also, writhing with discontent under the Czar's stern
despotism, was worked on with success by their emissaries; and the
ardour of the Poles made the recruits especially dangerous to the
authorities, ever fearful of another revolt in that unhappy land.
Finally, the Czar was fain to shut himself up in nearly complete
seclusion in his palace at Gatchina, near St. Petersburg, or in his
winter retreat at Livadia, on the southern shores of the Crimea.

These facts are of more than personal and local importance. They
powerfully affected the European polity. These were the years which saw
the Bulgarian Question come to a climax; and the impotence of Russia
enabled that people and their later champions to press on to a solution
which would have been impossible had the Czar been free to strike as he
undoubtedly willed. For the present he favoured the cause of peace
upheld by his chancellor, de Giers; and in the autumn of the year 1884,
as will be shown in the following chapter, he entered into a compact at
Skiernewice, which virtually allotted to Bismarck the arbitration on all
urgent questions in the Balkans. As late as November 1885, we find Sir
Robert Morier, British ambassador at the Russian Court, writing
privately and in very homely phrase to his colleague at Constantinople,
Sir William White: "I am convinced Russia does not want a general war in
Europe about Turkey now, and that she is really suffering from a
gigantic _Katzenjammer_ (surfeit) caused by the last war[232]." It is
safe to say that Bulgaria largely owes her freedom from Russian control
to the Nihilists.

[Footnote 232: _Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir William White_, edited
by H.S. Edwards, ch. xviii.]

For the Czar the strain of prolonged warfare against unseen and
desperate foes was terrible. Surrounded by sentries, shadowed by secret
police, the lonely man yet persisted in governing with the assiduity and
thoroughness of the great Napoleon. He tried to pry into all the affairs
of his vast empire; and, as he held aloof even from his chief Ministers,
he insisted that they should send to him detailed reports on all the
affairs of State, foreign and domestic, military and naval, religious
and agrarian. What wonder that the Nihilists persisted in their efforts,
in the hope that even his giant strength must break down under the
crushing burdens of toil and isolation. That he held up so long shows
him to have been one of the strongest men and most persistent