Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

PROPAGANDISE! OP NAPOLEON. 153

under pretext of aiding in the accomplishment of the Emperor's designs, a great number of political workmen,—a kind of masked army, charged with secretly preparing the way for our soldiers. These skilful intriguers were instructed to mix themselves up with the government, and especially with the system of public education, and to instil into the minds of the rising generation doctrines opposed to the political religion of the land. Thus did the great warrior — heir to the French revolution and foe to the liberties of the world—throw from afar the seeds of trouble and of discord, because the unity of despotism appeared to him a dangerous weapon in the military government which constitutes the immense power of Russia.

That empire is now reaping the fruit of the slow and profound policy of the adversary it flattered itself that it had conquered, — an adversary whose posthumous machiavelisni survives reverses unheard of in the history of human Avars. To the secretly-working influence of these pioneers of our armies, and to that of their children and their disciples, I attribute in a great measure the revolutionary ideas which have taken root in many families, and even in the army; and the explosion of which has produced the conspiracies that we have seen hitherto breaking themselves against the strength of the established government. Perhaps I deceive myself, but I feel persuaded that the present Emperor will triumph over these ideas, by crushing, even to the last man, those who defend them.

I was far from expecting to find in Russia such vestiges of our policy, and to hear from the mouths of Russians reproaches similar to those that the Spall 5