From those days, however, the Conspiratory Movement in Russia began to assume larger proportions. What I have said in the preceding pages, goes far to explain the violence by which that movement has latterly been characterized.
Partly from the aggressiveness which is the natural bent of a despotic military monarchy, partly from the wish to check the home-growth of Liberal sentiments by frequent blood-letting abroad, the government of Alexander II. has tried to meet the danger which has been gathering round the autocratic system by lighting up foreign wars. Central Asia has served him for that purpose. So has Turkey. The flag of ambition was flaunted before public opinion as soon as there was a revival of the Opposition tendency in internal affairs.
An attempt at opening up the whole Eastern Question was made as early as 1870, when France and Germany were locked together in deadly embrace. The confidential despatches and cypher telegrams exchanged in 1870 between Mr. de Novikoff, the Russian Ambassador at Vienna, and Mr. Ionin, the Russian Consul-General at Ragusa, which fortunately came to light some years ago, have fully proved that even then Muscovite policy busied itself with getting up a phantom insurrection in Herzegovina, preparatory to an attack upon Turkey. Nor is it a secret that a Bulgarian Committee of Insurrection, affiliated to Russia, had been in existence at Bucharest for years previous to the late war. All these propagandistic intrigues were in a measure designed to occupy some of the more active minds in Russia, who hesitated, between home reform and Panslavistic ambition.
The Czar has indulged in his warlike enterprizes, but he has deceived himself in his calculations as regards home policy. All his frightful spilling of blood abroad has not been able to prevent the formation and extension of what is called the Nihilist Conspiracy. Side by side with his wars, the Secret League has grown apace, overshadowing all his glory. So extensive have the ramifications of that Conspiracy become that the liveliest interest is now awakened as to its origin and its earliest germs.
In the nature of things it is impossible, at present, to speak with full certainty on this subject. The Russian revolutionists, being engaged in a desperate struggle, have neither the leisure necessary for writing such statements; nor is it their interest to go into details. Judicial inquiries have lifted, here and there, some corner of the mysterious winding-sheets in which the secret _Vehme_ is enveloped. But more light can only be expected after the Conspiracy has been entirely crushed,--in which case, however, owing to the heroic silence which its adherents generally maintain, a great deal of knowledge will for ever be buried in the grave,--or the fuller clearing up will come when, as I would fain hope, this fierce struggle ends with a triumph, whether complete or partial, of the cause of freedom.