"A Winter’s Tale: The Last Stand of the Decembrists." Topic

"Tsar Alexander I was dead to begin with, dead since 1 December in fact. Soldiers of the garrison of St Petersburg and the Imperial Guard had sworn allegiance to his brother Grand Duke Konstantin. However the Grand Duke had never wanted to be Tsar and abdicated in accordance with a secret manifesto signed by the dead emperor that transferred the succession. Into the gap stepped his younger brother Nicholas. Reluctantly at first because he didn't know about the manifesto and then becasue he wouldn't accept it.

This infuriated, or at least confused a large section of the garrison, and a secret society that would become known as the Decembrists took advantage of it. These were army officers bent on social reform, properly known as the Union of Salvation. The leaders of the northern part of this movement, liberals who wished constitutional monarchy based somewhat on American lines, were swift to try and persuade the St Petersburg garrison not to swear allegiance to Nicholas, and on 26 December (14 Dec OS), 3,000 mutinous troops, mostly from the Moscow Lifeguard Regiment, Grenadier Lifeguard and Marine Guard battalions marched on Senate Square in the heart of St Petersburg…."
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Amicalement
Armand

I kept thinking this couldn't be the 1800 event, but they never mentioned the year…until the sources were listed.

Argh!

Never trust lifeguards. Specially those in speedos.

Dan

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

The cry was "Constantine and Constitution!" Sadly, my Russian history professor told me that afterward it turned out that many of the soldiers thought Constitution was Constantine's wife.

Democracies are harder to get going than many people think.

Shooting someone in the back and then bayoneting him while he is lying wounded doesn't seem like an auspicious means of gaining the sympathy of the other troops and the crowd.