election and investiture by the bourgeoisie. It was in this spirit that in the year 1849 he sent troops to assist in suppressing the revolution in Hungary. In 1853 he ordered Serbia to dismiss the premier Garašanin (senior) because that statesman had been a pupil of Kossuth and Mazzini. Metternich's policy in Austria and Germany was a delight to Nicholas. He was not without objections to Napoleon III, but he accepted this coup d'état. Metternich, in turn, sought and found in Nicholas a protector against the revolution, of which he had himself been regarded as the chief opponent, and the Austrian chancellor came to terms with Russia in order to keep Germany and Italy dependent. In Europe Nicholas was admired by all conservatives and reactionaries, and by some actually worshipped, as for example by his brother-in-law Frederick William IV, who said: "I thank God upon my knees for having vouchsafed to me the profound grief I experience at the death of Tsar Nicholas, for having vouchsafed to me to be the tsar's faithful friend in the best sense of the word. "Nicholas, for his part, was devoted to the kings of Prussia, highly esteeming Prussian accuracy and orderliness. He preferred Germans in the army and in the administration.
With Nicholas began the "plague zone which extended from 1825 to 1855" (Herzen). Reaction became a carefully considered police system, the tsar in person assuming the office of chief superintendent of police, for this was the literal significance of the foundation in 1826 of the famous "third section of the departments under his majesty's immediate supervision," which down to the year 1880 was devoted to the attempt to gag Russia intellectually. The notorious Benckendorff, who had secured the tsar's favour through his zeal in the suppression of decabrism, was appointed chief of this institution. Later he also became chief of the gendarmerie, consecrating all his energies to the work of repression.
In this sketch it would be difficult to give an adequate idea of the abominable stupidity and provocative brutality that characterised reaction under Nicholas. For the utterance of liberal ideas conflicting with the official program, leading men were simply declared insane. This happened to Čaadaev and to a number of officers inclined towards revolutionary notions. In one case Nicholas had the death announced of certain Engelhardt whose sentence had in reality been commuted to imprisonment for life; his wife was compelled to
