Two hundred of the others were sent to Siberia for life, and the soldiers who had simply obeyed the orders of their leaders were distributed among other regiments than those in which they had served.
"Through his whole reign Nicholas was an enemy to free speech or free writing, and his rule was severe to the last degree. What he ordered it was necessary to perform, no matter what the difficulties were in the way, and a failure was, in his eyes, little short of a crime. He decided questions very rapidly, and often with a lack of common-sense. When the engineers showed him the plans of the Moscow and St. Petersburg Railway, and asked where the line should run, he took a ruler, drew on the map a line from one city to the other, and said that should be the route. As a consequence, the railway is very nearly straight for the whole four hundred miles of its course, and does not pass any large towns like the railways in other countries.
NICHOLAS I.
"A more sensible anecdote about him relates an incident of the Crimean war, when the Governor of Moscow ordered the pastor of the English Church in that city to omit the portion of the service which prays for the success of British arms. The pastor appealed the case to the Emperor, who asked if those words were in the regular service of the English Church. On being answered in the affirmative, he told the pastor to continue to read the service just as it was, and ordered the governor to make no further interference.
"His disappointment at the defeat of his armies in the Crimean war was the cause of his death, quite as much as the influenza to which it is attributed. On the morning of his last day he received news of the repulse of the Russians at Eupatoria, and he is said to have died while in a fit of anger over this reverse. Though opposed to the freedom of the Press and people, he advised the liberation of the serfs; and before he died he urged his son and successor to begin immediately the work of emancipation.
