the imperial weather-cock shifting to one quarter the whole swarm of these drones began buzzing away in the direction, making it more difficult for the Tsar to shift his course back again. In the uncertainty of the position, with the menace of serious danger, which gave a peculiarly intense character to everything, in this whirlpool of ambitions, of conflicting vanities, and views, and feelings, and different nationalities, this eighth and largest party, absorbed only in the pursuit of personal interests, greatly increased the complexity and confusion. Whatever question arose, the swarm of drones, still humming over the last subject, flew to the new one, and by their buzzing drowned and confused the voices of sincere disputants.

At the time when Prince Andrey reached the army yet another—a ninth party—was being formed out of all the rest, and was just making its voice heard. It consisted of sensible men of age and political experience, sharing none of the conflicting opinions, and able to take a general view of all that was being done at headquarters, and to consider means for escaping from the vagueness, uncertainty, confusion, and feebleness.

The members of this party thought and said that the whole evil was primarily due to the presence of the Tsar with his military court in the army; that it brought into the army that indefinite, conditional, and fluctuating uncertainty of relations which is in place in a court, but mischievous in an army; that it was for the Tsar to govern and not to lead his troops; that the only escape from the position was the departure of the Tsar and his court from the army; that the simple presence of the Tsar paralysed fifty thousand troops, which must be retained to secure his personal safety; that the worst commander-in-chief, acting independently, would be better than the best commander-in-chief with his hands tied by the presence and authority of the Tsar.

While Prince Andrey was staying, with nothing to do, at Drissa, Sishkov, the secretary of state, one of the leading representatives of this last group, wrote to the Tsar a letter to which Balashov and Araktcheev agreed to add their signatures. In this letter he took advantage of the Tsar’s permitting him to offer his opinion on the general question, and respectfully suggested the sovereign’s leaving the army, urging as a pretext for his doing so the absolute necessity of his presence to rouse public feeling in the capital.

To appeal to the people, and to rouse them in defence of their fatherland, was represented as urgently necessary to the Tsar, and was accepted by him as a sufficient reason for leaving. The outburst of patriotism that followed that appeal (so far indeed as it can be said to have been produced by the Tsar’s visit to Moscow) was the principal cause of the subsequent triumph of Russia.