Untitled - OUDL Home

could to rebuild the rampart, to restore the German landsto their previous position, with Austria controlling theConfederation, to maintain as far as possible the 1815settlement of Europe. Poland must be held down at allcosts, Russia sealed off from infection from the West.But internal conditions made any immediate active interventiondifficult, and opinion in Russia was in generalvery averse to pulling Austrian or Prussian chestnuts outof the fire. The extreme severity of the police-censorshiprule of Nicholas's closing years so alienated Russia fromhim that his death, in the midst of the Crimean War(1855), was greeted with undisguised relief.The three enemies to be fought were constitutionalism,nationalism, and socialism. The French Republic wasnaturally odious in the eyes of Nicholas, but not more sothan the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe; and,unlike Nesselrode, he looked with favour upon LouisNapoleon, until 'the saviour of society' became alsoEmperor of the French (1852) and the restorer of theFrench guardianship of Catholic rights in the Levant.In any case France was far away, but revolution near athand in central Europe.Nationalism in Poland was the tsar's first concern.Russian Poland was held down by additional troops andpolice. A rising in Prussian Poland was quashed. ThePolish question proved again the strongest tie betweenSt Petersburg and Berlin. Nationalism in Hungary wasthe second concern of Nicholas, not merely because itwas a challenge to Habsburg rule: with Kossuth therewere over a thousand Polish refugees. "We cannotallow the formation on the frontiers of Poland of anindependent Polish Hungary" (Nesselrode). The youngemperor Francis Joseph appealed for help: a Russianarmy crossed the Carpathians and saved the Habsburgs(1849)..The intervention in Hungary branded Russia with stilldarker colours in the eyes of the West and led to a tussleat Constantinople over the extradition of five thousandrefugees who had escaped from Hungary; a tussle inwhich Palmerston and Louis Napoleon joined in successfuldefence of the Porte. The intervention gave birth to410