Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century

But whether we be spiritualists or materialists with respect to Russia — whether we consider her power as a palpable fact, or as the mere vision of the guilt-stricken consciences of the European peoples-the question remains the same: “How did this power, or this phantom of a power, contrive to assume such dimensions as to rouse on the one side the passionate assertion, and on the other the angry denial of its threatening the world with a rehearsal of Universal Monarchy?” At the beginning of the eighteenth century Russia was regarded as a mushroom creation extemporised by the genius of Peter the Great. Schloezer thought it a discovery to have found out that she possessed a past; and in modern times, writers, like Fallmerayer, unconsciously following in the track beaten by Russian historians, have deliberately asserted that the northern spectre which frightens the Europe -of the nineteenth century already overshadowed the Europe of the ninth century. With them the policy of Russia begins with the first Ruriks, and has, with some interruptions indeed, been systematically continued to the present hour.

Ancient maps of Russia are unfolded before us, displaying even larger European dimensions than she can boast of now: her perpetual movement of aggrandisement from the ninth to the eleventh century is anxiously pointed out; we are shown Oleg launching 88,000 men against Byzantium, fixing his shield as a trophy on the gate of that capital, and dictating an ignominious treaty to the Lower Empire; Igor making it tributary^[94]; Svyataslav glorying,

“the Greeks supply me with gold, costly stuffs, rice, fruits and wine; Hungary furnishes cattle and horses; from Russia 1 draw honey, wax, furs, and men”;

Vladimir conquering the Crimea and Livonia, extorting a daughter’ from the Greek Emperor,’ as Napoleon did from the German Emperor, blending the military sway of a. northern conqueror with the theocratic despotism of the Porphyrogeniti,^[95] and becoming at once the master of his subjects on earth, and their protector in heaven.