o a
battle of life and death. Such insight was never attained by
Constantine; even in 1812, after the fall of Moscow, he pressed for a
speedy conclusion of peace with Napoleon, and, like field-marshal
Kutusov, he too opposed the policy which carried the war across the
Russian frontier to a victorious conclusion upon French soil. During the
campaign he was a boon companion of every commanding-officer. Barclay de
Tolly was twice obliged to send him away from the army. His share in the
battles in Germany and France was insignificant. At Dresden, on the 26th
of August, his military knowledge failed him at the decisive moment, but
at La Fere-Champenoise he distinguished himself by personal bravery. On
the whole he cut no great figure. In Paris the grand-duke excited public
ridicule by the manifestation of his petty military fads. His first
visit was to the stables, and it was said that he had marching and
drilling even in his private rooms.

In the great political decisions of those days Constantine took not the
smallest part. His importance in political history dates only from the
moment when the emperor Alexander entrusted him in Poland with a task
which enabled him to concentrate all the one-sidedness of his talents
and all the doggedness of his nature on a definite object: that of the
militarization and outward discipline of Poland. With this begins the
part played by the grand-duke in history. In the Congress-Poland created
by Alexander he received the post of commander-in-chief of the forces of
the kingdom; to which was added later (1819) the command of the
Lithuanian troops and of those of the Russian provinces that had
formerly belonged to the kingdom of Poland. In effect he was the actual
ruler of the country, and soon became the most zealous advocate of the
separate position of Poland created by the constitution granted by
Alexander. He organized their army for the Poles, and felt himself more
a Pole than a Russian, especially after his marriage, on the 27th of
May 1820, with a Polish lady, Johanna Grudzinska. Connected with this
was his renunciation of any claim to the Russian succession, which was
formally completed in 1822. It is well known how, in spite of this, when
Alexander I. died on the 1st of December 1825 the grand-duke Nicholas
had him proclaimed emperor in St Petersburg, in connexion with which
occurred the famous revolt of the Russian Liberals, known as the rising
of the Dekabrists. In this crisis Con