent to rule in

Georgia began to interfere considerably in the affairs of the Church, and it soon
became clear that the Russian government [contrary to the eighth paragraph of
the treaty of 1783] intended to abolish the autocephaly of the Georgian Church
and subordinate it to the Russian Synod.
“On June 10, 1811, Tsar Alexander summoned Anton II, Patriarch of All
Georgia, to his court and from there sent him into exile. For ten years Georgia
had neither a king nor a spiritual leader, and the people began to lose their sense
of political and spiritual independence.
“There ensued a period of great difficulty in the life of the Georgian Church.
The Church was subordinated to the Russian Synod through an exarch, or
representative, of the synod. From 1811 to 1817 the Georgian nobleman Varlaam
served as exarch, but after his term all the subsequent exarches were Russian by
descent. The foreign exarches’ ignorance of the Georgian language, traditions,
local saints, and feast gave rise to many conflicts between the foreign clergy and
the Georgian Orthodox believers. The most contemptible exarches stole valuable
pieces of jewelry and masterpieces of the Georgian enamel arts and sent them to
Russia. Many cathedrals were left to fall into ruin, and the number of diocese in
Georgia dropped dramatically from twenty-four to five. Divine services in the
Georgian language and ancient polyphonic chants were replaced by services in
Slavonic and the music of the post-Petrine Russian Church.
“Russian domination of the Church aroused considerable vexation and

indignation in the Georgian people, and evidence of the exarchs’ anti-Georgian
activities exacerbated their discontent. Despite the wise admonitions of many
Russian elders to respect the portion assigned by lot to the Theotokos and
converted by the holy Apostles themselves, appalling crimes continued to be
committed against the Georgian Church and nation. Frescoes in churches were
whitewashed, and the Khakuli Icon of the Theotokos along with other icons and
objects adorned with precious gold and silver were stolen…”229
In spite of these deviations, the annexation of Georgia marked an important

step forward in Russia’s progress to fulfilling her mission as the Third Rome. In
1826 General Paskevich defeated the Persians and by the Treaty of Turkmenchai
obtained Armenia and Azerbaijan as provinces of Russian Transcaucasia. The
Georgians began to recover under his and his successor’s rule, and after a failed
coup attempt in 1832 abandoned all hope of independence …
Machitadze, Lives of the Georgian Saints, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press,
229
2006, pp. 123-124.

115
In 1901 Fr. John Vostorgov meditated on this almost unprecedented union of
two peoples and Churches as follows: “In voluntarily uniting herself with
Russia, Georgia gained much. But we must not forget that she also lost: she lost
her independent existence as a separate state, that which served and serves as
the object of ardent desires and bloody struggles up to now in many peoples,
and which Georgia herself defended for a long series of centuries as an
inestimable treasure with as lofty heroism as can be attributed to any people in
history.
“Whether we recognize or not the providential significance of peoples in

history, we must in any case agree that historical and geographical conditions at
least place before this or that people this or that world task. Only from this point
of view do the ardent enthusiasms of patriotism, and the fervent desire and care
to bring greatness and power to one’s homeland, acquire a meaning and higher
justification: her greatness and power are not an end, but the means to serve the
universal, pan-human good. But what was the destiny of Russia on the
universal-historical plane? It would not be an exaggeration, nor an artificial
invention to point to the fact that she, as standing on the borders of the East and
the West, is destined to mediate between them, and to work out in her own
history a higher synthesis of the principles of life of the East and the West, which
are often contradictory and hostile to one another, pushing them onto the path of
bitter struggle, reconciling them in the unity of a higher, unifying cultural type.
This task – a great, colossal, unique task – was bequeathed to Russia by deceased
Byzantium, which in her turn inherited it from ancient Greece with her eastern-
Persian armies, her powerful Hellenism, which was victoriously borne even in
the time of Alexander the Great into the very heart of the East.
“But much earlier than Russia this great task was recognized and accepted by
Georgia…
“In the days of the ancient struggle between Greece and Persia, the West was
characterized, spiritually speaking, by the religions of anthropomorphism, and
the East – by Parsism. Georgia, like Armenia, stood at that time completely on
the side of the latter. The Persians placed a seal on the clothing, morals and
customs of the Georgians, and on their royal dynasties, language and religion,
that is perceptible to this day, because in deep antiquity the native paganism of
the Georgians was supplanted by the worship of Armazd, in whose name we
can undoubtedly hear the name of the Persian Ormuzd. A new, powerful
influence entered into the world when the West accepted Christianity and
placed it on the banner of her historical existence. And before the appearance of
Christianity, under Caesar and Pompey, we see in Georgia the beginnings of an
attraction towards the West. But she finally understood her own mission in the
world only in the light of Christianity: under the emperor Hadrian, this was still
expressed in an indecisive manner and bore the character of a certain
compulsion, but under Constantine the Great this was finally and irreversibly
recognized.
116
“It is not in vain that the year of the victory of Constantine the Great near
Adrianople (323), and the declaration that Christianity was not only permitted
(as it had been in 312 and 313) but the dominant religion of the Roman empire,
coincides with the year of the baptism of the Georgians in Mskhet… A
remarkable coincidence! King Mirian, who was by birth from a Persian dynasty,
wavered quite a bit until, propelled by the historical calling of his people, in
spite of his family links with Persia, he decided to make this step, which
irreversibly defined the destiny of Georgia. Soon the East, in its turn, exchanged
Parsism for Islam, and there began the great duel of two worlds. Western
Europe responded, and responded powerfully, to this duel with its crusades. But
we can say that the life and history of Georgia was one long crusade, one long
heroic and martyric feat! The arena of the great struggle was continually being
widened in the direction of the north: from ancient Greece to Byzantium, to
Georgia, to the south-western Slavic peoples. But when Byzantium began to
decline, from the tenth century, still further to the north, the young Russian
people was called into the arena, bearing upon herself the seal of great powers
and a great destiny. But until she grew up and thrust aside a multitude of paths
that bound her childhood and youth, until she had passed through the
educational suffering of her struggle with the wild hordes, with the infidels, in
the crucible of the Tatar yoke, and in domestic upheavals, Georgia remained
alone. It is difficult to represent and describe her boundless sufferings, her
faithfulness to the Cross, her heroism worthy of eternal memory, her merits
before the Christian world.
“Soon the Tatar yoke became synonymous with Islam; Russia, casting aside
that yoke, moved further and further into the Muslim world, became stronger
and stronger, and finally the hour of the will of God sounded: she gave the hand
of help and complete union to exhausted Iberia, which had reached the final
limits of exhaustion in her unequal struggle. Peoples having a single world task
naturally merged into one on the level of the state also…
“But this is not all: the situation of the struggle between Islam and
Christianity, between the East and the West, immediately changed. Russia,
having established herself in Transcaucasia, immediately became a threat to
Persia and Turkey; with unprecedented rapidity and might she cast the banner
of Islam far from the bounds of tormented Georgia. Only one century has passed
since the time of the union of Russia and Georgia, and in the meantime what a
huge, hitherto unseen growth has taken place in Christian Russia, and, by
contrast, fall in Muslim Turkey and Persia! This demonstrates to all how much
good the executed decision of the two peoples to merge into one on the basis of
the communality of their world tasks brought to the history of the world one
hundred years ago.
“But did both peoples understand these tasks, and do they understand them
now?
“Even if they had not understood them clearly, they would have striven
towards them semi-consciously: if a people is an organism, then in it there must
117
be instincts which subconsciously direct its life purposefully and infallibly,
having before it, not death, but life. But there is a force which gave to both the
one and the other people an understanding of their world tasks, and the means
of their fulfillment. This force is Orthodoxy. It alone includes in itself the
principles of true Catholicity, and does not suppress nationalities, but presents
to each one spiritual freedom without tying its spiritual life to a person, a place
or an external discipline, while at the same time it stands higher than all
nationalities. By means of undying tradition it preserves a man from confusing
freedom with license, from destructive spiritual anarchy, and makes possible in
him constant vitality and growth, as of a spiritual organism. Not being tied to a
place or time, and including in itself the principles of true democracy and good,
healthy cosmopolitanism (in the Orthodox understanding of the Church),
Orthodoxy – and only Orthodoxy – serves as a religion having an eternal and
global significance, uniting mankind inwardly, and not outwardly. Without
suppressing nationalities, it can at the same time become a pan-popular religion
in the full sense of the word. And truly it has become the fundamental strength
and popular religion both for the Russians and for the Georgians. Outside
Orthodoxy both Russians and Georgians cease to be themselves. But in it they
find the true guarantee of the preservation of their spiritual personalities under
any hostile attacks. For that reason it has become infinitely dear to the hearts of
both peoples; for that reason it has so quickly and firmly united both peoples in
an unbroken union hitherto unknown in history of state and Church, in spite of
the absence of tribal kinship, for kinship according to faith is higher that kinship
according to blood, union in the spirit is higher than union in race, and stronger
than unions created for the avaricious aims of states. This is a union in life and
death, for the present and the future, since it rests on spiritual, age-old
foundations. And the eternal and the spiritual give sense to the temporal and
make it truly fertile…”230
230
Vostorgov, “Gruzia i Rossia” (Georgia and Russia), in Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij Protoierea
Ioanna Vostorgova (The Complete Collection of the Works of Protopriest John Vostorgov),
Moscow, 1914, vol. 1, pp. 63-67.
118
15. THE OLD RITUALISTS AND THE YEDINOVERIE
Although the Old Ritualists were not allowed to have open churches in the
eighteenth century, they were not persecuted so long as they did not try to make
converts. Some emigrated to the Urals, Siberia, Lithuania and Courland; but the
Empress Elizabeth invited those who had gone abroad to return to Russia.
“In 1761,” writes S.A. Zenkovsky, “when Peter III came to power, he almost
immediately issued a decree forbidding any kind of persecution of the Old
Ritualists, which was confirmed in 1762, 1764 and 1784 by Catherine II. She
asked the Old Ritualists living abroad to return to the homeland, and tens of
thousands of them responded to her appeal, returned to Russia and settled in the
Middle and Lower Volga regions and in New Russia, where they were
immediately offered large plots of land. The ‘schismatics’ office’ that controlled
Old Ritualist affairs was closed, the Old Ritualists received civil rights, and the
monasteries of Irgiz on the Lower Volga were opened and became important
centres of the Old Ritualist popovtsi.
“At the end of the century large Old Ritualist centres were formed in Moscow
– the Rogozhsky (popovtsi) and Preobrazhensky (bespopovtsi), and the Korolevsky
in Petersburg. In many cities and village districts there were Old Ritualist
(popovtsi) churches or chapels in which priests who had come over from the
‘dominant’ church to Old Ritualism served. To speak of executions or tortures of
the Old Ritualists… since 1761 would simply be a distortion of the truth…” 231
The great hermit, St. Seraphim of Sarov (1754-1833), frequently had cause to
lead Old Ritualists to the True Church.
“Four Old Ritualists,” writes Archimandrite Lazarus Moore, “once came to

him in order to ask him about the Sign of the Cross made with two fingers, and
wanting a miracle as evidence of the truth. They had hardly crossed the
threshold of his cell, when Father Seraphim read their thoughts, took the first
man by the hand, folded his fingers in the Orthodox way and, crossing him,
said: ‘This is the Christian Sign of the Cross! Pray in this way and tell others to
do so. This way of making the Sign of the Cross had been handed down to us by
the holy Apostles, but the two-finger way is against holy tradition.’
“And he added with power: ‘I beg and implore you to go to the Greek-
Russian Church. It is n all the power and glory of God. Like a ship with many
masts, sails and a great helm, it is steered by the Holy Spirit. Its good helmsmen
are the Doctors of the Church. The Archpastors are the successors of the
Apostles. But your chapel is like a small rowing-boat without rudder and oars; it
is secured to the ship of our Church and floats behind it. The waves wash over it,
and it would have certainly gone down if it had not been secured to the ship.’
231
Zenkovsky, “Staroobriadchestvo, Tserkov’ i Gosudarstvo” (Old Ritualism, the Church and the
State), Russkoe Vozrozhdenie (Russian Regeneration), 1987- I, pp. 92-93.
119
“Another time an Old Ritualist asked him: ‘Tell me, old man of God, which
faith is the best – the present faith of the Church or the old one?’
“Stop your nonsense,’ replied Father Seraphim sharply, contrary to his wont.
‘Our life is a sea, the Holy Orthodox Church is our ship, and the Helmsman is
the Saviour Himself. If with such a Helmsman, on account of their sinful
weakness people cross the sea with difficulty and are not all saved from
drowning, where do you expect to get with your little dinghy? And how can you
hope to be saved without the Helmsman?’
“Once they brought him a woman whose limbs were so distorted that her
knees were bent up to her breast. She had previously been Orthodox, but having
married an Old Ritualists, she stopped going to Church. St. Seraphim cured her
in front of all the people by anointing her breast and hands with oil from his
Icon-lamp, and then ordered her and relations to pray in the Orthodox way.
“’Did some of your now deceased relatives pray with the two-finger Sign of
the Cross?’
“’To my great grief, everyone prayed like that in our family.’
“Father Seraphim reflected a little, and then remarked: ‘Even though they
were virtuous people, they will be bound; the Holy Orthodox Church does not
accept this Sign of the Cross.’
“Then he asked: ‘Do you know these graves? Go, mother, to their graves,
make three prostrations and pray to the Lord that He may release them in
eternity.’
“Her living relatives afterwards obeyed Father Seraphim’s instructions.
“Another edifying case was that of a woman who had been adopted as a
three-year-old orphan by Old Ritualists.
“After their death she first joined their community, but then she started a life
of pilgrimage and went from one Elder to another.
“My whole object was to find someone who could teach me, a sinner, how to
save my soul. I also had a misgiving. I was in doubt whether I could have my
benefactors prayed for in the Orthodox Church.’
“At last she reached Sarov. Reports about Father Seraphim had already
spread throughout Russia.
“’I saw a crowd of people preparing to go somewhere. I inquired and was

told that they were going to Father Seraphim’s hermitage. Though I was very
tired from the journey, yet I forgot about res and went with them. I wanted to
see the Elder as soon as possible. Having passed the Monastery, we went along a
120
forest path. We had walked about two versts, those who were stronger were
ahead, but I was lagging behind and following slowly in the rear. Suddenty I
looked to one side and saw an old wizened man, with whitish-looking hair and a
bent back, in a white cassock, gathering sticks. I went up to him, and asked him
whether it was far to Father Seraphim’s hermitage.
“’The Elder put down his faggot, gave me a serene look and asked softly:
“’”What do you want with poor Seraphim, my joy?”
“’Only then did I realize that I was talking to the Elder himself, and threw
myself at his feet, and began to ask him to pray for me, unworthy as I was.
“’”Rise, daughter Irene!” said the ascetic, and he bent down to help me up
himself. “I was just waiting for you. I did not want you to have come here for
nothing, when you are so tired.”
“’I was astonished to be called by my name, when he had never seen me

before, and I trembled all over with fear; neither could I say a word, but just
gazed at his angelic face.’
“Father Seraphim folded her fingers in the Orthodox way and crossed here
himself with her hand.
“’Cross yourself like that,’ he repeated twice, ‘that is how God commands us.’
“And after a short silence he went on: ‘As for your benefactors, if you happen
to have a copeck, give it without misgiving for them to be commemorated at the
proskomedia. It is not a sin!’”232
It is against this background that we should view the movement that began
among some Old Ritualist communities towards union with the Orthodox on the
basis of Yedinoverie, or “One Faith” – that is, agreement on dogmas and
acceptance of the authority of the Orthodox hierarchy, together with retention of
the pre-Nikonian rites.
“The essence of the Yedinoverie,” writes Archbishop Nikon (Rklitsky),

consisted in the fact that the ‘one-faithers’, while having amongst themselves the
priesthood and the fullness of the sacraments, did not at the same time lose their
beloved rites, with which they were accustomed to pray to God and to please
Him. The first person who had the idea of the Yedinoverie was none other than
Patriarch Nikon himself. After his Church reforms he allowed the first and most
important leader of the Church disturbance that then arose, Gregory Neronov, to
carry out Divine services according to the old printed service books and books of
needs, and blessed for him ‘to increase the alleluias’ during his presence in the
Moore, St. Seraphim of Sarov. A Spiritual Biography, Blaco, Texas: New Sarov Press, 1994, pp.
232
234-238.
121
Dormition cathedral. In this way Patriarch Nikon returned the first schismatic to
the Church. Moreover, already after the correction of the Divine service books,
Patriarch Nikon published books of the Hours in which the controversial
passages were printed in the old way. It is evident that Patriarch Nikon treated
this necessary Church reform very rationally and clearly understood that after
the danger of the Russian Orthodox Church being torn away from Ecumenical
Orthodoxy had been averted by the accomplished Church reform, the old books
and rites could be freely allowed for those who attached particular significance
to them without at the same time violating the dogmas of the faith.
“It is also known that in the best Russian monasteries of the second half of the
17 century they looked upon the old and new books in the same way and
th
carried out Church services with the ones and the others. There are also
indications that in the 18th century, too, the Church took a condescending
attitude towards the Church rite practice of the Old Ritualists, and her attention
was mainly directed at the dogmas of the faith, and not at rites and books. The
strict measures taken by the government, and the formal, bureaucratic attitude
of the Synodal administration, together with the striving to achieve unity in rites
by means of force put an end to this rapprochement and deepened the schism…
There is no doubt that the main reasons [for the gradual mutual alienation of the
ruling clergy and the Old Ritualists] were not so much religious and
ecclesiastical, as political, including the influence of foreign States striving to
weaken and disrupt the inner unity of the Russian people…”233
“Before 1800,” writes K.V. Glazkov, “almost all the Old Ritualist communities
had united with the Orthodox Church on their own conditions. Besides, there
were quite a few so-called crypto-Old Ritualists, who formally belonged to the
ruling Church, but who in their everyday life prayed and lived according to the
Old Ritualist ways (there were particularly many of these amidst the minor
provincial nobility and merchant class). This state of affairs was evidently not
normal: it was necessary to work out definite rules, common for all, for the
union of the Old Ritualists with the Orthodox Church. As a result of negotiations
with the Muscovite Old Ritualists the latter in 1799 put forward the conditions
under which they would agree to accept a priesthood from the Orthodox
Church. These conditions, laid out in 16 points, partly represented old rules
figuring in the 1793 petition of the Starodub ‘agreers’, and partly new ones
relating to the mutual relations of the ‘one-faithers’ with the Orthodox Church.
These relations required the union of the ‘one-faithers’ with the Orthodox
Church, but allowed for their being to a certain degree isolated. On their basis
the Muscovite Old Ritualists submitted a petition to his Majesty for their reunion
with the Orthodox Church, and Emperor Paul I wrote at the bottom of this
document: ‘Let this be. October 27, 1800.’ This petition with the royal signature
was returned to the Muscovite Old Ritualists and was accepted as complete
confirmation of their suggested conditions for union, as an eternal act of the
recognition of the equal validity and honour of Old Ritualism and Orthodoxy.
Rklitsky, Zhizneopisanie Blazhennejshago Antonia, Mitropolitan Kievskago i Galitskago (Life of his

233
Beatitude Anthony, Metropolitan of Kiev and Galich), volume 3, New York, 1957, pp. 164-165.
122
“But on the same day, with the remarks (or so-called ‘opinions’) of
Metropolitan Plato of Moscow, conditions were confirmed that greatly limited
the petition of the Old Ritualists. These additions recognized reunited Old
Ritualism as being only a transitional stage on the road to Orthodoxy, and
separated the ‘old-faith’ parishes as it were into a special semi-independent
ecclesiastical community. Wishing to aid a change in the views of those entering
into communion with the Church on the rites and books that they had acquired
in Old Ritualism, and to show that the Old Ritualists were falsely accusing the
Church of heresies, Metropolitan Plato called the ‘agreers’ ‘one-faithers’…
“The one-faithers petitioned the Holy Synod to remove the curses [of the
Moscow Council of 1666-1667] on holy antiquity, but Metropolitan Plato replied
in his additional remarks that they were imposed with justice. The Old Ritualists
petitioned for union with the Church while keeping the old rites, but
Metropolitan Plato left them their rites only for a time, only ‘in the hope’ that
with time the reunited would abandon the old rites and accept the new…
“Amidst the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church the view became
more and more established that the ‘One Faith’ was a transitional step towards
Orthodoxy. But in fact the One Faith implies unity in dogmatic teaching and the grace
of the Holy Spirit with the use in the Divine services of various Orthodox rites. But the
old rite continued to be perceived as incorrect, damaged and in no way blessed
by the Church, but only ‘by condescension not forbidden’ for a time.”234
“The Synodal administration, which was built on formalist foundations,

looked on the yedinoverie not from a paternal-caring point of view, but only as on
a certain group that was constantly making petitions for something, and the
Church authorities, in reply to these petitions, constantly restricted them, and
regarded them with suspicion and did not satisfy their age-old desire to have a
common spiritual father, a [one-faither] bishop.
“Thanks to this situation, the Yedinoverie gradually fell into decline and
disorder, to the great joy of the hardened schismatics …”235
234
Glazkov, “K voprosu o edinoverii v sviazi s ego dvukhsotletiem” (“Towards the Question of
the ‘One Faith’ in connection with its 200 th anniversary”), Pravoslavnij Put’ (The Orthodox Way),
2000, pp. 74-75, 76-77.
235
Rklitsky, op. cit., p. 167.
123
16. THE MURDER OF TSAR PAUL
In 1798 Napoleon seized Malta. Paul, who was head of the Maltese Order,
then entered into an alliance union with Prussia, Austria and England against
France. A Russian fleet entered the Mediterranean, and in 1799 a Russian army
under Suvorov entered Northern Italy, liberating the territory from the French.
However, in 1800, writes Lebedev, “England seized the island of Malta, taking it
away from the French and not returning it to the Maltese Order. Paul I sent
Suvorov with his armies back to Russia and demanded that Prussia take decisive
measures against England (the seizure of Hanover), threatening to break
relations and take Hanover, the homeland of the English monarchs, with
Russian forces. But at the same time there began direct relations between Paul
and Napoleon. They began in an unusual manner. Paul challenged Napoleon to
a duel so as to decide State quarrels by means of a personal contest, without
shedding the innocent blood of soldiers. Bonaparte declined from the duel, but
had a high opinion of Paul I’s suggestion, and as a sign of respect released his
Russian prisoners without any conditions, providing them with all that they
needed at France’s expense. Paul I saw that with the establishment of Napoleon
in power, an end had been put to the revolution in France. 236 Therefore he
concluded a union with Napoleon against England (with the aim of taking Malta
away from her and punishing her for her cunning), and united Russia to the
‘continental blockade’ that Napoleon had constructed against England,
undermining her mercantile-financial might. 237 Moreover, in counsel with
Napoleon, Paul I decided [on January 12, 1801] to send a big Cossack corps to
India – the most valuable colony of the English. 238 To this day his Majesty’s order
has been deemed ‘mad’ and ‘irrational’. But those who say this conceal the fact
that the plan for this Russian expedition against India did not at all belong to
Paul I: it arose under Catherine II and was seriously considered by her (Paul I
only put it into action).
“Russia’s break with England and the allies signified for them a catastrophe
and in any case an irreparable blow to the British pocket, and also to the pocket of
the major Russian land-owners and traders (English trade in Russia had been very
strong for a long time!). From the secret masonic centres of England and
Germany an order was delivered to the Russian Masons to remove the Emperor
and as quickly as possible!239
236
This was, of course, a great mistake. Napoleon was a child of the revolution and the
instrument of the spread of its ideas throughout Europe. (V.M.)
237
Another mistake, for it did precisely the opposite, weakening the continental economies and
allowing England, with her superior navy, to seize the colonies of her rivals around the world.
(V.M.)
238
They had crossed the Volga on March 18 when they heard of the death of the Tsar…
239
Douglas Smith describes the English involvement as follows: “Paul had recently broken
Russia’s alliance with Britain in favour of Napoleon’s France. He turned on his former ally with a
plan to challenge British supremacy on the seas and began seizing their ships in Russian waters
and imprisoning their sailors. The emperor even ordered Russian forces to attack the British in
India. The British Empire fought back. Just days before Paul’s murder, a British fleet sailed into
the Baltic Sea heading for St. Petersburg. Only after learning of the regicide, and the new
124
“Long disturbed by Paul I’s attitude, the Russian nobles were quick to
respond to the Masonic summons. Even before this,… in 1798 the Russian
Masons had succeeded in sowing dissension in the Royal Family. They
slanderously accused the Tsaritsa Maria Fyodorovna of supposedly trying to
rule her husband and instead of him. At the same time he was ‘set up with’ the
beauty Lopukhina, the daughter of a very powerful Mason, and a faithful
plotter. But the affair was foiled through the nobility of the Emperor. Learning
that Lopukhina loved Prince Gagarin, Paul I arranged their marriage, since he
was just good friends with Lopukhina. The Masons had to save the situation in
such a way that Prince Gagarin himself began to help his own wife come closer to
Paul I. She settled in the Mikhailov palace and became a very valuable agent of
the plotters. From the autumn of 1800 the plot rapidly acquired a systematic
character. Count N.P. Panin (the college of foreign affairs) was drawn into it, as
was General Count Peter Alexeyevich von der Pahlen, the governor of
Petersburg and a very close advisor of the Tsar, General Bennigsen (also a
German), Admiral Ribas (a native of the island of Malta), the brothers Plato,
Nicholas and Valerian Zubov and their sister, in marriage Princes Zherbtsova,
the senators Orlov, Chicherin, Tatarinov, Tolstoy, Torschinsky, Generals
Golitsyn, Depreradovich, Obolyaninov, Talysin, Mansurov, Uvarov,
Argamakov, the officers Colonel Tolbanov, Skaryatin, a certain Prince Yashvil,
Lieutenant Marin and very many others (amongst them even General M.I.
Kutuzov, one of the prominent Masons of those years). At the head of the
conspiracy stood the English consul in Petersburg, Sir Charles Whitford.
According to certain data, England paid the plotters two million rubles in gold
through him.
“The most important plotters were the Mason-Illuminati, who acted

according to the principle of their founder Weishaupt: ‘slander, slander –
something will stick!’ Floods of slanderous inventions poured onto the head of
the Emperor Paul I. Their aim was to ‘prove’ that he was mad, mentally ill and
therefore in the interests of the people (!) and dynasty (!) he could not remain in
power. The slander was strengthened by the fact that the Emperor’s orders
either were not carried out, or were distorted to an absurd degree, or in his name
instructions of a crazy character were given out. Von Pahlen was especially
successful in this. He began to insinuate to Paul I that his son Alexander
Pavlovich (and also Constantine), with the support of the Empress, wanted to
cast him from the throne. And when Paul I was upset by these communications,
it was insinuated to his sons and Alexander and Constantine that the Emperor
by virtue of a paranoid illness was intending to imprison them together with
their mother for good, while he was supposedly intending to place the young
Prince Eugene of Wurtemburg, who had then arrived in Russia, on the throne.
Noble society was frightened by the fact that Paul I in a fit of madness
[supposedly] wanted to execute some, imprison others and still others send to
Siberia. Pahlen was the person closest to the Tsar and they could not fail to believe
emperor Alexander’s pledge of renewed friendship, did the ships turn around” (Rasputin,
London: Pan Books, 2016, p. 633).
125
him! While he, as he later confessed, was trying to deceive everyone, including
Great Prince Alexander. At first the latter was told that they were talking about
removing his father the Emperor from power (because of his ‘illness’), in order
that Alexander should become regent-ruler. Count N.P. Panin sincerely believed
precisely in this outcome of the affair, as did many other opponents of Paul I
who had not lost the last trace of humanity. At first Alexander did not at all
agree with the plot, and prepared to suffer everything from his father to the end.
But Panin, and then Pahlen convinced him that the coup was necessary for the
salvation of the Fatherland! Alexander several times demanded an oath from the
plotters that they would not allow any violence to his father and would preserve
his life. These oaths were given, but they lied intentionally, as Pahlen later
boasted, only in order to ‘calm the conscience’ of Alexander. 240 They convinced
Constantine Pavlovich in approximately the same way. The coup was marked
for the end of March, 1801. Before this Ribas died, and Panin landed up in exile,
from which he did not manage to return. The whole leadership of the plot
passed to Pahlen, who from the beginning wanted to kill the Emperor. Many
people faithful to his Majesty knew about this, and tried to warn him. Napoleon
also heard about all this through his own channels, and hastened to inform Paul
I in time…. On March 7, 1801 Paul I asked Pahlen directly about the plot. He
confirmed its existence and said that he himself was standing at the head of the
plotters, since only in this way could he know what was going on and prevent it
all at the necessary moment… This time, too, Pahlen succeeded in deceiving the
Tsar, but he felt that it would not do that for long, and that he himself ‘was
hanging by a thread’. He had to hurry, the more so in that many officials,
generals and especially all the soldiers were devoted to Paul I. Besides, the
Jesuits, who were at war with the Illuminati, knew everything about the plot in
advance. In the afternoon of March 11, in the Tsar’s reception-room, Pater
Gruber appeared with a full and accurate list of the plotters and data on the
details. But they managed not to admit the Jesuit to an audience with Paul I.
Palen told Alexander that his father had already prepared a decree about his and
the whole Royal Family’s incarceration in the Schlisselburg fortress, and that for
that reason it was necessary to act without delay. Detachments of units loyal to
Paul I were removed from the Mikhailov castle, where he lived. On March 11,
1801 the father invited his sons Alexander and Constantine and personally asked
them whether they had any part in the conspiracy, and, having received a
negative reply, considered it necessary that they should swear as it were for a
second time to their faithfulness to him as to their Tsar. The sons swore,
deceptively… On the night of the 11 th to 12th of March, 1801, an English ship
entered the Neva with the aim of taking the conspirators on board in case they
failed. Before that Charles Whitford had been exiled from Russia. Zherebtsova-
Zubova was sent to him in England so as to prepare a place for the conspirators
there if it proved necessary to flee. On the night of the 12 th March up to 60 young
officers who had been punished for misdemeanours were assembled at Palen’s
240
Alan Palmer writes: “One of the older conspirators, more sober than the others, pertinently
asked the question which Alexander had always ignored: what would happen if the Tsar offered
resistance? ‘Gentlemen,’ Pahlen replied calmly, ‘you cannot make an omelette without breaking
eggs’. It was an ominous remark, difficult to reconcile with his assurance to Alexander”
(Alexander I, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974, p. 44). Lenin later quoted it... (V.M.)
126
house and literally pumped with spirits. One of them drunkenly remarked that
it would be good for Russia if all the members of the Royal Family were slaughtered
at once! The rest rejected such an idea with horror, but it spoke volumes! After
much drinking they all moved by night across Mars field to the Mikhailov castle.
There the brave officers were scared to death by some crows which suddenly
took wing at night in an enormous flock and raised a mighty cry. As became
clear later, some of the young officers did not even know where they were being
led and why! But the majority knew. One by one (and frightening each other),
they managed to enter in two groups into Paul I’s bedroom, having killed one
faithful guard, a chamber-hussar at the doors (the second ran for the sentry).
Paul I, hearing the noise of a fight, tried to run through a secret door, but a
tapestry, ‘The School in Athens’, a gift from the murdered king and queen of
France, fell on top of him. The plotters caught the Tsar. Bennigsen declared to
him that they were arresting him and that he had to abdicate from the throne,
otherwise they could not vouch for the consequences. The greatly disturbed Paul
I did not reply. He rushed to a room where a gun was kept, trying to break out
of the ring of his murderers, but they formed a solid wall around him, breathing
in the face of the Emperor, reeking of wine and spitefulness. Where had the
courtier nobles disappeared! ‘What have I done to you?’ asked Paul I. ‘You have
tormented us for four years!’ was the reply. The drunken Nicholas Zubov took
hold of the Emperor by the hand, but the latter struck the scoundrel on the hand
and repulsed him. Zubov took a swing and hit the Tsar on the left temple with a
golden snuff-box given by Catherine II, wounding his temple-bone and eyes.
Covered with blood, Paul I fell to the ground. The brutalized plotters hurled
themselves at him, trampled on him, beat him, suffocated him. Special zeal was
displayed by the Zubovs, Skoriatin, Yashvil, Argamakov and, as people think,
Pahlen (although there are reasons for thinking that he took no personal part in
the fight). At this point the sentries made up of Semenovtsy soldiers faithful to
Alexander appeared (the soldiers had not been initiated into the plot). Bennigsen
and Pahlen came out to them and said that the Tsar had died from an attack of
apoplexy and now his son Alexander was on the throne. Pahlen rushed into
Alexander’s rooms. On hearing of the death of his father, Alexander sobbed.
‘Where is your oath? You promised not to touch my father!’ he cried. ‘Enough of
crying! They’re going to lift all of us on their bayonets! Please go out to the
people!’ shouted Pahlen. Alexander, still weeping, went out and began to say
something to the effect that he would rule the state well… The sentries in
perplexity were silent. The soldiers could not act against the Heir-Tsarevich, but
they could also not understand what had happened. But the simple Russian
people, then and later and even now (!) understood well. To this day (since 1801)
believing people who are being oppressed by the powerful of this world in
Petersburg (and recently also in Leningrad) order pannikhidas for ‘the murdered
Paul’, asking for his intercession. And they receive what they ask for!...
“And so the plot of the Russian nobles against the Emperor they did not like
succeeded. Paul I was killed with the clear connivance of his sons. The eldest of
them, Alexander, became the Tsar of Russia. In the first hours and days nobody
yet suspected how all this would influence the destiny of the country in the
future and the personal destiny and consciousness of Alexander I himself. All
127
the plotters had an evil end. Some were removed by Alexander I, others were
punished by the Lord Himself. The main regicide Pahlen was quickly removed
from all affairs and sent into exile on his estate. There he for a long time went
mad, becoming completely irresponsible. Nicholas Zubov and Bennigsen also
went mad (Zubov began to eat his own excreta). Having falsely accused Paul I of
being mentally ill, they themselves became truly mentally ill! God is not mocked.
‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay’, He said. The joy of the Russian nobility was
not especially long-lived. Alexander I and then Nicholas I were nevertheless sons
of their father! Both they and the Emperors who followed them no longer allowed
the nobility to rule them. Immediately the Russian nobility understood this, that
is, that they no longer had any power over the Autocracy, they began to strive for the
annihilation of the Autocracy in Russia altogether, which they succeeded in doing,
finally, in February, 1917 – true, to their own destruction!.. Such was the zig-zag of
Russian history, beginning with Catherine I and ending with Nicholas II.
“The reign of Emperor Paul Petrovich predetermined the following reigns in the
most important thing. As we have seen, this Tsar ‘turned his face’ towards the
Russian Orthodox Church, strengthened the foundations of the Autocracy and
tried to make it truly of the people. Personally this cost him his life. But thereby
the later foundations were laid for the State life of Russia in the 19 th and the
beginning of the 20th centuries: ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality!’ Or, in its
military expression – ‘For the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland!’” 241
Tsar Paul knew the circumstances and even the exact date of his death
beforehand. It was told him by a monk named Abel, who had foretold the date
of the Tsar’s mother, Catherine the Great. “The prophecy of the clairvoyant
monk Abel was completely fulfilled. He personally foretold to the Emperor Paul:
‘Your reign will be short, and I, the sinner, see your savage end. On the feast of
St. Sophronius of Jerusalem you will receive a martyric death from unfaithful
servants. You will be suffocated in your bedchamber by evildoers whom you
warm on your royal breast… They will bury you on Holy Saturday… But they,
these evildoers, in trying to justify their great sin of regicide, will proclaim that
you are mad, and will blacken your good memory.… But the Russian people
with their sensitive soul will understand and esteem you, and they will bring
their sorrows to your grave, asking for your intercession and the softening of the
hearts of the unrighteous and cruel.’ This part of the prophecy of Abel was also
fulfilled. When Paul was killed, for many years the people came to his grave to
pray, and he is considered by many to be an uncanonised saint.”242
Abel also prophesied important events in the lives of the succeeding tsar,
such as the burning of Moscow under Alexander I and the righteous death of
Tsar Nicholas II. One of his disciples, Lazar, even painted an icon of the Tsar-
Martyr, with scenes from his life and death, a full seventy years before his
death!243
241
Lebedev, Velikorossia, pp. 245-249.
242
“Monk Abel ‘the Prophet’ of Valaam”, The Orthodox Word, vol. 36, N 1, January-February,
2000.
243
Facebook communication of Vyacheslav Marchenko, September 5, 2019.
128
129
17. THE GOLDEN AGE OF MASONRY
Alexander’s reign started decisively enough. With a single ukaz he “brought

profound changes to the country: freedom of the press was restored, as was the
right of assembly; political prisoners were released from jail and the right of
travel, which had been severely restricted under Paul, was restored. The
dreaded Secret Chancellery, in charge of state security, was soon abolished.” 244
However, he did not act against his father’s murderers, or admit openly that his
father had been murdered, for the simple reason that he himself had been an
accomplice to the crime. (He had not willed or expected his father’s death, but
had agreed to take his place on his abdication.) Indeed, he was tormented with
guilt for his connivance and the desire to atone for it for the rest of his reign, as
the holy Monk Abel had prophesied: “Under him the French will burn down
Moscow, but he will take Paris from them and will be called the Blessed. But the
tsar’s crown will be heavy for him, and he will change the exploit of service as
tsar for the exploit of fasting and prayer, and he will be righteous in God’s
eyes.”245
The reign of Tsar Alexander can be divided into three phases: a first phase
until 1812, when he was strongly influenced by the ideas of the eighteenth-
century French Enlightenment, even if he did little to put them into effect in
Russia; a second phase from 1812 to about 1822, when the main influence on him
was a kind of romantic mysticism; and a third phase until his death, when he
returned to True Orthodoxy. Tsar Alexander faced, in a particularly acute form,
the problems faced by all the “enlightened despots” of the eighteenth century –
that is, how to relieve the burdens of his people without destroying the
autocratic system that held the whole country together. Like his fellow despots,
Alexander was strongly influenced by the ideals of the French revolution and by
the Masonic ferment that had penetrated the nobility of Russia no less than the
élites of Western Europe. So it is not surprising that he should have wavered
between the strictly autocratic views of his mother the Dowager Empress Maria
Fyodorovna, the Holy Synod and the court historian Nicholas Karamzin, on the
one hand, and the liberalism of the Masons that surrounded him, on the other.
Nicholas Karamzin was one of the first intelligenty, together with the poet
Pushkin and the hierarch Philaret of Moscow, who called for a return to Russian
traditions in public life, and in particular to the Russian language, after the
century of forced westernization since Peter the Great. Karamzin believed that
Russia had nothing to be ashamed of by comparison with the West. Nor did he
accept the western vogue for republicanism. “Russia was founded through
victories and one-man-rule; she perished [at the end of the Kievan period]
because of a variety of rulers; and she was saved by the wise autocracy.”246
244
Alexis Troubetskoy, Imperial Legend, Staplehurst: Spelmount, 2002, p. 78.
245
Shabelsky-Bork, in Fomin S., Rossia pered Vtorym Prishestviem (Russia before the Second
Coming), Sergiev Posad, 1993, p. 121.
246
Karamzin, “Zapiska o novoj i drevnej Rossii i ee politicheskom i grazhdanskom
otnosheniakh” (Note on the new and ancient Russia and her political and civil relations), 1811; in
130
And yet the autocrat of all the Russias himself had his doubts about
autocracy. Only ten days after the death of his father, Alexander returned to the
Winter Palace one night to find an anonymous letter on his desk, full of liberal,
anti-autocratic sentiments of the kind that Alexander had espoused in his
youth.247 “Is it possible,” it asked, “to set aside the hope of nations in favour of
the sheer delight of self-rule?… No! He will at last open the book of fate which
Catherine merely perceived. He will give us immutable laws. He will establish
them for ever by an oath binding him to all his subjects. To Russia he will say,
‘Here lie the bounds to my autocratic power and to the power of those who will
follow me, unalterable and everlasting.’”
The author turned out to be a member of the chancery staff, Karazin. “There
followed,” writes Alan Palmer, “an episode which anywhere except Russia
would have seemed fantastic. When summoned to the Tsar’s presence, Karazin
feared a severe rebuke for his presumption. But Alexander was effusively
magnanimous. He embraced Karazin warmly and commended his sense of
patriotic duty. Karazin, for his part, knelt in tears at Alexander’s feet, pledging
his personal loyalty. Then the two men talked at length about the problems
facing the Empire, of the need to safeguard the people from acts of arbitrary
tyranny and to educate them so that they could assume in time the
responsibilities of government…”248
In 1797 Alexander had written a letter to his Swiss former tutor Frédéric La
Harpe which, as well as being indiscreet and disloyal to his father the Tsar,
showed his republican sympathies alarmingly clearly: “I think that if ever the
time comes for me to reign, rather than go into voluntary exile myself, I had far
better devote myself to the task of giving freedom to my country and thereby
preventing her from becoming in the future a toy in a madman’s hands. I have
been in touch with enlightened people who, on their side, have long thought in
the same way. In all we are only four in number, that is to say, M. Novosiltsov,
Count Stroganov, the young Prince Czartoryski, my aide-de-camp (a young man
in a million) and me. Our idea is that during the present reign we should
translate into the Russian language as many useful books as is possible, of which
we would print as many as would be permitted, and we will reserve others for a
future occasion… Once my turn comes, then it will be essential to work, little by
little, for a method of representing the nation… let it be by a free constitution,
after which my authority will end absolutely and, if Providence seconds our
endeavours, I will retire into some place and I will live contentedly and happily
observing the good fortune of my country and rejoicing in it.”249
N.G. Fyodorovsky, V poiskakh svoego puti: Rossia mezhdu Evropoj i Aziej (In Search of her own
path: Russia between Europe and Asia), Moscow, 1997, p. 27.
247
Alexander had once said to his tutor La Harpe, a Swiss republican: “Once… my turn comes,
then it will be necessary to work, gradually of course, to create a representative assembly of the
nation which, thus directed, will establish a free constitution, after which my authority will cease
absolutely” (in Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire 1552-1917, London: HarperCollins,
1997, p. 123).
248
Palmer, op. cit., p. 50.
249
131
The tsar simultaneously worked to improve and streamline his autocratic
system of government and to discuss constitutional ideas that could only
undermine the autocracy. Thus “in April, 1801,” writes Montefiore, “Alexander
created a new Council and replaced Peter the Great’s collegia with eight
Western-style ministries, reforms that completed Peter’s vision of a simplified
central government.250 But his ministers were still the same grandees who had
run Russia since Tsar Michael, and he wanted to find his own way, so he
appointed [the Polish] Adam Czartoryski and his friends as their deputies. And
then secretly he created an Intimate Committee made up of his friends. ‘We had
the privilege of coming to dine with the emperor without a prior appointment,’
recalled Czartoryski. ‘Our confabs took place two or three times a week,’ then
after official dinner and coffee, Alexander would disappear and the four liberals
would be led through corridors to reappear in the emperor’s salon to discuss a
constitution, a semi-elected senate and the abolition of serfdom.”251
“On June 24, 1801,” writes V.F. Ivanov, “the Intimate Committee [neglasny
komitet] opened its proceedings. Alexander called it, on the model of the
revolution of 1789, ‘the Committee of public safety’ [Komitet Gosudarstvennoj
Bezopasnosti – KGB for short], and its opponents from the conservative camp –
‘the Jacobin gang’.
“There began criticism of the existing order and of the whole government
system, which was recognized to be ‘ugly’. The firm and definite conclusion was
reached that ‘only a constitution can muzzle the despotic government’”. 252
However, Alexander’s coronation in September, 1801, in Moscow, the heart of

Old Russia with its autocratic traditions, pulled him in the opposite direction to
the liberal ideas of St. Petersburg. “After being anointed with Holy Oil by the
Metropolitan, Alexander swore a solemn oath to preserve the integrity of the
Russian lands and the sacred concept of autocracy; and he was then permitted,
as one blessed by God, to pass through the Royal Doors into the Sanctuary
where the Tsars had, on this one occasion in their lives, the privilege of
administering to themselves the Holy Sacrament. But Alexander felt unworthy
to exercise the priestly office in this way; and, as [Metropolitan] Platon offered
him the chalice, he knelt to receive communion as a member of the laity.
Although only the higher clergy and their acolytes witnessed this gesture of
humility, it was soon known in the city at large and created a deep impression of
the new Tsar’s sense of spiritual discipline.”253
250
According to Trubetskoy, “The emperor continued as chief legislator as well as chief
executive. The new ministries consolidated their functions surprisingly quickly, and the overall
efficiency of government improved significantly. An imperial bureaucracy had now been
established that functioned reasonably well until 1917” op. cit., p. 80). (V.M.)
251
Montefiore, The Romanovs, p. 283.
252
253
Palmer, op. cit., pp. 59-60.
132
However, it was not until his father’s murderers had been marginalized, and
particularly their leader, Count von Pahlen, has been exiled from court in June,
1802 that Alexander put away all thought of a constitution – for the time being.
Meanwhile, High Society continued to be ruled by the ideas, not of Holy Rus’,
but of the Masonic lodge: almost all the leaders of society were Masons…
“The movement was encouraged,” writes Janet Hartley, “by the rumours,
which cannot be substantiated, that Alexander I became a mason (he certainly
visited lodges in Russia and Germany) 254; his younger brother Constantine
certainly was a mason. Regional lodges continued to flourish and young army
officers who accompanied Russian forces through Europe in 1813 and 1814 also
attended, and were influenced by, lodges in the territory through which they
passed. The constitutions of secret societies which were formed by army officers
in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, like the Order of the Russian Knights and
the Union of Salvation and Welfare, copied some of their rules and hierarchical
organization from masonic lodges. In 1815, the higher orders of masonry in
Russia were subordinated to the Astrea grand lodge.”255
In January, 1800 A.F. Labzin opened the “Dying Sphinx” lodge in Petersburg.
The members of the order were sworn to sacrifice themselves and all they had to
the aims of the lodge, whose existence remained a closely guarded secret. In
1806 Labzin founded The Messenger of Zion as the vehicle of his ideas.
Suppressed at first by the Church hierarchy, it was allowed to appear by Prince
Golitsyn in 1817.
“The Messenger of Zion,” writes Walicki, “preached the notion of ‘inner

Christianity’ and the need for a moral awakening. It promised its readers that
once they were morally reborn and vitalized by faith, they would gain supra-
rational powers of cognition and be able to penetrate the mysteries of nature,
finding in them a key to a superior revelation beyond the reach of the Church.
“Labzin’s religion was thus a nondenominational and anti-ecclesiastical

Christianity. Men’s hearts, he maintained, had been imbued with belief in Christ
on the first day of creation; primitive pagan peoples were therefore closer to true
Christianity than nations that had been baptized but were blinded by the false
values of civilization. The official Church was only an assembly of lower-
category Christians, and the Bible a ‘silent mentor who gives symbolic
254
Richard Rhoda writes: “The tradition exists that Alexander became a Mason in 1803 and there
is evidence that he was the member of a lodge in Warsaw” (“Russian Freemasonry: A New
Dawn”, paper read at Orient Lodge N 15 on June 29, 1996,
http://members.aol.com/houltonme/ru.htm). (V.M.) But, as we shall see, he later repented and
banned Masonry. (V.M.)
255
Hartley, A Social History of the Russian Empire, 1650-1825, London and New York: Longman,
1999, pp. 233-235. “Astrea” is the goddess of justice (O.F. Soloviev, Masonstvo v Mirovoj Politike
XX Veke (Masonry in World Politics in the 20th Century), Moscow, 1998, p. 23).
133
indications to the living teacher residing in the heart’. All dogmas, according to
Labzin, were merely human inventions: Jesus had not desired men to think
alike, but only to act justly. His words ‘Come unto Me all ye that labor and are
heavy laden’ showed that he did not mean to set up any intermediate hierarchy
between the believers and God.”256
In 1802 A.A. Zherebtsov opened the “United Friends” lodge in Petersburg. Its
aim was “to remove between men the distinctions of races, classes, beliefs and
views, and to destroy fanaticism and superstition, and annihilate hatred and
war, uniting the whole of humanity through the bonds of love and
knowledge.”257
Then there was the society of Count Grabianka, “The People of God”. “The
aim of the society was ‘to announce at the command of God the imminent
Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and his glorious reign upon earth’ and to
prepare the humble and faithful souls for the approaching Kingdom of God. ‘As
in the Rosecrucian lodges,’ writes Sokolskaia, ‘in the lodge of Count Grabianka
people indulged, besides theosophy, in alchemy and magic. But while asserting
that the brothers of the “Golden Rose Cross” had as their object of study ‘white,
Divine magic’, the leaders of the Rosecrucians accused the followers of Count
Grabianka of indulging in reading books of black magic and consorting with evil
spirits. In sorrow at the lack of firmness of these brothers, who had become
enmeshed in a new teaching, the leaders wrote: ‘Those who are known to us are
wavering on their path and do not know what to join. And – God have mercy on
them! – they are falling into the hands of evil magicians or Illuminati…’”258
According to Fr. Georges Florovsky, “Freemasonry did not signify a passing

episode, but rather a developmental stage in the history of modern Russian
society. Toward the end of the 1770s freemasonry swept though nearly the entire
educated class. In any case, the system of Masonic lodges, with all its branches,
extended throughout that class.
“… No distinctions or divisions existed between ‘freemasons’ and

‘Voltairians’. The mystical current in freemasonry emerged somewhat later…
The circle of Moscow Rosicrucians became the most important and influential
amng the Russian freemasonic centers of the time.”259
256
Andrzej Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, Oxford: Clarendon, 1988, p. 73.
257
258
259
Florovksy, Ways of Russian Theology, Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1979, p. 149.
134
18. TILSIT: SUMMIT OF THE EMPERORS
St. Petersburg and Moscow, liberalism and autocracy, the false “inner church”
of Masonry and the True Church of Orthodoxy: these were the forces that
divided Tsar Alexander’s heart between them, making his reign a crossroads in
Russian history. Finally he was forced to make his choice for Orthodoxy by the
appearance in Russia of that incarnation of the despotic essence of the
supposedly democratic revolution – Napoleon.
Tsar Paul had been murdered with the connivance of the English ambassador
in St. Petersburg, Sir Charles Whitworth. Knowing this, Alexander “did not trust
the British…, and much that Consul Bonaparte was achieving in France
appealed to his own political instincts. Provided Napoleon had no territorial
ambitions in the Balkans or the eastern Mediterranean, Alexander could see no
reason for a clash of interests between France and Russia. The Emperor’s ‘young
friends’ on the Secret Committee agreed in general with him rather than with
[the Anglophile] Panin, and when Alexander discussed foreign affairs with them
during the late summer of 1801, they received the impression that he favoured
settling differences with France as a preliminary to a policy of passive
isolation.”260
However, the influence of Napoleon on Alexander began to wane after the

Russian Emperor’s meeting with the Prussian king Frederick William and his
consort Queen Louise in June, 1802. The closeness of the two monarchs
threatened to undermine the Tsar’s policy of splendid isolation from the affairs
of Europe, and alarmed his foreign minister Kochubey, as well as annoying the
French. But isolation was no longer a practical policy as Napoleon continued to
encroach on the rights of the German principalities, and so Alexander replaced
his foreign minister and, in May, 1803, summoned General Arakcheev (known
as “the Uniformed Ape”) to strengthen the Russian army…
In 1804 the Duc d’Enghien was kidnapped by French agents, tried and
executed as a traitor. (It was of this act that Talleyrand made the famous remark:
“It was worse than a crime. It was a mistake!’) “Alexander was enraged by the
crime. The Duc d’Enghien was a member of the French royal house. By
conniving at his kidnapping and execution the First Consul became, in
Alexander’s eyes, a regicide. Nor was this the only cause of the Tsar’s
indignation. He regarded the abduction of the Duke from Baden as a particular
insult to Russia, for Napoleon had been repeatedly reminded that Alexander
expected the French authorities to respect the lands of his wife’s family. His
response was swift and dramatic. A meeting of the Council of State was
convened in mid-April at which it was resolved, with only one dissentient voice,
to break off all diplomatic contact with France. The Russian Court went into
official mourning and a solemn note of protest was dispatched to Paris.
260
135
“But the French paid little regard to Russian susceptibilities. Napoleon
interpreted Alexander’s complaint as unjustified interference with the domestic
affairs and internal security of France. He entrusted the reply to Talleyrand, his
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and a bland statement appeared in the official
Moniteur: ‘If, when England prepared the assassination of Paul I, the Russian
Government had discovered that the organizers of the plot were no more than a
league away from the frontier, would it not have seized them at once?’ No
allusion could have been better calculated to wound the Tsar than this deliberate
reference to the circumstances of his own accession. It was a rhetorical question
which he found hard to forgive or forget. A month later news came from Paris
that the First Consul had accepted from the French Senate the title of Emperor.
Now, to all his other transgressions, Napoleon had added contempt for the
dynastic principle. Resolutely the successor of Peter the Great refused to
acknowledge the newest of empires.”261
Alexander now formed a defensive alliance with Austria and Prussia against
France (there were extensive negotiations with Britain, too, but no final
agreement was reached). The Tsar and his new foreign minister, the Polish
Mason Adam Czartoryski, added an interesting ideological element to the
alliance. “No attempt would be made to impose discredited regimes from the
past on lands liberated from French military rule. The French themselves were to
be told that the Coalition was fighting, not against their natural rights, but
against a government which was ‘no less a tyranny for France than the rest of
Europe’. The new map of the continent must rest on principles of justice:
frontiers would be so drawn that they coincided with natural geographical
boundaries, provided outlets for industries, and associated in one political unit
‘homogeneous peoples able to agree among themselves’.” 262
Appealing to peoples over the heads of their rulers, and declaring that states
should be made up of homogeneous ethnic units were, of course, innovative
steps, derived from the French revolution, which presented considerable
dangers for multi-ethnic empires such as the Russian and the Austrian. Similarly
new and dangerous was the idea that the nation was defined by blood alone.
None of these ideological innovations appealed to the other nations, and the
Coalition (including Britain) that was eventually patched up in the summer of
1805 was motivated more by Napoleon’s further advances in Italy than by a
common ideology.
In 1805 the British defeated Napoleon on sea at Trafalgar. However, it was a

different story on land. At Austerlitz the Russians lost between 25,000 and 30,000
men killed, wounded or captured – a serious blow to Alexander, whose retinue
had assured him of victory. And this was only the beginning. In 1806 Napoleon
routed the Prussians at Jena and Auerstadt, and in 1807, after an indecisive but
bloody conflict at Eylau, he defeated the Russians at Friedstadt. Alexander had
261
262
136
suffered huge losses, and almost the whole of Europe up to the borders of Russia
was in the hands of the French…
Two religious events of the year 1806 gave a deeper and darker hue to the
political and military conflict. In France Napoleon re-established the Jewish
Sanhedrin, which then proclaimed him the Messiah. Partly in response to this,
the Holy Synod of the Russian Church called Napoleon the antichrist, declaring
that he was threatening “to shake the Orthodox Greco-Russian Church, and is
trying by a diabolic invasion to draw the Orthodox into temptation and
destruction”. It said that during the revolution Napoleon had bowed down to
idols and to human creatures. Finally, “to the greater disgrace of the Church of
Christ he has thought up the idea of restoring the Sanhedrin, declaring himself
the Messiah, gathering together the Jews and leading them to the final uprooting
of all Christian faith”.263 He was “the Beast of the Apocalypse”, said Alexander,
the diabolic enemy of Orthodoxy and the champion of the Jews. 264
In view of this unprecedented anathema, and the solemn pledges he had

made to the King of Prussia, it would seem to have been unthinkable for
Alexander to enter into alliance with Napoleon at this time. And yet this is
precisely what he did. “Alliance between France and Russia,” he said, “has
always been a particular wish of mine and I am convinced that this alone can
guarantee the welfare and peace of the world”.
“’I desire that a close union between our two nations may repair past evils,’
Alexander instructed Prince Dmitri Lobanov-Rostovsky, his envoy to Napoleon.
‘An entirely new system… and I flatter myself Emperor Napoleon and I will
understand each other easily provided we deal without intermediaries.’ They
agreed to meet at Tilsit, where their engineers erected a white pavilion on a
specially constructed raft in the middle of the Niemen river, the border between
their empires. ‘Few sights will be more interesting,’ wrote Napoleon. He was
right. The division of Europe between two emperors, based on an expedient
friendship, made this one of the most famous summits in history.
“As Alexander prepared to meet his vanquisher, accompanied by [his

brother, Grand Duke] Constantine, he was under no illusions. ‘Bonaparte claims
I’m only an idiot,’ he soon afterwards wrote to his sister Catiche [Grand Duchess
Catherine Pavlovna]. ‘He who laughs last laughs best! And I put all my hope in
God.’ After his disastrous rush for glory, Alexander was entering a long game.
He could hardly believe what was about to happen, as he told Catiche: ‘Me,
spending my days with Bonaparte! Whole hours in tête-à-tête with him!’
Alexander’s practice in duplicity qualified him well for the seduction of
Napoleon. ‘He possessed to a high degree,’ wrote his courtier Baron Korff, ‘the
facility to subordinate men to himself and penetrate their souls while hiding all
his own feelings and thoughts.’
263
Ivanov, op. cit., p. 260. Cf. Cronin, Napoleon, London: HarperCollins, 1994, p. 315; Palmer, op.
cit., pp. 126-127.
264
Montefiore, op. cit., p. 289.
137
“On 13 June, Napoleon was rowed across to the raft so that he was there to
meet Alexander when he disembarked from his side. The two men embraced,
then Alexander said, ‘I will be your second against the English.’ Napoleon was
delighted. ‘Those words changed everything.’ They turned together and
disappeared through the pavilion door surmounted with Russian and French
eagles and elaborate ‘A’s and ‘N’s’, to talk for two hours in French without
interpreters. Alexander pleaded for Prussia, which he wished to save not only
out of chivalry for its queen [Louise, to whom he was close] but as an essential
ally.
“The younger emperor, still only twenty-nine, was ‘not dazzled by false
confidence’ but was happy to learn from ‘this extraordinary man’ who ‘liked to
show me his superiority in imaginative sallies’. For his part, Napoleon, the elder
at thirty-eight, could not help but be a little patronizing, yet he was utterly
charmed. ‘My dear, I’ve just seen Emperor Alexander and I’m very pleased with
him, a very handsome, good and young emperor,’ he told Empress Josephine.
‘More intelligent than is commonly thought,’ he later decided, ‘it would be hard
to have more wit than Alexander, but there’s a piece missing and I can’t discover
which.’ Alexander was somewhat seduced by the genius of his era. Napoleon’s
‘light-grey eyes’, he later recalled, ‘gaze at you so piercingly that you cannot
withstand them.’
“On the second day, Frederick William was allowed to sit in silently on their
discussions, when he no doubt learned that Prussia was to be harshly
diminished. After the meeting, a hundred guns saluted and Alexander joined
Napoleon in Tilsit. Each night, the three monarchs dined together, with
Napoleon and Alexander bored to tears by the lumpish Prussian; they would
say good night – and then, like a secret assignation, Alexander would steal back
to join Napoleon for long talks into the night.
“Alexander sought peace without losing honour or territory. Napoleon

sought mastery over Europe with a junior partner. These sons of the
Enlightenment were dreamers as well as pragmatists. War, Napoleon explained,
was not ‘a difficult art’ but ‘a matter of hiding fear as long as possible. Only by
this means is one’s enemy intimidated and success not in doubt.’ Alexander
praised effective republics and criticized hereditary monarchy which he
regarded as irrational – except in Russia, where local conditions made it
essential. Napoleon, the parvenu emperor who had been elected by plebiscite to
the throne of a guillotined king, defended heredity to the dynastic autocrat who
had acquiesced in paternal regicide. ‘Who is fit to be elected?’ asked Napoleon.
‘A Caesar, an Alexander only comes along once a century, so that election must
be a matter of chance.’
“’At Tilsit, I chattered away,’ admitted Napoleon. As the two of them

bargained over new kingdoms and spheres, Alexander asked for
Constantinople. ‘Constantinople is the empire of the world,’ replied Napoleon
gnomically. ‘I called the Turks barbarians and said they ought to be turned out
of Europe,’ he recalled. He played on Alexander’s fantasies, suggesting a joint
138
march eastwards to take Constantinople and then attack British India. ‘But I
never intended to do so,’ Napoleon admitted later. Alexander, who understood
the game, later called this ‘the language of Tilsit’.
“In 25 June, Lobanov, Paul’s minister Kurakin and Talleyrand signed the
Treaty of Tilsit. Alexander lost no territory but relinquished the Ionian Islands
and Wallachia and Moldavia, recognized Napoleon’s brothers as kings of
Westphalia and Naples, and promised to blockade England. Prussia suffered
grievously, but Alexander refused to annex Prussian Poland. Instead, Napoleon
created a grand duchy of Warsaw, a possible Polish base against Russia.
“’God has saved us,’ Alexander boasted to Catiche.
“’As long as I live, I shan’t get used to knowing you pass your days with
Bonaparte,’ Catiche replied. ‘It seems like a bad joke.’ A worse joke was mooted.
Napoleon’s marriage with Josephine was childless so, keen to found his own
dynasty, he contemplated divorce. Talleyrand sounded out Alexander about a
marriage to Catiche, who was already considering matrimony with another
suitor, Emperor Francis of Austria, but the tsar thought him dull – and dirty.
‘Then I can wash him,’ replied Catiche, who added that he certainly would not
be dull after marrying her. When Napoleon was mentioned, ‘I wept hot tears
like a calf,’ she admitted. ‘Princes are of two kinds – worthy people with scant
brains and clever ones but of hateful character.’ The former were preferable but
‘if the divorce came about’ and Napoleon asked for her, she ‘owed that sacrifice
to the State’. Napoleon was not yet single – but Catiche, to avoid him, had to
marry fast.
“As they parted, Alexander invited Napoleon to St. Petersburg: ‘I’ll order his
quarters warmed to Egyptian heat.’ The summit resembled one of those short
love affairs in which both lovers promise eternal love even though both know
they will ultimately return to their real lives. Looking back at the end of his life,
Napoleon reflected that ‘Perhaps I was happiest at Tilsit.’ As for Alexander, his
days with Napoleon seemed ‘like a dream’, he told Catiche. ‘It’s past midnight
and he’s just left. Oh I wish you could have witnessed all that happened.’ But
given his appalling hand, ‘Instead of sacrifices, we got out of the struggle with a
little short of lustre.’”265
To speak of not having to make sacrifice when so many men had been killed
in recent battles was extraordinary, and Catiche was having none of it: “We shall
have made huge sacrifices and for what?... I wish to see [Russia] respected not in
words but in reality, since she certainly has the means and right to do so. While I
live I shall not get used to the idea of knowing that you pass your days with
Bonaparte. When people say so, it seems like a bad joke and impossible. All the
coaxing he has tried on this nation is only so much deceit, for the man is a blend
of cunning, ambition and pretence…”266
265
Montefiore, op. cit., pp. 289-292.
266
139
The Prussians, too, were dismayed at Alexander’s betrayal of their recently
signed treaty with him. Queen Louise of Prussia, who was very close to
Alexander, wrote to him: “You have cruelly deceived me”. And it is hard not to
agree with her since, with Alexander’s acquiescence, Napoleon took most of the
Prussian lands and imposed a heavy indemnity on the Prussians, while
Alexander took a part of what had been Prussian territory in Poland, the
province of Bialystok. The only concession Alexander was able to wring from
the Corsican was that King Frederick should be restored to the heart of his
greatly reduced kingdom “from consideration of the wishes of His Majesty the
Emperor of All the Russias”.
“As the days went by with no clear news from Tilsit,” writes Palmer, “the
cities of the Empire were again filled with alarming rumours, as they had been
after Austerlitz: was Holy Russia to be sold to the Antichrist? For, whatever the
fashion on the Niemen, in St. Petersburg and Moscow the Church still thundered
on Sundays against Bonaparte.” 267 Metropolitan Platon of Moscow wrote to the
Tsar warning him not to trust Napoleon, whose ultimate aim was to subjugate
the whole of Europe.268 In other letters, Platon compared Napoleon to Goliath
and to “the Pharaoh, who will founder with all his hosts, just as the other did in
the Red Sea”.269
Of course, in view of his crushing military defeats, Alexander was in a weak

position at Tilsit. Nevertheless, if he could not have defeated his enemy, he did
not have to enter into alliance with him or legitimize his conquests, especially
since Napoleon did not (at that time) plan to invade Russia. Nor did he have to
damage Russian commerce by joining Napoleon’s “Continental System” against
England, “a major miscalculation… For the merchants of Petersburg and Riga
his secret pledge at Tilsit was an error of judgement they found hard to
forgive.”270
To explain Alexander’s behaviour, which went against the Church, his Allies
and his own mother, the Dowager-Empress, it is not sufficient to point to the
liberal ideas of his youth, although those undoubtedly played a part. It is
necessary to point also to a personal (or demonic) factor, the romantically
seductive powers of that truly antichristian figure, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon had seduced a whole generation of young people in Europe and
America; so it is hardly surprising that the Tsar should also have come under his
spell. But rarely could such a seduction have had such profound geopolitical
consequences – if the seducer had not over-reached himself in 1812…
`Montefiore continues the story: “While society plotted against his French
policy, Alexander welcomed Napoleon’s ambassadors, first Savary, duc de
Rovigo, and then Armand de Caulincourt, duc de Vicenza, as if these
267
268
Papmehl, op. cit., p. 84.
269
270
140
Bonapartist henchmen were his friends. Then, as chinks started to show in
French invincibility, Napoleon invited Alexander as his star guest at a new
summit.
“’My Alexander,’ wrote his mother, begging him not to go, ‘you’re guilty of
criminal self-deception.’
“’We will do everything to prove the sincerity’ of Russia’s ‘tight alliance with
France, this fearful colossus,’ replied Alexander to his mother – until ‘the
moment when we will calmly observe his fall. The wisest policy is to await the
right moment to take measures.’ He could only follow ‘the indications of my
conscience, my essential conviction, the desire that has never left me to be useful
to my country.’
“On 17 September 1808, Alexander… was greeted by Napoleon five miles

outside Erfurt. As well as the two emperors, there were four kings and a
constellation of other German princes attending this three-week demonstration
of the panoply of Napoleonic power – but it was all about Russia and France.
During their eighteen days together, the two emperors banqueted, hunted,
danced and attended illuminations and the theatre: when one of the actors
onstage in the play Oedipus declaimed ‘A great man’s friendship is the gift of the
gods’, Alexander turned and presented his hand to Napoleon to the applause of
the entire audience. Napoleon, a born actor himself, half admired Alexander’s
Thespian talents, calling him the ‘Talma of the North’ after the top French actor.
“But Napoleon grumbled because Alexander had become ‘stubborn as a

mule’. Alexander was treated to his first Napoleonic tantrum, with the imperial
foot stamping on the imperial hat. ‘You’re violent and I am stubborn,’ said
Alexander. ‘Let us talk and be reasonable – or I leave.’ Napoleon noticed that ‘he
plays deaf when things are said he is reluctant to hear.’ Alexander was slightly
deaf, but there was plenty he did not wish to hear. The Russians disliked the
Grand Duchy of Warsaw and Napoleon’s Continental System, a blockade of
British trade which was damaging the Russian economy. Alexander took the
opportunity to demand rewards. Napoleon offered Russia the very same titbits
offered by Hitler to Stalin in similar circumstances in 1939: Moldavia and
Wallachia ‘as part of the Russian empire’ and Finland, then a Swedish duchy.
‘It’s not right that the beauties of Petersburg should be interrupted by Swedish
cannon’, Napoleon generously reflected. In return, Alexander promised to
uphold the Continental System against Britain and support Napoleon if attacked
by Austria.
“Yet Alexander’s vision of himself as a European crusader was encouraged by

a traitor at the heart of Napoleon’s court. Napoleon had recently sacked his
foreign minister, the lame and reptilian Talleyrand. He still admired ‘the man
with the most ideas, the most flair’, though he had recently called him ‘shit in a
silk stocking’ to his face. Now appointed to the sinecure office of vice-grand-
elector, Talleyrand secretly betrayed him to the tsar – for cash. ‘Sire, it is up to
you to save Europe,’ he told Alexander, ‘and you won’t manage unless you
141
resist Napoleon. The French people are civilized, their sovereign is not; the
sovereign of Russia is civilized, but his people are not. Thus it is up to the
sovereign of Russia to be the ally of the French people.’
“Napoleon had one more demand. ‘I tell you of one of the most grievous
plights in which I ever found myself,’ Alexander told Catiche. ‘Napoleon is
obtaining a divorce and casting an eye on Anne.’ Their youngest sister Annette
was just fourteen. ‘Mother,’ wrote Alexander, ‘showed more calm over it than I
should have believed.’ Maria concluded, ‘How wretched would the child’s
existence be united to a man of villainous character to whom nothing is sacred
and without restraint since he does not believe in God? And would this sacrifice
profit Russia? All of that makes me shudder.’ Alexander thought ‘the right
course is hard to choose.’ Napoleon did not realize the Russians regarded him as
a fiend. ‘I’m happy with Alexander: I think he is with me,’ he told Josephine.
‘Were he a woman, I think I’d make him my lover.’
“That love was soon to be tested. After his return, Alexander was more
interested in promoting reform at home and seizing his own prizes abroad to
rescue his damaged prestige. He launched his Swedish war to gobble up the
Swedes’ province of Finland which would safeguard the approaches to
Petersburg. By February 1808, the Russian troops were floundering so Alexander
sent in Arakcheev. The Vampire reorganized the armies, enabling Alexander’s
best generals, the dependable Mikhail Barclay de Tolly and the ferocious Prince
Bagration, to cross the ice and assault Stockholm. The Swedes agreed to cede
Finland, which became a Russian grand duchy until 1917. ‘The peace is perfect’
Alexander boasted to Catiche, ‘and absolutely the one I wanted. I cannot thank
the Supreme Being enough.’
“Napoleon now discovered the limits of his Russian alliance. In April 1809,
Emperor Francis again went to war against Napoleon. Alexander fulfilled his
promises by despatching 70,000 troops but with instructions not to help the
French in the slightest. ‘It’s not an alliance I have here,’ fulminated Napoleon.
‘I’ve been duped.’ At Wagram, Napoleon defeated the Austrians.
“In November, Napoleon offered Alexander a settlement of the Polish

question – in return for his own betrothal to Annette. ‘My sister could not do
better,’ said the tsar to Caulaincourt. Alexander started negotiating a ‘reciprocal
agreement never to permit the re-establishment of Poland’. The French agreed,
but when Alexander insisted that Annette could not marry for two years,
Napoleon reneged on the Polish deal, and instead married Emperor Francis’s
daughter Archduchess Marie-Louise. Annette was saved from the Corsican ogre,
but the Romanovs had been insulted.
“As for Napoleon, he started to despise Alexander with that special hatred
reserved for the beloved mistress who ends a cherished affair. Napoleon
insulted him as ‘a shifty Byzantine’ and ‘a Greek of the lower empire, fake as a
coin’… Yet every ruler in Europe had to dissemble their real views and
compromise with Napoleon: it was Napoleon’s Icaran vanity that deluded him
142
into believing that any of them meant their diplomatic expressions of loyalty.
Alexander was a pragmatist living (and trying to stay alive and on his throne) in
dangerous times who survived because of that same versatility which others
might call dissembling. ‘His personality is by nature well meaning, sincere and
loyal, and his sentiments and principles are elevated,’ observed Caulaincourt,
‘but beneath all this there exists an acquired royal dissimulation and a dogged
persistence that nothing will overcome.’
“Alexander and Napoleon were now preparing for war…”271
271
Montefiore, The Romanovs, pp. 292-296.
143
19. ALEXANDER, NAPOLEON AND SPERANSKY
If Alexander had a spy in Paris in the shape of Talleyrand, Napoleon had, if

not a spy in Petersburg, at any rate an ideological sympathizer, in the shape of
Mikhail Speransky, the son of a village priest who had studied for the
priesthood and who became justice minister and then the tsar’s State Secretary.
Speransky was a great admirer of Napoleon’s Civil Code. Karamzin noted,
however: “Russia really does not need solemnly to acknowledge her ignorance
before all of Europe and to bend greying heads over a volume devised by a few
perfidious lawyers and Jacobins. Our political principles do not find inspiration
in Napoleon’s Code of Laws, nor in an encyclopaedia published in Paris, but in
another encyclopaedia infinitely older, the Bible.”272
Napoleon and Speransky had met at Erfurt, where Napoleon “did not miss
the opportunity to discuss with him in detailed conversations various questions
of administration. The result of these conversations was a whole series of
outstanding projects of reform, of which the most important was the project of a
constitution for Russia.”273
“For a long time,” writes Hosking, “it was thought that Speranskii shared the
cautious Reichstaat approach to a constitution held by his master, but the
publication of his papers in the Soviet Union in 1961 showed that his drafts were
a good deal more radical than his final proposals, and his published works, in
which he veiled his ultimate aspirations, possibly out of deference. From these
proposals it seems clear that he believed unlimited autocracy to be incompatible
with the rule of law, and that he tried to bring Alexander round to this point of
view. Given Alexander’s equivocal personality, it is probable that at times he
thought he had succeeded.
“What Speranskii proposed in the draft before the Emperor in 1809 was that
the functions of government be separated into three streams, the executive,
legislative and judiciary, according to advanced European and American theory,
but with the Emperor heading each of them. The ministries would manage the
executive, organized on functional lines. A State Council, consisting of senior
statesmen appointed by the Emperor, would draft laws and present them for the
Emperor’s consideration. Its work would be supplemented by a State Duma, an
assembly elected indirectly (through lower-level Dumas) by property-owners of
town and countryside: it would not initiate legislation itself but would combine
budgetary powers and the right to refer back a bill it thought to be in
contradictions with the fundamental laws.
This was the most ambitious blueprint for reforming Russia’s governmental
system until 1905. If implemented in full, it might not in theory have limited the
autocrat’s power, but in practice it would have ensured that power was
272
Karamzin, in Alexis S. Troubtezkoy, Imperial Legend. The Disappearance of Tsar Alexander I,
Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2003, p. 85).
273
Professor Theodore Shiman, Alexander I, Moscow, 1908, in Ivanov, op. cit., p. 255.
144
channelled through publicly elected institutions authorized to comment, petition
and protest, if not actually, to veto.”274
“Had Speransky got his way,” writes Oliver Figes, “Russia would have
moved toward becoming a constitutional monarchy governed by a law-based
bureaucratic state.”275
But he didn’t: the only one of Speransky’s reforms that the tsar put into
practice was the creation of the State Council, drawn from the aristocracy, on
New Year’s Day, 1810, with Speransky himself as chairman. The only other
proposal of his that Alexander tried to implement – that there should be an
examination for entrance into the bureaucracy – aroused such ire from the
nobility that within two years the tsar was forced to exile his favourite…
Opinions are sharply divided on Speransky. Some see in him an evil genius, a
conscious or unconscious tool of the Masons in their plans to destroy Russia,
while others see him as a brilliant reformer, the innocent (and somewhat naïve)
victim of jealousy and intrigue on the part of the nobility. At this distance in time
it is difficult to be confident which hypothesis is correct; so we will cite two
authorities adhering to opposite sides of the argument.
274
275
Figes, Natasha’s Dance, London: Penguin, 2002, p. 84. L. A. Tikhomirov criticized it as follows:
“From the beginning of the 19 th century, the Petrine institutions finally collapsed. Already the
practice of our 19th century has reduced ‘the collegiate principle’ to nothing. Under Alexander I
the elegant French system of bureaucratic centralization created by Napoleon on the basis of the
revolutionary ideas captivated the Russian imitative spirit. For Russians this was ‘the last word’
in perfection, and Speransky, an admirer of Napoleon, and, together with the Emperor, an
admirer of the republic, created a new system of administration which continued essentially
until Emperor Alexander II.
“Alexander I’s institutions completed the absolutist construction of the government machine.
Until that time, the very imperfection of the administrative institutions had not allowed them to
escape control. The supreme power retained its directing and controlling character. Under
Alexander I the bureaucracy was perfectly organized. A strict separation of powers was created.
An independent court was created, and a special organ of legislation – the State Council.
Ministries were created as the executive power, with an elegant mechanism of driving
mechanisms operating throughout the country. The bureaucratic mechanism’s ability to act was
brought to a peak by the strictest system of centralization. But where in all these institutions was
the nation and the supreme power?
“The nation was subjected to the ruling mechanism. The supreme power was placed, from an
external point of view, at the intersection of all the administrative powers. In fact, it was
surrounded by the highest administrative powers and was cut off by them not only from the
nation, but also from the rest of the administrative mechanism. With the transformation of the
Senate into the highest judicial organ, the supreme power lost in it an organ of control.
“The idea of the administrative institutions is that they should attain such perfection that the
supreme power will have no need to conduct any immediate administrative activity. As an ideal
this is correct. But in fact there is hidden here the source of a constant usurpation of
administrative powers in relation to the supreme power. The point is that the most perfect
administrative institutions act in an orderly fashion only under the watchful control of the
supreme power and his constant direction. But where control and direction by the supreme
power is undermined, the bureaucracy becomes the more harmful the more perfectly it is
constructed. With this it acquires the tendency to become de facto free of the supreme power and
even submits it to itself…” (Monarkhicheskaia Gosudarstvennost’ (Monarchical Statehood), St.
Petersburg, 1992, pp. 342-343).
145
*
Let us begin with the case for the prosecution. V. F. Ivanov writes: “The plan
for a transformation of the State was created by Speransky with amazing speed,
and in October, 1809 the whole plan was on Alexander’s desk. This plan
reflected the dominant ideas of the time, which were close to what is usually
called ‘the principles of 1789’…
“The plot proceeded, led by Speransky, who was supported by Napoleon.
“After 1809 stubborn rumours circulated in society that Speransky and Count
N.P. Rumyantsev were more attached to the interests of France than of Russia.
“Karamzin in his notes and conversations tried to convince Alexander to stop

the carrying out of Speransky’s reforms, which were useless and would bring
only harm to the motherland.
“Joseph de Maistre saw in the person of Speransky a most harmful

revolutionary, who was undermining the foundations of all state principles and
was striving by all means to discredit the power of the Tsar.
“For two years his Majesty refused to believe these rumours and warnings.
Towards the beginning of 1812 the enemies of Speransky in the persons of
Arakcheev, Shishkov, Armfeldt and Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna
convinced his Majesty of the correctness of the general conviction of Speransky’s
treachery.
“The following accusations were brought against Speransky: the incitement of

the masses of the people through taxes, the destruction of the finances and
unfavourable comments about the government.
“A whole plot to keep Napoleon informed was also uncovered. Speransky

had been entrusted with conducting a correspondence with Nesselrode, in
which the main French actors were indicated under pseudonyms. But Speransky
did not limit himself to giving this information: on his own, without
authorization from above, he demanded that all secret papers and reports from
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should be handed over to him. Several officials
were found who without objections carried out his desire….
“Then from many honourable people there came warnings about the traitrous
activities of Speransky.
“At the beginning of 1812 the Swedish hereditary prince Bernadotte, who was
in opposition to Napoleon, informed Petersburg that ‘the sacred person of the
Emperor is in danger’ and that Napoleon was ready with the help of a big bribe
to establish his influence in Russia again.”
146
In 1810 an Illuminati lodge, “Polar Star”, was opened by the German Lutheran
and pantheist mystic Professor I.A. Fessler, whom Speransky had summoned
from Germany. Speransky joined this lodge, and Professor Shiman writes that
Speransky “was a Freemason who accepted the strange thought of using the
organization of the lodge for the reform of the Russian clergy, which was dear to
his heart. His plan consisted in founding a masonic lodge that would have
branch-lodges throughout the Russian State and would accept the most capable
clergy as brothers.
“Speransky openly hated Orthodoxy. With the help of Fessler he wanted to

begin a war against the Orthodox Church. The Austrian chargé d’affaires Saint-
Julien, wrote in a report to his government on the fall of Speransky that the
higher clergy, shocked by the protection he gave to Fessler, whom he had sent
for from Germany, and who had the rashness to express Deist, antichristian
views, were strongly instrumental in his fall (letter of April 1, 1812). However,
our ‘liberators’ were in raptures with Speransky’s activities….” 276
“Speransky’s relations with the Martinists and Illuminati were reported by

Count Rostopchin, who in his ‘Note on the Martinists’, presented in 1811 to
Great Princess Catherine Pavlovna, said that ‘they (the Martinists) were all more
or less devoted to Speransky, who, without belonging in his heart to any sect, or
perhaps any religion, was using their services to direct affairs and keep them
dependent on himself.’
“Finally, in the note of Colonel Polev, found in Alexander I’s study after his
death, the names of Speransky, Fessler, Magnitsky, Zlobin and others were
mentioned as being members of the Illuminati lodge…
“On March 11, 1812 Sangley was summoned to his Majesty, who informed
him that Speransky ‘had the boldness to describe all Napoleon’s military talents
and advised him to convene the State Duma and ask it to conduct the war while
he absented himself’. ‘Who am I then? Nothing?’, continued his Majesty. ‘From
this I see that he is undermining the autocracy, which I am obliged to transfer
whole to my heirs.’
“On March 16 Professor Parrot of Derpt university was summoned to the

Winter Palace. ‘The Emperor,’ he wrote in a later letter to Emperor Nicholas I,
‘angrily described to me the ingratitude of Speransky, whom I had never seen,
expressing himself with feeling that drew tears from him. Having expounded
the proof of his treachery that had been presented to him, he said to me: ‘I have
decided to shoot him tomorrow, and have invited you here because I wish to
know your opinion on this.’” 277
On March 17, after a two-hour confrontation with Speransky, Alexander

sacked him. However, he did not carry out his decision to shoot him…
276
Shiman, in Ivanov, op. cit., p. 255.
277
Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 255-258.
147
*
Now let us turn to the case for the defence, as presented by Alexis
Trubetzkoy:- “So hysterical and unrelenting were the attacks on Alexander’s
councilor and right-hand man that Alexander soon came to feel that his own
popularity was in jeopardy; public opinion of him was souring. Some of the
accusations, furthermore, appeared to have enough credibility to cast doubt on
Speransky’s integrity and faithfulness. In early 1812 Baron Arnfelt, a close
advisor to Alexander on military matters, told him: ‘Guilty or not, Speransky
must be sacrificed. It is indispensable to rally the nation together around the
chief of state. The war we are about to engage in with Napoleon is not an
ordinary war. If we are not to succumb, it is essential that we make it a national
war.’ The baron went on to add, ‘Observe how the public attacks him; let them
uncover a conspiracy; that is precisely what we need!’
“In March 1812, Alexander received word from that the secretary of state had
allegedly established a burgeoning network of personal secret agents, not only
abroad but within the empire, who spied on the minister of foreign affairs,
among others. This imprudence was too much to bear, and when the rumor
spread throughout the city, Alexander determined to act firmly, if not through
conviction then through expediency. The emperor summoned Speransky and
confronted him with the allegations. Speransky did not deny it, but defended
himself by pleading that Alexander had recently instructed him to become well
informed on the activities of his diplomatic corps, ‘using all necessary means’.
He had further been requested to report confidentially on anything untoward.
The secretary protested that in no way was he acting treacherously; the
accusations, he claimed, were fabrications and pure slander.
“For two hours the exchange between tsar and minister continued, and those
waiting in the anteroom heard Speransky’s voice fade from a loud, clear tone to
a hoarse whisper. ‘I sympathize with you in your dilemma, Mikhail
Mikhailovich, but you must understand my situation,’ Alexander pleaded. ‘The
enemy is knocking at the doors of my empire. I realize that the accusations
levied against you are outrageously exaggerated, but the situation in which you
find yourself, placed there by the suspicions you have aroused by your behavior
and the various remarks you have permitted yourself to make, what can I do?
You must understand: it is essential that I do not appear weak in the eyes of my
subjects by continuing to put my faith in a person under suspicion of treason…
even an autocratic ruler must heed the voice of public opinion.’
“And then Alexander brought the discussion to an end. ‘I am exceedingly

sorry, Mikhail Mikhailovich, but I must sacrifice you for the sake of bringing our
Russian people together in order to face the deadly danger before us…
sovereigns cannot be judged by standards of private morality. Politics requires
me to perform certain duties, unpleasant as they may be, in cold blood, even
when my heart condemns it. Nevertheless, my severity, necessitated by the
situation, will be tempered by generosity. You will reside in Nizhni-Novgorod,
148
not an unpleasant town, on the banks of the Volga. Your pension will be
sufficient to cover the expenses of a household worthy of a former minister, and
you may take with you all your belongings, including your vast library.
Farewell, my dear friend.’
“Eventually a shaken and pale Speransky emerged from the emperor’s study
accompanied by an equally upset Alexander – both were in tears. The emperor
embraced his friend warmly and with great emotion said, ‘Farewell, once again!’
“Speransky, clutching his portfolio under his trembling arm, turned and
walked out of the palace. On his arrival home, General Alexander Balashov, the
minister of police, one of those who for months had vilified him, greeted him.
The official was there to seal Speransky’s documents and to attend to his
departure out of the city. Too distraught even to face his wife and children,
Speransky gathered a few belongings and within an hour was on his way out of
the capital, under escort to his place of exile in Nizhni-Novgorod. The all-
powerful minister was no more…”278
Ivanov continues the story from his hostile point of view: “Speransky had too
many friends and protectors. They saved him, but for his betrayal he was exiled
to Nizhni Novgorod, and then – in view of the fact that the Nizhni Novgorod
nobility were stirred up against him – to Perm…. At a patriotic banquet in the
house of the Provincial Governor Prince Gruzinsky in Nizhni Novgorod, the
nobles’ patriotism almost cost Speransky his life. ‘Hang him, execute him, burn
Speransky on the pyre’ suggested the Nizhni Novgorod nobles.
“Through the efforts of his friends, Speransky was returned from exile and
continued his treachery against his kind Tsar. He took part in the organization of
the uprising of the Decembrists, who after the coup appointed him first
candidate for the provisional government.” 279
Whatever the truth about Speransky personally, “for the rest of the
nineteenth century,” according to Hosking, “Russia was governed by a system
which might be called ‘truncated Speranskii’. The State Council and the
ministries genuinely injected a new and welcome professionalism into the tasks
of government, helped by the expansion of higher education and by the civil
service examination; but they also remained centres of patronage, where the
personal inclinations of the minister flourished unabated because there were no
public institutions to restrict his powers or to comment on his exercise of them.
The gap was filled, as ever since Peter, by personal agents of the Tsar, fiskaly or
revizory, sent to investigate a government agency or a provincial office.
Furthermore, again because there were no representative bodies to act as
counterweight, the imperial court and imperial family remained decisive sources
278
Troubtezkoy, op. cit., pp. 85-87.
279
149
of influence, modifying the functional exercise of authority with personal and
family considerations.
“When ministries were created in 1802, each of them was expected to present
an annual budget estimate, but its contents were kept secret (even from the
Senate) and they were confirmed by the Tsar privately till 1862. Naturally, in
these circumstances, there could be nothing like a serious official audit of
expenditure. The Emperor was at liberty to award extra funds to any minister or
even favourite without consulting the Minister of Finance... The distinction
between state funds and those of the Tsar personally was still not fully
established. In 1850, when there was a 33.5 million ruble deficit, Nicholas I hid
this even from the State Council, sending them a false budget with the War
Ministry’s estimate 38 million lower than in reality. He thus honoured in the
breach the principle that a single, orderly budget ought to exist. Only from 1862
was a consolidated state budget introduced and the Ministry of Finance given
complete control over all outgoings, assigning funds to each department only in
accordance with its estimates. Only at that stage was a limit finally set to the
financial irresponsibility of the court.
“Speranskii also had plans for financial reorganization which were aimed to
stabilize the money supply, encourage private enterprise and mobilize better for
the state the wealth of the empire. The greatest problem Alexander inherited
was the huge quantity of assignaty in circulation, paper money printed to meet
successive crises, especially the recent wars, and unbacked by the creation of
new wealth. The inevitable result was chronic inflation. Speranskii proposed
that the government should honestly declare the assignaty to be what they were,
a form of state debt, should announce that the entire national wealth was to be
collateral for them, and should promise to redeem them over a period of time by
withdrawing them from circulation, and replacing them with silver coins issued
by a single State Bank. Meanwhile the government should raise new revenue by
selling land to state peasants, and replacing both obrok and poll tax by a land tax,
payable by the nobility; and by selling state monopolies – for example in salt and
alcohol – to private traders who would then pay tax on their profits.”280
The debate over Speransky highlights a fundamental difference between two

kinds of governance in Russian history that Hosking labels patronage and
bureaucracy. The older kind, patronage, characteristically depended on the
personal relationship between one man in authority and those dependent on
him, whether he be a tsar ruling over his subjects or a landowner ruling over his
serfs. At its best, patronage created a warm, human bond between patron and
client that was flexible and infused with Christian love; its weakness was that if
the patron was cruel or abusive, the client had no means to seek redress.
Bureaucracy, on the other hand, provided the security of law and rule-based
procedures, but was cumbersome, impersonal and prone to corruption. Europe
after the French Revolution was moving decisively towards bureaucratic
government, replacing patron-client relationships with state-citizen relationships
280
Hosking, op. cit., pp. 130-131.
150
and the patriotic feeling of the citizen for the nation-state and its constitution. In
her efforts to remain a European great power, Russia was moving in the same
direction, but slowly and with difficulty; for she had nothing to replace the
major patronage bonds of tsar-subject and landowner-serf.
151
20. NAPOLEON'S INVASION OF RUSSIA
Napoleon decided to invade Russia after a gradual cooling in relations

between the two countries that ended with Alexander’s withdrawal, in 1810,
from the economically disastrous Continental System that Napoleon had
established against England. As Palmer writes, “Every possible solution for
easing tension between the Russians and French broke down on two basic
questions: the refusal of the French to permit Russia total control of trade by
land and by sea, and the French insistence on retaining armies of occupation on
Prussian territory, even as far east as the line of the Niemen.” 281
Moreover, Napoleon’s creation of a semi-independent Duchy of Warsaw

threatened to turn Poland from a buffer state protecting Russia into a dagger
menacing her.282 Not for nothing was a large part of Napoleon’s invasion force
composed of Poles…
By May, 1811, as a comet blazed in the heavens above Europe, Tsar Alexander
was showing a much firmer, more realistic, attitude to the political and military
situation. As he said to Caulaincourt: “Should the Emperor Napoleon make war
on me, it is possible, even probable, that we shall be defeated. But this will not
give him peace… We shall enter into no compromise agreements; we have
plenty of open spaces in our rear, and we shall preserve a well-organized
army… I shall not be the first to draw my sword, but I shall be the last to sheathe
it… I should sooner retire to Kamchatka than yield provinces or put my
signature to a treaty in my conquered capital which was no more than a
truce…”283
“Caulaincourt was impressed: ‘People believe him to be weak but they are
wrong’, he informed Paris. ‘His amenable personality has limits and he won’t go
beyond them: these limits are as strong as iron.’ When Caulaincourt returned to
Paris, he spent five hours trying to convince Napoleon not to attack Russia. ‘One
good battle,’ retorted Napoleon, ‘will see the end of all your friend Alexander’s
fine resolutions.’…
“’The horizon grows darker and darker,’ Alexander wrote to [his sister]
Catiche on 24 December [1811]. Napoleon, ‘the curse of the human race, becomes
daily more abominable.’ In February 1812, Napoleon told Alexander: ‘I cannot
disguise from myself that Your Majesty no longer has any friendship for me.’
“’Neither my feelings nor my politics have changed,’ replied Alexander. ‘Am

I not allowed to suppose it is Your Majesty who has changed to me?’ But he
ended ominously: ‘If war must begin, I will know how to sell my life dearly.’
281
282
Hosking, Russia and the Russians, p. 250.
283
152
“In early 1812, War Minister Barclay warned him that he must wind up the
Ottoman war: Napoleon was coming. Kutuzov forced the surrender of the
Ottoman army in March, then negotiated the Peace of Bucharest, in which
Russia gained Bessarabia and returned Wallachia…”284
Napoleon’s invasion probably saved Russia from a union with Catholicism,

which by now had made its Concordat with Napoleon and was acting, very
probably, on Napoleon’s orders in approaching the Russian Church. For in 1810
Metropolitan Platon of Moscow, as K.A. Papmehl writes, “became the recipient
of ecumenical overtures by the French senator Grégoire (formerly Bishop of
Blois), presumably on Napoleon’s initiative. In a letter dated in Paris in May of
that year, Grégoire referred to the discussions held in 1717, at the Sorbonne,
between Peter I and some French bishops, with a view of exploring the prospects
of re-unification. Peter apparently passed the matter on to the synod of Russian
bishops who, in their turn, indicated that they could not commit themselves on a
matter of such importance without consulting the Eastern Patriarchs. Nothing
had been heard from the Russian side since then. Grégoire nevertheless assumed
that the consultation must have taken place and asked for copies of the
Patriarchs’ written opinions. He concluded his letter by assuring Platon that he
was hoping and praying for reunification of the Churches…
“Platon passed the letter to the Synod in St. Petersburg. In 1811 [it] replied to
Grégoire, with Emperor Alexander’s approval, to the effect that a search of
Russian archives failed to reveal any of the relevant documents. The idea of a
union, Platon added, was, in any case ‘contrary to the mood of the Russian
people’ who were deeply attached to their faith and concerned with its
preservation in a pure and unadulterated form.”285
Only a few years before, at Tilsit, the Tsar had said to Napoleon: “In Russia I
am both Emperor and Pope – it’s much more convenient.” 286 But this was not
true: if Napoleon was effectively both Emperor and Pope in France, this could
never be said of the tsars in Russia, damaged though the Orthodox symphony of
powers had been by a century of semi-absolutism. And the restraint on
Alexander’s power constituted by what remained of that symphony of powers
evidently led him to think again about imitating the West too closely, whether
politically or ecclesiastically. That the symphony of powers was still intact was
witnessed at the consecration of the Kazan cathedral in St. Petersburg on
September 27, 1811, the tenth anniversary of Alexander’s coronation. “There was
an ‘immense crowd’ of worshippers and onlookers. Not for many years had the
people of St. Petersburg witnessed so solemn a ceremony symbolizing the inter-
dependence of Church and State, for this essential bond of Tsardom was
284
Montefiore, The Romanovs, pp. 298, 299. Kutuzov defeated a Turkish army four times the size
of his own, showing himself a worthy successor of his mentor Suvorov.
285
286
Debidour, Histoire des rapports de l’église et de l’état en France (History of Church-State Relations
in France), p. 255; in M.V. Zyzykin, Patriarkh Nikon, Warsaw: Synodal Press, 1931, part III, p. 251.
In 1805 Platon remarked to an English visitor that “the English government had done a very
wicked thing in tolerating Popery” (Papmehl, op. cit., p. 82).
153
customarily emphasized in Moscow rather than in the newer capital. To some it
seemed, both at the time and later, that the act of consecration served Alexander
as a moment of re-dedication and renewal, linking the pledges he had given at
his crowning in Moscow with the mounting challenge from across the frontier.
For the rest of the century, the Kazan Cathedral remained associated in people’s
minds with the high drama of its early years, so that it became in time a shrine
for the heroes of the Napoleonic wars.”287
It was from the Kazan Cathedral that Alexander set out at the start of the
campaign, on April 21, 1812. As Tsaritsa Elizabeth wrote to her mother in Baden:
“The Emperor left yesterday at two o’clock, to the accompaniment of cheers and
blessings from an immense crowd of people who were tightly packed from the
Kazan Church to the gate of the city. As these folk had not been hustled into
position by the police and as the cheering was not led by planted agents, he was
– quite rightly – moved deeply by such signs of affection from our splendid
people!… ‘For God and their Sovereign’ – that was the cry! They make no
distinction between them in their hearts and scarcely at all in their worship. Woe
to him who profanes the one or the other. These old-world attitudes are certainly
not found more intensively anywhere than at the extremes of Europe. Forgive
me, dear Mamma, for regaling you with commonplaces familiar to everyone
who has a true knowledge of Russia, but one is carried away when speaking of
something you love; and you know my passionate devotion to this country.” 288
In August, the Tsar visited Moscow, where he was mobbed. Countess

Choiseul-Gouffier wrote: “These spontaneous impulses on the part of the
people, impossible to counterfeit or provoke, are grand and sublime. They can
exist only among those nations whose hearts continued near to nature and who
are deeply impressed with religious ideas. Nations where the people are
accustomed to seeing in their sovereign the representative of God whom they
adore and upon whom they build their hopes of future happiness – all in the
sentiments of obedience and fidelity to which they have consecrated
themselves.”289
And so Napoleon’s invasion of Russia acquired a significance that the other

Napoleonic wars in continental Europe did not have: it became a struggle, not
simply between two countries of not-so-different political systems, but between
two radically opposed faiths: the faith in the Revolution and the faith in
Orthodoxy. 1812 produced an explosion of Russian patriotism and religious
feeling. God’s evident support for the heroic Russian armies, at the head of
which was the “Reigning” icon of the Mother of God 290, reanimated a fervent
pride and belief in Holy Russia.
However, not in everybody and not at the beginning of the campaign, when,
as Sir Geoffrey Hosking writes, “Alexander ordered that half a battalion, 300
287
288
289
Trubetzkoy, op. cit., p. 100.
290
That same icon which was to reappear, miraculously renewed, on March 2, 1917.
154
men, should be stationed in each guberniia, to be reinforced from the
neighbouring guberniia if things got out of hand. Sure enough, soon after the
invasion the excitable Count Rostopchin reported to the Committee of Ministers
that an ‘Old Believer sect’ in Smolensk guberniia had enrolled about 1,500 serfs
by promising them freedom from the landowners when Napoleon arrived. In
the provinces of Lithuania and Belorussia the invasion sparked off widespread
unrest: peasants, apparently under the impression that Napoleon would soon
free them, refused to be called up for military service, sacked manor houses and
drove out the pomeshchiki. In one village, as the French approached, the assembly
took the decision to murder the local landowner, who was notorious for his
cruelty, burn down his manor house, and divide up his property among
themselves.
“In these regions, of course, most of the landowners were Polish, so that one
might interpret the peasants’ as patriotic. But there were some similar disorders
further east: for example, in Smolensk, where in one uezd peasants proclaimed
themselves French citizens, and a punitive detachment had to be sent to restore
obedience. Overall it seems clear that the hope of emancipation was the main
motive for peasant unrest, and indeed the disorders died away as it became
apparent that the French Emperor was reacting just as the Russian one would
have done by sending in punitive expeditions and restoring the landowners. By
doing so, Napoleon converted the war into a simple issue of national survival.
The feelings aroused in peasants by that fact can be summarized by a
proclamation issued by a peasant partisan leader to his followers: ‘You are
people of the Russian faith, you are Orthodox (pravoslavnye) peasants! Take up
arms for the faith and for your Tsar!’”291
As K.N. Leontiev writes: “It was ecclesiastical feeling and obedience to the
authorities (the Byzantine influence) that saved us in 1812. It is well-known that
many of our peasants (not all, of course, but those who were taken unawares by
the invasion) found little purely national feeling in themselves in the first
minute. They robbed the landowners’ estates, rebelled against the nobility, and
took money from the French. The clergy, the nobility and the merchants behaved
differently. But immediately they saw that the French were stealing the icons
and putting horses in our churches, the people became harder and everything
took a different turn…”292
As we have seen, an important aspect of the campaign was the Polish factor. As
Serhii Plokhy writes, “Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 was officially called
the Polish campaign – the second Polish campaign, to be precise. In the first
(1806-1807), Napoleon had defeated the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian troops
and carved the Duchy of Warsaw out of the Prussian share of the Polish
partition. The official goal of the second campaign was to restore the Kingdom of
Poland, now including lands from the Russian sphere of the partitions. The
implicit and, many believe, primary goal was to stop the Russian Empire from
Hosking, Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917, London: HarperCollins, 1997, p. 134.
291
Leontiev, “Vizantizm i Slavianstvo” (“Byzantinism and Slavdom”), Vostok, Rossia i Slavianstvo

292
(The East, Russia and Slavdom), Moscow, 1996, p. 104.

155
trading with Britain and thereby tighten the French economic blockade of
Napoleon’s British enemy. But an economic issue could hardly serve as a battle
cry for the French armies or for potential allies in the region, who were ordered
or asked to invade the Russian Empire and march all the way to Moscow. The
undoing of a major historical injustice through the restoration of the Polish state
could and did rouse the martial spirit, inspiring mass Polish participation in
Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and lending international legitimacy to the war.
“Although the third partition had wiped Poland off the political map of
Europe, and the partitioning powers had agreed not to use the country’s name in
their titles or in the official names of the lands annexed as a result of the
partitions, Poland had retained its place on the mental map of many Europeans
– first and foremost, of course, the Poles themselves. Legend has it that upon his
defeat at the hands of Russian troops in 1794, the leader of the Polish uprising,
Tadeusz Kościuszko, exclaimed in desperation: ‘Finis Poloniae!’ He later denied
having said those words, and many Poles indeed refused to consider their
country lost. Some of them joined Napoleon’s revolutionary army, fighting in
the West Indies, Italy, and Egypt alongside the future emperor. Their marching
song, later to become the national anthem of the restored Polish state, began
with the words: ‘Poland is not dead as long as we are alive’.
“Napoleon never forgot the loyalty of the Polish legionaries or the ultimate
goal for which they were fighting. Addressing the Diet of the Duchy of Warsaw
just before the invasion of Russia in June 1812, the emperor recalled the bravery
of the Polish detachments in his army and his own readiness to fight for their
cause. ‘I love your nation,’ declared the French emperor. ‘For sixteen years now,
I have seen your warriors fighting along with me on the fields of Italy and Spain.
I applaud your deeds. I approved of all the efforts that you intend to make, and I
will do everything in my power to support your intentions. If your endeavours
are unanimous, then you may nourish the hope of forcing your enemies to
recognize your rights.’
“The intentions and rights Napoleon had in mind were reflected in the appeal
prepared a few days earlier by the Polish Diet. It read: ‘We are restoring Poland
on the basis of the right given to us by nature; on the associations of our
ancestors; on the sacred right, acknowledged by the whole world, that was the
baptismal font of the human race. It is not we alone, tasting the sweetness of
Poland’s resurrection, who are restoring her, but all the inhabitants of various
lands awaiting their liberation… Regardless of their lengthy separation, the
inhabitants of Lithuania, White Rus’, Ukraine, Podolia, and Volhynia are our
brethren. They are Poles, just as we are, and they the right to call themselves
Poles.’ Napoleon told the deputies that he could not violate the promises he had
given to Austria and the peace he had concluded with her; hence, restoring the
Austrian partition to Poland was out of the question. But there seemed to be no
problem with the Russian one. ‘Let Lithuania, Samogitia, Vitebsk, Polatsk,
Mahilioü, Volhynia, Ukraine, and Podolia,’ said Napoleon, ‘be inspired with the
same spirit that I encountered in Great Poland, and Providence will crown your
sacred cause with success.’
156
“Later that month, Napoleon’s Grand Army crossed the Russian border and
began its march through the territories annexed by Catherine II from Poland,
aiming at the Russian hinterland. As far as the Warsaw Poles were concerned,
the war for the restoration of their fatherland and reunification with their Polish
brethren in the Russian partition was on. Close to 100,000 Poles entered
Napoleon’s army – every sixth soldier serving in his Russian campaign was a
Pole. Not surprisingly, the first major military encounter, in late June 1812, took
place not between French and Russian troops but between Polish and Russian
detachments. What the outside observer saw as the first test of forces between
Napoleon and Alexander was in fact a battle between Polish cavalrymen and
Cossacks. They were continuing their age-old struggle on familiar turf – the
eastern provinces of the former Commonwealth. Although the Cossacks won,
they had to retreat. Their whole operation was meant to gain time for the main
Russian armies to withdraw to the interior, eventually leading Napoleon to the
gates of Moscow…”293
After a long retreat, the Russian commander Kutuzov chose to stand and
fight at the village of Borodino, ninety miles from Moscow…
“The slaughter,” writes Montefiore, “was astonishingly intense, ‘the bloodiest

battle in the history of warfare’ until the First World War: the French lost 35,000
wounded or dead [according to other sources, 40,000], the Russians 45,000… Just
as the battle might possibly have been won, Napoleon was asked to throw in his
reserves. He refused to commit his elite Imperial Guards. As night fell, both
dazed commanders believed uneasily that they had just won; Kutuzov felt sure
that the battle would extend into a second day – but it was Napoleon who had
failed to win a clear victory out of a lack of both imagination and boldness, two
qualities which he had never lacked before.
“’The battle was the bloodiest of recent times,’ Kutuzov reported to

Alexander, declaring that the Russians had kept possession of the battlefield,
definition of victory. ‘I defeated Napoleon,’ he boasted to his wife. The tsar
promoted Kutuzov to marshal and awarded him 100,000 rubles. As the news of
the butcher’s bill came in, Kutuzov realized that his plan to fight on the next day
was impossible. ‘Our extraordinary losses, especially the wounding of key
generals, forced me to withdraw down the Moscow road.’ During the night –
and contrary to his report to Alexander – Kutuzov pulled back several miles.
Napoleon claimed victory: the road to Moscow was open, and he dubbed
Borodino ‘the battle of Moscow’. Ultimately both Napoleon and Kutuzov saw
that Borodino had been a ghastly draw. ‘I ought to have died at the battle of
Moscow,’ Napoleon later admitted in exile, but it did decide the fate of the city.
“On 1 September, Kutuzov held a war council in a peasant hut in Fili, where
the old general understood that, now facing the choice of losing the army or
Moscow, he must save the army. ‘Napoleon is a torrent but Moscow is the
293
Plokhy, Lost Kingdom, London: Allen Lane, 2017, pp. 73-74.
157
sponge that will soak him up.’ Kutuzov took the decision but this was exactly
the choice that Alexander had avoided by leaving the army, and it would have
been impossible for a monarch to make. Kutuzov marched his army through the
streets of Moscow and out the other side; he abandoned the ancient capital,
without fully informing the governor-general Count Rostopchin, who ordered
the evacuation of the entire population. Captured capitals from Vienna to Berlin,
had usually greeted Napoleon with cowed aristocratic politeness. This was a
sign that this was a new national war à l’outrance. In scenes of dystopic exodus,
the roads teemed and seethed with the long-suffering, trudging masses, carts
heaped with a lifetime’s belongings, as multitudes, half a million people, the
entire Muscovite population, fled the city, heading eastwards. Rostopchin
opened the jails and, as the city emptied, he decided that ‘If I am asked, I won’t
hesitate to say, “Burn the capital rather than deliver it to the enemy”.’ Kutuzov
and his generals had already blown up ammunition stores as they left. At a
secret meeting in the governor’s house, Rostopchin and Prime Minister Balashov
ordered the burning of further buildings, which started an unstoppable
conflagration that tore through the wooden structures. Embarrassingly,
Rostopchin’s two city mansions were among the few buildings that did not catch
fire. Afterwards, when the French approached his estate at Voronovo, a palace
packed with French luxuries and Roman antiquities, Rostopchin ordered it
burned, leaving a sign that read: ‘Frenchmen, I abandon to you my two houses
in Moscow… with their contents worth half a million rubles. Here you will find
only ashes.’
“On 3 September, as Kutuzov headed south-westwards and set up a well-

placed camp on the Old Kaluga road, no one greeted Napoleon at the gates of
Moscow. Only a few French tutors, actresses and lethiferous hands of looters
haunted the streets as Moscow burned for six days. Napoleon was spooked by
what he saw. He should have withdrawn at once; his presence in Moscow broke
his cardinal rule that he must conquer armies, not cities – but he had not been
able to resist the storied city of golden domes. He moved into the Kremlin and
waited to negotiate from within a city of ashes…”294
Of particular significance was the fact that it had been Moscow, the old
capital associated with Orthodoxy and the Muscovite tsars, rather than the new
and westernized capital of St. Petersburg, that had borne the brunt of the
suffering. For it was not so much the indecisive battle of Borodino, a contest in
which, according to Napoleon, “the French showed themselves worthy of
victory and the Russians that they are invincible”, as the burning of Moscow,
which destroyed 80% of the dwellings in the city, and Alexander’s refusal to
surrender even after that, which proved the decisive turning-point, convincing
Napoleon that he could not win… For, he said, “This is a war of extermination, a
terrible strategy which has no precedent in the history of civilization… To burn
down their own cities! A demon has got into them! What ferocious
determination! What a people! What a people!”295
294
Montefiore, The Romanovs, pp. 304-305.
295
Napoleon, in Hosking, op. cit., p. 133.
158
The decision to burn down Moscow was highly controversial. It has been
argued that Rastopchin had the nobility evacuated from the city with their
families because he was well aware of their pro-Napoleonic, potentially
seditious sentiments. Thus according to the Martinist Runich, “Rastopchin,
acting through fear, threw the nobility, the merchants and the non-gentry
intellectuals out of Moscow in order that they should not give in to the
enticements and influence of Napoleon’s tactics… He saved Russia from the
yoke of Napoleon.”296
On the other hand, it was a savage decision. “For three days, one observer
had noted, ‘the whole city was on fire, thick sheaves of flame of various colours
rose up on all sides to the heavens, blotting out the horizon, sending in all
directions a blinding light and a burning heat’. In the chaos, French soldiers had
looted everything they could lay their hands on, joined in the pillaging by
peasants who descended upon the city from the neighbouring countryside. After
the fires had died down, the charred ruins of the burnt-out city had offered little
in the way of food and shelter to sustain Napoleon’s army though the winter.
Nearly 7,000 out of just over 9,000 houses, more than 8,000 shops and
warehouses, and over a third of the city’s 329 churches had been totally
destroyed. Some 270 million roubles’ worth of private property had been lost
without any possibility of compensation. Many civilians had already fled, and
most of the rest had subsequently left the city, facing a life of vagabondage and
destitution. Only 2 per cent of the population had remained, and a large
proportion of those, including many soldiers, did not survive…”297
“Many soldiers” is an understatement. Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes that as

a result of the fire of Moscow 15,000 Russian soldiers who were recovering from
wounds suffered at Borodino in the military hospitals of the city were burned
alive.298 This was total war, unprecedented in its scope and breadth.
“The fire of Moscow,” writes Ivanov, “started the people’s war. Napoleon’s
situation deteriorated from day to day. His army was demoralised. The hungry
French soldiers wandered round the outskirts of Moscow searching for bread
and provisions. Lootings and murders began. Discipline in the army declined
sharply. Napoleon was faced with a threatening dilemma: either peace, or
destruction.”299
God clearly helped the Orthodox. Thus early in the campaign terrible rain
storms killed thousands of horses that were desperately needed by Napoleon.
Then terrible summer heat killed many soldiers. The late onset of winter
296
297
Richard J. Evans, The Pursuit of Power. Europe 1815-1914, London: Penguin, 2017, pp. 3-4.
298
Solzhenitsyn, Le ‘problème russe’ à la fin du xxe siècle (The ‘Russian Problem’ at the End of the
20th Century), Paris: Fayard, 1994, pp. 52-53). See also Evgeny Ponasenkov, “Dokumental’noe
Rassledovanie o Sozzhenii Moskvy v 1812 godu (Documentary Investigation of the Burning of
Moscow in 1812), http://millionaire.ru/history.
299
159
tempted Napoleon to stay too long in Moscow - but then, when the winter did
come, it was savage…300
The terrible sufferings of the French on their return march are well-known.
There was even cannibalism, - a sure sign of apocalyptic times, - as the soldiers
of the Great Army began to put their fellow-soldiers in the stew pots. Out of the
vast army - nearly 600,000 men, only about half of whom were French - that set
out for Russia, only 120,000 returned, 35,000 of them French. The Russians lost
400,000, but they had saved their homeland. Orthodoxy had triumphed…
The role of the commander-in-chief Kutuzov was and remained controversial.

On the one hand, “by their fruits ye shall know them”, and it was he who
commanded the armies that drove Napoleon out of Russia. The protégé of
Suvorov, who also brought the war against Turkey to an end just before
Napoleon’s invasion, surely deserves credit for that.
On the other hand, there were many who blamed him for not engaging
Napoleon in battle. The Tsar blamed Kutuzov, probably unjustly, for the defeat
at Austerlitz, and was against his appointment in 1812, declaring: “The public
wanted his appointment. I appointed him: as regards myself personally, I wash
my hands of him.”
In favour of the Tsar’s judgment was the poor preparation of the Russian
position at Borodino. In that battle it was Barclay, rather than Kutuzov, who
took the lead, acting heroically.
According to Ivanov, the Russian victory was almost foiled by the intrigues of
the Masons, and first of all Kutuzov, who, according to Sokolskaia, was initiated
into Masonry at the “Three Keys” lodge in Regensburg, and was later received
into lodges in Frankfurt, Berlin, Petersburg and Moscow, penetrating into the
secrets of the higher degrees.301
Ivanov describes the course of events after Borodino and the burning of
Moscow: “Peace negotiations began. On September 23 at Tarutino camp
Kutuzov met Napoleon’s truce-envoy Lauriston. Kutuzov willingly accepted
this suggestion and decided to keep the meeting a complete secret. He told
Lauriston to meet him outside the camp, beyond the line of our advance posts,
on the road to Moscow. Everything was to be done in private and the project for
a truce was to be put forward very quickly. This plan for a secret agreement
300
For details, see Adam Zamoyski’s superb account, 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow,
London: HarperCollins, 2004.
301
« In 1779 he was initiated into the German Masonic lodge ‘Three Keys’ (Ratisbon). He was a
member of the Moscow lodges ‘Sphinx’ and ‘Three Banners.’ He also participated in the
meetings of the Masonic lodges of St. Petersburg, Frankfurt, Berlin. He had a higher degree of
initiation in the Swedish system. Within the Freemasons he was known as ‘evergreen laurel’”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kutuzov)
160
between Napoleon and the Masonic commander-in-chief fell through. Some
Russian generals and especially the English agent attached to the Russian army,
[General] Wilson, protested against the unofficial secret negotiations with
Napoleon. On September 23 Wilson made a scene in front of Kutuzov; he came
to him as the representative of the general staff and army generals and declared
that the army would refuse to obey him. Wilson was supported by the Duke of
Wurtemburg, the Emperor’s uncle, his son-in-law the Duke of Oldenburg and
Prince Volkonsky, general-adjutant, who had arrived not long before with a
report from Petersburg. Kutuzov gave way, and the meeting with Lauriston took
place in the camp headquarters.
“Kutuzov’s failure in securing peace did not stop him from giving fraternal
help to Napoleon in the future.
“After insistent urgings from those close to him and at the insistence of his
Majesty, Kutuzov agreed to attack near Tarutino.
“The battle of Tarutino [on October 6] revealed the open betrayal of the
commander-in-chief.
“’When in the end the third and fourth corps came out of the wood and the
cavalry of the main army was drawn up for the attack, the French began a
general retreat. When the French retreat was already an accomplished fact and
the French columns were already beyond Chernishina, Bennigsen moved his
armies forward.
“The main forces at the moment of the French retreat had been drawn up for
battle. In spite of this, and the persuasions of Yermolov and Miloradovich,
Kutuzov decisively refused to move the armies forward, and only a part of the
light cavalry was set aside for pursuing the enemy, the rest of the army returned
to the Tarutino camp.
“Bennigsen was so enraged by the actions of the field-marshal that after the
battle he did not even consider it necessary to display military etiquette in front
of him and, on receiving his congratulations on the victory, did not even get off
his horse.
“In private conversations he accused Kutuzov not only of not supporting him
with the main army for personal reasons, but also of deliberately holding back
Osterman’s corps.
“For many this story will seem monstrous; but from the Masonic point of
view it was necessary: the Mason Kutuzov was only carrying out his obligations
in relation to his brother (Murat), who had been beaten and fallen into
misfortune.
161
“In pursuing the retreating army of Napoleon Kutuzov did not have enough
strength or decisiveness to finish once and for all with the disordered French
army. During the retreat Kutuzov clearly displayed criminal slowness.
“’The behaviour of the field-marshal drives me mad,’ wrote the English agent
General Wilson about this.”
For “the Masonic oath was always held to be higher than the military oath.” 302
Montefiore agrees with Ivanov’s negative assessment of Kutuzov’s

performance. “After the closely-fought battle of Maloyaroslavets on October 11-
12, Napoleon sent a peace offer to Alexander. ‘Peace?’ replied Alexander. ‘But as
yet we’ve not made war. My campaign is only just beginning.’ He was frustrated
by Kutuzov’s slow pursuit. On 3-6 November, Kutuzov bruised the passing
French at Krasnyi in a rolling skirmish in which he took over 20,000 prisoners
and killed a further 10,000. ‘Yet another victory,’ Kutuzov told his wife, but he
was keen to avoid more battles. ‘I’m by no means sure,’ said Kutuzov, ‘the total
destruction of Napoleon would be of such benefit.’
“His forces were down to fewer than 60,000 men and he let the other armies,
under the German-born general, Prince Peter Sayn-Wittgenstein from the north
and Admiral Chichagov from the south, take over the pursuit. Kutuzov had let
Napoleon escape. ‘It is with extreme sadness that I realize that the hope of
wiping away the dishonor of Moscow’s loss by cutting off the enemy’s retreat
has been lost,’ wrote Alexander, thanks to Kutuzov’s ‘inexplicable inactivity’.
Kutuzov offered to resign. When he occupied Smolensk, Alexander bit his lip
and awarded him a resounding new title: prince of Smolensk.
“As two Russian armies converged on him, Napoleon and the remnants of his
army, harried by Cossacks and facing total destruction, raced to cross the
Berezina River. In a feat of French engineering, luck, courage and Russian
incompetence, Napoleon crossed the Berezina and then, abandoning his men to
Russian winter and revenge, he raced for Paris. ‘It seems the All-Powerful has
brought on the head of this monster all the miseries he intended for us,’
Alexander wrote with grim satisfaction to both Arakcheev and Catiche as
Napoleon’s retreat turned to rout in the first week of November…
“Kutuzov had no intention of pursuing Napoleon into Europe, in which he

was supported by the dowager empress and Catiche. Russia had lost 150,000
men; the army was down to 100,000. But Alexander had a different vision of a
personal and national mission, one that was now decisive in European history.
He left Nikolai Saltykov, that relic of the reigns of Elizaveta and Catherine, in
Petersburg, and advanced into Europe to destroy Napoleon. ‘You have saved
not just Russia,’ he told his soldiers, ‘but all of Europe’…” 303
302
Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 269-270, 272.
303
Montefiore, op. cit., pp. 307-309.
162
However, Alan Palmer is more generous to Kutuzov, while giving due credit
to Alexander’s determination and drive: “Alexander returned to Vilna
determined to resume the role of Europe’s liberator which he had sought to play
prematurely seven years previously [at Austerlitz]. He was now a Tsar with a
sense of mission. Even Rumiantsev, appeaser though he was by nature, caught
the new spirit: ‘Heaven has chosen you to accomplish its designs’, he wrote to
his master from St. Petersburg, ‘revealing already your destiny, that you shall
save Europe.’ But Kutuzov was cautious. He did not for one moment doubt
continuation of the war would lead to the final downfall of Napoleon, but only if
the Russians were strong in men and material. According to General Wilson,
who was attached to Kutuzov’s headquarters throughout the pursuit of
Napoleon, the army suffered 45,000 casualties in the final four weeks before
entering Vilna, and modern Soviet historians reckoned that only a third of
Kutuzov’s men were fit for active military service at the close of the year.
Kutuzov therefore wished to wait until the thousands of recruits marshaling in
Russia had reached headquarters. He was not opposed to Alexander’s mission,
although he was naturally less interested in the general affairs of Europe than
the non-Russians who had entered the Tsar’s service; but he was convinced the
army should not cross the frontier into Prussia in the depth of winter.
“Alexander, however, had no intention of listening to Kutuzov. He was

encouraged by the Prussian exile Stein who had already written urging him ‘to
deliver the human race from the most absurd and degrading of tyrannies’, and
he genuinely believed the Russians should strike while the enemy was still in
confusion. There was good sense in this argument, for the Cossacks and the
militia units were better able to give battle under winter conditions than in the
spring, when climate and terrain would favour troops from western and
southern Europe. The Germans at Alexander’s headquarters, both soldiers and
civilians, argued that their compatriots were eager to change sides against the
French provided they could count on adequate Russian protection from counter-
measures. However, although Kutuzov was exhausted and anxious to rest both
himself and his troops. Wittgenstein was still pursuing the enemy columns
along the banks of the lower Niemen and had every intention of crossing into
Prussia as soon as possible. Alexander warmly approved of Wittgenstein’s
initiative, as indeed he had done throughout the campaign: here at last was a
General after his own heart. ‘Thanks Heavens everything here is going well,’
Alexander wrote to Saltykov once he had assessed the situation at Vilna. ‘It is
proving a little difficult to dispose of the Prince Marshal [Kutuzov], but it is
absolutely essential to do so.’
“Events played admirably into Alexander’s hands. On 30 December General

Hans von Yorck, commanding the Prussian contingent in what remained of the
Grand Army, concluded a military convention at Tauroggen (Taurage) with the
Russian General Diebitsch, a corps commander serving under Wittgenstein. The
actual terms of the convention were limited and precise: the Prussians would
police the salient of territory around the mouth of the Niemen, southwards from
Memel, and would offer no opposition to the Russian army; but the significance
of this pledge of neutrality influenced events over a far larger area; for it made it
163
virtually impossible for the French to retain any hold on East Prussia and they
rapidly evacuated the city of Kōnigsberg, though preparing to withstand a siege
in Danzig rather than surrender so vital a port.
“Alexander heard of the Tauroggen convention when one of Wittgenstein’s

aides arrived in Vilna on 4 January. Immediately the Tsar decided to exploit the
signs of weakness in the French hold on Germany. He sent the ardent Prussian
patriot General von Boyen on a secret mission to King Frederick William with
the offer of an offensive and defensive alliance, and he also encouraged Stein to
issue and appeal to the King which urged him to break with Napoleon and call
on his subjects to liberate themselves in partnership with the advancing
Russians. Finally on 9 January Alexander left Vilna and prepared to carry the
war into Europe. He established temporary headquarters down the Niemen at
Meritz and it was from there that, three days later, he ordered his army
westwards across the Niemen and into Prussia. By the Russian calendar it was
the first day of the New Year; and a proclamation from Kutuzov called on
Alexander’s troops ‘to liberate from oppression and misery even those nations
who have taken up arms against Russia’.”304
The Tsar, writes Palmer, was "in a state bordering on religious

ecstasy. More and more he turned to the eleventh chapter of the Book
of Daniel with the apocalyptic vision of how the all-conquering King of
the South is cast down by the King of the North. It seemed to him as if
the prophecies, which had sustained him during the dark days of
autumn and early winter, were now to be fulfilled: Easter this year
would come with a new spiritual significance of hope for all Europe.
'Placing myself firmly in the hands of God I submit blindly to His will,'
he informed his friend Golitsyn from Radzonow, on the Wrkra. 'My
faith is sincere and warm with passion. Every day it grows firmer and I
experience joys I had never known before... It is difficult to express in
words the benefits I gain from reading the Scriptures, which previously
I knew only superficially... All my glory I dedicate to the advancement
of the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ'... At Kalisch (Kalisz) on the border
of the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw and Prussia the Tsar concluded a
convention with Frederick William: the agreement provided for a close
military alliance between Russia and Prussia, stipulating the size of
their respective contingents and promising Prussia territory as
extensive as in 1806; but the final clauses went beyond the normal
language of diplomacy to echo Alexander's religious inspiration. 'Let
all Germany join us in our mission of liberation,' the Kalisch Treaty
said. 'The hour has come for obligations to be observed with that
religious faith, that sacred inviolability which holds together the power
and permanence of nations.’” 305
304
Palmer, Alexander I, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974, pp. 258-259.
305
164
But should Russia go further west into Germany and liberate the whole of
Western Europe? Kutuzov and most of the senior officers were against it. “Even
the most ardent Russian patriots, such as his Minister of the Interior Admiral
Shishkov and the Archimandrite Filaret, were against Alexander’s proposed
liberation of Europe. The consensus was that Russia should help herself to East
Prussia and much of Poland, providing herself with some territorial gain and a
defensible western border, and leave it at that. But Alexander ignored them.”306
However just was some of the criticism targeted at the tsar in his period, on
the critical question whether he should have stopped at the Vistula or continued
all the way to Paris, in hindsight we must conclude that Alexander was right
and his critics wrong. For Napoleon’s power was by no means broken in 1813;
and if Alexander’s troops had not taken part in the great battle that did finally
break it, at Leipzig in October, 1813, it is likely that the ogre would have retaken
the whole of Germany and Poland up to the Vistula.
As Alexander and his armies approached the borders of France, the British
and Austrian foreign ministers Castlereagh and Metternich, fearing the
increased power of Russia on the continent, tried to persuade him to wait.
But Alexander pushed on, showing both the necessary firmness and
generosity when he arrived in Paris on March 31, 1814. As he declared: “The
armies of the allied powers have occupied the capital of France. The allied
sovereigns respect the wishes of the French nation. They declare that if
conditions of peace are to have the strongest guarantees the ambitions of
Bonaparte must be curbed… they respect the integrity of France as she was
under the legitimate kings… they invite the senate to form a provisional
government… and prepare a constitution that will be agreeable to the French
people.” Thus on the one hand, he refused to make any compromises, or meet
with Napoleon until he abdicated (which he did twelve days later), allowing the
Bourbons to return to power. And on the other hand, he did his best to reconcile
the French people with the loss of their evil empire.
As a result of his fine diplomacy the tsar was popular with the French in what
could have been a very tricky situation. “The hour called for elaborate exercises
in charm and in tact. No other contemporary public figure could display these
qualities to such advantage.”307 True, the ever-chivalrous Alexander was unwise
in giving Napoleon the island of Elba, very close to the mainland, from which he
escaped in 1815, only to be finally defeated with great difficulty at Waterloo in
June: Castlereagh and Metternich had been right in trying to dissuade him from
that. However, the Tsar must take the main credit for finally seeing to the
restoration of legitimate monarchism in France and throughout Continental
Europe.
306
Adam Zamoyski, Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon & the Congress of Vienna, London: Harper
Perennial, 2008, p. 27.
307
Palmer, op cit., p. 287.
165
21. THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA
The idea that dominated immediately after the final defeat of Napoleon was
reaction and the restoration of monarchism. It could not be otherwise when the most
powerful man in Europe was the Emperor Alexander…
But, as Evans points out, “Putting the genie of revolutionary change back into
the bottle of history was not easy. For the destructiveness of the wars fought by
Napoleon and his predecessors since the early 1790s was not merely physical.
Napoleon had redrawn the map of Europe several times, annexing large swathes
of it to France, from the Hanseatic cities in the north through the Low Countries
to north-west Italy in the south, creating a French Empire that at its height
covered 290,000 square miles and counted 44 million people as its inhabitants
[compared with 30 million inhabitants of the Russian Empire]. He had
surrounded this with a ring of satellite states, often ruled by his relatives,
including the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom
of Westphalia. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, created by
Charlemagne in 800, had come to an inglorious end in 1806 [when Emperor
Francis II abdicated]. Many of these changes would have been reversed in 1815,
but Napoleon showed that borders were not immutable. There were other
changes, too. The power of the Church had been reduced, with vast swathes of
land secularized and ecclesiastical states swept off the map. The registration of
births, marriages and deaths had been assigned to secular authorities.
Monasteries had been dissolved, and the power of the Church had been further
reduced in many areas by the introduction of freedom of religion, civil marriage
and divorce, secular education and the state appointment of clergy. The Church
had also been pressured into introducing freedom of worship and a measure of
equal rights for non-Christians, notably Jews.
“Everywhere that Napoleon ruled he had replaced encrusted custom and

privilege with rationality and uniformity. While the emperor’s armies rampaged
across Europe, his bureaucrats had moved in silently behind, reorganizing,
systematizing, standardizing. In the areas that France annexed and the
borderlands where it established its client states, notably western Germany,
northern Italy and the Low Countries, a new generation of professional
administrators had emerged to run things while Napoleon was away waging his
never-ending military campaigns. Local and regional jurisdictions, such as those
exercised by hundreds of imperial knights in the Holy Roman Empire, and by
Church and seigneurial courts, had been supplanted by a system of centralized
uniformity administered by a judicial bureaucracy. In all those areas, the
Napoleonic Law Code had disposed of existing, often tradition-bound laws and
ordinances, introducing a key element of equality before the law, even if in some
respects this central principle of the French Revolution had been modified by
Napoleon’s more conservative outlook on issues such as the rights and duties of
women. Property rights were guaranteed wherever the Code applied, as they
had not been in many areas before. The Code adhered to many of the key ideas
of the French Revolution, including the freedom of the individual, and, as
166
Napoleon himself proclaimed in his testament, equality of opportunity, ‘career
open to talent’, and ‘the rule of reason’. Weights and measures had been at least
to some extent standardized, internal customs tolls abolished, guilds and other
restrictions on the free movement of labour swept away, serfs freed (including in
Poland0. Everywhere Napoleon had brought change, and as he departed for his
final exile on St. Helena in 1815, it was clear that much of it could not be
reversed…”308
But some things could and had to be reversed. And that was the job of the
representatives of the victorious powers who met at a reconvened Congress of
Vienna after the shock-interlude of Napoleon’s Hundred Days.
As Davies writes, they met in chastened mood and “could not be accused, as
in the previous year, of ‘dancing instead of making progress’. They were ready
to risk nothing. They were determined, above all, to restore the rights of
monarchy – the sacred institution considered most threatened by the Revolution.
In so doing they paid little attention to the claims either of democracy or of
nationality….
“The spirit of the settlement, therefore, was more than conservative: it

actually put the clock back. It was designed to prevent change in a world where
the forces of change had only been contained by a whisker. The Duke of
Wellington’s famous comment on Waterloo was: ‘a damned nice thing, the
nearest run thing you ever saw in your life’. Such was the feeling all over
Europe. The issue between change and no change was so close that the victors
felt terrified of the least concession. Even limited, gradual reform was viewed
with suspicion. ‘Beginning reform,’ wrote the Duke in 1830, ‘is beginning
revolution.’ What is more, France, the eternal source of revolutionary
disturbances, had not been tamed. Paris was to erupt repeatedly – in 1830, 1848,
1851, 1870. ‘When Paris sneezes,’ commented the Austrian Chancellor,
Metternich, ‘Europe catches cold.’ French-style democracy was a menace
threatening monarchy, Church, and property – the pillars of everything he stood
for. It was, he said, ‘the disease which must be cured, the volcano which must be
extinguished, the gangrene which must be burned out with a hot iron, the hydra
with jaws open to swallow up the social order’.
“In its extreme form, as embodied by [the Austrian Chancellor] Metternich,

the reactionary spirit of 1815 was opposed to any sort of change which did not
obtain prior approval. It found expression in the first instance in the Quadruple
Alliance of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Britain, who agreed to organize future
congresses whenever need arose, and then in a wider ‘Holy Alliance’ organized
by the Tsar. The former produced the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), which
[at the Tsar’s request] readmitted France to the concert of respectable nations.
The latter produced the proposal that the powers should guarantee existing
frontiers and governments in perpetuity.”309
308
Evans, op. cit., pp. 14-15.
309
Davies, Europe, London: Pimlico, 1997, pp. 762-763.
167
*
The Tsar’s ultimate aim was much higher than just a political settlement; it
was the restoration, not just of monarchism, but of Christianity as the guiding
principle of European politics. Henry Kissinger writes: “He was convinced, as he
wrote to a confidante in 1812, that triumph over Napoleon would usher in a new
and harmonious world based on religious principles, and he pledged: ‘It is to the
cause of hastening the true reign of Jesus Christ that I devote all my earthly
glory.’ Conceiving of himself as an instrument of divine will, the Czar arrived in
Vienna in 1814 with a design for a new world order in some ways even more
radical than Napoleon’s in its universality: a ‘Holy Alliance’ of princes
sublimating their national interests into a common search for peace and justice,
forswearing the balance of power for Christian principles of brotherhood. As
Alexander told Chateaubriand, the French royalist intellectual and diplomat,
‘There no longer exists an English policy, a French, Russian, Prussian or
Austrian policy; there is now only one common policy, which, for the welfare of
all, ought to be adopted in common by all states and all peoples.’ It was a
forerunner of the American Wilsonian conception of the nature of world order,
albeit on behalf of principles dramatically the opposite of the Wilsonian
vision…”310
Perhaps the best measure of the Tsar’s victory was the Orthodox Divine
Liturgy celebrated on his namesday, September 12, 1815, on seven altars on the
Plaine de Vertus, eighty miles east of Paris, in the presence of all the leading
political and military leaders of the allied nations and a huge Russian army of
160,000 troops. Neither before nor since in the modern history of Europe has
there been such a public, universal witness, by all the leaders of the Great
Powers, to the true King of kings and Lord of lords and His true religion,
Orthodox Christianity. And if this was just a diplomatic concession on the part
of the non-Orthodox powers, it was much more than that for Alexander. His
Orthodox spirit, so puzzling to the other leaders of Europe, was manifested in a
letter he wrote that same evening: “This day has been the most beautiful in all
my life. My heart was filled with love for my enemies. In tears at the foot of the
Cross, I prayed with fervour that France might be saved…” 311 A few days later
Alexander presented his fellow sovereigns with a treaty designed to bind them
in a union of faith and virtue, requiring them “to take as their sole guide the
precepts of the Christian religion” and insisting that the treaty be dedicated “to
the Holy and Indivisible Trinity” in Paris - because it was the most irreligious of
all Europe’s capital cities.312
Only the King of Prussia welcomed the idea. The Emperor of Austria was
embarrassed, and in private agreed with his chancellor, Metternich, that
Alexander was mad. On the British side, the Duke of Wellington confessed that
310
Kissinger, World Order, London: Penguin, 2015, pp. 58-59.
311
Palmer, Alexander I, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974, p. 333.
312
168
he could hardly keep a straight face; he and the British Foreign Minister Lord
Castlereagh mocked it in private.313
Stella Ghervas writes that the tsar “wrote the preliminary notes in pencil and
then gave them to his Head of Chancery, Count John Capodistrias, so that he
could render them in a diplomatic language. In his turn, Capodistrias passed the
document to a brilliant and cultivated secretary [a Phanariot Greek] named
Alexandre Stourdza. Stourdza later provided a detailed explanation of the text
of the treaty in an unpublished piece called Considérations sur l’acte d’alliance
fraternelle et chrétienne du 14/26 septembre 1815…
“In his Considérations, Stourdza sought to demonstrate that the pact was
grounded on a solid theoretical and ideological base, in order to overcome the
suspicions of those who opposed the pact and to refute their objections. In his
theoretical construction, Napoleon was the heir of French Revolution, and his
fall the end of an epoch of social and political disorder. Referring to the recent
victory of the Allies following the Hundred Days, Stourdza wrote, ‘the principle
of subversion against all religious and social institutions has just been slain a
second time.’ This European unrest found its origin, according to him, in the
Seven Years’ War (1765) and included the American Revolution, the French
Revolution, and the succeeding Napoleonic epoch. Hence the sole solution was
to restore a principle of order in public life, and therefore to ‘proclaim […] the
sole conservative principles, which had been too long relegated to the
subordinate sphere of domestic life.’ There lies the explanation for the
intentional but otherwise incomprehensible [!] intrusion of Christian principles
into the political sphere. In fact the Tsar had already expressed that very idea
nine months earlier, on December 31, 1814, in a diplomatic note that he had sent
to the plenipotentiaries of the three great powers… More generally, the feeling
from many contemporaries that they had just escaped a near-apocalyptic
experience largely explains the wave of mysticism that washed over Europe in
those years.
“Stourdza’s testimony thus confirms that the Holy Alliance did pursue a
conservative, religious, and counter-revolutionary agenda. For all that, it would
be a mistake to call it a reactionary or ultra-royalist manifesto. Between these
two extremes, there existed not only a vast spectrum of ideas, but also profound
divergences. We should sooner speak of a middle ground, a ‘defensive
modernization,’ which sparked a storm of criticism from both sides…” 314
The more cynical attitude of the western statesmen was not unexpected. After
all, religion had long ceased to be seen as the basis of political life in the West.
True, the monarchs protected religion as a foundation of their own monarchical
power; but in the post-1815 settlement the Catholic Church received few of its
313
Zamoyski, Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon & the Congress of Vienna, London: Harper
Perennial, 2008, pp. 520-522.
314
Ghervas, “Antidotes to Empire: From the Congress System to the European Union”, in John
W. Boyer and Berthold Molden (eds.), Eutropes: The Paradox of European Empire, Paris and
Chicago, 2014, pp. 58-59.
169
lands back, which showed their true attitude to it. The fact was that Tsar
Alexander was now the most powerful man in Europe, and the others could not
afford to reject his religio-political project out of hand.
So, led by Metternich 315, they set about discreetly editing the treaty of its more
mystical elements until it was signed by the monarchs of Russia, Austria and
Prussia (the British and the Turks opted out, as did the Pope of Rome) on
September 26. Thus the original draft read: “Conformably to the word of the
Holy Scriptures, the three contracting Monarchs will remain united by the bonds
of a true and indissoluble fraternity, and considering each other as fellow
countrymen, they will on all occasions, and in all places led each other aid and
assistance; and regarding themselves towards their subjects and armies as
fathers of families, they will lead them, in the same fraternity with which they
are animated to protect religion, peace and justice.” 316
But Metternich modified the first part to remove the phrase “by the bonds of
a true fraternity” to read: “The three monarchs will remain united”.
Again, the original draft stated that the three Powers were three provinces of
a single Christian nation. But Metternich changed this to present them as three
branches of the same family.
“Metternich,” continues Ghervas, “having obviously grasped that there was

an attempt to pass political reformism under the guise of religious rhetoric (both
of which he disliked), had therefore been quick to temper the enthusiasm of the
Tsar. His was also the paternalist idea that the monarchs were ‘benevolent
fathers.’ However, the idea that Europe represented a ‘Christian nation’ still
made it into the final version of the text.
“It is obvious from the original proposition that Alexander I had sought to
found a European nation ‘essentially one’ and living in peace, of which the
various states would be provinces. We can easily guess the reason for
Metternich’s amendments: the original wording would have united the peoples
of Europe in a position, so to speak, “over the heads of the sovereigns,” while
placing unprecedented constraints on the monarchs; the text would have
smacked of a constitution. The original version even provided that the military
forces of the respective powers would have to be considered as forming a single
army—130 years before the aborted project of the European Defense Community
of the early 1950s! Even though Tsar Alexander I had initially envisaged a sort of
league of nations united under the authority of the sovereigns, what eventually
emerged was an alliance of kings.
315
“Discreetly, Metternich set about changing the form of the ‘Holy Alliance’, ridding the draft
[treaty] of those phrases which implied penitence for past imperfections; contrition smacked too
strongly of revolutionary presumption to satisfy those who identified the truths of religion with
orderly and conservative government. Their only doubt was whether the Tsar would accept
major modifications in a document which he seemed to treat as a new dispensation of Holy
Writ.” (Palmer, op. cit., p. 334)
316
170
“From this point of view, the pact of the Holy Alliance stemmed from a line of
thought of the Enlightenment. We should keep in mind that the monarchs and
ministers of the post-Napoleonic era considered themselves as heirs of that
movement as a matter of course: after all, they were the direct descendants of the
sovereigns Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine of Russia, and Joseph II of Austria,
all of whom had surprised their epoch with their intellectual audacity and
rivaled one another to host in their courts philosophers such as Voltaire,
Rousseau, Diderot, and Kant, much to the chagrin of the conservative minds of
their respective kingdoms. On the other hand, the three sovereign signatories of
the Holy Alliance rejected the French Revolution with the utmost energy…” 317
“To advance his concept inside Russia, [the Tsar] ordered copies of the
Alliance’s founding document to be displayed on walls and in churches. He
reorganized the Holy Synod to take under its wing not only the Orthodox
Church, but also the other Christian denominations, and he amalgamated it with
the Ministry of Education under his close friend, Prince Aleksandr Golitsyn, to
create a new super-ministry, of ‘Spiritual Affairs and Popular Enlightenment’, or
what the religious historian Georgii Florovsky has called ‘the ministry of
religious-utopian propaganda’. The intention was to create a synthesis of the
Christian faiths, and kind of ‘inner’ or ‘universal’ Christianity as a basis for
reconciling the numerous peoples of the empire, and with them the peoples of
Europe as well. This over-arching faith was to be preached in all the schools and
universities. It was a vast extension of the religious ideals of his father…” 318
Alexander’s own supporters joined in the spirit of his “sacred idea” in spite of
its ecumenist overtones. Thus Golitsyn wrote about the Alliance in positively
chiliastic terms: “This act cannot be recognized as anything other than a
preparation for that promised kingdom of the Lord which will be upon the earth
as in the heavens.”319 And Archimandrite Philaret, the future Metropolitan
Philaret of Moscow, wrote: “Finally the kingdoms of this world have begun to
belong to our Lord and His Christ”.320
317
Ghervas, op. cit., p. 60.
318
Sir Geoffrey Hosking, Russia. People and Empire 1552-1917, London: HarperCollins, 1997, p.
139.
319
Golitsyn, quoted by Fr. Georges Florovsky, “Philaret, mitropolit Moskovskij” (“Metropolitan
Philaret of Moscow”), in Vera i Kul’tura (Faith and Culture), St. Petersburg, 2002, p. 265.
320
Philaret, quoted in Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev), Zhizn’ i deiatel’nost’ mitropolita Filareta (The
Life and Activity of Metropolitan Philaret), Tula, 1994, p. 121.
Philaret appears to have been influenced by the ecumenism of his sovereign at this time. For
in 1815 he wrote in his Conversations between one testing and one convinced of the Orthodoxy of the
Greco-Russian Church: “Insofar as the one [the Eastern Church] and the other [the Western
Church] confess Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh, in this respect they have a common
Spirit, which ‘is of God’… Know that, holding to the above-quoted words of Holy Scripture, I do
not dare to call any Church which believes ‘that Jesus is the Christ’ false” (Snychev, op. cit., pp.
402, 408). However, in defense of the holy metropolitan, it should be pointed out that in the
above-quoted work he rejected the heresies of papism, and that he never served with heterodox
hierarchs or sought union with the heterodox churches. And he revered his mentor,
Metropolitan Platon of Moscow, who during his journey to Kiev and other Russian cities in 1804
reproached “the Russian authorities for following ‘that new-fangled mode of thinking which is
171
*
As we have seen, the great monarchical powers pledged themselves not to

take major decisions on the international stage without consulting each other.
Their alliance was therefore a kind of United Nations Assembly. But thanks to
the Tsar - albeit modified by Metternich, - it was a consciously Christian United
Nations.
Strikingly, however, it was a Christian United Nations that did not include
the Pope… This was a second blow to the Pope’s political power after the insult
he received from Napoleon.
As Ghervas writes, “the concept of a ‘Christian nation’ in Europe, an

ecumenism embracing the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox faiths was, in fact,
an insidious attack aimed at the Holy See. Somewhat surprisingly, it has not
been noted that the Pope of Rome, a major political actor of European history for
centuries, was now being banned from the continental chess game of the
Congress of Vienna and would never recover his former status.
“In fact, the statement in the treaty of the Holy Alliance that ‘the three
sovereigns make up a single nation with the same Christian faith’ amounted to a
notice of liquidation of the thousand-year-old political system of Western
Europe, which had been founded (at least ideologically) on the alliance between
the Catholic Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. By putting Catholicism,
Protestantism, and Orthodoxy on equal footing, thus making the political
organization of Christian Europe ‘non-confessional,’ the sovereigns of the three
powers were plainly declaring that the Pope’s claim to supremacy in Europe was
null and void. From that angle, it takes the aspect of a backstage revolution.
Napoleon had already damaged the prestige of the Sovereign Pontiff with his
own sacrilegious coronation in 1804. Two years later, the abolition of the Holy
Roman Empire had sealed the bankruptcy of the temporal side of the fellowship
between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1815, it was the turn of the
spiritual side to be liquidated. As a result, the political role of the Sovereign
Pontiff was reduced to that of a sovereign of an Italian state. This ideological
backlash profoundly upset Pope Pius VII; therein lies the reason why the Holy
See refused to sign the pact of the Holy Alliance.
“Why had the sovereigns of the great powers engaged in such a radically
anti-clerical maneuver that deliberately ousted the Pope from European politics?
… From Alexander’s point of view, a Patriarch of Rome who not only
considered himself independent of the sovereigns, but historically claimed to be
their suzerain, was a contestant on the European political scene that had to be
remorselessly shoved out of the way.
called tolerance’ in their relations with the Jesuits, and blamed the Jews for the impoverishment
of the Christian population in the areas in which they are numerous” (Papmehl, Metropolitan
Platon of Moscow, p. 81).
172
“That rather unfriendly attitude toward the Catholic Church was shared, but
for entirely different reasons, by the Protestant king of Prussia (a hereditary
enemy of Roman supremacy) and the sovereign of Austria—the same who had
liquidated the Holy Roman Empire and crowned himself emperor of Austria
under the name of Francis I. The latter was also the nephew of the archduke
Joseph II (1741–90), who had applied a policy known as Josephism, aimed
precisely at subordinating the Church to the State and at restraining pontifical
power. Hence, beyond the mysticism of the epoch, would it be appropriate to
speak of a strand of mystification in the Holy Alliance, especially when
considering the amendments from a character as down-to-earth as Metternich?
In any case, there was a shared interest on the part of the three Powers to put the
final nail in the coffin of Papal political authority.
“In firm opposition to the Holy Alliance, there arose, naturally enough,
representatives of Roman Catholic thought, such as the Jesuits, as well as Louis
de Bonald and Joseph de Maistre. In defiance of all odds, they kept advocating
an alliance of sovereigns under the auspices of the Pope, as well as a return to
the prerogatives of the aristocratic class. It is those views that most impressed
minds in France, especially the alliance of the Bourbon monarchy and the
Church of Rome, despite the fact that both were now only secondary pieces on a
rather complicated European chessboard. In addition, Maistre knew the Tsar
well, since he had spent several years in Saint Petersburg; if he mistrusted him, it
was not for failing to know him. Maistre wrote about the Holy Alliance, even
before its publication: ‘Let us note that the spirit behind it is not Catholic, nor
Greek or Protestant; it is a peculiar spirit that I have been studying for thirty
years, but to describe it here would be too long; it is enough to say that it is as
good for the separated Churches as it is bad for Catholics. It is expected to melt
and combine all metals; after which, the statue will be cast away.’ Maistre was
exposing what he had rightly perceived as a cunning maneuver: by adopting the
Christian religion as the guiding principle, but diluting it at the same time into a
vague whole, the three sovereigns had meant to undermine the Pope’s sphere of
influence. By a process that our age would call ‘embrace, extend, and
extinguish,’ they had deliberately opened the door to a European political
sphere that would henceforth be free of ecclesiastical influence (though not of
religion).
“Finally, the wording Christian family’ offered yet another advantage in the
geopolitical context of the time: it covered all states of Europe, but left out the
Ottoman Empire, a Muslim state. Russia, which had concluded a war with
Turkey only three years before, had been entertaining definite ambitions over it
since the epoch of Peter the Great. Thus the Holy Alliance potentially gave the
Russian Empire a free hand on the rather complex Eastern Question—in other
words, the competition among the great powers to partition the territory of the
declining Ottoman Empire.”321
“To protect the new overall territorial settlement,” writes Kissinger, “the
321
Ghervas, op. cit., pp. 64-67.
173
Quadruple Alliance of Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia was formed. A
territorial guarantee – which was what the Quadruple Alliance amounted to –
did not have the same significance for each of the signatories. The level of
urgency with which threats were perceived varied significantly. Britain,
protected by its command of the seas, felt confident in withholding definite
commitments to contingencies and preferred waiting until a major threat from
Europe took specific shape. The continental countries had a narrower margin of
safety, assessing that their survival might be at stake from actions far less
dramatic than those causing Britain to take alarm.
“This was particularly the case in the face of revolution – that is, when the
threat involved the issue of legitimacy. The conservative states sought to build
bulwarks against a new wave of revolution; they aimed to include mechanisms
for the preservation of legitimate order – by which they meant monarchical rule.
The Czar’s proposed Holy Alliance provided a mechanism for protecting the
domestic status quo throughout Europe. His partners saw in the Holy Alliance –
subtly redesigned – a way to curb Russian exuberance. The right of intervention
was limited because, as the eventual terms stipulated, it could be exercised only
in concert; in this manner, Austria and Prussia retained a veto over the more
exalted schemes of the Czar.
“Three tiers of institutions buttressed the Vienna system: the Quadruple

Alliance to defeat challenges to the territorial order; the Holy Alliance to
overcome threats to domestic institutions; and a concert of powers
institutionalized through periodic diplomatic conferences of the heads of
government of the alliances to define their common purposes or to deal with
emerging crises. This concert mechanism functioned like a precursor of the
United Nations Security Council. Its conferences acted on a series of crises,
attempting to distill a common course: the revolutions in Naples in 1820 and in
Spain in 1820-23 (quelled by the Holy Alliance and France, respectively) and the
Greek revolution and war of independence of 1821-32 (ultimately supported by
Britain, France, and Russia). The Concert of Powers did not guarantee a
unanimity of outlook, yet in each case a potentially explosive crises was resolved
without a major-power war.”322
“In 1814-15,” writes Dominic Lieven, “the European great powers formed
what can justly be called a system of international relations rooted in some
conception of common norms, interests, and restraint. They could do this in part
because all had suffered from a generation of warfare and dreaded its
recurrence. The continental powers were also united by what might be described
as an antidemocratic peace theory. With some justice – particularly as regards
France – they believed that revolution would bring to power regimes bent on
external aggression and certain to further destabilize the Continent. Britain
never fully subscribed to this theory nor to the European concert, partly out of
liberal principles and partly because of its traditional wish to keep the
322
Kissinger, op. cit., pp. 64-65.
174
continental powers divided.”323
Thus almost from the beginning the British worked to undermine the Holy
Alliance’s stand against liberal nationalism. For, as Norman Davies writes, “in
each of the subsequent Congresses held at Troppau (1820), Laibach (1821), and
Verona (1822), the British held strong reservations about the successive
expeditions for crushing revolution in Naples, Greece, and Spain. On the critical
issue of the revolt of Spain’s South American colonies, the British Foreign
Secretary, George Canning, joined the US President, James Monroe, in
forbidding any sort of European intervention in the Americas. ‘I called the New
World into existence,’ he told the House of Commons in 1826, ‘to redress the
Balance of the Old.’ In effect, he killed the Congress System stone dead. ‘Things
are getting back to a wholesome state,’ he remarked shortly before his death.
‘Every nation for itself, and God for us all’.”324
The British, led by Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh pursued a balance-of-

power politics with Britain playing the part of “balancer”. “By 1820,” writes
Rebecca Fraser, “the Congresses were issuing claims that they had the right to
put down revolutions in foreign countries as well as clamping down on the
press and on liberal policies in the German universities. As a result Britain no
longer attended in an official capacity, sending observers to Congress meetings
rather than ambassadors. Britain, said Castlereagh, whose own king was the
product of a revolution, could not logically ‘deny to other countries the same
right of changing their government’ by similar revolutions. Thus by the 1820s
Britain was once more the friend of constitutional change abroad…” 325
Castlereagh committed suicide in 1822, but his policy survived him. As

Ferguson writes, “Although Britain’s ‘continental commitment’ was intermittent
over the coming century, it was sufficient – until 1914 – to prevent any one
power on the Continent from challenging, as France under Napoleon, the
fundamental legitimacy of the pentarchical order. In essence, European stability
was based on a balance between the four continental powers, which Britain
preserved by occasional diplomatic or military intervention.” 326
Although this system had its flaws – for example, the resentment of some of
the lesser powers against the five great powers – “there was no denying that
something new had been established – and no denying that it worked. In the
century between the Utrecht settlements (1713-15) and the Congress of Vienna,
there had been thirty-three European wars involving some or all of the eleven
acknowledged powers of the period (which included Spain, Sweden, Denmark,
Holland and Saxony). For the 1815-1914 period, there were seventeen such wars,
even if Spain and Sweden are still counted as powers. The probability of war
participation by any power declined by roughly a third. There were, in effect,
323
Lieven, Towards the Flame. Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia, London: Allen Lane, 2015,
p. 26.
324
Davies, Europe: A History, London: Pimlico, 1997, p. 763.
325
Fraser, A People’s History of Britain, London: Macmillan, 2007, p. 509.
326
Ferguson, The Square and the Tower, p. 131.
175
world wars in the eighteenth century as in the twentieth – the Seven Years’ War
was a truly global conflict – but there was no world war in the nineteenth
century…”327
The most important achievement of the Holy Alliance was the re-
establishment of the monarchical principle, and in particular of Christian
hereditary monarchism (excluding papal monarchy)…
Now we have seen that even Napoleon’s regime had acquired monarchical
trappings; but he had failed to make it truly hereditary. Thus when an obscure
general called Malet had announced Napoleon’s death in Russia in October,
1812, the Emperor had been startled by how close the mutiny came to success.
What touched a particularly raw nerve in him, writes Zamoyski, “was that the
news of his death in Russia, announced by Malet, had led those who believed it
to consider a change of regime, instead of making them proclaim the succession
of his son, the King of Rome. ‘Our forefathers rallied to the cry: “The King is dead,
long live the King!” he reminded them, adding that ‘These few words encompass
the principal advantages of monarchy.’ That they had not been uttered on the
night of 23 October revealed to him that for all its trappings, the monarchy he
had created lacked consistency, and he was still just a general who had seized
power, a parvenu with no title to rule beyond his ability to hold on to it. He felt
this setback personally, and the sense of insecurity it induced would have a
profound effect on how he behaved over the next two years, making him more
aggressive and less amenable, and leading inexorably to his downfall…” 328
A hereditary monarch may not be an admirable person, and may suffer many
defeats in the field; but he is the king, and in a society that still believes in
kingship, this gives his regime solidity and strength. And if he fails or dies, his
son will succeed him, and command the same reverence and loyalty. But once
Napoleon had been defeated, and the magical aura of invincibility surrounding
him began to fade, it was the end both for him and for his upstart dynasty – as
he himself recognized after Waterloo.
However, while the Congress of Vienna succeeded in re-establishing the

principle of hereditary monarchism as the only true principle of political
legitimacy, in practice hereditary monarchs by no means always recovered their
thrones and territories. The great powers, as was to be expected, did not restore
the map of Europe to what it had been before 1792. They increased their own
power, and many hundreds of smaller rulers, especially in Germany, were
partially or wholly dispossessed in the complex negotiations and horse-trading
that took place between them in Vienna and Paris.
327
Ferguson, The Square and the Tower, p. 132.
328
Zamoyski, Rites of Peace, p. 5.
176
Moreover, millions of ordinary people, especially in Germany and Italy, now
found themselves under new rulers. This created almost as much disruption and
discontent as had the Napoleonic invasions. Thus a large part of the Catholic
Rhineland was given to Protestant Prussia with its very different social and
cultural traditions. And this in turn created a kind of nostalgia for the
Napoleonic times in some.
In addition to this, in spite of the defeat of the French revolution, and in spite
of the opposition of all the hereditary rules of Europe, the idea of nationalism that
the revolution had spawned continued to grow in influence. This was the idea
that not only the rulers, but also the nations over which they ruled, had rights
and privileges, and that a nation represented an organic and even moral unity
that could not be simply cut up and parceled out as, for example, Poland was.
The settlement of 1815, and the congresses of the great powers that took place in
the decade that followed, have been much criticized for not taking sufficient
account of these new developments, and of vainly trying to resist an
unstoppable development by crude police methods and repression.
An eloquent exponent of this point of view is Adam Zamoyski, who writes:

“The Vienna settlement imposed an orthodoxy which not only denied political
existence to many nations; it enshrined a particularly stultified form of
monarchical government; institutionalised social hierarchies as rigid as any that
had existed under the ancient regime; and preserved archaic disabilities – serfdom
was not abolished in Russia until half a century after the congress. By excluding
whole classes and nations from a share in its benefits, this system nurtured envy
and resentment, which flourished into socialism and aggressive nationalism.
And when, after the ‘Concert of Europe’ had fought itself to extinction in the
Great War, those forces were at last unleashed, they visited on Europe events
more horrific than the worst fears Metternich or any of his colleagues could have
entertained.
“It would be idle to propose that the arrangements made in 1815 caused the
terrible cataclysms of the twentieth century. But anyone who attempted to argue
that what happened in Russia after 1917, in Italy and Germany in the 1920s,
1930s and 1940s, and in many other parts of central and southern Europe at
various other moments of the last century had no connection with them would
be exposing themselves to ridicule…”329
And yet, as Zamoyski admits, the peacemakers of 1815 “did face a formidable
task, one that defied any ideal solution. Just because certain arrangements they
made turned out to have evil consequences, it does not follow that the opposite
course would have yielded more benign results.” 330
329
330
177
Indeed, the opposite course of giving in to the propaganda of the French
revolution might well have brought the cataclysm of 1914-45 forward by several
decades. The kernel of truth in Zamoyski’s argument is that the great powers
did not cure the disease of Europe, but only arrested or repressed it by crude
counter-revolutionary measures that were often counter-productive. But the
only real cure for the disease was for the peoples of Europe to accept the true
faith from their liberator, Russia – a near-impossible task, since the attitude of
the Europeans to Russia was one of supercilious condescension and non-
comprehension, while Russia would soon herself begin struggling to contain the
revolutionary disease within herself.
In this context, the attempt of Tsar Alexander to save Europe by preaching the
faith to his fellow monarchs – even if that faith was seen through the prism of an
Enlightenment education - acquires an extra poignancy. He failed because his
fellow monarchs and their peoples were not interested in the faith. But his
failure was less his than that of Europe as a whole; for the only hope for a real
resurrection of Christian and monarchical Europe lay in accepting the lead of
Russia in both the spiritual and the political spheres…
In the final analysis, the defeat of Napoleon and the re-establishment of

monarchical order proved the viability of traditional kingship in the face of the
most powerful and determined attempt to overthrow it yet seen in European
history. It established an order that, in spite of many upheavals and changes,
remained essentially in place until 1914, when the anti-monarchical movements
of revolutionary socialism and nationalism finally destroyed the old order. That
the old order survived for as long as it did was owing to no small degree to that
former-freethinker-turned-Orthodox-monarchist, Tsar Alexander the Blessed…
178
III. THE WEST: NATIONALISM, ROMANTICISM,
HISTORICISM (1815-1830)
179
22. THE ORIGINS OF NATIONALISM
We need to distinguish clearly between the concepts of the nation or

nationhood, national feeling or consciousness, and nationalism.
“Nationhood,” writes Sir Geoffrey Hosking, “has two main aspects. One is
civic: a nation is a participating citizenry, participating in the sense of being
involved in law-making, law-adjudication and government, through elected
central and local assemblies, through courts and tribunals, and also as members
of political parties, interest groups, voluntary associations and other institutions
of civil society. The second aspect of nationhood is ethnic: a nation is a
community bound together by sharing a common language, culture, traditions,
history, economy and territory. In some nation, for historical reasons, one aspect
predominates over the other: the French, Swiss and American nations are
primarily ‘civic’, while the German and East European nations have tended to
emphasize ethnicity.”331
Liberals tend to see the civic nation as superseding the ethnic nation; as civic
institutions develop, it is assumed, the ethnic nation will simply “wither away”.
But this is by no means always or even often the case. As the history of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries abundantly demonstrates, the development
of the civic nation may go hand in hand with the development and
strengthening of the ethnic nation. In fact, the institutions of civil society may be
instrumental in resurrecting the ethnic nation.
Clearly the civic concept of the nation is the more modern, having come into
being with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. It is also closer to
liberalism and democratism. The second, ethnic concept is much older and, I
would suggest, more fundamental. It can coexist and interact with the civic
nation, but has different roots.
National consciousness, the feeling of belonging to a nation to which one

owes loyalty and love, is as old as recorded history. In the Old Testament, a
feeling of nationhood is already evident among the seventy souls that descended
into Egypt under the leadership of the Patriarch Jacob (later called Israel). This
feeling became stronger when the Egyptians began to persecute the Israelites (by
this time, there were four hundred thousand of them) and Moses stood up in
their defence; and in general we see that national feeling is strengthened under
conditions of persecution and war. Thus Greek nationhood blossomed during
the conflict with Persia, and Roman nationhood during the conflict with
Carthage. In medieval times, English national feeling was strengthened through
the conflict of the Saxon peasants with their Norman and Plantagenet
conquerors, and French national feeling – through their conflict with the English
during the Hundred Years’ War.
331
Hosking, Russia. People and Empire, London: HarperCollins, 1997, p. xx.
180
The morbid tendency that we call “nationalism” must be distinguished from
the normal and healthy tendency that we call national consciousness or
patriotism. Sir Isaiah Berlin sees it as having been born in the German Counter-
Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, and as being defined in terms of four
characteristics: “the belief in the overriding need to belong to a nation; in the
organic relationships of all the elements that constitute a nation; in the value of
our own simply because it is ours; and, finally, faced by rival contenders for
authority or loyalty, in the supremacy of its claims.”332
It is “in the first place a response to a patronizing or disparaging attitude

towards the traditional values of a society, the result of wounded pride and a
sense of humiliation in its most socially conscious members, which in due course
produce anger and self-assertion. This appears to be supported by the career of
the paradigm of modern nationalism in the German reaction – from the
conscious defence of German culture in the relatively mild literary patriotism of
Thomasius and Lessing and their seventeenth-century forerunners, to Herder’s
assertion of cultural autonomy, until it leads in an outburst of aggressive
chauvinism in Arndt, Jahn, Kõrner, Gõrres, during and after the Napoleonic
invasion. But the story is plainly not so simple. Continuity of language, customs,
occupation of a territory have existed since time immemorial. External
aggression, not merely against tribes or peoples but against large societies
unified by religion, or obedience to a single constituted authority, has, after all,
occurred often enough in all parts of the globe. Yet neither in Europe, nor in
Asia, neither in ancient times nor medieval, has this led to a specifically
nationalist reaction: such has not been the response to defeat inflicted on
Persians by Greeks, or on Greeks by Romans, or on Buddhists by Muslims, or on
Greco-Roman civilization when it was overrun by Huns or Ottoman Turks, quite
apart from all the innumerable smaller wars and destruction of native
institutions by conquerors in either continent.
“It seems clear, then, even to me who am not a historian or a sociologist, that
while the infliction of a wound on the collective feeling of a society, or at least of
its spiritual leaders, may be a necessary condition for the birth of nationalism, it
is not a sufficient one; the society must, at least potentially, contain within itself a
group or class of persons who are in search of a focus for loyalty or self-
identification, or perhaps a base for power, no longer supplied by earlier forces
for cohesion – tribal, or religious, or feudal, or dynastic, or military – such as was
provided by the centralizing policies of the monarchies of France or Spain, and
was not provided by the rulers of German lands. In some cases these conditions
are created by the emergence of new social classes seeking control of a society
against older rulers, secular or clerical. If to this is added the wound of conquest,
or even cultural disparagement from without, of a society which has at any rate
the beginnings of a national culture, the soil for the rise of nationalism may be
prepared…”333
332
Berlin, “Nationalism”, in The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, p. 594.
333
Berlin, op. cit., pp. 594-595.
181
The eighteenth century was an age of profound religious and social
disruption. In particular, faith in God as having a real influence on human affairs
was being radically undermined – the preferred theology of most
Enlightenment-influenced intellectuals (King Frederick of Prussia was one such
intellectual, who was proud of his friendship with Voltaire), if they were not
atheists, was a vague kind of Deism, according to which God created the world
but then left it to develop without His intervention; the metaphor was of a clock
being wound up and then left to tick of its own accord. As long as people
believed in God, the allegiance to Him always came before any other allegiance,
including that of the nation. This supreme loyalty was now undermined,
creating a void in the hearts, if not of the simple people who still believed in
God, at any rate of the sophisticated intellectuals…
But besides belief in God, several other vitally important cultural factors that
made up what Sir Roger Scruton calls the “pre-political membership” of a
society, were being broken down. Sir Llewellyn Woodward identifies them as
“family, church, craft, city”. He sees nationalism as a reaction to the loss of these
unifying elements: “An inquiry into the nationalist movements in Europe after
1815 brings out an element in them which is not found to the same extent in
earlier times; an element of protest, or even fear, fear of the disintegration of the
group to which one belonged, fear almost of a loss of identity and of being left
an atom in a world of atoms. Such a fear was greater when other groups –
family, church, craft, city were losing much of their old significance and the
individual, especially in urban areas, though more free to choose, was also
feeling himself more alone. The association of like with like had been one of the
reasons for the formation of nation-states. Medieval loyalty was not to countries,
but to persons or small groups… As late as the early eighteenth century the
transfer of territory from one sovereign was not regarded as an affront to
political morality. The retention of Gibraltar and Minorca by Great Britain in the
Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 was not considered by the losers as a moral offence.
Gain of territory was the result of victory; loss of it, the result of defeat. A
hundred years later the proceedings of the Congress of Vienna caused scandal to
enlightened minority opinion in Europe. Transfer of territory had now become
barter of souls, something against which this enlightened minority opinion
protested as it protested against slavery. After another hundred years
recognition of the right of national groups to determine their own political
allegiance was thought essential to the removal of the causes of war. The Vienna
treaty of 1815 put certain different national groups under a single sovereignty;
the treaty of Versailles in 1919 divided multinational states as a means to lasting
peace.”334
Also undermining society were (1) industrial-economic and (2) educational-

linguistic-sociological factors. However, this disintegration made possible the
emergence of new unities, including the civic nation.
(1) Industrial-Economic. The Industrial revolution, which was just beginning

in the eighteenth century, undermined old economic communities, such as the
334
Woodward, Prelude to Modern Europe, 1815-1914, London: Methuen, 1972, pp. 43, 44.
182
village, the farm and the guild. However, by uniting different parts of the
population into one economic nexus, it created the conditions for a stronger
national-democratic, as opposed to local or regional or class consciousness. For,
as Shlomo Sand writes, “only the post-agrarian world, with its altered division
of labor – its distinctive social mobility and thriving new communications
technologies – has produced conditions conducive to linguistic and cultural
homogeneity, leading to an identity and self-awareness not confined to narrow
elites or groups, as was always the case in the [pre-industrial] past, but now
broadly manifest among the productive masses. Whereas earlier, in the era of the
great empires, through the nature of the feudal and religious fabric, human
societies had always been marked by definite cultural-linguistic divisions and
strata, henceforth all the people – high and low, rich and poor, educated or not –
would feel they belonged to a particular nation and, what is no less meaningful,
would be convinced they belonged to it in equal degree.
“The consciousness of legal, civil and political equality – produced mainly by

social mobility in the era of commercial, and later of industrialized, capitalism –
created an umbrella under which everyone could share an identity. Whoever
was not converted or included by it could not be a member of the national body,
an immanent aspect of equality. It is this equality that underlies the political
demand that construes ‘the people’ as a nation that warrants full self-
government. The democratic aspect – ‘the rule of the people’ – is utterly modern
and clearly distinguishes nations from the older social formations, such as tribes,
peasant societies under dynastic monarchies, religious communities with
internal hierarchies, even pre-modern ‘peoples’.
“No pre-modern human community manifested an inclusive sense of civil

equality or a persistent desire for self-rule that was felt by the entire populace.
But when people began to see themselves as sovereign creatures, there arises the
consciousness, or illusion, that enables them to believe that they can rule
themselves through political representation. This is the attitudinal core of all
national expressions in the modern age…”335
Again, as Maria Hsia Chang writes, “the protean forces of industrialization

began to link disparate peoples and communities together, ultimately
transforming them into a single nation. In effect, nations were produced as a
result of the peculiar functional requirements of the industrial economy. It is
said that the logic of modern industry necessitated a common culture and
language. Unlike the preindustrial agrarian society – where the economic units
were small, isolated, self-sufficient villages of face-to-face relations – the
industrial economy required a communication and transportation infrastructure
that could connect geographically separated communities. The effective
operation of this infrastructure, in turn, required a common language and
cultural code so that parochial communities of local dialects and cultures could
communicate in an abstract manner over space with strangers. Where a common
language was absent, the state would have to impart that common tongue – and
common culture – through a public school system. At the same time, the new
335
Sand, The Invention of the Jewish Nation, London: Verso, 2009, pp. 348-39.
183
industries attracted increasing numbers of migrants from the countryside to the
cities. As people left their villages and farms for cities, they also left behind
many of their previous attachments and became receptive to new identities.
“The transformative effects of industrialization were magnified by the rise of

civil society, given impetus and justification by the philosophers of the
Enlightenment. As ideas of self-government through political representation
spread, previously unconnected masses began to identify with each other. More
and more, new horizontal linkages replaced the feudal vertical relations between
monarch and subject, eventually culminating in a collective consciousness and
identity that congealed into nationalism.”336
(2) Educational-Linguistic-Sociological. As the nineteenth century

progressed, the universalist nationalism preached by figures such as Mazzini
metamorphosed into the harder, more exclusive and aggressive kind of
nationalism preached by, for example, Garibaldi. “This development,” as Sir
Richard Evans writes, “depended in the first place on the establishment of
national identities based on written language. At the time of the Restoration,
levels of literacy, measured by the ability to sign a marriage register or an army
recruitment form with one’s name rather than with a cross, were patchy at
best….
“Lacking a basis in a written national language, identity was firmly rooted

not in nationality but in locality. ‘Every valley,’ commented an economist
writing about the Pyrenees in 1837, ‘is still a little world that differs from the
neighbouring world as Mercury does from Uranus. Every village is a clan, a sort
of state with its own patriotism.’…
“Entirely different languages existed side by side as the principal medium of

communication in many parts of Europe. Minority languages were present in
particular regions everywhere – Welsh, for example, or Scottish Gaelic, or
Basque in north-west Spain, or Sami among the nomadic Lapps of northern
Scandinavia. In Brittany it was reported in 1873 that the people ‘do not speak
French, and do not want to speak French’. 337 Some dialects were extremely
localized. ‘Change village, change language,’ went one proverb in the French
province of the Limousin. The smallest of the Slavic linguistic communities, the
Lusatian Sorbs, continued to defy the influence of the surrounding majority of
Germans well into the twentieth century. In Calabria, in southern Italy, people
still spoke a version of Ancient Greek, probably deriving from the years of
Byzantine occupation…
“What changed this fragmented situation was not only the spread of
communications but also the expansion of elementary education, especially in
336
Chang, Return of the Dragon: China’s Wounded Nationalism, Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 2001,
pp. 18-19.
337
This illustrates the truth of Andrew Marr’s remark: “Most Europeans either did not speak the
language of whatever nation claimed to rule them, or spoke dialects that would have been
incomprehensible in their capital cities’ (A History of the World, London: Pan, 2012, p. 309). (V.M.)
184
the second half of the century. Many states attempted during this period to make
primary schooling compulsory…
“Nationalists tried to develop a standard written and spoken language in

order to justify their claim to a national identity and national statehood. Usually
they chose some particular dialect. West Bulgarian dialect was used as the basis
for the literary language in Bulgaria; in Italy it was the Tuscan dialect…
“Not just language, but also history, real and imagined, provided a basis for
national identity. In Ireland the nationalist movement began by attempting to
recover the autonomous institutions, including the Irish Parliament, abolished in
the Act of Union of 1800. The cultural memory of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, a powerful state in early modern Europe until its
dismemberment by Prussia, Austria and Russia in the eighteenth century,
played a key role in Poland. A historical grounding for a national culture could
not always be easy to create. For the supporters of Greek independence it
seemed natural to call the civilization of Ancient Greece in evidence for the claim
to statehood in the nineteenth century. The humanist scholar Adamantios Corais
(1748-1833), who was educated at the University of Montpellier in south-eastern
France, corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, and lived in Paris throughout the
Revolution of 1789-94, attempted to revive this connection not only by
publishing new editions of the Ancient Greek classics but also by propagating a
new version of Demotic Greek, called Katharevousa. He aimed to purge the
common spoken language of its foreign and particularly its Byzantine accretions
and bring it as close as was practicable to the ancient form of the language. But
the great mass of ordinary Greeks could not fully understand it and it never
became common currency…
“The spread of education, the increasing intensity of cross-border

communications, the greater ease with which people could migrate from one
country to another, the rise of tourism, and the growing trend for books to be
translated from one language into others, did not, as some hoped, lead to greater
international understanding…”338
Indeed; for speaking the same language does not mean thinking the same
thoughts or having the same feelings. In fact, the knowledge that comes from
reading the thoughts of foreigners may increase the sense of how different, how
foreign they are. Books may unify, but they may also divide…
Both liberals and nationalists adhere to the religion of Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity, but with different emphases. The liberal seeks to free the individual
(from kings and feudal servitude): the nationalist – the nation (from more
powerful nations or empires). The liberal seeks to make all citizens equal under
the law (but not necessarily in wealth or inherited privilege): the nationalist
Evans, The Pursuit of Power. Europe 1815-1914, London: Penguin, 2017, pp. 480-481, 482, 483,
338
487-488, 490.
185
seeks to make his nation equal in sovereignty (but not necessarily in power or
prestige) to other nations.
It is with regard to fraternity that the two tendencies differ most. The liberal is
not seeking the fraternity of brothers in the real sense but the much vaguer
“fraternity” of co-citizenship and will instinctively seek to restrict citizenship to
those of his own bourgeois, property-owning class. The nationalist, on the other
hand, is likely to feel the loss of the old fraternities of “family, church, craft, city”
more keenly, and therefore seeks the creation of new unities defined by blood or
land or even a new language.
However, whatever its emphasis – towards the individual or the collective –

this is a religion that is bound to fail. Especially with regard to real fraternity,
which is the deepest desire of human beings. Where there is fraternity, a lack of
liberty or equality can be tolerated, if not enjoyed; many servants or slaves are
perfectly happy with their masters, or at any rate do not wish to remove them.
But where there is no fraternity, nothing satisfies – hence the restlessness of
nineteenth-century politics, even where it is not outrightly revolutionary or
counter-revolutionary.
The fact is that, however political, economic and cultural conditions may
bring people together, it is only religion that truly brings them together, as is
reflected from the etymology of the word “religion” itself, which denotes
“binding together”. Moreover, even if a common religion unites men, this union
is superficial and temporary if the religion in question is not the true religion.
Thus a common religion united those who built the Tower of Babel, but this
religion, being a false one, ultimately served only to hasten their division and
dispersion throughout the world as separate communities speaking different
languages.
One way of looking at world history, therefore consists in the following:

throughout history men seek a common language and citizenship or
brotherhood based on a common religion, but this dream is shattered by one or
other of two tragedies. Either they choose a false religion, whose hidden
contradictions sooner or later lead to the collapse of the universalist dream. Or
they find the true religion, but their disobedience to that truth in all its purity
allows particularist passions – including nationalism – to destroy the dream
again…
186
23. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (1) FRANCE
France under Napoleon, writes Philip Bobbitt, became the first example of a
new species, the "state-nation", which he clearly distinguishes from the later
"nation-state". "A state-nation, is a state that mobilizes a nation - a national,
ethno-cultural group - to act on behalf of a State. It can thus call on the
revenues of all society, and on the human talent of all persons. But such a state
does not exist to serve or take direction from the nation, as does the nation-
state. This is quite clear in the case of Napoleonic France, which incorporated
many nations within its territory, but suppressed nationalism wherever it
encountered it outside France. It is equally true of the British Empire. By
contrast, the nation-state, a later phenomenon, creates a state in order to benefit
the nation it governs. This, of course, raises the familiar late-nineteenth century
(and twentieth century) question of self-determination: when does a nation get
a state? This question is nonsense to the state-nation. One might say that the
process of decolonization in the twentieth century was the confrontation of
nascent nation-states like Ireland or India or Indochina with state-nations, like
Britain and France...
"Thus Bonaparte's handling of the continental states arrayed against him

reflected a shrewd appreciation of their constitutional basis. So long as he faced
territorial states, he could outmaneuver their coalitions by offering one of their
members substantial territorial cessions; that state realized that if these were
refused, another state might accept offers made to it, thus bringing down the
coalition and weakening the bargaining power of the resisting state. Russia,
Prussia, and Austria each revealed a willingness to settle with France if offered a
sufficient territorial inducement. This tactic had been well understood by
Frederick the Great, but in him it was deployed for the limited territorial
objectives of the territorial state. With Bonaparte, this technique was used in
service of the unlimited, imperial objectives of the state-nation.
"France was transformed into a new constitutional entity...

Bonaparte declared: 'Citizens, the Revolution is now settled in the
principles which started it,' meaning that a new state had been created
that embodied these principles. That state, however, was far different
from what had been envisioned in the heady days of 1789. A
referendum was now proposed to determine whether Bonaparte should
be consul for life. This plebiscite resulted in an enthusiastic
endorsement for a quasi-imperial regime. Fresh hostilities that
reopened against England in May 1803 moved France further along the
constitutional path of the state-nation. The French Senate in 1804 sent
an address to Bonaparte after an assassination attempt, urging that the
Consulate for Life be changed to an hereditary empire subject to a new
public referendum. 'The government of the Republic,' the address
stated, 'is now entrusted to an emperor. Napoleon Bonaparte, first
consul, is Emperor of the French.'
187
"To repeat: the nation-state takes its legitimacy from putting the
State in the service of its people; the state-nation asks rather that the
people be put in the service of the State. The state-nation is not in the
business of maintaining the welfare of the people; rather it is
legitimated by forging a national consciousness, by fusing the nation
with the State. Consider Napoleon's speech to the troops before
entering Italy: 'All of you are consumed with a desire to extend the
glory of the French people, all of you long to humiliate those arrogant
kings who dare to contemplate putting us in fetters; all of you desire to
dictate a glorious peace, one which will indemnify the Patrie for the
immense sacrifices it has made; all of you wish to be able to say with
pride as you return to your villages: “I was with the victorious army of
Italy!”’
"This change forged a form of the State that apotheosized its glory
within a system of great powers, bending the energies of often diverse
national peoples to its service. Napoleon unsentimentally realized this
source of his legitimacy: 'My power depends on my glory and my
glories on the victories I have won. My power will fail if I do not feed
it on new glories and new victories. Conquest has made me what I am
and only conquest can enable me to hold my position.'” 339
Indeed, for all his achievements as a politician, it is as a warrior that Napoleon

is most famous. He recruited his 26 marshals on a strictly meritocratic basis;
many of them were from plebeian backgrounds. Under superior leadership, and
stirred up by the promise of glory, the soldiers were formed into a superb
fighting force that had no equal in Europe.
This was unquestionably the most martial era yet in European history. As
Harvey Sachs writes, “Between 1789 and 1815, the French revolutionary and
Napoleonic wars had torn Europe apart. From the Atlantic’s eastern shores all
the way to Moscow, clashing ideologies had been transferred into clashing
armies: the liberty-fraternity-equality banner was quickly bloodied by the
revolutionaries’ excesses, and its motto was then subverted by Napoleon, who
used the ideal of exporting the Revolution as a tool for achieving domination of
the whole Continent. However shocking the effects of the infant French
Republic’s guillotine may have been, the eighteen to forty thousand chopped-off
heads that it produced during the Terror of 1792-96 were a statistical trifle in
comparison with the results of the foreign wars that followed. Between 1796 and
1815, an estimated two and a half million soldiers and one million civilians met
their deaths in the Napoleonic Wars. During virtually any of Napoleon’s major
battles, two or three times as many people were killed as had been executed by
order of the Committee of Public Safety or other French Revolutionary groups
throughout their existence. In the battle of Borodino alone, on September 7, 1812,
the opposing armies of Russia and France lost far more soldiers than the United
States would lose during a dozen years of fighting in Vietnam, and the
339
Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, London: Penguin, 2002, pp. 146, 149, 175-176, 176-177.
188
revolutionary and Napoleonic wars lasted twice as long as the Vietnam War,
four times as long as the First World War.”340
Sir Richard Evans has even higher estimates of the numbers of lives lost. “It
used to be thought,” he writes, “that the damage inflicted by the French
Revolutionary and `Napoleonic Wars was relatively light compared to the
devastation wrought by later conflicts. Yet altogether, in twenty-three years of
more or less continuous warfare that had swept back and forth across Europe in
the wake of the French Revolution, an estimated five million people had died;
compared to Europe’s population as a whole, this was proportionately as many
as, if not more than, those who died during the First World War. One if five
Frenchmen born between 1790 and 1795 had perished during the conflicts…”341
This huge increase in war and bloodshed was the direct result of two factors:
first, the sheer ruthlessness of the revolutionary ideology, which removed many
of the inhibitions on killing in war, and secondly the rise of mass armies
representing the whole nation. The American revolution, and then the Battle of
Valmy in 1792, had seen the appearance of the citizen army, which now came to
replace the aristocrat armies of the eighteenth century. Thus Barbara Ehrenreich
writes: “If the mass armies of the early modern period had proletarianized the
foot soldier, reducing him from the status of peasant to that of a cog in a
machine, the revolutionary armies of the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries now ‘noble-ized’ him. He too had a shot at glory; he too had ‘honor’ to
defend; and he too possessed what had once been the trappings of the nobly
born – a flag, for example, which now symbolized a vast population rather than
a single dynasty. According to Vagts, ‘The tricolor [flag of France] gratified
emotions previously enjoyed only by the nobility. In short, the whole nation had
become the nobility.’
“The trade-off for this elevation in status was that the average male now
risked a much higher chance of dying in battle than had his peasant ancestors in
the era of knightly combat. Napoleon was particularly wanton in his
squandering of men as ‘cannon fodder’, expecting them not just to stand and
shoot but to charge fearlessly at the enemy’s artillery positions. He fielded the
largest armies Europe had ever seen, numbering in the hundreds of thousands,
and lost a total of 1.3 million to 1.5 million of his own men in the course of his
campaigns – enough to leave a lasting dent in the population of the nation
whose interests he supposedly fought to advance. In exchange for being ‘noble-
ized’ by the new revolutionary ethos, the soldier was expected to more willingly
‘give’ his life, and in exchange for giving his life he would be given a share of
glory.
“But the ‘democratized glory’ accessible to the average soldier was a

strangely depersonalized version of the glory sought by members of the
traditional warrior elite. The knight or samurai wanted glory for himself as an
individual, or at most for his noble lineage. It was his own name that he
340
Sachs, The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824, London: Faber and Faber, 2010, pp. 61-62.
341
Evans, The Pursuit of Power. Europe 1815-1914, London: Penguin, 107, p. 3.
189
announced in his battlefield challenge to the enemy, his own name that he
hoped would be remembered forever in epics and chansons. But the kind of glory
held out to men in the armies of George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, and
all military leaders since their time can be thoroughly anonymous glory, of the
kind celebrated in the peculiar institution of the tomb of the ‘unknown soldier’.
As Benedict Anderson writes: ‘No more arresting emblems of the modern
culture of nationalism exist than cenotaphs and tombs of Unknown Soldiers. The
public ceremonial reverence accorded those monuments precisely because no one
knows who lies inside them, has no precedent in earlier times.’
“This new kind of glory attached not to the individual but to a new kind of
entity, the hypothetical collectivity which the French revolutionaries heralded as
la nation. If the revolutionary armies encouraged individual initiative, they were
still mass armies, like those of the old regime. Revolution may have empowered
the individual, but the revolutionary armies were still a far cry from being
collections of knights each charging off on his own pursuit of personal glory.
Napoleon understood the difference and reserved the nation of ‘glory’ for the
old knightly tradition; modern soldiers were not to confuse ‘love of the
fatherland’ with ‘love of glory’. To one of Napoleon’s admirers, the Prussian
philosopher Hegel, ‘true valour’ was not ‘knightly valour’ but, rather, ‘the true
valour of civilized nations is their readiness for sacrifice in the service of the
state, so that the individual merely counts as one among many. Not personal
courage, but integration into the universal is the important factor here.’ And ‘the
universal’, meaning the nation and, for Hegel, even more mystical entities
beyond that, was in the first instance the modern mass army…”342
“In Benedict Anderson’s memorable phrase,” writes Ehrenreich, “nations are

not natural but ‘imagined communities’, whose imagining has taken a great deal
of conscious effort. In the European cases, intellectuals had to resurrect the
folklore and epics which could be used to give people a sense of a common past.
The printing press, along with the new market in what we now call
‘information’, had to publicize these findings to increasingly literate publics.
State-sponsored schools had to impose a common vernacular language on what
was often a hodge-podge of dialects and then educate people to literacy in it.
Equally strenuous efforts were required in the third world, where national
boundaries had often been laid down arbitrarily, for the convenience of the
European colonialists.
“The work of Anderson, and of historian Eric Hobsbawm, has much to tell us
about the creation of nations as a purely cognitive undertaking… What these
scholars fail to explain, however, are the passions that attach themselves to the
idea of the nation – the emotions of nationalism. In Imagined Communities,
Anderson seems to promise at the beginning to explain the religious power of
the nation over its citizens, but we are quickly immersed in the relatively
bloodless business of ‘imagining’ – the construction of common languages and
‘traditions’, and so forth. The reason for this oversight, it seems to me, is that
these writers, like most who owe something to the Marxist tradition, pay almost
342
Ehrenreich, Blood Rites, London: Virago, 1998, pp. 191-193.
190
no attention to war as a factor shaping human societies. But what is France if not
as defined against England or Germany? What is Serbia if not as defined against
Germany or Croatia [or Ottoman Turkey]? From the very beginning, as the
military historian Michael Howard has written, ‘the principle of nationalism was
almost indissolubly linked, both in theory and practice, with the idea of war.’
“… In the mass armies of pre-revolutionary and pre-nationalist Europe… the

individual soldier knows that he is threatened by distant forces, foreigners who
wish him dead. He knows too that he is, as an individual, helpless in the face of
this threat. But he is not just an individual; he is a unit – as the constant drilling,
if nothing else, convinces him – of something far larger and more powerful than
himself. What he feels, as a result, is very different from the anomie sense,
common to mass societies, of being only ‘one of many’, because in this case the
many add up to something greater than the sum of the parts. What he feels is the
confidence drawn from collective strength, which can amount, even in the face
of death, to a kind of joy…
“Nationalism, however, is experienced not only by soldiers in armies. It is

experienced, and often more strongly, by civilians who are far from any real
danger and who have never drilled or fought. Nazi ‘philosopher’ Alfred
Rosenberg understood the connection between civilian nationalism and the
intense community forged in armies, writing in 1937: ‘The German nation is just
now about to find its style of life for good… It is the style of the marching
column, regardless of where and for what purpose this marching column is to be
used… It is a mark of the German style of life that no German wants nowadays
to feel himself a private person.’
“In the age of nationalism, patriotic ceremonies begin to be designed,

consciously or not, to give civilians the feeling that they, too, constitute a kind of
‘army’, united by common danger and bonded by rhythmic activities analogous
to the drill. George L. Mosse observes that the nineteenth century saw ‘the
introduction of rhythm into all ceremonies – marches, parades, and festivals – in
order to transform the undisciplined masses into a disciplined crowd’. The
‘Marseillaise’ was the first national anthem set to a marching beat; in imitation,
other nations began to sing their anthems to similarly infectious and militant
rhythm. By ‘joining in the national liturgy [and] singing national anthems,’
Mosse writes, large numbers of people now had the experience of ‘sublimating
themselves to the great national community.’…”343
It should be remembered that, for Christians, there was always a larger supra-
national community into which the individual could merge – his Church.
However, Christian faith was sharply in decline throughout Europe; faith in the
nation filled that void. National Churches might also bolster faith in the nation;
but this created the danger that the National Church would become an
appendage of the Nation, and the primacy and universalism of the faith in
Christ would be weakened. Moreover, if Christian faith declined beyond a
343
Ehrenreich, op. cit., pp. 196-198. The Marseillaise was not only martial, but also very
bloodthirsty: Aux armes, citoyens! / Formez vos bataillons! / Marchez! Marchez! / Qu’un sang impur /
Abreuve nos sillons!
191
certain point, then the cult of the Nation completely took its place, becoming an
object of worship – which is precisely what happened in this period. This meant
a stand-off between the Nation and the Church, leading to, for example, the
confiscation of the Papal States in Italy, and Bismarck’s Kulturkampf against the
Church.
“This awareness of ‘something larger’ into which the individual might merge
is repeatedly expressed in nineteenth-century philosophical writings. Where
economically oriented thinkers like Marx saw only the isolation and anomie
induced by the capitalist economy, others, like Hegel before him and the
philosopher J.G. Fichte, saw the emergence of a new collective identity through
which, as Fichte put it, ‘each single person becomes part of an organized whole
and melts into one with it.’ No doubt the two perspectives are, as Marx might
say, dialectically connected: As the average citizen experienced an ever greater
economic reality of individual isolation, he or she became more open to – and
perhaps even eager for – the feeling of submergence within some larger
community, no matter how vague and imaginary that community might be.
“… What is this new entity that men – and women, insofar as they also
achieve the status of citizens – profess themselves willing to die for?
“The first clue is that the nation is not a static community, but one that is
imagined as existing in time. As Anderson puts it, rather ornately, the nation is
‘a sociological organism moving calendrically through homogeneous, empty
time’. It has a past; it is nothing, in fact, without a past. Even brand-new nations
attempt to situate themselves within some long-standing tradition (the human
struggle for freedom and self-determination, for example) or recurring necessity
(‘When, in the course of human events…’). Much of the work of ‘imagining’ the
nation as a community lies in the effort to resurrect or invent a national past, and
this past is in most cases defined by war: Serbs look back to the battle of Kosovo
in 1389; Americans look to Lexington and Bunker Hill. As Michael Howard has
written: ‘France was Marengo, Austerlitz and Jena: military triumph set the seal
on the new-found national consciousness. Britain was Trafalgar – but it had been
a nation for four hundred years, since those earlier battles Crécy and Agincourt.
Russia was the triumph of 1812… Italy was Garibaldi and the Thousand… Could
a Nation, in any true sense of the word, really be born without a war?’ The
nation, then, is our imagined link to the glorious deeds – or the terrible atrocities
still awaiting revenge – that were performed by others long ago.”344
Now this thesis needs heavy qualification. Not only were all the nations
mentioned here created a long time before the battles mentioned 345: their national
identity was not created by war. What is true is that the new concept of
nationhood that emerges after the French revolution places particular emphasis
on war and on the decisive battle that, in their imagination, forged the nation.
Again, loyalty to collectivities, as opposed to kings or dynasties, and the special
344
Ehrenreich, op. cit., pp. 199-200.
345
A sense of English nationhood, for example, is discernible at least as early as King Alfred the
Great or even the Venerable Bede in about 700… Bede entitled his most famous work A History of
the English Church and People, although there was as yet no unified English state.
192
glory of dying for one’s country, is not a new phenomenon: Dulce est pro patria
mori is a motto going back to classical antiquity. Nevertheless, it is true that the
French revolution, culminating in Napoleon’s despotism, introduced a
pathological element of nation-worship that was certainly new in the context of
the Catholic and Protestant West. Napoleon managed to persuade his fellow-
countrymen that everything he did was for the glory of France, and that nothing
was more important to him than that glory. And so while his despotism angered
some Frenchmen, for most of them the boost to their pride was ample
compensation for the loss of their freedom. “As Frenchmen accorded more and
more weight to Napoleon’s wishes,” writes Cronin, “so the notion of honour
came to the fore in the French Republic: honour and its sister concept, glory,
patriotism à outrance and the chivalry that had made Napoleon crown
Josephine.”346
If the secular nation was the new Church, and Napoleon its new Christ 347, the
revolution itself was the Holy Spirit. It blew where it wished, overthrowing
kings, liberating subject peoples and making them into “real” nations. This
liberation of nations was conceived at first as a democratic, egalitarian process; it
by no means implied the superiority of any one nation over the others, which
would simply be a repetition, on the collective level, of the despotism that the
revolution had come to destroy. The religion of the French revolution was a
universalist religion based on equal rights for all men and all nations. It was
believed that once the kings had been removed, the general will of each nation
would reveal itself, spreading peace not only within, but also between, nations.
Thus “sooner or later,” said Mirabeau to the National Assembly, “the influence
of a nation that… has reduced the art of living to the simple notions of liberty
and equality – notions endowed with irresistible charm for the human heart, and
propagated in all the countries of the world – the influence of such a nation will
undoubtedly conquer the whole of Europe for Truth, Moderation and Justice,
not immediately perhaps, not in a single day…”348
But it was not long before such noble sentiments were being transformed into
a purely pagan pride. “’You are, among the nations, what Hercules was amongst
the heroes,’ Robespierre assured his countrymen. ‘Nature has made you sturdy
and powerful; your strength matches your virtue and your cause is that of the
gods.’ France was unique in her destiny, she was La Grande Nation, and all
interests were necessarily subordinate to hers. Her service was the highest
calling, since it naturally benefited mankind.”349
Soon it became evident to other nations, whether those bordering France or

her overseas colonies, that the French believed not so much in the Nation (i.e. any
346
Cronin, op. cit., p. 253.
347
Christ Himself, according to a revolutionary pamphlet of 1790-91, “was a true sans-culotte, a
full-blooded republican. He developed all the principles of moral equality and the purest
patriotism. He faced every danger; he rebelled against the great who in all periods have abused
their powers. He castigated the harshness of the rich; he attacked the pride of kings and priests.
The Son of God rebelled against the aristocrats of the nation” (in Comby, op. cit., p. 114).
348
349
193
and every nation) as the Nation (one particular nation, the only truly Great
Nation) – which could only be France. An example was Belgium, which, under
the influence of the French Revolution, had done much to liberate itself from the
Habsburgs of Austria – only to have despotism reimposed on them by
Napoleon. Thus on January 19, 1795, with the help of the French, Dutch Patriots
“took control of Amsterdam. William V had sailed into exile in England the
previous night, and within days the whole country was in Patriot hands. But as
they busied themselves planting liberty trees, their future was being decided in
Paris. In May 1795 a Batavian Republic was established, at the cost of an
indemnity of 100 million guilders, a huge loan to France at a trifling rate of
interest and the cession to France of Maastricht, Venlo and Dutch Flanders.
There was also an official pillage of the Stadholder’s art collection. Belgium
hardly did better. The Patriots were kept well away from power, and in October
1795 the whole country was annexed to France.”350
Napoleon created a swathe of suffering and destruction throughout Europe

from Lisbon to Moscow that had not been seen since the invasions of the Huns
and the Goths. In retrospect, the seemingly irrational and chaotic system of old
Europe, whereby kings could buy and sell territories to which they were quite
unrelated by birth or upbringing, turned out to have kept the peace far better
than the system of more clearly defined, homogeneous nation-states that
emerged as a result of the Napoleonic wars. This is not to say, of course, that
there were no wars under the old system. But they tended to be short in
duration, with relatively few casualties, which were mainly confined to the
noble warrior class. And they were very quickly patched up by some
redistribution of territories among the monarchs. By contrast, the revolutionary
wars that began after 1792 were more like the religious wars of pre-1648 vintage:
much bloodier and crueler, involving far greater casualties among the civilian
populations.351 Moreover, they never came to a real end, since the losers felt
bound to recover the territories lost and avenge the wounds inflicted on their
national or regional pride. After all, if the people, and not the king, was now
sovereign, victory in war had to be won over the people (or rather, the
“enemies” of the people) as well as the king. Thus as Napoleon exported the
ideals of Freedom, Equality and Fraternity into neighbouring countries, their
freedom was destroyed, their equality with their “brothers” who had “liberated”
them was jettisoned, and the dream of universal brotherhood became the
nightmare of universal war. For “abroad, liberty simply meant French rule.” 352
How did the internationalist dream turn into a nationalist nightmare? The
problem was partly a conceptual one: it turned out to be notoriously difficult to
define what “the nation” was, by what criteria it should be defined (territory?
350
Zamoyski, Holy Madness, p. 90.
351
For example, during the siege of Saragossa in 1808-09, 54,000 Spanish civilians were killed. A
French officer later recorded one episode: “With a petard, we brought down the door of the
church, which the monks were defending to the death. Behind them a mass of men, women and
children had taken refuge at the foot of the altar, and were crying for mercy. But the smoke was
too thick for us to distinguish the victims we would have wished to spare. We wrought havoc
everywhere, and death alone stifled their cries…” (in The Economist, December 31, 1999, p. 41).
352
194
religion? blood? language?). Revolutionary definitions of who was a “patriot” –
that is, the true member of the nation - invariably meant defining large sections
of the population who did not accept this definition or did not come under it as
being “aliens” or “traitors” or “enemies of the people”.
But the problem went deeper: even when a certain degree of unanimity had
been achieved in the definition of the nation, - as Napoleon achieved it for
France, for example, in the period 1800-1813, - there were now no accepted limits
on the national will, no authority higher than the nation itself. This inevitably
resulted in the nationalism in the evil sense of the word that has become so
tragically familiar to us in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – not a
natural pride in one’s own nation and its achievements, but the exaltation of the
nation to the level of divinity. Thus faith in the nation becomes the ultimate
value, the defence of which justified any and every sacrifice of self and others. If
in “Dark Age” (i.e. Orthodox) and Medieval (i.e. Roman Catholic) Europe, men
had seen in the Church a higher, supranational authority which arranged
“Truces of God” and served, at least in principle, as a higher court of appeal to
which kings and nations submitted, this was now finally swept away by Article
Three of the Rights of Man, which pitted the “general wills” of an ever-
increasing number of sovereign nations against each other in apparently endless
and irreconcilable hostility.
Unless, that is, they all recognized France, the revolutionary nation par
excellence, as their own. And there were some who did this. Thomas Jefferson, for
example, the American ambassador to Paris, said: “Every man has two countries
– his own, and France.”
Others, while not going that far, nevertheless welcomed the conquering
French armies into their own land. Thus as late as 1806 the German philosopher
Hegel called Napoleon “the world spirit” and hoped that he would defeat his
opponents: “Everyone prays for the success of the French army”. Such a
substitution of loyalty to the messianic revolutionary nation of the time rather
than one’s own was to manifest itself again in the twentieth century, when
millions of people around the world betrayed their own country for the sake of
the greater glory of the Soviet Union…
However, as captivation turned to captivity, pious internationalism (i.e.

French messianism) turned into violent xenophobia, and enthusiasm into
disillusion. Among the nations that had been “forced to be free” by the French,
only the Poles remained faithful to the Napoleonic vision. Perhaps because they,
alone among the traditional nations of Europe, were completely under the
domination of foreign powers…
We have seen that there was a religious element in the nationalism of the early
nineteenth century. Or rather, in many cases it was a new religion to take the
place of the old – usually Catholicism – in which the nationalists had lost faith.
As Zamoyski writes: "Lafayette and his peers were natural believers. Most of
them left the Christian Church at some stage, but they never eradicated God
from their minds. They sought Him in nature, in art, in everything but religion.
195
Some found Him in humanity, as represented by the nation. Robespierre
described this faith as a 'tender, imperious, irresistible passion, the torment and
delight of magnanimous souls', just as the great ecstatic saints had described
their love of God. For him, 'this sacred love of the Patrie, this most sublime and
holy love of humanity,' would one day find its spiritual consummation in the
contemplation of 'the ravishing spectacle of universal happiness'. For Michelet,
faith in the nation meant 'the salvation of all by all'. He hated Catholicism
because it saved people individually, thereby undermining the love of the
nation. 'No more individual salvation; God in all and all Messiahs!' he preached.
In other words, salvation could only be achieved by, with and through the
nation. 'We shall bring about the freedom of nations all over the world,' wrote
Slowacki in November of the terrible year 1848, 'our blood and our body is the
property of the world and will be its nourishment, strengthening those who
have grown weak under oppression.'
"These were no mere rebels; they aspired to emulate Christ by immolating

themselves for the sake of humanity. And they offered hope, not political
solutions. The wars and revolutions they started or embraced were acts of faith.
They were for the most part born of vague longing not specific grievance, and
that was why they lingered on in the memory as glorious acts however dismal
their outcome: grievances can fail to be righted, but hope can never be defeated.
"Devotion to the cause became the only and all-embracing purpose of their
lives, more important than the achievement of its end. They sublimated the
mission itself. They accepted its purpose without question, because to question it
would have made nonsense of their sacrifices and their whole lives. This made
them fear and denounce everything that smacked of lukewarm belief or heresy.
In order to fortify themselves in the faith, they leaned on ritual, invoked
exemplars and martyrs, and venerated relics. They had, in fact, created a faith
and a church of their own, with all the trappings of the Christian one they
affected to despise. And, as with all faiths, the ultimate longing, because it
provided escape into another, and necessarily better, world, was death in the
service of the cause. They were certainly all a little mad, but theirs was a devoted
and holy madness."353
William Doyle writes: “An exuberant, uncompromising nationalism lay

behind France’s revolutionary expansion in the 1790s: but what the French
found, after this first impact of a nation in arms on its neighbours, was that the
neighbours responded in kind. They found that the doctrine of the sovereignty
of the nation, proclaimed by them at the outset of the Revolution in 1789, could
be turned against them by other peoples claiming their own national
sovereignty. In states long united by custom and language, such as the Dutch
Republic, all the French example did was to reinforce patriotic sentiments
already strong. In areas never before united, like Italy, it created a powerful
national sentiment for the first time by showing that archaic barriers and
divisions could be swept away. The first Italian nationalists placed their hopes in
French power to secure their ends, but from the start their attitude was double-
353
Zamoyski, Holy Madness, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999, pp. 449-450.
196
edged. ‘Italy,’ declared the winning entry for an essay competition on the best
form of Italian government, sponsored by the new French regime in Milan in
1796, ‘has almost always been the patrimony of foreigners who, under the
pretext of protecting us, have consistently violated our rights, and, while giving
us flags and fine-sounding names, have made themselves masters of our estate.
France, Germany and Spain have held lordship over us in turn… it is therefore
best to provide… the sort of government capable of opposing the maximum of
resistance to invasion.’ The tragedy for nationalistic Italian Jacobins was that,
when popular revulsion against the French invaders swept the peninsula in 1798
and 1799, they found themselves identified with the hated foreigners. Elsewhere,
peoples and intellectual nationalists found themselves more at one; and not the
least of the reasons why France’s most inveterate enemies were able to resist her
successfully was the strength of volunteering. An Austrian call for volunteers
against the French produced 150,000 men in 1809. Three years later the Russians
were able to supplement their normal armed forces with over 420,000 more or
less willing recruits to drive out the alien invader. Only nationalism could
successfully fight nationalism: and when it did, as Clausewitz… saw, it would
be a fight to the death.”354
354
Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 417.
197
24. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (2) ITALY
Italy towards the end of the eighteenth century was a highly complex
patchwork of individual states of various kinds not even united by a single
language (speakers of different Italian dialects were often incomprehensible to
each other). Napoleon’s invasion changed all that.
“Virtually everything the French did,” writes Zamoyski, “advanced the cause
of Italy’s unification in one way or another. They overthrew the foreign rulers
and reduced the temporal power of the Church. By the beginning of 1799 the
whole peninsula was under French control, and every part of the country save
Venice had some kind of bicameral body. These bodies and the administrations
they commanded needed to be staffed, and this gave rise to a new
administrative class. Bonaparte set up armed forces in every political unit he
created. Formed up on French republican lines, these were citizen armies
drawing in men from all walks of life. As promotion was on merit, they were an
important tool for the social advance of the able from the lower orders, and a
breeding-ground for patriots.
“In his ‘Notes of Advice to the Cisalpine Patriots’, the French representative
of the people, Jullien, produced a set of guidelines for them. ‘Oppose priestly
mummeries with national festivals that appeal to the eyes and the imagination,’
recommends Note 26. Note 27 urges the to ‘give institutions to the people to
regenerate them: create a new man. Multiply civil ceremonies having a moral
aim, such as marriages, adoptions, schools or gymnasia, prize distributions,
military exercises, races, games, and mass meetings.’ The more enlightened of
the existing priests were to be used to bring about change, by associating the
words ‘religion’ and ‘patrie’. The French imported the revolutionary passion for
association and talk, and political clubs sprang up like weeds after rain wherever
they passed. They were mainly Jacobin in inspiration, and they aped the style of
their model. Discussions were emotional, with much wailing over the shackled
motherland and veneration of France, ‘the apostle of nations’. In July 1798, a
huge crowd was gathered before an ‘Altar of Liberty’ in Rome. A heap of
cardinals’ hats, titles of nobility, papal insignia and the minutes of the
Inquisition was stacked up in front of this, and ceremoniously ignited. One man
broke a crucifix and threw it on the pyre, and then proceeded to ‘de-baptize’
himself by washing his hair.
“Not all Italian patriots approved of such excesses, but whatever they thought
of France, they could not do without her support. This was confirmed when, in
the summer of 1799, the Bourbon King Ferdinand and his British allies regained
possession of Naples, and the Austrian and Russian armies reoccupied the
north. Many leading Italian patriots had to take refuge in France, and it was only
when, in 1800, Bonaparte swept into Italy again, defeating the Austro-Russian
forces at Marengo and eventually clearing the entire peninsula of France’s
enemies, that they were able to return.
198
“This time Bonaparte ordered things differently. He was no longer a
revolutionary general but First Consul. A significant part of the ‘liberated’
territory was incorporated into France proper. The rest of northern Italy was
lumped together into the Italian Republic which in 1805 became the kingdom of
Italy, with Bonaparte, or the Emperor Napoleon as he became, as king. In the
following year his brother Joseph became king of Naples, a throne which he
relinquished two years earlier in favour of Joachim Murat, in order to ascend
that of Spain. For the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire all the
inhabitants of the peninsula were subject to the same legal system. They were
also linked by a new network of good roads and posting stations, and these
roads opened channels of communication, facilitating the dissemination of
ideas.”355
Indigenous Italian nationalism developed in three main stages corresponding

to the methods and ideas of three major leaders: Buonarotti, Mazzini and
Garibaldi. Buonarotti’s nationalism was quasi-communistic and conspiratorial.
Mazzini’s was romantic, altruistic and universalist in the sense that it longed for
the liberation of all nations, not just his own. Garibaldi’s was more hard-nosed,
anti-religious and particularist.
Filippo Antonio Buonarotti (1761-1837), a native of Pisa, was a descendant of

Michelangelo. “A freethinker and a radical he had long been suspect to the
Tuscan authorities for possessing French books, and when he began writing
enthusiastic articles about the French Revolution in the Florentine Gazzetta
universal, he came under threat of arrest so he fled to Corsica, just in time to
welcome back Pasquale Paoli [the Corsican patriot who ended Genoan rule on
the island] on his return from exile in England in June 1790.
“Like Rousseau before him, Buonarotti was delighted by the Corsican pattern
of social organization, and he began to dream of imposing a similarly egalitarian
system on the Italian mainland. In the meantime, he helped implement French
revolutionary laws on the island, in the teeth of considerable opposition from the
Corsicans. He later tried to foist a constitution, which turned out to be very close
to Rousseau’s nation-building project for Corsica, on the neighbouring island of
Sardinia. But the Sardinians did not wish to become a nation. After this failure,
he headed for Paris. There, he fell in love with Saint-Just and Robespierre, and at
the end of 1793 he was appointed Commissaire Éxécutif in Corsica. On the way
there he receive news that the island had been taken by the British so he decided
to instead follow the French Army which was invading Piedmont. On 22 April
1794 he was named French commissioner for the captured province of Oneglia.
In this tiny place, where he was joined by republicans and malcontents from
every part of the peninsula, Buonarotti began to build up a pan-Italian
conspiratorial network.
355
Zamoyski, Holy Madness, pp. 116-117.
199
“He soon fell foul of local interests, and was arrested, sent back to Paris and
cast into the prison of Plessis. There, Buonarotti met his soul mater, Graechus
(formerly François) Babeuf. Babeuf’s Corsica had been the poor villages of his
native Picardy, where the peasant still operated an archaic system of strip-
farming. During the five months of their imprisonment, the two worked out
their political recipe, published by Babeuf at the end of 1795 as The Plebeian
Manifesto. It was the first real communist manifesto, calling for the abolition of
private property and stipulating that anyone who worked hard or tried to
improve himself must be repressed as a ‘social scourge’. In 1796 Babeuf began
planning an insurrection in Paris, but it was the means rather than the desired
ends that are the most significant. They were quite novel, and derived from
Buonarotti’s experiences. He rejected the widespread belief, based primarily on
the American paragon, that revolutions could be carried out through
spontaneous popular effort when inspired by the justice of its cause. This,
Buonarotti realized, was out of the question in the Italian peninsula, where the
people did not care a jot for any cause. So, if a revolution was to succeed, it
would have to be implemented over their heads, and possibly even against their
will, by a group of dedicated conspirators taking control of the levers of power.
This they proposed to do by the gradual infiltration of the army, police and
administrations.
“For his part, Buonarotti concentrated on enlisting the motley crowd of Italian
patriots who had taken refuge in France, and who were to accompany the
French army poised to invade the Austrian possessions in northern Italy. But
only a couple of weeks later the French Directory uncovered Babeuf’s
conspiracy. Babeuf and one his accomplices were executed, the rest were given
varying terms of imprisonment. This put an end to Buonarotti’s plans. But the
model he had created, which enabled small and weak cells to subvert strong
governments, was to shape most of European conspiratorial activity over the
next century and keep the forces of the status quo in a state of permanent panic
alert. Buonarotti was the godfather of all secret societies and they would play an
exceptional role in the history of Italy over the next decades.” 356
Paul Johnson writes: “Like the Comintern in the 1930s, they were a European
phenomenon and, to some extent, coordinated and centrally directed. But unlike
the Comintern, they did not have an ultimate national base, where they could be
trained and from which money and arms could flow.
“[Buonarrotti] came out of prison in 1809 and immediately resumed

underground work in northern Italy with Republican elements in the French
occupation and local malcontents and ‘patriots’. He founded a network called
the Adelphi, which migrated to Geneva when the Austrians took over
Lombardy and changed its name to the Sublime Perfect Masters.
“The Sublime Perfect Masters combined illuminism, freemasonry and radical

politics with a good deal of pretentious symbolism. Its structure was
hierarchical, only the most senior levels knowing its inner secrets, and
356
200
Buonarrotti came closer to the isolated cell system of modern terrorist groups,
which makes them so difficult to destroy, even if penetrated. The various police
forces never discovered much about his apparatus, which is the reason we know
so little about it. In theory it was formidable, since it had links with a Directive
Committee in Paris which coordinated Orléanist, Jacobin, Bonapartist, and
Republican subversion, with various German groups, such as the Tugendbund
and the Unbedingren; with Spanish Masons and communeros; and even with a
Russian group called the Union of Salvation, the whole supposedly existing
under a mysterious body, also in Geneva, called the Grand Firmament. In Italy,
the Sublime Perfect Masters had links with the Carbonari, which operated in the
center and the south. Contact was maintained by special handshakes, secret
codes, invisible ink and other devices… But it is a notable fact that Buonarrotti,
in particular, and the networks, in general, never once succeeded in organizing a
successful conspiracy or one which can fairly be said to have got off the ground.
Moreover when uprisings did take place and governments were overthrown, as
in Spain in 1820, Buonarrotti – like Marx, and indeed Lenin, later – was taken
completely by surprise…”357
The Congress of Vienna in 1815 tried to put the clock back and restore Italy’s
complex patchwork of states. However, the thirst for change had been aroused,
and the Carbonari tried to satisfy it, amassing a vast membership of between
300,000 and 642,000 people. The highest members of the Carbonari swore the
following oath: “Property boundaries shall be erased, all possessions shall be
reduced to communal wealth, and the one and only patria, most gentle of
mothers, shall furnish food, education and work to the whole body of her
beloved and free children. This is the redemption invoked by the wise. This is
the true recreation of Jerusalem. This is the manifest and inevitable decisions of
the Supreme Being.”358 They vowed to overthrow absolutism in Italy, but were
opposed by Metternich’s secret police.
It was out of this milieu that there arose the most important Italian
nationalist: Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), who joined the Carbonari, which
vowed to overthrown absolutism in Italy, but was betrayed to the police in 1830,
arrested, and interned at Savona. There he had the idea of creating a new
nationalist movement to replace the Carbonari.
“To him,” writes M.S. Anderson, "nationality was truly a religion; national
unity must be based upon religious belief and be itself a form of religious belief.
The fundamental truths he thought of as known intuitively, leaving to reason
only a subordinate function. The duties of men were more important than their
rights; for individuals existed to fulfill a mission in the service of humanity, and
liberty was no more than the ability to choose between different ways of doing
this. Nations could be constituted only by the will of the individuals composing
them, by those individuals recognizing a common duty and its consequences
and affirming a common purpose. Each had its own specific moral mission to
perform. 'Every nation has a mission, a special office in the collective work, a
357
Johnson, The Birth of the Modern, World Society 1815-1830, London: Phoenix, 1992, pp. 665-666.
358
201
special aptitude with which to fulfill it: this is its sign, its legitimacy.' A world of
sovereign nation-states, each fulfilling its God-given task, would therefore be
one of peace and happiness. Mazzini was much more than a selfish or parochial
nationalist. His ideas were always at bottom universalist. To him the idea that
the nations of Europe as soon as they had gained their freedom would
spontaneously unite in some form of association was fundamental; and his last
significant work, the Politica Internazionale (1871) was a vision of a Europe of free
peoples thus voluntarily associated. The national state was to him the norm
towards which all political life and action should tend, not merely a panacea for
specific grievances. 'The nation,' he wrote, 'is the God-appointed instrument for
the welfare of the human race.'"359
The Austrians were bitterly and cruelly opposed to the cause of Italian
nationalism. “The roll of martyrs was rapidly built up through the 1830s as a
result of a string of unsuccessful conspiracies and risings, each giving forth its
crop of victims. At a distance, they appear ludicrous, and sometimes outright
comic, but the blundering brutality of the existing regimes sanctified them by
ensuring that they had tragic conclusions. And that was in line with Mazzini’s
aims. ‘Ideas ripen quickly when nourished by the blood of martyrs,’ he pointed
out.”360
Mazzini, writes Evans, “believed in a United States of Europe, composed of

free and independent peoples in a voluntary association with each other. The
disunity of the 1831 urban insurrections in northern Italy and their easy
suppression by the Austrians convinced him that the carbonari, to which he
belonged, had to be replaced by a truly national organization, dedicated above
all to organizing the expulsion of the Austrians from the peninsula. Living
secretly in Marseille, he founded an association called Young Italy, possibly in
imitation of the literary movement Young Germany founded shortly before.
Despite its conspiratorial trappings, Young Italy had a clear programme – Italian
unification on a democratic and republican basis. It also compiled membership
lists, charged subscriptions, and employed a courier service to keep members in
various towns and cities in touch with one another. Soon the members of Young
Italy numbered thousands, inspired by Mazzini’s tireless campaigning, his
incessant pamphleteering, and the fact that he was apparently the ‘most
beautiful being, male or female’ that people who encountered him said they had
ever seen. Metternich declared membership punishable by death. Carlo Alberto,
the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, had twelve army officers who were involved in a
plot to stage a military uprising under Mazzini’s influence early in 1833 publicly
executed. Mazzini himself was condemned to death in absentia and the sentence
read out in front of his family house in Genoa. Metternich succeeded in getting
him expelled from France, but Mazzini continued to run Young Italy from
Switzerland. He now focused his numerous plots on Piedmont: one of them, like
so many betrayed by the Piedmontese authorities, involved a young naval
officer, Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had joined Young Italy after meeting a member
on a trading expedition to the Black Sea. Also condemned to death in absentia,
359
Anderson, The Ascendancy of Europe, 1815-1914, London: Longman, 1985, pp. 210-211.
360
202
Garibaldi fled to South America, where he took part in the ‘War of the
Ragamuffins’ in Brazil before fighting in the Uruguayan Civil War.
“Working through correspondence, conducted after 1837 from London,

Mazzini created individual national movements under the aegis of Young Italy,
Young Austria, Young Bohemia, Young Ukraine, Young Tyrol and even Young
Argentina came briefly into being. Young Poland played a significant role in the
1830 uprising. The most enduring and important organization of this kind was
Young Ireland, a term mockingly attached by the English Press to a movement
founded in 1840 by Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847); it had nothing to do with
Mazzini, who did not think that Ireland should be independent; it eschewed
violence and insurrection, and it dedicated itself not to the creation of a new
nation but to the repeal of the Act of Union with England passed in 1800. But
through the organization he actually did found, Mazzini had changed the terms
and tactics of nationalism. Nationalists had learned to co-ordinate their efforts
within each particular country, and a strong dose of realism had entered their
discourse, causing all but the Poles to recognize their insurrections were unlikely
to succeed by themselves, and that the formation of secret societies was not
leading anywhere: nationalists needed a programme and a formal organization,
equipped with a propaganda apparatus and aimed at securing democratic
support.
“Under the leadership of Metternich, the Habsburg Empire continued indeed

to be the major obstacle that lay in the path of nationalist movements – in Italy,
Bohemia, Germany, Hungary and – along with Russian and Prussia – in Poland.
Austria had led the European states in the overthrow of Napoleon; for thirty
years, from 1815 to 1845, Austrian dominance in Europe was unquestionable.
The Emperor Franz I refused to introduce any new constitutional arrangements
to his domains in northern Italy. ‘My Empire,’ he remarked, ‘ resembles a
ramshackle house. If one wishes to demolish a bit of it one does not know how
much will collapse.’ In central Italy, Gregory XVI, who was elected in 1831, ruled
the Papal States through a militia of ‘centurions’ who suppressed all criticism of
the corruption and inefficiency of his administration. So chaotic was the state of
affairs in his dominions that the papal government did not even manage to
prepare a state budget for the last ten years of his pontificate. In Piedmont-
Sardinia throughout the 1830s and the first half or more of the 1840s, the fear of
conspiracy and revolution kept Carlo Alberto of Piedmont on the Austrians’ side
in northern Italy. Yet he was pessimistic in the longer run. ‘The great crisis,’ he
wrote in 1834, ‘can only be more or less delayed, but it will undoubtedly arrive.’
“Avoiding it was one of the aims of the moderate liberal reformers who
arrived on the political scene in the 1840s. As with similar figures elsewhere in
Europe, they looked above all to Britain as an example. The Milanese reformer
Carlo Cattaneo (1801-69), an ex-carbonaro who had turned to more moderate
ways, thought that ‘peoples should act as a permanent mirror to each other,
because the interests of civilization are mutually dependent and common’. In
Piedmont, the most influential of the moderates in the long run was Camillo
Benso, Count of Cavour (1810-61), a Protestant who had travelled widely in
Britain and France and supported economic progress, railway-building and the
203
separation of Church and State. As liberal sentiment spread among the educated
classes, above all in northern Italy, the British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston
warned the Austrian ambassador in London that it was time to make
concessions: ‘We think ourselves conservative in preaching and advising
everywhere concessions, reforms, and improvements, where public opinion
demands them; you on the contrary refuse them.’ But change in Italy seemed to
be heralded by the election of Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti (1792-1878) as
Pope Pius IX on 16 June 1846. The new Supreme Pontiff amnestied political
prisoners, relaxed the censorship rules, and appointed commissions to improve
the Papal States’ administration, laws, and educational provision. His
summoning of a consultative assembly sent shock waves through the Italian
states. Others followed suit. In Tuscany censorship was partially abolished in
May 1847, a legislature was convened following demonstrations in a number of
cities, and in September the Grand Duke Leopold II (1797-1870) appointed a
moderate liberal government. In Piedmont, Carlo Alberto granted elected
communal councils and limitations on censorship in October 1847. In the
Habsburg Monarchy, Metternich’s refusal to relax the censorship rules in 1845
had no effect since nationalist and liberal literature poured in from outside,
including French, English and German newspapers. The crisis seemed to be
coming. ‘We are now,’ warned the former civil servant Viktor Baron von
Andrian-Werburg (1813-58), author of an influential, pessimistic book on the
future of the multinational monarchy, ‘where France was in 1788.’”361
Mazzini’s nationalism invoked the name of God and was

universalist; that is, it believed in the nationalist cause in every nation.
As he declared: "I believe in the immense voice of God which the
centuries transmit to me through the universal tradition of Humanity;
and it tells me that the Family, the Nation and Humanity are the three
spheres within which the human individual has to labour for a common
end, for the moral perfecting of himself and of others, or rather of
himself through others and for others." 362
Such “universalist nationalism” was possible in the first half of the 19th
century, when nationalism was still closely integrated with the romantic reaction
against the destructive, anti-traditional Enlightenment programme, when
thinkers were trying to combine universalism with local traditions and the
sacredness of the individual. "In practice, however," writes Anderson, "it was
inevitable that the idea of national mission should normally be put forward in
support of the demands and grievances of some specific national
group." 363 And so as the century progressed, and as the nationalism of
one country became opposed to that of another, universalist
nationalism became rarer. Religious idealism gradually gave way to a
more hard-edged, atheistic cynicism.
361
362
Mazzini, in Biddiss, "Nationalism and the Moulding of Modern Europe", History, 79, N 257,
October, 1984, p. 420.
363
Anderson, op. cit., p. 211.
204
25. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (3) ISRAEL
The French revolutionary and nationalist spirit dominated the nineteenth
century, spreading even to the European colonies in Central and South America.
This spirit unleashed by the French revolution was never put back in the bottle.
From now on, the whole world would have to struggle against its spirits – a
struggle that is by no means over at the present time.
Among the nationalisms ignited by the French revolution perhaps

the most important in the long term was that of the Jews…
“Before the great secularization in Europe,” writes Shlomo Sand,

“Jewish believers clung to the religious axiom that sustained them
through times of trouble: they were the ‘chosen people’, God’s sacred
congregation, destined to ‘illuminate the nations’. In reality, they knew
that as minority groups existing in the shadow of other religions, they
were subordinated to the stronger powers. The passion for
proselytizing that had characterized these communities in the past had
all but disappeared through the ages, largely from fear of the dominant
religions. Over the centuries, thick layers of distrust and fear of
propagating their faith padded the self-identification of the believers
and bolstered the communal isolation that eventually became their
distinguishing mark. In the Middle Ages, the exclusive belief in the
‘unique nation that dwells apart’ also served to prevent large-scale
desertion to the other monotheistic religions.” 364
However, the Enlightenment and its universalist ideas began to

erode this kind of thinking, among both Jewish and Gentile
intellectuals. And the first major breach in the Jewish ghetto walls was
made by the French revolution. Pouring through that breach, the Jews
burst into the forefront of world politics for the first time since the fall
of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
In 1789 there were 39,000 Jews in France; most (half according to

one estimate, nine-tenths according to another 365 ) were Yiddish-
speaking Ashkenazim living in Alsace and Lorraine, which France had
acquired under the terms of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
“It is important,” writes Nesta Webster, “to distinguish between

these two races of Jews [the Ashkenazi and the Sephardim] in
discussing the question of Jewish emancipation at the time of the
Revolution. For whilst the Sephardim had shown themselves good
citizens and were therefore subject to no persecutions, the Ashkenazim
by their extortionate usury and oppressions had made themselves
detested by the people, so that rigorous laws were enforced to restrain
their rapacity. The discussions that raged in the National Assembly on
364
Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, London: Verso, 2009, p. 250.
365
205
the subject of the Jewish question related therefore mainly to the Jews
of Alsace.” 366
The eighteenth century had already witnessed some important

changes in the relationship between the State and Jewry. In England,
the Jews had achieved emancipation de facto, if not de jure. This was
helped by the relatively small number of Jews in Britain, and the non-
ideological approach of the British government.
It was a different matter on the continent, where a more ideological

approach prevailed. In 1782 the Masonic Austrian Emperor Joseph II
published his Toleranzpatent, whose purpose was that “all Our subjects
without distinction of nationality and religion, once they have been
admitted and tolerated in our States, shall participate in common in
public welfare,… shall enjoy legal freedom, and encounter no obstacles
to any honest way of gaining their livelihood and of increasing general
industriousness… Existing laws pertaining to the Jewish nation… are
not always compatible with these Our most gracious intentions.”
Most restrictions on the Jews were removed, but these new freedoms
applied only to the “privileged Jew” – that is, the Jew whom the State
found “useful” in some way – and not to the “foreign Jew”. Moreover,
even privileged Jews were not granted the right of full citizenship and
craft mastership. 367 For Joseph wanted to grant tolerance to the Jews, but
not full equality.
As for France, “already, in 1784, the Jews of Bordeaux had been

accorded further concessions by Louis XVI; in 1776 all Portuguese Jews
had been given religious liberty and the permission to inhabit all parts
of the kingdom. The decree of January 28, 1790, conferring on the Jews
of Bordeaux the rights of French citizens, put the finishing touch to this
scheme of liberation. [The Sephardic Jews of South-West France and
papal Avignon, who were already more assimilated than their
Ashkenazi co-religionists in Alsace, were given full citizenship in July,
1790.] But the proposal to extend this privilege to the Jews of Alsace
evoked a storm of controversy in the Assembly and also violent
insurrections amongst the Alsace peasants.” 368
In their first debate on the subject, on September 28, 1789, they

made a further important distinction between the nation and the
individuals constituting the nation. Thus Stanislas Comte de Clermont-
Tonnerre argued that “there cannot be a nation within a nation”, so
“the Jews should be denied everything as a nation but granted
everything as individuals.” 369 A separate nation of the Jews could not be
allowed to exist within France. For “virtually all – moderates no less
366
367
David Vital, A People Apart, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 35-36.
368
369
Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, London: Phoenix, 1987, 1995, p. 306.
206
than radicals, Dantonists no less than Robespierrists, Christians as well
as deists, pantheists, and atheists – held that equality of status in the
state they were in their various ways intent on establishing was bound
up of necessity with the elimination of all groups, classes, or
corporations intermediate (and therefore mediating) between the state
itself and the citizen.” 370
Vital writes: “The immediate issue before the Assembly was the
admission of certain semi-pariah classes – among them actors and
public executioners – to what came to be termed ‘active citizenship’. It
was soon apparent, however, that the issues presented by the Jews
were very different. It was apparent, too, that it would make no better
sense to examine the Jews’ case in tandem with that of the Protestants.
The latter, like the Jews, were non-Catholics, but their national identity
was not in doubt, nor, therefore, their right to the new liberties being
decreed for all. Whatever else they were, they were Frenchmen. No one
in the National Assembly thought otherwise. But were the Jews
Frenchmen? If they were not, could they become citizens? The
contention of the lead speaker in the debate, Count Stanislaw de
Clermont-Tonnerre, was that the argument for granting them full rights
of citizenship needed to be founded on the most general principles.
Religion was a private affair. The law of the state need not and ought
not to impinge upon it. So long as religious obligations were
compatible with the law of the state and contravened it in no particular
it was wrong to deprive a person, whose conscience required him to
assume such religious obligations, of those rights which it was the duty
of all citizens qua citizens to assume. One either imposed a national
religion by main force, so erasing the relevant clause of the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and the Citizen to which all now subscribed. Or
else one allowed everyone the freedom to profess the religious opinion
of his choice. Mere tolerance was unacceptable. ‘The system of
tolerance, coupled.. to degrading distinctions, is so vicious in itself,
that he who is compelled to tolerate remains as dissatisfied with the
law as is he whom it has granted no more than such a form of
tolerance.’ There was no middle way. The enemies of the Jews attacked
them, and attacked him, Clermont-Tonnerre, on the grounds that they
were deficient morally. It was also held of the Jews that they were
unsociable, that their laws prescribed usury, that they were forbidden
to mix with the French by marriage or at table or join them in defence
of the country or in any other common enterprise. But these reproaches
were either unjust or specious. Usury was blameworthy beyond a
doubt, but it was the laws of France that had compelled the Jews to
practise it. And so with most of the other charges. Once the Jews had
title to land and a country of their own the practice of usury would
cease. So would the unsociability that was held against them. So would
much of their religious eccentricity [ ces travers religieux]. As for the
further argument, that they had judges and laws of their own, why so
370
Vital, op. cit., p. 49.
207
they did, and on this matter he, Clermont-Tonnerre, would say to his
critics (coming to the passage in his address to the Assembly that
would be quoted over and over again in the course of the two centuries
that followed), that that indeed was impermissible.
“’As a nation the Jews must be denied everything, as individuals

they must be granted everything; their judges can no longer be
recognized; their recourse must be to our own exclusively; legal
protection for the doubtful laws by which Jewish corporate existence is
maintained must end; they cannot be allowed to create a political body
or a separate order within the state; it is necessary that they be citizens
individually.’
“There remained the question, what if, as some argued, it was the
case that the Jews themselves had no interest in citizenship? Why in
that case, he went on, ‘if they do not want it, let them say so, in which
case expel them [s’ils veulent ne l’être pas, qu’ils le disent, et alors, qu’on
les bannisse]’. The idea of a society of non-citizens within the state and a
nation within a nation was repugnant to him. But in fact, the speaker
concluded, that was not at all what the Jews wanted. The evidence was
to the contrary. They wished to be incorporated into the nation of
France.
“Clermont-Tonnerre was promptly contradicted on this last, vital

point by the abbé Maury. The term ‘Jew’, said the abbé did not denote a
religious sect, but a nation, one which had laws which it had always
followed and by which it wished to continue to abide. ‘To proclaim the
Jews citizens would be as if to say that, without letters of
naturalization and without ceasing to be English or Danish,
Englishmen and Danes could become Frenchmen.’ But Maury’s chief
argument was of a moral and social order. The Jews were inherently
undesirable, socially as well as economically. They had been chased out
of France, and then recalled, no less than seven times – chased out by
avarice, as Voltaire had rightly put it, readmitted by avarice once more,
but in foolishness as well.
“’The Jews have passed seventeen centuries without mingling with

the other nations. They have never engaged in anything but trade in
money; they have been the plague of the agricultural provinces; not one
of them has ever dignified [su ennoblir] his hands by driving a plough.
Their laws leave them no time for agriculture; the Sabbath apart, they
celebrate fifty-six more festivals than the Christians in each year. In
Poland they possess an entire province. Well, then! While the sweat of
Christian slaves waters the furrows in which the Jews’ opulence
germinates they themselves, as their fields are cultivated, engage in
weighing their ducats and calculating how much they can shave off the
coinage without exposing themselves to legal penalties.’
208
“They have never been labourers, Maury continued, not even under
David and Solomon. And even then they were notorious for their
laziness. Their sole concern was commerce. Would you make soldiers
of them, the abbé asked. If you did, you would derive small benefit
from them: they have a horror of celibacy and they marry young. He
knew of no general who would wish to command an army of Jews
either on the Sabbath – a day on which they never gave battle – or
indeed at any other time. Or did the Assembly imagine that they could
make craftsmen of them when their many festivals and sabbath days
presented an insurmountable obstacle to such an enterprise. The Jews
held 12 million mortgages in Alsace alone, he informed his colleagues.
Within a month of their being granted citizenship they would own half
the province outright. In ten years’ time they would have ‘conquered’
all of it, reducing it to nothing more than a Jewish colony – upon which
the hatred the people of Alsace already bore for the Jews would
explode.
“It was not that he, Maury, wished the Jews to be persecuted. ‘They
are men, they are our brothers; anathema on whoever speaks of
intolerance!’ Nor need their religious opinions disturb anyone [!!!]. He
joined all others in agreeing that they were to be protected. But that did
not mean that they could be citizens. It was as individuals that they
were entitled to protection, not as Frenchmen.
“Robespierre took the opposite line, supporting Clermont-Tonnerre.

All who fulfilled the generally applicable conditions of eligibility to
citizenship were entitled to the rights that derived from it, he argued,
including the right to hold public office. And so far as the facts were
concerned, much of what Maury had said about the Jews was ‘infinitely
exaggerated’ and contrary to known history. Moreover, to charge the
Jews themselves with responsibility for their own persecution at the
hands of others, was absurd.
“’Vices are imputed to them… But to whom should these vices be

imputed if not to ourselves for our injustice?… Let us restore them to
happiness, to country [patrie], and to virtue by restoring them to the
dignity of men and citizens; let us reflect that it can never be politic,
whatever anyone might say, to condemn a multitude of men who live
among us to degradation and oppression.’” 371
Thus spoke the man who was soon to lead the most degrading and
oppressive régime in European history to that date. Indeed, it is
striking how those who spoke most fervently for the Jews – apart from
leaders of the Jewish community such as the banker Cerfbeer and Isaac
Beer – were Freemasons or Illuminati.
371
Vital, op. cit., pp. 43-45.
209
Thus in the two years before the crucial debate on September 27,
1791, writes General Nechvolodov, “fourteen attempts were made to
give the Jews civic equality and thirty-five major speeches were given
by several orators, among them Mirabeau, Robespierre, Abbé Grégoire,
Abbé Sièyes, Camille, Desmoulins, Vernier, Barnave, Lameth, Duport
and others.
“’Now there is a singular comparison to be made,’ says Abbé

Lemann, ‘- all the names which we have just cited and which figure in
the Moniteur as having voted for the Jews are also found on the list of
Masons… Is this coincidence not proof of the order given, in the lodges
of Paris, to work in favour of Jewish emancipation?’
“And yet, in spite of the revolutionary spirit, the National Assembly

was very little inclined to give equality of civil rights to the Jews.
Against this reform there rose up all the deputies from Alsace, since it
was in Alsace that the majority of the French Jews of that time lived….
“But this opposition in the National Assembly did not stop the Jews.
To attain their end, they employed absolutely every means.
“According to Abbé Lemann, these means were the following:
“First means: entreaty. A charm exercised over several presidents of

the Assembly. Second: the influence of gold. Third means: logic. After
the National Assembly had declared the ‘rights of man’, the Jews
insisted that these rights should logically be applied to them, and they
set out their ideas on this subject with an ‘implacable arrogance’.
“Fourth means: recourse to the suburbs and the Paris Commune, so

as to force the National Assembly under ‘threat of violence’ to give the
Jews equality.
“’One of their most thorough historians (Graetz),’ says Abbé

Lemann, ‘did not feel that he had to hide this manoeuvre. Exhausted,
he says, by the thousand useless efforts they had made to obtain civil
rights, they thought up a last means. Seeing that it was impossible to
obtain by reason and common sense what they called their rights, they
resolved to force the National Assembly to approve of their
emancipation.
“’To this end, naturally, were expended vast sums, which served to
establish the ‘Christian Front’ which they wanted.
“’In the session of the National Assembly of January 18, 1791, the
Duke de Broglie expressed himself completely openly on this subject:
‘Among them,’ he said, ‘there is one in particular who has acquired an
immense fortune at the expense of the State, and who is spending in
210
the town of Paris considerable sums to win supporters of his cause.’ He
meant Cerfbeer.
“At the head of the Christian Front created on this occasion were the
lawyer Godard and three ecclesiastics: the Abbés Mulot, Bertoliot and
Fauchet.
“Abbé Fauchet was a well-known illuminatus, and Abbé Mulot – the

president of the all-powerful Paris Commune, with the help of which
the Jacobins exerted, at the time desired, the necessary pressure on the
National and Legislative Assemblies, and later on the Convention.
“What Gregory, curé of Embermeuil, was for the Jews in the heart of
the National Assembly, Abbé Mulot was in the heart of the Commune.
“However, although they were fanatical Jacobins, the members of

the Commune were far from agreeing to the propositions of their
president that they act in defence of Jewish rights in the National
Assembly. It was necessary to return constantly to the attack, naturally
with the powerful help of Cerfbeer’s gold and that of the Abbés
Fauchet and Bertoliot. This latter declared during a session of the
Commune on this question: ‘It was necessary that such a happy and
unexpected event as the revolution should come and rejuvenate
France… Let us hasten to consign to oblivion the crimes of our fathers.’
“Then, during another session, the lawyer Godard bust into the
chamber with fifty armed ‘patriots’ dressed in costumes of the national
guard with three-coloured cockades. They were fifty Jews who,
naturally provided with money, had made the rounds of the sections of
the Paris Commune and of the wards of the town of Paris, talking about
recruiting partisans of equality for the Jews. This had its effect. Out of
the sixty sections of Paris fifty-nine declared themselves for equality
(only the quartier des Halles abstained). Then the Commune addressed
the National Assembly with an appeal signed by the Abbés Mulot,
Bertoliot, Fauchet and other members, demanding that equality be
immediately given to the Jews.
“However, even after that, the National Assembly hesitated in

declaring itself in the manner provided. Then, on September 27, the day
of the penultimate session of the Assembly before its dissolution, the
Jacobin deputy Adrien Duport posed the question of equality for the
Jews in a categorical fashion. The Assembly knew Adrien Duport’s
personality perfectly. It knew that in a secret meeting of the chiefs of
Freemasonry which preceded the revolution, he had insisted on the
necessity of resort to a system of terror. The Assembly yielded. There
followed a decree signed by Louis XVI granting French Jews full and
complete equality of rights…” 372
General A. Nechvolodov, L’Empéreur Nicolas II et les Juifs (Emperor Nicholas II and the Jews),
372
Paris, 1924, pp. 216-220.

211
The power of the Jewish minority was revealed especially during
the reign of terror under Robespierre, when 2300 Catholic churches
were converted into “temples of Reason”.
At that point some voices were raised, writes Tikhomirov,

“demanding that the ban be spread onto the Jews also, and that
circumcision be forbidden. These demands were completely ignored,
and were not even put to the vote. In the local communes individual
groups of especially wild Jacobins, who had not been initiated into
higher politics, sometimes broke into synagogues, destroying the Torah
and books, but it was only by 1794 that the revolutionary-atheist logic
finally forced even the bosses to pose the question of the annihilation
not only of Catholicism, but also of Jewry. At this point, however, the
Jews were delivered by 9 Thermidor, 1794. Robespierre fell and was
executed. The moderate elements triumphed. The question of the ban of
Jewry disappeared of itself, while the Constitution of Year III of the
Republic granted equal rights to the Jews.” 373
But this was not the end of the matter. In the late 1790s a new wave
of Ashkenazis entered France from Germany, attracted by the superior
status their French brothers now enjoyed. This was to lead to further
disturbances in Alsace, which it was left to Napoleon to deal with…
“Nevertheless,” as Paul Johnson writes, “the deed was done. French

Jews were now free and the clock could never be turned back.
Moreover, emancipation in some form took place wherever the French
were able to carry the revolutionary spirit with their arms. The ghettos
and Jewish closed quarters were broken into in papal Avignon (1791),
Nice (1792) and the Rhineland (1792-3). The spread of the revolution to
the Netherlands, and the founding of the Batavian republic, led to Jews
being granted full and formal rights by law there (1796). In 1796-8
Napoleon Bonaparte liberated many of the Italian ghettos, French
troops, young Jews and local enthusiasts tearing down the crumbling
old walls.
“For the first time a new archetype, which had always existed in
embryonic form, began to emerge from the shadows: the revolutionary
Jew. Clericalists in Italy swore enmity to ‘Gauls, Jacobins and Jews’. In
1793-4 Jewish Jacobins set up a revolutionary regime in Saint Esprit,
the Jewish suburb of Bayonne. Once again, as during the Reformation,
traditionalists saw a sinister link between the Torah and subversion.” 374
However, the above picture of the Jewish struggle for emancipation

in Paris and, later, Bayonne should not obscure the fact that there was
still very strong opposition to the idea of emancipation from within
373
Tikhomirov, op. cit., p. 365.
374
Johnson, op. cit., pp. 306-307.
212
Jewry itself led especially by the rabbinic leaders of Ashkenazi Jewry in
Poland.
Thus Zalkind Hourwitz was a Polish Jew who won a prize for an
essay advocating Jewish emancipation from the Royal Society for Arts
and Sciences at Metz in 1787.
Nevertheless, as Vital writes, he “made no bones about his view of

the internal constraints to which Jews in all parts were subject through
the workings of the rabbinical-Talmudic system: of the limits it set
upon their worldly freedom, of the manner in which it effectively
barred their entry into society on a basis of equality. The social
liberation of the Jews was conditional, he believed, on the power that
the rabbis and the parnassim [chief synagogue officials] jointly
exercised over ordinary people in their daily lives being terminated –
in great matters as in small. ‘Their rabbis and syndics [i.e. parnassim]
must be strictly forbidden to assume the least authority over their
fellows outside the synagogue, or refuse honours to those who have
shaved off their beards, or curled their hair, or who dress like
Christians, go to the theatre, or observe other customs that bear no
actual relation to their religion, but derive from superstition alone as a
means of distinguishing them from other peoples.’” 375
In France, it had been the socially marginalized Jews who had

pressed for emancipation. Even the more acculturated Sephardic Jews
of Bourdeaux and Bayonne had been slow to ask for emancipation,
first, because they feared that they might have to pay for liberties
which they already enjoyed de facto, and secondly, because they wanted
to be clearly delineated from the Ashkenazi Jews of Alsace. The latter,
continues Vital, “had been slower still to ask for liberation. There is no
evidence of their authorized representatives pressing for anything
remotely of the kind before the Revolution; and when they made their
own first approach to the new National Assembly it was to ask for no
more than an end to the special taxes laid upon them and the abolition
of the residential, and travel restrictions to which they were subject.
The greatest anxiety of the Alsatians was to retain their own internal
communal autonomy – to which end, with only rare exceptions, they
(at all events, their authorized representatives) were prepared to forgo
emancipation altogether. Only when they learned that other branches
of French Jewry, the small community in Paris among them, were
prepared to yield to the demand that they give up their ancient
corporate status did the Alsatians and Lorrainers fall, reluctantly, into
line.” 376
The question: to emancipate or not to emancipate? was to cause

bitter divisions in Jewry that have continued to the present day. It
375
376
213
brought into sharp focus another question: was it possible for the Jews,
while remaining Jewish, ever to become an integral part of non-Jewish
society? And if not, how were they to live – as a separate nation with
its own homeland and language as the other Gentile nations, or in some
other way? The extreme zeal of the champions of Jewish emancipation,
on the one hand, and the equally extreme ghetto-creating mentality of
the opponents of emancipation, on the other, suggested that there was
no easy solution to this problem, even with the best intentions of the
Gentile and/or Christian rulers. For, as Norman Davies points out,
“Jewish emancipation was a double-edged operation. It required a
fundamental change in the conduct and the attitudes both of the host
societies and of the Jews themselves. It demanded the dismantling not
only of the constraints imposed on Jews from outside but also of the
‘internal ghetto’ in Jewish minds. Modern concern with the roots of
anti-Semitism sometimes overlooks the severity of the Jews’ own laws
of segregation. Observant Jews could not hold to the 613 rules of dress,
diet, hygiene and worship if they tried to live outside their own closed
community; and intermarriage was strictly forbidden. Since Judaic law
taught that Jewishness was biologically inherited in the maternal line,
Jewish women were jealously protected. A girl who dared to marry out
could expect to be disowned by her family, and ritually pronounced
dead. Extreme determination was needed to withstand such acute
social pressures…” 377
If the French revolution gave the Jews their first political victory,
Napoleon gave them their second. On May 22, 1799, the Paris Moniteur
published the following report from Constantinople on April 17:
"Buonaparte has published a proclamation in which he invites all the
Jews of Asia and Africa to come and place themselves under his flag in
order to re-establish ancient Jerusalem . He has already armed a great
number and their battalions are threatening Aleppo."
This was not the first time that the Jews had persuaded a Gentile
ruler to restore them to Jerusalem. The Roman Emperor Julian the
Apostate had allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and start
rebuilding the Temple. However, fire came out from the foundations
and black crosses appeared on the workers' garments, forcing them to
abandon the enterprise. 378 And the Jews were to be thwarted again
now: British sea-power prevented Napoleon from reaching Jerusalem
and making himself, as was reported to be his intention, king of the
Jews. The Jews would have to wait until 1917 before another Gentile
power (the British this time) again offered them a return to Zion.

377
378
Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, III, 20; Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, V, 22; Theodoret,
Ecclesiastical History, III, 15; Karen Armstrong, A History of Jerusalem, London: HarperCollins,
1997, pp. 194-196.
214
Napoleon now learned what many rulers before and after learned:
that kindness towards the Jews does not make them more tractable.
General Nechvolodov writes: "Since the first years of the Empire,
Napoleon I had become very worried about the Jewish monopoly in
France and the isolation in which they lived in the midst of the other
citizens, although they had received citizenship. The reports of the
departments showed the activity of the Jews in a very bad light:
'Everywhere there are false declarations to the civil authorities; fathers
declare the sons who are born to them to be daughters... Again, there
are Jews who have given an example of disobedience to the laws of
conscription; out of sixty-nine Jews who, in the course of six years,
should have formed part of the Moselle contingent, none has entered
the army.'
"By contrast, behind the army, they give themselves up to frenzied

speculation.
"'Unfortunately,' says Thiers describing the entry of the French into

Rome in his History of the Revolution, 'the excesses, not against persons
but against property, marred the entry of the French into the ancient
capital of the world... Berthier had just left for Paris, Massena had just
succeeded him. This hero was accused of having given the first
example. He was soon imitated. They began to pillage the palaces,
convents and rich collections. Some Jews in the rear of the army bought
for a paltry price the magnificent objects which the looters were
offering them.'
"It was in 1805, during Napoleon's passage through Strasbourg,

after the victory of Austerlitz, that the complaints against the Jews
assumed great proportions. The principal accusations brought against
them concerned the terrible use they made of usury. As soon as he
returned to Paris, Napoleon judged it necessary to concentrate all his
attention on the Jews. In the State Council, during its session of April
30, he said, among other things, the following on this subject:
"'The French government cannot look on with indifference as a vile,

degraded nation capable of every iniquity takes exclusive possession of
two beautiful departments of Alsace; one must consider the Jews as a
nation and not as a sect. It is a nation within a nation; I would deprive
them, at least for a certain time, of the right to take out mortgages, for
it is too humiliating for the French nation to find itself at the mercy of
the vilest nation. Some entire villages have been expropriated by the
Jews; they have replaced feudalism. It would be dangerous to let the
keys of France, Strasbourg and Alsace, fall into the hands of a
population of spies who are not at all attached to the country.'" 379
379
Nechvolodov, op. cit., pp. 221-222.
215
Napoleon eventually decided on an extraordinary measure: to
convene a 111-strong Assembly of Jewish Notables in order to receive
clear and unambiguous answers to the following questions: did the
Jewish law permit mixed marriages; did the Jews regard Frenchmen as
foreigners or as brothers; did they regard France as their native
country, the laws of which they were bound to obey; did the Judaic law
draw any distinction between Jewish and Christian debtors? At the
same time, writes Johnson, Napoleon "supplemented this secular body
by convening a parallel meeting of rabbis and learned laymen, to
advise the Assembly on technical points of Torah and halakhah. The
response of the more traditional elements of Judaism was poor. They
did not recognize Napoleon's right to invent such a tribunal, let alone
summon it." 380
However, if some traditionalists objected, other Jews received the

news with unbounded joy. "According to Abbé Lemann," writes
Nechvolodov, "they grovelled in front of him and were ready to
recognize him as the Messiah. The sessions of the Sanhedrin [composed
of 46 rabbis and 25 laymen from all parts of Western Europe] took
place in February and March, 1807, and the Decision of the Great
Sanhedrin began with the words: 'Blessed forever is the Lord, the God
of Israel, Who has placed on the throne of France and of the kingdom
of Italy a prince according to His heart. God has seen the humiliation of
the descendants of ancient Jacob, and He has chosen Napoleon the
Great to be the instrument of His mercy& Reunited today under his
powerful protection in the good town of Paris, to the number of
seventy-one doctors of the law and notables of Israel, we constitute a
Great Sanhedrin, so as to find in us a means and power to create
religious ordinances in conformity with the principles of our holy laws,
and which may serve as a rule and example to all Israelites. These
ordinances will teach the nations that our dogmas are consistent with
the civil laws under which we live, an do not separate us at all from the
society of men.’" 381
"The Jewish delegates," writes Oleg Platonov, "declared that state

laws had the same obligatory force for Jews, that every honourable
study of Jewish teaching was allowed, but usury was forbidden, etc.
[However,] to the question concerning mixed marriages of Jews and
Christians they gave an evasive, if not negative reply. 'Although mixed
marriages between Jews and Christians cannot be clothed in a religious
form, they nevertheless do not draw upon them any anathema." 382
On the face of it, the convening of the Sanhedrin was a great

triumph for Napoleon, who could now treat Jewry as just another
religious denomination, and not a separate nation, "appropriating for
380
381
Nechvolodov, op. cit., pp. 225-226.
216
the state what had traditionally been a subversive institution". 383
However, the Jews did not restrain their money-lending and
speculative activities, as Napoleon had pleaded with them. On the
contrary, only one year after the convening of the Great Sanhedrin,
when it became evident that their financial excesses were continuing,
Napoleon was forced to adopt repressive measures against them.
Moreover, he created rabbinic consistories in France having
disciplinary powers over Jews and granted rabbis the status of state
officials - a measure that was strengthen the powers of the rabbis over
their people. In time Jewish consistories on the French model were
created all over Europe. Then, writes Platonov, "began the stormy
propaganda of Judaism amidst Jews who had partially fallen away
from the religion of their ancestors, organised rabbinic schools and
spiritual seminaries for the education of youth in the spirit of Talmudic
Judaism. Everywhere local and general union (brotherhoods) were
created to united the Jews in their struggle for their national interests.
In the middle of the 19 t h century the formerly secret tip of the Jewish
iceberg came out from the shadows and began to elevate itself openly
over the Christian world. In 1860 was created L’Alliance Israélite
Universelle, whose leader, A. Crémier, almost openly formulated the
criminal aims of the Hews. “We,’ declared Cr émier, ‘do not have fellow
citizens, but only religious followers. Our nationality is the religion of
our fathers, we do not recognize any other nationality… The faith of
our ancestors is our only patriotism. We live in foreign lands, but, in
spite of all our external nationalities, we remain and will remain Jews,
one single nation… The Israelites, although you are scattered to all
corners of the earthly globe, remain always members of the chosen
people!... Only Judaism represents the religious and political truth!’” 384
Moreover, as Tikhomirov points out, "no laws could avert the international
links of the Jews. Sometimes they even appeared openly, as in Kol Ispoel Khaberim
(Alliance Israélite Universelle), although many legislatures forbad societies and
unions of their own citizens to have links with foreigners. The Jews gained a
position of exceptional privilege. For the first time in the history of the diaspora
they acquired greater rights than the local citizens of the countries of the
dispersion. One can understand that, whatever the further aims for the
382
O.A. Platonov, Ternovij Venets Rossii (Russia's Crown of Thorns), Moscow: Rodnik, 1998, p. 266.
383
Eliane Glaser, "Napoleon's Jews: A Law unto Themselves", BBC History Magazine, vol. 8, no. 8,
August, 2007, p. 36. This did not mean, however, that the complaints of the citizens of Alsace were
ignored. According to the "infamous decree" March 17, 1808, writes Vital, "existing debts to Jews
[in Alsace] were to be heavily and arbitrarily reduced. But the stipulations of the decree went a
great deal further. Restrictions were to be levelled on the freedom of Jews to engage in a trade of
their choice and to move from one part of the country to another without special permission. They
were to submit to special commercial registration. They were not to employ the Hebrew language
in their commercial transactions. Unlike all other citizens, they were to be forbidden to offer
substitutes in case of conscription for military service. And the entry of foreign Jews into France
was to be conditional either on military performance or on satisfaction of specified property
qualifications." (op. cit., p. 59). The decree lasted for ten years, but was not then renewed by the
Restoration government.
384
217
resurrection of Israel might be, the countries of the new culture and statehood
became from that time a lever of support for Jewry."385
Indeed, the main result of the Great Sanhedrin, writes Nechvolodov, "was to
unite Judaism still more. "'Let us not forget from where we draw our origin,'
said Rabbi Salomon Lippmann Cerfbeer on July 26, 1808, in his speech for the
opening of the preparatory assembly of the Sanhedrin:- 'Let it no longer be a
question of "German" or "Portuguese" Jews; although disseminated over the
surface of the globe, we everywhere form only one unique people.'" 386
After the fall of Napoleon in 1815, the Congress of Vienna decreed that "it
was incumbent on the members of the German Confederation to consider an
'amelioration' of the civil status of all those who 'confessed the Jewish faith in
Germany.'" Gradually, though not without opposition, Jewish emancipation
spread throughout Europe…
385
386
Nechvolodov, op. cit., p. 226.
218
26. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (4) LATIN AMERICA
“The wars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century,” writes Evans,
“had been not merely European but global in scale. They had shattered existing
global empires and paved the way for a new relationship between Europe and
the rest of the world. British rule in much of North America had already been
destroyed in the American War of Independence. In their turn, however, the
British had broken what remained of French power in Canada and India, and
had taken over Dutch and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean as well as annexing
Mauritius, the Cape of Good Hope, Singapore and Ceylon. Republican
movements, inspired by the French Revolution and backed by the British,
sprang up all over Latin America. Their leading figure, Simon Bolívar, raised a
series of irregular armies from the mixed-race and Native American population
to defeat the royalists and establish a set of independent states corresponding to
the old Spanish provinces – Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru –
while similar events further south had led to the creation of Chile and Argentina,
Uruguay and Paraguay as independent or autonomous states. Between 1812 and
1824 the Spanish Empire in the Americas was destroyed. Spain had been
weakened too much by the devastating Peninsular War (1807-14) to be able to
raise enough troops to assert itself: and in any case, of the 42,000 soldiers it did
send between 1811 and 1819, only 23,000 were left by 1820, the rest having
succumbed to disease and desertion. Spain’s fleet, destroyed at the Battle of
Trafalgar (1805), was unable to blockade rebel ports or defeat the rebel fleet
commanded by the radical ex-naval officer Lord Thomas Cochrane (1775-1660).
Sea power was vital to the South American independence movement, and it was
British sea power that tipped the balance.
“The British government, while remaining ostensibly neutral, turned a blind

eye to men like Cochrane and their securing of supplies from Britain. It was very
much in its interest to open up Latin America to free trade, and when Britain
recognized the new states in 1823, the Monroe Doctrine proclaimed by the US
government, which opposed any European intervention in the Americas, put an
end to any further action. In 1826 the British Foreign Secretary George Canning
(1770-1827) justified the long years of British support for Bolivar: ‘I resolved that
if France had Spain, it should not be Spain with the Indies. I called the New
World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.’ By this time, Brazil had
also become independent from Portugal, again as a result of the Napoleonic
Wars. When the French conquered Portugal in 1807, the regent Dom Joâo (1767-
1826), acting for Queen Maria the Mad (1734-1816), sailed to Rio de Janeiro and
set up court there, proclaiming Brazil a full sovereign state with all the rights
and privileges that went with it. This reduced Portugal to the status of a
province of Brazil, especially when Dom Joâo, becoming king after Maria’s death
in 1816, decided to stay on in Rio. In 1820, Dom Joâo was forced by political
upheavals in Portugal to return to Lisbon as king. He was also obliged to accept
the policy of reimposing mercantilist restrictions on trade with Brazil. This is
turn led his son Dom Pedro (1798-1834), now regent in Rio, to bow to Brazilian
mercantile pressure and become king of an independent constitutional
86
219
monarchy in Brazil in 1822. Portuguese interference was defeated by Admiral
Cochrane’s fleet, and the British recognized Brazilian sovereignty in 1825.
“The end of the European empires in the Americas was thus bound up
inexorably with events in Europe: the ferment of ideas generated by the French
Revolution; the assertion of British sea power in the drive to open up
mercantilist-controlled areas of South America to free trade; the severing of
connections between the Americas and European colonial metropoles by war;
and the insistence of European states on imposing tight and in some cases new
economic regulations and taxes on increasingly prosperous and autonomous
American colonies. At the same time, events in the Americas also had a
profound effect on Europe. For European liberals, radicals and revolutionaries,
Latin America (with the exception of Brazil, where slavery continued virtually
unchanged through the following decades) became a classic example of the
success of movements of emancipation and liberation…”387
It was especially in Latin America that the figure of Napoleon had a decisive
impact, as the heroic object of the fantasies and dreams of a whole generation of
young men. The specifically Latin American species of nationalism owed its
origins to the impact of Napoleon on certain young men, who then tried to
imitate Napoleon’s impact on society as a whole. These were generally
ambitious adventurers who managed by hook or by crook to impose themselves
on weakened government structures and then claim for themselves the mandate
of the people, as if their individual will represented the “general will” of the
people. Simple despotism, in other words, disguised as liberation from
despotism. Very often these “liberated” peoples had no idea that they had been a
distinct nation before, and would have been much happier without any
“liberator”. They were indeed “forced to be free”, in Rousseau’s phrase.
The most famous of the “liberators” was Simon Jose Antonio de la Santissima
Trinidad de Bolivar. Bolivar is a good example of the terrible spiritual damage
done to a whole generation of young men by the heroic image of Napoleon. Just
as Napoleon himself stood between the rationalism of the Enlightenment and
the passion of the Romantic age, uniting them in the image of himself fighting
for both the ideals of the Enlightenment and the death-defying glory of the
romantic hero, so did Bolivar and a host of similar adventurers in Central and
South America aspire to unite national “liberation” with personal glory.
“Bolivar,” writes Zamoyski, “arrived in the French capital just in time for
Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor of the French, an event he watched with
fascination. In March 1805 ... he saw Napoleon crown himself king of Italy. ‘I
centred my attention on Napoleon and saw nothing but him out of that crowd of
men,’ he wrote. He travelled on to Rome under the spell of this vision and there,
after considering what he had seen, he ascended the Monte Sacro, where he fell
on his knees and swore an oath before Rodriguez to liberate South America.” 388
387
388
220
Bolivar seized his chance after Napoleon deposed King Ferdinand VII of
Spain, which unleashed a strong nationalist backlash in Spain – but not before
the legal links between Spain and its colonies had been broken. Returning to
Venezuela, Bolivar proceeded to win, lose and finally reconquer Caracas from
the Spaniards in a series of civil wars distinguished by appalling savagery on
both sides. Although the Venezuelan Republic had been proclaimed on a whites-
only franchise in 1811, thereby excluding all Indians and blacks from “the
nation”, and although Bolivar himself was a slave-owner, on reconquering
Caracas in 1813 he immediately likened all royalist Spaniards to wandering
Jews, to be “cast out and persecuted”, and declared: “Any Spaniard who does
not work against tyranny in favour of the just cause, by the most active and
effective means, shall be considered an enemy and punished as a traitor to the
country and in consequence shall inevitably be shot. Spaniards and Canarios,
depend upon it, you will die, even if you are simply neutral, unless you actively
espouse the liberation of America.”389
Bolivar was as good as his word, and proceeded to slaughter the whole
Spanish population of Caracas – whereupon the people he had supposedly come
to liberate, the Indians and blacks, both free and slave, marched against him
under the slogan of “Long live Ferdinand VII”! After murdering a further 1200
Spaniards in retaliation, Bolivar then harangued the inhabitants of Caracas,
saying: “You may judge for yourselves, without partiality, whether I have not
sacrificed my life, my being, every minute of my time in order to make a nation
of you.”390
Like his idol Napoleon, and many Latin American strongmen since, Bolivar
did not like the people expressing its will in elections, which he called “the
greatest scourge of republics [which] produce only anarchy”. The liberator of
Mexico, Agustin de Iturbide, agreed, proclaiming himself Emperor in 1822. But
such unrepublican immodesty was nothing compared to Bolivar’s, who “hung
in the dining room of his villa outside Bogota a huge portrait of himself being
crowned by two genii, with the inscription: ‘Bolivar is the God of Colombia’.” 391
Nor, in the end, did he have much time for the people he had liberated.
Shortly after the assassination of his right-hand man, General José Antonio de
Sucre, when he was in self-imposed exile in Europe, he admitted that
independence was the only benefit he had brought “at the cost of everything
else”, and declared: “America [by which he meant Latin America] is
ungovernable. He who serves the revolution ploughs the sea… This country will
inexorably fall into the hands of uncontrollable multitudes, thereafter to pass
under… tyrants of all colours and races. Those who have served the revolution
have ploughed the sea. The only thing to do in America is emigrate.” 392 And
again: “America can be ruled only by an able despotism.”393
389
Almond, op. cit., p. 89.
390
391
392
Bolivar, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 546.
393
Bolivar, in “Mixed Blessing”, The Economist, December 31, 1999, p. 68.
221
The truth of this saying appears to be borne out by the history of Argentina,
whose war of independence (1810-1818) led to the liberation, not only of
Argentina, but also of the whole of the South of South America from Spanish
rule. Argentine rulers tended to be caudillos, strong men. In general, we may say
that the wars of liberation from supposed tyrants are almost always led by
“strong men” with tyrannical tendencies…
Despotism also prevailed in another “liberated” country of the region,

Paraguay, where it became a “secular replacement” for the former “Jesuit
communist empire”.394 “After independence,” writes David Landes, “like other
debris states of the great Hispanic empire, Paraguay had fallen almost
immediately under the control of dictators. The laws said republic, but the
practice was one-man rule – a mix of benevolent despotism and populist
tyranny. The first of these dictators…, Dr. Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, was
something special. A Jacobin ideologue, and like many of the French variety, a
lawyer by training, Francia was committed to a republic of equals and him more
equal than the rest. He was he was the ‘organic leader’, the elitist embodying the
popular will… Dr. Francia and his successors, Lopez father and son, would turn
the country into an enlightened Sparta – egalitarian, literate, disciplined, and
brave.”395
“It is generally accepted,” writes Zamoyski, “that the former Spanish colonies
never again achieved the wealth in which they had basked before 1810. Some
maintain that they were also better governed, more lawful and more peaceful
under Spanish rule than at any time since, and there is something to be said for
this view.
“Slavery was finally abolished in the former Spanish colonies in the late
1850s, but economic slavery remained endemic throughout the region. The
manner in which independence and nationhood were forced upon these
societies gave rise to systemic instability. The various Liberators could not count
on devotion to a cause to animate their troops and supporters, as the cause was
imaginary. Nor could they mobilize one whole section of the population on
behalf of a specific interest for any length of time. And they certainly could not
depend on colleagues, who were bound, sooner or later, to contest their
authority. They therefore had to keep rearranging alliances and decapitating any
faction that grew too strong. In order to enlist the loyalty and sympathy of the
lower orders, they would make a point of drawing these into the army. But as
such recruits became professionals, they cut their links with the classes they
came from and grew into arrogant Praetorians who carried with them an
element of incipient mutiny.”396
394
Horton Box, The Origins of the Paraguayan War, University of Illinois, 1927.
395
Lanes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, London: Abacus, 1999, pp. 330, 331.
396
222
27. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (5) GERMANY
“The idea of the nation as a political-cultural expression,” writes Sebag
Sebastian Montefiore, “had been propagated by the French Revolution, yet
ironically it was the war of liberation against Napoleon that had really
legitimized nationalism as the authentic spirit of a people.”397
In his book The Idea of Nationalism (1944), Hans Kohn, a Zionist of Czech-
German background, made an important distinction between two dominant
categories of nationalism – French-style, or Western European nationalism, and
German-style, or Central and East European nationalism.
These two types of nationalism have been summarized by Shlomo Sand as

follows: “Western nationalism, with an essentially voluntarist approach, which
developed on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, bounded on the east by
Switzerland; and the organic national identity that spread eastward from the
Rhine, encompassing Germany, Poland, the Ukraine and Russia.
“Nationalism in the West, except in Ireland, is an original phenomenon that

sprang from autochthonous sociopolitical forces, without outside intervention.
In most cases it appears when the state, which is engaged in modernization, is
well established or is being established. This nationalism draws its ideas from
the traditions of the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment, and its
principles are based on individualism and liberalism, both legal and political.
The hegemonic class that engenders this national consciousness is a powerful,
secular bourgeoisie, and it constructs civil institutions with political power that
play a decisive role in the formation of liberal democracy. It is a self-confident
bourgeoisie, and the national politics it fosters tend generally toward openness
and inclusiveness. Becoming a citizen of the United States, Britain, France, the
Netherlands or Switzerland depends not only on origin and birth but also on the
will to join. For all the differences between national perceptions, anyone
naturalized in these countries is seen, legally and ideologically, as a member of
the nation, with the state as the common property of the citizenry.
“According to Kohn, the nationalism that developed in Central and Eastern

Europe (the Czech case being something of an exception) was, by contrast, a
historical product catalyzed principally from outside. It came into being during
Napoleon’s conquests and began to take shape as a movement of resistance
against the ideas and progressive values of the Enlightenment. In these
countries, the national idea arose before, and in fact was unconnected with, the
consolidation of a modern state apparatus. In these political cultures the middle
classes were weak, and the civil institutions they founded were deferential
toward the central and aristocratic authorities…”398
German-style nationalism was deeply influenced by Romanticism; in fact, it

may be called the collective analogue of Romantic individualism. For, as M.S.
397
Montefiore, The Romanovs, London: Wedenfeld and Nicolson, 2016, p. 371.
398
Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, London: Verso, 2009, pp. 46-47.
223
Anderson writes: “From one point of view, to be a romantic was to stress the
individual and the unique, genius, originality, spontaneity. Yet at the same time
the romantic sense of history emphasized the impossibility of escaping
completely from the past and asserted that the development of human
institutions was continuous, not something that proceeded by jumps. Moreover
the populism which some of the more politically radical romantics affected, like
the organic conception of the state and the emphasis on corporate bodies and
peasant communities which appealed to others, did not square easily with
assertive individualism.”399
“For Byronic romantics,” writes Berlin, “’I’ is indeed an individual, the

outsider, the adventurer, the outlaw, he who defies society and accepted values,
and follows his own – it may be to his doom, but this is better than conformity,
enslavement to mediocrity. But for other thinkers ‘I’ becomes something much
more metaphysical. It is a collective – a nation, a Church, a Party, a class, an
edifice in which I am only a stone, an organism of which I am only a tiny living
fragment. It is the creator; I myself matter only in so far as I belong to the
movement, the race, the nation, the class, the Church; I do not signify as a true
individual within this super-person to whom my life is organically bound.
Hence German nationalism: I do this not because it is good or right or because I
like it – I do it because I am a German and this is the German way to live. So also
modern existentialism – I do it because I commit myself to this form of existence.
Nothing makes me; I do not do it because it is an objective order which I obey, or
because of universal rules to which I must adhere; I do it because I create my
own life as I do; being what I am, I give it direction and I am responsible for it.
Denial of universal values, this emphasis on being above all an element in, and
loyal to, a super-self, is a dangerous moment in European history, and has led to
a great deal that has been destructive and sinister in modern times; this is where
it begins, in the political ruminations and theories of the earliest German
romantics and their disciples in France and elsewhere.” 400
In its early stages Kant, Hegel and Goethe had all praised the Revolution; and
Kant’s disciple, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, had even declared that “henceforth the
French Republic alone can be the country of the Just”. Friedrich Schlegel did not
see France and Germany as rivals, but wanted “a relationship of mutual
cooperation and fulfillment. Novalis too wanted to overcome national rivalries
in a Christian Europe. The magazine Europa (1803-5) was also dedicated to the
same end. It was edited by Friedrich Schlegel, whose brother August Wilhelm
spoke of ‘European patriotism’.”401
Many West Germans preferred the French, rather than the Prussians, to be
their overlord. “This explains why, in 1804, a deputation of Rhineland Catholic
princes welcomed First Consul Bonaparte during his Charlemagne-themed visit
399
Anderson, The Ascendancy of Europe, 1815-1914, London: Longman, 1985, p. 337.
400
Berlin, “My Intellectual Path”, The Power of Ideas, pp. 10-11.
401
Dietrich von Engelhardt, “Romanticism in Germany” in Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich (eds.),
Romanticism in National Context, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 117.
224
to Aachen, declaring that he was the first of our Caesars to have crossed the Rhine to
drive out the barbarians. It was a broad hint that the Rhineland Catholics would
see the French as liberators, not as conquerors.”402
Even Prussia’s overwhelming defeat by Napoleon at Jena in 1806 did not

immediately dim the Germans’ enthusiasm for their conqueror. Hegel called him
“that world spirit”, and the Swiss historian Johannes von Müller declared: “I see
that God has given [Napoleon] dominion over the world; never has that been
clearer to me than in this war.” His worship of Napoleon led to him being made
secretary of state for Westphalia in 1807.403
However, in the same year of 1807 there began one of the decisive, truly
revolutionary turning-points in the history of ideas, when the secular, rationalist
cult of the nation on the French model acquired an irrational, quasi-religious,
Germanic Romantic passion that was, over the next century and more, to set
much of Europe on fire. The cause was undoubtedly, as Zamoyski writes, the
same event that had elicited Hegel’s and von Müller’s eulogies - “Napoleon’s
crushing defeat of the Prussians at the Battle of Jena in 1806. The humiliation of
seeing the prestigious army created by the great Frederick trounced by the
French led to painful self-appraisal and underlined the need for regeneration.
But it also stung German pride and dispelled the last shreds of sympathy for
France – and, with them, the universalist dreams of the previous decade.” 404
The origins of German nationalism go back to this reaction against the French
revolution that took place in Germany after Napoleon had marched through it as
a conquering and destroying hero… Against the French insistence that they were
“the great nation”, the universal nation, and therefore were allowed to impose
themselves on all others, the Germans defended the uniqueness and holiness of
their own nation. Their reaction was born of wounded pride, victimhood, a “form
of collective humiliation", in Sir Isaiah Berlin’s words.405
The reaction began with a powerful movement for reform in the army. As
Philip Bobbitt writes, "The Prussian military reforms from 1807 on were
designed to effect this change. Here it is enough to say that the Prussian force
that fought from 1813 onward waged war with the same patriotic motivation as
that which inspired the French. As Clausewitz wrote, it was 'a war of the
people'"406… In 1809 the playwright Heinrich von Kleist called Napoleon “a
spirit of destruction who rises from hell” 407, and the Germans were now
prepared to reply to violence with violence… The German Masons also changed.
As Tikhomirov writes, “having betrayed their fatherland at first, they raised
402
James Hawes, The Shortest History of Germany Devon: Old Street Publishing, 2018, pp. 85-86.
403
Von Müller, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 534.
404
405
Berlin, "The Bent Twig: On the Rise of Nationalism", The Crooked Timber of Humanity. London:
John Murry, p. 245.
406
Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, London: Penguin, 2002, p. 539.
407
Von Kleist, in Cohen and Major, op. cit.,
225
their voices against the French, by virtue of which the German national
movement arose”408…
But the decisive factor was that the Germans at last found a voice, a prophetic
voice sounding in the wilderness of German defeat. This was the voice of Fichte
in Addresses to the German Nation (1807), which used Ezekiel’s vision of the dry
bones to describe the future regeneration of Germany: “Although the bones of
our national unity… may have bleached and dried in the storms and rains and
burning suns of several centuries, yet the reanimating breath of the spirit world
has not ceased to inspire. It will yet raise the dead bones of our national body
and join them bone to bone so that they shall stand forth grandly with a new
life… No man, no god, nothing in the realm of possibility can help us, but we
alone must help ourselves, as long as we deserve it…”409
Fichte’s quest for resurrection for the German nation owed less to the
resurrection of Christian faith than to the resurrection of paganism, and of the
myths of the pagan German gods; whose final burial would come over a century
later, in the ruins of Nazi Berlin…
Joseph Görres described this pagan creed as follows: “Let the nation learn to
trace itself to its source, delve into its roots: it will find in its innermost being a
fathomless well-spring which rises from subterranean treasure; many minds
have already been enriched by drawing on the hoard of the Niebelungen; and
still it lies there inexhaustible, in the depths of its lair…”410
“Fichte,” writes Paul Johnson, “was much impressed by Niccolò Machiavelli

and saw life as a continuing struggle for supremacy among the nations. The
nation-state most likely to survive and profit from this struggle was the one
which extended its influence over the lives of its people most widely. And such a
nation-state – Germany was the obvious example – would naturally be
expansive. ‘Every nation wants to disseminate as widely as possible the good
points which are peculiar to it. And, in so far as it can, it wants to assimilate the
entire human race to itself in accordance with an urge planted in men by God,
an urge on which the community of nations, the friction between them, and their
development towards perfection rest.’
“This was a momentous statement because it gave the authority of Germany’s

leading academic philosopher to the proposition that the power impulse of the
state was both natural and healthy, and it placed the impulse in the context of a
moral world view. Fichte’s state was totalitarian and expansive, but it was not
revolutionary. Its ‘prince’ ruled by hereditary divine right. But ‘the prince
belongs to his nation just as wholly and completely as it belongs to him. Its
destiny under divine providence is laid in his hands, and he is responsible for it.’
So the prince’s public acts must be moral, in accordance with law and justice,
and his private life must be above reproach. In relations between states,
however, ‘there is neither law nor justice, only the law of strength. This
408
409
410
226
relationship places the divine, sovereign fights of fate and of world rule in the
prince’s hands, and it raises him above the commandments of personal morals
and into a higher moral order whose essence is contained in the words, Salus et
decus populi suprema lex esto.’ This was an extreme and menacing statement that
justified any degree of ruthlessness by the new, developing nation-state in its
pursuit of self-determination and self-preservation. The notion of a ‘higher
moral order’, to be determined by the state’s convenience, was to find
expression, in the 20th century, in what Lenin called ‘the Revolutionary
Conscience’ and Hitler ‘the Higher Law of the Party’. Moreover, there was no
doubt what kind of state Fichte had in mind. It was not only totalitarian but
German. In his Addresses to the German Nation (1807), he laid down as axiomatic
that the state of the future can only be the national state, in particular the
German national state, the German Reich.”411
The link between Fichte’s egoistic metaphysics and his nationalism was
indicated by Bertrand Russell. Fichte was also an idealist philosopher, who
“carried subjectivism to a point which seems almost to involve a kind of
insanity. He holds that the Ego is the only reality, and that it exists because it
posits itself; the non-Ego, which has a subordinate reality, also exists only
because the Ego posits it… The Ego as a metaphysical concept easily became
confused with the empirical Fichte; since the Ego was German, it followed that
the Germans were superior to all other nations. ‘To have character and to be a
German,’ says Fichte, ‘undoubtedly mean the same thing’. On this basis he
worked out a whole philosophy of nationalistic totalitarianism, which had great
influence in Germany”.412
“As the revolution progressed,” writes Zamoyski, “the feeling grew in

Germany that the French, with their habitual shallowness, had got it all wrong.
They had allowed the pursuit of liberty to degenerate into mob rule and mass
slaughter of innocent people because they perceived liberty in mechanical terms.
German thinkers were more interested in ‘real liberty', and many believed that it
was the ‘corrupt’ nature of the French that had doomed the revolution to failure.
Such conclusions allowed for a degree of smugness, suggesting as they did that
the French Enlightenment, for all its brilliance, had been flawed, while German
intellectual achievements had been more profound and more solid.
“Fichte identified Germany’s greatness as lying in her essentially spiritual

destiny. She would never stoop to conquer others, and while nations such as the
French, the English or the Spanish scrambled for wealth and dominance,
Germany’s role was to uphold the finest values of humanity. 413 Similar claims to
411
Johnson, The Birth of the Modern, World Society 1815-1830, London: Phoenix, 1992, pp. 810-811.
412
Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, London: Allen & Unwin, 1946, pp. 744-745.
413
Thus Fichte said: “The genius of foreigners will be like the amiable hummingbird [or] the
industrious and skilful bee which gathers in the honey… but the German spirit will be the eagle
which will lift his heavy body on powerful wings and, through a long and exciting flight, climbs
ever higher and higher towards the sun” (Addresses to the German Nation). (V.M.)
227
moral superiority and a moral mission for Germany were made by Herder,
Hölderlin, Schlegel and others…
“It had been central to Herder’s argument that each nation, by virtue of its
innate character, had a special role to play in the greater process of history. One
after another, nations ascended the world stage to fulfill their ordained purpose.
The French were crowding the proscenium, but there was a growing conviction
that Germany’s time was coming, and her destiny was about to unfold. The
Germans certainly seemed ready for it. The country was awash with under-
employed young men, and since the days of the proto-romantic movement of
Sturm und Drang the concept of action, both as a revolt against stultifying
rational forces and as a transcendent act of self-assertion, had become well
established. Fichte equated virtually any action, provided it was bold and
unfettered, with liberation.
“The problem was that the nation was still not properly constituted. Some
defined it by language and culture, or, like Fichte, by a level of consciousness.
The Germans were, according to him, more innately creative than other nations,
being the only genuine people in Europe, an Urvolk, speaking the only authentic
language, Ursprache. Others saw the nation as a kind of church, defined by the
‘mission’ of the German people. Adam Müller affirmed that this mission was to
serve humanity with charity, and that any man who dedicated himself to this
common purpose should be considered a German. In his lectures of 1806, Fichte
made the connection between committed action and nationality. Those who
stood up and demonstrated their vitality were part of the Urvolk, those who did
not were un-German. Hegel saw the people as a spiritual organism, whose
expression, the collective spirit or Volksgeist, was its validating religion. The
discussion mingled elements of theology, science and metaphysics to produce
uplifting and philosophically challenging confusion.
“But in the absence of clear geographical or political parameters, Germany’s

national existence was ultimately dependent on some variant of the racial
concept. And this began to be stated with increasing assertiveness. ‘In itself
every nationality is a completely closed and rounded whole, a common tie of
blood relationship unites all its members; all… must be of one mind and must
stick together like one man’, according to Joseph Görres, who had once been an
enthusiastic internationalist. ‘This instinctive urge that binds all members into a
whole is a law of nature which takes preference over all artificial contracts… The
voice of nature in ourselves warns us and points to the chasm between us and
the alien’.
“The location and identification of this ‘closed and rounded whole’ involved
not just defining German ethnicity, but also delving into the past in search of a
typically German and organic national unit to set against the old rationalist
French view of statehood based on natural law and the rights of man. The bible
of this tendency was Tacitus’s Germania. Placed in its own time, this book is as
much about Rome as about Germanic tribes. It imagines the ultimate non-Rome,
a place that had not been cleared and cultivated, and a people innocent of the
arts of industry and leisure. The forest life it describes is the antithesis to the
228
classical culture of Rome. It is also in some ways the original noble savage myth,
representing everything that decadent Rome had lost; beneath Tacitus’s
contempt for the savage denizens of the forest lurks a vague fear that by gaining
in civilization the Romans had forfeited certain rugged virtues.
“The German nationalists picked up this theme, which mirrored their relation
to French culture. Roma and Germania, the city and the forest, corruption and
purity, could stand as paradigms for the present situation. The ancient Teutonic
hero Arminius (Hermann) had led the revolt of the German tribes against Rome
and defeated the legions in the Teutonburg Forest. His descendants who aspired
to throw off the ‘Roman’ universalism of France could take heart.” 414
Dostoyevsky developed this theme of the age-old opposition between

Germany and Rome, of the perpetual revolt of the former against the latter:
“Germany’s aim is one; it existed before, always. It is her Protestantism – not that
single formula of Protestantism which was conceived in Luther’s time, but her
continual Protestantism, her continual protest against the Roman world, ever
since Arminius, - against everything that was Rome and Roman in aim, and
subsequently – against everything that was bequeathed by ancient Rome to the
new Rome and to all those peoples who inherited from Rome her idea, her
formula and element; against the heir of Rome and everything that constitutes
this legacy…
“Ancient Rome was the first to generate the idea of the universal unity of
men, and was the first to start thinking of (and firmly believing in) putting it
practically into effect in the form of universal empire. However, this formula fell
before Christianity – the formula but not the idea. For this idea is that of
European mankind; through this idea its civilization came into being; for it alone
mankind lives.
“Only the idea of the universal Roman empire succumbed, and it was
replaced by a new ideal, also universal, of a communion in Christ. This new
ideal bifurcated into the Eastern ideal of a purely spiritual communion of men,
and the Western European, Roman Catholic, papal ideal diametrically opposed
to the Eastern one.
“This Western Roman Catholic incarnation of the idea was achieved in its
own way, having lost, however, its Christian, spiritual foundation and having
replaced it with the ancient Roman legacy. [The] Roman papacy proclaimed that
Christianity and its idea, without the universal possession of lands and peoples,
are not spiritual but political. In other words, they cannot be achieved without
the realization on earth of a new universal Roman empire now headed not by
the Roman emperor but by the Pope. And thus it was sought to establish a new
universal empire in full accord with the spirit of the ancient Roman world, only
in a different form.
414
Zamoyski, op. cit., pp. 162, 163-165.
229
“Thus, we have in the Eastern ideal – first, the spiritual communion of
mankind in Christ, and thereafter, in consequence of the spiritual unity of all
men in Christ and as an unchallenged deduction therefrom – a just state and
social communion. In the Roman interpretation we have a reverse situation: first
it is necessary to achieve firm state unity in the form of a universal empire, and
only after that, perhaps, spiritual fellowship under the rule of the Pope as the
potentate of this world.
“Since that time, in the Roman world this scheme has been progressing and
changing uninterruptedly, and with its progress the most essential part of the
Christian element has been virtually lost. Finally, having rejected Christianity
spiritually, the heirs of the ancient Roman world likewise renounced [the]
papacy. The dreadful French revolution has thundered. In substance, it was but
the last modification and metamorphosis of the same ancient Roman formula of
universal unity. The new formula, however, proved insufficient. The new idea
failed to come true. There even was a moment when all the nations which had
inherited the ancient Roman tradition were almost in despair. Oh, of course, that
portion of society which in 1789 won political leadership, i.e. the bourgeoisie,
triumphed and declared that there was no necessity of going any further. But all
those minds which by virtue of the eternal laws of nature are destined to dwell
in a state of everlasting universal fermentation seeking new formulae of some
ideal and a new word indispensable to the progress of the human organism, -
they all rushed to the humiliated and the defrauded, to all those who had not
received their share in the new formula of universal unity proclaimed by the
French revolution of 1789. These proclaimed a new word of their own, namely,
the necessity of universal fellowship not for the equal distribution of rights
allotted to a quarter, or so, of the human race, leaving the rest to serve as raw
material and a means of exploitation for the happiness of that quarter of
mankind, but, on the contrary – for universal equality, with each and every one
sharing the blessings of this world, whatever these may prove. It was decided to
put this scheme into effect by resorting to all means, i.e., not by the means of
Christian civilisation – without stopping at anything.
“Now, what has been Germany’s part in this, throughout these two thousand
years? The most characteristic and essential trait of this great, proud and
peculiar people – ever since their appearance on the historical horizon –
consisted of the fact that they never consented to assimilate their destiny and
their principles to those of the outermost Western world, i.e. the heirs of the
ancient Roman tradition. The Germans have been protesting against the latter
throughout these two thousand years. And even though they did not (never did
so far) utter ‘their word’, or set forth their strictly formulated ideal in lieu of the
ancient Roman idea, nevertheless, it seems that, within themselves, they always
were convinced that they were capable of uttering this ‘new word’ and of
leading mankind. They struggled against the Roman world as early as the times
of Arminius, and during the epoch of Roman Christianity they, more than any
other nation, struggled for the sovereign power against the new Rome.
230
“Finally, the Germans protested most vehemently, deriving their formula of
protest from the innermost spiritual, elemental foundation of the Germanic
world: they proclaimed the freedom of inquiry, and raised Luther’s banner. This
was a terrible, universal break: the formula of protest had been found and filled
with a content; even so it still was a negative formula, and the new, positive word
was not yet uttered.
“And now, the Germanic spirit, having uttered this ‘new word’ of protest, as
it were, fainted for a while, quite parallel to an identical weakening of the former
strictly formulated unity of the forces of his adversary. The outermost Western
world, under the influence of the discovery of America, of new sciences and new
principles, sought to reincarnate itself in a new truth, in a new phase.
“When, at the time of the French revolution, the first attempt at such a
reincarnation took place, the Germanic spirit became quite perplexed, and for a
time lost its identity and faith in itself. It proved impotent to say anything
against the new ideas of the outermost Western world. Luther’s Protestantism
had long outlived its time, while the idea of free inquiry had long been accepted
by universal science. Germany’s enormous organism more than ever began to
feel that it had no flesh, so to speak, and no form for self-expression. It was then
that the pressing urge to consolidate itself, at least outwardly, into a harmonious
organism was born in Germany in anticipation of the new future aspects of her
eternal struggle against the outermost Western world…”415
Let us return to the narrative of Germany’s War of Liberation… “The French,”

continues Zamoyski, “became villains, and Napoleon himself was even
portrayed as the Antichrist, a focus for the crusading struggle of deliverance that
would regenerate Germany. Poets composed patriotic verse and anti-Napoleonic
songs…
“But while the mood changed, reality had not. Germany was still divided and
cowered under French hegemony. To the deep shame of much of her officer
corps, Prussia was still an ally of France when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812.
Her forces, which did not take part in the march on Moscow, were to support
the French and secure their flank in East Prussia. And it was when the frozen
remnants were trudging back into Prussia and Poland that this support would
415
F.M. Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, May-June, 1877, chapter III, 1; Haslemere: Ianmead,
1984, pp. 727, 728-730. “It may perhaps be accidental,” writes Sir Karl Popper, “but it is in any
case remarkable, that there is still a cultural frontier between Western Europe and the regions of
Central Europe which coincide very nearly with those regions that did not enjoy the blessings of
Augustus’ Roman Empire, and that did not enjoy the blessings of the Roman peace, i.e. of the
Roman civilization. The same ‘barbarian’ regions are particularly prone to be affected by
mysticism, even though they did not invent mysticism. Bernard of Clairvaux had his greatest
successes in Germany, where later Eckhart and his school flourished, and also Boehme.
“Much later Spinoza, who attempted to combine Cartesian intellectualism with mystical
tendencies, rediscovered the theory of a mystical intellectual intuition, which, in spite of Kant’s
strong opposition, led to the post-Kantian rise of ‘Idealism’, to Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel” (The
Open Society and its Enemies, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, p. 353).
231
have been most welcome. But it was precisely then that the Prussian military
judged it safe to show their colours. General von Yorck, in command of 14,000
men in East Prussia, found himself in a pivotal position. With his support,
Marshal Macdonald would be able to hold the line of the River Niemen and
keep the Russians out of Poland; without it, he had no option but full retreat.
The Prussian general had been in touch with the Russians for some time,
through the intermediary of a young German officer in Russian service by the
name of Carl von Clausewitz. On Christmas Day 1812 Yorck met the
commander of the Russian advance guard and, by a convention he signed with
them at Tauroggen, repudiated Prussia’s alliance with France. It was an act of
mutiny, the first in a series of acts by the German army to ‘save’ the fatherland
against the orders of its political leaders. It was also the signal for all the
nationalists to come out into the open.
“The irascible Ernst Moritz Arndt was well to the fore. ‘Oh men of Germany!’
he exhorted, ‘feel again your God, hear and fear the eternal, and you heard and
fear also your Volk; you feel again in God the honour and dignity of your fathers,
their glorious history rejuvenates itself again in you, their firm and gallant virtue
reblossoms in you, the whole German Fatherland stands again before you in the
august halo of past centuries… One faith, one love, one courage, and one
enthusiasm must gather again the whole German Volk in brotherly community…
Be Germans, be one, will to be one by love and loyalty, and no devil will
vanquish you.’
“The king of Prussia did not feel quite brave enough to ‘be German’ yet. He
ordered the arrest of Yorck, and then moved to Breslau, where he was out of
reach of the French. In March 1813, when he saw that it was safe for him to jump
on the anti-Napoleon bandwagon, Frederick William announced the formation
of citizens’ volunteer forces, the Landwehr and the Landsturm. On 17 March he
issued a proclamation to the effect that his soldiers would ‘fight for our
independence and the honour of the Volk’, and summoned every son of the
fatherland to participate. ‘My cause is the cause of my Volk,’ he concluded, less
than convincingly. But nobody was looking too closely at anyone’s motives in
the general excitement. The cause of the German fatherland justified everything.
‘Strike them dead!’ Heinrich von Kleist had urged the soldiers setting off to war
with the French. ‘At the last judgement you will not be asked for your reasons!’
“The campaign of 1813, when the patched-up Napoleonic forces attempted to

stand up to the combined armies of Russia, Prussia, Sweden and Austria, and
finally succumbed at Leipzig, should, according to Chateaubriand, go down in
history as ‘the campaign of young Germany, of the poets’. That was certainly the
perception. The by no means young Fichte finished his lecture on the subject of
duty and announced to his students at Berlin that the course was suspended
until they gained liberty or death. He marched out of the hall amid wild cheers,
and led the students off to put their names down for the army…
“The War of Liberation, Freiheitskrieg, was, above all, a war of purification and
self-discovery. It did not stop with the expulsion of French forces from Germany
in 1813. If anything, it was in the course of 1814, when Napoleon's forces were
232
fighting for survival on French soil, that the War of Liberation really got going in
Germany…
“But the War of Liberation was being waged no less vehemently at the
cultural level. The poets were not squeamish when it came to singing of the
national crusade, while the painters rallied to the cause in a memorable way.
Caspar David Friedrich, who had already done so much to represent the
symbolic German landscape as an object of worship through a series of paintings
in which people are depicted contemplating its wonder like so many saints
adoring the nativity in a medieval triptych, now turned to glorifying the nation.
He painted several representations of an imaginary tomb of Hermann,
evocatively set among craggy boulders and fir trees. And he also produced
various set-pieces representing the war. Other painters depicted groups of
patriotic German volunteers going forth in their hats to free the fatherland.
Joseph Görres led a movement demanding the completion of Cologne Cathedral
as a sign of German regeneration. ‘Long shall Germany live in shame and
humiliation, a prey to inner conflict and alien arrogance, until her people return
to the ideals from which they were seduced by selfish ambition, and until true
religion and loyalty, unity of purpose and self-denial shall again render them
capable of erecting such a building as this,’ he wrote.”416
In 1815 the Congress of Vienna “sanctioned the existing division of the

German territories into a German Confederation of thirty-nine states with a
common Diet presided over by Austria. This was supposed to replace the old
Empire, and in order to suggest a continuity which nobody felt, the Diet was to
meet at Frankfurt, where the emperors had traditionally been crowned. Austria
had emerged from the revolutionary and Napoleonic era greatly weakened,
while Prussia had been strengthened, notably with the Rhineland. This not only
made what had been a north-eastern fringe state of Germany a more ubiquitous
influence, it also established Prussia as the defender of the German lands against
possible future French aggression.
“Germany was, by and large, in far better shape than it had been in 1789. The
absurd patchwork of a thousand sovereignties had been rationalized into a
manageable thirty-nine, and communication between them was facilitated by
the germs of a federal structure. But a great many people, particularly the
young, were not happy. As Talleyrand reported from Vienna to Louis XVIII, the
unification of Germany had become ‘their cry, their doctrine, their religion,
carried even to fanaticism’.”417
“University circles were particularly inflamed. New societies were formed,

along a pattern thought up by a professor of history at the university of Jena.
These Burschenschaften, as they were called, were less rowdy and more spiritual
416
Zamoyski, op. cit., pp. 166, 167-168, 169-170. In the same year of 1813, and in the same city of
Leipzig, where Napoleon was finally defeated by Prussia, the composer Richard Wagner was
born. We shall see that he, too, was to make an important contribution to German nationalism…
417
233
than the earlier associations of gymnasts. They were Christian, fervently
nationalist, anti-French and hostile to the Jews, who were beginning to play a
part in German intellectual life. They adopted the uniform of the Lützow Corps,
complete with altdeutsch floppy hat. They wore beards and long hair. They
carried daggers in their belts. They marched under a flag of black, red and gold,
thought to have been the colours of the old German Empire. As faith in the
future waned, faith in the past grew, and history supplied many of the comforts
traditionally associated with religion. They sought refuge from a world drifting
into an age of material progress in a comforting vision of a heroic Teutonic
past…
“On 18 October 1817, the fourth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig, 468
members of the Burschenschaften from twelve universities met at the great
medieval castle of the Wartburg, where Martin Luther had translated the Bible
into German. In celebrating the anniversary of Luther’s launching of the
Reformation and the anniversary of Leipzig, they were proclaiming their
rejection of Rome as well as France. They were also following the Romantic urge
to recover the authentic self from the contrived conventions within which it was
supposedly trapped. In the figure of Martin Luther they identified one who had
done just this.
“The students processed into the Knights’ Hall, where they listened to
speeches by veterans of the war of liberation, sang hymns, recited prayers, took
oaths and exchanged kisses. In the evening, they marched by torchlight to a
nearby hill, on which they lit a great bonfire to commemorate the Battle of
Leipzig. They then cast into the flames a number of books that calumniated
Germany or otherwise incurred their displeasure – including the Code Napoleon
– and various symbols of un-German repression that to their mind scarred the
Prussian Army, such as a Hessian soldier’s wig and a corporal’s baton. A group
of students from Giessen wanted to march off to the battlefield of Leipzig and
proclaim a republic there and then. ‘Oh! My German people, raise yourself to the
high moral dignity of humanity,’ wailed a theology student by the name of Karl
Ludwig Sand. ‘German people, do not allow your sacred nature to be trodden
underfoot.’”418
The torchlight procession, the burning of books – the Fascist future was
already visible… And indeed, under the impact of the new collectivist
nationalism, individualist liberalism withered. As George L. Mosse writes:
“Even a devoted Liberal like Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) came, in the
end, to the conclusion that ‘there are only two realities, God and the nation.’ At
first he tried to combine individualism with a confrontation of the national
problem as Fichte had done, but he, too, came to the realization that ‘man is
nothing by himself except through the force of the whole with which he tries to
fuse himself.’ Such romanticism swept before it the older cosmopolitan and
humanitarian ideas of the last century. The old Goethe, who still proclaimed
such sentiments and who derided the new nationalism, was as isolated a figure
in Weimar as, a century later, the old Benedetto Croce was to be an isolated
418
234
figure in the new Italy. His concept of liberal freedom was as outdated then, so it
seemed, as Goethe’s was after the German wars of liberation against the French.
Friedrich Ludwig Jahn was the wave of the future. His book Volkstum (1810)
glorified the German Volk who represented the whole of humanity and whose
task it was to civilize the world by force. But the Volk must keep itself pure and
undefiled as a race; Rome had fallen because races had mixed. Here already we
can see the leanings of the glorification of the Volk toward an explicit racism. The
state formed by the Volk would be democratic – Jahn as yet kept representative
institutions and did not push the mystical unity of the Volk to the point where it
superseded all representative forms of government.
“The ‘force of the whole’ was the German nation singled out by God as the
only valid Volk...”419
Important contributions to the new, proto-fascist ideology were made by

philosophers of history such as Hegel and historians such as Leopold von
Ranke and Ernst Arndt. Thus von Ranke wrote in 1836 "that the fatherland 'is
with us, in us'. And as 'a mysterious something that informs the lowest among
us' the idea of the nation 'precedes any form of government and animates and
permeates all its forms'." 420 Again, Arndt redefined “freedom” as, in the words
of Mosse, "the right to integrate one's self with the tradition and
customs of one's own people. The innocent and just against whom no
force must be used are those who desire to live in that way. In Arndt's
mind these were the Prussians opposed to Napoleon. What is rejected
from the 'religion' of liberty is its cosmopolitanism based on the view
of a natural law which makes the goal of freedom the same all over the
world. This emphasis upon freedom as circumscribed by national
customs and traditions contrasts with the liberal ideas of men like
Cobden and Bright in England. For them liberty was the same in all
nations, a moral imperative which transcended nationalism and was
indeed hostile to it."
Arndt foreshadowed the future, the rise of what in Germany would

be called “national liberalism”, the increasing stress upon the freedom
of the historic nation rather than upon the universality of freedom...
From now on, European man would only rarely be induced to die for
God or Church or Sovereign. But he could be induced to die for his
country; for the nation was now seen to incarnate the highest value,
whether that value was defined as simply racial superiority (Germany),
or cultural pre-eminence (France), or the rule of law in freedom
(England).
419
Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe, Boulder & London: Westview Press, 1988, pp. 58-59.
420
Spellmann, Monarchies, London: Reaktion Press, 2001, p. 209.
235
28. NATIONALISM AND THE NATONS: (6) BRITAIN
British nationalism was unlike any other in that it derived neither from the
Enlightenment nationalism of the French type, nor from the Counter-
Enlightenment nationalism of the German type, being much older than both. In
modern times, as David Starkey has effectively argued, British (or, as it then
was, English) nationalism began with Henry VIII’s decision to remove his
kingdom from every foreign jurisdiction, whether secular or ecclesiastical. This
“splendid isolation” – a “Brexit” before Brexit - was reinforced by the victory
over the Spanish Armada and the mystique of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I,
who as it were “nationalized” the monarchy. British nationalism acquired an
institutional basis after “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, when it was seen to be
incarnate in the sovereignty of the King in parliament. After weathering the
storm of the American revolution, it was given a powerful boost by the
Napoleonic wars and the final victory over Napoleon in 1815.
“The threat of invasion,” writes Jenny Uglow, “the propaganda and parades,
the raising of the volunteers and the fireworks at every victory on sea and land
had fostered a spirit of nationhood… The mass mobilization of the war years
and the huge demonstrations of the peace movement had made everyone feel
involved with the affairs of the nation, and the effect on the political culture was
transformative: governments and politicians had to adapt to the world of the
popular press and mass opinion, in the knowledge that they could never return
to the old deferential culture. This change was born of the wars, almost without
people knowing it… Everyone shared in the wars…”421
And so, as Starkey writes, “nationalism… played a part in the downfall of

Napoleon’s empire second only to British arms.”422
In the rest of the nineteenth century British nationalism – and it was truly
British now in that the Scots played almost as big a part in it as the English -
continued to be reinforced by the seemingly inexorable growth of the British
Empire, which made Britain into the world’s first truly global super-power. As
Rebecca Fraser writes, “As befitted the nation over which shone the glory of
Waterloo and the honour of removing the menace of Napoleon, and which had
financed a great deal of the war, Britain did extremely well out of the peace.
After Trafalgar she had seized the opportunity to rid herself of any rivals at sea,
and she remained the dominant country in the carrying trade. She now usefully
expanded her trading bases throughout the world, adding Malta, the Ionian
Islands, the small island of Heligoland off the coast of Hanover and some
important former French West Indian islands – St. Lucia, Tobago and Mauritius -
to her colonial possessions. The route to India was safeguarded by her
continuing to hold the Cape of Good Hope, which she had captured from the
421
Uglow, In these Times: Living in Britain through Napoleonic Wars, 1793-1815, London: Faber &
Faber, 2014.
422
Starkey, Crown & Country, p. 450.
236
Dutch, as well as Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), at the door of India. Britain’s naval
and commercial supremacy was confirmed.”423
Although the Congress of Vienna had established five great powers, whose
consultations and joint actions controlled the geopolitical situation, there was
only one truly global power – Britain. “The end of the titanic struggle with
France in 1815,” writes Tombs, “left Britain the first global hegemon in history, a
position only otherwise occupied by the United States in 1989. Its naval power
maximized its strength, enabling some 45 percent of its forces to be deployed
overseas at the end of the war. Yet there were limits to its power, some self-
imposed. Policy after Waterloo was defensive: ‘It is not our business to collect
trophies,’ wrote the Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, to the Prime Minister,
‘but to try [to] bring the world back to peaceful habits.’ An unwitting tribute was
paid by Napoleon: ‘Castlereagh had the Continent at his mercy… And he made
peace as if he had been defeated. The imbecile!’.. There was irresistible pressure
to reduce taxation and debt. The navy was rapidly cut back to a peacetime
footing, with nearly 90 percent of its officers unemployed, and the number of
ships in commission falling from 713 in 1814 to 121 in 1818. All governments
throughout the century were as parsimonious as they could be, pressed by
lobbied that combined equal devotion to peace and cheap government.
Gladstone’s Liberal government in the 1860s, for example, was so keen to reduce
the costs of empire that it was happy to contemplate ‘friendly relaxation’ of links
with the colonies, or even ‘separation’, and it shrugged off the queen’s complaint
that Britain was being reduced to ‘a second-rate power’. Military spending was
generally 2-3 percent of national income – about the same as today – but
Britain’s wealth meant that this represented more money than in any other state
except sometimes France. Yet it often seemed (as a senior officer admitted in
1899) that Britain was ‘attempting to maintain the largest empire the world has
ever seen with instruments and reserves that would be insufficient for a third-
class Military Power’.
“With limited material forces, it had to deal with robustly independent and
relatively powerful European states. The navy, master of the oceans, had 40,000
– 50,000 men in mid-century, about the same as today. Its reach, as was often
wryly observed, depended on there being water. The army was never more than
a sizeable colonial police force by comparison with those of the other Great
Powers. In 1857, on he eve of the Great Mutiny, there were only 23,000 British
soldiers in the whole of northern India from the Khyber Pass to Rangoon, fewer
than in Northern Ireland in the 1980s; and there were more British troops in
Afghanistan in 2012 than in any of the Victorian Afghan wars. So the army was
often over-exposed, sometimes disastrously so: 700 British troops, 3,800 Indian
and 12,000 civilians were massacred in Afghanistan in 1841, another 1,700 men
wiped out at Isandlwana in Zululand in 1879, and half a brigade lost at
Marwand in Afghanistan in 1880. The Foreign Office in the 1820s had a staff of
36, and the separate Diplomatic Service remained unchanged between the 1860s
423
Fraser, The People’s History of Britain, London: Chatto & Windus, 2003,p. 509.
237
and the 1910s at under 150 men, compared with a combined total of over 6,000
today. The Colonial Office numbered 113 clerks in 1903 – half the U.K. Ministry
of Defence’s press office today – to oversee an empire that consisted of over 100
separated political units (not including some 600 Indian princely states). The
Indian civil service in the late nineteenth century numbered no more than 2,000 –
smaller than OFSTED, the school inspection service, today. Many, at the time
and since, have emphasized the fragility and even the illusory nature of British
power during the once-vaunted ‘Pax Britannica’.
“Yet if we look from the outside, as if from Paris, St. Petersburg or

Constantinople, the picture is different. Britain was effectively invulnerable: all
other major states, including the United States and Japan, were invaded during
the nineteenth century, some several times. But no potential enemy since
Napoleon has ever seriously prepared an invasion of Britain, and he would
probably have failed if he mounted it; Hitler got no further than aspiration. No
one between 1815 and 1914 dreamed of threatening its security in Europe. No
major state until Japan in 1941 calculatedly attacked its empire. All were
deterred by its naval power, its huge financial and economic capacity, and its
ability to strike without being struck. Its dominance of the seas many any
repetition of the global conflicts of the eighteenth century impossible, and
restrained the imperialist ambitions of European powers. Simon Bolivar, the
early-nineteenth-century South American revolutionary leader, declared that
‘only England, mistress of the seas, can protect us against the united force of
European reaction.’ Despite continual complaints about excessive naval
spending over the century, the Royal Navy maintained overwhelming
superiority: in the 1880s it had thirty-eight large battleships, while all other
navies combined had only forty; and although the numerical superiority
declined later in the century as other countries built, it still maintained a ‘two-
power standard’, a navy larger than those of the two next strongest naval
powers combined. A striking sign of power is that in major areas Britain got its
way, and even got more than it wanted. It had not wanted to rule Egypt, for
example, but eventually did; the French did want it, but could not get it. It
obtained practically all it wanted economically in South America without
needing major political intervention. The most important international
consequence of British naval power was to provide a guarantee of open
international trading conditions for everyone, fostering an economic
globalization in many ways more complete than in the twenty-first century, and,
unlike previous periods of partial globalization, driven more by technology than
by violence.”424
But could it be argued that the British Empire, as the first exemplar of what
Simon Schama calls “the empire of good intentions”, did more good than evil?
One of these supposed good intentions was the overthrow of evil regimes, and it
is probably true that in most cases the regimes that were overturned by British
imperialism were venal and cruel. Thus François Bernier, physician to two
Mughal princes, wrote: “The country is ruined by the necessity of defraying the
enormous charges required to maintain the splendor of a numerous court, and to
424
238
pay a large army maintained for the purpose of keeping the people in subjection.
No adequate idea can be conveyed of the sufferings of the people. The cudgel
and the whip compel them to incessant labour for the benefit of others…” 425
It helped the British – in India, as elsewhere - that many of these venal

regimes were weak. Indeed, as Tombs writes, “British power and influence in
the century following Waterloo – vastly more extensive than those of those of
the United States since 1945 – are explicable in large part by the fluidity and
fragility of much of the globe. The fragmentation of the Mughal Empire
following Persian and Afghan invasions in the early eighteenth century was the
condition of British power in India. The Chinese empire entered into a crisis in
the mid-eighteenth century. The Persian Empire collapsed in the 1720s. The
Ottoman Empire began its long agony after defeat by Austria and Russian in the
late eighteenth century and Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. The
Napoleonic Wars also finished off the Spanish Empire, fragmented the
Portuguese, and enfeebled the Dutch. New and sometimes aggressive polities
were appearing in Africa and Asia, such as the Asante and Zulu kingdoms, the
caliphate of Sokoto, the Sikh and Maratha confederations, and the kingdom of
Siam. In other parts of the world, organization and identity were still local: there
were 150 ‘nations’ west of the Mississippi; over 200 language groups in
Australia; hundreds of polities and thousands of language groups in Africa.
“In these circumstances, resistance to British power was weak, and its
hegemonic position could be maintained on a shoestring. Many of the
inhabitants of a pre-nationalist world were more or less acquiescent, and even
cooperative…”426
Nevertheless, the acquisition of vast areas of other people’s land and property
– probably the biggest land-grab in history – required a justification stronger
than the weakness of the opposition...
Moreover, the British Empire presents us with a puzzling moral paradox:

how could a country whose ideology was liberalism, and which had fought, and
would continue to fight, under the banner of freedom from tyranny for all
peoples, then set about creating the largest empire the world had ever seen,
enslaving – or, at any rate, enserfing - hundreds of millions of people to itself? Of
course, there are many very different kinds and qualities of empire. A major
argument of this series of books is that one kind in particular – the Orthodox
Christian Empire, based on the symphony of powers between the Orthodox
Autocrat and the Orthodox Church – is in fact the best form of government yet
devised for the attainment of the supreme end of man: the salvation of his
immortal soul. The British Empire was not of this type, although it also claimed
to be bringing salvation in Christ to heathen peoples.
425
Bernier, in Zareer Masani, “Revisiting the Raj”, World Histories, 8, February/March, 2018, p. 32.
426
239
That the British Empire, like all great empires, had a religious
underpinning is illustrated by William Blake’s hymn Jerusalem – so
popular even to this day in England:
And did those feet in ancient time,

Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.
Of course, Blake was speaking about the building of Jerusalem in England,

not in a global empire. But subconsciously the two ideas merged into one. If
England had been visited by Christ (by tradition, as a twelve-year-old boy, in the
company of St. Joseph of Arimathaea), and was the New Jerusalem, then
Englishmen had the right – nay, the duty - to export their dominion throughout
the world… There were echoes here of the Third Rome messianism of Russian
Orthodoxy: England was the Third Rome, and there would be no fourth. And
truly, “the British saw themselves as having duties as well as interests, and, like
other powerful peoples, saw their interests as the interests of all, spreading
Christian civilization, breaking down vested interests, encouraging toleration,
opening communications, and promoting international commerce. Governments
upheld what they saw as the national interest and very rarely allowed
themselves to be dictated by lobbies: they manipulated business interests rather
than being manipulated by them. The broad aim was to project a favourable
image of Britain as embodying constitutional freedoms, humanitarian rights and
the rule of law. British politicians often felt moral pressure to intervene where
states were failing or non-existent, most extensively in India and Africa. Inaction
was seen as a shameful dereliction of duty. It was strongly felt to be an
obligation to provide leadership and assist the forces of progress, preferably by
peaceful means, but by force if necessary against ‘barbarity’. The moralizing,
missionary aspect of nineteenth-century politics should not be underestimate,
despite Cecil Rhodes’s cynical quip that empire was philanthropy plus 5 percent
profit. So Britain was diplomatically very active and at war somewhere most of
the time. There was lethal arrogance here, combined with naïvely optimistic
generosity believing that the freedom and prosperity England had recently
secured should be spread…
240
“The ideological foundations of foreign policy were above all Whig ideas of
English history as the triumph of Progress. This led Charles James Fox to commit
the Whigs to supporting ‘civil and religious liberties all over the world’. Tories –
often accused from Castlereagh onwards of complicity with reactionary regimes
– did tend to be less assertive and ‘ethical’, though these were differences of
degree. For generations, much of the energy came from evangelical Anglicans
the Nonconformist conscience – what we might call the ‘religious left’. Radicals,
both secular and Christian, believed in the universality of progressive values,
which they considered Britain had a duty to uphold. The most pugnacious
exponent of this muscular liberalism was Henry John Temple, 3 rd Viscount
Palmerston (1784-18650, whose career spanned six decades. He was Secretary of
War as early as 1809, Foreign Secretary from 1830 to 1741 and 1846 to 1851, and
Prime Minister from 1855 to 1858 and 1859 to 1863 – the zenith of British power
and overseas activity. Palmerston was a cosmopolitan Anglo-Irishman who
liked to play John Bull: he could say unashamedly that inferior states needed to
feel his stick across their shoulders from time to time, and also say that the
extinction of the Atlantic slave trade was the greatest moment of his career. The
brutality and the humanitarianism emerged from the same frame of mind.” 427
Niall Ferguson summarizes his case for the British Empire as follows: “For
much (though certainly, as we shall see, not all) of its history, the British Empire
acted as an agency for imposing free markets, the rule of law, investor protection
and relatively incorrupt government on roughly a quarter of the world. The
Empire also did a good deal to encourage those things in countries which were
outside its formal imperial domain but under its economic influence through the
‘imperialism of free trade’. Prima facie, there therefore seems a plausible case that
empire enhanced global welfare – in other words, was a Good Thing.
“Many charges can of course be leveled against the British Empire; they will
not be dropped in what follows. I do not claim, as John Stuart Mill did, that
British rule in India was ‘not only the purest in intention but one of the most
beneficent in act ever known to mankind’; nor, as Lord Curzon did, that ‘the
British Empire is under Providence the greatest instrument for good that the
world has seen’; nor, as General Smuts claimed, that it was ‘the widest system of
organized human freedom which has ever existed in human history’. The
Empire was never so altruistic. In the eighteenth century the British were indeed
as zealous in the acquisition and exploitation of slaves as they were
subsequently zealous in trying to stamp slavery out; and for much longer they
practiced forms of racial discrimination and segregation that we today consider
abhorrent. When imperial authority was challenged – in India in 1857, in
Jamaica in 1831 or 1865, in South Africa in 1899 – the British response was brutal.
When famine struck (in Ireland in the 1840s, in India in the 1870s) their response
was negligent, in some measure positively culpable. Even when they took a
scholarly interest in oriental cultures, perhaps they did subtly denigrate them in
the process.
427
241
“Yet the fact remains that no organization in history has done more to
promote the free movement of goods, capital and labour than the British Empire
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And no organization has done
more to impose Western norms of law, order and governance around the world.
To characterize all this as ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ risks underselling the scale –
and modernity – of the achievement in the sphere of economics; just as criticism
of the ‘ornamental’ (meaning hierarchical) character of British rule overseas
tends to overlook the signal virtues of what were remarkable non-venal
administrations.”428
Of course, this analysis begs the question whether “the free movement of
goods, capital and labour” is such an indubitable good. In England for
generations, it was argued by many, it was an indubitable evil, in that it plunged
much of the working population into terrible, soul-destroying poverty, while
increasing the pride, cruelty and hypocrisy of the governing class to a proverbial
degree (“Victorian hypocrisy” is still a byword). But, as we shall see in more
detail later, if weighed on the scale of that utilitarian principle of Jeremy
Bentham, “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”, it is not clear whether
the pros or the cons of the principle have the edge – for England, at any rate.
It is difficult to see how it could have been a boon for anyone else unless we
are looking at the very long term. Thus the destruction of the indigenous Indian
textile industry by competition with the factories of Northern England doomed
millions of Indian peasants to even greater poverty. And while the British
administration was indeed less venal than the Mughal one that it replaced, this
was a relatively small benefit to place in the scale against the five million dead in
the Bengal famine of 1773-74 and the famines that periodically recurred
thereafter.
But if it is argued that such suffering was justified in that it was a necessary
stage “on the path to modernity” and the modern, democratic India, then we are
back with the Jesuit principle that the end justifies the means, and the idea that
the sufferings of one generation, undertaken unwillingly at the hands of
foreigners, can compensate for the relatively greater prosperity of another, much
later one that has imbibed the foreigners’ world-view.
Ferguson continues: “When the British governed a country – even when they
only influenced its government by flexing their military and financial muscles –
there were certain distinctive features of their own society that they tended to
disseminate. A list of the most important of these would run:
1. The English language

2. English forms of land tenure
3. Scottish and English banking
4. The Common Law
5. Protestantism
6. Team Sports
428
Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World, London: Penguin, 2004, pp. xxi-xxii.
242
7. The limited or ‘night watchman’ state
8. Representative assemblies
9. The idea of liberty
“The last of these is perhaps the most important because it remains the most
distinctive feature of the Empire, the thing that sets it apart from its continental
rivals. I do not mean to claim that all British imperialists were liberals: some
were very far from it. But what is striking about the history of the Empire is that
whenever the British were behaving despotically, there was almost always a
liberal critique of that behaviour from within British society. Indeed, so powerful
and consistent was this tendency to judge Britain’s imperial conduct by the
yardstick of liberty that it gave the British Empire something of a self-liquidating
character. Once a colonized society had sufficiently adopted the other
institutions the British brought with them, it became very hard for the British to
prohibit that political liberty to which they attached so much significance for
themselves.”429
But prohibit it they did. Because for all their talk of liberty and equality, the
British believed that they were superior to the peoples they governed, and
therefore entitled to deprive them of their liberty indefinitely. So not only did
the “liberal Empire” of Britain introduce the benefits of liberalism by illiberal
means – coercion and conquest: these benefits, according to the racist views of
the conquerors, could never really be absorbed or applied by the natives because
they were naturally slaves. This was because, as Ferguson admits, the spreading
of liberalism was not the real motivation for the creation of the Empire, but
rather commercial gain from the import of sugar, spices, cotton, etc., and the
export of manufactures, financial services, etc. When that commercial gain was
threatened for one reason or another, the British response was to send in the
gunboats or the redcoats, and annex the territory in question before introducing
those western institutions – property rights, contractual law – that would
guarantee a stable, long-term trading relationship. And so “the rise of the British
Empire, it might be said, had less to do with the Protestant work ethic or English
individualism than with the British sweet tooth.” 430 And when the end of the
Empire came, after the Second World War, it came not so much as result of the
British at length deciding that the natives were now mature enough to govern
themselves, nor even because the natives’ demand for self-government had
acquired an unstoppable momentum, but simply because the Empire was now
broke and could no longer afford its colonies: Mammon, not God or liberalism,
had decided the issue…431
429
Ferguson, op. cit., pp. xxiii-xxiv.
430
431
Ferguson, op. cit., chapter 6.
243
29. GOETHE AND BEETHOVEN
Probably the most famous artists of the early Romantic period were the poet
Goethe and the composer Beethoven. And yet they were not typical romantics.
They displayed a mixture of Romantic passion and Classical restraint that raised
their work to a pinnacle from which both the greatness of the Classical past and
the madness of the Romantic future was clearly visible.
Goethe was perhaps the first romantic. His novel, The Sorrows of Young
Werther (1774), was the world’s first “best-seller”; its tale of unrequited love and
suicide created a taste for passion, as it were, that has never since departed from
the subconscious of western civilization. “What set Goethe's book apart from
other such novels was its expression of unbridled longing for a joy beyond
possibility, its sense of defiant rebellion against authority, and of principal
importance, its total subjectivity: qualities that trail-blazed the Romantic
movement.”432
But shortly after Werther Goethe made his famous trip to Italy, which imbued
him with such a love of the Classics as to leave a permanent imprint on his art
and his beliefs. Of course, he was not alone in this attraction of the Romantics to
what appeared to be their artistic opposites. Byron loved Greek classicism and
died in the liberation of Greece. And John Keats wrote his “Ode on a Grecian
Urn” which summed up that glimpse of eternity in time that so many English-
speaking poets discerned in Greek art:
When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
As for Goethe, he was not only the first romantic but also the author of “Weimar
classicism”, a period in his art that extended well into the nineteenth century.
It was probably his classical tastes that enabled Goethe to escape that terrible
disease of the early Romantic generation – the worship of the French revolution.
He correctly called the French revolution “the most dreadful of all events”, and
remained firmly committed to the old regime’s aristocratic and hierarchical
model of politics. There may have been personal reasons for this: since 1775 he
had been a leading figure at the court of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, and
so had much to lose from the revolution. Moreover, he had been present at the
battle of Valmy in 1792, when the revolution won its first victory over the
Germans; he had witnessed the siege of Mainz, and the barbarism of Napoleon’s
troops when they ransacked his house in Weimar in 1806…
432
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe.
244
However, while not fooled by the revolution, Goethe was fooled by its
nemesis and apotheosis, Napoleon. Mistakenly thinking that he was the reverser
rather than the continuer of the revolution, “he persisted,” as Professor Ritchie
Robertson writes, “in admiring Napoleon, the invader of Germany and
conqueror of Prussia, whom patriots denounced as a devil risen from hell. For
him, Napoleon was the hero who had defeated the French Revolution and
replaced anarchy with a social order which Goethe hoped would prove
permanent. More than that, Napoleon was a superhuman figure, ‘the highest
phenomenon that was possible in history’. ‘His life was the striding of a demi-
god from battle to battle and from victory to victory’, Goethe later said to
Eckermann (11 March 1828). Goethe’s meeting with Napoleon [at Napoleon’s
request] at Erfurt on 2 October 1808, and again in Weimar on 6 October, was one
of the supreme moments of his life. Napoleon awarded him the Légion
d’Honneur, which he proudly wore at every opportunity. Hence he deeply
disliked the often furious German nationalism that grew up during Napoleon’s
occupation, triumphed over his downfall, and would flourish for the next
century and a half.”433
Goethe showed his affinities with the rationalist eighteenth century rather
than the romantic nineteenth also in his aversion to nationalism. Again, there
may have been personal motives for that. A man who in his literary career had
been deeply influenced by foreign writers, from the English Shakespeare to the
Greek Euripides to the Persian Hajiz, and spent much of his time translating
them, was hardly likely to think that all truth and beauty was in one nation.
“Although often requested to write poems arousing nationalist passions,

Goethe would always decline. In old age, he explained why this was so to
Eckermann: ‘How could I write songs of hatred when I felt no hate? And,
between ourselves, I never hated the French, although I thanked God when we
were rid of them. How could I, to whom the only significant things are
civilization [Kultur] and barbarism, hate a nation which is among the most
cultivated in the world, and to which I owe a great part of my own culture? In
any case this business of hatred between nations is a curious thing. You will
always find it more powerful and barbarous on the lowest levels of civilization.
But there exists a level at which it wholly disappears, and where one stands, so
to speak, above the nations, and feels the weal or woe of a neighboring people as
though it were one's own.’”434
Goethe’s attitude to religion was similarly rationalist. He was not anti-

religious: he objected to Voltaire’s mockery of religion, his works contain
sympathetic portrayals of religious people, and he counted sincere Christians
among his friends. Moreover, he saw through the deceptions of rationalism:
He hasn’t changed, your little god on earth –

He’s still peculiar as the day you gave him birth.
He’d live a better life, at least,
433
Robertson, Goethe: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 81-82.
434
245
If you’d not given him a glimpse of heaven’s light.
He calls it reason – which gives him the right
To be more bestial than any beast.435
But he was too much of an Enlightenment man to believe in the literal truth of
Christian dogma; he particularly disliked the doctrine of original sin, and didn’t
believe in miracles.
And he was an ecumenist, who believed in no institutional religion. As

Robertson explains, his real religion was probably a kind of nature-worship. “He
told Lavater firmly: ‘You consider the Gospel the most divine truth; even a loud
voice from heaven wouldn’t convince me that water burns and fire puts it out,
that a woman bears a child without a man, or that a man can rise from the dead;
instead, I consider those beliefs to be blasphemies against the great God and his
revelation in nature.’ He thought it self-evident that there was a God who was
manifested in the order of nature. Natural religion therefore did not require any
effort of faith; it was only particular religions that did so. Natural religion sprang
from ‘the dialogue in our bosom with nature’; it depended on feeling and could
not be implanted by rational argument. Hence what Faust professes to Gretchen
is natural religion.”436
One aspect of Goethe’s private religion may have been a product of his
interest in Eastern religion. This was a kind of amorality, an anticipation of
Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil: a belief that good and evil went together in the
world like Yin and Yan, as two aspects of one reality. As he put it: nature was
“an organ on which our Lord plays and the Devil treads the bellows”.
Thus according to Goethe, writes Ellendea Proffer, “at the heart of everything
lies a contradiction – attraction and repulsion, creation and destruction – that
men see as good and evil, heaven and hell. Goethe felt that moral concepts were
really only one facet of the whole, a whole in which immorality and amorality
are at least equally represented. The main thing is activity – the surge of life, an
everlasting repetition that never progresses, good never really does triumph
over evil, but the movement in itself is what is important. All these
contradictions are inseparable from one another and from God Himself.”437
In accordance with his views on morality, Goethe paid little

attention to the fairly strict contemporary views on sexual life, and had
a string of affairs. “Many of Goethe's works, especially Faust, the
Roman Elegies, and the Venetian Epigrams, depict erotic passions and
acts. For instance, in Faust, the first use of Faust's power after signing a
contract with the devil is to seduce a teenage girl. Some of the Venetian
Epigrams were held back from publication due to their sexual content.
Goethe clearly saw human sexuality as a topic worthy of poetic and
artistic depiction, an idea that was uncommon in a time when the
435
Goethe, Faust, Prologue in Heaven.
436
Robertson, op. cit., pp. 105-106.
437
Proffer, “Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita: Genre and Motif”, in Laura Weeks (ed.), The
Master and Margarita: A Critical Companion, Northwestern University Press, 1996, pp. 106-107.
246
private nature of sexuality was rigorously normative. Still worse,
Goethe was a pederast: ‘I like boys a lot, but the girls are even nicer. If
I tire of her as a girl, she'll play the boy for me as well’. Goethe also
defended pederasty: ‘Pederasty is as old as humanity itself, and one
can therefore say that it is natural, that it resides in nature, even if it
proceeds against nature. What culture has won from nature will not be
surrendered or given up at any price.’” 438
An important aspect of Romanticism was its subtle devaluation of science –

the god of the Enlightenment – by comparison with art. Goethe was a true
Romantic in this respect. For, though a scientist as well as a poet, he approached
his science in a distinctly non-empirical way, fearing an excessively abstract
approach to nature.
As Professor Robertson writes, “Given his fear of abstraction, Goethe was

inevitably hostile to the most successful model of scientific research in his time:
the conception of the universe as a great machine, operating by regular laws,
and capable of being described in quantitative and mathematical terms. Goethe
knew little of mathematics: in 1786 he tried to learn algebra, with limited
success. He says that mathematics is all very well in its place, dealing with those
restricted areas where exactitude is possible, but should abandon its claim to
‘universal monarchy’. The study of nature needs to emancipate itself from
mathematics and ‘seek with all loving, reverent, devout energies to penetrate
nature and its holy life’. Although he occasionally used a microscope to examine
micro-organisms, and enjoyed looking at the moon through a telescope, Goethe
generally deplored the use of instruments such as microscopes, on the grounds
that they distorted the natural relation between the observer and the world.
“Despite rejecting mathematical abstraction, Goethe did not confine himself

to the empirical study of phenomena. His cogently criticized the empirical
method advocated early in the 17th century by Francis Bacon and practiced after
1660 by the Royal Society in London. Empirical studies need to be guided by
principles, otherwise they will just lead to millions of isolated and insignificant
facts. The Royal Society, though claiming to study nature without
preconceptions, in fact assumed that the universe was really a great machine.
The investigator, in Goethe’s view, needed to remember that there were no raw
facts, independent of the viewer’s preconceptions.
“However, when Goethe writes, ‘The supreme goal would be to grasp that
everything factual is already theory,’ he does not mean ‘theory’ in any
recognizable present-day sense. He rejects ‘theory’ in the sense of mathematical
abstraction. Nor has he any interest in causal explanations for phenomena. After
all, since everything in nature is interrelated, a causal account merely privileges
one set of relationships, a historical one, at the expense of innumerable others.
Often he uses the word ‘theory’ in the original sense of Greek theoria, meaning
‘looking’… Ultimately all you can do with phenomena is contemplate them.
There is nothing behind them, nothing to be explained. The aphorism just
438
247
quoted continues: ‘The blue of the sky reveals to us the basic law of chromatics.
Do not look for anything behind the phenomena: they themselves are the
doctrine’. Even to express phenomena in words requires caution, since language
is just another phenomenon; we must use language with self-awareness and
irony if we are not to fall into mere abstraction.”439
Combining the roles of statesman, poet, scientist and philosopher, Goethe

was the nineteenth-century equivalent of the Renaissance man and represents,
perhaps better than anybody else, the paradoxes of western civilization and the
essence of its apostasy. We can understand this better if we study his most
famous and influential work, Faust. As we read in a Wikipedia article on the
play, “Faust Part One takes place in multiple settings, the first of which is
Heaven. The demon Mephistopheles makes a bet with God: he says that he can
lure God's favourite human being (Faust), who is striving to learn everything
that can be known, away from righteous pursuits. The next scene takes place in
Faust's study where Faust, despairing at the vanity of scientific, humanitarian
and religious learning, turns to magic for the showering of infinite knowledge.
He suspects, however, that his attempts are failing. Frustrated, he ponders
suicide, but rejects it as he hears the echo of nearby Easter celebrations begin. He
goes for a walk with his assistant Wagner and is followed home by a stray
poodle (the term then meant a medium-to-big-size dog, similar to a sheep dog).
“In Faust's study, the poodle transforms into Mephistopheles. Faust

makes an arrangement with him: Mephistopheles will do everything
that Faust wants while he is here on Earth, and in exchange Faust will
serve the Devil in Hell. Faust's arrangement is that if he is pleased
enough with anything Mephistopheles gives him that he wants to stay
in that moment forever, then he will die in that moment.
“When Mephistopheles tells Faust to sign the pact with blood, Faust
complains that Mephistopheles does not trust Faust's word of honor. In
the end, Mephistopheles wins the argument and Faust signs the
contract with a drop of his own blood. Faust has a few excursions and
then meets Margaret (also known as Gretchen). He is attracted to her
and with jewellery and with help from a neighbor, Martha,
Mephistopheles draws Gretchen into Faust's arms. With
Mephistopheles' aid, Faust seduces Gretchen. Gretchen's mother dies
from a sleeping potion, administered by Gretchen to obtain privacy so
that Faust could visit her. Gretchen discovers she is pregnant.
Gretchen's brother condemns Faust, challenges him and falls dead at
the hands of Faust and Mephistopheles. Gretchen drowns her
illegitimate child and is convicted of the murder. Faust tries to save
Gretchen from death by attempting to free her from prison. Finding
that she refuses to escape, Faust and Mephistopheles flee the dungeon,
while voices from Heaven announce that Gretchen shall be saved – ‘Sie
439
Robertson, Goethe: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 29-30.
248
ist gerettet’ – this differs from the harsher ending of Urfaust [the earliest
draft of Faust] – ‘Sie ist gerichtet!’ – ‘she is condemned.’
“Rich in classical allusion, in Part Two the romantic story of the first
Faust is forgotten, and Faust wakes in a field of fairies to initiate a new
cycle of adventures and purpose. The piece consists of five acts
(relatively isolated episodes) each representing a different theme.
Ultimately, Faust goes to Heaven, for he loses only half of the bet.
Angels, who arrive as messengers of divine mercy, declare at the end of
Act V: ‘He who strives on and lives to strive/ Can earn redemption
still’ (V, 11936–7).”
It is this quality of restless striving that is so characteristic of what

we may call Faustian man, Homo Occidentalis. As Mephistopheles puts
it:
He serves you [God] in a very curious way indeed.

It isn’t earthly nourishment he seems to need;
His fevered mind is in a constant ferment.
Half-conscious of his folly, in his pride
On all the joys of earth he wants to feed,
And pluck from heaven the very brightest star.
He searches high and low, and yet however far
He roams, his restless heart remains dissatisfied. (ll. 300-307)
Again, Faust himself says:
Listen: it’s not on happiness I’m bent.

I want a frenzied round of agonizing joy,
Of loving hate, of stimulating discontent.
Learning and knowledge now I leave behind;
I shall not flinch from suffering or despair,
And in my inners self I wish to share
The whole experience of mankind,
To seek its heights, its depths, to know
Within my heart its joys and all its woe,
Identify myself with other men and blend
My life with theirs, and like them perish in the end. (ll.1765-1775)
Of course, this lust for experience, “the whole experience of

mankind”, was a typically Romantic attitude. But it goes back well
before the Romantic period to the Renaissance, when this lust was first
revealed in Western culture. Only Goethe stands above this lust - or
pretends to. He sees it as a temptation posed by the devil himself,
which leads inexorably to disaster. It can be construed as a striving of
man for God – but a true meeting never takes place, just as God and
Adam in Michelangelo’s famous fresco in the Sistine Chapel stretch out
their hands towards each other but never quite meet. For
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Reason and knowledge, the highest powers of mankind,
You have rejected, to oblivion consigned.
Now let the Prince of lies confuse you,
With magic spells and fantasies delude you –
And I will have you then once and for all.
For fate has given him a mind
So restless, so impetuous, so unconfined
That his impatient spirit, like a waterfall,
Pours headlong over all the pleasures life can give.
I’ll plunge him into such distraction, he will live
A life so futile, so banal and trite,
He’ll flap and flutter like a bird stuck tight.
He is unsatiable, and so I’ll tantalize
Him, dangle food and drink before his greedy eyes.
In vain he’ll beg relief on bended knee,
And even if he hadn’t pledged himself to me,
He’d still be damned for all eternity! (ll. 1851-1867)
So Faust is a parable of the fall of man, employing many religious

themes, but from the point of view of a sceptic. Just as Adam strove
for deification through tasting of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, so Western, Faustian man strives for knowledge (experience) and
power. To that end he embraces science, magic, art and the senses – but
betrays his true love. Gretchen is redeemed for her simple faith,
refusing to escape from prison with aid of the devil. But the sceptic
Faust, who escapes with Mephistopheles, should be damned. He is not,
because Faust has an inauthentic sequel in which Faust is saved in spite
of his bargain with the devil. Goethe is moving away from authentic
tragedy. For, as Robertson writes, “after the intense agony of the
‘Prison’ scene, an unspecified time passes, and at the beginning of Part
II we find Faust lying on an Alpine meadow, attended by charming
spirits who pity his distress and sing him to sleep. When he wakes the
next morning, Faust is refreshed and ready to continue his career,
thanks to the healing power of nature. Now this may seem unfair,
indeed morally offensive. After all, Faust is responsible for Gretchen’s
misery and death. One might feel that he should be punished.
However, it seems that he has been punished enough by the agony of
confronting Gretchen in prison. Thereafter his moral failure is treated
as a medical problem. Not atonement, but healing, is prescribed. A
spectacular act of atonement would do no good: it wouldn’t bring
Gretchen back to life, and it would only prevent Faust from achieving
his potential and, perhaps, doing more good in the world. Goethe is
here moving beyond catharsis and beyond tragedy.” 440
Tragically, European man followed the path Goethe’s Faust had laid
out. In striving to “achieve his potential” he lost his soul - and
soulmate. Henceforth there would be no tragedies with a Divine, let
440
Robertson, op. cit., pp. 98-98.
250
alone a Christian dimension. The tragic heroes of later European Kultur
would be “redeemed” by suffering and striving alone – in other words,
by works, not by faith. Their justification would be the same as Faust’s:
striving, which would give a quality of dynamism to Western
civilization, but never of peace. At most, “redemption” would be
achieved by the death of all the guilty, including the hero, as in the
final scene of Hamlet or the battlefields of World War I – a most
unsatisfactory ending, providing no real catharsis and certainly no joy.
Like the spires of the medieval Gothic cathedrals, - interest in which,
not coincidentally, Goethe revived in his early essay, “On German
Architecture” (1772), - Faustian man strives always upwards and
outwards, knowing that the Kingdom of heaven is no longer within
him… This in contrast to the curves and domes of Eastern Orthodox
architecture, which as it were keep the Kingdom inside the building. No
striving, no achievement of potential, is needed there, only obedience
in love…
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) greatly admired Goethe, but he was a

very different man whose legacy pointed in a very different direction. What he
shared with Goethe was his being a Classical Romantic. His classicism came
with his education: he was, after all, the pupil of Haydn and Mozart, the greatest
of the classical composers; and his “Early Period” (roughly 1795-1802) could best
be characterized as “Haydnesque” (especially the First Symphony) with some
Mozartean interludes (such as the Second Piano Concerto). Only in his piano
works could something radically new be detected even at this early stage (for
example, in the famous “Pathétique” and “Moonlight” sonatas).
One event appears to have triggered the transition to his earth-shaking

“Middle Period” (roughly 1803-1813). This was the discovery that he was going
deaf – a terrible affliction especially for a composer, which he movingly recorded
in his famous “Heiligenstadt Testament” (1802). Then, with the writing of his
“Eroica” symphony in 1803 he embarked upon that colossal series of
masterpieces that smashed the conventions established by Haydn and Mozart, a
period, writes Harvey Sachs, “leaves one with a sense of wonder bordering on
disbelief: the Third (‘Eroica’), Fourth, Fifth, Sixth (‘Pastoral’), Seventh and Eighth
symphonies; Leonora (the name he gave to the first and second versions of his
only opera); the Fourth and Fifth (‘Emperor’) piano concertos; the Violin and
Triple concertos; the ‘Waldstein’, ‘Appassionata’ and ‘Les Adieux’ piano sonatas;
the Ninth (‘Kreutzer’) and Tenth (G Major) violin sonatas; the Third Cello
Sonata, op. 69; the String Quarters, op. 59 nos. 1 to 3 (‘Razumovsky’), and op. 74
(‘Harp’); the ‘Ghost’ and ‘Archduke’ trios for piano, violin and cello; the Coriolan,
Egmont and three Leonore overtures; the Choral Fantasy for piano, orchestra, and
chorus; and the Mass in C Major. Probably only Mozart and Schubert, in the last
ten years of their brief lives, produced in a single decade as much that is still
performed frequently all over the world as Beethoven between 1803 and 1813.
During the same period, Hegel wrote his University of Jena lectures, later
published as Phänomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of the Spirit or of the
251
Mind), which were crucial to establishing his reputation as a philosopher; Goethe
gave the world Faust, Part One; Schiller produced Wilhelm Tell; and Blake’s
Milton and the first two cantos of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage appeared.
But none of these works – not even Faust – occupied as much space in its specific
area as Beethoven’s works of that decade have occupied in theirs.
“These were the works that gave birth to the familiar image of Beethoven as a
tempestuous genius who shook his fist at fate and, Jove-like, loosed musical
lightning bolts that welded the rationalistic Enlightenment ideals of the just-
ended eighteenth century, in which he had spent roughly the first half of his life,
to the stormy Romantic individualism of the newborn nineteenth. By the time he
reached middle age, his startling originality had made him a European musical
icon, and his much-discussed intransigeance and eccentricity had become a
symbol of untrammeled artistic freedom.”441
If Beethoven’s Early Period showed him as a Classical artist, albeit a highly

unusual and talented one, in the Middle Period he was predominantly the
Romantic artist – indeed, the prototypical Romantic. Apart from the features
mentioned by Sachs, we may point to his extremely high estimate of the role of
art in general and music in particular, which was so typical of the romantics.
“Music,” he said, “is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music
is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.”
For the romantics, as we have seen, the artistic genius as a God-seer or demi-
god, lighting the path through the storm and stress and darkness of earthly life
to the Divine Light of Heaven, was a familiar theme. We find the same idea in
Goethe, who wrote: ”As a temporal gospel, true poetry announces itself by
knowing how to liberate us, through internal serenity and external pleasure,
from the earthly burdens that weigh us down. Like a balloon, it lifts us and the
ballast that we carry, into higher regions, leaving earth’s tangled paths lying
spread out before us in a bird’s-eye view.”
But even at the height of his most Romantic, Middle Period,

Beethoven displays important differences from Goethe. Thus the
latter’s amoralism with starkly at odds with Beethoven’s stern
moralism. For if for Goethe sin was not natural and inevitable, and
therefore not really sinful, Beethoven was quite different. Thus his
struggle to obtain the wardship of his nephew Karl because of the
immoral behaviour of Karl’s mother was a struggle that lasted many
years and cost him a great deal both financially and emotionally.
Again, he was appalled by the popularity of the “frivolous” Rossini’s
operas; for him, music was too intensely serious and important to be
used in such a way – the later Romantic attitude of “art for art’s sake”
was profoundly foreign to him. Again, his only venture into opera
scrupulously avoided the sensuality and illicit love of almost all great
operas from Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppaea to Mozart’s Don
441
Sachs, The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1924, London: Faber & Faber, 2010, pp. 46-47.
252
Giovanni, from Verdi’s La Traviata to Puccini’s La Bohème, being a hymn
to marital fidelity.
Beethoven was different also in his more conventional but at the same time
more authentic, religiosity. Sachs argues, on the contrary, that Beethoven shared
the ideas expressed in “Benjamin Constant’s treatise, De la religion, in which the
French writer and statesman essentially equated true religion with spirituality –
a quality natural to all human beings, he said – whereas formal, imposed
religion is inimical to the human spirit. ‘Religion has been disfigured,’ Constant
wrote. ‘Man has been pursued right to his last place of asylum, to this intimate
sanctuary of his existence. Persecution provokes rebellion… There is a principle
in us that becomes indignant at every intellectual fetter. This principle can be
whipped into a furor; it can be the cause of many a crime; but it is connected to
everything that is noble in our nature. Surely Constant’s anti-dogmatic, anti-
Establishment, nondoctrinaire, informal, open-minded, and indeed Romantic
approach to spirituality is closely linked to Beethoven’s beliefs…” 442
However, in his Late Period Beethoven enters a deeply religious phase of his
career, which, while still revolutionary, cannot easily be described in such terms.
The critical transition from the Middle to the Late Period in Beethoven’s music –
the relatively fallow years 1813-1823 – went in parallel with, and may well have
been influenced by, an important political transition: the defeat of Napoleon and
the Revolution and the return of Divine right monarchy in the form of the
Bourbon Kings Louis XVIII and Charles X. Unlike so many romantic artists of
the period, Beethoven appears to have been in no way upset by this turn of
events, and gladly composed two anti-revolutionary pieces (“The Glorious
Moment” and “Wellington’s Victory”) that he performed before all the crowned
heads of Europe at the Congress of Vienna in November, 1814. It would be going
beyond the evidence we have to say that Beethoven the lover of freedom, who
had removed Napoleon from the dedication of his Eroica symphony when he
became Emperor because of his despotic tendencies, had now repented of his
earlier liberalism and become a reactionary. Nevertheless, there is marked return
to classicism, if not in form, at any rate in spirit, in his Late Period works which
seems to parallel the return to older forms of government in Europe as a whole.
Only this is a revolutionary, new form of classicism which appears to combine
classicism with romanticism in a unique – and uniquely religious – mixture.
Beethoven’s Last Period begins with the Missa Solemnis, a setting of

the Catholic Mass. Elements in the musical style hark back to earlier,
more Christian ages, such as the Bachian fugues 443 ; and Donald
Tovey remarks that “Not even Bach or Handel can show a greater sense
of space and of sonority. There is no earlier choral writing that comes
so near to recovering some of the lost secrets of the style of Palestrina.
There is no choral and no orchestral writing, earlier or later, that shows
Sachs, op. cit., p. 131.
442
443
The use of this “old-fashioned” stylistic form is characteristic of Beethoven’s late works, as in
the “Hammerclavier” piano sonata or the Grosse Fuge for strings.
253
a more thrilling sense of the individual colour of every chord, every
position, and every doubled third or discord.”
More important, however, than these formal characteristics is the

content. Not since the stupendous Kyrie of Bach’s B Minor Mass had the
West produced a work of such unequivocally sincere faith. And if
sincere, then it cannot, of course, be described as undogmatic,
especially in the Credo. It is significant that the work was first
performed in 1824 in Orthodox St. Petersburg, not Catholic Vienna,
under the patronage of Prince Nikolai Golitsyn, who commissioned
many of his late sonatas and string quartets.
In the same year of 1824 Beethoven published his most famous

work, the Ninth Symphony. The first three movements constitute as it
were a summing up of his Middle Period – the tragic drama in the first
movement, the colossal energy in the second, the profound lyricism in
the third. But in the fourth, after the orchestra repeats the beginning of
each of the first three movements, these are rejected in turn in order to
make way for a new theme, the famous “Joy” melody that has become
the “national anthem” of the European Union. This is followed by the
soloists and chorus singing Schiller’s Ode to Joy – evidently this is the
“new word” by which Beethoven means to characterize his new music,
the music of his Late Period.
All creatures drink Joy

At Nature’s breast;
All the good, all the bad
Follow her rose-bedecked trail.
We might be tempted at first to think that the Joy in question is

some sort of nature-worship. But Beethoven’s God is not the same as
Goethe’s pantheist deity. First of all, the passage ends with the word
“God” thundered out at length in a huge fortissimo. And secondly, this
God is clearly a personal God, as both the words and the “solemn, even
liturgical” music, ending in a mysterious pianissimo, 444 indicate:
Be embraced, you millions!

By this kiss for the whole world!
Brothers, a loving Father must live
Above the canopy of the stars.
So for Beethoven the message is that joy is possible for all, but not
in the worship of nationalist-imperialist heroes such as Napoleon, but
in a truly universalist union under the one, personal and transcendent
God; the saviour is not nature, as Goethe thought, but the Creator of
nature. Could Beethoven’s meeting with Tsar Alexander, whom he met
in 1814 and who had a very similar vision of pan-European unity under
444
Sachs, op. cit., pp. 158, 159.
254
the one Christian God, have influenced him? Perhaps; and it is indeed
intriguing that Beethoven’s encounter with the Tsar and his
relationship with his devoted Russian patrons (Count Razumovsky and
Prince Nikolai Golitsyn) took place at this time.
It was a unique and decisive moment in European history, when the

Orthodox East stretched out its hand to the Catholic/Protestant West,
and the White Tsar entered Berlin and Vienna - even godless Paris and
London. But the decision went the wrong way: intrigued, and briefly
grateful to their “barbarian” liberators, the Europeans nevertheless
continued along their Faustian path. “The Gendarme of Europe”
continued to defend them against the real barbarians – but, a
generation later, there was none of the former curiosity or gratitude…
As for Beethoven, increasingly isolated from society, sick,

misunderstood and lonely, he entered deep within himself, producing
some of the most profoundly poignant and original works of Western
music. (His great contemporary, Schubert, asked that Beethoven’s
String Quartet in C sharp minor, opus 131, be played at his deathbed.)
Critics have called these works “mystical”, but of course there can be
no true mysticism where there is not the mystery of the true faith and
the True Church. Nevertheless, we may be confident that Beethoven
rejected the path of Faustian man; for his heart thirsted, not for the
ephemeral goals of the Faustian dream, but for the living God…
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30. THE REVOLUTION AND ROMANTICISM
The Age of Revolution was also the Age of Romanticism, and the one is
incomprehensible without the other. Of course, political and religious change
have always been reflected in artistic change. But the relationship is closer than
usual here. The image of the Decembrist revolutionary Ryleev ascending the
scaffold with a volume of Byron in his hand encapsulates that relationship: the
revolutionaries were impelled to their acts of violence by their visionary
Romanticism. Their love of political freedom was seen as being born from the
love of freedom expressed in their Romantic art; the theoria of the one
engendered the praxis of the other.
The revolutionary nature of Romanticism inevitably meant that it was linked

to the revolution in politics. “During the 1820s,” writes Sir Richard Evans, in
spite of the conservative reaction imposed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815,
“writers and thinkers began to move towards a more liberal point of view.
Victor Hugo, who in 1824 declared that literature should be ‘the expression of a
religious and monarchical society’, was by 1830 propounding the principle that
‘Romanticism, taken as a whole, is only liberalism in literature… Freedom in art
and liberty in society are the twin goals to which all consistent and logical
thinkers should march in step.’ In 1827 the French art critic August Jal (1795-
1873) declared that Romanticism was ‘the echo of the cannot shot of 1789’, and
as if to prove his point, Eugène Delacroix produced in 1830 what is probably the
most famous representation of revolution in any artwork, Liberty Leading the
People. For many Romantic poets and writers, the Greek uprising was a turning
point, symbolized by Byron’s death at Missolonghi. The opera that launched the
Belgian revolution in 1830 was only one example of a new trend, begun in Italy,
of portraying ancient struggles for liberty in words and music in such a way that
their contemporary relevance was unmistakeable.” 445
The connection between the revolution and romanticism became especially

clear and strong during the July Days of the 1830 revolution, as Adam Zamoyski
notes: “’People and poets are marching together,’ wrote the French critic Charles
Augustin Sainte-Beuve in 1830. ‘Art is henceforth on a popular footing, in the
arena with the masses.’ There was something in this. Never before or since had
poetry been so widely and so urgently read, so taken to heart and so closely
studied for hidden meaning. And it was not only in search of aesthetic or
emotional uplift that people did so, for the poet had assumed a new role over the
past two decades. Art was no longer an amenity but a great truth that had to be
revealed to mankind, and the artist was one who had been called to interpret
this truth, a kind of seer. In Russia, Pushkin solemnly declared the poet’s status
as a prophet uttering the burning words of truth. The American Ralph Waldo
Emerson saw poets as ‘liberating gods’ because they had achieved freedom
themselves, and could therefore free others. The pianist and composer Franz
Liszt wanted to recapture the ‘political, philosophical and religious power’ that
he believed music had in ancient times. William Blake claimed that Jesus and his
disciples were all artists, and that he himself was following Jesus through his art.
445
Evans, The Pursuit of Power. Europe 1815-1914, London: Penguin, 2017, pp. 81-82.
256
‘God was, perhaps only the first poet of the universe,’ Théophile Gauthier
reflected. By the 1820s artists regularly referred to their craft as a religion, and
Victor Hugo represented himself alternately as Zoroaster, Moses and Christ,
somewhere between prophet and God.”446
The forty years or so between the First and the Second French Revolutions (in
1789 and 1830 respectively) are among the most decisive and profound
transition-periods in the history of the world. The changes are most obvious, of
course, in politics; and there is no question but that the French revolution
constitutes the vital link between the English revolution of the seventeenth
century and the Russian revolution of the twentieth century, constituting the
break-through that destroyed the old, and created the new world that we live in
now. However, it could be argued that the political revolution was less profound
and all-embracing than the revolution in thought and feeling that we call the
Romantic movement, and that gave the revolution its long-term vitality.
Romanticism was influenced by Rousseau’s concept of the “natural man”,

which, as George L. Mosse writes, emphasized “that the individual was good
and virtuous when removed from the fetters of civilization. In such an ideal state
heart and head were unspoiled and therefore functioned properly. For Rousseau
and other eighteenth-century thinkers this meant that humans were both
reasonable and virtuous. However, the element of human reason in the state of
nature played, for Rousseau, a lesser part than the goodness of the heart. This
foreshadowed the romantic belief in the essential rightness and virtue of
mankind’s proper emotions when they are left to develop freely. The concept of
natural man became a widespread fad in the eighteenth century: Louis XVI and
his queen had a rural village built for themselves behind their palace of the
Trianon where they could play at ‘natural’ man and wife. Moreover, this image
was associated with rural life, the kind of Arcadia which writer had idealized for
centuries. It should be kept in mind that the ideal of natural man associated with
rural life was not only a background for the romantic movement, but also went
into the making of one of the most important preconceptions of the nineteenth
century, indeed of modern times: namely, that the peasant represents the
greatest virtues in a society which is growing ever more industrial and urban.
“The concept of ‘natural man’ was not the only element which went into the
making of the romantic atmosphere. Evangelicalism in England and pietism in
Germany provided important stimuli for romanticism, just as they were to be
important in the making of the new middle-class morality. Both stressed ‘piety
of the heart’ – religion as an emotional experience. Pietism was more temperate
than the evangelical movement; nevertheless, the emotional appeal was present.
Evangelicalism with its outright appeal to emotional conversion, ‘coming to
Christ’, implanted an emotionalism in all classes of the English population. The
emphasis upon hymn singing together with preaching as the chief outward
appeals of faith played an important part. Nor can the increasing stream of
oratory and moral exhortations which marked both movements be neglected.
Many other causes, like the Temperance League and the Society Against Vice,
446
257
depended on similar methods. All over Europe the reading public was
increasing; and what they read, above all, were books of edification or moral
exhortation to lead a good life. Education by exhortation was prominent in the
making of middle-class morality, as Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby can show, but
it also created an atmosphere congenial to life viewed as an emotional
experience.
“Though Rousseau foreshadowed the romantic mood in France and

evangelicalism did much to encourage it in England, Germany seemed at the
head of the movement during the eighteenth century. Not only German pietism,
but particularly a literary movement known as the storm and stress (Sturm und
Drang, 1765-1785) set the romantic tone. Making its home in Weimar, the
movement’s importance for the cultural revival in Germany was equal to its
contribution to romanticism. Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), in particular,
portrayed his heroes in terms of their inner responses to life, abstracting people
from their environment. In depicting the Robbers, for example, he made their
inner conflicts and the resulting tragedy take precedence over the morality or the
effects of their actions. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the greatest
German man of letters of that century, passed through the Enlightenment and
classicism to a romantic period. The narrative of his journeys to Italy did much
to stimulate a new emphasis upon nature as emotional and sentient rather than
as imprisoned within rational laws of nature.”447
Sturm und Drang, writes Zamoyski, “was essentially an emotional revolt

against all rational and moral constraint. The tenor of the passions evoked is
well rendered by a description of the first night of Schiller’s play The Robbers in
1781: ‘The theatre was like a lunatic asylum, with rolling eyes, clenched fists,
hoarse uproar among the audience. Strangers fell sobbing into each other’s arms,
women tottered, half-fainting, to the door.’”448
Another aspect of Romanticism is its seeking of the unusual and the exotic,
even the mad and the criminal, in human experience. Thus, as Evans writes, “a
number of early Romantic works were written under the influence of opium,
including, famously the poem Kubla Khan (1816) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1834), who became a serious addict, consuming up to four quarts of
laudanum (tincture of opium) a week. The drug’s impact was recorded in detail
by Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater
(1821). Opium distorted perception of time and space and heightened emotional
experience, something that strengthened its appeal to the Romantics. Whereas
the Enlightenment had stressed the need to subordinate the emotions to the
intellect, Romanticism instead stressed feeling as the fundamental source of
truth and authenticity and their expression in art.”449
“In Romanticism,” writes Jacques Barzun, “thought and feeling are fused; its
bent is toward exploration and discovery at whatever risk of error or failure; the
religious emotion is innate and demands expression. Spirit is a reality but where
447
Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe, Boulder: Westview Press, 1988, pp. 30-31.
448
449
Evans, op. cit., p. 449.
258
it is placed varies and is secondary: the divine may be reached through nature or
art. The individual self is a source of knowledge on which one must act; for one
is embarked – engagé, as the 20C Existentialists say. To act, enthusiasm must
overcome indifference or despair; impulse must be guided by imagination and
reason. The search is for truths, which reside in particulars, not in generalities;
the world is bigger and more complex than any set of abstractions, and it
includes the past, which is never fully done with. Meditating on past and
present leads to the estimate of man as great and wretched. But heroes are real
and indispensable. They rise out of the people, whose own mind-and-heart
provides the makings of high culture. The errors of heroes and peoples are the
price of knowledge, religion, and art, life itself being a heroic tragedy.” 450
Romanticism was born as a reaction to the Enlightenment and, more

generally, to the whole classical concept of civilization. For the dry, rationalist
world-view of the Enlightenment, while it influenced everybody, left many with
a feeling that an important part of the truth – especially that truth of the heart
which is accessible only to intuition and the emotions - had been left out by it.
Moreover, the Scottish philosopher David Hume had demonstrated, by purely
logical arguments, that the empirical, rationalist view of the world had,
paradoxically, no rational foundations; for it led to a denial of the objective
existence of God, the soul, morality and even of the external world, thereby
literally cutting the ground from under its feet. It was Hume’s withering
criticism that drew Immanuel Kant out of his “dogmatic slumbers”; by his
Critique of Pure Reason and other works, he re-established, at least to his own
satisfaction, the necessity of believing in God, the soul, causality, free will and
the external world. Ultimately, however, he begat, not a rebirth of empiricism on
rational foundations, but the German philosophy of idealism, which turned
everything on its head by defining the material world as spirit, the objective as
the subjective, the irrational as the rational.
Fr. Georges Florovsky writes that romantics such as Goethe, Carlyle,

Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hartmann, Renan and Maeterlinck “at first cautiously,
and then with greater and greater ardour, swelled the waves of ‘irrationalism’.
Everywhere and in everything, right to the religious feeling of the world and the
aesthetic perception of life. Beginning with ‘literary’ phrases about the
‘bankruptcy’ of science and ending with immersion in the satanic abysses of
black magic and the revival of the orgiastic cult of Dionysius and Ceres, from a
superficial atheist denial of Christian dogmatics to an inspired justification of
‘the many forms of religious experience’, from a call to return to nature to
futurism – everywhere we see clear manifestations of a profound disbelief in
rational knowledge, in ‘the wisdom of systems’. ‘Intuition’ triumphantly
squeezed out ‘logic’, and the very ideal of scientific knowledge of ‘the truth’
paled – sometimes in the unclear light of biological adaptation to the conditions
of existence, sometimes in the vivid flame of mystical feeling and pantheistic joy.
The dynamic nature of the cosmos began to be felt. The proud dream of
450
Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, 1500 to the Present, New York: Perennial, 2000, p. 491.
259
Feierbach to ‘create’ God was revived, the old idea of ‘the evolving Absolute’ and
the unfinished nature of the world was resurrected.” 451
The Romantic conception of a dynamic, unfinished world undermined faith

in eternal values and verities, and, combined with the idea of ever-oscillating
polarities, paved the way for the Hegelian schema of thesis-antithesis-synthesis –
albeit usually without the synthesis.
Sir Isaiah Berlin’s definition is also illuminating: “Since the Greeks, and
perhaps long before them, men have believed that to the central questions about
the nature and purpose of their lives, and of the world in which they lived, true,
objective, universal and eternal answers could be found. If the answers could not
be discovered by me, then perhaps by someone more expert or wiser than I; if
not in the circumstances in which I found myself, then in others more propitious:
in an innocent and happy past – a Garden of Eden from which our ancestors had
for their sins been expelled, or perhaps in a golden age that still lay in the future,
which posterity (perhaps after much labour and suffering) would, or at any rate
could, one day reach. It was assumed that all the truly central problems were
soluble in principle even if not in practice. Somewhere true answers to all
genuine questions must exist, if not in the minds of men, then in the mind of an
omniscient being – real or imaginary, material or ideal, a personal deity, or the
universe come to full consciousness of itself.
“This presupposition, which underlies most classical and Christian thought,

orthodox and heretical, scientific and religious, was connected with the belief
that, whether men knew it or not, the whole of life on earth was in some sense
bound up with the search for answer to the great, tormenting questions of fact
and of conduct; of what there is, was, will be, can be; of what to do, what to live
by, what to seek, hope for, admire, fear, avoid; whether the end of life was
happiness or justice or virtue or self-fulfilment or grace and salvation.
Individuals, schools of thought, entire civilisations differed about what the
answers were, about the proper method of discovering them, about the nature
and place of moral or spiritual or scientific authority – that is to say, about how
to identify the experts who are qualified to discover and communicate the
answers. They argued about what constitutes such qualifications and justifies
such claims to authority. But there was no doubt that the truth lay somewhere;
that it could in principle be found. Conflicting beliefs were held about the central
questions: whether the truth was to be found in reason or in faith, in the Church
or the laboratory, in the insights of the uniquely privileged individual – a
prophet, a mystic, an alchemist, a metaphysician – or in the collective
consciousness of a body of men – the society of the faithful, the traditions of a
tribe, a race, a nation, a social class, an academy of experts, an elite of uniquely
endowed or trained beings – or, on the contrary, in the mind or heart of any
man, anywhere, at any time, provided that he remained innocent and
uncorrupted by false doctrines. What was common to all these views –
incompatible enough for wars of extermination to have been fought in their
name – was the assumption that there existed a reality, a structure of things, a
451
Florovsky, “Khitrost’ Uma” (The Cunning of the Mind), in Vera i Kul’tura (Faith and Culture),
St. Petersburg, 2002, pp. 49-50.
260
rerum natura, which the qualified enquirer could see, study and, in principle, get
right. Men were violently divided about the nature and identity of the wise –
those who understood the nature of things – but not about the proposition that
such wise men existed or could be conceived, and that they would know that
which would enable them to deduce correctly what men should believe, how
they should act, what they should live by and for.
“This was the great foundation of belief which romanticism attacked and
weakened. Whatever the differences between the leading romantic thinkers – the
early Schiller and the later Fichte, Schelling and Jacobi, Tieck and the Schlegels
when they were young, Chateaubriand and Byron, Coleridge and Carlyle,
Kierkegaard, Stirner, Nietzsche, Baudelaire – there runs through their writings a
common notion, held with varying degrees of consciousness and depth, that
truth is not an objective structure, independent of those who seek it, the hidden
treasure waiting to be found, but is itself in all its guises created by the seeker. It
is not to be brought into being necessarily by the finite individual: according to
some it is created by a greater power, a universal spirit, personal or impersonal,
in which the individual is an element, or of which he is an aspect, an emanation,
an imperfect reflection. But the common assumption of the romantics that runs
counter to the philosophia perennis is that the answers to the great questions are
not to be discovered so much as to be invented. They are not something found,
they are something literally made. In its extreme Idealistic form it is a vision of
the entire world. In its more familiar form, it confines itself to the realm of
values, ideals, rules of conduct – aesthetic, religious, social, moral, political – a
realm seen not as a natural or supernatural order capable of being investigated,
described and explained by the appropriate method – rational examination or
some more mysterious procedure – but as something that man creates, as he
creates works of art; not by imitating, or even obtaining illumination from, pre-
existent models or truths, or by applying pre-existent truths or rules that are
objective, universal, eternal, unalterable but by an act of creation, the
introduction into the world of something literally novel – the activity, natural or
supernatural, human or in part divine, owing nothing to anything outside it (in
some versions because nothing can be conceived as being outside it), self-
subsistent, self-justified, self-fulfilling. Hence that new emphasis on the
subjective and ideal rather than the objective and the real, on the process of
creation rather than its effects, on motives rather than consequences; and, as a
necessary corollary of all this, on the quality of the vision, the state of mind or
soul of the acting agent – purity of heart, innocence of intention, sincerity of
purpose rather than getting the answer right, that is, accurate correspondence to
the ‘given’. Hence the emphasis on activity, movement that cannot be reduced to
static segments, the flow that cannot be arrested, frozen, analysed without being
thereby fatally distorted; hence the constant protest against the reduction of ‘life’
to dead fragments, of organism to ‘mere’ mechanical or uniform units; and the
corresponding tendency towards similes and metaphors drawn from ‘dynamic’
sciences – biology, physiology, introspective psychology – and the worship of
music, which, of all the arts, appears to have the least relation to universally
observable, uniform natural order. Hence, too, the celebration of all forms of
defiance directed against the ‘given’ – the impersonal, the ‘brute fact’ in morals
or in politics – or against the static and the accepted, and the value placed on
261
minorities and martyrs as such, no matter what the ideal for which they
suffered.
“This, too, is the source of the doctrine that work is sacred as such, not
because of its social function, but because it is the imposition of the individual or
collective personality, that is, activity, upon inert stuff. The activity, the struggle
is all, the victory nothing: in Fichte’s words, ‘Frei sein ist nichts – frei werden ist der
Himmel’ (‘To be free is nothing – to become free is very heaven’). Failure is
nobler than success. Self-immolation for a cause is the thing, not the validity of
the cause itself, for it is the sacrifice undertaken for its sake that sanctifies the
cause, not some intrinsic property of it.
“These are the symptoms of the romantic attitude. Hence the worship of the
artist, whether in sound, or word, or colour, as the highest manifestation of the
ever-active spirit, and the popular image of the artist in his garret, wild-eyed,
wild-haired, poor, solitary, mocked - but independent, free, spiritually superior
to his philistine tormentors. This attitude has a darker side too: worship not
merely of the painter or the composer or the poet, but of that more sinister artists
whose materials are men – the destroyer of old societies, and the creator of new
ones – no matter at what human cost: the superhuman leader who tortures and
destroys in order to build on new foundations – Napoleon in his most
revolutionary aspect. It is this embodiment of the romantic ideal that took more
and more hysterical forms and in its extreme ended in violent irrationalism and
Fascism. Yet this same outlook also bred respect for individuality, for the
creative impulse, for the unique, the independent, for freedom to live and act in
the light of personal, undictated beliefs and principles, of undistorted emotional
needs, for the value of personal life, of personal relationships, of the individual
conscience, of human rights. The positive and negative heritage of romanticism –
on the one hand contempt for opportunism, regard for individual variety,
scepticism of oppressive general formulae and final solutions, and on the other
self-prostration before superior beings and the exaltation of arbitrary power,
passion and cruelty – these tendencies, at once reflected and promoted by
romantic doctrines, have done more to mould both the events of our century and
the concepts in terms in which they are viewed and explained than is commonly
recognised in most histories of our time.”452
The central false dogma of the Romantic era was the moral superiority and
godlike status of the artist (like Byron) and/or the revolutionary (like Napoleon),
standing alone and above the world. The political or artistic genius was truly a
“genie” who, once let out of his bottle by his divine imagination, could create
heaven or hell on earth – and for his worshippers, it didn’t really matter which.
Revolutionaries and artists both saw visions unattainable to the ordinary mortal,
and for that they were venerated as God-seers if not as gods.
Berlin, “The Essence of European Romanticism”, The Power of Ideas, London: Pimlico, 1998, pp.
452
201-204.
262
For Imagination for the Romantics was much more than the ability to
fantasize. As Jacques Barzun writes: “Out of the known or knowable,
Imagination connects the remote, interprets the familiar, or discovers hidden
realities. Being a means of discovery, it must be called ‘Imagination of the real’.
Scientific hypotheses perform that same office; they are products of imagination.
“This view of the matter explains why to the Romanticists the arts no longer
figured as a refined pleasure of the senses, an ornament of civilized existence,
but as one form of the deepest possible reflection on life. Shelley, defending his
art, declares poets to be the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’. The arts
convey truths; they are imagination crystallized; and as they transport the soul
they reshape the perceptions and possibly the life of the beholder. To perform
this feat requires genius, because it is not a mechanical act. To be sure, all art
makes use of conventions, but to obey traditional rules and follow set patterns
will not achieve that fusion of idea and form which is properly creation. It was
Romanticist discussion that made the word creation regularly apply to works of
art…
“Those Romanticist words, recharged with meaning, helped to establish the

religion of art. That faith served those who could and those could not partake of
the revived creeds. To call the passion for art a religion is not a figure of speech
or a way of praise. Since the beginning of the 19C, art has been defined again
and again by its devotees as ‘the highest spiritual expression of man’. The
dictum leaves no room for anything higher and this highest level is that which,
for other human beings, is occupied by religion. To 19C worshippers the arts
form a treasury of revelations, a body of scriptures, the makers of this spiritual
testament are prophets and seers. And to this day the fortunate among them are
treated as demigods…”453
We may conclude that the long-term effects of Romanticism were disastrous,

as disastrous as the political revolutions it inspired, even if in the shorter term
they provided a much-needed corrective to the rationalism of the Enlightenment
epoch.
As Bertrand Russell writes, “Rousseau and the romantic movement extended

subjectivity from theory of knowledge to ethics and politics, and ended,
logically, in as complete anarchism as that of Bakunin. This extreme of
subjectivism is a form of madness…”454
Not for nothing was Adam Zamoyski’s excellent study of Romanticism

entitled Holy Madness. And indeed, much of early nineteenth century history can
be seen as a chronicle of madmen. By the middle of the century, reactionaries
had succeeded in imposing straitjackets on them. But by the end of the century
453
Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, 1500 to the Present, New York: Perennial, 2000, pp. 473-474.
454
Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, London: Allen & Unwin, 1946, p. 514.
263
the madmen – Nietzsche is the most important example - were beginning to take
control of the asylum.
264
31. REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION
France was readmitted to the concert of nations during the Congress of

Vienna because the victorious powers judged that it was the ideology rather
than the nation that was the real enemy, while former revolutionaries who no
longer practised revolution could be forgiven. For, as Eric Hobsbawm writes, “it
was now known that revolution in a single country could be a European
phenomenon; that its doctrines could spread across the frontiers and, what was
worse, its crusading armies could blow away the political systems of a continent.
It was now known that social revolution was possible; that nations existed as
something independent of states, peoples as something independent of their
rulers, and even that the poor existed as something independent of the ruling
classes. ‘The French Revolution,’ De Bonald had observed in 1796, ‘is a unique
event in history.’ The phrase is misleading: it was a universal event. 455 No
country was immune from it. The French soldiers who campaigned from
Andalusia to Moscow, from the Baltic to Syria – over a vaster area than any body
of conquerors since the Mongols, and certainly a vaster area than any previous
single military force in Europe except the Norsemen – pushed the universality of
their revolution home more effectively than anything else could have done. And
the doctrines and institutions they carried with them, even under Napoleon,
from Spain to Illyria, were universal doctrines, as the governments knew, and as
the peoples themselves were soon to know. A Greek bandit and patriot
expressed their feelings completely: “’According to my judgement,’ said
Koloktrones, ‘the French Revolution and the doings of Napoleon opened the
eyes of the world. The nations knew nothing before, and the people thought that
kings were gods upon the earth and that they were bound to say that whatever
they did was well done. Through this present change it is more difficult to rule
the people.’”456
The French revolution had another long-term effect: it justified all kinds of
crime in the name of politics. As Paul Johnson writes: “Perhaps the most
significant characteristic of the dawning modern world, and in this respect it was
a true child of Rousseau, was the tendency to relate everything to politics. In
Latin America, every would-be plunderer or ambitious bandit now called
himself a ‘liberator’; murderers killed for freedom, thieves stole for the people.
In Spain, during the 1820s, believers and nonbelievers, those who liked kings
and those who hated them, began to regard their faith, or lack of it, as a
justification for forming private armies which defied the lawful authorities.
Organized crime now took a party label and put forward a program and thereby
became better organized and a more formidable threat to society.
“Thus violence acquired moral standing and the public was terrorized for its
own good. Many years before, Samuel Johnson, in upholding the rights of
authority, had qualified his defense by pointing to a corresponding and inherent
human right to resist oppression: ‘Why all this childish jealousy of the power of
455
Hence Tom Paine’s declaration: “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good” (The
Age of Reason (1793)). (V.M.)
456
Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848, London: Abacus, 1992, pp. 116-117.
265
the Crown?… In no government can power be abused long. Mankind will not
bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people to a great degree, they will rise and
cut off his head.’ The French Revolution had lowered the threshold of abuse at
which men rose. It proved that cutting off royal heads was easier than had
previously been thought and did not bring down the heavens. That undoubted
fact was now a permanent temptation to every enemy of society who wished to
acquire moral respectability for his crimes. It operated, in particular, throughout
the Mediterranean area, where every government oppressed its subjects to some
degree and there were usually no lawful forms of redress. In the past, men with
a grievance had suffered in silence or taken to the hills and robbed. Now the
hitherto resigned joined secret societies, and the bandits called themselves
politicians.”457
These secret societies continued the revolution on an international scale… The

major powers had many problems in their struggle against them. One was that it
required large resources and a much larger police (and secret police) apparatus
than any state had hitherto possessed. Secondly, the powers were not united.
France was still distrusted; Austria did not want Russian Cossacks settling
problems on her territory; Britain, which had played such an important role in
defeating Napoleon, was nevertheless not averse to helping this or that
revolutionary movement (particularly in the Iberian Peninsula 458 and South
America) if this suited her balance-of-power politics. Moreover, the British were
opposed to “interventionism on ideological grounds, as practiced by the Holy
Alliance, because its object was to impose or sustain a particular type of
government, which ran directly counter to the Zeitgeist”.459
The Zeitgeist was anti-monarchist; and even the monarchs felt they could not
go completely against it. They made their first compromise with it in the
conditions they imposed on France in 1818. For, as Hobsbawm writes, while “the
Bourbons were restored,… it was understood that they had to make concessions
to the dangerous spirit of their subjects. The major changes of the Revolution
were accepted, and that inflammatory device, a constitution, was granted to
them – though of course in an extremely moderate form – under the guise of a
Charter ‘freely conceded’ by the returned absolute monarch, Louis XVIII.” 460
Another compromise was the granting of senior posts to former revolutionaries,
“reconciling”, if that were possible, the reactionary King Louis XVIII with some
of the men who had caused his brother Louis XVI’s death. 461
457
458
In Spain, for example, the left-wing and Masonic Isabelinos “were supported by Palmerston
and by the British Legion of volunteers from Britain… They were also supported by the
government of Louis Philippe [of France]. Metternich and Tsar Nicholas were not in a position to
help the Carlists” (Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, London: Constable, 1999, p. 200).
459
460
461
“Suddenly the door opened; and silently there entered vice leaning on the arm of crime, M. de
Talleyrand supported by Fouché… the trusty regicide, kneeling, put the hand which had made
Louis XVI’s head roll in the hands of the martyred king’s brother” (Viscount de Chateaubriand,
Mémoires d’Outremer, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 543).
266
And yet making such concessions was only a short-term solution. For
appeasement can never tame a really determined enemy, but rather whets his
appetite for more. So it was no use saying, as Friedrich von Gentz, Metternich’s
secretary, said to the Laibach Congress of the Holy Alliance, 1821: “Revolution
must be fought with flesh and blood. Moral weapons are manifestly
powerless.”462 The truth was precisely the opposite: it was moral weapons that
had to be found.463 And it was a convincing moral and spiritual alternative to the
revolution that was lacking, especially in the generation that had been born
during Napoleon’s ascendancy. “In his Confession d’un Enfant du Siècle, [Musset]
describes a generation trapped in a limbo between two worlds. Old beliefs had
been swept away, but nothing worthy of the name had been found to replace
them. These young men had been born and bred to fight, but they had nothing
to fight for. They felt robbed of greatness and demeaned by the new state of
affairs. ‘What is left for us to venerate?’ Vigny asked rhetorically. ‘In the
universal shipwreck of faith, what debris are there at which generous hands can
clutch?’”464
Some oppression was unavoidable; but it could not succeed for long on its
own. Thus, as “Even Castlereagh’s brother, Charles Stewart, ambassador in
Vienna and otherwise sympathetic to Metternich, complained about his
‘Inordinate Taste for Spies and Police’, which tended to ‘put the Employer more
oftener on the wrong, rather than the right scent.’ ‘Your politics of oppression,
which tolerates no resistance, is a fatal one and leads as surely to an explosion as
a hermetically sealed cauldron which has no safety valve,’ Lord Palmerston,
British foreign secretary, told Metternich at the moment of his downfall in
1848.”465
What was needed was another, more powerful spirit to oppose the corrupt
spirit of the times, a positive doctrine of religious and political authority that
was deeper and truer than the revolutionary doctrine. But none of the great
powers was able to provide a positive teaching to reinforce and justify their
alternately conciliatory and repressive measures, for the simple reason that none
of them – with the exception of Russia – was Orthodox, and very few, even in
Russia, were capable of communicating that positive message to those infected
with the revolutionary contagion.
*
462
Genz, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 542.
463
Genz knew this as well as anyone. For he understood that the cause of the revolution lay in
the changing religious beliefs of men, from the true religion to Protestantism to revolutionary
secularism, even if he misidentified the true religion with Catholicism: “Protestantism is the first,
the true, the only source of all the vast evils under which we groan today. Had it merely
confined itself to reasoning, we might have been able and obliged to tolerate it, for a tendency to
argue is rooted in human nature. However, once governments agreed to accept Protestantism as
a permitted form of religion, an expression of Christianity, a right of man; once they… granted it
a place in the State beside, or even on the ruins of, the only true church, the religious, moral and
political order of the world was immediately dissolved… The entire French Revolution, and the
even worse revolution which is about to break over Germany, have sprung from this same
source.” (in Hobsbawm, op. cit., p. 282).
464
465
John Bew, review of Adam Zamoyski’s Phantom Terror, Literary Review, November, 2014, p. 20.
267
The solutions that were offered harked back to failed ideologies of the
Enlightenment and Medieval periods. The first was Kant’s Perpetual Peace: A
Philosophical Sketch (1795), which contained the following axiom: "The law of
nations shall be founded on a federation of free states". This was the
Enlightenment answer to the problem of war: a world government.
Henry Kissinger writes that “Kant dared to see in the general upheaval
[caused by the French revolution] the faint beginnings of a new, more peaceful
international order.
“Humanity, Kant reasoned, was characterized by a distinctive ‘unsocial

stability’: the ‘tendency to come together in society, coupled, however, with a
continual resistance which constantly threatens to break this society up.’ The
problem of order, particularly international order, was ‘the most difficult and
the last to be solved by the human race’. Men formed states to constrain their
passions, but like individuals in the state of nature each state sought to preserve
its absolute freedom, even at the cost of ‘a lawless state of savagery’. But the
‘devastations, upheavals and even complete inner exhaustion of their powers’
arising from interstate clashes would in time oblige men to contemplate an
alternative. Humanity faced either the peace of ‘the vast graveyard of the human
race’ or peace by reasoned design.
“The answer, Kant held, was a voluntary federation of republics pledged to

non-hostility and transparent domestic and international conduct. Their citizens
would cultivate peace because, unlike despotic rulers, when considering
hostilities, they would be deliberating about ‘calling down on themselves all the
miseries of war.’ Over time the attractions of the compact would become
apparent, opening the way toward its gradual expansion into a peaceful world
order. It was Nature’s purpose that humanity eventually reason its way toward
‘a system of united power, hence a cosmopolitan system of general political
security’ and ‘a perfect civil union of mankind’.”466
This purely rationalist answer to the problem of world peace has been tried in
our time with the League of Nations and the United Nations. It has not worked.
And the reason is not far to find: mankind is not as rational, either in its
individual or collective forms, as to seek, let alone be satisfied with, a peaceful
solution of its conflicting desires. There is an irrational, demonic element in
fallen man that seeks, not life, but death, not peace, but war. This demonic
element burst out in the French revolution, and was checked – but by no means
exorcised completely – only by defeat on the battlefield.
The other solution on offer was a return to submission to the Roman Catholic
Church, a fervently anti-revolutionary power that was trying to make up for its
lapse in the time of Napoleon. Thus in 1814 the Jesuit order was re-established.
And in his encyclical Mirari vos (1832), Pope Gregory XVI declared that anti-
466
Kissinger, World Order, London: Penguin, 2015, p. 40.
268
monarchism was a crime against the faith, and that liberty of conscience flowed
from “the most fetid fount of indifferentism”.
The Vatican was supported by such writers as Chateaubriand, who in his

Genius of Christianity (1802), an immensely influential book, combined Catholic
Christianity with Romanticism around the idea of unity. “For Chateaubriand,”
writes George L. Mosse, “all things were interrelated, just as in the new music
drama all arts had to cooperate in order to produce a unity of feeling. Christ
reflected a harmony between God and humanity which was also reflected in
nature. When he wrote about church bells he went on to link the effect they
produced with the effect produced by winds, seas, volcanoes, and the voice of a
whole people. All these caused a thousand hearts to feel the sentiment, the same
unity of the emotions. This was what Chateaubriand called the sublime and the
beautiful. ‘There is one God, the grasses of the valleys and the trees of the
mountains bless him, the elephant salutes him at the dawn of day, the birds sing
in the foliage, the ocean declares his immensity.’ Though romantic religion had a
strong element of pantheism in it, Chateaubriand was not a pantheist. He
believed that Christianity was reflected in a divine institution which operated on
earth, the Catholic church.
“Catholicism was defended not on historical or even theological grounds, but

because it reflected the harmony of all things. From the center at Rome branched
out, in an orderly manner, missions, bishops, and the other services of the
church which extended over the whole earth. Moreover, its liturgy contained the
divine mysteries which, together with its centralized organization, reflected the
cosmos which was Christian. Protestantism in contrast was chaos. It must be
clear why Chateaubriand subtitled the book the Beauty of Christianity, for its
truth was sublime by the standards of romanticism…
“Chateaubriand’s justification of Catholicism was not an isolated

phenomenon. Romanticism had a preference for this form of Christianity. It
fitted in not only with the kind of ideology which Chateaubriand put forward,
but also with the Romantics’ Gothic vision of history…”467
According to Zamoyski, Chateaubriand “vindicated Christianity and

presented it in a way that appealed to modern intellectuals. His vision of a
spiritually refreshed Catholicism emerging from the blood and suffering of the
revolution with a chivalric monarchism rising above the power struggles of the
recent past, inspired most of the French Romantics. But submission to the will of
God was no longer appealing to generations that had become used to the
concept of the centrality of Man in the universe…” 468
A more hard-headed Catholic vision was presented by two French aristocrats,

Count Joseph de Maistre, a former envoy of Sardinia to Russia, and Viscount
Louis de Bonald. Thus De Maistre wrote: “All grandeur, all power, all
subordination rests on the executioner: he is the horror and bond of human
467
468
269
association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world, and at that
moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple, and society disappears. God,
Who is the author of sovereignty, is the author also of punishment.” 469 Between
God, the ultimate executioner, and kings, there is the power of the pope – the
highest on earth. “Without the pope Christianity is no longer, and as an
inevitable consequence, the social order is smitten in the heart. The church must
be governed like any other organization; otherwise there would no longer be
aggregation, cohesion, unity. This government is therefore by nature infallible,
that is to say absolute; otherwise the pope would not govern… There is nothing
shocking about the idea of all Christian rulers united by religious brotherhood in
a kind of universal republic under the measured supremacy of the supreme
spiritual power.”470
Here is the idea of medieval Christendom reborn! And De Maistre’s

exaltation of the papacy and opposition to any kind of power independent of it
was supported by De Bonald, who wrote: “Today… who does not see the
danger of granting anyone and everyone… the terrible liberty to indoctrinate, in
religion and in politics, a public which everywhere is made up largely of
mistaken, ignorant, and violent men?… There is no true liberty of the press…
except under the guarantee of censorship to prevent license of thought. There is
no civil liberty without laws to prevent actions that create disorder.” 471
Berlin writes: “What the entire Enlightenment has in common is denial of the
central Christian doctrine of original sin, believing instead that man is born
either innocent and good, or morally neutral and malleable by education or
environment, or, at worst, deeply defective but capable of radical and indefinite
improvement by rational education in favourable circumstances, or by a
revolutionary reorganisation of society as demanded, for example, by Rousseau.
It is this denial of original sin that the Church condemned most severely in
Rousseau’s Émile, despite its attack on materialism, utilitarianism and atheism. It
is the powerful reaffirmation of this Pauline and Augustinian doctrine that is the
sharpest single weapon in the root-and-branch attack on the entire
Enlightenment by the French counter-revolutionary writers Maistre, Bonald and
Chateaubriand, at the turn of the century.
“… The doctrines of Joseph de Maistre… formed the spearhead of the

counter-revolution in the early nineteenth century in Europe. Maistre held the
Enlightenment to be one of the most foolish, as well as the most ruinous, forms
of social thinking. The conception of man as naturally disposed to benevolence,
co-operation and peace, or, at any rate, capable of being shaped in this direction
by appropriate education or legislation, is for him shallow and false. The
benevolent Dame Nature of Hume, Holbach and Helvétius is an absurd figment.
History and zoology are the most reliable guides to nature: they show her to be a
field of unceasing slaughter. Men are by nature aggressive and destructive; they
rebel over trifles – the change to the Gregorian calendar in the mid-eighteenth
469
De Maistre, The St. Petersburg Dialogues; in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 543.
470
De Maistre, On the Pope, 1819.
471
De Bonald, On Opposition to the Government and the Liberty of the Press, 1827; in Cohen and
Major, op. cit., p. 544.
270
century, or Peter the Great’s decision to shave the boyars’ beards, provoke
violent resistance, at times dangerous rebellions. But when men are sent to war,
to exterminate beings as innocent as themselves for no purpose that either army
can grasp, they go obediently to their deaths and scarcely ever mutiny. When the
destructive instinct is evoked men feel exalted and fulfilled. Men do not come
together, as the Enlightenment teaches, for mutual co-operation and peaceful
happiness; history makes it clear that they are never so united as when given a
common altar upon which to immolate themselves. This is so because the desire
to sacrifice themselves or others is at least as strong as any pacific or constructive
impulse.
“Maistre felt that men are by nature evil, self-destructive animals, full of
conflicting drives, who do not know what they want, want what they do not
want, do not want what they want, and it is only when they are kept under
constant control and rigorous discipline by some authoritarian elite – a Church,
a State, or some other body from whose decisions there is no appeal – that they
can hope to survive and be saved. Reasoning, analysis, criticism shake the
foundations and destroy the fabric of society. If the source of authority is
declared to be rational, it invites questioning and doubt; but if it is questioned it
may be argued away; its authority is undermined by able sophists, and this
accelerates the forces of chaos, as in France during the reign of the weak and
liberal Louis XVI. If the State is to survive and frustrate the fools and knaves
who will always seek to destroy it, the source of its authority must be absolute,
so terrifying, indeed, that the least attempt to question it must entail immediate
and terrible sanctions: only then will men learn to obey it. Without a clear
hierarchy of authority – awe-inspiring power – men’s incurably destructive
instincts will breed chaos and mutual extermination. The supreme power –
especially the Church – must never seek to explain or justify itself in rational
terms; for what one man can demonstrate, another may be able to refute. Reason
is the thinnest of walls against the raging seas of violent emotion: on so insecure
a basis no permanent structure can ever be erected. Irrationality, so far from
being an obstacle, has historically led to peace, security and strength, and is
indispensable to society: it is rational institutions – republics, elective
monarchies, democracies, associations founded on the enlightened principles of
free love – that collapse soonest; authoritarian Churches, hereditary monarchies
and aristocracies, traditional forms of life, like the highly irrational institutions of
the family, founded on life-long marriage – it is they that persist.
“The philosophes proposed to rationalise communications by inventing a

universal language free from the irrational survivals, the idiosyncratic twists and
turns, the capricious peculiarities of existing tongues; if they were to succeed,
this would be disastrous, for it is precisely the individual historical development
of a language belonging to a people that absorbs, enshrines and encapsulates a
vast wealth of half-conscious, half-remembered collective experience. What men
call superstition and prejudice are but the crust of custom which by sheer
survival has shown itself proof against the ravages and vicissitudes of its long
life; to lose it is to lose the shield that protects men’s national existence, their
spirit, the habits, memories, faith that have made them what they are. The
conception of human nature which the radical critics have promulgated and on
271
which their whole house of cards rests is an infantile fantasy. Rousseau asks why
it is that man, who was born free, is nevertheless everywhere in chains; Maistre
replies, ‘This mad pronouncement, Man is born free, is the opposite of the truth.’
‘It would be equally reasonable,’ adds the eminent critic Émile Faguet in an
essay on Maistre, ‘to say that sheep are born carnivorous, and everywhere nibble
grass.’ Men are not made for freedom, nor for peace. Such freedom and peace as
they have had were obtained only under wisely authoritarian governments that
have repressed the destructive critical intellect and its socially disintegrating
effects. Scientists, intellectuals, lawyers, journalists, democrats, Jansenists,
Protestants, Jews, atheists – these are the sleepless enemy that never ceases to
gnaw at the vitals of society. The best government the world has ever known
was that of the Romans: they were too wise to be scientists themselves; for this
purpose they hired the clever, volatile, politically incapable Greeks. Not the
luminous intellect, but dark instincts govern man and societies; only elites which
understand this, and keep the people from too much secular education, which is
bound to make them over-critical and discontented, can give to men as much
happiness and justice and freedom as, in this vale of tears, men can expect to
have. But at the back of everything must lurk the potentiality of force, of coercive
power.
“In a striking image Maistre says that all social order in the end rests upon
one man, the executioner. Nobody wishes to associate with this hideous figure,
yet on him, so long as men are weak, sinful, unable to control their passions,
constantly lured to their doom by evil temptations or foolish dreams, rest all
order, all peace, all society. The notion that reason is sufficient to educate or
control the passions is ridiculous. When there is a vacuum, power rushes in;
even the bloodstained monster Robespierre, a scourge sent by the Lord to
punish a country that had departed from the true faith, is more to be admired –
because he did hold France together and repelled her enemies, and created
armies that, drunk with blood and passion, preserved France – than liberal
fumbling and bungling. Louis XIV ignored the clever reasoners of his time,
suppressed heresy, and died full of glory in his own bed. Louis XVI played
amiably with subversive ideologists who had drunk at the poisoned well of
Voltaire, and died on the scaffold. Repression, censorship, absolute sovereignty,
judgements from which there is no appeal, these are the only methods of
governing creatures whom Maistre described as half men, half beasts, monstrous
centaurs at once seeking after God and fighting him, longing to love and create,
but in perpetual danger of falling victims to their own blindly destructive drives,
held in check by a combination of force and traditional authority and, above all,
a faith incarnated in historically hallowed institutions that reason dare not touch.
“Nation and race are realities; the artificial creations of constitution-mongers

are bound to collapse. ‘Nations,’ said Maistre, ‘are born and die like individuals’;
they ‘have a common soul’, especially visible in their language. And since they
are individuals, they should endeavour to remain of one race. So too Bonald, his
closest intellectual ally, regrets that the French nation has abandoned its racial
purity, thus weakening itself. The question of whether the French are descended
from Franks or Gauls, whether their institutions are Roman or German in origin,
with the implication that this could dictate a form of life in the present, although
272
it has its roots in political controversies in the sixteenth, seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries, now takes the colour of mystical organicism, which
transcends, and is proof against, all forms of discursive reasoning. Natural
growth alone is real for Maistre. Only time, only history, can create authority
that men can worship and obey: mere military dictatorship, a work of individual
human hands, is brutal force without spiritual power; he calls it bâtonocratie, and
predicts the end of Napoleon.
“In similar strain Bonald denounces individualism whether as a social

doctrine or an intellectual method of analysing historical phenomena. The
inventions of man, he declared, are precarious aids compared to the divinely
ordained institutions that penetrate man’s very being – language, family, the
worship of God. By whom were they invented? Whenever a child is born there
are father, mother, family, language, God; this is the basis of all that is genuine
and lasting, not the arrangements of men drawn from the world of shopkeepers,
with their contracts, or promises, or utility, or material goods. Liberal
individualism inspired by the insolent self-confidence of mutinous intellectuals
has led to the inhuman competition of bourgeois society, in which the strongest
and the fastest win and the weak go to the wall. Only the Church can organise a
society in which the ablest are held back so that the whole of society can
progress and the weakest and least greedy also reach the goal.
“These gloomy [!] doctrines became the inspiration of monarchist politics in

France, and together with the notion of romantic heroism and the sharp contrast
between creative and uncreative, historic and unhistoric, individuals and
nations, duly inspired nationalism, imperialism, and finally, in their most violent
and pathological form, Fascist and totalitarian doctrines in the twentieth
century.” 472
And yet Berlin was wrong in this last paragraph: one cannot attribute fascism
and communism to the monarchical backlash against the French Revolution.
Fascism, it is true, was based on worship of the people, its historical tradition
and its State; but where did the worship of the people originate if not in the
French Revolution? It would be truer to say that the roots of Fascism lay in both
Enlightenment, rationalist and Counter-Enlightenment, irrationalist traditions.
As for the Russian and other communist revolutions, they were in every way the
descendants of the universalist and internationalist French Revolution.
But de Maistre was also wrong in thinking that the Catholic idea, the idea that
the evil passions can be tamed by blind obedience to an unquestioned, absolute
authority, could stop the revolution. The Catholic idea was now dead –
Napoleon killed it when he took the crown from the Pope and crowned himself.
Moreover, as we shall see, the conservative monarchs who defeated Napoleon
and formed their “Holy Alliance” in 1815 placed themselves firmly against it...
Sir Richard Evans has argued that “figures like de Bonald and de Maistre
Berlin, “The Counter-Enlightenment”, in The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998,
472
pp. 264-268.
273
were in fact marginal extremists”. 473 He is right in the sense that their views were
by this time minority opinions (at least in educated circles), and also in the sense
that the kind of Christianity they represented has been on the retreat in Europe
from that time to the present day. However, their idea that the West was rotting,
in rapid decay, was not uninfluential. As Berlin writes, “This was the doctrine
which the Roman Catholic counter-revolutionaries at the turn of the century
virtually invented, and it formed part of their view of the French Revolution as a
divine punishment visited upon those who strayed from the Christian faith, and
in particular that of the Roman Church. From France this denunciation of
secularism was carried by many devious routes, mainly by second-rate
journalists and their academic readers, to Germany and to Russia (to Russia both
directly and via German versions), where it found a ready soil among those
who, having themselves avoided the revolutionary upheavals, found it flattering
to believe that they, at any rate, might still be on the path to greater power and
glory, while the West, destroyed by the failure of its ancient faith, was fast
disintegrating morally and politically…”474

473
Berlin, “The Hedgehog and the Fox”, in The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, p.
474
481.
274
32. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORICISM
Now the Catholic idea stood for unchanging truth. It was opposed, in the early
decades of the nineteenth century, by the idea of the development of truth, or
historicism. This went together with a greatly increased interest in history.
As George L. Mosse writes: "A revival of history underlay the new concept of
liberty in the post-Napoleonic generation. This revival had been foreshadowed
by the Italian historian, Giambattista Vico, who in his Scienza Nuova, the New
Science (1725), had confronted the rationalism of his age with a philosophy of
history. Vico felt that history also worked according to natural laws, laws which
determined its movement which Vico took to be cyclical. Civilizations arose and
decayed, descending from the age of the gods to that of the heroic and on to the
human age and its subsequent decay. Vico’s cyclical theory of history had little
impact on his contemporaries. Much later, at the end of the nineteenth century,
Benedetto Croce refurbished Vico’s status as a historian, and still later Oswald
Spengler espoused, in part, his theories. Nevertheless, to this post-Napoleonic
generation, Vico displayed a philosophy of history governed by natural laws
which moved through the engine of the human spirit. Central to this spirit was a
concept of liberty.
“What emerged, then, from Vico’s thought was a concept of liberty which
worked as a natural law in history and through history. ‘Everything is history,’
the Neapolitan maintained, a remark Croce was fond of repeating later on.
While accepting the primacy of the spirit in the human struggle for liberty, the
adherents of the religion of liberty abandoned the cyclical rhythm of history in
favor of a concept of progress based, as it was, on the optimistic belief of the
Enlightenment in the triumph of reason. Now, however, this concept of progress
was combined with an awareness of the importance of historical development.
Human progress developed through the laws of history and not through the
inevitable triumph of reason alone. A concept of liberty was central to this
human progress in the sense of liberty’s progress as a part of man’s progress
through history.
“But had liberty not led to the Terror, to Jacobin tyranny and, in the end, to
Napoleon’s iron grip on Europe? Would liberty, even if conceived in historical
terms, not lead to new excesses? The adherents of this new liberty had to face
this problem. They believed in liberty but hated what Robespierre and Napoleon
had made out of this human longing. The emphasis on history helped here, for
such an emphasis precluded sudden innovations. They went one step further
and repudiated the revolutionary concept of democracy, a concept they felt led
not to liberty but to absolutism. They blamed Rousseau’s doctrine of the general
will and Robespierre’s use of it. Madame de Staël, in her Considerations upon the
French Revolution (1816), spoke of the Revolution as a crisis in the history of
liberty. She contrasted ancient liberty, sanctified by history, to the modernity of
despotism. Jacobin popular democracy was, for her, just another form of
tyranny; liberty had to be obtained in another way, a way outlined by the French
constitution of 1791 and the constitution of England (for Madame de Staël
275
admired the English constitution as did Montesquieu before her). ‘It is a
beautiful sight this constitution, vacillating a little as it sets out from its port, like
a vessel launched at sea, yet unfurling its sails, it gives full play to everything
great and generous in the human soul.’ Through such a constitution liberty
unfolds within the historical process. Liberty was all-important to this talented
and famous woman; she hated the Terror but she did not lay it at the doorstep of
the Revolution. The ancien régime had so corrupted the morals of the people that
despotism, not liberty, had to be the outcome of their justified revolt. She held to
the oft-repeated view that the champions of reaction, not the revolutionaries,
were the ultimate causes of revolutions.”475
Now French liberals such as Madame de Staël or Benjamin Constant might

speak about the historical process. But their understanding of that process was
something quite different from what it meant to the new wave of romantic
philosophers that were beginning to make their reputations across the Rhine…
By contrast with the Age of Reason, which had sought to elucidate

truths that were valid for all cultures and all times, for the Age of
Revolution truth was ineluctably historical and particularist. And this
meant not simply that the truth about a person or nation can be
understood only in his or its historical context. It meant that truth itself
changes with time. Thus God for the romantics was a dynamic,
evolving being indistinguishable from nature and history, always
overcoming contradictions and rising to ever higher unities.
It followed that there was no perfectly revealed religion, no absolute

truth. "Christians must not be 'vain and foolish', Friedrich
Schleiermacher warned, for their religion is not the only 'revealed
religion'. All religions are revealed from God. Christianity is the center
around which all others gather. The disunity of religions is an evil and
'only in the totality of all such possible forms can there be given the
true religion,' Schleiermacher added." 476
This schema was developed by Friedrich Schelling, who

distinguished "the three ages of history - the age of the Father, the age
of the Son, and the age of the Holy Spirit which correspond to the
events of creation, redemption and consummation. Schelling believed
that Christianity was now passing through 'the second age' which
Christ 'incarnated' almost two millennia ago.
"In the vocabulary of the Romantics, Christ brought 'the Idea of

Christianity' with Him. An 'Idea' is the invisible, unchangeable, and
eternal aspect of each thing. (Plato was probably the first to teach
'Idealism'.) Phenomena are visible, changeable, and temporary. Put
475
Mosse, op. cit., pp. 102-103.
476
Fr. Michael Azkoul, Anti-Christianity: The New Atheism, Montreal: Monastery Press, 1984, p. 34.
276
another way, the Idea of Christianity ('one Church') is what the
historical institution will become when it finishes growing, or, as
Schelling would say, when God becomes fully God. One may compare
its Idea to wheat and historical Christianity (the Idea) to what
Protestantism, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Christianity will
become. When the multiplicity of churches grows into the ecumenical
Church, then, the Idea of Christianity, of 'one church', will have been
actualised in space and time. It will be actualised in the coming of 'the
third age', 'the age of the Spirit', 'the age of consummation'." 477
The desire to keep always “in step with the times” was manifestly
especially by a third Friedrich, Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), who, as Sir
Richard Evans writes, “grew up in south-west Germany under the
influence of the Enlightenment, was an admirer of the French
Revolution, and of Napoleon. Whom he witnessed entering Jena after
the winning the battle of 1806. Following a variety of teaching
positions, Hegel was appointed to the Chair of Philosophy in Berlin in
1818, where he remained until his death of cholera in 1831. An atheist,
he replaced the concept of God with the idea of the ‘World Spirit’ of
rationality, which he believed was working out is purposes n a process
he called ‘dialectical’, in which one historical condition would be
replaced by its antithesis, and then the two would combine to create a
final synthesis. As he became more conservative, Hegel began to regard
the state of Prussia after 1815 as a ‘synthesis’ requiring no further
alteration. Not surprisingly, he was soon known as ‘the Prussian state
philosopher’. But his core idea of ineluctable historical progress held a
considerable appeal for radicals in many parts of Europe…” 478
Hegel’s dialectical philosophy of history is important not only for

an understanding of future movements, especially Marxism and
Fascism, which borrowed much from Hegel, but also in that it
constitutes a kind of synthesis of the two major movements of western
thought that we have just examined: rationalism, with its political
child, liberal democracy, and romanticism, with its offspring, the more
collectivist and authoritarian forms of political life.
Hume had demonstrated the irrationality of rationalism, of “pure”

empiricism. Kant had demonstrated that the application of reason
presupposes a spirit transcending the empirical world, but could not
explain how this free realm of spirit related to the causally determined
world of matter. Hegel expanded the realm of spirit to engulf
everything, making it into a kind of pantheistic god called the Absolute
Idea or the World Spirit. To this Spirit, which is the All and can only be
understood, like an organism, from the point of view of the All, he
477
Azkoul, op cit., pp. 77-78. Schleiermacher saw the essence of religion in the supposed fact
that "it resigns at once all claims on anything that belongs either to science or morality. In
essence it is neither thought nor action but intuitive contemplation and sentiment" (Speeches on
Religion to its Cultured Despisers, 1799, Second Speech; in Comby, op cit., p. 126).
478
Evans, The Pursuit of Power. Europe 1815-1914, London: Penguin, p. 175.
277
gave all the attributes that romanticism had rescued from the maw of
devouring rationalism: emotion, mystery, dynamism, history, even
nationalism. Thus to the bright empiricist-rationalist thesis, and its
dark romantic-idealist antithesis, Hegel supplied a cloudy,
metaphysical, empiricist-rationalist and romantic-idealist synthesis.
And a nonsensically self-contradictory one at that. Thus Karl Popper

writes: “Hegel… teaches that everything is in flux, even essences.
Essences and Ideas and Spirits develop; and their development is, of
course, self-moving and dialectical… History, as he sees it, is the
thought process of the ‘Absolute Spirit’ or ‘World Spirit’. It is the
manifestation of this Spirit. It is a kind of huge dialectical syllogism;
reasoned out, as it were, by Providence. The syllogism is the plan
which Providence follows; and the logical conclusion arrived at it’s the
end which Providence pursues – the perfection of the world. ‘The only
thought,’ Hegel writes in his Philosophy of History, ‘with which
Philosophy approaches History, is the simple conception of Reason; it
is the doctrine that Reason is the Sovereign of the World, and that the
History of the World, therefore, presents us with a rational process. This
conviction and intuition is… no hypothesis in the domain of
Philosophy. It is there proven… that Reason… is Substance; as well as
Infinite Power;… Infinite Matter…; Infinite Form…; Infinite Energy… That
this “Idea” or “Reason” is the True, the Eternal, the absolutely Powerful
Essence; that it reveals itself in the World, and that in that World
nothing else is revealed but this and its honour and glory – this is a
thesis which, as we have said, has been proved in Philosophy, and is
here regarded as demonstrated.’ This gush does not carry us far…” 479
“For Hegel as for Kant,” writes Niall Ferguson, “’human

arbitrariness and even external necessity’ had to be subordinated to ‘a
higher necessity’. ‘The sole aim of philosophical inquiry,’ as he put it in
the second draft of his Philosophical History of the World , was ‘to
eliminate the contingent… In history, we must look for a general
design, the ultimate end of the world. We must bring into history the
belief and conviction that the realm of the will is not at the mercy of
contingency.’ However, Hegel’s ‘higher necessity’ was not material but
supernatural – indeed, in many ways it closely resembled the
traditional Christian God, most obviously when he spoke of ‘an eternal
justice and love, the absolute and ultimate end [of] which is truth in
and for itself’. Hegel just happened to call his God ‘Reason’. Thus his
basic ‘presupposition’ was ‘the idea that a reason governs the world
and that history therefore is a rational process’: ‘That world history is
governed by an ultimate design… whose rationality is… a divine and
absolute reason – this is the proposition whose truth we must assume;
its proof lies in the study of world history itself, which is the image
and enactment of reason… Whoever looks at the world rationally will
find that it assumes a rational aspect… The overall content of world
479
Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, pp. 46, 47.
278
history is rational and indeed has to be rational; a divine will rules
supreme and is strong enough to determine the overall content. Our
aim must be to discern this substance, and to do so, we must bring with
us a rational consciousness.’ This somewhat circular argumentation
was the second possible way [the first was Kant’s theory of
phenomenal and noumenal realities] of dealing with the Cartesian
claim that determinism did not apply to the non-material world. Hegel
had no desire to give precedence to materialism: ‘The spirit and the
course of its development are the true substance of history,’ he
maintained; and the role of ‘physical nature’ was emphatically
subordinate to the role of ‘the spirit’. But ‘the spirit’, he argued, was
just as subject to deterministic forces as physical nature.
“What were these forces? Hegel equated what he called ‘the spirit’
with ‘the idea of human freedom’, suggesting that the historical
process could be understood as the attainment of self-knowledge by
this idea of freedom through a succession of ‘world spirits’. Adapting
the Socratic form of philosophical dialogue, he posited the existence of
a dichotomy within (to take the example which most concerned him)
the national spirit, between the essential and the real, or the universal
and the particular. It was the dialectical relationship between these
which propelled history onwards and upwards in what has been
likened to a dialectical waltz – thesis, antithesis, synthesis. But this was
a waltz, Fred Astaire style, up a stairway. ‘The development, progress
and ascent of the spirit towards a higher concept of itself… is
accomplished by the debasement, fragmentation and destruction of the
preceding mode of reality… The universal arises out of the particular
and determinate and its negation… All this takes place automatically.’
“The implications of Hegel’s model were in many ways more radical

than those of any contemporary materialist theory of history. In his
contradiction-driven scheme of things, the individual’s aspirations and
fate counted for nothing: they were ‘a matter of indifference to world
history, which uses individuals only as instruments to further its own
progress’. No matter what injustice might befall individuals,
‘philosophy should help us to understand that the actual world is as it
ought to be’. For ‘the actions of human beings in the history of the
world produce an effect altogether different from what they themselves
intend’ and ‘the worth of individuals is measured by the extent to
which they reflect and represent the national spirit’. Hence ‘the great
individuals of world history… are those who seize upon [the] higher
universal and make it their own end’. Morality was therefore simply
beside the point: ‘World history moves on a higher plane than that to
which morality properly belongs.’ And, of course, ‘the concrete
manifestation’ of ‘the unity of the subjective will and the universal’ –
‘the totality of ethical life and the realisation of freedom’ – was that
fetish-object of Hegel’s generation: the (Prussian) state.
279
“With such arguments, Hegel had, it might be said, secularised
predestination, translating Calvin’s theological dogma into the realm of
history. The individual now lost control not only of his salvation in the
afterlife, but also of his fate on earth… At the same time, there was at
least a superficial resemblance between Hegel’s idealist philosophy of
history and the materialist theories which had developed elsewhere.
Hegel’s ‘cunning of Reason’ was perhaps a harsher master than Kant’s
‘Nature’ and Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’; but these other quasi-deities
performed analogous roles.” 480
A central pillar - perhaps the central pillar - of German romantic philosophy

was the cult of the personality, freedom and creativity. Paradoxically, however,
the most romantic of German philosophies, that of Hegel, denies personal
freedom and creativity. As Fr. Georges Florovsky writes: "The romantic cult of
personality, unrepeatable, autonomous and self-sufficient, which itself ascribes
its own laws, the Fichtean pathos of the freedom of moral creativity, Schelling's
aestheticism of genius, Schleiermacher's religion of feeling and mood - all this is
too well known. And this whole series is completed by Hegelianism, in which
freedom, the freedom of creative self-definition becomes the main theme of
cosmic development. And yet at the same time, in these individualistic systems,
personality, strictly speaking... disappears, there is no place in them for the
creative personality. We shall not understand the real reason for this unexpected
event if we search for it in the 'pantheism' of the world-feeling of the time: after
all, it was not a matter of dissolving the personality in nature, but of finding the
whole of nature within oneself, as in an autonomous 'microcosm'. The
resolution of the enigma must be sought, not in a world-feeling, but in a world-
understanding. Logical providentialism - that is how best to express the
characteristic trait of this world-understanding; and it is precisely this idea of
the sheer logicalness of the world, the rationality of history, so to speak, the rational
transparency of the cosmic process that is the profound source of the inner
dissonances of idealistic individualism.
“The world, both in its stasis and in its movement, is seen as the realization of
a certain reasonable plan. Moreover, - this is very essential, - this plan is
recognized as not exceeding the power of human attainment. Every moment of
historical development is presented as the incarnation of some ‘idea’ that admits
of an abstract formulation. Also in the succession of these ‘epochs’ is revealed a
definite logical order, and the whole series is oriented in the direction of a
certain accomplished structure in which the fullness of its reasonable content is
revealed. That necessity with which the whole system of affirmations in space
proceeds in its smallest details as from the axioms of geometry, is also seen in
cosmic evolution, in the advancing pace of human history. The role of axioms is
played here by the elementary motifs of the Reason that creates the universe,
which are accepted as something accessible to human knowledge, so that,
proceeding from them, we can as it were divine in advance every bend in the
evolutionary flow. The course of history turns out to be unambiguously
determined. And thought does not stop at the ‘beginning’ of the world, but also
480
Ferguson, Virtual History, London: Picador, 1997, pp. 28-31.
280
penetrates into the mysteries of that ‘which was when there was nothing’, and
demonstrates the fated necessity of the building of the Absolute First-Cause of
all itself. It demonstrates that the world could not fail to arise, and moreover
could not fail to arise precisely as we know it. Thus the ‘thinking through’ of
history, carried to its conclusion, leads to inevitable determinism: every ray of
freedom or creativity dies in the vice of iron logic. Nothing ‘new’ in essence can
arise; only the inescapable conclusions from pre-eternal postulates come into
being – come into being in and of themselves.
“But this is not all: the ‘rationalization’ of history includes one more thought.
The aim of history is the realization of a definite construction, the installation into
life of a definite form of existence. This ‘construction’ and ‘existence’ turn out to be
the single value, and this will and must be so, since logical completion and
moral worth have been equated with each other from the very beginning. The
forms of natural existence or the forms of social organization are subject to moral
justification, and they are the same; only abstractions have moral meaning. The
individual can have an ethical content only indirectly, only insofar as it realizes
an ‘idea’, and only because it serves as its shell. In other words, unconditional
meaning belongs, not to people, but to ideas. ‘The good’ can be a theocracy, a
democratic state or der geschlossene Handelsstaat [closed mercantile state], but not
creative personalities.
“And finally, if the gradation of values exactly reproduces the dialectical

succession of ideas, then, in essence, this gradation does not exist as such;
historical development goes from the imperfect to increasing perfection, from
the worse to the better, so that it ends with all-perfection, the highest
concentration of the Good. But this highest level, which is in a fatalistic way
inevitable, is at the same time absolutely impossible without the lower levels. It
possesses its own worth only because behind it lies the unworthy. Good is
impossible without Evil, and not only because these concepts are co-relative, but
also because ontologically the power of the Good grows only out of the not-
good. Evil is not only undeveloped good, incomplete perfection, but also a
necessary constituent part of the Good. Evil had to arise inside the Divinity itself
in order that God could become the real God, completely Unconditional. The
meaning of the world can be realized only through meaninglessness. And it is
clear that in this way that unconditional disparity that characterizes the
predicates ‘good’ and ‘bad’ for the ‘naïve’ moral consciousness is removed. ‘Sin’
is turned into the inevitable ‘mistake’ of immature age, and moral tragedy
becomes a cunningly devised melodrama…”481
What is the relationship between Hegelianism and its most influential

offspring, Marxism? Timothy Snyder explains: “G.W.F. Hegel’s ambition was to
resolve the difference between what is and what should be. His claim was that
something called Spirit, a unity of all thoughts and minds, was emerging over
time, through the conflicts that defined epochs. Hegel’s was an appealing way of
Florovsky, “Smysl istorii i smysl zhizni” (The Meaning of History and the Meaning of Life),
481
Vera i Kultura (Faith and Culture), St. Petersburg, 2002, pp. 63-65.
281
seeing our fractious world, since it suggested that catastrophe was an indication
of progress. History was a ‘slaughter bench’, but the bloodshed had a purpose.
This idea allowed philosophers to pose as prophets, seers of hidden patterns that
would resolve themselves into a better world, judges of who had to suffer now
so that all would benefit later. If Spirit was the only good, then any means that
History chose for its realization was also good.
“Karl Marx was critical of Hegel’s idea of Spirit. He and other Left Hegelians
claimed that Hegel had smuggled God into his system under the heading of
Spirit. The absolute good, suggested Marx, was not God but humanity’s lost
essence. History was a struggle, but its sense was man’s overcoming of
circumstance to regain his own nature. The emergence of technology, argued
Marx, allowed some men to dominate others, forming social classes. Under
capitalism, the bourgeoisie controlled the means of production, oppressing the
mass of workers. This very oppression instructed workers about the character of
history and made them revolutionaries. The proletariat would overthrow the
bourgeoisie, seize the means of production, and thereby restore man to himself.
Once there was no property, thought Marx, human beings would live in happy
cooperation…”482
Sir Isaiah Berlin writes: “When Hegel, and after him Marx, describe historical
processes, they too assume that human beings and their societies are part and
parcel of a wider nature, which Hegel regards as spiritual, and Marx as material,
in character. Great social forces are at work of which only the acutest and most
gifted individuals are aware; the ordinary run of men are blind in varying
degrees to that which truly shapes their lives, they worship fetishes and invent
childish mythologies, which they dignify with the title of views or theories in
order to explain the world in which they live. From time to time the real forces –
impersonal and irresistible – which truly govern the world develop to a point
where a new historical advance is ‘due’. Then (as both Hegel and Marx
notoriously believed) the crucial moments of advance are reached; these take the
form of violent, cataclysmic leaps, destructive revolutions which, often with fire
and sword, establish a new order upon the ruins of the old. Inevitably the
foolish, obsolete, purblind, homemade philosophies of the denizens of the old
establishment are knocked over and swept away together with their possessors.
“For Hegel, and for a good many others, though by no means all, among the
philosophers and poets of the romantic movement, history is a perpetual
struggle of vast spiritual forces embodied now in institutions – Churches, races,
civilisations, empires, national States – now in individuals of more than human
stature – ‘world-historical figures’ – of bold and ruthless genius, towering over,
and contemptuous of, their puny contemporaries. For Marx, the struggle is a
fight between socially conditioned, organised groups – classes shaped by the
struggle for subsistence and survival and consequently for the control of power.
There is a sardonic note (inaudible only to their most benevolent and single-
hearted followers) in the words of both these thinkers as they contemplate the
discomfiture and destruction of the philistines, the ordinary men and women
482
Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, London: Vintage, 2018, pp. 30-31.
282
caught in one of the decisive moments of history Both Hegel and Marx conjure
up an image of peaceful and foolish human beings, largely unaware of the part
they play in history, building their homes, with touching hope and simplicity,
upon the green slopes of what seems to them a peaceful mountainside, trusting
in the permanence of their particular way of life, their own economic, social and
political order, treating their own values as if they were eternal standards, living,
working, fighting without any awareness of the cosmic processes of which their
lives are but a passing stage. But the mountain is no ordinary mountain; it is a
volcano; and when (as the philosopher always knew that it would) the inevitable
eruption comes, their homes and their elaborately tended institutions and their
ideals and their ways of life and values will be blown out of existence in the
cataclysm which marks the leap from the ‘lower’ to a ‘higher’ stage. When this
point is reached, the two great prophets of destruction are in their element; they
enter into their inheritance; they survey the conflagration with a defiant, almost
Byronic, irony and disdain. To be wise is to understand the direction in which
the world is inexorably moving, to identify oneself with the rising power which
ushers in the new world. Marx – and it is part of his attraction to those of a
similar emotional cast – identifies himself exultantly, in his way no less
passionately than Nietzsche or Bakunin, with the great force which in its very
destructiveness is creative, and is greeted with bewilderment and horror only by
those whose values are hopelessly subjective, who listen to their consciences,
their feelings, or to what their nurses or teachers tell them, without realising the
glories of life in a world which moves from explosion to explosion to fulfil the
great cosmic design. When history takes her revenge – and every enragé prophet
in the nineteenth century looks to her to avenge him against those he hates most
– the mean, pathetic, ludicrous stifling human anthills will be justly pulverised;
justly, because what is just and unjust, good and bad, is determined by the goal
towards which all creation is tending. Whatever is on the side of victorious
reason is just and wise; whatever is on the other side, on the side of the world
that is doomed to destruction by the working of the forces of reason, is rightly
called foolish, ignorant, subjective, arbitrary, blind; and, if it goes so far as to try
to resist the forces that are destined to supplant it, then it – that is to say, the
fools and knaves and mediocrities who constitute it – is rightly called retrograde,
wicked, obscurantist, perversely hostile to the deepest interests of mankind.
“Different though the tone of these forms of determinism may be – whether

scientific, humanitarian and optimistic or furious, apocalyptic and exultant –
they agree in this: that the world has a direction and is governed by laws, and
that the direction and the laws can in some degree be discovered by employing
the proper techniques of investigation; and moreover that the working of these
laws can only be grasped by those who realise that the lives, characters and acts
of individuals, both mental and physical, are governed by the large ‘wholes’ to
which they belong, and that it is the independent evolution of these ‘wholes’ that
constitutes the so-called ‘forces’ in terms of whose direction truly ‘scientific’ (or
‘philosophic’) history must be formulated. To find the explanation of why given
individuals, or groups of them, act or think or feel in one way rather than
another, one must first seek to understand the structure, the state of
development and the direction of such ‘wholes’, for example, the social,
economic, political, religious institutions to which such individuals belong; once
283
that is known, the behaviour of the individuals (or the most characteristic among
them) should become almost logically deducible, and does not constitute a
separate problem. Ideas about the identity of these large entities or forces, and
their functions, differ from theorist to theorist. Race, colour, Church, nation,
class; climate, irrigation, technology, geopolitical situation; civilisation, social
structure, the Human Spirit, the Collective Unconscious, to take some of these
concepts at random, have all played their parts in theologico-historical systems
as the protagonists upon the stage of history. They are represented as the real
forces of which individuals are ingredients, at once constitutive, and the most
articulate expressions, of this or that phase of them. Those who are more clearly
and deeply aware than others of the part which they play, whether willingly or
not, to that degree play it more boldly and effectively; these are the natural
leaders. Others, led by their own petty personal concerns into ignoring or
forgetting that they are parts of a continuous or convulsive pattern of change,
are deluded into assuming that (or, at any rate, into acting as if) they and their
fellows are stabilised at some fixed level for ever.
“What the variants of either of these attitudes entail, like all forms of genuine
determinism, is the elimination of the notion of individual responsibility. It is,
after all, natural enough for men, whether for practical reasons or because they
are given to reflection, to ask who or what is responsible for this or that state of
affairs which they view with satisfaction or anxiety, enthusiasm or horror. If the
history of the world is due to the operation of identifiable forces other than, and
little affected by, free human wills and free choices (whether these occur or not),
then the proper explanation of what happens must be given in terms of the
evolution of such forces. And there is then a tendency to say that not
individuals, but these larger entities, are ultimately ‘responsible’. I live at a
particular moment of time in the spiritual and social and economic
circumstances into which I have been cast: how then can I help choosing and
acting as I do? The values in terms of which I conduct my life are the values of
my class, or race, or Church, or civilisation, or are part and parcel of my ‘station’
– my position in the ‘social structure’. Nobody denies that it would be stupid as
well as cruel to blame me for not being taller than I am, or to regard the colour of
my hair or the qualities of my intellect or heart as being due principally to my
own free choice; these attributes are as they are through no decision of mine. If I
extend this category without limit, then whatever it is, is necessary and
inevitable. This unlimited extension of necessity, on any of the view described
above, becomes intrinsic to the explanation of everything. To blame and praise,
consider possible alternative courses of action, accuse or defend historical
figures for acting as they do or did, becomes an absurd activity. Admiration and
contempt for this or that individual may indeed continue, but it becomes akin to
aesthetic judgement. We can eulogise or deplore, feel love or hatred, satisfaction
of shame, but we can neither blame nor justify. Alexander, Caesar, Attila,
Mohammed, Cromwell, Hitler are like floods and earthquakes, sunsets, oceans,
mountains; we may admire or fear them, welcome or curse them, but to
denounce or extol their acts is (ultimately) as sensible as addressing sermons to a
284
tree (as Frederick the Great pointed out with his customary pungency in the
course of his attack on Holbach’s System of Nature)…”483
Hegel’s philosophy, according to Arthur Schopenhauer, was “a colossal piece

of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for
laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental
powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of
language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as
is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage.” And again: “The height
of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and
extravagant mazes of words, such as had been only previously known in
madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the
most barefaced, general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result
which will appear fabulous to posterity, as a monument to German stupidity.” 484
According to Golo Mann, it is “a fantastic, almost mad, almost successful [!]

attempt to give an answer to every question every asked, and to assign to every
answer ever given to every question a historical place within his own great, final
answer – an attempt to create being dialectically from thought, to reconcile idea
and reality and to overcome the cleavage between self and non-self. It was this
cleavage – the existence of the self in an alien world – that Hegel made his
starting-point. What he found was the identity of everything with everything, of
God with the world, of logic with reality, of motion with rest, of necessity with
freedom. The world spirit is everywhere, in nature, in man, in the history of
man. The spirit, alienated from itself in nature, comes into its own in man. This
process takes place on the one hand in the true history of peoples and states, and
on the other in art, religion and philosophy. All these spheres correspond to each
other; what is accomplished in each individual sector belongs to the whole and
fits into it or nothing will be accomplished. ‘As far as the individual is concerned
each person cannot in any even help being the child of his time. So too
philosophy is the expression of its time in ideas.’ ‘He who expresses and
accomplishes what his time wills is the great man of his time.’ Every present is
always a single whole, just as the history of mankind is its general lines a whole.
It finds expression in peoples, states and civilizations, of which the west
European or, as Hegel calls it, the Germanic is the highest so far attained. Will
there be higher ones? On this point the philosopher is silent. [Not quite: he said
that America was “the final embodiment of the Absolute Idea, beyond which no
further development would be possible”. 485] One can only understand the past,
and the present to the extent that it is the final product of all pasts which are
preserved in it. The future cannot be explored or understood; it does not exist for
the spirit. No other historical thinker was so little concerned with the future as
Hegel. What he hinted at, or what followed from his doctrine, was that the
future would be something entirely different from the past. For philosophy
483
Berlin, “Historical Inevitability”, The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, pp. 135-
141.
484
Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality; Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy.
485
Hegel, in Davies, op. cit., p. 790. (V.M.)
285
comes late, at the end of an epoch. It does not come to change or improve, but
merely to understand and to express; it constructs in the realm of the spirit what
has already been constructed in the realm of reality. ‘When philosophy paints its
picture in grey on grey, it means that a form of life has grown old, and by
painting it grey on grey it cannot be restored to its youth, but is only
recognised…’ This applies to all true philosophies, and is most valid for the
philosophy of all philosophies, namely the Hegelian, which brings to an end the
epoch of all epochs: the age of Protestantism, enlightenment and revolution.
What was still to come? Hegel shrugged his shoulders sadly at this question. His
philosophy gave no answer, and given its nature could not venture to attempt
one. ‘The spirit is in its full essence in the present…’ But this philosophy of
fulfilment, this song of praise of Man-God contains an element of pessimism:
after 1815 nothing further is to be expected.
“Though Hegel’s philosophy as a whole contains rest, fulfilment and finality,

it is full of unrest and struggle, both in the realm of the spirit and of reality. The
spirit is never content with what has been achieved, it always seeks new
conflicts, it must struggle to find and express itself anew. States and peoples are
never at rest, they come into conflict and one of them must give way. The world
spirit advances by catastrophes, and its path is marked by forms that are used
up, emptied, and jettisoned. Quiet is only apparent quiet, lull before a new
storm; as mere rest it is of no interest to the historian. ‘Epochs of happiness are
empty pages in the history of the world.’ History does not exist for the
happiness, the idyllic contentment of the individual. The goal is set high: the
reconciliation of all contradictions, absolute justice, complete knowledge, the
incarnation of reason on earth, the presence of God. The road to it is one of
exertion and ever new confusion. But what has happened is the only thing that
could have happened and how it happened was right. Terrible things occurred;
the rise of the Roman Empire was terrible and terrible was its fall. But
everything had a purpose and was as it should be. Julius Caesar was murdered
after he had done what the age wanted from him; the Roman Empire collapsed
after it had completed its historical mission. Otherwise how could it have fallen?
It is useless to lament the abysses of history, the crimes of power, the sufferings
of good men. The world spirit is right in the end, its will will be obeyed, its
purpose fulfilled; what does it care about the happiness or unhappiness of
individuals?486 ‘The real is rational and the rational is the real.’ When something
ceases to be rational, when the spirit has already moved on, it will wither away
and die. The individual may not understand his fate because he is liable to over-
estimate himself and believes that history revolves around his person at the
centre. The philosopher who perceives the kernel in the multi-coloured rind of
what occurs will provide the insight too.
“Power, and war, which creates and enhances power, cannot be omitted from
all this. Man only realizes himself in the state and the state exists only where
486
“’The deeds of Great Men, of the Personalities of World History,… must not be brought into
collision with irrelevant moral claims. The Litany of private virtues, of modesty, humility,
philanthropy, and forbearance, must not be raised against them. The History of the World can, in
principle, entirely ignore the circle within which morality… lies’.” (in Popper, op. cit., pp. 67-68)
(V.M.)
286
there is power to defend and attack. Might gives right. It is unlikely, it is in fact
impossible, that the state without right on its side will win. What sort of right?
Not a universally valid, pale right invented by stoicist philosophers, but
historical right, the superiority of the historical mission. Thus right was on the
side of the Spaniards against the Peruvians, in spite of all their cruelty and
deceit; right was on Napoleon’s side against the antiquated German Empire.
Later, on the other hand, right was on the side of allied Europe against Napoleon
only because, the professor concluded after much puzzling over this problem in
his study, the arrogant Emperor, himself now outdated, gave the Allies the right
to conquer him, and only because he put himself in the wrong could he be
conquered. Success, the outcome, provide the justification; in power there lies
truth…”487
Hegel’s philosophy is manifestly false. Nevertheless, in view of its historical

importance, we need to study it, and in particular his political philosophy, in a
little more detail.
Hegel made rebelliousness and revolution respectable, as being, not

optional modes of thought and action, but inherent in the deepest
nature of things. Rebelliousness was an aspect of “alienation”, and
revolution – of the self-realization of the World Spirit. For “Hegel’s
dialectic,” writes Roger Scruton, “implies that all knowledge, all
activity and all emotions exist in a state of tension, and are driven by
this tension to enact a primeval drama. Each concept, desire and feeling
exists first in a primitive, immediate and unified form – without self-
knowledge, and inherently unstable, but nevertheless at home with
itself. Its final ‘realization’ is achieved only in a condition of ‘unity
restored’, a homecoming to the primordial point of rest, but in a
condition of achieved self-knowledge and fulfilled intention. In order
to reach this final point, each aspect of spirit must pass through a long
trajectory of separation, sundered from its home, and struggling to
affirm itself in a world that it does not control. This state of alienation
– the vale of tears – is the realm of becoming, in which consciousness is
separated from its object and also from itself. There are as many
varieties of alienation as there are forms of spiritual life; but in each
form the fundamental drama is the same: spirit can know itself only if
it ‘posits’ an object of knowledge – only if it invests its world with the
idea of the other. In doing this it becomes other to itself, and lives
through conflict and disharmony, until finally uniting with the other –
as we unite with the object of science when fully understanding it; with
the self when overcoming guilt and religious estrangement; with other
people when joined in a lawful body politic.” 488
Lionel Trilling writes: “The historical process that Hegel undertakes to

expound is the self-realization of Spirit through the changing relation of the
487
Mann, The History of Germany since 1789, London: Pimlico, 1996, pp. 46-48.
488
Scruton, Modern Philosophy, London: Arrow, 1997, pp. 463-464.
287
individual to the external power of society in two of its aspects, the political
power of the state and the power of wealth. In an initial stage of the process that
is being described the individual consciousness renders what Hegel calls
‘obedient service’ to the external power and feels for it an ‘inner reverence’. Its
service is not only obedient but also silent and unreasoned, taken for granted;
Hegel calls this ‘the heroism of dumb service’. This entire and inarticulate accord
of the individual consciousness with the external power of society is said to have
the attribute of ‘nobility’.
“But the harmonious relation of the individual consciousness to the state

power and to wealth is not destined to endure. It is the nature of Spirit, Hegel
tells us, to seek ‘existence on its own account’ – that is, to free itself from limiting
conditions, to press towards autonomy. In rendering ‘obedient service’ to and in
feeling ‘inner reverence’ for anything except itself it consents to the denial of its
own nature. If it is to fulfill its natural destiny of self-realization, it must bring an
end to its accord with the external power of society. And in terminating this
‘noble’ relation the individual consciousness moves towards a relation with
external power which Hegel calls ‘base’.
“The change is not immediate. Between the noble relation of the individual
consciousness to state power and to wealth and the developing base relation
there stands what Hegel speaks of as a ‘mediating term’. In this transitional
stage the ‘heroism of dumb service’ modifies itself to become a heroism which is
not dumb but articulate, what Hegel calls the ‘heroism of flattery’. The
individual, that is to say, becomes conscious of his relation to the external power
of society; he becomes conscious of having made the choice the maintain the
relationship and of the prudential reasons which induced him to make it – the
‘flattery’ is, in effect, the rationale of his choice which the individual formulates
in terms of the virtues of the external power, presumably a personal monarch.
We might suppose that Hegel had in mind the relation of the court aristocracy to
Louis XIV. Consciousness and choice, it is clear, imply a commitment to, rather
than identification with, the external power of society.
“From this modification of the ‘noble’ relation to the external power the
individual proceeds to the ‘baseness’ of being actually antagonistic to the
external power. What was once served and reverenced now comes to be
regarded with resentment and bitterness. Hegel’s description of the new attitude
is explicit: ‘ It [that is, the individual consciousness] looks upon the authoritative
power of the state as a chain, as something suppressing its separate autonomous
existence, and hence hates the ruler, obeys only with secret malice and stands
ever ready to burst out in rebellion.’ And the relation of the individual self to
wealth is even baser, if only because of the ambivalence which marks it – the self
loves wealth but at the same time despises it; through wealth the self ‘attains to
the enjoyment of its own independent existence’, but it find wealth discordant
with the nature of Spirit, for it is of the nature of Spirit to be permanent, whereas
enjoyment is evanescent.
“The process thus described makes an unhappy state of affairs but not, as
Hegel judges it, by any means a deplorable one. He intends us to understand
288
that the movement from ‘nobility’ to ‘baseness’ is not a devolution but a
development. So far from deploring ‘baseness’, Hegel celebrates it. And he
further confounds our understanding by saying that ‘baseness’ leads to and
therefore is ‘nobility’. What is the purpose of this high-handed inversion of
common meanings?
“An answer might begin with the observation that the words ‘noble’ and
‘base’, although they have been assimilated to moral judgement, did not
originally express concepts of moral law, of a prescriptive and prohibitory code
which is taken to be of general, commanding, and even supernal authority and
in which a chief criterion of a person’s rightdoing and wrongdoing is the effect
of his conduct upon other persons. The words were applied, rather, to the ideal
of personal existence of a ruling class at a certain time – its ethos, in that sense of
the word which conveys the idea not of abstractly right conduct but of a
characteristic manner of style of approved conduct. What is in accord with this
ethos is noble; what falls short of it or derogates from it is base. The noble self is
not shaped by its beneficent intentions towards others; its intention is wholly
towards itself, and such moral virtue as may be attributed to it follows
incidentally from its expressing the privilege and function of its social status in
mien and deportment. We might observe that the traits once thought
appropriate to the military life are definitive in the formation of the noble self. It
stands before the world boldly defined, its purposes clearly conceived and
openly avowed. In its consciousness there is no division, it is at one with itself.
The base self similarly expresses a social condition, in the first instance by its
characteristic mien and deportment, as these are presumed or required to be,
and ultimately by the way in which it carries out those of its purposes that are
self-serving beyond the limits deemed appropriate to its social status. These
purposes can be realized only by covert means and are therefore shameful.
Between the intentions of the base self and its avowals there is no congruence.
But the base self, exactly because it is not under the control of the noble ethos,
has won at least a degree of autonomy and has thereby fulfilled the nature of
Spirit. In refusing its obedient service to the state power and to wealth it has lost
its wholeness; its selfhood is ‘disintegrated’; the self is ‘alienated’ from itself. But
because it has detached itself from imposed conditions, Hegel says that it has
made a step in progress. He puts it that the existence of the self ‘on its own
account’ is, strictly speaking, the loss of itself’. The statement can also be made
the other way round: ‘Alienation of self is really self-preservation’.” 489
Bertrand Russell, expounded Hegel thus: “In the historical development of

Spirit there have been three main phases: The Orientals, the Greeks and Romans,
and the Germans. ‘The history of the world is the discipline of the uncontrolled
natural will, bringing it into obedience to a universal principle and conferring
subjective freedom. The East knew, and to the present day knows, only that One
is free; the Greek and Roman world, that some are free; the German world
knows that All are free.’ One might have supposed that democracy would be the
489
Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, Oxford University Press, 1974, pp. 35-38.
289
appropriate form of government where all are free, but not so. Democracy and
aristocracy alike belong to the stage where some are free, despotism to that
where one is free, and monarchy to that in which all are free. This is connected
with the very odd sense in which Hegel uses the word ‘freedom’. For him (and
so far we may agree) there is no freedom without law; but he tends to convert
this, and to argue that wherever there is law there is freedom. Thus ‘freedom’,
for him, means little more than the right to obey the law.
“As might be expected, he assigns the highest role to the Germans in the
terrestrial development of Spirit. ‘The German spirit is the spirit of the new
world. Its aim is the realization of absolute Truth as the unlimited self-
determination of freedom – that freedom which has its own absolute form itself
as its purport.’490
“This is a very superfine brand of freedom. It does not mean that you will be
able to keep out of a concentration camp. It does not imply democracy, or a free
press, or any of the usual Liberal watchwords, which Hegel rejects with
contempt. When Spirit gives laws to itself, it does so freely. To our mundane
vision, it may seem that the Spirit that gives laws is embodied in the monarch,
and the Spirit to which laws are given is embodied in his subjects. But from the
point of view of the Absolute the distinction between monarch and subjects, like
all other distinctions, is illusory, and when the monarch imprisons a liberal-
minded subject, that is still Spirit freely determining itself. Hegel praises
Rousseau for distinguishing between the general will and the will of all. One
gathers that the monarch embodies the general will, whereas a parliamentary
majority only embodies the will of all…
“So much is Germany glorified that one might expect to find it the final
embodiment of the Absolute Idea, beyond which no further development would
be possible. But this is not Hegel’s view. On the contrary, he says that America is
the land of the future, ‘where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the
world’s history shall reveal itself – perhaps in a contest between North and
South America.’ He seems to think that everything important takes the form of
war. If it were suggested to him that the contribution of America to world
history might be the development of a society without extreme poverty, he
would not be interested. On the contrary, he says that, as yet, there is no real
490
“And after a eulogy of Prussia, the government of which, Hegel assures us, ‘rests with the
official world, whose apex is the personal decision of the Monarch; for a final decision is, as
shown above, an absolute necessity’, Hegel reaches the crowning conclusion of his work: ‘This is
the point,’ he says, ‘which consciousness has attained, and these are the principal phases of that
form in which Freedom has realized itself; for the History of the World is nothing but the
development of the Idea of Freedom… That the History of the World… is the realization of
Spirit, this is the true Theodicy, the justification of God in History… What has happened and is
happening… is essentially His Work…’
“I ask whether I was not justified when I said that Hegel presents us with an apology for God
and Prussia at the same time, and whether it is not clear that the state which Hegel commands us
to worship as the Divine Idea on earth is not simply Frederick William’s Prussia from 1800 to
1830…
“We see that Hegel replaces the liberal elements in nationalism, not only by a Platonic-
Prussian worship of the state, but also by a worship of history, of historical success. (Frederick
William had been successful against Napoleon.)” (Popper, op. cit., pp. 48-49, 58). (V.M.)
290
State in America, because a real State requires a division of classes into rich and
poor.
“Nations, in Hegel, play the part that classes play in Marx. The principle of
historical development, he says, is national genius. In every age, there is some
one nation which is charged with the mission of carrying the world through the
stage of the dialectic that it has reached. In our age, of course, this nation is
Germany. 491 But in addition to nations, we must also take account of world-
historical individuals; these are men in whose aims are embodied the dialectical
transitions that are due to take place in their time. These men are heroes, and
may justifiably contravene ordinary moral rules…
“Hegel’s emphasis on nations, together with his peculiar conception of

‘freedom’, explains his glorification of the State – a very important aspect of his
political philosophy….
“We are told in The Philosophy of History that ‘the State is the actually existing
realized moral life’, and that all the spiritual reality possessed by a human being
he possesses only through the State. ‘For his spiritual reality consists in this, that
his own essence – Reason – is objectively present to him, that it possesses
objective immediate existence for him… For truth is the unity of the universal
and subjective Will, and the universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its
universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on
earth.’492…
“… If the State existed only for the interests of individuals (as Liberals
contend), an individual might or might not be a member of the State. It has,
however, a quite different relation to the individual: since it is objective Spirit,
the individual only has objectivity, truth, and morality in so far as he is a
member of the State, whose true content and purpose is union as such. It is
admitted that there may be bad States, but these merely exist, and have no true
reality, whereas a rational State is infinite in itself.
“It will be seen that Hegel claims for the State much the same position as St.
Augustine and his Catholic successors claimed for the Church. There are,
however, two respects in which the Catholic claim is more reasonable than
Hegel’s. In the first place, the Church is not a chance geographical association,
491
“’The Nation State is Spirit in its substantive rationality and immediate actuality,’ he writes; ‘it
is therefore the absolute power on earth…The State is the Spirit of the People itself. The actual
State is animated by this spirit, in all its particular affairs, its Wars, and its Institutions… The self-
consciousness of one particular Nation is the vehicle for the… development of the collective
spirit;… in it, the Spirit of the Time invests its Will. Against this Will, the other national minds
have no rights: that Nation dominates the World.’” (Popper, op. cit., p. 58).
492
Hegel goes on: “We must therefore worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on
earth, and consider that, if it is difficult to comprehend Nature, it is infinitely harder to grasp the
Essence of the State… The State is the march of God through the world…. The State must be
comprehended as an organism… To the complete State belongs, essentially, consciousness and
thought. The State knows what it wills… The State is real; and… true reality is necessary. What is
real is eternally necessary… The State… exists for its own sake… The State is the actually
existing, realized moral life.” (Popper, op. cit., p. 31).
291
but a body united by a common creed, believed by its members to be of supreme
importance; it is thus by its very essence the embodiment of what Hegel calls the
‘Idea’. In the second place, there is only one Catholic Church, whereas there are
many States. When each State, in relation to its subjects, is made an absolute as
Hegel makes it, there is difficulty in finding any philosophical principle by
which to regulate the relations between different States. In fact, at this point
Hegel abandons his philosophical talk, falling back on the state of nature and
Hobbes’s war of all against all.
“The habit of speaking of ‘the State’, as if there were only one, is misleading
so long as there is no world State. Duty being, for Hegel, solely a relation of the
individual to his State, no principle is left by which to moralize the relations
between States. This Hegel recognizes. In external relations, he says, the State is
an individual, and each State is independent as against the others. ‘Since in this
independence the being-for-self of real spirit has its existence, it is the first
freedom and highest honour of a people.’ He goes on to argue against any sort of
League of Nations by which the independence of separate States might be
limited. The duty of a citizen is entirely confined (so far as the external relations
of his State are concerned) to upholding the substantial individuality and
independence and sovereignty of his own State. It follows that war is not wholly
an evil, or something that we should seek to abolish. The purpose of the State is
not merely to uphold the life and property of the citizens, and this fact provides
the moral justification of war, which is not to be regarded as an absolute evil or
as accidental, or as having its cause in something that ought not to be.
“Hegel does not mean only that, in some situations, a nation cannot rightly
avoid going to war. He means much more than this. He is opposed to the
creation of institutions – such as a world government – which would prevent
such situations from arising, because he thinks it a good thing that there should
be wars from time to time. War, he says, is the condition in which we take
seriously the vanity of temporal goods and things. (This view is to be contrasted
with the opposite theory, that all wars have economic causes.) War has a positive
moral value: ‘War has the higher significance that through it the moral health of
peoples is preserved in their indifference towards the stabilizing of finite
determinations.’ Peace is ossification; the Holy Alliance, and Kant’s League for
Peace, are mistaken, because a family of states needs an enemy. Conflicts of
States can only be decided by war; States being towards each other in a state of
nature, their relations are not legal or moral. Their rights have their reality in
their particular wills, and the interest of each State is its own highest law. There
is no contrast of morals and politics, because States are not subject to ordinary
moral laws.
“Such is Hegel’s doctrine of the State – a doctrine which, if accepted, justifies

every internal tyranny and every external aggression that can possibly be
imagined…”493
493
Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, London: Allen Unwin, 1946, pp. 763-764, 765-769.
292
For, as Hegel put it, “the march of world history stands outside virtue, vice
and justice…”494
As Copleston points out, “it is essential to remember that Hegel is speaking

throughout of the concept of the State, its ideal essence. He has no intention of
suggesting that historical States are immune from criticism.” 495 Nevertheless, the
similarities between Hegel and the modern totalitarians, especially the Fascists,
are clear: “(a) Nationalism, in the form of the historicist idea that the state is the
incarnation of the Spirit (or now, of the Blood) of the state-creating nation (or
race); one chosen nation (now, the chosen race) is destined for world
domination. (b) The state as the natural enemy of all other states must assert its
existence in war. (c) The state is exempt from any kind of moral obligation;
history, that is, historical success, is the sole judge; collective utility is the sole
principle of personal conduct; propagandist lying and distortion of the truth is
permissible. (d) The ‘ethical’ idea of war (total and collectivist), particularly of
young nations against older ones; war, fate and fame as most desirable goods.
(e) The creative rôle of the Great Man, the world-historical personality, the man
of deep knowledge and great passion (now, the principle of leadership). (f) The
ideal of the heroic life (‘live dangerously’) and of the ‘heroic man’ as opposed to
the petty bourgeois and his life of shallow mediocrity.” 496
Barzun has sought to lessen Hegel’s guilt somewhat: “Hegel did express
himself in favor of a strong state. What intelligent German who remembered 200
years of helplessness would want a weak one? In Hegel’s day, the state created
by the Prussian awakening was less than 20 years old and must not be allowed
to droop again”497 True; and yet the desire for a strong state, which is compatible
with many creeds and philosophies, need not be translated into the worship of
the State as the Divine Idea on earth, which is in effect Hegel’s idea. As he put it:
“the State is the basis and centre of all the concrete elements in the life of a
people: of Art, Law, Morals, Religion, and Science…” 498 This is idolatry, State-
worship, and the purest atheism…
Golo Mann writes penetratingly about Hegel: “If Hegel’s philosophy had
been true, then it could not remain true: it must be treated as Hegel had treated
all earlier philosophy, ‘set aside’, affirmed and denied at the same time. Hegel
had started life as a Protestant and had somehow managed to bring Christianity
even into his mature philosophy. His disciples or their disciples broke with
Christianity and became atheists – an attitude which could be derived from
Hegel’s philosophy, if it was followed to its logical conclusion. They took it upon
themselves to explain Christianity, like all religious belief, historically, as a
reflection of social reality, as a self-misunderstanding. Hegel had spoken much
of the reconciliation of idea and reality, but he had achieved this reconciliation
only in the mind, through his philosophy; it was for philosophy to recognize
494
Hegel, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 7, p. 448; in Berlin, “The Originality of Machiavelli”, The Proper
Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, p. 317.
495
Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 7, part I: Fichte to Hegel, pp. 255-256.
496
Popper, op. cit., pp. 62-63.
497
Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, 1500 to the Present, New York: Perennial, 2000, p. 508.
498
Popper, op. cit., p. 63.
293
retrospectively that what happened in reality was reasonable. Hegel’s
successors, however, claimed that reality was not reasonable but must be made
reasonable, not by dreams but by political action. Politics, rightly understood,
was thus in the end the true philosophy. Hegel had spoken of the ‘truth of
power’, and had meant the power of the state, of kings, of victorious armies. His
followers spoke of the truth of revolutions, of majorities, of mass action. There
was no need to fear the masses as Hegel had feared them. The rights of the
private individual were not as important as liberals believed. The state could not
be too powerful, provided it was a scientifically directed state, free from all
superstition. Such a state would do away with the remains of the Middle Ages
and make men free…”499
So from Hildebrand to Hegel we have come full circle: from the absolute
dominion of the Church in all spheres, including the State, to the absolute
dominion of the State in all spheres, including the Church. The theories of Hegel
and the “Hegelians” found their incarnation in the State-worshipping creeds of
Communism and Fascism, the most evil in history.
Such is the fall of western civilization, its thesis and antithesis. So far it has
not found – or, more exactly, has not recovered (since it used to have it in the
pre-schism, Orthodox period) - its synthesis. And until it does, only violent,
destructive swings between thesis and antithesis can be expected…
499
Mann, op. cit., p. 78.
294
IV. THE EAST: THE DEFEAT OF MASONRY (1815-1830)
295
33. THE CHILDREN OF 1812
1812 was not only a great military victory. It also rekindled the religious and
national consciousness of Russia. Orlando Figes writes: “As readers of War and
Peace will know, the war of 1812 was a vital watershed in the culture of the
Russian aristocracy. It was a war of national liberation from the intellectual
empire of the French – a moment when noblemen like the Rostovs and the
Bolkonskys struggled to break free from the foreign conventions of their society
and began new lives on Russian principles. This was no straightforward
metamorphosis (and it happened much more slowly than in Tolstoy’s novel,
where the nobles rediscover their forgotten national ways almost overnight).
Though anti-French voices had grown to quite a chorus in the first decade of the
nineteenth century, the aristocracy was still immersed in the culture of the
country against which they were at war. The salons of St. Petersburg were filled
with young admirers of Bonaparte, such as Pierre Bezhukhov in War and Peace.
The most fashionable set was that of Counts Rumiantsev and Caulaincourt, the
French ambassador in Petersburg, the circle in which Tolstoy’s Hélène moved.
‘How can we fight the French?’ asks Count Rostopchin, the Governor of
Moscow, in War and Peace. ‘Can we arm ourselves against our teachers and
divinities? Look at our youths! Look at our ladies! The French are our Gods.
Paris is our Kingdom of Heaven.’ Yet even in these circles there was horror at
Napoleon’s invasion, and their reaction against all things French formed the
basis of a Russian renaissance in life and art.”500
This Russian renaissance took many forms. At its simplest it meant that the
noble army officers evinced a greater appreciation of the Russian peasants with
whom they had marched all the way from Moscow to Paris. In the eighteenth
century the main contact the nobility had had with the Russian peasants, their
speech and their values, had been through their peasant nannies. As Figes
shows, this was a vital influence on many nobles, preserving a kind of stream of
Russian subconsciousness under their European consciousness. As a result of
1812, this subconscious stream came more to the fore.
One of the consequences of this was the birth of a specifically Russian-

language literature in the works of such “children of 1812” as the great poet
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. It was Pushkin who started the trend of looking
back to childhood, when the influence of his peasant nanny had been dominant.
Thus “compared with their parents, the Russian nobles who grew up after 1812
put a higher valuation on childhood. It took a long time for such attitudes to
change, but already by the middle decades of the nineteenth century one can
discern a new veneration of childhood on the part of those memoirists and
writers who recalled their upbringing after 1812. This nostalgia for the age of
childhood merged with a new reverence for the Russian customs which they had
known as children through their father’s household serfs.” 501
500
501
Figes, op. cit., p. 119.
296
Again, the new focus on the Russian language, Russian customs and
childhood influences merged with a new focus on history – beginning, of course,
with the events of 1812 itself, but going much further back into the childhood of
the nation. “’Oh please, Nurse, tell me again how the French came to Moscow.’
Thus Herzen starts his sublime memoir My Past and Thoughts, one of the greatest
works of Russian literature. Born in 1812, Herzen had a special fondness for his
nanny’s stories of that year. His family had been forced to flee the flames that
engulfed Moscow, the young Herzen carried out in his mother’s arms, and it
was only through a safe conduct from Napoleon himself that they managed to
escape to their Yaroslav estate. Herzen felt great ‘pride and pleasure at [having]
taken part in the Great War’. The story of his childhood merged with the
national drama he so loved to hear: ‘Tales of the fire of Moscow, of the battle of
Borodino, of the Berezina, of the taking of Paris were my cradle songs, my
nursery stories, my Iliad and my Odyssey.’ For Herzen’s generation, the myths
of 1812 were intimately linked with their childhood memories. Even in the 1850s
children were still brought up on the legends of that year. History, myth and
memory were intertwined.
“For the historian Nikolai Karamzin, 1812 was a tragic year. While his
Moscow neighbours moved to their estates, he refused to ‘believe that the
ancient holy city could be lost’ and, as he wrote on 20 August, he chose to ‘die on
Moscow’s walls’. Karamzin’s house burned down in the fires and, since he had
not thought to evacuate his library, he lost his precious books to the flames as
well. But Karamzin saved one book – a bulging notebook that contained the
draft of his celebrated History of the Russian State (1818-1826). Karamzin’s
masterpiece was the first truly national history – not just in the sense that it was
the first by a Russian, but also in the sense that it rendered Russia’s past as a
national narrative. Previous histories of Russia had been arcane chronicles of
monasteries and saints, patriotic propaganda, or heavy tomes of documents
compiled by German scholars, unread and unreadable. But Karamzin’s History
had a literary quality that made its twelve large volumes a nationwide success. It
combined careful scholarship with the narrative techniques of a novelist.
Karamzin stressed the psychological motivations of his historical protagonists –
even to the point of inventing them – so that his account became more
compelling to a readership brought up on the literary conventions of Romantic
texts. Medieval tsars like Ivan the Terrible or Boris Godunov became tragic
figures in Karamzin’s History – subjects for a modern psychological drama; and
from its pages they walked on to the stage in operas by Mussorgsky and Rimsky
Korsakov.
“The first eight volumes of Karamzin’s History were published in 1818. ‘Three
thousand copies were sold within a month – something unprecedented in our
country. Everyone, even high-born ladies, began to read the history of their
country,’ wrote Pushkin. ‘It was a revelation. You could say that Karamzin
discovered ancient Russia as Columbus discovered America.’ The victory of 1812
had encouraged a new interest and pride in Russia’s past. People who had been
raised on the old conviction that there was no history before the reign of Peter
the Great began to look back to the distant past for the sources of their country’s
unexpected strengths. After 1812 history books appeared at a furious pace.
297
Chairs were established in the universities (Gogol held one for a term at St.
Petersburg). Historical associations were set up, many in the provinces, and
huge efforts were suddenly devoted to the rescuing of Russia’s past. History
became the arena for all those troubling questions about Russia’s nature and its
destiny. As Belinsky wrote in 1846, ‘we interrogate our past for an explanation of
our present and a hint of our future’.”502
“Karamzin’s History was the opening statement in a long debate on Russia’s

past and future that would run right through its culture in the nineteenth
century. Karamzin’s own work was squarely situated in the monarchist
tradition, which portrayed the Tsarist state and its noble servitors as a force for
progress and enlightenment. The overarching theme of the History was Russia’s
steady advance towards the ideal of a unitary Imperial state whose greatness lay
in the inherited wisdom of its Tsar and the innate obedience of its citizens. The
Tsar and his nobles initiated change, while ‘the people remain silent’ (‘narod
bezmolvstvuet’), as Pushkin put it in the final stage direction of Boris Godunov.
Pushkin shared Karamzin’s statist view of Russian history – at least in his later
years, after the collapse of his republican convictions (which were in any case
extremely dubious) in 1825. In The History of Pugachev (1833) Pushkin
emphasized the need for enlightened monarchy to protect the nation from the
elemental violence (‘cruel and merciless’) of the Cossack rebel leader Pugachev
and his peasant followers. By highlighting the role of paternal noblemen such as
General Bibikov and Count Panin, who put down Pugachev yet pleaded with
the Empress to soften her regime, Pushkin understood the national leadership of
the old landed gentry from which he was so proud to descend…” 503
Both of the major intellectual movements of the mid-century – the Slavophiles

and the Westerners – may be said to have originated in this passion for Russian
history, which began after 1812. The Slavophiles believed that the real Russia
was to be found in the Orthodox medieval state that existed for many centuries
before Peter the Great, while the Westerners believed that Russian history only
really began with Peter and his westernizing reforms. However, both movements
represented a turning away from the “pure” westernism of the eighteenth
century. For both were speaking in Russian about Russia – and not merely about
the upper classes, but about the whole people.
1812 elicited more than patriotic feelings. The victory over Napoleon also
elicited an explosion of specifically religious feeling, not least in the Tsar himself,
who said: “The burning of Moscow enlightened my soul, and the judgement of
God on the icy fields filled my heart with a warmth of faith such as I had not felt
before. Then I came to know God as He is depicted in the Holy Scriptures. I am
obliged to the redemption of Europe from destruction for my own redemption”.
All the crosses and medallions minted in memory of 1812, he said, were to bear
the inscription: “Not to us, not to us, but to Thy name give the glory”. 504
502
Figes, op. cit., pp. 130-131.
503
Figes, op. cit., p. 134.
504
Dobroklonsky, op. cit., p. 666. For more on Alexander’s religious feelings in this period, see
Troubetzkoy, op. cit., pp. 105-106.
298
God was teaching the Russians a most important lesson: that those western
influences which had so inundated Russia in the century up to 1812, were evil
and threatened to destroy Russia. As St. Theophan the Recluse wrote some
generations later: “We are attracted by enlightened Europe… Yes, there for the
first time the pagan abominations that had been driven out of the world were
restored; then they passed and are passing to us, too. Inhaling into ourselves
these poisonous fumes, we whirl around like madmen, not remembering who
we are. But let us recall 1812: Why did the French come to us? God sent them to
exterminate that evil which we had taken over from them. Russia repented at
that time, and God had mercy on her.”505
Tragically, however, the repentance was short-lived. Although the Masonic

plans to overthrow both Church and State had been foiled, both Masonry and
other unhealthy religious influences continued to flourish. And discontent with
the existing order was evident in both the upper and the lower classes. Thus the
question arose of the emancipation of the peasants, who had played such a great
part in the victory, voluntarily destroying their own homes and crops in order to
deny them to the French.
In return, they hoped for some kind of reward, but received none. “There was
great bitterness,” writes Hosking, “among peasants who returned from their
militia service to find that there was no emancipation. Alexander, in his
manifesto of 30 August 1814, thanking and rewarding all his subjects for their
heroic deeds, said of the peasants simply that they would ‘receive their reward
from God’…. Some nobles tried to persuade the authorities not to allow them
back, but to leave them in the regular army as ordinary soldiers. The poet Gavriil
Derzhavin was informed by his returnees that they had been ‘temporarily
released’ and were now state peasants and not obliged to serve him. Rumours
circulated that Alexander had intended to free them all, but had been invited to
a special meeting of indignant nobles at night in the Senate, from which he had
allegedly been rescued, pleading for his life, by his brother Grand Duke
Konstantin Pavlovich…”506
Here we have the familiar theme of the people laying the blame for their
woes, not on the tsar, but on the nobles. Some peasants may have wanted
emancipation and a share in the nobles’ wealth. But they wanted it with the Tsar
and through the Tsar, not as the expression of some egalitarian and anti-
monarchist ideology. The French revolution in this, its imperialist, expansionist
phase, overthrew many kingdoms and laid the seeds for the overthrow of still
more. But it broke against the rock of the Russian people’s faith in their God and
their Tsar…
However, if the masses of the people were still Orthodox and loyal to the
Tsar, this could not be said of the nobility. We have seen the extent to which
Masonry penetrated the bureaucracy in the early part of Alexander’s reign.
Unfortunately, the triumphant progress of the Russian army into the heart of
505
Bishop Theophan, Mysli na kazhdij den’ (Thoughts for every day), Moscow, 1881, Platina, Ca.:
St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2010, p. 461.
506
299
Masonry, Paris, did not destroy this influence, but only served to strengthen it.
For, as Zamoyski writes, “if nobles at home wanted to keep their serfs, the
nobles who served as officers in the armies that occupied Paris were exposed to
other, liberal influences. They had been brought up speaking French and reading
the same literature as educated people in other countries. They could converse
effortlessly with German and English allies as well as with French prisoners and
civilians. Ostensibly, they were just like any of the Frenchmen, Britons and
Germans they met, yet at every step they were made aware of profound
differences. The experience left them with a sense of being somehow outside,
almost unfit for participation in European civilization. And that feeling would
have dire consequences…”507
Something of the atmosphere of St. Petersburg at that time can be gathered

from the recollections of the future Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov), when he
went there to teach in the newly reformed ecclesiastical schools in 1809. “The
Synod greeted him with the advice to read ‘Swedenborg’s Miracles’ and learn
French. He was taken to court to view the fireworks and attend a masquerade
party in order to meet Prince Golitsyn…, quite literally ‘amidst the noise of a
ball’… This was Philaret’s first masquerade ball, and he had never before seen a
domino. ‘At the time I was an object of amusement in the Synod,’ Philaret
recalled, ‘and I have remained a fool’” 508 – but a holy fool who would play a
great part in formulating the Orthodox doctrine of the State in the next reign…
507
Zamoyski, Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots and Revolutionaries, 1776-1871, London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999, pp. 172-173.
508
Fr. Georges Florovsky, The Ways of Russian Theology, Belmont, 1979, part I, pp. 202-203.
300
34. THE POLISH AND JEWISH QUESTIONS
“In December 1812,” writes Sergij Plokhy, “Emperor Alexander issued a

manifesto in which he addressed the Poles as close relatives, almost brothers,
offering amnesty to those who had fought against Russia in Napoleon’s army.
‘We hope,’ declared Alexander, ‘that this philoprogenitive and altruistic
forgiveness of Ours will bring the guilty to wholehearted repentance and prove
to all residents of these regions in general that they, as a people of one language
and kin with the Russians from ancient times, can nowhere and never be so
happy and secure as in complete merging in one body with mighty and
magnanimous Russia.’ The pan-Slavic idea of Russo-Polish brotherhood, first
presented by the court poet Vasilii Petrov on the occasion of the second partition
of Poland in 1793, was now reiterated and strengthened by the notion of
linguistic affinity.
“Alexander believed that he knew how to redeem the Poles. His solution was
to establish the Kingdom (in Russian, Tsardom) of Poland, and it was approved
by the Congress of Vienna... The kingdom was created out of the Polish lands
taken over by Prussia, with its capital in Warsaw. Without renouncing his title of
emperor of Russia, Alexander thus assumed the new title of tsar of Poland,
thereby creating the semblance of a dynastic union to justify Russia’s continued
domination of that country. This was also a step toward the realization of his old
dream of becoming a constitutional monarch: if he could not become one in
Russia, perhaps he could so in Poland. He granted the kingdom quite a liberal
constitution that provided for a Diet, a separate government and administrative
structure, and even an army. Catherine’s notion of making all parts of the
empire homogeneous was discarded in favor of particularism, now under the
banner of the Polish constitution. Alexander hope that one day the rest of the
empire would get its constitution as well. As things turned out, it would have to
wait another ninety years.
“Alexander was hailed in Warsaw as a restorer of the Polish statehood. The

Poles retained most of the territories given to them under Napoleon. But their
enthusiasm for Alexander was short-lived, as the Polish government had no
control over the kingdom’s budget, military forces, or international trade.
Besides, the tsar’s officials exceeded their mandate, while the tsar’s brother,
Grand Duke Constantine, who was commander in chief of the Polish army,
acquired a bad reputation among the Polish elites for his abusive behavior. On
top of that, Warsaw had no authority over the former Polish lands acquired by
Russia in the course of the partitions. The younger generation of Polish activists
began to create clandestine organizations whose goals included the restoration
of Poland in its pre-partition boundaries. The Russian authorities cracked down
on the conspirators, adding to the general sense of dissatisfaction in the
kingdom.
“Alexander’s constitution experiment was not going well, either in Poland or

in the rest of the empire. Conservative sections of Russian society opposed the
idea of constitutionalism as such. Progressives who wanted a constitution
301
complained that the Poles had gotten one while the Russians had not. Persistent
rumors about Alexander’s plans to transfer to the kingdom the territories
annexed by Russia in the second and third partitions aroused protests from both
camps.
“In 1819, these concerns were voiced by Russia’s most prominent historian of
the day, Nikolai Karamzin. In a letter titled The Opinion of a Russian Citizen,
Karamzin warned the tsar against what he saw as tantamount of a partition of
Russia: ‘Will they say that she [Catherine] divided Poland illegally? But you
would act even more illegally if your should think of smoothing over her
illegality by partitioning Russia itself.’ He then pointed out how tricky the use of
historical argument could be. ‘There are no old fortresses in politics,’ wrote
Karamzin. ‘Otherwise we would be obliged to restored the kingdoms of Kazan
and Astrakhan, the public of Novgorod, the grand principality of Riazan, and so
on. Moreover, even by virtue of old fortresses, Belarus, Volhynia, and Podolia,
along with Galicia, were once original possessions of Russia. If you give them
back, they will also demand Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Smolensk of you: after all,
they, too, belonged to hostile Lithuania for a long time.’
“Karamzin, the author of the multivolume History of the Russian State,

published in St. Petersburg between 1816 and 1826, did not confine himself to
historical arguments in his letter. He maintained that the tsar who ruled both
Russia and Poland had to choose and take the side of ‘your true Fatherland –
good, strong Russia’. With reference to the Polish elites of the annexed
territories, he wrote: ‘Lithuania and Volhynia want the Kingdom of Poland, but
we want one Russian Empire’. Ceding those territories to the Kingdom of
Poland would create a threat to Russia: ‘Poles legally recognized as a separate
and sovereign people are more dangerous to us than Pole-Russians.’ Finally,
Karamzin wanted no part of the pan-Slavic discourse that was popular at the
time: ‘No, Sire, the Poles will never be true brothers to us, nor faithful allies.
Now they are weak and insignificant: if you strengthen them, they will want
independence, and their first step will be to draw away from Russia – not in
your reign, of course, but look beyond your own lifetime, Sire!’
“Karamzin turned out to be a prophet of sorts. There was no revolt in the

Kingdom of Poland as long as Alexander was alive. But five years after his
death, which came in 1825, the Poles were up in arms …”509.
Alexander tried hard to help the Poles. For many of his Russian subjects “it
was intolerable that a nation which had collaborated so flagrantly with
Napoleon in 1812 should be the chief beneficiary of Russia’s final victory… The
Tsar’s inconsistencies alienated the sympathies of his new subjects in the
Congress Kingdom while failing to allay the suspicions of his old subjects that
the Poles had in some way stolen a march on them. The contradictoriness of his
half-solution of the Polish Question was to confound politics for the remainder
of his reign and beyond…”510
509
510
Alan Palmer, Alexander I, London: Wedenfeld & Nicolson, 1974, pp. 341-342.
302
*
If the Polish problem was difficult to solve, the Jewish problem was even
more intractable. The two nations had much in common: both were nations
without states, distrustful of each other but united in their craving for national
autonomy, both fiercely anti-Orthodox and both subjects of the same people, the
Russians, whom they had both exploited in the not-so-distant past. The future of
Europe, and Christian civilization in general, would to a large extent depend on
how well Orthodox Russia would succeed in assimilating and neutralizing this
breeding-ground of the Revolution…
Throughout the medieval and early modern periods, the Jews had been
forbidden to settle in Russia. From the beginning of the Muscovite kingdom,
however, they had begun to infiltrate into Russia from Poland-Lithuania, where,
as we have seen, the Polish landowners had given them considerable privileges,
employing them to collect very heavy taxes, fees, tolls and produce from the
Russian serfs. In some cases the Poles even handed over churches and
monasteries to the Jews, who would extort fees for the celebration of
sacraments.511
“In the 16th century,” writes Solzhenitsyn, quoting Yury Hessen, “’the
spiritual leadership of the Jewish world came to be concentrated in German-
Polish Jewry… So as to prevent the possibility of the Jewish people being
dissolved amidst the surrounding population, the spiritual leaders had from
ages past introduced stipulations whose purpose was to isolate the people from
close contact with their neighbours. Using the authority of the Talmud,… the
Rabbis wrapped round the public and private life of the Jew with a complex web
of prescriptions of a religio-social nature, which… prevented them getting close
to people of other faiths.’ Real and spiritual needs ‘were brought in sacrifice to
outdated forms of popular life’, ‘blind fulfilment of ritual was transformed for
the people into the goal, as it were, of the existence of Jewry… Rabbinism,
ossified in lifeless forms, continued to keep both the mind and the will of the
people in fetters.’”512
In 1648, the Ukrainian Cossacks and peasants rose up against their Polish and
Jewish oppressors and appealed to the Tsar for help. The Tsarist armies
triumphed, and by the treaty of Andrusovo in 1667 Eastern Ukraine was ceded –
together with its Jewish population – to Russia.513
For the next hundred years, writes Janet Hartley, these Jews of the Russian
empire “lived mostly in the Ukraine although a small Jewish community became
511
Hieromonk Patapios, “A Traditionalist Critique of ‘The Orthodox Church’”, Orthodox
Tradition, volume XVI, N 1, 1999, pp. 44-45.
512
A.I. Solzhenitsyn, Dvesti Let Vmeste (Two Hundred Years Together), Moscow, 2001, vol. 1, p.
34.
513
1667 was the very year in which Patriarch Nikon was unjustly deposed; so the first major
influx of Jews into Russia coincided with the first serious undermining of Russian Church-State
relations. (L.A. Tikhomirov, “Yevrei i Rossia” (“The Jews and Russia”), Kritika Demokratii (A
Critique of Democracy), Moscow, 1997, p. 487).
303
established in Moscow. The government legislated to contain and control the
Jewish population within the empire’s borders. Both Catherine I (1725-27) and
Elizabeth (1741-62) attempted to ban Jews from Russia; one estimate is that
35,000 Jews were banished in 1741.”514
From the second half of the eighteenth century, however, the universalism
and cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment, together with the principles of
human and national rights of the French revolution, led to the emancipation of
the Jews, first in France, and then in most of the countries of Europe. This
process was slow and accompanied by many reverses and difficulties, but
inexorable. The only great power which firmly resisted it was Russia….
Contrary to popular myth, the myth of its being “the prison of the peoples”,
the record of the Russian empire in its treatment of various subject populations
was in general good. We only have to look at the large number of Baltic German
names among the senior officials of the empire, the very large measure of
autonomy given to the Finns (and to the Poles before they rebelled), and the way
in which Tatar khans and Georgian princes were fully assimilated (or rather:
assimilated to the degree that they wanted). In fact, Russia was probably more
liberal, and certainly less racist, in its treatment of its subject peoples than its
contemporary rival, the supposedly “liberal” empire of Great Britain.
But the Jews presented certain intractable problems not found in the other
peoples of the empire. The first problem was the sheer number of Jews who
suddenly found themselves within its boundaries. Thus Hartley writes: “The
empire acquired a further c. 250,000 Jews after the establishment of the Congress
Kingdom of Poland in 1815. There was a substantial Jewish population in
Bessarabia (11.3 per cent in 1863). In 1854, the Jewish population of the whole
empire was estimated as 1,062,132.”515 These numbers grew rapidly in the
second half of the nineteenth century. And by the beginning of the twentieth
century, according to Lebedev, about half the number of the Jews in the whole
world were to be found in the Russian empire.
More fundamental, however, than the administrative problem presented by

these large numbers was the fact that, as David Vital writes, “there were
differences… between Russia and the other European states… in respect of the
place of religion generally and what were taken to be the teachings of religion on
what were unquestionably the state’s affairs. It was not merely that in principle
Russia continued to be held by its Autocrat and its minions to be a Christian
state with a particular duty to uphold its own Orthodox Church. It was that, far
from the matter of the state’s specifically Christian duty slowly wasting away, as
in the west, it continued actively to exercise the minds of Russia’s rulers as one
of the central criteria by which questions of public policy were to be judged and
decided. The continuous search for an effective definition of the role, quality,
and ultimate purposes of the Autocracy itself was an enterprise which,
considering the energy and seriousness with which it was pursued, sufficed in
514
Hartley, A Social History of the Russian Empire, 1650-1825, London and New York: Longman,
1999, p. 15.
515
Hartley, op. cit., p. 15.
304
itself to distinguish Russia from its contemporaries. The programmes to which
the state was committed and all its structures were under obligation to promote
varied somewhat over time. But in no instance was there serious deviation from
the rule that Russian Orthodoxy was and needed to remain a central and
indispensable component of the ruling ethos. Nineteenth-century imperial
Russia was therefore an ideological state in a manner and to a degree that had
become so rare as to be virtually unknown in Europe and would not be familiar
again for at least a century…”516
Moreover, if Russia was the last ideological state in Europe, the large
numbers of Ashkenazi Jews that came within the Russian empire between 1772
and 1815 constituted an ideological “state within the state” whose anti-christian
books, rabbinic leaders and kahal institutions caused them to be bitterly hostile to
everything that Russia stood for. To put it bluntly: if the Russians worshipped
Christ, the Jews hated Him. And no amount of state intervention, whether in a
liberal or illiberal, emancipatory or anti-emancipatory direction, could resolve
this basic contradiction or defuse the hostile sentiments it aroused on both sides.
The situation was exacerbated by the fact that, unlike the Orthodox Christians,
who are taught to recognize and obey secular authorities even if they are not
Orthodox, and not only out of fear but for conscience’s sake (Romans 13.1-4), the
Jews ultimately recognized no authorities beside their own, rabbinical ones. And
if they did obey the Gentile powers, it was only because they had been taught
that resistance was counter-productive, not because these powers had any moral
authority over them.
This led the Jew, writes Vital, “to be deeply sceptical of civil authority of all
kinds… The lasting effect of such scepticism was to leave him peculiarly
independent in mind and social outlook. “Having no earthly masters to whom
he thought he owed unquestioning political obedience (the special case of the
Hasidic rebbe or zaddik and his devotees aside), ‘[the European Jew’s] was… a
spirit that, for his times, was remarkably free. Permitted no land, he had no
territorial lord. Admitted to no guild, he was free of the authority of established
master-craftsmen. Not being a Christian, he had neither bishop nor priest to
direct him. And while he could be charged or punished for insubordination to
state or sovereign, he could not properly be charged with disloyalty. Betrayal
only entered into the life of the Jews in regard to their own community or, more
broadly, to Jewry as a whole. It was to their own nation alone that they accepted
that they owed undeviating loyalty.”517
We have seen how important and harmful the internal Jewish authority of the
kahal was considered to be by the enlightened Polish Jew Hourwitz. The Tsar’s
servants were soon to make this discovery for themselves. Tsar Paul I appointed
the poet and state official Gavriil Romanovich Derzhavin to investigate why
Belorussia had been afflicted by such a severe famine. After visiting Belorussia
twice in 1799 and 1800, Derzhavin came to the conclusion that the main cause of
the famine was the desperate poverty into which the Jewish tavern-keepers and
516
David Vital, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp.
86-87.
517
305
money-lenders, in connivance with the Polish landowners, had reduced the
Belorussian peasants.518
But more importantly, writes Platonov, Derzhavin “noted the ominous role of
the kahals – the organs of Jewish self-rule on the basis of the bigoted laws of the
Talmud, which ‘a well-constructed political body must not tolerate’, as being a
state within the state. Derzhavin discovered that the Jews, who considered
themselves oppressed, established in the Pale of Settlement a secret Israelite
kingdom divided into kahal districts with kahal administrations endowed with
despotic power over the Jews which inhumanly exploited the Christians and
their property on the basis of the Talmud. …519
“Derzhavin also uncovered the concept of ‘herem’ – a curse which the kahal
issued against all those who did not submit to the laws of the Talmud. This,
according to the just evaluation of the Russian poet, was ‘an impenetrable
sacrilegious cover for the most terrible crimes’.
“In his note Derzhavin ‘was the first to delineate a harmonious, integral
programme for the resolution of the Jewish question in the spirit of Russian
statehood, having in mind the unification of all Russian subjects on common
ground’.
“Paul I, after reading the note, agreed with many of its positions and
decorated the author. However, the tragic death of the Tsar as the result of an
international Masonic conspiracy destroyed the possibility of resolving the
Jewish question in a spirit favourable for the Russian people. The new Emperor,
Alexander I, being under the influence of a Masonic environment, adopted a
liberal position. In 1802 he created a special Committee for the improvement of
the Jews, whose soul was the Mason Speransky, who was closely linked with the
Jewish world through the well-known tax-farmer Perets, whom he considered
his friend and with whom he lived.
“Another member of the committee was G.R. Derzhavin. As general-

governor, he prepared a note ‘On the removal of the deficit of bread in
Belorussia, the collaring of the avaricious plans of the Jews, on their
transformation, and other things’. Derzhavin’s new note, in the opinion of
specialists, was ‘in the highest degree a remarkable document, not only as the
518
Solzhenitsyn writes, quoting Derzhavin, that “some ‘landowners, giving the sale of wine on
franchise to the Jews in their villages, are making agreements with them that their peasants
should buy nothing that they needed from anyone else, and should take loans from nobody
except these tax-farmers [three times more expensive], and should sell none of their products to
anyone except these same Jewish tax-farmers… cheaper than the true price’” (op. cit., p. 47).
519
In 1800, I.G. Friesel, governor of Vilna, reported: “Having established their own
administrative institution, called Synagogues, Kahals, or associations, the Jews completely
separated themselves from the people and government of the land. As a result, they were
exempt from the operation of the statutes which governed the peoples of the several estates, and
even if special laws were enacted, these remained unenforced and valueless, because the
ecclesiastical and temporal leaders of the Jews invariably resisted them and were clever enough
to find means to evade them.” (Isaac Levitats, The Jewish Community in Russia, 1772-1844, New
York, 1970, p. 29; quoted in Hartley, op. cit., pp. 98-99). (V.M.)
306
work of an honourable, penetrating statesman, but also as a faithful exposition
of all the essential sides of Jewish life, which hinder the merging of this race with
the rest of the population.’
“In the report of the official commission on the Jewish question which
worked in the 1870s in the Ministry of the Interior, it was noted that at the
beginning of the reign of Alexander I the government ‘stood already on the
ground of the detailed study of Jewry and the preparation that had begun had
already at that time exposed such sides of the public institutions of this
nationality which would hardly be tolerable in any state structure. But however
often reforms were undertaken in the higher administrative spheres, every time
some magical brake held up the completion of the matter.’ This magical brake
stopped Derzhavin’s proposed reform of Jewry, which suggested the
annihilation of the kahals in all the provinces populated by Jews, the removal of
all kahal collections and the limitation of the influx of Jews to a certain
percentage in relation to the Christian population, while the remaining masses
were to be given lands in Astrakhan and New Russia provinces, assigning the
poorest to re-settlement. Finally, he proposed allowing the Jews who did not
want to submit to these restrictions freedom to go abroad. However, these
measures were not confirmed by the government.
“Derzhavin’s note and the formation of the committee elicited great fear in
the Jewish world. From the published kahal documents of the Minsk Jewish
society it becomes clear that the kahals and the ‘leaders of the cities’ gathered in
an extraordinary meeting three days later and decided to sent a deputation to St.
Petersburg with the aim of petitioning Alexander I to make no innovations in
Jewish everyday life. But since this matter ‘required great resources’, a very
significant sum was laid upon the whole Jewish population as a tax, refusal from
which brought with it ‘excommunication from the people’ (herem). From a
private note given to Derzhavin by one Belorussian landowner, it became
known that the Jews imposed their herem also on the general procurator, uniting
with it a curse through all the kahals ‘as on a persecutor’. Besides, they collected
‘as gifts’ for this matter, the huge sum for that time of a million rubles and sent it
to Petersburg, asking that ‘efforts be made to remove him, Derzhavin, from his
post, and if that was not possible, at any rate to make an attempt on his life’.” 520
Not surprisingly, Tsar Alexander’s Statute for the Jews of December 9, 1804
turned out to be fairly liberal – much more liberal than the laws of Frederick
Augustus in Napoleon’s Duchy of Warsaw. Its strictest provisions related to a
ban on Jews’ participation in the distilling and retailing of spirits. Also, “there
was to be no relaxation of the ancient rule that Jews (negligible exceptions
apart521) were to be prevented from penetrating into ‘inner Russia’. Provision
was made for an eventual, but determined, attack on the rabbinate’s ancient –
but in the government’s view presumptuous and unacceptable – practice of
adjudicating cases that went beyond the strict limits of the religious (as opposed
520
Platonov, op. cit., pp. 242, 243-245.
521
In fact they were not negligible at all. The Pale of Settlement was exceedingly porous!
307
to the civil and criminal domain), but also on rabbinical independence and
authority generally….522
“But the Jews themselves could take some comfort in it being expressly stated
that there was to be no question of forcible conversion to Christianity; that they
were not to be oppressed or harassed in the observance of their faith and in their
general social activities; that the private property of the Jews remained
inviolable; and that Jews were not to be exploited or enserfed. They were, on the
contrary, to enjoy the same, presumably full protection of the law that was
accorded other subjects of the realm. They were not to be subject to the legal
jurisdiction of the landowners on whose estates they might happen to be
resident. And they were encouraged in every way the Committee could imagine
– by fiscal and other economic incentives, for example, by the grant of land and
loans to develop it, by permission to move to the New Russian Territories in the
south – to undergo decisive and (so it was presumed) irreversible change in the
two central respects which both Friezel and Derzhavin had indeed, and perfectly
reasonably, regarded as vital: education and employment. In this they were to be
encouraged very strongly; but they were not to be forced…” 523
However, the liberal Statute of 1804 was never fully implemented, and was
succeeded by stricter measures towards the end of Alexander’s reign and in the
reign of his successor, Nicholas I. There were many reasons for this. Among
them, of course, was Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, which, if it had been
successful, would have united the Western Sephardic Jews with the Eastern
Ashkenazi Jews in a single State, free, emancipated, and under their own legally
convened Sanhedrin. But not only did Napoleon not succeed: the invasion of
Russia was the graveyard of his empire. In 1813, and again in 1815, the Russian
armies entered Paris. From now on, the chief target of the Jews’ hatred in both
East and West would be the Russian Empire…
But the main reason for the tightening of Russian policy was “the Jews’
abhorrence of Christianity, the intensely negative light in which non-Jewish
society had always been regarded, and the deeply ingrained suspicion and fear
in which all forms of non-Jewish authority were commonly held.” 524 As a result,
in the whole of the 19th century only 69,400 Jews converted to Orthodoxy.525 If the
freethinking French delegates who emancipated French Jewry could ignore this
fact, the Russian Tsars could not.526
The Tsars’ gradual tightening of policy had little or no effect on the basic
problem of religious and social antagonism. As Platonov writes: “The statute of
the Jews worked out in 1804, which took practically no account of Derzhavin’s
suggestion, continued to develop the isolation of the Jewish communities on
522
The kahal was abolished in 1821 in Poland and in 1844 in the rest of the Russian empire.
523
524
525
Vladimir Gubanov (ed.), Nikolai II-ij i novie mucheniki (Nicholas II and the New Martyrs), St.
Petersburg, 2000, p. 698. Gubanov took this figure from the Jewish Encyclopaedia.
526
Nor did the Jews receive emancipation from the great powers at the Congress of Vienna,
although their situation had made it onto the agenda (Zamoyski, Rites of Peace, p. 568).
308
Russian soil, that is, it strengthened the kahals together with their fiscal, judicial,
police and educational independence. However, the thought of re-settling the
Jews out of the western region continued to occupy the government after the
issuing of the statute in 1804. A consequence of this was the building in the New
Russian area (from 1808) of Jewish colonies in which the government vainly
hoped to ‘re-educate’ the Jews, and, having taught them to carry out productive
agricultural labour, to change in this way the whole structure of their life.
Nevertheless, even in these model colonies the kahal-rabbinic administration
retained its former significance and new settlements isolated themselves from
the Christian communities; they did not intend to merge with them either in a
national or in a cultural sense. The government not only did not resist the
isolation of the Jews, but even founded for them the so-called Israelite Christians
(that is, Talmudists who had converted to Orthodoxy). A special committee
existed from 1817 to 1833.”527
527
Platonov, op. cit., p. 245.
309
35. THE REACTION AGAINST MASONRY
After 1812 all kinds of pseudo-religious mysticism flooded into Russia from
the West. There was, writes N. Elagin, “a veritable inundation of ‘mystical’ and
pseudo-Christian ideas… together with the ‘enlightened’ philosophy that had
produced the French Revolution. Masonic lodges and other secret societies
abounded; books containing the Gnostic and millenarian fantasies of Jacob
Boehme, Jung-Stilling, Eckhartshausen and other Western ‘mystics’ were freely
translated into Russian and printed for distribution in all the major cities of the
realm; ‘ecumenical’ salons spread a vague teaching of an ‘inner Christianity’ to
the highest levels of Russian society; the press censorship was under the
direction of the powerful Minister of Spiritual Affairs, Count Golitsyn, who
patronized every ‘mystical’ current and stifled the voice of traditional
Orthodoxy by his dominance of the Holy Synod as Procurator; the Tsar
Alexander himself, fresh from his victory over Napoleon and the formation of a
vaguely religious ‘Holy Alliance’ of Western powers, favored the new religious
currents and consulted with ‘prophetesses’ and other religious enthusiasts; and
the bishops and other clergy who saw what was going on were reduced to
helpless silence in the face of the prevailing current of the times and the
Government’s support of it, which promised exile and disgrace for anyone who
opposed it. Many even of those who regarded themselves as sincere Orthodox
Christians were swept up in the spiritual ‘enthusiasm’ of the times, and, trusting
their religious feelings more than the Church’s authority and tradition, were
developing a new spirituality, foreign to Orthodoxy, in the midst of the Church
itself. Thus, one lady of high birth, Ekaterina P. Tatarinova, claimed to have
received the gift of ‘prophecy’ on the very day she was received into the
Orthodox Church (from Protestantism), and subsequently she occupied the
position of a ‘charismatic’ leader of religious meetings which included the
singing of Masonic and sectarian hymns (while holding hands in a circle), a
peculiar kind of dancing and spinning when the ‘Holy Spirit’ would come upon
them, and actual ‘prophecy’ – sometimes for hours at a time. The members of
such groups fancied that they drew closer to the traditions of Orthodoxy by such
meetings, which they regarded as a kind of restoration of the New Testament
Church for ‘inward’ believers, the ‘Brotherhood in Christ’, as opposed to the
‘outward’ Christians who were satisfied with the Divine services of the
Orthodox Church… The revival of the perennial ‘charismatic’ temptation in the
Church, together with a vague ‘revolutionary’ spirit imported from the West,
presented a danger not merely to the preservation of true Christianity in Russia,
but to the very survival of the whole order of Church and State…” 528
528
Elagin, “The Life of Countess Anna Orlova-Chesmenskaya”, The Orthodox Word, 1977, vol. 13,
N 6 (77), pp. 240-241. V.N. Zhmakin writes: “From 1812 there began with us in Russia a time of
the domination of extreme mysticism and pietism… The Emperor Alexander became a devotee
of many people simultaneously, from whatever quarter they declared their religious
enthusiasm… He protected the preachers of western mysticism, the Catholic paters… Among
the first of his friends and counsellors was Prince A.N. Golitsyn, who was over-procurator of the
Synod from 1803… Prince Golitsyn was the complete master of the Russian Orthodox Church in
the reign of Alexander I… Having received no serious religious education, like the majority of
aristocrats of that time, he was a complete babe in religious matters and almost an ignoramus in
Orthodoxy… Golitsyn, who understood Orthodoxy poorly, took his understanding of it only
310
This mystical current was aided by what at first would seem to be a
completely different, “drier”, kind of religious phenomenon. The Tsar, who did
much to found new institutions of higher education for upper-class Russians,
also wanted the Holy Scriptures to be available to all the peoples of his empire in
their native languages. “For this purpose he encouraged the establishment of the
Imperial Russian Bible Society in December 1812, as a [largely autonomous]
branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society, to undertake the work of
translation, publication and distribution.
“The steering committee of the Bible Society brought together representatives

of different Christian churches, including a Roman Catholic bishop and a
Lutheran pastor. To avoid inter-denominational conflict, they agreed to publish
the various editions of the Bible without commentary.” 529 Its first general
meeting took place on 11 January 1813 with Prince Golitsyn, as president. It was
very successful, and within a decade had published over 700,000 Bibles in forty-
three languages and dialects, including German, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian,
Lithuanian, Polish, Armenian, Georgian, Kalmyk and Tatar. 530 Only there was no
translation into Russian because Church Slavonic was considered better capable
of conveying the truth and dignity of the Scripture… By the end of 1823 there
were 300 Bible societies in Russia.
However, “the publication of mystical books by prominent member of the

Bible Society cast a fatal shadow on the Society’s work on the Bible. There were
sufficient grounds to regard the Bible Society as something more or other than
what it claimed to be. Very many people with extreme views and scarcely
concealed hopes and intentions belonged to the Society, often in leading and
from its external manifestations… His mystical imagination inclined in favour of secrecy,
fancifulness, originality… He became simultaneously the devotee of all the representatives of
contemporary mysticism, such as Mrs. Krunder, the society of Quakers, Jung Schtilling, the
pastors… etc. Moreover, he became the pitiful plaything of all the contemporary sectarians, all
the religious utopians, the representatives of all the religious theories, beginning with the
Masons and ending with the … eunuch Selivanov and the half-mad Tatarinova. In truth, Prince
Golitsyn at the same time protected the mystics and the pietists, and gave access into Russia to
the English missionaries, and presented a broad field of activity to the Jesuits, who, thanks to the
protection of the Minister of Religious Affairs, sowed a large part of Russia with their missions…
He himself personally took part in the prayer-meetings of the Quakers and waited, together with
them, for the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, he himself took part in the religious gatherings
of Tatarinova, which were orgies reminiscent of the Shamans and khlysts…. Thanks to Prince
Golitsyn, mystical literature received all rights of citizenship in Russia – works shot through with
mystical ravings were distributed en masse… By the direct order of Prince Golitsyn all the more
significant mystical works and translations were distributed to all the dioceses to the diocesan
bishops. In some dioceses two thousand copies of one and the same work were sent to some
dioceses… Prince Golitsyn… acted… in the name of the Holy Synod… and in this way
contradicted himself;… the Synod as it were in its own name distributed works which actually
went right against Orthodoxy…. He strictly persecuted the appearance of such works as were
negatively oriented towards mysticism… Many of the simple people, on reading the mystical
works that came into their hands, … were confused and perplexed.” (“Eres’ esaula Kotel’nikova”
(“The Heresy of Cossack Captain Kotelnikov”), Khristianskoe Chtenie (Christian Reading),
November-December, 1882, pp. 739-745)
529
530
311
responsible positions or roles. By statute and design the Bible Society was to
embrace all confessions, so that all ‘confessions’ might be represented in the
Society as equally possessed by the sanctity of God’s Word. In fact, the Bible
Society became something like a new confession or sect (at least psychologically)
with the peculiarly esoteric and exalted cast of mind of a ‘circle’. Sturdza
somewhat justifiably called the Bible Society ‘exotic’ and labeled it ‘the Anglo-
Russian sect’. Many of the prominent members of the Bible Society, notably its
secretary V.M. Popov, participated in Madame Tatarinova’s circle of ‘spiritual
alliance’. Very often religious toleration metamorphosed as patronage for
sectarians, especially for the Dukhobors and Molokans, but even for the Skoptsy.
Mystical books, particularly Jung-Stilling and Eckartshausen, found ready
acceptance in this milieu. In any case, ‘formal church life’ was very often
denounced with the expectation that such ‘worn out altar cloths’ might be cut
away, thereby revealing a true and inner Christianity. One can read Jung-Stilling
on the ‘absurd and superstitious blindness of those who profess the Eastern
Greek-Catholic confession, which must be driven out with the light of the Divine
book.’”531
As V.F. Ivanov writes: “Under the mask of love for one’s neighbour and the
spreading of the word of God, the bible societies began to conduct oral
propaganda and publish books directed against [the Orthodox Christian]
religion and the State order. These books were published under the management
of the censor, which was attached to the Ministry of Spiritual Affairs and
Popular Enlightenment, which was headed by the Emperor Alexander’s close
friend, Prince A.N. Golitsyn. The main leaders of the Bible societies were
members of the Masonic lodges, who preached the rejection of Orthodoxy, the
Church and the rites of the Church. In 1819 there was published Stankevich’s
book, ‘A conversation in the coffin of a child’, which was hostile to the
institution of the Orthodox Church…
“The Orthodox clergy were silent. They could not speak against the evil that
was being poured out everywhere…”532
“Golitsyn,” writes Oleg Platonov, “invited to the leadership of the Bible

Society only certain hierarchs of the Russian Church that were close to him. He
de facto removed the Holy Synod from participation in this matter. At the same
time he introduced into it secular and clerical persons of other confessions, as if
underlining that ‘the aim of the Society is higher than the interests of one, that is
the Russian Church, and that it develops its activities in the interests of the
whole of Christianity and the whole of the Christian world’.
“As the investigator of the Bible Society I.A. Chistovich wrote in 1873 [ Istoria
perevoda Biblii na russkij iazyk (A History of the Translation of the Bible into Russian),
St. Petersburg, pp. 50-55], ‘this indifferent cosmopolitanism in relation to the
Church, however pure its preachers might be in their ideal simplicity of heart,
was, however, an absurdity at that, as at any other time. Orthodoxy is, factually
speaking, the existing form of the Christian faith of the Greco-Russian Church,
531
Florovsky, op. cit., p. 184.
532
312
and is completely in accord with the teaching and statutes of the Ancient
Universal Church. Therefore Christianity in its correct ecclesiastical form only
exists in the Orthodox Church and cannot have over or above it any other idea…
But the Bible Society was directed precisely against such an ideal, and they
sought it out or presupposed it.’
“In an official document of the Bible Society the ideas of Masonic ecumenism
were openly declared. ‘The heavenly union of faith and love,’ it says in a report
of the Russian Bible Society in 1818, ‘founded by means of Bible Societies in the
great Christian family, reveal the beautiful dawn of the wedding day of
Christians and that time when there will be one pastor and one flock, that is,
when there will be one Divine Christian religion in all the various formations of
Christian confessions.’
“The well-known Russian public figure, the academic A.S. Shishkov wrote on
this score: ‘Let us look at the acts of the Bible Societies, let us see what they
consist of. It consists in the intention to construct out of the whole human race
one general republic or other and one religion – a dreamy and undiscriminating
opinion, born in the minds either of deceivers or of the vainly wise… If the Bible
Societies are trying only to spread piety, as they say, then why do they not unite
with our Church, but deliberately act separate from her and not in agreement
with her? If their intention consists in teaching Christian doctrines, does not our
Church teach them to us? Can it be that we were not Christians before the
appearance of the Bible Societies? And just how do they teach us this? They
recruit heterodox teachers and publish books contrary to Christianity!… Is it not
strange – even, dare I say it, funny – to see our metropolitans and hierarchs in
the Bible Societies sitting, contrary to the apostolic rules, together with
Lutherans, Catholics, Calvinists and Quakers – in a word, with all the
heterodox? They with their grey hairs, and in their cassocks and klobuks, sit
with laymen of all nations, and a man in a frock suit preaches to them the Word
of God (of God as they call it, but not in fact)! Where is the decency, where the
dignity of the church server? Where is the Church? They gather in homes where
there often hang on the walls pictures of pagan gods or lascivious depictions of
lovers, and these gatherings of theirs – which are without any Divine services,
with the reading of prayers or the Gospel, sitting as it were in the theatre,
without the least reverence – are equated with Church services, and a house
without an altar, unconsecrated, where on other days they feast and dance, they
call the temple of God! Is this not similar to Sodom and Gomorrah?’” 533
At this critical moment for Russian Orthodoxy, God raised up righteous

defenders of the faith in the persons of Metropolitan Michael (Desnitsky) and
Archimandrite Innocent (Smirnov). Metropolitan Michael protested at Golitsyn’s
removal of the censorship of spiritual books from the Holy Synod, which meant
giving free expression to the pseudo-mystical sects. There were stormy scenes
between the prince and the metropolitan in the Synod. Innocent was given an
honourable exile from the capital and given the see of Penza. Both Innocent and
Michael soon died. Two weeks before his death, Michael wrote to the Emperor:
533
313
“Your Majesty, when this epistle reaches you, I will no longer be in this world. I
have communicated nothing except the truth to people, especially now, when in
my actions I am preparing to give an account to the Supreme Judge”
“As a Member of the Synod, the hierarch Philaret was witness to the heated
speeches of Metropolitan Michael in defence of the Church and undoubtedly
approved of his actions. In his eyes the first-ranking hierarch was rightly
considered to be a pillar of the Orthodox Church, restraining the onslaught of
false mysticism. And when this pillar collapsed 534, and the storms did not die
down, Philaret, like many others, was seized by fear for the destiny of the
Church. Under the influence of a vision seen by someone concerning
Metropolitan Michael, a sorrowful picture of Church life, full of misery and
darkness, was revealed. He believed that in such a situation only a person
possessing the spirit and power of the Prophet Elijah could work with benefit for
the Church. However, the holy hierarch was profoundly convinced that the
Church was supported, not by people, but by the Lord. And since he saw that it
was impossible to save the Church only by human efforts, without the help of
God, he decided that it was better for him to withdraw himself from everything
as far as he could. Evidently, Philaret preferred a different method of warfare
with various kinds of heterodox preachers and sectarian societies from that
employed by Metropolitan Michael. And these methods were: a correct
organization of the spiritual schools throughout Russia and the spiritual
enlightenment of the Russian people through the distribution of Orthodox
spiritual literature…”535
However, while Philaret withdrew to concentrate on spiritual education, a

man with the spirit and strength of the Prophet Elijah was found. Fr. Photius
(Spassky), later archimandrite of the Yuriev monastery near Novgorod, began
his open defence of Orthodoxy in 1817.
“Bureaucratic and military Petersburg were angry with the bold reprover. His
first speech was unsuccessful. Photius’ struggle… against the apostates from
Orthodoxy, the followers of the so-called inner Church, ended with his
expulsion from Petersburg.
“After the expulsion of Photius the Masons celebrated their victory. But the
joy of the conquerors turned out to be short-lived. The exile was found to have
followers. Photius received special support at a difficult time of his life from the
great righteous woman, Countess Anna Alexeevna Orlova-Chesmenskaia, who
presented a model of piety. She not only protected him, but chose him as her
leader and confessor. The firmness and courage with which Photius fought
against the enemies of Orthodoxy attracted the mind and heart of Countess
Orlova, a woman of Christian humility and virtue. After the death of her
instructor, Countess Orlova explained why it was Photius whom she chose as
her spiritual director. ‘He attracted my attention,’ wrote Countess Orlova, ‘by
the boldness and fearlessness with which he, being a teacher of the law of God at
534
(V.M.)
535
Snychev, op. cit., pp. 148-149.
314
the cadet corps and a young monk, began to attack the dominant errors in faith.
Everybody was against him, beginning with the Court. He did not fear this. I
wanted to get to know him and entered into correspondence with him. His
letters seemed to me to be some kind of apostolic epistles. After getting to know
him better, I became convinced that he personally sought nothing for
himself.’”536
However, the struggle against Masonry was helped by other events: the
revolutionary activity in the Polish and Russian lodges, and the demonstration
by Metternich at the Congress of the Sacred Alliance in Verona in 1822, “on the
basis of Masonic documents that had unexpectedly fallen into his possession,
that the secret societies of all countries, being in constant communication with
each other, constituted one common plot, which was subject only to the secret
leaders, and only for form’s sake accepted different programmes in different
countries, depending on circumstances and conditions. He was supported by the
Prussian minister, Count Haugwitz, who himself had formerly been a Mason.
He made a detailed report in which he showed that the ‘enmity’ of various
unions of Masonry was only for show, to divert attention. In actual fact Masonry
in its depths was one and its aim was the subjection of the world, and in the first
place the subjection of the monarchs, so that they become weapons in the hands
of the Masons. Haugwitz added that since 1777 he had personally ruled not only a
part of the Prussian lodges, but also Masonry in Poland and Russia! We can
imagine how shocked his Majesty Alexander I was as he sat in the hall...
Everybody was stunned. The Austrian Emperor Frantz and the Russian Emperor
Alexander I decided to attack this great evil. In 1822 Masonry was forbidden in
Russia by a decree of the Tsar. The lodges were disbanded, the ‘brothers’’
correspondence with abroad was strictly forbidden. At the same time this was
the third powerful blow that shook the soul of Alexander I with the collapse of
his faith in the nobility of the Masonic ideas and strivings. Strict censorship was
introduced, especially in the publication of books of a spiritual nature. Now his
Majesty began to pay attention to the rebukes of Masonry and mysticism issuing
from Archimandrite Innocent, who had suffered earlier for this, of the
metropolitan of the capital Michael, Metropolitan Seraphim who succeeded him,
and also of the zealous defender of Orthodoxy Archimandrite Photius (Spassky)
… Seraphim and Photius, joining forces, were able to show Alexander the
danger for Orthodoxy of ‘fashionable’ tendencies in thought, the harmfulness of
the activity of Prince Golitsyn, and return the heart of the Tsar to Holy Orthodoxy. A
visit to Valaam monastery, conversations with Vladyka Seraphim, with Elder
Alexis of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra made a great impression on Alexander
and showed him that what his exalted soul had sought throughout his life was
contained in the experience, rules and methods of Orthodox asceticism, which
was just then experiencing an unusual ascent, being armed with such books as
The Philokalia and others, especially on the doing of the Jesus prayer (‘Lord Jesus
Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’). This was Alexander’s fourth
powerful spiritual shock. It had two kinds of consequences. When, in April,
1824, after many fruitless exhortations, Archimandrite Photius publicly (in a
536
315
private house) pronounced ‘anathema’ on Prince Golitsyn and the latter retired,
his Majesty accepted his retirement.”537
Archimandrite Photius wrote: “the Masonic faith is of Antichrist, and its

whole teaching and writings are of the devil”. 538 In the spring of 1824 he wrote
“two epistles to his Majesty. In one of them he said that ‘in our time many books,
and many societies and private people are talking about some kind of new
religion, which is supposedly pre-established for the last times. This new religion,
which is preached in various forms, sometimes under the form of a new
world…, sometimes of a new teaching, sometimes of the coming of Christ in the
Spirit, sometimes of the union of the churches, sometimes under the form of
some renewal and of Christ’s supposed thousand-year reign, sometimes
insinuated under the form of a so-called new religion – is apostasy from the faith
537
Lebedev, Velikorossia, p. 289. “In 1822 Prince A.N. Golitsyn became acquainted with Photius
and tried to incline him to his side. The meetings of Prince Golitsyn with Archimandrite Photius
made a great impression on the former, which he noted in his letters to Countess Orlova. In these
letters to Countess Orlova Prince Golitsyn calls Photius ‘an unusual person’ and recognises that
‘the edifying conversation of Photius has a power that only the Lord could give’. In one of his
letters to Countess Orlova Prince Golitsyn expresses regret that he cannot enjoy the conversation
of ‘our Chrysostom’ and that he ‘wants to quench my thirst with pure water drawn up by a pure
hand and not by the hand of one who communicates to others stingily.’
“Prince Golitsyn’s attempt by subtle flattery to bring the Archimandrite to his side was
unsuccessful. A rapprochement and union between Archimandrite Photius, a pure and true
zealot of Orthodoxy, with Prince Golitsyn, an enemy of the faith and the Church, was
impossible.
“On April 22, 1822 Archimandrite Photius went to Petersburg. There his ‘great toil’ began.
Every day, according to the witness of Archimandrite Photius himself, he was called to various
people to talk about the Lord, the Church, the faith, and the salvation of the soul. Eminent and
learned noblemen and noblewomen gathered to hear him talk about the Lord. But such
conversations took place especially in the house of the virgin Anna, Abba Photius’ daughter, of
the noblewoman Daria Derzhavina, and sometimes in the Tauris palace.
“Without fear or hypocrisy Photius reproved the enemies of Orthodoxy.
“Once in 1822 Archimandrite Photius began to reprove Golitsyn, who could not stand it and
began to leave the living-room, but Photius loudly shouted after him: ‘Anathema! Be accursed!
Anathema!’
“By this time the Emperor Alexander himself returned.
“Rumours about the cursing of Prince Golitsyn had reached the ears of the Emperor, and he
demanded that Photius come and explain himself. At first the Emperor received the fearless
reprover threateningly, but then he changed his wrath for mercy. The Emperor was struck by the
bold speech of the simple monk against the lofty official, who also happened to be a close friend
of the Emperor himself. Photius described Golitsyn to the Emperor as an atheist, and the Bible
Society headed by him - as a nest of faithlessness that threatened to overthrow the Orthodox
Church. At the end of the conversation Photius began to speak to the Emperor about what was
most necessary.
“These are his remarkable words:
“’The enemies of the holy Church and Kingdom have greatly strengthened themselves; evil
faith and temptations are openly and boldly revealing themselves, they want to create evil secret
societies that are a great harm to the holy Church of Christ and the Kingdom, but they will not
succeed, there is nothing to fear from them, it is necessary immediately to put an end to the
successes of the secret and open enemies in the capital itself.’
“The Emperor ‘repeatedly kissed the hand that blessed him’ and, when Photius was leaving,
‘the Tsar fell to his knees before God and, turning to face Photius, said: ‘Father, lay your hands
on my head and say the Lord’s prayer over me, and forgive and absolve me’. (Ivanov, op. cit.,
pp. 280-282)
538
Elagin, op. cit., p. 243.
316
of God, the faith of the apostles and the fathers. It is faith in the coming
Antichrist, it is propelling the revolution, it is thirsting for blood, it is filled with
the spirit of Satan. Its false-prophets and apostles are Jung-Stilling,
Eckartshausen, Thion, Bohme, Labzin, Fessler and the Methodists…’
“His Majesty was favourably disposed to the epistle of Archimandrite Photius

in spite of the fact that it contained criticism of all his recent friends and of the
people who had enjoyed his protection. Almost at the same time there appeared
the book of Gosner, about whose harmful line Archimandrite Photius had
reported to his Majesty on April 17, 1824.
“On April 20, 1824, Emperor Alexander received Photius, who was ordered:
‘Come by the secret entrance and staircase into his Majesty’s study so that
nobody should know about this’. Their conversation lasted for three hours, and
on May 7 Photius sent his second epistle with the title: ‘Thoroughly correct the
work of God. The plan for the revolution published secretly, or the secret
iniquities practised by secret societies in Russia and everywhere.’
“On April 29 Photius gave his Majesty another note: ‘To your question how to
stop the revolution, we are praying to the Lord God, and look what has been
revealed. Only act immediately. The way of destroying the whole plan quietly
and successfully is as follows: 1) to abolish the Ministry of Spiritual Affairs and
remove two others from a well-known person; 2) to abolish the Bible Society
under the pretext that there are already many printed Bibles, and they are now
not needed; 3) the Synod is, as before, to supervise education, to see if there is
anything against the authorities and the faith anywhere; 4) to remove Koshelev,
exile Gosner, exile Fessler and exile the Methodists, albeit the leading ones. The
Providence of God is now to do nothing more openly.’
“This flaming defence of Orthodoxy [by Photius] together with Metropolitan

Seraphim was crowned with success: on May 15, 1824 the Ministry of Spiritual
Affairs was abolished.”539
The Synod was now freer; it had a new over-procurator in the place of
Golitsyn, and was purged of those members that had been linked with him. The
Tsar had paid heed to Photius’ appeal, and so had become a spiritual as well as a
physical conqueror. “God conquered the visible Napoleon who invaded Russia,”
he said to him. “May He conquer the spiritual Napoleon through you!”
539
317
36. THE RUSSIAN BIBLE PROJECT
However, not everyone saw only good in the struggle against the Bible
Society and the false mystics. Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, who had been
Archimandrite Photius’ early sponsor, had declined to enter into open warfare
with them, partly because of his personal friendship with Golitsyn (which did
not prevent him from firmly refusing Golitsyn’s request to distribute a work
published by the Tatarinova group), and partly because he had another
approach to the mystical ferment in Russia.
For “under the cover of the mystical temptations,” writes Florovsky, “Philaret
was able to recognize a living religious need, a thirst for religious instruction
and enlightenment. He recognized the need in Russian society for the living
enchurchment of the whole of life, whatever distorted and corrupt forms it
sometimes assumed. And he considered that what was necessary was not
rebuke, but pastoral admonishment, penetrated by the spirit of love and
completed by positive teaching.”540
As for Golitsyn, writes Metropolitan John Snychev, “the Muscovite

archpastor saw in him much that was positive and recognized him to be one of
the zealots of the spiritual side of the ecclesiastical organism. One way or the
other, with the support of Prince Golitsyn it had been possible to publish many
useful ecclesiastical books of a mystical character, but in an Orthodox spirit. Of
course, Philaret was Orthodox in his views on mysticism. He clearly understood
that in mysticism the most important question is its relation to the Church and
the institutions of the Church. Every form of isolation could bring only harm,
not good. Philaret recognized the usefulness of mystical teaching in the spirit of
Orthodoxy and was far from sympathizing with a superficial approach to the
latter. In the actions of the opponents of mysticism he found excesses, while the
very method of the struggle against the latter he considered to be open to
criticism and of little use. What, for example, did the party of Arakcheev and
Photius gain by their victory? Absolutely nothing…. First of all, mystical
literature was subjected to terrible attacks, and that which was formerly
considered useful was now recognized to be harmful, demonic and heretical. All
books of a mystical character were ordered to be removed from the libraries of
educational institutions and a veto placed on them. Terrible difficulties were
placed in the way of the publication of patristic literature. Publishers were
frightened, as it were, to publish, for example, the writings of St. Macarius, they
were frightened to appear thereby to be supporters of mysticism. The opponents
of the Bible Society did great harm also to the translation of the Holy Scriptures
into Russian…”541
Philaret (who was an outstanding Biblical scholar) had been taking an active
part in this translation because he saw in it the best means of diverting the often
misdirected religious aspirations of Russian society in the direction of
Orthodoxy. “’Let the bread not be taken away from the child’… - Metropolitan
540
Florovsky, “Filaret, mitropolit moskovskij”, op. cit., p. 271.
541
Snychev, op. cit., pp. 160-161.
318
Philaret firmly believed in the renovatory power of the Word of God. He
uninterruptedly bound his destiny with the work on the Bible, with the
translation of the Holy Scriptures. And it is difficult properly to value his Biblical
exploit. For him personally it was bound up with great trials and sorrow.”542
To the argument that the Bible should only be read with a patristic
interpretation, Philaret replied: “Everything that is necessary for salvation is
expounded in the Holy Scriptures with a clarity that any reader moved by the
sincere wish to be enlightened can understand it. Certainly, trained interpreters
of the Scriptures are useful for less educated Christians. But to state as a
principle that an authoritative interpreter is required to bring out the
propositions of the faith, demeans the dignity of God’s word, and subjects the
faith to human exposition.”543
Philaret’s project of translating the Bible into Russian was vigorously opposed
by Metropolitan Seraphim, Archimandrite Photius and Admiral Shishkov, the
new minister of education. Thus Shishkov “denied the very existence of the
Russian language – ‘as if he saw in it only baseness and meanness’, ‘the simple
people’s’ dialect of the single Slavic-Russian language. He saw in [Philaret’s]
determination to translate the Word of God an ill-intentioned undertaking, ‘a
weapon of revolutionary plots’, ‘how can one dare to change the words which
are venerated as having come from the mouth of God?’… And translate it into
what? Who would read these translations, would they not pile up everywhere in
torn-up copies?… From the translation of the Bible Shishkov turned to the
Catechism of Philaret and to his Notes on the Book of Genesis, where the Biblical
and New Testament texts were translated in a Russian ‘reworking’. He was
particularly disturbed by the fact that the Catechism was printed in a large print-
run (18,000!) – he saw in this the clear manifestation of some criminal intention.
Archimandrite Photius, on his part,… reproached the ‘unhealthy and harmful’
work of the Biblical translation – ‘the power of the translation was such that it
clearly overthrew the dogmas of Church teaching or cast doubt on the truth of
the Church’s teaching and traditions’. And Photius directly attacked Philaret,
who, in his words, ‘was struggling on behalf of a God-fighting assembly’ and
was supposedly ‘influencing the translation of the Bible in order rather to give a
new appearance to the Word of God, thereby assisting faithlessness, innovation
and all kinds of ecclesiastical temptations’. He directly called Philaret’s Catechism
‘gutter water’. As Philaret was told by his disciple Gregory, who was then rector
of the Petersburg Academy and many years later Metropolitan of Novgorod and
Petersburg, they were saying about the Bible Society that ‘it was founded in
order to introduce a reformation’. They feared the translation of the Old
Testament, and in particular the five books of Moses, lest it somehow seduced
people to return to the Old Testament ritual law, or fall into Molokanism and
Judaism (this thought was Magnitsky’s). They began ‘to say unpleasant things’
about Philaret in Petersburg, and it was suggested that he be removed to the
Caucasus as exarch of Georgia… In these years Philaret was in Moscow and took
no notice of the Petersburg rumours and ‘Alexandrine politics’. As before, he
542
Florovsky, “Philaret, mitropolit Moskovskij”, op. cit., p. 272.
543
Philaret, in Hosking, op. cit., pp. 233-234.
319
directly and openly defended the work on the Bible and attempted to show that
‘the very desire to read the Holy Scriptures is already an earnest of moral
improvement’. To the question, what was the purpose of this new undertaking
in a subject so ancient and not subject to change as Christianity and the Bible,
Philaret replied: ‘What is the purpose of this new undertaking? But what is new
here? Dogmas? Rules of life? But the Bible Society preaches none of these things,
and gives into the hands of those who desire it the book from which the
Orthodox dogmas and pure rules of life were always drawn by the true Church
in the past and to the present day. A new society? But it introduces no novelty
into Christianity, and produces not the slightest change in the Church’… They
asked: ‘Why is this undertaking of foreign origin?’ But, replied Philaret, so much
with us ‘is not only of foreign origin, but also completely foreign’…
“The supposed zealots succeeded in obtaining the banning of Philaret’s

Catechism on the excuse that there were ‘prayers’ in it – the Symbol of faith and
the Commandments – in Russian. The Russian translation of the New Testament
was not banned, but the translation of the Bible was stopped. And as
Metropolitan Philaret of Kiev remembered later ‘with great sorrow and horror’,
from fear of conversions to Judaism, ‘they found it necessary to commit to the
flames of brick factories several thousand copies of the five books of the Prophet
Moses translated into Russian in the St. Petersburg Theological Academy and
printed by the Bible Society’. M. Philaret reacted sharply and sorrowfully to
these actions, which were carried out bypassing the Holy Synod. [He wrote to
Metropolitan Seraphim]: ‘I cannot understand by whom and how and why
doubt can be cast on a work as pure and approved by all, as sacred as anything
on earth. It would be no small matter if the doubt threatened only the one man
who was the instrument of this work; but does it not threaten the Hierarchy?
Does it not threaten the Church? If the Orthodoxy of a Catechism that was
triumphantly approved by the Most Holy Synod is in doubt, then will not the
Orthodoxy of the Most Holy Synod itself not be in doubt? Will not allowing this
shake the Hierarchy to its foundations, will it not disturb the peace of the
Church? Will it not produce a serious temptation for the Church?’ Metropolitan
Seraphim calmed Philaret, saying that Orthodoxy was not in question here, that
everything came down to the language, but he refused ‘to reply in a satisfactory
manner’ ‘why the Russian language must have no place in the Catechism, which
was, moreover, short, and intended for small children who had no knowledge
whatsoever of the Slavonic language, and for that reason were not able to
understand the truths of the faith which were expounded to them in that
language’… The ban on the Catechism (1828) was removed only when all the
texts had been put into Slavonic and the Russian translation of the Symbol, the
Lord’s Prayer and the Commandments had been left out. M. Philaret was deeply
shaken by these events. ‘Smoke is eating into their eyes’, he wrote to his vicar,
‘and they are saying: how corrosive is the light of the sun! They can hardly
breathe from the smoke and with difficulty decree: how harmful is the water
from the source of life! Blessed is he who can not only raise his eyes to the
mountains, but run there for the clean air, the living water!… Blessed is he who
can sit in his corner and weep for his sins and pray for the Sovereign and the
Church, and has no need to take part in public affairs, becoming tainted with the
sins of others and multiplying his own sins!’ Above all Philaret was alarmed by
320
the un-thought-through hastiness and interference of secular people, ‘people
who have been called neither by God, nor by their superiors’, and who rise up in
bold self-opinionated fashion against the appointed teachers.” 544
The destruction of volumes of the Holy Scriptures simply because they were
in a Russian translation, and of the official Catechism because it quoted them in
Russian rather than Slavonic, would, in another age, have led to a schism. But
Philaret refrained from open protest precisely because he did not want to create
a schism.545
However, with heresy overwhelming so many from the left, and blind
prejudice parading as traditionalism from the right, the Russian Church was in a
precarious position…
The Russian Bible Society was forced to close down in 1826 by Tsar Nicholas
I; its property, worth some two million roubles, was transferred to the Holy
Synod. The Society re-established itself in Russia in 1990. The project for the
translation of the Holy Scriptures into Russian was resumed in 1859 in the reign
of Alexander II.
“The Gospels appeared in 1861, the New Testament in 1861, and the whole
Bible in 1876. It immediately proved immensely popular, and new editions had
to be printed forthwith. In St. Petersburg a Society for the Dissemination of the
Holy Scriptures sold or distributed nearly 1.25 million copies between 1861 and
1865.
“Ironically, the final appearance of the Bible in Russian took place just after
the publication of Marx’s Das Kapital in the same language. One might regard
the succeeding century as a competition between the two doctrines for the
allegiance of Russian working people…”546
544
Florovsky, “Philaret, mitropolit Moskovskij”, pp. 273-275. And yet his main enemies, sadly,
were the zealots of Church piety. Thus Fr. Photius, on reading Philaret’s letter to Seraphim,
wrote: “From the letters of Philaret it is not evident that he valued the faith, the Church and
Orthodoxy, but only his own personality and honour” (in A.I. Yakovlev, “Sviatitel’ Filaret
(Drozdov) in gosudarstvennaia zhizn’ Rossii v 1821-1831 godakh” (The Hierarch Philaret
(Drozdov) and State life in Russia from 1821 to 1831), in Vladimir Tsurikov (ed.), Philaret,
Metropolitan of Moscow 1782-1867, Jordanville: Variable Press, 2003, p. 138.
545
Metropolitan Seraphim of St. Petersburg had threatened to retire if Philaret insisted on
continuing his translation. (Snychev, op. cit., p. 181)
546
321
37. THE GREEK REVOLUTION
Greek nationalism under the Turkish yoke was nourished and sustained
from two quite different sources. One was the Orthodox faith. Greek language
and culture was encouraged by the Orthodox because the Gospel and most of
the patristic writings were written in Greek, and a good knowledge of
Orthodoxy required a good knowledge of Greek and Byzantine history. But
Orthodox Hellenism, or Romanity (Ρωμειοσυνη), excluded the pagan Hellenism
that glorified pagan Greek culture, placing it on a par with the Holy Fathers.
This kind of Orthodox Greek nationalism, which wanted to liberate Greece for
the sake of the faith, was to be found especially among the monks of Mount
Athos. Throughout the period of the Ottoman yoke it gave birth to saints and
martyrs. The names of 162 martyrs for the faith at the hands of the Turks
between 1453 and 1838 are known.547
Another, less pure source of Greek nationalism was the western teaching on
freedom promulgated by the French revolution, and brought back to Greece by
the sons of the wealthy Phanariot families of Constantinople. As Mark Mazower
writes, “it was the French Revolution which first suggested that emancipation
might come through the action of the masses themselves [as opposed to a
foreign king]. The toppling of the French monarchy, the rise of Bonaparte and
above all, his invasion of Ottoman Egypt in 1798, radicalized the political
thought of Balkan Christian intellectuals.”548
“According to my judgement,” wrote the Greek freedom fighter Theodore

Kolokotronis in his memoirs, “the French Revolution and the doings of
Napoleon opened the eyes of the world. The nations knew nothing before, and
the people thought that kings were gods upon the earth and that they were
bound to say that whatever they did was well done. Through this present
change it is more difficult to rule the people.”549
By the end of the eighteenth century most educated Greeks were deeply
tainted by westernism. And there were other, political and economic factors
exciting the dreams of the Phanariots: the conquest of the Ionian islands by
Napoleon and then by the British; the rebellion of the Mohammedan warlord Ali
Pasha against the Sultan in 1820; the inexorable gradual southward expansion of
the Russian Empire, which drew Greek minds to the prophecies about the
liberation of Constantinople by “the yellow-haired race”, the Russians; and the
restrictions on the accumulation of capital in the Ottoman empire, which
contrasted unfavourably with the more business-friendly regimes they had
encountered in the West. However, the most important influences were
undoubtedly ideological – the influence of western ideas made available by the
explosion in the provision of educational opportunities for young Greeks that
the Phanariots created in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first
quarter of the nineteenth.
547
Norman Russell, “Neomartyrs of the Greek Calendar”, Sobornost’, vol. 5, no. 1, p. 39.
548
Mazower, The Balkans, London: Phoenix, 2000, p. 81.
549
Kolokotronis, in Mazower, op. cit., p. 87.
322
Such an emphasis on education had been made by New Hieromartyr Cosmas
of Aitolia (+1779), who built over two hundred schools. But he emphasized, not
education in western culture, but the opposite: education in Orthodoxy in order
to escape the snares of western culture.550 The merchants, however, sent young
Greeks to the heterodox universities of Western Europe, especially Germany.
“Here,” writes Richard Clogg, “they came into contact not only with the heady
ideas of the Enlightenment, of the French Revolution and of romantic
nationalism but they were made aware of the extraordinary hold which the
language and civilization of ancient Greece had over the minds of their educated
European contemporaries.551
“During the centuries of the Tourkokratia knowledge of the ancient Greek

world had all but died out, but, under the stimulus of western classical
scholarship, the budding intelligentsia developed an awareness that they were
the heirs to an heritage that was universally revered throughout the civilized
world. By the eve of the war in independence this progonoplexia (ancestor
obsession) and arkhaiolatreia (worship of antiquity), to use the expressive Greek
terms, had reached almost obsessive proportions. It was precisely during the
first decade of the nineteenth century that nationalists, much to the
consternation of the Church authorities, began to baptize their children with the
names of (and to call their ships after) the worthies of ancient Greece rather than
the Christian saints….”552
Such veneration of Greek antiquity could, unfortunately, be combined with

contempt for the real strength and glory of Greece – the Orthodox Church. A
case in point was Adamantios Korais. Sir Steven Runciman writes: “He was born
at Smyrna in 1748 and went as a young man to Paris, which he made his
headquarters for the rest of his life. There he made contact with the French
550
“It is better,” he said, “my brother, for you to have a Greek school in your village rather than
fountains and rivers, for when your child becomes educated, then he becomes a human being.
The school opens churches; the school opens monasteries.” And to the people of Parga he said:
“Take care to establish without fail a Greek school in which your children will learn all that you
are ignorant of [because] our faith wasn’t established by ignorant saints, but by wise and
educated saints who interpreted the Holy Scriptures accurately and who enlightened us
sufficiently by inspired teachings” (Nomikos Michael Vaporis, Witnesses for Christ: Orthodox
Christian Neomartyrs of the Ottoman Period 1437-1860, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 2000, p. 202).
551
The Europeans were originally interested in the ancient monuments. Hence the removal of the
Elgin marbles and the Venus of Milo to London and Paris respectively. However, attitudes were
changed, as Zamoyski points out, “by Lord Byron’s visit to Greece in 1809, whose fruits were the
second canto of Childe Harold, published in 1809, The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos (1813), and
The Siege of Corinth (1816). More interested in people than in stones, Byron concentrated on
depicting the craggy nobility of the natives. He was also much affected by the notion of a once
great people under alien oppression. The negative picture of the Turks and their culture – rococo
Ottomania had given way to priggish neoclassical contempt – made the oppression all the
crueller to the European imagination, in which the Turk combined lustfulness with barbarity.
The educated European of 1800 was as disgusted by the idea of the ‘terrible’ Turk defiling Greece
as his twelfth-century forebear had been at the idea of Saracens profaning the Holy Land. And
just as the Holy Land called out to Christendom for vengeance and crusade, so the oppressed
Greek land called out for liberation” (Holy Madness, p. 233).
552
Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 27-28.
323
Encyclopédistes and their successors. From them he learnt a dislike for clericalism
and for tradition. From reading Gibbon he came to believe that Christianity had
ushered in a dark age for European civilization. His friend Karl Schlegel taught
him to identify nationality with language. ‘Language is the nation.’ He wrote;
‘for where one says la langue de France one means the French nation.’ The Greeks
of his time were therefore of the same race as the ancient Greeks. But to make the
identification closer he sought to reform the language so that it would be nearer
to the Classical form... For the Byzantine past of Greece and for the Orthodox
Church he had no use at all. His writings were eagerly read by the young
intellectuals at the Phanar and by men of education all over Greece.”553
And so, mixed with the righteous Greek nationalism “for faith and
fatherland”, was an unrighteous, fallen nationalism influenced by the ideas of
the French revolution and ready at times to put the narrow interests of the Greek
nation – or rather, of the nation’s Phanariot elite - above those of the other
oppressed Orthodox under the Turkish yoke.
Such was the nationalist bombast of, for example, Benjamin of Lesbos, who
wrote: “Nature has set limits to the aspirations of other men, but not to those of
the Greeks. The Greeks were not in the past and are not now subject to the laws
of nature.”554 This mixed character of the Greek revolution, symbolized by the
use of three different flags555, determined its mixed outcome, and the fact that, in
the course of the nineteenth century, Orthodox Eastern Europe was liberated,
not through a single, united Orthodox movement of liberation, but by separate
nationalist movements – Greek, Bulgarian, Serb, Romanian – which ended up, in
1912-1913, fighting each other rather than the common enemy…
“One of the first to develop plans for a coordinated revolt,” writes Clogg,
“was Rigas Velestinlis, a Hellenized Vlach from Thessaly. After acquiring his
early political experience in the service of the Phanariot hospodars of the
Danubian principalities, he had been powerfully influenced by the French
Revolution during a sojourn in Vienna in the 1790s. The political tracts, and in
particular his Declaration of the Rights of Man, which he had printed in Vienna
and with which he aspired to revolutionize the Balkans, are redolent of the
French example. Potentially the most significant was the New Political
Constitution of the Inhabitants of Rumeli, Asia Minor, the Islands of the Aegean and the
Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. This envisaged the establishment of a
revived Byzantine Empire but with the substitution of republican institutions on
the French model for the autocracy of Byzantium. Although it was intended to
553
Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity, Cambridge University Press, 1968, pp. 392-393.
554
Benjamin, Stoikheia tis Metaphysikis (The Elements of Metaphysics), 1820 (in Greek); quoted in
Clogg, op. cit., p. 33.
555
Alexander Pushkin, who was in nearby Kishinev at the time, wrote that the Greeks “published
proclamations which quickly spread everywhere – in them it is said that the Phoenix of Greece
will arise from its own ashes, that the hour of Turkey’s downfall has come, and that a great
power [Russia?] approves of the great-souled feat! The Greeks have begun to throng together in
crowds under three banners; of these one is tricoloured [the revolutionary flag], on another
streams a cross wreathed with laurels, with the text ‘By this sign conquer’ [the religious flag,
derived from God’s promise to St. Constantine], on a third is depicted the Phoenix arising from
its ashes [the patriotic flag]” (in Mazower, op. cit., p. 91).
324
embrace all the inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire, Greeks, whether by birth or
by culture, were to predominate. Rigas’ carefully articulated schemes were
without result for he was betrayed (by a fellow Greek) in Trieste as he was about
to leave the Hapsburg territory to preach the gospel of revolution in the Balkans.
With a handful of fellow conspirators he was put to death by the Ottomans in
Belgrade in May 1798.”556
The spiritual leader of the Greek people, and the ethnarch of all the Orthodox
under Turkish rule, was the Ecumenical Patriarch. He had good cause to resent
the Sultan’s dominion. “The rights of the patriarch,” writes Fr. Alexander
Schmemann, “were gradually reduced to nothing; all that was left to him was
the ‘right’ of being responsible for the Christians. In the course of seventy-three
years in the eighteenth century, the patriarch was replaced forty-eight times!
Some were deposed and reinstalled as many as five times; many were put to
torture. The rebellions of the Janissaries were accompanied by terrible
bloodshed. Churches were defiled, relics cut to pieces, and the Holy Gifts
profaned. Christian pogroms became more and more frequent. In the nineteenth
century Turkey was simply rotting away, but the ‘sick man of Europe’ was
supported at all points by other nations in opposition to Russia.”557
However, the Patriarch was bound by his oath of allegiance to the Sultan not
to encourage protest against the Turks, a contract that went back to the original
agreement between Mehmet II and Patriarch Gennadius Scholarius. 558 He was
therefore unable to bless or help any potential revolution, which inevitably led
to misunderstandings and disillusionment. For, as Runciman writes, “the Greek
in the provinces could not understand the subtle politics of the Patriarchate. He
could not appreciate the delicacy that the Patriarch and his advisers had to show
in their dealings with the Sublime Porte. He looked to his village priest or to the
local abbot or the bishop to protect him against the Turkish governmental
authorities, and he gave his support to anyone who would champion him
against the government. In the great days of the Ottoman Empire, when the
administration had been efficient and on the whole just, Greek nationalism could
be kept underground. But by the eighteenth century the administrative
machinery was beginning to run down. Provincial Turkish governors began to
revolt against the Sultan and could usually count on the support of the local
Greeks. A growing number of outlaws took to the mountains. In Slav districts
they were known by the Turkish name of haidouks; in Greece they were called
the Klephts. They lived by banditry, directed mainly against the Turkish
landowners; but they were quite ready to rob Christian merchants or travellers
of any nationality. They could count on the support of the local Christian
villagers, to whom they were latter-day Robin Hoods; they could almost always
find refuge from the Turkish police in some local monastery…” 559
556
Clogg, op. cit., pp. 29, 31.
557
Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 1977, p. 274.
558
New Martyr Demetrios of Samarina (+1808) also urged the Greeks to obey the Ottoman laws.
559
Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity, Cambridge University Press, 1968, p. 391.
325
However, neither the klephts nor the villagers who supported them nor the
the Phanariots who nursed ideas of revolution could count on support from the
Patriarchate. Runciman writes: “A test came early in the nineteenth century
when Sultan Selim made a serious effort to suppress brigandage. The Klephts in
Greece, thanks to the spirit of revolt and to the hymns of Rhigas, had become
popular heroes. It was a patriotic duty for a Greek to give them shelter against
the police; and the village priest and the monks of the country monasteries were
eager to help them. But they were a menace to orderly rule; and when the Sultan
demanded of the Patriarch that he should issue a stern decree threatening with
excommunication any priest or monk who would not aid the authorities in their
suppression, the Patriarch could not well refuse. The decree was published in
the Peloponnese; and though most of the higher clergy sullenly obeyed it, the
villages and the poorer monasteries were outraged; and even at the Phanar there
was open disapproval. It became clear that when the moment for revolt arrived
the Patriarch would not be at its head.
“In spite of the Patriarch the plots continued. At the end of the eighteenth
century there were even several secret societies in existence, with names such as
the Athena, which hoped to liberate Greece with French help and which counted
Korais among its members, or the Phoenix, which pinned its hopes on Russia. In
1814 three Greek merchants at Odessa in Russia, Nicholas Skouphas, Emmanuel
Xanthos and Athanasius Tsakalof, the first a member of the Phoenix and the
latter two freemasons, founded a society which they called the Hetaireia ton
Philikon, the Society of Friends. Thanks chiefly to the energy of Skouphas, who
unfortunately died in 1817, it soon superseded all the previous societies and
became the rallying point of the rebellion. Skouphas was determined to include
in the society patriots of every description; and soon it had amongst its members
Phanariots such as Prince Constantine Ypsilanti and his hot-headed sons,
Alexander and Nicholas, all now living in exile in Russia, and members of the
Mavrocordato and Caradja families, or high ecclesiastics such as Ignatius,
Metropolitan of Arta and later of Wallachia, and Germanus, Metropolitan of
Patras560, intellectuals such as Anthimus Ghazis, and brigand leaders such as the
armatolos George Olympios and Kolokotronis. 561 It was organized partly on
Masonic lines and partly on what the founders believed to have been the early
Christian organization. It had four grades. 562 The lowest was that of Blood-
brothers, which was confined to illiterates. Next were the Recommended, who
swore an oath to obey their superiors but were not permitted to know more than
560
He came from the same village of Dhimitsana in the Peloponnese as Patriarch Gregory V. The
attitudes of these two hierarchs came to symbolise a fundamental division in Greek society that
was to continue for decades… (V.M.)
561
Adam Zamoyski writes that the Hetaira’s “ultimate aim was the liberation of Greece and the
restoration of a Greek Empire. More immediately it was concerned with the ‘purification’ of the
Greek nation…. By 1821 the Hetairia had a total of 911 members.” (Holy Madness, p. 234) (V.M.)
562
Although the Philiki Hetairia recalled Masonry in its four grades, in its oaths of secrecy and
obedience to unknown leaders, and in the fact that two of its three founders were in fact
Freemasons, it was nevertheless Orthodox in its ideology, according to Archimandrite Ambrose,
(Tektonismos kai Philiki Hetairia (Masonry and the Society of Friends), Athens, 1972 (in Greek)).
But if two of the three founders of the Hetairia were Masons, then Masonic influence cannot be
ruled out. (V.M.)
326
the general patriotic aims of the society and were kept in ignorance of the names
of their superiors and were supposed not even to know of the existence of the
Blood-brothers. Above them were the Priests, who could initiate Blood-brothers
and Recommended and who, after solemn oaths, were allowed to know the
detailed aims of the society. Above them again were the Pastors, who supervised
the Pastors, who supervised the Priests and saw that they only initiated suitable
candidates; a suitable Recommended could become a Pastor without passing
through the grade of Priest. From the Pastors were chosen the supreme
authorities of the society, the Arche. The names of the Arche were unknown
except to each other, and their meetings were held in absolute secrecy. This was
thought necessary not only security against external powers but also for the
prestige of the society. Had the names of its directors been known, there might
have been opposition to several of them, particularly among such a faction-
loving people as the Greeks; whereas the mystery surrounding the Arche enabled
hints to be dropped that it included such weighty figures as the Tsar himself. All
grades had to swear unconditional obedience to the Arche, which itself operated
through twelve Apostles, whose business it was to win recruits and to organize
branches in different provinces and countries. They were appointed just before
the death of Skouphas; and their names are known. It was first decided to fix the
headquarters of the society on Mount Pelion, but later, after the initiation of the
Maniot chieftain, Peter Mavromichalis, it was moved to the Mani, in the south-
east of the Peloponnese, a district into which the Turks had never ventured to
penetrate.
“There were however two distinguished Greeks who refused to join the
Society. One was the ex-Patriarch Gregory V. He had been deposed for the
second time in 1808, and was living on Mount Athos, where the Apostle John
Pharmakis visited him. Gregory pointed out that it was impossible for him to
swear an oath of unconditional obedience to the unknown leaders of a secret
society563 and that anyhow he was bound by oath to respect the authority of the
Sultan. The reigning Patriarch, Cyril VI, was not approached.
Still more disappointing for the revolutionaries was the refusal of the Tsar’s
foreign minister, John Capodistrias, to countenance the Hetairia.564 “John Antony,
Count Capodistrias, had been born in Corfu in 1770, and as a young man had
worked for the Ionian government there, before going to Russia at the time of
the second French occupation of the Ionian islands in 1807. He was given a post
in the Russian diplomatic service and was attached to the Russian Embassy at
563
Gregory Frazee, The Orthodox Church and Independent Greece 1821-1852, Cambridge University
Press, 1969, p. 24. Moreover, these “highest authorities” (anotati arkhi) were called “Great Priests
of the Eleusinian Mysteries” (Clogg, op. cit., p. 35). It is understandable that the first priest in
Orthodoxy could not be involved in such things! (V.M.)
564
The Hetairia sent an envoy to Capodistrias in St. Petersburg. He was appalled, and advised
them that if the conspirators “do not want to perish themselves and destroy together with
themselves their innocent and unfortunate Race, they should abandon their revolutionary plots
and live as before under the Governments they find themselves, until Providence decides
otherwise.” Again, when the revolution broke out, he said: “So, a premature revolution for
Greece that is going to destroy all my efforts for a happy future” (Frazee, op. cit., p. 17).
However, he did not betray the plan of the plotters, and when the revolution began he resigned
his post as minister and went to Geneva, where he worked quietly to help the insurgents. (V.M.)
327
Vienna in 1811, and next year was one of the Russian delegates at the treaty
negotiations at Bucharest. His remarkable abilities impressed Tsar Alexander,
who in 1815 nominated him Secretary of State and Assistant Foreign Minister. In
his youth Capodistrias had made contacts with many of the Greek revolutionary
thinkers, and he was well known to be a Greek patriot. In the past many Greeks
had looked to France to deliver them from the Turks; but after Napoleon’s
collapse the whole Greek world turned to Russia, and Capodistrias’s accession
to power gave them confidence. The Russian sovereign was the great patron of
Orthodoxy. The Greeks forgot how little they had gained from Catherine the
Great, the imperialistic German free-thinker, who had incited them to revolt in
1770 and then had abandoned them. 565 But at the Treaty of Kucuk Kainarci in
1774 Russia had acquired the right to intervene in Turkish internal affairs in the
interests of the Orthodox. Catherine’s son, … Paul, was clearly unwilling to help
the Greek cause; but when Alexander I succeeded his murdered father in 1801
hopes rose. Alexander was known to have liberal views and mystical Orthodox
sympathies. Belief in his aid had encouraged the Princes of Moldavia and
Wallachia to plot against the Sultan in 1806; and, when they were deposed by
the Sultan, the Tsar cited his rights under the Treaty of Kucuk Kainarci and
declared war on Turkey. The only outcome of the war had been the annexation
by Russia of the Moldavian province of Bessarabia. But the Greeks were not
discouraged. Now, with a Greek as the Tsar’s Secretary of State, the time had
surely come for the War of Liberation. The plotters refused to realize that
Capodistrias was the Tsar’s servant and a practical man of the world; and they
did not know that the Tsar himself was becoming more reactionary and less
willing to countenance rebellion against established authority.
“The planners of Greek independence could not count on the open support of
the Patriarchate. They should have realized that they also could not count on the
support of Russia. And the nationalist ecclesiastical policy of the Church during
the last century deprived them of the friendship of the other peoples of the
Balkans. The leaders of the Hetairia were aware of this. They made earnest
attempts to enrol Serbian, Bulgarian and Roumanian members. When
Karageorge revolted against the Turks in Serbia Greek armatoles and klephts
came to join him. Even the Phanariot princes had offered support; but they were
rebuffed. ‘The Greek Princes of the Phanar,’ Karageorge wrote, ‘can never make
common cause with people who do not wish to be treated like animals.’
Karageorge’s revolt was put down by the Turks in 1813. Two years later the
Serbs revolted again, under Miloš Obrenovic, a far subtler diplomat, who
secured Austrian support and eventually induced the Sultan to accept him as a
reliable vassal-prince. Miloš had no contact with the Greeks. The Hetairia
therefore pinned its faith on Karageorge, who was persuaded to become a
member in 1817. As Karageorge was greatly admired by the Bulgarians it was
hoped that numbers of them would now join the movement. Karageorge was
then sent back to Serbia. But the Serbs, who were satisfied with Miloš’s
565
“The ill-fated Orlov expedition to the Peloponessos, launched by Catherine the Great, and the
combined Russian-Greek attempt to free the Peloponnesos from the tyranny of the Ottoman
Mohammedans, ended in disaster. In addition to destroying the Greek military forces and many
of the Russians, the Albanian Mohammedan mercenaries, who were called in by the Ottoman
Mohammedans, wreaked havoc on the local population…” (Vaporis, op. cit., p. 337) (V.M.)
328
achievements, offered him no support; and Miloš regarded him as a rival to be
eliminated. He was assassinated in June 1817. With his death any hope of
interesting the Serbs in the coming Greek rebellion faded out; and there was no
one capable of rallying the Bulgars to the cause. Karageorge alone could have
given the Hetairia the air of not being exclusively Greek.
“The Hetairia had higher hopes of the Roumanians. There a peasant leader,
Tudor Vladimirescu, who had led a band to help the Serbs, was defying the
Turkish police in the Carpathian mountains and had gathered together a
considerable company. He was in close touch with two leading hetaerists,
George Olympius and Phokianos Savvas, and he himself joined the society,
promising to co-ordinate his movements with the Greeks’. But he was an
unreliable ally; for he was bitterly opposed to the Phanariot princes, who, he
considered, had brought ruin to his country…”566
“By the end of 1820,” continues Runciman, “everything seemed to be ready.

Ali Pasha of Janina was in open revolt against the Sultan; and had promised help
to the Greeks; and though Osman Pasvanoglu was dead, his pashalik of Vidin
was in disorder, tying up Turkish troops south of the Danube. The Arche of the
Hetairia had a few months previously elected a Captain-General, choosing a
young Phanariot Alexander Ypsilanti, son of the ex-Prince Constantine of
Moldavia. It is interesting to note that the plotters considered that only a
Phanariot had sufficient experience and prestige for the post. Alexander
Ypsilanti was born in 1792 and spent his youth in Russia. He had won a
reputation for gallantry and military skill when serving in the Russian army and
had lost an arm at the battle of Kulm, fighting against the French. He was known
to be an intimate friend of the Tsar and the Tsaritsa and of Capodistrias. He
made it his first task to improve the efficiency of the Society and summoned the
one and only plenary meeting of the Arche, which was held at Ismail in southern
Russia in October 1820. The original plan had been to start the revolt in the
Peloponnese, where there would be a secure base in the Mani and where the
sympathy of the inhabitants was assured. Alexander now changed his mind. It
would be better to start the main campaign in Moldavia. By the Treaty of
Bucharest the Turks had undertaken not to send troops into the Principalities
without Russian consent. Vladimirescu would distract what Turkish militia was
there already; and a successful army sweeping through Wallachia and across the
Danube was the only thing that might induce the Bulgarians and the Serbians to
join in. Meanwhile a subsidiary rising in the Peloponnese, which Alexander’s
brother Demetrius was sent to organize, would further embarrass the Turks.
566
Runciman, op. cit., pp. 398-402. That the Romanians should have placed their hopes of
freedom from the Turks on the tsar rather than on a phanariot was hardly surprising. Moldavia
had been closely linked to Russia for many centuries, and in November, 1806, when the Russo-
Turkish war began, Metropolitan Benjamin (Kostake) in his pastoral epistle wrote: “The true
happiness of these lands lies in their union with Russia”. And when Bessarabia, that is, the part
of Moldavia east of the Prut, was united to Russia in 1812 (an annexation recognized by the
Congress of Vienna in 1815), there was great rejoicing among the people, and in five years the
population of Bessarabia almost doubled through an influx from the lands west of the Prut.
(Vladimir Bukarsky, “Moskovskij Patriarkhat pod udarom: na ocheredi – Moldavia”,
Pravoslavnaia Rus’, N 23 (1836), December 1/14, 2007, p. 4).
329
“The invasion of Moldavia was timed to begin on 24 November (O.S.) 1820.
Alexander had already gathered together a small army of Greeks and Christian
Albanians on the Russian side of the frontier. Almost at the last moment
Capodistrias counselled delay. The Austrian secret police had discovered the
plans and had sent to warn the Sultan; and the Tsar was nervous of international
reactions. But, in January 1821, Vladimirescu, encouraged by George Olympus,
against the advice of Phokianos Savvas, began to attack Turkish police posts and
was scornful of Ypsilanti’s hesitation. About the same time the Prince of
Wallachia, Alexander Soutzo, died, poisoned it was rumoured by the Hetairia, of
which he was known to disapprove. Demetrius Ypsilanti reported from the
Peloponnese that everyone there was impatient of further delays. Alexander
Ypsilanti decided that the time had come to act. He sought an audience of the
Tsar before leaving St. Petersburg, but it was refused. 567 The Tsaritsa, however,
sent him her blessing; and he was assured that the Tsar would personally protect
his wife. On 22 February (O.S.) Alexander and his little band crossed over the
Pruth into Moldavia.
“In his desire to prevent a leakage of news Alexander had not warned his
fellow-plotters. When news of his advance reached the Peloponnese, his brother
Demetrius hesitated, fearing that it might be a false rumour. But the people
would not wait. They found a leader in Germanus, Metropolitan of Patras, who,
in defiance of the Patriarchate and of Orthodox tradition, raised the standard of
revolt at the monastery of Agia Lavra, near Kalavryta, on 25 March. 568 The Mani
had already risen. The islands of Spetsai and Psara and a little later Hydra rose
in early April. By the end of April all central and southern Greece was up in
arms.
“But it was now too late for Alexander Ypsilanti. He had marched unopposed
on Bucharest. But there was no news of any rising among the Bulgarians or the
Serbs; and when he reached Bucharest he found that Tudor Vladimirescu and
his troops were there before him; and they refused to let him into the city. ‘I am
567
Michael Binyon writes that a letter from Alexander I, signed by Capodistrias, “denounced
Yspilanti’s actions as ‘shameful and criminal’, upbraided him for misusing the tsar’s name,
struck him from the Russian army list, and called him to lay down his arms immediately”
(Pushkin, London: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 133). Ironically, the officer sent by the Russian
government to report on the insurrection was Pestel, the future leader of the Decembrist
rebellion (op. cit., p. 134). (V.M.)
Troubetskoy writes: “Under normal circumstances there would have been no doubt about the
tsar’s reaction: as champion of the Orthodox world, he could hardly have rejected such a plea.
The circumstances at the time, however, were anything but normal. Central Europe was captive
to the views of Austrian chancellor Metternich, to whom any hint of insidious liberalism –
revolutionary movements in particular – was anathema. The Holy Alliance, of which Russia was
an enthusiastic signatory and driving force, was to assure this. Despite his personal sympathy for
the Greeks and antipathy to the Turks, there was no way the tsar could let down the established
new order. It was a conundrum that he painfully resolved by disavowing and censuring
Ypsilantis.” (Imperial Legend, Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2003, pp. 112-113) (V.M.)
568
Germanus wrote to the ambassadors of the foreign powers: “We, the Greek race of Christians,
seeing that the Ottoman people despises us and is intending destruction against us, sometimes in
one way and at other times in another, have decided firmly: either we shall all die or we shall be
liberated.” (Boanerges, 24, March-April, 2006, p. 32 (in Greek)). Germanus was supported by eight
other bishops, five of whom died in prison. (V.M.)
330
not prepared to shed Roumanian blood for Greeks,’ said Vladimirescu. 569 There
were skirmishes between the two forces. Then came news that the Tsar had
repudiated the whole rebellion at the Congress of Laibach, and with his
permission a huge Turkish army was approaching the Danube, ready to invade
the Principalities. Ypsilanti retired north-east, towards the Russian frontier.
Vladimirescu, after lingering for a few days in Bucharest trying to make terms
with the Turkish commander, moved back on 15 May into the Carpathians. But
he had lost control over his own followers. They allowed George Olympus to
take him prisoner and to put him to death, on the evening of 26 May, for his
treason to the cause. Phokianos Savvas and a garrison of Albanians held
Bucharest for a week, then also retired into the mountains. The Turks entered
Bucharest before the end of May, then moved in pursuit of Ypsilanti. On 7 June
(O.S.) they routed his army at a battle at Dragasani. His best troops perished. He
himself fled over the Austrian border into Bukovina, where by Metternich’s
orders he was arrested. He spent the remainder of his life in an Austrian prison.
The remnant of his army was rallied by George Cantacuzenus, who led them
back towards the Russian frontier. But the frontier was closed to them. The
Turks caught up with them at Sculeni on the Pruth and massacred them there,
on 17 June, in sight of Russian territory. Savvas surrendered to the Turks in
August and was put to death by them. George Olympus held out till September
in the monastery of Secu. When all hope was lost he fired his powder stores and
blew up the monastery with himself and all his garrison within it.”570
However, while the Phanariot rebellion in the north failed, the rebellion of the
bishops and the people in the south, in the Peloponnese, succeeded. But the cost
was high. A characteristic of the war was the extreme cruelty on both sides. It
began with the Greeks. By April, 1821, 15,000 out of the 40,000 Turkish
inhabitants of the Peloponnese had been killed. Within a few months, shouting
“Kill all the Turks in the Morea”, the Greeks had killed 20,000 men, women and
children. At Tripolitsa, the Scottish Philhellene Thomas Gordon watched as the
Greeks, “mad with vindictive rage, spared neither age nor sex – the streets and
houses were inundated with blood, and obstructed with heaps of dead bodies.
Some Mohammedans fought bravely and sold their lives dearly, but the majority
were slaughtered without resistance…” The British observer George Finlay
wrote: “Women and children were frequently tortured before they were
murdered. After the Greeks had been in possession of the city for forty-eight
hours, they deliberately collected together about two thousand persons of every
age and sex, but principally women and children, and led them to a ravine in the
nearest mountain [Mount Maenalion] where they murdered every soul.”
“On 27 January 1822,” writes Sir Richard Evans, “meeting at Epidauros in the
Peloponnese, a self-styled Greek National Assembly issued a ringing declaration
of independence from ‘the cruel yoke of Ottoman power’. The Greeks, it
proclaimed, were fighting ‘a holy war, a war the object of which is to reconquer
the rights of individual liberty, of property and honour – rights which the
civilized peoples of Europe, our neighbours, enjoy today.’ Yet despite the
569
Here we see the bitter fruits reaped by the Greek Phanariots’ rule in Romania. (V.M.)
570
Runciman, op. cit., pp. 403-405.
331
ideological proclamations of the Assembly, which provided the formal
leadership of the rebel movement, the uprising remained uncoordinated,
internally divided and chaotic, a huge gulf separating the educated professional
elements from the rough-and-ready and often barely politically aware fighters
on the ground…”571
The Turks responded in kind. Massacres began in Constantinople, where

Patriarch Gregory V was in an impossible position. The Sultan was convinced
that he supported the insurrection. So Gregory, writes Frazee, “called a meeting
of the Greek leaders and people to discuss their common peril that same day
after he had met with the sultan. Mahmud had demanded that the patriarch and
Synod excommunicate those responsible for the uprising and those who had
killed innocent Turks. At the patriarchate, therefore, the patriarch of Jerusalem,
Polykarpos, four synodal archbishops, Karolos Kallimachi, Hospodar of
Wallachia, the Dragoman of the Porte, Konstantinos Mourousi, and the Grand
Logothete, Stephanos Mavroyeni, gathered to decided on their next step. A
number of other Greeks were also in attendance ‘of every class and condition’.
Gregorios and Mourousi presided. The assembled Greeks were all exhorted ‘to
carefully guard against any move or action contrary to their allegiance and
fidelity to their Sovereign’. A letter was drafted which incorporated the sultan’s
suggestion and was sent off to be printed at the patriarchal press. The patriarch
then urged that the Greeks prepare to leave the city quickly, promising that he
would stay: ‘As for me, I believe that my end is approaching, but I must stay at
my post to die, and if I remain, then the Turks will not be given a plausible
pretext to massacre the Christians of the capital.’
“The letter of excommunication against the revolutionaries appeared on Palm

Sunday, 4 April, in all the Greek churches of the capital signed by the patriarch,
Polykarpos of Jerusalem, and twenty-one other prelates. In part, the document
stated: ‘Gratitude to our benefactors is the first of virtues and ingratitude is
severely condemned by the Holy Scriptures and declared unpardonable by Jesus
Christ; Judas the ungrateful traitor offers a terrible example of it; but it is most
strongly evidenced by those who rise against their common protector and lawful
sovereign, and against Christ, who has said that there is no rule or power but
comes from God. It was against this principle that Michael Soutzos and
Alexandros Ypsilantis, son of a fugitive, sinned with an audacity beyond
example, and have sent emissaries to seduce others, and to conduct them to the
abyss of perdition; many have been so tempted to join an unlawful hetairia and
thought themselves bound by their oath to continue [as] members, but an oath to
commit a sin was itself a sin, and not binding – like that of Herod, who, that he
might not break a wicked obligation committed a great wickedness by the death
of John the Baptist.’ The text ended by solemnly condemning and
excommunicating Soutzos and Ypsilantis, having been signed on the altar itself.
The patriarchal letter was the final blow to strike Ypsilantis’ fading expedition in
the Principalities.”572
571
572
Frazee, op. cit., pp. 28-29.
332
Some have argued that the patriarch secretly repudiated this anathema;
which is why the Turks, suspecting him of treachery, hanged him at Pascha.
Gregory’s biographer, Kandiloros writes: “As the representative of Christ it
cannot be believed that the patriarch signed such a letter. But as the head of a
threatened people, he had to take measures, as well as he could, to save his
powerless and hard-pressed population from being massacred.” 573 “In any case,”
writes Fr. Anthony Gavalas, “the anathema was ignored, as were all the other
letters unfavourable to the plans of the revolutionaries, as having been issued
under duress. There is an opinion that the patriarch knew that the anathema
would be so considered and issued it, hoping to placate the Turks on the one
hand, and on the other, to gain time for the revolution to gain strength.” 574
In the opinion of the present writer, while the patriarch was undoubtedly a
patriot who longed for the freedom of his country, his righteousness of character
precludes the possibility that he could have been plotting against a government
to which he had sworn allegiance and for which he prayed in the Divine Liturgy,
or that he could have been hypocritical in such an important church act. After
all, as we have seen, he had always refused to join the Philiki Hetairia. In this
connection it is significant that the patriarch’s body was picked up by a Russian
ship and taken to Odessa, mutely pointing to the place where the organization
that had indirectly caused his death had been founded.
The patriarch was not the only one to die. “Two metropolitans and twelve
bishops followed him to the gallows. Then it was the turn of the laymen. First
the Grand Dragoman, Mouroussi, and his brother, then all the leading
Phanariots. By the summer of 1821 the great houses in the Phanar were empty. A
new Patriarch had been appointed… There was a new Dragoman, unrelated to
any of the Phanariot clans; and he was executed on the merest suspicion of
treason a few months later; and the post was abolished. The powers of the
Patriarchate were severely curtailed. The contract between the Conquering
Sultan and Gennadius had been broken by the Patriarchate. The Turks were no
longer prepared to trust the Orthodox…”575
The Tsar, writes John Julius Norwich, “did not mince his words” when
condemning the Turks. “In an ultimatum drafted by Capodistrias, he declared
that: ‘the Ottoman government has placed itself in a state of open hostility
against the Christian world. It has legitimised the defence of the Greeks, who
will henceforth be fighting solely to save themselves from inevitable destruction.
In view of the nature of that struggle, Russia will find herself strictly obliged to
offer them help, because they are persecuted; protection, because they need it;
and assistance, jointly with the whole of Christendom, because she cannot
surrender her brothers in religion to the mercy of blind fanaticism.’ This was
presented to the Turkish government on 18 July. On the 25th, having received no
573
Kandiloros, in Frazee, op. cit. p. 29.
574
Gavalas, “St. Gregory V, Patriarch of Constantinople”, Orthodox Life, vol. 28, N 2, March-April,
1978, p. 22.
575
Runciman, op. cit., p. 406.
333
reply, the Russian ambassador, Count Stroganoff, broke off diplomatic relations
with the Porte and closed the embassy…”576
Nevertheless, there was to be no military help from Tsar Alexander, who

disapproved of revolution on principle. Thus Capodistrias wrote: “The emperor
has highly disapproved of these [means] which Prince Ipsilanti appears to wish
to employ to deliver Greece. At a time when Europe is menaced everywhere by
revolutionary explosions, how can one not recognize in that which has broken
out in the two principalities [Wallachia and Moldavia] the identical effect of the
same subversive principles, the same intrigues which attract the calamities of
war… the most dreadful plague of demagogic despotism.”577
576
Norwich, The Middle Sea, London: Vintage, 2007, p. 469.
577
Capodistrias, in Mazower, op. cit., pp. 91-92.
334
38. THE FREE STATE OF GREECE
The main leader of the Greeks now was General Theodore Kolokotronis,
whose greatest success was the defeat of the Ottoman army under Mahmud
Dramali Pasha at the Battle of Dervenakia in 1822. In 1825, he was appointed
commander-in-chief of the Greek forces in Peloponnese. However, Runciman
has reason in calling him a “brigand”; for he was cruel not only to the Turks, but
also to those Greeks that did not obey him. Thus in his Memoirs he wrote: “’The
people of Karytaina's plains have not taken arms.’ Such was the writing which I
received. I lost no time, but straightway issued the following proclamation: ‘Fire
and sword to every place that does not listen to the voice of the nation.’" 578
The Greeks after the revolution were desperately poor and even more
desperately divided. The new patriarch, Eugenius, again anathematized the
insurgents. In response, twenty-eight bishops and almost a thousand priests in
free Greece anathematized the patriarch, calling him a Judas and a wolf in
sheep's clothing.579 The Free Greeks now commemorated “all Orthodox bishops”
at the Liturgy instead of the patriarch. Not surprisingly, in 1824 the patriarchate
refused a request from the Greek Church for Holy Chrism.580
In 1822 the Free Greeks entered into negotiations with the Pope for help
against the Turks. Very soon the Faith was being betrayed for the sake of the
political struggle, as at the council of Florence. President Mavrokordatos wrote
to the Papal Secretary of State: “The cries of a Christian nation threatened by
complete extermination have the right to receive the compassion of the head of
Christendom.”581 Greek delegates to the meeting of the Great Powers in Verona
wrote to Pope Pius VII that the Greek revolution was not like the revolutions of
other nations raised against altar and throne. Instead, it was being fought in the
name of religion and “… asks to be placed under the protection of a Christian
dynasty with wise and permanent laws”. In another letter the delegates
addressed the pope as “the common father of the faithful and head of the
Christian religion”, and said that the Greeks were worthy of the pope’s
“protection and apostolic blessing”. Metropolitan Germanus was even
empowered to speak concerning the possibility of a reunion of the Churches.
However, it was the Pope who drew back at this point, pressurized by the other
western States that considered the sultan to be a legitimate monarch. 582 How
soon had a struggle fought “for faith and fatherland” betrayed the faith while
only partially winning the fatherland! For real political independence had not
been achieved. If the Turks had been driven out, then the British and the French
and later the Germans came to take their place.
578
Kolokotrones, Memoirs: War of Greek Independence 1821-1833, p. 133.
579
Gregory Frazee, The Orthodox Church and Independent Greece 1821-1852, Cambridge University
Press, 1969, p. 44.
580
Frazee, op. cit., p. 62.
581
582
Frazee, op. cit., pp. 54-57.
335
The Greeks had to pay a heavy price for their rebellion. 583 After the
martyrdom of Patriarch Gregory, the Turks ran amok in Constantinople; and
there were further pogroms in Thessaloniki, Smyrna, Adrianople, Crete and
especially in Chios, where, in May, 1922, in response to the arrival of a small
party of Greek revolutionaries from Samos, 30,000 Muslims invaded from Asia
Minor, killed 25,000 Greeks and took 45,000 into slavery. Many others fled. The
population of the island fell from 120,000 before 1822 to 30,000 a year later.584
Aroused by these events, many young westerners, among whom was the
famous poet Lord Byron, decided to join the Greek freedom-fighters. They
sympathized with the sufferings of the Greeks, which were popularized by
works of art such as Byron’s poems and Eugene Delacroix’s painting The
Massacre at Chios (1824); but they were fighting, not so much for Orthodox
Greece as for their romantic vision of ancient, pagan Greece, which they saw as
having been the first to espouse the ideal of freedom. 585 Similarly, although
many Greeks undoubtedly fought for the sake of Orthodoxy against Islam,
several of their leaders espoused an essentially western ideology of freedom. 586
A more peaceful, and ultimately more beneficial, contribution to the new

Greek state was offered by Lord Frederick North, Earl of Guildford, a son of the
British Prime Minister that surrendered British sovereignty over the North
American colonies to Washington’s rebels.
North visited the island of Corfu in 1792, and after being converted to
Orthodoxy by a layman (he already knew the main points of Orthodox theology)
he was received into the Church by baptism with the name Demetrios. Keeping
his conversion secret from his compatriots, North returned to the island in 1820,
spending the greater part of each year there until his death in 1827. “To the
British and Greek public of the time, the fifth earl of Guilford was simply one
among a number of British philhellenes. They knew him as the author of a
Pindaric ode in Greek honouring the empress Catherine of Russia, as president
of the ‘Society of the Lovers of the Muses… founded at Athens in 1814, as an
indefatigable collector of books and manuscripts. They knew him above all as an
ever-generous patron of Greek letters, as benefactor to a host of Greek students
in western universities, and as chancellor of the Ionian academy founded at
Corfu in 1824, almost entirely through his efforts. This academy or university, as
it could with some justice claim to be, served as a notable centre of education to
the whole Greek nation during the years of the rising against the Turks and in
583
Not for the first time. Thus in 1601 Metropolitan Dionysius rebelled twice against the Turks,
which led, not only to his own death, but to the deaths of many innocent Christians, including
Hieromartyr Metropolitan Seraphim of Phanarion, who had taken no part in the rebellion.
584
585
However, there is a strong tradition in Greece that Byron was baptized into the Orthodox
Church before he died.
586
Ypsilantis’ ideology had little to do with Orthodoxy. “’Let us recollect, brave and generous
Greeks, the liberty of the classic land of Greece; the battles of Marathon and Thermopylae, let us
combat upon the tombs of our ancestors who, to leave us free, fought and died,’ Ypsilantis wrote
in his declaration of 24 February 1821. ‘The blood of our tyrants is dear to the shades of the
Theban Epaminondas, and of the Athenian Thrasybulus who conquered and destroyed the thirty
tyrants’ – and so on.” (Zamoyski, Holy Madness, p. 235).
336
the period immediately following, when the Greeks possessed as yet no other
institute of higher learning…”587
London financiers were also involved in the Greek war effort. Their reasons,
of course, had nothing to do with sympathy for the suffering or with an
enthusiasm for Classical Greece. Nevertheless, their contribution was vital. As
Yuval Noah Harari writes, “They proposed to the rebel leaders the issue of
tradable Greek Rebellion Bonds on the London stock exchange. The Greeks
would promise to repay the bonds, plus interest, if and when they won their
independence. Private investors bought bonds to make a profit, or out of
sympathy for the Greek cause, or both. The value of Greek Rebellion Bonds rose
and fell on the London stock exchange in tempo with military successes and
failures on the battlefields of Hellas. The Turks gradually gained the upper
hand. With a rebel defeat imminent, the bondholders faced the prospect of
losing their trousers. The bondholders’ interest was the national interest, so the
British organized an international fleet that, in 1827, sank the main Ottoman
flotilla at the Battle of Navarino. After centuries of subjugation, Greece was
finally free. But freedom came with a huge debt that the new country had no
way of repaying. The Greek economy was mortgaged to British creditors for
decades to come…”588
Before Navarino, however, the Greek cause had very nearly been lost. “The
Ottomans,” writes Evans, “dispatched a strong force of Egyptian troops
supplied by the sultan’s nominal vassal Muhammad Ali (1769-1849), who had
agreed to put down the rebellion in return for the addition of Syria to his
fiefdom. His troops soon began advancing up the Peloponnese, leaving a bloody
trail behind them. Public pressure in western Europe mounted, but serious
differences opened up between the Russians, who sought to exploit the
weakness of the Ottomans for their own purposes, and the British, who
distrusted Russian ambitions. Alexander I had initially shrunk from unilateral
action since he knew this would undermine the Holy Alliance, which after all
had largely been his own creation. But the continued deterioration of the
situation made this policy difficult for his successor Nicholas I to continue
without serious damage to Russian influence and prestige. Soon the tsar felt
forced to act. A chance for him to intervene was supplied by serious internal
disturbances within the Ottoman capital of Constantinople, resulting from
military reforms introduced by Mahmud II, who was understandably concerned
by the multiple threat now emerging towards his rule over south-eastern
Europe.
“The disturbances started with the Janissaries, created in the fourteenth

century as an elite military corps of slaves recruited from young Christian boys
587
Kallistos Ware, “The Fifth Earl of Guilford (1766-1827)and his Secret Conversion
to the Orthodox Church”, in Derek Baker, The Orthodox Churches and the West
(Studies in Church History, vol. 13), Oxford: Blackwell, 1976, p. 254). North “adopted
a Socratic purple robe and around his head wore a velvet band embroidered with
olive leaves and the owl of Athens, and made the teachers wear similar garbs”
(Zamoyski, Holy Madness, op. cit. , p. 234).
588
Harari, Sapiens. A Brief History of Humankind, London: Vintage, 2011, pp. 365-366.
337
but which had evolved into a largely hereditary body by the early modern
period, becoming corrupt and undisciplined. In 1826 the sultan, recognizing that
they had become largely useless for military purposes, ordered that the
Janissaries be disbanded. In the past they had on more than one occasion
deposed sultans who attempted reform, and in 1826 too, most of the 135,000
members of the corps refused to obey the command. But as well as the
Janissaries, Mahmud II had been recruiting a modern army on European lines,
consisting of free Turks, so that when the Janissaries began fighting their way to
the sultan’s palace, they were quickly forced back into their barracks. The
sultan’s new troops bombarded the barracks, killing at least 4,000 of the
mutineers; the rest fled or were imprisoned. At least 1,000 of them were taken to
Thessaloniki and beheaded in what became known as the ‘blood fort’. These
disturbances provided the opportunity for the Russians in 1826 to impose on the
sultan the Convention of Akkerman, which forced the Turks to evacuate the
Romanian Principalities. In July 1827 the British, French and Russians managed
to patch up their disagreements in the Treaty of London to work together for an
armistice between the Greeks and the Ottomans without committing themselves
to either side, and dispatched their fleets to the area. The commander of the joint
fleet, the British Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Codrington (1770-1851), was less than
impressed by the town of Nafplio (‘the filthiest town, with the worst streets and
most wretched houses, I ever saw’), the capital of the provisional Greek
government in the Peloponnese, and still less by the gunfire that echoed round
the streets as the different Greek factions tried to pick each other off with small-
arms fire. But when the sultan refused to accept the Treaty of London,
Codrington, encouraged by the British consul in Istanbul, the philhellene
Stratford Canning (1786-1880), ordered his ships in October 1827 to open fire on
the Turkish fleet lying at anchor in the sheltered bay of Navarino in the south-
western corner of the Peloponnese. There was nowhere for the Turkish ships to
escape apart from a narrow channel leading to the waiting British fleet. In three
and a half hours of relentless bombardment, the Turkish fleet was sunk and
Ottoman naval power destroyed.
“Both Canning and Codrington had exceeded their brief. The Duke of
Wellington, commander-in-chief of the British Army at the time, was furious
and publicly disowned the action. It was not in the British national interest to
weaken the Ottoman Empire, because this would simply open the door to an
extension of Russian power in the area. His perception was correct, but he was
unwise to give it public expression. The Ottoman Sultan saw Wellington’s
statement as an encouragement to repudiate the Akkerman Convention and
continue with his efforts to suppress the Greeks; the tsar responded by declaring
war on the Ottoman Empire. Initially the campaign did not go well… but by
August 1829 a Russian army was threatening Constantinople and the Ottoman
Empire seemed on the verge of collapse. Paradoxically, this provided the
stimulus needed to patch up the Concert of Europe that had become so badly
unstuck over the Greek rebellion. It was in nobody’s interests at this stage to
replace the Ottoman Empire in Europe with a disorderly collection of weak and
unstable states run by bandits and revolutionaries. A conference held in London
between November 1829 and February 1830 decided to establish by European
agreement a small independent Greek state under a constitutional monarchy,
338
assigned the Romanian Principalities to Russia’s sphere of influence, and
committed the participants, including Russia, to abandoning any further claims
on Ottoman territory in the Balkans. The Greek revolt had posed the most
serious threat to the Concert of Europe so far. In the end, the Concert had held
together…”589
The question now was: who was to lead the newly independent state of
Greece? The best candidate was the 6 Foreign Minister of Russia Capodistrias,
who was elected as ‘Governor’ of Greece by a National Assembly in 1827. In an
encyclical to the clergy he wrote: “Speak to the hearts of the people the law of
God, rightly dividing the word of truth. Announce peace. Evangelize unanimity.
Teach philanthropy, love for each other, that all may be one in Christ.”590
“Returning to the capital at Nafplio in 1828, Capodistrias introduced a new

currency and implemented educational reforms, as he had done on Corfu more
than two decades earlier, setting up schools, establishing a university and using
his medical knowledge to establish a quarantine system against infectious
diseases such as the plague. Among other things, he also introduced the potato
into Greece in an effort to improve people’s diet. At first, this met with deep
skepticism among the peasantry, who refused to take up his offer of free
distribution of seed potatoes to anyone who would plant them. Trying a new
tactic, Kapodistrias had the potatoes piled up on the waterfront at Nafplio and
surrounded by armed guards. This convinced local people and visitors from the
countryside that these new vegetables were precious objects, and thus worth
stealing. Before long, as the guards turned a blind eye, virtually all the potatoes
had been taken – and their future in Greece was assured. But Kapodistrias did
not take such a subtle approach in his dealings with the warring factions whose
internecine rivalries were proving such an obstacle to the creation of a stable
Greek state.591 His attempts to centralize military administration and
recruitment, taxation and customs revenues, met with determined opposition
from the fiercely independent leading families of the Mani peninsula, where an
uprising was quelled with the aid of Russian troops. Further trouble was caused
by the piratical merchant ship-owners of the islands of Hydra, Spetses and
Psara, who captured the ineffectual Greek national fleet, but were themselves
defeated by the French navy and scuttled their own ships rather than be
incorporated into a new Greek navy under central government control.
“The most dangerous opposition to Kapodistrias came from the

Mavromichalis family, one of the turbulent and powerful clans based on the
Mani peninsula. In an attempt to bring the clan to heel, Kapodistrias imprisoned
its leading figure, Petrobey Mavromichalis (1785-1848), formerly governor of the
peninsula under the Ottomans. Outraged at this insult to their honour,
Petrobey’s two brothers decided to follow local tradition and assassinate
Kapodistrias. They were waiting for him as he went to church on 9 October 1831.
589
590
Boanerges (Esphigmenou monastery, Mount Athos) 24, March-April, 2006, p. 32.
591
“He dismissed the primates as ‘Christian Turks’, the military chieftains as ‘robbers’, the
intelligentsia as ‘fools’ and the Phanariots as ‘children of Satan’” (Clogg, op. cit., p. 46). (V.M.)
339
As Kapodistrias made to enter the building, one of the brothers shot him in the
head, while the other stabbed him through the lungs…”592
Misha Glenny summarizes the rule of Kapodistrias thus: "Although [he]

attempted to integrate the various factions into his system of authoritarian
government, he underestimated the strength of particularism. All sides
distinguished themselves by their appalling behavior. The Hydriots, who had
excelled themselves during the war, mounted an insurrection in August 1831 so
bitter that they preferred to scuttle their entire fleet, the only real source of
independent Greek power, rather than see it come under central government
control. By imprisoning Petrobey, the Maniot leader of the Mavromichalis
family, Capodistrias sealed his own fate.”
592
Evans, op. cit., pp. 60-61
340
39. THE DECEMBRIST REBELLION
The wave of revolutionary violence rolling through Southern Europe reached

Russia after the supposed death of Tsar Alexander I on November 19, 1825.
According to a rather strong tradition, his death in Taganrog was actually
staged, and he in fact became a hermit in Tomsk in Siberia under the name
Theodore Kuzmich until his death in 1864, being blessed to undertake this path
by Seraphim of Sarov.593 This tradition has received confirmation recently from
graphological experts.594 Moreover, in November, 2015, during a press
conference, Bishop Tikhon (Shevkhunov) announced that the tomb of Tsar
Alexander I had been found to be empty in 1921…
Discontent and even open rebellion against the Sovereign on the part of the
nobility was a characteristic feature of eighteenth-century Russia. “Royal blood,”
writes I.P. Yakobi, “became terribly cheap in this century: rebellion and regicide
became not only safe, but even profitable occupations. Tolstoy enticed the
Tsarevich Alexis to inevitable death; the Preobrazhensky officers overthrew the
lawful Tsar Ioann Antonovich; Orlov brutally killed Emperor Peter III. These not
only did not suffer any punishment, but were showered with royal favours. And
if Alexander the Blessed did not act in the same way with the murderers of his
father, they in any case remained in honour, and the names of Zubov, Panin and
Bennigsen were not linked in the popular imagination with the thought of
shame or the horror of regicide.
“Rebellion and malice in relation to the Monarch takes hold of the upper class
every time the ship of state goes in a direction not ordered by them, or even
when it considers its own interests affected.
“Even Alexander the Blessed, the liberator of the Fatherland from the
invasion of twelve nations and the deliverer of Europe from the heavy yoke of
Napoleon, even Alexander I, the softest, most charming, most ‘liberal’ of the
Russian tsars, was subjected in the Petersburg salons to malicious and open
attacks whose boldness amazed foreign diplomats…
“Such was the judgement not only of foreigner, who were perhaps
insufficiently informed. The Empress Elizabeth Alexeyevna wrote to her mother
about absolutely the same popular opinion, which ‘shouts in a terrible way’.
Elizabeth Alexeyevna also condemns the relatives of the Sovereign: ‘on her part
the (Dowager) Empress, as a consequence of that boundless love of honour,
which forces her to flatter popular opinion in all circumstances so as to increase
593
See Alexis S. Troubtezkoy, Imperial Legend. The Disappearance of Tsar Alexander I, Staplehurst:
Spellmount, 2003; Tainstvennij Starets Feodor Kuzmich v Sibiri i Imperator Aleksandr I (The
Mysterious Elder Theodore Kuzmich and Alexander I), Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity
Monastery, 1972, R. Régis, Les Mystères de l’Histoire, Paris: Larousse, pp. 78-87, Anna Liesowska,
“Russian tsar ‘lived secretly as monk in Siberia’ for decades after history books say he died”, The
Siberian Times, April 10, 2018, http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0326-new-
handwriting-analysis-suggests-russia-tsar-did-not-die-as-history-books-said/
594
“Grafolog: u Aleksandra I i startsa Fedora odinakovie pocherki”, Novosti v Tomske, July 24,
2015, http://news.vtomske.ru/news/108988.html.
341
her own popularity, was the first to give an example of discontent and began
loudly to condemn the political behaviour of her son… I cannot express to You
how this disturbs me!’ Then, speaking about the rebelliousness of Grand Duke
Konstantin Pavlovich, Elizabeth Alexeyevna adds: “I assure you that at times it
seems to me that our dear Sovereign, who is better than all his relatives, has been
sold and betrayed by his own family.’
“That was the mood in 1809. How did society relate to his Majesty Alexander
Pavlovich when the threat of 1812 appeared?
“Moscow was inundated with Frenchmen, the people’s army was exerting
every effort to save the Fatherland. But Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna
wrote to the Sovereign: ‘Dissatisfaction has reached it peak, and you personally
are far from being spared. If this reaches even me, then judge for yourself about
the rest. Everyone is openly blaming you for the misfortune of Your Empire, for
the ruin of everyone and everything, and finally for your sacrifice of the honour
of the country and your own honour… Do not fear a catastrophe in the shape of
a revolution, no! But think what must be the situation in a country whose head is
despised: there is nothing people would not do to re-establish their own honour,
but in spite of a passionate desire to sacrifice everything for the Homeland, they
say: how will all this end when everything is perishing and is being destroyed as
a result of incompetence of the leaders? Fortunately, the thought of peace is not
in anyone’s mind, on the contrary: even the feeling of shame for the loss of
Moscow elicits a desire for revenge. But they condemn You, and without
inhibition; I consider it my duty to tell You about this, since it is too important…
“This letter is dated September 12, 1812. A month later Napoleon had fled
from Moscow, and three months later – the Russian armies had crossed the
frontier. In eighteen months Alexander I, who had ‘lost his honour’,
triumphantly entered Paris and was glorified by the whole of Europe as her
saviour, while the ‘incompetent’ Russian leaders became historic national
heroes… ”595
But the virus of rebellion was not destroyed… The Decembrist conspiracy
began when thirty officers founded a Union of Salvation in 1816. They then
divided into a constitutionalist Northern Society based in St. Petersburg and a
more radical Southern society based in Tulchin, headquarters of the Second
Army in the Ukraine.
“In the ideology of the Northern Society especially,” writes Walicki, “there
were certain elements reminiscent of the views of the aristocratic opposition of
the reign of Catherine II. Many of the members in this branch of the Decembrist
movement were descendants of once powerful and now impoverished boyar
families… Nikita Muraviev claimed that the movement was rooted in the
traditions of Novgorod and Pskov, of the twelfth-century Boyar Duma, of the
constitutional demands presented to Anne by the Moscow nobility in 1730, and
of the eighteenth-century aristocratic opposition. The poet Kondraty Ryleev
Yakobi, Imperator Nikolaj II i Revoliutsia (Emperor Nicholas II and the Revolution), Moscow,
595
2010, pp. 59, 60-61.

342
painted an idealized portrait of Prince Andrei Kurbsky (the leader of the boyar
revolt against Ivan the Terrible) and even devoted one of his ‘elegies’ to him…In
his evidence before the Investigating Commission after the suppression of the
revolt, Petr Kakhovsky stated that the movement was primarily a response to
the high-handedness of the bureaucracy, the lack of respect for ancient gentry
freedom, and the favoritism shown to foreigners. Another Northern Decembrist,
the writer and literary critic Aleksandr Bestuzhev… wrote that his aim was
‘monarchy tempered by aristocracy’. These and similar facts explain Pushkin’s
view, expressed in the 1830’s, that the Decembrist revolt had been the last
episode in the age-old struggle between autocracy and boyars…
“The Decembrists used the term ‘republic’ loosely, without appearing to be

fully aware that there were essential differences between, for instance, the
Roman republic, the Polish gentry republic, the old Russian city states, and
modern bourgeois republics… Muraviev modelled his plan for a political system
on the United States… The theorists of the Northern Society made no distinction
between criticism of absolutism from the standpoint of the gentry and similar
criticism from a bourgeois point of view. Hence they saw no difficulty in
reconciling liberal notions taken largely from the works of Bentham, Benjamin
Constant and Adam Smith with an idealization of former feudal liberties and a
belief in the role of the aristocracy as a ‘curb on despotism’. The theoretical
premise here was the ‘juridical world view’ of the Enlightenment, according to
which legal and political forms determined the revolution of society.” 596
The Northern Decembrists were in favour of the emancipation of the serfs.

However, they insisted that the land should remain with the gentry, thereby
ensuring the continued dependence of the serfs on the gentry. “The conviction
that the peasants ought to be overjoyed merely at the abolition of serfdom was
shared by many Decembrists. Yakushkin, for instance, could not conceal his
exasperation at his peasants’ demand for land when he offered to free them.
When they were told that the land would remain the property of the landlord,
their answer was: ‘Then things had better stay as they were. We belong to the
master, but the land belongs to us.’”597
The Northern Decembrists worked out a new interpretation of Russian

history conceived “as an antithesis to Karamzin’s theory of the beneficial role of
autocracy”. “An innate Russian characteristic, the Decembrists maintained – one
that later developments had blunted but not destroyed – was a deep-rooted love
of liberty. Autocracy had been unknown in Kievan Russia: the powers of the
princes had been strictly circumscribed there and decisions on important affairs
of state were taken by the popular assemblies. The Decembrists were especially
ardent admirers of the republican city-states of Novgorod and Pskov. This
enthusiasm was of practical significance, since they were convinced that the
‘spirit of liberty’ that had once imbued their forbears was still alive; let us but
strike the bell, and the people of Novgorod, who have remained unchanged
throughout the centuries, will assemble by the bell tower, Ryleev declared.
596
Walicki, op. cit., pp. 58, 59, 60.
597
Walicki, op. cit., p. 61.
343
Kakhovsky described the peasant communes with their self-governing mir as
‘tiny republics’, a living survival of Russian liberty. In keeping with this
conception, the Decembrists thought of themselves as restoring liberty and
bringing back a form of government that had sound historical precedents.” 598
This reinterpretation of Russian history was false. Russia was imbued with
the spirit of Orthodox autocracy and patriarchy: the “republics” of Pskov and
Novgorod were exceptions to the historical rule. And if Kievan autocracy was
less powerful than the Muscovite or Petersburg autocracies, this was not
necessarily to its advantage. Russia succumbed to the Mongols because the
dividedness of her princes precluded a united defence. And there can be little
doubt that she would not have survived into the nineteenth century as an
independent Orthodox nation if she had not been an autocracy.
The leader of the Southern Society, Colonel Pavel Pestel, had more radical
ideas in his draft for a constitution, Russian Justice, which was based on two
assumptions: “that every man has a natural right to exist and thus to a piece of
land large enough to allow him to make a basic living; and that only those who
create surplus wealth have a right to enjoy it. After the overthrow of tsarism,
therefore, Pestel proposed to divide land into two equal sectors: the first would
be public property (or, more accurately, the property of the communes); the
second would be in private hands. The first would be used to ensure everyone a
minimum living, whereas the second would be used to create surplus wealth.
Every citizen was entitled to ask his commune for an allotment large enough to
support a family; if the commune had more land available, he would even be
able to demand several such allotments. The other sector would remain in
private hands. Pestel felt that his program ensured every individual a form of
social welfare in the shape of a communal land allotment but also left scope for
unlimited initiative and the opportunity of making a fortune in the private
sector.
“Pestel believed that his program had every chance of success since land
ownership in Russia had traditionally been both communal and private. Here he
obviously had in mind the Russian village commune; it should be emphasized,
however, that Pestel’s commune differed essentially from the feudal obshchina in
that it did not restrict its members’ movement or personal freedom and did not
impose collective responsibility for individual members’ tax liabilities.” 599
In 1823 Alexander I was given a list of the future “Decembrists”. But he

refused to act against them. Archpriest Lev Lebedev explains why: “‘It is not for
me to punish them,’ said his Majesty, and cast the paper into the fire. ‘I myself
shared their views in my youth,’ he added. That means that now, in 1823,
Alexander I evaluated these diversions of his youth as sin, which also had to
receive their retribution. Neither he nor [Grand Duke] Constantine [his brother]
had the spiritual, moral right to punish the plotters, insofar as both of them had
been guilty of the plot against their own father! That was the essence of the
598
Walicki, op. cit., p. 67.
599
Walicki, op. cit., pp. 62-63.
344
matter! Only he had the right to punish who had in no way been involved in the
parricide and the revolutionary delusions – that is, the younger brother Nicholas.
It was to him that the reins of the government of Russia were handed.” 600
The rebellion took place on December 14, 1825, when a group of army officers
attempted to seize power in St. Petersburg. It was crushed by Tsar Nicholas I.
On the investigation committee into the crimes of the conspirators he placed

Count Alexander Khristoforovich Benckendorff, future head of the Gendarmes
and secret police. At the first interrogation Benckendorff gathered all the
accused and said to them: “You affirm that you rebelled for the sake of freedom
for the serfs? Very praiseworthy. I ask those of you who gave this same freedom
to the serfs – who did not cast them out on the street to die as homeless dogs,
their heads under a fence, but released them from the land while helping them
to relocate – to raise your hands. If there are such people among you, then their
case will be shelved, since they have truly acted in accordance with their own
conscience. I’m waiting. Nobody? How strange…
“I released my serfs in Lithuania in 1816, and those in Tambov in 1818. They

all left the land with funds to make a new start. I paid the taxes of each one of
them for five years in advance to the state purse. And I do not consider myself to
be a liberal or liberator! It’s more advantageous to me this way. These people
work better for themselves. I earn on grinding and timber-felling – and from my
former serfs. I have already covered all my expenses and made a profit on all
that. And I don’t come out onto the square with declarations and protests
against his Majesty or, even less, the Empire. And so there is no way you can
prove that this affair is political. We will judge you as rebels and traitors of the
Fatherland like Emelyan Pugachev. And now, all of you, to your cells! You will
go on the same convoy with the criminals, you swine!”
579 people were arrested and brought to trial. 40 were given the death
sentence and the rest – hard labour. In the end only five were executed; 601 the
soldiers were flogged. The five, writes Sir Richard Evans, “were hanged before a
large crowd; as the ropes split, saving the lives of the condemned men, the
crowd clamored for mercy, in a tradition that regarded such occurrences as the
expression of God’s will; but the implacable Tsar Nicholas I ordered new ropes
to be attached to the gallows and the hanging went ahead…” 602
In August, 1826 Tsar Nicholas confirmed the ban on Masonry.
600
Lebedev, Velikorossia, St. Petersburg, 1997, p. 291.
601
One of those executed was Sergius Ivanovich Muraviev-Apostol, a leader of the southern
society. In his Catechesis we find a strong Christian element, but a tirade against the tsars for
having “seized the people’s freedom” and a confession that he wanted to kill the tsar
(http://decemb.hobby.ru/index.shtml?archive/pokaz5).
602
Evans, The Pursuit of Power, London: Penguin, 2017, p. 433. “In the 1820s there was only one
execution per 100,000 population in Russia, a ration that continued roughly for the rest of the
century.” (op. cit., p. 433)
345
“And so for the first time in Russian history,” writes Lebedev, “a rebellion of
the nobility had as its aim not the removal of one sovereign by another, but the
annihilation of tsarist power altogether… It became clear that [the Decembrists’]
links in ‘society’ were so significant and deep, and the sympathy for them so
broad, that one could speak of a betrayal of the Throne and Church – or, at any
rate, of the unreliability – of the noble class as a whole.”603
V.F. Ivanov writes: “As an eyewitness put it, the rebellion in Petersburg
shocked the general mass of the population of Russia profoundly. In his words,
‘the attempt to limit the Tsar’s power and change the form of government
seemed to us not only sacrilege, but an historical anomaly; while the people,
seeing that the plotters belonged exclusively to the upper class, considered the
nobility to be traitors, and this added one more sharp feature to that secret
hatred which it nourished towards the landowners. Only the progressives and
the intelligentsia of the capital sympathized with the unfortunate madmen’
(Schilder).
“The best people turned away from the affair in disgust and branded the
work of the Mason-Decembrists that of Cain. In the words of Karamzin: ‘Look at
the stupid story of our mad liberals! Pray God that not so many real rogues are
found among them. The soldiers were only victims of a deception. Sometimes a
fine day begins with a storm: may it be thus in the new reign… God saved us
from a great disaster on December 14…’”604
In 1826 Karamzin wrote: “Liberals! What do you want? The happiness of

men? But is there happiness where there is death, illness, vices, passions?… For
a moral being there is no good without freedom: but this freedom is given not by
his Majesty, not by Parliament, but by each of us to ourselves, with the help of
God. We must conquer freedom in our hearts by peace of conscience and trust in
Providence!”605 And Metropolitan Philaret said in the same year: “It’s becoming
clearer and clearer from what horrors and iniquities God delivered us, when He
strengthened His Majesty on December 14. Pray that this evil will be completely
annihilated by righteousness and wisdom. But there are people who, after
talking previously about the visitation of God, are now talking about the wrath
of God on us.”606
The Decembrists were romantic dreamers rather than hardened

revolutionaries. Thus one of their leaders, the poet Ryleev, mounted the scaffold
with a volume of Byron in his hands. 607 Another, Count Sergius Volkonsky,
broke down in tears on hearing of the death of Nicholas I.608
603
Lebedev, op. cit., p. 318.
604
605
Yakovlev, op. cit., p. 143.
606
Yakovlev, op. cit., p. 130.
607
Benita Eisler, Byron, London: Penguin books, 1999, p. 753.
608
Figes, op. cit., p. 143. He also petitioned to serve as a private in the Crimean war, which he
saw as a return to the spirit of 1812. Figes sees Volkonsky as the link between the Decembrists
and the Populists of a later generation. He wrote to his son in 1857: “I gave my blessing when
you went into the service of the Fatherland and the Tsar. But I always taught you to conduct
yourself without lordly airs when dealing with your comrades from a different class (op. cit., pp.
346
But of course they were not monarchists: as Alexis Khomiakov said, they
“preferred the tyranny of an armed minority to one-man rule”. And their
naivety did not diminish the evil effect of their words and deeds on succeeding
generations. From now on, Russian liberals could appeal to the example of the
“heroic” Decembrists in their struggle against the Orthodox autocracy…
A clear example, according to Sir Isaiah Berlin, was Alexander Herzen, who
declared that the hanging of the Decembrist conspirators “was the critical
turning-point of his life; whether this was so or not, the memory of these
aristocratic martyrs in the cause of Russian constitutional liberty later became a
sacred symbol to him, as to many others of his class and generation, and affected
him for the rest of his days. He tells us that a few years after this, he and his
intimate friend Nick Ogarev, standing on the Sparrow Hills above Moscow, took
a solemn ‘Hannibalic’ oath to avenge these fighters for the rights of man, and to
dedicate their own lives to the cause for which they died…” 609
As I.P. Yakobi pointed out, “the corruption of the upper classes could not fail
to influence the other strata of society. From the nobility the revolutionary
turmoil spread to the new class of the intelligentsia, and there appeared
organized terror. The assassins followed on the heels of the Russian Tsars.
Emperor Alexander II was killed by the members of the “People’s Freedom’
movement. His successor was saved by a miracle. His grandson, Nicholas II,
together with the whole of his family, found a martyric death at the hands of the
heirs of the Decembrists – the Bolsheviks.”610
143-143).
609
Berlin, “Herzen and his Memoirs”, in The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, p.
503.
610
Yakobi, Imperator Nikolai II i Revoliutsia (Emperor Nicholas II and the Revolution), Moscow,
w010, p. 62.
347
40. ST. SERAPHIM OF SAROV
Just before the rebellion, a young officer-Decembrist came up to a hermit in
the great woods of Sarov, St. Seraphim, the most famous Russian saint of
modern times. “Taking off his cap,” the soldier “asked for his blessing. The
usually meek and quiet elder Seraphim was suddenly filled with such anger as
nobody had ever seen in him. He began to shout loudly at the officer and cursed
him. The unfortunate one, struck as if by thunder, went away, swaying from the
shock and forgetting to put on his cap… An involuntary witness of the event
had been a young monk who had brought Elder Seraphim some food. ‘Did you
see?’ the elder asked him. ‘I saw,’ replied the monk. The elder pointed at the
source, which he had so carefully tended: ‘Look!’ The monk glanced and saw
that the source of grace-filled water, which had healed many sick people, and
which had always been clean and transparent, this time had become completely
disturbed. ‘That’s how these gentlemen want to disturb Russia,’ said St.
Seraphim. Soon Russia learned of the plot and the attempt at rebellion of the
‘Decembrists’ (the officer was one of them)…”611
In 1844 Nicholas Alexandrovich Motovilov, a nobleman of Simbirsk province

and a close friend of the saint, made notes of his conversations with him. At the
beginning of the twentieth century Sergius Alexandrovich Nilus found these
notes and published them as follows:-
“… As a demonstration of true zeal for God Batyushka Seraphim cited the

holy Prophet Elijah and Gideon, and for hours at a time he talked in an inspired
manner about them. Every judgement that he made about them was concluded
by its application to life, precisely our own life, and with an indication of how
we… can draw soul-saving instructions from their lives. He often spoke to me
about the holy King, Prophet and Ancestor of God David, at which point he
went into an extraordinary spiritual rapture. How one had to see him during
those unearthly minutes! His face, inspired by the grace of the Holy Spirit, shone
like the sun, and I – I speak the truth – on looking at him felt in my eyes as if I
was looking at the sun. I involuntarily recalled the face of Moses when he had
just come down from Sinai. My soul, pacified, entered such a quiet, and was
filled with such great joy, that my heart was ready to embrace within itself not
only the whole human race, but also the whole creation of God, pouring out in
love towards everything that is of God…
“’So, your Godbelovedness, so,’ Batyushka used to say, leaping from joy
(those who still remember this holy elder will relate how he would sometimes be
seen leaping from joy), ‘”I have chosen David my servant, a man after My own
heart, who will do all My will”’…
“In explaining how good it was to serve the Tsar and how much his life
should be held dear, he gave as an example Abishai, David’s war-commander.
611
Lebedev, op. cit., p. 295. Platonov (op. cit., p. 265) believes that the Decembrist was Pestel.
348
“’Once,’ said Batyushka Seraphim, ‘to satisfy the thirst of David, he stole in to
a spring in view of the enemy camp and got water, and, in spite of a cloud of
arrows released at him from the enemy camp, returned to him completely
unharmed, bringing the water in his helmet. He had been saved from the cloud
of arrows only because of his zeal towards the King. But when David gave an
order, Abishai replied: “Only command, O King, and everything will be done in
accordance with your will.” But when the King expressed the desire to take part
himself in some bloody deed to encourage his warriors, Abishai besought him to
preserve his health and, stopping him from participating in the battle, said:
“There are many of us, your Majesty, but you are one among us. Even if all of us
were killed, as long as you were alive, Israel would be whole and unconquered.
But if you are gone, then what will become of Israel?”…’
“Batyushka Fr. Seraphim loved to explain himself at length, praising the zeal
and ardour of faithful subjects to the Tsar, and desiring to explain more clearly
how these two Christian virtues are pleasing to God, he said:
“’After Orthodoxy, these are our first Russian duty and the chief foundation
of true Christian piety.’
“Often from David he changed the subject to our great Emperor [Nicholas I]
and for hours at a time talked to me about him and about the Russian kingdom,
bewailing those who plotted evil against his August Person. Clearly revealing to
me what they wanted to do, he led me into a state of horror; while speaking
about the punishment prepared for them from the Lord, and in confirmation of
his words, he added:
“’This will happen without fail: the Lord, seeing the impenitent spite of their
hearts, will permit their undertakings to come to pass for a short period, but
their illness will turn upon their heads, and the unrighteousness of their
destructive plots will descend upon them. The Russian land will be reddened
with streams of blood, and many noblemen will be killed for his great Majesty
and the integrity of his Autocracy: but the Lord will not be wroth to the end, and
will not allow the Russian land to be destroyed to the end, because in it alone
will Orthodoxy and the remnants of Christian piety be especially preserved.
“Once,” as Motovilov continued in his notes, “I was in great sorrow, thinking

what would happen in the future with our Orthodox Church if the evil
contemporary to us would be multiplied more and more. And being convinced
that our Church was in an extremely pitiful state both from the great amount of
carnal debauchery and… from the spiritual impiety of godless opinions sown
everywhere by the most recent false teachers, I very much wanted to know what
Batyushka Seraphim would tell me about this.
“Discussing the holy Prophet Elijah in detail, he said in reply to my question,

among other things, the following:
“’Elijah the Thesbite complained to the Lord about Israel as if it had wholly
bowed the knee to Baal, and said in prayer that only he, Elijah, had remained
349
faithful to Lord, but now they were seeking his soul, too, to take it… So what,
batyushka, did the Lord reply to this? “I have left seven thousand men in Israel
who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So if in the kingdom of Israel, which had
fallen away from the kingdom of Judah that was faithful to God, and had come
to a state of complete corruption, there still remained seven thousand men
faithful to the Lord, then what shall we say about Russia? I think that at that
time there were no more than three million in the kingdom of Israel at that time.
And how many do we have in Russia now, batyushka?’
“I replied: ‘About sixty million.’
“And he continued: ‘Twenty times more. Judge for yourself how many more
of those faithful to God that brings!… So, batyushka, those whom He foreknew,
He also predestined; and those whom He predestined, He also called; and those
whom He called, He guards, and those He also glorifies… So what is there for us
to be despondent about!… God is with us! He who hopes in the Lord is as
Mount Sion, and the Lord is round about His people… The Lord will keep you,
the Lord will protect you on your right hand, the Lord will preserve your
coming in and your going out now and to the ages; the sun will not burn you by
day, nor the moon by night.’
“And when I asked him what this meant, and to what end he was talking to
me about it:
“’To the end,’ replied Batyushka Fr. Seraphim, ‘that you should know that in
this way the Lord guards His people as the apple of His eye, that is, the
Orthodox Christians, who love Him and with all their heart, and all their mind,
in word and deed, day and night serve Him. And such are those who completely
observe all the commandments, dogmas and traditions of our Eastern Universal
Church, and confess the piety handed down by it with their lips, and really, in
all the circumstances of life, act according to the holy commandments of our
Lord Jesus Christ.’
“In confirmation of the fact that there were still many in the Russian land who
remained faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ, who lived in Orthodoxy and piety,
batyushka Fr. Seraphim once said to one acquaintance of mine… that once,
when he was in the Spirit, he saw the whole land of Russia, and it was filled and
as it were covered with the smoke of the prayers of believers praying to the
Lord…”612
St. Seraphim prophesied: "More than half a century will pass. Then evildoers
will raise their heads high. This will happen without fail: the Lord, seeing the
impenitent evil of their hearts, will allow their enterprises for a short time. But
their sickness will rebound upon their own heads, and the unrighteousness of
their destructive plots will fall upon them. The Russian land will become red
with rivers of blood... Before the birth of the Antichrist there will be a great,
protracted war and a terrible revolution in Russia passing all bounds of human
612
Yu.K. Begunov, A.D. Stepanov, K.Yu. Dushenov (eds.), Tajna Bezzakonia (The Mystery of
Iniquity), St. Petersburg, 2000, pp. 61-64.
350
imagination, for the bloodletting will be most terrible: the rebellions of Ryazan,
Pugachev and the French revolution will be nothing in comparison with what
will take place in Russia. Many people who are faithful to the fatherland will
perish, church property and the monasteries will be robbed; the Lord's churches
will be desecrated; good rich people will be robbed and killed, rivers of Russian
blood will flow…"613
It was not only in his gifts of prophecy and miracle-working that St. Seraphim
was renowned. People of all classes streamed to him from all over Russia to
receive his God-inspired wisdom. Motovilov was one of his chosen friends, and
in a famous conversation the saint revealed to him an almost forgotten but
vitally important truth, that the aim of the Christian life is to acquire the Holy
Spirit, which is accomplished through good works, especially prayer, carried out
in the name of Christ:-
“’But father,’ said I [Motovilov], ‘ you continue to dwell on the acquisition of

the grace of the Holy Spirit as the aim of the Christian life. How and where can I
see it? Good deeds are visible. Is the Holy Spirit then to be seen? How am going
to know whether He is with me or not?’
“’At the present time,’ the elder replied, ‘thanks to our almost universal
indifference to the holy faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and thanks to our
inattentiveness to the working of His Divine purpose to us and of the
communion between man and God, we have come to this, that one might say
that we have almost entirely departed from the true Christian life. Those words
seem strange to us now that the Spirit of God spake by the lips of Moses: And
Adam saw the Lord walking in paradise; or those words which read in the
Apostle Paul: We went to Achaia and the Spirit of God came not with us, we
returned to Macedonia and the Spirit of God came with us. More than once in
other passages of Holy Scripture is told the story of God’s appearance to men.
Some people say these passages are incomprehensible; could men really see
God? But there is nothing incomprehensible here. This failure to understand
comes about because we have wandered from the spacious vision of early
Christians. Under the pretext of education we have received such a darkness of
ignorance that now to us seems inconceivable what the ancients saw so clearly
that even in ordinary conversation the notion of God’s appearance did not seem
strange to them. Men saw God and the grace of the Holy Spirit, not in sleep or in
a dream, or in the excitement of a disordered imagination, but truly, in the light
of day. We have become very inattentive to the work of our salvation, whence it
comes about that many other words also in the Holy Scriptures we do not take
in the proper sense; and all because we do not allow it to enter our souls, and
therefore we have no true enlightenment from the Lord, which is sent into the
hearts of men, to all who hunger and thirst in heart for God’s truth.
613
St. Seraphim, quoted by Protopriest Victor Potapov, "God is betrayed by silence". See also
Literaturnaya Ucheba, January-February, 1991, pp. 131-134.
351
“’When our Lord Jesus Christ had accomplished the whole work of salvation,
after His resurrection, He breathed on the Apostles to restore the breath of life
which had been lost by Adam, and gave them the same grace of the Holy Spirit
of God which had been Adam’s. On the Day of Pentecost He triumphantly sent
down on them the Holy Spirit in the rushing of a mighty wind like tongues of
fire, which sat upon each one of them and entered in and filled them with the
strength of Divine flame-like grace; whose breath is laden with dew, and it
creates joy in the souls partaking of its power and influence. And, when this
same fire-inspired grace of the Holy Spirit is given to all the faithful in Christ in
the sacrament of Holy Baptism, they seal it in the chief places appointed by the
Holy Church on our flesh, as the eternal vessel of this grace. The words are: “The
seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.” On what do we miserable creatures set our
seal except on the vessels which preserve some precious treasure? But what can
be higher and more precious than the gifts of the Holy Spirit sent us from above
in the sacrament of Baptism? For this baptismal grace is so great, so necessary, so
life-giving for man, that it will never be taken away even from the heretic until
his very death; that is, until the term which has been set by the Providence of
God to man’s earthly trial – for what will he be of use and what will he
accomplish in the time and with the grace given him by God? If we were never
to sin after our baptism, we should remain for ever holy, spotless, exempt from
all foulness of flesh and spirit, like the saints of God. But the trouble is that,
though we increase in stature, we do not increased in the grace and mind of
God, as our Lord Jesus Christ increased; but on the contrary, growing dissipated
bit by bit, we are deprived of the grace of God’s Holy Spirit and become sinners
of many degrees and many sins. But, when a man, stirred by the Divine Wisdom
which seeks our salvation, is resolved for her sake to rise early before God and
keep watch for the attainment of his eternal salvation, then must he in obedience
to her voice hasten to acquire the Holy Spirit, which works in us and sets up in
us the kingdom of God. Notwithstanding man’s repeated falls, notwithstanding
the darkness around the soul, the grace of the Holy Spirit which is given at our
baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit shines
still in the heart with the Divine immemorial light of the precious merits of
Christ. When the sinner turns to the way of repentance, this Christ Light
smooths out all trace of past sin and clothes the former sinner once more in a
robe of incorruption woven from the grace of the Holy Spirit, about the
acquisition of which, as the aim of the Christian life, I have been speaking so
long.
“’Still more clearly will I tell you, that you may the more clearly know what to
understand by the grace of God, how to recognize it and how in particular its
actions are revealed in those enlightened therewith. The grace of the Holy Spirit
is the light which lighteneth man. The Lord has more than once revealed for
many witnesses the working of the grace of the Holy Spirit in those whom He
has sanctified and illumined by His great outpourings. Think of Moses after his
talk with God on Mount Sinai. People were unable to look on him, with such
unwonted radiance did he blaze; he was even forced to appear before the people
under a veil. Think of the Lord’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor: His garments
were glistering like snow and His disciples fell on their face for fear. When
Moses and Elias appeared to Him, then, in order to hide the effulgence of the
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light of God’s grace from blinding the eyes of the disciples, a cloud, it is written,
overshadowed them. Thus the grace of God’s Holy Spirit appears in light
inexpressible to all to whom God reveals its power.’
“’How then,’ I asked Father Seraphim, ‘am I to know that I am in the grace of
the Holy Spirit?’
“’It’s very simple, my son,’ he replied; ‘wherefore the Lord says: All things
are simple to them that get understanding, the Apostles always perceive
whether the Spirit of God abideth in them or not, and, being filled with
understanding and seeing the presence of God’s Spirit with them, they affirmed
that their work was holy and pleasing to God. By this is explained why they
wrote in their epistles: It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. Only on these
grounds did they offer their epistles as immutable truth for the good of all the
faithful. Thus the Holy Apostles were consciously aware of the presence in
themselves of God’s Spirit. And so you see, my son, how simple it is!’
“I replied:
“’Nevertheless, I do not understand how I can be firmly assured that I am in

the Spirit of God. How can I myself recognize His true manifestation?’
“Father Seraphim replied:
“’I have already told you, my son, that it is very simple and have in detail
narrated to you how men dwell in the Spirit of God and how one must
apprehend His appearance in us. What then do you need?’
“’My need,’ said I, ‘is to understand this well!’
“Then Father Seraphim took me firmly by the shoulders and said:
“’We are both together, son, in the Spirit of God! Why lookest thou not on
me?’
“’I cannot look, Father, because lightning flashes from your eyes. Your face is
brighter than the sun and my eyes ache in pain!’
“Father Seraphim said:
“’Fear not, my son, you too have become as bright as I. You too are now in the
fullness of God’s Spirit; otherwise you would not be able to look on me as I am.’
“Then, bending his head towards me, he whispered softly into my ear:
“Give thanks to the Lord God for His ineffable mercy! You have seen that I
did not even cross myself, and only in my heart I prayed mentally to the Lord
God and said within myself: Lord, vouchsafe to him to see clearly with bodily
eyes that glory. And see, my son, the Lord has fulfilled in a trice the humble
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prayer of poor Seraphim. Surely we must give thanks to Him for His ineffable
gift to us both!’”614
G.P. Fedotov, A Treasury of Russian Spirituality, Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1969, pp. 27-
614
274.
354
V. THE WEST: LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM (1830-1865)
355
41. THE ROTHSCHILD CENTURY
The nineteenth century stood, among many other things, for the destruction
of feudalism in the economic and social relations between men, and its
replacement by capitalism. Now capitalism, as Adam Smith taught, is based on
egoism in theory and practice. It is a paradoxical theory, to say the least: that the
public interest is best served by everyone pursuing his self-interest as freely as
possible! But it found confirmation in the work of the London banker David
Ricardo in the 1820s.
“It was Ricardian economic theory,” writes Norman Cantor, “that became
and remains the theoretical foundation of that market capitalism in which so
many nineteenth-century Jews [most famously, the Rothschilds] made their
fortune and general fame, or at least found the means for a satisfying private
family life. Ricardo was the Moses of Jewish capitalism, who brought down the
tables of truth to show to the chosen people and the admiring Gentiles as well.
“The main point of Ricardian economics is identical with that of Reform

Judaism’s Haskalah-Kantian theology. Just as God in the latter is a creator whose
majesty is humanly unapproachable, so the market is a universal, rationalizing
structure that cannot be modified by human will or sentiment, such as by paying
wages beyond the minimum with which the market can operate, or by state
interference with the business cycle or capital accumulation. Leave God and the
market alone and attend to your personal, family, and communal lives and
business interests…”615
There is indeed nothing mystical about the Jews’ acquisition of enormous

wealth. In the present as in the past – for example, in the Hungarian Jew George
Soros’ vastly successful gamble on Britain leaving the European Exchange Rate
Mechanism in 1990, or in the Jewish bank Goldman Sachs’ ability to profit even
from the drastic culling of the American banks in 2007 – we see the same prosaic
formula for success, consisting of the following in order of importance: (i) The
exceptionally close solidarity of the members of the tribe to each other on the
basis of their common Jewish faith or – which comes to the same thing – Jewish
nationality; (ii) their vast capital base, which enables them to ride out storms and
disasters that would sink less well capitalized organizations; and (iii) their vast
intelligence network combined with great speed and security of communication,
which enables them always to be “ahead of the game” in what may be called
“institutionalized insider dealing.” All three elements were important in the rise
of the most famous Jewish family of the nineteenth century, the Rothschilds…
As Niall Ferguson writes: “’Master of unbounded wealth, he [Rothschild]

boasts that he is the arbiter of peace and war, and that the credit of nations
depends upon his nod; his correspondents are innumerable; his couriers outrun
those of sovereign princes, and absolute sovereigns; ministers of state are in his
pay. Paramount in the cabinets of continental Europe, he aspires to the
615
Cantor, The Sacred Chain, London: Fontana, 1996, p. 266.
356
domination of our own.’
“Those words were spoken in 1828 by the Radical MP Thomas Dunscombe.

The man he was referring to was Nathan Myer Rothschild, founder of the
London branch of what was, for most of the nineteenth century, the biggest bank
in the world. It was the bond market that made the Rothschild family rich – rich
enough to build forty-one stately homes all over Europe…
“… His brothers called Nathan ‘the general in chief’. ‘All you ever write,’
complained Salomon wearily in 1815, ‘is pay this, pay that, send this, send that.’
It was this phenomenal drive, allied to innate financial genius, that propelled
Nathan from the obscurity of the Frankfurt Judengasse to mastery of the London
bond market. Once again, however, the opportunity for financial innovations
was provided by war.
“On the morning of 18 June 1815, 67,000 British, Dutch and German troops
under the Duke of Wellington’s command looked out across the fields of
Waterloo, nor far from Brussels, towards an almost equal number of French
troops commanded by the French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. The Battle of
Waterloo was the culmination of more than two decades of intermittent conflict
between Britain and France. But it was more than a battle between two armies. It
was also a contest between rival financial systems: one, the French, which under
Napoleon had come to be based on plunder (the taxation of the conquered); the
other, the British, based on debt.
“Never had so many bonds been issued to finance a military conflict. Between
1793 and 1815 the British national debt increased by a factor of three, to £745
million, more than double the annual output of the UK economy. But this
increase in the supply of bonds had weighed heavily on the London market.
Since February 1792, the price of a typical £100 3 per cent consol had fallen from
£96 to below £60 on the eve of Waterloo, at one time (in 1797) sinking below
£50…
“According to a long-standing legend, the Rothschild family owed the first

millions of their fortune to Nathan’s successful speculation about the effect of
the outcome of the battle on the price of British bonds. In some versions of the
story, Nathan witnessed the battle himself, risked a Channel storm to reach
London ahead of the official news of Wellington’s victory and, by buying bonds
ahead of a huge surge in prices, pocketed between £20 and £135 million. It was a
legend the Nazis later did their best to embroider. In 1940 Joseph Goebbels
approved the release of Die Rothschilds, which depicts an oleaginous Nathan
bribing a French general to ensure the Duke of Wellington’s victory, and then
deliberately misreporting the outcome in London in order to precipitate panic
selling of British bonds, which he then snaps up at bargain-basement prices. Yet
the reality was altogether different. Far from making money from Wellington’s
victory, the Rothschilds were very nearly ruined by it. Their fortune was made
not because of Waterloo, but despite it.
“After a series of miscued interventions, British troops had been fighting

357
against Napoleon on the Continent since August 1808, when the future Duke of
Wellington, then Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley, led an expeditionary
force to Portugal, invaded by the French the previous year. For the better part of
the next six years, there would be a recurrent need to get men and materiel to the
Iberian Peninsula. Selling bonds to the public had certainly raised plenty of cash
for the British government, but banknotes were of little use on distant
battlefields. To provision the troops and pay Britain’s allies against France,
Wellington needed a currency that was universally acceptable. The challenge
was to transform the money raised on the bond market into gold coins, and to
get them to where they were needed. Sending gold guineas from London to
Lisbon was expensive and hazardous in time of war. But when the Portuguese
merchants declined to accept the bills of exchange that Wellington proferred,
there seemed little alternative but to ship cash.
“The son of a moderately successful Frankfurt antique dealer and bill broker,
Nathan Rothschild had arrived in England only in 1799 and had spent most of
the next ten years in the newly industrializing North of England, purchasing
textiles and shipping them back to Germany. He did not go into the banking
business in London until 1811. Why, then, did the British government turn to
him in its hour of financial need? The answer is that Nathan had acquired
valuable experience as a smuggler of gold to the Continent, in breach of the
blockade that Napoleon had imposed on trade between England and Europe.
(Admittedly, it was a breach the French authorities tended to wink at, in the
simplistic mercantilist belief that outflows of gold from England must tend to
weaken the British war effort.) In January 184, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
authorized the Commissary-in-Chief, John Charles Merries, to ‘employ that
gentleman [Nathan] in most secret and confidential manner to collect in
Germany, coins, not exceeding in value £600,000, which he may be able to
procure within two months from the present time.’ These were then to be
delivered to British vessels at the Dutch port of Helvoetsluys and sent on to
Wellington, who had by now crossed the Pyrenees into France. It was an
immense operation, which depended on the brothers’ ability to manage large-
scale bullion transfers. They executed their commission so well that Wellington
was soon writing to express his gratitude for the ‘ample… supplies of money’.
As Harries put it: ‘Rothschild of this place has executed the various services
entrusted to him in this line admirably well, and though a Jew [sic], we place a
good deal of confidence in him.’ By May 1814 Nathan had advanced nearly £1.2
to the government, double the amount envisaged in his original instructions.
“Mobilizing such vast amounts of gold even at the tail end of a war was risky,
no doubt. Yet from the Rothschilds’ point of view, the hefty commissions they
were able to charge more than justified the risks. What made them so well suited
to the task was that the brothers had a ready-made banking network within the
family – Nathan in London, Amschel in Frankfurt, James (the youngest) in Paris,
Carl in Amsterdam and Salomon roving wherever Nathan saw fit. Spread
throughout Europe, the five Rothschilds were uniquely positioned to exploit
price and exchange rate differences between markets, the process known as
arbitrage. If the price of gold was higher in, say, Paris than in London, James in
Paris would sell gold for bills of exchange, then send these to London, where
358
Nathan would use them to buy a larger quantity of gold. The fact that their own
transactions on Herries’s behalf were big enough to affect such price differentials
only added to the profitability of the business. In addition, the Rothschilds also
handled some of the large subsidies paid to Britain’s continental allies. By June
1814, Herries calculated that they had effected payments of this sort to a value of
12.6 million francs. ‘Mr. Rothschild’, remarked the Prime Minister, Lord
Liverpool, had become ‘a very useful friend’. As he told the Foreign Secretary,
Lord Castlereagh, ‘I do not know what we should have done without him…’ By
now his brothers had taken to calling Nathan the master of the Stock Exchange.
“After his abdication in April 1814, Napoleon had been exiled to the small
Italian island of Elba, which he proceeded to rule as an empire in miniature. It
was too small to hold him. On 1 March 1815, to the consternation of the
monarchs and ministers gathered to restore the old European order at the
Congress of Vienna, he returned to France, determined to revive his Empire.
Veterans of the grande armée rallied to his standard. Nathan Rothschild
responded to this ‘unpleasant news’ by immediately resuming gold purchases,
buying up all the bullion and coins he and his brothers could lay their hands on,
and making it available to Herries for shipment to Wellington. In all, the
Rothschilds provided gold coins worth more than £2 million – enough to fill 884
boxes and fifty-five casks. At the same time, Nathan offered to take care of a
fresh round of subsidies to Britain’s continental allies, bringing the total of his
transactions with Herries in 1815 to just under £9.8 million. With commissions
on all this business ranging from 2 to 6 per cent, Napoleon’s return promised to
make the Rothschilds rich men. Yet there was a risk that Nathan had
underestimated. In furiously buying up such a huge quantity of gold, he had
assumed that, as with all Napoleon’s wars, this would be a long one. It was a
near fatal miscalculation.
“Wellington famously called the Battle of Waterloo ‘the nearest run thing you
ever saw in your life’. After a day of brutal charges, countercharges and heroic
defense, the belated arrival of the Prussian army finally proved decisive. For
Wellington, it was a glorious victory. Not so for the Rothschilds. No doubt it was
gratifying for Nathan Rothschild to receive the news of Napoleon’s defeat first,
thanks to the speed of his couriers, nearly forty-eight hours before Major Henry
Percy delivered Wellington’s official dispatch to the Cabinet. No matter how
early it reached him, however, the news was anything but good from Nathan’s
point of view. He had expected nothing as decisive so soon. Now he and his
brothers were sitting on top of a pile of cash that nobody needed – to pay for a
war that was over. With the coming of peace, the great armies that had fought
Napoleon could be disbanded, the coalition of allies dissolved. That meant no
more soldiers’ wages and no more subsidies to Britain’s wartime allies. The price
of gold, which had soared during the war, would be bound to fall. Nathan was
faced not with the immense profits of legend but with heavy and growing losses.
“But there was one possible way out: the Rothschilds could use their gold to
make a massive and hugely risky bet on the bond market. On 20 July 1815 the
evening edition of the London Courier reported that Nathan had made ‘great
purchases of stock’, meaning British government bonds. Nathan’s gamble was
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that the British victory at Waterloo, and the prospect of a reduction in
government borrowing, would send the price of British bonds soaring upwards.
Nathan bought more and, as the price of consols duly began to rise, he kept on
buying. Despite his brothers’ desperate entreaties to realize profits, Nathan held
his nerve for another year. Eventually, in late 1817, with bond prices up more
than 40 per cent, he sold. Allowing for the effects on the purchasing power of
sterling of inflation and economic growth, his profits were worth around £600
million today. It was one of the most audacious trades in financial history, one
which snatched financial victory from the jaws of Napoleon’s military defeat.
The resemblance between victor and vanquished was not lost on
contemporaries. In the words of one of the partners at Barings, the Rothschilds’
great rivals, ‘I must candidly confess that I have not the nerve for his operations.
They are generally well planned, with great cleverness and adroitness in
execution – but he is in money and funds what Bonaparte was in war.’ To the
Austrian Chancellor Prince Metternich’s secretary, the Rothschilds were simply
die Finanzbonaparten. Others went still further, though not without a hint of
irony. ‘Money is the god of our time,’ declared the German [Jewish] poet
Heinrich Heine in March 1841, ‘and Rothschild is his prophet.’
“To an extent that even today remains astonishing, the Rothschilds went on to
dominate international finance in the half century after Waterloo. So
extraordinary did this achievement seem to contemporaries that they often
sought to explain it in mystical terms…
“The more prosaic reality was that the Rothschilds were able to build on their
successes during the final phase of the Napoleonic Wars to establish themselves
as the dominant players in an increasingly international London bond market.
They did this by establishing a capital base and an information network that
were soon far superior to those of their nearest rivals, the Barings. Between 1815
and 1859, it has been estimated that the London house issued fourteen different
sovereign bonds with a face value of nearly £43 million, more than half the total
issued by all banks in London. Although British government bonds were the
principal security they marketed to investors, they also sold French, Prussian,
Russian, Austrian, Neapolitan and Brazilian bonds. In addition, they all but
monopolized bond issuance by the Belgian government after 1830. Typically, the
Rothschilds would buy a tranche of new bonds outright from a government,
charging a commission for distributing these to their network of brokers and
investors throughout Europe, and remitting funds to the government only when
all the instalments had been received from buyers. There would usually be a
generous spread between the price the Rothschilds paid the sovereign borrower
and the price they asked of investors (with room for an additional price ‘run up’
after the initial public offering). Of course, as we have seen, there had been large-
scale international lending before, notably in Genoa, Antwerp and Amsterdam.
But a distinguishing feature of the London bond market after 1815 was the
Rothschilds’ insistence that most new borrowers issue bonds denominated in
sterling, rather than their own currency, and make interest payments in London
or one of the other markets where the Rothschilds had branches. A new
standard was set by their 1818 initial public offering of Prussian 5 per cent
bonds, which – after protracted and often fraught negotiations – were issued not
360
only in London, but also in Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg and Amsterdam. In his
book On the Traffic in State Bonds (1825), the German legal expert Johann
Heinrich Bender singled out this as one of the Rothschilds’ most important
financial innovations: ‘Any owner of government bonds… can collect the
interest at his convenience in several different places without any effort.’ Bond
issuance was by no means the only business the Rothschilds did, to be sure: they
were also bond traders, currency arbitrageurs, bullion dealers and private
bankers, as well as investors in insurance, mines and railways. Yet the bond
market remained their core competence. Unlike their lesser competitors, the
Rothschilds took pride in dealing only in what would now be called investment
grade securities. No bond they issued in the 1820s was to default by 1829,
despite a Latin American debt crisis in the middle of the decade (the first of
many).
“With success came ever greater wealth. When Nathan died in 1836, his
personal fortune was equivalent to 0.62 per cent of British national income.
Between 1818 and 1852, the combined capital of the five Rothschild ‘houses’
(Frankfurt, London, Naples, Paris and Vienna) rose from £1.8 million to £9.8
million. As early as 1825 their combined capital was nine times greater than that
of Baring Brothers and the Banque de France. By 1899, at £41 million, it exceeded
the capital of the five biggest German join-stock banks put together.
Increasingly, the firm became a multinational asset manager for the wealth of the
managers’ extended family. As their numbers grew from generation to
generation, familial unity was maintained by a combination of periodically
revised contracts between the five houses and a high level of intermarriage
between cousins or between uncles and nieces. Of twenty-one marriages
involving descendants of Nathan’s father Mayer Amschel Rothschild that were
solemnized between 1824 and 1877, no fewer than fifteen were between his
direct descendants. In addition, the family’s collective fidelity to the Jewish faith,
at a time when some other Jewish families were slipping into apostasy or mixed
marriage, strengthened their sense of common identity and purpose as ‘the
Caucasian [Jewish] royal family’.”616
616
Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, New York: Penguin Press, 2008, pp. 78-88.
361
43. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The world as we know it today is largely the product of a dual revolution -

the liberal revolution and the industrial revolution. Its main workshop and
demonstration hall was Britain, where both liberalism and industrialism had
been born in the century that stretched from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to
the eve of the French Revolution in 1789. It was on the back of this dual
revolution that a third would break out – the communist revolution…
“During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars,” writes Evans,

“Britain had forged ahead economically, leaving the Europe Continent far
behind. Per capita industrial production in Britain in 1830 was almost twice that
of Switzerland or Belgium, more than twice that of France, and three times that
of the Habsburg Empire, Spain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark or the
Netherlands.
“Linen and wool had long formed the basis of the textile industry. What was
new in the late eighteenth century was the arrival of cotton, previously used
mainly for printed fabric or calico, for mass consumption. By this time, England
was mass-producing cloth from raw cotton grown with cheap labour in India
and then exporting finished cotton products back to the subcontinent. In the
American south, cotton was farmed by slaves, making it cheaper still. Soon
cotton in Europe was replacing the more expensive linen and wool, which did
not undergo mechanization until the 1820s or later, as the basic fabric used in
clothing. Exports of raw cotton into Britain rose from 11 million pounds in
weight in 1785 to 188 million in 1850, all used to manufacture cloth. India,
meanwhile, was sent headlong into industrial decline, to be followed by Egypt,
where the attempts of the local pasha, Muhammed Ali, to develop a cotton
industry were undermined by the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1838. The
British intervened the following year, after the pasha defeated an Ottoman army
in battle and threatened to march on Constantinople. His monopoly on trade
was forcibly abolished, and as Egypt was flooded with cheap British cotton
products, the domestic industry collapsed. Britain’s industrial advantage over
the rest of the world was not the product of British ingenuity or inventiveness or
other domestic factors. More than anything else, the explosion of cotton
production in Britain was driven by world trade. In 1814, Britain was already
exporting more cotton cloth than it sold at home; by 1850 the disparity had
increased, with thirteen yards sold abroad for every eight in the UK. In 1820, 118
million yards of cotton cloth were sold to the European Continent, with 80
million going to the Americas (apart from the USA), Africa and Asia: by 1840 the
comparable figures were 200 million and 529 million. British domination of the
seas guaranteed a virtual monopoly for cotton sales to Latin America, which
took a quarter as much cotton cloth as the European Continent in 1820 and half
as much again twenty years later. Exports to India rose from 11 million yards in
1820 to 145 million in 1840. Cotton products made up nearly half the value of all
British exports between 1816 and 1850. The growth of a new industrial economy
in Britain after 1815 was not just the product of scientific or technological
superiority, it was also the product of global empire…
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“The industrial revolution was not confined to textile manufacture, but was in
the longer run of even greater significance in the production of coal and iron.
Here what marked out Britain from the rest of Europe in the industrial sphere
was above all its early use of coal as a source of energy and its continued
domination of coal production well into the second half of the century. Between
1815 and 1830 coal output in Britain virtually doubled, from 16 million tons a
year to 30 million. As later as 1860, Britain was still producing more than twice
as much coal as the whole of the rest of Europe put together. As demand grew,
so mines had to be sunk deeper to access coal seams hundreds of feet below the
surface. Water had to be pumped out of the mine, air circulated along the pits
and galleries, gallery roofs held up with timber prop, coal hauled to the surface
and taken away by specially built canals or, in the 1840s increasingly, by rail.
The need to pump water out of coalmines was a key factor in the development
and refinement of the steam engine, but the actual cutting of coal from the seam
was done by hand. Production could only increased by bringing ever more
miners to the coalfields, and areas where there were rich seams of coal, for
example in south Wales, saw increasing numbers of immigrants drawn by the
prospect of steady work.
“The work was dirty, difficult and dangerous…”617
Certain factors assisted the British in achieving this domination. One, as we

have seen, was political: domination of the seas and of the Indian subcontinent.
A second was geographical: the presence of rich seams of coal in several areas
around the country.
A third was education. England “had an unusually high level of literacy and
education – probably higher, for example, than Pakistan today. Some schooling
for working class children was not uncommon. Only in England and Holland
could a majority of workers sign their names – something unprecedented in
world history. Two-thirds of English boys took long apprenticeships in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – impressive in the light of today’s
unfulfilled ambition to have half of young people in post-school education.
Schooling and apprenticeship cost money, and required the prospect of high
wages to make them affordable and attractive as investments, even to the poor:
one Ealing gardener paid 6d a week to educate his two children – as much as he
spent on beer. If there is a literacy threshold for economic development, England
had probably passed it by 1700: there was practically universal literacy in high-
level commercial occupations and close to universal in occupations where it was
functionally valuable. England’s economy was centered on what was not the
biggest city in the western world. Its government kept order while permitting an
unusual degree of liberty. It also gave protection against foreign competition. Its
legal system protected property, but not so much as to prevent change: for
example, by land enclosure. Its agriculture, already efficient and adaptable,
could feed a growing and increasingly urban population.”618
617
Evans, op. cit., pp. 132-133, 139-140.
618
Tombs, op. cit., p. 374.
363
This brings us to another important factor: the English agrarian revolution of
the eighteenth century. Its essential features were the "privatization" of the
common land (in England, the pioneer in both the agrarian and industrial
revolutions, it was accomplished through the Enclosure Acts of 1760 to 1830), its
more efficient capitalist exploitation by a new breed of capitalist landowners,
creating a new surplus in food and market in agricultural produce, and the
destruction of the feudal bonds that bound the peasant to the land that he
worked and the landowner for whom he worked. This led to the creation of a
large number of landless agricultural labourers who, in the absence of work in
the countryside, sought it in the new industrial enterprises that were being
created in the towns to exploit a series of important technological innovations.
These innovations did not all originate in England: the Jacquard loom, which
revolutionized silk weaving, originated in France before 1788. But it was the
British who exploited it to drive down prices and increase profits. Moreover,
they had plenty of their own. “During the eighteenth century,” writes Tombs,
“there came an amazing succession of technological advances. Abraham Darby’s
iron smelting with coke (1709) bypassed the need for charcoal; Thomas
Newcomen’s steam engine (1712) permitted out the pumping out of deep
coalmines; John Kay’s flying shuttle (1733) speeded up weaving; James
Hargreaves’s spinning jenny (c. 1765) multiplied the effectiveness of hand-
spinning; Richard Arkwright’s water frame (1769) used power for spinning with
rollers; James Watt’s condenser (1769) meant economical steam power; Samuel
Crompton’s mule (1779) began mass production of high-quality yarn; Henry
Cort’s rolling mill (1783) speeded up production of iron; Edmund Cartwright’s
loom (1787) enabled water and steam power to be used to make cloth. These
transformed the productivity of workers and were continually improved. The
focused ingenuity that produced them was found among the often self-taught
artisans and businessmen who were already involved in the ‘industrious
revolution’. Ten ‘macro-inventers’ have been identified: those mentioned above,
plus John Smeaton (engineering) and Josiah Wedgwood (pottery). Three had
been to grammar schools and one, Cartwright (the son of a landed gentleman),
to Oxford. The others had little schooling, but had learned technical skills
through apprenticeship, adult education and experiment. Several had
Dissenting connections. Ordinary people thus changed history.
“What made these ingenious labour-saving technologies worthwhile were the

already high wages of English workers. Also, buoyant consumer demand
ensured that new technology made profits. Cheaper products then further fed
the growing demand for goods. Heavy investment in continuous technological
development was thus viable in England. By contrast, spinning jennies were not
taken up in France or India because labour was so cheap. The French
government was eager to obtain technology from England by industrial
espionage and by offering inducements to British entrepreneurs and workers.
Significantly, this did not always succeed. In 1785, with the help of the
364
ironmaster William Wilkinson, a huge plant producing the Continent’s first
coke-blast iron was built at Le Creuset, in eastern France. It soon became a white
elephant. Where wages and demand were low and skills rare, expensive
prestige projects rusted.
“The epoch-making technological innovation was to harness energy

generated from coal, marking the beginning of a transition from what has been
turned an ‘organic economy’ (wood-, wind-, water- and muscle-powered) to a
‘mineral economy’. This permitted England to overtake Holland in wealth and
India in manufacturing. It also did much to shape the country’s economic, social
and political geography, concentrating much of the new industrial activity near
the coalfields of the Midlands and the north. England had very large coal
deposits, which were indispensable to the Industrial Revolution. But so did
many other parts of the world, including India. It was only in England that the
mineral economy could take off, because it already had a sizeable coal industry
(80% of Europe’s production in 1700), principally to heat London, swollen by
centuries of mercantile development. Early steam power – Newcomen’s simple
‘atmospheric engine’ (c. 1712), which created a vacuum by heating and cooling
steam – used so much coal that it was only viable at the pit head, where fuel
costs were negligible. Continual improvements in fuel economy (such as Watt’s
condenser) gradually extended the use of steam, through it took until well into
the nineteenth century to producing a transforming effect on the English and
then the world economy through powered machinery, railways, steamships and
later electricity generation. It would be more than two centuries before the
global spread of the carbon economy began to pose an environmental threat to
the very well-being it had created…”619
The steam engine was perhaps the most important technological

innovation of this “take off” stage of the Industrial Revolution. It was
exploited particularly by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806 –1859), an
English engineer, who changed the face of the English landscape with
his groundbreaking designs and ingenious constructions. Brunel built
dockyards, the Great Western Railway, a series of steamships including
the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship, and numerous
important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionized public
transport and modern engineering. During his career, Brunel achieved
many engineering firsts, including assisting in the building of the first
tunnel under a navigable river, and development of SS Great Britain,
the first propeller-driven, ocean-going, iron ship, which, when built in
1843, was the largest ship ever built. 620 Brunel must rank prominently
in the ranks of those men who most changed the world – at any rate in
the physical, technological sense.
Hardly less important were George Stephenson (1781-1848), the “Father of the
Railways” and his son George. They built the Locomotion No. 1, the first steam
619
620
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel.
365
locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line, the Stockton and Darlington
Railway, in 1825.
But the most important innovations from a political as also from an

economic point of view were those in communications. As we have seen
it was through superior communications on a yacht Nathan Rothschild
made a record killing on the London stock market on 19 June 1815.
However, yachts were as nothing compared to the new, machine-produced
means of communication, such as trains and steamships. And hardly less
important than these were the electric telegraph (1835), the postage stamp
(1840), photography (we possess a very early photo of the Duke of Wellington)
and, especially, the modern, mass-produced newspaper.
The impact of the explosion in newspaper reading was so great that the
Austrian Chancellor Metternich wondered "whether society can exist along
with the liberty of the press." 621 Indeed, his secretary Friedrich Gentz wrote in
1819 to Adam Mueller: "I continue to defend the proposition: 'In order that the
press may not be abused, nothing whatever shall be printed in the next... years.
Period.' If this principle were to be applied as a binding rule, a very few rare
exceptions being authorized by a very clearly superior Tribunal, we should
within a brief time find our way back to God and Truth." 622
But the press could not be muzzled. And so in the 1848 revolution, "even the
most arch-reactionary Prussian junkers discovered... that they required a
newspaper capable of influencing 'public opinion' - in itself a concept linked
with liberalism and incompatible with traditional hierarchy." 623 As the poet
Robert Southey wrote: "The steam engine and the spinning engines, the mail
coach and the free publication of the debates in parliament... Hence follow in
natural and necessary consequences increased activity, enterprise, wealth and
power; but on the other hand, greediness of gain, looseness of principle,
wretchedness, disaffection and political insecurity." 624
While Ricardian theory and Rothschildian practice enabled a few to get rich
quick – mainly those with initial capital and entrepreneurial skills, - for the great
majority of Englishmen the nineteenth century meant the horror and squalor of
William Blake’s “satanic mills”. If “freedom” in liberal theory means “freedom
from”, it certainly did not mean freedom from poverty, disease or death for the
workers – many of them children - crowded together in filthy slums in
Manchester. The pollution of land, water and air was horrific - a quarter of
Victorian Britons died from bad air.625 In view of this, it is hardly surprising that
not only the poor, but also many of the better-off who pitied them, came to see
621
Metternich, in J.L. Talmon, Romanticism and Revolt: Europe 1815-1848, London: Thames &
Hudson, 1967, p. 35.
622
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution (1789-1848), London: Abacus, 1977, p. 281.
623
Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital (1848-1875), London: Abacus, 1975, p. 39.
624
Southey, in Talmon, op. cit., pp. 9-10.
625
366
look upon these liberal “freedoms” with jaundiced eyes… Later, of course,
largely under the pressure of humanitarian ideas and the labour movement,
capitalism did begin to restrain itself, thereby disproving Marx’s prophecy of its
imminent collapse. But the rise of collectivism was not checked by these
concessions, but was rather strengthened, as we see throughout Europe as the
nineteenth century progressed.
This is the generally accepted picture. But to what degree is it accurate? Let us
examine a “revisionist” point of view, that of Robert Tombs:- “Though long-term
the global consequences, good and bad, of the Industrial Revolution are obvious
the immediate effects on England and its people are less so. This has long been a
vexed question. From the beginning there were enemies of the new economy,
who attacked it on moral, social, aesthetic and eventually ideological grounds. It
was corrupting, encouraging luxury and vice; it was disruptive and ugly. Others
had praised ‘commercial society’, most famously the Scottish philosophers
David Hume and Adam Smith, who asserted that the new economy remedied
poverty and unemployment, and its ‘obvious and simple system of natural
liberty’ provided the basis for a peaceful, civilized, cooperative and stable
society. Individual self-betterment would serve the general good as if by ‘an
invisible hand’: ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the
baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.’ So
economic freedom was not only right, it was also productive. Oppression and
slavery were not only wrong, but also inefficient. Pessimistic and optimistic
interpretations have continued ever since, and have shaped English social and
political ideas.
“The fundamental question is whether the Industrial Revolution improved or

damaged the lives of the English people as a whole. ‘Optimists’ could point to
the undeniable increase in living standards that took place – eventually. They
inferred that technology and increased economic activity must have increased
wealth. ‘Pessimists’ argued that industrialization for many decades brought
workers little but cost them much – loss of independence and self-respect,
devaluation of skills, deteriorating health, high mortality, bad food, crushing
labour (for men, women and children) and destruction of cherished rights and
community traditions. In short, the Industrial Revolution created an
impoverished, downtrodden and embittered proletariat, ground down by the
power of money and the oppression of the ruling classes, and forced by long and
bitter struggle to assert their meager rights to a share in national wealth.
“What is the evidence? Much painstaking investigation has focused on

workers’ wages and living standards. Perhaps surprisingly, real wages barely
rose over the crucial period of the Industrial Revolution – by only 4 percent
between 1760 and 1820. Over this period working hours greatly increased.
Women and children worked more intensively, contributing about 25 percent of
family incomes. Food prices rose and diet deteriorated. Health and hygiene in
industrial cities worsened. Infant mortality was high and life expectancy low by
present-day standards, and both actually deteriorated. People’s physical
condition as measured by their height fell to one of its lowest ever levels and
showed marked difference between classes – over five inches’ difference
367
between rich and poor boys in 1790. It would seem that the pessimistic case is
amply proved, and that industrialization amounted to stunted and damaged
lives for generations of ordinary people.
“Looked at closely, the picture is less stark. More optimistic views see
economic changes, for good and bad, as linked to the aspirations and choices,
however limited, or ordinary working people, who were not hostile to the
market economy or indifferent to the goods it brought. English wages did not
rise partly because they were already very high by world standards, and they
remained among the highest in the world over the period of industrialization. A
sharp and continuous rise took place from the mid-nineteenth century onwards,
when new industries and technologies had grown sufficiently to transform the
whole economy. The average fall in height may have been due not to new
factory conditions, but to increasing work in agriculture at a young age (the
same fall can be seen in the nineteenth-century United States), and is therefore
probably a consequence of the ‘industrious revolution’ rather than of
‘proletarianized’ labour in factories. Moreover, French, Italian and Austrian men
were smaller still than Englishmen. English workers’ attainment of a relative
degree of prosperity brought what we now know to be unhealthy choices (more
alcohol, tobacco, sugar and meat), health risks and family stress. Similar things
can be seen in the slums of Mumbai or Rio today: appalling and life-threatening
conditions, but which also mean a chance to escape from age-old poverty and
cultural and social immobility. Indeed, England’s political stability must in part
be due to many people being able to aspire to improvement, and even to attain
it.
“There is, finally, a factor which most specialists now agree resolves the
‘optimist’/’pessimist’ debate: England was experiencing a sudden demographic
boom unique in its history. The population more than tripled in 150 years, from
5.2 million in 1701 to 17.9 million in 1851. The reason is simple: increasing wages
and job opportunities after the Restoration – the ‘industrious revolution’ again –
which enabled people to marry several years’ younger on average than before,
and which meant more children. The inevitable result of this process in other
times and places was a sharp fall in living standards as numbers outran
resources, reducing life expectancy, restricting births, or bringing even more
severe consequences such as famines, epidemics or wars. These are the famous
‘Malthus checks’ first theorized by the Rev. Thomas Malthus in his Essay on the
Principle of Population (1798). The consequences were visible in southern and
central Europe, where living standards deteriorated sharply between 1500 and
1800, and real wages had dropped to a half or a third of those in England. Given
its exceptional population explosion, eighteenth-century England was logically
heading for a similar collapse in living standards and widespread misery.
“But it did not happen... There was certainly hardship, especially during and
immediately after the Napoleonic Wars, in 1811-12 and 1816-21, when the whole
country and its economic system were under strain. On top of that came a
Continent-wide run of bad harvests, the worst of them due to a catastrophic
volcanic eruption in the East Indies in April 1815, which disrupted global
climate and caused widespread famine. In England, there was hunger and
368
economic instability. But there was no economic disaster – as there might well
have been had Napoleon won and wrecked British trade. And there was no
political catastrophe. What was once seen as the ‘stagnation’ or ‘decline’ of
English workers’ living standards should properly be seen as their maintenance
of a relatively high level. This stands out in comparison with disastrous
increases in poverty in many parts of Europe since the seventeenth century.
“How, in adverse circumstances, were English living standards maintained?

By growing the towns, especially manufacturing and commercial centres, such
as London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham. By creating new jobs in
textiles, metalworking and commerce. By supporting incomes through the Poor
Law. And be defending access to export markets by defeating Napoleon.
“During several decades, things might still have gone badly wrong. But by
the 1850s a ‘second stage’ of industrialization was beginning. By 1850 Britain’s
GDP had overtaken that of the world’s most populous country, China – a lead it
maintained for more than 150 years. Productivity was transformed by the cheap
energy of the ‘mineral economy’, permitting what economists have called a
breakout to permanent economic growth. This finally brought it the second of
the nineteenth century an unambiguous increase in workers’ living standards.
Thus was established, in difficult and dangerous circumstances, the prototype of
a new society…”626
The Industrial Revolution had this important spiritual effect, not only in
England but throughout the world and to the present day: by increasing the
number of urban dwellers and reducing the number of country dwellers, it
increased the power of the state over the citizen. For the country dweller
generally has a degree of independence: he grows his own food and lives in his
own house. But when he moves to the town he loses this independence, and
with it his independence of mind, making him more amenable to the influence of
demagogues and mass movements such as socialism…
626
Tombs, op. cit., pp. 37- 382.
369
44. THE AMERICAN DREAM
We have seen that Hegel, for all his admiration of the Prussian State as the
embodiment of the World Spirit, saw the land of the future as America. This was
one of the few genuine insights of his philosophy. For indeed, in the early
nineteenth century America was beginning to spread her wings…
Of all the major countries that can be called European in the cultural sense,
America was the most advanced from the liberal point of view (just as Russia
was the most “backward”). Her economic system was more purely capitalist
than any other’s, and her system of government was more democratic than any
other’s; for the scourges of despotism and feudalism had been more effectively
removed from America than from any other country. In spite of this, American
democracy had its critics, even among democrats.
Thus the New Yorker Thomas Whitney declared: "I take direct issue with
democracy. If democracy implies universal suffrage, or the right of all men to
take part in the control of the State without regard to the intelligence, the
morals, or the principles of the man, I am no democrat... As soon would I place
my person and property at the mercy of an infuriated mob... as place the
liberties of my country in the hands of an ignorant, superstitious, and
vacillating populace."627
One of the best of America’s critics was the French aristocrat Alexis de
Tocqueville, who came to America in 1831 and whose Democracy in America was
published in 1835. ‘Following his famous visit to America,” writes Stephen Holt,
“he suggested that democracy, if unchecked by religion and other forms of
association, could well be characterized by self-destructive individualism,
oppressive egalitarianism and an anxious desire to acquire, or be provided with,
material well being.”628 An important fault of American democracy, he
considered, was what he called “the tyranny of the majority”, whose power
threatened to become not only predominant, but irresistible: “The moral
authority of the majority is partly based on the notion that there is more
enlightenment and wisdom in a numerous assembly than in a single man, and
the number of the legislators is more important than how they are chosen. It is
the theory of equality applied to brains. This doctrine attacks the last asylum of
human pride; for that reason the minority is reluctant in admitting it and takes a
long time to get used to it…
“The idea that the majority has a right based on enlightenment to govern
society was brought to the United States by its first inhabitants; and this idea,
which would of itself be enough to create a free nation, has by now passed into
mores and affects even the smallest habits of life…”629
627
Whitney, in David Reynolds, America, Empire of Liberty, London: Penguin, 2010, pp. 171-172.
628
Holt, review of De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America in History Today, May 2001, p. 58.
629
De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, New York: Fontana, 1968, vol. I, pp. 305-306.
370
One effect, paradoxically, of this freedom was extreme intolerance of any
minority opinion. “I know of no country in which there is so little independence
of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. The majority raises
formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author
may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.” 630
This contributed to a general “dumbing down” of culture, although this

cultivated Frenchman admitted it also prevented complete brutalization. “Few
pleasures are either very refined or very coarse, and highly polished manners
are as uncommon as great brutality of tastes. Neither men of great learning nor
extremely ignorant communities are to be met with; genius becomes more rare,
information more diffused. There is less perfection, but more abundance in all
the productions of the arts.”631
This state of affairs was facilitated by the fact that there was no native
American aristocracy, and few minority interests (except those of the Indians
and Negroes) which were directly and permanently antagonistic to the interests
of the majority. “Hence the majority in the United States has immense actual
power and a power of opinion which is almost as great. When once its mind is
made up on any question, there are, so to say, no obstacles which can retard,
much less halt, its progress and give it time to hear the wails of those it crushes
as it passes.
“The consequences of this state of affairs are fate-laden and dangerous for the
future…”632
One of the consequences was legislative instability, “an ill inherent in

democratic government because it is the nature of democracies to bring new
men to power…. Thus American laws have a shorter duration than those of any
other country in the world today. Almost all American constitutions have been
amended within the last thirty years, and so there is no American state which
has not modified the basis of its laws within that period…
“As the majority is the only power whom it is important to please, all its
projects are taken up with great ardour; but as soon as its attention is turned
elsewhere, all these efforts cease; whereas in free European states, where the
administrative authority has an independent existence and an assured position,
the legislator’s wishes continue to be executed even when he is occupied by
other matters.”633
But, continues de Tocqueville, “I regard it as an impious and detestable

maxim that in matters of government the majority of a people has the right to do
everything, and nevertheless I place the origin of all powers in the will of the
majority. Am I in contradiction with myself?
630
De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, in Barzun, op. cit., p. 538.
631
De Tocqueville, On the Effects of Future Democratization, 1840.
632
De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, pp. 306-307.
633
De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, pp. 307-308.
371
“There is one law which has been made, or at least adopted, not by the
majority of this or that people, but by the majority of all men. That law is justice.
“Justice therefore forms the boundary to each people’s right.
“A nation is like a jury entrusted to represent universal society and to apply

the justice which is its law. Should the jury representing society have greater
power than that very society whose laws it applies?
“Consequently, when I refuse to obey an unjust law, I by no means deny the

majority’s right to give orders; I only appeal from the sovereignty of the people
to the sovereignty of the human race.”634
In a believing age, instead of “the sovereignty of the human race”, the phrase
would have been: “the sovereignty of God” or “the authority of the Church as
the representative of God”. But after this obeisance to the atheist and democratic
temper of his age, de Tocqueville does in fact invoke the sovereignty of God. For
the essential fact is that the majority – even the majority of the human race – can
be wrong, and that only God is infallible. “Omnipotence in itself seems a bad
and dangerous thing. I think that its exercise is beyond man’s strength, whoever
he be, and that only God can be omnipotent without danger because His
wisdom and justice are always equal to His power. So there is no power on earth
in itself so worthy of respect or vested with such a sacred right that I would wish
to let it act without control and dominate without obstacles. So when I see the
right and capacity to do all given to any authority whatsoever, whether it be
called people or king, democracy or aristocracy, and whether the scene of action
is a monarchy or a republic, I say: the germ of tyranny is there, and I will go look
for other laws under which to live.
“My greatest complaint against democratic government as organised in the

United States is not, as many Europeans make out, its weakness, but rather its
irresistible strength. What I find most repulsive in America is not the extreme
freedom reigning there, but the shortage of guarantees against tyranny.
“When a man or a party suffers an injustice in the United States, to whom can
he turn? To public opinion? That is what forms the majority. To the legislative
body? It represents the majority and obeys it blindly. To the executive power? It
is appointed by the majority and serves as its passive instrument. To the police?
They are nothing but the majority under arms. A jury? The jury is the majority
vested with the right to pronounce judgement; even the judges in certain states
are elected by the majority. So, however, iniquitous or unreasonable the measure
which hurts you, you must submit.
“But suppose you were to have a legislative body so composed that it

represented the majority without being necessarily the slave of its passions, an
executive power having a strength of its own, and a judicial power independent
634
De Tocqueville, op. cit., pp. 309-310.
372
of the other two authorities; then you would still have a democratic government,
but there would be hardly any remaining risk of tyranny.”635
Towards the end of his great work, de Tocqueville describes in a remarkably

prescient manner how he sees democracy changing into a benevolent yet sinister
despotism: “I ask myself in what form will despotism reappear in the world. I
see an immense agglomeration of people, all equal and alike, each of them
restlessly active in getting for himself petty and vulgar pleasures which fill his
whole being. Each of them, left to himself, is stranger to the fate of all the others.
A vast, protecting power overshadows them. This power alone is responsible for
securing their satisfaction and for watching over their fates. The power is
absolute, concerned with every detail, smooth in operation, takes account of the
future, and is not harsh… The power wants all citizens to be happy, provided
that happiness is their sole aim. It works willingly for their well-being, but
insists upon being the source of this well-being and the sole judge of what it
should consist. It gives them security, foresees and supplies their needs,
facilitates their pleasures, conducts the principal business of their live, manages
their industries, divides their properties and regulates their inheritances and, in
short, saves them from the trouble of thinking and the difficulties of living.
“This tutelary power is continuously at work to render less useful and more
infrequent the use of free-will; the sphere of liberty of decision is thus restricted
more and more until every citizen loses, as it were, the control of himself.
Equality has conditioned men for all these transformations and prepared to
accept such things and even to welcome them as beneficial.
“After having brought the individual, stage by stage, into its mighty bonds
and moulded him to its wishes, the sovereign extends its tentacles over the
community as a whole, and covers the surface of society with a network of little
rules, complicated, detailed and uniform, but from beneath which the more
original minds and the more vigorous personalities can find no way of
extricating themselves and rising above the crowd. The sovereign does not break
the wills of the subjects; it enervates them, bends them to its purpose, directs
them, rarely forcing them to act, but continually preventing them from action; it
does not destroy, but merely prevents things from coming to life; it never
tyrannizes, but it hampers, dumps down, constricts, suffocates, and at the last
reduces every nation to the level of timid and industrious animals of whom the
Government is the shepherd…
“This kind of regulated servitude, well regulated placid and gentle, could be
combined – more easily than one would think possible – with the forms of
liberty and could even establish itself under the shadow of the sovereignty of the
people.”636
635
De Tocqueville, op. cit., pp. 311- 313. “I am guided by Alexis de Tocqueville,” writes
Charles C. Camosy, “in my assessment of the course of liberal democracy, who observed
that as democracy becomes ‘more itself,’ it becomes ‘less itself.’ Thus, the end station of
democracy, according to Tocqueville, was despotism” (“Why Individualist Liberalism
Wins, and the Catholic Side Loses”, Crux, December 19, 2017).
636
De Tocqueville, op. cit.
373
The democratic government de Tocqueville had in mind here as preventing
the tyranny of the majority was probably that of England, with its rule by “the
king in parliament”, its respect for custom and strong aristocratic element.
England’s aristocratic element did indeed protect the English from some of
the excesses of democracy for a time, eliciting the comment of Konstantin
Petrovich Pobedonostsev that parliamentary government was possible only in
England. Nevertheless, the process of further democratization was inexorable.
In this context, and in the light of our modern experience of democracy, it will
be useful to examine the estimate of de Tocqueville given by his fellow
Frenchman and fierce anti-communist, Jean-François Revel: “Tocqueville the
visionary depicted with stunning precision the coming ascension of the
omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient state that twentieth-century man
knows so well; the state as protector, entrepreneur, educator; the physician-state,
helpful and predatory, tyrant and guardian, economist, journalist, moralist,
shipper, trader, advertiser, banker, father and jailer all at once. The state ransoms
and the state subsidizes. It settles without violence into a wheedling, meticulous
despotism that no monarchy, no tyranny, no political authority of the past had
the means to achieve. Its power borders on the absolute partly because it is
scarcely felt, having increased by imperceptible stages at the wish of its subjects,
who turn to it instead of to each other. In these pages by Tocqueville we find the
germ both of George Orwell’s 1984 and David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd.
“In one sense, history has endorsed Tocqueville’s reasoning and, in another,
has invalidated it. He has been proved right insofar as the power of public
opinion has indeed increased in the democracies through the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. But public opinion has not grown more consistent or
uniform; it has in fact become increasingly volatile and diversified. And the
state, instead of gaining strength in proportion to its gigantism, is increasingly
disobeyed and challenged by the very citizens who expect so much from it.
Submerged by the demands on it, called on to solve all problems, it is being
steadily stripped of the right to regulate things.
“So the omnipotence based on consensus that Tocqueville forecast is only one
side of the coin of modern government. The other is an equally general
impotence to deal with the conflicting daily claims made on it by constituents
eager for aid but less and less willing to assume obligations. By invading every
area of life, the democratic state has stuffed itself with more responsibilities than
powers. The very contradictions among special interests that are as legitimate as
they are incompatible, all expecting to be treated with equal goodwill, show that
the state’s duties are expanding faster than its means of performing them. There
is no denying how burdensome a tutelary government is on society – provided
we add that its expansion makes it vulnerable, often paralysing it in its relations
with client groups that are quicker to harry it than obey it.
“This sort of behavior splinters democratic societies into separate groups,

each battling for advantage and caring little for the interests of others or society
374
as a whole. Public opinion, instead of being united by uniform thinking, is
fragmented into a variety of cultures that can be so different in tastes, ways of
living, attitudes and language that they understand each other only dimly, if at
all. They coexist but do not mingle. Public opinion in today’s democracies forms
an archipelago, not a continent. Each island in the chain ranks its own
distinctiveness above membership in a national group and even higher above its
association with a group of democratic nations.
“In one sense, we do live in a mass era as residents of a ‘planetary village’

where manners and fashions blend. But, paradoxically, we also live in an age of
the triumph of minorities, of a juxtaposition of widely differing attitudes. While
it is obvious that the passion for equality, identified by Tocqueville as the drive
wheel of democracy, generates uniformity, let’s not forget that democracy also
rests on a passion for liberty, which fosters diversity, fragmentation,
unorthodoxy. Plato, democracy’s shrewdest enemy, saw this when he compared
it to a motley cloak splashed with many colours. In a democracy, he said,
everyone claims the right to lives as he chooses [Republic 8], so that ways of
living multiply and jostle each other. To Aristotle, too, liberty was the basic
principle of democracy. He broke this down into two tenets: ‘for all to rule and
be ruled in turn’ and ‘a man should live as he likes’. In American democracy, the
right to do one’s own thing is as much or more cherished than equality.” 637
More cherished even than the Christianity that they so prided themselves on,
which exhorted men to be “free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice” (I Peter
2.16)...
This brings us to the question of American religion and the secular religion of
Americanness. “In America,” wrote Sir Roger Scruton in 2002, “religion has been
a vital force in building the nation. The initial unity of faith among the Pilgrim
Fathers rapidly disintegrated, however, and while religious worship remains an
important feature of the American experience, freedom of conscience has been
guaranteed from the beginning by the Bill of Rights. This does not mean that
America is a secular nation, or that religion has no part to play in establishing
the legitimacy of American institutions. It means, rather, that all the many
religions of America are bound to acknowledge the authority of the territorial
law, and that each renounces the right to intrude on the claims of the state.
Furthermore, these religions come under pressure to divert their emotional
currents into the common flow of patriotic sentiment: the God of the American
sects speaks with an American accent.
“The patriotism that upholds the nation-state may embellish itself with far-
reaching and even metaphysical ideas like the theories of race and culture that
derive from Herder, Fichte and the German romantics. But it might just as easily
rest content with a kind of mute sense of belonging – an inarticulate experience
of neighbourliness – founded in the recognition that this place where we live is
637
Revel, How Democracies Perish, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985, pp. 13-15.
375
ours. This is the patriotism of the village, of the rural community, and also of the
city street, and it has been a vital force in the building of modern America.
Indeed, in the last analysis, national identity, like territorial jurisdiction, is an
outgrowth of the experience of a common home.
“Of course, if people turn their backs on one another, live behind closed doors
in suburban isolation, then this sense of neighbourliness dwindles. But it can
also be restored through the ‘little platoons’ described by Burke and recognized
by Tocqueville as the true lifeblood of America. By joining clubs and societies, by
forming teams, troupes, and competitions, by acquiring sociable hobbies and
outgoing modes of entertainment, people come to feel that they and their
neighbours belong together, and this ‘belonging’ has more importance, in times
of emergency, than any private difference in matters of religion or family life.
Indeed, freedom of association has an inherent tendency to generate territorial
loyalties and so to displace religion from the public to the private realm…” 638
This may have been true in the nineteenth century, or even in some parts in
the 1950s, but feels outdated today, in the twenty-first century, when social
cohesiveness has declined drastically, political divides have become much
deeper and fiercer, and religion has been not only banished to the private realm,
but been invaded and trampled on. True cohesiveness does not exist without the
true faith, which the Americans did not possess (although they gave refuge to
many immigrants having the true faith). Hence the sage words of President John
Adams: “We have no government capable of contending with human passions,
unbridled by morality and religion… Our constitution was made only for a
moral and religious people.”
Let us turn to America’s attitude to other nations.
While the Old World was tearing itself apart, the newly independent power
of the United States was sheltered from the turmoil not only by the vast expanse
of the Atlantic Ocean,639 but also by its own very distinctive understanding of
itself and its role in the world.
In his Farewell Address of 1796 President George Washington

admonished his countrymen to avoid allowing the newly independent
United States to be dragged into the ongoing wars and strife that
characterized Europe. “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to
foreign nations,” he said, “is in extending our commercial relations, to
have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we
have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect
good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests
which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be
engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially
638
Scruton, The Rest and the West, London: Continuum, 2002, pp. 47-49.
639
The English revolutionary Tom Paine managed to cross it, but was very tepidly received.
376
foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to
implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her
politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships
or enmities. Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us
to pursue a different course.”
“In other words,” writes Protopresbyter James Thornton, “while

friendship and trade with all countries is a good thing, the United
States should maintain strict neutrality when it comes to Europe’s
seemingly everlasting quarrels since they involve nothing that concerns
this country.
“President Thomas Jefferson spoke similarly when, in his 1801 inaugural
address, he advocated ‘peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,
entangling alliances with none.’ That policy of friendship and trade with all, but
alliances with none, remained the cornerstone of our country’s foreign policy
throughout the 19th century. Indeed, during that time there were occasional
conflicts with other nations. But these involved the immediate interests, or the
defense of the sovereignty, of the United States. Let us review major events in
America’s foreign policy during that period.
“An example of a policy that involved America’s interests was the First
Barbary War, which began in 1801. Pirates along the North African coast
regularly attacked commercial vessels, including those of the United States,
seizing them and either holding their captives for ransom or selling them into
slavery. In exchange for tribute payments, the Pasha of Tripoli offered protection
against these attacks. For some time, the United States paid the protection
money, but when Tripoli demanded increased payments, the United States
refused. A squadron of ships was sent to the Mediterranean and, when
threatened by Tripolitanian pirates, engaged them in battle. A blockade was
enforced against Tripoli, and both sea and land battles ensued. The climax came
when a U.S.-led army crossed the desert from Alexandria to the city of Derna,
which was captured. The Pasha, fearful of further encroachment by the U.S.
forces, agreed to terms and signed a peace treaty that satisfied American
concerns. A Second Barbary War was fought in 1815 when the Barbary States
returned to their old practices. Two powerful American squadrons under
Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur entered the
Mediterranean, attacking and capturing enemy ships. U.S. envoys demanded an
end to piracy and threatened the North African rulers. The war ended with a
new treaty that guaranteed American rights in the Mediterranean, granted
compensation for American losses, and freed American and European captives.
“Another example of war to uphold American interests was the War of 1812,
declared by the United States against Britain on June 18, 1812. Hostilities were
brought about when Britain stopped American ships on the high seas to seize
American seamen and impress, or force, them to serve in the Royal Navy. That
was a direct assault on American sovereignty and an attack on the ability of the
United States to sail the oceans of the world for purposes of peaceful commerce
and communication unmolested. To make matters worse, Britain tried to foment
an uprising by Indians on the American frontier. After more than two years of
377
war, during which part of Maine was occupied and the U.S. capital burned,
negotiations brought peace. The Treaty of Ghent was signed in December 1814,
in which American grievances were satisfactorily addressed.” 640
As the nineteenth century progressed, however, another aspect of American

foreign policy emerged… Having been a colony that had won its independence
from an imperialist power, the United States has always been officially an anti-
imperialist State. So it is something of a surprise to discover that in the very year
of the Declaration of Independence, leading American politicians were
foreseeing the growth of an empire. Thus Ferguson writes: “When, in the draft
Articles of Confederation of July, 1776, John Dickinson proposed setting western
boundaries of the states, the idea was thrown out at the committee stage. To
George Washington the United States was a ‘nascent empire’, later an ‘infant
empire’. Thomas Jefferson told James Madison he was ‘persuaded no
constitution was ever before as well calculated as ours for extending extensive
empire and self-government.’ The initial ‘confederacy’ of thirteen would be ‘the
nest from which all America, North and South [would] be peopled.’ Indeed,
Jefferson used his inaugural address in 1801 to observe that the short history of
the United States had already furnished ‘a new proof for the falsehood of
Montesquieu’s doctrine, that a republic can be preserved only in a small
territory. The reverse is the truth.’ Madison agreed; in the tenth of the Federalist
Papers he forcefully argued for ‘extend[ing] the sphere’ to create a larger
republic. Alexander Hamilton too referred to the United States – in the opening
paragraph of the first of the Federalist Papers as ‘in many respects the most
interesting… empire… in the world.’ He looked forward eagerly to the
emergence of a ‘great American system, superior to the control of all trans-
Atlantic force of influence, and able to dictate the terms of connection between
the Old and the New World.’”641
Henry Kissinger explains how this quasi-imperialist element of American

foreign policy arose: “The openness of American culture and its democratic
principles made the United States a model and a refuge for millions. At the same
time, the conviction that American principles were universal has introduced a
challenging element into the international system because it implies that
governments not practicing them are less than fully legitimate. This tenet – so
engrained in American thinking that is only occasionally put forward as official
policy – suggests that a significant portion of the world lives under a kind of
unsatisfactory, probationary arrangement, and will one day be redeemed; in the
meantime, their relations with the world’s strongest power must have some
latent adversarial element to them.
“These tensions have been inherent since the beginning of the American
experience. For Thomas Jefferson, America was not only a great power in the
making but an ‘empire for liberty’ – an ever-expanding force acting on behalf of
all humanity to vindicate principles of good governance. As Jefferson wrote
during his presidency: ‘We feel that we are acting under obligations not confined
640
Thornton, “Partnering with Putin”, New American, November 20, 2015,
http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/21998-partnering-with-putin.
641
Ferguson, Empire: How Britain made the Modern World, London: Penguin Books, 2003, p. 34.
378
to the limits of our society. It is impossible not to be sensible that we are acting
for all mankind; that circumstances denied to others, but indulged to us, have
imposed on us the duty of proving what is the degree of freedom and self-
government in which a society may venture to leave its individual members.’
“So defined, the spread of the United States and the success of its endeavors
was coterminous with the interests of humanity. Having doubled the size of the
new country through his shrewd engineering of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803,
in retirement Jefferson ‘candidly confess[ed]’ to President Monroe, ‘I have ever
looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to
our system of States.’ And to James Madison, Jefferson wrote, ‘We should then
have only to include the North [Canada] in our confederacy… and we should
such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation: & I am
persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for
extensive empire & self government.’ The empire envisaged by Jefferson and his
colleagues differed, in their minds, from the European empires, which they
considered based on the subjugation and oppression of foreign peoples. The
empire imagined by Jefferson was in essence North American and conceived as
the extension of liberty. (And in fact, whatever may be said about the
contradictions in this prospect or of the personal lives of its Founders, as the
United States expanded and thrived, so too did democracy, and the aspiration
toward it spread and took root across the hemisphere and the world.)” 642
Soon this “empire for liberty” was conceived as embracing not only North but
also Central and South America. In 1823, as we have seen, President James
Monroe asserted his famous “Monroe doctrine”, which Ferguson calls “the fons
et origo of American grand strategy”. It asserted “as a principle… that the
American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have
assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future
colonization by any European powers”. The point of the Monroe doctrine,
according to Thornton, “was to keep any European conflicts from spilling over
into the Americas and, thereby, to avoid ensnaring the United States in Europe’s
disputes”643 Almost inevitably, however, it came to be seen by some as giving
America exclusive right to interfere anywhere in the western hemisphere where
she considered her own interests to be at stake… Moreover, in excluding Spain
from the Americas, it encouraged the growth of rebellions against Spanish
power throughout the region.
Kissinger writes: “In the United State, the Monroe Doctrine was interpreted as
the extension of the War of Independence, sheltering the Western Hemisphere
from the operation of the European balance of power. No Latin American
countries were consulted (not least because few existed at the time). As the
frontiers of the nation crept across the continent, the expansion of America was
seen as the operation of a kind of law of nature. When the United States
practiced what elsewhere was defined as imperialism, Americans gave it
another name: ‘the fulfilment of our manifest destiny to overspread the
642
Kissinger, op. cit., pp. 235-237.
643
Thornton, op. cit.
379
continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly
multiplying millions.’ The acquisition of vast tracts of territory was treated as a
commercial transaction in the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France
and as the inevitable consequence of this Manifest Destiny in the case of Mexico.
It was not until the close of the nineteenth century in the Spanish-American War
of 1898, that the United States engaged in full-scale hostilities with another major
power…
“The success of the United States, [wrote the United States Magazine and
Democratic Review,] would serve as a standing rebuke to all other forms of
government, ushering in a future democratic age. A great, free union, divinely
sanctioned and towering above all other states, would spread its principles
throughout the Western Hemisphere – a power destined to become greater in
scope and in moral purpose than any previous human endeavour: ‘We are the
nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward
march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can. The United States was
thus not simply a country but an engine of God’s plan and the epitome of world
order.
“In 1845, when American westward expansion embroiled the country in a

dispute with Britain over the Oregon Territory and with Mexico over the
Republic of Texas (which had seceded from Mexico and declared its intent to
join the United States),644 the magazine concluded that the annexation of Texas
was a defensive measure against the foes of liberty. The author reasoned that
‘California will probably, next fall away’ from Mexico, and an American sweep
north into Canada would likely follow. The continental force of America, he
reasoned, would eventually render Europe’s balance of power inconsequential
by its sheer countervailing weight. Indeed the author of the Democratic Review
644
“In 1836, the Republic of Texas came into being, having achieved independence
from Mexico. It was subsequently recognized as a sovereign country by the United
States and several European countries. In October 1845, a substantial majority of the
citizens of Texas voted in favor of union with the United States. That union became
official in February 1846. Unfortunately, there arose a dispute between the United
States and Mexico as to the precise location of the western borders of Texas.
“Texas had always claimed all of the territory as far south as the Rio Grande,
while Mexico insisted that the borders of Texas extended no further south than the
Nueces River, a difference involving a huge swath of territory. Both the United
States and Mexico sent in troops. In April 1846, a large Mexican force ambushed
and overwhelmed a small American force of about 80 men, killing 11, wounding six,
and capturing the remainder. President Polk stated that Mexico had invaded
American territory and shed American blood, and asked Congress to declare war,
which it did. As a result of the American victory in that war, the United States
gained not only Texas, but also the territory that is now California, Nevada, Utah,
Arizona, New Mexico, most of Colorado, and a small portion of Wyoming. For that,
the United States paid Mexico $15 million (the equivalent today of nearly $500
million), and the United States agreed to assume the debts owed by Mexico to
American citizens, amounting to $3.25 million (the equivalent today of about $88.6
million). Later, in 1854, Mexico agreed to sell what today is southern Arizona and a
small slice of land in southwest New Mexico to the United States for $10 million
(the equivalent today of about $260 million). The land was needed so that a
transcontinental railroad could be constructed along a southern route that avoided
mountainous terrain.” (Thornton, op. cit. ) (V.M.)
380
article foresaw a day, one hundred years hence – that is, 1945 – when the United
States would outweigh even a unified, hostile Europe: ‘Though they should cast
into the opposite scale all the bayonets and cannons, not only of France and
England, but of Europe entire, how would it kick the beam against the simple,
solid weight of the two hundred and fifty, or three hundred million – and
American millions – destined to gather beneath the flutter of the stripes and
stars, in the fast hastening year of the Lord 1945!’
“This is, in fact, what transpired (except that the Canadian border was
peacefully demarcated, and England was not part of a hostile Europe in 1945,
but rather an ally). Bombastic and prophetic, the vision of America transcending
and counterbalancing the harsh doctrines of the Old World would inspire a
nation – often while being largely ignored elsewhere or prompting consternation
– and reshape the course of history…”645
But while America was fulfilling her “Manifest Destiny”, millions were dying
to make way for the coming Universal Empire of Liberty. These were, of course,
the American Indians, whose treatment at the hands of the Americans was much
worse than, for example, the treatment of the Siberian natives by the Russians.
(And the relatives of the Siberian natives in Alaska wept when the Russian flag
was taken down for the last time when the United States bought Alaska in 1867.)
“The indigenous population [of North America],” writes William Landes, “was
uprooted repeatedly to make way for land-hungry newcomers. The Indians
fought back, the more so as settler expansion entailed repeated violations of
ostensibly sacred and eternal agreements – as long as the sun would shine and
the waters run. The white man broke faith at will, while the natives were
slaughtered... Here… technology made the difference. Repeating weapons,
batch- or mass-produced with roughly interchangeable parts, multiplied the
firepower of even small numbers and made Indian resistance hopeless.” 646
Noam Chomsky has called the white man’s slaughter of the
American Indians “pure genocide… Current estimates are that north of
the Rio Grande, there were about twelve to fifteen million Native
Americans at the time Columbus landed, something like that. By the
time Europeans reached the continental borders of the United States,
there were about 200,000. Okay: mass genocide. Across the whole
Western Hemisphere, the population decline was probably on the order
of from a hundred million people to about five million. That’s pretty
serious stuff – it was horrifying right from the beginning in the early
seventeenth century, then it got worse after the United States was
established, and it just continued until finally the native populations
were basically stuck away in little enclaves. The history of treaty
violations by the United States is just grotesque: treaties with the
Indian nations by law have a status the same as that of treaties among
sovereign states, but throughout our history nobody ever paid the
slightest attention to them – as soon as they wanted more land, you just
forgot the treaty and robbed it; it’s a very ugly and vicious history.
645
Kissinger, op. cit., pp. 240, 243-244.
646
Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, London: Abacus, 1999, p. 305.
381
Hitler in fact used the treatment of the Native Americans as a model,
explicitly – he said, that’s what we’re going to do with the Jews…” 647
The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin had, like Hegel, been attracted at first to
the United States. However, after reading a review of a book on the North
American Indians, he changed his mind: “My respect for this new people and its
constitution, the fruit of the newest enlightenment,” he wrote, “has been
severely shaken. With amazement we have seen democracy in its disgusting
cynicism, its cruel prejudices, its intolerable tyranny…”648
America remained a land of opportunity, even a dream, for many millions of

future immigrants; but in spite of the fresh beginning it provided, the passions
of “Old Europe” – more exactly, of fallen humanity in general – remained
endemic in the land of the free, while for the native Indians the dream of
freedom very early on turned into a nightmare…
647
Chomsky, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, London: Vintage, 2003, p. 135.
648
Pushkin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij (Complete Works), 1949, vol. 12.
382
45. THE JULY DAYS
“The latter half of the eighteenth century,” writes Bernard Cornwell, “had
been a long struggle for supremacy between France and Britain. The Seven Years
War drove the French from North America, but France had its revenge in the
American Revolution when its army, allied with George Washington’s forces,
decisively defeated the British and so secured independence for the United
States. Ten years later the Revolutionary Wars began, and except for one brief
respite in 1802, those wars would last till 1815. Waterloo ended the struggle and
ensured that Britain would dominate the nineteenth century…” 649
Britain’s power was expressed not only in its control of the sea and world
trade, but also, and more importantly, in its export of the idea of liberalism,
which it did not invent but which it successfully protected and promoted
throughout the world. The years 1792-1815 had discredited both absolutism
and its opposite, the communistic ideas of Danton, Robespierre and Babeuf.
Liberalism and constitutionalism was “the third option”, in Burke’s opinion,
between the “despotism of the monarch” and the “despotism of the
multitude”.
The Bourbon restoration in 1815 did not restore full absolutism. For if
Jacobin tyranny, and Napoleonic imperialism were now discredited, there were
few who wanted a return to the pre-revolutionary, old regime, even if that had
been possible. And so, while Louis XVIII's powers were declared to rest on a
divine mandate, a bicameral legislature on the English model was established,
and in 1821 the rights of citizens to freedom of religion and thought were
reaffirmed.
While Louis XVIII was forced to allow a certain degree of constitutionalism,

his successor, Charles X, tried to turn the clock back, and his coronation
ceremony in Rheims in 1825 had all the ceremonial of the ancien regime,
including the medieval practice of touching for scrofula. 650 But Charles was not
popular, and in July, 1830 he was overthrown. 651 The July Days introduced a
649
Cornwell, Waterloo, London: William Collins, 2014, p. 340.
650
W.M. Spellman, Monarchies, London: Reaktion Books, 2001, p. 208.
651
Even allies of De Maistre, such as the ultra-royalist and ultramontane priest Felicité de
Lamennais became disillusioned with Charles X. "To Lamennais, the July 1830 revolution was
providential; the world was to be given a new lease of life through freedom and freedom was to
be given a new lease of life through God. With his friends Lacordaire, Montalembert, de Coux
and Gerbet, on 15 October 1830 Lamennais founded a journal with the title L'Avenir (The
Future), which carried at its masthead 'God and Freedom'. The journal was of interest to those
who were fighting for independence: the Poles, the Irish. It proposed a renewal of the church
and society based on freedom: freedom of conscience and worship without distinction, the
separation of church and state, the freedom of the press and of association, decentralization, and
so on. De Coux aroused his readers to the social question. The tone of the journal was sometimes
over the top. The bishops, who thought that the idea of separation of church and state was
unthinkable, showed their disapproval by applying indirect sanctions against the subscribers.
L'Avenir ceased publication on 15 November 1831. Frowned on by the French bishops,
383
constitutional monarchy headed by another Bourbon, Louis-Philippe, the Duke
of Orléans. As Alistair Horne writes, “his acceptability to both sides in 1830
stemmed largely from the fact that his father had been the duplicitous regicide
Philippe Egalité – though apostasy had not sufficed to save his neck during the
Terror. Louis-Philippe had been nominated for the post of Lieutenant-General
of the Kingdom by both Charles X and the Commune of Paris, and for the
remainder of his eighteen-year rule between revolutions he would do his
utmost to be all things to all sides. It was symbolic that the last King of France,
the very antithesis of Louis XIV, accepted the crown not at Rheims but in the
Palais Bourbon, as the politically elected ruler of ‘the people’. Shorn of all
mystical or inherited droits, the People’s King had little more power than a
British constitutional monarch…”652
Louis Philippe sought to establish a "golden mean" between

absolutism and Jacobinism. As he said in a speech from the throne in
January, 1831: "We seek to hold to the juste milieu [golden mean]
equally distant from the excesses of popular power and the abuses of
royal authority". 653 But such a "golden mean" was not attained by any
except the English in the nineteenth century for any long period of
time.
The difference between the revolutions of 1789 and 1830, apart from
the fact that much less blood was shed in 1830, consisted in the latter's
concentration on broadening electoral suffrage and in its more openly
commercial flavour, in keeping with the new spirit of commercial
enterprise. “The July revolution,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, “was carried
out by the people, but the middle class which had touched it off and led it, was
the chief beneficiary”. 654 "Master of everything, as no aristocracy had ever been
or perhaps will never be, the middle class, which one has to call the governing
class, having entrenched itself in power and soon afterwards in its self-interest,
seemed like a private industry. Each of its members scarcely gave a thought to
public affairs except to make them function to profit his own private business,
and had no difficulty in forgetting the lower orders in his little cocoon of
affluence. Posterity will possibly never realize how far the government of the day
had in the end taken on the appearance of an industrial company, where all
Lamennais, Lacordaire and Montalembert decided to take their case to the pope, whom they had
always supported. 'Pilgrims for God and Freedom', they arrived in Rome at the end of December
1831 at a rather inopportune time. The pilgrims waited three months before having a
disappointing meeting with Gregory XVI, at which neither the question of L'Avenir nor future
preoccupations were raised. The publication of the letter from the Pope to the Polish bishops in
June 1832 infuriated Lamennais, who left Rome, which he called 'this gigantic tomb where there
are only bones to be found'. A few weeks later, on 15 August 1832, the encyclical Mirari vos
appeared which, without naming Lamennais, condemned all his ideas and those of L'Avenir."
(Jean Comby, How to Read Church History, London: SCM Press, 1989, vol. 1, pp. 129-130).
652
Horne, Seven Ages of Paris, London: Pan, 2002, pp. 254-255.
653
Guizot, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 552
654
De Tocqueville, in M.J. Cohen and John Major (eds.), History in Quotations, London: Cassell,
2004, p. 556.
384
operations are carried out with a view to the benefit the shareholders can draw
from them."655
The July Days in Paris were followed by a revolution in Brussels in the same
year that overthrew the rule of the Dutch King Willem. As Sir Richard Evans
writes, “the formation of a provisional national government on 26 September was
followed on October 4 by a Belgian declaration of independence and then the
calling of a national Congress. Demonstrating the enduring influence of the
American Revolution in European political thought, the Congress issued a
ringing condemnation of the Dutch government for reducing Belgium to the
status of a colony, accompanied by ‘the despotic imposition of a privileged
language’ and ‘taxes, overwhelming in their amount, and still more in the
manner in which they were apportioned’.”656
The events in Paris led to similar disturbances and similar political changes in
several West European countries. The issues were comparable everywhere:
“middle-class reformers and artisans and small farmers all wanted a
liberalization of the laws of assembly and association, freedom of the press, and
above all a widening of political participation.”657
There were similar changes also in Britain, where the Peterloo riots of 1819 in
Manchester, during which troops had killed and wounded many demonstrating
for greater worker emancipation, had wakened the rulers to the necessity of
reform. The Reform Act of 1832 “did enough to defuse popular outrage and, with
further reforms in local government and other areas of administration, stabilized
the British political system on a new, moderately liberal basis. The outcome of the
great struggle over reform was in the end a constitution and political system not
so very different from those of other European states that had experienced a
successful transition in 1830. Unlike them, however, it was, in the short-to-
medium term at least, to be more durable and to prove more resistant to further
attempts at changing the status quo.”658
655
De Tocqueville, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 553.
656
Evans, The Pursuit of Power. Europe 1815-1914, London: Penguin, 2017, pp. 70-71.
657
658
385
46. LIBERALISM, MONARCHISM AND CHRISTIANITY
“Liberalism,” writes Norman Davies, “developed along two parallel tracks,

the political and the economic. Political liberalism focused on the essential
concept of government by consent. It took its name from the liberales of Spain,
who drew up their Constitution of 1812 in opposition to the arbitrary powers of
the Spanish monarchy; but it had its roots much further back, in the political
theories of the Enlightenment and beyond. Indeed, for much of its early history
it was indistinguishable from the growth of limited government. Its first lasting
success may be seen in the American Revolution, though it drew heavily on the
experiences of British parliamentarianism and on the first, constitutional phase
of the Revolution in France. In its most thoroughgoing form it embraced
republicanism, though most liberals welcomed a popular, limited, and fair-
minded monarch as a factor encouraging stability. Its advocates stressed above
all the rule of law, individual liberty, constitutional procedures, religious
toleration and the universal rights of man. They opposed the inbuilt
prerogatives, wherever they survived, of Crown, Church, or aristocracy.
Nineteenth-century liberals also gave great weight to property, which they saw
as the principal source of responsible judgement and solid citizenship. As a
result, whilst taking the lead in clipping the wings of absolutism and in laying
the foundations of modern democracy, they were not prepared to envisage
radical schemes for universal suffrage or for egalitarianism.
“Economic liberalism focused on the concept of free trade, and on the

associated doctrine of laissez-faire, which opposed the habit of governments to
regulate economic life through protectionist tariffs. It stressed the right of men of
property to engage in commercial and industrial activities without undue
restraint. Its energies were directed on the one hand to dismantling the economic
barriers which had proliferated both within and between countries and on the
other to battling against all forms of collectivist organization, from the ancient
guild to the new trade unions.”659
Liberalism was an individualist creed in that its aim was the maximum
development of individual men. It was concerned to protect individual freedoms
from the encroachment of all kinds of collectives, including the State. However,
trends towards individualism have always gone hand in hand historically with
trends in the opposite, collectivist direction; and the horrors caused by liberal
individualism elicited the growth of socialist collectivism...
“The core beliefs of mid-nineteenth century liberalism,” writes John Darwin,

“sprang from the contemplation of this fearful period of European history [the
French revolution and the Napoleonic wars]. Escape from the cycle of war and
revolution required political institutions that would defend the state equally
against popular revolt and parvenu despotism. Rulers must be more
‘legitimate’. They needed the loyalty of a wider range of communities and
659
386
interests. Their servants and officials must be kept in check, ideally by a
representative body. That raised the question of who should represent whom.
Most of all it raised the question of how far a government should regulate the
social and economic life of its citizens. Liberalism’s answer to this was the key
to its position, the fundamental premise of its political theory.
“It was brilliantly sketched by the Swiss-born Frenchman Benjamin Constant,

whose political writings were a fierce rejection of revolutionary violence and
Napoleonic tyranny. Constant argued that ordinary people were bound to resist
interference in their private and social lives and that arbitrary acts by the state
destroyed the mutual trust between individuals on which all social and
commercial relations depended. He distinguished between the proper (and
narrow) sphere of authority and the wider realm (what would now be called
‘civil society’) in which the self-regulation of private interests should prevail.
Modern societies, he suggested, were too complex to be ruled politically after the
fashion of an ancient city state – the model to which many earlier writers
(including Rousseau) had appealed. Diversity, pluralism and localism were the
secret of stability and freedom. Secondly, the legislators, to whom the executive
should answer, should be drawn from those least likely to favour the extension
of arbitrary power or to be seduced by a demagogue. Politics should be the
preserve of the propertied, who would exert a wholesome (and educated)
influence on the ‘labouring poor’. The propertied were the true guardians of the
public interest. Thirdly, it was necessary for property rights and other civil
freedoms to be protected by well-established rules – an idea that implied the
codification of the law and its machinery.
“Constant advanced a further crucial justification for his liberal system: it

alone was compatible with social progress. All forms of arbitrary government
tended sooner or later to impose uniformity. Yet without freedom of thought all
societies were condemned to stagnate, since the expression and exchange of
ideas was the means of advance in every sphere. Indeed, without the free
circulation of ideas, governments themselves would scarcely know what course
to pursue. Neither Constant nor the liberal thinkers who followed him intended
to promote an anarchy of ideas. Their real concern was with the intellectual
freedom of the educated, enlightened and propertied. For (or so they assumed) it
was these who were the real political nation, the defenders of freedom, the
engineers of improvement. Under their tutelage, civil society would be freed, but
also dynamic.
“Of course, a sea of arguments swirled around these beliefs. Could a

hereditary monarch be trusted as head of state, or was a republic the only safe
form of representative government? Could women be part of the political nation,
or was their ‘physical faculty’ a decisive bar? Did commercial and industrial
wealth confer political virtue on its possessors, or did this spring only from
property in land? Was religion the enemy of freedom of thought or the vital
prop of social morality? Should the laws embody the ‘custom of the country’
(and become the subject of historical inquiry) or (as the ‘utilitarian’ followers of
Jeremy Bentham believed) emancipate society from the ‘dead hand’ of the past?
387
Then there was the question that vexed liberalism more perhaps than any other:
was the achievement of ‘nationality’ – a shared ethnic, linguistic and
(sometimes) religious identity – the essential precondition for liberal institutions
to function properly? And what if the pursuit of nationality conflicted with the
central tenets of the liberal programme: freedom of thought and the strict
limitation of government power? Was nationalism a forward-looking ideology
or (except in a few and ‘progressive’ places) a creed of the backward and
benighted?”660
All of these contradictory tendencies were in the original French revolution,

which became successively liberal, socialist and nationalist in character. As yet
perhaps only Mazzini saw the potential conflicts between these different
tendencies (he saw collectivist nationalism as incompatible with any talk of
individual rights). Few realized that the revolution could not be used to make
limited reforms, and then stopped in its tracks before it became dangerous.
The path that the first French revolution took after 1792 should have made that
obvious. But many conservative liberals thought that they could sow the wind
without reaping the whirlwind...
As a result of the revolution of 1830 the post of Prime Minister of

France was given to François Guizot, “a Protestant historian whose
father had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror, [and who]
managed to establish a stable ministry in 1840, which lasted until 1848.
He became more conservative over time. ‘Not to be a Republican at the
age of 20 is proof of a want of heart,’ he remarked: ‘to be one at 30 is
proof of a want of head’. An Anglophile who translated Shakespeare
and published a collection of English historical documents in thirty-one
volumes, Guizot was the arch-apostle of English-style constitutional
monarchy. His commitment to the established order was
unquestionable. His ambition, one critic said, was ‘to be incorporated
into the Metternich clique of every country’. His response to those who
complained of not having a vote because they did not have the 1,000
francs a year needed as a qualification, laid bare the materialism at the
heart of the July Monarchy: ‘Enrich yourselves!’” 661
In 1820, when Louis XVIII's Charter conceded legal equality,

religious toleration and parliamentary scrutiny over new laws, Guizot
declared: "I consider the revolution of 1789 to be over. All its interests
and legitimate wishes are guaranteed by the Charter. What France
needs now is to do away with the revolutionary spirit which still
torments her." 662 Guizot wanted to believe that the "freedom" aimed at
by the revolutionaries of 1789 and 1830 was quite different from the
660
Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Rise & Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000, London: Penguin Books,
2008, pp. 229-231.
661
662
Guizot, in Mark Almond, Revolution, London: De Agostini, 1996, p. 92.
388
"freedom" aimed at by the revolutionaries of 1793. As he said in
December, 1830: "the spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a
spirit radically opposed to liberty". 663 Therefore according to Guizot the
revolution could conveniently stop in 1830, when the middle classes
were put back in the saddle. But is there really such a radical
opposition between the "freedom from" of the liberals and the "freedom
to" of the sans-culottes? How can one and not the other be called "the
spirit of insurrection" when both attained their ends by means of
bloody insurrection against the established order?
Guizot's real goal was a repetition of the "Glorious" English

revolution of 1688 on French soil, a bloodless affair that would put the
men of property firmly in power. "Moderate" revolutions such as those
of 1688 and 1789 would somehow avert "radical" ones such as 1793.
That is why he supported the overthrow of Charles X in 1830, hoping
that Louis Philippe could play the role of William of Orange to Charles
X's James II: "We did not choose the king but negotiated with a prince
[Orléans] we found next to the throne and who alone could by
mounting it guarantee our public law and save us from revolutions...
Our minds were guided by the English Revolution of 1688, by the fine
and free government it founded, and the wonderful prosperity it
brought to the British nation." 664 And since the English Revolution had
put the middle classes into power (although only after the Reform Act
of 1832 did they really begin to acquire power at the ballot box), he
wanted the same for France. "I want," he said, "to secure the political
preponderance of the middle classes in France, the final and complete
organization of the great victory that the middle classes have won over
privilege and absolute power from 1789 to 1830." 665
The four decades after the “July Days” (approximately 1830-1870) constitute
the highwater mark of liberalism in its most naïve, attractive form (as opposed to
the far more alarming and extreme varieties that have appeared in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries). The non-liberal kinds of humanism –
what Yuval Noah Harari calls “socialist humanism” (Communism) and
“evolutionary humanism” (Fascism) – were still in the stage of theoretical
development and had not yet displayed their full, bloody potential. All that
would change with the Paris Commune of 1870 and the rise of the New
Germany in 1871. But for the time being, Europeans could deceive themselves
into thinking that they could be both liberal and Christian, both progressive and
civilized.
Louis Philippe's liberal reign was cut off by a more radical

revolution, that of 1848, which was succeeded by the still more radical
revolution of the Paris Commune in 1870. Guizot and Louis Philippe
are clear examples of the inconsistency and ultimate ineffectiveness of
663
Guizot, in Almond, op. cit., p. 95.
664
Guizot, in Almond, op. cit., p. 93.
665
Guizot, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 552.
389
those who oppose revolution, not root and branch, but only in its more
obviously unpleasant and radical manifestations.
What the liberals failed to see was that that the revolution was not a
rational human desire for limited, reasonable reform that could be
satisfied once those limited reforms had been granted, but an
irrational, elemental, satanic force whose ultimate aim was simply total
destruction. The liberals thought that this demon could be tamed by
constitutional reform and limited monarchy.
This theory was pithily expressed by Adolphe Thiers: “A king must

reign, but not rule.”
But the vanity of this liberal hope of a non-ruling “constitutional

monarchy” and “limited revolution” was demonstrated by Hieromonk
Seraphim (Rose): “In the Christian order, politics... was founded upon
absolute truth... The principal providential form government took in
union with Christian Truth was the Orthodox Christian Empire, wherein
sovereignty was vested in a Monarch, and authority proceeded from him
downwards through a hierarchical social structure... On the other hand... a
politics that rejects Christian Truth must acknowledge 'the people' as sovereign
and understand authority as proceeding from below upwards, in a formally
'egalitarian' society. It is clear that one is the perfect inversion of the other; for
they are opposed in their conceptions both of the source and of the end of
government. Orthodox Christian Monarchy is government divinely
established, and directed, ultimately, to the other world, government with the
teaching of Christian Truth and the salvation of souls as its profoundest
purpose; Nihilist rule - whose most fitting name... is Anarchy - is government
established by men, and directed solely to this world, government which has
no higher aim than earthly happiness.
"The Liberal view of government, as one might suspect, is an

attempt at compromise between these two irreconcilable ideas. In the
19th century this compromise took the form of 'constitutional
monarchies', an attempt - again - to wed an old form to a new content;
today the chief representatives of the Liberal idea are the 'republics'
and 'democracies' of Western Europe and America, most of which
preserve a rather precarious balance between the forces of authority
and Revolution, while professing to believe in both.
"It is of course impossible to believe in both with equal sincerity and

fervor, and in fact no one has ever done so. Constitutional monarchs
like Louis Philippe thought to do so by professing to rule 'by the Grace
of God and the will of the people' - a formula whose two terms annul
each other, a fact as evident to the Anarchist as to the Monarchist.
390
"Now a government is secure insofar as it has God for its foundation
and His Will for its guide; but this, surely, is not a description of
Liberal government. It is, in the Liberal view, the people who rule, and
not God; God Himself is a 'constitutional monarch' Whose authority
has been totally delegated to the people, and Whose function is entirely
ceremonial. The Liberal believes in God with the same rhetorical fervor
with which he believes in Heaven. The government erected upon such a
faith is very little different, in principle, from a government erected
upon total disbelief; and whatever its present residue of stability, it is
clearly pointed in the direction of Anarchy.
"A government must rule by the Grace of God or by the will of the
people, it must believe in authority or in the Revolution; on these issues
compromise is possible only in semblance, and only for a time. The
Revolution, like the disbelief which has always accompanied it, cannot
be stopped halfway; it is a force that, once awakened, will not rest until
it ends in a totalitarian Kingdom of this world. The history of the last
two centuries has proved nothing if not this. To appease the Revolution
and offer it concessions, as Liberals have always done, thereby showing
that they have no truth with which to oppose it, is perhaps to postpone,
but not to prevent, the attainment of its end. And to oppose the radical
Revolution with a Revolution of one's own, whether it be
'conservative', 'non-violent', or 'spiritual', is not merely to reveal
ignorance of the full scope and nature of the Revolution of our time,
but to concede as well the first principle of the Revolution: that the old
truth is no longer true, and a new truth must take its place.” 666
Liberalism as a political theory is a compromise, a compromise between the

barbarism of the revolutionaries, the crude and violent men known as the sans-
culottes (literally, those “without trousers”), and the decency of the liberals
themselves, the gentlemen who wore both trousers and top hats, who paid their
taxes and bowed to the ideals of Christian civilization as they understood them.
It took the slogan of the revolution, “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” and
sought to give it a Christian gloss. In essence, however, this slogan encapsulates,
not merely a political doctrine, but a new religion, the religion of liberty.
As the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine wrote: “Freedom is the new
religion, the religion of our time. If Christ is not the god of this new religion, he is
nevertheless a high priest of it, and his name gleams beatifically into the hearts of
the apostles. But the French are the chosen people of the new religion, their
language records the first gospels and dogmas. Paris is the New Jerusalem, the
Rhine is the Jordan that separates the consecrated land of freedom from the land
of the Philistines.”
For James Stephens the phrase “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”… was
“indeed something more than a motto. It is the creed of a religion, less definite
666
Rose, Nihilism, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press, 1994, pp.
28-30.
391
than any one of the forms of Christianity, which are in part its rivals, in part its
antagonists, and in part its associates, but not on that account the less powerful.
It is, on the contrary, one of the most penetrating influences of the day. It shows
itself now and then in definite forms, of which Positivism is the one best known
to our generation, but its special manifestations give no adequate measure of its
depth or width. It penetrates other creeds. It has often transformed Christianity
into a system of optimism, which has in some cases retained and in others
rejected Christian phraseology. It deeply influences politics and legislation. It
has its solemn festivals, its sober adherents, its enthusiasts, its Anabaptists and
Antinomians. The Religion of Humanity is perhaps as good a name as could be
found for it, if the expression is used in a wider sense than the narrow and
technical one associated with it by Comte. It is one of the commonest beliefs of
the day that the human race collectively has before it splendid destinies of
various kinds, and that the road to them is to be found in the removal of all
restraints on human conduct, in the recognition of a substantial equality between
all human creatures, and in fraternity or general love. These doctrines are in very
many cases held as a religious faith. They are regarded not merely as truths, but
as truths for which those who believe in them are ready to do battle, and for the
establishment of which they are prepared to sacrifice all merely personal ends.
Such, stated of course in the most general terms, is the religion of which I take
‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ to be the creed.”
But is Stephens right to suppose that the liberals were as passionate about
their religion of liberalism as the revolutionaries about their religion of
revolution? Yes, because in essence they are the same religion. The French
Revolution gave birth both to liberalism with its slogan of Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity and its Declaration of Human Rights and to Jacobinism with its bloody
guillotine and regicide. If the earlier phase seems more reasonable and civilized
to contemporary westerners than the later, it nevertheless gave birth to the later
and cannot be separated from it logically or historically. If “true” liberals stop
short in horror at cutting off the heads of kings and aristocrats, this is not
because their teaching forbids it. Christianity forbids it – but Christianity is
something quite different. If the path to liberty and equality lies through a pool
of blood, then so be it. In vain did Guizot and his ilk look to the English
revolution as a model of moderation. It, too, culminated in regicide, and even its
less violent and supposedly “glorious” reprise in 1689 involved an armed
invasion and a pitched battle.
Not all radicals accepted the idea of human rights. One critic was the leader of
the “Philosophical Radicals”, Jeremy Bentham, famous for his “greatest
happiness” principle: the best action is the one that involves the greatest balance
of pleasure over pain for the greatest number of people. In 1843 Bentham
declared that the authors of the Declaration of Human Rights were sowing “the
seeds of anarchy” and that the rights doctrine was ‘execrable trash… nonsense
upon stilts. He called the Declaration “a metaphysical work – the ne plus ultra of
392
metaphysics.” Its articles, he said, could be divided into three classes: (1) those
that are unintelligible, (2) those that are false, (3) those that are both.”667
As for the idea that all men were born free: on the contrary, said
Bentham, “all men… are born in subjection, and the most absolute
subjection – the subjection of a helpless child to the parents upon
whom he depends every moment of his existence…”“This was the
case,” writes Joanna Bourke, interpreting Bentham, “when you looked
at the relationship of apprentices to their masters, or of wives to their
husbands. Indeed, ‘without subjection and inequality’ the institution of
marriage could not exist, ‘for of two contradictory wills, both cannot
take effect at the same time’. Bentham ridiculed the idea that rights
belonged to ‘all human creatures’. In his words, this would mean that
women would have to be included, as well as ‘children – children of
every age’, because, his sarcastic analysis continued, ‘if women and
children are not part of the nation, what are they? Cattle?’ For him, this
was nothing more than ‘smack-smooth equality, which rolls so glibly
out of the lips of the rhetorician.’” 668
The second principle, that of equality, is no less difficult to

establish. Men differ vastly in their talents and abilities, and above all
in their moral worth. Indeed, according to C.S. Lewis, another
campaigner against the idea of human rights, “equality is a purely
social conception. It applies to man as a political and economic animal.
It has no place in the world of the mind. Beauty is not democratic; she
reveals herself more to the few than to the many, more to the persistent
and disciplined seekers than to the careless. Virtue is not democratic;
she is achieved by those who pursue her more hotly than most men.
Truth is not democratic; she demands special talents and special
industry in those to whom she gives her favours. Political democracy is
doomed if it tries to extend its demand for equality into these higher
spheres. Ethical, intellectual, or aesthetic democracy is death…” 669
Human rightists see inequality, especially in social life, as a scandal.

But the “scandal” for our ancestors was not so much in the obvious and
inescapable fact of inequality in every sphere of life, as in the fact that
life so often does not seem to distribute rewards in accordance with
natural inequality: “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the
strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the learned, nor favour to
the skilful” (Ecclesiastes 9.11). So life is unjust, not so much because it
contains inequalities, as because the natural order of inequality is not
rewarded as it should be from a human point of view… However, the
injustice of life is not a scandal to religious people because they believe
667
Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1946, p.
803.
668
Bentham, “Anarchical Fallacies; Being an Examination of the Declaration of Rights Issued
During the French Revolution”; JoannaBourke, What it Means to be Human, London: Virago, 2011,
p. 115.
669
Lewis, “Democratic Education”, in Compelling Reason, London: Fount, 1987, p. 41.
393
in “the God of justice” (Malachi 2.17) Who will put all injustices to
right at the Last Judgement and reward all men according to their
deeds. And this means unequal rewards for unequal men; for apart from
the fact that some men will be sent to heaven and others to hell, even
among those who are saved there are different rewards. For, as the
Apostle Paul says, “there is one glory of the sun, another glory of the
moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another
in glory” (I Corinthians 15.41).
As regards the third principle, that of fraternity, that was easily unmasked.
The behaviour of the revolutionaries themselves showed that they had no
conception of true love or fraternity. The revolution bitterly divided Frenchmen
against each other, and Frenchmen against the other nations of Europe upon
whom they tried to impose their “fraternity” at the edge of a sword…
The truth is that the ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity have real
content and application only in the context of the Christian faith. All men are
born free in the sense that they are created in the image of God, which means
they are free to do the will of God or reject it. If they do His will, then they
become truly free in the sense that they become like God, free from sin and
passion, whereas “he who commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8.32). Then,
having becoming truly free, they are truly equal to all other men who are
spiritually free in the redeemed and renewed human nature that is given to us in
the Last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, having become free and equal
in Jesus Christ, we all participate in the love of brothers, that true fraternity,
which exists only in the Church of Christ…
The revolution began by imposing freedom and equality at the point of a gun:
it was never really concerned with fraternity at all. But the Christian way is the
reverse: the path to true freedom and equality is through love, and only through
love. For love in the great liberator and equalizer; it does not remove natural
subjections and inequalities, but makes them as it were irrelevant.
This was beautifully expressed in the seventh century by St. John

the Almsgiver, Patriarch of Alexandria. As we read in his Life: “If by
chance the blessed man heard of anybody being harsh and cruel to his
slaves and given to striking them, he would first send for him and then
admonish him very gently, saying: ‘Son, it is come to my sinful ears
that by the prompting of our enemy you behave somewhat too harshly
towards your household slaves. Now, I beseech you, do not give place
to anger, for God has not given them to us to strike, but to be our
servants, and perhaps not even for that, but rather for them to be
supported by us from the riches God has bestowed on us. What price,
tell me, must a man pay to purchase one who has been honoured by
creation in the likeness and similitude of God? Or do you, the slave’s
master, possess anything more in your own body than he does? Say, a
hand, or foot, or hearing, or a soul? Is he not in all things like unto
you? Listen to what the great light, Paul, says: ‘For as many of you as
were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew
394
nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, for ye are all one man in
Christ Jesus’. If then we are equal before Christ, let us become equal in our
relations with another; for Christ took upon himself the form of a servant
thereby teaching us not to treat our fellow-servants with disdain. For
there is one Master of all Who dwells in heaven and yet regards the
things of low degree; it does not say ‘the rich things’ but ‘things of low
degree’. We give so much gold in order to make a slave for ourselves of
a man honoured and together with us bought by the blood of our God
and Master. For him is the heaven, for him the earth, for him the stars,
for him the sun, for him the sea and all that is in it; at times the angels
serve him. For him Christ washed the feet of slaves, for him He was
crucified and for him endured all His other sufferings. Yet you
dishonour him who is honoured of God and you beat him mercilessly
as if he were not of the same nature as yourself.” 670
Where is the axiom in liberal theory that will prevent it taking the road to war
and barbarism? In truth, it does not exist. Immediately it is accepted that the first
step towards liberty and equality involves rebellion against the powers that be,
at that moment the potential for violence and barbarism is present. For while the
English might deceive themselves that their own revolution was “glorious” and
“bloodless”, in truth there is no such thing as a glorious and bloodless revolution
whose aims are those of liberalism. The degree of violence will vary depending
on the situation, the degree of resistance and the temperament of the liberators;
but violence there will undoubtedly be…
The same applies to the “liberal empire” which the British boasted in having.
In India, for example, the British Raj, while more liberal in some respects than its
Mughal predecessor, and having some justifications for its rule that were not
trivial, was nevertheless not liberal. How could it be if it ruled over a vastly more
numerous population who did not want to be ruled by foreigners? Only if one
nation asks to be ruled by another – as, for example, the Russians asked to be
ruled by Rurik in 862, or the Georgians asked to be ruled by the Tsar in 1801 –
can we entertain the possibility, albeit highly unlikely, of a liberal imperium. In
India, the fiction of a liberal British empire was exposed during the Indian
Mutiny in 1859 and again during the Amritsar massacre of 1919.
The truth which all liberals refuse to face is the fallenness of human nature.
Freedom beyond a certain limit is not good for fallen man; it spoils him and
leads him further away from God and the truth. The Lord did not say “Ye shall
be free, and that will lead you into truth”, but the opposite: “Ye shall know the
truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8.32). The liberals did not know the
truth, which is why, for all their good intentions and some undoubtedly good
results (such as the abolition of slavery), they proved incapable of truly freeing a
single human being.
670
Life of St. John the Almsgiver, 33; in Elizabeth Dawes & Norman H. Baynes, Three Byzantine
Saints, London: Mowbrays, 1977, pp. 243-244.
395
47. THE GEOPOLITICS OF SLAVERY AND ABOLITION
Perhaps the greatest paradox of nineteenth-century history is the fact that the
main power spreading liberalism throughout the world was Great Britain, the
power that had, with Russia, defeated the French revolution in its Napoleonic
phase, and whose empire, the greatest in history, had come to rule over, if not
technically enslave, hundreds of millions of people around the globe. Let us see
how the British tried to reconcile liberalism with imperialism…
The greatest affront to the new liberal creed of “progressive” humanity was
slavery; and as the nineteenth century progressed, this was the issue that more
than any other threatened to divide the Great Powers between and within
themselves. So they were forced to discuss it in the intervals when they were not
combatting some revolutionary outbreak (of which there were many in this
period). Thus at the Vienna Congress in 1815, they had agreed a common
statement, as Bernard Simms writes, “that the slave trade was repugnant to the
principles of humanity and universal morality. For the moment this was mere
aspiration, but the potentially huge international ramifications of the issue were
already clear…”671 These revolved around the fact that while the victors of 1815
had declared themselves against slavery, in the eyes of many liberals and
revolutionaries the monarchical regimes of Russia, Prussia and Austria kept the
peasants and subject nations of their empires in virtual slavery, or at any rate
serfdom. This gave a propaganda advantage to the only victor nation that had –
officially, if not yet de facto in all her dominions - abolished slavery and serfdom,
Britain, and it allowed the British, while formally belonging to the monarchical,
anti-revolutionary Holy Alliance, to interfere on the side of liberals and
revolutionaries in such places as Spain and Italy. Of course, it may plausibly be
argued that the condition of industrial workers in Britain, as of many millions of
subjects in the British empire, was little short of slavery; but the propaganda
advantage remained, and was used vigorously by the British.
Before we examine how the British played the slavery card, let us look at how
and why slavery was introduced into the West…
Slavery, the slave trade and forced labour had been commonly practiced
among the Arab Muslims and pagans of Africa since the time of the Egyptian
pharaohs.672 A particularly egregious contemporary example of native African
slavery was seen in Queen Ranavalona I of Madagascar (1829-1842). “Putting an
end to most foreign trade relationships, Ranavalona I pursued a policy of self-
reliance, made possible through frequent use of the long-standing tradition
of fanompoana—forced labor in lieu of tax payments in money or goods.
Ranavalona continued the wars of expansion conducted by her
Simms, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, London: Allen Lane, 2013, p. 181.
671
672
See Christine Tasin, “Esclavage: les Arabo-musulmans ont tué ou déporté 17
millions d’Africains et 3 millions d’Européens”, May 10, 2017.
http://resistancerepublicaine.eu/2017/05/10/les-arabo-musulmans-ont-tue-ou-
deporte-17-millions-dafricains-et-3-millions-deuropeens .
396
predecessor, Radama I, in an effort to extend her realm over the entire island,
and imposed strict punishments on those who were judged as having acted in
opposition to her will. Due in large part to loss of life throughout the years of
military campaigns, high death rates among fanompoana workers, and harsh
traditions of justice under her rule, the population of Madagascar is estimated to
have declined from around 5 million to 2.5 million between 1833 and 1839, and
from 750,000 to 130,000 between 1829 and 1842 in Imerina.”673
But the emphasis now was on slavery in the Christian nations.
According to Yuval Noah Harari, “At the end of the Middle Ages, slavery
was almost unknown in Christian Europe. During the early modern period, the
rise of European capitalism went hand in hand with the rise of the Atlantic slave
trade. Unrestrained market forces, rather than tyrannical kings or racist
ideologues, were responsible for this calamity.
“When the Europeans conquered America, they opened gold and silver mines
and established sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations. These mines and
plantations became the mainstay of American production and export. The sugar
plantations were particularly important. In the Middle Ages, sugar was a rare
luxury in Europe. It was imported from the Middle East at prohibitive prices
and used sparingly as a secret ingredient in delicacies and snake-oil medicines.
After large sugar plantations were established in America, ever-increasing
amounts of sugar began to reach Europe. The price of sugar dropped and
Europe developed an insatiable sweet tooth. Entrepreneurs met this need by
producing large quantities of sweets: cakes, cookies, chocolate, candy, and
sweetened beverages such as cocoa, coffee and tea. The annual sugar intake of
the average Englishman rose from near zero in the early seventeenth century to
around eight kilograms in the early nineteenth century.
“However, growing cane and extracting the sugar was a labour-intensive

business. Few people wanted to work long hours in malaria-infested sugar fields
under a tropical sun. Contract labourers would have produced a commodity too
expensive for mass consumption. Sensitive to market forces, and greedy for
profits and economic growth, European plantation owners switched to slaves.
“From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, about 10 million African

slaves were imported to America. About 70 per cent of them worked on the
sugar plantations. Labour conditions were abominable. Most slaves lived a short
and miserable life, and millions more died during wars waged to capture slaves
or during the long voyage from inner Africa to the shores of America. All this so
that Europeans could enjoy their sweet tea and candy – and sugar barons could
enjoy huge profits.
“The slave trade was not controlled by any state or government. It was a
purely economic enterprise, organized and financed by the free market
according to the laws of supply and demand. Private slave-trading companies
About History, July 10, 2017, http://about-history.com/list-of-dictatorships-by-death-toll-the-
673
top-10-biggest-killers-in-history/
397
sold shares on the Amsterdam, London and Paris stock exchanges. Middle-class
Europeans looking for a good investment bought these shares. Relying on this
money, the companies bought ships, hired sailors and soldiers, purchased slaves
in Africa and transported them to America. There they sold the slaves to the
plantation owners, using the proceeds to purchase plantation products such as
sugar, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, cotton and rum. They returned to Europe, sold the
sugar and cotton for a good price, and then sailed to Africa to begin another
round. The shareholders were very pleased with this arrangement. Throughout
the eighteenth century the yield on slave-trade investments was about 6 per cent
a year – they were extremely profitable, as any modern consultant would be
quick to admit.
“… The African slave trade did not stem from racist hatred towards Africans.
The individuals who bought the slaves, the brokers who sold them, and the
managers of the slave-trade companies rarely thought about the Africans. Nor
did the owners of the sugar plantations. Many owners lived far from their
plantations, and the only information they demanded were neat ledgers of
profits and losses…”674
“The British,” writes Robert Tombs, “were by far the largest shippers,
carrying over 3 million people between 1660 and 1807, when Parliament banned
the trade; the French, and the Portuguese in Brazil were the biggest customers.
African rulers were eager suppliers. The trade expanded, reaching an all-time
peak in the 1780s, when British ships were transporting about 120 Africans per
day. Sugar flowed out and imports flooded back: linen from Ireland and
Scotland, fish from Newfoundland, timber and rum from New England, and
manufactured goods from England. This was the notorious ‘triangular trade’:
carrying manufactured goods to Africa in exchange for slaves, sold in the
Caribbean to purchase sugar for Europe. By 1780 Liverpool was shipping one-
third of Manchester’s total cloth exports to Africa. Britain and France were
prepared to make unlimited efforts to seize and hold sugar islands, principally
Jamaica for the British and Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) for the French. Tens of
thousands of troops were repeatedly sacrificed to tropical diseases: officers
resigned and men deserted when ordered there. But as George III put it to one of
his ministers in 1779, ‘Our islands must be defended even at a risk of the
invasion of this island’ – Britain itself.”675
However, consciences began to stir, and slavery was eventually abolished in

one of the earliest and most remarkable – but also most peaceful - manifestations
of “people power”…
In the early modern period, writes Henry Kissinger, “the West expanded with
the familiar hallmarks of colonialism – avariciousness, cultural chauvinism, lust
for glory. But it is also true that its better elements tried to lead a kind of global
tutorial in an intellectual method that encouraged skepticism and a body of
political and diplomatic practices including democracy. It all but ensured that,
674
Harari, Sapiens. A Brief History of Humankind, London: Vintage, 2011, pp. 368-370.
675
Tombs, The English and their History, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014, p. 340.
398
after long periods of subjugation, the colonized peoples would eventually
demand – and achieve - self-determination. Even during their most brutal
depredations, the expansionist powers put forth, especially in Britain, a vision
that at some point conquered peoples would begin to participate in the fruits of
a common global system…”676
Since the anti-slavery movement was all about freedom and equality, one
would have expected the revolutionary French to take the lead in it. But the
French under Napoleon chose rather to enforce slavery in the Caribbean and
attempt to conquer the whole of Europe from Spain to Russia. It was the
counter-revolutionary British rather than the revolutionary French who initiated
this most liberal of causes.
“Gradually in the 18 th century an anti-slavery lobby built up in Europe,

notably in Britain, the superpower of the seas. In 1772 Lord Mansfield, a judge,
ruled that a runaway slave there could not be forced back by his master to the
West Indies. The ruling was interpreted (questionably, but this was the effect) as
confirming that there could be no slavery in Britain.” 677
Then, “in late May 1787, a group of parliamentarians, doctors, clergymen and
others met in London to form the ‘Committee of the Society for the purpose of
effecting the abolition of the Slave Trade’. Its supporters were driven by an often
religiously inspired sense of humanitarian outrage at the whole concept of
slavery, and especially the horrors of the ‘middle passage’, the transportation
across the Atlantic. In mid-April 1791, William Wilberforce’s parliamentary bill
demanding the abolition of the slave trade failed, but put the issue firmly on the
political agenda. The slaves, of course, were not passive recipients of western
benevolence. In August 1791 a major counter-revolutionary revolt broke out in
the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue led by plantation slaves
outraged not only by the Revolution’s continued toleration of slavery and its
failure to extend the rights of man to gens de couleur but also by its treatment of
the king and revealed religion. Their leaders regarded themselves as African
tribal chiefs rather than representatives of the people. Left to their own devices
the revolting slaves would probably have set up a political system similar to the
traditional slave-owning African kingdoms from they had originally come; they
regularly sold black captives to the Spanish and British. The revolt was a major
headache for the European powers, especially Britain and Spain, who drew
much of their revenue, and thus their European leverage, from slave plantations
in the Caribbean, and the Americans, who feared that the example of Haiti
would inflame the black population of the Southern states. The relationship
between slavery and the international balance was thus very close…”678
Thus James Walvin writes: “The emergence of the independent black republic
of Haiti from the wreckage of plantation slavery in St. Domingue sent shock
waves throughout the Americas. It also sent refugees (white and black) fleeing to
other islands, especially to neighbouring Jamaica, and to North America, with
676
Kissinger, World Order, London: Penguin, 2015, p. 174.
677
“Guilty Parties”, The Economist, December 31, 1999, p. 90.
678
399
terrifying tales of what had happened. Defenders of the slave trade (and slavery)
felt vindicated. Here was living proof of all their warnings: if you tamper with
the slave system, catastrophe would inevitably follow. It was a powerful blow
against British abolition [the movement for which had been building up for over
fifty years] and it was reinforced by subsequent military disasters.
“St. Domingue was a temptation to the British. It was a fruitful colony whose
sugar and coffee threatened to displace British Caribbean produce on world
markets. For William Pitt, the opportunity to seize St. Domingue, and to add it to
Britain’s necklace of Caribbean possessions, proved too good to resist. But Pitt’s
plans took little notice of Haitian leader and former slave Toussaint
L’Ouverture’s rebellious slaves on the island or of tropical disease, and the
British invading force was soon overwhelmed. The loss of life was horrendous
and the whole endeavour proved a military debacle whose significance was
camouflaged by being so distant from the metropolis. Pitt’s aims of augmenting
Britain’s slave possessions ended in the deaths of more than 40,000 men…” 679
In 1799, the French tried to take back the colony. In 1802 Napoleon was
proclaiming: “Never will the French Nation give chains to men whom it has
once recognized as free.”680 But in the same year his forces tried to reintroduce
slavery, only to be defeated by black soldiers singing the Marseillaise... 681
Then, in the next year, as Joanna Bourke writes, “Haitians waged the first
successful anti-colonial revolution, to found the first black republic. Their armed
struggle won them a nation to call their own at colossal cost. 682 The fury of the
entire Western world turned against the new nation, ostracizing them and even
insisting that former slaves pay compensation to their owners. Well into the
twentieth century, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere was paying
this financial debt to one of the world’s strongest economies, France.” 683
The British, meanwhile, while continuing to justify their empire (although

there were plenty of critics), had really bitten the anti-slavery bullet. In 1807
parliament banned the slave trade. However, slavery itself was not banned in the
British Empire until 1833, and did not end in the British Caribbean until 1838. 684
“When in 1814,” writes Tombs, “Castlereagh successfully pressed the French to
agree to abolish their slave trade in five years’ time, this delay was denounced as
the ‘death warrant of a multitude of innocent victims’ and a huge national
campaign was organized, claiming 750,000 supporters. Wellington tried to
renegotiate the treaty, and the government put pressure on its allies Spain and
679
Walvin, “The Cause of a Nation”, BBC History Magazine, vol. 8, no. 3, March, 2007, p. 7.
680
Zamoyski, Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots and Revolutionaries, 1776-1871, London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999, p. 130.
681
Mark Almond, Revolution, London: De Agostini, 1996, p. 85.
682
More than 100,000 slaves died in many barbarous ways in Haiti (Claude Ribbe, in Ian Sparks,
“How Napoleon’s massacre of 100,000 blacks inspired Hitler”, Daily Mail, November 30, 2005, p.
35), (V.M.)
683
Bourke, What it Means to be Human, London: Virago, 2011, p. 128. By a profound irony,
“according to one estimate, Haiti has more slaves [today] ‘than any other country outside Asia.”
(op. cit., p. 152)
684
“Guilty Parties”, The Economist, December 31, 1999, p. 90.
400
Portugal, the main slave-buying nations, to stop the trade. Castlereagh wrote:
‘You must really press the Spanish… there is hardly a village that has not met
and petitioned.’ London even asked the Pope for support. Castlereagh
persuaded the reluctant Great Powers to attach to the Treaty of Vienna (1815) a
condemnation of the slave trade – the first such ‘human rights’ declaration in a
major international treaty. This began a long effort to end slaving, against the
resistance of the slave-trading and slave-holding nations and their African
suppliers.
“Campaigning peaked in 1833 with more than 5,000 petitions containing

nearly 1.5 million signatures. One, more than a mile long, was signed and sewn
together by women, who played an unprecedented part in the campaign, among
them Elizabeth Heyrick, author of Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition (1824).
Parliament responded in 1834 by emancipating 800,000 slaves in the empire,
paying a huge £20m in compensation to the owners – equal to a third of the state
budget – and requiring a four-year ‘apprenticeship’ by slaves. This was thus a
compromise measure, but still its anniversary was publicly celebrated by
American abolitionists as a great achievement. In 1843 British subjects were
forbidden to own slaves anywhere else in the world. The abolition of slavery in
the empire in practice applied to slave ownership by whites.”685
In South Africa, the British came up against the Boers on this issue; for the
Boers were particularly oppressive slave-owners, who were “outraged that black
people were ‘placed on an equal footing with Christians, contrary to the laws of
God’.”686 The problem began after a war with the Xhosa to the east of Cape
Colony, when the British, as Evans writes, “withdrew and left the Xhosa with
their land. This did not go down well, especially with the Dutch-descended Boer
farmers, who bitterly resented the abolition of slavery by the British government
in 1834 and were outraged by the minimal scale of the compensation paid to
them. Some 5,000 Boer farmers expressed their lack of confidence in the British
Empire by migrating northwards between 1835 and 1837 in the ‘Great Trek.’”687
The British saw themselves as the champions of liberty everywhere, and did
not care much if their increasingly muscular interventions on behalf of liberty,
wherever it might be, offended their monarchical and serf-owning allies, Russia,
Prussia and Austria.
“The Russians, for their part,” writes Simms, “saw Austria and Prussia as a
counter-revolutionary dam or breakwater which would halt, or at least slow
down, subversive currents before they reached Poland, and ultimately Russia
itself. It was with this in mind that the tsar exerted pressure on Berlin to disavow
ministers who wanted to cooperate with liberal nationalism. He got his way
after the death of Motz and the replacement of Bernstorff by the conservative
Friedrich Ancillon as foreign minister in the early 1830s. In 1833, the three
eastern powers came together at Münchengrätz, to agree a joint policy of
stability on conservative principles in central Europe and the Ottoman Empire.
685
686
Tombs, op. cit., pp. 550.
687
401
Two years later, Berlin and St. Petersburg advertised their solidarity by holding
joint manoeuvres in Poland. The counter-revolution was closing ranks across
Europe.
“In the west, liberal and constitutionalist powers were quick to pick up the
gauntlet. British foreign policy, in particular, manifested an emancipatory and at
times almost messianic streak. This reflected a strong sense that European peace
and Britain’s own security depended, as the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston,
put it, on the ‘maint[enance] of the liberties and independence of all other
nations’. On his reading, the survival of freedom in Britain required its defence
throughout Europe: constitutional states were thus her ‘natural allies’. There was
also a broader feeling that Britain should, as Palmerston argued in August 1832,
‘interfer[e] by friendly counsel and advice’, in order to ‘maintain the liberties
and independence of all other nations’ and thus to ‘throw her moral weight into
the scale of any people who are spontaneously striving for… rational
gov[ernmen]t, and to extend as far and as fast as possible civilization all over the
world’. In other words, Britain would not ‘interfere’ in the internal affairs of
other countries, or impose her values on unwilling populations, but she pledged
her support to those who were willing to take the initiative – who were
‘spontaneously striving’ – to claim their liberal birthright.
“Globally, the main battlefront was the international slave trade, and,
increasingly, the institution of slavery itself. In 1833, slavery was finally
abolished throughout the British Empire, which led a year later to the
establishment of a French abolitionist society. A cross-Channel Franco-British
agitation against the slave trade now began, and a joint governmental
programme for its eradication became a real possibility. This cleared the way for
a more robust policy against the international slave trade, which the Royal Navy
had been battling with varying success since 1807. The newly independent
Central and South American states had just abolished slavery, while Britain
forced Madrid to give up the legal importation of slaves in 1820, and was
increasing the pressure on Spain to abolish slavery altogether in her only
remaining large colony of Cuba. In 1835, London and Madrid concluded a treaty
to limit the slave trade; for the moment this agreement was honoured on the
Spanish side, but it was a further step in the international de-legitimation of the
trade. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1838, and
two years later the World Anti-Slavery Convention took place in London.
Tensions with Portugal, whose ships still carried the lucrative human cargo to
Brazil, rose…”688
“Even when other states agreed to outlaw slave trafficking,” continues

Tombs, “- sometimes (as with Spain and Portugal) with compensation paid by
Britain – they commonly winked at evasion. So the Royal Navy placed a
permanent squadron from 1808 to 1870, at times equal to a sixth of its ships, to
try to intercept slavers off West Africa. It was based at Freetown, the capital of
the colony for freed slaves at Sierra Leone, which had the first African Anglican
bishop, Samuel Crowther, rescued as a boy from a slave ship by the Royal Navy.
688
Simms, op. cit., pp. 198-200.
402
Patrolling was a thankless and grueling effort, exposing crews to yellow fever,
hardship and even personal legal liability for damages; it also cost a large
amount of taxpayers’ money. France and the United States refused to allow the
Royal Navy to search ships flying their flags. There was continual diplomatic
friction with slave-trading states. British officials there were often threatened
with violence. During the 1830s and 1840s several American ships forced by bad
weather into British colonial territory had the slaves they were carrying released.
In 1839 in the famous case of the slave ship Amistad, when captives rebelled and
killed the captain, British testimony proving illegal action by American officials
helped to secure their freedom. A serious dispute with the United States
occurred in 1841 when American slaves on the ship Creole, being taken from
Virginia to be sold in New Orleans, seized the ship and killed a slave-trader.
They were given asylum in the British-ruled Bahamas, where they were
acquitted of any crime and declared free.
“Britain signed forty-five treaties with African rulers to stop the traffic at
source. They were very reluctant to give it up, even threatening to kill all their
slaves if they were prevented from selling them. In several cases, Britain paid
them to abandon the traffic. Abolitionists urged that Britain should maintain a
territorial preserve in West Africa, to combat illegal trafficking and promote
legitimate commerce, such as palm oil, to wean African rulers and Liverpool
merchants from slaving and towards soap manufacture – a good example of
cleanliness being next to godliness. By 1830 palm oil exports were worth more
than the slave trade. But the trade continued, and the Royal Navy adopted more
aggressive tactics, including blocking rivers and destroying slave pens on shore,
even when these were foreign property. In 1861 it occupied Lagos, deposing the
ruler who refused to stop the trade, and thus blocked one of the main slave
routes. Over sixty years the navy captured hundreds of slave ships off the
African coast and freed some 160,000 captives. As one recalled it: ‘They took off
all the fetters from our feet and threw them into the water, and they gave us
clothes that we might cover our nakedness, they opened the water casks, that we
might drink water to the full, and we also ate food, till we had enough.’ Several
hundred thousand more were prevented from being shipped from Africa by
naval and diplomatic pressure.
“Palmerston, as Foreign Secretary, was prepared to put pressure on slave-

owners too, In 1839 he simply ordered the seizure of Portuguese slave ships, and
in 1845 his successor, Lord Aberdeen, declared Brazilian slave ships to be
pirates, and 400 were seized in five years. In 1850 the Royal Navy even forcibly
entered Brazilian ports to seize or destroy hundreds of slave ships – decisive in
forcing Brazil, the biggest slave-buyer of all, toe end of the largest forced
emigrations in history. Palmerston said this had given him his ‘greatest and
purest pleasure’. Cuba, supplied by fast United States ships, came under similar
pressure. But American ships were treated more cautiously, as searches of
suspected slave ships carrying the Stars and Stripes caused threats of war from
Washington. As Palmerston expostulated, ‘every slave trading Pirate’ could
escape by simply hoisting ‘a piece of Bunting with the United States emblems’.
The American Civil War caused a reversal in American policy in 1862, when
Abraham Lincoln’s government signed a secret treaty allowing the Royal Navy
403
to intercept American slavers. The Spanish and Cuban authorities bowed to
circumstances, and the Atlantic slave trade was effectively ended. Slavery itself
remained legal in the United States until the 1860s, and in much of Latin
America until the 1880s. As late as 1881 the Royal Navy arrested an American
slave ship off the Gold Coast.
“The British campaign against the slave trade has often been debunked.
French and American slave-traders accused Britain of using it as a pretext to try
to gain control of West Africa, Cuba, even Texas. Some later historians claimed
that slavery ended only because it was no longer profitable. But recent research
is practically unanimous that slavery was booming, and it would have been in
Britain’s economic interests to expand it, as the United States did. But Britain
was rich enough to let its powerful humanitarian and religious lobby get its way.
“Did Britain – another accusation at the time and since – use the slave trade as
a pretext for colonial expansion in Africa? In fact, successive governments were
reluctant to rule inhospitable and relatively profitless territory, and movement
inland was negligible until the late-nineteenth-century ‘scramble for Africa’. The
exception, which involved campaigns against the aggressive slaving kingdom of
Asante (Ashanti) – a magnificent and exceptionally cruel warrior society – was
done at the request of Africans on the coast, who were subject to repeated attack
from the 1820s onwards and requested British protection. Central Africa
meanwhile was being devastated by Muslim slavers supplying the Middle East.
The Foreign Office estimated that they were taking 25,000 – 30,000 people per
year during the 1860s, and the nineteenth century total has been estimated at
between 4 million and 6 million people, huge numbers dying as they were
dragged across the Sahara or to the coast, and many others being killed in the
violence of capture. British anti-slavery groups – inspired by the adventures and
writings in the 1850s and 1860s of one of the most revered Victorian heroes,
David Livingstone – demanded government intervention in what Livingstone
had rightly called the open sore of the world. He hoped optimistically that a
‘Christian colony’ of ‘twenty or thirty good Christian Scotch families’ would lead
to moral and commercial improvement and would put an end to slavery.
Instead, a long diplomatic effort was required to throttle the trade, by
persuading African rulers to stop supplying and Muslim states to close the great
slave-markets of Egypt, Persia, Turkey and the Gulf. Britain had far less power
to act directly in the Muslim world, where slavery had ancient social and
religious sanction, so action had to be discreet. The consul-general at Cairo in
the1860s, Thomas F. Reade, spied out the Egyptian slave markets disguised as an
Arab. He estimated that 15,000 Africans were sold at Cairo annually, and
reported on ‘the cruelties and abominations’ involved. Other diplomats were
active in helping escaped slaves, including by purchasing their freedom with
official funds, and the consul in Benghazi maintained a safe house for escapees
at his own expense. British interference in the slave trade – however cautious
Whitehall tried to be – could cause serious tensions and even led to mass
uprisings in Egypt and the Sudan. However, careful but persistent pressure on
the Egyptian, Turkish and Persian governments to forbid the trade, backed up
by naval patrols, treaties and even bribes to officials to apply law eventually had
404
considerable effect. Pressure and financial inducements to the sultan of Zanzibar
(a vast slaving entrepôt) shut its slave market in 1873…”689
“The main focus of the new geopolitics, however,” writes Simms, “was
Europe. With liberal – but not radical – governments in Paris after 1830, and in
London from 1832, France and Britain were now ideologically aligned. In 1834,
both powers responded to Münchengrätz by coming together with liberal-
constitutionalist Spain and Portugal to form the Quadruple Alliance. ‘The Triple
League of despotic governments,’ Palmerston exulted, ‘will now be counter-
balanced by a Quadruple Alliance in the west.’ The continent was now split into
two ideologically divided camps. Once hopeful of Alexander’s intentions, liberal
opinion saw the Tsarist Empire of Nicholas I as the bulwark of reaction across
Europe. The British writer Robert Bremner noted at the end of the decade that
the European press was teeming with books painting Russia as the ‘most
boundless, irresistible… most formidable, and best consolidated [power] that
ever threatened the liberties and rights of man’.”690
And yet the institution of serfdom, for which Russia was particularly
reproached (together with her autocracy), was by no means unique to her. Serfs
were not slaves, since they had rights as well as obligations; but they were tied
to the land and the landowners in an essentially feudal relationship, being the
basis of the agrarian economy of the whole of Central and Eastern Europe. After
1815, they were gradually emancipated throughout the region, with the greatest
single act of emancipation in history taking place in Russia in 1861.
“The scale of these measures,” as Evans writes, “was vast. In East-Elbian

Prussia, 480,000 peasants became free proprietors in the wake of the
emancipation edicts of the early nineteenth century. Even in a small country
such as Romania, more than 400,000 peasants received ownership of their land,
and another 51,000 households were given land enough for a house and garden.
Nearly 700,000 peasants in Poland [which was, of course, in the Russian Empire]
became landowners. In the German and Slav provinces of the Habsburg Empire,
the emancipation involved more than two and a half million peasant households
indemnifying nearly 35,000 landowners for the loss of 39 million days of labour
services without animals and 30,000 days with them, plus over 10 million
bushels of dues in kind. In Russia the emancipation was even more gargantuan
in its effects, with some 10 million peasants on private estates receiving title to
nearly 100 million acres of land, quite apart from the similar measures already
enacted for the even larger number of serfs on state demesnes. Nevertheless,
everywhere the measures were put into effect relatively quickly, with a
minimum of fuss. In principle this was the greatest single act of emancipation
and reform in Europe during the whole of the nineteenth century. A huge class
of people who had hitherto been bound to the land in a form of neo-feudal
servitude had been emancipated from its chains and given equal rights as full
citizens. Legally prescribed social distinctions now came to an effective end.
Encrusted status and privilege had been swept away and every adult male was
689
690
405
now in almost every respect equal before the law and free to dispose over his
person and his property. The last significant legal vestiges of the society of social
orders assailed by the French Revolution of 1789 left the state of history…”691
691
406
48. VICTORIAN RELIGION AND MORALITY
“It would be easy,” writes Tombs, “to present Victorian England as

a mass of contradictions. It rang with moral exhortation: listening to
sermons was a popular pastime, even on honeymoon. Yet vices were
not only secretly indulged but publicly flaunted. Politicians could show
off their mistresses: for example, the Marquess of Hartington, Liberal
MP and later holder of many ministerial offices, who openly took the
well-known courtesan Catherine (‘Skittles’) Walters to the Derby in
1862. Aggressive prostitution made parts of London’s West End no-go
areas for respectable women, and the staff of the well-known Trocadero
restaurant were so nervous about prostitutes that any unknown
unaccompanied woman was shunted off into a corner so that ‘in case of
misbehavior we can screen the table off’. Property and convention
ruled, but emotion was constantly bursting out as men sobbed and
women swooned, sometimes over things that even we would find
embarrassingly sentimental: one elderly peer sobbed all night after
reading one of Dickens’s death scenes. Modernity was lauded; but
some of the most creative cultural impulses came from a reinvention of
tradition in architecture, art and music. Religion exerted enormous
power over people’s lives. Yet never before had its power been so
publicly questioned. Matthew Arnold’s poem ‘Dover Beach’ (1851),
with its sonorous description of Faith ebbing with a ‘melancholy, long,
withdrawing roar’, is said to be the most widely reprinted poem in the
language…” 692
With regard to religion, there was a marked change from the early
nineteenth century to the mid-century Victorian era. At the beginning
of the century, religion was not something that gentlemen practiced or
talked about much. Thus, as David Starkey and Katie Greening write,
“the Church of England had fallen to a new low earlier in the century.
Its buildings were crumbling, and Anglican church services had
become not only devoid of ceremony and ritual, but were often badly
organized, understaffed and sparsely attended. On Easter Sunday,
1800, only six communicants attended the morning celebration in St.
Paul’s Cathedral.” 693
William Palmer, looking back in 1883 to England in 1833, wrote:

“Allusions to God’s being and providence became distasteful to the
692
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
693
Starkey and Greening, Monarchy & Music, London: BBC Books, 2013, p. 301.
407
English parliament. They were voted ill-bred and superstitious; they
were the subjects of ridicule as overmuch righteousness. Men were
ashamed any longer to say family prayers, or to invoke the blessing of
God upon their partaking of His gifts; the food which He alone had
provided. The mention of His name was tabooed in polite circles.” 694
And yet only a few decades later, the English could be counted
among the more religious nations of Europe. Continental atheism
found little response in English hearts. True, Mary Shelley’s novel
Frankenstein (1816) expressed a fear, not only that science might go off
the right path and produce monsters, but that it might reveal that man,
like Frankenstein, did not have a soul, but was purely material, so that
God did not exist. The rapid growth of science, and the emergence of
such atheist theories as Darwinism, accentuated these fears. But in the
second half of the century, at any rate, the English remained stubbornly
“pious”. And if some surprising blasphemies did escape the lips of
senior public servants – such as the British consul in Canton’s remark:
“Jesus Christ is Free Trade, and Free Trade is Jesus Christ” 695 – this was
not common. True, Free Trade was probably the real faith of many in
the English governing classes. But officially England was a “most
Christian” nation.
This was owing in no small part to the movement of religious and moral that
we know as Victorianism…696
Francis Fukuyama writes: “The Victorian period in Britain and America may
seem to many to be the embodiment of traditional values, but when this era
began in the mid-nineteenth century, they were anything but traditional.
Victorianism was in fact a radical movement that emerged in reaction to the
kinds of social disorder that seemed to be spreading everywhere at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, a movement that deliberately sought to
create new social rules and instill virtues in populations that were seen as
wallowing in degeneracy. The shift toward Victorian values began in Britain but
was quickly imported into the United States beginning in the 1830s and 1840s.
Many of the institutions that were responsible for its spread were overtly
religious in nature, and the changes they brought about occurred with
remarkable speed. In the words of Paul E. Johnson: ‘In 1825 a northern
businessman dominated his wife and children, worked irregular hours,
consumed enormous amounts of alcohol, and seldom voted or went to church.
Ten years later the same man went to church twice a week, treated his family
with gentleness and love, drank nothing but water, worked steady hours and
694
Palmer, in Geoffrey Faber, The Oxford Apostles, London: Penguin, 1954, pp. 319-320.
695
J.M. Roberts, The Penguin History of Europe, London: Penguin Books, 1997, p. 382.
696
As in the patriotic and religious revival of the mid-eighteenth century, music played an
important part in this movement. The German Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn, with the
help of Victoria and Albert, raised the level of church music, and recalled Handel in his
composing the oratorios St. Paul (1836) and Elijah (1846) (Starkey and Greening, op. cit., p. 302).
408
forced his employees to do the same, campaigned for the Whig Party, and spent
his spare time convincing others that if they organized their lives in similar
ways, the world would be perfect.’ The nonconformist churches in England and
the Protestant sects in the United States, particularly the Wesleyan movement,
led the Second Great Awakening in the first decades of the century that followed
hard on the rise in disorder and created new norms to keep that order under
control. The Sunday school movement grew exponentially in both England and
America between 1821 and 1851, as did the YMCA movement, which was
transplanted from England to America in the 1850s. According to Richard
Hofstadter, U.S. church membership doubled between 1800 and 1850, and there
was a gradual increase in the respectability of church membership itself as
ecstatic, evangelical denominations became more restrained in their religious
observances. At the same time, the temperance movement succeeded in
lowering per capita alcohol consumption on the part of Americans back down to
a little over two gallons by the middle of the century…
“These attempts to reform British and American society from the 1830s on in
what we now label the Victorian era were a monumental success…” 697
We can measure the success of Victorianism by the sharp reversal in the

trends for crime and illegitimacy, which increased through the first half of the
nineteenth century (and especially during the Napoleonic wars), but from about
1845 declined steadily until the end of the century. We find a similar pattern in
America, with the peak in crime coming about thirty years later. 698 However, in
spite of its undoubted success in raising the external morality and efficiency of
the Anglo-Saxon nations, Victorianism has had a bad press. It has been seen as
the product of pride and engendering hypocrisy. As we shall see, there is some
truth in this (although exaggerated in the sphere of sexuality). Moreover, the rise
of Victorianism coincided, paradoxically, with a decline in faith in many spheres.
“Victorian England,” writes Tombs, “was a highly religious society: this was
one of the best and worst things about it. But so had the country been in
previous centuries, and so were all contemporary societies. How religious was
it? Its favourite books included the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress. But when for the
first and only time a census recorded religious practice on Sunday, 30 March,
1851, the statistics shocked many. They showed a relatively high number
‘neglecting’ religious services – estimated at 5.3 million people, 29 percent of the
population. However, 7.3 million did attend church – 41 percent of the
population, about 70 percent of those able to do so. These levels are similar to
those in the United States in the 2000s, though five times higher than the 8
percent attending Sunday worship in Britain in 2000.”699
The Russian Slavophile theologian Alexis Khomiakov was amazed at

how silent the streets of London were on a Sunday. And he wrote:
“Germany has in reality no religion at all but the idolatry of science;
France has no serious longings for truth, and little sincerity; England
697
Fukuyama, The Great Disruption, London: Profile Books, 1999, pp. 266-267, 268.
698
Fukuyama, op. cit., pp. 268-269.
699
409
with its modest science and its serious love of religious truth might
[seem] to give some hopes…” 700
Tombs continues: “More than half of 1851 attendances were at

Nonconformist chapels, not the Church of England. England had since
the seventeenth century been unusually diverse and divided in its
beliefs – ‘sixty sects and only one sauce,’ joked a French observer. Yet
over the eighteenth century Old Dissent (Presbyterians,
Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers) legally tolerated in 1689,
stagnated, and Anglican dominance seemed unchallengeable. The
explosion of ‘New Dissent’ (especially Methodism) from the 1770s to
the 1840s marked one of the most dramatic social and cultural changes
in the country’s history. English religion no longer consisted of a
national Church with a few licensed dissenters, but of some ninety
churches and sects. The omnipresent Church of England remained by
far the largest – 85 percent of marriage in 1851 were in church, and
only 6 percent in chapel. But the 1832 Reform Act had increased the
voting power of Nonconformists – about 20 percent of the new
electorate. Many of them demanded outright disestablishment, some
vehemently denouncing ‘the white-chokered, immoral, wine-spilling,
degraded clergy, backed by debauched aristocrats and degraded wives
and daughters.’ To understand the continuing importance of the
Church, and the vehemence of both its defenders and attackers, we
would have to imagine an institution today combining the BBC, the
major universities, parts of the Home Office, and much of the welfare,
judicial and local-government systems.
“Anglicanism was both strengthened and weakened by its ancient

institutional structures. It was strongest in the Midlands and the south
of England, and weak around the edges – the north, the south-west, the
Scottish and Welsh borders, and Wales. This was originally for basic
material reasons – scattered populations, low incomes and inability to
support a resident clergy. But from the 1750s these areas boomed in
population and industry. By the time the Church responded – building
over 4,000 churches between 1820 and 1870, an effort unique in history
– many people had been integrated into Nonconformist sects, especially
Methodism: on ‘census Sunday’ its chapels attracted about 2.25 million,
over 20 percent of the total, and up to half of those in towns. John
Wesley’s flexible and even opportunistic methods (moving on when
there was no response and consolidating where converts were made)
700
Khomiakov, First Letter to William Palmer, in W.J. Birkbeck, Russia and the English Church,
London: Rivington, Percival & Co., 1895, p. 6. Cf. the Fourth Letter: “An almost boundless
Individualism is the characteristic feature of Germany, and particularly of Prussia. Here in Berlin
it would be difficult to find one single point of faith, or even one feeling, which could be
considered as a link of true spiritual communion in the Christian meaning of the word. Even the
desire for harmony seems to be extinguished, and that predominance of individualism, that
spiritual solitude among the ever-busy crowd, sends to the heart a feeling of dreariness and
desolation…. Still the earnestness of the German mind in all intellectual researches is not quite so
disheartening as the frivolous and self-conceited gaiety of homeless and thoughtless France.”
(Birkbeck, op. cit., pp. 77-78).
410
proved highly successful: Methodism was the only denomination that
positively thrived on socio-economic change – including population
growth, industrialization, migration and social mobility. So, in its
various forms, it became the most powerful catalyst of cultural
dissidence in England. Chapels and their Sunday schools, often staffed
by self-taught artisans and miners, became a channel of revolt against
the squire and the parson, providing an autonomous religious
environment affording moral legitimacy, solidarity and self-confidence.
In rural society, this might attract farmers who resented paying church
rates and tithes, labourers in dispute with their bosses – even poachers.
In short, all who detested parsons, who were also often Poor Law
guardians or JPs: Radicals never forgot that it was a clerical magistrate
who had read the Riot Act at Peterloo [in 1819]. The Primitive
Methodists (the ‘Prims’), who doubled their numbers during the
conflictual 1830s, remained a sect of the poor, preaching a lively
message of ‘the 3 Rs’: ‘ruin, repentance and redemption’; and their
preachers provided a constant stream of trade union leaders.
Mainstream Methodism attracted the hard-working, respectable and
newly prosperous businessmen who now had the vote and became one
of the most dynamic forces in English politics.
“Smaller older sects, such as the Quakers and Unitarians, became

the religion of urban and business elites, at least as much as the Church
of England was that of the squirearchy… Some were also influential
philanthropists and campaigners: pious Dissenting families regarded
their wealth and privilege as imposing a God-given duty to society.
Similarly, Evangelicalism, which influence both Church and Dissent,
was a call to public and political action in almost every sphere. It
created vast numbers of charities and philanthropic lobby groups –
many still in existence – largely depending on the voluntary labours of
middle-class women. Women as well as men were politically organized
and powerful as lobby groups, despite lacking the vote. To their
pressure is due much of what is ‘Victorian’ in social and cultural life:
anti-slavery, animal protection, Sunday Observance, prison reform,
temperance, protection of women, and prosecution of obscenity and
illicit sexuality. The so-called Nonconformist conscience was willing to
use political action and law enforcement as a means of extending moral
behaviour.” 701
“A challenge to Anglicanism from the other end of the spectrum was the
Oxford Movement, an 1820s High Church dons’ revolt led by the poet John
Keble, the Regius Professor of Hebrew Edward Pusey, and the vicar of St.
Mary’s, John Henry Newman. The rebels were determined, in Newman’s words,
to resist ‘Rationalism’ and ‘Liberalism’ in the Church which led to the subversive
701
411
conclusion that ‘no theological doctrine is any thing more than an opinion.’
During the 1840s Pusey was banned from preaching and Newman censured.” 702
The Movement began with John Keble’s sermon to the Oxford Assize Judges
in July, 1833, in which he warned against “the growing indifference, in which
men indulge themselves, to other men’s religious sentiments”.
Later, in his famous Tract 90, John Newman sought to interpret the Anglican
39 Articles in such a way as to make them consistent with Catholic teaching. This
led to a backlash, which eventually forced Newman to leave Anglicanism and
join the Roman Church, where he became a cardinal. The Oxford Movement
then devolved into the Cambridge Camden Society, which explored medieval
liturgy, music and architecture, and which was led by Pusey.
Pusey developed the branch theory of the Church, according to which

Anglicanism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy were three branches of the One
Church.703 This aroused the interest of Khomiakov with hopes of a genuine
rapprochement between Anglicans and Orthodox. Not that he agreed with the
branch theory: his The Church is One is an effective refutation of the heresy.
The main contribution of the Oxford Movement was to return

attention to the dogma of the Church, which Anglican theology had
seriously neglected. “The whole point of the Movement,” writes
Geoffrey Faber, “lay in the assertion – no less passionately made than
the Evangelical’s assertion of his private intimacy with God – that men
deceive themselves if they seek God otherwise than through the
Church. It should be needless to add that in the teachings of Keble,
Pusey, Newman, and the Tractarians generally, the relationship of the
individual soul to God was just as important as in the teaching of John
Wesley. But the importance of that relationship was not to be thought
of as transcending the importance of the Church. The Church was the
divinely established means of grace. But she was something else and
something greater. She was the continuing dwelling place of God’s
spirit upon earth, and as such she had owed to her all the honour and
glory within the power of men to pay.” 704
One of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, William Palmer, was a

friend of the Russian Slavophile Alexei Khomyakov, who was for a
702
703
Dr. Joseph Overbeck, one of the first Western converts to Orthodoxy, wrote about Pusey: "Dr.
Pusey is the father of the so-called Anglo-Catholics, sometimes styled Puseyites, though by this
by-name are generally understood those High-Churchmen who revel in decorative tom-fooleries
and stylish ceremonies. He was, though not the originator, still a mighty support of the
Tractarian movement. He quieted the passions of the young hot-brained Tractarians, smoothed
down the Romanizing tendencies, and was always an upright friend of the Eastern Church,
which he considered to be in unison with his own. Still he remained a Western Churchman,
guided by the true idea that both Churches are fully entitled to have their own way and
subsistence, only linked by the bond of common Catholic truth and Catholic Constitution. He
would be quite right, provided his Church were a true branch of the Western Catholic Church.”
704
Faber, The Oxford Apostles, London: Penguin, 1954, p. 325.
412
while deceived by the semblance of Catholicity presented by the
Oxford Movement. In the midst of her “Babylonian” materialism, as
exemplified above all by the 1851 Great Exhibition, England seemed to
him to have “higher thoughts”: “England, in my opinion, has never
been more worthy of admiration than this year. The Babylonian
enterprise of the Exhibition and its Crystal Palace, which shows
London to be the true and recognized capital of Universal Industry,
would have been sufficient to engross the attention and intellectual
powers of any other country; but England stands evidently above its
own commercial wonders. Deeper interests agitate her, higher thoughts
direct her mental energy…” 705
Later, however, as the Oxford movement petered out, and England

joined with “insincere” France and infidel Turkey in the Crimean War
against Holy Russia, Khomiakov’s admiration turned to disillusion and
anger. Moreover, in his famous work The Church is One, he refuted
Pusey’s “Branch Theory” of the Church, which claimed that
Anglicanism, with Orthodoxy and Catholicism, was one of the branches
of the Church.
In his last years Khomiakov may well have felt closer in his estimate
of England to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who was appalled by his visit to
London in 1862.
“On the streets,” writes Geir Kjetsaa, he “saw people wearing

beautiful clothes in expensive carriages, side by side with others in
filth and rags. The Thames was poisoned, the air polluted; the city
seemed marked by joyless drinking and wife abuse. The writer was
particularly horrified by child prostitution:
“’Here in the Haymarket, I saw mothers who brought along their

young daughters and taught them their occupation. And these twelve-
year-old girls took you by the hand and asked to be accompanied. One
evening, in the swarm of people I saw a little girl dressed in rags, dirty,
barefoot, emaciated and battered. Through her rags I could see that her
body was covered with bloody stripes. She wandered senseless in the
crowd… perhaps she was hungry. No one paid her any attention. But
what struck me most was her sad expression and the hopelessness of
her misery. It was rather unreal and terribly painful to look at the
despair and cursed existence of this small creature.’
“When he visited the London World’s Fair with ‘civilization’s

shining triumphs’, Dostoyevsky again found himself possessed by
feelings of fear and dejection. Appalled, he recoiled from the hubris
that had created the Crystal Palace’s ‘colossal decorations’. Here was
705
Khomiakov, Sixth Letter to William Palmer, in Birkbeck, op. cit., p. 99.
413
something taken to its absolute limit, he maintained, here man’s
prideful spirit had erected a temple to an idol of technology: “’This is a
Biblical illustration, this speaks of Babylon, in this a prophet of the
Apocalypse is come to life. You feel that it would take unbelievable
spiritual strength not to succumb to this impression, not to bow before
this consummate fact, not to acknowledge this reality as our ideal and
mistake Baal for God.’” 706
Dostoyevsky saw through the Englishman’s religiosity, seeing it as a

kind of humanism. He noted that English thinkers such as Mill were
impressed by Auguste Comte’s idea of a “Religion of Humanity”, and
in 1876 he wrote: “In their overwhelming majority, the English are
extremely religious people; they are thirsting for faith and are
continually seeking it. However, instead of religion – notwithstanding
the state ‘Anglican’ religion – they are divided into hundreds of
sects…. Here, for instance, is what an observer who keeps a keen eye
on these things in Europe, told me about the character of certain
altogether atheistic doctrines and sects in England: ‘You enter into a
church: the service is magnificent, the vestments are expensive;
censers; solemnity; silence; reverence among those praying. The Bible is
read; everybody comes forth and kisses the Holy Book with tears in his
eyes, and with affection. And what do you think this is? This is the
church of atheists. Why, then, do they kiss the Bible, reverently
listening to the reading from it and shedding tears over it? – This is
because, having rejected God, they began to worship ‘Humanity’. Now
they believe in Humanity; they deify and adore it. And what, over long
centuries, has been more sacred to mankind than this Holy Book? –
Now they worship it because of its love of mankind and for the love of
it on the part of mankind; it has benefited mankind during so many
centuries – just like the sun, it has illuminated it; it has poured out on
mankind its force, its life. And “even though its sense is now lost”, yet
loving and adoring mankind, they deem it impossible to be ungrateful
and to forget the favours bestowed by it upon humanity…’
“In this there is much that is touching and also much enthusiasm.
Here there is actual deification of humankind and a passionate urge to
reveal their love. Still, what a thirst for prayer, for worship; what a
craving for God and faith among these atheists, and how much despair
and sorrow; what a funeral procession in lieu of a live, serene life, with
706
Kjetsaa, Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Writer’s Life, London: Macmillan, 1987, p. 145. Lev Tolstoy, who
visited the city in 1861, noted the sexual hypocrisy of the city with its thousands of prostitutes
(Kate Summerscale, "Divorce, Victorian Style", Seven, April 29, 2012, pp. 12-13) but thought they
had an important role to play in preserving the institution of the family. “Imagine London
without its 80,000 magdalenes – what would happen to families?” he wrote (Rosamund Bartlett,
Tolstoy: A Russian Life, Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2011, p. 187).
However, Tombs argues that the “widely repeated estimate of 80,000 or more prostitutes in
London should probably be closer to 5,000. A proof of the power of respectable Nonconformity
to shape actual behaviour was the rarity of prostitution in the northern towns. We should be
skeptical of the idea that hypocrisy was a Victorian hallmark: ‘As a matter of plain fact, sexual
hypocrisy in the recorded lives of notable Victorians is rare.’” (op. cit., p. 482)
414
its gushing spring of youth, force and hope! But whether it is a funeral
or a new and coming force – to many people this is a question.” 707
Dostoyevsky then quotes from his novel, A Raw Youth, from the
“dream of a Russian of our times – the Forties – a former landowner, a
progressive, a passionate and noble dreamer, side by side with our
Great Russian breadth of life in practice. This landowner also has no
faith and he, too, adores humanity ‘as it befits a Russian progressive
individual.’ He reveals his dream about future mankind when there
will vanish from it every conception of God, which, in his judgement,
will inevitably happen on earth.
“’I picture to myself, my dear,’ he began, with a pensive smile, ‘that

the battle is over and that the strife has calmed down. After
maledictions, lumps of mud and whistles, lull has descended and men
have found themselves alone, as they wished it; the former great idea
has abandoned them; the great wellspring of energy, that has thus far
nourished them, has begun to recede as a lofty, receding Sun, but this,
as it were, was mankind’s last day. And suddenly men grasped that
they had been left all alone, and forthwith they were seized with a
feeling of great orphanhood. My dear boy, never was I able to picture
people as having grown ungrateful and stupid. Orphaned men would
at once begin to draw themselves together closer and with more
affection; they would grasp each other’s hands, realizing that now they
alone constituted everything to one another. The grand idea of
immortality would also vanish, and it would become necessary to
replace it, and all the immense over-abundance of love for Him who,
indeed, had been Immortality, would in every man be focused on
nature, on the universe, on men, on every particle of matter. They
would start loving the earth and life irresistibly, in the measure of the
gradual realization of their transiency and fluency, and theirs would
now be a different love – not like the one in days gone by. They would
discern and discover in nature such phenomena and mysteries as had
never heretofore been suspected, since they would behold nature with
new eyes, with the look of a lover gazing upon his inamorata. They
would be waking up and hastening to embrace one another, hastening
to love, comprehending that days are short and that this is all that is
left to them…’
“Isn’t there here, in this fantasy, something akin to that actually

existent ‘Atheists’ Church’?” 708
The American writer Emerson came to the same conclusion in his

English Traits (1856). As Lionel Trilling writes: “These people, he says,
707
Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, London: Cassell, trans. Boris Brasol, vol. I, pp. 265-266.
708
Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, p. 266.
415
have no religious belief and therefore nothing is ‘so odious as the polite
bows to God’ which they constantly make in their books and
newspapers… [However, continues Trilling,] no student of Victorian
life will now confirm Emerson in the simplicity with which he
describes the state of religious belief in England. It is true that the
present indifference of the English to religion – apart from the rites of
birth, marriage, and death – was already in train. By the second half of
the nineteenth century the working classes of England were almost
wholly alienated from the established Church and increasingly
disaffected from the Nonconformist sects. It was the rare intellectual
who was in any simple sense a believer. The commitment of the upper
classes was largely a social propriety, and Emerson was doubtless right
when he described it as cant. It is possible to say that the great
Dissenting sects of the middle classes were animated as much by social
and political feelings as by personal faith and doctrinal predilections.
Still, when all the adverse portents have been taken into account, the
fact remains that religion as a force in the life of the nation was by no
means yet extinct and not even torpid, what with Low Church and
High Church, Oxford Movement and the unremitting dissidence of
Dissent, public trials over doctrine and private suffering over crises of
belief. Christian faith was taken for granted as an element of virtue; as
late as 1888, Mrs. Humphry Ward, a niece of Matthew Arnold, could
scandalize the nation with her novel, Robert Elsmere, the history of a
gifted and saintly young clergyman who finds Christian doctrine
unacceptable; Gladstone himself felt called upon to review the book at
enormous length.
“The history of England was bound up with religion, which still

exercised a decisive influence upon the nation’s politics, its social and
ethical style, and its intellectual culture. If there was indeed an
attenuation of personal faith which gave rise to the insincerity that
Emerson discerned, among the intellectual classes it had an opposite
effect, making occasion for the exercise of a conscious and strenuous
sincerity. The salient character-type of the Victorian educated classes
was formed, we might say, in response to the loss of religious faith –
the non-believer felt under the necessity of maintaining in his personal
life the same degree of seriousness and earnestness that had been
appropriate to the state of belief; he must guard against falling into the
light-minded libertinism of the French – ‘You know the French…,’
Matthew Arnold said. Perhaps the greatest distress associated with the
evanescence of faith, more painful and disintegrating than can now be
fully imagined, was the loss of the assumption that the universe is
purposive. This assumption, which, as Freud says, ‘stands and falls
with the religious system’, was, for those who held it, not merely a
comfortable idea but nothing less than a category of thought; its
extirpation was a psychic catastrophe. The Victorian character was
under the necessity of withstanding this extreme deprivation, which is
to say, of not yielding to the nihilism it implied.
416
“How this end might be achieved is suggested by the anecdote
about George Eliot – it has become canonical – which F.W.H. Myers
relates. On a rainy May evening Myers walked with his famous guest in
the Fellows’ Garden of Trinity College, Cambridge, and she spoke of
God, Immortality, and Duty. God, she said, was inconceivable.
Immortality was unbelievable. But it was beyond question that Duty
was ‘peremptory and absolute’. ‘Never, perhaps,’ Myers says, ‘have
sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and
unrecompensing Law. I listened and night fell; her majestic
countenance turned towards me like a sybil in the gloom; it was as
though she withdrew from my grasp the two scrolls of promise, and
left me with the third scroll only, awful with inscrutable fate.’ Much as
George Eliot had withdrawn from her host, she had not, we may
perceive, left him with nothing. A categorical Duty – might it not seem,
exactly in its peremptoriness and absoluteness, to have been laid down
by the universe itself and thus to validate the personal life that obeyed
it? Was a categorical Duty wholly without purpose, without some end
in view, since it so nearly matched one’s own inner imperative, which,
in the degree that one responded to it, assured one’s coherence and
selfhood? And did it not license the thought that man and the universe
are less alien to each other than they may seem when the belief in God
and Immortality are first surrendered?” 709
One of the questions that troubled the Victorians was the

relationship between religion and science, doubts that would become
more acute after the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species in
1859. Another was the impact of industrialization on religion. Thus
Thomas Carlyle wrote in Sartor Resartus: “Now the Genius of
Mechanism smothers [man] worse than any Nightmare did. In Earth
and Heaven he can see nothing but Mechanism; he has fear for nothing
else, hope in nothing else… To me the Universe was all void of Life, of
Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead,
immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to
grind me limb from limb.”
Another problem that troubled religious Victorians was the doubts

engendered by the so-called “critical” school of Biblical interpretation, This, “the
work”, writes Paul Johnson, “mainly of German scholars, dismissed the Old
Testament as a historical record and classified large parts of it as religious myth.
The first five books of the Bible, or Pentateuch, were now presented as orally
transmitted legend from various Hebrew tribes which reached written form only
after the Exile, in the second half of the first millennium BC. These legends, the
argument ran, were carefully edited, conflated and adapted to provide historical
justification and divine sanction for the religious beliefs, practices and rituals of
the post-Exile Israelite establishment. The individuals described in the early
709
Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, Oxford University Press, 1974, pp. 115-118.
417
books were not real people but mythical heroes or composite figures denoting
entire tribes.
“Thus not only Abraham and the other patriarchs, but Moses and Aaron,
Joshua and Sampson, dissolved into myth and became no more substantial than
Hercules and Perseus, Priam and Agamemnon, Ulysses and Aeneas. Under the
influence of Hegel and his followers, Jewish and Christian revelation, as
presented in the Bible, was reinterpreted as a determinist sociological
development from primitive tribal superstition to sophisticated urban
ecclesiology. The unique and divinely ordained role of the Jews was pushed into
the background, the achievement of Mosaic monotheism was progressively
eroded, and the rewriting of Old Testament history was pervaded by a subtle
quality of anti-Judaism, tinged even with anti-Semitism. The collective work of
German Biblical scholars became the academic orthodoxy, reaching a high level
of persuasiveness and complexity in the teachings of Julius Wellhausen (1844-
1918), whose remarkable book, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel, was
first published in 1878.For half a century Wellhausen and his school dominated
the approach to Biblical study, and many of his ideas influence the historian’s
reading of the Bible even today. Some outstanding twentieth-century scholars,
such as M. Noth and A. Alt, retained this essentially skeptical approach,
dismissing the pre-conquest traditions as mythical and arguing that the Israelites
became a people only on the soil of Canaan and not before the twelfth century
BC; the conquest itself was largely myth, too, being mainly a process of peaceful
infiltration. Others suggested that the origins of Israel lay in the withdrawal of a
community of religious zealots from a Canaanite society they regarded as
corrupt. These and other theories necessarily discarded all Biblical history before
the Book of Judges as wholly or chiefly fiction, and Judges itself as a medley of
fiction and fact. Israelite history, it was argued, does not acquire a substantial
basis of truth until the age of Saul and David, when the Biblical text begins to
reflect the reality of court histories and records.”710
Fortunately, modern archaeology has provided confirmation of the existence

of the supposedly mythical persons and stories of the Old Testament. So the
“critical” approach to Bible Study has begun to lose its icy grip on Biblical
scholarship. Nevertheless, it is worth remembering this, not the least harmful
consequence of Hegelian historicism.
But whatever their doubts, and however great the inconsistencies

between their beliefs and actions, the Victorians were prepared to go to
great pains to export their religion to other lands. Just as English
industrial products encompassed the whole world, so did English
missionaries, as the efforts of Livingstone in Africa and Lord Redstock
in Russia demonstrate. As late as 1904, writes Niall Ferguson, the
German satirical magazine Simplicissimus pointed to this religiosity and
missionary enthusiasm of the British Empire by comparison with the
710
Johnson, A History of the Jews, London: Phoenix, 1995, pp. 5-6.
418
other empires “with a cartoon contrasting the different colonial
powers. In the German colony even the giraffes and crocodiles are
taught to goose-step. In the French, relations between the races are
intimate to the point of indecency. In the Congo the natives are simply
roasted over an open fire and eaten by King Leopold. But British
colonies are conspicuously more complex than the rest. There, the
native is force-fed whisky by a businessman, squeezed in a press for
every last penny by a soldier and compelled to listen to a sermon by a
missionary…” 711
This Victorian attachment to Duty in the place of God and

Immortality explains the puzzling fact that while English liberalism
made a fetish of liberty, and the Anglican Church tolerated a wide
range of beliefs in the most liberal fashion, in the realm of morals, as
George Mosse writes, “very little freedom was allowed. For Liberals
accepted and furthered that change in morality which came about at
the turn of the century. It is important, therefore, to discuss this
morality in connection with liberalism, even though it became the
dominant morality in England generally and in much of Europe as
well. Liberal freedom… was severely circumscribed and restricted by
this development.
“It is difficult to analyze the moral pattern which accompanied

liberal thought. There is no doubt that the turn of the century saw a
change in the moral tone of society, which is easily illustrated. Sir
Walter Scott’s aged aunt asked him to procure for her some of the
books she had enjoyed in her youth during the previous century. Sir
Walter did as he was bid and later when he ventured to hope that she
had enjoyed this recapturing of her youth her answer greatly surprised
him. His aunt blushed at the mention of the books and allowed that she
had destroyed them because they were not fit reading. Similarly, in
Germany, a lady sitting next to the writer Brentano told him how much
she had enjoyed a play he had written in his youth. How startled she
must have been when the author, instead of being pleased, replied that
as a woman and mother she should have been ashamed to read such a
work. This change is what Sir Harold Nicolson has characterised as the
‘onslaught of respectability’. It was, as these examples show, quite
rapid, almost within one generation.
“What lay behind this tightening up of morality? Only tentative

answers can be given, for as yet little is known about this phenomenon.
It seems certain that the evangelical movement in England, the
strongest element in nonconformity, and the pietistic movements in
Europe had a direct influence on the morality of the age. Both these
movements had remained outside the mainstream of the
Enlightenment; both were opposed to its main tenets. It is often
forgotten that the eighteenth century witnessed a religious revival even
711
Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World, London: Penguin, 2004, p. 296.
419
while the philosophes were writing their enlightened tracts. This
revival stressed piety, not the piety of Church attendance but the piety
of the heart. Dogma had no great interest for either the Wesley brothers
in England or Count Zinzendorf in Germany; true conversion of the
spirit was the center of their religious thought. Such piety required a
casting off of the worldly frivolities. Especially in England it revived
the Puritan idea of life as a struggle between the world and the spirit,
between the lusts of the flesh and dedication to one’s calling.
“Two other factors strengthened this reawakened moral passion.

There was a moral reaction against the French Revolution and its
antireligious bent. Madame de Staël had seen in the Reign of Terror a
moral failing on the part of the people; many Englishmen linked the
events of the French Revolution to the prevalence of immorality in that
nation. Men and women of the nobility and middle classes called for
moral reform at home in order that Revolutionary immorality might be
better withstood in the struggle between the two nations. Pamphlets
and diaries give ample evidence of an attempted reform of manners.
Frivolity, worldly and sexual excesses were regarded as unworthy of a
nation engaged in a life and death struggle with forces which
symbolized all that was immoral. The Evangelicals in England
benefited from this feeling of distaste. Sunday observances were
revived; frivolity was taken as a sign of levity in a time of serious
crisis. William Wilberforce persuaded King George III to issue a royal
proclamation in 1787 which condemned vice. Considering the immoral
tone of his sons, this could not have lacked irony.
“The second factor, associated with the expanding economy, was the
rapid rise within the social hierarchy of the newly rich. This self-
assertive and ambitious bourgeoisie brought with them a dedication to
hard work and a sense of the superiority of the values of the self-made
man to those of the old aristocracy. These values blended in with the
revived Puritan impetus exemplified by the evangelical movement.
Never a part of the idle and sophisticated aristocracy, these men,
through the increasing fluidity of English class lines, now infiltrated
that class. No wonder that Edmund Burke lamented the vanished
‘unbought grace of life’ of a previous age. Now the grace of
membership in the upper classes was bought and that, in itself, created
a different attitude toward life. Piety, moral revulsion against the
French Revolution, and the attitudes of the bourgeoisie all contributed
to the new moral tone. This was not confined to England; such
conditions were present in all of western Europe, but it was England
which best exemplified these moral attitudes, for they fitted in with
liberal thought which now took up and furthered this morality as
suited to its ideology in the age of the Industrial Revolution.
Individualism stood in the forefront combined with the kind of
toughness which made for victory in the struggle for existence. What
was needed was sobriety, hard work, and an emphasis on action. Such
420
a life exemplified the true Christian spirit and on the basis of the
individuality of one’s own character led to self-fulfilment.
“Two passages from Charles Kingsley’s famous novel Westward Ho!

(1855) demonstrate the conception of this new attitude by a leading
Evangelical. The duty of man was to be bold against himself, as one of
the book’s heroes explained to his young companion: ‘To conquer our
fancies and our own lusts and our ambitions in the sacred name of
duty; this is to be truly brave, and truly strong; for he who cannot rule
himself, how can he rule his crew or his fortunes?’ What the Puritans
had designated their ‘calling’ was here named duty. The individualism
involved was brought out further in another passage from Kingsley’s
book. There were two sorts of people: one trying to do good according
to certain approved rules he had learned by ear, and the other not
knowing whether he was good or not, just doing the right thing
because the Spirit of God was within him. It was this sort of piety
which became fashionable at the turn of the century. The contemplative
side of pietism gave way to a piety of action. This transformation was
in tune with the experiences of the commercial and industrial classes,
though seventeenth-century Puritans had already stated repeatedly
that ‘action is all’.
“This action was exemplified by what the Victorians called the

‘gospel of work’. As Carlyle put it: ‘…. Not what I have but what I do is
my kingdom.’ It was in work that duty was exemplified. John Henry
Newman shared this emphasis on work: ‘We are not here that we might
go to bed at night, and get up in the morning, toil for our bread, eat
and drink, laugh and joke, sin when we have a mind and reform when
we are tired of sinning, rear a family and die.’ Work had to be done in
the right spirit: the service of God in one’s secular calling.
“Samuel Smiles’s Self Help (1859), which propagandised this

morality and its application to work, was the most successful book of
the century – over a quarter of a million copies were sold by 1905. Its
popularity was as great outside England as within the country.
Garibaldi was a great admirer of the book, as was the Queen of Italy. In
Japan it was the rage under the title European Decision and Character
Book. The mayor of Buenos Aires compared Smiles, surprisingly, to
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Quite rightly these underdeveloped countries
saw in Smiles’s book a reflection of attitudes which were making an
important contribution to the successful industrialization of England.
“The aim of Self Help was to aid the working classes in improving
themselves so as to reach the top. This path was marked by the
improvement of the individual character of those who desired to be a
success in life. ‘The crown and glory of life is character.’ What this
character should be Smiles illustrated through examples of men who
raised themselves to fame and fortune. Character had to be formed by
morals, for to Smiles, social and economic problems were really
421
problems for morality. When he talked about thrift and saving it was
the moral aspect of self-reliance and restraint which appealed to him
and not the economic consequences of such practices. Character was
also shaped by the competitive struggle – stop competition and you
stop the struggle for individualism. This struggle had to be conducted
in a ‘manly way’ if success was to follow. He exhorted the workers to
become gentlemen, for this meant the acquisition of a keen sense of
honor, scrupulously avoiding mean actions. ‘His law is rectitude –
action in right lines.’ Here was a rooted belief in a moral code as the
sole road to worldly success…” 712
The Victorians’ keen sense of character, honour and manliness

appears to go back to an attitude of the Italian Renaissance. Thus in
about 1860 Jacob Burckhardt wrote about “that moral force which was
then the strongest bulwark against evil. The highly gifted man of that
day thought to find it in the sentiment of honour. This is that enigmatic
mixture of conscience and egotism which often survives in the modern
man after he has lost, whether by his own fault or not, faith, love and
hope. This sense of honour is compatible with much selfishness and
great vices, and may be the victim of astonishing illusions; yet,
nevertheless, all the noble elements that are left in the wreck of a
character may gather around it, and from this foundation may draw
new strength. It has become, in a far wider sense than is commonly
believed, a decisive test of conduct in the minds of the cultivated
Europeans of our own day, and many of those who yet hold faithfully
by religion and morality are unconsciously guided by this feeling in the
gravest decisions of their lives.” 713
Yes, Victorians’ code of morality based on a sense of honour was

indeed the road to worldly success, both at home and abroad. It
protected them from certain sins such as laziness and petty thievery,
but not from more serious ones such as pride and avarice (although it
must be acknowledged that the Victorian era was a time of charities
and alms-giving on a large scale). As such it could not help being
supremely worldly and hypocritical from a Christian point of view: as
the Lord said of the Victorians’ first-century predecessors: “Verily I say
unto you: they have had their reward” ( Matthew 6.5)…
712
713
Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, London: Penguin, 1990, p. 273.
422
49. MILL ON LIBERTY
Foreigners were impressed by England’s political system because it

seemed to combine freedom with stability, individualism with
solidarity, power with prosperity (for the few), gradual extension of
rights with traditional deference to title and rank, science and progress
with morality and religion. The German encyclopaedist Carl Welcker
called it “the most glorious creation of God and nature and
simultaneously humanity’s most admirable work of art”.
Indeed, the Germans were especially taken with English liberalism.

“The brand-new field of linguistic scholarship had revealed that there
were distinct groups of languages in Europe. Since English clearly
belonged to the Germanic group, it was claimed that some timeless
affinity existed between the Germans and the English. In the first three-
quarters of the nineteenth century, it was common for the English and
the Germans to write about each other as cousins. This led some
Germans to believe that Anglo-Saxon liberty was in fact an ancient
Germanic idea, not some foreign, western imposition like those the
French (and indeed the Romans) had tried to bolt on Germany.
“Hegel himself mused on the possibility that World History would

next be revealed in the Nordic principle of the Germanic peoples as a sea-
going, colonial Empire of the Germans (Reich der Germanen), by which he
meant a post-Waterloo alliance of Protestant Germany – led, naturally,
by Prussia – and England.
“This wasn’t just a philosopher’s dream. It obsessed one of the most

politically influential Germans on the planet. Albert of Saxe-Coburg,
Prince Consort of Britain’s Queen Victoria (herself, of course, of
German family) was tireless in pursuit o what was called the Coburg
Plan. Backed by King Leopold of Belgium among others, Albert and his
German advisers proposed that Prussia should first reform along
British constitutional lines, then unite all of Germany, which in the
process would become (as Victoria put it) a most useful ally for
Britain.” 714
German anglophilia reached its peak in 1856, with the engagement

of Victoria and Albert’s daughter Victoria to Frederick, second in line
to the throne of Prussia. Bismarck was annoyed by this “stupid
admiration of the average German for Lords and Guineas, the
anglomania of parliament, of the newspapers, of sportsmen, of
landlords and of presiding judges”. 715 But he would get his revenge:
largely through Bismarck’s own successful policies of “blood and iron”,
German anglophilia would soon turn to Anglophobia…
714
James Hawes, The Shortest History of Germany, Devon: Old Street Publishing, 2018, pp. 97-98.
715
Hawes, op. cit., p. 102.
423
*
Why was England able to avoid the continual upheavals that we see
in contemporary France and on the continent? One factor enabling the
country to combine relative freedom in governance with stability was
undoubtedly the authorities’ ability to use the improved methods of
communication, especially the railways, to concentrate the power of a
greatly increased police force against troublemakers more quickly than
on the continent. For example, 80,000 new constables were quickly
created and deployed at the peak of the Chartist riots. Again, the
unprecedentedly large emigration to America and the White Dominions
(in the case of Australia, of course, this “emigration” was compulsory)
served as a safety-valve to expel the desperately poor and potentially
rebellious (especially the Irish). A third factor was that the rapidly
increasing lower middle classes, though poor, already had more than
their chains to lose, and so tended to support the existing system. They
needed the patronage of the rich, and looked down on the proletarians
below them, whose desperation they feared. The rulers took this into
account, and so were able to introduce just enough reforms to maintain
stability without creating a totalitarian state. Thus “shat impressed
European liberals,” writes Evans, “was the ability of the British
political system to avoid revolution through timely concessions to
liberal demands.” 716
As Jacques Barzun writes: “This knack of judging when and how

things must change without upsetting the apple cart was painfully
acquired by the English over the centuries. They were long reputed the
ungovernable people. But fatigue caught up at last and a well-rooted
anti-intellectualism helped to keep changes unsystematic and under
wraps. Forms, titles, décor remain while different actions occur beneath
them; visual stability maintains confidence. It was the knack of rising
above principle, the reward of shrewd inconsistency.” 717
However, probably the most important single factor was the

morality of duty and respectability noted above, which acted as a
strong deterrent on bad behaviour in all classes. “Respectability,”
writes Tombs, “was a much broader process than merely compelling
the working classes to accept middle-class standards of decorum. It
meant working people themselves wishing to create security,
cleanliness and safety for their families, asserting a social status,
‘keeping up appearances’, and raising children according to various
ideals of Progress, Christianity, manliness and femininity…The
attainment of respectability was a source of pride and the basis of
political assertion. For example, mid-century Chartists and later
716
717
Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, New York: Perennial, 2000, p. 529.
424
Radicals demanded democratic rights on the grounds that they were
respectable heads of households.” 718
The Victorians did not like the idea of the “grandmotherly state” –
what we call the “nanny state” – because it offended their pride in
themselves as being able to help themselves. And if that meant that the
state intruded less, this was balanced by the fact that the neighbours
intruded more. As the Russian exile Alexander Herzen, who lived in
London in the 1850s, put it: “The freer a country is from government
interference… the more intolerant grows the mob: your neighbour,
your butcher, your tailor, family, club, parish keep you under
supervision and perform the duties of a policeman.” 719
This was reflected in a much less tolerant attitude to criminals than

in, for example, Russia. Thus Tolstoy wrote: “I was struck when I saw
in the streets of London a criminal escorted by the police, and the
police had to protect him energetically from the crowd, which
threatened to tear him in pieces. With us it is just the opposite, police
have to drive away in force the people who try to give the criminal
money and bread. With us, criminals and prisoners are ‘little unhappy
ones’.” 720
The 1850s saw England at her peak from an external, material point
of view. Her navies ruled the seas; her trade and industry was far
greater than any other country’s (though America and Germany were
catching up fast); and while liberalism was checked on the continent
after 1848 as monarchy revived and the proletariat raged, in England it
remained remarkably stable.
As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge write, “British

liberals took a decrepit old system and reformed it, establishing a
professional civil service, attacking cronyism, opening up markets, and
restricting the state’s right to subvert liberty. The British state shrank
in size even as it dealt with the problems of a fast-industrializing
society and a rapidly expanding global empire. Gross income from all
forms of taxation fell from just under 80 million pounds in 1816 to well
under 60 million pounds in 1846, despite a nearly 50 percent increase in
the size of the population. The vast network of patronage appointees
who made up the unreformed state was rolled up and replaced by a
much smaller cadre of carefully selected civil servants. The British
Empire built a ‘night-watchman state’, as it was termed by the German
socialist Ferdinand Lasalle, which was both smaller and more
competent than its rivals across the English Channel.
“The thinker who best articulated these changes was John Stuart
Mill, who strove to place freedom, rather than security, at the heart of
718
Tombs, op. cit., pp. 477, 479.
719
Herzen, My Past and Thoughts; in Tombs, op. cit., p. 477.
720
Tolstoy, in A.N. Wilson, Tolstoy, London: Atlantic Books, 2012, p. 159.
425
governance… Mill’s central political concern was not how to create
order out of chaos but how to ensure that the beneficiaries of order
could achieve self-fulfilment. For Mill, the test of a state’s virtue was
the degree to which it allowed each person to develop fully his or her
abilities. And the surest mechanism for doing this was for government
to get out of the way…” 721
It was to give a theoretical underpinning to this English variety of

liberalism, that John Stuart Mill wrote his famous essay On Liberty,
which remains to this day the most elegant and influential defence of
English liberalism.
Mill admired de Tocqueville, and was a passionate opponent of “the

tyranny of the majority”. To protect society against this tyranny he
proposed a single “very simple” principle which would place a limit on
the ability of the state to interfere in the life of the individual: “The
object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to
govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the
way of compulsion and control, whether the means to be used by
physical force in the form of legal penalties or the moral coercion of
public opinion. That principle is that the sole end for which mankind
are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the
liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection. That the only
purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member
of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He
cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better
for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the
opinion of others, to do so would be wise or even right. These are good
reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or
persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him or
visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the
conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to
produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of anyone or
which it is amenable to society is that which concerns others. In the
part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right,
absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is
sovereign.” 722
Mill asserted that this “Liberty Principle” or “Harm Principle” applied only to
people in “the maturity of their faculties”, not to children or to “those backward
states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage.” 723
For “Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to
721
Micklethwait and Wooldridge, “The State of the State”, Foreign Affairs, July-August, 2014, pp.
122-123.
722
Mill, On Liberty, London: Penguin Classics, 1974, pp. 68-69.
723
Mill, On Liberty, p. 69.
426
the time when mankind have become capable of being improved through free
and equal discussion”.724
This qualification provided a neat justification for the spread of the British
Empire among the pagan nations; and in general, in spite of the fact that Mill
was concerned above all to protect the liberty of the individual against the
tyranny of the majority and popular morality, his theory fitted in remarkably
well with the prejudices of the majority in the England of his time. Thus the
English prided themselves on their freedom of speech, and their giving refuge to
political exiles of every kind, from Louis XVIII and Louis Napoleon to Herzen
and Bakunin, Kossuth and Marx.725 No tyranny of the majority here!
Mill provided a passionate defence of the widest possible freedom of thought

and speech. “First,” he argued, ‘the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by
authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course, deny
its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the
question for all mankind and exclude every other person from the means of
judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion because they are sure that it is false is
to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing
of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.”726
No: there is a difference between certainty and the assumption of infallibility.

A man may consider himself to be a wretched sinner and prone to all kinds of
errors, and yet be completely certain of some things. All true religious belief is of
this kind – and much false religious belief also. Faith, according to the definition
of the Apostle, is certainty in the existence of invisible realities (Hebrews 11.1); it
is incompatible with the least doubt. But even if one is not completely certain
about something, one may be sufficiently sure to act to censor what one
considers a false opinion. Thus a government may not be completely certain that
a certain drug has no serious side effects. But it may still act to ban it, and ban
any propaganda in its favour, in the belief that the risks are sufficiently great to
warrant such action. Mill may be able to accommodate this example with his
“Harm Principle”, but not on the grounds that to exclude a certain opinion on
the grounds that it is likely to be false amounts to a belief in one’s infallibility.
Mill anticipates this objection, writing: “Men and governments must act to the
best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is
assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life. We may, and must assume
our opinions to be true for the guidance of our own conduct; and it is assuming
724
725
Dostoyevsky described how a Member of Parliament, Sir Edward Watkins, welcomed Don
Carlos to England: “Of course, he himself knew that the newly arrived guest was the leading
actor in a bloody and fratricidal war; but by meeting him he thereby satisfied his patriotic pride
and served England to the utmost of his ability. Extending his hand to a blood-stained tyrant, in
the name of England, and as a member of Parliament, he told him, as it were: ‘You are a despot, a
tyrant, and yet you came to the land of freedom to seek refuge in it. This could have been
expected: England receives everybody and is not afraid to give refuge to anyone: entreé et sortie
libres. Be welcome’” (The Diary of a Writer, 1876, London: Cassell, part I, trans. Boris Brasol, pp.
262-263).
726
427
no more when we forbid bad men to pervert society by the propagation of
opinions which we regard as false and pernicious.”727
But Mill will have none of this; it is only by allowing our opinion to be
contested by those who think otherwise, he argues, that we come to know
whether it is really deserving of confidence, and hence whether the opposite
opinion should be censored. “The most intolerant of churches, the Roman
Catholic Church, even at the canonization of a saint admits, and listens patiently
to, a ‘devil’s advocate’. The holiest of men, it appears, cannot be admitted to
posthumous honours until all that the devil could say against him is known and
weighed.”728
In practice, this means that no opinion should ever be censored; “the lists
have to be kept open” in case someone appears who will expose the flaw in the
accepted “truth”. And this applies even if the dissenting opinion goes against
one’s most treasured and vital convictions concerning God or morality. For
“however positive anyone’s persuasion may be, not only of the falsity but of the
pernicious consequences – not only of the pernicious consequences, but (to
adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the immorality and impiety of
an opinion – yet if, in pursuance of that private judgement, though backed by
the public judgement of his country or his contemporaries, he prevents the
opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infallibility. And so far from
the assumption being less objectionable or less dangerous because the opinion is
called immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which it is most fatal.
These are exactly the occasions on which the men of one generation commit
those dreadful mistakes which excite the astonishment and horror of
posterity.”729
And then Mill cites the examples of Socrates and Jesus Christ, who, though
the most admirable of men, became the victims of the censoriousness of their
generation.
Mill’s most powerful argument in favour of complete liberty of speech – an

argument expressed before him in More’s Utopia and Milton’s Areopagitica - is
that it is only in an atmosphere of complete intellectual freedom that truth can be
truly understood and become well rooted. “Truth gains more even by the errors
of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself than by the true
opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to
think. Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to form great thinkers that freedom of
thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as much and even more indispensable
to enable average human beings to attain the mental stature which they are
capable of. There have been, and may again be, great individual thinkers in a
general atmosphere of mental slavery. But there never has been, nor ever will be,
in that atmosphere an intellectually active people.”730
727
728
729
730
428
Mill cites the Reformation, the late eighteenth-century in France and the early
nineteenth-century in Germany as admirable periods of intellectual freedom. “In
each, an old mental despotism had been thrown off, and no new one had yet
taken its place. The impulse given at these three periods has made Europe what
it now is. Every single improvement which has taken place either in the human
mind or in institutions may be traced distinctly to one or other of them.” 731
However, the citing of these three periods exposes the false assumptions of
Mill’s argument. The Reformation was indeed an intellectually exciting period,
when many of the abuses and falsehoods of the medieval period were exposed.
But did it lead to a greater understanding of positive truth? By no means.
Similarly, the late eighteenth century was the period in which the foundations of
Church and State were so effectively undermined as to lead to the bloodiest
revolution in history to that date, a revolution which most English liberals quite
rightly abhorred. As to the early nineteenth century in Germany, its most
dominant thinker was Hegel, who constructed probably the most pompous and
contradictory – indeed, strictly nonsensical - of all philosophical systems, which is
considered, with some justice, to be an ancestor of both communism and
fascism.
As for the Anglo-Saxon world, in the one-and-a-half centuries since Mill’s

time, although it has attained a still greater degree of freedom of thought and
speech than prevailed in those three epochs, yet it has been at the expense of the
almost complete decay of traditional Christian belief and morality... Evidently,
freedom does not necessarily lead to truth. Nor did the Truth incarnate ever
claim that it would, declaring rather the reverse relationship, namely, that “ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8.32). And part of
the truth consists in the sober recognition that men’s minds are fallen, and for
much of the time do not even want the truth, so that if given complete freedom
to say what they like, the result will be the falling away of society from truth into
the abyss of destruction.
As Timothy Snyder writes: “The core texts of liberal toleration, such as

Milton’s Areopagitica and Mill’s On Liberty, take for granted that individuals will
wish to know the truth. They contend that in the absence of censorship, truth
will eventually emerge and be recognised as such. But even in democracies this
may not always be true.”732
In democracies especially it may not always be true. For the pressure to follow
the majority opinion is greater in democracies, as is the power of
demagoguery…
Mill’s arguments in favour of complete freedom of expression rest on the

assumption that the men who are given this freedom are not children or
barbarians. And yet the corruption of mind and heart we associate with the
word “barbarian” is present in every single man; this is what we mean by the
731
732
Snyder, “War is Peace”, Prospect, November, 2004, p. 33.
429
term “original sin”. And if men were not very often children in mind, the
Apostle Paul would not have been forced to say: “Brethren, be not children in
your thinking; be babes in evil, but in thinking be mature” (I Corinthians 14.20).
James Fitzjames Stephen, in his Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873) pointed to

further important flaws in Mill’s argument. Liberty was like fire, he said; it could
be used for good and ill; to assume otherwise was naïve and dangerous. It was
by no means certain that full freedom from interference by others would lead to
greater searching for truth; it could just as easily lead to idleness and lack of
interest in social affairs.
Moreover, writes Gertrude Himmelfarth, “what disturbed him about Mill’s

doctrine was the possibility that its adoption would leave society impotent in
those situations where there was a genuine need for social action. Implicit too
was the possibility that the withdrawal of social sanctions against any particular
belief or act would be interpreted as a sanctioning of that belief or act, a licence
to do that which society could not prohibit.”733
Stephen’s line of argument was developed by Lord Devlin in The Enforcement

of Morals (1968). “The occasion for Devlin’s essay,” writes Himmelfarth, “was the
Report of the Wolfenden Commission recommending the legalization of
homosexuality between consenting adults. Against the Commission’s claim that
private morality and immorality were ‘not the law’s business’, Devlin argued
that ‘the suppression of vice is as much the law’s business as the suppression of
subversive activities; it is not more possible to define a sphere of private
morality than it is to define private subversive activity.”734
As we know, the Wolfenden Commission’s recommendation with regard to

homosexuality was accepted by the English parliament, which demonstrates the
power – the highly destructive power – that the application of Mill’s Principle
has acquired in our times, a power that Mill himself would probably have
deplored. Indeed, a completely consistent application of the Principle would
probably lead to the sweeping away of prohibitions against such activities as
euthanasia, incest and prostitution on the grounds that these are within the
sphere of private morality or immorality and so of no concern to the State. But
then, asks Devlin, “if prostitution is… not the law’s business, what concern has
the law with the ponce or the brothel-keeper…? The Report recommends that
the laws which make these activities criminal offences should be maintained…
and brings them… under the heading of exploitation…. But in general a ponce
exploits a prostitute no more than an impresario exploits an actress.” 735
Mill justifies the prohibition of certain acts, such as public indecency, on the
grounds that they “are a violation of good manners, … coming thus within the
category of offences against others”. And yet, as Jonathan Wolff points out, it is
difficult to see how such a prohibition can be justified on the basis of the Harm
733
Himmelfarth, in Mill, On Liberty, p. 40.
734
Himmelfarth, in Mill, On Liberty, p. 41.
735
Devlin, in Jonathan Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 1996,
p. 141.
430
Principle alone. For “what harm does ‘public indecency’ do? After all, Mill
insists that mere offence is no harm. Here Mill, without being explicit, seems to
allow customary morality to override his adherence to the Liberty Principle.
Few, perhaps, would criticize his choice of policy. But it is hard to see how he
can render this consistent with his other views: indeed, he appears to make no
serious attempt to do so. “Once we begin to consider examples of this kind we
begin to understand that following Mill’s ‘once simple principle’ would lead to a
society of a kind never seen before, and, perhaps, one which we would never
wish to see…”736
And so, while Millsean liberalism carefully sought to protect society both
from the continental-style tyranny of one man, and from the American-style
tyranny of the majority, it ended up delivering society into a series of tyrannies
of minorities, which is best exemplified by the European Human Rights Act that
is devastating Christian faith and morality in contemporary Britain. This should
not surprise us; for liberalism is in essence a pagan doctrine, owing its origin
more to fifth-century Athens than to any period of Christian history. Mills
extolled the Liberty or Harm Principle not simply because it supposedly
guaranteed freedom from tyranny and the triumph of truth, but because it
fostered that ideal of the human being, vigorous, independent, unafraid of being
different, even eccentric, which he found in Classical Greece. Indeed, he openly
rejected the ascetic, Christian ideal in favour of the pagan Greek: “There is a
different type of human excellence from the Calvinistic: a conception of
humanity as having its nature bestowed on it for other purposes than merely to
be abnegated. ‘Pagan self-assertion’ is one of the elements of human worth, as
well as ‘Christian self-denial’. There is a Greek ideal of self-development, which
the Platonic and Christian ideal of self-government blends with, but does not
supersede. It may be better to be a John Knox than an Alcibiades, but it is better
to be a Pericles than either; nor would a Pericles, if we had one in these days, be
without anything good which belonged to John Knox…”737
736
Wolff, op. cit., pp. 140-141. For the difficulties created for Mills’ theory by public indecency,
see several articles in Philosophy Now, issue 76, November-December, 2009.
737
431
50. UTOPIAN SOCIALISM
We have seen that the liberal movement was largely confined to bourgeois
property-owners with the purpose of benefiting other property owners. Socialist
humanism, the third kind of humanism after liberal humanism and evolutionary
humanism in Yuval’s terminology, aimed to correct this fault in liberalism by
extending liberal freedoms to the peasants and/or the workers. But this was
only the first, and by no means the most important step for socialists: since the
formerly dispossessed were the largest class and had suffered so long and so
bitterly from the oppression of the higher classes, it was envisaged that the lower
classes should take over the government of states, creating a completely new
kind of society, a community of “comrades” rather than “citizens” or “nations”,
that would have no place at all for the beneficiaries of the earlier revolutions.
This was the dream of the most extreme socialists, Marx and Engels, whose
Communist Manifesto was published in the year of the liberal revolutions of 1848.
However, there were other kinds of socialists… According to M.S. Anderson,

two main schools of socialist thought can be distinguished within early
nineteenth-century socialism. “On the one hand was that which traced from the
Jacobin regime of 1793-94 in France and which was uncompromisingly activist
and power-oriented. Represented from the 1830s onwards most clearly by the
fanatical professional revolutionary Auguste Blanqui, it believed that the new
age could be ushered in, in any existing society, only by a violent coup d’état
which must be the work of an enlightened minority, the agents of an inexorable
historical process. Once established in power, this minority would establish a
regime based on complete social and political equality, the end towards which
history was inescapably moving. After some unavoidable coercion the majority,
their eyes opened by education, would embrace the new regime with
enthusiasm. It would then become permanent and unalterable, since no man, as
a rational being, could wish to change it. Aspirations of this kind were first given
practical expression in the Babeuf conspiracy of 1796 in Paris. Through the
Conspiration pour l’égalité of Buonarotti, a history of that conspiracy published in
1828 which became ‘the manual of the communist movement in the 1830s and
1840s and the chief source of its ideology’, they were to remain part of the
European, later the world, revolutionary vision until our own day.
“Side by side with this harsh and uncompromising scheme there developed
another current of thought, represented in Great Britain by Robert Owen and in
France by Charles Fourier and to a lesser extent Louis Blanc and that most
idiosyncratic of thinkers, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. These writers, dominated less
by ideas of historical inevitability than by a desire for justice and for the
lessening of human suffering, disliked the totalitarianism, the violence, the
centralization of power which were essential to the Jacobin-Babouvist-Blanquist
outlook. They dreamed rather of a new society, achieved peacefully or with a
minimum of violence, in which patterns and initiatives would emerge from
below. Owen and Fourier, the most extreme representatives of this attitude,
432
envisaged the dissolution of central authority and its transfer to small self-
contained communities based on a perfect division of labour.” 738
These “Utopian” Socialists were particularly influenced by the

economic ideas of the so-called Philosophical Radicals: Jeremy
Bentham, Malthus, Ricardo and James Mill, the father of J.S. Mill.
Utopian socialism, writes Bertrand Russell, “began in the heyday of
Benthamism, and as a direct outcome of orthodox economics. Ricardo,
who was intimately associated with Bentham, Malthus, and James Mill,
taught that the exchange value of a commodity is entirely due to the
labour expended in producing it. He published this theory in 1817, and
eight years later Thomas Hodgskin, an ex-naval officer, published the
first Socialist rejoinder, Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital. He
argued that if, as Ricardo taught, all value is conferred by labour, then
all the reward ought to go to labour; the share at present obtained by
the landowner and the capitalist must be mere extortion. Meanwhile
Robert Owen, after much practical experience as a manufacturer, had
become convinced of the doctrine which soon came to be called
Socialism. (The first use of the word ‘Socialist’ occurs in 1827, when it
is applied to the followers of Owen.) Machinery, he said, was
displacing labour, and laisser-faire gave the working classes no
adequate means of combating mechanical power. The method which he
proposed for dealing with the evil was the earliest form of modern
Socialism.
“Although Owen was a friend of Bentham, who had invested a

considerable amount of money in Owen’s business, the Philosophical
Radicals did not like his new doctrines; in fact, the advent of Socialism
made them less Radical and less philosophical than they had been.
Hodgskin secured a certain following in London, and James Mill was
horrified. He wrote:
“’Their notions of property look ugly;… they seem to think that it

should not exist, and that the existence of it is an evil to them. Rascals,
I have no doubt, are at work among them… The fools, not to see that
what they madly desire would be such a calamity to them as no hands
but their own could bring upon them.’
“This letter, written, in 1831, may be taken as the beginning of the long war
between Capitalism and Socialism. In a later letter, James Mill [writes]: ‘These
opinions if they were to spread, would be the subversion of civilized society;
worse than the overwhelming deluge of Huns and Tartars.’” 739
Owen’s creed, writes Sir Isaiah Berlin, “was summarised in the sentence
inscribed at the head of his journal, The New Moral World: ‘Any general character,
from the best to the worst, from the most ignorant to the most enlightened, may
738
M.S. Anderson, The Ascendancy of Europe, 1815-1914, London: Longman, 1985, pp. 340-341.
739
Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, London: Allen and Unwin, 1946, pp. 808-809.
433
be given to any community, even the world at large, by the application of proper
means, which means are to a great extent at the command and under the control
of those who have influence in the affairs of men.’ He had triumphantly
demonstrated the truth of his theory by establishing model conditions in his
own cotton mills in New Lanark, limiting working hours, and creating provision
for health and a savings fund. By this means he increased the productivity of his
factory and raised immediately the standard of living of his workers, and, what
was even more impressive to the outside world, trebled his own fortune. New
Lanark became a centre of pilgrimage for kings and statesmen, and, as the first
successful experiment in peaceful co-operation between labour and capital, had
a considerable influence on the history both of socialism and of the working
class. His later attempts at practical reform were less successful. Owen, who died
in deep old age in the middle of the nineteenth century, was the last survivor of
the classical period of rationalism, and, his faith unshaken by repeated failures,
believed until the end of his life in the omnipotence of education and the
perfectibility of man.”740
In his Declaration of Mental Independence, Owen declared that from

then mankind should consider itself liberated from "the trinity of evils
responsible for all the world's misery: traditional religion, conventional
marriage and private property". And since traditional religion was the
main buttress of conventional marriage and private property, it was the
worst evil. Perhaps that is why he founded his own religion, becoming
“the self-styled ‘Social Father of the Society of Rational Religionists’,
before converting to Spiritualism and enjoying conversations with the
shades of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson…” 741
Kind-hearted entrepreneurs who would support Owen remained few
and far between. His last scheme, in New Harmony, Indiana, failed
because when he tried to put into effect his belief in the abolition of
private property, his workers did not respond. Their nature, alas, was
not as perfectible as Owen believed... 742
John Stuart Mill drew from Owen’s failure the conclusion that only
state action could solve the problem of poverty and inequity. In his
Principles of Political Economy, he made another proposal that was to be
seen as the essence of socialism: redistribution. With this proposal,
writes Barzun, he "broke with the liberal school by asserting that the
distribution of the national product could be redirected at will and that
it should be so ordered for the general welfare. That final phrase,
perpetually redefined, was a forecast.... It was [its] underlying idea -
essential socialism - that ultimately triumphed, taking the twin form of
Communism and the Welfare State, either under the dictatorship of a
party and its leader or under the rule of a democratic parliament and
democracy.” 743
740
Berlin, Karl Marx, London: Fontana, 195, pp. 32-33. Owen also wanted to abolish the family….
741
742
Alan Jacobs, Original Sin: A Cultural History, New York: HarperCollins, 2008, pp.174-188.
743
Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, New York, 2000, pp. 527-528.
434
However, the English liberal solutions of self-help and education (Owen) and
redistribution of wealth (Mill) were rejected by radical thinkers on the continent,
especially in France. The most radical was the anarchist Proudhon, who
anticipated the nihilists of the following generation by calling for the destruction
of all authorities, even God. “’The Revolution is not atheistic, in the strict sense of
the word… it does not deny the absolute, it eliminates it…’ ‘The first duty of
man, on becoming intelligent and free, is to continually hunt the idea of God out
of his mind and conscience. For God, if he exists, is essentially hostile to our
nature… Every step we take in advance is a victory in which we crush Divinity.’
‘Humanity must be made to see that God, if there is a God, is its enemy.’” 744 It
was Proudhon who uttered the famous words: “What is property? Property is
theft.” 745 “By this phrase,” writes Evans, “he did not intend to dismiss all private
property; rather, he wanted society to own all property but to lease it all out to
prevent profiteering and unfair distribution. Nevertheless, his declarations
resonated across the century as a slogan for socialists, communists and
anarchists alike. Proudhon was vehemently opposed to female equality. If
women obtained equal political rights, he declared men would find them
‘odious and ugly’, and it would bring about ‘the end of the institution of
marriage, the death of love and the ruin of the human race’. ‘Between harlot and
housewife,’ he concluded, ‘there is no halfway point’.”746
Other French thinkers tried to be more constructive. Among them was the
Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), “who had had a career more adventurous
than most: he had served under Washington at Yorktown in 1781, narrowly
escaped the guillotine during the Revolution of 1789, and been incarcerated as a
lunatic with the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) at the asylum in Charenton. He
continued to live a troubled life thereafter, even attempting suicide in 1823 by
shooting himself. His central concern was with developing a rational form of
religion in which people would obtain eternal life ‘by working with all their
might to ameliorate the condition of their fellows’.”747
Saint-Simon’s “earliest pamphlet,” writes Talmon, “A Letter from a Citizen of

Geneva, contains the bizarre scheme of a Council of Newton. The finest savants
of Europe were to assemble in a mausoleum erected in honour of the great
scientist, and deliberate on the problems of society. The author thereby gave
picturesque expression to his view that in the French Revolution popular
744
Proudhon, in Rose, op. cit., p. 61.
745
Marx disagreed with the latter statement insofar as it presupposed real rights in property.
Nevertheless, he admitted the importance of Proudhon’s analysis of private property relations.
“The two forces,” writes Berlin, “which Proudhon conceived as fatal to social justice and the
brotherhood of man were the tendency towards the accumulation of capital, which led to the
continual increase of inequalities of wealth, and the tendency directly connected with it, which
openly united political authority with economic control, and so was designed to secure a growth
of a despotic plutocracy under the guise of free liberal institutions. The state became, according
to him, an instrument designed to dispossess the majority for the benefit of a small minority, a
legalised form of robbery…” (Berlin, op. cit., pp. 82-83)
746
747
435
sovereignty had proved itself as fumbling, erratic and wrong as the divine right
of kings, and that the tenets of rationalism about the rights of man, liberty and
equality, had shown themselves just as irrelevant to man’s problems as
theological doctrine. Not being rooted in any certainty comparable to that of
science, old and new political ideas alike became only a pretext for the will of
one set of men to dominate all others – which was all, in fact, that politics had
ever been.
“What had made men yield to such palpable error for so long and then
caused Saint-Simon to see through them at precisely that moment? Unlike
eighteenth-century philosophers – such as his masters Turgot and Condorcet –
Saint-Simon does not invoke the march of progress, the victory of
enlightenment, or the sudden resolve of men. He points to the importance
assumed by scientific advance, technological development and problems of
industrial production, all based upon scientific precision, verifiable facts and
quantitative measurements which left no room for human arbitrariness.
“In the past, mythological and theological modes of thought, medieval

notions of chivalry, metaphysical preoccupations and so on were the
accompaniment – or, as Saint-Simon more often seems to suggest, the matrix – of
the economic conditions and the social-political order of the day. In brief, frames
of mind, modes of production and social political systems hang together, and
develop together, and the stages of such overall development cannot be skipped.
The industrial system which the nineteenth century was ushering in had its
beginnings in the Middle Ages. Within the womb of a civilization dominated by
priests and warriors, shaped by values and expectations not of this world,
geared for war and inspired by theatrical sentiments of chivalry, there began a
mighty collective effort to fashion things, instruments and values designed to
enhance men’s lives here and now: industrial production, economic exchange
and scientific endeavour. The communes had at first no thought of subverting
the feudal-theological order, within which they made their earliest steps – firstly
because they were as yet too weak for such a revolt, and secondly because they
did not value the external accoutrements of power. They believed only in
positive tangible goods and solid achievements in the social-economic and
scientific domain.
“This was the cause of a divorce between content and form. While in external
appearance warriors and priests still held the reins of authority, real power was
increasingly concentrated in the hands of the productive classes. These classes,
whose position, indeed whose very existence, lacked acknowledged legitimacy
in the official scheme of things, developed a special ethos. Knowing the ruling
classes to be incompetent to deal with matters of decisive importance to them,
the bourgeoisie restored to a theory of laissez-faire which condemned all
government interference and glorified individual initiative and the interplay of
economic interests. In order to clothe this class interest in theoretical garb,
bourgeois spokesmen evolved the doctrine of the natural rights of man and the
theory of checks and balances and division of power. These designed to curb the
power-drives of the feudal forces, and indeed succeeded in undermining the
self-assurance of the aristocratic order.
436
“In Saint-Simon’s view, the French Revolution signified not so much the
triumph of rationalist-democratic ideas as the total victory of the productive
classes and the final swamping of feudal-theological values by positive forces.
But this fundamental fact was distorted and obscured by those metaphysicians
and lawyers who, having played an important part in helping the industrial
classes to win, mistook their secondary role for a mission to impose their ideas
and their rule upon society. Instead of stepping aside and letting the imperatives
of industrial endeavour shape new institutions, they set out to impose their
conjectural ideas upon society, side-tracking the real issues and befogging them
with rhetoric and sophistry. In effect their intention was not to abolish the old
system which divided society into rulers and ruled, but to continue it, only
substituting themselves for the feudal lords; in other words, to rule by force. For
where the relationship between rulers and ruled is not grounded in the nature of
things as is that, for example, between doctor and patient, teacher and pupil –
that is, on division of functions – the only reality is the rule of man over man
based on force. This form of relationship dated from the days when man was
considered to need protection by superiors because he was weak, lowly and
ignorant, or had to be kept from mischief because he was riotous and savage. It
was no longer justified since the Revolution had proved that man had come of
age. It was time for government, in other words the state, to make room for an
administration of things, and conscious, sustained planning of the national
economy. The need to keep law and order, allegedly always so pressing and
relentless, would be reduced to a minimum when social relations were derived
from objective necessities. The whole problem was thus reduced to the discovery
of the ‘force of things’, the requirements of the mechanism of production. Once
these had become the measure of all things, there would be no room for the
distinction between rulers in the traditional political sense. The nexus of all
human relationships would be the bond between expert knowledge and
experience on the one hand, and discipleship, fulfillment of necessary tasks, on
the other. The whole question of liberty and equality would then assume a quite
different significance.
“In fact men would no longer experience the old acute craving for liberty and
equality. A scientific apportioning of functions would ensure perfect cohesion of
the totality, and the high degree of integration would draw the maximum
potential from every participant in the collective effort. Smooth, well-adjusted
participation heightens energy and stills any sense of discomfort or malaise.
There is no yearning for freedom and no wish to break away in an orchestra, a
choir, a rowing boat. Where parts do not fit and abilities go to waste, there is a
sense of frustration and consequently oppression, and man longs to get away.
The question of equality would not arise once inequality was the outcome of a
necessary and therefore just division of tasks. There is no inequality where there
is no domination for the sake of domination.
“Such a perfect integration remained to be discovered. Pursuing his quest,

Saint-Simon stumbled upon socialism, and then found himself driven to
religion. Waste, frustration, deprivation, oppression were the denial of both
cohesion of the whole and the self-expression of the individual. Those scourges
437
were epitomized in the existence of the poorest and most numerous class – the
workers. And so what started with Saint-Simon as a quest for positive certainty
and efficiency gradually assumed the character of a crusade on behalf of the
disinherited, the underprivileged and frustrated. The integrated industrial
productive effort began to appear as conditioned upon the abolition of poverty,
and dialectically the abolition of poverty now seemed the real goal of a fully
integrated collective endeavour.
“But was the removal of friction and waste enough to ensure the smooth
working of the whole? And would rational understanding suffice to ensure
wholehearted participation in the collective effort? Saint-Simon was led to face at
a very early stage of socialism the question of incentives. He felt that mechanical,
clever contrivances, intellectual comprehension and enlightened self-interest
were in themselves insufficient as incentives and motives. And so the positivist,
despising mythical, theological and metaphysical modes of thought, by degrees
evolved into a mystical Romantic. He became acutely aware of the need for
incentives stronger, more impelling and compelling than reason and utility. In a
sense he had already come to grips with the problem in the famous distinction
between organic and critical epochs in history, a distinction which was destined
to become to important in the theory of his disciple, Auguste Comte.
“These two types of epoch alternate in history. There is a time of harmony

and concord, like the pre-Socratic age in Greece and the Christian Middle Ages,
and there are times of disharmony and discord, like post-Socratic Greece and the
modern age, which began with the Reformation, evolved into rationalism, and
came to a climax in the French Revolution. The organic ages are period of a
strong and general faith, when the basic assumptions comprise a harmonious
pattern and are unquestioningly taken for granted. There are no dichotomies of
any kind, and classes live in harmony. In the critical ages there is no longer any
consensus about basic assumptions; beliefs clash, traditions are undermined,
there is no accepted image of the world. Society is torn by class war and
selfishness is rampant.
“The crying need of the new industrial age was for a new religion. There must
be a central principle to ensure integration of all the particular truths and a
single impulse for all the diverse spiritual endeavours. The sense of unity of life
must be restored, and every person must be filled with such an intense
propelling and life-giving sense of belonging to that unity, that he would be
drawn to the centre by the chains of love, and stimulated by a joyous irresistible
urge to exert himself on behalf of all.
“Saint-Simon called this new religion of his ‘Nouveau Christianisme’. It was

to be a real fulfillment of the original promise of Christianity, and was to restore
that unity of life which traditional Christianity – decayed and distorted – had
done its best to deny and destroy. The concept of original sin had led to a
pernicious separation of mankind into a hierarchy of the perfect and the mass of
simple believers. This carried with it the distinction between theory and practice,
438
the perfect bliss above and the vale of tears below; the result was compromise
and reconciliation with – in effect, approval of – evil here and now.” 748
Saint-Simon reduced Christianity to “Love thy neighbour”. “Applied to

modern society,” writes Edmund Wilson, this principle “compels us to recognize
that the majority of our neighbours are destitute and wretched. The emphasis
has now been shifted from the master mind at the top of the hierarchy to the
‘unpropertied man’ at the bottom; but the hierarchy still stands as it was, since
Saint-Simon’s whole message is still his own peculiar version of the principle of
noblesse oblige. The propertied classes must be made to understand that an
improvement in the condition of the poor will mean an improvement in their
condition, too; the savants must be shown that their interests are identical with
those of the masses. Why not go straight to the people? he makes the interlocutor
ask in his dialogue. Because we must try to prevent them from resorting to
violence against their governments; we must try to persuade the other classes
first.
“And he ends – the last words he ever wrote – with an apostrophe to the Holy
Alliance, the combination of Russia, Prussia and Austria which had been
established upon the suppression of Napoleon. It was right, says Saint-Simon, to
get rid of Napoleon, but what have they themselves but the sword? They have
increased taxes, protected the rich; their church and their courts, and their very
attempts at progress, depend on nothing but force; they keep two million men
under arms.
“’Princess!’ he concludes, ‘hear the voice of God, which speaks to you

through my mouth: Become good Christians again, throw off the belief that the
hired armies, the nobility, the heretical clergy, the corrupt judges, constitute
your principal supporters; unite in the name of Christianity and learn to
accomplish the duties which Christianity imposes on the powerful; remember
that Christianity command them to devote their energies to bettering as rapidly
as possible the lot of the very poor!’” 749
Saint-Simon is an important link between the Masonic visionaries of the

French revolution and the “scientific” vision of the Marxists. The importance he
attached to economic factors and means of production formed one of the main
themes of Marxism – although Marx himself dismissed him as a “Utopian
socialist”. That he could still think in terms of a “New Christianity” shows his
attachment to the religious modes of thought of earlier ages, although, of course,
his Christianity is a very distorted form of the faith.
Marx would purge the religious element in Saint-Simon and make the
economic element the foundation of his theory, while restoring the idea of
Original Sin in a very secularized form. As for the incentives which Saint-Simon
thought so necessary and which he thought to supply with his “New
Christianity”, Marx found those through his adoption of the idea of a
748
Talmon, op. cit., pp. 58-65.
749
Wilson, To the Finland Station, London: Phoenix, 2004, pp. 84-85.
439
scientifically established progress to a secular Paradise, whose joyous
inevitability he borrowed from the dialectical historicism of one of the most
corrupting thinkers in the history of thought – Hegel.
One of Saint-Simon’s disciples was Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who founded

the extremely influential doctrine of positivism. “Comte,” writes Norman Davies,
“held that all knowledge passed through three successive stages of
development, where it is systematized according to (respectively) theological,
metaphysical, and ‘positive’ or scientific principles. The theological and
metaphysical states had to be discarded in order to arrive at the state of true
knowledge, which is science. Comte placed the sciences in a kind of hierarchy
with a new “science of society”, or sociology, at the summit. The social scientists’
task was “to know in order to foresee, and to foresee in order to know”. 750
Comtean positivism is one of the corner-stones of the modern world-view;

and his idea of science as the only true knowledge became as accepted in the
capitalist West as in the communist East.
Another Utopian Socialist figure was Charles Fourier (1772-1837). He believed

in the old chiliastic dream of Paradise on earth, in which men would live to be
144 years old.751 He had other dreams, too: “He believed that the world would
last precisely 80,000 years and that by the end of that time every soul would
have traveled 810 times between the earth and certain other planets which he
regarded as certainly inhabited, and would have experienced a succession of
existences to the precise number of 1626!752
“His starting point,” according to Talmon, “was very much that of Rousseau.
Man, he believed, had come out of the hands of nature a good and noble being.
The institutions of civilization had brought about his undoing. Greed and
avarice were the root of all evil. They had created the existing dichotomies
between private morality and commercial and political codes of behaviour,
between things preached and ways practiced. Morose, ascetical teachings about
the evil character of the natural urges were motivated by the avarice and
ambition of the greed and strong, who wished to instill into their victims a sense
of sin, and with it humility and readiness to bear privations, perform the dirtiest
750
751
Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen), Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Writings, Platina, Ca.:
St. Herman of Alaska Press, 2003, p. 623.
752
Wilson, op. cit., p. 89. These early socialists, in spite of their materialist bent of mind, were
peculiarly susceptible to quasi-religious visions. Thus Saint-Simon had visions of Charlemagne,
and it was revealed to him “in a vision that it was Newton and not the Pope whom God had
elected to sit beside Him and to transmit to humanity His purposes” (Wilson, op. cit., p. 83). As
for Owen, “he came in his last days to believe that all the magnanimous souls he had known,
Shelley, Thomas Jefferson, Channing, the Duke of Kent… - all those who when living had
listened to him with sympathy, of whom he had felt that they had really shared his vision, and
who were lost to him now through death – he came to believe that they were returning from the
other world, to make appointments with him and keep them, to talk to him and reassure him”
(Wilson, op. cit., p. 97).
440
jobs, and receive the whip. The attempt to stifle natural impulses had the effect
of turning the energy contained in them into channels of perversion and
aggressiveness.
“Such impulses were inflamed by the spectacle of avarice rampant and all-
pervasive, in spite of the official ascetic teachings. Fourier may have moralized,
may have dreamed of the waters of the oceans turning into lemonade and of
lions changed into modern aeroplanes and carrying men over vast distance; but
his homilies and dreams are buttressed by a very acute analysis and critique of
commercial, if not quite capitalist, civilization. He also analysed history into a
succession of social economic stages, and sketched a historical dialectic from
which Marx and Engels could – and it seems did – learn something.
“Here, however, we are concerned with Fourier’s contribution to the problem

of organization and freedom. In his view, the state and its laws were instruments
of exploitation, and any large centralized state was bound to develop into an
engine of tyranny. Fourier therefore held that the state ought to be replaced by a
network of small direct democracies. Each should enjoy full autonomy and be at
once a wholly integrated economic unit and a closely-knit political community.
In these ‘phalanstères’ all would be co-partners, everybody would know all the
other members (Fourier laid down a maximum of 1800), and decisions would be
reached by common consent. By these means men would never be subjected to
some anonymous, abstract power above and outside them.
“Fourier also tackled the problem of reconciling integration with self-

expression. He argued that it was absurd to expect to eliminate the love of
property, desire to excel, penchant for intrigue or craving for change, let alone
sex and gluttony. Such an attempt was sure to engender frustration and anti-
social phenomena. And there was no escape from the fact that people had
different characteristics and urges of different intensity. Happily, benevolent
nature had taken care of that by creating different sorts of characteristics and
passions, like symphonic compositions in which the most discordant elements
are united into a meaningful totality. The task was therefore reduced to the art of
composing the right groups of characteristics – perfectly integrated partnerships
based on the adjustment of human diversities. It followed that the other task was
to manipulate the human passions so cleverly that they would become levers of
co-operative effort and increased production instead of impediments to
collaboration. (This implies an ardent faith in education and environmental
influence comparable to Robert Owen’s. 753) To take first the love of property: it
would not be abolished or made equal. There would be a secured minimum of
private property, but beyond that it would depend on investment, contribution,
type of work, degree of fatigue and boredom, and so on, with progressively
decreasing dividends. Persons of diverse characteristics joined into one group
would stimulate each other, and competition between groups would be strongly
753
Cf. Owen’s words: “Every day will make it more and more evident that the character of man
is, without a single exception, always formed for him; that it may be, and is, chiefly created by
his predecessors: that they give him, or may give him, his ideas and habits, which are the powers
that govern and direct his conduct. Man, therefore, never did, nor is it possible he ever can, form
his own character” (in Anderson, op. cit., p. 341). (V.M.)
441
encouraged. The paramount aim was to turn labour into a pleasure instead of a
curse. In order to obviate the danger of boredom, spells of work would be short
and changes in the type of labour frequent. Gangs of children would be set the
task of doing the dirty jobs in a spirit of joyous emulation. Finally, industry
would be combined with an Arcadian type of agriculture.
“This is Fourier’s solution to the dilemmas which have plagued our common
sense for so long: who will do the disagreeable jobs in a perfectly harmonious
society, and what will be the relationship between superiors and inferiors in
it?”754
“It was above all Fourier,” writes Evans, “who propounded the identity of
women’s emancipation and general human emancipation, a belief shared by
Flora Tristan: ‘The extension of privileges to women,’ he wrote, ‘is the general
principle of all social progress.’ He too compared women to slaves: marriage for
them was ‘conjugal slavery’. In the phalanstery, women would have fully equal
rights and would be free to marry and divorce as they wished. Just as Cabet
invented the word ‘communism’, so Fourier invented the word ‘feminism’. The
Saint-Simonians were equally preoccupied with women’s place in society.
Enfantin proclaimed ‘the emancipation of women’ as a central goal of a new
Church that he would lead. He included in this concept, however, the
‘rehabilitation of the flesh’, and his advocacy of the sexual emancipation of
women brought a conviction for offending public morality in 1832. Far more
conventional was Cabet, who, perhaps surprisingly, thought that the main
constituent unit of communist society would not be the individual but the
heterosexual married couple and their children, so that shared childrearing did
not come into his vision. Every women should be educated, but the aim of her
education should be to make her ‘a good girl, a good sister, a good wife, a good
mother, a good housekeeper, a good citizen’.”755
Before leaving the French thinkers, we should briefly take note of
the great historian Jules Michelet. In the first half of his book, The
People, written shortly before the 1848 revolution, he analyzed
industrial society in a way that anticipated Marx, but which was
broader in scope and more balanced in its vision. “Taking the classes
one by one, the author shows how all are tied into the social-economic
web – each, exploiting or being exploited, and usually both extortionist
and victim, generating by the very activities which are necessary to win
its survival irreconcilable antagonisms with its neighbours, yet unable
by climbing higher in the scale to escape the general degradation. The
peasant, eternally in debt to the professional moneylender or the
lawyer and in continual fear of being dispossessed, envies the
industrial worker. The factory worker, virtually imprisoned and broken
in will by submission to his machines, demoralizing himself still
further by dissipation during the few moments of freedom he is
allowed, envies the worker at a trade. But the apprentice to a trade
belongs to his master, is servant as well as workman, and he is troubled
by bourgeois aspirations. Among the bourgeoisie, on the other hand,
754
Talmon, op. cit., pp. 68-71.
755
442
the manufacturer, borrowing from the capitalist and always in danger
of being wrecked on the shoal of overproduction, drives his employees
as if the devil were driving him. He gets to hate them as the only
uncertain element that impairs the perfect functioning of the
mechanism; the workers take it out in hating the foreman. The
merchant, under pressure of his customers, who are eager to get
something for nothing, brings pressure on the manufacturer to supply
him with shoddy goods; he leads perhaps the most miserable existence
of all, compelled to be servile to his customers, hated by and hating his
competitors, making nothing, organizing nothing. The civil servant,
underpaid and struggling to keep up his respectability, always being
shifted from place to place, has not merely to be polite like the
tradesman, but to make sure that his political and religious views do
not displease the administration. And, finally, the bourgeoisie of the
leisure class have tied up their interests with the capitalists, the least
public-spirited members of the nation, and they live in continual terror
of communism. They have now wholly lost touch with the people. They
have shut themselves up in their class; and inside their doors, locked so
tightly, there is nothing but emptiness and chill….
“’Man has come to form his soul according to his material situation. What an
amazing thing! Now there is a poor man’s soul, a rich man’s soul, a tradesman’s
soul… Man seems to be only an accessory to his position.’
443
51. PATERNALISM VERSUS UTILITARIANISM
Industrialization, writes Andrew Marr, “changed the politics of the British in
many unexpected ways. During 1811-16 in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and
Lancashire, the old artisan, cottage-based handloom weaver revolted violently
against the new mechanized factory looms that were destroying their
livelihoods. Taking their battle name from a fictitious woodland freedom fighter
called King Lud, these ‘Luddites’ smashed machines, attacked employers and
magistrates and, having practiced night manoeuvres outside industrial cities,
ended up clashing with the army. Many were hanged or sent to Australia. In
1830, agricultural workers in Kent began the ‘Swing Riots’ – another attack on
the new job-destroying technology: in this case mechanized threshing
machines.”756
The Luddite rebellion exposed a profound dilemma at the heart of the

industrial revolution, not only in the early nineteenth century but in every stage
of its development up to the present day: that as science and technology produce
inventions that save labour and increase productivity, creating wealth and
leisure for some, or even for very many, workers in the older industries lose
their jobs and become poorer. This is the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil in its modern form: increases in material scientific knowledge
yield “good” in the shape of material progress and wealth, but also “evil” in the
shape of the blighting of formerly productive lives. No generation has succeeded
in solving this dilemma because no generation has been able to desist from
tasting of the forbidden fruit. Thus in our own time computerization and
digitalization have brought huge increases in productivity and wealth to the
modern world, but also unemployment and insecurity on a massive scale. 757 The
next stage, we are told, will be robotization: most ordinary jobs done by humans
will be replaced by the operations of robots. The consequences of this are
difficult to foresee; with confidence we can say only that they will be huge, and
by no means unambiguously good. Some put their faith in the promise of the
serpent that men are gods and that the good of their inventions will always
outweigh the evil. Others believe in God, Who says that the fruits of this tree,
whatever they may be in material terms, will lead to the spiritual death of man
unless he repents of his folly and clings to the Tree of Life…
Another, related change brought about by industrialization was the change in

the formerly paternal attitude taken by governments and landlords to
agriculture and agricultural workers. By far the biggest employer in England,
writes Tombs, “was agriculture, taking about a third of the male labour force.
The booming wartime population and restricted imports had caused an
extension of cultivation to common land and ‘waste’. Despite occasional serious
shortages, the country had been fed. Landlords and tenant farmers had made
profits; but the poor had lost customary common rights as land was ‘enclosed’,
Marr, A History of the World, London: Pan, 2012, pp. 401-402.

756
Modern films that have explored this theme are The Man in the White Suit (1951), 2001 Space
757
Odyssey (2001 and Artificial Intelligence (2001).

444
making them wholly dependent on wages, and creating a sense of injustice.
Wartime conditions were clearly unsustainable, but again the solution was
neither easy nor uncontentious. Should agriculture be encouraged to maximize
production and try to feed the booming population? Or should cheaper overseas
food supplies be sought, and some English land taken out of cultivation? In 1813
a notorious ‘Corn Law’ was adopted, which gave some protection to domestic
producers by excluding imports of grain until the price reached a certain level –
for wheat, eighty shillings a quarter (sixty-four gallons).
“Many, at home and abroad, thought that an overpopulated England was

heading for famine. The most notorious and influential alarmist was an Anglican
parson with radical connections, Thomas Malthus. His Essay on Population (1798)
mixed heterodox Christianity with what would now be called finite ecology,
arguing that population growth inevitably tended to outrun food supply, and
would inevitably be ‘checked’ either by restraining births or by famine, hunger
and war. In his own time and since he has been the subject of controversy and
denunciation – he himself apologized for his ‘disheartening’ conclusions.
Defended by political economists and attacked by a string of moralists, including
Dickens, Carlyle, Coleridge, Byron, Cobbett and Disraeli, he had an immediate
influence, for his argument seemed incontrovertibly logical, and it became,
wrote one Utilitarian, ‘the fixed, axiomatic belief of the educated world’.
Malthus’s theories caused moral and intellectual turmoil, and the perception of
the poor as a danger. Attempts to relieve poverty would encourage population
increase, and so merely make the danger worse. His ideas retained a hold until
the 1850s. As late as 1852, the leading French radical Auguste Ledru-Rollin
published a book prophesying gloatingly that England was doomed to mass
starvation. The main target of such fears during the 1820s-1830s was the Poor
Law, believed to encourage a feckless dependency culture and the breeding of
too many children.
“One way of escaping future hunger was to import food. This required secure
control of the seas by maintaining naval supremacy built up over the previous
century (potential enemies looked forward to the day when England might be
starved by a coalition of naval powers). It also meant exporting ever more goods
and services to pay for imported food. These exports required increasing
employment in manufacturing and commerce, and endlessly growing cities – an
uncharted prospect. Was this just another road to disaster? Many thought so:
only agriculture was ‘real’, the rest was a house of cards. ‘Perish commerce!’
declaimed the Radical William Cobbett. Many feared a future of ugly, polluted
towns, crowded with degraded and lawless labourers. Could this be prevented,
or must it be adapted to? Was more government intervention required, or
should things be left to work themselves out under the rules of political
economy and Divine Providence?
“These questions reflected deep ideological and moral divisions. The

philosopher and politician John Stuart Mill characterized it as ‘every Englishman
of the present day [being] either a Benthamite or a Coleridgian’. This convenient
labeling was derived from Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), whose Utilitarianism
445
gave a fresh ideological thrust to Radicalism, and the poet Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (1772-1834), an enthusiastic revolutionary turned mystical
conservative. The division covered politics, economics, science, social relations
and not least theology – we must always remember that most of the political
class, and most of the country, had religious beliefs now rare outside the deepest
recesses of the American Bible Belt. Other voices called for a plague on both
Benthamites and Coleridgians, including Dickens and Thomas Carlyle,
denouncing all and sundry like a modern Jeremiah.
“Benthamite Utilitarianism saw the universe as a self-regulating machine,

with discoverable ‘axioms’, such as the ‘Principle of Utility’: ‘The greatest
happiness of the greatest number… is the measure of right and wrong.’ Society
should be reformed to work according to these axioms. This appealed both to
political economists, who saw the rules as scientific, and to Evangelicals, who
saw them as God’s will. Individual choice was central – there was no such thing
as society. Coleridge once said to Martineau, ‘You seem to regard society as an
aggregate of individuals.’ She replied: ‘Of course I do.’ Government,
professionally managed, must regulate individuals through a system of rewards
and punishments, like intelligent laboratory rats. The virtuous man, taught
Bentham, is an exact calculator. Utilitarianism was authoritarian, epitomized by
the ‘Panopticon’, a prison (it could also be a school, hospital or factory) built so
that inmates could be constantly observed by an all-seeing ‘inspection’. Millbank
(1816) and Pentonville (1842) prisons in London adopted some of these features.
Bentham, who considered the idea of natural rights ‘nonsense on stilts’, had
thought of having a million poor and potentially antisocial people confined in
factory-prisons. Not all his schemes were adopted, of course, but his
fundamental maxims, his scorn for traditional thinking, and his bureaucratic
utopianism were widely influential among modernizers. His embalmed body
still sits inspecting University College London.
“The Coleridgian view – paternalist, interventionist, anti-liberal – saw the

universe and human society not as machines but as complex organisms
developing over time, under a Divine artist, not a celestial engineer. Society
needed leadership and high-minded government to function. Coleridge
advocated moral leadership by a ‘clerisy’, a public-spirited cultural and
intellectual elite. Such views of society appealed to those who saw the traditional
landowning class as having that duty – as Edmund Burke had put it, like great
oaks shading a meadow. However, idealized this view, there was a wide
acceptance of gentry leadership, and recognition of obligations to the ‘deserving’
poor, through charity and the Poor Law. Coleridge and Wordsworth, their
youthful hopes of the French Revolution dashed, found consolation in the
English countryside, and social relations based on what Wordsworth called
‘personal feeling’ and ‘moral cement’. Arguably, such a society could not survive
population growth, urbanization and commercial expansion. Such was
Wordsworth’s fear: ‘Everything has been put up to market and sold for the
highest price’, he wrote to a friend in 1818. The only hope was for society’s
446
moral basis to be restored, but for that ‘they who govern the country must be
something superior to mere financiers and political economists’…”758
One of the main “axioms” of the Benthamite Radicals was free trade, the main
principle of economic liberalism; it was a very important concept, first in
England, and then in other countries that followed the English way.
“True,” writes J.M. Roberts, “it is almost impossible to find economic theorists
and publicists of the early industrial period who advocated absolute non-
interference with the economy. Yet there was a broad, sustaining current which
favoured the view that much good would result if the market economy was left
to operate without the help or hindrance of politicians and civil servants. One
force working this way was the teaching often summed up in a phrase made
famous by a group of Frenchmen: laissez-faire. Broadly speaking, economists
after Adam Smith had said with growing consensus that the production of
wealth would be accelerated, and therefore the general well-being would
increase, if the use of economic resources followed the ‘natural’ demands of the
market. Another reinforcing trend was individualism, embodied in both the
assumption that individuals knew their own business best and the increasing
organization of society around the rights and interests of the individual.
“These were the sources of the long-enduring association between

industrialism and liberalism; they were deplored by conservatives who regretted
a hierarchical, agricultural order of mutual obligations and duties, settled ideas,
and religious values. Yet liberals who welcomed the new age were by no means
taking their stand on a simply negative and selfish base. The creed of
‘Manchester’, as it was called because of the symbolic importance of that city in
English industrial and commercial development, was for its leaders much more
than a matter of mere self-enrichment. A great political battle which for years
preoccupied Englishmen in the early nineteenth century made this clear. Its
focus was a campaign for the repeal of what were called the ‘Corn Laws’, a tariff
system originally imposed to provide protection for the British farmer from
imports of cheaper foreign grain. The ‘repealers’, whose ideological and political
leader was a none-too-successful businessman, Richard Cobden, argued that
much was at stake. To begin with, retention of the duties on grain demonstrated
the grip upon the legislative machinery of the agricultural interest, the
traditional ruling class, who ought not to be allowed a monopoly of power.
Opposed to it were the dynamic forces of the future which sought to liberate the
national economy from such distortions in the interest of particular groups. Back
came the reply of the anti-repealers: the manufacturers were themselves a
particular interest who only wanted cheap food imports in order to be able to
pay lower wages; if they wanted to help the poor, what about some regulation of
the conditions under which they employed women and children in factories?
There, the inhumanity of the production process showed a callous disregard for
the obligations of privilege which would never have been tolerated in rural
England. To this, the repealers responded that cheap food would mean cheaper
758
447
goods for export. And in this, for someone like Cobden, much more than profit
was involved. A worldwide expansion of Free Trade untrammelled by the
interference of mercantilist governments would lead to international progress
both material and spiritual, he thought; trade brought peoples together,
exchanged and multiplied the blessings of civilization and increased the power
in each country of its progressive forces. On one occasion he committed himself
to the view that Free Trade was the expression of the Divine Will (though even
this did not go as far as the British consul at Canton who had proclaimed that
‘Jesus Christ is Free Trade, and Free Trade is Jesus Christ’)…
“Only in England was the issue fought out so explicitly and to so clear-cut a
conclusion. In other countries, paradoxically, the protectionists soon turned out
to have the best of it. Only in the middle of the century, a period of expansion
and prosperity, especially for the British economy, did Free Trade ideals get
much support outside the United Kingdom, whose prosperity was regarded by
believers as evidence of the correctness of their views and even mollified their
opponents; Free Trade became a British political dogma, untouchable until well
into the twentieth century. The prestige of British economic leadership helped to
give it a brief popularity elsewhere, too. The prosperity of the era in fact owed as
much to other influences as to this ideological triumph, but the belief added to
the optimism of economic liberals. Their creed was the culmination of the
progressive view of Man’s potential as an individual, whose roots lay in
Enlightenment ideas.”759
The difference between the old patriarchal attitude towards social and
economic relations and the new liberal attitude is seen particularly in the
contrast between Lord Ashley and Richard Cobden.
Lord Ashley was a Christian Tory philanthropist who campaigned for the
improvement of working conditions for the poor. He ”hated the competitive
atmosphere of factories. Visiting his ancestral seat, St. Giles in the county of
Dorset, he noted in his diary on 29 June 1841, ‘What a picture contrasted with a
factory district, a people known and cared for, a people born and trained on the
estate, exhibiting towards its hereditary possessors both deference and
sympathy, affectionate respect and a species of allegiance demanding protection
and repaying it in duty.’ To the Northern factory-owners such patronizing
attitudes led only to stultification. There was no movement, no struggle, in
Ashley’s view of society. Cobden, the Corn Law reformer par excellence, hated
Ashley’s attempts to set limits to an employer’s powers – the length of hours he
could make factory hands work, or the limiting of the age of his employees.
‘Mine is that masculine species of charity which would lead me to inculcate in
the minds of the labouring classes the love of independence, the privilege of self
respect, the disdain of being patronised or petted, the desire to accumulate and
the ambition to rise.’”760
759
Roberts, History of the World, Oxford: Helicon, 1996, pp. 571-573.
760
A. N. Wilson, The Victorians, London: Arrow Books, 2003, p. 60.
448
“Richard Cobden and John Bright,” writes Tombs, “were promoters of
what Disraeli called the ‘Manchester School’ of economics. Cobden, elected
to Parliament for Stockport in 1841, was a self-made Manchester cotton
magnate, the son of a small yeoman farmer who detested the landlord class:
‘We will grapple with the religious feeling of the people – their veneration
for God shall be our leverage to upset their reverence for the aristocracy.’
Bright was a Quaker landowner from Rochdale, and MP for Durham from
1843. The league was to have a great impact on politics and economics than
any single-issue group before or since. In Britain and elsewhere, exporters
were quick to see the advantages of free trade and lower food costs, but there
was far more to the league than merely business calculation. It condemned
trade barriers as pillars of war, poverty and aristocratic oppression, whereas
free trade promised freedom, peace and prosperity for all. The league
combined the organizational dynamism of a new business class with the
campaigning fervour of Evangelicals and Dissenters: in one week it mailed
some 9 million leaflets, and it organized saturation press campaigns. The
campaign tapped into the anti-slavery movement, which had just succeeded
in abolishing slavery in the empire. Cobden adopted the slogan ‘immediate
abolition’ because it was the old anti-slavery shibboleth. The league’s
optimistic message was the first effective answer to the Malthusian belief, so
hated and so persuasive, that rising population would inevitably lead to
poverty, starvation and conflict. What began as the campaign of a pressure
group became the settled orthodoxy of the country until the 1930s and still
influences English attitudes today.
“Farmers led a counter-campaign in favour of continuing protection for

agriculture, and a flood of rural support went to the Tories. This gave them a
sweeping victory in 1841. The results show that a durable regional pattern
was setting in. The Tories now dominated the English counties and smaller
towns. The Whigs dominated the larger towns, especially south of the Trent,
and were well ahead in Scotland and Ireland. These years set the scene for
nearly half a century of Whig-Liberal hegemony once the Corn Law issue
exploded, for the Whigs established an alliance with northern manufacturers
and retailers, many of them Nonconformists, who dominated urban
politics.”761
In fact, Cobden had still wider, international aims in campaigning for the
repeal of the Corn Laws. “It was expected not merely to destroy the domestic
bases of British militarism by crushing landlord power, but also to link states
commercially through what we would today call ‘interdependence’, thus
making war all but impossible. Free trade, Cobden predicted, would inaugurate
‘the greatest revolution that ever happened in the world’s history’, destroy ‘the
antagonism of race, and creed and language’, and make ‘large and mighty
empires… gigantic armies and great navies’ redundant.” 762
761
762
Trevelyan, in Simms, op. cit., p. 209.
449
Cobden’s “masculine species of charity” was imitated by other industrial
employers and landlords, who felt much less bound by custom and morality to
protect their employees than had the feudal landlords of previous ages.
Trevelyan writes: “Throughout the ‘forties nothing was done to control the slum
landlords and jerrybuilders, who, according to the prevalent laissez-faire
philosophy, were engaged from motives of self-interest in forwarding the
general happiness. These pioneers of ‘progress’ saved space by crowding
families into single rooms or thrusting them underground into cellars, and saved
money by the use of cheap and insufficient building materials, and by providing
no drains – or, worse still, by providing drains that oozed into the water supply.
In London, Lord Shaftesbury discovered a room with a family in each of its four
corners, and a room with a cesspool immediately below its boarded floor. We
may even regard it as fortunate that cholera ensued, first in the years of the
Reform Bill and then in 1848, because the sensational character of this novel
visitation scared society into the tardy beginnings of sanitary self-defence.”
The idea of free trade began to penetrate into Europe... Thus Prussia took the
lead in abolishing tariff barriers between the members of the German
Confederation, “first through a reform passed in 1818 and then through the
German Customs Union founded in 1834, soon to be joined by South German
states such as Baden, though not by Austria. The Customs Union [Zollverein]
brought together a range of earlier, smaller tariff agreements on the basis of a
uniform import duty based on the Prussian one. A major and often neglected
effect of the Customs Union was to protect German industry from British
competition; in 1844, for example, it was charging an import duty on pig iron of
a pound a ton… The breaking down of internal tariff barriers was… vital for
economic progress…”763
Yanis Varoufakis sees in the Zollverein a precursor to the European

Union. “Prior to 1833, what is Germany today encompassed a
multitude of different states, city-states and jurisdictions, each with its
own standards, time zone and currency. Trading across these multiple
borders was nightmarish and the reason that Germany was so far
behind Britain in terms of industrialization, innovation and
governance. German unification began with a customs union known as
the Zollverein, an 1833 agreement between the various territories
promoted as a first step towards free trade and much needed economic
integration.
“One shrewd observer at the time was deeply concerned with the
Zollverein. Chancellor Klemens von Metternich of the Austro-
Hungarian empire… could not fail to notice that the Zollverein treaty
had been driven by Prussia, the dominant German kingdom, and
excluded the Austro-Hungarian empire. Just as Beijing today sees as a
763
450
major threat the American drive to forge a Pacific Basin free trade zone
that excludes China in the form of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP),
Metternich too felt that Prussia was up to mischief. In a letter to his
emperor he wrote: ‘Within the great Confederation, a smaller union is
being formed, a status in statu in the full sense of the term, which will
only too soon accustom itself to achieving its ends by its own
machinery and will pay attention to the objectives and machinery of
the Confederation only when convenient… [O]n every question that
comes before the Diet [the Confederation’s parliament] (and not only
commercial affairs) [it] will act and vote as one according to prior
arrangements. Then there will no longer be any useful discussion in the
Diet; debates will be replaced by votes agreed in advance and inspired
not by the interests of the Confederation but by the exclusive interest
of Prussia… Even now it is unfortunately easy to determine in advance
how these votes will be cast on all the questions where the interest of
Prussia conflicts with that of the federal body.’ This description could
have been written, with very few emendations, to describe my
experience of the Eurogroup deliberations as finance minister of a
small European nation in 2015. Metternich could have been writing
about the manner in which matters of crucial importance for various
Eurozone member states, especially those with large deficits and
unbearable debts, were settled on the basis of modern Prussia’s
‘exclusive interest’.
“In modern times we imagine that nineteenth-century politicians

primarily used the sword to expand their empires, rather than
appealing to the self-interest of prospective subjects. That was not true
of the German Confederation. The idea of voluntary accession on the
basis of the self-interest of the smaller states was indeed central to the
Zollverein. Prussia persuaded the small German states to enter into the
new arrangements by insisting that they would be better off inside the
union, where they would be well positioned to influence matters, than
outside, where they could only react to decisions the confederation
reached.
“Even the notion of subsidiarity, or something close to it, was

employed. The promise of decentralized power worked miracles in
convincing the German states that feared a Prussian-dominated union
to enter it. However, some argue that this was a well-laid trap. The
German constitutionalist Heinrich Tiepel observed that ‘a looser
association of states encourages hegemony more than a tight one…” 764
Another attempt to combine free trade with a European economic

union was made when the French Emperor Napoleon III “suddenly
agreed, partly to strengthen relations with Britain, to a commercial
treaty, negotiated secretly between Richard Cobden and the French
764
Varoufakis, And the Weak Suffer What They Must? London: Vintage, 2017, pp. 213-215.
451
free-trade economist Michel Chevalier and signed in January 1860. The
treaty opened the French market to a range of British goods. It became
the core of a short-lived European economic community, extended by
other treaties to the whole of western and central Europe, with free
movement of population, certain rights of citizenship and an embryonic
single currency, which became the Latin Currency Union. This was the
apogee of the free traders’ vision, and Europe became for a time
Britain’s main trading outlet…” 765
The late 1830s in England were characterized by a huge movement of

protests, strikes and threats of violence. The Luddite movement was only one
manifestation of this. The largest was Chartism, combining a variety of
causes. The Chartists were so-called because they handed in a charter with
1.2 signatures to parliament, but it was rejected. Tempers flared, and there
was one armed uprising, in Newport.
The result of increasing poverty for the great majority in the 1840s, according
to the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, “was social revolution in the form of
spontaneous risings of the urban and industrial poor”, which “made the
revolution of 1848 on the continent, the vast Chartist movement in Britain. Nor
was discontent confined to the labouring poor. Small and inadaptable
businessmen, petty-bourgeois, special sections of the economy, were also the
victims of the Industrial Revolution and of its ramifications. Simple-minded
labourers reacted to the new system by smashing the machines which they
thought responsible for their troubles; but a surprisingly large body of local
businessmen and farmers sympathized profoundly with these Luddite activities
of their labourers, because they too saw themselves as victims of a diabolical
minority of selfish innovators. The exploitation of labour which kept its incomes
at subsistence level, thus enabling the rich to accumulate the profits which
financed industrialization (and their own ample comforts), antagonized the
proletarian. However, another aspect of this diversion of national income from
the poor to the rich, from consumption to investment, also antagonized the small
entrepreneur. The great financiers, the tight community of home and foreign
‘fund-holders’ who received what all paid in taxes… - something like 8 per cent
of the entire national income – were perhaps even more unpopular among small
businessmen, farmers and the like than among labourers, for these knew enough
about money and credit to feel a personal rage at their disadvantage. It was all
very well for the rich, who could raise all the credit they needed, to clamp rigid
deflation and monetary orthodoxy on the economy after the Napoleonic Wars; it
was the little man who suffered, and who, in all countries and at all times in the
nineteenth century demanded easy credit and financial unorthodoxy. Labour
and the disgruntled petty-bourgeois on the verge of toppling over into the
unpropertied abyss, therefore shared common discontents. These in turn united
them in the mass movements of ‘radicalism’, ‘democracy’ or ‘republicanism’ of
765
452
which the British Radicals, the French Republicans and the American Jacksonian
Democrats were the most formidable between 1815 and 1848.”766
Violent collectivist reaction to the excesses of liberal individualism

seemed inevitable. This was certainly the belief of a German factory-
owner in Manchester, Friedrich Engels, who wrote in his Condition of
the English Working Classes, written in 1844, but published in English
only 1892: “The revolution must come; it is already too late to bring
about a peaceful solution… The classes are divided more and more
sharply, the spirit of resistance penetrates the workers, the guerrilla
skirmishes become concentrated in more important battles, and soon a
slight impulse will suffice to set the avalanche in motion.” Engels’
work made “Manchesterism” a term of abuse throughout Europe. Marx
built on it to argue that the workers would not better their lot through
helping themselves, and still less through receiving help from
governments, churches or employers, but through revolution.
And yet the revolution did not take place in England. The Chartist
movement was both large-scale and occasionally violent. But it did not
develop into the proletarian revolution Engels and Marx anticipated.
In investigating why the revolution did not take place in England

Tombs notes, first, “the fundamental economic and social fact [of]
England’s population growth, faster than anywhere in Europe. It rose
from 8.6 million in 1801 to 17 million in 1852 – an increase of 98
percent, with the highest ever recorded growth in 1811-21 (16 percent
in a decade). Around 40 percent of this population was under fifteen,
comparable with much of Africa today. The total urban population,
already the highest in Europe, tripled during the first half of the
century. London’s more than doubled, making it by far Europe’s
biggest conurbation. In the 1820s alone, Manchester grew by 47
percent, West Bromwich by 60 percent, and Bradford by 78 percent.
Average life expectancy at birth was 41.7 years in 1841 – also
comparable with much of Africa in the 2000s. In the multiplying towns
and among the poorest groups it was some ten years less than the
national average… This corresponds to the darkest ‘Dickensian’ images
– of ‘Coketown’ (1854), or the lawless and savage ‘Wodgate’ in
Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Sybil (1845), where ‘swarming thousands
lodged in the most miserable tenements in the most hideous burg in the
ugliest country in the world.’ A French visitor thought that ‘if the
people [of Birmingham] go to hell, they won’t find anything new.’
“Yet this revulsion missed as much as it saw. Critics seized on the worst
conditions, not the typical: there were horrible slums, but the vast majority of the
people did not live in slums, the most notorious of which, investigated and later
photographed, were often very small – a few streets or houses. Working
766
Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, London: Abacus, 1992, pp. 54-55.
453
conditions in the new industries were horrifying by modern Western standards,
but the deadliest trades were thoroughly traditional – file-making, chimney-
sweeping and, worst of all, keeping a pub. Moreover, England was in a
considerably better state than elsewhere. In 1820 GDP per head was some 50
percent higher than in western Europe as a whole. Infant mortality in 1839 was
151 per 1,000 in England (comparable with that of Afghanistan in 2010); but in
France it was 160, in Belgium 185 and in southern Germany 285. An
unprecedented Europe-wide cholera pandemic in 1831, spread by infected
drinking water, killed up to 7,000 in London – often taken as a symptom of the
capital’s archaic and decentralized governance (it had thirty-eight local
authorities); but the same disease killed over 18,000 in centrally administered
Paris. Cholera came to seem the nemesis of the growing city. The worst
pandemic of the century, in the mid-1850s, killed another 11,000 in London and
23,000 across Britain – but 130,000 died in France. London led the way during
the 1850s in gradually improving public health, sewerage and drinking water in
a joint effort by philanthropic campaigners, local government bodies such as the
Metropolitan Board of Works (1855), and parliamentary legislation…
“Paternalistic Toryism campaigned in the 1830s for legislation to limit hours,

improve factory conditions, and protect child and women workers. It was led by
a strange but determined group including Richard Oastler (a Leeds linen
merchant turned squire), his friend Michael Sadler (another Leeds linen
merchant) and the philanthropic aristocrat Lord Ashley later 7 th Earl of
Shaftesbury. They had in common fervent Evangelical Anglicanism (opposing
both slavery and Catholic emancipation) and were horrified by the moral and
social effects of uncontrolled factory labour: ‘I heard their groans,’ wrote Oastler,
‘I watched their tears; I knew they relied on me.’ Parliament enacted down a
watered-down Factory Act in 1833 and the principle of compulsory labour
regulation was established. Utilitarians and liberals deplored what they
considered ignorant and damaging attempts to shackle the labour market and
pile costs on employers.
“Industrialists accused Tory paternalists – sometimes no doubt correctly – of

being less solicitous about the farm labourers on great estates. It was also the
case that Evangelical Tories were ultimately more concerned with souls than
bodies, particularly those of women and children tempted by the drink,
godlessness and sex supposedly inseparable from factories and mines…
“… Poor people themselves did not necessarily share the pessimism either of
contemporary upper-class commentators or of later historians. The rural poor,
especially young people underemployed in over-populated villages, found in
towns and factories an escape from dependency, chronic poverty, and exclusion
from adult life and marriage. However risky and accident prone, a move to town
meant more regular work, money in their pockets, freedom, the chance of family
life and/or amorous adventure, and exciting new social and cultural
opportunities. Judging from their own writings, many working people felt not
454
only that they were living in a rapidly changing world, but that it was changing
for the better… ”767
In any case, Engels’ analysis was not accurate. “He seized on slums in
Manchester as ‘the classic type of a modern manufacturing town’ – although
they were neither modern nor linked to manufacturing. He denounced as the
‘degradation’ of the new industrial ‘proletariat’ what was in fact the plight of a
non-industrial, unskilled underclass, many of them newly arrived Irish
immigrants, who had no connection with factory work. Such slums in London,
Liverpool and Manchester illustrated not industrialization but the problems of
rapid urbanization without manufacturing industry – what England’s booming
population might have suffered had it not been for the Industrial Revolution,
and which was being suffered in the ancient teeming cities of eastern and
southern Europe, from Palermo to Moscow. In contrast to Engels’s pessimism,
an 1860s survey found 95 percent of houses in Hull and 72 percent in
Manchester to be ‘comfortable’.”768
Even if we accept that the working class was less miserable than previously
thought, and that the problems were due more to very rapid population growth
than industrialization as such, the fact remains that legislation was needed in
order to protect the vast numbers of new workers pouring into the new
industrial towns. And here it has to be admitted that the legislation in this
period of “unrestrained capitalism” (Sir Karl Popper’s phrase) often only
exacerbated the plight of the poor. This was especially true of the Poor Law Act
of 1834, which prescribed the building of workhouses designed to be as
unattractive as possible. Thus the Reverend H.H. Milman wrote to Edwin
Chadwick: “The workhouses should be a place of hardship, of coarse fare, of
degradation and humility; it should be administered with strictness – with
severity; it should be as repulsive as is consistent with humanity.” 769
As Tombs writes, “The New Poor Act (1834) – which fired Dickens’s
indignation in Oliver Twist (1837) – is the most notorious of the Utilitarian
reforms, and that which most colours popular perceptions of the period. The Old
Poor Law, dating from Elizabeth I, had developed into a unique welfare
system… It had – or was believed to have – become increasingly unsustainable
during the wary years: total spending had increased from about £2m in 1784 to
£6m in 1815, when around 15 percent of the population were receiving aid. In
fact, the cost was pretty stable as a share of growing GDP (which contemporaries
could not know) – around 2 percent. However, the rise in population, wartime
inflation and postwar economic fluctuations made the old system of local
financing unviable, imposing an open-ended commitment on ratepayers: in one
small Yorkshire town, Newburgh, the annual bill to thirteen ratepayers rose
from £34 in 1817-18 to £130 in 1836-37. Foreign observers thought it dangerous to
give the poor a legal entitlement to assistance and commonly made the
elementary error of assuming that because there were more ‘paupers’ (i.e.
767
Tombs, op. cit., pp. 436-437, 438-440.
768
769
Millman, in Wilson, The Victorians, op. cit., p. 12.
455
benefit claimants) in England than in other countries, this meant that there were
more poor people, and that the gulf between rich and poor was growing. Rather,
it was because the Poor Law recognized relative deprivation: the richer society
grew, the more the poor needed. So ‘the English poor are almost rich to the
French poor,’ observed the French liberal Alexis de Tocqueville. Paupers were
quick to stand up for their rights by applying to Overseers of the Poor and, if
dissatisfied, appealing to the magistrates: Tocqueville was scandalized to see old
men, pregnant girls and unemployed labourers doing so unblushingly before
the Justices of the Peace. This, he and many others thought, created a
dependency culture that meant that ‘the number of illegitimate children and
criminals grows rapidly and continuously, the indigent population is limitless,
the spirit of foresight and saving becomes more and more alien to the poor,’ as
truculent young men squandered their poor relief in the pub…
“Grey’s government appointed a Royal Commission, which proposed a

uniform, transparent and impersonal system, aiming to eliminate fraudulent
claims and what it considered excessive generosity without removing the legal
right to assistance. The New Poor Law (1834) had many Benthamite features. It
prescribed ratepayer-elected Boards of Guardians, professional administrators, a
central supervisory commission and national dietary regulations. The key idea
was a self-acting ‘test’ of genuine need: the traditional payments in cash or kind
were forbidden (except in emergencies and for the sick); assistance was to be
given only within workhouses offering a ‘less eligible’ existence than the lowest
wages could provide. So these ‘Whig Bastilles’ were a deliberate deterrent, by
monotonous (if usually ample) diet, unpleasant work and regimentation. The
‘respectable’ poor were humiliated by wearing uniforms, being mixed with the
unrespectable, and having their families split up between different day-rooms
and dormitories. The press quoted one old man as vowing that ‘as long as I can
arne a sixpence anyhow, they shan’t part me from my wife.’ Entry into ‘the
House’ was made a last desperate resort: thus, reported the Royal Commission
on the Poor Law with evident satisfaction, ‘the line between those who do, and
those who do not need relief is drawn, an drawn perfectly.’ Spending on poor
relief dropped from £6.3m to £4m, and the percentage of the population aided
from 10.2 to 5.4 percent. Only some Tories and Radicals objected. Disraeli said
that the Act ‘disgraced the country’…
“Poor relief – previously a source of social cohesion – had been envenomed

and many lives blighted by Utilitarian reforms that were harsh, unworkable and
counter-productive, for in trying to prevent the pauperization and
demoralization of the poor, the reformers had in truth pauperized and
demoralized them far more. A shoemaker, Samuel Kydd, recalled that ‘reforms
‘did more to sour the hearts of the laboring population’ than material hardship,
and to ‘sap the loyalty of the working men, to make them dislike the country of
their birth.’ It did much to ignite arguably the greatest – if not the only – class
war England has ever seen, the Chartist campaign…”770
770
456
The New Poor Law, as John Gray writes, “set the level of subsistence lower
than the lowest wage set by the market. It stigmatised the recipient by attaching
the harshest and most demeaning conditions to relief. It weakened the
institution of the family. It established a laissez-faire regime in which individuals
were solely responsible for their own welfare, rather than sharing that
responsibility with their communities.
“Eric Hobsbawm captures the background, character and effects of the

welfare reforms of the 1830s when he writes: ‘The traditional view, which still
survived in a distorted way in all classes of rural society and in the internal
relations of working-class groups, was that a man had a right to earn a living,
and, if unable to do so, a right to be kept alive by the community. The view of
middle-class liberal economists was that men should take such jobs as the
market offered, wherever and at whatever rate it offered, and the rational man
would, by individual or voluntary collective saving and insurance make
provision for accident, illness and old age. The residuum of paupers could not,
admittedly, be left actually to starve, but they ought not to be given more than
the absolute minimum – provided it was less than the lowest wages offered in
the market, and in the most discouraging conditions. The Poor Law was not so
much intended to help the unfortunate as to stigmatize the self-confessed
failures of society… There have been few more inhuman statutes than the Poor
Law Act of 1834, which made all relief ‘less eligible’ than the lowest wage
outside, confined it to the jail-like work-house, forcibly separating husbands,
wives and children in order to punish the poor for their destitution.’
“This system applied to at least 10 per cent of the English population in the
mid-Victorian period. It remained in force until the outbreak of the First World
War.
“The central thrust of the Poor Law reforms was to transfer responsibility for
protection against insecurity and misfortune from communities to individuals
and to compel people to accept work at whatever rate the market set. The same
principle has informed many of the welfare reforms that have underpinned the
re-engineering of the free market in the late twentieth century…
“No less important than Poor Law reform in the mid-nineteenth century was
legislation designed to remove obstacles to the determination of wages by the
market. David Ricardo stated the orthodox view of the classical economists
when he wrote, ‘Wages should be left to fair and free competition of the market,
and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature.’
“It was by appeal to such canonical statements of laissez-faire that the Statute
of Apprentices (enacted after the Black Death in the fourteenth century) was
repealed and all other controls on wages ended in the period leading up to the
1830s. Even the Factory Acts of 1833, 1844 and 1847 avoided any head-on
collision with laissez-faire orthodoxies. ‘The principle that there should be no
interference in the freedom of contract between master and man was honoured
to the extent that no direct legislative interference was made in the relationship
457
between employers and adult males… it was still possible to argue for a further
half-century, though with diminishing plausibility, that the principle of non-
interference remained inviolate.’
“The removal of agricultural protection and the establishment of free trade,

the reform of the poor laws with the aim of constraining the poor to take work,
and the removal of any remaining controls on wages were the three decisive
steps in the construction of the free market in mid-nineteenth century Britain.
These key measures created out of the market economy of the 1830s the
unregulated free market of mid-Victorian times that is the model for all
subsequent neo-liberal policies.”771
The most famous champion of the poor in this period was the novelist
Charles Dickens, whose early novel Oliver Twist did much to publicize the
horrors of child labour and the inhumanity of the factory-owners.
His A Christmas Carol (1843) was a moving exhortation to charity, a

nineteenth-century version of the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. As
John Broich writes, it “was an instant bestseller, followed by countless print,
stage and screen productions. Victorians called it ‘a new gospel,’ and reading
or watching it became a sacred ritual for many, without which the Christmas
season cannot materialize.
“But A Christmas Carol’s seemingly timeless transcendence hides the fact

that it was very much the product of a particular moment in history, its
author meaning to weigh in on specific issues of the day. Dickens first
conceived of his project as a pamphlet, which he planned on calling, ‘An
Appeal to the People of England on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child.’ But in
less than a week of thinking about it, he decided instead to embody his
arguments in a story, with a main character of pitiable depth. So what might
have been a polemic to harangue, instead became a story for which
audiences hungered.” 772
Scrooge in A Christmas Carol epitomized the industrial and retail bourgeoisie

who formed the core of the new “middle class”. They were, as Eric Hobsbawm
writes, “self-made men, or at least men of modest origins who owed little to
birth, family or formal higher education. (Like Mr. Bounderly in Dickens’ Hard
Times, they were not reluctant to advertise the fact.) They were rich and getting
richer by the year. They were above all imbued with the ferocious and dynamic
self-confidence of those whose own careers prove to them that divine
providence, science and history have combined to present the earth to them on a
platter.
”’Political economy’, translated into a few simple dogmatic propositions by

self-made journalist-publishers who hymned the virtues of capitalism… gave
Gray, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, London: Granta Books, 1998, pp. 9-11.
771
Broich, “The Real Reason Charles Dickens Wrote ‘A Christmas Carol’”, Time, December 13,
772
2016.
458
them intellectual certainty. Protestant dissent of the hard Independent,
Utilitarian, Baptist and Quaker rather than the emotional Methodist type gave
them spiritual certainty and a contempt for useless aristocrats. Neither fear,
anger, nor even pity moved the employer who told his workers:
“’The God of Nature has established a just and equitable law which man has
no right to disturb; when he ventures to do so it is always certain that he, sooner
or later, meets with corresponding punishment… Thus when masters
audaciously combine that by an union of power they may more effectually
oppress their servants; by such an act, they insult the majesty of Heaven, and
bring down the curse of God upon themselves, while on the other hand, when
servants unite to extort from their employers that share of the profit which of
right belongs to the master, they equally violate the laws of equity.’
“There was an order in the universe, but it was no longer the order of the
past. There was only one God, whose name was steam and spoke in the voice of
Malthus, McCulloch, and anyone who employed machinery…
“A pietistic Protestantism, rigid, self-righteous, unintellectual, obsessed with

puritan morality to the point where hypocrisy was its automatic companion,
dominated this desolate epoch. ‘Virtue’, as G.M. Young said, ‘advanced on a
broad invincible front’; and it trod the unvirtuous, the weak, the sinful (i.e. those
who neither made money nor controlled their emotional or financial
expenditures) into the mud where they so plainly belonged, deserving at best
only of their betters’ charity. There was some capitalist economic sense in this.
Small entrepreneurs had to plough back much of their profits into the business if
they were to become big entrepreneurs. The masses of new proletarians had to
be broken into the industrial rhythm of labour by the most draconian labour
discipline, or left to rot if they would not accept it. And yet even today the heart
contracts at the sight of the landscape constructed by that generation.
“‘You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely useful. If the members
of a religious persuasion built a chapel there – as the members of eighteen
religious persuasions had done – they made it a pious warehouse of red brick,
with sometimes (but this only in highly ornamented examples) a bell in a bird-
cage on the top of it… All the public inscriptions in the town were pained alike,
in severe characters of black and white. The jail might have been the infirmary,
the town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that
appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction. Fact, fact, fact,
everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the
immaterial… Everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the
cemetery, and what you couldn’t state in figures, or show to be purchaseable in
the cheapest market and saleable in the dearest, was not and never should be,
world without end, Amen.’
“This gaunt devotion to bourgeois utilitarianism, which the evangelicals and

puritans shared with the agnostic eighteenth-century ‘philosophic radicals’ who
put it into logical words for them, produced its own functional beauty in railway
459
lines, bridges and warehouses, and its romantic horror in the smoke-drenched
endless grey-black or reddish files of small houses overlooked by the fortresses
of the mills. Outside it the new bourgeoisie lived (if it had accumulated enough
money to move), dispensing command, moral education and assistance to
missionary endeavour among the black heathen abroad. Its men personified the
money which proved their right to rule the world; its women, deprived by their
husbands’ money even of the satisfaction of actually doing household work,
personified the virtue of their class: stupid (‘be good, sweet maid, and let who
will be clever’), uneducated, impractical, theoretically unisexual, propertyless
and protected. They were the only luxury which the age of thrift and self-help
allowed itself.
“The British manufacturing bourgeoisie was the most extreme example of its
class, but all over the continent there were smaller groups of the same kind:
Catholic in the textile districts of the French North or Catalonia, Calvinist in
Alsace, Lutheran pietist in the Rhineland, Jewish all over central and eastern
Europe. They were rarely quite as hard as in Britain, for they were rarely quite as
divorced from the older traditions of urban life and paternalism. Leon Faucher
was painfully struck, in spite of his doctrinaire liberalism, by the sight of
Manchester in the 1840s, as which continental observer was not? But they shared
with the English the confidence which came from steady enrichment…” 773
Even the Anglican Church, which hardly penetrated into the new industrial
slums, seemed to be on the side of the exploiters. “A typical representative of
this kind of Christianity was the High Church priest J. Townsend, author of A
Dissertation on the Poor Laws, by a Wellwisher of Mankind, an extremely crude
apologist for exploitation whom Marx exposed. ‘Hunger,’ Townsend begins his
eulogy, ‘is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted pressure but, as the most
natural motive of industry and labour, it calls forth the most powerful exertions.’
In Townsend’s ‘Christian’ world order, everything depends (as Marx observes)
upon making hunger permanent among the working class; and Townsend
believes that this is indeed the divine purpose of the principle of the growth of
population; for he goes on: ‘It seems to be a law of nature that the poor should
be to a certain degree improvident, so that there may always be some to fulfil the
most servile, the most sordid, the most ignoble offices in the community. The
stock of human happiness is thereby much increased, whilst the more delicate…
are left at liberty without interruption to pursue those callings which are suited
to their various dispositions.’ And the ‘delicate priestly sycophant’, as Marx
called him for this remark, adds that the Poor Law, by helping the hungry,
‘tends to destroy the harmony and beauty, the symmetry and order, of that
system which God and nature have established in the world.’” 774
With the official Church effectively on the side of the exploiters, it was left to
“Christian socialists”, individual preachers and philanthropists, and, above all,
novelists to elicit the milk of human kindness from the hard breasts of the rich.
773
Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, pp. 230-232.
774
K.arl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, vol. II,
p. 200.
460
The realistic novel in the hands of great writers such as Dickens and Balzac
acquired an importance it had not had in earlier ages, teaching morality without
moralizing. Thus Mrs. Elisabeth Gaskell’s North and South not only brought
home to readers in the rural south the sufferings of the industrial north: it also
showed how the philosophy of Free Trade tended to drive out even the
Christian practice of almsgiving. For the novel describes how the industrialist
Thornton, though not a cruel man at heart, is against helping the starving
families of his striking workers on the grounds that helping them would help
prolong the strike, which, if successful, would force him out of business, which
would mean unemployment and starvation for those same workers. But in the
end he is led by the woman he loves to see how a thriving business and kindness
to the workers can be combined…
Poverty, especially in the countryside, where most of the population

continued to live, was an increasing problem throughout Europe in the
nineteenth century. Gradual improvements in medicine meant that child
mortality went down and the numbers of mouths to feed went up. Improved
agricultural techniques, developed mainly in England, were slow in reaching
those areas where they were most needed. Emancipation of the peasants went
ahead throughout the continent; but it was a painful, disputatious and complex
affair that did not translate immediately, if at all, into increased prosperity, and
not infrequently led to peasant uprisings. Periodic famines, such as those of
1816-17 and the late 1840s, killed hundreds of thousands.
461
52. THE HUNGRY FORTIES AND THE IRISH FAMINE
In 1841 Lord Peel became Tory Prime Minister. It looked as if Tory
Paternalism had triumphed over Whig Utilitarianism. But it was not to be –
thanks to the Irish famine…
“’The Hungry Forties’ – a term invented retrospectively during the anti-

protectionist campaign of the 1900s – saw a Europe-wide economic slump of
extreme severity. Beginning in 1846, this was a combination of the last of the
age-old dearths caused by harvest failures and the first great global financial
panic. Rising prices, a rush to import food, government borrowing and interest
rate increases burst a speculative bubble based on railway-building. This gave
rise to an acute sense of change and crisis, inspiring both utopian hopes and a
sense of dread, as mass hunger and unemployment precipitates in 1848 a bloody
cycle of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary conflict across much of Europe.
The 1840s were also the climax of agonized English self-examination, the decade
of several of Dickens’s most popular works – including The Old Curiosity Shop
(1840-41), Barnaby Rudge (1841), A Christmas Carol (1843), Dombey and Son (1848)
and David Copperfield (1849-50); of Carlyle’s Chartism (1840), famously
denouncing the ‘cash nexus’, and Past and Present (1843); of Disraeli’s Coningsby
(1844) and Sybil (1845); Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847); Charles Kingsley’s
Yeast (1848); Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848) and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton
(1848); and impassioned poetry, including Thomas Hood’s ‘Song of the Shirt’,
Elizabeth Barrett’s ‘The Cry of the Children’ and Tennyson’s ‘Locksley Hall’.
Literature made metropolitan readers more aware of regional differences and
problems, particularly those of the industrial north – though one reader declared
that after reading the Brontës she would ‘rather visit the Red Indians than trust
herself in Leeds’. The aim was to haunt readers’ imaginations and prick their
consciences.
“Bad weather and the arrival of an unknown plant disease from America in
1845 began ‘an ecological catastrophe almost unparalleled in modern history’ by
destroying potato crops. In 1846 wheat and rye harvests also failed from Spain to
Prussia. Potatoes provided good and cheap nourishment across northern
Europe, and the crop failures caused some 40,000-50,000 deaths in Belgium and
similar numbers in Prussia. Far worse ensued in Ireland, whose population had
risen to at least 8 million (compared with England’s 13 million) and which was
more dependent on potatoes than anywhere else, consuming some 7 million tons
per year. The Irish famine, during which nearly a million people died [according
to other estimates, 1.1 million between 1845 and 1850] and as many emigrated
[mainly to the United States], has left a dark stain on English history, because of
the overall responsibility of predominantly English governments. The tragedy
has been described as ‘genocide’, developing an accusation first put forward by
Irish nationalists in the 1860s. It bred generations of hatred, not least among Irish
Americans. The genocide accusation, which can be found today on websites and
in pop songs and was approved in the 1990s for teaching in schools in parts of
the United States, alleges not merely that English aid was inadequate, but that
462
the government deliberately blocked aid and created an artificial famine by
extorting vast quantities of food from Ireland to feed England.” 775
Let us first listen to the case for the prosecution. Niall Ferguson writes: “It
may have been phytophthora infestans that ruined the potatoes; but it was the
dogmatic laissez-faire policies of Ireland’s British rulers that turned harvest
failure into outright famine.”776
John Mitchel put the same point as follows in his The Last Conquest of Ireland
(Perhaps) 1860: “The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight, but the English
created the Famine.” “These words,” writes A.N. Wilson, “very understandably
became the unshakeable conviction of the Irish, particularly those forced into
exile by hunger. The tendency of modern historians is not so much to single out
individuals for blame, such as Charles Edward Trevelyan, permanent head of
the Treasury, as to point to the whole attitude of mind of the governing class and
the, by modern standards, gross inequalities which were taken for granted.
Almost any member of the governing class would have shared some of
Trevelyan’s attitudes.
“But there is more to John Mitchel’s famous statement (one could almost call
it a declaration of war) than mere rhetoric. Deeply ingrained with the immediate
horrors of the famine was the overall structure of Irish agrarian society, which
placed Irish land and wealth in the hands of English (or in effect English)
aristocrats. It was the belief of a Liberal laissez-faire economist such as Lord John
Russell that the hunger of Irish peasants was not the responsibility of
government but of landowners. No more callous example of a political doctrine
being pursued to the death – quite literally – exists in the annals of British
history. But Lord John Russell’s government, when considering the Irish
problem, were not envisaging some faraway island in which they had no
personal concern. A quarter of the peers in the House of Lords had Irish
interests…”777
Another factor contributing to English callousness was “No Popery”. English

Protestantism had made a significant concession to Irish Catholicism in 1829,
when, under the guidance of the Duke of Wellington (an Anglo-Irish landowner
who also commanded many Irish soldiers in the Napoleonic wars), and under
the pressure especially of the Catholic Member of Parliament for Co. Clare,
Daniel O’Connell, the British government repealed the anti-Catholic legislation
that had been in place since the Gunpowder Plot. And yet anti-Catholic feeling
remained.
Thus, as Wilson writes, “there were plenty who saw [the famine] as ‘a special
“mercy”, calling sinners both to evangelical truth and the Dismantling of all
775
776
Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World, p. 253.
777
Wilson, op. cit., p. 80.
463
artificial obstacles to divinely-inspired spiritual and economic order’, as one
pamphlet put it.”778
In spite of such attitudes, there were English men and women who felt their
consciences and contributed to the relief of the famine – Queen Victoria and
Baron Rothschild among them. “Yet these overtures from the English side,”
continues Wilson, “were undoubtedly made against a tide of prejudice and
bitterness. The hordes of Irish poor crowding into English slums did not evoke
pity – rather, fear and contempt. The Whiggish Liberal Manchester Guardian
blamed the famine quite largely on the feckless Irish attitudes to agriculture,
family, life in general. Small English farmers, said this self-righteous newspaper,
don’t divide farms into four which are only sufficient to feed one family. (The
economic necessities which forced the Irish to do this were conveniently
overlooked by the Manchester Guardian: indeed economic weakness, in the
Darwinian jungle, is the equivalent of sin.) Why weren’t the English starving?
Because ‘they bring up their children in habits of frugality, which qualify them
for earning their own living, and then send them forth into the world to look for
employment’.
“We are decades away from any organized Irish Republican Movement.
Nevertheless, in the midst of the famine unrest, we find innumerable ripe
examples of British double standards where violence is in question. An
Englishman protecting his grossly selfish way of life with a huge apparatus of
police and military, prepared to gun down the starving, is maintaining law and
order. An Irishman retaliating is a terrorist. John Bright, the Liberal Free Trader,
hero of the campaign against the Corn Laws, blamed Irish idleness for their
hunger – ‘I believe it would be found on inquiry, that the population of Ireland,
as compared with that of England, do not work more than two days a week.’
The marked increase in homicides during the years 1846 and 1847 filled these
English liberals with terror. There were 68 reported homicides in Ireland in 1846,
96 in 1847, 126 shootings in the latter year compared with 55 the year before.
Rather than putting these in the contexts of hundreds of thousands of deaths
annually by starvation, the textile manufacturer from Rochdale blames all the
violence of these starving Celts on their innate idleness. ‘Wherever a people are
not industrious and not employed, there is the greatest danger of crime and
outrage. Ireland is idle, and therefore she starves; Ireland starves, and therefore
she rebels.’
“Both halves of this sentence are factually wrong. Ireland most astonishingly
did not rebel in, or immediately after, the famine years; and we have said
enough to show that though there was poverty, extreme poverty, before 1845,
many Irish families survived heroically on potatoes alone. The economic
structure of a society in which they could afford a quarter or a half an acre of
land on which to grow a spud while the Duke of Devonshire owned Lismore,
Bolton (and half Yorkshire), Chatsworth (and ditto Derbyshire), the whole of
Eastbourne and a huge palace in London was not of the Irish peasant’s making.
778
464
“By 1848/9 the attitude of Lord John Russell’s government had become
Malthusian, not to say Darwinian, in the extreme. As always happens when
famine takes hold, it was followed by disease. Cholera swept through Belfast
and Co. Mayo in 1848, spreading to other districts. In the workhouses, crowded
to capacity, dysentery, fevers and ophthalmia were endemic – 13,812 cases of
ophthalmia in 1849 rose to 27,200 in 1850. Clarendon and Trevelyan now used
the euphemism of ‘natural causes’ to describe death by starvation. The gentle
Platonist-Hegelian philosopher Benjamin Jowett once said, ‘I have always felt a
certain horror of political economists, since I heard one of them say that he
feared the famine of 1848 in Ireland would not kill more than a million people,
and that would scarcely be enough to do much good.’ As so often Sydney Smith
was right: ‘The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem
to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence and common sense, and to
act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots.’”779
And now the case for the defence, made by Robert Tombs: “When the blight
was first reported to [Tory Prime Minister Lord] Peel in September 1845 – a
potato merchant wrote warning him personally – he bought American maize for
Ireland to feed 500,000 people for three months. In January 1846 he suspended
the Corn Laws to allow untaxed imports. A Public Works (Ireland) bill was
introduced to provide employment. But the early potato crop was good, and
disguised the peril. Irish nationalists minimized the problem and rejected aid:
‘No begging appeals to Ireland… For who could make men and freemen of a
nation so basely degraded?’ Peel’s fall in June 1846, after repealing the Corn
Laws, brought in a Whig government under Lord John Russell, which has long
been condemned for dogmatic adherence to free trade. The traditional villain of
the piece is Charles Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, accused of
dogmatism, racism and an Evangelical belief that the famine was the work of
Providence. There is some truth in this, though Providentialist views were
widespread, including in the Irish Catholic Church. The Whigs certainly
believed in the beneficence of free trade, including exports from Ireland. They
set up a public-works programme as a means of famine relief, though rejecting a
large-scale plan of railway-building, aid to farmers and taxes on absentee
landlords proposed by the Tory Lord George Bentinck. At the peak, over 700,000
people were being employed on public works – more than the total employment
provided by Irish agriculture. But this was still insufficient. The potato crop
failed disastrously again in 1846. Trevelyan wrote to a Catholic priest: ‘The
famine is increasing; deaths become more frequent; and the prospect may well
appal the heart’. In January 1847 the government began direct food distribution
through soup kitchens, which by July fed 3 million people daily, but this was
considered only possible for a few months, and was cut back when the next
harvest came. Trevelyan declared that ‘Absolute famine still stares whole
districts in the face,’ and appealed for ‘a great effort [of] human exertion’ –
779
Wilson, op. cit., pp. 82-83.
465
voluntary contributions from the English people. A leading nationalist paper
replied: ‘We scorn, we repulse, we curse all English alms.’ The main collection in
England, despite its own economic depression, raised £435,000 – the equivalent
of over £100 million today – smaller contributions came from the empire and
America. The British Relief Association, a charity, was helping to feed up to
200,000 children. Another £0.5m came from public funds, equal to a sixth of total
state spending and ‘probably unprecedented in famine history’. Yet it was
nowhere near enough. People continued to die in their thousands, mostly from
untreatable epidemic diseases worsened by hunger, movement and
overcrowding at soup kitchens and workhouses, where many doctors and clergy
also died. Trevelyan and Russell doubtless believed that everything possible had
been done, and that the only long-term remedies were migration and
agricultural reform. Palmerston, Foreign Secretary and an Irish landlord, himself
chartered ships to take his impoverished tenants to Canada and he supplied
them with clothes and money.
“In the conditions of the time – when the United Kingdom was economically
at about the level of Cameroon today – famine could not have been wholly
prevented. It was immense in scale and duration: there was a total overall
shortfall of some 50 million tons of potatoes. The food exported to England (a
staple of the genocide accusation) accounted for only a fraction of what was
needed to replace the potato and was ‘dwarfed’ by government purchases of
maize. A measured judgement is that the Whig government ‘may have lacked
foresight and generosity’ and ‘may have been guilty of underestimating the
human problems,’ but it was ‘not guilty of either criminal negligence or of
deliberate heartlessness’. At the time, there was no clear demand within Ireland
for a different policy, and the disaster made Irish independence seem unfeasible.
Yet British shortcomings, however they are judged, provided one of the pillars
of Irish nationalism in future generations.
“Aid from England, however substantial, had limits. Public opinion blamed
rapacious Irish landlords for the problem, especially when they evicted
impoverished tenants (there the English agreed with Irish nationalists): hence a
general determination that they should pay their share. In Russell’s words, ‘The
owners of property in Ireland ought to feel the obligation of supporting the poor
who have been born on their estates and have hitherto contributed to their
yearly incomes. It is not just to expect the working classes of Great Britain
should permanently support the burden.’ Prosperous Irish tenant farmers also
inspired little sympathy, in the light of reports that they were ignoring the crisis
and even profiting from it. It was also reported that aid was being siphoned off
to buy arms, while nationalists continued to collect political funds from the
population. There developed a certain ‘compassion fatigue’, aggravated by the
hostile responses of Irish nationalists – ‘thank you for nothing is the Irish thanks
for £10 million’. But racial prejudice does not seem to have been a significant
barrier to aid, and policies in Ireland were the same as in Scotland, which was
also suffering. Views for which English politicians were subsequently excoriated
were shared by prominent Irish nationalists, one of whom, Justin McCarthy, a
witness of the suffering, wrote later that ‘terrible as the immediate effects of the
466
famine are, it is impossible for any friend of Ireland to say that, on the whole, it
did not bring much good with it.’ There was a bitter irony in the polemic, at the
time and since. English politicians insisted on the permanence of the Union, yet
thought of Ireland as a semi-foreign country; Irish nationalists rejected the Union
and ‘appeals to England’, yet later accused the English of lack of solidarity. The
real English responsibility lies in the dysfunctional aspects of Irish society, in
large part due to its long and troubled hegemony.”780
Whatever the final verdict on the role of the British in Ireland, the impact of
the crisis was colossal. “Between 1848 and 1855,” writes Sir Richard Evans, “the
island’s population fell from 8.5 to 6 million, and while much of the decline at
the beginning of the period can be ascribed to the famine, the continuing fall, to
under 4.5 million by the census of 1921, was almost entirely due to emigration.
More than 700,000 had arrived on the British mainland by 1861, over 200,000
went to Canada and 289,000 left for Australia (many of them to join the gold
rushes of the 1860s). But the bulk of the migrants found their way to the United
States – more than three million in all between 1848 and 1921. By 1900 there were
more Irish-born men and women living in the USA than in Ireland itself…” 781
Ireland was England’s first colony, the beginning of what John Dee in about 1580
had called “the British Empire”. If it had remained her only colony, then as a
consequence of the Irish famine, not to mention earlier troubles, the British
Empire would have to be deemed an unequivocal failure…
“The Irish crisis,” continues Tombs, “had caused Peel to suspend grain tariffs
as an emergency measure, and he then abolished the Corn Laws formally in
January 1846 against the will of his own party. Passage through the Commons
took thirty-two nights of angry debate, among the most dramatic in
parliamentary history. The leading protectionist spokesmen were Lord George
Bentinck, who obliquely accused Peel of ‘double-dealing with the farmers of
England… deceiving our friends, betraying our constituents,’ and Benjamin
Disraeli, who claimed to speak for ‘the cause of labour – the cause of the people
– the cause of England!’ The Conservative party was split: two thirds voted
against Peel, typically those representing the counties and smaller boroughs, and
holding local office as JPs, lords lieutenant and sheriffs; they agreed with
Disraeli that agriculture provided ‘the revenues of the Church, the
administration of justice, and the estate of the poor’. Liberals and Radicals voted
overwhelmingly – 95 percent – for repeal. Soon after, Peel was defeated on a
secondary issue, and his career was over. In his resignation speech he said that
the working class would have ‘abundant and untaxed food… no longer
leavened by a sense of injustice’. His followers, including young disciples such
as William Ewan Gladstone, gravitated to the Liberals. He died in 1850, after
falling from a horse. Factories closed as crowds of working class people gathered
to mourn. He was surely the most popular Conservative leader of all time with
780
781
467
urban workers: 400,000 contributed a penny each for a memorial fund to buy
books for working men’s clubs and libraries. He did much to convince them that
the established order was not their enemy.
“The repeal of the Corn Laws had little economic effect for a generation. But it
had immense political and moral effect. It shattered the Conservative party and
brought political divisions into private life to an unusual degree: for example,
the Duke of Newcastle used all his influence to bring about his Peelite son’s
election defeat, and was only reconciled with him on his deathbed. More than
material interests were at stake: there is no obvious correlation between Tory
MPs’ vote on repeal and their personal sources of income. Bentinck declared that
repeal would save him £1,500 a year: ‘I don’t care that: what I cannot bear is
being sold.’ Disraeli’s stance if usually dismissed as opportunistic – the
accusation of his political opponents, aggravated by snobbery and anti-
Semitism, and repeated by historians afraid of being branded naïve. In reality,
he was a romantic English nationalist, a consistent supporter of protection
against the cost-cutting commercialism of the ‘Manchester School’. He also
believed that Peel’s betrayal of electoral commitments undermined the party
system on which politics depended.
“Symbolically, and in the long term really, the end of the Corn Laws marked
the end of a governing order and a set of political ideas. These ideas were of
England as primarily an agricultural country, feeding itself, and governed by a
paternalistic landed elite – the vision of Burke, Wordsworth and Coleridge. But
by 1846 more than half the population lived in towns, and more people had
worked in manufacturing than in farming since the 1820s. The new urban
mechanistic ideologies of Utilitarianism, political economy and free trade
became the norm. All their opponents – from Tories to socialist Owenites – had
lost the argument…”782
By 1852, writes Rebecca Fraser, “free trade had so much been proved to be the
most profitable way for Britain to function that it became national policy for all
the parties; protectionism was quietly abandoned by Derby and Disraeli. The
repeal of the corn laws had not destroyed British farming. Labourers had not
been thrown out of work nor cornfields abandoned, as had been feared. It was
only in the last quarter of the nineteenth century that surplus wheat from the
North American prairies ruined prices in Britain. The price of corn had not
dropped as dramatically in 1846 as the Anti-Corn Law League had expected, but
that was because the cost of all commodities rose over the next ten years, and
repeal acted to offset that rise in the case of corn…”783
782
783
Fraset, The People’s History of Britain, London: Chatto & Windus, 2003, p. 551.
468
53. THE 1848 REVOLUTION: (1) FRANCE
The revolution of 1848 in Europe, writes V.F. Ivanov, “gave wings of hope to
all the antichristian and destructive forces.
“The profound thinker V.A. Zhukovsky, in January, 1848, in an excerpt from

a letter, What is Going to Happen, prophetically foretold the bloody chaos of
which we are the witnesses in our own days.
“’We live,’ wrote Zhukovsky, ‘on the crater of a volcano which not long ago
was giving out fire, which calmed down and which is now again preparing to
throw up. Its first lava flow has not yet cooled, and already in its depths a new
one is bubbling, and the thunder of stones flying out of the abyss is announcing
that it will soon pour out. One revolution has ended, and another stepping on its
toes, and what is remarkable is that the course of the last is observing the same
order as did the first, in spite of the difference in their characters. The two are
similar in their first manifestations, and now, as then, they are beginning with a
shaking of the main foundation of order: religion. But now they are doing it in a
bolder way and on a broader scale. Then they attack the faith obliquely,
preaching tolerance, but now they are directly attacking every faith and
blatantly preaching atheism; then they were secretly undermining Christianity,
apparently arming themselves against the abuses of Church authorities, but now
they are yelling from the roots that both Christianity and the Church and the
Church authorities and every authority is nothing other than abuse. What is the
aim of the present reformers? – I am speaking about those who sincerely desire
what is better, sincerely believe in the reality and beneficence of their speculations
– what is the aim of the present reformers?, who are entering on the same path
which their predecessors trod, whose end we saw with shuddering, knowing
that the desired improvement would never be found there. What is the aim of
the present reformers? They themselves do not clearly see it. It is very probable
that many of them are deceiving themselves, and, while going forward with
banners on which there shine the words of our age: forward, freedom, equality,
humanity, they themselves are sure that their path leads straight to the promised
land. And perhaps it is fated for them, as for many others of their predecessors,
to shudder on the edge or on the bottom of this abyss, which will soon open up
under their feet.
“’Behind these preachers of education and progress, who are acting openly,
others are acting in secret, who are not blinded, who have a practical aim which
they see clearly in front of them: for them it is no longer a matter of political
transformation, or of the destruction of privileges and age-old historical
formations (that was already accomplished in the first revolution), but simply of
the annihilation of the difference between yours and mine, or, more correctly, of
turning yours into mine.’”784
Ivanov, Russkaia Intelligentsia i Masonstvo: ot Petra I do nashikh dnej (The Russian Intelligentsia
784
and Masonry: from Peter I to our Days), Harbin, 1934, Moscow, 1997, pp. 337-338.
469
The 1848 revolution, writes Hobsbawm, “coincided with a social catastrophe:
the great depression which swept across the continent from the middle 1840s.
Harvests – and especially the potato crop – failed. Entire populations such as
those of Ireland, and to a lesser extent Silesia and Flanders, starved. Food-prices
rose. Industrial depression multiplied unemployment, and the masses of the
labouring poor were deprived of their modest income at the very moment when
their cost of living rocketed. The situation varied from one country to another
and within each, and – fortunately for the existing regimes – the most miserable
populations, such as the Irish and the Flemish, or some of the provincial factory
workers were also politically among the most immature: the cotton operatives of
the Nord department of France, for instance, took out their desperation on the
equally desperate Belgian immigrant who flooded into Northern France, rather
than on the government or even the employers. Moreover, in the most
industrialized economy, the sharpest edge of discontent had already been taken
away by the great industrial and railway-building boom of the middle 1840s.
1846-8 were bad years, but not so bad as 1841-2, and what was more, they were
merely a sharp dip in what was now visibly an ascending slope of economic
prosperity. But, taking Western and Central Europe as a whole, the catastrophe
of 1846-8 was universal and the mood of the masses, always pretty close to
subsistence level, tense and impassioned.
“A European economic cataclysm thus coincided with the visible corrosion of

the old regimes. A peasant uprising in Galicia in 1846; the election of a ‘liberal’
Pope in the same year; a civil war between radicals and Catholics in Switzerland
in later 1847, won by the radicals; one of the perennial Sicilian autonomist
insurrections in Palermo in early 1848: they were not merely straws in the wind,
they were the first squalls of the gale. Everyone knew it. Rarely has revolution
been more universally predicted, though not necessarily for the right countries
or the right dates. An entire continent waited, ready by now to pass the news of
revolution almost instantly from city to city by means of the electric telegraph. In
1831 Victor Hugo had written that he already heard ‘the dull sound of
revolution, still deep down in the earth, pushing out under every kingdom in
Europe its subterranean galleries from the central shaft of the mine which is
Paris’. In 1847 the sound was loud and close. In 1848 the explosion burst.” 785
“On 1 January 1848,” writes Zamoyski, “King Louis Philippe told a foreign
diplomat that ‘two things are from now on impossible in France: revolution and
war.’ In a sense that he did not intend, he was right. The great revolution that
was meant to consummate the work of 1789 would abort itself, while the great
war for the liberation of nations would never be declared. In effect, 1848 was to
see the death of the ideals of 1789. They were drowned beneath the waves of two
new forces: a Darwinian nationalism based on the right of the strongest and a
materialistic socialism that would, in time, enslave half the world…
785
Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, pp. 370-371.
470
“On 21 February the conservative government of François Guizot refused
permission for the last in a series of public banquets held by radicals in order to
air the grievances of the working classes. The organizers accepted this decision,
but a group of students did not. The following day they assembled at the
Panthéon and marched by a roundabout route taking in the poorest areas of
Paris so that by the time they reached the Palais Bourbon, seat of the National
Assembly, they had snowballed into a huge crowd. The police did their best to
disperse it, but barricades began going up in various quarters. The National
Guard was called out and troops went into action. A few of the barricades were
taken and dismantled, after which the troops retired for the night. The persistent
drizzle acted as a dampener on spirits, and there was none of the fire and
passion of the July Days of 1830. But on the morning of 23 February there were
fresh demonstrations, leading to clashes with troops. More barricades went up,
and the red flag appeared in the rue Montmartre.
“What rattled the ageing Louis Philippe and stopped him from responding
with firmness was that National Guardsmen from the poorer sections were
joining the insurgents and only those from the wealthier quartiers were standing
by him. He therefore dismissed Guizot and promised a measure of reform. This
defused the situation, and by the evening of 23 February the streets were full of
celebration, some of it admittedly a little rowdy. On the Boulevard des
Capucines there was an altercation between troops and a group of civilians,
during which tempers frayed. A random shot was taken by the troops as a signal
to open fire. The result was a heap of corpses, which were duly arrayed on a
wagon and paraded around the city by torchlight. More barricades went up, and
by the evening of 24 February the revolution had started in earnest.
“`Louis-Philippe tried to restore order through a combination of military

force and another change of government, but soon realized that it was too late.
He abdicated in favour of his grandson, the Comte de Paris, and left the
Tuileries, which were promptly sacked. 786 But the Comte de Paris was not to
reign. In the Chamber of Deputies, [the poet] Lamartine declared himself in
favour of ‘that sublime mystery of universal sovereignty,’ a republic.” 787
As was to be expected, the revolution in France was not without the secret
participation of the Masons. L.A. Tikhomirov writes: “Revolutionary agitation
between the years 1830 and 1848 was carried out mainly by the Carbonari and
various ‘Young Germanies’, ‘Young Italies’, etc. In the Masonic world before
1848 something powerful, similar to 1789, was being planned, and preparations
for the revolution went ahead strongly in all countries. In 1847 a big Masonic
convention was convened in Strasbourg from deputies elected at several small
conventions convened earlier… At the convention it was decided to ‘masonize’
the Swiss cantons and then produce a revolutionary explosion at the same time
throughout Europe. As we know, movement did in fact follow, with a difference
of several months, in a whole series of countries: Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Milan,
786
He fled with his wife to England, disguised as Mr. and Mrs. Smith. (V.M.)
787
Zamoyski, op. cit., pp. 329, 334-335.
471
Parma, Venice, etc. Reformist ‘banquets’ laying the beginning of the revolution
in Paris were organized by the directors of the Masonic lodges…” 788
The Masons loudly expressed their joy at the initial success of the revolution
in Paris. “On March 10, 1848 the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite welcomed
the Provisional government. On March 24 a delegation of the Grand Orient also
welcomed the Provisional government and was received by two ministers,
Crémieux and Garnier-Pagès… who came out in their Masonic regalia.” 789
However, the Provisional Government of the Second Republic, which

included a worker in its ranks, Albert Martin, did not last long: in the elections
to the Constituent Assembly, now on the basis of universal male suffrage, the
liberal bourgeoisie, fearing social revolution, voted for the right 790, as did the
property-owning peasantry. What seems to have happened is that the Masons
underwent a change of heart in the middle of the revolution, and decided, out of
fear or for some other reason, not to allow it to proceed to its logical conclusion.
For during the bloody “June days”, they switched sides, supporting the
government of General Cavaignac against the workers in the streets. Thus on
June 27, writes Jasper Ridley, the historian of Masonry, “the day after the
revolutionaries had been defeated, the Grand Orient issued a statement
supporting Cavaignac.”791
Perhaps it was the spectre of communism as set out in Marx and

Engels’ Communist Manifesto, published early in 1848, had set the
Masons thinking. Communist theory played little direct role in the
events of 1848-49; it was still too little-known and too extreme for the
majority even of leftists. Nevertheless, the threat of Communism, the spectre of a
truly radical social upheaval overtaking and replacing the milder liberal and
nationalist revolutions, probably played an important part in stiffening the right-
wing reaction that eventually crushed the revolution…
This threat was quite explicit: “The Communists disdain to conceal their
views. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible
overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a
communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!”792
In any case, the consequences of the reaction were profound. As the new
government arrested revolutionary leaders, clawed back some of the concessions
788
Tikhomirov, Religiozno-Filosofskie Osnovy Istorii (The Religio-Philosophical Foundations of History),
Moscow, 1997, p. 463.
789
790
As predicted by Count Cavour, the future architect of a united Italy, in 1846: “If the social
order were to be genuinely menaced, if the great principles on which it rests were to be at serious
risk, then many of the most determined oppositionists, the most enthusiastic republicans would
be, we are convinced, the first to join the ranks of the conservative party” (in Hobsbawm, The Age
of Capital, p. 28).
791
Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, London: Constable, 1999, p. 207.
792
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto.
472
of February and abolished national workshops, the urban poor rose in rebellion
against the republic they had helped to create. This rebellion was put down with
much bloodshed; some 13,000 rioters and police were killed. The bourgeois
revolution had consolidated its gains while staving off the revolution of the
workers.
“The ‘June Days’,” writes Simon Jenkins, “became a metaphor for bourgeois
treachery against revolution. The composer Hector Berlioz noted that the statue
of Liberty on the Bastille column had a stray bullet hole in her breast.
“The spectacle of the French republic killing its own devastated the
revolutionary cause. In December 1848 elections were held for a new president
of France. One candidate was the exiled pretender to Napoleon’s crown, his
nephew Louis Bonaparte. Dismissed as a charlatan and even a cretin, he had
been living incognito in London, where he served as a constable during the
Chartists’ rally. All Bonapartes were supposedly banned from France. However,
Louis’s appearance in Paris caused a sensation. The sheer celebrity of his name
won him over five million votes and the presidency.” 793
Again, Masonry played its part. Ridley writes: "On 10 December

1848 the election was held for the new President of the Republic. The
Freemasons' journal, Le Franc-Maçon, called on its readers to vote for
Lamartine [though he was not a Mason], because he believed in 'the
sacred words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity'; but Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte (who would later become the Emperor Napoleon III) was
elected by a very large majority; he defeated Cavaignac, Ledru-Rollin,
the Socialist François Raspail, and Lamartine, receiving 75 per cent of
the votes cast, and coming top of the poll in all except four of the
eighty-five departments of France. He was the son of Louis Bonaparte,
King of Holland, and in his youth had been involved in the
revolutionary movement in Italy in 1831. It has been suggested that he
joined the Carbonari and the Freemasons in Italy, but this cannot be
proved. He afterwards tried twice to make a revolution against Louis
Philippe, and on the second occasion was sentenced to life
imprisonment in the fortress at Ham near St Quentin in north-eastern
France; but he made a sensational escape, took refuge in England, and
returned to Paris to his electoral triumph in 1848.
"Although he had been suspected at one time of being a Communist, as soon

as he was elected President of the Republic he relied on the support of the Right
793
Jenkins, A Short History of Europe, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2018, p. 213. “The
emperor's only son - 'Napoleon II', 'The Eaglet' - had died young in Austria. Louis-Napoleon
was his political heir. Until 1848 his career had been a bad joke. He made absurd attempts in
1836 and 1840 to seize power, was imprisoned, escaped, and lived as a man-about-town in
London. After the revolution, he returned to France and found himself a political celebrity.
When he announced his candidature to be the first elected president of the republic, it soon
became clear that he would win by a landslide; and in December 1848 he duly did.”( Robert
Tombs and Isabelle Tombs, My Sweet Enemy, London: Pimlico, 2007, p. 349)
473
wing and the Catholic Church. Young Radicals who flaunted red cravats, and
shouted 'Long live the Social Republic!' were sentenced to several years'
imprisonment. From time to time a Freemasons' lodge was raided by the police,
and warnings were sent by local officials to the government that 'members of
the anarchist party' were planning to gain control of the Masonic lodges in Paris
and the provinces.
"The Grand Orient thought it would be wise to revise their

constitution. In 1839, when they were living happily under Louis
Philippe, they had stated that 'Masonry is a universal philanthropic
association' and that one of their objectives was 'the examination and
discussion of all social and economic questions which concern the
happiness of humanity'. In August 1848, after the June Days and the
legislation suppressing secret political societies, they changed this
article in their constitution by deleting the words 'social and economic';
and a year later, on 10 August 1849, Grand Orient stated that all
Freemasons must believe in God and in the immortality of the soul." 794
Napoleon III took full advantage of his famous name. “My name is a
programme in itself”, he said. “He had created an image of concern for social
problems. The political alternatives - republican, royalist, socialist - had all
made themselves unpopular. He attracted support for different, even
contradictory, reasons: he would both prevent further revolution and stop
royalist counter-revolution; he would both help the poor and restore business
confidence; he would both make France great and keep the peace. However, the
new constitution allowed presidents to serve for only one four-year term, which
was not enough for a Bonaparte. To stay in power he carried out a coup d'état
on 2 December 1851, which involved brief fighting in Paris and a major
insurrection in the provinces. A plebiscite gave him overwhelming popular
support; but it was never forgotten that he had shed French blood and
transported thousands to penal colonies." 795
When, in addition to this, Napoleon, in order to win the Catholic vote, sent his
troops to crush the Roman republic under Mazzini, it must have seemed that the
Masons would now, at last, turn against him. And indeed, when he established
his dictatorship on December 2, 1851, "there was an attempt at resistance in Paris
next day, led by the deputy Baudin, a Freemason." But Baudin was shot on the
barricade; and when Napoleon held a plebiscite on whether he should continue
as President for ten years, the Grand Orient called on all Masons to vote for him.
And on October 15, 1852, the Masons addressed Napoleon and said: "Guarantee
the happiness of us all and put the emperor's crown on your noble head".796
794
Ridley, op. cit., pp. 207-208.
795
Tombs and Tombs, op. cit., p. 350.
796
Alexander Selyanin, Tajnaia sila masonstva (The Secret Power of Masonry), St. Petersburg, 1911,
p. 82.
474
Why did the Masons support the man who crushed Mazzini’s Roman
republic? Some light is cast on this mystery by Tikhomirov: "Soon after the coup
of 1851 (more precisely: on February 7, 1852), [the historian] Michelet wrote to
Deschampes: 'By this time a great convention of the heads of the European
societies had taken place in Paris, where they discussed France. Only three
members (whose leader was Mazzini) demanded a democratic republic. A huge
majority thought that a dictatorship would better serve the work of the
revolution - and the empire was decreed 'sur les promesses formelles' (on the basis of
the formal promises) of Louis Napoleon to give all the forces of France to the
services of Masonry. All the people of the revolution applied themselves to the
success of the state coup. Narvaets, who was in obedience to Palmerston
[British Prime Minister in 1855-1858 and from 1859], even loaned Louis
Napoleon 500,000 francs not long before December 2.'
"If Napoleon III really gave 'formal promises', then this could refer only to the
unification of Italy, and consequently, to the fate of the Pope's secular dominion…
In general Masonry protected Napoleon III.797 At any rate Palmerston, who had,
as they affirm, been the highest leader of European Masonry (the Orient of
Orients), supported Napoleon with all his strength, and, perhaps, would not
have allowed his fall, if he had not died five years before the Franco-Prussian
War."798
So here we see why Napoleon was able to retain the support of the
Masons, while supporting their mortal enemy, the Catholic Church: he
had a very powerful friend, Lord Palmerston, the British Prime
Minister, a former supreme head of Masonry. Nor, as we have seen,
were the Catholics as irreconcilably opposed to the liberal revolution as
before... And so Britain under Palmerston, France under Napoleon, the
Pope and the Sultan all worked together to humble the real enemy of
Masonry, Russia, in the Crimean War of 1854-1856...
The pattern of events in France between 1848 and 1851 was

remarkably similar to that of the First French Revolution and Empire
under Napoleon the First: constitutional monarchy, followed by
revolution, followed by one-man dictatorship.
As Alfonse Karr wrote in Le Figaro, “plus ça change, plus c'est la même

chose.” 799
797
However, in spite of the Masons' support for Napoleon III, the Freemason Benito
Juarez, president of Mexico from 1861 to 1872, succeeded in driving out the French
occupation under the Emperor Maximilian. This shows yet again that Freemasonry
was not a united force - Masons were on opposite sides in many conflicts from the
American revolution onwards. (V.M.)
798
799
Karr, The Wasps, January, 1849, p. 305; in Cohen & Major, op. cit., p. 563.
475
However, one thing radically distinguished 1848 from 1789: the fact
that the monarchical principle was now much weaker, making a
restoration of the old hereditary monarchy unlikely. The masonic rule
of Napoleon III was a very different affair. Thus in January, 1848 De
Tocqueville declared: "The old monarchy [of Louis XVI] was stronger
than you, because of its [hereditary] origin; it had better support than
you from ancient practices, old customs, ancient beliefs; it was stronger
than you, and yet it fell into the dust. Can you not feel - how shall I put
it? - the wind of revolution in the air?" 800 These new, democratic winds
could hardly fail to be felt when, as a result of it, many thousands of "Poles,
Danes, Germans, Italians, Magyars, Czechs and Slovaks, Croats, and Romanians
rose up in arms, claiming the right of self government."
But it was above all the use by Napoleon III of the plebiscite that
demonstrated that Europe had entered a new age, the age of the nation-state, in
which the demos was truly king. For, as Philip Bobbitt writes, "when Louis
Napoleon resorted to the plebiscite, he first used it to legitimate a new
constitution, and later in 1852 in order to confer the title of emperor
and to make this title hereditary. [But] the use of the national
referendum to determine the constitutional status of a state is more
than anything else the watermark of the nation-state. For on what basis
other than popular sovereignty and nationalism can the mere vote of a
people legitimate its relations with others? It is one thing to suppose
that a vote of the people legitimates a particular policy or ruler; this
implies that, within a state, the people of that state have a say in the
political direction of the state. It is something else altogether to say
that vote of the people legitimates a state within the society of states.
That conclusion depends on not simply a role for self-government, but
a right of self-government. It is the right of which Lincoln spoke at
Gettysburg." 801
800
De Tocqueville, in Almond, op. cit., p. 98.
801
Bobbitt, op. cit., pp. 179-180.
476
54. THE 1848 REVOLUTION: (2) ITALY
“In January 1848,” writes Jenkins, “Milan rebelled against its Austrian
government and set up a provisional regime. The king of Piedmont and
Sardinia, Charles Albert, came out in support and declared war on Austria. In
Rome a new pope, Pius IX (1846-78) greeted anti-Austrian crowds with the cry:
‘God bless Italy’. He liberated Rome’s Jews from their ghetto. On cue, Sicily
declared its independence of Bourbon Naples, and a rare Venetian
revolutionary, Daniele Manin, declared that city’s independence of the
Austrians. Gradually, as in 1830, uprisings spread across the continent…” 802
However, the counter-revolution proved stronger than the revolution – across

the continent. Italy before 1848 was still little more than "a geographical
expression", in Metternich's phrase; and, as the Tuscan radical, Giuseppe
Montanelli, said, "there was no unity of direction; therefore there was no
national government. We fought as Piedmontese, as Tuscans, as Neapolitans, as
Romans, not as Italians." Thus when the Austrians counter-attacked against
revolutionary Milan and Venice, many of their soldiers were poor Italians who
distrusted the urban revolutionaries. Again, the Bourbon King of the Two
Sicilies Ferdinand II found allies amongst the Neapolitan poor. 803
In March, 1849 the Austrians defeated the Piedmontese King Charles

Albert. In April, they invaded Tuscany and restored Grand Duke
Leopold to the throne.
Only Rome now remained. Now Rome was the most reactionary of
all the monarchies of Europe. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh write:
"Writing in the 1850s, an historian and Catholic apologist described the
Papal States of the immediate post-Napoleonic period as 'a benevolent
autocracy'. Between 1823 and 1846, some 200,000 people in this
'benevolent autocracy' were consigned to the galleys, banished into
exile, sentenced to life imprisonment or to death. Torture by the
Inquisitors of the Holy Office was routinely practised. Every
community, whether small rural village or major city, maintained a
permanent gallows in its central square. Repression was rampant and
surveillance constant, with Papal spies lurking everywhere. Meetings
of more than three people were officially banned. Railways were
banned because Pope Gregory XVI believed they might 'work harm to
religion'. Newspapers were also banned. According to a decree of Pope
Pius VIII, anyone possessing a book written by a heretic was to be
considered a heretic himself. Anyone overhearing criticism of the Holy
Office and not reporting it to the authorities was deemed as guilty as
the critic. For reading a book on the Index, or for eating meat on
Friday, one could be imprisoned." 804
802
Jenkins, op. cit., p. 211.
803
Almond, op. cit., pp. 103, 104.
804
Baigent and Leigh, The Inquisition, London: Penguin, 1999, p. 196.
477
The new pope who came to power in 1846, Pius IX, began his reign, as we
have seen, with the reputation of being a liberal. He was sympathetic to at least
some form of Italian unification and nationalism. He envisioned himself, in his
capacity of pontiff, serving as a divinely ordained conduit and instrument for
Italy's rebirth. He dreamed of presiding over a confederation of Italian states. He
even elicited hopeful appeals for support from Mazzini and Garibaldi, who in
their naivety fancied they might find a new ally in the Church.
But, as Baigent and Leigh write: "Whatever illusions Pius may initially have
fostered, they quickly evaporated, along with his popularity. It soon became
apparent that the Italy the Pope had in mind bore little relation to any
constitutional state. In 1848, he doggedly refused to lend his support to a
rebellious military campaign against Austrian domination of the north. His
studied neutrality was perceived as a craven betrayal, and the resulting violent
backlash obliged him to flee Rome in ignominious disguise, as a priest in the
carriage of the Bavarian ambassador."805
“The Pope’s flight,” writes Evans, “led to the proclamation of the

Roman Republic, in which Mazzini, elected an honorary citizen by a
unanimous vote of the democratic Assembly, played the leading role.
Mazzini proved to be an unexpectedly competent administrator,
winning general approval for his modest way of life, his probity and
his effectiveness. He closed down the Inquisition and made over its
premises for the accommodation of the poor, scrapped the censorship
and abolished the death penalty, introduced public courts run by lay
judges, set up a progressive taxation system and introduced religious
toleration. His commissioner in Ancona, a town on the Adriatic coast of
the Papal States, Felice Orsini (1819-58), a former carbonaro, restored
order in the midst of a crime wave. The American writer Margaret
Fuller (1810-50), visiting Rome at the time, called Mazzini ‘a man of
genius, an elevated thinker’ and compared him to Julius Caesar.
“However, the Pope’s appeal to the international community, now

led again by the resurgent monarchies of Europe, did not fall on deaf
ears. Surprisingly, perhaps, it was the French who responded…” 806
The explanation was as follows… In December, 1848 Louis Napoleon

had been elected “Prince-President” of the French Second Republic. He
“was aware of the need to win over conservatives and monarchists in
France to his support, as well as to turn popular hostility to Austria to
his own advantage. A French expedition to Rome to restore the Pope to
his throne would win Catholic support in France and satisfy liberals
and leftists by pre-empting the Austrian threat to do the same. In
March 1849 the Assembly approved the sending of an expedition, and
805
Baigent and Leigh, op. cit., p. 197.
806
478
on 24 April, 6,000 French troops led by Charles Oudinot (1791-1863),
who had fought with the first Napoleon from 1809 to 1814, landed on
the Italian coast and moved towards Rome. Mazzini had been joined in
Rome by Garibaldi, who had come back from exile in South America
the previous August and taken part with his band of 500 volunteers in
the fighting in northern Italy. Mazzini put him in charge of military
affairs in Rome. Eight thousand troops of the Roman Republic
surprised the French on 30 April and drove them back with heavy
losses in a fierce bayonet charge, led by Garibaldi himself brandishing
a sabre. Further republican victories followed against a Neapolitan
army approaching from the south. Louis-Napoleon knew that the
humiliation of Oudinot’s defeat had to be avenged if he was to
continue to associate himself plausibly with the military legend of his
uncle. Oudinot moved heavy artillery up to the heights around the
Eternal City and began a systematic bombardment.
“On 3-4 June an assault on Italian positions allowed the French to

move further forward, and by 22 June they had captured the outer
walls of the city. With their ceaseless cannonades causing huge
destruction and loss of life, the French entered the city on the night of
29-30 June, beating back Garibaldi’s volunteers, who had now begun to
wear the red shirts that later made them famous. Recognizing defeat,
Garibaldi told Mazzini the game was up. The veteran revolutionary left
for renewed exile in Switzerland, while Garibaldi led his volunteers out
of Rome on an epic march across the mountains towards Venice, during
which his wife Anita died and most of his followers were captured by
the Austrians… Garibaldi himself managed to make his way to the
coast and sail to the Americas, where he eked out a living in a variety
of countries over the next few years.” 807
In 1850, Pius was restored to his throne. “His political position,

however, now made no concessions of any kind to liberalism or reform;
and the regime he established in his own domains was to become
increasingly hated.” 808 He “disregarded Louis-Napoleon’s advice to
respect the liberties of his subjects, re-established the Inquisition,
forced the Jews back into the old ghetto, and refused to amnesty the
majority of the Republic’s officials.” 809
In August the Venetians surrendered to the Austrian Count

Radetsky, and the Italian revolution was over. Mazzini's slogan, Italia
farà da sé (Italy will do it alone), had failed – for the time being.
807
808
Baigent and Leigh, op. cit., p. 197.
809
479
The revival of the Italian revolution was owing especially to King Victor
Emmanuel II of Piedmont and his Prime Minister, Count Camillo Cavour, who,
writes Sir Llewellyn Woodward, “was as remarkable a man in his way as
Bismarck. In some respects indeed Cavour was even more remarkable since he
had to do his work without the powerful support of instruments like the
Prussian Army and bureaucracy. Cavour was born in 1810; he began his career
in the army but soon left it and occupied himself with large-scale agriculture. He
founded a newspaper, Il Risorgimento, in 1847, but the confusion and failure of
the revolutionary movement turned him against complete democracy and
strengthened his view that economic reform was a pre-condition of Italian unity.
“Cavour became Prime Minister of Piedmont in 1852; he died in 1861. Before

his death he had modernized the Piedomontese state, secured the expulsion of
the Austrians from Lombardy and persuaded the other Italian principalities,
including (with Garibaldi’s help or rather, dangerously independent initiative)
the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, to accept a united Italy under the house of
Savoy. Cavour never won the support of Mazzini, who remained an
irreconcilable republican and died in exile in London, but he managed to use,
cajole and outwit Garibaldi. Cavour had to begin by bringing together moderate
opinion in Piedmont in a centre party with a programme of economic reform. He
continued to reassure this moderate opinion by his rejection of Mazzini’s
revolutionary methods and, at the same time, by putting into effect long
necessary internal reforms. These reforms lost him the support of the Church.
The attitude of Pius IX to all forms of liberalism made it almost impossible for
Cavour or anyone else wanting sensible change not to be anti-clerical; the Pope’s
refusal to surrender his temporal sovereignty forced Italian nationalists into an
absolute opposition. In any case the financial and political privileges of the
Church in Piedmont were not compatible with the organization of a modern
state. One in every 214 Piedmontese was an ecclesiastic (including the religious
orders); the figure for catholic Austria and Belgium was one in 500 or 600. The
Church had its own courts and a total control of education. The archbishop of
Turin, with full papal approval, refused to give up any of the privileges or
endowments of the Church.
“Cavour was not anti-catholic; to the end of his life he hoped that he might
persuade the hierarchy to accept the principle of ‘a free church in a free state’,
but no compromise could be reached with Pius IX and, after Cavour’s death,
clerical refusal to come to terms not only with Italian nationalism but with the
ideas and assumptions of modern society reached its climax.”810
The other leader who revived the Italian dream was Napoleon III, Emperor of
the French. But of course Napoleon had helped crush the revolution of 1848. So
why this volte-face?
Apart from a desire for glory, Napoleon was drawn to Italy by his childhood
memories of Rome. “As a youth,” writes David Gilmour, “he considered himself
810
Woodward, Prelude to Modern Europe 1815-1914, London: Methuen, 1972, pp. 155-156.
480
an Italian patriot, planning an insane plot in Rome in 1830”. 811 Even when an
Italian nationalist, Orsini, made an attempt on his life, he tried hard to save him
from the guillotine, “and when this proved politically impossible – Orsini’s
bombs had missed their target but killed eight bystanders – he asked the Italian
to appeal to him in a public letter to support the patriotic cause”.812
But he also had darker reasons of a less personal nature. In December, 1851
Napoleon staged a coup in Paris, and, somewhat surprisingly, the leadership of
the Grand Orient decided to support him in the plebiscite that elected him
President of the Republic. The Masons’ motivation in backing Napoleon was
complex. On the one hand, they feared the real radical Freemasons, such as
Ledru-Rollin, who with Marx and Herzen had marched against Napoleon. On
the other hand, they wanted to weaken the monarchical powers of Austria and
the Papacy in accordance with the plans of anti-monarchist and anti-Christian
Masonry. And so Napoleon, repaying his debt to the Masons, decided to support
the Italian revolution, turning against the same Pope whom he had rescued in
1848.813
In 1859, writes Philip Bobbitt, Napoleon "concluded a secret agreement with

Cavour, the Piedmontese prime minister, providing that the kingdom of
Piedmont would be extended into a Kingdom of Upper Italy to include
Lombardy, Venetia, and the Romagna. France would receive Nice and Savoy. A
Kingdom of Central Italy, composed of Tuscany, Parma, Modena, Umbria, and
the Marches, would be given to Napoleon's cousin, Prince Napoleon. As with the
French demands against the Ottoman Empire, French intrigue had singled out
another vulnerable state-nation: the Austrian empire.
"Fighting broke out in April, most of the warfare taking place between French
and Austrian forces. The battles of Magenta and Solferino were actually French
victories, not those of the Piedmontese or Italian volunteers. The decision to
cease fire was also French, and an agreement was signed between Napoleon III
and the Austrian emperor Francis Joseph on July 11, 1859. This truce clearly
sacrificed Italian nationalism to French ambitions. Lombardy was given to
Piedmont but Venetia remained with the Austrians. Nothing was said of the
French agreement with Cavour. The settlement ignited a firestorm of reaction
among the Italians, who had not been consulted. Cavour resigned his
premiership. Assemblies called by Tuscany, Parma, Modena, and the Papal
Legations [the northern Papal states] met and requested annexation by the
kingdom of Piedmont.
"At first Napoleon III fell back on a call for a European congress to settle the
question of central Italy. This approach might have strengthened the system of
collective security in Europe, but then, in December, he changed course. Relying
on Britain, where Palmerston and his foreign secretary, Lord John Russell,
supported the principle of self-determination, Napoleon III renewed the
811
Gilmour, The Pursuit of Italy, London: Penguin, 2012, p. 182.
812
Gilmour, op. cit., p. 183.
813
Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, London: Constable, 1999, pp. 208-210.
481
agreement between France and Piedmont. Cavour returned to power in less than
a month.
"Piedmont annexed the Duchies and the Legations and promptly organized a
plebiscite, based on universal suffrage, held in March 1860. The Piedmontese
king, Victor Emmanuel, took over the new territories by decree. Elections to a
single Italian parliament were held in Piedmont-Sardinia, Lombardy, the
Duchies, and the Legations. The first task of this legislature was to ratify the
annexations to Piedmont as well as those to France. The French annexations of
Nice and Savoy had been similarly endorsed by local plebiscites.” 814
However, the French annexations angered Garibaldi, who was born in Nice,
one of the annexed areas. So, as Montefiore writes, “Garibaldi’s thoughts turned
to the south, the so-called Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, backward, impoverished
and ruled by the Bourbons. With a mere 1146 of his Redshirts, and tacitly
supported by Emmanuel and Cavour, he landed in Marsala, Sicily in May 1860
and even captured Palermo. He forced 20,000 Neapolitan soldiers to surrender
and declared himself a very popular dictator. He then [with the help of the
British Navy] crossed the Straits of Messina, entered victoriously into Naples [in
September] and forced King Francis II to flee. Garibaldi handed over his
conquests to Victor Emmanuel, recognizing him as king of Italy; only the French-
defended papal states and Austrian-ruled Venetia remained outside the new
kingdom.”815
On October 2, 1860 Cavour announced to parliament that the revolution was

at an end, and on October 21 Sicily and Naples were annexed after a plebiscite.
The Italian revolution had been supported by the British. This was partly
because of the traditional liberalism of British politics 816, and partly from
complicated considerations of Realpolitik. Thus the British helped Napoleon and
Cavour in the north. But at the same time they supported Garibaldi in the south,
as a counter-weight to the northern powers. For perhaps, they wondered,
Napoleon, in spite of his traditional friendliness towards the English, was
becoming the new European hegemon… And so “when in 1860 France launched
the world’s most powerful warship, the ironclad Gloire, Britain prepared for the
worst. Huge fortifications – ‘Palmerston’s follies’ – were hastily built to defend
England and the empire, with the biggest forts protecting Portsmouth and
Plymouth in case of a surprise French invasion. An even bigger warship than the
Gloire, HMS Warrior, was quickly launched, the first large warship to be built
wholly of iron, and a naval arms race began….
“London did not want to see Napoleon dominant in Italy, so in August 1860
the Royal Navy permitted Garibaldi to land a tiny army in Sicily, and then
invade Naples. There were some English volunteers with him – merely tourists
814
Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, London: Penguin, 2002, pp. 182-183.
815
Montefiore, Titans of History, pp. 360-361.
816
Thus one of Gladstone’s friends declared: “I side with those who are at war with Russia and
Rome, with earthly and spiritual despotisms.” (Tombs, op. cit., p. 57!)
482
visiting Mt. Etna – announced Palmerston with characteristic effrontery. The
small Italian states collapsed, and the British encouraged the Sardinian
government, under King Victor Emmanuel and his liberal and pro-British prime
minister, Cavour, to unite the whole peninsula as a single kingdom of Italy. This
was a cheap success for Britain and a boost to its people’s self-confidence; a
popular cause had triumphed and the possibility of French dominion had
receded, with Britain using only diplomatic influence and a peaceful naval
presence. Garibaldi declared that ‘England was the representative of God’ in the
battle against ‘tyranny and evil priests.’ Italy, said Gladstone, had adopted ‘the
English way’. The English reciprocated enthusiastically. Garibaldi visited
England in 1864, and was feted by all parties and sections of the population.
Thomas Cook began taking tourist parties to Italy. Both the Foreign Office in
Whitehall and the Free Trade Hall in Manchester was built in Italianate
style…”817
Britain was continuing to pursue its balance-of-power politics, acting to stop

any single power gaining predominance in Continental Europe. But since 1848,
and especially since the Crimean War, it had become dangerously prone to
supporting revolutionary powers (like Garibaldi’s). Was it on the way to
becoming a revolutionary power itself?...
817
483
55. THE 1848 REVOLUTION: (3) GERMANY
The economic downturn of the late 1840s had caused prices to rise
400% in Germany. “There were riots in Berlin and Hamburg, while
large numbers of wandering poor and restless mobs in cities created a
sense of threat and instability.
“With its numerous universities, Germany produced a surfeit of

educated people, with too many graduates chasing too few jobs. ‘In
Germany, the intellectual proletariat is the real, fighting church of the
fourth estate,’ wrote the German conservative Wilhelm Riehl, listing
‘civil servants, schoolmasters, perennial students of theology, starving
academic instructors, literati, journalists, artists of all kinds ranging
downwards from the travelling virtuosi to the itinerant comedians,
organ-grinders and vaudeville singers’, and concluding that ‘Germany
produces more mental product than she can use or pay for’. This
redundant ‘mental product’ was an unstable element, and when news
of the risings in Sicily and then France reached Germany, it was at the
forefront of a wave of demonstrations, strikes and attacks on authority
that swept through the whole country. Liberal concessions were
exacted in Württemburg, Baden, Saxony and other states. In Bavaria a
combination of outrage at the king’s patronage of the Irish dancer Lola
Montez, and liberal pressure, brought about his abdication. In Berlin,
events took a more drastic turn.
“On 10 March large demonstrations ignited a fuse that led to the

Prussian army opening fire on an unarmed crowd a week later. The
populace was aroused and fierce street-battles ensued. After a few
hours of blood-letting [300 were killed], King Frederick William IV
[publicly asked forgiveness of the people and] ordered his troops to
leave the city and agreed to the formation of a liberal ministry. The
Polish prisoners of 1846 were released from the Moabit gaol. In heroic
pose and crowned with laurels, Mieroslawski and his colleagues 818 were
drawn around the city on open carriages in a carnival triumph. When
the convoy reached the royal palace, the king, no doubt grinding his
teeth, came out to the balcony to salute the exultant rebels. A civil
guard was formed, and the king was henceforth attended in his palace
by a cohort of students dressed in a medieval Teutonic version of the
Calabrian look.
“Independently of the revolutions taking place in various parts of

the country, the Diet of the German Confederacy passed a number of
reforms in the first months of 1848. On 1 March, for instance, it voted
to allow individual states to appeal the laws imposed by Metternich in
1819, and a few days later adopted the black, red and gold colours. On
818
Creators of an abortive uprising in Poznania and Galicia in 1846 (V.M.)
484
3 March some fifty liberals met at Heidelberg and called for an all-
German parliament, and the Diet decided to summon it straightaway in
provisional form.” 819
In May an all-German preparatory parliament (Vorparlament)

convened in Frankfurt. But there were arguments over what kind of
constitution a united Germany should have, whether a single unitary
German republic should be created or not, and whether it should be a
"great Germany" with Austria or a "little Germany" without it. And
then there was the problem of what to do with non-German national
minorities. The parliament ignored the demands of the Prussian Poles
for national self-determination; and the Czechs, among other national
minorities, "saw the [Austro-Hungarian] Empire as a less unattractive
solution than absorption by some expansionist nationalism such as the
Germans' or the Magyars'. 'If Austria did not already exist,' Professor
Palacky, the Czech spokesman, is supposed to have said, 'it would be
necessary to invent it.'" 820
“At its first session,” writes Jenkins, “the parliament invited

Prussia’s Frederick William to become it constitutional monarch. He
declined, worried both over the intrusion on the autonomy of the
German state and over the likely reaction of Vienna and St. Petersburg.
By early 1849 scepticism towards the parliament was growing across
Germany and members were failing to attend. By summer it was
inquorate and collapsed. Engels dismissed it as ‘a mere debating club,
an accumulation of gullible wretches’.
“Frederick William was right on one score. Russia’s reactionary tsar,

Nicholas, had no interest in the growth of a liberal-minded, let alone
democratic, German state, any more than did Austria. In November
1850 the tsar forced on Frederick William the bizarrely entitled
‘humiliation of Olmütz’. His German initiative was declared dead.” 821
In truth, the tide had began to turn against the revolution long
before the tsar’s intervention. The Austrian monarchy, having been
driven out of Vienna, recovered its nerve in the summer and autumn
and reconquered Vienna and Prague. As Evans writes, this “had
profoundly negative effects on the prospects of German unification. On
10 December the Frankfurt Parliament, after many months of
discussion, finally promulgated the Basic Rights of the German People,
guaranteeing all the liberal freedoms, secularizing marriage, abolishing
aristocratic titles and privileges, introducing trial by jury in open court,
and abolishing the death penalty. Yet these would prove impossible to
enforce. Since Austria and Bohemia had definitely rejected inclusion in
a unitary German nation state, the Parliament was left with no choice
819
820
Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875, London: Abacus, 1997, p. 25
821
Jenkins, op. cit., pp. 214-215.
485
but to go for a smaller Germany, with the King of Prussia as hereditary
sovereign, able to delay legislation but not reject it. Sufficient numbers
of democrats were persuaded to support the idea with the inclusion of
the vote for all men over the age of twenty-five in the Constitution,
which narrowly passed on 27 March 1849. Twenty-eight German states
adopted the Constitution, including Prussia, where the newly elected,
largely liberal Parliament endorsed it on 21 April. Immediately,
however, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who referred to the imperial crown as a
‘dog-collar with which people want to chain me to the 1848
Revolution’, dissolved the Parliament, shortly afterwards declaring
that he would never accept an office given him by election rather than
Divine Right. This severely undermined the political position of the
moderate constitutionalists and played into the hands of the radical
democrats and republicans, who now seized the initiative. However, it
was striking that they were able to do so only in relatively peripheral
regions of Germany, in Saxony and the Rhineland.” 822
The last stand of the radicals took place in May, 1849 in Dresden,
the capital of Saxony, where the rebels were crushed by the King’s
troops. 2000 survivors – who included the composer Richard Wagner
and the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin – fled to Switzerland. The
revolution was over…
As George L. Mosse writes: "The revolution of 1848 seemed to give liberalism

another chance. But at the high tide of the revolution, the Frankfurt Parliament,
the revolution's nationalist impetus became as evident as its liberal framework.
From Frankfurt's Church of Saint Paul, where the Parliament sat823, came a
declaration of the rights of the German people which enumerated all the
principles of the religion of liberty: individual freedom under the law, freedom of
belief, the abolition of all entrenched privileges, the inviolability of private
property and, finally, the call for a constitution. But what was missing from this
declaration is equally significant. The principle that 'he who governs best governs
least' was never apparent. Instead, the declaration insisted that military service
was the paramount duty of the citizen; no citizen could be allowed exemption
from duty to the state on the grounds of conscience.
"The fact that true revolutionaries of 1848 had to resolve the

question of nationalism as well as that of freedom produced a change
in liberal thought, a change which was foreshadowed by Arndt. The
men of 1848 desired liberty - a liberty, however, that rested upon a
national base. The revolution failed and a second chance was lost. Its
manner of failure further influenced the construction of a national
liberalism. The common explanation of this failure has been that the
Parliament at Frankfurt talked too much and acted too little. By
drawing out their proceedings, the explanation runs, the Parliament
822
“Over its chamber towered a painting of a mythical Germania, holding an ominously large
823
sword and a very small olive branch” (Jenkins, op. cit., p. 214). (V.M.)
486
gave the territorial rulers ample time to gain back their lost power. But
the story involved more than a simple delight in speechifying. There
was in this Parliament a minority whose ideas on reform far exceeded
those of the majority. They were Republicans, revolutionaries of the
left. Encouraged by some local successes, especially in the state of
Baden, these men were allied with the Socialists; Karl Marx looked to
their successes with hope. In Parliament they filibustered. The Liberals
were thus caught between the left and the reaction.
"It was the left they feared more than the right even from the
beginning of the revolution. Like Liberals all over Europe, they
believed that wealth was an open road to be trod by talent and morality
in tandem - but they were equally keen to close that road to the
challenge of popular democracy. The famous Frankfurt Parliament was
not elected by a universal franchise but by restrictive electoral practices
which excluded the lower classes from the vote, just as in England
parliamentary reform had erected the barrier of a high property
qualification for voting. In Germany as in England the lower classes
protested. The Chartists and the radical Republicans, as they were
called in Germany, tried to establish universal suffrage. Both failed.
But where in England the Chartist agitation, though peaceful,
accomplished nothing, in Germany the radicals did capture momentary
control of some regions. In Baden, for example, their attempted reforms
were later called by their adversaries the 'red terror'.
"Though this radicalism was only a small factor in the revolution

itself, it was to have a great effect on the future of German liberalism.
The middle classes were driven still further into the arms of the state.
They now feared a 'red terror' and sought, above all, stability, those
national roots, which contemporaries had already held up as desirable
goals. Within a few years after the event one leading Liberal could
characterize 1848 as the 'idiotic revolution'. German liberalism took on
aspects which would have been unthinkable in England or France. A
man like the writer Gustav Freytag, regarded as a leading Liberal by
both contemporary and future generations of German Liberals, could
combine ideas of constitutionalism with racial stereotypes. For him
rootedness in the nation was an essential prerequisite for any kind of
liberty. Those who preserved any custom or religion alien to the deep
roots of the German past were enemies of the German people. National
liberalism was unable to fight authoritarian encroachments on
individual freedom, as did English and French liberalism. Nationalism
swamped the religion of liberty in Germany…" 824
824
Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe, Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1988,
pp. 120, 121-122.
487
56. THE 1848 REVOLUTION: (4) AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
In Prague, on hearing of events in Paris and Berlin, “a group of

Bohemian radicals organized a rally on 11 March that turned into a
mass meeting formulating demands for national autonomy. A
delegation was despatched to Vienna, and patriots began enlisting in
the St. Wenceslas Militia. The Hungarians were not far behind.
Nationalists were well represented in the Hungarian Diet which met at
Pressburg towards the end of November 1847. The run-up to the
elections had been unusually agitated, with the anti-Habsburg
opposition campaigning on brazenly nationalist grounds. People
paraded in colourful Hungarian costumes, with grand ladies dressed as
peasant women in diamonds and poets decked out like cattle drovers
from the Puszta. News of the February revolution in Paris reached
Pressburg on 1 March 1848 and two days later Lajos Kossuth made a
thundering speech demanding total reform of the Habsburg monarchy.
On 13 March revolution broke out in Vienna, sparked partly by his
speech, and the great Metternich, linchpin of the Congress System, was
swept from office.
“On 14 March the Hungarian Diet agreed to demand constitutional

autonomy for Hungary. That evening there were torchlight processions
around Pressburg, and when Kossuth appeared on the balcony he was
greeted as ‘the Liberator of Hungary’. The aristocrats who had hitherto
eyed him with a mixture of disdain and alarm, were swept along. The
following day a delegation drawn from both Chambers climbed aboard
a steamer, the Bela, and paddled up the Danube. When, a couple of
hours later, the Hungarian noblemen, with their gem-studded sabres
and fur caps adorned with egret feathers, hove in sight of Vienna, they
were dubbed ‘the Argonauts’ by the Austrian press. Crowds lined the
streets as they began their stately progress to the imperial chancellery
to lodge their petition. People cheered and wept by turns, women
surged forward to kiss Kossuth’s cloak, and students unharnessed the
horses from his carriage so that they could pull it themselves. Again
and again he was obliged to stop and talk to the crowd.” 825
Hobsbawm writes: “Unlike Italy, Hungary was already a more or

less unified political entity (‘the lands of the crown of St. Stephen’),
with an effective constitution, a not negligible degree of autonomy, and
indeed most of the elements of a sovereign state except independence.
Its weakness was that the Magyar aristocracy which governed this vast
and overwhelmingly agrarian area ruled not only over the Magyar
peasantry of the great plain, but over a population of which perhaps 60
per cent consisted of Croats, Serbs, Slovaks, Rumanians and
Ukrainians, not to mention a substantial German minority. These
825
488
peasant peoples were not unsympathetic to a revolution which freed
the serfs, but were antagonised by the refusal of even most of the
Budapest radicals to make any concession to their national difference
from the Magyars, as their political spokesmen were antagonised by a
ferocious policy of Magyarisation and the incorporation of hitherto in
some ways autonomous border regions into a centralised and unitary
Magyar state. The court at Vienna, following the habitual imperialist
maxim ‘divide and rule’, offered them support. It was to be a Croat
army, under Baron Jellacic [Jela čić], a friend of Gay, the pioneer of a
Yugoslav nationalism, which led the assault on revolutionary Vienna
and revolutionary Hungary.” 826
Misha Glenny explains what happened: "The initiative to appoint

Jelačić [as Imperial Ban or Viceroy of Croatia] had originated in a
petition to the [Austrian] Kaiser, signed jointly by representatives of
Croatia's gentry and its aristocracy. They had been prompted to do so
by the vigorous rebellion that swept through Croatia and Slavonia in
March 1848. They saw Jelačić as a guarantor both of greater autonomy
and of law and order against a restless peasantry, potentially the most
powerful revolutionary force in Croatia in 1848. His appointment was
also the first move in a complicated game played by the court in Vienna
to set Hungarian and Croatian nationalism against each other. The
resulting collision played a key role in the defeat of revolution in the
Empire." 827
The Hungarian liberal revolutionaries led by Kossuth were prepared

to make compromises with the Austrian monarchy (which it promised
to recognize as their own), and with the Magyar peasantry (who were
pacified by a land reform). But they were determined not to negotiate
with the Slavic national minorities, Croat, Slovak, Slovene and Serb.
And after they had proclaimed the union of Hungary with
Transylvania, they also came into conflict with the Romanians of
Transylvania.
As for the Czechs, they were tempted by the Frankfurt Parliament to

join the German revolution. But they did not trust the Germans… In
June they summoned a meeting of all the Slav nations in the Habsburg
dominions, but the Congress dissolved in disagreements. The Poles
called for a war against Russia, but neither the Czechs nor the Serbs
want to fight the Russians. In the end the Czechs and Moravians
decided that “their best protection was the cloak of the Habsburg
monarchy. They were rural nations, whose peasants were more
conservative than their nobles, so they found it easy to accept the
reactionary solution.” 828
826
Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, pp. 31-32.
827
Glenny, The Balkans, 1804-1999, London: Granta Books, 2000, pp. 47-48.
828
489
An important role in the revolution here was played by the Serbs of Novi
Sad, who were much wealthier and savvier than their Free Serb brothers across
the Danube. In March they "presented a petition to the Hungarian government,
demanding the restoration of autonomy for the Orthodox Church and the
recognition of Serbian as a state language. In exchange, the Serbs said they
would back the Hungarian struggle against Vienna. Kossuth dismissed their
demands with a brusque warning that 'only the sword would decide the
matter'. In doing so he sealed the unspoken alliance between Serbs and Croats -
the 'one-blooded nation with two faiths' - and, as a result, the fate of the
Hungarian revolution. "On 2 April, a Serb delegation in Vienna appealed for the
unification of the Banat and Bačka (two provinces within Vojvodina) with
Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia. With the approval of Serbia's Prince Alexander
Karadjordjevič, who had come to power in 1842, and Ilija Garašanin in
Belgrade, Serb leaders at Novi Sad decided to convene a Serb National
Assembly. At the beginning of May, Serbs from all over the Banat streamed into
Sremski Karlovci, the former seat of the Orthodox Church in the Habsburg
Empire. Joined by Croats, Czechs, Poles and Slavs, they gathered in the streets
and began chanting 'Rise up, rise up, Serbs!' Through popular acclamation, the
government of the Serbian Vojvodina was proclaimed, headed by Colonel Josip
Šupljikac, the supreme Vojvoda (Military Leader or Duke). Rajačić was named
Patriarch of the restored see in Karlovci. Conspicuously, the new assembly did
not rescind allegiance either to Vienna or to the Kingdom of Hungary. But the
concluding words of the proclamation breathed life into the Yugoslav idea for
the first time: 'Before all else, we demand resolutely a true and genuine union
with our brothers of the same blood and tribe, the Croats. Long Live Unity!
Long Live the Triune Kingdom!' 829
Immediately, war broke out between the Hungarians and the Serbs…
“This was a modern conflict,” writes Bernard Simms, “triggered by imperial

collapse and the nationalist rivalry of two liberal bourgeoisies. It was not an
explosion of ancient tribal hatreds, as is so often claimed. And the Serbs and
Croats, after all, were fighting side by side as brothers...
"The Hungarian forces drove the imperial forces out of the country.
At this point in the summer of 1849, Tsar Nicholas I offered his services
to Franz Joseph in the name of the Holy Alliance. Two Russian armies,
one stationed east of the Pruth in Bessarabia, the other east of the
Vistula in Russian-controlled Poland [300,000 troops in all], swept
across and down into Hungary and finally smashed the revolution in
August.
"Reaction had triumphed throughout the Habsburg Empire. In

Hungary, the newly restored Austrian authorities exacted a terrible
retribution against the rebels. Elsewhere in the Empire, the demands of
829
Glenny, op. cit. , p. 50.
490
other national communities, especially the Croats and Serbs, who had
contributed significantly to the exhaustion of the Hungarian forces,
were simply ignored by the Kaiser. Liberal nationalism had apparently
suffered a catastrophic defeat." 830
It is important to understand why Tsar Nicholas intervened so

decisively in the 1848 revolution. It was not simply because of his
membership of the Holy Alliance of monarchical powers and hatred of
revolution in general. There was also the question of Poland. Already in 1846 a
rebellion in the Austrian-controlled region of Galicia had been crushed by the
Austrian army, and in November an Austrian-Russian Treaty had abolished the
free status of the city of Crakow, the centre of the revolt, and merged it into
Galicia. Now, in 1848, the Poles, joined by Bakunin from Paris, were arming in
Poznania…
“Liberal and socialist plans for the reconstitution of Poland

threatened the very core of the Tsarist Empire. ‘Poland as understood
by the Poles,’ the Russian diplomat Baron Peter von Meyendorff
warned in March 1848, ‘extends to the mouth of the Vistula and
Danube, as well as to the Dnieper at Kiev and Smolensk.’ ‘Such a
Poland,’ he continued, ‘enters Russia like a wedge, destroys her
political and geographical unity, throws her back into Asia, [and] puts
her back two hundred years.’ Stopping this, Meyendorff concluded,
was the cause of ‘every Russian’.” 831 And so when the Russians made
their decisive intervention against the Hungarian revolution through
Transylvania in 1849, they were driven, according to Stephen Winder,
“by disgust at insurrection, but also because they could not help
noticing how many Poles were joining the Hungarian army: a liberal,
republican, independent Hungary providing a shelter for Poles would
have featured very high in the long list of the Tsar’s nightmares...” 832
830
Bernard Simms, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, London, 2011, pp. 115-116.
831
832
Winder, Danubia, London: Picador, 2013, pp. 334-335.
491
57. THE TRIUMPH OF REACTION
The most important long-term consequence of the failure of the 1848

revolution was the turning of Germany away from liberalism and towards
nationalism. As Zamoyski writes, “There were two questions pivotal to the whole
enterprise of the [Frankfurt] Assembly: that of consistency and that of dominant
authority, and it failed to address either with honesty. It did not define the
Germany it meant to represent because it could not bring itself to forfeit claims to
alien territories such as Poznania and Bohemia. It failed to establish a legitimate
authority in Germany because it slavishly threw itself at the feet of, first, the
Austrian emperor and then of the Prussian king. The metaphysical audacity and
the literary recklessness of its Deputies were born of books and lecture-halls.
They blustered about renewal and liberty, but they were really looking for a
master.
“Contemplating the Germans in a state of revolutionary excitement,

Alexander Herzen was reminded of ‘the playfulness of a cow when the excellent
and respectable animal, adorned with all the domestic virtues, takes to frisking
and galloping in the meadow, and with a serious face kicks up her two hind legs
or gallops sideways chasing her own tail.’ But there was nothing amusing about
the conclusion of the Frankfurt Assembly’s sally into liberalism.
‘Faced with the prospect of relinquishing territory, even the most liberal
members of the Assembly drew back from their earlier enthusiasm. As the
constitutional historian Professor Dahlmann put it, the Germans had found out
that their thirst for freedom could only be satisfied by power. ‘They threw in their
lot with autocratic princes in order to achieve it, and drew emotional
compensations for the democratic dreams they had buried from myths of
national destiny and German cultural superiority. Not for the last time, a desire
for social and political reform by the middle classes was bought off with a dream
of national greatness.
“In July 1848 the German minority in Poznania demanded the province’s
incorporation into the Confederation. This embarrassed the liberals. But it was
championed by Wilhelm Jordan, a left-wing Deputy from Prussia, who made one
of those speeches that figure as milestones in European history. ‘It is high time
that we awaken from the romantic self-renunciation which made us admire all
sorts of other nationalities while we ourselves languished in shameful bondage,
trampled on by all the world; it is high time that we awaken to a healthy national
egoism which, to put it frankly, places the welfare and honour of the fatherland
above everything else,’ he said. Egged on by enthusiastic applause, Jordan
argued that the Slavs were an inferior race, and that the Poles were a nation ‘of
lesser cultural content’ than the Germans. Having thus demoted them, he went
on to suggest that it was Germany’s mission to civilize the Poles. But that was not
his clinching argument.
492
“’I admit without beating about the bush that our right is only the right of the
stronger, the right of the conqueror,’ Jordan declared defiantly. Another delegate
ventured that ‘self-preservation is the First Commandment of the political
catechism’. ‘I stand by the fatherland, by our Germany,’ spelled out a delegate
from Moravia, ‘and that is to me über alles.’ By this stage, even polite liberals like
Gagern had changed their tune. ‘I believe that it is the role of the German people
to be great, to be one of those who rule,’ he stated. After decades of agonizing
rumination over their destined role in the scheme of things, they had found their
mission…”833
Another consequence of the failure of the 1848 revolution was that the socialist
revolutionaries – who had taken little part in the revolution, but had
hoped to profit from it - now believed that a proletarian revolution was
not on the cards for at least another generation. Marx and Engels now
thought that society had to go through all the stages of bourgeois
development before the proletariat could rise up and take power. That
meant that the revolution would not come first in peasant societies
such as Russia (the European peasantry had proved frustratingly
conservative in 1848), but in highly industrialized ones, such as Britain
or Germany, as the proletariat there became poorer. Again, writing in
Neue Rheinische Zeitung in January, 1849, Marx said that several nations
in Europe – including the Basques, the Scottish Highlanders and the
Serbs – would have to perish in the coming revolution, because they
were too primitive in their development, they were still two stages
behind the capitalists… But these predictions turned out to be wrong.
In the West no revolution took place as the workers’ lot was improved
by trade-union agitation from below and prudent concessions from
above. The revolution finally took place in the predominantly peasant
country of Russia…
Also as a result of the failure of 1848, Marx and Engels saw no role
in the revolution for the smaller nations, of which there were so many
in Central and Eastern Europe. For the Croats, for example, had fought
on the side of counter-revolution. And so they damned the Croats,
writes Mark Almond, “as the arch-collaborators with tottering reaction:
‘An Austria shaken to its very foundations was kept in being and
secured by the enthusiasm of the Slavs for the black and yellow;… it
was precisely the Croats, Slovenes, Dalmatians…’ But the two prophets
of Marxism tinged their savage political condemnation of the Croats
with a genocidal, albeit ‘progressive’, racism.
“Along with the Czechs and the Russians, whose troops had dealt
the death-blow to the revolutionary dreams of 1848, it was the Croats
who were excommunicated from the future communist society by Marx
833
493
and Engels. An anonymous poet in Marx’s paper, the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung could not find abuse enough for them: the Croats were ‘That
horde of miscreants, rogues and vagabonds… riff-raff, abject peasant
hirelings, vomit…’ But it was left to Engels to issue the terrible formal
sentence of annihilation on the Croats like other inherently ‘counter-
revolutionary peoples’. Convinced that he knew where history was
going and that it belonged to the great homogeneous peoples like the
Germans and had no room for little nations who got in the way, like the
Gaels or Basques as well as Croats, Engels proclaimed that the ‘South
Slavs are nothing more than the national refuse of a thousand years of
immensely confused development’…. Engels noted that ‘this national
refuse… sees its salvation solely in a reversal of the entire development
of Europe…’ His conclusion was that a ‘war of annihilation and
ruthless terrorism’ was necessary against ‘reactionary’ and ‘unhistoric’
peoples as well as reactionary classes.
“Engels remained decidedly unsympathetic to the aspirations of the

South Slavs for independence or unity until the end of his days. Even
in the 1880s, after all the public outrage in Britain about the Bosnian
and Bulgarian atrocities, he could still write to Bernstein that the
Hercegovinians’ ‘right to cattle-rustling must be sacrificed without
mercy to the interests of the European proletariat’, which lay in peace at
that time. Both Marx and Engels bequeathed to the left in the twentieth
century a powerful tendency to sympathise with large-scale
‘progressive’ states at the expense of the poor and small.” 834
Thus did 1848’s “springtime of the nations” turn into a bitter

“winter of discontent”. Although the monarchists had triumphed, there
were few monarchists who believed that the tide of history was
returning their way. Many of the exiles gathered in London to
reminisce and celebrate the glories of the past. But the bitter truth was
that they had failed… And the basic reason for that failure was an even
harder pill to swallow: the great majority of the peoples in the various
nations, even if they did not like their rulers, did not want to risk
everything by joining the revolution. Even Garibaldi “was growing
restive. He was ‘terrified at the likely prospect of never again wielding
a sword’ for Italy. News reaching him on Caprera filled him with
uncomprehending gloom. For him, Italy was ‘the cult and religion of
my entire life’, and to fight for her was ‘the Paradise of my belief’. He
could not conceive of happiness while the motherland was enslaved.
Yet most Italians, as far as he could see, cared little. ‘The Italians of
today think of the belly, not of the soul,’ he complained.” 835
834
Almond, Europe’s Backyard War, London: Mandarin, 1994, pp. 70-71. Already in
1849 Engels was declaring that small nations such as the Basques, the Scottish
highlanders and the Serbs should be exterminated because they were not one, but
two stages behind in the dialectical progress of History.
835
494
Nor only revolutionaries, but even moderate liberals, felt that the
“miasma of the fifties”, as Nietzsche put it, compared badly with the
idealism of the forties. Thus the historian Johann Gustav Droysen
wrote: “Our spiritual life is deteriorating rapidly; its dignity, its
idealism, its intellectual integrity are vanishing… Meanwhile the exact
sciences grow in popularity; establishments flourish where pupils will
one day form the independent upper middle class as farmers,
industrialists, merchants, technicians and so one; their education and
outlook will concentrate wholly on material issues. At the same time
the universities are declining… At present all is instability, chaos,
ferment and disorder. The old values are finished, debased, rotten,
beyond salvation and the new ones are as yet unformed, aimless,
confused, merely destructive… we live in one of the great crises that
lead from one epoch of history to the next…” 836
The impact of 1848 was profound. “Europe’s thrones had been shaken to their
foundations. Figures like Metternich and Louis-Philippe, who had long
dominated the political world had been ousted. Monarchs had been pressured
into abdicating, abjuring a large part of their powers, or surrendering their claim
to rule by Divine Right and undergoing the humiliating experience of bowing
before enraged crowds of their citizens. Representative assemblies had come into
being across Europe, and where they had existed already, gained significant new
powers. The principle of national self-determination had been successfully
asserted in one country after another. Vast and far-reaching social and economic
reforms had been put in train in a dramatic expression of the principle of equality
before the law. The 1848 Revolutions have often been dismissed in retrospect has
half-hearted failures, but that is not how they seemed at the time. Nothing in
Europe would ever be the same again after the events of January to July 1848.
True, there had been setbacks. But in the summer of ‘the crazy year’, as it was
later called in Germany, or, more optimistically, ‘the springtime of the peoples’,
there still seemed everything to play for.”837
Several factors contributed to the collapse of the revolution. One was the
continued support of the armies for the dynastic principle. Another
was the distrust of the peasants, still the majority of the population in
most countries, for the urban intellectuals. A third was the fear of the
propertied classes for their property. This had been predicted by Count
Cavour, the future architect of a united Italy, in 1846: "If the social
order were to be genuinely menaced, if the great principles on which it
rests were to be a serious risk, then many of the most determined
oppositionists, the most enthusiastic republicans, would be, we are
convinced, the first to join the ranks of the conservative party". 838
The question raised by this defeat was: could liberalism and
nationalism coexist in the long term? And the answer provided by
836
Droysen, in Mann, A History of Germany since 1789, London: Pimlico, p. 124.
837
838
Cavour, in Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, p. 28.
495
history since the French revolution appears to be: no. Liberalism
demands freedom and equality for each individual citizen, regardless
of his race or creed. Nationalism, on the other hand, calls for the
freedom and equality of every nation, no matter how small. Both
demands are impossible to fulfill. No state is able to fulfill the endless
list of human rights demanded by every citizen and every minority
without descending into anarchy. And no state is able to fulfill the
supposed national rights of every nation without descending into war,
as the demand that one nation have its own sovereign, inclusive and
homogeneous territory inevitably involves the "ethnic cleansing" of
other groups on the same territory. The only solution, it seemed, was
the multi-national empire, which suppressed both liberalism and
nationalism and in which the emperor stood above all his empire's
constituent national groups, being, at least in theory, the guarantor of
the rights of every individual citizen.
Such were the empires of Russia, Austro-Hungary and Turkey. The

“liberal empires” of France and Britain (which did not suffer from
revolutionary disturbances) were in a slightly different category,
having made significant concessions to liberalism. Germany was in yet
another category, still in the process of unification and, as we have
seen, showing signs of succumbing to nationalism…
Of course, many nations within these empires saw themselves as

being tyrannized by the dominant nation from which the empires took
their names. But at any rate all the subordinate nations had a kind of
brotherhood in misery, being equally prisoners in a “prison of the
peoples". This suppressed age-old rivalries among themselves.
Moreover, many members of national minorities acquired a kind of
sincerely imperial patriotism. Only when central authority began to
falter did this supra-national patriotism weaken and national conflicts
return with a vengeance, as we see in the 1848 revolution in Austro-
Hungary.
“Henceforth,” writes Hobsbawm, “there was to be no general social

revolution of the kind envisaged before 1848 in the ‘advanced’
countries of the world. The centre of gravity of such social
revolutionary movements, and therefore of twentieth-century socialist
and communist regimes, was to be in the marginal and backward
regions… The sudden, vast and apparently boundless expansion of the
world capitalist economy provided political alternatives in the
‘advanced’ countries. The (British) industrial revolution had swallowed
the (French) political revolution.” 839
This increasing general prosperity, together with the gradual

liberalization of many European regimes, blunted the hunger for
839
Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, pp. 14-15.
496
combat both of the more moderate revolutionaries and of the masses.
For now they had more than their chains to lose… “In 1848-9 moderate
liberals therefore made two important discoveries in western Europe:
that revolution was dangerous and that some of their substantial
demands (especially in economic matters) could be met without it. The
bourgeoisie ceased to be a revolutionary force.” 840
What of the Church, that bastion of counter-revolution? There were

still some Catholics who spoke the truth in public. Thus Montalembert
said in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies in September, 1848: “The
church has said to the poor: you shall not steal the goods of others, and
not only shall you not steal them, you shall not covet them. In other
words, you shall not listen to this treacherous teaching which
ceaselessly fans in your soul the fire of covetousness and envy. Resign
yourself to poverty and you will be eternally rewarded and
compensated. That is what the church has been saying to the poor for a
thousand years, and the poor have believed it – until the day when
faith was snatched from their hearts.” 841
However, the leaders of the Church – with the important exception

of the Pope - were moving to come to terms with the prevailing
Zeitgeist. Thus Cardinal de Bonald told his priests: “Show the faithful
the example of obedience and submission to the Republic. Frequently
make a vow to yourselves to enjoy this freedom which makes our
brothers in the United States so happy; you will have this freedom. If
the authorities wish to deck religious buildings with the national flag,
attentively heed the desires of the magistrates. The flag of the Republic
will always be a flag which protects religion… Agree to all measures
which may improve the lot of the workers… Citizens, Jesus Christ was
the first, from up on his cross, to make the magnificent words
‘Freedom, equality, brotherhood’ resound throughout the world. The
Christ who died for you on the tree of liberty is the holy, the sublime
Republican of all times and all countries.” 842
M.S. Anderson writes: “The governments which reasserted

themselves after the revolutions were much stronger than their pre-
revolutionary predecessors. To some extent this was merely a matter of
physical factors. The new railways were making it easier than ever
before to move soldiers quickly to crush rebellion before it could offer
a serious threat. They also made it possible to transport food rapidly to
areas of dearth and thus stave off the famine which alone could
produce mass disorder. The new telegraph was allowing a central
government to be informed almost instantaneously of events in the
840
Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, p. 33.
841
Montalembert, in Comby, op. cit., p. 133.
842
De Bonald, in Comby, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 132.
497
most distant parts of its territory, and thus to control these events and
still more the day-to-day activity of its own officials. More
fundamentally, however, the new regimes of the 1850s embodied
attitudes different from those of the age of Metternich, and reflected a
changing intellectual climate. Positivism and materialism were now
helping to give to the actions of governments a cutting edge of
ruthlessness, as well as an energy which they had generally lacked
before 1848. In France Louis Napoleon had dreams, and capacities for
good and evil, which were quite beyond the scope of Louis-Philippe, as
well as an apparatus of political control much more efficient than any
possessed by his predecessor. In the Habsburg Empire, Bach and
Kübeck, the dominant ministers of the 1850s, were men of a very
different stamp from Metternich. In Prussia, now beginning a period of
spectacular economic growth, the medievalist dreams of Frederick
William IV had lost all significance before he himself collapsed into
insanity in 1858. Tempered by the fires of successfully resisted
revolution, fortified by new technical aids and helped by a favourable
economic climate, the governments of Europe were entering a new
era…” 843
And what of the Russians, the only European nation not directly
affected by the 1848 revolution, and the one that finally put an end to
it? The Russian leftists were of course deeply disappointed by the
failure of the revolution. Especially disillusioned was Alexander
Herzen. In 1848 he had called for the destruction of the world by which
the “new man” was being strangled. “Hail, chaos and destruction! Hail,
death! Make room for the future!’ 844 But after the failure of the French
revolution his radicalism was somewhat muted. However, “he could
not forget the betrayal of the revolution in Paris by the bourgeois
parties in 1848, the execution of the workers, the suppression of the
Roman revolution by the troops of the French Republic, the vanity,
weakness and rhetoric of the French radical politicians.” 845
The Russian right drew far-reaching conclusions. Thus the poet and diplomat
Fyodor Tiutchev wrote: "The revolution is an illness devouring the West... The
revolution is the purest product, the last word and the highest expression of that
which we have been accustomed to call, already for three centuries now, the
civilization of the West. It is contemporary thought, in all its integrity, from the
time of its break with the Church. The thought is as follows: man, in the final
analysis, depends only on himself both in the government of his reason and in
the government of his will. Every authority comes from man; everything that
proclaims itself to be higher than man is either an illusion or deception. In a
843
Anderson, op. cit., pp. 99-100.
844
Herzen, From the Other Shore.
845
Isaiah Berlin, “Herzen and his Memoirs”, in The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico,
1998, p. 515.
498
word, it is the apotheosis of the human I in the most literal meaning of the
word... We are quite possibly present at the bankruptcy of the whole
civilization... The revolution is not simply an opponent clothed in flesh and
blood. It is more than a Principle. It is Spirit, reason, in order to gain victory over
it, we must know how to drive it out...
"The revolution is the logical consequence and final end of contemporary

civilization, which antichristian rationalism has won from the Roman church.
The revolution has in fact become convinced of its complete inability to act as a
unifying principle, and has to the same degree become convinced, on the
contrary, that it possesses a disintegrating power. On the other hand, the
elements of the old society which have been preserved in Europe are still
sufficiently alive that, in case of necessity, they can throw everything that has
been done by the Revolution back to its point of origin. But they have also been
so penetrated by the revolutionary principle, so distorted by it, that they are
almost incapable of creating anything that could be accepted by European
society as a lawful authority. That is the dilemma which rears its head with all
its exceptional importance at the present time... The European West is only half
of a great organic whole, but the difficulties undergone by it, difficulties that are
from an external point of view insoluble, will acquire their resolution only in its
other half,"846 that is, in the Russian Empire.
846
Tiutchev, in Fomin and Fomina, Rossia pered Vtorym Prishestviem (Russia before the Second
Coming), Moscow, 1994, vol. 2, pp. 83 -84.
499
58. THE RISE OF ARTISTIC REALISM
The defeat of the 1848 revolution, and the great industrial boom of
the 1850s, placed a temporary damper on the romantic, mystical and
irrationalist tendencies of the previous age. The post-1848 era was the
age of reaction in politics, of the realistic novel in art and of positivism
in philosophy, when "the real” was defined as exclusively “the
rational”.
Romanticism, as we have seen, is characterized by the love of the

exotic, the erotic and the extreme in human nature. Realism, on the
other hand, describes the commonplace… This may be connected with
the advent of the age of the common man, of democracy.
One of the earliest works of literary realism was Ivan Sergeyich Turgenev’s
collection of short stories describing peasant life, A Sportsman's Sketches (1852),
which was rumoured to have inspired the emancipation of the Russian
peasantry in 1861. He was followed by the greatest of the Russian realist
novelists, Leo Tolstoy, whose War and Peace (1868) and Anna Karenina (1877)
raised the genre to a peak of perfection.
Perhaps the earliest realist in the field of the novel was Honoré de
Balzac (1799-1850), whose masterpiece , La Comédie Humaine, “is made
up of nearly 100 works, which contain more than 2000 characters and
together create an alternative reality that extends from Paris to the
provincial backwaters of France. Balzac’s works transformed the novel
into a great art form capable of representing life in all its detail and
colour, so paving the way for the ambitious works of writers such as
Proust and Zola…
“His imaginative gift and powers of description set the tone for the
development of the 19 th -century realist novel. As Oscar Wilde said,
Balzac ‘created life, he did not copy it.’…” 847
Evans suggests that that the rise of realism in art has something to do with the
advent of photography – the Duke of Wellington and the battlefields of the
Crimean War were among the first subjects to be photographed. And he
continues: “By mid-century the age of Romanticism was drawing to a close with
the growing turn to Realism in the work of painters such as Gustave Courbet
(1819-77), who eschewed mythical and religious themes of the past for the
concerns of contemporary life. His landscapes abandoned the dramatic
exaggeration and compositional artifice employed by the Romantics in favour of
a naturalistic approach that suggested he had just come upon a scene and
decided on the spot to paint it. In The Stone-Breakers (1849) Courbet depicted two
peasants breaking rocks by the side of a road, while in A Burial at Ornans (1849)
847
Montefiore, op. cit., pp. 343, 345.
500
he showed the funeral of his great-uncle, depicting not richly clad models but
the actual people who attended the event, participating in orderly manner rather
than indulging in the emotional gestures that would have been expected in a
Romantic representation of the same subject. ‘The burial at Ornans, Courbet
remarked, ‘was in reality the burial of Romanticism.’ Later he complained that
‘the title of Realist was thrust upon me just as the title of Romantic was imposed
upon the men of 1830.’ But his paintings undoubtedly inaugurated a new
cultural style. Courbet was a political radical and a committed participant in the
Paris Commune of 1871, and he painted scenes of poverty that were intended as
social criticism rather than presentations of the picturesque. In The Gleaners
(1857) Jean-François Millet (1814-75) showed poor peasant women bending over
to pick up small ears of corn left on the fields after the harvest, while The Potato
Eaters (1885) by Vincent van Gogh depicted a group of rough peasants sitting
round a table eating the potatoes by the light of a little lamp. Van Gogh wanted,
he said, to indicate by their appearance the fact that they had ‘tilled the earth
themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish’.
“Realist in a very different way were the English painters of the Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood, founded in 1848. From one point of view they paintings
of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82), William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), John
Everett Millais (1829-96) and their colleagues reflected the concern of
Romanticism, with their focus on the Middle Ages and religious subjects and
their break with Classical models and techniques in the search for authenticity of
expression. But they also follow the new Realism in using ordinary people,
including working-class girls and prostitutes, as models. Millais’ painting Christ
in the House of His Parents, exhibited in 1850, was widely condemned: instead of
employing transcendental religious imagery, it was set amid the dirt and mess of
a carpenter’s workshop and showed the Holy Family as ordinary, poor people.
Even more controversial was the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), whose
sculptures were a far cry from the smooth Classicism of the Academies…
“Realism spread rapidly to other countries, reaching Russia for example in

the shape of ‘The Wanderers’, fourteen young artists who abandoned the
Imperial Academy of Arts in 1863 to form their own co-operative, painting
scenes such as the celebrated Barge Haulers on the Volga (1873) by Ilya Yefimovich
Repin (1844-1930). Similarly, the Realist novel was often, though not invariably,
set in the present rather than in the Romantic past. It allowed readers to inhabit a
world parallel to their own, where moral and social dramas were played out in
ways that were recognizably similar to their own lives, but more eventful and
exciting, and which sometimes prompted the desire to subscribe to the
reforming ideas of the author. The chronology of literary Realism did not match
that of its counterpart in the visual arts precisely: already in the 1830s, Balzac
was turning away from writing historical fiction in the manner of Walter Scott,
as in early novels such as Les Chouans (1829) and fantasy-fables like La Peau de
Chagrin (1831), to writing in a Realist manner his series La Condition humaine. Of
course some artists continued to paint Biblical, Classical and historical scenes
regardless of the Realist trend. But there is no doubt that artworks and novels
501
addressing contemporary life and attempting to portray it in a manner that was
true to life predominated after the middle years of the century.
“It was above all industrialization that called forth the Realist novel as a
means of portraying the collectivity of society, with its teeming mass of
characters and its description of the shifting relations between them. The master
here was Charles Dickens, many of whose works sought to lay bare in literary
form the evils of the age and to advocate by showing their dramatic
consequences the urgent need to tackle them: Oliver Twist (1837-9) addressed the
state of crime and disorder in London, Bleak House (1853) the expense and
injustice of the antiquated English system of civil law, Hard Times (1854) the
cruelties inflicted by the utilitarian philosophy of the new industrialists. The
‘social novel’ carried a strong charge of social criticism: Alton Locke (1849) by
Charles Kingsley (1819-75) reflected its author’s Chartist sympathies in its
depiction of the exploitation of agricultural labourers and workers in the
garment industry, while Mary Barton (1848) by Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65)
showed what its author called the ‘misery and hateful passions caused by the
love of pursuing wealth as well as the egoism, thoughtlessness and insensitivity
of manufacturers’. Les Misérables (1862) addressed the three great problems of
the age, identified by Victor Hugo as ‘the degradation of man by poverty, the
ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and
spiritual night’. In L’Assommoir (1877), Émile Zola painted a drastic portrait of
poor housing conditions in a Parisian slum, while his Germinal (1885) brought
together the political and social features of life in a coal mining community over
several decades in a dramatic narrative of a strike followed by an uprising. More
drastic still was the account of impoverished Russians living in a shelter for the
homeless in The Lower Depths (1902) by Maxim Gorky.
“Realist novels could flourish in many European countries not least because
of the emergence of a new market for books, as the middle classes grew in
numbers and wealth, and merchants, industrialists, lawyers, bankers, employers
and landowners were joined in the ranks of the affluent by doctors, teachers,
civil servants, scientists, and white-collar workers of various kinds, numbering
more than 300,000 in the 1851 census in the United Kingdom for example, the
first time they were counted, and more than double that number thirty years
later. Books became cheaper and more plentiful as steam-driven presses
replaced hand-operated ones in the printing industry, and as mechanical
production reduced the cost of paper while hugely increasing the supply.
Novels, including those of Dickens and Dostoyevsky, were commonly printed in
instalments and read in serial form. Alongside the ‘penny dreadful’ and the
colportage serial a new type of bourgeois novel emerged, catering for an educated
readership. Altogether, if 580 books were published in the United Kingdom
every year between 1800 and 1825, more than 2,500 appeared annually in mid-
century, and ore than 6,000 by the end of the century. In 1855 some 1,020 book
titles were published in Russia, and by 1894 this figure had increased tenfold, to
10,691, a figure equal to the output of new titles in Britain and the United States
combined.
502
“In all of this, despite the growing taste for non-fiction, ranging from
encyclopedias and handbooks to triple-decker biographies, the proportion of
works of fiction published in Britain increased from 16 per cent in the 1830s to
nearly 25 per cent half a century later. Novel-reading, once the province of
upper-class women, became a general habit among the middle classes of both
sexes. Perhaps by necessity, in order to gain a following, Realist artists and
writers focused on the comfortably off as well as on the poor and the exploited.
Portraits continued to be a significant source of income for painters, while in
literature the bourgeoisie featured centrally in the family sagas of the age. Fathers
and Sons (1862) by Ivan Turgenev dissected the fraught relationship between a
conservative elder generation and young nihilistic intellectuals; Zola’s Les
Rougon-Macquart (1871-1893), a cycle of twenty novels, attempted, as the author
said, ‘to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that
cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is
making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions
that accompany the birth of a new world’.
“In Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1871-2), George Eliot tackled the
impact of change brought by the railways, medicine and other harbingers of
modernity on a deeply conservative small-town society; Madame Bovary (1856),
written by Gustave Flaubert after his friends had persuaded him to abandon
early efforts at historical fantasy, described in realistic detail the daily life and
love affairs of the bored wife of a weak provincial doctor; both Theodor Fontane
in Effi Briest (1894) and Tolstoy in Anna Karenina (1877) dealt with adultery, real
or imagined, and the constrained lives of married women in the upper reaches
of society; and in the six-novel sequence The Barsetshire Chronicles (1855-67),
Anthony Trollope traced the fortunes of the leading inhabitants of an imaginary
provincial town, while The Pallisers (1865-80) focused on the engagement of a
much grander family with parliamentary politics. As the American writer Henry
James (1843-1916) remarked, in a somewhat backhanded compliment, Trollope’s
‘inestimable merit was a complete appreciation of the usual’. However quotidian
their concerns, Realist novels and paintings shared one thing in common with
the cultural products of Romanticism: their appeal to the emotions, achieved not
least by plumbing the depths of character and arousing sympathy and
identification in the reader or the viewer…”848
So powerful was the romance of revolution and the revolution of

romanticism, that neither the political nor the artistic kind of madness
was brought to an end by the age of political reaction and artistic
realism. The revolutionary/romantic personality even became a subject
of realistic art, as in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The
Devils.
848
503
As for music, the most romantic of the arts, it became an important
vehicle of nationalist feeling. The demand for the official recognition of
a nation’s language and culture was a great stimulus to art and,
especially, music. And this in turn added an extra energy to
nationalism. We think of Sibelius for the Finns, Grieg for the
Norwegians 849 , Smetana and Dvorak for the Czechs, Liszt for the
Hungarians – even, somewhat later, Albeniz and De Falla for the
Spanish and Elgar and Vaughan Williams for the English. But perhaps
the most characteristic fusion of nationalism and music was to be found
in the Italian Giuseppe Verdi. Verdi’s operas, from Nabucco in 1842
(whose chorus of the Hebrew slaves became a kind of national anthem
of Italian nationalism) to Don Carlos in 1870, completed three years
before Italian troops entered Rome and completed the task of national
unification, “provided the soundtrack to the desire for independence.
Through his many works, Verdi reflected, and even shaped, the
struggle for Italian unification.” As an Italian writer wrote in 1855:
“With what marvelous avidity the populace of our Italian cities was
seized by these broad and clear melodies, singing as they went…,
confronting the grave reality of the present with aspirations for the
future.” 850
And so music, alone among the arts, never went through a realist
reaction, but went on to still wilder emotional extremes, as in Wagner’s
Tristan or Strauss’s Salome.
The legacy of romanticism is also evident in the philosophy of the era, where,
while the hard-boiled realists might insist that man was just a complicated
animal or machine, the romantics still dreamed dreams and saw visions and
believed in the world spirit and their own inner divinity. If the men-gods had
been brought down to earth, their dreams and fantasies were now part of the
mental furniture of every European (and American). The bacillus was now in the
bloodstream of western man, and it would require a still greater blood-letting, at
the hand of a still crueler tyrant, to tame it…
849
However, as Evans writes, Grieg “came to dislike what was perhaps his most famous
composition, ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’, part of his incidental music for Ibsen’s 1867 play
Peer Gynt, ‘because it absolutely reeks of cow-pats [and] exaggerated Norwegian nationalism’”
(op. cit., p. 528).
850
“Giuseppe Verdi: The Sounds of Freedom”, National Geographic History, January/February,
2017.
504
59. THE BRITISH IN INDIA
“Many in England,” writes Tombs, “felt uncomfortable about India, less the
jewel in the crown than the cuckoo in the nest… The British presence there had
originally been commercial, through the chartered Honourable East India
Company (HEIC). Over the second half of the eighteenth century it had
increasingly become a territorial ruler, originally under nominal Mughal
sovereignty and then as an agent of the British government – the greatest ever
quango. But expansion had taken place haphazardly, often driven by the
ambitions of men on the spot, months away from the restraining and
parsimonious hands of Whitehall and Westminster. British actions had always
aroused controversy as well as pride. ‘How can the same nation pursue two
lines of policy so radically different… despotic in Asia and democratic in
Australia?... Why do we… involve ourselves in the anxiety and responsibility of
governing two hundred millions of people in Asia?’ asked Sir John Seeley, the
pioneer Cambridge historian of empire, in 1883. Yet this view of the empire as a
confederation of settler colonies ignored the immense economic and strategic
importance of India, both directly as a market for British goods and as the source
of the Indian Army that made Britain an Asian power from the Persian Gulf to
Shanghai, and also indirectly, as Indians were the producers, merchants and
labourers who constructed a vast economic network. As one historian sums it
up, ‘Across a large part of the world East of Suez, it would have been more
accurate to talk not of a British, but of an Anglo-Indian empire.’” 851
Further expansion of British rule in India “occurred particularly,” as Evans

writes, “at the initiative of the Governor-General Lord Dalhousie (1812-60),
appointed in 1848. Dalhousie considered Indian-controlled states were
inefficient and that income for the East India Company… would be increased if
he annexed them.”852
The Company was probably the largest corporation in history, even to this
day. Indeed, the Company was British India. It had its own civil service and
army – up to 350,000 men, larger than the British army, - in order to protect the
vast territories it had annexed in pursuit of its business interests.
Gradually, however, the British state took a deeper, more intrusive interest in
the Company, bringing the first, purely commercial phase in its history to an
end. This intrusiveness took the form initially of making the company act as an
aid to the missionary work advocated in parliament by the famous champion of
the emancipation of slavery, William Wilberforce. As a Wikipedia article on him
writes, “Wilberforce fostered and supported missionary activity in Britain and
abroad. He was a founding member of the Church Missionary Society Church
(since renamed the Church Mission Society) and was involved, with other
members of the Clapham Sect, in numerous other evangelical and charitable
organisations. Horrified by the lack of Christian evangelism in India, Wilberforce
851
852
505
used the 1793 renewal of the British East India Company’s charter to propose the
addition of clauses requiring the company to provide teachers and chaplains and
to commit to the ‘religious improvement’ of Indians. The plan was unsuccessful
due to lobbying by the directors of the company, who feared that their
commercial interests would be damaged. Wilberforce tried again in 1813, when
the charter next came up for renewal. Using petitions, meetings, lobbying and
letter writing, he successfully campaigned for changes to the charter. Speaking
in favour of the Charter Act 1813, he criticized the British in India for their
hypocrisy and racial prejudice, while also condemning aspects of Hinduism,
including the caste system, infanticide, polygamy and suttee. ‘Our religion is
sublime, pure beneficent’, he said, ‘theirs is mean, licentious and cruel.’”
“In one sense,” writes Dominic Lieven, “religion was a relatively

unimportant factor in Britain’s empire. From the seventh and eighth
centuries, for instance, Muslim conquerors converted the Near East and
southern Mediterranean to Islam, in the process forever changing
identities and geopolitics in a vast region. Religion was also very
important in the Spanish conquest of the Americas, great effort being
put into subsequent conversion of the indigenous population. Though
Elizabethan imperialists sometimes talked the language of religious
mission, in reality little effort went into converting indigenous peoples
to Christianity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Until 1813
the East India Company strictly limited missionary activity in India.
Only with the onset of the Evangelical Movement in the late eighteenth
century did missionaries begin to play a role of any significance in the
British Empire. Even subsequently, however, missionaries never
converted large communities and when compared to the activities of
the Islamic or Spanish empires, their impact was very small.” 853
Indeed, it could be argued that the Indians were making more

converts to Hinduism among the British Christians in India than the
British were making converts to Anglicanism among the Indians… This
threat of “going native” produced an exaggerated determination among
the British to preserve their culture to the smallest detail, while
separating themselves completely from the life of the Indians, whom
they despised. This was to bode ill for the future of the British in
India…
This is not to say that their aim in trying to bring Christianity to

India was wrong: the preaching of the true religion, and protection
from false religions, remains the only really defensible justification of
one people’s dominion over another – so long as it is done in a truly
Christian, apostolic spirit. It was at the root of the idea of Christian
Rome, which brought Orthodoxy to the peoples of the Mediterranean
basin and to the Slav nations to the north. The Russian Empire
extended it still further into Asia and even America – and with much
853
Lieven, Empire, London: John Murray, 2000, p. 97.
506
less damage to indigenous cultures than was inflicted by many of the
Western missionaries.
In his Considerations on Representative Government (1861), John Stuart

Mill had mentioned “the decay of usages or superstitions which
interfere with the effective implementation of industry” as one of the
main benefits of British imperialism. But why should “the
implementation of industry” be more important than deliverance from
“usages or superstition”, that is, false religion? After citing this phrase,
Ferguson writes: “Nowadays, the modern equivalents of the missionary
societies campaign earnestly against ‘usages’ in far-flung countries that
they regard as barbaric: child labour or female circumcision. The
Victorian non-governmental organizations were not so different. In
particular, three traditional Indian customs aroused the ire of British
missionaries and modernizers alike. One was female infanticide, which
was common in parts of north-western India. Another was thagi (then
usually spelt ‘thuggee’), the cult of assassin-priests, who were said to
strangle unwary travellers on the Indian roads. The third, the one the
Victorians most abhorred, was sati (or ‘suttee’): the act of self-
immolation when a Hindu widow was burned alive on her husband’s
funeral pyre… Between 1813 and 1825 7,941 women died this way in
Bengal alone…” 854
Tombs continues: “Those driving the extension of power in India

between the middle of the eighteenth century and the middle of the
nineteenth had a potent mixture of motives: the ambition to make a
name and a fortune; a growing belief in Britain’s destiny to rule as a
‘new Rome’ 855 ; and a confident belief that they would ‘improve’ India,
encouraged in some cases by a Christian zeal, and in all cases by the
belief that Britain was in the vanguard of human Progress. Intervention
and often annexation took place in what the British considered failing
states, where there was internal conflict, disputed succession, serious
human rights abuse or the danger of inter-state conflict. While there
was, or seemed to be, a military threat – from the Marathas (whose
cavalry were ferocious raiders), the Afghans or the Sikhs in the Punjab
– they were fought and eventually defeated or at least checked. By 1850
the HEIC directly governed most of northern, central and south-eastern
India, and states under Indian rulers were subordinated. This security-
854
Ferguson, op. cit. , pp. 139, 141. There is a story from this time of a British
commander, who was told that some locals were practicing sati. The commander
saddled his horse and took some soldiers and went out to where this was going on,
and told them to stop. The locals replied, "This is our tradition."His answer was,
‘And it is our tradition to hang men who murder women. So if you will practice
your tradition, we will practice ours.’ The woman was let go.
855
However, it goes without saying that neither the “New Rome” of Byzantium,
still less the “Third Rome” of Russia, was a model for the British. They preferred –
as their architecture in Delhi showed – the first, pagan Rome of the Caesars and
Augusti. (V.M.)
507
led expansion of what has been called the ‘imperial garrison state’ was
more important than trade or settlement in pushing forward the
boundaries of empire.
“Perhaps the most notorious cultural imperialists were the

Utilitarians James Mill and Thomas Babington Macaulay, who in 1835
drafted a Minute on education in India, arguing that money should be
spent on teaching English and European science, philosophy and
history, rather than ‘medical doctrines which would disgrace an
English Farrier – Astronomy, which would move laughter in girls at an
English boarding school – History, abounding with kings thirty foot
high… and Geography, made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter.’
This is often quoted as an egregious example of racial arrogance; in
fact, it was Utilitarian arrogance towards all traditional culture,
English as well as Indian – Mill considered all poetry a relic of
barbarism. Not all shared Mill’s sweeping modernism: Benares College,
founded in 1791, preserved, evener-created a supposedly traditional
Indian culture. The British were often torn between admiration and
impatience, pride and guilt. One of the most influential voices of the
age, Richard Cobden, regarded Britain’s record in India one of
‘spoliation and wrong’ and hoped for the ‘happy day when England
has not an acre of territory in Continental Asia’.” 856
The generation after the Crimean War saw Britain reach the peak of her
power. Far outstripping her competitors in industrial production (it was still
some time before America and Germany caught up), mistress of the seas and of
an ever-expanding empire (four times larger than the Roman empire) on which,
as the saying went, the sun never set, British self-confidence grew with it. The
British considered that theirs was the greatest civilization in the world, and that
it would last forever… And yet Britain’s boast, as we have seen, was in
something quite different: in being the world champion of freedom and
liberalism in both political and economic life. But how – we return to the
question - was it possible to be both liberal and imperialist at the same time?
The clue lay in the so-called doctrine of benign intervention: the teaching that
Britain, alone among the empires of history, had acquired her empire for the
benefit, not of her own, but of her subject peoples, to whom she communicated
the fruits of her liberal civilization by her benign interventions in their lives – in
other words, by her annexation of their territories and completely reconstructing
their economies. This teaching was expounded by Britain’s foremost liberal
thinker, John Stuart Mill, in his essay, “A Few Words on Non-Intervention”, in
which he asserted that England was “incomparably the most conscientious of all
nations… the only one whom mere scruples of conscience… would deter” and
“the power which of all in existence best understands liberty”. 857 As Noam
Chomsky writes, Mill “urged Britain to undertake the enterprise [of
856
857
Mill, in Ferguson, Empire: How Britain made the Modern World, p. 138.
508
humanitarian intervention] vigorously – specifically, to conquer more of India.
Britain must pursue this high-minded mission, Mill explained, even though it
will be ‘held up to obloquy’ on the continent. Unmentioned was that by doing
so, Britain was striking still further devastating blows at India and extending the
near-monopoly of opium production that it needed both to force open Chinese
markets by violence and to sustain the imperial system more broadly by means
of its immense narco-trafficking enterprises, all well known in England at the
time. But such matters could not be the source of the ‘obloquy’. Rather,
Europeans are ‘exciting odium against us’, Mill wrote, because they are unable
to comprehend that England is truly ‘a novelty in the world.’ A remarkable
nation that acts only ‘in the service of others’. It is dedicated to peace, though if
‘the aggressions of barbarians force it to a successful war’, it selflessly bears the
cost while ‘the fruits it shares in fraternal equality with the whole human race’,
including the barbarians it conquers and destroys for their own benefit. England
is not only peerless but near perfect, in Mill’s view, with no ‘aggressive designs’,
desiring ‘no benefit to itself at the expense of others’. Its policies are ‘blameless
and laudable’. England was the nineteenth-century counterpart of the ‘idealistic
new world bent on ending inhumanity’, motivated by pure altruism and
uniquely dedicated to the highest ‘principles and values’, though also sadly
misunderstood by the cynical or perhaps paranoid Europeans…” 858
Mills’ views undoubtedly express a dangerous degree of hubris and self-

delusion. Even taking into account the occasional genuine idealism and
evangelical zeal among the British in India, the fact remains that the main
motive of Britain’s imperial expansion was commercial profit. Moreover, this
profit was unquestionably immoral when gained at the expense of jobless Indian
textile workers859 or Chinese opium addicts.860
“From another angle,” continues Lieven, “Protestantism was vital to the

whole English sense of imperial mission. From the sixteenth to the twentieth
century, most Englishmen believed that the Protestant conscience was at the core
of all progress. They were convinced that the Protestant had a sense of
individual responsibility and a strong motivation to better himself and succeed
in life. He was self-disciplined, purposeful and based his life on firm moral
principles, which he derived for himself by reading the Bible and struggling to
define his own path to salvation. Eighteenth-century Enlightenment and
858
Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, London: Metropolitan
Books, 2003, pp. 44-45. Cf. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875-1914, London: Abacus, 1994,
p. 62-69.
859
Chomsky again: “India was a real competitor with England: as late as the 1820s; while the
British were learning advanced techniques of steel-making there, India was building ships for
the British navy at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, they had a developed textiles industry, they
were producing more iron than all of Europe combined – so the British just proceeded to de-
industrialize the country by force and turn it into an impoverished rural society” (Understanding
Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, London: Vintage, 2003, p. 257).
860
“It is a remarkable fact,” writes Ferguson, “that throughout the first half of the nineteenth
century the amount the East India Company earned from its monopoly on the export of opium
was roughly equal to the amount it had to remit to London to pay the interest on its huge debt.
The opium trade was crucial to the Indian balance of payments.” (op. cit., p. 166, note).
509
nineteenth-century liberalism had no doubt of their descent from the Protestant
tradition even if they had sometimes lost faith in a personal god. By contrast,
Catholics were seen to be the slaves of sentiment, tradition, ritual and ignorance.
Muslims were worse, and Hindus and Buddhists worst of all. Racial stereotypes
of Africans in the late nineteenth century were very familiar from sixteenth-
century Ireland: the natives were shifty, immoral and idle, and needed for their
own good to be forced to work. Nor had English attitudes to Catholics in general
or the Irish in particular necessarily changed much over the previous 300 years.
In 1882 the Regius Professor of History at Oxford University commented that
‘the Celts of Ireland are as yet unfit for parliamentary government… Left to
themselves, without what they call English misrule, they would almost certainly
be… the willing slaves of some hereditary despot, the representative of their old
coshering chiefs, with a priesthood as absolute and as obscurantist as the
Druids.’
“Such views explain the English imperialist’s powerful sense of cultural

superiority and civilizing mission among indigenous populations. They explain
too the doctrine of terra nullius, first proclaimed in sixteenth-century Ireland,
which justified the expropriation and exploitation by a more civilized invading
people of human and natural resources which a backward native society was
wasting. Armed with this doctrine, one could easily justify the expropriation of
indigenous peoples’ land and the eradication of indigenous culture in the name
of progress. One could even at a pinch justify turning the lazy African into a
productive slave or forcing the Chinese government to allow the import of
opium, since these were essential to the development of the British-led
international economy and the latter was the driving wheel of progress.
“Whether Catholics, Muslims and pagans could actually be converted to

English Protestant virtues and, if so, how quickly the task could be accomplished
was a moot point. As one might expect, the Enlightenment and its early
Victorian heirs were optimistic. Some Enlightened eighteenth-century observers
expected the conversion of Irish Catholics to ‘rationality’, in other words to the
culture of the Protestant elite but with God largely removed. In the 1830s it was
widely believed that consistent government policy, particularly as regards
education, would lead to Anglicization first of India’s elites and then of the
whole population. In the reformers’ minds there was no doubt that this would
be wholly to Indians’ advantage, their belief in mankind’s perfectibility being
matched only by their utter contempt for non-European cultural and intellectual
traditions. As Charles Trevelyan put matters, ‘trained by us to happiness and
independence, and endowed with our learning and political institutions, India
will remain the proudest monument of British benevolence.’ In these first
pristine years of Victorian liberal optimism some Englishmen had a faith in
rapid progress to rationality along unilinear paths foreordained by history
which was subsequently equalled by Lenin’s.
“In the British imperial context this vision always had its doubters. They
included pragmatists conscious of the social disruption and political danger
liberal policy might create; financial officials aware that Westminster would
510
insist on India living on its own revenues, and that the latter barely sufficed to
pay for army, police and administration – let alone ‘luxuries’ like education.
More ideological opposition to liberalism also existed. This encompassed an
increasing tide of late Victorian racialism, which stressed the innate biological
inferiority of non-Whites. It included too romantics and, later, anthropologists,
who gloried in native culture and proclaimed the need to preserve its unique
traditions.
“But the British Empire could never give up its basic, albeit stuttering
commitment to progress and enlightenment, since these were essential to its
British elite’s understanding of history, their perception of themselves and of the
legitimacy of Britain’s empire. Clearly, British liberal values and ideology did
convert growing sections of the indigenous elite, firstly in India and then
elsewhere: it was precisely in the name of these values that self-government and
independence from Britain were demanded. But in this as in so much else formal
empire was only one element in a much broader process of change and
Westernization…”861
861
Lieven, op. cit., pp. 97-99.
511
60. THE INDIAN MUTINY
The Indian Mutiny of 1857 – known in India as the First War of Independence
- deeply impressed upon the British the limitations of their power in the
reformation of Hindu “usages or superstitions”. It began, as Tombs writes,
“when mutinies in the East India Company’s Bengal army in February, April
and May 1857 turned into a revolt across north-central India, involving both
peasants and princes. The causes were many and have been debated ever since.
The withdrawal of British troops from India for the Crimea, the exposed failings
of the British army [in the Crimean war] – dangerous for a regime so reliant on
prestige – and expectation of Russian or Persian intervention created a sense of
opportunity among discontented Indians, and perhaps fed prophecies that the
British would be defeated one hundred years after Clive’s 1757 victory at
Plassey. There were political, military, economic and religious grievances among
the Company’s subject peoples and its troops. The Bengal army, largely high-
caste Hindu gentry, resented deteriorating conditions of service for what had
been the most attractive employer in India, but which now seemed to bring
social degradation. Peasants resented taxation and changes in land tenure.
Princes, dispossessed princes, would-be princes and their military retainers
bitterly resented British takeover of ‘lapsed’ states, when there was no direct
heir, or when the British considered them badly governed, as in the Muslim-
ruled Awadh (Oudh), just annexed. Nana Sahib, who became the most notorious
rebel leader, had been refused recognition as adopted heir of a Maratha prince.
The Rhani of Jhansi, later a heroine to both Indian nationalists and feminists,
was alienated by British rejection of her similar claim. The British later liked to
think that it was their modernizing reforms, such as railway-building, that were
resented by reactionaries. Some reforms certainly had caused resentment – for,
example, banning the burning of widows, ‘suttee’ (also ‘sati’), legalizing their
remarriage, and permitting (against sharia law) inheritance by Muslim converts
to Christianity. The abolition of suttee caused one of the first major campaigns
against British rule and stimulated the creation of Hindu newspapers. Christian
missionary activity (which the Company traditionally disliked as a nuisance)
was a further aggravation. These resentments were expressed in an anonymous
manifesto sent to all the princes of India: ‘The English are people who overthrow
all religions… the common enemy of both [Hindu and Muslims, who] should
unite in their slaughter… for by this alone will the lives and faiths of both be
saved.’ The final spark for the mutiny was the introduction of new rifle
cartridges, supposedly greased with pork and cow fat, polluting for both
Muslims and Hindus and seen as a plot to force mass conversion to
Christianity.862
“This inextricable confusion about causes illustrates a fundamental problem

of foreign rule: the difficulties of understanding and communicating with the
ruled. The British were horrified and enraged by the savage violence suddenly
inflicted not only on supposedly popular army officers, but on any British
862
“At root the Vellore mutiny was about religion” (Ferguson, op. cit., p. 145). (V.M.)
512
person (other than converts to Islam), on women and children, and on Indian
Christians – an unmistakable sign of the religious hatreds British rule had
aroused, and of the absence of basic human solidarity between them and many
of their subjects. Though there were several vicious episodes, the most notorious
took place at Cawnpore (Kanpur) in June and July 1857 – a traumatic event
constantly retold in British accounts. A few hundred British and loyal Indian
soldiers, civilians, women and children witnessed a three-week siege in
harrowing conditions. They were persuaded to surrender by promises of safe
conduct by river, but as they tried to embark, they were ambushed and several
boats set alight. Few men escaped. Nearly 200 captured women and children
were subsequently butchered and thrown down a well, some still alive. British
troops arriving soon after found their prison ‘ankle deep in blood, ladies’ hair
torn from their heads… poor little children’s shoes lying here and there, gowns
and frocks and bonnets… scattered everywhere.’
‘The British and their Indian supporters [particularly Gurkhas and Sikhs]
fought with savage desperation first for survival and then for revenge. Men
whose families had been killed often took the lead. Villages suspected of
harbouring rebels or mistreating British fugitives were burned. Suspected
mutineers were indiscriminately massacred. At Cawnpore, condemned men
were forced to clean the blood-stained floor – polluting to Hindus, who, wrote
General James Neill, ‘think that… they doom their souls to perdition. Let them
think so.’ Some were forced to eat pork and beef before being killed. [At
Peshawar] another notorious punishment – copied from the Mughals and
Marathas – was to be tied to a cannon and ‘blown away’: ‘His head flew up into
the air some thirty or forty feet – an arm yonder, another yonder, while the gory,
reeking trunk fell in a heap beneath the gun.’
“The governor-general, Lord Canning, a former Peelite and son of the 1820s
Foreign Secretary George Canning, tried to rein in the reprisals and was attacked
as ‘Clemency Canning’: ‘As long as I have breath in my body… I will not govern
in anger.’ He was supported by some of the government in London. Palmerston
called a National Day of Fast, Humiliation and Prayer on 7 October 1857. The
day inspired calls for clemency and criticism of misgovernment. Radical
newspapers expressed sympathy with the Indians. There was a wider conviction
that rule in India had to be reformed: the mutiny, thought the Earl of Elgin,
proved ‘the scandalous treatment the natives receive at our hands.’ The queen
wrote that ‘for the perpetrators of these awful horrors no punishment can be
severe enough… But… the native at large… should know there is no hatred of
brown skin.’ But for many British in India there certainly was. Wrote one young
officer, Edward Vibart: ‘These black wretches shall atone with their blood for
our murdered countrymen,’ and he and others made sure they did.”863
“The year 1857,” writes Ferguson, “was the Evangelical movement’s annus
horribilis. They had offered India Christian civilization, and the offer had been
not merely declined but violently spurned. Now the Victorians revealed the
863
513
other, harsher face of their missionary zeal. In churches all over the country, the
theme of the Sunday sermon switched from redemption to revenge. Queen
Victoria – whose previous indifference to the Empire was transformed by the
Mutiny into a passionate interest – called the nation to a day of repentance and
prayer: ‘A Day of Humiliation’, no less. In the Crystal Palace, that monument to
Victorian self-confidence, a vast congregation of 25,000 heard the incandescent
Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon issue what amount to a call for holy war:
“’My friends, what crimes they have committed… The Indian

government never ought to have tolerated the religion of the Hindoos
at all. If my religion consisted of bestiality, infanticide and murder, I
should have no right to it unless I was prepared to be hanged. The
religion of the Hindoos is no more than a mass of the rankest filth that
imagination ever conceived. The gods they worship are not entitled to
the least atom of respect. Their worship necessitates everything that is
evil and morality must put it down. The sword must be taken out of its
sheath, to cut off our fellow subjects by their thousands.’” 864
In fact, the British response to the Mutiny was anything but liberal.
“On 4 October 1857 the novelist Charles Dickens assured his readers in
London that were he commander-in-chief in India, he would ‘do my
utmost to exterminate the Race on whom the stain of the late cruelties
rested… and with all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of
execution, to blot out of mankind and raze it off the face of the earth.’
He meant Indians, of all ages, and, presumably, men, women and
children alike…” 865 This resulted in a significant change in British
imperial policy with regard to the conversion of the natives. From now
on, the emphasis would be less on the saving of souls and more on the
political and economic benefits of British rule.
Thus “on 1 November 1858 Queen Victoria issued a proclamation

that explicitly renounced ‘the right and the desire to impose Our
convictions on any of Our subjects’. India was henceforth to be ruled
not by the East India Company – it was to be wound up – but by the
crown, represented by a Viceroy. And the government of India would
never again lend its support to the Evangelical project of
Christianization. On the contrary, the aim of British policy in India
would henceforth be to govern with, rather than against, the grain of
indigenous tradition.” 866
864
Ferguson, op. cit., pp. 150-151.
865
Dickens, in Wheatcroft, op. cit., p. 259.
866
514
61. THE BRITISH IN CHINA
There was a huge contradiction at the heart of the British Empire. On the one
hand, as we have seen, the British regarded themselves as innately superior to
the native peoples they ruled; they were true racists. On the other hand, the
ideology on the basis of which they justified their expansionist policies, Free
Trade and Human Rights, was universalist.
For, as Tombs writes, “free traders were universalistic: all mankind was
morally and intellectually the same, human values were transnational, racial or
ethnic differences were irrelevant, and civilization and progress were the right
and destiny of all. However, some nations were more advanced than others –
with England economically and politically in the lead. This could mean, as one
Englishman put it tartly in 1863, that his countrymen thought that ‘all men were
morally and intellectually alike’ and all ‘equally inferior to himself’.
“Unquestioned belief in the morality and civilizing influence of commercial

freedom explains how a country that was striving to stop the African slave trade
was also striving to export opium to China. Some of the same people were
involved, notably Palmerston. Although he believed that ‘Her Majesty’s
Government cannot interfere for the purpose of enabling British merchants to
violate the laws of the country to which they trade,’ he equally believed that
‘Commerce is the best pioneer of civilization,’ making mankind ‘happier, wiser,
better’.”867
In China the British came up against a nation that was much older than theirs,
and similar, arguably, in their common sense of racial superiority… Maria Hsia
Chang writes: “It is difficult to imagine two civilizations more dissimilar than
those of China and the West. Continental in proportion, agrarian China was
insular and self-sufficient; industrial Western Europe was driven to export and
championed free trade. Chinese culture deified authority and the group;
Western civilization was rooted in individualism. Europeans were Judeo-
Christians who regarded the Chinese, with their ancestor worship, as benighted
pagans. Westerners believed in the rule of law, due process, and innocence until
proven guilty; Chinese long opted for rule by Confucian ethics, in which the
courts were a last recourse where the accused was presumed to be guilty until
proven innocent. Although East and West were each other’s complete opposites,
both were great and proud civilizations. The Chinese, an ancient people with a
5,000-year history, still thought they were the centre of the world; Westerners,
with a civilization that reached back to Greco-Roman antiquity, found only
confirmation of their superiority in their excursions across the globe. It does not
take the gifts of a prophet to predict that contact between two such disparate
civilizations could only lead to deadly conflict. Indeed, a British trader, writing
in 1833 on the miserable trade conditions in China, ominously concluded that
‘war with the Chinese cannot be doubted’.”868
867
868
Chang, Return of the Dragon, Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 2001, p. 67.
515
The problem was that the British wanted to trade with China, but the Chinese
did not want to trade with the British. Nevertheless, in what he saw as a
magnanimous gesture, Emperor Kangxi (1662-1722) had allowed western
merchants to trade within a kind of ghetto in Canton with a monopolistic group
of Chinese merchants, the Thirteen Hongs. But the British, the “proudest” and
“stiffest” of the westerners, found these restrictions “tiresome, insulting, and
stultifying”. Just as Rousseau had said that the people had to be “forced to be
free” in the political sphere, so the British insisted that Free Trade had to be
forced down the throats of every people they came into contact with…
“The China trade,” continues Chang, “had become important for both British
consumers and their government. Until 1830, when India began the commercial
cultivation of tea, tea could be bought only from China. In 1785, some 15 million
pounds of Chinese tea a year were purchased by the British East India
Company; tax on that tea accounted for a tenth of the British government’s total
revenue. In 1795, and again in 1816, envoys were sent from London to prevail
upon the Chinese emperor to improve trade conditions by lifting the restrictions
in favor of a modern commercial treaty. Both missions, like the earlier Dutch
effort, returned empty handed. To add fuel to fuel, the emperor treated the
representatives of the British monarch with customary imperiousness, sublimely
oblivious that he was dealing with a new breed of ‘barbarians’. That arrogance
was only too evident in the letter to King George III from Emperor Qianlong
(1736-1795), in response to the Macartney mission of 1795:
“’My capital is the hub and centre about which all quarters of the globe
revolve… Our Celestial Empire possesses all thing in prolific abundance… [and
has] no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians… But as the tea,
silk and porcelain which the Celestial Empire produces, are absolute necessities
to… yourselves, we have permitted, as a signal mark of favor, that foreign hongs
should be established at Canton, so that… your country thus participate in our
beneficence.’
“What the Chinese did not realize was that Britain had the power to force
them into making trade concessions. But before force could be resorted to, a
casus belli had to be found. That pretext was opium…”869
“William Jardine and James Matheson,” writes Niall Ferguson, “were

buccaneering Scotsmen who had set up a trading company in the southern
Chinese port of Guangzhou (then known as Canton) in 1832. One of their best
lines of business was importing government-produced opium from India.
Jardine was a former East India Company surgeon, but the opium he was
bringing into China was for distinctly non-medicinal purposes. This was a
practice that the Emperor Yongzheng had prohibited over a century before, in
1729, because of the high social costs of opium addiction. On 10 March 1839 an
imperial official named Lin Zexu arrived in Canton under orders from the
869
Chang, op. cit., p. 68; Kissinger, op. cit., pp. 216-218.
516
Daoguang Emperor to stamp out the trade once and for all. Lin blockaded the
Guangzhou opium godowns (warehouses) until the British merchants acceded
to his demands. In all, around 20,000 chests of opium valued at £2 million were
surrendered. The contents were adulterated to render it unusable and literally
thrown into the sea. The Chinese also insisted that henceforth British subjects in
Chinese territory should submit to Chinese law. This was not to Jardine’s taste at
all. Known to the Chinese as ‘Iron-Headed Old Rat’, he was in Europe during
the crisis and hastened to London to lobby the British government. After three
meetings with the Foreign Secretary, Viscount Palmerston, Jardine seems to have
persuaded him that a show of strength was required, and that ‘the want of
power of their war junks’ would ensure an easy victory for a ‘sufficient’ British
force. On 20 February 1840 Palmerston gave the order. By June 1840 all the naval
preparations were complete. The Qing Empire was about the feel the full force of
history’s most successful narco-state: the British Empire.
“Just as Jardine had predicted, the Chinese authorities were no match for
British naval power. Guangzhou was blockaded, Chusan (Zhoushan) Island was
captured. After a ten-month stand off, British marines seized the forts that
guarded the mouth of the Pearl River, the waterway between Hong Kong and
Guangzhou. Under the Convention of Chuenpi, signed in January 1841 (but then
repudiated by the Emperor), Hong Kong became a British possession. The
Treaty of Nanking, signed a year later after another bout of one sided fighting,
confirmed this cession and also gave free reign to the opium trade in five so-
called treaty ports: Canton, Amoy (Xiamen), Foochow (Fuzhou), Ningbo and
Shanghai. According to the principle of extraterritoriality, British subjects could
operate in these cities with complete immunity from Chinese law.” 870
“Thereafter,” writes Chang, “the political integrity of China began to unravel.

In 1844, without fighting a war, treaties were concluded with the United States
and France that had effects more far-reaching than the Treaty of Nanjing. The
Treaty of Wangxia with the United States introduced the most-favored-nation
clause and the right of extraterritoriality, both of which had devastating impact
on China’s well-being and sovereignty. The most-favored-nation clause
extended all bilateral treaties between China and a foreign country to all other
interested powers, thereby enabling the United States to obtain all the benefits
that Britain had derived from the Treaty of Nanjing (excepting Hong Kong and
the indemnity). The right of extraterritoriality, for its part, gave foreigners to
China immunity from its laws and criminal justice system. Foreigners suspected
of having committed crimes in China would be handed over to their consuls for
trial in accordance with their own country’s laws – which was rarely followed
through in practice. More than that, the right of extraterritoriality was not
mutual. Chinese immigrants in Western countries enjoyed no reciprocal legal
immunity.871
870
Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, New York: The Penguin Press, 2008, pp. 289-292.
871
“Foreigners were placed under the legal jurisdiction of their consuls – a flagrant breach of
Chinese sovereignty necessitated, in Western eyes, by the barbarity of Chinese law” (Tombs, op.
cit., pp. 560-561). (V.M.)
517
“France followed the United States by concluding the Treaty of Huangpu,
which promptly invoked the most-favored-nation principle, thereby gaining for
France every erstwhile concession obtained by Britain and the United States.
Additionally, the Chinese agreed to lift their ban on Christianity, opening China
to proselytization by French and other Western missionaries.” 872
The Second Anglo-Chinese War began in 1856 when “the Chinese authorities
arrested the crew of a British-registered ship, the Arrow… [The war was]
deliberately escalated by the governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Bowring, a free-
trade fundamentalist, founder member of the Anti-Corn Law League and former
Radical MP for Bolton. Believing that ‘Jesus Christ is Free Trade’ he acted in
November 1856 to try to compel the Chinese by force to concede greater
commercial access, and ordered the navy to shell the Canton defences – an
enterprise denounced both by Tories and more pacifically minded free traders.
In retaliation, the Chinese governor of Canton offered $100 for every English
head, and attacks on foreigners multiplied. The Earl of Elgin – who deplored
imperial expansion as merely ‘increasing the area over which Englishmen…
exhibit how hollow and superficial are both their civilization and their
Christianity’ – was, ironically, sent to negotiate with the Chinese by force,
though his arrival was delayed by the Indian Mutiny. Elgin confided in his diary
that the ‘wretched’ Arrow case was ‘a scandal’. He loathed the Hong Kong
merchants who ‘for blood and massacre on a great scale’, and who ‘for the most
selfish objects are trampling under foot this ancient civilisation’. But he
nevertheless permitted a fairly minor bombardment and occupation of Canton
in Decembe 1857. The French, determined not to be left out, contributed troops.
After sporadic skirmishing, multi-national diplomatic wrangling and broken
agreements, it was decided t mount an expedition to Peking. An Anglo-French
force land in August 1860, simultaneously negotiating and looting with gusto as
they marched…”
When some British prisoners were tortured and killed, Elgin aimed his
reprisal “at the imperial court, a furious Elgin in October ordered the destruction
of the vast Summer Palace, some 200 buildings in a park outside Peking – a
unique cultural monument, though of varying taste. Thus Elgin, sneered Lytton
Strachey, ‘in the name of European civilization, took vengeance upon the
barbarism of the East.’”873
“The Convention of Peking (1860) confirmed and extended concessions to

foreigners, ceded Kowloon to Britain, accepted foreign diplomats at Peking, and
opened ports to foreign trade. The British were determined to prevent the
Chinese Empire from collapsing and either becoming ‘another India’ or being
partitioned by rivals, particularly Russia and France. So they treated China as as
an informal protectorate, preventing other states from obtaining more than
minor commercial footholds. The Royal Navy tried to suppress piracy,
sometimes at Chinese request. British and French troops defended Shanghai
872
Chang, op. cit., pp. 70-71. Tombs (op. cit., p. 561) says “perhaps 50 million deaths”.
873
Tombs op. cit., pp. 570, 572-573,
518
against the indomitable Taipings… Shanghai was developed by British business
and remained largely under British control until 1937. The British consular
service in China was the largest in the world, and the key Chinese Maritime
Customs Service, a major source of state income, was run for forty-five years by
the incorruptible Sir Robert Hart, who saw himself as a disinterested servant of
China: ‘I want to make China strong, and I want to make England her best
friend.’”874
The attitudes of Elgin and Hart show an interesting ambiguity. On the one
hand, they were servants of the British crown, and therefore had to carry out the
commandments of the British Gospel of Free Trade. And so British cotton
exports to China multiplied – as did the export of opium. But they were also
manifestly impressed by this ancient civilization and inwardly deplored the
destruction that the British were clearly inflicting upon it. The question was:
could the European imperialists be “friends” of China and strengthen its
defences, while at the same time exploit it, imposing unequal treaties upon it at
the point of a gun?
874
Tombs op. cit., pp. 573-574. Hobsbawm writes: “Hart, who was Inspector General of Chinese
Customs from 1863 until 1909, was the master of the Chinese economy and, though he came to
be trusted by the Chinese governments and to identify himself with the country, in effect the
arrangement implied the entire subordination of the imperial government to the interests of the
westerners (The Age of Capital, p. 159).
519
62. THE TAIPING REBELLION
“For China,” writes Ferguson, “the first Opium War ushered in an

era of humiliation. Drug addiction exploded. 875 Christian missionaries
destabilized traditional Chinese beliefs. And in the chaos of the Taiping
Rebellion – a peasant revolt against a discredited dynasty led by the
self-proclaimed younger brother of Christ [called Hong Xiuquan] –
between 20 and 40 million people lost their lives [although only a small
proportion of these deaths was in battle].” 876
“At first,” writes Tombs, “the rebels’ quasi-Christianity won some sympathy
from the West. British naval officers were officially sent fifty theological
questions: ‘Does any one among you know 1. How tall God is, or how broad, 2.
What his appearance or colour is, 3. How large his abdomen is, 4. What kind of
beard he grows?’ etc., to which they gave ‘courteous and thorough’ answers, but
also said that they ‘think it right to state to you distinctly that we… can subscribe
to none of your [dogmas].’
There were other western influences, notably communistic ideas. Thus J.M.
Roberts writes: “The basis of Taiping society was communism: there was no
private property but communal provision for general needs. The land was in
theory distributed for working in plots graded by quality to provide just shares.
Even more revolutionary was the extension of social and educational equality to
women. The traditional binding of their feet was forbidden and a measure of
sexual austerity marked the movement’s aspirations (though not the conduct of
the ‘Heavenly King’ himself). These things reflected the mixture of religious and
social elements which lay at the root of the Taiping cult and the danger it
presented to the traditional order.”877
Such elements might lead one to think that this rebellion was undertaken
under the direct influence of the West, being an eastern offshoot of the European
Age of Revolution. But this would be a mistake, according to Jacques Gernet,
insofar as Hung “was only following in the footsteps of other rebel leaders and
usurpers who had been regarded as reincarnations of Maitreya, the saviour
Buddha… This view fails to recognize the role played by heterodox religions in
the big rebellions of Chinese history and the opposition – a basic factor in China
– between the official cults, patronized by the legitimate authority, and the
religious practices frowned on by the state (yin-ssu). Taoism, Buddhism, and
Manicheism all provided popular risings with the messianic hope of a world at
peace, harmony, and general prosperity; the Christianity of the T’ai P’ing comes
into the same category.”878
875
“In the late nineteenth century, about 40 million Chinese, a tenth of the country’s population,
were opium addicts” (Harari, Homo Sapiens, p. 364).
876
877
Roberts, History of the World, Oxford: Helicon, 1992, p. 666.
878
Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 550, 556.
520
Be that is may, it is intriguing that this enormous rebellion, together with the
later rebellions it gave rise to, should have taken place at just the time when
western ideas were beginning to enter into China. Some causal link seems highly
probable. Thus we may agree with the judgement of Eric Hobsbawm that “these
convulsions were in important respects the direct product of the western impact
on China.
“Perhaps alone among the great traditional empires of the world, China
possessed a popular revolutionary tradition, both ideological and practical.
Ideologically its scholars and its people took the permanence and centrality of
their Empire for granted: it would always exist, under an emperor (except for
occasional interludes of division), administered by the scholar-bureaucrats who
had passed the great national civil service examinations introduced almost two
thousand years before – and only abandoned when the Empire itself was about
to die in 1916. Yet its history was that of a succession of dynasties each passing,
it was believed, through a cycle of rise, crisis and supersession: gaining and
eventually losing that ‘mandate of Heaven’ which legitimised their absolute
authority. In the process of changing from one dynasty to the next, popular
insurrection, growing from social banditry, peasant risings and the activities of
popular secret societies to major rebellion, was known and expected to play a
significant part. Indeed its success was itself an indication that the ‘mandate of
Heaven’ was running out. The permanence of China, the centre of world
civilisation, was achieved through the ever-repeated cycle of dynastic change,
which included this revolutionary element.
“The Manchu dynasty, imposed by northern conquerors in the mid-

seventeenth century, had thus replaced the Ming dynasty, which had in turn
(through popular revolution) overthrown the Mongol dynasty in the fourteenth
century. Though in the first half of the nineteenth century the Manchu regime
still seemed to function intelligently and effectively – thought it was said with an
unusual amount of corruption – there had been signs of crisis and rebellion since
the 1790s. Whatever else they may have been due to, it seems clear that the
extraordinary increase of the country’s population during the past century
(whose reasons are still not fully elucidated) had begun to create acute economic
pressures. The number of Chinese is claimed to have risen from around 140
million in 1741 to about 400 million in 1834. The dramatic new element in the
situation of China was the western conquest, which had utterly defeated the
Empire in the first Opium War (1839-42). The shock of this capitulation to a
modest naval force of the British was enormous, for it revealed the fragility of
the imperial system, and even parts of popular opinion outside the few areas
immediately affected may have become conscious of it. At all events there was a
marked and immediate increase in the activities of various forces of opposition,
notably the powerful and deeply rooted secret societies such as the Triad of
south China, dedicated to the overthrow of the foreign Manchurian dynasty and
the restoration of the Ming. The imperial administration had set up militia forces
against the British, and thus helped to distribute arms among the civilian
population. It only required a spark to produce an explosion.
521
“That spark was provided in the shape of an obsessed, perhaps psychopathic
prophet and messianic leader, Hung Hsiu Chuan (1813-64), one of those failed
candidates for the imperial Civil Service examination who were so readily given
to political discontent. After his failure at the examination he evidently had a
nervous breakdown, which turned into a religious conversion. Around 1847-8 he
founded a ‘Society of those who venerate God’, in Kwangsi province, and was
rapidly joined by peasants and miners, by men from the large Chinese
population of pauperised vagrants, by members of various national minorities
and by supporters of the older secret societies. Yet there was one significant
novelty in his preaching. Hung had been influenced by Christian writings, had
even spent some time with an American missionary in Canton, and thus
embodied significant western elements in an otherwise familiar mixture of anti-
Manchu, heretico-religious and social-revolutionary ideas. The rebellion broke
out in 1850 in Kwangsi and spread so rapidly that a ‘Celestial Realm of
Universal Peace’ could be proclaimed within a year with Hung as the supreme
‘Celestial King’. It was unquestionably a regime of social revolution, whose
major support lay among the popular masses, and dominated by Taoist,
Buddhist and Christian ideas of equality. Theocratically organised on the basis
of a pyramid of family units, it abolished private property (land being
distributed only for use, not ownership), established the equality of the sexes,
prohibited tobacco, opium and alcohol, introduced a new calendar (including a
seven-day week) and various other cultural reforms, and did not forget to lower
taxes. By the end of 1853, the Taipings with at least a million active militants
controlled most of south and east China and had capture Nanking, though
failing - largely for want of cavalry – to push effectively into the north. China
was divided, and even those parts not under Taiping rule were convulsed by
major insurrections such as those of the Nien peasant rebels in the north, not
suppressed until 1868, the Miao national minority in Kweichow, and other
minorities in the south-west and north-west.
“The Taiping revolution did not maintain itself, and was in fact unlikely to.
Its radical innovations alienated moderates, traditionalists and those with
property to lose – by no means only the rich – the failure of its leaders to abide
by their own puritanical standards weakened its popular appeal, and deep
divisions within the leadership soon developed. After 1856 it was on the
defensive, and in 1864 the Taiping capital of Nanking was recaptured. The
imperial government recovered, but the price it paid for recovery was heavy and
eventually proved fatal. It also illustrated the complexities of the western
impact.
“Paradoxically the rulers of China had been rather less ready to adopt
western innovations than the plebeian rebels, long used to living in an
ideological world in which unofficial ideas drawn from foreign sources (such as
Buddhism) were acceptable. To the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats who
governed the empire what was not Chinese was barbarian. There was even
resistance to the technology which so obviously made the barbarians invincible.
As late as 1867 Grand Secretary Wo Jen memorialised the throne’s warning that
the establishment of a college for teaching astronomy and mathematics would
522
‘make the people proselytes of foreignism’ and result ‘in the collapse of
uprightness and the spread of wickedness’, and resistance to the construction of
railways and the like remained considerable. For obvious reasons a
‘modernising’ party developed, but one may guess that they would have
preferred to keep the old China unchanged, merely adding to it the capacity to
produce western armaments. (Their attempts to develop such production in the
1860s were not very successful for that reason.) The powerless imperial
administration in any case saw itself with little but the choice between different
degrees of concession to the west. Faced with a major social revolution, it was
even reluctant to mobilise the enormous force of Chinese popular xenophobia
against the invaders. Indeed, the overthrow of the Taiping seemed politically by
far its most urgent problem, and for this purpose the help of the foreigners was,
if not essential, then at any rate desirable; their good-will was indispensable.
Thus imperial China found itself tumbling rapidly into complete dependence on
the foreigners.”879
879
Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital 1848-1875, pp. 155-159. Stephen Platt writes: "China was not a
closed system, and globalism is hardly the recent phenomenon we sometimes imagine it to be.
By consequence, the war in China was tangled up in threads leading around the globe to Europe
and America, and it was watched from outside with a sense of immediacy and horror.” (Autumn
in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War, p. xxiii, xxvi,
review by Samuel Burt in Open Democracy, August 18, 2012)
523
63. WAGNER ON REPUBLICANISM AND MONARCHISM
While England continued on the path of ever-increasing liberalism, in
Germany after the failure of the 1848 revolution there was a reaction from
liberalism to conservatism, which can be seen most clearly in the writings of the
famous composer Richard Wagner.
Wagner’s youthful faith was in the socialist revolution. Thus during the
revolutionary year of 1848 he wrote: “I will destroy every evil that has power
over mankind. I will destroy the domination of one over another, of the dead
over the living; I will shatter the power of the mighty, of the law and of property.
Man’s sole master shall be his own will, his only law his own desire, his only
property his own strength, for only the free man is holy and there is nothing
higher than he. Let there be an end to the evil that gives one man power over
millions… since all are equal I shall destroy every dominion of one over
another.”880 Here we see not only the influence of the revolution, but also of the
concept of Will, even before his meeting with Schopenhauer, together with the
embryo of a Will to Power such as we find later in Nietzsche, who greatly
admired Wagner (until he thought that he had sold out to the bourgeoisie in his
later years).
The collapse of the 1848 revolution forced Wagner into exile from his native
Germany for many years. Nevertheless, he never completely shook off his early
faith, but combined it in an original way with other ideas: anti-capitalism with
anti-communism, and republicanism with monarchism. Thus his early anti-
capitalism found expression also in his later music dramas. One of leitmotifs of
these dramas was the corrupting power of money. For example, his most famous
work, the four-opera Ring cycle, describes how money, symbolized by a golden
ring possessed by Alberich and sought by the hero, Siegfried, is incompatible
with true love and happiness.
The contemporary symbol of the love of money gone wild was London, and in
1877, during a trip down the Thames in a steamer, as A.N. Wilson writes,
“Wagner said, 'This is Alberich's dream come true - Nibelheim, world dominion,
activity, work, everywhere the oppressive feeling of steam and fog.'...
"One of the most disturbing novels of the 1870s was Trollope's The Way We
Live Now - disturbing because genial, comic Anthony Trollope, who had so
consistently amused his public with tales of country-house gossip and cathedral-
feuds, chose to depict an England extremely vulgarised, sold to Mammon,
dominated by money-worship.... Professor Polhemus, an American scholar
quoted by Trollope's biographer James Pope-Hennessy, makes the point that
Trollope saw the same truth as Marx and Engels - 'a world where there is no
other bond between man and man but crude self-interest and callous cash-
payment', a world that 'has degraded personal dignity to the level of exchange-
880
Wagner, The Revolution, in Stephen Johnson, Wagner. His Life and Music, London: Naxos, 2007,
p. 60.
524
value', creating 'exploitation that is open, unashamed, direct and brutal'.
Professor Polhemus points out that, while Karl Marx was an optimist, Trollope's
later years were suffused with pessimism and gloom.
"The Way we Live Now was published the year before the opening of the
Bayreuth Festival Playhouse and the first complete performance of Wagner's
Ring. As Bernard Shaw reminded 'The Perfect Wagnerite' in 1898, 'the Ring, with
all its gods and giants and dwarfs, its water-maidens and Valkyries, its wishing-
cap, magic ring, enchanted sword, and miraculous treasure is a drama of today,
and not of a remote and fabulous antiquity. It could not have been written before
the second half of the nineteenth century, because it deals with events which
were only then consummating themselves.'
"Shaw rightly saw Alberich the dwarf, amassing power through his
possession of the ring, and forcing the Niebelungs to mine his gold, as the type of
capitalism. 'You can see the process for yourself in every civilized country today,
where millions of people toil in want and disease to heap up more wealth for our
Alberichs, laying up nothing for themselves, except sometimes agonizing disease
and the certainty of premature death.'
"No allegory of any work is exhausted by drawing too punctilious a match

between symbol and signified. The audience to Wagner's musical drama is
caught up in an experience which is profound in itself, and to say Alberich = the
Big Capitalist or that the befriending of Alberich by Loki and Wotan = the
Church and the Law embracing the power of capital is too narrow and too
specific an account of what stands as a universal work of art. Shaw was right,
however, to say that Wagner's masterpiece was rooted in its time. What is
suggested in the final opera of the cycle is a universal collapse - the Gods
themselves hurtling towards self-destruction. As the 'storm-clouds of the
nineteenth century' - John Ruskin's phrase - gather, we sense impending disaster
in many of the great art-works of the period."881
*
Wagner managed to combine anti-capitalism with anti-communism, and
republicanism with monarchism. In his celebrated "Fatherland Club Speech",
delivered on June 14, 1848 in Dresden, Wagner declared that his aim was that the
"demoniac idea of Money vanish from us, with all its loathsome retinue of open
and secret usury, paper-juggling, percentage and bankers' speculations. That will
be the full emancipation of the human race; that will be the fulfilment of Christ's pure
teaching, which enviously they hide from us behind parading dogmas, invented
to bind the simple world of raw barbarians, to prepare them for a development
towards whose higher consummation we now must march in lucid
consciousness. Or does this smack to you of Communism? Are ye foolish or ill-
disposed enough to declare the necessary redemption of the human race from
the flattest, most demoralising servitude to vulgarest matter, synonymous with
carrying out the most preposterous and senseless doctrine, that of Communism?
Can ye not see that this doctrine of a mathematically equal division of property
881
Wilson, op. cit., pp. 413-414, 415.
525
and earnings is simply an unreasoning attempt to solve that problem, at any rate
dimly apprehended, and an attempt whose sheer impossibility itself proclaims it
stillborn? But would ye denounce therewith the task itself [i.e. the removal of the
power of money] for reprehensible and insane, as that doctrine of a surety [i.e.
Communism] is? Have a care! The outcome of three-and-thirty years of unruffled
peace shews you Human Society in such a state of dislocation and
impoverishment, that, at end of all those years, ye have on every hand the awful
spectacle of pallid Hunger! Look to it, or e'er it be too late! Give no alms, but
acknowledge a right, a God-given right of Man, lest ye live to see the day when
outraged Nature will gird herself for a battle of brute force, whose savage shout
of victory were of a truth that Communism; and though the radical impossibility of
its continuance should yield it but the briefest spell of reign, that short-lived
reign would yet have sufficed to root up every trace, perchance for many an age
to come, of the achievements of two thousand years of civilisation. Think ye, I
threaten? Nay, I warn!"882
It was a prophetic warning, published in the same year as The Communist

Manifesto and directed precisely against it. And in his zeal that his warning about
the coming of Communism should be fulfilled, Wagner called for the
preservation of the Monarchy in Saxony. Only he argued that his idea of
monarchy was not in opposition to the Republic, but in union with it.
He called for "the King to be the first and sterlingest Republican of all. And who is
more called to be the truest, faithfulest Republican, than just the Prince?
RESPUBLICA means: the affairs of the nation. What individual can be more
destined that the Prince, to belong with all his feelings, all his thoughts and
actions, entirely to the Folk's affairs? Once persuaded of his glorious calling, what
could move him to belittle himself, to cast in his lot with one exclusive smaller
section of his Folk? However warmly each of us may respond to feelings for the
good of all, so pure a Republican as the Prince can he never be, for his cares are
undivided: their eye is single to the One, the Whole; whilst each of us must needs
divided and parcel out his cares, to meet the wants of everyday."883
Here Wagner is expressing one of the key ideas of Orthodox Christian

monarchism: that only the king is able to transcend individual and party
political factionalism and self-interest, and labour for the nation as a whole. In
this sense the king is the guarantee of the freedom of his people rather than its
destroyer; for only he can preserve the freedom of individuals and parties from
encroachment from other individuals and parties. And so "if he is the genuine
free Father of his Folk, then with a single high-hearted resolve he can plant
peace where war was unavoidable." 884
882
Wagner, "What Relation bear Republican Endeavours to the Kingship?" in Art and Politics,
London and Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996, pp. 139-140.
883
Wagner, op. cit., p. 141.
884
526
At the same time, Wagner claims, he is a Republican. But the Republic will be
proclaimed by - the King! "Not we, will proclaim the republic, no! this prince, the
noblest, worthiest King, let him speak out: -
"'I declare Saxony a Free State.'
"And let the earliest law of this Free State, the edict giving it the fairest surety
of endurance, be:- 'The highest executive power rests in the Royal House of Wettin,
and descends therein from generation to generation, by right of primogeniture.'
"The oath which we swear to this State and this edict, will never be broken:
not because we have sworn it (how many an oath is sworn in the unthinking joy
of taking office!) but because we have sworn it in full assurance that through this
proclamation, through that law, a new era of undying happiness has dawned, of utmost
benefit, of most determinant presage, not alone for Saxony, no! for Germany, for
Europe. He who thus boldly has expressed his enthusiasm, believes with all his
heart that never was he more loyal to the oath he, too, has sworn his King, than
when he penned these lines today."885
All this may seem like the height of romantic fantasy - and Wagner was
nothing if not a romantic. However, his idea of a "People's Monarchy" as
essential to the spiritual well-being of Germany did not leave him; and if he did
not find it in Saxony, he appeared to have found it for a time in Ludwig II of
Bavaria some 16 years later. Moreover, already in 1848 he was quite clear that
he did not mean by a "People's Monarchy" a kind of compromise between
Monarchy and Republicanism in the form of an English-style "constitutional
monarchy": "Now would this have brought about the downfall of the
Monarchy? Ay! But it would have published the emancipation of the Kinghood.
Dupe not yourselves, ye who want a 'Constitutional Monarchy upon the
broadest democratic basis.' As regards the latter (the basis), ye either are
dishonest, or, if in earnest, ye are slowly torturing your artificial Monarchy to
death. Each step forward, upon that democratic basis, is a fresh encroachment
on the power of the Mon-arch, i.e. the sole ruler; the principle itself is the
completest mockery of Monarchy, which is conceivable only as actual alone-
ruling: each advance of Constitutionalism is a humiliation to the ruler, for it is a
vote of want-of-confidence in the monarch. How shall love and confidence
prevail, amid this constant, this often so unworthily manoeuvred contest twixt
two opposing principles? The very existence of the monarch, as such, is
embittered by shame and mortification. Let us therefore redeem him from this
miserable half-life; let us have done altogether with Monarchism, since Sole-
rule is made impossible by just the principle of Folk's rule (Democracy): but let
us, on the contrary, emancipate the Kinghood in its fullest, its own peculiar
meaning! At head of the Free State (the republic) the hereditary King will be
exactly what he should be, in the noblest meaning of his title [Fürst]: the First of
the Folk, the Freest of the Free! Would not this be alike the fairest commentary
upon Christ's saying: 'And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall he be
885
Wagner, op. cit., pp. 142-143.
527
servant of all'? Inasmuch as he serves the freedom of all, in his person he raises
the concept of Freedom itself to the loftiest, to a God-implanted consciousness.
"The farther back we search among Germanic nations for the Kinghood's
meaning, the more intimately will it fit this new-won meaning." 886
Wagner returned to this subject in 1864, in an article entitled "On State and
Religion" written at the request of his patron, King Ludwig II. If in 1848, the
year of revolution, he had been concerned to show that kingship was
compatible with freedom, here he links freedom with stability, which is the
main aim of the State.
"For it constitutes withal the unconscious aim in every higher human effort
to get beyond the primal need: namely to reach a freer evolution of spiritual
attributes, which is always cramped so long as hindrances forestall the
satisfaction of that first root-need. Everyone thus strives by nature for stability,
for maintenance of quiet: ensured can it only be, however, when the
maintenance of existing conditions is not the preponderant interest of one party
only. Hence it is in the truest interest of all parties, and thus of the State itself,
that the interest in its abidingness should not be left to a single party. There
must consequently be given a possibility of constantly relieving the suffering
interests of less favoured parties.
"The embodied voucher for this fundamental law is the Monarch. In no State
is there a weightier law than that which centres on stability in the supreme
hereditary power of one particular family, unconnected and un-commingling
with any other lineage in that State. Never yet has there been a Constitution in
which, after the downfall of such families and abrogation of the Kingly power,
some substitution or periphrasis has not necessarily, and for the most part
necessitously, reconstructed a power of similar kind. It therefore is established
as the most essential principle of the State; and as in it resides the warrant of
stability, so in the person of the King the State attains its true ideal.
"For, as the King on the one hand gives assurance of the State's solidity, on
the other his loftiest interest soars high beyond the State. Personally he has
naught in common with the interests of parties, but his sole concern is that the
conflict of these interests should be adjusted, precisely for the safety of the
whole. His sphere is therefore equity, and where this is unattainable, the
exercise of grace (Gnade). Thus, as against the party interests, he is the
representative of purely-human interests, and in the eyes of the party-seeking
citizen he therefore occupies in truth a position well-nigh superhuman. To him
is consequently accorded a reverence such as the highest citizen would never
dream of distantly demanding for himself."887
886
887
Wagner, "On State and Religion", op. cit., pp. 11-13.
528
“The subject relates to the King through the self-sacrificing emotion of
patriotism. In a democracy, on the other hand, the position of the King is taken by
public opinion, the veneration of which is far more problematic, leading as it does
to "the most deplorable imbroglios, into acts the most injurious to Quiet". 888
"The reason lies in the scarcely exaggerable weakness of the average human
intellect, as also in the infinitely diverse shades and grades of perceptive-faculty
in the units who, taken all together, create the so-called public opinion. Genuine
respect for this 'public opinion' is founded on the sure and certain observation
that no one is more accurately aware of the community's true immediate life-
needs, nor can better devise the means for their satisfaction, than the community
itself: it would be strange indeed, were man more faultily organised in this
respect than the dumb animal. Nevertheless we often are driven to the opposite
view, if we remark how even for this, for the correct perception of its nearest,
commonest needs, the ordinary human understanding does not suffice - not, at
least, to the extent of jointly satisfying them in the spirit of true fellowship: the
presence of beggars in our midst, and even at times of starving fellow-creatures,
shews how weak the commonest human sense must be at bottom. So here
already we have evidence of the great difficulty it must cost to bring true reason
into the joint determinings of Man: though the cause may well reside in the
boundless egoism of each single unit."889
Another problem with public opinion is that it has an extremely unreliable

"pretended vice-regent" in the press. The press is made out to be "the sublimation
of public spirit, of practical human intellect, the indubitable guarantee of
manhood's constant progress." But in fact "it is at all times havable for gold or
profit." In fact, "there exists no form of injustice, of onesidedness and
narrowness of heart, that does not find expression in the pronouncements of
'public opinion', and - what adds to the hatefulness of the thing - forever with a
passionateness that masquerades as the warmth of genuine patriotism, but has
its true and constant origin in the most self-seeking of all human motives.
Whoso would learn this accurately, has but to run counter to 'public opinion', or
indeed to defy it: he will find himself brought face to face with the most
implacable tyrant; and no one is more driven to suffer from its despotism, than
the Monarch, for very reason that he is the representative of that selfsame
Patriotism whose noxious counterfeit steps up to him, as 'public opinion', with
the boast of being identical in kind.
"Matters strictly pertaining to the interest of the King, which in truth can only
be that of purest patriotism, are cut and dried by his unworthy substitute, this
Public Opinion, in the interest of the vulgar egoism of the mass; and the
necessitation to yield to its requirements, notwithstanding, becomes the earliest
source of that higher form of suffering which the King alone can personally
experience as his own.” 890
888
Wagner, "On State and Religion", op. cit., p. 18.
889
Wagner, "On State and Religion", op. cit., p. 18.
890
Wagner, "On State and Religion", op. cit., pp. 20, 20-21.
529
Ordinary men pursue definite, practical aims associated with their particular,
lowly station in life. But "the King desires the Ideal, he wishes justice and
humanity; nay, wished he them not, wished he naught but what the simple
burgher or party-leader wants, - the very claims made on him by his office,
claims that allow him nothing but an ideal interest, by making a traitor to the
idea he represents, would plunge him into those sufferings which have inspired
tragic poets from all time to paint their pictures of the vanity of human life and
strife. True justice and humanity are ideals irrealisable: to be bound to strive for
them, nay, to recognise an unsilenceable summons to their carrying out, is to be
condemned to misery. What the thoroughly noble, truly kingly individual
directly feels of this, in time is given also to the individual unqualified for
knowledge of his tragic task, and solely placed by Nature's dispensation on the
throne, to learn in some uncommon fashion reserved for kings alone. The highly
fit, however, is summoned to drink the full, deep cup of life's true tragedy in his
exalted station. Should his construction of the Patriotic ideal be passionate and
ambitious, he becomes a warrior-chief and conqueror, and thereby courts the
portion of the violent, the faithlessness of Fortune; but should his nature be
noble-minded, full of human pity, more deeply and more bitterly than every
other is he called to see the futility of all endeavours for true, for perfect
justice."891
"To him more deeply and more inwardly than is possible to the State-citizen,
as such, is it therefore given to feel that in Man there dwells an infinitely
deeper, more capacious need than the State and its ideal can ever satisfy.
Wherefore as it was Patriotism that raised the burgher to the highest height by
him attainable, it is Religion alone that can bear the King to the stricter dignity
of manhood."892
Therefore just as Monarchy is more purely disinterested, more truly solicitous

of the needs - the deepest as well as the more temporary needs - of all its citizens,
than "Franco-Judaico-German Democracy"893, so through this very necessity of
having to rise above individual, partial, lower interests and needs, it ascends into
the realm of religion. And, we should add, receives its strength and confirmation
and sanctification from true religion. In this Wagner, paradoxically, while still far
from the true faith, is not far from the Orthodox conception of true kingship…
891
Wagner, "On State and Religion", op. cit., pp. 22-23. We remember the great speech of the king
in Shakespeare's Henry V (IV.1): Upon the king! Let us our lives, our souls,/ Our debts, our careful
wives,/ Our children, and our sins lay on the king!/ We must bear all. O hard condition!/ Twin-born with
greatness, subject to the breath/ Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel/ But his own wringing. What
infinite heart's ease/ Must kings neglect that private men enjoy!
892
Wagner, "On State and Religion", op. cit., pp. 23-24.
893
Wagner, "What is German?", op. cit., p. 166.
530
64. EMANCIPATED JEWRY: (1) BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Among the nationalisms that became such an important feature of

European life in the nineteenth century, none is more important that
that of the Jews. Jewish nationalism is a particularly complex variety
that does not fit easily into the category of the nationalisms either of
the great, “historic” nations (Nationen) or of the lesser, newer
nationalities (Nationalitätchen) that grew up in reaction to the former. 894
Of course, Jewish nationalism of one kind had existed for

thousands of years, being closely linked with the religion, first, of the
Old Testament and, later, after their rejection of Christ, of the Talmud.
But nineteenth-century Jewish nationalism was of a different kind,
being strongly influenced by the western varieties that arose out of the
French revolution. Its development was slow because it had to contend
with other currents of thought that also arose out of the revolution and
were particularly strong among the Jews: anti-nationalism or
assimilationism, union with the prevailing liberal-secular culture of the
West, and violent rejection of that same culture on the basis of the creed
of the internationalist proletarian revolution. (In a speech in the House of
Commons in 1852 Disraeli spoke of the secret societies aiming to
destroy tradition, religion and property. And he said that at the head of
all of them stood people of the Jewish race…) Other factors making for
the great complexity of Jewish nationalism were: the lack of a
territorial base or homeland, the different conditions of Jews in
different parts of Europe, and the different relationships between the
religion and the nation of the Jews in the different regions.
Jewish nationalism arose at least in part as a reaction to

assimilationism. Since 1789 and the declaration of the rights of men,
Jewish assimilation into European life, which was achieved either
through Christian baptism (the favoured route), or through the
sanitized, almost Protestant religion known as Reform Judaism, had
progressed rapidly, if unevenly, through Europe. It was furthest
advanced in Britain, where we see it triumphant in the careers of such
men as the banker Lionel Rothschild, the philanthropist Sir Moses
Montefiore and the Tory party leader and Prime Minister Benjamin
Disraeli. And yet the striking fact especially about these men is their
continued attraction to Israel: Montefiore financed Jewish colonies in
Palestine, and Disraeli travelled to Palestine and wrote a novel,
Tancred, about the return to Zion.
Disraeli is usually contrasted with his great parliamentary rival

from the 1850s to the 1880s – William Ewart Gladstone, leader of the
Liberal Party. Both, writes Tombs, were “highly unusual men by any
standards. In some ways both were characteristically but differently
David Vital, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939, Oxford University Press, 1999, p.
894
253.
531
‘Victorian’ – Gladstone in his agonized and introspective religiosity,
Disraeli in his romantic devotion to aristocratic leadership and
grandiose patriotism.” 895
“With his goatee beard, his dandified clothing, his profession as a

writer of novels (which he continued to publish during his tenure of
office), and his often frivolous wit, [Disraeli] hardly seemed cut out to
lead a party of stolid gentry and landowners. Part of his secret was that
he had a firm belief in the virtues of the aristocracy, strong-minded,
independent, and not to be overawed by the mob; indeed, he believed
that Jews themselves were natural aristocrats. The architect of the 1867
extension of the franchise, he was the founder of ‘Tory Democracy’,
turning the Conservatives into a modern political party in terms not
only of organization but also of ideology. On the death of Lord
Palmerston in 1865, Disraeli was quick to appropriate his mantle of
patriotism for the Conservatives.” 896
“One of Disraeli’s most influential achievements,” writes

Montefiore, “was in creating an imperial ethos for the British empire.
He sang the virtues of imperium et libertas (empire and liberty), and he
saw Britain’s mission as not just to trade and establish colonial
settlements, but also to bring British civilization and values to the
diverse peoples of its ever expanding dominion…” 897
Disraeli stood for the union the two nations – the landowning
aristocracy and the workers – into one patriotic conservative entity
bound together by a very imperial patriotism and a distaste for the
cosmopolitan liberalism represented by Gladstone and the urban liberal
elite.
In his early novels, such as Coningsby and Sybil, Disraeli showed

himself to be a passionate monarchist, a defender of the old aristocratic
order based on the land and an enemy of the contemporary worship of
Mammon that produced such a lamentable contrast between the “two
nations” of England, the rich and the poor. “Toryism,” he predicted,
“will yet rise… to bring back strength to the Crown, liberty to the
subject, and to announce that power has only one duty: to secure the
social welfare of the PEOPLE.” 898
Such a creed, combined with his Anglicanism (he was a baptized

Jew from an upper-middle-class family) might lead us to believe that
Disraeli was trying, like so many assimilated Jews, to distance himself
as far as possible from his Jewish roots and make himself out to be a
High Tory Englishman. But this was only half true. He once answered a
taunt in parliament: “Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the
895
896
897
Montefiore, Titans of History, pp. 357-358.
898
Disraeli, Sybil; in Sarah Bradford, Disraeli, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982, p. 136.
532
Right Honourable Gemtleman were living as savages in an unknown
island, mine were priests in the Temple of Solomon…” And, as
Constance de Rothschild wrote, “he believed more in the compelling
power of a common ancestry than in that of a common faith. He said to
me, as he has said over and over again in his novels, ‘All is race, not
religion – remember that.’” 899
It was extraordinary how a Jew to the leadership of the greatest and

proudest Gentile empire while not disguising his belief that he
belonged to a superior race. It was in 1847 that he first made this belief
public, first in the third novel of his trilogy, Tancred, published in
March, and then in his famous speech pleading Jewish emancipation in
the Commons in December.
“Tancred,” writes Sarah Bradford, “which Disraeli began in 1845, the

year in which Peel’s Jewish Disabilities Bill had opened every
municipal office to the Jews (membership of Parliament still remaining
closed to them), was Disraeli’s favourite among his novels. It had
originally been conceived as part of the Young England plan, an
examination of the state of the English Church as an instrument of
moral regeneration, but evolved into an exposition of the debt of
gratitude which European civilization, and the English Church in
particular, owed to the Jews as the founders of their religious faith. It
was the expression of all his most deeply-felt convictions, combining
his feeling for Palestine and the East and his theory of the superiority
of the Jewish race with the revolt of the romantic against progress and
scientific materialism…
“… Disraeli’s hero, Tancred de Montacute, is young, rich and noble,

heir to the Duke of Bellamont. Serious and deeply religious, Tancred,
disappointed by the failure of the ‘mitred nullities’ of the Anglican
Church to satisfy his spiritual needs, conceives the idea of a pilgrimage
to Jerusalem in search of redemption. He is encouraged in this project
by Sidonia, a thinly disguised London Rothschild, whose City office,
Sequin Court, and select dinner parties are minutely described. Sidonia
talks to Rothschild of ‘the spiritual hold which Asia has always had
upon the North’, recommending him to contact, Lara, prior of the
Convent of Terra Santa in Jerusalem, who is a descendant of an
aristocratic Spanish Sephardic family and a Nuevo Cristiano, or
converted Jew. He compares Lara’s knowledge of the Old (Jewish) faith
with the New (Christian) learning of the English Church in a manner
extremely derogatory to the Anglican bishops, while introducing the
main theme of the book: ‘You see, he is master of the old as well as the
new learning; this is very important; they often explain each other.
Your bishops here know nothing about these things. How can they? A
few centuries back they were tattooed savages.’
899
Rothschild, in Bradford, op. cit., p. 186.
533
“This was hardly a tactful way of putting his argument to his
English readers; but when Disraeli gets Tancred to the East, his
statements become even odder and, to his Victorian Gentile audience,
more offensive. Tancred visits Jerusalem and establishes himself in
Syria… He meets and falls in love with a beautiful Jewess named Eva,
whom Disraeli uses as a mouthpiece for his main message. ‘Half
Christendom worships a Jewess,’ Eva tells Tancred, ‘and the other half
a Jew. Now let me ask you. Which do you think should be the superior
race, the worshipped or the worshippers?’ Disraeli goes even further,
for not only do Christians owe a debt of gratitude to the Jews as the
forerunners of their religion, but if the Jews had not crucified Christ
there would be no Christianity. He aims his argument at a specifically
British audience: ‘Vast as is the obligation of the whole human family
to the Hebrew race, there is no portion of the modern population
indebted to them as the British people.’
“As the book progresses Disraeli’s arguments become even more

mystical and confusing. He introduces an odd supernatural figure, the
Angel of Arabia, who accords Tancred a visionary interview on Mount
Sinai. The Angel, in Disraelian fashion, blames the sickness of human
society on the atheistic influence of the French Revolution…
“…The Angel, Tancred and the author are anti-Progress. In a famous

passage that was to rouse The Times to fury, Disraeli declares: ‘And yet
some flat-nosed Frank, full of bustle and puffed up with self-conceit (a
race spawned perhaps in the morasses of some Northern forest hardly
yet cleared) talks of Progress! Progress to what, and from where? Arid
empires shrivelled into deserts, amid the wrecks of great cities, a single
column or obelisk of which nations import for the prime adornment of
their mud-built capitals, amid arts forgotten, commerce annihilated,
fragmentary literatures, and by populations destroyed, the European
talks of progress, because by an ingenious application of some
scientific acquirements, he has established a society which has
mistaken comfort for civilisation.’ Tancred’s cure for the ‘fever of
progress’ is to ‘work out a great religious truth on the Persian and
Mesopotamian plains’, and by revivifying Asia to regenerate Europe.
“Disraeli, carried away by the onrush of his feelings and wild ideas,
simply backs away when faced with the necessity of producing some
solution to Tancred’s vague plans for revivifying Europe… [He] had
conceived the love between Eva and Tancred as a symbol of his most
important message, the synthesis between Judaism and Christianity;
but in the end he finds even this impossible to carry through…
“… The Times… reproved Disraeli for writing a novel with a

message: ‘It is a bastard kind of writing – that of fiction “with a
purpose”, … the “unsubstantial” aim of “converting the whole world
back to Judaism”.’ The reviewer ridiculed this notion by pointing out
the anxiety of contemporary Jewry to approximate itself ever more
534
nearly to Gentile society, with particular reference to the Rothschilds:
‘Whilst Mr. Disraeli eloquently discourses of a speedy return to
Jerusalem, Sidonia buys a noble estate in Bucks, and Sidonia’s first
cousin is high-sheriff of the county. So anxious, indeed, are the
Hebrews generally to return to the Holy Land as a distinct race, that
they petition Parliament for all the privileges of British citizens…
During the last ten years the Western Jew has travelled faster and
farther from Jerusalem than he journeyed during ten centuries
before.’…
“Disraeli was not deterred by the public reaction to Tancred; he was

to repeat his arguments in the debate on Jewish Disabilities on 16
December. The background to the bill was the election, in August of
that year, of Disraeli’s friend, Baron Lionel de Rothschild, as Liberal
candidate for the City of London. As a Jew, Baron Lionel had felt
unable to take the oath requiring a member of Parliament to swear ‘on
the true faith of a Christian’ and was therefore debarred from taking
his seat…
“[Disraeli’s] argument… aimed at removing Christian scruples by

pointing out that Judaism and Christianity were practically
synonymous, that Judaism was the foundation of Christianity.
“’The Jews,’ Disraeli began, ‘are persons who acknowledge the same
God as the Christian people of this realm. They acknowledge the same
divine revelation as yourselves.’ No doubt many of the listening
squires did not greatly like the idea of their Anglican faith being
equated with that of ‘the Ikys and Abys’, but worse was to come. They
should be grateful, Disraeli told them, because ‘They [the Jews] are,
humanly speaking, the authors of your religion. They unquestionably
those to whom you are indebted for no inconsiderable portion of your
known religion, and for the whole of your divine knowledge.’ At this
point the first outraged cries of ‘Oh!’ broke out, but Disraeli only
warmed to his theme. ‘Every Gentleman here,’ he told the astonished
House, ‘does profess the Jewish religion, and believes in Moses and the
Prophets’, a statement that provoked a chorus of angry cries.
“’Where is your Christianity, if you do not believe in their Judaism?’

Disraeli asked them. He went on: ‘On every sacred day, you read to the
people the exploits of Jewish heroes, the proofs of Jewish devotion, the
brilliant annals of past Jewish magnificence. The Christian Church has
covered every kingdom with sacred buildings, and over every altar…
we find the tables of the Jewish law. Every Sunday – every Lord’s day –
if you wish to express feelings of praise and thanksgiving to the Most
High, or if you wish to find expressions of solace in grief, you find both
in the words of the Jewish poets.’
“No doubt most of Disraeli’s hearers thought he was going too far,
and stirred uncomfortably in their seats. When, however, he prepared
535
to launch into yet another paragraph on the same theme, ‘… every man
in the early ages of the Church, by whose power, or zeal, or genius, the
Christian faith was propagated, was a Jew,’ the dissidents in the House
lost patience and shouted him down. ‘Interruption’ Hansard notes
flatly.
“At this, Disraeli too lost patience. He rounded on his tormentors,

telling them in so many words that much of their concern for the
safeguarding of Christianity was humbug, and that the real reason for
their opposition to admitting the Jews was pure anti-Semitic prejudice:
‘If one could suppose that the arguments we have heard… are the only
arguments that influence the decision of this question, it would be
impossible to conceive what is the reason of the Jews not being
admitted to full participation in the rights and duties of a Christian
legislature. In exact proportion to your faith ought to be your wish to
do this great act of national justice… But you are influenced by the
darkest superstitions of the darkest ages that ever existed in this
country. It is this feeling that has been kept out of this debate; indeed
that has been kept secret in yourselves… and that is unknowingly
influencing you.’
“He ended defiantly: ‘I, whatever may be the consequences – must

speak what I feel. I cannot sit in this House with any misconception of
my opinion on the subject. Whatever may be the consequences on the
seat I hold… I cannot, for one, give a vote which is not in deference to
what I believe to be the true principles of religion. Yes, it is as a
Christian that I will not take upon me the awful responsibility of
excluding from the Legislature those who are of the religion in the
bosom of which my Lord and Saviour was born.’” 900
It is difficult to know at whom to be more amazed – at the audacity

of Disraeli in telling the highest assembly of perhaps the most powerful
Christian nation on earth that all the greatest Christians were in fact
Jews, and that Christianity was merely a variety of Judaism, or the
ignorance of the English, who in essence bought the argument,
eventually passed the Bill (Lionel Rothschild became MP for the City in
1858) and from then on acted as the main protectors of the Jews and
Judaism on the stage of world history! This confirms Keble’s charge in
his Assize Sermon of 1833 that “under the guise of charity and
toleration we are come almost to this pass: that no difference, in
matters of faith, is to disqualify for our approbation and confidence,
whether in public or domestic life.”
Ignored, it would seem, by everyone in this debate was the

fundamental fact that Judaism since Annas and Caiaphas was not the
religion of the great saints of the Old Testament, that Christ was killed
900
Bradford, op. cit., pp. 179-184.
536
by the Jews, and that the Talmud, the contemporary Jews’ real “Bible”,
expressed the most vituperative hatred of both Christ and Christians.
Disraeli’s speech was a sign of the times, a sign that the Jews had
now truly broken through the barrier of “anti-Semitism” to reach the
highest positions in the western world, the top of the “greasy pole”
(Disraeli’s phrase), where, as Tombs writes, he believed himself
“himself destined to wield British power, ‘to sway the race that sways
the world in an epic global chess game for world civilization against
the forces of revolution, nationalism, militarism and pan-Slav
imperialism.’” 901
But the speech also showed that the Jews would unfailingly use their
position to advance the interests of their race, whether baptised or unbaptised.
In other words, if we were to judge from the behaviour of the
Rothschilds and Montefiores and Disraelis, at any rate, the Jews would
never be fully assimilated. For, as Disraeli himself said: “All is race, not
religion – remember that…” 902
901
902
Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich wrote: “[Jews] first need to become legally equal with Christians
in order to repress Christianity next, turn Christians faithless, and step on their necks. All
modern European slogans have been made up by Jews, the crucifiers of Christ: democracy,
strikes, socialism, atheism, tolerance of all religions, pacifism, universal revolution, capitalism,
and communism. These are all inventions made by Jews, namely, by their father, the devil. All
this has been done with the intention to humiliate Christ, to obliterate Him, and to place their
Jewish Messiah on the Christ's throne, without being aware even today that he is Satan himself,
their father, who has reined them in with his reins, and who whips them with his whip."
9Addresses to the Serbian People–Through the Prison Window, chapter 77)
537
65. EMANCIPATED JEWRY: (2) HEINRICH HEINE
And yet there were many assimilated Jews who went to the other
extreme: far from emphasizing their Jewishness, they did everything in
their power not only to deny it in their own personal lives, but also to
extirpate the very principle of nationality from political life in general.
The French revolution had been the watershed. Before it, Jewish
revolutionary activity had been religious in character – and therefore
nationalist as well, insofar as Talmudism was in essence the faith of the
Jewish nation. During the revolution, the activity of the Jewish
revolutionaries had been neither religious nor specifically anti-
religious in character, but nationalism under the guise of
internationalism, Jewish emancipation under the guise of obtaining
equal rights for all men and all nations.
According to Norah Webster, “religious feeling appears to have

played an entirely subordinate part” among the Jews in the French
Revolution. “The Jews… were free before the Revolution to carry on the
rites of their faith. And when the great anti-religious campaign began,
many of them entered whole-heartedly into the attack on all religious
faiths, their own included… The encouragement accorded by the Jews
to the French Revolution appears thus to have been prompted not by
religious fanaticism but by a desire for national advantage…” 903
However, after the revolution the situation changed again. There

were as many Jews as ever in the secret societies 904 ; but nationalism no
longer seems to have been their motive. For the Jews were now, as we
have seen, thoroughly emancipated in some western countries, such as
Britain and France, and on the way there in many more. Their financial
power, symbolized by the Rothschilds, was enormous. And except to
some extent in Germany, there were no real barriers to their political
advancement, either. Even in Germany, according to William Marr, “we
Germans completed in the year 1848 our abdication in favour of the
Jews… Life and the future belong to Judaism, death and the past to
Germandom.” 905
903
Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, The National Book Club of America, 1924,
pp. 249, 250, 251.
904
This fact was well-known to Disraeli, from “the exceptional intelligence service linking the
London house of Rothschild with the branches in Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna and Naples”
(Bradford, op. cit., p. 187). However, he chose not to mention it when, on July 14, 1856, he said in
the House of Commons: “There is in Italy a power which we seldom mention in this House… I
mean the secret societies… It is useless to deny, because it is impossible to conceal, that a great
part of Europe – the whole of Italy and France and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of
other countries – is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the
earth is now being covered with railroads. And what are their objects? They do not attempt to
conceal them. They do not want constitutional government; they do not want ameliorated
institutions… they want to change the tenure of land, to drive out the present owners of the soil
and to put an end to ecclesiastical establishments… Some of them may go further…”
905
Wilhelm Marr, Der Sieg des Judentums über das Germanentum (The Victory of Jewry over the
German Spirit), 1879, pp. 27, 44; in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 630.
538
But the Jews who poured into the socialist revolutionary movements
in the second quarter of the nineteenth century were neither Judaists
nor interested in the fate of their fellow Jews. Rather, they tended to
identify Jewry and Jewishness with the most hated aspects of the
capitalist system. A forerunner of this phenomenon was the German
Jewish poet Heinrich Heine.
Heine, as Paul Johnson writes, “hated being a Jew. He wrote of ‘the

three evil maladies, poverty, pain and Jewishness’. In 1822 he was
briefly associated with the Society for Jewish Science, but he had
nothing to contribute. He did not believe in Judaism as such and saw it
as an anti-human force. He wrote the next year: ‘That I will be
enthusiastic for the rights of the Jews and their civil equality, that I
admit, and in bad times, which are inevitable, the Germanic mob will
hear my voice so that it resounds in German beerhalls and palaces. But
the born enemy of all positive religion will never champion the religion
which first developed the fault-finding with human beings which now
causes us so much pain.’ But if he rejected Talmudic Judaism, he
despised the new Reform version. The Reformers were ‘chiropodists’
who had ‘tried to cure the body of Judaism from its nasty skin growth
by bleeding, and by their clumsiness and spidery bandages of
rationalism, Israel must bleed to death… we no longer have the
strength to wear a beard, to fast, to hate and to endure out of hate; that
is the motive of our Reform.’ …
“Heine suffered from a destructive emotion which was soon to be

commonplace among emancipated and apostate Jews: a peculiar form
of self-hatred. He attacked himself in [his attacks on the baptised Jew]
Gans. Later in life he used to say he regretted his baptism. It had, he
said, done him no good materially. But he refused to allow himself to
be presented publicly as a Jew. In 1835, lying, he said he had never set
foot in a synagogue. It was his desire to repudiate his Jewishness, as
well as his Jewish self-hatred, which prompted his many anti-Semitic
remarks. A particular target was the Rothschild family. He blamed
them for raising loans for the reactionary great powers. That, at any
rate, was his respectable reason for attacking them. But his most
venomous remarks were reserved for Baron James de Rothschild and
his wife, who showed him great kindness in Paris. He said he had seen
a stockbroker bowing to the Baron’s chamber-pot. He called him ‘Herr
von Shylock in Paris’. He said, ‘There is only one God – Mammon. And
Rothschild is his prophet.’… Heine was both the prototype and the
archetype of a new figure in European literature: the Jewish radical
man of letters, using his skill, reputation and popularity to undermine
the intellectual self-confidence of established order.” 906
906
Johnson, A History of the Jews, London: Phoenix, 1995, pp. 342, 343, 345.
539
But there are strong indications that while trying to repudiate his
Jewishness, Heine remained loyal to his race. Thus “I would fall into
despair,” he wrote to a friend in 1823, “if you approved of my
baptism”. Again, in one work he described three symbolic beauties:
Diana – ancient classical art, Abondona – romantic art, and Herodias –
a Jewess, and declared himself to prefer “the dead Jewess”. Indeed,
according to the Jewish historian Graetz, Heine only superficially
renounced Jewry, “and was like those warriors who remove the arms
and banner from the enemy, so as to use them to beat and annihilate
him more thoroughly!” 907 To prove the point, some four of five years
before his death (from syphilis), Heine returned to the Judaist faith…
Again, if Heine was a radical, he saw more clearly than almost any
conservative the horrors to which radicalism would lead. As Golo
Mann writes, “he foresaw the inevitable annihilation of the rich and
their state by the poor, the ‘dangerous classes’ as they were called in
France at the time. His prescience did not make him happy, yet he
despised the existing social order; his attitude was that of one who was
above or outside it. It was as though Heine was bewitched by
Communism. In his articles he constantly talked about it at a time
when only a very few people concerned themselves with it. He spoke of
it more with dread than hope, as of an elemental movement of the age,
immune to politics.
“’Communism is the secret name of the terrible antagonist who

confronts the present-day bourgeois regime with proletarian
domination and all its consequences. There will be a terrible duel…
Though Communism is at present little talked about, vegetating in
forgotten attics on wretched straw pallets, it is nevertheless the dismal
hero destined to play a great, if transitory part in the modern
tragedy…’ (20 June 1842).
“Three weeks later he prophesied that a European war would

develop into a social world revolution from which would emerge an
iron Communist dictatorship, ‘the old absolutist tradition… but in
different clothes and with new catchphrases and slogans… Maybe there
will then only be one shepherd and one flock, a free shepherd with an
iron crook and an identically shorn, identically bleating human herd.
Confused, sombre times loom ahead, and the prophet who might want
to write a new apocalypse would need to invent entirely new beasts,
and such frightening ones that St. John’s animal symbols would appear
like gentle doves and amoretti by comparison… I advise our
grandchildren to be born with very thick skins.’
“Then again he saw Communism not as a system under which men

would enjoy the material benefits of life but as one under which they
would slave at their jobs with dreary monotony; once he even predicted
Alexander Andreyevich Chernov, Bol’shoe Pochemu ili Strategicheskij Plan v Dejstvii (The Great
907
‘Why’, or The Strategic Plan in Action), Kiev, 1974, pp. 100, 101 (MS).
540
[with Dostoyevsky] the marriage of the Catholic Church with the
Communists and foresaw an empire of asceticism, joylessness and strict
control of ideas as the child of this union. Heine made himself few
friends by such prophecies. The conservatives, the good German
citizens, regarded him as a rebel and a frivolous wit. The Left saw in
him a faithless ally, a socialist who was afraid of the revolution, who
took back today what he had said yesterday and who behaved like an
aristocrat. It is true that Heine, the artist, was both an aristocrat and a
rebel. He hated the rule of the old military and noble caste, particularly
in Prussia, despised the role of the financiers, particularly in France,
and yet feared a leveling reign of terror by the people….
“Heine could not identify himself with any of the great causes that
excited his compatriots at home or in exile [in Paris]; the servant of
beauty and the intellect cannot do this. He could only see things with
gay, sarcastic or melancholy eyes, without committing himself. Yet just
because he was detached, sometimes to the point of treachery, his work
has remained more alive than that of his more resolute contemporaries.
“Those who had no doubts, who were reliable, were equally

irritated by Heine’s attitude towards Germany. At times he loved it and
could not do otherwise. He had been born there and spoke its
language; he was only a young man when he wrote the poems which
have become part of Germany’s national heritage. Sick and lonely in
exile, he longed for home. Yet at other times he mocked his compatriots
in a manner which they could not forgive for their philistinism, their
provincialism, their weakness for titles, their bureaucrats, soldiers and
thirty-six monarchs. In an extremely witty poem he says that if there
were ever to be a German revolution the Germans would not treat their
kings as roughly as the British and French had treated theirs…
“No sooner had Heine written verses of this kind and mocked at the
Germans for their lamb-like patience than he warned the French that
the German revolution of the future would far exceed theirs in terror.
“‘A drama will be enacted in Germany compared with which the

French Revolution will seem like a harmless idyll. Christianity may
have restrained the martial ardour of the Teutons for a time, but it did
not destroy it; now that the old restraining talisman, the cross, has
rotted away, the old frenzied madness will break out again.’
“The French must not believe that it would be a pro-French

revolution, though it might pretend to be republican and extreme.
German nationalism, unlike that of the French, was not receptive to
outside influences filled with missionary zeal; it was negative and
aggressive, particularly towards France. ‘I wish you well and therefore
I tell you the bitter truth. You have more to fear from liberated
Germany than from the entire Holy Alliance with all its Croats and
Cossacks put together…’ Heine toyed with things cleverly and
541
irresponsibly. At the time it was thought in France, in Italy and in
Germany too that nationalism was international, closely related to the
republican and the democratic cause; that nations, once they were free
and united at home, would join forces in one great league of nations.
Heine did not share this view. He regarded nationalism, particularly
German nationalism, as a stupid, disruptive force motivated by
hatred…” 908
Heine “was vouchsafed an uncanny prophetic insight into the

terrifying potentialities of German Romantic pantheism, with its vision
of man as a being swallowed up or impelled by cosmic forces, the all-
embracing Will of History, and the destiny of the Race.” 909
908
Mann, op. cit., pp. 80-82.
909
Talmon, op. cit., p. 162.
542
66. EMANCIPATED JEWRY: (3) KARL MARX
As Evans writes, Karl Marx “gravitated towards the Young

Hegelians at the University of Berlin, one of whom, Feuerbach (1804-
72), was the source of Marx’s famous statement ‘Philosophers have
hitherto only interpreted the world: the point is to change it’. Marx
became a freelance writer, penning articles for a recently founded
radical paper based in Cologne, the Rheinische Zeitung. The paper was
closed by the authorities in April 1843, and three months later Marx
moved to Paris. His reading of the French socialists led him to see in
the abolition of private property and the establishment of communal
and collective forms of labour the way to overcome the alienation of
the workers’ labour through the appropriation of its products by the
employers. Socializing with radicals in Paris also brought Marx for the
first time into contact with Friedrich Engels (1820-95), who became his
lifelong collaborator.” 910
Marx was a friend of Heine’s, writes Paul Johnson, being a still more
developed and important example of the same phenomenon: the God-
hating, Jew-hating Jew. According to Johnson, “Heine’s jibe about
religion as a ‘spiritual opium’ was the source of Marx’s phrase ‘the
opium of the people’. But the notion that Heine was the John the
Baptist to Marx’s Christ, fashionable in German scholarship of the
1960s, is absurd. A huge temperamental gulf yawned between them.
According to Arnold Ruge, Marx would say to Heine: ‘Give up those
everlasting laments about love and show the lyric poets how it should
be done – with the lash.’ But it was precisely the lash Heine feared:
‘The [socialist] future,’ he wrote, ‘smells of knouts, of blood, of
godlessness and very many beatings’; ‘it is only with dread and horror
that I think of the time when those dark iconoclasts will come to
power’. He repudiated ‘my obdurate friend Marx’, one of the ‘godless
self-gods’.
“What the two men had most in common was their extraordinary capacity for
hatred, expressed in venomous attacks not just on enemies but (perhaps
especially) on friends and benefactors. This was part of the self-hatred they
shared as apostate Jews. Marx had it to an even greater extent than Heine. He
tried to shut Judaism out of his life… Despite Marx’s ignorance of Judaism as
such, there can be no doubt about his Jewishness. Like Heine and everyone else,
his notion of progress was profoundly influenced by Hegel, but his sense of
history as a positive and dynamic force in human society, governed by iron laws,
an atheist’s Torah, is profoundly Jewish. His Communist millennium is deeply
rooted in Jewish apocalyptic and messianism. His notion of rule was that of the
cathedocrat. Control of the revolution would be in the hands of the elite
intelligentsia, who had studied the texts, understood the laws of history. They
would form what he called the ‘management’, the directorate. The proletariat,
910
543
‘the men without substance’, were merely the means, whose duty was to obey –
like Ezra the Scribe, he saw them as ignorant of the law, the mere 'people of the
land'".911
Johnson ignores the anti-Christian essence of Talmudic Judaism.

Nevertheless he is perceptive in his analysis of Marx’s Communism “as
the end-product of his theoretical anti-Semitism… In 1843 Bruno Bauer,
the anti-Semite leader of the Hegelian left, published an essay
demanding that the Jews abandon Judaism completely and transform
their plea for equal rights into a general campaign for human liberation
both from religion and from state tyranny.
“Marx replied to Bauer’s work in two essays published in the

Deutsch-Französische Jahrbucher in 1844, the same year Disraeli
published Tancred. They are called ‘On the Jewish Question’. Marx
accepted completely the savagely anti-Semitic context of Bauer’s
argument, which he said was written ‘with boldness, perception, with
thoroughness in language that is precise as it is vigorous and
meaningful’. He quoted with approval Bauer’s maliciously exaggerated
assertion that ‘the Jews determines the fate of the whole [Austrian]
empire by his money power… [and] decides the destiny of Europe’.
Where he differed was in rejecting Bauer’s belief that the anti-social
nature of the Jew was religious in origin and could be remedied by
tearing the Jew away from his religion. In Marx’s view, the evil was
social and economic. ‘Let us,’ he wrote, ‘consider the real Jew. Not the
Sabbath Jew… but the everyday Jews.’ What, he asked, was ‘the profane
basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly cult
of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly god? Money.’ The Jews had
gradually conveyed this ‘practical’ religion to all society: ‘Money is the
jealous God of Israel, besides which no other god may exist. Money
abases all the gods of mankind and changes them into commodities.
Money is the self-sufficient value of all things. It has, therefore,
deprived the whole world, both the human world and nature, of their
own proper value. Money is the alienated essence of man’s work and
existence: this essence dominates him and he worships it. The god of
the Jews has been secularised and has become the god of this world.’
“The Jews, Marx continued, were turning Christians into replicas of

themselves, so that the once staunchly Christian New Englanders, for
example, were now the slaves of Mammon. Using his money-power, the
Jew had emancipated himself and had gone on to enslave Christianity.
The Jew-corrupted Christian ‘is convinced he has no other destiny here
below than to become richer than his neighbours’ and ‘the world is a
stock exchange’. Marx argued that the contradiction between the Jew’s
theoretical lack of political rights and ‘the effective political power of
the Jew’ is the contradiction between politics and ‘the power of money
in general’. Political power supposedly overrides money; in fact ‘it has
911
544
become its bondsman’. Hence: ‘It is from its own entrails that civil
society ceaselessly engenders the Jew.’” 912
Oleg Platonov has developed this argument as follows: “Under the

influence of Jewish economics the personal worth of a man was turned
into an exchange value, into merchandise. Instead of the spiritual
freedom given to the people of the New Testament, Jewish-Masonic
civilization brought ‘the shameless freedom of trade’. As the Jewish
philosopher Moses Hesse wrote, ‘money is the alienated wealth of a
man, attained by him in commercial activity. Money is the quantitative
expression of the worth of a man, the brand of our enslavement, the
seal of our shame, of our grovelling. Money is the coagulated blood
and sweat of those who at market prices trade their inalienable
property, their wealth, their vital activity, for the sake of accumulating
that which is called capital. And all this is reminiscent of the
insatiability of the cannibal.'
“’Money is the god of our time, while Rothschild is its prophet!’

replied the Jewish poet Heinrich Heine to Hesse. The whole family of
the Rothschilds, which had enmeshed in its octopus grip of debt
obligations the political and industrial structures of Europe, seemed to
the poet to be ‘true revolutionaries’. And he called Baron M. Rothschild
‘the Nero of financiers’, remembering that the Roman Nero
‘annihilated’ the privileges of the patricians for the sake of creating ‘a
new democracy’.
“In creating economics on the antichristian foundations of the

Talmud, Jewry not only acquired for itself financial power. Through
Jewry money became a world power, by means of its control over the
Christian peoples. The gold-digging spirit of Jewish economics,
crossing the frontiers of Jewry, began to corrupt the Christians
themselves; and in the precise expression of K. Marx, ‘with the help of
money the Jews liberated themselves to the same extent as the
Christians became Jews.’” 913
There was much truth in Marx’s analysis; but it was one-sided.

Contemporary European and American civilization was based on a
complex intertwining of apostate Jewry and heretical Christianity. If
the Jews had taught the Christians the worship of money, and gone on
to enslave them thereby, the Christians had nevertheless prepared the
way for this by betraying their own Christian ideals and introducing to
the Jews the semi-Christian, semi-pagan ideas of liberty, equality and
fraternity, human rights, etc. The Jews had seized on these ideas to
emancipate themselves and then take them to their logical extreme in
the proletarian revolution, taking control both of money power in the
heights, and of political power in the depths of society. And so the
912
Johnson, op. cit ., pp. 350-351.
913
Platonov, Ternovij Venets Rossii (Russia’s Crown of Thorns), Moscow, 1998, p. 147.
545
relationship between the Jews and the Christians was mutually
influential and mutually destructive.
The only question that remained was Lenin’s: kto kogo?, who would
control whom? The answer to this was: the Jews would control the
Christians. Why? Because the Christians, though fallen away from the
true faith, nevertheless retained vestiges of Christian values and
morality that restrained them from ultimate evil; they lacked that extra
insight and ruthlessness that was given to the Jews for their greater
ambition, greater hatred, greater proximity to Satan… And so heretical
Christians might cooperate with apostate Jews in the overthrow of
Christian civilization, as Engels cooperated with Marx. But in the end
the heretical Christians would do the will of the apostate Jews, as
Engels did the will of Marx. The only power that could effectively
stand against both – and was therefore hated by both – was the power
of the true faith, the Orthodox faith, upheld by the Russian Orthodox
Empire. It was logical, therefore, for Marx and Engels to see in Russia
the main obstacle to the success of the revolution…
Johnson continues: “Marx’s solution, therefore, is not like Bauer’s,

religious, but economic. The money-Jew had become the ‘universal
anti-social element of the present time’. To ‘make the Jew impossible’ it
was necessary to abolish the ‘preconditions’ and the ‘very possibility’
of the kind of money activities for which he was notorious. Once the
economic framework was changed, Jewish ‘religious consciousness
would evaporate like some insipid vapour in the real, life-giving air of
society’. Abolish the Jewish attitude to money, and both the Jew and
his religion, and the corrupt version of Christianity he had imposed on
the world, would simply disappear: ‘In the final analysis, the
emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.’
Or again: ‘In emancipating itself from bucksterism and money, and thus
from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself.’
“Marx’s two essays on the Jews thus contain, in embryonic form, the
essence of his theory of human regeneration: by economic changes, and
especially by abolishing private property and the personal pursuit of
money, you could transform not merely the relationship between the
Jew and society but all human relationships and the human personality
itself. His form of anti-Semitism became a dress-rehearsal for Marxism
as such. Later in the century August Bebel, the German Social
Democrat, would coin the phrase, much used by Lenin: ‘Anti-Semitism
is the socialism of fools.’ Behind this revealing epigram was the crude
argument: we all know that Jewish money-men, who never soil their
hands with toil, exploit the poor workers and peasants. But only a fool
grasps the Jews alone. The mature man, the socialist, has grasped the
point that the Jews are only symptoms of the disease, not the disease
itself. The disease is the religion of money, and its modern form is
capitalism. Workers and peasants are exploited not just by the Jews but
546
by the entire bourgeois-capitalist class – and it is the class as a whole,
not just its Jewish element, which must be destroyed.
“Hence the militant socialism Marx adopted in the later 1840s was
an extended and transmuted form of his earlier anti-Semitism. His
mature theory was a superstition, and the most dangerous kind of
superstition, belief in a conspiracy of evil. But whereas originally it
was based on the oldest form of conspiracy-theory, anti-Semitism, in
the later 1840s and 1850s this was not so much abandoned as extended
to embrace a world conspiracy theory of the entire bourgeois class.
Marx retained the original superstition that the making of money
through trade and finance is essentially a parasitical and anti-social
activity, but he now placed it on a basis not of race and religion, but of
class. The enlargement does not, of course, improve the validity of the
theory. It merely makes it more dangerous, if put into practice, because
it expands its scope and multiplies the number of those to be treated as
conspirators and so victims. Marx was no longer concerned with
specific Jewish witches to be hunted but with generalized human
witches. The theory remained irrational but acquired a more
sophisticated appearance, making it highly attractive to educated
radicals. To reverse Bebel’s saying, if anti-Semitism is the socialism of
fools, socialism became the anti-Semitism of intellectuals. An
intellectual like Lenin, who clearly perceived the irrationality of the
Russian anti-Semitic pogrom, and would have been ashamed to
conduct one, nevertheless fully accepted its spirit once the target was
expanded into the whole capitalist class – and went on to conduct
pogroms on an infinitely greater scale, killing hundreds of thousands
on the basis not of individual guilt but merely of membership of a
condemned group.” 914
Johnson’s definition of socialism as the intellectuals’ anti-Semitism

has great psychological plausibility; but it needs to be extended and
deepened. The original irrational rebellion against civilized society was
the rebellion of the Jews, the former people of God, against their Lord,
God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. This was the original anti-Semitism, in
that it was directed both against the greatest Semite, Jesus Christ, and
his Semitic disciples, and against the original, pure religion of the
Semites, which Jesus Christ came to fulfill in the Church founded on
Himself, “in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek”. As Christianity
spread among the Gentiles, this original anti-Semitism, full of hatred
and “on the basis not of individual guilt but merely of a condemned
group”, was transmuted into the anti-Gentilism of the Talmud, being
directed against the whole of Gentile Christian society. As Christian
society degenerated into heresy, the Jewish virus of anti-Christian
hatred infected the Christians themselves, becoming standard anti-
Semitism. The sign that this anti-Semitism was simply the reversal of
the same Jewish disease of anti-Gentilism is the fact that its object
914
Johnson, op. cit., pp. 352-353.
547
ceased to be the Talmudic religion, the real source of the disease, but
the Jews as a race and as a whole.
However, with the gradual assimilation of the Jews into Western

Christian society during the nineteenth century, Jewish radicals such as
Marx joined with Gentile intellectuals such as Engels to create a new
strain of the virus, a strain directed not against Jews alone or
Christians alone, but against a whole class, the class of the bourgeois
rich. In this perspective we can see that Marx’s view that the solution
of “the Jewish question” lay in economics was wrong. Bauer was right
that its solution was religious; but he was wrong in thinking that
simply destroying the Talmud would cure the disease. For what was to
be put in its place? The heretical, lukewarm Christianity of the West,
which hardly believed in itself any more and was in any case, as we
have seen, deeply infected by both Jewish and pagan elements?
As the example of Disraeli proves, that could never satisfy the

spiritual quest of the more intelligent Jews. It could only prepare the
way for a new, more virulent strain of the virus, which is in fact what
we see in Marxism. The only solution was a return to the original,
untainted faith of the Apostles… But that was only to be found in the
East, and especially in Russia – where, however, the true faith of the
Apostles lived in conjunction with both Jewish anti-Gentilism and
Gentile anti-Semitism, and where the most virulent form of the virus,
Marxism, would find its most fertile breeding-ground…
Although English and French socialism contributed to Marx's

thought, he probably owed even more to German atheism and
historicism. Marx had no need of teachers in respect of atheism. There is
some evidence that in his youth he turned against God and became a
Satanist because God did not give him the girl he loved. As he said: "I
shall build my throne high overhead", which is a more or less direct
quotation of Satan's words in Isaiah 14.13. 915 Again, in his doctor's
thesis he wrote: "Philosophy makes no secret of the fact: her creed is
the creed of Prometheus - 'In a word, I detest all the gods.' This is her
device against all deities of heaven or earth who do not recognize as
the highest divinity the human self-consciousness itself." 916
In later life Marx was known as "Old Nick", and his little son used
to call him "devil". 917 "In spite of all Marx's enthusiasm for the
'human'," writes the socialist Edmund Wilson, "he is either inhumanly
dark and dead or almost superhumanly brilliant". 918
915
Richard Wurmbrand, Was Karl Marx a Satanist?, Diane Books (USA), 1976.
916
Wilson, To the Finland Station, p. 122.
917
Feuerback, The Essence of Christianity, New York, 1957, pp. 14, 230.
918
548
Marx's atheism received an impetus from Feuerbach's The Essence of
Christianity (1841), which reduced God to a psychological idea: “The
divine being,” he said, “is nothing else than the human being; or,
better, it is the essence of man when freed from the limitations of the
individual, that is to say, actual corporeal man, objectified and
venerated as an independent Being distinct from man himself… All the
attributes of the divine nature are, therefore, attributes of the human
nature… Man is the real God." 919 Marx, too, defined religion as a
purely human product: "the heart of a heartless world, as it is the spirit
of spiritless conditions, the opium of the people." 920 He praised
Feuerbach, according to Isaiah Berlin, "for showing that in religion men
delude themselves by inventing an imaginary world to redress the
balance of misery in real life - it is a form of escape, a golden dream, or,
in a phrase made celebrated by Marx, the opium of the people; the
criticism of religion must therefore be anthropological in character, and
take the form of exposing and analysing its secular origins. But
Feuerbach is accused of leaving the major task untouched: he sees that
religion is an anodyne unconsciously generated by the unhappy to
soften the pain caused by the contradictions of the material world, but
then fails to see that these contradictions must, in that case, be
removed: otherwise they will continue to breed comforting and fatal
delusions: the revolution which alone can do so must occur not in the
superstructure - the world of thought - but in its material substratum,
the real world of men and things. Philosophy has hitherto treated ideas
and beliefs as possessing an intrinsic validity of their own; this has
never been true; the real content of a belief is the action in which it is
expressed. The real convictions and principles of a man or a society are
expressed in their acts, not their words. Belief and act are one; if acts
do not themselves express avowed beliefs, the beliefs are lies -
'ideologies', conscious or not, to cover the opposite of what they
profess. Theory and practice are, or should be, one and the same.
'Philosophers have previously offered various interpretations of the
world. Our business is to change it.'" 921
By the mid-1840s, writes Edmund Wilson, Marx and Engels had taken what
they wanted from the utopian socialists. “From Saint-Simon they accepted as
valid his [supposed] discovery that modern politics was simply the science of
regulating production; from Fourier, his arraignment of the bourgeois, his
consciousness of the ironic contrast between ‘the frenzy of speculation, the spirit
of all-devouring commercialism’, which were rampant under the reign of the
bourgeoisie and ‘the brilliant promises of the Enlightenment’ which had
preceded them; from Owen, the realization that the factory system must be the
root of the social revolution. But they saw that the mistake of the utopian
socialists had been to imagine that socialism was to be imposed upon society
from above by disinterested members of the upper classes. The bourgeoisie as a
919
Feuerbach, in Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 7, part II: Schopenhauer to
Nietzsche, Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1965, p. 63.
920
Marx-Engels. Werke, Berlin, 1956, I, p. 378; in Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, p. 279.
921
Berlin, Karl Marx, pp. 106-107.
549
whole, they believed, could not be induced to go against its own interests. The
educator, as Marx was to write in his Theses on Feuerbach, must, after all, first
have been educated: he is not really confronting disciples with a doctrine that
has been supplied him by God; he is merely directing a movement of which he is
himself a member and which energizes him and gives him his purpose. Marx
and Engels combined the aims of the utopians with Hegel’s process of organic
development.”922
In this way they substituted Hegel’s idea of the historical role of nations with
that of class. “The history of all hitherto existing society is a history of class
struggle”, wrote Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. Marx claimed that
this was his only original contribution to Marxism. Be that as it may (Plato, as Sir
Karl Popper points out, had said something similar), it was certainly one of the
two fundamental axioms of his theory.
As Robert Service writes, “the founders of Marxism put class struggle at the
forefront of their analysis; they said the working class (or the proletariat) would
remake the politics, economics and culture of the entire world… Salvation
according to Marx and Engels would come not through an individual but
through a whole class. The proletariat’s experience of degradation under
capitalism would give it the motive to change the nature of society; and its
industrial training and organisation would enable it to carry its task through to
completion. The collective endeavour of socialist workers would transform the
life of well-meaning people – and those who offered resistance would be
suppressed…
“[Marx’s] essential argument was that the course of change had been
conditioned not by the brilliance of ‘great men’ or by dynamic governments but
by the clash of social classes – and Marx insisted that classes pursued their
objective economic interests. The French ‘proletariat’ had lost its recurrent
conflict with the bourgeoisie since the end of the eighteenth century. But Marx
was undeterred. He had asserted in his Theses on Feuerbach, penned in 1845:
‘Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the
point is to change it.’
“The ultimate objective for Marx and Engels was the creation of a worldwide
communist society. They believed that communism had existed in the distant
centuries before ‘class society’ came into being. The human species had
supposedly known no hierarchy, alienation, exploitation or oppression. Marx
and Engels predicted that such perfection could and inevitably would be
reproduced after the overthrow of capitalism. ‘Modern communism’, however,
would have the benefits of the latest technology rather than flint-stone. It would
be generated by global proletarian solidarity rather than by disparate groups of
illiterate, innumerate cavemen. And it would put an end to all forms of
hierarchy. Politics would come to an end. The state would cease to exist. There
would be no distinctions of personal rank and power. All would engage in self-
administration on an equal basis. Marx and Engels chastised communists and
922
550
socialists who would settle for anything less. They were maximalists. No
compromise with capitalism [although Engels was a factory owner] or
parliamentarism was acceptable to them. They did not think of themselves as
offering the watchword of ‘all or nothing’ in their politics. They saw
communism as the inevitable last stage in human history; they rejected their
predecessors and rival contemporaries as ‘utopian’ thinkers who lacked a
scientific understanding.”923
The other fundamental axiom of Marx’s theory was economic materialism.

Everything is determined, according to Marx, by man’s struggle for economic
survival, which in turn depends on his relationship to the economic conditions
of production. The juridical, political, religious, aesthetic and philosophical
aspects of man’s existence are all simply “ideological forms of appearance” of
the only true reality, his economic position in society – that is, his class
membership. As he put it in his famous epigram: “It is not the consciousness of
man that determines his existence – rather, it is his social existence that
determines his consciousness.”924 For “I was led,” he wrote, “to the conclusion
that legal relations, as well as forms of state, could neither be understood by
themselves, nor explained by the so-called general progress of the human mind,
but that they are rooted in the material conditions of life which Hegel calls…
civil society. The anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy.”
As Maria Hsia Chang writes, “Classical Marxism (the ideas of Marx and
Engels) conceived society’s economic base as composed of the forces of
production (means of production) that determine the relations of production
(the nature of economic classes and their relations – who gets what, when, and
how). The economic base, in turn determines the epiphenomenal superstructure
composed of such elements as law, philosophy, religion, and ideology. The
relations of production were subordinate to and contingent upon the productive
forces – as productive forces change, social relations change; as social relations
change, all of life changes.
“Marx was unequivocal on the determinant role of the forces of production.

In the 1859 Preface to his Critique of Political Economy, he wrote that ‘in the social
production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable
and independent of their will,’ relations that ‘correspond to a definite state of
development of their material productive forces.’ ‘The multitude of productive
forces accessible to men determines the nature of society’ as well as the ‘forms of
intercourse’ between human beings. Even the ‘phantoms formed in the human
brain’ – religious convictions, ethics, and law – were ‘sublimates’ of the more
fundamental processes of production. In the final analysis, the ‘productive
forces… are the basis of all… history.’
“It follows that socialism could only be a product of a fully developed

economy. As early as the German Ideology of 1845, Marx had insisted that socialist
revolution could come only to advanced industrial systems because only those
923
Service, Comrades, London: Pan Books, 2007, pp. 20, 26-27.
924
Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
551
systems would inherit the productive potential to fully satisfy human needs
without having recourse to invidious class distinctions and oppressive political
rule. If an attempt were made to introduce socialism into an economically
underdeveloped environment, Engels foresaw the consequence to be a ‘slide
back… to [the] narrow limits’ of the old system. True socialist liberation was a
function of ‘the level of development of the material means of existence’. To
attempt to build communism on a primitive economic base could only be a
‘chiliastic, dream fantasy’.”925
“The single operative cause,” writes Berlin, “which makes one people
different from another, one set of institutions and beliefs opposed to another is,
so Marx now came to believe, the economic environment in which it is set, the
relationship of the ruling class of possessors to those whom they exploit, arising
from the specific quality of the tension which persists between them. The
fundamental springs of action in the life of men, he believed, all the more
powerful for not being recognised by them, are their relationships to the
alignment of classes in the economic struggle: the factor, knowledge of which
would enable anyone to predict successfully men’s basic line of behaviour, is
their actual social position – whether they are outside or inside the ruling class,
whether their welfare depends on its success or failure, whether they are placed
in a position to which the preservation of the existing order is or is not essential.
Once this is known, men’s particular personal motives and emotions become
comparatively irrelevant to the investigation: they may be egoistic or altruistic,
generous or mean, clever or stupid, ambitious or modest. Their natural qualities
will be harnessed by their circumstances to operate in a given direction,
whatever their natural tendency. Indeed, it is misleading to speak of a ‘natural
tendency’ or an unalterable ‘human nature’. Tendencies may be classified either
in accordance with the subjective feeling which they engender (and this is, for
purposes of scientific prediction, unimportant), or in accordance with their
actual aims, which are socially conditioned. Men behave before they start to
reflect on the reasons for, or the justification of, their behaviour; the majority of
the members of a community will act in a similar fashion, whatever the
subjective motives for which they will appear to themselves to be acting as they
do. This is obscured by the fact that in the attempt to convince themselves that
their acts are determined by reasons or by moral or religious beliefs, men have
tended to construct elaborate rationalisations of their behaviour. Nor are these
rationalisations wholly powerless to affect action, for, growing into great
institutions like moral codes or religious organisations, they often linger on long
after the social pressures, to explain away which they arose, have disappeared.
Thus these great organised illusions themselves become part of the objective
social situation, part of the external world which modifies the behaviour of
individuals, functioning in the same way as the invariant factors, climate, soil,
physical organism, function in their interplay with social institutions.
“Marx’s immediate successors tended to minimise Hegel’s influence upon

him; but his vision of the world crumbles and yields only isolated insights if, in
the effort to represent him as he conceived himself, as the rigorous, severely
925
Chang, Return of the Dragon, Oxford: Westview Press, 2001, pp. 151-152.
552
factual social scientist, the great unifying, necessary pattern in terms of which he
thought, is left out or whittled down.
“Like Hegel, Marx treats history as phenomenology. In Hegel the

Phenomenology of the human Spirit is an attempt to show… an objective order
in the development of human consciousness and in the succession of
civilisations that are its concrete embodiment. Influenced by a notion prominent
in the Renaissance, but reaching back to an earlier mystical cosmogony, Hegel
looked upon the development of mankind as being similar to that of an
individual human being. Just as in the case of a man a particular capacity, or
outlook, or way of dealing with reality cannot come into being until and unless
other capacities have first become developed – that is, indeed, the essence of the
notion of growth or education in the case of individuals – so races, nations,
churches, cultures, succeed each other in a fixed order, determined by the
growth of the collective faculties of mankind expressed in arts, sciences,
civilisation as a whole. Pascal had perhaps meant something of this kind when
he spoke of humanity as a single, centuries old, being, growing from generation
to generation. For Hegel all change is due to the movement of the dialectic,
which works by a constant logical criticism, that is, by struggle against, and final
self-destruction of, ways of thought and constructions of reason and feeling
which, in their day, had embodied the highest point reached by the ceaseless
growth (which for Hegel is the logical self-realisation) of the human spirit; but
which, embodied in rules or institutions, and erroneously taken as final and
absolute by a given society or outlook, thereby become obstacles to progress,
dying survivals of a logically ‘transcended’ stage, which by their very one-
sidedness breed logical antimonies and contradictions by which they are
exposed and destroyed. Marx translated this vision of history as a battlefield of
incarnate ideas into social terms, of the struggle between classes. For him
alienation (for that is what Hegel, following Rousseau and Luther and an earlier
Christian tradition, called the perpetual self-divorce of men from unity with
nature, with each other, with God, which the struggle of thesis against antithesis
entailed) is intrinsic to the social process, indeed it is the heart of history itself.
Alienation occurs when the results of men’s acts contradict their true purposes,
when their official values, or the parts they play, misrepresent their real motives
and needs and goals. This is the case, for example, when something that men
have made to respond to human needs – say, a system of laws, or the rules of
musical composition – acquires an independent status of its own, and is seen by
men, not as something created by them to satisfy a common social want (which
may have disappeared long ago), but as an objective law or institution,
possessing eternal, impersonal authority in its own right, like the unalterable
laws of Nature as conceived by scientists and ordinary men, like God and His
Commandments for a believer. For Marx the capitalist system is precisely this
kind of entity, a vast instrument brought into being by intelligible material
demands – a progressive improvement and broadening of life in its own day
that generates its own intellectual, moral, religious beliefs, values and forms of
life. Whether those who hold them know it or not, such beliefs and values
merely uphold the power of the class whose interests the capitalist system
embodies; nevertheless, they come to be viewed by all sections of society as
being objectively and eternally valid for all mankind. Thus, for example,
553
industry and the capitalist mode of exchange are not timelessly valid
institutions, but were generated by the mounting resistance by peasants and
artisans to dependence on the blind forces of nature. They had had their
moment; and the values these institutions generated will change or vanish with
them.”926
Marx differed from Hegel also in his vision of the final outcome of the
historical process. Whereas for Hegel the self-realization of the Divine Idea
culminated in the Prussian State (although, looking towards America, he was
inclined to hedge his bets), for Marx it culminated in the victory of the
proletariat, and finally in the withering away of the now unnecessary state…
One thing was certain: the bourgeoisie could not stand. For Marx and Engels
understood the characteristic of the industrial, bourgeois age that distinguished
it from all previous ages – its dynamism. Whereas previous ages aimed to
preserve the social structure in order to preserve their place in it, the bourgeois
were in effect constantly changing it, knowing that technological advance was
constantly making present relationships obsolete and unprofitable. Not only did
it overthrow the old, patriarchal and feudal society that came before it: it was
constantly working to overthrow itself. “The bourgeoisie,” they wrote, “cannot
exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and
thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the
contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant
revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,
everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all
earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their trace of ancient and
venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones
become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into the air.” 927
But this constant change, though promoted by the bourgeoisie, at the same
time built up the numbers and resources of the proletariat. “Not only has the
bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into
existence the men who are to wield those weapons – the modern working class –
the proletarians. In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e. capital, is developed, in the
same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed.” 928
The first axiom of Marx’s theory, the idea that class conflict is the sole
determinant of world history, is clearly false: there are countless counter-
examples that disprove it.929 If his second axiom, that man’s thought is
determined by his economic status, is true, then there is no reason for believing
it to be true insofar as Marx’s thought, too, must be determined by his economic
status; so it, too, is false.
926
Berlin, op. cit.
927
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, London: Penguin Books, 2004, p. 7.
928
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, pp. 11-12.
929
Popper cites the conflict between the popes and emperors, both of the same class ( op. cit., p.
116).
554
And so, since both his fundamental axioms are false, there is no reason for
believing the rest of his theory. As for his prediction that true socialism could
only succeed in an economically advanced society, this is disproved by its
“success” in such peasant societies as Russia and China. The almost universal
fall of those same societies in the late twentieth century is still further proof that
Marx was a false prophet.
Marxism is “a creed complete with prophet, sacred texts and the promise of a
heaven shrouded in mystery. Marx was not a scientist, as he claimed. He
founded a faith. The economic and political systems he inspired are dead or
dying. But his religion is a broad church, and lives on.”930
It is too kind to describe Marxism, as some have done, as a burning love of

justice clothed in a false economic theory. Its motive power is neither the love of
justice nor the love of men, but simply hatred – hatred of God and God’s order in
the first place, but hatred also of men. Marx despised not only the ruling classes
and the bourgeoisie, but even the proletariat whose triumph he falsely
predicted, rejecting the notion that “the poor in society were inherently decent
and altruistic”.931 He delighted in the destruction and death that the revolution
would bring (he brought only misery to his own relatives), consigning all those
who opposed the laws of dialectical materialism (and many of those who did
not) to “the dustbin of history”. He loved only the cold goddess History, the
Moloch of the twentieth century, whose most zealous and merciless servant he
was…
930
“Marx after Communism”, The Economist, December 19, 2002.
931
Service, op. cit., p. 22.
555
67. UNEMANCIPATED JEWRY: MOSES HESS AND THE PROTO-
ZIONISTS
Alfred Lilienthal writes: “The early 19 th-century Jewish settlements in Palestine

were completely non-nationalist in motivation. Political Zionism, spurred by the
writings of Moses Hess (Rome and Jerusalem, 1862) and Leo Pinsker (Auto-
Emancipation, 1882) and the inspired, dedicated leadership of Theodor Herzl, did
not succeed in winning wide support among the Jews of Europe or America. The
9,000 Jews whom Sir Moses Montefiore found in Palestine on his first visit in 1837
had barely reached 50,000 at the turn of the century. The settlements that he
founded, and Baron Rothschild generously supported after him, benefited only
the new colonists and posed no threat to the indigenous Arab population…” 932
The nationalist ideology that we know as Zionism, and which posed an

immediate and mortal threat to the indigenous Arab population, arose as the
result of the threats coming to Talmudic Judaism from several directions: from the
secular, humanist ideals of the French revolution, from the rising tide of German
anti-semitism, and from Reform Judaism.
To the defence of Talmudism there arose the German Jew Moses Hess, a friend
and collaborator of Marx and Engels. He charted a path for the survival of
Talmudism that was prophetic on many accounts. For it looked forward both to
the Bolshevik revolution, and to the Holocaust, and to the foundation of the
Zionist State of Israel.
“Hess’s task,” writes Michael Hoffman, “was to see that the Judaics did not
succumb to the new winds of reform and religious indifferentism with which
Catholics and Protestants under the spell of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, had fallen…
“Forged in the crucible of the German Rhineland, where he was born to an

Orthodox Judaic family, and at a period of time that marked the beginning of the
Prussian reaction against the legacy of Napoleon, Hess approached this dilemma
through the vehicle of his Zionism, the religious nationalism which embraces the
Talmud not necessarily as a code for daily living, but as a totem of racial cohesion
and a prophylactic against liberalism. Hess wrote:
“’Many who have emancipated themselves from dry orthodoxy have recently
manifested in their studies a deepening conception of Judaism, and have thus
brought about the banishment of that superficial rationalism which was the cause
of a growing indifference to things Jewish and which finally led to a total
severance from Judaism.’
“Hess termed as ‘nihilists’ all liberal Judaics who sought to abolish the
influence of the Talmud, which he regarded as the ‘fountain of life’. Hess
endeavoured to build a Hegelian-Kabbalistic bridge between the Judaic liberals
and the rabbinic traditionalists. ‘The new seminaries, modelled after the Breslau
932
Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection, New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1987, p. 11.
556
school... ought to make it their aim to bridge the gap between the nihilism of the
Reformers, who never learn anything, and the staunch conservatism of the
Orthodox, who never forget anything.’
“The bridge consisted of Communist leadership for the reform-minded, and

what came to be called modern Orthodoxy for the conservatives, with these two
seeming opposite tendencies eventually reconciled, far in the future, in the racial
patriotism that is Israeli Zionism. As Hess stated, ‘The pious Jew is above all a
Jewish patriot. The ‘new’ Jew, who denies the existence of the Jewish nationality,
is not only a deserter in the religious sense, but is also a traitor to his people, his
race and even to his family.’
“In his early 1837 work, The Holy History of Mankind, Hess advocated an
occult, Talmudic hierarchy of Adamic man (human beings, i.e. Jews), contrasted
with subhuman creatures, the Nephilim. ‘This tradition,’ observes Hess, ‘leads
toward a higher and clearer consciousness.’
“In 1841 Hess began to be supported by a wealthy circle of Rhineland

capitalists. They appointed him to head a leading Masonic newspaper which
they funded, the Rheinische Zeitung, in whose offices he made the acquaintance
of Karl Marx, whose teacher he became and in whom he discerned messianic
qualities. In a letter written before Marx had published anything, Hess predicted
of him, ‘... he will give the final blow to all medieval religion and politics... Can
you imagine Rousseau, Voltaire, Holbach, Lessing, Heine and Hegel combined
in one person? If you can – you have Dr. Marx.’
“After the Prussians drove Hess into exile in France, he joined with the
German-Judaic expatriates there to lay the groundwork for the Communist
ideology in such works as Kommunistisches Bekenntis in Fragen unde Antworten
(‘A Communist Credo: Questions and Answers’); Uber das Geldwesen (‘On
Money’) and Sozialismus und Kommunismus. Though attributed to Marx and
Friedrich Engels, Hess himself wrote the first draft of The Communist Manifesto
and sections of The German Ideology, which is officially said to have been written
by Marx and Engels.
“Hess the Communist sought to extirpate the Gentile’s connection to the land
by weakening private property rights and in particular, the right to inherit land.
In keeping with the conjunction of seeming opposites, in which Communism
often is backed by capitalists, Hess believed that the modernizing trends of free
trade and commerce would contribute to Communism through the demise of
property rights. He also favoured the factory system which he believed would
‘guarantee abundance’.”933
In 1862, under the influence of the Italian Risorgimento, Hess wrote Rome and
Jerusalem: the Last National Question, which explores the possibility of the Jews
933
Hoffman, “Moses Hess”, Revisionist History,
557
becoming a nation in the way that the Italians were becoming one. 934 In his first
paragraph he stated his most important conclusion: that the Jews could never
become fully assimilated into western culture: "After an estrangement of
twenty years, I am back with my people. I have come to be one of them again,
to participate in the celebration of the holy days, to share the memories and
hopes of the nation, to take part in the spiritual and intellectual warfare going
on within the House of Israel, on the one hand, and between our people and
the surrounding civilized nations, on the other; for though the Jews have lived
among the nations for almost two thousand years, they cannot, after all,
become a mere part of the organic whole." (First Letter).
Not that Hess was renouncing his assimilated western humanist ideals. On
the contrary: "When I labour for the regeneration of my own nation, I do not
thereby renounce my humanistic aspiration. The national movement of the
present day is only another step on the road of progress which began with the
French Revolution. The French nation has, since the great Revolution, been
calling to the other nations for help. But the nations have turned a deaf ear to the
voice from the distance and have lent a not unwilling ear to the tumult of
reaction in their own midst. Today, this roar deafens not only the people in
certain parts of Germany, those who, by dint of political trickery, are aroused to
the pitch of enthusiasm for the kings and war lords. But the other nations hear
and follow the call of France. The call has reached also our ancient nation, and I
would unite my voice with that of France, that I may at least warn my racial
brothers in Germany against listening to the loud noise of the reactionaries."
(Third Letter)
Hess considered assimilation into German culture a vain dream: "The

endeavours are vain. Even conversion itself [to Christianity] does not relieve the
Jews from the enormous pressure of German Anti-Semitism. The German hates
the Jewish religion less than the race; he objects less to the Jews' peculiar beliefs
than to their peculiar noses." (Fourth Letter)
"The real Teutomaniacs of the Arndt and Jahn type will always be honest,
reactionary conservatives. The Teutomaniac, in his love of the Fatherland, loves
not the State but the race dominance. How, then, can he conceive the granting of
equal rights to other races than the dominant one, when equality is still a utopia
for the large masses of Germany? The sympathetic Frenchman assimilates with
irresistible attraction every foreign race element. Even the Jew is here a
Frenchman. Jefferson said long ago, at the time of the American Revolution, that
every man has two fatherlands, first his own and then France. The German, on
the other hand, is not at all anxious to assimilate any foreign elements, and
would be perfectly happy if he could possess all fatherlands and dominions for
himself. He lacks the primary condition of every chemical assimilative process,
namely, warmth." (Fifth Letter).
Hess considered that not only the Germans, but all the European nations,
with the exception of France (he was wrong here, as the Dreyfus case was to
934
http://www/zionismontheweb.org/Moses_Hess_Rome_and_Jerusalem.htm.
558
show), were antisemitic: "... The European nations have always considered the
existence of the Jews in their midst as an anomaly. We shall always remain
strangers among the nations. They may tolerate us and even grant us
emancipation, but they will never respect us as long as we place the principle ubi
bene ibi patria [where it is good, there is our fatherland] above our own great
national memories. Though religious fanaticism may cease to operate as a factor
in the hatred against the Jews in civilized countries, yet in spite of enlightenment
and emancipation, the Jew in exile who denies his nationality will never earn the
respect of the nations among whom he dwells. He may become a naturalized
citizen, but he will never be able to convince the Gentiles of his total separation
from his own nationality. It is not the old-type, pious Jew, who would rather
suffer than deny his nationality, that is most despised, but the modern Jew who,
like the German outcasts in foreign countries, denies his nationality, while the
hand of fate presses heavily upon his own people..." (Fifth Letter).
The Jews are good at assimilating foreign cultures, but they have gone too far:
"Just as it is impossible for me to entertain any prejudice against my own race,
which has played such an important role in universal history and which is
destined for a still greater one in the future, so it is impossible for me to show
against the holy language of our fathers the antipathy of those who endeavour
to eliminate Hebrew from Jewish life, and even supersede it by German
inscriptions in the cemetery. I was always exalted by Hebrew prayers. I seem to
hear in them an echo of fervent pleadings and passionate entreaties, issuing
from suffering hearts of a thousand generations. Seldom do these heart-stirring
prayers fail to impress those who are able to understand their meaning. The
most touching point about these Hebrew prayers is, that they are really an
expression of the collective Jewish spirit; they do not plead for the individual,
but for the entire Jewish race. The pious Jew is above all a Jewish patriot. The
'new' Jew, who denies the existence of the Jewish nationality, is not only a
deserter in the religious sense, but is also a traitor to his people, his race and
even to his family. If it were true that Jewish emancipation in exile is
incompatible with Jewish nationality, then it were the duty of the Jews to
sacrifice the former for the sake of the latter..." (Fourth Letter).
Jewish patriotism, for Hess, humanist though he is, is inseparable from Jewish
religion; the former is the root of the latter: "All feast and fast days of the Jews,
their deep piety and reverence for tradition, which almost apotheosises
everything Hebraic, nay even the entire Jewish cult, all have their origin in the
patriotism of the Jewish nation." (Fourth Letter)
For Judaism is "nothing else but a national historical cult developed out of
family traditions" (Sixth Letter).
Reform Judaism, therefore, is anathema to Hess: "The threatening danger to

Judaism comes only from the religious reformers who, with their newly-
invented ceremonies and empty eloquence have sucked the marrow out of
Judaism and left only its skeleton... Their reforms have only a negative purpose -
if they have any aim at all - to firmly establish unbelief in the national
foundation of the Jewish religion. No wonder that these reforms only fostered
559
indifference to Judaism and conversions to Christianity. Judaism, like
Christianity, would have to disappear as a result of the general state of
enlightenment and progress, if it were not more than a mere dogmatic religion,
namely a national cult. The Jewish reformers, however, those who are still
present in some German communities, and maintain, to the best of their ability,
the theatrical show of religious reform, know so little of the value of national
Judaism, that they are at great pains to erase carefully from their creed and
worship all traces of Jewish nationalism. They fancy that a recently
manufactured prayer or hymn book, wherein a philosophical theism is put into
rhyme and accompanied by music, is more elevating and soul-stirring than the
fervent Hebrew prayers which express the pain and sorrow of a nation at the
loss of its fatherland. They forget that these prayers, which not only created, but
preserved for millennia, the unity of Jewish worship, are even today the tie
which binds into one people all the Jews scattered around the world." (Seventh
Letter)
Moreover, there is this difference between Judaism and other religions: it is

forever tied to the ethnic Jew, implanted in his genes as it were: "In reality,
Judaism as a nationality has a natural basis which cannot be set aside by mere
conversion to another faith, as is the case in other religions. A Jew belongs to his
race and consequently also to Judaism, in spite of the fact that he or his ancestors
have become apostates. It may appear paradoxical, according to our modern
religious opinions, but in life, at least, I have observed this view to be true. The
converted Jew remains a Jew no matter how much he objects to it." (Seventh
Letter).
"The Jewish religion, thought Heine, and with him all the enlightened Jews, is
more of a misfortune than a religion. But in vain do the progressive Jews
persuade themselves that they can escape this misfortune through
enlightenment or conversion. Every Jew is, whether he wishes it or not, solidly
united with the entire nation; and only when the Jewish people will be freed
from the burden which it has borne so heroically for thousands of years, will the
burden of Judaism be removed from the shoulders of these progressive Jews,
who will ultimately form only a small minority. We will all then carry the yoke
of the 'Kingdom of Heaven' until the end...
“The levelling tendencies of the assimilationists have remained and will

always remain without influence on those Jews who constitute the great Jewish
masses.” (Eleventh Letter).
The Jewish religion, according to Hess, is far superior to Christianity:

"Christianity is, after all, a religion of death, the function of which ceased the
moment the nations reawakened to life..." (Fifth Letter)
The new, life-giving religion is the religion of freedom - individual freedom

and national freedom - that the French Revolution has given to the world. The
Jewish religion, paradoxically, can come to life within the new context of this
new religion bequeathed by the French: "The rigid forms of orthodoxy, the
existence of which was justified before the century of rebirth, will naturally,
560
through the power of the national idea and the historical cult, relax and become
fertile. It is only with the national rebirth that the religious genius of the Jews...
will be endowed with new strength again be re-inspired with the prophetic
spirit." (Fifth Letter)
"This 'religion of the future' of which the eighteenth-century philosophers, as

well as their recent followers, dreamed, will neither be an imitation of the
ancient pagan Nature cult, nor a reflection of the neo-Christian or the neo-
Judaism skeleton, the spectre of which haunts the minds of our religious
reformers. Each nation will have to create its own historical cult; each people
must become like the Jewish people, a people of God." (Seventh Letter)
"As long as no other people possessed such a national, humanitarian cult, the
Jews alone were the people of God. Since the French Revolution, the French, as
well as the other peoples that followed them, have become our noble rivals and
faithful allies" (Ninth Letter).
All this is leading to "the Messianic era", when "the Jewish nation and all
other historical nations will arise again to new life, the time of the 'resurrection
of the dead', of 'the coming of Lord', of the 'New Jerusalem', and of all the other
symbolic expressions, the meaning of which is no longer misunderstood. The
Messianic era is the present age, which began to germinate with the teachings of
Spinoza, and finally came into historical existence with the great French
Revolution. With the French Revolution, there began the regeneration of those
nations which had acquired their national historical religion only through the
influence of Judaism" (Tenth Letter)
But how can the nation be resurrected if it has no land? And so Hess is led by
the logic of his argument to a kind of proto-Zionism. "You," he addresses the
Jews, "are an elemental force and we bow our heads before you. You were
powerful in the early period of your history, strong even after the destruction of
Jerusalem, and mighty during the Middle Ages, when there were only two
dominant powers - the Inquisition and its Cross, and Piracy with its Crescent.
You have escaped destruction in your long dispersion, in spite of the terrible tax
you have paid during eighteen centuries of persecution. But what is left of your
nation is mighty enough to rebuild the gates of Jerusalem. This is your mission.
Providence would not have prolonged your existence until today, had it not
reserved for you the holiest of all missions. The hour has struck for the
resettlement of the banks of the Jordan..." (Eleventh Letter)
Not only is the return to Palestine a worthy aim: it is absolutely necessary for
the regeneration of Jewry. "In exile, the Jewish people cannot be regenerated.
Reform or philanthropy can only bring it to apostasy and to nothing else, but in
this no reformer, not even a tyrant will ever succeed. The Jewish people will
participate in the great historical movement of present-day humanity only when
it will have its own fatherland... No Jew, whether orthodox or not, can
conscientiously refrain from cooperating with the rest for the elevation of the
entire Jewry. Every Jew, even the converted should cling to the cause and labour
for the regeneration of Israel." (Eleventh Letter)
561
But the return to the fatherland can take place only after the revolution, which
will shake out Western Jewry: "The rigid crust of orthodox Jewry will melt when
the spark of Jewish patriotism, now smoldering under it, is kindles into a sacred
fire which will herald the coming of the spring and the resurrection of our
nation to a new life. On the other hand, Western Judaism is surrounded by an
almost indissoluble crust, composed of the dead residue of the first
manifestation of the modern spirit, from the inorganic chalk deposit of an extinct
rationalistic enlightenment. This crust will not be melted by the fire of Jewish
patriotism; it can only be broken by an external pressure under the weight of
which everything which has no future must give up its existence. In
contradistinction to orthodoxy, which cannot be destroyed by an external force
without at the same time endangering the embryo of Jewish Nationalism that
slumbers within it, the had covering that surrounds the hearts of our cultured
Jews will be Shattered only by a blow from without, one that world events are
already preparing; and which will probably fall in the near future. The old
framework of European Society, battered so often by the storms of revolution, is
cracking and groaning on all sides. It can no longer stand a storm. Those who
stand between revolution and reaction, the mediators, who have an appointed
purpose to push modern Society on its path of progress, will, after society
becomes strong and progressive, be swallowed up by it. The nurses of progress,
who would undertake to teach the Creator himself wisdom, prudence and
economy; those carriers of culture, the saviours of Society, the speculators in
politics, philosophy and religion, will not survive the last storm. And along with
the other nurses of progress our Jewish reformers will also close their ephemeral
existence. On the other hand, the Jewish people, along with other historical
nations, will, after this last catastrophe, the approach of which is attested by
unmistakable signs of the times, receive its full rights as a people... Just as after
the last catastrophe of organic life, when the historical races came into the
world's arena, there came their division into tribes, and the position and role of
the latter was determined, so after the last catastrophe of social life, when the
spirit of humanity shall have reached its maturity, will our people, with the
other historical peoples, find its legitimate place in universal history." (Eleventh
Letter)
Hess concludes with a warning against German nationalism: "The cause of

national regeneration of oppressed peoples can expect no help and sympathy
from Germany. The problem of regeneration, which dates not from the second
restoration of the kingdom in France, but goes back to the French Revolution,
the war, was received in Germany with mockery and derision; and in spite of
the fact that the question is an urgent one and is uppermost almost everywhere,
even in Germany itself, the Germans have name it the 'Nationality trick'. Our
Jewish democrats, also, display their patriotism in accusing the French and the
people sympathizing with them, of conquering designs. The French, say the
German politicians, as well as their allies, will only be exploited by the second
Monarchy, for purposes of restraining liberty rather than promoting it. It is,
therefore, according to the deep logic of these politicians, the duty of the
German to be obedient to the Kaiser and the kings, in order that they should be
able to defeat the conquering desires of the French. These politicians and patriots
562
forget that if Germany were to conquer France and Italy today, it would only
result in placing the entire German people under police law; and in depriving
the Jews of their civil rights, in a worse manner than after the Way of Liberation,
when the only reward granted by the Germans to their Jewish brethren in arms
was exclusion from civil life. And, truly, the German people and the German
Jews do not deserve any better lot when they allow themselves, in spite of the
examples of history, to be entrapped by medieval reaction." (Appendix V. The Last
Race Rule)
"The age of race dominance is at an end. Even the smallest people, whether it
belongs to the Germanic or Romance, Slavic or Finnic, Celtic or Semitic races, as
soon as it advances its claim to a place among the historical nations, will find
sympathetic supporters in the powerful civilized Western nations. Like the
patriots of other unfortunate nations, the German patriots can attain their aim
only by means of a friendly alliance with the progressive and powerful nations
of the world. But if they continue to conjure themselves, as well as the German
people, with the might and glory of the 'German Sword', they will only add to
the old unpardonable mistakes, grave new ones; they will only play into the
hands of the reaction, and drag all Germany along with them." (Appendix VI. A
Chapter of History)
Hess was notable for his combining different strands of nineteenth-century

Jewish and Gentile thinking: the universalist nationalism of the French
Revolution, the revolutionary socialism of Marx and Engels, and traditional
Talmudic Judaism. He rejected only the extremes of assimilationism, which
would destroy Judaism and therefore Jewry, and the particularist nationalism of
the German type.
And yet, paradoxically, his assertion that "once a Jew, always a Jew", even
after conversion to Christianity, appeared to confirm one of the principal theses
of German anti-Semitism. In this way he looked forward not only to Zionism but
also to the Holocaust...
Hess’s work had a strong influence on another the historian Heinrich Graetz,
whose massive History of the Jews began to appear in the 1850s. “This pioneering
work,” writes Shlomo Sand, “written with impressive literary flair, remained a
presence in national Jewish history throughout the twentieth century. It is hard
to measure the impact on the rise of future Zionist thought, but there is no
question of its significance and centrality…
“Graetz read Rome and Jerusalem before meeting the author. That meeting
began their close friendship and extensive correspondence, which went on till
Hess’s death in 1875. The two even planned to journey together to the old
‘ancestral land’, but eventually the historian traveled there on his own. A year
after the appearance of Hess’s book, Graetz published a fascinating essay of his
own, entitled ‘The Rejuvenation of the Jewish Race’. This is largely an unstated
dialogue with Hess, and though it suggests some doubts and hesitations, it also
563
reveals a partial acceptance of the ideological breakthrough of which Hess was
one of the catalysts. The ‘Rejuvenation’ reveals not only the means by which the
Jewish people are invented in Graetz’s writing, but also the historian’s acute
consciousness of the nationality issue roiling many circles of European
intelligentsia.
“What gives a human community the right to present itself as a nation,

Graetz wonders, and replies that it is not a racial origin, because sometimes
different racial types join up to form one people. Nor is language necessarily the
common denominator, as is shown by Switzerland, for instance. Even a unified
territory is not enough for a national formation. Do historical memories unify
peoples, asks Graetz, and responds with a sharp and prescient historical
observation – that until the modern era the peoples did not take part in political
history, but passively viewed the deeds of leaders and rulers. Was it, then, high
culture that provided the basis for a nationality? No, because it, too, is new, and
has not yet been acquired by the entire people. The existence of nations is a
mystery, and there seems to be no single way to account for them.
“As Graetz puts it, there have obviously been mortal peoples that vanished in
history and others that are immortal. Nothing is left of the Hellenic and Latin
races, which have dissolved into other human divisions. By contrast, the Jewish
race has succeeded in preserving itself and surviving, and is about to renew its
marvelous biblical youth. Its revival after the Babylonian exile and the return to
Zion revealed its potential for renewal. Thus, the people are an organic body
with a marvelous capacity for rebirth, which distinguishes them from ordinary
biological organisms. The existence of the Jewish race had been unique from the
start, which is why its history is a marvel. For Graetz, the teleology of the chosen
people is more moral than political, retaining some dusty remnants of a
crumbling traditional belief…”935
Was Hess's Messianic vision of the creation of a Jewish nation-state in

Palestine in fact compatible with traditional Judaism? This question, which has
so troubled the modern state of Israel, was obliquely addressed in 1836 by
Samuel Raphael Hirsch in his Nineteen Letters on Judaism.
Hirsch’s work, as Dan-Sherbok writes, was "a defence of Orthodoxy in the

form of essays by a young rabbi to a friend who questioned the importance of
remaining a Jew. The work began with a critique of Judaism of this period:
'While the best of mankind climbed to the summit of culture, prosperity, and
wealth, the Jewish people remained poor in everything that makes human
beings great and noble and that beautifies and dignifies our live "In response
Hirsch maintained that the purpose of human life is not to attain personal
happiness and perfection. Instead human beings should strive to serve God by
doing his will. As an example of such devotion, the Jewish people was formed
so that through its way of life all nations would come to know that true
935
Sand, op. cit. , pp. 72, 80-81.
564
happiness lies in obeying God. Thus, Hirsch maintained, the people of Israel
were given the Promised Land so that they would be able to keep the Covenant.
When the nation was exiled, they fulfilled this mission by remaining loyal to
God and the Torah despite continual persecution and suffering. According to
Hirsch, the purpose of the divine commandments is not to repress physical
gratification of material prosperity; rather the goal of following God's law is to
lead a religious life and thereby bear witness to the messianic ideal of universal
brotherhood. Given this vision of God's plan, Reform Judaism was denounced
for abandoning this sacred duty. For Hirsch citizenship rights are of little
importance, since Jews are united by a bond of obedience to God's laws until the
time when the 'Almighty shall see fit in his inscrutable wisdom to unite again his
scattered servants in one land, and the Torah shall be the guiding principle of a
state, a model of the meaning of Divine revelation and the mission of
humanity'."936 The question was posed again by two rabbis who came to be
known as "the Forerunners of Zionism" - the Serbian Rabbi Alkalai and the
Polish Rabbi Kalischer. Alain Dieckhoff writes: "Giving some role to the
collective organisation of the Jews to promote their return [as was done by the
two rabbis] was already in itself a major innovation. It implied a reinterpretation
of Jewish Messianism which had adopted an increasingly quietist approach. As
the political effacement of the Jewish nation in Palestine steadily progressed,
sealed by the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE) and the crushing defeat
of Bar Kochba (135), belief in the coming of the Messiah who would deliver
Israel from its exile and restore it to its past glory was consolidated, as a form of
compensation. This Messianic hope adopted an apocalyptic content, both
restoration oriented (a return to the original golden age) and utopian
(establishment of an essentially different and better age); this made it easier to
adopt an attitude of distance from, even indifference towards the contemporary
world. Although the deliverance of Israel was certainly located in the domain of
the visible since it assumed the physical restoration of the Jewish nation in its
land, it was also placed at the end of time (be-aharit ha-yamim), i.e. at the end of
the course of human history. Therefore the enormous change to be inaugurated
by the Messianic era could only be the miraculous work of God, from Whom
man could only hope, by a life of prayer and holiness, that the final redemption
would come without too great a delay.
"This spiritualization considerably weakened the political dimension of

Messianism, which had been very present in the Biblical period - as illustrated
by the Maccabees' struggle in the second century BCE - but was constantly
eroded by rabbinical Judaism, which feared its destructive force. The epic story
of Shabtai Zvi, who aroused a wave of enthusiasm across the Jewish world in
1665-7, further discredited Messianic activism. The abolition of fasting days, the
proclamation of new festivals and transformations of the liturgy - all breaches of
religious law - in any case somewhat undermined the Messianic legitimacy of
Shabtai Zvi, who finally discredited himself by his sudden conversion to Islam.
The antinomian and heretical aspect of Shabtaism, which was cultivated by his
disciples and especially by Jacob Frank, led to a 'dogmatic' hardening in official
Judaism and the condemnation of all human efforts to hasten the end of time
936
Dan Cohn-Sherbok, An Atlas of Jewish History, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 147-148.
565
(dehikat ha-ketz). So for reassessment of the human factor in the process of
redemption it was necessary to reassert voluntarism, which had been discredited
by Shabtaism, and to modify the 'Messianic code' at three levels. First of all,
without denying God's supernatural intervention, Rabbis Alkalai and Kalischer
considered that it would only be carried out after an initial phase where man
would play an active and propitiatory role. This separation of two Messianic
periods, one for which man would strive while the other would be decided by
God, was explicitly proposed by Kalischer.
"'The redemption of Israel, for which we continue to long, should not be

imagined as a sudden miracle. The Holy One - may His name be blessed - will
not come down suddenly from his heights to give His people their marching
orders. Nor will He send the Messiah from the clouds in the twinkling of an eye
to sound the great trumpets of the dispersed children of Israel and gather them
together in Jerusalem. He will not surround the Holy City with a wall of fire and
will not make the Holy Temple come down from the highest heaven.
"'The bliss and the miracles promised by His servants the Prophets will
certainly take place, for all will be accomplished, but we shall not flee in
affliction and terror, for the redemption of Israel will come in successive stages,
and rays of the deliverance will shine gradually.' [Derishat Tzion, 1862]
"Because redemption is gradual, two distinct and successive moments can be

distinguished - the first natural, the second miraculous. This idea was
particularly daring because it made the saving power of God depend on prior
action by man. It directly challenged apocalyptic Messianism, which was
defended by the majority of the rabbis of the time who expected the deliverance
of Israel to come only by a cataclysmic entry of the Messiah.
"For what purpose was this human energy thus liberated to be used? Here
again an original distinction made it possible for the Forerunners of Zion to
justify an active role for man. In Jewish tradition there was only one true remedy
for sin: repentance (teshuva), i.e. explicit renunciation of evil and adoption of
behaviour in accordance with the Law. The idea of inner repentance was so
essential that it was supposed to have coexisted with the Law before the
proclamation on Mount Sinai, and even to have existed before the creation of the
world. This was above all of an individual nature in Talmudic literature, but
took on a collective dimension from the sixteenth century, under the impetus of
the Kabbala of Isaac Luria. After that the return to a life of holiness ensured not
only the salvation of the individual soul, but also restored the original fullness of
the world. Teshuva was no longer limited solely to the existential level, within
the narrow confines of the individual; it also concerned the historic level of the
national group, and beyond that the cosmic level of mankind. Alkalai went so
far as to consider, differing from the classical idea, that collective repentance
must necessarily precede individual repentance. There remained the final
question: what did this general teshuva involve?
"It involved physical re-establishment of the Jews in the Land of Israel to

recreate the national community. Playing on the double meaning of the word
566
teshuva, which strictly means return, Kalischer stated that collective repentance
meant a geographical return to Zion and not, at least not directly, a spiritual
return. So Jews who returned to Palestine were not breaking the religious Law,
since in the first instance their return was a purely material one. It was only
later, when they were gathered in Zion, that by the grace of God the truly
supernatural redemption would start, bringing with it the individual repentance
of every Jew and union with God. This bold idea, based on exegesis of religious
texts, was a powerful call to action. It meant that Jews could legitimately
cooperate and meet together to prepare for and organise their settlement in the
Holy Land. By turning to the traditional scholarly interpretation based on the
Talmud and Midrash literature, the Forerunners of Zionism encouraged the
adoption of an unconventional way ahead, in which the Jewish man had a direct
responsibility for the way the world was to develop. Even if it was in a confused
way and probably unconsciously, they started a Copernican revolution which
Herzl's Zionism was to bring to full flower, placing man, not God, at the centre
of Jewish destiny."937
937
Dieckhoff, The Invention of a Nation, London: Hurst and Company, 2003, pp. 16-19.
567
68. THE WORLD AS WILL: SCHOPENHAUER
One of those who profited from the change in mood after 1848 was the
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, whose main work, The World as Will and
Representation, had been written in 1819 but only now became popular. He
became famous, writes Golo Mann, "because of historical trends which he would
have disapproved of if he had been clear about them: post-revolutionary
disappointment of the middle class, a temporary lack of interest in politics. These
trends helped Schopenhauer, who despised history and politics." 938
While retaining German idealism's characteristic starting-point in psychology

(or meta-psychology), and its post-Hegelian emphasis on history and becoming,
Schopenhauer changed its direction by arguing that the essence of reality, the
"thing-in-itself", was not Idea or Mind or Reason, but Will. This idea could be
said to be a German challenge to the Frenchman Descartes’ “I think, therefore I
am.” For Schopenhauer, by contrast, the fundamental axiom of philosophy was:
“I will, therefore I am.” This will is, however, destined to ultimate extinction,
which gives Schopenhauer’s philosophy an extremely pessimistic colouring: "We
begin in the madness of carnal desire and the transport of voluptuousness, we
end in the dissolution of all our parts and the musty stench of corpses. And the
road from one to the other goes, in regard to our well-being and enjoyment in
life, steadily downhill: happily dreaming childhood, exultant youth, toil-filled
years of manhood, infirm and often wretched old age, the torment of the last
illness and finally the throes of death."
According to Bertrand Russell, "Schopenhauer's system is an

adaptation of Kant's, but one that emphasizes quite different aspects of
the Critique from those emphasized by Fichte or Hegel. They got rid of
the thing-in-itself, and thus made knowledge metaphysically
fundamental. Schopenhauer retained the thing-in-itself, but identified
it with will. Kant had maintained that a study of the moral law can take
us beyond phenomena, and give us knowledge which sense-perception
cannot give; he also maintained that the moral law is essentially
concerned with the will.” 939
It was not that Schopenhauer denied the sphere of thought. But he

ascribed the primacy to will over knowledge, desire over thought; for
him, knowledge and thought were at all times the servants of will and
desire. In this way he provided the philosophical justification of that
critical transition in German life from the dreamy, brilliant but
somewhat ineffective Romantic period to the intensely active,
entrepreneurial period that began after the 1848 revolution and
continued after 1871 into the Second Reich. Moreover, the emphasis on
938
Mann, A History of Germany, p. 141.
939
Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, p. 783.
568
will and desire corresponded to the intense development of the science
of biology in this period.
As John Gray has pointed out, Schopenhauer anticipated Freud in

his emphasis on the dominance of unconscious desire over conscious
thought, on the importance of the sexual impulse, slips of the tongue,
repressed emotions, and so on. Yanis Varoufakis develops this theme,
which links Schopenhauer not only with Freud but also with Nietzsche
and Marx: “The German philosopher Schopenhauer castigated us
modern humans for deceiving ourselves into thinking that our beliefs
and customs are subject to our consciousness. Nietzsche concurred,
suggesting that all the things we believe in, at any given time, reflect
not truth but someone else’s power over us. Marx dragged economics
into this picture, reprimanding us all for ignoring the reality that our
thoughts have become hijacked by capital and its drive to accumulate.
Naturally, although it follows its own steely logic, capital evolves
mindlessly. No one designed capitalism and no one can civilize it now
that it is going at full tilt…” 940
Copleston asks: "How does Schopenhauer arrive at the conviction that the
thing-in-itself is Will? To find the key to reality I must look within myself. For in
inner consciousness or inwardly directed perception lies 'the single narrow door
to the truth'. Through this inner consciousness I am aware that the bodily action
which is said to follow or result from volition is not something different from
volition but one and the same. That is to say, the bodily action is simply the
objectified will: it is the will become idea or presentation. Indeed, the whole body
is nothing but objectified will, will as a presentation to consciousness. According
to Schopenhauer anyone can understand this if he enters into himself. And once
he has this fundamental intuition, he has the key to reality. He has only to extend
his discovery to the world at large.
"This Schopenhauer proceeds to do. He sees the manifestation of the one

individual Will in the impulse by which the magnet turns to the north pole, in the
phenomena of attraction and repulsion, in gravitation, in animal instinct, in
human desire and so on. Wherever he looks, whether in the inorganic or in the
organic sphere, he discovers empirical confirmation of his thesis that phenomena
constitute the appearance of the one metaphysical Will.
"The natural question to ask is this. If the thing-in-itself is

manifested in such diverse phenomena as the universal forces of
Nature, such as gravity, and human volition, why call it 'Will'? Would
not 'Force' or 'Energy' be a more appropriate term, especially as the so-
called Will, when considered in itself, is said to be 'without knowledge
and merely a blind incessant impulse', 'an endless striving'? For the
term 'Will', which implies rationality, seems to be hardly suitable for
describing a blind impulse or striving.
940
Varoufakis, The Global Minotaur, London: Zed Books, 2013, p. 39.
569
"Schopenhauer, however, defends his linguistic usage by
maintaining that we ought to take our descriptive term from what is
best known to us. We are immediately conscious of our own volition.
And it is more appropriate to describe the less well known in terms of
the better known than the other way round.
"Besides being described as blind impulse, endless striving, eternal becoming

and so on, the metaphysical Will is characterized as the Will to live. Indeed, to
say 'the Will' and to say 'the Will to live' are for Schopenhauer one and the same
thing. As, therefore, empirical reality is the objectification or appearance of the
metaphysical Will, it necessarily manifests the Will to live. And Schopenhauer
has no difficulty in multiplying examples of this manifestation. We have only to
look at Nature's concern for the maintenance of the species. Birds, for instance,
build nests for the young which they do not yet know. Insects deposit their eggs
where the larva may find nourishment. The whole series of phenomena of animal
instinct manifests the omnipresence of the Will to live. If we look at the untiring
activity of bees and ants and ask what it all leads to, what is attained by it, we can
only answer 'the satisfaction of hunger and the sexual instinct', the means, in
other words, of maintaining the species in life. And if we look at man with his
industry and trade, with his inventions and technology, we must admit that all
this striving serves in the first instance only to sustain and to bring a certain
amount of additional comfort to ephemeral individuals in their brief span of
existence, and through them to contribute to the maintenance of the species.
"Now, if the Will is an endless striving, a blind urge or impulse

which knows no cessation, it cannot find satisfaction or reach a state of
tranquillity. It is always striving and never attaining. And this essential
feature of the metaphysical Will is reflected in its self-objectification,
above all in human life. Man seeks satisfaction, happiness, but he
cannot attain it. What we call happiness or enjoyment is simply a
temporary cessation of desire. And desire, as the expression of a need
or want, is a form of pain. Happiness, therefore, is 'the deliverance
from a pain, from a want'; it is 'really and essentially always only
negative and never positive'. It soon turns to boredom, and the striving
after satisfaction reasserts itself. It is boredom which makes beings who
love one another so little as men do seek one another's company. And
great intellectual powers simply increase the capacity for suffering and
deepen the individual's isolation.
"Each individual thing, as an objectification of the one Will to live, strives to

assert its own existence at the expense of other things. Hence the world is the
field of conflict, a conflict which manifests the nature of the Will as at variance
with itself, as a tortured Will. And Schopenhauer finds illustrations of this
conflict even in the inorganic sphere. But it is naturally to the organic and
human spheres that he chiefly turns for empirical confirmation of his thesis. He
dwells, for example, on the ways in which animals of one species prey on those
of another. And when he comes to man, he really lets himself go. 'The chief
source of the most serious evils which afflict man is man himself: homo homini
lupus. Whoever keeps this last fact clearly in view sees the world as a hell
570
which surpasses that of Dante through the fact that one man must be the devil
of another.' War and cruelty are, of course, grist for Schopenhauer's mill. And
the man who showed no sympathy with the Revolution of 1848 speaks in the
sharpest terms of industrial exploitation, slavery and such like social abuses.
"We may not that it is the egoism, rapacity and hardness and cruelty
of men which are for Schopenhauer the real justification of the State. So
far from being a divine manifestation, the State is simply the creation
of enlightened egoism which tries to make the world a little more
tolerable than it would otherwise be." 941
The philosopher understands that there is only this constant striving

and suffering, and therefore no other path for him except the decision
to renounce the Will to live, which is the cause of all suffering. But this
is not accomplished through suicide, as one might expect, for suicide is
in fact an attempt to escape certain evils, and therefore the expression
of a concealed will to live.
Only two things relieve the bleakness of this nihilist vision to any
degree: art and asceticism… In the contemplation of art - especially
music, which exhibits the inner nature of the Will, the thing-in-itself -
desire is temporarily stilled. For "it is possible for me to regard the
beautiful object neither as itself an object of desire nor as a stimulant to
desire but simply and solely for its aesthetic significance." 942
However, "aesthetic contemplation affords no more than a temporary or

transient escape from the slavery of the Will. But Schopenhauer offers a lasting
release through renunciation of the Will to live. Indeed, moral progress must
take this form if morality is possible at all. For the Will to live, manifesting itself
in egoism, self-assertion, hatred and conflict, is for Schopenhauer the source of
evil. 'There really resides in the heart of each of us a wild beast which only waits
the opportunity to rage and rave in order to injure others, and which, if they do
not prevent it, would like to destroy them.' This wild beast, this radical evil, is
the direct expression of the Will to live. Hence morality, if it is possible, must
involve denial of the Will. And as man is an objectification of the Will, denial
will mean self-denial, asceticism and mortification." 943
"We must banish the dark impression of that nothingness which we discern
behind all virtue and holiness as their final goal, and which we fear as children
fear the dark; we must not even evade it like the Indians, through myths and
meaningless words, such as reabsorption in Brahma or the Nirvana of the
Buddhists. Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire
abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but,
conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied itself, this our
world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways - is nothing." 944
941
Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 7, part II, pp. 37-39.
942
Copleston, op. cit., p. 43.
943
Copleston, op. cit., pp. 47-48.
571
With the surrender of the Will, "all those phenomena are also abolished; that
constant strain and effort without end and without rest at all the grades of
objectivity in which and through which the world consists; the multifarious
forms succeeding each other in gradation; the whole manifestation of the will;
and, finally, also the universal forms of this manifestation, time and space, and
also its last fundamental form, subject and object; all are abolished. No will: no
idea, no world. Before us there is certainly only nothingness."945
So, contrary to the Christian vision, there is no positive end to the self-
denial that Schopenhauer recommends. Nor could there be. For there is
nothing other than the Will to live, which is neither God nor any positive
ideal, but pure egoism "objectified" in various forms and ending in death.
The most a man can hope for as a result of his self-denial is to "penetrate the
veil of Maya [illusion] to the extent of seeing that all individuals are really one.
For they are all phenomena of the one undivided Will. We then have the
ethical level of sympathy. We have goodness or virtue which is characterized
by a disinterested love of others. True goodness is not, as Kant thought, a
matter of obeying the categorical imperative for the sake of duty alone. True
goodness is love, agape or caritas in distinction from eros, which is self-directed.
And love is sympathy. 'All true and pure love is sympathy (Mitleid), and all
love which is not sympathy is selfishness (Selbstsucht). Eros is selfishness; agape
is sympathy.'"946
However, the existence of a "true and pure love" attainable by philosophy

and self-denial seems to be inconsistent with the premises of Schopenhauer's
system. For how can there be a selfless love when all that exists is the selfish
Will to live? Indeed, for Schopenhauer "existence, life, is itself a crime: it is our
original sin. And it is inevitably expiated by suffering and death." 947 Since for
Schopenhauer there is no paradisiac innocence, but only original sin, there can
be no escape from sin, and no return to paradise, but only the vain and self-
contradictory attempt of existence to deny itself.
Schopenhauer's vision represents a significant new turn in European

philosophy. On the one hand, it reflects the highly practical spirit (will rather
than mind) of the early industrial age. On the other, it reflects the underlying
scepticism of the post-1848 age in which it was read (rather than the age in
which it was written). Gone is the optimism of the Enlightenment, and its belief
in reason and the perfectibility of man; gone, too, the innocence and freshness of
the first wave of Romanticism. In its place we find Byronic despair and Eastern
pessimism, the despair of a man who has cut himself off from the last vestiges of
the Christian Good News948, who believes neither in God nor in anything else
except his baser instincts, and is preparing to escape from his suffering by
944
Schopenhauer, in Russell, op. cit., p. 785. Here, perhaps, we see the influence of Buddhism. “In
his study,” notes Russell, “he had a bust of Kant and a bronze Buddha.” (op. cit., p. 785).
945
Schopenhauer, in Russell, op. cit., p. 785.
946
Copleston, op. cit., pp. 48.
947
Copleston, op. cit., pp. 48.
572
plunging into what he insists will be a sea of nothingness, but which he fears
will be something very different and much more terrifying…
948
"Nevertheless," writes Mann, "he was a Christian [!] and distinguished between two basic
tendencies in Christianity: an optimistic one promising paradise on earth, which he regarded as
Jewish in origin, and an ascetic one proclaiming the misery and treachery of the world, teaching
resignation and compassion" (op. cit., pp. 142-143).
573
69. DARWIN’S THEORY OF EVOLUTION
The Bible of the new, Victorian rationalism was Charles Darwin's

The Origin of Species, published in 1859 but written considerably
earlier. 949 The year 1859, according to M.S. Anderson, "can be seen as
the beginning of a new era in intellectual life"; for it "gave birth not
merely to the Origin of Species but also to Marx's Critique of Political
Economy and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde". 950 If eighteenth-century
Deism had banished God to the heavens, leaving for Him only the
function of Creator, Darwinism deprived Him even of this function,
ascribing all creativity to the blind will of nature working entirely
through chance. Of course, this could be seen as the height of
irrationalism - which it was, and a return to the crudest pagan nature-
worship - which it also was. But Darwin succeeded in ascribing to his
pagan mysticism the aura of science - and few there were, in the 1860s,
who dared to question the authority of science.
The theory maintains that all life, even the most complex, has
evolved from the simplest organisms over a period of hundreds of
millions of years. This process is entirely random, being propelled
forward by two mechanisms: natural selection, which "selects out" for
survival those organisms with advantageous variations (this was
Darwin's preferred mechanism), and genetic mutations, which introduce
variations into the genotypes of the organisms (this is the favoured
mechanism of the "neo-Darwinists").
"Therefore," writes Bertrand Russell, "among chance variations those

that are favourable will preponderate among adults in each generation.
Thus from age to age deer run more swiftly, cats stalk their prey more
silently, and giraffes' necks become longer. Given enough time, this
mechanism, so Darwin contended, could account for the whole long
development from the protozoa to homo sapiens." 951
"Given enough time…" Time - enormous amounts of it - was indeed

a critical ingredient in Darwin's theory; in fact it took the place of a
949
Darwin may have waited many years before publishing his theory partly
because, as Tombs writes, “the socio-economic and political climate was calmer”
(op. cit. , p. 470) and partly because, as David Quammen writes, he was anxious
"about announcing a theory that seemed to challenge conventional religious beliefs
- in particular, the Christian beliefs of his wife, Emma. Darwin himself quietly
renounced Christianity during his middle age, and later described himself as an
agnostic. He continued to believe in a distant, impersonal deity of some sort, a
greater entity that had set the universe and its laws into motion, but not in a
personal God who had chosen humanity as a specially favored species. Darwin
avoided flaunting his lack of religious faith, at least partly in deference to Emma.
And she prayed for his soul…" ("Was Darwin Wrong?", National Geographic,
November, 2004, p. 9)
950
Anderson, The Ascendancy of Europe, 1815-1914 , London: Longman, 1985, p. 365.
951
Russell, op. cit., p. 752.
574
satisfactory causal mechanism. But such a theory chimed in with the
historicist temper of the times. It also chimed in with the idea, as
Jacques Barzun writes, "that everything is alive and in motion - a
dynamic universe" 952 , which in turn chimed in with the great dogma of
the day, the idea of PROGRESS.
Liberals believed in gradual progress, socialists believed in progress

through revolution, everyone except for a few diehards like the Pope
believed that things had to change, and that change had to be for the
better. Above all, evolution appealed to man's pride, in the belief that
man was destined for greater and greater things. "You know," says
Lady Constance in Disraeli's novel Tancred (1847), "all is development -
the principle is perpetually going on. First, there was nothing; then - I
forget the next - I think there were shells; then fishes; then we came -
let me see - did we come next? Never mind, we came at last and the
next change will be something very superior to us, something with
wings." 953
It will be noted that this was written twelve years before Darwin's
Origin of the Species, which shows that the "scientific" theory filled an
emotional need already expressed by poets and novelists. Evidently not
feeling this need himself, Disraeli said that as between the idea that
man was an ape or an angel, he was "on the side of the angels" 954 ; but
he forgot that, as Lady Constance had opined in his novel, evolution
was for many a way of attaining angelic status ("something with
wings") in the very long run. For those who did not believe in the
deification of man through Christ, evolution provided another, secular
and atheist form of deification. This elicited the not unfounded
derision of the conservatives. Thus Gobineau said that man was "not
descended from the apes, but rapidly getting there". 955
Thus “doubts there were aplenty”, writes A.N. Wilson, about

various questions. “But… the Victorian capacity… to live, very often,
with double standards, is what makes so many of them – individually
and collectively – seem to be humbugs and hypocrites.” 956
Darwin himself was not a hypocrite. He knew that his theory was
incompatible with Christianity. Thus in 1880 he wrote to Francis
McDermott: “I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in
the Bible as a divine revelation & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the
son of God.” 957
952
Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, New York: Perennial, 2000, p. 501.
953
Disraeli, in Barzun, op. cit., p. 502.
954
Barzun, op. cit., p. 571.
955
Barzun, op. cit., p. 571.
956
957
“A Matter of Faith for Darwin”, The Irish Times, Fine Arts and Antiques Section, September 19,
2015, p. 21.
575
But the great and the good of the British establishment managed – to
their satisfaction at any rate - to square the circle of Christianity and
the atheism of evolutionism. Thus Newman “regarded Darwin’s theory
as compatible with his Catholic beliefs. Darwinism was soon being
interpreted optimistically as the means used by God in creating a
progressive universe. As the devout High Church Anglican Gladstone
put it, ‘Evolution, if it be true, enhances in my judgement the proper
idea of the greatness of God.’” 958
In 1860 a famous debate on Darwinism took place between Thomas

Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce (“soapy Sam”), the Bishop of Oxford,
at the British Association for the Advancement of Science. According to
Isabella Sidgwick, “The Bishop rose, and in a light scoffing tone, florid
and fluent, he assured us there was nothing to the idea of evolution,
rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning
to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it
through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent
from a monkey? On this Mr. Huxley slowly and deliberately arose. A
slight tall figure stern and pale, very quiet and very grave, he stood
before us and spoke these tremendous words – words which no one
seems sure of now, nor I think, could remember just after they were
spoken for their meaning took away our breath, though it left us in no
doubt as to what it was. He was not ashamed to have a monkey for his
ancestor, but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who
used great gifts to obscure the truth…” 959
Paradoxically, Darwin's book never actually discussed the very first

and simplest step in evolution, the supposed transformation of
inorganic matter into organic. This was perhaps because Darwin knew
of Louis Pasteur's contemporary discovery that spontaneous generation
is impossible. But modern scientists have continued to try and prove
the impossible to be possible in their laboratories, if not in nature -
with no success whatsoever.
Darwin himself had doubts about natural selection. "To suppose,”

he wrote. “that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting
the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of
light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration,
could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess,
absurd in the highest degree." 960
Instead he turned to the discredited theory of Lamarck, that

acquired characteristics are inherited - a theory accepted, in modern
times, only by Stalin's Lysenko...
958
959
Sidgwick, in Evans, op. cit., p. 472.
960
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1909, Harvard Classics edition, p. 190.
576
Darwin was right to be troubled by the example of the eye. Fr. Job
Gumerov writes: “Evolutionism is fundamentally at odds with the
systemic methodology. Consider the human eye. It is a complex, finely
ordered system. If you remove at least one element, the system will
lose its properties and will not be able to perform its functions. The eye
could not have arisen in the process of evolution. Evolutionists place a
person, a bird, and a frog in a certain sequence on the axis of
progress. However, the eyes of each of these species are different
systems. They are distinguished not by the degree of perfection, but by
a different system-constructive principle.” 961
The German philosopher Nietzsche rejected Darwinism, pointing

out, as Copleston writes, "that during most of the time taken up in the
formation of a certain organ or quality, the inchoate organ is of no use
to its possessor and cannot aid it in its struggle with external
circumstances and forces. The influence of ‘external circumstances’ is
absurdly overrated by Darwin. The essential factor in the vital process is
precisely the tremendous power to shape and create forms from within,
a power which uses and exploits the environment." 962
The idea that all things came into being out of nothing by chance
was rejected already in the fourth century by St. Basil the Great:
"Where did you get what you have? If you say that you received it by
chance, you are an atheist, you do not know your Creator and are not
grateful to your Benefactor." 963 And St. Nectarios of Pentapolis, writing
in 1885, was withering in his rejection of this new version of a very old
heresy: "The followers of pithecogeny [the derivation of man from the
apes] are ignorant of man and of his lofty destiny, because they have
denied him his soul and Divine revelation. They have rejected the
Spirit, and the Spirit has abandoned them. They withdrew from God,
and God withdrew from them; for, thinking they were wise, they
became fools... If they had acted with knowledge, they would not have
lowered themselves so much, nor would they have taken pride in
tracing the origin of the human race to the most shameless of animals.
Rightly did the Prophet say of them: 'Man being in honour, did not
understand; he is compared to the dumb beasts, and is become like
unto them.’" 964
A little later, St. Nektary of Optina affirmed that the fossils, the only
scientific evidence for evolution, were actually laid down by the Great
Flood and had nothing to do with what St. Theophan the Recluse called
961
Gumerov, “The Orthodox Church Rejects Evolution & Accepts Genuine Science”, Russian
Faith; Science as a Confirmation of the Biblical Doctrine of Creation, Samara, 2001, p.26-27.
962
Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 7, part II: Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, Garden
City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1965, pp. 185-186.
963
St. Basil the Great, Sermon on Avarice.
964
St. Nectarios, Sketch concerning Man, Athens, 1885.
577
the “geological madness” of Darwinism: "Once a man came to me who
simply couldn't believe that there had been a flood. Then I told him
that on very high mountains in the sand are found shells and other
remains from the ocean floor, and how geology testifies to the flood,
and he came to believe. You see how necessary learning is at times."
And again the elder said: "God not only permits, but demands of man
that he grow in knowledge. However, it is necessary to live and learn
so that not only does knowledge not ruin morality, but that morality
not ruin knowledge." 965
St. Nektary's fellow-elder at Optina, St. Barsanuphius (+1912),

emphasized the ruination of morality by Darwinism: “ Darwin created an
entire system according to which life is a struggle for existence, a struggle
for the strong against the weak, where those that are conquered are doomed
to destruction. This is already the beginning of a bestial philosophy, and
those who come to believe in it wouldn't think twice about killing a man,
assaulting a woman, or robbing their closest friend - and they would do all
this calmly, with a full recognition of their right to commit their crimes.” 966
It was the implicit denial of the rational, free, spiritual and

immortal soul that particularly shocked the early critics of Darwinism.
For as Darwinism rapidly evolved from a purely biological theory of
origins into the metaphysical theory of universal evolutionism, going
back to what scientists now call the Big Bang, the image of man that
emerged was not simply animalian but completely material. Man was
made in the image, not of God, but of dead matter.
Moreover, evolutionism turned out to be an explanation of the

origins of the whole universe on the basis of a supposedly new
philosophy or religion that was in fact very old and very pagan. For
"all things were made" now, not by God the Word, the eternal Life and
Light of the world, but by blind mutation and "natural selection" (i.e.
death). These were the two hands of original Chaos, the father of all
things - a conception as old as the pre-Socratic philosophers
Anaximander and Heraclitus and as retrogressive as the pre-Christian
religions of Egypt and Babylon.
Darwin’s idea of species evolving into and from each other also
recalls the Hindu idea of reincarnation. A more likely contemporary
influence was Schopenhauer’s philosophy of Will. For both
Schopenhauer and Darwin the blind, selfish Will to live was
everything; for both there was neither intelligent design nor selfless
love, but only the struggle to survive; for both the best that mankind
could hope for was not Paradise but a kind of Buddhist nirvana.
965
Zhitia prepodobnykh Startsev Optinoj Pustyni (The Lives of the Holy Elders of Optina Desert),
Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, 1992.
966
Victor Afanasyev, Elder Barsanuphius of Optina, Platina: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood,
2000, p. 488.
578
Schopenhauer in metaphysics, Darwin in science, and Marx in
political theory formed a kind of unholy and unconsubstantial trinity
of false prophets, whose essential concept was Will. 967 Marx liked
Darwinism because it appeared to justify the idea of class struggle as
the fundamental mechanism of human evolution. "The idea of class
struggle logically flows from 'the law of the struggle for existence'. It is
precisely by this law that Marxism explains the emergence of classes
and their struggle, whence logically proceeds the idea of the
dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead of racist pre-eminence class pre-
eminence is preached." 968
However, Darwinism’s blind historicism and implicit atheism was

also congenial to Marx. As Richard Wurmbrand notes: "After Marx had
read The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, he wrote a letter to
Lassalle in which he exults that God - in the natural sciences at least -
had been given 'the death blow'". 969 "Karl Marx," writes Hieromonk
Damascene, "was a devout Darwinist, who in Das Kapital called
Darwin's theory 'epoch making'. He believed his reductionist,
materialistic theories of the evolution of social organization to be
deducible from Darwin's discoveries, and thus proposed to dedicate
Das Kapital to Darwin. The funeral oration over Marx's body, delivered
by Engels, stressed the evolutionary basis of communism: 'Just as
Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx
discovered the law of evolution in human history.'" 970
“Darwinism and Marxism,” wrote Fr. Seraphim Rose, “are

inextricably linked. Karl Marx, one of world history’s biggest villains,
dedicated his book Das Kapital to Darwin. The five biggest mass
murderers in world history, Pol Pot, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao,
were all heavily influenced by Darwin. With Darwinist-utilitarian
logic, Pol Pot stated, ‘Keeping you is no gain. Losing you is no loss.’
Adolf Hitler dedicated his memoir Mein Kampf (My Struggle) to the
subtitle of The Origin of Species, and tried to put Darwin’s theory into
practice by conducting the Holocaust. Vladimir Lenin said, ‘Darwin put
an end to the belief that the animal and vegetable species bear no
relation to one another, except by chance, and that they were created
by God, and hence immutable.’ He also owned a bronze statue of
bronze statue of an ape gazing at an oversized human skull on a stack
of his books, one of them being The Origin of Species. His right-hand
man Leon Trotsky also talked about Darwin’s influence on himself.
When Joseph Stalin came across Darwin as a young kid, he became
convinced that God does not exist, and told a classmate all about him.
967
Marx's task was "to convert the 'Will' of German philosophy and this abstraction into a force in
the practical world" (A.N. Wilson, After the Victorians, London: Hutchinson, 2005, p. 126).
968
Fr. Timothy Alferov, Pravoslavnoe Mirovozzrenie i Sovremennoe Estestvoznanie (The Orthodox
World-View and the Contemporary Science of Nature), Moscow: "Palomnik", 1998, p. 158.
969
Wurmbrand, Was Karl Marx a Satanist?, Diane Books (USA), 1976, p. 44.
970
Hieromonk Damascene, in Fr. Seraphim Rose, Genesis, Creation and Early Man, Platina, Ca.: St.
Herman of Alaska Press, 2000, p. 339, note.
579
When he took power, he said, ‘There are three things that we do to
disabuse the minds of our seminary students. We had to teach them the
age of the earth, the geologic origin, and Darwin’s teachings.’ Stalin
also tried to create ape-men super warriors by putting human semen
into female apes. Mao Tse-tung listed Darwin as the most influential
Westerner in his life, along with Darwin’s followers Thomas Huxley,
Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton, and Herbert Spencer. Mao also said
‘The basis of Chinese socialism rest on Darwin and his theory of
evolution.’” 971
"The years after 1870," writes Gareth Stedman Jones, "were

dominated by the prestige of the natural sciences, especially that of
Darwin. Playing to these preoccupations, Engels presented Marx's
work, not as a theory of communism or as a study of capitalism, but as
the foundation of a parallel 'science of historical materialism'.
Socialism had made a transition from 'utopia' to 'science'"... 972
Darwinism can also be seen as the application of the principles of capitalist

competition to nature. Thus Bertrand Russell writes: "Darwinism was an
application to the whole of animal and vegetable life of Malthus's theory of
population, which was an integral part of the politics and economics of the
Benthamites - a global free competition, in which victory went to the animals
that most resembled successful capitalists. Darwin himself was influenced by
Malthus, and was in general sympathy with the Philosophical Radicals. There
was, however, a great difference between the competition admired by orthodox
economists and the struggle for existence which Darwin proclaimed as the
motive force of evolution. 'Free competition,' in orthodox economics, is a very
artificial conception, hedged in by legal restrictions. You may undersell a
competitor, but you must not murder him. You must not use the armed forces
of the State to help you to get the better of foreign manufacturers. Those who
have the good fortune to possess capital must not seek to improve their lot by
revolution. 'Free competition', as understood by the Benthamites, was by no
means really free.
"Darwinian competition was not of this limited sort; there were no

rules against hitting below the belt. The framework of law does not
exist among animals, nor is war excluded as a competitive method. The
use of the State to secure victory in competition was against the rules
as conceived by the Benthamites, but could not be excluded from the
Darwinian struggle. In fact, though Darwin himself was a Liberal, and
though Nietzsche never mentions him except with contempt, Darwin's
'Survival of the Fittest' led, when thoroughly assimilated, to something
much more like Nietzsche's philosophy than like Bentham's. These
developments, however, belong to a later period, since Darwin's Origin
971
Rose, Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Press.
972
Gareth Jones, "The Routes of Revolution", BBC History Magazine, vol. 3 (6), June, 2002, p. 36.
580
of Species was published in 1859, and its political implications were not
at first perceived…" 973
The political implications of Darwin's book are obvious from its full
title: On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured Races in the struggle for life. Darwin did not
mean by "races" races of men, but species of animals. However, the
inference was easily drawn that certain races of men are more
“favoured” than others; and this inference was still more easily drawn
after the publication of The Descent of Man in 1871.
Darwin’s writings are definitely racist. In The Descent of Man he

wrote, “At some future period, not very distant as measured by
centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate,
and replace, the savage races throughout the world.” And again: “With
savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. … We civilized
men, on the other hand … build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed
and the sick. … Thus the weak members propagate their kind. No one
who had attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that
this must be highly injurious to the race of man. … Hardly anyone is so
ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. …” Darwin continued:
“Civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace
the savage races throughout the world. … The break between man and
his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man
in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and
some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or
Australian and the gorilla.”
Very soon different races or classes or groups of men were being

viewed as if they were different species. "Applied to politics," writes
Jacques Barzun, "[Darwinism] bred the doctrine that nations and other
social groups struggle endlessly in order that the fittest shall survive.
So attractive was this 'principle' that it got the name of Social
Darwinism." 974 Thus Social Darwinism may be defined as the idea that
"human affairs are a jungle in which only the fittest of nations, classes,
or individuals will survive". 975
Social Darwinism leads to the conclusion that certain races are

congenitally superior to others. "Only congenital characteristics are
inherited," writes Russell, "apart from certain not very important
exceptions. Thus the congenital differences between men acquire
fundamental importance." 976 As Fr. Timothy Alferov writes: "The ideas
of racial pre-eminence - racism, Hitlerism - come from the Darwinist
teaching on the origin of the races and their unequal significance. The
973
Russell, op. cit. , pp. 807-808
974
Barzun, op. cit. pp. 571-572.
975
Norman Davies, Europe, London: Pimlico, 1997, p. 794.
976
581
law of the struggle for existence supposedly obliges the strong races to
exert a strong dominance over the other races, to the extent of
destroying the latter. It is not necessary to describe here the incarnation
of these ideas in life in the example of Hitlerism, but it is worth noting
that Hitler greatly venerated Darwin." 977
Social Darwinism also had an important effect on criminology.

Thus, as Evans writes, “Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), who served with
the Italian army in 1863 fighting brigands in Calabria, came to the view
that criminals were not made but born, representing throwbacks to an
earlier stage of human evolution. In 1876 he published Criminal Man,
which took advantage of the development of photography to argue that
born criminals had long arms, simian features and other physical
attributes of the ape. Lombroso’s idea of atavism, of criminals as
evolutionary throwbacks, never received much support, and as time
went on he modified his arguments to suggest that hereditary
criminality was also the consequence of generations of alcoholism, or
sexually transmitted diseases, or malnutrition; but more generally the
basic idea that criminality was inherited began to exert a growing
influence across Europe in the late nineteenth century.
“The consequences of Lambroso’s basic argument, popularized by

his student Enrico Ferri (1856-1929) in Italy, by Gustav Aschaffenburg
(1866-1944) in Germany, by Francis Galton (1822-1911) in Britain, and
by Rafael Salillas (1854-1923) in Spain, were momentous. The study of
crime and criminality became the province not of law and its
practitioners but of medicine and of professional criminology.
Increasingly, In the 1890s and beyond, arguments began to be raised in
favour of the compulsory sterilization of the ‘inferior’ who might be
found work but should not be allowed to reproduce. Lombroso himself,
along with many others who shared at least some of his views, began to
argue for capital punishment on new grounds, namely that the
extremely degenerate offender, the criminal with inherited violent
traits, could neither be rendered safe nor removed from the chain of
heredity unless he or she was eliminated altogether. Punishment had
come full circle, from the medieval and early modern punishment of
the body to the Enlightenment and Victorian punishment of the mind,
and back again to the turn-of-the-century punishment of the body
again.” 978
However, while appearing to widen the differences between races

and classes of men, Social Darwinism also reduces them between men
and other species - with startling consequences.
977
Alferov, Pravoslavnoe Mirovozzrenie i Sovremennoe Estesvoznanie (The Orthodox
World-View and the Contemporary Science of Nature), Moscow: "Palomnik", 1998,
pp. 157-158.
978
582
Thus Russell writes: "If men and animals have a common ancestry,
and if men developed by such slow stages that there were creatures
which we should not know whether to classify as human or not, the
question arises: at what stage in evolution did men, or their semi-
human ancestors, begin to be all equal? Would Pithecanthropus
erectus, if he had been properly educated, have done work as good as
Newton's? Would the Piltdown Men have written Shakespeare's poetry
if there had been anybody to convict him of poaching? A resolute
egalitarian who answers these questions in the affirmative will find
himself forced to regard apes as the equals of human beings. And why
stop at apes? I do not see how he is to resist an argument in favour of
Votes for Oysters. An adherent of evolution should maintain that not
only the doctrine of the equality of all men, but also that of the rights
of man, must be condemned as unbiological, since it makes too
emphatic a distinction between men and other animals." 979
Since Russell’s time this idea of the essential equality between men
and animals has come to be taken more seriously than even the Social
Darwinists evidently took it… Thus a British television programme
once seriously debated the question whether apes should have the
same rights as human beings, and came to a positive conclusion... 980
Arthur Balfour, who became British Prime Minister in 1902,

described universal evolutionism as follows: "A man - so far as natural
science is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe,
the Heaven-descended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an
accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the
meanest of the planets. Of the combination of causes which first
converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of
humanity, science indeed, as yet knows nothing. It is enough that from
such beginnings famine, disease, and mutual slaughter, fit nurses of the
future lords of creation, have gradually evolved after infinite travail, a
race with conscience enough to feel that it is vile, and intelligent
enough to know that it is insignificant. We survey the past, and see that
its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt,
of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and
learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but
short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our
investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the
sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer
tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man
will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish…" 981
979
980
Cf. See Joanna Bourke, What it Means to be Human, London: Virago, 2011.
981
Balfour, The Foundations of Belief, 1895, pp. 30-31; in Wilson, The Victorians, London:
Hutchinson, 2002, p. 557.
583
A truly melancholy philosophy – but fortunately there is no reason
to believe in it. C.S. Lewis wrote: "By universal evolutionism I mean the
belief that the very formula of universal process is from imperfect to
perfect, from small beginnings to great endings, from the rudimentary
to the elaborate, the belief which makes people find it natural to think
that morality springs from savage taboos, adult sentiment from
infantile sexual maladjustments, thought from instinct, mind from
matter, organic from inorganic, cosmos from chaos. This is perhaps the
deepest habit of mind in the contemporary world. It seems to me
immensely implausible, because it makes the general course of nature
so very unlike those parts of nature we can observe. You remember the
old puzzle as to whether the owl came from the egg or the egg from the
owl. The modern acquiescence in universal evolutionism is a kind of
optical illusion, produced by attending exclusively to the owl's
emergence from the egg. We are taught from childhood to notice how
the perfect oak grows from the acorn and to forget that the acorn itself
was dropped by a perfect oak. We are reminded constantly that the
adult human being was an embryo, never that the life of the embryo
came from two adult human beings. We love to notice that the express
engine of today is the descendant of the 'Rocket'; we do not equally
remember that the 'Rocket' springs not from some even more
rudimentary engine, but from something much more perfect and
complicated than itself - namely, a man of genius. The obviousness or
naturalness which most people seem to find in the idea of emergent
evolution thus seems to be a pure hallucination…" 982
Although the complete unmasking of Darwinism and evolutionism

has had to wait until the discovery of DNA in 1953, already in the
nineteenth century its falseness even from a purely scientific point of
view was known. Thus Gumerov writes: “ With the advent of genetics,
evolutionism was dealt a mortal blow. The ingenious work of Gregor
Mendel, Experiments on Plant Hybrids, was published in 1866, and by
the 20th century the laws of heredity came to be even better
understood. The laws of genetics knocked out one of the cornerstones
from the foundation of evolutionary assumptions — the presumed
transfer of acquired characters by inheritance. In fact, science has
shown that each species has a reliable internal mechanism giving it
amazing stability. Talking about the evolution of a species was
revealed to be scientifically incorrect...”
Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry?" in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, New York:
982
Macmillan, 1949.
584
70. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
The American Civil War was not unexpected. As early as 1787

Alexander Hamilton "had made a prediction: The newly created federal
government would either 'triumph altogether over the state
governments and reduce them to an entire subordination,' he surmised,
or 'in the course of a few years the contests about the boundaries of
power between the particular governments and the general government
will produce a dissolution of the Union.'" 983
However, Hamilton’s words related to statehood and revolution, not

slavery. For the Civil War was not only about slavery: it was also, and
perhaps primarily, about the nature of the state… States can create
nations, just as nations - states. As Norman Davies writes, in the
nineteenth century nationalism "came in two opposing variants. One of
them, state or civil nationalism, was sponsored by the ruling
establishments of existing states. The other, popular or ethnic
nationalism, was driven by the demands of communities living within
those states and against the policy of those governments. There are as
many theories on the essence of nations as there are theorists. But the
essential qualities would seem to be spiritual in nature. 'The nation is a
soul,' wrote Renan, 'a spiritual principle. [It] consists of two things.
One is the common legacy of rich memories from the past. The other is
the present consensus, the will to live together.'" 984
The 1848 revolution in Europe had shown how difficult it was to

define a nation, and how people of the same nation according to
theories of language or blood nevertheless preferred to remain citizens
of States ruled by other nations rather than go to war for the sake of
reuniting the "nation" in a single, ethnically homogeneous state.
Clearly, there was much uniting North and South in terms of language,
culture, religion and race. In his famous Gettysburg Address Abraham
Lincoln emphasized that the United States was a single nation, using
the word "nation" five times. 985 But if one group of people feels itself to
constitute a different nation from another group, this psychological fact
alone creates an important difference. Thus insofar as the Southerners
felt themselves to be a different nation, they were a different nation.
And so, if the revolution of 1776 had been justified in the name of the
liberty of the new nation called America, although it had previously
been one nation with Britain, then that of the Southerners in 1861 was
no less justified, in their view - not least because, as they argued, the
Constitution of the United States permitted the secession of individual
States. 986
983
Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers, New York: Vintage Books, 2002, p. 77.
984
Davies, Europe, pp. 812, 813.
985
David Reynolds, America, Empire of Liberty: A New History p. 205.
585
"Each side," writes J.M. Roberts, "accused the other of revolutionary
designs and behaviour. It is very difficult not to agree with both of
them. The heart of the Northern position, as Lincoln saw, was that
democracy should prevail, a claim assuredly of potentially limitless
revolutionary implication. In the end, what the North achieved was
indeed a social revolution in the South. On the other side, what the
South was asserting in 1861 (and three more states joined the
Confederacy after the first shots were fired) was that it had the same
right to organize its life as had, say, revolutionary Poles or Italians in
Europe." 987
The truth seems to be that the South was indeed a nation, but the
Civil War destroyed the possibility of its becoming a nation-state.
Dominic Lieven writes: “William Gladstone, then the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, commented in 1862 that Confederate independence seemed
assured not just by the South’s military victories but above all because
the Confederacy had proved itself to be a true nation. His statement
was reasonable. Over three quarters of white male Southerners of
military age served in the armed forces, and a third of them died, and
exceptionally high level of commitment by any comparison. The myths
and memories of war create nations. Had the Confederacy survived on
the battlefield, the immense sacrifices made by Southerners in its cause
would have guaranteed the consolidation of a Southern nation-state for
generations. Instead, the Confederacy was destroyed in one of the most
important and brilliant examples of nation-killing in history. Above all
defeat was owed to the massive mobilization and intelligent direction
of Northern military and economic power and to the hold of American
nationalism on the Northern imagination. No amount of military or
economic power would have sufficed to destroy the Confederacy unless
backed by the willingness of Northern young men to die in massive
numbers and far from home in the cause of an American nation that
they believed must include all the territories of the Union and would
stretch from ocean to ocean…” 988
The war arose because of a quarrel over whether the new western
states should be allowed to have slaves or not. Ian Rimmer writes:
“After the war with Mexico ended in 1848, the borders of the American
Republic became finalized. Expansion into the new territories to the
west began, but disputes about whether they should become free or
slave were fierce, and at times violent. Various compromises and short-
term fixes gave some stability but the ultimate problem was
986
James Ostrowski, "An Analysis of President Lincoln's Legal Arguments against
Secession". Paper delivered at the academic conference on secession-- "Secession,
State, and Economy", April, 1995.
987
Roberts, History of the World, Oxford, 1992, p. 620.
988
Lieven, Towards the Flame: Empire, Wat and the End of Tsarist Russia, London: Allen Lane, 2015,
p. 22.
586
crystallized by a speech on 16 June 1858 in Springfield, Illinois. It was
given by the newly formed Republican Party’s candidate for the Illinois
senate seat. He argued: ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand. I
believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and
half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect this
house to fall. But I do expect it will cease to be divided.’ The
candidate’s name was Abraham Lincoln.” 989
According to Rimmer, in 1862, Lincoln, now President, “seized the

opportunity to confront the issue of slavery. At war’s onset he had
maintained its purpose was to save the Union and pledged to leave the
institution of slavery unaffected in the Southern States. Lincoln
believed he wasn’t able to challenge state-sanctioned servitude under
the Constitution, which kept the important border slave states of
Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware loyal to the Union.
“However, as the war unfolded, slavery’s effects couldn’t be

ignored, as they were damaging the Union campaign. Slaves were used
to construct defences for the Confederate armies, while slave work on
farms and plantations kept the South’s economy going, allowing more
of the white population to fight. Determined to affect the balance of the
war, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in
September 1862.” 990
In his inaugural address in March, 1861 he declared: "I have no

purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of
slavery in the States where it exists." And again he said: "If I could save
the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save
it by freeing all the slaves I would do it, and if I could save it by
freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." It was not
until January 1, 1863, nearly two years into the Civil War, that Lincoln,
now president, signed an Emancipation Declaration freeing four
million black slaves. This act, though designed mainly to attract blacks
into the Northern Armies, changed the nature of the war, in Yankee
eyes, from one of unification (of North and South) into one of liberation
(of the black slaves).
Michael Hutcheson argues that Lincoln was not a real abolitionist, but simply
a good politician: “In his first inaugural address, Lincoln stated clearly that (1) he
had no legal authority to interfere with slavery where it existed, (2) that he had
no inclination or intention to do so even if he had the legal authority, (3) that he
would enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, returning runaway slaves escaping to the
North to their masters in the South, and (4) that he fully supported the Thirteenth
Amendment then being debated in Congress which would protect slavery in
perpetuity and was irrevocable. He later famously stated, ‘Do not paint me with
the Abolitionist brush.’
989
Rimmer, “Lincoln’s Civil War”, All About History, p. 28.
990
Rimmer, op. cit., p. 32.
587
“Although there was some opposition to slavery in the country, the
government was willing to concede everything the South wanted regarding
slavery to keep it in the Union. Given all these facts, the idea that the South
seceded to protect slavery is as absurd as the idea that Lincoln fought the war to
end slavery. Lincoln himself said in a famous letter after the war began that his
sole purpose was to save the Union, and not to either save or end slavery; that if
he could save the Union without freeing a single slave, he would. Nothing could
be clearer.
“For decades before the war, the South, through harsh tariffs, had been
supplying about 85% of the country’s revenue, nearly all of which was being
spent in the North to boost its economy, build manufacturing, infrastructure,
railroads, canals, etc. With the passage of the 47% Morrill Tariff the final nail was
in the coffin. The South did not secede to protect slavery, although certainly they
wished to protect it; they seceded over a dispute about unfair taxation, an
oppressive Federal government, and the right to separate from that oppression
and be governed ‘by consent’, exactly the same issues over which the Founding
Fathers fought the Revolutionary War. When a member of Lincoln’s cabinet
suggested he let the South go in peace, Lincoln famously replied, ‘Let the South
go? Where, then, would we get our revenue?’ He then launched a brutal,
empirical war to keep the free and sovereign states, by force of arms, in the
Union they had created and voluntarily joined, and then voluntarily left. This
began his reign of terror.
“Only after the Union had suffered two years of crushing defeats in battle did
Lincoln resolve to ‘emancipate’ the slaves, and only as a war measure, a military
tactic, not for moral or humanitarian purposes. He admitted this, remarking, ‘We
must change tactics or lose the game.’ He was hoping, as his original draft of the
document shows, that a slave uprising would occur, making it harder for
Southerners to continue the war. His only interest in freeing the slaves was in
forcing the South to remain in the Union. His Emancipation Proclamation was
denounced by Northerners, Southerners and Europeans alike for its absurdity
and hypocrisy; for, it only ‘freed’ the slaves in the seceded states—where he
could not reach them—and kept slavery intact in the North and the border states
—where he could have freed them at once.”991
“The real question” about American slavery, writes Eric Hobsbawm, “is why
it should have led to secession and civil war, rather than to some sort of formula
of coexistence. After all, though no doubt most people in the North detested
slavery, militant abolitionism alone was never strong enough to determine the
Union's policy. And Northern capitalism, whatever the private views of
businessmen, might well have found it as possible and convenient to come to
terms with and exploit a slave South as international business has with the
'apartheid' of South Africa.
991
Hutcheson, “The Terrible Truth about Abraham Lincoln and the Confederate War”, America,
Snap out of it!, https://snapoutofitamerica.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/the-terrible-truth-about-
abraham-lincoln-and-the-confederate-war/amp/.
588
"Of course slave societies, including that of the South, were doomed. None of
them survived the period from 1848 to 1890 - not even Cuba and Brazil. They
were already isolated both physically, by the abolition of the African slave-trade,
which was pretty effective by the 1850s, and, as it were, morally, by the
overwhelming consensus of bourgeois liberalism which regarded them as
contrary to history's march, morally undesirable and economically inefficient. It
is difficult to envisage the survival of the South as a slave society into the
twentieth century, any more than the survival of serfdom in Eastern Europe,
even if (like some schools of historians) we consider both economically viable as
systems of production. But what brought the South to the point of crisis in the
1850s was a more specific problem: the difficulty of coexisting with a dynamic
northern capitalism and a flood of migration into the West.
"In purely economic terms, the North was not much worried about the South,
an agrarian region hardly involved in industrialisation. Time, population,
resources and production were on its side. The main stumbling-blocks were
political. The South, a virtual semi-colony of the British to whom it supplied the
bulk of their raw cotton, found free trade advantageous, whereas the Northern
industry had long been firmly and militantly committed to protective tariffs,
which it was unable to impose sufficiently for its desires because of the political
leverage of the Southern states (who represented, it must be recalled, almost half
the total number of states in 1850). Northern industry was certainly more
worried about a nation half-free trading and half-protectionist than about one
half-slave and half-free. What was equally to the point, the South did its best to
offset the advantages of the North by cutting it off from its hinterland,
attempting to establish a trading and communications area facing south and
based on the Mississippi river system rather than facing east to the Atlantic, and
so far as possible pre-empting the expansion to the West. This was natural
enough since its poor whites had long explored and opened the West.
"But the very economic superiority of the North meant that the South had to
insist with increasing stubbornness on its political force - to stake its claims in the
most formal terms (e.g. by insisting on the official acceptance of slavery in new
western territories), to stress the autonomy of states ('states' rights') against the
national government, to exercise its veto over national policies, to discourage
northern economic developments, etc. In effect it had to be an obstacle to the
North while pursuing its expansionist policy in the West. Its only assets were
political. For (given that it could not or would not beat the North at its own game
of capitalist development) the currents of history ran dead against it. Every
improvement in transport strengthened the links of the West with the Atlantic.
Basically the railroad system ran from east to west with hardly any long lines
from north to south. Moreover, the men who peopled the West, whether they
came from North or South, were not slave-owners but poor, white and free,
attracted by free soil or gold or adventure. The formal extension of slavery to
new territories and states was therefore crucial to the South, and the increasingly
embittered conflicts of the two sides during the 1850s turned mainly on this
question. At the same time slavery was irrelevant to the West, and indeed
western expansion might actually weaken the slave system. It provided no such
reinforcement as that which Southern leaders hoped for when envisaging the
589
annexation of Cuba and the creation of a Southern-Caribbean plantation
empire. In brief, the North was in a position to unify the continent and the
South was not. Aggressive in posture, its real recourse was to abandon the
struggle and secede from the Union, and this is what it did when the election of
Abraham Lincoln from Illinois in 1860 demonstrated that it had lost the 'Middle
West'.
"For four years civil war raged. In terms of casualties and destruction it was
by far the greatest war in which any 'developed' country was involved in our
period, though relatively it pales beside the more or less contemporary
Paraguayan War in South America, and absolutely beside the Taiping Wars in
China. The Northern states, though notably inferior in military performance,
eventually won because of their vast preponderance of manpower, productive
capacity and technology. After all, they contained over 70 per cent of the total
population of the United States, over 80 per cent of the men of military age, and
over 90 per cent of its industrial production. Their triumph was also that of
American capitalism and of the modern United States. But, though slavery was
abolished, it was not the triumph of the Negro, slave or free. After a few years of
'Reconstruction' (i.e. forced democratisation) the South reverted to the control of
conservative white Southerners, i.e. racists. Northern occupying troops were
finally withdrawn in 1877. In one sense it achieved its object: the Northern
Republicans (who retained the presidency for most of the time from 1860 to 1932)
could not break into the solidly Democratic South, which therefore retained
substantial autonomy. The South, in turn, through its block vote, could exercise
some national influence, since its support was essential for the success of the
other great party, the Democrats. In fact, it remained agrarian, poor, backward
and resentful; the whites resented the never-forgotten defeat, the blacks the
disfranchisement and ruthless subordination re-imposed by the whites." 992
Even the Northerners complained. Thus "the lawmakers of Illinois - the

president's home state - called the Proclamation [of Emancipation in 1863] 'a
gigantic usurpation at once converting the war professedly commenced by the
Administration for the vindication of the authority of the Constitution into the
crusade for the sudden, unconditional and violent liberation of 3 million negro
slaves, a result which would not only be a total subversion of the Federal Union
but a revolution in the social organization of the Southern States the present and
far-reaching consequences of which to both races cannot be contemplated
without the most dismal foreboding of horror and dismay.'"993
"In a sense," writes Roberts, "there had been no colour problem while slavery
existed. Servile status was the barrier separating the overwhelming majority of
blacks (there had always been a few free among them) from whites, and it was
upheld by legal sanction. Emancipation swept away the framework of legal
inferiority and replaced this with a framework, or myth, of democratic equality
when very few Americans were ready to give this social reality. Millions of
blacks in the South were suddenly free. They were also for the most part
992
Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital (1848-1875), London: Abacus, 1975, pp. 170-173.
993
Reynolds, op. cit., p. 199.
590
uneducated, largely untrained except for field labour, and virtually without
leadership of their own race. For a little while in the Southern states they leant
for support on the occupying armies of the Union; when this prop was removed
blacks disappeared from legislatures and public offices of the Southern states to
which they had briefly aspired. In some areas they disappeared from the
polling-booths, too. Legal disabilities were replaced by a social and physical
coercion which was sometimes harsher than the old regime of slavery. The slave
at least had the value to his master of being an investment of capital; he was
protected like other property and was usually ensured a minimum of security
and maintenance. Competition in a free labour market at a moment when the
economy of large areas of the South was in ruins, with impoverished whites
struggling for subsistence, was disastrous for the black. By the end of the century
he had been driven by a poor white population bitterly resentful of defeat and
emancipation into social subordination and economic deprivation." 994
*
"Today," writes John Keegan, "Lincoln would be unable to deliver
the speeches on which he won the nomination in 1860. Lincoln, as he
expressly made clear, did not believe in the personal equality of black
and white. He held the black man to be the white's inferior and
irredeemably so. He also, however, held the black man to be the white's
legal equal, with an equality recognised by the founding laws of the
United States, a recognition requiring legal empowerment. Blacks must
have the same access to the law as whites, and exercise the same
political rights.
"Most Southerners held the opposite, believing that unless the

inequality of blacks was legally enforced, their own way of life would
be overthrown. Some Southern ideologues argued fervently that
slavery was a guarantee of freedom, not only the freedom of the whites
to live as they did and to organise the Southern states as they were
organised but the freedom of the blacks also, since slavery protected
the blacks from the economic harshness suffered by the labouring poor
in the Northern factory system. Books were written to argue and
demonstrate the case, and Southern polemicists advocated
unashamedly with their Northern opponents. There is no doubt that it
was believed also, since the spectacle of happy blacks living under
paternal care on well-run plantations did seem to support the idea of
slavery as a sort of welfare system." 995
Thus Senator James Hammond of South Carolina… said that the

"difference between us is that our slaves are hired for life and well
compensated, there is no starvation, no begging, no want of
employment among our people, and not too much employment either.
Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated,
which may be proved in the most painful manner, at any hour in any
994
Roberts, op. cit., pp. 621-622.
995
Keegan, The American Civil War, London: Hutchinson, 2009, pp. 31-32.
591
street in any of your large towns. Why you meet more beggars in one
day, on any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet
in a lifetime in the whole South." 996
Hammond had a point, and other observers favourably compared

the situation of black slaves in America to that of white English
workers of the time. Thus Robert Owen noted: "Bad and unwise as
American slavery is and must continue to be, the white slavery in the
manufactories of England was at this unrestricted period far worse
than the house slaves which I afterwards saw in the West Indies and in
the United States, and in many respects, especially as regards health,
food and clothing, the latter were much better provided for than were
those oppressed and degraded children and work-people in the home
manufactories of Great Britain." 997
Nevertheless, there were real abuses in the South - for example, the
very liberal use of the whip by slave-owners, their sexual abuse of
black slave women, and the fact that they had the power to break up
slave families by selling the breadwinner alone and keeping his family
(this was the theme of the famous novel of the time, Uncle Tom's Cabin).
Moreover, there is no doubt that most Southern Whites believes that
the blacks were naturally inferior to themselves. And they were not
alone in this opinion. Many Europeans and Americans did not regard
slaves as fully human. As Joanna Bourke writes, “this construction of
slaves as inhuman monsters or ‘things’ allowed significant degrees of
violence to be directed against them. In the supposedly idyllic New
World, brutality was covertly legitimate in law – often by permitting
‘necessary’ or ‘ordinary’ cruelty. For instance, John Haywood’s A
Manual for the Laws of North-Carolina (1808) allowed masters to kill
slaves if the slaves resisted them or when slaves died ‘under moderate
correction’. Similarly, the Black Code of Georgia (1732-1809) only
outlawed ‘unnecessary and excessive whipping’ and ‘cruelly and
unnecessarily biting and tearing with dogs’. In other words, whipping
and ‘tearing with dogs’ was legitimate, so long as it was not done
cruelly, excessively and unnecessarily. To quote the distinguished
Caribbean scholar Colin Dayan, ‘This commitment to protection thus
becomes a guarantee of tyranny, and the attempt to set limits to
brutality, to curb tortures, not only allowed masters to hide behind the
law but also ensured that the guise of care would remain a “humane”
fiction.’ So were slaves in the American South nothing more than
‘property’, like animals? It certainly seemed that way to the slaves. Ex-
slave Charles Moses from Brookhaven, Mississippi, recalled that slaves
were ‘worked to death’. His master would ‘beat, knock, kick, kill. He
done ever’thing he could ‘cept eat us’. He insisted that God Almighty
never meant for human beings to be like animals. Us Niggers has a soul
an’ a heart an’ a min’. We ain’t like a dog or a horse.’
996
997
Owen, in A.N. Wilson, The Victorians, p. 89.
592
“In 1850 Frederick Douglass also claimed that masters had
unlimited power over the bodies of slaves. Slaves’ names were
‘impiously inserted in a master’s leger with horses, sheep and swine’
and that master could ‘work him, flog him, hire him out, sell him, and
in certain circumstances kill him, with perfect impunity. The slave is a
human being, divested of all rights – reduced to the level of a brute – a
mere “chattel” in the eyes of the law – placed beyond the circle of
human brotherhood [sic].’ This was not strictly accurate. Slaves were
not simply ‘things’ in law. Rather, they were carefully constructed
quasi-legal persons. Because they were ‘property’, they could be
harshly punished by their masters. But they were categorized as
‘persons’ when it came to serious crimes. They could not be murdered
(‘unnecessarily’) and they could be indicted and punished for murder.
Thus, in Cresswell’s Executor v. Walker (1861), slaves were held to
have ‘no legal mind, no will which the law can recognize’ so far as civil
acts were concerned. As soon as they committed a crime, however, they
were ascribed personhood. A similar point was intriguingly argued in
1857, the first time a slave stood as a defendant in a US court. This was
the federal prosecution of ‘Amy’, who had been convicted for stealing a
letter from the post office in violation of federal law. Her defence
attorney argued that she was not a legal person. Because she was a
slave, she could not be indicted under an Act of Congress that forbade
‘any person’ to steal a letter from the United States mail. The
prosecutor’s response to this ingenious defence was blunt: ‘I cannot
prove more plainly that the prisoner is a person, a natural person,’ he
exclaimed, ‘than to ask your honors to look at her. There she is.’
“Of course, personhood was not straightforwardly located in an

identifiably ‘human’ face and figure. For one thing, both were highly
racialized. Indeed, the prosecutor could just as easily have gestured
towards Amy to illustrate the point that she was not a ‘natural person’.
This was exactly was racists did, on a routine basis. Pro-slavery
arguments often introduced the idea of polygeny, or the view that
Africans and Europeans had evolved from two entirely different
species. As physician Josiah Nott put it in a lecture given in 1844, the
‘Caucasian and Negro differ in their Anatomical and Physiological
character’ and these differences ‘could not be produced by climate and
other physical causes’. There were, he insisted, ‘several species of the
human race’; these ‘species differ in perfection of their moral and
intellectual endowments’; and ‘a law of nature’ was ‘opposed to the
mingling of white and black races’. He ended his lecture by quoting
Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man: ‘One truth is clear: WHATEVER IS, IS
RIGHT’. In other words, slavery was ‘natural’: the ‘black races’ were
‘naturally’ property, like many other species. Or, as William Harper
put it in the mid-nineteenth century, just as it was right and proper for
humans to ‘exercise dominion over the beasts of the field’, so too, it
593
was ‘as much in the order of nature, that men should enslave each
other.’” 998
The Southern States, or Confederacy, were quite explicit in

declaring that whites were naturally superior to blacks. Thus Annette
Gordon-Reed writes: “The founding documents of the Confederacy [the
Southern States], under which the purported citizens of that entity
lived, just as Americans live under the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution, announced that African slavery would form the
‘cornerstone’ of the country they would create after winning the Civil
War. In 1861, a few weeks before the war began, Alexander Stephens,
the vice president of the Confederacy, put things plainly: ‘The new
constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating
to our peculiar institution – African slavery as it exists amongst us –
the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the
immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in
his forecast had anticipated this and as the “rock upon which the old
Union would split.” He was right… The prevailing ideas entertained by
him and most of the leading statesmen of the time of the formation of
the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in
violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially,
morally, and politically… Those ideas, however, were fundamentally
wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This
was an error.
“’Our new government is founded on exactly the opposite idea; its

foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the
negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the
superior race – is his natural and normal condition.” 999
*
While there can be no doubt the North had a strong moral case in
opposing the South’s “great truth”, it does not follow that the Yankees
were justified in the means they employed. Moreover, by no means all
the southerners were racists, and some had noble motives in resisting
the invasion of their Homeland.
Thus when the famous southern general Robert E. Lee was faced with the
North's intention to destroy the South, he recommended resistance to the
Confederate Congress. "Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled
by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public
sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while
intermingled as at present in the country, I would deprecate any sudden
disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to
both." But, he went on, in the present crisis, "I think we must decide whether
slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves be used against us,
or use them ourselves at the rise of the effects that may be produced on our
Bourke, op. cit., pp. 146-148.
998
999
Gordon-Reed, “America’s Original Sin”, Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2018,
pp. 4-5.
594
social institutions. My own opinion is that we should employ them without
delay," and the "best means of securing the efficiency and fidelity of this
auxiliary force would be to accompany the measures with a well-digested plan
of gradual and general emancipation." 1000
Fr. Steven Allen writes: “Many Southerners, including Robert E. Lee, believed
in gradual emancipation, in which owners would receive compensation, the
freed slaves would receive land to farm, and a peaceful transition could be made
to an all-free society. They never had a chance to try it, because the federal
government sent an army to destroy the South and turn the black people loose
with no land, no education, and no help. It was their old masters who took them
in, gave them work, and fed them. Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy,
had an adopted black son whom Union soldiers cruelly tore away from his
family in order to ‘liberate’ him.”1001
“This is what William Mack Lee the body Servant of General Robert E. Lee
said about Lee and slavery. He stayed with General Lee throughout the war and
until the day Lee died in 1870. Mack said of General Lee after his death ‘I was
raised by one of the greatest men in the world. There was never one born of a
woman greater than General Robert E. Lee, according to my judgment. All of his
servants were set free ten years before the war, but all remained on the
plantation until after the surrender.’ General Lee left Mack $360 in his will, which
Mack used to go to school and started 14 churches.” 1002
Another example was General "Stonewall" Jackson, the South's best general
and, in the opinion of Lord Roberts, commander-in-chief of the British armies
early in the twentieth century, "one of the greatest natural military geniuses the
world ever saw". As James I. Robertson Jr. writes, he was a profoundly religious
man, who deeply loved his two wives. "He owned two slaves, both of whom had
asked him to purchase them after the deaths of their masters. Anna Morrison [his
second wife] brought three slaves to the marriage. Jackson viewed human
bondage with typical simplicity. God had established slavery for reasons man
could not and should not challenge. A good Christian had the twin
1000
1001
Allen, on Facebook, August 25, 2017.
1002
Rene Morgan, on Facebook. Indeed, many Northerners, including famous
generals, had slaves. Thus “William T. Sherman had many slaves that served him
until well after the war was over and did not free them until late in 1865. U.S. Grant
also had several slaves, who were only freed after the 13th amendment in December
of 1865. When asked why he didn't free his slaves earlier, Grant stated: ‘Good help
is so hard to come by these days.’ Contrarily, Confederate General Robert E. Lee
freed his slaves (which he never purchased - they were inherited) in 1862!!! Lee
freed his slaves several years before the war was over, and considerably earlier than
his Northern counterparts. And during the fierce early days of the war when the
South was obliterating the Yankee armies! Lastly, and most importantly, why
did NORTHERN States outlaw slavery only AFTER the war was over? The so-called
"Emancipation Proclamation" of Lincoln only gave freedom to slaves in the
SOUTH! NOT in the North! This pecksniffery even went so far as to find the state of
Delaware rejecting the 13th Amendment in December of 1865 and did not ratify it…
until 1901!” (“Confederate History – Dispelling the Myths”)
595
responsibilities of treating slaves with paternal affection and of introducing them
to the promises of God as found in Holy Scriptures. To that end, Jackson taught a
Sunday afternoon Bible class for all slaves and freedmen in Lexington.
"Jackson and the VMI [Virginia Military Institute] corps of cadets served as
gallows guard in December 1859, when the abolitionist John Brown was executed
for treason and murder having seized the government arsenal at Harpers Ferry.
As war clouds thickened in the months thereafter, Jackson remained calm. The
dissolution of the Union, he told a minister, 'can come only by God's permission,
and will only be permitted if for His people's good.'
"Civil war exploded in mid-April 1861, and Jackson promptly offered his
sword to his native state. Virginia's close ties with the South, and its opposition
to the federal government using troops to coerce a state, were the leading issues
behind Virginia's secession. The state regarded as unacceptable the idea of
federal troops marching through Virginia to wage war on other states. The
nation was still so young that the rights of states remains strongly ingrained in
political thinking. Jackson had been a strong believer in the union until Virginia
left it. When this happened Jackson felt the same as thousands of his
neighbours: Virginia, the Old Dominion, had been in existence for 180 years
before a 'United States' was established. The roots of families like the Lees and
Jacksons ran deep within Virginia's soil. In 1861 an American's birthright and
heritage was his state, not a federation which, during the last fifteen of its
seventy-four years, had been in turmoil over the slavery question." 1003
The cost of the civil war was horrific: 600,000 died on both sides, more than all
the Americans who died in the two world wars (520,000). Many thousands
refused to join the Northern armies and draconian measures were applied to fill
the draft. Brutalities were committed on both sides, but more on the side of the
"liberators", and nostalgia for the Old South has lasted to the present day. The
southern General Robert E. Lee said bitterly: “Any army that wars against
defenseless civilians, no matter its excuse, is no army, but barbarians unworthy
of the name of Christian.”
The slaves were freed, 1004 to enjoy unemployment, continued poverty and the
continued oppression of the whites. "The slaves were freed," writes Reynolds,
"but they did not become equal citizens. The twelve-year Northern occupation of
the South from 1865 to 1877, known as Reconstruction, was too short and not
radical enough to reconstruct Southern ways; in fact, the South defiantly
romanticized the pre-war order as part of its separate identity. From the
perspective of civil rights, Reconstruction was therefore a tragic missed
opportunity - not rectified until the so-called Second Reconstruction of the 1960s,
1003
Robertson, "The Christian Soldier: General Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson", History
Today, vol. 53 (2), February, 2003, pp. 31-32.
1004
The state of Mississippi did not formally revoke slavery until 1995, and its
decision was not entered into the Federal register until 2012
(https://lenta.ru/news/2013/02/19/mississippi/).
596
which depended on an assertion of federal power inconceivable to the still
essentially states' rights mentality of the 1860s. In any case, most Northerners of
the late nineteenth century were just as Negrophobe as their Southern
counterparts; they had little inclination to force on the South racial policies they
rejected for themselves. So, instead of slave and free, the great divide in
American society became the one between white and black…
"Freedom is heady stuff but it does not fill stomachs. Frederick Douglass, the
Northern Black leader, noted that many a freed slave, after a lifetime of
dependence, lacked the means or training to set up on his own. Now 'he must
make his own way in the world, or as the slang phrase has it, "Root, pig, or die";
yet he had none of the conditions of self-preservation or self-protection. He was
free from the individual master but the slave of society. He had neither money,
property, nor friends. He was free from the old plantation' - but was turned loose
'naked, hungry and destitute to the open sky'. And there were 4 million freed
slaves across the South in 1865."1005
For “as is always the case,” writes Lieven, “military victory needed to be
reinforced by a political settlement, and in the American case this meant
accepting a wide degree of autonomy for the South within the Union, thereby
abandoning the Southern blacks. White racism helped to make this settlement
acceptable to the great majority of Northerners.”1006
Of course, the United States remained a land with religious and political
freedom. But as a result of the war the power of the State was vastly increased, in
both North and South. States can truly liberate their subjects, as Tsar Alexander
II did in Russia in 1861; but as often as not liberation by the State leads to greater
subjection to the State.
And this was perhaps the main lesson of the American Civil War for future
generations: that the attempt to force freedom as often as not leads to still greater
slavery. Thus Woodrow Wilson, who became President of the United States in
1913, was a famous southerner who saw the evil effects of Reconstruction at first
hand. These influenced his vaunted neutrality between the Entente and Axis
Powers in the First World War (until 1918), his refusal to sake sides and
advocacy of “peace without victory”.
For, as Adam Tooze writes, “one of Wilson’s earliest memories of childhood in

Virginia was of hearing the news of Lincoln’s election and the rumours of a
coming civil war. Growing up in Augusta, Georgia, in the 1860s – what he would
describe to Lloyd George at Versailles as a ‘conquered and devastated country’ –
he experienced from the side of the vanquished the bitter consequences of a just
war, fought to its ultimate conclusion. It left him deeply suspicious of any
crusading rhetoric. Nor was it just the Civil War that scarred Wilson. The peace
that followed was, if anything, even more traumatic. Throughout his life he
1005
Reynolds, op. cit., pp. 218, 219-220.
1006
Lieven, Towards the Flame. Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia, London:
Allen Lane, 2015, pp. 22-23.
597
would denounce the Reconstruction era that followed, the effort made by the
North to impose a new order on the South that enfranchised the freed black
population. In Wilson’s view it had taken America more than a generation to
recover. Only in the 1890s had something like reconciliation been achieved…” 1007
The victory of the North meant no liberation for the American Indians. “In
December 1868,” writes Simms, “President Johnson told Congress that
‘Comprehensive national policy would seem to sanction the acquisition and
incorporation into our federal union of the several adjacent continental and
insular communities.’ All this was bad news for the Indians who inhabited the
great space between the core area of the Union and its outliers on the Pacific
Ocean. Over the next thirty years, they were progressively expropriated,
marginalized and in many cases simply killed, as the Union moved westwards in
a cascade of new states…”1008
‘Once the war was over,” writes Andrew Marr, “the destruction of native
culture accelerate, particularly once gold had been discovered in the Black Hills
of Dakota. The 1870s saw relentless attacks on the Plains Indians and their
attempts to fight back, which culminate in Crazy Horse’s superb defeat of that
Civil War hero General George Custer at the battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876.
Yet even the Sioux, the boldest and most aggressive of the tribes – it could almost
be said, the Zulu of America – had no chance against the much larger, better
armed and disciplined soldiers sent against them. And these were merely the
advance party of a teeming migration of farmers, hunters, cattle-rancher,
bartenders and shopkeepers. Had the Confederacy survived intact, there is no
doubt that the Native American peoples would still have succumbed to the guns
and sheer numbers of the incomers, but it would not perhaps have happened
quite so quickly.”1009
Let us look briefly at the attitude of the European nations to the American
Civil War.
“The French,” writes Tombs, “wanted to profit from the American Civil
War… to secure Mexico [where they had installed a puppet government under
the Habsburg Archduke Maximilian] by agreement with the Confederacy, the
rebellious slave-owning Southern states…”1010
Protopresbyter James Thornton writes, “the government of Abraham Lincoln
was particularly vigorous in its attempts to keep the European powers from
interfering in the War Between the States. Britain and France were both warned
that formal recognition of the Confederacy by them would mean war with the
United States. Whether the United States would actually have declared war as a
result of recognition is another matter.
1007
Tooze, The Deluge, London: Penguin, 2015, p. 44.
1008
Simms, op. cit. p. 237.
1009
Marr, A History of the World, London: Pan, 2012, p. 426.
1010
598
“War between the United States and Britain nearly erupted as a result of what
is known as the Trent Affair. On November 8, 1861, the USS San Jacinto stopped
the British mail steamer HMS Trent as she was sailing toward the Caribbean
island of St. Thomas (then a Danish possession). On board were two Confederate
diplomats, James Mason and John Slidell, on their way to Europe for discussions
with British and French authorities. The U.S. captain, Charles Wilkes, arrested
the two diplomats, declaring them ‘contraband of war’; removed them to the San
Jacinto; and transported them to Boston, where they were held as prisoners.
While many people in the North were delighted with the seizure of the
Confederates, a careful review of maritime law brought forth serious doubts
about the legality of the action. In Britain, news of the seizure, seen as a flagrant
insult to the British flag, brought an explosion of outrage. London demanded an
apology and the immediate release of the Confederate diplomats. Meanwhile,
British troops were dispatched to Canada in case war broke out. Though initially
reluctant to back down, Lincoln ultimately acquiesced to the British demands,
realizing that were Britain to declare war at the same time the war with the
Confederacy was being fought, the United States would be hard pressed to
prevail.”1011
In Britain, anti-slavery feeling was strong. “Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-

slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), also produced as a stage play, had had a
stunning emotional impact on working-class audiences. So there was potential
sympathy in England for the Northern states, and certainly reluctance to give
active help to the South. President Abraham Lincoln, however, repeatedly
declared that he was not fighting to end slavery, but to preserve the Union, and
this confused matters for the British government and public. If they condemned
slavery, they also had mixed feelings about the Union – not least because of the
threat its expansion posed to Canada – and thought that perhaps the Confederate
states had the right of self-determination. The Southern states, moreover, were
the main suppliers of raw material to England’s huge cotton industry. Disruption
of the supply by a Northern naval blockade of the South caused social and
economic damage, especially in Lancashire, where it caused mass
unemployment; consequently, the labour press (such as Reynold’s News and The
Working Man) sided with the South. Volunteers from England and other
European countries, whether as adventurers or idealists, fought on both sides in
the war, which some saw as having parallels with social and political divisions at
home. As a Stockport weaver who fought for the North put it, ‘I detested slavery
of every kind whether among the white factory operatives at home or among the
negroes of America. I always wet with the dog that was down.’
“With opinion thus divided, there was a possibility that Britain might
recognize the Confederacy and sweep away the Union blockade, allowing the
South to equip itself freely from European shipyards and arsenals, and cotton
supplies to flow. Palmerston, now Prime Minister, was, however, cautious: as he
observed to the Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell, ‘They who in quarrels
interpose, Will often get a bloody nose.’ But a serious dispute with Washington
1011
Thornton, “Partnering with Putin”, New American, November 20, 2015,
http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/21998-partnering-with-
putin
599
in 1861 might easily have tipped the balance towards intervention. In November,
a British ship, the Trent, was stopped on the high seas by a Federal warship and
two Confederate diplomats on their way to Britain were arrested. In Friedrich
Engels’s view, as he wrote to Karl Marx, ‘To take political prisoners by force on a
foreign ship is the clearest casus belli there can be. The fellows must be sheer
fools to land themselves in a war with England.’ Prince Albert helped to calm
down the British government’s response – the last official act of his life – and
Abraham Lincoln’s government sensibly backed down and handed the
diplomats over.
“Then, in the summer of 1862, with North and South deadlocked in an

increasingly bloody and destructive struggle, Napoleon III suggested joint
mediation by France, Britain and Russia to end the war, which could have
resulted in a break-up of the United States. Gladstone, Chancellor of the
Exchequer, reflected in September that: ‘the case of Lancashire is deplorable, but
this is a trifle… compared with the wholesale slaughter that is going on, and its
thoroughly purposeless character, since it has long been (I think) clear enough
that Secession is virtually an established fact, & that Jeff. Davis [the Confederate
president] & his comrades have made a nation.’ – an opinion he later repeated in
a sensational speech in November, and later still regarded as a grave error.
Abolitionists strongly disagreed with Gladstone, whose views the leading
Liberal John Bright explained as due to the ‘taint’ of coming from a slave-owning
family. But part of the public, including many suffering Lancashire workers,
thought Gladstone might be right. Palmerston, as well as being cautious, was, as
we have seen, strongly opposed to slavery and considered that ‘slavery… was
from the beginning the obvious difficulty in our way as mediators’. To impose a
two-state settlement would mean giving ‘the guarantee of England’ to the
perpetuation of Southern slavery, which was unthinkable. The Cabinet decided
for the time being against mediation. Lincoln’s sudden cooperation with London
in 1862 over suppressing the slave trade, his belated proclamation of abolition in
January 1863 – though many thought this was mere opportunism – and a change
in the military situation marked by a Union victory at the bloody battle of
Gettysburg in July decided the issue. Without Britain, France could not act.
British reluctance to support the Confederacy caused disappointment and anger
in the South, and attempt to foment conflict between Britain and the North,
including by minor violations of Canadian neutrality…
“As well as the economic effects on Lancashire, the American Civil War also
hit Jamaica, sparking one of the most notorious episodes in colonial history, the
Morant Bay rebellion of October 1865. The former slave population was
impoverished and dependent on a white and mixed-race landowning class.
Protest, articulated by revivalist Baptist preachers, led to a small uprising in
which twenty people were killed and several plantations looted. The leaders
insisted on their loyalty to Queen Victoria and hope that she would send ‘fresh
gentlemen from England and we and those gentlemen will quite agree’. But there
was panic among the white and mixed-race minorities, and rumours of atrocities.
The governor was Edward Eyre, the son of a clergyman, who had previously
been a humane and successful Protector of Aborigines in South Australia. He
saw Jamaica very differently and declared martial law. This permitted local
600
militia and regular British and West Indian troops and sailors to go on a looting
and killing spree. Houses were burned and people were shot, flogged and
hanged indiscriminately or after derisory courts-martial. Nearly 500 were killed.
They included a prominent local politician and a Baptist minister. A senior
official wrote to the Colonial Secretary: ‘No one will ever believe the things that
were done here in that mad, bad time. And very few will hear of the tenth part of
them – including some of the worst.’ There was an outcry in England, led by the
Anti-Slavery Society, and Eyre was removed. He was prosecuted, unsuccessfully,
for murder and abuse of power by a committee led by John Stuart Mill and
supported by Charles Darwin. But another committee supported Eyre, and
included Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, Charles Kingsley and
Alfred Tennyson. These advocates of progress and civilization identified it with
the imposition of imperial rule, however brutal the means…”1012
The United States had been Russia’s only ally in the Crimean War, and Tsar
Alexander II sympathized with Lincoln, although the tsar’s own liberation of his
serfs, as we shall see, was achieved at nothing like the cost in blood and
destruction that Lincoln’s emancipation required. When the American president
appealed to the Russian tsar for help, the latter “immediately, in great secrecy,
sent to America two squadrons of military vessels under the command of
Admiral Leskovsky, who occupied the ports of New York and San Francisco.
This unexpected help shocked the whole of Europe, and England refrained from
intervention, which guaranteed the victory of Lincoln…”1013
The Ecumenical Patriarch, Joachim II, also supported the North. At the close
of 1862, he wrote: “The United States of America, after many years of union and
peace, after gigantic material and moral development, are separated into two
hostile camps. The Northern States, guided by true reason and evangelical
principles, persistently seek the abolition of the slavery of the blacks. The
Southern States, blinded by a badly understood material interest, obstinately and
anti-Christianly seek the perpetuation of slavery. This war of ideas and physical
interests is prosecuted to desperation. Bloody battles are delivered, but victory
until the present is doubtful, and the return of peace does not seem near. But if
we cast a careful eye upon the wonderful events of this age, we shall be inclined
to believe that those who contend so nobly for the most unquestionable and
humane rights, will, God helping them, reach the object of their desires.” 1014
Although Lincoln, as we have seen, was not a fanatical abolitionist, and was
motivated above all by a desire to preserve the Union intact, it is difficult to resist
the thought that in his assassination he received retribution for the evil deed of
1012
Tombs, op. cit. , pp. 574-577.
1013
Nikolai Boeikov, “O rossijskoj monarkhii” (On the Russian Monarchy), in
Protopriest Benjamin Zhukov (ed.), Nikolaj II, Paris, 2013, p. 15.
1014
Anatolikos Aster (Oriental Star), translated in The Liberator, April 24, 1863. See
http://orthodoxhistory.org/2015/04/27/ecumenical-patriarch-opposes-american-
slavery-in-1862.
601
the Civil War, the successful attempt to overthrow the patriarchal society of the
South and replace its slavery by the slavery of being at the bottom of the wage-
labour industrial system…1015
The Christian faith does not forbid slavery, as long as Christian masters and
slaves treat each other with love, as befits brothers in Christ. Some of the saints
even owned slaves – for example, the family of St. Basil the Great. St. John of
Damascus owned slaves before he became a monk.1016
For, as Archbishop Averky of Jordanville (+1966) writes: "The epistle to

Philemon vividly witnesses to the fact that the Church of Christ, in liberating
man from sin, does not at the same time produce a forcible rupture in the
established inter-relationships of people, and does not encroach on the civil and
state order, waiting patiently for an improvement in the social order, under the
influence of Christian ideas. Not only from this epistle, but also from others, it is
evident that the Church, while unable, of course, to sympathize with slavery, at
the same time did not abolish it, and even told slaves to obey their masters.
Therefore here the conversion of Onesimus to Christianity, which made him free
from sin and a son of the Kingdom of God, did not, however, liberate him, as a
slave, from the authority of his master. Onesimus had to return to Philemon, in
spite of the fact that the Apostle loved him as a son, and needed his services,
since he was in prison in Rome. The Apostle's respect for civil rights tells also in
the fact that he could order Philemon to forgive Onesimus, but, recognizing
Philemon's right as master, begs him to forgive his guilty and penitent slave. The
words of the Apostle: 'Without your agreement I want to do nothing' clearly
indicate that Christianity really leads mankind to personal perfection and the
improvement of the social legal order on the basis of fraternity, equality and
freedom, but not by way of violent actions and revolutions, but by the way of
peaceful persuasion and moral influence."1017
1015
On the day following the assassination, April 15, Nicholas Motovilov wrote to the Tsar
informing him that he had received the following revelation from St. Seraphim of Sarov on April
1 about the death of Abraham Lincoln: "The Lord and the Mother of God not only do not like the
terrible oppression, destruction and unrighteous humiliation that is being wrought everywhere
with us in Russia by the Decembrists and raging abolitionists: the goodness of God is also
thoroughly displeased by the offences caused by Lincoln and the North Americans to the slave-
owners of the Southern States, and so Batiushka Father Seraphim has ordered that the image of
the Mother of God the Joy of all who Sorrow should be sent to the President of the Southern - that
is, precisely the slave-owning States. And he has ordered that the inscription be attached to it: TO
THE COMPLETE DESTRUCTION OF LINCOLN." (Sergius and Tamara Fomin, Rossia pered
Vtorym Prishestviem (Russia before the Second Coming), Moscow: Rodnik, 1994, vol. I, p. 343)
1016
St. Dmitri of Rostov, The Great Collection of the Lives of the Saints, vol. IV: December, House
Springs, Mo: Chrysostom Press, 2000, p. 76.
1017
Archbishop Averky (Taushev), Rukovodstvo k izucheniu Sviaschennago Pisania
Novago Zaveta (Guide to the Study of the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament),
Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Monastery, vol. II, pp. 354-355.
602
VI. THE EAST: THE GENDARME OF EUROPE (1830-
1865)
603
71. TSAR NICHOLAS I
Tsar Nicholas was one of the most powerful and important rulers in history.
Contrary to much commentary on him, he did not rule by the knout alone. Nor
was he ruled by personal ambition and lust for power, but by force of personality
and iron devotion to what he saw as his duty to God and Russia. This can be seen
in the following anecdote related by Sebag Sebastian Montefiore: “As Poland’s
rebellion was crushed, a cholera outbreak sparked rioting on the Haymarket in
Petersburg. Hastening there with just two adjutants, Nicholas faced down the
mob, then ordered them to their knees. ‘I have to ask God’s mercy for your sins,’
thundered God’s own emperor. ‘You have offended Him deeply. You’ve
forgotten your duty of obedience to me and I must answer to God for your
behavior! Remember you’re not Poles, you’re not Frenchmen, you’re Russians. I
order you to disperse immediately.’ The rioters obeyed. No wonder Nicholas
believed he was the sacred personification of Russia. ‘I am only here,’ he told his
children preciously, ‘to carry out her orders and her intentions.’ Nicholas was
convinced that ‘Our Russia was entrusted to us by God,’ once praying aloud at a
parade: ‘O God, I thank Thee for having made me so powerful.’
“’No one was better created for the role,’ wrote Anna Tyutcheva, a young
maid-of-honour who later wrote a superbly indiscreet diary. ‘His impressive
handsomeness, regal bearing and severe Olympian profile – everything, down to
the smile of a condescending Jupiter, breathed earthly deity.’ He played the role
perfectly: ‘There is nothing more terrible on earth than the gaze of his colourless
pewter eyes.’”1018
“After the failure of the Decembrist conspiracy,” writes Sir Llewellyn

Woodward, “a movement developed among the students and the Russian
intelligentsia to widen the basis of the revolutionary party. The term intelligentsia
is itself Russian and denoted those who earned a living by their ideas in contrast
with the well-to-do liberals of the noble class. Obviously not all of the so-called
intelligentsia were revolutionary and not all revolutionaries belonged to the
intelligentsia, but without this class there would have been no revolutionary
party.”1019
The destroyer of the Decembrist rebellion, Tsar Nicholas I, had never been
swayed by the liberal ideas of the intelligentsia. Having tasted something of the
flavour of democratic life in France during the reign of his father, he said to
Golenischev-Kutuzov: “If, to our misfortune, this evil genius transferred all
these clubs and meetings, which create more noise than substance, to us, then I
would beseech God to repeat the miracle of the confusion of the tongues or, even
better, deprive those who use their tongues in this way of the gift of speech.” 1020
1018
Montefiore, The Romanovs, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016, p. 356.
1019
Woodward, Prelude to Modern Europe, 1815-1914, Lndon: Methuen, 1972, p. 196.
1020
V.F. Ivanov, Russkaia Intelligentsia i Masonstvo ot Petra I do nashikh dnej (The Russian
Intelligentsia and Masonry from Peter I to our days), Harbin, 1934, Moscow, 1997, pp. 316-317.
604
A man of iron will and strict opinions, who was venerated by Saints Seraphim
of Sarov and Theophilus of the Kiev Caves, his rule was made still stricter by the
fact that he came to the throne in the midst of the Decembrist rebellion and
therefore had to punish the rebels as his first task.
Some have portrayed the Tsar as having been unreasonably strict and
censorious. However, he wanted to abolish serfdom, and took important
preparatory measures towards that great act carried out in the end by his son.
Thus L.A. Tikhomirov wrote: "Under Emperor Nicholas I the government

undertook a restructuring of the State peasants. The Emperor made a very good
choice for the executor of his thought in Count Kiselev, one of the greatest
statesmen that Russia has ever given birth to. Thus one of the most remarkable
social organizations in our history was created. Lands the size of the whole of
Europe were united in the hands of the State, the peasants were abundantly
endowed [with them], and the system of repatriations gave an exit to new
generations of the farming class. A remarkable system of national provision for
the struggle against poor harvests was created. The improvement of the farming
culture of 20 million peasants became the object of obligatory and conscious
work on the part of the ministry. Moreover, the peasants were personally free,
and their communities were ruled by men chosen by themselves. After two
decades of effort this extensive organization was finally put on its feet." 1021
Again, as Sir Richard Evans writes, Nicholas I continued the measures of poor
relief initiated by his predecessor: “In view of the Church’s inability to deal with
the mounting problems of pauperism, secular voluntary associations across
Europe were playing a growing role in poor relief. In Russia, where the
institutions of civil society were weak in the extreme, it was not surprising that
the most important of the voluntary poor-relief organizations, the Imperial
Philanthropic Society, was founded in 1816 on the initiative of Tsar Alexander I,
who supplied it with an annual grant to increase the income it received from
membership fees and private donations. Branches opened in many cities, and
the number of people it assisted increased from just over 4,000 in the 1820s to
more than 25,000 in the early 1840s and nearly 38,000 in 1857. Some twenty new
charitable societies were given licenses in Russia between 1826 and 1855. Typical
was the house of industry opened in 1833 by Anatoly Nikolayevich Demidov
(1813-70), the son of a rich industrialist, providing soup and work to the needy.
On a visit to the main prison in St. Petersburg in 1837, Tsar Nicholas I was
shocked to find beggars mingling with common criminals, and he set up a
Supreme Committee for Differentiation and Care of Beggars in St. Petersburg, as
well as a similar institution in Moscow. The Committee took beggars arrested by
the police, sent those thought to be the deserving poor unable to work through
no fault of their own to the Imperial Philanthropic Society, and referred the able-
bodied to employers. Allegedly idle professional beggars were returned by the
Committee to the police and then went on to labour colonies in Siberia, while
those in temporary difficulty were helped out with funds or documents.
1021
Tikhomirov, "Pochemy ia perestal byt' revoliutsionerom" (Why I ceased to be a revolutionary,
in Kritika Demokratii (A Critique of Democracy), Moscow, 1997, p. 26.
605
“The relative centralization of poor relief in Russia was unusual. In most parts
of Europe it was localized.”1022
While the tsar was undoubtedly strict against his opponents, he had the
ability to convert, and not simply crush, them. Thus it was after a long, sincere
conversation with the liberalizing Pushkin that he was able to say: “Gentlemen, I
present to you a new Pushkin!” “And it was truly thus,” writes Lebedev. “Not
out of fear before the authorities, not hypocritically, but sincerely and truly,
Pushkin, the friend of the ‘Decembrists’, the worldly skiver, in life as in poetry,
after 1826 renounced his free-thinking and Masonry and created his best and
greatest works!”1023
“Having rejected a rotten support, the nobility,” writes Lebedev, Tsar

Nicholas “made his supports the Orthodox Church, the system of state
institutions (in which the class of bureaucrats, of officials, acquired great
significance) and the Russian people which he loved! Having grasped this main
direction of the Tsar’s politics, Count S. Uvarov, the minister of enlightenment
expressed in the remarkable formula: Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality”.1024
“Our duty,” declared Uvarov in his memorandum to the Tsar in November,
1833, “is to see that in accordance with the supreme intention of our August
Monarch, the education of the people is carried out in the united spirit of
Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality.”
“This schema,” writes Sergius Firsov, “can be called a political reincarnation

of the Byzantine theory of ‘the symphony of powers’ in the changed conditions
of State realities in Russia.”1025
The three elements of the formula were closely linked, and there was a
definite order in them. First came Orthodoxy (as opposed to Catholicism and
Protestantism), then Autocracy (as opposed to Absolutism and Democracy), and
then Nationality (as opposed to Internationalism and Nationalism). The supreme
value was Orthodoxy, whose first line of defence was the Autocracy, and second
- national feeling. Any attempt to invert this order – as, for example, by making
Orthodoxy merely a support for Autocracy, or both as supports of Nationality,
would be equivalent to idolatry and lead to the downfall of Russia.
Some, such as D.S. Khomiakov, thought that an inversion of this order did
indeed take place.1026 However, Khomiakov’s view was not shared by Archpriest
Lev Lebedev, who wrote: “Beginning already with Paul I, the rapprochement of
imperial power with the Church continued under Nicholas I, being raised to a
1022
1023
Lebedev, Velikorossia (Great Russia), St. Petersburg, 1999, p. 331. Cf. Montefiore, op. cit., p.
353.
1024
1025
Firsov, Russkaia Tserkov’ nakanune peremen (konets, 1890-x – 1918 gg.) (The Russian Church on
the eve of the changes (the end of the 1890s to 1918), Moscow, 2002, p. 51.
1026
Khomiakov, Pravoslavie, Samoderzhavie, Narodnost’ (Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality),
Minsk: Belaruskaia Gramata, 1997, pp. 13-15.
606
qualitatively higher level. The All-Russian Autocrat from now on did not oppose
himself to the Church and did not even consider himself ‘self-sufficient’ or
‘independent’ of her. On the contrary, he saw himself as a faithful son of the
Orthodox Church, completely sharing the faith of his people and bound in all his
politics to be guided by the commandments of God, proceeding precisely from
the Orthodox world-view (and not from the demands of a certain non-existent
‘religion of nature’, as under Catherine II). This was a good, grace-filled radical
change. It made itself immediately felt also in the relations of the two powers –
the tsar’s and the Church’s. From now on the over-procurators of the Synod
were people who enjoyed the respect and trust of the Russian hierarchs and
considered themselves faithful children of the Church. Such were Admiral
Shishkov and Count Protasov. There was not always unanimity between them
and the members of the Synod. Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov), for example,
more than once ‘warred’ with Protasov. But these were quarrels about separate
matters, where both sides were governed by the single desire to benefit Holy
Orthodoxy (even if they understood this differently).” 1027
This beneficial change in Church-State relations was reflected in the voluntary

reunion of the uniates of Western Russia with the Orthodox Church. Favourable
conditions for this change had been created by the fall of Poland in 1815, the
expulsion of the Jesuits from Russia in 1820 and the suppression of the Polish
rebellion in 1830-1831. Then, in 1835, a secret committee on the uniate question
was formed in St. Petersburg consisting of the uniate bishop Joseph Semashko,
Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, the over-procurator of the Holy Synod and the
minister of the interior. By 1839 1,600,000 had converted to Orthodoxy.1028
In spite of these positive changes, a true “symphony” was not attained. In

fact, formally speaking, the power of the Tsar over the Church was increased.
Thus between 1828 and 1830 an important new collection of the Fundamental
Laws in 45 volumes was published. Nicholas entrusted this work to the Mason
Speransky, because his expertise in the subject was unrivalled. However, above
him he placed his former teacher Balugiansky, saying: “See that he (Speransky)
does not get up to the same pranks as in 1810. You will answer for that to
me.”1029 And Speransky, perhaps chastened by his exile under Alexander I, did
not disappoint. As David L. Ransel writes, he “departed from the previous
generation’s (and his own earlier) method of designing reforms on general
principles and borrowing directly from foreign models; in line with the new
notions about the organic nature of society, he assembled past law, beginning
with the code of 1649 and including the thousands of statutes enacted in the
intervening 180 years (omitting some, such as those related to government
crises)… He then distilled from this compendium a thematically organized
fifteen-volume codex of living, currently applicable law called the Digest of
Laws, which went into effect in 1835.” 1030 This recollection of Justinian’s Digest
1027
1028
A.P. Dobroklonsky, Rukovodstvo po Istorii Russkoj Tserkvi (Handbook to the History of the
Russian Church) Moscow, 2001, pp. 654-657.
1029
Tsar Nicholas, in Ivanov, op. cit., p. 317.
1030
Ransel, “Pre-Reform Russia 1801-1855” in Gregory L. Frazee, Russia. A History, Oxford
University Press, 2009, p. 187.
607
was not doubt deliberate, and the comparison is just: Tsar Nicholas did for
Russia in the field of law what Justinian had done for Byzantium.
Among the important decrees of this code were the following

relating to the position of the Tsar: “The Emperor as the Christian
sovereign is the supreme defender and preserver of the dogmas of the
dominant faith and the supervisor of right faith and every good order
in the Holy Church”. In the administration of the Church, intoned
articles 42 and 43, “the autocratic power acts by means of the Holy
Governing Synod, which was founded by it.”
In these formulae, writes Fr. Georges Florovsky, “there is clearly

and faithfully conveyed the State’s consciousness of itself and self-
definition: in them there is taken to its logical conclusion the thought
of Peter, who considered himself to be ‘the supreme judge’ of the
Spiritual College [i.e. the Holy Synod], and who openly derived its
privileges from his own autocratic power – ‘when it was established by
the Monarch and under his rule’”. 1031 Such an overbearing attitude of
the State towards the Church was bound to lead to friction. And yet
when there were clashes between the Tsar and the hierarchs on matters
of conscience, the Tsar showed himself ready to give way, which gives
strength to Lebedev’s claim that a qualitatively higher level of Church-
State relations had been attained. Thus once Metropolitan Philaret
refused to bless a triumphal monument because it had some pagan
hieroglyphs and representations of pagan gods. The Emperor, showing
a good grasp of church history, said: “I understand, but tell him
[Philaret] that I am not Peter the Great and he is not St. Metrophan.”
Still, he allowed Philaret not to take part in the ceremony. 1032 According
to another account, on hearing of Philaret’s disinclination to serve, the
Emperor said: “Prepare the horses; I’m leaving today”, so that the
ceremony took place without either Tsar or metropolitan. 1033
Afterwards, Philaret asked his spiritual father, Archimandrite

Anthony: “Did I act well? I annoyed the Tsar. I don’t have the merits of
the hierarch Metrophan.” “Don’t take them upon yourself,” replied Fr.
Anthony, “but remember that you are a Christian bishop, a pastor of
the Church of Christ, to whom only one thing is terrible: to depart from
the will of Jesus Christ.”
Then the hierarch revealed that the previous night St. Sergius had
entered his locked room, come up to his bed, and said: “Don’t be
disturbed, it will all pass…” 1034
1031
Florovsky, “Filaret, mitropolit Moskovskij” (Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow), in Vera i
Kul’tura (Faith and Culture), St. Petersburg, 2002, p. 260. Nicholas had a bust of Peter on his desk.
1032
Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev), Zhizn’ i deiatel’nost’ mitropolita Philareta (The Life and Activity
of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow), Tula, 1994, p. 238.
1033
Fr. Maximus Kozlov, introduction to Filareta mitropolita moskovskogo i kolomenskogo Tvorenia
(The Works of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow and Kolomna), Moscow, 1994, pp. 14-15.
1034
Kozlov, op. cit., pp. 25-26.
608
Again, in 1835 the Emperor wanted his son and heir, the Tsarevich
Alexander Nikolaevich, to become a member of the Holy Synod. But
Metropolitan Philaret, together with the other hierarchs, was against
the idea, and on meeting the tsarevich, asked him when he had
received clerical ordination. Shamed, the tsarevich henceforth refrained
from attending sessions of the Holy Synod. 1035
We have discussed Orthodoxy and Autocracy in Tsar Nicholas’ ideological

schema. What about the third term, Nationality?
“While nationality,” writes Serhii Plokhy, “was introduced as a new element

of the official Russian belief system, it came in as a distant third in Uvarov’s own
thinking as expressed in his memorandum to the tsar, and he did not conceive of
it as an equivalent of modern nationalism. He understood ‘nationality’ as native
tradition rooted in Russia’s historical development, linking the throne and the
church in order to ensure their stability.
“Ironically, from today’s viewpoint, but quite normally for Uvarov’s time, his
program of Russian nation-building was written in French, which was still the
prevailing idiom of the Russian elites. Uvarov defined his new principle as
nationalité, which his clerks subsequently translated as narodnost’. The Russian
term is best translated in English as ‘national way of life’…
“According to Uvarov, nationality was the traditional way of life that was
supposed to ensure the continuity of the other two key elements of Russian
identity – religion and autocracy – in an age shaped by new European ideas. If in
Europe the idea of nation, closely associated with the principle of popular
representation, challenged political autocracy, in Russia it was supposed to
support the traditional tsarist regime. Uvarov did not seek to justify the tsar’s
autocratic rule by claiming that it was based on divine right, as was customary at
the time in the imperial capital; not did he look to the church to legitimize it.
Instead he linked autocracy with nationality, claiming that ‘one and other flow
from the same source and are conjoined on every page of the history of the
Russian people.’ He stopped short, however, of suggesting that the Russian
nation was the source of autocratic power.
“Uvarov was clearly being selective in introducing the Western idea of

nationality to Russia. He ignored Schlegel’s emphasis on national language and
culture, stressing attachment to traditional institutions. Since the Russian Empire
was multiethnic, the idea of ethnic particularity threatened it with the kind of
mobilization against Russian political dominance that the Poles had
demonstrated in 1830. There was also the prospect that Russian nationalists
might define their rights and interests differently from those of the monarchy.
Uvarov sought to link empire and nationality in the hope that the latter would
Sergius and Tamara Fomin, Rossia pered vtorym prishestviem (Russia before the Second
1035
Coming), Moscow, 1994, vol. I, p. 322.

609
strengthen the former. He concluded his memorandum with a reference to the
responsibility that he felt to ‘God, Sovereign and Fatherland’. This was a reprise
of the triad enunciated by Admiral Shishkov, Russia’s chief propagandist at the
time of the Napoleonic Wars, indicating the link between Uvarov’s formula and
established imperial tradition.
“Despite Uvarov’s conservative intentions, the introduction of the term

‘nationality’ into Russian politics meant that European nationalism had arrived
in the Russian Empire. Peter I’s chief ideologue, Theofan Prokopovych, had used
the term ‘fatherland’; it had not been transmuted into ‘nation’ (prefigured in the
Synopsis of 1674, where ‘nation’ was also used in a traditional rather than a
revolutionary sense). What ‘nationality’ would mean in practice was not yet
clear, either to the author of the new ideological triad or his addressee, the tsar
himself. It would take generations to resolve the political issues implicit in the
term. What were the borders of Russian nationality? Did it suffice for a subject of
the empire to profess loyalty to the tsar and the Orthodox faith, or were there
other essential elements of Russianness as well? Nowhere were these questions
more pressing, in the wake of the Polish uprising of 1830-1831, than in the
former territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth annexed to the
Russian Empire…”1036
Coming to power in the middle of a revolution, Tsar Nicholas’ thinking about

his own role was inevitably deeply influenced by the Pauline concept of the
emperor as “him who restrains the coming of the Antichrist’ – that is, the
revolution. So the struggle against revolutionary ideas among the people became
his absolute priority, and his attitude to other rulers was determined by their
attitude towards the revolution. Therefore he rejected the legitimacy of
revolutionary France while accepting that of reactionary Austria – and did not
encourage the Slavs who lived under Austrian rule to rebel. For as K.N.
Leontiev wrote, he “was a true and great ‘legitimist’. He did not like even the
Orthodox ‘rayas’ [peoples of the Ottoman Empire] permitting themselves to
rebel against theSultan, reasonably ascribing to himself alone the lawful right to
conquer the Sultan and bring him into submission, as the right of a tsar…
“The unsuccessful and lightmindedly liberal Decembrist rebellion of the

nobility had a less profound influence on his royal mind than the later events of
the 1830s, which shook him and made him understand. From that time the Tsar
became an opponent of all emancipation, all equalization, all confusion both in
Russia and in other countries….
“Of special interest is the explanatory note which the young [I.S.] Aksakov
was forced to present in reply to the questions of the Third Department in 1849.
Some passages in this reply were underlined by Tsar Nicholas Pavlovich, and
objections against them were made by the Tsar in his own hand. Opposite the
place where Aksakov writes about ‘the heartfelt sympathy of the so-called
1036
610
Slavophiles for the western Slavs and in general for the situation of their co-
religionist and consanguineous brothers’, the Emperor made the following
comment: ‘Under the guise of sympathy for the Slavic tribes supposedly
oppressed in other states, there is hidden the criminal thought of a rebellion
against the lawful authority of neighbouring and in part allied states, and of a
general union they expect to attain not through the will of God’….
“By these ‘states’ we must understand, of course, first of all Austria, and then
in part Turkey… Nicholas Pavlovich recognized himself to have the right of
exerting pressure on the Sultan in favour of his co-religionists, the right to war
with him and even subject him to himself, but did not recognize the right of the
subjects of the Sultan to carry out their own self-willed liberation….
“Nicholas Pavlovich understood at that time that liberationist politics beyond

the bounds of one’s own state is something that, while useful at the beginning, is
in essence extremely dangerous and can, with the slightest incaution, turn onto
the head of the liberator.
“He understood half a century ago that of which it is impossible to convince

many of us even now, in spite of all the crude evidence of events, in spite of the
fact that everything is simply ‘bursting at the seams’ both in old Europe and in
the Orthodox countries of the East!
“Emperor Nicholas was called by Divine Providence to hold back for a time
the general disintegration which even now nobody knows how to stop…
“…Tsar Nicholas Pavlovich did not live to the end of the 19 th century, when
‘reaction’ is beginning little by little to acquire for itself theoretical justifications
and foundations. However, he felt by his political instinct not only that the West
was on the path to a corruption which could be contagious for us, too, but also
that our Russia herself under him had attained its cultural-state apogee, after which
living state construction would come to an end and on which it was necessary to stop as
far as possible and for as long as possible, not fearing even a certain stagnation. And all
his major political actions and sympathies are explained by this conservative
instinct of genius: his revulsion from the liberal monarchy of Louis Philippe; his
defence of the ‘crafty’, but necessary for some time to come, perhaps, Austria; the
Hungarian war; his helping of the Sultan against Mehmed Ali; his good
disposition toward England, which was still at that time aristocratic and
conservative; his desire that the Eastern Christians should not of their own will
rise up against the lawful and autocratic Turkish government; and finally, his
disillusionment in emancipated Greece, which was expressed in his words
(legendary or historical, it doesn’t matter): ‘I will not give an inch of land to this
demagogic people.’”1037
1037
Leontiev, “Plody natsional’nykh dvizhenij”, op. cit., pp. 542, 543-544, 545, 545-546.
611
72. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (7) POLAND
The Poles, as we have seen, had been given a very liberal

constitution by Tsar Alexander in 1815. But the Russian practice of
coopting the local elites of subject nations, which had worked well with
Muslims and Georgians, failed completely with the Poles. Stirred up by
the Roman Catholic Church, as well as by their own very specific,
ultra-romantic brand of nationalism, the Poles rose in rebellion late in
1830.
“In November, 1830,” writes Plokhy, “young Polish cadets tried to

assassinate their Russian military commander, Grand Duke
Constantine, sparking a revolt that would become known as the
November Uprising. The grand duke survived the attempt, fleeing his
residence in women’s clothes, but the façade of dynastic union between
Russia and Poland was now gone. The Polish Diet convoked by the
rebels not only declared the secession of the Kingdom of Poland from
the Russian Empire but also sought to regain the pre-partition Polish
territories that were not part of the kingdom. The rebels sent troops
and reinforcements to Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine and chose
delegates to go to St. Petersburg to demand those territories.” 1038
Tsar Nicholas saw it as his duty and destiny to suppress the

revolution not only at home, but also abroad. He had decided not to
intervene in the revolutions in France and Belgium in 1830. T his time,
however, he did act. As he wrote to his brother, Grand Duke
Constantine Pavlovich, who ruled the Polish Kingdom: “It is our duty
to think of our security. When I say ours, I mean the tranquility of
Europe.” 1039
Archpriest Lev Lebedev writes: “The revolutions of 1830 in France

and Belgium gave an impulse to the Masonic movement in Poland. It
had two basic tendencies – an extreme republican one (headed by the
historian Lelevel) and a more moderate aristocratic one (headed by A.
Czartoryski). At the end of 1830 there began a rebellion in Warsaw.
Great Prince Constantine Pavlovich with a detachment of Russian
soldiers was forced to abandon Poland. In 1831 there arrived the armies
of General Dibich, who had no significant success, in particular by
reason of a very strong outbreak of cholera, from which both Dibich
and Great Prince Constantine died. Meanwhile the revolutionaries in
Warsaw created first a ‘Provisional government’ with a ‘dictator’ at its
head, and then convened the Sejm. The rebels demanded first the
complete independence of Poland with the addition to it of Lithuania
and western Rus’, and then declared the ‘deposition’ of the Romanov
dynasty from the throne of the Kingdom of Poland. Count Paskevich of
Plokhy, op. cit., p. 78.
1038
Tsar Nicholas, in M.J. Cohen and John Major (eds.), History in Quotations, London: Cassell,
1039
2004, p. 551.
612
Erevan was sent to Poland. He took Warsaw by storm and completely
destroyed the Masonic revolutionary armies, forcing their remnants
abroad [especially Paris, where they played a significant role in the
revolutionary movement]. Poland was divided into provinces and
completely included into the composition of the Russian Empire. The
language of business was declared to be Russian. Russian landowners
received land in Poland. A Deputy was now placed at the head of the
Kingdom of Poland. He turned out to be Paskevich with the new title of
Prince of Warsaw. In connection with all this it became clear that the
Polish magnates and landowners who had kept their land-holdings in
Belorussia and Ukraine had already for some time been persecuting the
Orthodox Russians and Little Russians and also the uniates, and had
been occupied in polonizing education in general the whole cultural
life in these lands. Tsar Nicholas I was forced to take severe measures
to restore Russian enlightenment and education in the West Russian
and Ukrainian land. In particular, a Russian university was opened in
Kiev. The part of the Belorussian and Ukrainian population headed by
Bishop Joseph Semashko which had been in a forcible unia with the
Catholic Church since the end of the 16 th century desired reunion with
Orthodoxy. Nicholas I decided to satisfy this desire and in 1839 all the
uniates (besides the inhabitants of Kholm diocese) were united to ‘to
the ancestral Orthodox All-Russian Church’, as they put it. This was a
great feast of Orthodoxy! Masses of uniates were united voluntarily,
without any compulsion. All this showed that Russia had subdued and
humbled Poland not because she wished to lord it over her, and resist
her independence, but only because Poland wanted to lord it (both
politically and spiritually) over the age-old Russian population,
depriving it of its own life and ‘ancestral’ faith! With such a Poland as
she was then striving to be, there was nothing to be done but
completely subdue her and force her to respect the rights of other
peoples! But to the Polish Catholics Russia provided, as usual, every
opportunity of living in accordance with their faith and customs.” 1040
Unfortunately, the Poles and the West did not see it like that. The
tsar had earned the undying hatred of Poles: “I know they want to kill
me, but if God doesn’t will it, nothing will happen, so I am quite
calm.” 1041
The composer Frederick Chopin wrote, somewhat blasphemously:

“The suburbs [of Warsaw] are destroyed, burned… Moscow rules the
world! O God, do You exist? You’re there and You don’t avenge it.
How many more Russian crimes do You want – or – are You a Russian
too!!?” 1042
1040
Lebedev, Velikorossia, St. Petersburg, 1999, p. 326. About 1,600 uniate priests and 1.5 million
laypeople were joined to Orthodoxy in the Act of Union (Plokhy, op. cit., p. 100).
1041
1042
Chopin, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 551.
613
“Poland will arise,” wrote the poet Mickiewicz, “and free nations of
Europe from bondage. Ibi patria, ubi male; wherever in Europe liberty is
suppressed and is fought for, there is the battle for your country.” 1043
Adam Zamoyski writes that Mickiewicz turned “the spiritual

fantasies of a handful of soldiers and intellectuals into the articles of
faith that built a modern nation.
“Mickiewicz had established his reputation as Poland’s foremost

lyric poet in the 1820s, and enhanced his political credentials by his
exile in Russia, where he met several prominent Decembrists and grew
close to Pushkin [who, however, did not sympathize with his views on
Poland]. In 1829 Mickiewicz received permission to go to Germany to
take the waters. He met Mendelssohn and Hegel in Berlin, Metternich
in Marienbad, and August Schlegel in Bonn, and attended Goethe’s
eightieth birthday party in Weimar. Goethe kissed him on the forehead,
gave him the quill with which he had worked on Faust, and
commissioned a portrait of him for his collection. Mickiewicz then
went to Italy where, apart from a de rigueur trip to Switzerland
(Chillon and Altdorf, with Byron and Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell in his
hand), he spent the next year-and-half. It was in Rome that news of the
November Rising [in Warsaw] reached him. He set off for Poland, but
his attempts to cross the border were foiled by Cossack patrols, and he
was obliged to watch the debacle from Dresden.
“In this tranquil Saxon city he was gripped by inspiration and wrote
frantically in fits lasting up to three days, without pausing to eat or sleep. The
fruit was the third part of a long poetic drama entitled Forefathers’ Eve, which can
only be described as a national passion play. Mickiewicz had also seen the
significance of the holy night [of November 29, 1830], and he likened all
monarchs, and Nicholas in particular, to Herod – their sense of guilty foreboding
led them to massacre the youth of nations. The drama describes the
transformation through suffering of the young poet and lover, Konrad, into a
warrior-poet. He is a parable for Poland as a whole, but he is also something
more. ‘My soul has now entered the motherland, and with my body I have taken
her soul: I and the motherland are one,’ he declares after having endured torture.
‘My name is Million, because I love and suffer for millions… I feel the sufferings
of the whole nation as a mother feels the pain of the fruit within her womb.’
“In Paris in 1832 Mickiewicz published a short work entitled Books of the Polish
Nation and of the Pilgrimage of Poland. It was quickly translated into several
languages and caused a sensation. It is a bizarre work, couched in biblical prose,
giving a moral account of Polish history. After an Edenic period, lovingly
described, comes the eighteenth century, a time when ‘nations were spoiled, so
much so that among them there was left only one man, both citizen and soldier’
– a reference to Lafayette. The ‘Satanic Trinity’ of Catherine of Russia, Frederick
of Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria decided to murder Poland, because
1043
Mickiewicz, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 551.
614
Poland was Liberty. They crucified the innocent nation while degenerate France
played the role of Pilate.1044 But that was not to be the end of it. ‘For the Polish
nation did not die; its body lies in the tomb, while its soul has left the earth, that
is public life, and visited the abyss, that is the private life of peoples suffering
slavery at home and in exile, in order to witness their suffering. And on the third
day the soul will re-enter the body, and the nation will rise from the dead and
will liberate all the peoples of Europe from slavery.’ 1045 In a paraphrase of the
Christian Creed, Liberty will then ascend the throne in the capital of the world,
and judge the nations, ushering in the age of peace.
“So the Polish nation was now in Limbo, and all it had to do in order to bring
about its own resurrection and that of all grieving peoples was to cleanse and
redeem itself through a process of expiation which Mickiewicz saw as its
‘pilgrimage’. This was to be a kind of forty days in the wilderness. The pilgrims
must fast and pray on the anniversaries of the battles of Wawer and Grochow,
reciting litanies to the 30,000 dead of the Confederation of Bar and the 20,000
martyrs of Praga; they must observe their ancient customs and wear national
dress. One is reminded of Rousseau’s admonitions in his Considérations sur le
Gouvernement de Pologne.
“Rousseau would have been proud of this generation. As one freedom fighter
writes in his memoirs: ‘Only he loves Poland with his heart and his soul, only he
is a true son of his Motherland who has cast aside all lures and desires, all bad
habits, prejudice and passions, and been reborn in the pure faith, he who, having
recognized the reasons for our defeats and failures through his own judgement
and conviction, brings his whole love, his whole – not just partial, but whole –
conviction, his courage and his endurance, and lays them on the altar of the
purely national future.’ He had taken part in the November Rising and a
conspiratorial fiasco in 1833, for which he was rewarded with fifteen years in the
Spielberg and Küfstein prisons. Yet decades later he still believed that the
November Rising had ‘called Poland to a new life’ and brought her ‘salvation’
closer by a hundred years. Such feelings were shared by tens of thousands, given
expression by countless poets and artists, and understood by all the literate
classes.
“Most of Mickiewicz’s countrymen read his works and wept over them. They
identified with them and learned them by heart. They did not follow the
precepts laid down in them, nor did they really believe in this gospel in any
literal sense. These works were a let-out, an excuse even, rather than a guiding
1044
Chopin also blamed the French. For “Lafayette moved heaven and earth to make France go to
war in support of Poland, but he could not move Louis Philippe. He formed a committee to help
the Poles, with the participation of Victor Hugo and a string of artists and heroes” (Zamoyski,
Holy Madness, p. 278). (V.M.)
1045
The passage continues: “And three days have already passed; the first ending with the first
fall of Warsaw; the second day with the second fall of Warsaw; and the third day cometh but it
shall have no end. As at the resurrection of Christ the sacrifice of blood ceased upon the earth, so
at the resurrection of the Polish Nation shall war cease in Christendom.” “This,” comments Neal
Ascherson, “was the extraordinary doctrine of Messianism, the identification of the Polish nation
as the collective reincarnation of Christ. Messianism steadily gained strength over the next
century-and-a-half. History saw to that” (Black Sea, London: Vintage, 1995, p. 160). (V. M.)
615
rule. But they did provide an underlying ethical explanation of a state of affairs
that was otherwise intolerable to the defeated patriots. It was an explanation that
made moral sense and was accepted at the subconscious level. It was a spiritual
and psychological lifeline that kept them from sinking into a Slough of Despond.
It made misfortune not only bearable, but desirable…” 1046
55,000 Polish troops and 6,000 civilians made a great exodus to the West and
Paris and kept this cult alive, not in Polish hearts only, but throughout Europe.
Only the Russians were not seduced by its masochistic charm…
“In May 1856,” continues Zamoyski, “the new Tsar, Alexander II,
visited Warsaw and promised reform. Martial law, which had been
introduced in 1831, was suspended. Thousands of political convicts
were released from Siberian captivity, and an amnesty was extended to
émigré who wished to return. In 1857 the first Polish institution of
higher education came into being since the closure of Warsaw
University in 1831. In the same year the landowners were permitted to
form an Agricultural Society, which became a kind of senate bringing
together the most active members of the Polish aristocracy. This was of
particular significance in view of the fact that the greatest single reform
challenging the whole Russian Empire involved the peasantry.
“The Polish lands within the Empire had been growing prosperous
throughout the 1840s and 1850s, and the only segment of the
population that did not share in this were the poorest peasants. Unlike
the rest of the Empire, there was no serfdom in the former Polish lands.
Landless peasants were nevertheless in a state of bondage, as the only
way they could rent land was by paying for it with their labour. The
fact that the lord of the manor was usually the local magistrate meant
that they were often legally as well as financially subjected to the same
master. It behoved the Polish landed nobility to improve the lot of
these people. Poland’s Russian master was moving towards reform in
this area, and it would be desirable for the Polish peasant to owe his
future well-being to his countrymen rather than to a foreign despot –
the Galician jacquerie was but a decade past.
“’No pipe-dreams please, gentlemen,’ the Tsar had warned while

declaring his openness to reform. He was determined that the
concessions he might make should not revive aspirations to Polish
independence. The overwhelming majority of the population welcomed
the improving economic and political conditions and was prepared to
wait for further concessions that would, it was hoped, lead to a return
to the kind of national autonomy existing before 1830. But they and the
Tsar were fooling themselves. The lives of many revolved around
dreams, and the poets kept alive the vision of revolt as the ultimate act
1046
616
of human expression, bringing sanctification through death. And a
Napoleon on the French throne stirred all sorts of memories, while
events in Italy suggested no end of possibilities…” 1047
And so once again the hopes of the overwhelming majority of Poles

for a peaceful and prosperous future were dashed by a fanatical
minority. About 9000 exiles returned to their homes from Siberia
between 1857 and 1860 bringing with them the virus of nationalism, as
did firebrands such as Lukwik Mieroslawski, who lambasted his fellow
Poles for the “moral decay” – i.e. desire to avoid war - seeping through
the nation. On 25 February, 1861 a group of activists consisting of
students and junior army officers organized a demonstration
commemorating the Battle of Grochow in 1831, the Poles’ first victory
in the November Rising. Although the Russians tried to exercise
restraint, and offered concessions 1048 , the demonstrations got out of
hand, some demonstrators were killed. Foreign revolutionaries, such as
Bakunin, Mazzini and Garibaldi got involved. By the end of 1862 there
were as many as 100,000 Russian troops in the country, not counting
garrisons and frontier companies, against a maximum of 20,000 Poles at
any one time (although as many as 200,000 may have fought at various
times). It was a lost cause…
The rebellion was fully ignited in January, 1863, when the Russians
tried to take the radical youth off the streets by conscripting them into
the army. The Polish irregulars fought the vastly superior Russian
army in over a thousand skirmishes. As John van de Kiste writes, “they
slaughtered Russian soldiers asleep in their Warsaw barracks, and
national resistance turned to general uprising. This spread through the
kingdom into the nine formerly Polish provinces known as Russia’s
Western region, where powerful landlords and Catholic clergy were
ready to give vent to their hatred of Russian domination. For a while it
looked as if England, France and Austria might join in on the side of
Warsaw after giving their tacit blessing to the rebels, but Russia put
down the unrest at no little cost to the Poles…. While the Poles
butchered scores of Russian peasants including women and children,
the Russians erected gibbets in the streets where rebels and civilians
were hanged in their hundreds, with thousands more sent to Siberia.
The insurrection was finally quelled in May 1864, when the more
conservative Count Theodore Berg was sent to replace Constantine as
viceroy.” 1049
1047
Zamoyski, Holy Madness, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999, p. 412.
1048
Thus on the day after the Tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Constantine, was made
viceroy of Poland, he was shot in the shoulder. He persisted with a programme of
“re-Polonization” – more liberal state administration and local government
regulations governing the use of the Polish language, and Polish educational
institutions. But this did not appease the nationalists.
1049
Van der Kiste, The Romanovs: 1818-1959, Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999, p. 35.
617
73. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (8) UKRAINE
It was only natural that the Russians should fear the spread of the nationalist
virus from Poland eastwards, into the Ukrainian lands that had once been under
Polish dominion. The separation of Ukraine from the Empire would have been
disastrous. As long as the Ukrainians considered themselves “Russian” in some
sense (or “Little Russians” as the Great Russians called them), they would
probably remain in the Russian empire without rebelling. But the calculation
might be different if they saw themselves as a separate nation…
Fortunately for the empire as a whole, “by the second half of nineteenth
century,” as Sir Geoffrey Hosking writes, “the Ukrainian sense of separate
identity was [still] rather weak, being borne mainly by intellectuals and
professional people in the smaller towns. Large numbers of peasants spoke
variants of Ukrainian, but they had no wider national consciousness, and their
colloquial tongue was viewed by most Russians as a farmyard dialect of
Russian. However, the survival of Ukrainian culture was quite strong, thanks to
the heritage of the poet Taras Shevchenko, the writings of historians such as
Mykhaylo Drahomaniw, and the possibility of smuggling materials across the
frontier from Habsburg Galicia, where Ukrainian identity was officially fostered
as a counterweight to Polish influence.”1050
Shevchenko was typical of this early, Proto-Ukrainian nationalism. “Born as a

serf in the early nineteenth century, [he] published Kobzar, his first collection of
poetry, when he was twenty-six. The series of musings on Ukrainian identity,
written in the Ukrainian language, probably did more than anything else to
create a sense of nation among the descendants of the Cossacks.”1051
Things began to change on March 31, 1847, when a young professor of history
at Kiev University, Mykola (Nikolai) Kostomarov, was arrested in accordance
with an order proceeding from the emperor himself. “It was given,” writes
Serhii Plokhy, “by Count Aleksei Orlov, head of the Third Section of the
Imperial Chancellery – the body responsible for political surveillance. The heir to
the throne, the future Tsar Alexander II, was briefed on the case, which involved
a number of Kyivan intellectuals – government officials, teachers, and
students… Shevchenko… was arrested on April 5, upon his arrival in Kyiv and
also escorted to St. Petersburg. There were further arrests and more deportations
to the capital, where the liberal public was at a loss to explain the authorities’
actions.
“The governor general of Kyiv, Podolia, and Volhynia, Dmitrii Bibikov, was
then in St. Petersburg, reporting on, among other things, a proclamation that had
been found on the wall of a building in Kyiv. It read: ‘Brothers! A great hour is
upon us, an hour in which you are being given the opportunity to wash off the
dishonor inflicted on the dust of our ancestors, on our native Ukraine, by the
Hosking, Russia, People and Empire, London: HarperCollins, 1997, p. 378.
1050
Shaun Walker, The Long Hangover, Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past, Oxford
1051
University Press, 2018, p. 170.

618
base hand of our eternal foes. Who among you will not lend a hand to this great
undertaking? God and good people are with us! The ever loyal sons of Ukraine,
foes of the katsapy [derogatory term for Russians].’
“The appeal was as anti-Russian as could be imagined, but it was written in

Russian, not Polish, and not addressed to the Polish nobles who then dominated
Kyiv society. It was addressed to ‘the faithful sons of Ukraine’ – people whom
the imperial government considered Russian by nationality. Bibikov was sent
back to Kyiv with order to take over supervision of the Kyiv educational
district…
“There was no doubt that this manifestation of disloyalty came from the very
institutions that had been created to ensure the loyalty of the region’s
inhabitants to tsar and empire. Mykola Kostomarov taught at the university,
while Taras Shevchenko, who had been appointed instructor of drawing there,
had earlier been employed by the Archaeographic Commission, which aimed to
document the Russian identity of Right-Bank Ukraine. Official policy appeared
to have backfired. Instead of solidifying a common front between the
government and the ‘Russian’ population of the western provinces against the
Polish threat, it had contributed to dividing the imperial Russian nation and
promoted the development of a separate nation that would claim equal rights
with the Great Russians in the core areas of the empire in the course of the next
few decades. A new Ukrainian nation was emerging from the cocoon of the old
Little Russian identity. The imperial government would do everything in its
power to stop its development and put the Ukrainian genie back into the Little
Russian bottle.
“The Third Section’s investigation into the activities of Kostomarov,

Shevchenko and others uncovered the existence of a clandestine organization,
the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius. Its goal was the creation of a
voluntary federation of Slavic nations, with Ukraine at its core. The investigation
of the brotherhood became known in government circles as the Slavophile case,
later renamed the case of the Ukrainian Slavophiles…” 1052
“It was Kostomarov who formulated the true aims of the Brotherhood, and
his thinking was strongly marked by the works of Mickiewicz, the historical
writings of Lelewel and the example of the Polish communes of penitents at
Portsea and on the island of Jersey.
“Kostomarov’s The Books of the Birth of the Ukrainian People was modeled on
Mickiewicz’s similarly titled work. Its theme was that the Slavs had received
Christianity as a holy destiny, but had failed to fulfill God’s divine purpose on
earth – or at least Russia and Poland had, leaving only the Ukraine, suffering,
devastated but still pure and unbending. The Ukraine had brought about the
brotherhood of man in the form of the Cossack way of life and defended
Christendom from the infidel Turk. And for this, according to Kostomarov, she
had crucified by her sister Slav nations. ‘Ukraine is lying in the grave, but she
1052
Plokhy, op. cit., pp. 105-107.
619
has not died,’ he wrote. ‘And her voice, calling on all Slavs to liberty and
brotherhood, resounded throughout the Slavic world.’ Eventually, her voice
would be heard, and then Slavdom would triumph.
“In an ‘Appeal to the Russians and the Poles,’ the Brotherhood called on these
nations to cast of their hierarchical social patterns and return to Slavic simplicity.
‘Russian and Polish Brothers! It is the Ukraine that calls to you, your poor sister,
which you divided up and destroyed, and which does not remember evil,
sympathizes with your misfortunes and is ready to shed her blood for your
liberty.’ Kiev, where the Brotherhood were based, had been the capital of ancient
Rus, and they saw it as the future capital of a kind of United States of Slavdom,
modeled on the USA. ‘We were not able to precisely draw the map of where our
planned federation of states was to arise, and we left the final picture to history,’
wrote Kostomarov. History is still at it…”1053
“Among the key figures of the Slavophile movement mentioned by

investigators of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius in their reports
were two Moscow University professors, Mikhail Pogodin and Stepan Shevyrev.
Pogodin, whom Uvarov had rejected as the prospective author of a Russian
history textbook integrating the western provinces into the empire, taught
history at Moscow University; Shevyrev lectured there on philology and
literature. The two also served as co-publishers of the journal Moskvitianin (The
Muscovite), which later became a mouthpiece of the Slavophile movement in the
1840s. Pogodin was a leading figure in the emerging pan-Slavic movement,
which regarded all Slavs as a single family. By stressing the uniqueness
(samobytnost’) and self-awareness (samosoznanie) of the Russian nation, the
Slavophiles, for all their pan-Slavic ecumenism, set an example to non-Russian
Slavs who wished to celebrate the distinctiveness of their own peoples and,
consequently, their right to autonomy and independence.
“Early on, Ukraine took a special place in the Slavophile imagination.

Pogodin and Shevyrev in particular showed great interest in the culture and
history of Ukraine, or, as they called it, Little Russia. In the 1830s, Mykola
Kostomarov, then a student at Kharkiv University in eastern Ukraine, had been
strongly influenced by Stepan Shevyrev, whose lectures he attended. Shevyrev,
who referred to Little Russia as Great Russia’s elder sister, put a strong emphasis
on nationality and encouraged the study of popular culture. But there was a
problem, since ‘nationality’ meant different things in Moscow and Kharkiv.
When Kostomarov went to the people to collect their lore, he had to speak to
them in Ukrainian, and by 1839 he was already writing in that language.
Kostomarov was not the first admirer of nationality to bring back texts from his
field trip that were written in a language difficult to understand, if not entirely
foreign, to enthusiasts of nationality in Moscow and St. Petersburg…
“Mikhail Pogodin saw cultural differences between Russians and Ukrainians

that went beyond language and history. He wrote in 1845, ‘The Great Russians
live side by side with the Little Russians, profess one faith, have shared one fate
1053
Zamoyski, Holy Madness, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999, pp. 319-320.
620
and, for many years, one history. But how many differences there are between
the Great Russians and the Little Russians!’
“By the mid-nineteenth century, the Slavophiles’ belief in the unity of Great
and Little Russia and their treatment of the latter as the fountainhead of Russian
culture was being challenged by the Little Russians’ search for a nationality of
their own. Encouraged by like-minded individuals in Moscow and St.
Petersburg to investigate and embrace issues of nationality, the Ukrainians
brought to the salons of St. Petersburg and Moscow not only a language quite
different from Russian but also a history distinct from that of the Russian people
and state. It would soon become clear that language, history, and culture could
be used not only to construct a past separate from that of the Great Russians but
also a different future. In that new vision, Little Russia would turn into Ukraine,
an entity still close to Russia but also very different and quite separate from
it…”1054
When Shevchenko died in 1861, “a funeral procession accompanied his coffin

down the Dnieper River from Kiev to Kaniv, where he was buried as a national
hero, albeit of a nation that as yet had no state…”1055
The great Ukrainian – but at the same time classical Russian – writer Nikolai
Gogol wrote as follows about this most problematic of national relationships in
1844: “I would give no preference either to the Little Russian over the Russian or
to the Russian over the citizen of the Little Russian. Both natures are too richly
endowed by God, and each includes in itself what is not in the other – a clear
sign that they must complement each other. For this each of the very histories of
their past life includes that which is not in the other, so that their different
strengths and characters should be nourished separately, so that later, having
been merged into one, they might constitute that which is most perfect in
humanity.”
Shortly after the Polish rebellion of 1863, in a circular dated June 18, 1863 the
Russian Interior Minister Peter Valuev, fearing that Polish nationalism might
infect the neighbouring Ukraine, banned most Ukrainian-language publications.
As a result, between 1863 and 1868 their number dropped from thirty-three to
one. “Valuev’s circular,” writes Serhii Plokhy, “was directed mainly against the
Ukrainian intellectuals, whose efforts to introduce their language into churches
and schools he regarded as part of a Polish intrigue to undermine the empire.
‘That phenomenon is all the more deplorable and deserving of attention,’ stated
the circular, ‘because it coincides with the designs of the Poles and is all but
obliged to them for its origin; judging by the manuscripts received by the censors
and by the fact that most of the Little Russian compositions actually come from
the Poles.’ Valuev claimed that the ‘adherents of the Little Russian nationality’
were turning to the common people for political reasons. He noted that many of
1054
Plokhy, op. cit., pp. 108, 111.
1055
Walker, op. cit., p. 170.
621
them had already been investigated by the government and were being accused
by their own compatriots of ‘separatists designs hostile to Russia and fatal for
Little Russia.’”1056
“On June 21, 1863,” continues Plokhy, “a month before Valuev signed his
circular, Katkov added his voice to the discussion on prohibiting Ukrainian-
language publications in an article with a telling title, ‘The Coincidence of
Ukrainophile Interests with Polish Interests’. In complete agreement with the
adherents of pan-Russian Orthodoxy in [the ex-uniate Bishop] Iosif Semashko’s
camp, Katkov accused the Ukrainophiles of being instruments not only of Polish
but also of Jesuit intrigue. In doing so, Katkov not only politicized the question of
Ukrainian-language publications but in fact criminalized it, opening the door to
the politically damaging Polish-Ukrainian connection in Valuev’s circular. More
importantly in the long run, Katkov provided intellectual foundations for the
repressive policies vis-à-vis the Ukrainian cultural and political movement that
would be adopted by the imperial government and last for decades. Katkov
argued that ‘Ukraine has never had its own history, never been a separate state:
the Ukrainian people are an authentic Russian people, an indigenous Russian
people, an essential part of the Russian people, without which it can hardly
remain what it is now.’ Although he recognized linguistic and cultural
differences between the branches of the ‘Russian nation’, he considered them
only locally significant. If the big Russian nation was to develop and prevail, the
cultivation of local dialects would have to be arrested…” 1057
However, Ukrainian national consciousness continued to grow…
Now, as Hosking writes, “most of the elites of ‘Little Russia’ were

non-Ukrainian: Russian and Polish landowners; Jewish, German and
Russian townsfolk. Some of the national deficit was made good from
sources across the border in Galicia, part of the Habsburg monarchy,
where Ukrainian culture (there known as Ruthenian) was officially
encouraged as a counterweight to Polish. With the help of smuggled
Galician material, by the 1860s Russian Ukrainians were investigating
and publishing their own folklore, collecting antiquities, and beginning
to write their own history as a people distinct from the ‘Muscovites’,
Hromady, Ukrainian cultural societies, were being formed in the towns
and launching educational programs for the more emancipated
peasants.” 1058
But the Russians refused to accept the existence either of a distinct

Ukrainian people or of a Ukrainian language: “there never has been a
distinct Little Russian language, and there never will be one”, declared
Valuev. The Ukrainians were called “Little Russians” by contrast with
the “Great Russians” to the north, the important point being that they
were all Russians, being really one nation, not two. As Dominic Lieven
writes, tsarist statesmen “focused their attention on the linguistic and
1056
Plokhy, Lost Kingdom, London: Allen Lane, pp. 137-138.
1057
Plokhy, op. cit., p. 141.
1058
622
cultural foundations of national identity and therefore of subsequent
political nationalism. In 1863 General Annenkov, the governor-general
of the Kiev region, flatly opposed the publication of the bible in
Ukrainian, commenting that by its publication Ukrainian nationalists
‘would achieve so to speak the recognition of the independence of the
Little Russian language, and then of course they will make claims to
autonomy for Little Russia.’ Thirteen years later a key government
memorandum [by Valuev] warned of the dangers of ‘various doctrines
which superficially contain nothing political and seem to relate only to
the sphere of purely academic and artistic interests’. In the long run
their danger could be very great. ‘Nothing divides people as much as
differences in speech and writing. Permitting the creation of a special
literature for the common people in the Ukrainian dialect would signify
collaborating in the alienation of Ukraine from the rest of Russia.’ The
memorandum went on to emphasize the very great importance of the
Ukrainians to the Russian nation and state: ‘To permit the separation…
of thirteen million Little Russians would be the utmost political
carelessness, especially in view of the unifying movement which is
going on alongside us among the German tribe.’ In the light of such
views the tsarist regime did its utmost from 1876 to stop the
development of a written Ukrainian language or high culture,” 1059
prohibiting the publication of books, other than belles lettres and
folklore, in Ukrainian, as well as the use of Ukrainian in the theatre
and the import of Ukrainian books from abroad.
“This measure inevitably transferred the center of gravity across the

border to Habsburg Galicia, a region with very different traditions. If
the roots of Ukrainian distinctiveness within Russia originated in the
Cossack tradition of volia, then in Galicia the Ruthenians had their own
Greek Catholic, or Uniate, Church. They had, moreover, imbibed the
strong estate consciousness now present in all ranks of Habsburg
society and the relatively more robust legal traditions prevalent there.
All the same, the Habsburg Ruthenians remained a highly
disadvantaged ethnos, economically backward and without national
leaders outside the clergy.
The Russian government, writes Lieven, “faced a difficult dilemma.

On the one hand, Petersburg was not wrong to see the potential danger
of Ukrainian nationalism rooted in the local language. The restrictions
imposed on the Ukrainian language and civil society did impede the
emergence of Ukrainian nationalist movement in the Russian Empire.
Even after the 1905 revolution, when these restrictions were relaxed,
the Ukrainian movement was constrained by the lack of Ukrainian-
speaking teachers, journalists, and other professionals. In the big
Ukrainian towns, Russian or Jewish culture usually prevailed…” 1060
1059
Lieven, Nicholas II, pp. 279-280.
1060
Lieven, Towards the Flame, p. 54.
623
“Altogether,” writes Hosking, “by the early twentieth century the
prospects for the emergence of a separate Ukrainian nation looked very
dim. They had no elites outside the small towns, their cities were in the
hands of other national groups, and their written culture was weakly
developed and poorly disseminated. Only the revolutionary
developments of the twentieth century, combined with the collapse of
the empires in which they lived, could provide the conditions for
national independence…” 1061
1061
624
74. THE RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE ANGLICANS
It was in the reign of Tsar Nicholas I that a beginning was made to

ecumenical relations with the western confessions. Surprisingly, in view of the
political tensions between the two Great Powers, it was with England and the
Anglican Church that these relations were the warmest. This was largely
because certain individuals in the Anglo-Catholic arm of the Anglican Church,
believing fervently in the “branch theory” of the Church, according to which the
Orthodox, the Catholics and the Anglicans were the three branches of the One
Church, were very eager that their theory should be tested in Russia…
The pioneer in these ecumenical relations on the Orthodox side was Alexei
Khomiakov, whose correspondence with the Anglican Deacon William Palmer is
one of the earliest and best examples of how to conduct ecumenical relations
without betraying the truth. He was very well informed about the religious
situation in both East and West, clearly longed for union, and was not seeking
merely to “score points” over an adversary. He was generous about what was
good in the West, and not afraid to admit weaknesses in the East. But he was
unbendingly firm in his defence of the Orthodox position on questions of faith
(e.g. the Filioque) and ecclesiology (i.e. where the True Church is and where it is
not). However, the matter did not end well; for Palmer was shocked to learn that
the Greeks would receive him into communion by baptism, and the Russians by
chrismation only, considering this divergence in practice to indicate a
fundamental confusion in thinking. In spite of Khomiakov’s attempts to explain
the Orthodox use of condescension or “economy”, Palmer remained dissatisfied
by what he saw as a difference in ecclesiology between the Greeks and the
Russians, and eventually joined the Roman Catholic Church.
When Palmer criticised the dominance of the State over the Church
in Russia (completely ignoring the Erastianism of the Anglicans),
Khomiakov replied: “That the Church is not quite independent of the
state, I allow; but let us consider candidly and impartially how far that
dependence affects, and whether it does indeed affect, the character of
the Church. The question is so important, that it has been debated
during this very year [1852] by serious men in Russia, and has been
brought, I hope, to a satisfactory conclusion. A society may be
dependent in fact and free in principle, or vice-versa. The first case is a
mere historical accident; the second is the destruction of freedom, and
has no other issue but rebellion and anarchy. The first is the weakness
of man; the second the depravity of law. The first is certainly the case
in Russia, but the principles have by no means been damaged. Whether
freedom of opinion in civil and political questions is, or is not, too
much restrained, is no business of ours as members of the Church
(though I, for my part, know that I am almost reduced to complete
silence); but the state never interferes directly in the censorship of
works written about religious questions. In this respect, I will confess
again that the censorship is, in my opinion, most oppressive; but that
does not depend upon the state, and is simply the fault of the over-
625
cautious and timid prudence of the higher clergy. I am very far from
approving of it, and I know that very useful thoughts and books are
lost in the world, or at least to the present generation.
“But this error, which my reason condemns, has nothing to do with

ecclesiastical liberty; and though very good tracts and explanations of
the Word of God are oftentimes suppressed on the false supposition of
their perusal being dangerous to unenlightened minds, I think that
those who suppress the Word of God itself should be the last to
condemn the excessive prudence of our ecclesiastical censors. Such a
condemnation coming from the Latins would be absurdity itself. But is
the action of the Church quite free in Russia? Certainly not; but this
depends wholly on the weakness of her higher representatives, and
upon their desire to get the protection of the state, not for themselves,
generally speaking, but for the Church. There is certainly a moral error
in that want of reliance upon God Himself; but it is an accidental error
of persons, and not of the Church, and has nothing to do with our
religious convictions. It would be a different case, if there was the
smallest instance of a dogmatic error, or something near to it, admitted
or suffered without protestation out of weakness; but I defy anybody to
find anything like that…” 1062
In spite of his ardent desire for union, Khomiakov was pessimistic about its
prospects; and this not so much because of the doctrinal obstacles, as of the moral
obstacles. As he explained to Palmer: “A very weak conviction in points of
doctrine can bring over a Latin to Protestantism, or a Protestant to the Latins. A
Frenchman, a German, an Englishman, will go over to Presbyterianism, to
Lutheranism, to the Independents, to the Cameronians, and indeed to almost
every form of belief or misbelief; he will not go over to Orthodoxy. As long as he
does not step out of the circles of doctrines which have taken their origin in the
Western world, he feels himself at home; notwithstanding his apparent change,
he does not feel that dread of apostasy which renders sometimes the passage
from error to faith as difficult as from truth to error. He will be condemned by
his former brethren, who will call his action a rash one, perhaps a bad one; but it
will not be utter madness, depriving him, as it were, of his rights of citizenship
in the civilized world of the West. And that is natural. All the Western doctrine
is born out of the Latins; it feels (though unconsciously) its solidarity with the
past; it feels its dependence on one science, on one creed, on one line of life; and
that creed, that science, that life was the Latin one. This is what I hinted at, and
what you understand very rightly, viz., that all Protestants are Crypto-Papists;
and, indeed, it would be a very easy task to show that in their theology (as well
as philosophy) all the definitions of all the objects of creed or understanding are
merely taken out of the old Latin System, though often made negative in the
application. In short, if it was to be expressed in the concise language of algebra,
all the West knows but one datum, a; whether it be preceded by the positive sign
Khomiakov, “Eighth Letter to William Palmer”, in W.J. Birkbeck, Russia and the English
1062
Church: Containing a correspondence between Mr. William Palmer, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford,
and M. Khomiakoff, in the years 1844-1855, London, 1895, pp. 126-127; Living Orthodoxy, 142, vol.
XXIV, N 4, July-August, 2004, p. 26.
626
+, as with the Latins, or with the negative -, as with the Protestants, the a
remains the same. Now, a passage to Orthodoxy seems indeed like an apostasy
from the past, from its science, creed, and life. It is rushing into a new and
unknown world, a bold step to take, or even to advise.
“This, most reverend sir, is the moral obstacle I have been speaking about;
this, the pride and disdain which I attribute to all the Western communities. As
you see, it is no individual feeling voluntarily bred or consciously held in the
heart; it is no vice of the mind, but an involuntary submission to the tendencies
and direction of the past. When the unity of the Church was lawlessly and
unlovingly rent by the Western clergy, the more so inasmuch as at the same time
the East was continuing its former friendly intercourse, and submitting to the
opinion of the Western Synods the Canons of the Second Council of Nicaea, each
half of Christianity began a life apart, becoming from day to day more estranged
from the other. There was an evident self-complacent triumph on the side of the
Latins; there was sorrow on the side of the East, which had seen the dear ties of
Christian brotherhood torn asunder – which had been spurned and rejected, and
felt itself innocent. All these feelings have been transmitted by hereditary
succession to our time, and, more or less, either willingly or unwillingly, we are
still under their power. Our time has awakened better feelings; in England,
perhaps, more than anywhere else, you are seeking for the past brotherhood, for
the past sympathy and communion. It would be a shame for us not to answer
your proferred friendship, it would be a crime not to cultivate in our hearts an
intense desire to renovate the Unity of the Church; but let us consider the
question coolly, even when our sympathies are most awakened.
“The Church cannot be a harmony of discords; it cannot be a numerical sum

of Orthodox, Latins, and Protestants. It is nothing if it is not perfect inward
harmony of creed and outward harmony of expression (notwithstanding local
differences in the rite). The question is, not whether the Latins and Protestants
have erred so fatally as to deprive individuals of salvation, which seems to be
often the subject of debate – surely a narrow and unworthy one, inasmuch as it
throws suspicion on the mercy of the Almighty. The question is whether they
have the Truth, and whether they have retained the ecclesiastical tradition
unimpaired. If they have not, where is the possibility of unity?…
“Do not, I pray, nourish the hope of finding Christian Truth without stepping
out of the former protestant circle. It is an illogical hope; it is a remnant of that
pride which thought itself able and wished to judge and decide by itself without
the Spiritual Communion of heavenly grace and Christian love. Were you to find
all the truth, you would have found nothing; for we alone can give you that
without which all would be vain – the assurance of Truth.”1063
In spite of Khomiakov’s pessimism, successive over-procurators, supported

by the Holy Synod, took great interest in the idea of an Orthodox mission in
Khomiakov, “Third Letter to William Palmer”, in Birkbeck, op. cit., pp. 67-69, 71; Living
1063
Orthodoxy, N 138, vol. XXIII, N 6, November-December, 2003, pp. 26-27.

627
England. Thus in 1856 the convert Stephen Hatherley, who had been baptized in
the Greek Church, turned for help to the Russians, who decided to bless and
financially support his idea of a mission church in Wolverhampton. However,
the Russians did not satisfy Hatherley’s request that he be ordained for that
mission; so he turned to the Greeks and received ordination in Constantinople in
1871. But then the Greeks, succumbing to intrigues on the part of the Anglicans,
banned Hatherley from making any English converts. Hatherley obeyed this
directive, which unsurprisingly led to the collapse of his mission… 1064
For all the enthusiasm of the Russians, the fruit of their labours in England
was meager. Some of the reasons for this were well pinpointed by Archpriest
Joseph Wassilief in a report sent to the Holy Synod in 1865 after a visit to
England:
“’… 2. Plans for union with the Orthodox Church are curiously conceived by
those who promote this movement and they cannot be reconciled with Orthodox
or any other theological approaches to their realization. Thus the practical and
mutual benefits of union are given preference over and against the necessity for
a preliminary agreement in doctrine.
“’3. Only a few individuals recognize the necessity for unity of dogmas and
labour to reconcile the differences, but without decisive concessions on the part
of the Anglican Church.’
“Father Wassilief,” continues Fr. Christopher Birchall, “was frustrated by the

lack of any real desire to face the dogmatic issues and ascribed this, in part, to
the fact that the Church of England had existed for centuries without any real
unity of belief. Consequently, [they] assumed that union with the Orthodox
could be achieved on the same basis. Part of the Anglican hierarchy would have
liked to strengthen its position by being recognized by the Orthodox, but
nothing could be done without the consent of Parliament and the laity, who
would resist any change. ‘The past and its customs give support to any
opposition,’ he wrote, ‘in England they are virtually idolized.’ Echoing the ideas
of Khomiakov, he continued, ‘One of the reasons for the Anglican’s faithfulness
to his tradition and establishment lies in an exaggerated sense of superiority
before other people, and in personal and national pride. He also extends this
feeling to his Church, which is a national creation and thus national property. It
is extremely difficult for the Anglican to admit that his forefathers constructed
the Anglican Church unsuccessfully, that this sphere of life is higher, truer and
firmer in Russian and among other Eastern peoples, who in all other respects are
less favoured than the English.’
“Another factor hindering unity, Wassilief noted, was the Anglican Church’s
‘enormous possessions and income.’ ‘If only some of the Anglican bishops
together with a number of priests and faithful would unite with the Orthodox
Church in rejecting the 39 heretical Articles of the Anglican Church as ratified by
Protodeacon Christopher Birchall, Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen. The Three-Hundred Year
1064
History of a Russian Orthodox Church in London, Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Publications, 2014,
pp. 114-135, 139-143.
628
Parliament, then the government might well consider this society a sect, and
might deprive its pastors of their worldly benefits by which they profit in the
Anglican Church and condemn them to a life which would be the more arduous
since their present life is so full of abundance and luxury. For a bishop or a dean
to renounce his salary, he would have to possess an immutable belief and an
exceptional faith…’”1065
In 1864, four years after Khomiakov’s death, Pastor Jung, a delegate of the
New York convocation of the Episcopalian Church with authority from some of
the bishops there to enter into relations with the older Russian hierarchs, came to
Russia. In a meeting with Metropolitan Philaret and other bishops, he explained
the significance of the 39 articles for the Anglicans and Episcopalians. The
metropolitan said that a rapprochement between the Russian and American
Episcopalian Churches might create problems with their respective “mother
churches” in England and Greece. For example, the Greeks were less
accommodating with regard to the canonicity of baptism by pouring than their
Russian co-religionists. The metropolitan probably had in mind here the
experience of William Palmer…
In 1867, the metropolitan expressed the following opinion: “A member of the

Anglican Church, who has definitely received a baptism in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, even though it be by effusion
(pouring), can, in accordance with the rule accepted in the Church of Russia
(which the Church of Constantinople considers to be a form of condescension),
be received into the Orthodox Church without a new baptism, but the sacrament
of chrismation must be administered to him, because confirmation, in the
teaching of the Anglican Church, is not a sacrament…
“The question as to whether an Anglican priest can be received into the

Orthodox Church as an actual priest awaits the decision of a Church Council,
because it has not yet been clarified whether the unbroken Apostolic Succession
of hierarchical ordination exists in the Anglican Church, and also because the
Anglican Church does not acknowledge ordination as a sacrament, although it
recognizes the power of grace in it…”1066
In another meeting with Pastor Jung, Metropolitan Philaret posed five

questions relating to the 39 articles:
1. How can the 39 articles not be a stumbling-block to the union of the

Churches?
2. How can the teaching of the American Episcopalian Church’s teaching on
the procession of the Holy Spirit [the Filioque] be made to agree with the
teaching of the Eastern Church?
1065
Birchall, op. cit., pp. 109-110.
1066
Birchall, op. cit., pp. 607-608.
629
3. Is the uninterruptedness of apostolic hierarchical ordination fully proven
in the American Church?
4. Does the American Church recognize reliable Church Tradition to be a
subsidiary guiding principle for the explanation of Holy Scripture and for
Church orders and discipline?
5. What is the view of the American Church on the sevenfold number of
sacraments in the Eastern Church?
At another meeting the pastor gave preliminary replies to these questions,

and insisted that the 39 articles had a political rather than a spiritual meaning,
and did not have a fully dogmatic force.
Although the two sides parted on friendly terms, nothing positive came from
the meeting. The public in America were not ready for this, and there even
began something in the nature of a reaction. Learning about this, Philaret sadly
remarked: “The reconcilers of the churches… are weaving a cover for division,
but are not effecting union.” “How desirable is the union of the Churches! But
how difficult to ensure that the movement towards it should soar with a pure
striving for the Truth and should be entirely free from attachment to entrenched
opinions.” “O Lord, send a true spirit of union and peace.”1067
“Will the idea of the union of the churches, which has lit up the west like a
glow on the horizon, remain just the glow of sunset in the west, or will it turn
into an Eastern radiance of sunrise, in the hope of a brighter morning? Thou
knowest, O Lord.”1068
Perhaps the most distinguished Western converts to Orthodoxy in

this period were the Anglicized German Dr. Joseph Overbeck and the
Frenchman Fr. Vladimir Guettée. “Dr. Julian Joseph Overbeck (1820-
1905) was perhaps the most well-known of Western Roman Catholic
converts to Orthodoxy in the later half of the 19th century in the
English speaking world. A German by nation[ality], he was raised in
the Papist Faith, eventually becoming a priest in it. He was also an
extremely learned man, knowing around 12 ancient languages, and
many modern. His grasp of ancient and medieval Christian history was
as good as any; any mistakes he makes are generally no worse than that
of other scholars. However, as Dr. Overbeck stated ‘history was always
the weak point of the Jesuits, and consequently of the Papists.’ His
study led him away from Romanism; in initial despair he contemplated
perhaps having something to do with some form of high Lutheranism.
Yet, he could not ultimately swallow such. He eventually immigrated
to England and became a Professor in German at the Royal Military
Academy in 1863. In 1865, convinced of the equal untenability and
imminent collapse of both Papism and Protestantism, and sure of the
1067
Snychev, op. cit., p. 357.
1068
Birchall, op. cit., p. 91.
630
Truth of the Orthodox Faith, he was received into the Orthodox Church
by Fr. Eugene Popoff, chaplain of the Russian Embassy in London.
“For the next 40 years he was a constant antagonist of the

heterodox, an opponent of the earliest forms of proto-ecumenism
(which he saw as being fundamentally of Anglican-Protestant
origination and heresy), and thus the finest proponent and only
apologists and polemicist for the Orthodox Christian Faith in the
English speaking world. He was in concourse with the famed Fr.
Vladimir (Guettée) (i.e. Abbé Guettée) who had a similar story to Dr.
Overbeck; the difference being that Dr. Overbeck, having left Roman
Catholicism and the Papist priesthood, was later married. However,
upon his conversion to Orthodoxy, the Russian Church told Dr.
Overbeck that he could not serve as a priest since he was married after
ordination (the Russian Church had the practice of receiving Roman
Catholic clergy by vesting); though, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow
had supposedly informed him that if he had joined Orthodoxy via the
Greek Church, he would have been baptized, and the question would
have been handled entirely differently. Despite this, Dr. Overbeck
continued his work. His errors are no more than those of the time and
of the contemporary Russian Church (i.e., a semi-scholasticized
understanding of some of the Mysteries); his projects, while seemingly
‘fantastical’ to the Anglican critic (and modern) were supported by the
Synod in Russia (and others), and while many never came to full
fruition in his own lifetime, they did demonstrate a wholesale devotion
to Orthodoxy in all matters (thus, his gaining approval from the Holy
Governing Synod of Russia and the Ecumenical Patriarchate for the
idea of an Orthodox Western rite based upon Orthodox Canon Law and
pre-Schism praxis of the West [something entirely ignored by the later
Antiochian proponents who found Dr. Overbeck equally repugnant for
his polemic against Anglicanism and nascent anti-ecumenism]; the
resurrection of local Orthodox sees in the West, etc.).
“Dr. Overbeck was a constant opponent and antagonist of the

Anglican heresy just as much as he was of the Roman. The Romans, in
general, tried to ignore him and belittle him (as they did Fr. Vladimir
until the spigots of threats were turned on); the Anglicans tried the
same, but found themselves unable. At the Bonn Conference in the
1870s, an early attempt by the Orthodox Church to bring the nascent
Old Catholic movement wholesale into Orthodoxy, Dr. Overbeck was
present at the commission discussions. He and other Russian Church
delegates had stalwartly opposed the introduction of Anglican
representatives to have any part in the debates between the Orthodox
and Old Catholics. Overbeck saw them as meddlesome interlopers who
would only muddy the water and provide cover for the Old Catholics
on issues that caused their continuing separation from the Church.
However, the Anglicans insinuated themselves into the affair, and the
results were largely disastrous; the Old Catholic movement, though
abandoning the Filioque clause in 1877, was never to make good on
631
anything. It was continually to degenerate and fall more and more into
the Anglican orbit (ecclesially, theologically, liturgically), which is
exactly what Dr. Overbeck had noted would happen if they did not
become Orthodox. He thus wrote them off, just as he did the Anglicans,
looking only for individual conversions.
“The experience of the Anglicans with Dr. Overbeck at the

conference had made Overbeck a target for Anglican criticism and
slander for the rest of his life. Yet, despite this, he continued to
publish the first apologetic, polemic, and historical journals in English
that taught the Orthodox position in the English language (the
Orthodox Catholic Review; it is difficult to find copies of all the
volumes which were published monthly from 1867-1885)…
“… Dr. Overbeck (and many other Orthodox) foresaw massive

changes ahead with the creation of “Papal Infallibility”; which in
essence is the elevation of man above God. He says as much when
addressing it. He stated, ‘The poisonous seed is sown: what may the
plant, the full grown plant be? We do not indulge in fancies or
unsubstantial apprehensions.’ Well, we know today more than ever.
“Indeed, if Dr. Overbeck were walking upon the Earth today, it

would not just be Papism and Protestantism he would target, but, it
would be the modern Ecumenical Patriarchate and its sister
Patriarchates for their desired union with the former in the heresy of
ecumenism; not to mention their wholesale embrace of the modernist
heresy.” 1069

“Rome’s Rapid Downward Course by Dr. J. Joseph Overbeck (1820-1905)”, NFTU News,
1069
November 10, 2016. http://nftu.net/romes-rapid-downward-dr-j-joseph-overbeck/#49561562.

632
75. THE JEWS UNDER NICHOLAS I
Tsar Alexander I’s project of settling the Jews as farmers on the new
territories of Southern Russia had proved to be a failure, in spite of very
generous terms offered to them – terms that were not offered to Russian
peasants.
In spite of this failure, writes Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in his Statute of 1835,

which replaced Alexander’s of 1804, Nicholas “not only did not abandon Jewish
agriculture, but even broadened it, placing in the first place in the building of
Jewish life ‘the setting up of the Jews on the basis of rules that would open to
them a free path to the acquisition of a prosperous existence by the practice of
agriculture and industry and to the gradual education of their youth, while at
the same time cutting off for them excuses for idleness and unlawful trades’. If
before a preliminary contribution of 400 roubles was required for each family
[settling in the new territories] from the Jewish community, now without any
condition ‘every Jew is allowed “at any time” to pass over to agriculture’, and all
his unpaid taxes would immediately be remitted to him and to the community;
he would be allowed to receive not only State lands for an unlimited period, but
also, within the bounds of the Pale of Settlement, to buy, sell and lease lands.
Those passing over to agriculture were freed from poll-tax for 25 years, from
land tax for 10, and from liability to military service – for 50. Nor could any Jew
‘be forced to pass over to agriculture’. Moreover, ‘trades and crafts practised in
their village life’ were legalised.
“(150 years passed. And because these distant events had been forgotten, an
enlightened and learned physicist formulated Jewish life at that time as ‘the Pale
of Settlement in conjunction with a ban [!] on peasant activity’. But the historian-
publicist M.O. Gershenzon has a broader judgement: ‘Agriculture is forbidden to
the Jew by his national spirit, for, on becoming involved with the land, a man
can more easily become rooted to the place’.)”1070
In general, the Statute of 1835 “’did not lay any new restrictions on the Jews’,
as the Jewish encyclopaedia puts it in a restrained way. And if we look into the
details, then according to the new Statute ‘the Jews had the right to acquire any
kind of real estate, including populated estates, and carry out any kind of trade
on the basis of rights identical with those granted Russian subjects’, although
only within the bounds of the Pale of Settlement. The Statute of 1835 defended
all the rights of the Jewish religion, and introduced awards for rabbis and the
rights of the merchants of the first guild. A rational age for marriage (18 and 16
years) was established [contrary to the rabbis, who married off young Jews at
much younger ages]. Measures were undertaken that Jewish dress should not be
so different, separating Jews from the surrounding population. Jews were
directed to productive means of employment (forbidding the sale of wine on
credit and on the security of household effects), all kinds of manufacturing
activity (including the farming of wine distilleries). Keeping Christians in
1070
A.I. Solzhenitsyn, Dvesti Let Vmeste (Two Hundred Years Together), Moscow, 2001, p. 114.
633
servitude was forbidden only for constant service, but it was allowed ‘for short
jobs’ without indication of exactly how long, and also ‘for assisting in arable
farming, gardening and work in kitchen gardens’, which was a mockery of the
very idea of ‘Jewish agriculture’. The Statute of 1835 called on Jewish youth to
get educated [up to then the rabbis had forbidden even the learning of Russian.
No restrictions were placed on the entry of Jewish to secondary and higher
educational institutions. Jews who had received the degree of doctor in any
branch of science… were given the right to enter government service. (Jewish
doctors had that right even earlier.) As regards local self-government, the Statute
removed the Jews’ previous restrictions: now they could occupy posts in dumas,
magistracies and town councils ‘on the same basis as people of other confessions
are elected to them’. (True, some local authorities, especially in Lithuania,
objected to this: the head of the town on some days had to lead the residents into
the church, and how could this be a Jew? Or how could a Jew be a judge, since
the oath had to be sworn on the cross? The opposition proved to be strong, and
by a decree of 1836 it was established for the western provinces that Jews could
occupy only a third of the posts in magistracies and town councils.) Finally, with
regard to the economically urgent question linked with cross-frontier smuggling,
which was undermining State interests, the Statute left the Jews living on the
frontiers where they were, but forbad any new settlements.
“For a State that held millions of its population in serfdom, all this cannot be
characterised as a cruel system…”1071
This is an important point in view of the persistent western and Jewish

propaganda that Nicholas was a persecutor of the Jews. And in this light even
the most notorious restriction on the Jews – that they live in the Pale of
Settlement – looks generous. For while a peasant had to live in his village, the
Jews could wander throughout the vast territory of the Pale, an area the size of
France and Germany combined; while for those who were willing to practise
agriculture, or had acquired education, they could go even further afield.
“In 1827,” writes Montefiore, “he ordered conscription into the army of
Jewish boys from the age of twelve for twenty-five years ‘to move them most
effectively to change their religion.’”1072
Of particular importance were the Tsar’s measures encouraging Jewish

education, by which he hoped to remove the barriers built up around the Jews
by the rabbis. “Already in 1831 he told the ‘directing’ committee that ‘among the
measures that could improve the situation of the Jews, it was necessary to pay
attention to their correction by teaching… by the building of factories, by the
banning of early marriage, by a better management of the kahals,… by a change
of dress’. And in 1840, on the founding the ‘Committee for the Defining of
Measures for the Radical Transformation of the Jews in Russia’, one of its first
aims was seen to be: ‘Acting on the moral formation of the new generation of
1071
Solzhenitsyn, op. cit., pp. 115-117.
1072
634
Jews by the establishment of Jewish schools in a spirit opposed to the present
Talmudic teaching’…”1073
“The masses, fearing coercive measures in the sphere of religion, did not go.
“However, the school reform took its course in… 1844, in spite of the extreme
resistance of the ruling circles among the kahals. (Although ‘the establishment of
Jewish schools by no means envisaged a diminution in the numbers of Jews in
the general school institutions; on the contrary, it was often pointed out that the
general schools had to be, as before, open for Jews’.) Two forms of State Jewish
schools [‘on the model of the Austrian elementary schools for Jews’] were
established: two-year schools, corresponding to Russian parish schools, and
four-year schools, corresponding to uyezd schools. In them only Jewish subjects
were taught by Jewish teachers. (As one inveterate revolutionary, Lev Deutsch,
evaluated it: ‘The crown-bearing monster ordered them [the Jews] to be taught
Russian letters’.) For many years Christians were placed at the head of these
schools; only much later were Jews also admitted.
“’The majority of the Jewish population, faithful to traditional Jewry, on

learning or guessing the secret aim of Uvarov [the minister of enlightenment],
looked on the educational measures of the government as one form of
persecution. (But Uvarov, in seeking possible ways of bringing the Jews and the
Christian population closer together through the eradication ‘of prejudices
instilled by the teaching of the Talmud’, wanted to exclude it completely from
the educational curriculum, considering it to be an antichristian codex.) In their
unchanging distrust of the Russian authorities, the Jewish population continued
for quite a few years to keep away from these schools, experiencing ‘school-
phobia’: ‘Just as the population kept away from military service, so it was saved
from the schools, fearing to give their children to these seed-beds of “free
thought”’. Prosperous Jewish families in part sent other, poor people’s children
to the State schools instead of their own… And if by 1855 70 thousand Jewish
children were studying in the ‘registered’ heders [rabbinic schools], in the State
schools of both types there were 3,200.”1074
This issue of education was to prove to be crucial. For when, in the next reign,
the Jews did overcome their “school-phobia”, and send their children to the
State schools, these had indeed become seed-beds of “free-thinking” and
revolution. It is ironic and tragic that it was the Jews’ education in Russian
schools that taught them how to overthrow the Russian Orthodox Autocracy…
They were also taught by foreign Jews – like Sir Moses Montefiore, “a
wealthy baronet and brother-in-law of the banker N.M. Rotshchild”. As his
descendant relates, he came to Petersburg in 1861 and met Tsar Alexander II,
who thought that he was “’kind and honest yet a Jew and a lawyer – and for this
it is forgivable for him to wish many things.’ On his way home, Montefiore was
mobbed by the Jews of Vilna, the Jerusalem of the North. The Third Section
1073
Solzhenitsyn, op. cit., p. 122.
1074
Solzhenitsyn, op. cit., pp. 123-124.
635
secret policeman reported the excitement of the ‘greedy Yids’ who flocked to
‘the English Messiah’…”1075
76. RUSSIAN HEGELIANISM
The failure of the Decembrist rebellion, and the reaction that set in under
Nicholas I, created a special breed of young men, usually but not always from
the nobility, educated for public service but unwilling to serve because of their
alienation from the regime, but wishing to serve “the people” in some
unspecified way. They gathered together in discussion circles, or kruzhki, where
they discussed literature, art, philosophy and politics with great intensity and
enthusiasm. “The content of their discussions,” writes Hosking, “was shaped by
the post-Decembrist situation, by the yawning gap between thought and deed,
between noble moral intentions and abject practical failure. The French
Enlightenment thought on which the Decembrists had been nurtured did not
offer an explanation of either the gap or the failure. But the new German idealist
philosophy, just beginning to penetrate in Russia in the 1820s, did suggest some
insights and some hope. Kant’s postulate that our understanding of reality is
shaped by the categories of the human mind, such as space, time and causality,
was developed – or distorted – in later German thinkers into the view that the
human mind in some sense ‘creates’ understandable reality…” 1076
“In Russia, as elsewhere,” writes Richard Pipes, “the principal consequence of

Idealism was greatly to enhance the creative role of the human mind. Kant’s
critique of empirical theories had this inadvertent result that it transformed the
mind from a mere recipient of sensory impressions into an active participant in
the process of cognition. The manner in which intelligence, through its inbuilt
categories, perceived reality was in itself an essential attribute of that reality.
With this argument, the Idealist school which sprung up to overshadow
Empiricism, gave a weapon to all those interested in promoting the human mind
as the supreme creative force – that is, in the first place, the intellectuals. It was
now possible to argue that ideas were every bit as ‘real’ as physical facts, if not
more so. ‘Thought’ broadly defined to include feelings, sensations, and, above
all, creative artistic impulses was raised to a status of equality with ‘Nature’.
Everything fitted together; nothing was accidental: intelligence merely had to
grasp how phenomena related to ideas. ‘I owe to Schelling the habit I now have
of generalizing the least events and the most insignificant phenomena which I
encounter’, wrote V.F. Odoevskii, a leading Schellingian of the 1820s. In the late
1830s when Russian intellectuals became drunk on Hegel, the addiction acquired
1075
Montefiore, op. cit. , p. 373.
1076
Hosking, op. cit., p. 269. Many of these intelligenty did not simply discuss philosophy at
home, in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but went to Germany and listened to the lectures of Hegel
himself, and of other important German philosophers such as Kant and Schelling. The influence
of these lectures on the Russian intelligentsia lasted deep into the nineteenth century. Pushkin
satirized this influence in Evgeny Onegin in the figure of
Vladimir Lensky, just returning
From Göttingen with soulful yearning,
Was in his prime – a handsome youth
And poet filled with Kantian truth.
636
extreme forms. Alexander Herzen, having returned from exile, found his
Moscow friends in a kind of collective delirium:
“’Nobody at this time would have disowned such as sentence as this: “The
concrescence of abstract ideas in the sphere of the plastic represents that phase of
the self-questing spirit in which it, defining itself for itself, is potentialized from
natural immanence into the harmonious sphere of the formal consciousness in
beauty”… Everything that in fact is most immediate, all the simplest feelings
were erected into abstract categories and returned from thence as pale, algebraic
ghosts, without a drop of living blood… A man who went for a walk… went not
just for a walk, but in order to give himself over to the pantheistic feelings of his
identification with the cosmos. If, on the way, he met a tipsy soldier or a peasant
woman who tried to strike up a conversation, the philosopher did not simply
talk with them, he determined the substantiality of the popular element, both in
its immediate and its accidental manifestations. The very tear which might arise
to his eye was strictly referred to its proper category: to Gemüth or the “tragic
element in the heart”.’
“Secondly, and only slightly less importantly, Idealism injected into

philosophy a dynamic element. It conceived reality, both in its spiritual and
physical aspects, as undergoing constant evolution, as ‘becoming’ rather than
‘being’. The entire cosmos was evolving, the process leading towards a vaguely
defined goal of a perfectly free and rational existence. This ‘historicist’ element,
present in all Idealist doctrines, has become ever since an indispensable
ingredient of all ‘ideologies’. It gave and continues to give the intelligentsia the
assurance that the reality with which they happen to be surrounded and in
varying degrees repudiate is by the very nature of things transitory, a stepping
stone to something superior. Furthermore, it allows them to argue that whatever
discrepancy there might exist between their ideas and reality is due to the fact
that reality, as it were, has not yet caught up with their ideas. Failure is always
temporary for ideologues, as success is always seen by them to be illusory for
the powers that be.
“The net effect of Idealism was to inspire Russian intellectuals with a self-
confidence which they had never possessed before. Mind was linked with
nature, both participating in a relentless unfolding of historical processes;
compared to this vision, what were mere governments, economies, armies and
bureaucracies? Prince Odoevskii thus describes the exaltation he and his friends
experienced on being first exposed to these heady concepts:
“’What solemn, luminous, and joyful feeling permeated life once it had been
shown that it was possible to explain the phenomena of nature by the very same
laws to which the human spirit is subject in its evolution, seemingly to close
forever the gap separating the two realms, and fashion them into a single
receptacle containing the eternal idea and eternal reason. With what youthful
and noble pride did we at that time envisage the share which had been allotted
to man in this universal existence! By virtue of the quality and right of thought,
man transposed visible nature within himself and analysed it in the innermost
recesses of his own consciousness: in short, he became nature’s focal point, judge
637
and interpreter. He absorbed nature and in him it revived for rational and
inspired existence… The more radiantly the eternal spirit, the eternal idea
reflected themselves in man, the more fully did he understand their present in
all the other realms of life. The culmination of the whole [Idealist] outlook were
moral obligations, and one of the most indispensable obligations was to
emancipate within oneself the divine share of the world idea from everything
accidental, impure, and false in order to acquire the right to the blessings of a
genuine, rational existence.’
“Of course, not all Russian intellectuals succumbed to such ecstasy. Idealism
had also more sober followers, as, for example, among academic historians who
took from Hegel little more than a general scheme of development of human
societies. But in some degree, in the reign of Nicholas I (1825-55) Idealism was an
all-pervading philosophy of the Russian intelligentsia, and its influence
persisted well into the second half of the nineteenth century, after its principal
tenets had been repudiated and replaced by materialism…”1077
But idealism was not replaced only by materialism… Some of the Russian
Hegelians became materialists and Marxists. But others began to return to the
roots of Russian national and religious consciousness in the movement known as
Slavophilism…
The Slavophiles were influenced particularly by Schelling, and in particular

by his concept, common among the Romantics, of a national soul or essence. “In
the 1820s,” writes Oliver Figes, “Schelling had a godlike status in Russia, and his
concept of the soul was seized upon by intellectuals who sought to contrast
Russia with Europe. Prince Odoevsky, the archpriest of the Schelling cult in
Russia, argued that the West had sold its soul to the Devil in the pursuit of
material progress. ‘Your soul has turned into a steam engine,’ he wrote in his
novel Russian Nights (1844); ‘I see screws and wheels in you , but I don’t see life.’
Only Russia, with her youthful spirit, could save Europe now. It stands to reason
that young nations like Germany and Russia that lagged behind the
industrializing West would have recourse to the idea of a national soul. What
nations lacked in economic progress they could more than make up for in the
spiritual virtues of the unspoilt countryside. Nationalists attributed a creative
spontaneity and fraternity to the simple peasantry that had long been lost in the
bourgeois culture of the West. This was the vague Romantic sense in which the
idea of the Russian soul began to develop from the final decades of the
eighteenth century…”1078
Still more influential than Schelling was Hegel… Evans writes: “In the
emerging world of the intelligentsia in Russia during the 1830s and 1840s, as
Alexander Herzen, author of Who is to Blame? (1845-6), one of the first Russian
social novels, later remembered, Hegel’s writings were discussed deep into the
1077
Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, London: Penguin Books, 1995, pp. 259-261.
1078
638
night. ‘Every insignificant pamphlet… in which there was a mere mention of
Hegel was ordered and read until it was tattered, smudged, and fell apart in a
few days.’ Hegel’s dialectic sharpened vague perceptions of the differences
between East and West and forced Russian intellectuals to take sides. The
literary critic Ivan Kireyevsky (1806-56), whose religious father was so
vehemently hostile to the atheism of Voltaire that he bought multiple copies of
the Frenchman’s books solely in order to burn them in huge piles in his garden,
attended Hegel’s lectures in Berlin and concluded that Russia was destined to
belong to the East, founding its society on collectivism rather than
individualism, and building its moral character on the doctrines of the Orthodox
Church. However, Hegel’s philosophy of history convinced others that Russia
was on a preordained trajectory towards a liberated future by acquiring the
freedoms common in the West. The young literary critic, Vissarion Belinsky
(1811-48) began labelling everything he thought backward in the culture and
politics of his native land ‘Chinese’. Herzen drew similar consequences from a
reading of Hegel, but stopped short of advocating violent revolution in order to
achieve them.
“That step was taken by the most radical of the Russian Hegelians, Mikhail
Bakunin (1814-76), who imbibed the works of the German philosopher while
studying in Moscow. Bakunin was a man of violent, volcanic temperament,
described by his friend Belinsky as ‘a deep, primitive, leonine nature’, also
notable, however, for ‘his demands, his childishness, his braggadocio, his
unscrupulousness, his disingenuousness’. In 1842, by now in Paris, Bakunin
published a lengthy article urging ‘the realization of freedom’ and attacking ‘the
rotted and withered remains of conventionality’. The article breathed a spirit of
Hegelianism so abstract that for long stretches it was almost incomprehensible.
But it ended with a chilling prophecy of the violent, anarchist extremism of
which Bakunin was the founding father: ‘The passion for destruction is also a
creative passion.’ These sentiments expressed the influence of a group of
German philosophers known as the Neo-Hegelians, whose atheism led to their
expulsion by the pious King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV (1795-1861), soon
after he came to the throne in 1840. Bakunin met them in Paris, publishing an
article in one of their short-lived magazines, edited by Arnold Ruge (1802-80). It
was also in Paris that Bakunin me another Hegelian, Karl Marx (1818-83), who
was to be his rival in the small and intense world of revolutionary activists and
thinkers for most of the rest of his life. The two men disliked each other on first
sight. Marx, as Bakunin later recalled, ‘called me a sentimental idealist, and he
was right. I called him morose, vain and treacherous, and I too was right.’” 1079
There were some positive things that the Russians gained from Hegelianism.
Among them was the idea of universal history. Thus the great novelist Nicholas
Gogol wrote: “Universal history, in the true meaning of the term, is not a
collection of particular histories of all the peoples and states without a common
link, plan or aim, a bunch of events without order, in the lifeless and dry form in
which it is often presented. Its subject is great: it must embrace at once and in a
complete picture the whole of humanity, how from its original, poor childhood
1079
639
it developed and was perfected in various forms, and, finally, reached the
present age. To show the whole of this great process, which the free spirit of man
sustained through bloody labours, struggling from its very cradle with
ignorance, with nature and with gigantic obstacles – that is the aim of universal
history! It must gather into one all the peoples of the world scattered by time,
chance, mountains and seas, and unite them into one harmonious whole; it must
compose out of them one majestic, complete poem. The event having no
influence on the world has no right to enter here. All the events of the world
must be so tightly linked amongst themselves and joined one to another like the
rings of a chain. If one ring were ripped out, the chain would collapse. This link
must not be understood in a literal sense: it is not that visible, material link by
which events are often forcibly joined, or the system created in the head
independently of facts, and to which the events of the world are later arbitrarily
attached. This link must be concluded in one common thought, in one
uninterrupted history of mankind, before which both states and events are but
temporary forms and images! The must be presented in the same colossal size as
it is in fact, penetrated by the same mysterious paths of Providence that are so
unattainably indicated in it. Interest must necessarily be elicited to the highest
degree, in such a way that the listener is tormented by the desire to know more,
so that either he cannot close the book, or, if it is impossible to do that, he starts
his reading again, so that it is evident how one event gives birth to another and
how without the original event the last event would not follow. Only in that way
must history be created…”1080
However, it will be noted that there is no hint of Hegelian determinism in this

picture: it is “the free spirit of man” that propels universal history forward. The
determinism of Hegel did not attract the Russian thinkers; and characteristic of
almost all of them was their emphasis on the importance of the individual and
individual freedom. Those who inherited the Hegelians’ determinism later took
the more radical road of atheism and Marxism.
Another difference between the Hegelian and the Russian interest in history
was the greater concentration, among the Russians, on Hegel’s concept of “the
historical nation”, and on Herder’s idea of the unique essence of every nation,
which stimulated Russian thinkers to take a more historical and dialectical
approach to the study of their own land. Thus the nobleman Peter Chaadaev,
according to Andrej Kompaneets, “attached a great importance to history in his
investigations. Chaadaev was sure: if humanity allowed itself to see in their true
light the causes and consequences of the historical process, then even
nationalities divided up to now ‘would unite for the attainment of an agreed and
general result’. The aim of the philosophy of history is ‘to attain a clear
representation of the general law governing the succession of epochs’, but this
law constituted a certain idea (a moral idea) moving civilizations. But when this
idea is exhausted, the state perishes. Thus, for example, the Roman Empire,
Egypt, Alexandria: ‘these were rotting corpses; they (the barbarians – A.K.) only
scattered their dust in the wind’.”1081
Gogol, “O Prepodavanii Vseobschej Istorii” (On the Teaching of Universal History), in Polnoe
1080
Sobranie Sochinenij (Complete Works), vol. 8, pp. 50-51.

640
“What was the relationship between the old, pre-Petrine Russia and the new,
post-Petrine Russia?” they asked. “Could these antithetical Russias be reconciled
in a new synthesis of the future?” “Is it necessary decisively to choose the one
and reject the other?”
More particularly, it was Hegel’s failure “to find room for the Slavs”, as G.
Vernadsky put it, that provoked and intrigued the Russian intellectuals, both
westerners like Chaadaev and Herzen and Slavophiles like Khomiakov and
Kireyevsky. For Hegel wrote: “[The Slavs] did indeed found kingdoms and
sustain vigorous conflicts with the various nations that came across their path.
Sometimes, as an advance guard – an intermediate nationality – they took part in
the struggle between Christian Europe and unchristian Asia. The Poles even
liberated beleaguered Vienna from the Turks; and Slavs have to some extent
been drawn within the sphere of Occidental Reason. Yet this entire body of
peoples remains excluded from our consideration because hitherto it has not
appeared as an independent element in the series of phases that reason has
assumed in the world.”1082
Was Russia no more than “an intermediate nationality”?, asked the Russian
intellectuals indignantly. Had History really passed the Slavs by? Were they just
a footnote to “the sphere of Occidental Reason”? Or did they have something
original to contribute? In the next stage of the historical dialectic perhaps? After
all, if Hegel thought that the Romano-French period of history had been
overtaken by the German, why should not the German in its turn be overtaken
by the Slav?...1083
The failure of the 1848 revolution in Europe, in which Tsar Nicholas had
played a decisive – and laudable - part by sending his troops to crush the
Hungarian revolutionaries, also heralded the end of the Hegelian phase of
Russian thought. Censorship, already tight, became still tighter, and the gulf
between liberals and radicals, and between supporters and opponents of the
autocracy, increased. This was no time for abstract armchair theorizing…
As Sir Isaiah Berlin writes. “The prison walls within which Nicholas I had
enclosed the lives of his thinking subjects… led to a sharp break with the polite
civilization and the non-political interests of the past, to a general roughening of
fibre and exacerbation of political and social differences. The gulf between the
right and the left – between the disciples of Dostoevsky and Katkov and the
followers of Chernyshevsky or Bakunin – all typical radical intellectuals in 1848
– had grown very wide and deep. In due course there emerged a vast and
growing army of practical revolutionaries, conscious – all too conscious – of the
specifically Russian character of their problems, seeking specifically Russian
solutions. They were forced away from the general current of European
development (with which, in any case, their history seemed to have so little in
common) by the bankruptcy in Europe of the libertarian movement of 1848: they
1081
Kompaneets, “Vo chto veril Chaadaev?” (In what did Chaadaev believe?),
http://religion.russ.ru/people/20011206-kompaneets.html).
1082
Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History; quoted in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 175.
1083
Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: Empire & People, London: HarperCollins, 1997, p. 270.
641
drew strength from the very harshness of the discipline which the failure in the
West had indirectly imposed upon them. Henceforth the Russian radicals
accepted the view that ideas and agitation wholly unsupported by material force
were necessarily doomed to impotence; and they adopted this truth and
abandoned sentimental liberalism without being forced to pay for their
liberation with that bitter, personal disillusionment and acute frustration which
proved too much for a good many idealistic radicals in the West. The Russian
radicals learnt this lesson by means of precept and example, indirectly as it were,
without the destruction of their inner resources. The experience obtained by both
sides in the struggle during these dark years was a decisive factor in shaping the
uncompromising character of the later revolutionary movement in Russia…” 1084
1084
Berlin, “Russia and 1848”, in Russian Thinkers, London: Penguin, 2002, pp. 22-23.
642
77. THE PEASANTS’ MIR AND PRAVDA
There were two schools of thought in the intelligentsia on the nature

and destiny of Russia: the westerners, who basically thought that the
westernizing path chosen by Peter the Great had been correct, and the
Slavophiles, who believed in Orthodoxy, in the pre-Petrine symphony
of powers, and in a special, distinct path chosen by God for Russia.
Almost the whole of the public intellectual life of Russia until the
revolution could be described as increasingly complex variations on
these two viewpoints and the various intermediate positions: Chaadaev
and Pushkin, Belinsky and Gogol, Herzen and Khomiakov, Tolstoy and
Dostoyevsky, Soloviev and Pobedonostev, Lenin and Tikhomorov.
In spite of their differences, however, the Slavophiles and Westerners had

some important things in common: their belief in Russia (Chaadaev is an
exception), and their veneration of the institution of the rural commune, the mir,
as expressing the essence of Russianness. For Slavophiles, the mir was a
patriarchal institution of pre-Petrine Russia, while for the Westerners it was
"Russian socialism".
However, Fr. Lev Lebedev points out that the commune was by no means as
anciently Russian as was then thought: "In ancient Rus' (Russia) the peasants
possessed or used plots of land completely independently, according to the
right of personal inheritance or acquisition, and the commune (mir) had no
influence on this possession. A certain communal order obtained only in
relation to the matter of taxes and obligations. To this ancient 'commune' there
corresponds to a certain degree only the rule of 'collective responsibility'
envisaged by the Statute of 1861 in relation to taxes and obligations. But in Rus'
there was never any 'commune' as an organization of communal land-use with the
right of the mir to distribute and redistribute plots among members of the
'commune'."1085
According to Richard Pipes, "the origins of the Russian commune are obscure
and a subject of controversy. Some see in it the spontaneous expression of an
alleged Russian sense of social justice, while others view it as the product of
state pressures to ensure collective responsibility for the fulfilment of obligations
to the Crown and landlord. Recent studies indicate that the repartitional
commune first appeared toward the end of the fifteenth century, became
common in the sixteenth, and prevalent in the seventeenth. It served a variety of
functions, as useful to officials and landlords as to peasants. The former it
guaranteed, through the institution of collective responsibility, the payment of
taxes and delivery of recruits; the latter it enabled to present a united front in
dealings with external authority. The principle of periodic redistribution of land
ensured (at any rate, in theory) that every peasant had enough to provide for his
family and, at the same time, to meet his obligations to the landlord and
state."1086
1085
Lebedev, op. cit., pp. 341-342.
1086
Pipes, op. cit., p. 98.
643
Hosking has an interesting and convincing take on the origins of the mir
based on the meaning of the word – “peace”. Life in a “geopolitically vulnerable
and agriculturally marginal” land such as Russia created the need for peace and
solidarity, and the organization of the mir went some way to providing that.
Moreover, “communal solidarity was needed not only at times of emergency”,
such as the fires and droughts and famines that were so common in the Russian
countryside. “The narrowness of the margins of survival made it unusually
important that members of rural settlements should reach a consensus on such
matters as use of timber and common lands, gleaning rights, access to water, and
the upkeep of roads and bridges. Conflict was not merely damaging: it might
threaten the community’s existence. The ideal of the rural community was mir,
which meant ‘peace’ but in time came to be adopted as the name of the
community itself. In England the ‘king’s peace’ was imposed from above,
through sheriffs and royal courts. In medieval Rus, the prince was too far away
and communications too poor; the community had to devise its own means of
providing harmony. Our sources do not tell us how this was done, though it
seems likely that regular meetings of heads of households were the normal
practice, to thrash out problems and disagreements, and if possible to reach a
consensus which did not override individual interests too flagrantly. ‘Joint
responsibility’ (krugovaia poruka) was a well-developed custom long before it
became an administrative device, to facilitate tax collecting and recruitment, in
the seventeenth century.
“It was all the more important because, in practice, conflict, latent or open,
was the rule within rural communities, between indigent and affluent, young
and old, men and women. Peasants were suspicious of both the rich and the
poor, for they undermined community principle, the poor by draining resources
from their neighbors, the rich because they did not need their neighbors. As a
popular saying had it, ‘Wealth is a sin before God, and poverty is a sin before
one’s fellow villagers.’ Egalitarianism and mutual harmony were not often
achieved, but they remained ideals for all that.”1087
The strength of the mir, at the bottom of Russian life, and that of the
autocracy, at its apex, between them determined much of Russian history. The
autocrat looked to the peasants of the mir to support him, just as the peasants
looked to the tsar to support them. The enemy of both tended to be the classes in
the middle – the landowners and serf-owners in the sixteenth to nineteenth
centuries, and the bourgeois and professional classes (including the raznochintsy,
“of indeterminate rank”) that came to the fore only in the nineteenth century. As
long as tsar and peasant united their respective strengths in support of each
other, Russia remained strong – or at any rate, strong enough to survive. Old
Russia fell when the autocracy itself fell to the intrigues of the “middle men”,
having been weakened by the gradual alienation of the peasants who joined the
Old Ritualist schismatics or one of the revolutionary parties or conducted arson
attacks against the estates of the landowners (as in 1905).
1087
Hosking, Russia and the Russians, London: Penguin, second edition, 2012, pp. 15, 16.
644
*
Peasant values, continues Hosking, “were summed up in the single word

pravda. It meant ‘truth’, but also much more, in fact everything the community
regarded as ‘right’: justice, morality, God’s law, behaving according to
conscience. The criterion for any decision taken by the village assembly was that
it must accord with pravda. Pravda was the collective wisdom of the
community, accumulated over the generations. The whole of life was regarded
as a struggle between pravda and nepravda or krivda (crookedness). Pravda was
order and beauty, where the home was clean and tidy, family life was
harmonious, the fields were well cultivated and the crops grew regularly.
Nepravda was a world of disorder and ugliness, where families were riven by
conflict, the home was dirty and untidy, the fields were neglected and famine
reigned. The orderly world was created by God and was under the protection of
the saints, the disorderly one was the province of the ‘unclean spirit’ (nechistaia
sila), the devil. Outside the community, officials were judged according to
whether their behavior exemplified Pravda or not. The grand prince or tsar was
assumed to embody it through his status as God’s anointed: if he manifestly did
not, then he must be a ‘false tsar’, and the true one had to be found.
“Given the rigid and demanding norms of community life, it is not surprising
that, at least subconsciously, peasants yearned to escape them, to break away
and begin a new life of volia (freedom). Many young men did so, either by
simply establishing a new household or, more radically, by fleeing to the frontier
and becoming a brigand or perhaps joining the Cossacks (the term ‘cossack’
derives from a Turkish word meaning ‘free man’, as distinct from serf). Hence
migration rates were very high… Volia is not freedom as that is understood in
modern democratic societies, for which another word exists: svoboda. Rather,
volia is the absence of any constraint, the right to gallop off into the open steppe,
the ‘wild field’ (dikoe pole), and there to make one’s living without humble
drudgery, by hunting or fishing, or if necessary by brigandage and plunder.
Volia does not recognize any restriction imposed by the equivalent freedom of
others: it is nomadic freedom rather than civic freedom. The scholar Dmitrii
Likhachev has called it ‘Svoboda plus open spaces’. It helps to explain the
otherwise unbelievably rapid penetration of Siberia, a territory which, in the
words of the writer Valentin Rasputin, ‘originated in runaway serfs and
Cossacks’.
“Members of a village community not only needed each other; they also
needed if possible a protector, someone from the elite who could direct a
minimum of material wealth in their direction, provide for them in case of
disaster, and help to mitigate or divert the disfavor of the mighty. One reason,
then, why serfdom became so widespread in Russia was that it could be useful
to the serfs as well as the serf-owners. Not that all the serf-owners fulfilled their
role properly. Some of them merely practiced repression and exploitation.
However, they too had an interest in the survival of their serfs. Some kept
granaries to supplement the peasant diet in case of famine, or provided
employment to tide villagers over a period of idleness and poverty. In all cases,
however, whether the patron was good or bad, the elected village elder (starosta)
645
was the key intermediary who communicated to him the village’s needs,
brought back his commands, and saw that they were carried out.”1088
This peasants had their own customary law quite distinct from that of the
educated classes. It embodied a distinctive world-view with potential for both
good and evil. “The peasant-class courts”, writes Oliver Figes, “often functioned
in a random manner, deciding cases on the basis of the litigants’ reputations and
connections, or on the basis of which side was prepared to bribe the elected
judges with the most vodka. Yet, amidst all this chaos, there could be discerned
some pragmatic concepts of justice, arising from the peasants’ daily lives, which
had crystallized into more-or-less universal legal norms, albeit with minor
regional variations.
“Three legal ideas, in particular, shaped the peasant revolutionary mind. The
first was the concept of family ownership. The assets of the peasant household
(the livestock, the tools, the crops, the buildings and their contents, but not the
land beneath them) were regarded as the common property of the family. Every
member of the household was deemed to have an equal right to use these assets,
including those not yet born. The patriarch of the household, the bol’shak, it is
true, had an authoritarian influence over the running of the farm and the
disposal of its assets. But customary law made it clear that he was expected to act
with the consent of the other adult members of the family and that, on his death,
he could not bequeath any part of the household property, which was to remain
in the common ownership of the family under a new bol’shak (usually the eldest
son). If the bol’shak mismanaged the family farm, or was too often drunk and
violent, the commune could replace him under customary law with another
household member. The only way the family property could be divided was
through the partition of an extended household into smaller units, according to
the methods set out by local customary law. In all regions of Russia this
stipulated that the property was to be divided on an equal basis between all the
adult males, with provision being made for the elderly and unmarried women.
The principles of family ownership and egalitarian partition were deeply
ingrained in Russian peasant culture. This helps to explain the failure of the
Stolypin land reforms (1906-17), which, as part of their programme to create a
stratum of well-to-do capitalist farmers, attempted to convert the family property
of the peasant household into the private property of the bol’shak, thus enabling
him to bequeath it to one or more of his sons. 1089 The peasant revolution of 1917
made a clean sweep of these reforms, returning to the traditional legal principles
of family ownership.
“The peasant family farm was organized and defined according to the labour
principle, the second major peasant legal concept. Membership of the household
was defined by active participation in the life of the farm (or, as the peasants put
it, ‘eating from the common pot’) rather than by blood or kinship ties. An
outsider adopted by the family who lived and worked on the farm was usually
viewed as a full member of the household with equal rights to those of the blood
1088
1089
As we shall see, Stolypin’s reforms were by no means a complete failure. (V.M.)
646
relatives, whereas a son of the family who left the village to earn his living
elsewhere eventually ceased to be seen as a household member. This same
attachment of rights to labour could be seen on the land as well. The peasants
believed in a sacred link between land and labour. The land belonged to no one
but God, and could not be bought or sold. But every family had the right to
support itself from the land on the basis of its own labour, and the commune was
there to ensure its equal distribution between them. On this basis – that the land
should be in the hands of those who tilled it – the squires did not hold their land
rightfully and the hungry peasants were justified in their struggle to take it from
them. A constant battle was fought between the written law of the state, framed
to defend the property rights of the landowners, and the customary law of the
peasants, used by them to defend their own transgressions of these property
rights. Under customary law, for example, no one thought it wrong when a
peasant stole wood from the landlord’s forest, since the landlord had more wood
than he could personally use and, as the proverb said, ‘God grew the forest for
everyone’. The state categorized as ‘crimes’ a whole range of activities which
peasant custom did not: poaching and grazing livestock on the squire’s land;
gathering mushrooms and berries from his forest; picking fruit from his
orchards; fishing in his ponds, and so on. Customary law was a tool which the
peasants used to subvert a legal order that in their view maintained the unjust
domination of the landowners and the biggest landowner of all: the state. It is no
coincidence that the revolutionary land legislation of 1917-18 based itself on the
labour principles found in customary law.
“The subjective approach to the law – judging the merits of a case according to
the social and economic position of the parties concerned – was the third specific
aspect of the peasantry’s legal thinking which had an affinity with the revolution.
It was echoed in the Bolshevik concept of ‘revolutionary justice’, the guiding
principle of the People’s Courts of 1917-18, according to which a man’s social
class was taken as the decisive factor in determining his guilt or innocence. The
peasants considered stealing from a rich man, especially by the poor, a much less
serious offence than stealing from a man who could barely feed himself and his
family. In the peasants’ view it was even justified… to kill someone guilty of a
serious offence against the community. And to murder a stranger from outside
the village was clearly not as bad as killing a fellow villager, Similarly, whereas
deceiving a neighbour was seen by the peasants as obviously immoral, cheating
on a landlord or a government official was not subject to any moral censure; such
‘cunning’ was just one of the many everyday forms of passive resistance used by
peasants to subvert an unjust established order. Within the context of peasant
society this subjective approach was not without its own logic, since the peasants
viewed justice in terms of its direct practical effects on their own communities
rather than in general or abstract terms. But it could often result in the sort of
muddled thinking that made people call the peasants ‘dark’. In The Criminal, for
example, Chekhov tells the true story of a peasant who was brought to court for
stealing a bolt from the railway tracks to use as a weight on his fishing tackle. He
fails to understand his guilt and in trying to justify himself repeatedly talks of
‘we’ (the peasants of his village): ‘Bah! Look how many years we have been
removing bolts, and God preserves us, and here you are talking about a crash,
people killed. We do not remove all of them – we always leave some. We do not
647
act without thinking. We do understand.’
“Here, in this moral subjectivity, was the root of the peasant’s instinctive
anarchism. He lived outside the realm of the state’s laws – and that is where he
chose to stay. Centuries of serfdom had bred within the peasant a profound
mistrust of all authority outside his own village. What he wanted was volia, the
ancient peasant concept of freedom and autonomy without restraints from the
powers that be. ‘For hundreds of years,’ wrote Gorky, ‘the Russian peasant has
dreamt of a state with no right to influence the will of the individual and his
freedom of action, a state without power over man.’ That peasant dream was
kept alive by subversive tales of Stenka Razin and Emelian Pugachev, those
peasant revolutionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whose
mythical images continued as late as the 1900s to be seen by the peasants flying
as ravens across the Volga announcing the advent of utopia. And there were
equally fabulous tales of a ‘Kingdom of Opona’, somewhere on the edge of the
flat earth, where the peasants lived happily, undisturbed by gentry or state.
Groups of peasants even set out on expeditions in the far north in the hope of
finding this arcadia.
“As the state attempted to extend its bureaucratic control into the countryside
during the late nineteenth century, the peasants sought to defend their autonomy
by developing ever more subtle forms of passive resistance to it. What they did,
in effect, was to set up a dual structure of administration in the villages: a formal
one, with its face to the state, which remained inactive and inefficient; and an
informal one, with its face to the peasants, which was quite the opposite. The
village elders and tax collectors elected to serve in the organs of state
administration in the villages (obshchestva) and the volost townships (upravy)
were, in the words of one frustrated official, ‘highly unreliable and
unsatisfactory’, many of them having been deliberately chosen for their
incompetence in order to sabotage government work. There were even cases
where the peasants elected the village idiot as their elder. Meanwhile, the real
centre of power remained in the mir, in the old village assembly dominated by
the patriarchs. The power of the tsarist state never really penetrated the village,
and this remained its fundamental weakness until 1917, when the power of the
state was removed altogether and the village gained its volia.” 1090
1090
Figes, A People’s Tragedy, pp. 99-102.
648
78. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (1) CHAADAEV VS. PUSHKIN
The great debate between Slavophiles and Westerners began in 1836 with the
publication, by Peter Chaadaev, of the first of his Philosophical Letters (1829 –
1831). N.O. Lossky writes: “The letters are ostensibly addressed to a lady who is
supposed to have asked Chaadaev’s advice on the ordering of her spiritual life.
In the first letter Chaadaev advises the lady to observe the ordinances of the
Church as a spiritual exercise in obedience. Strict observance of church customs
and regulations may only be dispensed with, he says 1091, when ‘beliefs of a
higher order have been attained, raising our spirit to the source of all certainty;’
such beliefs must not be in contradiction to the ‘beliefs of the people’. Chaadaev
recommends a well-regulated life as favorable to spiritual development and
praises Western Europe where ‘the ideas of duty, justice, law, order’ are part of
the people’s flesh and blood and are, as he puts it, not the psychology, but the
physiology of the West. He evidently has in mind the disciplinary influence of
the Roman Church.
“As to Russia, Chaadaev is extremely critical of her. Russia, in his opinion, is

neither the West nor the East. ‘Lonely in the world, we have given nothing to the
world, have taught it nothing; we have not contributed one idea to the mass of
human ideas.’ ‘If we had not spread ourselves from [the] Behring Straits to [the]
Oder, we would never have been noticed.’ We do not, as it were, form part of the
human organism and exist ‘solely in order to give humanity some important
lesson’.”1092
According to Chaadaev, “not a single useful thought has sprouted in our

country’s barren soil; not a single great truth has emerged from our ambit….
Something in our blood repulses all true progress. In the end we have lived and
now live solely to serve as some inscrutable great lesson for the distant
generations that will grasp it; today, whatever anyone may say, we are a void in
the intellectual firmament.”1093
“It is clear,” he writes, “that if the weakness of our faith and the inadequacy of
our doctrine has hitherto kept us outside this universal movement in which the
social idea of Christianity is being developed and formulated, and has thrown us
back into the category of people who can profit from Christianity to the full
extent only indirectly and far too late, it is clear that we must try with all
possible means to breathe new life into our faith and to give ourselves a truly
Christian impulse. For it is Christianity alone which has brought all this to pass
there [in Europe]. That is what I mean when `I say that among us the upbringing
of the human race must begin again…”
1091
The idea that Church regulations and customs, such as fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays,
could be dispensed with was an attitude of the nobility that St. Seraphim of Sarov, in particular,
criticized. He said that he who does not fast is not Orthodox. (V.M.)
1092
N.O. Lossky, History of Russian Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1952, p. 48.
1093
Translated in Serena Vitale, Pushkin’s Button, London: Fourth Estate, 2000, p. 82.
649
Sir Isaiah Berlin sums up the matter well: “Chaadaev’s attack, with its
deification of Western traditions, ideas and civilisation, was the key to later
Russian ‘social thought’. Its importance was enormous. It set the tone, it struck
the dominant notes which were echoed by every major Russian writer up to and
beyond the Revolution. Everything is there: the proclamation that the Russian
past is blank or filled with chaos, that the only true culture is the Roman West,
and that the Great Schism robbed Russia of her birthright and left her barbarous,
an abortion of the creative process, a caution to other peoples, a Caliban among
nations. Here, too, is the extraordinary tendency toward self-preoccupation
which characterises Russian writing even more than that of the Germans, from
whom this tendency mainly stems. Other writers, in England, France, even
Germany, write about life, love, nature and human relations at large; Russian
writing, even when it is most deeply in debt to Goethe or Schiller or Dickens or
Stendhal, is about Russia, the Russian past, the Russian present, Russian
prospects, the Russian character, Russian vices and Russian virtues. All the
‘accursed questions’ (as Heine was perhaps the first to call them) turn in Russian
into notorious proklyatye voprosy – questions about the destinies (sud’by) of
Russia: Where do we come from? Whither are we bound? Why are we who we
are? Should we teach the West or learn from it? Is our ‘broad’ Slav nature higher
in the spiritual scale than that of the ‘Europeans’ – a source of salvation for all
mankind – or merely a form of infantilism and barbarism destined to be
superseded or destroyed? The problem of the ‘superfluous man’ is here already;
it is not an accident that Chaadaev was an intimate friend of the creator of
Eugene Onegin [Pushkin]. No less characteristic of this mental condition is
Chaadaev’s contrary speculation that was also destined to have a career in
subsequent writing, in which he wondered whether the Russians, who have
arrived so late at the feast of the nations and are still young, barbarous and
untried, do not thereby derive advantages, perhaps overwhelming ones, over
older or more civilised societies. Fresh and strong, the Russians might profit by
the inventions and discoveries of the others without having to go through the
torments that have attended their mentors’ struggles for life and civilisation.
Might there not be a vast positive gain in being late in the field? Herzen and
Chernyshevsky, Marxists and anti-Marxists, were to repeat this with mounting
optimism. But the most central and far-reaching question was still that posed by
Chaadaev. He asked: Who are we and what should be our path? Have we
unique treasures (as the Slavophiles maintained) preserved for us by our Church
– the only true Christian one – which Catholics and Protestants have each in
their own way lost or destroyed? Is that which the West despises as coarse and
primitive in fact a source of life – the only pure source in the decaying post-
Christian world? Or, on the contrary, is the West at least partially right: if we are
ever to say our own word and play our part and show the world what kind of
people we are, must we not learn from the Westerners, acquire their skills, study
in their schools, emulate their arts and sciences, and perhaps the darker sides of
their lives also? The lines of battle in the century that followed remained where
Chaadaev drew them: the weapons were ideas which, whatever their origins, in
Russian became matters of the deepest concern – often of life and death – as they
never we in England or France or, to such a degree, in Romantic Germany.
650
Kireyevsky, Khomiakov and Aksakov gave one answer, Belinsky and
Dobrolyubov another, Kavelin yet a third.”1094
Chaadaev’s letter had an enormous impact on Russian society; Herzen

remarked that it “shook the whole of intellectual Russia”. The tsar was furious.
Klementy Rosset, an officer of the General Staff, wrote to the famous poet
Alexander Pushkin: “The Emperor has read Chaadaev’s article and found it
absurd and extravagant, saying that he was sure ‘that Moscow did not share the
insane opinions of the Author’, and has instructed the governor-general Prince
Golitsyn to inquire daily as to the health of Chaadaev’s wits and to put him
under governmental surveillance…” 1095
This letter, together with the other Philosophical Letters, elicited from Pushkin
the first, and one of the best statements of the opposing, Slavophile position.
Pushkin had known Chaadaev for a long time. In 1818, when his views were
more radical than they came to be at the end of his life, he had dedicated to
Chaadaev the following lines:
Comrade, believe: joy’s star will leap
Upon our sight, a radiant token;
Russia will rise from her long sleep;
And where autocracy lies, broken,
Our names shall yet be graven deep.1096
But even here anti-autocratic sentiments are combined with a belief in Russia. So
although Pushkin admitted to the Tsar that he would have participated in the
Decembrist rebellion if he had not been in exile, he was never a typical
westernizer. This fact, combined with his deep reading in Russian history, the
stabilising experience of marriage and, as we have seen, an enlightening
interview with the Tsar himself, led Pushkin to a kind of conversion to Russia, to
Tsarism and to a belief in her significance as a phenomenon independent of
Europe:
“Why is it necessary,” he asked, “that one of us [the tsar] should become

higher than all and even higher than the law itself? Because in the law a man
hears something cruel and unfraternal. You don’t get far with merely the literal
fulfillment of the law: but none of us must break it or not fulfill it: for this a
higher mercy softening the law is necessary. This can appear to men only in a
fully-empowered authority. The state without a fully-empowered monarch is an
automaton: many, many [automat?], if it attains to what the United States has
attained. But what is the United States? A corpse. In them man has disappeared
to the point that he’s not worth a brass farthing. A state without a fully-
empowered monarch is the same as an orchestra without a conductor. However
good the musicians, if there is not one among them who gives the beat with the
movement of his baton, the concert gets nowhere…”1097
1094
Berlin, “Russian Intellectual History”, in The Power of Ideas, London: Chatto & Windus, 2000,
pp. 74-75.
1095
Michael Binyon, Pushkin, London: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 551.
1096
Pushkin, “To Chaadaev”, quoted in Walicki, op. cit., p. 81.
1097
Razgovory Pushkina (The Conversations of Pushkin), Moscow, 1926.
651
“Of course,” writes Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev), “when Pushkin
pronounced [these words], he knew well that there were big defects in state
administration under the tsarist autocracy. These inevitably occur when the
autocratic monarchs violate this, the best state order, by their opposition to the
Divine laws. Nevertheless, as we see from his words, it was impossible to
compare this form of government in Russia with any other form of government
in the countries that did not have autocracy, just as it is impossible to compare
heaven with the earth.”1098
The sincerity of his conversion was demonstrated during the Polish rebellion
in 1830. Although “enlightened” Europe condemned the Tsar for crushing the
rebellion, on August 2, 1830, just three weeks before the taking of Warsaw by
Russian troops, Pushkin wrote “To the Slanderers of Russia”. From that time, as
the friend of the poet’s brother, Michael Yuzefovich, wrote, “his world-view
changed, completely and unalterably. He was already a deeply believing person:
[he now became] a citizen who had changed his mind, having understood the
demands of Russian life and renounced utopian illusions.”1099
However, Chaadaev had not undergone this conversion, and was still not
convinced that Russia’s past was anything more than “a blank sheet of paper”,
“an unhappy country with neither past, present nor future”.
Valery Lepakhin and Andrei Zavarzin summarised the debate between

Chaadaev and Pushkin as follows: “Russia and Europe. This problem especially
occupied the minds of Russians at the beginning of the 19 th century. Chaadaev
considered the schism (the division of the Churches [in 1054]) as a tragedy for
Russia, which separated it from Christianity (of course, from Catholicism, and
not from Christianity, but at that time these terms were synonymous for
Chaadaev), from ‘the world idea’, form ‘real progress’, from ‘the
wonderworking principle’, from ‘the enlightened, civilized peoples’. In principle
Pushkin agreed with Chaadaev, but specified that ‘the schism disunited us from
backward Europe’: first, it separated ‘us’, that is, not only Russia, but in general
the whole of the eastern branch of Christianity, and secondly, it separated
simply from ‘backward Europe’, and not from ‘enlightened and civilized
people’, as Chaadaev claimed. In reading the Russian chronicles, sermons and
lives of saints, it is impossible not to notice the fact that they are full of gratitude
to God for the fact the Rus’ accepted baptism from Orthodox Constantinople,
and not from Catholic Rome.1100 This fact is never viewed as a tragedy in Russian
literature and history, rather the opposite: beginning with the description of the
holy Prince Vladimir’s choice of faith, this event became the subject of poetry
and chant. And not out of hostility to Catholicism, and from faith in Divine
1098
Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev), Russkaia Ideologia (The Russian Ideology), St. Petersburg,
1992, p. 59.
1099
Yury Druzhnikov, “O Poetakh i Okkupantakh”, Russkaia Mysl’, N 4353, February 15-21, 2001,
p. 8.
1100
At the time of the baptism of Rus’ in 988, Rome was still formally Orthodox and in
communion with Constantinople. Nevertheless, heretical tendencies were already deeply rooted
in the West. (V.M.)
652
Providence, which judged that it should be so and which the consciousness of
believers perceived with gratitude, for Providence cannot err. But Chaadaev,
who speaks so much about Christianity, sees in this fact ‘the will of fate’ in a
pagan manner.
“Pushkin agreed with his friend of many years that ‘we did not take part in
any of the great events which shook her (Europe)’. But it does not occur to
Chaadaev to ask the simple question: why should Rus’ have taken part. Or, for
example, would not this ‘participation’ have been for the worse, both for Europe
and for Rus’? Pushkin gives a simple, but principled reply at this point: Russia
has ‘her own special calling’, which Pushkin in another place calls ‘lofty’: ‘It was
Russia and her vast expanses that were swallowed up by the Mongol invasion.
The Tartars did not dare to cross our western frontiers and leave us in their rear.
They departed for their deserts, and Christian civilization was saved… By our
martyrdom the energetic development of Catholic Europe was delivered from
all kinds of hindrances’. From Pushkin’s reply it follows that indirectly at any
rate Russia did take part in the life of Western Europe, and, in accordance with
its historical significance, this participation was weighty and fraught with
consequences for the West. It was not a direct participation insofar as Russia had
a different calling. The complete opposition of Pushkin’s and Chaadaev’s views
on the problem is characteristic. For the latter the Tartar-Mongol yoke was a
‘cruel and humiliating foreign domination’. For Pushkin this epoch was
sanctified by the lofty word ‘martyrdom’, which Russia received not only for
herself, but also for her western brothers, for Christian civilization generally. In
his reply Pushkin links the special calling of Russia with her reception of
Orthodoxy, and see in it not ‘the will of fate’, but Russia’s preparation of herself
for this martyrdom.
“Chaadaev’s attitude to Byzantium also elicited objections from Pushkin.

Chaadaev called Byzantium ‘corrupt’, he affirmed that it was at that time (the
10th century – the reception of Christianity by Rus’) ‘an object of profound
disdain’ for the West European peoples. Now it is difficult even to say what
there is more of in this passage from Chaadaev: simple ignorance of the history
of Byzantium and Europe and complete absorption in his speculative
historiosophical conception, or the conscious prejudice of a westerniser. The
beginning of the 10th century in Byzantium was marked by the activity of Leo VI,
‘the Wise’, the middle – by the reign of Constantine VII Porphyrogennitus, and
the end – by the victories of Basil II the Bulgar-slayer. It was precisely this period
that saw the development of political theories and the science of jurisprudence,
theoretical military thought and knowledge of the natural sciences. New schools
were opened, and a good education was highly prized both in the world and in
the Church. Significant works were produced in the sphere of philosophy,
literature and the fine arts, and theology produced such a light as Simeon the
New Theologian, the third (after the holy Evangelist John the Theologian and St.
Gregory the Theologian) to be given the title ‘theologian’ by the Orthodox
Church. … This period is considered by scientists to be the epoch of the
flourishing of Byzantine aesthetic consciousness, of architecture and music. If
one compares the 10th century in Byzantium and in Europe, the comparison will
653
not be in favour of the latter. Moreover, Chaadaev himself speaks of the
‘barbarism’ of the peoples that despised Byzantium.
“’You say,’ writes Pushkin, ‘that the source from which we drew up
Christianity was impure, that Byzantium was worthy of disdain and was
disdained’, but, even if it was so, one should bear in mind that ‘from the Greeks
we took the Gospel and the traditions, and not the spirit of childish triviality and
disputes about words. The morals of Byzantium never were the morals of Kiev.
For Chaadaev it was important ‘from where’, but for Pushkin ‘how’ and ‘what’
they took it. After all, ‘was not Jesus Christ Himself born as a Jew and was not
Jerusalem a proverb among the nations?’ Pushkin did not want to enter into
polemics on the subject of Byzantium insofar as that would have dragged out his
letter. Moreover, the problem was a special one not directly connected with the
polemic surrounding the history of Russia. For him it was evident that Russia, as
a young and healthy organism, had filtered through her Byzantine heritage,
assimilated the natural and cast out that which was foreign and harmful. Above
mention was made of the fact that in the chronicles praise was often offered to
God for the reception of Christianity by Rus’ from Byzantium. But no less often
do we find critical remarks about the Greek metropolitans, and of the Greeks
and Byzantium in general. Therefore Pushkin placed the emphasis on the critical
assimilation of the Byzantine heritage. For him, Rus’ received from Byzantium
first of all ‘the light of Christianity’….
“Both Chaadaev and Pushkin highly esteemed the role of Christianity in

world history. In his review of The History of the Russian People by N. Polevoj, the
latter wrote: ‘The greatest spiritual and political turning-point [in the history of]
of our planet is Christianity. In this sacred element the world disappeared and
renewed itself. Ancient history is the history of Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome.
Modern history is the history of Christianity.’ Chaadaev would also have signed
up to these words, but immediately after this common affirmation differences
would have arisen. For Chaadaev true Christianity rules, shapes and ‘lords over
everything’ only in Catholic Europe – ‘there Christianity accomplished
everything’. Chaadaev even considers the history of Catholic Europe to be
’sacred, like the history of the ancient chosen people’.
“He recognises the right of the Russians, as, for example, of the Abyssinians,
to call themselves Christians, but in the Christianity of the former and the latter
that ‘order of things’, which ‘constitutes the final calling of the human race’ was
not realised at all. ‘Don’t you think,’ says Chaadaev to his correspondent, ‘that
these stupid departures from Divine and human truths (read: Orthodoxy) drag
heaven down to earth?’ And so there exist Catholic Europe, the incarnation of
Christianity, and Russia, Abyssinia and certain other historical countries which
have stagnated in ‘stupid departures from Divine and human truths’. Chaadaev
refuses these countries the right to their own path, even the right to have a
future.
“In one of his reviews Pushkin indirectly replies to Chaadaev: ‘Understand,’

he writes, ‘that Russia never had anything in common with the rest of Europe;
her history demands other thoughts, other formulae, different from the thoughts
654
and formulae extracted by Guizot from the history of the Christian West’. For
Pushkin it is absolutely obvious that any schema of historical development will
remain a private, speculative schema and will never have a universal character.
Any conception is built on the basis of some definite historical material, and to
transfer it, out of confidence in its universality, to other epochs or countries
would be a mistake. After all, as often as not that which does not fit into a once-
worked-out schema is cut off and declared to have no significance and not
worthy of study or analysis. But Pushkin makes his own generalisations,
proceeding from history, from concrete facts. S. Frank wrote: ‘The greatest
Russian poet was also completely original and, we can boldly say, the greatest
Russian political thinker of the 19 th century’. This was also noticed by the poet’s
contemporaries. Vyzamesky wrote: ‘In Pushkin there was a true understanding
of history… The properties of his mind were: clarity, incisiveness, sobriety… He
would not paint pictures according to a common standard and size of already-
prepared frames, as is often done by the most recent historians in order more
conveniently to fit into them the events and people about to be portrayed’. But it
was precisely this that was the defect of Chaadaev’s method. Moreover, the non-
correspondence of schema and historical reality (frame and picture) was
sometimes so blatant with him that he had completely to reject the historical and
religious path of Russia for the sake of preserving his schema of world
development.
“Pushkin also disagreed with Chaadaev concerning the unity of Christianity,

which for Chaadaev ‘wholly consisted in the idea of the merging of all the moral
forces of the world’ for the establishment of ‘a social system or Church which
would have to introduce the kingdom of truth among people’. 1101 To this
Pushkin objected already in his letter of 1831: ‘You see the unity of Christianity
in Catholicism, that is, in the Pope. Does it not consist in the idea of Christ,
which we find also in Protestantism?’ Pushkin notes the Catholico-centrism of
Chaadaev, and reminds him of the Protestant part of the Western Christian
world. But the main point is that Pushkin turns out to be better-prepared
theologically than Chaadaev. The Church is the Body of Christ, and Christ
Himself is Her Head, according to the teaching of the Apostle Paul (Ephesians
1.23, 4.16; Colossians 1.18, etc.). Here Pushkin in a certain sense anticipates the
problems of Dostoyevsky, who considered that Rus’ had preserved that Christ
that the West had lost, and that the division of the Churches had taken place
precisely because of different understandings of Christ.
“Pushkin considered it necessary to say a few words also about the clergy,
although Chaadaev had not directly criticized them in his first letter. ‘Our
clergy,’ writes the poet, ‘were worthy of respect until Theophan [Prokopovich].
They never sullied themselves with the wretchednesses of papism…, and, of
course, they would never have elicited a Reformation at a moment when
mankind needed unity more than anything.’ In evaluating the role of the clergy
in Russian history, Pushkin distinguished between two stages: before Peter and
after Peter. The role of the clergy in Russian life before Peter was exceptionally
For Chaadaev “the supreme principle” was “unity”, which he saw incarnate in Western
1101
Catholic Christendom – completely forgetting that the West was torn by the division between
Catholicism and Protestantism. See Pushkin’s remark below. (V.M.)
655
great. Ancient Rus’ inherited from Byzantium, together with the two-headed
eagle on her arms, the idea of the symphony of secular and ecclesiastical power.
This idea was equally foreign both to caesaropapism and papocaesarism and the
democratic idea of the separation of the Church from the State. Of course,
symphony never found its full incarnation in State life, but it is important that as
an idea it lived both in the Church and in the State, and the role of the clergy as
the necessary subject of this symphony was naturally lofty and indisputable. But
even outside the conception of ‘symphony’, the clergy played an exceptionally
important role in the history of Russia. In the epoch of the Tatar-Mongol yoke
they were almost the only educated class in Russian society: ‘The clergy, spared
by the wonderful quick-wittedness of the Tatars alone in the course of two dark
centuries kept alive the pale sparks of Byzantine education’. In another place
Pushkin even found it necessary to contrast the Russian and Catholic clergy –
true, without detailed explanations of his affirmation: ‘In Russia the influence of
the clergy was so beneficial, and in the Roman-Catholic lands so harmful…
Consequently we are obliged to the monks of our history also for our
enlightenment’.
“A new era began from the time of Theophan Prokopovich (more exactly:
Peter I), according to Pushkin. In a draft of a letter dated 1836 he wrote to
Chaadaev: ‘Peter the Great tamed (another variant: ‘destroyed’) the clergy,
having removed the patriarchate’. Peter made the clergy into an institution
obedient to himself and destroyed the age-old idea of symphony. Now they had
begun to be excised from the consciousness both of the clergy and of the simple
people, and of state officials. In losing their role in society, the clergy were
becoming more and more backward, more and more distant from the needs and
demands of the life of society. They were being forced to take the role of
‘fulfillers of the cult’.
“In Pushkin’s opinion, a serious blow against the clergy was later delivered
by Catherine II. And if we are to speak of the backwardness of the Russian
clergy, it is there that we must see its source. ‘Catherine clearly persecuted the
clergy, sacrificing it to her unlimited love of power, in the service of the spirit of
the times… The seminaries fell into a state of complete collapse. Many villages
did not have priests… What a pity! For the Greek [Orthodox Christian]
confession gives us our special national character’. If Chaadaev reproaches
Russia for not having ‘her own face’, then for Pushkin it is evident that Russia
has ‘her own face’ and it was formed by Orthodoxy. Therefore a sad note is
heard in Pushkin’s evaluation of the era of Catherine: she has her own face, her
own ‘special national character’, if only she does not lose it because of ill-
thought-out reforms and regulations foreign to the spirit of Russian life. In
contrast to Chaadaev, Pushkin linked the backwardness of the contemporary
clergy not with the reception of Christianity from Byzantium, but with the recent
transformations in Russian State and Church life, and sought the roots of this
backwardness not in the 10th century but in the 18th century, in the reforms of
Peter and in the epoch of the so-called Enlightenment…”1102
Lepakhin and Zavarzin, “Poet i Philosoph o Sud’bakh Rossii” (A Poet and A Philosopher on
1102
the Destinies of Russia), Vestnik Russkogo Khristianskogo Dvizhenia (Herald of the Russian
Christian Movement), N 176, II-III, 1997, pp. 167-196.
656
Such was the debate in its main outlines. And yet, just as Pushkin moved
towards the Slavophile position later in life, so, less surely, did Chaadaev. Thus
in 1830 he praised Pushkin’s nationalist poems on the Warsaw insurrection. And
later, in his Apology of a Madman (1837), he was inclined to think that the very
emptiness of Russia’s past might enable her to contribute to the future. Indeed,
he then believed that Russia was destined “to resolve the greater part of the
social problems, to perfect the greater part of the ideas which have arisen in
older societies, to pronounce judgement on the most serious questions which
trouble the human race”.1103 Moreover, in the same Apology, he spoke of the
Orthodox Church as “this church that is so humble and sometimes so heroic”.
And in a conversation with Khomiakov in 1843 he declared: “Holy Orthodoxy
shines out for us from Holy Byzantium”.1104
However, while Slavophile tendencies sometimes surfaced in Chaadaev, as in

other westerners, his fundamentally westernizing radicalism was revealed by his
anti-monarchical remark on the occasion of the European revolutions in 1848:
“We don’t want any king except the King of heaven”…1105
1103
Andrzej Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, Oxford: Clarendon, 1988, p. 89.
1104
But Byzantium, he notes, was still in communion with Rome at that time, and “there was a
feeling of common Christian citizenship”. (Wil van den Bercken, Holy Russia and Christian Europe,
London: SCM Press, 1999, p. 198).
1105
Lossky, op. cit., p. 49. Moreover, in 1854, during the Crimean War, he wrote: “Talking about
Russia, one always imagines that one is talking about a country like the others; in reality, this is
not so at all. Russia is a whole separate world, submissive to the will, caprice, fantasy of a single
man, whether his name be Peter or Ivan, no matter – in all instances the common element is the
embodiment of arbitrariness. Contrary to all the laws of the human community, Russia moves
only in the direction of her own enslavement and the enslavement of all the neighbouring
peoples. For this reason it would be in the interest not only of other peoples but also in that of
her own that she be compelled to take a new path” (in Pipes, op. cit., p. 266).
657
79. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (2) BELINSKY VS. GOGOL
The figure of Peter the Great continued to be a critical point of difference

between the Westerners and the Slavophiles. The Westerners admired him (for
Chaadaev he was, with Alexander I, almost the only significant Russian): the
Slavophiles criticized him as the corrupter of the true Russian tradition. All felt
they had to interpret his place in Russian history.
Once again it was Pushkin who began the reappraisal with his famous poem
on the statue of Peter, The Bronze Horseman. However, it was the literary critic
Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky who made the decisive contribution from the
Westerners’ side. And another writer, Nicholas Vasilyevich Gogol, who took the
Slavophile argument one step further…
Unlike most of the intellectuals of the time, Belinsky was not a nobleman, but
a raznochinets (that is, of undetermined rank, a nobleman by birth who did not
occupy himself with a nobleman’s pursuits). Moreover, he was an atheist. In
fact, he rejected all the traditional pillars of traditional Russian life…
“Hegelian in outlook, Belinskii believed that literature was the vehicle

through which the Universal Spirit would come to self-awareness and self-
expression in Russia, the means by which the Russian people would make their
own distinctive contribution to world culture and the development of mankind.
“Literature, he declared, would heal the rift within Russian culture,

reintegrating the common people by giving it a detailed and authentic account
of their life and assimilating their spoken language, not for ethnographic reasons
but for moral and cultural ones, to express the Russian national essence. It
followed that the mainstream of Russian literature would be realism, or what
Belinskii called the ‘natural school’. By describing the life of the common people
vividly and sympathetically but also critically, the writer would arose the
concern and compassion of the reader and stimulate improvement and progress.
He identified Pushkin’s long narrative poem, Evgenii Onegin, and the first part of
Gogol’s novel, Dead Souls, as exemplars of the new tendency.”1106
Belinsky was concerned, writes Walicki, “above all with the role of Peter the
Great and the antithesis of pre-and post-reform Russia. In his analysis, he made
use of a dialectical scheme current among the Russian Hegelians, although he
was the first to apply it to Russian history. Individuals as well as whole nations,
he argued, pass through three evolutionary stages: the first is the stage of
‘natural immediacy’; the second is that of the abstract universalism of reason,
with its ‘torments of reflection’ and painful cleavage between immediacy and
consciousness; the third is that of ‘rational reality’, which is founded on the
‘harmonious reconciliation of the immediate and conscious elements’.
1106
658
“Belinsky developed this idea in detail as early as 1841, in his long essay on
‘The Deeds of Peter the Great’, in which he wrote: ‘There is a difference between
a nation in its natural, immediate and patriarchal state, and this same nation in
the rational movement of its historical development’. In the earlier stage, he
suggested, a nation cannot really properly be called a nation (natsiia), but only a
people (narod). The choice of terms was important to Belinsky: during the reign
of Nicholas the word narodnost’, used… by the exponents of Official Nationality
[together with the words ‘Orthodoxy’ and ‘Autocracy’ to express the essence of
Russian life], had a distinctly conservative flavour; natsional’nost’, on the other
hand, thanks to its foreign derivation evoked the French Revolution and echoes
of bourgeois democratic national developments.
“Belinsky’s picture of pre-Petrine Russia was surprisingly similar to that

presented by the Slavophiles, although his conclusions were quite different from
theirs. Before Peter the Russian people (i.e. the nation in the age of immediacy)
had been a close-knit community held together by faith and custom – i.e. by the
unreflective approval of tradition idealized by the Slavophiles. These very
qualities, however, allowed no room for the emergence of rational thought or
individuality, and thus prevented dynamic social change.
“Before Russians could be transformed into a nation it was necessary to break

up their stagnating society… Belinsky argued that the emergence of every
modern nation was accompanied by an apparently contradictory phenomenon –
namely the cleavage between the upper and lower strata of society that so
disturbed the Slavophiles. He regarded this as confirmation of certain general
rules applying to the formation of modern nation-states: ‘In the modern world,’
he wrote, ‘all the elements within society operate in isolation, each one
separately and independently… in order to develop all the more fully and
perfectly… and to become fused once more into a new and homogeneous whole
on a higher level than the original undifferentiated homogeneity’. In his
polemics with the Slavophiles, who regarded the cleavage between the
cultivated elite and the common people as the prime evil of post-Petrine Russia,
Belinsky argued that ‘the gulf between society and the people will disappear in
the course of time, with the progress of civilization’. This meant ‘raising the
people to the level of society’, he was anxious to stress, and not ‘forcing society
back to the level of the people’, which was the Slavophiles’ remedy. The Petrine
reforms, which had been responsible for this social gulf, were therefore, in
Belinsky’s view, the first and decisive step toward modern Russia. ‘Before Peter
the Great, Russia was merely a people [narod]; she became a nation [natsiia]
thanks to the changes initiated by the reformer.’” 1107
Berlin writes: “The central question for all Russians concerned about the
condition of their country was social, and perhaps the most decisive single
influence on the life and work of Belinsky was his social origin. He was born in
poverty and bred in the atmosphere, at once bleak and coarse, of an obscure
country town in a backward province. Moscow did, to some degree, soften and
civilise him, but there remained a core of crudeness, and a self-conscious, rough,
1107
659
sometimes aggressive tone in his writing. This tone now enters Russian
literature, never to leave it. Belinsky spoke in this sort of accent because this kind
of raised dramatic tone, this harshness, was as natural to him as to Beethoven.
Belinsky’s followers adopted his manner because they were the party of the
enragés, and this was the traditional accent of anger and revolt, the earnest of
violence to come, the rough voice of the insulted and the oppressed peasant
masses proclaiming to the entire world the approaching end of their suffering at
the hands of the discredited older order.
“Belinsky was the first and most powerful of the ‘new men’, the radicals and
revolutionaries who shook and in the end destroyed the classical aristocratic
tradition in Russian literature. The literary élite, the friends of Pushkin, despite
radical ideas obtained abroad after the Napoleonic wards, despite Decembrist
tendencies, was on the whole conservative, if not in conviction, yet in social
habits and temper, connected with the court and the army, and deeply patriotic.
Belinsky, to whom this seemed a retrograde outlook, was convinced that Russia
had more to learn from the West than to teach it, that the Slavophile movement
was romantic illusion, at times blind nationalistic megalomania, that Western
scientific progress offered the only hope of lifting Russia from her backward
state. And yet this same prophet of material civilisation, who intellectually was
so ardent a Westerner, was emotionally more deeply and unhappily Russian
than any of his contemporaries, spoke no foreign language, could not breathe
freely in any environment save that of Russia, and felt miserable and
persecution-ridden abroad. He found Western habits worthy of respect and
emulation, but to him personally quite insufferable. When abroad he began to
sigh most bitterly for home and after a month away was almost insane with
nostalgia. In this sense he represents in his person the uncompromising elements
of a Slav temperament and way of life to a far sharper degree than any of his
contemporaries, even Dostoyevsky.
“This deep inner clash between intellectual conviction and emotional –

sometimes almost physical – predilection is a very characteristically Russian
disease. As the nineteenth century developed, and as the struggle between social
classes became sharper and more articulate, this psychological conflict which
tormented Belinsky emerges more clearly: the revolutionaries, whether they are
social democrats, or social revolutionaries, or communists, unless they are
noblemen or university professors – that is, almost professionally members of an
international society – may make their bow with great conviction and sincerity
to the West in the sense that they believe in its civilisation, above all its sciences,
its techniques, its political thought and practice, but when they are forced to
emigrate they find life abroad more agonising than other exiles…
“To some degree this peculiar amalgam of love and hate is intrinsic to
contemporary Russian feeling about Europe: on the one hand intellectual
respect, envy, admiration, desire to emulate and excel; on the other emotional
hostility and suspicion and contempt, a sense of being clumsy, de trop, of being
outsiders; leading as a result to an alternation between excessive self-prostration
before, and aggressive flouting of, Western values. No recent visitor to the Soviet
Union can have failed to remark this phenomenon: a combination of intellectual
660
inadequacy and emotional superiority, a sense of the West as enviably self-
restrained, clever, efficient and successful; also cramped, cold, mean, calculating
and fenced in, incapable of large views or generous emotion, incapable of feeling
which at times rises too high and overflows its banks, unable to abandon
everything and sacrifice itself in response to some unique historical challenge;
incapable of ever attaining a rich flowering of life. This attitude is the most
constant element in Belinsky’s most personal and characteristic writings: if it is
not the most valuable element in him, it is the most Russian: Russian history past
and present is not intelligible without it, today more palpably than ever…” 1108
The Slavophiles were free of this neurotic attitude to the West that Belinsky
typified among the westerners; they were both more critical of the West, and
calmer in relation to it. The reason was that they, unlike the Westerners, had
discovered the heart of Russia, her Orthodox Christianity. For them, the critical
event in European history was not the Catholic-Protestant schism, but the
schism between Eastern and Western Christianity in the middle of the eleventh
century. In thus tracing the origins of the difference between East and West to
the religious schism between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics of the
eleventh century, as opposed to later events such as the Protestant Reformation of
the sixteenth century or the reforms of Peter the Great in the eighteenth century,
the Slavophiles made a very important step towards the reintegration of Russian
historical thought with the traditional outlook on history of Orthodox
Christianity. This wider and deeper historical perspective enabled them to see
that, after the schisms of the West from the unity of the One, Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church of the East for so many centuries, it was inevitable that a new
kind of man, homo occidentalis, with a new psychology, new aims and new forms
of social and political organization, should have been created in the West, from
where it penetrated into the Orthodox East.
One of the first to see this clearly was Gogol. While Belinsky looked forward
to the rationalism of Tolstoy, Gogol’s views on the Westernizer-Slavophile
controversy both looked back to Pushkin and forward to Dostoyevsky’s Pushkin
Speech. “All these Slavists and Europeans,” he wrote, “or old believers and new
believers, or easterners and westerners, they are all speaking about two different
sides of one and the same subject, without in any way divining that they are not
contradicting or going against each other.” The quarrel was “a big
misunderstanding”. And yet “there is more truth on the side of the Slavists and
easterners”, since their teaching is more right “on the whole”, while the
westerners are more right “in the details”.1109
Having made his name by satirical and fantastical works such as Notes of a
Madman, The Greatcoat, The Government Inspector and, above all, Dead Souls,
Gogol suddenly and quite unexpectedly began to talk about Orthodoxy,
Autocracy and Nationhood. This change of heart was clearly proclaimed in
Berlin, “The Man who became a Myth”, in The Power of Ideas, op. cit., pp. 85-87.
1108
V. Sapov, “Gogol, Nikolai Vasilyevich”, in Russkaia Filosofia: malij entsiklopedicheskij slovar’

1109
(Russian Philosophy: A Small Encyclopaedic Dictionary), Moscow: Nauka, 1995, pp. 132-133.
661
Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, which, according to Oliver
Figes, “was meant to serve as a sort of ideological preface to the unfinished
volumes [two and three] of Dead Souls. Gogol preached that Russia’s salvation
lay in the spiritual reform of every individual citizen. He left untouched the
social institutions. He neglected the questions of serfdom and the autocratic
state,.. claiming that both were perfectly acceptable as long as they were
combined with Christian principles…”1110
“The main theme of the book,” writes I.M. Andreev, “was God and the
Church. And when Gogol was reproached for this, he replied, simply and with
conviction: ‘How can one be silent, when the stones are ready to cry out about
God.’
“Like Khomiakov and Ivan Kireyevsky, Gogol summoned all ‘to life in the
Church’.
“The pages devoted to the Orthodox Church are the best pages of the book!
No Russian writer had expressed as did Gogol such sincere, filial love for the
Mother Church, such reverence and veneration for Her, such a profound and
penetrating understanding both of Orthodoxy as a whole and of the smallest
details of the whole of the Church’s rites.
“’We possess a treasure for which there is no price,’ is how he characterizes

the Church, and he continued: ‘This Church which, as a chaste virgin, has alone
been preserved from the time of the Apostles in her original undefiled purity,
this Church, which in her totality with her profound dogmas and smallest
external rites has been as it were brought right down from heaven for the
Russian people, which alone has the power to resolve all our perplexing knots
and questions… And this Church, which was created for life, we have to this
day not introduced into our life’…
“The religio-political significance of Correspondence was huge. This book

appeared at a time when in the invisible depths of historical life the destiny of
Russia and Russian Orthodox culture was being decided. Would Russia hold out
in Orthodoxy, or be seduced by atheism and materialism? Would the Russian
Orthodox autocracy be preserved in Russia, or would socialism and communism
triumph? These questions were linked with other, still more profound ones, that
touched on the destinies of the whole world. What was to come? The flourishing
and progress of irreligious humanistic culture, or the beginning of the pre-
apocalyptic period of world history?
“Gogol loudly and with conviction proclaimed that the Truth was in
Orthodoxy and in the Russian Orthodox Autocracy, and that the historical ‘to be
or not to be’ of Russian Orthodox culture, on the preservation of which there
also depended the destiny of the whole world in the nearest future, was now
being decided. The world was on the edge of death, and we have entered the
pre-apocalyptic period of world history.
1110
Figes, Natasha’s Dance, London: Penguin, 2002, p. 317.
662
“Correspondence came out in 1847. Pletnev published it at Gogol’s behest.
“This book, in its hidden essence, was not understood by its contemporaries
and was subjected to criticism not only on the part of enemies, but also of friends
(of course, the former and the latter proceeded from completely different
premises).
“The enemies were particularly disturbed and annoyed by Gogol’s sincere

and convinced approval of the foundations of those social-political orders which
to so-called ‘enlightened’ people seemed completely unsustainable.” 1111
Belinsky was furious. “Russia expects from her writers salvation from
Orthodox, Nationality and Autocracy,” he wrote in his Letter to Gogol in 1847.
And he now called Gogol a “preacher of the knout, apostle of ignorance,
champion of superstition and obscurantism”. Russia, he thundered, “does not
need sermons (she has had her fill of them!), nor prayers (she knows them by
heart), but the awakening in people of the feeling of human dignity, for so many
centuries buried in mud and dung; she needs laws and rights compatible not
with the doctrines of the church, but with justice and common sense.” 1112
Gogol’s friends, continues Andreyev, “criticized Correspondence for other

reasons… The most serious and in many respects justest criticism belonged to
the Rzhev Protopriest Fr. Matthew Konstantinovsky, to whom Gogol, who did
not yet know him personally, sent his book for review. Fr. Matthew condemned
many places, especially the chapter on the theatre, and wrote to Gogol that he
‘would give an account for it to God’. Gogol objected, pointing out that his
intention had been good. But Fr. Matthew advised him not to justify himself
before his critics, but to ‘obey the spirit living in us, and not our earthly
corporeality’ and ‘to turn to the interior life’.
“The failure of the book had an exceptionally powerful effect on Gogol. After
some resistance and attempts to clarify ‘the whirlwind of misunderstandings’,
without rejecting his principled convictions, Gogol humbled himself and
acknowledged his guilt in the fact that he had dared to be a prophet and
preacher of the Truth when he personally was not worthy of serving it. Even to
the sharp and cruel letter of Belinsky Gogol replied meekly and humbly: ‘God
knows, perhaps there is an element of truth in your words.’” 1113
A very important influence on Gogol was the Optina Elder Macarius (Ivanov),
who was one of the critics of Correspondence.
According to St. Barsanuphius of Optina, Gogol became more firmly

established in Orthodoxy towards the end of his life. “Our great writer Gogol
was spiritually reborn under the influence of talks with Elder Macarius,
1111
Andreyev, “Religioznoe litso Gogolia” (“The Religious Face of Gogol”), Pravoslavnij Put’ (The
Orthodox Way), 1952, pp. 173, 174.
1112
1113
Andreyev, op. cit., p. 175.
663
which took place in this very cell, and a great turning point resulted in him.
As a man of sound nature, not fragmented, he was not capable of
compromise. Having understood that he could not live as he had done
previously, he, without looking back, turned to Christ and strove towards the
Heavenly Jerusalem. From Rome and the holy places which he visited, he
wrote letters to his friends, and these letters comprised an entire book, for
which his contemporaries condemned him. Gogol had not yet begun to live
in Christ – hardly had he begun to wish for this life – and the world, which is
at enmity with Christ, raised a persecution against him and passed a harsh
sentence on him, considering him half crazy.”
Another important influence on the writer, as we have seen, was the

Rzhev Protopriest Fr. Matthew Konstantinovsky, who pointed him towards
Elder Macarius. It was under Fr. Matthew’s influence that Gogol gradually
turned away from writing altogether, to the extent that he even burned his
best work. Fr. Matthew is reported to have said: “Artistic talent is a gift of
God…. True, I advised [Gogol] to write something about good people, that is,
to depict people of positive types, not negative ones.”
Some churchmen did not share the ascetic approach to his art of Gogol and
his spiritual fathers. Thus Archimandrite Feodor (Bukharev), as Robert Bird
writes, “in his famous ‘Letters to Gogol’ elaborated a markedly different
approach to the religious significance of artistic creativity. Archimandrite
Feodor regretted the way that Gogol, who had once ‘unconsciously’ followed
Christ in his ‘powerful and free creative work’, had fallen under the influence
of the ‘slavish fearfulness and mercilessness’ of Father Matvei
Konstantinovsky, who rejected everything that ‘did not openly bear the
imprint of Christ’… Bukharev concluded that any genuine literary or
intellectual work can inspire a Christian: ‘another tendency of thought and
discourse, without explicitly recognizing Christ as its leading principle,
nonetheless can be under His invisible leadership and be led by Him to be of
direct use to faith and love for Christ’s truth.’ Significantly, Archimandrite
Feodor’s work was not approved for publication by Metropolitan Philaret.
Philaret alleged that Bukharev saw the mere ‘flickering of the light’.”
Gogol came to believe that his work would be harmful because of the
imperfection of its creator; as he put it, “One should not write about a holy
shrine without first having consecrated one’s soul”; and in 1845 he burned
the second half of his masterpiece, Dead Souls.
But he could not keep away from writing, which was his life, and in 1851
he began again the second part of Dead Souls, which was highly praised by
those friends to whom he read it… However, on the night of 11th to 12th
February, 1852, he burned the manuscript of the second part of Dead Souls for
the second time. Then he made the sign of the cross, lay down on the sofa and
wept… The next day he wrote to Count A.N. Tolstoy: “Imagine, how
powerful the evil spirit is! I wanted to burn some papers which had already
long ago been marked out for that, but I burned the chapters of Dead Souls
which I wanted to leave to my friends as a keepsake after my death.”
664
“What were the true motives,” asks Andreyev, “for the burning of the
completed work which Gogol had carefully kept, accurately putting together
the written notebooks and lovingly rebinding them with ribbon? Why did
Gogol burn this work, with which he was himself satisfied, and which
received an objective and very high evaluation from very competent people
who had great artistic taste? Let us try to answer this complex and difficult
question.
“In his fourth letter with regard to Dead Souls, which was dated ‘1846’ and
published in his Correspondence, Gogol gives an explanation why he for the
first time (in 1845) burned the chapters of the second part of his poem.
“’The second volume of Dead Souls was burned because it was necessary.
‘That will not come alive again which does not die’, says the Apostle. It is
necessary first of all to die in order to rise again. It was not easy to burn the
work of five years, which had been produced with some painful tension, in
which every line was obtained only with a shudder, in which there was much
that constituted my best thoughts and occupied my soul. But all this was
burned, and moreover at that moment when, seeing death before me, I very
much wanted to leave at any rate something after me which would remind
people of me. I thank God that He gave me strength to do this. Immediately the
flame bore away the last pages of my book, its content was suddenly
resurrected in a purified and radiant form, like a phoenix from the ashes, and
I suddenly saw in what a mess was everything that I had previously
considered to be in good order. The appearance of the second volume in that
form in which it was would have been harmful rather than useful.’… ‘I was
not born in order to create an epoch in the sphere of literature. My work is
simpler and closer: my work is that about which every person must think
first of all, and not only I. My work is my soul and the firm work of life.’…
“Such was the motivation for the first burning of Dead Souls in 1845.
“But this motivation also lay at the root of the second burning of the
already completed work – but now much deeper, depending on the spiritual
growth of Gogol.
“In his Confession of an Author written after Correspondence, Gogol for the
first time seriously began to speak about the possibility of rejecting his
writer’s path in the name of a higher exploit. With striking sincerity he writes
(how much it would have cost him!): ‘It was probably harder for me than for
anybody else to reject writing, for this constituted the single object of all my
thoughts, I had abandoned everything else, all the best enticements of life,
and, like a monk, had broken my ties with everything that is dear to man on
earth, in order to think of nothing except my work. It was not easy for me to
renounce writing: some of the best minutes in my life were those when I
finally put on paper that which had been flying around for a long time in my
thoughts; when I am certain to this day that almost the highest of all
pleasures is the pleasure of creation. But, I repeat again, as an honourable
665
man, I would have to lay down my pen even then, if I felt the impulse to do
so.
“I don’t know whether I have had enough honour to do it, if I were not
deprived of the ability to write: because – I say this sincerely – life would then
have lost for me all value, and not to write for me would have meant
precisely the same as not to live. But there are no deprivations that are not
followed by the sending of a substitute to us, as a witness to the fact that the
Creator does not leave man even for the smallest moment.’…
“From the last thought, as from a small seed, during the years of Gogol’s
unswerving spiritual growth, there grew the decision to burn his last finished
work and fall silent.
“The burning before his death of the second part of Dead Souls was Gogol’s
greatest exploit, which he wanted to hide not only from men, but also from
himself.
“Three weeks before his death Gogol wrote to his friend Zhukovsky: ‘Pray
for me, that my work may be truly virtuous and that I may be counted
worthy, albeit to some degree, to sing a hymn to the heavenly Beauty’. The
heavenly Beauty cannot be compared with earthly beauty and is
inexpressible in earthly words. That is why ‘silence is the mystery of the age
to come’.
“Before his death Gogol understood this to the end: he burned what he
had written and fell silent, and then died.”
St. Barsanuphius of Optina expressed a similar view to Andreyev.

“Gogol,” he said, “wanted to depict Russian life in all of its multifaceted
fullness. With this goal he began his poem, Dead Souls, and wrote the first
part. We know in what light Russian life was reflected: the Plyushkins, the
Sobakevitches, the Nosdrevs and the Chichikovs; the whole book constitutes
a stifling and dark cellar of commonness and baseness of interests. Gogol
himself was frightened at what he had written, but consoled himself that this
was only scum, only foam, which he had taken from the waves of the sea of
life. He hoped that in the second volume he would succeed in portraying a
Russian Orthodox man in all his beauty and all his purity.
“How was he to do this? Gogol did not know. It was at about this time that
his acquaintance with Elder Macarius [of Optina] took place. Gogol left
Optina with a renewed soul, but he did not abandon the thought of writing
the second volume of Dead Souls, and he worked on it.
“Later, feeling that it was beyond his power to embody in images that
Christian ideal which lived in his soul in all its fullness, he became
disappointed with his work. And this is the reason for his burning of the
second volume of Dead Souls…”
666
Shortly before he died, Gogol wrote in a letter to Optina: “For Christ’s sake,
pray for me. Ask your respected Abbot and all the brothers, and ask all who
pray more diligently there, to pray for me. My path is hard. My work is of such a
kind that without the obvious help of God every minute and every hour, my pen
cannot move. My power is not only minimal but it does not even exist without
refreshment from Above…”
And again he said, with truly Christian humility: “I ask everyone in Russia to
pray for me, beginning with the bishops, whose whole life is a single prayer. I
ask prayers also of those who humbly do not believe in the efficacy of their
prayers, as well as of those who do not believe in prayer at all and even consider
it useless.”
667
80. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (3) HERZEN VS. KHOMIAKOV
Belinsky had deified the West, but never felt at home there. Alexander
Herzen was the first Westernizer to symbolize the westerners’ exile from
Russian values by permanently settling in London. From there, writes Berlin,
“he established his free printing press, and in the 1850s began to publish two
periodicals in Russia, The Pole Star [recalling the Masonic lodge of the same
name] and The Bell (the first issues appeared in 1855 and 1857 respectively),
which marked the birth of systematic revolutionary agitation – and conspiracy –
by Russian exiles directed against the tsarist regime.” 1114
Herzen followed Belinsky and the westerners in his disdain for Russia’s pre-
Petrine past: “You need the past and its traditions, but we need to tear Russia
away from them. We do not want Russia before Peter, because for us it does not
exist, but you do not want the new Russia. You reject it, but we reject ancient
Rus’”.1115
However, after the failure of the 1848 revolution, Herzen began to lose faith in
the western path to happiness. He began to see the futility (if not the criminality)
of violent revolution, and of such senseless slogans as Proudhon’s “all property
is theft”, or Bakunin’s “the Passion to destroy is the same as the Passion to
create”. The revolution had only left the poor poorer than ever, while the
passion to destroy seemed as exhilarating as the passion to create only in the
heat of the moment, and not when the pieces had to be picked up and paid for
the next day…
“A curse on you,” he wrote with regard to 1848, “year of blood and madness,
year of the triumph of meanness, beastliness, stupidity!… What did you do,
revolutionaries frightened of revolution, political tricksters, buffoons of liberty?
… Democracy can create nothing positive… and therefore it has no future…
Socialism left a victor on the field of battle will inevitably be deformed into a
commonplace bourgeois philistinism. Then a cry of denial will be wrung from
the titanic breast of the revolutionary minority and the deadly battle will begin
again… We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general, just
as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.” 1116
And again: “If progress is the goal, or whom are we working? Who is this
Moloch who, as the toilers approach him, instead of rewarding them, draws
back; and, as a consolation to the exhausted and doomed multitudes, shouting
‘morituri te salutant’ [‘those who are about to die salute you’], can only give
the… mocking answer that after their death all will be beautiful on earth. Do you
truly wish to condemn the human beings alive today to the sad role… of
wretched galley-slaves who, up to their knees in mud, drag a barge… with…
‘progress in the future’ upon its flag?… a goal which is infinitely remote is no
1114
Berlin, “A Revolutionary without Fanaticism”, in The Power of Ideas, op. cit., p. 91.
1115
Herzen, in Lebedev, op. cit., p. 333.
1116
Herzen, From the Other Shore, 1849; in Cohen & Major, op. cit., p. 563.
668
goal, only… a deception; a goal must be closer – at the very least the labourer’s
wage, or pleasure in work performed.”1117
“He was disillusioned with western civilization and found that it was deeply
penetrated by the petty bourgeois spirit, and was built on ‘respect for the sacred
right of property’ and ‘has no other ideals except a thirst for personal security’.
“’Europe,’ said Herzen, ‘is approaching a terrible cataclysm. The medieval

world is collapsing. The political and religious revolutions are weakening under
the burden of their own powerlessness, they have done great things, but they
have not fulfilled their task… They have destroyed faith in the throne and the
altar, but have not realized freedom, they have lit in hearts a desire which they
are not able to satisfy. Parliamentarism, Protestantism – all these were
deferments, temporary salvation, powerless outposts against death and
degeneration; their time has passed. From 1849 they began to understand that
neither ossified Roman law nor cunning casuistry nor nauseating deistic
philosophy nor merciless religious rationalism are able to put off the realization
of the destinies of society.’
“Herzen did not believe in the creative function of contemporary democracy,

he considered that it possessed only a terrible power of destruction, but not the
capacity to create.
“’In democracy,’ said Herzen, ‘there is a terrible power of destruction, but

when it takes it upon itself to create something, it gets lost in student
experiments, in political etudes. There is no real creativity in democracy.’
“Hence Herzen drew the merciless conclusion that the perishing order must
be destroyed to its foundations.
“This destruction had to be universal, it would come in a storm and blood.
“’Who knows what will come out of this blood? But whatever comes out, it is
enough that in this paroxysm of madness, revenge, discord and retribution the
world that restricts the new man, and hinders him from living, hinders him from
establishing himself in the future, will perish. And that is good, and for that
reason let chaos and destruction flourish and may the future be constructed.’” 1118
But then the unexpected: disillusioned with the West, this westernizer par
excellence turns in hope to – Russia. “’The future,’ declared Herzen, not without
some pride, ‘belongs to the Russian people, who is called to bring an end to the
decrepit and powerless world and clear a place for the new and beautiful
[world].’
“In 1851 in a letter to Michelet Herzen wrote: ‘Amidst this chaos, amidst this
dying agony and tormented regeneration, amidst this world falling into dust
1117
Herzen, From the Other Shore, in Isaiah Berlin, “The Pursuit of the Ideal”, The Proper Study of
Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, pp. 13-14.
1118
669
around its cradle, men’s gaze is involuntarily directed towards the East.’” 1119
And when Alexander II prepared to emancipate the peasants, he hailed him in
the words of Julian the Apostate to Christ: “You have conquered, Galilaean!” 1120
That which particularly aroused the hopes of Herzen for Russia was the
peasant commune or mir. He thought that this was a specifically Russian kind of
socialism. As N.O. Lossky writes: “Disappointed with Western Europe and its
‘petty bourgeois’ spirit, he came to the conclusion that the Russian village
commune and the artel hold a promise of socialism being realized in Russia
rather than in any other country. The village commune meant for him peasant
communism [‘The Russian People and Socialism’, 1852, II, 148]. In view of this
he came to feel that reconciliation with the Slavophiles was possible. In his
article ‘Moscow Panslavism and Russian Europeanism’ (1851) he wrote: Is not
socialism ‘accepted by the Slavophiles as it is by us? It is a bridge on which we
can meet and hold hands’ (I, 338).”1121
What was the truth about the commune?
"The commune," writes Richard Pipes, "was an association of peasants

holding communal land allotments. This land, divided into strips, it periodically
redistributed among members. Redistribution (peredely), which took place at
regular intervals - ten, twelve, fifteen years or so, according to local custom -
were carried out to allow for changes in the size of household brought about by
deaths, births, and departures. They were a main function of the commune and
its distinguishing characteristic. The commune divided its land into strips in
order to assure each member of allotments of equal quality and distance from
the village. By 1900, approximately one-third of communes, mostly in the
western and southern borderlands, had ceased the practice of repartitioning
even though formally they were still treated as 'repartitional communes'. In the
Great Russian provinces, the practice of repartition was virtually universal.
"Through the village assembly, the commune resolved issues of concern to its
members, including the calendar of field work, the distribution of taxes and
other fiscal obligations (for which its members were held collectively
responsible), and disputes among households. It could expel troublesome
members and have them exiled to Siberia; it had the power to authorize
passports, without which peasants could not leave the village, and even to
compel an entire community to change its religious allegiance from the official
church to one of the sects. The assembly reached its decisions by acclamation: it
did not tolerate dissent from the will of the majority, viewing it as antisocial
behaviour."1122
1119
1120
And yet he continued his revolutionary agitation against “the Galilaean”, especially in
Poland. But when the Polish uprising failed in 1863, subscriptions to Kolokol fell by a factor of six
times.
1121
Lossky, History of Russian Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1952, p. 58.
1122
Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 1899-1919, London: Collins Harvill, 1990, pp. 87-98.
670
Certainly, Herzen had some reason for hoping for some agreement with the
Slavophiles on the commune. The most famous of them, Alexis Stepanovich
Khomiakov, praised “its meetings that passed unanimous decisions and its
traditional justice in accordance with custom, conscience, and inner truth.” 1123 As
Pipes writes, the Slavophiles “became aware of the peasant commune as an
institution confined to Russia, and extolled it as proof that the Russian people
allegedly lacking in the acquisitive ‘bourgeois’ impulses of western Europeans,
were destined to solve mankind’s social problems. Haxthausen popularised this
view in his book, published in 1847. In the second half of the nineteenth century,
the Russian mir became in Western Europe the starting-point of several theories
concerning communal land-tenure of primitive societies…” 1124 Moreover, there
seemed to be some prima facie similarity between Herzen’s idea of “Russian
socialism” and Khomiakov’s key idea of sobornost’, although the latter is
religious in essence.
Khomiakov had not gone through the tormenting journey from westernism to
Orthodoxy that his friend Kireyevsky had undergone, but had remained that
rarity in the Russian educated classes – a committed Orthodox who practised his
faith openly and without shame while remaining completely au courant with
modern developments (he had several technological inventions to his credit). As
Roy Campbell writes, “he was as far removed from the ‘ridiculousness of
conservatism’ as he was from the revolutionary movement with its ‘immoral
and passionate self-reliance’”.1125
“In contradistinction to Kireyevsky and K. Aksakov,” writes Lossky,

“Khomiakov does not slur over the evils of Russian life but severely condemns
them. At the beginning of the Crimean War (against Turkey, France and
England, 1854-1855) he denounced with the fire and inspiration of a prophet the
Russia of his day (before the great reforms of Alexander II) and called her to
repentance.
“Western Europe has failed to embody the Christian ideal of the wholeness of
life through overemphasizing logical knowledge and rationality; Russia has so
far failed to embody it because complete, all-embracing truth from its very
1123
Lossky, op. cit., p. 39.
1124
Pipes, op. cit., p. 17. “In 1854, however, this whole interpretation was challenged by Boris
Chicherin, a leading spokesman for the so-called Westerner camp, who argued that the peasant
commune as then known was neither ancient nor autochthonous in origin, but had been
introduced by the Russian monarchy in the middle of the eighteenth century as a means of
ensuring the collection of taxes. Until then, according to Chicherin, Russian peasants had held
their land by individual households. Subsequent researches blurred the lines of the controversy.
Contemporary opinion holds that the commune of the imperial period was indeed a modern
institution, as Chicherin claimed, although older than he had believed. It is also widely agreed
that pressure by the state and landlord played a major part in its formation. At the same time,
economic factors seem also to have affected its evolution to the extent that there exists a
demonstrable connection between the availability of land and communal tenure: where land is
scarce, the communal form of tenure tends to prevail, but where it is abundant it is replaced by
household or even family tenure” (op. cit., pp. 17-18).
1125
Roy E. Campbell, “Khomiakov and Dostoyevsky: A Genesis of Ideas”, 1988 (MS).
671
nature develops slowly… Nevertheless Khomiakov believes in the great mission
of the Russian people when it comes fully to recognize and express ‘all the
spiritual forces and principles that lie at the basis of Holy Orthodox Russia.’
‘Russia is called to stand at the forefront of universal culture; history gives her
the right to do so because of the completeness and manysidedness of her
guiding principles; such a right given to a nation imposes a duty upon every one
of its members.’ Russia’s ideal is not to be the richest or most powerful country
but to become ‘the most Christian of all human societies’.
“In spite of Khomiakov’s… critical attitude toward Western Europe,… [he]

speaks of it in one of his poems as ‘the land of holy miracles’. He was
particularly fond of England. The best things in her social and political life were
due, he thought, to the right balance being maintained between liberalism and
conservatism. The conservatives stood for the organic force of the national life
developing from its original sources while the liberals stood for the personal,
individual force, for analytical, critical reason. The balance between these two
forces in England has never yet been destroyed because ‘every liberal is a bit of a
conservative at bottom because he is English’. In England, as in Russia, the
people have kept their religion and distrust analytical reason. But Protestant
scepticism is undermining the balance between the organic and the analytic
forces, and this is a menace to England in the future…” 1126 In another place,
Khomiakov saw the menace to England in her conservatism: “England with her
modest science and her serious love of religious truth might give some hope; but
– permit the frank expression of my thoughts – England is held by the iron chain
of traditional custom.”1127
While attached to England, when it came to comparing the Eastern and

Western forms of Christianity, Khomiakov was severe in his judgements.
Influenced by Elder Ambrose of Optina as Kireyevsky had been by Elder
Macarius, he had a deep, unshakeable confidence in the Orthodox Church.
“Peter Christoff characterizes Khomiakov’s belief as follows, ‘Although
Khomiakov respected and valued much in the Western nations he was
absolutely convinced of the superiority of Orthodoxy.’ The Slavic world-view
and the Russian peasant commune specifically served as a foundation for a new
social order with the emphasis on the Orthodox Church. To refer to
Khomiakov’s Christian Orthodox messianism would in no way do him an
injustice. Khomiakov believed that Russia had a mission to bring the whole
world under the ‘roof’ of the Orthodox Church.”1128
1126
Lossky, op. cit., p. 40.
1127
Khomiakov, “First Letter to William Palmer”, in Birkbeck, op. cit., p. 6; Living Orthodoxy, N
138, vol. XXIII, N 6, November-December, 2003, p. 13. It is interesting to compare the Slavophile
Khomiakov’s estimate of England with that of the westerner Herzen: “He admired England. He
admired her constitution; the wild and tangled wool of her unwritten laws and customs brought
the full resources of his romantic imagination into play… But he could not altogether like them:
they remained too remote from the moral, social and aesthetic issues which lay closer to his own
heart, too materialistic and self-satisfied.” (Isaiah Berlin, “Herzen and his Memoirs”, The Proper
Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, pp. 516, 517)
1128
Christoff, in Archimandrite Luke (Murianka), “Aleksei Khomiakov: A Study of the Interplay
of Piety and Theology”, Orthodox Life, vol. 54, N 1, January-February, 2005, p. 11.
672
“The Church,” he wrote in his famous ecclesiological tract, The Church is One,
“does not recognize any power over herself other than her own, no other’s court
than the court of faith”.1129 The Church is One, declared Khomiakov, and that
Church is exclusively the Orthodox Church. “Western Christianity has ceased to be
Christianity,” he wrote. “In Romanism [Roman Catholicism] there is not one
word, not one action, upon which the seal of spiritual life might lie”. “Both
Protestantisms (Roman and German)… already bear death within themselves; it
is left to unbelief only to take away the corpses and clean the arena. And all this
is the righteous punishment for the crime committed by the ‘West’”. 1130
This points to the fundamental difference between the Slavophiles

and westerners: their attitude to the faith : the Slavophiles embraced
Orthodoxy, while the westernizers rejected it. “It is to Herzen that there
belongs the most apt word expressing the difference between the two
camps. Not without sorrow at the collapse of his friendship with
Kireyevsky, Herzen wrote: ‘The walls of the church were raised
between us.’ 1131
Paradoxically, however, some have accused Khomiakov of degrading the

theological mystery of sobornost’ into a secular, westerning ideal, of confusing
sobornost’ with democracy, the spiritual warmth of communion in Christ with
the natural warmth of a family or society.
It is certainly true to say that for Khomiakov, as for the other early
Slavophiles, there was a close connection between his teaching on the Church
and his teaching on the peasant commune, the mir.
Indeed, as Fr. Georges Florovsky writes, “the hidden meaning of the

Slavophile teaching becomes completely clear only when we divine that both
these, at first sight discordant teachings coincide completely, in that what the
commune should be in the sphere of external inter-human relationships, in the
sphere of ‘earthly’ life, is what the Church is in the order of the spiritual life of
the person. And the other way round: the commune is that form of social
existence which is realized as a result of the application of the principles of
Orthodox ecclesiasticism to the question of social inter-relations.”1132
“One could even say,” writes S. Khoruzhij, “that the social aspect, the
interpretation of sobornost’ as the principle of social existence, in time came to
occupy centre stage, leaving the original ecclesiological meaning of the concept
in the background and almost forgotten. Here we see a fairly systematic
evolution. From the beginning there lived in the minds of the early Slavophiles
1129
Khomiakov, The Church is One, in Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij (Complete Works), Moscow, 1907,
vol. II.
1130
Khomiakov, op. cit., vol. II, 127, 139, 141; quoted in S. Khoruzhij, “Khomiakov i Printsip
Sobornosti” (Khomiakov and the Principle of Sobornost’), Vestnik Russkogo Khristianskogo
Dvizhenia, NN 162-163, II-III, 1991, p. 103.
1131
Kusakov, “Iuridicheskaia eres’ i Pravoslavnaia Vera”, in Metropolitan Anthony
(Khrapovitsky), Dogmat Iskuplenia (The Dogma of Redemption), Moscow, 2013, pp. 76-77.
1132
Florovsky, “Vechnoe i prekhodiaschee v uchenii russkikh slavianofilov” (The eternal and the
passing in the teaching of the Russian Slavophiles”), in Vera i Kul’tura, op. cit., p. 93.
673
an idea of the communal ideal expressing the harmonious management of social
life. They were in agreement in considering the closest historical approximation
to it the village commune, the peasant mir, and, correspondingly, the ideal was
usually called ‘communality’ or ‘communal unity’, being defined as ‘unity which
consists in… the concept of a natural and moral brotherhood and inner justice’
(I, 99). It is a banal tradition to reproach the Slavophiles for idealizing the
communal set-up and Russian history. For all its triteness, the reproach is just;
although Khomiakov tried to moderate this tendency (especially after the
Crimean war), he never managed to measure with one measure and judge with
an equal judgement home and abroad, Russia and the West. But we must point
something else out here. However embellished were his descriptions of the
sources and bases of Russian history and statehood, embellishment never
became deification, nor was communality identified with sobornost’. They were
two different principles, and Khomiakov did not think of merging them into
each other, bringing a human, secular matter to the level of the Theandric and
grace-filled. He saw an impassible boundary between the one and the other.
“However, it was not long before people with frightening ease lost the ability
to discern this boundary – and then learned to deny it. Sobornost’ was inexorably,
with greater and greater strength and openness, brought down to earth,
deprived of its grace-filled content and reduced to a simple social and organic
principle: to a certain degree this process was the very essence of the ideological
evolution of Slavophilism, from its earlier to its later variants, and from it to the
conservatism of the last reign, to post-revolutionary Eurasianism and still
further. In this process of the degeneration of the path of sobornost’ it crossed
paths with the socialist idea: as has been pointed out more than once, ‘in this
attraction to the ideal of… the commune it is not difficult to discern a
subconscious and erroneous thirst for sobornost’ [Florovsky]. Therefore in the
same descending line we find in the end all the communard variations on the
theme of collectivisation, Soviet patriotism and even National Bolshevism… At
the same time as grace freedom is cast out – and, as a result, sobornost’
completely lost its spiritual nature, being turned into the regulative principle
either of mechanical statehood, or of the organic life of the primitive community.
The link with the Church, churchness, was for the most part preserved
externally. However, it goes without saying that the very idea of the Church
could here degenerate as much as the idea of sobornost’. In the first case the
Church was likened to the state to the point of being indistinguishable from it,
and in the second it was a primitively pagan institution for the sanctification of
life and manners. They claimed to be preserving churchness, while rejecting the
principle of freedom – and this was spiritual blindness”1133
81. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (4) KIREYEVSKY
We have seen that the Slavophiles believed that western civilization since the
Schism in the eleventh century had created a new kind of man, homo occidentalis.
The question, then, was: what were the main characteristics of this new man,
1133
Khoruzhij, op. cit., pp. 97-99.
674
and in what did he differ from homo orientalis, the older, original kind of
Christian and European, who was now to be found only in Russia and the
Balkans? The first clear answer to this question was expounded by Ivan
Vasilievich Kireyevsky, a man of thoroughly western education, tastes and
habits, who converted to the Orthodox ideal in adult life, becoming a disciple of
the Optina Elder Macarius. In his Reply to Khomiakov (1839) and On the Character
of European Civilization and Its Relationship to Russian Civilization (1852), he gave
his own answer to the question of the cause of the appearance of homo
occidentalis - the growth of western rationalism.
The beginning of Kireyevsky’s spiritual emancipation may be said to date to

1829, when, as Fr. Sergius Chetverikov writes, he “appeared for the first time in
the field of literature with an article about Pushkin, which revealed a remarkably
clear understanding of the works of this poet. In this article he already expressed
doubt in the absolute truth of German philosophy and pointed out the pressing
need for the development of a school of original Russian scientific thought.
‘German philosophy cannot take root in us. Our philosophy must arise from
current questions, from the prevailing interest of our people and their individual
ways of life.’ But at the same time we must not reject the experience of Western
European thought. ‘The crown of European enlightenment served as the cradle
of our education. It was born when the other states had already completed the
cycle of their intellectual development; and where they finished, there we began.
Like a young sister in a large harmonious family, Russia was enriched by the
experience of her older brothers and sisters prior to her entry into the world.’” 1134
“Europe,” wrote Kireyevsky in 1830, “now presents an image of stupor. Both

political and moral development have come to an end in her.” Only two peoples
“from the whole of enlightened humanity… are not taking part in the general
falling asleep; two peoples, young and fresh, are flourishing with hope: these are
the United States and our fatherland.”1135
At this stage the full uniqueness and saving truth of Orthodoxy was perhaps
not yet fully revealed to Kireyevsky. The decisive moment in his conversion, as
Nina Lazareva writes, was his marriage to Natalya Petrovna Arbeneva in 1834:
“The beginning of his family life was for Ivan Vasilievich also the beginning of
the transformation of his inner world, the beginning of his coming out of that
dead-end in which his former rationalistic world-view had led him. The
difference between the whole structure of Natalya Petrovna’s life, educated as
she had been in the rules of strict piety, and that of Ivan Vasilievich, who had
passed his days and nights in tobacco-filled rooms reading and discussing the
latest philosophical works, could not fail to wound both of them.
1134
Chetverikov, Elder Ambrose of Optina, Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1997,
pp. 124-125.
1135
Kireyevsky, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij, Moscow, 1861, vol. 2, p. 237; vol. 1, pp. 45, 46. Quoted
in S.V. Khatunev, “Problema ‘Rossia-Evropa’ vo vzgliadiakh K.N. Leontieva (60-e gg. XIX veka)”
(The Russia-Europe’ problem in the views of K.N. Leontiev (60s of the 19 th century), Voprosy
Istorii, 3/2006, p. 117.
675
“In the note written by A.I. Koshelev from the words of N.P. Kireyevsky and
entitled ‘The Story of Ivan Vasilievich’s Conversion’, we read: ’In the first period
after their marriage her fulfilment of our Church rites and customs made an
unpleasant impression on him, but from the tolerance and delicacy that was
natural to him he did not hinder her in this at all. She on her side was still more
sorrowfully struck by his lack of faith and complete neglect of all the customs of
the Orthodox Church. They had conversations which ended with it being
decided that he would not hinder her in the fulfilment of her obligations, and he
would be free in his actions, but he promised in her presence not to blaspheme
and by all means to cut short the conversations of his friends that were
unpleasant to her. In the second year of their marriage he asked his wife to read
Cousin. She willing did this, but when he began to ask her for her opinion of this
book, she said that there was much good in it, but that she had not found
anything new, for in the works of the Holy Fathers it was all expounded in a
much profounder and more satisfying way. He laughed and was quiet. He
began to ask his wife to read Voltaire with him. She told him that she was ready
to read any serious book that he might suggest to her, but she disliked mockery
and every kind of blasphemy and she could neither hear nor read them. Then
after some time they began to read Schelling together, and when great, radiant
thoughts stopped them and I.V. Kireyevsky demanded wonderment from his
wife, she first said that she knew these thoughts from the works of the Holy
Fathers. She often pointed them out to him in the books of the Holy Fathers,
which forced Ivan Vasilievich to read whole pages sometimes. It was unpleasant
for him to recognise that there really was much in the Holy Fathers that he had
admired in Schelling. He did not like to admit this, but secretly he took his wife’s
books and read them with interest.’
“At that time the works of the Holy Fathers were hardly published in Russia,
lovers of spiritual literature transcribed them themselves or for small sums of
money they engaged transcribers. Natalya Petrovna made notes from those
books which her spiritual father, Hieromonk Philaret (Puliashkin) gave her to
read. In his time he had laboured much to prepare the Slavonic Philokalia for
publication. These were works of the Holy Fathers collected by St. Paisius
Velichkovsky which contained instructions on mental prayer, that is, on the
cleansing of the soul from passions, on the means to attaining this and in
particular on the union of the mind and the heart in the Jesus prayer. In 1836
Ivan Vasilievich for the first time read the works of St. Isaac the Syrian, who was
called the teacher of silence. Thus the philosopher came into contact with the
hitherto unknown to him, centuries-old Orthodox enlightenment, which always
witnessed to the True Light, our Lord Jesus Christ.
“’Acquaintance with the Novospassky monk Philaret, conversations with the

holy elder and the reading of various works of the Holy Fathers gave him
pleasure and drew him to the side of piety. He went to see Fr. Philaret, but each
time as it were unwillingly. It was evident that he wanted to go to him, but
forcing was always necessary.’ This continued until, according to the Providence
of God, and thanks to the clairvoyance of Elder Philaret and his knowledge of
the human soul, a truly wondrous event took place: ‘I.V. Kireyevsky in the past
never wore a cross round his neck. His wife had more than once asked him to do
676
that, but Ivan Vasilyevich had not replied. Finally, he told her once that he
would put on a cross if it would be sent to him by Fr. Philaret, whose mind and
piety he warmly admired. Natalya Petrovna went to Fr. Philaret and
communicated this to him. The elder made the sign of the cross, took it off his
neck and said to Natalya Petrovna: ‘Let this be to Ivan Vasilyevich for salvation.’
“When Natalya Petrovna went home, Ivan Vasilyevich on meeting her said:
‘Well, what did Fr. Philaret say?’ She took out the cross and gave it to Ivan
Vasilyevich. Ivan Vasilyevich asked her: ‘What is this cross?’ Natalya Petrovna
said to him that Fr. Philaret had taken it off himself and said: let this be to him
for salvation. Ivan Vasilyevich fell on his knees and said: ‘Well, now I expect
salvation for my soul, for in my mind I had determined: if Fr. Philaet takes off
his cross and sends it to me, then it will be clear that God is calling me to
salvation.’ From that moment a decisive turnaround in the thoughts and feelings
of Ivan Vasilyevich was evident.’”1136
Soon Kireyevsky met the famous Optina Elder Macarius, with whom
he started the series of Optina translations of the works of the Holy
Fathers into Russian. This, as well as being of great importance in
itself, marked the beginning of the return of a part of the educated
classes to a more than nominal membership of the Church. It was on
the basis of the teaching of the Holy Fathers that Kireyevsky
determined to build a philosophy that would engage with the problems
felt by the Russian intelligentsia of his day and provide them with true
enlightenment.
A very important element in this philosophy would be a correct

“placing” of Russia in relation to Western Europe.
According to Kireyevsky, “three elements lie at the foundation of

European [i.e. Western European] education: Roman Christianity, the
world of the uneducated barbarians who destroyed the [western]
Roman empire, and the classical world of ancient paganism.
“This classical world of ancient paganism, which did not enter into
the inheritance of Russia, essentially constitutes the triumph of the
formal reason of man over everything that is inside and within him –
pure, naked reason, based on itself, recognizing nothing higher than or
outside itself and appearing in two forms – the form of formal
abstraction and the form of abstract sensuality. Classicism’s influence
on European education had to correspond to this same character.
“Whether it was because Christians in the West gave themselves up

unlawfully to the influence of the classical world, or because heresy
accidentally united itself with paganism, the Roman Church differs in
its deviation from the Eastern only in that same triumph of rationalism
over Tradition, of external ratiocination over inner spiritual reason.
1136
Lazareva, “Zhizneopisanie” (“Biography”), introduction to I.V. Kireyevsky, Razum na puti k
Istine (Reason on the Path to Truth), Moscow: “Pravilo very”, 2002, pp. XXXVI- XXXIX.
677
Thus it was in consequence of this external syllogism drawn out of the
concept of the Divine equality of the Father and the Son [the Filioque]
that the dogma of the Trinity was changed in opposition to spiritual
sense and Tradition. Similarly, in consequence of another syllogism,
the pope became the head of the Church in place of Jesus Christ. They
tried to demonstrate the existence of God with a syllogism; the whole
unity of the faith rested on syllogistic scholasticism; the Inquisition,
Jesuitism – in a word, all the particularities of Catholicism, developed
by virtue of the same formal process of reason, so that Protestantism
itself, which the Catholics reproach for its rationalism, proceeded
directly from the rationalism of Catholicism…
“Thus rationalism was both an extra element in the education of

Europe at the beginning and is now an exclusive characteristic of the
European enlightenment and way of life. This will be still clearer if we
compare the basic principles of the public and private way of life of the
West with the basic principles of the same public and private way of
life which, if it had not developed completely, was at least clearly
indicated in old Russia, when she was under the direct influence of
pure Christianity, without any admixture from the pagan world.
“The whole private and public way of life of the West is founded on
the concept of individual, separate independence, which presupposes
individual isolation. Hence the sacredness of formal relationships; the
sacredness of property and conditional decrees is more important than
the personality. Every individual is a private person; a knight, prince
or city within his or its rights is an autocratic, unlimited personage that
gives laws to itself. The first step of each personage into society is to
surround himself with a fortress from the depths of which he enters
into negotiations with others and other independent powers.
“… I was speaking about the difference between enlightenment in

Russia and in the West. Our educative principle consisted in our
Church. There, however, together with Christianity, the still fruitful
remnants of the ancient pagan world continued to act on the
development of enlightenment. The very Christianity of the West, in
separation from the Universal Church, accepted into itself the seeds of
that principle which constituted the general colouring of the whole
development of Greco-Roman culture: the principle of rationalism. For
that reason the character of European education differs by virtue of an
excess of rationalism.
“However, this excess appeared only later, when logical

development had already overwhelmed Christianity, so to speak. But at
the beginning rationalism, as I said, appeared only in embryo. The
Roman Church separated from the Eastern because it changed certain
dogmas existing in the Tradition of the whole of Christianity into others
by deduction. She spread other dogmas by means of the same logical
process, again in opposition to Tradition and the spirit of the Universal
678
Church. Thus a logical belief lay at the very lowest base of Catholicism.
But the first action of rationalism was limited to this at the beginning.
The inner and outer construction of the Church, which had been
completed earlier in another spirit, continued to exist without obvious
changes until the whole unity of the ecclesiastical teaching passed into
the consciousness of the thinking part of the clergy. This was
completed in the philosophy of scholasticism, which, by reason of the
logical principle at the very foundation of the Church, could not
reconcile the contradictions of faith and reason in any other way than
by means of syllogism, which thereby became the first condition of
every belief. At first, naturally, this same syllogism tried to
demonstrate the truth of faith against reason and subdue reason to
faith by means of rational arguments. But this faith, logically proved
and logically opposed to reason, was no longer a living, but a formal
faith, not faith as such, but only the logical rejection of reason.
Therefore during this period of the scholastic development of
Catholicism, precisely by reason of its rationality, the Western church
becomes an enemy of reason, its oppressive, murderous, desperate
enemy. But, taken to its extreme, as the continuation of this same
logical process, this absolute annihilation of reason produced the well-
known opposite effect, the consequences of which constitute the
character of the present enlightenment. That is what I meant when I
spoke of the rational element of Catholicism.
“Christianity in the East knew neither this struggle of faith against

reason, nor this triumph of reason over faith. Therefore its influence on
enlightenment was dissimilar to that of Catholicism.
“When examining the social construction of old Russia, we find

many differences from the West, and first of all: the formation of
society into so-called mirs [communes]. Private, personal idiosyncracy,
the basis of western development, was as little known among us as was
social autocracy. A man belonged to the mir, and the mir to him.
Agricultural property, the fount of personal rights in the West,
belonged with us to society. A person had the rights of ownership to
the extent that entered into the membership of society.
“But this society was not autonomous and could not order itself, or itself
acquire laws for itself, because it was not separated from other similar
communities that were ruled by uniform custom. The innumerable multitude of
these small communes, which constituted Russia, was all covered with a net of
churches, monasteries and the remote dwellings of hermits, whence there spread
everywhere identical concepts of the relationship between social matters and
personal matters. These concepts little by little were bound to pass over into a
general conviction, conviction – into custom, whose place was taken by law,
which established throughout the whole space of the lands subject to our Church
one thought, one point of view, one aim, one order of life. This universal
uniformity of custom was probably one of the reasons for its amazing strength,
which has preserved its living remnants even to our time, in spite of all the
679
opposition of destructive influences which, in the course of two hundred years,
strove to introduce new principles in their place.
“As a result of these strong, uniform and universal customs, it was impossible
for there to be any change in the social order that was not in agreement with the
order of the whole. Every person’s family relationships were defined, first of all,
by his birth; but in the same predetermined order the family was subject to the
commune, and the wider commune to the assembly, the assembly to the veche,
and so on, whence all the private circles came together in one centre, in one
Orthodox Church. No personal reasoning, no artificial agreement could found
any new order, think up new rights and privileges. Even the very word right was
unknown among us in its western sense, but signified only justice,
righteousness. Therefore no power could be given to any person or class, nor
could any right be accorded, for righteousness and justice cannot be sold or
taken, but exist in themselves independently of conditional relationships. In the
West, by contrast, all social relationships are founded on convention or strive to
attain this artificial basis. Outside convention there are no correct relationships,
but only arbitrariness, which in the governing class is called autonomy, in the
governed – freedom. But in both the one and the other case this arbitrariness
demonstrates not the development of the inner life, but the development of the
external, formal life. All social forces, interests and rights exist there in
separation, each in itself, and they are united not by a normal law, but either
accidentally or by an artificial agreement. In the first case material force
triumphs, in the second – the sum of individual reasonings. But material force,
material dominance, a material majority, the sum of individual reasonings in
essence constitute one principle only at different moments of their development.
Therefore the social contract is not the invention of the encyclopaedists, but a real
ideal to which all the western societies strove unconsciously, and now
consciously, under the influence of the rational element, which outweighs the
Christian element.”1137
“Private and social life in the West,’ Kireyevsky wrote, ‘are based on the
concept of an individual and separate independence that presupposes the
isolation of the individual. Hence the external formal relations of private
property and all types of legal conventions are sacred and of greater importance
than human beings”.
“Only one serious thing was left to man, and that was industry. For him the
reality of being survived only in his physical person. Industry rules the world
without faith or poetry. In our times it unites and divides people. It determines
one’s fatherland, it delineates classes, it lies at the base of state structures, it
moves nations, it declares war, makes peace, changes mores, gives direction to
science, and determines the character of culture. Men bow down before it and
erect temples to it. It is the real deity in which people sincerely believe and to
which they submit. Unselfish activity has become inconceivable; it has acquired
Kireyevsky, “V otvet A.S. Khomiakovu” (In Reply to A.S. Khomiakov), Razum na puti k Istine
1137
(Reason on the Path to Truth), Moscow, 2002, pp. 6-12.

680
the same significance in the contemporary world as chivalry had in the time of
Cervantes.”1138
This long and tragic development had its roots, according to Kireyevsky, in
the falling away of the Roman Church. "In the ninth century the western Church
showed within itself the inevitable seed of the Reformation, which placed this
same Church before the judgement seat of the same logical reason which the
Roman Church had itself exalted... A thinking man could already see Luther
behind Pope Nicolas I just as… a thinking man of the 16th century could foresee
behind Luther the coming of 19th century liberal Protestantism..." 1139
According to Kireyevsky, just as in a marriage separation or divorce takes

place when one partner asserts his or her self against the other, so in the Church
schisms and heresies take place when one party asserts itself over against
Catholic unity. In the early, undivided Church “each patriarchate, each tribe,
each country in the Christian world preserved its own characteristic features,
while at the same time participating in the common unity of the whole
Church.”1140
A patriarchate or country fell away from that unity only if it introduced

heresy, that is, a teaching contrary to the Catholic understanding of the Church.
The Roman patriarchate fell away from the Unity and Catholicity of the Church
through an unbalanced, self-willed development of its own particular strength,
the logical development of concepts, by introducing the Filioque into the Creed in
defiance of the theological consciousness of the Church as a whole. But it fell
away from that Unity and Catholicity in another way, by preaching a heresy
about Unity and Catholicity. For the Popes taught that the Church, in order to be
Catholic, must be first and above all Roman – and “Roman” not in the sense
employed by the Greeks when they called themselves Roman, that is, belonging
to the Christian Roman Empire and including both Italians and Greeks and
people of many nationalities. The Popes now understood “Rome”, “the Roman
Church” and “the Roman Faith” in a different, particularist, anti-Catholic sense –
that is, “Roman” as opposed to “Greek”, “the Roman Church” as opposed to
“the Greek Church”, “the Roman Faith” as opposed to, and something different
from and inherently superior to, “the Greek Church”. From this time that the
Roman Church ceased to be a part of the Catholic Church, having trampled on
the dogma of Catholicity. Instead she became the anti-Catholic, or Romanist, or
Latin, or Papist church.
“Christianity penetrated the minds of the western peoples through the

teaching of the Roman Church alone – in Russia it was kindled on the candle-
stands of the whole Orthodox Church; theology in the West acquired a
ratiocinative-abstract character – in the Orthodox world it preserved an inner
wholeness of spirit; where there was a division in the powers of the reason –
1138
Kireyevsky, Polnoe sobranie sochinenij (Complete Works), Moscow, 1911, vol. I, pp. 113, 246;
quoted in Walicki, op. cit., pp. 94, 95.
1139
Kireyevsky, quoted by Fr. Alexey Young, A Man is His Faith: Ivan Kireyevsky and Orthodox
Christianity, London: St. George Information Service, 1980.
1140
Kireyevsky, in Young, op. cit.
681
here a striving for their living unity; there: the movement of the mind towards
the truth by means of a logical chain of concepts – here: a striving for it by means
of an inner exaltation of self-consciousness towards wholeness of heart and
concentration of reason; there: a searching for external, dead unity – here: a
striving for inner, living unity; there the Church was confused with the State,
uniting spiritual power with secular power and pouring ecclesiastical and
worldly significance into one institution of a mixed character – in Russia it
remained unmixed with worldly aims and institution; there: scholastic and
juridical universities – in ancient Russia: prayer-filled monasteries concentrating
higher knowledge in themselves; there: a rationalist and scholastic study of the
higher truths – here: a striving for their living and integral assimilation; there: a
mutual growing together of pagan and Christian education – here: a constant
striving for the purification of truth; there: statehood arising out of forcible
conquest – here: out of the natural development of the people’s everyday life,
penetrated by the unity of its basic conviction; there: a hostile walling-off of
classes – in ancient Russia their unanimous union while preserving natural
differences; there: the artificial connection of knights’ castles with what belonged
to them constituted separate states – here: the agreement of the whole land
spiritually expresses its undivided unity; there: agrarian property is the first
basis of civil relationships – here: property is only an accidental expression of
personal relationships; there: formal-logical legality – here: legality proceeding
from everyday life; there: the inclination of law towards external justice – here:
preference for inner justice; there: jurisprudence strives towards a logical codex –
here: instead of an external connectedness of form with form, it seeks the inner
connection of lawful conviction with convictions of faith and everyday life; there
improvements were always accomplished by violent changes – here by a
harmonious, natural growth; there: the agitation of the party spirit – here: the
unshakeability of basic conviction; there: the pursuit of fashion – here: constancy
of everyday life; there: the instability of personal self-rule – here: the strength of
familial and social links; there: the foppishness of luxury and the artificiality of
life – here: the simplicity of vital needs and the exuberance of moral courage;
there: tender dreaminess – here: the healthy integrity of rational forces; there:
inner anxiety of spirit accompanied by rational conviction of one’s moral
perfection – among the Russians: profound quietness and the calm of inner self-
consciousness combined with constant lack of trust of oneself and the unlimited
demands of moral perfection – in a word, there: disunity of spirit, disunity of
thoughts, disunity of sciences, disunity of state, disunity of classes, disunity of
society, disunity of family rights and obligations, disunity of the whole unity
and of all the separate forms of human existence, social and personal – in Russia,
by contrast, mainly a striving for integrity of everyday existence both inner and
outer, social and personal, speculative and practical, aesthetic and moral.
Therefore if what we have said above is just, disunity and integrity, rationalism
[rassudochnost’] and reason [razumnost’] will be the final expression of West
European and Russian education.”1141
Kireyevsky, “O kharaktere prosveschenia Evropy i o ego otnoshenii k prosvescheniu Rossii”

1141
(On the Character of the Enlightenment of Europe and its Relationship to the Enlightenment of
Russia), in Razum na puti k istine, op. cit., pp. 207-209.
682
We may wonder whether the contrast between East and West has been drawn
too sharply, too tidily here. But there can be no doubt that Kireyevsky has
unerringly pointed to the main lines of bifurcation between the development of
the Orthodox East and the Catholic-Protestant West. The explanation lies in his
spiritual development. “Having himself been a son of the West and gone to
study with the most advanced philosophers,” writes Fr. Seraphim Rose,
‘Kireyevsky was thoroughly penetrated with the Western spirit and then became
thoroughly converted to Orthodoxy. Therefore he saw that these two things
cannot be put together. He wanted to find out why they were different and what
was the answer in one’s soul, what one had to choose…”1142
Monk Damascene Christenson, Not of this World: The Life and Teaching of Fr. Seraphim Rose,
1142
Forestville, Ca.: Fr. Seraphim Rose Foundation, 1993, pp. 589-590

683
82. RUSSIA AND EUROPE: (5) DOSTOYEVSKY
Dostoyevsky, like Gogol, had been a protégé of Belinsky. But, again like
Gogol, he had broken with him because of his atheism and readiness to
subordinate art to propaganda. However, he did not decisively cast off his
socialist acquaintances, and his return to conscious Christianity was
correspondingly tortuous, slow and punctuated by harsh lessons from life.
Dostoyevsky’s Christian critique of socialism, though not yet fully articulate

in the 1840s, had already begun to reveal itself in his relations with Belinsky, of
whom he wrote much later: “Treasuring above all reason, science and realism, at
the same time he comprehended more keenly than anyone that reason, science
and realism alone can merely produce the ant’s nest, and not social ‘harmony’
within which man can organize his life. He knew that moral principles are the
basis of all things. He believed, to the degree of delusion and without any reflex,
in the new moral foundations of socialism (which, however, up to the present
have revealed nothing but abominable perversions of nature and common
sense). Here was nothing but rapture. Still, as a socialist he had to destroy
Christianity in the first place. He knew that the revolution must necessarily
begin with atheism. He had to dethrone that religion whence the moral
foundations of the society rejected by him had sprung up. Family, property,
personal moral responsibility – these he denied radically. (I may observe that,
even as Herzen, he was also a good husband and father.) Doubtless, he
understood that by denying the moral responsibility of man, he thereby denied
also his freedom; yet, he believed with all his being (much more blindly than
Herzen, who, at the end, it seems, began to doubt) that socialism not only does
not destroy the freedom of man, but, on the contrary, restores it in a form of
unheard-of majesty, only on a new and adamantine foundation.
“At this juncture, however, there remained the radiant personality of Christ
Himself to contend with, which was the most difficult problem. As a socialist, he
was duty bound to destroy the teaching of Christ, to call it fallacious and
ignorant philanthropy, doomed by modern science and economic tenets. Even
so, there remained the beatific image of the God-man, its moral inaccessibility,
its wonderful and miraculous beauty. But in his incessant, unquenchable
transport, Belinsky did not stop even before this insurmountable obstacle, as did
Renan, who proclaimed in his Vie de Jésus – a book permeated with incredulity –
that Christ nevertheless is the ideal of human beauty, an inaccessible type which
cannot be repeated even in the future.
“’But do you know,’ he screamed one evening (sometimes in a state of great

excitement he used to scream), ‘do you know that it is impossible to charge man
with sins, to burden him with debts and turning the other cheek, when society is
organized so meanly that man cannot help but perpetrate villainies; when,
economically, he has been brought to villainy, and that it is silly and cruel to
demand from man that which, by the very laws of nature, he is impotent to
perform even if he wished to…?’
684
“That evening we were not alone: there was present one of Belinsky’s friends
whom he respected very much and obeyed in many ways. Also present was an
author, quite young, who later gained prominence in literature [Dostoyevsky].
“’I am even touched to look at him,’ said Belinsky, suddenly interrupting his
furious exclamations, turning to his friend and pointing at me. ‘Every time I
mention Christ his face changes expression, as if he were ready to start
weeping… But, believe me, naïve man,’ he jumped at me again, ‘believe me that
your Christ, if He were born in our time, would be a most imperceptible and
ordinary man; in the presence of contemporary science and contemporary
propellers of mankind, He would be effaced!’” 1143
The essence of “The Parable of the Grand Inquisitor” is in that scene, with
Belinsky in the role of Inquisitor and Dostoyevsky - in that of the silent Christ.
However, Dostoyevsky was not yet ready to break decisively with the
socialist camp. As he wrote: “All these new ideas of those days were very
appealing to us in Petersburg; they seemed holy in the highest degree and moral,
and – most important of all – cosmopolitan, the future law of all mankind in its
totality. Even long before the Paris revolution of ’48 we fell under the fascinating
influence of these ideas. Already in ’46 I had been initiated by Belinsky into the
whole truth of that future ‘regenerated world’ and into the whole holiness of the
forthcoming communist society. All these convictions about the immorality of
the very foundations (Christian) of modern society, the immorality of religion,
family, right of property; all these ideas about the elimination of nationalities in
the name of universal brotherhood of men, about the contempt for one’s native
country as an obstacle to universal progress, and so on and so forth – all these
constituted such influences as we were unable to overcome and which,
contrariwise, swayed our hearts and minds in the name of some magnanimity.
At any rate, the theme seemed lofty and far above the level of the then
prevailing conceptions, and it was precisely this that was tempting…
“The human mind, once having rejected Christ, may attain extraordinary
results. This is an axiom. Europe, in the persons of her highest intellectual
representatives, renounces Christ, while we, as is known, are obligated to imitate
Europe…”1144
The first revolutionary movement in Russia after the 1848 revolution was the
“Petrashevtsy”, named after its leader, Michael Petrashevsky. He expressed his
“realist” views thus: "[Naturalism] means a science which holds that by thought
alone, without the help of tradition, revelation, or divine intervention, man can
achieve in real life a state of permanent happiness through the total and
independent development of all his natural faculties. In the lower phases of its
evolution, naturalism considers the appearance of the divine element in positive
1143
Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, 1873, London: Cassell, p. 7.
1144
Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, 1873, pp. 148-149, 151.
685
religions to be a falsehood, the result of human rather than divine action. In its
further evolution, this science - having absorbed pantheism and materialism -
conceives divinity as the supreme and all-embracing expression of human
understanding, moves towards atheism, and finally becomes transformed into
anthropotheism - the science that proclaims that the only supreme being is man
himself as a part of nature. At this stage of its rational evolution, naturalism
considers the universal fact of the recognition of God in positive religions to be a
result of man's deification of his own personality and the universal laws of his
intellect; it considers all religions that reflected the historical evolution of
mankind to be a gradual preparation for anthropotheism, or - in other words -
total self-knowledge and awareness of the vital laws of nature." 1145
The Petrashevtsy especially admired Fourier; and on his birthday D.D.

Akhsharumov declared: “We venerate his memory because he showed us the
path we must follow, he revealed the source of wealth, of happiness. Today is
the first banquet of the Fourierists in Russia, and we are all here: ten people, not
much more! Everything begins from something small and grows into something
big. Our aim is to destroy the capitals and cities and use all their materials for
other buildings, and turn the whole of this life of torments, woes, poverty and
shame into a life that is luxurious, elegant, full of joy, wealth and happiness, and
cover the whole poor land with palaces and fruits and redecorate them in
flowers. We here, in our country, will begin its transfiguration, and the whole
land will finish it. Soon the human race will be delivered from intolerable
sufferings…”1146
One member of the circle, the proud, silent and handsome Nikolai Speshnev,
considered all distinctions between beauty and ugliness, good and evil to be “a
matter of taste”. He did not believe in the transformation of Russia from the top,
but in a socialist revolution from below, to which end only verbal propaganda
was necessary. “I intend to use it, without the slightest shame or conscience, to
propagandise socialism, atheism, terrorism, and all that is good.” 1147 Speshnev
formed his own “Russian Society”, which was joined by Dostoyevsky. He called
him his “Mephistopheles”, and was fascinated by him. But he was never wholly
convinced by him, and continued to believe in Christ…
However, in 1849 the Petrashevtsy, including Dostoyevsky, were arrested –

Dostoyevsky, for reading Belinsky’s Letter to Gogol in public. They were
imprisoned in the Peter and Paul fortress, and then, after a mock-execution, sent
to four years’ hard labour in Siberia. The experience – recounted in The House of
the Dead – brought Dostoyevsky to repentance. As he wrote to his brother: “In
my absolute spiritual solitude, I re-examined the whole of my former life. I
scrutinized every minute detail. I thought very carefully about my past. Alone as
I was, I judged myself harshly, without mercy. Sometimes I even thanked my
fate because it had sent me into solitude, for without it, this new judgement of
1145
Petrashevtsy, in Andrezj Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1988, pp. 157-58.
1146
Akhsharumov, in Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 323-324.
1147
Geir Kjetsaa, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, London: Macmillan, 1987, p. 63.
686
myself would never have happened…”1148 As St. Ambrose of Optina said: “This
is a man who repents!”1149
Then, in Siberia, by being “personally classed with villains”, he came to know

the Russian people as they really were for the first time. And through them, as
he wrote later, “I again received into my soul Christ, Who had been revealed to
me in my parents’ home and Whom I was about to lose when, on my part, I
transformed myself into a ‘European liberal’.” 1150 “The moral idea is Christ,”
wrote Dostoyevsky. “In the West, Christ has been distorted and diminished. It is
the kingdom of the Antichrist. We have Orthodoxy. As a consequence, we are
the bearers of a clear understanding of Christ and a new idea for the resurrection
of the world… If faith and Orthodoxy were shaken in the people, then they
would begin to disintegrate… The whole matter lies in the question: can one
believe, being civilized, that is, a European, that is, believe absolutely in the
Divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ? (for all faith consists in this)… You see:
either everything is contained in faith or nothing is: we recognize the importance
of the world through Orthodoxy. And the whole question is: can one believe in
Orthodoxy? If one can, then everything is saved: if not, then better to burn… But
if Orthodoxy is impossible for the enlightened man, then… all this is hocus-
pocus and Russia’s whole strength is provisional… It is possible to believe
seriously and in earnest. Here is everything, the burden of life for the Russian
people and their entire mission and existence to come…”1151
And so Dostoyevsky became, after Pushkin and Gogol, the third great
Russian writer to be rescued from European atheism and converted to “the
Russian God”, Jesus Christ... Like the other Slavophiles, Dostoyevsky saw the
beginning of the European disease in the reforms of Peter the Great. Unlike
them, however, he came to believe that this turning to the West was providential
– and not only in that enabled Russians to acquire European arts and sciences. It
was providential in that it enabled the truth of Orthodoxy to return to old
Europe from Russia as “light from the East”.
“Throughout these hundred and fifty years after Peter we have done nothing
but live through a communion with all human civilization, affiliating ourselves
with their history and their ideals. We have learned, and trained ourselves, to
love the French, the Germans and everybody else, as if they were our brethren –
notwithstanding the fact that they never liked us and made up their minds never
to like us. However, this was the essence of our reform – the whole Peter cause;
we have derived from it, during that century and a half, an expansion of our
view, which, perhaps, was unprecedented and cannot be traced in any other
nation, whether in the ancient or the new world. The pre-Peter Russia was active
and solid, although politically she was slow to form herself; she had evolved
unity within herself and she had been ready to consolidate her border regions.
And she had tacitly comprehended that she bore within herself a treasure which
1148
Dostoyevsky, in Kjetsaa, op. cit., p. 105.
1149
Fr. Sergius Chetverikov, Elder Ambrose of Optina, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood, 1997, p. 213.
1150
Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, 1880.
1151
Dostoyevsky, in K. Mochulsky, Dostoyevsky: His Life and Work, Princeton, 1967.
687
was no longer existent anywhere else – Orthodoxy; that she was the conservatrix
of Christ’s truth, genuine truth – the true image of Christ which had been
dimmed in all other religions and in all other nations. This treasure, this eternal
truth inherent in Russia and of which she had become the custodian, according
to the view of the best Russians of those days, as it were, relieved their
conscience of the duty of any other enlightenment. Moreover, in Moscow the
conception had been formed that any closer intercourse with Europe might even
exercise a harmful and corrupt influence upon the Russian mind and the
Russian idea; that it might distort Orthodoxy itself and lead Russia along the
path to perdition ‘much in the same way as all other peoples’. Thus ancient
Russia, in her isolation, was getting ready to be unjust – unjust to mankind, having
taken the resolution to preserve passively her treasure, her Orthodoxy, for
herself, to seclude herself from Europe – that is, mankind – much as our
schismatics who refuse to eat with you from the same dish and who believe it to
be a holy practice that everyone should have his own cup and spoon. This is a
correct simile because prior to Peter’s advent, there had developed in Russia
almost precisely this kind of political and spiritual relation with Europe. With
Peter’s reform there ensued an unparalleled broadening of the view, and herein
– I repeat – is Peter’s whole exploit. This is also that very treasure about which I
spoke in one of the preceding issues of the Diary – a treasure which we, the
upper cultured Russian stratum, are bringing to the people after our century-
and-a-half absence from Russia, and which the people, after we ourselves shall
have bowed before their truth, must accept from us sine qua non, ‘without which
the fusion of both strata would prove impossible and everything would come to
ruin.’ Now, what is this ‘expansion of the view’, what does it consist of, and
what does it signify? Properly speaking, this is not enlightenment, nor is it
science; nor is it a betrayal of the popular Russian moral principles for the sake
of European civilization. No, this is precisely something inherent only in the
Russian people, since nowhere and at no time has there ever been such a reform.
This is actually, and in truth, almost our brotherly fifty-year-long living
experience of our intercourse with them. This is our urge to render universal
service to humanity, sometimes even to the detriment of our own momentous
and immediate interests. This is our reconciliation with their civilizations;
cognition and excuse of their ideals even though these be in discord with ours;
this is our acquired faculty of discovering and revealing in each one of the
European civilizations – or, more correctly, in each of the European
individualities – the truth contained in it, even though there be much with which
it would be impossible to agree. Finally, this is the longing, above all, to be just
and to seek nothing but truth. Briefly, this is, perhaps, the beginning of that
active application of our treasure – of Orthodoxy – to the universal service of
mankind to which Orthodoxy is designated and which, in fact, constitutes its
essence. Thus, through Peter’s reform our former idea – the Russian Moscow
idea – was broadened and its conception was magnified and strengthened.
Thereby we got to understand our universal mission, our individuality and our
role in humankind; at the same time we could not help but comprehend that this
mission and role do not resemble those of other nations since, there, every
national individuality lives solely for, and within, itself. We, on the other hand,
will begin – now that the hour has come – precisely with becoming servants to
all nations, for the sake of general pacification. And in this there is nothing
688
disgraceful; on the contrary, therein is our grandeur because this leads to the
ultimate unity of mankind. He who wishes to be first in the Kingdom of God
must become a servant to everybody. This is how I understand the Russian
mission in its ideal.”1152
Dostoyevsky would develop his ideas on Russia and Europe after the Russo-
Turkish War and the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, especially, as we shall see, in his
famous Pushkin Speech of 1880.
Dostoyevsky, “The Utopian Conception of History”, The Diary of a Writer, June, 1876, London:
1152
Cassell, pp. 360-362.

689
83. RUSSIAN MONARCHIST THINKERS
We have discussed Orthodoxy and Nationality, but said little about the
central element in the tripartite formula of Nicholas I’s reign: Autocracy, which
was coming more and more under attack from the westerners as the century
wore on. With the exception of Kireyevsky, the Slavophiles had little to say
about Autocracy. As Lev Tikhomirov writes, “the greatest merit of the
Slavophiles consisted not so much in their working out of a political teaching, as
in establishing the social and psychological bases of public life.”1153 They were not
opposed to the autocracy; but the emphasis of their thought, especially
Khomiakov’s, was on the people rather than on the autocracy.1154
Thus Khomiakov wrote: “The people transferred to the Emperor all the
power with which it itself was endowed in all its forms. The sovereign became
the head of the people in Church matters as well as in matters of State
administration. The people could not transfer to its Emperor rights that it did not
itself have. It had from the beginning a voice in the election of its bishops, and
this voice it could transfer to its Emperor. It had the right, or more precisely the
obligation to watch that the decisions of its pastors and their councils were
carried out – this right it could entrust to its chosen one and his successors. It
had the right to defend its faith against every hostile attack upon it, - this right it
could also transfer to its Sovereign. But the Church people did not have any
power in questions of dogmatic teaching, and general Church piety – and for
that reason it could not transfer such power to its Emperor.” Here again we see
the myth of an early pact between the Tsar and the people. For this was what the
Slavophiles were above all concerned to emphasize: that the Tsar is not
separated from his people, that Tsar and people form one harmonious whole
and have a single ideal.
Khomiakov was also concerned to emphasize that it was not the Tsar who
ruled the Russian Orthodox Church, as the Fundamental Laws of the Russian
Empire might have suggested. “’It is true,’ he says, ‘the expression “the head of
the local church” has been used in the Laws of the Empire, but in a totally
different sense than it is interpreted in other countries’ (II, 351). The Russian
Emperor has no rights of priesthood, he has no claims to infallibility or ‘to any
authority in matters of faith or even of church discipline’. He signs the decisions
of the Holy Synod, but this right of proclaiming laws and putting them into
execution is not the same as the right to formulate ecclesiastical laws. The Tsar
has influence with regard to the appointment of bishops and members of the
Synod, but it should be observed that such dependence upon secular power is
frequently met with in many Catholic countries as well. In some of the
Protestant states it is even greater (II, 36-38, 208).”1155
1153
Tikhomirov, Monarkhicheskaia Gosudarstvennost’, St. Petersburg, 1992, p. 310.
1154
Florovsky writes that the Slavophiles “opposed their ‘socialism’ to the statism of West
European thought, both in its absolutist-monarchist and in its constitutional-democratic
varieties” (“The Eternal and the Passing in the Teaching of the Russian Slavophiles”, in Vera i
Kul’tura, p. 95).
1155
Lossky, op. cit., pp. 35-36.
690
The Slavophiles were not against the autocracy, but they believed that since
Peter a rift had opened up between the Tsar and the people that had to be
overcome. “In the words of Aksakov, ‘There arose a rift between the Tsar and
people, and the ancient union of land and state was destroyed. In its place the
state imposed its yoke on the land. The Russian land was, as it were, conquered,
and the state was the conqueror. Thus the Russian monarch became a despot,
and people who had been his free subjects became slaves and prisoner in their
own land.’
“The political ideal of the Slavophiles was a return to what they took to have
been the organic, truly Russian monarchy of pre-Petrine days. The monarch
should restore sobornyi government by reconvening the zemskii sobor as a regular
institution representing the various strata of the population. As a father caring
for his people, he would not need to be bound by any juridical guarantees such
as were laid down in Western constitutions, but he did need the regular contact
with them which a zemskii sobor would ensure. The church had also become
bureaucratize and needed to return to its own basic principles by abolishing the
Holy Synod and restoring the pomestnyi sobor (local council) as its governing
body, properly elected to give due weight to the voices of prelates, monks,
priests and laity. At the lowest level, the parish council must also be reinstated,
as an autonomous body empowered to elect its own priest and tend the material
life of the congregation.”1156
“The whole pathos of Slavophilism,” writes Bishop Dionysius (Alferov), “lay

in ‘sobornost’’, ‘zemstvo’, in ‘the popular character of the monarchy, and not in its
service as ‘he who restrains [the coming of the Antichrist]’. Byzantium, in which
there were neither Zemskie Sobory nor self-government of the land, elicited only
irritation in them and was used by them to put in the shade the free ‘Slavic
element’. The Russian Tsar for the Slavophiles was first of all ‘the people’s Tsar’,
and not the Tsar of the Third Rome. According to the witness of Konstantin
Leontiev, Tsar Nicholas Pavlovich himself noticed that under the Slavophiles’
Russian caftan there stuck out the trousers of the most vulgar European
democracy and liberalism.”1157
In Konstantin Aksakov we certain, if not liberal, at any rate anti-statist

tendency, an attempt to bypass the state as being irrelevant to the deeper life of
the people, the “ancient Russian freedom” that existed in the peasant communes
and the Church. “Republican liberty, he argued, was political freedom, which
presupposed the people’s active participation in political affairs; ancient Russian
freedom, on the other hand, meant freedom from politics – the right to live
according to unwritten laws of faith and tradition, and the right to full
realization in a moral sphere on which the state would not impinge.

1156
1157
Alferov, “Ob Uderzhanii i Simfonii” (On Restraining and Symphony),
http://www.monarhist-spb.narod.ru/D-ST/Dionisy-1.htm, p. 11.
691
“This theory rested on a distinction the Slavophiles made between two kinds
of truth: the ‘inner’ and the ‘external’ truth. The inner truth is in the individual
the voice of conscience, and in society the entire body of values enshrined in
religion, tradition, and customs – in a word, all values that together form an
inner unifying force and help to forge social bonds based on shared moral
convictions. The external truth, on the other hand, is represented by law and the
state, which are essentially conventional, artificial, and ‘external’ – all the
negative qualities Kireyevsky and Khomiakov ascribed to institutions and social
bonds that had undergone a rationalizing and formalizing process. Aksakov
went even further than the other Slavophiles in regarding all forms of legal and
political relations as inherently evil; at their opposite pole was the communal
principle embodied in the village commune, based (in Aksakov’s view) purely
on truth and unanimity and not on any legal guarantees or conditions and
agreements characteristic of a rational contract. For Aksakov the difference
between Russia and the West was that in Russia the state had not been raised to
the ‘principle’ on which social organization was largely founded. When the
frailty of human nature and the demands of defense appeared to make political
organization necessary, Russians ‘called’ their rulers from ‘beyond the sea’ in
order to avoid doing injury to the ‘inner truth’ by evolving their own statehood;
Russian tsars were given absolute powers so that the people might shun all
contacts with the ‘external truth’ and all participation in affairs of state. Relations
between ‘land’ (that is the common people who lived by the light of the inner
truth) and state rested upon the principle of mutual non-interference. Of its own
free will the state consulted the people, who presented their point of view at
Land Assemblies but left the final decision in the monarch’s hands. The people
could be sure of complete freedom to live and think as they pleased, while the
monarch had complete freedom of action in the political sphere. This
relationship depended entirely on moral convictions rather than legal
guarantees, and it was this that constituted Russia’s superiority to Western
Europe. ‘A guarantee is an evil,’ Aksakov wrote. ‘Where it is necessary, good is
absent; and life where good is absent had better disintegrate than continue with
the aid of evil.’ Aksakov conceded that there was often a wide gap between ideal
and reality, but ascribed this entirely to human imperfections. He strongly
condemned rulers who tried to interfere in the inner life of the ‘land’, but even in
the case of Ivan the Terrible, whose excesses he condemned, he would not allow
that the ‘land’ had the right to resistance and he praised its long-suffering
loyalty.”1158
Although there is some truth in this account, it is exaggerated. Certainly, the

“inner truth” of Orthodoxy was more important than the “external truth” of
government and law; and it was true that the presence of this inner truth in
Russia had prevented statehood becoming the “primary principle” it had
become in the West, where “inner truth” had been lost. And yet from the
beginning the Russian State had always taken a very active and essential role in
Russian life in protecting and fostering the internal freedom provided by the
Orthodox way of life, and was accepted as such with gratitude by the people.
1158
692
Moreover, it was inaccurate to represent the power of the Russian tsars as
being “external” to the true life of the people. For the tsars were themselves
Orthodox Christians anointed for their role by the Church and guided in their
decisions by the Church.
Another Russian supporter of Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality who is

sometimes classified as a Slavophile was the poet and diplomat Fyodor
Ivanovich Tiutchev. Already at the age of 19, in his poem, On Pushkin’s Ode on
Freedom, he had rebuked his fellow-poet for disturbing the hearts of the citizens
by his call to freedom. While sharing the world-view of the Slavophiles, he took
their sympathies and antipathies to their logical conclusions. 1159 Thus he posed
the contrast between Russia and the West as a struggle between Christ and
Antichrist. “The supreme power of the people,” he wrote, “is in essence an
antichristian idea.” Popular power and Tsarist power mutually exclude each
other. So it was not a question of two cultures living side by side with each other
and complementing each other in some sense. No: it was a fight to the death
between the Russian idea and the European idea, between the Rome of the
Papacy and the political and social structures it evolved, and the Third Rome of
the Orthodox Tsar…
Tiutchev believed in “the Great Greco-Russian Eastern Empire”, whose soul

was the Orthodox Church and whose body the Slavic race. The Empire’s destiny
was to unite the two halves of Europe under the Russian Emperor, with some
Austrian lands going to Russia. There would be an Orthodox Pope in Rome and
an Orthodox Patriarch in Constantinople. The Empire was a principle, and so
indivisible. Western history had been a struggle between the schismatic Roman
papacy and the usurper-empire of Charlemagne and his successors. This
struggle “ended for the one in the Reformation, i.e. the denial of the Church, and
for the other in the Revolution, i.e. the denial of the Empire”. The struggle
between Russia and Napoleon had been the struggle “between the lawful
Empire and the crowned Revolution”.1160
Tiutchev believed that the Russian Empire could liberate the East Europeans,
including even the Czechs and Moravians, from the false empire, church and
civilization of the West. According to V. Tsimbursky, Tiutchev called on
Nicholas I “to play on the revolutionary self-destruction of western civilization
to place on its ruins the ‘ark’ of the new Empire: may ‘the Europe of Peter’ take
the place of ‘the Europe of Charles’. With Tiutchev, as in the fears of the West,
the Europeanization of Russia becomes the growth of a power called to take the
place and replace Romano-German Europe. Tiutchev… in return for the
Florentine unia of 1439, puts forward a project for helping the Roman papacy
out of the corner it was driven into by the Italian revolution on condition of its
honourable return to Orthodoxy.”1161
1159
As Demetrius Merezhkovsky expressed it, Tiutchev put bones into the soft body of
Slavophilism, crossed its ‘t’s and dotted its ‘i’s (Dve tajny russkoj poezii. Nekrasov i Tiutchev (Two
Mysteries of Russian Poetry. Nekrasov and Tiutchev), St. Petersburg, 1915).
1160
Tiutchev (1849), in Fomin & Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, p. 327.
1161
Tsimbursky, in Fomin & Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, p. 327.
693
As a diplomat Tiutchev knew much about the threat to the Orthodox
autocracy posed by the 1848 revolution; and in April, 1848, just as this revolution
was gathering pace, he wrote: “There have long been only two real powers in
Europe – the revolution and Russia. These two powers are now opposed to each
other, and perhaps tomorrow they will enter into conflict. Between them there
can be no negotiations, no treaties; the existence of the one is equivalent to the
death of the other! On the outcome of this struggle that has arisen between them,
the greatest struggle that the world has ever seen, the whole political and
religious future of mankind will depend for many centuries.
“The fact of this rivalry is now being revealed everywhere. In spite of that, the
understanding of our age, deadened by false wisdom, is such that the present
generation, faced with a similar huge fact, is far from completely comprehending
its true significance and has not evaluated its real causes.
“Up to now they have sought for its explanation in the purely political
sphere; they have tried to interpret by a distinction of concepts on the
exclusively human plane. In fact, the quarrel between the revolution and Russia
depends on deeper causes. They can be defined in two words.
“Russia is first of all the Christian Empire; the Russian people is Christian not
only by virtue of the Orthodoxy of its convictions, but also thanks to something
more in the realm of feelings than convictions. It is Christian by virtue of that
capacity for self-denial and self-sacrifice which constitutes as it were the basis of
her moral nature. The revolution is first of all the enemy of Christianity!
Antichristian feeling is the soul of the revolution: it is its special, distinguishing
feature. Those changes in form to which it has been subjected, those slogans
which it has adopted in turn, everything, even its violence and crimes have been
secondary and accidental. But the one thing in it that is not accidental is
precisely the antichristian feeling that inspires it, it is that (it is impossible not to
be convinced of this) that has acquired for it this threatening dominance over the
world. He who does not understand this is no more than a blind man present at
a spectacle that the world presents to him.
“The human I, wishing to depend only on itself, not recognizing and not
accepting any other law besides its own will – in a word, the human I, taking the
place of God, - does not, of course, constitute something new among men. But
such has it become when raised to the status of a political and social right, and
when it strives, by virtue of this right, to rule society. This is the new
phenomenon which acquired the name of the French revolution in 1789.
“Since that time, in spite of all its permutations, the revolution has remained
true to its nature, and perhaps never in the whole course of this development
has it recognized itself as so of one piece, so sincerely antichristian as at the
present moment, when it has ascribed to itself the banner of Christianity:
‘brotherhood’. In the name of this we can even suppose that it has attained its
apogee. And truly, if we listen to those naively blasphemous big words which
have become, so to speak, the official language of the present age, then will not
everyone think that the new French republic was brought into the world only in
694
order to fulfill the Gospel law? It was precisely this calling that the forces created
by the revolution ascribed to themselves – with the exception, however, of that
change which the revolution considered it necessary to produce, when it
intended to replace the feeling of humility and self-denial, which constitutes the
basis of Christianity, with the spirit of pride and haughtiness, free and voluntary
good works with compulsory good works. And instead of brotherhood preached
and accepted in the name of God, it intended to establish a brotherhood imposed
by fear on the people-master. With the exception of these differences, its
dominance really promises to turn into the Kingdom of Christ!
“And nobody should be misled by this despicable good will which the new
powers are showing to the Catholic Church and her servers. It is almost the most
important sign of the real feeling of the revolution, and the surest proof of the
position of complete power that it has attained. And truly, why should the
revolution show itself as hostile to the clergy and Christian priests who not only
submit to it, but accept and recognize it, who, in order to propitiate it, glorify all
its excesses and, without knowing it themselves, become partakers in all its
unrighteousness? If even similar behaviour were founded on calculation alone,
this calculation would be apostasy; but if conviction is added to it, then this is
already more than apostasy.
“However, we can foresee that there will be no lack of persecutions, too. On

that day when concessions have reached their extreme extent, the catholic
church will consider it necessary to display resistance, and it will turn out that
she will be able to display resistance only by going back to martyrdom. We can
fully rely on the revolution: it will remain in all respects faithful to itself and
consistent to the end!
“The February explosion did the world a great service in overthrowing the
pompous scaffolding of errors hiding reality. The less penetrating minds have
probably now understood that the history of Europe in the course of the last
thirty three years was nothing other than a continuous mystification. And
indeed with what inexorably light has the whole of this past, so recent and
already so distant from us, been lit up? Who, for example, will now not
recognize what a laughable pretension was expressed in that wisdom of our age
which naively imagined that it had succeeded in suppressing the revolution
with constitutional incantations, muzzling its terrible energy by means of a
formula of lawfulness? After all that has happened, who can still doubt that
from the moment when the revolutionary principle penetrated into the blood of
society, all these concessions, all these reconciling formulas are nothing other
than drugs which can, perhaps, put to sleep the sick man for a time, but are not
able to hinder the further development of the illness itself…” 1162
In spite of his fervent support for the Autocracy, Tiutchev criticized the
Tsarist imposition of censorship. In 1857 he wrote: “It is impossible to impose on
minds an absolute and too prolonged restriction and yoke without substantial
harm for the social organism…. Even the authorities themselves in the course of
1162
Tiutchev, “Rossia i revoliutsia” (Russia and the Revolution), Politicheskie Stat'i (Political
Articles), Paris: YMCA Press, 1976, pp. 32-36.
695
time are unable to avoid the disadvantages of such a system. Around the sphere
in which they are present there is formed a desert and a huge mental emptiness,
and governmental thought, not meeting from outside itself either control or
guidance or even the slightest point of support, ends by weakening under its
own weight even before it destined to fall under the blows of events.”1163
“Why,” he wrote 1872, “can we oppose to harmful theories and destructive

tendencies nothing except material suppression? Into what has the true principle
of conservatism been transformed with us? Why has our soul become so
horribly stale? If the authorities because of an insufficiency of principles and
moral convictions pass to measures of material oppression, it is thereby being
turned into the most terrible helper of denial and revolutionary overthrow, but it
will begin to understand this only when the evil is already incorrigible.”
The Aksakov brothers, like Tiutchev, combined a belief in the autocracy and
the imperial mission of Russia with a belief in civil liberties. This sometimes
brought them into conflict with Tsar Nicholas. Thus in his memorandum, The
Eastern Question (February, 1854), Constantine Aksakov hoped that the Tsar
would promote “an alliance of all Slavs under the supreme patronage of the
Russian Tsar… Galicia and the whole Slavonic world will breathe more easily
under the patronage of Russia once she finally fulfills her Christian and fraternal
duty.”
Konstantin’s brother Ivan was somewhat more cautious. He recognized that

“The Catholicism of Bohemia and Poland constitutes a hostile and alien
element” and in any case “the greater part of these Slavic peoples are already
infected by the influence of Western liberalism which is contrary to the spirit of
the Russian people and which can never be grafted onto it.”1164
So Ivan was less “Pan-Slavist” than Constantine…
However, both brothers believed in the spiritual freedom of the individual

within the autocratic state. Thus, as N. Lossky writes, “on the accession of
Alexander II to the throne in 1855 [Constantine] Aksakov submitted to him,
through Count Bludov, a report ‘On the Inner Condition of Russia’. In it he
reproached the Government for suppressing the people’s moral freedom and
following the path of despotism, which has led to the nation’s moral
degradation. He pointed out that this might popularise the idea of political
freedom and create a striving to attain it by revolutionary means. To avoid these
dangers he advised the Tsars to allow freedom of thought and of speech and to
re-establish the practice of calling Zemski Sobors.”1165
There was some truth in this. The government’s oppressive measures could
be undiscerning, and its inability to develop a coherent philosophy to counteract
1163
Tiutchev, “O tsenzure v Rossii” (On Censorship in Russia).
1164
Aksakov, in Almond, op. cit., p. 104.
1165
Lossky, op. cit., pp. 44-45.
696
the revolutionary propaganda limited its success in counteracting it. This was
due in large part to the superficial Orthodoxy of the ruling circles.
This “semi-Orthodoxy” of the ruling elites was expressed by Tiutchev as

follows:
Not flesh, but spirit is today corrupt,

And man just pines away despairingly.
He strives for light, while sitting in the dark,
And having found it, moans rebelliously.
From lack of faith dried up, in fire tossed,
The unendurable he suffers now.
He knows right well his soul is lost, and thirsts
For faith – but ask for it he knows not how.
Ne’er will he say, with prayers and tears combined,
However deep before the closéd door his grief:
“O let me in, my God, O hear my cry!
Lord, I believe! Help Thou mine unbelief!”1166
By contrast, Tiutchev, like the early Slavophiles and Dostoyevsky, continued

to believe in the Orthodoxy of the common people and in the unique destiny of
Russia, poor in her exterior aspect but rich in inner faith and piety:
These poor villages which stand

Amidst a nature sparse, austere –
O beloved Russian land,
Long to pine and persevere!
The foreigner’s disdainful gaze
Will never understand or see
The light that shines in secret rays
Upon your humility.
Dear native land! While carrying
The Cross and struggling to pass through,
In slavish image Heaven’s King
Has walked across you, blessing you.1167
However, the successes of government measures are easily forgotten. We

have already noted the conversion of Pushkin, Gogol and Dostoyevksy.
Moreover, those who were urging the government to remove censorship were
not supported by the leading churchmen of the age, and showed a dangerous
naivety about the way in which the forces of evil could – and, in the reign of
Alexander II, did – exploit this freedom.
1166
Tiutchev, Nash Vek (Our Age).
1167
Tiutchev, translated in Christensen, op. cit., p. 645.
697
Probably the best monarchist thinker among the Slavophiles was Ivan
Kireyevsky, although, paradoxically, of all the Slavophiles he had the most
problems with the Tsarist censor. At one point he was required to give an
assurance to the minister of popular enlightenment that in his thinking he did
not “separate the Tsar from Russia”. Offended by the very suggestion,
Kireyevsky proceeded to give one of the earliest and best justifications of the
Autocracy in post-Petrine Russian history… He began from the fact that “the
Russian man loves his Tsar. This reality cannot be doubted, because everyone
can see and feel it. But love for the Tsar, like every love, can be true and false,
good and bad – I am not speaking about feigned love. False love is that which
loves in the Tsar only one’s advantage; this love is base, harmful and, in
dangerous moments, can turn to treachery. True love for the Tsar is united in
one indivisible feeling with love for the Fatherland, for lawfulness and for the
Holy Orthodox Church. Therefore this love can be magnanimous. And how can
one separate in this matter love for the Tsar from the law, the Fatherland and the
Church? The law is the will of the Tsar, proclaimed before the whole people; the
Fatherland is the best love of his heart; the Holy Orthodox Church is his highest
link with the people, it is the most essential basis of his power, the reason for the
people’s trust in him, the combination of his conscience with the Fatherland, the
living junction of the mutual sympathy of the Tsar and the people, the basis of
their common prosperity, the source of the blessing of God on him and on the
Fatherland.
“But to love the Tsar separately from Russia means to love an external force, a
chance power, but not the Russian Tsar: that is how the Old Ritualist schismatics
and Balts love him, who were ready to serve Napoleon with the same devotion
when they considered him stronger than Alexander. To love the Tsar and not to
venerate the laws, or to break the laws given or confirmed by him under the
cover of his trust, under the protection of his power, is to be his enemy under the
mask of zeal, it is to undermine his might at the root, to destroy the Fatherland’s
love for him, to separate the people’s concept of him from their concept of
justice, order and general well-being – in a word, it is to separate the Tsar in the
heart of the people from the very reasons for which Russia wishes to have a Tsar,
from those good things in the hope of which she so highly venerates him.
Finally, to love him without any relation to the Holy Church as a powerful Tsar,
but not as the Orthodox Tsar, is to think that his rule is not the service of God
and His Holy Church, but only the rule of the State for secular aims; it is to think
that the advantage of the State can be separated from the advantage of
Orthodoxy, or even that the Orthodox Church is a means, and not the end of the
people’s existence as a whole, that the Holy Church can be sometimes a
hindrance and at other times a useful instrument for the Tsar’s power. This is the
love of a slave, and not that of a faithful subject; it is Austrian love, not Russian;
this love for the Tsar is treason before Russia, and for the Tsar himself it is
profoundly harmful, even if sometimes seems convenient. Every counsel he
receives from such a love bears within it a secret poison that eats away at the
very living links that bind him with the Fatherland. For Orthodoxy is the soul of
Russia, the root of the whole of her moral existence, the source of her might and
strength, the standard gathering all the different kinds of feelings of her people
into one stronghold, the earnest of all her hopes for the future, the treasury of the
698
best memories of the past, her ruling object of worship, her heartfelt love. The
people venerates the Tsar as the Church’s support; and is so boundlessly
devoted to him because it does not separate the Church from the Fatherland. All
its trust in the Tsar is based on feeling for the Church. It sees in him a faithful
director in State affairs only because it knows that he is a brother in the Church,
who together with it serves her as the sincere son of the same mother and
therefore can be a reliable shield of her external prosperity and independence…
“He who has not despaired of the destiny of his Fatherland cannot separate
love for it from sincere devotion to Orthodoxy. And he who is Orthodox in his
convictions cannot not love Russia, as the God-chosen vessel of His Holy Church
on earth. Faith in the Church of God and love for Orthodox Russia are neither
divided nor distinguished in the soul of the true Russian. Therefore a man
holding to another confession cannot love the Russian Tsar except with a love
that is harmful for the Tsar and for Russia, a love whose influence of necessity
must strive to destroy precisely that which constitutes the very first condition of
the mutual love of the Tsar and Russia, the basis of his correct and beneficent
rule and the condition of her correct and beneficent construction.
“Therefore to wish that the Russian government should cease to have the
spirit and bear the character of an Orthodox government, but be completely
indifferent to the confessions, accepting the spirit of so-called common
Christianity, which does not belong to any particular Church and was thought
up recently by some unbelieving philosophers and half-believing Protestants –
to wish for this would signify for the present time the tearing up of all bonds of
love and trust between the government and the people, and for the future, - that
is, if the government were to hide its indifference to Orthodoxy until it educates
the people in the same coldness to its Church, - it would produce the complete
destruction of the whole fortress of Russia and the annihilation of the whole of
her world significance. For for him who knows Russia and her Orthodox Faith,
there can be no doubt that she grew up on it and became strong by it, since by it
alone is she strong and prosperous.”1168
In a critical review of an article by the Protestant Pastor Wiener, who was

defending the principle of complete separation of Church and State and
complete tolerance, Kireyevsky wrote: “The author says very justly that in most
states where there is a dominant religion, the government uses it as a means for
its own private ends and under the excuse of protecting it oppresses it. But this
happens not because there is a dominant faith in the state, but, on the contrary,
because the dominant faith of the people is not dominant in the state apparatus.
This unfortunate relationship takes place when, as a consequence of some
chance historical circumstances, the rift opens up between the convictions of the
people and of the government. Then the faith of the people is used as a means,
but not for long. One of three things must unfailingly happen: either the people
wavers in its faith and then the whole state apparatus wavers, as we see in the
West; or the government attains a correct self-knowledge and sincerely converts
Kireyevsky, “Ob otnoshenii k tsarskoj vlasti” (On the relationship to Tsarist power), in Razum
1168
na puti k istine, op. cit., pp. 51-53, 62.

699
to the faith of the people, as we hope; or the people sees that it is being deceived,
as we fear.
“But what are the normal, desirable relations between the Church and the
State? The state must not agree with the Church so as to search out and
persecute heretics and force them to believe (this is contrary to the spirit of
Christianity and has a counter-productive effect, and harms the state itself
almost as much as the Church); but it must agree with the Church so as to place
as the main purpose of its existence to be penetrated constantly, more and more,
with the spirit of the Church and not only not look on the Church as a means to
its own most fitting existence, but, on the contrary, see in its own existence only
a means for the fullest and most fitting installation of the Church of God on
earth.
“The State is a construction of society having as its aim earthly, temporal life.
The Church is a construction of the same society having as its aim heavenly,
eternal life. If society understands its life in such a way that in it the temporal
must serve the eternal, the state apparatus of this society must also serve the
Church. But if society understands its life in such a way that in it earthly
relationships carry on by themselves, and spiritual relations by themselves, then
the state in such a society must be separated from the Church. But such a society
will consist not of Christians, but of unbelievers, or, at any rate, of mixed faiths
and convictions. Such a state cannot make claims to a harmonious, normal
development. The whole of its dignity must be limited by a negative character.
But there where the people is bound inwardly, by identical convictions of faith,
there it has the right to wish and demand that both its external bonds – familial,
social and state – should be in agreement with its religious inspirations, and that
its government should be penetrated by the same spirit. To act in hostility to this
spirit means to act in hostility to the people itself, even if these actions afford it
some earthly advantages.”1169
Useful as the work of lay intellectuals might be, the task of defending the
Autocracy from its westernizing critics fell in the first place on the Church…
Now the most outstanding hierarch in the Holy Synod at this time was
Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov). The son of a poor village priest of Kolomna, he
was consecrated a bishop at the age of 35 in 1817; he became Metropolitan of
Moscow in 1821, serving there for nearly fifty years – fifty! – until his death in
1867. His reputation in Russia was immense: from his fellow hierarchs and the
holy Elders of Optina to the simple people who sought his miracle-working
help, he was revered as a great saint, the Russian equivalent of St. Photius the
Great.
Elena Kontzevich writes: “The turning point in the spiritual life of

Metropolitan Philaret was his first encounter with Fr. Anthony [Medvedev],
then abbot of a poor hermitage who came to him to pay a visit to his ruling
Kireyevsky, in L.A. Tikhomirov, “I.V. Kireyevsky”, Kritika Demokratii (A Critique of
1169
Democracy), Moscow, 1997, pp. 520-521.

700
bishop. Fr. Anthony was quite outspoken in condemning the unorthodox and
harmful ‘mysticism’ propagated by the masonic Bible Society, which was in
vogue during the reign of Alexander I. Metropolitan Philaret hoped to have the
Bible translated for the first time into modern Russian and thus supported the
Society without really being able to see the danger in its ideas. At this meeting
he heard for the first time the Orthodox Patristic teaching of the inward activity
(Jesus Prayer) and, probably, about Saint Seraphim. He was deeply impressed,
and as soon as he could he placed Fr. Anthony as head of the Holy Trinity Lavra,
which was in his diocese. After this a great spiritual friendship developed
between him and Fr. Anthony, who became his Starets, and without his advice
he made no important decision, whether concerning a diocesan matter,
governmental affairs, or his personal spiritual life.
“Fr. Anthony had been absolutely devoted to St. Seraphim from the time he
entered monastic life at Sarov at a young age. Contact with the Saints revealed to
him the realm of Orthodox spirituality and the path to acquire it. St. Seraphim
foresaw that he would become ‘abbot of a great Lavra’ and instructed him how
to meet the challenge.
“Metropolitan Philaret went through the way of the inward activity, the prayer
of the heart, under the guidance of St. Seraphim’s disciple, and he thereby
acquired great gifts in the spiritual life: gifts of vision, of prophecy, of healing
the afflicted. Thus he himself became one of the forces of the great spiritual
revival in Russia. He saved the institution of Startsi in Optina Monastery when
Starets Lev was persecuted, protected the nuns of St. Seraphim’s Diveyevo
Convent, patronized Starets Makary’s publication of Paissy Velichkovsky’s
translations, founded the Gethsemane Skete of cave-dwellers near the Lavra. He
himself functioned as a Starets. There is a clear indication also that he foresaw
the Russian Revolution.”1170
During the Decembrist rebellion that followed on the supposed

death of Tsar Alexander I in 1825, Metropolitan Philaret’s wise refusal
to reveal the contents of the Tsar's will immediately helped to
guarantee the transfer of power to his brother, Tsar Nicholas I. Philaret
continued to defend Russia against Masonry and other western heresies
throughout his life, but was pessimistic about the future. Thus he
feared “storm-clouds coming from the West”, and advised that rizas
should not be made for icons, because “the time is approaching when
ill-intentioned people will remove the rizas from the icons.” 1171
Particularly important and enlightening were Philaret’s views on

the Autocracy, and on the relationship between the Church and the
State. Indeed, according to Robert Nicols, it is perhaps Philaret, who
“should be credited with the first efforts [in the Russian Church] to
work out a theory of church-state relations that insisted on the
legitimacy of divinely instituted royal authority without endorsing the
Kontezevich, “Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow”, St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, p. 195.
1170
1171
Fomin S. and Fomina T., Rossia pered Vtorym Prishesviem (Russia before the
Second Coming), Moscow, 1998, vol. I, p. 349.
701
seemingly unlimited claims of the modern state to administer all
aspects of the lives of its citizens.” 1172
According to Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev), Philaret said that "it

was necessary for there to be a close union between the ruler and the
people - a union, moreover, that was based exclusively on
righteousness. The external expression of the prosperity of a state was
the complete submission of the people to the government. The
government in a state had to enjoy the rights of complete inviolability
on the part of the subjects. And if it was deprived of these rights, the
state could not be firm, it was threatened with danger insofar as two
opposing forces would appear: self-will on the part of the subjects and
predominance on the part of the government. 'If the government is not
firm,' taught Philaret, 'then the state also is not firm. Such a state is like
a city built on a volcanic mountain: what does its firmness signify
when beneath it is concealed a force which can turn it into ruins at any
minute? Subjects who do not recognize the sacred inviolability of the
rulers are incited by hope of self-will to attain self-will; an authority
which is not convinced of its inviolability is incited by worries about
its security to attain predominance; in such a situation the state wavers
between the extremes of self-will and predominance, between the
horrors of anarchy and repression, and cannot affirm in itself obedient
freedom, which is the focus and soul of social life.'
"The holy hierarch understood the [Decembrist] rebellion as being

against the State, against itself. 'Subjects can themselves understand,'
said Philaret, 'that in destroying the authorities they are destroying the
constitution of society and consequently they are themselves
destroying themselves.'” 1173
Philaret "did not doubt that monarchical rule is 'power from God'
(Romans 13.1) in its significance for Russian history and statehood, and
more than once in his sermons expressed the most submissively loyal
feelings with regard to all the representatives of the Royal Family. But
he was one of the very few archpastors who had the courage to resist
the tendency - very characteristic of Russian conditions - to reduce
Orthodoxy to 'glorification of the tsar'. Thus, contrary to many
hierarchs, who from feelings of servility warmly accepted Nicholas I's
attempt to introduce the heir among the members of the Synod, he
justly saw in this a manifestation of caesaropapism..., and in the
application of attributes of the Heavenly King to the earthly king - a
most dangerous deformation of religious consciousness..., and in such
1172
Nicols, “Filaret of Moscow as an Ascetic” in J. Breck, J. Meyendorff and E. Silk
(eds.), The Legacy of St Vladimir, Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1990, p. 81.
1173
Snychev, Zhizn' i Deiatel'nost' Filareta, Mitropolita Moskovskogo (The Life and
Activity of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow), Tula, 1994, p. 177.
702
phenomena as the passing of a cross procession around statues of the
emperor - a direct return to paganism." 1174
Metropolitan Philaret, as Fr. Georges Florovsky writes, "distinctly and

firmly reminded people of the Church's independence and freedom, reminded
them of the limits of the state. And in this he sharply and irreconcilably parted
with his epoch, with the whole of the State's self-definition in the new,
Petersburgian Russia. Philaret was very reserved and quiet when speaking. By
his intense and courageous silence he with difficulty concealed and subdued
his anxiety about what was happening. Through the vanity and confusion of
events he saw and made out the threatening signs of the righteous wrath of
God that was bound to come. Evil days, days of judgement were coming - 'it
seems that we are already living in the suburbs of Babylon, if not in Babylon
itself,' he feared... 'My soul is sorrowful,' admitted Metropolitan Philaret once.
'It seems to me that the judgement which begins at the house of God is being
more and more revealed... How thickly does the smoke come from the coldness
of the abyss and how high does it mount'... And only in repentance did he see
an exit, in universal repentance 'for many things, especially in recent years'.
"Philaret had his own theory of the State, of the sacred kingdom.
And in it there was not, and could not be, any place for the principles
of state supremacy. It is precisely because the powers that be are from
God, and the sovereigns rule by the mercy of God, that the kingdom
has a completely subject and auxiliary character. 'The State as State is
not subject to the Church', and therefore the servants of the Church
already in the apostolic canons are strictly forbidden 'to take part in the
administration of the people'. Not from outside, but from within must
the Christian State be bound by the law of God and the ecclesiastical
order. In the mind of Metropolitan Philaret, the State is a moral union,
'a union of free moral beings' and a union founded on mutual service
and love - 'a certain part of the general dominion of the Almighty,
outwardly separate, but by an invisible power yoked into the unity of
the whole'... And the foundation of power lies in the principle of
service. In the Christian State Philaret saw the Anointed of God, and
before this banner of God's good will he with good grace inclined his
head. 'The Sovereign receives the whole of his lawfulness from the Church's
anointing', that is, in the Church and through the Church. Here the
Kingdom inclines its head before the Priesthood and takes upon itself
the vow of service to the Church, and its right to take part in
ecclesiastical affairs. He possesses this not by virtue of his autocracy
and authority, but precisely by virtue of his obedience and vow. This
right does not extend or pass to the organs of state administration, and
between the Sovereign and the Church there cannot and must not be
any dividing wall or mediation. The Sovereign is anointed, but not the
1174
V. Shokhin, "Svt. Philaret, mitropolit Moskovskij i 'shkola veruiushchego
razuma' v russkoj filosofii" ("Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow and the 'school of
believing reason' in Russian philosophy"), Vestnik Russkogo Khristianskogo Dvizhenia
(Herald of the Russian Christian Movement ), 175, I-1997, p. 97.
703
State. The Sovereign enters into the Church, but the State as such
remains outside the Church. And for that reason it has no rights and
privileges in the Church. In her inner constitution the Church is
completely independent, and has no need of the help or defence of the
secular authorities - 'the altar does not fear to fall even without this
protection'. For the Church is ruled by Christ Himself, Who distributes
and realizes 'his own episcopacy of souls' through the apostolic
hierarchy, which 'is not similar to any form of secular rule'.
"The Church has her own inviolable code of laws, her own strength
and privileges, which exceed all earthly measures. 'In His word Jesus
Christ did not outline for her a detailed and uniform statute, so that
His Kingdom should not seem to be of this world'... The Church has her
own special form of action - in prayer, in the service of the sacraments,
in exhortation and in pastoral care. And for real influence on public
life, for its real enchurchment, according to Metropolitan Philaret's
thought, the interference of the hierarchy in secular affairs is quite
unnecessary - 'it is necessary not so much that a bishop should sit in
the governmental assembly of grandees, as that the grandees and men
of nobles birth should more frequently and ardently surround the altar
of the Lord together with the bishop'... Metropolitan Philaret always
with great definiteness drew a firm line between the state and
ecclesiastical orders. Of course, he did not demand and did not desire
the separation of the State from the Church, its departure from the
Church into the arbitrariness of secular vanity. But at the same time he
always sharply underlined the complete heterogeneity and
particularity of the State and the Church. The Church cannot be in the
State, and the State cannot be in the Church - 'unity and harmony' must
be realized between them in the unity of the creative realization of
God's commandments.
"It is not difficult to understand how distant and foreign this way of
thinking was for the State functionaries of the Nicolaitan spirit and
time, and how demanding and childish it seemed to them. Philaret did
not believe in the power of rebukes and reprimands. He did not attach
great significance to the external forms of life - 'it is not some kind of
transformation that is needed, but a choice of men and supervision', he
used to say. And above all what was necessary was an inner creative
uplift, a gathering and renewal of spiritual forces. What was needed
was an intensification of creative activity, a strengthening and
intensification of ecclesiastical and pastoral freedom. As a
counterweight to the onslaught of the State, Metropolitan Philaret
thought about the reestablishment of the living unity of the local
episcopate, which would be realized in constant consultative communion of
fellow pastors and bishops, and strengthened at times by small congresses and
councils, until a general local Council would become inwardly possible and
704
achievable.1175 Metropolitan Philaret always emphasized that 'we live in the
Church militant'... And with sadness he recognized that 'the quantity of sins and
carelessnesses which have mounted up in the course of more than one century
almost exceeds the strength and means of correction'... Philaret was not a man of
struggle, and was weighed down 'by remaining in the chatter and cares of the
city and works of men'. He lived in expectation 'of that eternally secure city, from
which it will not be necessary to flee into any desert', He wanted to withdraw, to
run away, and beyond the storm of affairs to pray for the mercy and
longsuffering of God, for 'defence from on high'."1176
The State was "a union of free moral beings, united amongst
themselves with the sacrifice of part of their freedom for the
preservation and confirmation by the common forces of the law of
morality, which constitutes the necessity of their existence. The civil
laws are nothing other than interpretations of this law in application to
particular cases and guards placed against its violation." 1177
Philaret emphasized the rootedness of the State in the family, with the State
deriving its essential properties and structure from the family: "The family is
older than the State. Man, husband, wife, father, son, mother, daughter and the
obligations and virtues inherent in these names existed before the family grew
into the nation and the State was formed. That is why family life in relation to
State life can be figuratively depicted as the root of the tree. In order that the tree
should bear leaves and flowers and fruit, it is necessary that the root should be
strong and bring pure juice to the tree. In order that State life should develop
strongly and correctly, flourish with education, and bring forth the fruit of public
prosperity, it is necessary that family life should be strong with the blessed love
of the spouses, the sacred authority of the parents, and the reverence and
obedience of the children, and that as a consequence of this, from the pure
elements of family there should arise similarly pure principles of State life, so that
with veneration for one's father veneration for the tsar should be born and grow,
and that the love of children for their mother should be a preparation of love for
the fatherland, and the simple-hearted obedience of domestics should
prepare and direct the way to self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness in
obedience to the laws and sacred authority of the autocrat." 1178
1175
"Already in the reign of Alexander I the hierarch used to submit the idea of the
restoration of Local Councils and the division of the Russian Church into nine
metropolitan areas. At the command of Emperor Alexander he had even composed a
project and given it to the members of the Synod for examination. But the Synod
rejected the project, declaring: 'Why this project, and why have you not spoken to
us about it?' 'I was ordered [to compose it]' was all that the hierarch could reply,
'and speaking about it is not forbidden'" (Snychev, op. cit., pp. 226). (V.M.)
1176
Florovsky, "Philaret, mitropolit Moskovskij" (Philaret, Metropolitan of
Moscow), in Vera i Kul'tura (Faith and Culture), St. Petersburg, 2002, pp. 261-264.
1177
Metropolitan Philaret, quoted in Lev Regelson, Tragedia Russkoj Tservki, 1917-
1945 (The Tragedy of the Russian Church, 1917-1945), Paris: YMCA Press, 1977, pp.
24-25.
1178
Metropolitan Philaret, Sochinenia (Works), 1848 edition, volume 2, p. 169.
705
If the foundation of the State is the family, and each family is both a
miniature State and a miniature monarchy, it follows that the most
natural form of Statehood is Monarchy - more specifically, a Monarchy
that is in union with, as owing its origin to, the Heavenly Monarch,
God. Despotic monarchies identify themselves, rather than unite
themselves, with the Deity, so they cannot be said to correspond to the
Divine order of things. In ancient times, the only monarchy that was in
accordance with the order and the command of God was the Israelite
autocracy. The Russian autocracy was the successor of the Israelite
autocracy, was based on the same principles and received the same
blessing from God through the sacrament of anointing to the kingdom .
In 1851, Metropolitan Philaret preached as follows: "As heaven is

indisputably better than the earth, and the heavenly than the earthly, it
is similarly indisputable that the best on earth must be recognized to be
that which was built on it in the image of the heavenly, as was said to
the God-seer Moses: 'Look thou that thou make them after their
pattern, which was showed thee in the mount' (Exodus 25.40). In
accordance with this, God established a king on earth in the image of
His single rule in the heavens; He arranged for an autocratic king on
earth in the image of His almighty power; and He placed an hereditary
king on earth in the image of His imperishable Kingdom, which lasts
from ages to ages.
"Oh if only all the kings of the earth paid sufficient attention to their
heavenly dignity and to the traits of the image of the heavenly
impressed upon them, and faithfully united the righteousness and
goodness demanded of them, the heavenly unsleeping watchfulness,
purity of thought and holiness of intention that is in God's image! Oh if
only all the peoples sufficiently understood the heavenly dignity of the
king and the construction of the heavenly kingdom in the image of the
heavenly, and constantly signed themselves with the traits of that same
image - by reverence and love for the king, by humble obedience to his
laws and commands, by mutual agreement and unanimity, and
removed from themselves everything of which there is no image in the
heavens - arrogance, disputes, self-will, greediness and every evil
thought, intention and act! Everything would be blessed in accordance
with the heavenly image if it were well constructed in accordance with
the heavenly image. All earthly kingdoms would be worthy of being
the antechamber of the Heavenly Kingdom.
"Russia! You participate in this good more than many kingdoms and
peoples. 'Hold on to that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown'
(Revelation 3.11). Keep and continue to adorn your radiant crown,
ceaselessly struggling to fulfil more perfectly the crown-giving
commandments: 'Fear God, honour the king' (I Peter 2.17).
"Turning from the well-known to that which has perhaps been less
examined and understood in the apostle's word, I direct our attention to that
706
which the apostle, while teaching the fear of God, reverence for the king and
obedience to the authorities, at the same time teaches about freedom: 'Submit',
he says, 'to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake; whether to the king, as
being supreme, or to governors as being sent through him... as free'. Submit as
free men. Submit, and remain free...
"But how are we more correctly to understand and define freedom?

Philosophy teaches that freedom is the capacity without restrictions
rationally to choose and do that which is best, and that it is by nature
the heritage of every man. What, it would seem, could be more
desirable? But this teaching has its light on the summit of the
contemplation of human nature, human nature as it should be, while in
descending to our experience and actions as they are in reality, it
encounters darkness and obstacles.
"In the multiplicity of the race of men, are there many who have
such an open and educated mind as faithfully to see and distinguish
that which is best? And do those who see the best always have enough
strength decisively to choose it and bring it to the level of action? Have
we not heard complaints from the best of men: 'For to will is present in
me, but how to perform that which is good I find not' (Romans 7.18)?
What are we to say about the freedom of people who, although not in
slavery to anybody, are nevertheless subject to sensuality, overcome by
passion, possessed by evil habits? Is the avaricious man free? Is he not
bound in golden chains? Is the indulger of his flesh free? Is he not
bound, if not by cruel bonds, then by soft nets? Is the proud and
vainglorious man free? Is he not chained, not by his hands, and not by
his legs, but by his head and heart, to his own idol?
"Thus does not experience and consciousness, at least of some

people in some cases, speak of that of which the Divine Scriptures
speak generally: 'He who does sin is the servant of sin' (John 8. 34)?
"Observation of people and human societies shows that people who to a

greater degree allow themselves to fall into this inner, moral slavery - slavery to
sin, the passions and vices - are more often than others zealots for external
freedom - freedom broadened as far as possible in human society before the law
and the authorities. But will broadening external freedom help them to freedom
from inner slavery? There is no reason to think that. With greater probability we
must fear the opposite. He in whom sensuality, passion and vice has already
acquired dominance, when the barriers put by the law and the authorities to his
vicious actions have been removed, will of course give himself over to the
satisfaction of his passions and lusts with even less restraint than before, and will
use his external freedom only in order that he may immerse himself more deeply
in inner slavery. Unhappy freedom which, as the Apostle explained, 'they
have as a cover for their envy'! Let us bless the law and the authorities
which, in decreeing and ordering and defending, as necessity requires,
the limits placed upon freedom of action, hinder as far they can the
707
abuse of natural freedom and the spread of moral slavery, that is,
slavery to sin, the passions and the vices.
"I said: as far as they can, because we can not only not expect from
the law and the earthly authorities a complete cutting off of the abuse
of freedom and the raising of those immersed in the slavery of sin to
the true and perfect freedom: even the law of the Heavenly Lawgiver is
not sufficient for that. The law warns about sin, rebukes the sinner and
condemns him, but does not communicate to the slave of sin the power
to break the bonds of this slavery, and does not provide the means of
blotting out the iniquities committed, which lie on the conscience like a
fiery seal of sinful slavery. And in this consists 'the weakness of the
law' (Romans 8.3), to which the Apostle witnesses without a moment's
hesitation.
"Here the question again arises: what is true freedom, and who can
give it, and – especially - return it to the person who has lost it through
sin? True freedom is the active capacity of the man who has not been
enslaved to sin and who is not weighed down by a condemning
conscience, to choose the best in the light of the truth of God and to
realize it with the help of the power of God's grace.
"Only He Who gave this freedom to sinless man at his creation can
give it back to the slave of sin. The Creator of freedom Himself
declared this: 'If the Son will set you free, then you will truly be free'
(John 8.36). 'If you remain in My words, you will truly be My disciples,
and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free' (John
31.32). Jesus Christ, the Son of God, having suffered and died for us in
the nature He received from us, by His 'Blood has cleansed our
conscience from dead works' (Hebrews 9.14), and, having torn apart the
bonds of death by His resurrection, has torn apart also the bonds of sin
and death that bind us, and, after His ascension to heaven, has sent
down the Spirit of truth, giving us through faith the light of His truth
to see what is best, and His grace-filled power to do it.
"This is freedom, which is restrained neither by heaven, nor by the

earth, nor by hell, which has as its limit the will of God, and this not to
its own diminution, because it also strives to fulfil the will of God,
which has no need to shake the lawful decrees of men because it is able
to see in these the truth that 'the Kingdom is the Lord's and He Himself
is sovereign of the nations' (Psalm 21.28), which in an unconstrained
way venerates lawful human authority and its commands that are not
contrary to God, insofar as it radiantly sees the truth that 'there is no
power that is not of God, the powers that be are ordained of God'
(Romans 13.1). And so this is freedom, which is in complete accord
708
with obedience to the law and lawful authority, because it itself wishes
for that which obedience demands…” 1179
However, as Nicols writes, the holy metropolitan “became

disenchanted with Russia’s growing regimentation under Tsar Nicholas
I and his officials. For Filaret, this was a period of ‘crisis’, and his
response to it shows him to be a follower of the Orthodox ascetical and
contemplative approach to the tasks of personal and social
reconstruction in the Christian life. This approach decisively defined
his outlook as a churchman, for it suggested to him that beyond the
decisions of Synods, the education of seminaries and academies, the
unity found in political and ecclesiastical formulations, the only
adequate means for combating a new irreligious and secular age could
be found in the healing power of the Holy Spirit most effectively
mediated through those perfected by asceticism, prayer, and silence.
Just as in the arduous age of St Anthony the Great in the Egyptian
desert, or the dangerous one of St. Sergius of Radonezh, sufficient
power for healing, renewal, and salvation could only be acquired by
those cloistered in the ‘wilderness’ of Russia’s Northern Thebaid. The
divisions of the raskol and the Unia, the theological differences between
Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants, the inadequate knowledge of
Scripture and Christian teaching by ordinary Russians could not be
surmounted by formal decrees of secret committees or specially trained
missionaries and dogmatists working in the Nicholaevan spirit of
military discipline and regimentation. Christianity required an inner
freedom and vitality that was immediately suspected as a subversive
current pulling against the official tide. ‘In such circumstances,’ Filaret
warned, ‘no amount of caution will suffice, but nonetheless assiduous
caution is necessary.’ Filaret’s criticisms and actions in the 1840s
brought him into official disfavor, and his private papers at one point
were secretly examined for damaging and incriminating evidence
against him. He was forced to leave St Petersburg and the Holy Synod
under a dark cloud. He did not return again until after the emperor’s
death in 1855…” 1180
Metropolitan Philaret’s courage in relation to the strictest and most

powerful of the Tsars is illustrated by the following incident, which he
related to his Starets, Fr. Anthony. “In Moscow,” as Kontzevich relates
the story, “the newly erected Triumphal Gate was to be dedicated by
the Metropolitan, for which occasion Emperor Nicholas I himself was
to come. Since there were statues of pagan gods on it, Metropolitan
Philaret refused to consecrate it. The Tsar was greatly angered, and
society disapproved of his action. Although he had obeyed his pastoral
conscience and Fr. Anthony, he was not at peace over this and prayed
fervently all night. ‘I fell asleep,’ he said, ‘and it was already close to
1179
Metropolitan Philaret, "Slovo v den' Blagochestivejshego Gosudaria Imperatora
Nikolaia Pavlovich" (Sermon on the day of his Most Pious Majesty Emperor
Nicholas Pavlovich), in Kozlov, op. cit., pp. 274-275, 277-279.
1180
Nicols, op. cit., pp. 83-84.
709
five when I heard a noise at the door. I awoke and sat up. The door,
which I usually lock, opened quietly and in walked St. Sergy, a thin,
gray-haired old man of medium height, in his monk’s habit and
without epitrachelion. Bending over the bed, he said to me: “Do not be
upset, all will pass”… And he disappeared.’ St. Sergy of Radonezh,
under whose protection the Metropolitan lived all his life, had
personally come from another world to console the sorrowing heart of
his servant.” 1181
1181
Kontezevich, op. cit., pp. 195-196.
710
84. THE OLD RITUALISTS ACQUIRE A HIERARCHY
From 1843 the Old Ritualists had begun to seek a degree of legality from the
State and permission to build churches and prayer houses. Tsar Nicholas
would have none of it, and large Old Ritualist centres were closed: first in Irgiz
(1839), then in Vyg, in Moscow and Petersburg (at the beginning of the 1850s).
"At the closing of the Irgiz monasteries," writes S.A. Zenkovsky, "the Old
Ritualists resisted and, in view of the application by the administration of
armed force, many of them suffered physically. But again these were victims of
the conflict, and not of tortures or executions of arrested Old Ritualists. These
were not religious persecutions, but the desire of Nicholas I and his ministers
of the interior to introduce 'order' into the religious life of the country and
control the religious communities of the Old Ritualists that were de facto
independent of the administration."1182
Metropolitan Philaret supported the Tsar's policy. He was very disturbed by

the Old Ritualists' not commemorating the Emperor during their services. And
he reported that in the Preobrazhensky workhouse the Old Ritualists were
distributing books that taught "that no marriages should be recognized; the
schismatics in marital unions with people not belonging to the schism should
have their union broken; that bodily relationship should not be recognized in
Christian marriages; that from 1666 married Christians are a satanic nest of
vipers and the most shameful dwelling-place of his demons; that now satan is
thinking about the multiplication of the human race and a soul is being given
from the devil for the conception of a child."1183
At about this time the Popovtsi Old Ritualists began to look for a bishop
overseas. No such bishop was found in the Caucasus, Syria, Palestine, Persia
and Egypt. Finally, writes Dobroklonsky, they "lured to themselves a former
metropolitan of Bosnia, the Greek Ambrose, who had been deprived of his see
and was living in Constantinople. 1184 In 1846 he was brought to Belaia Krinitsa
(in Bukovina, in Austria) and was received into the communion of the Popovtsi
by cursing some supposed heresies and chrismation. In 1847, in accordance
with the wish of the schismatics, he consecrated Bishop Cyril as his deputy and
Arcadius for the Nekrasovtsy (in Turkey). Thus was the existence of the
Belokrinitsky hierarchy established. Although in the following year, at the
insistence of the Russian government, Ambrose was removed from Belaia
1182
Zenkovsky, "Staroobriadchestvo, Tserkov' i Gosudarstvo" (Old Ritualism, the Church and the
State), Russkoe Vozrozhdenie (Russian Regeneration), 1987 - I, pp. 93-94.
1183
Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev), Zhizn' i Deiatel'nost' Filareta, Mitropolita Moskovskogo, Tula,
1994, p. 319.
1184
"In 1866 Patriarch Anthimus of Constantinople wrote an epistle to Metropolitan Joseph of
Karlovtsy, in which he wrote the following about Metropolitan Ambrose: 'The hierarch whom
we are discussing, being considered subject to trial because of his flight, canonically cannot
carry out hierarchical actions'" (Archbishop Nicon (Rklitsky), Zhizneopisanie Blazhennejshago
Antonia, Mitropolitan Kievskago i Galitskago (Life of his Beatitude Anthony, Metropolitan of Kiev
and Galich), volume 3, New York, 1957, p. 167). (V.M.)
711
Krinitsa to restricted residence in the city of Tsilla (in Styria) and the
Belokrinitsky monastery was sealed, in 1859 the Austrian government again
recognised the lawfulness of the Belokrinitsky metropolia and the monastery
was unsealed. Cyril, who succeeded Ambrose, took care to consecrate new
bishops, and such soon appeared for the Turkish, Moldavian and, finally,
Russian schismatics. The first of the Russians was the shopkeeper Stephen
Zhirov, who was made bishop of Simbirsk with the name Sophronius in 1849;
by 1860 there were already up to 10 schismatic dioceses within the boundaries
of Russia. A 'spiritual council' was formed in Moscow to administer church
affairs; it was composed of false bishops and false priests. Sophronius was
dreaming of founding a patriarchate, and even set up a patriarch, but, at the
insistence of the schismatics, himself condemned his own undertaking. At first
the government repressed the Old Ritualist hierarchs and the priests ordained
by them. However, the Austrian priesthood continue to spread. From the time
of Alexander II it began to enjoy toleration, although the government did not
recognize it as lawful. In spite of a visible success, the Austrian hierarchy from
the very beginning of its existence displayed signs of disintegration. Quarrels
constantly arose between the schismatic bishops. They became especially fierce
after the publication in 1862 in the name of the spiritual council of a certain
'encyclical of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church'. It was composed by
an inhabitant of Starodub, Hilarion Egorovich Kabanov with the aim of
condemning the reasonings of the Bespopovtsi, whose distribution had dealt a
blow to the Austrian priesthood. Having examined several books of the
Bespopovtsi, the epistle expressed [the following] view of the Orthodox Church:
'The ruling church in Russia, as also the Greek, believe in the same God as we
(the Old Ritualists), the Creator of heaven and earth& Therefore, although we
pronounce and write the name of the Saviour 'Isus', we do not dare to condemn
that which is written and pronounced 'Iisus' as being the name of some other
Jesus, the opponent of Christ, as certain Bespopovtsi think to do. Similarly, we do
not dishonour and blaspheme the cross with four ends.' It was also recognised
that the true priesthood of Christ continued in the Orthodox Church (Great
Russian and Greek) and would remain until the day of judgement. While some
accepted the epistle, others condemned it. Thus there appeared mutually
opposing parties of 'encylicalers' and 'anti-encyclicalers'. The latter, who had
tendencies towards Bespopovshchina, began to affirm that the name 'Iisus', as
accepted by the Orthodox Church, is the name of another person than 'Isus', and
is the name of the Antichrist. Both parties had their own bishops."1185
1185
Dobroklonsky, op. cit., pp. 702-703. For more on Bishop Ambrose, see S.G.
Wurgaft, I.A. Ushakov, Staroobriadchestvo (Old Ritualism), Moscow: "Tserkov'”,
1996, pp. 18-22. The following revelation given to Novice John Sorokin (a former
Old Ritualist) is found in the Solovetski Patericon: "One morning," he (the future
Novice John) related "after the cell prayer in which I asked God with tears: 'Lord,
tell me the way I should follow'; I fell asleep and dreamt that I was in some
splendid palace and I heard a voice coming from above: 'Go to the Church for it is
impossible to be saved outside the Church.' I answered: 'There are many
temptations and tares in the Church.' The voice said: 'Why should you worry about
that? You will be more special than wheat.' I said: 'There is a Church with a bishop
and clergy in Austria.' The voice replied: 'The Austrian Church is not a true Church,
because it separated from the Eastern Church, and there is no salvation in it.' ”
712
After the creation of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy, the attitude of the
Russian government towards the Old Ritualists became stricter. In 1854
they were deprived of all rights as merchants, and their chapel in the
Rogozhsky cemetery was closed. However, from the beginning of
Alexander II's reign, they were allowed to have services in the cemetery, and
their marriages were recognized. In 1865 the government wanted to introduce a
further weakening of the legislation against the Old Ritualists, and only the
voice of Metropolitan Philaret stopped it. "In 1858, for example, he complained
that the Old Believers [Ritualists] were increasingly confident that the
government would refrain from enforcing various restrictions on their influence
and activities. Warning of the Old Believers' pernicious moral influence,
Philaret insisted on the need for strict control and rejected the idea of religious
tolerance then gaining popularity in educated society. Philaret appealed not to
tradition or canons, but to the state's own self-interest: 'The idea [of religious
tolerance] appears good, but it is fair only when the subject and limits are
precisely and correctly determined. The idea of protecting the unity of the
ruling confession in the state (thereby preserving the popular spirit - a source of
strength for the state and an important aid to governance) should come before
the idea of religious tolerance and should impose limits on the latter.' Hence, he
noted, European countries (even liberal England) imposed limits on religious
freedom. Moreover, the state had a particular interest in defending the Church
against the Old Belief [Rite]: 'But tolerance extended without limits to the
schism (which emerged as much from a refusal to obey the Church as from a
rebellion against the state, and through its intensified proselytism constantly
acts to harm the unity of the Church and state) would be both an injustice to the
Church and a serious political mistake.' Despite such arguments, Philaret could
do little to halt the gradual liberalization of policy toward Old Believers that
only fuelled their expectations for still more concessions. Unable to arrest this
process, Philaret darkly warned that, 'if the secular government fails to show
sufficient caution against the pseudo-bishops and pseudo-priests [of the
schism], then this will fall on its conscience before God, the Church, and the
fatherland.'"1186
However, Snychev argues that "the struggle of the holy hierarch with the
schism in the last years of his life had, if not a very large, at any rate a definite
success. Many of the schismatics joined either Orthodoxy or the Yedinoverie. Thus
in 1854 some schismatics from the Preobrazhensky cemetery joined the
Yedinoverie, and in 1865 the following activists of the Belokrinitsky metropolia
joined the Orthodox Church with the rights of the Yedinoverie: among the
bishops, the metropolitan's deputy, Onuphrius of Braila, Paphnutius of Kolomna,
Sergius of Tula and Justin of Tulchinsk; Hieromonk Joasaph; the archdeacon of
Metropolitan Cyril, his secretary and the keeper of the archives Philaret;
Hierodeacon Melchizedek, who was able to take the archive of the metropolia
and transfer it across the Russian frontier. The success might have been greater if
the government had more actively supported Philaret."1187
1186
George Frazee, "Skeptical Reformer, Staunch Tserkovnik: Metropolitan Philaret and the Great
Reforms", in Vladimir Tsurikov (ed.), Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow 1782-1867, Jordanville:
Variable Press, 2003, pp. 169-170.
1187
Snychev, op. cit., p. 359.
713
85. THE CRIMEAN WAR
The Tsar might consider most of European governments legitimate, but

they did not return the favour... Gratitude to Russia for suppressing the
revolution of 1848, never strong, had completely disappeared with the rise
of a new generation of leaders. In 1851 the exiled Hungarian revolutionary
Kossuth denounced Russian "despotism" in front of a cheering crowd in
London. Meanwhile, the French Emperor Napoleon III was looking to win
714
popularity among French Catholics by challenging the Vienna settlement of
1815 and dividing Austria and Russia… 1188
Nevertheless, it was a remarkable turn-around for these countries to ally

themselves with the Ottoman empire against a Christian state, Russia,
when they were in no way threatened by Russia...
One factor making for instability was the gradual weakening of the
power of Turkey, "the sick man of Europe", in the Tsar's phrase. Clearly, if
Turkey collapsed, its subject peoples of Orthodox Christian faith would
look to Russia to liberate them. But the Western Powers were determined to
prevent this, which would threaten their hegemony in the Eastern
Mediterranean and greatly increase the power of their rival, Russia.
There were also religious rivalries. The Tsar, as head of the Third Rome,
saw himself as the natural protector of the Orthodox Christians in the
Ottoman empire. He had already demonstrated this in his critical support
for the Greeks during their war of liberation from the Turks in 1839-31.
And in 1841 he initiated negotiations with the Turkish authorities to obtain
for Russian pilgrims the right of travel within Palestine and the
establishment of a guest house for them. Later the Russian Church sent its
representative to the Holy Land, Archimandrite Porfiry, who “was
instrumental in creating an Ecclesiastical Seminary for Arabs in the
Monastery of the Holy Cross and organized there studies of Arabic, Greek,
Russian and Church Slavonic. Textbooks in Arabic began to appear…” 1189
However, the Catholics, whose main political protector was France,

were not prepared to allow the Orthodox to play such a prominent role in
the Holy Land... "The spark to the tinderbox," writes Trevor Royle, "was the
key to the main door of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. By
tradition, history, and a common usage which had been built up over the
centuries, the great key was in the possession of the monks of the eastern,
or Greek Orthodox... Church; they were the guardians of the grotto in
which lay the sacred manger where Christ himself was... born. That state of
affairs was contested with equal fervour by their great rivals, the monks of
the Roman Catholic, or Latin, church who had been palmed off with the
keys to the lesser inner doors to the narthex (the vestibule between the
porch and the nave). There was also the question of whether or not a silver
star adorned with the arms of France should be permitted to stand in the
Sanctuary of the Nativity, but in the spring of 1852 the rivals' paramount
thoughts were concentrated on the possession of the great key to the
church's main west door.
“[Alexander] Kinglake wrote: ‘When the Emperor of Russia sought to

keep for his Church the holy shrines of Palestine, he spoke on behalf of
1188
Philip Mansel, Constantinople, London: Penguin, 1995, p. 268.
Lubov Millar, Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, Richfield Springs, N.Y.: Nikodemos Orthodox
1189
Publication Society, 2009, p. 55.

715
fifty millions of brave, pious, devoted subjects, of whom thousands for the
sake of the cause would joyfully risk their lives. From the serf in his hut,
even up to the great Tsar himself, the faith professed was the faith really
glowing in his heart.’” 1190
"Nicolas I had both temporal and spiritual reasons for wanting to extend
his protection of the Eastern Church within the Ottoman Empire. Napoleon
III's were rather different. Having dismissed the French parliament he
needed all the support he could get, most especially from the Roman
Catholics, before he could declare himself emperor. It suited him therefore
to have France play a greater role in Palestine and 'to put an end to these
deplorable and too-frequent quarrels about the possession of the Holy
Places'. To that end the Marquis de Lavalette, his ambassador to the Porte -
or the Sublime Porte, the court or government of the Ottoman Empire -
insisted that the Turks honour the agreement made in 1740 that confirmed
that France had 'sovereign authority' in the Holy Land. Otherwise, hinted
de Lavalette, force might have to be used.
"On 9 February 1852 the Porte agreed the validity of the Latin claims but
no sooner had the concession been made than the Turks were forced to bow
once more, this time to Russian counter-claims. Basing his argument on an
agreement, or firman, of 1757 which restored Greek rights in Palestine and
on the Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainarji (1774) which gave Russia protection of
the Christian religion within the Ottoman Empire, Nicholas's ambassador
succeeded in getting a new firman ratifying the privileges of the Greek
Church. This revoked the agreement made to the French who responded by
backing up their demands with a show of force.
"Later that summer, much to Nicholas's fury and to Britain's irritation,

Napoleon III ordered the 90-gun steam-powered battleship Charlemagne to
sail through the Dardanelles. This was a clear violation of the London
Convention of 1841 which kept the Straits closed to naval vessels, but it
also provided a telling demonstration of French sea power. It was nothing
less than gunboat diplomacy and it seemed to work. Impressed by the
speed and strength of the French warship, and persuaded by French
diplomacy and money, Sultan Abd-el-Medjid listened ever more intently to
the French demands. At the beginning of December he gave orders that the
keys to the Church of the Nativity were to be surrendered to the Latins and
that the French-backed church was to have supreme authority over the
Holy Places. On 22 December a new silver star was brought from Jaffa and
as Kinglake wrote, in great state 'the keys of the great door of the church,
together with the keys of the sacred manger, were handed over to the
Latins'.
"Napoleon III had scored a considerable diplomatic victory. His subjects

were much gratified, but in so doing he had also prepared the ground for a
much greater and more dangerous confrontation. Given the strength of
Russian religious convictions Tsar Nicholas was unwilling to accept the
1190
Royle, Crimea: The Great Crimean War 1854-1856, London: Abacus, 1999, pp. 15, 17.
716
Sultan's decision - which he regarded as an affront not just to him but to
the millions of Orthodox Christians under his protection - and he was
determined to have it reversed, if need be by using force himself." 1191
In October, 1852, the Tsar arrived in Kiev and confided to the

metropolitan: "I do not want to shed the blood of the faithful sons of the
fatherland, but our vainglorious enemies are forcing me to bare my sword.
My plans are not yet made - no! But my heart feels that the time is nearing
and they will soon be brought to fulfillment."
Seeking advice, the Tsar asked if there were any holy elders in Kiev. The
Metropolitan mentioned Hieroschemamonk Theophilus. They set off there
immediately. On the way, they saw Blessed Theophilus lying by the side of
the road in the middle of an ant-hill, not moving. His arms were folded on
his chest crosswise, as in death, and his eyes were completely closed. Ants
swarmed in masses all over his body and face, but he, as if feeling nothing,
pretended to be dead. Puzzled, the Tsar and the Metropolitan returned to
Kiev.
Russian troops moved into the Romanian Principalities, and on July 2,

1853, the Tsar proclaimed: "By the occupation of the Principalities we
desire such security as will ensure the restoration of our dues [in
Palestine]. It is not conquest that we seek but satisfaction for a just right so
clearly infringed." As he told the British ambassador in St. Petersburg,
Seymour: "You see what my position is. I am the Head of a People of the
Greek religion, our co-religionists of Turkey look up to me as their natural
protector, and these are claims which it is impossible for me to disregard. I
have the conviction that good right is on my side, I should therefore begin
a War, such as that which now impends, without compunction and should
be prepared to carry it on, as I have before remarked to you, as long as
there should be a rouble in the Treasury or a man in the country." 1192
Nevertheless, when the Powers drew up a compromise "Note", Nicholas

promptly accepted it. However, the Turks rejected it, having been secretly
assured of Franco-British support. On October 4, 1853 they delivered an
ultimatum to the Russians to leave the Principalities within a fortnight.
When the Tsar rejected the ultimatum, war broke out. On the same day A.F.
Tiutcheva noted in her diary: "A terrible struggle is being ignited, gigantic
opposing forces are entering into conflict with each other: the East and the West,
the Slavic world and the Latin world, the Orthodox Church in her struggle not only
with Islam, but also with the other Christian confessions, which, taking the side of the
religion of Mohammed, are thereby betraying their own vital principle."1193
On November 30 the Russians destroyed the Turkish fleet at Sinope.

Promptly The British and the French, and later the Sardinians, declared war
1191
Royle, op. cit., 19-20.
1192
Royle, op. cit., p. 52.
1193
Tiutcheva, Pri Dvore Dvukh Imperatorov (At the Court of Two Emperors), Moscow, 1990, p. 52; in
N.Yu. Selischev, "K 150-letiu nachala Krymskoj vojny" (Towards the 150th Anniversary of the
Crimean War), Pravoslavnaia Rus' (Orthodox Rus'), N 24 (1741), December 15/28, 2003, p. 11.
717
on the Turkish side. In March, 1854, the British Foreign Secretary Lord
Palmerston in a secret memorandum prepared for the cabinet wrote of the
Russian empire's "dismemberment. Finland would be restored to Sweden,
the Baltic provinces would go to Prussia, and Poland would become a
sizable kingdom. Austria would renounce her Italian possessions but gain
the Danubian principalities and possibly even Bessarabia in return, and the
Ottoman empire would regain the Crimea and Georgia." 1194
As A.S. Khomiakov wrote: "Whatever political bases and excuses there

may be for the struggle that is convulsing Europe now, it is impossible not
to notice, even at the most superficial observation, that on one of the
warring sides stand exclusively peoples belonging to Orthodoxy, and on
the other - Romans and Protestants, gathered around Islam." And he
quoted from an epistle of the Catholic Archbishop of Paris Sibur, who
assured the French that the war with Russia "is not a political war, but a
holy war; not a war of states or peoples, but solely a religious war". All
other reasons were "in essence no more than excuses". The true reason was
"the necessity to drive out the error of Photius [his opposition to the
Filioque]; to subdue and crush it". "That is the recognized aim of this new
crusade, and such was the hidden aim of all the previous crusades, even if
those who participated in them did not admit it." 1195
On February 18, 1855, the Tsar, worn out and intensely grieved by the
losses in the war, died of pneumonia. On his last day he received
communion, and then continued working until he died. 1196
Metropolitan Philaret of Kiev asked his valet whether he remembered

the trip with the Tsar to Blessed Theophilus, and the fool-for-Christ's
strange behaviour. "Up to now I could not understand his strange
behaviour. Now, the prophecy of the Starets is as clear as God's day. The
ants were the malicious enemies of our fatherland, trying to torment the
great body of Russia. The arms folded on his chest and the closed eyes of
Theophilus were the sudden, untimely death of our beloved Batiushka-
Tsar." 1197
Sebastopol fell in September, 1855. In 1856 the new Tsar, Alexander II,
signed the Treaty of Paris, thereby bringing the Crimean war to an end.
While the Russians had lost some battles and the port of Sebastopol, they
retained Kars, which (with Erzurum) they had conquered from the Turks.
At the Peace Conference, both Russia and Turkey were forbidden to have
fleets in the Black Sea (although Alexander II abrogated this clause in
1870), the Straits were closed for warships, and the Aland islands in the
1194
Palmerston, in Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, London: Penguin, 2002, p. 181.
1195
Khomiakov, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij (Complete Works), Moscow, 1994, vol. II, pp. 74-75; in
Selischev, op. cit., pp. 10-11.
1196
According to one version, he was poisoned by the medic Mandt on the orders of Napoleon III
(Ivanov, op. cit., p. 327). This hypothesis seems unlikely. Dr. Mandt wrote: “Never have I seen someone
die like this. There was something superhuman in this carrying out of duty to the very last breath” (in
Richard Cavensih, “Death of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia”,History Today, March, 2005, p. 58).
1197
Hieroschemamonk Feofil, Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1970, pp. 108, 111.
718
Baltic were demilitarized. On the other hand, as the Russian representative
A.F. Orlov telegraphed to St. Petersburg: "The English claims on the
independence of Mingrelia, the Trans-Caucasus and other demands have
been completely rejected. The quarrels over Nikolaev stirred up by Lord
Clarendon have been resolved by our replies." 1198 As Metropolitan Philaret
of Moscow put it: "In spite of all this, in Europe we were unconquered,
while in Asia we were conquerors. Glory to the Russian army!" 1199
So in purely military terms, the Crimean war was not such a disaster for Russia;
and if the war had continued, might well have ended with victory as superior Russian
manpower began to tell. The situation had been much more perilous for Russia in
1812, and yet they had gone on to enter Paris in triumph. As Tsar Alexander II had
written to the Russian commander Gorchakov after the fall of Sebastopol: "Sebastopol
is not Moscow, the Crimea is not Russia. Two years after we set fire to Moscow, our
troops marched in the streets of Paris. We are still the same Russians and God is still
with us."1200
Nevertheless, writes Evans, “the inadequacies of the respective performances of the

various armies led to far-reaching reforms in military organization and supply both in
Russia and the United Kingdom… In Russia, Tsar Alexander II, who was the
grandson of Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia and thus, like many if not most European
monarchs of the nineteenth century, part German , reacted to the defeat by embarking
on a series of fundamental reforms. The most significant of these was the
emancipation of the serfs, carried out after lengthy preparations in 1861. Creating an
army who soldiers had a positive stake in Russia’s military success was one of the
motivations for the emancipation, which was followed by a reorganization of
government in the provinces. The abolition of serfdom had significant implication for
rural Russian administration.
“Ending the landlords’ police powers meant introducing a centralized system of

policing, while on the other hand a sense of loyalty to the regime was to be
encouraged by establishing locally elected assemblies, introduced in 1864. The
assemblies, or zemstva, existed at district and provincial levels and were elected
separately by nobles, townmen and peasants (the last-named indirectly). At the
provincial level, nobles predominated, a factor that dissuaded liberal reformers from
pressing for a national assembly; the idea was opposed by conservatives in the tsar’s
entourage anyway. Thus the autocracy continued. Alexander made efforts to reform
the judicial system, introducing western European-style courts and public trials in
1865, with irremovable judges and jury trials for criminal offences. The police retained
powers of ‘administrative arrest’ and exile to Siberia without trial for political
offenders, but the reform was still a significant one: in due course, the courts became
major centres for the free expression of opinion. In 1862 preventive censorship was
replaced by prosecutions after publication. Universities were given greater autonomy,
with the professors free to teach what they wanted, and the school system was
restructured and extended. Serious attempts were made to purge corrupt bureaucrats
and improve the standard of administration. The decentralization of many functions
of government to the zemstva undoubtedly helped this process.
1198
Orlov, in Selischev, op. cit., p. 12.
1199
Metropolitan Philaret, in Selischev, op. cit., p. 13.
1200
Oliver Figes, Crimea, London: Allen Lane, 2010, p. 397.
719
“Alexander II appointed the liberal Dmitry Alexeyevich Milyutin (1816-1912) as
Minister of War in 1861 with the task of reforming the army. Between 1861 and 1881
Milyutin streamlined the administration, reducing the volume of correspondence by
45 per cent, divided the empire into fifteen military districts, integrated the various
branches of the army, reorganized and professionalized the military schools and
training centres, and increased the available reserve from 210,000 in 18612 to 553,000
by 1870. After tremendous struggles with conservatives at Court who wanted nobles
to remain exempt from military service, Milyutin finally succeeded in persuading the
tsar to introduce universal conscription in 1874, with a six-year period of service
followed by nine in the reserve. Milyutin was also concerned by the low level of
literacy among recruits – a mere 7 per cent in the 1860s – and set up educational
schemes within the army that resulted in a swift increase in the literacy rate among
soldiers, half of whom were able to read by 1870 and a quarter of whom could write
as well. Thus Russia entered the second half of the 1870s far better prepared for war
than it had been two decades before…”1201
And it showed: within a generation of the Crimean War, Russian armies were at
the gates of Constantinople…
However, the fact remained that while the war of 1812-14 had ended in
the rout of Russia's enemies and the triumph of the Christian monarchical
principle, this had not happened in 1854-56. Russia had "not yet been beaten
half enough", in Palmerston's words; but her losses had been far greater than those
of the Allies (143,000 deaths as opposed to 21,000 British and 95,000 French deaths),
and the war had revealed that Russia was well behind the Allies in transport and
weaponry, especially rifles. In this respect, Nicholas I’s intensely conservative and
militaristic approach to ruling the empire had not served it well. For he had failed
to take account of the technological advances made since 1815 by his chief enemies,
France and Britain; and his insistence that the Russian army was the same in 1855
as it had been 1815 only served to guarantee that it would fail to modernize
adequately. Moreover, as he himself admitted, his system of censorship and spying,
while probably necessary in the first half of his reign when rebellions had to be
crushed, paradoxically made it difficult for him to get reliable information from a
system of informants who were afraid to tell their master certain uncomfortable
truths.
Russia's anti-monarchist enemies had taken heart from her defeat; and
her primary war-aim, the retention of her right to act as guardian of the
Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, had not been achieved - she
now had to share the guardianship with four other Great Powers.
Still more serious was the dispiriting effect that the war had on public
opinion. Observers had noted the enthusiasm of the simple people for the
war, which they considered to be a holy; the soldiers in the Crimea had
shown feats of heroism; and the intercession of the Mother of God had
1201
720
clearly been seen in the deliverance of Odessa through her "Kasperovskaia"
icon. 1202 However, examples of unbelief had been seen among the
commanding officers at Sebastopol, and some of the i ntelligentsy, such as
B.N. Chicherin, openly scoffed the idea of a holy war.
One scoffer was a young officer who was soon to make a worldwide
reputation in another field - Count Leo Tolstoy. In his Sebastopol Sketches he
made unflattering comparisons between the western and the Russian
armies. His comments on the defenders of Sebastopol were especially
unjust: "We have no army, we have a horde of slaves cowed by discipline,
ordered about by thieves and slave traders. This horde is not an army
because it possesses neither any real loyalty to faith, tsar and fatherland -
words that have been so much misused! - nor valour, nor military dignity.
All it possesses are, on the one hand, passive patience and repressed
discontent, and on the other, cruelty, servitude and corruption." 1203
Tolstoy was to cast his ferociously cynical eye over much more than the
army in the course of his long life as a novelist and publicist. Idolized by
the public, he would subject almost every aspect of Russian life and faith to
his withering scorn. For, as the poet Athanasius Fet noted, he was
distinguished by an "automatic opposition to all generally accepted
opinions" 1204 ; and in this way was in a real sense "the mirror of the Russian
revolution".
The leading Slavophiles of the pre war period, such as Khomiakov and
Kireyevsky, died soon after the war, and with their deaths the ideological
struggle shifted in favour of the westerners. While the war of 1812 had
united the nation behind the Tsar, the Crimean war was followed by
increasing division and dissension.
The conclusion drawn by Constantine Aksakov (who, in spite of his

anti-statism, ardently supported the war) was as follows: "From the very
beginning the reason for all our failures has lain, not in the power, strength
or skill of our enemies, but in us ourselves; we ourselves, of course, have
been our most terrible adversaries. It is no wonder that we have been
overcome when we ourselves give in and retreat... Believe me, the danger
1202
See "Zhitie sviatitelia Innokentia Khersonskogo" ("The Life of the holy Hierarch Innocent of
Cherson"), in Zhitia i Tvorenia Russikh Sviatykh (The Lives and Works of the Russian Saints), Moscow,
2001, pp. 701-702. Archbishop Innocent of Kherson and Odessa, within whose jurisdiction the
Crimea fell, had had sermons "widely circulated to the Russian troops in the form of pamphlets
and illustrated prints (lubki). Innocent portrayed the conflict as a 'holy war' for the Crimea, the
centre of the nation's Orthodox identity, where Christianity had arrived in Russia. Highlighting
the ancient heritage of the Greek Church in the peninsula, he depicted the Crimea as a 'Russian
Athos', a sacred place in the 'Holy Russian Empire' connected by religion to the monastic centre of
Orthodoxy on the peninsula of Mount Athos in northeastern Greece. With [Governor] Stroganov's
support, Innocent oversaw the creation of a separate bishopric for the Crimea as well as the
establishment of several new monasteries in the peninsula after the Crimean War" ( Figes, op. cit., p.
423). However, in the end it was on the other side of the Black Sea, in Abkhazia, that the great
monastery of New Athos was constructed shortly before the First World War.
1203
Tolstoy, Sebastopol Sketches; quoted in Figes, op. cit., p. 445.
1204
Fet, in Figes, op. cit., p. 446
721
for Russia is not in the Crimea, and not from the English, the French and
the Turks, no, the danger, the real danger is within us, from the spirit of
little faith, the spirit of doubt in the help of God, a non-Russian, western
spirit, a foreign, heterodox spirit, which weakens our strength and love for
our brothers, which cunningly counsels us to make concessions, to
humiliate ourselves, to avoid quarrels with Germany, to wage a defensive
war, and not to go on the offensive, and not go straight for the liberation of
our brothers. We have protected ourselves! That is the source of our
enslavement and, perhaps, of our endless woes. If we want God to be for
us, it is necessary that we should be for God, and not for the Austrian or in
general for the German union, for the sake of which we have abandoned
God's work. It is necessary that we should go forward for the Faith and our
brothers. But we, having excited the hopes of our brothers, have allowed
the cross to be desecrated, and abandoned our brothers to torments... The
struggle, the real struggle between East and West, Russia and Europe, is in
ourselves and not at our borders." 1205
Another Slavophile, Yury Samarin, analysed the situation as follows: “We were
defeated not by the external forces of the Western alliance, but by our own internal
weakness… Stagnation of thought, depression of productive forces, the rift between
government and people, disunity between social classes and the enslavement of one
of them to another… prevent the government from deploying all the means available
to it and, in emergency, from being able to count on mobilising the strength of the
nation.”1206
In the foreign sphere, the most important long-term consequence was

the destruction of the Holy Alliance of Christian monarchist powers
established by Tsar Alexander I in 1815. Russia had been the main
guarantor of the integrity of both Prussia and Austria, and in 1848 had
saved Austria from the revolution. But a bare seven years later, Austria had
turned her against her benefactor...
“Hitherto,” writes Bernard Simms, “the Tsarist Empire had tried to stay
on good terms with both Prussia and Austria, but tilted strongly towards
the latter on ideological grounds. During the war, both powers had blotted
their copybooks in St. Petersburg, but Austria’s humiliating ultimatum [“in
1205
C. Aksakov, in E.N. Annenkov, "'Slaviano-Khristianskie' idealy na fone zapadnoj tsivilizatsii,
russkie spory 1840-1850-kh gg." ("'Slavic-Christian' ideas against the background of western
civilization, Russia quarrels in the 1840s and 50s"), in V.A. Kotel'nikov (ed.), Khristianstvo i Russkaia
Literatura (Christianity and Russian Literature), St. Petersburg: "Nauka", 1996, pp. 143-144. Cf. Yury
Samarin: “We were defeated not by the external forces of the Western alliance, but by our own
internal weakness… Stagnation of thought, depression of productive forces, the rift between
government and people, disunity between social classes and the enslavement of one of them to
another… prevent the government from deploying all the means available to it and, in emergency,
from being able to count on mobilising the strength of the nation” (“O krepostnom sostoianii i o
perekhode iz nego k grazhdanskoj svobode” (“On serfdom and the transition from it to civil liberty”),
Sochinenia (Works), vol. 2, Moscow, 1878, pp. 17-20; quoted in Hosking, op. cit., p. 317).
1206
Samarin, “O krepostnom sostoianii i o perekhode iz nego k grazhdanskoj svobode”
(“On serfdom and the transition from it to civil liberty”), Sochinenia (Works), vol. 2,
Moscow, 1878, pp. 17-20; quoted in Sir Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People & Empire,
London: HarperCollins, 1997, p. 317.
722
December 1855, the Austrians joined the French and the British in an
ultimatum to the new tsar… to end hostilities or face combined action
against him”] had given far more offence than Prussia’s timid neutrality.
Henceforth, the Russians saw the Austrians as the principal barrier to their
Balkan ambitions, and the idea that the path to Constantinople ran through
Vienna – a common slogan in later decades – began to gain currency in St.
Petersburg. Even more crucially, the Russians were determined that they
would never again face the full force of the German Confederation under
the aegis of Austria. Vienna would have to be unbolted from the leadership
of Germany. So in late August 1856 the new Russian foreign minister,
Gorchakov, announced in a widely discussed circular that the tsar would
no longer support his fellow monarchs. The message was clear: the
Habsburgs would face the next revolutionary challenge on their own…” 1207
The Crimean War highlighted a difficult dilemma faced by the

Ecumenical Patriarchate: its political loyalties were divided between the
Turkish Sultan, to whom he had sworn an oath of allegiance, the King of
Greece, to whom his nationalist sympathies drew him, and the Tsar of
Russia, to whom his religious principles should have led him. After all, in
1598 Patriarch Jeremiah II had called the tsar the sovereign " of all Christians
throughout the inhabited earth," and explicitly called his empire " the Third
Rome". But now, centuries later, the image of Russia the Third Rome had
faded from the minds of the Patriarchs; it was the image of a resurrected
New Rome, or Byzantium, that attracted them and their Greek compatriots -
this was the truly "great idea". The Russians were, of course, Orthodox, and
their help was useful; but the Greeks would liberate themselves. To adapt a
phrase of Elder Philotheus of Pskov, it was as if they said: "Constantinople
is the Second Rome, and a Third Rome there will not be"...
But what of the oath of allegiance that the Patriarch had sworn to the Sultan,
which was confirmed by his commemoration at the Divine Liturgy? Did not this
make the Sultan his political master to whom he owed obedience? Certainly, this
was the position of Patriarch Gregory V in 1821, as we have seen, and of other
distinguished teachers of the Greek nation, such as the Chiot, Athanasios Parios.
Moreover, the Tsar who was reigning at the time of the Greek Revolution,
Alexander I, also recognized the Sultan as a lawful ruler, and as lawful ruler of his
Christian subjects, even to the extent of refusing the Greeks help when they rose up
against the Sultan in 1821. Even his successor, Tsar Nicholas I, who did come to the
rescue of the Greeks in 1827 and again in 1829, continued to regard the Sultan as a
legitimate ruler.
However, the situation was complicated by the fact that, even if the Patriarch
commemorated the Sultan at the Liturgy, almost nobody else did! Thus Protopriest
Benjamin Zhukov writes: "In Mohammedan Turkey the Orthodox did not pray for
the authorities during Divine services, which was witnessed by pilgrims to the
Sepulchre of the Lord in Jerusalem. Skaballonovich in his Interpreted Typicon writes:
1207
Simms, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, London: Allen Lane, 2013, pp. 223-224, 222.
723
'With the coming of Turkish dominion, the prayers for the kings began to be
excluded from the augmented and great litanies and to be substituted by: "Again
we pray for the pious and Orthodox Christians" (p. 152)." 1208
But perhaps commemoration and obedience are different matters, so

that commemoration of an authority may be refused while obedience is
granted... Or perhaps the Sultan could not be commemorated by name
because no heterodox can be commemorated at the Divine Liturgy, but
could and should have been prayed for in accordance with the apostolic
command... For St. Paul called on the Christians to pray "for all who are in
authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and
honesty" (I Timothy 2.2), although the authorities at that time were
pagans...
However, there was one important difference between the pagan authorities of
St. Paul's time and the heterodox authorities of the nineteenth century. In the
former case, the pagan Roman empire was the only political authority of the
Oecumene. But in the latter case, there was a more lawful authority than the
heterodox authorities - the Orthodox Christian authority of the Tsar.
The critical question, therefore, was: if there was a war between the
Muslim Sultan, on the one side, and the Orthodox Tsar, on the other, whom
were the Orthodox Christians of the Balkans to pray for and support?...
Precisely this situation arose during the Crimean War. The Russians
were fighting for a cause dear to every Orthodox Christian heart: the
control of the Holy Places. And their enemies were an alliance of three of
the major anti-Orthodox powers, Muslim (Turkey), Catholic (France) and
Protestant (England). So the supreme loyalty inherent in faithfulness to
Orthodox Christianity - a loyalty higher than any oath given to an infidel
enemy of the faith under duress - would seem to have dictated that the
Patriarch support the Russians. But he neither supported them, nor even
prayed for the Russian Tsar at the liturgy.
Perhaps the likely terrible retribution of the Turks on the Balkan

Orthodox was a sufficient reason not to support the Tsar openly. But could
he not commemorate the Tsar at the liturgy, or at any rate not
commemorate the Sultan as other Balkan Churches did not? For even if the
Sultan was accepted as a legitimate authority to whom obedience was due
in normal situations, surely his legitimacy failed when he used his
authority to undermine the much higher authority of the Orthodox
Christian Empire?
Certainly, the Athonite Elder Hilarion (whom we have met before as Fr.
Ise, confessor of the Imeretian King Solomon II) felt that loyalty to the Tsar
came first in this situation, although he was not Russian, but Georgian. He
1208
Zhukov, Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov' na Rodine i za Rubezhom (The Russian
Orthodox Church in the Homeland and Abroad), Paris, 2005, pp. 18-19.
724
instructed his disciple, Hieromonk Sabbas, to celebrate the Divine Liturgy
every day and to pray for the Russians during it, and to read the whole
Psalter and make many prostrations for the aid of "our Russian brethren".
And the rebuke he delivered to his ecclesiastical superior, the Ecumenical
Patriarch, was soon shown to have the blessing of God.
"When some time had passed," witnesses Hieromonk Sabbas, "the elder
said to me: 'Let's go to the monastery, let's ask the abbot what they know
about the war, whether the Russians are winning or the enemies.' When we
arrived at the monastery, the abbot with the protoses showed us a paper
which the Patriarch and one other hierarch had sent from Constantinople,
for distributing to the serving hieromonks in all the monasteries. The
Patriarch wrote that they were beseeching God, at the Great Entrance in the
Divine Liturgy, to give strength to the Turkish army to subdue the
Russians under the feet of the Turks. To this was attached a special prayer which
had to be read aloud. When the abbot, Elder Eulogius, had read us this patriarchal
epistle and said to the elder: 'Have you understood what our head, our father is
writing to us?', my elder was horrified and said: 'He is not a Christian,' and with
sorrow asked: 'Have you read this in the monastery during the Liturgy, as he
writes?' But they replied: 'No! May it not be!' But in the decree the Patriarch was
threatening any monastery that did not carry out this order that it would suffer a
very severe punishment. The next day we went back to our cell. A week passed. A
monk came from Grigoriou monastery for the revealing of thoughts, and my elder
asked him: 'Did you read this prayer which the Patriarch sent to the monasteries?'
He replied: 'Yes, it was read last Sunday during the Liturgy.' The elder said: 'You
have not acted well in reading it; you have deprived yourselves of the grace of Holy
Baptism, you have deprived your monastery of the grace of God; condemnation has
fallen on you!' This monk returned to the monastery and told his elders and abbot
that 'we have deprived the monastery of the grace of God, the grace of Holy Baptism
- that is what Papa Hilarion is saying.' On the same day a flood swept away the mill,
and the fathers began to grumble against the abbot: 'You have destroyed the
monastery!' In great sorrow the abbot hurried to make three prostrations before the
icon of the Saviour and said: 'My Lord Jesus Christ, I'm going to my spiritual father
Hilarion to confess what I have done, and whatever penance he gives me I will carry
it out, so that I should not suffer a stroke from sorrow.' Taking with him one
hierodeacon and one monk, he set off for the cell of the Holy Apostle James, where
we living at the time. When they arrived, my elder was outside the cell. The abbot
with his companions, on seeing my elder, fell face downwards in prostrations to the
earth and said: 'Bless, holy spiritual father.' Then they went up to kiss his hand. But
my elder shouted at them: 'Go away, away from me; I do not accept heretics!' The
abbot said: 'I have sinned, I have come to ask you to give me a penance.' But the
elder said: 'How did you, wretched one, dare to place Mohammed higher than
Christ? God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ says to His Son: "Sit Thou at My
right hand, until I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy feet' (Psalm 109.1), but
you ask Him to put His Son under the feet of His enemies! Get away from me, I will
not accept you.' With tears the abbot besought the elder to receive him in repentance
and give him a penance. But my elder said: 'I am not your spiritual father, go, find a
spiritual father and he will give you a penance.' And leaving them outside his cell
weeping, the elder went into it and locked the door with a key. What could we do?
725
We went into my cell and there served an all-night vigil, beseeching God to incline
the elder to mercy and give a penance to the abbot. In the morning the elder went
into the church for the Liturgy, not saying a word to those who had arrived, and
after the dismissal of the Liturgy he quickly left for his cell. Those who had arrived
with the abbot began to worry that he would suffer a heart attack; they asked me to
go in to the elder and call him; perhaps he would listen to me. I went, fell at his feet
and asked him: 'Be merciful, give them a penance - the abbot may suffer a stroke in
the heart attack with fatal consequences.' Then the elder asked me: 'What penance
shall I give them? God on high is angry with them. What epitimia should I give them
which would propitiate God?' When I said to my father: 'Elder, since I read the
whole Psalter of the Prophet-King David every day, as you told me, there is one
psalm there which fits this case - the 82nd: "O God, who shall be likened unto Thee?
Be Thou not silent, neither be still, O God..." Command them to read this psalm
tomorrow during the Liturgy, when the Cherubic hymn is being sung, at the Great
Entrance; let the hieromonk who read the prayer of the Patriarch before stand under
the great chandelier, and when all the fathers come together during the Great
Entrance, the priest must come out of the altar holding the diskos and chalice in his
hands, then let one monk bring a parchment with this psalm written on it in front,
and let the hieromonk, who has been waiting under the chandelier, read the whole
psalm loudly to the whole brotherhood, and while they are reading it from the
second to the ninth verses let them all repeat many times: "Lord, have mercy". And
when the remaining verses are being read, let them all say: "Amen!" And then the
grace of God will again return to their monastery.' The elder accepted my advice
and asked me to call them. When they joyfully entered the cell and made a
prostration, the elder said to them: 'Carry out this penance, and the mercy of God
will return to you.' Then they began to be disturbed that the exarch sent by the
Patriarch, who was caring for the fulfilment of the patriarchal decree in Karyes,
might learn about this and might bring great woes upon the monastery. They did
not know what to do. The elder said: 'Since you are so frightened, I will take my
hieromonk and go to the monastery; and if the exarch or the Turks hear about it, tell
them: only Monk Hilarion the Georgian ordered us to do this, and we did it, and
and you will be without sorrow.' Then the abbot said: 'Spiritual father, we are also
worried and sorrowful about you, because when the Turks will learn about this,
they will come here, take you, tie you up in sacks and drown you both in the sea.'
My elder replied: 'We are ready, my hieromonk and I, let them drown us.' Then we
all together set off in the boat for Grigoriou monastery. When the brothers of the
monastery saw us, they rejoiced greatly. In the morning we arranged that the
hieromonk who had read the prayer of the Patriarch should himself liturgize; they
lit the chandelier during the Cherubic hymn, and when all the fathers were gathered
together and the server had come out of the altar preceded by the candle and
candle-holder and carrying the chalice and diskos on his head and in his hands, he
declared: "May the Lord remember you all in His Kingdom", and stopped under the
great chandelier. Then one monk, having in his hand the parchment with the 82nd
psalm written on it, stood in front of the priest and began to read: "O God, who shall
be likened unto Thee? Be Thou not silent, neither be still, O God..." - to the end.
Meanwhile the fathers called out: "Lord, have mercy" until the 10th verse, and then
everyone said: "Amen" many times. And they all understood that the grace of God
had again come down on the monastery, and the elders from joy embraced men,
726
thanking me that I had done such a good thing for them; and everyone glorified and
thanked God.'
"All this took place under Patriarch Anthimus VI. At the end of the war he was
again removed from his throne. After this he came to Athos and settled in the
monastery of Esphigmenou, where he had been tonsured. Once, in 1856, on a certain
feast-day, he wanted to visit the monastery of St. Panteleimon, where Fr. Hilarion was
at that time. During the service the Patriarch was standing in the cathedral of the
Protection on the hierarchical see. Father Hilarion passed by him with Fr. Sabbas; he
didn't even look at the venerable Patriarch, which the latter immediately noticed. The
Patriarch was told about the incident with the prayer in Grigoriou monastery. At the
end of the service, as usual, all the guests were invited to the guest-house. The
Patriarch, wanting somehow to extract himself from his awkward situation in the eyes
of the Russians and Fr. Hilarion, started a conversation on past events and tried to
develop the thought that there are cases when a certain 'economia' is demanded, and
the care of the Church sometimes requires submission also to some not very lawful
demands of the government, if this serves for the good of the Church. 'And so we
prayed for the granting of help from on high to our Sultan, and in this way disposed
him to mercifulness for our Church and her children, the Orthodox Christians.' When
Patriarch Anthimus, under whom the schism with the Bulgarians took place, arrived
on Athos after his deposition, and just stepped foot on the shore, the whole of the Holy
Mountain shuddered from an underground quake and shook several times. All this
was ascribed by the Athonites to the guilt of the Patriarch, and the governing body
sent an order throughout the Mountain that they should pray fervently to God that He
not punish the inhabitants of the Holy Mountain with His righteous wrath, but that He
have mercy according to His mercy."1209
Thus there was a fine line to be drawn between submission to the Sultan as the
lawful sovereign, and a too-comfortable adaptation to the conditions of this
Babylonian captivity. The Tsar considered that the Orthodox peoples did not have the
right to rebel against the Sultan of their own will, without the blessing of himself as
the Emperor of the Third Rome. But the corollary of this view was that when the Tsar
entered into war with the Sultan, it was the duty of the Orthodox subjects of the
Sultan to pray for victory for the Tsar. For, as Fr. Hilarion said, echoing the words of
St. Seraphim of Sarov: "The other peoples' kings often make themselves out to be
something great, but not one of them is a king in reality, but they are only adorned
and flatter themselves with a great name, but God is not favourably disposed towards
them, and does not abide in them. They reign only in part by the condescension of
God. Therefore he who does not love his God-established tsar is not worthy of being called a
Christian."1210
And yet back home, in Russia, the foundations of love for the God-established tsar
were being shaken, as were all the foundations of the Christian life. As St. Macarius,
the great Elder of Optina, wrote: “The heart flows with blood, in pondering our
beloved fatherland Russia, our dear mother. Where is she racing headlong, what is
she seeking? What does she await? Education increases but it is pseudo-education, it
Fomin & Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 331-333.
1209
Hieromonk Anthony of the Holy Mountain, Ocherki Zhizni i Podvigov Startsa Ieroskhimonakha Ilariona
1210
Gruzina (Sketches of the Life and Struggles of Elder Hieroschemamonk Hilarion the Georgian),
Jordanville, 1985, p. 95.
727
deceives itself in its hope. The young generation is not being nourished by the milk of
the doctrine of our Holy Orthodox Church but has been poisoned by some alien, vile,
venomous spirit, and how long can this continue? Of course, in the decrees of God’s
Providence it has been written what must come to pass, but this has been hidden from
us in His unfathomable wisdom…’”1211
In spite of this, the Orthodox Church in the mid-nineteenth century presented an

impressive God-established reality that was quite capable of attracting the souls of
westerners dissatisfied with the sterility of the western heterodox confessions. Thus
the Anglican priest John Mason Neale wrote in his History of the Eastern Church:
“Uninterrupted successions of Metropolitans and Bishops stretch themselves to
Apostolic times; venerable liturgies exhibit doctrine unchanged, and discipline
uncorrupted; the same Sacrifice is offered, the same hymns are chanted, by the
Eastern Christians of today, as those which resounded in the churches of St. Basil or
St. Firmilian… In the glow and splendor of Byzantine glory, in the tempests of the
Oriental middle ages, in the desolation and tyranny of the Turkish Empire, the
testimony of the same immutable church remains. Extending herself from the sea of
Okhotsk to the palaces of Venice, from the ice-fields that grind against the Solovetsky
monastery to the burning jungles of Malabar1212, embracing a thousand languages,
and nations, and tongues, but binding them together in the golden link of the same
Faith, offering the Tremendous Sacrifice in a hundred Liturgies, but offering it to the
same God, and with the same rites, fixing her Patriarchal Thrones in the same cities as
when the Disciples were called Christians first at Antioch, and James, the brother of
the Lord, finished his course at Jerusalem, oppressed by the devotees of the False
Prophet, as once by the worshippers of false gods, - she is now, as she was from the
beginning, multiplex in her arrangements, simple in her faith, difficult of
comprehension to strangers, easily intelligible to her sons, widely scattered in her
branches, hardly beset by her enemies, yet still and evermore, what she delights to call
herself, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic…”1213
1211
St, Macarius, Letter 165 to Monastics, in Fr. Leonid Kavelin, Elder Macarius of Optina, Platina, Ca.: St.
Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press, 1995, pp. 309-310.
1212
Neale is probably thinking here of the Monophysite “Church of St. Thomas” in Southern India,
which was not in fact Orthodox. (V.M.)
1213
Neale, in Christopher K. Birchall, Embassy, Emigration, and Englishmen: The Three-Hundred Year
History of a Russian Orthodox Church in London, Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Publications, 2014, pp.
98-99.
728
86. RUSSIA IN THE BLACK SEA REGION
In spite of her defeat in the Crimean War, Russia continued to extend

her influence into Asia. Her missions to Siberia and Central Asia, China,
Japan and Alaska were to bring forth rich fruit; later Persia would feel her
beneficial influence. And she fulfilled her mission as the Third Rome in her
protection of the ancient Orthodox kingdom of Georgia.
Georgia depended for her very survival on the support of Russia against
the Muslim peoples to the south. Correspondingly, Russia's constant aim in
the Caucasus region was to establish a firm and reliable bridge to Georgia
across the Caucasus mountains. To this end, as Archpriest Lev Lebedev
writes, "it was necessary to overcome the opposition of Persia and Turkey
and the warlike mountain peoples of the Northern Caucasus and the
Caspian and Black Sea coasts whom they often stirred up.
"It is fashionable to talk about the cruelties committed by the Russian

armies in this 'Caucasian war'. But it is not fashionable to talk about the
bestial acts of the Muslim mountaineers in relation to the Russians, and
also in relation to those of their own people who had accepted Orthodoxy
(for example, the Ossetians and Georgians). And these acts exceeded all
human imagination. War is war! The mutual hardening of the sides was,
alas, inevitable here. And so there were also excesses of violence and
cruelty on the side of the Russians… Gradually, at a dear price, Russia
managed to break the opposition of the mountaineers and thereby
guarantee a constant safe 'bridge' of communication with Orthodox
Georgia." 1214
Russia first made contact with the Caucasian mountaineers when she
achieved her great victory over the Tatar Mohammedans at the taking of
Kazan. In 1552 two Cherkassian princes asked Ivan IV, the conqueror of
Kazan, to receive them as subjects to help them in their struggle against the
Turkish sultan and his vassal, the Crimean Khan. In 1557 two Kabardinian
princes, Temryuk and Tizryut, asked for the same in their struggle against
Shamkhal of Tarki. Soon there were Cossacks on the banks of Terek, and in
1586 the Russian Tsar and King Alexander of Georgia formed an alliance
against Shamkhal, as a result of which Tarki was stormed in 1594. But
Sultan-Muta, son of Shamkhal, and the whole of Dagestan rebelled against
the Russians. Tarki was destroyed in 1604 and the Russian armies were
destroyed. It was not until over a century later, in 1722, that Peter I
resumed the Russian advance and conquered the Caspian coast. This
brought the Russians in conflict with the Shah of Persia, who in 1741 tried
to conquer the area, but was defeated.
"To some extent," writes Dominic Lieven, "the Russians were pulled into
the Trans-Caucasus - in other words, across the mountains - by appeals for
1214
Lebedev, Velikorossia, pp. 324, 325.
729
support from the Georgians, a fellow Orthodox people. Georgia was too
weak to defend itself against increasing pressure from both the Ottomans
and the Persians. Georgia had good reason to seek the protection of empire
and to escape the anarchy, economic devastation and loss of population
that had resulted from existing in an insecure borderland. In the mid-
thirteenth century there were five million Georgians, by 1770 there were
barely 500,000. In the last decades of the eighteenth century Petersburg
wavered as to whether it was worthwhile to take on the burden of
defending and ruling Georgia. In the end what mattered most were
strategic and geopolitical considerations. Given both traditional hostility to
the Ottoman Empire and growing rivalry with Napoleonic France and
Britain in Persia and the Ottoman Empire, it was decided to annex Georgia
as Russia's base and centre of power beyond the Caucasus. Once
established in the region, however, the Russians to some extent had to obey
the laws of local geopolitics. This entailed, for example, conquering the
land and sea communications between the Trans-Caucasus and Russia.
Subduing the mountain peoples of the North Caucasus proved a hugely
expensive and time-consuming struggle, not concluded until the 1860s." 1215
In 1785-87 Sheikh Mansur led Chechnya and Dagestan in rebellion

against the Russians. He was defeated. However, in 1812 rebellion flared
up again. Then, "in 1826," writes Lebedev, "for the sake of her interests in Georgia
and without a declaration of war, Persia invaded Transcaucasia. General Ermolov, the
commander-in-chief of the Russian armies in the Caucasus, was not able with his
forces to deal with the invasion. There came to his help the armies led by General
Paskevich. In a series of battles Paskevich defeated the Persians, took Erivan
(Yerevan), invaded Persia and headed for its capital - Teheran. The Persian Shah
sought peace, which was concluded in 1828 in Turkmanchai, in accordance with
which the lands of present-day Armenia and Azerbaidjan passed permanently to
Russia. An end was placed to Persia's pretensions. Nicholas I bestowed the title
of Count of Erivan on Paskevich. It was more difficult to bring into
submission the mountain tribes of the Northern Caucasus, with whom the
Russian Cossack settlements on the Terek and Kuban had long had
dealings. The Chechens, the Cherkessy and other warlike peoples not only
warred against the Cossacks, they also lived next to them and entered into
peaceful relations with the Russians, encountering in these cases a
completely friendly response from the Russians. But in 1825 there began
the 'Miurizm' movement, which was introduced from Turkey. The 'Miuridy'
(novices) were obliged to wage a holy war against the 'infidel' Russians
under the leadership of 'holy elders' - imams and sheiks - with the aim of
creating an extensive 'caliphate' from Stambul to the Kuban. The imams
Kazi-mullah and later Shamil became popular leaders." 1216
From the middle of the 1840s Shamil became both the political and the
religious leader of the state of Imamat, "the ruler of the right-believing"; all
executive, judicial and legislative power was in his hands. Declaring all the
tribal leaders who submitted to the Russians to be traitors and apostates,
1215
Lieven, Empire, London: John Murray, 2000, pp. 212-213.
1216
730
he united all the North Caucasus mountaineers for the first time. 1217 As the
French consul in Tiflis wrote: "We have to distinguish two personalities
united in Shamil.... On the one hand, the political leader, dictator, to whom
limitless power was presented by events with a democratic system based
on the principle of absolute equality. But at the same time he is a religious
leader, to whom the calling of the great imam, the supreme head of the
right believers, a sacred character is attached. Having this dual calling, he
is the only judge in the question of offering the sacrifices demanded by the
war. His power is firmly organized." 1218
However, God was with the Russian armies. Thus on December 24, 1853
Archbishop Isidore, the exarch of Georgia, wrote to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow:
"The captured Turks told us openly that when the battle near Alexandropol' became
fierce, and the whole Russian detachment became involved, the Turks saw a radiant
woman coming down from heaven holding a banner in her hands and accompanied
by two warriors. The light from her was so bright that it was like the shining of the
sun, and no eye could stand it. This appearance produced horror in the ranks of the
fighters and was the reason why, on seeing that God was on the side of Rus', all the
Turks turned to flight and lost the battle. The Russians did not see this appearance. By
the Providence of God our foreign enemies witnessed to it."1219
In 1859 Shamil was captured, and by 1864 the war had come to an end.
It had claimed the lives of nearly 100,000 Russians killed since 1801. At this
point, writes Lieven, most of the population of the western region of the
Caucasus "were 'encouraged' to emigrate to the Ottoman Empire amidst
great suffering and loss of life. The Chechens and Dagestanis of the eastern
region, who had resisted the Russians with equal determination, were
allowed to remain in their homeland. The reason for this was that the
western region, bordering on a Black Sea on which Russia [after the
Crimean War] was not permitted to have a navy, was acutely vulnerable to
Ottoman or British attack. In the aftermath of the Crimean War, St.
Petersburg's perception was that Russia was dangerously weak, and
Palmerston's England on the offensive worldwide. Palmerston himself
commented that 'these half-civilized governments such as those of China,
Portugal, Spanish America require a Dressing every eight or ten years to
keep them in order', and no one who knew his views on Russia could doubt
his sense that she too deserved to belong to this category of states. The
Russians were not therefore prepared to leave on this coastline a Sunni
population whom they quite rightly believed to be potential allies of the
Ottomans in any future war. A British historian of the 'Great Game' (i.e.
Anglo-Russian nineteenth-century rivalry in Central Asia) comments that
'the forcible exile of six hundred thousand Circassians from the Black Sea
Coast deprived the Turks and the British of their most valuable potential
allies within the Russian Empire.’” 1220
1217
S.M. Kaziev (ed.), Shamil, Moscow: Ekho Kavkaza, 1997, p. 31.
1218
Kaziev, op. cit., p. 53.
1219
Snychev, op. cit. , p. 325.
1220
Lieven, op. cit., pp. 213-214. The historian referred to is David Gillard.
731
*
Special mention should be made of Crimea, which, though geographically part of

Europe, was culturally and religiously part of Asia.
In spite of the region’s close links, first with Byzantium, and then with the Rus’ of
St. Vladimir (who was baptized there), it became predominantly Muslim in the later
Middle Ages. For, as Shaun Walker writes, “descendants of the Mongols mingled
with various indigenous people of the peninsula, and eventually became known as
Crimean Tatars. The Tatar khans ruled from Bakhchisarai, their alluring capital in the
heart of Crimea’s hilly interior. The Crimean Tatars were a force to be reckoned with
fearsome warriors in fur-rimmed spiked helmets, masters of their rugged horses and
with a reputation for brutality in their raids for slaves and cattle. In 1571, a Crimean
Tatar force invaded Russia, burning Moscow and taking tens of thousands of
prisoners before retreating back to Crimea. They would not trouble the Russian
capital again, but even as Russia expanded inexorably, the Tatars remained firmly
ensconced in the Kirim (‘the Fortress’, which comes the Russian Krym and the
English Crimea), ruled by their khan, who was not a hereditary monarch but elected
via the nobility. The khanate secured backing from Constantinople, and functioned
as a protectorate of the Ottomans, Russia’s main rival by the eighteenth century.
“In 1782 Grigory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s erstwhile lover and the man in
charge of her new provinces in what is now called Ukraine, passionately urged the
empress to annex the peninsula. The status quo was dangerous because the
Ottomans ‘could reach our heart’ through Crimea, Potemkin warned Catherine. It
was worth acting decisively to seize the peninsula while the Ottomans were weak,
preoccupied with riots and plague, and the British and French were still distracted by
the war in America, Potemkin told the empress. It was a similar pre-emptive logic to
reasoning used in 2014: that Russia had to move decisively to prevent a hypothetical
future NATO member Ukraine from kicking the Russian fleet out of Sevastopol and
turning the Black Sea into a NATO sea.
“Catherine was not immediately convinced. What about the international

repercussions, she wondered. Potemkin told her it was naïve to think about such
vagaries, given that nobody else did. ‘There is no power in Europe that has not
participated in the carving up of Asia, Africa, America,’ he told Catherine, much as
Putin would later use Western misdeeds to justify his own flagrant violations of
international law.
“The first Russian takeover of Crimea used the carrot as much as the stick. In 1771,
Shahin Girey, a Tatar noble who would go on to become the last of the Tatar khans,
travelled to St. Petersburg. Catherine invited him to watch dancing girls in a closed,
exclusive circle, wooing him with access and jewels. It was the tsarist equivalent of
the white telephone and Putin’s financial offers to the Crimean Tatar Dzhemilev
more than two centuries later. The next year Shahin Girey returned to the Russian
capital, and left with 20,000 rubles, a gold sword, and a good disposition towards the
Russians. A few years later he was elected khan, and in 1783 gave up power under
Russian pressure without a fight. He was kept under an honourable house arrest in
732
St. Petersburg, while the Tatar nobility were bought off with promises that their
customs and Islamic faith would suffer no repression. Among later generations, the
final khan became a byword for cowardice and collaboration. ‘Nobody wants to be
the second Shahin Girey,’ Dzhemilev told me, explaining why he turned down
Putin’s offer of cash.
“Relations between the Tatars and their new Russian overlords were initially
cordial, but arriving Russian landowners seized much Tatar land, and by the turn of
the century, there were stories of Russian soldiers amusing themselves by taking pot-
shots with their muskets at mullahs during the midday all to prayer. The Russians
also provoked ire among the locals for using headstones from Tatar cemeteries as
building materials. The relationship deteriorated to the extent that during the
Crimean War in the mid-nineteenth century, the Tatars provided the allies (Britain,
France, and the Ottomans) with logistical and intelligence support. They paid for it in
a series of reprisals in the aftermath, and by 1867, around 192,000 Tatars had fled the
peninsula for Turkey, out of a total population of 300,000. They left 784 deserted
villages and 457 abandoned mosques. Russian peasants flooded the region, and the
aristocracy built palaces along its coastline, of which the splendid Livadia outside
Yalta was one of many. Crimea’s demographic makeup was changed forever, and it
was really only from this point onwards that Crimea could in any way be considered
‘historically Russian’ [as Putin claims].”1221
Walker, The Long Hangover. Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past, Oxford University Press,
1221
2018, pp. 153-155.

733
87. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (9) GREECE
As was pointed out earlier, East European nationalism was influenced more by
the more mystical, blood-and-soil nationalism of Germany than by the more civic
nationalism of France. A particularly important influence coming from Germany was
that of Johann Gottfried von Herder, whose concept of the unique essence of each
nation was also to influence Russian Hegelian thinkers in the 1840s. Tom Gallagher
calls this idea “romantic nationalism”: “With its emphasis on the unique value of
every ethnic group and on each group’s ‘natural right’ to carve out a national home
of its own, romantic nationalism was able to undermine the multi-cultural traditions
of the Eastern world. When Herder hailed the Slavs as ‘the coming leaders of
Europe’, intellectuals were encouraged to explore the past and all-too-often invent
glorious historical pedigrees meant to give reborn nations the inalienable right to
enjoy contemporary greatness. If this meant dominating territories shared by more
than one ethnic group, then many nationalists justified such a course even if it meant
that they were imitating the imperialists whose rule they were seeking to throw
off….
“The appeal of romantic nationalism for European public opinion was first
revealed by the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s…”1222
According to Daniel P. Payne, “the importance of Herder for East European

nationalism” has been demonstrated by Peter Sugar.
“According to Sugar, Herder’s concept of the Volk was transformed in the Eastern
European context. In the concept of the Volk, Herder simply meant nationality and
did not imply the nation as such. In his arguments against the search for the ideal
state, Herder maintained that the concept of liberty must conform to the needs of
each particular nationality. Sugar notes: ‘This is a romantic and, even more, a
humanitarian concept. It condemns those who place the state, even the ideal state,
ahead of people.’ Consequently, in Eastern Europe this contextualization on the basis
of each particular nationality led to a unique messianism in the particularization of
each Volk. In this particularization a ‘confusion of nationality and nation, of cultural,
political, and linguistic characteristics was further extended to justify the Volk’s
mission. This mission could be accomplished only if it had free play in a Volksstaat,
nation-state.’ Thus, the concept of the nation-state as it developed in Eastern Europe
was very different from the Western understanding. In the East each Volk needed its
own nation-state in order to fulfill its messianic mission rooted in the Volksville.
Herder’s romanticism combined with the political ideas of the West, creating the
form of cultural-political nationalism that is uniquely its own.”1223
However, there were special factors that distinguished Balkan nationalism from
German, Herderian nationalism. The most important of these was the role of the
Orthodox Church. Whereas in Western Europe the Churches, with the exception of the
Catholic Church in Ireland, played only a small role, in the Balkans the Orthodox
Church played a decisive part. We have seen how it was Metropolitan Germanos of
Gallacher, “Folly & Failure in the Balkans”, History Today, September, 1999, p. 47.
1222
Payne, “Nationalism and the Local Church: The Source of Ecclesiastical Conflict in the Orthodox
1223
Commonwealth”, Nationalities Papers, Vol. 35, No. 5, November 2007.

734
Patras who actually raised the standard of revolution in the Peloponnese in 1821, and
the Church was equally important in the Serbian revolution. At the same time, the
Church by her nature, being an international community with a universalist message,
was opposed to the divisive tendencies introduced by the various nationalisms.
Thus on the one hand the Orthodox Church supported the struggles for national
independence insofar as they were struggles for the survival of the Orthodox faith
against Islam. The Ottoman Muslim yoke had a similar effect in stimulating
nationalism in the Balkans as Napoleon’s victories had had in stimulating
nationalism in Germany. And the Church was on the side of the people against the
infidel oppressor.
On the other hand, the Church in the Ottoman Empire could not afford to identify
too closely with the individual national revolutions. And this for two main reasons.
First, because the revolutions had caused atrocities – for example, the wiping out of
every Turkish man, woman and child in the Peloponnese (57,000 people) – that the
Church could not possibly approve of. And secondly because while the Orthodox
Christian people of the Balkans constituted a single millet, or people, ruled by a single
head – the Ecumenical Patriarch, the individual nationalisms competed with each
other and even fought wars against each other. Thus Serbs fought Bulgarians, and
Bulgarians fought Greeks – and all three nations fought the Turks, not together, but
in competition with each other. Even the Patriarch, who should have been the
symbol of Orthodox unity, tended to further Greek interests at the expense of those
of his Slav parishioners. This encouraged anti-clerical tendencies among the Slav
nationalists.
Thus Payne writes: “With the advent of nationalism in the late eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries in Eastern Europe, which led to the eventual dissolution of the
Ottoman Empire, the various nationalities revolted not only against their Ottoman
overlords but also their clerical authorities, especially the Ecumenical Patriarch (EP).
Under the leadership of the Greek patriarch, a process of Grecification had occurred
to insure ecclesiastical unity in the millet. Instead of the use of Church Slavonic in the
Slav churches, the Greek liturgy and practice was enforced, especially in the mid- to
late nineteenth century. Additionally, the high taxes placed upon the Orthodox
people by the hierarchical authorities to insure their positions with the Sublime Porte
produced increasing anti-clericalism in the Balkan peoples. This anti-clericalism
against the Greek bishops was also rooted in the Enlightenment ideas of Western
Europe. Borrowing the Erastian model of church–state relations that developed in
Western Europe, whereby the Church was placed under the authority of the state,
East European secular nationalists, desiring their own independent churches, argued
for the creation and subjection of national churches to the political authorities. As
Aristeides Papadakis argues, ‘Significantly, one of the first steps taken by these
independent states was to separate the church within their frontiers from the
authority of Constantinople. By declaring it autocephalous, by “nationalizing” it,
they hoped to control it.’
“At the time of the development of nationalism in the Balkans, there were two
differing opinions as to the direction of the polity to succeed the Ottoman Empire.
On the one hand, many of the Phanariots believed that the Ottoman Empire
735
eventually would become Greek, allowing for the resurrection of the Byzantine
Empire. Thus, they did not support the various nationalist movements that led to the
breakup of the Ottoman Empire. Instead, they looked to its natural devolution. This
understanding was supported by the traditional Byzantine political ideology of the
oikoumene, which holds that the one empire has only one church. In a modified
position, Rigas Pheraios Vestinlis articulated an understanding of an Orthodox
commonwealth of nations in the succeeding empire, with the EP as its head.
However, the Western-educated secular nationalists contested the vision of Rigas
and what Zakynthos calls ‘neo-byzantine universalism,’ employing instead the
Enlightenment ideas of Voltaire to articulate the development of independent nation-
states with autocephalous national churches. Adopting the secular national vision of
the state with its concomitant national church led to the transmogrification of the
Orthodox understanding of the ‘local church.’
“Greek sociologist Paschalis Kitromilides argues similarly, using

Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities,’ that the national
historiographies smoothed over the antinomical relationship between
Orthodoxy and nationalism. He states: ‘It was the eventual abandonment of
the ecumenicity of Orthodoxy, and the “nationalization” of the churches,
that brought intense national conflicts into the life of the Orthodox Church
and nurtured the assumption concerning the affinity between Orthodoxy
and nationality.’ The various national histories created imagined national
communities whereby the Church’s opposition to nationalism was
dismissed and its support as a nation-building institution was promoted.
Kitromilides argues that the Church instead opposed nationalism and the
Enlightenment ideas underlying it in order to sustain its traditional
theological position of being the ‘one’ Church. However, under the
influence of secular nationalism, the Church’s position eventually changed,
assuming a nationalist position, especially in regards to the Macedonian
crisis of the late nineteenth century…” 1224
A period of anarchy followed on the assassination of Capodistrias in 1831. Then,

on May 7, 1832 Britain, France, Russia and Bavaria signed a treaty in London
guaranteeing Greece’s independence and naming the seventeen-year-old Prince Otto
von Wittelsbach (1815-67), son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, as king. “As a good
Classicist,” writes Evans, “Otto moved the capital from Nafplio to Athens, but he
imported so many of his fellow countrymen into government and administration
that his reign was popularly known in Greece as Bavarokratia, the rule of the
Bavarians. In the following years Otto was to struggle vainly to retain control over
events, though he won some support by backing Greek nationalist attempts to
enlarge Greece’s borders to as to include many Greeks who were still under Ottoman
rule, a policy that itself was hardly designed to bring stability to the region.” 1225
And yet Greece’s independence was purely nominal. The country had to bribe the
Ottomans to recognize them, and Otto remained on his throne only thanks to the
1224
Payne, op. cit.
1225
736
support of the European powers. When Byron was dying in Greece in 1824, the Duc
d’Orléans had commented “that he was dying so that one day people would be able
to eat sauerkraut at the foot of the Acropolis”. He was not far from the truth; for
Greece was now under a German Catholic king ruling through German ministers
and maintained in power by German troops.
Until King Otto came of age, three regents were appointed by the Great Powers to
rule Greece in his name: Colonel Heideck, a Philhellene and the only choice of the
Tsar but a liberal Protestant, Count Joseph von Armansperg, a Catholic but also a
Freemason, and George von Maurer, a liberal Protestant. Pressed by the British and
French envoys, von Armansperg and von Maurer worked to make Greece as
independent of Russia and the patriarchate in Constantinople as possible. Russian
demands that the king (or at any rate his children) become Orthodox, and that the
link with the patriarchate be preserved, were ignored… It was Maurer who was
entrusted with working out a new constitution for the Church. He “found an
illustrious collaborator, in the person of a Greek priest, Theocletus Pharmacides. This
Pharmacides had received his education in Europe and his thought was exceedingly
Protestant in nature; he was the obstinate enemy of the Ecumenical Patriarch and of
Russia.”1226
Helped by Pharmacides, Mauer proceeded to work out a constitution that

proposed autocephaly for the Church under a Synod of bishops, and the
subordination of the Synod to the State on the model of the Bavarian and Russian
constitutions, to the extent that "no decision of the Synod could be published or
carried into execution without the permission of the government having been
obtained".
As Frazee comments: “If ever a church was legally stripped of authority and
reduced to complete dependence on the state, Maurer’s constitution did it to the
church of Greece.”1227
In spite of the protests of the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Tsar, and the walk-out
of the archbishops of Rethymnon and Adrianople, this constitution was ratified by
thirty-six bishops on July 26, 1833. The conservative opponent of Pharmacides in the
government was Protopresbyter Constantine Oikonomos. He said that the
constitution was “from an ecclesiastical point of view invalid and non-existent and
deposed by the holy Canons. For this reason, during the seventeen years of its
existence it was unacceptable to all the Churches of the Orthodox, and no Synod was
in communion with it.”1228
Not only did the Ecumenical Patriarchate condemn the new Church: many Greeks
in Greece were also very unhappy with their situation.
In effect, the Greek Church had exchanged the uncanonical position of the
patriarchate of Constantinople under Turkish rule for the even less canonical
position of a Synod unauthorized by the patriarch and under the control of a Catholic
1226
Fr. Basile Sakkas, The Calendar Question, Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1973, p. 61.
1227
1228
Oikonomos, quoted by Bishop Macarius of Petra, 1973-2003: Thirty Years of Ecclesiastical
Developments: Trials-Captivity-Deliverance (MS, translated from the Greek).
737
king and a Protestant constitution! In addition to this, all monasteries with fewer
than six monks were dissolved (425 out of 500, according to one estimate, 600
according to another), and heavy taxes imposed on the remaining monasteries. And
very little money was given to a Church which had lost six to seven thousand clergy
in the war, and whose remaining clergy had an abysmally low standard of education.
Among the westernising reforms envisaged at this time was the introduction of
the new, Gregorian calendar. Thus Cosmas Flammiatos wrote: “First of all they were
trying in many ways to introduce into the Orthodox States the so-called new
calendar of the West, according to which they will jump ahead 12 days [now 13], so
that when we have the first of the month they will be counting 13 [now 14]. Through
this innovation they hope to confuse and overthrow the feastdays and introduce
other innovations.”1229
And again: “The purpose of this seminary in Halki of Constantinople which has
recently been established with cunning effort, is, among other things, to taint all the
future Patriarchs and, in general, all the hierarchy of the East in accordance with the
spirit of corruption and error, through the proselytism of the English, so that one
day, by a resolution of an ‘ecumenical council’ the abolition of Orthodoxy and the
introduction of the Luthero-Calvinist heresy may be decreed; at the same time all the
other schools train thousands and myriads of likeminded individuals and
confederates among the clergy, the teachers and lay people from among the
Orthodox youth.”
For his defence of Orthodoxy, Cosmas was imprisoned together with 150 monks
of the Mega Spilaion monastery. The monks were released, but Cosmas died in
prison through poisoning.1230
In 1843 Greece experienced a liberal revolution “when a conspiracy of leading

civilian politicians and army veterans of the War of Independence in the 1820s staged
a bloodless coup against the ‘Bavarocracy’ of German officials brought in by King
Otto when he had been imposed on the country by the Great Powers in 1832.
Storming out of their barracks, the soldiers gathered before Otto’s palace window,
shouting ‘Long Live the Constitution!’ Reluctantly, the king yielded, appointing one
of the leading conspirators, Andreas Metaxas (1790-1860), Prime Minister in what
was now a constitutional monarchy with a restored legislative assembly elected by
universal male suffrage. Otto never fully accepted the Constitution, and his
continued intrigues against it, combined with his failure to produce an heir,
eventually led to another conspiracy that overthrew him in 1863. Told to accept this
fait accompli by Britain and France, who had called the shots in Greece throughout
his reign, Otto went back to Munich, where he would regularly appear in the
Bavarian Court in traditional Greek dress until his death in 1867…”1231
1229
Flammiatos, cited in Monk Augustine, “To imerologiakon skhisma apo istorikis kai kanonikis
apopseos exetazomenou” (The calendar schism from an historical and canonical point of view), Agios
Agathangelos Esphigmenitis, 129, January-February, 1992, p. 12 (in Greek).
1230
“A Biographical Note concerning Cosmas Flamiatos”, Orthodox Christian Witness, vol. XVIII, № 30
(833), March 18/31, 1985.
1231
738
In 1852 the schism between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Free
Greek Church was healed. But there was no sign that the Greeks (on either
side) had fully understood the cause of the schism - the evil doctrine of
revolutionary nationalism. To this day, March 25 is a national holiday in
Greece; those who died in the revolution are "ethnomartyrs" (a term
unknown to the Holy Fathers); and the "great idea", while watered down to
correspond to the realities of modern Greece's small-power status, remains
a potent psychological force...
The question that arose after 1832 was: who were the Greeks?
“Although,” as Roderick Beaton writes, “just about all the citizens of the
kingdom with the exception of the king and his advisers who came from
Bavaria, were united by the Greek language and the Orthodox religion,
many more co-religionists and Greek speakers lived beyond its boundaries,
in territories still under the control of the Ottomans. Since a state now
existed, and the very concept of European statehood had previously been
foreign to traditional Greek concepts of themselves, it followed that in
order to live up convincingly to that concept, the Greek state would have to
include all the Greeks. Greek irredentism is therefore as old as the Greek
state, a logical consequence of the Romantic concept of nationhood used to
define that state from the beginning.
“The inescapable requirement for the state to incorporate all its

‘nationals’ within its boundaries in order to justify its own self-definition,
was first articulated in a famous speech to the Constituent Assembly in
Athens in January 1844 by Ioannis Kolettis, a veteran strategist of the war
of independence and soon to become prime minister: ‘Greece is
geographically placed at the centre of Europe, between East and West, her
destiny in decline [i.e. the destiny of ancient Greece] to spread light to the
West, but in her rebirth in the East. The former task our forefathers
achieved, the latter falls to us. In the spirit of this oath [i.e. to liberate
Greece] and of this great idea I have consistently seen the nation’s
representatives gathered here to decide the fate not only of Greece, but of
he Greek race.’…” 1232
In the same speech Kolettis went on to say: "The kingdom of Greece is not
Greece; it is only a part, the smallest and poorest, of Greece. The Greek is not only he
who inhabits the kingdom, but also he who lives in Janina, or Thessaloniki, or Serea,
or Adrianople, or Constantinople, or Trebizond, or Crete, or Samos, or any other
country of the Greek history or race. There are two great centers of Hellenism, Athens
and Constantinople. Athens is only the capital of the kingdom; Constantinople is
the great capital, the City, I Polis, the attraction and the hope of all the
Hellenes." 1233
1232
Beaton, “Romanticism in Greece”, in Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich, Romanticism in National
Context, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 95.
1233
Kolettis, in Glenny, op. cit. Italics mine (V.M.).
739
So the revolutionary aim of the new nationalism was to unite
Constantinople and Greek-speaking Anatolia – and perhaps even the whole
of the territory formerly ruled by Alexander the Great and the Byzantine
autocrats! - to the Kingdom of Greece, although Athens and Constantinople
were disunited not only politically but also ecclesiastically. Fortunately,
the ecclesiastical schism, as we have seen, was healed in 1852. However,
the political schism was never healed because the revolution failed
disastrously during the second Greek revolution in 1922. The vast majority
of Anatolian Greeks were indeed united with their Free Greek cousins, but
only through an exchange of populations in 1922-23. Even after the collapse
of the Ottoman empire, Constantinople and Anatolia remained in Turkish
hands…
Sir Steven Runciman writes: "Throughout the nineteenth century, after

the close of the Greek War of Independence, the Greeks within the Ottoman
Empire had been in an equivocal position. Right up to the end of the Balkan
Wars in 1913 they were far more numerous than their fellow-Greeks living
within the boundaries of the Kingdom of Greece, and on average more
wealthy. Some of them still took service under the Sultan. Turkish
government finances were still largely administered by Greeks. There were
Greeks in the Turkish diplomatic service, such as Musurus Pasha, for many
years Ottoman Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Such men served
their master loyally; but they were always conscious of the free Greek state,
whose interests often ran counter to his. Under the easygoing rule of
Sultans Abdul Medjit and Abdul Azis, in the middle of the century, no
great difficulties arose. But the Islamic reaction under Abdul Hamit led to
renewed suspicion of the Greeks, which was enhanced by the Cretan
question and the war, disastrous for Greece, of 1897. The Young Turks who
dethroned Abdul Hamit shared his dislike of the Christians, which the
Balkan War seemed to justify. Participation by Greeks in Turkish
administrative affairs declined and eventually was ended.
"For the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople the position throughout

the century was particularly difficult. He was a Greek but he was not a
citizen of Greece. By the oath that he took on his appointment he undertook
to be loyal to the Sultan, even though the Sultan might be at war with the
Kingdom of Greece. His flock, envious of the freedom of the Greeks of the
Kingdom, longed to be united with them; but he could not lawfully
encourage their longing. The dilemma that faced Gregory V in the spring of
1821 was shared, though in a less acute form, by all his successors. He no
longer had any authority over the Greeks of Greece. Hardly had the
Kingdom been established before its Church insisted on complete
autonomy [i.e. autocephaly] under the Archbishop of Athens. It was to
Athens, to the King of Greece, that the Greeks in Turkey now looked for the
fulfilment of their aspirations. Had the Christian Empire been restored at
Constantinople the Patriarch would indeed have lost much of his
administrative powers; but he would have lost them gladly; for the
Emperor would have been at hand to advise and admonish, and he would
have enjoyed the protection of a Christian government. But as it was, he
740
was left to administer, in a worsening atmosphere and with decreasing
authority, a community whose sentimental allegiance was given
increasingly to a monarch who lived far away, with whom he could not
publicly associate himself, and whose kingdom was too small and poor to
rescue him in times of peril. In the past the Russian Tsar had been cast by
many of the Greeks in the role of saviour. That had had its advantages; for,
though the Tsar continually let his Greek clients down, he was at least a
powerful figure whom the Turks regarded with awe. Moreover he did not
interfere with the Greeks' allegiance to their Patriarch. Whatever Russian
ambitions might be, the Greeks had no intention of ending as Russian
subjects. As it was, the emergence of an independent Greece lessened
Russian sympathy. Greek politicians ingeniously played off Britain and
France against Russia, and against each other and Russia found it more
profitable to give her patronage to Bulgaria: which was not to the liking of
the Greeks.
"We may regret that the Patriarchate was not inspired to alter its role. It
was, after all, the Oecumenical [i.e. Universal] Patriarchate. Was it not its
duty to emerge as leader of the Orthodox Oecumene? The Greeks were not
alone in achieving independence in the nineteenth century. The Serbs, the
Roumanians, and, later, the Bulgarians all threw off the Ottoman yoke. All
of them were alive with nationalistic ardour. Could not the Patriarchate
have become a rallying force for the Orthodox world, and so have checked
the centrifugal tendencies of Balkan nationalism?
"The opportunity was lost. The Patriarchate remained Greek rather than
oecumenical. We cannot blame the Patriarchs. They were Greeks, reared in the
Hellene tradition of which the Orthodox Church was the guardian and from which
it derived much of its strength. Moreover in the atmosphere of the nineteenth
century internationalism was regarded as an instrument of tyranny and reaction.
But the Patriarchate erred too far in the other direction. Its fierce and fruitless
attempt to keep the Bulgarian Church in subjection to Greek hierarchs, in the 1860s,
did it no good and only increased bitterness. On Mount Athos, whose communities
owed much to the lavish, if not disinterested, generosity of the Russian Tsars, the
feuds between the Greek and Slav monasteries were far from edifying. This record
of nationalism was to endanger the very existence of the Patriarchate in the dark
days that followed 1922." 1234
The philhellene Russian diplomat C.N. Leontiev wrote in the 1880s: "The
movement of contemporary political nationalism is nothing other than the
spread of cosmopolitan democratization with the difference only in the
methods. There has been no creativity; the new Hellenes have not been able
to think up anything in the sphere of higher interests except a reverent
imitation of progressive-democratic Europe. As soon as the privileged Turks,
who represented something like a foreign aristocracy among the Greeks,
had removed themselves, nothing was found except the most complete
plutocratic and grammatocratic egalitarianism. When a people does not have
1234
Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity , Cambridge University Press, 1968, pp. 407-
410.
741
its own privileged, more or less immobile classes, the richest and most
educated of the citizens must, of course, gain the superiority over the
others. Therefore in an egalitarian-liberal order a very mobile plutocracy
and grammatocracy having no traditions or heritage inevitably develop. At
that time [1821-32] the new Greece could not produce a king of their own
blood, to such a degree did her leaders, the heroes of national liberty, suffer
from demagogic jealousy! It, this new Greece, could not even produce a
president of her native Greek blood, Count Kapodistrias, without soon killing
him."
According to Leontiev, the Greek revolution, which continued

throughout the nineteenth century, represented a new kind of Orthodox
nationalism, a nationalism influenced by the ideas of the French revolution
that did not, as in earlier centuries, seek to strengthen national feeling for
the sake of the faith, but rather used religious feeling for the sake of the nation.
This was the reason why, in spite of the fact that the clergy played such a
prominent role in the Greek revolution, their influence fell sharply after the
revolution in those areas liberated from the Turks. "The Greek clergy
complain that in Athens religion is in decline (that is, the main factor
insulating [the Greeks] from the West has weakened), and makes itself felt
much more in Constantinople than in Athens, and in general more under
the Turks than in pure Hellas." 1235
"The religious idea (Orthodoxy) was taken by the Greek movement only
as an aid. There were no systematic persecutions of Orthodoxy itself in
Turkey; but there did exist very powerful and crude civil offences and
restrictions for people not of the Mohammedan confession. It is understandable
that in such a situation it was easy not to separate faith from race. It was
even natural to expect that the freedom of the race would draw in after it the
exaltation of the Church and the strengthening of the clergy through the growth
of faith in the flock; for powerful faith in the flock always has as its
consequence love for the clergy, even if it is very inadequate. With a strong
faith (it doesn't matter of what kind, whether unsophisticated and simple
in heart or conscious and highly developed) mystical feeling both precedes
moral feeling and, so to speak, crowns it. It, this mystical feeling, is
considered the most important, and for that reason a flock with living faith is
always more condescending also to the vices of its clergy than a flock that
is indifferent. A strongly believing flock is always ready with joy to
1235
Leontiev, "Natsional'naia politika kak orudie vsemirnoj revoliutsii" (National
Politics as a Weapon of Universal Revolution), in Vostok, Rossia i Slavianstvo, op. cit., pp.
513, 514-515. However, religious zeal had by no means been banished from the Free
Church of Greece. Thus “in 1901 there were riots in Athens over a new translation of the
New Testament into demotic Greek, carried out in London and published in Athens by
the daily newspaper, Acropolis. After it was condemned as blasphemous by the
Patriarchate, students took to the streets, trashed the paper’s offices, and on 8 November
held a mass demonstration outside the Temple of Zeus to demand the excommunication
of the translators. The Prime Minister called in the army, who shot eight demonstrators
dead and wounded another seventy. In the ensuing furore he was forced to resign, along
with the Metropolitan, who had approved the translation.” (Richard Evans, The Pursuit
of Power. Europe 1815-1914, London: Penguin, 2017, p. 462).
742
increase the rights, privileges and power of the clergy and willingly
submits to it even in not purely ecclesiastical affairs.
"In those times, when the peoples being freed from a foreign yoke were
led by leaders who had not experienced the 'winds' of the eighteenth
century, the emancipation of nations did not bring with it a weakening of
the influence of the clergy and religion itself, but even had the opposite
effect: it strengthened both the one and the other. In Russian history, for
example, we see that from the time of Demetrius Donskoj and until Peter I
the significance, even the political significance of the clergy was constantly
growing, and Orthodoxy itself was becoming stronger and stronger, was
spreading, and entering more and more deeply into the flesh and blood of
the Russian nation. The liberation of the Russian nation from the Tatar
yoke did not bring with it either the withdrawal of the clergy from the
political sphere or a lessening of its weight and influence or religious
indifference in the higher classes or cosmopolitanism in morals and
customs. The demands of Russian national emancipation in the time of St.
Sergius of Radonezh and Prince Ivan Vasilievich III were not combined in the
souls of the people's leaders with those ideals and ideas with which national
patriotism has been yoked in the nineteenth century in the minds of contemporary
leaders. What seemed important then were the rights of the faith, the rights
of religion, the rights of God; the rights of that which Vladimir Soloviev so
successfully called God's power.
"In the nineteenth century what was thought to be important first of all
was the rights of man, the rights of the popular mob, the rights of the people's
power. That is the difference."
Leontiev concludes: " Now (after the proclamation of 'the rights of man')
every union, every expulsion, every purification of the race from outside
admixtures gives only cosmopolitan results [by which he means
'democratization within and assimilation (with other countries) without'].
"Then, when nationalism had in mind not so much itself as the interests
of religion, the aristocracy, the monarch, etc., then it involuntarily produced
itself. And whole nations and individual people at that time became more
varied, more original and more powerful.
"Now, when nationalism seeks to liberate and form itself, to group people
not in the name of the various, but interrelated interests of religion, the
monarchy and privileged classes, but in the name of the unity and freedom
of the race itself, the result turns out everywhere to be more or less uniformly
democratic. All nations and all people are becoming more and more similar
and as a consequence more and more spiritually poor.
"In our time political, state nationalism is becoming the destroyer of

cultural, life-style nationalism." 1236
1236
Leontiev, "Plody natsional'nykh dvizhenij na pravoslavnom Vostoke", op. cit., pp.
536-537, 538.
743
744
88. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (10) SERBIA AND
MONTENEGRO
As we have seen, a major idea underpinning the varieties of Balkan nationalist

ideologies was that the national state had the right to extend its boundaries to
include everyone of the same race within its territory, even if these ethnic enclaves
had for centuries belonged to other states. Since no state was ethnically
homogeneous, and since almost every nation had ethnic enclaves in more than one
state, this was a recipe for almost permanent nationalist warfare and revolution, and
especially in the bewildering patchwork of interwoven national enclaves that
constituted the Balkans. The most consistent and determined advocates of this idea
were the Serbs…
As we have seen, the Greek revolution was to a large extent inspired by

the ideology of the French revolution. This was not the case in Serbia,
which had very few western-educated intellectuals infected by this
ideology. But in both countries’ liberation the Orthodox Church played an
important role.
There were two Serbian Orthodox Churches: the metropolitanate of

Karlovtsy in Slavonia, founded in 1713, which by the end of the nineteenth
century had six dioceses with about a million faithful 1237 , and the Peć
patriarchate, which was abolished by the Ecumenical Patriarch Samuel in
1766, but which recovered its autocephaly in the course of the
revolution. 1238 In spite of this administrative division, and foreign
oppression, the Serbian Church preserved the fire of faith in the people.
"For the Cross and Golden Freedom" was the battle-cry.
In 1791 Austria-Hungary ended its war with Turkey at the Treaty of

Sistovo. Simon Winder writes: “A critical element at Sistov, now the
Danubian Bulgarian town of Svishtov, was the decision to hand over
Belgrade to the Turks. This gesture was designed to be generous enough to
ensure that fighting could come to an end and troops moved to France, but
it had head-spinning and quite unintended consequences. If Belgrade had
been part of the new Habsburg Empire as it emerged during the following
decade, then not only would Vienna have controlled the only major hub in
the northern Balkans, but the Serbs would have become an important group
in the Empire much like the Czechs, rather than just a small element in
parts of Hungary. The history of the nineteenth century then takes a
dazzlingly different turn. As it was, the Serbs soon revolted and pushed the
Turks out of Belgrade on their own. This formed the kernel of an
1237
Adrian Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church, London: Catholic Truth Society, 1920,
p. 308.
1238
The Serbian Peć Patriarchate was founded as an autocephalous archiepiscopate by
St. Savva in 1218-19, raised to the rank of a patriarchate with its see in Pe ć in 1375, and
abolished in 1766. It should not be confused with the Bulgarian Ochrid archiepiscopate,
which was founded by Emperor John Tsimiskes in Preslava in 971, moved to Sophia,
Voden, Prespa and finally Ochrid, and was abolished on January 16, 1767.
745
independent state that would never have been allowed to exist if it had still
been under Habsburg rule.” 1239
But the Serbian revolution was hindered by the rivalry of its two main
peasant leaders, Karadjordje and Obrenovi ć.
“Black George” Karadjordje took command of the first uprising in 1804,

which paradoxically was fought by the Serbian peasants in the name of the
Sultan against four Dahi, local Muslim lords who had rebelled against the
Sultan's authority and had begun to oppress the Serbian peasantry. As a
result of Karadjordje's victories over the Dahi, he was able to extract some
concessions from the Sultan for the Serbian pashalik. But the Serbs could not
hope to liberate their nation fully and permanently from the Ottomans
without the active support of the Russians, who in 1806 declared war on
the Porte. However, in 1812, the Russian Tsar Alexander was forced to sign
the Treaty of Bucharest with the Sultan and withdraw his troops from the
Balkan to face Napoleon's Great Army in Russia. And so in 1813 the
Ottomans were free to invade Serbia, Karadjordje was forced to flee, and
his rival Obrenović took over the leadership of the liberation movement.
Several Serbs were martyred at this time, including the holy New Martyr Paisius
who was igumen of the Annunciation monastery in Trnava near Cacak. After the
collapse of Karageorge's revolt in 1813, the Turks began a reign of terror against the
Serbs. Disease also swept the area because of the many bodies left unburied. The
people attempted another revolt under Hadj-Prodan Gligorijevic, and the monks of
Trnava became involved in it. The rebellion took place on the Feast of the Cross
(September 14), but it was crushed by the Turks. Many people were captured, and
some were executed on the spot as a warning to others. Some of the prisoners were
sent to Suleiman Pasha in Belgrade, among whom were Sts Paisius and Avakum. The
holy deacon Avakum sang "God is with us" (from Compline) in the prison cell, while
St Paisius prayed. The Turks offered to free anyone who would convert to Islam.
Some of the prisoners agreed to this, but not St Paisius, who was taken from prison
and forced to carry a stake to the place of execution. He was impaled, and the stake
was set into the ground. The holy martyr exclaimed, "Glory to God." Then the vizier
clapped his hands to signal his soldiers to draw their swords and begin killing some
of the other prisoners. Forty-eight people were killed, and their bodies were raised
up on posts. After suffering for some time, St Paisius surrendered his soul to God,
thereby obtaining the crown of martyrdom on December 17, 1814.
"In 1817," writes Tim Judah, "Karadjordje slipped back into Serbia.
Sensing danger for both himself and his plans, Obrenovi ć sent his agents
who murdered Karadjordje with an axe. His skinned head was stuffed and
sent to the sultan. This act was to spark off a feud between the families
which was periodically to convulse Serbian politics until 1903.
"Miloš Obrenović was as rapacious as any Turk had been in collecting

taxes. As his rule became ever more oppressive, there were seven rebellions
1239
Winder, Danubia, London: Picador, 2013, p. 286.
746
against him including three major uprisings between 1815 and 1830. In 1830
the sultan nevertheless formally accepted Miloš's hereditary princeship." 1240
Mazower writes: “The two new states [Serbia and Greece] were impoverished,
rural countries. Serbia was, in Lamartine’s words, ‘an ocean of forests’, with more
pigs than humans. Serbian intellectual life in the Habsburg lands was far more
advanced than in Belgrade. Perhaps 800,000 Greeks inhabited the new Greek
Kingdom, while more than 2 million still remained subjects of the Porte. No urban
settlement in Greece came close to matching the sophistication and wealth of
Ottoman cities such as Smyrna, Salonika and the capital itself. There were, to be sure,
impressive signs of revitalization for those who wished to look: the rapidly
expanding new towns built on modern grid patterns which replaced the old Ottoman
settlements in Athens, Patras, Tripolis and elsewhere, for example, or the neo-
classical mansions and public buildings commissioned by newly independent
government. ‘some barracks, a hospital, a prison built on the model of our own,’
wrote Blanqui from Belgrade in 1841, ‘announce the presence of an emergent
civilization.’ In fact, similar trends of town planning and European architecture were
transforming Ottoman cities as well.
“The inhabitants of the new states were as viciously divided among themselves in
peace as they had been in war. In Serbia adherents of the Karageorge and Obrenović
factions tussled for power, locals vied with the so-called ‘Germans’ (Serb immigrants
from the Habsburg lands), Turcophiles fought Russophiles. In Greece there were
similar struggles between regional factions, between supporters of the various
Powers, who each sponsored parties of their own, and between ‘autochthones’ and
‘heterochthones’. These divisions embittered politics from the start…” 1241
The early history of the Serbian princedom was not inspiring.

Karadjordje had killed his stepfather before being killed by his godfather,
and the pattern of violence continued. But "behind the drama of intrigue,
shoot-outs and murder," writes Misha Glenny, "lay a serious struggle
concerning the constitutional nature of the Serbian proto-state. Karadjordje
wanted to establish a system of monarchical centralism while his baronial
opponents were fighting for an oligarchy in which each leader would reign
supreme in his own locality. A third, weaker force was made up of
tradesmen and intellectuals from Vojvodina in the Habsburg Empire. They
argued for an independent judiciary and other institutions to curb the
power of both Karadjordje and the regional commanders. The modernizing
influence of the Vojvodina Serbs was restricted to the town of Belgrade." 1242
Gradually the monarchical idea prevailed over the oligarchical one. But
somehow the idea of the sacred person of the monarch, and the sacred
horror at the thought of regicide, never caught on in Serbia... For, as
Christopher Clark writes, “The pairing of rival dynasties, an exposed
location between the Ottoman and the Austrian empire and a markedly
undeferential political culture dominated by peasant smallholders: these
1240
Judah, The Serbs, London: Yale University Press, 1997, pp. 51-52, 52-54.
Mazower, op. cit., p. 95.
1241
1242
Glenny, op. cit., p. 17.
747
factors in combination ensured that monarchy remained an embattled
institution. It is striking how few of the nineteenth-century Serbian regents
died on the throne of natural causes. The principality’s founder, Prince
Miloš Obrenović, was a brutal autocrat whose reign was scarred by
frequent rebellions. In the summer of 1839, Miloš abdicated in favour of his
elder son, Milan, who was so ill with the measles that he was still unaware
of his elevation when he died thirteen days later. The reign of the younger
son, Mihailo, came to a premature halt when he was deposed by a rebellion
in 1842, making way for the installation of a Karadjordjevi ć – none other
than Alexandar, the son of ‘Black George’. But in 1858, Alexandar, too, was
forced to abdicate, to be succeeded by Mihailo, who returned to the throne
in 1860. Mihailo was no more popular during his second reign than he had
been during the first; eight years later he was assassinated, together with a
female cousin, in a plot that may have been supported by the
Karadjordjević clan.” 1243
In 1844 Ilija Garašanin, Minister of Internal Affairs under Prince Alexander,

published his Načertanije, or "Blueprint", “a Programme for the National and Foreign
Policy of Serbia”. “Garašanin's project,” writes Misha Glenny, “was informed by a
historicist approach, recalling the supposed halcyon days of Tsar Dušan's medieval
Serbian empire, and by a linguistic-cultural criterion. The sentiment underlying the
Načertanije seemed to imply that where there was any doubt, it could be assumed
that a south Slav was a Serb, whether he knew it or not.”1244
The Načertanije, according to John Etty, “was the main development in

Serbian nationalism. Though concerned about upsetting them, this secret
document identified Turkey and Austria-Hungary as obstacles to Serbian
greatness and detailed, in order of ease of acquisition, the annexation of all
Serbian-speaking regions. Although implementation was delayed by
domestic disruption, such expansionist aspirations were significant. Before
1890, Nikolai Pašič (future Prime Minister) referred to the Načertanije when
he explained that ‘the Serbs strive for the unification of all Serb tribes on
the basis of tradition, memory and the historical past of the Serb race.’” 1245
“It would be difficult,” writes Clark, “to overstate the influence of this
document on generations of Serb politicians and patriots; in time it became
the Magna Carta of Serb nationalism. Garašanin opened his memorandum
with the observation that Serbia is ‘small, but must not remain in this
condition’. The first commandment of Serbian policy, he argued, must be
the ‘principle of national unity’; by which he meant the unification of all
Serbs within the boundaries of a Serbian state. ‘Where a Serb dwells, that is
Serbia.’ The historical template for this expansive vision of Serbian
statehood was the medieval empire of Stephan Dušan, a vast swathe of
territory encompassing most of the present-day Serbian republic, along
1243
Clark, The Sleepwalkers. How Europe Went to War in 1914, London: Penguin, 2013, p. 6.
1244
Misha Glenny, The Balkans, 1804-1999, London: Granta Books, 2000, p. 46.
1245
Etty, “Serbian Nationalism and the Great War”, History Today, February 27, 2014.
748
with the entirety of present-day Albania, most of Macedonia, and all of
Central and Southern Greece, but not Bosnia, interestingly enough.
“Tsar Dušan’s empire had supposedly collapsed after a defeat at the

hands of the Turks on Kosovo Field on 28 June 1389. But this setback,
Garašanin argued, had not undermined the Serbian state’s legitimacy; it
had merely interrupted its historical existence. The ‘restoration’ of a
Greater Serbia unifying all Serbs was thus no innovation, but the
expression of an ancient historical right. ‘They cannot accuse [us] of
seeking something new, unfounded, of constituting a revolution or an
upheaval, but rather everyone must acknowledge that it is politically
necessary, that it was founded in very ancient times and has its roots in the
former political and national life of the Serbs.’ Garašanin’s argument thus
exhibited that dramatic foreshortening of historical time that can
sometimes be observed in the discourses of integral nationalism; it rested,
moreover, upon the fiction that Tsar Dušan's sprawling, multi-ethnic,
composite, medieval polity would be conflated with the modern idea of a
culturally and linguistically homogeneous nation-state. Serb patriots saw
no inconsistency here, since they argued that virtually all the inhabitants of
these lands were essentially Serbs. Vuk Karad žić, architect of the modern
Serbo-Croat literary language and author of a famous nationalist tract, Srbi
svi i svuda (Serbs all and everywhere, published in 1836), spoke of a nation
of 5 million Serbs speaking the ‘Serbian language’ and scattered from
Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Banat of Temesvar (eastern Hungary, now
in western Romania), the Bačka (a region extending from northern Serbia
into southern Hungary), Croatia, Dalmatia and the Adriatic coast from
Trieste to northern Albania. Of course, there were some in these lands,
Karadžić conceded (he was referring in particular to the Croats), ‘who still
find it difficult to call themselves Serbs, but it seems likely that they will
gradually become used to it.’
“The unification programme committed the Serbian polity, as Garašanin

knew, to a long struggle with the two great land empires, the Ottoman and
the Austrian, whose dominions encroached on the Greater Serbs of the
nationalist imagination. In 1844, the Ottoman Empire still controlled most
of the Balkan peninsula. ‘Serbia must constantly strive to break stone after
stone of the façade of the Turkish State and absorb them into itself, so that
it can use this good material on the good old foundations of the Serbian
Empire to build and establish a great new Serbian state. Austria, too, was
destined to be a foe. In Hungary, Croatia-Slavonia and Istria-Dalmatia
there were Serbs (not to mention many Croats who had not yet embraced
Serbdom) supposedly awaiting liberation from Habsburg rule and
unification under the umbreall of the Belgrade state.
“Until 1918, when many of its objectives were met, Garašanin’s

memorandum remained the key policy blueprint for Serbia’s rulers, while
its precepts were broadcast to the population at large through a drip-feed
of nationalist propaganda partly coordinated from Belgrade and partly
driven by patriotic networks within the press. The Greater Serbian vision
749
was not just a question of government policy, however, or even of
propaganda. It was woven deeply into the culture and identity of the Serbs.
The memory of Dušan's empire resonated within the extraordinarily vivid
tradition of Serbian popular epic songs. These were long ballads, often
sung to the melancholy accompaniment of the one-stringed gusla, in which
singers and listeners relived the great archetypal moments of Serbian
history. In villages and markets across the Serbian lands, these songs
established a remarkably intimate linkage between poetry, history and
identity. An esrly observer of this was the German historian Leopold von
Ranke, who noted in his history of Serbia, published in 1829, that ‘the
history of the nation, developed by its poetry, has through it been
converted into a national property, and is thus preserved in the memory of
the people’…
“The commitment to the redemption of ‘lost’ Serbian lands, coupled

with the predicaments of an exposed location between two land empires,
endowed the Serbian foreign policy of the Serbian state with a number of
distinct features. The first of these was an indeterminacy of geographical
focus. The commitment in principle to a Greater Serbia was one thing, but
where exactly should the process of redemption begin? In the Vojvodina,
within the Kingdom of Hungary? In Ottoman Kosovo, known as ‘Old
Serbia’? In Bosnia, which had never been part of Dušan's empire but
contained a substantial population of Serbs? Or in Macedonia to the south,
still under Ottoman rule? The mismatch between the visionary objective of
‘unification’ and the meager financial and military resources available to
the Serbian state meant that Belgrade policy makers had no choice but to
respond opportunistically to rapidly changing conditions on the Balkan
peninsula. As a result, the orientation of Serbian foreign policy between
1844 and 1914 swung like a compass needle from one point on the state’s
periphery to another. The logic of these oscillations was as often as not
reactive. In 1848, when Serbs in the Vojvodina rose up against the
Magyarizing policies of the Hungarian revolutionary government,
Garašanin assisted them with supplies and volunteer forces from the
principality of Serbia. In 1875, all eyes were on Herzegovina, where the
Serbs had risen in revolt against the Ottomans – among those who rushed
to the scene of that struggle were [the future Prime Minister] Paši ć and the
military commander and future King Petar Karadjordjevi ć, who fought
there under an alias. After 1901, following an abortive local uprising
against the Turks, there was intensified interest in liberating the Serbs of
Ottoman Macedonia. In 1908, when the Austrians formally annexed Bosnia
and Herzegovina (having held them under military occupation since 1878),
the annexed areas shot to the top of the agenda. In 1912 and 1913, however,
Macedonia was once again the first priority.
“Serbian foreign policy had to struggle with the discrepancy between

the visionary nationalism that suffused the country’s political culture and
the complex ethnopolitical realities of the Balkans. Kosovo was at the
centre of the Serbian mythscape, but it was not, in ethnic terms, an
unequivocally Serbian territory. Muslim Albanian speakers had been in the
750
majority there since at least the eighteenth century. Many of the Serbs Vuk
Karadžić counted in Dalmatia and Istria were in fact Croats, who had no
wish to join a greater Serbian state. Bosnia, which had historically never
been part of Serbia, contained many Serbs (they constitute 43 per cent of
the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, when the two provinces
were occupied by Austria-Hungary) but it also contained Catholic Croats
(about 20 per cent) and Bosnian Muslims (about 33 per cent). (The survival
of a substantial Muslim minority was one of the distinctive features of
Bosnia – in Serbia itself, the Muslim communities had for the most part
been harassed into emigration, deported or killed during the long struggle
for independence.)” 1246
The Serbs would need allies in their struggle, and Garašanin looked to
Russia as a likely patron. But Nicholas I's foreign minister Nesselrode was
not interested in the idea of a Greater Serbia. For that would inevitably
drag Russia into yet another war with the Ottoman empire...
Serbian nationalism flourished especially in Montenegro, a tiny Serbian

principality on the Adriatic coat that was de jure part of the Ottoman Empire, but de
facto, as Norman Russell writes, “autonomous under the vague suzerainty of Russia.
Since the end of the seventeenth century Montenegro had been ruled by a member of
the Petrovich family, who was also the bishop, and who passed on the succession to
a nephew or cousin.”1247 Its history shows that Tennyson’s calling it “a rough rock-
throne of freedom” was well-merited.
Probably the greatest of the Montenegrin Prince-Bishops was Petar I, who became
a monk at the age of twelve and metropolitan at the age of twenty-three. “He ruled
almost half a century, from 1782 to 1830. Petar I was a wise bishop and a great
military commander who won many crucial victories against the Ottomans,
including at Martinici and Krusi in 1796. With these victories, Petar I liberated and
consolidated control over the Highlands that had been the focus of constant warfare,
and also strengthened bonds with the Bay of Kotor, and consequently the aim to
expand into the southern Adriatic coast.
“In 1806, as French Emperor Napoleon advanced toward the Bay of Kotor,

Montenegro, aided by several Russian battalions and a fleet of Dmitry Senyavin,
went to war against the invading French forces. Undefeated in Europe, Napoleon's
army was however forced to withdraw after defeats at Cavtat and at Herceg-Novi.
In 1807, the Russian–French treaty ceded the Bay to France. The peace lasted less
than seven years; in 1813, the Montenegrin army, with ammunition support from
Russia and Britain, liberated the Bay from the French. An assembly held in
Dobrota resolved to unite the Bay of Kotor with Montenegro. But at the Congress of
Vienna, with Russian consent, the Bay was instead granted to Austria. In 1820, to the
north of Montenegro, the Morača won a major battle against an Ottoman force from
Bosnia.
Clark, The Sleepwalkers. How Europe Went to War in 1914, London: Penguin, 2013, pp. 21-25.
1246
Norman Russell, review of Zika Prvulovich, Prince-Bishop Njegosh’s Religious Philosophy, in

1247
Sobornost’, vol. 7, no. 2, 1985, p. 61.

751
“During his long rule, Petar strengthened the state by uniting the often quarreling
tribes, consolidating his control over Montenegrin lands, and introducing the first
laws in Montenegro. He had unquestioned moral authority strengthened by his
military successes. His rule prepared Montenegro for the subsequent introduction of
modern institutions of the state: taxes, schools and larger commercial enterprises.
When he died, he was by popular sentiment proclaimed a saint.” 1248
St. Petar always lived in a narrow monastic cell. His incorrupt relics and many
healings bear witness to his sanctity.1249
He died in 1830 and was succeeded by his nephew, Petar Petrovic

Njegoš, who was then only seventeen years old. “He was nevertheless
immediately tonsured and three years later sent to Russia to be made a
bishop. He had not had any inclination towards the ecclesiastical life but
accepted the burden as part of his duty to his people.
“He was a good and enlightened ruler, attempting in very different

circumstances to create the rudiments of a modern state. On his return from
Russia to Centinje, the capital, he opened the first school. He built cisterns
and a windmill, and opened a gunpowder works. The last project must
have commended itself to the warlike people, but when he attempted to
introduce a modest degree of taxation they rebelled. The exploitation of the
situation by Austria and Turkey was only one of the many serious
problems which continually confronted him. Njegosh was acutely conscious
of his lonely isolation. ‘I am a ruler among barbarians and a barbarian
among rulers,’ he once exclaimed. Under the strain of single-handed
government his health broke down, and he died in 1851 at the age of
thirty-eight.” 1250 .
In view of the Serbian wars of the 1990s, it is important to note the long-
term influence of Njegoš’s poem, The Mountain Wreath (1847), which
“glorified the mythical tyrant-slayer and national martyr Miloš Obili ć and
called for the renewal of the struggle against alien rule. The Mountain
Wreath entered the Serb national canon and has stayed there ever since.” 1251
The poem glorifies the mass slaughter of Muslims who refuse to convert
to Christianity. Thus the principal character, Vladyka Danilo, says:
The blasphemers of Christ's Name
We will baptize with water or with blood!
We'll drive the plague out of the pen!
Let the son of horror ring forth,
A true altar on a blood-stained rock!
1248
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince-Bishopric_of_Montenegro
1249
See https://oca.org/saints/lives/2015/10/18/108067-st-peter-of-cetinje.
1250
1251
Clark, op. cit., p. 24.
752
In another poem Njegoš writes that "God's dearest sacrifice is a boiling
stream of tyrant's blood". 1252 A defensive armed struggle against the infidel
for the sake of Christ can be a good deed. But there is little that is Christian
here.
Even Bishop Nikolai Velimirović, an admirer of Njegoš, had to admit:

"Njegoš's Christology is almost rudimentary. No Christian priest has ever
said less about Christ than this metropolitan from Cetinje." 1253 Some of his
ideas, such as that of the pre-existent celestial Adam appear to be
gnostic. 1254
This bloodthirsty and only superficially Christian tradition was

continued by such figures as the poet Vuk Karad žić, who called the Serbs
"the greatest people on the planet" and boosted the nation's self-esteem "by
describing a culture 5,000 years old and claiming that Jesus Christ and His
apostles had been Serbs." 1255 However, it must be remembered that the truly
Christian tradition of St. Savva continued to exist alongside the
bloodthirsty one in Serbia…
In 1852, Njegoš was succeeded by his nephew Danilo, who wanted to

marry. So he “refused to be ordained bishop and turned the prince-
bishopric into an ordinary secular princedom." 1256
1252
Quotations in Anzulović, Heavenly Serbia, London and New York: New York University Press,
1999, pp. 51-52, 55.
1253
Velimirović, Religija Njegoševa (The Religion of Njegoš), p. 166, quoted in Anzulovi ć,
p. 55.
1254
1255
1256
Adrian Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church , London: Catholic Truth Society, 1920,
p. 309.
753
89. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (11) ROMANIA
Romania, unlike the other Balkan Christian States, had never had a long
spell as a unified, independent State. The reign of Stephen the Great in the
fifteenth century was the nearest they ever came to it; but this brief
moment of genuine Romanian Orthodox autocracy, sandwiched between
the fall of the Byzantine autocracy and the rise of the Russian one, had been
snuffed out by the Ottoman sultans, who handed over administration of
Wallachia and Moldavia to rich Greek Phanariots from Constantinople.
From the end of the sixteenth century until 1711, Romanian rulers were
crowned by the Ecumenical Patriarch, but the Ottomans took over closer
control thereafter. As for the Church, it was under the Serbian Church in
medieval times, and under Constantinople thereafter, while its liturgy was
in Slavonic. The Romanian language was introduced in the seventeenth
century, but the Slavonic script was not changed to Latin until the end of
the nineteenth. 1257
Closer geographically to Russia than Bulgaria or Serbia, but without the

Slavic blood ties that linked those States to Russia (although there were
many Slavic words in the Romanian language), Romania finally regained
her unity and independence as a result, first, of Russia's gradual weakening
of Ottoman power in a series of wars (between 1711 and 1829, seven major
wars were fought on Romanian territory), and then of the power vacuum
created by Russia's defeat in the Crimean War.
Dan Ioan Mure șan writes: “During the last Russian occupation, the Holy
Synod of the Russian Church named Gavril Bănulescu Bodoni as exarch
(1787-92, 1806-12), interfering directly in the jurisdiction of the ecumenical
patriarchate. This prelate of Romanian origin encouraged a movement of
opposition against Greek influence that led directly to the autocephaly of
the reunited Romanian Church. In 1812, after the annexation of the eastern
half of Moldavia (Bessarabia) by the Russian Empire, Bodoni became the
new metropolitan of Chișinău, developing here a Romanian cultural
politics. But all his Russian successors strove for the integration of the
diocese in the bosom of the Russian Church. One of them even confiscated
all the Romanian books in the monasteries and burnt them in an unmatched
auto-da-fé.
A movement towards Romanian independence began during the Greek

revolution of 1821. “In January 1821,” writes Glenny, “Tudor Vladimirescu,
a minor boyar and former soldier in the Russian army, led an uprising of
militiamen whose primary aim was to depose the Greek prince, the
hospodar, and banish Phanariot rule from the two Principalities, Wallachia
and Moldavia. Throughout the eighteenth century the hospodars had sucked
the cultural and economic lifeblood out of the Principalities, as illustrated
by the mutation of the Greek word kiverneo, meaning 'to govern', into its
Romanian derivative chiverniseala, which means 'to get rich'. Subordinate to
1257
Runciman, op. cit., pp. 25, 379.
754
the Porte, the hospodars administered an economic region that forced
Romania's indigenous aristocracy, the boyars, to sell a large part of their
produce to Constantinople at prices fixed below the value of the goods in
Western Europe. At a time when the Ottoman Empire's ability to harvest
declining resources was under pressure, the hospodar system, which
ensured the steady flow of annual tribute, commodities and tax revenue,
was extremely useful.
"The Vladimirescu uprising was driven by hostility to Greeks. Herein

lies a bizarre paradox: carried out by Romanians in the heart of Wallachia,
the uprising was conceived and executed as the first act of the Greek
Revolution. It was intended to soften up the Principalities' defences to
facilitate Alexander Ypsliantis's invasion from Russia into Moldavia. The
affair was planned by the Philiki Etairia whose leadership hoped it would
trigger a wave of instability throughout the Empire, leading to the eventual
liberation not of the Romanians but of the Greeks.
"Vladimirescu and Ypsilantis failed to ignite a broader revolution

because they did not receive the expected support from Russia. St.
Petersburg and Istanbul were old enemies, but Tsar Alexander was deeply
conservative and felt obliged to resist revolution wherever it occurred,
whether in Russia or in neighbouring empires. While it was legitimate to
beat the Turk on the battlefield, it was not done to subvert him from
within. Thus the first lesson from the debacle was that no revolutionary
movement in the Principalities could succeed without the backing of a
great power... The Principalities stood at the intersection of the Russian,
Austrian and Turkish empires, and acted as the last land bridge which
Russian armies had to cross into the Balkan peninsula. In the eyes of St.
Petersburg, their strategic importance among the proto-states of the
Balkans was unparalleled…
"Disillusioned with Ypsilantis and the Etairia, Vladimirescu nonetheless

found himself in control of Bucharest. Here he assumed the role of
revolutionary Prince to replace the hospodar who had been poisoned by
Vladimirescu's co-conspirators. But Vladimirescu soon found himself in
trouble with his own people. The peasants around Bucharest seized the
revolutionary moment to make their own demands, mainly to abolish the
hated feudal obligation, the clacă, which obliged the peasant to work an
unlimited number of days for his landlord every year. When the Turkish
army crossed the Danube to restore order, the Romanian landowners were
greatly relieved.
"The Turks did agree to do away with the hospodars, who had become
too unreliable. The boyars were happy to continue collecting the tribute for
the Porte while augmenting their economic power with political influence.
For the peasantry, however, a greedy Romanian oligarchy had replaced a
Greek kleptocracy. Landowners did not pay taxes, peasants did. In Greece
and Serbia, the peasants had formed the backbone of the military force that
shook Ottoman rule, and while this did not eliminate tension between the
755
emerging elites and the peasantry, it did mean that peasant interests were
not ignored. In Wallachia and Moldavia, it never entered the boyars' heads
that the peasants had any legitimate demands whatsoever…” 1258
In 1828 war broke out between Russia and Turkey, and until 1834, the
country was effectively ruled by the Russian General Pavel Dmitrievich
Kiselev. Boia writes: “Under his supervision, the boyars formulated the
first Romanian constitution, known as the ‘Réglament Organique’ [or
Regulamentul Organic (‘Organic Rules’)], which was almost identical in
Wallachia and Moldavia – another step towards unification. Kiselyov took
an interest in everything, from the condition of the peasants to the
appearance and hygiene of the towns; it was to him that Romanian society
owed the first great attempt at its systematic modernization.
“Defeated by the Russians, the Turks restored the Danube ports (Turnu,
Giurgiu and Brăila) to Wallachia, gave up their commercial monopoly with
regard to the principalities, and recognized freedom of navigation on the
Danube, all by the Treaty of Adrianople (Edirne) of 1829. All of this served
to stimulate the growth of agricultural production for export. The two
Romanian lands (and, later, Romania) came to constitute one of the
granaries of Europe. The principalities remained vassals of the Sublime
Porte, but with an increased degree of autonomy. Their rulers were elected
for life by a ‘Community Assembly’ made up of boyars 1259 – a provision
intended to put an end to political instability and Ottoman interventions,
though in fact no ruler in the period up to 1866 actually remained in power
until his death! Turkish suzerainty was complemented by Russian
‘protection’. Kiselyov’s behaviour had been excellent, but it was hard to
say how this ‘protection’ would manifest itself in the end...” 1260
There now began a very rapid westernization of the upper classes in

Romania. The Cyrillic script began to be sprinkled with Roman letters, and
in 1860 the Roman alphabet was introduced officially; borrowings from
French were so common that one in five Romanian words was French in
origin. Bucharest became, in its architecture and the style of upper class
women’s clothes, a “little Paris”.
But the worst aspect of this Westernizing process from an Orthodox

point of view was that it became a channel for revolutionary ideas.
“French revolutionary ideas”, writes Glenny, “were transmitted to

Romania more swiftly than to anywhere else in the Ottoman Empire
1258
Glenny, op. cit., pp. 58-59.
1259
The two National Assemblies were composed of 800 boyars subordinated to an
elected prince. Each Assembly comprised a legislature under the control of high-ranking
boyars - 35 in Moldavia and 42 in Wallachia, voted into office by no more than 3,000
electors in each principality. The judiciary, however, was removed from the control of
the hospodars. Although the Orthodox had a privileged position in the state and a
political say, it was closely supervised by the government, with clergy being given
salaries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulamentul_Organic0 . (V.M.)
1260
Lucian Boia, Romania, London: Redaktion, 2006, p. 76.
756
because of the close linguistic affinity between Romanian and French. The
sons of rich boyars, especially from Wallachia, were sent to study in Paris
where they quickly adopted French political culture as their own. During
the reign of the hospodars, the hitherto hereditary title of boyar had been
devalued by regulations allowing its sale. The proliferation of noble titles
created a new type of boyar, less wedded to the countryside but eager to
exercise political influence. This urban boyar became first the agent of
western ideas in the Principalities and later the backbone of the Liberal
party, just as the landowning boyar would later support the Conservatives.
"The works of Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau flooded into the private and
public libraries of the Principalities, particularly Wallachia. Boyars, intellectuals, and
merchants from Bucharest and Iaşi made the pilgrimage to Paris. The appearance of
Romanian cities was transformed over a twenty-year period from the mid-1820s.
The boyars embarked on the large-scale cultivation of wheat, which was sent up the
Danube to western markets. The barges returned loaded with clothes, furniture and
cigars. Fashion changed dramatically, as the Ottoman robes of the east were
discarded in favour of the hats and suits of St. Petersburg and Vienna. One
contemporary commentator noted in 1829 how Bucharest had been struck by 'the
disease of love'. Divorce, affairs, elopement and rape appear to have been part of the
staple culture of the Wallachian capital's nobility.
"With their awakened passion for national revival, the boyars

established the principle of joint citizenship for the people of Wallachia
and Moldavia. The idea of being Romanian, with a common heritage, was
invented in its modern form. The demand for the unification of the
Principalities was heard ever louder, especially in Bucharest where people
regarded the city as the natural centre of power in a future Romanian state.
Although dramatic, these changes affected a small proportion of society. As
the leading historian of modern Romania puts it, the boyars had listened to
only one part of the revolutionary message from France, 'the foreign policy
and the revival of nationalism, completely ignoring its democratic aspect,
social equality'.” 1261
Then came the revolution of 1848… “After the February Days, a

delegation of Romanians in Paris announced to Lamartine that Romania
demanded the right to exist. In March there was a Romanian uprising in
Jassy, which was easily put down, and on 2 May the Transylvanian
Romanians assembled in a field outside Blaj and called for greater
recognition within the Habsburg Empire. In June their fellows in Turkish-
ruled Wallachia rose under Balcescu, took Bucharest and passed a
constitution, but they were quickly put down by the Turks. Only the 150-
strong Bucharest fire brigade put up a stiff resistance. Those leaders who
did not manage to get away were incarcerated on a hulk in the Danube.
‘That boat, holy ark of a ship-wrecked people, contained its government, its
literature, its soul and its thought, and, we hope, its future!’ in the words
of Michelet. But the future looked bleak for Romania, the only hope of
1261
757
survival lay in a policy of loyalism to the Habsburgs, which was welcome
to the latter as it sought to hem in Hungarian ambitions.” 1262
As we have seen, the tsar crushed the revolution in Hungary, thereby

relieving the pressure of the Hungarian Catholics on the Romanian
Orthodox in the Hungarian province of Transylvania. But when the
Organic Regulations were burned in Bucharest, the tsar, ever the legitimist
and enemy of revolution, joined with the Sultan to occupy the Principalities
and suppress the revolution.
"A central goal of the revolutionaries had been unification of the two
Principalities, but they faced internal opposition. A broad political division
separated the Moldavian and Wallachian elites, symbolized by the different
intellectual influences in their two capitals, Ia şi and Bucharest. Among
intellectuals in the Moldavian capital, the influence of German Romantic nationalism,
especially the ideas of J.G. Herder, was paramount. Herder's work suggested that the
essence of national identity was transmitted through popular language and culture.
During the nineteenth century his theories were adopted by conservative nationalists
who believed that national identity could not be learned, but only transmitted
through blood. In contrast, the Bucharest intellectuals had imbibed the French
conception of nationhood which saw commitment to a particular culture as the central
requirement in establishing a person's national identity. (Everyone could be
considered French provided they accepted French culture - unless, of course, they had
yet to attain 'civilization', like the Algerians.) For this latter group, anyone, regardless
of origin, could join the Romanian national struggle by accepting its goals (but
Romania's Jews were excluded from this liberal embrace).
"Bucharest intellectuals, like Ion C. Brãtianu and C.A. Rosetti, who

established the revolutionary government of 1848 and would later inspire
the founding of the Liberals, were the first to advance the theory that
Romanians formed the last outpost of western culture in south-eastern
Europe. Their ethnic identity and autonomous traditions, they believed,
meant that they shared much more in common with French and English
culture than with the 'Asiatic' values of the other regions of the Ottoman
Empire." 1263
These anti-Orthodox ideas, if allowed to develop, would have been

extremely dangerous for the future of Romania, and would have torn her
away from the Orthodox Christian commonwealth. Not coincidentally,
therefore, Divine Providence arranged for foreign intervention. Thus in
1853 Tsar Nicholas occupied the Principalities in the opening stage of the
Crimean War. "The two princes of Moldavia and Wallachia were forced out
of office and fled to Vienna. The Russian authorities introduced a harsh
military regime and suppressed political organizations." 1264
1262
1263
1264
758
However, facing defeat in the Crimea, the Russians in their turn were
forced out by the Austrians and Ottomans, who occupied the country until
the end of the war. In spite of that, things turned out reasonable well for
the Romanians. For, as Barbara Jelavich writes, "primarily with French aid,
the Romanian leaders were able to secure the election of a single prince,
Alexander Cuza, for both Wallachia and Moldavia. He then united the
administrations and legislatures of the two provinces. During Cuza's reign
important reforms to improve the condition of the peasants were
introduced." 1265
Romania's greatest saint, Callinicus of Cernica, "took part in the sessions

of the Parliament of 1857, as one of the deputies representing the clergy of
Oltenia [of which he was bishop]. It was this Parliament which on 2nd
November 1857 requested that those who should inherit the throne of the
united Romanian lands should be of the Orthodox religion, and that the
language to be written and spoken in Parliament should be that which 'the
people understand'. On 12th December 1857 St. Callinicus was among those
who declared that they would not participate in further sessions of the
Parliament, until the great powers of Europe had accepted the desires of
the Romanian nation for unity and national independence. During this time
of struggle for the Romanian people he urged his clergy, through his
diocesan letters to pray in their churches 'for the union of the Romanians in
a single heart and soul'. When, on 24th January 1859, Prince Cuza was
elected as Prince of both the Romanian principalities, Moldavia and
Wallachia, St. Callinicus was one of the members of the Assembly. He was
amongst those who signed the official statement sent to Cuza, at Ia şy,
informing him that he had been elected Prince of Romania.” 1266
During the reign of this Prince, St. Callinicus was constantly at his side,
supporting his measures of reform, and dissenting only in some of his
ecclesiastical “reforms”, such as the seizure of monastic lands. Prince Cuza
for his part, as N. Iorga observes, 'knew how to honour this man of many
qualities, even though so different from his own'. Cuza honoured and
appreciated him, since he saw in him 'a true and holy man of God',
declaring that 'such another does not exist in all the world'…"
Under the saint’s influence, as Mure șan writes, Cuza “proclaimed the
autocephaly of the Romanian Church in 1865 under the presidency of a new
primate, the metropolitan of Walachia…. It has recently been proved that in
1864 Alexandru Ioan Cuza became the last Romanian prince to accept
princely unction in the ancient Byzantine rite by the ecumenical patriarch.
The prince seems then to have arrogated a series of prerogatives derived
from this ceremony, acting in some crucial instances with an authority
imitating that of a Byzantine emperor: like Nicephorus Phokas, he tried to
1265
Jelavich, History of the Balkans: vol. 2, Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press,
1983, p. 4.
1266
Patriarch Justinian of Romania, "St. Callinicus: Abbot, Bishop, Man of God", in A.M. Allchin (ed.),
The Tradition of Life: Romanian Essays in Spirituality and Theology, London: Fellowship of St. Alban and
St. Sergius, 1971, p. 15.
759
delimit the abuses of monastic property; like Justinian and Basil II, he
created an autocephalous church in opposition to the patriarchate…
“The autocephaly of the church was inscribed in the Constitution of 1866

and finally in the church law of 1872. After the proclamation of the
kingdom in 1881, the Romanian Synod itself consecrated the holy chrism in
1882. This aroused the stern opposition of Patriarch Joachim III, but his
successor Joachim IV bowed to the reality: the Synod in Constantinople
officially recognized the autocephaly by the Tomos of 25 April 1885.” 1267
For a brief moment under Prince Cuza Romania had acquired something
like that "symphony of powers" which is the only normal and Divinely
blessed form of government for an Orthodox nation. January 24, the day of
Romanian independence, became a feast of celebration in the nation’s
calendar, similar to March 21 in the Greek calendar. But compared with the
Greek revolution, the Romanian revolution was remarkably free of
bloodshed, and its outcome – a unified state with an autocephalous Church
blessed in the end by Constantinople – remarkably close to the aspirations
of the best Romanians.
However, Romania’s brief idyll under Prince Cuza was interrupted in

1866, when a group of conspirators led by Brãtianu and called "the
monstrous coalition" forced their way into Prince Cuza's bedroom and
forced him to abdicate. The revolution was underway again! Agents
scoured Europe for a western prince that would be favoured by the western
powers and came up with Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a member
of the Catholic branch of the Prussian royal family, later known as King
Carol I. The Moldavian Orthodox hierarchy protested, and for half a day
there were demonstrations in Ia şi with placards such as: ‘Revolution: Fear
Not. Hold on a Few Hours, the Russians Are Coming to Our Aid’". 1268
But the Russians didn't come, and all the great powers abstained from
intervention. Romania was “free”. However, this was not the freedom that St.
Callinicus had prayed for. Freedom from Ottoman rule - yes. Monarchy, albeit one
limited by a parliament and constitution – a qualified yes. But a Catholic monarch,
with all that that implied for the future penetration of Romania by western heresy -
1267
Mureșan, op. cit., p. 149. Only the Romanians of Bessarabia (under Russian rule) and Transylvania
(under Hungarian rule) remained outside this unity. Originally, the Karlovtsy metropolitanate in
Slavonia had had jurisdiction over the Romanians of Transylvania. However, in 1864 (or 1865) the
authorities allowed the creation of a separate Romanian Church in Hungary, the metropolitanate of
Hermannstadt (Nagy-Szeben) (Fortescue, op. cit., p. 316) And from 1873 there was also a
metropolitanate of Černovtsy with jurisdiction over all the Orthodox (mainly Serbs and Romanians) in
the Austrian lands. (Fortescue, op. cit., pp. 323-325) “In Transylvania,” writes Mureşan, “Bishop
Andrei Şaguna (1848-73) achieved the restoration of his metropolitanate in 1865, emancipating it from
Serbian jurisdiction, and established cordial relations with the Romanian Uniate Church which in 1852
had herself been released from Hungarian jurisdiction and reorganized as a metropolitanate. A
specialist of canon law and excellent manager, Şaguna issued the new Organic Rules of his
metropolitanate, founded on the autonomy of the church in respect of the state and the large
participation of the Christian laity in the affairs of the church. At the same time, the Orthodox Church
of Bukovina also acceded to the metropolitan rank (1873), almost a century after the annexation of this
ancient Moldavian province by the Habsburg Empire (1775).” (op. cit., pp. 149-150)
1268
760
no. The saint died on April 11, 1868 standing, as if there was still an important job to
be done, a vital war to be won... 1269
1269
Fr. Dumitru Staniloae, "St. Callinicus of Cernica", in Allchin, op. cit., p. 29.
761
90. THE EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS
"The failures of the Crimean war,” A.I. Sheparneva, “were connected by the
Westerners with God's punishment striking Russia for all her vices and
absurdities, by which they understood the existence in the country of serfdom
and the despotic character of the State administration. Despotism and serfdom,
as the Westerners noted, hindered the normal development of the country,
preserving its economic, political and military backwardness." 1270 The
Slavophiles disagreed about the supposed despotism of the Tsar, but they
agreed on the need to abolish serfdom.
Serfdom arose in the sixteenth century as a result of military needs. "Before

then," writes Max Hayward, peasants "had been free to leave their masters
every year, by tradition, on St. George's day in November. The introduction of
serfdom meant that the peasants were bound to the land in the same way and
for the same reasons as their masters were bound to the czar's service." 1271
The reasons were military necessity, the Tsar’s need to have soldiers to
defend his territory, which meant guaranteeing that the nobles did not shirk
their duty and the serfs did not run away from the draft… Indeed, as Dominic
Lieven writes, “The key to Russian success and Ottoman failures as great
powers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the ruthless Russian
system of serfdom and the Westernization of the elites.”1272
For "with the military character of the state," as St. Ignaty Brianchaninov,
Bishop of the Black Sea (+1867) wrote, "it was impossible for the military class
not to occupy the first place in the state. In particular in ancient and middle-
period Russia the military element absorbed and overshadowed all other
elements...
"The necessity of muzzling the self-will of the simple people and the
impossibility of having a police force in an unorganized state forced Tsar Boris
Godunov to tie the peasants to the lands. Then all the Russian peasants became
unfree...
"From the time of Alexander I views on the subject changed: the state finally
became organized, a police force consisting of officials was established
everywhere, the people began to emerge from their condition of childhood,
received new ideas, felt new needs. The nobility began to chafe at being
guardians of the peasants, the peasants - at the restrictions on their liberty, at
1270
Sheparneva, "Krymskaia vojna v osveshchenii zapadnikov" (The Crimean war as
interpreted by the Westerners), Voprosy Istorii (Questions of History), 2005 (9), p.
37).
1271
Hayward, introduction to Chloe Obolensky, The Russian Empire: A Portrait in
Photographs, London: Jonathan Cape, 1980, p. 13.
1272
Lieven, Towards the Flame. Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia, London:
Allen Lane, 2015, p. 49. The westernization of the Russian elites was necessary in
order for it to absorb western military technology. In respect of the spiritual life,
however, westernization was very bad for Russia.
762
their patriarchal way of life. All this began to appear and express itself strongly
in the second half of the reign of Emperor Nicholas I.” 1273
There were considerable strengths in this patriarchal system, and not just
military ones. From the state’s point of view it guaranteed the payment of taxes
by the village community (or mir). From the peasant’s point of view, it gave him a
certain security, both from the mir and from the landlord.
Its main weakness was the sometimes cruel behaviour of the landowners, who
had begun to lose their feeling of duty both to the state and to their serfs. Since
there were only about nine thousand police to preserve order amid a population
of over one hundred million peasants in 1900 1274, the rogue elements among the
nobility could act with more or less impunity. The peasants, correspondingly,
began to see their obedience to the nobles as a burden that was not justified, as in
the past, by the defence of the land. As such, the formal patriarchal structure
probably had to change in view of the change in its spiritual content.
Although there were good landowners as well as bad, and although, as

English observers noted, the Russian peasants were on the whole richer than
their British counterparts1275, the fact remains that the lot of the serf was
undoubtedly a wretched one in many cases.
He was completely dependent on his noble owner, who could exploit him
with little fear of punishment. Thus Sir Richard Evans writes: “Russian noble
landowners frequently lived away from their estates. They spent much of their
time and money in St. Petersburg or in French resorts and central European
spas, running up enormous debts at the gambling table. Even if they were not
indebted or mortgaged up to the hilt, they often saw their estates as little more
than sources of income to sustain their lifestyle in the big city… What mattered
indeed was the powerlessness of the enserfed. There were estates where
peasants were beaten or whipped by their lord, or put in an iron collar if they
disobeyed his orders…”1276
However, serfs, unlike slaves, had rights as well as duties. “Law and custom
required the seigneur to provide for his serfs in hard times, to care for the sick,
the elderly and the feeble-minded if their families were unable to look after
them, and to feed the serfs and their draught animals while they were working
for him. In many areas the serfs had the right to graze their animals on the
seigneur’s pastures, to glean the pickings from harvested fields on his estate, to
send their pigs to root in the lord’s forest, and to enter his forest to cut wood. In
turn, the seigneur usually had the right to graze his animals on the village
common land and make use of the common forests.
1273
Polnoe Zhizneopisanie Sviatitelia Ignatia Brianchaninova (A Complete Biography of
the Holy Hierarch Ignaty Brianchaninov), Moscow, 2002, pp. 317, 319-320.
1274
Lieven, Towards the Flame, p. 50.
1275
M.V. Krivosheev and Yu.V. Krivosheev, Istoria Rossijskoj Imperii 1861-1894 (A
History of the Russian Empire), St. Petersburg 2000, pp. 10-11.
1276
Evans, op. cit. , p. 86.
763
“Encompassed as they were by a web of rights and duties, serfs could still be
bought and sold along with the land they rented or owned. If the seigneur sold
an estate, the serfs on it passed to the new owner. The state often gave tacit
approval to the practice of selling serfs on their own without land, as implied in
a Russian law that banned the use of the hammer at public auctions of serfs, or
in a regulation of 1841 that made it illegal to sell parents and their unmarried
children separately from one another. In Russia serfs were not just tillers of the
soil; increasingly, they were enrolled as domestic servants, footmen, coachmen,
cooks and much more besides…”1277
Thus, as Andrew Marr writes, “Russian serfdom had unique aspects that made
Russia feel fundamentally different from Western European societies. For a start,
there was no ethnic divide in Russia between owner and serf. They were all the
same mix, mostly Slav with some Tatar and sometimes some German. Master,
mistress and servants looked alike and had similar names. Serfs, living for
generations on the same dark soil, sharing the old stories and the old music,
devoutly adhering to the Orthodox religion, seemed to many liberal Russian
landowners more ‘real’, more authentically Russian than they were themselves.
To numerous writers and intellectuals Russia seemed uniquely cursed, but when
at times radicals tried to ‘go towards’ the serfs and befriend them, these skeptical,
conservative-minded peasants regarded them with bafflement.
“For tens of thousands of poorer landowners there was not even a big cultural
divide between them and their human ‘property’. Serfs cooked in the master’s
kitchen, suckled and brought up his children, told stories around the fire and
taught the lore of the countryside to the little noble growing up amongst them.
They shared hunting trips. Serfs could be talented craftworkers, musicians,
decorators and builders that their owners relied on for goods and services, as
better-off Western Europeans relied on free, waged workers. Landowners could
be asked by the patriarchs of serf families to resolve family disputes. So there was
an intimacy in Russian serfdom as experienced in houses and villages remote
from the cities, that some Russian landowners felt to be more embarrassing and
more emotionally touching than rural servitude in some other places…” 1278
Tsar Nicholas I had long planned to emancipate the serfs, and was able to
improve the lot of the State serfs considerably. In 1827 he decreed that
landowners’ estates where a peasant had less that 4.5 desyatins of land was
transferred to the state, while the peasants themselves could move to the towns.
In 1841 he forbade the sale of serfs wholesale and without land. From 1843
landless noblemen were deprived of the right to acquire serf “souls” (a custom
parodied in Gogol’s Dead Souls). From 1847-48, if a landowner went bankrupt
and had to sell his property, his serfs could buy their freedom with land at the
auction.1279
1277
Evans, op. cit. , p. 91.
1278
Marr, A History of the World, London: Pan, 2012, pp. 410-411.
1279
Krivosheev and Krivosheev, op. cit., p. 13.
764
On his deathbed Tsar Nicholas bequeathed the task of emancipating the
peasants to his successor, Alexander II. With the support of his sister Elena, the
new tsar set about the task with zeal. "It is better to abolish serfdom from above,”
he said to the reluctant nobles, “than wait for it to abolish itself from below."
For the serfs were becoming violent... "There were 148 outbreaks of peasant
unrest in 1826-34,” writes Eric Hobsbawm, “216 in 1835-44, 348 in 1844-54,
culminating in the 474 outbreaks of the last years preceding the emancipation of
1861." 1280 And Ronald Seth writes: "A Russian historian, Vasily Semevsky, who
died in 1916, using official records as a basis, claimed that there were 550
peasant uprisings in the sixty years of the nineteenth century prior to liberation;
while a later Soviet historian, Inna Ignatovich, insists, upon equally valid
records, that there were in fact 1,467 such rebellions in this period. And in
addition to these uprisings serfs deserted their masters in hundreds and
thousands, sometimes in great mass movement, when rumours circulated that
freedom could be found 'somewhere in the Caucasus'."1281
These disturbances were not caused by poverty alone. “The peasants,”

wrote the senator, Ya. A. Soloviev, “either were disturbed in whole
regions by false rumours about freedom, or were running away from
cruel landlords, or resisted the decrees of unjust landowners. The
landlords feared both the government and the peasants. In a word,
serfdom was beginning to shake and with each day became more and
more unsuitable: both for the peasants, and for the landlords, and for
the government.” 1282
The peasants understood their relationship with their masters to be:

"we are yours, but the land is ours", or even: "we are yours, and you
are ours". 1283 While this was unacceptable to the Tsar, he did accept that
"emancipation was, in [Prince Sergius] Volkonsky's words, a 'question
of justice, a moral and a Christian obligation, for every citizen that
loves his Fatherland.' As the Decembrist explained in a letter to
Pushkin, the abolition of serfdom was 'the least the state could do to
recognize the sacrifice the peasantry has made in the last two wars: it is
time to recognize that the Russian peasant is a citizen as well'." 1284
“’The great matter of the emancipation is almost done,’ Alexander

told Bariatinsky, ‘and to be completed has only to go through the State
Council.’ On 27 January 1861, Alexander addressed the Council: ‘You
can change details but the fundamental must remain unaltered… The
1280
Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 , London: Abacus, 1962, p. 362.
1281
Seth, The Russian Terrorists, London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1966, pp. 20-21.
1282
Soloviev, in Krivosheev and Krivosheev, op. cit. , p. 17.
1283
Archimandrite Constantine (Zaitsev), "Velikaia Reforma Osvobozhdenia
Krestian. 1861-1961" ("The Great Reform of the Emancipation of the Serfs. 1861-
1961"), Pravoslavnij Put' (The Orthodox Way), Jordanville, 1961, p. 24.
1284
Oliver Figes, Natasha’s Dream, London: Penguin, 2002, pp. 144-145.
765
autocracy established serfdom and it’s up to the autocracy to abolish
it.’ The decree was approved.” 1285
The emancipation manifesto was published on February 19, 1861. It

acknowledged that “the State’s legislation, while actively benefiting the
higher and middle conditions, defining their duties, rights and
advantages, has not attained equal activity in relation to the serfs, so
called partly because of the old laws and partly out of habit, who are
hereditarily enserfed under the power of the landowners, on whom
there lies at the same time the duty to establish their welfare.”
The essence of the reform consisted in freeing twenty-two million

serfs from their landlords while enabling them to buy the land they
tilled. The government would immediately pay the lords 80% of the
value of the land by wiping out their debts, while the peasants, having
been given their freedom gratis, would be given a 49-year period within
which to pay for the land at a cheap rate of interest. The remaining 20%
would be paid by the peasants directly to the landowners in cash
payments or in labour with the aid of generous loans from the
government.
Bishop Ignaty Brianchaninov said that the emperor “has found the
matter already prepared and has found it necessary to change the form
of administration of landowners' peasants. What is the essential
significance of the improvement in the peasants' way of life? It is the
change in the form of their administration. They are being given
freedom, but not self-will. They are coming out from under the
jurisdiction of the landowners as if from under the supervisions of
educators and guardians, into a relationship of personal service to the
state." 1286
The reform was in general well received. Thus Bishop Ignaty saw it
as "a most happy initiative, a majestic order amazing Europe". He
argued: "1. That both the Word of God and the Church - both the
Universal Church and the Russian Church - in the persons of the Holy
Fathers, has never said anything at all about the abolition of civil
slavery, that there is nothing in common between spiritual and civil
freedom, that both slaves and masters were constantly taught by the
Church the most exact and conscientious fulfilment of their obligations,
that the violators of Christ's commandment on love were subject to
rebukes and exhortations.
"2. That the emancipation of slaves has always been recognized by

the Church as a good deed, a deed of mercy, a deed of brotherly
Christian love.
1285
Montefiore, op. cit.
1286
Polnoe Zhizneopisanie Sviatitelia Ignatia Brianchaninova, op. cit., p. 396.
766
"3. The most pious Russian Autocrat has indicated to the class of the nobility
the accomplishing of a great Christian work, a work of love. The Church invokes
the blessing of God upon the great work of the fatherland with her warmest
prayers. Her pastors invite the nobility to noble self-renunciation, to sacrifice, to
the immediate sacrifice of material goods for the sake of moral goods, while they
instruct the peasants to accept this gift of the Tsar with due veneration and
humility - the true indications that the gift will be used wisely and usefully.
"But one must not think that civil liberty morally exalts only the peasants: the
class of the nobility must unfailingly enter onto a higher level of moral
achievement in renouncing the ownership of slaves. That is the characteristic of
self-sacrifice and the offering of material goods as a sacrifice for spiritual goods:
it exalts, changes and perfects man."1287
According to Dostoyevsky, far from undermining the traditional bonds of

society, emancipation in fact strengthened the bond between the Tsar and the
people, the union in faith and love which was at the very heart of Holy Russia.
For the peasants had always looked to the Tsar as their father and protector
against the greed of the landowners and officials. They had been expecting the
Tsar to liberate them, and their expectations had been fulfilled, if not in the
precise way they had anticipated. Certainly if the matter had been left to the
nobles, without the driving will of the tsar, nothing would have been done.
For Dostoyevsky, as Igor Volgin writes, "the reform of 1861 created a

historical precedent of exceptional importance. It presented an example of
voluntary renunciation of an age-old historical injustice, a peaceful resolution of
a social conflict that threatened to have terrible consequences."1288
"Is the saying that 'the Tsar is their father' a mere phrase, an empty sound in
Russia? He who so believes understands nothing about Russia! Nay, this is a
profound and most original idea, - a live and mighty organism of the people
merging with the Tsar. This idea is a force which has been moulding itself in the
course of centuries, especially the last two centuries, which were so dreadful to
the people, but which we so ardently eulogize for European enlightenment,
forgetting the fact that this enlightenment was bought two centuries ago at the
expense of serfdom and a Calvary of the Russian people serving us. The people
waited for their liberator, and he came. Why, then, shouldn't they be his own,
true children? The Tsar to the people is not an extrinsic force such as that of
some conqueror (as were, for instance, the dynasties of the former Kings of
France), but a national, all-unifying force, which the people themselves desired,
which they nurtured in their hearts, which they came to love, for which they
suffered because from it alone they hoped for their exodus from Egypt. To the
people, the Tsar is the incarnation of themselves, their whole ideology, their
hopes and beliefs.
1287
Polnoe Zhizneopisanie Sviatitelia Ignatia , pp. 335-336.
1288
Volgin, Poslednij God Dostoevskogo (Dostoyevsky's Last Year), Moscow, 1986, pp.
32-33.
767
"So recently these hopes have been completely realized. Would the people
renounce their further hopes? Wouldn't the latter, on the contrary, be
strengthened and reinforced, since after the peasants' reform the Tsar became
the people's father not merely in hope but in reality. This attitude of the people
toward the Tsar is the genuine, adamant foundation of every reform in Russia. If
you wish, there is in Russia no creative, protective and leading force other than
this live organic bond of the people with their Tsar, from which everything is
derived. For instance, who would have ventured to dream about the peasants'
reform without knowing and believing in advance that the Tsar was a father to
the people, and that precisely this faith of the people in the Tsar as their father
would save and protect everything and stave off the calamity?"1289
Let us look at the balance-sheet of the reform from a purely material point of
view. Emancipation would pave the way for more efficient agriculture (Samarin
calculated that peasants’ productivity was 50 % higher on their own plots than
on the landlords’) and the provision of labour for the industrialization of Russia,
especially the production of armaments, so sorely needed in view of the relative
failure of the Crimean War, by freeing the peasants from the commune as soon
as they had paid their redemption payments. These would then be free to seek
work in the towns and factories. 1290
Again, as Sir Geoffrey Hosking writes, "the existence of serfdom

obstructed modernization of the army and thereby burdened the
treasury with huge and unproductive military expenditure. As the
military reformer R.A. Fadeyev pointed [out], 'Under serfdom, anyone
becoming a soldier is freed; hence one cannot, without shaking the
whole social order, admit many people to military service. Therefore
we have to maintain on the army establishment in peacetime all the
soldiers we need in war.'" 1291
Philip Bobbitt confirms this judgement: "Because service in the army

was rewarded by emancipation, serfs had to be recruited for long
periods; otherwise, the number of those bound to the land would have
plummeted. Thus recruitment provided only about 700,000 men. There
was no reserve. Such measures did not fill the needs of contemporary
warfare, which required universal, short-term conscription, followed
by service in the reserve. An adequate system, however, would move
all serfs through the army in a generation. Therefore modern
conscription and reserve service meant the emancipation of the serfs.
1289
Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, January, 1881, London: Cassell, pp. 1032-
1033.
1290
The Crimean war had revealed Russian rifles to be very inefficient. Therefore
priority had to be given to new armaments technologies and factories. But that
required a free labour force instead of the system of forced labour of serfs that was
then in operation. For "in the words of a report on the Tula Armory in 1861: 'It
would seem to be generally indisputable that only free men are capable of honest
work. He who from childhood has been forced to work is incapable of assuming
responsibility as long as his social condition remains unchanged.'" (David Landes,
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations , London: Abacus, 1999, p. 241). (V.M.)
1291
Hosking, Russia. People and Empire, 1552-1917 , London: HarperCollins, 1997, p.
318.
768
And this is precisely what happened. In 1861 the serfs were freed;
universal military service followed in 1874. Six years' active service
and a nine-year reserve created a total force of 1.35 million." 1292
But there were still more advantages to the emancipation of the

serfs. Thus it would save the poorer nobles from bankruptcy. For "by
1859, one-third of the estates and two-thirds of the serfs owned by the
landed nobles had been mortgaged to the state and noble banks. Many
of the smaller landowners could barely afford to feed their serfs. The
economic argument for emancipation was becoming irrefutable, and
many landowners were shifting willy-nilly to the free labour system by
contracting other people's serfs. Since the peasantry's redemption
payments would cancel out the gentry's debts, the economic rationale
was becoming equally irresistible." 1293
Inevitably, however, many were disappointed. Many of the peasants had not
expected to pay for the land, and found the payments greater than the rents they
had been paying earlier. Moreover, once liberated, they lost access to timber and
firewood in landowners' forests.
Again, "the Law allowed landowners considerable leeway in choosing the bits
of land for transfer to the peasantry - and in setting the price for them. Overall,
perhaps half the farming land in European Russia was transferred from the
gentry's ownership to the communal tenure of the peasantry, although the
precise proportion depended largely on the landowner's will. Owing to the
growth of the population it was still far from enough to liberate the peasantry
from poverty."1294
Again, for those peasants who did not take advantage of their freedom to
leave the land, and until they had paid their redemption payments, the authority
of the commune over them would actually increase now that the authority of the
landlord was removed. If one member of the commune could not contribute
payments or labour, he fell into debt, as it were, to the commune.
Moreover, "during the conservative reign of Alexander III legislation was

passed which made it virtually impossible for peasants to withdraw. This policy
was inspired by the belief that the commune was a stabilizing force which
strengthened the authority of the bol'shak [head of the individual peasant
household], curbed peasant anarchism, and inhibited the formation of a volatile
landless proletariat."1295
1292
Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, London: Penguin, 2002, pp. 181-182.
1293
Figes, Natasha's Dream, p. 144. "More than 80% of the small and middle nobility
were in debt to the state on the security of their own estates, and this debt would
have been unrepayable if it had not been for the reform. The value of the payments
for the land cleared many debts." (Krivosheev and Krivosheev, op. cit. p. 20).
1294
Figes, Natasha's Dream p. 145.
1295
Pipes, op. cit., pp. 98-99.
769
So while the government genuinely wanted to free the peasant, both as a
good deed in itself, and in order to exploit his economic potential, its desire to
strengthen the bonds of the commune tended to work in the opposite direction...
The radicals said that the reform provided "inadequate freedom". However,
the real problem was not so much "inadequate freedom" as the fact that
emancipation introduced "the wrong kind of freedom". The very composer of
the manifesto, Metropolitan Philaret, had doubts about emancipation and the
reform process in general.1296
True freedom, according to the Metropolitan, "is Christian freedom - internal,

not external freedom, - moral and spiritual, not carnal, - always doing good and
never rebellious, which can live in a hut just as comfortably as in an aristocrat's
or tsar's house, - which a subject can enjoy as much as the master without
ceasing to be a subject, - which is unshakeable in bonds and prison, as we can
see in the Christian martyrs'."1297 This freedom was not lost under serfdom.
Rather, it was emancipation that threatened this true Christian freedom by
introducing the demand for another, non-Christian kind.
In fact, as we have seen, the old order, though harsh, was never really one of
traditional slavery. It had been dictated by the military situation of the time, in
which Russia had vast extended borders with no natural defences. A quasi-
monastic way of life was developed in which everyone from the Tsar to the
humblest peasant had his "obedience". The Tsar had to obey his calling; the
nobles had to obey the Tsar (by providing military service or service in the
1296
Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev), Zhizn' i deiatel'nost' mitropolita Filareta (The Life
and Activity of Metropolitan Philaret), Tula, 1994. As Gregory Frazee writes, “from
the very onset of the Great Reforms, Philaret expressed deep reservations about
ambitious plans for a radical reconstruction of Russian state and society. In a
sermon delivered at Chudovo Monastery in 1856 (and ostensibly directed at more
radical perspectives, but implicitly applicable to those with excessive ambitions for
reform), Philaret upbraided those who ‘work on the creation and establishment of
better principles (in their opinion) for the formation and transformation of human
cities. For more than half a century, the most educated part of mankind, in places
and times, see their transformation efforts in action, but as yet, never and nowhere,
have they created a “calm and tranquil life”. They know how to disturb the ancient
buildings of states, but not how to create something solid. According to their
blueprints, new governments are suddenly built – and just as quickly collapse. They
feel burdened by the paternal, reasonable authority of the tsar; they introduce the
blind and harsh authority of the popular crowd and endless fights among those
seeking power. They seduce people by assuring that they will lead them to freedom,
but in reality they lead them away from lawful liberty to wilfulness, and then
subject them to oppression.’”
“Philaret was still more candid in his private correspondence. The same year,
1856, after receiving a far-reaching proposal to restore the Church’s prerogatives,
Philaret warned that ‘it is easy to discern what should be improved, but not so easy
to show the means to attain that improvement.’ His experience over the next few
years only intensified his abiding scepticism. In February 1862, he wrote a close
confidante that ‘now is not the time to seek new inventions for Church authority.
May God help us to preserve that which has not been plundered or destroyed’.”
(“Skeptical Reformer, Staunch Tserkovnik: Metropolitan Philaret and the Great
Reforms”, in Vladimir Tsurikov (ed.), Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, 1782-1867 ,
Jordanville: Variable Press, 2003, pp. 155-156)
1297
Philaret, in Bishop Plato, On the Question of Freedom of Conscience , Kiev, 1902.
770
bureaucracy); and the peasants had to obey the landowners. It was a common
effort for a common cause - the preservation of Orthodox Russia. Nobody
literally "owned" anybody else. But there were relations of obedience enforced
by law that were carried out, for the most part, in the Spirit of Orthodoxy. For, as
St. John of Kronstadt said, "the varied forms of service... to the tsar and the
fatherland are an image of the main service to our heavenly King, which must
continue forever. Him first of all are we are obliged to serve, as fervent slaves of
His by creation, redemption and providence... Earthly service is a test, a
preparatory service for service in the heavens".1298
The real problem consisted in the quite different understandings

landlords and peasants of the emancipation decree. “The contrast
between the two elements is easily illustrated by the mutual
relationship of landowners and peasants with regard to the land. The
peasants continued to see themselves and their landlords from the
point of view of service to the Tsar. Since the landowners had been
removed from [their obligation of] service to the land [under Peter III
and Catherine II], it remained to them only to leave the land, allowing
the peasants to serve on it. As to how the landowners were to be
rewarded for their other services, that was the affair of the Tsar. But
the landowners looked on the peasants and the land as their own
property. Since the peasants were being emancipated, it remained to
them only to leave the land, which remained in the possession of its
owners. There was no possibility of reconciliation between these two
points of view. The solution was found in the state redeeming the land
from the landowners; it itself covered the expenses of this grandiose
operation, and by state decrees took redemption payments from the
peasants.” 1299
As we have seen, the sanctifying bonds of obedience were already breaking

down before the reform as the numbers of peasant riots increased. But the change
in formal structure from patriarchal to civil after 1861 meant that these bonds
broke down still faster than they would have done otherwise. To that extent, the
reform, though rational from a politico-economic point of view, was harmful. As
Schema-Monk Boris of Optina said: "The old order was better, even though I
would really catch it from the nobleman... Now it's gotten bad, because there's no
authority; anyone can live however he wants."1300
Fr. Lev Lebedev writes: "Later critics of the reform also justly point out that it
suffered from an excessive 'slant' in one direction, being inspired most of all by
the idea of the immediate emancipation of the serfs from the landowners, but
without paying due attention to the question how and with what to substitute
the guiding, restraining and, finally, educating function of 'the lords' (the
landowners) for the peasants. Indeed, delivered as it were in one moment to
1298
St. John of Kronstadt, Moia Zhizn' o Khriste (My Life in Christ) , Moscow, 1894.
Zaitsev, op. cit., p. 15.
1299
1300
Victor Afanasyev, Elder Barsanuphius of Optina, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of
Alaska Press, 2000, pp. 216, 217. The old family retainer in Chekhov's The Cherry
Orchard also believed that the rot set in with "Freedom" (Hayward, in Obolensky,
op. cit., p. 13).
771
themselves, to their own self-administration (after 100 years of the habit of being
guided by the lord), could the Russian peasants immediately undertake their
self-administration wisely and truly, to their own good and that of the
Fatherland? That is the question nobody wanted to think about at the
beginning, being sometimes ruled by the illusion of the 'innateness' of the
people's wisdom!... They began to think about this, as often happens with us, 'in
hindsight', after they had encountered disturbances and ferment among the
peasantry. All the indicated mistakes in the reform of 1861 led to the peasantry
as a whole being dissatisfied in various respects. Rumours spread among them
that 'the lords' had again deceived them, that the Tsar had given them not that
kind of freedom, that the real 'will of the Tsar' had been hidden from them,
while a false one had been imposed upon them. This was immediately used by
the 'enlighteners' and revolutionaries of all kinds. The peasants gradually began
to listen not to the state official and the former lord, but to the student, who
promised 'real' freedom and abundant land, attracting the peasant with the idea
of 'the axe', by which they themselves would win all this from the deceiver-
lords... In such a situation only the Church remained in her capacity of educator
and instructor of the people, which task she immediately began to fulfill,
although it was very difficult because of the restricted and poor condition of the
Church herself. Therefore there soon arose the question of the broadening and
strengthening of the rights and opportunities of the Russian Church. The most
powerful and influential person who completely understood this was
Pobedonostsev, who did a great deal in this respect, thereby eliciting the hatred
of all 'democrats'.
"But in spite of inadequacies and major mistakes, the reform of 1861, of

course, exploded and transfigured the life of Great Russia. A huge mass of the
population (about 22 million people) found themselves a free and self-governing
estate (class), juridically equal to the other estates...."1301
Emancipation was a liberal reform carried out by supposedly despotic Russia

on a scale unparalleled by any comparable reform in the West.
"In retrospect” writes J.M. Roberts, emancipation “seems a massive

achievement. A few years later the United States would emancipate its Negro
slaves. There were far fewer of them than there were Russian peasants and they
lived in a country of much greater economic opportunity, yet the effect of
throwing them on the labour market, exposed to the pure theory of laissez-faire
economic liberalism, was to exacerbate a problem with whose ultimate
consequences the United State is still grappling. In Russia the largest measure of
social engineering in recorded history down to this time was carried out without
comparable dislocation and it opened the way to modernization for what was
potentially one of the strongest powers on earth…" 1302
1301
Lebedev, op. cit., pp. 342-343.
1302
Roberts, History of the World, Oxford: Helicon, 1992, p. 612.
772
CONCLUSION. OPTINA DESERT AND THE FUTURE OF
RUSSIA
In spite of the suppression of the Decembrist rebellion by Tsar Nicholas I,

revolutionary ideas and the poison of westernism had been spreading through
Russian society. And the liberalizing reforms of Alexander II, regardless of their
intrinsic merits or faults, brought Russia closer to the West. At the same time,
however, a revival of the Eastern Orthodox teaching and practice of eldership
(starchestvo) and hesychasm had also been taking place, whose aim was exactly
the opposite of the revolution, that is, the bringing of men into submission to the
all-holy Will of God and the lawful authorities that are established by God. The
fount and origin of this revival was the great monastic founder St. Paisius
Velichkovsky, several of whose Russian disciples spread the word north from
Romania into Russia. Besides his personal influence on his disciples, Paisius also
translated the Philokalia, a collection of patristic texts on prayer and the spiritual
life, into Slavonic; the first edition was published with the help of Metropolitan
Gabriel of St. Petersburg in 1793.
Ivan Mikhailovich Kontzevich has identified the essence of eldership, or

starchestvo, with the gift of prophecy1303, and the gifts of clairvoyance, of
foreseeing the future and accurately assessing the present that we associate with
Old Testament prophecy are certainly part of this New Testament charisma. But
a study of the lives of the holy elders and their discussions with the thousands of
people of all classes, ages and conditions who poured into Optina seeking advice
and consolation shows that eldership was much more than that. It can be
summarized as the knowledge of the will of God for every individual supplicant
and the ability to guide him to accept and fulfill that will to the end of eternal
salvation. The future confessor of the faith E. Poselyanin described it as follows:
“The business of saving souls is a difficult one. The unceasing struggle with self,
that is, the struggle of the spirit with a nature infected with original sin, and a
continuous watch over self, necessary for success in this struggle, are not yet
enough. A vast knowledge of human nature and its relations with the external
world, of the spiritual benefit and harm which may be derived from contact with
the world, and of the way by which grace is obtained is needed. To aid the soul
in its exercises, and to preserve its balance, continuous guidance is necessary.
Such guidance makes uninterrupted progress toward perfection possible,
without the spiritual fluctuations and vicissitudes common to people who have
no guide. There is needed someone who knows the soul, its dispositions,
abilities and sins, a person with spiritual experience and wisdom who can guide
the soul, encouraging it in times of laziness and sadness and restraining it in
times of immoderate elation, one who knows how to humble pride, foresee
danger and treat sin with penance. Quick and safe is the way of the man who
has subjected himself to such guidance because he practices then the great
virtues: obedience and humility. Revelation of thoughts, which is the condition
sine qua non of starchestvo, is a powerful means of progress, terrible to the enemy
Kontsevich, Optina Pustyn’ i ee Vremia (Optina Desert and its Time), Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy
1303
Trinity Monastery, 1977.

773
of our salvation. The unrevealed thought troubles and depresses the soul;
revealed, it falls away and does no harm.”1304
“The path of guidance by an elder,” wrote Fr. Clement Sederholm in 1875,

“has been recognized throughout all ages of Christianity by all the great desert
dwellers, fathers and teachers of the Church as being the most reliable and
surest of all that are known to the Church of Christ. Eldership blossomed in the
ancient Egyptian and Palestinian communities; it was afterwards planted on
Athos, and from the East it was brought to Russia. But in the last centuries, in
view of the general decline of faith and asceticism, it has gradually fallen into
neglect, so that many have even begun to reject it. In the times of St. Nilus of
Sora, the way of eldership was already scorned by many; and by the end of the
past century [that is, the 18th] it had become almost entirely unknown. For the
restoration of this form of monastic life, which is founded upon the teaching of
the Holy Fathers, much was done by the famous and great Archimandrite of the
Moldavian monasteries, Paisius Velichkovsky. With great labor he gathered
together on Athos and translated from Greek into Slavonic the works of the
ascetic writers, which set forth the patristic teaching on monastic life in general
and the spiritual relationship to an elder in particular. At the same time in
Niamets and in the other Moldavian monasteries under his rule, he exhibited in
practice the application of this teaching. One of the disciples of Archimandrite
Paisius, Schemamonk Theodore, who lived in Moldavia almost 20 years,
transmitted this teaching to Hiero-schemamonk Father Leonid and through him
and his disciple, the Elder Hiero-schemamonk Macarius, it was planted in the
Optina monastery.
“The abbot of Optina at that time, Fr. Moses, and his brother, the Skete
superior Fr. Anthony, who laid the beginning of their monastic life in the
Bryansk forest in the spirit of the ancient great desert dwellers, wished for a long
time to introduce eldership into the Optina Monastery. By themselves, however,
they could not fulfill this task; they were burdened by many difficult and
complicated occupations in conjunction with the development and governance
of the Monastery. Furthermore, although in general the combining of the duties
of the abbacy and eldership in one person was possible in the ancient times of
simplicity of character, as we have already mentioned, in our times it is very
hard and even impossible. However, when Fr. Leonid settled in Optina, Fr.
Moses, knowing and taking advantage of his experience in the spiritual life,
entrusted all the brothers who live in the Optina Monastery to his guidance, as
well as all others who would come to live in the Monastery.
“From that time the entire order of the monastic life at the Optina monastery
changed. Without the counsel and blessing of the Elder nothing of importance
was undertaken in the Monastery. Every day, especially in the evening, the
brotherhood came to his cell with their spiritual needs. Each one hastened to
reveal before the Elder how he had transgressed during the course of the day in
deed, word or thought, in order to ask for counsel for the resolution of problems
that had arisen, consolation in some sorrow that he had met, help and strength
1304
Posleyanin, Russkie Podvizhniki 19-go veka (Russian Ascetics of the 19th Century), St.
Petersburg, 1910, pp. 221-222.
774
in the internal battle with the passions and with the invisible enemies of our
salvation. The Elder received all with fatherly love and offered all a word of
experience instruction and consolation.”1305
Nor was it only monks who sought the instruction of the Optina elders:
people from all walks of life from generals to peasants poured in their thousands
through the gates of the monastery. The influence of the Optina elders, together
with that of other Russian elders from other great monasteries in the same
tradition such as Valaam, Sarov, Glinsk, Kiev and the Rossikon (St. Panteleimon’s
on Mount Athos), and holy bishops such as Theophan the Recluse, Ignaty
Brianchaninov, Innocent of Kherson, Philaret of Kiev and Philaret of Moscow,
constituted a powerful spiritual antithesis to the influence of westernism in
nineteenth-century Russia. Nor was Optina’s significance confined to pre-
revolutionary Russia: many of the confessor bishops and priests of the early
Soviet period had been trained by the Optina elders. No less than fourteen
Optina startsy or elders have been glorified as saints. The most recent was St.
Nektary, who died in exile from the Sovietized monastery in 1928. After the first
two great startsy, or elders, Lev (Nagolkin) and Macarius (Ivanov), the most
famous and influential was Macarius’ disciple Ambrose (Grenkov). St. Lev’s
disciples included the famous Bishop of the Black Sea and the Caucasus, St.
Ignaty Brianchaninov. We have already seen the influence of St. Macarius on
Nikolai Gogol and the Slavophile writer Ivan Kireyevsky, while St. Ambrose’s
influence would extend wider still, including the famous writers Tolstoy and
Dostoyevsky.
Among the spiritual sicknesses coming from the West and identified by the
holy elders was indifferentism, what we would now call ecumenism, that is, an
increased tolerance for Christian heresies to the extent of placing them on a par
with Orthodoxy. As we have seen, the first ecumenical dialogue with the
American Episcopalians had begun, and while the Church leaders stood firm in
Orthodoxy, the spirit of Anglican indifferentism was infectious.
Thus in the 1850s St. Ambrose of Optina wrote: “Now many educated people
bear only the name of Orthodox, but in actual fact completely adhere to the
morals and customs of foreign lands and foreign beliefs. Without any torment of
conscience they violate the regulations of the Orthodox Church concerning fasts
and gather together at balls and dances on the eves of great Feasts of the Lord,
when Orthodox Christians should be in church in prayerful vigil. This would be
excusable if such gatherings took place on the eves of ordinary days, but not on
the eves of Feasts, and especially great Feasts. Are not such acts and deeds
clearly inspired by our enemy, the destroyer of souls, contrary to the
commandment of the Lord which says: carry out your ordinary affairs for six
days, but the seventh (festal) day must be devoted to God in pious service? How
have Orthodox Christians come to such acts hated by God? Is it not for no other
reason than indiscriminate communion with believers of other faiths?…”
Sederholm, Elder Leonid of Optina, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1990, pp.
1305
49-52.
775
In 1863 St. Theophan the Recluse described how western indifferentism had
begun already centuries before: “Have you heard of the indulgences of the Pope
or Rome? Here is what they are: special treatment and leniency, which he gives,
defying the law of Christ. And what is the result? From all of this, the West is
corrupt in faith and in its way of life, and is now getting lost in its disbelief and
in the unrestrained life with its indulgences.
“The Pope changed many doctrines, spoiled all the sacraments, nullified the
canons concerning the regulation of the Church and the correction of morals.
Everything has begun going contrary to the will of the Lord, and has become
worse and worse.
“Then along came Luther, a smart man, but stubborn. He said, The Pope
changed everything as he wanted, why shouldn’t I do the same? He started to
modify and to re-modify everything in his own way, and in this way established
the new Lutheran faith, which only slightly resembles what the Lord
commanded and the holy apostles delivered to us.
“After Luther came the philosophers. And they in turn said, Luther has
established himself a new faith, supposedly based on the Gospel, though in
reality based on his own way of thinking. Why, then, don’t we also compose
doctrines based on our own way of thinking, completely ignoring the Gospel?
They then started rationalizing, and speculating about God, the world and man,
each in his own way. And they mixed up so many doctrines that one gets dizzy
just counting them.
“Now the westerners have the following views: Believe what you think best,
live as you like, satisfy whatever captivates your soul. This is why they do not
recognize any law or restriction and do not abide by God’s Word. Their road is
wide, all obstacles removed. But the broad way leads to perdition, according to
what the Lord says…”1306
The danger of religious indifferentism was especially noted by St. Ignaty

Brianchaninov, a disciple of the Optina Elder Lev: "You say, 'heretics are
Christians just the same.’ Where did you take that from? Perhaps someone or
other calling himself a Christian while knowing nothing of Christ, may in his
extreme ignorance decide to acknowledge himself as the same kind of Christian
as heretics, and fail to distinguish the holy Christian faith from those offspring of
the curse, blasphemous heresies. Quite otherwise, however, do true Christians
reason about this. A whole multitude of saints has received a martyr's crown,
has preferred the most cruel and prolonged tortures, prison, exile, rather than
agree to take part with heretics in their blasphemous teaching.
“The Ecumenical Church has always recognised heresy as a mortal sin; she
has always recognised that the man infected with the terrible malady of heresy is
spiritually dead, a stranger to grace and salvation, in communion with the devil
and the devil's damnation. Heresy is a sin of the mind; it is more a diabolic than
1306
Theophan the Recluse , Sermon on the Sunday after Nativity , December 29, 1863.
776
a human sin. It is the devil's offspring, his invention; it is an impiety that is near
idol-worship. Every heresy contains in itself the blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit, whether against the dogma or the action of the Holy Spirit." 1307
“The reading of the Fathers clearly convinced me that salvation in the bosom
of the Orthodox Russian Church was undoubted, something of which the
religions of Western Europe are deprived since they have not preserved whole
either the dogmatic or the moral teaching of the Church of Christ from her
beginning.”1308
St. Ignaty was especially fierce against the heresy of Papism: "Papism is the
name of a heresy that seized the West and from which there came, like the
branches from a tree, various Protestant teachings. Papism ascribes to the Pope
the properties of Christ and thereby rejects Christ. Some western writers have
almost openly pronounced this rejection, saying that the rejection of Christ is a
much smaller sin than the rejection of the Pope. The Pope is the idol of the
papists; he is their divinity. Because of this terrible error, the Grace of God has
left the papists; they have given themselves over to Satan – the inventor and
father of all heresies, among which is Papism. In this condition of the darkening
[of the mind], they have distorted several dogmas and sacraments, while they
have deprived the Divine Liturgy of its essential significance by casting out of it
the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the blessing of the offerings of bread and
wine, at which they are transmuted into the Body and Blood of Christ… No
heresy expresses so openly and blatantly their immeasurable pride, their cruel
disdain for men and their hatred of them.”
St. Ignaty was pessimistic about the future of Russia: "It is evident that the
apostasy from the Orthodox faith is general among the people. One is an open
atheist, another is a deist, another a Protestant, another an indifferentist,
another a schismatic. There is no healing or cure for this plague."
"What has been foretold in the Scriptures is being fulfilled: a cooling towards
the faith has engulfed both our people and all the countries in which Orthodoxy
was maintained up to now."
"Religion is falling in the people in general. Nihilism is penetrating into the

merchant class, from where it has not far to go to the peasants. In most peasants
a decisive indifference to the Church has appeared, and a terrible moral
disorder."1309
"The people is being corrupted, and the monasteries are also being
corrupted," said the same holy bishop to the future Tsar Alexander II in 1866,
one year before his own death.1310
1307
Brianchaninov, Pis'ma, no. 283; translated as "Concerning the Impossibility of
Salvation for the Heterodox and Heretics", The Orthodox Word, March-April, 1965,
and Orthodox Life, January-February, 1991.
1308
Brianchaninov, "Lamentation", in The Orthodox Word, January-February, 2003, p.
20.
1309
Brianchaninov, in Fomin and Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 339, 340.
777
Another pessimist was Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, who feared “storm-
clouds coming from the West”, and advised that rizas should not be made for
icons, because “the time is approaching when ill-intentioned people will remove
the rizas from the icons.”1311
Visions from above seemed to confirm that apocalyptic times were

approaching. Thus in 1871 the Over-Procurator of the Holy Synod, Count
Alexander Petrovich Tolstoy, had the following vision: "It was as if I were in my
own house standing in the entrance-hall. Beyond was a room in which on the
ledge between the windows there was a large icon of the God of Sabaoth that
gave out such blinding light that from the other room (the entrance-hall) it was
impossible to look at it. Still further in was a room in which there were
Protopriest Matthew Alexandrovich Konstantinovsky and the reposed
Metropolitan Philaret. And this room was full of books; along the walls from
ceiling to floor there were books; on the long tables there were piles of books;
and while I certainly had to go into this room, I was held back by fear, and in
terror, covering my face with my hand, I passed through the first room and, on
entering the next room, I saw Protopriest Matthew Alexandrovich dressed in a
simple black cassock; on his head was a skull-cap; in his hands was an unbent
book, and he motioned me with his head to find a similar book and open it. At
the same time the metropolitan, turning the pages of this book said: 'Rome,
Troy, Egypt, Russia, the Bible.' I saw that in my book 'Bible' was written in very
heavy lettering. Suddenly there was a noise and I woke up in great fear. I
thought a lot about what it could all mean. My dream seemed terrible to me - it
would have been better to have seen nothing. Could I not ask those experienced
in the spiritual life concerning the meaning of this vision in sleep? But an inner
voice explained the dream even to me myself. However, the explanation was so
terrible that I did not want to agree with it."
St. Ambrose of Optina gave the following interpretation of this vision: "He
who was shown this remarkable vision in sleep, and who then heard the very
significant words, very probably received the explanation of what he had seen
and heard through his guardian angel, since he himself recognized that an inner
voice explained the meaning of the dream to him. However, since we have been
asked, we also shall give our opinion...
"...The words 'Rome, Troy, Egypt' may have the following significance. Rome
at the time of the Nativity of Christ was the capital of the world, and, from the
beginning of the patriarchate, had the primacy of honour; but because of love of
power and deviation from the truth she was later rejected and humiliated.
Ancient Troy and Egypt were notable for the fact that they were punished for
their pride and impiety - the first by destruction, and the second by various
punishments and the drowning of Pharaoh with his army in the Red Sea. But in
1310
Zhizneopisanie Sviatitelia Ignatia Brianchaninova , p. 485. In the last decade of his
life the holy hierarch composed notes for an agenda of a Council of the Russian
Church that would tackle the grave problems facing her. See
http://catacomb.org.ua/modules.php?name=Pages&go=page&pid=1968 .
1311
Fomin and Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, p. 349.
778
Christian times, in the countries where Troy was located there were founded the
Christian patriarchates of Antioch and Constantinople, which flourished for a
long time, embellishing the Orthodox Church with their piety and right dogmas;
but later, according to the inscrutable destinies of God, they were conquered by
barbarians - the Muslims, and up to now have borne this heavy slavery, which
restricts the freedom of Christian piety and right belief. And in Egypt, together
with the ancient impiety, there was from the first times of Christianity such a
flowering of piety that the deserts were populated by tens of thousands of
monastics, not to speak of the great numbers of pious laity from whom they
came. But then, by reason of moral licentiousness, there followed such an
impoverishment of Christian piety in that country that at a certain time in
Alexandria the patriarch remained with only one priest.
"... After the three portentous names 'Rome, Troy, Egypt', the name of 'Russia'
was also mentioned - Russia, which at the present time is counted as an
independent Orthodox state, but where the elements of foreign heterodoxy and
impiety have already penetrated and taken root among us and threaten us with
the same sufferings as the above-mentioned countries have undergone.
"Then there comes the word 'Bible'. No other state is mentioned. This may
signify that if in Russia, too, because of the disdain of God's commandments and the
weakening of the canons and decrees of the Orthodox Church and for other reasons, piety
is impoverished, then there must immediately follow the final fulfillment of that which is
written at the end of the Bible, in the Apocalypse of St. John the Theologian.
"He who saw this vision correctly observed that the explanation given him by
an inner voice was terrible. Terrible will be the Second Coming of Christ and
terrible the last judgement of the world. But not without terrors will also be the
period before that when the Antichrist will reign, as it is said in the Apocalypse:
'And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and death shall
flee from them' (9.6). The Antichrist will come during a period of anarchy, as the
apostle says: 'until he that restraineth be taken away from the midst' (II
Thessalonians 2.7), that is, when the powers that be no longer exist."1312
St. Ambrose's identification of "him that restraineth" the coming of the

Antichrist with the Russian Tsardom had long roots in the patristic writings. St.
John Chrysostom, Blessed Theophylact and others identified him with the
Roman emperor, whose successor, as being the emperor of "the Third Rome",
Russia, was the Russian Tsar. Metropolitan Philaret had restated the political
teaching of Orthodoxy with exceptional eloquence in the previous reign. And
now St. Theophan the Recluse wrote: "The Tsar's authority, having in its hands
the means of restraining the movements of the people and itself relying on
Christian principles, does not allow the people to fall away from them, but will
restrain it. And since the main work of the Antichrist will be to turn everyone
away from Christ, he will not appear as long as the Tsar is in power. The latter's
authority will not let him show himself, but will prevent him from acting in his
1312
St. Ambrose of Optina, Pis'ma (Letters), Sergiev Posad, 1908, part 1, pp. 21-22.
779
own spirit. That is what he that restraineth is. When the Tsar's authority falls,
and the peoples everywhere acquire self-government (republics, democracies),
then the Antichrist will have room to manoeuvre. It will not be difficult for Satan
to train voices urging apostasy from Christ, as experience showed in the time of
the French revolution. Nobody will give a powerful 'veto' to this. A humble
declaration of faith will not be tolerated. And so, when these arrangements have
been made everywhere, arrangements which are favourable to the exposure of
antichristian aims, then the Antichrist will also appear. Until that time he waits,
and is restrained."
St. Theophan wrote: "When these principles [Orthodoxy, Autocracy and

Nationality] weaken or are changed, the Russian people will cease to be Russian.
It will then lose its sacred three-coloured banner." And again: "Our Russians are
beginning to decline from the faith: one part is completely and in all ways falling
into unbelief, another is falling into Protestantism, a third is secretly weaving
together beliefs in such a way as to bring together spiritism and geological
madness with Divine Revelation. Evil is growing: evil faith and lack of faith are
raising their head: faith and Orthodoxy are weakening. Will we come to our
senses? O Lord! Save and have mercy on Orthodox Russia from Thy righteous
and fitting punishment!"1313And again, he wrote: “Do you know what bleak
thoughts I have? And they are not unfounded. I meet people who are numbered
among the Orthodox, who in spirit are Voltaireans, naturalists, Lutherans, and
all manner of free-thinkers. They have studied all the sciences in our institutions
of higher education. They are not stupid nor are they evil, but with respect to the
Church they are good for nothing. Their fathers and mothers were pious; the
ruin came in during the period of their education outside of the family homes.
Their memories of childhood and their parents’ spirit keeps them within certain
bounds. But what will their own children be like? What will restrain them
within the needed bounds? I draw the conclusion from this that in one or two
generations our Orthodoxy will dry up.”
As St. Ignaty Brianchaninov wrote: “We are helpless to arrest this apostasy.
Impotent hands will have no power against it and nothing more will be required
than the attempt to withhold it. The spirit of the age will reveal the apostasy.
Study it, if you wish to avoid it, if you wish to escape this age and the
temptation of its spirits. One can suppose, too, that the institution of the Church
which has been tottering for so long will fall terribly and suddenly. Indeed, no-
one is able to stop or prevent it. The present means to sustain the institutional
Church are borrowed from the elements of the world, things inimical to the Church, and
the consequence will be only to accelerate its fall. Nevertheless, the Lord protects the
elect and their limited number will be filled.”1314
1313
St. Theophan, in Fomin and Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 346, 347.
1314
Sokolov, L.A. Episkop Ignatij Brianchaninov (Bishop Ignaty Brianchaninov), Kiev, 1915, vol. 2,
p. 250. Italics mine (V.M.).
780

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THE AGE OF REVOLUTION (1789-

AN ESSAY IN UNIVERSAL HISTORY

© Copyright, Vladimir Moss, 2019. All rights reserved.

The government of the revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

Lo, thy dread Empire, CHAOS! is restor'd;

Thou art a man, God is no more:

I am the new Prometheus, chained to the rock to be gnawed by vultures. Yes, I

These philosophers consider men in their experiments no more than they do

God is love, but God is not equality.

He who serves the revolution ploughs the sea…

Without religion, political science can create only despotism or anarchy.

The King reigns, but does not rule.

Property is theft… Anarchy is order.

I. THE WEST: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND NAPOLEON (1789-1815) 11

1. THE REVOLUTION AND FREEMASONRY 12

3. THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 35

4. BURKE ON THE REVOLUTION 43

5. THE JACOBIN TERROR 53

6. THE REVOLUTION AND RELIGION 61

7. FROM THE DIRECTORY TO NAPOLEON 70

8. NAPOLEON AND THE ENGLISH 74

9. NAPOLEON AND RELIGION 79

10. FROM SALAMANCA TO WATERLOO 84

11. NAPOLEON THE MAN-GOD 90

II. THE EAST: RUSSIA AND NAPOLEON (1789-1815) 99

12. RUSSIA AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 100

13. TSAR PAUL I 103

14. THE ANNEXATION OF GEORGIA 110

15. THE OLD RITUALISTS AND THE YEDINOVERIE 117

16. THE MURDER OF TSAR PAUL 122

17. THE GOLDEN AGE OF MASONRY 128

18. TILSIT: SUMMIT OF THE EMPERORS 133

19. ALEXANDER, NAPOLEON AND SPERANSKY 142

20. NAPOLEON'S INVASION OF RUSSIA 150

21. THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 164

III. THE WEST: NATIONALISM, ROMANTICISM, HISTORICISM (1815-1830) 177

22. THE ORIGINS OF NATIONALISM 178

23. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (1) FRANCE 185

24. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (2) ITALY 196

26. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (4) LATIN AMERICA 217

27. NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONS: (5) GERMANY 221

28. NATIONALISM AND THE NATONS: (6) BRITAIN 234

29. GOETHE AND BEETHOVEN 242

30. THE REVOLUTION AND ROMANTICISM 254

31. REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION 263

32. THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORICISM 273

IV. THE EAST: THE DEFEAT OF MASONRY (1815-1830) 293

33. THE CHILDREN OF 1812 294

34. THE POLISH AND JEWISH QUESTIONS 299

35. THE REACTION AGAINST MASONRY 308

36. THE RUSSIAN BIBLE PROJECT 316

37. THE GREEK REVOLUTION 320

38. THE FREE STATE OF GREECE 333

39. THE DECEMBRIST REBELLION 339

40. ST. SERAPHIM OF SAROV 346

V. THE WEST: LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM (1830-1865) 353

41. THE ROTHSCHILD CENTURY 354

43. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 360

44. THE AMERICAN DREAM 368

45. THE JULY DAYS 381