o court-martial his horse.
The noble steed had tripped beneath his rider. A council was convened,
composed of the equerries of the palace. The horse was proved guilty
of failing in respect to his majesty, and was condemned to receive
fifty blows from a heavy whip. Paul stood by, as the sentence was
executed, counting off the blows.[24]

[Footnote 24: Memoires Secret, tome i., page 334.]

Twelve Polish gentlemen were condemned, for being "wanting in respect
to his majesty," to have their noses and ears cut off, and were then
sent to perpetual Siberian exile. When any one was admitted to an
audience with the tzar, it was necessary for him to fall upon his
knees so suddenly and heavily that his bones would ring upon the floor
like the butt of a musket. No gentle genuflexion satisfied the tzar. A
prince Gallatin was imprisoned for "kneeling and kissing the emperor's
hand too negligently." This contempt for humanity soon rendered Paul
very unpopular. He well knew that his legitimacy was doubted, and that
if an illegitimate child he had no right whatever to the throne. He
seemed to wish to prove that he was the son of Peter III. by imitating
all the silly and cruel caprices of that most contemptible prince.

The French Revolution was now in progress, the crushed people of that
kingdom endeavoring to throw off the yoke of intolerable oppression.
All the despots in Europe were alarmed lest popular liberty in France
should undermine their thrones. None were more alarmed than Paul. He
was so fearful that democratic ideas might enter his kingdom that he
forbade the introduction into his realms of any French journal or
pamphlet. All Frenchmen in his kingdom were also ordered immediately
to depart. All ships arriving were searched and if any French subjects
were on board, men or women, they were not permitted to land, but were
immediately sent out of the kingdom. Merchants, who had left their
families and their business for a temporary absence, were not
permitted again to set foot in the kingdom. The suffering which this
cruel edict occasioned was very great.

Day after day new decrees were issued, of ever increasing violence.
The tzar became suspicious of all strangers of whatever nation, and
endeavored to rear a wall of separation around his whole kingdom which
should exclude it from all intercourse with other parts of Europe. The
German universities were all declared to be tainted with superstition,
and all Russians were proh