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When Alexander I resumed the struggle for thePrincipalities (1806-12) the Russians were assisted forthe first time (apart from the Montenegrins) by a reallyserious rising, the Serbian peasant rebellion led byBlack George (Karageorgevich, the forefather of thepresent king of Jugoslavia). The Serbs were readyenough to receive arms and money from any source,preferably the Russians, if need be from the Austrians,if needs must from Napoleon. Russian agents werevery active amongst them, but material assistance waserratic and policy vacillating. For a brief moment(1812) Alexander planned a league of the Balkan Slavsas a great diversion in the rear of Napoleon and hisnominal ally Austria, but this chimera faded into cloudrackin face of the Grand Army, and the Serbs were leftto the tender mercy of the Turks.When victory over Napoleon was finally won, Alexanderwas determined that the Congress of Viennashould not concern itself with the Ottoman empire.He remained deaf to the Serbs and the Greeks, unlikethe Poles, and the Turks were wrong in fearing that hisHoly Alliance was designed to prove its holiness bysome crusade against themselves. It proved rather tobe the father of a crusade for conservatism.At the very time when the Slavs outside Russia werereviving their past and moulding their future in the newcrucible of nationalism, autocracy in Russia underNicholas I (1825-55) was playing the part of 'thegendarme of Europe' and the upholder of thrones andconstituted authority against 'the demagogic hydra.'The days of Czartoryski, the Pole, and Capodistrias, theGreek, as foreign ministers of the tsar were past. Thelatter's successor, Nesselrode, of German parentage,foreign minister continuously from 1822-56, frownedseverely upon any Slav movements which might infusea further dose of revolutionary principles. For Nesselrodeand his closest associates the Serbs were 'thesebrigands': complete emancipation of the Orthodoxfrom Turkey was no part of their policy; still less anyencouragement of movements that might infect theHabsburg empire.239