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 Christendom from the summit of St. Sofia at Constantinople.  But Britain’s ironclads, Austria’s legions, and German diplomacy barred the way in the very hour of triumph; and Russia drew back.  To the Slav enthusiasts of Moscow even the Treaty of San Stefano had seemed a dereliction of a sacred duty; that of Berlin seemed the most cowardly of betrayals.  As the Princess Radziwill confesses in her Recollections—­that event made Nihilism possible.

As usual, the populace, whether reactionary Slavophils or Liberals of the type of Western Europe, vented its spleen on the Government.  For a time the strongest bureaucracy in Europe was driven to act on the defensive.  The Czar returned stricken with asthma and prematurely aged by the privations and cares of the campaign.  The Grand Duke Nicholas was recalled from his command, and, after bearing the signs of studied hostility of the Czarevitch, was exiled to his estates in February 1879.  The Government inspired contempt rather than fear; and a new spirit of independence pervaded all classes.  This was seen even as far back as February 1878, in the acquittal of Vera Zazulich, a lady who had shot the Chief of the Police at St. Petersburg, by a jury consisting of nobles and high officials; and the verdict, given in the face of damning evidence, was generally approved.  Similar crimes occurred nearly every week[223].  Everything therefore, favoured the designs of those who sought to overthrow all government.  In a word, the outcome of the war was Nihilism.