arative ease
with which the Grand Army was engulfed left on the national mind of
Russia a consciousness of pride never to be lost even amidst the cruel
disappointments of the Crimean War. Holy Russia had once beaten back the
forces of Europe marshalled by the greatest captain of all time. She was
therefore a match for the rest of the Continent. Such was the belief of
every patriotic Muscovite. As for the Turks, they were not worthy of
entering the lists against the soldiers of the Czar. Did not every
decade bring further proofs of the decline of the Ottomans in governing
capacity and military prowess? They might harry Bulgarian peasants and
win laurels over the Servian militia. But how could that bankrupt State
and its undisciplined hordes hold up against the might of Russia and the
fervour of her liberating legions?

After the indulgence of these day dreams the disillusionment caused by
the events at Plevna came the more cruelly. One general after another
became the scapegoat for the popular indignation. Then the General
Staff was freely censured, and whispers went round that the Grand Duke
Nicholas, brother of the Czar, was not only incompetent to conduct a
great war, but guilty of underhand dealings with the contractors who
defrauded the troops and battened on the public funds. Letters from the
rank and file showed that the bread was bad, the shoes were rotten, the
rifles outclassed by those of the Turks, and that trenching-tools were
lacking for many precious weeks[222]. Then, too, the Bulgarian peasants
were found to be in a state of comfort superior to that of the bulk of
their liberators--a discovery which aroused in the Russian soldiery
feelings like those of the troops of the old French monarchy when they
fought side by side with the soldiers of Washington for the triumph of
democracy in the New World. In both cases the lessons were stored up, to
be used when the champions of liberty returned home and found the old
order of things clanking on as slowly and rustily as ever.

[Footnote 222: _Russia Before and After the War_, translated by E.F.
Taylor (London, 1880), chap. xvi.: "We have been cheated by blockheads,
robbed by people whose incapacity was even greater than their
villainy."]

Finally, there came the crushing blow of the Treaty of Berlin. The
Russian people had fought for an ideal: they longed to see the cross
take the place of the crescent which for five centuries had flashed
defiance to Christendo