De Maistre lived at St. Petersburg in great poverty, which he bore without being humiliated by it. He was distrusted and constantly left in the lurch by his ungrateful court, which did not even repay him the sums that from time to time he was obliged to advance out of his slender means to necessitous fellow-countrymen in Russia. During these years his theories matured and his intellectual idiosyncrasies became more marked. The letters, private as well as diplomatic, which he wrote at this time give us an excellent idea of the spirit and the general conditions prevailing at the court of Alexander I. Those written previous to and during Napoleon's campaign in Russia are especially interesting from the graphic impression they give of the fears, hopes, panics, and rejoicings produced at that time throughout the Russian empire by war news, whether true or false. At first De Maistre is in great anxiety about the issue of the war. He clearly sees the incompetence of the generals who are appointed to direct the operations against such a leader as the Emperor of the French. But from the moment when it is known how ill-equipped the French army is to face the Russian autumn, not to mention the Russian winter, he is no longer in doubt; he foresees that Napoleon's fall and the restitution of all his conquests--events which he had long regarded as certain to happen sooner or later--are close at hand.
Six of De Maistre's works were written at St. Petersburg. Of these _Du Pape, De l'Église Gallicane, Examen de la Philosophie de Bacon_, and _Soirées de St. Pétersbourg_ are the most important and the most characteristic of their author.
The _Soirées_ contain the ideas on the subject of God and the world upon which his theory of the state is based. Anticipating the objection that the authority of his absolute monarchs rests upon no foundation, that they are utterly irresponsible, that, in other words, autocracy is unjust, he meets it with the preliminary general answer that injustice is the law of every society, because it is the law of all life on earth. In nature itself might is right--with the right of the stronger, plants and animals are perpetually destroying one another. And this law: Might is right, is far from losing its validity in the world of man; here also it prevails, as the law of war. War is a perpetually recurring phenomenon in the life of the human race. Except for a few years in each century, it has raged from the most ancient times until now, and it will continue to do so. Human blood will always be flowing upon earth. For the chastisement of heaven is upon man. To this conception of war the military profession owes the high position it holds and always has held. No trade is considered so honourable as that of the soldier. The human race, taken as a whole, is guilty and deserves the scourge of war, unjustly though the punishment may fall in single cases.