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aroused interest in the highest quarters, though to littlepractical effect. After 1815 the political ideas of Englandof the unreformed Parliament were felt to be too radicalor alien by the conservative nationalists, too aristocraticor reactionary by the generation influenced by the FrenchRevolution and the wars in the West.The French Revolution had soon brought into drasticplay Catherine's censorship and police, but neither it northe Napoleonic wars caused a general revulsion fromFrance. There were so many different Frances. Wherethe Revolution was taboo or Napoleon an ogre, therewas the France of the emigres, of the Jesuits (allowedin Russia between 1772 and 1820), of Chateaubriandand Madame de Stael. And there was always theFrance of the seventeenth-century classics. Many royalistemigres figured prominently in the Russian army andnavy, and New Russia owed a great debt to her governorgeneral,the Due de Richelieu, later Louis XVIIPs primeminister, and to his French collaborators (cf. p. 46).1812 and the burning of Moscow caused an explosionof national feeling against "the barbarians, the Vandals,""the modern Tamerlane,'' but the catastrophe of theGrand Army and the part played by Russia in the finaloverwhelming of Napoleon changed the outburst ofhatred to mixed feelings of pity, condescension, andsuperiority. The events of 1812-15 gave a most powerfulimpetus to the Russian nationalism that had thriven onthe Great Northern War, the Seven Years War, and theall-round prestige of 'the age of Catherine,' It wasreinforced by a recrudescence of militant xenophobia inthe Orthodox church and by the patriotic, literary conservatismbest represented by Karamzin's phenomenallysuccessful History of the Russian State (1816).On the other hand, the campaigns in the West and theoccupation of France (1815-18) made Russians far betteracquainted with Europe at first hand than ever before.Many officers, especially in the Guards, became impregnatedwith, or sympathetic towards, liberal or radicalideas. The glaring contrasts between Russia and theWest inspired feelings of the necessity of wholesalereform, beginning with the autocrat's throne and reaching349